by Debra Erfert
“I . . . I got a call from the department about the gun,” Alex said quietly, almost in a whisper.
He’d changed the subject rather quickly. “What about it?”
“They matched the bullets to a gun taken from the city evidence lock-up.”
Candice’s breath caught in her chest. “What?” she whispered.
“It was used in a crime four years ago, in an armed robbery where there was a pursuit. It ended in a foot chase. They found the gun in the car.”
“When . . . when was it taken,” Candice asked, not really wanting to know, but needing to know.
“I don’t know. It could’ve been anytime,” Alex told her softly, and then he was quiet for several moments, a quiet where she didn’t want to intrude. “I need to go there and check on something myself. I’ll be over after I’m done.”
~*~
The printer/copier/scanner/fax machine Candice bought had been easy to set up. She got the next model up from the one that melted into puddles in the fire last night. She had it attached to her laptop minutes after the new power cord began to recharge its batteries. She sat at the breakfast bar and downloaded the pictures she took over the past few days and put them into files on her hard drive before she began printing each picture.
It wasn’t a quick project, and she had time to pour a bag of Skittles into a crystal candy dish. She kept it within arm’s reach, but watching the pictures of Zane Graham, presumably, and Antonio Barbarize were so intriguing that she couldn’t pull her eyes away long enough to stuff her face with the candy. Well, not yet, anyway.
After she had the first dozen prints of her suspects lying across the counter, she grabbed a handful of candies and shoved them in her mouth while the printer quickly produced another fine quality photo. This one was of the two men standing on their office porch staring at her in anger. “Hello, you—you creep,” Candice mumbled. She took the photo and tacked it to the wall next to the map, and then she tacked up the other dozen, also, framing the map on all sides. Lastly, she printed out the pictures of the boys Zane corrupted into burning down buildings for him, and even attempting to kill for him. Bobby and Lito’s picture was still hard to look at. It made her sad to think of the destruction they had done and of what counseling they’d have to go through if they stood a chance of having a normal adulthood, so she ate more candy and sipped orange soda while she mapped the addresses from the news articles she got from the library onto the new map she taped up next to the out-of-date map.
It took twice as long doing it alone, but by the time the bowl of candy was empty, she had almost two dozen more colorful pushpins in the map, clustered in groups. Candice stood back with a can of soda in her hand and speculated out loud.
“What do we have?” she asked the map. “We know . . . that boys with a proclivity for starting fires were approached by a man named Zane Graham while they were coming home from a public place like the local skate park, and they were asked to burn down something, a shed or an empty house. Then they were asked to do something bigger: if they did it, then they were paid for it; if they didn’t, like Joshua, then they were penalized and possibly killed by other kids being used by Zane. His hands never actually touched anything.” But then Candice remembered the gunshot in her shoulder, and her burned fingers throbbed. She took a cool sip of soda before she continued to recap what she’d discovered.
“Zane would have these, these children burn down empty houses that were for sale or rental homes that were in between occupants, and then he would approach the owners and offer to buy the property. I don’t know how successful he’s been. I’ll check into that tomorrow. Now the only thing that hasn’t made sense was how this man knew who to ask.”
Candice pointed to the boy’s pictures with her can of soda. “How did he know these boys would even consider starting a fire in a house for him? I mean,” she argued with herself, “unless they advertised that they were fire setters, the only way Zane Graham could have known about them was if somebody with knowledge told them their names and where to find them, and possibly given him pictures of them.” Candice pointed at the picture with the red Phoenix fire department car in it and continued to theorize out loud. “Barbarize had knowledge, and he knows Zane Graham; my pictures prove that. He also had access to the evidence lock-up where the gun that shot me was kept. What more do I need to prove his involvement in this conspiracy?” she asked the map.
“You’re right,” a man’s tenor voice said.
Candice turned at the sound, and caught a glimpse of Patrick. His hand above his head held something in his fist—his gun—she saw a gun in his fist just before he brought it down hard on the side of her head.
