Come on, Sam. Get out of the car. Make sure those shooters are down.
Alyssa couldn’t see the second man she’d hit—the one who’d been farther back in the woods. She aimed and put another bullet into the first one, just for safety’s sake.
But still Sam didn’t move.
Please don’t let him be dead. Please God, please God . . .
And then—as if in answer to her prayers—God appeared.
In the form of three Seahawks, coming from up above. One of them landed directly in the center of the circular driveway.
It was deus ex machina.
Two minutes too late.
Alyssa started toward the attic stairs, and the entire back roof of the house caved in.
As Mary Lou watched, the helicopters landed, and what looked like FBI agents as well as soldiers swarmed out and toward the house.
Whitney was out of the car. “Hey, over here!”
And then a man in a windbreaker with “FBI” in big white letters on the back was getting into the car. He drove them out of the garage, out through the hole Sam had made in the doors, and right over to the nearest helicopter.
They were in time. They were just in time, because as soon as they pulled outside, the house groaned and shook, and sparks and flames flew way up into the sky.
About seven men and women, all wearing those FBI jackets or T-shirts, helped them out of the car and up into the helicopter.
Other people were there, giving oxygen to the babies first, then to the rest of them, gently lowering Ihbraham to the floor and giving him first aid.
Someone closed the doors.
They were up. In the air. Flying faster than Mary Lou had dreamed it was possible for a helicopter to fly.
They were safe. They were safe.
But . . . “Sam’s still down there,” she shouted over the noise of the blades to the nearest FBI jacket. “And Alyssa Locke is still inside that house!”
Sam used Alyssa’s Swiss army knife to deflate the airbag that had punched him directly in his bullet wound.
Holy Jesus God. That had hurt so much he’d actually passed out.
And now look. He’d opened his eyes to a pair of Seahawks on the lawn and a third one heading back to wherever they’d come from.
It was, no doubt, an early birthday present from Max Bhagat.
Sam pulled himself out of the car.
The yard was filled with agents and—hoo-yah!—what looked like special forces soldiers. Way to go, Max.
Several cars and vans had pulled up, too, and it was only Jules Cassidy’s timely arrival that kept Sam from being tackled or, shit, even shot, since he was dressed more like a tango than one of the good guys.
“Where’s Alyssa?” Sam shouted to Jules.
“We took everyone out of the house on that chopper that just left—express for a safe hospital,” he shouted back.
“No,” Sam said. “There’s no way she would have gotten on that thing without me.”
Jules looked at the burning house, no doubt thinking the same thing Sam was thinking.
Alyssa was still inside.
Sam ran for the house with Jules on his heels.
Max pulled over to the side of the driveway so that the emergency vehicles and fire trucks would be able to get through.
“I want a body count,” he shouted as he got out of his car. “Are all the shooters accounted for? Let’s find ’em and bag ’em and get IDs started. I want to know who these bastards were—yesterday! And someone get me Alyssa Locke!”
Okay, so the stairs were gone.
She was going to have to jump down from the third to the second floor, which was kind of scary since she didn’t know whether or not she would go right through those floorboards when she landed.
The heat and smoke were so intense, Alyssa’s lungs felt as if they were going to burst.
Okay, God. Favor time. Keep Sam alive and keep those floorboards intact. Oh, and it would be nice to have the stairs from the second to the ground floor still intact too.
And a cool glass of lemonade waiting for her outside this hellmouth.
A lottery win for her sister’s family. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men. A sunny day for her wedding . . .
Nah. That was not at all necessary. It didn’t matter if it rained or shined as long as Sam was smiling at her.
Alyssa jumped.
“Jesus,” Jules shouted, coughing up what sounded like an entire lung. “Stay low.”
“She was upstairs,” Sam shouted back. “Third floor.”
A beam fell, showering them with embers.
“We’re not going to make it without masks and oxygen!”
No kidding. There was no point in both of them dying. “Go get some,” Sam yelled, grabbing the little bastard and throwing him back out of the house.
He ran for the stairs—if you could really call the half-assed staggering he was barely capable of doing running—but then fell on his face as a piece of falling ceiling hit him hard on the back of his head.
Alyssa found him on the stairs.
Sam.
Rushing to rescue her.
The blood from his bullet wound had completely soaked through Noah’s T-shirt. He had plaster in his hair and on his back, and as she rushed toward him, he was already pushing himself up onto his hands and knees, ready to keep climbing, ready to walk into hell, if need be, to find her.
She helped him up, slipping his arm around her shoulders, pulling him down the stairs, no longer trying to stay low to avoid the smoke, trying instead for speed. But, God, there was so much of him. She was lucky he was helping. Carrying him on her own would have been a real challenge. “You are such a jerk. Running into a burning building with a gunshot wound?”
“Are you all right?” he gasped.
And then, alleluia! They were out in the air.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Twelve different people rushed to help them move farther from the house, but Sam wouldn’t let go of her. Jules was there, too, with oxygen.
Alyssa put her mask over Sam’s mouth and nose, and realized he was doing the same for her.
