Southern Cross (16 page)

“They
didn’t get along too good,” she said carefully. “But I always knew that was
Danny’s fault—like, he can be kind of a pain, you know what I mean? And Dr.
Durham just seemed like he was always tryin’ to do what was best. Danny’s mama
was more the problem, you ask me.”

I
didn’t say anything, waiting for her to continue on her own.

“Dr.
Durham couldn’t ever say nothin’ to her about any of it, but I know he didn’t
mind the band so much. Mrs. Durham was the one always tryin’ to get Danny to
give it up and go play at the dang church instead. ‘Til one day she just up and
had a fit, and made Danny quit.”

“And
you talked to Wy—Dr. Durham about this?” I asked, treading as cautiously as
possible.

She
lowered her eyes, returning her attention to her now-melted ice cream. “I told
you, I didn’t know Dr. Durham. It’s just a feeling I got.”

Right.
While I was still trying to figure out my next approach, the Ford Focus Solomon
and I had rented pulled in and slid into the space beside the Chevy Impala I’d
borrowed from Mae when I ditched Agent Blaze. I watched Solomon get out of the
driver’s seat, then waited to see if she had reinforcements with her. No one
else got out, though. She came in, waved to Casey and me as casually as you
please, then went to the front and ordered herself a turtle sundae. Only then
did she come over, sliding into the seat beside me with her dessert.

“Fancy
meeting you here,” she said. There was a spark to her eye that suggested she
was more amused than annoyed by my exploits. I took that as an encouraging
sign. She slid the sundae toward me.

“What
are the chances?” I agreed.

“Hey,
funny story.” She turned in the seat so she could look me in the eye. “You know
Agent Blaze? That super-hot, super-scary agent you were hanging out with this
afternoon? She just got back… turns out she got
three
flat tires while
she was out at the Durham place. All at once. Crazy, right?”

“That
is crazy,” I agreed.

“That’s
not even the weirdest part,” she said. She was on a roll now, so I let her run
with it. “She said you excused yourself to go find George Durham, and then… poof,
you just vanished. You and Mae’s old Chevy, gone. Apparently, she didn’t even
find a note.”

I
took another bite of her sundae. Casey raised her eyebrows at both of us.

“I
should probably get going,” the girl said.

“Don’t
let me interrupt,” Solomon said. “If you guys were talking…”

I
shook my head. Whatever happened between Casey and Wyatt Durham, there was no
way in hell she was talking to me about it. “I think we’re done. I’ll give you
a call if I hear anything, okay?” I said to Casey. “And if you think of
anything, or you need anything at all, you know how to reach either of us.
Right?”

She
nodded, but I doubted I would hear from her. “I will. Y’all sure you don’t need
anything else from me?”

“No,
we’re good,” Solomon said, too sweetly. “But we’ll definitely call you if we
hear anything else.”

Casey
went back up to the front to have a confab with Sophie, and Solomon moved over
to the other side of the booth. Not before she’d cuffed me soundly in the back
of the head, however.

“Ow!
Don’t try and tell me you were surprised when you heard I ditched G.I. Jane,” I
said. “You know me better than that.”

“It’s
the principle of the thing,” she said. “What’d you find out from the kid?”

“Not
a damn thing,” I said. “Danny smokes a lot of weed and I get the feeling he’s
dipped his wick in some unsavory places, but I don’t see why that should get
him kidnapped or killed. And Wyatt…”

I
paused. She raised her eyebrows, a spoonful of ice cream halfway to her mouth.
“Wyatt what?”

“I’m
not sure. Casey knows something that she’s not telling me, though. Blaze hinted
that there was something we didn’t know about him… I have this feeling it might
have something to do with Casey.”  

“Like
an affair?”

I
shook my head. “No. I can’t imagine it—Wyatt wasn’t that guy. And even if he
was
that guy, if he was going to have an affair, he sure as hell wouldn’t have one
with a fifteen-year-old girl.”

