by K. J. Emrick
To emphasize Christian’s point, Jackson smirks and takes out his handcuffs, dangling them from one finger. He looks like he’d enjoy putting those on me a little too much.
I know when I’m beat.
“Okay, fine. I’m not happy about it, but I guess you aren’t really giving me a choice.”
“No,” Christian agrees, “I’m not. It’s fine, Sid. Just stay in the car and we’ll be out again in five minutes, tops. You’ve done your part. Now it’s time for us to do ours.”
He doesn’t even wait for me to answer, just turns and motions the other two officers to follow him with a nod of his head. Jackson gives me one last glance, and a wink, and then puts his handcuffs away as he jogs to catch up.
“Probably sleeps with those things,” I mutter to myself as I get in Christian’s car. “Probably cuffs himself to the bed and practices unlocking them with his toes. Hmph. It’ll be a cold day in hell before you put those things on me, buddy.”
I almost slam the door, but then I remember we’re trying to be quiet. As mad as I am at what Christian had just done to me, I wanted this to go right. Katarina’s life could be at stake. So, I shut it nice and easy instead. I can always slam it later just as many times as I want.
The two uniformed officers follow Christian in a low crouch up to the front door. There’s no porch, just a small cement slab for a step. There had been flower beds to either side of the door, once upon a time, but they’re just overgrown patches of weeds now. Just another house in need of attention in suburban America. Nobody would ever think that there was something bad going on behind those closed doors and shuttered windows.
Wait… shutters?
I thought back to when I had been in that room with Katarina. The room before that, too, where I first poofed into the house. Curtains. The windows in that house had curtains on them. Not shutters.
I kept staring at that second-floor window as Christian moved up to the front door, and his guys took up position one to either side. That would have to be the room I was in when I saw Katarina, but there should be curtains there. Flowery pink curtains.
Christian reached out for the doorknob.
Had we stopped at the wrong house, I wondered? No, there were numbers tacked to the front siding, giving the address. Same address that was in the file on Christian’s computer, the last known address of Andrea Michaelson. The one she was about to lose to the bank. This was the right place.
Then why did it not feel right?
Christian tries the knob, and I can see from here that it’s unlocked. I watch him pull his gun from its holster, and give each of his guys a nod, telling them to get ready.
Then he tenses up, and shifts his body weight—
My future-sense went crazy. Flames. Fire. This house in smoldering pieces and Christian lying on the front lawn, bleeding.
Oh, damn.
I threw the car door open just as fast as I could and start racing across the lawn, calling Christian’s name as loud as I can without a care about who would hear me. “Get back! Get back from the door! Get away from there!”
He looks my way, annoyance scribbled across his features, and he takes a single step back toward me, even as he swings the door open wide.
Amazing what can happen in three seconds.
Behind him the house explodes, and the sound of it is like God’s hands smacking both of my eardrums. An unseen concussive force knocks me off my feet and suddenly I’m looking at the sky and wondering why the clouds were so dark.
It wasn’t until later that I realize that was smoke rolling up from the burning house.
Chapter Twelve
By the time the nice red fire trucks had put out most of the fire, I’d gotten most of my hearing back.
You had to be impressed at their response time, actually. They’d managed to keep the building from burning all the way to the ground and none of the neighboring houses so much as got singed. Except for branches full of crisped and curled up leaves on the trees that surrounded the lot, the damage was contained to that dumpy two-story house.
The house that was not the same house I’d been in with Katarina.
I don’t know what went wrong. We’d tracked Andrea Michaelson to this address. I was so certain that she was the one holding Katarina captive in some sort of twisted revenge scheme. She had to be here. Katarina had to be here.
Only, she wasn’t. The fire department had confirmed there were no bodies inside. Nobody was home.
The place was just rigged to blow the minute someone came through the front door.
There were people everywhere, watching the action, smiling to see something this incredible. Usually they could only see this in the movies. Read about it in those thriller novels. This was a big deal for them. It happened right here on their street. Lucky them.
When the friendly paramedic tried to send me to the hospital for the third time, I tell her to go help someone who really needs it. Not in those words. My words were more colorful. She huffs and tosses the box braids in her hair over one shoulder before grabbing up her duffle bag of medical supplies. She went off somewhere, leaving me alone on the bumper of the ambulance.
So what now? I needed to get back to my apartment. I needed to talk to Barlow. I needed to figure out some way of finding Andrea. If she wasn’t here, then she had to be somewhere. I mean, that was just simple logic. Everyone had to be somewhere and wherever Andrea was, I firmly believed she had Katarina with her. If not at this place then somewhere. Still in Detroit, too, because there really hadn’t been time for her to go far. So what was I supposed to do, go door to door asking if there were any crazy ladies at home with Croatian girls chained to a wall in a bedroom upstairs?
Something tells me that wasn’t going to work.
What I really needed to do, most of all, was check on Christian and make sure he was all right. The two uniformed cops that had been with him at the front door had gone in the same squad already to be checked out for minor burns and cuts. They were dazed and hurt but would probably be all right. Their vests took a lot of the force of the explosion. Plus, they’d been standing to the side.
