With his false coating of charm firmly in place, he grinned as he held the door for Talia. Tierney watched as her friend thanked him with the most saccharine smile she'd ever seen and rolled her heavy tread tire and her battery-laden chair right over his foot.
Jolting back he yelled into the room, "Fuck!"
Everybody's eyes snapped up at the sound, many of the small town faces offended by the word. Tierney didn't mind that Elliot had garnered negative public attention for once. Talia was gone out the door, not looking back, but Tierney was grateful for the point her friend had scored.
His contorted face snapped back to a friendly smile. "Don't worry about it," he called after Talia.
Talia clearly wasn't worried in the slightest, but now Tierney was. Shit, had her friend just put herself on his target list? Her only hope was that he would be too busy hunting Tierney down to remember. What was he here for now anyway?
He looked to everybody in the bar. "I'll be fine. It's not a problem."
Slowly, they turned back to their food and drinks as he let the door swing shut and headed across the bar.
Tierney once again found herself facing down a man who had an agenda. Still she looked at something else, checking the drinks behind the bar and looking at the two order tags that hung in the window. She wouldn't even give him her attention.
He took the seat next to the one Talia had just vacated. "What does a man have to do to get a little service around here?"
Something in his tone was dirty and gross, but Tierney gave him only her most straightforward and curt voice. "What can I get for you?"
"You know what I like." He almost leered. But not quite. Not Elliot.
"No," she shook her head. "I have no idea what you like." She slid a short menu across the bar at him before turning away.
She would not give him an inch.
In a moment, he ordered, still acting overly familiar and still she rebuffed him with cold replies at every turn. If anyone paid any attention to the interaction, she didn't want them thinking she was friendly with him. In the end, he paid for his food by sliding a platinum card across the counter and leaving a twenty-dollar bill as a tip, which Tierney refused to touch.
Carter saw it sitting there through the kitchen window and told her if she wouldn't take it he would.
"Have it," she waved it through the window to him. "It's as dirty as money can get."
Several hours later, by the time she was close to leaving, things seemed to have returned to normal. But Tierney knew there was no normal. Whatever Elliot had come in for today, he had an agenda. He'd been looking for something. Checking for some reaction. Maybe remotely downloading data from her cell phone. Who knew?
He had a plan and she'd probably played right into it, because, once again, she didn't know what it was.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Tierney was startled as Ronan burst into the bar not fifteen minutes later, his movements choppy and disjointed.
With the bar still relatively empty, Tierney turned her attention to his worried expression. He practically charged at her, trying to say something but she figured she already knew what it was.
Frowning at him, she waved him over to a barstool. It wasn't even worth trying to get out from behind the long bar to greet him. She filled him in on the fact that she understood. "You just missed Elliot."
That, at least, seemed to snap him out of whatever it was that had him worried. For the moment he looked confused. Maybe she hadn't been right about what Ronan wanted to say.
"What?" he asked.
"He left here maybe fifteen minutes ago." She turned around and looked up at the clock only then realizing she hadn't noted the time when he'd showed up or when he left. Probably a mistake on her part.
"Why do you keep talking to him? Just turn him away!" Ronan seemed irritated as he pointed to the sign behind her that allowed any of the workers to refuse service to anyone anytime.
Tierney shook her head. "The best way to get information is to let him talk. I need to know what he wants."
"He wants to kill you." Ronan's irritation was justified, even if he was wrong.
"No. He wants me back," Tierney corrected him as Ronan pulled out his phone. "He doesn't love me or want me. I'm not even a person to him. I'm a prize—valuable because I got away. I'm more valuable because I managed to stay away for ten years. And I'm an insult. He needs me back on his arm in New York society to prove that he won."
Ronan's face showed that he thought it made no sense. "What does that even prove?"
"To normal people? Nothing. But to Elliot, it proves that he won. He won't kill me until it's impossible to have me."
"If he can't have you, no one will." Ronan nodded along. “But—”
"Right," Tierney said and added, “We're still in the phase of him trying to get me back."
She'd been through this before. For everything Elliot had done, he had threatened everyone around her. Everyone who got close to her. He peeled them away, isolating her. Though he didn't have a problem hurting her, he didn't want her dead. At least, like Ronan said, not yet.
"So if he just left, what, fifteen minutes ago, then tell me what this is?" He held up a picture on his phone screen.
Suddenly, Tierney understood why he'd come in here as agitated as he was. The image showed a long barrel of a rifle with a scope on top. It seemed the scope was sighted on Mrs. Kelly, who was working in her garden. Tierney sucked in a breath at the sight.
Ronan hit the button making it play. The only audio was heavy breathing, but the short video made it clear she was moving around.
Ronan looked her square in the eyes. "Is this real?"
He tried to take the phone back but Tierney was re-watching the video. "It looks real."
"So he's right there with the rifle sighted on my mother, right now? And there's nothing I can do."
"I think he wants you to follow the scope and the angle and come find him."
"I can do that." He was starting to stand up and leave, his eyes again on the short video.
"Don't! Not yet. By the time you get there, he'll already have her hostage."
