Dead Man District

by Julie Miller

  Matt checked the door to make sure it was safe to open, then ushered them both into the hallway. The smoke wasn’t as thick here, but the haze hanging in the air told him it was seeping upward through every available vent, crack or open window. The flames would follow soon enough.

  “We need to evacuate this floor and everything above us.”

  Corie nodded and jogged to the fire alarm on the wall. But when she pulled it, nothing happened. “This isn’t working, either.”

  Matt ran to the far end of the hall and tried that alarm. Silence. Corie’s ex had been very thorough.

  He pounded on each door he passed, “Fire! KCFD, you need to evacuate. Fire!” A few doors opened immediately, and Matt repeated his orders. “Make sure your neighbors get out.”

  He rejoined Corie and Evan and guided them toward the stairwell, doing his best to ignore the twin sets of green eyes that were so wide with fear. “You need to get out of here, too. Stay off the elevator. Take the emergency stairs.”

  Corie grabbed a fistful of his coat. “What about you?”

  “I’m a firefighter, sweetheart. I need to do my job. And I need to know you two are safe so I can do that job right.”

  Her grip tightened on his coat and she pulled him down to exchange a quick, hard kiss. “Do it well. We need you.”

  He walked them down to the sixth-floor landing, intending to part ways. He wanted to check out Norwell’s apartment and get the other residents on the floor evacuated.

  But a determined eight-year-old blocked his path. “I want to stay with you.” Evan hugged his dinosaur in his arms. “I’m not afraid.”

  Matt went down on one knee in front of Evan and hunkered lower to look him in the eye. “You’re the bravest boy I know, bud. But you need to respect the fire. Get your mom outside and the two of you stay together until I can reach you. Can you do that for me?” A familiar inspiration hit him, and he unbuckled his watch and strapped it onto Evan’s wrist. “Here. Set the timer for ten minutes. I’ll be down to join you by then.”

  “Ten minutes? Dragon swear?”

  Matt crossed his heart. “Now go.”

  Hand in protective hand, the two most cherished people in the world to him walked away. Matt hurried onto the sixth floor, relieved to hear the blare of sirens in the distance. He knocked on doors and scooted the startled residents out to the emergency exits. He stopped when he reached the bowed door of apartment 612. The crime scene tape crisscrossing the door had been sliced through. He heard the rumble of something on the other side, like the whooshing ebb and flow of the tide rising along the beach. He knew that sound—heat, pressure, flames filling the confined space. This whole area was about to blow.

  The snooty lady across hall was only too happy to have him knocking on doors now. As he turned her to follow her neighbors to the exit stairs, Matt tried to reason out why Norwell would torch his own apartment. KCPD and the crime lab had already been in there to gather evidence against him. The fire endangered his son. An explosion could destabilize the building’s structure, bringing it down on all of them, killing anyone who couldn’t get out.

  The evacuation.

  Matt swore. This was all about getting Evan and Corie out in the open. It was about hiding in a crowd distracted by noise and fear.

  It was about kidnapping his son. Again.

  Matt pulled out his phone to call Corie to warn her.

  And that’s when he heard the man screaming for help.

  From apartment 612.

  “Help me! Somebody, help!”

  Matt’s heart sank. He had no choice. People before property. And he wasn’t going to have another Enrique Maldonado flinging himself off a balcony because he couldn’t escape the flames and smoke.

  Matt texted his brother Mark, told him his location and what he was about to do. Then he steeled himself with a deep breath, prepared himself for the blast of heat, and kicked in the door. Fire literally poured out into the hallway as the man’s screams turned to gratitude. “Hey, it’s the boyfriend. Help me. Please.”

  In between hacking coughs, he recognized the man’s voice. Jordan Cox. For half a second, Matt thought about turning around and running downstairs to Corie instead of rescuing this worthless piece of trash. But he’d already notified his team that he was going in, and they’d risk their lives looking for him if he didn’t show up where he said he’d be.

