by Stacy Green
Smoke now flooding the room, Jaymee staggered to the open window and breathed the semi-fresh air. Outside the day was still beautiful, the cerulean blue sky a brilliant contrast with the smoke-filled terror surrounding Jaymee.
The house was a two-story, a good forty-foot jump. She’d easily break both her legs, possibly more.
But she wouldn’t die of smoke inhalation, with her body cooked.
In the distance, sirens wailed. Fire Station Two that served the subdivision and outlying area was five minutes away, in normal traffic. “Help!” Her scream echoed over the copycat rooftops, sucked away with the southern breeze. “Help!”
A dull roar came from somewhere deep inside the house, followed by the sound of wood splintering, as if the house were being ripped in two, and something heavy falling.
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she fought with the window screen. Her blood pressure beat in her head, her breathing wild, each gasp a desperate plea for survival. The latch stuck, the flimsy material blocking her one chance at escape. She looked wildly around the room for something sharp enough to tear the screen.
There was nothing.
“Help me!” She screamed again. “I’m upstairs!” Rearing back, she kicked the screen with all her strength, busting a hole wide enough to get her fingers through. Frantic, sweating and choking, she tore at the screen.
The smoke had a life of its own, wrapping around her and sucking away at her senses until her eyes stung and confusion slithered into her head.
She thought of the mother she was trying to forge a relationship with, of the biological father she needed to get to know, of the friends who loved her.
And Nick. He’d already lost Lana. But maybe he’s dead too. Maybe they were both in heaven, and I’ll join them. A heavenly love triangle.
She dropped to her knees, ripping away the last of the screen. Digging her fingers into the windowsill, she fought to remain conscious. The fire was close now, the heat overtaking the room almost as much as the smoke. Head hanging, hands clinging to the window, she peered beneath her taut arms, trying to see across the room. But it was too smoky. She saw nothing but a haze above the gray cloud, like the shimmering heat on the landscape on a blazing summer day.
Above the blistering roar, a voice drifted. Summoning the last of her strength, Jaymee hauled herself up, half hanging out of the window.
Her eyes watered terribly, robbing her of decent vision. On the lawn below stood a throng of people. The man in the center seemed to be the one screaming.
“Help me!” Jaymee said.
“I’ve got a ladder. Climb down!”
The clang of metal next to her head sent a final wave of adrenaline through Jaymee. She shoved herself straight enough to swing her left leg over the window, and then her right, her butt balancing precariously on the edge. Her body weaved.
Something shined next to her: the ladder.
The sirens sounded close now.
“Grab it!” The man screamed. “The place is going fast.”
She didn’t really remember making the decision to step onto the ladder. She simply found herself in midair, face against the house and body swaying. What was she supposed to do?
“Climb down!”
Yes, that’s right.
One foot and then the other.
Fire screeching, smoke thick and tasting of burnt wood and plastic. People screaming in the background.
And the blessed, ear-piercing sound of the siren and screeching tires.
Her feet suddenly stopped moving. Something prickly at her fingers.
Grass.
Strong hands pulled her away, and just before she lost consciousness, Jaymee saw the flames reaching out from Joseph Stanley’s house to lick the neighbor’s tree.
“It’s been a really dry season,” she said to the person carrying her away.
And then she passed out.
Like something out of a fever-induced dream, a cacophony of frenetic voices echoed in Jaymee’s head. As she struggled to understand the panicked words, the rest of her senses bled together until all she could smell and taste was burning.
“Why the hell did the fire truck take so long to get here?”
“Wreck…traffic jam.”
“It’s spreading into the back field. Wind’s helping it. Everything’s dry.”
“Evacuate the houses!”
She finally peeled her eyes open and promptly cried out in pain. They were dry and sore, her vision still blurry.
Something covered her mouth. An oxygen mask. Jaymee moved to pull it off, but the cool, clean air felt intoxicating. She pulled in a soothing breath.
“Just relax.” A latex-covered hand caught her arm. “You’ve inhaled a lot of smoke. You need to go to the hospital to get checked out.”
