“I love you,” she whispered.
Brad closed his eyes again. He didn’t want to hear those words. He wanted to do this and get it over with. If she didn’t have the good sense to get out of the way, then that wasn’t his problem.
“I love you,” she repeated, and kissed him again. A surge of energy shot through his body; it was a feeling he’d never experienced. A chill, maybe, but something better. Something more intimate.
Pulling the pistol away from his ear, he wrapped his arms around Nicki and gave himself up to her kiss. A new passion welled from his soul, filling his chest and then his head. It was a wonderful feeling, a liberating feeling. It was as if the darkness parted and revealed for him a glimpse of what the world was supposed to be. He let the pistol slide to the floor.
Grasping her face in his hands, he looked into her eyes, and all the pain and the fear were gone.
Then something on the floor behind her caught his attention.
Nicki sensed that something was wrong. “What is it?” she asked, following his eye line.
Brad scowled as he tried to make sense of a piece of black spaghetti on the floor. Snatching the gun back into his hand, he rose to his knees and moved in for a closer look. He had to get within two feet before he understood. “It’s a goddamn camera,” he said, his voice leaden with disbelief. “They’ve been watching everything we do!”
* * *
The Mellings’ kitchen erupted in noise. “Oh shit!” someone shouted. “We’re made. He sees the camera.”
The last thing they saw in the television screen before it went blank was the enormous muzzle of Brad’s pistol.
* * *
To his left, Trooper Matt Hayes saw Luis fumbling for the transmit button on his portable radio. Before he could get to it, someone else on the channel yelled, “Shots fired! Shots fired! All units report status.”
While Luis announced to the world that the side-three sniper team was unhurt, Matt settled in behind his scope to do business. It wouldn’t be long now.
* * *
Nicki screamed, thinking Brad had gone through with the suicide. Even when her brain had reconciled with her eyes, and she realized that Brad was still alive, she didn’t comprehend what had just happened.
Brad’s fury had returned. “Those bastards!” he yelled. “They’ve been watching us!” He thought of the cops who’d been standing outside when he opened the door to release Gramma, and now he understood how they knew to be there; why they seemed so calm when the door opened up.
“Goddammit!” he yelled, and he fired a shot into the ceiling.
Nicki rose to settle him down, but as she tried, the room tilted sideways. “Come on, baby, don’t—”
A new sound from outside startled them, and as they turned, the curtains jumped as the front window broke. A smoking canister sailed into the room, skipping across the floor in two quick hops before settling against the wall closest to them. Nicki felt her lungs close, and she had the sensation that someone had poured ground glass into her eyes.
Just like that, someone had stolen all the air.
“Tear gas,” Brad growled, and despite his wound, he darted to the corner where the smoking canister lay, picked it up, and hurled it back toward the window. The canister was hot—like a pot on the stove is hot—and he yelled and cursed as the skin on his palm blistered. “Shit!”
The hole in his belly made his throw an awkward, ugly thing. The canister barely made it as far as the window before it got hung up in the curtains and fell to the floor.
“Close your eyes!” he yelled. He pulled his T-shirt over his head and off, handing it to Nicki. “Breathe through this,” he said, and he pressed it against her face.
Nicki didn’t respond, couldn’t respond as the gas inflamed her sinuses and throat. She felt consciousness slipping. They needed to get out of there. To stay was to die, if not by the onslaught of bullets, then by suffocation. She remembered her doctor telling her to be careful around cigarette smoke and other pollutants. He told her that she’d be more sensitive than others.
Brad knew they had to go. The siege was over now. He’d never even considered the use of tear gas as the first wave of their assault. It had never even occurred to him that he wouldn’t have a chance to shoot it out with a team of armed men swarming in through the front and back doors simultaneously. How foolish he’d been for not thinking about it. From the cops’ perspective, it was immeasurably safer to have their prey come to them than the other way around.
