Forsaken (10 page)

I held up a thumb. “It’s green. Next time I thought we could go with a backyard garden theme.”

“Great idea. Each of us can dress like a different vegetable.” Everyone laughed except Elise, who was holding her knife up to the light and polishing it with her napkin.

After we all settled in, the events coordinator from the Mid America Center ordered a bottle of Chianti.

I felt the muscles in my neck relax. One bottle seemed light for a group of nine, but it was a start. It had been a stressful evening.

A white-coated waiter with a thick mustache and a towel draped over his arm selected the bottle from the rack behind Donny’s head and moved from chair to chair, offering to fill glasses. As I stretched out my hand to steady my wine glass for the waiter, Simon turned his glass upside down. Everyone from the ministry followed suit. I swallowed hard. “Waiting for something with a bit more bounce?” I smiled hopefully.

“I don’t drink. You go ahead if you’d like, though.”

The waiter appeared next to me and extended the bottle toward my glass. His hand seemed to move in slow motion as I balanced risk and reward in my mind. Just as he tipped the bottle, I caught his hand. “No thanks. Just water.”

Simon smiled. Good thing he didn’t know me better, or he would have recognized the longing look that I gave to the bottle as it passed. I turned my glass over.

Donny said a prayer for the food and then loudly entertained the other end of the table with a high-pitched recap of his role in improvising music during the potted plant debacle. He smiled my way a number of times, presumably to assure me that he was not being critical.

Simon picked up his butter knife and twirled it between his fingers. “I understand you stepped into a difficult situation tonight. I think my problem was that we hadn’t had any time to talk things over. I didn’t know
what to expect. If we could sit down and go through a sort of cost-benefit analysis on some of the security steps you would like for us to take—Elise is big on cost-benefit analysis—we can probably get to a point we both can live with. Are you willing to give that a try?”

I was pleasantly surprised. “Sure. I understand that you don’t have an unlimited budget for this. Nobody does, except the president.”

“Actually, I’m not as worried about the dollar cost as I am about the effect on my ability to reach people. I’m no PR genius, but I understand that much of my appeal is that ordinary people view me as one of them. Anything that would make me appear aloof or as if I were acting like a big shot . . . well, that’s what I couldn’t afford. Here’s an example. We tell the car services never to send those big, long limousines to pick us up. We ride in regular town cars, even if it means taking two or three cars instead of one. Riding around looking like rock stars is not our thing.”

“That makes perfect sense. I can work within your requirements. I’m all about compromise.”

The waiter walked into the room and placed salads on the table. I must have glanced lovingly at my upside-down wine glass because Simon said, “You really wanted a glass of wine, didn’t you?”

I considered how I had lied to him about the bathtub during our first telephone conversation. I resolved not to lie to him again—at least not unnecessarily. “Yes, I would have liked a glass. Or two.”

“You could have had it. I wouldn’t have minded.”
He looked at his watch, which must have been as old as he was, judging by the wear on its leather strap. “I’ve always told Kacey that most of the bad things in life happen after midnight and involve alcohol or drugs. It’s five minutes after twelve.”

I gave him a weak smile. “That late? Boy, time has really gotten away from me tonight.”

“I don’t have any problem with people who like to have a glass of wine now and then, so you don’t need to worry. Even the apostle Paul said we should take a bit of wine for the stomach’s sake.”

“He really said that?” I rapped my fingers on the edge of the table. “Now, there’s a portion of the Bible that’s grossly underreported.”

He laughed as he opened his menu. “We had them bring the same salad for everyone because we’re usually starving by the time we get to dinner after a show. You can order your entrée off the menu.”

After a few moments he closed the menu and set it on the table. “I don’t drink because there are always those in the press out to snap a picture that will prove that people like me are nothing but fakes. Though it’s still difficult for me to believe, millions of people look up to me. One photo with a goofy look on my face and a wine glass in my hand could do a lot of damage. I’m determined not to let that happen.”

The waiter came around to take our orders. As I watched Simon pick up his menu and point to something, I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for him. Because of my stint in the Secret Service, I knew the fishbowl
in which politicians swim. Until that moment, though, I never considered that people like Simon were in the same sort of situation.

Actually worse, if they took their responsibility seriously.

The public expected politicians to have vices. They did not cut preachers the same slack. One public slipup would not only irreparably injure his career but could damage the whole point of it. People looked to him for guidance on how to live their lives. That was quite a burden to carry around every day. I thanked my lucky stars I was far too socially irresponsible to have any influence over anyone.

We spent the rest of the dinner chatting about a variety of things, including the next weekend’s International Celebration of Hope in Dallas. It would be his largest event ever and would be telecast around the world. Because the event had been planned for months, I would not be able to have much impact on security. There were a few areas, though, where I could provide security upgrades, even on such short notice. We discussed my ideas as we ate.

From time to time Elise eyed us from the other end of the table. She frowned through the entire dinner, as if she had been permanently exiled. Her frown particularly deepened whenever Simon said something that made me laugh, which was frequently. He was a witty guy.

One thing seemed obvious: Elise was likely to create obstacles to my efforts to do my job. Nevertheless, she had made it clear at the auditorium that she would do
what was best for Simon, no matter what her personal interest—at least, it seemed that way. That impressed me. I was curious to learn more about her. And about her relationship with Simon.

Of course, that was the last thing that should have been occupying my mind. I was about to learn that, where Simon Mason was involved, there was no time to sweat the small stuff.

