If I Live

  I’m sick, so I run to the bathroom and sit on the floor. Someone threw a bomb through his window? It had to be Keegan or one of his partners. And they’ll try again.

  Dylan probably doesn’t have either of his phones. Everything he owns was probably burned in the fire.

  What if Dylan’s dead? No, he couldn’t be. They would have said that. They just said the neighbor was badly injured, not Dylan. Could it be that he escaped the blast? God, please!

  I can’t stand it, so I call that number again. It still doesn’t go through.

  I check my e-mail, but he hasn’t answered. I have to do something.

  There’s no one I can call, but I pack my bag, check out of the motel, and head south to Louisiana. If I don’t hear from him by the time I get there, I’ll have to do something drastic.

  18

  DYLAN

  When I call Dex to let him know I’ve replaced my phone, he says, “Listen, have you seen Detective Rollins today?”

  “Last night I did. I told you I drove him home from a bar before my apartment fire.”

  “Interesting,” he says. “I’m taking what happened to you personally, man, so I decided to tail Keegan and see what him and his buddy are up to. Off the clock. No charge.”

  “I’ll pay you,” I say. “I appreciate that.”

  “No, it’s on me. But here’s the thing. Rollins is nowhere around. So I leave Keegan and go by Rollins’s house, and his car’s not home. Since you said he was drunk last night, I went by the bar and his car’s still there.”

  “He’s probably hung over. Hasn’t gotten it yet.”

  “I’m just thinking it’s weird that they’re not together after the bombing. I get the feeling Keegan is looking for you. He’s been to a lot of hotel parking lots, driving through looking for something . . . probably your car. But if Rollins is involved too, wouldn’t he be trying to help?”

  “Maybe he’s not involved.”

  “Maybe. So you need a place to crash again tonight?”

  I smile. It’s good to have friends. “No, thanks. I’m gonna get a hotel. I got my debit card replaced, so I have some cash now. Thanks for the heads-up, though. I’ll use our friend’s method to get a room.” I deliberately don’t use Casey’s name, just in case someone’s listening via Dex’s phone. “Pay cash and claim my wallet got stolen.”

  “Dude, you know he won’t be looking for you at my house. Don’t you think that’s safer?”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t want to keep your family in this mess. And I can stay under the radar.”

  “What about your burns? I can change the bandages.”

  “With one hand? No, I’m good, Dex. I can do it.”

  “So what about Rollins? You want me to keep watching?”

  “Yeah, if you will. You’re officially on the clock now. Let me know when he sticks his head out.”

  I spend the morning filing a claim on my renter’s insurance. My deductible is huge, so I go ahead and buy another computer—which I can’t do without—and spend a couple of hours downloading my files from the cloud. My next stop is the bank where I have my safe deposit box, and I load my newest files onto the thumb drive that’s stored there. Then I lock it back up.

  Once I get in touch with Casey, I’ll get her to send the pictures of my evidence sheet back to me.

  While I have a wifi signal, I open Yahoo and go to our e-mail account, where I see the message she sent me today. She’s heard about it on the news. My heart sinks. I didn’t want her to find out this way.

  I write back: I’m fine. Phone gone. Got a new one but don’t have your number.

  I find a motel and park my car at a restaurant a block away. Then I check my e-mail again. She’s written back with her number. Please call! I’ll answer this time.

  Relief floods over me, and I smile.

  As I walk to the motel, I program in her number, then click on it.

  She must be holding her phone, because she answers the second it rings. “Are you okay?”

  Her voice is a gift that soothes my soul. “Yeah, just a few minor burns. Are you okay?”

  “No! I almost had a heart attack when I saw the news on the website. Dylan, what happened?”

  I tell her the whole thing. “I’m fine, really. I had a lot to replace today, and I’m staying under his radar. You don’t need to worry.”

  She expels a long breath. “Dylan . . .”

  The care in her voice melts me. I could get used to it. “My neighbor below me got the worst of it. She didn’t have any warning at all.”

