by Nora Roberts
“Deborah Umberio?”
“That’s right.”
“Got flowers for you.”
“Flowers?” Pink came into her cheeks. Women were so predictable. “Who’s sending me flowers?”
“Ah . . .” He turned the box as if reading a label on the side. “Sharon McMasters. Seattle?”
“That’s my daughter. Well, what a surprise. Wait just a minute.” She shut the door, rattled the chain off, pulled it back open. “What a nice surprise,” she repeated, reaching for the box.
He rammed his right fist into her face. As she fell backward, he nipped inside, closed the door, flipped the lock, set the chain.
“It is, isn’t it?” he said.
He had plenty to do. Hauling her into the bedroom, stripping her down, tying her up, gagging her. She was out cold, but he punched her again, just to keep her that way for a while longer.
The bedroom curtains were closed a little early tonight, but he didn’t think anyone would notice. Or give a rat’s ass.
He left her TV going. She’d had the Discovery Channel on—for God’s sake—while she worked in the kitchen.
Looked like she’d been making herself a salad. Too lazy to cook, he decided as he poked inside her refrigerator. Well, something would be cooking soon.
He found a bottle of white wine. Cheap shit, but sometimes you had to make do.
He’d learned to like finer wines while working for the Carbionellis. He’d learned a hell of a lot working for the Carbionellis.
He drank the wine with the hard-boiled eggs she’d set out for the salad. Though he had surgical gloves in his backpack, he wasn’t worried about fingerprints any longer.
They’d moved past that part of the game.
He riffled through her cupboards, in her freezer. He found several frozen dinners. His initial reaction was disgust, but the picture on the box of the meat loaf and mashed potatoes didn’t look half bad.
He popped it in the oven, dumped some Italian dressing on the salad.
While he waited, he surfed channels. Couldn’t the stupid bitch spring for more than basic cable? He kept the sound low in case some nosy neighbor came to the door and settled on Jeopardy!
Jeopardy! ended, Wheel of Fortune began while he ate the meat loaf and potatoes.
There was a lot to do, but plenty of time to do it. He caught the low, muffled moaning from the bedroom.
Ignoring it, Joey drank some wine with Wheel. “Buy a vowel, you asshole.”
He got a sudden, vivid image of his father, kicked back in the living room recliner, drinking a beer and telling some stranger on the game show to buy a vowel, you asshole.
It pushed him up, pushed the fury through him, fresh and bright.
He wanted to punch his fist through the TV, slam his foot into it. Nearly did as his brain screamed with the rage.
Buy a vowel, you asshole, his father had said, and sometimes, sometimes had shot his son a wide grin.
“When are you gonna get on the show, Joey? When you gonna get on and win us some money? You got more brains in half your head than these cocksuckers.”
He murmured the words, remembered the words as he paced the tiny living area, calming himself again.
They’d’ve been all right, he thought. They’d’ve come out of the slump and been all right. They’d just needed a little more time. Why didn’t they get the time?
Because that little bitch had gone crying to her old man and ruined everything.
It shook his body for a moment. The fury and the grief stormed through him so that his body vibrated and hummed until he got it under control once more.
He picked up the wine, took another long sip.
“All right. Time for work.”
A man who loved his work was a prince among men, Joey thought as he flashed on the lights in the darkened bedroom. He smiled at the woman in the bed whose eyes blinked, then widened with terror.
His pal Nick mouthed off about never taking it personally, about remembering it was just business, but he didn’t buy that crap. He always took it personally. Otherwise, what was the damn point?
He strolled up to the bed while her eyes wheeled toward him. “Hiya, Deb. How’s it going? Just want to say that for a woman pushing toward sixty, you’re not in bad shape. That’s going to make this more pleasant for me.”
She was shaking, her body jerking with shudders as if with small electric shocks. Her arms and legs pulled and twisted against the clothesline he’d used to bind her. He was tempted to rip off the duct tape from her mouth, pull the wadding out, just to hear that first bubbling scream.
But there was no point in disturbing the neighbors.
“Well, why don’t we get started?” He put his hands on the button of his jeans, watched her head shake frantically, her eyes fill with tears.
God, he loved this part.
“Oh, wait, where are my manners? Let me introduce myself. Joseph Francis Pastorelli Junior. You can call me Joey. Your cocksucking husband dragged my father out of our home, put handcuffs on him and pulled him out in front of all the neighbors. Put him in jail for five to seven.”
He unbuttoned his jeans now. She was rubbing her wrists raw with the struggles. There’d be some blood in a minute, and that was always satisfying.
“That was twenty years ago. Now, some people might say that’s a long time to hold a grudge, but you know something, Deb, some people are assholes. The longer you hold it, the better it feels when you make the fuckers pay.”
