“Got it?” he growled between coughs.
Her face was burning. Smoke was rising from her clothes. She could feel the soles of her feet melting, sticking to the dirt. “Got it,” she managed to choke out.
Then he was dragging her out the door. Like demons circling them, flames cackled against a background roar of thumps and creaks, warning that the worst was yet to come. The smoke was so dense, she was eating it. No, it was eating her. Overhead, the roof of the barn was on fire. Walls of flame danced around them. Black caustic fog swirled, replacing all the air. Her eyes were flooded with tears. The whole world was a blur, too bright, too hot. Dusty dragged her first one way and then the other, like a kid manhandling a rag doll.
“Mia Valdez!” Through the roar of the fire, she heard a stranger’s voice over her left shoulder. “Run this way! Run this way!”
She turned toward the voice. Through leaping flames, she could barely make out the darker rectangle of the barn door. Who stood there?
“Run this way!”
“Remember,” Dusty growled, nearly crushing her arms. “I didn’t have to come back. I could have let you burn. You owe me. Remember.”
With an ominous creak and then a loud snap, a rafter crashed down behind them. A new wall of flame erupted from the pile. Dusty glanced over his shoulder in that direction.
“I’ll remember forever, darlin’.” Twisting her arm to pull it from his grip, Mia bent at the waist, and head-butted him.
It wasn’t an elegant move. It wasn’t even karate.
Dusty grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulling her with him as he fell backward onto the flaming rafter.
Chapter 29
Friday
Finn watched in horror as parts of the roof fell in. Flames dropped to the ground, and a new volcano of fire erupted in the center of the building. He knew that the sane thing to do would be to wait for the volunteer firefighters to arrive.
But then he heard the screams. He couldn’t have come so close to the solution, only to let Mia Valdez die when he was standing only a few yards away.
He ran inside the burning barn, waving his arms in a useless attempt to clear away the dense smoke so that he could see. “Mia? Mia Valdez? Are you in here?”
Flames crawled along the rafters overhead, and as the far end of the barn fell, a gale of superheated air rushed through the building. The building groaned and shrieked like a live creature. Any second now, the whole structure would come down.
Chapter 30
Friday
It hurt like hell, but Mia managed to rip her hair from Dusty’s fists. Her head was burning. Her feet were burning. Dusty’s screams followed her as she leapt through the flames and ran through the raining debris toward the front of the barn, where, through streaming eyes, she thought she could make out a blurry black square that had to be the doorway.
A large man clamped an arm around her. “Mia? Mia Valdez?” Then he started slapping her head with his free hand.
“No!” she screamed, struggling against his grip. “Let me go!”
He pulled her toward the opening. “I’m Detective Finn, Mia. I’ve got you.”
Her legs collapsed. He swept her up into his arms and jogged outside. “We’ve been looking for you for so long,” he said softly. Kindly. She started sobbing.
Cradling her awkwardly in his arms, he still managed to brush embers from her hair, another away from the back of her neck. Mia used her fingers to comb a glowing particle from his hair. The sleeve of his jacket was smoking, and she slapped her hand against the fabric until it stopped. He opened his mouth, then broke into a fit of coughing, and hefted her higher against his chest.
She choked and cried into his shoulder as he carried her away from the fire, out of the smoke, into the cool night air. She gripped his shirt sleeve in her fist, and couldn’t stop crying and coughing.
Still holding her in his arms, the man leaned against a car and watched the fire as a wall gave way and the entire roof crashed down into the flames below. He started to say something, then choked, swallowed, took a deep breath, and finally, in a hoarse voice, managed to ask, “Anyone else in there?”
“No,” she croaked.
Chapter 31
Friday
Finn held Mia Valdez in his arms as a fire engine and aid truck pulled onto the site, followed by two police cruisers and a dark sedan. The girl was soaking wet and couldn’t stop coughing, her eyes and nostrils streaming, her face black with soot. Half her hair had burned away, a blister on her scalp was raw-looking, and she no doubt had many more injuries he couldn’t see. He waited until the EMTs had a gurney ready before he handed her over. She held tight to his shirt until he told her it was okay to let go. “You’re safe now, Mia.”
