Back behind it, though, the chief’s SUV sat there on the road where he’d left it, barely touched. Well, except for having all its windows shattered from the force of the blast.
We fell in line, rakes in hand, and went to work. This time around, the work went just as fast, but we didn’t get any breaks. The cooler was inside the firebreak and that was too close to risk retrieving. Of course, we didn’t have a fire at our front, cooking us alive, so it was bearable as we stripped off our turnout gear and worked in just our bunker pants and sweat-soaked undershirts.
As the other men and I dug, Chief Beckett got on the radio, had the 911 dispatcher start routing in trucks from other counties, and called Sheriff Peak. Apparently, though, they were already mobilizing, since they’d heard the explosion in town.
Now, with rake in hand as I dug and chopped, I couldn’t help but think about Rebecca. About how the Denver Mafia was expanding its targeting and coming after me, as the investigator, instead of her. Were they really that afraid of loose ends? Of someone being able to testify against them in court?
I hoed and raked at the ground, the fire beginning to spread from the edges of the engine as we raced to enclose it in a preventive firebreak.
How had things gotten so out of hand? First, this was just an arson investigation. Now, it was damn near domestic terrorism!
Chief Beckett grabbed me again by the shoulder.
I spun around, rake mid-swing. “What?” I nearly yelled into his face. “Can’t take a break now!”
“It’s not that!” he shouted back, his eyes wide and searching. “Just got a call from dispatch. We gotta go! Rebecca Stokes’ house is on fire!”
Chapter Forty-four – Rebecca
When I came to, I saw darkness around me. My ankles were bound and my wrists were pinned behind my back with duct tape. I screamed and kicked, tossing and turning in the enclosure, but got nowhere.
A strange humming noise seemed to penetrate through the walls of my prison, vibrating my entire body as the seconds ticked by. The noise filled my ears and the vibrations chattered my teeth.
I was in a car, I realized. The trunk of a car. I thrashed around again, trying to break free. Nothing.
Derrick. Derrick had done this. He must have choked me out back at my house, then brought me out to his car and stuffed me in the trunk.
No, that didn’t make sense. He didn’t drive a car. He drove a jeep, like a lot of the other guys around town. Said he liked the Colorado air conditioning during the summer, where you wore shorts and got a nice breeze up the leg while you were whipping down the highway.
My car, then? My trunk?
I thrashed my head around some more, felt my hair entangle in my jumper cables, right where I’d left them.
My trunk, definitely.
I swallowed hard, trying to process everything that was going. Derrick, my best friend ever since high school, had just knocked me unconscious and stuffed me in the trunk of my car. Okay.
My stomach dropped and I immediately felt like puking.
Out of the three men I trusted most in the world, one of them had just knocked me out and stuffed me in the trunk of my own car. This was after another one of them, my adopted father, was put in prison while he awaited trial for arson. And the final one was out doing God knows what, maybe lying dead somewhere in a ditch. And, on top of that, he was going to be the man responsible for keeping my Uncle Zeke in prison.
The tears began to spill out and my sobs came out unbidden and full-throated as I cried out to the heavens for some kind of relief. Why the hell was all of this happening to me? I hadn’t done anything wrong, had I? I’d led a decent enough life. Sure, I wasn’t fucking perfect or anything, but who was? Why was my world being forced to crumble down around my ears?
“You awake back there, Becks?” Derrick called from the driver’s seat as we continued down the road, his voice calm as a crystal clear lake.
“Derrick?” I called back through my tears and sobs. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you can stop this right now. Just let me go, and no one ever needs to find out what you’re trying to do.”
He just laughed. “What I’m trying to do?” he asked, laughing again. “Come on, Becks, we’re just going for a little ride here. No biggie.”
