“You know, it’s not your job to be the caretaker of the whole world. That’s God’s job.”
“I really do know that,” Nick said. “But she’s a special case.”
“Why? Because she’s good-looking?”
“No,” Nick said. “Because she seems like such a sad person.”
Dan made a face. “She doesn’t seem that sad to me.”
“That’s because you don’t know her that well.”
He breathed a laugh. “And you do? You two could hardly look each other in the eye.”
Nick looked at him as if he couldn’t believe he’d said that. “That isn’t true.”
“It is true. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you two had a crush on each other.”
Nick laughed out loud, but it seemed a little overdone. “The last person in the world Issie would ever get involved with is a preacher. It’s not just us Christians who don’t want to be unequally yoked, you know. The unbelievers aren’t real crazy about it, either. You’re lucky, you know,” Nick said. “You and Jill, you start off with a lot going for you. You care about the same things. You both want to be fruitful for God. You care about how he sees you. You’ll both make Christ the center of your relationship. If you two got married, you’d start off way ahead of the game already.”
“You act like we’re engaged.”
Nick stared into him. “Well, haven’t you thought about it?”
Dan didn’t want to answer that. It made him real uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat. “We’re a long way from that.”
“Oh. My mistake. I thought you two were getting along real well.”
“Well, you don’t marry someone just because you get along real well. At least you shouldn’t. I mean, there has to be more to it, doesn’t there? There has to be a lot of trust.”
“You don’t trust Jill?” Nick asked.
Dan rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. Of course I do. But maybe not in that way. Not enough to know that she’ll stay with me for the rest of my life.”
“What about yourself? Do you trust yourself to stay with her for the rest of your life?”
Dan shook his head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”
“Are you thinking about it?” Nick asked.
Dan rubbed the stubble on his face. “Maybe. But this covenant stuff kind of got me thinking. It’s pretty serious stuff…that two-becoming-one business. I don’t think most Christians realize how serious it is.”
“I’d say you’re right.”
“I mean, if they realized that marriage really is a covenant…and it’s binding and can’t be broken without ripping—”
The telephone rang suddenly and Dan jumped. He realized he was tense, perspiring. Did the subject get under his skin that much? Thankfully, he got up and answered the phone on the wall. “Midtown Station.”
“Dan, is that you?” He recognized the voice of Lisa Manning, one of the women he’d taken out a time or two before Jill.
“Hey, Lisa. What’s up?” He noticed that Nick looked accusingly up at him, as if Dan had solicited the call.
“I hate to call so late,” she said. “But I figured you’d still be up. I have to go to this big dinner tomorrow night. One of those coat and tie functions, and I thought it was a shame to get all dressed up and not have a date.”
He felt his muscles tightening. It was getting hotter in the room. He wondered if something was wrong with the air conditioning. He turned his back to Nick.
“So what do you say?” she asked. “You want to go as my date, or not?”
He breathed out a hard sigh. “I don’t think I’d better, Lisa.”
“You busy?” she asked.
He glanced back at Nick. The preacher wasn’t hiding the fact that he was listening. “Yeah.”
“Oh, I get it,” she said. “It’s Jill Clark, isn’t it? Are you two on again?”
“You might say that.”
“I heard you were with her when you had your accident the other night.”
“Bad news travels fast.”
“It’s a small town. She’s bringing you bad luck, you know.”
Dan laughed. “I don’t believe in luck.” He glanced at Nick again, hoping that would please him.
“So you two are an item?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean…I’m not sure. I just…don’t think I can go tomorrow night.”
The back door opened and Mark came in. Apparently, he’d been in the backyard of the station, talking on his cell phone, probably to Allie. Dan felt suddenly self-conscious. “Uh…thanks for the invitation, though.”
“No problem,” she said. “I’ll just find somebody else.”
“All right. Thanks for calling.”
He hung up and turned back to Nick and Mark as they both stared at him. “Who is that?” Mark asked.
Dan started to tell them they needed a hobby, that his life didn’t need to be their sole source of entertainment, but he knew that was a little defensive. “It was Lisa Manning.”
“Lisa Manning?” Mark asked. “What did she want?”
“She asked Dan out,” Nick said.
“Thanks a lot,” Dan shot back.
“Are you going?”
“Of course not.” He pulled his towel from around his neck. “You know, I appreciate your concern, but you’re not Jill’s caretaker just because she’s staying at your house.” He walked away.
Mark frowned. “Jill’s not staying at our house. At least, not tonight.”
Dan turned back around. “What do you mean? Where is she?”
“She’s staying in a hotel. Didn’t she tell you?”
“No!” he said, his face reddening. “I just talked to her a little while ago.”
“What did you do? Call her cell phone?”
“Well, yeah, after Allie told me to. I assumed she was there and just didn’t want to tie up your line or something.”
“She wasn’t there. She was in a hotel.”
