by Lynn Bulock
He stopped pacing. Because he had no right to tell her anything of the kind, that’s why. One kiss and one date did not give a guy enough say-so in a woman’s life to forbid her to do something like this. He should be grateful that she agreed to the two-way radios. “Still awake over there?” he couldn’t resist asking into his.
There was a crackle of static, and then a soft laugh. “Of course. I just put the kids down for the last time not ten minutes ago. It’s only nine o’clock. Do you think I go to bed with the chickens?”
Mike was tempted to tell her what he really thought: he wished she could be with him. Not for the pleasure it would bring them, but for the protection he could give her. He didn’t dare say that, however. “I still wish we would have tapped the phone over there.”
“Not legal. Hank said there was no way he could get an order for a wiretap, and we couldn’t use one in a court of law any other way.”
“Yeah, but I’d like to have it in hard evidence if that guy threatens you or comes on to you or anything.”
“He might threaten me, but I doubt he’d do anything. Mike, he’s old enough to be my father. And he’s a very successful man in this community. Why would he risk all that over somebody like me?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Lori just how precious “somebody like her” could be. But Mike had no idea how to say what he wanted to, so he left it for now. “You keep that radio where I can hear your end of the call, at least.”
“Will do. Now tell me good-night so I can go make the call. And pray for me, will you?”
“Sure.” He didn’t know if he could. Didn’t know what good it would do if he did pray for her, or even for himself. But Mike wasn’t about to tell Lori that over this two-way radio, or even in person. So he put things on standby mode to listen in while she called Hughes. And he sat down in his favorite leather recliner to listen.
Dogg padded over and put one huge front paw on his knee. “Later,” he told the beast, rubbing his head. “We’ll walk, as soon as this is over.” The dog gave a gusty canine sigh and dropped to the floor. He knew the word later and wasn’t too fond of it. But he didn’t argue.
Mike told himself that if he had Lori’s mind-set he’d call that a little miracle. Maybe the first one in a series, if this call went okay. But he wasn’t far enough along to call anything a miracle yet. He was sure God had a few of them up His sleeve, but he hadn’t shown many to him yet. Time would have to tell.
One ring. Two rings. Someone picked up the phone at Hughes’s number. “Hello?”
“Mr. Hughes?”
“Yes. Who’s calling?” His voice was smooth, cultured. Lori was ready to hang up right then and call it a night. Surely she couldn’t do this. Help, Lord!
She took a deep breath. Time to concentrate. Time to steady her hands and her voice. “This is Lori Harper. Gary’s wife?” She tried to sound even more breathy and scatterbrained than she felt. In her half-panicky state, it was easy.
“Right. What can I do for you, Lori?”
Here it went. She wished she’d written everything down, like a script, once she and Hank planned it all in the office. But then it would probably sound rehearsed. No, this was better, even though her heart was racing and her hand was almost too damp to hold the phone. “I, uh, seem to have something of yours. Or at least something with your name on it.”
There was a short pause. “I don’t know how that could be. Unless it’s something you found at the trailer, perhaps, that I’d left there.”
He was taking the bait. “No, that’s not it, Mr. Hughes. You see, I was cleaning out our storage space yesterday. The rent on the space was due, and I decided I couldn’t afford it anymore.”
“I suspect money is rather tight for you, even working at Martin Properties like you are.” He sounded so smooth, so positively oily. Lori’s stomach flipped while she planned out what to say next.
“You know it is. Anyway, I found some of Gary’s old things. One batch of papers seems to be from work. They certainly mention your name often. I thought you might want to have them, uh, for your records.”
“And naturally you intend to just pop by the feed store tomorrow and give them to me for free.” Hughes’s voice had a cynical edge now.
“Well, like you said, things are kind of tight. And if I’m going to move down to Sedalia with the kids like I’ve planned, there’s a few things I’ll need.”
“Naturally. These papers… How often do they mention my name?”
