Page 30 of The Witch’s Orchard

TWENTY-FOUR

I AM FALLING. THROUGH DARKNESS. Through space.

I hear my name and open my eyes and see Jessica Hoyle reaching out for me, her little-girl hands raking the air between us as she tries to grasp mine. I reach toward her, but she slips through my fingers like vapor. I crash to the ground. The wind is knocked out of me in a bone-jarring thump.

I cough, my ribs aching.

I open my eyes. Fight my way back through the fog to reality.

I blink as the world comes into focus.

Taking stock, I find that I am sitting on the ground, propped against AJ’s cruiser. He’s holding an oxygen mask to my face while an EMT does something to my leg. The lower half of my right jeans leg has been cut away, and I groan inwardly. These were good jeans.

I try to find Honey but I can’t.

“Is Honey okay?” My voice is raspy, weak.

AJ laughs, nods.

“She’s parked on the other side of the cruiser,” he says. “She’s fine.”

“Oh, thank God.”

Another EMT brings me a silver-foil blanket, a bottle of water. I hold my hand out for it and AJ pulls the mask away long enough for me to drain half the bottle. The plastic crunches in my hand.

“Tommy?” I ask.

“We got him. He’s in the ambulance. Under arrest.”

“A meth lab?” I ask.

He nods.

I sigh, and the sigh turns into a cough. I manage to get another drink from the bottle, make the coughing stop.

“It’s a good thing you found that mask,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s too bad they didn’t. Oh! Elaine Hoyle. She was in there. And Dwight Hoyle. Did you find them?”

“Annie, you and Tommy are the only ones who came out.”

We look back toward the burning factory.

Ugly black smoke rolls out of the wreckage and what’s left of the top floor is aflame.

A fire engine stands nearby, tapped into a hydrant I’m surprised still works.

They’re hosing the building down, but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good.

I hear a shouted conversation about HAZMAT, about suits, about other firefighters coming in from another county, but all the words seem jumbled, far away.

The EMT gives my leg a gentle tap, and I look down, first at the bandage, then at the EMT’s hands, and then at her face. She’s a full-figured lady with rosy cheeks and a choppy gray pixie cut.

“You’re gonna live,” she says.

“But my jeans tragically could not be saved?”

I can barely hear my own voice over the ringing in my ears, and I begin to wonder if I actually said anything, especially since the EMT completely ignored my attempt at humor.

Instead she says, “Easier to cut the pant leg than pull the whole pair off. ’Specially with these big-ass clodhoppers you’ve got.

” She taps my half-calf-high tactical boots, and I’m suddenly overcome with gratitude that she decided to cut my jeans instead of my boot strings.

They’re broken in just right. And, like my gun, they were a gift from Leo.

“Girl who kicks up as much shit as you do ought to have some reliable boots,” he’d said. I smile at the memory, and my face feels tight and hot. I try instead, to relax and watch the EMT’s hands at work on my leg.

“Thanks,” I say to her.

“No problem,” she says. “Looks like you grazed something in there.”

I figure it must’ve been that beam I kicked but who knows. I grimace at the gauze on my shin, just above my boot. I look closer and see a long scrape up the black leather and offer a silent thanks for well-made shoes.

“I cleaned it out,” she says. “Your boots absorbed the worst of it. Didn’t even break the leather. You don’t need stitches or anything, so that’s good. We’ll get you to the hospital and—”

“Nope,” I say. “Nope. I’m… I’m okay. I’m fine. Nothing’s broken, right? Not bleeding from anywhere?”

“Well, I can’t make you go. Just keep it clean,” she says, hands on her hips. “Keep fresh gauze on it. And you’re going to want to report to the hospital in the morning. Get you a tetanus booster.”

“Oh,” I say. “I’m good.”

She gives me a practiced side-eye.

“Military,” I say.

She nods like that explains everything.

“Chest X-ray wouldn’t hurt either. But you got lucky.”

“I know.”

“Promise you’ll go to the hospital if you start to feel worse.”

“Scout’s honor.”

