Cross fire, p.17
Cross Fire, page 17
“Holly . . .”
I scratched until the chalk was reduced to a nub between my fingertips and the words were erased from existence, before dropping the chalk back to the pavement. I drew in a shivering breath and stepped back.
I caught the quiet concern in Jordan’s eyes and felt abruptly self-conscious. I folded my arms over my stomach and tried not to tremble as I walked toward the old fire station.
If Collin had been close enough to Maya to steal a piece of her chalk, I needed to make sure she was all right. I crouched down to her level, and she paused, balancing precariously on one foot as she cocked her head at me.
“Hi, Maya. Do you remember me?”
She bobbed her head. “Holly. You used to tell me stories, and sometimes you braided my hair ‘cause you did it better than mom. I would hug you but mom always said you don’t like touches and I should always be p’lite and ask first.”
I smiled through my worry. “I would love a Maya-hug.”
A happy grin brightened her face, and she put her other foot down before throwing her arms around my neck. I hugged her back.
When she pulled away, she asked with wide, hopeful eyes, “Does this mean you’re all better?”
My throat tightened. “I’m getting better.”
A shadow stretched over us from behind. Maya looked up at Jordan, and I saw a flicker of fascination when she caught sight of his blue eyes.
Then her expression turned adorably serious, and her tiny black eyebrows pinched together. “You have pretty eyes but you’re a stranger, and strangers are dangerous even if they have candy, so I can’t talk to you.”
I looked up at Jordan, whose lips twitched in amusement. He crouched down a few feet from me. “What if I’m a cop?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “You don’t look like a cop. I think you’re lying, and lying is bad. I don’t talk to liars either.”
Jordan pulled out his sheriff’s badge and showed it to her. “I’m a sheriff.”
She gasped. “Can I touch it?”
He almost laughed as he handed it to her.
She stared at it with wonder as she turned it every which way. “Rachel’s husband says he’s a cop, but I think he’s a liar, and he’s mean. I don’t like him. Sometimes he comes over and yells, and sometimes he gets really mad ‘cause Rachel won’t come out, and he bangs on the door. Are you Holly’s boyfriend? Mom says I can’t have a boyfriend ‘til I’m thirty.”
I choked a little, and Jordan’s expression blanked. It took him a moment to answer, “Well, I’m a boy and I’m Holly’s friend.”
“Okay,” she said, thrusting out her small hand. “I’m Maya.”
He shook her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Maya.”
She giggled.
“Where’s your mom?” I asked, looking around nervously.
“Inside. I’m supposed to knock when I’m done playing.”
As if on cue, the fortified metal door creaked open and a middle-aged woman with mocha skin and guarded dark eyes stepped out. She wrapped a cardigan around herself and fixed her gaze on Jordan as she said calmly, “Maya, go inside and have a snack.”
Maya tilted her head curiously. “But it’s not snack time.”
“You can have two this afternoon.”
Her face lit up. “Fruit snacks?”
“That’s fine.”
Maya pumped a fist into the air as she cheered, “Yes!” She hurried inside, her small voice chanting musically, “Fruit snacks, fruit snacks, fruit snacks.”
The woman closed the door after her daughter and folded her arms against the cold as she studied us, her gaze lingering suspiciously on the man who had just shaken her daughter’s hand. “Can I help you with something?”
I stood slowly and rubbed my hands on my jeans. “Hi, Beth Anne.”
Her gaze shifted to me, and she looked me over before recognition warmed her eyes. “Holly? My goodness. I didn’t even recognize you. You’ve put on weight and you look healthy.”
Jordan blinked. “You’ve put on weight?” He examined me critically, as if he couldn’t figure out how I could possibly weigh less than I did now.
I had weighed about eighty pounds when I wandered by the building two years ago and started peeking through the windows. It had been a little over two weeks since my last brush with Collin, and I had moved from one abandoned building to the next, afraid that he would find me again if I stayed in one place for too long.
