HEARING HIM TALKING on the phone behind her, she risked opening her eyes a slit. Her best friend still looked back at her with the shock and vacancy of death, a line of blood drying where it had trickled from her mouth. Without moving, she could see only Colin’s legs and feet where he lay sprawled on creamy plush carpet. Carpet splashed with scarlet splotches, as was the glass-topped coffee table. Keenan, now...
His fingers twitched. His shoulders rose and fell slightly with a breath. In. Out.
Her terror swelled. If his father saw any hint of life, he’d pump another bullet into his eight-year-old son. He thought they were all dead—Paige, eleven-year-old Colin, Keenan and the baby of the family, six-year-old Molly.
And Paige’s friend, who had happened to drop by this evening with a book of quilt patterns that Paige had wanted to look through. Wrong time, wrong place.
Except, she’d managed to inch over when Damon’s back was turned so that she could shield Molly’s small body. Molly was breathing. Damon couldn’t be allowed to see. Once she’d laid a hand over the little girl’s mouth to stifle a moan.
She ached to whisper reassurance to Keenan, who wasn’t within reach. To beg him to stay absolutely still.
Every breath was agony, searing pain flaring from her abdomen. Blood had spurted when the bullet struck and she had gone down with that first shot. She vaguely remembered hearing Colin’s terrified scream. Damon had turned away to shoot his son and forgotten her. Probably, she thought dully, her wound would be fatal. But she desperately wanted Molly and Keenan to live. All three of them might survive if the police stormed the house soon.
There’d been a bullhorn earlier, before Damon answered his cell phone. That could have been fifteen minutes ago, or two hours ago. She floated in a dreamlike state. Only the pain anchored her here.
No. Not only pain. Molly and Keenan.
It took an enormous effort to comprehend what Damon was saying.
“Hell, no, I’m not going to let that bitch talk to you! If you don’t quit asking, that’s it. Do you hear me?” The savagely angry voice bore little resemblance to the smooth baritone she knew from phone calls and the times Paige had invited her to dinner with her family.
Pause. “They’re with their mother. No, I’m not going to upset them by putting them on the phone, either.”
They’re dead or dying. Paige is dead. Please, please. We need you.
Time drifted. Occasionally, she heard him talking.
“I lose my job and she’s going to leave me?”
Molly was still breathing. Keenan...she wasn’t sure.
Whoever was on the phone with Damon listened, sympathized, gave him all the time he wanted to air his furious grievances.
While we die.
She quit listening, quit peeking at a dying boy. She let herself float away.
“NOW, WE BOTH know you want that quilt.” The auctioneer had strolled down the aisle between folding chairs until he was only a few feet from one of the two bidders on a spectacular album quilt. “And for a cause this important, you can spend a little extra. Isn’t that right?” He thrust the microphone toward the woman next to the man holding the bid card.
She giggled.
Nadia Markovic held her breath. She’d put in a huge amount of work to make tonight’s charity auction at Brevitt House happen, and it was paying off beyond her wildest dreams. The ballroom in this restored pre–Civil War house was packed, and bidding had been lively on the least-coveted quilts, intense on the stars of the evening. Watching from beside the temporary stage, she felt giddy. Profound relief had struck when the trickle of first arrivals had appeared two hours earlier then had gathered strength, until her current ebullience made her wonder if she’d bob gently toward the ceiling any minute.
“We’re at twenty-eight hundred dollars right now,” the auctioneer coaxed. “What do you say to twenty-nine hundred?”
The poor guy glanced at the woman, sighed and raised his bid card again.
The crowd roared.
The other bidder’s number shot up.
The silver-haired auctioneer, lean in his tuxedo and possessing a deep, powerful voice, looked around at the crowd. “Three thousand dollars, all for the victims of the recent tornadoes!”
This time, he couldn’t persuade the second bidder to go on. He declared the album quilt sold to the gentleman holding bid number 203.
Sturdy, middle-aged Katie-Ann Chupp, the Amish woman who had been Nadia’s assistant chair, exclaimed, “Three thousand dollars! Colleen will be so glad.”
Colleen Hoefling was a superb quilter. Standing at the back of the room and smiling at what was presumably congratulations from others clustered in her vicinity, she did look pleased, but not surprised. Nadia had recently sold another of Colleen’s quilts through her shop, that one in the classic Checkers and Rails pattern, for $2,800.
As the bidding began for a lap-size Sunshine and Shadows quilt, Nadia found herself trying to add up what they’d already earned but failed. She should have made notes in the catalog—
A woman in the ballroom doorway signaled for her, and Nadia slipped out to the foyer where the reception and cashiers’ tables had been set up. The auction software program being used tonight was new to all of them. Nadia had entered the original information—the quilts, estimated values and the names and addresses of all registered bidders—which made her the de facto expert.
A woman who had won the bidding on two quilts was trying to check out, but her name didn’t appear on the computer. Realizing the woman was an unexpected walk-in, Nadia added her to the software, took her money then printed a receipt.
“Quite an event you’ve put on,” the woman said, smiling. “I don’t really need any more quilts, but one of those April tornadoes missed us by less than a mile. Could have hit our house.”
Nadia thanked her again, realizing anew that she’d hardly had to sell the cause to the people who lived in northern Missouri. They saw the devastation, year after year.
The good news was that at least a third of tonight’s attendees had come from outside Missouri, either as a way to help or because they were passionate collectors excited by the mix of antique and new quilts being offered tonight. The Amish-made were among the most prized.
Nadia added the check to the gray metal lockbox. At her suggestion, they’d offered an express pay option, but surprisingly few auctiongoers had taken advantage of it. At charity events she’d helped with in Colorado, hardly anyone had paid cash. Here, apparently people were used to the fact that few Amish businesses accepted credit cards. The piles of actual cash already in the lockbox, much of it from the earlier sales tables, bemused her. It awakened something a tiny bit greedy, too. She itched to start counting the bills, even though the software would supply totals.
Able to hear furious bidding on a queen-size quilt from an elderly Amish woman, Ruth Graber, Nadia lifted her head. She expected this one to surpass the $3,000 that had been the evening’s high so far. The Carpenter’s Square pattern was intriguing but not complex; it was the elaborate hand quilting with incredibly tiny stitches that made this one stand out.
“Do you mind covering for me while I race to the bathroom?” one of the volunteer cashiers asked.
Nadia smiled. “No, I’ll be glad to sit down for a minute.” With a sigh, she sank