Stranger in the Night (20 page)

Shauntay held Liz’s right hand. The young woman with two children and a history of violence, instability and probably prostitution had blossomed in recent days. She whispered her story as they walked.

“I like Pastor Stephen,” she said. Though others around them
were praying—some aloud and some in silence—Shauntay had too much to tell. “He different from most of the men in this hood, yo. He sticks with his wife and kids, and he works hard. I see him over at that restaurant where I eat when I’m takin’ a break at the hair shop. He says hi to me every time, and he knows my name, too. He always talks to me about God.”

Liz tried to smile. She, too, admired Stephen Rudi. The pastor was walking with Joshua at the head of the growing crowd, but the two men could not have looked more different. While Stephen prayed loudly, calling down God’s blessings and protection on the people of St. Louis, Joshua moved in silence. His eyes searched the buildings—high, low, scanning alleyways, taking note of every storefront, studying each open window. His broad shoulders were squared, and his hands hung loosely at his sides. Liz wondered if somewhere on the man’s body he had concealed a knife. Or a gun.

“Pastor Stephen makes God sound real,” Shauntay confided, leaning close. “Like you can talk to Him and He listens. When his baby got shot yesterday, I figured that would be it between Pastor Stephen and God.”

It almost was, Liz reflected in silence. She recalled the man’s despair in the waiting area of the emergency room. His words had filled her own heart with anger toward God. Why wouldn’t a loving Heavenly Father protect this faithful preacher who had come so far with his traumatized wife and children? Did God have to allow even more agony? More sorrow?

“But look at him now,” Shauntay said. “This morning, Pastor S. told me God don’t make things right. God makes
people
right. Sometimes that means they got to go through a lot of trouble. Like me. I been through so much, me and my babies, and I get to thinking nobody cares about me. Even Raydell.”

Both women focused on the young man who walked just behind Joshua. His hand in the white cast, it might have been
comical the way he was imitating the former Marine sergeant. But Liz knew that Joshua had become a role model and a mentor in the community.

“Raydell and me talked,” Shauntay whispered. “He said he was sorry for calling me a Hypes queen. But you know…I ain’t exactly innocent. I did have some things going down with them gangsters, and I can’t deny Mo Ded made his moves on me. I thought about jumping off the porch, but I changed my mind. I want to stay clean if I can.”

“I hope you will,” Liz said, finding her voice with difficulty. The sun was setting, streetlights had begun to glow and she knew the group was now walking right through the center of Hypes turf.

“Raydell is getting his GED,” Shauntay continued, “and then he’s going to be a cop. Wants to enroll at the police academy and all that. I told him about my job at D’Shondra’s Braids. He said he admired me for working hard and taking care of my kids. Anyhow, we back together.”

“Together?”

“You know.” She covered her mouth with her hand and giggled. “But we ain’t doing nothing, because Raydell told me that Sam and Terell said Christian men supposed to stay pure. I could tell them a thing or two about Raydell, and there ain’t a drop of purity left in that dog. Me, either, yo. But him and me…we decided to be pure anyhow. Pastor S. said God can wash away every bad thing a person did if they just ask Him. Raydell been talking to me about getting married.”

“Married?” Liz caught her breath at the idea. She squeezed the young woman’s hand. “Shauntay, that would be good.”

“Yeah, if Raydell could be like Pastor S., it would. That’s the kind of man I want for a husband. Somebody faithful and hardworking. I don’t want no more cheaters. You sure got yourself a good one.”

Liz had to hold her tongue. How many times could she explain that she and Joshua were not
together?
Not in the sense people assumed.

“You smell that?” Shauntay slowed her pace. “Somebody’s cookin’ ice. We too close now. Mo Ded ain’t gonna like this.”

Cooking ice?
Liz detected the faint whiff of a familiar odor in the chill air. The putrid, cat-urine smell of methamphetamine. The smell of Mo Ded.

Closing her eyes, she tried to pray as she walked. Impossible. Her heart felt as though it might jump out of her chest. Her knees melted like warm chocolate inside her jeans.

“You and your man staying pure?” Shauntay asked.

For a moment, Liz couldn’t reconcile the question with the reality around her. Pure? What could that have to do with the smell of a meth lab, the abandoned buildings, the trash and beer cans in the gutter, the taste of fear on her tongue?

