Welcome to Last Chance

by Hope Ramsay

  “She’s going into shock. Get the hell outta here, Stone,” the EMT bellowed.

  But Clay’s brother seemed a million miles away. Someone had to bring him back to reality. Clay stood up and grabbed Stone by the arm and hauled him out of the way. “Get a grip,” he said into his brother’s ear as he pulled him away from the scene.

  Stone turned violent. “You asshole,” he hissed through his teeth. “I told you she was trouble. Did you listen? She shot Momma.”

  “No, she didn’t,” Clay replied, certain of the words. He was also certain that whoever shot Momma was here because of Jane and because of that little necklace he’d seen in Jane’s purse last Thursday morning.

  “Damn it, Clay, can’t you see the truth when it’s right there in front of you? That woman is no good.”

  Clay wanted to argue the point, but he knew better. He wanted to believe in Jane’s innocence, but his mother was lying there bleeding while the EMTs worked, and Haley was missing, trapped in a hijacked car. One couldn’t refute such irrefutable evidence.

  Loving Jane wasn’t going to work out.

  Then Stone turned toward the cops converging on the scene. “Did anyone see Jane attack my mother? Did anyone see which way that woman went?” he asked.

  Chaos answered. Lightning hissed above them. The streetlights went out, and an explosion of static crackled over the police radios as dispatchers began to call in an astounding number of weather-related disasters.

  To hear those radios, one might think Armageddon had arrived in Allenberg County, South Carolina. Power lines, telephone lines, cable lines, and just about every form of mass communication except radio was down. The Edisto had flooded its banks, washing out the bridges north of town, with additional high water being reported along Route 70 east and west of town. It was almost as if God Almighty had set up a series of roadblocks to ensure there that were no routes of escape for Jane Coblentz. No routes, except 321 South.

  That’s when the county dispatcher informed everyone that a Country Pride Chicken truck driver had just used his CB to call in an accident on Route 321 South. One of Country Pride’s trucks and a tan Ford Taurus had gotten tangled up with Jesus down at Golfing for God.

  CHAPTER 20

  Jane hugged Haley to her side and was encouraged when the child hugged her back and settled herself onto Jane’s hip like a little monkey. Like a heavy little monkey.

  Jane took off down the waterlogged gravel path leading to the golf course. Ahead she could see a darker blur against the beating rain that looked like a life-sized Ark. Okay, maybe not life-sized, but at least as big as a barn.

  She almost laughed aloud because the rain was so heavy it looked like it might flood the entire area. She wondered if the Ark was seaworthy.

  Jane was losing her focus. She needed to stay sharp, because one look behind her told her the bad guys had not given up the chase. A wave of adrenaline hit her system, causing her heart rate to spike and her stomach to drop. She was in flight mode now. Running for her life.

  “Haley,” she shouted into the child’s ear.

  She got a grunt.

  “Is there a phone in the Ark?”

  Silence.

  “Is there a phone in the Ark, honey? You gotta tell me.”

  “Uh. I think so. In Granddaddy’s office.” The child’s voice sounded dreamy and sleepy, like she’d suffered a serious head injury.

  Hoo boy. If Haley suffered irreversible damage, Jane would never forgive herself. She prayed a little harder to the Universe to show her the way.

  “Is your granddaddy here?”

  “Uh, no. He was still eating breakfast when we left.”

  “Great. I could have used some help, especially from his angels,” she muttered as she picked up her pace. Her thighs and lungs burned. Heading for the Ark was the best plan she had. Maybe the door wasn’t locked, and she could get to that phone before the bad guys got to her. Maybe she could stash Haley in a safe place.

  One quick glance at the bad guys behind her told her that the Ark was out of range. Woody was almost on her, with the school of four loan sharks only a few paces behind him.

  The situation was hopeless. She couldn’t outrun these guys, even without being weighed down by Haley. Maybe she could find a place to hide in the wooded area that grew on the right side of the path.

