The Heaven Trilogy (22 page)

In fact, it was in this last stage of the entire plan that he would find himself again. The thought of it pushed him into the certainty that coursed through his bones like charged electrons. After weeks of empty dread, it came like a euphoric drug.

Kent looked over Cliff 's shoulder at the wall—at the picture of the white yacht hanging in the shadows. An image of that same boat he'd plastered on the refrigerator at home sailed through his mind. His promise to Gloria.
I swear, Gloria, we will own that yacht one day.

A lump rose to his throat. Not that she had cared much. She'd been too enamored with her mother's religion to appreciate the finer things. Kent had always hung on to the hope that it would change. That she would drop her silly obsessions and run after his dreams. But now she was gone.

For the first few days the thoughts whispered relentlessly, and he began to construct possible solutions to the challenges. Not too unlike debugging. A natural exercise for his mind. While Cliff busied himself with the code before them, Kent busied himself with another code altogether. This morning alone, he had apologized three times for his drifting mind. Cliff guessed it had to do with the loss of his wife and son. Kent nodded, feeling like a pimp for hiding behind the sentiment.

It was one o'clock before he shut down the Cliff machine. “Okay, Ace. I've got some errands to run over lunch. You should have enough to keep you busy for a couple of days anyway.” He stood and stretched.

“I suppose you're right. Thanks for the time. I'll just keep digging. You never know what I'll come up with.”

A thought crossed Kent's mind. “Actually, why don't you focus on debugging for a few days and leave the digging. I mean, be my guest, dig all you want, but wandering aimlessly through my code is not necessarily the best use for a mind like yours, pal.” He shrugged. “Just my opinion, of course. But if you want to find something, just ask me. I'll save you a mountain of time.”

Cliff smiled brightly. “Sure, if you're here. I think that was the concern. What happens if Kent Anthony disappears?”

“Well, a week ago that strategy made sense. But it's now obsolete. I'm here to stay. You tell that to whoever punches your buttons.” Kent grinned to make the point stick.

Cliff saluted mockingly. “You got it, sir.”

“Good then. Off you go, lad.”

Cliff left grinning ear to ear. Kent honestly felt nearly jovial. The drug of his plotting had worked its way right through his veins. It felt as though he had stepped out of some nightmare and found himself at the gates of a new undiscovered world. And he fully intended to discover every corner of it.

He locked his office, made some comment to Betty about how much work there was, and hustled out the back. Normally he would have preferred the front doors, but now was not normally. Now he would have crawled through a trapdoor in the floor if there had been one.

He hurried down the alley to his car and slid onto the leather upholstery before considering his destination. The library. He had some books to check out. No. That would leave a trail. The bookstore, then. He had some books to purchase. With cash. The nearest Barnes and Noble was three miles down Sixth Avenue. He made a U-turn and entered the flow of traffic.

Kent was not one to stop and lend a hand to stranded vehicles. Road kill, he called them. If the morons didn't have the foresight to either have their cars properly serviced or sign up for AAA they surely didn't deserve his extended hand. The dead vehicles were usually old cars stuffed with people from Stupid Street anyway. As far as he was concerned, a little breakdown on the road in heavy traffic was a good indoctrination to responsibility, a rare commodity these days.

Which was why it struck him as strange that the white Acura sidelined ahead on the left-hand side of the divided thoroughfare even caught his attention. And even stranger was the simple fact that once it was in his eyesight, he could hardly remove his eyes from the vehicle. And no wonder. It sat like a beacon of light ahead, glowing white, as if a lightning bolt had lit it up. It suddenly occurred to him that the sky was indeed rather foreboding—in fact downright dark. But the Acura was actually glowing up there, and all the other cars just sped by as if it did not exist. Kent gripped the steering wheel, wooden.

A woman with blonde hair, dressed in jeans and a green shirt, was climbing out. She turned to face his approach, and Kent's heart bolted. He didn't know
why
his heart jumped like that, but it did. Something in her face, possibly. But that was just it; he could hardly
see
her face from this distance.