Christian had taken the brunt of it when the door came off its hinges and slammed into him and sent him sailing halfway across the yard. If he hadn’t been turning back toward me in that exact moment, he might just be dead.
My insides twist up into knots at the realization that I might have lost him. He and I had been friends for a very long time. It was more than that between us, though. I care about the guy. He was like a brother to me… no, he was more than that.
When I reach up a hand to see what’s tickling my cheeks, I feel my tears. They weren’t for me. They weren’t even for Katarina.
They’re for Christian, and the pain I’d caused him by not being quicker to warn him. Future-sense be damned, I wasn’t fast enough.
I caught the arm of a cop rushing past. “Hey. Excuse me. Where’s Christian Caine?”
“Are you okay?”
That was not an answer to my questions. “I’m fine, just…”
“Here, let me get one of the paramedics to help you.” His voice is full of concern for me, and I know why. The nice EMT had cleaned up the cut on the side of my face but it was still all scraped up and nasty looking. I think I had the start of a black eye, too.
“Listen, I’m fine, they already checked me out.” I was not going to go back into that ambulance. Not until I knew what had happened to Chris. “Where’s Detective Caine? I need to tell him how I knew the explosion was going to go off.”
The cop looks uncertainly at my wound, and then shakes his head. Whatever I was talking about was above his paygrade. “Caine’s over there. You’ll want to hurry before they leave.”
I follow his finger to where he was pointing. A white van with official striping. The words across the back double doors nearly stopped my heart.
That’s a Coroner’s van.
From this side I couldn’t see anyone around it. Which could mean they w
ere inside the van. Where the dead bodies go. No. I refused to think like that. He was fine. Christian was fine. He had to be fine.
Holding my breath, I push off the back of the ambulance and rush over to that van, past police officers and firemen and city officials wandering around and looking important. I didn’t care who saw me. I just needed to know that Christian was all right…
When I rounded the back of the van, there he was.
He’s standing and talking to two guys in blue windbreakers with the words Medical Examiner written across their backs. His right arm was wrapped and held in a sling. His bottom lip had been split open and now it was puffed up around a crusty line of dried blood. One eye was swollen shut. That nice shirt of his was ripped along the side. If he hadn’t been wearing his badge on his belt, he could have passed for just another victim of a random house explosion.
Although this hadn’t been so random, and it had nearly cost him his life.
Breathe, I tell myself. You can breathe again.
I only catch the tail end of his conversation. “Sorry to get you out for this one, Sam,” he says to one of the guys in their windbreakers. “Nobody died this time.”
“That’s what we like to hear,” the guy named Sam answers with a heavy laugh. “Got enough dead bodies down at the morgue to deal with. Really didn’t need to add your sorry carcass into the mix.”
Nobody died. Christian is standing right there and he said the words himself. Nobody died.
That was all I’d been waiting to hear. Somehow having the words hanging out there in the air made it real. Made it true.
Rushing over to him, pushing between him and the other two men, I throw my arms around his neck and give him the biggest hug I’ve ever given anyone. I completely ignore his pleas for me to be careful with his injuries because I just don’t care. He’s alive. He’s here, and he’s alive.
Then I take a step back and punch him in his good arm just as hard as I can.
“Ow!” he complains, totally blowing his tough guy image if you ask me. “What part of ‘I’m hurt’ did you miss?”
“Why are you standing here, you idiot?” I argue back at him. “You just got blown up by a house! What happened? Why aren’t you more hurt? I mean, I’m glad you’re not but how… just how?”
He runs a hand through his hair, but then his fingers find the injuries to his face, and he tentatively feels across them, as if he was trying to decide if they were real or not. “I honestly don’t remember, Sid. I remember you jumping out of the car, and I remember being angry at you that you couldn’t just wait like I asked you to, but then… the rest of it’s kind of a blank until I woke up. The paramedic said that’s natural with a blunt force trauma like I had. You know. A door to the skull. My memory might come back in a day or two or it might not. Doesn’t really matter. I’m here to tell the story and I have a feeling I’ve got you to thank for it.”
I swallow, afraid by what he might say next. “Er, what do you mean?”
“You called out to me just as the explosion was about to go off. The paramedic said that me turning away like that let the door carry me away from the blast. That and the vest…” He shrugs, and winces at the movement against his injured arm. “Guess I’m lucky. Not sure what you saw that I missed, but you saved my life, Sid. So… yeah. Thanks.”
He couldn’t remember me telling him that the building was going to explode. He just knew that I was calling his name, and he couldn’t remember what I said. That was a serious relief. Nobody knew about my special gift. Not Chris. Not the people who used to be in my unit in the Marines. I’d never even told my sister. Harry didn’t even know, for the love of God, and he was a magical being who lived in a rug. Nobody knew about it, because I did not want to explain that part of myself to anyone. If I ever did, I’d be looked at as a freak.
I just wanted to keep being me.
I hug him again, gently, and this time I didn’t punch him.
The two Medical Examiners mutter their goodbyes to Chris, giving him a few pointed glances for the honey-blonde woman hanging off his shoulders with tears in her eyes. Whatever. Let the rumors fly. Me and Chris are good friends. That’s all.
