The Fire of Home (A Powell Springs Novel) (30 page)

Everyone agreed with that.

They piled back into the vehicles and drove to a bend in the road heavy with shrubs and blackberry brambles, just beyond which was the house. A lot of whispering and hand signals passed between the men, and they moved forward into an uncertain situation.

Amy did her best to stay busy but she wandered to the front and back windows so often she accomplished almost nothing. She was standing in the kitchen, trying to decide if she should bake a cake or bread when she heard a car horn out front. Running to the door, she saw the county car and her heart leaped in her chest until she realized her sister was driving and someone was in the backseat.

“Oh, God,” she moaned. She grabbed the house key from its hook next to the telephone in the kitchen, then hurried out the front door, slamming it behind her.

When she got closer and saw Whit, a flash of raw panic burned through her. “Where’s Bax?” she yelled.

“Get in,” Jess called back. “He’s still with everyone else at the Beckers’ place, but Whit’s hurt. We’ve got to stop and pick up Em.”

“Whit, is it serious in Fairdale?” Amy asked, getting into the car before turning around completely in her seat. All she saw were holes cut here and there in his clothes and some angry-looking blisters on his face and neck.

“If it’s all the same to you, Amy,
I’d
rather explain this just once more. Can we wait till we pick up Em?”

“Oh, of course, I’m so sorry!” She turned around again, grateful that he didn’t seem to be seriously hurt and wishing that h
e’d
brought Bax with him. Would these problems never end?

When they got to Whit’s house, a tidy little white house with a yard full of flowers and a neatly trimmed lawn—a sure sign of a woman’s touch since Amy last saw his place—his wife came running out of the house, much the way Amy had.

“Sweet Jesus!” Em screeched and hurried to the car, her red hair flying behind her. “Whitney!” She almost pulled off the backseat door to get to him, then climbed onto the seat on her knees.

“Shut the door, Em, we’re going to my office. The men know we’ll all be gathered there.” The midday sun glared off the hood of the car as Jessica pulled away.

“What happened?” Em asked.

“All right, now listen carefully because you’re all going to have to repeat it when someone else asks. I’m only going to tell this one more time today,” he said, his face showing a little more color now that his wife was with him. Hers was ghastly pale, making her freckles pop out like paint specks. So he explained again what had occurred and commented that he hoped Bax could take care of the problem once and for all since it kept coming back. He added that Bax should be all right because he had so many people with him, while Whit had gone alone.

The women got him into Jess’s office, careful to avoid touching any of his obvious burns, and Amy sat on the sofa in the back office to wait for word of her own husband.

“You might as well give it up,” Bax called to the house from the shelter of a large oak that grew in the front yard. “If you don’t, we’ll just storm the house and shoot you on the spot.”

While he talked, one by one his posse slipped off to surround the house and check for possible entrances, using the cover of the shrubbery as much as they could. He didn’t expect his order to be followed, but he kept talking anyway.

Then he noticed Paul McCoy in the yard, waving his arms to get Bax’s attention. He made a semicircular motion toward the front of the house with his pointed finger, but Bax wasn’t sure what he meant. Just then, the front door opened and two men emerged with their hands on their heads, being prodded along by Cole and Tanner.

“I’ll be damned,” Bax uttered, and felt a rush of gratitude for the two men and their willingness to help. He didn’t know the details of how the
y’d
gotten in—right now he was more interested in finding out who the
y’d
caught.

“What about the Beckers?” Bax asked.

“Mrs. Becker is a little shaken up, but they’re fine,” Tanner said, just as the older couple emerged from the house.

“We sure do want to thank you boys,” Luke said. He gestured at the two criminals, now surrounded by the rest of the posse and forced to sit on the ground with their hands tied behind them with clothesline the
y’d
gotten in the house. “After you and Whit took out their still, they came back and waved a shotgun at my wife when she told them to get off our land. Emily doesn’t scare easy, but she’s not one to argue with a gun pointed at her face.” The couple still held hands, and Bax could see Mrs. Becker’s faded but vibrant beauty in the fine bones of her face and her fresh-snow white hair. She was nearly as tall as Doc Jess. “I called Whit and he came out. I guess you know what happened after that.”

“I’m glad you’re both all right,” Bax said, then looked over at the two offenders. “I didn’t think it would be that easy to sneak up on them.”

“Just because they’re lawbreakers doesn’t make ’em smart,” Paul McCoy observed.

“True. Let’s see who we’ve got here.”

One man h
e’d
seen in Powell Springs a couple of times, but hadn’t thought much of. He might have been the one Granny Mae talked to. The other, though, the
other
—

“By God! Tom Sommers?”

Cole shrugged. “Yeah. Isn’t that something?”

Bax felt like a gaffed salmon, his astonishment was so complete and unnerving. H
e’d
lived under the same roof with the man, had sympathized with him when Deirdre died—hell, h
e’d
even been sorry to see him move out of Amy’s house. Now he felt altogether defrauded. Then another thought occurred to him. “All those nights you claimed you were working late at the sawmill? You were making methanol?”

