“It's him!” Viv hissed.
I stood on wobbly legs, my phone dropping from my suddenly numb hand. “I see that.”
“What the freak are you two doing?” he said through gritted teeth. “You two clueless idiots!”
“Hey,” Viv said in protest, turning to glare at him. “That's not nice.”
“You're so stupid! I didn't want to have to kill anyone else. I did not want to do this. I just came to get justice for my brother, and then I was going to leave again and everything would be fine.”
A few things clicked into place for me, and despite the situation, I felt kind of proud for having spotted a motive, although I didn't know that's what I was looking at. I pictured every movie I'd ever seen where a sympathetic ear turned a bad guy into a good one. “What Peter Browning did to your brother was wrong,” I said. “Unfair.”
“What he did to my brother was criminal!” he shouted. “He should have been tried for manslaughter, at least. But instead he was turned into a hero, and he was about to ride that train all the way to stardom.” He looked at the rubble. “David was not to blame for this. He should never have taken the fall.”
“You're right,” I said. I took a small step closer.
Behind me, Stump had taken advantage of the distraction and was ripping into the paper bag. She growled again, but this time it had more of a triumphant overtone.
I looked at Viv and the guy. They were both looking at Stump. I decided maybe I could take advantage of this.
“Can I just—if she eats that she's going to be—” I turned and bent, edging carefully toward Stump. If I could somehow whisper into my phone for Windy to get Bobby...
He cocked the gun. “Don't move.”
I straightened and raised my hands, just like Viv did, and froze.
“You two have only yourselves to blame for this. Following me around, asking stupid questions. You know this would have eventually died out. It looked like a suicide. I was very careful about that. I gave him the exact same things David took. I made him write a note. People would have realized what a jerk thing he'd done, and they would have seen him for the opportunist he was. It would have blown over.” He gave Viv a disgusted look. “You deserve this. Cocky. Driving circles around my office like you're taunting me. You asked for it, old lady.”
I felt my own eyes go wide at that. One did not simply call Viv an old lady.
She narrowed her own eyes, and then, with a banshee scream, she whirled around, her coat in her hands. “Grab my gun!” she screamed. “Grab it! Hurry!”
For a second, the guy was too startled to do much besides stand there looking confused. I scrambled with Viv's wildly flapping coat, struggling to get through the layers of fabric.
The guy reached for her. She slid to the side. I went after her, fighting to get hold of anything.
“Get it, Salem! Get it and shoot him!”
“Be still! I can't get hold of—”
Stump decided then to get involved. She danced around us, barking furiously.
The guy drew back his arm and backhanded Viv across the side of the head. She dropped like a rock.
I froze again, breathing hard. I raised my hands. His eyes on me, the gun pointed at me, he squatted and patted Viv's back. He ripped aside her coat, then her jacket, then her blouse. He tugged the gun from the back of her pants.
He stood, his gun still trained on me, his eyes on me, and slid Viv's gun into the pocket of his jeans.
“Look,” I said. “You can't get away with killing us. My friend is a detective with the Lubbock PD, and I've already told him about you. If we're killed, he'll know who did it.”
He didn't look nearly as concerned about this as I would have liked.
“But it's not too late for you to get, I don't know, leniency, maybe? What Peter did to you—he ruined the family business. He practically killed your brother with his own hands.” I remembered the poor woman he'd ushered through the Baucum Memorial and what the nurse had said about shock exacerbating Alzheimer's. “The shock of his death drove your poor mother's failing health right over the edge. Peter Browning made you a desperate man. I think a jury would take all that into consideration.”
“I wasn't desperate,” he sneered. “I did what had to be done to avenge my family's honor. I made sure he knew it, too. The little weasel. He sat there, holding his broken hand and promised me all kinds of things. He would set the record straight. But I could see what a lying weasel he was. Trying to manipulate me just like you're trying to do now.”
My heart thudded, and I fought to stay clear headed. “His broken hand? How did he break his hand?”
Then a thought occurred to me and I blurted it. “You drove him through here before you took him out of town. You were driving the car.”
“Sure. He had to know what was going on. He was pretty out of it by then, but he knew enough to put two and two together when we came through here.”
“When the passenger door opened—Peter was trying to get out. Trying to escape.”
He didn't answer, but it made sense. The injury Bitsy had said the police asked her about, the fight they asked Misty about—if he'd tried to escape and this guy had slammed his hand in the car door to keep him in—that added up.
It also scared me.
“Trying is the operative word here,” he said. “I don't let people escape.”
“You will not get away with this,” I reminded him. “I don't know your name, but I told Bobby all about you, where you worked, that you're David's half brother. He will easily be able to track you down.”
He shook his head. “Do you honestly think that really matters to me at this point? I came into this knowing that I could go to prison for it. I've got my eyes wide open.” He shrugged. “From what you say, I'm probably going now anyway. Might as well go for three murders as for one.”
