Consumed

by J. R. Ward

“Everything is so neat.” Nancy Janice stood up from petting the dog. “So tidy.”

  “You make that sound like a bad thing.” Anne dropped her mother’s fifty-pound overnight bag at the foot of the stairs. “I have to take him out. Come on, Soot.”

  “It’s not a bad thing.” Her mother followed the way to the back porch. “It’s just so spare.”

  “I don’t see the need to clutter my space with crap from the Home Shopping Network.”

  The way her mother sighed told her that the message had been received as it had been intended: That house Anne and her brother had grown up in had been crammed full of knickknacks, fads, and cutesy “moments.”

  Nothing like being raised in an infomercial ecosystem.

  “Out you go, Soot.” She opened the door and stood to the side. “Go on. G’head.”

  Soot stood in between the jambs and eyed the sky with suspicion.

  “You want me to go out with you?” Please make me go out with you. “Here, we’ll go together.”

  “I’ll make tea,” her mother said. “Where’s your kettle?”

  “I don’t have one. I use K-Cups. And I still don’t drink tea.”

  “What’s a K-Cup?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Help yourself.”

  “I don’t drink coffee.”

  “Come on, Soot.”

  Thankfully, the dog decided to commit to a visit to the backyard, and Anne took the opportunity to breathe deep and brace herself for the return. When they came back in, her mother had set out two mugs and was boiling water in a pan.

  “Don’t worry, Annie-Banannie, I brought plenty of Celestial Seasonings for the both of us.”

  Annie-Banannie. God, she had hated that nickname her entire life.

  As she stayed quiet, the smile her mother sent over her shoulder was cheerful in a determined kind of way. “It’s for nighttime. For rest.”

  Anne grabbed a dish towel and bent down, taking each of Soot’s paws in turn, wiping off the mud. “I told you. I don’t drink tea.”

  “Oh. Well, I could make you a coffee? I could—”

  “No. Thank you. I don’t need anything.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  Anne lowered her head. “I’ll sit with you.”

  “Oh, I would love that. I’ve missed you.”

  Yeah, wow, she’d forgotten how three-quarters of Nancy Janice’s statements started with “Oh”—as if she were constantly shocked by conversation, in spite of the fact that she was a chatter. Then again, she’d been a seen-and-not-heard wife to a flamboyant force of nature. It probably was still a surprise, even after all these years, that anybody listened to her.

  It wasn’t Anne’s job to step into that void, however. And giving her mother an opening to speak was like setting off an entire can of Febreze in an enclosed space—and then thinking you could keep the flower-fresh stench from your nose by batting the air away from your face.

  Anne sat down at her table and told herself she needed to ask what the woman had been up to, but she wasn’t sure she could feign interest in Pilates, bridge, and senior center volunteering.

  Especially as she thought about Emilio in that hospital bed, and Danny struggling to find his way, and the people who had died in those warehouse fires down by the wharf.

  See, this was the problem. There was a vast, un-crossable distance between what her mother worried over and what Anne had on her plate. It was Kleenex to surgical gauze. Sandals to steel-toed work boots. An off-key hum to a scream for help.

  Her mother took a green-and-white box out of her corgi-themed purse and put a tea bag in each mug. Then she poured the hot water from the pan and brought her solution to insomnia over.

  As she put the tea in front of Anne, her pale eyes were like those of a dog begging to be let in from the cold.

  “Just in case you change your mind,” she said softly.

  I won’t, Anne wanted to holler. For godsakes, is this the reason Dad cheated on you?

  chapter

  27

  The following morning, Danny pulled his truck into the parking area behind the 617 stationhouse and checked his phone. He was fifteen minutes early, but not because he’d planned it that way and set some kind of an alarm.

  You needed to be able to sleep to worry about alarms. And anything even remotely REM-related had been a nonissue for him.

