The Baker's Wife (37 page)

“We'll show him that,” Diane said, looking at the diamond.

Audrey let the chain pool in her lap, and she set the stone on top. “This necklace hasn't saved anyone yet.” She scooped it up and held it out to Diane. “In fact, it's yours. I didn't even ask.”

Diane folded Audrey's fingers closed over the jewelry and pushed her hand back. “It's my mother's, and Julie's, and mine, and yours. With a legacy like that, who knows what it might speak to Jack?”

“It's just a stone on a chain.”

“That's like you saying you're just a baker's wife. Look at what you did today.”

“I didn't do it.”

“Is that your way of saying God did it? Through you?”

Audrey offered a tiny smile.

“I'd like to see what else he can do,” Diane said.

The ride to the bakery lasted only five minutes. The streets were blockaded as they were the morning of Audrey's accident, but this time sunshine illuminated the scene, and a crowd of bystanders had collected in the park and at the storefronts near the intersection. People were taking pictures. And drinking coffee. The female officer who'd taken Audrey's bloody clothes moved a barricade to let the cruiser through.

Audrey saw Geoff with Captain Wilson and jumped out of the sedan before it came to a complete stop. Geoff saw her at the same time, and they reached each other in seconds.

His arms around her waist filled her with hope; his breath in her hair was peace. She squeezed his neck and whispered, “Where's our son?”

“Playing hero,” Geoff said, and when he drew back from Audrey his eyes were wet. He pointed toward the crowd gathered at the mouth of the park behind them. “He got all of us out.”

Audrey saw Diane moving toward Estrella, who was surrounded by her husband and grandsons. Estrella lifted her hand, waving Diane to join them. Julie's student Leslie sat on the curb hugging the bedraggled alley cat. Someone was applying a bandage to the cat's rear foot.

“Coach is at the hospital,” Geoff said. “Wilson's getting ready to send a team in.”

“What's Jack saying?”

“Nothing. I'm going to go talk to him, Audrey.”

Audrey looked at her feet. “What can you say that Wilson and his guys can't?”

“Lots of things. I'm a pastor.”

“What are you
going
to say?”

“I'm going to beg him to save Ed's life.”

Audrey shook her head in frustration and felt tears rising again. “I couldn't bring Jack what he wants.”

“No one can, Audrey. No one.”

She groped at straws. “There's a picture of Julie—”

“Wilson showed me.”

“And there's this.” She cupped Geoff's hand and set the pendant in his palm. “It's something Julie took with her. Maybe Jack will . . .” She didn't know what she was trying to say.

Geoff wrapped his arms around her again. She rested her ear over his heart and he prayed, “Lord, bring me and my son back to this woman you gave us.” He kissed her on the top of her head.

Audrey stood alone in the center of Sunflower and Main while someone took Geoff to don a bulletproof vest. She didn't understand why Geoff's going in was necessary, why Wilson would allow it. Not even God was getting through to Jack.

“Your husband ees
loco
.” Estrella stood at Audrey's elbow.

“Just the right amount of crazy for God to work with,” Diane said behind them both.

Audrey hoped so. She prayed so. Hearing her friends say it aloud made it seem possible.

CHAPTER 36

Jack leaned into the barrel of his own gun, feeling more holy than ever in his life. He was prepared to lay down his life for his enemy, for the sake of rightness and righteousness. But God would step between him and this unholy child and spare his life, and the boy would be humbled. Humiliated.

God's will be done.

The gun was quivering in Ed's hands. It would be impossible for the boy to shoot it, because he knew Jack was right.

Jack withdrew his forehead from the gun and straightened his body. He sat back on his heels. A pleasant shower of satisfaction came over him, and also warmth radiating from the open mouth of the oven, which retained its heat forever like the glory of God. Ed lowered the gun to rest on his thigh and exhaled noisily, obviously disappointed in God's decision not to bless him.

“Thank God that's over,” Ed said.

“Interesting choice of words.”

They evaluated each other for a few moments.

“I could have killed you.”

“But God intervened,” Jack said.

“He did.”

“He won't intervene when your time comes.”

“When's that?”

Jack glanced at the clock.

“I think I have more time,” Ed said.

“I didn't say how much you have.”

“That's okay, though. Because I still have this.”

Ed raised the weapon toward Jack's chest once more, but Jack felt no fear. The kid was careless. His finger wasn't even wrapped around the trigger.

Jack reached to take the gun back. Ed jerked it just out of his grasp.

“Do you know what God told me when I was thinking about blowing a hole through your head?”

“I doubt it was God speaking to you.”

“He told me how we're going to get out of this mess.”

“Yes, he's told me that too.”

“I don't think you and I are hearing quite the same thing,” Ed said.

Only a cocky Harlem Globetrotter could have done it, Jack thought as he watched the gun arc upward out of Ed's flicked wrist and toward the mouth of the five-hundred-plus-degree oven directly over his head. Or a son of the devil.

He felt true fear then, while the revolver was still rotating in the air, while his frantic grab for it missed, while he listened to the metal hit the oven floor and slide, grinding across the heat until it hit the back wall, where he could not reach without his flesh melting.

