by Dana Fraser
Mostly, though, she walked around with a look of grim determination, working long days getting the homestead ready for an influx of refuges. This was the second outbuilding getting weatherproofed and hooked up for basic electricity using solar panels scavenged from a parts depot of the Tennessee Department of Transportation.
She started each day optimistic. By sundown, however, it was more than just hard work that took the bounce out of her step. It was even worse on the days that Mae Parrish brought new arrivals out in her rusting old Suburban for temporary housing.
Cash had a sense that, for Hannah, each morning carried with it the fresh expectation her mother would show up. As the day wore on, her thoughts would turn to wondering if the woman had made it back to Evansville but been unable to interpret the code Hannah left behind. By the time night rolled around, she was feeling guilty for surviving.
The walkie talkie at Cash’s hip crackled with news.
“Mae’s on her way up,” Tonya Anders warned from her lookout post along the road leading up to the homestead. “Got a full load of people.”
“Copy that,” Cash said. “Stay warm.”
“Copy, over,” Tonya answered.
“New job, little man,” Cash said, pointing Jace in the direction of the house. “Make sure Nana Nori knows we have guests.”
Jace started to bounce, which set the puppy to running and pouncing in circles around the boy’s legs.
“Can Grub meet them?”
“Maybe, now get to work.”
Jace ran off toward the house as Hannah headed down the ladder. Cash grabbed hold of one rail, steadying it on the wet ground.
When her feet touched the earth, Hannah looked up at Ellis.
“You’re coming, aren’t you?”
Even when Mae wasn’t bringing refuges with her, everyone not on guard duty stopped working to hear firsthand whatever news she might bring. Things around Dover had changed drastically just two days after Cash made it back to the homestead. The whole area now had a protective ring around it.
Ellis shrugged at his sister’s question, a subtle sarcasm lurking when he answered.
“Still three panels to install. More wood to chop and, as fascinating as it is to learn the one-sixty gained another square mile of freehold, the story doesn’t lose anything if I hear it secondhand.”
Cash stared at the kid, trying to get a read on him. Had he missed the same moods in Ellis that he saw so clearly in Hannah? He already felt like Ellis wouldn’t be hanging around the homestead much longer. There was a restlessness infecting the young man.
“Tonya said there’s a full load,” Hannah coaxed, her entire expression lifting with optimism.
Ellis shrugged again. Cash turned Hannah away from the ladder, planting a soft kiss on her cold cheek and giving her a little nudge. “We’ll be along in a second, love.”
Her lips twisted but she didn’t argue.
“You’ll come down and help unload anything they’re carrying,” Cash said, looking up at the kid once Hannah was out of earshot. “You know the kind of hell these people have probably been through. You know they’re tired.”
“I know they’re strangers,” Ellis countered.
“Strangers don’t deserve your kindness?”
Cash didn’t wait for the kid to answer. He took off after Hannah as the sound of Mae’s Suburban filtered through the trees. A few seconds later, he heard Ellis land on the ground alongside the building.
He stopped and glared over his shoulder as the kid straightened.
“The next time I catch you jumping off a roof, the building better be on fire,” Cash growled. “You break a leg and—”
“Dad?”
Ellis stiffened at Hannah’s softly voiced question. Cash took a few quick steps to round the corner of the barn in time to see a man climb out of Mae’s vehicle.
There was very little of the newcomer’s face visible between the gray beard and the cold weather cap snugly covering his head. He either didn’t hear Hannah or knew that no one at the homestead would be calling him by that name.
Two more men exited the vehicle, one old enough to be Hannah’s grandfather judging by the pure white beard. The third male was tall and lean with a dark brown beard in need of a trim.
Cash couldn’t make out the fourth visitor’s gender. The painfully thin form was dwarfed in a parka with the coat’s hood up against the cold. Man or woman, the figure was weak and unsteady. Both graybeard and brownbeard reached out to offer assistance.
“Dad?” Hannah repeated, this time loud enough to lift graybeard’s chin.
Shielding his eyes, he squinted in her direction.
The paralysis gripping Hannah broke. She ran toward Mae’s vehicle. The man didn’t move.
Ellis brushed past Cash, his steps slow as he watched his sister reach the visitors. Graybeard looked at the person in the parka and then at the man with the brown beard. A second later, graybeard had his arms around Hannah.
Ellis could have been sleepwalking as slow as he moved. Cash overtook him then stopped about two feet from Hannah.
She was crying and laughing and hugging graybeard as Ellis reached her.
“How did you figure out my message?”
The man frowned and shook his head. “I didn’t. Don’t you—”
“Becca?” Ellis asked over his father’s voice as the kid stared into the shadows formed by the parka’s hood.
Another wave of paralysis locked up Hannah’s muscles. All she could do was swivel her head and look at the shrunken form standing next to her stepfather.
She started to shake then Cash noticed her knees begin to buckle. He closed the distance between them and wrapped one arm around her waist to hold her up. Two months ago he could have tossed her over his shoulder and carried her up to the roof on the ladder, but it was all he could at that moment do to keep them both upright, his left lung spasming and refusing to fill with oxygen.
“M-ma-ma-mom?” Hannah stuttered.