But Nicki wasn’t walking anywhere. She wasn’t crawling anywhere. With barely enough strength to stand a few minutes ago, she looked hardly alive now, every breath an exercise in torture. He knew how bad it was for himself; he couldn’t imagine the agony she was having to endure.
“We’re getting you out of here,” he said.
Blood spilled from his belly wound now, cascading down his leg under his trousers, painting a meandering crimson line down onto the carpet. He dreaded the thought of what was coming as he kneeled in front of Nicki, preparing to hoist her onto his shoulder to carry her outside. “Just a little more,” he said, and to give himself the use of both hands, he let Ben Maestri’s pistol fall to the carpet.
The front wall erupted in flame. Brad guessed that the tear gas canister had heated the fabric of the drapes to its ignition point, and once ignited, the fire spread as if fed by gasoline. Flames leaped from the floor to the ceiling in the front of the room, and from there, they spread across the ceiling, igniting everything in their path.
Brad had never seen anything like it. In the time it took for him to wonder at the speed of the fire’s spread, the temperature in the room shot from merely stifling in the summer heat to untenable, radiating from the front wall and the ceiling. Brad pulled Nicki down onto the floor, where the temperature was survivable, but the concentration of gas the greatest.
Sputtering and choking to grab a breath of air, Brad vomited, but paid it no mind. They had to get out of the house. Now. And the front door was no longer an option.
Nicki had gone completely limp, as inanimate as a dress-up doll, incapable of aiding her own rescue. Brad tied his T-shirt around her nose and mouth, hoping to filter out some of the rancid atmosphere, and then wrapped his right arm around her chest, under her arms—a hold that he vaguely remembered from a YMCA water rescue course. Crawling on his wounded side, he began to drag her across the carpet toward the kitchen and its door to freedom. It was an agonizing, impossibly slow journey.
After fifteen seconds yielded only a few feet of distance, it occurred to him that he faced a far more gruesome death than he’d ever imagined.
* * *
Carter felt his sanity slipping. They’d been so close to a peaceful resolution. Brad had put his gun down, for God’s sake! Now that the command post had been blinded, a violent outcome was guaranteed. Through the garbled mess of the radio traffic, he heard excited cries of shots fired, and here in the tiny kitchen, everyone was shouting orders at once.
One urgent cry cut through the commotion like a torpedo through water: “Team one to command, we’ve got heavy fire showing in the front of the building.”
Carter jumped at the words. “What does that mean?” he asked the room. When no one answered, he grabbed Donnelly’s arm. “What kind of fire? Are people shooting?”
“No,” Donnelly said. “The building’s on fire.” He turned back to his team at the table. “Alert fire and rescue. Have them start units this way.”
“Wait.” Carter pulled him back. “Nicki’s lungs can’t take that kind of assault. Are you getting them out?”
Donnelly’s look was cold and unreadable. “We’ll do what we can if they surrender, but we’re cops, not firefighters. I’m sorry.”
“But they’ll die in there.”
* * *
Trooper Hayes couldn’t believe the speed with which the fire grew. At first, there was only the white mist of the gas canister, but then, out of nowhere, it seemed, the smoke turned black
and started to roll out of the far side of the building. After he heard the sound of breaking glass, all hell broke loose. Literally. A fireball rolled out of the front of the building and into the air, igniting the roof in the process.
All in less than a minute.
His earpiece popped as someone broke squelch. “Team one to team three, the front of the building is impassible. If they make a move, it’ll be on your side. Keep your eyes open.”
“Shouldn’t we at least try and rescue them?” Luis asked.
“They promised to shoot anyone they saw,” Matt said. “They’re the ones who set the rules, not us.” They’re dead, Matt thought. Or if they weren’t, they would be in another couple of minutes. At least the old woman and the boy were safe.
* * *
Brad moved like an inchworm on his side, each cycle of arms and knees taking him only a foot and a half and lighting an even hotter fire in his belly. He yelled out against the pain, if only to fight off his own approaching wave of unconsciousness.
