“You know the old girl. She’s loony,” Scheidel shrugged. “Not sure what we can do but check it out.”
Alex felt his stress level double. He wanted to be back on the road, looking for the suspect, driving up to the Oak Canyon Estates before the REA struck again. He steadied himself and nodded for the deputy to join him. “Let’s do it.”
They didn’t quite reach the door when it flew open. Standing there was a frail, white-haired woman, her face stricken with fear. She clung to her oversized house jacket, and her arms and legs shook. “They’re everywhere! Everywhere, I tell you!” She stepped onto the porch and grabbed hold of Alex’s arm. “Help me, young man! Please help me!”
Alex stiffened and started to take a step back. Nobody touched him on a call, not for any reason. But then he stopped himself. The woman wasn’t going to hurt him, and something about the terror in her face touched him. The feeling was strangely unfamiliar, and he couldn’t help but wonder how his father would’ve handled the situation. “Ma’am, calm down.” Alex put his hand on her shoulder. “What seems to be the problem?”
“Soldiers! They’re everywhere!” She was panting now, on the verge of hyperventilating. “Get them out!”
His partner stepped up. “Show us where they are, okay?”
“This way.” She remained at Alex’s side, clutching him, her whole body trembling. They walked through a cluttered living room to a patio door off the kitchen. The woman waved her hand at her backyard, a patch of overgrown grass and weeds surrounded on all sides by a rotting wooden fence. “See?” She tried to hide behind Alex. “Soldiers everywhere!”
“Ma’am, come here right now.” Scheidel’s tone grew stern, his patience pressed. When she peered out from behind Alex, he motioned for her to come closer. “Now, ma’am.” He jabbed his finger at a spot on the floor beside him. “Right here.”
The woman seemed stricken at the idea of leaving Alex’s side, but she took three shaky steps toward Scheidel and cast frantic eyes at him. Her voice was a pathetic whine. “Make them go.” She clutched at Scheidel now and squeezed her eyes shut. “Please, make them go!”
Scheidel shook his arm free. He pointed to the backyard. “Ma’am, open your eyes and look out there.”
It took her a few seconds, but finally she opened her eyes the slightest crack. As if she were really seeing something, her eyes darted from one side of the yard to the other. “They won’t leave!”
“Ma’am,” Scheidel lowered his voice to the methodical, patronizing tone typically reserved for young children and dogs. “There are no soldiers in your backyard. Not one single soldier.”
She was shaking harder now, her gaze glued to the things her mind was seeing in the backyard. “Yes … a hundred of them.” Her frantic eyes found Scheidel again. “I counted.”
Something about the scene tugged at Alex, the way most calls never did. She looked harried and helpless, like the victims walking the outer edges of a disaster. The way people looked after 9/11. Suddenly, he had an idea. He touched the woman’s shoulder again. “I’ll get rid of them, but I need your help.”
The first sign of hope softened her features. She was still out of breath, panicked by whatever she was seeing.
“Follow me out here onto the patio.”
She started to shake her head. “But they — “
“Ma’am, if you want them to leave, you need to help me.”
The woman seemed to summon all the courage of a lifetime. Alex walked outside first, and slowly she followed. When she was on the patio with a clear view of the yard, Alex stopped her. “Stay right here.”
“Brady …” Scheidel held up his hands as if to tell him not to feed into the woman’s craziness.
But Alex signaled the deputy that he had the situation under control. Then he took a few determined strides onto the grass and put his hands on hips. “All right, men, listen up! I want all of you in a straight line right now.” He barked the orders loud enough that his voice carried across the yard. Again, he could almost feel his father’s approval as he shouted, “First soldier over here!” He pointed to the left, where a wobbly gate provided the only exit. “The rest of you fall in behind him. Everyone!”
From the corner of his eye he saw the woman put her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.
