Tough Love

  “Warrant,” Grace crowed.

  “This time it looks like we’ve got what we want,” Captain Perry affirmed. “Any luck with the search?”

  “Not so far.” Grace looked down at the face of the receiver. It looked like sonar, or radar, with contours of the hills, and the interstate in solid black. Each time they flipped over to a new part of the survey they initiated a new “circle of confusion.” Maybe some other time, she would think that was an amusing term. But not now. It would only work if Forrest had his transmitter. If it was on. If it was working. It could have been damaged when he was taken. If no one had stuck it in a tree. There were so many ifs.

  If they found him in time.

  If he wasn’t dead already.

  “If what you told me is correct about this boy’s condition and how long he’s been without his medication, we need to hurry this along,” the doctor said tensely. His name was Julio Alcina, and he looked a little green. Not a fan of flying, probably less a fan of being thrown around in the air like wet rags on a windy clothesline; she hoped he knew his business.

  “Sure thing, Doc,” Ham said affably. “Hey, Friesen, can you hit the turbo?”

  “Bad news,” Friesen replied. “We’re going to hit a storm.”

  “Please, let me call my daughter and see if she’s okay,” Rhetta begged as she drove the car. Tears rolled down her face. They were pulling away from Bobby, leaving him exposed to the wind, unconscious on the ground. She hadn’t seen any blood; if Jeannie hit him hard enough, he could die from bleeding on his brain.

  Rhetta willed him to stay alive until she could get help. Gazing down at the odometer, she memorized the last three digits of the readout so that she could retrace their route to where Jeannie had abandoned him.

  “Please let me see if Mae’s all right.”

  Mae, call the police. Call Daddy. Call someone.

  Jeannie sat beside her, training the gun on her. She had told Rhetta it belonged to Brenda Kessel, who had stashed it in her locker. Jeannie had found it while investigating the lockers of the other women. Rhetta remembered that the only prior she had ever had before was petty theft, breaking into the locker of another woman at a health club. Apparently she knew a trick about how to open combination locks.

  “Please,” Rhetta begged. She was crying so hard she couldn’t see where she was going. Fierce winds buffeted the car. Large raindrops plopped on the windshield.

  “He wouldn’t hurt her,” Jeannie said. “He really wouldn’t, Miz Rodriguez.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” Rhetta shouted. “He hurt you.”

  “He—he lost his temper. But we-we’re married. Married people get mad sometimes.” The wind pushed at the car again. “Maybe we should pull over.”

  I have to get to Mae. I forgot about the mall, or I would have told her not to go. How could I forget? Todd’s at the Handleys. Todd should be safe. He has to be safe. Ronnie, check on the kids.

  “Hunter stole Mae’s cow. Speckles—”

  “Oh, Miz Rodriguez.” Jeannie sounded sad. “You have to know he did that for me.” She opened Rhetta’s phone with her free hand.

  If she looks away to punch in a number, I’ll attack her. Rhetta gripped the steering wheel; the skin stretched across her knuckles. Her face prickled with fear. I have to get to my child. I have to save my child.

  As if Jeannie had read her mind, she closed the phone.

  “Pull over,” she said. “Please, Miz Rodriguez.”

  Oh, God, oh dear God.

  “We’re going to have to set down,” Friesen declared as he, Ham, Grace, and the doc stared out the window at the darkening funnel on the horizon. “This is getting too dangerous.”

  “Shit, that’s a damn tornado,” Dr. Alcina yelled. “Get us out of the air.”

  Five miles on the ground, fifty in the air. We just hit a new “circle of confusion.”

  And he’s dying.

  “Please, no,” Grace said. “Just a few more minutes. We’ve got time. And Forrest Catlett doesn’t have any time left. C’mon, man.”

  She looked at Ham, asking for his support. A united front might sway the pilot.

  Then the helicopter plummeted twenty feet, and the doctor shrieked. He grabbed on to his seat and bent his head forward as if bracing for impact. Grace stared at Ham. Friesen brought it out and up; everything was fine. Kind of.

  “Get us out of here!” Dr. Alcina bellowed.