"Jesus," Ronan replied. "What do I do? Just wait? For what? This bastard is threatening to murder my mother. Right now."
As much as Tierney's heart was beating too fast, she knew Elliot. Elliot was an asshole. "We need a plan. We cannot leap into whatever he's doing. He lives to make you suffer."
"Well, it's working." Ronan's jaw was visibly clenched as he started to pace a small circle, clutching the phone tightly, as if crushing it would crush Elliot.
"If he kills her, he loses her as leverage," she pointed out.
"Jesus, Tierney!"
She knew it sounded cold, but it was true. Elliot was very unlikely to kill Mrs. Kelly. He was trying to get Ronan to do something. There was a plan here. "Hold on. Just think. If you go running in there, you're doing exactly what he wants and he’ll be ready for it. So we can't do that. We have to do something else."
She wanted to be sure Ronan knew she wasn't sitting back. She wasn't going to let Mrs. Kelly pay for the shit Tierney had brought to everyone who'd been so good to her.
Ronan swallowed hard and sat down on the barstool even harder.
She had him on board. Good. "Let's check everything. Are you certain that’s your mom?"
"Yes!" He was clearly irritated that they weren't operating faster.
"We have to ask the obvious questions. He would fake something like this just to torture you."
He took a deep breath and nodded. "Yes, that is my mom and that's her garden. And, you know, that's the corner of our house. Come on, Tierney. This is real."
"No. Wait." Her blood rushed through her system, she wasn't calm, but she was trying. She couldn't place her finger on it but ... "Something doesn't look right."
"Of course, it doesn't!" He snapped back. "There's a rifle aimed at her head! She doesn't even know it's there!" He paused, taking in a deep breath. "Do you think the video of
my mom is one video and the rifle is overlaid over it?"
"I don't know." She didn't have those kinds of skills. But something else was bothering her. "But, wait, is this now?"
She hadn't been outside for hours, but she looked up and out the few small windows at the top of the walls. They lined the whole opposite side of the room. The natural light that was coming in today wasn't the brightest. "Ronan, it's relatively cloudy today."
For the first time, he truly paused. When he looked at the video again, she could see that it was with a true critical eye. He, too, turned and checked out the window. "It was a bit cloudy when I came in. What day is it?"
"Thursday."
"Right, I'm back on my first shift tomorrow ... Friday." Then he paused again. "I don't think she's supposed to be home. Hold on."
Already pulling her own phone out of her back pocket, Tierney began to check, too. Another patron came in the door, pushing it shut to keep the chill out. She waved to him to choose a table but didn't pay any more attention. She couldn't afford to.
She'd already found his mother tagged in a photo on social media. "Look! This looks like this was posted thirty minutes ago. What is it?"
"I think it's her book club?" He said, clearly not sure.
"It looks like they're eating cake and drinking wine."
"Probably. I think they just call it a book club as an excuse," Ronan agreed, finally starting to let his shoulders drop a little.
"Do you think this is an old picture?" Even as she asked, Tierney saw the tag "Thursday afternoon book club."
"It's not." She answered her own question. "Do you think she would have gone right home and gardened?"
"No." He said that with conviction. "She wouldn't drive home after drinking. Not even just a little. Dad drilled this into us even as kids. That's what happens when your dad is a firefighter."
"So, I think this video is real," Tierney said, "but it's not today. Or at least not right now."
Ronan finally nodded along, already calling his mother and letting out a long breath when she answered. He’d interrupted her book club, and her glass of red wine. Tierney only heard his half of the quick conversation, but he didn’t say why he’d called.
He was much more relaxed as Tierney pointed out again, "Elliot’s trying to lure you out someplace."
"What do we do?"
"We sit back." She grabbed a beer from under the bar and popped it for him. "We have a beer. And we let him know that he didn't fool us."
"Or he'll think we don't care about my mother."
"That would be good, too. It takes her out of the pool of targets," Tierney pointed out, her own cold beer now in hand. She needed it to calm the shakes she'd tried to not let show. "Either way, we score a point."
They both pocketed their phones and took another maybe-too-long swig of the beer.
Still, when Ronan set his down, he gave her a serious look. "Either way, he threatened to murder my mother. It's not a game, Tierney."
For a moment her anger flared. She understood but ... She tried to say it as calmly as she could. "Ronan, I left everyone I knew behind. I changed my name and moved in with a family I'd never met before—while I was pregnant—at the age of sixteen. You don't have to tell me it's not a game."
His expression was contrite as he took another sip of his beer. They stayed like that, silent and hanging somewhere between celebrating a victory and being scared out of their wits. Tierney wondered, how was Elliot going to slap back from this loss?
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Ronan headed into his first shift back on the job. Though he'd been there for six hours, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that rode with him.
It did feel good to be back at work. It felt good to have something useful to do. But if he wasn't out on a run, he was checking his phone, constantly worried that Tierney would tell him something horrific had happened. Or worse, Elliot would send him some other terrifying message. At least this time, he knew to be skeptical.
