Twilight (36 page)

His voice rasped, “I thought they’d killed you already.” He winced and lay back against a narrow trunk.

He’d thought she was dead?
“But you came in after me.”

“I have a hero complex.” He pressed a hand to his side.

Hero complex
. Her own words. She’d meant it as an insult, but what if he didn’t? What if he hadn’t been driven to save her at all costs? “You are a hero, Cal.” She covered the hand that held his side with her own. “Is it bad?”

“Bad enough.” He faced her squarely. “Laurie …”

“Don’t talk. It’s hurting you.” Her own knee was throbbing, shooting pain down her shin. His injuries were much worse, gashes and swelling on the side of his head, burns and abrasions, and something worse with his side. She fought panic. What if he was …

“Listen.”

“No.” She put a hand to his lips. “Later.” She moved close to warm him.

He drew a shallow breath. “I don’t know what’ll happen later. There’s something I want to tell you.” He slowly raised one knee and shifted his hip with a groan, then settled. “Eight months ago there was a fire. An old B-and-B on Wilton Street.”

“Cal.” Why was he forcing it? Was he in shock, delirious?

“They were doing a remodel. Had everything blocked up. Scaffolding … debris. They were careless.”

His chest tightened under her hand as he spoke, more she guessed from tension than pain. But he kept on. “They were replacing the electrical, but something went haywire, literally. Once it started, the place took off like”—his voice grated—“nothing I’d seen before. We thought we had everyone out …”

Laurie’s diaphragm seized as she guessed what was coming. Did she want to hear, to know what had changed Cal, damaged him? Why was he telling her now, when he’d just done what no one else could have, would have, done?

He closed his eyes. “A little girl … Ashley Trainor, two years old.”

Laurie remembered the way he’d lunged for Maddie.

Cal held his hand to his side, and his breath caught. “Each parent thought the other had her. Too much confusion. Exits blocked. The building was a loss. We were pulling out to contain. Then we learned Ashley was in there.”

The pain was deep in his voice. Pain deeper than any physical injury. Pain that had changed him, broken him. Laurie trembled. Cal had always loved deeper, cared more, risked more.

“Frank said no.” He rubbed his palm along his thigh in distracted agitation. “But I disobeyed. I thought—”

“Cal, don’t.” Laurie touched his cheek. She didn’t want his sacrifice laid bare, didn’t want to know, to feel his failure.

He turned, teeth clenched, jaw tense. “She was alive.” His eyes burned. “I saw her there, scared, unable to help herself.”

Oh, God, that little girl!
Laurie felt his torture, saw it in his face, thought of her own children and the horror of losing them. Little Maddie, trapped and terrified.

“I was so close.” Tears welled in his eyes, red rimmed and haggard. “She was too little, Laurie. Too helpless.”

Laurie’s voice was a ghost. “She died.”

“The place flashed. Ignition blew me out.” He cocked his chin and looked up at the sky, one tear making a track down his burned cheek.

They sat in silence a long moment. Laurie could think of nothing to change what he saw in his mind, what she now knew had caused his erratic behavior. Like what soldiers experienced long after a war.

“That’s what Rita treated you for?”

He swallowed. “I went a little crazy. Hit the sauce and behaved badly. They slapped me with a medical suspension to clean up my act. Court ordered me into treatment.”

“And?”

“And I came back the fireclown.” He grimaced. “A position tailor-made for pyrophobic firemen.”

Laurie’s eyes stung with tears. “It must have been awful.”

“It was hell. Still is sometimes.” He formed a crooked smile. “You saw that for yourself.”

“But you came in for me. You faced the fire, you …”

“I’m no hero, Laurie. Just a fool.” He slid a hand around the back of her neck, pulled her forward, and kissed her lips. It brought more pain than pleasure, and not because her lips were cracked and scorched. It was because she didn’t know what to feel. He drew back, and she was glad.

He pressed himself up. “Think you can walk?”

Her knee still throbbed and bled, but she nodded. “Can you?”

“Don’t have much choice. Unless we get to the highway, no one’s going to find us.” He sat up, wincing. “Ray would have been here by now.”

“Cal …” She laid a hand on his shoulder. He shouldn’t move. He might have serious injuries from the falling debris.

“It’s okay.” He pulled himself to his feet.

