A bobbing light appeared near the Ngatas’ house, cutting in sweeping arcs through the thick, moonless darkness. A flashlight? At this time of night when no one was meant to be around?
Kyle leaned forward with narrowed eyes, frowned in frustration, and retreated inside, taking the stairs at a run to where his grandfather’s set of binoculars still hung from a neck strap by the front door. By the time he raced back to the balcony and focused the binoculars in the direction of the Ngatas’, there was no flashlight to be seen, but the front security light was on. And then it wasn’t. He strained his ears but couldn’t hear anything as the light breeze was blowing in the wrong direction.
Then—the winking flash again.
This time not bobbing and slowly scanning as it had before, but jerking in short motions, as if someone was running. He swore softly, trying to focus the binoculars, wishing they were damn night-vision goggles. Abruptly bright artificial light filled his vision and he blinked, jerking back from the eyepieces.
The front of the house was lit up again.
In such a hurry to get the binoculars in place, Kyle clipped the bridge of his nose against them. He barely felt it. Gripping the cool metal sides, he swung the binoculars from side to side, seeing nothing but inky black until he finally located the light—and the two figures in it.
All the blood in Kyle’s brain dropped into the soles of his feet as his eyes strained to see across the miles. For a moment he swayed, light-headed.
One figure was a woman who wore a white sweater and hot-pink shorts. Who had long dark hair. Who lay limp in a fireman’s hold across the shoulders of a bigger figure—male, that was all Kyle could tell—and that male was carrying her around the side of the house and out of his view.
His fingers loosened on the binoculars and they fell. He barely registered the crunch of them hitting the deck.
Tui.
Adrenaline detonated in his central nervous system, punching strength back into his limbs. He spun, taking the stairs two at a time, pausing only to grab his car keys as he slammed out of the house.
And came face-to-face with a startled Matt climbing out of his car with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
“Kyle? What the—”
“Get back in the car. Drive.” Kyle sprinted to his brother’s car and yanked open the passenger door.
Matt dropped back into his seat, tossed the bottle into the back, and gunned the engine. As he reversed with all the finesse of a rally driver, Kyle caught a look of intense concentration on his brother’s face.
Matt jammed on the brake, slotted the gearshift into first, and shot out of Griff’s driveway. “Where?”
Kyle’s fingers dug into the dashboard, which he was gripping like a life preserver. Amid the sheer terror for the woman he loved, a fierce surge of affection for his youngest brother swept over him. No questions asked, Matt had his back.
“Ngatas’.”
Matt drove, tyres skidding a little on the corners when he took them too fast, but he got them down the hill in record time. “Ma’s asleep,” he said as they passed the darkened homestead. “And I’ve no idea what pub Dave and Eric have ended up at. What’s going on?”
Kyle told him the abbreviated version as they left their driveway.
Matt white-knuckled the steering wheel, his mouth in a grim line, shooting him darting sideways glances.
“Shit, Kyle. Did you get a good look at the guy?” Matt slowed fractionally but didn’t stop for a Stop sign.
They blew through the intersection, and even though the Ngata farm was only a short drive away, Kyle was conscious of every yard, every strung-out second that ticked past.
“No, dammit. It was too far away to see his face, and he had hoodie covering most of it.” And he was big enough, strong enough, to pick up Tui like she was a bag of feathers. Nothing that he and Matt couldn’t handle together, though.
“Tui’s tough. She’ll be okay,” Matt said.
Because what else could he say? Bad luck that your woman seems to have stumbled onto a burglary in progress, man. Or fingers crossed that the guy isn’t the type to rape an apparently unconscious and helpless woman.
“Yeah. She’ll be okay,” Kyle repeated, though his gut told him otherwise and his chest felt as if his ribs had turned into a steel vise that squeezed his heart in a death grip.
He hadn’t wanted it to come to this, yet now it had, and the decision had been made for him. Taken out of his hands by his brother’s stupid obsession with the Ngata girl.
