Wade (23 page)

People trickled into the kitchen. They appeared a little disoriented, as if they didn't quite know what to do with themselves. Food offered an acceptable solution, and many began to mill around the kitchen, taking plates and peering at dishes and serving themselves a little of this, a little of that.

Janna, pushing her way through the crowd, began to dispense coffee. Tory appeared almost immediately afterward and picked up a knife to cut pies and cakes. Regina handed the sleeping toddler she carried to an elderly woman with hair as fine and silvery as a spi
der's web, then pitched in at the kitchen sink. Chloe watched them for a minute or two before moving in beside Kane's wife and beginning to dry the dishes as they were handed to her. The quick smile that passed between April and Regina, over and around her, held such approbation that it made her feel almost tearful.

“Is it getting dark outside already?” she asked when she had a chance. “Is that why everyone came inside?”

“Orders,” Regina said, her face serious. “Roan gave them, but I think the guys got together and decided it was time.”

Chloe's movements slowed as she wiped a plate. “Something is happening then.”

“Or will soon.”

She thought fleetingly of the children on the roof. “I wonder if this is such a good idea, everybody piling in here. An old house like this would go up like kindling if an incendiary shell were fired into it. I mean, it's a grand and solid old place, but with so much dried-out wood…”

“I know what you mean,” Regina said unhappily. “I worried about the same thing at The Haven until poor Kane got tired of hearing it and installed a sprinkler system. The danger now is that little Courtney may drown in her bed if we have a fire.”

“Maybe we should do something besides worry.”

“Like what? Where would we go? What would we do? The guys wet down the walls and rooftops with
water hoses this afternoon, but I really think they have other plans in mind. We'll just have to hope they know what they're doing.”

Chloe didn't want to hope, but to know. She needed to be sure that Wade would live so she could talk to him. There were things she needed to say, things she must explain. She couldn't stand it that he was out there not knowing how much she cared or how wrong she had been. Even if he didn't love her, he should know that the hurtful words she'd spoken had been self-protection, because she'd been afraid to let him know what she felt, afraid he might take advantage of it.

Chloe glanced around, but there was no one to ask, no sign of Wade or Kane, Roan and Adam. In fact, the only one of the Benedict cousins that she could see was Luke, who had apparently just come in from his post on the driveway after being relieved. She watched a second as April went to greet him and was swept into a rib-crushing hold before being thoroughly kissed to the cheers and jeers of those closest to them. Then she looked away, scanning the crowd again and even backing up a few steps to see into the living room.

Most of the male Benedicts inside the house were either senior citizens or teens. The men of fighting age were nowhere in sight.

“Where are Wade and the others?” she asked as she stepped closer to Regina again. “Where did they go?”

“Out there,” Regina said, tipping her head toward the area beyond the house walls. “Into the woods.”

Chloe could feel her heart start to jar against the walls of her chest. “What do you mean? What good will that do?”

“If you're afraid we've been left unprotected, don't be. It's to take care of us that they're out there.”

“But Ahmad and the others are experts in guerrilla tactics. They practically invented them. And they'll be armed, I'm sure, with sophisticated assault weapons, grenades, the kinds of things that aren't in your ordinary gun cabinet.”

Regina gave her a serene look. “The Benedicts aren't exactly unarmed. Men who can bring down a deer at long range with a single shot from a high-powered rifle should have no problem bagging a different sort of game.”

Regina, with her cloud of red hair, pale, freckled skin and soft voice might seem like a lightweight, but it would be a mistake, Chloe thought, to depend on it. She hadn't become a Benedict woman without reason.

“That's where you and Tory and the others were just now, wasn't it?” she asked in slow comprehension. “Saying goodbye to your men.”

“I don't know that I'd call it a goodbye,” Regina demurred.

“Sending them off, then.”

“You never know.” The red-haired woman looked down at her hands in the soapy water.

No, you never knew. Wade had gone with the rest of them, and she hadn't been there to say anything, to do anything to erase the last hurtful words between them. He'd taken up an unprotected position in the woods while thinking that she didn't appreciate what he'd done to keep her safe or that he was now forced to protect his family because of her. He was out there waiting for Ahmad and the others to show themselves, possibly in an explosive hell of flame and firepower, blood and death. Wade was gone, and it was too late.

