It was an endless cycle of discontent, all of it diverting them from their original course: loving and being committed to each other. It was what had made Joe’s Place—and ultimately Issie—so attractive to him.
Ben, Ray’s son, came back from his shower, and Mark smiled weakly and shook his hand. The boy’s eyes were red, and he looked more like a scared little boy than a college track star.
“Any word?” Ben asked his father.
“No, son. No word.”
Nor was there any change all that afternoon.
Chapter Thirty-One
Since money was getting low, Mark and Allie stayed in a less expensive, more obscure hotel near the French Quarter that night and ate hamburgers that they’d picked up on the way back. The room came with only one bed, which infuriated her.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” she told him when they unlocked the musty room and spotted the one bed.
“That’s a little silly, don’t you think, considering that we shared a bed for four years? It’s not like I’m going to attack you in your sleep.”
“I don’t want to sleep in the same bed with you,” she bit out.
They were both irritable, and he hadn’t shaven. Thick stubble shadowed his face, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. “Allie, the minute my head hits that pillow, I’m gonna be out. It’ll be just like you’re alone, if that makes you feel better.”
“But I don’t think it’s right, Mark. Sharing a bed is a privilege between a husband and wife, and we are not husband and wife. We haven’t been in eight weeks.”
“For heaven’s sake, Allie. I’ll sleep on the floor then!”
He grabbed the pillow off the bed and threw it onto the stained carpet. She jumped when she saw a roach migrating across the room. Mark stepped on it, then threw it away.
“Long way from the Marriott, huh?” he asked.
He went to the closet for a blanket and threw it down on the floor next to the pillow. The thought of roaches crawling on him while he slept sickened her. “Mark, you can’t sleep down there.”
“Watch me. I could sleep anywhere right now. There’s no choice, anyway.”
“All right, sleep on the bed,” she said finally.
He sighed, then leveled his red eyes on her. “I’ll sleep on top of the bedspread so we don’t accidentally touch. How would that be?”
She recognized the sarcasm, and it made her angrier. “Sounds good to me.”
“Fine.”
She went into the bathroom to take a bath and brush her teeth, and when she came out, Mark was already asleep on top of the covers, facing the window. She got in on the other side and lay still for a long moment.
When he began to snore, she tried to feel irritated, but some secret part of her found comfort in that. Turning her back to him, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
A thud against their door woke her. She sat bolt upright in bed and listened. The glowing clock beside her told her several hours had passed since she’d fallen asleep.
She heard footsteps in the hall.
“Mark,” she whispered. “Mark!”
He didn’t hear, so she reached for the lamp on the bed table to turn on the light, but she knocked over a glass.
Mark woke up. “What is it?” he muttered.
“I heard something outside.”
He got up and padded across the room to the door. She followed him, listening.
They heard the sound again, footsteps, then a thud, and a scraping sound.
Mark went to the door and looked out through the peephole.
Allie came up behind him and touched his back, as if that could protect her. He turned around. “Come look,” he whispered, then pulled her toward the peephole.
She stood on her toes and peered out. A man was standing at the door across the hall from them. He was obviously drunk and barely able to stand, repeatedly trying and failing to get his key into his door.
As she watched, someone opened the door, and he almost fell into the room.
“Where have you been?” a woman shouted.
He muttered something about a bar downstairs, and she slammed the door behind him.
Allie turned around. Mark was leaning on one arm against the door, close, too close, and she looked up at him in the darkness. “Guess it was a false alarm. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “No problem. I’m sorry he woke you.”
The kindness in his voice almost did her in. She realized that her coldness gave him reason to treat her with contempt—which, ironically, she was better able to handle.
“Well, no point in standing here. Let’s go back to bed.”
He took her hand, as if he sensed that she was still frightened, and led her to the bed. She slid in, and he covered her up, then went around to his side.
She lay there on her side, shivering.
“Are you cold?” he asked, his voice a gravelly baritone against her ear.
“No. Just still shaking from the scare. But you must be cold.”
“A little,” he said.
She knew he waited for her to invite him under the covers, but something inside her, some hurt, self-protective part of her, refused. Finally, he did it without asking. Before she could object, he had slid up behind her, set his knees at the back of hers, and slid his arms around her.
“Mark…”
“Shhh,” he said. “I’m just trying to warm you up and make you stop shaking. Just relax and quit trying to be mad at me. Close your eyes.”
Trying to be mad at him? The thought almost made her smile. It sometimes did take an effort, when things were going well and he was so much like he used to be. But then she remembered walking in on him holding Issie, remembered him lying his way out of it, remembered the sick despair that had crushed her as she’d tried to decide what to do.
She stiffened. “I can’t sleep with you touching me,” she said.
He let her go and backed away. “You used to sleep like a baby when I was holding you.”
“I’ve gotten used to sleeping alone.”
