Hell's Hilltop

by J. A. Dennam

  Ignoring Chewie’s bid for attention, Miss Prim opened her large shoulder bag and pulled out a white paper sack. From it, she produced a prescription bottle, which she and Ty hunkered over while she gave him instructions. Ty nodded, took the bottle from her, said something that made her mouth spread into a mega-watt smile.

  Oh, please, you might as well just throw yourself at him.

  Then their lips met for a brief kiss.

  What? Seriously?

  When he wrapped his powerful arms around her, Rena had a bird’s-eye view of the wobbly breath Miss Prim released over his shoulder. Then he opened the door for her and she left.

  Instead of leaving her hiding place, Rena decided to study the contents of the magazine rack by his desk. Let him come to her. While she waited, a large square folder caught her attention and she pulled it out. The cover was a dead giveaway even before she read the title.

  2009 Missouri Firefighter Calendar

  Didn’t she hear something about Ty being in this thing? Rena opened it, flipped through the pages.

  “You’re sure this is the right medication?” Ty asked as he entered the office with the pill bottle and a glass of water. When he noticed what she held, he stopped dead in his tracks.

  Rena lifted a brow as she angled his picture toward the light. “Well, hellooooo, Mr. February.”

  The air had grown sultry with his mere presence, but now it positively sizzled as he approached her. “Give me that damned thing.”

  When he ripped it from her hands, Rena managed an affronted look. “Hey, I was looking at that.”

  “Why, so you can call me an opportunist again?” The calendar was tossed onto the desk with such force, it sailed over the side and onto the floor.

  “Aw,” Rena purred with sarcastic flare. “Did I touch a cord, Ty?”

  “I told you it was for—”

  “For charity. Yeah, I remember.”

  Why was she being such a bitch? Was it because his voice alone was enough to change the tempo of her pulse, or because she’d just watched him paw all over another woman?

  Shut up, Rena.

  Her guilt doubled when he took the high road and simply handed her the pill bottle. “Thioridazine, twenty-five milligrams. Are you sure,” he enunciated every word as he repeated the question, “this is the right medication?”

  With a sigh, she took the small bottle and studied the label. Though the repeated injections Derek used to bring her out of her catatonic state surely contained a cocktail of drugs, this was definitely the medication needed to keep her on track. She nodded in answer.

  “When’s the last time you were given this?”

  Rena held up the bottle, studied the pills inside. “Friday night after the escape. At least, I’m pretty sure this is what Derek was giving me.”

  Arms crossed, Ty's biceps seemed to double in size. He regarded her with an intensity that weakened her knees. “I was hoping for more than pretty sure.”

  The lines framing his sculpted mouth were a damned distraction. He still hadn’t shaved, and the burnt-gold stubble darkening his jaw pronounced its rugged shape. No wonder Miss Prim was such a hot mess around him.

  Shut up and focus, Rena. Attitude put bite in her words. “You know, not all antipsychotics work the same for everyone. It takes a while to be fitted with the right one, and this was the medication I was on before my life fell apart.” Why did that sound so pathetic?

  “If you missed two days, it could explain your recent break,” Ty suggested.

  Rena watched him with wary caution as he extended the glass of water in her direction. Aside from the animosity between them, why did she feel so damned taken care of? So nurtured?

  Isn’t that why you’re here?

  That damnable voice in her head needed to shut the hell up. Rena popped open the childproof cap, shook out a small pill. It went into her mouth and she accepted the glass of water. Only when it was going down did she realize how easily she had trusted it.

  “I hate to shoot down your theory,” she explained, handing the glass back, “but it’s not like turning a light switch on and off. If the medication is stopped, a person can take weeks to spiral into a psychotic break.” She followed him into the kitchen. “I think it’s more likely I hadn’t fully recovered yet, even though it seemed I had.”

  Ty emptied the glass down the drain with a look of discomfiture. She knew that look well, had seen it on plenty of faces when she was a child. He was wondering if, just because she was lucid now, he wouldn’t find himself tied to the bed again later on.

