by Julie Miller
Someone else was in the house with the man she loved. She looked at the two phones in her hands. She couldn’t call him and warn him.
She’d do it herself.
“Send the police, too!” Amy yelled before hanging up and stuffing both phones into her pockets. She dashed up the stairs and shoved open the door. A wave of smoke washed over her, filling her lungs and eyes. “Mark!” She coughed her lungs clear and ran to the bottom of the stairs. “Fire Man! He’s here! He’s already in the house with you!”
She heard a thud and a grunt and something metal and heavy rolling across the landing floor. “Mark?”
Fear propelled her up the first few steps, but she halted when she saw movement in the smoke above her. She squinted to bring the ghostly figures she saw moving through the smoke into focus. Two men. Was one carrying the other away from the smoke and flames? Were they fighting?
Before she fully understood what was happening, she saw Mark’s inert body fold over the railing like a rag doll. “Mark!”
He hit the top level of the scaffolding with a smack and then the framework of metal tilted forward, wobbling, tipping, until the whole thing toppled over and crashed into the foyer. Amy jumped back against the wall as boards and metal poles and tools and cans hurtled down to the floor, bounced, broke apart and collapsed into a pile of burning tarps and dust and smoke.
“Mark!”
No, no, no, no, no! He couldn’t be dead. Not her Fire Man. Amy raced down the stairs and climbed into the destruction, stepping where she could, flinging aside debris and crawling underneath the mangled scaffolding where she couldn’t. She found Mark buried in the middle of it all. Lying so still. She bent over him to see blood oozing from a wound at the side of his head. She put her hand over his heart. It was beating, strong, fast. He’d taken a horrible blow to the head and was knocked out cold. There was a tear in his jeans where he was bleeding from a cut. But he was alive. Please, God. Stay alive!
“This is not how we’re going to end,” she vowed, rising to her feet and kicking aside the burning tarp that had landed near his feet. She could see the shiny gleam of the liquid someone had poured over it, liquid that disappeared as the flames drank up the flammable chemical. She was seriously coughing now, struggling to take in a full breath of air, but she was breathing. And as long as she was alive, she would fight. For this man, for her grandmother, for Jocelyn and the other women—she would fight. She curled her arms beneath his shoulders and pushed with her legs, pulling him away from the brightest of the flames, dragging him through the foyer toward the front door and fresh air.
All that breadth and strength she loved when he was awake and holding her now pulled against her like dead weight. She screamed with the exertion of dragging him to safety. When she butted against a cage-like wall of broken scaffolding, she set him down as gently as she could and shoved with all her might against it. Her eyes were burning and watering so badly now, she could barely see. She could barely catch her breath. She leaned over him to touch his heart and make sure he was still alive before summoning the last of her strength and rising to push the debris aside, since she couldn’t pick him up and carry him over it.
She grunted as she pushed, then stumbled to the floor as the section of scaffolding suddenly rose into the air and flew into the stairs. What was happening? Had Matt arrived? Was someone here to help her?
Amy was looking at a scuffed pair of men’s work boots when she pushed herself up onto her elbows. “He’s hurt. We have to get him out...”
The man upstairs. Mark hadn’t been alone.
She scrambled onto her bottom and scooted away, wanting to protect Mark from the man she guessed had pushed him over the railing. “Stay away from him.” Her words were a feeble croak that scratched through her throat and triggered another coughing fit. “You didn’t have to hurt him. Is it me you want?”
A scraped and bruised hand reached down to help her stand.
Amy followed the arm up to the man’s face.
Sunburned cheeks puffed up as the man smiled down at her.
“I don’t understand. Richie?” Brad Frick’s friendly, simpleminded sidekick.
Not help. A killer. Jocelyn’s killer.
When she didn’t take his hand, he squatted in front of her. His tone was as friendly as ever. “I’ve got a special place all set up for us in your art studio.”
“My studio? Us?” Why wasn’t this making any sense? “Did you take pictures of me, Richie? Do you like taking pictures of women?”