“I didn’t think so,” the girl said. “He don’t look like the type to hold back.”

“Wait—yes, we are staying pure,” Liz murmured. “Joshua and I don’t…we don’t sleep together, if that’s what you’re asking. We’re like Sam and Raydell and the others at Haven. We’re trying to follow Christ’s teachings.”

“Yeah? That’s cool. I never would have thought it. No offense, but none of you is that young no more. I mean, you all been round the block, but you ain’t…” Shauntay gave a secret smile, as if she found the information delicious and mysterious. “I can’t hardly imagine it because you know how it is. People my age, nobody thinks there’s anything wrong with—”

Stiffening, she let go of Liz’s hand and hugged herself. “It’s them.”

The group of prayer-walkers came to a sudden halt. The sounds of murmured prayers ceased. Joshua’s arms went rigid at his sides.

In the distance, Liz spotted a collection of ragtag young men moving toward them. They hung in the deeply shadowed recesses of buildings, out of the light of streetlamps or neon signs. Gliding as one, they drifted forward.

Then Liz distinguished their leader. A too-large coat hanging from his shoulders, Mo Ded led his pack of gangbangers. Liz imagined the arsenal hidden inside that coat. Her mouth went dry. Her scalp prickled. She reached into her pocket for her phone.

Joshua had told the group that the police would be aware of their route. But as she looked around, Liz saw no sign of a squad car, no evidence that any legal authority would be protecting them.

“We’ve gone far enough,” Joshua said in a low voice. “We made our point here.”

“Everyone please turn around now.” Sam spoke up from the back of the group where he and Terell had been holding the rear flank. The calm in his voice was forced. “It’s time to head back to Haven. Granny and some of the other volunteers have hot cocoa waiting for us.”

The uncomfortable silence was followed by a low rumble of dialogue as the group attempted to change direction. Liz caught Joshua’s eye for a moment. He was unhappy with the situation.

Pastor Stephen suddenly sprang out into the street. “I must speak with our enemy,” he declared in a loud voice. “I must share God’s love!”

Before Joshua could stop him, the man started away from the relative safety of the cluster. He waved a hand in the direction of the oncoming gang.

“We come to you in peace!” Stephen called out. “In the name of God, we present ourselves to you!”

A deafening bang silenced him. People screamed and bolted for cover. Liz hung frozen for a moment. Not again! She spotted
Joshua on one knee on the pavement. He had knocked Stephen down to avoid the gunfire. Now both men were scrambling to their feet.

Liz searched for an escape route. Intent on her conversation with Shauntay, she hadn’t noticed which direction the group had walked. Now she jogged a short distance, tried to follow the crowd. But people had scattered and were vanishing fast. They knew this street, these buildings, the shortcuts to safety.

She swung around and spotted Mo Ded running toward her. Grabbing her phone, she pulled it from her pocket and pressed a button to summon the police. In the distance she heard sirens—someone had beaten her to the call. But the Hypes were close now, moving in.

Liz darted for the shadows. Ran down the sidewalk toward a street corner. She turned, searching the night for any sign of Joshua. Unable to find him, she ran again. The sound of feet pounding the sidewalk behind her clenched at her heart. She glanced over her shoulder, saw the glint of green in Mo Ded’s eyes, realized she would never make the corner in time.

An Open sign on a storefront beckoned. She shouldered her way inside. A woman cried out in surprise. A man pointed toward a stairwell at the back of the shop.

“Go there!” he shouted. “That way!”

Liz hesitated. Was this a trap? Had Mo Ded planned it ahead of time? Or did people regularly run into this store looking for a place to hide?

Unable to puzzle it out, she obeyed. She threw herself up the steps. Her feet tangled over each other. She caught the handrail. Cold metal. Pulling herself through the darkness, she struggled to breathe.

Rounding a corner, she expected a landing. Instead, she was in a narrow hall. A single low-watt bulb hung from the ceiling.
She spotted a window at the far end of the corridor. A metal fire escape.

Doors lined the walkway. Apartments? She saw no numbers.

Now she heard shouting in the store below. Mo Ded’s voice, she thought. She reached for a doorknob. It didn’t turn. She jiggled it, praying.

Running to the next door, she did the same. Nothing. Locked. All of them.