AFTER DINNER WE MADE our way toward the front of the restaurant. Simon walked in front of me and pulled my suitcase as our group moved single file down the narrow hallway and then wound through several tightly packed tables. Before we reached the front, I turned to him. “Can I take a look at the receipt Hakim gave you?”

He reached in his coat pocket and handed it to me. “Why do you want that?”

“I’m going to call and check on the new driver.”

He stopped. “Now, this is an example of what I was talking about, Taylor. I don’t really think it’s necessary to check out the driver of a reputable limousine service
that was recommended by the auditorium. That seems like overkill to me.”

I flipped open my phone. “You talked about cost-benefit a minute ago. I have unlimited minutes on this thing. We can certainly handle the cost of one call.” I held the receipt up to the light and punched in the number.

While the phone was ringing, we passed the floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window at the front of the restaurant. A single limo—a white, super stretch model with heavily tinted windows—sat at the curb outside. I tapped Simon on the shoulder. “Didn’t you say that you don’t use stretch limos?”

Just as a voice on the other end of the phone said hello, a light flashed over our heads. The window exploded. A medicine ball of hot air slammed into my chest and knocked me to the floor.

Outside the shattered window, the mangled hood and roof of the limo cartwheeled from the sky like two huge, wounded birds. They crashed to the sidewalk, side by side, bounced into each other, landed again, and spun several revolutions before nudging together and rocking to a stop in the street. Tires screeched as a taxi swerved to avoid the wreckage. At the curb, flames shot from the limo’s passenger compartment, which was peeled open like a sardine can.

I reached up, wrapped my arms around Simon’s waist, and sat backward, pulling him to the floor on top of me. To our right a woman screamed. I rolled Simon off me, then crawled beneath the table in front of us. Lifting
with my back, I flipped it onto its side. Plates and glasses crashed to the floor. The tabletop was now between us and the window. I tugged Simon’s arm, and he moved in behind the table. A cloud of acrid smoke drifted in from the street and settled over the room like a dark fog, burning my nose and throat.

A few feet away Elise stood transfixed, one hand on her forehead. I reached out, wrapped my fingers around her ankle, and jerked. She dropped onto her rear end and let out a high-pitched yelp as if a stranger had just pinched her in an elevator. The sound was so incongruous that I nearly burst out laughing. I dragged her behind the table with us.

Expecting gunfire at any moment, I crawled to my purse, which was on the floor about five feet away. I dragged it back to the table, dug into it, and pulled out my Sig .357. Then I squatted, back to the tabletop, so I was positioned between the table and Simon. I checked the magazine. My ammo was fine.

Throughout the room, people screamed and moaned. I pointed toward Simon and Elise. “Keep your heads down and stay quiet, both of you. We don’t want to draw attention. Are you all right?”

Simon nodded. “I’m okay. How about you, Elise?” His voice was steady and so was his hand as he reached out to place it on her shoulder. I was impressed.

Elise nodded, but her face was ashen and her hands trembled uncontrollably.

Simon got on his hands and knees and began to crawl toward a woman at the table next to us who had a
bloody gash from her ear to her chin. She was still sitting in her chair, staring straight ahead and moaning.

I grabbed his arm and yanked. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going to see if I can help.”

“You’re not going anywhere! You’re the target!”

He pointed at the woman. “She needs help.”

I tightened my grip on his sleeve. “This may not be the end of the attack, and I’m not counting on this table to stop a bullet. I’ve got to get you out of here.” I scanned the room for exits. The only ones were the front door, which was out of the question, and a door in the back with
stairs
stenciled across it in yellow letters.

Simon turned toward me. Blood oozed from a cut on the side of his neck. I picked up a napkin from the floor and pressed it over the cut. “You’re bleeding. Hold this tight.”

Simon held it there for a few seconds, then pulled it down and looked at it. It was bloody but not soaked. He pressed it back on the wound. “I’m okay. Don’t worry about me.”

I let go of his sleeve. “We’re getting out of here right now. Stay low and follow me.” I crawled away from the table, brushing broken glass out of the way with my fingers.

Simon grabbed my leg. “We’re not going to leave these people here and run away.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. “Oh, yes we are! My job is to protect you, remember?”

He shook his head. “I told you before, I’m not the
president. I’m a preacher. What good am I if I run away from a situation like this?”

I looked around the room. People were scattered about, some sitting in chairs and some on the floor. A number were bleeding from open wounds. Men and women cried. I took a deep breath, turned around, and peeked over the top of the table toward the window—nothing but the burning limo, traffic piling up, and sirens coming closer.

I knelt and faced him. “All right, we’ll help anyone we can. But stay down, don’t get too far away from me, and always keep something between you and the window. Elise, you stay right here behind this table and don’t move a muscle. I don’t want to have to worry about both of you.”

She nodded and sniffled. I knew she wasn’t going anywhere, and I was pretty sure that it would be a long time before she would get over this.

Simon gave me a thumbs-up. He grabbed a napkin off the floor and crawled to the lady at the table next to us. He pulled her gently down, put one hand behind her head, and used the napkin to dab at the blood on her face with the other. He smiled and spoke to her in a low, soft tone. I couldn’t make out anything he said, but whatever it was, it seemed to calm her.

Watching Simon with the woman, I remembered something my dad said that last night by the campfire:
When the shooting starts, some men run and some stay and
do what they can.
I shook myself. This was no time for daydreaming.

I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911. “There’s been an explosion outside Pascali’s on Clark Street. I hear sirens. The police must be on their way. Tell them it was a car bomb.”

“Are you inside the restaurant, ma’am?”

“Yes. There are a number of injuries. We’ll need ambulances.”