Safe House

by Jenny Carroll

  Or Rob.

  Too bad she didn't know that the kind of calls I'd been receiving all night were not exactly from members of the pep squad, wanting to discuss the next day's bake sale.

  No, more like members of the death squad, wanting to discuss my imminent demise.

  But when I picked up, I found that it wasn't my prank caller at all. It was Special Agent Johnson.

  "Well, Jessica," he said. "Have you given any thought to our conversation this morning?"

  I looked at my mom and Douglas. "Uh, do you guys mind?" I asked. "This is kind of personal."

  My mom's eyebrows furrowed. "It isn't that boy, is it?" she wanted to know. "That Wilkins person?"

  That Wilkins person. It was almost as bad as the Jerk.

  "No," I said. "It's another boy."

  Which wasn't technically even a lie. And which made my mom smile as happily as she left the room as if I'd just been voted Most Likely to Marry a Doctor. Douglas left too, only he didn't look half so happy as Mom did.

  "Which conversation?" I asked Special Agent Johnson, as soon as my mother was gone. "Oh, you mean the one where you suggested my brother might, in fact, be Amber Mackey's killer? And that if I didn't help you track down your little Ten Most Wanteds, you'd haul him in for questioning about it?"

  "Well, I don't think I put it quite like that," Special Agent Johnson said. "But that, in essence, is why I'm calling."

  "I hate to break it to you," I said, "but Douglas has got a rock solid alibi for the times both those girls disappeared. Just ask his new employers down at Comix Underground."

  There was silence on the line. Then Special Agent Johnson chuckled.

  "I was wondering," he said, "how long it would take for him to work up the courage to tell you."

  I felt a jolt of rage. You knew? I was going to scream into the receiver.

  But then it hit me. Of course he'd known. He and his partner had known all along. They'd just been using the fact that I didn't know to yank my chain.

  Well, that's what they get paid for. Covert operations.

  "If you're done having your little fun with me," I said—with more irritation than was perhaps necessary, but I felt tears threatening again—"you might actually want to do some work for a change. I mean, I know it's more fun for you all to try to get me to do your job for you, but in this particular case, I think you've got the expertise."

  I told him about my mysterious caller. Special Agent Johnson was, I must say, mightily interested.

  "And you say you didn't recognize the voice?" he asked.

  "Well," I said. "It sounded kind of muffled."

  "He probably put something over the mouthpiece of the phone he was using," Special Agent Johnson said, "for fear you might recognize him. Let me ask you something. Was the voice distinctive in any way? Any accents, or anything?"

  For some reason, I found myself remembering the Grit Test. You know, the pen versus pin thing.

  "No," I said, with some surprise at myself for not having realized it before. "No accent at all."

  "Good," Special Agent Johnson said. "Good girl. All right, we'll work on seeing if we can come up with the number this person called from."

  "Well, I would think you should be able to come up with that pretty easily," I said. "Seeing as how you've had my phone tapped since like, forever."

  "That's very funny, Jessica," Special Agent Johnson said, dryly. "You are aware, of course, that the Bureau would never do anything to violate a U.S. citizen's rights during an investigation."

  "Haw," I said. Somehow, knowing Special Agent Johnson was on the case made me feel better. Crazy, huh, considering how much having the Feds following me around all the time used to bug me? "Haw, haw."

  "And don't worry, Jessica," Special Agent Johnson said. "You and your family are in no danger. We'll post plenty of operatives outside your home tonight."

  Too bad that isn't what they chose to destroy in order to assure me of how serious they were about their threats. Our home, I mean.

  Instead, they burned down Mastriani's.

  C H A P T E R

  17

  You'd have thought I'd be able to catch a break, wouldn't you? I mean, it wasn't like I'd gotten any sleep the night before. No, they had to make sure I didn't get any the next night, either.

  Well, okay, I got some. The call didn't come until after three.

  Three in the morning, I mean.

  But when it did come, there was no sleep for anyone in the Mastriani household. Not for a long, long time.

  I, of course, thought it was for me.