  He hoped his boots were thick enough to protect him from this walk through hell. “Shut up and do what I tell you this time,” he commanded, racing into the searing heat and toxic fumes. “You take in more smoke if you talk.”

  The damn fool wouldn’t listen. While Matt pulled out his pocketknife and cut Jordy free of the duct tape he’d been bound with, the redheaded bully prattled on. “He said he didn’t need my help anymore, that I was a liability. He said he could kill two birds with one stone. Please don’t let me die.”

  Despite a blow to the head, probably to subdue him long enough to bind him to the chair, Jordan seemed aware and ambulatory. Still, he’d never make it through this fiery sludge in those tennis shoes. Since time was of the essence, there was no debate. Matt put his shoulder to Jordy’s midsection, secured his arms and legs and lifted him up in a fireman’s carry.

  With flames melting the carpet and igniting the wood subfloor in the hallway now, Matt carried the smaller man to the exit stairs. There he set him down, but clamped a hand around Jordy’s arm, partly to keep the man standing and moving through every cough, and partly because he intended to hand him over to the first police officer they met once they got outside.

  On the third floor, he asked, “Did Norwell hire you to harass Corie?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause he’s pissed at her for taking his son. He wanted us to rough her up, scare her a little. He said he was too busy to do all the work himself.” On the second floor, Jordy tried to apologize. “He doesn’t like that you’re in the picture. He said he had to change his plans once you got involved.”

  “Do you know his plans now?”

  Jordy shied away, knowing Matt wouldn’t like his answer. “Keep the kid. Kill your girlfriend.”

  “Move.”

  The air was cold when they made it outside, but it was also clean. Matt sucked two deep breaths of reviving air into his lungs. Most of the cops out here were managing traffic and crowd control, but he got rid of Jordy and started his search to find the McGuires.

  He found the building super first. “Stinson! You got a list of tenants we can go through to confirm that everyone has evacuated?”

  The older man pulled it up on his phone and started checking people off.

  Where was the woman with hair the color of a ripe wheat field and whose smile lit up his heart? And that spunky little boy who was everything Matt could want in a child of his own?

  He skimmed the crowd again, his training not allowing the man in him to panic. He even glanced at the passersby pausing their morning walks and commutes to work to ogle the drama of lights and fire engines and flames and dark smoke pouring out the sixth-floor window. They should have made it down and out through the exit stairs ahead of him. The tension in his neck corded up with the very worst of warnings and he ran back to Stinson. “Where are Corie and Evan?”

  “They aren’t with you?”

  “I sent them down ten minutes ago.”

  The balding man scrolled through the list on his phone. There were no checks beside the tenants of apartment 712. “I haven’t seen them.”

  When he spotted a familiar white van parked against the curb halfway down the block, Matt ran to it. “Corie! Ev!”

  Inside, he found a remote arson lab with nearly all the same ingredients and equipment Norwell had kept in his apartment. He also found Harve Mohrman unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. Was he supposed to suffer the same fate as his
buddy Jordy? Had Norwell’s attempt to kidnap Evan from the crowd outside their burning building failed? If so, where were Corie and Evan now? Or was leaving the van unlocked and in the open like this an impromptu attempt to frame Mr. Gross Beard for all the arson fires?

  Matt stepped out of the van and made three calls, summoning a medic to treat Mohrman, a cop to arrest him, and Corie’s cell.

  It went straight to voice mail. Again.

  And then he saw the black muscle car, already three blocks down, darting through the growing crowd of rush-hour traffic, speeding away. The damn van was one more misdirection giving Norwell more time to get away with his prize.

  Not this time. Matt wasn’t sure what to do next. He couldn’t afford getting caught by another diversion. He’d lose all trace of Norwell before he got down to his truck in the parking garage. If Norwell had Corie, she was as good as dead. If he had Evan, the boy was as good as gone.

  No. No way. He’d lost one family in a fire. He wouldn’t lose another.

