As best Ringer can tell, Byrdie and Gamer sat on the house for two hours, seeing not a single light or sign of life. Aware of the clock ticking, of the fact that the detectives that had visited them might also be on Clady, they decided to leave their post along the curb.
They pulled directly into his driveway, their movements hidden under cover of darkness. Carrying only a plastic jug of accelerant and a blow torch, Gamer was through the front door in seconds, the thin wooden casing no match for his size and strength.
From there, it was fairly simple. Homes in San Diego were often made from the cheapest materials, designed to allow for maximal air flow. They weren’t made to withstand a nuclear blast, the fire chewing through it in record time.
“We gave it fifteen minutes,” Gamer says. Leaning forward, his massive fists are wrapped around his mug, one of the knuckles bearing a small scab from the night before. In that position, his shoulders bunch up beneath his neck, a thick roll of fat extended like a ring from ear to ear. “When the sirens started wailing, we decided to get out of there.”
Grunting, Ringer nods slightly. “No sign of him?”
“Nope.”
“Anybody see you?”
“Definitely not,” Gamer replies. A quick glance over to Byrdie is answered with a shake of his head, secondary confirmation that they weren’t spotted.
Whether that’s true or not, Ringer has no way of knowing right now, figuring they’ll find out soon enough.
Leaning back in his seat, he raises a hand to his face. He scratches at the underside of his jaw, nails digging against wiry bristles.
The decision to go after Clady might seem brash, but it was a risk worth taking. After the disappearance of Linc, it could be assumed he already knew about them anyway. After the events of the night before, it was assured.
They had nothing to gain from waiting any longer. It was time for them to get out ahead, to put up a show of force.
To make a statement.
“Okay, good,” Ringer replies, thinking ahead, working on the next thing in order.
A thing that never arrives, interrupted by the swinging doors spilling open. Through it tumbles a young man with dark hair hanging around his chin. Barely able to stay upright, he staggers to the bar, just catching himself, before turning wild-eyed toward the corner.
His left arm is painted red with blood, speckles and streaks, all of it dried. Smears line his hands and the front of his jeans.
Recognizing him as Dru, Ringer rises from his seat, the three around him turned and staring. Every other member that is still hanging around does the same, all sound falling away as everybody stares.
Any hint of optimism that existed a moment before is gone.
“It’s Clady,” Dru says, swinging his gaze around the room, moving past Ringer twice before settling his focus on him. “He got Prince.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
On the opposite corner of the property, positioned in the middle of the street, Detective Malcolm Marsh watches as Kyle Clady arrives. Moving like a specter between the various police cruisers and fire trucks, he seems oblivious to the chaos of the world around him, his sole focus on the home.
Where he has been or what has taken him so long to arrive, Marsh hasn’t a clue. Shifting from the house, he makes no effort to hide his appraisal as he openly stares at Clady, waiting for his reaction, wanting to see some semblance of how he responds to all this.
When Tinley first told him about the fire, his instinct immediately went to arson. Intentional or not he wasn’t sure, though starting a bonfire and trying to purge every memory of a lost loved one wasn’t an entirely unheard of way of handling things.
It wasn’t likely that would include an entire home, but sometimes things get away from someone. He already knew Clady had been staying elsewhere, had needed some space for the time being.
Seeing his arrival removed all such thoughts. His movements frantic, his responses completely real, there was no way to fake that sort of emotion. No way he would be so late arriving, would have that visceral a reaction, if things were staged.
The fire is real. Whether planned or not, Marsh will have to look into. If so, he will have to determine who did it, if it was the same people that shot Clady’s wife, if his visit to The Wolf Den earlier that day was just the first of many.
But all that will have to wait for now.
Even if this is the case that Marsh has been waiting for, that one enormous bust that will be the catalyst he needs out of Imperial Beach and San Diego in general, it will have to at least wait until morning.
Beside him, he feels Tinley tap the back of his wrist. Shifting his chin over a few inches, he sees his partner motion to Clady across the way, his hands raised above his head.
“There he is,” Tinley whispers.
Saying nothing, Marsh watches as a woman with red hair steps up beside Clady, a hand on his back. A big man with a sleeve of tattoos falls in on the other side. A black man in long sleeves completes the quartet.
Not one of them says a word, their attention squarely on the house.
Watching them another moment, Marsh puts his hands in his pockets. Shuffling his feet, he turns and looks at the glowing embers of the home, a steady plume of white smoke rising into the air beneath the deluge of water the firefighting teams are cascading over it.
A tiny bit of the original heat has receded, replaced by the smell of smoke so strong it burns the nostrils.
“Come on, let’s go,” Marsh says. Turning away from the house, he walks in the opposite direction of Clady, toward their sedan parked a block away.
“Wait,” Tinley calls.
Marsh doesn’t slow, picking his way past first-responders as his partner comes up beside him, jogging to close the gap.
“That’s it?” he asks. “We came all this way and we’re not even going to question him?”
