Trial by Fire (15 page)

Her eyes rounded in surprise, and he realized the spiritual talk had given him solid footing and made him forget his awkwardness.

“Funny coming from you,” she said.

They were too close, and he never should have taken her hands. He needed to get up, put some distance between them. But he couldn't seem to do it. He kept his eyes boldly locked with hers. “I have the same impulses you have, Issie.”

Her eyes were the softest brown, almost hazel, and he felt he could see through them right into her heart. The air between them was charged with electricity, and he feared he would feel the shocking pop, telling him that the voltage was too high.

“I never would have figured,” she said. Now he heard the expected flirtation in her tone.

“Yes, you would,” he whispered.

It was clear by the grin in her eyes that she relished the power she had over him. “So you're telling me that even preachers have temptations?”

“They absolutely do,” he whispered. He swallowed hard, trying to get his bearings. “But the Bible tells us there's no temptation too great that God won't give us the means of escape. And I've found that to be true every single time.”

The pleasure seemed to fade from her eyes, and he sensed her disappointment. “Haven't you ever wondered what it would be like if you didn't escape it?” she asked. “Just once? If you gave in to something that you wanted to do?”

He wanted to say yes, that he was struggling with that now, that it would have been so easy to let her have that power over him as she sat knee to knee, holding his hands, grinning into his eyes. It would have been so easy to just lose himself in that moment, to taste of Issie Mattreaux and learn what he was missing.

But then there would be tomorrow, and the emptiness would set in, and when it did…where could he run for comfort? How could he turn to the Savior he had betrayed? She would never understand.

“I
want
to please God,” he said. “That's my first priority.”

She sighed, as if disappointed. “I don't even know why I like you,” she told him. “There are a million other people I could have called tonight. I could have called Joe's Place and just asked for somebody and ten people would have come to the phone wanting to help me. Ten medics, like me, sitting there unwinding together. We have a bond, you know. We're close. I could have called them.”

Nick smiled. “But you didn't call them,” he said. “You called me. Isn't that interesting?”

“So what are you saying? That that's a God thing?”

“I think maybe.”

She lifted her chin high and leaned closer. Her eyes sparkled. “Maybe it was a chemistry thing,” she said defiantly. “Maybe I called you because I'm attracted to you, God-only-knows-why.”

He felt the blood rushing to his face and pulled his hands away. Had she just admitted she was attracted to him? Issie Mattreaux, to the preacher? He didn't know where to go with that.

“Maybe God's telling us that you and I are supposed to be an item,” she went on, chiding him. “How would you feel about that, Nick, with all your rules?”

His mouth suddenly felt dry. “I don't know, Issie. I don't think that's what happened.”

“Of course it's not,” she said, “because a pious person like you could never get involved with a wretch like me, is that right?”

She was too close to him now, looking up into his face, daring him to back away. He smelled the scent of her hair. It was nothing like sauerkraut or gym shoes. Strawberries, maybe. He liked strawberries.

She turned her face up to his, her lips too close to his. “I'm not good enough for you, am I, Nick?”

He looked down at her, feeling her breath against his own lips, and wondered what it would be like to kiss her just once. He wanted to feel that sprinting of his heart and that sweet relief and urgent desire warring inside him. He wanted to tell her that he thought about her more than any other woman he knew, that her image was constantly on his mind.

But escape lingered there in the back of his mind. He could take a step backward, break this spell she seemed to have over him. He could close off the vision he had of holding her and kissing her, and focus back on the Christ who would not have orchestrated their coming together for the purposes of becoming a couple, not when they were so unequally yoked. Christ would want someone for him who could share his passion for the kingdom. Christ would have chosen someone who shared his passion for the Lord. A woman who had the same goals and purpose that he had, someone who understood the grace of the Cross, someone whose heart was broken over it.

Issie was not that woman.

He took that step back. “I'm going to bed, Issie.”

“Did I scare you, Nick?” she asked, almost angrily.

“No,” he said. “Let's just say I'm taking that escape.” And before she could dare him further, he went into the guest room and closed the door.

J
ake woke to the sound of moaning. He opened his eyes and squinted at the light pouring in through the window. He had come home after Cruz had run out after Issie last night, and had brought Benton with him. The rest of the kids in the house had scattered, for fear that the latest killing, and Cruz's actions if and when he caught Issie, might bring police. Jake's parents were in bed when he got home, and now, at nine
A.M.,
he hoped they were both at work.

He had called Issie's house at least twice an hour all night long, and she had never answered. His stomach burned. What had Cruz done to her?

There had been no news. His parents hadn't gotten a phone call in the middle of the night, and Issie hadn't shown up here in desperate flight.

So what did that mean? Had they gotten to her, shut her up? Or had she gotten to the police first?