“Darcy?” she croaked, and then her hacking began again.
“She’s okay. She’s back home.”
Mia’s blistered lips formed the word good but the sound wouldn’t come out. Then she made the sign for “thank you.”
Shaking his head, an EMT placed an oxygen mask over her face and then the aid truck took her away.
Finn didn’t feel worthy of thanks. It had taken him too long to figure it all out. Mia Valdez had nearly died. And, based on the screams he’d heard after he had Mia in his arms, someone else had died in there.
His right hand hurt, and in the flickering light, he saw blisters on his palm. A spot on his neck felt as if it was still smoldering, and when he touched it gingerly with his left hand, he felt a large bubble of skin there.
“Lucky you.” Standing by his side, Detective Melendez tapped a metal flashlight against her thigh as she regarded the burning barn with disgust. She handed him a bottle of water.
“Lucky? Have mercy.” He tucked the bottle under his arm. After coughing a few times, he spit black phlegm into the dirt before adding, “I’m wounded.” He pulled down his collar to show her the red welts on the side of his neck, and he turned his hands palms up to show her the blisters.
“Oh, jeez, now you’ll get a Purple Heart, too.” Melendez rolled her eyes. “You save the girl while I get yet another arson case.”
She took the bottle from him, unscrewed the cap, and handed it back.
“What’s with this?” she asked, staring at the water hose lying at her feet.
“I don’t know. It was here when I arrived. I suspect there was at least one more person inside.” He gestured toward the mountain of flaming lumber that used to be a barn.
Melendez grimaced. “Oh, goody. Crispy critters, something to look forward to. But probably not my arsonists. Who sets a fire and then tries to put it out?”
Finn inhaled. It hurt, as if his lungs had forgotten how to expand and contract. A long swallow from the water bottle made his throat ache. “Those pickups”—he nodded in the direction of the white pickup parked near the trees, and then the black one parked close to the building—“were here when I drove up.” He paused to cough and spit again. “I think you’ll find the white one belongs to one of two boys who work at the SpeediLube. Names are Greco and Symes.”
Melendez raised an eyebrow.
“Coincidence,” he said. “I’ll explain later.”
“And that one?” She tilted her head toward the black truck that the fire department was hosing down in hopes of preventing it from bursting into flames.
“I suspect it might be registered to Trevor Vollmar. Foster son of Todd Sutter.”
“Interesting.” After staring at him for a long moment, blinking, she surveyed the vehicles, and then peered into the dark woods.
His coughing started again, burning up his throat from his scratchy lungs.
“Go to the hospital, Finn,” she told him. “Johnson! Magruder!” she yelled at the uniformed officers. “Grab your flashlights. We’re going hunting.”
Chapter 32
Friday
“It’s Detective Finn, Mrs. Valdez,” Finn began when Robin Valdez answered her cell phone. He was using one of the hospital landlines, heeding the warning posted on the wal
l about no cell phone usage in the zone.
“Robin,” she said immediately. “You sound awful. I can barely hear you. How’s Grace?”
He had to clear his throat and swallow before he could respond. “Robin, I’m at the hospital now. The docs say Grace will be fine. I’ll bring her back tomorrow.”
“Thank God.”
“Thank you for holding down the fort in Gorillaville. But I’m calling to give you an update on Mia. We had a major breakthrough tonight.”
Her brief silence radiated tension, and he knew Robin was steeling herself for bad news. Finally she said, “Go ahead, Detective.”
He handed the receiver to the girl on the bed beside him, using his unbandaged left hand. Mia hadn’t let the staff chase Finn away from her side for a minute after he arrived at the hospital, but they’d insisted on inspecting his wounds.
Slipping down her oxygen mask, Mia said, “Mom.” Her voice was hoarse from smoke and emotion. “I’m okay.”
