by Sara Blaedel
Jeff began walking back to them, but Ilka strode up to him and smacked him in the face before he could say a word. She wanted to pummel him, to pound him into the ground, but she couldn’t stop the tears and wailing, and she felt she was crumbling right there in front of him. She had so much she wanted to say, but it all drowned in the desperate sorrow mounting inside her. She was in shock, and everything seemed so unreal. Suddenly she remembered her mother and Jette, both at the funeral home.
“My mother,” she said. She felt Dorothy’s arm around her now.
“I put some guards at the funeral home,” Jeff said. “In front and back. And we told your mother to stay inside.”
“But really, if Burnes wants us, why didn’t they just wait here and stop us?”
“They figure you’ve called the police,” he calmly explained. “Right now they’re keeping a low profile, but they’re waiting for you, you can be sure of that.”
She stepped back and looked him over. “How could you ever think I can trust you, after what you’ve done.” Her anger began churning again. “You sold Jane-Maya and Lydia! How much did they pay you for trapping us?”
“This isn’t about money, it’s about getting you out of here, to safety.”
“And then what happens?” Dorothy stood with both hands in the slanted pockets of her coveralls.
“You disappear into thin air, and they don’t have a prayer of finding out where you’ve gone.”
“But—”
Dorothy grabbed Ilka’s arm and pulled her back a step. “We’ll do it. Let him help us. At this moment, all that matters is stopping them from getting their hands on the girls. We’ve got to get them to safety. And we just have to hope the police will do what they can to stop Isiah Burnes.”
Ilka shook her head but realized she was already wavering, about to change her mind. “What if he’s bluffing?” she whispered.
“Let’s all get turned around, and then both of you follow me,” Jeff said. He started back to his car.
Ilka let Dorothy lead her away, but before she reached the hearse, she turned and shouted back at Jeff, “What’s in it for you?”
He stopped as he was about to get in his BMW. “A job, I hope.”
Ilka felt like slapping him again, but she felt Dorothy’s eyes on her. She was right; they needed his help.
He whipped a U-turn in his BMW and waited. When both vehicles were lined up behind him, he took off. They passed Dorothy’s driveway and continued on past autumn-gold fields on both sides of the road. A few miles farther he slowed and signaled to turn right. Ilka checked all around for black cars before following him toward a patch of woods that swallowed up the road.
Jeff slowed down again when he entered the woods, and Ilka glanced in her rearview mirror; Dorothy was following, and nothing seemed amiss. They drove down the bumpy road through the woods, where the treetops curtained off the gray daylight above. Several minutes later, Jeff stopped and shut off his engine.
“What’s happening?” Ilka shouted as she jumped out of the hearse. She glanced back at the coffin inside.
He followed her eyes. “Let the girls out,” he said.
Ilka instinctively took a step back to guard the coffin, but Jeff simply explained that he knew what Burnes was after, and he’d seen that Burnes hadn’t taken the girls with him.
“How?” Ilka said. “How do you know what happened? All the windows on those cars are tinted. You’re lying.”
Suddenly her anger gave way to fear. She’d never really felt sure about where Jeff stood, and right now it looked like trusting him had been a terrible mistake.
“I saw what happened,” he said.
“How?” she shouted.
He shook his head and motioned to Dorothy to get out of her car. This feels all wrong, Ilka thought, and she looked for somewhere to run. It was a trap he’d set up. She grabbed Dorothy and pulled her close, then turned to Jeff.
“Why? Why are you doing this? What is it you want?”
Dorothy wrenched free of her grip and stepped toward Jeff. “We can pay you. What will it cost to get you to follow us out to Fletcher’s ranch? Two young girls have just lost their mother, and it’s time for you to show some compassion. And we have the money—just say how much.”