He'd called his mother again and explained what had happened. She’d told him she'd been in her garden two days earlier and it appeared that was when the video was shot. That matched to Tierney's comment about the weather, too. It concerned his mother as much as it concerned Ronan that she’d had a sniper rifle aimed at her head at one point.
Tierney had warned him that the game would be psychological as much as anything else. He hadn’t quite believed her. He did now.
When he was home—or at the cabin—he checked the locks and windows like he was paranoid. He did the same thing at the station, looking out windows, watching the corners, and generally trying not to look like he was doing it. When the bell rang, he did his best but it was an effort to focus on his job.
That focus was a huge part of the training. This was the job: No cell phones, nothing from your life beyond the station was allowed to come in. It was you against the fire, saving property and lives if you could. So Ronan told himself that Tierney could handle herself, and so could his family, and he let himself fall back into the pattern of stepping into his turnout gear and climbing on the engine.
The team arrived at the edge of town. It was easy to spot the plume of smoke from a mile away. When they pulled up, it was exactly as reported: last house on the street. Old and decrepit. Did it mean anything that this house was at the absolute edge of their jurisdiction? Fifteen feet further north and the volunteer station took over.
Ronan shook off the thought and listened as the Chief sized up the blaze and organized the fight. The place had been abandoned for some time. The siding was falling off and the roof had caved under a fallen tree that no one had moved for some number of years. Though Ronan knew the chief had talked to the city about it before, clearly, it had not been taken care of. Now, it was their problem.
Smoke, thick and gray, roiled up. It snuck under and around the edges of the roof. It poured from one broken window. The tree that had fallen on it had been there long enough to be dry, and it was burning as readily as the house. The crackle of the flames matched the heat he could just detect through all the turnout gear.
There was no property here to save. But there were properties next door and a wildfire that they couldn't afford to let start.
As the firefighters pulled out the hose and started to work in a coordinated effort, Ronan could hear Taggart behind him. His chief was asking, "What do you mean there's no record of the call-in number?"
Ronan wanted to turn and ask about it, but this wasn't the time and it wasn't his job. He had to trust that his chain of command would work and that he'd be notified if it concerned him. He focused on his place on the hose and the fire was quickly put out. It was a relatively short job, although the cleanup took several hours. Everything had to be inspected. There could be no stray sparks allowed to hop to a dead tree in the next yard over. There could be no studs or roofing trusses that held an ember that could flare again hours later. This was meticulous work, and maybe the most important.
Eventually, they made it to the last stages of putting the equipment back on the truck. Dirty and sweaty at the end of a run but still functioning as part of his unit, he moved as part of a team. The old synchronicity came back easily and the motion of it soothed him. Ronan had to say he was grateful to be back, grateful he hadn't felt the tug in his side as he'd held the heavy hose and fought the force of fast water. There was something about the work that was restorative ... until Taggart came and tapped him on the shoulder.
"You'll want to come look at this."
He followed his Chief back to the scene, around the back of what was left of the small house. Taggart pointed at the tree trunk, still sideways where it had been for several years. "There."
"What am I looking at?"
Taggart reached up and pointed with one gloved finger, following cuts in the tree that weren't obvious but were deep enough to remain after the burn.
The cuts looked to be made with a chainsaw, crudely forming the l
etters R T K.
"You know anything about this?"
"Shit," Ronan muttered.
"Your initials," Taggart said. He didn't have to ask. He had files on all his firefighters. The Chief asked a very pertinent question. "So what the hell's going on back at the station right now?"
He meant, what had Vander clef lured them out here for? What was he doing now that he had the fire house cleared out?
Ronan didn't know. He asked for permission to check his cell phone, but when he fetched it and held it up for the Chief, there was nothing. No incoming calls, no new messages.
"Do we even get signal out here?" Taggart looked up and around. He communicated through a comm system and a satellite phone. He wouldn't have been alerted to any cell gaps.
When Ronan held the phone up, sure enough, nothing was coming through.
"Fuck." The Chief looked at him, but Ronan knew it wasn’t blame.
Turning to the rest of the crew, Taggart issued instructions to complete the job. Then he and Ronan climbed into the fire chief's truck and zipped back toward town. Within a few blocks, Ronan's phone lit up with messages as they flooded in, having finally linked to a tower.
He scrolled through, trying to quickly sort the important from the unnecessary. Tierney had messaged— "Elliot was here again."
So he'd been at the bar. If Elliot was watching their exchanges, that might alert him, but it didn't give him any information.
But another message came in. "Hope you're having a good afternoon."
He held the phone up and told his boss, "This is from an unknown number." Then he read the stupid little message out loud.
"You think it's him?"
"I don't see how it could be anybody else." Ronan thought for a moment. "I suppose it could be a random wrong number, but ..."
"But we don't believe in coincidences," the Chief filled in.
"It's barely been twenty-four hours since he threatened my mom," Ronan commented, as if that meant anything.
"Does he not have anything else to do?" The Chief was taking the turns a little fast, getting irritated at the lights. Ronan could see him itching to put the sirens on, but he hadn't done it yet.
Down in Flames (Wildfire Hearts Book 5) Page 20