He unzipped, released himself. Stroked. The sounds she made now were tinny, high-pitched shrieks held in by the wadding and the tape. “The cocksucker you married? He’s got to bear part of the blame for all this. Since he’s dead—oh, condolences, by the way—you’re going to get what was coming to him.”
He sat on the side of the bed, making her leg jerk and twist when he patted it. He removed his shoes. “I’m going to rape you, Deb. But you’ve figured that out already. I’m going to hurt you when I do.” He boosted up his hips, pulled down his jeans. “That really adds to it for me, and I’m the one in charge here.”
She struggled and wept and bled. He watched her face as long as he could, the bruises and bleeding he’d caused. He saw Reena’s face. He always did.
He came hard, with that tinny shriek in his ear.
She was down to mewling whimpers when he rolled away. He used her bathroom, emptied his bladder, cleaned himself up. He didn’t care for the smell of sex, that whore smell women coated on a man.
He went out, drank a little more wine, surfed around, found the ball game and watched an inning while he snacked on some Wheat Thins.
Goddamn O’s, he thought as they went down in order. Couldn’t find the ball if you rammed it up their ass.
When he went back into the bedroom, she was struggling weakly against the bonds. “Okay, Deb, I’m refreshed. Time for round two.”
This time he sodomized her.
Her eyes were dull and distant when he was finished. She’d stopped fighting and lay limp. He could probably perk her up for another go, but a man had a schedule to keep, after all.
He showered, humming to himself and using her lime-scented body gel. Dressed, he lined up what he could use from her own kitchen.
Cleaning fluid, rags, candles, waxed paper. No need to make it look like an accident, but no point in being sloppy. A man should take pride in his work.
He snapped on the surgical gloves from his backpack. While he was soaking rags, the phone rang. He paused, waiting, listened to the bright, female voice that came on after the answering machine picked up.
“Hi, Mom. It’s just me, checking in. I guess you’re out on a hot date.” There was a tinkle of laughter. “Give me a call if you don’t get home too late. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Love you. Bye.”
“Isn’t that sweet?” Joey whined as he continued to work. “Yeah, your mom’s got a hot one tonight.”
He chipped up some of the vinyl tile to expose the subflooring, use
d the electric screwdriver out of his pack to remove some of the cupboard doors to tent into funnels for flame. He cracked the window for ventilation, set his trailers of rags and loosely crumpled waxed paper.
Satisfied, he carried candles and rags into the bedroom.
She was only half conscious now, but he saw what was left of her go on alert, the fear that leaped into her eyes.
“Sorry, Deb, just don’t have time for a third round, so we’re going to move straight to the grand finale. Your cocksucking husband ever bring his work home?” he asked, and pulled out a knife.
She went wild—still some life in the old girl yet—when he turned the blade in the light.
“You ever have discussions about how he spent his workday? He ever bring pictures home so you could see what happens to people who burn in bed?”
He brought the knife down, viciously, an inch from her hip. Those hips reared up, and she began to struggle madly, gurgling, air wheezing out her nose, her eyes so wide he wondered they didn’t just pop out of her skull like a couple of olives.
He scored the mattress, pulling stuffing free. After replacing his knife, he took a container out of his pack. “I used some of your kitchen supplies in the other room. Hope you don’t mind. But in here, I brought my own. A little methyl alcohol. Goes a long way.”
He soaked the scattered stuffing, rags, the sheets she’d soiled in terror, drawing them onto the floor, using them and the rags, the rest of the waxed paper as a trailer to her curtains.
He set her lamp on the floor, and whistled between his teeth as he dismantled her bedside table. “Just like making a campfire,” he told her as he arranged tepees of wood over the trailers. “See the methyl alcohol, it’s got a flash point below a hundred degrees. The pine oil I used in the kitchen, it’ll take a lot more heat, closer to two hundred—that’s Fahrenheit. But you set it all up right, it’ll burn pretty good once it gets going. Out there, that’s what we’re calling my second wave. What they call a point of origin. In here’s the main show, and, Deb, you’re the star. Just a couple more details, first.”
He picked up her little desk chair and stood on it to open the casing of the bedroom smoke alarm. Unhooked the battery.
Since it was handy, he broke the chair apart, used it to arrange another tent on the mattress.
He stepped back, nodded. “Not bad, not bad at all, if I do say so myself. Damn, getting another woody here.” He rubbed his crotch. “Wish I could give you one more taste of it, honey, but I’ve got places to go.”
He arranged books of matches along the trailers, inside the tents, smiled—coolly now—while she twisted, beat her heels against the mattress, strained to scream through the gag.
