The Widow's Protector

by Stephanie Newton

  The young woman’s eyes filled as she nodded. “I don’t know why you would offer it to me, but yes, I’ll take it. What’s the rent?”

  “Wait until you have a job and then we’ll talk. Until then, you can clean up after the construction crew or help stock shelves or whatever, in place of rent.” She walked toward the door. “You’ll probably want to stay at the inn for a day or two. I haven’t gotten new furniture for upstairs yet.”

  Demi pulled her sweater closer around her and hitched up her bag once again. “I’ll find a job. I’m good at…something.”

  The worry in her determined eyes made Fiona want to help Demi even more. If the people of Fitzgerald Bay hadn’t helped her with the proceeds from the softball game, she wouldn’t be standing in a freshly painted Reading Nook right now. “You know, Demi, my brother Charles is looking for a nanny for his twins. I can’t promise anything, but you could talk to him about it.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “He’s the doctor in town, so you could talk to him about it at his office tomorrow. Just ask for Dr. Fitzgerald.”

  “That should be easy to remember. Thank you for helping me.” She hesitated. “Would you…would you mind if I stay upstairs now? I have a sleeping bag. I promise I’ll stay out of the way of the workers.”

  Fiona studied Demi’s face. Tired, desperate, lonely even. She’d been there. Luckily, she’d had her family and her faith to get her through the hardest times. And she’d had Hunter. Demi had no one.

  “Come on. I’ll show you the apartment. It’s not much to look at, especially right now.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you.” Demi followed Fiona up the spiral staircase.

  “There’s an entrance from the back stairs outside on the side street, too. We don’t normally keep this door locked, but if you’re living here, of course, you can lock it.” Fiona pushed open the door and walked into the small apartment. The walls had long ago been taken down to make one large room for gathering. She’d left one small bedroom and a bathroom intact. “I hope it will work for you.”

  “It’s perfect. Even without furniture.” Demi smiled and, this time, the smile actually reached her pretty green eyes.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” Fiona closed the door behind her, happy that she could give someone a hopeful tomorrow, especially after how rough this week had been on her. Now her brother Charles might not be happy she’d shared his name with a complete stranger, but he could check Demi’s references.

  She yawned. It was time for her to go home and get some sleep. It had been a long day. She started toward the storeroom. Habit. She always went out the rear door. Her house was just across the back street. Less than a block. She stood in the middle of the room, undecided. That way was so much faster. And it was foolish to waste time walking around the store.

  Fiona left the low lights on, just like she’d found them, and opened the back door. It was frustrating to her to be ill at ease in her own town, the place she’d grown up. She belonged here.

  Tilting her head, she sniffed. The smell of cinnamon lingered in the air. Just like the scent of those cinnamon toothpicks Nate Santos was forever chewing on. And, she realized, just like the lingering smell in her house after the break-in.

  Had Nate been in her house to check it out? No, the fire department hadn’t been called until after the cops. And they never went in her house. And Nate wasn’t even on shift that day.

  Was it possible that Nate Santos was the arsonist?

  She dug in her bag for her cell phone as she hurried down the back street toward her house. Whether she was right or not, she needed to tell someone.

  Glancing behind her, she nearly tripped. Nate stepped out of the shadows behind the Sweet Shoppe.

  Fiona stepped away, her heart jumping into her throat. “Nate, you scared me!”

  The lazy good-natured smile she’d been used to from Nate was nowhere in evidence tonight. His dark eyes looked black in the dim light. He stepped closer to her.

  She stumbled back farther, ending up against the wall of the Sweet Shoppe. “What are you doing here, Nate?”

  “Came to see you. You have something I want.” He had a cell phone in his hand, one of those like she’d seen at the convenience store, a burner phone, her dad and brothers called it.

  Her mind made the connection before it actually registered. She was right. She’d been right about everything. But, how could that be?

