Four Weddings and a Fireman (26 page)

“They were harp players?” Vader was starting to wonder if this entire episode was a surreal dream. He'd probably wake up at any second.

“No, no. They sang. Gospel and country. They were so good they got offered a recording contract, but the father turned it down. They stopped performing after that.”

Vader clawed a hand through his hair. “It must be someone else. Cherie doesn't sing.”

“Are you sure about that? I listened to one of their songs online and they sounded beautiful. Voices like crystallized honey. The Heavenly Harpers is a good name for them.”

With a silent howl of frustration, Vader decided he had an even better name for them. The Deceitful Duo. The Little Liars. He couldn't believe Cherie would hide something like that from him, something so little and yet so big.

If she could do that, why couldn't she steal his van behind his back? Had anything about her ever been real?

“I can't even deal with this right now, Mom. Look, go back to bed. We've lost enough sleep over those two. I'll be off in a few hours.”

“Are you all right, Vader?”

“Snazzy.” Except it might be time for another midnight howl. “Call me if anything else comes up.”

On his way back into the apparatus bay, he nearly collided with Double D, who was stepping into his turnout boots, wearing nothing but his boxers and a baggy white T-­shirt.

“Whatcha doin', D?”

“Heard something,” the veteran mumbled. “Heard a yell. We catch a fire? Wait for me. I'm up. I'm up.”

Vader tried hard not to crack up, and failed. “It's all right, Double D. No fire. I was just letting off some steam. Come on, let's get you back to bed.”

“Okey-­dokey, Mr. Pokey.”

Vader, smothering a snort, considered whipping out his phone and taking a quick video of Double D. Maybe a sleepwalking fireman in his underwear would make ­people forget about his pole dance. Instead he led the man gently inside and steered him toward his room.

No one else had heard his crazy early morning caterwauling. He got back into bed, then texted Cherie again. No answer. She was probably driving on the highway and couldn't look at her phone. Or she and Trixie were blasting the radio and singing at the top of their lungs.

Because they were freaking
singers
and not only had Cherie never mentioned it, but she'd actually told him she
never sang
. And he'd believed her, like the sucker he was. Every time he thought he knew her, something else surfaced. He looked at the text she'd sent him.
We're on our way to Las Vegas to find Jacob, thanks for the van
.
If you want to come with us,
call us as soon as you get off shift. Love you always.

Yeah, right. She might as well have texted,
Ditched you, stole your van, made an ass out of you, love ya!
Even if Trixie was somehow behind the whole thing—­which he suspected—­Cherie had gone along with it. The least she could do was answer her damn phone. A slow burn of anger made his stomach pitch. How was he supposed to explain to the guys that they'd been dragging themselves over to Gardam Street to watch over two girls who were now on their way to Vegas? And how
could
they have taken his van? What if he needed it to take his mom to the doctor?

He punched his pillow. There was nothing more he could do tonight.
Go to sleep, asshole
, he told himself. And this time, he did.

He made it through the rest of the shift without incident. A grease fire at a donut shop woke him up around six. It was quickly dealt with, and he got back to the station around nine. For the hell of it, he tried Cherie again. Still no answer. He was changing back into civilian clothes when his phone rang. He snatched it up. Finally, she was calling him. Boy, he was going to let her have it.

“Vader, there's something else I just thought of,” said his mother before he even said hello. Vader could barely speak through the sharp disappointment.

“What, Mom?”

“Yesterday I was trying to get Izzy down from the front windowsill—­you know how he likes to play with that curtain fringe—­when I saw a car cruising past, nice and slow. It caught my eye and I was going to mention it but forgot in all the excitement. It was an old make of Buick, a tan color.”

“Okay.” A car had driven past the house. So? He bit back his impatience.

“Well, its plates were coated with mud. It's been so dry here, I don't know why they would have been muddy.”

“Muddy plates. Hmm.” Vader yawned, and took a swig of Red Bull. “Maybe the dude just finished a road trip.”

“Well, but you couldn't read what state it was from. Just out of curiosity, I checked the weather online and it's been raining a lot in Pine Creek, Arkansas. It must be very muddy there.”