Finn could hear Robin’s exclamations from where he stood. Mia sobbed nonstop as she listened to her mother’s voice, and Finn bet that Robin was crying, too. Mia wasn’t exactly okay, he knew, and it might be some time before she was okay again. She’d been drugged, raped, choked, and burned. But the girl was a fighter.
He retrieved the phone long enough to tell Robin that he had sent a police cruiser out to pick her up. “You shouldn’t be driving,” he told her.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“You just did. I’m sending a veterinary tech to stay with Kanoni. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Here’s Mia again.”
Finn’s joy at finding Mia overcame the pain of the burns on his hands and neck. It was nearly one a.m. The hospital was quiet as he strolled down the hallway, found a door with Grace McKenna’s name in the slot outside. The nurses would have tossed him out if they’d known he had snuck into her room. He was surprised to see the gleam of her eyes in the dim light of her room. Touching her arm with his unburned left hand, he quietly told her the news about Mia.
“Oh, Matt, that’s wonderful news.” She seemed somber. Or maybe just sleepy. He promised to come back for her tomorrow as soon as she was released.
“Sounds good,” she said, closing her eyes. “Kanoni?”
“Holding her own.” He hoped that was true.
“You need a shower, Matt. You smell like smoke.”
“I love you, Grace,” he whispered. But she’d already fallen asleep.
Finn knew that Cargo and the cats were counting the minutes until he returned, so he drove straight home. The noise from the fire still echoed in his brain, contrasting with the silence of his house. Cargo’s munching and the purring of the tabbies as they rubbed against him seemed overly loud. His bandaged right hand began to throb. He would need to wrap a plastic bag around it to take a shower.
Then his doorbell rang. Envisioning one of his neighbors complaining about Cargo howling about his abandonment until five minutes ago, he considered not answering it.
Fists pounded on the front door. “Police! Answer the damn door or we’ll break it down!”
He rushed to open it before the neighbors heard that. In spilled Sara Melendez, Officers Rick Johnson and Marc Magruder, and at least half the volunteer fire department, carrying six-packs of beer and bottles of wine and bags of chips. Everyone still stank of smoke and sweat.
“Sara?” He questioned his colleague, “What about the hubby and kids?”
“They’ll keep.” Handing him a beer, she raised one to clink with his. “They’re asleep right now. And they’re not cops. Or firefighters.” She pointed the neck of her beer bottle toward him. “You’re single. So tonight, your house is party central! Two cases successfully closed, all fires out, scumbags in custody or in the morgue.”
Finn briefly considered the mountain of reports he was going to have to fill out tomorrow to actually close the case. He suspected that Mia Valdez had saved the state of Washington major time and expense by exacting her own punishment on Trevor Vollmar. He was glad he had no way of proving whether Vollmar’s death had been an accident. Now that they had good reason to believe that Sutter and Vollmar had disposed of their corpses in abandoned farm buildings, there would be weeks of work ahead to inspect all the likely properties and search for more victims.
“Lighten up, Finn.” Sara gave him a gentle slap on the arm. “Tonight, you’re a hero. Hell, I’m a hero. Hell, we are all heroes!”
The party went on until almost three in the morning. Cargo ate an entire bag of chips, then upchucked them on the bathroom rug. Lok and Kee were hiding under Finn’s bed when he finally fell into it.
Chapter 33
Saturday
It was eleven a.m. before Finn dragged himself into the station the next morning. The media was already there en masse, but the captain was happily answering all their questions, so Finn managed to sneak past the crowd without their notice.
As he strolled into the shared detectives’ office, he was surprised to see Detective Perry Dawes at his desk. A pair of crutches leaned on the wall behind him.
“Didn’t you have a couple more weeks of leave?” Finn asked.
Dawes looked up from his email. “One more day at home, my wife and daughters were gonna make me take up knitting. Do you know what it’s like to be surrounded by women?”
“I have a fair idea.”
“I was going berserk. Besides, I hear you’ve been hogging the good cases and getting all the glory.”
“Not all the glory.” Sara Melendez walked through the door. “I got some, too.” Sliding her purse into a drawer, she clanged it shut and winced at the noise. Her head probably throbbed as much as his did this morning.
