Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3) (24 page)

Forty-Nine

Giulia pushed through the concealed entrance in the hedge and stepped into the central clearing, Joanne at her back. They’d caught the tail end of supper. Ariel and her husband sipped mead. The accordion player and his wife faced each other on two chairs singing the chorus of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” The cheesemaker buttered bread and handed it to her husband. Horizontal sunset rays striped the table.

Tim looked over when the ivy rustled. He waved at them with the piece of bacon in his hand. “Hey, Maria. Who you got with you?”

Jim’s head popped up from behind Tim’s back, his fingers still on his sneaker laces. “It’s Phoebe. Whoa, you look hot.”

The music stopped. The mead glasses hit the table. The goat-milker coughed on a bite of bread. Everyone crowded around Giulia and Joanne.

“We missed you.”

“Alex said you weren’t coming back.”

“Give me your workout regimen, please.”

“Are you hungry?”

Joanne answered the last question. “Starving.”

The twins became perfect gentlemen. They led Giulia and Joanne to their vacated chairs and shoved their own dirty plates out of the way—well, almost perfect. Tim ran into their house and returned with clean plates, cups, and utensils. Jim poured mead. Ariel stabbed slices of meat and cheese. Orion buttered bread.

Joanne took a bite of meat and closed her eyes. “Mutton. I love mutton.”

Giulia hid her smile at Joanne’s delight in eating something other than venison.

“Don’t diss the bread,” Jim said. “It’s my first try.”

“Now that you’re back you’ll make cake for us again, right, please?” Tim said.

“What happened to you?” the accordion player’s wife said. “You look stressed.”

Pepin and another dog barked from inside the octagonal house. Giulia had forgotten the dogs. “What’s up with Pepin?”

Jim said, “He’s having a night o’ love with Rana in Orion’s house. Alex says we should breed them.”

Tim gestured over his shoulder. “Lassie and Boris are in our house.”

Giulia breathed again.

In between alternate bites of cheese, meat, and bread, Joanne told the story of her past two months. She didn’t mention weaning herself off the drugs. Instead, she played up her old mindset of being unworthy of Alex’s attention and the responsibility of leading the apocalypse survivors into the future. In this version, she escaped Larabee’s hidden room by bashing him over the head with the lamp because her muscles were finally strong enough to overpower him.

“We should never have offered him a place in our family,” Ariel said.

“Alex never made a judgment mistake like that before,” the cheesemaker said.

“Shh,” the accordion player said.

Alex’s deep voice said, “Phoebe.”

Giulia hadn’t seen him arrive, again. If he was in “the god is possessing me” mode,
The Scoop
would be sending her flowers and chocolate tomorrow.

Joanne channeled her inner Method Actor, exactly like Giulia had coached her to do during the drive. She ran to Alex and threw her arms around him. “Alex, I should never have left here. I was so wrong. I’ve been punished. Please take me back into the community.”

Alex unpeeled her and set her at arms’ length. “Cernunnos sent me a vision of captivity and flight. I understand now. He was speaking of you.”

Tim and Jim started talking together. Ariel and her husband joined in. Alex held up his left hand. “Stop. Phoebe, how is it that you and Maria are together here?”

Giulia stood, shamming respect. “My cleaning service job sent me to a satellite location because they were short-handed again. Phoebe flagged me down on my way home.”

Joanne stepped away from Alex and hugged Giulia. “She took me to her apartment so I could shower for the first time in two months. She even bought me clothes. She’s my new bestie.”

Giulia-as-Maria returned the squeeze. “You’re so brave. Isn’t it cool how we belong to the same community? It’s like we were meant to find each other.”

A rapid glissando turned everyone’s head. The accordion player keyed the opening bars to “In Heaven There is No Beer.” The hippies placed one arm on each other’s waists, the other hand high on their partner’s shoulders, and began to polka. Tim grabbed Joanne and Jim took Giulia. The cheesemaker and her husband joined in a moment later. Last, Alex offered a hand to the accordion player’s wife.

They polkaed around the table, between the front vegetable gardens, up onto porches and down to the fire pit. The song switched to the “Beer Barrel Polka” and everyone changed partners.

