The Truth Seeker

by Dee Henderson

  “Lisa’s inside!”

  Jack swung the ax with every ounce of energy in his body, the muscles in his legs through his back propelling the blow. He didn’t waste time on words. It was an accelerant fire unlike any he had ever seen; even the ground seemed to burn.

  The shouts of men who fought the dragon were a noble chorus around him.

  The second blow splintered the door at the lock; it swung open—and a wall of fire slammed out with ferocious intent. For a horrifying instant Jack was inside the fire, his face mask taking the brunt of the beast’s breath; he was trapped by heat and light and angry flames.

  Eighty pounds of water pressure per minute hit back; scalding steam roiled, and the flames slowly began to retreat.

  One second.

  Two.

  Three.

  They weren’t getting through it fast enough.

  At seven Jack surged through the doorway, not caring anymore what it was going to be like inside, stealing through the opening in the wall of flames to the left and toward the hall.

  There was no way to shout, to hear Lisa against the roaring noise. She’d be down low to the floor trying to escape the smoke while trying to get toward a window . . . if she were able to still move. The smoke was too low, hugging near his knees. Her lungs would have already seared with the smoke, which made for an agonizing death. And the windows were the last place he wanted her moving toward—they had been laced and marked to burn. She’d reach safety only to have it denied her. And Jack knew from horrifying experience that once clothes caught fire . . .

  He wasn’t leaving her in this house.

  A hand clamped down hard on his shoulder, squeezing twice, Cole signaling he’d search clockwise around the room while Jack moved counterclockwise. Jack reached up and tapped Cole’s hand in agreement.

  Only another firefighter would understand why they were inside an inferno when hope was so slim. The fact it was his best friend and the head of the arson group at his side—Jack was grateful. Cole was the most experienced man in the company. If there was a chance, Cole would help create it.

  Which room?

  Kitchen? Living room? Bedroom?

  Pets.

  Jack knew exactly where Lizzy would have tried to go.

  And knowing that, it might just save her life.

  He moved forward with Cole down the hall, judging distance by the number of steps he took, and felt for the door frame of the guest bedroom, committing himself and Cole to searching this room first, and possibly last, if the fire had its way. It was terrifying, the knowledge Lizzy could literally be lying one foot farther down the hall, and in this smoke he couldn’t see her.

  He was blind, and his sister was dying.

  “Take out the window in the guest bedroom next!” Stephen shouted over the roaring flames. Quinn turned the long pike pole with its metal hook to break out the glass and latch around the burning windowsill. He could feel the heat blistering his face as he strained to tear out the wood, grimly ignoring the pain.

  Marcus latched his fire hook around the wood to help. “Pull!”

  Stephen had wisely given them a job, for neither of them could handle standing by to watch. Jack and Cole had risked their lives going inside to get Lisa. They needed a way to get her out. Quinn refused to accept the reality that he could feel, see, smell, and taste. The fire had already won. Water hissed around him as the flames roared and ate the water thrown against it.

  “Lisa!” It was a shout from Kate behind him and to the right. Quinn risked seconds to look away and checked his movement midstroke. Lisa, running hard across the sidewalk from the direction of the nearby park into the street without looking, falling forward and catching herself as her feet moved from sidewalk to asphalt. Quinn dropped the fire hook and swerved sharply to cut her off.

  Her eyes were wide, bright, and focused past him. “No!”

  Quinn caught her, steel arms wrapping around to stop her. The force of the contact drove a bruise deep into his side.

  “Jack, get out of there! Lisa’s safe. She’s outside!” Kate screamed over the roaring fire.

  The top of Lisa’s head caught Quinn under the chin sending sharp splinters of pain into his jaw and face. She was hard to hold. She’d learned to fight dirty and she wanted past him; in the adrenaline rush to reach her pets she wasn’t thinking, just reacting. Those were her pets dying.