She didn’t recognize the young paramedic, but her voice was as beautiful as anything Jaymee had ever heard.
She tried to speak, but the medic hushed her. “We’re leaving in a minute. The man who held the ladder for you has some minor burns on his hands. My partner’s treating him before we take you.”
“Please,” Jaymee managed to force out, “find out his name. Tell him I said thank you.”
“It was Mr. Stanley, the house’s owner. He arrived in time to see the fire and called the ambulance. Then he heard your screams.”
“Tell him I said thank you.”
“I will. Now please, relax.”
Jaymee faded in and out after that. She felt the motion of the ambulance moving, heard its wails, and sometimes the hushed voices of the paramedics.
Only one thought remained consistent in her foggy brain.
How had the fire started?
13
Jaymee finally started thinking straight about the time the ambulance arrived at the hospital. No one seemed to care she didn’t want to go into the emergency room. A harried-looking doctor said something about smoke inhalation causing serious damage. He forced her through two rounds of breathing out of a weird-looking contraption that hissed alarmingly.
A nurse put drops in her eyes and then ointment on her fingers. She hadn’t realized the tips were red until then. She didn’t remember burning them.
Beyond her curtained-off trauma room, she heard the chatter of nervous voices and words like “evacuation” and “major event” being thrown around. The fire was spreading. The fields beyond the subdivision were dry—perfect kindling for nature’s warpath. Behind that lay more open land.
The curtain whipped back. Jaymee barely registered Dani’s face before her friend was at her side, arms around her.
“Cage called me. He heard on the scanner. He was so pissed. Thought you’d snuck into the house.”
“No.” Jaymee’s throat stung. “Stanley called me, asked me to clean.”
“We know that now.”
Dani’s fingers shook as she sat on the edge of Jaymee’s bed. She looked completely wrung out. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve just been in a fire.”
Dani glared at her.
“I’m all right. Eyes and throat hurt. They’re making me do this breathing thing and observing me. I’ll probably go home tonight.”
“Thank God.” Dani fiddled with the sheet and then glanced at Jaymee.
“What?” A dark cloud, powered with the current of fear, came down over Jaymee. “Did Cage find something out about Nick?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just, your car. It was in the garage, so Stanley didn’t think you were there until he heard you screaming.”
“I got lucky.”
“You did, but your car,” Dani emphasized, “was in the garage.”
Realization dawned on Jaymee. Her usual bad luck rearing its thorny head. “Oh my God. That’s Penn’s car.”
“Yeah. And the fire spread fast. Hit the neighbor’s and ignited the gas grill. No one got hurt, but the fire’s getting bigger.”
“My God.”
“They’re fighting to contain it,” Dani said. “It’s wr
apping around like a snake, following the wind. Beyond that meadow around the subdivision is about five hundred acres of undeveloped woodland. Natchez Fire and Rescue is helping set up a perimeter in the hopes to keep it from spreading farther than those woods.”
“At least there aren’t any houses there.”
“Animals, though. Cage said they’re running out of the woods and into fields. Poor things. And if the wind changes, Roselea’s right here, and it’s so dry.” Dani shook her head. “Cage is trying to stay on Nick’s case, but the department is small. He might have to leave it to Gina.”
“Where is Cage now?”
“Dealing with traffic. It’s chaos out there. The subdivision’s being evacuated, and people are trying to get out of town. Of course, the historic district is panicking, but they’re refusing to leave.”
“Christ. Do you have anything good to tell me?”
“Actually, I do. Remember I took pictures of that flag Nick bought? I sent them to Lee. He’s on vacation, but you know how he is.” Dani tried to smile, but only one corner of her mouth ventured up, and her eyes looked glazed and tired. “On the back of the frame was a symbol. I didn’t think anything of it, but Lee recognized it. In the past year, before I arrived, he saw several fake items with that symbol. He tried to trace the location but hasn’t had any luck. Maybe the police will. Did you find anything?”
