A Touch of Grace (9 page)

There was a beat of silence before she asked, “Were you out the night Maddy died?”

He glanced her way, interested that she would mention her sister. The topic had been off-limits before.

“Yes,” he answered. He’d been out but not long enough.

The van proceeded slowly down the narrow old streets past hotels and bars and vagrants. Gretchen sat against the passenger door, quiet and pensive. She had to be thinking of her sister walking these same streets, sleeping in the same alleys and doorways. Such thoughts couldn’t be too comforting.

Ian’s pulse accelerated when he spotted a young man in the doorway of a cheap hotel, cigarette smoke curling around his head. On the stoop next to him, a teenage girl
was curled into a ball, backpack under her head, either asleep or passed out.

“Terry Anne,” he said nodding toward the scene. “The runaway.”

Gretchen drew in a hissing breath. “This doesn’t look so good.”

“You won’t find anything good happening on this street.” He wheeled to the curb and put the van in Park. As the vehicle went through the usual chugging and coughing, he said, “You’ll probably want to stay here while I check things out.”

Without awaiting her answer, he opened his door and got out slowly, assessing the situation as he moved. Behind him, he heard the metallic grind of the passenger door.

The tension in his shoulders tightened like a vice.

Just what he didn’t need, and the very reason he’d wanted Gretchen to stay at the mission. A nosy reporter could get hurt out here. If not for his great worry that something very bad was going to happen to Terry Anne, he would turn around and leave right now.

“Jackie, how’s it going?” Tone casual, he stepped up on the sidewalk, praying all the while.

“We don’t need your help, Preacher.”

Ian ignored the glower, focusing instead on the young girl, his heart heavy with the knowledge that she was probably high. Her skin was as pale as copy paper. “Is Terry Anne all right?”

“Yeah.” Jackie laughed rudely. “She’s had a busy evening.”

Ian didn’t even want to consider the meaning behind
that. “Why don’t you let us take her to Isaiah House to sleep it off?”

The man barked another crude laugh and prodded the sleeping girl with the toe of his shoe. “Get up, sweetcakes. Nap’s over.”

Ian gritted his teeth, his fists tight at his side, as the girl stumbled to her feet. Her hair stuck up in all directions. Beside him, Gretchen uttered a sound of protest and started forward. Ian put out an arm to stop her. She didn’t know Jackie like he did. The man carried a knife in his boot and a gun in his pocket. This would require finesse, not force.

Gretchen apparently didn’t agree. She refrained, but shot him a look of pure disgust. So she thought he was a coward. Nothing he could do about that.

“Terry Anne,” Ian said quietly. “Are you all right?”

The girl blinked slow, uncertain. “Sure, Ian. Just great.” She looked up at Jackie. “I’m great, aren’t I, Jackie?”

Her girlish voice sounded frightened and unsure.

“You don’t have to live this way,” Ian said quietly. “We can get you help. Get you off the streets.”

“I won’t go back home.”

“No one will make you do that, Terry Anne. I’m here to help.”

Jackie flicked his cigarette onto the concrete and shouldered away from the wall.

“Look, Preacher, I told you. Terry Anne ain’t going nowhere. Now get lost.”

He shoved an open hand into Ian’s chest, knocking him back several steps. Somehow Ian maintained his balance.

Fighting to keep a calm voice he said, “There’s a bet
ter way, Jackie. Sooner or later, the streets are going to kill you. Both of you. You don’t want that to happen. Neither do I. God loves you, man. He’ll help you get out of this mess.”

Jackie let out a string of expletives that burned the already heated air. Ian had heard worse, though he regretted Gretchen hearing the vitriol.

There wasn’t much he could do but back off. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got your number. So don’t let us keep you any longer.”

He’d had this conversation with the pair for a week now to no avail. For some reason tonight he couldn’t give up. His gut told him something bad was in the works. A small, still voice, the voice he was sure came from God, wouldn’t let him back away.

“Terry Anne, you don’t have to wait for Jackie. We’ll take care of you.”

The girl’s eyes widened. She glanced from Ian to Jackie. The naked desperation in that gesture prodded Ian toward her.