Then Kent was past the car, torn by indecision. If ever there was a soul who deserved assistance, it was this one. On the other hand, he didn't do roadkill. Thirty yards flew by before he jerked the wheel impulsively and slid to a stop, five inches from the guardrail, cars moaning by on the right.

The instant he stopped, he decided it had been a mistake. He thought about pulling back into traffic. Instead, he slid out of the seat and jogged the forty yards back to the Acura. If the glow that had surrounded the car had ever actually been there, it had taken leave. Someone had pulled the plug. The woman had lifted the hood so that it gaped, black-mouthed, at him like a steel alligator. She stood watching his approach, bouncing in his vision.

Kent was ten feet from the woman when recognition slammed into his mind like a sledge. He pulled up, stunned.

It was the same for her, he thought. Her jaw dropped to her chest, and her eyes grew wide. They stood fixed to the pavement like two deer caught in each other's headlights.

“Kent?”

“Lacy?”

They responded simultaneously. “Yes.”

Her eyes were like saucers. “Kent Anthony! I can't believe it's actually you. My . . . my car died . . .”

He grinned, feeling oddly out of sorts. She was prettier than he remembered. Thinner perhaps. Her face was still rather ordinary, but those eyes. They shone like two beaming emeralds. No wonder he'd taken to her in college. And age was wearing well on her.

“Lacy Cartwright. How on Earth did you end up stranded on the side of the road?”
Her car broke down, you idiot. She told you that.

She broke into a wide grin. “This is weird. I don't know what happened. It just stopped . . .” She chuckled. “So how in the world are you?”

“Good. Yeah, good,” he said, thinking it both a downright lie and the honest truth.

He stood silent for a full ten seconds, just staring at her, at a loss for what to say next. But then she was doing the same, he thought.
Come on, man. Get a grip.

Kent finally motioned to the car. “So, what happened?”

She gazed at the tangle of tubes under the hood. “It just died. I was lucky to pull over without hitting the rail.”

The atmosphere was charged with expectancy. High above, a line of lightning crackled through black clouds. “Well, I'm not a mechanic, but why don't you get in and turn her over and I'll poke around a little.”

“Good.” She held his eyes for a moment as if trying to read any message there. He felt a strange tightness squeeze his chest.

Lacy jumped behind the wheel, eyeing him through the windshield. He dipped his head under the raised hood. Good grief ! He was staring at a ghost from the past.

The engine turned over, and he jerked back, immediately hoping she had not seen his reaction. No sense coming off like a wuss.

The engine caught and rumbled to life.

Kent stood back, studied the running motor for a moment and, seeing nothing extraordinary, slammed the hood shut.

Lacy was out. “What did you do?”

He shrugged. “Nothing.”

“You're kidding, right? This thing was dead, I swear.”

“And I swear that I did nothing but breathe on it. Maybe I should've been an auto mechanic. I could fix cars by breathing on them.” He grinned.

“Well, you always did have a lot of hot air.” Lacy shot him a coy look and smiled slyly.

They chuckled, and Kent kicked at the pavement, suddenly shy again. He looked up. “Well, I guess you're fixed up. I heard you'd moved to Boulder.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe we should get together.”

The smile vanished from her face, and he wondered if she'd heard. “You heard about Gloria, right?” he asked.

“Gloria?”

“Yes. My wife died awhile back.”

Her face registered shock. “I'm so sorry! I had no idea.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Anyway, I should probably get going. I have to get back to work.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I have to get back to Boulder. My washer broke down.” She offered no further explanation.

He nodded again, feeling suddenly stranded. “Yeah.” She was not moving.

“I'm really sorry about your wife, Kent. Maybe we should get some coffee and talk about it.”

“I heard you lost your husband a couple years ago.”

She nodded. They were nodding a lot. It was a good way to fill in the blanks after, what? Thirteen years?

“You have a card?” he asked. That sounded dumb. Sounded like he was hitting on her, and he had no intention of hitting on anyone. No desire at all.

