She bit her lip, shook off the last of the panic, and carefully got to her feet. She turned to the back wall, lifted the cover mounted there, and pressed the green button. She watched it light, signaling she was inside and okay. “Do what you need to do, then come let me out ASAP,” she whispered, trying for a smile.
Whoever was in her house, however many, and their reasons for breaking in, none of it particularly mattered. Nobody could get inside the safe room except David. “Come get me, David.” Just saying his name helped to calm her further. Whatever was happening, it was on the outside of this room, and for now it wasn’t her problem . . . couldn’t be her problem if she wanted to keep her sanity.
Maggie looked at the shelves, turned on the battery-operated CD player, and surrounded herself with the soothing sounds of a Beethoven sonata. She pulled out a deck of cards, dropped two pillows to the floor for more comfortable seating, and settled in for a game of solitaire. Her hands shook as she turned the cards, adrenaline still rippling through her body.
Think about something else. Anything else . . .
She was looking for an idea for a new album cover. She needed to decide on a birthday gift for David.
She felt like throwing up. She glanced over at the trash can. No, it’s not going to get that bad. Think about the cards, listen to the music. This was the worst kind of stress—not knowing, sitting atop panic that faded far too slowly.
I should have come to believe like David and married him years ago. She laughed softly at the unexpected thought, but felt more than a little comfort in it too. She occasionally wondered if initially it was the danger in David’s job making faith easier for him than unbelief. It had to be comforting for him to know he was never alone. So is that true, that he’s never alone? She could use some of that comfort right now.
Jesus, if you’re real, please become real to me. I’m tired of this wondering, trying to get my mind around the question. I want to go to the side of the decision that is true, and I’m in the dark right now. She looked up at the light above her as it flickered once, twice, then steadied. She pulled in a deep breath and slowly let it out. The light burned on brightly. She was going to be okay. Everyone was going to be okay. David would be here soon. She reached over for a flashlight on the shelf, tested it, and left it on the floor beside her knee.
“Jesus, you could start by keeping the lights on,” she whispered, and felt for the first time as though someone was listening.
David Marshal
David saw the blood first. A path on the carpet, the brightness of it under the lights, the destruction trailing toward the stairs and up, Maggie’s framed record albums knocked from the wall, photos smashed where they impacted the railing. He looked at John Key.
“It’s bad,” John told him simply. “He’s upstairs, dead.”
“Maggie?”
“Inside the safe room. The green light came on about three minutes after the door closed and sealed. As far as we can tell, she’s fine. And, thankfully, she didn’t see any of this. Security feeds snapped on with the alarm—she’d been sitting on the bedroom floor, working on song lyrics. You see her look toward the window as the crashes happen, then back to the bedroom door when the patio glass shattered. She heard that and bolted.”
“Thank you, God, for small blessings,” David prayed, forced his heartbeat to settle. “He had help getting through the gate.”
“It looks like three other guys. The dump truck struck first, the Caterpillar hauler second. We think our intruder was in the high-wheel truck that made it into the driveway and up to the garage. All we have on the first two drivers are black hoods, black sweats, black shoes—picked up by a dark blue or black Charger. Cameras that would have captured clear pictures for us got jarred out of position by the impacts—a fact we’ll be correcting for the future. We learned that lesson the hard way.”
“Bradley?”
“Got himself slightly clipped by the third vehicle and is on the way to the hospital with a banged-up shoulder. He would have stopped Number Three on his own, but we’d already seen the safe room door close by then and the area patrol was arriving on scene. I held Bradley in place so we didn’t run up against possibly losing him in a situation that was becoming contained. They cleared the house as a group, found Number Three dead upstairs.”
“Thanks, John. Maggie’s going to have a hard enough time with this without one of her own getting killed.” He examined the smashed patio door and the trail of blood caused by the flying glass, which probably sliced open his arm. “We need to know how he found her address.”