The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (45 page)

But once he joined Chloe in the car he realized that was not something he needed to fret about just yet.

“Don’t tell me you’ve invited Buck to join us for lunch,” she said.

“Didn’t even think of it. Why?”

“He’s treating me like a sister, and yet he wants me to drop in and see his place tomorrow.”

Rayford wanted to say “So what?” and ask her if she didn’t think she was reading too much into the words and actions of a man she barely knew. For all she knew, Buck could be madly in love with her and not know how to broach it. Rayford said nothing.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m obsessing.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“I can read your mind,” she said. “Anyway, I’m mad at myself. I come away from a message like that one, and all I can think about is a guy I’ve somehow let slip away. It’s not important. Who cares?”

“You do, apparently.”

“But I shouldn’t. Old things are passed away and all things have become new,” she said. “Worrying about guys should definitely be an old thing. There’s no time for trivia now.”

“Suit yourself.”

“That’s just what I don’t want to do. If I suited myself I’d see Buck this afternoon and find out where we stand.”

“But you’re not going to?”

She shook her head.

“Then would you do me a favor? Would you try to reach Hattie Durham for me?”

“Why?”

“Actually, I’m just curious to know whether she’s already moved to New York.”

“Why wouldn’t she have? Carpathia’s hired her, hasn’t he?”

“I don’t know. She’s on a thirty-day leave. Just call her apartment. If she’s got a machine running, then she’s not made up her mind yet.”

“Why don’t
you
call her?”

“I think I’ve intruded enough in her life.”

Buck stopped for Chinese carryout on the way home and sat eating alone, staring out the window. He turned on a ball game but ignored it, keeping the sound low. His mind was full of conflict. His story was ready to be transmitted to New York, and he would be eager for a reaction from Stanton Bailey. He also looked forward to getting his office machines and files, which should arrive at the Chicago bureau office in the morning. It would be good to pick those up and get organized.

He couldn’t shake Bruce’s message, either. It wasn’t so much the content as Bruce’s passion. He needed to get to know Bruce better. Maybe that would be a cure for his loneliness—and Bruce’s. If Buck himself were this lonely, it had to be much worse for a man who had had a wife and children. Buck was used to a solitary life, but he’d had a network of friends in New York. Here, unless he heard from the office or someone else in the Tribulation Force, the phone was not going to ring.

He certainly wasn’t handling the Chloe situation well. When he had been demoted, Buck had considered the relocation from New York to Chicago a positive turn—he would get to see more of her, he’d be in a good church, get good training, have a core of friends. But he also felt he had been on the right track when he began to slow his pursuit of her. The timing was bad. Who pursues a relationship during the end of the world?

Buck knew—or at least believed—that Chloe was not toying with him. She wasn’t playing hard to get just to keep him interested. But whether she was doing it on purpose or not, it was working, and he felt foolish to be dwelling on it.

Whatever had happened, however she was acting, and for whatever reason, he owed it to her to have it out. He might regret the let’s-be-friends routine, but he didn’t see that he had any other choice. He owed it to her and to himself to just pursue the friendship and see what came of it. For all he knew, she wouldn’t be interested in more than that anyway.

He reached for the phone, but when he put it to his ear, he heard a strange tone, and then a recorded voice. “You have a message. Please push star two to hear it.”

A message? I never ordered voice mail.
He pushed the buttons. It was Steve Plank.

“Buck, where the devil are you, man? If you’re not going to answer your voice mail, I’m going to quit leaving messages there. I know you’re unlisted there, but if you think Nicolae Carpathia is someone to trifle with, ask yourself how I got your phone number. You’ll wish you had these resources as a journalist. Now, Buck, friend to friend, I know you check your messages often, and you know Carpathia wants to talk to you. Why didn’t you call me? You’re making me look bad. I told him I’d track you down and that you’d come and see him. I told him I didn’t understand your not accepting his invitation to the installation meeting, but that I know you like a brother and you wouldn’t stand him up again.