  He forced her to turn away from the fire, not to watch, and felt her chest heave as she tried at the same time to breathe and speak. “Don’t, Lizzy, please don’t. It’s already over.”

  He could feel it rush over her, could feel the shock break and the truth hit. Her body shuddered. She’d lost everything that mattered to her: the scrapbooks, the records, the art . . . and the pets. The pets she had loved were dead.

  He held on because it was all he could do to help.

  He could hear Jack coughing, Kate angry in her relief, and Cole ordering people back. The fire viciously roared as the roof collapsed.

  It took Lisa minutes but Quinn felt the change. She stiffened as she took a deep breath. She braced and pushed herself a few inches back from his chest, stumbled, and found her footing again. She was reeling and fighting it and her eyes— His hands tightened and she tried to shake him off. “I’m okay. Go help Jack. Someone needs to help Jack.”

  Marcus read the situation in a glance, slid his arm around her waist, and took over. “Lizzy, you scared us, honey.”

  Marcus met his gaze, and Quinn understood the silent message. Quinn let his hand tighten on Lisa’s shoulder. “I’ll get Jack so you can see for yourself he’s okay.”

  Lisa was sitting on the side step of the fire engine, silent, one tennis shoe off because she’d stepped on a hot ember and burned the sole. She was moving her socked foot slowly back and forth in the soot-blackened water rushing down the street toward the nearest storm drain, her gaze never leaving the dying fire. Her brother Stephen had wrapped a fire coat around her and she gripped it with both hands, pulled tight.

  Quinn kept a close watch on her as he leaned against the driver’s door of a squad car, waiting for a callback from the dispatcher. She was alone in her grief, her emotions hidden, her eyes dry. She’d lost what she valued, and he hated to realize how much it had to resonate with her past.

  Kate sat down beside her.

  Quinn watched as the two sisters sat in silence, and he prayed for Kate, that she would have the right words to say.

  Instead, Kate remained silent.

  And Lisa leaned her head over against Kate’s shoulder and continued to watch the fire burn, the silence unbroken.

  Friends. Deep, lifelong friends.

  Quinn had to turn away from the sight, so much emotion inside it was going to rupture out in tears or fury.

  He found himself facing a grim Marcus.

  “Quinn, get her out of here.”

  “Stephen has already tried; she won’t budge.”

  “No. I mean out of here. Out of town,” Marcus replied tersely. “He goes from notes and phone calls to fire. He’s not going to stop there.”

  Marcus was right. Lisa had to come first. “The ranch. She’s going to need the space.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll keep her safe; now that it’s too late.”

  “Quinn—we’ll find him.”

  That wasn’t even a question. He was going to hunt the guy down and rip out his heart.

  “Lizzy.” She was awake but looked unseeing out the plane window, her face still bearing the streaks of soot and her clothes the strong smell of smoke. Quinn tucked the blanket around her lap, then eased her head forward and replaced the jacket she’d bundled up with a pillow. He reached for her hand and closed it around a cold water bottle. “Ice water. It will help.”

  He loosened the cap when she tried and couldn’t turn it.

  He wished she’d say something, wished she’d at least cry, but instead she had pulled back into silence, turning her face away from him, watching the black ni
ght sky. Dave had chartered the flight for them so she’d have no one else to have to deal with.

  Rachel had wanted to come along, and Kate, but Lisa had just shaken her head. It had hurt the others to see her pulling away from them, but Lisa hadn’t seen that. She’d simply wanted to retreat on her own. And because he understood, he’d quietly suggested to her family that they give her a couple days.

  He wanted so badly to reach out and pull her against him, take the pain away, but she wasn’t seeking him out either, and that hurt, deep in his soul it hurt. She wasn’t turning to him.

  He reached over and held her hand. For the duration of the flight it remained lax within his.

  Twenty-one

  Quinn walked down the long hardwood floor hallway in the ranch house, past the sculptures and the art, the mail on the side table and suitcases still unpacked by the door. He accepted the phone from his housekeeper. “Jack?”