“There should be a polka about mead,” Tim said as he swapped partners with the goat-milker.

Alex took Giulia from Jim. “Your resourcefulness and generosity please us. We want you to move here as soon as possible.”

Giulia made happy-sappy conversation while thinking, “How does he maintain perfect breath control after two polkas?” and “I can’t wait to testify against you in court.”

BASH!

Louis Larabee charged through the hidden entrance. Shredded ivy vines hung from his left ear and both shoulders. His left hand held a Glock. Tim and Ariel stutter-stepped in front of him. Tim pushed Ariel toward her husband. Larabee grabbed Tim and shoved the Glock under his chin.

Giulia yanked her phone out of her back pocket and hit Send on the one-word text she’d pre-written to Ken Kanning:
Now
.

Fifty

The cheesemaker screamed. The music jangled into silence. Jim pushed Joanne under the table and stood in front of her, a gallant gesture despite his birch tree build. The remaining community members froze in their last dance positions.

“Look at the loser freaks.” Larabee’s voice showed minimal signs of stress and the gun didn’t tremble at all. “You can’t hide from a real hunter, Josie. I knew you’d come crawling back here. Show yourself.”

Giulia sent psychic hurry-up vibes to
The Scoop
and her husband. They should’ve been here before Larabee.

“Let go of my brother, Louis,” Jim said.

“Fat chance, incestuous faggot.”

Jim’s stunned expression was comical.

“You know what they say about homophobes.” Tim’s jaunty reply cut off at the last word as Louis jabbed the gun barrel harder into his throat.

“I want what’s mine, freaks.” Louis detached the gun from Tim’s throat to wave it at the group. “Unless you want to go all Donner Party on this pissant for breakfast tomorrow.” The gun returned to its previous position.

Giulia stepped toward Louis and Tim. “I’m sure we can talk about this.”

Louis did a textbook double-take. “You?”

Joanne crawled into view and stood. “Louis, don’t do this.”

“There you are, you disobedient pig. Get your fat ass over here.”

The hippie moved to Giulia’s left. Giulia flipped a mental coin on whether he was saving his own skin or about to add his own attempt to talk Larabee down.

Where was her cavalry?

Larabee tightened his grip on Tim and planted his back against the hedge. “Don’t try to distract me, asshole. Everybody stay nice and still and think about living until your next polka.”

Bang.
The hippie cried out and fell to the dirt. Blood spurted through his fingers as he clutched his right foot.

“Honey bun?” Ariel got two strides closer to him before another bullet sprayed up dirt in her face.

“I said stand still, you stoner twits.”

The gun was at Tim’s neck again. He grimaced when the hot muzzle contacted his skin.

Joanne said from her current position, “Louis, this is between you and me. Don’t take it out on them.”

“You shouldn’t have run back to them like the spineless lard-ass you are at heart.”

Giulia increased her psychic Ken Kanning vibes. Her position next to Alex was in Larabee’s direct line of sight. She needed Kanning and Pit Bull to give her an opening.

“Louis, let Tim go and I’ll come back with you.”

Larabee’s laughter spooked Giulia.

“You’ll say whatever you think I want to hear to rescue this little piece of shit.”

Joanne clutched her hands in a praying position. “No, Louis, I swear. They don’t want me anymore. They said I wasn’t worthy because I ran away.”

“You like running, don’t you?”

She took another step closer. “You knew I needed someone to be strict with me. You need to help me learn my lesson again.”

Another skin-crawling laugh. “Don’t worry. I will.”

BASH!

“We found it, Scoopers! A Doomsday cult plying innocent teenagers with drugs and booze to force them—aagh!”

Ken Kanning collapsed to the ground at the no-longer-hidden hedge entrance. Pit Bull’s camera followed Kanning down, the lens whirring in close on the blood running from Kanning’s right arm into the dirt.

“Who the hell are these idiots?” Larabee’s gun was again at Tim’s neck.

“I wish we had a live feed,” the face of
The Scoop
muttered as he struggled upright. The late sunlight faded to twilight by the time he got himself vertical. “Light,” he said in a quiet voice and the camera’s spotlight illuminated a swath of the central area.

