A Time to Surrender

by Sally John

  “Sweetheart, God is with them. They are in His hands.”

  “Oh, Max!” Sudden tears streamed down her face.

  He wrapped her in his arms and held her tightly. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  She could not have spoken if she had to, but Max knew what was going on inside her. In a few days, they would mark the first anniversary of the devastating fire that tore through the estate and emotionally scarred them all horribly. With the approaching date, she had been on edge, grateful for so many positive outcomes but reliving fear-filled moments.

  She and Max had talked again of his experience, how he survived that long night not knowing if his family was alive or dead.

  Like . . . Ben and Indio with BJ. One long night that lasted thirty-four years.

  Oh, God! There’s too much pain. Just too much. How are we supposed to do this? Live in this world of hurt?

  Max’s voice reached her, calm, soft, steady. He was praying.

  After a bit, her tears slowed, her lungs filled with oxygen, her faith in Someone else’s control put down a new root.

  Claire, we know where everyone else is.” Max pulled a polo shirt over his head. Behind him a commentator on the television described a scene full of emergency vehicles.

  “I just need to hear their voices.” She looped a belt around her tunic top while sliding her feet into sandals. Her jeans and boots lay in a heap. “Right now.”

  “Before we leave? Not from the cell phone when we get down the hill?”

  Yes, right now! Again and again she tried poking the belt prong into a hole. It kept missing. Lord, don’t let him quit on me. Please don’t let him quit on me.

  Max gently pushed her hands from the belt and buckled it for her. “I’ll dial the numbers for you.”

  She gave him a small smile. “I don’t think we can reach Skylar.”

  “Skylar’s on your list too?”

  “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  He kissed her cheek. “We can’t get Dad and Tuyen, either, you know. They’re out on the horses. Mom first?”

  She nodded and they sat on the couch.

  They talked briefly with Indio, who was in her house down the road. Her prayers, of course, were set in motion.

  Lexi was at the office of the landscape firm where she worked part-time now that they needed her help on the hacienda grounds. Claire let Max break the news to Lexi and then she spoke with her.

  “Hon—”

  “Mom! Danny’s there! He told me he was going.” More resolution than panic filled her voice. “But don’t worry. He’s all right. I know it.”

  “The twin thing?”

  “Yeah. With some faith thrown in too. I’m leaving right now. I’ll catch up with you down there.”

  Max called Jenna’s high school and was put on hold. He clasped Claire’s hand. When a male voice came on, she could hear most of what he was saying.

  “Mr. Beaumont, Cade Edmunds here. We just heard the news. Um, Jenna, um . . .”

  Claire had met Cade Edmunds a few times. The man did not say “um.” Her stomach twisted.

  “Uh, um, there was a funeral at that church.”

  They knew that. They’d heard that on the news. A Marine . . . A Marine.

  No.

  “Jenna and another teacher went . . . went to the funeral. I’ve been calling . . .”

  Claire was out the door before Max hung up the phone.

  Twenty-three

  Breathless, Skylar ran alongside Danny, anxious to know what had happened, equally anxious not to know.

  They couldn’t pinpoint the direction from which the noise had come, but—like others racing ahead of them—deduced that the rally site must somehow be involved.

  What insanity possessed them all to run toward the sounds of chaos rather than away? She thought of videos of tumbling skyscrapers, still frightfully vivid after so many years.

  They couldn’t see anything yet except for stopped traffic and racing fire trucks and police cars. The coffee shop was at least ten blocks from the demonstrators. Skylar slowed to a jog. Surfer Dude might be able to run the whole way, but she couldn’t.

  “Danny, what are we doing?”

  He matched his pace with hers, his breath nowhere near as ragged as hers. “Rosie’s there. Other people I know.”

  “Rosie will know what to do. You told me you warned your friends about what she said even before I caught up with you.”

  “That doesn’t mean they left like we did. I have to make sure they’re okay. I have to make sure Rosie’s okay. I should call Erik—no, not yet. You don’t have to come.”

