And he’d backed off. Good for him.
“What will he want you to do?” Darcy asked, the first time she’d spoken during this conversation.
Alexandra shrugged jerkily. “Not sure.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded close to tears. “I have a year of high school left. How can I have a baby just before final exams? How can I go to college with a baby?”
Neither Darcy nor I said anything. We—or at least I—had a hard time imagining it, too. But at the same time, I certainly didn’t want to doom the girl to a life of menial labor just because she’d gotten herself knocked up as a teenager.
“Other girls manage,” I told her. “There are lots of women who get pregnant in high school, who go on to live happy, successful lives. Look at David’s mother.”
“She gave David up for adoption!” Alexandra said.
He’d been taken away from her, actually, but there was no need to mention that. “You can’t deny that she had a successful career, though. And I’m sure there are other women who had babies in high school who went on to live happy, successful lives while keeping their babies, too.”
I could have mentioned Rafe’s mother, although LaDonna Collier wasn’t really a poster child for either happy or successful. She’d managed to raise a great son, though. Even if he’d probably partly raised himself. Or become who he was in spite of his mother and grandfather and not because of them.
“There are options other than to keep the baby,” I said. “You could—you know—get rid of it...”
I had considered that when I first found myself pregnant with Rafe’s baby and had no clue whether he’d be happy or the opposite, or whether he’d even care one way or the other. In the end, it hadn’t been an option I personally could choose, but that didn’t mean it shouldn’t be open to Alexandra. Abortion wasn’t illegal, and I didn’t want the girl to have to keep a baby she didn’t want. While life is sacred and all that, who in their right mind would insist that a girl who didn’t want to be a mother needed to become one anyway? In custody proceedings, the judge is supposed to make the decision that’s best for the child. It should be the same thing in this case. And surely it wouldn’t be best for the child to insist that he or she should be born to someone who didn’t want him.
“And there’s adoption,” I said, without looking at Darcy. “David was adopted. He has wonderful parents who couldn’t love him any more if he carried their DNA. They couldn’t have a child of their own, and David was a gift. If you don’t want a baby, you can give a gift to someone who does.”
Alexandra bit her lip and nodded. She looked beyond overwhelmed and well into shell-shocked.
I took pity on her. “You don’t have to decide now. You have some time to think about it. Get used to the idea of being pregnant first. Talk to the baby’s father. Tell your own father, although maybe that can wait until you decide what you want to do. And you’ll need to see a doctor. I can give you the name of mine, if you want.”
“That’d be great,” Alexandra said weakly.
I asked for her phone, and programmed the number in. While I was doing that, Alexandra turned to Darcy. “I’m sorry I’m not better company.”
“It’s OK,” Darcy told her. “I was adopted. My mother might have been a girl like you. It actually helps to see what you’re dealing with. It helps me to understand what she might have been going through.” And although she didn’t specifically say so, it probably also helped her to understand why her mother had given her up, and that it wasn’t necessarily just because Darcy wasn’t wanted.
Alexandra smiled, a little watery. “Thanks.” She dropped the phone I handed over back into her bag. “Thanks, Savannah. I think I’m going to go home and think about this. Can I call you if I need someone to talk to?”
“Sure,” I said, with a glance at Darcy. “I think Darcy and I are just headed back to Sweetwater now. Unless there’s something you’d like to do while we’re in Nashville?”
She shook her head.
“We’re stopping in Columbia on the way back,” I told Alexandra, since I’d already decided to do that, “but I should be back in Sweetwater by five. You can call me anytime after that.”
Alexandra said she might, and took herself off. Darcy and I did the same.
The house on Potsdam Street is only a few minutes from the barbeque place, so I asked Darcy if she minded if we swung by, just to make sure everything was OK. The neighborhood isn’t the greatest, as I told her, and it was always possible that someone had taken advantage of Rafe’s and my absence to break in.
Not that I really thought anyone had: it was more that while we were there anyway, I could throw a couple more outfits into a bag and take them with me, since I’d have to stay in Sweetwater longer than expected. That way, I wouldn’t have to keep wearing the same pairs of panties every day.
Darcy said she didn’t mind, so off we went, down Main Street, up Dickerson Road, past the buffalo statues, right on Dresden, left on Potsdam at the Milton House old folks’ home, where Mrs. Jenkins had been staying last year, and up the street toward home.
It was Darcy’s first time here, and she kept looking left and right, her face registering an expression somewhere between horror and fascination. “Is it safe?”
“Not as safe as where you live. But it’s safe enough.”
A lady of the night, plying her trade in broad daylight, swayed her way down the opposite sidewalk, while a gaudy Plymouth with a bunch of teenage boys hanging out of the windows cruised slowly by in the other lane, cat-calling. Darcy eyed her. “Is that...?”
“Looks that way. Although it could just be a woman with bad fashion sense.” I shook my head. “The trouble we’ve had since we moved here hasn’t come from the neighborhood. The neighbors pretty much all know Rafe and know that he works for the TBI. The law-abiding ones appreciate the presence of law enforcement, and the ones that don’t keep a wide berth.”
Darcy nodded.
