“To protect me.”
“Yes.”
“From . . . ?”
“Everyone.” Mark held his palms up to the brilliant October sun and spun a slow 360 on his heel.
“And why would you extend your generosity to me even if I don’t agree to your helping my bank account grow?”
“I’m not.” Mark zipped open his black leather jacket. “I’m doing it because I want to see the chair remain safe.”
“In other words, you’re not losing sleep over me.”
Mark nodded with his whole body. “I still care about you. Just not as much as the chair.”
“I appreciate your honesty.” Corin looked at his watch. “I have to go.”
“Tell me about the lady who gave you the chair.” Mark paced, two slow steps right, then two back to the left.
It made Corin feel like he was in a courtroom cross-examination during a high-profile trial. He wasn’t the lawyer. “Why?”
“Because I suspect she can tell me much about it.”
The guy wouldn’t take a hint even if it was grand piano-sized and landed on his head. Corin stepped to the side of Jefferies and up to one of his bodyguards. “I have to get to my shop. Now.”
“Are you going to allow me to give you the money that can help your store and your brother?”
“I’ll let you know by the end of the deadline. But I should tell you, the answer is probably going to be no.”
The mountain man shifted back a step and Corin slid through the opening and strode down the sidewalk.
“That’d be a mistake,” Jefferies said.
“I’m so grateful for that penetrating spiritual insight, Pastor Mark. I’ll be sure to meditate on it all day.” Corin considered the wisdom of making the comment. It would undoubtedly tick the pastor off. Corin smiled. Exactly.
THAT NIGHT AS Corin slumped at his desk and attempted to balance the books, his gaze kept falling on the papers describing the results of the experimental spinal-cord surgery. Sixty percent success rate. Sixty. It was far higher than the success rate from the two delusional doctors from Mexico Shasta had gone to in the first year after the accident. The ones promising immediate healing.
Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And Mark was offering him eight hundred thousand.
The decision was simple, wasn’t it? He’d be able to offer Shasta the surgery and have enough left over to save the store, pay off his house, and still have enough to take that trip to the Swiss Alps he’d been promising himself forever.
So why did he hesitate to make the call?
No idea.
Corin picked up his phone and tapped in Mark’s cell phone number.
He stared at Mark’s card taped to his computer monitor and flicked it with his finger. He wouldn’t give him the chair till the money was in his account.
As the phone rang a second time, the sound of shattering glass pierced through Corin’s thoughts. “What the—?” He lurched to his feet and staggered out his office door and onto his showroom floor.
Broken glass was strewn across the desks, tables, and chairs at the front of the store, the fluorescent light making them sparkle like diamonds. A cold wind meandered through the spot where his storefront’s picture window had been.
Corin glanced around the room. Had someone shot the window?
On his second visual sweep of the floor, he spotted a rock just smaller than a baseball resting next to the leg of a burr walnut wine table from the late 1800s. He stared at it as if he expected the rock to move. Finally he strode over to it and picked up the almost perfectly round stone.
On one side were three words: We want it. On the other it said: The old Tahmahoe barn. Leave it just inside the door. Tonight after midnight. No heroes. No hurt. We both live happily ever after.
Twenty-three minutes later the police pulled up in front of Corin’s store.
The cop nodded hello, then studied the window. “When did it happen?”
“About thirty minutes ago.”
“Was anything stolen?”
“No. I was in my office and came out right after it came through the window.”
“Any idea who played John Elway with the rock?”
Corin plucked the stone off the table he’d set it on and handed it to the cop.
“I grabbed it without thinking about fingerprints.”
“Don’t sweat it; rocks like this wouldn’t take a print anyway.” The cop stared at him. “Any idea?”
“No.” Corin lied. He wasn’t sure what Jefferies was capable of, but he suspected his linebacking cabal had a certain proficiency for these type of projects.
The policeman turned the rock over and looked at the words. “What’s ‘it’? What do they want you to leave in the barn?”
Corin lied again. “I don’t know.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“I see.” The cop held Corin’s gaze long enough it was clear he didn’t believe him, then jotted a note on his pad. “There’s not much I can do other than file a report and make a few more passes through this neighborhood each week.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Do you have any enemies you know of?”
“No.” This time he didn’t have to lie.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, you do now. This doesn’t look like the work of a couple of kids. Which means whoever it is will probably be back.”
The cops stayed another few minutes, doing a quick sweep of the store, and then turned to Corin. “You get any ideas who did this, let us know, okay?”
After boarding up the broken window, Corin e-mailed Nicole and asked her to meet him as soon as possible. Then he called Tesser, got his voice mail, and asked the professor the same thing.
No way would he be dropping the chair off in some old abandoned barn.
But he needed answers. The water was closing in and he needed a life jacket.
No, he needed a speedboat.
