From the Embers

by Aly Martinez

  One look at me and she went on alert. “What’s wrong?”

  I stopped and gripped the back of my neck. “Agent Garrett is on his way.”

  In the narrow hall, she rushed the few steps toward me. “Did they find her?”

  I shook my head, unable to even say the single syllable of truth. “They were able to find someone who had received money from the ransom account. Half a million dollars within a day of the fire.”

  “What?” she gasped. “That’s—”

  “Suspicious as fuck,” I finished for her. “Some guy named S. Barton.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Unable to stand still, I resumed my pace up and down the hallway. “Hell if I know. Garrett said they are looking into it but—”

  “Wait.” She narrowed her eyes on a blank space above the door. “Barton.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  She snapped her fingers twice and then, without another word, barged into the room Madison was sleeping in.

  I followed after her, whisper-yelling, “Hey, shhhh, she’s asleep.”

  Once she’d grabbed the computer bag she’d brought from the house, she silently slipped out of the room just as quickly as she’d entered it. She made fast work of pulling out her laptop and then passed the bag to me. “Find me my external key.”

  She sank down on the top stair, typing in passwords and booting up her computer. I dug to the bottom of the bag, finding the small flash-drive-sized device she used to securely access Prism from home. “What are you doing?”

  “We had a Barton at Prism. I don’t remember his first name though.”

  With my heart pounding in my chest, I passed her the digital key and wedged my large body beside her at the top of the stairwell. “You think it could be him?”

  “I don’t know. He’s the only Barton I know though.” She continued staring at the screen, her fingers flying across the keyboard. “Do you remember when I first went back to work after the fire? There was a maintenance guy who no-showed for an entire month before anyone noticed and cut him from the books.”

  I did not remember this in the least. I was, however, hovered over her screen as if I could magically unlock the universe and I prayed with my entire soul I could.

  Suddenly, her back shot straight, and she leaned in close to the screen. “Steven Barton. S. Barton—he used to work at Prism.”

  She turned the screen my way and there he was. A man I didn’t recognize with dark-brown hair and a thick beard. Steven Todd Barton in the fucking flesh who possibly knew who had taken my daughter.

  I shot to my feet. “What’s his address?”

  She continued frantically clicking around on the screen.

  “Bree, what the fuck is his address?”

  “I don’t know. I’m looking. He doesn’t seem to have one. The address section is all blacked out.” She shook her head. “That’s not possible. Get Jillian on the phone. Everyone has an address on file. It’s policy.”

  It took one ring for Jillian to answer the phone. “Hello?”

  “Why doesn’t Barton have an address?” I snapped.

  “What?” she asked, thoroughly perplexed.

  Bree reached up and took the cell from my ear. “Hey, Jill, it’s Bree. Listen, I’m looking at a file for a former employee. His address is all blacked out though. Why?” She hit the speaker button and then set the phone beside her so she could use both hands.

  Jillian’s voice filled the hallway. “A lot of times, when employees just up and quit or get fired, they forget to send us their new address. When tax season rolls around, we send everything out do not forward. That way, the post office will send it back to us with the correct address and we can update it in the system. If you hit the yellow arrows, it should take you to the newest address we have on record.”

  “Yeah, I see the yellow arrows.” Another click. “Yep. Okay. I got it.”

  I read over her shoulder—the three-line address branded on the backs of my lids.

  “Any word on Luna yet?” Jillian asked.

  “We’re working on it.” Bree ended the phone call, but I was already halfway down the stairs. “Where are you going?”

  “Eight-ninety-one Richmont Way.”

  “You can’t go there,” she hissed, her feet pounding the stairs as she hurried after me, but I didn’t slow. “You don’t even know if it’s the same guy.”

  “I’ll take my chances being wrong.” Each step toward the door made me more determined than the last.

  “Eason,” she called. “Wait, let’s call Agent Garrett.”

  “Happy to as soon as we get on the fucking road.” I paused as I passed Evelyn, who was sitting in her recliner. “Can you watch the kids for a few?”