  No, she didn’t. But at the same time, yes, she did. She knew people there too. At least one, anyway. If God wanted to wreak a righteous vengeance, that one should be lying on a stretcher. She should have said something. She should have said something! Deep down she’d understood he was not there just to carry a sign.

  They reached a corner. A few blocks ahead, every kind of emergency vehicle clogged the street. Their lights flashed, the sirens winding down. Firefighters and people in military uniforms looked like fish swimming upstream against a tide of people exiting a church.

  A church. The one Rosie mentioned? The one holding a funeral ?

  Skylar saw a curl of smoke and followed it downward to a side wall of the big old, gray stone building. Where stained-glass windows should have been there were, instead, two gaping holes, giant eyeballs staring blankly.

  Insane.

  There were no visible flames. Skylar surmised that an explosive device had blown out the windows. Or blown them in. To prove a point?

  Or to maim and kill?

  “Skylar.” Danny grasped her arm and they stopped. “You look ready to barf. I said you don’t have to come. I’ll show you how to loop around this block and get to the parking garage.”

  She shook her head vehemently. “I have to come.”

  Beneath the sunglasses, his mouth twisted in a quizzical expression. “Suit yourself.” He let go of her arm and they resumed their hurried pace.

  She’d heard the anger in his voice, felt it in his fingers digging into her arm. It matched her own.

  This should not have happened.

  Skylar and Danny reached the edge of the chaos. Someone jostled her and she fell against him. Police were cordoning off paths, allowing people exiting the church down ramps and steps one way, emergency workers up another ramp. Looky-Lous like themselves were being turned aside.

  They stepped off the curb and found an empty spot to stand, in between two parked cars. Their owners wouldn’t be driving off anytime soon.

  “I don’t see Rosie.” He pulled off his sunglasses and continued scanning the hordes.

  Skylar’s throat ached at the sight of mourners stumbling along the sidewalk, some so close she could have reached out and touched them. They were all dressed in black, a new horror etched on their faces that had nothing to do with burying a loved one.

  She whispered, “It’s not right.” He goes too far. How did I ever . . .

  “I want to punch somebody,” Danny muttered. “I want to tear somebody’s head off.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  He turned to her.

  “You don’t, Danny. Don’t say that. Don’t say that kind of stuff.”

  He looked away.

  A medic backed out of the church’s double center door. He guided a wheeled stretcher over the threshold. A fireman came into view, holding aloft tubes and an IV bag. Another medic followed at the other end of the stretcher. They moved toward a handicap ramp down one side of the steps.

  At least a face was visible on the stretcher. It wasn’t covered with a sheet. It wasn’t in a body bag.

  Skylar heard faint music. “Your phone’s ringing.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your phone.”

  Danny dug into his back jeans pocket, pulled out his cell, and flipped it open. “Erik . . . Yeah. Mm-hmm . . . I talked to her earlier. It’s a mess now. I don’t see her, but
she’s fine. The damage seems to be inside the church. She wouldn’t have been in there . . . What?!”

  At his shout, Skylar looked at him. The tanned cheeks had drained of all color. “What is it?” she asked.

  He ignored her, listening intently for long moments. “I’ll find her.” He snapped the phone shut.

  “Danny?”

  “Jenna’s inside the church.”

  Skylar’s knees buckled. She sank onto the bumper of one of the cars, watching him stride up the curb and roughly elbow his way between people, powerless to go after him. Acid burned its way up from her stomach into her throat.

  Images battered about in her mind, snapshots of herself. Lonely, toddling behind her older sister and brother, never catching up. Confused at her parents’ disinterest in her. So sad in that redwood forest, heartbroken years before she was old enough to understand man’s destructive ways. Angry with the unfairness she met at every turn, at the crimes committed against people and nature. Growing quiet and secretive and fearful. So naive even when she was old enough to understand. Running. Running.

  Explosion after explosion echoing in her head.