With his peripheral vision on Jackie, he held out a hand to the girl. “Come on, Terry Anne. Come with us right now.”

Jackie’s tone threatened. “Back off, Preacher.”

Ian’s heart thundered in his chest. Keeping his voice steady and his eyes on the girl, Ian said, “Can’t do it, Jackie. Not unless Terry Anne says so.”

“Tell him, sweetcakes. Tell him to get lost.”

The girl’s lip trembled. Huge tears welled in makeup-smeared eyes. “But I’m sick, Jackie.”

Ian took a step closer. He felt Gretchen move with him, felt her anxiety for the young girl. He kept his body between her and the unpredictable man.

“Just for tonight, Jackie? Please.” A sheen of perspiration beaded Terry Anne’s upper lip. “I think—”

At that moment, she leaned forward and retched violently. Gretchen rushed to her. Ian wheeled toward Jackie, daring him to interfere. Fortunately for them all, the man paled at the sound and sight of Terry Anne’s sickness.

With a disgusted cry and another string of curses, he said, “Stupid girl’s no good like that.”

To Ian’s relief, Jackie whipped around on gleaming black shoes and escaped into the lobby of the cheap hotel.

“Hurry before he changes his mind. He carries a gun.”

Gretchen sucked in a startled breath and looked at him, green eyes round as headlights. Hadn’t she even considered such a thing?

But to her credit, she helped the sick and quivering girl to the van, heedless that her own clothes were now soiled. Back at the mission and now here on the streets, Gretchen had done more than observe. She’d cared. And yet, she didn’t like ministers and seemed intent on finding fault with Isaiah House.

He didn’t understand her at all.

Gretchen Barker was a very puzzling woman.

Gretchen climbed into the back of the van, thankful to find a pillow and blanket waiting. Apparently, the reverend had done this sort of impromptu rescue before. As gently as possible, she helped Terry Anne get settled.

The girl trembled violently, sweat drenching her hair.
Gretchen prepared for another bout of sickness as visions of Maddy flashed through her head. She knew what to do. Hadn’t she nursed her retching, shivering sister a dozen times?

The comparison ripped into her. Her own stomach churned, not with sickness but with grief.

Why had she thought she wanted to do this? To come out onto the streets with Ian? Hadn’t she known there were others like Maddy still roaming the French Quarter in search of peace? Hadn’t she realized that reminders would lurk on every corner? Hadn’t she known this would hurt?

She smoothed a soothing hand over Terry Anne’s forehead, aching for her lost sister. A pair of dazed brown eyes gazed up at her. In a heavy Southern accent, the girl murmured, “What if I get sick in your van?”

Ian twisted in the driver’s seat. “Wouldn’t be the first time. If it happens, it happens. No big deal. Try to relax and rest. We’ll have you at Isaiah House in a few minutes.”

He started the engine and pulled onto the streets, continuing to watch the hotel where Jackie had disappeared.

As soon as they were a block away, Terry Anne took a deep, shuddering breath and let her eyelids flutter closed.

“Are you okay back there, Gretchen?”

Gretchen’s opinion of the street preacher rose a notch. In fact, tonight it had risen several notches. From what she’d observed thus far, his was a thankless job, and yet he persevered to the point of endangerment.

She glanced wryly at her filthy blouse and slacks. She stank and her snazzy sandals needed a wash. “Couldn’t be better.”

Ian caught her eyes in the rearview mirror and chuckled softly. “There are wet wipes and some other useful items in the backpack. Help yourself.”

Gratefully, she found the wipes and used several on Terry Anne before attending to herself. The girl hardly stirred. Rings of exhaustion and illness darkened the delicate skin beneath her eyes. And she was frighteningly thin.

“This girl has been sick for a while, Ian.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Is that why you pushed so hard for her to come with us?”

“Gut instinct. God wouldn’t let me leave her there.”

The phrase tweaked her attention. “Are you saying God talks to you?”

A blink of silence and then, “Is that a reporter question?”

Was it? Or was she asking because Ian was starting to get to her? Her stomach jittered at the thought. She’d been around people before who claimed to hear from God, and they’d used that power to control and manipulate. If Ian did the same, she needed to know.

“I’m here to do a story, Ian,” she answered honestly.