She pushed it away. “I need a medic!” she shouted in a voice that was harsh from the smoke. “Right now! Right now!” She looked at Sam. “I can’t believe you came in there after me!”
“I think you taste perfect just the way you are,” he told her, his voice raspy. “I didn’t want you to get overcooked.”
He was grinning at her—grinning—as a team of paramedics swarmed around them, tending to his injuries, pushing her back.
Jules was there, next to her. He gently placed the oxygen mask back onto her face. “He’s going to be okay.”
She took a couple of deep breaths before she took it off. “Did I get that last shooter? Is the area secure?”
“We have seven dead,” a familiar voice said from behind her. She turned around to see Max. “Four at the gate,” he told her, “two are the guards who were on duty—and three up here by the house.” He looked at Jules. “None are Warren Canton.”
“Yeah, I noticed that,” Jules said.
“Warren who?” Alyssa asked.
Sam floated.
The really nice guy in the EMT uniform had started an IV and added something special to the saline drip.
“I’m okay,” Sam told them as he and another guy took Noah’s necktie off his waist.
“You’re not quite,” the first guy said. “But you definitely will be.”
He could see Alyssa. She was listening intently to something Max was telling her.
Jesus, they looked good together.
Something Max said made Alyssa smile up into his eyes, and Sam knew with a sickening certainty that Max Bhagat was the better man for her. He was a good man, a principled man, a man who was able to keep sex out of a relationship until the time was good and right. Max wouldn’t drive her crazy and piss her off all the time. Max was the kind of guy Alyssa could be seen with, feel proud of, rise alongside of in
the political arena of Washington, D.C.
If that was really the life she wanted, then Sam should close his eyes and just quietly float away. He should do the right thing and fade back, let her have a chance at happiness.
As Sam watched, they embraced.
Fuck!
Fuck doing the right thing. And whose right thing was it, anyway? Max’s? Fuck that. Letting Max waltz away with Alyssa wasn’t the right thing for Sam, and it sure as hell wasn’t the right thing for Alyssa, whether she knew it or not.
He sat up. “Hey! Tell him you can’t marry him because you’re marrying me!”
The EMT guys were not happy about this, but Sam pushed them away. He would’ve stood up, if Alyssa hadn’t come running over to him.
“Lie down,” she said. “And behave.”
“I love you,” he said. “You have to marry me. Tell that fucker to keep his hands off of you. You’re mine.”
The look she gave him probably would have terrified him without the medication flowing into his veins. “I’m yours?”
“Yes. Fuck it if it’s not politically correct,” he said, laboring to get the words out. The top of his head was floating way above his mouth. “You are mine. You are my heart and my soul and the . . . the very breath from my lungs. And I’m yours. I’m totally yours. You own me. Tell me what you want, Lys, and I’ll do it.”
She was laughing. Or maybe she was crying. He couldn’t tell.
“I want you to lie down.” She looked at the EMT. “What did you give him?”
“Max,” Sam yelled. “You fucker! You—”
Alyssa kissed him, and he completely forgot whatever it was that he was going to say.
Max stepped back as the chopper carrying Sam and Alyssa to the hospital left the yard.
The fire was still burning out of control, and the place was swarming with firefighters, FBI, local police, and EMTs.
“Cell tower trucks are in place,” Jules reported.
Max opened his phone. Sure enough. Just when they no longer needed them.
“Do me a favor,” Max said, “and call Noah Gaines. Alyssa asked me to call and see if he and his wife will meet Mary Lou and Haley at the hospital. Apparently Sam’s afraid we’re going to drag his ex-wife by her hair into a questioning session—first ripping her terrified baby out of her arms.”
Jules was already dialing his phone. “Oh, yeah, why would he think that?” He looked up at Max. “Oh, because it sounds like something we might actually do. Hey, I meant to tell you, we’ve got roadblocks in place in this entire area. Unless Warren Canton can dematerialize, we have a good chance at picking him up.”
Max wasn’t quite so optimistic, but there was no point bursting Jules’s bubble. The younger man was unbelievably happy at the outcome of this. And why shouldn’t he be? Sam and Alyssa were his friends. Sam’s ex-wife and daughter were safe. Jules had no doubt been extremely worried about them.
Max looked at his watch. Debriefings and interviews would continue on until late tonight. There was no way he was going to make it over to the airport to apologize to Gina yet one more time before her flight left for New York.
Yeah, that’s why he wanted to go there and see her. To apologize again. Right.
Jules waved as he climbed into his car, parked at the side of the driveway. “See you back there.”
Max’s car had been moved out onto the street. As he rounded the corner to the guardhouse, he could see a team of people hard at work on the crime scene.
As he watched, one of the men approached a sawhorse that had been set up and deftly removed an FBI windbreaker that someone had tossed there.
There was something about his movement that struck Max as off. As he watched, the man slipped on the jacket—despite the fact that it was a billion degrees in the shade.
He was wearing a baseball cap and jeans and sneakers—not so different from every one else, but . . .
His left sneaker was stained with blood. It was harder to see it on his jeans. Yeah, he was definitely walking as if he were injured and trying to hide it.
“Hey!” Max shouted as he reached for his side arm. He knew as soon as he opened his mouth that he’d made a mistake.
