Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [116]
“I can’t take you there now. Didn’t you hear the sirens? I’ll bet they’re there already, to fight the fire. What? You thought I was kidding about that?” He laughed at her. “Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire . . .”
“I’m really cold,” she told him, the status of her beloved home suddenly secondary to the immediate matter of her lack of body heat.
“There are blankets there behind you. You can use one of those.” He sat cross-legged on the ground in front of where she sat but made no move to assist her. “I brought them when I used to come to watch you through the windows. Sometimes I watched even after the lights went out.”
“You came inside, too. You were in my room,” she said, remembering the feeling of someone watching her while she slept.
“Just a few times. The house always smelled funny. Like a pipe or something. I hate that smell.”
She stopped and turned to look at him. “You don’t know what that smell was?”
“Tobacco, I guess. I didn’t know that you smoked. I never saw you smoke.” He pointed toward the small pile of blankets and said, “Don’t take the blue one. That’s mine. Give it to me. I’m a little chilly now, too.”
“Which one?” She stopped abruptly and turned to stare at him.
“The blue one.”
“This one?” She lifted the corner of a green plaid quilt.
“No, the blue one. The other one. What’s the matter with you, are you color blind?”
She tossed him the blanket.
“No, I’m not.” She gathered the quilt around her and shivered into it, wondering how long it would take for her to warm. “But Ian was.”
Adam drove over the crushed stone drive behind Father Tim’s Mission of Hope and turned off the engine. He’d been calling every fifteen minutes on his drive from the airport and was more than a little concerned that he’d gotten no answer at Selena’s house, but he’d been unable to get past Father Tim’s answering machine and the recorded message that cheerfully announced that the Mission closed at nine P.M. but would reopen at eight in the morning. Emergency calls could be made to a different number, which Adam had tried several times without success. He glanced around as he got out of the car, looking for Kendra’s old Subaru, but it wasn’t in the lot. Maybe she’d come with her friend Selena, he thought, recalling the cars that were parked out on the street.
The back-porch lights were on, Adam noticed as he walked toward the house, and inside several lights were on. He tried the back door, then tried the knob when his knock was unanswered. It opened without hesitation.
“Kendra wasn’t kidding about people around here leaving their doors unlocked at night,” he muttered, frowning, as he stepped inside.
A shadow passed through the hall.
“Father Tim?” Adam called out to the figure.
“Father Tim isn’t here.” An elderly man who appeared to be missing several of his front teeth stepped from the darkness. “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Kendra Smith’s,” Adam explained. “I thought she might be here.”
“Kendra’s friend, eh?” The old man turned on the kitchen light. “If you’re her friend, how come you’re not over there fighting the fire with Father Tim and everyone else?”
“What fire? Over where?”
“Fire down the road. Father Tim and the others went down about an hour ago, right after we got the call. Thought it could be the Smith place. Hey, we’re all volunteer firemen, you know, Father Tim insists on it. Way to do a little for the community, you know, while we live here. Though these days I mostly man the fort. But I drove many a pumper when I was younger, fought many a fire back here in the Pines.”
Adam took off through the back door while the old man was still talking.
Given all he’d learned that day, Adam could not get there quickly enough. He hoped he’d remember the way, and he prayed he wouldn’t be too late.
“What happened to my brother, Zach?” Kendra asked.
He stared at her thoughtfully. Finally, he said, “That gave me away? The blanket thing?”
She nodded.
“But up until then, I had you convinced, didn’t I?”
“I admit I was wavering.