Woods in Kentucky
Secrets at Midnight
Leona Palmer Haag
Chapter 63
The afternoon sun glared off the tarmac in shimmering waves.
Jenn clutched her stomach hoping to prevent another revolt. With Katie propped
on her hip she briskly walked, not knowing where she headed, but distancing
herself from the overcrowded break room where one person after another was
destined to die. She dug her cell phone from her purse, flipped it open and
punched 9-1-1.
“What is your emergency?” a pleasant voice said.
“I—um—I—I’m not sure,” Jenn stammered. Remembering her gun
had recently murdered someone jolted her words to a halt.
“Where are you?” the voice asked.
Glancing over her shoulder at the hangers, above at the
brilliant blue sky, and forward toward the stark desert she whispered, “I'm not
sure. Somewhere in Texas.”
“What is the emergency?”
The voice asking questions sounded calm and unreal, and her
reply sounded contrived. “Someone was shot. His name is Adams. That's all I
know about him. He's from Dallas—I think.”
“Someone has been shot?” the mechanical voice asked.
Jenn gulped. “Yes. He’s dead. There are other people,
but....”
“Are you in danger?”
“Yes, my baby and I are....” Jenn pulled the phone away from
the questions and flipped it shut. What could she say—she was walking away from
a murder scene?
Within steps she quickened her pace, then began running. She
reached the end of the hangers and found nothing but a heat-blasted desert. She
darted around the corner and ran to the next corner and slowed. If she kept
going she’d end up right where she’d started—at the break room—except on the
outside wall. She halted and leaned against the metal hanger in the shade.
Gasping for breath she slid to the parched dirt and huddled with Katie.
Together they had a good cry, her daughter matching her sob for sob. She
ignored return phone calls from the emergency dispatcher.
Afternoon heat intensified. Still, Jenn sat in the shade,
not wishing to go anywhere but home and her easy life back when Nick sold
insurance. Hours ticked by with only dust moving on tiny puffs of breeze. She
expected Nick to round the corner searching for her, but he never bothered.
Katie grew restless. Jenn turned her loose and she played in
the dirt. She tossed pebbles at the metal hanger, giggling when they pinged
like musical notes. She eventually wearied and sat on her blanket and ate chips
and cookies—depleting the diaper bags goody stash. She drank the last of the
juice and started on the water bottle.
The sun lowered and shadows lengthened. Two planes landed
and one took off. For a while Jenn wondered if she'd been abandoned—Nick and
Matt had flown off without her. She despaired until she remembered Matt’s
relentless tracking in the Montana forest. A driven man, he’d do the same among
cacti.
Horrible visions rushed through Jenn’s head next—Nick dead
and dragged into a hanger. Matt dead—Natalie doing the dragging. But she’d
heard no gunshots, although maybe she’d mistaken the noise as Katie’s rock
music.
Perhaps Kevin and Mueller were plotting how they’d find
her—waiting until dark. Despite the heat, she shivered.
The sun sank. Nothing moved except a wasp and Katie.
Darkness crept onto the desert and the stifling heat dissipated. A breeze
tickled a nearby thorny shrub. Jenn sipped the last drops Katie had left in the
water bottle. She set the empty plastic aside and thought about life and
death—how much she wanted to live and how hard it had become.
A gunshot shattered the silence. Jenn gasped and clamped her
hands over Katie’s ears. Something had been settled that would determine her
future. When the silence following the blast expanded, she snatched Katie up,
grabbed the dirty blanket she’d been sitting on and frantically looked for a
hiding place.
Nothing.
Trapped between a long wall of airplane hangers and the
desert, she had no escape except beneath a thorny shrub. She raced to it and
slouched under the low-spreading branches. Almost able to reach out and touch
the hangers, she jumped up like a scared jack rabbit and darted to a larger
bush further out. Six more times she darted and settled before she cowered
beneath a shrub with heavy foliage at least one hundred yards from the hangers.
She pulled Katie tightly into her lap and added rattlesnakes and scorpions to
her fear list.
As time passed and stars winked overhead, Jenn stopped
planning how she’d reform Nick and switched to how she’d manage as a widow.
With her husband’s death on her hands—she’d left him in a dangerous situation,
after all—she’d never forgive herself. She was certain Curtis had sprung like a
lion and had killed him, Natalie had reached the gun before Matt could respond,
and Mueller—well, he was probably searching for her.
A plane took off, lights blinking red and white in the ink
above her until they disappeared. Quiet returned. A breeze caught dry leaves
and rustled them, then died. A cricket chirped. Hot, hungry and parched, she
recalled feasting on scorched fish in a drenching downpour next to an icy lake.
An explosion rocked the earth. A blast wave smashed sand and
pebbles and scorched heat against her, searing Jenn’s shoulders and arms as she
protected Katie. The night lit up as if a thousand dragons belched fire. The
horror before her ripped her soul. “Nick!” she screamed. “Nick!” She pulled
Katie’s blanket over their heads, leaving only her eyes exposed to witness fire
and death licking out where the hanger once stood. She wished it would hurry
and devour them, hating thinking of the alternative: wandering aimlessly in the
scorched desert until the pounding sun shriveled them into raw bones.
A red light blinked overhead—a beacon of hope—a rescue
plane! Jenn rose and waved the blanket. It blinked once more, then exploded,
showering doom. Sirens wailed, adding an unearthly scream to hell. From
billowing smoke a shadow appeared. Jenn dropped to her knees and curled around
Katie, hushing her screams against her shoulder. In the orange glow lighting
the night there was no place dark enough for hiding. She pressed her body into
the spines, seeking cover. “Oh God, please, don’t let my daughter die,” she
whispered. “Not while I’m alive to witness it.” She hushed and waited for death
to discover them.
“Jenn! Jenn!” The voice rose above the roar—Nick’s. Not long
ago it would have brought relief, but now it stampeded with fear. His rough
voice kept calling as he rushed past her, turning every direction, his feet
stumbling as he searched. He sank to the earth and pounded the desert with his
fists, calling her name.
Jenn slowly rose to meet salvation or doom. “Here,” she
whispered, uncertain if she wanted to be found. Desperate shadows
twisting like the flames mirrored on Nick’s bare back. “I’m here,” she called
louder.
Nick pulled himself up and stumbled on, and wouldn’t have
seen her if she hadn’t shouted, “Nick!” and waved Katie’s blanket above her
head. Dirt flipped into her eyes and clouded her vision, but she saw him turn
and lunge toward her a moment before she was wrapped in his arms.
Nick dragged her and Katie back to the
hanger—toward death—to join a row of bodies strewn among twisted metal and
blood near the flames.
End Chapter 63