“That’s the house, up there.” I pointed to it. Three stories tall, red brick, with a round tower on the corner.
Darcy’s eyes widened. “Wow.”
“Isn’t it great? Mrs. Jenkins, Rafe’s grandmother, owns it, but she’s in a nursing home now. Rafe put her there to keep her safe last fall, after Marquita Johnson died—Cletus’s wife; she was Mrs. Jenkins’s nurse—and then Mrs. J seemed to settle in, and we decided we might as well keep her with people who understood her condition and could work with her.”
Darcy looked politely inquiring, and I added, “She has dementia. Half the time she thinks Rafe is her son Tyrell, and I’m LaDonna Collier. It got even worse when we brought David into the mix. Anyway, she isn’t safe staying at home anymore. We can’t stay with her twenty-four/seven, and if we don’t, she wanders off and gets lost. She’s better off where she is. They’re working with her, and she has company and things to do.”
Darcy nodded. “It’s a beautiful house.”
Yes, it was. “You should have seen it the first time I came here.” I turned into the circular driveway and heard the gravel crunch under my tires, the same way it had done back then. “The porch was sagging, the roof was caving in, and the weeds were up to my knees. Rafe did a great job of bringing it back to life.”
Also, he looked very nice mowing the lawn, muscles moving smoothly and skin glistening with sweat.
Not that I wanted to put that particular image in Darcy’s head, so I didn’t say anything about it. Instead, I pulled the car to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, and cut the engine. “Let’s go inside.”
I reached for the door handle.
“Wait.” Darcy put out a hand to stop me.
“What?” But I waited.
She was looking at the house. “I saw the curtains move.”
“What?” I leaned over, until I was almost in her lap, and peered out the passenger side window. Nothing moved now. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” Darcy said, h
er voice tight. “Someone’s inside.”
“Nobody’s supposed to be inside.” I thought for a second. “Maybe Rafe’s back.”
Although why would he be back here, if he were hoping that the missing gang bangers would show up at the duplex?
Granted, he had told me he expected them to lie low until dark, but still, it didn’t make sense that he’d leave. It especially didn’t make sense that he’d come here.
“Go!” Darcy said, the edge in her voice so shrill it was almost a shriek.
I glanced past her in time to see the door start to move.
“Shit! I mean...”
Never mind. Nobody was here but Darcy, and I didn’t think she’d begrudge me the curse.
“Hurry!” she told me.
I was doing the best I could. I had taken the key out of the ignition when we stopped, and now my hand fumbled getting it back in. But after what felt like an eternity—but which was probably just a few seconds—I managed, and yanked on the gearshift. The car bulleted down the driveway, spitting up gravel. I looked in the rearview mirror, in time to see a figure come out of the door. Dark skin, oversized T-shirt, baggy jeans hanging low on skinny hips.
And a gun in his hand.
He lifted it and sighted down the barrel, and I braced for impact. But he must have decided to save the lead, or maybe he figured we were too far away and moving too fast to make a good target.
The next second we took the turn onto Potsdam on two wheels and screamed down the road. My heart was beating double-time in my chest, and Darcy was hyper-ventilating next to me. “Go!” she kept telling me. “Go!”
I wanted to tell her I was going as fast as I could, but there didn’t seem to be much point in it. And anyway, I couldn’t get my voice to cooperate.
The words ‘get away’ ran like a refrain through my head. Get away. Get away.
So we got away, as quickly as I could get us there. But while my body was shaking like a leaf and my breath sawed in and out of my lungs, I did manage to keep an eye on the rearview mirror. I didn’t fancy being in a car chase, and if they came after us, I wasn’t looking forward to what would happen.
By the time we reached the light at Dresden, I had lost sight of the driveway. In the time I had been watching, nobody had come out of it. The light was red, and after a quick back-and-forth look—nobody was coming—I tore across the intersection and into the parking lot outside the Milton House. There, I screeched into a parking space between two bigger cars, where hopefully we would be out of sight while I recovered, but where we could see the end of Potsdam Street. If anyone came after us, we’d see them.
“Keep an eye on the road,” I told Darcy, who was clutching the handle on her side of the car so hard her knuckles were white. “I have to make a call.”
She nodded, although I’m not a hundred percent sure she understood what I’d said. Her eyes were huge, staring straight ahead, but I’m not sure she actually saw anything beyond the fear.
It couldn’t be helped. I dug the phone out of my purse with shaking hands, and managed to turn it on. Punching in the numbers took a bit longer, but finally I managed. The phone rang once, twice, then—
“Darlin’? This ain’t a great time.”
“There’s someone in our house,” I said.
He was all business immediately. And didn’t ask me to repeat it, either. It’s nice to be married to someone who doesn’t make you reiterate the obvious. “Who?”
“Black guy. Early twenties. Jeans, T-shirt, bandanna. Gun.”
I could feel the chill through the phone when he heard that last word. “Did he shoot at you?”
I shook my head, and then realized he couldn’t see me. “No. He lifted the gun, but by then we were all the way down the driveway.”
“Color?”
“I told you,” I said. “He was black. Or brown. More like coffee without a lot of cream. Darker than you, but—”
“Not the guy. The bandanna.”