She rolls her eyes and walks off.

“Most of the second floor collapsed,” AJ says. “Right after we pulled you out.”

I put the water bottle to my mouth. Drain it.

“Yeah. You sure you don’t wanna go to the hospital, Annie?”

“Don’t like ’em. Can’t afford ’em. And, right now, I don’t need one. I’ll be fine. I just need a shower and some food.”

“Okay,” he says. “I can help with some of that, at least.”

I smile at him, exhausted, and lay my head back against the cruiser and close my eyes. Almost instantly, I hear the sound of another car crunching over the gravel and into the lot. A door slams and boots hit gravel.

“Somebody tell me what the hell happened here,” Sheriff Jacobs barks to the general crowd from the other side of the car.

I open my eyes and find AJ looking not at his boss but at me.

“Oh, come on,” I say to the sky, pleading. “Just a shower. That’s all.”

“You!” Jacobs says, rounding the corner. “Just what the hell are you doing here?”

“I only—”

“I swear to Christ, it’s like you’re a walking bad-luck charm!

” His cheeks are red with some blood-pressure-raising mix of frustration, surprise, and anger as he points at the smoldering factory and shouts at me.

“Does chaos just happen to follow you around or do you invite it along for rides in that ugly clunker of yours?”

A growl works its way from my belly, up through my chest, and into the back of my mouth before I realize I’m too tired to fight and, anyway, there’s no getting out of this. The growl turns into an exhausted sigh.

It’s an hour and a half at the station, for the second time in two days, making a statement and signing all the paperwork. I’m sitting, filthy and exhausted, in the same little room as before initialing everything with a Bic ballpoint, barely even reading it, when AJ comes to get me.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Shower,” I say, getting up with a groan and almost plowing into him. “Food.”

Thirty minutes later, I pull up outside the cabin.

AJ, who traded his cruiser for his personal truck, pulls in right behind me.

I go straight around the side of the cabin, where I’d seen a little garden hose the day before.

AJ starts to follow me, then turns around when I strip naked and toss my filthy clothes in a heap.

“Please,” I shout to him. “Dinner.”

Then, I take a bracing deep breath and turn the cold water on my body, not wanting to breathe any of the steam that might come off me in a hot shower.

Once the water running onto my feet is mostly clear, I shut off the hose and walk, stark naked, back around to the front of the cabin.

There, AJ is waiting with a towel, his eyes averted and a deep blush in his cheeks.

“Feel better?” he asks.

“Almost.” I take the towel, wipe my feet on the mat, pad into the cabin, and head straight for the bathroom.

I turn the shower on and step in. In spite of my best efforts with the hose, streaks of black and gray still spiral around my feet and disappear down the drain.

“Gross,” I mutter. “This is disgusting.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” AJ hollers through the bathroom door.

“Yeah,” I shout. The cut on my shin opens under the scalding water. Bright blood mixes with the streaks of gray. “I’ve had worse.”

There’s no reply, and after a few minutes I ask. “You order that dinner yet?”

I wash everything three times, scrubbing with one of Max’s nice pale blue washcloths and honeysuckle body wash and wishing I’d asked AJ to just hand me the bottle of dish soap from the kitchen.

After the third scrub, I toss the washcloth toward the trash can, but miss. It hits the wall with a wet slap and leaves a dark streak as it slurps down to the floor. I pull another one from the little hutch above the toilet and start over.

When I get out, I wrap a clean towel around my middle and give my hair a good tousle with another one, run a comb through it.

I pull the bag out of the trash can and tie it off, replace it.

I look in the mirror and find that I am pink and shiny.

Satisfied, I let out what could almost be called a contented sigh.

I go into the kitchen, towel still wrapped around me, hair dripping down my shoulders. AJ’s got a fire going in the fireplace and the cabin is toasty and nice and I realize I’ve probably been in low-level shock since I woke up next to AJ’s cruiser.

“Oh,” AJ says when he sees me. “You’re bleeding.”

I look down and find that the cut on my shin is open again. A streak of red runs onto my foot.

