True Light

  Now he had their attention. “Where is it?” Larry asked.

  “It’s not here.” Sweat dripped into his eyes. “Let her go and I’ll take you to it.”

  Jack laughed. “You’ve got it backwards, little bro. I’ll stay here with your hot little girlfriend. You take Larry to the gold, and when we have it in our hands, we let her go. You pull any tricks, and we kill her.”

  “We’ve got nothing to lose,” Larry snapped. “We’re already wanted for murder. We’ve lost our wives and our children, our homes and our inheritance.”

  Deni got her feet under her and started to rise, but Jack’s gun came back to her head. Squeezing her eyes shut, she waited for him to pull the trigger.

  “It’s not far,” Mark said. “It’s hidden in a tree in the woods near my house.”

  “A tree?” Larry almost spat the word. “Who do you think you’re dealing with?”

  Deni opened her eyes again and saw the front door. If she could just get to that door, open it, squeal with all her might.

  “I’m telling the truth.” Mark’s voice wobbled. “You know I don’t have it at either one of these houses, because you tore them both apart looking for it. Where else could I have it? I’ll take you to it, but you both come with me. Once you have it in your hands, you can take off from there.”

  Deni had gotten to her knees. Jack grabbed her by the neck, jerked her to her feet, and pressed the revolver up to her ear. Her mind raced for an escape.

  God, please . . .

  Cursing, Jack said, “You’re not calling the shots, Mark! We’re in charge here. Larry’ll go with you, and I’ll stay here with her.”

  Deni met Mark’s eyes. She had never seen such fear. The terror was for her, she knew — as if he knew in his heart that he had set her up for murder.

  But she nodded her head, telling him to go.

  She had no idea what Jack might do to her while Mark was gone, but this was at least a way of buying time. Maybe someone would see him on the way. Maybe her father would come looking for them. Maybe she could figure out a way to turn the tables.

  She couldn’t communicate all that to Mark — but he nodded, as if he understood. I’ll hurry, his intense eyes seemed to say.

  Jack laughed and buried his face in her hair, nuzzling against her neck. She shrank from his touch. She would kill him if she could, she realized. She had fought his murderous father, and she could fight him.

  “Forget it,” Mark said. “I’m not going unless she comes too.”

  Larry hit him across his stitches and Mark stumbled back, but he quickly righted himself. “Unbind her!” he yelled.

  “She’s staying here!” Jack said.

  Mark’s eyes flashed. “Then find the stinking gold yourself.”

  Larry thrust the pistol into Mark’s throat. Jerking his chin up, Mark spoke through his teeth. “Kill me, if you want. You’ll never find it then.”

  Deni saw the look pass between Larry and Jack. Suddenly, Larry tossed the rifle to Jack. Keeping the Glock against Mark’s head, he took Mark’s broken arm, tore off the sling, and wrenched his cast behind his back. Pain twisted through Mark’s bones.

  Deni tried to scream, but only a muffled squeal came out.

  Grabbing Mark’s collarbone brace, Larry jerked it until the bone snapped again. Mark arched in pain.

  Larry dragged him to the door and looked over his shoulder. “If we’re not back in ten minutes, Jack, you know what to do.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  DENI WATCHED MARK LEAVE WITH HIS BROTHER. SHE turned back to Jack, raising her chin and trying to look stronger than she was.

  It was a mistake, because he saw it as a challenge. Hanging the rifle from its sling, he shoved his revolver against her neck. “What’s the matter, darlin’?”

  She pressed her head back against the wall.

  “I’ve known since the first day you came to this house to swim in my dad’s pool that you were salivating for me.”

  She grunted out her protest and shook her head hard. She’d been stupid then, but not that stupid.

  “Remember when my little wife Grace was so jealous of you and your friend?”

  He came closer to her, touched the inside collar of her shirt.

  Twisting away from him, she threw herself on the floor, breaking his hold on her. Pushing with her knees, she tried to crawl to the door.

