Trial by Fire

"This is a story about me," Danni's eyes were shining as she whispered to Lanston.

"Yes it is, now don't spoil it Danni. Watch the Senator."

Senator Johnson was shifting uncomfortably in his chair. His eyes searched for a way of escape, but the exits were blocked.

"A new player enters our story now. A young graduate student from the University was doing research at La Garita and discovered it was about to erupt. He tried to warn the world, but no one listened. One of the e-mails he sent was to the office of a US Senator from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. It was dismissed as the ravings of a madman. Do not forget the Senator.

This young man fled from the impending doom and the course of events took him to the home of our heroine. He fled south, taking our heroine and her sister with him. They were very sad about the death of their brother. They remembered his last words to them. They had pleaded with him not to go. They told him it was too dangerous. He had joked with them about it and tried to make them comfortable when he left. 'Are you certain?' Those were his last words to them. They were very frightened and alone. Two young women, 16 and 20 years of age were alone in a world that was destroying itself. They had little hope, and that rested on the mercy of a stranger they had just met.

They took a boat on the Mississippi river where they were pursued by pirates. Our heroine was very brave. She stood in the back of the boat with her sister and fought the pirates. She would surely have perished, but new players entered the game and rescued her and her sister and the young man. A family from across the state was fleeing the holocaust and destroyed the pirates, rescuing the three brave young people.

Her first words to her saviors were, 'My name is Dannielle, and I'm very glad you rescued me.'

Dannielle was very grateful and she soon fell in love with her new acquaintances, and they quickly fell in love with her. They became acquainted with her charm and the daily struggle for existence forged a bond between them that was the closest she had ever known. They continued down the river on their tugboat and our Danielle and her companions became part of their new family. She adopted them, and they were pleased to be taken under her wing, especially the youngest son. They called her Danni. She had grown to be a beautiful young woman. She was very small, but perfectly formed. She was charming and perfect in every way and her new family basked in her glow.

But, all was not well in her world. Deadly danger lurked just around every corner. The world was coming apart around them as they fled south from the volcano. Not the least of their dangers was from people they encountered. Danni's new family was well organized and well equipped to escape from the volcano's devastation. Other people were dying all around them and those desperate people attacked Danni and her family in an attempt to take their boat and supplies. The danger was constant and unrelenting and the family could never relax for a moment. It appeared that if they did not perish from the effects of the volcano, they would not survive the hostile and dangerous people who constantly attacked them.

Our villain now enters the stage. I trust you have not forgotten the Senator. He was a vicious and violent man. He spotted our Danni's boat on the river and coveted it. His upbringing had been privileged. He was the scion of old Kentucky money. He had attended the finest schools and increased his family's wealth. He became a lawyer and eventually won a seat on the state legislature. His life was one of privilege, comfort and power"

"Do you know who he's talking about?" Joseph whispered to the Senator. Johnson was a man hypnotized, and he did not respond. Joseph touched his arm and the man started.

Johnson was watching Reagan on the stage, his face twisted in rage and fear. He shook his head and brushed Joseph's arm away.

"I read about this in the newspaper," Joseph whispered. "I feel like that Senator is in a lot of trouble."

Regan continued his tale.

"The villain succeeded in life. He enjoyed privilege and power, but he had a dangerous weakness. He enjoyed the company of under-age girls. This flaw landed him in several precarious positions but he managed to escape by corrupting a judge and the members of his Secret Service detail once he was elected to a US Senate seat. His crimes were well known, but he covered his tracks well. He financed abortions, drugged his victims and distributed bribes. One 15-year-old victim was murdered by the Senator's own hands, but it was made to look like a suicide by the corrupted Secret Service detail. He rose through the ranks to become the chairman of a powerful committee. There was even talk of his appointment to head the department of State.

This was in spite of the well-known fact that no young female intern dared ride in an elevator with him. Then came La Garita. The senator was in his home state on one of his visits to his home district. He was caught up in the disaster and his life was in peril.

The senator was in trouble on the river. His power and wealth meant nothing and had been stripped from him. He had nothing left but two secret service agents and a boat they had stolen. He saw Danni's boat and perceived his method of escape. He would take her boat and the supplies her family had gathered and use them as his ticket out. By taking their meager possessions, he would escape the cataclysm to rise again to power in another place.

His agents were armed and dangerous men, former military Special Forces, and he would use them to gain control of our heroine's family. He instructed his men that they would board the tug as refugees. As soon as they were aboard they would seize control by force and cause the family to cooperate through fear.

