Judgement by Fire

by Lydia Grace

  Sickened, feeling as though her heart would break, Lauren turned her back on him. Paul put his arm around her and said he’d take her to his cottage and get her wrist bandaged. Blinded by tears and determined not to let him see, Lauren kept her spine rigid as she walked away in the shelter of Paul’s supporting arm. She didn’t see when Jon and Paul again exchanged meaningful looks.

  “I think you’d better leave,” Paul told Jon quietly.

  With a last anguished look at Lauren, Jon climbed into his company Jeep and drove away, He hoped she’d forgive him for the subterfuge—he didn’t give a damn about the truck, not when she night have been hurt—but Paul was right. He had to get away, talk to Police Chief Ohmer and try to finish this before anyone else got hurt. Again, the thought of anything happening to Lauren seared into him, and he slammed his foot down on the accelerator.

  *

  Watching through binoculars from a sheltered spot at the edge of the woods, the tall blond man felt a vicious enjoyment as he saw the looks that flickered on their faces. She believed so readily all that he’d set up, her faith so thin in Jon Rush that it shattered at the first hint of trouble. More fool you, Cousin Jon, for falling for the stupid, treacherous bitch!

  Mostly, he enjoyed the emotions of fear, hurt and betrayal, which flashed in quick succession across Jon’s face. Feel that pain, Jon! Feel it sink into your bones, into your heart, into your innards! The pain of loss and betrayal is going to be your last emotion, the one you’ll take to your grave!

  *

  Absorbed as he was in helping Lauren walk the short distance to the cottage he and Lucy shared so that he could bandage her wrist, Paul’s attention was caught by the flash of sunlight on something bright on the edge of the woods. However, now his greatest concern was to shore up Lauren’s sagging emotional state and to minister to her injuries. He’d think about that telltale shaft of light later.

  Chapter 11

  With a soothing muscle-relaxing ointment on her wrenched shoulder and an elastic bandage supporting her wrist, Lauren sat hunched over the comforting warmth of a mug of strong, sweet coffee that she clasped tightly in both hands. She was shivering despite the almost moist heat of the sun porch. Sunlight streamed in through the green curtain of plants that veiled a large conservatory window in the glassed in back porch of Paul and Lucy’s cottage, creating a semi tropical ambience despite the streaks of snow that still patterned the ground outside.

  Lauren should have been feeling better. Instead, she had never felt so wretched in her life. Paul had tried to tell her that she’d been suffering from shock and tension and not thinking straight, but Lauren couldn’t excuse her behavior so easily. Certainly, she’d been in pain, certainly she’d been shaken by the events of the past twenty-four hours, yet to accuse the man she loved, on scant evidence, of being behind such terrible things was unforgivable, and she felt a deep sense of shame. Because she hadn’t had the courage to trust Jon, hadn’t been able to trust her own love for him.

  Talking to Paul, she’d realized what her heart and her head had been telling her all along; that Jon could not have been driving the truck that pushed her off the road. He’d arrived too early at her cottage to be responsible. And she hadn’t even given him the benefit of the doubt.

  “He was like a clock spring, all wired with tension, worried sick about you,” Paul had told her, his words flaying her emotions. “He’s told me all about the things that have been happening at the company, and how he and the security chief think there may be a link between everything that’s been happening. He was terrified something might happen to you, kiddo, terrified and full of guilt. You see, he feels responsible, because it’s something to do with that company he loves so much that is threatening you. He loves you, Lauren.”

  Lauren knew that Paul was trying to help, trying to convince her of what she already knew—that she had laid the blame in the wrong quarter. However, his words served only to intensify the pain and shame she was already feeling.

  I’m an emotional coward, she berated herself. Jon had made it plain from the very beginning of their relationship—from the day, they first met—that he was willing to put himself out on the line to see if the attraction that had raced between them would go any further. He’d been there at every turn, urging her to follow her heart, begging her not to turn away from him, putting himself out in time, energy, and emotional currency.

