Trial by Fire Read online

  Pastor and fireman Nick Foster found the body in the inferno engulfing his church. From the bullet wound in the head, it’s clear this is no ordinary fire victim. The quiet community of Newpointe, reeling from the shock of the dead man’s identity, struggles with the agonizing question: who did it—and why?

  Paramedic Issie Mattreaux is no icon of virtue, but she cares enough about her teenage nephew, Jake, to track him down when he turns up missing. Only, what she finds is far more than a harmless bonfire on the outskirts of town.

  After a chilling attempt on Issie’s life, Nick takes on the role of protector even as he struggles with the tragedy that has struck his church. Whoever is behind the fire is far from finished. Unknown to Nick, that person’s twisted agenda now threatens to consume everything he loves most.

  Trial by Fire is book four in the Newpointe 911 series by award-winning novelist Terri Blackstock. Newpointe 911 offers taut, superbly crafted novels of faith, fear, and close-knit small-town relationships, seasoned with romance and tempered by insights into the nature of relationships, redemption, and the human heart. Look also for Private Justice, Line of Duty, Shadow of Doubt, and Word of Honor.

  Books by Terri Blackstock

  Soul Restoration

  Emerald Windows

  Restoration Series

  1 | Last Light

  2 | Night Light

  Cape Refuge Series

  1 | Cape Refuge

  2 | Southern Storm

  3 | River’s Edge

  4 | Breaker’s Reef

  Newpointe 911

  1 | Private Justice

  2 | Shadow of Doubt

  3 | Word of Honor

  4 | Trial by Fire

  5 | Line of Duty

  Sun Coast Chronicles

  1 | Evidence of Mercy

  2 | Justifiable Means

  3 | Ulterior Motives

  4 | Presumption of Guilt

  Second Chances

  1 | Never Again Good-bye

  2 | When Dreams Cross

  3 | Blind Trust

  4 | Broken Wings

  With Beverly LaHaye

  1 | Seasons Under Heaven

  2 | Showers in Season

  3 | Times and Seasons

  4 | Season of Blessing

  Novellas

  Seaside

  ZONDERVAN

  Trial by Fire

  Copyright © 2000 by Terri Blackstock

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

  ePub Edition JUNE 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-86054-9

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Blackstock, Terri, 1957—

  Trial by Fire / Terri Blackstock.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-10: 0-310-21760-1 (pbk.)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-310-21760-2 (pbk.)

  I. Series: Blackstock, Terri, 1957—Newpointe 911.

  PS3552.L34285W67 1999

  813'.54—dc21 99-30016

  The examples used in this book are compilations of stories from real situations. But names, facts, and issues have been altered to protect confidentiality while illustrating the points.

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible:New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  Published in association with Yates & Yates, LLP, Literary Agent, Orange, CA.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  07 08 09 10 11 12 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14

  This book is lovingly dedicated to the Nazarene

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  Contents

  Books by Terri Blackstock

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Afterword

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughtsr />
  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to three good friends and fellow novelists who shared their expertise with me for this book. Dr. Harry Kraus Jr. helped me with my medical facts, as he has done many times before. Lawana Blackwell shared her husband’s experiences in a burn center. And Rev. Alton Gansky—former firefighter—gave me personal insights about fighting fires.

  I also must thank the Christian novelists of Chi Libris, all of whom I consider dear brothers and sisters, who constantly challenge and edify me. We came together as a group in 1999 because of our common calling. We stay together because of our common love. Thank you for being my coworkers in Christ’s Harvest, instead of my competitors in publishing.

  What a mighty God we serve!

  Chapter One

  The fire alarm blaring at four A.M. jerked Nick Foster from a sound sleep. He swam through his groggy stupor and sat up, slipping his feet into the turnout pants and boots scrunched together next to his bunk. Mark Branning and Dan Nichols stumbled into their own gear and raced out of the room.

  Adrenaline snapped Nick to attention, and his heart rate, which had gone from sleep to sprint in a matter of seconds, brought him fully awake. He grabbed the radio mike. “Midtown to Simone,” he said to the dispatcher who sat in an upstairs room at the police station next door. “It’s Nick.”

  “Nick, the church is on fire. Sounds bad.”

  “What church?”

  “Your church, man! Calvary Bible Church.”

  Nick froze as the words filtered through his consciousness, then settled hard in the pit of his stomach. He forced himself to think clearly and grabbed his helmet from its hook. Pulling it on, he bolted out to the truck bay.

  “Where to?” Mark yelled from the driver’s seat of the pumper.

  “The church.” Nick grabbed his turnout coat and helmet and leaped onto the truck. “My church is on fire!”

  Mark didn’t comment that it was his church too, and Dan’s as well. He turned on the siren, chasing away any remnants of sleep that might have dulled their senses, and drove into the warm October night as fast as reason would allow. A faint yellow glow lit up the night sky in the distance, and Nick could see the smoke billowing through the air as the fire truck approached Calvary Bible Church.

  “Faster!” Nick shouted, but he knew Mark was driving as fast as he could. Maybe it was just in the rec hall, he thought. Maybe they could save the sanctuary.

  But as they reached the street, he saw that the building was fully engulfed. Every wall was in flames, and the roof was a stage on which the fire did its wicked dance. The truck stopped and Nick leaped out, pulled on his tanks, and snapped on his mask. As he unwound the hose from the truck, he broke into warrior mode.

