House on Fire (ARC)

by Bonnie Kistler

  “Well, maybe she is fine. You might be mistaken.”

  “I got an operator on-site with eyes on. He’s got four kids. He knows what labor looks like. If you could just get dressed and come with me—we really need to get her to the hospital. If anything happens to her or that baby, Mr. Beck will—well, I don’t know what he’ll do.”

  She remembered the viral video of Hunter beside the broken body of his first wife. How he howled his anguish to the streets. “Yes. Yes, of course.” She waved John into the house and closed the door. “I’ll just be two minutes.”

  She ran upstairs and grabbed some clothes. How far along was Jenna now? She jammed her feet in a pair of loafers and did the math. Close to forty weeks.

  John was standing at attention in the front hall, staring at his watch as she ran down the stairs. “My car’s out front,” he said and yanked the door open.

  She grabbed her bag from the hall table. First babies took the longest, but they also presented the most complications. What was Jenna thinking? She locked the door behind her and followed him to his blue minivan in the driveway.

  “Where is she?” she asked as he spun back out on the road.

  “In an apartment in Arlington.” He turned the wheel with one hand and stuck in his earpiece with the other.

  “Arlington!” She’d pictured her holed up in a remote cabin in the Blue Ridge, not living in a near suburb of Washington. “How’d you find her?”

  “She got sloppy with one of her credit cards. But Mr. Beck didn’t want to spook her. He told us not to approach. Just keep her under surveillance in case she got in trouble.” He pressed a button on the electronic dog tags around his neck. “Report.”

  Leigh watched his face go grim as he listened. “She’s pacing,” he told her.

  “How are you seeing her?”

  “Her blinds are open. She’s on the thirtieth floor. She thinks nobody can see her, but we’ve got a surveillance post on the rooftop across the street.” He listened again to his operator’s report. “Every couple minutes she stops and grips onto something like she can’t breathe. Does that sounds like labor?”

  She bit her lip with a nod.

  “And she put a stack of towels beside her bed. And a pair of scissors.”

  The silly girl actually intended to deliver the baby by herself. Carrie and Fred needed to know about this. Leigh pulled out her phone. They’d answer if they saw her name, wherever they were, and she’d have them meet her in Arlington. She scrolled to Carrie’s number and pressed the call button.

  There was nothing but silence in her ear. She frowned at the screen. It showed zero signal bars. That was strange. She never had trouble getting cell service on this road. She pressed the call button again, but again it didn’t connect. “No service,” she shouted to John.

  He pointed to his earpiece. He was listening to his man on the ground. “Roger that,” he said. “Maintain position. ETA oh two thirty.”

  “How are you getting through?”

  “Secure radio channel,” he said.

  Of all the times for cell service to go out. She dropped the phone in her bag and grabbed onto the armrests. The familiar landmarks rippled past as John sped over the dark roads.

  In only thirty minutes the dark night gave way to bright lights. A drive that took an hour during Leigh’s workday commute took half that time at three in the morning and at the speed John was traveling. He exited the highway and drove a few city blocks to swerve into the entry court of a luxury high-rise building. Leigh recognized it at once. There was a lot of buzz about it when it first opened to residents last year. It was a so-called smart building with high-tech amenities and state-of-the-art security, and it included a ground-level shopping mall, and a rooftop pool and fitness center. Not a bad choice for Jenna’s hideaway, she had to admit. Restaurants, a pharmacy, even an urgent care center were all just an elevator ride away.

  John parked at the glass-fronted entrance, and a man came loping up to stand at attention beside the driver’s door. “Status,” John grunted, as if they hadn’t been talking on the radio only two minutes before. He swung out with his rucksack over his shoulder.

  “Entrance and exit secured,” the other man said.

  Leigh climbed out and came around to join them.

  “Ms. Huyett, this is my operator. Charlie.”

