Southern Storm

by Terri Blackstock

  CHAPTER 28

  A yellow lamp burned in Blair’s office, casting threatening shadows on the walls and ceiling. She checked the clock—2:00 A.M. She’d been at this for hours and had come up with little information. She’d learned that William Clark was a contract lawyer who worked independently. He had no police record and had led an uneventful life up until the day he stepped out in front of Cade’s car.

  And she’d found next to nothing about Ann.

  She sat back in her chair and rubbed her aching forehead. Regardless of her spotless record, Ann Clark knew something about Cade. He could be somewhere in that house. There had to be a bomb shelter the police hadn’t seen, a tornado room, something somewhere that they hadn’t run across.

  The Clarks didn’t own any property other than the house at Washington Square. The woman could have him in some vacant structure that she didn’t own, of course. A warehouse somewhere or an empty house, or maybe that of a friend who was helping her.

  She got up and walked out of the office into the library lit only by a small recessed bulb near the door. The smell of dusty books permeated the room, and her heels clicked on the hardwood floor as she paced, trying to make some sense of it all. What did she have?

  Ann Clark had probably been angry about her husband’s death and might have sought revenge. It was clear that she had met with Cade on the morning of his disappearance, that he’d gotten into her car, and that he’d never been seen again since.

  But that still didn’t tell her where he was.

  Her stomach sank as if it contained concrete, and her breathing seemed labored and short. The thought that Cade was dead, lying somewhere undiscovered, shot through her. Quickly she shook it away. She couldn’t think that way. He had only been gone a few days. He was a strong man, tough and capable, not prone to being bested by a hundred-ten-pound woman.

  She went back in and turned off the computer and the lights, locked the door and walked across to her own home. Before going in, she stood out and looked across the street to the water glistening under the moonlight, stars sprinkling without number across its black expanse. Tears came to her eyes, and her heart swelled with emotion. And in her despair, she did something she had rarely done before.

  “God, I don’t know if you’re even there,” she whispered, “and if you are, I know you don’t have any reason to answer anything I ask. But Cade’s one of yours. You didn’t save my parents, and I don’t know why. But save him. Save him, please, if you’re really there.”

  A strong wind blew up from the water, sweeping her hair back from her face and whispering through the leaves on the trees above her. She wiped a tear from her face and felt the hard scaly skin of her burn scars under her fingertips.

  It reminded her again of that day Cade had touched her scars, after she’d called God a divine terrorist who enjoyed wreaking havoc on people’s lives. Her anger about her scars and the secrets surrounding them had come out that day. Cade had looked at her with puzzlement on his face. Touching her scars with his gentle fingertips, he’d whispered, “I don’t even see them anymore.”

  No one had ever been that intimate with her. Even her parents had avoided touching the scars she was so sensitive about. No one else would have dared do what Cade had done that day. In a lot of ways he had rescued her then, pulled her out of the pit of despair, given her a reason to stay in Cape Refuge and a reason to think she had some value to the people who lived here. She wished she could return the favor now and pull him out of whatever pit he was in.

  “Don’t let him be dead,” she whispered out loud. “Please don’t let him be dead.”

  When she finally went into her house and got ready for bed, she knew she was in for another night of lying awake and filing through the possibilities, dozing off and dreaming of some great Avenger chasing Cade down the road to the City of Refuge.

  In her dream, he was overtaken, and left to die outside the city walls, only inches from the gate.

  CHAPTER 29

  The lies came more easily Saturday night.

  Sadie waited until Caleb was bathed and put to bed, the dishes were clean in the kitchen, and all her responsibilities were done. Then she excused herself to go and read herself to sleep. She was very tired, she said. Though Morgan had looked at her with confusion and a little suspicion, she thought she had pulled it off.

  She had finally sneaked out the front door, while everyone else was in the kitchen, and headed across the street to the beach and down toward the place where Trevor had told her to meet him.

