Into the Fire

by Anne Stuart

  21

  Dillon reached in his pocket for his cigarettes and came up empty. Which reminded him of Mouse, and why there were no cigarettes there, and he bit off a savage curse.

  After ten years he hadn’t lost his touch. He could still drive faster and better than almost anyone on the road, avoiding police and speed traps, weaving in and out of traffic so fast he could have been a ghost. It helped having the old Bel Air. For all its anonymous appearance, it was a monster underneath the hood, and he’d tuned it to a state of near perfection. He was gone before people even noticed him on the highway, chewing up the miles in a blur of speed.

  He could even use his lack of cigarettes to focus on his goal. That nervous energy was focused straight ahead, on the Dungeon, and he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, whistling beneath his breath.

  Jamie had had a twenty-four-hour head start, but she probably wouldn’t have driven faster than sixty-five in the Cadillac. It could go one hundred and twenty, easy, but she’d be nervous of such a big car, and besides, the road conditions hadn’t been ideal.

  Whereas he could average ninety, going over a hundred when no one was around. He knew how to avoid construction, and he didn’t stop for anything more than gas. Jamie would have spent the night on the road—she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since he’d first put his hands on her, and she’d be exhausted, both physically and emotionally. He could catch up.

  He didn’t need sleep, he didn’t need food, he didn’t need a damned thing. Nothing but Jamie.

  Keeping her alive, he amended. The snow had slowed to lazy flurries, and he ignored it. He could drive on glare ice if he had to, he knew his way around spinouts, but at least there were regular tires on the car, with real treads, instead of almost tread-less racing tires. He sped through the miles, tapping on the steering wheel, humming tunelessly to the whine of the tires, the purr of the engine.

  He couldn’t even begin to think how this was going to end. MacPherson shouldn’t be able to track the wreck of the Volvo—Dillon hadn’t spent years in a chop shop for nothing. And if Mouser had any kind of history, it was from long ago, from a previous life. There’d be nothing to tie the dead body to Cooperstown, Wisconsin.

  No, MacPherson might suspect, but he wouldn’t be able to trace the Volvo back to him. Mouser had always said he wanted to be cremated, and that’s what Dillon had done for him.

  He was counting on Nate being true to form. Jamie was incidental—a means to an end. It wouldn’t give Nate any satisfaction to kill Jamie before Dillon got there. He’d lose any advantage—if Jamie was dead there would be nothing to stop Dillon from killing him with his bare hands.

  Then again, that might be exactly what Nate wanted. To make Dillon so crazed with anger that he’d be an easy mark. Because either Nate was going to kill him, or he was going to kill Nate. They both knew that. Maybe they’d always known it. Their relationship had always been so enmeshed, and Nate wasn’t someone who let go easily.

  He’d figured it out long ago—he’d never been particularly stupid, despite the asshole things he’d done as a kid. He knew that Nate had an obsessive relationship with him. For all his never-ending lineup of girlfriends, he’d always seemed focused on Dillon. Wanting to know who he was screwing, who he wanted.

  He never should have told him about Jamie. But hell, he was seventeen and stoned out of his mind, and Nate was a master at getting useful information out of people.

  He’d expected Nate to be furious, elder-brother protective when he found out Dillon had a wicked case of the hots for his then-fifteen-year-old cousin. Instead he’d been amused. And had taken to throwing them together, flaunting Jamie at Dillon’s hungry eyes.

  How many times had he kicked himself for that night? He’d known how Jamie felt about him—he knew the signs of a crush. He was a bad boy—a good-looking, fuck-it-all rebel—and girls loved him. It wasn’t a surprise that Jamie would look at him surreptitiously, her gray eyes wide with virginal desire.

  He’d been an idiot not to take her. Nate had thrown them together, and even if Dillon distrusted his motives, it still meant he could have had Jamie. And God knows, he’d wanted her so much it made him shake.

  And he still did.

  But he’d decided to be noble. She needed a jock, someone headed for Harvard. She needed her own kind, and he’d handed her over to a rapist.