“Come on,” he says. He holds out a cold beer as a lure and leads me to the kitchen chair.

“Max has a first aid kit in here,” AJ says as I sit and take the bottle and have a good, long drink.

AJ opens a cabinet over the stove and pulls out a little red hard-shell case and then kneels down on the floor in front of me and opens it up. He cleans the wound with an alcohol pad. I grit my teeth, but I don’t hiss or shiver.

“What were you doing in there?” he asks.

“Shower,” I say.

He gives me a “You know what I meant, smart-ass” look and says, “DrakeCo Toy Factory.”

“Tam Hoyle told me that someone saw his dad and Dwight Hoyle over there. I thought… what if it had something to do with Jessica and Molly?”

“Well, it was searched after the girls were kidnapped. The FBI did an entire investigation around it; I saw the files today. Ever since, it’s hosted a few unsavory types and we have to run them off, but, as far as I know, you stumbled into the first meth lab.”

“Lucky me,” I say.

He holds the back of my calf in one hand, cradling the muscle like a bird, while he applies antibiotic ointment with a swab. His touch is so light, I barely feel it.

“Deputy Flora questioned Tommy at the hospital. He says he was just visiting his cousins.”

“At their meth lab?”

“Yeah,” AJ says.

“Jesus,” I breathe.

AJ keeps his eyes on the wound. His hands are warm and firm and strong. His voice is even and smooth. I feel myself melting into his care, feel the tension beginning to drain away from me, feel the shock of my day receding.

I realize that, even after he finishes dressing my wound, even after we eat dinner, even after we spend the evening discussing the case, I am going to want him to stay the night. I am going to need his big, warm, easy bearing close to me.

“How’s this?” he asks, blowing a cool stream of air across my exposed flesh. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” I say. “It’s okay. You’re doing a good job.”

He lets go of my calf, tears open a sterile package of gauze, and applies it carefully to my shin. He picks up the roll of tape.

“Did Tommy say what happened?” I ask.

He pulls a strip of tape from the roll and attaches the gauze, pressing it down gently.

“Well, of course, Tommy says he had no idea his cousins were cooking.”

“Of course.”

“He says he was just taking them some lunch.”

“What a nice guy.”

“And he says when he got up today, his truck was broken down. So, he got a ride to Ellerd’s, grabbed some food, then took Mandy’s car. He went up to the factory and they were—according to him—arguing because he was telling them what a bad idea it was to be cooking meth.”

“Sure.”

“And then Elaine went to the window on the other side of the building for a smoke. She saw you pull up, saw you on the phone. She was stoned—ran back into the lab to tell them they were being watched and forgot she was holding a lit cigarette in her hand.”

“And it all went downhill from there.”

“Yeah.”

He tapes the other end of the gauze down, and I watch him in silence.

“I didn’t know they were there,” I say. “Not until—”

“I know.” He lets go of my calf but he’s still kneeling on the floor in front me.

He raises both hands, lays them on my bare knees, looks up at me.

And he could say things like, “It wasn’t your fault.

” Which I know. And “You saved Tommy’s life.

” Which I know. And “They shouldn’t have been in there cooking meth in the first place. ” Which I know.

But he doesn’t.

I’m no closer to finding Molly’s killer. At least two more people are dead. Tommy Hoyle is in the hospital. And Jessica may still be out there, awaiting the same fate as Molly. That’s how I balance my ledger at the end of this day. That’s where I am in this moment.

And AJ could tell me that I’m lucky to be alive, which I know. Lucky I’m not lying in the hospital room right next to Tommy, hacking out toxic muck, which I know. Lucky that after I faced an explosion and a fire and a crumbling building, I’m still here. And I’m not alone.

I know it. AJ knows it.

Neither of us says it.

I lean forward and kiss AJ’s forehead, the bridge of his nose, the dip above his lip.

He runs his palms up, over my knees, and onto my thighs.

The towel drops away.

I don’t say anything. And neither does AJ.

Neither of us has to.