He sat up in his bed and admitted to himself that his association with Cruz and his group wasn't working out to his advantage. Playing drums for their band was definitely a perk, and the idea of living in a commune without school or parents, growing their own food, and following a charismatic spiritual leader like Cruz had been cool enough…but he hadn't counted on murder and seeing his friends and family abused.

He heard the moan again, and squinted up to see Benton writhing on the twin bed across from him, his leg exposed where Issie had cut open his jeans last night. The dental floss stitches she'd made were crude and looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie. He wondered if the muscle beneath would heal without deeper sutures, or if Benton would have a limp for the rest of his life.

He got up and went to Benton, reached out to shake him, and felt that his skin was burning. “Benton?” he said. “Wake up, buddy. You're burning up with fever.”

Benton's eyes barely slit open. “I'm f-f-f-reeezing.”

“Chills,” he said, grabbing a blanket to put over him. “Man, we need to get you to a hospital. You may need surgery or something.”

“Cruz said no.”

“I don't care what Cruz said,” Jake threw back. “He's not the one with the gash up his leg.”

“Don't even know what I d-d-did.”

“Something about Jennifer. He sees red when anybody touches her. Goes ballistic, man. Like a total personality change. Jekyll and Hyde.”

“She didn't do nothin' wrong, Jake. You're just mad 'cause she was with me instead of you.”

“We need to get you to the doctor, and while we're there, we need to have our heads examined for hanging out with people like Cruz and Jennifer in the first place.”

“You better sh-sh-shut up,” Benton said. “He might kill you if he hears you talking like that.”

“He's not even here. We're at my house.” He bent over and touched the swollen place around Benton's stitches. “Come on, man. We've got to get you to a hospital before Cruz comes looking for us.”

“B-b-but what'll we tell 'em?”

“We'll think of something on the way there. Now, come on.”

Benton tried to sit up but was too weak. Jake bent down and helped him. “Man, you lost a lot of blood last night. No wonder you're weak. Wouldn't hurt to get you some food too, and something cold to drink. You're hot as fire. Here, lean on me and try to get to your feet.”

He managed to get Benton up on one leg, and they limped out the door. With each step on his hurt leg, Benton moaned and winced. Jake looked down at his leg and saw that the stitches were pulling as the wound swelled, and the cut was beginning to bleed again.

“Here, just stop. Don't put any more weight on it, man. Just stand here against the house, and I'll back the car around. Can you do that, man?”

Benton seemed to be dizzy, but he managed to nod.

Jake ran to get the car, drove up in the yard, turned around, and put it in reverse. He backed up to just a foot or two from Benton, then got out and helped him into the passenger seat.

As Jake got back into his car, he realized that if Benton hadn't been so scared of Cruz, he would have gotten him to the hospital before now. At least he could have taken him home, where his parents could care for him…if they felt like it. But Benton's dad sometimes got a little crazy himself, and Jake wouldn't put it past him to beat Benton for coming home wounded, as if he'd miraculously heal if his dad gave him enough other injuries to concentrate on.

“What are we gonna tell 'em?” Benton slurred as he leaned his head back against the seat. “We can't squeal on Cruz.”

“I know, I've been thinking about that,” Jake said. “Let's tell them that we were out last night, and we got really drunk at the Viper Pit, and you fell on a broken bottle and it cut your leg.”

Benton thought that over for a moment. “Does a glass cut look like a knife wound?”

Jake wasn't sure. “You got a better idea?”

“No.”

“Okay, then.”

“What about the stitches? Do we tell them about Issie?”

“No, man. We can't get her in trouble. We tell them that I did the stitches. That we got paranoid about coming in 'cause we were so drunk…”

“Yeah, okay.” Benton closed his eyes, thinking it over.

Jake tried to measure for flaws in the story, and decided it was okay.

Benton began to laugh. He threw his wrist over his eyes and shook his head. Jake glanced over at him, grinning. “What's so funny?”

“They'll probably lock us up to protect us from ourselves,” he said. “Man, we're gonna look stupid.”

“I don't care how stupid we look,” Jake said. “Just so they take care of you.”

Silence filled the car as they both ran the scenario through their minds. “It makes me sick…Cruz doing me like that,” Benton said. “I didn't do nothin' to him. I trusted him, looked up to him. Look what I did for him!”

“He turned on us, man. He's not the person he wants us to think. Cruz's dangerous. He doesn't tell us anything, but he expects us to jump in with both feet, no questions asked. Well, I don't work that way.”

“We've both been workin' that way lately,” Benton said. “I worked that way last night. That kid we killed…He reminded me of my kid brother…” He got quiet for a moment, his eyes closed and his head leaned back on the neck rest. “Man, you think I might go to prison?”

“Of course not,” Jake said. But as he navigated his way to the Slidell hospital, he realized that prison was a secondary problem. First they had to keep Benton from losing his leg.