“What?” The cloud and the remnants of smoke in Jaymee’s brain stunted her comprehension.
“Come on. I know you agreed to clean because you wanted to search. And Cage’s already ragging about how nothing you found can be used as evidence. Not that it matters now.”
“Shit.” Jaymee pointed to the hospital bag containing her smoky clothes. “I did find something. I was trying to decide if I should take them when I realized the house was on fire. Hand me my jeans.”
Dani obeyed, and Jaymee dug the trinkets out of her pockets.
Dani snatched the buckle. “Fake and damned close to the other one. No serial number I can see. The chevron might be real. It’s hard to tell without the rest of the uniform, and it’s really easy to make material look old. I’d have to check, but I think this is a design used by officers. As for this…” She looked at the Confederate bills. “They’re fake. You can buy them online for a few bucks. But they’re known to fool a lot of people.”
She examined the $2.50 note closely. “But this one might just be real.”
Jaymee sat up straighter in the hospital bed. “How can you tell?”
“Well, the fakes are printed on chemically treated paper, and the signatures are stamped or signed with black ink. But the original Confederate notes were signed in something called iron gall ink. It was a very dark blue, but on paper, as it aged, looked brown. And the serial numbers are usually in brown.” Dani turned the bill over in her hands. “I’d have to examine this under a microscope and check the serial number against a list of known fakes. But we might have a diamond in the rough. Of course, there was also a lot of fake Confederate currency made during the Civil War. This could be a very good fake. Even then, it’s genuinely old, I think.”
“But if it’s real?”
“It could be worth five figures. Just depends.”
Jaymee reached the edge of her frayed nerves. Her stupid hands shook, and her fingertips stung. “So Stanley’s got some side business that mixes real and fakes, and Nick gets himself in trouble over it?”
“It’s possible,” Dani said. “Or maybe Stanley bought these somewhere and is totally innocent. We’ll have to tell Cage and Gina, let them sort it out.”
“Meanwhile, Nick is still out there, and Roselea is burning.” Whatever hope of finding Nick alive seemed to have been burned away with the fire. Jaymee felt suddenly heavy, unable to even lift her finger, her head sinking into the lumpy pillow like a weight.
Dani squeezed her hand. “I wish I could tell you something to make you feel better, but there’s nothing to say. Everything is pretty much shit right now.”
“Thanks for being honest. I don’t need sugarcoating.” A sob worked its way up her sore throat as Jaymee finally voiced her biggest fear. “God, what if he’s dead?”
“You can’t think that way.”
“When Lana was killed, I thought burying her would be the hardest part, that nothing was worse than saying goodbye to that casket. But this is worse. Not knowing where he is or what happened hurts so bad I feel it in my bones.”
“I know.”
Dani held her hand but said nothing more. Jaymee gave herself to the pain, allowing the hot, ugly tears to fall. They left soot-stained blotches on the crisp, white pillow.
“I won’t stop looking until I find out what happened.”
“Neither will I,” Dani said. “I promise.”
A soft knock on the door caught their attention. Jeb Riley, white coroner’s badge gleaming against his black shirt, hesitated in the doorway. He carried the black bag of death, as Cage liked to call it.
An unseen knife slashed right through Jaymee, piercing her stomach so that she nearly gagged. “Why are you here? Did they find Nick? Are you here about his body?”
“No, no.” Jeb stowed the bag over his shoulder and came to her bedside. “An elderly lady passed a while ago, so I had to come in. I heard what happened and stopped by to check on you.”
“She’s going to be fine.” Dani still sounded shaky.
“You’re lucky. People are saying the house exploded.”
“Her car was in the garage,” Dani said. “It exploded.”
“Penn’s car.” Jaymee felt terrible about the loss. He’d be more concerned about her well-being, but she still felt like a horse’s ass, even if Penn had insurance.
“How did it start?” Jeb asked.
“They don’t know yet,” Dani said. “Joseph Stanley called Jaymee over and knew she was there alone.”