  The sun had set, and the sky at twilight billowed with lavender clouds, waiting for dark. God’s handiwork, Sadie thought. Just like she was God’s handiwork, inscribed on the palm of his hand.

  Guilt surged through her again.

  What kind of ungrateful daughter was she, to take the goodness God had shown her through Morgan and Jonathan and throw it back in his face?

  She almost turned back, but then she saw him, elbows braced on the rail of the pier, wind teasing through his hair. He was watching her approach with a smile on his face. All thoughts of turning back fled from her mind as he came back down the pier and met her on the sand.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” he said.

  She smiled. “Hey. Am I late?”

  “Not too.” He kissed her, melting the residue of her guilt. She pulled back, looked up at him, and decided that any trouble this brought her was worth it.

  “Come on.” He took her hand and pulled her across the sand. “The party doesn’t start until after nine,” he said. “But we can head on over.”

  Their shoulders bumped together. “I’m a little nervous.”

  “Why? A girl like you? You’ve been to parties before.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, but I’m not the same person I was back in Atlanta. And I haven’t really been to any in Cape Refuge.” The warm breeze flirted with her hair. “I wish we could just skip it.”

  “But then you wouldn’t meet my friends. Come on, Sadie, you can do it. I want to show you off a little.”

  The idea that anyone considered her something to show off flattered her, and she felt pink warmth climbing her cheeks. He swept her hair behind her ear. Something like an electric shock went through her, jolting her heart. How did that work? she wondered. How could his simple touch make her heart skip beats?

  “So you said these aren’t your friends from school?” she asked. “Where do you know them from?”

  “Here and there,” he said. “But some of them are from school. You know how it is. Most of the parties on the island start out with a small list and wind up full of crashers, so there’s no telling who might come.”

  She pictured the kinds of parties her mother used to have. They’d been much the same way. “So they’re a real party crowd, huh? Are there any Christians?”

  He laughed. “I don’t know. If they are, they don’t talk about it.”

  That would be a no, she thought. She slowed her step and looked up at him. “What about you? Do you believe in God?”

  He shrugged. “I think there’s something up there. I’m not sure what.”

  She frowned and tried to process that. “What about the Bible? Do you believe in that?”

  He laughed again, as if he thought she was cute. “How can I? I’m not going to let some ancient book dictate how I live. No, I don’t believe in it. I have my own truth.”

  For a moment, Sadie walked quietly beside him, battling those guilt feelings ambushing her again. “But Jonathan says that the Bible is the living, active Word of God. How can you know God if you don’t know his Word?”

  He grinned again. “I don’t believe it is his word, if he’s even there. If there’s really a God, he would have more respect for us than to set us up a list of rules. He would want us to be happy and to do what we think is right.”

  “My mother did what she thought was right, and she let all our lives get messed up. Her boyfriend, Jack, did what he felt was right, and he nearly killed me.”

  “C
ome on, Sadie. You don’t think they really thought those things were right, do you?”

  Darkness was fading over the night sky. “But see, that’s the thing. If they don’t believe in any system of right or wrong, then who’s to say those things were wrong. I might think they were wrong, and you might think they were wrong. But they didn’t.

  They did what they thought was okay . . . for them. But the things that made them happy—drugs and parties and stuff—weren’t good for my little brother or me. People need a clear-cut system of right and wrong. And we can’t just decide that as we go along.”

  Even as she spoke, she recognized the hypocrisy in her words. Wasn’t that what she was doing? Justifying her sins and making it up as she went along?

  Her spirits sank again. He seemed to sense that and stopped walking. Turning her to face him, he whispered, “You’re cute when you talk religion.”

  Before she could muster a retort, he kissed her, a long, disarming kiss that made her forget that guilt again.

  When it was time, they walked up the beach until they came to the condo where a party was in progress. Loud music spilled out onto the beach behind it. A bonfire raged in the middle of the sand, and people danced together on one side of it and sat in clusters around the other side. It looked harmless enough.