  Jane swerved to the right and down into a little gully that was ankle deep in water. She splashed along for a few steps, then ran up the other side onto soft ground covered in fragrant pine needles. Above her, Carolina pines swayed in the ferocious wind.

  Lightning whizzed through the air. Crack. The sound was sharp and deafening, and Haley screamed.

  Jane stumbled to one knee, pain jolting up her thigh. The unmistakable odor of ozone filled her nose as she struggled back to her feet, only to be knocked flat by a secondary explosion ten times louder than the lightning strike.

  Haley screamed again. Jane cried out, too, as the breath left her body. Through the rain and wind, heat flashed against her back.

  Jane struggled to inhale against her bruised diaphragm as she looked over her shoulder. The scene could have come right out of an action movie. The lightning had hit something explosive—maybe the propane line for the tiki torches that lined the path. Whatever it was, the explosion had blown the tiki torches sky-high and transformed the path into a corridor of fire.

  Jane didn’t have the time to ponder how anything could burn like that in a raging downpour. Woody had followed her up into the woods and had managed not to be barbecued.

  And so, apparently, had at least three of the four bad guys on his tail.

  Jane pulled Haley back onto her hip and started running again. The girl was awake now and weeping about being afraid of lightning.

  “It’s okay, Hale; just think about your Grandfather’s angels, okay?”

  It was lame, but maybe the kid would buy it. Jane scanned the terrain in front of her. There wasn’t any place to hide. She needed to get to the Ark and find the telephone. She swerved left and headed toward the golf course. She could see the brighter green of fake turf ahead.

  She stumbled through a stand of azaleas. To get to Golfing for God from this direction, she would have to wade the looping carp pond that ringed the golf course like a moat. The pond came complete with lily pads and fish, and probably snakes and other creepy crawlies.

  Jane put the thought of snakes out of her mind and splashed through the knee-deep water. She clambered up onto hole number four, featuring a bunch of oversized, blue-green fiberglass frogs. What frogs had to do with God was a mystery to Jane—probably because she was more than a little vague on her Bible stories. These particular frogs spat water at each other in short bursts and streams. Anyone who missed their first putt was going to get wet.

  She ran down the fairway, the frogs shooting at her like amphibian water artillery. She took a sharp right onto the path that led to the Ark.

  And that’s when the earthquake hit.

  Well, it wasn’t exactly an earthquake. But the ground did kind of shake, and there was this funny grinding noise audible even above the raging wind and the pounding rain and the crackle of the burning tiki torches.

  She ran harder, past statues of David and Goliath—a story she actually knew. But with each step, the noise grew louder until it crescendoed with a sharp series of pops followed by a roar that sounded like a freight train. All of this was punctuated by male shouts of surprise.

  “Look,” Haley said in her ear. “You were right about the angels. The Sorrowful Angel and her friends are smiting them just like in the Bible.” The girl’s voice sounded dreamy.

  “Huh?” Jane looked over her shoulder. She didn’t see any angels.

  Instead, one of the fiberglass frogs lost its head. It popped off and shot skyward, and then the water it had been spitting turned into a raging torrent. In quick succession, the remaining five frogs similarly converted themselves into open fire hydrants, spewing water so hard that it knocked down Wood
y West and one of his assailants. The entire scenario gave a new meaning to the term water hazard.

  But the scene gave Jane no comfort because little Haley was hallucinating about angels, and it was all Jane’s fault for suggesting it. There was no way Stone Rhodes would ever forgive her for this, even if she lived through it.

  Jane kept running, putting distance between herself and the two bad guys who had managed to bypass the frog hazard.

  Jane swerved left, past Jonah’s whale. Then she scrambled up a little rise where another, smaller statue of Jesus stood with open arms. Noah’s Ark stood behind this statue.

  Noah’s boat was not built for sailing. It was more of a barn. A pair of wide doors were built into its side, and several wooden-fenced corrals occupied a space to one side of the structure. Jane recognized a cattle barn when she saw one. She also recognized the sounds that were, at that moment, emanating from deep inside.