D
an and Jill Nichols sat in the waiting room in Mayor Patricia Castor's office. They knew she wasn't busy. They had heard her through the wall talking on the phone to her daughter about what to get her grandchild for Christmas, but she always liked to keep people waiting for meetings, just so they would know who was in control. The only time she was prompt was during election years. Then she made a career out of being courteous and polite.

This was not an election year.

Jill checked her watch and gave a disgruntled sigh. “You know, I've got a lot of work to do. I probably ought to just let you handle this and get on back to the office.”

“No, wait.” Dan slapped down the bodybuilding magazine he'd been scanning and got up. “I've had enough. I'm going in.”

The mayor's secretary looked alarmed. “You can't do that, Dan.”

“Watch me.” He went to the mayor's door and threw it open. “Pat, I'm sick of waiting. Now if you can get off the phone and quit talking about Christmas presents and grandkids, maybe we can get down to some of the town's business.”

Pat Castor looked up at him, disgusted. “Where is my secretary? Why didn't she keep you—”

“I'm here, Mayor,” the woman said, scurrying to the doorway. “I'm so sorry. I tried to keep him from comin' in, but—”

“Come on, Pat,” Dan said, motioning for Jill to follow him as he bolted in. “It's not her fault. I sat there patiently listening to you talk about Beanie Babies and Play Stations until I was sick of it. Jill needs to get back to the office, so can we please get on with this?”

The mayor looked indignant, but she made her apologies to her daughter and got off the phone. “What do you want, Dan?”

It occurred to him that they hadn't gotten off to a very good start. This didn't bode well for the favor he had come to ask her. “I want to talk to you about our church.”

She shifted in her seat and crossed her arms. As far as anyone could tell, Pat Castor didn't go to church, though she claimed affiliation with the Methodists on every campaign flier she had printed up. If she attended a Methodist church, they could only assume it was one out of town, since no one at Newpointe's Methodist church had ever seen her there. “Yes, that church burnin' was such a tragedy,” she said. “And poor Ray. I've been meanin' to get a card out to him, expressin' my condolences.”

Dan started to say that a card should make up for everything, but Jill anticipated the sarcasm and pinched his leg. “Pat, we appreciate your time,” she said, though Pat hadn't given it willingly. “We're really upset about our church and the fact that it's completely devastated and there's no place for us to worship.”

“It was a tough break,” Pat said, “and I'm trying to get to the bottom of it. I won't have people in my town going around burning down institutions. Next thing you know, they'll be burning down the courthouse and the police station and my office, so's you're not safe anywhere. I'm thinking about getting a bodyguard. You just never know what you might run into.”

Jill nodded sympathetically. Again, Dan bit his tongue to keep from expressing amazement that she'd managed to twist the conversation back to herself.

“Mayor, we wanted to ask you a favor,” Jill said. “We want to ask if you would allow us to use the courtroom to have our services on Sunday.”

The mayor just stared at her for a moment, then laid her head back and let out a laugh.

Now it was Jill's turn to be angry. “Would you please tell me why this is so funny?” she demanded.

“Because I can't believe you'd ask me that. You, a lawyer and everything. You know I can't let you have church services in the courtroom. Whatever happened to separation of church and state?”

Dan pinched Jill's knee, figuring that either of them had grounds for going across the desk and throttling the woman. “The separation of church and state,” Jill said in her best legal voice, “had to do with preventing our states from telling us how, when, and where we had to worship. It had nothing to do with congregations using municipal buildings paid for with taxpayers' money to hold their services. In fact, they did it all the time in the early days of our country. Our founding fathers even worshiped in them.”

“Well, if I let you,” Pat said, “I'd have to let the Muslims and the Hindus and the Buddhists.”

Dan shot her an are-you-crazy look. “First of all, there aren't any of those in Newpointe to my knowledge, and if there were, they'd have their own places to worship. Ours, on the other hand, was burned to the ground the day before yesterday. Every one of us is a taxpayer. We're asking to use this facility for a public assembly. We have the right to worship.”

“But you don't have the right to worship in my courthouse,” the mayor said. “Sorry, folks. I just can't let you do it.”

Dan gave further consideration to lunging across the desk. “Pat, what is your problem? You've let us have meetings here for everything from planning the policeman's ball to organizing a fund-raiser for the public schools. You've even let Aunt Aggie cart food in here when people were meeting. It's one of the few rooms big enough for our whole congregation to fill.”

“There've got to be others,” she said. “Try the hotel. It probably has a conference room.”

“A conference room is not big enough, Pat. We have two hundred members. Besides, we don't have a lot of money, and the hotels want us to pay for those rooms.”

“So the city is supposed to give you a handout?”

“Not a handout,” Jill said. “A place to meet. That's all.”

Dan stood straighter as an idea came to him. “Pat, do you realize how many of your voters go to our church?”