  But of all those affected, none were more fearful of her illness than she was. In a desperate bid to change the subject, Rena leaned over the counter. “So, how long have you been stringing Doris Day along?”

  Ty’s expression changed as he turned toward her, taken aback by her accusation. “She’s a friend. A very good one.”

  Rena smirked. “And how many times have you slept with her?”

  Though he looked “caught”, it didn’t last long. “Once,” he admitted. “A long time ago.”

  “Something tells me she’s hoping for another go-round,” she managed without a snarl.

  He glared at her from the sink. “We aren’t going to discuss Kelly. She’s a good person and a damn good nurse. And she’s the only reason we have that medication without the required doctor’s signature.”

  Rena rolled her eyes. “I doubt she would have been so helpful if she knew who they were for.”

  “She didn’t ask, so it’s a moot point.” His attention darted to the microwave clock. “Look, it’s almost nine. Are you ready to make that phone call?”

  Rena ran a hand through her hair, expelled a heavy breath. And they’d been having so much fun.

  “Yes. I’m ready.

  _____

  Once again, they flanked the kitchen counter as Ty dialed Melanie’s cell number. “Now, remember,” he said before hitting the “call” bar, “I told you she’s pissed at me. We weren’t too friendly during our last encounter.”

  In fact, Derek’s girlfriend had made it loud and clear she considered Ty the enemy.

  “What did you do?” Rena asked with an innocent mien.

  Ty lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug. “She threatened to destroy the bullet, so I blackmailed her into giving it to me. It may have cast a bad light.”

  That seemed to alarm Rena. “Why would she destroy the bullet?”

  “Out of spite for you. Out of anger because she thought Derek was dead and that he couldn’t benefit from it anymore.”

  Rena nodded. “I guess that’s understandable.”

  Really? A cure for psychotic disorders was no small thing. People had died for it, and Melanie had been ready to throw it away like a tube of lipstick.

  Apprehension tightened his gut when he finally put the call through. Sure enough, the voice that spilled through the speaker was dripping with attitude.

  “Unless you have something to report,” Melanie barked, “I’m not ready to talk to you yet.”

  Ty shifted uneasily, picturing the woman’s angelic face glowering with hatred. “Mel, I don’t have—”

  “You lying bastard. How could you do that to me?”

  Across from him, Rena smirked, eating up his misery with shameless delight. Ty pinched the bridge of his nose. “I take it Derek found you.”

  “Austin found him in the basement at IGP,” Melanie answered. “Before it exploded!”

  That was news to him, since he’d been incommunicado during his exhaustive search for Rena. “There was an explosion?”

  “Austin rigged two pounds of C4 in the electrical room in order to shut down the whole building. Derek was tied up right next door!”

  Ty noticed Rena’s body grow rigid at the mention of Austin’s name. Could she still be in love with her ex after all this time?

  “How would that have made you feel,” Melanie went on, “knowing you saved Derek just to have him killed for real?”

  He would hav
e felt like shit, but after Derek knocked him out and took off on his own, Ty had little control of the situation. “I didn’t know where he was or I would have told you the truth.”

  “How does that justify you lying to me?”

  His hand came down and plunked against the slate countertop. “Would you really want to grieve all over again if he ended up dead?”

  “That wasn’t your call to make!”

  Ty was this close to flipping Rena off when she shook her head in disgust. It had been her goddamned plan, after all, but Ty wasn’t one to lay blame for what was ultimately his choice. “If it makes you feel better, I’ve learned my lesson. No more harebrained schemes,” he said with a pointed finger.

  Rena rolled her eyes.

  “Where are you?” Melanie asked, her voice still soured with attitude. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  The women were ruthlessly testing his resolve, further reminding him why he was still a single thirty-year-old male. “Yep. Lookin’ at it right now.”

  Rena did flip him off, but the gesture was executed in a slow, graceful manner that made him want to smile.