~*~
“No, don’t . . .” Candice whispered weakly. She became conscious, or at least she thought she was awake. She couldn’t see any light, but she felt movement. It was familiar . . . somehow. After another moment, she became more aware, coming up from the depth of darkness. She remembered . . . Patrick—that he’d hit her with his gun. She couldn’t protect herself. He knew he couldn’t give her the chance to. He’d blindsided her like a coward.
Now she was someplace dark, or maybe it was nighttime, or . . . she was blinded. Her head felt . . . broken. A sickening warmth coated the side of her face like a towel fresh from the hot dryer. Blood. Odd movement created nauseating dizziness.
Where am I? Sleep beckoned to her. Candice resisted, willing herself to think. Think. She was lying on her side—that much she could feel. Patrick took her somewhere, or . . . he was taking her. Abducting her. Why? Why would he try to kill her? Think! What had she been doing before? Before. She’d been talking to herself. Candice gasped. He’d been listening to her.
Momentum had Candice pitching forward. A car? The trunk of a car? Of his car? Patrick was slowing down. Her hands were behind her back, her wrists pressed together and bound with . . . she twisted her hand and flicked the edge with her fingernail. Soft plastic. Crime scene tape? Her feet were bound, too. Patrick did this. Why? He cared for me. Didn’t he? He was always there so quickly after she was hurt. He was always there so . . . quickly, like he knew about them before they happened. Candice groaned. He was her enemy. Or did he see her as his enemy because of her investigation of the Leavitts’ fire? Or maybe she was getting too close to Zane and the truth? Did Barbarize have anything to do with it at all? She’d jumped to a wrong conclusion, and now she was being taken . . . somewhere.
So many questions that she’d never get to ask. It felt as if she was bleeding to death, although she had no sense of time. How long ago had Patrick abducted her? Minutes? Hours? Candice didn’t know, but he didn’t want her awake, and if—and that was a big word under the circumstances—if she was still alive when he opened the trunk, she needed to pretend she was unconscious or he’d hurt her again.
The car slowed to a stop. The engine stilled to dead silence. A moment later, the car rocked. Her heart jumped and accelerated in panic. Candice had to slow her breathing down or he’d know—he’d know she was awake. Candice tried to listen to him walking, but there wasn’t any noise, just the loud staccato rhythm of her fast beating heart. Either he was standing still, or walking on something soft. Sand? He was going to bury her in the desert. Her panic doubled—tripled in intensity. Hyperventilating wasn’t a good way of playing dead. Candice wanted to scream; she’d never felt so powerless.
Hearing a man’s voice had Candice holding her breath. It wasn’t Patrick’s, but the man was furious. For a split second, she thought of yelling for help. She could. Her mouth wasn’t taped. That thought passed when Patrick cursed at the man, calling him Zane. The voices slowly faded. Had they left?
“Don’t cry, don’t cry,” Candice whispered. Tears would be noticed immediately as her being conscious. She willed them back, promising herself that she’d cry an ocean later—after she was saved . . . by somebody. But nobody knew where she was. She didn’t know where she was.
“Alex,” Candice whispered. “I’m sorry. I’v
e always loved you.” She closed her eyes for a moment.
The sharp sound of the trunk popping open woke Candice with a frightening start. It took a couple of seconds to remember what had happened and who was standing outside the car. She kept still and breathed as regularly as her fast beating heart would allow as Patrick reached under her shoulders and knees. He lifted her up out of the trunk and carried her close to his chest across the sand. She felt his embrace. He must’ve been getting her blood all over his jacket. Then suddenly his footsteps were loud as he stepped onto . . . concrete. Raw wood replaced the sickening copper odor of her blood that had saturated the trunk. They were in a new house under construction.
Patrick’s steps went across a room and then slowly up wooden stairs. His strength was either dwindling from carrying her so far, or his heart really wasn’t into his work. When they reached the first floor landing, Candice felt him turn one way, and then another before he started walking again. Moments later, he gently set her down on the plywood subfloor, and when she expected a final blow, she felt a gentle hand touch her cheek.
