He gave a long, quiet laugh. It would have been reassuring if dread hadn’t been flickering up and down her spine. “No. Nothing like that.” Then his voice deepened, the way things happen in dreams, one thing seamlessly shifting into another.
And the familiar tones of this new voice made bile rise in her throat.
“The fingerprints won’t survive, Miss Rachel Allen Kessler, because this entire place is going to get burned to the ground. Nothing’s going to survive. Except me. I always survive.”
Chapter 29
“Who are you?” Rachel’s heartbeat drummed in her ears.
Officer Lee smirked. “Surprise.” He lowered his voice, until it sounded exactly like the one she’d never managed to forget. “I still have the hair I chopped off your head.”
“Why?” Now that the kidnapper of her nightmares was standing right in front of her, the fear that had shadowed her all these years felt different. Her heart raced and adrenaline flooded her body, but her head was clear. She was entirely focused on this moment, on him. Seventeen years had changed him, added bulk and a hunch to his shoulders. She’d never seen his face, and in the darkness still couldn’t make out his features.
He kept playing the flashlight across her face, as if looking for her fear. She didn’t give it to him.
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “Who are you? Where’s Mick?”
“Mick got sick,” he said succinctly. “I sent him home. I’m the man who’s been waiting for this moment for seventeen years. Knew if I joined the local heat I’d get my shot. Couldn’t have planned it better, with that nut job going after you.”
“You were behind that?”
“No. As if I cared about animals. I want you here. With your damn animals.”
His words flashed back to her. This entire place is going to get burned to the ground. “The animals?” she whispered. Greta. Everything in her wanted to check her car, make sure Greta was okay. But she didn’t want him to know her dog was so close, so she forced her gaze to stay fixed on him.
“There it is.” He looked at her greedily, shining the light on her face. “I knew that would hit you where it counted.”
“Why do you have to hurt the animals?” She had to force the words through her frozen throat. “Why? Why not just hurt me?”
“Oh, I will. But first I want you to watch your precious creatures get burned to a crisp.”
“But why?” She couldn’t keep her horror from showing. Part of her knew she was in the presence of something she could never really comprehend. Someone so damaged and twisted her mind wouldn’t be able to grasp his motives. The other part of her wanted, needed, to know why?
“KZ Ventures,” the officer said succinctly.
“What? That old partnership?” Before Kessler Tech, there had been KZ Ventures. But there’d been a split, and her father had gone on to create an empire. “That was forever ago. My dad and . . .” She drew a blank on the name.
The earned her a sudden blow across her cheek from Lee’s flashlight. She wheeled around, remembering almost automatically how to take his punches. You fell away as they struck, going with the momentum of his fist rather than fighting it.
“Zander,” he said tightly. “Paul Zander. My father. I use my mother’s name.”
With a hand to her cheek, stopping the flow of blood from the slash he’d left, she stared at him, still not understanding. “They were friends. Paul Zander was my dad’s professor. Then they went their separate ways.” It had all happened before she was born, so she knew only what her father had relayed.
“Separate is one way to put it. Kessler became a billionaire. My father became a suicide.”
“I . . . I’m sorry.” The night shadows were drawing in closer. The only light came from Lee’s flashlight, which was moving restlessly from her face to the grounds beyond, and the guard shack at the far end of the corral. Her eyes dropped to the pistol at his hip. Her gun lay in the bottom drawer of her office desk. He held the advantage in every way.
“Sorry for what? For driving my father to put a rope around his neck? Stealing my childhood?”
“Then we’re even. You stole mine.”
He bared his teeth in a flash of white. She tried to remember his hair color. He might have close-cropped sandy-brown hair, or he might not, she couldn’t say for sure. He must have worked hard to fade into the background. “That month was the best time of my life,” he said in a thick voice that made her sick. “Knowing how much Kessler was suffering. Knowing all the control belonged to me. When you left”—the words seemed to leave a bitter taste in his mouth—“I knew this day would happen eventually. When you’d be under my thumb again.”
As she watched the flashlight trace an arc of light through the air, some of the familiar Krav Maga sayings ran through her mind. Switch from defensive to offensive as quickly as possible. Improvise. Use anything available. There had to be something she could do to fight back. An idea came to her. A risky one, and probably painful, but at least it was something. If she could get him to go after her with that flashlight again . . .
“Mr. Lee, I had nothing to do with what happened to your father. And these animals definitely didn’t. Forget them. What satisfaction will you get out of hurting a bunch of goats and turtles?”
“You forgot the dogs,” he said grimly.
Her breath stalled in her throat. Did he have a grudge against dogs, because one had helped her escape? “The dogs?”
