Peggy Dulle - Liza Wilcox 04 - Saddle Up (21 page)

CHAPTER 21

“Freeze!” Tom yelled.

I was shoved from behind and Dad and I tumbled onto the ground.

Tom didn’t even move to catch us. He just kept his gun trained on the doctor.

“Let us the hell out of here!” Tom shouted at the doctor.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” the doctor yelled back.

“What the hell is going on?” I said from the ground.

“You’ve got to stay here for a while, Liza,” Doc voice shook. “You’ll be okay. Somebody will come in the morning and let you all out. Just have some patience.”

“That’s not happening,” Tom said. “We’re leaving now.”

“Doc?”

“Look. They’re threatening my daughter and I don’t have a choice. You’ll be fine.”

He started to close the door and Tom yelled. “I’ll shoot you if you close that door any more.”

Doc looked at me and then at Tom. It was like a Mexican stand-off. Nobody was moving or yielding anything.

I stood up.

“Get back down, Liza,” Tom said without taking his eyes off the doctor.

“Doc?” I repeated his name.

“If I don’t do this Liza, they’ll hurt my daughter. I have to go. You know how that is. Wouldn’t you do anything for the baby you’re carrying?”

“You’re pregnant!” my dad exclaimed from the floor.

“That’s great,” Tom said without breaking his concentration on the doctor or the door. “Maybe I can get her to marry me sooner this way.”

The doctor laughed. “That’s never going to happen, son. It’s not your kid.”

In that blink of a second, Tom hesitated and the door slammed shut.

Anger welled up inside me, along with the tears that streamed down my face. How could Tom actually think I could be pregnant by someone else? Didn’t he know me better than that? What kind of relationship did we have if it wasn’t based on honesty and trust? Red flashed before my eyes as the hurt and anger took over my entire thought process. All I wanted to do was strike out against him.

Tom turned and I saw the hurt in his eyes. I remembered all the things he had told me about his ex-wife. He and Pamela had been high school sweethearts, went to the same college, were married and had several years of happiness until they drifted apart. They had Michael as an attempt to fix a crumbling marriage. When she came home smelling of liquor, pot, and sex, he had thrown her out. I wasn’t Pamela, but that’s who he was seeing. The years of hurt pooled into a single tear I saw leave his eye and cross his cheek.

My own anger flowed out of me like an undammed river. I put my arms around his waist. He was stiff and his body shook.

“I’m not and I’d never,” I whispered into his ear.

His body relaxed and he wrapped his arms around me and we held each other for a few minutes.

We were interrupted by my dad’s voice, “Pregnant?”

I turned my face toward him and said, “Of course not. Get a grip, Dad.”

I kissed Tom on the cheek, obliterating the tear and said, “Tom, meet my dad.”

Tom turned his body and extended his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

Dad shook his hand and said, “It’s good to meet you too, son, and you’d better not get my daughter pregnant until after you marry her.”

Tom laughed.

Agent Souza groaned from the ground, reminding me that he was even in the room.

“What happened to the Fed?” Dad asked my question.

“After you spoke to him, he didn’t believe you, so he decided we should check out the lagoon by ourselves before he called in the troops.”

“Idiot,” Dad muttered.

“So all the other Feds are at the power plant?” I asked.

“Yes. We got to the Lagoon a little before sunset, so we could still see pretty well. We checked out the marina and didn’t find anything, so we decided to take a trip around the lagoon and make sure. We spotted this building but we couldn’t get in.”

I told him about the door.

Tom nodded and continued, “So we went around the back to see if we could see what was in the building. That’s when Agent Souza was shot in the chest. We took cover in the only place we could find.”

“The back door was open?” Dad asked.

“Yep, it was a great trap and we walked right into it. I dragged him inside and the door slammed behind me with a weird sound.”

“Another hermetically sealed door,” I suggested.

My dad and Tom nodded.

“You should have shot the doctor,” Dad suggested.

“Yeah, well, it’s too late now,” Tom said. “Let’s find a way out of this place.”

“Why don’t you just call for help?”

“No service,” Tom and Dad said together.

“Why no service?” I asked.

“It’s this building. The metal interrupts the signal from the satellites,” Tom said.

“What if we get the phone near the windows in the first room?” Dad suggested.

“Might work.” Tom nodded.

“Those windows are over twenty feet high and I didn’t see a ladder anywhere,” Dad said.

Dad and Tom started checking out the building and when Agent Souza moaned again, I went to him. He had a hole in his chest that was oozing blood at an alarming rate. I took off my white sweater and pushed it into the wound to try to slow the flow but within minutes it was soaked with blood. I remember from my first aid training that you don’t remove the bloodied gauze, so I used the agent’s belt and tied it around his chest to hold the sweater in place. Agent Souza’s breathing was labored and uneven.

I went and found Tom and Dad trying to build a ladder out of wooden boxes they had found.

“Agent Souza is dying, Tom.”

“I know, Liza.” Tom pulled apart the wooden box.

“But we’ve got to do something.”

“Not much we can do, honey,” my dad answered. “If we can get us out of here, he might have a chance. The longer we’re stuck here, the worse his chances are.”

“What is your group planning to do here? Maybe they’ll come and find us,” I suggested.

Tom stopped and turned toward my Dad.

Dad looked at Tom and then at me. He stiffened his shoulders and said, “Torch the marina building. It’s made of old wood and should go up like a tinder box.”

“When?”

“Later tonight,” my dad answered keeping his eyes on mine.

“And the other group?”

