DYLAN
When I call Dex to let him know I’ve replaced my phone, he says, “Listen, have you seen Detective Rollins today?”
“Last night I did. I told you I drove him home from a bar before my apartment fire.”
“Interesting,” he says. “I’m taking what happened to you personally, man, so I decided to tail Keegan and see what him and his buddy are up to. Off the clock. No charge.”
“I’ll pay you,” I say. “I appreciate that.”
“No, it’s on me. But here’s the thing. Rollins is nowhere around. So I leave Keegan and go by Rollins’s house, and his car’s not home. Since you said he was drunk last night, I went by the bar and his car’s still there.”
“He’s probably hung over. Hasn’t gotten it yet.”
“I’m just thinking it’s weird that they’re not together after the bombing. I get the feeling Keegan is looking for you. He’s been to a lot of hotel parking lots, driving through looking for something . . . probably your car. But if Rollins is involved too, wouldn’t he be trying to help?”
“Maybe he’s not involved.”
“Maybe. So you need a place to crash again tonight?”
I smile. It’s good to have friends. “No, thanks. I’m gonna get a hotel. I got my debit card replaced, so I have some cash now. Thanks for the heads-up, though. I’ll use our friend’s method to get a room.” I deliberately don’t use Casey’s name, just in case someone’s listening via Dex’s phone. “Pay cash and claim my wallet got stolen.”
“Dude, you know he won’t be looking for you at my house. Don’t you think that’s safer?”
“No, I don’t. I don’t want to keep your family in this mess. And I can stay under the radar.”
“What about your burns? I can change the bandages.”
“With one hand? No, I’m good, Dex. I can do it.”
“So what about Rollins? You want me to keep watching?”
“Yeah, if you will. You’re officially on the clock now. Let me know when he sticks his head out.”
I spend the morning filing a claim on my renter’s insurance. My deductible is huge, so I go ahead and buy another computer—which I can’t do without—and spend a couple of hours downloading my files from the cloud. My next stop is the bank where I have my safe deposit box, and I load my newest files onto the thumb drive that’s stored there. Then I lock it back up.
Once I get in touch with Casey, I’ll get her to send the pictures of my evidence sheet back to me.
While I have a wifi signal, I open Yahoo and go to our e-mail account, where I see the message she sent me today. She’s heard about it on the news. My heart sinks. I didn’t want her to find out this way.
I write back: I’m fine. Phone gone. Got a new one but don’t have your number.
I find a motel and park my car at a restaurant a block away. Then I check my e-mail again. She’s written back with her number. Please call! I’ll answer this time.
Relief floods over me, and I smile.
As I walk to the motel, I program in her number, then click on it.
She must be holding her phone, because she answers the second it rings. “Are you okay?”
Her voice is a gift that soothes my soul. “Yeah, just a few minor burns. Are you okay?”
“No! I almost had a heart attack when I saw the news on the website. Dylan, what happened?”
I tell her the whole thing. “I’m fine, really. I had a lot to replace today, and I’m staying under his radar. You don’t need to worry.”
She expels a long breath. “Dylan . . .”
The care in her voice melts me. I could get used to it. “My neighbor below me got the worst of it. She didn’t have any warning at all.”
“So you’re the hero who saved her?”
“Hero is a stretch since she wouldn’t have been injured if not for me.”
“Keegan? Did he do this? Rollins?”
“Not Rollins. He was drunk. I delivered him to his door last night. No, it was a risky operation, so it was probably someone they hired. Probably thought sure they’d killed me.”
“Did you go to the hospital? Did you have your burns treated?”
“Yes. Dex stayed with me all night. I’m fine. I have some dressings, but—”
“Dylan, they tried to kill you!” Her voice is on the edge of panic. “You understand that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Things are getting intense here. But I’m hiding.”
“No! You have to get out of there,” she cries. “You need to leave town!”