“I hate dogs.” He lifted the flashlight and she winced, turning her face away. But instead of hitting her, he simply brandished the flashlight at her. She gave it as close a scrutiny as she could. It was one of those heavy-duty ones, the kind the guards carried. The side of her face still burned from where he’d struck her.
“Whatever. Whatever I call you, you’re still a coward if you hurt innocent animals. You should really get help, you know. Have you ever tried talking to a therapist?”
“Shut the fuck up. Just for that, I’m going to make you pour the gasoline. I got two cans’ worth, and if it’s not enough, you probably have extra in that hundred-mile-an-hour eco-mobile.”
He reached for her wrist but she danced backward. Letting him get his hands on her was not part of her plan.
“There’s nowhere for you to go, Kessler-bitch. You’re trapped here. You got no options except to do what I say.”
“You wish that were true. But there are always options. I just learned that recently, as a matter of fact. You have options too. You could consider pursuing something other than pointless revenge. I really think if you talked to a qualified counselor you could make real progress with your issues of abandonment and loss of control.” She’d had enough counseling herself to throw some valid-sounding terms around. “I’m a dog therapist, you know. But it probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to work with you. Tell you what, I won’t even charge you.” She inhaled a deep breath, praying this next bit would send him over the edge. “It would hardly be fair to charge you when my father ended up with all the money and yours got nothing. What’s it like to grow up with no father and no money? I can’t even imagine, but I guess I just got lucky. And know what? I still have a father and lots of money. Life just isn’t fair, is it?”
And here it came, just as she’d hoped. The flashlight sliced through the air with vicious force. Anticipating its trajectory, she slanted her face away, her hands flying up to meet the attack. It all happened at once, and so fast. The agony of the heavy metal object hitting her already injured cheek, the sudden pain of one of her fingers getting bent backward by the flashlight. Her primitive grunt as she flung her body away from him, using the momentum of the flashlight to wrest it from his hands. He lost his balance and took a few stumbling steps past her.
She was so shocked that her plan had actually worked that she bobbled the flashlight and nearly dropped it. Hearing him come at her, she clamped her hands around on the slippery metal and aimed the bulb directly into his eyes. He reared back, stumbling a
gain. Then she switched the light off and, in the sudden darkness, ran as fast as she could toward the corral.
The thought of conking him on the head with the weighty flashlight was tempting, but she couldn’t risk him grabbing it back. Instead, she stuck it in the back of her pants, where it bumped awkwardly against her butt as she ran.
Finally, all of Mr. Eli’s lessons had paid off.
She undid the latch of the corral and swung open the gate, to the confused bleating of an alpaca and a mountain goat. Maybe the goats and other animals would provide a distraction. If he did set the place on fire, at least they’d have a fighting chance instead of being penned up. If all she could give them was a slight chance, she would.
If only she had time to free the birds in the aviary and the injured dogs in the kennel. And Greta. But she had to get her gun before anything else. From the front yard, she heard his angry voice and heavy footsteps as he stomped toward the guard shack.
“This isn’t going to work, Kessler-bitch,” he yelled. “One flashlight isn’t going to save you. I still got the gun and all that gas.”
A horrible thought struck her. What if he just shot the animals instead of setting a fire? The goats had begun wandering out of the gate, tempted by new grass they hadn’t tasted yet. They were such easy targets. She bit down hard on her lip, so sure a gunshot would be next that she could practically hear the retort.
But he didn’t shoot. Maybe he realized it was a waste of bullets and would just make a big mess. Besides, it was completely dark everywhere except the guard shack. He might risk a stampede if he started firing his gun.
She pictured her gun, a tidy Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum nestled into the bottom drawer of her turn-of-the-century mahogany desk, the one she’d inherited from her mother. The challenge was how to get to her office. By now his eyes had probably adjusted to the darkness and if she crossed the open yard, he might spot her. She waited an agonizing few moments until a few goats had ventured into the front yard. Then she went onto her hands and knees. Maybe in the dark she’d look roughly like a goat. Or maybe he’d be looking higher up, for a human shape, and wouldn’t notice her. Barely daring to breathe, she crawled across the open, grassy area to her office.
For every second of that crossing, she expected a bullet to zing past her. It had happened just that way, back then. She’d been half crawling, half running, her legs weak from terror and disuse, her head ringing from the guard’s kick. Gunshots, one after the other, rat-a-tat-tat, had struck the dirt and a clump of dry grass near her. But she’d kept going.
This time, no bullets came as she crawled to the back door of the office. She slipped inside, keeping to her hands and knees, and scrambled to her desk. Her revolver, black and solid, nearly leaped into her hands.