“Sometimes the smoke gets you first. Sometimes it doesn’t. The way I’ve set this up, you’re going to hear your own skin crackling. You’re going to smell yourself roasting.”
His eyes went flat as a shark’s, and just as cold. “They won’t get to you in time, Deb. No point in false hope, right? And when you see that cocksucking husband of yours in hell, tell him Joseph Francis Pastorelli Junior sends his best.”
He used a long, slim butane lighter—let her see the flame spurt out of it before he set mattress wadding, matchbooks, rags on fire.
He watched it start to smolder and leap, watched it slyly sneak its way along the path he’d provided for it.
He gathered his pack, strolled out and lit his stage in the kitchen. Then he turned on the gas stove, extinguished the pilot and left the door open.
The fire was edging toward her, crawling over the bed like a lover. Smoke rose in sluggish plumes. He stepped around it, opened the window two inches.
For a moment he stood there, watching it circle him, daring him.
He’d loved nothing in his life the way he loved the dance of flame. It tempted him to stay, to watch, to admire, just another minute. Just one more minute.
But he stepped back. The fire was already starting to sing.
“Hear it, Deb? She’s alive now. Excited and hungry. Feel her heat? I almost envy you. Almost envy you what you’re about to experience. Almost,” he said.
And hitching his pack, he picked up the florist’s box and slipped out the door.
It was dark now, and fires burned brighter in the dark. This one would. He took a Sirico’s takeout menu, dropped it at the front edge of the building.
When he reached his car, he stowed his backpack, the empty florist’s box in the cargo area. He checked his watch, calculated the time, then took a leisurely drive around the block.
He could see the whiffs of smoke finding their escape from the window he’d opened, and the sparkle of flame just rising up, seeking the air he’d provided.
He dialed Reena’s number. He kept it short this time, simply rattled off the address. He tossed the phone out the window and drove toward home.
He had work to do.
The war was being fought when Reena arrived. Arcs of water hurled against the building, battled the bright flames that shot out of windows. Firefighters carried people out of the building while still others dragged hoses in.
She grabbed a helmet out of her trunk and shouted at Bo over the sounds of battle. “Stay back. Stay way back until I get a handle on the situation.”
“There are people in there this time.”
“They’ll get them out. That’s what they do.” She raced over, around barricades that were still being set up. Through the haze of smoke, she spotted the company commander barking into a two-way.
“Detective Hale, arson unit. I called it in. Give me the status.”
“Third floor, southeast corner. Evacuation and suppression. Black smoke, active flames on arrival. Three of my men just went in the door of the involved unit. We’ve got—”
The explosion blasted out, punching through the wall of noise. Glass and brick rained down, lethal missiles battering cars, the street, people.
She threw up an arm to shield her face and saw the sword of fire stab through the roof.
Men rushed the building, charging into the holocaust.
“I’m certified,” Reena shouted. “I’m going in.”
The commander shook his head. “One more civilian reported inside. Nobody else goes in until I know the status of my men.” He held her off, snapping orders, questions into his two-way.
The voice that crackled on reported two men down.
The night was full of the fire, the power of it, the terrible beauty. She stood, as mesmerized as she was horrified as it danced out of wood and brick, toward the sky.
She knew how it capered inside that wood and brick, flying, consuming, lashing back at those who tried to kill it. It roared and it whispered, it slithered and it flashed.
How much would it destroy? Flesh and bone as well as wood and brick, before it was tamed. This time.
The third floor collapsed with a sound like thunder and opened the gateway for the fire to soar.
Men stumbled out of the building with their fallen comrades on their backs. And paramedics dashed forward.
She moved forward with the commander toward one of the men taking long hits of oxygen through a mask. The man shook his head.
“Bitch was in flashover. We got in. Victim on the bed. Gone. Already gone. We laid down a line of suppression, and it blew. Carter took the worst. He took the worst. Jesus, I think he’s dead. Brittle’s bad, but I think Carter’s dead.”
Reena looked up at the sound of more thunder. More of the roof going, she thought dully. And most of the floor under the apartment he’d chosen.
Who had he killed tonight? Who had he burned to death?
She crouched down, touched a hand to the shoulder of the firefighter who dropped his head to his knees. “I’m Reena,” she said. “Reena Hale. Arson unit. What’s your name?”
“Bleen. Jerry Bleen.”
“Jerry, I need you to tell me what you saw in there while it’s fresh in your mind. Give me everything you can.”
“I can tell you somebody s
et that bitch.” He lifted his head. “Somebody set her.”
“Okay. You went in the southeastern apartment, third floor.”
“Through the door. Brittle, Carter, me.”
“Was the door closed?”