Devils Among Us (Devin Dushane Series Book 1) (13 page)

Devin now had tears streaming down her face. “I promise not
to wear my ‘I was married to a black man t-shirt’ while I’m here. How’s that?”
She was in real danger of falling out of her chair now. If Shane’s pen cap had
still been in his mouth, he probably would have choked on it. As it was, he was
practically lying down he was leaning so far back in the conference-room chair
with one arm thrown across his face. His whole body was silently shaking. Adam
was leaning on the table with one hand clamped tightly across his mouth to keep
any sound from escaping. From the collar of his shirt to the roots of his hair,
he had gone so red he was almost purple.

“All right, you little pain in the neck,” Mama said. “Just
take care of yourself and call an old lady once in awhile.”

Devin was still wiping tears away. “I don’t know any old
ladies…but I’ll call you now and then.” She reached up to weave her fingers
around the medallion of her choker. “Give my love to Little Man and the girls.”

“I will, but you know you could call your sisters and your godson
and do it yourself.”

“Yes ma’am, I will.”

“Liar.”

“I love you, too, Mama Dushane.”

“Be a good girl Devin, I love you.”

As soon as Devin snapped her phone shut, the walls of the
conference room shook with howls of laughter. None of the three could get out a
coherent sentence just tidbits of …the Klan…and …I’m white…which would just
start them all snickering that much harder. Finally Sheriff Bittner came in to
see what the disturbance in his peaceful little office was all about.  He found
the three of them face down on the conference table, red faced and giddy.

“Are y’all on drugs?” the Sherriff’s tone sounded like he
thought it more likely that they were mentally unstable. With their boss in the
room Adam and Shane made valiant efforts to pull themselves together, but Devin
was enjoying herself way too much. “With all this energy, y’all shouldn’t have
any problem finishing up the details for the class tomorrow.”

He might as well have tossed cold water on Devin—the effect
of his words was just as sobering. She leaned back in her chair and smirked as
she tapped her pen against the edge of the laminated fake wooden table top.

“Exactly how much preparation do we need to teach a dozen
teenage girls and housewives basic defense skills?” She was bluffing, of
course. Devin never brushed off anything especially something that could keep
girls safe on the streets. She had written out six weeks of detailed lesson
plans for her class.

The sheriff rocked back on his heels. “A dozen? Try a few
more than that. As of nine o’clock this morning, we had forty-seven signed up,
and I haven’t checked in with Marlene this afternoon to get the latest count.”

Devin bolted upright in her chair. “Forty-seven! How many
women are there in Fenton?”

“Forty-six, but Mr. Whitacre that owns the upholstery shop on
Eagle Street is very excited about attending.” Shane bent his wrist over and
batted his eyes until Adam nearly knocked him off his chair.

Devin groaned. “You might have mentioned this sooner,
teaching to a group that size will have to be done in a completely different
way, just in logistics alone.” Her mind was already whirling as she was working
out a new plan.

“Now Miss Devin doesn’t get in a tizzy, you’ll have these
two jokers to do your bidding and I asked Deputy Lambert to pitch in as well.”

With a sigh she started stacking up the case files in front
of her.

“Well, can you send this deputy in and we’ll make a plan for
tomorrow?”

Grahm Bittner was so pleased he looked like he might burst a
button-off the shirt that was already so tightly stretched across his wide
belly. “He’s out on patrol, but I’ll radio him in right this minute ma’am.”
With that he turned and dashed out of the room with speed belied by his size.

Devin was enjoying the icy pelting of water in her shower.
She’d gone to the gym on her way home and working out in Fenton in June was
like working out inside a sauna. Since she didn’t have air conditioning, the cold
shower was like heaven. Devin had to admit that focusing her workouts for this
class was keeping her fighting skills up for work, so she wasn’t losing any
ground on her “forced vacation”. As she stood under the frigid rinse a moment
more, she smiled as she thought about their planning this afternoon. Shane had
pouted the entire time. Deputy Jake Lambert turned out to be tanned with
muscles carved out of stone and sandy blonde hair that had been kissed by the
sun. Not that Devin had been looking that close, but his green eyes had a ring
of orange wrapped around the iris like she had never seen before. On top of all
that, he had a 1972 Mustang and a Harley.

Oh, hello, summer fling!
Yep, Shane had worked
himself up into a right fine little snit by the end of the afternoon. It was a
good day.