Jeb started chewing on a generic antacid. “Do they think someone wanted to hurt her?”
Dani glanced at her. Jaymee shrugged.
“We don’t really know right now,” Dani said.
“Understood. But I don’t like the idea of you two being alone with Nick missing and Jaymee being roughed up. She could have been killed.”
“We’ll be fine,” Jaymee said. “We’ll stick together, I promise.”
Jeb looked disgruntled, and Dani led him into the hall, assuring him they would call if needed.
Jaymee tried to rest, but every time her eyes shuttered closed, visions of smoke and flames attacked, trapping and melting her body into nothing but ashes and bone.
To hell with sleeping.
Two hours later, the afternoon bleeding into evening, Jaymee and Dani walked out of the hospital. Jaymee thought she’d prepared herself for the sight of the demon on the horizon, but her breath still left her in a hard whoosh.
With the sun setting in the west, the eastern sky blazed with a red, smoke-covered behemoth. A gray pall covered downtown as residents stood on the sidewalks, some carrying things to their waiting vehicles, gaping at the fire less than five miles away.
“Fire Marshall said if it gets within two miles of town, we’ll be forced to evacuate.” The portly owner of the beloved creamery Sweet Treats huffed past talking on his cellphone. “Some people already are, but I’ll be damned if I leave.”
A light wind still blew to the east, driving the fire away from town. For now.
“Jaymee.”
She turned to find Joseph Stanley, his right hand bandaged, hurrying toward her. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
“Thanks to you.” She didn’t know if she should act grateful or smack him in the face and demand to know what he’d done with Nick. She still wasn’t sure Stanley could take him, and if he set the fire specifically to kill Jaymee, why pull her out? “I’m so grateful.”
“I’m just glad I heard your screams. I had no idea you were still there.”
“I shouldn’t have parked in the garage. If I hadn’t, things might not have gotten so
bad.”
“You couldn’t have known that.” Stanley rubbed his arm across his forehead leaving a thin trail of soot.
Dani pulled a tissue out of her purse and handed it to him. “Do you have any idea how the fire started?”
Stanley hesitated long enough for Jaymee’s attention to focus on the man coming to stand behind him. Tall, imposing. Good-looking baby boomer type. Wrinkles around his blue eyes.
Dani elbowed her, but Jaymee already had the answer: the man they’d seen talking to the warden at Delta Correctional. The ex-senator.
“They believe it’s arson.” The man’s deep voice sent a foreboding tremor down Jaymee’s spine. He extended his hand. His eyes were a pretty blue, a familiar…
Jaymee stilled. The man in the picture she’d seen at Stanley’s stood in front of her. “Wyatt Booth, CEO of Norton Investments.”
“Stanley’s visitor.” Jaymee tried to be polite even though he was the source of much of Roselea’s squabbling these past months.
“That’s right,” Stanley said. “Guess we’ll get a hotel, preferably out of town.”
“It’s all settled,” Booth said. “Mayor Asher has offered to put us up.”
“How nice of him,” Dani said. “I’m sure he’s worried about his son since Dylan’s a volunteer firefighter.”
Jaymee’s brain was still rebooting. Of course Dylan would be out there fighting the fire. Damn. I hope he’s all right.
“He is,” Booth said. “And very worried about the town.” His calculating eyes were mesmerizing, and Jaymee got the feeling he knew how to manipulate people. “Much of the fire at the house is under control,” Booth continued. “But with the speed and force of the blaze, the fire marshal believes an accelerant was used. Do you have any enemies, Miss Ballard?”
“I—what?”
“I wasn’t there,” Stanley said. “But you were. Whoever started the fire waited until that moment.”
“But her car was in the garage,” Dani said. “I assume that’s where yours would have been. Since it’s your house, I’d guess you had the enemy.”
“Unless you set it yourself.” The words popped out of Jaymee’s mouth before she could stop them. Whoops. So much for politeness and decorum. Oh well. Treading lightly wasn’t exactly her strongest trait.