  “Friesen, c’mon, man,” Ham said.

  They dropped again, hard.

  Dr. Alcina turned his head and threw up.

  “I gotta set down,” Friesen insisted.

  Rhetta sat cross-legged in the wind and the rain while Jeannie used her phone. Jeannie was sitting sideways in the driver’s seat with her feet on the ground, as if preparing to race after Rhetta if she needed to. Soaking wet, Rhetta couldn’t hear her. She didn’t know who she was calling—or if she was going to drive off and leave her when she was done.

  Or kill her.

  Hail Mary, full of grace …

  I love you, Ronnie. Mae, Todd. I love you, Grace.

  “Okay,” Jeannie said. “Please, come back in.” She looked flushed and excited. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  “Why? What did you do?”

  Jeannie licked her lips. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Okay, I’m setting down now,” the pilot insisted.

  Grace closed her eyes. She didn’t exactly pray, but she pictured Earl in her mind. And what she saw surprised her—he was standing on the ground just below the helicopter, holding a golden string attached to the leg of the chopper—like a kite string. Like the helicopter was a kite.

  “No, man,” Ham said.

  The receiver blipped. She stared down at it. So did Ham, and the airsick doctor. It was a goddamn blip. They were within fifty miles of Forrest Catlett’s transmitter.

  “We’ve got him!” Grace yelled. “We need to triangulate!”

  “We need to land,” the doctor insisted.

  Friesen was silent a moment.

  “Oh, hell,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  The chopper fell, rose again; screamed downward, leveled out. Alcina was shouting about contacting Captain Perry, then about Internal Affairs, and Grace ignored him as she watched the blip. The screens changed and the blip got bigger, then enormous—

  “Look,” Ham said, pointed out the window.

  There was a trailer down below them, all alone; a nice double-wide, flanked by a Dodge truck. As Grace watched, the trailer door opened and an older man in a long-sleeved green shirt and dark pants emerged, carrying someone in his arms.

  Forrest.

  “Set down!” Grace ordered Friesen. “He’s taking him to that truck!”

  The copter hovered for a few minutes as Friesen got his pitch, roll, and yaw under control; then he landed behind the truck, blocking it from leaving.

  The man stood in place. Then a woman came out of the trailer. She was wearing a straw hat and a pink jogging suit.

  Grace bolted from the helicopter, ducking as the blades slowed down, and pulled her gun. “Freeze!” she shouted. “Don’t move. Doc, get out here!”

  Armed with a black medical bag, Dr. Alcina jogged toward the man, who was blinking at Grace as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His resemblance to Stephen Catlett was astonishing.

  So it was the estranged grandparents.

  “When was the last time he had insulin?” Dr. Alcina said as he took Forrest from the man and laid him on the ground.

  “We … we didn’t give him any,” the man replied. The woman stayed where she was, in the background, looking from the man to Grace to the doctor and back again. Her face was dead white.

  “What?” Dr. Alcina cried. “What?”

  “Sugar. Glucagon,” Grace said.

  “On it.” Dr. Alcina opened his bag. Inside he had a container loaded with syringes. He uncapped one and jammed it into Forrest’s arm.

/>   Rain roared down like a waterfall, a wild torrent, gushing over everyone. Grace stood over Forrest as the doctor examined him, checking his eyes, his pulse. Grace remembered working on Haleem. And failing.

  “Not sure about this,” the doctor muttered. He looked back at the pilot.

  “No way.” He shook his head. “Not now.”

  Ham darted forward and scooped Forrest up. “Get the door open,” he said to the woman. She complied, and Ham dashed into the trailer. The others followed, Grace last; she slammed the door shut.

  They were in a small living room furnished with a couch and two chairs. Ham laid Forrest down, and the old woman began to towel him off. The doctor attended him, checking vitals. Then he whipped out his cell phone. He spoke rapidly in doctorese.

  “How far are we from an ER? Urgent care?” Dr. Alcina said.

  “About an hour,” the old man—Mr. Catlett—replied.

  The doctor shut his eyes tightly. “We don’t have that much time. We have to get him out of here. Get the truck.”

