Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
T oo much smoke.
Moose coughed as he pushed through the front gates, the smoke billowing out of the house. Shouts, and the clutter of people, and flames—his eyes burned.
“She went in the back!” London’s voice. It rose through him, galvanized him, and he took off around to the back of the house.
His heart thundered, and in the back of his mind, he knew—he’d get there. It had already happened, but the memory still played out, almost in slow motion, in his dream. Cops coming from the canal, one of them coming for him.
Then Colt somehow in the fray even as Moose kept running.
Smoke clogging the air, turning it hazy, and then a scream and Tillie’s voice. He stood on the pool deck, looked up. Barely made out a body hanging over the edge of the balcony.
Then it dropped.
Reflexes, adrenaline, instincts?—
He missed. He missed!
Hazel lay broken on the sidewalk, her head cracked, bleeding, and he went to his knees. A keening sound emerged from him, high pitched, ripping through him?—
No . . . no . . .
A siren blared, piercing, cutting through his nightmare, and Moose opened his eyes, shaking, sweaty, and sat up.
Blinked.
The morning rays cast through the gauzy curtains of the main-story windows of the beach home, puddled along the wooden floor, over the creamy white sheets of the queen-sized bed.
Oaken’s beach home—or at least, the one he’d given to his mother.
An alarm blared, cutting through the house, and Moose threw off the comforter, pulled on a pair of shorts, and slammed out of his room.
The kitchen connected to the great room, and as he came out of the main-floor bedroom, he spotted Hazel at the stove, trying to put out flames from a pan with a towel. Except the towel had lit on fire, and Hazel started screaming, trying to shake out the flames. Which flew off the towel onto a rack of paper towels?—
“Get back!” Moose scooped her up with one arm, grabbed a pan lid, and slammed it over the flames. Then, still holding Hazel, he snatched the hose from the sink faucet and doused the paper-towel torch. He dropped the burning towel onto the tile floor and drenched that too.
About then the screaming from the alarm stopped, and he turned to find Oaken on a chair, pieces of the smoke alarm in his hand.
Boo had also emerged from a guest room, wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.
Tillie stood at the open sliding-glass door, holding a cup of coffee, her eyes wide. “I was out by the pool—I didn’t even hear it until—Hazel, are you okay?”
He hadn’t realized he still held her. Now he put her down.
She looked up at him, then her mom, and her cute little face crumpled. “I wanted to make you breakfast.”
That’s when Moose spotted the broken eggshells in the sink, the empty carton on the counter. And bacon—aw, the grease had probably splashed out onto the gas stove.
“I always make my mom eggs at home,” she said to Moose as he knelt in front of her.
“It’s okay. Are you burned?” He looked at her arms, her hands, and she shook her head.
“She does,” Tillie said, coming in. “It’s okay, Hazel. These things happen.”
“I just want to go home.” Hazel turned to her mom, her arms around her, crying.
Moose stood up, wrapped a hand around his neck.
He trembled, the adrenaline still hot inside him. Maybe from the fire.
Maybe from the dream.
Surely from the what-ifs.
Axel had emerged from an upstairs bedroom. “So, that was fun.” He had wet hair, a T-shirt plastered to his body, a pair of faded jeans. He leaned over the railing. “If I jump, will you catch me?”
Moose had stood up and now scowled at him.
“Too soon?” Axel winked.
“Never too soon,” Tillie said. She released Hazel, then walked over and put her hand on Moose’s arm.
And in front of everyone, she rose on her toes and kissed him.
Oh.
She patted his chest. “Listen, Superman. You sit and let me get this cleaned up.”
She directed Hazel to a stool. But Boo and Oaken had already started the cleanup. Moose came over to sit next to her.
“You okay, kiddo?”
She nodded. Such a tough kid . “I couldn’t sleep, and Mom got up, so I did too.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep either,” Tillie said, now sitting beside them. “I just keep—” She sighed, then looked at Moose. “I’m still trying to sort it all out. How on earth did you . . .” She glanced at Hazel.
“I don’t know, really. When we saw the house explode—or at least what we thought was explosions—I just lost it. I knew you’d try to save Hazel?—”
“You knew?”
“We saw you casing the joint,” Axel said as he came down the stairs.
“I wasn’t . . . okay, yes, I was. But only to figure out a way to get in.” She took a sip of her coffee.
“I don’t know why I knew to go to the back—I just did. And then, there she was.” He smiled at Hazel. “She just fell right into my arms.”
