He was silent for a few seconds. “No, but it looks like your boxes have been chewed on the corners, so that’s likely the cause of the noise. You have rodents up here.”
“That’s great,” Lilly said with a smile. “I never thought I’d be so relieved to have rodents in my attic.”
They all listened as David’s steps did another circuit of the boards, the beam of his flashlight bouncing around in the dark square of the attic entrance.
“I’m coming down,” he said, his foot appearing on the top rung of the ladder. “And I might need to head straight for the shower.”
As he emerged through the hole, Lilly saw that he was covered in dust, silvery threads of old cobwebs resting lightly on his brown hair and beard.
“You look like an old man,” Astrid said with a laugh.
He shook his head, sending dust rising into the air, and Astrid helped to brush down his shirt, picking pieces of debris out of the collar.
“Mom, we really need to clean the attic,” she said. “And get rid of the squirrels.”
“I’ll do that for you,” David said. “I use humane traps to catch them and then release them in a park.”
“I thought you were leaving tomorrow,” Astrid said. “Mom says you’ve organized a replacement agent.”
David glanced at Lilly. “Well, I can stay if you want me to.”
Astrid shrugged, and Lilly recognized the gesture as defensive. Astrid was protecting herself against another fatherly rejection. “It’s up to you,” she said. “I don’t care.”
“That’s not true, honey,” Lilly said. “You care a lot.”
Astrid folded her arms. “No, I don’t. He can leave if he wants. I won’t beg him to stay.”
Lilly closed her eyes, wanted to weep for the amount of times Astrid had begged her biological father to come visit, only to be let down time and time again. Her daughter was expecting it to happen again, making the assumption that David would run out on her just like Rylan did. Lilly understood this fear perfectly.
“I’m here for you, Astrid,” David said. “I want to apologize for the things I said this morning and I’m sorry for hurting you.”
“You never hurt me,” Astrid lied, her emotions rising. “So just pack your bags and leave us alone. You never cared about me anyway, did you? There’s no need to pretend.”
“I’m not pretending,” he said calmly. “I care about you a lot.”
“You’re a liar!” she shouted, sudden and high-pitched. “You hate me.”
David said nothing, and Lilly waited for his eventual reaction. Would he send Astrid to her room, demand submission, tell her she was disrespectful?
Instead of saying these things, he slipped his hand into Lilly’s. “Let’s talk this through together.”
Astrid huffed, stormed to her room and slammed the door. Meanwhile, Lilly looked down at her fingers entwined in David’s and wondered whether she could really, truly rely on him to be sensitive and kind, nurturing and fatherly. Could he be all of those things that Rylan was not?
With a big discussion in the cards, it looked like those burning questions were about to be answered once and for all.
* * *
David opened the door to Astrid’s room slowly and found her lying facedown on her bed, her head buried in a pillow.
“Hey,” he said, gently. “Can we come in?”
Astrid said nothing, so he led Lilly toward her bed and they both sat on the edge, hands clasped together, a joined force. This conversation had the power to make or break his future happiness and he needed Lilly’s stabilizing influence to help him pitch it right. She was the softness to his strength, the gentle influence that would remind him to always speak with love.
“I have something to give you, Astrid,” he said, slipping a cell phone from his pocket and placing it on the pillow. “I know you miss Noah a lot so I thought you might like to call him.”
Astrid raised her head. “You’re giving me a cell phone?”
“Yes, I’m giving you a cell phone. It’s one of our special devices so the calls can’t be intercepted, but I only want you to use it to call Noah. I know we’re not officially in hiding anymore, but social media and emails are out of bounds, okay? Henderson might learn too much about the house and its weak spots, so it’s best to have an internet blackout for now.”
She sat up, wiped her eyes. “Aren’t you worried?” she asked, picking up the cell and running her fingers over the numbers. “You remember what I did last time.”
“I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “I am a little worried, but I want to give you a chance to prove yourself. You can keep the phone in your room.”
She put the cell on her bedside dresser. “I’ll call Noah in the morning. He’ll be really pleased to get an actual phone call instead of a Snapchat message.” She dropped her eyes. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Tell me about Noah. Does he treat you well? It’s important that you hold him to a high standard because teenage boys can misbehave sometimes.”
“Noah doesn’t misbehave,” Astrid said hotly. “He’s really good to me.”
Lilly squeezed David’s hand. “I think what David is trying to say is that you only deserve the best, honey.”
He smiled at Lilly, grateful that she was pulling him back on track. “That’s exactly what I meant,” he said. “You’re a great person and I just wanted to check that Noah sees you in the same way.”
“Oh, he does,” Astrid said. “He says he wants to marry me one day.”
He was incredulous. “You’re only fifteen.” Another squeeze of the hand came. “But it’s nice that he’s planning ahead.”
“Noah says we can buy a house in Pittsburgh when we’re married, and he’ll teach in one of the public schools. He wants to be a science teacher.”
“A science teacher, huh?” This reassured him. The same boy who was immature enough to give Astrid a secret cell phone was also sensible enough to choose to be an educator. “He sounds like a good kid.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you when you met him,” Lilly said with a laugh. “But it wasn’t such a good time. His family attends the same church as me, and Noah stops by every Sunday to ask Astrid if she’ll go along with him.”