  Like John this man was dressed all in black and had the same hard body and military bearing, though he was a head shorter and probably a decade younger. The father of four and he couldn’t have been more than twenty-three. He spared her a brisk nod as he continued his report. “No movement in the unit. Lights off.” There was an Appalachian twang in his voice.

  “If she’s gone to bed, it must mean the contractions stopped,” Leigh said. “It could have been false labor.”

  “We can’t take that chance,” John said.

  He was afraid of his employer, and she didn’t blame him. Still, if Jenna was asleep, she hated to disturb her.

  The glass-walled lobby was empty. Leigh would have expected a building like this to have a twenty-four-hour doorman, but instead there was an access control panel by the door with some kind of biometric ­scanner—fingerprints or eyeballs, she couldn’t tell which. Beside it was a video inter­com system. She stepped up to the camera and raised her fingers to the keypad. “What’s her apartment number?”

  “No need,” John said and opened the door.

  She gaped as he strode into the building. “How—?”

  “After you, ma’am,” Charlie said.

  She let out a little laugh as she went through the door ahead of him. It seemed locks really did fall open for a war hero.

  The smart building had a smart elevator system. A computerized call station stood between the banks, but one of the elevators was already open and waiting. John led the way aboard, the doors closed, and the car lifted without a single button having been pushed. In fact, there were no buttons to push.

  The doors opened again only seconds later. John led the way, down a hushed corridor with carpeting so thick their footsteps were utterly soundless. He stopped and pointed her to the door at the end of the hallway. “You go on ahead. We’ll hang back here.”

  Leigh continued down the corridor. Mounted to the wall beside Jenna’s door were her own biometric access screen and video intercom, similar to but a different brand from the ones at the main entrance. Apparently she’d had her own customized extras installed. Leigh pressed the buzzer under the camera and waited a minute and pressed it again.

  The intercom opened, and Jenna’s groggy voice came through the speaker. “Leigh? What the fuck?”

  “Jenna, open the door. Please.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “I’m here to help, Jenna. Please, let me in.”

  The intercom cut out. Leigh pressed her ear to the door, and when she heard the shuffle of feet inside, she turned and gave a nod to the two men crouching out of sight down the hall.

  A complicated series of beeps sounded from the other side of the door, and three different dead bolts turned before Jenna opened the door with sleepy eyes and a scowl on her face.

  “How do you feel?” Leigh said as she stepped inside. The apartment had a double-height ceiling and a wall of city-view windows, a kitchen tucked off to one side, a bedroom straight ahead.

  “Pissed off. What are you doing here?” Jenna wore a cotton sleep shirt stretched thin over a nine-month belly. A silver chain hung from her neck with an oversized pendant that rested heavily against the upper shelf of her abdomen.

  “How far apart are your contractions?”

  “My—what?”

  “Jenna, I know you’re in labor. We need to get you to the hospital.”

  “What are you talking—?” The girl’s eyes flared as she looked past her. “Oh, my God!” She clutched at the pendant on her chest.
“What did you do?”

  “Relax. It’ll be all right.” Leigh was annoyed to feel the two men crowding into the doorway behind her. They should have waited until she called them. “It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “We’re here to help. This is a friend of—” She looked back again and stopped. Both men were right behind her, and they were wearing black ski masks. “What—?”

  John shoved her, and she went stumbling into a glass console table as Jenna shrieked and made a dive for a kitchen drawer. She wrenched at it, but before she could get it open, John grabbed her and lifted her off her feet. He clapped a hand over her mouth. “Get the light,” he grunted, and the room went dark.

  “John, what are you doing?” Leigh cried. “What’s going—?” Something slapped over her mouth, and she felt the sticky grip of duct tape against her lips. Her arms were yanked behind her and her wrists bound together with a strip of something that cut hard into her skin. She didn’t understand what was happening. There had to be some mistake.

  “Lookit here.” It was Charlie’s voice, snickering from the kitchen. “A little lady gun.”

