Silas Varner stumbled out of his house just as the fire truck pulled up in front of his store. He was coughing so hard that for several minutes he couldn’t say a coherent word.
When he could finally speak, looking desperate and wild-eyed, he grabbed the first person’s arm that he came to. It was Cash.
“My boy’s still inside his house and my grandsons—” His voice broke and he couldn’t finish his sentence, but he didn’t have to.
“We’ll get them,” Rick assured him. Looking around, he raised his voice to get Dan’s attention. “Doc, we could use you over here.”
“No, that’s okay. I’m all right, I’m all right,” Silas protested weakly. “Just get my son and grandsons,” he pleaded.
“We will,” Joe promised the man, hurrying to join Rick.
Within a moment, Dan had pushed his way through the cluster of bodies in order to reach Silas.
The older man’s face was a mask of fear. He watched as Rick sent three of the volunteers into the younger Varner’s house to find Steve and his two small sons. Other volunteers were dispatched to work the unwieldy fire hose and aim it at the burning buildings. Since the hardware store presented the greatest threat, the men focused their efforts on it.
Those who weren’t working the hose shoved dirt onto the perimeter of the fire, trying to suffocate the smaller flames before they had a chance to grow into bigger ones.
Because Cash had no training, Rick had put him on the latter detail. Cash did what he was able, shoveling as fast as he could.
When he stepped back for a moment, trying to get out of the way of some flying burning debris, he looked up and saw that one of Varner’s grandsons was in the second-story window. The blond-haired boy, no more than about four, looked absolutely terrified.
Cash looked around for Rick or someone he could point out the boy to, but everyone was either converged around the truck, doing what they could to put out the fire, or they were on opposite sides of the buildings, shoveling dirt.
At that moment, he saw the three volunteers rushing out of the front door, a sheet of flames right behind them as two of the men carried Steve Varner out between them. The third volunteer, Joe, was carrying the older grandson in his arms.
Taking in the scene and processing his options quickly, Cash felt that the trapped boy’s only chance to get out would be through the window, not through the house. From the looks of it, going back in that way wasn’t possible anymore.
Driving up, he’d taken note of a tall oak tree that was towering over Steve’s house. It was standing not far from the side where the boy was trapped. With just a little bit of luck, Cash judged, he could use the tree to get to the boy.
It took Cash exactly five seconds to come up with his plan and then implement it. Running to the tree, he began to climb up.
That was when Alma saw him.
As she screamed out his name, hoping to stop him, she saw the terrified little boy.
Now she understood.
Her heart froze halfway up her throat. Cash might be able to get to the boy, but then how was he going to get back into the tree with him?
Frantic, Alma could only stare and pray as she watched Cash make his way up. He slipped twice and she was certain he was going to fall, but he didn’t. Somehow, in what felt like an eternity later, he made it to the edge of the branch. It bowed dangerously beneath his weight. Cash inched his way along until he came to the end of it. About a foot shy of the window.
Because it was summer and hot, the window was open. Otherwise, Cash sincerely doubted that the boy would have been able to get it open on his own.
“C’mon, boy, just lean out the window,” he urged, stretching out his arms. “You can do it. I’ll catch you.”
“No,” the little boy screamed, crying. “I’ll fall. I’ll fall,” he said over and over again.
Cash sighed. He hadn’t come up just to stay on the limb and watch the boy die. Taking a deep breath, he propelled himself forward in a pseudoleap and barely managed to get hold of the windowsill with his fingertips.
The splintered wood pierced his skin as he struggled to hang on. His forearms and biceps screamed in protest as he managed to pull himself up and inside the burning building.
Once he did, Cash grabbed the boy in his arms and then looked back out. Leaping back wasn’t possible, not if he had to hold on to the boy, but there didn’t seem to be another option open to them.
“Cash! Cash, down here!”
There was ringing in his ears and the fire roared behind him. His very clothing got hot and the metal of his belt buckle felt as if it was branding his skin.