  And what had she done? She’d put him off at every opportunity. Aside from when you shared his bed, the little voice in her head had turned vicious, then you shared everything with him completely, and glad enough too! It added derisively.

  Lauren sighed deeply, but it brought no relief from the terrible guilt that burdened her. Sigh, heart, and never break…that’s what her mother had told her, an old English folk saying. But it wasn’t true. Despite her sighs, Lauren’s heart was breaking because she knew the treasure she might have lost because of her own lack of emotional courage.

  You’re running scared. One bad deal with Terry and now you think every man wants to rule your life and take away—take away what, exactly? What is this precious creative freedom you’re always rabbiting about? Do you honestly believe that loving Jon is going to mean you’ll never pick up a paintbrush again? Look at all the women who’ve had wonderful relationships while being at their creative best—look no further than your neighbors! Lucy was already pursuing her artistic career when the concept of women working outside the home was only in its infancy. Her husband was a top civil lawyer, but Lucy’s career didn’t go down the drain in a flurry of Susie Homemaker hostessing.

  Lauren sprang to her feet, the coffee now cold in her cup, and began pacing the small space. Anything to try to get away from the jibes of the small voice in her head, the voice she now realized came from her heart. It was not so easy to escape from the truth. Her relationship with Terry had foundered because it wasn’t really based on the sort of honest love that encouraged each person to be the best they could be. Not like the beautiful treasure Jon had been offering her and which she had dashed from his hands.

  Well, she could change all that. She’d go and find Jon, tell him how she felt, beg, if necessary, for his forgiveness. Pray he’d take her in his arms and send that fire tingling down her veins…

  Images of a big, black Jeep hurtling down on her came unbidden into Lauren’s mind. She imagined, too, the slight body of a woman, left behind like garbage in the dirty city snow as the same Jeep sped off and left her for dead. Suddenly, her heart was filled again with the dread that she’d experienced when she’d stood alone in her ransacked studio and felt the anger and hatred of the intruder which had still hummed in the empty air long after he’d done his work and gone. Before Jon arrived and took her in his arms and made the horror recede.

  The conviction that the person who’d been behind these incidents also meant Jon terrible harm returned to her, and Lauren could be still no longer. She had to find Jon, set things straight between them, and protect him with her life, if need be. She knew he’d do no less for her.

  Waving aside Paul’s protests with a quick kiss to the older man’s cheek and a promise to be careful, Lauren ran out to her car. Now that she had direction and purpose, she was able to free her mind from the mental and emotional quagmire she’d been struggling in. Wherever Jon had gone, she’d find him and they’d sort this out. Paul had mentioned that Jon was going to West River hamlet to take a first hand look at an information booth they were setting up on behalf of Avalon Hospitality. The booth was to be located on an empty lot near the village council offices on the Main Street, and Lauren decided to make that her first stop. If she couldn’t find Jon at the information booth, she would be within easy reach of the council offices and would try to find him there.

  Saturday was the major marketing day for all the families who lived out in the township, when farmers and other rural dwellers came into West River to pick up animal feeds and groceries, and to meet with friends over a meal or coffee at one of the two
diners. Children ran around the streets, greeting friends and enjoying the opportunity to browse the few shops, while the adults stood around on the sidewalks in groups, chatting and basking in the early spring sunshine. The broad main street was packed with cars, vans and pickup trucks parked at the curb, and Lauren drove through twice, predatorily searching for a space in which to tuck her small car. Her wrist was aching seriously by the time she managed to squeeze into a space as a station wagon laden with children and dogs pulled out into traffic.

  A tiny blonde girl, strapped in the back of the wagon, gave her a cheery smile and a wave of a candy-sticky hand, and Lauren was suddenly struck again by that heart-deep longing which had coursed through her at the idea of holding Jon Rush’s child in her arms. The feeling was so strong it sparked an almost sensual ache in the pit of her stomach and tears misted over her vision as she swallowed back on the possibility that such a paradise might be lost to her. Images of the night she and Jon had spent discovering and pleasuring each other in the big antique bed swamped her, and for a moment, she was transported back to the sheer delight of that time. Her heart pounded, her body tingled and ached with remembered bliss, and she could barely move.

