Cottage Cheese and Green Onions Ch. 04

"Do you want me to call Bob? They have a beacon in her car, I seem to recall."

"Go ahead. And tell them to prepare for her departure."

She let go, turned to leave...

"Sue?"

She stopped, turned to face him. "Yes?"

"I love you."

She came to him, kissed him for the longest time then returned to her desk, called the head of the family's personal security detail.

'What now?' she said to herself as she listened to the phone ring. 'What has that psychotic cunt done to him now - and will it ever stop?'

+++++

She was at her grandfather's house, at Koon Kreek, watching the storm rage just to the north of the 'Old Lake' - the original lake the clubhouse overlooked - and she smiled. 'Maybe it'll take out that Sawyer cunt, and her dim-witted partner, too.'

She had seen there cars when she passed the house by the night before, after she'd taken care of that Dempsey guy. One more of her father's headaches dealt with, she sighed, satisfied with the results - and with these two detectives down here, not on the case, she figured she had time to rest, to keep out of sight.

Then she saw the funnel drop from the wall cloud, felt the change in atmospheric pressure. And another change came over her then...

"What if it hits their house? They'll be hurt, or worse!" she said, as she grabbed her car keys and ran for the Mustang...

+++++

The sound, the pressure, was incredible. Like a freight train looming in the night, the roar was subtle - at first - then in seconds it fell on the house and they ducked to the cold concrete floor as the storm hit. That the house was gone was not in doubt; only the extent of the damage to the rest of the farm remained an open question - then the storm door was literally ripped off it's hinges and an old pecan tree came ripping down into the cellar. The old man tried to hold on to something, anything, but he felt himself being sucked out the passage and fear gripped him like nothing ever had before - then he felt Dickinson's hand grasping for his and he caught it, held on for dear life. His feet were off the floor now, being pulled out the sundered doorway, and he looked down now, saw a shattered branch had impaled Becky - and she was bleeding...

"John!" he screamed, trying to hear his own voice over the screeching banshees. "Look-at-Becky! She's hurt!"

Dickinson turned, saw Becky struggling with a limb that had pinned her to the concrete floor, then he saw blood running under her shirt - and somehow he pulled Tom down into the shelter, turning to her as he did. They were on her in an instant, trying to pull the limb free, or even break it loose, but the full weight of the giant tree had her pinned.

As the wind fell away, John tried to push his way up the tree, but the way out was a tangled mess of twisted limbs and wet leaves...then he saw her.

Rebecca Lykes. Staring down through the branches and leaves.

"What are you doing here?" he hissed.

"I was driving by...is anyone hurt?"

"Yes. Becky is."

"Becky?"

"Yes, Miss Sawyer. She bleeding, badly."

He saw the change come over the girl in an instant. She pushed her way through the leaves, down into the cellar, and she knelt besides Becky, took her wrist and started assessing her condition. "We're going to need a rescue crew here, stat. Look, the house is gone, but I saw lights on at May's. Take my keys, get down there and call the fire department..."

Dickinson looked at her, didn't know what to...

"Don't think! Go!" Lykes yelled, and he nodded his head, pushed his way out the opening and into the greenish twilight. He ran for the Mustang and peeled out, drove for the café as fast as the rain-swollen dirt road allowed. He slid into the muddy parking lot and ran for the door, and May met him as he ran up.

"Twister hit us," he panted. "Becky's trapped in the cellar, bleeding out."

"I'll call the fire department," May said, "and get some of my people headed you way. How's the house?"

"Gone."

"Dear God. Okay, you git. We'll be right behind you."

"Bring chain saws," he said as he left, as May turned for her phone, and he sprinted back to the farm as the last of the rain passed. Tom was already cutting limbs with a chainsaw near the entry, and he started pulled limbs and debris away. Minutes seemed like hours, but more pickup trucks slid to a stop and neighbors jumped to work clearing more debris - and parts of the house - from the area.

Tom Sawyer stepped away, turned and assayed the damage, and Dickinson turned with him.

"Barns are okay," Tom said, and there was some relief in his eyes, but he looked and sounded completely devastated. He walked off towards the dairy barn just then - as May drove up in her old Impala - just as two fire trucks turned up the dirt road.

An ambulance followed, and paramedics jumped down into the cellar moments later, and he saw the Lykes girl crawl out a minute after that. She saw him and walked over, and she looked at the cop right in the eye the whole way over.

"I don't think anything vital was hit, no arterial bleeding anyway. Her pulse is steady and unchanged, and she hasn't lost consciousness."

He looked at her, not sure what to do.

"Well? Are you going to say something? Or just stand there staring at me?"

"Why?" he asked.

"Why what?"

"Why'd you come here?"

"Look, like I said, I was just..."

"No, you weren't."

She looked into the cop's eyes, could see he was cutting through layers of deceit - like his eyes were scalpels. "No, I wasn't. But I was afraid someone was hurt, and I had to..."

"You know what? I'm probably going to get fired for this, but you need to get out of here, fast. They've already called, want us back in town to start looking for you."

She nodded her head. "Okay. Why? Why are you letting me go?"

"I'm giving you a little head start, that's all. I owe you that."

"Okay. You know something?"

"What?"

"Your next," she said. "At least - you were." She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, then smiled at him. "Got my keys?"

He tossed them to her then looked away, as if giving her his leave to run - then he watched her drive away before he ran back to the cellar.

Coda

She made it back to work six weeks later, and as she'd officially been summoned back to work just before the storm hit her injuries were classified as 'on-duty' - so the financial impact of the event wasn't so overwhelming.

She claimed she did not remember being rescued, or who was involved, and her father never mentioned seeing a Ford Mustang at the farm. John Wayne Dickinson, of course, never mentioned anything of the sort. Neither did he mention his activities after he following Becky's ambulance to Parkland Hospital that evening. Like calling Rebecca Lyke's father at his house later that night. He did not mention driving to Love Field at two in the morning - and watching Rebecca Lykes walk up into a private Boeing 707-320c that had just landed and refueled at the Braniff facility next to Southwest Airmotive. Neither did he mention talking with people in the shadows as the jet took off and turned to the northeast.

The Lykes case was officially closed, marked solved, later that summer after all leads went cold.

John and Becky Sawyer were married in August, not long after work on Tom Sawyer's new house was finished. No one commented that the new house was quite a bit nicer, and bigger, than the one it replaced. John was asked once, by May, and he only said that he and Tom had done a lot of the work themselves.

Tom drove them over to DFW Airport after the wedding, and he saw them off on their honeymoon. They were going to Switzerland as it turned out, but Tom didn't see anything wrong with that.

The only thing that bothered him, in fact, was an odd statement John made on the way to the airport. "Oh, I have a few loose ends I need to take care of over there, pops."

"Loose ends?" Tom remembered asking.

"Oh, more like an errand. Just something I have to do. For a friend."

© 2017 | adrian leverkühn | abw | fiction, fiction and nothin' but the fiction. hope y'all enjoyed.