“Did you ever see it again?”

“No, because Izzy lost interest in those particular curtains and started stalking the fish tank again. But Vader, what if it belonged to that Mr. Mackintosh? What if he was watching the house and now he's chasing after them? Or what if he made them leave somehow?”

Vader went silent. He ran through everything his mother had told him, Cherie's text, her unusual behavior. Something wasn't adding up. For all her wariness about sharing her secrets, Cherie wasn't a thoughtless person. She'd never take off and leave him without a way to transport his mother in an emergency. Maybe it was just Trixie pulling one of her stunts. Maybe it was Mackintosh. Either way, he didn't have a choice. He had to go after them.

He swung the wheel of his truck, making a U-­turn toward the highway. “Mom, will you be okay for a day? I think I'd better go to Vegas. I'll make sure the crew keeps checking on you.”

“You go. I'll be fine. As a matter of fact, I'll be the envy of every girl in San Gabriel. I bet I'm the only crippled lady with a complete list of the personal phone numbers of the Bachelor Firemen.”

“Rawr. You naughty cougar. You be careful and call me if you think of anything else.”

He tossed the phone aside and floored the accelerator.

 

Chapter Twenty-­Five

W
hile Cherie, at the wheel, fought the fatigue that threatened to make her veer off the road, Trixie sent off a flurry of texts on her cell phone.

“Who are you talking to?” Cherie asked.

“I'm just trying to find out exactly where Jacob might be. And I'm trying to locate Robbie too.”

“Any luck?”

“Nothing yet. But it's still early.”

Cherie inhaled the slightly antiseptic scent of the Suburban's interior. It held only a trace of Vader, since he used his truck ninety percent of the time. “I sure hope Vader comes. I'd feel a lot better if he was with us.”

Trixie looked out at the sunrise gilding the world with beams of pink and gold light. “Maybe it's better this way. Why should anyone else be in danger because of us?”

That question hit Cherie hard. Putting others in danger was exactly what she'd been trying to avoid all this time. “You mean, because of me.”

“I mean because of
us
. If Mackintosh can't get you back, he'll move on to me.” Cherie glanced over at Trixie. All the flightiness, the carefree teasing, had dropped away. With the just-­rising sun kissing her face, she looked much older than eighteen.

Cherie gripped the cloth-­covered steering wheel. “We won't let him.”

“You've been scared of him all this time, haven't you? That's why you don't really get involved with anyone, even someone like Vader.”

“I'm involved with Vader.”

“Not as much as you want to be,” Trixie said in a knowing voice, as if she'd seen a million relationships come and go in her time.

“Well, that's because it's complicated.”

“You make it complicated because you're afraid of Mackintosh. What makes you think you're so much safer alone?”

Cherie gritted her teeth. “You're barely eighteen and you've spent your entire life in the backwoods. What do you know about it?”

Trixie either ignored that or hadn't heard it. She was busy texting again. “You know what I don't understand? Why didn't you just marry Vader? You'd be a lot safer that way.”

Cherie drew in a deep breath. Trixie didn't have the whole story. She didn't know that Cherie's signature was sitting on a piece of paper somewhere, and that piece of paper meant she couldn't just do whatever she wanted.

“I might be married to Mackintosh,” she blurted.

“What?” For the first time, she had Trixie's full attention. The girl even dropped her phone onto the floorboards.

“Well, it turns out I'm probably not, but they made me sign a document and they drugged me and . . .”

“Holy catfish on a spit. Does Vader know?”

“Now he does.”

“That changes everything.” She chewed on her lip. “If you're actually married to him, then he's definitely going to come after us when he's done with Jacob. He's demented about his possessions. We borrowed his mule and he came over to check on it like three times a day.”

Cherie didn't care for that comparison. “I'm not a mule. Or one of his possessions, for that matter. And I'm not actually married to him. The lawyer said it wasn't legal.”

“But you're not thinking like Mackintosh. In his eyes, you're not only married to him, but you belong to him just like a runaway mule would.” She snapped her fingers. “I know! We have to find a hotel room.”