  She gagged against the duct tape when she tried to yell, and she could hear Jenna close by, choking on her own screams. One of the men grabbed her arm and dragged her to the door. It was dark in the corridor now, too. She flailed against whoever was holding her and managed to twist free only to crash to her knees on the thick pile rug. He hauled her back on her feet, and she kicked out blindly, connected with nothing, and fell to her knees again.

  “Give it up,” John muttered. He dragged her after him until she could clamber to her feet again. She didn’t understand what was happening. There had to be some mistake. She chanted the words in her brain as the men bore them down the hall and into the elevator.

  Her stomach dropped as they descended. The doors opened again, not on the glass-walled lobby, but on a shadowy space that reeked of garbage. Her feet dragged across a tile floor, through a door, and across the rough scrape of a concrete surface. It was dark outside, too, but she could feel the hot swirl of humid air and hear the roar of traffic a few blocks away. This wasn’t the main entrance of the building, it was the service alley in the back, and that wasn’t John’s minivan she was being forced into, it was a black Jeep.

  She landed in a facedown sprawl across the backseat. She aimed a mule kick backward, but he grabbed her legs and bound her ankles together with another set of cable ties and slammed the door behind her. Her fists dug into the small of her back as she scrambled to sit up. On the other side of the car, Jenna was struggling furiously against the younger man. She put one foot on the running board and the other on the door panel and locked her knees to brace herself there. He tried to bend her legs, cautiously, clearly trying not to hurt her but getting nowhere. John came around and took over. He lifted her straight up in the air until her feet came free, then tossed her into the car before she could brace herself again. She landed next to Leigh with an outraged sob behind her gag.

  There had to be some mistake, Leigh thought as the men went into a huddle beside the car. The refrain played over and over. There had to be some mistake. John was her favorite client. The savior of Al-Bab. Winner of the Silver Star. Devoted father of Bryce. He wouldn’t do this. He was John Stoddard, American Hero.

  Then she thought of Hunter Beck, American Billionaire. He must have offered John more money than he ever knew existed, and all he had to do was bring the man his own wife. The irresistible force of Hunter Beck met an ultimately movable object in John Stoddard.

  Jenna hadn’t imagined the prowler outside her window that night in April. Hunter had in fact sent one of his goons to her parents’ house, and not just to spy on her either. It was reconnaissance for the ultimate plan to abduct her, a plan she thwarted when she went into hiding. And Leigh realized something more: she hadn’t imagined her own prowler either. That was John Stoddard, too, surveilling her in case she could lead him to Jenna’s hideaway. To get close to her, he went undercover as a loving parent longing to be reunited with his child, the perfect cover story to win her trust and admiration. He groomed her the way a spy groomed an enemy asset.

  Now she understood why Hunter dropped his appeal. It was a smoke screen. It was all a smoke screen, the way he ingratiated himself to Carrie and Fred, his public appeal and million-dollar reward. All designed to lull Leigh into complacency so she’d be the patsy they needed her to be. So she’d play her part in this black op.

  Jenna was glaring at her with hot teary eyes, and she was right to blame her. John was driving the car, but it was Leigh who was delivering her to Hunter, all but tied up with a bow. Or rather, with cable ties around her wrists and ankles.

  But she could see that Jenna was livid, not frightened, and after a minute Leigh stopped struggling, too. There was no cause for panic. Hunter wouldn’t allow any harm to come to Jenna, not before the baby was born, and as for Leigh, she was nothing but a means to an end. A tool.

  Sometimes we go in loud, John had said, but sometimes we go in real quiet. He’d been able to penetrate all of the building’s electronic defenses, but not Jenna’s customized security. For that he needed a special tool. A Trojan horse.

  Leigh.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The rain ended before midnight, and Pete lay awake for hours listening to the quiet. The triple-glazed windows blocked out all the noises of the night, and the only thing he could hear was the faint hum of the AC in the vast, empty space. That was good, it was the mark of a well-built house—no settling creaks, no pipe groans, no rattles in the ductwork—but it was driving him crazy. He couldn’t sleep with all that quiet going on. No sounds came from across the hall either. Kip must be lying awake, too, listening to nothing.

