Here I am. Send me.--Chapter Seventeen

The danger ratchets up as Evelyn and Chris are drawn further into the mystery.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

To Evelyn, a telephone was a device for swapping texts. Speaking to people in real time by phone was reserved for her parents, other family members on holidays, and emergencies. Spending the day calling strangers from the church directory and asking them questions about Rachel, Josey, Leyla, and Cal had yielded nothing and been emotionally exhausting.

Chris stayed with her until two in the afternoon when he had to get some sleep before starting his security guard shift. After that, the last few solo calls she made completely drained her battery. She dragged herself up the stairs to her apartment clutching yet another drive-through fast food dinner bag. The bathroom scale had been a no-step-zone for the past two weeks and she vowed to start eating better and exercising more the next day. She had made the same vow thirty days in a row since the last time she had gone to the gym.

She let herself into the apartment, said 'hello' to Beth, and stepped into the small kitchenette to place the burger and fries on a paper plate and at least pretend to be an adult.

"A couple of guys came by to see you." Beth's voice came over from her permanent perch on the sofa.

She must have misheard. "What?"

Beth repeated. "A couple of guys came by and asked for you."

"What do you mean came by?"

Beth was perplexed at the question. "They came by. They knocked on the door. I answered. They asked for you."

"They got to our door in our secure building?"

"I guess so."

"Did you recognize them? Are they neighbors?"

"I don't know all of the neighbors."

Evelyn didn't know any of the neighbors and preferred it that way. "Did you get their names?"

Beth had to think about that one. "No. They didn't say their names. When I told them that you weren't here, they said that they had someone else to meet and would be back."

"And you're sure that you didn't recognize them?"

"I don't know all of your friends." The sad thing was that she probably did.

***

The blaring of the alarm woke Chris. He had fallen asleep in his clothes. Rolling over, he confirmed his fear. It was 7:30 PM and time to get up and go to work. His shift started at nine o'clock, and he liked to get there about thirty minutes early. Given that it was a thirty-minute drive from La Vergne to downtown and another ten minutes to get his parking situated, he had twenty minutes to get ready. He could do it in ten. He hit the snooze button.

It turned out he was wrong, but that only meant that he arrived twenty minutes earlier rather than thirty. The back door to the store had once opened into an alley, but with the growing popularity of Nashville as a tourist destination, it had been converted into a high-end shopping zone. He made his way through the crowded area, held his key fob to the reader, waited for the click, and entered the back rooms at the rear of the store.

The first shift guard had left their lunch spread out on the shared desk, and there was no sign that any of the paperwork had been started. Chris made his way out onto the showroom floor. Fifteen minutes until closing, and there were still several potential buyers milling about, most in their teens. He spotted the other guard who was standing next to the door.

"Hi, Joey."

"Hey Chris. Would you mind coming on duty a little early?"

Chris looked around. "A show of force?"

"What else can we do?"

Chris took his position on the other side of the door as pairs of teens kept each of the salespeople busy. The two guards waited for the distraction, which came in the form of one of the kids accidentally knocking over a potted plant in the back of the room. Instead of rushing to check on the plant, both men stayed next to the front door and kept their eyes on the young man, who was keeping his eyes on them.

When it became obvious that their heist was foiled, the gang filed out the door.

Joey watched them cross Broadway to the arena side and head toward the river, blending into the sidewalk crowds. "It would be nice if they tried something new for a change."

Chris nodded. "At least it would be different."

The mid-twenties male floor manager came up and confronted Joey. "Why didn't you stop them from tipping over that plant? It's going to take us thirty minutes to clean that up, and I'll have to approve overtime!"

Joey shrugged. "It's better than a few thousand bucks of electronics running out of the front door."

"Right! There's always some sort of 'clear and present danger' with you people! I didn't see any threat, and that's what I'm going to report to the store manager."

"Do what you have to do, man." Joey then looked over at Chris. "I'm bugging out, dude. I'll see you next week."

Chris smiled. "Have a nice weekend."

The floor manager then turned to Chris. Chris looked past him and gestured to the small army of salespeople milling about. "The folks that you're paying overtime don't seem to be very busy."

That successfully retargeted the floor manager's ire, and he launched himself across the sales floor like a torpedo.

One more customer arrived five minutes before closing, and, according to company policy, the entire store and staff stayed open until that person had finished browsing. After finally being able to lock the door, Chris paced around the periphery of the floor while the salesclerks went through the closing processes and left for the night. The floor manager left last. None of them said 'good night'.

As soon as the electronic lock clicked behind the floor manager, a quiet settled over the room, and Chris let out a long sigh. This was his favorite part of the job, the quiet. He took one last walk around the building and made sure that everything was locked up tight. After that, he sat at the desk in the back of the room and opened his soul to the Holy Spirit. Gentle peace immediately began to soothe his tense nerves, and he felt what it was to be loved.

And then a ruckus sounded from the sidewalk in front of the store, and he had to stand up and check it out. Not surprisingly, it was a group of drunkenly loud bachelorettes staggering their way down Lower Broad and heading for their next honky-tonk. He surveyed the rest of the street and saw nothing that required his attention. Since he was up, he took another walk through the building and then settled in with The Lord again.

His prayers were unspoken and wordless. It was a communal time with the Spirit that filled his soul. It was not a perfect connection from his end. His mind would wander to what had happened at the school, and he would use that to picture the different children that he had seen and counseled on that day, and he focused on loving each of them and lifted that love up to God as a prayer for each.

He then thought about Leyla and prayed for the child. And his prayers moved to Josey and then to Claire and then to Rachel... where they hit a snag. He tried to pray through it, but the snag continued. He simply did not like Rachel. She was judgmental and harsh and seemed filled with anger and even hatred. She was every stereotype that justified non-believers in turning away from faith. Everything he was for, she seemed to be against. He took a long, slow breath and recited in a whisper.

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

The impediments to his prayer began to fade away, and he pictured Rachel in his mind as Jesus pictured her, as an object of love. Chris opened his heart to that love, and then he, too, loved Rachel. He communed with Christ in that common love and prayed.

Until a brick shattered the window wall at the front of the store.

He jumped to his feet and saw three masked men, dressed in black, climbing through the felled shards of glass and into the store. He was trained to call the police and protect himself. Dialing 911, he rushed toward the rear exit. The operator came on, and he did not let her finish her standard opening sentence.

"I'm at the MS4 Electronics Store at the corner of Representative John Lewis Way and Broadway. A break-in is currently in progress. Three men in dark clothing. I am moving to exit out of the rear of the store."

He didn't hang up and kept the line open so that he could apprise the operator of any changes.

In all the training videos, the thieves ignored the guard and focused on gathering loot. But these three did not even glance at the hundreds of thousands of dollars of state-of-the-art electronics and ran toward the back of the store to cut off his exit.

When one of them reached the back door ahead of him, Chris turned and tried to make his way to the front. He yelled into the phone. "I can't get out through the rear exit..." That was when a hand grabbed the back of his shirt collar, and he felt himself being dragged down. The first blow was a kick to his side that knocked the wind out of him. He tried to defend himself, but his flailing arms swung harmlessly through the air. He was lying on his back and drew his arms and legs in, hoping to deflect as many of the kicks as possible.

A kick directly to the top of his head made a white flash appear inside his eyelids, followed by what looked like twinkling stars on a red background. While blows slammed into his arms and sides, a second kick caught him directly in the jaw, and his head snapped back and slammed into the concrete floor. Another flash of fireworks went off inside his head and then everything went black.

Metro Police arrived nine minutes later.