Walk Through the Fire

by Calle J. Brookes

  “Go,” Annie said, already grabbing the wrappers. “I’ll get your tray.”

  “Save me the cookies. I’m absolutely starving.”

  “No problem. And we’ll finish this conversation later.”

  75

  Later came when she was in Izzie’s room, helping Izzie back into the bed.

  Izzie had lost weight, wasn’t sleeping well, and looked horrible. But she was keeping her spirits up.

  “This is the last place I wanted to move into, Ann. I mean, I was here enough before to say I lived here, but the reality is not so great.”

  “Nikkie Jean sent over more pajamas for you.”

  Izzie groaned. “Do you realize how much teasing the last pair she bought got me?”

  “Yes. But you still wore them.” And Annie would be taking the tie-dyed monstrosities home to launder. Izzie wasn’t going to be stuck in a hospital gown when she was up walking around the hospital. Her friend deserved more dignity around their coworkers than that. “Just like you will these.”

  “Dancing dogs? Those are a bit tame for Nik.”

  “Well, I’ve had a lot on my mind,” the woman in question said from the door. “Incubating while helping raise three remarkable children is extremely hard work.”

  “I’ll say, on the three children. You just keep the incubating to yourself, thank you. You’re so going to have to spill.” Annie wanted the details, fast.

  “Ok, what’s going on?” Izzie said, after a small cough. “Please give me something to think about besides this place. I feel like a captive. And I’ve read every book I can get my hands on here. I even bribed Cage Ralstone to bring me whatever he could find. In pediatrics. He brought me those…” She pointed to a stack of My Little Pony chapter books. “I need something besides television.”

  Izzie had always despised television, preferring to be outside doing something. Or in a gym. Before the onset of puberty, Izzie had been a natural at gymnastics, and phenomenal at ballet. All that had changed when she stopped being able to participate because of the asthma.

  If her mother had noticed back then and taken her to the proper doctors, it might have been different. But now...now Izzie spent all her spare time with Annie and the boys, Nikkie Jean, or studying.

  At least this was forcing Izzie to slow down a bit. “You need to take better care of yourself, Iz. Actually use this time to rest. You’re...scaring me.”

  “I’m going to be ok. I’m tougher than I look. Hard as nails, underneath this.” She touched her hair, which still stuck up on her head everywhere. Annie made a note to bring her hair dryer in the morning. Before Izzie went crazy or ended up looking like a dark-haired version of Little Orphan Annie. “Permanent bedhead. Now...what does Nik need to spill? I feel like I’m missing all the good stuff here.”

  “That is a seriously good question.” Annie settled on the foot of Izzie’s bed, keeping a careful eye on how her friend was moving. Izzie was still very sore, though she refused to admit it.

  Izzie could be stubborn that way.

  Her body was physically healing from the bullets—it was her pneumonia that had everyone worried. And everyone was worried. Infection had added nine days to her stay already. Maybe her physicians were just being cautious because her shooter was a physician at this hospital, and they were afraid of liability issues, but Annie didn’t care. She wanted Izzie where she could get help, if she needed it.

  Izzie was in the best possible place she could be right now. And Annie was spending as much of her time off the clock with Izzie as she could. She, Cherise, Wanda, Jillian, Lacy, Nikkie Jean. They were making certain she knew she wasn’t alone.

  They couldn’t find Jake anywhere.

  “Spill, Nik,” Izzie ordered. “And make it good.”

  “Well, in the beginning, my father met my mother, and my brother was conceived several years later. I think he’s seven years older than I am, but we were never that close, so how should I know?”

  “Nik...focus. Get to the good stuff.” One thing the three of them had in common was the fact that they had had crappy parents all around. It had drawn them together. Nikkie Jean had been practically raised by housekeepers. Jake had been the most influential in Izzie’s life.

  Annie had basically raised herself, with a tiny bit of Jake thrown in on the side.

