Fatal Burn

by Lisa Jackson

  She felt nauseated at the thought but forced herself to appear relaxed. Whatever happened she had to go with it, to the point that she knew she could wound him, debilitate him or outrun him.

  So far he hadn’t stepped a foot into her private cell.

  In fact it was almost as if he could barely tolerate her.

  She still had no idea who he was and any attempts to draw him into conversation were met with steely-eyed resistance and tight lips.

  During this whole time, he’d barely strung two words together when talking with her and then it was always just to bark an order.

  “Get into your room.”

  “What’re you lookin’ at?”

  “Eat and shut the fuck up.”

  During mealtimes he allowed her to sit at a table and choke down the stuff he had—canned beans, canned spaghetti, canned stew—all of which he cooked over the fire that he pissed on each night. It turned her stomach, but she forced the food down, determined to keep up her strength, determined to escape from this boring, hot, hell of a prison. He gave her bottled water and sometimes a Coke.

  In the brief periods of time he’d allowed her out of the room she’d checked out as much of this cabin as possible, each avenue of escape, the few windows and two doors. There was no television. No phone. No electricity. The shack was primitive and decaying, the door on her room latched with an old-fashioned hook-and-eye lock that looked as if it had been there for half a century.

  Her forays out of the cell were short, only long enough to eat or stretch her legs, but he was beside her constantly, his eyes trained on her, his muscles tense as if he was ready to pounce on her if she made one misstep. That thought, of his hands on her again, of the smell of him close, kept her in line.

  She wondered where he went every night after the strange peeing ritual. He was gone for hours, often until late the next day, as if he was living somewhere else, or had a job, as if he had a double life.

  He was a freak. That was it. She listened as he prepared to leave—just as he did every night. First he latched her door, locking her into this miserable room, then he would walk outside, his boots making the old porch boards squeak. After that his footsteps would fade away and about a minute or two later the sound of a truck engine would spark in the distance.

  She knew he parked the truck away from the cabin in an old lean-to shed off the road. She’d seen its leaning, cracked boards on the night he’d brought her here. Since then, she’d never even caught a glimpse of his truck. The few times he’d let her outside, he’d been close beside her. In those few precious minutes, she would try like crazy to figure out where they were. Since she’d never seen that they’d crossed any more state lines she was pretty sure they were still in California. They’d passed through small towns and vineyards and had driven through the Valley of the Moon, so they were probably somewhere in that area her dad called “wine country.” But where was that?

  From the cabin she heard no sounds of traffic, not even the rush of cars on a distant freeway. But in the middle of the night she’d be awakened by the sound of a train thundering past. The tracks couldn’t be too far away, she figured, because the whole cabin shook. The clank of wheels and the roar of the engine were deafening as the train rushed by.

  Now, wondering where the train went to, where it came from, how close the next station or railway yard was, Dani lay sweating on the cot, counting off the seconds with her own heartbeats. She hardly dared breathe as she waited for the sound of the pickup truck’s engine to ignite in the distance. Crossing her fingers that he was really taking off for the night and hadn’t just left for a few minutes to get something from the truck, she strained to listen.

  She wanted him gone.

  Forever.

  She wouldn’t die here.

  No, she’d get out of this hot, airless prison.

  She just needed some time.

  A lot of time.

  By herself.

  So she could work out her plan.

  Then she heard it, the catch and cough of a truck’s engine.

  Thank God.

  Dani relaxed. She had a few hours, maybe more. In the near darkness, she rolled off the cot and crawled unerringly into the tiny closet where she’d discovered what she hoped would be her salvation. She couldn’t see anything, but she felt with her fingers all around the floorboards until she found it, that one warped board with the nail working its way out of its hole.

  She smiled to herself. The perv hadn’t noticed it, thought the room was secure. Think again, jerk-wad!

  Using one of her socks as a glove, she grabbed hold of the nail head and began wiggling and pulling. Back and forth, back and forth, tugging slightly, hoping to ream out the nail hole and make it bigger, all the while urging that rusted, ancient spike from the rotting wood.

  Sweat collected on her forehead.

  Ran down her arms.

  The rusted nail head poked through her sock and she doubled the cotton over, still feeling the sharp edges of the head dig into her fingers. She didn’t care, worked through the discomfort, even when she felt blood welling.

  The nail, if she could just extract it, was her ticket to freedom.

  “I don’t care what strings you have to pull, or whose butt you have to kiss, but get me out of here,” Shannon said from her hospital bed.

  Her brother Shea, all six feet one of him, wasn’t buying it. He stood inside the open door of the small room and shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Probably not, but do it anyway. You’re with the police department, twist some arms, make some calls, lean on someone, but for God’s sake, get me out of here.” She was already shifting on the bed, swinging her legs over and trying not to cringe at the pain in her shoulder and ribs. They seemed to be the worst, even harsher than the cut on the back of her head that had required a patch of her hair to be shaved and seven stitches to close the wound.