“Candice,” Patrick whispered so closely she felt his breath on her skin, “I’m sorry. I could’ve loved you.” He kissed her lips softly before he moved away.
She listened to his rapid footsteps change in tone as he strode into the hallway and then dissipated down the stairs.
Candice gulped in air like a woman drowning, grateful for the abundant oxygen as she struggled with the plastic tape around her wrists. She opened her eyes. Daylight streamed in through a frame that would soon have a window in it, so she hadn’t been gone too long. Another body lay only a few feet away from her, and she recognized the clothing from earlier that day. It had to be Zane Graham. He was very still. She couldn’t tell if he was dead, but he definitely had lost the argument.
She rolled onto her side and began to sit up, but the room spun upside down, throwing her unceremoniously sideways against the hard floor. Candice had to close her eyes to avoid seeing her blood covering the plywood. She was conscious and wanted to stay that way as long as possible. The sickening odor of blood twisted her gut into a tense knot, but the smell was mingled with something else.
Smoke.
“Patrick started a fire,” she murmured, groaning. He had intended to kill her after all. It would’ve been more merciful if he’d smothered her while she was unconscious. She tried to reach around to her front pocket, but her hands were bound too tightly. A new horror filled her mind: burning to death.
“Help!” she yelled as loud as she could. “Help me! Please, someone, help me!”
“Candice?” Joshua’s unsure voice had come from behind her. Candice,” he said, coming over to her. She opened her eyes enough to see him kneeling beside her, his young face distressed, staring down at her. “Candice, are you alive?”
“Yes, Joshua, how . . .” Dizziness had her gasping. “How did you know?”
“I saw what that man did to you back at the guesthouse,” Joshua said as he tugged on the plastic tape around her wrists. “He came up to the front door and asked for you. He said he was a detective, and I told him where you lived. But I secretly followed him to your door. He didn’t even knock before he opened it. He was watching you, Candice, and then he . . . I’m sorry, I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him from hurting you.”
“No, Joshua,” Candice whispered. “Don’t be sorry. You couldn’t have stopped him. How did you find me?”
He tugged harder on the tape. “I followed you on the mountain bike from your garage. I kind of borrowed it earlier today. He lost me for a while, but then I saw smoke and I, well, I just figured with what we were working on and with what you were saying before he . . . well . . .”
“You’re a smart kid, Joshua,” Candice told him with a little more strength in her voice. “Can you get me untied? The smoke is getting heavier.”
“He splashed something on the wooden floor and lit it on fire.”
“How did you get inside then?”
“I used the bicycle for a step and climbed onto that platform. This tape is tough.”
“I have keys in my front pocket. Hurry, Joshua.” Candice rolled onto her back for him to reach her pocket. He quickly had the keys.
“You have a pocket knife,” Joshua said in triumph.
“Uh-huh,” she whispered.
“Candice, wake up!”
“I’m . . . tired, Alex.”
“Candice, it’s me, Joshua. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here. Turn over. I can’t get your hands. Candice!” he yelled.
She opened her eyes to see Joshua’s frightened face staring down at her. She’d passed out for a moment.
“Roll over, Candice,” he said, pushing against her shoulder.
Candice did what he asked. He had her free within seconds. Joshua cut the tape around her feet next before he moved over to Zane and kicked him. The moan they heard meant he was alive. She pushed up onto her hands and knees. “Is that Zane?”
“Yeah, that’s him,” Joshua said. “He’s going to die on his own funeral fire. He tried to make me into a monster. He’s collected kids like pieces of bodies from all over the city. We’ve done such horrible things because of him.”
The floor was getting hotter. The smoke had grown thicker, deeper. “We need to get out of here. Help me with Zane,” Candice said, crawling over to the prone man.
“What?” Joshua shouted. “I don’t want to save him. He tried to kill my family. He tried to kill you! He should die.”