  Jack was on her in an instant, picking her up by her waist and carrying her up the stairs. “You’re feisty, aren’t you, baby? My dad had good taste.”

  She kicked and bucked her head, trying to make him drop her. He got to the top of the stairs and tripped over some books on the floor. She fell out of his grip again and rolled to her back.

  “Want to play rough?” he said through his teeth as he grabbed her again.

  She squealed and flailed and fought. But she didn’t know how long she could hold him off.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  STRUGGLING WITH THE PAIN FIRING THROUGH HIM, MARK led Larry through the trees as fast as he could. The sooner he could get to the gold, the sooner he could get back to Deni.

  Ever aware of the gun at his back, Mark prayed as he ran. God, please protect her!

  He saw the stump up ahead. “There it is,” he said, slowing down. He reached it and started pulling out the leaves with his good hand.

  Larry was out of breath. “You’ve got to be kidding. Are you setting me up?”

  Mark reached inside for the metal box. He tried to pull it out, but it was heavy, and agony shot spears through his broken bones.

  “Hold it!” Larry cocked his pistol. “You got a gun in there? You trying to put one over on me?”

  Mark raised his good arm and took a step back. “Open it yourself, if you want. It’s full of gold.”

  Larry moved closer, keeping the gun on Mark, and opened the box. There they were, all ninety-seven coins. Larry’s eyes rounded lustfully as he took in the sight. He grabbed some of them, let them fall through his fingers. Perspiration rolled down his temples as he started filling his coat and pants pockets with the coins.

  Mark knew his brother had no reason to keep him alive now.

  Taking advantage of Larry’s distraction, he took off running, each footstep jolting his fractured bones.

  He heard Larry drop the toolbox, footsteps pounding the earth behind him.

  Mark didn’t look back. He kept running, moving from left to right through the trees, knowing that Larry could kill him at any moment before he could get back to the house and save Deni from Jack.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  DENI PUSHED WITH HER FEET, BACKING INTO THE OFFICE, sliding across the carpet until she reached the wall with a window. She struggled to get to her feet, but Jack grabbed them out from under her, knocking her to her back.

  She kicked him in the mouth.

  He stumbled back, bumping into the desk. The oil lamp she’d left there tumbled onto the floor. Flames spilled across the carpet.

  But in his rage, he didn’t see them. He swung and slapped her, knocking her head back against the wall. She kicked him again, but he grabbed her feet and dragged her toward the door.

  She twisted helplessly, looking up at the window through which she could call for help, if she could just get it open.

  Smoke began to fill the room, and suddenly, Jack let her go.

  She looked back and saw that he was stamping out the flames that had now crossed the doorway. The fire spread as if it had life, ravenously devouring the carpet, creeping toward her. She slid to the side, away from the window as the flames grew taller, licking up the walls.

  SIXTY-SIX

  LARRY WAS RIGHT ON HIS HEELS AS MARK MADE HIS WAY back to his father’s house. As he ran, he expected Larry to fire. But his brother must have been leery of drawing attention. Bent on reaching Deni first, Mark crossed the yard and burst in through the back door. Smoke filled the house, and Mark saw flames devouring the staircase. “Deni!” he screamed.

  He saw Jack stomping through the flames upsta
irs, scaling the banister, leaping to the first floor. As he hit the ground, his revolver went off.

  Time seemed to slow into still pictures. Jack’s gun recoiling, the bullet tearing through Mark’s flesh, wrenching, agonizing, exploding pain doubling him in two, throwing him back into the glass door . . . glass shattering . . . flames reaching . . . Jack getting to his feet . . . Larry kicking Mark out of the doorway. Opening the door. Running.

  Mark struggled to sit up. Blood seeped into his shirt, and he pressed his hand against the wound in his gut. Fire . . . Deni . . .

  He heard her squealing at the top of the stairs. He got to his feet, stumbled through the flames. The fire was spreading across the carpet, ripping up the walls, spreading to the curtains.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  His hand was wet with blood, his shirt soaked. His mind raced.