God, what was he trying to do? Was it this thing I’d kind of started with Matthew? Had he gotten jealous of his firefighting buddy, and now he realized he wanted me all for himself? Because that wasn’t going to happen. Ever. Not willingly, at least. I tried to shift around, to get my arms at an angle where I could clasp the emergency interior latch for the trunk. When I failed, the tears came down faster and heavier, my voice a wail as I struggled to grab the release.
“Oh, Becks, don’t act that way. Your little field trip will be over soon.”
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, still crying as I called again through the backseat.
“To see someone. Someone you probably haven’t thought about in years, but I’ve had to think about everyday.”
I lay there, trying to parse through his cryptic response, my mind clouded by the tears and terror engulfing my psyche. None of this made any sense. Why was he doing this? Why was he hurting me this way?
Then it dawned on me.
Was he tied to the framing of Zeke somehow? To the mafia men who’d been threatening the small business owners all over town? Was he helping them somehow?
“Derrick,” I said between sniffling back my tears, “I thought we were friends.”
“We were,” he said matter-of-factly. “Back in high school.”
Realizing what he’d meant, I began to cry harder. Those days were all gone, all over. The friendship, the relationship he and I had back then wasn’t the same as the one today.
“Oh, and that boom of thunder you heard earlier?” he asked, a knowing smile in his voice. “That was your boyfriend Matthew Jones. I blew him and the fire engine he was riding on straight back to hell.”
And then he turned the radio on and cranked up the music, blasting my ears with whatever pop song was on the radio. At that volume, it didn’t matter what it was. It was just loud, and my eardrums felt like they were about to explode.
Tears of agony, both spiritual and physical, streaming down my face, I began to scream again as I kicked at the backseat.
That was what I’d felt earlier. That was the gut-wrenching feeling while I was still back at my house.
It was Matthew Jones, the love of my life, being wrenched from this existence.
Chapter Forty-five – Matthew
As Chief Beckett and I raced down the highway back toward Enchanted Rock, sirens blaring and lights flashing, I reached into the pocket of my borrowed turnout coat, searching for spare water. The fear of Rebecca stuck inside her home filled my thoughts and made my heart race in fear and panic.
I didn’t find any spare water, though.
All I found was a crumpled up piece of paper that I hadn’t noticed before.
“What the fuck?” I mumbled, pulling it out of my pocket and straightening it out. I wouldn’t have normally, but it was just so strange that I’d find something like that in a pocket. I’m normally a neat and tidy guy, and never carry around a bunch of junk.
“What’s that?” Chief Beckett asked from the driver’s seat, glancing over at me.
“Keep your goddamn eyes on the road,” I said just as we crossed the five-mile marker to town. Almost there. I turned my eyes down to the paper, but all that was on there was a long web address, a string of numbers, dashes, letters, and slashes.
“Pull that out of your pocket?”
“Yeah,” I replied, looking the address over again, my eyes settling on the parent address at the very front of the string of digits and letters. “Whose turnout coat is this?”
“Uh, Derrick’s, I think.”
And then it hit me. That’s where I knew that address from. It was the same forum we’d found on Zeke Rogers’ computer, the one that had shown how to build a time-
delayed arson device. The final piece of so-called evidence that had made me turn my back on an innocent man. I groaned loudly and ran a hand down my face. How could I have been so fucking stupid?
“What?” the chief asked from beside me. “What’s going on? Talk to me, Matt. What’s wrong here?”
“Derrick!” I said, holding up the paper. “Derrick is the one that’s been doing all this shit! He’s the one who framed Zeke Rogers, and he’s probably the guy who just blew up your engine!”
But why Derrick Newhouse? That just didn’t make any sense. He and Rebecca were best friends, weren’t they?
I went to pull out my phone to try and call Rebecca to tell her what I’d found, but realized I’d left my phone in my pocket back at the fire station when I’d stripped down for my turnout gear. “Son of a bitch!”
Beckett gave me a look like I’d completely lost it. Which, in all fairness, I felt like I had. He asked me one simple question: “Why Derrick?”