  She sat up and kicked the footrest closed, her eyes wide. “Of course. What’s going on? Did they find her?”

  “Not yet.” I snatched my keys from my pocket and shoved my feet into a pair of boots by the back door, not bothering with the laces. “But we’re working on it.”

  Bree chased me all the way out to my Tahoe, and even though I loved that woman, my already thin patience was waning.

  “Eason, stop,” she ordered, jumping between me and the car door.

  “I can’t fucking stop. Do you understand me?” I seethed. “Someone has my daughter. Someone I do not know. Someone who could—right this very second—be hurting her, abusing her.” I leaned in close and added through clenched teeth, “Killing her. Stopping is no longer an option. This Steven Barton ends up being the wrong guy, then I have not one fucking thing to lose besides a trip across town. Though, he ends up being the right guy…” I lifted my T-shirt to reveal my moon-covered pec. “I have the entire fucking world to gain. So either move and let me go or get in the fucking car, but one way or another, with or without you, I’m going to find my daughter.”

  She stared deep into my eyes, searching for the right thing to do. I was past all that. Bree wasn’t rash or reckless. She was too evenly measured to be fueled by desperate emotion. She was, however, my soul mate, the mother of my child—DNA be damned—and the smartest woman I had ever met.

  Proof being: She got into the car.

  BREE

  “Don’t you fucking dare go over there!” Agent Garrett yelled so loudly that I wasn’t even holding the phone and heard it clear across the Tahoe.

  “Too late. I’m already here,” Eason said, no fucks left to give. He ended the call and dropped the phone into the cup holder. It immediately lit with an incoming call, but it was safe to say Eason was done talking.

  I reached across the center console and gave his thigh a squeeze. “Eason, honey. Can we just take a breather for a minute? It’s completely possible this guy has nothing to do with Luna.”

  “This look like the neighborhood of an entry-level maintenance man to you?” he asked, following his GPS through manicured streets and charming boulevards we raced by.

  No. It was safe to say it did not. This place was gorgeous, everything spread out unlike some of the newer neighborhoods in the suburbs of Atlanta where the houses were practically on top of each other. Large homes with sprawling, green lawns were set back from the street. Old-timey streetlights illuminated sidewalks and even a bike path disappearing into a wooded area. The houses weren’t quite as big as ours, but the neighborhood itself was impressive.

  “Maybe his parents live here or—”

  “Or maybe he bought it with the half million he got paid for lighting my house on fire and killing two people.”

  My stomach wrenched. This was a theory he’d brought up while weaving through traffic on the way over, and I had to admit the timing of the payment seemed suspect as hell, but the police had never once considered the fire arson.

  He was teetering on the edge of sanity, adrenaline spinning his mind in every possible direction. I understood. I was desperate too. But if I couldn’t make him wait on the police, I could at least talk him off the ledge of doing something that might drive us even further away
from finding Luna.

  “We don’t know that,” I told him. “And if you walk up to that door, slinging accusations, we may never know. I am behind you one thousand percent here. But emotions are high, and we can’t lose our focus. Steven Barton received money from the man who has Luna. All we need is a name, Eason. Save the rest of the interrogation for the cops.”

  The hinges of his jaw ticked, and his eyes remained fixated on the road, but even with as pissed off and scared as he was, he knew I was right. “Look for eight-ninety-one,” he said, and it wasn’t an order or said with a bark, so I assumed I’d gotten through.

  We pulled into the driveway of a brick two-story at just past ten. The porch light was on as well as several inside both upstairs and down, so if Barton was in there, we weren’t going to have to wake him up.

  Eason was out of the car first, and I had to jog to keep up with him. He stomped his way up the stairway leading to a massive wraparound front porch. At least half a dozen white rocking chairs and hanging plants lined the front. Such a normal house to be standing in front of under such horrific pretenses.