They failed to reckon with one thing: the love our heroine's family shared together. They boarded the tug and seized one of Danni's new sisters hostage. They supposed this would force the others to capitulate and they would gain control. A standoff ensued, with Danni's family eventually gaining the upper hand, wounding one of the agents in the process. They repelled the attack and left the villain behind, licking his wounds and planning his revenge.

Two weeks later the Senator attacked them again. He had increased his strength by recruiting other men as savage and unscrupulous as he. Again he was unsuccessful and the attack was repelled. His fury and frustration knew no bounds."

"Who is this man, Dr. Thayer?" the reporter asked. "He needs to be arrested!"

"Patience, my friend," Reagan replied. "All will be revealed." He glanced at the Senator. Fear and hatred distorted Johnson's face as he sat helplessly, listening to the harrowing tale.

Reagan took a drink from a bottle of water and continued.

"Our heroine made her way to the gulf with her family. She and the youngest son soon discovered that they meant a great deal to each other. Over the months, they fell deeply in love and they became inseparable.

Danni won the hearts of everyone she encountered. She became the center of their world and their satellites orbited around her brilliance.

They decided to make their way to the Island of Carriacou and attempt to make a new life there for themselves. The people of Carriacou welcomed them with open arms and open hearts and they began to be happy and to forget the tragedy of their former lives. Danni's sister married the graduate student that had rescued them and she went back to high school, finally, for the first time in her life, surrounded by people who loved her and she loved in turn. She brightened every room she entered and her happiness infected everyone she touched. She loved her new parents and brothers and sisters and especially that youngest son.

Gradually, the darkness drew away from her life and she was happy. Only sometimes she was wistful and she sometimes cried at night when she remembered her brother and her mother and father and all she had lost in the catastrophe. Only the man she called Dad was taken into her confidence and he was sometimes trusted to see the remnants of the darkness and he tried to comfort her. Over time the darkness visited her less frequently until it was hardly to be seen.

I trust you have not forgotten our villain? He now returns to the stage. He too had escaped the holocaust in the north and came to the island of Trinidad. He managed to get himself appointed as the spokesman for a group of refugees and he quickly grew his base into a power center. He still had the remaining agent from his security detail. The other had been left to die on the river. He recruited other violent men and gained influence.

He visited American Embassies and renewed his lines of power. He hired thugs who beat any opposition among the refugees into silence. One trip he made was to Grenada where he learned that Danni had survived the holocaust and was living happily on a nearby island. He plotted his revenge."

Whispers ran through the crowd and heads began to turn as they began to understand Reagan's tale. Senator Johnson squirmed desperately in an agony of fear and frustration in his seat. The situation was becoming impossible.

"For months he employed spies to ferret out our heroine's secrets," Reagan continued. "He discovered the love her new family had for her and he determined to use that against them.

When the time was right, he instructed his thugs to kidnap Danni. They overpowered her in the night and stole her away to Grenada where he intended to use her as a hostage to induce her family to surrender themselves to his power."

A gasp from the crowd filled the theatre. One man pointed out Johnson to his companions.

"Again, he miscalculated. The youngest son of her new family pursued the thugs to Grenada and discovered where she was being held only hours after she arrived.

The Senator drugged our Danni. He had noticed her beauty and youth and conceived an evil lust in his heart. His proclivity for young girls asserted itself and he determined to have her. As he fondled her drugged and sleeping body, she woke and stabbed him with a fork she had concealed in the blanket she was wrapped in. He and his henchman administered a savage beating to this young lady, and left her alone in her bruises, bound and helpless.

Her new father was also involved. He had heard of the Senator's presence in Trinidad and was watching. He discovered the Senator's arrival in Grenada and where he was holding our heroine.

The young man who was in love with Danni arrived at the place she was being held. He was determined to rescue her or die trying. He disposed of the Senator's two thugs and was about to take our heroine to freedom when the Senator intervened. The Senator armed himself and determined to kill that young man. Our heroine had also obtained a weapon and was about to kill the Senator to defend the man she loved when her new father arrived and took command of the situation. The senator fled, escaped from the island and remains at large today.

Each day our heroine wakes up in fear of her life. The dark cloud has returned and her happiness, so briefly enjoyed, is in danger of slipping away from her again forever. She is very brave and she tells no one but her adopted father of her fear. She is afraid to leave his side. She doesn't go out with her friends. Her love for life, for school, for the beach and being in the sun is swallowed in fear and her every move is in constant danger."

Reagan paused and took a drink of water. Many heads turned toward Senator Johnson and as the spell of Reagan's speech began to fade a murmur ran through the house as people began to whisper. Several reporters turned their cameras toward the Senator and began to take pictures.

