Trial by Fire

  He hung up.

  He started walking toward the edge of the woods, hoping to stay in the shadows enough that he could get away from this place in case they had traced the call. And as he walked along, he tried to rack his brain for a place to go. None of his friends could be trusted. He didn’t want to put his own parents in jeopardy.

  Nick Foster. The name came to him out of the blue, and he remembered hearing that Issie and Nick might be an item. He knew Nick would want to know that Cruz had it in for him, that the first fire and killing had to do with revenge against him.

  Maybe Nick could help.

  He knew that Nick lived across the street from the church that had burned down, so he headed that way, just a few blocks away, and hoped that Nick would be home.

  It took him half an hour to reach Nick’s trailer, and when he did, he realized there was no car there. He peered across the street to the place where the church had been and saw no sign of Nick. Where could he be?

  Maybe he was at the fire station, he thought. What if he was there all night and Jake couldn’t reach him without giving himself away? He stumbled onto the front porch, a weather-beaten structure that was in need of repair.

  He walked up the rickety steps, wishing for the cover of darkness, though it was only five P.M. He sat down in a corner and leaned back against the rail. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d slept. Most of the people he’d been living with only fell asleep when daylight hit.

  He closed his eyes and tried to relax, wishing that Nick would come home soon. If not, he supposed he’d have to sleep here all night, but he would have to leave before daylight. Maybe the police would take the information he gave them and find Issie by then, and then they could arrest Cruz and Jennifer and the rest of the gang before they did any more harm to churches or people, or Jake’s own relatives or friends.

  Nick searched everywhere he thought Issie could be but didn’t find her, and as he drove, he felt the growing sense of panic that something had happened to her. She was in trouble. He knew better than to think she had just been irresponsible by not showing up for work. He had contacted everyone he knew who was a friend of Issie’s, but no one knew her whereabouts.

  Almost to the point of despair, he decided to head back home, get on his knees, and pray for Issie as hard as he could. It was the only thing he knew to do.

  He drove back to the street where the church had burned and pulled into his gravel driveway. His headlights lit up the front of his porch, and he saw the shape of something he hadn’t expected on his porch. Had someone left something, he wondered, or was that a person hunched in the corner waiting for him?

  Issie, he thought suddenly. She was here, waiting for him to get home. He should have known. He stopped the car, lunged out, and raced up the steps.

  “Issie?” But when he got to the front he was shocked to see that it wasn’t Issie at all. Instead, a young man was hunched in the corner. Could this be Jake?

  Startled out of sleep, the boy sat up straight. It took a second for him to orient himself, then as if he realized where and why he was here, he grabbed both of Nick’s arms and pulled himself to his feet.

  “Nick, Issie’s in trouble!”

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jake said. “She was snooping around the warehouse where we were. I think she followed somebody there, and she went in. They must have heard her, because she ran out, and then Cruz went wild. He put her in his trunk and drove her off somewhere. I don’t know where they went.”

  “In his trunk?” Panic almost stopped Nick’s breath. Issie might not live through this. He pictured her somewhere locked in the trunk of a car. Was she dead or alive?

  He unlocked his front doors and bolted inside, Jake on his heels. “We’ve got to call the police,” he said.

  “I already did,” Jake told him. “I don’t know if they believed me but I tried. I described the car, and I told them who was driving it. Maybe they can find her.”

  Nick dialed the number of the police department and asked for Stan’s desk. Stan wasn’t in, so he talked to Sid Ford.

  “Sid, Nick Foster. Have you heard anything about Issie?”

  “We’ve got an APB out on that same blue Subaru right now,” Sid said, “but we ain’t found nothin’ yet.”

  “Come on, Sid!” Nick yelled. “This is a small town. How many places are there to look?”

  “They coulda left town by now,” Sid said. “They could be anywhere between here and the south shore. There’s woods all around, man.”

  “Sid, he’s got her in her trunk. He could kill her if he hasn’t already!”

  “I understand that,” Sid said, “and we’re doin’ the best we can. We’ve got dogs out, and a helicopter, and everybody’s looking for her. But we can’t do more than that. Not unless you’ve got some more information that would help us.”

  “What do you need?” Nick asked. “You have the make and model of the car. You have the name of the person driving it.”

  “We’re workin’ on it,” Sid said, “and when we find somethin’ out, trust me, you’ll be the first to know.” Sid hung up, and Nick sat staring at the receiver in his hand. He slammed it down, almost breaking the telephone, then he turned on Jake.

  “They’re your friends,” he said. “Now you tell me where they might have taken her!”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know,” Jake said. “I’m on your side, okay? She’s my aunt. I’ve known her all my life. I don’t want anything to happen to her. That’s why I came here. I’ve been out of the loop on everything for the past couple of days, and then they killed my friend Benton. Shot him through the back, and he didn’t deserve it. He killed a kid for them, all just to throw the cops off of Cruz. And look how they reward him!”

  Nick felt sick. “Do you know where Benton is?” he asked. “Are you sure he’s dead?”

  “Absolutely dead,” he said. “He’s out by the warehouse, only everybody’s gone.”