My heart stopped beating. I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn't. What did you say to someone who has nothing left to lose?
“What is your name?” I finally croaked, because I literally couldn't think of anything else to say.
He stared stonily at me for a long time. Then finally, he said, “Jacob.”
Everything inside me went suddenly very still. It was as if I'd come to a pinnacle moment. A mountaintop moment, when everything in my life and my consciousness coalesced to one pinpoint moment of clarity.
Jacob, the heel-grabber.
Jacob, who wrestled all night with an angel.
Don't be afraid to fight for what you need, Salem. If you have to wrestle all night...
I took a deep breath, then took a step toward him.
I couldn't believe how calm I felt. I suddenly wasn't afraid at all. God was on my side.
“Freeze,” Jacob said. He leveled the gun at me.
I kept coming, crossing the space between us quickly.
“I mean it,” he said. “Don't try me, girl.”
I stepped closer. I could touch him now. “You aren't going to shoot me,” I said.
He shoved the barrel of the gun hard into my chest.
I fell back. “Ow!” That had, unfortunately, brought me out of the numb reverie that had made me cross to him. Reflexively, I grabbed his wrists. “That hurt!”
He jerked his hands back, but I tightened my grip and held on. We were locked together—I could feel the length of his body against mine, feel the muscles in his forearms that were stronger than mine, feel the power of his thighs against my own. He was clearly so much stronger than I was, but I couldn't let go.
We stumbled around in the dirt, with me gripping his wrists for all I was worth. The gun was cold and hard between us, and I knew it could go off at any moment, killing him or me.
Wrestle all night if you have to.
Already, though, I could feel his strength winning over my own. I gripped my hands tighter, but it felt feeble against the muscle and sinew of his arms.
“Windy!” I screamed in the direction of where I'd dropped my phone. “Call Bobby!”
“I'm getting him now, Sweetie,” she said.
Jacob looked, startled, in the direction of the phone. That bought me half a second, and I shifted a bit and re-tightened my grip.
“Sloan.” Bobby's voice came through the dark night and I almost sobbed in desperation. I had all my strength focused on hanging on to Jacob's wrists, so focused that I couldn't force words out of my mouth. It took all my strength to grunt, “Bobby, help!”
“Salem?” he sounded frantic. “Salem! Hang on! I'm on my way.”
Jacob frowned at the phone, then at me. Then, a decision came into his eyes. He shifted his feet apart and bent his knees.
Behind Jacob, Viv stirred.
Seeing her triggered another memory, and I knew suddenly what I had to do.
I tightened my grip hard. Then, as quick as I could, I released my grip.
He stumbled, just a bit. I dropped my hands to his front pocket. I felt Viv's gun there. I pulled the trigger.
The gun went off with a boom.
“Salem!” Bobby screamed through the phone.
Jacob dropped to the ground, moaning. I kept my hand gripped on the gun, and it slipped from his pocket as he fell. I pointed it at him. The thigh of his jeans was already growing darker with the blood seeping out through the hole the bullet had made.
He pointed his gun at me, his teeth clenched with fury and pain. “You stupid—”
Behind him, Viv stretched out and kicked his elbow. The gun flew from his hand and landed on the ground near me. I moved toward it, then put my foot on top of it.
Through the roar in my head, I heard sirens. The furious sound screamed closer, then headlights bounced over the ground, a car racing across the dirt toward us.
I narrowed my eyes against the bright light, but I couldn't move. Jacob was on his knees on the ground, slumping more by the second. Viv lay behind him, breathing hard. Stump sniffed around my feet at the gun but I was afraid to move. I felt such a tenuous hold on safety that I couldn't unclench.
Two more cars tore across the grass, red and blue lights flashing. I heard car doors opening, saw Bobby running toward me in the glare of the headlights.
“Salem! Put the gun down! Put it down!”
I heard him, but I couldn't think. The boom of the gun had been so loud, the shock of it so powerful, it was as if everything in me had shut down in response.
Bobby was running toward me, and I could hear him screaming at me to drop the gun. I looked beyond him at the other officers, standing behind their open doors.
They all had guns pointed at me.
“Hold!” Bobby shouted, turning back to them. “Hold fire!”
He turned back to me and ran closer. He had his own weapon out, I saw. He looked desperate. “Salem. Honey. Drop the gun. Put it down.”
They were going to shoot me, I realized, but only through layers and layers of numbness. I was standing with a gun in my hand, pointed at someone on the ground.
But I was frozen. I couldn't move.
I heard Stump snuffling at my feet and I thought, A stray bullet could hit her.
“Salem, baby, please. Please put the gun on the ground.”
Something about the desperation in his voice finally got through to me, and I jerked myself back into the moment.
