Love Inspired Suspense July 2015 #2 (54 page)

She glanced around the lawn. Shorty was lying on the driveway. His eyes were closed but his chest was still moving. “Once I heard him fall and you tap my initials, I knew it was time to get ready to run.”

“You managed to catch all that?”

“Of course. The hardest part was trying to think like you, pay attention and fight the urge to just run off wildly.”

“Well, we both seem to have learned something from each other.” Daniel's hand tightened in hers. “Come on, we've got to run. I did manage to grab Shorty's gun, but I'm hardly going to launch into a gun battle with illegal weapons against a killer if I can help it.”

A gunshot blast sounded from the living room behind them. The door frame exploded into splinters. Looked as though Jesse had managed to find his gun.

Then a second bullet flew past from the other direction. Brute was running down the driveway toward them. He was still probably too far away to get in a fatal shot. But he was closing in fast. One gunman behind them. One in front of them and getting closer.

They were trapped in the middle with nowhere to run.

Olivia wheeled around to Daniel. “Now what?”

“Up.” Daniel jumped on the porch railing. “We've got to climb.”

NINETEEN

“C
ome on.” Daniel pulled her up onto the railing. “We're going to climb onto the porch roof and up onto the second floor.”

“What?” How was that not a death trap? “We'll be cornered up there with two men shooting at us.”

“Please.” He reached up and grabbed the shallow roof above their heads. His eyes grew darker as they fixed on her face. “I have my firearm stashed up there. I took out their explosives guy and destroyed the only bomb Shorty had on him, which he never even got a chance to set. Considering how wet the wood is, unless they brought a foolproof backup bomb, or they've got a major accelerant handy, I can get up there, arm myself and come back faster than they can set this place on fire. Trust me. It's the best option we've got.”

I want to trust you. But this is crazy!
“You said the second and third floor were in such bad shape we were likely to fall through.”

“I know.” He let go of her hand and hauled himself up onto the roof above her head. “But I also went through and painstakingly marked on the floor where all the main supporting walls were. If we stick to my path, we won't fall through.”

She scrambled up onto the railing and reached up with both hands. He grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her up onto the porch roof. It shook under their weight.

Jesse broke through the door beneath them. Brute shot toward the house again, but only managed to elicit a burst of swearwords from Jesse.

“This way!” Daniel yanked a window open. They tumbled into a huge master bedroom. The crescent-shaped room had huge windows and several boards missing from the floor. Fluorescent spray paint traced a single vertical line across the room. So not a lot of supporting walls under this room, then.

She leaped to her feet only to feel her right foot punch a hole through the worn floorboards all the way to her knee. Daniel grabbed her hand and helped her out. “Careful. Probably best we stay on our hands and knees until we're out in the hallway.”

They crawled along the thick fluorescent line and through the doorway. A bullet flew up through the floor where her foot had been. They reached the hallway and started running single file. Her eyes barely took in the rooms on either side, drinking in the beautiful, ragged empty spaces with no doors, holes in floors and huge broken windows.

There was shouting beneath their feet, followed by a blast of gunfire and the sound of floorboards splintering behind them. They hit the end of the hallway. A door flew open in front of them. Brute was standing there at the top of the stairs with a gun in his hand. He leveled them in his sights.

“Get down!” Daniel yelled. He raised his hand above his head and spun something around like a slingshot. She dropped to the floor just in time to see it fly through the air. The projectile caught the huge thug in the chest. Brute grunted, fell back, then suddenly dropped from view like a stone.

A deafening crash filled the air.

They reached the doorway and looked down through a gaping hole at the pile of broken timber that had moments ago been the rickety staircase. She grabbed the wall to steady herself. Brute had fallen straight through.

“Told you those stairs were dangerously unsafe.” Daniel's hand touched hers. “I just pray he manages to stay alive until we can get out of there and send an ambulance for him. He might be a killer, but I'm not.”

“What did you throw at him?”

“A wrench attached to a bungee cord. I just wanted to knock him out, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised his fall took down the stairs.”

A bullet shattered the door frame beside them. Daniel yanked her back against the wall. A second hole appeared in the ground by their feet. All three of the Faceless Crew were now accounted for. But Jesse was still shooting. She didn't want to know how many holes it would take through the floor before the whole thing collapsed beneath them.

“This way.” Daniel pulled her through a doorway and into a narrow staircase. “We need to keep climbing.”