  And even worse, he’d seen the look of satisfaction in Nate’s eyes when he’d taken his shattered cousin away.

  He’d paid for that mistake. Not for beating Paul to a pulp, but for thinking Nate could be trusted. Nate had been the one to suggest Paul would be a good match for Jamie at her first wild party. That he’d look out for her. But Nate knew human nature better than any other human being on this earth, and knew exactly what kind of a bastard he had Dillon hand Jamie over to.

  He hadn’t been able to get out on bail, and the trial had gone quickly. In the end Nate had paid for a lawyer for him. He’d ended up with eighteen months, with time served taken into account, and he’d made it through. The only thing the lawyer couldn’t fix was the felony conviction—the Jameson family was too powerful in Marshfield, Rhode Island, for that to happen.

  Hell, it didn’t matter. He didn’t give a shit about voting, and he’d own a gun whether he was allowed to or not. He was off probation, self-employed, and he really didn’t give a shit whether or not he could ever go into the army. What was past was past.

  Except the past wasn’t gone at all.

  It was waiting for him.

  He remembered the party at Dizzy’s just after he got out of jail. Everyone was drunk out of their minds, high on any chemical they could find, and by the small hours of the morning most people had paired up. He’d been too drunk and too apathetic to take advantage of the various offers sent his way, and he’d passed out on the sofa. When he woke up, a couple of hours later, half the people in the room were asleep, the other half were fucking.

  Which didn’t bother him—nobody seemed to have trouble with inhibitions, and he figured if they didn’t care, neither did he. Until his gaze focused, and he saw Nate in a far corner, banging some girl from the back. Which would have been fine, except that while he humped her he was staring directly at Dillon, a fixed expression on his face.

  After that Dillon began to notice small things. How Nate always tried to entice him into a threesome with whatever girl he was with at the time. The possessive attitude when other people were around. Ending up with a night at the Dungeon, when everyone had fallen asleep, and Dillon had come out of a drunken stupor to find Nate in bed with him, curled up tight, with one hand on his crotch, jerking himself off with the other.

  He hadn’t freaked. He’d simply pulled away, rolled out of bed. He had an erection himself—no wonder when an anonymous hand had been stroking him in his sleep—but Nate could see it, and he redoubled his efforts, his eyes burning into Dillon’s as he brought himself off.

  Dillon shook his head slowly. “No, man. I love you like a brother, but…no.”

  He turned around and walked out. It was midsummer, and he was barefoot and still half out of it. He was afraid Nate would come after him, but he didn’t. The upstairs of the garage was dark and silent.

  And Nate had never mentioned it. Hell, maybe he didn’t even realize it had happened, maybe it meant nothing and Nate hadn’t even realized he’d crawled into bed with his best friend and not the girl he was currently screwing. That’s the way he wanted to play it, and Dillon was willing to let it go. If anything he felt guilty—guilty that he might have misled Nate. Guilty that he couldn’t give Nate what he wanted, when Nate had given him so much. Saving his butt when he’d faced a fifteen-year prison sentence.

  Of course, he hadn’t realized at the time that Nate had actually wanted his butt.

  He’d left the Dungeon a few months later, heading out with an old friend. He hadn’t told Nate he was leaving—he didn’t want a scene. He managed to drop off the face of the earth, or so he thought, u
ntil Nate showed up at the garage five years later.

  It was the first of many visits. He was dealing, big time, and Dillon was working on his day-by-day sobriety, a fact which amused Nate. Nate’s favorite occupation was to use in front of him, and try to entice him into using as well. He liked to mock twelve-step slogans in a singsong voice, and bring women back to the garage and do them in Dillon’s bed.

  He’d tolerated it, to prove to himself he could, and for old times’ sake. Just because he was in recovery didn’t mean he couldn’t have compassion for someone as messed up as Nate. Someone who loved him, even if it wasn’t the way Dillon wanted to be loved.