  “So you’re the hero who saved her?”

  “Hero is a stretch since she wouldn’t have been injured if not for me.”

  “Keegan? Did he do this? Rollins?”

  “Not Rollins. He was drunk. I delivered him to his door last night. No, it was a risky operation, so it was probably someone they hired. Probably thought sure they’d killed me.”

  “Did you go to the hospital? Did you have your burns treated?”

  “Yes. Dex stayed with me all night. I’m fine. I have some dressings, but—”

  “Dylan, they tried to kill you!” Her voice is on the edge of panic. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. Things are getting intense here. But I’m hiding.”

  “No! You have to get out of there,” she cries. “You need to leave town!”

  “I can’t,” I say. “I’m so close to having everything I need. There was another murder. One of Keegan’s extortion victims. His wife told me he failed to make a payment to Keegan and Rollins. They threatened him. That ties Keegan to more than extortion. It connects him to murder. And now the grenade and the fire—I still have to find a way to link them to that. If I leave town, nothing will happen.”

  “This is enough!” she cries. “I don’t want you dead! I can’t take any more people I care about being murdered!” She’s crying now, almost hysterically, and I wish I were there to hold her and reassure her. I know the full force of the other deaths is slamming her now. Her father, Brent, even Cole Whittington . . . The trauma of those deaths multiplies her worry about the attempt on my life.

  “I’m not dead,” I tell her. “Casey, I want you to breathe. Count to twenty. Breathe in . . . and out . . .”

  I don’t know if she’s breathing with me or not. There’s silence, and I wonder if I’ve lost the connection, or if she thinks I’m being condescending.

  “We’re so close to this,” I say in a steady voice. “I have to get them. I promise you, if it looks like things are getting too dicey, I’ll take it to the DA before taking a big risk. But if we wait just a little longer, if I dig a little deeper, we can connect the dots from them to all of these murders. It can happen, Casey. You’ll be able to come home. You’ll have your life back.”

  I hear her sniffing, and finally she says, “Having my life back won’t mean that much if you’re not in it.”

  My heart jolts at the reality of that. The confession anchors me. “I feel the same,” I whisper.

  “I want to come there. I want to help.”

  “Stay,” I tell her. “Wherever you are, just stay there. I’ll let you know when it’s okay to come. Just trust me now. And trust God. He was with me when that grenade came in, and he’s with me now.”

  “I do trust him,” she says, her voice calming. “I’ve been reading the Bible. It’s fascinating. I don’t understand it all, so I bought a study Bible with a lot of notes and stuff in it, and it helps explain things.”

  “That’s good. Old or New Testament?” I ask.

  “Both. I read from the Old for a while, and then the New. Yesterday I read all of Genesis and last night I read Matthew.”

  “That’s a lot of reading.”

  “Yeah, but I honestly can’t put it down. And I found all these preaching videos on YouTube.”

  I hesitate to ask. “So would you call yourself a believer yet?”

  She pauses. “I believe, but I’m counting the cost. That’s biblic
al, right? Jesus said to do that.”

  My heart sinks a little. “Yeah, he did.”

  “It’s just that, to whom much is given, much is required.”

  I smile. “So now you’re quoting Scripture to me?”

  “The minute I surrender,” she says, “I’ll have to repent. That guy, the one who wore potato sacks and ate wild locusts . . .”

  “John the Baptist?” I ask. “I think he wore camel’s hair.”

  “Yeah. That guy. He said something that kind of hit me like a baseball bat. He said to perform deeds in keeping with repentance. Repenting means I’ll have to come back there and turn myself in. But I won’t live through that. It’s certain death.”

  “You can give your life to Christ and repent without running into bullet fire right away.”

  “Can I? Is that what Christians in hostile countries do? When they know they could be murdered for converting? Don’t they immediately put themselves in harm’s way, just by professing their belief?”

  I don’t quite know what to say. “Where did you hear that?”