“I have no idea,” I said, frowning. “I hardly even know the guy. I’d looked at him early on as a suspect, but there didn’t seem any history with Zeke, just that he was friends with his goddaughter. Do you know him?”
Beckett shrugged. “Well enough, I guess. Guy grew up here, moved off, and came back after his aunt died in a car accident.”
“His aunt?”
“Yeah,” he said, laying on his horn as he wove around a little hatchback that hadn’t pulled all the way over, “his aunt. His mother, she’s stuck in a sickbed at home, and his aunt took care of her when she wasn’t substituting for the schools in the Rock. Got into an accident or something on the way in a little while back. Remember that?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding along. I recalled. Mabel Owen had died last year from an accident during a snowstorm. It had been right after the case with the Russians and Frank O’Dwyer’s mate, Ashley Maxwell. “That was his aunt?”
He nodded. “I remember because I was one of the guys responding to the call. Apparently she was going into fill in for some English class or something at the high school, and her old Volvo stalled out in front of a semi-truck. Broadside sent her right over the edge and down into a gully. Dead on impact. Nothing we could do.”
“Were they close? Derrick and his aunt?”
He shrugged as he slammed on the gas. “Not that I knew of. I mean, guy hardly ever came back to town, even for holidays, from what he said.”
“Could it be about Rebecca, then? Is he in love with her or something?”
“They spend enough time together,” the chief conceded. “Been friends since forever, and she ain’t exactly rough on the eyes.”
I frowned, but didn’t respond. Right then I was thinking about her being left alone with him or her being stuck in her house as it burned down around her ears.
“Hey, do you think we should call him?” Beckett asked after a moment. “I mean, see where the hell he is?”
“You know what,” I said as Chief Beckett pulled the phone from the dash and glanced at it, “that’s not a bad idea. I’ll do the talking, though. You should probably focus on driving.”
I pulled up Derrick’s number, hit send, and stuck Beckett’s phone to the side of my head. I took a deep breath as I listened to the tone ringing in my ear.
“Chief Beckett?” Derrick asked after the third ring.
“Close,” I said. “But no cigar. Where are you, Derrick? And where’s Rebecca?”
“Who the hell is this?”
“Who the hell do you think?”
Silence.
“Couldn’t help but notice you’d been marked off the on-call list for today. Missed all the fireworks,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.
More silence. Which was good. Him not speaking gave me a chance to listen in around him, to hear what was going on. It sounded like he was in a car. I couldn’t hear Rebecca, though, which might have meant she wasn’t nearby, or he had her some place nearby.
“Don’t worry, you didn’t hurt anyone. Just the chief’s pride and joy engine.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Listen, Derrick,” I said after a long pause. “I think I have an idea of what this is about.”
“Oh, do you?”
“You’re in love with Rebecca, aren’t you? That’s why you’ve been working on getting the men out of her life, men who stood between you and her.” I paused and licked my lips as I listened to the sound of his heavy breathing. “And I understand, Derrick. I really do. But it doesn’t need to go this way, man. You’re a firefighter, same as me, and we can work this out without the cops, without the courts. I’ll just let the DA release Zeke, you let Rebecca go, we chalk this up to some adolescent–” I stopped talking, though, as his laughter burbled through from the other line.
“Oh man, Matty boy, you are really fucking dense, aren’t you?” he asked with a derisive laugh. Before I could respond, though, he hung up.
I took the phone from my ear and looked down at it in disbelief. “Motherfucker!”
“What happened?”
I tossed the phone on the dash. “Just hung up on me!”
We kept cruising toward town, a thin black pillar of smoke on the east side of town guiding us the whole way. God, I hoped Rebecca was safe. If I thought for a second I could beat Chief Beckett’s drive time there, I’d have ripped off all my clothes and transformed into a wolf right there on the spot, prohibitions against entering town be damned.
“Well, what did he have to say?”
