Chapter 73
Darger and Luck still huddled near the tree when the wind changed. She could see the currents adjust, the ripples in the air morphing, shifting gears, changing directions. The smoke once spiraling away from them now closed on their location, veered toward them as if seeking them out.
The black clouds grew thicker and thicker in the air around them until she couldn’t see the liquid movement of them anymore. Only the black sheen of it, the shadow of it as opaque as a steel wall.
The night grew darker as the smoke descended and blackened around them. No more stars. No more fire hemming them in on all sides. The raging, writhing orange replaced by a velvet curtain of blackness.
The smoke stung her eyes even if she couldn’t really see it anymore. She felt a couple of tears drain down from the corners, streaks running down her cheeks. There should be more, she thought, but she was running dry now. The heat was cooking the fluid out of her little by little.
Her mouth was so dry, her tongue kept getting stuck to the roof of her mouth, felt like some weird sponge in her face. She tried to swallow, tried to get the saliva flowing, but she only started to cough again, a dry rasp that shook her ribcage.
“We better get low,” Luck said, his voice coming out of the darkness to her left.
She wasn’t sure it mattered now, couldn’t imagine the smoke was any less dense at ground level, but it couldn’t hurt.
She reached for him, found his shoulders. Kept him steady as he rolled over onto his belly, trying to make sure that the bone protruding from his ankle didn’t jab into the ground and jolt fresh pain up the limb.
And then she scooted onto her stomach as well, her chest and arms poked by the pointy bits of the mulch. She pressed her face down into the jacket. Breathed what fresh air she could. The fabric was mildly damp at best now. She wasn’t even quite sure it was wet enough to truly be considered damp.
“We’re going to be OK, yeah?” Luck said.
His face was closer to hers now. His voice near her ear.
“Yeah,” she said. “I hope so.”
“Nah. I wasn’t asking. I’m telling you, Violet. We’re going to be OK.”
She wasn’t so sure about that, but she didn’t say anything. Even if a helicopter pilot could brave the conditions, if the chopper could handle the heat technically and fly in here for them, there was no way anyone could see them or much of anything now. Nothing but smoke.
She pictured the bird’s eye view of it. The smoke rolling over the land, over the parking lot, over the hospital. Endless black clouds. Impenetrable dark that blotted everything out, making what seemed like the whole world an indistinguishable black mass. A writhing, darkling nothingness that snaked over and over itself in strange rivulets.
Smoke inhalation would most likely kill them now. She knew that. Understood it, even if it was hard to make much meaning of it here in the dark, face jammed down in a jacket tucked into some wood chips.
Luck’s hand found hers again. Gripped it. His palm was warm and dry and strong.
And she wondered what any of this had meant. Any of it. What was the use? The purpose? Why did all the people keep going? Keep fighting? Keep holding out hope for as long as they did? What for?
She shoved her face deeper into the jacket, burrowing her head down into the mulch, and the world seemed to drift away. To grow quiet.
Her thoughts turned to the man who had started all of this. He was getting what he wanted, wasn’t he? More destruction. More death. She wondered if they’d catch him after all of this. And as she fought to keep that last spark of hope from being extinguished, she wondered if it even mattered.
Chapter 74
The Chief paces the floor of the conference room, no less than thirteen distinct lines creasing his forehead. He hisses into the phone more than he talks into it, the little smartphone wedged against his ear, quivering along with the hand holding it there, inching back and forth as his nervous twitches adjust it endlessly.
Klootey can’t help but stop thinking about anything else to listen to him, piece together this conversation based on the one side he can hear. He notices that Beck is doing the same, eyes tracing Macklin’s path to one side of the room and then the other, pupils swinging back and forth like pendulums.
“I know that. You think I don’t know that?”
He listens for a few seconds. Goes on.
“Well, check again. Look, I’m asking you to check again.”
Klootey knows he’s asking after the helicopter, whether it will be able to make it into the hospital parking lot to retrieve Luck and Darger. It had been looking good, but the wind changed directions. Smoked everything up. Now, they aren’t so sure.
The Chief stops in his tracks. The whole room has gone quiet now. Watching him. Waiting to hear the news.
“No. We can’t… Are you serious? Hours? That’s not acceptable.”
Klootey looks over at Beck, sees tears beading along the bottoms of her eyelids, clear sparkles ready to spill down her face. Once again, he has to stifle a laugh, biting at the inside of his cheeks.
“Fine,” the Chief says. He rips the phone away from his ear and ends the call, jaw muscles rippling.
Then he seems to gather himself as he realizes the whole room is watching and waiting. He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. The deep creases on his forehead relax, now mere hairline folds.
“The smoke is going to be a problem,” he says, addressing the hushed room. “They said… I mean, if it doesn’t clear up…”
The tension in the room thickens like Cream of Mushroom soup.
Klootey is giddy inside. Ecstatic. He has to stop himself from tumbling across the room in a gymnastics routine full of handsprings and cartwheels and culminating in a series of pelvic thrusts. Has to cup a hand over his smile and cough a little to conceal the truth.
