Daddy's Little Girl (28 page)
Read Daddy's Little Girl Online
Authors: Ed Gorman,Daniel Ransom
Carnes slammed into the doorway as he made his way into the basement. But he kept on running.
He was filled with the sense that he could yet save Deirdre if he hurried.
He took the steps as quickly as he could without tumbling.
Then he ran down the corridor to the cubicle Minerva had mentioned, Bobby close behind him.
They reached the lip of the opening and peered down just in time to see a bloody man crawl painfully to his feet and pull something out of his pocket.
Carnes could not believe what he was seeing. The man had a hand grenade!
Without thinking, Carnes leaped to the opening in the cubicle floor and flung himself down through the trapdoor.
Just as his hand grabbed the man’s hair, an explosion rocked the entire subbasement.
Carnes felt blackness, cold, chill blackness reach out and grab him.
Carnes awoke with dust and silt covering him.
He lay sprawled over the man who had thrown the grenade.
The man was cold. Dead.
Bobby was shaking Carnes, trying to drag him out of the rubble.
Carnes struggled to his feet and peered into the room just ahead of him.
Rubble from exploded walls covered half the entrance. He had to crawl over, dust filling his mouth. There was little light to guide him.
On the other side of the entrance, he stepped on something.
He looked down.
A hand.
Another dead man, this one with a ludicrous Halloween mask around his neck.
Next to him was a gray-haired woman. He assumed this was Ruth Foster.
Then he heard the moan.
And recognized it at once.
A beam had fallen across the back of the room.
Then he heard Beth’s voice as she came down the steps.
“I’m all right!” he called. “In here!”
Which was when he heard Deirdre’s voice for the first time in twenty-four hours.
“Daddy! Daddy!” she cried.
The doctor said, “I think you should give her that vacation now.”
He smiled down at Deirdre, who looked beautiful with her pale face against her hospital pillow.
“She’ll be out tomorrow,” the doctor finished.
Deirdre smiled back at the doctor. “I think maybe I’ll go home for a few days, if you don’t mind. Right now, my own room sounds pretty good.”
Carnes, who stood next to Beth Daye on the other side of the bed, laughed. “She has a whole gallery of Michael Jackson posters, Doctor.”
“So does my daughter,” the doctor said.
Beth squeezed Carnes’s hand.
Earlier she had asked him if she thought Deirdre was going to have any trouble accepting her.
From the way Deirdre beamed at her, the answer was obvious.
A proud young Bobby Coughlin peeked in the door and smiled at Deirdre and set a vase of roses on her table. Then he ducked shyly out before anybody could speak to him.
At the window, five minutes later, the doctor gone and Deirdre and Beth talking, Carnes looked out the window at the town of Burton.
It had been part of a terrible pact for more than thirty years.
Now, if such a thing was possible, it had recovered its innocence.
The sunlight that touched its greening trees and blooming flowers promised a new and better world.
One Carnes wanted to be part of.
Watch for
Toys in the Attic
AWARD-WINNING Author
ED GORMAN
Writing as
DANIEL RANSOM
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www.speakingvolumes.us
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