He was out there, ready to fight and to die, because of her.

She couldn't breathe, could barely think. Her heart felt as if it were trying to beat its way out of her chest. With burning eyes, she stared at nothing while seeing images of death and destruction that made her feel faint.

The plate she was holding slipped a little in her hands. She caught it, then put it down carefully on the cabinet and dropped her drying cloth on top of it. Turning away, she moved almost blindly toward the living room, heading for the stairs that would lead to some place, anyplace, where she could be alone with this grinding pain.

It was then that the sound of gunfire crackled from far down the drive. Immediately afterward, they all heard the thin, high-pitched scream of a child.

T
hree evenly spaced shots crackled through the woods with a traveling echo. Wade shoved away from the tree he'd been propped against, instantly alert. It was the signal. Time to get this show on the road.

From two hundred yards away, Clay whistled with the melodious three-note call of a whippoorwill. Wade returned that signal to pinpoint his location. Then they closed the gap, heading at a ground-eating lope for the deadfall they'd spent all afternoon constructing in the sharp curve of the driveway just short of Grand Point.

Clay reached it first. By the time Wade made it, he could hear the roar of oncoming vehicles. Their fast-traveling headlights flickered among the trees, gaining speed. Then they rounded a bend and came into view as they hit the straightaway that led to that last curve.

Wade whipped his hunting knife from the sheath on his belt. Placing the blade against one of the guy ropes holding a sizable pine that had been sawn through at its base, he held it ready while applying pressure to the trunk with his other arm. He could feel the huge tree waver, unsteady on its stump.
Glancing across at Clay, he could just make out his brother in position at the opposite guy rope. They turned their heads to watch the end of the race.

Roan, driving Clay's pride and joy, the big, gleaming white one-ton turbocharged diesel truck, was giving it all he had. Dust flying, gravel grinding under the dual wheels, he bore down on them like the Nascar speedway champion he'd been a few years back. He was coming hard, closing the distance in high-speed chase like a hundred others he'd been in as the parish sheriff. Only there were a couple of differences this time. Roan was being pursued, and the car behind him was the green sedan they'd last seen in Turn-Coupe.

The waiting was over. Ahmad and his friends had finally arrived.

The dually thundered past where Wade and Clay stood. Immediately Roan slammed on the brakes and locked the wheels, throwing the heavy vehicle into a hard turn. The back end skidded in a tight half circle, flinging gravel among the trees like grapeshot and kicking up dust so thick the truck cab disappeared in the cloud. Under that cover, Roan bailed out and raced for the firewood piled in one ditch that, repeated on the other side, finished off the ends of the roadblock. Slapping a hand on top of the logs, he vaulted over behind their protection.

Wade didn't wait to see him land. The sedan was rounding the curve, barreling down on the barricade formed by the truck. Brakes squealed and tires
squalled. The lightweight car fishtailed and slid sideways, plowing up grass and weeds along the shoulder like a road grader. It crashed into the back fender of the truck with a solid thud and the tinkling rain of safety glass.

Instantly Wade slashed the thick rope under his knife, then put his shoulder to the pine. Clay matched his movement on the other side.

The mighty tree began to topple. It gathered momentum, giving in to the inevitable pull of gravity. Wood creaked. The smell of resin filled the air. Branches thrashed with the sound of a great wind. Then the trunk crashed down on the back end of the sedan, jolted off, then slammed across the driveway behind it with a thunderous impact. It closed the trap, cutting off escape.

A hail of gunfire poured from the open windows of the half-destroyed car. It cut through the night, thudding into the trees. Wade dived for the cover of a big sweet gum, sucking in his gut and keeping his head and spine in alignment with the trunk. From the crash off to his right, he thought Clay had done much the same. Moving with care, he slid his rifle strap from his shoulder and waited for the volley to end.

It ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Wade heard the car doors open and the yells of what sounded like instructions in Pashtu. He ducked his head out from behind the sweet gum in time to see Ahmad and his cronies roll out of the vehicle and plunge into the woods on the far side of the road. Wade counted four
of them. Ahmad had brought in reinforcements, it seemed.