He had to be hallucinating. He could have sworn he heard Alma calling his name.
“Cash! Look down here!”
This time, it was the sheriff’s voice that resonated above the noise. He looked down and saw that Alma, Rick and five other volunteers had stretched out what appeared to be a tarp between them. They were holding it taut.
“Jump!” Alma cried. “We’ll catch you!”
From where he was, it didn’t look likely, but it was probably the only chance he and the boy had to survive.
Leaning forward, Cash held the boy out. “The boy first!” he told them. But when he went to release the child, he found that the terrified little boy had a death grip around his neck. “C’mon, boy, you have to let go of me.”
But the boy just held on tighter, so much so that he was beginning to cut off Cash’s air. “No! I don’t wanna die,” he sobbed.
“You’re not going to die. I won’t let you,” Cash assured him, doing his best to sound cheerful, hoping the boy would respond to his tone. “This is just like a parachute drop at an amusement park,” he told him. “There’s nothing to it and they’re all waiting to catch you,” he promised. “Nobody’s going to let anything happen to you. You can be sure of that. Remember, I’m the guy who just leaped in to save you,” he added with a wink.
He felt the little boy’s grip begin to loosen just a little.
Steve Varner pushed forward until he was just beneath the second-story window. “C’mon, Jackie, jump,” he coaxed. “You can do it, boy. Just pretend it’s Daddy’s bed and you’re jumping up and down, the way you and Jimmy always do. C’mon,” he pleaded. “Jump!”
The boy timidly released his hold on Cash’s neck. Cash immediately dropped him, aiming as close to the center of the tarp as he possibly could.
The second the child hit the tarp, the volunteers lowered it so that Jackie could stand up and run to his father. He was off in a flash.
“Did ya see me, Daddy? Did ya see? I jumped,” he declared proudly, stretching out the word.
Steve could only hold the boy close and do his best not to sob.
An ominous noise resounded from the burning building Cash was still stranded in, as walls, consumed by the fire, began to crumble into hot ashes.
The building was coming down.
And Cash with it.
“Get it up!” Alma screamed. “Get the tarp up! Now!” The volunteers she’d corralled immediately lifted the tarp up a second time, bringing it as close to the second house as they dared.
They got it up as the entire second building collapsed.
Cash just managed to clear the window before it and everything else in the building shuddered and then came crashing down. He landed on the tarp, singed, coughing up smoke and feeling more than a little light-headed.
Alma rushed to him and threw her arms around Cash. A half second later, Cash’s knees buckled and he blacked out.
The weight of his body almost caused her to fall over, as well. She struggled to remain upright, her shoulder propped up beneath Cash’s arm.
He was unconscious.
Worried, Alma cried, “A little help here.” Within a minute Rick, Dan and Joe were removing Cash’s deadweight from her.
Rick and Joe laid the unconscious Cash down on the ground, away from the burning houses and store, as Dan did a quick medical assessment.
“He’ll be a
ll right,” Dan assured Alma, gaining his feet again. “A little ointment on those burns, a little bed rest and your hero’ll be good as new.”
Her hero.
He was that, she thought. He always had been.
Tears zigzagged their way down her soot-covered cheeks. The dress she had on was covered with soot, burned in places and utterly beyond repair. It was ruined, as were her matching shoes.
But, all things considered, Alma couldn’t remember when she’d felt happier. Cash was all right. He was going to live and he was all right.
With a lump in her throat, she found that she could barely push out her words of thanks to the doctor.
Dan smiled at her. “I’m not the one who did anything,” he said as he closed his medical bag. Nodding his head at Cash, he said, “He did.”
Rick, who along with Joe and Larry had gone back to join the rest of the firefighters still battling the fire, suddenly came running back to them.
“We’ve got to get him up,” he shouted to Dan and Alma before he reached them.