“Yeah. Pretty women. I like them.”
Amy’s skin crawled. There was something wrong in this man’s head, something she doubted she could reason with. “Did you take pictures of my friend Jocelyn? And Lissette over at the construction site? Did you kill them?”
“Stop talking. Walk with me.” He grabbed her arm.
Amy shrugged him off and crawled to Mark’s body, willing him to wake up, wanting to tell him she loved him, wondering if she had any chance of living through this night. Other than the blood on his head and leg, he looked as though he was sleeping. And she might never see his beautifully interesting face or feel his strong arms around her again.
“Miss Amy,” Richie prompted. “You belong to me. I want you.” He coughed behind her. Odd. Somehow, she’d expected an arsonist to be immune to smoke and fire. “The fire will hide my mistake,” he said, as though burning Mark’s body would be a reassurance to her. “Mr. O’Brien paid Brad and me to set fires. I liked it. Brad liked the money, but I thought it was fun. Now I use them to hide my mistakes.”
Jocelyn was a mistake. Lissette was a mistake. Now Mark—and maybe she, too—would be the latest mistake covered up by Richie Sterling’s fires.
“I won’t leave him,” she protested, hoping she could order Richie away from whatever he had planned. “You’ll have to go without me.”
“That’s not how it works.” He whined a little like a frustrated child who hadn’t gotten his way. “I want you to walk with me to your studio.”
Amy’s pendant fell out of the neckline of her blouse and dangled in front of her as she bent over Mark. Her studio. She caught the pendant in her hand and tugged the chain from around her neck. Matt Taylor and the rest of Firehouse 13 were coming. She just had to stay alive long enough for help to arrive. Long enough for Mark to wake up and do his Captain Good Guy thing.
“Rescue me, Fire Man,” she whispered against his ear before she pressed a kiss there and slipped her necklace into the pocket of his jeans.
Richie’s hand clamped down around her upper arm in a bruising grip and he pulled Amy to her feet. She shoved at his chest and struggled against him. “I don’t want to be another one of your mistakes. Richie, you have to let me go.”
“Walk.” He held up the mallet he must have struck Mark with. Blood dripped from the tip onto the antique oak floor. “Or I’ll hit him again.”
Chapter Fourteen
Mark was regaining consciousness as his brother Matt hauled him onto his shoulders and carried him from the burning house.
As soon as he laid him on the ground outside, Mark rolled onto his hands and knees, coughing the smoke and chemicals from his lungs and drawing in deep breaths of pure oxygen from the breathing mask, which Matt held over his nose and mouth. Ball bearings pinged back and forth inside his skull with every cough. But once his vision had cleared and the world stopped spinning, Mark staggered to his feet. “Where’s Amy?” He looked toward his truck. The door was open, and the cab was empty. “Amy!”
Matt caught him by the arm and probed at the aching goose egg at his temple. “I haven’t seen her. Hold still.”
“I sent her out to wait in my truck. There was a guy upstairs. I don’t know what he hit me with.” Oh, no. Hell no. He turned back to the porch. “Amy must have ignored my warning and gone back in to help me. Amy!”
But Matt planted himself on th
e steps in front of him, blocking his path. “Uh-uh.” He thumbed over his shoulder. “Fully engulfed. Neither of us is going back in there until the team comes with full gear.”
Mark could see the flames shooting through an upstairs window and thick black smoke puffing out the front door. He turned 360 degrees, looking for a flag of copper-red hair. But there was nothing. He had her. The bastard who’d killed those women and taken pictures of Amy had her. “Lucky 13 isn’t here yet?”
“They’re en route. Two minutes out, according to Redding.”
“Good. She hasn’t been gone that long, then. He can’t have gotten far.”
“Gone?” Matt’s tone was calm, but urgent. “Where? Where’s Amy?”
Matt patted his pockets for his phone, then swore when he remembered he’d left it with Amy. “I can’t call her.”
Matt pulled out his cell. “Use mine.”