“What? Why?”

“Duh, we have to change our appearance. Plus we have to ditch the van and find another vehicle. Oh, I just thought of something! What if Mackintosh is following us and we lead him to Jacob? We can't let that happen. We'll definitely have to ditch the van.”

Cherie put a hand to her forehead, where a nagging ache had appeared. The road seemed to be wavering back and forth before her eyes. She counted up the hours of sleep she'd gotten in the past few nights and didn't pass single digits. “Trixie, you're being crazy. I'd say you've watched too many episodes of
Law & Order
, but I know you've never even seen TV.”

“I've seen enough. They play
Law & Order
at the feed store, in the back. We need a rental car and some hair dye. Unless you brought some with you.”

“Yes, because the first thing I grab when I'm woken up in the middle of the night is hair dye. My bag is full of it. Oh wait, what bag? I didn't bring
anything
, Trixie, remember?”

“Of course you didn't. That's because I brought everything we need. Everything I thought we'd need, that is. I have to admit I didn't think of hair dye.” She frowned, concentrating. “That's okay. We can find a hair salon.”

“I'm not going to sit under a hair dryer while Mackintosh goes after Jacob.”

Trixie waved a nonchalant hand. Her brief moment of seriousness had sailed past and now she was back to teenage ditz. “So we'll get stuff at a pharmacy. No biggie. At least you can't deny we'll need different clothes.”

“Why, are we disguising ourselves as sane ­people?”

“Your attitude could use some work, Cherie. At least the clothes part will be fun. I think we're going to pass some outlet stores. It's a good thing I brought all your tango money.”

“You
what
?” The cash from her tango students constituted her emergency fund. She kept it in an old Crock-­Pot in the kitchen.

“I knew you wouldn't mind. If anything's an emergency, it's trying to rescue Jacob.”

Cherie was starting to wonder if the true emergency was Trixie's mental state. Maybe she ought to be driving straight for a psychiatrist's office.

“I just had another idea,” Trixie continued. “Instead of a rental car, which is going to totally wipe out the tango money, maybe we should just trade in the van for a different car. You know, the way Justice-­Denied is always trading in one junker for another.”

That was it. Cherie threw up her hands, then clamped them back on the wheel. Trixie had clearly lost her mind. “Are you nuts?”

“Hey!” She sniffed. “You don't have to be so rude just because you don't like my ideas.”

“I don't like your idea because it's stupid, not to mention illegal.”

“Stop staying such mean things!”

“
Trixie.
” Was there any way to get through such obstinate cluelessness? “Have you forgotten this is
Vader's van
? It belongs to him, not us.”

“So? If you'd married him, it would be your van too.”

“If I'd married him, I might be a bigamist!”

Trixie laughed. Cherie swiveled her head to look at her little sister, who clapped her hand over her mouth. Her blue eyes widened over the top of her hand. She spread her fingers apart to release a smothered “Sorry.”

And then Cherie was laughing too, with an edge of hysteria she couldn't control. The absurdity of the entire situation sank home. She laughed so hard that tears leaked out of her eyes and she could barely see straight. “Did you really say we should trade Vader's
van
?” The last word came out as a shriek of laughter.

Trixie took her hand away from her mouth. “Maybe . . .” she gasped, “that was going . . . a little too far . . .”

“You think?” Still shaking with big gusts of laughter, Cherie alternated hands on the steering wheel so she could swipe the tears off her face with the free one. The highway kept blurring in and out.

How long had it been since she'd laughed with her sisters? There was no one in the world with whom you could giggle the way you could with a sister. When the gusts of laughter finally subsided, she drew in a deep, still shaky breath. Everything seemed lighter now, and much less terrifying.

She was trying to protect her gay brother from her crazy, homophobic possible husband in a borrowed van with her madcap little sister—­but things could be worse.

She let out a sigh and smiled at her little sister. “I think I needed that laugh.”

Trixie returned a sunny smile, as if she were already concocting more crazy plans.

Cherie spotted a billboard advertisement for a Best Western off the next exit and decided it was a sign from above. “You did get one thing right, though. We need to get some rest. I'm not safe to drive right now.”