  My heart was in my throat as Eason rang the doorbell. I tried to play it cool, but his adrenaline spread to me as we stood there, impatiently waiting, hoping and praying this man could lead us to Luna.

  After several seconds of nothing, Eason knocked hard with his fist.

  “Easy,” I whispered, walking around the rocking chair to peer inside a window. Modern dark leather furniture decorated the living room as the local news flashed across a large flat screen mounted above the fireplace.

  “Do you see anyone?” he asked.

  “No, but the TV’s on.”

  “Then someone’s got to be in there.” He rattled the doorknob, groaning when it didn’t give. “Fuck it. I’m going around back.”

  “Eason—” I started to scold, a whole lecture about trespassing poised on the tip of my tongue, but it died before it ever made it out of my mouth.

  Suddenly, a sharp cry sounded from the inside of the house, and I felt it hit my body with the force of a sledgehammer.

  It wasn’t Steven Barton.

  It wasn’t a man at all.

  But there was no mistaking it. I would recognize that voice anywhere.

  And I wasn’t the only one.

  “Luna!” Eason bellowed, ramming his shoulder into the door.

  A man’s broad back appeared as he ran down the hallway with our little girl dangling in his arms. Her honey-brown eyes collided with mine over his shoulder. I couldn’t hear her muffled voice, but the sound of her sweet “Bwee” played in my head all the same.

  “She’s in there!” I yelled, panic consuming me. “I think he’s taking her out the back.”

  I took off around the side of the house. Eason was faster though, sprinting past me, his feet hammering on the wooden porch. With two hands on the railing, he propelled himself over it and disappeared from my sight.

  “Hey!” he boomed. “Stop right fucking there.”

  Blood thundered in my ears as I rounded the corner to the back steps, skipping every other one on my way down. I made it to the bottom just in time to see Eason dive and tackle the bearded man holding Luna.

  Luna flew from his arms and landed hard in the grass, a pained wail tearing from her throat.

  “Get her!” Eason yelled at me while clinging to the man, fighting beneath him to get away. Punches were exchanged, grunts and cusses echoing through the otherwise silent night.

  With my heart in my throat, I bolted to Luna. Her arms were already stretched as high as she could get them, reaching for me, twin rivers dripping off her chin. Mid-stride, I scooped her up, planting her on my hip, but she crawled up my front, shaking as she hugged my neck.

  “I want Daddy!” she cried.

  “Shhh. It’s okay. I’ve got you,” I soothed, stroking a hand down her back.

  The right thing to do was to take Luna and leave. Eason could handle himself. I told my feet to move. My brain all but screamed it. But for some reason, I couldn’t stop staring at the man Eason was fighting to restrain.

  I wouldn’t recognize Steven Barton. I’d never seen more than the one picture of him on my computer. The dark-brown hair matched. So did the thick beard.

  But none of that explained why the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

  “You motherfucker,” Eason snarled, rolling on top of him and wrapping a hand around his throat. Using his knees, he pinned him to the ground, reared back his fist, and then stopped. Completely. Head to toe. His entire taut, rage-filled, adrenaline-ravaged body just…

  Froze.

  Just like my heart, as the entire world once again caught fire around us.

  His name slipped through my lips on a violent whisper. “Rob?”

  EASON

  “What the hell?” I breathed, the fist aimed at my former best friend’s face dropping limply to my side.

  My dead former best friend’s face.

  “Get the fuck off me.” He bucked beneath me, blood dripping from his lip into his beard.

  I shook my head, seeing but in no way believing that the man breathing in front of me could actually be alive.

  I couldn’t lie. I hated Rob for so many things I’d learned since his death, but there was still a tiny part inside me that sparked, almost happy at seeing the man I had considered my brother for so many years with a pulse again.

  Until I remembered he had taken my daughter.

  With both hands wrapped around his neck, I cracked his head against the ground, roaring, “You’re dead! We buried you!”

  A sinister smile curled the corners of his mouth. “No. You buried Steven. That dumb fuck deserved to die. Setting off the explosive in the basement too soon. Fucking amateur cost me my whole damn life.”

