Heaven Should Fall

“Get back upstairs.”

I met Dodge’s eyes. Cade’s hand gripped my shoulder again, and I shrugged hard, but he didn’t let go. “It’s easier for you if we’re gone,” I told him. “Babies need too many things. Let me out the door now and I won’t say a word to anyone.”

“It’s too late for that,” said Dodge. “They’re all around the house. Agents. FBI probably. Scooter, he was on his way over here and saw them coming up the road. Called to warn us—”

Not us, I thought. Me. All the pieces snapped into place in my mind: that when Cade texted him, he realized he had been all wrong in his prediction that they would wait until after TJ’s surgery. He had turned them in, most likely in a panic, and only realized after the fact that TJ and I were about to be caught in the net with the rest of them. He had tried to do the right thing, but it was too late and too complicated.

“Fuck my life,” Cade said. He let go of my shoulder and pushed past me into the living room. “Fuck!” he shouted toward the front wall.

“And they arrested him, or so it sounded like. Now they got people outside every door. And we’re just waiting.”

Dodge stopped speaking and looked toward the living-room window, but its dusty drapes had been drawn tightly against the night. Cade leaned back against the wall and gazed toward the ceiling with an empty expression, as though looking to God for instructions. I asked, “Waiting for what?”

“For them to make contact.”

I looked impatiently at Cade. The door was right there; everything within me pulled me toward it, and irritation was rapidly replacing my fear and disbelief. “Well, why don’t you take out your damn phone and call them yourself? It’s all over anyway, right? And your son needs to get to the hospital.”

Cade didn’t respond. He looked stricken. In the silence, Dodge spoke up again. “I told you Scooter was a plant. Like hell he just happened to walk into that one. Arranged to disappear before he got trapped in the house with us is more like it.”

“Shut up, Dodge,” Cade said peevishly. “It could have been anybody. Someone who saw your truck, someone who works with Bylina—Uncle Randy, even—”

Dodge cocked his head in rueful agreement. “Randy, yeah, it could be. Thanks to Miss Busybody over here.”

I scowled at him. “Why don’t you quit listening to yourself talk for five minutes and get the police on the phone so we can get out of this? Where’s Candy?”

“Downstairs watching our guest. She set the boys up in Grandma’s workroom. Cade’ll take you upstairs, too. Got to have someone keep them kids away from the windows.”

“No chance. I’m not babysitting so you can bicker back and forth with the police. Cade, give me your phone.”

He gave me a long, guarded look, as if he was considering it. Dodge said, “Goddamn, Cade, your little woman needs to see the back of someone’s hand.”

But right then, it rang. I took a step back from him and shifted TJ to the other hip, and Dodge took advantage of Cade’s distraction and mine to take me firmly by the upper arm and pull me out into the hallway. “Up the stairs,” he ordered.

I shook him off. “Don’t you dare.”

“Fine. Walk.” When I balked, he met my eye with a gaze widened by impatience. “You want to be down here if they bust in, huh? You think that’s such a smart idea? Best you and your boy be up at the top of the house, away from the people they want. And don’t think they’re going to give us any warning.”

As much as I hated him, there was a logic to what he said. I stepped onto the first stair and he nudged me forward. On the second floor the shades were all drawn. I held TJ firmly against me as I navigated the narrow staircase to the attic. In Leela’s workroom, the three little boys sat hunched around Dodge’s laptop from which came the tinny dialogue of a children’s show about George Washington. Despite the early hour, John’s face was a mess of red lollipop residue; Matthew, seated in the middle, wore his birthday rifle slung on his back as always. The little square of electrical tape over the webcam curled outward at its top edge.

“Tell Cade to tell them I need to leave,” I told Dodge. “That ought to be his priority.”

Dodge grunted a reply and thumped back down the stairs.

I set TJ down on the floor and shut the door. “Matthew, give me your rifle.”

He shook his head slowly, not raising his gaze from the screen. “‘This is my rifle,’” he quoted. “‘There are many like it, but this one is mine.’”

“Not right now, it isn’t. Hand it over.”

“No.” He began babbling a half-coherent version of the Rifleman’s Creed. “I will ever guard it against the ravinges of weatherman damage—”

I walked up behind him and lifted it off his back, ignoring his indignant hey, and unloaded it before securing it in the craft closet that was safely outside the door. Crouching on the floor, I peeked out through the thin gap between the bottom of the shade and the window. I squinted against the sudden swirling lights, red and blue, that pulsed in rhythm against the dark sky. Out on the main road sat two ambulances, three fire trucks, several other boxy emergency vehicles and a white van from which sprouted a satellite dish perched atop a long pole. At the end of the driveway, glinting beneath the moonlight and partially obscured by the trees, a large black truck blocked the exit. I sighed from deep in my chest. There was still the chance they would let me walk out with TJ and take us to the hospital if Cade put his son ahead of himself. He might, I told myself. None of this had been a part of his original plan. Surely he wanted his son to have this surgery as much as I did.

I sat with my back against the wall beneath the window and waited out the long minutes, watching the backs of the three little boys hunched over the laptop, the wanderings of TJ as he crawled across the rug. All of a sudden I had an idea. “Boys,” I said, and they startled at the sharpness of my voice. “Let me see that computer a minute.”

I took it from Matthew’s hands and checked the network connection. Our phones had been cut off long ago, but Dodge had kept up payments on the satellite internet to keep his eBay sales going. Relief washed over me at the sight of the little icon of expanding rays. I logged in to my email and sent off a quick message.

Dave—complication. We’re in trouble here at the house in Frasier. SWAT teams or FBI outside. Might not get to hospital but am trying. Help if poss.—Jill

I turned off the WiFi connection and handed the computer back to Matthew, who snapped the video back on. “TJ stinks,” he said as an afterthought. Sure enough, the baby needed a diaper change, and I had left the bag downstairs. I carried TJ down the narrow steps to change him in my room, where we kept extra diapers next to the laundry basket where he slept. As I laid him down on the bed, working hard to keep my touch gentle in spite of my anxiety, Cade stepped into the darkened room behind me. “Jill, Fielder’s lying about you and Stan, isn’t he?”

I looked over my shoulder and shot him a perplexed look. Of all the things he could be worrying about right now. “Of course he is.”

“I thought so.” He rested his back against the wall and looked toward the hallway, dimly lit from what little daylight was now creeping in around the shades. For the first time in all this I noticed the handgun holstered on his belt, just behind his right arm. “But he said—he said he saw you himself.”

I closed up the diaper and lifted TJ to my hip. “He saw that I slept in Stan’s bed sometimes, but never when Stan was home. It’s that simple.”

“I thought you were sleeping in the living room.”

“When he was home, yes, but his mattress was more comfortable and I was pregnant and my back hurt, so when he wasn’t there I didn’t see the harm in sleeping there. Come on, Cade. Drew’s just exaggerating to distract you, and it’s working. It’s ridiculous that’s even in your head at a time like this.”

“If everything was so up-and-up, then why didn’t I know about this before?”

“Because there wasn’t anything to say. Seriously, if it was like that between me and Stan, do you think I would have taken this as my best option in life?” My voice was rising. TJ thumped his fist against my chest and squirmed, but I lacked the restraint to lower my voice. “If I haven’t proven by now that I’m