Heaven Should Fall

nurse, I pictured Dave standing in a hospital corridor, watching the clock, and I felt the anger inside me rise to a boil. They were destroying my plan to escape. All this time I had held out for TJ’s sake, and now they were making all those miserable weeks pointless. Now perhaps I would be charged as an accessory, because I had known things I should have reported, tried and failed to hedge my bets about Cade’s conscience and his sanity. At the very least the coming weeks would be a mess of lawyers, two-way mirrors—possibly even foster care for our son. I could lose my child. He would become motherless, just like me, but it would be so much worse for him. He would be shucked into a system whose goal was merely to keep him alive.

That’s unproductive thinking, Jill. I heard the shadow of my mother’s voice behind the thought. Calm down. Remember, don’t quit five minutes before the miracle happens.

“Aunt Jilly, I’m hungry,” said John.

“Let me see if Grandma’s got any snacks up here,” I replied, doubtful. TJ had fallen asleep at my breast, and I eased him back into the sling before rising awkwardly from the floor. There would be nothing in the craft room, but perhaps there was some food squirreled away on the shelves on the landing. I closed the craft-room door behind me to soften the laptop’s hearty chime of “Yankee Doodle” and began rifling through the clutter on the bookshelf. Three stories down there was enough food to feed all of Frasier for a year, but nobody had thought to hand up so much as a box of graham crackers before they confined us to the attic. Sixty thousand dollars, I remembered Cade saying as I looked over the basement in wonder. He had mocked his family then, so sure he was nothing like any of them.

The bookshelf search turned up nothing, and I wasn’t eager to return to tell John he would have to go hungry. My back aching from TJ’s weight, I walked with a gentle sway to my gait to keep him asleep, back and forth in front of the attic fan. Then, as I approached it once again, my eye caught a movement just beyond its slats. I stopped and peered through the mesh and past the slats. Two men in black SWAT gear were moving around behind a truck that blocked the driveway. My heart pounded, and TJ, as if sensing my surge of adrenaline, raised his eyebrows high above his closed eyes and stirred. I rushed to the craft closet and pulled out a torn length of white sheet to drape from the window. But as I unsnapped the grimy closures and braced my hands against the sash, another motion caught my gaze. The window below mine opened and the lean black silhouette of an automatic rifle appeared, then Dodge, easing his upper body out the window to sight in.

I glanced at the closed door of the craft room, then at the closet still wide open beside it. In a few efficient movements I grabbed Matthew’s rifle from the closet, reloaded it and took aim through the venting slats for the fan. The pop of the gun cut the air; I felt the flail of TJ’s arm against my back, and then Dodge slumped half out the window. The rifle fell from his hands and clattered against the porch roof. Blood bloomed on the back of his head, long streaks of it unfurling like a lily.

Someone screamed. A man. I guessed it was Cade.

I shoved the gun back into Leela’s closet and buried it beneath the bolts of cloth. “What the fuck!” I heard him shouting from the second floor. “What the fuck! ”

I slipped back into the workroom and locked the door behind me with the old key that jutted from the lock. Matthew stared at me as I hurried in. He asked, “Did Uncle Cade go and shoot himself?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s what happens. My dad says so. That’s what happens when you don’t know your target.”

I nodded and peeked out the shade.

“Uncle Cade’s sort of stupid with guns.”

“He sure is.”

Cade’s howling had turned into a wail. After a few moments a long shrill sound from Candy rose up, as well. I heard the sound of the attic door being thrown open, and my heart thumped in my ears, a double thud that resonated like being underwater. I felt as though I could feel all four chambers pumping, each distinct. TJ, sensing my anxiety, pulled up his legs inside the sling and twisted against my side. But he did not awaken.

“The hell you didn’t!” Cade shouted, and without a reply from Candy I had to assume he was talking on the phone. “Then why the fuck is my brother-in-law hanging dead out my window?”

Candy began to sob in a messy, noisy way, punctuated with fresh wails. “All right, all right,” Cade said. “All of them, yeah. Take ’em all.”

Relief flooded through me. I wrapped my arms around TJ and stood just inside the attic door, prepared to rush out as soon as Cade opened it. But when he did, he blocked my exit with his arm. “Not you. Candy’s boys.”

All the relief I had felt turned abruptly to dread. The boys ducked beneath his arm and raced down the stairs like water down a drain. I tried to push past, but he shifted to stand in my path. His face was pale, eyes frantic. “Stay there, Jill.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s not safe for you to go out. They shot Dodge. Candy wants her boys, fine, but you’re not going anywhere. Not as long as they’ve got a sniper on us.”

So that was what he believed. I had no problem playing along. “But they’re not going to shoot us. It’s safer for everybody if TJ and I go, too. Why would you want your son to stay here if there’s a sniper on the roof? Just let us go, Cade. If they see you’re willing to be reasonable, they’re less likely to rush in on you.”

“And there’s less to stop them from shooting me if they do.” I looked at him in dismay, and he combed both hands back through his hair. “Sorry, Jill, but that’s where it’s at right now. You know I’m out of cigarettes? Fine frickin’ time for that to happen.”

Just leave anyway, I thought. Shove past him and run. But I looked at the gun on his hip and thought better of it. I didn’t think he would hurt me or TJ, but I had never thought he would hold Drew Fielder hostage, either. “If I go, maybe I can negotiate for you better than anybody else can,” I suggested. “I’ve got more sympathy for you.”

He glanced toward me. I kept my expression neutral, but in the effort to do so I realized I wasn’t lying. More than anger, I felt pity for him. He could have been something wonderful, but here he was, whiling down the minutes that would end in him losing everything. Prison was going to be ugly for Cade. He was too good-looking and too easily cowed by another man’s will.

His phone buzzed. He looked at it, then handed it to me and sat on the floor, leaning back against the craft closet. I stared at the phone and then at him, and asked, “What am I supposed to do, answer it?”

“Yeah. I’m tired.”

I turned it on. “This is Jill.”

“Jill!”

The sound of Dave’s voice bewildered me. I hurried into the workroom and turned away from Cade. I couldn’t utter a response. Dave’s voice came on again. “Is that you, really? I thought I was going to talk to Cade. Are you doing all right?”

Glancing back at Cade, I gauged his reaction, but he only stared at the wall in a passive way. “I don’t understand,” I replied carefully.

“They’ve had me talking to him for a couple hours now,” Dave explained. “I got your email and then I saw the news, and so I called the police. They said sometimes it helps if someone with a connection to the family tries to help broker a truce, so they put me on. I’m trying to get you out of there. Is the baby all right? Are you?”

“We’re both here. We’re not hurt. Cade’s trying to process whatever just happened.”

“Yeah. They say they need him to be clear on the fact that they don’t know what the situation is with Dodge Powell, and they’re investigating it, but they don’t believe it was one of their men. They say they’re not in a position to retrieve the body. Do you know the condition of the hostage?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been up in the attic all this time.” At this Cade scowled at me. “What Cade wants…is to talk to a lawyer who will put together a good case for him.”

“Am I on speaker? Can he hear me?”

“No.”

“Good. What Cade really wants is for everybody to go home and forget this ever happened. In the end the choices are going to be that either he comes out or the SWAT team comes in. It’s a lot better for everyone, especially him, if he picks the first one. Tell me what it’s going to take to make that