Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  Anne whimpered and began to babble again.

  Jessie shook her and the gibberish stopped, though she continued to whimper and was now shaking uncontrollably.

  “Stop that. What are we going to do?”

  She was talking to herself and knew it, but verbalizing helped her think. Coughing that she couldn’t control made her headache worse in spite of the aspirin she had taken. At the rate the room was filling they would soon have nothing to breathe but the deadly smoke, would pass out and be unconscious, or dead, long before the flames came anywhere close.

  The water was gone, but the towel she had used to wipe her face was half wet. She retrieved it and cut it in half with the knife. Grabbing up the coffeepot, she poured what was left onto the fabric.

  “Here. Tie this around your face.”

  Anne looked at her as if she were mad and dropped it on the floor as she bent double to cough.

  “Dammit, Anne. It’ll help you breathe,” Jessie told her, picking it up and tying it on her before she tied the other half over her own mouth and nose and desperately looked around, assessing everything she could see for some way to get out.

  When she had lived here, she had considered digging a small cellar under the floor. Deciding to leave, she had abandoned the idea. Now she wished she had completed it, for she had heard of people surviving fires by crawling into their storage spaces. I’m playing what-if, she thought, and turned her attention elsewhere.

  The towel mask smelled of coffee, but seemed to be keeping most of the smoke temporarily at bay. She could feel the temperature rising dramatically in the room. Flames now engaged half the wall and had crept up just under one of the peeled log beams. The builder had planned for heavy amounts of snow. About three feet apart and eight inches in diameter, the solid beams reached across the width of the cabin and supported the posts and struts that braced the rafters and, in turn, the roof.

  The roof. Could they break out through the roof?

  The rising smoke was thickest under the peak of the roof. She knew that you were supposed to get down as close to the floor as possible, where the only breathable air would be found, but there was no possible exit on the floor. The roof just might be worth a try.

  “Over here,” she yelled to Anne, who did not move but stared at her dumbly, tears streaking what could be seen of her sooty cheeks.

  Impatiently grabbing Anne’s arm, Jessie dragged and shoved her over to the bunk and pushed the rifle into her hands.

  “Stand here and give that to me when I ask for it. Do you understand?”

  Anne nodded slowly, hopelessly, and watched as Jessie scrambled quickly onto the foot of the bunk, then, one hand on the wall to give her balance, onto the post at the foot, tossing Anne’s parka to the floor. From there she could easily reach the beam over it.

  Grasping it with both hands, Jessie swung her legs up and wrapped them around the log that ran straight across to the fiery wall, where, as she watched, a tongue of flame reached up to lick its underside. Hurriedly, but careful not to fall, she pulled herself up and around, until she lay on top and could reach down with one arm.

  “Now. Give it to me,” she instructed Anne and, for once, the woman complied, holding the rifle up by its stock, so Jessie could grasp the barrel. Settling it securely in the angle of roof and beam, she pulled herself to a crouch, then put one foot on the next beam and stood up enough to use her hands to tear off the plastic vapor barrier, then the insulation. When she had exposed the planks, she turned around and stood, back to the roof, leaning her shoulders against the steep angle. Holding the rifle barrel pointed forward, she began to pound the stock as hard as she could against them, regretting the insult to her father’s gift.

  These planks had not been reinforced by the person who pounded the door closed but were held in place with nothing more than a single nail holding each plank to each rafter.

  At first there was little result, but increasing the length of her swing provided more force, and in a few strikes she felt one plank give slightly. Attacking that spot again and again, she kept up the battering until it splintered at last and broke away from its nail.

  Repeating her efforts on the next plank, Jessie soon had it loose as well. Nails still held it to the next rafter and, though now she could use leverage, she was gasping for breath, rapidly running out of air.

  “Jessie. Come down, Jessie-e-e,” came a shrill wail above the roar of the accelerating fire.

  Looking down, Jessie found it was hard to make out Anne’s terrified uptilted face through the dense smoke. She could see the burning wall and the flames advancing across the beams on which she stood. The heat was almost intolerable; her exposed skin felt scalded.