  Another bolt of lightning hissed overhead, followed immediately by a crack of thunder. This storm was right overhead, not miles away. And that probably explained why the panicked cattle took that moment to kick down the barn’s door. Suddenly she came face to face, or more properly face to horn, with a large brown bull.

  “Mamie,” Haley said in greeting to the horned beast, who had a pair of mild brown eyes and looked more like a Texas longhorn than an actual bull. “Follow the Sorrowful Angel and her friends,” the little girl said. “Get the bad guys.”

  Haley pointed toward one of the putt-putt holes that featured a tower that sort of looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, only without the lean. Jane had no idea what Pisa had to do with God, either.

  Mamie followed Haley’s orders impeccably and charged. She also possessed leadership qualities, because she took the entire Golfing for God herd with her. The herd was not that large: It consisted of just one llama, a billy goat, two sheep, and a bunny rabbit.

  To be honest, the bunny rabbit wasn’t up to stampeding and scurried off in the opposite direction, but the goat made up for the bunny’s cowardice by making a beeline toward one of the men in black. The goat took him out with a single blow.

  Jane put Haley down on her feet and looked down at her. She had a huge bump on her forehead, but her eyes looked clear. “Are you dizzy?”

  Haley shook her head, and Jane felt relieved.

  “Honey, go hide in the barn and stay there, you hear me?”

  Haley looked up at her with this odd look. “Don’t worry, Jane, the angels are here. They won’t let anything bad happen to us.”

  The relief vanished. Haley was seriously hurt. “Just hide in the barn, honey. With the angels, okay?”

  Haley shook her head. “No, the angels are smiting the bad guys just like in the Bible. They’re busy; they can’t hide with me right now.” With that pronouncement, Haley scurried toward the black maw of the Ark’s doors. Jane watched her run, feeling the weight of the whole world on her shoulders. Stone Rhodes was going to murder her—or at least lock her up for life.

  Jane turned toward the office door but didn’t get very far because something deep in the earth gave way and the ground shook again. And then a geyser of water shot up through hole eighteen, right at the feet of the second statue of Jesus. In fact, it looked as if the fiberglass statue, with its outstretched arms, was willing the water up through the golf hole.

  And since it was hole eighteen—the hole where the establishment collects your golf balls so you can’t cheat and play another round—the geyser was not composed entirely of water.

  It was, in fact, loaded with multicolored golf balls. It streamed forth like some kind of supercharged bazooka that shot those babies skyward with an aim that was pretty darn remarkable and not at all random.

  Haley stopped and turned, and the two of them stood speechless as every single one of the bad guys—even the ones who had been burned or drowned or taken out by the stampede—got brained by one of those balls just for good measure.

  Haley laughed aloud, and it was a joyful sound. “Jiminy Christmas! The Sorrowful Angel sure has a good throwing arm, doesn’t she?” she said.

  “Who?” Jane asked.

  “The Sorrowful Angel.”

  Jane swallowed hard and looked up at the sky but didn’t see any angels, sorrowful or otherwise. Instead, the heavens were in the process of folding themselves up. That was about the only way she could describe what she saw. The black clouds were disappearing as if some hand or power were sucking them dry.

  Blue sky was breaking out all over.

  And so were the sirens.

  In the next thirty seconds, the entire combined police forces and fire departments of the towns of Last Chance, Denmark, and Olar, not to mention various county authorities, converged on Golfing for God and took the bad guys into custody.

  Stone Rhodes led the charge.

  The chief of police covered ground fast, and when he got to Jane and Haley, he fell down on his knees in front of his child and hauled that little girl up against his chest like his entire life depended upon it.

  Jane felt like a voyeur watching the chief lose his composure. There were tears running down his craggy cheeks, and he looked bad. Real bad.

  Even though Stone was big and macho and capable of looking after himself, a person would have to be blind not to realize how much he loved his family and why he worked so hard to keep the bad guys out of Last Chance.