  Skylar jerked upward, quickly scanning every direction, assuring herself that the noise had been in her imagination. Disorder filled the area. Those clad in black still inched their way past her. People crushed against each other, shouting. Sirens screamed.

  The blasts were all imagined . . . except for that one, the one that swirled Kansas, the Land of Oz, and the yellow-brick road all together and right on out into oblivion.

  She faced a choice: stick with the Beaumonts or hightail it out of San Diego. Claire would forgive her for using the credit card to buy just one tank of gas, wouldn’t she? When that ran out, Skylar would stick the card in the glove box and abandon the car. The police would eventually find it. Max would retrieve it. By then Skylar would be long gone. The family would think it all rather curious and simply get on with their lives.

  Oh! She nearly shouted a curse. She did not want to leave! The Hacienda Hideaway was not a movie set. The Beaumonts were not a sitcom family. They were a safe harbor, her safe harbor, unlike any she’d ever had in her life. The least she could do was jump into the fracas with Danny and help him find his sister.

  And what of Fin Harrod, the ghost from her past? The one who could very well be—most likely was—at least partially responsible for the mess before her? For any harm that had come to Jenna?

  Skylar hesitated.

  What would Indio do? What would Claire do?

  Those two women who welcomed her as a family member would not back down. They epitomized feminine courage.

  More than anything else, Skylar wanted to be like them.

  She sprang up the curb and pressed herself into the crowd. “Excuse me. I have family inside the church. Excuse me.”

  Skylar found Danny behind a parked ambulance, its rear doors open.

  “Hey,” she said.

  He whirled around and tossed her a passing glance as he hurried by.

  She kept pace with him.

  “She’s not here. She’s not there.” He waved his arm in the direction of other ambulances. “I don’t see her on the street. She’s got to be inside.”

  Or on her way to the hospital. Skylar didn’t want to say that aloud. “Who would be with her?”

  “No clue. Jenna doesn’t hang out with military people. She hasn’t even admitted that she is one.” His face was crimson. The anger almost masked the fear so obvious in his eyes that darted every which way. “I can’t imagine what she’s doing here, how she got here.”

  “Who said she was here?”

  “Her principal.”

  So Jenna had left school to attend a military funeral. Maybe the family was somehow related to the faculty or a student? But wouldn’t she have said something to her own family if the school were affected like that?

  In the confusion she and Danny easily bypassed police and firefighters still trying to cordon off the sidewalk. On the church steps, Skylar climbed slowly behind Danny, squished against a railing by people descending them. They made it to the main double doors.

  A helmeted fireman blocked their path. “You need to turn around, please. Only emergency personnel allowed inside.”

  “My sister—”

  “Sorry, bud. Everyone needs to clear out. We don’t know the extent of the damage. It’s not safe in there—”

  Danny was on his toes, jabbing the air with his finger. “Are there people in there?” He was just shy of going ballistic.

  “Medics are bringing out the injured as quickly as possible. Please, sir, move away.”

  “I’m not going—”

  “Danny!” Skylar grasped his elbow and pulled as hard as she could. Getting close to his ear, she whispered, “Come on. Maybe there’s a back way in.”

  Avoiding the side with the blown-out windows, they went the other way and passed one door with a cop helping people exit it. They rounded the back corner. Ahead, nearly hidden in an alcove behind wide-leafed tropical plants, a door opened. Clergymen emerged, followed by a woman, two little kids, and an elderly couple. They were all clothed in black, all with blank expressions that seemed to say the moment was totally beyond comprehension.

  Danny hurried across the narrow stone path, moving quickly to the door that kept automatically closing on people. He took hold of the handle. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Waiting off to the side in the grass, Skylar stared at him. Was he for real? In the midst of his own anxiety, gracious words fell from his lips in heartfelt tones.

  Marines backed out through the door now.

  They carried a casket.

  God, if You’re for real, would You just wipe everyone responsible for this right off the face of the earth?