The figure in the parka began to sway, a pained moan escaping. Ellis jumped forward, scooping up the falling form.
“Better get her inside,” Eleanor Bishop called from the porch.
Ellis carried the woman all on his own, placing her on the couch then retreating to a corner as his father knelt on the floor and took the woman’s hand in his. Cash had to guide Hannah inside, a whisper repeating on her lips.
“That’s not her. That’s not my mother. I would have recognized her.”
She was wrong. The frail, shapeless form really was Dr. Rebecca Sand.
“Let the nurse come through,” Eleanor said, her crisp, professional tone clearing everyone but Thomas out of her way.
Ellis wrapped a hand around his father’s bicep and drew him to a side chair as Cash slid an ottoman next to the couch for Eleanor to sit on.
“She’s been sick for weeks,” the younger of the two males said from the other side of the screen door. “We finally have some antibiotics, but she only has a couple of doses in her so far.”
Cash looked at the man and waved him in, along with Mae and the other passenger from the vehicle.
“Let’s get you two over to the kitchen table,” he said. “Get some tea or coffee in you and something to eat.”
“Miss Parrish filled me and Sean’s bellies with breakfast,” the old man said, thrusting his hand at Cash. “Name’s Isaac, by the way.”
“Cash Bishop.”
He let the old man pump his hand a few times then turned to the other new arrival. Meeting the man’s gaze, Cash locked up, his hand raised but not extended.
He was looking at a ghost.
Cash shook his head, banishing the possibility. Couldn’t be—he’d only seen the man he was thinking of once, with a fresh shave and close cropped hair hidden under a combat helmet. This man looked like a grizzly bear.
Still, those eyes…the line of his nose.
“Mulhern?” Cash whispered.
It took a few seconds, but the man responded
with a slow nod. “Glad to see you made it home, Tennessee.”
Cash bobbed his head, a lump unexpectedly forming in his throat. He wasn’t sure if it was from finding the man alive or if it was the memories his presence conjured up about the house where Cash had rescued Grub.
“Ran into Daniels again,” Cash told Mulhern. “He said you were dead.”
“He’d have to say that seeing as he was the one in charge of killing me.”
Mulhern brushed at his cheek then shrugged. “He came damn close to completing his objective, too. Just didn’t wait around to make sure the job was done.”
Cash glanced over his shoulder, his gaze seeking out Hannah. Her face contorted with worry. Ellis had an arm around her, both of them staring at the woman on the couch.
A tilt of his head let Cash see and read his mother’s face. Over the years, he had learned to recognize even the faintest trace of worry in her expression. Thankfully, she looked calm as she finished examining Rebecca Sand.
Turning back to Mulhern, he caught the man’s attention focused on Hannah’s mother. Curiosity flared inside him but he pushed it down. Right now, Mulhern’s feelings for Hannah’s mother were not his concern.
“You’re sticking around,” Cash said, addressing both men.
Each immediately nodded, their motions nearly identical.
“Well, if I can’t tempt you with anything from the kitchen, let me show you around the other buildings and give them a little privacy.”
Gesturing for them to follow him outside, Cash leaned in and whispered in Mulhern’s ear.
“If you want, when things settle down, I’ll tell you how Daniels died.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THOMAS STOOD on the front porch of the main house as the old grandfather clock in Eleanor Bishop’s living room began to chime ten. The world around him was tranquil and silent, everyone inside safely tucked into bed.
The ground was blanketed with a fresh layer of snow that had floated down after dinner. In the moonlight, Thomas could trace the footprints others had made as they headed toward the outbuildings to turn in for the night. Tonya Anders had walked west toward the road where a two-car garage had been converted into a comfortable cottage for her family of three. Sean and Isaac had left for the old bunkhouse behind the barn with its newly added insulation and potbellied stove to keep them warm as they slept on camping cots.
Ellis had slipped off to the barn—at least that was Hannah’s guess.
Everyone else was playing musical beds in the main house. Hannah was in Cash’s room. Eleanor was sharing her room with her daughter Marie, who had graciously offered her room to Becca and Thomas.
Fighting the urge to pace on the squeaky porch, Thomas gripped the rail with both hands and squeezed.
His daughter and hosts expected him to sleep in bed with his wife. He wasn’t even sure Becca wanted him in the same room.
She hadn’t said anything to Thomas after McFadden called an end to the interrogation. Heck, she really hadn’t said anything to anyone until she woke up on Eleanor’s couch to find Hannah hovering over her. Before that, she had offered short nods and polite smiles in dealing with McFadden’s soldiers and Mae Parrish.
Thomas wanted to lay the blame on McFadden—with the hair raising blockade, hauling Becca off to the caves, not answering her questions other than to tell her she wasn’t a prisoner, then bringing Thomas bound and gagged and interrogating her with her husband’s life quite possibly hanging in the balance.
He could almost talk himself into scapegoating the warrant officer. Whenever he came close to convincing himself, Thomas would see Becca’s face as he tied her hands, again as he hit Sean to make him look more like a prisoner than a conspirator, and, maybe worst of all, when he sawed through Yardley’s throat.