  He spotted Kyle Redding’s white scene commander helmet and ran. “Captain!” Then he saw the engine parked farthest from the scene and changed direction. When he saw the Lucky 13 logo on the side, he kissed it with his hand and climbed inside behind the wheel. He hadn’t understood all of the changes that had happened in his life this past week, but he knew one thing very, very well.

  He turned the key over in the ignition, and the engine’s powerful motor roared to life.

  But Redding had chased after him, grabbing the door before Matt could close it. “Taylor! What are you doing with my engine? You’re supposed to be off the clock today.”

  “Take it out of my paycheck, boss.” The car was still in sight but getting farther away. If it turned a corner or crested a hill... “Ignition point is apartment 612. Flames are in the hallway encroaching on the apartment above it.” Corie’s apartment. “I’ve got a secondary emergency, sir. Let me go.”

  His brother Mark was there, too, opening the passenger side and climbing in. “Come on, bro. Talk to us. What’s wrong?”

  “He took them.”

  “Corie’s ex? He took the kid, too?”

  Matt turned on the lights and siren. He’d clear a path through traffic and get to them quicker this way. “Call Cole and Rand. Tell them I’ve got a bead on Norwell. Give them the GPS on my engine and follow me.”

  “I’ll handle the tracking,” Redding insisted, climbing down and calling dispatch. “You’re on my orders, Taylor,” Redding said, giving Matt the backup he needed to keep his job. Stealing a fire engine for a personal mission tended to get one fired. And jailed. “Go find this guy who’s burning up my city and give him hell.”

  “Captain?”

  “I had a woman I loved once, too.” He tapped the door of the truck, signaling Matt he was clear to move out before striding away. “Go! I want that arsonist behind bars.”

  Instead of jumping down, Mark put a helmet on Matt’s head and tossed a coat around his shoulders. “You don’t have to do this, Mark.”

  His baby brother grinned. “Hell yeah, I do. We’re a team, remember? We have been since the day I was born.” He smacked Matt’s shoulder the same way Captain Redding had tapped the truck. “Lucky 13 rolling.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Corie woke up to throbbing headache and the coppery taste of blood in her mouth.

  A pungent chemical smell hung in the air, stinging her sinuses, and making her eyes water. But when she reached up to wipe the tears from her cheeks, a sharp pain tore at her wrists, pulling out some of the hair and bruising her skin. What the...?

  Crystal clarity returned with a vengeance and she sat up straight. She was strapped to a rolling office chair, her wrists and ankles bound by duct tape. That same yellowish goo Matt had showed her from her oven fire had been painted in a large circle around her chair. Her clothes were damp with it, too.

  Now she remembered the figure she’d seen in the smoke when she and Evan had been evacuating their apartment building. She’d assumed it was another resident following them down the stairs. But then he’d run up on her.

  She’d known one frightening moment of recognition as the man’s face cleared the smoke. Dark hair. Thick chest. Cold eyes. She’d instinctively pushed Evan behind her as Kenny’s fist connected with her cheek, splitting it open and emptying out a bucket of ball bearings that swirled inside her skull. She fell to her knees as Evan screamed and reached out for her.

  But Kenny got between them first, cupping his hand beneath the boy’s chin. “Remember me, son?”

  Evan backed into the corner of the stairwell landing, avoiding his father’s touch. Since sentimentality hadn’t worked to instantly win him over, Kenny went back to the tactics he knew best. He jerked Corie to her feet, the sudden movement doing nothing to help the concussion he’d probably given her. “Kenny, don’t do this,” she pleaded as the world spun in circles around her. “He doesn’t know you. All you’re doing is scaring him.”

  “Good. Then he’ll understand.” Kenny’s grip tightened painfully on her arm, keeping her upright when she would have stumbled. “You do exactly as I say, Danny, or I will hit her again. Now come with me. And act like we’re all just going for a nice little stroll.”

  Corie had barely made it to his fancy black car when the dizziness made her puke. She’d passed out in the back seat without knowing if her son was safe. Now, minutes? Hours? Sometime later, the very chemical that was supposed to kill her had acted like smelling salts and roused her to awareness.