  And why not? It wasn't like the phone had rung—not even once that night—for anybody else in the house. No, all of my mother's dreams for me were finally coming true: I was Miss Popularity, all right.

  Too bad the only dates I was getting were dates with, um, death.

  Well, and Skip Abramowitz.

  When the phone started ringing its head off at three A.M., I shot out of bed before I was even fully awake and dove for the extension in my room, as if somehow, by catching it on the second ring, I was going to keep the rest of the house from waking up.

  Yeah, nice try.

  The voice on the other end of the line was familiar, but it wasn't one of my new friends. You know, the ones who'd promised to kill me if I talked to Tisha Murray anymore about the house on the pit road.

  It was, instead, a woman's voice. It took me a minute to realize it was Special Agent Smith.

  "Jessica," she said when I answered. And then, when my dad got on the line in his bedroom, and went, blearily, "Hullo?" she added, "Mr. Mastriani."

  My dad and I didn't say anything. He, I think, was still trying to wake up. I, of course, was tensing for what I knew was going to follow … or thought I knew, anyway. Someone else was missing. Tisha Murray, maybe.

  Or Heather Montrose. Despite the guard they'd put on her room in the hospital, someone had managed to sneak in, and finish the job they'd started. Heather was dead.

  Either that, or they'd found someone. They'd found someone trying to sneak into my house to kill me.

  But of course it wasn't that at all. It wasn't any of those things.

  "I'm sorry to wake you, sir," Jill said, sounding as if she meant it. "But I think you should know that your restaurant, Mastriani's, is on fire. Could you please—"

  But Jill never got to finish, because my dad had dropped the phone and was, if I knew him, already reaching for his pants.

  "We'll be right there," I said.

  "No, Jessica, not you. You should—"

  But I never found out what I have should have done, because I'd hung up.

  When I met him at the front door a few seconds later, I saw that I'd been right. My dad was fully dressed—well, he had on pants and shoes. He was still wearing his pajama top as a shirt. When he saw me, he said, "Stay here with your mother and brother."

  I, however, had gotten dressed, too.

  "No way," I said.

  He looked annoyed but grateful at the same time, which was quite a feat, if you think about it.

  As soon as we stepped outside, we could see it. An orange glow reflected against the low hanging clouds in the night sky. And not a small glow, either, but something that looked like that burning-of-Atlanta scene out of Gone With the Wind.

  "Christ almighty," my dad said when he saw it.

  I, of course, was busy consulting with my friends across the street. The ones in the white van.

  "Hey," I said, tapping on the rolled up window on the driver's side. "I gotta go downtown with my dad. Stay here and keep an eye on the place while I'm gone, okay?"

  There was no response, but I hadn't expected any. People who are supposed to be covertly following you don't like it when you come up and start talking to them, even if their boss knows that you know they're there.

  Well, you know what I mean.

  The drive downtown took no time at all. At least, it didn't usually. And yet it seemed to take ages that night. Our house is onl
y a few blocks from downtown … a fifteen-minute stroll, at most, a four-minute drive. The streets, at three in the morning, were empty. That wasn't the problem. It was that orange glow hanging in the sky above our heads that we couldn't take our eyes off of. A couple of times, my dad nearly drove off the side of the road, he was so transfixed by it. It was a good thing, actually, that I was there, since I'd taken the wheel and gone, "Dad."

  "Don't worry," I said to him, a minute later. "That isn't it. That orange light? That's probably, you know, heat lightning."

  "Staying in one place?" my dad asked.

  "Sure," I said. "I read about it. In Bio."

  God, I am such a liar.

  And then we turned the corner onto Main. And there it was.

  And it wasn't heat lightning. Oh, no.

  Once, a long time ago, the people who lived across the street from us had a log roll out of their fireplace and set the living room curtains on fire. That was how I'd expected the fire at Mastriani's to be. You know, flames in the windows, and maybe some smoke billowing out of the open front door. The fire department would be there, of course, and they'd put the flames out, and that would be the end of it. That's what had happened with our neighbors. Their curtains were lost, and the carpet had to be replaced, along with a couch that had gotten completely soaked by the fire hoses.