They couldn't head down. They couldn't stay where they were. But would climbing up higher make them any safer? Daniel was already heading up the narrow, darkened staircase. “Hug the wall and watch your step. Some of the stairs are missing.”

She climbed up behind him. They came out into a small, dusty attic. The ceiling slanted steeply above their heads. A large window looked out at one end of the room. Rays of sunshine spread out across the dingy floor.

Daniel looked around the empty space and groaned.

“What?”

“I kept my hunting shotgun up here. It was in a locked box under a tarp. It was the most obscure, unlikely place I could think to hide it, because I didn't want Sarah stumbling upon it. She could be pretty nosey but she knew she wasn't allowed up here. Figured she'd be afraid of crossing the floor. Guess I was wrong.” He sighed. “I do have the gun I lifted from Shorty. It's a horrible piece, totally illegal and only has two bullets left. But it's better than nothing. At least we managed to take out the Faceless Crew, so it's now just Jesse we have to worry about. Sarah made it sound as if they were planning on blowing the house up, and when I took out Shorty he had an explosive device on him. Looked as though he hadn't set it yet. I managed to slice up the wires pretty good, then yanked the whole contraption apart and tossed it in a puddle. Hopefully, Jesse doesn't have the technical know-how to put it back together.”

Daniel crossed over carefully to the window at the front of the house and looked out. She did, too, but saw nothing but an empty driveway fading into the tree line. More bullets sounded below them. Then came the sound of Jesse bellowing and shouting words she couldn't make out. Daniel sat on the floor against the wall and gestured for her to join him. She sat beside him. Her head dropped against his shoulder. “I'm really sorry about Sarah.”

“Me, too.” He slid one arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him. “Ever since I became her guardian, I had this feeling I was just treading water trying to keep her out of jail. I think I had mostly forgiven myself for everything that had happened with Mona, but I hadn't quite been ready to get rid of this nagging feeling that if I'd only loved her just a little bit harder, she'd have given up the drugs and the partying, and her life would've turned out differently. I think I needed to spend the past few years working this hard at taking care of Sarah for God to show me that no matter how hard you try to guide someone's life, people are still going to make their own choices. You helped me see that, too.” His arm tightened around her. “I'm just thankful Sarah's still alive and safe in police custody. Maybe she'll get the kind of help she needs behind bars.”

“Now what?” She couldn't remember ever feeling so trapped and helpless. There was nowhere left to run. Nowhere to go. Yet somehow with Daniel beside her, sitting in the attic of this ramshackle old house, she felt the most at home she'd ever been.

“First we pray and thank God we're here, still alive, still together. Then we make a plan for getting out of here alive.”

She closed her eyes for a moment and lifted her heart toward God as Daniel whispered a prayer into the darkness. They squeezed each other's hands tighter than she'd ever held on to anything in her life.

Lord, I'm not ready to die. Not here. Not now. But thank You that I met a man like Daniel. Thank You for showing me there are people I can rely on when the world all falls apart. Thank You that he and I are in this together.

Then she felt Daniel's lips brush against her hair. “We'll figure something out. I drove Ricky's car here and it's parked not that far away, if we can get down safely and run to it.”

The sound of gunfire stopped below them. She didn't know if that was a good or a bad sign. “Does anyone else know we're here?”

“No, I'm sorry. Trent took off to coordinate with the police and turn over Rake. Your sister took Ricky to the hospital. The bulletproof vest saved his life. We just have to pray they'll put two and two together and figure out where I went.” His hand brushed up her neck and under her chin. She turned her face toward his. “I'm sorry. I wish I'd handled things differently. Maybe if I had, we wouldn't be here. I wish I hadn't tried to stop you from following your gut. I wish I hadn't told you to run—”

His voice caught in his throat. Her fingers ran up the back of his neck.

“And I wish I hadn't rushed up here Friday night with Ricky to interview you the way I did without clearing it with my editor,” she said softly. “We both made a lot of decisions, some right, some wrong. But we're here now, and like you said, we'll find a way out of this.”

“Yeah.” His voice grew husky. “At least we're together now.”

His face bent toward hers. Then she felt his lips brush over hers.

Something crashed outside.

“What was that?” Daniel jumped up and walked over to the window. She followed just as an angry shout filled the air.

“You want to stay up there? Fine, then you can die up there!” Jesse was standing on the lawn, staring up at them. In one hand he clutched a gun. In the other he held up a jug of gasoline. “You may have destroyed my bomb, but I'm going to set fire to the house. I promised I'd burn you down. One way or another, you're going to burn!”

