Page 54 of I'll Be There
“I’m getting my keys,” Grace said at the door. “That looks like an allergic reaction.”
“But—how?” Liza stood up, Mona at her elbow. Yep, her breaths came harder. Oh no, now she would die twenty-four hours before her wedding. Nice, just perfect.
Ivy grabbed her other elbow. “Ingrid, we’ll call you from the hospital.’
Hospital? Oh no—
“Do you have food allergies?” Ivy asked. “Wheat? Sugar? Milk?”
She shook her head. Grace opened the back passenger door to her SUV. “How about nuts?”
“No. I can eat peanut butter—”
“No, I’m talking tree nuts—like the pecans Mom puts in the cookies.”
“I...I don’t know. I don’t normally eat...pecans...” Oh, and now she really couldn’t breathe.
Grace got into the front seat. Mona slid in beside her. “Just slow, even breaths now, Liza. It’s going to be okay.”
Oh why didn’t she just elope?
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You’re still up?”
Micah’s voice found Conner seated at the kitchen table, his eyes burning just a little from hours staring at his computer screen, his brain on fire. He couldn’t sleep if he took an entire bottle of sleeping pills—not with the information he was unraveling.
Or the thought of Liza, curled in the fetal position, fighting to relax herself into slumber.I wake up screaming, sweaty, and it’s all fresh, as if it just happened.
Those words had nearly made him hang up, jump in his truck, head down to the Christiansens’, and pull her into his arms just so she could sleep.
Yeah, maybe they should have eloped.
But if they had, she would have never sent out those crazy texts, and he wouldn’t right now be downloading evidence of P.T. Blankenship’s personal betrayal of Justin. Evidence that Blankenship had forsaken his oaths to the US government to serve and protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of not getting terrorized by one man’s personal agenda.
Please let it be only Blankenship, and not the government Conner had given so much of his life to.
Micah walked over, leaned over Conner’s shoulder. “What are you finding?”
The moonlight striped the plywood floor, and behind the quiet, the breathing of his sleeping friends pulsed through the house. Seth had rummaged up blankets, sleeping bags, and a few camp pads for them to bed down on. It felt a little like a strike camp, minus the stench of a fire, the grime of the ash and dirt, the heat of summer, and of course, the fatigue that embedded every cell in his body.
The ache of missing Liza somehow remained, despite their conversation tonight. Deepened, even.
Two more days.
“Blankenship is a very wealthy man, is what. At least you can say he buys local. He’s heavily invested in Storm Wesson Tech, a major player on the small arms market. The year of the British consulate bombing, Storm won a $96 million government contract for sniper rifles. Two years later, they won an even larger contract after the Mexican consulate was bombed. And then came the Times Square bombing—the first one. No one was caught, but Storm got not only another contract but this time one for 1.9billionfor assault rifles and machine guns.”
“And you think the Sons of Freedom are helping drive stock prices up?”
“Their stated goal is to arm every willing American with a gun, close the borders, and evict every single member of Congress, and start over. In short, they want to revert back to the law of the West.”
“I’m not sure I disagree with them. Especially about the right to arm ourselves and run the thieves and liars out of Congress,” Micah said.
“Except you would do it by obeying the law. Not bombing buildings,” Conner said. “And they want no government at all.”
“Your point?”
“Sons of Freedom is as far right as socialists are left. And they’re not afraid to hurt people.”
