From the Ashes (Southern Heat Book 1)

by Jamie Garrett

  On top of it all, Sloane felt guilty for not being completely truthful with Mason. She had remembered something more last night as they ate pizza and drank beer. That young man she had mentioned. She did know him. David. His name had popped up out of nowhere. With the name came memories. He worked with her. With Sakkas.

  After Mason left, and despite the lateness of the hour, she had grabbed the phone and dialed the number—a number her fingers remembered even if she didn’t. Hurray for muscle memory. A groggy male voice answered after two rings. She didn’t care if the police were listening. She had to get this figured out.

  “’lo?”

  “David? Is that you?”

  “Who is this?” The voice was a little clearer, alert, and wary.

  “It’s Sloane . . . Sloane Maxwell. I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news, or—”

  “Sloane! It’s good to hear your voice. Of course I’ve heard the news. Just terrible, what’s happened. How are you doing?”

  “I’m doing all right. My memory . . . it’s coming back in bits and pieces. Not much, but I do remember you. You’re a colleague. We used to travel together sometimes. Right?”

  “Yes, we did. When I worked with Sakkas. But I haven’t worked for him in over a year.” A year? Why was she remembering so many things from years ago, but nothing useful? David’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Do you have any idea what you were doing up there? It’s pretty damn rural, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure, David. But from what I can remember, we were friends, too. I had another memory. It looked kind of like a pawn shop. I might’ve been there with Sakkas. Do you have any idea where that place is?”

  “A pawn shop with Sakkas? Probably in Charleston. But it could be Savannah, or just about anywhere along the eastern seaboard. He’s got friends in pawnshops all over the place, keeping an eye out for items that he might be interested in. I can’t tell you how many times we had to go to those places, check out some of the junk.”

  “David, do you have any idea what I would be doing up in Monroe? Was I on business here? Was I supposed to meet someone here?”

  “You’re there now? In Monroe? Um, no, I don’t know what you’re doing up there, but you said your memory is coming back?”

  “Just flashes here and there. Nothing that I can relate to, yet.” She sighed. “I’m sorry I woke you up. Thank you.”

  “You take care of yourself, Sloane.”

  Sloane tried to sleep, maybe even managed to doze on and off for awhile, before finally giving up. She wasn’t going to get any solid sleep that night. Her thoughts, fears, and ideas chased round and round in her brain. She remembered David. She remembered being in a pawn shop. She obviously remembered being in the abandoned auto shop surrounded by smoke. She paced through the apartment, pausing only long enough to prepare coffee before continuing her pacing. In a matter of moments, the aroma of coffee and the sound of the bubbling coffee maker pulled her from her musings.

  She poured herself a mug of coffee and sipped it, peeking through the blinds over the living room window. The unmarked car was still there, a figure slumped in the driver’s seat. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. Mason had told her last night he had some kind of a meeting or training session to go through today, so he wouldn’t be around until later tonight.

  She was going stir crazy. No way in hell was she going to sit around another day. Sloane glanced at the clock. Six thirty. Her “bodyguards” would trade off within the next fifteen minutes. Maybe she could slip away, just for a little while, go for a walk, get rid of some of the anxious energy growing inside her. She didn’t care if she got yelled at later. Let them sit cooped up in a one-room apartment for days on end and like it.

  Sloane felt like a spy in a Jason Bourne movie as she quickly made her way toward one of the back gates at the apartment complex. She couldn’t help but grin. They wouldn’t know she was gone. She didn’t plan on being very long, maybe just an hour or two. She just had to get out of that apartment, and she knew there was a park nearby. Maybe she’d just sit there for a little while, watch the squirrels, listen to the birds, whatever. Anything had to be better than the four barren walls of the apartment. Maybe she would even walk a few times around the park. Stretch her legs.

  The switch between officers hadn’t occurred as quickly as she had hoped. In fact it was nearly nine o’clock before Martin arrived to take Scott’s place. As they exchanged a few words, she quickly slipped out of the apartment and around the side of the building toward one of the many pathways that meandered through the buildings of the complex. It really was quite a nice place. If circumstances had been different, she wouldn’t have minded living there.

  After speaking to David last night, Sloane had decided to call Sakkas, whether the police wanted her to or not. She had been hesitant to ask David last night , . . she had wanted to ask him if he recalled any kind of relationship, other than strictly business, between her and Sakkas. She hoped to hell not.

  After Mason had left and she tossed and turned in bed for a while, thoughts of David, Sakkas, and that pawn shop became a bit clearer. Not how she’d gotten there, nothing more than superficial, but it was there. While Sakkas hadn’t mentioned any kind of relationship between them and hadn’t acted as if they were lovers or anything, she wondered just how close they were. Close enough to commit murder together? A shiver ran through her, despite the warmth of the sun.

  Certainly, he should know why she’d been up here in Monroe. Of course, if he was involved in some shady business deals, he might not want to have admitted that to the cops or to her, but maybe if she could talk to him privately, she might, just might, get some answers. She slid the phone from her pocket and stared at it. Should she call him? Surely the phone was tapped by now, may have been by last night when she spoke to David. She hoped her call wouldn’t cause any trouble for him.