  Then she was brought back to the present with an unpleasant thump when the driver of a truck, hoping she was about to leave the precious parking space, gave an impatient blast of his horn. Giving the other driver a brief wave to explain that she was staying, not leaving, Lauren gathered her purse from the front seat and stepped out of her vehicle. By happy coincidence, her parking space was close to both the council offices and the empty lot now occupied by the sleek, silver lines of the modern trailer. The name “Avalon Hospitality Inc.” was emblazoned over the entryway with another, smaller sign, stating ‘Information’ underneath the main sign. A huge family home had stood in this prime location once, but the house had been gutted by fire many years ago, and the rural economy had not recovered from its decade-long slump enough for anyone to be willing to invest in redeveloping the site.

  As she paused beside her car, trying to decide on where to look first in her search for Jon, Lauren thought she heard the sharp sound of breaking glass, but looking around her could see nothing untoward. Moments later, her heart suddenly took on a staccato beat and a lump rose in her throat as she saw a familiar tall, broad shouldered figure, topped by a mop of smooth blond hair, striding purposefully away from her some distance away on the other side of the road. He had come from behind the mobile unit, his step purposeful but hurried, hands buried in the deep pockets of a thick parka and moved away in the opposite direction from where she stood. Although at this distance it was hard to be sure, the man looked so like Jon from behind that Lauren felt a tightness of familiarity in her chest as she watched his progress down the street.

  “Jon! Jon!” she called over the noise of oncoming traffic, waving frantically. Her display earned her some interested looks from passers-by, some of whom nodded good afternoon to her, but Lauren had to wait frustrating minutes for a break in the traffic so that she could dart across the road. She thought he’d heard her, for the tall figure seemed to pause, and she called again. However, he obviously hadn’t heard, for if anything, he had quickened his pace away from the booth as Lauren ran towards him. Refusing to believe that Jon would deliberately ignore her no matter how angry or hurt he might be Lauren consoled herself with the excuse that it was too noisy for her voice to be heard so many yards away.

  Lauren ran along the sidewalk, thankful of a gap in the crowds as she jogged towards the front of the information booth, her mind set on only one thing: to catch up with the man she thought was Jon and find some way of repairing the damage between them.

  As she ran, she noticed the sharp tang of burning, a smell more like smoldering garbage liberally laced with plastic, than the sweet scent of wood smoke. She was so preoccupied with her pursuit of the tall figure rapidly moving away from her that it took several seconds before she realized that the evidence of her nose was confirmed by her eyes. Where moments before there had been only blank darkness behind the small windows of the information unit, now a sinister orange glow lit the small building from inside. Lauren screamed a warning to others nearby to get help and raced towards the building. Even as she ran, she realized that she was putting herself in danger but a sudden, overriding fear that someone might still be inside the trailer forced her on.

  Lauren had reached the door, pounding with her fists against it in a desperate tattoo, when suddenly the world exploded around her as the fire’s greedy fingers found the small propane gas tank that fed the appliances in the unit’s tiny kitchen. A wall of hot air rolled over her sucking the breath from her lungs and choking her as the force of the blast threw her backwards in a searing, suffocating vacuum. The roar of the explosion and fire hit her eardrums and she was lost in a silent world as she was knocked her from her feet and fell backwards from the sidewalk and into the road.

  Lauren, locked in her silent, terrifying world, was detachedly aware of a big truck swerving around her, the driver’s face frozen in an ugly mask of shock. Then her hearing began to return, giving her an underwater impression of children crying and women screaming in fear, of men shouting in alarm and anger. Turning her head slightly, she looked towards the sidewalk and saw the Avalon Hospitality information booth engulfed in flames. Then she sank thankfully into the blackness that waited welcomingly for her.