  Mouser had tried to warn him. Nate and Mouser had hated each other at first sight, a shock, because Mouser didn’t hate anybody. He’d tried to warn Dillon, but he hadn’t listened. Until he heard about the girl.

  There was no proof, of course. If he’d had even a shred of proof he’d have taken it to the police, despite his distrust of them.

  Mouser had been the one to tell him, just the facts, and Dillon hadn’t wanted to believe him. Hadn’t wanted to believe that Nate had anything to do with the nude body of a thirteen-year-old girl, found raped and murdered near Charles Street. Too damned close to the garage.

  Any more than he’d wanted to believe that other girl’s death had been an accident, back at the Dungeon. That was what had spurred him into leaving. He never knew her real name—she’d called herself Cheyenne but she looked more Scandinavian than Native American. She was strung out on any kind of drug she could find, any kind of man she could find, and she hung around the Dungeon like a camp follower. She’d been spending the last few weeks in Nate’s bed when she disappeared. Her mutilated body had shown up in the woods by one of the standing towers. She’d obviously fallen, or been pushed, and her naked body was crushed by the stones she’d landed on. But it hadn’t obliterated the knife marks.

  Over the years he could remember other people, other disappearances that were never explained. Each one had seemed so random he hadn’t connected them with anyone, but in hindsight he was sickened.

  Nate had usually been too smart to mess with the wrong people. But he’d messed up on a drug deal in Chicago, he’d said when he arrived at the garage. Messed up badly. And men like Orval Johnson didn’t tolerate mistakes. If he couldn’t have money he wanted blood.

  And Dillon could no longer ignore the truth of just what Nate was. When Johnson’s enforcer showed up three days later Dillon had let him into the house, told him where Nate was, and sat alone in the kitchen, listening while he beat Nate to death.

  He could have left. It would have been the smart thing to do, but he’d figured it was some kind of penance. For not realizing what Nate was capable of. For not putting a stop to it himself.

  And in the end, Nate hadn’t died. He must have known Johnson would be coming after him. Must have known time was getting short.

  He was smart enough to know that getting a fresh start was the only way to go. So why had he showed up at the garage months after his death? Or had he ever left in the first place?

  He didn’t want to think about it. He couldn’t think about anything but driving, chewing up the highway miles. To get there in time.

  If Jamie had had any sense she would have turned and run. Except she’d known this was what she’d find. This was what she’d come after. Answers.

  “Nate,” she said, taking another step into the room, her voice broken.

  He swiveled the gun around to point it directly at her chest. It was dark, it was a distance, but it looked like a gun that would manage to hit its target. And do impossible damage.

  “Stay right there, precious,” he said, his voice mocking. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. There’s nothing you can do to me at this point, but I don’t like to get close to people.”

  “If there’s nothing I can do to you, why are you holding a gun on me?”

  “Because there’s a great deal I can do to you. When the time is right. Close the door, Jamie, and come on in. Haven’t you got a word of welcome for your dead cousin?”

  It was her last chance to run. She closed the door behind her. “Where have you been for the last three months?”

  “Dead. Closer, sweetheart. I want to get a good look at you. I only managed to get peeps at you, when you were going down on my old buddy or when he was doing you from the back. Who would have thought my sweet, repressed little cousin could become such a whore?”

  She’d already been cold, but his words drove the last bit of warmth from her body. “You watched?”

  “I like to watch. You were getting quite inventive toward the end. But then, women never could resist Killer. I’ve been watching him fuck for years now, and women do anything he wants them to. I could never figure out why he kept his hands off you back then, when he wanted you so much, but I guess he made up for lost time this week.”

  “Nate…”

  “I want you to come here, Jamie, and sit in the corner like a good girl. We’re waiting for a visitor. I knew you’d get here first—you always were a clever little thing. Killer would have had to deal with Mouser’s body first. He’d know this was a trap, but it would take him a while before he figured out you’d be the bait. So I figure he’ll show up sometime in the next twenty-four-hours, and we’ll just wait here for him.”

  “Why?”