  “Then you need to bring ‘it’ over here now.”

  Noting the urgency in her command, Ty’s back straightened. “Why, what’s wrong?”

  “Three-two-nine Baltimore Court, apartment 2-H.”

  Ty chose a pen from a coffee mug and scribbled the address on a pad of paper. Just when he asked again if something was wrong, Rena leaned close and whispered, “I want to go to Austin’s house.”

  The request stopped him short. His answering frown questioned her sanity.

  “I won’t discuss it over the phone,” Melanie answered through the speaker. “I’ve been careless enough as it is.”

  “The phones are untraceable, remember?” he reminded her, having been the one to set them all up with a secure way to communicate.

  “I don’t care. Rafferty escaped our makeshift prison last night and I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

  Though Ty had never laid eyes on the man whom everyone feared, his body tensed with alarm. Rena’s fair complexion turned ashen.

  “Since you never came in contact with him,” Melanie continued, “you shouldn’t be on his radar, but you should be careful.”

  Ty could imagine how tense they were at losing the upper hand. It went against everything he believed in, but perhaps they should have killed Rafferty instead of keeping him as a sort of insurance policy in the likely event of IGP backlash. “How did he escape?”

  Her answer was impatient, clipped. “Someone helped him, but we’ll explain that later. Just get you-know-who over here. And Ty… you better hurry.”

  “Sure, Mel, we’ll be right there. But before you hang up I just want to say… I’m sorry for hurting you.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  Ty stared at the red “call ended” message on his screen, dropped the phone and scrubbed his face with his hands. That had not gone well at all. “The bitch of it is,” he groaned against his palms, “I can’t even blame you.”

  Rena cocked her head. “But I enjoy being everyone’s punching bag.”

  “I should have known better. Told Derek what you were up to when I had the chance.”

  “Why didn’t you?” she asked with a raised brow.

  It was a question he’d asked himself every time the knot on his skull ached, reminding him of Derek’s reason for putting it there—because he thought Ty had betrayed him. “Because I gave you the benefit of the doubt.” Ty ripped the top page from the notepad and glared at her as he passed. “Last time I make that mistake.”

  Fifteen minutes later, all was forgiven when Rena appeared at the top of the stairs wearing his clothes. Was there anything she didn’t look sexy in? Since her black camisole was the only piece of clothing that had escaped the blood bath, she wore it beneath one of his open button-down shirts and a pair of Levis he’d found from his high school years. They were too big on her, but much to Ty’s chagrin, her curves refused to stay hidden.

  “A lot of cops live in this neighborhood,” he said, extending a ball cap and sunglasses in her direction. “How do you feel about riding in the back seat?”

  She took them, inspected the blue and yellow fire department logo on the hat. “Depends on the vehicle.”

  Moments later, a silver 2010 Camaro with dark tinted windows backed out of the gravel driveway with one male driver and a canine passenger.

  “Something tells me this is not out of the norm for you,” Rena griped from the floor of the back seat.

  “What,” Ty said as he shifted into first gear. “Sneaking an escaped fugitive through the outskirts of town?”

  She peered over the center console. “No, forcing your date to ride in the back while your mutt gets shotgun.”

  Ty turned on the radio. Classic rock filled the cockpit. “If that’s your way of asking me out, you could do better.”

  An audible laugh escaped her throat. “In your dreams, Ferguson.”

  He smiled, reached over and gave Chewie’s head a scratch. Rena could swear the dog also smiled. Two dudes sharing a laugh at her expense.

  Rena scoped out the interior of his fancy sports car with mild interest. Charcoal gray with silver accents, leather seats, a boxy instrument panel that didn’t quite fit in with all the rounded curves. “Funny, I pictured you owning a car like this,” she said with a yawn. “All pomp and circumstance. Gotta say, though, I like Derek’s car better.”

  Derek’s restored 1970 Challenger had seen some action throughout the weekend’s events, but Ty had been given the honor of stealing it from Austin and Danny’s garage. Derek’s sister gave him hell for it, but that was before she knew her brother had given the order.