The Chief goes on, his voice sober as fuck. He’s just as oblivious as Bishop and Beck and all the rest, and that makes Klootey want to laugh even more.
“They think it could be hours before they can get a chopper in there to attempt the extraction. They just don’t know.”
Chapter 75
The wind moaned as it ripped past. Endless gusts of air brushing over her, prying at her shirt, her hair. Wind. This was what brought the never-ending smoke to them. Smothered them. Even after all they’d braved, all the energy they’d expended, the sacrifices they’d made to get to this parking lot, it would kill them in time. Nothing more than a strong breeze would kill them.
Darger kept her head down, face shoved into her wadded up jacket as deeply as it’d go. Eyes closed, each shallow breath tasting and smelling of wood chips and smoke.
Her throat burned, and her head swam. She felt on the verge of passing out, and despite the fuzziness in her head that made her thoughts sluggish and nonsensical, knew that would be bad. She had to fight. She took a deep breath and then another, fighting the urge to start coughing again.
Luck’s hand still gripped hers. She gave it a squeeze, and after a second of hesitation, he squeezed back, just barely. She could feel the strength leaving his fingers. He was still there for now, though. That was something.
With every breath, she wondered how many she had left. Twenty more breaths? Less? All of life was a countdown, though, wasn’t it? The number of heartbeats. The ticks on the clock. Always winding down to our end, one way or another.
How long had they been lying here like this now? Ten minutes? An hour? It felt like an eternity.
When she couldn’t stand it any longer, Darger lifted her head to look. She expected to see nothing but the writhing darkness. She braced herself for it, for the endless clouds of smoke that meant to suffocate them.
Instead she found patches of translucence perforating that thick wall of smoke. Bars of light that broke through the murk, lighting up the twisting coils of black and gray.
And through the gaps, she could see glimmers of the fire again. Coals of withered trees gl
eamed orange and angry in the night. The forest as it had been was gone. Only bones were left now.
Darger shoved her face back into her makeshift respirator. Breathed. Tried not to think about the ache in her throat where the heat and smoke had abraded the flesh.
Instead, she pictured those beams shining through the smoke again. Glimmers of hope that played in her head over and over.
A low-pitched whir entered her consciousness. It was so subtle and quiet at first that she wasn’t even sure if it was really there or if her pulse had suddenly taken on a strange beat. But after a moment, she recognized the sound.
A helicopter.
It whoomphed closer, the sound growing bigger, louder, crisper. Propellers slicing the night air.
God, let it be real. Don’t let it just be my imagination. Please.
She squeezed her eyelids closed hard. Would have cried if there were any tears left to spend.
She wondered if Luck could hear the chopper. He must, right? She gave his fingers a little squish. Waited.
His hand stayed slack. No response.
Then she felt a stirring of the air. A change in the wind that disturbed the wood chips around her, made them tremble and throb. Unlike the winds that had ripped past for the last while, coasting over them from northeast to southwest, the pressure now came straight down at them. It beat into the ground, snuffled at her shirt which had gone so dry as to feel stiff and overstarched at some point.
The chopper sound suddenly swelled in volume. Louder and louder.
She peeled her head up to take another look. Blinked smoke out of her eyes.
The helicopter sliced a hole in the murk and descended into it, seeming to appear there out of nowhere. It hovered just above the ground some 100 or so yards from them, between their tree and the hospital.
The circular motions of the propellers assailed the black cloud above. Twisted it up like a tornado. And the smoke seemed to dissipate over the lot.
Darger didn’t think now. She stood and waved her arms over her head. Jumped up and down.
There was no response from the shapes in the helicopter. The two silhouettes in the cockpit seemed oblivious. Unmoving.
One of them poked his head out the side door, cupped a hand over his brow. He scanned from left to right. Looking. Searching. Not seeing her.
Darger jumped higher, waved her arms harder. She tried to scream but something more like a croak came out, dry and raspy and small.
The man lowered the hand from his brow, and Darger was certain then that he was going to climb back in the chopper and move on. Leave them there. Surely they had other survivors to look for.
Instead, he lifted the hand again. His head bobbed as he turned and said something to the other man in the helicopter. It was a beat before she realized he was pointing at her.
Then he waved at her. A big, happy wave that reminded her of something a little kid would do.
The helicopter descended the last twenty feet or so and landed. The man jumped down from the cabin door and started running for her. The vortex of air from the spinning propellers fluttered against his bright yellow shirt, wrinkling and pressing the fabric flat to his chest and belly.
Darger stooped to Luck’s side, part of her unsurprised that he hadn’t moved even with all the commotion. She reached out a hand for him, grasped his upper arm.
His skin was strangely cool to the touch, and when she shook him, he did not wake.
Chapter 76
It’s a bad omen. Darger surviving? It puts a kind of fear in Klootey, in Jim.
He goes to take another slug of Mountain Dew and finds the can empty. Hollow. Sucks on the little glowing green liquid in the lip of the can. He feels the zing of the acidity touch his lips, but it’s not even enough to really taste it.