  “Jessie-e.”

  Ignoring the panicked wail, bracing her back solidly against the loosened planks, feet on the beams, knees bent, Jessie threw all her weight and strength into applying pressure to the roof.

  Escape would have to happen now—or not at all. In a very few minutes it would be impossible to remain where she was.

  Years of constant exercise—large amounts of time on the back of a sled, pumping with one leg then the other, or running along beside it and lifting dogs in and out of harness, weighty sleds over uneven trails, and heavy kettles of food and water—had kept Jessie fit and gradually built her a powerful body that she took for granted. The test she had now set for herself, however, required more than her average strength and determination. Had she tried with her arms to lift the weight she had set herself against, she would have failed miserably. By putting her back and legs into the effort and adding to it adrenaline-produced strength, she had a slim chance. The deciding factor was anger.

  As she strained against the roof, every muscle tensed and laboring to its limit, she realized she was furiously angry. Unable to waste breath on words, she swore mentally and found herself rhythmically rocking with every curse against the planks that imprisoned her. Come on, you son of a bitch. Dammit to hell. I will not die in here. Her knees began to ache—her head throbbed. She closed her eyes and pushed till she thought she might pass out and fall from her perch.

  Something gave, suddenly, behind her shoulders. One of the planks shrieked a complaint of pulled nails and sprang loose, ripping the exterior roofing paper and shingles with it. She sustained the pressure, and the other plank went as well.

  Hanging her head out of the hole she had made, she gulped breaths of fresh air, while smoke poured out past her into the sunshine. The opening was narrow—just two planks wide—but it would serve. They could get out through it.

  Looking down, she saw Tank below on the ground and heard him bark.

  Over the all-but-overwhelming rage of the fire, a faint cry from inside, “Jessie-e. Don’t le-eave me-e. I’ll be go-o-od.”

  And Jessie knew that she must risk going back down into what was becoming an inferno—one that she had fed with the additional oxygen by the escape hatch she had created. The fire bellowed and howled its wrath. Against all her instincts that screamed get out, she knew she could not live with herself unless she went into the hell below her feet to try to save a woman who had lied to her, stolen from her, might hate her enough to have set her house on fire, and who had tried to frame her for the murder of Mike Tatum.

  26

  THE SNOW SHE HAD FALLEN INTO FROM THE ROOF OF THE cabin was cool and soothing on her cheek and blistered hand. Jessie wanted to stay where she was, gasping clean air into her parched lungs, but there was heat, too—growing stronger as the fire finally engulfed the cabin. She heard a wall collapse. Suddenly a shower of sparks and bits of burning ash and cinders were falling all around, hissing as they hit the snow. She knew she must move or be further burned.

  Anne Holman spoke from somewhere beyond her sight.

  “No. You can’t ask me that, dammit. You just tried to burn me to ashes. Why can’t you just go away and leave me alone?”

  Jessie raised her aching head, got to her knees, and crawled away from the burning building, then s
at back into a drift to see who the woman was addressing.

  Greg Holman, dressed in a black snowmachine suit, tears running down his face, stood staring at his wife. In his hands was the metal box that held the fragile bones of the child that Anne had dug out of the ground farther up the hill—that she had told Jessie was not his.

  “Why?” he said. “Just tell me why. And for once in your life don’t lie to me.”

  In Anne’s steady hands, the rifle that Jessie had thrown from the hole in the roof, before going back to help her to safety, was leveled at him, her finger on the trigger. Her expression was as cold and full of hatred as any Jessie had ever seen.

  “Because you wanted it so much,” she told him contemptuously. “Because you wouldn’t let me get rid of it.”

  “But why tell me now?”

  “Because you won’t let me go. I want to go, but you keep getting in my way.”

  “You know I can’t let you go—and why.”

  “I know you think you can’t. But now you’ll have to—won’t you?”