  In the golden light of the bonfire, Trevor introduced her to a few of his friends, then left her alone to go get her a drink. She stood awkwardly among his friends, trying to look accessible and not nervous.

  “What in the world are you doing here?”

  The voice chilled her, and she swung around and saw Crystal Lewis. Her heart crashed.

  She lifted her chin. “I came with Trevor.”

  “Trevor?” The girl’s lips curled in contempt. “I thought you said you weren’t going out with him.”

  “I changed my mind.” Sadie started to walk away, but the girl grabbed her arm.

  “He only wants one thing from you and you know it. Everybody on Cape Refuge has heard about where you came from and what you were like in Atlanta.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” Sadie said.

  “Well, we know that a person who grew up with a mother in prison and a stepfather with a crystal meth lab sure doesn’t have lily-white morals. And there you live in the Hanover House with a bunch of ex-cons.”

  Sadie jerked out of her grasp and started to walk around the fire to get away from her, but Crystal followed.

  “You don’t have any right to be here, you know. Nobody wants you here. Trevor, maybe, but we both know what he wants. If you don’t deliver, you’re going to wind up all by yourself anyway. And if you do deliver, it’s going to be all over town because everybody is going to know.”

  Sadie saw Trevor heading toward her, so she met him halfway. Crystal saw him, too, and fell away.

  He brought her a drink. “You okay?”

  “You told me Crystal wouldn’t be here,” she said. “You told me this wouldn’t be the friends from school.”

  “Well, I told you that lots of people crash. Why? What did she say to you?”

  “Nothing.” She took a drink from the yellow paper cup he’d given her. It had a sweet citrus taste with a bit of a bite. “What is this?”

  “Punch. You like it?”

  She took another drink. “Yeah, it’s not bad.”

  “Good,” he said. “It’s some of Brian’s special concoction.”

  She wanted to cry. “It’s not alcoholic, is it?”

  His grin told her that it was, but he pulled her close again and put his mouth close to hers. “What if it was? You can handle it, Sadie. You’re a big girl.”

  She started to pour the drink out onto the sand, but then she saw Crystal sitting in the firelight, muttering to her friends. They were all watching him hold her.

  She didn’t want them to see her acting like a prude, so she drank it, telling herself she wouldn’t have any more after this one.

  But with each gulp of the sweet liquid, her inhibitions fell. She stopped caring what Crystal and her friends thought of her, and she relaxed and danced with Trevor. Not nearly as tense as she’d been earlier, she actually started getting to know his friends and having fun with them. He brought her another drink, and another, and finally she lost count and just surrendered herself to its numbing power.

  She would draw the line when she needed to, she thought. But not now. Not yet.

  CHAPTER 30

  The sound of knocking cut into Morgan’s sleep. Groggy, she sat up and looked through the darkness, hoping it had been a dream.

  The knocking came again.

  “Tell me no one’s knocking at our door,” Jonathan muttered.

  “I’ll get it.” Morgan slipped out of bed and cracked the door open. Light from the hall spilled in.

  Karen stood there with a distraught look on her face.

  “Karen, are you all right?”

  “I’m sorry to wake you up again, Morgan, but my water broke. And I’m having labor pains again. I called the doctor and he said I need to get to the hospital.”

  Morgan’s brain came to full attention. “Okay, then we need to hurry.” She flicked on the light, and Jonathan threw his arm over his eyes. “Jonathan, wake up! Karen’s in labor.”

  “I heard.” He got out of bed, looking disheveled and disoriented. “Just let me get dressed.”

  “Is your bag still packed from the other night?” Morgan asked her.

  “Yeah, packed and ready to go.”

  “Okay. We’ll be ready in five minutes and we’ll head out.”

  Morgan ran back into her room and got dressed. “Will you drive us, Jonathan? It’s one in the morning.”

