Southern Storm

by Terri Blackstock

  She looked around. “Where’s the bathroom in this place?”

  Morgan shrugged. “You’re the one who was locked up here the other day. I don’t know.”

  “I’m going to go find it,” Blair said. “I’ll be right back.”

  But instead of finding the bathroom, Blair looked instead for a side exit. Hull was still deep in conversation, so he didn’t see her as she slipped out.

  She hurried toward her car before Morgan could figure out what she’d done. Cade was in that house, and she was going to get to him tonight if it absolutely killed her.

  CHAPTER 68

  Fifteen minutes passed before Morgan realized that Blair had left the station. She ran out to the parking lot, and saw that Blair’s car was gone. Morgan screamed out her rage, then rushed back inside.

  “She’s gone,” she told Hull, “and I know right where she is. She’s gone back to Ann Clark’s house to handle this by herself!”

  Hull was listening now. “She wouldn’t be that stupid.”

  “Oh, yes, she would,” Morgan screamed back. “Please! You guys have got to get over there and do something. She’s going to get herself killed!”

  Hull sprang into action and rushed out. Morgan sat there a moment as fear gripped her.

  She needed help. She needed Jonathan.

  She picked up Hull’s phone and dialed Hanover House. It rang three times, and she knew one of the agents was giving them the signal to answer.

  “Hello?”

  “Jonathan, I need you.”

  He paused. “Morgan, what’s going on? Why did Blair call Tavist?”

  She started to cry. “I’m in Savannah. I’m no better than Sadie. I lied to you, Jonathan, right through my teeth. Not once but twice.”

  “What about?”

  “We weren’t going to visit some newcomer to Cape Refuge. We were going to visit Ann Clark because Blair just had to get inside her house to see if Cade was there.”

  “You didn’t. Oh, dear God—”

  “Oh, yeah, we did. We found a bloody bandage and brought it to the police department, and then Blair left me sitting here and went right back there by herself. Jonathan, she’s going to break back into that woman’s house!”

  He was breathing heavy. “Morgan, which precinct?”

  “Three, on Victory Drive.”

  “Stay right there. Don’t move until I get there. Do you hear me?”

  Morgan knew she couldn’t talk him out of that. “Hurry, Jonathan.”

  “Morgan, I’ll be there as soon as possible. But don’t you leave there!”

  “I hear you,” she said. “I’ll be right here.”

  CHAPTER 69

  Darkness had fallen over the city by the time Blair got back to Ann Clark’s house. She had not left. Her car was still in the garage, and Blair could see her through the kitchen window, pacing and ranting into the phone.

  She hurried to the window she’d tried to break into last night and saw that the screen was still crooked. No one had noticed it.

  She worked it loose, careful not to scrape. Then she tried the window.

  It slid up.

  She froze. Could she do this? Could she climb in without being heard?

  Did she have a choice?

  Any minute now, Morgan would notice she was gone. The police would come and stop her, further alerting that woman. She had to hurry.

  She pushed the window open a few more inches, then managed to pull herself in. The room was dark, but in the lamplight from the hallway, she could see that it was a library. Law books lined the shelves, and a big wooden desk sat in the middle of the room.

  She stood silently in the dark, listening for the sound of Ann Clark’s voice.

  “I can’t move him alone! Even if I drug him, it’ll take some time for it to take effect, and I can’t carry him!”

  Blair shuddered. He was here, all right, and she hadn’t come a moment too soon.

  She tiptoed to the doorway and stopped.

  Ann Clark was coming up the hall.

  Blair stepped back into the shadows and waited. She heard a door opening, feet going down basement stairs.

  Blair stole out of the room and tiptoed to the cellar door. Sweat beaded across her lip as she peered down.

  She couldn’t see Ann, but she heard a scraping sound.

  Slowly, she stepped down the stairs. Ann was pushing the bookshelf away, and just as Blair suspected, there was a door behind it. She watched the woman open the locked door, heard her talking to someone.