Thomas had delivered as much terror into Becca’s life trying to protect her as he had in failing to be there for her when the power went out and the world went mad.
He couldn’t lay next to her in bed with that burden pushing at him. He wouldn’t presume she wanted him to.
The screen door creaked. He glanced behind him to find Becca stepping onto the porch in bare feet. Her legs were partly bare, the hem of the nightgown Marie had given her falling an inch above her knees. Over top of the gown was the parka she had been wearing since they left Evansville.
She stood, mute and staring, the moonlight turning her pale green eyes into jade pools.
“You should be in bed,” he cautioned.
The shock of finally reuniting with the kids, of having Hannah and Ellis in front of her, had been too much. She had remained unconscious for half an hour on the couch. She shouldn’t tax her body now by being out in the cold.
“You need to come inside,” Becca whispered, fingers dancing at her sides.
He wondered what she was calculating—and why.
Sometimes it was work, other times it was a coping mechanism. Clearly it was the latter this time, but that still didn’t tell him why.
“The kids need some normalcy,” she said when Thomas returned to staring at the tracks in the snow. “They’ve been through their own hell.”
“They are grown up now,” he said, the words reluctant to leave him. “You don’t need to suffer having me around because you think it will make them feel better.”
There, it was out in the open. No turning back.
She stepped toward him, the squeaky porch signaling her approach. She placed her hand on the rail next to, but not touching, his.
“I don’t want to be alone, Thomas.”
Fatal words almost slipped past his tongue. But he didn’t really want to ask her if he should fetch Sean. He didn’t think there was anything between them—not like that. But the man had saved her life and kept her alive and she had bonded with him on that level. Hell, she had been ready to brain Thomas with the rifle after he punched Sean—and tied her up.
Did she understand Thomas had done the best he could in the time he had and, like the algorithms she created, his plan of action had eventually led them here, to this homestead where they were with their children once again?
“Go back inside,” he coaxed. “I’ll be along in a moment.”
If she had listened closely to his voice, she would have heard the hesitation, the indecision coiling around each letter.
Minutes would pass after she left before he re-entered the house. More minutes were lost as he stared at his pack in the corner, mentally tallying the supplies he would be able to take with him if he left. He stopped the inventory when he remembered all the weapons were locked up away from the small hands of Gabby and Jace.
He crept down the hall and turned the doorknob to their temporary room. Sheer lace curtains covered the window, the moonlight almost as bright inside as it was outdoors. He could see Becca under the covers, her face turned toward the wall.
Thomas slipped off his boots and outer jacket, then his pants, leaving him in boxers and a t-shirt. The clothes were clean, the homestead boasting plenty of hot water for showers and electricity to run the washing machine.
It felt strange being that clean after almost seven weeks of filth.
He pulled back the quilt and eased himself into place. The mattress cushioning him had likely been nothing special before the power went out, but it was pure decadence at that moment.
Everything would have been heaven if he hadn’t felt Becca shaking a few inches from him.
“Are you cold?” he asked, his voice a whisper to keep from waking anyone in the surrounding rooms.
“No,” she whispered back, the vibrations running through her body multiplying at the exchange.
Out on the porch, she had thought she wanted him to stay with her. Now she knew she didn’t. It was the only explanation Thomas could think of.
He rolled on his side so that he faced her back. The blond hair with its strands of silver fanned across her pillow. He inched his hand toward Becca until he was close enough to touch
the hair. He remembered what it looked and felt like to have it spilling across his chest.
Thomas stopped breathing, the muscles of his chest seizing painfully. Forcing his body to work, he propped himself up on one elbow and kissed where the quilt covered her shoulder, then he slid his legs out from under the covers and sat up.
He reached for his pants. He would sleep upright in one of the chairs out in the living room—if he slept at all. Come morning, he would figure out his next step.
McFadden had already asked for his assistance. Now that Becca was with the kids, Thomas would be able to do more good for her at a distance, fighting those who had introduced such chaos and violence into her life.
“I can’t do it, Thomas,” Becca cried softly as he slid his feet into his jeans.
Still facing the wall, she pulled her knees up to her chest and tucked her chin, her body curled as tightly around itself as possible.
“I can’t tell you that I’m going to be okay.”
He dropped the pants to the floor and rolled toward her, his body on top of the quilt that covered her. With only a small cushion of air between them, he otherwise molded himself to her, his hand the only thing touching her as he gently gripped her trembling shoulder.
“You’re never going to look at me and see that woman on the plane again.”
Her whisper broke his heart.
Terrible things had happened to her and he had to share the blame. For some of them, he had to take all the blame. But what had happened to her didn’t make her less than who she had been before.
He didn’t know how to tell her that.
His hand shifted, the index finger extending to stroke at her cheek.
“You’ll think of me and remember the husband who wasn’t there to protect you,” he countered. “You’ll see the monster who tied you up and slit another monster’s throat before ordering the only person you trusted at that moment to throw you in a cage.”
Of all his sins, those were the ones that weighed most heavily because he had failed her. The trail of bodies he had left between D.C. and Dover were nothing. He couldn’t even count them all, didn’t know and didn’t care how many he had killed and how many he had just wounded with the grenades.