“Okay,” Alex walked to the gate, carefully opened it so it wouldn’t fall off its hinges, then returned to his spot near the woman. “When I give the command, you march out that gate and don’t come back. I’ll count you off. Ready …” He pointed to a spot near the open gate. “One … two … three. Keep it moving, men. Four … five …”
The woman turned her head with each number, watching the imaginary soldiers slowly leave her yard. Alex kept counting, through the twenties and thirties and on into the seventies and eighties. As he reached the end, he forced his tone to sound even more stern. “Ninety-eight … No stragglers! Ninety-nine … one hundred.” He went back to the gate and yelled, “Don’t come back, or I’ll arrest every one of you.”
He walked to the woman and found her gripping Scheidel, who had stepped out onto the patio beside her. She was weeping openly, the fear and trembling gone. As Alex came to her, she reached out and touched him, her wet eyes shining with admiration. “Thank you, sir. You saved me! Thank you!”
They spent another couple minutes reassuring her, then went back to their cars out front. The whole thing hadn’t taken more than ten minutes, and Scheidel chuckled as they walked. “That was brilliant, man. Absolutely brilliant.”
“Figured maybe it would help if someone took her seriously.” He shrugged one shoulder. “You’ll make the report, right?”
“Should be a keeper. A hundred soldiers cleared out. Mission accomplished.”
Before he left, Alex saw the woman waving at them from her front porch. Again, his heart went out to her. He waved back and took off toward the freeway. A few minutes later, he heard the report. Another fire was burning at a housing development — this one in Malibu. The hills adjacent to the area were already burning, and firefighters as far as three hours north in Santa Maria were being called in to help. Arson was suspected again, and this time there were no witnesses. The fires were far apart, which would stretch the fire departments in the area, and with the winds, the dangers that day were only just being realized.
He drove as fast as he could without sirens and lights to the winding road that led up to the Oak Canyon Estates. Without hesitating, he drove up and onto the main street, the one where all the houses in this phase sat. He turned right and cruised slowly to the end. A few work vans were parked outside one house, and a pair of well-dressed men with hard hats were talking to a construction worker. Alex nodded at them as he drove by, and at the end of the street he turned around and drove to the other side. The model house in the middle had just one car parked out front, and past that were more work trucks.
Alex fought back his frustration as he headed back down the steep road. The place should have a guard, at least. Someone to screen visitors. He’d checked with Clay, and the suggestion had been talked about with the developers. Apparently, they were in the process of hiring a security company. Alex scanned the horizon and saw the two gray-black areas that marked the separate brush fires. The wind kicked up a dust cloud in front of him, and he squinted to see through it.
Sometimes he felt like the old woman from the earlier call, shouting for someone to believe him that the fires this year could kill people. They could kill firefighters. But after today, he was bound to feel the same relief the woman felt. Because based on the way the day was going so far, no one could argue about whether the REA was setting fires in new housing developments. They could argue just one thing:
When was it going to happen at Oak Canyon Estates?
NINETEEN
Jamie could hardly sleep, and when she woke Thursday morning only one thought filled her mind — this was the day she was going to meet Holly Brooks. She’d found the girl at the work number Alex’s mother had pas
sed along. Their initial conversation was brief since Jamie wanted the heart of their discussion to happen in person. She’d told the young woman only that the two of them shared a New York connection, and she’d like a chance to meet with her this week if possible.
The meeting was set for nine o’clock that morning when Holly had no other appointments. Jamie had been praying about it almost constantly.
As she drove the kids to school, she turned the radio to a news station for an update on the brush fires still burning along two separate mountain ranges. The Santa Ana winds had died down in the past twenty-four hours, and the smoky skies had cleared some, but the last Jamie heard, the fires were still burning.
The announcer was talking about baseball, with breaking news coming up on the hour. Jamie wasn’t concerned with who was ahead in the World Series, so she turned the volume down and glanced at Sierra, sitting in the passenger seat of their Trail-blazer. “Ready for your math test?”
