by Brandy Ayers
“After that, Trudy was removed to a group home more equipped to deal with her issues. I know my parents still checked up on her, made sure she had everything she needed, that she was being treated well. Visited her. But I never saw her again.”
Trey stood again, crossing to the big bay window that face the street. “Until last year. She came to a church service one day out of the blue. Said she wanted to apologize. Make amends. My parents helped her get a job at a restaurant. She started volunteering at the church, made meals for the fire station. Everything seemed great. My parents welcomed her as parent of the family, like they had for all their charges. All their parishioners. Six months ago, she asked if we could go on a date. Said now that she’s an adult, too, it wasn’t inappropriate. I turned her down. But she kept asking until I told her I’d never be able to see her like that.”
“Six months ago. When the trash fires started.” Of course, Charlotte had known where the story was going the whole time, but for some reason, his single, sad nod was like a blow to the chest. Charlotte crossed her legs under her on the floor and collapsed back against the sofa. “Why didn’t you tell anyone now?”
“I didn’t put it together at first. Initially, the trash fires were blamed on a group of homeless guys in the area trying to stay warm in the colder than normal fall. But then, I noticed a pattern. At first, I thought I was just being paranoid. Trudy had been doing so well, helping my parents and the community.” Trey shook his head, his fist pounding against his leg almost absent mindedly. “It wasn’t until the fire after our first time sleeping together that I really put it together.”
“The house, where the two firefighters and cat woman were injured?”
Trey nodded. “Trudy was there. At one point, you approached her for an interview, but she just walked away without answering. But she stopped to look at me first. And I knew. The fires were my fault. I upset her, and this was her outlet. The morning you woke up and over heard me on the phone, that was Trudy. I was trying to get her to turn herself in. To get help. But she refused.
“Then she started talking about you. About how pretty you were. Started saying some cryptic stuff about how easily fire takes something beautiful and turns it to ash. She never out right threatened you, but I got the message. That is why I disappeared. I thought if I just left you alone, she would stop. But I think at that point, it had gotten a hold of her again. Or maybe she never stopped. I don’t know. That time apart from you killed me though. I thought we were so new, had only been talking for a few weeks, it should have been easy to give you up, especially if it meant knowing you were safe. But it wasn’t easy. I spent all my time thinking about where you were. If Trudy was still watching you. Worrying about you. Then I saw you at the press conference, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away. Bekah’s little speech was the last push I needed.”
With each piece of his story, the puzzle became clearer and clearer. The arsonist had been quiet during the week they were apart. Since they had picked back up, so had the frequency of the fires. “But the fire today was outside your zone. She'd only been setting fires in your jurisdiction.”
“Yeah, now the fires are more pointed at me. The one yesterday was at the building where her therapist used to have his office. Some of the houses she’s targeted were where other foster families she stayed with lived. With each one, she cares less and less about human life getting in the way. It’s why I’ve been so insistent on always being with you. I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time before she tries to hurt you.”
Anger swelled up inside Charlotte. “And the woman at the door, that was Trudy?”
Trey nodded.
“Why haven’t you gone to the authorities with all of this? You stood at that press conference and listened as they told everyone to be on the lookout for a white unemployed male. You could stop these fires, and yet you’re just sitting this information. You say you want to keep me safe, but you are really just protecting a woman with no regard for human life.”
“I didn’t have proof.” Trey whispered, shame lacing his words. “This is all just conjecture. She denies everything. She’d been smart, not using any unusual accelerants. Not leaving behind evidence. Other than the one fire, she never sticks around to watch the aftermath. I would have been laughed out of the chief’s office if I brought this to him. I tried to get her to turn herself in so many times. But she denies it every time. Says I’m harassing her, and she’s going to turn me in. But what you saw on that video, that was me telling her I was done trying to help her. I’m going to the chief today. I just wanted to make sure you were okay first.”
Words refused to come. Her mind reeled. Trey had known all this time, and he’d done nothing. How many lives had been risked so that he could try and help a woman out of a misplaced sense of obligation?
“I know I’ve disappointed you Charlotte. I swear, I thought I was doing the right thing.” Trey sat beside Charlotte on the floor, gathering her up into his arms.
As much as she wished it didn’t, his touch soothed her. Reassured her.
“I swear, I will make this right.” Trey was a good man. And sometimes good men made mistakes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Two weeks. It had been two weeks since Trey went to the authorities and told them what he knew about Trudy and her fascination with fire. They’d gone to the apartment she listed on her personnel paperwork at the restaurant where Mr. and Mrs. Smith had gotten her a job, but it was vacant. No one from the church had seen her either. She’d disappeared.
The fires had gone right with her. Nothing they could tie to her had happened since the South Side fire. Things seemed to be getting back to normal, though Trey still held tight to his insistence to accompany Charlotte everywhere. The closets in her apartment had quickly become stuffed with his clothes, though she didn’t remember there being a conversation about him leaving them there. They just started showing up.
After finding him waiting in the parking lot on several occasions, Charlotte made him a key, and now often came home to the scents of his cooking and Weasley standing by ready to accept scraps. Trey had even met her parents, who greeted him with their usual stoic disinterest, which he took in stride.