  He squinted at the luminous digits on the clock. After two. He got up and padded to the bathroom, and his reflection blinked back wildly as he switched on the lights. He looked like a wild man with his unruly hair and his thick black beard. He looked like a lost man stumbling out of the wilderness.

  He spread a towel over the vanity top and got out the scissors and sheared off most of the growth, then took the electric clippers and buzzed them over his face. The clumps of coarse black hair collected like autumn leaves on the towel. Then he lathered up and scraped the rest off with a razor until he was smooth and hairless again. He peered closely in the mirror. He thought he’d see his old self again, but he didn’t. His skin was a sickly white where the beard had been, and his cheeks more gaunt than he remembered. And when did he get that hound dog look in his eyes?

  Sleep might help, and he ought to try and get some. He went back to his cot and searched on his phone for a white noise app. There were a bunch of them. Relaxation, Soundscape, Ambience, Sleep Miracle. It would take a miracle, he thought. White noise wouldn’t do it. What he needed was an app that would shut down his brain altogether. He did a search for instant coma, and as the results started to load, an alarm went off.

  His head snapped up. It was a high-pitched whistle alternating with a deep-throated clanging like a fire truck. He jumped to his feet. He’d tested all the alarm systems in the house and didn’t remember any of them sounding like that. Could it be the CO2 monitor in the basement? He put on pants and shoes and was halfway down the stairs when he realized the alarm wasn’t inside the house. It was coming from outside, and it was loud enough that all the heavy-duty sound insulation couldn’t block it.

  He ran out the front door. The sound was even more ear-piercing out here. The sky flashed red for a second, and he sniffed the air for smoke, but it only smelled like pine and hay. The red glow came again, and he tracked it to the place next door. Lights were flashing on and off inside the Hermitage walls.

  The door slammed behind him, and Kip ran out, shirtless and barefoot. “What?” he panted. “What is it?”

  “Wait here,” Pete told him. “Don’t move.”

  He jogged down the front lawn and along t
he road. A police car was barreling toward him with its light bar whirling. Another one was close on its tail. The first car cut its wheels and spun into the drive of the Hermitage, and when the second followed tight behind, Pete was sure they were both going to crash into the gates. But they disappeared from sight without any bang of smashing metal. The gates must be open.

  Another fifty yards along the side of the road and he saw it for himself. The cop cars were inside the courtyard, their headlights angled at a third car parked at the steps of the mansion. A few figures stood silhouetted in the center of the triangle. Three cops standing with their legs spread, their hands at their belts, while a fourth man ranted at them, his arms flapping wildly as he screamed through the clamor of the alarm.

  Abruptly the racket ended, and the red beacon stopped flashing, too. A fourth cop had disabled the alarm on the security control panel. Pete recognized him as he came closer. “Sergeant Hooper?” he called as soon as his ears stopped ringing.

  The cop looked up. “Oh, hey. Mr. Conley, right? How’s it going?”

  Pete bristled a little at the friendly greeting. Like Kip wasn’t going on trial today. Though in fairness, maybe the cop didn’t know. His name wasn’t on the government’s witness list. “Some kind of trouble here?” he asked.

  “Security system tripped an alarm. You didn’t happen to see or hear anything, did you? Other than the obvious?”

  He shook his head. “Somebody break in?”

  Hooper shrugged. “Fella claims the gate was open and he just drove in, looking to retrieve some property. Place is empty, no harm, no foul. According to him.”

  Pete leaned around him for a look. The third car in the courtyard was a silver Porsche, and Drew Miller was pacing circles beside it, still ranting but now into his phone. Pete rolled his eyes. “Let me guess. A camera drone.”

  The cop’s left eyebrow went up. “You know this guy?”

  “Yeah,” Pete muttered. “I’m building his house.”

  Hooper looked back at Miller, then up the hill at Hollow House. His face said the word his mouth wouldn’t. Asshole. Pete hid his smirk.