Astrid made a face. “I don’t like that church, Mom. It’s so boring.”
An idea pinged into David’s mind. “Chloe just started going to a church youth group in Penn Hills. It’s not too far from here if you’d like to give it a try. I can drop you off and pick you up. Noah too.”
At this suggestion Astrid became animated. “I’d love to meet Chloe,” she said. “She sounds super cool. Do you think she’d like me?”
“I think she’d love you,” he replied. “You two have a lot in common. As soon as it’s realistically possible, I’ll drive you to Penn Hills and you and your mom can meet her together.”
David glanced at Lilly, worried she would be irritated with him for making decisions without consulting her, but she was smiling, seemingly pleased at the way he was handling this conversation.
“I know we’ve both made mistakes in how we’ve dealt with you lately, Astrid,” Lilly said. “I haven’t disciplined you enough and David’s discipline has sometimes been too tough, but you said yourself that we make a good team.”
“And your mom is the better half,” David said, kissing Lilly’s hand. “By a long way.”
“That’s true,” Astrid agreed. “But you’re okay too.”
David had had enough experience of teenagers to understand that being called okay was a huge compliment. But he wanted to go further.
“I want to be more than okay, Astrid,” he said. “I hope to be someone that you admire and respect, and in order to achieve that I’ll have to lay down some rules at times.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I like rules.” She s
miled. “Apart from the ones about homework. I hate those rules.”
“Okay,” he said with a smile, writing on an imaginary notebook with his finger. “No homework rules.”
“If we’re going to make this work, we have to be prepared for some tough times ahead,” Lilly said. “And we have to agree to speak to each other in a loving way, even when we’re angry or upset. We always speak the truth in love. Agreed?”
David recognized the words of Scripture as being from Ephesians. It was a perfect line of guidance for their situation.
“We speak the truth in love,” he said, hand across his heart.
“We speak the truth in love,” Astrid repeated after him, quickly adding, “apart from the truth about homework.”
He laughed. “I get it,” he said. “You hate homework. But I still want you to do it.”
“Does this mean you’re not leaving tomorrow?” Astrid asked hopefully.
David let go of Lilly’s hand and stood up. “I’m not leaving tomorrow. I’ll go make the call to cancel my replacement.” He walked to the door, realized something, stopped and turned around. “I forgot to ask if that’s okay with you both. This has got to be a joint decision, right?”
“I know I might not always show it, but I want you to stay,” Astrid said. “What about you, Mom?”
Lilly smiled at him, long and lingering.
“I want you to stay too,” she said. “I’m so glad we had this conversation.”
“Me too.” He looked around the room and raised his eyebrows at Astrid quizzically. “What happened to the huge mess that was in here a few days ago? I can see the carpet.”
“I tidied up,” she said. “I did a good job of it, huh?”
He dropped to his knees to peer at the space under the bed, only to see it crammed with her shoes, purses and books, jumbled together in a heap. As he burst into laughter, Astrid and Lilly did the same.
“Welcome to Astrid’s version of tidying up,” Lilly said. “It’s not perfect but it’s definitely effective.”
“No comment,” he said diplomatically, heading for the hallway.
THUMP! A noise sounded from overhead, right above Astrid’s room.
David stopped dead in the doorway and reached for his gun, raising his head to the ceiling.
“What was that?” Astrid asked, jumping from the bed. “That’s not a squirrel. No way.”
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
David tried to track the sound, hoping to pinpoint its exact location in the attic. Perhaps he could shoot through the ceiling, but without knowing what he was shooting at, he would run the risk of killing someone or something entirely innocent.
Goldie came running into the room. “Do you hear that?” she asked breathlessly. “It’s in the attic.”
“Stay with Lilly and Astrid while I take a look.”
He raced to the hatch, pulled the cord and yanked down the ladder, flitting up the steps in a matter of seconds. Activating the flashlight, the yellow beam picked out Astrid’s old canoe, bouncing along the floor, its front end rising up and thumping on the boards with huge force. For a second or two, he had no idea what was happening or how this yellow fiberglass boat could be moving entirely of its own accord. Then he saw a hand extend from the opening, someone making a desperate attempt to free themselves.
It was Henderson. He had somehow squeezed himself into the narrow space to successfully hide from view and was now apparently stuck. He must’ve been there since they arrived this afternoon, waiting for an opportune moment to strike.
David aimed his weapon, shouted, “It’s over, Henderson. You’re under arrest.”
But the canoe’s front end rose up one more time and came crashing down on one of the rotten boards with such force that it gave way with a huge crack. Both the canoe and David fell through the floor as more boards collapsed under the strain. He hit the carpet of Astrid’s bedroom with a thump while suitcases and boxes came crashing on top of him, knocking his gun from his hand and winding his gut. In the commotion were screams and shouts, Goldie yelling that she was trapped beneath a fallen bookcase. Lilly called out David’s name and he bellowed a response from beneath the pile of her belongings.
“Get out of the house! Go now!”
