Through the Flames by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins Page B

for the shortest instant, and Judd remembered wondering where in the world they would put another sticker.
    When he saw the “new” van, it all came back to him. Someone had had the nerve to park the thing right in front of Lionel’s house, as usual. Eventually they would have to get a Mount Prospect city sticker. On the other hand, Judd knew, that would be the last priority of the local police department. If the Chicago PD didn’t even care to investigate suspicious deaths in the black community, Mount Prospect might let a few delinquent city stickers slide during a season of international chaos.
    Judd could only wonder what type of trouble Talia had been in with LeRoy when LeRoy found out she had borrowed his roadster and taken Lionel, of all people, to see André. Clearly, it seemed LeRoy was intent on doing away with anyone who knew anything about the first murder. That likely included Lionel.
    Judd hadn’t seen Talia while staking out the area, but one day something showed up on the front porch that made Judd squint, shake his head, and wonder. It was a duffel bag with Lionel’s name on it, plain as day. Someone had set it on the top step. To normal passersby, perhaps it wouldn’t even catch their attention. But to Judd, and to anyone who knew Lionel and his situation, this seemed some kind of a signal.
    Judd drove to a nearby elementary school, closed since the disappearances, and parked in the deserted staff lot. He then walked idly through the neighborhood, passing Lionel’s house on the other side of the street. He still had seen no occupants of the home in all the time he had spent spying on it, but that bag and that repainted van meant someone had to be there.
    That evening he mentioned the bag to Lionel.
    “That’s the bag I used to take on my sports and Y trips,” he said. “I thought it was stuffed way deep in my closet. I have no idea what it means. I want to see it.”
    “I suppose if we go at night we’ll be safe,” Judd said. “Anybody else want to go?”
    “Not me,” Ryan said.
    “I thought you were getting brave on us all of a sudden,” Lionel said. “Don’t fall back to being a chicken now.”
    “I’m not! But I don’t care if I never get chased by a van again—I don’t care what color it is—as long as I live.”
    “I’m not afraid of the van,” Lionel said. “But I wouldn’t want to run into LeRoy right now.”
    “I want to go,” Vicki said, “but I want to stay out of sight until we know no one is watching us.”
    “Promise,” Judd said. “That’ll go for you too, Lionel.”
    “Yeah, I guess I’d be pretty conspicuous in my own neighborhood when everyone knows I don’t live there anymore.”
    “I’m stayin’ here,” Ryan repeated.
    “It’s all right with me,” Judd said. “As long as you think you’ll be all right alone.”
    “I’ll feel safer here. Anyway, like I said, I’m not a chicken anymore. I just don’t want to push my luck too far with those murderers.”
    “I can’t blame you,” Judd said. “Let’s go.”
    Judd left Ryan with the car phone number, just in case. Several minutes later, with Vicki ducking down in the front passenger seat and Lionel lying out of sight across the backseat of the minivan, Judd drove past Lionel’s house. “What do you see?” Lionel wanted to know.
    “Nothing. Not a thing. I mean nothing on the porch anyway. The cream van is out front, and there’s a light on in a back room.”
    “That’s where Ryan said he heard Talia talking on the phone the other day,” Lionel said. “I wonder how she feels about André.”
    “Wait,” Judd said. “I just saw someone! It’s a woman, and she’s coming from that back room into the hall. The light just went out in that room and on in the hall.”
    “Park somewhere!” Lionel said. “I want to see if it’s Talia.”
    Judd pulled off to the side, several houses past Lionel’s. “You see anybody on the street?” Lionel asked. “Can I sit up?”
    “Yeah,