Page 2 of Kandie Shoppe

“Y’all be careful, ya hear?” Mom calls from the porch wrapping her robe tighter as trucks zoom past.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“We will, babe,” we call back to her simultaneously. I watch through the rearview window as she waves us off.

“Where’s it at this time?” I ask as we head up Highway Seventeen.

“That group home Bishop Smith has those kids at,” Dad mutters grimly.

The Shelby Home for Children has been the bane of my father’s existence since the place opened five years ago. Acharismatic tent revivalist, Bishop Smith got enough of his congregation to shell out funds to build a group home just outside of the county line even though he labeled it after our side of the town. It was said to be an answer to the orphaned and abandoned children of the tri-county area. Only it wasn’t that. It was just a means to separate immigrant children from their undocumented parents. Somehow, he also finagled members of the state legislature to give him custody of children in the overburdened foster care system.

“This motherfucker,” Dad curses as we come upon the blaze. The entire front of the building is up in flames.

“You no-good sombitch, you motherfucka. Imma kill you, bitch.” I know that voice. Turning I see the girl I thought had long since gone from around here when her parents took off with her and her sisters.

“Is that?”

“Kandice Love,” my dad says in wonder. “What’s she doing here?” Pulling to a stop, he starts cursing. “The fuck is she doing here? She has a family. Where’s her sisters — parents?” he asks himself. “Fucking Loves.” Shaking his head, he pulls to stop right in front of the deputy, having an incredibly hard time maintaining control of the small spitfire of a girl.

“Let me go, let me go. Let me goooo.” Her screams seem to tear through her whole body. She bucks, twisting this way and that, trying futilely to free herself from the massive arms of Deputy Davies. I see the flash of her teeth mere seconds before she rears back and bites the fuck out of his arm.

“Gotdammit,” the deputy howls right before she snaps her head back hard smashing into his beak of a nose. He rears back stunned releasing her squirming body dropping her into an unceremonious heap on the ground. Kandie, as everyone around here calls her, stays put all of five seconds before she scrambles up to her feet and darts straight to the fire.

“Fuck. Girl, get back here,” Daddy yells, his hard strides eating up the ground behind her. She’s fast but just like me, Daddy used to play football and is on her in no time.

Unlike Deputy Davies, he knows how to actually restrain people and has her in a hold that her twisting only makes worse.

“Sheriff,” she pleads. “My sister is still in there. Let me go. I know where they have them locked up. In—in the basement, there’s a trap door down there. The kids are down there locked up. They sell ’em and do bad things to ’em. Bishop Smith caught us trying to escape once before. He knocked Kerania out and locked me down there for weeks. Please.” Breaking off on a sob, the girl crumbles before my father like a wilted flower.

“Kandice.” Tone hard he grips her shoulders getting eye level with her. “Tell me exactly where they are. Exactly where.” Luckily, the blaze has not reached the back of the building she’s indicating the kids are being held. Daddy calls over some more of the volunteer firemen.

“Bring a crowbar and the battering ram,” he calls out to one of the men. “There are kids down in that basement.” At his words, the atmosphere becomes charged with more than the adrenaline of putting out the blaze. The huddle thins out as the strongest and best men are picked to retrieve the children.

“Kandice, stay here with Ulysses.” He nods in my direction. Solemn eyes turn toward me and I nod.

I beckon her over watching as seven men head into the door leading to the basement.

Knowing that some of the children didn’t make it out yet, the team intensifies their efforts to stop the fire from spreading to the bottom rear of the building. Another truck arrives and soon the entire structure is being doused. The fire seems to be under control from where I stand with the shivering girl beside me.

A steady trickle of small forms run in our direction away from the smoldering building, the small group building uponitself until there are nearly two dozen kids of various ages and nationalities surrounding us.

The kids are cordoned off to the right of Dad’s truck with deputies asking them questions. Some of them point in our direction and say, “Kandie.” Stiffening at the mention of her name Kandie’s gaze doesn’t waver from the back of the building.

“They’re coming,” I say, not once doubting my dad. He and his guys have rescued all these kids. The fire is nearly out. Four of the first responders emerge carrying babies, one even looks like it’s a newborn in a swaddle.

“Mon bèbè,” a girl who looks no older than me screams rushing over to Billy Earl Merchant, one of the new guys on the force. Giving her the baby he follows close behind her as a lady paramedic comes over to take her to have the baby checked out. No other mothers come forward to claim the other three.

A county cruiser pulls up in front of us then. Grim faced, Deputy Davies slams out of the car. He steps up to us, grabbing Kandie by the wrist.

“Hey,” I shout, grabbing his arm.

“You can go too.” He throws me off turning back to Kandie, whose luminous eyes are still trained on the building. “Kandice Love, you are under arrest for suspected arson.”

Quicker than I’d have given him credit for Davies zip-ties her small wrists so tight I can see it cutting into her flesh.

“My dad —” The words seize in my throat when the ground beneath us shudders and the entire Shelby Home for Children collapses in on itself.

Chapter

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