Finally, he reached the kitchen. He kicked open the swinging door and heaved himself and Nicki across the threshold onto the cool tile floor. The atmosphere in here was better than it had been in the front room, at least a hundred degrees cooler, and the air was nearly breathable.
But it was getting bad quickly. Looking back toward the living room, he saw the roiling cloud of black smoke pushing through the opened kitchen door. He kicked it shut again, but it was too late. Through swollen, teary eyes, he watched in horror as the killing cloud rolled across the ceiling and banked toward the floor. Beside him, Nicki stirred, barking out a horrid, pain-racked cough.
“We’re close,” he rasped. “Hang in there. We’re close.”
Without the friction of the carpet, it was easier going. He dragged her to the back door and smiled. Just a few feet separated them now from a breath of air. They’d step outside, and the miserably thick summer air would taste like honey. Like life.
He reached up, turned the knob, and pulled.
Shit! The key was on top of the goddamn refrigerator.
* * *
Carter couldn’t take it anymore. Nobody even noticed when he strode out of the Mellings’ kitchen and into the night. The rain had stopped. Overhead, the moon was trying to force its way through the clouds.
Disoriented at first, Carter stepped down off the tiny stoop into the lumpy assortment of sand and grass that masqueraded for a lawn in this part of the world, and walked a half-dozen paces to the left. As soon as he cleared the side of the Mellings’ house, there was no missing the scene of the standoff.
In the distance lay a patch of light brighter than noon, projecting up toward the heavens from behind a dune. In the center of the shaft of light, a plume of black smoke climbed toward the sky. “Oh, my God,” he breathed.
“They won’t let you go down there,” said a voice from the darkness to his right.
Carter turned to see an old woman and a young boy sitting together in the sand. They were just silhouettes, but he could make out enough detail to see that the boy had a bandage on his head.
“It’s my house and they wouldn’t let me go,” the boy clarified.
Carter felt an inexplicable rush of emotion as he saw these two. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Are you Carter Janssen?” the old woman asked.
“I am.”
“Then I have something very sad to tell you. That’s a very mixed-up boy in there, that Brad. He’s going to die tonight.”
Carter felt a cold fist grip his insides. Please just let him die alone, he didn’t say.
“I’m June Parker, by the way.” She reached around the boy to extend her hand. “This is my grandson, Scotty Boyd.”
Carter shook the woman’s hand and then Scotty’s.
She continued, “Before he released me, that Brad told me to tell you something when I saw you. He said that his guts were yours to do with what you want. He said he wanted them to go to Nicki, and that I’d have to be a witness to make that happen. Does that make sense to you?”
“Yes, it does.” Carter felt like a ghoul.
“There’s something else,” Gramma said. “He said that nothing comes for free. That you owe him a favor.”
Carter waved her off. “Not now. Tell me about it later.”
“No, it has to be now,” she insisted. “He said it was very important, and if I don’t pass it along now, I’ll forget some details.”
Carter sighed. He didn’t want this. He didn’t need this. But he listened.
It took less than a minute.
* * *
The smoke in the kitchen had banked down to less than four feet above the floor. Against the backdrop of the white light outside, the smoke layer might as well have been constructed with a straight edge, so sharp was the dividing line between life and death. With the smoke came unbelievable heat as the ravenous flames burned through the flimsy kitchen door and raced along the ceiling, consuming everything in their path.
Somewhere in that inferno lay the key to the dead bolt, placed so diligently and proudly on top of the refrigerator.
Keeping his head as low as he could, Brad slapped around the top of the refrigerator, hoping to feel the key. It had to be there somewhere. It had to be.
And there it was, farther back than he’d thought, and as his fingertip hit it, he could just barely make out the sound of the key sliding across the top of the fridge toward the back. “No!” he shouted, but there was nothing to do. He heard the unmistakable sound of the key falling off the far edge of the refrigerator, tumbling down through the tubing and wiring before coming to rest on the floor.