Then Mark felt the lump in his front pocket. What the hell? He pulled out Amy’s necklace, studied it in his hand. “She never takes this off.”
A memory stirred in his foggy brain. Rescue me, Fire Man. He’d heard the words like he remembered a dream when he was about to wake up.
“I know where she is.” He stuffed the necklace into his pocket.
“All right, let’s go.”
“No.” He put up his hand to stop his brother. There was more than one threat here, and Mark couldn’t stop them both. Amy had already lost enough. “I don’t want to panic him, in case he hurts her.” He ran around the side of the house, glimpsing the copper roof of Amy’s art studio. “You got an ax in your truck?”
Matt was back in a matter of seconds and handed it to him. “You sure you don’t want me to do this? I’m ninety-nine percent sure you’ve got a concussion.”
“No. You take care of the fire.” Mark swung the ax, gripping the handle in both hands before moving up the hill. “This is personal.”
* * *
AMY SAT ON the edge of the sofa, chewing at the ropes Richie had tied around her wrists. He seemed inordinately interested in standing up to the copper garden alien she’d been sculpting. He thumped his chest against the sculpture’s copper chest piece and laughed when it rattled. He picked up nearly every piece of glass and trash she’d sorted into various cubbies, sliding a couple into his pockets and tossing aside others.
Her first goal was freeing herself from the ropes that were cutting into her skin. The next step would be finding a way to unlock the padlocks he’d installed inside both the front and garage doors. Of course, she’d have to get past Richie himself first. And while she believed she could outthink him, he’d already proved that she couldn’t outmuscle him.
And then she wanted to get back to the house. She wanted to get Mark out of there before the flames consumed him, before he suffocated, before she lost him forever. As tears stung her eyes and panic welled inside her, Amy angrily shoved them aside.
One problem at a time.
Now Richie had discovered her welding equipment. He clicked her lighter on several times, grinning each time it sparked a tiny flame. Fortunately, he set it aside before moving on to the tanks. He turned each valve on, hissing along with the release of the gas, inhaling a sinusful from each tank. “You shouldn’t leave them on like that,” she warned, keeping her voice as friendly as possible. Since the windows and doors were all locked shut, she could smell the gases gathering inside the building. “It isn’t safe. It will eat up the oxygen and you could pass out. Or cause an explosion if you’re not careful.”
She dutifully dropped her hands to her lap when he turned to her. He still carried that mallet he’d used to hammer paint cans shut, swinging it through the air and pounding it down on different surfaces inside her studio, as though he enjoyed hearing the different sounds of smashing, bending and breaking.
“I like fire.” Why wasn’t that a surprise? “I don’t know if I like explosions.”
When he picked up a pry bar to pop off the brass tokens she’d used for eyes on her alien sculpture, Amy went back to work on the knot at her wrists.
“You found my treasures. You took them from me and gave them to Mr. O’Brien. I want some of your treasures to put in my box.”
“I’ll give you anything you want here, Richie. Just let me go.”
He dropped his gaze to her hands in her lap, shaking his head as if he knew what she’d been doing all along. “You weren’t nice to me. You gave away my treasures.”
The strongbox with the incriminating evidence. She’d thought Dale O’Brien had murdered those women. He’d just been anxious to remove anything that would link him to the fires. Maybe he’d even suspected that Brad or Richie had killed Lissette, but if anyone found out he’d hired them, they might think he was the killer. “Those are your pictures? Your fire-starting kit?”
“The cotton balls are just to start the fire. But stain and turpentine burn really well once you get it lit.” He sat down beside her, bumping his leg against hers. She didn’t bother trying to slide away because he still held the mallet, and she’d seen the dent in Jocelyn’s skull. “Mr. O’Brien paid Brad and me to burn down your stuff. Drive down the property value, or plain ol’ scare you away from wantin’ to stay. He said you and Miss Comfort had something he wanted.” He plucked her braid from her shoulder and ran his fingers along its length. “You have something I want, too.”