  Lighting a cigarette, he cracked his window and blew a stream of smoke out. Following the storms, the September sun was back out with a vengeance, the bright sky and utter lack of clouds making him think of someone starting an organic diet after a McDonald’s binge.

  He blinked gritty eyes. Drank some coffee. Smoked some more.

  Five minutes ’til nine, he doused the butt in his cold Dunkin’ and got out. The chief’s shiny new stationhouse had a dedicated administrative entrance, so at least he didn’t have to enter through the bays and face the crew—who’d all know why he was here.

  Anne’s brother was going to love this meeting.

  And hey, at least his last act as a firefighter was going to be making someone’s day.

  Danny pulled open the glass door and stepped into a waiting room as fancy as any you’d find in a lawyer’s office downtown: leather couches, coffee table, flat-screen TV, even a throw rug that picked up on the gray-and-blue color frickin’ scheme.

  Nice to know that Ripkin’s people saw to everything. Not just the donation and the building, but the goddamn curtains and the furniture.

  It even smelled nice.

  Given how executive-ish everything was, he always expected some assistant to come out and demand his ID and fingerprints before he could get in to see the big man.

  Nope. He just walked over to the fishbowl: The chief’s office was three sides of see-through, and the man was sitting at an old beat-up desk that was buried in paperwork, the phone in danger of falling off the far edge, a dead plant wilted on shelves that were mostly empty.

  Ashburn was like an isolated contaminant in all the otherwise perfectly orderly and new.

  Tom looked up. “Come on in.”

  Or something to that effect. The office was soundproof.

  Danny pushed his way inside. “Morning.”

  “Sit down.”

  Why bother. He wasn’t going to be in here long. But Danny followed the order, parking it in a creaky wooden chair.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “So this was quick.”

  Anne’s brother eased back and steepled his fingertips like he was a school principal with a delinquent. The man looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes adding age to his face, that salt-and-pepper hair pulling an assist on the almost-fifty vibe. The poor bastard was only in his mid-thirties, though.

  “Dr. McAuliffe got back to me yesterday.”

  “Where do I sign?”

  “What?”

  Danny sat forward and motioned over all the paperwork. “On my release papers. I already know I wasn’t on service long enough to vest my pension, but I want my COBRA.”

  The chief didn’t respond. Then again, no doubt this was like a good meal, something to be savored.

  “I want you back on shift. But you’re on probation.”

  Danny shook his head to reset his ears. “What?”

  “You heard me. Because of Emilio being out, I’ve shuffled the crew at four-nine-nine around, and you need to work today’s shift out, off tomorrow and Sunday.”

  The chief picked up a piece of paper, his eyes scanning back and forth. Then he looked up. “Why are you still here? You’re late for roll call at the four-nine-nine.”

  Danny was aware of a shaft of anxiety hitting him in the chest. “I don’t get it.”

  “I think I’m being clear enough.”

  “Why aren’t you firing me?”

  “You really want to argue this point?”

  Danny shook his head again. “I’m confused.”

  “That’s because you think it’s personal between you and me. It’s not. The therapist’s repo
rt stated that she felt you were suffering from severe trauma and undiagnosed depression. She’s advocating for a three-month suspension and mandatory follow-up. She also believes you have a problem with alcohol and is recommending that you address this.”

  “So why are you putting me back on shift.”

  “If I waited for a clean bill of mental health for all my firefighters, I’d have engines with no engineers, lines with no one to hold them, and ladders with nobody to climb.”

  Danny clasped his hands together because he had a case of the shakes he didn’t want to share. “Thank you.”

  The chief’s eyes went back and forth on the paper, but in the same position as he read whatever line he was on over and over again. After a moment, he said gruffly, “Payback. We’re equal now.”

  “I wasn’t aware we had a debt to discharge.” That was a lie. There was Anne. “A recent one, at any rate.”

  “Chavez.” Tom glanced up. “If you hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have . . . anyway. Yeah.”

  In the back of his mind, Danny did the math on switching one unstable man for another, but he was not going to fight the chief. Something was finally breaking his way.