Dan slammed his hand into the wall. “What in the world would possess her to do that? She knows this guy’s still after her.”
“She hired a guard to sit outside her room. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay,” he said. “She’s in danger.”
“She said she needed to do some research for the case. She needed to be alone so she could focus. Something about the Bible.”
“Why didn’t she tell me she wasn’t at your house?”
“Calm down,” Nick said, coming to his feet. “Maybe there’s a logical explanation.”
“There’s no excuse for her lying to me.”
“Did she lie to you?” Mark asked. “Did she ever say she was at our house?”
“No,” Dan said. “But she knew I thought she was still there, and she didn’t tell me. To me that was lying.” His face was crimson, and he headed for the phone and jerked it up. He jabbed out Jill’s number.
“Hello?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were in a hotel room?”
There was a long pause. “Dan, I just didn’t want you to worry. I knew you’d overreact.”
“Overreact?” he asked. “Because I care about you? Because I’m looking out for you? You said you like that, that you didn’t want me to stop.”
“Dan, I have a guard right outside the door. Nobody can get past him.”
“Unless he blows him away! Jill, you’re a sitting duck for this guy!”
“I’m a sitting duck no matter where I am. I needed to be alone tonight, Dan. I needed some time to read about covenant and figure out what’s going on with Jerry and Frank Harper. I needed some time to pray. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“You knew I wouldn’t understand?” Dan repeated, incredulous. “Just because I don’t approve means I’m so dense that I can’t understand?”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“I can’t believe you’d lie to me!”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you where I
was. It didn’t come up.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Dan said. “Just because I didn’t think to ask you if you’d moved in the last twenty-four hours…Excuse me if I misinterpreted our relationship to be close enough that you, at least, told me where you slept at night.”
“Dan, you’re blowing this way out of proportion. This really has nothing to do with you.”
“Oh, well, thanks a lot. Guess that puts me in my place.” He slammed the phone down and pressed his forehead against it.
“That didn’t go well, did it?” Mark asked.
Dan shot him a piercing look.
“Man, I’m sorry I started all this. I wouldn’t have said anything if I’d known—”
“That she lied to me?” he asked. “No problem. You know why? Because there are other fish in the sea.” He picked up the phone and began to dial again. “Lisa Manning is one of them.”
“Man, don’t do it.” But Dan kept dialing. “Dan, you’re making a big mistake.”
Dan swung around. “Don’t tell me what I’m doing. She’s putting her life in danger, and she doesn’t care what I think about it. She lied to me to keep me from reacting, and I’m not even important enough for her to consult about this at all.”
“She doesn’t have to consult with you, Dan! You’re not married.”
“We’re not going to be, either.”
“Dan, you can’t run every time she disappoints you.”
“This is the last time she’s gonna disappoint me,” he said.
Lisa answered the phone, and he snapped, “Yeah, Lisa. Listen, about that invitation. I think I will take you up on it.”
“Good. Pick me up at seven.”
“You pick me up,” he countered. “I may not have a car yet.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll see you then.”
When he hung up the phone, he turned back to his two friends. “Don’t say a word,” he said. “Jill Clark doesn’t care about me or my feelings, so I’m not going to care about hers.”
He started to storm away, but Mark grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean, what am I doing? You heard me.”
“Are you and Jill still an item, or not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, who would know?” Mark asked sarcastically.
“Apparently, you!” Dan said. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“I think you are an item, but that self-destructive part of you that is scared to death of a committed relationship is looking for the slightest little excuse to call it off. You pump iron until you look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, jog five miles a day, comb your hair every time you pass a mirror…But you’re your own worst enemy. You sabotage yourself the minute things start going right for you. It’s like part of you doesn’t want to be happy.”
“I don’t need you playing shrink on me, Mark.”
“All right, then,” Mark said, glancing at Nick. “Then let Nick tell you. Tell him, Nick. You’re his pastor. He’ll listen to you.”
“Oh, brother…” Dan said.
Nick got up and set his foot on a chair. “Dan, you were just talking about not trusting yourself with that kind of commitment. From the looks of things, you were right.”
“Great,” Dan said. “So much for pastor confidentiality. You two are amazing.” He started to leave the room, then turned back to them. “Get this straight. I’m not going out with Lisa Manning because I’m so weak that I can’t help straying. I’m going to make a point.”
“To Jill, or to yourself?” Mark asked.
“Maybe both of us,” he said. “If our relationship is so superficial that she doesn’t even tell me when she’s walking into the line of fire, then it’s too superficial for us to have an exclusive relationship.”
Mark’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “You’ll show her.”
Dan went back to the weight room and began to pump iron with a vengeance.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The van that Frank Harper had stolen after Dan’s car went off the bridge was found in Slidell’s Piggly Wiggly parking lot that night, after the Civic was reported missing. It belonged to one of the employees inside, and he was distraught, cursing and pacing, as the police took the report. There were no witnesses who had seen the thief.