  Nick’s mind raced. “Jake, it would be a good idea to take the police to him. Come on and get in the car.”

  “No!” Jake said. “They’ll arrest me, man. Lock me up! Then who’s gonna look for Issie?”

  “I am,” Nick said. “The cops are.”

  “But I know places,” he said. “I know some of their hangouts. There’s Cruz’s deer camp…Besides, I already told them where he is near the warehouse. They’ll find him there.”

  Nick tried to think, and he rubbed his temples with shaky hands. “So she was still conscious when he got her into the trunk?”

  “Yes,” Jake said. “She was conscious all right. Banging and kicking and screaming. It’s a wonder he’d ever keep her in that trunk.”

  Nick hoped that was true. Maybe her rage and her emergency training and her strength would get her out of this. He was shaking, sweating, and his mind was having trouble following a logical train of thought. “Okay, Jake, we have to do something.” He sank down on to the porch step next to Jake, still rubbing his face. He let his fingers slide slowly down his cheeks. “Jake, how do I know this isn’t some kind of trick? I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’ve been up to. For all I know, you may have killed Ben Ford.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Jake said. “I knew they killed him, but I wasn’t there. Man, I was stupid. I bought into everything. Cruz thinks he’s God or something, and we all thought he was too. He had the Bible memorized, and he had this plan for us to build a secure compound and live together and grow our own food. It felt good to believe in something and have a goal.”

  “So you let them kill people and you sat by and didn’t do anything about it?”

  Jake looked down. “I know it’s stupid. But I’m telling you the truth. By the time I got wise that he wasn’t who he said he was, I knew they’d kill Benton and me both if either of us tried to get out. Plus Issie was getting involved where she shouldn’t have, making a lot of people crazy, and I decided I’d better stay with them just to make su
re they didn’t get to her, ’cause you know they slashed her tires and they broke into her apartment and left a dead cat on her bed. I gave them the key and let them do it! I’m such a jerk!”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?” Nick asked.

  “Because I was messed up,” he said. “And I was scared. And to tell you the truth, I was worried that I would be the one going to jail. I didn’t know what would happen.”

  “So your staying out of jail was more important than saving your aunt’s life?” Nick asked. He could see the self-hatred on Jake’s face.

  “What can I say? I’m a coward. I admit it!”

  Nick groaned and rubbed his eyes hard. He let out a heavy sigh. “At least you came now.”

  “Well, it’s not going to do her a lot of good if she’s already dead,” Jake cried. He smeared his tears away. “How could I have trusted those guys? I knew they didn’t care about anybody but themselves.”

  “It wasn’t a matter of trust,” Nick said. “It was a matter of you getting something out of it. You were having fun. You didn’t have any restrictions on you. You had the freedom you thought you wanted. But just like all the freedoms we think we want, they wind up becoming a prison instead. You might have been trying to keep yourself out of jail, Jake, but you’re in a cage as surely as if the police had put you there.”

  Jake didn’t deny it. “I can’t undo anything I’ve done,” he said. “All I can do is try to find her, try to help you find her.”

  “Then think,” Nick said. “You mentioned a deer camp. Can you take me there?”

  Jake tried to calm down, and it was clear his mind was running through all the possibilities. “Yeah, I could find it easy.”

  Nick got to his feet and pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Okay, let’s go.”

  They piled into the car, and pulled out of the driveway. “Which way?” Nick asked.

  Jake pointed the direction he needed to turn.

  “You know, this guy, Cruz,” Jake said. “He’s a lunatic. Really. He’s insane. He stabbed Benton in the leg because he was kissing Jennifer or something. It was like he blacked out and went into some kind of rage. Didn’t even make sense.” He gestured to the next turn. “Up here, to the right.”

  Nick drove, the streetlights flashing then darkening his face as they passed.

  “So what’s your relationship with Issie anyway?” Jake asked. “I know she doesn’t go to church, but you and her are the talk of the town. Even Cruz and them know you got her from the bar the other night.”

  Nick was quiet for a few moments. “We’ve gotten to be good friends lately.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Jake said, “it doesn’t seem like a match made in heaven to me.”

  “It’s not a match made in heaven,” Nick said. “We’re just friends. I’ve been worried about her. She knew she could count on me, for several things,” he said. “For coming out and looking for her, for rescuing her, for praying for her.”

  “Issie needs a lot more than prayer right now,” Jake said. “Up here. Turn into this dirt road.”

  Nick turned onto the dirt road, feeling as if he might be driving into a trap, but he had to try. He put his headlights on bright and drove down the dirt road, weaving back and forth among the trees, till finally he came to an opening and saw an old, inactive oil rig in the middle of the property. There were no cars to be seen.

  “Aw, man,” Jake said. “We came here once with a keg of beer, so I thought they could have parked her here.”

  Nick slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “Then where are they?”

  “I don’t know,” Jake said, “but there are a few more places that they’ve been known to go. I’ll take you to each one of them. Just turn around and go back out the same way you came in.”

  Nick did that, but as he drove, he realized how hard this was going to be. Issie could be anywhere, and it might already be too late.