“He said I don’t understand why he’s doing this. But I’m pretty sure he does have Rebecca.” I closed my mouth, then thought back to the conversation I’d just finished. There was something there, right under my nose and on the tip of my brain that I was missing. Whatever it was, it was flying right by me, like the cars heading out of Enchanted Rock. Red cars, black cars, blue cars of all makes as the townspeople came to the defense of their volunteer firefighters.
“Think, Matthew,” I mumbled as I looked out the passenger side window at the approaching town, “think. What are you missing?”
Sheriff Peak’s SUV flew by, its engine roaring like a freight train, as it headed out to the site of the explosion. Deputy Glick’s cruiser wasn’t far behind it. We’d spoken to them when we first hopped in the car and let them know where we were headed, and to send backup trucks from Yellow Rose.
Between all the noise from the cars and from the sirens, I could hardly think straight.
And then it occurred to me what I hadn’t heard. No noise on Matthew’s side of the phone. No real noise, at least, not like you would hear with a Jeep.
“He’s in a car,” I said. “But, Chief, he’s not in his Jeep. I couldn’t hear any outside noise. He took her car, Chief.”
I thought back to the little black Honda Civic we’d just driven past on the highway, its windows tinted against the afternoon light. I hadn’t thought of it at the time, but it sure did look an awful lot like Rebecca’s little sedan.
“What in the hell are you talking about, Matt?”
“Turn the truck around, Chief,” I said quickly and insistently. “Turn it around! He just passed us a few miles back! If we hurry, we can still catch him!”
Chapter Forty-six – Rebecca
I screamed for dear life as soon as I realized that he was on the phone. It was too late, though. He’d already hung up by the time I began and just turned the music back to full blast.
But, still, I screamed. I didn’t know what else to do as I tried to struggle against my bonds.
It didn’t matter, of course, and all I did was scream myself hoarse.
The only consolation I had was that I was pretty sure Matthew had been on the other line. He wasn’t dead, after all. Just that thought brought a small smile to my face. No matter what was going to happen to me, he’d still be all right.
Or, even better, he’d come find me.
We began to slow down, and my little Civic pulled off the main road onto a gravel country road or driveway. I wa
sn’t sure if we were north or south of town, but from the shifting of the car it felt like we’d turned left off the highway.
We bumped and crunched along the drive, my body doing a bad impression of the worm, for a few minutes until we came to a stop and Derrick put the car in park. He popped the trunk before he got out of the car, the light blinding as it slipped in around the edges of the pure blackness.
I closed my eyes against the glare of the afternoon and tried to turn my head away from the brightness as my world suddenly lit up brighter than the Fourth of July.
My former friend, now my captor, crunched heavily on the gravel as he came back and opened the trunk all the way. I squinted in the bright light, my hair all over my face and my eyes slightly swollen. A faceless silhouette against the day, he just stared down at me.
“Need anything? Water? Food? I’m not a monster. Not really.”
“I just want to know why you’re doing this, Derrick. I thought you were my friend.”
“I was. That’s why I’m offering you food and water, Becks.”
“Don’t call me that. You don’t deserve to call me that.”
“I’ll call you whatever the fuck I want.” Then he slammed the trunk shut again, the lid booming and the air compression popping my ears.
“Fuck you, Derrick!” I screamed, kicking my legs against the sides of the trunk.
He paused for a moment, listening to my tantrum, before his feet began their crunch-crunch on the gravel again as he walked away. I heard him step onto hardwood of some sort, and what sounded like a screen door open and close.
I sat there in the heat of the trunk, breathing hard.
I needed to get out of here. I needed to do something. Lying around here wasn’t going to do me any good, and I knew it.
And then I remembered my jumper cables and their metal, nearly serrated teeth. Back in high school, when Zeke had first been teaching me how to drive, he’d explained that the teeth were cut that way to help keep a grip on the battery terminals. I hoped that they were gnarly enough to cut through the silvery tape enclosing my wrists.
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