Miki came in, carrying several sheets of paper in her hands and several rolled-up maps tucked under one arm. Heading for Finn’s desk, she dumped her load there. “Here are all the addresses I could come up with for old farm buildings in Kittitas and Grant counties. And you’ll want these maps. And the captain says that you need to join a press briefing in the roll call room”—she dramatically checked her watch—“ten minutes ago.” The aide turned toward Sara Melendez’s desk. “You too, Melendez.” She left.
“Oh, the glory of it all,” Sara complained, rubbing her forehead.
Dawes pointed at the heap of materials Miki had left on Finn’s desk. “Bring all that stuff over here.”
“Really?” Finn gladly gathered up all the papers and transported them across the room.
“I may not be able to chase perps right now,” Dawes said, “But I can detect from behind my computer. Maybe I can turn up a few old victims and resolve some cold cases, take the load off you, Finn. Then I can score some points, too, wrap up Sutter and Vollmar.”
Melendez crossed her arms. “What about me?”
They both ignored her as Special Agent Alice Foster entered. Halfway to Finn’s desk, she stopped and fisted her hands on her hips, a wry smile on her lips. “I can’t believe you solved it without me, Finn.”
“Sorry. I couldn’t wait for you to get back from Spokane.”
“Here’s the unlocked cell phone.” Pulling it from her jacket pocket, she clapped it down on his desk. “Not that you need it now. And by the way, Cooper Trigg will be transported tomorrow to Grant County for prosecution for the stolen credit cards. You might want to ask the Irelands if they want to add vandalism, too, for keying Darcy’s car.”
“Thank you.”
She folded her arms, echoing Melendez’s posture. “I’m glad it wasn’t human trafficking. Well, sort of. Now I have no reason to stick around. Congratulations, Detective.” She faced Melendez. “And congrats to you, too, Sara, on nailing your arsonists.”
“Thanks for your help.” Finn extended his unbandaged left hand to Foster. “Your assistance expedited the case. Had we been one day later, Mia Valdez would be dead.”
“Matthew Finn,” she said, taking his hand. “I hope our paths cross again someday.”
Then she winked at him. “You could always make that happen.”
“Uh.” He couldn’t think of an appropriate response.
“That’s what I thought,” Agent Foster said. “Have fun with Grace and the gorillas.”
Chapter 34
Monday
Two days later, Finn flipped burgers left-handed on the grill as the evening transitioned into a purple twilight. Grace lounged nearby in a lawn chair, watching the gorillas in their enclosure across the yard. Finn had brought Cargo with him, and the big mutt reclined beside Grace, licking her hand whenever she stopped scratching his head.
The gorillas were climbing the rope net. Neema had Kanoni on her back, and Gumu carried the white cat Snow under one arm like a football.
Robin, Keith, and Mia Valdez watched from the ground next to the fence. Mia had been released from the hospital only hours ago and sat in a wheelchair to relieve her blistered feet. Tonight, the family was staying in Grace’s staff trailer, but they’d leave in the morning for Bellingham. Instead of the revealing clothing Mia had worn in her photos, the teen was now dressed in camouflage cargo pants and a loose T-shirt, and her blond hair was short and spiky. She was subdued and still croaking from smoke inhalation but seemed remarkably resilient, given what she’d been through.
When the gorillas reached the top of the rope net, Gumu cradled the cat, and Neema pulled Kanoni into her lap to nurse. Baby happy me, she signed to herself, or perhaps to the baby gorilla. Even Finn could understand those signs.
Grace smiled. “Kanoni’s going to be okay. She’s still weak, but her fever is gone and she’s eating again. And now I have plenty of money to pay the vet.”
He waited for the explanation of her sudden windfall.
“Get this: Robin set up this system on my website where people can order customized cards featuring their names and a painting by a gorilla. I couldn’t believe it! It’s automatic. People just fill in a form, choose the gorilla and the painting, pay the fee, and the order goes off to the printer, just like that.”
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