A moment passed, and then she felt him turn over, slide out from under the covers, and drop back on top of the spread. Not another word was spoken until morning.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Mark stood inside the airport looking out onto the tarmac at the aircraft they were about to board, a small commuter jet that looked tiny compared to the massive airliners around it.
It was starting to rain, and he wished they had thought to bring an umbrella. He looked at Allie and saw the distant, worried look on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I just had this sick feeling. I don’t know if I’m more afraid of getting on that little plane in a storm or of taking my chances with the killer.”
“The plane is fine, Allie. It’s all we could afford.”
“If it weren’t raining, I wouldn’t be worried.”
“We could wait. But the tickets are nonrefundable.”
Chilled, she rubbed her arms, and he fought the urge to put his arm around her to warm her. After last night’s rebuff, he had decided she would have to make the next move. “I’ll be all right,” she said.
“Are you sure? You didn’t eat much breakfast. Maybe you need something in your stomach.”
“No, there’s no time.”
“I don’t want you to get—”
“I said I’ll be all right!”
He sighed, disgusted, and turned back to the window. What was he doing here with a woman who didn’t want him near her? His very presence seemed to keep her so tense that she couldn’t eat or sleep. So far, he hadn’t really protected her from anything. Was all of this wasted effort?
Their flight number was called, and Mark picked up their bags. Allie started for the gate, and he followed.
A handful of others trotted down the steps onto the tarmac ahead of them. The rain was picking up; thunder boomed above the sound of the jet engines;
the scent of fuel and exhaust washed over them as they hurried toward the plane. Allie walked rapidly in front of him, carrying her purse in one hand and a small bag in the other.
Mark heard a crack from his left, and the bag flew out of Allie’s hand. She screamed and spun around. A bullet! he thought. Someone shot at Allie! He dropped the suitcases and hurled himself forward.
Allie fell beneath him, still screaming.
He covered Allie entirely with his body. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” he chanted, trying to reassure her. But it wasn’t okay. Another shot cracked the air. The bullet hit him, whiplashing his head sideways.
Lord, protect her, was the last conscious thought that cried through his mind before blackness overtook him.
Allie’s screams shrilled into a higher, more desperate pitch as she felt the impact of the bullet move Mark’s body. Then he went limp, and she saw the blood dripping onto the concrete. Screaming in a voice that seemed distant, apart from her, she rolled him over. Forgetting the threat of being struck by another bullet, she knelt beside him and tried to wake him.
Chaos surrounded them as people screamed and ran for cover. “Help me!” she screamed. Mark lay limp, lifeless, blood gushing from the side of his head and pooling on the asphalt. “Somebody please help me!” She clutched his head with trembling hands, trying to stop his bleeding.
Time seemed frozen, and no help came. Finally, security guards appeared, then a rescue unit and police officers. Someone pried her hands from his wound and tried to pull her away, but she fought them. Even so, she soon found herself sitting on the ground a few feet from him. “I have to stay with him. He needs me!”
“You can, ma’am. But we need to check you first. Were you hit?”
She watched them working desperately on Mark. “Please, you’ve got to save him! Please.”
“Ma’am, are you hurt?” they asked, examining the scrapes and bruises she’d received from being thrown to the ground.
“No!” she shouted, pushing their hands away. “Help him!”
But there were people helping him. It just wasn’t enough. He was going to die. She knew it.
An officer with a badge that said Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office bent down to her. “Ma’am, did you see the shooter?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t say how far away he was?”
“No. I…I think it came from over there.” She pointed in the direction from which the bullet had come. “My bag…got hit first.”
Several other officers clustered around the bag, and she turned back to Mark. “Is he alive?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
That was all she could get out of them as she watched them lifting him onto a gurney.
She got to her feet and found that her legs were weak. She followed as they loaded him into a rescue unit. “It was meant for me,” she told them, as if they would realize the mistake and clear the whole mess up. “I’m the fire wife.”
“Fire wife?” A cop was in her way at once, but she pushed him aside and climbed in next to Mark. “Guys, she’s a fire wife!” he shouted.
The paramedic closed the doors. Allie sat out of the way as they worked on him, putting tubes down his throat, an IV in his arm, applying pressure to his wound. One paramedic barked out vitals on the radio to the online physician at the hospital where they were headed.
He was still alive; she clung to that reality, and from somewhere she found the strength to pray. She reached between the paramedics to touch Mark’s hand. Hers was still covered with his blood. His was warm, though limp. Sobbing, she closed her eyes and sent up her pleas to God, offering him bargains and promises and sacrifices, all peppered with terror and rage and confusion and desperation.
They were at the hospital in moments, and she followed them out of the ambulance as if in a fog, only dimly aware of the handful of reporters who shouted questions that she ignored.