Most of what little food I found along the way hadn’t stayed with me. My next panic attack would bring it all back up, and I had been too scared to keep returning to the same soup kitchens.
Beth Anne regarded Jordan with polite caution. “And who might you be?”
“This is Jordan. He’s a friend,” I explained.
“I see,” she said. She gave him a courteous nod. “I would invite you in, but I’m sure you understand why I can’t.”
“I’m not sure I do actually,” Jordan admitted.
“This is a women’s shelter,” she explained. “Your presence would make some of the women uncomfortable.”
“Oh,” Jordan said, glancing at me. There weren’t any women’s shelters in Stony Brooke, so this was probably the first time he had encountered one. His eyes swept over the building again, snagging briefly on the inconspicuous camera nestled between the cracks of the bricks and the newly added bars on the windows. “It looks like you’ve done a good job making it secure and discreet.”
“That’s the idea,” she replied. “Some of these women just don’t feel safe in the mixed company of homeless shelters, but some of them have spouses or significant others who want them back. It’s best they don’t know how to find them.”
“And Holly lived here?”
She smiled at him but didn’t answer. She had always been very adept at keeping people’s secrets. Lives depended on it.
“She let me stay here for a while,” I explained. “Helped me get my feet under me again. And then pulled a few strings with my former landlord to get me my apartment.”
“How did you find this place?” Jordan asked.
“I don’t actually know. I never came this far downtown before, but the police kicked me out of the building I was sleeping in and I just kept walking. I don’t even know why I picked this building out of all the others, but something about it sent whispers of safety through me.”
Beth Anne smiled warmly. “That was God, honey. There was definitely divine intervention involved. How else do you explain walking three miles from your usual haunts, and of all the abandoned-looking buildings to choose from, breaking into one that just happened to be a women’s shelter?”
“You broke in?” Jordan asked in surprise.
I nodded at Beth Anne, giving her my silent consent to tell the story. “Threw a rock through one of the rear windows before we had bars. I found her in the pantry with her nose in a box of pastries. She was pretty scrawny, so I didn’t really mind that she went after the food. Climbed back out the window and took off when she saw me.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t board up the window,” he said.
“To be honest, I considered it, but I had a feeling I shouldn’t. She came back the next night, and I was waiting for her with a box of those Little Debbie snack cakes. I got a good look at her, and I knew I needed to convince her to stay with us.”
“Why?”
Beth Anne rubbed absently at her throat as she looked at me, probably remembering the condition I had been in. “She was . . . terrified. Banged up. Took me almost an hour to get her to calm down enough to stand still.”
As Beth Anne told Jordan the story of how we met, the memories unfolded in my mind, taking me back to that chilly night.
I hadn’t broken into the shelter with the intention of stealing. I had only wanted a safe place to curl up for the night. But when I crawled through the window and found myself in a pantry, I realized how hungry I was.
I never expected a woman to come into the room. I scrambled back out the window before she could call the police. The second night I came back, I did so with the intention of stealing.
But the woman was already there, offering me food. I thought it was a trap, and I was about to crawl back out the window, when she slid the box to me and took several steps back.
“It’s not a trick. The food’s yours,” she said.
I grabbed the whole box of oatmeal cookies and hugged them to my chest. I wondered how long I could make them last.
She gestured to the shelf. “There’s plenty more.”
I glanced at the boxes of food hungrily, but I couldn’t shake the nagging doubt that she had an ulterior motive.
Maybe she wanted to keep me here until the police came. They would arrest me for breaking in and stealing food, even though she was giving it to me.
Maybe she was a drug dealer or a criminal, and she wanted a favor in return for the food. Or maybe she was one of those female pimps, who sold other women by the hour. I had seen girls drawn into that life over the years.
“You’re welcome to take the food and leave, but you don’t have to go. We have beds, fresh clothes, hot food. You’ll be safe here. No one will hurt you,” she promised.