  “But there’s a condition.”

  Here it comes. “Which is.”

  “Not one violation of any procedure or policy. Everything will be by the book, and yes, I’m putting this in your personnel file. I am not fucking around. I will fire you and to hell with the personnel shortage if you fuck anything up.”

  Hard to argue with that standard, Danny thought.

  “Go on to the four-nine-nine then.” Tom got to his feet. “And shake my hand. So we both know we have an agreement.”

  * * *

  Boston traffic was a thing.

  As Anne passed another marker on I-93, she checked the clock on the dash of her municipal sedan. She’d called Ripkin’s office first thing and informed them she would be arriving at nine sharp. She wasn’t going to make it by that time, they’d said they didn’t expect the big man in until nine thirty.

  New Brunswick had its share of tall buildings, but it was JV next to the pros when compared to Beantown’s glass-and-steel forestland. The fact that Ripkin owned an entire skyscraper was testament to his wealth, and she had to admit she was impressed.

  But at this rate, she was going to be a hundred before she got anywhere near the place.

  The lanes of the highway were congested, making her think of clogged arteries, and sump lines that were full of silt, and gutters that had yet to be cleaned of autumn leaves. She also thought of all the lives in all of the cars, the details, the timelines, the beginnings, middles, and ends. In this respect, every morning and every evening, in every major city across the globe, biographies gathered on the asphalt, books lined up one to another as if on a shelf, the pages at once anonymous within the collection and totally personal between the covers, in each automobile.

  Humanity was a galaxy, countless, unfathomable, too vast to comprehend.

  Not that she’d ever wanted to be God.

  When she finally pulled into the Ripkin Building’s underground parking garage, it was 9:20. She got her ticket, found a slot on the third of the six levels, and was not surprised to learn that Ripkin’s office was all the way up on the skyscraper’s top floor, a king surveying the world he had conquered.

  When she stepped off the elevator, there was no question which way to go: Down to the right, a wall of glass bearing the Ripkin Development logo cordoned off a reception area that had been built around an enormous crystal sculpture depicting the letter R.

  Anne entered and went over to the black granite desk. The attractive blonde was like any other piece of art, dressed in black, her hair slicked back into a bun that gave Anne a headache just looking at it.

  “I’m Inspector Ashburn,” she said. “I’m here to see Mr. Ripkin.”

  Flashes of Bud Fox showing up at Gordon Gekko’s office and getting put on the back burner for hours made her think of her boss. Thank God Don was on Soot duty for however long this took.

  “But of course. He’s expecting you.”

  But of course? When was the last time she’d heard that expression? She wasn’t going to argue with the access, however.

  “Please come this way.”

  The blonde didn’t so much stand up as levitate, and as she led the way down a long gray hall, Anne wondered whether she was a fembot or something. She moved like her bones were wire and she had ball bearings for joints.

  Utterly bizarre, Anne thought as she looked around at all the closed doors: She didn’t hear any phones ringing. There were no voices. Nobody else striding the corridors.

  “Mind if I ask you something?” she said.

  The blonde glanced over. “As you wish.”

  As I wish? Is this an Alfred Hitchcock movie? “Is this Ripkin Development headquarters?”

  “Ripkin Development takes up the top ten floors. This floor is solely for Mr. Ripkin.”

  “An entire floor. Wow.”

  “Mr. Ripkin is a very busy man.”

  “Well, I would think he would be with all the buildings he owns.”

  “You are very lucky Mr. Ripkin decided to see you. Ordinarily, he is booked months in advance.”

  “Arson should be a priority. Especially when it happens on property you own.”

  “Mr. Ripkin is not worried about meeting with you.”

  Okay, Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration. “I didn’t catch your name?”

  If she said Phyllis, Anne was going to believe for sure God existed.

  “Persephone.” The future Stepford wife stopped in front of a pair of dove-gray doors that were tall as a waterfall. “Please wait here. I will announce you to Mr. Ripkin.”