Wade sighted on the moving shadows through his scope and squeezed the trigger. The shot spooked them like jumping deer in the middle of hunting season. A yell rang out as if he'd done some damage, though he couldn't tell how much. Still, their crashing progress through the woods had all the earmarks of panicked flight.

The strategy they'd worked out back at the house was on target. The jihadis were on foot and on the run. The home advantage belonged to the Benedicts since they knew every hill and hollow, every snake burrow and rabbit trail of this stand of woods. Armed with high-powered deer rifles accurate to five hundred feet—or as far as they could see in the dusk darkness—and shotguns loaded with buckshot, they were on the hunt.

Everything was fine, so far as it went, but it was still no cakewalk. The men they had to stop were trained soldiers armed with who knew what kind of weapons. Most dangerous of all was their state of mind. They meant to wipe out every Benedict that breathed, and didn't mind dying to make it happen.

Wade stepped from his cover and quartered the night with a narrow gaze until he spotted Clay. He gave a short wave as a signal to advance. Clay whistled his night bird call, and it was answered by Nat and the others up and down the road. Shadowy forms converged from all directions, forming a long line
parallel to the driveway. At another signal, the Benedict band began to advance in this formation that could, if necessary, close on their prey like the jaws of a bear trap.

It was then that the sound of a screaming child came on the night breeze. Wade froze in place, listening.

“Lainey,” Clay said from a short distance away, his voice grim.

He was right. The little girl was crying out for her daddy over and over. Someway or other, God alone knew how, she must have seen the dually as it came near crashing, heard the shots. She thought Clay was hurt. But the part that made the hair stand up on the back of Wade's neck was that her wails were traveling, coming toward them from the direction of the house. Then in nightmare horror, he caught the low rumble of Jake's cracked baritone, protesting, following.

Clay said something under his breath, a sound halfway between a curse and a prayer. Wade echoed it with the virulence of helpless dread. The two kids were running straight into danger. On top of that, their presence in the woods would hamstring the carefully constructed defense, interfering with the ability to fire by forcing identification of targets with absolute certainty. If they should be taken by the jihadis, then they were all dead since every single Benedict on this patch of ground would step straight into the mouth of hell before letting either youngster be harmed.

Then, when he thought the situation could not be worse, he heard a third voice. It was a woman calling to the two kids, moving after them. She spoke in tones of warning. It might have been for silence, since all sound ceased immediately.

Chloe. The woman's voice belonged to Chloe.

Wade's mind went dark. His chest felt as if it was being ripped open from the inside. Sweat broke out on him that had more to do with the images of the past than with the warmth of the night. He swore with soundless fluency and blackest dread.

Abruptly he was quiet. Going off the deep end wasn't going to help. Only one thing might, and that was to revert to the soldier-protector he'd been before. He took a deep, steadying breath and closed off all thought, all feeling and purpose other than the one thing that had to be done. He had to get those three out of there.

Clay was coming toward him, a gray ghost that made no more noise than a hunting night owl. As he neared, he spoke in tones that carried only a few feet. “I've got Lainey. Chloe is all yours. Roan is probably after Jake already, but if he can't get to him, then one of us looks out for the boy. Okay?”

Chloe is all yours.

“Got it.” It was a promise, resolute and unbreakable. Without waiting or even looking back to see if Clay followed, Wade headed for the place where he'd last heard the woman who was at the heart of this mess and his sole, eternal responsibility.

He needed to reach her before Ahmad, had to remove her from the line of fire before more innocents died. He could not fail. This time, please God, everything had to come out right.

They moved along the line back toward the house, he and Clay, spreading the word of what they were doing as they went, passing the order to close ranks. Even as they made tracks, Wade could sense the clan slipping through the woods in search of the trespassers. He and Clay had scant minutes, maybe seconds, before all hell broke loose.

It felt like desertion to leave the line. They needed to be in two places at once, though it was plain which objective was most important at this second. Though the Benedicts paid lip service to him being in charge, they had no real need of a field general. They were used to going their own way, even preferred it. In any crisis calling for leadership, the first man on the scene could and would handle the job.

As if in answer to the thought, a fusillade of shots broke out back toward his left. They were closer to the house than Wade liked, but sounded as if somebody was alert. A man signaled. An answer came. Flashes sparked the night as more rounds were fired.