Footsteps echoed in the stairwell. Liz gasped. Cried out. Was someone still chasing her? Would she die now? Before she had really begun?

The window at the end of the hall was her only hope. She saw the paint, thick layers caked around the frame. Was the window painted shut? Sealed? Should she break the glass? How?

Crying now, she ran her fingers over the double-hung panes. Her hand found the window latch on the wooden sash. She pressed. It turned!

Bending, she lifted the lower window. A blast of cold air shot down the hall. Sniffling, trying to see through tears, she crawled through the window onto the fire escape. In a fetal ball, she rolled onto a grated landing.

No time to shut the window behind her. She hauled herself to her feet. Black. An alley. No lights.

Feeling for the rail, she wrapped her hand around the chilled iron bar. Her feet somehow found steps. She started down.

Her pulse thrummed in her head. She willed her shoes to silence. Listening for sound overhead, she heard nothing.

Then feet. Someone running down the alley.

She halted, pressed herself against the brick. There was no way out. No way.

Metallic thumps echoed as a dark figure started up the fire escape. She took two steps back toward the window. But Mo Ded would be in the hall. Starting down any moment.

She was caught in the middle. Trapped. “Liz? Liz, tell me you’re up there.”

Joshua!

A sob caught in her throat. “It’s me.”

H
e was at her side, catching her up in his arms, holding her tight. Liz buried her face in the crook of Joshua’s neck, unable to stop the tears.

“They’re gone, babe,” he murmured, his hand covering her head, fingers threaded through her hair. “It’s over now. Nothing happened. No one got hurt. You’re safe.”

“Safe?” Drawing back, she hammered her fist on his chest. “You shouldn’t have let this happen! We should have stayed at Haven.”

“No, it was a good thing after all.” He pulled her closer, his body warming her. “You and Pastor Stephen were right. I was wrong.”

“How can you say that? They shot at us again.”

“That round was fired in fear. Pastor Stephen accomplished more than he intended. Now Mo Ded knows we’re not afraid. None of us will back down—he understands that. And he heard the message about love. Peace. If he doesn’t already know about the praying, he soon will. It was an eerie thing. Scary, the whole crowd of us walking and praying. Mo Ded is off-kilter. For once, he lost control.”

“No, he was on the attack, Joshua. They came after me. Mo Ded could be right there—down in the alley or just around the corner.”

“Mo Ded was the first to run. He’s the biggest coward of them all. They saw the pastor walking toward them, and someone fired a random shot. A second later they all took off in every direction.”

“But I saw Mo Ded coming after me, Joshua! I barely made it into the store.”

“He wasn’t chasing you. He was running from me.”

“You? Were you behind him?” As realization dawned, she sucked down a breath of frigid air. “You were trying to get to me.”

“Of course.”

As he kissed her gently on the lips, someone shut the window above them. The shop owner whose footsteps she had heard in the stairwell?

“Liz, I won’t let anything happen to you,” Joshua said. “I love you.”

“No, Joshua. You can’t love me. Not honestly. You keep saying you’re going to Texas, and it isn’t possible to say both things at the same time.”

“You’re going to Africa, and you love me. I know you do.”

She looked away. Her acknowledgment came in a whisper. “Yes, Joshua. I do love you.”

At her words, he fell silent. The cold night slid dark fingers around them. She shivered and slipped her arms inside his open jacket. Laying her head against his chest, she listened to the even rhythm of his heart. How could the man be so calm? At a time like this, he somehow was relaxed, his hands gentle on her back.

“Liz, come to Texas with me.” He spoke the words into her ear. “I’ll buy a plane ticket. Fly away with me. Meet my parents. See the house, the office. You’ll like the oil fields. They’re flat and dry. Nice. Peaceful.”

“Nothing like the Hindu Kush,” she murmured. “Nothing like the streets of St. Louis. Can you be happy there?”

“Not without you.”

Liz squeezed her eyes shut, unable to accept what he was saying. “You’ll get over this, Joshua. It was too fast, too crazy. Look at us huddled here in the dark. Nothing has been normal.”

“Is that what you’re telling yourself? That our love is a knee-jerk reaction to danger? You think what I’ve told you is some kind of PTSD side effect?”

“I don’t know what it is. I’ve never known anything like this. Anyone like you.”

“This is how I am, Liz. This is me. Do you love me or not?”