  But you know that night—the night the curtains caught fire—the people who lived across the street slept in their own—somewhat smoky-smelling—beds. They hadn't needed to go stay with relatives or in a shelter or a hotel or anything, because of course their house was still standing.

  The fire at Mastriani's was not that kind of fire. It was not that kind of fire at all. The fire at Mastriani's was a writhing, breathing, living thing. It was, to put it mildly, awesome in its destructive power. Flames were shooting thirty, forty feet in the air from the roof. The entire building was a glowing ball of fire. We couldn't get closer than two hundred feet away from it, there were so many fire engines parked along the street. Dozens of firefighters, wielding hoses spitting streams of water, weaved a dreamy, dance-like pattern in front of the building, trying to douse the flames.

  But it was a losing battle. You did not need to be a fire marshall to tell that. The place was engulfed, consumed in flames. It was not even recognizable anymore. The green and gold awning above the door, that shielded customers from the rain? Gone. The matching green sign, with MASTRIANI'S spelled out across it in gold script? Gone. The window boxes on the second floor administrative offices? Gone. The new industrial freezers? Gone. The make-out table where Mark Leskowski and I had sat? Gone. Everything, gone.

  Just like that.

  Well, not just like that, actually. Because as my dad and I got out of the car and picked our way toward the place, carefully stepping over the hoses that, pulsing like live snakes, crisscrossed the road, we could see that a lot of people were working very hard to save what appeared to me, anyway, to be a lost cause. Firefighters shouted above the hiss of water and the roar of the flame, coughing in the thick, black smoke that instantly clogged the throat and lungs.

  One of them noticed us and said to stand back. My dad yelled, "I own the place," and the firefighter directed us to a group of people who were standing across the street, their faces bathed in orange light.

  "Joe," one of them yelled, and I recognized him as the mayor of our town, which is small. If there were going to be a catastrophic fire threatening not only one prominent downtown business, but the businesses around it as well, you would expect the mayor to be there.

  "Jesus, Joe," the mayor said. "I'm sorry."

  "Was anybody hurt?" my dad asked, coming to stand between the mayor and a man I knew from his periodic inspections to be the fire chief. "Nobody's been hurt, have they?"

  "Naw," the mayor said. "Coupla Richie's guys, trying to be heroes, went in to make sure nobody was still inside, and got a chestful of smoke for their efforts."

  "They'll be okay," Richard Parks, the fire chief, said. "Nobody was in there, Joe. Don't worry about that."

  My dad looked relieved, but only moderately so. "What are the chances of it spreading?" Mastriani's was a freestanding structure, a Victorian-type house flanked on either side by a New Age bookstore and a bank branch, with a shared parking lot behind it. "The bank? Harmony Books?"

  "We're watering them down," the fire chief said. "So far, so good. Coupla sparks landed on the roof of the bookstore and went out right away. We got here in time, Joe, don't worry. Well, in time to save the neighboring structures, anyway."

  His voice was sorrowful. And why not? He'd eaten at Mastriani's a lot. Just like every single man there, pointing a hose at it.

  "What happened?" my dad asked in a stunned voice. "I mean, how did it start? Does anybody know?"

  "Couldn't say," Captain Parks told us. "Folks over at the jailhouse heard an explosion, looked out, saw the place was on fire. Couldn'ta been more than eight, nine minutes ago. Place went up like a cinder."

  "Which suggests," a woman's voice said, "an accelerant to me."

  We all looked around. And there stood Special Agents Smith and Johnson, looking concerned and maybe a little worse for wear. To be roused from a dead sleep two nights in a row was a little rough, even for them.

  "My thinking exactly," the fire chief said.

  "Wait a minute." My dad, his face scratchy-looking with a half-night's growth of beard bristle, stared at the FBI agents. "What are you saying? You're saying somebody purposefully started this fire?"