  He heard the other fire truck from across town coming up Jacquard Boulevard, and behind their truck, the rescue unit screeched to a halt. The hose opened, blasting the way in front of him. As he entered the building and saw how thoroughly the fire had taken hold, he forced himself to think like a firefighter and not a preacher.

  The fire had already consumed the west side of the building where all the children’s Sunday school classes were held just yesterday, and the north side where they had fellowship and ate dinner together on Wednesday nights. He sprayed his way into the sanctuary, searching for the origin of the flames. The sanctuary was engulfed as well, and the air billowed with black smoke. It was tangible evil, blinding him to the source of the fire. But he would not give up. He was David facing down Goliath. His hose was like a few small stones, but if he aimed it well, he could knock Goliath to the ground. God would help him.

  The gates of hell would not prevail against this church!

  Stan Shepherd—Newpointe’s only police detective—arrived on the scene just as the firemen began fighting the flames. As if he were watching his own home being consumed, he sat paralyzed behind the wheel. How had this happened?

  Not so long ago, he and Celia had made the decision to lower their lifestyle so they could donate money for the building now going up in flames. All that money wasted…all those hours of work sanding and scraping and painting…

  Stan tried to shake off his shock and got out of the car. A crowd of people was gathering in the street.

  “Back up,” he told them. “All the way across the street.” Slowly, they did as he said.

  “Stan, are they gonna save the building?” Mildred Buford asked.

  He didn’t want to pronounce the building dead, but it didn’t look good. “I don’t know, Mildred. Now get back.”

  “But I had some fish and a hamster in my Sunday school room. The kids’ll never get over it if they can’t save ’em! If I could just run in and get ’em—”

  “You can’t go in there. Now, come on, Mildred. I need you to get across the street.”

  “But could you tell the firefighters to look for them?”

  “No! They’re trying to put the fire out, Mildred. They don’t have time to look for your pets.”

  He could tell that she was offended, but he couldn’t worry about that now. As several more police cars came to the scene, he yelled for the uniformed officers to block off the street so that no other cars or curiosity-seekers would be able to come this way. Then he headed into the crowd reassembling on the opposite side of the street. “Did anybody see what started the fire?” he yelled. “Who made the call?”

  “I did,” Zeb Fox said. He was the old man who lived next door to the parsonage—Nick’s home—across the street from the church. Zeb worked the night shift, seven to three, at the Mason Dean steel factory. “I seen smoke comin’ up out the roof when I got home,” he said, “then it started comin’ out from under the doors and I knowed I’d better call somebody. I was just fixin’ to call the po-lice when I seen the flames comin’ from ’round the back.”

  “But did you see anybody nearby?” Stan asked. “Was there anybody in the church or any cars around?”

  “I seen somebody,” Thelma Fox piped in. She was Zeb’s wife, and kept up with everything that happened in the community. She had mounted a rearview mirror at the perfect angle on her sink window, so that she wouldn’t miss a thing while she was washing dishes. “I was fixin’ breakfast for Zeb, and I seen a car full of young’uns over there just before the fire started. Three or four of them, and when I seen ’em in the parking lot, I knew they was up to no good.”

  “Did you get their tag number?” Stan asked.

  “Why, no, I didn’t think to do that,” she said.

  “Well, what about the kids? Did you recognize any of them?”

  “No, but I believe it was a red car.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “All I know is red.”

  “I seen those kids too,” Cliff Breaux said. “I was rollin’ my newspapers when they screeched around the corner and like ta hit me.”

  “Could you see them well enough to identify them?”

  “No, it was too dark. But like Thelma said, they was young folks.” He tapped his pockets for a pack of cigarettes and shook one out. He pulled it out of the pack with his lips. “Oh, I almost forgot. There was some bumper stickers on the car. One o’ them Nazi symbols.”

  “A swastika?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. And they had a KKK sticker too.”

  Stan gathered the rest of the information the bystanders had to give him, then hurried back to his unmarked car and radioed the dispatcher.

  “Simone,” he said, “put an APB out on a red car full of kids, with a swastika sticker and a KKK sign on the bumper. Possible suspects in the church burning.”

  He looked out through the windshield and saw that George Broussard and Cale Larkins, as well as several other off-duty firefighters, had arrived on the scene to help. Most of them kept turnout gear in their trunks in case they were called from home.

  For the first time, he wished he was a firefighter so he could go in there with them and take on this raging enemy.

  Chapter Two

  Ray Ford, the fire chief of
Newpointe, had heard the call on his scanner as he got ready for work that morning. He hurried out the door without telling Susan goodbye, and sped to the scene.

  He got out of his car and reached for his boots and gear, gaping in horror at the building that meant so much to him. But like the others, he shoved his emotions down. There was no time for grief or shock now. He had a job to do.

  He saw Mark and Dan emerging from the building, and bolted toward them.

  “What happened?”

  “Looks like arson,” Mark said. “I don’t know how else it could have gone up so fast. The place wasn’t locked, so anybody could have walked in.”

  They heard yelling from inside. Ray recognized Nick’s voice, but he couldn’t make out what he was saying. He headed for the door, when something cracked overhead. “Get ’em out!” Ray yelled. “The roof’s cavin’!”

  Inside, flaming roof beams fell, missing Nick by inches. He jumped back, almost tripping on something under his feet. He bent down and tried to see through the smoke. It was a body, lying facedown. He had stepped on a hand.