She lifted her head, trying but unable to make out the features on his face. “I love this man I’m holding…this person who battles terrorists and gangsters. This man who’s as comfortable in inner-city jungles as he is in foreign countries. But what will you be like in Amarillo? Life there will change you, Joshua. An office. A desk. You’ll get comfortable. You’ll lose the essence of who you are—that urge to track enemies and take down the evil things in this world. And you know I won’t fit.”

“But you fit with me. Look how well we fit together.”

As she pushed away from him again, a laugh of dismay welled up inside her. “Joshua, I feel at home in this kind of craziness as much as you do. I love these people—my wounded refugees, sad girls like Shauntay clinging to hope, even the angry gangsters who might change their ways. I don’t think I can find meaning anywhere else.”

“Except in Africa. Ten thousand miles from St. Louis.”

She shook her head. “Maybe not, Joshua. You know my struggle. My sleepless nights. Talking to Shauntay on the prayer-walk, I felt her pain. I used to think Africa was where God needed me most. But the need here is just as great. It’s different, but the intensity is equal.”

“And you’re going to fix it all?”

“Don’t make fun of me. I have to try.”

“I’m not mocking you, Liz. I love you. But Amarillo is a city. It has needy people, too. Why don’t you go there with me? We’ll drive downtown and try to find the ones who could use our help.”

“But in the end, that’s not how it would be for us—working with the disadvantaged, trying to make a difference, going where life is hardest. You know it, too. The comfort of
things
would lure us away, Joshua. The swimming pool. The club. That kind of luxury is so easy. I don’t want to be tempted.”

“So we both suffer? We give each other up? Go separate ways. I never see you again. Do you really want that, Liz? Tell me if you do.”

She shuddered and slipped her arms around him again. “No. I want to do whatever God tells me to do.”

“Would He put us together and then tear us apart? What purpose could that have? You’ve been wrestling with your feelings about going to Africa, and I’ve already surrendered my work for the military. So maybe God wants us someplace new. Together.”

“What are you saying, Joshua? You’re scaring me.”

“Too intense again?” He fell silent, his chest rising and falling as he drew breath. “I want you. That’s all I know. I can’t ask for promises…or give them. But if you’ll go with me to Texas, I believe we’ll understand what we’re supposed to do.”

Liz lifted on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Take me home. I need to think.”

As they started down the fire escape steps, he paused. “I leave Saturday morning. Think fast.”

Liz switched on her laptop and watched as a blue light filled the screen. Too wound up to sleep, she had not even bothered to go to bed.

Earlier that evening, she and Joshua had returned to Haven. Gathered on the indoor basketball court, everyone was drinking hot cocoa and discussing the prayer-walk. Stephen Rudi sat at
the edge of the group, Charity curled in a ball on his lap. Mary was still at the hospital with Virtue. Her shift at the cleaning company would start soon. Joshua needed to take Stephen to his son’s side and drive Mary to work.

Liz had tried to convince him to let her go to her apartment alone. He refused to hear of it. He bundled the pastor and his daughter into his own car and followed Liz home. She hurried upstairs, thinking how much she missed him already and considering a quick phone call to ask him to come back later that night.

But Shauntay’s amazed expression lingered in her thoughts. Liz had promised the young woman that she and Joshua were “staying pure.” She didn’t want to do anything to make that a lie. It was right to be obedient to Christ’s teaching. Agonizing but right.

Wrapped in her robe, Liz ate a sandwich, talked to Molly for a few minutes, touched base with her parents and then stared at the photo album on her sofa. Without knowing exactly why, on an impulse she snatched it up, opened a drawer in her bedroom dresser and shoved the thing to the very back.

There. Take that, Africa.

As she turned away, Liz spotted the jewelry box on the table near her bed. The small painted chest dated back to her childhood, and she recalled the heirloom ring that had come to mind during the gang task force meeting.

Diamonds.

Platinum
.

Lifting the lid of the little box, she sifted through a tangle of chains and earrings she rarely wore. Her fingers touched the familiar shape of the ring. She slipped it onto her finger and studied its features under the glow of the lamp. The diamonds glittered, as always. But it was the platinum that intrigued her now.

Bright and shiny, the metal might as well be silver, she thought. Except that it didn’t tarnish. Why was platinum so valuable? And why would anyone be trading it on the streets of St. Louis?