“Oh.” I told him the color of the bandanna. “Is he one of the guys you’re looking for?”
“Sounds like. Where are you?”
I told him we were down the street at the Milton House. “Sitting in the parking lot. Watching the cars.”
Almost like a song lyric.
“Did they follow you from the house?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. My teeth were chattering less now, and Darcy’s grip on the handle had loosened. Her knuckles were no longer white, although she was still hanging on. “We’re watching, and we haven’t seen anyone.”
“Stay where you are. Don’t go back.”
I told him, with all the sincerity I could muster, that I wouldn’t dream of it.
“Or better yet, go home.”
“Not sure I want to do that,” I said. “Just in case I’m wrong and they did follow us. I don’t want them to tag along to Sweetwater. One nutcase this summer was enough.”
He didn’t say anything to that. There wasn’t a lot to say. “Don’t move from where you are, then.”
“Are you coming?”
He sighed. “I might as well. If they’re there, it’s ‘cause they know who I am and where I live.”
They knew the house would be empty because they knew Rafe was somewhere else.
“I’m on my way. And I’m bringing a SWAT team.”
“That should be fun,” I said, and hung up.
And just sat for a moment with my hands in my lap trying to get my adrenaline under control. We were safe now. No one had followed us. Rafe was coming, and he was bringing reinforcements.
“What did he say?” Darcy asked. She had given up her death grip on the door handle, and was massaging her fingers. They were probably stiff from hanging on so tightly.
“He’s coming. And bringing a SWAT-team.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were. But no. Apparently these guys are dangerous.”
“I could tell that when he tried to shoot at us,” Darcy said.
“It should be quite a show, though. When I see the SWAT car go by, I’m going to follow it.”
“Maybe it won’t go by,” Darcy said.
Well, no. Maybe it wouldn’t. If it came from downtown, it would. Dickerson to Dresden was the quickest way from downtown to Potsdam Street. But if the East Police Precinct had a SWAT vehicle, it would come from the north. They were located on the opposite side of the house from where we were sitting.
“Maybe we should go back there and hang out in a driveway across the street. That way we won’t miss anything.”
“I don’t think we should go back there,” Darcy said as I put the car into gear. “Didn’t your husband say not to go back there?”
He had. But— “They’re probably not even there anymore. They knew we saw them. Unless they’re stupid, they’ll have left by now.”
“Then why is your husband sending a SWAT team?” Darcy wanted to know. She was fumbling for the door handle again, and we were barely even moving. Maybe she was thinking of opening the door and throwing herself out so she didn’t have to go back to the house. “I don’t think this is a good idea, Savannah. I mean, of course they’re stupid. They’re criminals, right?”
“We’re just going to sit across the street,” I said. “It’s my house. I want to watch.” I glanced at her. “Wouldn’t you want to watch, if it were your house?”
“Not if there was a chance I was going to get shot,” Darcy said as I maneuvered the car slowly out of the parking lot and onto the street.
“They’re not going to shoot us.”
“They tried!”
“He didn’t actually fire.” At least I hadn’t heard any shots, and they’re hard to miss. “If he wanted to shoot us, he would have done it then. And we won’t go anywhere near the house. I promise. There’s a driveway just up the street, that has a perfect view of our house.” The deranged serial killer who had kidnapped and tortured Rafe back in June, had parked there to keep us under surveillanc
e. “The house is being renovated, so nobody lives there. And they’re probably not working today.” Seeing as it was the weekend.
Darcy sighed, but didn’t protest. I waited for a low-slung, black Dodge to take a left onto Dresden, and then turned the Volvo onto Potsdam.
As it turned out, we were just in time. No sooner had we backed into the driveway across the street—where no one was working today—than the SWAT vehicle came lumbering down the street from the north. While it stopped just shy of our property, and a half dozen armored and armed men in black with the letters SWAT emblazoned across their backs tumbled out, I kept my attention on the house.
“I don’t see anything.”
“They’re not going to be standing on the porch,” Darcy said, a bit waspishly. I guess she really didn’t want to be here, even though we now had the protection of a six-man SWAT team.
“I’m sure they’re gone. If they have any sense at all, they’re gone.”
We watched as the SWAT cops swarmed over the low stone wall at the bottom of the yard and made their way toward the house, zig-zagging from tree to tree. Maybe they’d noticed something I hadn’t, or maybe they were just being careful.
“Your husband isn’t here,” Darcy said, “is he?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think he would have had time to get here from South Nashville. He drives like a bat out of hell, but there are limits to how fast he can go. And he wouldn’t tell the SWAT team to wait for him. He’d know that their best chance to get these guys is to get here quickly.”
Darcy nodded. “I guess they have another team in the back, right? So the bad guys can’t go out that way?”
I was sure they did. I didn’t know how often the Nashville police had occasion to dispatch a SWAT team, but it was frequently enough that they had one on standby.
The group in the front reached the house and swarmed up on the porch like an army of ants, high-powered rifles clutched in their hands. We watched as they peered through the windows into the house.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “I mean... oh, no.”
Darcy glanced at me. “What’s wrong?”
Uncertain Terms (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 12) Page 11