His cell phone was working. He was surrounded by agents. It would have taken very little effort to set up a dragnet around this son of a bitch.
Instead, he gave away the upper hand by shouting “Hey.”
It was possible that he deserved to die.
The man turned around, weapon firing. Max moved and would’ve dodged it, but somehow this guy knew where he was going to go, and instead he moved right into the bullet. It smashed into Max’s chest and it threw him back, but he rolled with it and aimed and plugged the son of a bitch, not once but twice and then three times, because he didn’t just want him dead, he wanted him fucking dead.
“Man down!” He could hear Jules, shouting, running. “Max!”
And there Jules was, kneeling over him, tearing at his shirt, looking at the damage.
Max didn’t need to look. He knew it was bad.
“One step behind,” he said to Jules in a voice that didn’t even qualify as a whisper. This entire op, he’d been one lousy step behind.
Chaos was around him now. EMTs shouting, moving him, pain.
“Gina . . .” Max let himself slide away from the noise into blackness, remembering Gina’s smile as she leaned forward to kiss him. Remembering Gina’s eyes.
Remembering . . .
Still one step behind.
September 8, 1945
From the journal of Dorothy S. Smith
I really didn’t have a choice in the matter. I brought Jolee with me to meet Walter’s ship in New York City. How could I leave her home?
I knew there was no one he’d rather see than that little girl. And as much as I would have liked to be the first one to fall into his arms, I knew this entire homecoming would be strange for him.
And there was the not inconsequential fact that he was determined to ignore the romantic love that had bloomed between us after Mae’s untimely death.
So our first embrace was one with Jolee between us, which was better than fine with me, since I loved them both so much.
We went to dinner, and it was Jolee, chattering on and on to this tall, quiet stranger—whom she’d recognized the moment he stepped onto the pier, because we kept photos of him everywhere in the house—who said it first.
“—when you and Mama Dot get married.”
Walt looked at me. I just smiled at him as I ate my pie.
I’d gotten us a suite in a hotel in a colored neighborhood. It wasn’t quite the Ritz, but it was nice and clean and the people were friendly. Jolee and I had stayed there the night before and were made to feel nothing but welcome.
“Jolee and I will share the bedroom,” I told Walt as I unlocked the door. “The couch opens out. That’s yours.”
He looked at the supplies, the tents and such, that I’d brought inside—not feeling it was safe to leave them in the back of the pickup truck while we were in the big, bad city.
“We’re going to camp on our way back to Texas,” I informed him. “I know you’ve probably had enough of camping for a lifetime and a half, but Jolee and I, we don’t get a chance too often.”
It would remove the discomfort of attempting to stay in motels in which Walter and Jolee would not be welcome. As far as I was concerned, I had no desire to give the people who owned those places my hard-earned dollars, anyway.
Jolee got ready for bed, and Walter pretended not to cry as he read her a story. I sat by the window and also pretended not to cry. Jolee must’ve thought we were nuts. She was just so happy her daddy was home—what were the tears for?
Five-year-olds rarely cry from happiness.
Walter put his daughter into bed, while I went into the bathroom and changed into my nightgown and robe. I knew Jolee well—so I knew she’d be asleep almost immediately upon hitting that pillow.
Walt was standing at the window as I
came out.
“Bathroom’s yours,” I told him.
He turned to look at me.
“This isn’t that bad, is it?” I asked.
He knew what I was talking about. However, my gown and robe were designed to confuse and they were indeed doing the trick. It took him a moment or two to answer. “It’ll be different in Texas.”
“I hope so,” I said. “In Texas I’ll be sharing a bed with you instead of Jolee.”
He shook his head. “Dot . . .”
“I know how strange this must seem to you, to be back in the States. Your daughter’s so big—and I know you must still miss Mae. I will not rush you into anything, Walter, but you do need to know that I will not take no. You said that this—that we—cannot be? Well, I am responding by telling you that there are no acceptable alternatives. I love you, and I do believe you love me. Take all the time you need to get used to the fact that you, Jolee, and I already are a family. I’ll be here when you’re ready. Good night.”
And then I went into the bedroom where Jolee was sleeping, and I closed the door.
I’m not sure who was more surprised, him or me. I’m pretty sure we both expected me to jump him the moment Jolee was asleep!
September 18, 1945
From the journal of Dorothy S. Smith
We are back in Texas.
Our camping trip was a huge success.
We came home via Alabama, where Walter and Jolee spent some time at Mae’s grave. It was good for Walt to see it, even though that day and the next were quiet ones, with little conversation between any of us.
But we took our time, spending two days along a river in Mississippi, where the sky was so blue you’d swear you were in heaven.
It was there that we let ourselves laugh again.
Yes, it was a most successful trip.
As was my campaign. As we brought our luggage in from the truck, Walter didn’t say a word as I carried his bag into my bedroom. He just stood there, giving me that look.
“Yes? No?” I asked.
And he nodded. “Yes.”
And, oh, that’s when I jumped him. Such willpower I’d had up to that very moment and it all crumbled. I kissed him, and Lord Almighty, he kissed me and we were both crying.
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