Ilka stepped back toward the hearse. This wasn’t going to end well; when Jeff realized how much money Dorothy had in the car, he would pressure them. Or else take the money and leave them here in the woods. She was panicking, she knew that; how could she ever get the girls out of the coffin and away from there without him realizing it? She shut the voices out and took a few deep breaths before cautiously lifting up the rear door of the hearse.
“I don’t want money,” Jeff said. “I just want my old job back.”
“But there’s nobody left to take care of,” Dorothy answered.
“Sure there is. I want to be in charge of the family’s security.”
Ilka couldn’t believe her ears. She looked at him and stepped away from the hearse, close to laughing at him. “You of all people must know, you have to be able to trust a security chief. You have to know he has your back, that he’ll do anything to protect you. But you, you have us in the palm of your hand. It would be so easy for you to deliver us to Burnes and his God Squad.”
“I’m here to help you. All I want is my old job back.”
“You can’t threaten your way to a job like that. You have to earn it, by being someone people can trust. And we don’t, we can’t trust you, don’t you get it?”
“What will it cost?” Dorothy asked again.
He was getting impatient. “It won’t cost you anything. C’mon, let the girls out, just trust me.”
Ilka froze. She heard the growl of an engine nearby; then it stopped. All three of them turned and stared back at the narrow road. Ilka glanced in fright at Jeff before slamming the rear door shut. Dorothy locked her car and stood in front of the passenger-side door, where all the money lay.
They heard the engine start again, a deep rumble that soon became a wall of sound slowly moving through the woods.
Jeff’s car blocked them in front, and now they were being cut off from behind. They were caged in. Trapped.
Ilka tried to make eye contact with him, but he seemed unaffected as he stared quietly in the direction of the noise.
“Let the girls out,” he repeated. The vehicle plowed through the woods, snapping off branches as it approached.
Ilka’s mind raced; how far away could she get with the girls? But they were too small, they could never outrun Jeff. And anyway, that would be abandoning Dorothy.
Suddenly the back end of a broad white truck appeared. Ilka held her breath as it bulldozed its way toward them, laying waste to small trees and bushes on both sides of the narrow road.
Jeff clapped his hands and started over toward them. “Let’s go, get the girls out of the coffin.”
Dorothy and Ilka froze; all they could do was watch the truck backing up.
“Now,” Jeff yelled, waving at Ilka as the back of the truck slowly began lowering.
The smell of horses roused Ilka out of her stupor. She heard the driver’s-side door slam shut as she stepped toward the ramp. Dorothy leaned up against her car with arms folded.
Ilka’s mouth fell open as she stared inside the Fletcher and Davidson Raceteam’s enormous horse trailer, and a moment later Tom, the stable manager, appeared and nodded at her. All the stall bars attached to runners on top had been pushed aside, and the trailer was one big open space.
“We need to get the cars inside,” Jeff said, gesturing for them to get going. “The girls can stay in the coffin, of course, but they’ll be more comfortable sitting in the backseat of the other car. Can you drive the hearse in yourself, or do you want me to do it?”
Jeff held out his hand for the key.
Ilka was still staring at the trailer. The fear that had nearly choked her only seconds earlier slowly drained away as she caught on to Jeff’s plan.
Dor
othy was the first to move. She opened the hearse’s rear door, and Ilka heard her warn the girls that she was going to open the coffin lid. Suddenly Ilka could move too. She hurried over and flipped the steel latches, then they lifted off the lid. The girls were lying the same way they had in the oven, hands on each other’s shoulders and foreheads together. At first Ilka thought they were sleeping; then she noticed their lips moving, as if they were reciting a rhyme together. When the lid was all the way off and the light hit them, they stopped and blinked their eyes open.
“Come on out,” Ilka said, holding out her hand to the older girl.
The girl hesitated a second then took it. She sat up slowly and rested a foot on the edge of the coffin before being lifted out. Dorothy reached for the younger girl, and moments later they were standing outside, the girls staring in fright at the gigantic truck.