“Sure.” She reached through the window, withdrew her purse, and handed him a card. Rocky Mountain Bank and Trust. Customer Service.

“I didn't know you were in banking.” He glanced up at her. “You know I'm in banking, right?”

“Someone said that. Information Systems, right?”

“Yeah. Good, I'll call you. We'll catch up.”

“I'll look forward to it,” she said, and he thought she meant it.

“Good.” Lots of
goods
and
yeahs
and nodding. “Hope your car runs well,” he said and dipped his head to her.

Then he was jogging back to his car. The horizon flashed crooked fingers of lightning, and thunder boomed. The rain was eager, he thought. When he reached his door, Lacy's white Acura sped by and honked. He waved and slipped behind the wheel. Go figure.

LACY DROVE west through a hard pour with her gut twisted in knots. The chance meeting with Kent had thrown her completely off center. She sped down the blacktop, fixated on the
whap, whap
of the windshield wipers, slowly exiting the big city. But her heart was back there, on the roadside, gazing into those lost blue eyes.

Kent looked as though he'd stepped out of some lost corner of her mind, a carbon copy of the zany college student who'd managed to capture her heart. Her first love. It had been his sincerity, she'd mused a thousand times. A man as sincere and honest as he was ambitious. The unique blend of those traits had whipped up a potion that had her swooning for the first time in her life. Well, his blue eyes and blond hair had not exactly impeded her swooning, she supposed.

He had lost his wife. Didn't he have a son as well? Poor child.

And under that haunting facade hid a man aching for comfort yet repelled by it at once. She should know. She'd been there. “God, help him,” she breathed, and she meant it. She meant not only that Kent would receive help, but that
God
would help him. Because Lacy believed in God. She had fallen to his feet just over a year ago while climbing out of her own despondency, learning that she did not have the world by its tail.

“Father, comfort him,” she whispered. The wipers squeaked.

Lacy fought a sudden urge to pull off, whip the car around, and chase Kent down. Of course, that was ridiculous. Even if such a thing were possible, she had no business chasing after an old flame who'd just lost his wife. And since when had she become the chasing type, anyway?
Listen to me, even thinking in terms of chasing! Heavens! I don't mean chasing like some dog in heat, but chasing as in trying to . . . help the man.

She glanced at the new water pump in the passenger seat and remembered the broken washing machine. Now, if that machine had not broken down precisely when it had, she would have missed him entirely. If the strange service tech had not been as accommodating on the phone, if he'd had a pump in stock, if she had not driven to Denver, if her car had not lost its spark for a moment when it did—any single fluctuation in this endless string of events, and she would not have met Kent.

And on top of it all, Kent had pulled over without knowing whom he would be helping. That much was evident by his shock when he recognized her.

On the other hand, every event that ever occurred did so only after a string of other events lined up perfectly.

Lacy glanced at a brown smudge on her right sleeve, a spot of smeared grease. Had he seen it? She returned to her line of thinking. Almost anything was statistically possible. But the pull in Lacy's heart suggested that today's string of events was not just a random occurrence. It had been somehow orchestrated. Had to be.

On the other hand, stranger things had happened.

Lacy ground her teeth and dismissed the mental volleys. But they did not go so easily; within the minute they were back, nipping at her mind.

In the end she decided that none of it mattered. Kent had her card. He would either call, or he would not call. And that had nothing to do with chance. It had everything to do with his choice. Her heart jumped at the thought.

An obscure memory from her early adolescent years flashed through her mind. She was all dressed up for the prom, clad in a pink dress with white frills and her hair pulled back in a cluster of curls. It had taken her and her mother a good three hours to make everything just so. It was her first date, and Daddy had told her how proud he was of her, looking so beautiful. She sat on the living room couch, holding a white carnation for her date. Peter. But Peter was late. Ten minutes, then half an hour, then an hour. And she just sat there swinging her legs, feeling all gooey inside and trying to be brave while her father stormed on the phone. But Peter never came, and his parents knew nothing about their son's whereabouts. Her father took her out for dessert, but she could not manage eye contact with anyone that night.