Hughes was getting more interested. This wasn’t a direct admission that he was doing anything illegal, but if he was totally innocent, why would he care what kind of paperwork Gary Harper had left behind?
Lori felt a pang of remorse for ever thinking Gary had gone back on his promise to her that he wasn’t involved in illegal drug trafficking. From his perspective, he hadn’t been involved. He probably even saw this all as a favor to the police and the county, getting a drug lab shut down.
“Well, you do seem to be in there a lot. Gary even said something about your plans to expand the business.”
“Oh?” Hughes’s intake of breath was sharp. “What kind of expansion?”
“It looks like pharmacy work to me, Mr. Hughes. That or somebody in your family certainly gets a lot of bad colds.” Lori let out her breath, trying to remember to focus and feel less light-headed. This was going just the way Hank had said it would. And Hughes wasn’t denying the link to the other ingredients for the meth lab.
There was a pause on Hughes’s end of the line while Lori held her breath. “I’m sure I could convince you of the perfect legality of all those purchases.” Good. This was getting closer. “And you say you have the paperwork there with you?”
“I do now.”
“You haven’t shown it to anybody, have you? I’d hate for something like that, which could be misconstrued so easily, to fall into the wrong hands.” Did Hughes sound nervous, or was it just a slightly bad phone connection?
“Of course not. Why would I show it to anybody but you, Mr. Hughes? I can’t think of anyone else who would be interested. Unless, of course, this is something else besides just a list of business supplies…”
“Which it isn’t,” Hughes was quick to reply. “Perhaps we could go to lunch together tomorrow. Maybe even with your delightful children. Would you like that, Mrs. Harper?”
“We can leave the kids out of this.” Her response was natural, but quick. “This just involves the two of us, Mr. Hughes. And I look forward to hearing from you again. Soon.” She hung up, willing her hands not to shake.
It only took about thirty seconds after the connection was broken for her radio across the room to crackle to life. “Okay, fill in his end of the conversation,” Mike growled. “I want every detail. There is no way I’ll get to sleep tonight unless I know what’s going on first.”
Lori picked up her handset. “Fine. For once I’m glad you’re worried about me. Let me run it all by you and see what you think.”
Mike found himself tossing and turning. He had dozed off several times, only to wake up and listen to the night sounds around the place. Lori and the kids should really be back in his mom’s guest room in the main house. Or he and Dogg ought to be over there. Granted, either situation would blow everything if Hughes or someone working for him came nosing around.
But it was hard to justify the sheriff’s investigation of Hughes as being more important than Lori Harper and her kids. They were becoming more precious to him every day, and he didn’t want to jeopardize their safety even for a moment.
How had that happened? He didn’t think of himself as a family man, exactly. Yet, here he was with a beautiful young woman often by his side, and her with two small kids. It boggled the mind. The roughest part of the whole situation was that even though he had a good job, more money than he knew what to do with and could meet her every need financially, she probably wouldn’t have anything to do with him in the long run because he wasn’t a Christian.
That was not exactly true. He believed in God, just not in the intensely personal way Lori seemed to. It was beyond his understanding to trust the way she did. Suddenly chilled, Mike pulled up the blankets.
His being cold was only partly due to the open window. His mother would skin him alive if she knew he was sleeping with the window open this early in March, even to hear what was going on outside. Still, he wasn’t comfortable doing things any other way, so it was a good thing his apartment was on zoned heating and away from his mother’s bedroom.
Having the windows open made him happier with the fact that his apartment was probably as far as you could get from that little green house and not leave the property. For once he wished he had a good, direct view of the place. There was always another checkin on the two-way radio. He could see it outlined on his bedside table.
Mike couldn’t quite bring himself to turn it on again. Surely he was the only one worrying like this. Lori was asleep, with those kids down for the night hours ago. He would only disturb her if he called again now.
Before he could reach for the radio, Dogg whined on the floor at his feet. “Come on. Come tell me all about it.” Mike patted the side of his bed, expecting the dog to pad up to the head of the bed and complain. Instead, the beast’s ears perked up and he stood. This wasn’t a particularly good sign.
