Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [122]
“If she’s in there, they’ll find her.” Father Tim grabbed Adam by the arm. “They know what they’re doing. You don’t. You’re getting in the way. Let them do their job.”
Only the thought that his well-intentioned efforts could impede Kendra’s rescue kept Adam from entering the house. He stood near the rear of the property, watching the men struggle to take control of the conflagration, his mind nearly paralyzed with the fear that she could be trapped in the inferno. After all, her car was in the drive, and there’d been no sign of her or Selena.
Had Selena’s car been parked at her house? Adam realized he hadn’t even noticed as he’d flown up the road, following the smoke and flames.
“Anyone check Selena’s?” he asked Father Tim. “Maybe Kendra’s there with her.”
The priest shook his head. “Selena’s still at her brother’s up around Trenton. As a matter of fact, it was she who first alerted us to the fire.”
“How could she have known about the fire if she’s out of town?” Adam frowned.
“She saw it in a vision,” Father Tim told him without giving any sign that he found that even the least bit questionable.
“A vision? You brought the fire trucks down here because someone had a vision?”
“No, but I did drive out here to check after she called. As soon as I made the turn off the main road I could see the smoke. Then I called in the fire. Good thing I did, wouldn’t you say?” Father Tim pointed to the house, where the flames were just starting to subside.
Adam was still pondering the probability of anyone rousing himself in the middle of the night because someone had had a vision, when movement from the corner of his eye drew his attention to the stream that ran behind the house. He turned just as the canoe stopped at the water’s edge.
“Holy Mother,” he whispered.
The woman was covered with blood and moved on shaking legs that appeared barely capable of taking the next step. In three strides, Adam had covered the distance and gathered her into his arms. She collapsed against him, sobbing and muttering something indistinguishable.
“Kendra . . .” His arms tightened around her. “Dear God, what happened to you?”
“McMillan’s barn,” she sobbed. “The barn . . . Zachary. He killed Ian. . . . He left Ian to die in the cave. . . .”
“I know. The report came back from the medical examiner. They’d checked the dental records on the body they found. It’s definitely Ian.” Adam stroked her back as if to comfort her.
“Zach tried to be Ian,” she said, clinging to his neck like a child, “wanted to be Ian.”
“Is he armed, Kendra?” Chief Logan asked.
“Don’t think so.”
Logan sent three officers into the stream toward McMillan’s.
“She didn’t do it, Adam,” Kendra sobbed. “She didn’t do it.”
“Didn’t do what, sweetheart?” He smoothed her hair, thanking God that she was here, that she was all right. That she was alive. “Who didn’t do what?”
“My mother . . . my mother . . .” she said, her last words before passing out.
The ambulance took way too long to arrive, in Adam’s opinion, and he paced restlessly, Kendra still in his arms, until the first emergency vehicle arrived. He reluctantly relinquished her to the gurney, then climbed in the back with the EMTs and rode with them to the nearest hospital emergency room, which was twelve miles away. Once there, his FBI badge notwithstanding, he was relegated to the waiting room, where he paced some more.
He’d filled out her admission forms, printing his own name on the “next of kin” line. It wasn’t a lie, he thought. Who else did she have? From where he sat, she had him, and she had Selena, and that was about it.
Bless Selena. If she hadn’t called Father Tim when she did, they might not be worrying about who Kendra Smith’s nearest and dearest were.
Later, at the hospital, Selena would tell Adam, the vision had blasted through the shield she generally invoked whenever