They whisked him away from her before she had time to tell them how urgent it was that they save him, how she needed another chance with him, how good a man he was…
And they whisked her into an emergency room stall where they began to check her scrapes and bruises, her blood pressure, her temperature, asking her questions that she couldn’t understand, couldn’t answer, couldn’t think about…
All she could think of was her husband, and the fact that she might never have the chance to make things right with him.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The television set in the living area of the Midtown Station in Newpointe blared the news report as WVUE-TV broadcast live from the New Orleans airport. Nick Foster, the room’s only occupant, looked up from the notes he was making for Sunday’s sermon, his attention caught by the urgent tone of the news correspondent. “John, the airport is teeming with police and airport security personnel as they comb the area from which the bullet seems to have been fired. Just over my left shoulder is the area where the shooter probably stood, although there doesn’t seem to be any witnesses. The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office responded to the call, just after the shooting, but we’re told that the Kenner Police Department is investigating the case. Police have determined that the shooter did not come through security; otherwise his gun would have been found. Instead, they believe he came through the gates leading to the tarmac and found a place on which to perch that would give him a clear shot of his victim. He is believed to be the Newpointe serial killer, since the victim was a Newpointe fireman.”
Nick threw his notes aside; they fluttered across the floor. “Slater! Dan! Hey, anybody!” he yelled.
“Witnesses say that the first bullet hit Allison Branning’s bag, at which point her husband, Fireman Mark Branning, flung himself over her to protect her.”
“No, not Mark,” Nick whispered, slowly rising to his feet.
“The second bullet fired, and he was hit in the head. It’s clear that both bullets were intended for Mrs. Branning. Fortunately, she was not injured, but we have no word on Branning’s condition. We’ll have more for you later, John, as this bizarre case continues to unfold.”
Nick almost tripped on his chair as he rushed to the door. “Mark’s been shot!. he shouted to anyone who could hear. “He got Mark!”
He found Slater Finch lying on a bed napping, and Slater sat up and squinted at him. “What?”
“Mark Branning’s been shot!”
He ran to the bathroom where there was a light under the door, and banged for whomever was in there. “Mark Branning was shot at the airport!”
Frantic, he searched for others. Where was everybody?
Slater was on his feet now, following Nick. “How do you know? Where did you hear this?”
“On the news.” Nick’s hands were shaking, and he rushed around a corner and ran into Junior Reynolds. “Mark Branning—”
“I heard you,” Junior said, breathless. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said, rushing to the phone. “I’ll call.”
He started dialing information as Bob Sigrest and Issie Mattreaux came in from the garage. “What’s going on?” Bob asked.
“Mark’s been shot.”
Issie uttered a loud curse, then dropped slowly into a chair.
By the time Nick had been connected with East Jefferson Hospital’s intensive care unit waiting room, all of the firemen and paramedics on duty, except for Dan Nichols, were in the room. He asked for Allie, but no one came to the phone. Nick hung up, frustrated and desperate. Some of them were now gathered around the television waiting for updates, while others ran next door to tell Stan, in case he hadn’t heard. Issie just sat motionless, staring into space.
“I’ve got to get up there,” Nick said, picking up the phone and dialing Craig Barnes’s beeper. “I’ve got to go sit this out with Allie.”
“You can’t, man. You’ve got to stay on duty,” Slater said. “That was the deal.”
“But I’m their pastor! This is the kind of thing I’m supposed to be there for!??
?
“Craig is never gonna let you off. Not unless you get a replacement. Pat Castor will have a fit if she thinks we’re operating with less than a full crew.”
“Then I’ve got to call someone else in.”
“They’re all gone with their wives. You think they’re gonna leave their wives alone after they hear about this? It means he knows, man. He knows where they are. What they’re doing. He can find them.”
Nick was feeling nauseous. “I’ll call George Broussard.”
“George? After what he’s been through?”
Nick put the phone back down. “You’re right.” He stood motionless for a moment, lost in thought, then grabbed the phone again and tried the ICU waiting room. “But Allie can’t be there alone. This guy will stop at nothing.”
But despite how much he wanted to go, he knew he wasn’t going to get to. He had a job to do, and he was stuck with it.
A little over an hour later, Dan came jogging back in, drenched from head to foot in sweat. He saw the others clustered around the television set, and stopped cold. “What’s going on?”
Nick looked up at him. “Where have you been?”
“Out jogging,” Dan said. “What happened?”
Issie wiped the tears on her face. “Mark’s been shot.”
“Mark Branning?”
“Yes, Mark Branning,” Nick said. “He was shot at the airport as he and Allie were about to get on a plane.”
Dan dropped his towel and gaped at his pastor. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Dan’s face reddened, and his mouth fell open as if in a silent groan. “I don’t believe this,” he muttered finally. “It can’t be happening. What hospital is he in?”
“East Jefferson. I tried to call but couldn’t find out anything.”
Dan’s eyes were misting over, and his cheeks were mottled now in blotchy patches of red. Sweat ran from his wet blonde hair down his face. “You couldn’t find out if he was dead or alive?” he yelled. “Don’t they know?”