Trixie peered out the window at the upcoming rest stop. It contained a Chevron gas station, the Best Western hotel, a Sizzler restaurant, an I-­HOP, and that was about it. The place was as unglamorous as you could get. Her face fell. “Best Western? That's not what I pictured at all.”

“Too bad. We're done doing this your way. Sorry, Trixie, I'm firing you as cruise director. We're going to get ourselves a room. We're both going to get some sleep. We're going to eat something. We're going to fill up the tank, because we're on empty. Then I'm going to make some calls and figure out what's next.”

“Calls?” Trixie said nervously.

“Calls,” Cherie repeated, more firmly. No doubt about it, Trixie was keeping something to herself. “We need to find out where Jacob is before we just go barreling blind into Las Vegas. This'll give Vader some time to catch up with us. I'll feel better once he's here.”

She pulled off the highway and into the parking lot of the Best Western, which was comforting in its sheer generic familiarity. She and Jacob had splurged one night on a Best Western during their flight from Arkansas. Somehow it seemed appropriate to repeat the indulgence with Trixie.

When the clerk asked for her driver's license, she hesitated for a moment. But then she decided she was being overcautious. Even if Mackintosh was following them, he wasn't with the CIA. He was a farmer from backwoods Arkansas. He wouldn't have access to the hotel records. The bigger risk was that he would recognize Vader's Suburban. She'd make sure to park out of sight.

The hotel was nearly empty, so they had their pick of rooms. Cherie debated the issue of what sort of room would a fugitive choose? Isolated or surrounded by ­people? Ground floor or top floor? Near the ice machine or near the pool? It all seemed so ridiculous that she gave up and chose a room on the second floor, in the back. After she'd parked the Suburban in the most inconspicuous spot possible, she and Trixie let themselves into the room. Eyes gritty from fatigue, she'd barely put her head on the pillow before she was deeply asleep.

She was so exhausted, she forgot to call Vader and tell him which hotel they were at.

Luckily, Vader had
LoJack on his Suburban.

He didn't want to report it stolen, because that would implicate Cherie—­not that she didn't deserve it. But he knew that if he couldn't track them down, as a last resort, the police could. He also knew that the Suburban was low on gas. If they were leaving town in a hurry, in the middle of the night, they probably wouldn't have stopped for gas until they'd left San Gabriel. But just in case, he stopped at the few gas stations between Gardam Street and the southbound 5. No one had seen a big navy-­blue Suburban.

He did the same thing at each gas station he passed. Since he knew the license plate number and even had a recent receipt for his car registration in his wallet, he had no trouble questioning the gas station attendants. The problem was that each time he described Cherie, the angrier he got. Describing her was a humiliating reminder of how much truth she'd withheld from him.

“Red hair—­well, usually. I'm not sure of her actual hair color because she always dyes it. The younger girl has light brown hair, except that right now it's dyed blond.”

Since both sisters changed hair color on a whim, who knew what color it was now?

“One red, one blond?” The Pakistani clerk couldn't have sounded more bored.

“I guess they could have changed hair color, so never mind their hair. They both wear . . . I don't know. Dresses.” This was why he was a firefighter, not a detective. You didn't have to take note of ­people's outfits while you were saving their houses. “Pretty ones. No jeans or anything like that. Unless they were traveling, you know, incognito.”

The guy frowned. “Are these girls celebrities?”

“No.” Unless you counted the Arkansas country fair circuit. “The Southern accent is a definite, but sometimes it's stronger than others. Mostly when Cherie—­the redhead—­is tired or upset.”

Which she might be, if Mackintosh really was on their tail. The more he heard about the man, the more worried he got.

“So you're asking about two girls, who may or may not be red-­haired and blond, who might or might not be wearing dresses, and who might be upset or tired?”

“They have names. Cherie and Trixie. No, hang on. Their real names are Chastisement and Humility.”

It occurred to him that each could use a little dose of her own first name. Maybe he should change his name to “
Fu
tility.”

The Pakistani clerk had nothing for him, nor did the attendants at the nine other gas stations he stopped at.