He’d caught her. Nearly gone down with the force of it, but held, pulled her tight. And then she’d wrapped her arms around him and started to wail—something about her mom—but she’d held him so tight he couldn't wrench her away. Then more cops appeared and grabbed him and forced him to the front yard and?—
And right then, he rewrote the nightmare lingering in his head.
Yes, life was out of his control. And always would be.
But God had sent him there, right time, right place, and that was enough. To trust God to be in charge. Moose just had to listen.
You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
“Right into your arms,” Tillie repeated, and gave him a soft smile. He lifted a shoulder.
Axel slid onto a stool. “Flynn and I stayed up late talking last night. Her friend Val contacted a family lawyer here that is filing a fresh custody petition in the Florida courts. They’ re going to have to do a paternity test to prove that Richer isn’t the father. He’s on the birth certificate.”
“He’s not my dad,” Hazel said. “I know it.” She slid off the stool.
“Hazel!”
But she ran down the hall toward the room where she’d stayed with her aunt.
Tillie’s expression grew serious. “All her life—at least, after we moved to Alaska—my sister told her that her father was a soldier. A brave soldier who’d died. I think she wanted to put a good memory into Hazel’s mind instead of the horror of Rigger, and what went down. I always assumed she was lying.”
Hazel had returned, carrying her stuffed dog. “Ask my mom.”
Tillie frowned. “What?”
She shoved the dog into Tillie’s hands. “I know you’re not my real mom. She died. But she told me who my dad was.”
Tillie held the worn stuffed animal, frowning.
“Mom. Here.” Hazel grabbed the animal back and turned it over, reaching up behind its neck to an opening. Dug her little hand into the space and pulled out a tiny MP3 player. She handed it to Tillie. Then rose on her tiptoes and pressed play.
A voice emerged, soft, bright, clear.
“My dearest Hazel. I don’t have a lot longer for this earth, but I wanted you to know some truths, things that I think your mom—your next mom, Tillie—won’t be able to tell you. First, I love you more than life. You were what saved me from myself. You made me want to believe that there was a better life for us, but it wasn’t until your aunt Tillie made me act on that belief that I was set free. See, honey, sometimes you have to act like you believe even when you’re not sure. Don’t let your unbelief trap you. Someday, you’ll understand that. The second thing is that you are the daughter of a hero. His name is Arch Henry. Archie. He served with your aunt Tillie. When she deployed, I was very sad. And Archie made me happy. He loved me, and we would have gotten married, but he left for the war. He was killed before he knew about you. But he would have loved you. When I get to heaven, I can’t wait to tell him all about you.”
Tillie looked up at Moose, holding his gaze, hers wide, glossy.
Yeah, his throat ached too. He took her hand.
“Be good for your next mom. Aunt Tillie—Momma Tillie—also loves you and would do anything for you. I’ll always be with you, Hazelnut. Never forget that I love you.”
The room went silent as the recording stopped. Tillie didn’t move.
Moose had nothing. But shoot , he sort of wanted to put his head down in his arms and have a little cry.
“See, Mom, I knew that man wasn’t my dad.” Hazel slid onto the chair and tucked the recorder back into the stuffed animal. “So, can we go home now?”
Flynn had come into the room and now walked up to the counter. “Hazel, I think a few more people need to listen to that recording. And then we can figure out how to get you home.”
Moose squeezed Tillie’s hand.
“How do you feel about pancakes?” Oaken said as he dried the pan he’d just washed.
“I love pancakes!” Hazel said.
And that broke the silence. Tillie leaned down and kissed her daughter’s head, and Boo took out glasses and poured orange juice, and Flynn grabbed a cup of coffee, and then the front door opened and Shep and London came in, breathing hard, dressed in workout gear—clearly returning from a morning run—and Shep said, “What did I miss?”
Moose wanted to ask him the same, but that’s when Axel pulled a folded letter from his back pocket and put it on the counter.
“Is that—” Tillie started.
“Yep. The letter from Pike,” Axel said. “Moose left it at the cabin, and I thought . . . Anyway, look at the address.”
Moose picked it up and read the address under the Return to Sender stamp. “It’s in Melbourne, Florida.”
“Yeah. About two hours from here.” He took a sip of coffee, looked at Flynn. “Tell him.”
“My contact, Val Castillo, used to be a detective, and he still has access to resources. He found an expired forwarding address for your contact there—Fisher Maguire, Pike’s son. His mother lived in Melbourne, but she got remarried about ten years ago and moved to Tampa. Fisher was seventeen at the time. He then graduated, went to college in Pennsylvania, and eventually came back to Florida, where he now runs a computer security company. Ironically, in Melbourne.”