And that’s what she was, a girl. To hell with political correctness.
A girl who didn’t know what she wanted, and because of her indecision—and getting herself pregnant—she’d jeopardized everything.
A woman, on the other hand, would’ve accepted Kyle’s offer of a life of luxury. She could’ve popped out the kid, played the role of a suburban housewife, and he would’ve sent a damn gift basket to the new mummy and daddy in Auckland. Far, far away from Bounty Bay and from Kyle being all up in their business.
But no. It had come to this after all.
He’d tried subtle. Slipping into Griff’s house to turn the freezer off and taking what he’d hoped were important papers. Even throwing that ugly tomcat outside and leaving a window open so Kyle would think it’d run away. Not to mention the dropped hints of a return to the city and the behind-the-scenes work of keeping his other brothers and Ma pitted against the Ngatas.
But subtle didn’t work. Which was why he had a plan B in reserve.
Though plan B now had a hitch in it—thanks to Tui showing up unexpectedly.
“You’re supposed to be at the party with the rest of them, you nosy bitch.” He shoved the sliding door open, the one he’d jimmied moments before she’d blundered around the corner of the house.
The woman in his arms moaned. He glared down at her as he strode through the dark house to the small bedroom behind the living room—luckily he’d memorized the layout on Christmas Day. And found a moment when no one was looking to break the back security light.
It was her own damn fault she’d been knocked out. His gut clenched, remembering the hot sear of panic blazing through him as he’d chased her down. None of the excuses he’d invented on the fly made sense when he tried to reason with her, and since she fought him like a wildcat, it was obvious she wouldn’t be reasoned with.
So he’d slammed her up against the house and she’d hit her head, suddenly going limp. He’d scooped her up in his arms, and for a minute he’d stood there with his eyes shut, crackling flames dancing behind his closed lids.
Fire. The ultimate solution. His blood bubbled in anticipation.
He’d thought it was over. That Kyle was over her and that things would go back to normal, giving him time for his long-term plan to work out. A few more years of fudging the honey business’s books—which was his right since he was doing most of the damn work—and he’d have had enough stashed away to get the hell out of Bounty Bay for good.
But no, Brother Dearest was back again, and according to Matt, determined to seal the deal with Tui. And after seeing her with her family, he knew she’d never be happy in Auckland. And if Tui stayed here, so would his big brother. He couldn’t allow that to happen.
Plan A went into action. Get rid of the Ngata family home, get rid of the Ngatas. And he didn’t mean that in the literal sense. He wasn’t a monster. A burned-to-the-ground family home would up the chances of them selling at least some of their land, and the Griffins would be more than happy to take it off their hands.
Really, he was doing his family a favor.
Then Tui had stumbled into his plan, screwing everything up. He couldn’t see any way around the inevitable. She’d seen him breaking into her parents’ house with a can of just-in-case petrol at his feet. No explaining that away. And he just knew she’d have the cops all over him in a flash, and those cops would put two and two together around the unexplained fires in the area over the years.
Maybe even the fire.<
br />
He’d tilted his face to the sky, the distant sound of releasing fireworks making him smile. If he continued to stand there, maybe he’d catch the faintest trace of smoke in the air. But, no. He’d a job to do.
He set her down on the room’s single bed, and she rolled into a ball, a hand curled protectively around her stomach. He yanked open the closet door, scanning the row of clothes hanging there. He found a stash of ugly men’s ties and knotted two of them around Tui’s wrists, and after tugging off her gumboots, her ankles. Gently—because he wasn’t a monster.
He moved quickly through the darkened house to the kitchen. He flicked on the stove’s gas element and stuck a frying pan on it that conveniently hadn’t been cleaned so it still contained a greasy coating of congealed oil. Sloppy, Mrs. N. Sloppy. Cooking with grease, so dangerous. Especially when the daughter of the house starts cooking something to sate her pregnant appetite and then takes a nap, forgetting the dangers of untended pots and pans. He grinned to himself, watching the grease heat and start to spit.