“Then let’s save this conversation for another time.”

The evasive answer only roused her curiosity further. As an investigative newswoman, she probed into thoughts and beliefs to discover the real person hiding behind the public persona. Ian was smart enough to know that.

She squinted at his reflection in the rearview mirror. When they’d hit the streets, he’d turned his cap around backward like some college kid. Along with his usual
jeans and tennis shoes, the casual look took years off and allowed him to blend in with the crowd. But now in dim shadow from passing cars and streetlights and framed by the outline of whiskers, his boyish face looked dark and serious.

Gretchen got the feeling that there were many layers of Ian Carpenter yet to be discovered.

“How do you keep your cool when somebody cusses at you the way Jackie did?”

“I wasn’t all that cool. My natural reaction was to bust him in the mouth.”

A preacher with violent tendencies? Or a natural male reaction? “But you didn’t. Why not?”

“Well, the fact that he carries a nine millimeter in his coat and a knife in his shoe might have had something to do with it.” His tone was self-mocking.

“That didn’t stop you from pushing the issue when Terry Anne got sick.”

“So I guess we’re back to the same question, and I’m afraid the answer is also the same.”

“God?”

“I sure couldn’t do any of this on my own.”

Once again she couldn’t help comparing him to Brother Gordon who also claimed to hear from God. But Brother Gordon’s mandates from Heaven had never put him in personal danger. Others maybe, but not himself.

And now here was Ian out on the dangerous streets confronting a man with a gun, a knife and a bad attitude because God told him to.

It didn’t make sense.
He
didn’t make sense.

It also didn’t make sense that he had quietly slipped
money to several people tonight. Why had he done that? Was it payment for something? Or a gift of compassion?

Her head started to hurt.

She’d come to pry deeply into his life, but the closer she got the more of a mystery he became.

Yes, Ian Carpenter was a puzzling man.

Chapter Seven

“W
hen can we expect something on this new series?”

Gretchen’s producer, Mike Marsh, paced the length of the narrow meeting room. The hyperactive boss of Channel Eleven News never sat down during one of these production meetings, a habit that added to the stress of an already high-stress profession.

“I don’t know yet,” Gretchen said. “Three months for the full series. Maybe more. I was thinking an intermittent series might work best this time. The first ministry is taking longer than I expected.”

After two weeks of digging, Gretchen was no closer to the truth about Isaiah House than before. At the mission, Ian seemed on the up-and-up. On the streets at night, he was a one-man wonder. But he still refused to let her talk to all the clients at the mission and now pressure from Councilwoman Jacobs, who somehow knew about the series, had intensified.

“Then move on to another and come back to that one.”

“I’m doing research simultaneously, Mike.” She held up five folders filled with contacts, pubic financial records, complaints, information from phone calls, e-mails and other sources. “All of these ministries deserve public scrutiny and they’ll get it, but that kind of probe takes time. You want a thorough, unimpeachable series, don’t you?”

“Without question, but—”

“Then give me the time I need to do this right. Don’t I always come through?”

“How much time?”

She stiffened. “That’s an unfair question, and I’m surprised that you’d even ask it. Investigative reports take as long as they take.”

Mike ran a hand over his shiny, receding hairline. “We’re not an independent news channel anymore, Gretchen. The big boys expect results for the money they pay out. We have to give them something.”

“And they’ll get it.” A knot tightened in her belly. “Work with me, Mike. Tell the bosses I’m on to something big.”

“Are you?”

“I could be.”

He made a huffing noise and stopped pacing long enough to lean both hands on the table in front of her. “We seem to be having a communication problem today, Gretchen.” His piercing stare seemed to look inside her. “Or maybe something else is going on here. Maybe Isaiah House has become your pet project. Is that the problem?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But if he was thinking what she suspected, she didn’t want to hear it.

Mike’s expression softened a tiny bit, an unusual sight from the tough newsman. “Wasn’t Isaiah House the mission where—”

She jumped in before he could mention Maddy’s name. “I’m a professional. Personal feelings have no place in objective journalism.”

Coffee breath inches from her face, Mike’s intense scrutiny held steady. “My thoughts exactly.”

Gretchen swallowed.