Dogg stayed focused on something outside. Mike got up and looked out the window. It took a moment for his eyes to get used to the dark. He couldn’t see anything different at the one corner of the green house he could see from this angle. But then…from the bushes near the corner of the house it seemed a deeper shadow detached itself from the shadows there for a split second.
Everything happened at once. Dogg’s whining gave way to a full-throated growl, and the shadow definitely became the shape of a person. There was the crash of glass and a woman’s scream, and a roaring whoosh as the darkness was lit by flames.
The radio on his bedside crackled to life as Mike struggled into jeans, groping for shoes. “Mike. Help. Something just happened. I think the house is on fire.”
“I’ll call the crew and I’ll be right there. All of you get out of that house, now!” Mike shut off the radio and reached for the phone to get his 911 call made.
He had to make the call to get the trucks here as soon as possible. But that meant losing the chance of catching whoever threw the device that caused the fire. He swore under his breath. Catching the bad guy was key, but getting Lori, Tyler and Mikayla out of that house was far more important.
Dressed now, with shoes on, he barked instructions into the phone. Once she knew who it was, the dispatcher told him to hang up so he could go be more useful at the fire scene instead of staying on the line until the fire-and-rescue vehicles came. That was good, because Mike wouldn’t have stayed there anyway. He threw down the phone and bolted from his apartment. Every second counted, as he knew all too well. He’d faced a lot of situations like this before, but not with people he cared about battling the flames. Not for a very long time. Running toward the green house, he broke out in a cold sweat.
Chapter Fourteen
This was a waking nightmare. Smoke billowed in the hall as Lori ran with the screaming baby. “Tyler. Come on now. I need you with me now,” she called into the dark hallway, which was growing darker as the smoke grew.
“Mama?” Tyler was coughing. How awful for a little child to be awakened from a sound sleep by fire and smoke in his own home. That horrified Lori more than her own experience. It was hard to remember which way to go in all this confusion.
“Here I am, Ty. Come out in the hall and hurry. We need to get out of here.” In a moment his solid body ran into hers and Lori nearly burst into tears of gratitude. Clutching his hand, she groped her way down the hall to the kitchen door. There would be no going through the front door. Whatever had started the fire had begun in the living room. The furniture was burning and the drapes had caught. Going into that room was impossible.
The kitchen wasn’t burning yet, but dense smoke had begun to fill the room. After struggling with the unfamiliar locks for a moment, they were out in the fresh air, gulping it.
What had happened back there? One moment, everybody was in bed, asleep, and the next there was a horrible noise of shattering glass and the living room was on fire. Someone had to have thrown something through the window. That, or someone had actually been inside the house and set the fire. Either possibility made Lori light-headed. It was hard to think of even Clyde Hughes as being that coldhearted when small children were involved.
Tyler was wide-eyed and Mikayla was still sobbing. Lori jostled the baby on her shoulder, grateful that they were all in one piece and outside. “Let’s move away from the house and go toward Mike’s house, okay? I don’t want smoke to get in our eyes,” she told Tyler, tugging him gently away from the house.
“Are the fire engines coming?” Tyler looked up at her.
“Soon. Very soon,” Lori promised, praying that it was true. It would take a huge blaze and plenty of wind for anything else on the property, except her beaten-up old car, to be in danger, but it was always possible. If the firefighters got here soon, she would feel a lot better. She strained to hear sirens.
“Will they need mine? Mom?” Tyler pulled on her arm. “Where’s my fire engine?”
Lori tried to pay attention to Tyler’s question. It surprised her that he was worried about a toy, even his favorite one. “Inside, I guess, sweetheart. We just got the important things, like people.” Lori realized with a pang that none of them had any clothes except for what they had slept in. For her that was old flannel boxers and a T-shirt, and for the kids it was pajamas. Tyler didn’t even have shoes.
