Because of a Girl (24 page)

Comprehension lit the boy's face. “Oh!” He pulled a phone from his pocket. An instant later, Jack heard the ringing.

He tasted bitter bile as his stomach kept trying to expel nonexistent contents. What a counterproductive response to pain, he thought in some remote part of his brain, as the agony dug in its talons.

Above him Asher started talking. “Meg! We have Sabra. She's safe.” Pause. “Jack, too. Um...” He looked down at Jack. “I mean, he's hurt, but I can't tell how. He's not, like, bleeding. He managed to get Sabra out, though. I'd call nine-one-one and ask for an ambulance, except I don't know where we are.”

Jack breathed slowly, carefully. Nothing happened. He reached a hand up. “Let me talk to her.”

Asher gave him an alarmed look but handed over the phone.

“Meg,” he managed in a scratchy whisper, “let him go. We'll get the son of a bitch later.”

“Are you all right?” Strained and desperate, her voice came to him like a lifeline.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes.” She did nothing but breathe. “Okay. Yes. I'm... I'm slowing down. There's supposed to be—oh, my God! There he is. A state patrolman.”

“Bouchard is armed. Did you warn them he might be?”

“I think so.”

He managed to rise to a kneeling position. “Pull over. Stop.
Do it, Meg.
”

“I said I would!”

“Okay.” Jack tried for soothing, while his inner beast raged. “Can you see what's happening?”

“The patrolman put on his lights and he did a U-turn so he's behind Bouchard. I can hear his siren, too. I'm not sure he's slowing down...no, now he is.”

Jack waited, sweating.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

M
EG
STARED
UNTIL
her eyes burned. She wished she was closer so she could see better what was happening...but she also wished, suddenly, that she wasn't here at all. What if Bouchard
shot
that state patrolman? What if he then got back in his car, turned around and came after her?

“We heard gunshots,” she said into the phone she still clutched.

“Bastard shot me.” There was only the sound of harsh breathing for a minute.

Fear constricted her throat. “Jack? Are you—”

“Wearing a vest. Stopped the bullets.” Then, “He had Sabra blockaded in a cabin. Poured gasoline on the walls and set it on fire.”

“He's a monster,” she whispered.

“Yeah.” A voice rough with disgust and a kind of disbelief had her fingers tightening until they skidded on the slick surface of the phone.

“The state patrolman is getting out,” she said. This had to be the most dangerous moment. He was exposed for the distance it took him to reach the car.

But Bouchard would think he could still get away with this, she knew suddenly. Lacking any kind of conscience, he'd smile, hand over his license and registration, make a joke. If Sabra and Jack were both dead, and the fire eliminated fingerprints...

Her mind took a frantic jump.

Hadn't it occurred to him that DNA from Sabra's baby could be linked to him? No, he would have dismissed that because he might think, with Jack dead, nobody would connect Sabra's disappearance to him at all. The medical examiner would determine the baby hadn't been Asher's...but investigators wouldn't legally be able to take DNA from Mr. Bouchard without evidence that he could be the father.

Except he had to be wondering who was in that Jeep Cherokee. Why had it been following him? Why was it still parked on the side of the road? What had the driver seen?

She so hoped he was sweating.

The officer suddenly planted himself in an aggressive posture, gun pointed. No longer breathing, Meg waited.

“What's happening?”

She could tell Jack was trying to yell.

The car door swung open. Bouchard stumbled out, hands in the air, and turned to face the car. The patrolman did something with one hand...and Meg closed her eyes and let her head fall forward.

“He's been handcuffed.” She straightened, really breathing again. “I can't believe this. I'm coming back.”

“The officer may expect you to wait.”

“I don't care.” She was already executing a U-turn. “I have to see you.”

“Okay, sweetheart.” This time, the roughness in his voice said something else altogether. “Drive carefully.”

* * *

A
SHER
HAD
HELPED
Jack to his feet so they could get farther away from the inferno. Sabra and Jack collapsed beneath a poplar tree while Asher trotted down the long driveway in hopes of finding an address on a rusting mailbox none of them remembered seeing.

He was back, shaking his head, when the Jeep Cherokee came barreling up the driveway toward them.

Once again, Jack went to his hands and knees in hope of being able to stand to meet Meg, but he got only as far as his knees. Meg threw herself out of the car, tears pouring down her cheeks. He thought her eyes flashed gladness at the sight of Sabra, but then they fixed on him.