“Four stages,” he whispered. “Incipient, growth, fully developed, and decay.” And in between the growing blaze and fully developed came his favorite. Flashover.
He watched, waited, breathed in the greasy stench that rapidly turned to smoke—then flames licked across the pan, a spit of superheated grease causing the roll of paper towels to catch. It blazed a trail up to the cabinetry, which also caught.
“You beauty.”
The smoke detector mounted on the ceiling began to screech. Ah, the wonderful sound of his people and his cue to exit stage right. One last thing, though…he tossed a large glass of water at the pan from a safe distance and the fire roared its encouragement.
He laughed, backing out of the kitchen, watching the thick dark smoke curl after him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the luxury of hanging around to see the fire reach its full potential. At the sliding door onto the back deck he paused, hypnotized for a moment by the bright orange flames licking out of the kitchen and into the living room. A moving wall of heat against his back snapped him out of his daze.
He had to get moving. It was too soon for anyone to have noticed the fire—wasn’t it?
His heart pounded faster, harder—if the evidence wasn’t destroyed in the blaze, he’d be caught, no doubt about it. Vision blurring as a carnival of possible outcomes—all bad—tumbled through his mind, his gaze settled on the petrol can. He’d have to risk helping the flames along. He shivered, stepping out into the choking hot air. Plucking up the petrol can, he sloshed a trail along the deck, on the walls of the house, and worked his way around to the front driveway, enthralled by the heat, the roar, the flames.
Burn, baby, burn.
It was late at night. She’d left her bedroom window open to try and encourage a sea breeze to filter inside. Thudding footsteps running past her room woke her, and she was momentarily disorientated because her bedroom smelled like…fireworks? A beach bonfire? The fire her dad would set to heat river stones for a traditional hāngī?
She opened her eyes and blearily tried to focus on the drapes blowing in the breeze, on the weird reddish light discoloring the window pane. She blinked, eyes stinging a little as the night that wasn’t dark but bloody danced across her vision.
She went to sit up, to run to the window and slam it shut, but she was too tired to move. Yeah, well, she’d tagged along after Sam and his mates surfing for, like, hours yesterday. No wonder she was exhausted, not to mention sick of her brother’s immature friends who gave him hell about bringing his fourteen-year-old sister with him. She’d showed them, though, outsurfing the lot.
She shut her eyes again.
Give her a minute to gather her strength and she’d shut the window and shut out that terrible smell. She coughed. Man, her throat was dry. She swallowed, hearing the dry click echoing in her ears. She coughed again, and the first inkling of fear set in. Coughing fit? Gah! She hated them with a passion. The humiliation when a kernel of popcorn went down the wrong way in a silent movie theater and you coughed yourself crimson. Or on one notable occasion in a café with her friends when she’d eaten a bite of spicy pasta, gasped at the fiery heat, then swallowed the wrong way which caused her to cough so much, so hard, that’d she’d thrown up a little into her paper napkin. In front of everyone, including Aidan who was a Year Thirteen and, OMG, soooo cute and had actually smiled at her before she started choking.
Tui! Shut the window.
She grunted, slitting her eyes open. Her head hurt. Had she wiped out and hit it on her board? She raised a hand to touch her forehead, but for some reason both hands lifted. She squinted at her wrists. Where had the weird red light gone to? And why did her wrists hurt, too? She wriggled them and they chafed against something smooth but tight against her skin. Huh? Then, concentrating really hard, she straightened her bent knees…except her ankles also appeared to be fused together.
She coughed. A long, racking cough that clawed through her lungs and made her whole body convulse. Her head dropped down on the pillow and she whimpered. Coughed again.
Wake up!
Her ma’s voice. Next would come the threats of “You’ll miss the school bus,” and “If you’re not out of that bed in one minute I’ll dump a bucket of cold water on you.” Tui smiled. She would—she had. Her ma never made empty threats.