Glancing over, Marsh shakes his head. “Kyle Clady didn’t do this.”
“But, still-“
This time, Marsh comes to a complete stop. He turns and looks at Tinley before glancing back at Clady and his friends standing in the street, none having moved an inch.
“I’d say the man’s been through enough for one night, wouldn’t you?”
When I left Corvallis eight months before, Mira had moved into my old place. A small cottage on the outskirts of town, it backed up to the Bald Hill Recreation area, the place the visual depiction of the word idyllic.
On the back porch sat a picnic table and a charcoal grille overlooking a sweeping meadow. Set aside as a cow pasture, most of the year it was a deep shade of green or gold, a herd of grazing black angus roaming lazily across it, perpetually in search of their next meal.
Tired of dorm living, she had asked the older couple I rented from if she could take over.
Considering she basically lived there already, they were more than amenable to the idea, even welcoming me back when I returned several months later.
For all but the short spell I was in Massachusetts, and Arizona or Montana the summers before that, the place had been where I lived for the last four years, the longest I had ever stayed in a single place. Furnished in a warm, comfortable style, it was the place in the world I was most at ease.
But even at that, sitting in the front living room, the lights off, cool air seeping through the rear windows, it no longer felt like home.
Reclined on the couch, stockinged feet extended onto the coffee table before me, crossed at the ankle, I sat with the television off. Staring past the silent black screen, I instead focused on the meadow out back, on the thick blanket of white covering it, moonlight refracting off the surface.
So locked in thought, deep in the recesses of my own mind, I didn’t hear Mira approach. Didn’t even know she was there until she slid a hand across my shoulder, circling around the sofa.
The springs beneath us shifted slightly as she dropped down beside me, the warmth and grog of sleep still clinging to her. Resting her head against my sho
ulder, her long hair fell against my neck, her hands sliding into the crook of my elbow and pulling it over.
For more than a minute, neither of us said a thing, each staring out, the quiet not quite awkward, but certainly not comfortable either.
Per usual, it was Mira that worked up the nerve to go first.
“You can’t let what Nancy said get to you. She’s always had a thing. You know that.”
Whether she was referring to the fact that her teammate had a major inferiority complex for all things Oregon State baseball or at one time had had romantic interest in me, I couldn’t be sure.
Nor could I argue that either one would be wrong.
“What makes you think I’m sitting in here thinking about Nancy?” I replied, my tone having far less conviction than I would have liked, knowing she would see right through it.
Though I still had to go through the motions all the same.
A small snort was Mira’s first response, her head rocking slightly against my arm. “Because you’ve barely said ten words since.”
Shifting, she turned to look at me, pressing her chin and lips against my arm. Turning for just a moment, I matched her gaze, holding it before shifting and looking back out through the rear window.
Per usual, she was right. I had been unable to sleep and I was sitting in the dark thinking about things, though she was wrong in thinking it was because of Nancy.
Or, at least, just because of Nancy.
“It’s just…” I said, losing my voice for a moment as I tried to formulate the best way to proceed. “She’s not wrong. I love Corvallis, I love this house, I love being with you…”
Squeezing my arm a bit tighter, Mira prompted, “But?”
“But right now, I feel like I’m in a holding pattern. Like I’m clinging to a life that’s gone. Like everything else has moved forward, and I’m still stuck staring in the rearview.”
Not wanting to fire back too quickly, to refute whatever I was thinking or feeling, Mira nodded. She considered things for a moment, sitting in silence, before saying, “But it’s not your fault. You got hurt. You’re still healing.”
I knew it wasn’t my fault. What had happened was a freak accident. The thing that had always made me a good player – the complete abandon I used in all aspects of the game – had ultimately become my undoing.
It was unfortunate, but it was fair.
What wasn’t was sitting around, trying to cling to something I knew was getting further away by the day.
“It’s been months,” I whispered, “and still I can barely swing a whiffle ball bat. Nobody wants to say anything, they keep insisting on being positive and supportive, but I can see the looks in their eyes.”
I didn’t bother finishing the sentence. Not because I couldn’t bring myself to do it, but because there was no need to.
My Mira knew me better than anyone. She had seen me every day since my return, no doubt sensed the thoughts I was carrying around. The self-doubt that was starting to creep in, the realization that what I’d always wanted to do was slowly coming to an end.
And that what scared me most was I had no idea where I went from there.
Turn the page for a sneak peek of Ships Passing, part 4 of the My Mira Saga
Sneak Peek
Ships Passing, My Mira Series Book 4
Prologue
I’m not sure how I know. Like the words to a song I haven’t heard in ages or the ending of a movie I stumble across late at night on cable, the pattern is already ingrained in my mind, the outcome sealed long before reaching the conclusion.
As if imprinted on me so long before that the origin has ceased being of importance, cast aside into the ethereal abyss that the mind creates for all that it doesn’t deem worthy of preserving.