  She sat on a park bench, staring out onto the grassed view, her mind blank. When were all the niggling bits of memory going to coalesce and, like a miracle, fall into place? She’d remember everything: her past with Mason, her job, what had taken her to that abandoned auto shop. Relief coincided with trepidation. What if the memories that came back weren’t memories she wanted? She closed her eyes, listening to the sound of the birds chirping in the treetops, the scolding chatter of a nearby squirrel, and the sound of a baby crying in the near distance. The morning sun was warm on her skin, easing the tension in her muscles. It felt so good to be outside, in the fresh air. For the first time in . . . well, since the fire, she felt hopeful.

  This evening, when she got together with Mason, she’d talk to him about going down to Charleston. She wanted him to go with her, if at all possible. But, she couldn’t rely on him forever.

  She turned with a frown as the bench shifted slightly beneath her. With all the space and empty benches scattered around the park, why did someone need to sit next to her? Something hard pressed into her ribs and looked down. Something hard and shiny. What the hell? Was that a gun? She looked up into the face of the man who had sat down beside her and everything else fell away.

  “If I go down, so do you.”

  That voice . . . it sounded like . . . “Mister Sakkas?” Confused, fear raced through her veins. “What . . . how did you . . . what’s going on?”

  How did he get here? This was her boss? She swallowed hard, trying to tamp down the surge of nausea that roiled in the pit of her stomach. “How did you—”

  “I tracked your phone,” he interrupted. “Plus, David called me, told me you were still in Monroe.”

  David? She didn’t understand. She had thought she could trust him. He was involved?

  “And let me tell you something. You’re not Little Miss Innocent.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “Your time of playing house with your fireman is over. You’re going to go with me quietly. You’re not going to scream. You’re not going to try to run away. If you do . . .”

  He
jammed the barrel of the gun harder into her ribs, definitely leaving a bruise. That was probably the least of her worries. Panic started to rise, coursing through her. Oh God. Oh God, oh my God!

  “Now you’re going to stand up and we’re going to walk calmly out of the park.” He gestured with his chin. “We’re going to go out to the sidewalk over there and you’re going to get into that black Mercedes. You understand?”

  Sloane nodded and slowly stood, her legs wobbly beneath her. Oh God, what had she done? She should’ve stayed at the apartment. She should have—

  “Give me your phone.”

  She did. And watched in horror as he pulled the back off the phone, removed the chip, then dropped the phone to the ground and then stomped on it. Destroying her only link to help. Destroying the GPS chip. Destroying any chance of—

  “Now we’re going to go to the pawn shop, and you’re going to tell me everything that you remember. If you don’t, I’m going to kill you, just like I killed the man in the auto shop. He had a funny idea that he could blow the whistle on me and get away with it.”

  “The pawn shop? In Charleston?” Confused, she stared at him in growing realization. He had killed the man in the auto shop? He had tried to kill her? But why? “Why are you—”

  “Shut up, and just keep walking. If you don’t, I’ll kill that nosey fireman you’ve been shacking up with, too. He’s been asking way too many questions for someone who shouldn’t know a damn thing. You’ve been talking, haven’t you, Sloane?”

  She walked, the hard steel of the gun barrel pressed against the small of her back. Sakkas walked so close she could smell his cologne. The scent triggered a memory. A shipping container. No one was around, but for some reason she was at a shipyard, or a loading dock, or a shipping company. She had smelled a whiff of cologne, the same cologne that now emanated from her former boss’s tweed jacket, a sickening sweet smell mixed with his sweat.

  She knew. She knew! She had something on him. She couldn’t remember what the hell it was, but that was something Sakkas didn’t know. The minute he found that out, she was dead.

  She had to get away! But how? Every step brought them closer to the black Mercedes, sitting like a black, silent monster against the curb. Tinted windows. With the gun in her back she wouldn’t get three steps away before he’d pull the trigger. He’d get away with it, too. She knew that. Somehow, she knew that.

  Mason! She desperately wanted Mason. Would she ever see him again, or would she just disappear? Disappear from his life like she had the first time. Would he think that she’d betrayed him all over again? Tears formed in her eyes as they approached the car. Sakkas opened the passenger-side door and ordered her inside. She obeyed. The door slammed shut behind her and Sakkas quickly strode around the hood toward the driver’s side. No chance for escape. At least not yet.

  21

  Mason

  “What the hell do you mean, she’s disappeared?” Mason demanded, his voice raised. Fuck it. He’d just returned to the firehouse after a callout to a small house fire. Nothing terribly serious; a cooking fire that had spread to window curtains, scorched a kitchen wall and damaged cupboards but otherwise no additional damage.

  He had plopped his weary body down onto one of the benches on one side of the large wooden table where they would soon eat lunch, thanks to Marty and his flair for crockpot meals. His phone had rung and when he answered it, his appetite instantly disappeared. His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach before it began pounding.