Kanning switched the microphone to his left hand and jerked his head at the hedge. The camera swooped up and put Larabee in the spotlight.

Kanning’s voice filled the clearing. “This may be the first time I’ve been shot in the line of duty, but
The Scoop
never runs away from a story. Directly in front of me a desperate man holds a fragile boy hostage. Is it the drugs? Is it the poisonous moonshine they brew in their hidden cellars?”

“Hey,” Tim said. “I’m not fragile.”

“Shut up, you with the mike,” Larabee said.

Cheryl stumbled through the mess in the new, larger entrance. “What’s going on? Jim? Tim?”

“Will he shoot this innocent young man? Does no one in this group of supposed brave pioneers have the guts to save one of their own?”

Cheryl screamed her son’s name.

“Shut up,” Larabee shouted.

Alex’s booming preacher voice cut through the din. “How dare you attack my sacred circle, blasphemer?” His hands beat a syncopated rhythm on the table.
Thump, thump-thump, thump. Thump, thump-thump, thump.

Cheryl stopped screaming. Ariel stopped crooning over her husband. Her husband stopped putting pressure on his bloody foot.

“Scoopers, we’re not quite sure what’s happening.” Kanning paused while Pit Bull, still holding the camera steady, bent his head and whispered to his boss.

Thump, thump-thump, thump.
The size of Alex’s hands or the wood of the table or both made the sounds resonate at the lower threshold of Giulia’s hearing.
Thump, thump-thump, thump.

“Apparently the cult’s leader is channeling their private god. I promise our Scoopers we’ll find out which god and what psychic control he and it have over these hostages.”

Larabee pointed the Glock at Alex. At Giulia. At Joanne. At Kanning. Then back to Tim’s throat. Kanning’s eyes slewed toward Alex. The camera took the hint and poured its light along the table, framing Alex and his drumming hands.

The hippie stood. The accordion player set his instrument on the ground.

Over the unchanging drumbeat, Alex cemented Giulia’s chances at a delivery from one of Cottonwood’s florists tomorrow.

“My people are the hunters,” Alex said in his “possessed by the god” voice. “My people share my strength. I protect my people. I give strength to my people.”

Larabee’s deer in the headlights expression shifted from Alex to the houses behind him. Tim grunted as Larabee’s muscular arm tightened around his chest and the gun moved from his throat to his temple.

Two uniformed police officers ran into the clearing behind Alex. Their flashlights increased the twilight plus spotlight chiaroscuro effect.

Alex kept drumming. “Show them my people’s strength. Show them my people’s strength.”

“At last the city’s finest make an entrance, Scoopers. How many more guns will threaten our lives tonight?”

Larabee glared at the uniforms flanking Alex. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll blow this pretty-boy’s head off.”

Frank and Nash skirted the beehives, Larabee’s view of them blocked by the cheesemaker and her husband.

Thump, thump-thump, thump.

The uniformed officer on Alex’s right said, “Shut up with that noise.”

“Where is a true hero?” Kanning swept the crowd with his injured arm, spattering blood on the dirt. He grimaced at the camera. “Only a coward hides behind a gun and a helpless boy.”

“Shut up,” Larabee said, his voice rising on the second word. “Everybody shut up!”

“Drop the gun and step away from the boy,” Frank said.

Larabee twisted himself and Tim to face Frank. He gave Frank a physically impossible order.

“I’ll count to three.”

Another impossible order.

Thump, thump-thump, thump.

“Stop that damn drumming,” Larabee said.

“One.”

“Louis, please let Tim go.” Joanne walked forward.

“Two.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt, Louis.”

“Three.”

The drumming stopped.

Joanne leaped the intervening distance with her yoga-trained muscles. Tim butted the back of his head into Larabee’s nose. Joanne knocked the gun away from Tim’s face. It fell to the ground but didn’t go off. Every community member swarmed Larabee at the same time Frank and Nash dived on him. Kanning narrated the chaos. Tim ran to the safety of the nearest front porch at Olympic-worthy speed.

Joanne said, “Everybody get off him.”