He punched the boxes and cases from his body, snatching up his gun and jumping to his feet to free Goldie. Upon lifting the bookcase, it was immediately apparent that his partner’s leg was broken, and she was gritting her teeth against the pain.
“Go find Lilly and Astrid,” she said. “Where’s Henderson?”
He spun around to locate the canoe, seeing it resting in the corner, cracked into large pieces by the impact.
And Henderson was nowhere in sight.
* * *
Lilly ran for her life, pursued by the man who was determined to kill both her and her daughter. She fumbled to open the front door when a gunshot rang out, splintering the door frame above her head.
“Help us,” she yelled, dragging Astrid down the path toward the patrol car at the curb. “Please help us.”
Both officers leaped from the car, weapons drawn. As the sound of multiple gunshots cracked the air, Lilly ran for cover, pulling Astrid alongside her. She headed down the side of the house, taking the path that led to the back lawn, where she hoped to jump the fence into Mr. Peters’s yard.
Glancing back, she saw the two officers slumped on the street, one lying motionless on the ground, the other leaning against the bumper of the patrol car, with a dark bloodstain spreading rapidly on his shirt. Their handguns had clearly been no match for the weapon in Henderson’s hand.
The officer looked up, caught her eye. “Go!” he yelled, a grimace of pain on his face. “Get out of here.”
But the officer’s shout had only served to give away her and Astrid’s position, halfway to the backyard, flattened against the fence. In an instant, Henderson came into view on the front lawn, wearing a bulletproof vest and holding a small but powerful submachine gun at his side.
And then his eyes locked with hers, pinning her to the spot like a rabbit in headlights. He held her gaze for a full two seconds, sending terror cascading from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. He had dropped his disguise entirely, and she saw his wickedness and savagery come pouring out. He seemed almost inhuman.
He smiled at her, a vile and terrifying smile that might be the last thing she ever saw.
“Lilly!” David’s voice cut through her immobility. “Where are you?”
Henderson spun on the spot and sprayed bullets at the front of her house.
“Come on, Mom.” Astrid was pulling her arm. “Let’s go.”
Lilly snapped out of her trance and raced to her backyard, wondering if David was okay. She had already seen a bookcase fall onto Goldie from the collapsed attic, so that meant he was battling alone.
“Jump over the fence, Astrid,” she said, making a platform with interlocked fingers. “Quickly!”
Astrid placed her slippered foot onto her mother’s hand and scrambled up the fence, swinging her long legs over the top and landing heavily on the other side. Lilly stood on tiptoes to peer over.
“You okay, Astrid?” she said, seeing Mr. Peters appear through his back door, confusion and fear on his face. “Go inside with Mr. Peters and wait for the police. A SWAT team will be here soon.”
Mr. Peters rushed over and helped Astrid to her feet. “Aren’t you coming too, Lilly?” he asked. “I don’t know what’s going on over there, but it sounds like you’re better off on this side of the fence.”
Lilly listened to the sound of the popping bullets from the submachine gun. The gunfight meant that David was still alive, holding off Henderson to distract him from reaching her and Astrid.
“I have to go help somebody,” she said. “Please look after Astrid until more police officers arrive. I’ll be back as soon as I
can.”
Tears fell down her daughter’s face. “I want to stay with you, Mom. Let me come with you.”
“I need you to do something far more important,” Lilly said, blowing her a kiss. “I need you to pray for me and David and Goldie, okay? I love you.”
Then she turned and ran to her back door, fumbling with the set of keys she always kept in her pocket. Finding and inserting the correct key required both hands due to the violent trembling, but she finally stumbled into her kitchen, breathing heavily, knowing that she had to find a weapon. Quickly.
Swallowing away her fear, she walked into the hallway, telling herself that she was fierce and brave, that she wasn’t reckless or foolish for returning to the danger zone. Astrid was safe and that was the most important thing right now.
Lilly stopped in her tracks as the gunfire ceased. While Henderson had been firing bullets in the front yard, at least she’d known where he was. If she couldn’t hear him, he could be anywhere. And she still needed a weapon. She headed straight for Astrid’s room, hoping Goldie could help.
“Lilly!” Goldie exclaimed on seeing her. “You should be with David. What are you doing inside?”
Lilly cast her eyes quickly around the room, which was covered in debris and broken furniture, boxes and dust. Goldie lay amongst the mess, holding her bloodied leg, which was bent at an awkward angle and clearly causing her discomfort.
“I don’t know where David is,” Lilly said, dragging a bookcase across the floor and positioning it between Goldie and the collapsed door, then adding other items in an attempt to make a barricade. “And I have no idea where Henderson is either. I’ll make a defense barrier for you and then I have to go find David. Do you have a spare gun?”
“Sure, but why do you need it?” Goldie said, wincing as she tried to reposition her leg. “Where are the cops from the patrol car? They’re meant to hold off an attack until the SWAT team arrives.”
Lilly shook her head, thinking of the blood that streaked the sidewalk. “They got shot.”
“Take this,” Goldie said, giving Lilly a handgun. “It has only twelve bullets in the chamber so use them wisely.”
Safe House Under Fire Page 18