Laurie was almost too tired to do the same, but she made herself follow. He held out an arm, and she hooked hers in. Slowly they started for the road. They hadn’t gone far when the snow began— small, listless flakes meandering down, stinging her cheeks like tiny pinpricks. She raised her fingertips to touch the skin.

Her face was burned like sunburn from the scorching heat she’d escaped. What would have happened if Cal hadn’t come? He’d saved her life. Why was she surprised? He’d been trying to save her from the first time they’d met.

It hurt to think what he’d faced in order to do it now. To enter a burning building after … Why had he told her? Did it matter that he’d suffered a crisis? Even that he’d weathered it badly? He was Cal. It scared her more than the flames.

A wind chilled his face when Cal caught sight of the highway. He forced his legs to move, in spite of the raw, burned skin on the back of his calves. Every part of him hurt. Laurie was silent, and, after baring his soul, he was glad to stay quiet too. Why had he told her?

Maybe, in the midst of victory, to show her he was fallible. She’d called him a hero. But he hadn’t done this alone, hadn’t saved her. Someone higher, someone bigger, some real savior had intervened.

God? The Big Man? The Lord Jesus? Those moments of aloneness haunted him. It hadn’t been Laurie he needed. It was a more primal need, a spiritual need. A God need. Something no person could fill. But he couldn’t talk about that, didn’t understand it. So he’d told her his story.

Cal swallowed the ache in his throat, the tears just behind his eyes. Until that moment with Laurie, he hadn’t cried, hadn’t shed a tear for Ashley Trainor or her family. He’d raged. He’d drunk himself into a stupor. He’d numbed his mind with pain-killers. But he hadn’t cried. Nor had he described, even to Rita, what he’d just told Laurie.

He’d joked, he’d argued, he’d rebelled. But now it seemed his rebellion was crumbling away. He couldn’t summon the self-deprecation, the anger, the guilt. He looked around him. Where was the smoke, the orange, the shakes? If anything should have brought it on, that burning barn … He wiped the sooty streak from his left eye.

Now was not the time to give in to the sobs building inside his chest. Later. He’d visit it later. With God’s help? He dropped his chin, recalling Reggie’s words.
“It’s not what happened to the circumstances; it’s what happened here.”
In his heart. Cal shuddered. Maybe Reggie was right. Maybe he couldn’t do it himself, his way.

He and Laurie reached the edge of the pavement and stopped together. Cal scanned the empty expanse of blacktop, spackled now with snow. Maybe this was his road to Damascus.
“You remind me of someone, the Apostle Paul. Took a mighty wallop to get his attention.”
And Reggie’s story had stuck more deeply than he knew. Cal’s side was shooting pain, the burns screaming a chorus while his head kept up a pulsing ache. He looked up at the sky, aswirl with white feathers.

He had told God to have His way. In the burning barn he’d said,
“change me, take me, do whatever you choose.”
He’d surrendered, and somehow he couldn’t take up the fight again, couldn’t resist. God was bigger than his rage, bigger than his shame and horror. Cal felt the truth of it. And the dark loneliness shrank away.

He glanced at Laurie. She was pale and shaking. His shirt had soaked up her blood like a sponge. She must be in pain. He released a slow breath. “We’ll rest.”

She nodded, leaning into him more than she realized, he guessed.

He let her lean, though her weight made him compensate in a way that didn’t help the ribs. “Are you cold?”

“I don’t know.”

That wasn’t good. She’d lost blood on top of trauma. She could be in shock. “Maybe I ought to look at your knee.” Though with no first-aid equipment what could he do beyond binding it with the shirt as he already had?

“It doesn’t matter.” Her head sagged against his shoulder.

He smelled nothing but smoke and gasoline in her hair. “When’s the last time you slept?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Ate?”

She shook her head.

He needed to keep her talking. And walking. As soon as they caught their breath a little … Cal shifted to relieve the pain in his side and scanned the highway both directions. It was one of those country roads that leapt and bobbed through the farmland like a discarded ribbon in the wind.

He’d accept a ride from any good-ol’-boy who came by, if any came. The road was still and quiet, but he didn’t worry about that. Something would happen. It had to. He didn’t suppose God would work halfway. Not now, not …

“Cal?” Laurie’s voice broke.

“Yeah?” He dipped his head to her.

“Brian’s dead.” So that was what occupied her thoughts, numbed her mind.