“Now he wants to see you. I don’t know what it’s all about or even whether I’ll sit in on it. I don’t know if it’s on the record, but you can certainly ask him for a few quotes for your article. Just get here. You can hand deliver your article to the
Weekly
, say hi to your old friend Miss Durham, and find out what Nicolae wants. There’s a first-class ticket waiting for you at O’Hare under the name of McGillicuddy for a nine o’clock flight tomorrow morning. A limo will meet your plane, and you’ll have lunch with Carpathia. Just do it, Buck. Maybe he wants to thank you for introducing him to Hattie. They seem to be hitting it off.

“Now, Buck, if I don’t hear from you, I’m going to assume you’ll be here. Don’t disappoint me.”

“What’s the scoop?” Rayford asked.

Chloe imitated the recorded voice. “‘The number you have dialed has been disconnected. The new number is . . .’”

“Is what?”

She handed him a scrap of paper. The area code was for New York City. Rayford sighed. “Do you have Buck’s new number?”

“It’s on the wall by the phone.”

Buck called Bruce Barnes. “I hate to ask you this, Bruce,” he said. “But could we get together tonight?”

“I’m about to take a nap,” Bruce said.

“You should sleep through. We can do it another time.”

“No, I’m not going to sleep through. You want the four of us to meet, or just you and me?”

“Just us.”

“How about I come to your place then? I’m getting tired of the office and the empty house.”

They agreed on seven o’clock, and Buck decided he would turn his cell phone off after one more call. He didn’t want to risk talking to Plank, or worse, Carpathia, until he had talked over and prayed about his plans with Bruce. Steve had said he would assume Buck was coming unless he heard back, but it would be just like Steve to check in with him again. And Carpathia was totally unpredictable.

Buck called Alice, the Chicago bureau secretary. “I need a favor,” he said.

“Anything,” she said.

He told her he might be flying to New York in the morning but he didn’t want Verna Zee knowing about it. “I also don’t want to wait any longer for my stuff, so I’d like to bring you my extra key before I head for the airport. If you wouldn’t mind bringing that stuff over here for me and locking back up, I’d really appreciate it.”

“No problem. I have to be going that way late morning anyway. I’m picking up my fiancé at the airport. Verna doesn’t have to know I’m delivering your stuff on the way.”

“You want to go to Dallas with me tomorrow morning, Chlo’?” Rayford asked.

“I don’t think so. You’re going to be in 777s all day anyway, right?”

Rayford nodded.

“I’ll stay around here. Maybe I’ll take Buck up on his offer to see his place.”

Rayford shook his head. “I can’t keep up with you,” he said. “Now you
want
to go over there and see the guy who treats you like a sister?”

“I wouldn’t be going to see him,” she said. “I’d be going to see his place.”

“Ah,” Rayford said. “My mistake.”

“You hungry?” Buck asked before Bruce had even gotten in the door that evening.

“I could eat,” Bruce said.

“Let’s go out,” Buck suggested. “You can see the place when we get back.”

They settled into a booth in a dark corner of a noisy pizza place, and Buck filled Bruce in on the latest from Steve Plank.

“You thinking about going?” Bruce asked.

“I don’t know what to think, and if you knew me better, you’d know that’s pretty bizarre for me. My instincts as a journalist say yes, of course—go, no question. Who wouldn’t? But I know who this guy is, and the last time I saw him he put a bullet through two men.”

“I’d sure like to get Rayford’s and Chloe’s input on this.”

“I thought you might,” Buck said. “But I’d like to ask you to hold off on that. If I go, I’d rather they not know.”

“Buck, if you go, you’re going to want all the prayer support you can get.”

“Well, you can tell them after I’m gone or something. I should be having lunch with Carpathia around noon or a little after, New York time. You can just tell them I’m on an important trip.”

“If that’s what you want. But you have to realize, this is not how I see the core group.”

“I know, and I agree. But they both might see this as pretty reckless, and maybe it is. If I do it, I don’t want to disappoint them until I’ve had a chance to debrief them and explain myself.”

“Why not do that in advance?”

Buck cocked his head and shrugged. “Because I haven’t sorted it out myself yet.”

“It sounds to me like you’ve already made up your mind to go.”