She glanced at the clock when she stepped out of the shower
and saw that it was already after five. She would have to step it up. It
wouldn’t do to be late for Henry. Devin wrapped her hair in a towel to help
speed up the drying process and did a quick make-up job. She was dressing up
for Henry, Dushane-style, so to speak, in white shorts and a coral silk poncho-style
top that Carter’s sister had given her, because apparently it was ‘her color’. Devin
hadn’t even known what it was when she opened it for her birthday, but this
seemed like a perfect opportunity to wear it. The espadrilles had worn a
blister on her foot this morning, though, so she was stuck with tennis shoes
for comfort. She tossed the towel off and ran some mousse thru her hair with
ten minutes to spare. She did the rounds thru the downstairs to make sure
everything was locked up and the lights were turned off. The dining room was
functioning as her command center for the investigation. She had her notes and
files stacked neatly on the table and the beginning of a timeline charted on the
wall. When Devin hit the light switch, the dining room went pitch black.

Whoa, those are serious drapes, there’s not even a crack
of light.
She thought about opening them up in anticipation for tomorrow’s
sunlight, but didn’t want to use up any more time.

Devin strolled across the street to Henry’s, carrying a
bottle of diet soda so she wouldn’t be subjected to sweet tea and knocked on
his front door, which was odd.

Since when does Henry close his front door?
With no
air conditioning Henry usually kept all his windows and doors open, with just
the screen door shut. Did he get AC just for this? She tried the knob, but it
was locked.

He must want me to come through the kitchen door on the
carport.
She grinned at the thought. Henry had been buzzing around the
house all day today getting ready for dinner.

As she rounded the corner to the carport, Devin smelled the
acrid smell of burnt pork. “Uggh! Henry are you burning my dinner?!” She called
out to the house. But when she looked up thru the window into the kitchen,
horror washed over her, quickly followed by adrenaline. The entire stovetop was
engulfed in flames, and black smoke was filling the kitchen. She could just
make out the shadowy outline of Henry’s body on the floor across the room.

Devin yanked her cell phone out of her back pocket and
dialed 911 as she tried the kitchen door, which was also locked. The dispatcher
barely had time to answer before Devin was rattling out details. “Interior
structure fire at 229 Cardwell Street. One male victim inside, incapacitated. Alert
rescue workers that a 29-year-old female is entering the premises.”

The dispatcher tried to advise her against entering the
house, but she was talking to dead air. Devin had just spotted a chamois from
where Henry had washed his truck this morning, so she snapped the phone shut
and wrapped the cloth around her fist to smash in the glass pane on the door
and unlock it from the inside. Preparing to enter the smoke-filled room, Devin
pressed the damp cloth across her mouth and nose, but when she turned the
doorknob, it still met resistance from the security chain. Not wanting to lose
any more time she slammed her shoulder into the door. Bits of wood and smoke
flew into her face as the door gave way. Devin stumbled across the darkness to where
she had seen Henry lying and dropped to his side. He was still unconscious and
bleeding from a gash on the back of the head, but she was relieved to find a rapid
pulse and no obvious broken bones. Devin worked quickly, flipping over his tall
frame and catching him underneath the arms to drag him out of harm’s way. As
they passed thru the now battered kitchen door, Devin noted that the curtains
had now caught the ceiling on fire—the blaze would quickly be out of control.

She hadn’t stopped dragging Henry’s limp form until they
were well up into the front yard, at which point the elderly neighbors had
begun to pour out of their homes to offer assistance. Mrs. Portman from next
door had come flapping across the lawn so rapidly in her house coat and
slippers, lofting a fire extinguisher above her head, that Devin thought she
might be in danger of having a heart attack. Mr. Portman just looked pleased to
finally have a use for the four hundred feet of garden hose he had purchased on
sale.

Devin was using the chamois she had breathed thru to press
against the wound on Henry’s head, praying that with enough pressure it would
hold the bleeding until the ambulance got there. Then she realized, where was
Bo? The dog was normally Henry’s shadow. He should’ve been standing over his
body raising the alarm, but he was nowhere to be seen.  Henry had started to
groan ever so slightly.

“Henry! Henry, where’s Bo? Where’s the dog, Henry?” But he was
still much too out of it to offer any answer. Without thinking Devin jumped to
her feet, handing off her bandaging task to Mrs. Portman in exchange for her
fire extinguisher. As she ran back towards the house, she left her tank top on
but yanked her new silk top over her head, ripping it in the process.