She knew that Cash belonged in a bed right now, but the urgency in Rick’s voice told her that his order had nothing to do Cash’s actual condition. From the sound of it, something else was very wrong.
Now what?
“Why?” she wanted to know.
“Silas just told me that he got in a large shipment of varnish and paint remover yesterday. If the fire gets to them, there’s going to be one hell of a huge explosion. I want everyone who isn’t fighting the fire to clear out! Now!” he shouted. “That’s an order.”
The next second he was pivoting on his heel and running back to the fire truck and his men.
Alma was torn between running after Rick to try to get the fire under control and out before the unthinkable happened, and going in the opposite direction, dragging Cash to safety with Dan’s help.
In the end, she went with her heart and Cash.
Between the two of them, she and Dan got Cash onto his feet and over to where the vehicles were parked. One of the cars belonged to Eli.
“Go,” she told Dan once they’d gotten Cash into the backseat. “I can handle it from here. The sheriff’s going to need everyone he can get.”
The fire that had consumed Steve Varner’s house had been contained and was almost out and they seemed to have gotten a handle on the other house fire, but the fire at the hardware store was as ominous as ever.
Dan appeared a little skeptical as he glanced at his patient again. “Are you sure you can manage him on your own?”
She nodded, then smiled. “In case you haven’t noticed yet, Doctor, they grow their women tough out here.” She had a feeling she knew what he was thinking and added, “Even the short ones.”
“I’ll take you at your word,” he said. “Like I said, he should be fine by morning. But if he’s not, or you have any doubts, give me a call. Night or day,” he added.
“Like the doctors of old,” she quipped. “The ones that people said used to make house calls.”
“Exactly like the doctors of old,” he told her. The next moment, he turned on his heel and ran back to the fire truck—and the fire.
Chapter Fifteen
He was there again.
Back in the courtroom, defending Ronald Harper. Winning the freedom of the man accused of killing a husband and wife during a robbery.
Securing Harper’s freedom not on hard and fast evidence, or even lack of hard and fast evidence, but on a technicality. The police had found the murder weapon in Harper’s bottom bureau drawer—a closed bureau drawer—without the benefit of a search warrant. Because of that, he’d gotten the judge to rule that the weapon was inadmissible as evidence. And, just like that, the case was thrown out of court.
Standing there, Cash watched Harper as the man strolled by him, a smirk on his lips.
And that was when he knew.
Knew that despite the man’s swearing on a stack of Bibles that he was innocent, Ronald Harper had killed those two young people.
Within the blink of an eye, Cash found himself transported to a street corner in a residential area, watching several policemen firing at Harper. He saw Harper, wearing that same smirk, sink to his knees, five police-issued bullets piercing his body. He was dead before he hit the ground.
But not before he’d ended the lives of a family of five whose home he had invaded. A family who would still be alive if he hadn’t gotten Harper off.
Five faces swirled around him, all crying the same thing. “You killed us.” Shaking, in a puddle of sweat, Cash bolted upright, yelling, “No!”
“Easy there, hero,” Alma said soothingly. Her hands on his chest, she pushed Cash gently back down onto the bed and tucked the sheet around him.
Cash’s eyes looked almost wild as he took in his surroundings. As they registered, he calmed down a little. He wasn’t in court, or out on that street corner. He was inside Alma’s bedroom.
In her bed?
How?
Cash had no recollection of coming here. The last thing he remembered was trying to get that boy out of the burning building. Fragments came back to him like bits and pieces in a kaleidoscope.
He gazed back at Alma again. “What am I doing here?” he asked.
“Hopefully recovering,” Alma answered, trying to keep her voice light. Then, because he was still looking at her intently, she explained, “My place was closer than your grandfather’s ranch, so I had the sheriff and my brothers bring you here two days ago.”
The information stunned him. “Two da— I’ve been out for two days?” That couldn’t be possible. She had to be mistaken.