  Nate had been Jimmy’s friend. He’d gone to school with all of them. Betrayal burned in her gut. “You did this?” She waved a hand at the burned shell of Betsie’s shop.

  “I want the notebook, Fiona. I have the next fire preprogrammed into the phone. It might be your cousin Bridget’s house, where your little boy is sleeping right now.”

  Air rushed from her lungs, leaving her gasping. “Please, Nate, don’t do that.”

  He shrugged carelessly. “It might be Hunter’s truck. He’s on his way home from the hospital right now, you know.”

  Fiona didn’t speak. She watched him, watched the phone in his hand, the horror of his words growing in her chest like a huge boulder. Nate killed Jimmy. He was the one who’d nearly killed her, and Betsie, and Sean.

  “This particular bomb might even be rigged under a certain mayoral candidate’s bed. Do you think your precious daddy would even wake up?” He grinned and his darkly handsome face grew even more sinister.

  He pulled the small tube from his shirt pocket, extracted a toothpick and stuck it in his mouth. The overpowering smell of cinnamon almost gagged her. She backed farther down the street, toward her shop. If she could just get inside. “What do you want, Nate?”

  The firefighter she’d once called a friend studied her face. “I just wanted to be a part of your little group. Now, I want what’s coming to me. Jimmy got the promotions that I deserved.”

  Jimmy had earned every promotion that he was given, but she wasn’t going to argue with a madman. “So, you killed him?”

  “Well, I was really just trying to scare Jimmy into stopping his investigation. But it all turned out fine. There were no more questions. I laid low for a while, but setting fires is fun. I just couldn’t keep from doing it again.”

  It all turned out fine. He was talking about the death of her husband, the loss of a father to a son, a friend and a colleague. She slid her hand in her pocket and felt the cool cylinder of pepper spray, but he hadn’t let go of the cell phone. All it would take was the press of a button out of reflex and someone could die. Someone she loved. She couldn’t risk it.

  But she could keep him talking. “It’s been two years, Nate. Why now?”

  “I thought when Jimmy died, that finally I would get some recognition, but no. Instead it was Hunter, your precious Hunter.” He gave her a sly look. “I could’ve killed him today, you know.”

  So he had been in the fire. In the hospital, when Hunter said he’d seen a firefighter in the fire, she’d thought at first that it was the head injury, but Nate had been there, unable to resist watching his creation burn. He’d seen Hunter and Lance in trouble and he’d walked away. He had no remorse, no feeling whatsoever.

  “You didn’t kill him. Why not?”

  “Well, you know…” He made a face. “There was a witness, that probie. So messy. And somewhere along the way, I realized that it would be so much more satisfactory to hurt Hunter by hurting you.”

  Fiona tried not to think emotionally. She needed every rational, list-making part of her brain working right now. But how could she be rational, when her son could lose his only parent? Putting a child through that would be beyond cruel. She had to survive this and somehow, she had to protect those she loved at the same time.

  Her phone rang in her bag. She looked at Nate.

  “Take the phone out of the bag.” He didn’t smile, his black eyes were cold. He didn’t look anything like the person she’d grown up with.

  She pulled out her phone and placed it in his hand. He turned it off and stuck
it in his pocket. “I’ll just save that for later.”

  Fiona couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. The TV blared from the back of Mrs. Whitwer’s house. Just look out the window, Mrs. Whitwer. “What do you want from me, Nate?”

  “Well, aside from just torturing Hunter, I want the notebook. Note. Book. I really thought you were smarter than this, Fiona.” He pointed to the open door of his Jeep 4x4 with the hand that held the cell phone. “Get in the car.”

  She was the child of a police chief. She knew the odds of surviving once you get in the car with an offender. But right now, she wasn’t concerned with her odds. She was concerned with cornering the odds for Sean, for Hunter and for her family. Those were the odds that counted now.

  Praying someone saw her getting into his car, she slid in. Nate closed her in the backseat and laughed as she realized that he’d removed the door handle. He’d planned ahead. In fact he’d probably been planning this for a long, long time.

