Indemnity: Book Two: Covenant of Trust Series (45 page)

As Chuck reread the note, a fresh sadness settled in his heart. Tracy had resigned herself to being hunted down and murdered by her father. There was no date on the note, but she must have written it before she even knew about her father’s parole.

Is that what she meant when she said as she lay dying that it was better this way? A car accident was preferable to the imagined death at her father’s hands.

How long had she prayed for Jack? Maybe it wasn’t such a stretch to hope she’d been saved if she was in the habit of praying.

Chuck debated for a moment within himself before opening Jack’s note, but parenting won out over privacy.

Tracy was going to run. That’s why she was dressed as if she’d been to work Friday afternoon. She’d been making arrangements. She intended for Chuck to find an empty house on Sunday evening when he brought Jack home. It made him sick to imagine what that scene would have been like. Knowing that she could even consider doing that to Jack made Chuck want to choke her.

How could she ...? She couldn’t stand to be away from Jack for the weekend. How could she even consider ...? But if it was for Jack, somehow, maybe she would.

She left that letter in the trashcan, the one from the law firm in Minnesota. The name she used, Kathleen Kelly, her father would have recognized those names. The letter was a decoy to throw her dad off. She was drawing him away from St. Louis. Away from Jack.

Where was she going though? He checked the envelope again. It was postmarked last week, from a post office box on the West Coast. Chuck opened it and pulled out a letter, and a brochure from an inpatient clinic, a Christian care facility specializing in substance abuse. A spot had opened up. They would be ready for her October twenty-first.

Rehab. She was going to get help. She used her given name, and she was finally going to let someone help her. “God ... why did You let her die, then?”

He could picture her Friday evening, shaken by the news of the parole, drinking, and then gripped by the fear of checking into a clinic, and the guilt of leaving Jack, and the bitter loneliness, she probably took every kind of medication she had.

Passed out until Saturday afternoon, she probably needed another round before she left town. By that time, she was so impaired she couldn’t drive. She hadn’t even made it out of town before she wrecked.

He flipped through the brochure, and tried to picture Tracy baring her soul to a counselor. No carefully constructed persona, no alcohol to hide behind, no prescription drugs to dull her pain and anxiety, just her and the truth. He shook his head. The image wouldn’t form.

Maybe this was the answer he needed. She had a plan. A warped, misguided plan, perhaps, but she thought she was doing the best thing for Jack by distancing herself from him. The wreck was a tragic accident, not a suicide. Now for the rest of his life, he had to wrestle with whether or not she ever found Jesus. Unless ...

He read the brochure again. She wanted rest ... She purposefully chose a Christian clinic ... Jesus Christ was the only one who could have prompted Tracy to deal with her issues. Maybe she did. Maybe that’s what God was waiting on. Maybe He thought she’d suffered enough, and she could skip ahead to the good stuff.

He slid the brochure and letter back in the envelope, along with the report card and photos. He put the rings carefully in his pocket, and returned the box to its slot.

Someday, when Jack was a little older, he would sit down and explain everything to him. Everything but his mother’s plan to abandon him. On his way out of the bank, he dropped the notes in a trashcan. “You’re welcome, Tracy.”

Twelve years later

Gateway Mission stopped serving food at ten p.m., so Jack Molinsky picked up the shop broom and began sweeping up. The scraping sounds of the chairs he pushed out of the way were loud enough that he didn’t hear the bell when the front door opened. When he turned around, he was startled to find an old man sitting in one of the chairs. “Mister, I’m sorry, they packed up the food already. I can get you a sandwich though.”

“
Just coffee, black,” the old man answered in a raspy voice.

Jack set his broom against the wall, poured the coffee, and then he joined the old man at the table. “I’m Jack,” he said, extending his hand. “My brother runs this place.”

“
I’m Ed.”

“
You need a place to stay?”

“
Nah.” He slurped loudly. “You make good coffee, Jack.”

“
I learned it from my mom. She’s a big coffee drinker.”

The old man studied Jack carefully. “You from around here?”

“
Pretty much. We bounced around some when I was little, but I’ve been in St. Louis since I was six.”

“
Ever been to Baltimore?”

“
No. You?”

“
That’s where I’m from. I had a daughter. You remind me of her. Thought you might be related.”

“
That would be an incredible coincidence.”

Please enjoy a sample from the third book of

the Covenant of Trust Series

PRECEDENT

Available 2011 from

MINDSTIR MEDIA

PROLOGUE

Thursday, June 12

Edward Reynolds glanced in the window of Gateway Mission. The kid was there. His grandson. He was sure the boy was Teresa’s son. He had her eyes. For the last twelve years, he tracked Teresa’s movements across the country. He finally traced her to St. Louis, only to find out he was too late.

The kid was his last chance. He would go in and drop a few hints, make a few pointed comments and see if the boy reacted. He opened the door of the mission, and slipped into one of the chairs close to the door. The kid, Jack, never looked up from his task of straightening chairs, loudly scraping them across the tile floor. A broad-shouldered, sturdy-built young man, he had to take that after his father’s people. The Reynolds and the Hickmans were both thin and slight. Moments later, he looked up.

“
Mister, I’m sorry. They packed up the food already.” He adjusted his baseball cap. “I can get you a sandwich though.”