  "No way it coulda spread that fast, Joe," the fire chief said, "or burned so hot. Not without some kind of accelerant. From the smell, I'm guessing gasoline, but we won't know until the fire's out and the place has cooled down enough for us to—"

  "Gasoline?" My dad looked as if he was about to have a heart attack. Seriously. All these veins I had never noticed before were standing out in his forehead, and his neck looked kind of skinny, like it could barely support the weight of his head.

  Or maybe it was just that, in the bright light from the fire, I was getting my first really good look at him in a while.

  "Why in God's name would anybody do this?" my dad demanded. "Why would anybody deliberately burn the place down?"

  The sheriff, whom I hadn't noticed before, cleared his throat and went, "Disgruntled employee, maybe."

  "I haven't fired anybody," my dad said. "Not in months."

  That was true. My dad didn't like firing people, so he only hired people he was pretty sure were going to work out. And mostly, his instincts were right on.

  "Well," the sheriff said, gazing almost admiringly at the blaze across the street. "There'll be an investigation. That's for sure. Case of arson? You can bet your insurance company'll be all over it. We'll get to the bottom of it. Eventually."

  Eventually. Sure. Or they could, I supposed, just have asked me. I'd have been able to tell them who started it. I knew good and well.

  Well, actually, what I knew was the why. Not the who. But the why was clear enough.

  It was a warning. A warning about what would happen to me if I didn't quit asking questions about the house on the pit road.

  Which was so unfair. My dad. My poor dad. He'd done nothing to deserve this, nothing at all.

  Looking at him, at his face as he tried to joke with the mayor and the sheriff and the fire chief, my heart swelled with pity. He was joking, but inside, I knew, his heart was breaking. My dad had loved Mastriani's, which he'd opened shortly after he and my mom had married. It had been his first restaurant, his first baby … just like Douglas was Mom's first baby. And now that baby was going up in a puff of smoke.

  Well, not really a puff, actually. More like a wall. A great big wall of smoke that would soon be floating across the county like a storm cloud.

  "Don't even think about it, Jess," Special Agent Johnson said, not without some affability.

  I turned to blink at him. "Think about what?"

  "Finding out who did this," Allan said, "and going a
fter them yourself. We're talking about sorne dangerous—and fairly sick—criminals here. You leave the investigating to us, understand?"

  For once, I was perfectly willing to do so. I mean, I was mad and everything. Don't get me wrong. But a part of me was also scared. More scared even than I'd been when I'd seen Heather all tied up in that bathtub. More scared than I'd been on that motorcycle, careening through the darkness of those woods.

  Because this—the fire—was more terrible, in a way, than either of those things. This was awful, more awful than Heather's broken arm, and way more awful than me tipping over beneath an eight-hundred-pound bike.

  Because this . . . this was out of control. This was dangerous. This was deadly.

  Like what had happened to Amber.

  "Don't worry," I said, gulping. "I will."

  "Yeah," Special Agent Johnson said, clearly not believing me. "Right."

  And then I heard it. My mom's voice, calling out my dad's name.

  She came toward us, picking her way through the fire hoses, with a trench coat thrown over her nightgown and Douglas holding onto her elbow to keep her from tripping in her high-heeled sandals. My dad, seeing her, started forward, meeting her just beside one of the biggest fire engines.

  "Oh, Joe," my mom said, sighing as she watched the flames that still seemed to rise so high into the sky, they were practically licking it. "Oh, Joe."

  "It's all right, Toni," my dad said, taking her hand. "I mean, don't worry. The insurance is all paid up. We're totally covered. We can rebuild."

  "But all that work, Joe," my mom said. Her gaze never left the fire, as if it had transfixed her. And you know, even though it was this horrible thing, it was still beautiful, in a way. The firefighters had given up trying to put the flames out, and were instead concentrating on keeping them from spreading to the buildings next door. And so far, they were doing a good job.

  "All your hard work. Twenty years of it." I saw my mom tilt her head until it was resting on my dad's shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Joe."

  "It's okay," my dad said. He let go of her hand, and put his arm around her instead. "It's just a restaurant. That's all. Just a restaurant."