CHAPTER 33
The next morning at eleven thirty, Corin met Nicole at Rob’s Ruby Rocket Diner, just off Highway 24 and fifty miles east of the city, focused on one thing: getting answers.
The door squealed like a pig in labor as he opened it, and he glanced around the restaurant. There were ten or eleven tables, all of them empty except for the one farthest from the front door where Nicole sat staring at him.
He eased toward her, studying her eyes, which were serious and seemed full of concern. When Corin reached the table, he slid into a red vinyl chair straight out of the sixties, folded his hands, and rested them on the table next to the salt and pepper shakers that were even older than the chairs. He brushed the remnants of a French fry off the table and interlaced his fingers again.
“Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.”
She didn’t answer, just nodded.
“Is there a reason you wanted to meet at a restaurant an hour from town in a dive that probably hasn’t seen a mop since Washington was president?”
Corin had been so focused on Nicole, he hadn’t noticed a plump blond woman in a uniform two sizes too small standing at their table, pen and pad in hand.
Whoops.
She slapped two glasses of water onto the table. “We’ve only been in business since the Lincoln administration. And we did a remodel when Roosevelt came into office.”
“Which one?”
“Teddy.” She smiled and asked what they wanted.
“You have a great sense of humor.”
The waitress nodded and winked at him.
Corin ordered iced tea and a hamburger and Nicole ordered black coffee and French onion soup.
“Why here?” Nicole said. “Because he
probably wouldn’t follow you out this far and wouldn’t think of you coming into a place like this if he did.”
“Who is ‘he’?”
“The person who is after the chair and would possibly even kill to relieve you of it.”
The scene with Mark’s linebackers flashed into Corin’s mind. “Jefferies, right?”
“I’m not going to tell you who it is.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
For the first time Corin wondered about Nicole’s mental stability. She had never been anything but fully self-assured. She appeared that way now. But this was the first time she’d said something crazy.
Actually that wasn’t true. From the start her ideas had been dancing on the edge of the universe.
“Why not?”
“It’s part of your growing up. You need to learn who to trust and who not to trust rather than be told.”
“My growing up? I’m thirty-four years old.” Corin bent his cardboard coaster two ways so he could spin it like a top on the grease-stained table.
“Some people die still as children.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think you know, Corin.”
He did know. He’d heard a single traumatic incident in a person’s life could freeze his emotional age at the moment the event happened. So intellectually he might be thirty-four but emotionally he was, what? Ten? “So I’m ten years old?” The coaster slowed to a stop.
“It’s time to face your fear. You’re in the midst of doing that, which I applaud you for.”
“What does facing my fear have to do with telling me I’m still ten years old?”
“I didn’t say that, you did.”
“I’m scared of drowning. So what? I’m sure a lot of people are.” He dropped a penny in his water glass and watched it sink to the bottom. “And I am trying to face it.”
“How?”
“I sat in the chair again.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? That surprises me.” She stared at him till he dropped his eyes.
The waitress arrived with their food. A welcome distraction. It gave him time to think. Should he tell her? The revelation he’d received probably wouldn’t surprise her. Nicole had almost predicted it.
“When I sat in the chair I got the impression I should call my brother.”
“I see.” Nicole sipped her coffee and studied him over the top of her cup. “Are you going to?”
“I doubt it.” Corin devoted the next five minutes to devouring his burger and slurping down his iced tea. Nicole stayed silent but continued to laser him with her piercing blue eyes.
“Why me?” Corin slid his water glass back and forth in front of him, the penny sitting in the center of the glass, looking bigger, feeling bigger than it was. Just like his fear. “Why did you give the chair to me?”
“You were the one I was supposed to give it to.”
“And how did you determine that?”
For the next two or three minutes Nicole only looked at him as she took small spoonfuls of her soup. It was unnerving. He was about to ask again when she finally spoke.
“I’ve been watching you and the other possibility for many years now. It became clear early on you were the most likely candidate, but I couldn’t give it to you till the time was right.”
“You’ve been watching me for years?” Corin leaned back in his chair and scowled. “That creeps me out.”
“Does it surprise you?”
No. It didn’t. Based on what he knew about her, it didn’t shock Corin at all. The confidence with which she’d given him the chair and their interactions since made it seem like she’d known him all her life.
He pushed his plate to the side of the table. “Why me? Why not the other one? I’m no one special.”
Nicole smoothed her pants as a lilting laugh escaped her lips. “That is so far from true.”
“It is true. I’ve done nothing.”
“You can do a dance step around your destiny for a time, but you can’t escape it forever.”
“What destiny? What are you talking about?”
“Your destiny. To have the chair.”
“It doesn’t make sense. I’m not female for one thing. Plus I’m full of doubt, full of fears. I’ve made—”
“Mistakes you regret with everything inside.” Nicole smiled. “Welcome to the human race. Let me read you something a friend gave me many years ago.” She pulled out a yellowed envelope and from it drew out a small gray note card.