The instant I hear the sound, the clear din of an engine approaching, every nerve ending in my body draws taut. My senses sharpen, picking up on the slightest shifts around me.
The diminishing light inside the room. The weak rattle of an air conditioning unit from next door. The smell of dust and cleaning product in the air.
Perched on the edge of the bed, I sit ramrod straight, counting off seconds. A sheen of sweat covers my skin, the residual light of day reflecting from it, though I am not nervous.
The point for that has come and gone.
Nor am I angry. Or sad. Or really feeling much of anything beyond the tiniest bit of relief, knowing that this inevitability was coming. In a way, I’m just glad to get it over with, to put this behind me forever.
Fingers splayed over the tops of my thighs, I hear as the brakes moan slightly, bringing the approaching vehicle to a halt. As the engine cuts out a moment later.
As a door wrenches open and footsteps crunch across the parking lot, the mixture of dirt and gravel allows each one to ring out. Hearing them, I am able to track my visitor’s movement, imposing them on the images in my mind, knowing exactly where they stand at any given moment.
My breathing increases slightly, my pulse picking up, thrumming through my temples. Still, I remain motionless on the edge of the bed, watching as a shadow passes by the threadbare curtain hanging over the window at the front of the room.
It is time.
Finally.
Chapter One
Hours have passed since I first showed up to see my home standing as a fiery pyre, oversized fingers of orange and yellow reaching ever higher into the night sky. In the time since, most of the commotion that was present when I first arrived has subsided.
Many of the first responders have now come and gone. A pair of police cruisers sit at either end of the street. To my right, a pair of officers lean against the front hood, glancing between the house and the street, waving off the occasional rubbernecker that tries to peer down on their way to work.
At the opposite end, the two men have given up the task, instead retreating inside their vehicle, their heads silhouetted behind the windshield.
Not that I harbor any ill will toward them. They are right. There isn’t anything more they can do.
Between them, the quartet of fire engines that first showed up has shrunk to a single unit. A small cluster of men in oversized fire-retardant pants and suspenders stand near the back end of it, their bare arms and faces smudged with soot. Spooled out alongside them is enough hose to ensure that the last dying gasps of the home don’t somehow spring back to life, but it is clear at a glance that they expect nothing of the sort.
At this point, the fight has been fought and lost.
Just as has almost every earthly possession that remained from my Mira.
When the sun last set, it did so on the definition of a bucolic suburban Southern California neighborhood. Single family dwellings butted up tight to one another, both sides of the street were filled with lots of equal size. Containing all the usual trappings, each had front lawns, side garages, a car or two parked outside.
A few had pets. A smaller handful even had the mythical white picket fence.
Only a matter of hours has passed since then, but already the sun is beginning to rise on a much different scene. No longer does the street look like it once did, an enormous black divot now gouged into the center of it.
What was once my home, the first house my wife and I owned together, the place where we were seriously considering expanding our family, is now nothing but a pile of cinders, each passing moment further reducing all that remains.
By noon, I suspect it will be nothing more than ash, the Santa Ana winds carrying it into the distance.
I can feel the concrete curb beneath me biting into my tailbone as I sit on the opposite side of the street and stare. Disbelief, terror, shock, nostalgia all run through my mind in equal measure. All so fierce, all so prescient, I don’t know which to seize on first, my body numb.
For only the second time in my life, I have no idea how to process something.
“Here,” a voice says, arriving a split second before a foil package taps against my shoulder. Sliding down
a few inches, I can smell sausage and cheese, my hand reaching up to accept the intrusion without my mind truly grasping what it is.
“Breakfast burrito,” Wendell Ross says, stepping down onto the street beside me and settling onto the curb.
A fellow Petty Officer, Ross has been by my side since we first went into SEAL training almost a decade before. A bit shorter than me, he is cut from solid muscle, his arms and chest broad plates achieved through hours of bodyweight calisthenics.
Dressed in gym shorts and a long-sleeve neoprene shirt, he places a brown paper bag between his feet as he settles in, though makes no move to open it.
Where he went or how long he’s been gone, I can only guess at, the last several hours a menagerie of sights and sounds and thoughts, all of it contorted into one unending nightmare.
Just as the last week since my wife’s death as had been.
“You should eat something,” Ross says, his voice low and composed. He doesn’t bother looking my way as he says it, both of us staring at the shattered remains of the last tangible memories I had of my marriage.
Of course, he is right. Just as he has been a dozen times before over the years when we were together out in the shit, moments when he would ensure the rest of us got the food or rest we needed.
A direct result of being one of the few among us that was also a father, the paternal instinct ingrained.
“Thanks,” I manage, not knowing what else to say at the moment.
I do need food. And water. And sleep.
I need to push rewind, and go back to sitting in the corner booth at The Cartwright with Mira and Ross and our friends Emily Stapleton and Jeff Swinger. I need to take her directly home afterward, avoiding Balboa Park and the Wolves and anything else that might endanger her.
Fair Trade Page 14