The Senator's panic grew to a crescendo. He glared wildly about for a way of escape. He tried to regain control of himself.

"It's not going to work," Lanston whispered to his mother.

"It's not over yet, Lanston. Let him work."

Reagan nodded to Mason and he turned to the two police officers beside him in the back. "We have an urgent message for Senator Johnson. Would you go get him?" he asked.

The senator saw the nod and he turned to look at Mason. He saw him speak to the two police officers. The officers nodded and looked at the Senator.

"I don't understand," the reporter said as Reagan paused in his narrative. "Is that the end of the story?"

The two police officers started down the aisle toward Johnson. His panic swelled. They were coming to arrest him! The end of everything was upon him. Fear seized him by the throat and he snapped. He sprang to his feet. "You devil," he screamed. He produced a pistol from beneath his jacket and leveled it at Reagan.

Joseph struck his arm and the shot intended for Reagan buried itself in the ceiling. Bodyguards clustered around Reagan and the line of fire disappeared. The Senator screamed "Devil" again. He turned the weapon on himself and fired. The bullet entered his chin and the top of his head exploded. He crumpled to the floor and there was a moment of shocked silence.

Reagan crumpled his notes, threw them in a trashcan and looked at the reporter. "Senator Johnson has provided the ending of my story."

Chapter Thirty-One

The Thayer's were back aboard the yacht heading for Carriacou. His family surrounded Reagan, sitting on the circular sofa in the main cabin. Everyone was talking excitedly about the events on St. Vincent. He had a glass of cognac in one hand and was stroking Danni's smooth little brown arm with the other. She was curled up on his lap and watching him with wide eyes.

"Why are you staring at me button, it makes me nervous?" he asked.

"I wonder who you are," she said. "I've never met anyone like you. You always surprise me. I think you must know everything. What you just did! Just when I think I know all about you, you do something that catches me off guard. I'm a little bit afraid of you. Sometimes I feel like I don't know you at all, Dad"

"I did it for you, Danni."

"I know. Thank you, Dad. I can usually figure stuff out, but I've never seen anything like that. It was a masterpiece. I never knew how much you loved me. I know you went against everything you believe in, and you did it for me. You killed that bastard for me."

"No Danni, I didn't go against everything I believe and please don't go around telling people I killed him. Sooner or later that man was going to try again. As long as he was alive none of the people I love were ever going to be safe again. He was harming you Danni, even from hundreds of miles away. You were afraid all the time and I couldn't live with that."

"But why, Dad? Why would you do that for me?"

"Because I love you, Danni."

"I can't believe you made that man kill himself," Jason exclaimed. "I think you may be the devil he said you were."

"Jason, you aren't to talk like that about Dad," Danni fired back at him. "You make me so angry when you say that."

"No, no sis, you've got it all wrong," he explained. "I was admiring him. I've never seen anything so insidious. The way he twisted that man around and got him to kill himself was positively satanic. He is the devil Danni and I'm glad he's on our side."

"I'm sorry, Jason. But it makes me get all shaky inside when someone says something bad about him. He may be the devil, but he's my devil, and I love him."

"You were awesome, Dad," Kierra said. "You were like the master puppeteer pulling everyone's strings. You made everyone dance and that awful man is dead. We'll all seep better tonight knowing he's dead. I'll never wake up again with the memory of him holding a gun to my head."

"Yes," Danni agreed. "I won't be afraid to sleep in my apartment anymore."

"Please, you're all making me blush," Reagan said. "I am a very tired devil. Danni, push that ottoman over here so I can put my hooves up. I feel like a zombie. That was the most difficult thing I've ever done. I just want to lay back here and listen to my kids talk and go to sleep. Don't leave me here. Stay here so I can hear you talk in my sleep and know you're all safe."

Danni sprang up, pushed the ottoman over and lifted his feet onto it. She fluffed up a pillow and put it behind his head, and curled up on his lap again. She kissed his lips gently and said, "Will you hold me while you sleep, Dad? I'll take a nap, too, if I can stay here."

"Yes Danni, I'd like that." He reached over, pulled a zebra striped throw over them, and wrapped her up in his arms. He laid his head back on the pillow and drifted off to the sound of beloved voices talking quietly. The world they knew had ended, but his family was safe and the future was alive with possibility.

In a prairie near Lamar, Missouri, a groundhog pushed her head out of her burrow and sniffed cautiously. She sensed nothing dangerous and scurried out, searching for something to eat.