I waited for the strings that had to be attached to this too-good-to-be-true offer.
She looked me over, her expression pinched with concern. “Who hurt you, honey? Have you been to a doctor?” When I didn’t answer, she offered, “I can take a look if . . .”
I stepped back quickly when she reached toward me, and she stilled, the remainder of her sentence hanging unspoken in the air between us. Very slowly, she lowered her arm. “My name’s Beth Anne. What’s yours?”
I glared at her distrustfully as I tried to rip open one of the oatmeal cookies. I couldn’t manage it with three splinted fingers, so I used my teeth. If I could’ve shoved the whole thing in my mouth and swallowed, I would have just to ease the ache in my stomach, but I made myself chew. I was contemplating a second cookie before I finished swallowing the first one, when I noticed the doorknob behind the woman turn.
She was still issuing promises of safety when I grabbed two more boxes of pastries and disappeared out the window.
I came back the next night, surprised to find the window replaced but unlocked. I slipped inside and found a little box with a sandwich, an apple, a pastry, and a bottle of chocolate milk with a post-it note stuck to it that read “When you’re ready, just knock.”
The next night, after I ate the meal Beth Anne left for me, I approached the door I assumed connected the pantry to the main building, and tried the handle. Locked. Two nights after that, I knocked.
“It took me a while to convince her that we were safe,” Beth Anne continued, drawing me from my memories. “It was weeks before she said a word to me, to anyone. I didn’t even know her name for the first month she stayed with us. If I hadn’t heard her talking in her sleep one night, I might have thought she couldn’t speak.”
The first words I had spoken to her had been a question: “Why did you help me?” Anyone else would’ve called the police and had me arrested for breaking and entering, and theft, but she had shown me nothing but kindness.
She hadn’t fit into my view of the world.
She had smiled at my question and said, “The Lord gives each of us a heart for something in this world, something we can change. Helping women who’ve been hurt is my heart, and I follow it.”
She had changed my life. And it all started with Little Debbie snack cakes.
I looked up at Jordan. I thought I could see sadness in his eyes as Beth Anne described a young woman far more damaged and frightened than the woman he had come to know, but also a tiny flame of hope.
I wondered about that hope.
“She never did tell me her story,” Beth Anne said. “But she was great with the kids and some of the other women who were having a difficult time. And she kept things interesting.”
“Interesting how exactly?” Jordan asked.
“We took turns cooking. The normalcy and routine is good for healing. Thursday nights were her night to cook, and in the winter we all bundled up in anticipation of having to flee the premises or risk dying of smoke inhalation.”
“I wasn’t that bad,” I disagreed.
She laughed softly. “God gifted Holly with a big heart and a resiliency I don’t often see in my line of work, but when it came to equipping her with culinary skills . . . He forgot.”
Jordan laughed, and I rolled my eyes. At least Marx wasn’t here to overhear that. He would permanently ban me from his kitchen.
“And we’re done storytelling,” I decided.
Beth Anne smiled. “I’m happy to see you doing so well, Holly. And to see you in mixed company.” Her gaze flickered back to Jordan briefly. “I’ve hoped and prayed you would heal and learn to trust again. But I am surprised to see you back here.”
“I’m surprised to be here,” I admitted. Collin shouldn’t have known about this place. I shifted uneasily as I thought about the pictures of Maya and the implied threat in the second message. “Have you noticed any strange men lurking in the area?”
“Lurking?” she pondered aloud. “No. Just the usual. Although there was a man in January that did strike me as a bit odd. In fact, he was actually looking for you. Not sure how he found the shelter, but he said he was your brother.”
January. He had looked for me here before he discovered where I was living. How had Collin even known about the shelter? How had he known I stayed here?
Jordan pulled his wallet from his back pocket and slipped a photo from inside the folds. “Is this him?”