  Chapter Fifty

  Issie was bleeding. She had a cut across her cheek where Cruz had hit her, and a gash down her arm where she had wedged it between the trunk and the car, trying to keep him from closing it. As he’d wrestled her into the trunk, her calf had caught on a sharp metal corner, ripping open her pants and slashing her leg. She lay cramped in the darkness, folded in a fetal position.

  The rough carpet beneath her was wet with her blood. She wasn’t sure which was bleeding harder—her face, her arm, or her leg—but she couldn’t maneuver enough to get to any of those places to apply pressure. She tried to turn or wiggle free so that she could move more easily, but she was wedged.

  Pain shot through her leg, throbbed on her cheek, and the cut on her arm rubbed against the hard carpet as she tried to turn over. Her head ached, but worse than all that was the realization that if she didn’t get out of this car and days passed, and Nick Foster’s church met at Aunt Aggie’s for the midweek service, they could all wind up dead, right down to the preacher himself. There was no one to warn them.

  She wailed, then screamed for help again and banged on the metal roof. But no one came, and she feared no one would. Where had they taken her? They had driven for some time. They could be out of town, far away from Newpointe, way back in the woods where no one would ever find her.

  She wondered if Jake had told them what had happened, if they were even looking for her, or if he had wimped out and decided to go back to his gang. Or had they killed him? She had heard several gunshots.

  She managed to squeeze her arm free and began to reach above her head where she couldn’t see, feeling around for the few items Cruz had left in his car. She found some greasy jumper cables and a tire gauge, but nothing else.

  Was God trying to get her attention, or had he only turned away?

  She closed her eyes and tried to take inventory of what had brought her here. She had to admit that her own influence over Jake might have led him to his association with these people. She hadn’t shown him any reason not to get involved in evil.

  Everyone was good, she had told him, because good was a relative term. She had told him that we defined our own good and evil. It was whatever you thought it was. But now she knew that wasn’t true. There were clear lines between good and evil, lines that Nick understood, and all the people in his congregation did as well. It was only beginning to become clear to her.

  What had brought her here? she asked again. Was it generations of a family who followed their own path? She wondered if her brother would even look for her, or if he’d simply drown his worries in a bottle of wine. That was how their family handled crisis.

  But now it all seemed to have caught up with her, as if God was trying to get her attention. She wept harder and yelled out, “You’ve got it, God! You’ve got my attention now! What do you want me to see?”

  She thought of Mark Branning and Allie, the forgiveness that Allie had shown her, yet the way that Mark avoided her as if she would bring plagues on him. She thought of how happy Dan and Jill were, and Stan and Celia, in spite of all the trials they’d faced.

  She had never seen them go out and get drunk just because things went bad. She hadn’t sat around the table with them at Joe’s Place reliving the cases they’d gone out on that day. They led quieter, cleaner lives, lives that she had considered boring until she’d found herself locked in the trunk of a car.

  She had even considered Nick to be boring at one time, but something in her spirit had changed. Lately he had seemed like someone safe, a point of refuge in which she could hide. She didn’t know why she had been so attracted to him lately, why she’d gravitated toward him in every situation, why he was the first person she thought of when she needed to call for help. But now his life was in danger, and she could do nothing about it.

  She banged on the roof again, trying to get the trunk up, but it wouldn’t budge. She was getting weak. If she didn’t do something soon to stop the bleeding, the life might just bleed right out of her.

  She groped down around her legs, and touched a to
wel that seemed stiff and greasy. She took the towel and bit until it tore. Then she ripped a strip and managed to bring her leg up as far as she could. Wiggling her way down, she was able to touch her calf. She inched the strip of cloth around it, tied it tightly to stop the blood.

  “Please, God,” she whispered, “don’t let me die here. Get me out of here so I can tell them before they kill everybody.”

  She didn’t care about herself anymore, or her past sins or her very soul. She didn’t care what was going to happen to her in the future. All she knew was that Nick and his congregation were in trouble, and she could help them if she could just get free.

  She tore off another strip and wrapped her arm, bandaged it as tightly as she was able in the small space she had. Then she wadded another piece of terry cloth and laid her face down on it. The pressure would stop the bleeding, she hoped, but it wouldn’t stop the pain. And every time she moved she was liable to start it again.

  She closed her eyes and tried to picture God watching over her from somewhere up in the sky too far away to reach her and unlock that trunk.

  “I know you don’t have anything for me, God,” she said. “I’m not even worth your time. I’m probably so repulsive you can’t even stand to look at me. But that’s okay. You can turn your face from me…But those people at that church, they’re your people. And Wednesday night when they gather for their service, Cruz is going to be waiting. And there’s not going to be any place for them to run.” She started to sob.

  “Please, God. I don’t want Nick to die. I don’t want any of them to die. You’ve got to stop them or you’ve got to help me so I can. Do whatever you want with me. I don’t care. I deserve every bit of it. But they don’t.”

  She wasn’t sure if the bleeding had stopped, and she almost didn’t care. She felt the life drifting out of her as sleep pushed its way in. Finally, she drifted into a state of rest, weary from tears, fighting, and the loss of her own blood.