“Whatever. Looks like you’re already heading back the way you came.”
“What?” Mitch realized that Rex meant, you’re driving north. Away. “No, I just…came out to see the storm.”
“Yeah, well, I’m on my way to check on…people in that direction.”
He isn’t even going to say her name to me, Mitch thought.
“Okay, well, I better not keep you from it.”
“You’re not. I guess, if you’re going to be around for a while, I’ll probably see you.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be here.” Mitch paused, then added reluctantly, “My dad doesn’t know I’m here, so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything.”
Rex raised his eyebrows. “You going to tell him?”
“Pretty soon. So…are you a deputy to your dad now?”
“No.” Rex smiled slightly. “He’s retired. I’m it.”
“You’re the sheriff?”
There was another moment then, following Mitch’s incredulous question when they might have laughed together about it, about the idea of either one of them growing up to be a lawman, but again they kept it from happening.
“Yeah, I’m the sheriff.”
“I’ll be damned.”
Rex restrained himself from commenting on that.
“What about you? he asked Mitch.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you do?”
“Some law, some real estate.”
“Sounds lucrative.” Rex looked over Mitch’s shoulder at the black Saab.
“It’s all right,” Mitch said. “You married?”
“No, you?”
“Divorced. I have a son. Any kids?”
“Not so I’ve heard.”
Mitch smiled, but Rex didn’t return it.
And that was that. There was an instant when they might have shaken hands in parting, but they didn’t.
“Good to see you,” Mitch said awkwardly.
“Yeah. Take care.”
Each man turned and went toward his car without looking back.
Mitch got into his vehicle and sat and watched Rex drive off. If Rex was going to check on Abby, then he didn’t have to. He felt shaken by the encounter. He felt angry, sad, a jumble of emotions he realized he had not anticipated fully, and did not know how to absorb in a way that might make them go away. He just wanted them to go away. For a moment, he again considered just going away, himself.
Not yet. Not until he had done what he needed to do for himself…and Sarah.
It occurred to him that the aftermath of a storm might be a good time to start.
Mitch waited until the sheriff’s car was out of sight. Then he turned the Saab around on the highway, and headed back toward Small Plains to see if the high winds and rain had produced any damage that might be of benefit to him.
Chapter Twenty-five
The rain had washed the air clean, giving everything a bright, sharp edge.
Mitch drove into town, noting tree limbs and wet leaves in the streets, and gutters backed up so high that water stood in pools at the intersections. He spotted minor property damage in some places-a shutter torn here, a large tree branch fallen on a roof there.
The only place Mitch saw serious damage was at Sam’s Pizza.
It looked dark, but then so did everyplace else. It appeared the electricity was out all over town. There didn’t seem to be anybody inside the restaurant with the light pole sticking out of it. Maybe they had all gotten out in time, he thought as he drove slowly past it. But what if they hadn’t?
He pulled over and parked, and hurried to find out if anybody inside needed help.
It struck him as ironic that he couldn’t recall ever having gone to the rescue of anybody in all the years he’d lived in Kansas City. Yet, here he was helping out for the third time that day, counting the girl at the cemetery and stopping to check on the man who had turned out to be Rex Shellenberger.
Across the street, in the shadow of a store’s doorway, Abby crouched beside the elderly man, who had fallen during the storm. She had one hand gently on his shoulder and in her other hand she held her cell phone, on which she was in the middle of a conversation with her doctor-father. Once the storm had passed, she had been able to make calls again. Still unable to raise Rex, she’d finally connected with the sheriff’s department to tell them about the trapped people in the basement of Sam’s Pizza. She tried not to think about how scared her sister and her friends must be right now, and to focus instead of the immediate needs of the old man in front of her.
“He says his arm hurts, Dad, and he can’t seem to get up-”
She heard a car door slam, and turned to see if help had arrived.
But instead of seeing Rex or his deputies, she saw a tall man get out of a black Saab. He glanced around the street without noticing Abby and the old man, and then hurried toward Sam’s Pizza.
Abby’s voice faltered; her breath stopped in her chest.
“Abby?” she heard her dad say. “Are you there?”
“Hold on, Dad,” she said into the phone.
Abby watched, disbelieving, as Mitch Newquist crossed the street in front of her.
She crouched deeper into the shadows, trying to keep him from seeing her. In spite of everything, and whether it was stupid vanity or not, she couldn’t bear the thought that he might see her for the first time in seventeen years like this-looking like a drenched rat from running in the wind and rain. She felt suddenly as unsteady, as wounded and dazed, as the old man beside her. When Mitch never turned around, she relaxed a little bit. Before he vanished into the restaurant, however, she saw how broad his back was across his shoulders, and how it tapered to his waist, and how his legs looked long and lean in his jeans, and how his blond hair had darkened, but not thinned, over the years. When he disappeared inside Sam’s Pizza, she said helplessly, “Oh, dammit!”
“What’s the matter?” her father demanded.
“Just drive on over here Dad, and check on this guy, will you?”
She hung up, still staring at the darkened restaurant across the street. And suddenly she no longer felt helpless, she just felt furious.
“You rotten lousy no-good runaway son of a damned bitch!”
The old man stared at her in alarm.
“Not you,” she soothed him. “I didn’t mean you.”
When Mitch walked into Sam’s Pizza, he whistled at the damage the top half of the light pole had done, the way it had shattered plate glass and broken tables and scattered silverware, food, napkins, and plastic glasses. There was room to walk without running into the danger of any wires that might come to life. It almost looked as if somebody had moved the wires out of the way. A part of the pole had lodged in a way that held shut a door that he decided must lead to the basement. When he heard pounding and yelling voices coming from behind it, he hurried to apply muscle to the broken pole.
“The door’s stuck!” he called to the voices behind the door. “Hold on.”
Their calls for help subsided, but he could still hear talking on the other side.
It took him several minutes, but Mitch finally managed to dislodge the splintery wood, and when he did the door popped open on its own. He saw a couple of people he didn’t recognize standing toward the middle of the stairs, but couldn’t see anybody else in the dimness beyond them.
“Thank you!” the woman closest to him said, and was echoed by other voices.
“No problem. Everybody all right down there?”
“We’re fine. Just scared, with no lights.”
“I’ll bet. There’s a lot of broken glass up here. And watch out for electrical wires when you come up.”
Having ascertained that they were okay, Mitch turned and walked out.
Down at the bottom of the stairs, four women stood, dumbfounded, staring up at the open doorway where the tall, baritone-voiced man who rescued all of them had stood just an instant before. He hadn’t been able to see any of them, but they had been able to see him clearly, framed as he was in the new clear light of the evening.