Slowly, Charlotte’s trust in him was rebuilding. The love she still hadn’t told him about deepened. The only thing holding her back now was pure fear.
The warmth of his solid body beside her each night had become so ingrained in her routine, that she woke as soon as he shifted away.
“Sugar, I got a call. Fire in a residence on Walnut. They’re asking for more man power.” His words had the same effect as a bucket of ice water pouring over her head.
Sitting up, she clutched the sheet to her naked chest, the space between her thighs still sore from the intense lovemaking from hours before. “Is it her?”
“I won’t know until I get there. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Trey leaned over and placed a gently kiss to her forehead. So different from the dominate way he’d taken her against the wall before dinner. “Get some sleep.”
Charlotte watched as he gathered his things and headed out for the scene of the fire. Just because Trudy had been silent for two weeks didn’t mean Trey was out of danger. His job would always be dangerous, and Charlotte would always worry about him when he left the comfort of her bed.
Unable to fall back asleep, Charlotte got up, pulled on the shirt that she had now claimed as hers, and padded over to her computer. It had been weeks since she checked in on the “Young and the Anxious” chatrooms, and she felt bad for neglecting her online friends. But more and more, she found she related to them less.
The new position had been an almost seamless transition, though she still hated having to present in front of the entire staff each morning. Nerves would always be something she had to deal with, but they no longer held her back from taking the life she wanted. Part of that was thanks to Trey, not to mention Bekah, Mira, and Michelle, but it was also her. Somewhere along the way, she began to
trust herself. Her instincts. Her emotions. She wasn’t her mother, and she never would be.
The cell phone still laying on her nightstand lit up and danced around the table top with an incoming call. Dread seeped through her skin when she saw it was Kym. Her friend would never call this late unless something was wrong.
“What’s wrong?”
“Char, it’s the shop. There’s a fire. It’s gone.” Familiar panic laced Kym’s words, the woman’s normally sexy voice thin as gauze. “Please. I have nowhere. Please.”
Charlotte pulled on the jeans crumpled nearby on the floor, flying into action as soon as her closest friends pleading words reached her ears. “I’m coming. Just breathe, it will be okay.”
The phone buzzed in her hand with another incoming call. Work. “Kym, find a paramedic and tell him you are having a panic attack. I will be there as soon as I can.”
The call from WQUZ went to voicemail while Charlotte listened for Kym to follow her instructions. But another quickly came in right after the first. Confident her friend was getting help, Charlotte switched lines.
“Charlotte, you have to come in. I don’t know what to do.” It was her replacement on the overnight shift, Kennedy. “There are four active fire calls right now. Two in zone seven. Two in zone four. I don’t have enough people to send, and they all sound bad.”
“Okay, just breathe.” Charlotte had a sudden premonition that she would be saying those words a lot that night. “Call Mira. Get her and Chris to the zone four. They live closest, and Chris can pinch hit as a breaking news reporter. Get Rufus to meet Mira, and send Kyle to meet Chris. Send your photographer at the station to zone seven, call Bekah and Sean and get them there. Sean is going to have to shoot his own video until we find another photographer to meet him, so make sure he takes his camera. I’ll call Michelle and fill her in. But I can’t come to the station. One of the fires is at my friend’s place, and I need to go help her.”
Finally dressed and with the immediate needs under control, Charlotte grabbed her purse and headed for the front door. But the moment her hand touched the door knob, she pulled it back with a hiss, the palm of her hand immediately reddening with a severe burn.
Smoke.
The heat from the metal pressed against her skin forced her mind back to her apartment, and not to work and Kym’s studio. That’s when she smelled it. Gas. Smoke. Melting plastic. Placing her uninjured hand on the door, it radiated heat. A glance at her feet showed smoke seeping in under the door frame.
Slowly, she backed away, trying to think of another way out of the apartment. But she didn’t have a fire escape. Before her eyes, the smoke turned from a milky grey to inky black, flames licked up under the door, eating at the hollow wood like it barely existed.
Instinct kicked in, and Charlotte dropped to the ground on her stomach. A flash of Trey showing her how to use the extinguisher he had brought her ran through her mind. She crawled quickly to the kitchen, grabbing the heavy red canister in her hands.
The cool metal was like balm to her blistering palm, and part of her wanted to stay where she was, curled up in the kitchen and wait for help. Her lungs burned already, and she’d only been breathing in the smoke for no more than a minute. Her heart thud in her chest, seeming to fight for every beat.
A flash of orange down the hall got her moving. “Weasley, come here boy.” Charlotte coughed around the words, army crawling as best she could with her arms full, chasing after the cat to her bedroom.
Once in her bedroom, she kicked the door shut behind her. Weasley screeched and wailed under her bed, making Charlotte’s attempt to extract him twice as difficult. Finally, she managed to pull him from under the bed, and stuffed him into the duffle bag Trey had used for a while to transport his clothes back and forth from his apartment, zipping it over the protesting cat and flinging it over her shoulder.
