But as she turned her back to the hatch, knelt and then allowed her bottom half to drop through the hole, she felt as if something else was driving her. An inner power Beth didn’t know she possessed.
She felt the flames heating her legs through her jeans as she extended them and her belly being scorched as her shirt rode up her body. Beth slid out of the hatch, straightened her arms and briefly looked down at what she would land on.
The conflagration was being drawn to the air in the attic above, and the yellow peaks rose steadily to meet her. She could see the fumes immediately emanating black from the rubber soles of her boots and knew her feet would combust if she remained there for more than a few seconds longer.
Beth released her grip on the attic above and landed softly in the fire, the flames curling around her legs before she jumped sideways to the door on her left. She pulled down on the handle and it was blistering hot, but her scream was lost above the roar of the blaze. The door didn’t budge. Maybe the heat had warped it in the frame. She pulled her sleeve over her hand and tried it again. No movement inwards. Beth rammed her shoulder against it and felt the panel scorch her skin.
She moved quickly to the next but she was moving away from her exit down the stairs, and chances were, if one door had been locked, so had the others. Her lips sealed shut and her lungs strained for oxygen. She could barely see the landing through the black vapour and scrabbled her hands along the bubbling wall, her fingertips hissing and her exclamations of pain locked tight in her head. As she tried to estimate the handle’s position, she felt the skin shrink tight to her skull.
Beth couldn’t open her eyes; they were clenched tight against the caustic chemicals radiating from the smouldering wood, so she remained motionless while she tried to locate the door and the flames ate through the clothes on her right side. Her fingers found the handle, and although she gripped it through the material of her shirt, she felt it sticking to the palm of her hand. She grunted inwardly again, feeling the heat shrivelling her right ear. The door didn’t move. He’d locked that one as well.
Beth couldn’t bear it any longer, and if smoke inhalation didn’t make her black out, she was about to pass out from the intensity of the flames. Should she try the last door? If she ventured any farther away from the stairs, trapped herself where the flames were hottest, she knew she wouldn’t make it. The third door was sure to be locked. She thought of the O’Dooles waiting for her signal, but had no choice.
Beth turned and bolted for the top of the stairs, her circulation pounding at her core as she stamped her way through the fire and tried to estimate where the landing finished. She waved her arms at the churning smoke, cracked her watering eyes and tried to discern anything that would let her know how much farther she had to go.
The floor ended and she was running into thin air.
Chapter 79
Beth’s knees bashed the edges of the wooden stairs, her hands reaching for something to break her fall. She didn’t manage to grab the rail until she was three from the bottom, her wrist snapping back hard as it became lodged between the slats. Her stomach struck the step, winding her. Her first breath was asthmatic, her body hastily tugging in what it needed to stop her losing consciousness. But overriding it was the horrible notion that the baby had just been harmed.
The smoke about her was thinner, the air cooler. Her head felt suddenly cold. She was quickly on her feet though, yanking her hand from the rail and ignoring the pain that pumped through her frame. Beth supported herself by gripping the wooden globe of the banister and swung carefully around it to look down the passage.
Already disoriented, Beth jumped as country music blared loudly from behind the door of the den. There were noises from the kitchen, too. Radio voices under whirring sounds. She wiped the water from her eyes and peered up and down the passage.
Beth guessed he was trying to spook her, throw her off balance. She had to remain focused. He’d turned off the electricity, turned on all the appliances. Now he’d turned it back on. Where was the switch? He must be in the cellar. Even if he wasn’t, he had to still be inside the house.
Beth leaned back so she was standing at the bottom of the stairs again. She bunched her fist and struck the panelled wall to her left once, as hard as she could.
*
Marcia O’Doole and her two sons were standing at the chest, ready to heave it back. She knew Beth hadn’t been successful.
“Did you hear that?” Tyler whispered.
They all waited for the second impact but it didn’t come.
“Does that mean she’s found him?” Marcia’s voice cracked.
They waited and then the door exploded into flames. They shrank back from it.
Tyler hustled his mother and brother over to the window. “We have to go while we can! That was her signal!”
Marcia shouted above the rush of flames and the smoke detector on the ceiling that had just activated. “It might not have been. It could have just been something collapsing!”
“We have to go now anyway!”
She momentarily looked out of the window. Tyler was right. Better to take their chances outside than be burnt alive in the bedroom. “I’ll go first. Stay away from the window until I’m halfway down, and then send your brother down.”
Kevin shook his head violently.
She put her hands either side of his face and looked deep into his eyes. Was this the last time they’d ever look at each other? Marcia kept her own emotions in check. “I’ll be there to catch you! I won’t let anything happen to you!” They both knew it was a lie. Like when Tyler had told him Santa Claus didn’t exist but Kevin had chosen to continue believing. She knew he nodded now for the same reason.
The door and the portion of wall above it collapsed and flames blasted through the opening. Marcia released Kevin and clambered out. She hooked her hands over the sill and allowed her body to hang down. She waited for the bullets to slam into her but retained eye contact with Kevin. “I won’t let anything happen to you!”