“I’m going back to the precinct house,” he tells me after a moment. “You should come back with me and we can take a second crack at finding Andrea Michaelson.”
“How? There’s nowhere else to look for her. Your records said she was here.”
“Can’t always depend on computers.” His arm is still around me. My arms are still around him. “There’s other ways to do a police investigation. I’ll rattle some cages. We’ll find her.”
I step back from him then, still close enough to keep my hand on his arm. “We? Now there’s a ‘we’?”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t get all mushy. We started this together, we’ll finish it together.”
I squeeze his arm, meaning it as agreement, but he winced with fresh pain when I did.
That settles it. “What you need to do,” I tell him in my best don’t-argue-with-me voice, “is go get checked out at the hospital. I… that is, we almost lost you today. Take a breath. Make sure you’re okay and you aren’t going to drop over dead in the next two hours from a tiny microtear in the artery of your pinky finger, or something.”
“Sid…”
“Chris…” I can play that game, too, and I’m better at it. “You need to go to a hospital. Plain and simple.”
From behind me, a shadow rises up to block the midmorning sun. I felt the man coming, and I know who it is. I was just kind of hoping it would be a different supervisor coming out today. Anyone but Lieutenant Axel Webb.
“She’s right,” he says to Chris. “You’re going to the hospital.”
His voice is a low bass rumble, perfectly suited to a body that was built like an oak barrel, round and dark and weathered. The lines of his uniform are just as crisp and exact as always. The single gold bar on each collar tab are gleaming in the shadows he casts. I’m pretty sure that I’ve never seen the man in anything but his uniform, and I’ve never seen his uniform be anything but perfect.
“Sir,” Christian greets him formally. He probably would have saluted, too, if not for his arm being in that sling. “I didn’t realize you were coming out to the scene.”
“Hadn’t planned on coming out, Detective Caine,” he snaps. He starts walking around both of us slowly, examining us up and down. “Thing is, when three of my officers get hurt on an operation that I knew nothing about, well that kind of changes my plans for the day. Oh, sorry Miss Stone. Three of my officers got hurt, and one Private Eye.”
The disdain in his voice is a palpable thing. He doesn’t like me much, or rather he doesn’t like private investigators in general, but the feeling is mutual. I can’t explain it, but I’ve only ever been able to take this man in small doses.
Christian tries for a reassuring smile and mostly makes it happen. “Sir, I’m fine. I really need to keep working on this until we find Katarina Borishev.”
“Don’t push me, Detective.” Webb’s voice drops. The muscles in his jaw clench. Thunderclouds roll behind his eyes. “I’ve already got to explain this whole mess to the Assistant Chief in an hour, and that’s after not being told anything about it in the first place. I have to explain why a house in a nice, quiet suburban Detroit neighborhood blew sky high when my officers obviously didn’t take the proper precautions before entering.”
“Uh, well, I might be able to help you there, sir.”
“Think so? Well, then by all means. Enlighten me.”
I can see the veins cording in Chris’s neck as his frustration rises, but he’s keeping himself restrained, somehow. “Here’s the thing. The fire department guys found the remains of a tripwire setup. Gasoline all over the inside of the front room. It’s all amateur stuff. Looks like it was rigged to blow whenever anyone opened the front door. The door was unlocked, so whoever planted it wanted to kill us. It was definitely premeditated. I figure Andrea Michaelson is trying to cover
her tracks on this kidnapping.”
“Or,” Webb snarls, “she’s in so deep with the mortgage and behind on her payments that this is her saying screw-you to the bank! She burned the house down, rather than let them get it! Did you think of that? Do you have any scrap of evidence to show there even was a kidnapping?”
Chris stands his ground in front of this verbal abuse, never once backing down. “We have a missing woman, Lieutenant. We have that woman stealing money from her boyfriend along with another woman, as yet unidentified. We have the fact that I was just nearly blown apart on the front lawn of Andrea Michaelson’s house. I’d say she’s a pretty good suspect in my book.”
Webb leans into Chris from his heavy waist, putting them nose to nose. “You think that makes it better somehow? Know how this is going to play in the media? Cops screw up again! That’s how. If you’d died it would’ve been better for us, truth be told, because at least then we’d have the sympathy angle to work with.”
I was left gaping at the man. I couldn’t help it. How could anyone say something that insensitive, that cold-hearted, that… that… damned cruel? Especially about one of their own!
Several things were about to come out of my mouth that he was not going to like, but Chris manages to silence me with a look. He didn’t want me to make it worse for him. I don’t see how it could possibly get any worse, myself. This man deserves a piece of my mind. And a slap across the face. And a good surgeon to remove that rod stuck up his—
“Get yourself to the hospital,” he says to Chris again, interrupting the very colorful image in my mind’s eye about what part of Webb’s anatomy might need surgery. “I’m not asking you, Detective, I’m telling you. Hospital. Now. Pass your notes off to Huckle Bryerson. He’ll follow up on any leads you have. And for the love of God. Let’s try not to blow up any more of Detroit today. All right?”