  I blinked, literally nothing about the moment making sense. I had so many questions, but my mind couldn’t steady on one long enough to ask any of them. It was Luna’s cry from behind me that finally broke through my shock.

  I looked up and found my woman holding her a few yards away, her face pale, as though she’d seen a ghost. Which, in reality, she had. But she had my daughter, my baby, safe in her arms, out of reach of whoever this madman was beneath me. Even with the utter shitstorm brewing all around me, I managed to let out a sigh of relief.

  Bree started to take a step forward but froze, the shock leaving her unable to get any closer. “How did you get out?” Her voice shook, but her words were clear. “No one could have survived the second explosion.”

  Rob sneered, “No one should have survived the first one. And yet here we are.”

  I didn’t want to take my eyes off Luna, afraid that, if I looked away, I’d be thrust back into the nightmare of not knowing where she was. But it was Rob’s maniacal laughter that sent chills down my spine, forcing me to focus on him.

  “God, this is so damn poetic. Eason, you should write a song about this shit. Maybe it’ll actually be good for once.”

  A low blow from the man who’d spent years encouraging me to pursue my dreams. But the more words poured out of him, the more he told me that that man no longer existed.

  Maybe he never had.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it was to find someone willing to kill you two? I spent months siphoning money from Prism. I plotted out every fucking detail, right down to how Jessica would spend her time lounging by the pool—or better yet, on her knees, treating me like a fucking king.” Even with my hands still wrapped around his throat, he managed to turn his head to look at his wife. No, fuck that. My woman. “Your life insurance policy was going to allow us the life we both deserved. Half a million fucking dollars wasted on Steven Barton, and in the end, she was the only one who died.” He let out a low growl filled with pain.

  The air around us went static, and in that moment, pinning him to the earth, which he should have been six feet deep under, I could feel the fire licking at my neck all over again.

  The fear as I woke up covered in rubble.<
br />
  The pain as I sliced my hands, searching through the wreckage for Jessica.

  The unrivaled agony as I stood outside, knowing I had failed my wife and best friend.

  “You did this?” I seethed, the pieces of his deception clicking into place almost as fast as my fist came down on his face. “You tried to have me killed?”

  He grunted under the force of my punch, but his slimy grin grew. “Well, technically, it was only Bree who was supposed to die. Jessica was the one who threw you into the deal. God, she hated you.”

  I wanted to choke the life out of him. My vision tunneled as blood roared in my ears. With his vile confessions slamming into me over and over, I could have done it without the first ounce of guilt.

  You couldn’t kill a man who was already dead, right? But I was so damn confused; I needed answers more than I needed revenge.

  “What the fuck, Rob? You sleep with my wife, fall in love, or whatever the hell you two were doing. Then you fake your own death and then kidnap my kid? Who in the fuck are you?”

  “I wouldn’t have needed Luna if that bitch over there hadn’t fired my cash cow.”

  Bree gasped and I wanted to go to her, hold her and Luna in my arms as we tried to piece this sick, twisted puzzle together, but I couldn’t risk giving Rob a chance to escape.

  “Bree, get Luna out of here!” I shouted at her, my eyes still boring into a face that was both familiar and foreign. I could hear her footsteps, but instead of moving away, they grew closer.

  “Who the hell did you have on the inside at Prism?” she asked.

  “Oh, don’t look so surprised. There was probably a line of people who would have been happy to help me destroy you. Doug was just the one I caught stealing money first. And now there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell he’s not going to flip on me as soon as his trial rolls around. Five million was my last chance at a one-way trip to Mexico.” He squirmed beneath me. “Get the fuck off. I can’t breathe.”

  I leaned into his face, a bead of my sweat dripping onto his forehead. “Good. Welcome to the hell we’ve been living for the last two years now.” Although I briefly wondered if it had been hell at all. I had the best family, the best woman, and now a career I’d always dreamed about. The heartache had been worth it.