“It
does seem like a stretch. So…?” she prompted.

“So,
I’m thinking of alternate theories,” I said. I had an idea, but I wanted to give
it a little time. Ask a few questions before I spoke out of turn. “How’d you
manage to duck out on the masked avenger?” I asked, switching gears.

“The
masked avenger, hmm? I think Juarez would like that, actually. We went over and
interviewed a couple of weird old brothers who live together—they’re big fans
of Barnel.”

“The
Reese brothers?” I asked.

She
nodded. “Yeah. They didn’t have much to say, really. You know they have at
least a dozen cats, all of them with little bells on their collars? It wasn’t
like a hoarding thing, though. More like… you know, everything was a little too
clean, and the cats were secretly in control. It was like a horror movie. A
horror movie with bells.” 

She
was babbling, which meant however cool she might be playing it, she’d been
worried when Blaze showed up at the station without me. I helped myself to more
of her ice cream and let her babble.

“That’s
rough,” I said.

“Tell
me about it,” she agreed. “Anyway, Blaze was just coming off a murderous rage
when we got back there. You might want to wear a cup when you see her next,
incidentally. And somehow, her not being happy with
you
turned into her
not being happy with
me
. I decided it might be smart to make myself
scarce.”

“Good
move.”

“That
was my thought,” she agreed. She fell silent, watching me while I pushed
caramel around in her sundae. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

Landing
the ball solidly in my court. I was just preparing to deflect the question when
I read the look in her eyes and realized deflection was exactly what she
expected. I thought of our conversation the day before.
Everything’s this
deep, dark mystery with you.
I wet my lips.

“I
think Wyatt helped Casey get an abortion,” I said.

Her
eyebrows went up, eyes widening. “You just let me ramble about the cat brothers
for ten minutes when that’s what you’re sitting on? Thanks a lot. What makes
you think that?”

“Timeline,”
I said. “Mae said Barnel cut Wyatt off about six months ago, telling him he’d
crossed a line he could never uncross. Danny said Casey missed the first month
of school, which would have been around the same time… And Mae mentioned the
whole thing about Wyatt going to talk to Casey’s father right about then.”

“You
really think he’d do that?”

I’d
been going over that in my head. I had a hard time imagining it—Wyatt and I
were long-time friends, but our views on sex and marriage and everything in
between couldn’t have been different. I glanced up front while I was thinking
it over.

Casey
and Sophie were still talking, though it looked like their friendly chat wasn’t
quite so friendly now. Sophie said something and Casey looked back toward me,
her cheeks coloring when she realized I was watching them. She leaned in and
said something more to Sophie, clearly pissed, and Sophie grabbed her arm as
Casey started to leave. Solomon followed my gaze.

“Looks
like a cat fight’s about to break out,” she noted.

I
stood just as Casey pulled her arm free, turned on her heel, and started for
the door. She stopped halfway there, as though she’d spotted someone outside.
When she turned toward me, all the color had drained from her face. The hair on
the back of my neck stood on end when I realized what she’d seen.

“Diggs?”
Solomon said.

“Get
down,” I said, my voice tight. Solomon just stared at me, forehead furrowed.

“What?”

“Now!”

The
glass in the restaurant’s front door exploded an instant later as a tan minivan
tore through the front of the restaurant and came to a stop in the middle of
the dining room. Screams filled the air. I dove for Solomon, pulling her from
the booth to the floor, and covered her body with my own. There was a split
second lapse in which everything went quiet, and I heard something small and
metallic hit the floor. It rolled toward us.

“Stay
down,” I whispered in her ear, bracing myself.

The
world hung suspended for a tenth of a second before the first explosion rocked
the building. The force pulled me up off the ground for an instant, but I kept
my body curled around Solomon and held on. Two more blasts went off around us
before the van itself exploded.