  She quickly took in her surroundings. Judging by the large louvered windows running the length of the walls, it looked like she was on an upper floor of a converted warehouse. She seemed to be smack-dab in the center in an open commons area. But on either side of her were cubicle walls, desks, papers. It was Saturday and these offices were closed. So, there were no employees she could call on for help.

  She spotted Evan at one of the windows, kneeling on a stack of office chairs and looking out at something through the window that had been propped open. Under normal circumstances, she’d have been frightened to see him leaning so close to an open second-story window. But these circumstances were far from normal, and right now she was helpless to keep either of them safe. At least he had his dragon with him to give himself comfort. He hugged it to his chest and rocked back and forth.

  Corie frowned as her vision cleared. No. He was picking the dragon apart, piece by piece, glancing over his shoulder to the cubicles on her right and then dropping the colorful plastic bricks one or two at a time out the window.

  They both turned their heads to the sound of raised voices as two men argued behind one of the dividing cubicle walls.

  “I said no moonlighting.”

  “I’ve done every job you’ve hired me to. The results have been satisfactory, yes?” She recognized Kenny’s voice immediately.

  “Yes. But I’m not paying you to screw with your ex-wife. You’re drawing too much attention to my operation.”

  “You said you wanted this building burned to the ground. You don’t get to say how I do it.”

  “I pay you good money to take care of my enemies.”

  “And I will. These boys will be in bankruptcy long before they think of horning in on your territory again. This job takes care of two problems—yours and mine.” Corie heard footsteps and knew the men were on the move. “Now give it a rest, Meade.”

  Corie sat up as straight as her bindings allowed, trying to get a glimpse of whom Kenny was arguing with. Maybe she could convince that man to help her. Maybe he’d at least take Evan with him and drop him off at police station or firehouse. Maybe she had a chance to at least keep her son safe.

  Her movement caught Evan’s attention, and he saw that she was awake. “Mom!”

  He jumped down from the stack of chairs and ran toward her.

  “Evan, stop!” She eye
d the puddle of goopy gel and knew Kenny had rigged this whole place to go up in flames along with her. “Stay back! Don’t get any of this stuff on you. It’ll burn, sweetie.”

  A hard arm in steel-gray coveralls caught Evan by the shoulder and pulled him several feet away from the flammable gel. “Your mom’s right, Danny.”

  “I’m not Danny!” Her boy twisted away and kicked Kenny square in the shin. “The dragon beats the monster every time!”

  “What does that even mean?” Kenny was still rubbing his injured leg and cursing. “What kind of garbage you teaching my son, Katie?” He turned his curses on Evan and Corie nearly ripped her arms from their sockets trying to break free and get to him to protect him. “You need to man up, kid. No son of mine is going to believe in all this pansy fairy-tale stuff.” He snatched the dragon from Evan’s hands. “What is this supposed to be, anyway?” He tossed the dragon at Corie. She ducked, but the toy hit the floor hard and broke into several pieces.

  “No!” Evan shouted, lunging after his longtime version of a security blanket.

  “Evan, stop!” she shouted, not wanting him any closer to this death trap. “Do as he says. Please.”

  “Stop calling him Evan. His name is Danny, after my dad.”

  Evan swung his small fists at the monster who’d sired him. “It is not! Matt’s my dad now. He’s Mom’s boyfriend and he loves me. Matt said so.”

  Kenny backhanded him across the mouth. “Shut up—”

  Corie came unglued, sliding forward in her chair and crashing to the floor. “Don’t you touch him! Evan!”

  “There ain’t no other man who’s your daddy but me.”

  The man Kenny had addressed as Meade stepped out from behind the cubicle wall. He had graying hair, and though he wore a pricey tailored wool dress coat over his suit, she could tell he wasn’t a classy guy. He walked right past Evan, who sat on the floor, holding his cheek and sobbing. He didn’t offer a handkerchief or a smile or ask if Ev was okay. That man was no ally to her. “I’m leaving. I was never here. I’ve had my fill of domestic squabbles years ago. You’re fired.”