He broke away from her grasp, yelling, “I need my fire engine. Mike will need it. I have to get my fire engine so we can help.”
“No, Tyler. That’s a toy, and we have to just leave it for now. We have to go, Tyler. Now. Don’t go there,” Lori shrieked, running, but he broke away from her and went back into the house.
Her screaming made Mikayla cry louder. Lori stood at the door of the house, stunned. She couldn’t take the baby back in there. But she couldn’t leave Tyler inside, either.
Mike running across the grass was a vision. He was truly her guardian angel this time. “Mike, Tyler went back inside. He said he had to get his fire engine. I couldn’t stop him. What do we do?”
He looked grim. Pushing her away from the door, back into the grass, Mike looked toward his apartment. “The trucks are on their way. But my oxygen and equipment are on one of those trucks. There’s no time to wait for it. Where would he be?”
“Heading for his bedroom. At least it’s away from where the fire started. But the smoke was so thick…” Lori felt tears streaming down her face. Mike put his hands on her shoulders, steering her farther from the house again.
“There’s no sense in telling you to go up to the house and sit with my mom. You won’t move any farther from here until I come out with Tyler.” He headed toward the house. “Keep Dogg out here with you. Don’t let him follow me into that fire, no matter what.”
“I’ll try,” Lori promised, reaching down for the animal’s collar. He whined, but didn’t growl or snap, even though he wanted to follow his master. She pulled the dog to her side and they huddled together in the grass as far away from the house as she dared get. And she prayed as she had never prayed before while two of the people most precious to her in the world were in terrible, terrible trouble. For the present they were truly in God’s hands.
He couldn’t do this. Mike Martin stood just inside the kitchen door to the house, scanning the area for movement besides the roiling smoke. Where was Tyler? Could the boy even figure out the way to his bedroom in this mess?
Once inside, there wasn’t much choice of a path except to the bedrooms. The front of the house was an inferno. Tyler wouldn’t have gone to the basement, so he had to have headed into the bedrooms.
It was as if giant hands pushed him
back, kept him from moving. Mike had never liked going into a house on fire. Some of the guys claimed to, but it had always been his least favorite situation. And this particular time, fear and something else even more elemental had him rooted to the spot.
I can’t do this. The words screamed in his brain while the smoke choked him. Was he going to be able to walk outside and tell Lori that? If they waited for the trucks to get there and somebody with proper gear to go after Tyler, it would probably be too late. At the very least he would suffer smoke inhalation and probably some burns.
Still not moving forward, Mike dropped to his knees. Smoke rose, so the best air, if there was any, would be nearer the floor. That was beginner’s knowledge, something he should have remembered, and done, first thing.
His perspective matched Tyler’s from down here. And it dawned on him that it also matched Lori’s, not in real height, where she at least came to his collarbone or better. But in her trust and faith, she always seemed to be on her knees, talking to God.
She was praying for him and for Tyler right now. Mike knew that without even wondering. Knowing of her resolve, Mike made a decision himself. It was time for him to call upon that Lord that Lori held so dear.
He spoke the words out loud as smoke gagged him. “Lord, I haven’t been much of a believer. And maybe it’s wrong to come to You now when I need help so badly. But I can’t do this on my own. Help me find Tyler.”
He was on his hands and knees now, crawling through the dark area. The floor was smooth, so it was still kitchen vinyl tile. Or did the hallway continue in the same stuff? Mike racked his brain trying to remember. The layout of the small house was so familiar that he didn’t have to question where each room was. That was a blessing, maybe even one of those miracles Lori always talked about. He was going to need several to get out of here in one piece with Tyler. Especially when he couldn’t be sure what the floor in each room was made out of, and in the hellish atmosphere around him, floor texture was his only guide.
The surface under his fingers was still smooth. Continuing to move forward, he swept the area as widely as possible with his fingertips. In front of him he hit wall and baseboards. He was in the hall. That meant he needed a left turn to reach the bedrooms. Thank you, Jesus. It was good to get this far and to know where he was.