I raised my hands, dangling the gun by the butt. I held it far from me and slowly bent my knees, showing with exaggerated motions that I was putting it down. Once I'd dropped it into the dirt, I stood straight and held my hands wide.
Bobby took over then, shouting for an ambulance, putting handcuffs on Jacob, ordering me and Viv to not move a muscle or, he swore on his mother's life, he would arrest us both. I watched everything as if from a distance.
Viv sat in the dirt, criss-cross apple sauce, her hands held up near her ears, and watched everything going on around her. She, too, looked dazed.
An ambulance appeared quickly, and they immediately went to work on Jacob’s bullet wound.
I remained frozen, but I said to one of the ambulance people, “You need to check Viv. He hit her in the head.”
“Are you injured?” he asked me.
“No, no, I don't think so.” To be honest, I had no idea if I was injured or not. But I had seen Viv get hit, seen her go down, and I knew she needed help. “Viv got hit. Take care of Viv.”
Bobby was getting the scene wrapped up quickly, but he kept turning back to look at me. “Salem, are you hurt? Did he hurt you?” He looked at my mouth, then reached out and ran his thumb over my lip where Stump had scratched me.
I couldn't answer. I couldn't think. All I could do was stand there, holding my arms up. Suddenly, I felt very strongly that I was probably going to cry. “Bobby, can I hold my dog?” My voice cracked on the last word.
“Can you...” He scanned the ground, saw Stump. He scooped her up and shoved her at me. My arms dropped, folding around Stump. He took half a step back, then closed in again, holding onto me fiercely, taking me and Stump both into one tight hug. He kissed the top of my head, then my forehead, gripped my shoulders and searched my face. He kissed my forehead again before he let me go.
––––––––
Bobby took me and Viv to a small emergency clinic a couple of blocks from the school. He told us the ambulance would take Jacob to the county hospital where he would be treated under guard.
The little ER decided Viv needed to be observed overnight, so that meant she'd be taking an ambulance ride to the other big hospital in town.
They were loading her in the ambulance, with me and Stump waving from the sidewalk, when Tony pulled up.
He didn't even close the door on his truck. He saw me and was by my side in an instant.
“I did not go chasing after him, Tony,” I said as he barreled toward me. “We were just—”
I had to stop talking then, because Tony held me too tight for words.
His heart thudded against mine, and somehow, this made all my emotions—which had been locked up somewhere—come flooding back. All of them at once.
I could have been shot.
I almost was shot. The hard shove of that gun barrel into my chest felt suddenly as big as the world.
I shot someone.
I could have been shot by the police.
Suddenly, I was crying. Ridiculous, hard, hiccuping sobs in Tony's safe arms. Stump grumbled and shoved her feet against me, and I bent and put her on the ground with strict but unintelligible orders to stay, and then I launched myself back into Tony's arms.
I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Bobby coming toward us.
“Your wife is a hero, man,” he said, and held out his hand to shake Tony's.
“I know,” Tony said.
The obvious ridiculousness of this struck me as funny, so then I was crying and laughing at the same time.
“How did you get there so fast?” I asked Bobby, wiping my eyes and sniffling. “It was like you were around the corner.”
“I was around the corner. I was watching that video you showed me, and then I heard a call come through that somebody in the neighborhood of the school had reported two women screaming something about bombs, and I figured...” He held out his hands. “Two women. It had to be you, right? So, I checked the live feed and saw your car, then saw the Eagle truck pull up.”
“Can I make some kind of arrangements for you to just keep her under surveillance 24/7?” Tony asked. “It would be a good use of my tax dollars.”
Bobby shook his head. “You need a whole security detail for this girl,” Bobby said. He gave a crooked smile and left.
I watched him go, trying not to notice that he looked sad and lonely. He was a grown man. A handsome grown man. If he was sad and lonely, he would probably have no problem finding someone to help him take care of that.
I turned back to Tony. “I really didn't go chasing after him. He came after us.”
Tony put his forehead against mine. “I believe you, Salem.”
“I really was trying to honor my word to you.”
“I know.”
“I'm sorry I almost got myself killed again.”
“Shhh.” He kissed me. “Let's go home.”
So we went home, and he didn't let go of me all night.
The next week was blessedly back to normal. I went to work. I watched Misty Monahan report the news about Jacob Starr's release from the hospital and arrest into the county jail with charges of murder and attempted murder. When I got tempted to freak completely out about that attempted murder thing, I visited Viv back in Belle Court, and together we went to see Anne.
The nurse who had warned her about the laxatives gave Viv the stink eye as we walked by. “I told you we were going to let her family decide what to tell her. Then you went and gave her some bull hockey about him moving in with his daughter in Florida.”
“Which gave her a great deal of comfort,” Viv said, leaning over the counter to give her own stink eye right back.
“Which is why I'm letting you off with a warning this time. But you just remember.” She leaned forward and met Viv's gaze. “I have the power to make you all sorts of uncomfortable.”