Under cover of the noise, Wade and Clay were able to move at a faster clip. They paralleled the driveway, keeping their eyes and ears open. Progress wasn't in a straight line, however, as they avoided the more open shoulders of the roadway. Instead they wound their way around trees and tangles of briers, and
jumped a branch that was dry now but ran full during heavy rains.

The small, pale shape came at them out of the dark. It smacked into Clay at waist level and held tight. “Daddy, Daddy,” Lainey said on a gulping sob. “I thought you were wrecked.”

“I'm fine honey, really I am.” Clay wrapped his arms around the shaking child, holding tight. “But what are you doing out here?”

“I was watching from upstairs. I saw the bad guys chasing you and forgot we weren't supposed to be outside. I had to see you, I just had to.”

“It was Uncle Roan in the dually. He's okay, too. Where's your mother? Why didn't somebody stop you?” The strained note in Clay's voice was an indication of his fear that their quarry might have someone eluded them and penetrated the house.

“She's inside. I was running really fast. Jake came after me because he told April and Chloe that he'd watch me. But then, oh, but then…”

“I thought I heard Chloe just now,” Wade said.

“She came after us because Mama can't run fast with the baby inside her. I heard her calling me but hadn't found you yet and didn't want to go back. Then Jake caught up, just before the bad man came.” Her voice broke on a sob. “Oh, Daddy, it's all my fault!”

Clay went to one knee in front of her. “Take a deep breath, sweetheart. Then tell us exactly what happened.”

“Jake,” she said, the word jerked from her by a hiccuping attempt to follow his instructions. “These men were in the bushes, two of them. They caught us, but Jake fought them so they turned me loose. He told me to run, but I saw the big one hit him really hard. Jake fell down and they picked him up and carried him off. Then Chloe found me. I told her about Jake, and she said that she would see about him. She said I should go this way and find you as fast as I could.”

“What did she do then?” The words were sharper than Wade intended, but he couldn't help it.

“I don't know. When I looked back, she wasn't there!”

“Take Lainey on back to the house, Clay,” Roan said, his voice deadly quiet as he stepped from a dense tree shadow. “I'll go with Wade.”

“I don't want to go back,” Lainey cried. “I have to find Jake. He took care of me, and now I have to help him.”

“You did your part. You found us, sweetheart,” Clay said. “Now we have to go home.”

He ended the argument by picking her up and carrying her. Wade and Roan moved with him for a short distance then peeled off, circling in the direction from which Lainey had come.

Wade moved in a rage so consuming that he lost all contact with notions of time or distance. Operating on finely honed instinct, he saw little except what was directly in front of him. He was aware of Roan beside
him, knew his objective, but little more than that. He had become the machine that he'd once been trained to be, and was grateful for it.

He was grateful because the alternative was to recognize the fear that ran beneath his surface preoccupation. He was passionately afraid that he was going to be too late. To admit that was something he couldn't afford. Jake's life, and Chloe's, might depend on how well he was able to ignore it.

Abruptly they reached the woods' edge with the rear of the house looming in the darkness. Just in front of them lay the old Indian mound where he'd played knights and soldiers as a kid.

A man-made hill of earth worn down through the centuries to less than a tenth its original size, it was kept clear of trees and brush because of its supposed historical value. A root cellar and storm shelter had been dug into one side and fitted with a heavy door in the old days, when Native American sites were so plentiful that no one gave them a thought. The heavy door had been wedged open for years, had certainly been open earlier while Lainey and the other kids used it for a playhouse. Now it sagged on its hinges, almost shut.

He and Roan weren't alone in the tangled undergrowth of saw briers, wild myrtle and huckleberries. Wade was as certain of that as he was of the moon just rising into the sky. He was sure even before he caught sight of Chloe standing a short distance away. A slim figure in the moonlit darkness, she turned to
ward him and he saw the white mask of desperation that was her face.

“Ahmad is in there, isn't he?” he asked, the words so harsh he barely recognized them as coming from his own throat.

“I suppose it looked familiar.”

She meant, he thought, that it resembled the caves of Hazaristan, the bunkers of choice during centuries of warfare. “And Jake?”