“Jack. Oh, my God. Jack.”

He struggled to rise. She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around him. He expelled a sound of pain even as he enclosed her in an embrace.

“...so scared.” Her mumbles were hard to make out. “You're
hurt
. Why didn't you say?”

“Bruises. Maybe a cracked rib.” Words weren't coming easy to him. Not when all he wanted to say was,
I love you. Please will you take me home with you?

She kept crying, and he wasn't sure those weren't tears tracking his face and dampening her hair.

At last she wiped her cheeks on his shirt. “I called for help. They knew where the lavender farm is.”

“Can't miss the smoke if they get close.”

“No.” Blotchy, wet, dirty, the face she lifted to him was beautiful. “I can't believe you saved Sabra.”

“Group effort. Meg...”

But she was looking past him, and fresh tears fell when Emily flung herself at her mom. Then Sabra was there, too, and Jack let himself sink back onto his ass.

Pretty pathetic that he felt abandoned.

Just then Meg's head turned until she saw him, as if he was her anchor, and he relaxed. They'd have time.

He cocked his head, sure he heard a siren.

* * *

T
HE
ER
DOCTOR
at the hospital in Walla Walla really wanted to keep Jack overnight.

Even hours later, he looked awful. Meg could tell he hurt way more than he wanted to admit. After the splinters had been removed, his hands had been cleaned, disinfected and wrapped in gauze. Pain medication glazed his eyes.

“Will you listen to her?” Meg said. “You really should stay.” She hoped she sounded more certain than she felt. What she wanted desperately was to take them all home.

“No,” he repeated, sounding patient but unmovable.

Sabra's doctor had made noises about keeping her, too, but really, she was only mildly dehydrated. An ultrasound had shown her baby was active and appropriately sized for the gestational stage.

Both doctors had exclaimed when they saw Meg, too, necessitating repeated explanations. She
felt
like she should be a patient. Every muscle in her body had stiffened, which wasn't fair when she had hardly gotten out of the car.

They all smelled like smoke when they finally escaped. Meg anxiously eased Jack into the front passenger seat and let the kids squeeze into the back.

As she was getting in, he reached for the seat belt, then grumbled something she couldn't make out.

“What did you say?”

He clicked the belt into place. “It feels like the damn San Andreas Fault is moving in my body.”

“Oh, Jack! We can go back in—”

“Not a chance.”

“Can we just go home?” Emily said from the back, sounding tremulous.

Meg's shoulders sagged. “Yes. Except we're stopping to pick up Jack's car, remember.”

As she drove, what she and Jack wanted was to hear Sabra's story. They'd been in another cubicle when the Whitman County detective had interviewed her.

The headlights pierced the night ahead. The interior of the Cherokee was mostly dark once they left town.

Sabra talked in a low, halting voice. Nothing she said at first was any surprise.

Despite Bouchard's urgings, she had refused to have an abortion. He had claimed he and his wife lived together like strangers, that he loved Sabra, so when she pressed he had said he'd get a divorce. It would just take time. Only months passed, and she started realizing how evasive he was. She got mad.

The day she disappeared, she had stuck enough clothes in for a day or two and, after Meg dropped her off, she'd gone to Remy's car and hidden on the floor in the backseat.

“He left it unlocked for me. So we could go to his house and talk. I told him
everyone
would know the baby was his if he didn't move out.”

Meg winced.

What Bouchard told her was that he had a cabin set up for her. It would only be temporary, but he could come see her
a lot
. When they got there and she saw how primitive it was, and that it had no windows, he had had to force her inside. And then he nailed the boards over the door.

Meg tensed, imagining what Sabra had felt as he ignored her pleading.

Bouchard had left her a flashlight, and she found drinks and food and a plastic cooler and a really icky camp bed. She had screamed and cried and tried to get out.

“But my hands were bleeding and I broke the only chair, and I couldn't make any of the boards move
at all
.”

Bouchard had come every few days and pried a board off the window—the one she had been looking out when Jack found her—to pass her food and anything else she needed.

“He'd talk to me,” she said. “It was
beyond
bizarre. First he kept lying and saying we'd get married, that he just couldn't let me tell anyone we were together yet. But he didn't care when I cried or begged or anything. And then...” She went silent for a minute. Light from the beams of a passing truck glanced over her face and allowed Meg to see that the girls were holding hands.