  Twenty-four

  Jenna gripped the medic’s gloved hand and pulled it from her wrist. “I’m fine!”

  “Ma’am, please sit still—”

  “Take care of her! Take care of Amber!”

  The man beside her on the pew got into her face, blocking the view of her friend on a stretcher in the aisle. His haircut resembled Kevin’s quarter-inch buzz. Kevin’s post-enlisted haircut. Had this guy joined up too? Where was Kevin? She should tell him she was all right. He would worry. He was like that.

  “Jenna, stay with me here.”

  She blinked a few times. The room still spun faster than her eyes could follow. Her ears still rang.

  “Amber is being taken care of.” The medic’s head came into focus. He was bent over her arm, holding her wrist again. “Okay? There’s plenty of help around. We need to take care of you too.”

  “But she’s hurt!”

  “And this”—he gently lifted her blouse sleeve—“is a figment of my imagination. Mm-hmm, right. What do you do for a living, Jenna?”

  She leaned sideways. Amber looked dead. Pale. Motionless. An oxygen mask covered most of her face. A dressing covered that spot on her neck, the spot where blood had trickled. Two medics still worked on her, conversing with each other, talking at her. She didn’t answer. She looked dead.

  “Johnson!” A voice barked.

  Jenna nearly jumped off the seat. A burly policeman moved along the row ahead, directing his attention to the guy next to her.

  “We gotta move out right now. They’re not so sure about that wall.”

  A rustling noise came from the stretcher. Amber was talking, her voice muffled, and she tried to push aside the mask.

  One of the medics lifted it. “What?”

  “Solid masonry.” She rasped. Her eyelids fluttered, but didn’t completely open. “No problem. Bombs went pop, pop. Do about as much damage as a skeeter on an elephant’s behind.” Instantly Amber returned to her deadlike state.

  The medics chuckled, put the mask back in place.

  Then the policeman was slapping his palms against the pew’s back, gripping its edge, and leaning over it toward Jenna. “What does she know about the bombs?”


  Jenna heard the voice and saw the big man’s square jaw, his scrunched lips, but nothing registered. There was too much else going on in her mind. The spinning. The noise.

  “What do you know about the—hey!” The cop shouted again, this time to Amber’s group. “I need her ID.”

  Someone called out the name of a hospital.

  Johnson, the medic with Jenna, still held her injured arm. He’d put something around it. “That one is Amber Ames. This is Jenna Mason, on her way to the same place. They’ll be there awhile.” He moved closer again, his eyes commanding hers to focus on him. “Let’s try to walk, okay? We’ll catch the next stretcher that comes by.”

  “Can’t we wait here?” Her legs felt like overcooked noodles. “Amber said the walls are solid. She’s really a smart woman. Knows all about explosives.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Jen!” A familiar voice shouted. “Jenna!”

  She looked up to see Danny. From the front of the church, he was climbing over pews, making his clumsy way to the middle where she sat. Relief flooded through her. Danny would know what to do.

  “Who is this?” The cop wouldn’t let up. He spun around, flung out an arm, and stopped Danny in midstride over the final pew. “Who are you?”

  “What? That’s my sister.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Daniel Beaumont.”

  “Were you in here for the funeral?”

  Jenna rolled her eyes. Like somebody would wear ratty blue jeans, T-shirt, and Ro-Bo Shop cap for a funeral.

  “No,” Danny said. “Excuse me, Officer.”

  “How’d you get inside?” A notebook was in his hand now, and he was writing.

  “Walked through a door.” Danny sprang over the back of the pew and reached her. “Jen, you okay?” He looked beyond her shoulder. “Is she okay?”

  “She’ll be fine,” the medic replied. “She’s fading in and out a little. Has a bump on her head. There’s a sliver of glass in her arm. Doc will have it out, no sweat. Jenna, let’s take that walk.”

  They helped her to her feet. Whatever her last meal had been rumbled in her stomach.

  The cop growled something about not letting them out of his sight.