  “How’s she doing?”

  Quinn didn’t have a good description. “Still in shock. Too quiet.” He worried about how long it would take her to come out of it. This Lisa, so passive she followed directions without comment, was a mystery to him. He hoped that if she couldn’t sleep she’d at least seek him out, rather than slip from the house to walk alone. “How are you doing? Honestly?”

  Jack’s voice had deepened an octave and still sounded rough, an aftereffect of all the smoke he’d inhaled. “I would not recommend running air tanks down until they start to chime. I’m thankful Cole was with me.”

  “It’s painful, knowing the risk you took when she wasn’t even inside.”

  “Quinn—” Jack’s voice became grim—“if she had been inside, she’d have been dead. The flames were coalescing to the center of the house, the toxic smoke was as low as my knees. Every room was filled with the smoke; it was pouring through the air-conditioning vents like small chimneys.”

  “Arson?”

  “The place was soaked in fuel oil. Poured into the ground and soaked into the wood of the patio. It went with the same ferociousness as a natural gas line break would burn.”

  “He wanted to kill her, not just scare her.”

  “He set the fire while she was out of the house; I don’t think that was an accident. Marcus found a note tucked under the windshield wiper of her car. Go away.”

  “The fire was a threat.” Quinn felt sick. There was no more room to escalate but to murder. They had to find this guy. “How’d he start it?”

  “Preliminary—a lighter tossed into the flower bed at the back of the house.”

  “No one in the neighborhood saw anything?”

  “I’m sorry, Quinn. Her immediate neighbors were gone for the weekend, and the patrols that have been watching the neighborhood didn’t see anything out of place. But my gut tells me he stayed. I don’t think he set the fire and left the area. We’re reviewing the news reporter’s tape of the fire to see if there was anyone in the crowd that stands out.”

  “She didn’t tell many people she was going to be gone or when she would return.”

  “He’s close enough to her to know the details, either directly or second hand.”

  He had nowhere to direct the anger he felt. “Why didn’t Lisa smell the fuel oil?”

  “It’s like motor oil: once it’s soaked in, it’s not going to be that obvious. And they were asphalting the driveway three houses down. Even I would have had a hard time separating the smell of fresh asphalt from the faint, lingering smell of fuel oil.” Jack’s voice turned rough. “Quinn, that note. Why does he want her gone? It has to tie to the murders you two have been investigating. Just how close are you to the truth that he would risk such a public action to slow you down?”

  “I don’t know. If we’re staring at it already, I don’t know what it is.”

  “Find out. Until you do, I don’t know how we’ll stop him.”

  “Was there anything salvageable?”

  “Kate and I will find out tomorrow once the ruins have cooled down.”

  “Don’t tell Lisa what you’ve told me.”

  “Not until she’s ready to hear it,” Jack agreed. “I’ll call in the morning.”

  “Please do.”

  After he said good-bye and hung up the phone, Quinn just stood in the hall, looking unseeing at the floor, weary to the bone. It was almost dawn.

  Lisa had had to start over so many times in her life. He didn’t know if she had the reserves to do it again. She’d loved having roots, a place that was hers.

  She’d loved that house. She’d needed that house. And now someone had taken it away. She struggled to let herself attach to people, would now add a struggle to let herself attach to another place knowing it could also get ripped away. There were only so many losses a person could take.

  “Lord, I want to find whoever did this and rip away what he values most, make him feel the same hurt he inflicted.” Quinn felt the ache settle back in his stomach, like a wound that wouldn’t heal. He’d nearly lost her for a second time. “I’d give my right arm to know how to help her right now.”

  There was nothing he could do, that was the harsh part. He wished from the depths of his heart that he could share this ranch with her for more than a few days, he wished he could make her part of it and the roots of this house and land that went back not one generation but four.

  “What’s going to help, Lord? She’s hurting. And it’s breaking my heart.”