  “Sure.” He still wasn’t awake enough. She wished they had time to make a pot of coffee. “Wake Sadie up to let her know where we’ll be. Just in case we’re not home by morning.”

  Morgan buttoned the last button on her shirt and raced out of the room. She got to Sadie’s room, knocked lightly so she wouldn’t disturb the other tenants. When there was no answer, she opened the door and leaned inside. “Sadie? Honey, wake up a minute. I have to talk to you.”

  There was no answer, so Morgan opened the door farther. The lamplight from the hall spilled in, revealing a bed that hadn’t been slept in. Sadie wasn’t here.

  She went back to her own room and found Jonathan brushing his teeth. “Jonathan, Sadie isn’t in her room. She hasn’t slept in her bed. It’s still made up.”

  “What?” He spat out the toothpaste. “Well, go look downstairs. Maybe she couldn’t sleep and is reading or something.”

  Morgan dashed downstairs and looked in the kitchen. No sign of Sadie. When she wasn’t in the parlor or the den, either, she started to get worried.

  Karen had already brought her suitcase down and was waiting in the parlor.

  “Karen, how long have you been up?”

  “I never went to bed,” she admitted. “I was having pains, so I just stayed up. I been down here watching TV since you went to bed.”

  “Have you seen Sadie? Did she come down for anything?”

  “No, I haven’t seen her at all. I figured she was sleeping.”

  Jonathan came down the stairs, and Morgan looked up at him. “She’s not here, Jonathan. Where is she? It’s one o’clock in the morning!”

  Jonathan looked over her shoulder to Karen. “I don’t know, but we’d better hurry.”

  Morgan turned back to Karen and saw her doubled over with a contraction, and she remembered the urgency of their mission. She ran to the woman’s side and stroked her back. “Okay, honey. We’re going.” She turned back to Jonathan. “Jonathan, someone has to stay here and look for Sadie. I’ll go to the hospital, and you call the police or something. She couldn’t have just vanished! Something’s happened to her.”

  He followed them to the door. “Do you think she could have snuck out?”

  “No way,” Morgan said. “That’s not like her. She wouldn’t have gone out without telling us.�
�

  Trying to keep her heart from giving in to the sudden terror that had overtaken her, she walked Karen out to the car. Jonathan followed, scanning the beach across the street for some sign of Sadie.

  “Don’t worry, Morgan. I’ll find her.”

  “You have to, Jonathan. She could be in danger, like Cade.” Tears came to her eyes, and she hugged him quickly. “Oh, Jonathan, find her.”

  She heard Karen moaning in the passenger seat and quickly ran to the driver’s side. As she pulled out of the driveway, she saw Jonathan standing on the front porch, trying to decide what to do.

  CHAPTER 31

  Just after one in the morning, Trevor suggested they leave the party and walk a little way down the beach to be alone. It sounded good to Sadie, even though she found she couldn’t walk in a straight line. He seemed to enjoy steadying her.

  She had never laughed so much in her life.

  When they’d gotten far enough away from the crowd, he sat down in the sand and pulled her down next to him. She lay back and pillowed her head in the sand.

  “You’ve had fun tonight, haven’t you?” he asked her with a grin.

  “Yeah, I did.” Her words slurred, amusing her. “I love your friends. They’re great.”

  He lay on his side in the sand and looked down at her. “So are you.”

  “Yeah?” she asked, grinning up at him.

  “Yeah.” He leaned over and kissed her, long and hard and hungry, and she felt him moving closer, his hands groping where they shouldn’t. . . .

  Despite her buzz, an alarm went off in her mind.

  But she didn’t want to heed it. She wanted to let him kiss her just the way he was, wanted to feel that she belonged just a little while longer . . .

  Sliding her arms around him, she surrendered fully to that kiss . . .

  CHAPTER 32

  Jonathan called the police department as soon as Morgan was gone. Jim Henry answered.

  “Jim, this is Jonathan Cleary. I have an emergency. Our foster daughter, Sadie, has disappeared.”