“Climb out after, Mom!” Tyler was at the window pointing the rifle out of it in all directions.
“Get away from the window, Tyler!”
“I can’t see anybody.” He swung it left and right. “I’m going to see if I can help her!”
“What?”
“She might be lying on the landing. It should have been me going up there!”
Tyler slung the rifle on his shoulder.
“Tyler!”
Marcia watched him drag the stool over to the floor below the hatch opening. Her weight was dragging her down. She couldn’t pull herself back in. Kevin stood between them, eyes wide with terror.
“Tyler!”
She watched her eldest son jump up, swing at the hatch opening and crawl into the smoke above.
Chapter 80
Tyler’s eyelids clamped tight against the smoke. His body shook as he hooked his right elbow onto the edge of the hatch, his stomach muscles quivering as he hoisted his weight inside the broiling attic.
Should he be back at the window, covering Mom and Kevin’s descent? If the noise they’d heard had been Beth’s signal, it meant they could climb down in safety. It should have been him that had clambered up here in the first place. He had the gun, knew how to use it and shouldn’t have let her come alone. Tyler thought about Beth Jordan swinging her fists at him at the roadside and how he’d hid behind his iPhone.
He got to his feet, crouched low and cupped his hand over his mouth and nostrils. Through the rolling waves of smoke, he could locate the other hatch by the orange fire jetting through it. Maybe it was too late. He would just take a look; see if she was below. Maybe she’d passed out. If the flames were too intense, he would return to the bedroom and follow his family out the lodge that way.
His stomach pumped, retching against the fumes. He’d already breathed some in through his nostrils. Tyler reached the hatch and leaned over the opening, the blazing current forcing him back.
“Beth!�
�� He leaned over before being repelled again. The billowing smoke made it impossible for him to see anything below. She said the fire hadn’t spread to the stairs. If he dropped down he could head straight for them, have the rifle ready to shoot. But the flames could have blocked that exit by now, in which case he’d be trapped on the landing.
*
Beth was halfway down the passage. She knew the gunman was waiting for her just before the kitchen door, concealed at the entrance to the cellar. Black vapour surged past her and was sucked through the screen of the open back door. The smoke alarm joined the cacophony in the kitchen. Was a sprint her best option? Try to run past him and close the inner kitchen door?
It would give her a few valuable seconds to ram the screen and dive over the balustrade into the river, swim down so he couldn’t get a clear shot and hold her breath as long as she could. She couldn’t think beyond that. Beth hoped the O’Dooles had heard the signal and were getting out of the house. Perhaps they were already at the patrol car.
If she started her run up here, it would alert him of her approach, however. She had to get as close to him as possible before she made a break for it. Beth flattened herself to the staircase panel and crouched low, sliding her back towards the right turning to the cellar where he was waiting for her.
*
Tyler realised it was foolish. But the woman had come to warn them, and his mother had locked her up in the cellar. Now it looked like she was alone with the maniac. Could they leave her without a weapon? Tyler knew he couldn’t live with himself if they waited outside while she lay unconscious and the lodge burnt down.
But how long would he have to live with it? And if he dropped through the hatch, he was likely to be roasted alive.
Tyler wasn’t ready to die. Even though he was always so gung-ho about his condition for everyone else’s benefit and knew he might not see Kevin’s sixteenth, he wasn’t ready to die down there.
“Fuck,” he said into his palm and turned back to the bedroom hatch.
*
Marcia O’Doole stood on the concrete in front of the lodge, clasping Kevin to her and watching the smoke gushing from the bedroom window. She couldn’t have stopped Tyler. She’d already dangled out of the window and had to make sure Kevin got down safely. She’d thought she wouldn’t be able to climb back and that Kevin would remain frozen there, but, to her relief he’d quickly followed her out, and she’d talked him down until it was time to drop the few feet from the end of their makeshift rope.
It flailed gently in the breeze, and Marcia knew they couldn’t wait for Tyler. She had to bottle her anger, concentrate on getting Kevin to safety before she came back for him. They still had to make it up the steps. If they did, they wouldn’t stop at the patrol car; she’d drag Kevin to Saw Creek and call the police from there.
There was a scrabbling above them, and Mrs O’Doole looked up. Tyler’s leg cocked over the ledge, and soon his entire body was sliding down the sheets. He dropped to join them and unshouldered the rifle. She hugged him. He was rigid.
“I couldn’t get through. Couldn’t reach her,” he said emotionlessly.
“We have to go.” She grabbed both her sons and hurried them to the steps.
*
Beth was covering her mouth, stifling her fear and her need to cough against the smoke that had filled the hallway. Its curtain was now only a foot from the floor, and it wouldn’t be long until the gunman would be overcome as well. She was about three feet from the turning to the cellar entrance and edging nearer. He must have heard her come down the stairs, knew she was working her way towards him. Perhaps he thought she had the rifle. She wished she had.
It was time to make her move. If the smoke forced the gunman to make his presence known, she was an easy target.