  “On a video. A missionary talking about the persecution of Christians and how dangerous his work is. I think it’s going to be kind of like that for me. I mean, I live in a free country where I won’t be murdered for openly going to church. But my decision to believe dictates repentance, and repentance will put me in danger. So how do I reconcile that?”

  I want to tell her that making an eternal decision like that will be worth whatever the cost is, but I don’t want her to come back here and be killed. Maybe my own faith isn’t that strong. Finally, I’m only able to say, “I pray for you, Casey, all the time. Let God dictate the timing, not fear.”

  When we hang up, I feel like I’ve been given a dose of one of those benzo drugs my doctors are always trying to prescribe for me. Talking to Casey makes me feel like I can do this, finish this, defeat this.

  I check in to the motel under the name of Baxter Jones. When I get to my room, I pull out the bandages I bought at the drugstore and change my dressings, fighting the pain. I lie on the bed and mentally replay Casey’s phone call.

  Her caring for me is nothing short of a God thing. He’s still working in my life. I see him. It assures me that he cares about me too.

  19

  DYLAN

  I sleep until Chief Gates calls me and asks me to come in to talk to him about the bombing, and I’m suddenly suspicious that I’m walking into a trap. When I arrive at the station late in the afternoon, I see Keegan’s car in the parking lot, and I can’t wait to see how he plays this. Rollins’s car isn’t here.

  I feel a little sick as I walk up the long hall to the chief’s office—trying not to limp—and when I step inside, I see through the secretary’s area that Keegan is sitting across from the chief’s desk. I clench my molars so hard the muscles of my jaws ache.

  “Mr. Roberts, he’s waiting for you. Go on in.”

  My mouth feels dry and my throat constricts as I step into Chief Gates’s doorway and see that Captain Swayze is there too. Chief sees me first. “Dylan, come on in. Have a seat, man.”

  I shake his hand and don’t bother to shake the other two as I lower to the chair closest to the door. I can’t even feign normalcy.

  “How you doing, man?” the chief asks. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I say stiffly.

  “You lose everything?” Keegan asks with a note of joviality in his voice.

  I don’t look at him. “Nothing that matters.”

  “What does that mean?” Swayze asks.

  His tone makes me wonder if he’s in on it. “It means that I made it out. I’m okay with losing stuff.”

  “What about your injuries?” Gates asks.

  “They’ll heal,” I say.

  He looks me over, but he can’t see my wounds under my jeans. “Dylan, we’re doing everything we can to find the perpetrator. We got some prints from the outdoor AC unit and the ladder they left. We’re trying to pull the security footage from businesses around the apartment complex, to possibly catch images of the person driving by. I have detectives working on all those who had access to grenades in the area. We’re making some progress. I wanted you to know that.”

  That’s more than I expected. “Who’s on the case?”

  “Steele and Johnson.”

  “Good,” I say.

  “I was just talking to Keegan about the Casey Cox case, and wondering if this attack on you could have had anything to do with that.”

  I keep my gaze locked on Gates. “And what did he say?”

  There’s a second of silence, then Keegan clears his throat.

  “I was telling him that it’s possible. Maybe she did it herself.”

  I look at Keegan now. “Where would Casey Cox get a grenade?”

  “This girl has resources.”

  “True,” I say. “But this was pretty physical for someone of her size. Carrying a ladder, getting it against the building, carrying a gas can up, tossing the grenade . . . I was thinking it was probably a man. If a woman had all that stuff and was even getting it out of a vehicle, it might call attention. But a man doing it wouldn’t.”

  I know I should modulate my tone, that I might sound too anxious to get their focus off of her, but obviously Keegan knows I’m on to him or the attempt on my life wouldn’t have happened. I’m sick of this, and suddenly I don’t care if he knows it.

  “Again,” he says. “She’s resourceful. She could have had help. Figured you were closing in on her and wanted to take you out.”

  I’m dumbfounded that he would go that far, but I stay quiet. “Where you staying, man?” Keegan asks.