 I never really liked it anyway.
Mr. Portman had
sprayed the kitchen doorway and window with the hose, so Devin darted thru the
mist right into the flames, directing her small fire extinguisher at the source
of the fire on the stovetop and attempting to make a path to the hallway. It
quickly ran out of foam, so she used her new shirt to cover her nose and mouth
and started crawling down the hallway, stopping at every door to call for Bo
and listen for answering yelps or scratches.

Finally at the last door, she was rewarded for her efforts
with a whining from the other side, but when Devin tried to push the door open,
it wouldn’t budge.

You’ve got to be kidding me! The dog locked himself in a
room?!
But there was no lock on the door, and Devin’s breathing was
becoming strained even thru her makeshift mask, and the smoke burned her eyes
like acid. Do something fast Dushane or lie down on Henry’s ugly avocado green carpeting
and die with the dog. Devin studied the door for a moment. They had rented a
house for a brief time in Glen Allen a suburb of Richmond when she was little. It
had a door like this. Doors that were so thin and hollow you could hear Mama
and Daddy fighting, and Daddy could put his fist clear through. Devin sat up
and braced against the opposite wall, drawing both of her knees against her
chest and then slamming her feet through the door.  The explosion of wood so
close to his face it sent Bo yelping for cover, but her familiar voice coaxed
the hound dog through the hole. As she shifted him around the jagged wooden
edges to avoid injury, Devin saw the chair in the bedroom that was jammed under
the doorknob to keep Bo’s door tightly shut.

By the time Devin dragged Bo up the hallway towards an exit,
she was breathing in spasms of coughs. She didn’t even resist when a
firefighter scooped Bo up from her and another yanked her to her feet and over
his shoulder like a rag doll. She did, however, complain a little when he
dumped her unceremoniously on the ground next to Henry.

“Hey! I didn’t survive all that just to come out here and
break a bone, buddy!” She couldn’t glare at him properly because she was too busy
coughing and gasping for breath, which would ruin the effect anyway.

It was quite a surprise when the firefighter yanked off his
oxygen mask and hurled his helmet to the ground. Young Deputy Lambert was beat
red, whether from exertion or anger, it was hard to tell. Amid all the turmoil,
Devin still noted the figure that flung itself out of the blue Ford and began
sprinting towards them. Jake Lambert was not going to be ignored though.

“
Are you out of your mind?
Literally!
Are you
insane?”
He was pacing rapidly back and forth in front of where the
paramedics were attending to Devin and Henry and loading them on stretchers,
but he stopped at his last question, right in front of Devin, and extended his hands
toward either side of her face, punctuating each word as if truly trying to get
the focus of a mental patient.

The sprinter arrived and, as expected, it was Shane. “Henry!
Devin! Are you ok? What…”

Apparently Jake wasn’t done. “Oh, I’ll tell you what
happened. Little Miss Tae Kwan Doe Barbie decides instead of waiting for the
trained firemen to come handle this she’s just gonna run into a burning
building,
Twice
! The second time to look for a dog.
A dog!
She
has lost her mind, I’m telling you!”

With his soot-streaked red face, bulging eyes and disarrayed
white blond hair, Jake was the one that looked in need of a strait jacket.

Shane was taking more offense to this little tirade than
Devin. “You need to check your attitude, Deputy. You’re talking about a
decorated officer. She’s saved more lives than you can even fathom.” He stepped
forward and jammed three fingers into Jake’s chest, punctuating his words. “If
anything, you should be thanking your lucky stars for the opportunity to stand
in her presence.”

“Just because she’s lucky doesn’t make her a super cop. If
I’d been another two minutes, she would have burned up in there with that
mutt.”

“Or she would have just crawled another few feet and made it
out on her own! Who said she needed you to be the hero?”

Devin yanked off her oxygen mask and pushed off of her
gurney on to her elbow.  “Boys! I’m right here! You’re both missing the most
important thing here.” Everyone in the little group froze, even the paramedics
braced for her reaction. “Henry, you have the
ugliest
carpet I have ever
seen.” With that she slid her mask back on and motioned to be loaded on the
ambulance. The driver was howling, Shane was snickering and poor clueless Jake
was staring baffled at her feet as they disappeared into the ambulance.

“See! I told you she’s crazy!”

Still snickering, Shane slapped him on the back. “No, son,
she just cares more about that ugly carpet than she does your opinion.”