*
Mrs O’Doole and her boys reached the top of the steps and the patrol car. Its red-and-blues were still switched on.
“This way.” She led them along the bank. They would skirt it under cover of the trees until they reached the next lodge.
Tyler headed for the vehicle. “Let’s see if they’ve left the keys in it.”
“Tyler, no! He’ll hear the engine.”
He was nearly at the driver’s door. “Just let me look. We could use the radio.”
“Tyler, stay with me!”
He opened it.
Chapter 81
Beth had reached the edge of the panelling, her eyes slitting and throat trembling with the effort of holding back a hack to expel the fumes. Daylight through the kitchen door was eight feet away. How shallow the river would be, she had no idea. She could be diving straight onto jagged rocks and, in a few seconds, she’d know. Beth tensed the muscles in her calves.
The square of daylight was blocked as the figure of the gunman stepped into the passage. Through the smoke she could see his weapon arm out straight, aiming above her crouched position. He hadn’t heard her approach. Beth sprang upright and forward.
She aimed the crown of her head at his paunch, struck him solidly in the stomach and heard the wind escape his body. Beth kept on going, trampling him as he fell backwards.
He thudded onto his back and she was crouched over him, trying to get upright again. Beth kneed him hard in the face, stamped at his injured shoulder, but his hand grabbed her right arm and she cried out, dragging smoke into her mouth as his fingers locked painfully hard around bone.
He pulled her down towards him so she couldn’t use her legs. Beth tried to jab her left fist into his face, but he caught it by the wrist. She was immobilised, but so was he. Their linked arms trembled with the exertion of Beth trying to get free and him trying to hold onto her.
She put her entire weight behind her left fist, tried to force it towards his face and extend her fingers so she could push them into his eye socket. He twisted his head away and grunted as he tried to lever his shoulders off the floor.
Beth realised if both his hands were restraining her, he must have released the gun. Where was it? As his strength forced her back, she could barely see his gritted expression below her. A fresh gust of smoke completely obscured his exerted features. Beth felt the passage invert as the dizzy overture of a blackout seized her. She hacked against the fumes, but its exertion made her weaken in his grip. She knew he would release her soon – momentarily. Then his hands would be about her throat and he could throttle her while she was barely conscious.
Beth was still crouching over him, the bottom half of her body across his waist. She straightened her knees, stood up and then leaned back so she could aim her melting boot at his face. She stamped where she thought it was and felt her sole connect with something hard. Beth stamped it again, using it to push back from his grip. She screamed and slammed her boot down as hard as she could, wrenching his arms up with the action. His fingers released her and she stood up straight, recovered her balance and jammed her boot downwards again. It struck the floor. He’d rolled out of her way.
Beth headed for the fading daylight, stumbling over his bulk and grasping fingers and staggering into the kitchen where the smoke alarm shrieked, radio blared and coffee grinder and food mixers buzzed. Was there a knife block nearby? But she could barely see the floor. Lying on the tiles to her right, however, was a small black shape. She reached for the gun and turned, waving it in all directions as she reversed towards the doorway.
She banged her spine against the screen and stumbled out backwards, gun trained on the kitchen. She stopped at the wooden balustrade and waited as the screen swung back into the smoking frame.
It slammed quickly outwards again as the gunman emerged, his hand holding his burst nose, blood cascading down his chin. His left eye was closed and his right rolled up at her as he took a faltering step forward.
“I’ll shoot.” The smoke in her throat shrivelled the warning to a whisper. She knew she’d have to anyway.
The gunman came at her and her finger hooked hard on the trigger. It stuck there.
The Gunman smiled thro
ugh burst lips, a film of red on his crowns. “You really don’t know how to use that thing, do you. Mh?” He came at her.
Beth’s finger instinctively flicked against the solid trigger again. The gunman halted midstep and grabbed his arm.
There had been no shot. Beth knew she hadn’t fired the gun.
“Jesus...” the gunman said breathlessly. He bunched his body around the arm and gripped it tighter.
Beth took a step back as he lurched diagonally to the balustrade.
“Call an ambulance.”
He said it clearly enough, but she couldn’t believe he had. Beth barked more smoke out of her lungs and spat. Then she put her boot against his side and shoved hard. He hinged over the balustrade and dropped into the Flathead.
Chapter 82
Beth didn’t know how long she stood motionless on the deck, but eventually she looked over the balustrade. If she’d dived in headfirst, she would have been fine. The water was pretty deep the other side. Driftwood churned. She waited for him to surface, but he didn’t. It looked like the trauma of their struggle had brought on a heart attack. The river was flowing fast. Strong undercurrents had probably already dragged him away. Behind her, the lodge boomed. Smoke skimmed over her and out across the river where the cloudless blue sky was reflected. It was still only early morning.
Her adrenaline started to ebb. A few seconds later, Beth’s pain and exhaustion followed her out of the back door. Her body started to buzz and harmonise with the high-pitched whistle in her ears. She put one hand on the balustrade to support herself and the other gently on her stomach as her whole frame started to quake.
Stalk Me Page 26