Ed cleared his throat to make sure he could speak. “Just coffee, black.” Ed watched Jack move the broom away from the counter against the wall and pour the coffee. Jack handed him the coffee cup and Ed invited him to sit at the table.

“
I’m Jack,” he said, extending his hand. “My brother runs this place.”

“
I’m Ed.” Teresa just had the one son. Was he mistaken about the boy? Maybe Jack had a half-brother. Teresa never married, so it couldn’t be a stepbrother.

“
You need a place to stay?” Jack asked.

“
Nah.” Ed slurped the coffee loudly. “You make good coffee, Jack.”

“
I learned it from my mom. She’s a big coffee drinker.”

He talked about her in present tense. The old man studied Jack carefully. “You from around here?”

“
Pretty much. We bounced around some when I was little, but I’ve been in St. Louis since I was six.”

“
Ever been to Baltimore?”

“
No. You?”

“
That’s where I’m from. I had a daughter. You remind me of her. Thought you might be related.”

“
That would be an incredible coincidence,” Jack said.

CHAPTER 1

FRUITION

“
How goes it?” Jack Molinsky leaned against the doorframe of the tiny office where his brother worked crunching columns of numbers on an outdated adding machine.

Brad spoke without looking up. “Slow. I’ve got board summaries and a bunch of filings to finish up before the thirtieth. Did somebody come in?”

“
Yeah,” Jack said. “An old guy. He just had a cup of coffee and left.”

“
He didn’t want anything?”

“
No. Said he had a place to stay and everything.” Jack stopped sweeping and leaned on the broom. “It was strange. He asked me if I’d ever been to Baltimore.”

Brad put his pencil down and looked up at him. “Your mom was from Baltimore, wasn’t she?”

“
Yeah. He said I reminded him of his daughter, even.”

“
You don’t think ...?”

“
What?”

“
You don’t think that was Tracy’s dad, do you?”

“
Here? After all these years?”

“
Did he give you a name?”

“
Just Ed, no last name.”

“
Tracy’s dad was named Ed.”

“
It was, wasn’t it?”

“
He couldn’t have gotten far.” Brad headed for the front door.

Jack followed close behind “He took a right when he got outside.”

Once out on the street, Brad said, “Don’t make eye contact with anybody unless I speak to them first. Got that?” He glanced at his watch. “I know a couple of guys who’ll be transacting some business. Maybe they’ve seen him.”

Jack stuck close to his brother, keeping his head down as instructed. Brad had become very streetwise in his years at the mission. He knew who was just down and out, and who the truly bad guys were. A couple of blocks from the mission, Jack could see a group of six or eight boys in their late teens, maybe early twenties, sporting gang colors. This was their turf. Great.

As they got closer, a black SUV with tinted windows turned onto the street, and drove slowly toward the group of boys, toward Brad and Jack. “This is wrong,” Brad whispered, and Jack raised his head. He watched the boys closely, but they weren’t reacting. Brad’s eyes darted back to the SUV, and Jack turned to see the passenger side window inching down. Even from a half a block away, Jack could make out the glint of metal.

The same instant Jack’s brain processed what he was seeing, the shooting began. The group of boys dove for cover behind parked cars while one or two returned fire. Paralyzed by shock and fear, Jack felt Brad’s strong hands dig into his shoulders, and then he hit the sidewalk hard, feeling the burning scrape on his knee, hands and cheek. But in that split second, Brad left himself exposed.

Jack heard a strange thud, unlike anything he’d ever heard before. He rolled over in time to see Brad splayed against the brick building, and then he crumpled awkwardly to the sidewalk.

“
BRAD!”

Jack crawled to his brother, and rolled him onto his back. Brad didn’t speak, but clutched Jack’s shirt. “I think you’ve been shot, Brad! It’s gonna be okay!” Brad lifted a trembling hand to his chest, to the spreading red stain soaking his shirt. As soon as he saw the blood, his own blood, on his hand, Brad seemed to relax.

“
Brad, hang on! Hang on! I’m calling for an ambulance, right now! Just hang on!” Jack fumbled with his cell phone, trying to check Brad’s pulse as he dialed. Then he held the phone against his shoulder while he worked to take his shirt off. “My brother’s been shot!” he yelled as soon as the operator picked up. Holding his wadded shirt against the wound in a desperate attempt to slow the bleeding, he quickly relayed all the details he could, and waited the eternal minutes for the paramedics. “Brad, they’re coming. Hang in there.”

Once Brad was loaded in the ambulance, Jack ran back to the mission, and got Brad’s car to head to the hospital. He held the steering wheel with his knee, while he pulled a clean shirt from his bag. His hands shook as he dialed his parents’ phone number, and he breathlessly relayed what he could when his dad answered. “Dad ... Brad ... was shot ... Taking him to University. Meet you there.”

Bobbi Molinsky heard the phone ring, but when she saw her husband, ashen-faced, steadying himself against the wall, her breath pressed from her lungs.

“
Jack, wait!” Chuck pleaded, then he looked at her. “He hung up.”

“
What happened? Is Jack hurt?”

He shook his head and reached for her hand. “Not Jack.” In his effort to stay calm, stay in control, he sounded mechanical. “Brad. Brad’s been shot. They’re taking him to University Hospital.”