That got her attention. Her eyebrows came up as she considered that fact. “Since I won by a landslide, I guess you're right. My constituency is everywhere.”

“But if word gets out that you wouldn't let us meet here, how do you think they'll vote next time?”

“It'll blow over by then.” She preened, patting the back of her short hair. “They have short memories. Anyway, they'll probably understand because they all know about the separation of church and state.”

Jill stood up and went into attorney mode. “You mean, they're all
deceived
about the separation of church and state. As you are. You know, it really chaps me that our own elected officials don't know the Constitution any better than that.”

“Well,” the mayor huffed. “Insult me all you want, if that's the way your church operates…” She got to her feet, dismissing them. “I appreciate you stoppin' by,” she said. “Wish I could help. I hope I can still count on your vote in the next election.”

“My vote?” Jill asked. “I was actually thinking of running against you.”

Her face hardened instantly. “Run against me? You?”

“Why not?” Dan asked. “She's younger and smarter and has more character. Better looking too. I think she could win it hands down.”

They both knew they were bluffing, but Pat's reaction was amusing. Her face was turning red, and her lips were compressed as she looked at them. “Well, you just do that,” she said in her saccharine drawl. “May the best woman win.”

Dan and Jill left, still fuming, and headed to the school superintendent's office to see if they could use the high school auditorium. When they saw the man's reaction, Dan wondered if Pat Castor had already warned the superintendent.

He told them that he had enough trouble getting federal aid without turning the school into a church. One move like that and he'd be on a street corner trying to raise funds to pay teachers.

Then they tried the theater in town, but the owner told them that the first scheduled movies on Sunday were for eleven o'clock. If he allowed them to have church there, he wouldn't be able to start the movies on time.

Feeling defeated, they left there and went to the fire station to tell Mark and some of the others that they had struck out. Aunt Aggie was there serving lunch to the men.

The old Cajun woman was almost ninety years old, yet she still insisted on cooking for her boys every day. The habit had started decades ago when her own husband had been a firefighter and she'd been known as the best cook in town. Aggie, rich from her investments, had pitied her husband for having to eat their cooking, and had started bringing meals from home for him. When there was enough of an uproar from men asking to share what she'd brought her husband, she had started bringing her groceries to the station and cooking it all up there. She had been doing it ever since. It was one of the joys of her life, and theirs too. They'd had to start a strenuous workout program for the firefighters, to offset the extra calories they took in while on duty. Today they were having Cajun popcorn, which was really fried crawfish claws, and homemade seasoned French fries for lunch.

As Dan and Jill walked in, Aunt Aggie motioned for them to hurry. “Did ya eat yet,
sha?”

“Not yet, Aunt Aggie,” Jill said.

“Then sit yourself down. Hurry up. I gotta get this on the table while it's still hot, me.”

“That's okay, Aunt Aggie,” Dan said. “I'm off duty. We're not eating.”

“I don't care if you off duty. You here, ain't you?” She pulled out a chair and ordered them to sit down. They both took their seats obediently as the firemen filed in.

“Well, what you two doin' here on your day off, Dan?”

Dan shrugged. “I was just coming by to tell Mark that I didn't have any luck with finding a place to worship. Pat Castor won't let us use the courthouse, and Dennis Fournier won't let us use the high school. The theater manager refused too. I can't think of any other places, but I thought maybe somebody here could.”

“How 'bout my house?” Aunt Aggie asked. Mark was just coming to the table, and he looked up at her.

“Your house, Aunt Aggie? Your house is big, but it's not big enough for two hundred worshipers.”

“I meant outside,” she said. “We can get folding chairs and sit out in the yard. I got plenty of land and plenty of shade,
Sha,
and it ain't too cold yet.”

Jill and Dan looked at each other. “You know, that's an idea. We hadn't thought of meeting outside.”

Aunt Aggie was a new Christian and was still a little green about the things of Christ, but she knew how to solve a problem. “I'll cook and we can have food and—”

“No, Aunt Aggie,” Jill cut in. “You don't have to cook. If we use your property, that'll be enough. We'll be so grateful.”

Mark's eyes were widening as he looked at Dan. “I think that's the answer. We can have services Sunday morning, can't we, Aunt Aggie?”

“Mais oui,
you bet we can. I'll get Bradford over to the rental place to brought us the chairs. You boys can help set 'em up. We'll have us a church 'fore we even know it, right there under God. He'll be smilin' down at us.”

Mark was getting excited. “And the neighbors around will hear us singing and praising the Lord. It might turn out to be a good witness. Maybe our numbers will even grow.”

“I like it,” Jill said. “I like it a lot. Aunt Aggie, are you sure?” “I'm sure,
sha,”
she said, “and I'll be insulted if you don't do it, me. I ain't never had much to give that church 'cept money, and that don't mean nothing now that the building's flat on the ground. If I can help keep the church goin', then that's what I'll do, me.”