The clock marked seconds—in Jack's mind, hours—and then the bullets started cooking off. They were tiny bombs, mere puffs of smoke and brass, aimless bursts too small to cause any real damage. But they decimated Jack's theology.

The weak sounds of the bursting bullets, which went off like six pieces of popcorn, had barely died out when Jack let out a primal yell and overturned the metal prep table in the center of the room. The corner gouged the wall before the table edge slipped on the smooth cement and thundered onto its top. Metal bowls and cups and utensils rattled across the floor in a terrible noise. Jack continued to scream as he cleared the counters of their pans and flours. An empty bread basket hit Ed in the chest. Uncooked muffin batter thickened by six hours of exposure oozed out of its bowl where it fell. Glass shattered as it hit the basin of the sink.

Jack grabbed the arm of the industrial mixer with both hands and started shaking it, screeching. His fury and his weight weren't enough to budge the machine, so he started kicking the bowl. It snapped off of its base but was caught by the dough hook. Jack kept kicking, his screams morphing to grunts. Dents formed in the bowl's sides.

Ed pulled his feet up, rolled to his knees, and began to crawl toward the door with his left arm tucked up by his rib cage. Jack's drumming on the mixing bowl ceased, and he took up insane, unintelligible muttering. Ed didn't look.

He nearly reached the passage into the dining room when Jack grabbed hold of Ed's limp left arm and yanked him onto his side, then started dragging him. The agony caused Ed to yell, the noise of his own lungs preventing him from losing consciousness. He gritted his teeth and wished for his father to bear down on the scene in full-combat gear. A real fantasy.

Jack pulled Ed to the back door and began to peel off the plastic explosive he had applied there after sending Diane Hall away. He needed two hands and dropped Ed onto his face, still babbling.

Sweat dripping off Jack hit the back of Ed's neck.

Ed rolled off his gunshot wound, nauseated. Another window in the dining room broke then, giving way to the butt of a rifle and the shouts on the street. Jack seemed not to notice it. Ed jerked his head sideways to look but couldn't see anything except the bottom of kitchen appliances. He rolled away from Jack and pushed himself up again with his good arm. His limping crawl was frantic this time.

“Jack! Ed!” someone shouted. Ed didn't answer, afraid of becoming an adrenaline-boosted gunman's target.

Once more he reached the doorway between the kitchen and rear of the counter, and this time he passed through without Jack's intervention. He concentrated on getting out of Jack's sight. His arm was sticky with blood but he didn't think he'd lost that much, and his bones seemed to be as straight and strong as they ought to be. But that hole through his muscle was a searing fire.

The invasion seemed too understated, too orderly. No Hollywood commotion or frantic shouting from all, just a single voice rising above the rest with clear direction.

“Jack, let the kid come out now. Your wife is alive.”

The voice seemed to bring Jack back down to earth. His ranting and crazed fumbling stopped. Ed froze in the new silence.

“You're not playing by the rules, Rutgers,” Jack said to the speaker. His breathing was still heavy. Ed glanced back over his shoulder and saw Jack facing the entryway, hefting a small and misshapen gray lump of a bomb in his palm. A detonating wire protruded from the side. “Stay where you are, Ed. It isn't twelve thirty yet.”

Ed obeyed. The detonator, which had been rigged to the jamb in such a way to be triggered if the door opened, was in Jack's other hand. This was a confusing sight.

Clicking radio static from the next room filled the silence.

“Stand up,” Jack said to Ed. “And stay with me.”

Ed had sickening thoughts of that detonator going off and creating a terrible chain reaction of electric
kabooms
. The plastics wouldn't explode if Jack dropped them or even if a sharpshooter blasted them out of Jack's hands—Ed's grandfather had told stories of burning the stuff for cooking fires in Vietnam—but that other device had all the catalyst needed to kill them all, standing up or lying down. Ed opted to stay put, even if it didn't improve his chances much.

“Jack,” said Rutgers, “we have Julie.”

His hands dropped half an inch as his attention passed to the dining room.

“Back door's disarmed,” Ed yelled, “but he's got a detonator!”

Displeasure messed up Jack's expression, but he had no means to punish Ed for that. He reached back and turned the dead bolt on the exit.

His dad would have the key, Ed thought.

“Where's my wife?” Jack shouted.

After a short silence Rutgers said, “She's on her way.” Ed shared Jack's evident doubt.

“I want her
here
. Now. Where she belongs.”

“We should be seeing her any second, okay? She's been sick, so we're all going to be patient. Why don't you let Ed go while we wait. How you doing, Ed?”

He put a lot of effort into sounding fearless. “Doing okay.”

“You hurt?”

“Not re—”

“I've been patient!” Jack yelled. “I don't think you've got her! I know your tricks—have you forgotten who I am?”

“No, Jack. We all respect your record. Let's keep it as clean as we can. Julie's counting on you. What might happen to her if you lose it now? Do you catch my meaning?”

“I need justice.”

“That's exactly what she's going to get, Jack. It's the justice system you serve. It's never failed you yet, has it?”

Ed saw Rutgers's error in the disgust that smeared Jack's expression. The man had made the mistake of assuming Jack's insanity, of jumping to the conclusion that because Jack was having some kind of breakdown, he could no longer reason like a man.