  Nate’s smile was the same charming smile in his shadowed face. “Because I’m going to kill him, of course. After I kill you.”

  She skirted around him carefully, going to the spot underneath the window and sitting down, wrapping her arms around her knees. He smelled. Not like a dead person; like someone who hadn’t bathed in months. He was almost skeletally thin, and his dark eyes bulged slightly in his bony face. Jamie looked away.

  “It’s cold in here, Nate,” she said. She used the reasonable voice she’d somehow slipped into, like a calm teacher dealing with a temperamental child.

  “The dead don’t feel the cold, precious. We don’t need heat, we don’t need food, we don’t—”

  “You clearly don’t seem to need soap and water,” she said in a caustic voice. “Which would be all well and good if you were really dead, Nate, but you’re not. You’re sitting there large as life with a gun across your lap, and I can see you and, God help me, I can smell you. You’re not dead.”

  “You trying to piss me off, precious? I’m past all human emotions.”

  “Sure you are. If you’re past all human emotions, why am I here? Why are you waiting to kill Dillon? If you’re past all human emotions, why aren’t you on some cloud playing a harp?”

  Nate’s laugh was eerily hollow in the chill air, and she would have almost thought he really was a ghost, if she couldn’t see his breath on the frosty air.

  “Silly girl. People like me don’t go to heaven, if there even was such a thing. We go straight to hell.”

  “Then why aren’t you there? Don’t let me stop you—go ahead.”

  Nate chuckled. “You’ve gotten pretty feisty as you’ve grown up, haven’t you? Though I remember you always did have a mouth on you. I just never imagined you’d use it on my old friend Dillon like that.”

  “Are you trying to embarrass me, Nate? Because it’s not working. I’m sitting here freezing to death, my supposedly dead cousin is holding a gun on me, and there’s a good chance I’ll be dead in the next few hours. Embarrassment pales in comparison.”

  “Not a good chance you’ll be dead, precious. A certainty.”

  “Then why don’t you kill me now?” Stupid thing to ask, but she was trying to distract him, to keep him talking.

  “Because I’m waiting for Dillon. It’ll be that much more satisfying if he has to watch.”

  “Or you could always kill Dillon and make me watch. There are all sorts of options.”

  He shook his head. “That wouldn’t work. You see, I don’t care about you. It doesn’t matter if you suffer.”

  It was ridiculous. She was sitting in a freez
ing room with a murderer and she felt as if she’d been slapped in the face. “You don’t care about me?” she echoed.

  “Don’t be naive, Jamie. I tolerated you. If we hadn’t been stopped for drunk driving that night I would have killed you then. You’ve been an annoyance my entire life, trying to steal Aunt Isobel’s and Uncle Victor’s love. It didn’t work with Auntie—you always came second, you know. Uncle Victor was more suspicious, but then he died, and it didn’t matter.”

  Horror was beginning to work its way through the icy shock. “You didn’t kill him?”

  Nate shook his head. “He was on his way out, anyway. No need to hurry him along. Besides, been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I don’t like repeating myself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Nate’s skeletal smile was oddly innocent. “My parents, precious. How do you think they managed to get locked in the house the night the fire broke out, and I got out safely? No one ever suspected a ten-year-old boy capable of such a thing. But I was. Oh, believe me, I was.”

  She wanted to throw up. “Why?”

  Nate shrugged. “Because they were there. They were talking about sending me away, so I just decided to take matters into my own hands. I knew Aunt Isobel would give me free rein. She always wanted a son, and there I was, blood of her blood.”

  “Weren’t you afraid she’d find out what you’d done?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she guessed. And she still loved me better. Hush!”

  In the distance the sound of a car broke the icy silence. “He was faster than I thought. He must really love you, precious.”

  “He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about me.”

  Nate shook his head, shifting the gun across his lap as the sound of the engine cut out and a car door opened. “You never were that stupid. Maybe he fucked your brains as well as your body. He’s been mooning over you since you were fifteen. Of course, he was wrong about that. It wasn’t really you he wanted.”