  God, save us!

  He jerked a curtain off a wall that hadn’t yet been hit by the fire, and used it to try to smother the flames on the stairs as he made his way up. He felt the flames licking at his skin, singing the hair on his arms, licking up the denim of his jeans.

  Dizziness hit him as he reached the top of the stairs. Pressing a hand against his wound, he tried to go on. Gasping for breath, he fought the flames. There was a fire extinguisher somewhere. He had seen it on the floor in one of the rooms, pulled out with everything else. Where had it been?

  The bathroom!

  He lurched into the room across from the office and saw the red tank lying on the floor. Letting go of his wound, he reached for it with his blood-covered hand.

  He pulled the pin and squeezed the trigger.

  The white foam cleared a way into his father’s office, smothering the flames. Now he could see her — Deni was hunched in a ball with her face in a corner. He staggered to her and ripped the duct tape from her hands.

  She fought her way upright, coughing . . .

  The room began to spin. He felt himself hit the floor. Darkness closed in on him as he heard Deni screaming.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  DENI RIPPED THE TAPE FROM HER MOUTH, GOT TO HER feet, and opened the window. “Help!” Her hoarse scream tore across the neighborhood. “Someone help!”

  She fell to Mark’s side, mashing her fist into his wound to stop the bleeding. Smoke still billowed into the room, telling her that, although the fire was mostly out in this room, it was still raging elsewhere.

  She could take the fire extinguisher and go for help. But by the time she got back, Mark would have bled to death.

  No, she had to stay here and stop the bleeding. As she kept her hands on Mark’s stomach, she screamed until she had no voice left.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  ON HIS WAY BACK HOME FROM THE WELL, HANK HUCKABEE heard screaming. He saw the smoke pouring from the window of Vic’s house and ran toward it. As he approached, he saw flames engulfing the first floor, but the screaming came from upstairs.

  He dragged his garbage can full of well water into the house and used it to extinguish some of the flames. By that time, Merilee Goff had appeared with a fire extinguisher. Rushing in, she covered the stairway, killing the flames. Hank ran up the slippery stairs and found a hysterical Deni Branning — and Mark Green bleeding to death.

  DENI DIDN’T KNOW HOW MUCH TIME HAD PASSED BEFORE the paramedics arrived. Someone had gone to get her father, and Doug jumped into the sheriff’s van, still parked in his driveway, and flew out of Oak Hollow to find the paramedics.

  Prayers, bargains, and desperate pleas tumbled through Deni’s mind as she tried to keep Mark alive. It seemed like an eternity before she heard the sirens, and the paramedics ran in with a gurney. Pushing her out of the way, they rushed him into their ambulance. Doug and Kay intercepted her as she tried to follow, but she pushed past them. “I have to go with him!”

  “Deni, you’re bleeding!” her mother cried.

  Deni looked down at her wet hands. “It’s not me. It’s him!” She started to sob and looked up at her dad. “Go after Larry and Jack, Dad. You can’t let them get away.”

  SIXTY-NINE

  DOUG DIDN’T WAIT FOR BACKUP BEFORE GOING AFTER Larry and Jack Green. Their tracks led him into the woods. These men who had tormented his daughter and almost killed their own brother would not get away this time.

  He heard sirens on the other side of the trees, dogs barking, voices yelling.

  And then he saw the brothers, running back toward him. Doug raised his gun. “Freeze!” he shouted. “Don’t move!”

  Larry fired. Doug dove and felt the bullet whistle past his face. He returned fire from the ground, and Larry dropped.

  Jack raised his hands in the air, his gun pointed at the sky.

  “Drop the gun!” Jack looked from side to side. Wheaton and his men were moving toward him from the other side of the woods. He lowered the revolver . . .

  And put it to his head.

  The gun went off, and he hit the ground with a thud.

  Doug couldn’t believe what he’d seen. Slowly, he got up, keeping his pistol trained on the two bodies on the ground. He moved closer, watching to see if either of them moved.