  Ty draped a wrist over the wheel, seemingly unaffected by Rena’s attempt to goad. “A friend of mine couldn’t make the payments so I took it off his hands,” he said conversationally. “Otherwise I’d still have my old Monte Carlo.” He reached up, turned down the visor, pointed to a photo of him leaning against the fender of a white, nondescript, eighty-something-model car.

  Rena squinted for a better look. For some reason, that love-worn coupe looked a lot more like the man behind the wheel than the shiny new Camaro. Dammit if she didn’t want to rip his clothes off for it.

  Ty signaled, made a hard left. “She was my first car. Saw me through high school, college, my internship….”

  “What happened to it?” Rena asked before she could pretend indifference.

  “The guys I work with convinced me to part with her last year after the odometer hit three hundred thousand miles.”

  A tinge of genuine remorse etched his voice. Rena gazed at his profile and swallowed hard. When Ty Ferguson loved, he loved big and till the bitter end.

  Eager to rid herself of those thoughts, she changed course. “So, where are we going, anyway?”

  They were on a side road flanked by thick woods. The morning sun flickered through the leaves and Ty yawned while he reached for a pair of sunglasses on the dash. “Not sure. Somewhere north.”

  She pulled herself up, looked through the windshield. “You mind taking a detour to the Cahill home?”

  He turned slightly, all traces of fatigue thoroughly wiped away. “You did swallow that pill, right? You aren’t hallucinating or mumbling gibberish?”

  “It’s an honest question!”

  He ran a hand over his short crop of sun-kissed hair, revealing the slightly darker roots beneath. While Rena stared, she sensed his frustration before he opened his mouth.

  “If you want to get caught,” he explained calmly, “that’s the first place the police will be looking for you.”

  Her lip came out. “I just wanted to see it again. It was my home once.”

  Ty clammed up, putting an end to all conversation. But he was right, of course. It would be like turning herself in. Rena flattened her hands over the ball cap and relived some of the memories she’d made in the historic two-story Colonial
she once lived in… with Austin at her side.

  Their love had run so deep at one time… and then she’d ruined it by going after IGP.

  The times she would join Austin and his salvage crew in the commons room for lunch, bringing them all fresh-baked cookies on the days they needed a lift. Pizza Sundays with the Cahill family and the god-awful pizza oven that robbed too much kitchen space. Late nights on the couch with her fiancé, a bowl of popcorn and an episode of CSI.

  The world had been right at her fingertips and she'd lost it all to some doomed quest to help her father.

  “I think this is it.”

  Not until Ty spoke did Rena realize she’d drifted off. Had she slept? The fact she wasn’t certain of it was what scared her most. She peered over the seat and saw another brick building, this one a three-story apartment complex. Wrought iron rails and white trim barely kept it from looking like a motel.

  “There’s Danny’s jeep.”

  “Terrific,” Rena muttered, pulling the cap low over her face. “My biggest fan.”

  Austin’s new wife still held a grudge over Rena’s attempt to “off” her, but Rena could care less. If she tried to further explain herself at this point, the truth would only sound like excuses. Rena had lived with the burden throughout most of her childhood—until the right medication came along, that is. So she’d learned to quit explaining herself. To hell with it.

  She craned her neck, looking for another vehicle as Ty backed into a space. Sure enough, Austin’s white Lincoln Mark LT was parked a few spaces down, but her heart failed to execute the expected flip-flop at the thought of seeing him again, like it had two days prior. Her ex hadn’t changed much. He was still the same tall, dark, and beautiful male she’d fallen in love with in kindergarten. But his grudge against her was equal to that of his wife’s.

  The pre-lunch heat was rising, eradicating all lingering traces of an earlier rainstorm. The three of them walked up the steps to the landing of apartment 2-H with Ty’s arm lovingly wrapped around her shoulders. Chewie happily led the way on his leash, making them the perfect, affectionate family of three on a mid-morning outing.