The bustle turns jubilant around the conference room once again. Someone put on some horrific dubstep music and now a couple of the younger officers dance in one corner of the room, making fools of themselves and giggling about it. Giddy like children. Another fleet is already headed down to the outdoor break area to celebrate by breathing smoke. The irony.
Word is, the choppers have both Darger and Luck in sight. Any moment now they’ll be loaded and lifted. Maybe it’s happening right this second, Klootey thinks, trying not to picture the heroic rescue. Barring some kind of Stevie Ray Vaughn type chopper crash, they’ll get out.
And he can’t sit here any longer. Cannot. Needs to get out of the conference room. Away from these people.
Probably better to lay low for this next little bit anyhow. Let things play out. If he leaves right now, he can still get the jump on hiding out, if that becomes necessary.
That’s what he’ll do. Stay one step ahead. He’ll feel out what they know at this point and react accordingly. He knows there’s no logical reason to believe that Darger has figured him out, but he fears it with such intensity that he can’t sit still, can’t stay here a second longer.
He pushes through the glass doors. Moves out into the corridor. The camera in his head pans down the hall, not dwelling on any of the faces as he rushes past, keeping them in that soft focus that seems less threatening, less real.
He’ll take the back stairs. Stepping into an elevator right now would feel like entering a cage. There’s less foot traffic that way, too. His bike sits in a parking garage a few buildings down from here, and he can cut along the backs of the buildings this way. Stay off the street.
He fishes his keys out of his pocket before he’s even outside. Clutches them in his hand as though simply touching them puts him closer to where he wants to be. A talisman he can focus his desire on, sharpening the edge of it in his mind.
A steel door angles out of the way, and he’s outside. One step closer. Almost there.
He’s half-startled by the small crowd on the other side of the door. But it’s only the smokers. A bunch of uniformed officers, most of them from the task force, mill around the pair of big ashtrays. The ceramic cylinders look like birdbaths full of sand. Cigarette butts pock this little beach, though. All their heads submerged, the filter ends sticking up at various angles.
Some of the officers still suck on the big stogies handed out earlier, probably having saved and relit them. Others opt for traditional cigarettes. A few vape instead, blowing out huge dense clouds of the stuff.
Klootey recognizes some of the faces. Gives a little wave. Better to play it cool. Just a dude heading home for some much needed shut-eye. No one worth noticing. Nothing to see.
The crowd seems pretty occupied in any case, a loud conversation bandying back and forth among the ring of smokers. They talk over each other to the point that Klootey can’t pick out any strands clearly.
He almost doesn’t hear the sound of the door opening and shutting again behind him. The noise certainly doesn’t register or mean anything until her voice comes just after it.
“Freeze.”
Right away the little mob of smokers falls quiet. Total silence fills the space behind him. Makes that cold surge of adrenaline course through his hands.
But Jim detects a note of fear in the voice. A shakiness. Doubt. He ignores it, takes a step.
“Officer Klootey,” she repeats. “I said, ‘Freeze.’”
When he hears her pull the bolt of her gun back, he stops. What the hell?
“Hands up.”
Whispers erupt from the crowd. Klootey picks out one sentence among the murmuring.
“What’s going on here?”
Captain Beck stands just behind Klootey now. So close he feels her breath on the back of his neck. She plucks his gun from his holster. Tells him to put his hands behind his back.
By the time she tightens the cuffs around his second wrist, he can’t feel his arms, his legs. Can’t feel anything at all.
Chapter 77
A knock came from outside of Darger’s hospital room, and then the door opened. Georgina Beck poked her head inside.
“Are you awake?”
Darger ga
ve a thumbs up. Her throat was so fucked she still couldn’t talk, even after several hours of oxygen and IV fluids. The oxygen mask would have made conversation awkward anyway, so she supposed it didn’t matter.
She swiped her phone from the bedside table and typed out a message. She pressed a button and the bionic voice of her phone spoke for her.
“You did it. You saved the day.”
Beck settled into the chair next to Darger’s bed.
“Oh heck. It was your profile that did it.”
“The profile is just words on paper. Applying it is the hard part, and you’re the one who did that,” Darger said.
Beck didn’t look convinced.
“At the very least, you deserve credit for an assist,” she said.
Darger’s thumbs danced over the screen, typing out a new message. Beck was the first visitor the nurses had allowed into her room, and though she’d gotten bits and pieces of what had transpired since she and Luck had been stranded, she was starved for more information.
“How long did you suspect it was Klootey? And when did you know for sure?”
“That’s what I’m trying to say,” Beck said, throwing her hands in the air. “I didn’t know anything for sure until I called my station and had them run a records check on vehicles registered to Klootey’s mother.”
Darger raised an eyebrow, indicating that Beck had jumped too far into her story, and she wasn’t following.
“OK. So the first thing was that he mentioned having been to Yucaipa before. Said he used to be into all this outdoorsy stuff when he was younger, went on camping trips in Wildwood State Park. That’s where one of the old fires was, the ones I told you about that were put down as accidental but fit the arsonist’s M.O. when I dug a little deeper.”
“How’d you end up talking to him in the first place?”
Beck frowned, her head rocking back a little on her neck.
Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Page 30