Amy breathed deeply through her nose, swallowing the urge to gag or run away as Richie caressed her hair.
“So, O’Brien is responsible for those fires.” She intended to get that man arrested and as far away from her and her gran as she could. If she got away from Richie. Amy pushed the doubt out of her head. When she got away from Richie. Except for the ropes. And the locks. And the mallet. “You killed my friend Jocelyn. And Lissette.”
“They were nice to me.”
“You killed them because they were nice to you?”
“Like you’re nice to me. Touching me. Smiling. Talking.” His hand fisted around her braid, pulling painfully on her scalp. “Only you don’t mean it any more than they did.” He leaned in and rubbed a wet, juvenile kiss against her neck. “You’re gonna be nice to me, aren’t you, Miss Amy? The way you were nice to that fireman of yours?”
Amy watched his grip loosen on the mallet as he pulled her hair to turn her mouth to his.
No. No man was going to hurt her again.
Summoning her courage, letting her anger at too many injustices fuel her strength, Amy rammed her elbow into Richie’s nose. As he cried out in pain and grabbed at his face, she rose, grabbing the mallet and slinging it as hard as she could across the room.
She ran to her workbench. She knew the weapon she needed to keep Richie away from her. She knew the tool she needed to cut her way through those locks. He’d already done half the work for her by turning on her oxyacetylene tanks. As long as the air hadn’t truly filled with gas, she could do this without blowing herself up.
“Miss Amy!” With blood dripping from his broken nose, Richie lunged after her. If he hadn’t wasted precious seconds looking for his weapon of choice and not finding the mallet, he would have reached her. “That wasn’t nice!”
She dived for the lighter. Although she was hindered by her bound hands, she’d done this so often that she created a spark on the second strike. She grabbed the nearest hose.
Richie’s hands were in her hair when she lit the torch and whirled around, bringing the cutting fire down over his arm and freeing herself. The torch hummed with power as she swung it again, aiming for one of those sunburned cheeks.
He staggered back, burned and bleeding, as she dragged the tank from its shelf. It crashed to the floor, disconnecting the hose. The torch went out and she dropped it, reaching for the lighter and igniting the second torch. It was impossible to aim the torch and carry the canister to the door with her hands tied.
Hold him off with t
he torch? Or run to the locked door?
Richie had the mallet in his fist again when he kicked aside a stool and screamed at her. “Why won’t you be nice?”
Amy dropped the torch and ran to the door. “Help me! Somebody help!”
She rattled the padlock in useless frustration, wondering why Richie hadn’t tackled her to the floor and smashed her head in already. Then she turned.
And realized the error she’d made.
Richie Sterling had dropped his mallet and picked up the burning flame of her welding torch. He ran the flame across her workbench, setting the wood on fire. Her drawings and desk went next.
“Richie, please!” She ran to the garage door and had no luck with the lock there, either.
He was going to burn this whole place down. He didn’t care if he died. So long as the woman who’d been too mean to love him or make out with him or whatever misguided obsession he wanted to live out died, too.
He was at the sofa now, lighting it on fire and watching the flames.
The pry bar.
Amy blinked away the tears she had no time to shed and searched the floor to find the pry bar Richie had used and discarded. She’d slipped it behind the latch of the garage door when she heard a crash from the studio’s front door.
She spun around as the wood splintered. Richie turned, too, holding the blinding torch in front of him like a flamethrower.
Something heavy smashed into the door again, breaking through. She saw the glint of a shiny ax head reflecting the flames from the fire. It disappeared and then crashed through the door again, sending it flying off its hinges.
And then Mark was there. Battered and bleeding, strong and every bit the heroic nickname she teased him with. “Amy!”
“Mark! Look out!”
Richie rushed toward him, but Mark was ready. Before the flame ever reached him, he jabbed the ax forward, hitting Richie square in the chest and knocking him back into the flames. He screamed and tried to escape, but the fire he loved was climbing the walls, surrounding him, consuming him.