“I can’t,” I say. “I’m so close to having everything I need. There was another murder. One of Keegan’s extortion victims. His wife told me he failed to make a payment to Keegan and Rollins. They threatened him. That ties Keegan to more than extortion. It connects him to murder. And now the grenade and the fire—I still have to find a way to link them to that. If I leave town, nothing will happen.”
“This is enough!” she cries. “I don’t want you dead! I can’t take any more people I care about being murdered!” She’s crying now, almost hysterically, and I wish I were there to hold her and reassure her. I know the full force of the other deaths is slamming her now. Her father, Brent, even Cole Whittington . . . The trauma of those deaths multiplies her worry about the attempt on my life.
“I’m not dead,” I tell her. “Casey, I want you to breathe. Count to twenty. Breathe in . . . and out . . .”
I don’t know if she’s breathing with me or not. There’s silence, and I wonder if I’ve lost the connection, or if she thinks I’m being condescending.
“We’re so close to this,” I say in a steady voice. “I have to get them. I promise you, if it looks like things are getting too dicey, I’ll take it to the DA before taking a big risk. But if we wait just a little longer, if I dig a little deeper, we can connect the dots from them to all of these murders. It can happen, Casey. You’ll be able to come home. You’ll have your life back.”
I hear her sniffing, and finally she says, “Having my life back won’t mean that much if you’re not in it.”
My heart jolts at the reality of that. The confession anchors me. “I feel the same,” I whisper.
“I want to come there. I want to help.”
“Stay,” I tell her. “Wherever you are, just stay there. I’ll let you know when it’s okay to come. Just trust me now. And trust God. He was with me when that grenade came in, and he’s with me now.”
“I do trust him,” she says, her voice calming. “I’ve been reading the Bible. It’s fascinating. I don’t understand it all, so I bought a study Bible with a lot of notes and stuff in it, and it helps explain things.”
“That’s good. Old or New Testament?” I ask.
“Both. I read from the Old for a while, and then the New. Yesterday I read all of Genesis and last night I read Matthew.”
“That’s a lot of reading.”
“Yeah, but I honestly can’t put it down. And I found all these preaching videos on YouTube.”
I hesitate to ask. “So would you call yourself a believer yet?”
She pauses. “I believe, but I’m counting the cost. That’s biblical, right? Jesus said to do that.”
My heart sinks a little. “Yeah, he did.”
“It’s just that, to whom much is given, much is required.”
I smile. “So now you’re quoting Scripture to me?”
“The minute I surrender,” she says, “I’ll have to repent. That guy, the one who wore potato sacks and ate wild locusts . . .”
“John the Baptist?” I ask. “I think he wore camel’s hair.”
“Yeah. That guy. He said something that kind of hit me like a baseball bat. He said to perform deeds in keeping with repentance. Repenting means I’ll have to come back there and turn myself in. But I won’t live through that. It’s certain death.”
“You can give your life to Christ and repent without running into bullet fire right away.”
“Can I? Is that what Christians in hostile countries do? When they know they could be murdered for converting? Don’t they immediately put themselves in harm’s way, just by professing their belief?”
I don’t quite know what to say. “Where did you hear that?”
“On a video. A missionary talking about the persecution of Christians and how dangerous his work is. I think it’s going to be kind of like that for me. I mean, I live in a free country where I won’t be murdered for openly going to church. But my decision to believe dictates repentance, and repentance will put me in danger. So how do I reconcile that?”
I want to tell her that making an eternal decision like that will be worth whatever the cost is, but I don’t want her to come back here and be killed. Maybe my own faith isn’t that strong. Finally, I’m only able to say, “I pray for you, Casey, all the time. Let God dictate the timing, not fear.”
When we hang up, I feel like I’ve been given a dose of one of those benzo drugs my doctors are always trying to prescribe for me. Talking to Casey makes me feel like I can do this, finish this, defeat this.
I check in to the motel under the name of Baxter Jones. When I get to my room, I pull out the bandages I bought at the drugstore and change my dressings, fighting the pain. I lie on the bed and mentally replay Casey’s phone call.
Her caring for me is nothing short of a God thing. He’s still working in my life. I see him. It assures me that he cares about me too.