  The fact chilled her.

  The odds of her surviving the night were slim, the chance of rescue next to nothing, but she would hold on to hope. Even if the margin was slim to none.

  TWELVE

  Hunter pulled past Fiona’s picture-perfect picket fence into her driveway. He’d gotten the cops to put a guard on Lance, but what they’d all failed to see was that Fiona was in just as much danger. Fiona was the one who had been in danger all along. She’d even said she was a target.

  He tried her cell phone again. Still, it went straight to voice mail. Maybe she’d gone to Bridget’s to check on Sean and left her phone in the car. He would check there next. At the beep he said, “Fiona, it’s Hunter again. Call me when you get this.”

  As he hung up the phone, Hunter opened the door of his truck and put one foot on the ground as he heard a phone ring inside Fiona’s house. In fact, it sounded like many phones ringing. Horror dawned as he realized what the sound meant. His fear was confirmed as he saw a bright flare of light in the front windows.

  He ran for the door as flames licked at the windows. Every window. The entire place had been rigged. “Fiona! Fee!”

  He kicked in the door. A fireball roared out at him. He flattened himself on the ground, barely realizing the dampness on his face was tears pouring from his eyes.

  It was too late, much too late, to go in. He stumbled away from the porch onto the lawn, dialed the fire department and told them to come.

  He walked two doors down and knocked. A couple minutes later, Bridget peeked out of the side window to the left of her door. When she saw him, she opened the door, wrapping her robe around her. “Hunter, what’s going on?”

  “Do you know where Fiona is?” Behind him, the attack engine went screaming by, pulling to a stop in front of Fiona’s house.

  She stepped outside. “I don’t…” She stared at Fiona’s house and then dragged her attention back to him. “I don’t know. She dropped off her clothes and said she was going to the shop and she’d be back later to spend the night. She doesn’t like staying by herself since the break-in.”

  A glimmer of hope began to grow. “She wasn’t at home?”

  “I don’t think so. She left her stuff here.” Bridget pointed to a bag on the end of her couch.

  “Do you mind if I take a look?” He didn’t wait for permission, just grabbed the bag and dug through it. She’d brought a change of clothes for herself and Sean. She definitely wasn’t planning on going back home tonight. Relief began to trickle in with the fear that had overtaken him.

  At the bottom of the overnight bag was Jimmy’s notebook. Hunter picked it up and held it in his hand. Fiona had wanted him to know what was in this notebook. “I’m going to the shop to see if she’s still there.”

  “Let me know when you find her.”

  “I will, and Bridget, don’t let anyone in, okay? Just family. Sean could be in danger.” He didn’t want to scare her, but with Fiona’s house in flames, it wasn’t too far a stretch to imagine that Sean was a target, too.

  Hunter skirted the emergency vehicles and ran to the back door of Fiona’s store. It was unlocked but the store was empty. He climbed the stairs to the upstairs apartment, checked the door. It was locked. Now that was weird.

  He jiggled the handle. Maybe the heat from the fire in here had caused the door to swell or something. Forget it, he was kicking it in. He’d buy Fiona a new door. He raised his foot and then heard a quiet, “Can I help you?”

  Stepping back down, he leaned forward. “Who is that?”

  “The owner, Fiona, told me I could stay here.”

  If Fiona told whoever this was that she could stay in the apartment, that had to have been when she came by to check on the place. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? It’s important. Fiona’s missing.”

  The door cracked open and Hunter saw one green eye in a framed lens. “Missing? Like something bad happened to her?”

  “I’m not sure. What time did you see her?”

  “I got off the bus around seven, I think. I was walking around the park. I saw her inside the shop and the lights were on. It looked like she might just be opening up her new business, so I asked her for a job.”

  And instead of a job, Fiona gave this person new to town a place to live. It sounded just like her. “Did you see her leave?”