  As Jessie watched, he stared at her for a long minute without speaking. Then, as if repeating something he had said before, he said, very gently, “No. I can’t do that. You know why I can’t. Give me the gun now, Anne, and let’s go home.”

  “No, you big, dumb bastard. Not now—not ever.”

  The report of the rifle was unexpected. Jessie started to get to her feet, but fell as an ankle she’d injured in her leap from the roof collapsed, tumbling her back into the drift with a yelp. From where she landed, she saw Greg Holman fall facedown, the metal box hitting the frozen ground first, breaking open, and spilling the small white bones it contained into the snow, white on white, sliding, scattering, disappearing against it.

  The shot had caught him in the center of the chest. He had fallen silently, and lay silent and unmoving with ash falling on him out of the still air.

  Anne stared down at him without a change of expression—as if she had just killed a rabid dog or swatted a fly. Then she turned and caught sight of Jessie sitting in the snow behind her.

  “And you,” she said in a curiously conversational tone. “What shall I do with you?”

  The barrel of the rifle came slowly up to point directly at Jessie’s chest.

  “You and him.” She gave a short jerk of her head toward Greg’s still form. “You thought I wouldn’t ever know that when you lived here he stopped at your place when he went down the hill—or came back up it. Thought I was really stupid, didn’t you?”

  “That’s not true,” Jessie said carefully, knowing she couldn’t run or escape. “Greg and I never—”

  “Still won’t admit it? He wouldn’t either. But…never mind. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  Slowly she shook her head and shifted her grip on the rifle.

  “I could have left you in there,” Jessie told her flatly, “and let you die. But I went back, made you climb—even when you fought me—and dragged you out. When you tried to climb over me to get out and shoved me off the beam, I climbed back again and helped you.”

  “So you think I owe you? I think it’s the other way around. Maybe you should’ve left me.”

  “Maybe I should have…but—”

  The whine of a snowmachine engine grew suddenly loud enough to be heard over the fire. Jessie and Anne both looked toward the sound and saw Hank Peterson come sailing through the trees and into the open space by the burning cabin. Without hesitation, seeing the rifle turned on Jessie, he increased his speed and drove straight at Anne.

  She lowered the barrel and took a few quick steps backward and, as she dodged, Jessie distinctly saw Greg Holman move his arm. Peterson’s snowmachine passed almost close enough to knock her down, but missed. He was too close for Anne to shoot, so she turned the rifle quickly and swung the stock at him instead. As it glanced off his left arm she lost her grip on the barrel; the gun flew from her hands over Greg’s body, and landed near a spruce.

  Immediately she sprang after it, but, as she leaped across Greg, he rolled over and threw an arm into her path, knocking her feet from under her. She landed, rolling clumsily like a rag doll in a wild gyration of arms and legs, tumbled to a stop against Greg’s parked snowmachine, hit her face against one of its skis, and flopped over onto her back.

  For a moment she lay stunned, a trickle of blood showing up a startling red against the whiteness of her skin.

  “No,” Greg said sharply, and coughed. His voice was weak but clear enough for Jessie to hear. “No more, Anne. It’s got to end now.”

  Peterson stopped his snowmachine, got off, and removed his goggles.

  “What the hell is going on here?” he asked, but got no answer.

  Greg was facing Anne as she stared at him whitefaced from where she lay. Jessie was watching them both.

  Anne pushed herself into a sitting position and swiped at the cut on her cheek, smearing blood across the back of her bare hand. Then she got to her feet, walked over, and stood looking down at Greg in a sort of disdainful amusement. Reaching out, she wiped her blood across his mouth.

  “Still in my way?” she asked. Then in a strange, calm, and agreeable tone—with a hint of malicious intent to humiliate and hurt—she said, “Be careful what you wish for.”

  She whirled and began to walk toward the holocaust the cabin had become.

  Hank Peterson raced across the space between them, and attempted to bring her down before she could reach the burning cabin—but failed by inches.