Wake up, girl! If not for yourself, for the child you carry.
She wasn’t carrying a child! Did her mother think so little of her that she thought her daughter would get herself pregnant at fourteen?
Tui.
A male voice, but not her father’s, nor her brothers’. This voice dug into her brain, burrowed into her very soul and left her hurt and aching and yearning and wanting to burst into noisy tears.
Kyle.
Was it real? Was he real? What was real?
Tui flipped awkwardly onto her back, her bound hands dropping to rest low on her stomach. On her baby. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, tears slipping over her lashes to spill down her cheeks. She remembered now.
She was thirty-one, not fourteen. It wasn’t the night of the fire, it was New Year’s Eve. There were dogs barking. She’d found them tied up. Her nose crinkled. The dogs were barking and…someone was trying to get into her parents’ house! She’d run, run, run—faster even than Isaac when he charged down a rugby pitch—the intruder would never catch her. But she’d slipped on loose gravel, twisted her ankle, fallen to her knees, and he’d grabbed her, shouting incoherently.
She’d seen his face. Known in an instant who had started the fire all those years ago. Would’ve known even if she hadn’t seen the petrol can by his feet. And all she could think while she struggled with him, before he slammed her into the wall of the house and the world went dark, was: This will break Kyle when he finds out.
If he finds out.
There’d be no one to tell him if she didn’t move…her…ass.
Tui coughed and coughed. She rolled onto her other side, forcing her legs to swing off the bed. Her ankle throbbed and her grazed knees burned, but she ignored them and tried to stand. Pain ricocheted up her leg and she dropped back down again. Nope. Better to keep low to the ground anyway, that much she knew from having fire safety drummed into her at school.
If you’re on fire, stop, drop, and roll. At least she wasn’t on fire, but from the rising temperature in the room, the house was.
She eased herself off the bed onto the floor. The air was a little clearer there, but it wouldn’t be for long. She figured she didn’t have enough time to unravel the tightly knotted whatever-it-was binding her wrists and ankles, but she could caterpillar crawl over to the window.
Escaping to freedom. Just like old times.
She smiled grimly and humped her way across the rough carpet to the window. Thank goodness she’d been a teenage hellion. And you, little one, she thought since she couldn’t spare the breath to speak out loud. You’ll have your mum sneaking out with you, embarrassing you in front of your
friends, but making sure you rebel safely.
She reached the window and, scrambling onto her knees, shoved on the frame. It didn’t budge. She ran her fingertips along the sill, searching for the bolt to unlock it. She found the first bolt and drew it back, moving quickly onto the second, coughing and choking in the growing foul air. Success. But when she again shoved at the frame, it refused to move.
No, no, no!
She was running out of time. She checked the bolts again—unlocked—then traced her fingers down the window sash’s vertical frame…and felt the slight indentation of puttied-up nailheads.
Oh. Crap.
Her father must’ve nailed the window up—no doubt worried about house security.
Tui dropped back down to the floor. Which felt scarily warm to the touch. Think, woman.
Door! It was her only other option.
She wriggled as fast as she could, coughing, coughing. Found the edge of the door with her fingertips—it was partially open, yes! She tugged and it creaked on its hinges as she rolled onto her side to get around it. She lurched toward freedom, only to bump her face against something that smelled like leather and shoe polish. Cursing, she stretched out her bound wrists and felt around, her fingertips recognizing the shape of shoes. Lots of shoes. She’d turned herself around and somehow ended up at the closet, not the door out of her room.
She squeezed her eyelids down over eyes that felt as if they’d been sandpapered. Her head spun, and she felt herself begin to drift. She was so tired, though she’d best get used to sleep deprivation with a baby on the way.
I love you. I want us to be a family.
She hugged her stomach as best she could.
Tame Your Heart: A Small Town Romance (Bounty Bay Book 6) Page 28