  Grayness filtered through her eyelids as she fought to remain in the safe, black cocoon. Voices calling her, urging her to return to a horror she didn’t want to revisit. Firmly she shut them out, then her stomach contracted in great heaving waves of nausea and she knew she couldn’t ignore her body’s warning. Her eyes flew open and she surged forwards, grateful for the gentle hands which held her, stroking her hair as she threw up into the basin held at her side. When the heaving convulsions passed, the gentle hands kept stroking as other, tactful hands removed the bowl and its contents. Racked with shivering, she reached out, her hands searching for something reassuringly solid in the suddenly unreal abyss her world had been thrown into, and found herself clinging to a warm, familiar smelling body. She closed her eyes, her head and body resting against Jon’s broad, hard chest as his hands gently stroked her hair. When the worst was over, he knelt in front of her, wiping her mouth, cheeks and forehead with a cool damp cloth, his face stamped with shock and worry as his eyes bored into hers, begging her to be all right.

  “You’re safe, now, Lauren. I’ve got you. It’s all right. I won’t let anything hurt you. Please be all right, my love, Lauren, Lauren,” she heard his voice, pleading and repeating the words like a mantra until she looked directly into his eyes, focused, and nodded that she recognized him and was back in the world again.

  Seeing that look, Jon gathered her into his arms, hugging her close with a gasp of relief so honest, so caring that it knocked the breath out of her again. After a few moments, he pushed back from her, holding her slightly away so he could look into her face, into her beautiful green eyes.

  “Oh, God, I was so afraid….Lauren, Lauren…I love you.”

  The naked honesty of his words was written so plainly on his face that it almost hurt her to see the vulnerability there and she burrowed against him, unable to get close enough.

  “I love you, too,” she muttered into his shirt, wondering if he heard her words but too overcome with love, too raw from her recent trauma, to repeat them.

  It seemed an eternity that they clung to each other as Lauren gradually became more aware of her surroundings. She recognized the newly built medical clinic, West River’s civic pride and joy, and realized she was perched on a tall examining bed in a curtained alcove.

  Beyond the curtain, she could hear muffled footsteps and the murmur of anxious voices, a child crying, as medical staff on the minor injuries and shock left in the wake of the incident that had shaken the quiet village to the core. Reality intruded too soon, and Lauren wasn’t surprised as she heard a deep, discreet cough and managed
to lift her head away from Jon’s shoulder to see Police Chief Ohmer standing beside them, looking faintly embarrassed but very grim.

  Jon stood then, too, releasing her from his arms but keeping a hand on her shoulder, and Lauren almost sobbed at the bereft feeling that surged through her at losing that close contact with him.

  “Sorry to intrude, folks, but I really have to talk to Miss Stephens,” Ohmer said, his tone formal and very firm.

  “Can’t it wait, Chief? You can see she’s still in shock,” protective anger blazed across Jon’s face as he regarded the other man.

  “She’s also a material witness, the one closest to the blast which has left a dozen or so people, many of them children, mildly injured and considerably traumatized. That’s to say nothing of having blown the windows out of half of the main street of my town and caused several mercifully minor traffic accidents.” Ohmer replied, his voice hard. “Now I want an end to this before it goes any further. Miss Stephens here is likely to have information that can help do just that.”

  Jon began to protest, insisting Lauren be checked again by a doctor before being subjected to the traumas of a questioning session. Lauren silenced him with a gentle hand on his solid forearm.

  “Offer me a coffee, Chief, and you can ask me anything you like,” she told the police Chief with an attempt at her old humor.

  The Chief looked across at one of the other officers nearby, nodding, and the man went off in search of coffee. At least, Lauren hoped that was what he was doing. Her head ached and her stomach was still giving ominous little cramps. Every part of her body hurt, and as she ran a hand over her throbbing head, she gasped a little with dismay as she felt the tender flesh and rough, ridged area of stitches there.

  “You received a number of cuts from flying glass and debris, but that was the worst, the one that probably knocked you out. It’s just a few stitches, and the doc says it won’t mar your beauty,” Jon said, his effort at lightness betrayed by the angry tightness of his mouth as his eyes swept over her face.