“I’m not sure. It will be bigger and take more casualties. This place is deserted, so I don’t understand why they chose it.”

“Tomorrow morning there is supposed to be a Cowboy Church service,” I told them, remembering what Justin had told me about the rodeo events for the weekend.

“Then that will be it,” Dad said.

“They’re going to blow up a church service?” I asked.

“I don’t have any control over them, Liza. I told the Fed it would go down here and he should have listened.”

“You think they’ve already planted the explosive devices?” Tom asked.

“Yes,” my dad nodded. “It’s too dark out here to do it at night, so I’m sure they were here before sunset. What time does the service start?”

“I don’t know but the rodeo starts again at 1:30,” I told them.

Tom turned back to the wooden boxes and he and my dad used the nails that held the boxes together to build a wooden ladder with the slats from the boxes. I went over and sat down on the ground and watched them.

“You think this is going to work?” I heard my dad say to Tom.

“Not a chance,” Tom replied. “It’s going to collapse as soon as we get on it.”

“What if I try to climb it?” I suggested.

“No,” both Dad and Tom said in unison.

“I’m lighter than the both of you and I know how to climb a ladder.”

Tom shook the ladder and a piece fell off of the middle. “This thing is held together with old screws and termite eaten boards. You’re not getting on it.”

“He’s right, Liza. You’ll get hurt.”

“Well, both of you are too heavy, so it’s me or nobody.”

Tom and Dad looked at each other, then they both shrugged and Tom said, “Okay, give it a try.”

When I stepped on the first rung, it split in two and my foot hit the ground. Tom caught my arm as I started to tumble.

“This is ridiculous. You’re going to get hurt,” Tom said as he helped me stand again.

“I just have one thing to say,” I told them both.

“What?” they said together.

“If I fall, one of you had better catch me!” I took a deep breath and slowly inched my way, rung by rung, up the ladder. The third step creaked but held.

When the fifth split, Tom yelled, “Liza!”

But I grabbed onto the sides and was able to get my footing back onto the ladder.

“That’s my girl,” Dad said.

I made it up three more steps before another rung split. This time Sheryl Ann’s beautiful skirt caught on an exposed nail and when I grabbed for the side of the ladder, it was out of my reach. I felt myself tumbling backwards. I struggled to reach for something to slow my fall, but nothing was close enough to help. When the skirt tore, I couldn’t reach anything so I went tumbling backwards.

I heard the ladder go crashing to the right as I slammed against Tom, who landed on my dad. It was a nice cushion for me, but not for them.

“Get the hell off me!” Dad shouted.

Tom stood up, taking me with him.

“Let’s try it again,” I told them.

“Not going to happen,” Tom said. “We broke the ladder.”

The ladder lay in several pieces on the ground, the wood shattered beyond repair.

“Let’s see if we can jimmy that door,” Dad suggested.

“I’ve already tried it several times,” Tom said.

“We’ve exhausted the only material we could find to build a ladder, so let’s try to open that door some more.” my dad suggested.

Tom nodded and he and Dad went to the front door and used some of the wood from the ladder rungs to wedge between the door and the jamb. Nothing budged or moved.

I went back to sit on the floor and watch.

“It’s an electric door, right?” Dad asked.

“That’s what you guys said,” Tom answered.

“If we break the electrical current to the door, will it open?”

“Maybe or it will just stay shut.”

“It’s already shut, let’s see if we can shut down the power to the door.”

Tom and Dad searched around for an electrical box or any wiring leading to the door. I’m not really good at sitting around and doing absolutely nothing, so I started doodling in the dirt on the ground. Soon my fingers were wet. Where had the water come from? I looked around and noticed for the first time that the floor was damp.

While Tom and Dad looked for a way to break the electrical current to the door, I looked for reason that the floor was getting wet. I couldn’t find anything in the main room, so I went back to the room near the platform. Agent Souza was lying in at least an inch or two of water. His breaths were coming so infrequently, that I doubted he would survive much longer. I put my hands under his shoulder and pulled him onto the raised platform in front of the back door which was twelve inches above the floor.

I sat down next to him and watched the water slowly rise – four inches – five inches. We were trapped inside an airtight building and the water was rising! My heart rate accelerated and I couldn’t catch my breath. I would drown in this building.

All my fear from being stranded in the water for all those hours caught up with me and I couldn’t think. Dad and Tom didn’t know about the water because they stood on a landing in front of the door which had to be at least ten or twelve inches high.

When I tried to call for them, my voice came out in a squeak. What was I going to do? I had to get out of this building! My mind raced and I frantically searched for a way out. I started darting around the room, checking every inch. As the panic grew, my hands and body started to shake. I tried to scream, but nothing came out, except panted breaths. I saw stars before my eyes as the panic drove me closer and closer to unconsciousness.

I felt hands on my cheeks.

My body shook with the sheer panic that worked its way like a tidal wave over my body.

“Liza!” Tom’s voice shouted.

I could hear him, but I couldn’t respond.

“Open your eyes, Liza! Look at me!” Tom’s voice broke through my panic but it sounded so far away.

“What the hell’s happening to her?” I heard my dad say.

“She’s afraid of the water. It’s a full scale panic attack.”

“She doesn’t have panic attacks,” my dad said.

“She’s had them before,” Tom said.

I remembered the other attacks. They came on when I was trapped in an abandoned mine, thrown into jail and accused of shooting children, Shelby was poisoned, I was kidnapped by that crazy mayor, and the first time I thought my dad was still alive, but I always have been able to calm myself down and bring myself back. This was way worse than that.