Axel took a sip of coffee, then smiled at Moose and said in a singsong voice, “Road trip.”
Oh brother .
But Moose considered the envelope, took a breath.
Tillie’s hand came over his arm. “Time to get out of the whale.”
He looked at her and she winked, and their conversation from the cave, so long ago, but really just a few days, returned to him.
Out of the whale .
“I’m going to need some pancakes first.”
“You didn’t have to come with me.” Moose sat in the driver’s seat of Colt’s SUV, shaking his head as he and Tillie pulled into a small neighborhood on the barrier island near the town of Melbourne Beach.
Yes, yes she did. After all he’d done for her—“I’m just here for moral support.” She touched his arm. “Moose, breathe. It’ll be okay.”
He nodded, but she heard their past conversations in her head and had no doubt he was stirring up the same.
“This could be the end of Air One,” he said softly. “If I were Fisher, I’d want my father’s inheritance. I’d be asking why he gave it to a random guy.”
“Then you’ll have to tell him about the accident, and how Pike died.”
Moose swallowed, and her heart went out to him. She leaned over, caught the back of his neck, met his eyes.
“Have a little faith.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“No, seriously.” She leaned back. “If you’ve taught me anything, it’s that God does miracles. That he surprises us with more than we can ask or imagine. I mean, who would have thought that my dad was alive and trying to take down the one man who haunted me—haunted us. That he would show up right when Rigger was—” She swallowed, again, for a moment living those terrible moments when she’d been waiting for Rigger to finish what he’d started. “Anyway?—”
Moose turned to her. “You’re safe. Hazel’s safe.”
She nodded. “They were sweet today, weren’t they?”
“Yeah. Watching your dad meet his granddaughter was something I’ll never forget.”
Her throat closed over at the memory of her dad showing up at Oaken’s mother’s house with another toy puppy, then sitting on the floor with Hazel to play a game.
“I remember when he used to play Sorry! with me. It was like watching my childhood all over again.” She drew in a breath. “They’ll be fine, right?”
“Yes. Declan is meeting Axel and Flynn at the beach. It’ll give your dad a chance to bond with her before we go back to Alaska.”
Oh.
And maybe the question played on her face because his mouth opened. Closed. “I guess . . . yeah.”
She hadn’t thought beyond today. “I’m still out on bond. I have a court date to be at. And we need to settle Hazel’s custody. My dad has offered his place for us to land for a while.”
“Yes.” Moose nodded. “I get that.” He gave a wry smile. “I just thought, after?—”
“You thought right.” And the sense of hope welled up in her—she could almost see it. A future with Moose, wherever that might be.
Have faith.
Yes.
She smiled at him, and he studied her face for a moment before he leaned in and kissed her. Sweetly, softly.
A promise.
Then he met her eyes. “Let’s find Fisher.”
She nodded. He got out, and she followed him up the path to a modest home with a white painted-brick exterior, a teal-blue door.
Not on the level of the home Moose lived in. She glanced at him. The tightness of his jaw had returned.
He knocked on the door. Took a breath. She slid her hand into his.
The door opened.
Moose jerked. Handsome guy, mid-height, lean, with brown hair, wearing a pair of golf shorts and a white shirt. He looked at Moose and then, “You.”
And the word seemed to blow Moose apart, because he drew in a breath, swallowed, and she’d never seen him so completely undone.
So, “Hello. My name is Tillie, and this is?—”
“Moose Mulligan.”
And now she felt her own bones rattle. “Um, yeah. How do you?—”
“Come in.” Fisher held the door open, then held out his hand. “Sorry. I’m Fisher Maguire. But my guess is that you know that.”
Moose took Fisher’s hand, nodded, and Tillie followed him into the house.
Nice place. Not large. Clean, with a sunken living room under a vaulted ceiling, a small galley kitchen, and an inviting blue pool covered by a screen in the back.
“I should have contacted you long ago,” Fisher said. “Can I get you anything? Water? Something stiffer?”
“Water.”
“Nothing for me,” Tillie said.
“What you do you mean, contacted me?” Moose asked as Fisher went into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of water from the refrigerator.
He handed it to Moose. “This is my fault.”
And she, along with Moose, had nothing.
Moose, however, opened the bottle and took a drink.