  Nikkie Jean turned serious again. “My father’s back in my life, and he’s changed things. I’m still trying to figure that out. I do know one thing. No matter what happens, I have Caine and you two to help me figure it out.”

  “Each and every minute you need us,” Annie said, understanding more than what her friend was saying. Her father had been a roller coaster through her life, and Nikkie Jean was one who preferred her feet flat on the ground. Annie and Izzie were to help hold those feet down right now. “Izzie and me? We’re not going anywhere. You’re stuck with us forever.”

  “That’s absolutely right,” Izzie added. “Maybe-boss. You’ve got us. Even if you try to push us away for some reason. We are onto your ways.”

  “Exactly what I was counting on. Now, Annie...tell the truth...” Nikkie Jean looked right at her. Annie braced herself. Nikkie Jean was about to switch subjects. And Annie suspected she knew what the next topic was going to be. “How was it, kissing the hottest mayor in Texas? And are you planning on doing so again?”

  Annie’s hands came up to cover her flaming cheeks. “It was wonderful. And no. I don’t plan on kissing him ever again.”

  “Boy, the things I miss stuck here in Hospitalandia. Spill, Annie. This time. All the details. I want each and every one.”

  76

  Annie was kept on her feet for the next three days. Izzie was finally about ready to be released, and Annie had received more paperwork from the city. There was a slightly higher offer this time. It still wasn’t what she’d been told they could get. She told Lacy about it as they took a few minutes together in the cafeteria after a vicious round of car accident victims in the ER.

  “Here’s the deal. I know you need a place,” Lacy said as she poured at least a thousand coffee creamers into her cup. “And I can’t just let my ranch sit there.”

  Annie leaned back in her chair. The cafeteria chairs were not the most comfortable. If anything, they were designed to incentivize hospital staff not to linger. “Ok.”

  “We’re both wise women. We know what I’m getting at here,” Lacy shot her a grin. “Only thing wrong with the ranch is that someone tried to abduct me from the living room, and Travis plans to put specialty cattle on the back fifty acres. The house is just going to sit there. And I put a lot of work into it.”

  She had. Annie had even helped paint, she and Izzie and Jillian. Before Nikkie Jean had become a part of their little trio. It was a comfortable ranch house with four bedrooms, a den, and an open concept living space. Lacy had been remodeling it bit by bit before she had married Travis Worthington-Deane and moved into his much larger ranch a few miles away. They’d met when Travis wanted to buy her land. They’d fallen in love when another doctor at the hospital had become obsessed with Lacy and almost killed her.

  Annie bit back a snort. There was a lot of that going around at Finley Creek Gen, apparently.

  No surprise—Lacy’s attacker and Nikkie Jean’s had been in the same department. They may have even been friends.

  Suddenly, the idea of Lacy’s ranch becoming her home sounded good. Like an oasis where she and the boys could just be. They’d never had that. Until recently, Annie’s mother had always been there. Caustically trying to diminish everything. Sometimes, it felt like Annie had been fighting her mother forever. At least her mother had controlled herself in front of the boys, saving her nastiness for Annie and Josie.

  Her mother did love the boys now. Annie didn’t doubt that. She just couldn’t show it, nor could she be responsible for their care. That was Annie’s job now. And one she was ready to take on.

  Just her, the boys, and the life she’d build for them. With Josie popping in from
the nearby FCU campus to visit when she could. While Josie built herself the life an eighteen-year-old woman deserved.

  All her fears aside, that sounded like her version of heaven.

  “It’s a bit far away from my work.” It was technically in another county, just over the line for Barratt County.

  “True, but it’s only about five miles from Nikkie Jean and Caine.”

  That was a big bonus, as far as Annie was concerned. They were some of the few people she’d ever feel comfortable leaving her children with.

  “And Travis and I are just a few miles in the other direction. So you’re not going to be completely alone out there with three little boys.”

  Boys who loved to play outside. Boys who loved horses and dogs and all of the animals that living in the urban area of Finley Creek didn’t allow, simply for space and safety.