“I know.”

She didn’t ask how, just gave a low moan in her throat, as though she hadn’t been certain until that moment. “They killed him. I thought … I thought I’d be the one to die. Or the children. Or you. Or all of us.” She started to shake again, hysteria building in her voice. “Where are Luke and Maddie?”

“With Mildred at my grandpa’s cabin.” In the fire, he had told her they were safe, but maybe she didn’t remember. She was running on overload, the same as he. “They’re safe, Laurie. I promise you.”

That calmed her at least. She must be on an internal roller coaster worse than his own. Maybe talking would help, and he sure had questions. “How did you get mixed up with cocaine?”

Her eyes came up to him, large and haunted. “Brian flew it in with his private jet. I don’t know how, I don’t know why.” She waved a hand as the words built and spilled from her. “I found it by accident. I couldn’t believe he’d be that stupid. That’s why I left.”

Not because she didn’t love him, didn’t want the marriage, the life she had as Mrs. Brian Prelane. Cal knew himself for a fool. A familiar thought.

She drew a jagged breath. “But before I did, I washed it all down the pool drain.”

Cal let out a low whistle.

“I know. It was stupid. I just didn’t think. I reacted. How could I know …”

Cal pressed her head to his chest. “You didn’t go to the police?”

“And turn my own husband in?”

Her own husband
. It hurt to hear it, but he could face it now. He had to. He didn’t say her husband might be alive if she had turned him in. Saying it wouldn’t change things now. Brian Prelane had made a stupid choice of his own. Cal swallowed the hardness in his throat. Why would any man who had Laurie risk it all for … for what? Money? Power? The thrill of the illegal?

“And he could take the children.”

Cal glanced down. What did she mean?

“He threatened it, several times when … we disagreed. He said he’d take them where I couldn’t find them. I know he could have.”

She was not painting a picture of marital bliss now. But that wasn’t his business.

“Cal?” She turned her face up. “What did you do? They said you had the cocaine. I heard them through the floor. They said you had it.”

“Well,” Cal grinned, “between Mildred’s suitcase and Cissy’s cornstarch.. .” Her look made him laugh, which he wouldn’t do again.

Laurie gripped his arm. “What if they’d—”

“Well, they didn’t. And I doubt they’ll have time now. I sent Ray for Sergeant Danson. There’s probably an APB on those two already.” Cal could only pray Ray had accomplished that much at least. After all he knew where to find Danson—in the shed, cuffed with his own cuffs and gagged with the bandanna from his back pocket. This wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. Even if Ray did convince him to look for two punks in a Mustang.

Laurie sagged, and he staggered with the pain that shot through his ribs, then jerked his head up, listening. A car. A hint of an engine through the cold air, but a car engine nonetheless. “Do you believe in God?”

Again her eyes searched his face. “I used to.”

“Now might be a good time to try again.” Cal steeled himself to wave the car down, then saw Danson’s cruiser top a rise and plunge down again, lights flashing in the growing dusk. Oh boy. At least he wouldn’t have to wave.

He relaxed his shoulders and drew a careful breath. “Laurie, I might not have much chance to talk here.”

She pulled back a little. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

The car was nearly to them. Cal released his hold of her. “Will you make sure Annie gets fed and—”

Laurie gripped his arm again. “What are you talking about?”

“Cissy knows where to find the kids if Mildred hasn’t brought them down.” Cal turned as Danson slid to a stop and climbed out of the cruiser. He’d brought backup in the form of Pete Rawlings, but didn’t need it as he pulled himself up to his full six feet four, broiling with animosity.

“Calvert Morrison. You’re under arrest.” He slipped the cuffs from his belt and yanked Cal’s arm.

“Aah!” Fire shot through Cal’s side and shoulder and head, and he couldn’t stop the cry.

Laurie shouted, “Wait. He’s hurt. What are you doing?” She might have been a flea circling Danson’s head.

“I won’t list all the charges I have against you, Morrison, but I’ll give you your rights. Just so there’s no possibility you’ll slip through.”

“He hasn’t done anything. He …”

Officer Rawlings took Laurie and led her away.

Danson yanked Cal’s other arm and cuffed it behind him. “You have the right to remain silent …”

“Do I have the right to talk?” Cal spoke through gritted teeth, scarcely breathing through the pain. One question only. Had Danson put an APB on the punks?