Brad hammered the refrigerator door with his fist. “Goddammit!”
“Brad?” Nicki rasped.
“Right here.” He joined Nicki on the floor near the door. Across the room, all of ten feet away, the entire doorjamb leading to the living room seethed with fire.
“A window,” Nicki said. She tried to raise herself to a sitting position.
“Bars, remember?” To keep out home invaders, he thought wryly. Or maybe just to ensure they never left alive.
Think, Brad told himself. There was always a way. The thought of breaking down the door was too much to contemplate, not only because of the agony, but because of the futility of it. He remembered the size of the dead bolt, the sturdiness of the door. That wasn’t even in play.
And the chances of rescue were zip. If I see a face I’ll shoot it. Great call there. So, what was the choice? Surely, there had to be something.
Of course! But he’d left it on the floor in the other room.
Chapter Ten
Pressing himself into the unyielding floor in an effort to get away from the searing heat of the fire that roiled above him, Brad crawled back through the flaming doorjamb, out into the living room. He needed his pistol.
Before the fire had started, the distance between the kitchen and the front room had seemed like nothing at all, just a few feet. But now, as he felt the skin on his back wrinkling like old parchment, and the stench of burning hair mixed with the rest of the horrific olfactory assaults, it felt as if he were crawling the length of a swimming pool.
Please let it be there, he prayed. As if it could have wandered off on its own.
There it was, right where he thought, and thank God for it. Seconds meant everything in this heat. His clock had ticked down to nothing, and he still had to make it back to the kitchen. The pain of the fire on his back eclipsed the pain of his bullet wound.
The terror of burning to death had eclipsed his fear of living.
* * *
Nicki was dying. Of this, she was one hundred percent certain. And as she watched Brad crawl back into the inferno that was the living room, she knew that she would die alone. Even as the panic welled up, she realized the bitter irony in the prayer she offered up to God to allow her to die of asphyxia before the fire could get to her.
For the past nine months, ever since she’d first gotten her terri
ble prognosis, she’d dreaded the slow suffocation that would eventually take her. Now, as she lay on her back, helpless to move, watching the fire roll across the ceiling of the kitchen, she saw suffocation as a fine alternative to immolation.
Once Brad disappeared back into the burning living room, Nicki started counting. She arbitrarily decided that twenty seconds was all the time he could have in there and survive. She counted aloud, so Brad could hear her and zero in on the sound of her voice. “One and two and three and four and . . .” Ten to get in, ten to get out. Anyone can do anything, she figured, for ten seconds.
When she got to twelve, she started to worry for real. At eighteen, she knew it was over. Brad was dead, had to be. Incinerated in his effort to save her. Despite that, she found herself awash in an odd sense of calm. Even if she could have mustered the strength or the wind for a scream, she wasn’t sure that she’d have tried. Soon, they’d be dead together, forever. Maybe that was the whole purpose of this terrible trick God had played on them. The fire would speed their peaceful, eternal reunion in Heaven. And it would be Heaven, too. If she and Brad were together, how could it be anything but?
“Nicki! Are you still there?”
It was Brad! “I’m here!” she rasped. She could barely hear herself.
He touched her leg. “We’re outta here.”
He had eight .40 caliber rounds in his gun, and there wasn’t a lock in the world to resist that kind of attack. The smoke in the kitchen had banked down impossibly low, until the doorknob was the last thing visible before the air became a deadly cloud. “Cover your ears,” he said, and he took aim.
* * *
Matt Hayes saw the back door jump as the bullets ripped through the wood. In the sharpness of the floodlights, he could see every detail as chips of wood flew from the door and its jamb.
Next to him, Luis yelled into his radio, “Shots fired! Shots fired on side three. We’re taking fire.”
“No, we’re not,” Matt said, but his spotter wasn’t listening. From what Matt could see, the perps were trying to shoot themselves out of an inferno.
Time to Live: Part Five Page 8