She watched in horror as Jesse dragged the can up onto the porch. The smell of gasoline wafted up toward them. He sloshed gas wildly over the wood. The stone walls themselves wouldn't catch fire. But the blaze would still burn the floorboards out from under their feet—if the smoke didn't choke them first. Even if they climbed to the roof, Jesse could watch and shoot while the house raged into an inferno beneath them.

They'd run out of time. They'd run out of options.

In moments the porch would be ablaze.

Daniel slid the windowpane all the way up.

“Come with me.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her back through the attic, away from the window. “I have a plan—”

“Plan? What plan?”

“No time to explain.” He turned them back toward the window. “Just get ready to jump.”

“What?”

Jump? What kind of plan is—

“Go!”

She felt the pull of his hand on hers and held on to him tight.

They ran, pelting across the attic floor.

The window grew closer.

“Lord, You are our ever-present help in danger... Now!”

Daniel leaped through the window. Olivia followed one footstep later.

They plunged through the air. Then hit the top of the porch. The sagging wood smacked hard against her body. The breath was knocked from her lungs. She lost hold of Daniel's hand.

The roof gave way and they fell through. Wood splintered around them.

Jesse glanced up in horror as Daniel, Olivia and the entire porch roof fell in on top of him.

Lord! Save us! Please don't let us die—

But porch beams crumpled in around them before she could finish the prayer.

TWENTY

“O
livia? Olivia!” Daniel scrambled over the broken pile of timber that had been his front porch, searching the wreckage. He couldn't see Olivia anywhere. “Shout if you can hear me!”

Oh, Lord, where is she? Was she buried underneath all this? Is she even still alive?

There was a groan to his left. He turned. Jesse was trapped under a support beam.

Daniel picked his way over quickly and checked Jesse's pulse. It was strong, and there was no visible head trauma. Daniel grabbed Jesse's hands and duct-taped them together.

His eyes snapped open. “You're dead. You're both dead. When I catch you and that—”

He slapped a piece of duct tape over Jesse's mouth.

Then he saw her. Olivia was lying deep inside a pile of crumbled wood. He ran toward her. Her eyes were closed. Her face was pale.
Lord, please let her be okay
.
He knelt down and gently pulled her body out of the wreckage. He cradled her into his chest. His eyes brushed the side of her face. “Olivia? Honey? Can you hear me?”

Green eyes fluttered open. He'd never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life.

“Hey!” A smile crossed her lips but her voice was faint. “That was some plan.”

“Yeah.” He chuckled softly. “Are you okay?”

“I think so.” She took his hand and tried to pull herself to her feet. A cry escaped her lips. She fell back onto the wood. “I hurt my ankle.”

“Hopefully it's not broken, just sprained.” He slid his arms under her limbs and picked her up. He carried her through the rubble and out into the trees. “We'll get you to the car and to a hospital.”

Her hands slid around his neck. Her heart beat into his chest. “Where's Jesse?”

“Trapped well enough that he can't chase us. But alive. Looks as though Jesse and the Faceless Crew will all live to face justice.”

Branches pressed up against their bodies. Her arms tightened their grip on his neck. “When you said you had a plan, I was expecting something a little more complicated than jumping out a window and dropping a roof on top of him.”

“Well, we didn't have that many options.” He chuckled softly. “You're the one who taught me it was sometimes good to be impulsive.”

Dazzling blue spread across the sky above them. The world was silent except for the sound of his feet moving through the underbrush and her breath against his neck.

“So now what?” she asked.

“Now we drive to Barrie. Trent lent me a disposable cell phone. As we go, you can keep trying your sister. She'll be so thrilled to hear your voice. Then the cops will come to arrest Jesse, Shorty and Brute. We'll provide the authorities with some really good information. You'll end up with a pretty major story.” He bent closer to her. “And I'll ask you out for dinner. Somewhere you and I can sit alone, with quiet and candlelight, without anyone shooting at us and nothing exploding.”

“Dinner?” Her breath teased his skin. “Last I heard, you just wanted to grab a quick coffee.” Her lips brushed against his jaw, sending a shiver down his spine, then up into his heart.

He pulled her tighter into his chest. “Let's just say I've realized I want to get to know you better.”

Then, before another word could escape her mouth, he brought his mouth down toward her, and their lips met in a kiss.