The Mind Pirates by Frank Peretti

Author:Frank Peretti [Peretti, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Supernatural Suspense;FIC042060;FIC042020;FIC031070
ISBN: 9781441231406
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

13

Lacey and Delilah

Tank looked up and down the street. Folks were shaken, coated with dust, helping each other to their feet. A few were bleeding, but not seriously.

Lacey tugged his arm. “You’ve got to get out of here!”

“But people are hurt!”

“They’ll live. You won’t—not if you stay here!”

“But—”

“Let’s go!”

She tugged and urged Brenda, Tank, and Daniel until they ran headlong down the alley and didn’t stop running until they’d regrouped in the living room of a comfortable bungalow a few blocks inland. Lacey drew the shades, then cracked one aside to double-check the street.

“What . . . what just happened?” Brenda asked, settling into a soft chair, holding Daniel close.

“Somebody tried to kill you by planting a bomb in my mom’s restaurant,” said Lacey, finally sitting in another chair. “In the kitchen. It was set to go off at 6:01, and it did.”

Tank figured the bamboo-looking sofa would hold his weight and sat, speechless.

Brenda shuddered. “But . . . how did you . . . ?”

“You ought to know,” said Lacey.

The back door opened.

“We’re in here, Mom,” said Lacey.

In came the lady from the restaurant, the one who burst into the kitchen and told everyone to get out. She was bedraggled and dusty, carrying a shopping bag.

“You okay?” asked Lacey.

“I’m all right,” the lady answered, brushing a lock of hair from her face. “Everyone’s okay. The insurance rep will be by tomorrow.”

“So what caused it?”

The lady gave her head a cynical tilt. “They say it was a gas explosion.”

“Oh, I’m sure!”

“Purely accidental, just a leaky gas line and then a spark somewhere set it off. In a kitchen with flames and cooking going on everywhere, a spark set it off?” She collapsed on the other end of the sofa and looked Brenda, Tank, and Daniel up and down. “So just who are you people, anyway?”

“Mom, this is Brenda, Daniel, and Tank. Brenda, Daniel, and Tank, this is my mom, Delilah.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Tank.

Delilah still stared, borderline glared, at them. “So what was that movie line? ‘Of all the restaurants in all the towns in all the world, you had to come into mine’?”

“Mom . . .”

“And into your store,” she said to her daughter. “So first it was your boss, and now it’s my restaurant. Why’d you send them to my place?”

Lacey was mortified. “I didn’t think—”

“No, you didn’t.” Delilah reached into her shopping bag and pulled out a half-melted wall clock, its glass face shattered. The hands indicated 6:01. “So how’d you know there was a bomb set to go off at exactly 6:01?”

Lacey pulled a scrap of paper from her shirt pocket—the paper on which Brenda had scribbled her and Tank’s cell numbers. She turned it over to show Brenda’s sketch on the reverse side: the very same half-melted wall clock with the glass shattered and the hands indicating 6:01.

Even Brenda was amazed. “I thought I was just playing around with a Salvador Dali kind of thing.”

“I grew up looking at that wall clock in the kitchen,” said Lacey.

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