  She did not give him a glance or try to avoid the tackle that dropped him just out of reach of her feet, but walked on straight into the roaring inferno. With an odd half smile on her face, like a person going somewhere they have anticipated with pleasure, she disappeared into the flames and never made a sound.

  27

  ON A WARM DAY THREE WEEKS LATER, JESSIE AND HANK Peterson drove two teams of dogs up the slopes of the Little Peters Hills, left the dogs resting in the sun by the remains of the Holman cabin, and walked west through the trees and across the open space to a large rock to fulfill a promise she had made. He carried a shovel and she, a metal box.

  When they had dug the hole and put the box back where Jessie had been asked to leave it—where it belonged—she stood for a minute feeling the rightness of their action. Nothing was said, no prayer or scripture recited, but there were the sounds of small birds in the nearby trees and a gurgle of water melting unseen and running under what was left of the snow on the south side of the hill.

  She walked to the edge of the open space, where the slope fell more steeply away to the wide valley far below, and watched a pair of ravens playing tag on the currents of the breeze, their rough cries carrying faintly up the hill to her ears. There always seemed to be ravens—a comforting constant. Beneath them, an almost invisible reddish haze seemed to cling to the bare branches of the birch, a precursor of new green leaves that would soon open to cover them. Grass would spring up when the snow had disappeared, smoothing the sharp lines of rocks and rough ground, and all would be new and seemingly unspoiled again.

  Even through the blackened rubble that was left of the two cabins, new life would appear and shove its way up to cover and gradually swallow up the ugly scars. Wishing she could lay her memory down with them for similar treatment, Jessie turned away and walked back through the trees with Peterson to the fire they had built for making tea.

  “Greg should be buried there, too,” Peterson said, thoughtfully.

  “I asked him before he died. He didn’t want to be.”

  “Why?”

  “He said—and I quote—‘She’ll walk up there, you know. I don’t think it would be right for us to be so close. She took my son’s life—she’ll look after him. I took hers—so let her be. It’s all she wanted from me.’”

  “Je-e-ez. You believe that kind of stuff?”

  Jessie noted his shiver and shrugged.

  “But she did kill Tatum and start the fires that killed the other two, right?”


  “She started all the fires except mine and the last one up here. Greg told MacDonald when he was still in the hospital. Anne held grudges and in her mind nothing was ever her fault. She hated Buzz Martin because he told Tatum about her after the fire ten years ago and aimed the investigation in her direction to keep it away from Cal Mulligan. Mulligan didn’t support her when they questioned him—angry—grieving over his kids, maybe. Greg never really knew if she set that fire or not, but he believed she did.”

  “She didn’t start yours? I thought she did.”

  “No, Greg confirmed that one, too. Tatum is the only person who could have started it, trying to frame Anne—or get me. He was really angry at me for protecting her.”

  “Is that what you were doing?”

  “No. But that’s how it looked to him.” Jessie grinned. “He wasn’t too pleased when I hit him either.”

  “But Tatum? He was a fireman—an investigator.”

  “MacDonald says it’s not so big a step from fighting to lighting fires. Both firefighters and arsonists usually have some kind of fascination with it. Tatum’s turned into an obsession.

  “And, yeah, he set mine. He’d kept track of Anne for the last ten years—always knew where she was. Every once in a while she’d get a newspaper clipping in the mail about an arson in MatSu with a question mark penciled in the margin, and she’d know who’d sent them. He never let her forget. She came back to kill him—to finally get him off her back. Would have done it a long time ago, I guess, but Greg kept such a close watch on her that she couldn’t. It’s why they left Alaska. She finally got away, but he followed her, knowing where she’d go, and he tried to protect her. Even helped her meet me at the airport and make me think she’d just come in on a plane, so I’d buy her story. He thought she’d be okay with me. When Tatum burned my house it let her get away from both of us.”

  “He knew what she was capable of—had done—and stuck around all that time?”

  “He loved her, Hank. Even when she tried her best to make him leave her—got beat up by other guys she was sleeping with and telling him about it—he cared.”