  Lightning flashed. Thunder roared. He began to bundle Forrest up.

  “Now.”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jeannie said, more to herself than Rhetta. The rain was flooding the road. Visibility was practically nil. Rhetta was covered in icy sweat, trembling uncontrollably, so close to shattering that it took everything in her to stay in control.

  She had told Rhetta to drive in “the back way.” Rhetta started to argue that there was no back way—to lie—but Jeannie seemed to know there really was one. Rhetta had to get out to open the gate, and she thought about running again. If she could just make it to the house … There was a squad car there, and Ronnie. Through the rain, she stared longingly in the direction of her house. Then a sob burst out of her chest and she opened the gate.

  Back behind the wheel, Rhetta forced the Corolla over the muddy road, holding her breath as it sank more deeply, as the wheels spun. She didn’t think they were going to make it any farther. So much for her other plan, which was to run off the road. She’d been tempted several times on the long drive, but Jeannie had held the gun too tightly, aiming at Rhetta’s temple.

  “No one is going to bother us,” Jeannie said, half to herself. She flashed Rhetta an apologetic smile. “When I called? I told them we’d had a car accident. Your husband is probably searching for us now. I’m sorry. I know he’ll be upset.”

  She’s crazy, Rhetta thought. And crazy people do crazy things. Oh, dear God, help me. Please, help me.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Grace bit off. She was soaked to the bone. They had just wheeled Forrest into the entrance of the tiniest urgent care facility Grace had ever seen. Dr. Alcina accompanied the gurney, speaking with the on-duty physician. One look at him and Grace did not think there was going to be a happy ending.

  “What were you thinking?” Grace repeated, lowering her voice as a woman in scrubs passed blankets all around. She threw it over her shoulders, too angry to bother with taking her jacket off first.

  “That they were insane,” Eunice Catlett said as Delbert’s arms came around her. They both looked half dead themselves. They’d ridden in the cab with Forrest; Grace, Ham, and the doctor had sat in the truck bed under tarps that had done very little to keep them dry. Friesen was back with the helicopter, waiting for a break in the weather.

  “We thought,” Mr. Catlett said, “that Roberta was killing him with all her neurotic hypochondria. We wanted to save him from whatever it was she was doing to him.”

  “We were trying to … to detox him,” Eunice said. “We were praying and—”

  “Praying?” Grace interrupted. “You thought you’d pray away a life-threatening illness? Would you pray away a forest fire? Pray if there was a bomb underneath that goddamn trailer? Or would you actually do something?”

  “That’s what we did,” Mrs. Catlett said between sobs. “We hired those men to rescue him—”

  “You mean kidnap him?” Grace said. “And believe me, that was a kidnapping. And they’ll be charged, same as you.”

  The old lady shrank against her husband’s chest. He held her. They looked frail and terrified.

  “So you couldn’t talk to his doctor? Get a second opinion?” Ham said.

  Speaking over his wife’s head, Mr. Catlett looked in the direction they had taken his grandson.

  “No. They wouldn’t let us near him. We didn’t know his doctor.”

  “You knew Mrs. Moore, at church,” Grace said. “You could have asked her. There was so much you could have done—”

  “It was the pump,” Mr. Catlett murmured. “They were obsessed with it—either to let him have it or not. All we could think was that it would pour chemicals into his body. And—and we weren’t even sure he actually had diabetes.”

  “Well, he does,” Grace said, unable to pity them. “And thanks to you, he’s on the verge of dying from it.”

  She looked over at Ham, who was on his cell, calling Captain Perry. She couldn’t read the expression on his face, which was unusual for her. He hung up and she went over to him.

  “Two things,” he said. “We got the warrant. Captain Perry wants us to get with Butch to serve it. As our reward.” His smile was fleeting.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” she said, staring into his eyes, bracing herself.

  He didn’t make her wait. “Jeannie Johnson called on Rhetta’s cell phone. They’re out somewhere in the storm. They had an accident.”

  “Why didn’t Rhetta make the call?” Grace asked, whipping out her cell phone. She punched in Rhetta’s number.