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “We want to help you find a place,” he says, all sympathetic-sounding now. “Rollins and I can do some of the legwork for you.”

  “Where is he, by the way?” Gates asks. “I left a message, told him to be here.”

  “No idea,” Keegan says. “I’ve been calling him all morning and he won’t return my call. Car’s not home, so I don’t know where he is.”

  Dex’s suspicion that something is going on with Rollins, coupled with Keegan’s “concerns,” raises a red flag for me. Keegan knows where Rollins is. Tension pulls at my temples.

  “My call to Sy went straight to voice mail,” Swayze said. “Maybe one of us should go by his house and check on him.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do it,” Keegan says. “Soon as I leave here.”

  Gates turns back to me. “What can we do for you, Dylan?”

  “Find who did this.”

  “We have to find that girl,” Keegan says, like it’s settled that Casey threw the grenade. “This is getting old.”

  “It’s gone on too long,” Chief agrees. “Where are you on that, Dylan?”

  “Close,” I say. “This slowed me down a little.”

  The meeting is basically useless, and I feel like Keegan might have been the one to call it, to root me out. I get out to my car before he does, but he’s close enough behind me that I don’t leave yet. For a few minutes we both just sit there, until he realizes I’m not leaving. Finally, he starts his car and pulls away. I give him a ten-minute head start, knowing he’s waiting just up the street to follow me to wherever I’m going so he can finish the job. Maybe Rollins is actually waiting here somewhere too, hidden, ready to follow me when I leave.

  I get on my phone and order an Uber to meet me around the corner at a coffee shop. Then I grab my computer bag with every possession I now own, pull on a baseball cap, and walk through the cars to the shop. I order a coffee, and by the time I have it in hand, the car is there.

  I have the driver take me to the motel I’ll be staying in tonight. I’ll come back later to get my car.

  Dex calls me a little while later, and I pick up. “Hey, dude. Whatcha got?”

  “Rollins is still not up, man. I’ve been watching nonstop. Keegan came by and banged on the door, but he didn’t wait very long. I’m suspicious, man. Someth
ing’s happened to that guy. You don’t think Keegan did something to him, do you?”

  “No, they’re too tight. I don’t see it.”

  “Then where could he be? Not showing up at work, not at home . . .”

  “Maybe Rollins has a girlfriend. Or a plane, and his own mistress in some other town.”

  “I’m gonna keep watching. I’m curious now.”

  “All right. Let me know the minute you find him.”

  20

  DYLAN

  I’m driving to Rollins’s favorite drinking hole to see if his car is still there when my phone chimes. It’s Chief Gates. “Hello, Chief?”

  “Dylan, have you heard the news yet?” His voice is somber, low.

  I hesitate, and my mind instantly goes to Casey. Has something happened to her? “No, what?”

  “Sy Rollins is dead.”

  I suck in a breath and look for a place to pull over. “What?” I half whisper.

  “His body was found in a shallow grave a little while ago. Shot through the head.”

  “Murdered?” I ask. “Wait . . . when? How long has he been there?”

  “Probably overnight.”

  My mind races. “Any leads?”

  “We’re working on it. Keegan is on the case. He won’t leave any stone unturned.”

  I can’t help asking, “You really think that’s a good idea? I mean, Keegan is awfully close to things. Shouldn’t it be someone more objective?”

  “It’s personal to him. He’s like a dog with a bone. I’m putting another team on it too, but Keegan won’t be able to focus on anything else for a while anyway.”

  I’m silent for a moment, but then I decide to just say what’s on my mind. “I took Rollins home from a bar last night. He’d had too much to drink, and I was there with friends. I knew he couldn’t drive. But I got him home safely and watched him go in. I don’t know how he could have gone out after I left. If he went out again, someone had to come get him. You should get a team over there and check fingerprints on the door. See if there are any clues about who was there after he got home. Maybe he was shot at home and moved.”