“Two days,” she confirmed. “The doctor stopped by a couple of times to look in on you. He told me that these things take time, that you’d come around.” But she wasn’t nearly as patient as she looked. “I have to admit, though, I was getting kind of worried.”
There was a burning sensation through his lungs and throat. Taking in a deep breath made it ache even more. He drew the next one in more slowly.
“And you’ve been here the whole time?” he asked, surprised.
Alma half shrugged, half nodded. “I put the town’s crime wave on hold again.” She offered him a smile, doing her best to hide how worried she’d been, how very relieved she was now to see him open his eyes. “Didn’t seem like anything else was as important as being here when you woke up.
“Mr. Varner and his son came by to see how you were doing yesterday,” she said by way of a footnote. “They asked to be notified the minute you came to, but I think you’d rather have a little time to pull yourself together first.”
“Yeah,” Cash agreed absently. His chest was really aching, as if a tree trunk or something equally heavy had fallen across it. He felt as exhausted as he had the time he’d finished his first ten-K run. “What did you call me when I woke up?” he asked suddenly, confused as words popped up at random in his brain.
“I said, ‘Easy there, hero,’” Alma repeated.
The scowl that appeared on his face went down clear to the bone. “I’m not a hero,” Cash snapped.
The flash of anger surprised her. Maybe they should have taken Cash to the hospital. It was a fifty-mile drive, but maybe he needed an X-ray or lab tests.
“I’m afraid Mr. Varner and his family would beg to differ with that assessment. When he was here yesterday, Silas kept talking about giving you free tools for life.”
None of this was making any sense to him. “Why? Why would he say something like that?”
Had he hit his head when he’d jumped? Or had the smoke somehow addled his brain?
“In case you’ve forgotten,” she said gently, “you did an imitation of a flying squirrel and saved his younger grandson, Jack. There’s no way to actually repay someone for saving a life, but Silas is determined to give it a try.”
Cash looked away, the nightmare he’d had still lingering around the perimeter of his brain. It was impossible to shake and it reinforced the weight of the guilt.
“There’s no way to make up for losing one, either,” he told her.
He was obviously referring to whatever it was that haunted him. She was through waiting for him to volunteer the information on his own.
“Okay,” she informed him, pulling the chair she’d occupied for the past two days closer to the bed. “I’ve been patient long enough. You tell me what’s eating away at you or you don’t get out of this room.” She saw the skeptical expression that entered Cash’s eyes. “I’m not bluffing. If you care to glance under the sheet, you’ll notice that you’re not exactly dressed for a stroll in our fair streets,” she told him. “I’ve got your pants and I intend to hold them for ransom until you tell me what I want to know.”
Cash shook his head, trying to protect her and, he supposed, himself, as well. She would look at him with hatred once she knew and he couldn’t bear that. “You don’t want to know this.”
They were beyond teasing, beyond banter. When she looked at him, there was no smile on her lips. Her eyes met his.
“Oh, yes, I do. You’re in pain, Cash, and you have been ever since you got here. I want to know why.”
The pause was so long she was certain he wasn’t going to answer her. Just as she moved in for another attack, he began to talk. His voice had a hard, unforgiving edge to it. “I helped a killer beat a murder charge.”
It was her understanding that this was what he did for a living. He was a defense lawyer whose firm dealt with high-profile criminal cases.
“Did you know he was a killer at the time you defended him?” she asked.
He sighed, thinking. Pulling the pieces together. “Not for certain,” he allowed. “But looking back, I had my suspicions,” Cash admitted.
“What happened?” Alma prodded, knowing there had to be more to the story.
“Three weeks after the trial was over, he was caught breaking into another house. A neighbor called the police, said she heard screaming. They showed up in spades. He tried to shoot his way out and the police wound up having to kill him.” He took in a deep breath. His chest ached even more.
“There’s more to it than that.” Her intuition told her as much. He wouldn’t have been this distraught over the death of a career criminal. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Lassoing the Deputy Page 15