  “No—well, kind of. I heard the door close just after she left up here. I think it was around eight. Why don’t you come in and have a look around, just to be sure?”

  “Thanks. I’m really sorry.” He knew it was probably rude, but worry was beginning to consume him. Where was she?

  The young woman wrapped her sweater around her thin body as she stepped out of the door. “It’s okay. If I were missing, I’d really want someone to be looking for me.”

  Hunter looked hard into her face. There was a wistful quality about her and a sweetness that didn’t seem to be false.

  “So there was no one with her here and you didn’t see anyone outside?”

  “I’m sorry, no. I feel terrible—I should’ve looked.”

  Now he felt bad. “No, it’s not your fault. Thanks for the help.”

  “Demi.” She stuck out her hand and he shook it. “I’m Demi Taylor. If you think of anything I can do…”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  She had the door closed and locked before he got two steps down Fiona’s spiral staircase.

  So, somewhere between the store and Bridget’s house, Fiona had gone missing. He wanted to ask himself, what could happen to her in sleepy Fitzgerald Bay? But he knew all too well that there was someone out there determined to do them harm.

  Standing in the back door, he stared across the small alleyway between the rear of the Main Street stores and the houses on Fiona’s street. The red lights of the emergency vehicles cast weird shadows across the buildings. Neighbors stood on their lawns in their pajamas, watching and waiting to make sure their houses would remain safe.

  What if the arsonist took her? What if she’d been in the house after all?

  His chest burned, the same feeling as breathing superheated air. Surely he would know in his heart if she was gone.

  Wouldn’t he?

  He had to be there, be at her house and see the evidence for himself. Was Fiona even still alive?

  * * *

  Fiona sat still in the back of Nate Santos’s vehicle. She tried to figure what sadistic scheme he had plotted to use her to hurt Hunter. He’d gone so far, to this point, that she suspected there was very little he wouldn’t be willing to do to accomplish his imagined goals.

  She’d decided about five minutes outside of town that he wasn’t going to let her live anyway. He hadn’t bothered to blindfold her. She knew who he was, she knew where they were going—well, sort of. Either way, he definitely planned to kill her.

  So when they arrived at their destination, wherever it was, she was going to fight him. She would do whatever it took, to the very end of her strength, to keep him from harming her loved ones. If sh
e wasn’t going to survive anyway, then she was going to die protecting those she loved most in the world.

  “Where are you taking me, Nate?”

  “You don’t need to know that. What you need to do is tell me where that notebook is.”

  She knew exactly where the notebook was, but she wasn’t telling him. She would never put her son in danger. “I left it at my house. But you’ll never find it without me. I hid it.”

  She saw his smile, even from her position in the backseat. Her blood slowed to a chilled crawl. “What? What did you do?”

  “I don’t think I have to worry about anyone finding that notebook. It’s in ashes by now, like everything else in your house.” He chuckled. “The best part is the phone calls came from your phone. Unfortunately, I had to set the fire to burn so hot, they’ll probably never know that.”

  He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Pity.”

  Tears formed in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She refused to let him see how badly he got to her. He’d burned her home, the place she’d lived with Jimmy, where she’d brought Sean home from the hospital and where she’d survived the worst time in her life. She loved that house.

  She swallowed back the tears. In the end, it was just a house. Thank God her son hadn’t been in it. There were so many things to be thankful for. Hunter survived the fire and she knew he wouldn’t let Nate get away with this. He was closing in. He would figure it out, and Nate would pay.

  The Jeep 4x4 turned onto a gravel road. “Almost there, Fiona. No worries, now. I’ve got everything planned.”

  She closed her eyes and prayed. God, I need You now. I need Your peace. I need Your guidance and Your grace. No amount of list-making is as powerful as You are.

  As Nate pulled off the road, Fiona gathered her strength for the coming fight. He came around the front of the car and opened her door. As he reached in, she kicked out with one foot, right into his solar plexus.