Sommers looked up at him with an expression that could have frozen the blood in Bax’s veins. “So what? It paid better than that shit job at the mill.”

“What about Deirdre?”

“What about her? I didn’t kill her. That old woman did.” How could Bax, how could all of them, have been so deceived? Well, he had to admit, the guy had two completely different personalities. Even Adam Jacobsen wasn’t all that different from Harlan Monroe. Monroe just owned a better wardrobe and put on better manners, according to what h
e’d
heard from Tabitha Pratt.

Bax was so furious, he was afraid if Sommers said anything more, h
e’d
kick the man in the head. “All right, tie them to Cole’s truck bed and bring them in. We’ll get this sorted out in town.”

Luke and Emily shook everyone’s hands, and invited them all to an outdoor picnic sometime this summer. “We’ll have a grand time. My Emily is a good cook, so you won’t starve.” To Bax, he added, “I heard you just got married yesterday. I’m sorry we had to drag you away from your gal. I still remember the day Emily and I got married.”

She gave him a wry look. “Yes, he was furious with me but he married me anyway.”

“Well, I was supposed to marry your sister, and you tricked me good, but we don’t need to tell the world about that again. Anyway, it all worked out. We got four kids out of the deal, didn’t we?”

She actually blushed and murmured to him, “That was the easiest part.”

Cole and Bax stared at them, open-mouthed, and then at each other. Bax was itching with curiosity over that story. H
e’d
have to ask around about it.

Luke gave them a quizzical look. “Say, are you two boys related?”

“Bax is my brother-in-law,” Cole answered. Bax glanced away and smiled, filled with a true sense of family and homecoming.

“We’ll get out of your hair,” Bax said. “I hope this is the end of the problem for you.”

“Don’t we all? Thanks again, boys,” Luke said. “We’ll be in touch about that picnic.” He put an arm around his wife’s waist and waved to them as they dragged the prisoners away.

Would that be him and Amy in forty years? Bax wondered as they pulled out. Would he still be able to make her blush and giggle? They were off to a great start. He just needed to be able to spend some time with her.

Amy had actually dozed off on that sofa in Jessica’s private office when she woke to the sound of a commotion out front. She sprang upright and got to her feet in time to see both Cole and Bax coming down the hallway from the waiting room.

With an incoherent cry, she threw herself into his arms. “You’re all right?” she asked, raining kisses on his face. “Tell me you’re all right!”

Cole chuckled and moved around them to see his own wife.

“Yes, but what a story I have to tell you.” Bax sat down on the sofa and patted the place next to him. She sat too, cuddling up so tight he was pushed to the corner, and listened to the story of Tom Sommers and his new occupation. She stared at him the way he supposed h
e’d
stared at Sommers.

“
Really?
I can hardly believe it. He didn’t seem like that kind of man at all.”

“Yeah, that’s what makes him even more creepy and dangerous than that stupid Jacobsen. He was heartless and incompetent. Sommers is just plain evil. I don’t know the whole story yet. I left Tilly in charge of the two prisoners. He can get them dinner from Mae’s and sit there the whole damned night as far as I’m concerned.” He told her about his whiny helplessness and Jessica’s comment to him about finding a spine. She laughed.

“Yes, Jessie doesn’t pull any punches when she’s mad.”

He nodded in the general direction of Jessica’s surgery. “What about Whit?”

“She says he’ll be fine but he’ll have to take it easy for a couple of days. Some of those burns are as big as my palm, so he’ll be better off hanging around in his nightshirt for a while.”

Bax sighed. “I guess I’ll have a couple of long days ahead of me too. But I talked to Horace about getting us more help. He said he’s up for reelection in November but he’s not going to run again. He wants to retire to his dairy farm and let someone else have the responsibility now.”

“Hmm, I think I know someone who might be just right for the job.”

“Not
me
!”

“No, no, not you. We’ll have to see what happens.”

He paused for a moment, then asked, “Do you know Luke and Emily Becker?”

“Just in passing. Why?”

He played with her hand, lacing and unlacing their fingers. “They’ve been together for forty years, and he mentioned that she tricked him into marrying her. He was supposed to marry her sister.”

She sat up a bit straighter. “I’ve never heard about that! I’ll have to do a little checking. Just out of curiosity, you understand.”

“Well, yeah, I’m curious too. Be looking for an invitation from them for a summer picnic. They want to thank everyone who helped them today.” He turned her wedding ring on her finger. “We’ve come a long way over these months, you and I. Together and separately.”

“I suppose we have,” she agreed quietly.

“I came to Powell Springs looking for a home, one where no one knew about my past. It came out and I’m still here. You came back to Powell Springs because it’s the only home you know. People already knew about your past, you overcame it and got your family back. We found each other. And today, Cole referred to me as his brother-in-law. I lost my childhood family and found my real one.”