Beth Anne studied the head shot of Collin. “It most certainly is. Handsome devil.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Not much,” she said, her expression thoughtful. “Just that he hadn’t seen her in two years and he was looking forward to a long reunion.”
My heart staggered over itself in my chest, and I exhaled a long, slow breath to try to keep myself calm.
Beth Anne’s gaze shifted to me when I didn’t say anything. “Two years . . . just before you showed up at my shelter.” Grim understanding suddenly crossed her face. “He’s not your brother.”
I shook my head.
She sighed. “He’s the one, isn’t he? The one you never talked about. The one who gave you nightmares.”
Beth Anne had seen me at my worst: starving, emotionally raw, frightened of every shadow, and screaming in the middle of the night from unspeakable nightmares. There was no sense in trying to hide the truth from her.
I nodded.
“I knew something was wrong with him. I don’t believe God ever forgets to give a baby a soul, but somewhere along the way, that man’s soul shriveled up and died,” she said regretfully.
“He’s dangerous,” Jordan told her. He pulled a card with his name and number on it from his wallet and handed it to her along with the photo. “If he comes back, call me, and it would probably be a good idea if Maya didn’t play outside alone.”
She accepted them without question. “We’re good at taking care of ourselves, Mr. Jordan. Don’t you worry about us. Holly, if you need a safe place to stay, we have room. You’re always welcome.”
If I set one foot inside that shelter, it would paint a bright red target on it. Collin would rip it apart brick by brick to get me out. I wouldn’t put those women in any more danger than they already were, not even if it was my only place to hide.
I gave her a faint smile. “I appreciate that, Beth Anne, but I think I’m okay now.” I cast another nervous look around the surrounding streets before saying to Jordan, “We should go.”
“Holly,” Beth Anne said, stepping forward and capturing my hands in hers before I could turn away. “I don’t know why I feel like I should tell you this, but . . . sometimes life catches us by surprise and bad things, sometimes heart-crushing things, happen, and it’s hard to get back up after that. But just remember that God is in the darkness with you, waiting to lead you out of it if only you take His hand. Know that you’re loved, and you’re never alone.”
Something about her words, or maybe it was the unusual presence in her eyes as she spoke them, sent a shiver down my spine.
“Okay,” I managed, before unlinking my hands from hers and stepping back. “Thanks.” I started down the sidewalk but paused when I realized Jordan wasn’t beside me.
Beth Anne had caught him by the arm. Her voice was quiet, but I heard the message she passed along to him. “You watch out for her. This man,” she said, pointing to the picture, “he breaks bones. She still had broken fingers, and I’m pretty sure she was still nursing some broken ribs when she climbed through my window two years ago.”
Tension rippled across Jordan’s shoulders. I had a sinking feeling that if he and Collin were ever alone in a room together, someone would die. “I won’t let anything happen to her,” he said.
She nodded and released him. “Good man.”
I braced myself for another uncomfortable interrogation as Jordan strode toward me, but all he said was, “You’ve come a long way from the woman she described.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Beth Anne and smiled. “I had help.”
15
We made one last stop after the women’s shelter before Jordan took me back to Marx’s apartment. I unlocked the door with the spare key Marx had given me and held the door open for him.
Jordan carried in a narrow side table to replace the one he had broken, and set it against the wall. He stepped back to take it in, and grinned mischievously. “You think he’ll like it?”
“I think he’s gonna shoot you,” I said seriously. It was the most hideous table I had ever seen. There wasn’t even an ugly enough word to describe it.
“You know CPR, right?” When I gave him a funny look, he shrugged with a wry smile. “Well, a guy can hope. I’ll be in the hall until he gets home. I think he said about an hour.”
“Oh, I um . . .” I tucked my hair behind my ears as I looked around the room. I was getting better with Jordan, at least in public places, but being alone with him behind closed doors still made my heart race and my palms sweat. I wished I could say it was because I found him attractive.