  Boys who would be going into the Finley Creek Public School system eventually. She knew the facts; in the neighborhoods Annie could afford on a single salary, the elementary schools weren’t the greatest.

  “It’s in the Value school district?”

  “Yes. Syrus and Nikkie Jean’s Dalton would be in the same class.” Lacy knew how to sell, that was for sure. “It’s a better school system, with smaller class sizes, too. Better funding, as Mel and Houghton are technically in that zone. Mel’s insisted Houghton donate to all the schools in a sixty-mile radius, too.”

  Annie shot her a smile. It was good. It sounded perfect. Exactly the kind of place she wanted for the boys. “Ok, you’ve sold me. How much? Terms?”

  Lacy leaned forward, sipping the decaffeinated coffee and grimacing. “I hate decaf.”

  “Then why drink it?”

  Lacy sent her a mysterious smile. “No reason…”

  Annie knew what her friend was implying. “Then I’m not congratulating you...yet.”

  Lacy named a fair price, and Annie agreed. Four bedrooms. She could put the boys in their own rooms when they were older. She could turn the den into a small guest room for either Josie or Izzie. The kitchen was larger than her current one, with room for an actual dining room table instead of the folding card table she’d used since she was seventeen. She and Izzie had dragged it back from a secondhand store and cleaned it up. Spray-painted it brown to cover the smoke stains and beer rings that had been on the faux leather top.

  They could eat real dinners around an actual wooden table with nice chairs. Instead of her feeding the boys first, then grabbing something herself at the counter.

  “The only thing we ask is that the boys stay away from the far barn. That’s where Trav is keeping his specialty grass seeds, and the back of that is where he’s got a few stalls for injured or ill cows. Plus, there’s a nasty sinkhole on the property. Trav is fencing it off now. But it’s a ways from the house, too.”

  “Then, thank you. I...” Tears hit her eyes. “I was worried I wouldn’t have a place lined up before the hearing, and that it would delay things. But I need to wait to move until after the adoption is final so that I don’t have to have another home study approved. Or the city seizes the house. Whichever happens first.” She’d been given a court date for the adoption, but it had already been changed twice. That had been before the storm. Now…well, anything could happen.

  “No problem. It’s yours. Whenever you want it.” Lacy reached into her pocket and pulled out a small keychain with a fairy attached. “The keys. You can have them now.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Why not? It’s not like I don’t trust you or anything. Just lock the doors when you leave. Measuring for curtains can be fun.”

  77

  Jake MacNamara was missing. He’d been sent on a lead toward Brownsville and hadn’t been seen since. Elliot had been looking for him since the last time he and Turner had spoken.

  Nothing.

  “Any word?” Turner asked quietly as he settled into the chair across from the TSP police chief.

  Elliot shook his head. “Not yet. There was a text sent to Callum, but nothing more than that. And nothing helpful. We can’t even be certain it was from Jake at this point.”

  “It’s getting worse.” Turner looked through the photocopies of the threats that had been delivered to his office on the desk between them.

  It had been the one Elliot Marshall’s father had sat at when he’d held the position Elliot Junior did now.

  The desk had been swept up in the tornado when the TSP had been hit. It had been found in the parking lot at Finley Creek County Hospital, three blocks away, with Elliot’s letterhead still inside.

  There were a few more dings and scratches over the surface, and one door had been missing when it had been found, but Elliot’s brother Chance had cleaned it up for him and had it delivered to his brother himself.

  Turner thought the desk symbolized a great deal. It had stood through generations of TSP chiefs, and it would stand through this one as he worked with Turner to rebuild their city.

  Turner had learned early on to respect the desk.

  “When did these roll in?” Elliot lifted the first photocopy. Turner knew exactly what the crude warning tied to a brick and thrown through the window of his temporary office said. “‘Back off, Barratt. You won’t like what happens next.’ Real original.”