  A man replied.

  Her heart almost leaped from her chest. Cade! He was alive!

  She searched around for a weapon that she could use against the woman. Hurrying back up and into the hall, she reached for a vase that sat on a table.

  Her trembling hand slipped. The vase toppled over and crashed.

  “Who’s there?” she heard the woman cry.

  “Cade!” Blair screamed. She picked up the broken glass and held it like a weapon. “Cade! Can you hear me?”

  She heard his voice, muffled and weak.

  A bullet fired past her head, and she dove to the side. Rolling into another room, she searched for something, anything, that she could use.

  She found a fireplace tool leaning against a dusty hearth and wielded it like a sword.

  She heard the woman searching for her, going from room to room.

  Blair knew she would come here next. She held the tool above her head, waited for her to come through the door . . .

  Ann was still holding the gun in both hands, her arms stiff as she came through the door. Blair swung the tool and knocked the gun out of her hand.

  The woman screamed, and Blair dove for the gun. Before she reached it Ann was on her back, desperately trying to choke her as she reached. . . .

  CHAPTER 70

  Jonathan flew behind Agent Tavist’s car to Savannah, then detoured to the Third Precinct to pick up Morgan. He ran inside and found her, pacing in front of the glass doors and crying hysterically.

  He threw his arms around her.

  “I’m so sorry, Jonathan! So sorry!”

  “Let’s go,” he said. He pulled her back out to his truck, and they took off for Ann Clark’s house, hoping to stop Blair before she got herself killed.

  CHAPTER 71

  From his bed, Cade heard Blair’s voice screaming out his name.

  Ann had left the door open as she’d dashed out of his room. He heard crashing glass, breaking furniture, Blair’s screams ripping through the house.

  Cade pulled himself off the bed and lunged for the door. Pain exploded through his body, but he got out into the bigger basement room.

  He heard another crash, Ann’s cursing, Blair’s frantic voice—

  He fell at the bottom of the stairs. Sweat covered his face and neck, and he gritted his teeth against the pain. He pulled himself up one step after another, only able to use his good leg.

  “Please, Lord, help me,” he whispered. “Don’t let anything happen to her.”

  One by one he made his way up the steps, pain bolting through him with each shove of his body upward. He got to the top of the stairs and looked up the hall. Broken things and toppled furniture bore witness to what he had just heard, and he heard more scuffling in a room just off the hallway. Holding onto the wall and gritting his teeth in pain, he managed to drag himself along.

  He heard a siren outside, saw headlights through the windows, but he didn’t have time to wait for the cops. He reached the doorway.

  Ann Clark was on top of Blair, choking the life out of her. Blair’s scars were purple, and her eyes were bulging. He saw the gun lying on the floor where Ann had dropped it just out of either of their reach. He kept his eyes on it, moving toward it as pain sliced through his nerve endings, shards of bone piercing tissue and muscle. . . .

  He was going to black out. He turned and saw Blair losing the fight.

  The gun still lay there. He got himself over it, grabbed it. . . .

&
nbsp; They were too close together—and his hands weren’t steady. The danger of hitting Blair was too great. But Ann’s hands clutched Blair’s throat.

  His finger closed over the trigger, and he fired.

  Ann Clark fell away.

  CHAPTER 72

  Blair screamed as the force of the bullet threw Ann off her. Trying to catch her breath, she twisted and saw Cade leaning in the doorway with the gun in his hand.

  “Cade!”

  She started to sob at the sight of him. Getting up, she went toward him. He had a two-week growth of beard, and his skin was deathly gray. His pant leg had been cut off at the knee, and she saw his mangled leg with its blood-soaked bandage.

  He fell toward her, and she caught him. “Cade!” She’d heard sirens outside. Where were the police? “Help! Somebody help me!”

  She heard the kitchen door crashing open as she fell with him, trying to buffer his landing. “Help him!” she cried as they came into view. “He’s wounded!”