  As she was left to her own devices, Anne wondered if Mr. Ripkin was sleeping with good ol’ Persephone/Phyllis. It was a fair bet that was a yes. Loyalty like that either had to be bought with a good wage, or it had to be seduced with the promise of a good lifestyle. Besides, hadn’t the original Mrs. Ripkin died a few years back?

  The doors opened again. “Mr. Ripkin will see you now.”

  As the woman stood to one side, Anne entered a room she knew she was never going to forget. The ceilings were even higher than the entry doors, and the square footage was nearly that of a hotel lobby. Everything was covered in gray marble, great sheets of the stone covering the walls and the floor. No rugs, no paintings, just windows on three sides, and three or four sitting areas with a couple of conference tables.

  Framed against a view out to the vast ocean, “Mr. Ripkin” was seated behind a vast desk that was uncluttered by even a phone. The man was seventy, but he looked sixty, no doubt the result of some very expensive, very subtle plastic surgery. His hair was snow white and thick as a snow drift, and his expression of calm professionalism reminded her of a hockey goalie’s mask.

  He was protecting a lot behind that composure, making sure no one pucked him in the face.

  Anne instantly mistrusted him, and she thought about that stationhouse the man had bought the department.

  “Inspector Ashburn.” Voice was even, the townie in the vowels mostly brushed out, like stain from a cloth. “How nice of you to come.”

  As if he’d issued an invitation? “Thanks for seeing me.”

  “Perhaps we’ll sit over here. Would you care for coffee? Tea?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He issued a curt nod and she knew without looking over her shoulder that Persephone was going to vanish sure as a shadow chased away by the light. And as they proceeded over to some silk-covered chairs, Anne was aware that her hand was beginning to sweat.

  “You will sit here,” he announced as he pointed to a seat that appeared to be no different from any other.

  Yeah, except for the wire that was running out the back and into the floor. And she would have chosen another, but she was willing to bet that whatever he had had installed in the thing was the same in all of the others . . . except for the one he p
icked.

  As Anne sat, she wondered what was being monitored in her body. How much was being recorded. There were ways now that people could measure the slightest deviations in skin temperature, weight shift, breathing.

  She sat on the very edge of the cushion. “So about those warehouse fires.”

  The man smiled slowly, and it was only then that she realized his eyes were the color of his decor, the color of dangerous fog on the sea.

  “Won’t you sit back and relax, Inspector Ashburn. We aren’t in any kind of hurry.”

  Anne glanced at the double doors she’d entered through. “My boss is expecting me back in the office ASAP.”

  “He’ll wait.”

  chapter

  28

  As the engine’s brakes squealed and Company 17 pulled up to an apartment building with a second-story burn, Danny hopped down to the pavement and went for the lines in the back.

  “Dannyboy, you’re on clear first.” Captain Baker nodded at Moose. “You, too.”

  “Roger that.”

  He and Moose got their tanks and masks on and then went for some additional equipment, pulling up the panels. As the lineup of axes and tools was revealed, Moose palmed two long handles and turned to Danny.

  The sight of the axes made Danny sweat underneath his turnouts. “I’ma take the adz.”

  “Why? We need axes to get through doors—oh. Sorry.”

  Don’t dwell on it. Just keep going.

  Danny grabbed a hickory-handled length that had a fifteen-inch steel blade on one end and looked forward to using it to pry open doors. Besides, one axe was enough. They didn’t both need one.

  As they jogged over to the front door of the apartment building, he kept going with the list of reasons why there was a strategic imperative for him not to have an axe.

  Residents were funneling out of the entrance, some still in bathrobes even though it was by now eleven thirty in the morning. Most were elderly and he anticipated a lot of cats. Meanwhile, the building’s alarm system was going off, the shrill ringing hurting his ears. And the smell of smoke was heavy in the air.

  This is a hot one, he thought. He could tell by the scent.