Julia Spencer-Fleming - To Darkness And To Death

He kept walking.

“Stop!”

He walked faster. Behind him, he heard the thud of running feet. He broke into a run, but even his athlete’s body couldn’t function at peak with a hundred and forty pounds of young woman in his arms.

The firefighter’s tackle knocked him to the carpet. The girl bounced and rolled, coming to rest on her back, her head tilted to one side.

A hand grabbed his jacket and flipped him over. The firefighter set his ax, blade side down, against Shaun’s sternum. With his other hand, he shoved the face shield up and tugged his oxygen mask down.

Shaun frowned. It was… it was… He blinked. It was Ed Castle, the guy who supplied his pulp.

“What,” Ed Castle said, “are you doing with my daughter’s college roommate?”

Russ had finished getting a radio briefing from Lyle MacAuley on the three-alarm fire that was consuming the old mill on the Reid-Gruyn property. He turned to the newly arrived Mark Durkee and Noble Entwhistle. “What’s the flammable version of ‘It never rains, but it pours?’ ” Mark shrugged his shoulders. “Okay,” Russ said. “We’re going to need some crowd and traffic control here. I want you to-”

Someone grabbed his shoulder. He looked around at John Huggins. “Hey,” Huggins said. “I got a radio squawk from one of my guys. He’s calling for paramedics and the cops.” He pointed toward the edge of the hotel. “Go around there. The second door. It’ll be open.”

Huggins strode away before Russ could acknowledge the information. “You heard the man,” he said, pointing to Mark. “Let’s go.”

From the corner of his eye, Russ saw two paramedics from the Corinth squad shouldering their rolled pallet and medical kits. He let Mark lead, trusting his younger, keener night vision to find them footing.

They found the door. The firefighter who called them in was close by.

“Lookit who I found,” Ed said.

Mark knelt by Millie. “She’s got a bloody laceration at the back of her skull,” he said. “But she’s alive.”

Russ looked at Shaun a long moment. Then he looked at the man holding the ax. “Ed,” he said. He paused. He didn’t know what to say. “Thank you,” he finally got out.

Ed nodded. “It was her hair caught my eye. Like Becky’s.”

Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “Mark,” he said wearily. “Will you cuff Mr. Reid and inform him of his rights?”

Clare and Deacon Aberforth sat in Hugh Parteger’s car together, keeping warm.

“Do you think they’ll stop it?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m sure they will.” She looked through the window at the carnival of lights and hoses and moving reflective stripes. She sighed.

“I wonder if I’ll be able to get back to my room?”

“You can bunk in the rectory tonight, Father.”

He smiled at her for the first time. “You know, before all this, I would have said that was totally unacceptable.”

“And now?”

“And now, I think I’ll just say, ‘Thank you.’ ”

Clare leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.

“Ms. Fergusson.”

She opened them again.

“I suspect you and I disagree on quite a number of things, including homosexuality, the proper degree of episcopal control of a parish, and, for all I know, the doctrines of immutable grace and virgin birth.”

“I may be a liberal, Father, but that doesn’t mean I’ve fallen under the sway of Bishop Spong.”

“No. No, I suppose not. And we are called to remember what unites us in Christ, not what divides us in the world.”

“Amen,” she said. The car’s heater kicked in again, and her skirt rustled in the blower’s blast.

“What I’m trying to say is, I recognize I must seem like a hopelessly outdated fossil to you.”

She prudently kept her mouth shut.

“But I have lived a good number of years. I’ve seen quite a lot of the world. It may surprise you to know that I served in the marines as a young man.”

“You’re kidding.”

“In Korea.”

“I’m impressed.”

“And I’m a widower.”

She paused. It was difficult to imagine Willard Aberforth in a marital relationship. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m not saying this to garner your sympathy but to let you know that I’ve attained a good deal of knowledge about human nature. And about men and women.” He looked at her. His black eyes were a good deal less intimidating than they had been earlier. It was hard, she guessed, to keep your back up around someone wearing striped pajamas.

“I saw you, earlier.”

She was silent.

“When I was at the bar, after you left, the man you… were with… came through the lobby. With a woman who acted very much like a wife. Was I mistaken?”

“No. You must have a good eye for body language.”

He sighed. “Unlike you, I cannot offer confession and absolution.”

“No,” she said.

“But I can offer a quiet, listening heart. And whatever insight my years have left me with.”

Clare closed her eyes. She felt… taut, as if her skin were stretched around this secret she was stuffed with. She tried to live her life with integrity. But integrity required her to be integrated. To be one whole person, whether alone in her house or in front of an entire ballroom full of people.

She opened her eyes. Beyond the crazy emergency lights she could see the mountains. And the moon.

“When I met Russ Van Alstyne, I thought of him simply as a friend,” she started. “Our relationship seemed like”-she thought for a moment-“a meeting of true minds.”

He found her sitting in Parteger’s car, her skirts practically up to her nose, deep in conversation with an old guy in pajamas and an overcoat. He knocked on the window. She rolled it down.

“Guess what?” he said.

“After tonight? I wouldn’t dare try.”

“We’ve found Millie van der Hoeven.”

She smiled brilliantly. “Oh, Russ, that’s wonderful. Finally, some good news.”

“She’s been resting up in one of the ambulances, but before she goes, she’d like to meet you.”

“Me? Whatever for?”

“I told her about you being on the search party and talking with her brother and all. Will you come?”

She looked at the old fellow. “Will you excuse me?”

“Of course,” he said.

She maneuvered her skirts out of the car. She was still wearing Russ’s tuxedo jacket. “I see you found a replacement,” she said, fingering the heavy parka he was wearing.

“I borrowed it.” He turned his back, to show her the words FIRE CHIEF in reflective letters.

“Why am I not surprised you found one that says ‘chief’?”

He smiled to himself.

“Did you find your Mom okay?”

“Yeah, She and Nane and the rest of the ACC gardeners were already outside when the crates blew. They’ve all gone to the Kreemy Kakes diner to talk the evening over.”

“How are the firefighters doing?” she asked.

“Not bad. The ballroom, the kitchen, and the conference room next to the ballroom are a complete loss, and there’s serious structural damage to the floor above them, but they’ve managed to contain it.”

“Thank God.”

“Was Millie behind the bombing? Or the PLA?”

“No.” He didn’t elaborate on what the van der Hoeven sisters had already told him.

He pointed to where the Corinth ambulance was parked. Several people milled around the open back doors. “Are those the corporate honchos from GWP?” Clare asked.

“Yep. Millie and her sister insisted on signing the documents transferring Haudenosaunee before they left for the hospital.”