  Paramedics pulled Cade away, and Blair scooted back against the wall, watching, helpless, as they tried to bring him back around. Others ran for Ann Clark, who lay bleeding on her floor.

  Blair shivered and rubbed her neck where Ann’s fingers had dug into her skin.

  “She’s dead,” one of them said.

  Blair looked through her tears at the woman who had done so much evil. If Cade hadn’t shot her exactly when he did, Blair would be dead.

  She crawled toward him, touched his face. “Can you hear me, Cade?” she asked through her tears.

  His eyes fluttered back open, and he focused up at her. “I hear you.”

  She caught her breath. “Cade . . .”

  “Are you okay?” His voice was hoarse, raspy. “Did she hurt you?”

  The question undid her. “No, it’s you who’s hurt.”

  Her tears dropped onto his face, pooled in his stubble.

  “Leg’s shattered,” Cade told her. “Bullet wound. Another one on my right side.”

  The paramedics were already on it.

  “Baby,” he said. “Where’s the baby?”

  She frowned. “What baby?”

  “She has a baby. We can’t leave it.”

  Blair looked up and saw Tavist standing in the doorway. “He said she had a baby in the house.”

  Tavist frowned and looked down at Cade. “Did you see it?”

  “No, I heard it crying,” he said. “She denied it, but I know what I heard. And she had an accomplice. He’s the one who shot me.”

  But there was no baby in the house.

  When they had him on the gurney, she followed them out into the night. Morgan burst through the crowd forming around the house and pulled Blair into a crushing embrace. “He’s alive,” Blair wept against her hair. “He’s alive!”

  “So are you.”

  Morgan held her and wept as they loaded him into the ambulance.

  CHAPTER 73

  Blair felt a lump the size of Kentucky in her throat as she stood in front of the hospital’s bathroom mirror, trying to put herself back together. For the past several hours, half of Cape Refuge had waited with her as Cade’s surgery lingered on.

  Because of the severity of his wounds, he had been taken straight to the operating room when the paramedics brought him in. A metal rod was inserted into his marrow cavity to repair the shattered bone in his tibia. Because it was set internally, a cast was not needed, only bandages dressing the wound.

  He was awake now, and Joe had come to tell her that he was asking for her.

  But she couldn’t let him see her like this. The bruises had surfaced on her neck from where Ann Clark had choked her. Her throat burned and her voice was hoarse. But it was a small price to pay. Her eyes were so tired they looked sunken in, and scratches marred the good side of her face.

  Thankfully, Morgan had makeup in her purse and, sensing her insecurity, had thrust the bag at Blair.

  She smeared powder over the scratches, then applied a pale pink lipstick, tapped a few dots of it onto her good cheek. Then she dug through Morgan’s bag until she found her mascara and some eye shadow.

  She did the best she could, given her fatigue, her injuries, and of course, her scars.

  But it wasn’t good enough.

  She stared at her reflection and slowly brought her hand up to cover the right side. Looking at only half of her face, she could almost think herself pretty. But the other side was what mattered most.

  Who was she kidding?

  Feeling like a fool for trying, she dropped Morgan’s makeup back into her bag and walked out into the hall.

  Taking in a deep breath, she went to his door, knocked lightly, and pushed inside.

  He was lying in bed with his leg elevated, and as she walked toward him, he smiled.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Cade held out a hand for her. “There’s my hero lady.”

  Blair took his hand. His beard was gone, and the sight of him almost brought tears to her eyes. She stood awkwardly beside his bed, making sure the scar side of her face was away from him. “So how are you feeling?”

  “Blessed,” he said. “The Lord delivered me. And I know you don’t believe, Blair, but he used you to do it.”

  She couldn’t seem to comment on that. If she got too vulnerable, she would fall apart completely.

