“I’m okay, just a little banged up,” he said, wincing as the two women held him tightly, not yet aware of his cracked rib.
“We thought you were dead until yesterday when that negotiation team appeared!” Makala cried. “Even now, we feared it was a trap to lure us in.”
“I think we can still flank the bastard,” Ed said, holding up one of the two precious mobile shortwaves owned by the town. “I got our second company up above the quarry ready to swing in behind them.”
“And knowing those people, they’re waiting for just that. No, what happened back there just now was a mistake, and their leader handled it. Now let’s just get the hell out of here and go home.”
He looked down at his hand. The cigarette was still intact, and he smiled, hesitated, thinking of his lost daughter and the promise he made to her to quit smoking. He crumbled it up and tossed it to the ground.
He stood up, looking around and watching as the reaction teams came back in. Thankfully, no more shots echoed. He got back out of the Jeep, making it a point to go up to as many as possible and thank them, many of his students—some in tears—coming up to salute him and more than a few flinging their arms around him, so grateful that he was alive, after all.
He spotted Grace, went up to her, and actually started to point a finger at her to chew her out for her disobedience in following him. He saw the tears of joy and loving concern in her eyes and relented.
“So glad you’re alive, sir,” she gasped, and then she turned around to shout for her team to mount up as ordered.
He waited until the last of his students, his troops, were safely into the vehicles and heading back to town before getting back in the Jeep.
“What the hell happened, John?” Maury asked. “I saw you go down, thought you were dead, and then they dropped me. By the time we got up to where you were, you were gone.”
“Anyone else hurt?”
“Wilson Stepp shot in the leg, but you must have seen him lying there. He said they were minding their own business and got ambushed.”
“You believe that?” John asked.
Maury shook his head. “But we do have a problem. Pat Stepp is dead. We found him in the morning, or what was left of him, inside that shack.”
“Damn all this,” John said. He thought he had an agreement, but it was one the Stepps would never observe. Feuds that lasted for generations, such as memories of the Shelton Laurel Massacre over in Madison County during the Civil War, still caused tensions between the descendants of those on opposing sides 150 years later. Truce or not with one of the border reiver gangs, the Stepps would continue to wage their own war, and nothing he could say would stop it.
He sighed. “I got a bit of a concussion and a cracked rib. How about we go home? I’ll fill everyone in on what happened. It actually turns out the whole affair could be to our advantage, though we’ll have to figure out how to deal with the fact that old Pat got killed.”
“Not tomorrow morning,” Ed said.
“Why?”
“Yesterday afternoon, Fredericks has ordered ‘select leaders of the community,’ as he put it, to come to Asheville.”
“Did he know I was captured?”
“Of course. It was news across the entire valley.”
John took it in. It was getting hard to think. “I’m going home for now,” he replied, and he looked at Makala, who was gazing intently at him and pressed in close to his right side in the backseat of the Jeep, Elizabeth on his left.
“Damn right. A week of rest and bed for a concussion, at the least.” It wasn’t a suggestion; it was an order.
“And this meeting?”
“The hell with him,” she said. “He figured you were dead, John, and was summoning the rest of us for an audience. Don’t respond at all, and let’s see what he does in reply.”
John looked at her and smiled. “You ever read Machiavelli?” he asked.
CHAPTER SIX
The day promised to be a hot one even in the cove of Montreat. He had slept peacefully through the night and now rested on the sofa bed out on the sunporch. Someone had actually stopped by with two freshly laid eggs for John, and Makala had fried them up for breakfast. There was no coffee, of course, to help kick-start him awake, and he had to chew even the eggs carefully because of his tooth. Makala had vetoed having it pulled while he recovered from the concussion.
Sunlight streamed in through the south-facing windows, the world outside the open windows quiet, peaceful, the silence disturbed by the sharp ringing of the phone. Makala answered, spoke briefly, and hung up.
“You were masterful.” He pitched his voice higher in a vain attempt to sound like his wife. “‘I’m so sorry, Mr. Fredericks. Yes, thank you, John is fine, but he’s suffered a severe concussion. He’s confined to bed rest for at least the next three days and not able to travel.’”
She smiled.
“Well, it’s the truth. I’d prefer a week, and that granny nurse you told me about was right; you got a cracked rib next to your sternum.” Her features became serious. “Another hard blow there, the rib breaks free and gets driven right into your heart or lungs, so no driving around in that damn Jeep until it starts to knit.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She kissed him on the forehead.
“Anyhow, what did Fredericks say?”
“He tried to force the issue of you going to Asheville, but he backed off.” She shrugged. “You heard the rest. He’s coming here in an hour.”
“There must be some fire under his butt from further up if he’s doing that. I guess I should get dressed and go to the office.”
“You idiot, that defeats what I just said about you not being able to move. I’ll prop you up and get a clean shirt on you and a shave. You really do look like hell.”
“At least I had real coffee while being held.”
“What?”
“I’d darn near kill for a cup now.”
“Cruel even to mention it,” she replied, and there was a real touch of longing in her voice.
Propped up on the sofa in the sunroom, John caught a glimpse of Fredericks’s Humvee pulling into his driveway. The driver looked like the character he had tangled with in front of the courthouse earlier in the week.
In spite of the heat, Dale still wore the blue blazer as if it were a uniform but, perhaps in a gesture of informality, had foregone the necktie, which, ever since the Day, was something rarely seen. Makala was out to meet him with a courteous smile, directing him around the back walkway to the sunroom. Elizabeth, with Ben in her arms, had agreed with the suggestion that she take the toddler for a walk to avoid any maudlin encounter and for Jen to just stand clear, even though the woman was eager to “give that bastard a piece of my mind”—said, of course, with proper Southern ladylike charm.
John made a slight gesture to get up, but Dale, smiling, extended a hand.
“Don’t bother; you’re the one that’s wounded. Just relax, John.”
Makala, role-playing a proper hostess, returned a few minutes later with a tray and two cups of fresh mint tea, and then she left the room, closing the door behind her.
“How you doing, John? When I heard what happened, I was preparing to send an operation up over the mountain to see if we could pull you out.”
That would have been one helluva mess, John thought without replying at first, sipping the soothing brew. Not coffee, with which Burnett had spoiled him for several days, but still good.
“So what happened?” Dale asked, leaning forward attentively. Then he hesitated. “If you feel okay to talk. Your wife said you were pretty banged up.”