Jeff sat on his haunches beside them. “Have you ever ridden in a car inside a truck?”
Both girls backed off a step; the younger one grabbed Dorothy’s pant leg. Before Ilka could say anything, Jeff smiled and said that not very many people had, but they were going to get to.
“Together with Ilka and Dorothy,” he added. He pointed at Dorothy’s car and told them to hop into the backseat, and then they’d see how fun it would be.
The girls stared at him with eyes wide open, but Ilka nodded quickly and told them Jeff was right, it was going to be fun.
Dorothy unlocked the car.
“Come on,” Ilka said. She opened the back door, and though the girls still seemed wary, they climbed in. Dorothy got behind the wheel, and Jeff nodded at her.
Ilka wondered if the hearse could even make it up the ramp. She turned to Jeff. “Maybe we should leave it here?”
He shook his head. “We can’t leave anything behind. I’m driving mine in too. The hearse has rear-wheel drive, it’ll make it up.”
“Is it big enough for three cars?” Ilka said, and he explained that he would park his car beside Dorothy’s to leave more room for the hearse.
Ilka gave him the keys, studying him out of the corner of her eye. He’d set all of this in motion to help them. He must have contacted Tom before stopping them out on the highway, and planned how to get them out of here.
Dorothy drove her car inside and parked inches from the wall of the trailer. Next Jeff drove his BMW in, and then he backed the hearse up the ramp as well.
“Thank you,” she said softly when he hopped down and handed her the keys. “For this.” She nodded at the horse trailer.
He nodded back. She thought she saw a glimpse of satisfaction in his eye, but there was no smugness, no I told you so.
“Where do you want to sit?” he said. “With the girls or me?”
Ilka shrugged.
“Tom has to be alone up front when we get to the ranch.”
She nodded. It was as if a part of her still couldn’t believe there was a way out. She felt like they were being airlifted out of danger.
“I’ll sit in the hearse,” she said. She needed to be alone, needed time to think things out.
At first she was afraid he’d try to talk her out of it, but he simply told her to get in before Tom raised the ramp.
Inside the hearse, she sank down into the driver’s seat. Were you supposed to fasten your seat belt when being driven this way inside a truck? She did. Then she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
The monster vehicle started moving. Tree limbs scraped along both sides, and the bumpy road tossed her from side to side, but Ilka soon didn’t even notice. Her thoughts were with Lydia. Ilka didn’t know if she’d ever see her again.
When she woke up, everything was dark and quiet. Ilka stared up at the ceiling for the longest time, not knowing where she was. Exhaustion kept tugging her back toward sleep, and she drifted in and out of consciousness until she began remembering everything that had taken place, at Dorothy’s, on the highway, in the woods. Fear tugged at her chest again, crawled in under her skin, and Ilka’s breathing became short and shallow.
Mary Ann and Leslie had been at the ranch to help when they drove in. Dorothy and the girls were given one of the guest rooms upstairs. Ilka tried to call her father several times, and when she finally got hold of him, he told her that Ethan had just come out of surgery. He was headed to the recovery room to meet the boy there.
“I’ll call you back,” he promised, but Ilka hadn’t heard from him since then. Which was why she hadn’t told him about what had happened to Lydia. Or to Calvin Jennings. He might have heard from someone else anyway, but Ilka wanted to tell him how Lydia had fought for Jane-Maya and her nieces. It wasn’t something to talk about over the phone, though, she decided, as she waited for his call. She’d also tried to get hold of Stan Thomas, but his cell phone directed her to the station, where she was told he was out on an investigation. They couldn’t divulge any further information.
Finally, Ilka had gone into the den and stretched out on the sofa, where she gazed out the windows into the dark until falling asleep.
Now it all slowly came back to her, and the more she remembered, the less she felt like waking all the way up. She had no idea how she’d ended up in bed. Then Ilka realized she was still on the sofa, that someone had covered her with a thick comforter.