When someone from the Slidell Police Department learned that the van had been stolen from a campsite near the I-10 bridge, he called Stan Shepherd to tell him that the thief was probably Frank Harper himself, and that it was highly likely that he was driving a green Civic.
Stan put an APB out, alerting all the cops on duty in several surrounding counties that the killer may be in a green Civic. And as he cruised the town in his unmarked car, trying to think like an insane terrorist, he racked his brain for where Frank Harper might be.
He went to every motel in town and showed Frank’s picture, asked if anyone had seen him. No one had. He cruised the parking lots of Delchamps, the Newpointe Library, the Bonaparte Court Apartments, the Bijoux movie theatre, looking for the stolen green Civic, but found nothing.
Where was this guy? What was he up to? Who was he going to try to kill tonight?
Around ten o’clock, he called home to check on Celia. “Hey, babe. Were you in bed?”
“No,” she said. “I’m cleaning out the closets.”
“Cleaning the closets? Why?”
“It needed doing. I want the house to be clean when we bring the baby home.”
“But we still have two weeks.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
He frowned. He had heard that women had a burst of energy before they went into labor, that they often got into a cleaning spree that was almost obsessive compulsive. “You’re not nesting, are you?”
“Probably,” she said, “but don’t worry about it. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You know, they say that you’re supposed to get as much rest as you can, even if you don’t feel like it, because if you do go into labor, you’ll wind up being too tired to deliver.”
“And what?” she asked, amused. “I’ll have to carry the baby the rest of my life? Stan, honey, this baby is coming whether I’m tired or not.”
“You still need your rest. Our closets are clean enough.”
“Okay. I’ll go to bed. When are you coming home?”
Before he could answer, he got a call on the radio. “Hold on,” he said, and turned it up. Slidell police had spotted the Civic at a parking lot when they’d been called about another car theft. “What kind of car was stolen this time?” he asked.
“A maroon Cavalier,” the dispatcher told him. “Tag number’s SEW 365.”
Quickly, Stan put an APB out on the maroon Cavalier and alerted all available police that Frank Harper was driving it and that he could be armed and dangerous. He picked the phone back up. “Honey, it’s gonna be a while before I can get home. You just call me if you need me. I’ll keep the phone on. And go to bed, will you?”
“Okay,” she said. “I promise.”
He clicked off the phone and drove past Jill’s house. Nothing there. Then he drove to Debbie Ingalls’s place. She still wasn’t home.
An uneasy sense of having no control plagued him as he drove. Something was going to happen tonight. He could feel it. He only hoped he could stop it before it was too late.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Jill hadn’t slept at all that night. Despite her need for rest, Dan’s words tumbled through her mind. By the time she’d checked out of the hotel the next morning, paid T.J. Porter, and headed for the jail, she looked as exhausted as she felt. She had dark circles under her eyes, but she had applied her makeup to hide it.
Still, Jerry noticed right away. “You look like you didn’t get much sleep last night,” he said. “Have you been crying?”
“No,” she lied. “I was just up late reading about covenant.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Really? You read about covenant? Everything about it?”
“Everything I could find,” she said. She sat down wearily and looked up at him. “But there’s something I don’t understand. You said something about the Gideonites. I looked and looked and I didn’t see anything about the Gideonites having to do with covenant.”
“No,” he said. “Not the Gideonites. The Gibeonites.”
“Who are they?”
She could see that Jerry was a born teacher. He leaned forward, and his face came alive. “Just before Joshua led the Israelites into the Promised Land, God told them not to make a covenant with anybody, and to destroy all of the people in the cities of the Promised Land. So the Gibeonites, who lived in the Promised Land, decided to trick the Israelites into entering into covenant with them. They got old wineskins and old clothes and dried pieces of bread, and made it look like they had come from a long way away to make covenant with them. They knew if the Israelites knew they were from the Promised Land, they’d never make covenant with them. So they lied. Joshua didn’t consult God, and he fell for it. The Israelites entered into covenant with them, and it was binding.”
“But it was deceitful, “she said. “If they were tricked, they wouldn’t have to keep the covenant, would they?”
“Oh, but they did,” Jerry said. “If you read about it you’ll see that’s exactly what happened. When they found out the Gibeonites just lived around the corner, they realized they’d been had. But the covenant itself meant more than the deceit. They had to honor it. When the Gibeonites were attacked by the Amorites, they called on the Israelites, and they had to defend them. So that tells me that it doesn’t matter if one person deceives you in covenant, or if they break it. Regardless, you’re obligated for your side of the bargain. There’s another example of that, with Jacob and Leah. He worked seven years so he could marry Rachel, but after the wedding he found out he’d been had. Was the covenant he’d made with Leah broken? Nope. He had to honor that covenant.”