  Wheaton ran through the trees toward him. When he saw the two bodies on the ground, he knelt to check their pulses. He nodded up at Doug. “They’re gone,” he said.

  Doug leaned against a tree, letting his weapon drop to his side.

  It was over now.

  SEVENTY

  WHEATON LET DOUG TAKE THE SHERIFF’S VAN TO BIRMINGHAM so his family could ride along. As he drove, he heard Martha weeping in the backseat. Kay sat next to her, comforting her as they flew through town.

  Beth sniffed behind him. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw her eyes, hollow and vacant. Jimmy Scarbrough sat next to her, his face white. Doug hoped Jimmy’s mother was still at the hospital with his dad.

  Logan sat on the other side of Beth, holding his sister’s hand. “They can’t kill Mark,” Logan said. “He’s tough. He’s probably better already.”

  Doug stayed quiet. The opposite was probably more likely. As tough as Mark was, Doug had seen the blood on the carpet.

  Jeff, in the passenger seat, seemed to sense Doug’s thoughts. “He’s gonna make it, Dad.”

  Doug stared through the windshield. “I hope you’re right.”

  It would be so unfair if Mark died, after all he’d been through. It would destroy Deni, devastate Martha, demoralize Beth.

  And Doug himself would never get over it. What would he tell his family? How would he explain such tragedy to his church?

  He struggled to see through the tears in his eyes as he drove the dark, deserted streets. Please, God. Don’t let him die. He means so much to all of us.

  Finally, Logan broke the silence. “Daddy, when is this ever gonna be over?”

  He glanced back at his youngest. “When will what be over?”

  “The stinking Pulses. I’m sick of this. I want things back like they were before.”

  Doug looked through the glass to the stars sprinkling the night sky, and he wished the same thing. If they could only turn back time, to the days of peace and prosperity, before evil ran so rampant, when everyone he knew was thriving and healthy.

  Had it really been that way? Or had he just viewed the world through the filter of his affluence, through the lenses of American technology, hurrying along so fast that he didn’t have time to see the suffering around him? Was it bliss or merely ignorance?

  The work God was doing in them all was important. Purging out the waste, intensifying their purpose. They were all stronger for it.

  But like Logan, he longed for it to end.

  He thought of his sermon last week, on the reason for God’s testing. The Scripture he’d used was from Deuteronomy 8, verses 2 and 3.

  Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and th
en feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

  Though he had trouble embracing the theme of that sermon now — that this time of testing was to make them more righteous, more useful for the kingdom of God — he knew it was true. God was doing a work in them all. And there might be more yet to come.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  DOUG AND KAY FOUND DENI ON A TABLE IN AN EXAMINING room, breathing into an oxygen mask, her hands and clothes still covered with blood. She reached for Kay, trembling.

  “We got them,” Doug told her. “Larry and Jack are dead.”

  Her forehead wrinkled as she stared into her father’s eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. They won’t cause any more trouble for Mark.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and tears rolled down her face. “The doctors took him as soon as we got here. I don’t know if he was dead or alive.”

  “Oh, honey, he’s alive,” Doug said. “They have him in surgery. They took his mother back when we came in.”

  Deni opened her eyes and pulled off the mask. Tears streaked through the soot on her face. “They can save him, can’t they? They saved Zach and Sheriff Scarbrough.”

  “I hope so, sweetheart.”

  “He was bleeding so much . . . but he came up the stairs and saved me.”

  Kay got a paper towel and some alcohol and began to wipe the blood off Deni’s hands. “If we had some water, we could get you cleaned up. But this’ll have to do for now.”

  She scrubbed hard, rubbing off every spot. “Rubbing alcohol is good for so many things,” Kay said. “Did you know you can wash mirrors with it? Or is that hydrogen peroxide? I always get the two mixed up. I never have tried it because there’s never much of either one around, but I think I heard Martha Stewart say once — ”