  Jane hugged herself against a cold that seeped into her bones and made a mockery of the bright sunshine breaking out all over the place. A lump lodged in her throat, and guilt settled on her shoulders. She would never understand the Universe. If she had gone somewhere else, Ruby and Haley would still be all right.

  At that moment, Clay came dashing through the wreckage like the U.S. Cavalry. She watched him approach with a mixture of hope and fear and overwhelming relief. She had thought she might never see him again.

  She could count at least that blessing.

  He came to a stop, breathing hard, and gave her one soulful look that said it all. Things had changed between them.

  His actions punctuated the point. Clay didn’t pull her into his arms and profess his love, like Stone had just done with his child. He didn’t reach out and give her the warmth she needed. He just looked at her as if he were trying to figure out what he was supposed to do next. As if he were weighing the pros and cons and thinking things through, instead of acting on them.

  His lips tightened. For one instant her hope soared and then it crashed. Clay turned away. It was over.

  He presented his back as he squatted down and squeezed Stone’s shoulders for a brief moment. There was a world of love in that touch. Jane ached for it.

  Clay hung there beside his brother, listening to Haley babble on about the Sorrowful Angel and studying the scrape on her head. Then it was like he made a decision.

  He stood up and yelled for an EMT.

  One of the medics who had just arrived detached himself from one of the bad guys and hurried up. He started examining Haley. Stone took that moment to look up at Jane, murder in his deep green eyes. Clay didn’t turn back toward Jane until the EMT and Stone took the child to one of the waiting ambulances. There wasn’t murder in Clay’s eyes, only a deep sorrow that made Jane want to weep.

  He stood there, his waterlogged Stetson shadowing his face. She wanted to throw herself against his broad, sturdy chest. She wanted that safe feeling back, but she wasn’t going to find it there anymore.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  No. She wanted to wail the word. But she didn’t want to show her weaknesses. She didn’t want Clay to rescue her. She wanted him to love her. She wanted a love that could overlook even this, but that was more than anyone could ask. So she just ignored his question and asked one of her own. “Is Ruby…?” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Tears gathered in his eyes but they didn’t spill over. “She’s bad. It’s a head wound. But she’s still alive, if that’s what you’re asking.” His voice sounded kind
of dead.

  Jane’s stomach clenched, and her heart twisted. Ruby Rhodes had been kind, and this is how she had repaid her. She closed her eyes and winged a little affirmation to the Cosmos on Ruby’s behalf. She doubted that the powers of the Universe would answer her. She had lost her faith in manifesting. She had lost her hope, too.

  “Look, I know what I said this morning, but…” Clay started, and his voice faded out.

  Jane opened her eyes, her heart shattering. “I’m not going to hold you to that,” she managed to say. “We both know I’m not what you want,” she said, paraphrasing the words to “I Will Always Love You.” She would always love him. But right now, she needed to run—and run hard.

  Clay nodded like he understood. “I gotta go. They were taking Momma up to Orangeburg. Getting up there’s going to be a problem, seeing as the road’s all flooded.”

  Jane took a deep, shaky breath. Her world was coming unraveled. She had just cheated death, only now death seemed such a small hurt compared to this big hurt inside her heart.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  She looked away so she didn’t have to watch him turn his back. She stood there alone with her sadness and her guilt and her fury at the Universe.

  “Mary Smith?” a deep, no-nonsense voice asked a moment later. Jane’s trip to the very bottom was not finished.

  She turned and faced an African-American man with a grim face. He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a leather case and a shiny FBI badge. His name was Bernard Wilkes.

  Clay still stood there, behind the G-man. The look on his face sent another wave of sorrow and regret running through her. He was thinking the absolute worst. Well, so be it. She didn’t want a man who always thought the worst of her. She wanted someone who could see the bright side of things. Someone who would support and forgive her, no matter what. Someone who would have her back when the bad stuff arrived.

  She shifted her gaze back to the federal agent. “I’ve gone by that name,” she said. “But my real name is Wanda Jane Coblentz.” It was time to accept who she was.