  The meal the nurse had rustled up—clear broth, red Jell-O, and a wimpy pressed-turkey sandwich—lay untouched on her plate. Her hunger had fled when she’d learned about Travis Settler and his daughter. No, check that, make it her daughter.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Shea was saying, but she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  “Well, either you work things out with the powers that be here at Santa Lucia General, or I go AWOL.” She slid her feet onto the floor and found that her legs supported her.

  “Shannon, listen to reason.”

  “You listen, okay? The arson detectives spilled the beans that the guy I ran into during the fire is my daughter’s adoptive father. He’s claiming that she’s missing.”

  “It’s true.”

  “You checked? And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I thought I’d wait until you were released.”

  “Consider me outta here. So my daughter really is missing?”

  His lips pinched at the corners, but he nodded. “Yeah. She’s been missing for a while. The reason Settler is down here is because he thought you might have something to do with the abduction.”

  She felt her gut tighten. “Swell guy. He loses track of his kid, then immediately thinks I had something to do with it? Me!” She pointed a finger at her own chest. “The woman who trusted that whoever adopted her would take care of her, keep her safe, protect her, love her? The person who hasn’t seen her in thirteen damned years?” Shannon’s voice cracked a bit. She fought back tears and cleared her throat. Right now she couldn’t afford to get too emotional. Now, more than ever, she had to be clear-headed, in control. “What about his wife?” she asked. “Where’s she in all this? The attorneys told me when I agreed to give the baby up, even though it was a private adoption, that my little girl was going to be raised by a married couple, one that really wanted children and for some reason or other couldn’t conceive.”

  “The wife is dead.”

  All the air in the room seemed to be sucked out by a vacuum.

  “Oh.” A little of S
hannon’s rage dissipated. For the briefest of seconds she felt a pang of compassion for the single father who obviously had to deal with his own grief as well as his child’s. Who knew what he had suffered? “What happened to her?”

  “The wife? Not sure. Illness of some kind, I think. She’s been gone a few years. Now it’s just Settler and the daughter.”

  “Whom he lost!” Again her anger reached flash point. What kind of father loses a kid? Her baby? Rationally she knew that children could be abducted, or run away, that it was a tragedy that happened every day, but not to her daughter, not to the precious baby she’d given up against her better judgment! She’d fought the idea, but in the end she’d been persuaded that giving the baby to a loving married couple desperate for a child would be best for her daughter’s sake, for her well-being. The couple would be able to give the baby everything she wanted and needed…And it had turned out badly. Shannon’s eyes burned. She tried to get a grip on herself. “This is just so wrong,” she whispered, swallowing hard.

  Refusing to wince against the pain that thrummed from her head down through her torso, she walked carefully across the small room and opened the closet door. Inside was an old yellow terry-cloth robe that one of her brothers had obviously found at the back of her closet at home. The robe had seen better days and was beyond shopworn. The cuffs were ragged and there was a coffee stain on one lapel that had never quite faded. Her blood-soaked boots had been tossed, and there weren’t any shoes, just a pair of worn, navy blue mule-type slippers.

  “Perfect,” she muttered flatly. Annoyed, she slid her feet into the scuffs.

  “I suppose I can’t talk you out of this.”

  “Nope.”

  “You seem to have forgotten that you’ve always been the baby, Shan.” Shea looked for all the world as if he was frustrated out of his mind. He scrabbled in his pocket for his pack of cigarettes before remembering where he was. He let his hand drop to his side.

  “Yeah, well, let’s not think of me as the baby of the clan. Or the only sister or any of that bull. I’m a grown woman and it’s time I quit relying on the rest of you.”

  “Except for me pulling strings to get you out of here.”

  She had the grace to smile. “Nobody said I wouldn’t still use you whenever I could.”

  His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “So who put you in charge?”

  “The son of a bitch who tried to beat the crap out of me,” she said, cinching the belt of her robe over the stupid hospital gown. She had no option but to wear it out of the place. “So do whatever it is you have to do to spring me and let’s go.”

  “You want me to take you back home.”

  “Eventually, but we have a stop to make first.”

  “A stop?”

  “You know where Travis Settler is, don’t you?”

  Shea’s lips tightened. “I can’t take you to him.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Shannon, I’d strongly advise against you having any contact with the man. We haven’t ruled him out as a suspect.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Listen to me. You could compromise the investigation,” Shea insisted, again reaching for his pack of cigarettes only to leave it in his pocket. “I can’t let you talk to him.”

  “I don’t see why not. I just want some simple answers, you know, like where the hell is my daughter? And since when do you go by the rules anyway? Since when does anyone in this family?”

  He was standing in front of the door, the proverbial brick wall.

  “Either you help me with this or I do it on my own,” she said, walking to the bedside table and the phone. “I’ll call Nate. I know he’s at the house taking care of the animals and I bet he’d come in an instant. Or I can call a cab. Or you can just drive me where I want to go.” She picked up the receiver and Shea threw up a hand.

  “Shit! When did you get so damned hardheaded?”

  “Flannery family trait,” she shot back. She didn’t bother explaining that from the moment she saw the fire in the shed she’d decided to take matters into her own hands. She now knew that the horses were safe, the dogs were fine and her house was still standing. But her daughter was missing. She couldn’t sit idly by.