  Montana was doing its best to show itself at its finest. The sunset was painting the sky, the temperature was cool but comfortable, the evening breeze faint.

  Lisa took a seat on the steps of the porch rather than take a chair. Quinn gave her the space, leaning against the post of the porch, watching the sunlight fade. The sounds of the night were beginning to rise: the faint sounds of cattle and horses moving around settling for the night, the quiet rising sound of insects.

  As peaceful as the night was, Quinn doubted Lisa felt it. Five days. It was Saturday and she had yet to come out of the silent place where she grieved. Pets like people were mourned. Her face was drawn from lack of sleep. He couldn’t get under that reserve, hadn’t tried. He understood the patience of time.

  His mongrel dog with the odd name of Old Blue—cattle smart, loyal to a fault—angled from coming to him to veer toward her, his tail moving slowly back and forth as he stopped near where she sat. Lisa didn’t respond. The dog moved forward, nudged her hand, and rested his muzzle on her knee.

  It was a silent standoff between the two of them and Quinn tensed.

  Lisa finally reached forward and rubbed the dog’s head.

  And Quinn saw the first tear fall.

  “Someone burned down my house and killed my pets.”

  Sitting on the porch step beside Lisa, Quinn just nodded. “I know.”

  She wiped her eyes with one hand, the other continuing to stroke Old Blue’s head. Quinn was relieved that there was life back in her eyes, even if the emotion was primarily anger.

  “Someone who had to be following us that day we visited Marla’s grave. And he likes fire. We know that about him now.”

  “I had copies of the case files sent out.” He knew the work would help, would give her a safe place to function while she dealt with the emotions.

  “I want to see them.”

  “Let me get you something to eat first.” She desperately needed some sleep too, but he knew he would get nowhere encouraging that at the moment.

  “The files are in the study?”

  “The white boxes stacked by the bookcases.”

  “I’ll eat as I read.”

  He wrapped his hand around hers. “Please, go call the family first. It will help them—Kate, Rachel, especially Jennifer. And Marcus can fill you in on what he and Jack and Stephen have been able to find out.” She’d talked to them when they called, but she’d been holding herself so far back from everyone it had made her words seem merely polite. It had been so hard on them to wait, not to fly out as the days slipped by, to give her t
he space she wanted.

  “I’ll call them.”

  Afraid he’d say too much if he stayed, he kissed her forehead, then got up from the porch step beside her.

  “Jen, I’m sorry.”

  “Please quit apologizing. It’s not necessary. I was absolutely sick when Marcus called to tell me the news.”

  Stretched out on the couch in Quinn’s study, her head resting against the armrest, Lisa idly wrapped the phone cord around her finger. Her family loved her enough to forgive her for being rude. She’d pushed them away for five days and they were still there waiting for her when she came back to her senses. “Someone wanted to kill me, Jen.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “I know that too.”

  Lisa reached down toward Old Blue and got her hand licked for her trouble. The dog rolled onto his side and she buried her hand in his warm fur. She had a feeling Old Blue wasn’t a house dog, but Quinn had shown up with sandwiches and the dog at his heels. Lisa was pretty sure the dog was hanging out with her because of the food she’d been sharing but felt relieved to have him with her regardless.

  “I miss Sidney so much. He was so special. And Iris—” She was crying again and wiped at the tears, furious with herself for having so little control, glad Quinn had given her privacy for this call.

  “They’ll find whoever did it.”

  She reached over for another Kleenex.

  “You never told me why you left the house to go walk around the pond.”

  Lisa hesitated.

  “Lizzy? You want to talk about it?”

  “Quinn.” She tried not to put all the confusion she felt over the man into the word, but it was there.

  “I wondered,” Jen said softly. “You two were pretty tight over the weekend.”

  “I went for a walk to try and clear my head. A lot of good that did me. If I’d been at the house, I might have been able to save my pets.”

  “I wish someone had been able to. I know Jack tried.”

  “They would have been terrified in those minutes before they died.”