“Ugh!” Sierra made a face. She was in sixth grade, and much like when she was younger, she had an opinion about everything. “I wanted to talk to you about that.” She angled herself so she could see Jamie better. “I love writing and reading and art and music and PE and —.”
“And soccer!” CJ leaned his head as far forward as his car seat would allow. “You love soccer, Sissy.”
“Right.” Sierra flashed him a grin. “I love a lot of things, but I don’t love math. So I was thinking, it doesn’t seem right — once a person knows the basics … adding, subtracting, division, multiplication — that she should have to take math in school unless she loves it.” She grabbed a quick breath and kept on with her rapid-fire pace. “I mean, I don’t want to be a math teacher, Mom. So math’s a waste of time for me, and by the way, I had this talk with Josh, and he feels the same. We’re thinking of starting a petition, passing it around my school and then through his high school classes, and since we’re not part of the public school system, maybe we can get rid of math except for those kids who love it.” She blinked. “Isn’t that a good idea?”
Jamie raised one eyebrow, a smile tugging at her lips. “Nice try.” She reached over and patted Sierra’s knee. “But I’m pretty sure no amount of signatures will convince the board at King Christian School to eliminate required math.”
Sierra looked out the window, no doubt working up a retort.
“I have school today, right, Mommy?” CJ asked the question in a happy voice. With Sierra around, he’d learned to talk early and often, and his vocabulary was beyond that of most three-year-olds.
“Yes, honey. You have preschool two days a week, and today’s one of those days.”
“Goody!” He shouted his enthusiasm. “‘Cause I love school, Mommy!”
“I love school too,” Sierra jumped in. “Just not math.”
“I like math ‘cause we count with jelly beans.” CJ bounced up and down. “Jelly bean math is yummy!”
“Yeah, I’d like that math too, buddy.” Sierra grinned back at her brother. “Wait till you get to sixth grade.” She held up empty hands. “No more jelly bean math.”
“No more?” CJ sounded alarmed.
The commercial on the radio ended, and the news report came on. Jamie turned up the volume, and the kids quieted to listen. “Fires in the hills surrounding Los Angeles are seventy percent contained, a spokesperson for the fire department said this morning.”
Jamie was grateful about the containment. She listened for the rest of the report.
“Officials have confirmed that the two separate blazes, which both began at the construction sites of custom hillside housing developments, were apparently intentionally set by the environmental terrorist group REA,” the reporter’s voice grew somber. “No arrests have been made, and a statement released by the sheriff’s department today warned that with more winds in the forecast later this week, the danger for additional fires is high.”
A shiver of concern ran down Jamie’s arms. Clay and Joe both expected more fires in the weeks to come, and with the tinder-dry hills, the department feared the situation could grow much worse.
“We’ve gotten off easy so far,” Clay told her last night. “Five unoccupied new homes and a few thousand acres of brush. The chance for a huge disaster still exists.”
The news was over, so Jamie pushed the button, turning off the radio.
“I don’t understand people setting fires on purpose.” Sierra pulled down the sun visor and looked at herself in the mirror. She pulled lip gloss from her backpack and applied it. “I mean,” she smacked her lips a few times, “how can it be good for the environment to have all that smoke clogging up the sky?”
“It doesn’t make sense.” Jamie kept her eyes on the road. “They’re a bunch of bad guys who like the attention. They can talk about the environment, but you’re right, honey. Destroying hillsides and homes … that’s not the sign of people who care.”
“Someone should tell them about Jesus.” Sierra marked the statement with a tone of finality. “Then they could see how wrong they are.”
In the backseat, CJ launched into an off-key rendition of the song he’d learned last week in preschool. “Jesus loves me, this I know … for the Bible tells me so!”