  “No kidding.” Turner had received six threats since the day the two thugs had attacked him in his own driveway. And he was almost certain he’d been followed twice since. “They’re out there, trying to intimidate me. I just don’t know if it’s because of this asshole ring or because of the Boethe Street Initiative. Or next year’s election. Neither one of those projects are making me any friends.”

  “Except for sweet little Annie Gaines. I heard all about what she said that night in your defense.” Elliot’s expression was rueful. “Her sister told Syd, Syd told Mel, Mel told Jillian, Jillian told Brynna, and Brynna told Gabby…”

  Turner just gawked at the other man. Hell, Elliot was serious. “They played the telephone game?”

  “Texted, I believe.” Elliot just shook his head. “Annie’s a close friend of Gabby’s, Turner. They all keep close tabs on each other, the women of W4HAV. They say it’s a safety thing; and I completely agree. But we have other things to worry about.”

  Turner nodded. It was time to get started.

  He’d deal with what was going on between him and Annie later. Right now, they had to figure out what had happened to Jake MacNamara.

  78

  Turner looked good in the papers and good on the news. Annie spent most of her lunch struggling to look away from the breakroom television in the small hospital as the mayor finished up another press conference in reference to the latest bust Elliot’s Major Crimes unit had made that morning.

  Daniel McKellen was in the background directing things, looking as tall, dark, and handsome as ever.

  Just as attractive as the mayor, but her hands didn’t slick with nerves when Daniel looked at the screen. Her heart didn’t race when the camera panned in for a close-up on Daniel’s face like it did when Turner’s face filled the screen.

  She was being a total doofus over that man.

  And he wasn’t even in the same building.

  One kiss on her front porch, and she hadn’t been able to forget the man. Even with all she had to do, to deal with right now.

  Half her living room was in boxes.

  And she had to explain—yet again—to three little boys what moving meant.

  Two of the boxes had been “unpacked” by the time she got home the night before.

  Josie just shrugged at her, a harried look on her pretty face, as she’d wiped Solomon’s face—removing something Annie couldn’t quite identify. Syrus was crying, wanting his mother to hold him.

  Annie quickly obliged, swinging her youngest baby into her arms. “What’s going on?”

  “World War Three, Gaines-style.” Her sister rolled her eyes then stood. “I got to get going. I have a date.”

  “Nice. Who with?” />
  “Not telling—”

  Pounding on the door interrupted. Annie and Josie stared at each other. This…people didn’t pound on their door for a lack of good reason. She passed Syrus back to her sister. “Take the kids into the kitchen.”

  The room furthest from the door. From the threat.

  Seemed her life had always been one of awareness of the threat. Of standing between the ones she loved and whatever was coming. The pounding came even harder. Annie hurried to the front door.

  “Annie! Harley’s house is on fire. We need to get out of here. Now.” Her next-door neighbor from the house on the left—Gia, a woman a few years older than Annie—was in tears. Her six-month-old baby Isla fussed in her arms.

  The neighborhood was cloaked in the scent of fire.

  Annie looked at Harley’s house, the one directly on the left of Gia’s.

  Flames shot out of the roof.

  “I can’t call the fire department,” Gia hiccupped. “I had my phone shut off. I can’t pay the bill.”

  Gia didn’t have a cell phone for the same reason. She’d borrowed Annie’s phone many times.

  Annie looked toward the kitchen.

  Josie was already on the phone; she nodded at Annie.

  When she disconnected, she grabbed Syrus where he was fussing.

  Annie made the decision immediately.

  “We need to get out of here. Our houses are too close together. Josie, take the baby. Let’s go. Gia…”

  “I’m taking my car and going to my sister’s in Wichita Falls. I…I’m going to stay with her until I can find a place to live. I just have a few things left to pack.”

  “Go. And give me your sister’s number when you get settled.” Annie hugged the other woman quickly.

  Then she grabbed her middle son and stepped outside.

  79