So far, the smoke hadn’t made it to her room yet, and she looked around frantically for a way out. The bathroom windows weren’t big enough to fit through. The one and only window in her room was painted shut, something she had often thought about trying to fix every spring when she wanted fresh air in her room, but never got around to taking care of. While searching fruitlessly for an exit, the smoke increased, until she was once again hacking and coughing, needing to drop back down on the floor to get under the smoke.
With her cheek pressed to the floor, she could see the orange glow through the space under her door. Fear paralyzed her. The certainty that she would die here, on the floor of her cheap apartment while her best friend across town lost everything, and her boyfriend fought another fire miles away.
He would never know how much she loved him. The fear that had held her back from saying those words seemed insane now. She’d give anything to go back to the night before, while he held her down in her bed, pounding into her from behind, telling her over and over what a pretty, dirty girl she was. And how much he loved it. How much he loved her. No matter how much, she didn’t say the words, Trey never hesitated to tell her exactly how he felt. To make sure she knew. She’d go back and tell him how much she loved him throwing her around like his own sexual rag doll, then cradling her against his chest and whispering the sweetest words into her ear.
Claws dug into her back through the thick canvas bag, and Charlotte yelped at the sting of her cat’s sharp talons. But the pain broke her from the panic induced introspection. Calming her mind without the ability to practice her breathing exercises took effort, but she managed it, and took another look around.
To her right, the fire extinguisher she’d discarded to fight with her cat practically winked at her. She pulled it into her arms and rose up onto her knees, moving as fast as she could to her bedroom window.
She acted before the plan fully formulated in her mind. With all her strength, Charlotte pull the heavy tool back, and swung it forward, breaking the glass in the ancient windows. She was suddenly very happy her landlord sucked and never invested in upgrades to the house. Fresh air whooshed into the room for a split second before the smoke surged forward pushing it back out again. Not bothering to pick the remaining glass from the frame, Charlotte crawled out the window and perched on the porch roof beneath her. But that was as far as she could get. The turrets next to her were too steep to try and climb down. She would simply slide down to the pavement below.
Below, sirens sounded in the distance, the subtle red flashing of lights just visible past the neighboring houses. All she had to do was hold on and someone would arrive soon. Behind her, the fire crackled, enveloping her bedroom faster than she thought possible. The flames jumped and danced closer and closer to the oxygen feeding its destruction. She tried to inch away from the opening, but the roof was barely wider than the window itself.
“Charlotte!” Trey’s voice bellowed up from the sidewalk below.
Relief swamped Charlotte’s system until she slumped against the wall behind her.
Beneath her, the scene exploded in activity. Fire trucks screeched up to a stop on the street. Men ran, pulling hoses and ladders, Trey helping despite not being outfitted in his gear. The heat grew behind her, great radiating waves of blistering air washing over her skin and making her whimper in pain. Through it all, she kept her eyes glued to Trey.
A ladder banged against the house a foot from where she clung, shortly followed by Trey clambering up the rungs, despite shouted protests from the men swarming the street below. As soon as he reached her, he reached out, wrapping his arm around her waist and lifting her onto the ladder in front of him like she weighed nothing.
“I’ve got you, Char. I’ve got you.” The low voice she’d become so familiar with during their time together broke something free inside Charlotte’s chest. Great wracking sobs shook her body. “It’s okay. We are going to climb down this ladder and get you checked out. Okay?”
Charlotte nodded, the burning in her throat from both the smoke and her emotions preventing any words from coming out.
“You got Weasley
in here?” Trey poked the back still slung over her shoulder, and the very angry cat hissed. Slowly, with one of his hands on her hip, the other holding the ladder, Trey guided Charlotte down to the ground. To safety.
Paramedics swarmed her, hooking oxygen to her face, inspecting and cleaning a few minor burns on her arms. One unfortunate man tried to give oxygen to Weasley, and got three angry scratches down his arm for the trouble.
Trey never left her side. They sat together on the gurney, watching as the building Charlotte had lived in since college burned to nothing but an empty shell. Her neighbors were all accounted for, and she said a silent thank you to whatever greater force out there might be listening.
“Ma’am, we need to take you to the hospital for treatment.”
Charlotte shook her head, pulling the blanket that had appeared over her shoulders tighter to her neck. “No, I’m fine.”
The completely engulfed structure before them had become almost unrecognizable. Yet Charlotte couldn’t stop staring at it. Part of her could even see the beauty in the flames, the swift efficiency it had used to completely level the old house.
“Is this what it feels like for her? This awe. Is this why she likes fire?” She got it. For a moment Charlotte understood why the troubled girl would find solace in such a destructive force. It didn’t discriminate. Didn’t listen to reason. To fire, everything was equal. Everything was fuel for its mission.
“I don’t know, Char. I don't think she even knows.” Trey buried his face in the crook of her neck, kissing the sensitive skin there. “I almost lost you. All I know is I’m never letting anything like this happen to you again.”
His words warmed her, thawed some of the shock she had slipped into. A warm, wet tear dropped onto her collarbone, and she stroked his shoulder, comforting him and herself.