I
waited ten seconds, then fifteen, for something more to happen. The smoke alarm
wailed; kids screamed. I still had my head down, my face pressed into Erin’s neck while she lay pinned beneath me, but I could feel the heat and hear flames
surrounding us.

“Diggs?”
Solomon whispered to me.

I lay
there, frozen for an instant, before I recovered enough to speak. “I’m okay,” I
said. I lifted my head and took stock of the situation before I let her up. The
kitchen was ablaze, the rest of the restaurant filling with smoke. I stayed
low, noting gashes on Solomon’s forehead and arm when she sat up.

“Are
you okay?” I shouted over the noise.

She
nodded. Her eyes were already huge, but they widened even further when she
looked at me, her gaze lingering on my shoulder.

“I’m
okay,” I repeated.

She
shook her head. “You have a shard of glass above your shoulder blade.” She
pulled out her cell phone and handed it to me. “Call for help, okay? Don’t take
the glass out. Get whoever you can and get the hell out of here.”

She
scrambled away, toward the worst of the injured. I dialed 911 even though I was
sure by this time the whole town had been alerted, and hung up when the
dispatcher assured me that, yes, there was definitely someone on the way.

Casey
was kneeling beside Sophie, her eyes wide with shock, her face bloodied. The
other girl lay twisted, unmoving on the floor. I crouched low and began to move
as Solomon checked Sophie for a pulse.

The
minivan was engulfed in flames by now, the driver unrecognizable. Solomon ran
to me and shouted over the noise.

“We
need to get people out—if the gas tank blows…”

She
didn’t need to complete that thought. I began with the little kids that had
come in with their parents, their mother’s screams on a par with their own. The
father lay on the floor, unconscious, his forehead bloodied. I picked up the
bigger of the two kids, a boy maybe five years old.

“We
need to get outside,” I said to the woman. The left side of her face was
burned, but not badly. The kids seemed relatively unscathed. She stared at me
blankly, then shifted her focus back to her husband.

“I’ll
come back for him,” I said quickly. “You need to think about your kids right
now—please.”

I
shepherded her and the kids outside to the parking lot, where emergency
vehicles were already pulling in, then started back in for Solomon. A fireman
stopped me, decked out in full gear. The back of the building was consumed with
flames, every window in the place now broken.

“We’ve
got this—you hang back, let somebody check you out.”

He
motioned to a paramedic to come get me. I was about to dodge them and force my
way back in when Solomon came out with Casey’s arm draped over her shoulder,
half-dragging the girl to safety. I’d expected to find World War Three in the
parking lot, but apart from a couple of broken windshields, the damage was
confined to the DQ. Solomon left Casey with the medics, then returned to my
side.

“Come
with me, okay?” she said. She took my hand and led me toward one of three
ambulances. The medic looked at me, then back at the bodies still being pulled
from the building. He was young—maybe twenty-one. Clearly out of his element.

“I’m
a certified EMT,” Solomon lied. At least I thought she was lying. She was just
lying very, very well. “I can help you guys. You’ve got at least twenty injured
in there; are you set up to handle that?” He shook his head, still looking
dazed. “That’s what I figured. I can help triage. Are these your only rigs?”

“Paducah’s sending more,” he said. “But they’re an hour away.”

“Okay.
Is there any kind of air evac unit coming?”

The
man who appeared to be in charge—a paunchy guy with a handlebar moustache—came
over. “You’ll need to set down, ma’am,” he said to Solomon. “Somebody’ll get to
you two as soon as they can.”

“I’m
fine,” she said impatiently. “You’ve got a guy in his forties in there with a
head injury, and I wasn’t getting any breath sounds on his right side. Probable
neumothorax. And there are at least five people still trapped in the kitchen. I
can help with victims once you get them out here.”

He
looked torn for a split second before he nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He pointed to
the second ambulance, which appeared abandoned. “Go on over there, just assess
as people come out. Don’t do anything, you hear me? Just red tag the worst
cases so we can get ‘em out of here.”