Liz put the ring away and returned to her laptop. She scanned through her e-mail, answering a few messages and deleting the rest. Curiosity nagging, she switched to a search engine. After wading through lists of retailers and wholesalers who dealt in platinum, she began to read articles about the precious metal.

Platinum’s scarcity on planet Earth had made it more valuable than gold or diamonds, Liz learned. The commodity was used in jewelry, of course, but it actually had greater significance in industry. More than half the world’s output of platinum was assigned to the control of vehicle exhaust emissions. With clean air a global priority, the metal’s price was skyrocketing.

Platinum had medical applications, too. Certain implants, anticancer drugs and dental restorations required it. As she digested the flow of information, Liz began to believe that almost every cutting-edge modern industry needed platinum. The rare metal was essential to producers of hard-disk-drive coatings and fiber-optic cables. Fertilizer and aerospace industries had to have it. Platinum even helped household detergents become biodegradable.

If Mo Ded had found a source for the precious metal, she deduced, he could probably peddle it for a bundle of money. But platinum was so uncommon that to find it for sale on the St. Louis black market seemed unthinkable.

As Liz searched the Web for sources of the product, she realized Daniel Ransom had spoken correctly. Most of the world’s platinum was mined in two places. South Africa and Russia.

But as the hours passed and Liz dug further, she stumbled on a discovery that chilled her to the core. The newest and potentially most productive platinum mine in the world was located in a struggling, troubled country in central Africa.

Paganda.

Leaning back on her sofa, Liz tried to process the information. Paganda? Little, war-torn, genocidal Paganda? Who had
discovered platinum there? Who owned the mine? What had the recent civil war meant to production and export levels?

Shivering uncontrollably, she wrapped her robe tighter and turned her thermostat up a notch. Paganda? Surely Mo Ded didn’t have a supplier of Pagandan platinum.

Did he?

Could a refugee have managed to smuggle the metal into the United States? Might that refugee be Stephen Rudi? Surely not. She pictured the pastor at the hospital, his shoulders shaking as he sobbed over his son’s injury and his feelings of abandonment by God. She recalled the light in his eyes as he spoke about faith. Shauntay had testified to the man’s kindness and warmth.

But people weren’t always who they claimed to be. Especially those with a secret agenda.

The thought that Pastor Stephen could be the source of the platinum bothered Liz so much that she went in search of her phone. Should she call Joshua and share her suspicions? It was much too late at night to bother him. And how might he respond to her discovery? It was a crazy notion, connecting the dots between Paganda, Stephen Rudi and Mo Ded. There was no link…was there?

Though she felt sure her mental gymnastics were ridiculous, Liz spotted her phone on the kitchen counter. She had almost reached it when the ringtone blasted her. The warbling sound echoed off every tile on the walls and floor. As she snatched up the phone, she nearly dropped it.

She almost didn’t bother glancing at the ID. “I was just going to call you.”

“I thought so.” Joshua sounded wide-awake, curt. “A hunch. Listen, we need to talk.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Mary. She wasn’t at the hospital. Not at work, either. The woman fled again. A nurse told me that when they were trying
to communicate with her about Virtue’s condition, Mary got spooked and took off.”

“Oh, no.”

“I talked to her job supervisor. He fired her. Said he had no choice.”

Rubbing her forehead, Liz wandered back into the living room. She couldn’t count the times refugees she was trying to assist had lost their jobs for one reason or another. Still, this was serious.

“How is Virtue?” she asked.

“Great. Bouncing back. Kids do that—I saw it in the war. But Stephen is losing it. I’m concerned about his level of agitation.”

“Agitation?” Her neck prickled.

“He kept apologizing to me for triggering the gang attack. He blames himself for Mary’s problems, too. Feels like everything that’s going wrong with the family is his fault.”

“That’s not true.” But even as she said the words, the sickening possibility slid into Liz’s stomach. She tried to hold her tongue, but the idea refused to stay put. “Stephen Rudi is a good man…at least he seems to be.”

“Of course he is, but I have no idea how to fix the Rudis’ mess, Liz. I’m leaving, and they’re still struggling to get settled and become self-sufficient. Stephen has one child in the hospital and a wife who flees at the first sign of distress. Now he’s coming apart fast. He holds himself responsible for the chaos, and nothing I say will change his mind.”