  “Fine. You win,” Shea growled. “I’ll start the paperwork to get out of here. I’ll put in my two cents’ worth, but you talk to the staff, get your instructions and prescriptions. After that, I’ll drive you to your place to get your things…some clean clothes and your purse. If you’re going to meet Settler, you may as well not do it in a hospital gown.”

  “All right,” she agreed, silently admitting he was right. She didn’t want to go off half-cocked and look like a lunatic to boot.

  Shea wasn’t finished. “Listen, I don’t know this guy and I don’t trust him. So I’m not dropping you off or anything like that. We’ll go together. That’s the deal.”

  Shannon didn’t hesitate. She dropped the receiver. “I’ll take it.”

  It was time she met Travis Settler face-to-face.

  Chapter 11

  Turning off all the lights in his small motel room, Travis fiddled with the blinds and looked out the window. Across the asphalt lot, past a row of minivans, sedans and SUVs, parked on the street was an unmarked police car. The same silver Ford Taurus he’d caught tailing him earlier in the day. So much for a covert operation, he thought, and scowled to himself. He closed the blinds, turned the air conditioner to MAX/COOL, flipped on the television, leaving it muted, then flopped onto the bed with its thin mattress and floral-print quilt.

  What the hell had happened at Shannon Flannery’s place?

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that someone had not only torched the shed but had used the fire as a trap and a distraction. Shannon had been so busy trying to save her livestock that she’d almost gotten herself killed by an assailant.

  She’d been set up.

  The television, on an all-news channel, showed the president, smiling, holding up a hand to the press while his Secret Service bodyguards stood between him and the crowd of protestors.

  Travis barely noticed. He swiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to make sense of the fire. Sure, the arsonist could have been intent on torching the place, a random act, and when Shannon stumbled upon him, he’d panicked and beaten her while trying to escape…But that didn’t fit, Travis thought. No…There was more to the story than met the eye.

  What did he know about Shannon Flannery? First and foremost she was Dani’s birth mother. She’d never married the father and had given the baby up for adoption, a private adoption, through the law firm of Black, Rosen and Tallericco, which had dissolved over ten years ago.

  He also knew that she’d been charged with her husband’s murder. According to all the records the marriage had been rocky and there had been a restraining order filed against Ryan Carlyle by his wife. There were rumors of affairs and some speculation that he’d been a criminal known as the “Stealth Torcher” because of a string of intentionally set fires that had not occurred again since his death.

  Some people thought that Carlyle had been caught in his own trap. That he’d died in the forest fire that he’d set, slipped on a rock and broken his ankle as the fire had blazed around him.

  Others thought his wife, fed up with being cheated on and beaten, had lured him into the woods, somehow disabled him and then set a fire. The ensuing blaze had not only killed him, reducing him to little more than ash but had also taken some five hundred acres of California wilderness with it and sent three firefighters to the emergency ward.

  So what does the fire at Shannon Flannery’s house have to do with Dani?

  Nothing!

  Not one damned thing!

  This had been a wild-goose chase.

  Nothing more.

  Stretching across the bed, he opened the minifridge that doubled as a nightstand and dragged out a beer that he’d picked up earlier along with a nine-dollar pizza that was eight dollars overpriced. The damned
thing had tasted like cardboard topped with too little burned mozzarella cheese.

  Today, all the while he’d been running his errands including spending time at the offices of the newspaper, then hitting the library before picking up the six-pack of Coors and the bad pizza, the police had followed him in that dirty silver Taurus. Not that he blamed them, he supposed. After all, he had been at the fire, and though he had called 9-1-1, the call could have been his cover. His clothes had been smeared with her blood and she didn’t know who he was. Plus, all the damaging evidence they’d found in his truck.

  He twisted off the cap from his bottle of beer, then zinged the cap across the room to land hard in the trash basket under a scarred desk.

  The police had questioned him for nearly an hour, then let him go…But still they tailed him.

  He didn’t blame them for zeroing in on him, but it was a pain in the backside.

  As he took a long pull from his bottle, he wondered who had been behind the attack? Who would want to destroy her property and nearly kill her?

  He’d always considered Shannon Flannery his enemy, a woman who could seek out the daughter she’d given up thirteen years ago, a woman with the power to throw his life into total chaos. He wasn’t even certain that the private transaction through attorneys had conformed to all of the adoption laws of the state. For years, Travis had feared Shannon would change her mind, that she might find a way to try and reclaim her daughter and that Dani could be stripped from him.

  After Ella’s death, his fear had been stronger, to the point of near paranoia, but now…observing Shannon Flannery in action, seeing her trying to save her animals, only to be beaten savagely, he found himself softening to her.

  Maybe she wasn’t the enemy.

  Then who was?

  Who had his child?

  He drained his beer and left the bottle on the nightstand. If he could only find his kid. That’s all he wanted. Just Dani back home.

  His throat thickened and a muscle ticked in his jaw. He flipped open his cell and punched the speed dial button for Shane Carter. Though he was certain Carter would have called him had there been any news about Dani, Travis felt the need to check in, the need to hear something, anything.