“And then?” Jack prompted.

“He said I wouldn't be able to
prove
anything if it weren't for the baby.” Stress threaded her voice. “He yelled and yelled. Why did I have to get pregnant and wreck everything? And did I
really
think he'd marry a dumb teenage girl like me? When his wife was smart and made lots of money and they had kids together?” She bent her head, her hair falling forward. “I was so stupid.” Finally she said, her voice soft, “He told me I'd have to stay there until I had the baby. He'd take it away, and I could go home, because no matter what I said, people would believe
him
and not me.”

“Did you think that was true?” Jack asked.

“I didn't know. It was so scary there that... I just wanted him to let me go! Only I think he meant to kill my baby.”

Meg heard a quiet growl from Jack. It felt so natural to reach out and take his hand, which he gripped hard.

“The last time he came—before today, I mean—Remy said he wasn't sure he could let me go. That my friend and a cop were both sniffing around, so it might be better if I just disappeared. I asked him if he was going to kill me, and he wouldn't answer. He just nailed the board back over the window and drove away.”

Meg heard herself say, “It took him a while to admit to himself that he was able and willing to kill another human being. He was a sociopath but didn't know it.”

“But why would he want to be a
teacher
?” Emily burst out.

“The same reason pedophiles coach youth sports team,” Jack said grimly. “Because he would have access to his chosen prey.”

The words cast a pall. Nobody said anything for a long time.

“What will happen to him?” Sabra whispered at last.

“He'll be convicted of first-degree kidnapping and attempted murder.” Jack sounded hard, unforgiving. “Two counts. One of trying to kill a minor, one a law enforcement officer. He won't be getting out of prison for a long time, if ever.”

“Oh.”

Meg tried to see Sabra in the rearview mirror. A girl that age might easily still have mixed feelings for the monster she'd once believed she loved, but if so, she didn't say anything.

Even with windows closed, they smelled the smoke long before they reached the burned cabin.

* * *

D
ESPITE
THE
DARK
, Jack, Meg and Asher walked the short distance to where the soggy, charred remains of the cabin still steamed. A firefighter who remained told them they'd brought in a pumper tanker to blast the fire with water.

“The vines could have caught,” he said, nodding to the fields beyond, eerily visible in moonlight. “Big loss.”

Jack nodded. As the firefighter turned away, Jack kept an eye on his companions, both staring at what had been Sabra's prison. Meg's expression was stricken.

This seemed like the place to say what he needed to.

“Asher, I don't think I could have gotten Sabra out in time today without you. You showed guts and strength.”

The boy squared his shoulders. “She was a friend,” he said simply, gaining Jack's respect.

He looked at Meg. “You were right not to go when I told you to. All of you were right. I needed you.”
I still need you.

“I didn't do much,” she demurred. “As it turned out, it wouldn't have mattered whether I chased after him or not. All I had to do was call nine-one-one.”

“You had no way of knowing he didn't have Sabra.”

She pursed her lips. “Well...”

Jack bent forward and kissed her cheek. “Don't argue.”

He thought she was blushing, but couldn't be sure. They retraced their steps to the two vehicles. Emily and Sabra had stayed huddled together in the backseat of Asher's car.

“I'll see you all back in Frenchman Lake,” he started to say, when Meg blocked him.

“Not a chance.” She poked his chest, albeit gently. “You are
not
driving.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Aside from cracked ribs
and
cracked sternum, you mean? Let me think. Narcotic pain reliever, anyone? Did you
listen
to the nurse?”

Actually...no.
He'd tuned her out.

Meg held out her hand. “Keys.”

Neither girl argued about transferring to the Camry. That way Asher could go straight home, where his parents were waiting. Sabra gave him a quick hug, as did Emily.

Then, to everyone's surprise, Meg did the same. “You've been amazing today. I'm so glad you were with us.”

Jack would bet Asher's face was flaming red when he opened his car door.

* * *

O
NCE
IN
F
RENCHMAN
L
AKE
, Asher flashed his lights at them before turning off toward his own home.

When her house came in sight, Meg almost moaned in relief...until she saw the car sitting in the driveway. Beside her, Jack bit back a curse. A dramatic, tearful reunion was the last thing any of them needed, but she should have realized there was no way Andrea would forgo it. They were lucky she hadn't called the local TV station and had cameras waiting to film the reunion.