Viv straightened. “I am not afraid of you.” She strolled away.
I followed after her, looking back over my shoulder to make sure the nurse wasn't about to chunk anything at us. I was afraid of her.
Anne seemed tireder than she'd been the last time we visited, and I felt guilty when I realized she was working very hard to make us feel better about her situation, which seemed like an unreasonable thing for anyone to expect. So I entertained her with some stories of my own school days, and we both agreed that she was lucky she hadn't had me for a student.
When we left her room and headed for the elevator, I noticed something that made me stop dead in my tracks.
“Mrs. Starr is back?” I turned to the nurse and pointed to the room where the woman we'd seen at the Baucum Memorial had just been wheeled in.
The nurse nodded. “Yeah, she just got moved back in yesterday. And you know, I think she's better already. She's comfortable here.”
“But...” I leaned close, my surprise outweighing my fear of her. “I heard that she couldn't afford to stay here any longer. I mean, that's gossip, but...”
“She couldn't.” The nurse flattened her lips. “What with the one son dead, the other one in jail, and all the business assets tied up in litigation, she's flat broke, I think. But then all of a sudden, she got a benefactor. Which is a good thing, because she needs to be here.”
“Salem, would you quit gossiping and come on?” Viv stood holding the door for me.
In the elevator, I let this sink in. I opened my mouth to say something to Viv, but stopped. She stared straight ahead, ignoring me as hard as she could.
I smiled. I shifted toward her and lifted my arm.
“If you try to hug me again, I will slap you.”
I stopped, put my arm down, and grinned.
––––––––
That night, Tony and I went shopping for clothes to wear to my mother's wedding. I have to admit, it was fun going into a nice department store and picking out something new, instead of Walmart or the resale store. I found a chocolate brown sweater dress that would look nice with my riding boots, and Tony got a new shirt and tie of almost the same color. We would look perfect for a “rustic” backyard wedding.
The next day, I stood in front of the mirror, turning to look at the back view, then the side view. I placed my hands on my stomach. It was hard to say if it would ever be flat again, now. I tried not to worry about it, though.
Tony came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me, his gaze meeting mine in the mirror. “You are beautiful,” he said.
I reached back to put my hand on his head. “I love you.”
He leaned over, opened a drawer on the dresser, and pulled out a wrapped gift box.
“I have something for you.”
“It's a little early for presents, isn't it?” I couldn't help but smile, though. And take it.
“There will be more for Christmas, don't worry.”
I untied the ribbon and slipped it off. My heart thudded when I realized this could be a key. To his house. And he was asking me to move in permanently. It only made sense, but...my heart still thudded painfully at the thought.
But it wasn't a key. It was a small stack of business cards.
Discreet Investigations, it read. Salem Solis and Vivian Kennedy. Our phone numbers. All in tasteful black type on a plain white card.
“Tony?” I looked at him.
“Look.” He framed my face with his hands. “I can't ask you not to do this. You love doing this. I heard you the other night, talking to Viv. And maybe you're right—this could be God's plan for you. Who am I to get in the way of that?”
I threw my arms around him and held him so tight. “Do you mean it?”
“I must. I had cards made.”
“Oh my gosh, these are so much better than Viv’s cards.”
“Tell me about it. Those things were horrifying.”
I studied them through tears. “But—and I'm just checking here—is this your way of trying to get rid of me? Give me free rein to go chase after bad guys in the hopes that one of them will actually shoot me?”
He laughed. “Not a chance.” He lifted the stack of cards and I saw something beneath it. A folded piece of paper. I unfolded it.
“An application for a concealed handgun license?” I looked at him. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly. Salem, if you're going to be out there dealing with people who kill people, you have to protect yourself.”
“But...I don't want a gun.”
He cocked his head and gave me an unyielding look.
“Viv has a gun.”
“Viv is also bad with that gun.”
“That's true, but...” I remembered the feel of the gun going off in my hand and shuddered.
“There's also this.” He pulled another piece of paper out of the box.
“A self-defense course. Well, okay!” I said. I could get on board with this.
He kissed the top of my head. “Good. If you're going to be fighting bad guys, you might as well be prepared. Okay, one more thing.” He pulled back and drew something from his pocket. It was a silver bracelet with oval discs linked together. He held it out to me.
“What is this?” I peered closely at the word inscribed on one of the discs. “A...minta? Aminta? What's that?”
“I think that's how it's pronounced, yes.” He fastened the bracelet around my wrist. “You wanted a new name, so I looked up the Hebrew word for truth – because when I think of you, that’s always the first word that comes to mind. Truth. Aminta. It also means defender.” He gave a slight shake of his head. “Truth defender. Sounds like you all over.”
“Aminta,” I whispered, studying the bracelet through fresh tears. “Truth.”