  “Jeannie told Captain Perry that she and Bobby were trying to get the car out of the mud.”

  “Her phone’s ringing,” Grace said, holding up a hand. “It’s going straight to voice mail. Rhetta, call. Let me know you’re okay.” She called Ronnie.

  “Did you hear?” she asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’re driving all over the place looking for the car but we can’t see a damn thing. Jeannie said they were okay but no one is answering the phone.”

  “Shit,” Grace said. “Maybe the storm’s screwed it up.”

  “Grace,” he added, “did you hear about the stalker? Some guy was following Mae at the mall. I’ve got her with me.”

  Some guy. She went cold. “You’ve got her, right? Todd’s okay?”

  “We’re all here. Now if we can just find Mom—yes, Mae, and Speckles, too—I’ll stop holding my breath.”

  “Copy that,” Grace said.

  She disconnected. Then she turned to the Catletts. “We’re going to take your truck,” she said. “We’ll get it back to you later.” To Ham, “Let’s go.”

  Grace and Ham changed into dry clothes even though, given the weather conditions, there didn’t seem to be much point. Then they met up with Butch at the department and got ready to rumble. Captain Perry had insisted on backup—lots of it—and as everyone trundled along the boggy road into the enclave, Grace drawled, “We got us a convoy.”

  “Breaker, breaker,” Ham said. He was driving. They both had their weapons at the ready. Behind them, squad cars with good, armed cops followed with lights flashing. Sirens were off.

  They reached the compound gate. The Sons of Oklahoma stood in full paramilitary uniform—dark green hats, olive-green shirts and jackets, brown pants, boots. Over each breast pocket was a name written in marker; beside it, a Confederate flag.

  Across each chest … ammo. Submachine gun belts. They weren’t dickin’ around today.

  “Got a warrant,” Grace said through a bullhorn. “Tommy Miller, come on down.”

  “He ain’t here.” She recognized that voice: DeWitt, the coon killer.

  It didn’t matter if Miller was there or not. They were serving the warrant on the location, not a person. Still, she liked to know where her main adversaries were whenever possible.

  “What about Johnson?” she asked.

  There was silence.

  This is wrong, G
race thought, glancing at Ham. Something’s up.

  “He’s on his way,” Jeannie murmured as they made a pot of coffee in the house. Ronnie and the kids weren’t there. The squad car wasn’t there. No one was there, except Jeannie and Rhetta.

  And Hunter Johnson was on his way.

  Jeannie crossed to the turquoise bag on the table and pulled out the hairbrush Rhetta had packed for her, and the plastic sack from the drugstore that contained all her new makeup. Brenda Kessel’s gun was in there, too. Rhetta had watched Jeannie place it in the bag when they got out of the Corolla and rushed into the house. Maybe Jeannie figured she didn’t need it anymore.

  “Jeannie, he might be … he might not understand what’s going on,” Rhetta said. She cast a surreptitious gaze around her kitchen, with all its many potential weapons—frying pans, knives—and the lockbox of guns in the bedroom closet. The pot of hot coffee that was nearly finished brewing.

  And the shotgun in the barn.

  Jeannie looked down. “I-I’ll make him see.”

  “You ran away from him because he hit you,” Rhetta reminded her. “You left him. He must be so angry. He might lose his temper again.”

  “He …” Jeannie touched her swollen face. She grabbed the coffee carafe and carried it to the sink. The last drops of the brewed coffee hissed against the heating element.

  Taking a deep breath, she turned halfway facing Rhetta. Rhetta kept her attention firmly on her, but mentally, she was seeing the turquoise bag. Reaching for it, grabbing it—

  “Hey!” Jeannie shouted.

  And then Rhetta was doing it in real life.

  With the bag in her arms, Rhetta flew out the front door, racing through the mud, heading for the barn. She had the gun.

  There was a shotgun in the barn. If she could grab them and get to the road before he got here—or maybe it was better to stay in the barn—she didn’t know what to do; she raced through ashes and mud, huffing, wheezing, grabbing on to a gatepost to keep herself from falling.

  “No, wait!” Jeannie yelled.