“You are no one and you are everyone. You are glorious and you are nothing. You are mountains and valleys, You are glory and sin, And even when in the heart of your glory you can’t comprehend how deep His passion for you runs, Take hold of who you are. Know it in your soul. Run before the wind of the destiny He has created for you, And seek Him in every moment.”
Nicole slid the card back into her purse and wove her fingers together. “Do you understand?”
Corin reached to his left and grabbed a French fry off his plate. “You’re saying God chose me.”
“Yes. But be careful. Death has always surrounded the chair. As has healing. Dark and light. Evil and goodness. Joy and sorrow.”
“And His purpose in my having the chair is what?”
Nicole smoothed her coat. “That is the one part of this whole drama I have no doubt I know the answer to.”
“What’s the answer?”
She slid her chair back, stood, leaned over him, and patted his shoulder. “We’ll talk again soon, Corin. Stay strong and believe.” Nicole snatched a twentydollar bill from her purse and dropped it on the table. “He is for you.”
The click of her heels on the old linoleum floor seemed muted as she walked away. Or maybe it was because his brain was spinning too loudly for him to hear well.
He popped the French fry in his mouth. It was cold and he spit it into his napkin which he crumpled and tossed onto his plate. Corin stood and glanced at his watch.
The guy fixing his store window wouldn’t be done for another two or three hours. Tesser hadn’t returned his call so this was a perfect time to get in a workout. Time to go for a long inline skate. Time to get his mind off the chair and his brother and his own nagging neuroses.
But as he left the restaurant, something in the jangling of the bells on the front door gave him the feeling he wasn’t going to get it.
CHAPTER 34
On the way to G. Peterson Park, Corin considered putting a gun to Shasta’s head. It would be the only way he’d get his brother to sit in the chair. Or maybe he should sell it to Mark and try to forget it ever existed. Or give Tesser the chair and let him figure out if the thing was real.
Or move to Mexico with Tori and live on a thousand dollars a year.
He pulled his truck into the parking lot in front of the skate path and threw his gearshift into Park. The perfect spot to get away from everything and everyone. Few people would be here this time of the year with the temperature only in the mid-fifties.
After jamming his in-line skates onto his feet, he pushed off onto the path that wove through clusters of narrow-leaf cottonwood trees, scattered red and gold leaves mixed with their brothers and sisters who still held the green of summer in their hue.
Stop thinking about the chair for an hour. He could do it. Give himself just sixty minutes with nothing on the brain except working up a good sweat.
It wasn’t going to be possible.
Five minutes into his skate a scream sliced through his mind from over the hill to his right.
“Please, help me!”
Corin pulled off his skates on the edge of the grass and jogged toward the voice. A woman by the sound of it. As he crested the hill he
spotted a heavyset lady who took tiny staggering steps back and forth in front of a large drain pipe.
She turned as Corin ran up to her. “Can you help me? Will you, please?”
A muffled yapping drifted out from deep inside the pipe.
“What’s—?”
“My puppy . . . she’s . . . I’m too . . .”—she brushed her hips—“big to get in there . . . I need . . . can you crawl in? Get her, please?” The woman’s baby blue mascara was smeared with tears and her hands trembled.
Corin squatted and glanced at the pipe. Forget it. Someone else would need to be Superman today. He could fit into the pipe but not comfortably and his brain wouldn’t fit at all.
“I’m sorry, tight spaces and I don’t get along. I can’t—”
“Please? There’s no one else out here. She’s already been in there for ten minutes.” The lady blinked and rubbed her stomach with both hands.
“Don’t worry. I can go get help, send someone down here to get your—”
“She’s my only family. She’s a cockapoo, so sweet, you know?” The woman knelt next to the pipe and sobbed. “If I lose her . . .”
“How far in?” Corin gritted his teeth. Why did he ask? He couldn’t do it even if the dog was only twenty feet in.
“I don’t know. Scoundrel sniffed inside the pipe and then started to go in . . .” More tears. “She yanked at the leash—I should have bought a new one, I know—and it snapped and . . . maybe she saw a rabbit . . . And I’ve called and called and she won’t come out . . . and I don’t know if she’s stuck or hurt or—”
“Listen, I’ll run and get some help, get someone back here in five minutes, ten at the most.”
“Fine.” All emotion drained out of her face. “That’s fine. It’s fine. I’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.” The woman shook her head and started crying again. “I don’t know if I can last that long. She’s probably not very far in.”
This was all too cliché. Woman’s dog gets stuck in drainpipe. Man happens along who is paralyzed by small spaces. Woman cries. Man gives in and crawls in pipe hating the woman, hating the dog, hating his fear. Why couldn’t it be a cat seventy feet up in a tree?
Jim Rubart Trilogy Page 83