  “She must’ve slipped out of the safe house between Martin and Scott’s shift change,” Detective Bascom explained. “You haven’t heard from her, have you? She does have a phone now.”

  A tension headache bloomed and pounded in his head as Mason pushed away from the table, muttering an excuse to his colleagues. He quickly made his way from there through the garage, where Matt wiped down the fire engine and Mason slipped through the doorway toward the small patio space behind the station house. “How the hell did she manage to slip away from the safe house? How could that happen? With both of them there?”

  Un-fucking believable. He shook his head in disgust, worry replacing the surge of anger and disbelief. “And no, I haven’t heard from her. You gave her the damn phone. Why don’t you ping it or something? It has a GPS in it, doesn’t it?”

  Bascom muttered something under his breath.

  “What was that?”

  “The phone is off, or disabled, or—”

  Mason cursed again. “With two attempts on her life, you guys managed to let her slip away.” His tone filled with accusation, he wanted to shout and rage but paused to take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. He couldn’t lose it. “Where the hell would she go? Did anything happen after she left the police station yesterday? Did she make any calls? Anything?”

  He paced, the phone pressed to his ear with one hand, the other rubbing at the headache that grew worse by the second, smack bang in the middle of his forehead. He couldn’t decide whether he was angrier than worried or vice versa. What the hell was Sloane thinking, to sneak out of the safe house? “How long has she been missing?”

  “About an hour—”

  “An hour?” Mason exploded. “Great. This is just great.” He paced. “Has anyone gone by my apartment, made sure she wasn’t there?”

  “Yes. We also have officers pounding the pavement at the apartment complex and the surrounding neighborhood. We do have one witness who says she thinks she saw a woman fitting Sloane’s description sitting at the park.”

  Hope raised, Mason asked the next obvious question. “She was all right? Just sitting there?”

  “The witness, a young mother with a baby, was taking a stroll nearby. She said the woman was sitting there for a few minutes, and then a man came and sat beside her. They walked off together and then got into a black Mercedes.”

  “And nobody has any idea who that was? Was she under duress? Anybody have a license plate number for the Mercedes? What about—”

  “We’re looking into all of that, Mason,” Bascom interrupted. “I just called to let you know what happened and ask if you’d heard from her. You let us do the investigating, all right?”

  “Sure, Detective,” he said with unabashed sarcasm. “You guys have done such a fine job so far.” He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “Sorry. I know it’s been tough. She’s been getting anxious. Parts of her memory are returning.”

  “What? She’s got her memory back?”

  “Not really, just bits and pieces of it.”

  “Like what?”

  Mason hedged. Now he was the one who didn’t have time for the detective’s questions. He needed to find Sloane. She could be in trouble, or worse.

  “Mason, what has she told you?”

  “Nothing really important, or even concrete,” he replied, frustrated and worried about Sloane. He had to get off the phone and get out there looking for her! “She’s having dreams. I think the dreams are memories, but she’s not sure.”

  “What kind of dreams? Anything good points to a location?”

  “I think she remembers parts where she was in the abandoned auto shop where we pulled her out of the fire.”

  “Anything about that guy, Reed? The one that was murdered there? Did she recognize the man who killed him?”

  “No.”

  “Anything else?”

  Mason didn’t elaborate. “About us. Back when we were dating.” He told the detective how Sloane had explained her frustration to him. But there was something else. Something that bothered her, and if he were honest with himself, it bothered him, too. If Sloane was in trouble, Bascom needed to know everything. “She said she felt unsettled. Wondered if she was an innocent bystander in this mess or if she was somehow involved. She’s not sure why she would have been there, at that abandoned building, taking a video of a murder.”

  “And?”

  “She said she remembered something about being in a pawn shop. She said she sees a room filled with
different things, and . . .” he paused for only a moment. “She thinks the man with her at the pawn shop or whatever the hell it was, could be her old boss, Sakkas . . . she said he had an accent and she thought it was Greek.”

  “Shit.”

  “What?” Mason asked, every muscle in his body tense.

  “We can’t find him, either.”

  A sound ripped from Mason’s chest. A growl filled with worry, anger, and frustration. “Does Sakkas own any pawn shops in the area?”

  “We’re checking into that. And Mason, she called someone last night. A guy named David. Did she tell you anything about him?”

  David? “No, who’s he?”

  “That’s the thing. Sloane knows that her phone was tapped, incoming and outgoing calls.”

  “Which points to her innocence,” Mason murmured. “Look, Detective, she’s trying to get information. Who is this guy, this David?”

  “We’ve done a little bit of checking on him. David Conroy. He used to work for Sakkas, at least officially, but as of a year ago, he’s not listed as an official employee.”

  “What do you mean, an official employee?” The detective was holding something back, limiting the information he gave out to a civilian probably, but Mason was having none of it. “I’ll find out, Detective. I don’t know how, but I will find out. We need to find Sloane. I think we both agree on that. Her life could be in danger. So tell me what you know. Please.”

  A sigh from Bascom. “We checked into his finances. We found a ten-thousand dollar deposit made into his bank account at about two o’clock in the morning.”