Jamie grinned. She loved this about Sierra and CJ, that they so fully and naturally embraced their faith. Clay had a wonderful way of incorporating talk about the Lord into their everyday conversation, so moments like these were completely natural. She pulled into the school parking lot and entered the drop-off line. King Christian School required a drive each morning, but it was well worth the effort. The school had a waiting list of kids hoping to get in, and its academic standards made it one of the top-ranked schools in the state — especially in math.
When it was their turn, Sierra leaned over and kissed Jamie’s cheek. “Bye, Mom. Love you.” She grabbed her backpack. “Have a good day! And pray about my math test.”
“I will. Love you too.” Jamie hugged her daughter and then watched her run off toward her peers. Three girls from her class hurried over to her, their faces lit up as the four of them headed toward the front doors.
“My turn!” CJ’s voice was pure glee. “You can see my turtle, Mommy! Okay? ‘Kay, you can see my turtle!”
“Sure, buddy. I can’t wait to see it.” Jamie eased out of the line and found a parking spot on the far end of the lot, adjacent to the separate building that housed the preschool. She unbuckled CJ, and he held her hand, skipping as they walked up the path to the right classroom.
Inside, half the kids were already there, and the teacher was helping them with some oversized crayons and construction paper. “Hi, CJ!” She waved. “We’re drawing pumpkins today!”
CJ smiled big. He tugged at Jamie’s hand. “Over here, Mommy … my turtle’s over here!” He led her to the far wall where an extended family of paper turtles was tacked to a display area. He pointed to one with purple spots across its back. “That’s it, see! My turtle has polka dots!”
Jamie admired her son’s work, and after a few minutes she swung him up into her arms and kissed his forehead. “I love you, buddy. Have a good day.”
“Okay. Love you too.” He wrapped his arms around her neck and hugged her for a long time. “You’re my pretty Mommy.”
“Thanks, Ceej.” She set him down, and he ran off toward the others at the coloring table. Preschool lasted only three hours, and CJ loved every minute of it. But the fact that he was so well-adjusted was bittersweet. Just a year ago, he wouldn’t leave her side, and now … well, he was growing up and needing her less.
She didn’t dwell on the fact as she left the classroom. She had to hurry if she was going to be on time to her appointment with Holly. The young woman had sounded pleasant but guarded during their phone call yesterday. Once they agreed on a meeting time, Jamie took down the address where Holly worked. She had searched online for it this morning on the way out the door and now, before she pulled out of the parking lot, she glanced at the piece of paper.
r /> The directions took her back to the Ventura Freeway south toward Las Virgenes, and then up into the hills. Strange, Jamie thought. Most real estate offices would typically be on the valley floor, in the more populated areas. It took ten minutes to get to Las Virgenes, and another eight before she found the right road. She turned right and immediately saw the grand entrance to a housing development and an open gate just ahead of her. Jamie’s heartrate quickened as she slowed and read the sign.
Oak Canyon Estates? The development Alex was so concerned about? Jamie and Clay had talked about this place just yesterday, how Alex was still checking up on the REA’s headquarters and how he believed this development was next on the group’s hit list. So why had Holly given her the address to Oak Canyon Estates, unless … was this where she worked? Selling exclusively for this one development?
Jamie drove slowly up the hill, giving herself a chance to adjust to the shock. What were the odds that Alex’s long-ago love would work at the very custom home site that he feared was in the greatest danger? At the top of the road, a paved street ran perpendicular to the hill, with gorgeous custom estates strategically placed on either side. Each of them was in various stages of construction, and in the middle was a finished home with flags lining the walkway. The address on the front of the house matched the one Holly had given her.
Jamie pulled into the nearest parking spot and checked her look in the mirror. Please, God, let this be a step in the right direction. Let something come of this meeting that could help both Alex and Holly. She remembered what Clay had said the night before.
“You’re doing your best, and I understand your passion.” He smoothed his thumb along the side of her face, looking into the soul of her intentions. “But it’s a stretch, Jamie. Finding Alex’s old girlfriend, looking her up without telling him.”