Candice gazed up at the incensed young man and waited until the spinning slowed down. “If you let him die when you had a chance to save him, then he will have succeeded into making you that monster. Now, help me get him out before it’s too late.” She didn’t like the sight of his frown getting deeper, but he grabbed Zane around his upper arm while Candice looped her arm around his other arm and started crawling toward an opening that was meant to have a sliding glass door in it. The platform Joshua had climbed up on was a Juliet balcony. Tragically, it would burn brightly, like an exploding nova, before collapsing in on itself.
They dragged Zane to the edge of the platform. Candice moved to the side and used her feet to push his body. Joshua sat beside her and placed his feet on Zane’s hip. Together, they pushed him over the side. He landed in the dirt with a thud. He’d been unconscious. He wouldn’t have felt anything if he’d landed on concrete.
“Joshua, climb down,” she told him. She elbow-crawled to the edge and looked over at Zane before she rolled off. She landed on Zane’s body.
“Candice, wake up. Wake up!” Joshua cried.
The boy was trying to drag her away from the collapsing building when she opened her eyes. Thunderous cracking had her looking back at the house. The second story conflagrating plywood subflooring was cascading to the ground, snapping the studs along with it. A wall of heat lifted her hair. “Let’s move!”
Candice grabbed Zane again and crawled away from the firestorm, but Joshua pulled them both in the sand toward a pallet of wall blocks, away from the inferno, and from Patrick Donovan. For the most part, she kept her eyes closed to shield herself from seeing her own blood.
“I hear sirens,” Joshua said, huffing heavily and dropping to the ground. He’d released Zane, yet he still held onto Candice.
“Someone called the fire department,” Candice whispered, laying in the dirt and groaning from pain.
“I told the security guard to call the police when I raced past that silly fence they have across your street,” Joshua said.
“What did you tell her?” she asked, glancing past the bonfire.
“I said you were kidnapped by the man who just left.”
He sounded so matter of fact about it. “Did she believe you?”
He didn’t answer right away. “Shouldn’t she?”
The guard had been able to recognize her purely by description, so she suspected at the very least, she’d send her partner to investigate if she was all right. “Yes, she should. Onl
y she’d have no idea on where to send them.”
“But they’d be looking for you, including your boyfriend, right?”
“Alex,” she whispered. Was he in danger, too? Candice began to panic all over again. “I need to see if that detective is still around. You stay here with—” Zane chose that moment to moan loudly, moving his head as he finally woke up. Candice got up on her knees and dropped down on the man’s chest with her good hand. He groaned louder, but it also roused him. “Zane Graham! You scum. Look at me!”
“What? What?” His eyes opened, although he didn’t seem to be able to focus.
“You were almost killed, but we saved you,” Candice said, leaning over his face. She must’ve looked like a victim out of a slasher movie with her hair bloodied and matted against her head, the same blood that coated the side of her face and neck, and down onto her once blue silk shirt—she assumed. She still refused to let her eyes wander that direction. She couldn’t afford to faint.
A massive lump protruded on the side of Zane’s skull. “You were knocked unconscious and left to die in that burning house, and if you don’t tell me what I want to know then I have no doubt you’ll end up there again, and we won’t be there to pull your rear end out of the fire.”
Between her scary looks and her not-so-gentle threat, the man opened up like a Morning Glory blossom. In between some expletives that could’ve made a department store mannequin blush, he swore he’d never seen Antonio Barbarize before today.
“I’m going to look for that detective, and if he’s gone, then I’ll bring back a paramedic.” Candice tried to stand, but she didn’t make it very far before falling down to her knees. The dizziness wouldn’t pass.
“Candice, you can’t even walk,” Joshua said, taking her arm around his neck, and waited for her to use him as a crutch to lean against. He was right. She couldn’t make it on her own any farther. She had to hope they didn’t meet Patrick before they had help. Candice leaned against Joshua’s overburdened young shoulder and managed to stagger toward the street where a fire engine had pulled to a stop. Firefighters were pulling hoses from the truck.