  He reached up and touched the bruises on her neck. “She almost killed you,” he whispered. His hand lingered there. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  She couldn’t stop the tears rimming her eyes. “Better than you.”

  He smiled. “I thought about you a lot while I was in there,” he said. “I worried about you.”

  She breathed a laugh. “Worried about me? Why?”

  “Because I thought this would make you even firmer in your resolve not to believe in God.”

  She just stared at him for a moment. “You were being held captive in a basement with gunshot wounds, waiting for them to kill you . . . and you worried about whether I would ever believe in God?”

  He took her hand then and brought it to his heart. “That’s right. You’re in much more danger because of that than I’ve ever been, Blair.”

  She turned away for a moment because she felt too raw, standing here looking at him. She got the chair that was pushed against the window and slid it next to his bed. Slowly she sat down.

  “I took care of Oswald for you.” She knew it was obvious, but she had to change the subject. “He sends his love.”

  He grinned. “Bet he’s mad.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “Did you go in?”

  She nodded. “A couple of times. I saw your Bible. You’d been reading about the cities of refuge, like you were one of those manslayers and you needed an escape from the dead man’s Avenger.”

  He groaned. “I think God led me to that passage that morning kind of as a way of preparing me for what I was about to go through. He wanted to remind me where my refuge was.”

  “Only you never made it to the city. The Avenger overtook you.”

  Cade pulled himself up on his elbow and looked into her face. “Actually, I had already made it to the real city of refuge,” he said. “And the Avenger didn’t overtake me.”

  She frowned and shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean that Christ is my refuge, Blair. He was there for me the whole time, protecting me and watching out for me. When I’m in him, the Avenger can’t touch me.”

  “But Ann Clark did touch you. She and her accomplice shot you, Cade. You almost died.”

  “But I didn’t die, because God didn’t let you rest until you found me. And even if they had killed me, Blair, I still would have had that refuge in Christ. Evil might be able to destroy my body and change my life, but it can never destroy my soul. Can you understand that, Blair?”

  She understood more than she wanted him to know, but she couldn’t make herself answer.

  “I want you to understand about tha
t refuge, Blair,” he said. “You have enough Avengers chasing you. I’d love to see joy in your eyes.”

  She swallowed the emotion tightening her throat. “You may not believe this, Cade, but I prayed for you.”

  A poignant smile lit up his face. “You did?”

  “I did,” she whispered. “And it appears that my prayer was answered.”

  “What do you know.”

  She met his eyes, wishing her heart didn’t feel so raw and vulnerable. But he seemed vulnerable, too, as he looked back at her.

  Hoping to get the subject on safer ground, she said, “Did you know I quit my job?”

  His smile faded. “No, Blair. Why?”

  “Long story,” she said.

  He stared at her for a moment. “You’re not leaving town, are you?”

  “No, I . . . I’m staying, for a while at least. Actually, I’m buying the Cape Refuge Journal.”

  He caught his breath. “Blair, that’s great! You’ll be perfect for that. I couldn’t think of a better job for you.”

  “And in my first issue, I’m going to focus on Ann Clark’s accomplice. He’s still out there, Cade. We have to find him.”

  “Not ‘we,’ Blair. The FBI and the police. You’ve risked your life enough. I want you to stay out of it.”

  “But Karen’s baby is still missing, and that person must know where he is.”

  “We’re going to find him,” Cade said. “Trust me on this. That man is not going to get away with what he did to me. And that baby and all the other babies will be found.”

  “May I quote you in that first issue?”

  “Feel free.”

  She could see he was getting tired, so she got up. “There are others who want to see you. Joe’s waiting outside. I guess I should go.”

  He reached out then and caught her hand. “Thank you for not giving up, Blair.”

  She smiled. “How could I?”

  He reached up and touched her face—the smooth, soft side. His eyes lingered on hers, and she knew what those sappy poets with their love images meant when they talked about hearts melting. . . .

  She was like them, helpless in her connection to him.