Exhaling in relief, Bay threw a load on her own welder. She began the bottom weld on her spear and was immediately lost in her work.
How long was it before she picked up on the change, the smell? Two minutes, three? It couldn’t have been much longer. In any case, the strong odor, wholly unnatural to their environment and so clearly wrong, prompted her to throw up her hood and sniff again.
She turned around.
Smoke was coming from Glenn’s table, so much smoke that she couldn’t see him. Nevertheless, the nauseating smell told her he was there. Swatting the hood off her head, she ran to his machine, flipped off the ignition switch and, while her reaction was fast, her movements automatic, her mind froze on one thought. Heart attack.
The horrible stench gagged her as much as the smoke did, speaking too clearly of burning clothing and worse. As horror urged retreat, she grabbed the lead to get the stringer out from beneath him, at the same time pushing against his shoulder to roll him off it. In that instant something struck her forearm.
Through tearing eyes and suffocating smoke she saw a metal rod—no, one of the Maiden’s lances.
The spear was impaled through Glenn’s back.
Also available from MIRA Books and HELEN R. MYERS
FINAL STAND
DEAD END
LOST
MORE THAN YOU KNOW
COME SUNDOWN
WHILE OTHERS SLEEP
No Sanctuary
Helen R. Myers
www.mirabooks.co.uk
For Norma L. Wilkinson
Who has also known what it takes to stand alone.
Like many, I grew up hearing the sage advice “Two things should never be discussed at the dinner table—politics and religion.” An adage, I should add, that was rarely heeded by those who taught it to me. Then my family moved south of the Mason-Dixon Line and, a few years after we were married, my husband and I settled in east Texas, a place, I have wryly concluded, where there are more churches than pine trees. As hard as I try, avoiding the subject of religion here is more difficult yet—in fact it’s virtually impossible. Salutations are typically followed by one of two questions: “What church do you belong to?” or “Who are your people?”
It is partly because of such troubling and inappropriate queries that this story evolved. My other inspiration came from actual crimes—two in particular. One to this day remains unproven, although I’m sure the U.S. Treasury Department continues to watch over it hoping for a break, and the other was brought to trial but failed to win a conviction. From there on, this is a work of fiction. To the best of my knowledge, Mission of Mercy Church does not exist in this area. But sadly, I have seen a few too many variations of it and of characters like Martin Davis and Madeleine Ridgeway. They present great fodder for a writer, but I despair for the innocent minds they abuse and corrupt.
Several people need to be thanked for sharing their stories and expertise, or for going out of their way to try to arrange interviews—Darese Cotton, Karen Kelley and Linda Broday. To those of you who write in approval of my protagonists’ “real” professional backgrounds, I hope you’ll enjoy Bay and her work. All credit for its accuracy goes to my husband, Robert, a master craftsman and shaman with metal. Any error there and elsewhere is entirely my own.
The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.
—Benjamin Disraeli
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Tyler, Texas
August, 1995
It was well past nine, hours after their usual quitting time—more if the battery-operated clock above the office door had stuck again—and yet Bay Butler reached for another welding rod. With two more ornamental lances to tack then weld into the division bars, she could call her half of the entry gate completed, and she wasn’t shutting down until done. The gate had to be installed the day after tomorrow. It couldn’t matter that every muscle and bone in her back and neck screamed from fatigue, or that her eyes had been on fire since the rest of the crew had gone home for the day. Never mind that sweat saturated her long-sleeved denim shirt and jeans, threatening to slow-cook her to death. It was August, this was Texas, and only a bankruptcy-intent fool air-conditioned a welding shop.
At least her clothes were providing some protection from the red-hot sparks shooting at her. Denim was not ideal for such work, but allowed flexibility of movement that the leather vest wisdom dictated a welder use didn’t. Those contraptions felt as weighty as a warrior’s breastplate, the arms as stiff and restrictive as the pauldrons, rerebraces and couters of any good knight’s armor. The invention was also meant to guard against worse health problems down the road; however, thanks to her creditors, there would be no “down the road” for Bay if she couldn’t work with reasonable speed and flexibility. Which was also why she replaced her wardrobe every few months; none of which, her CPA chastised repeatedly, was deductible because her shop wasn’t union and denim didn’t qualify as a uniform.
Two more lances…
It might as well be six and she had to visualize something pleasant to keep going. Once she dragged her butt home, she would fill the tub with whatever the faucet marked C offered considering this was Tyler and triple-digit heat had been the status quo for thirty-eight days straight. A tray or three of ice cubes from the freezer would help, as would the quart of cold milk from the fridge that was a few days past its expiration date. Whole milk, which was why she rarely drank it, the kind that clung to skin like a pearl’s sheen. Then she would pop the tab on a tall Miller Lite to cool off her insides, and hopefully pass out from sheer exhaustion.
“Christ Almighty, will you knock it off, already?”
She paused in lowering the Darth Vader-like hood over her face and glanced behind her to see Glenn English glaring from beneath his own raised hood. Behind him on the rolling parts table were five other ten-foot tall iron rods with the sharp arrowheads that would finish his side of the entry gate. It wasn’t like him to be so far behind her, and he knew what was at stake. But as she accepted she might have to forgo the soak, maybe even the beer, she shouted back over the motors, “Go ahead and quit if you need to. I’ll finish for you.”
She made sure her tone was matter-of-fact; after all, he had someone waiting for him. Maybe Holly had committed them to an engagement and he’d neglected to share that tidbit of information. It wouldn’t be the first time, and who could blame Holly for deciding that tonight she’d eaten one too many dinners alone, received one last-minute excuse beyond what a fiancée should endure?
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