“I knew Dad had gone to Alaska, hunting. He invited me every year, even after the divorce, but I was so angry that I just couldn’t go. And after we moved, he stopped writing to me, so I thought he gave up too.” He sighed. “My mom sent me the article about how you carried him out of the woods, and even then, I didn’t want to talk to him. And then he died. And all I could think was . . . I was a jerk. He left me all this money, and I just couldn’t touch it.”
“He left you money?”
“Yeah. Dad had numerous investment accounts. He left one to me and another to Mom and . . . a few charities. And of course the endowment to Air One Rescue and all the properties in Alaska to you. He was a good man.” He sighed. “After he and Mom got divorced, he changed. He was gone a lot when I was a kid, but suddenly he started hanging around. Going to church, and sometimes he tried to drag me along. I was almost relieved when I moved away with her so that he couldn’t bug me.” He sighed. “I wish I could get that back. Especially now that . . . well, I met my wife, and she finally talked me into attending church. And then I realized what had changed my dad. Salvation.” He met Moose’s eyes, then Tillie’s. “I wish I’d figured out how to forgive him and asked him to forgive me before he left this earth.”
“He sent you a letter.” Moose pulled the folded letter from his back pocket. “It came back, and he carried it in his Bible. Tillie found it.” He glanced at her as he held out the letter.
Fisher took it. Took a breath. Then he looked up at Moose. “This was sent around the time of my birthday.” He turned it over and opened it with his thumb. Reached in and pulled out a card.
Something fluttered out of it, but Fisher seemed not to notice. Tillie picked it up. A picture of a kid, maybe aged ten or twelve, holding a stringer of fish with his father, who was holding a pole, both of them grinning into the camera.
Fisher opened the card, read it, his hand to his mouth. His eyes glazed, and he nodded. Looked up. “It’s, uh . . . he . . .”
Moose held up his hand. “It’s okay, Fisher. But you should know that he talked about you over those three days while we tried to make it to safety. He definitely loved you, and more, he forgave you. He made me promise to find you and tell you that.”
Fisher nodded. “Yeah.” He looked away, blinking, closing the card.
Tillie held out the picture. “Seems like he had some good memories.”
He took the photo, and a smile slowly swept over his face. “This was taken near his cabin. We used to fly in to go fishing.” He ran his thumb over the picture. “I wish, sometimes, that he knew that I turned out okay. Good job. Wife, kid . . . and I found Jesus.”
A car pulled up outside, and Fisher looked up.
Tillie turned, too, and through the door came a boy about ten, a towel around his neck, wearing flip-flops and board shorts, his hair wet.
“Dad! The waves are amazing—” He stopped and looked at Moose and Tillie. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay. PJ, this is my friend Moose Mulligan and his friend?—”
“Tillie Young.”
“Hi.” PJ raised a hand.
“Take a jump in the pool and then shower off. You have soccer practice in an hour.”
PJ went out through the sliding door, dropped his towel, and jumped into the pool.
A woman had come in behind them too, pretty, long brown hair, wearing a sundress. “Hey there.” She set beach gear down in the entryway.
“Lana, this is Moose Mulligan and his friend Tillie.”
Her mouth made a rounded O as she came over to stand by Fisher. “Really? It’s nice to finally meet you, Moose. And you, Tillie.” She shook their hands, then turned to Moose. “What are you doing in Florida?”
“It’s a long story,” Tillie said. “We’re . . . sort of in the middle of a . . .”
“Wait,” Moose said. “Do you run an internet security company?”
Fisher raised an eyebrow. Nodded.
“Do you know anything about encryption?”
“Of?”
“Security footage.”
Tillie frowned at Moose. The security footage from the Fight Factory? They’d found it?
“I can take a look,” Fisher said.
Moose pulled out his phone, and she guessed he was texting Axel.
She turned to Fisher. “You really don’t care that your dad gave away half your inheritance to other people?”
He sighed, folded the card on the crease where Moose had, and stuck it in his pocket. “Truth is, I did care, for a while. And then I realized that God was in all of this. I get the Anchorage news online, and you’re doing good stuff up there. And . . . truth is, I have all I need.” Then he looked at his wife and smiled.
She frowned but rose up and kissed him. Turned to Tillie. “Would you like something to eat? I made an amazing key lime pie earlier.”
Tillie looked at Moose, and he happened to glance up also and meet her eyes.
And then as he smiled, she said, “Yes, actually. Pie would be perfect.”
He laughed, and she laughed too, and deep in her heart she heard the words, With long life I will satisfy her, and show Tillie my salvation.