“Hello?”
The quiet voice startled Ilka. Her father was sitting in the easy chair beside the sofa, a newspaper in his lap.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped to cover up her shock.
“Waiting for you to wake up.”
“I thought you were with Ethan,” she said, still annoyed. But she softened when she noticed the worry in his eyes. “How’s he doing?”
Ilka gathered the comforter around her and sat up.
“He’s okay. They did a skin transplant on him, it went fine. He’s getting out of the hospital soon. I left when he came back from the recovery room, but you were asleep when I got here.”
“Have you heard about Lydia?” In all likelihood she already knew the answer to her question, judging from the sorrow written all over his ashen face. Her father looked even older.
He nodded. “Dorothy told me what happened and about Jeff and Tom helping you get out of there. We tried to wake you up, but you were sleeping like a log. She also told me about the third sister, how she betrayed Lydia and Jane-Maya.”
The third sister, Ilka thought. She gazed up at the ceiling. Yesterday, for the first time, she’d felt like the third sister. When they all had stepped in to help, and she’d felt accepted, with no reservations. As if she belonged, as if she and Leslie and Amber were truly sisters. Amber’s boyfriend had driven the horse trailer out into the woods to help them get away. And Leslie had been at the ranch, ready to help everyone.
“I tried to call you,” Ilka said quietly. She could feel tears coming again. She was completely exhausted, but she tried to fight off her stupor, a hazy feeling of not really being present, as if she was trying to take a few steps back from the horrible things that had happened.
Her father glanced at his watch. “You’ve been asleep fifteen hours. We were getting worried.”
Ilka simply nodded. She could have slept another fifteen hours if not for the dread gnawing in her gut. “When did you get back?”
“We got here about seven thirty yesterday evening, but you were already asleep.”
“We?”
Her father nodded toward the door. Ilka turned and found herself looking at a white comforter that hung down over a rollaway bed behind the sofa. She straightened up and stared, dumbfounded at the sight of Artie lying back against a stack of pillows, watching her.
“Jeff didn’t think Artie was safe at the hospital. He wanted Ethan out of there too, but the doctors said no, so he put a guard outside his room.”
Artie didn’t speak, he simply lay on the mountain of pillows, looking at her. It was as if all the violence had somehow locked him up.
“The ranch is like a fortress now,” her father said. “We’re
safer than Fort Knox.”
Ilka tore her eyes away from Artie and looked back at her father.
“Amber’s here too,” he said. “She and Tom moved into her house.”
Ilka nodded. She knew her half sister had been living at the ranch from the time she started working for her grandfather.
“Have you heard anything?” She couldn’t shake the feeling that something more had happened, that they were there to spare her when she woke up.
Her father nodded, while Artie shook his head.
“So far the police have arrested four people in town. They suspect these men are part of the God Squad, and that they were looking for you and Dorothy and the girls.”
Finally, Artie spoke up, though his voice was hoarse. “We haven’t heard anything about Lydia,” he said, apparently knowing that was the question Ilka had wanted to ask.
“Dorothy contacted Alice Payne,” her father said. “And Stan Thomas too. Nothing’s come out in the media yet; the police don’t want any supporters of God’s Will to complicate the situation if they manage to locate Isiah Burnes’s motorcade.”
“How are you feeling?” Ilka wrapped the comforter around her, then stood up and walked over to Artie’s bed.
He reached out for her hand and spoke in a small voice. “I’m afraid of what’ll happen to Lydia. What if the police stop the cars and then they don’t believe her?”
“She’s going to be okay,” Ilka whispered. She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “And we’re here to back her story up. She’s not alone anymore.”
The door to the den opened, and Leslie came in carrying her iPad. “Have you heard?”
Everyone in the house was gathered around Leslie’s iPad. The first thing Ilka saw on the small screen was a photo of Calvin Jennings. An older photo, but she recognized his narrow white tie and direct gaze.