As soon as she held it, the seriousness of the situation seemed to increase a thousand-fold. Could she shoot Lee? Of course she could. When she’d been held captive, she’d kept fighting even when it meant more pain. If she’d had a weapon, she would have used it. What scared her more was the knowledge that she sucked with a gun. What if she missed and hit one of the goats? Or what if she just nicked him and made him angry? Her gun had only six bullets in it. She’d have one chance, maybe two. No, only one, because the retort always threw her off and she never managed to get the second shot anywhere close to the target.
She’d always done a lot better with Krav Maga than with a handgun. But she’d just have to do her best.
She crawled to the window and peered out. It took her a moment to spot him. Then she saw him at the edge of the wooden fence that enclosed the large corral. He held a large, squarish object that he shook slightly as he walked.
Oh my God. It was a gasoline can. He was pouring gas around the corral. With the dry grass, the whole place would light up. They’d all get incinerated, she and the animals. Greta, still shut up in her car. Her hands shook as she pried open a window. She had to shoot him before he set a match to the gas. Even though she’d never hit a target at that distance, she’d have to try.
He was nearing the guard’s bungalow, which was at the farthest point from the office, and then he’d start curving in closer. She decided to wait until he passed the shack and she could get a clear shot.
The slight reprieve gave her a chance to line up her shot. She crouched at the window, her forearms resting on the sill for extra stability, and watched his steady progress along the fence.
Evil. The man was evil. Or so fucked up he was beyond help. In other circumstances, she might feel sympathy for him. But not if he was going to deliberately set a fire aimed at destroying animals. No. He deserves to die, she told herself fiercely. Hurting the innocent was just fucked up.
The vibration of her phone in her pocket startled her so much she let out a tiny shriek. Luckily, the bleating of the goats milling through the yard masked the sound.
Cell phone. God, what was wrong with her? She’d been so focused on getting away from him and grabbing her gun that she hadn’t thought to call for help. Keeping the gun aimed past the guard shack with one hand, she dug in her pocket with the other.
Fred was texting her. Thinking about you. Can we talk?
Fred. Fred. She longed for him, craved him with the sudden intensity of a newborn craving air. If only Fred were here, his open, wonderful, square-jawed smile pouring sunshine into the room.
She quickly texted back. Call 911. Refuge. Kidnapper setting fire. Come quick. I love you. If she never got a chance to tell him in person, at least she’d said it.
Hang tight. Love you. On my way.
She shoved the phone back in her pocket. Did he mean “love you” the way she meant it, or in a generic, calm-down sort of way? That made one more thing the evil kidnapper had stolen—a precious moment between her and the man she loved, one that should have taken place in person, not over a text message.
The man had a lot to answer for.
She resumed her position, arms braced on the windowsill, gun pointed to the right of the bungalow. He must be behind it now, because she couldn’t see him, or any movement from that end of the property. Closer to her, a few goats wandered across the lawn, chomping and occasionally bleating softly. The goats usually slept at night, but this change in their routine must have thrown them for a loop.
If we get out of this, sweet clover for all, she silently told the goats. Maybe some sugar cubes and alfalfa and . . .
A weird rumbling noise interrupted her thoughts. Somebody gave her a violent shake. Somebody enormous, like the world itself. Then everything was jerking this way and that, the walls, the floor, the windowsill. Utterly confused, she pulled the trigger, saw something go winging out the window toward the treetops. She fell back onto the ground, the gun dropping from her fingers. Books were leaping out of the bookcases like rats deserting a sinking ship. The noise was horrendous, as if a freight train was hurtling through the office.
Door. She should get to the door. Or hide under her desk or something. The desk was closer than the door, so she crawled across the floor on her hands and knees. It kept tilting back and forth, making her slide this way and that. She grabbed onto the nearest leg of the desk and hauled herself toward it. Or maybe it was careening toward her, she couldn’t tell. It was like some kind of weird shipwreck with no water. Just flashing lights and rumbling and furniture going free range.
How could it still be going on? It seemed as if she’d been jolting around forever. Using all the arm strength she possessed, she swung herself under the desk, suppressing her automatic panic at sticking her head in such a small space. Now was not the time for a phobia. She glanced cautiously above her. Pretend that’s sky overhead, not the underside of a mahogany desk. As sharp and heavy things rained onto her legs, she tried to curl into a ball small enough to fit under the desk. Then everything went black.
Chapter 30
The earthquake struck while Fred was driving helter-skelter toward the Refuge. He pulled over, leaving his lights flashing so other cars would do the same. H
e set the parking brake and held on through the violent jarring. Out on the road, a few other cars slowed down, one crashed into a telephone pole, but most followed his lead and pulled over. His instinct was to run outside and direct everyone, but it would be stupid to get out of the car before the shaking had stopped. He counted the seconds. Thirty . . . thirty-one . . . finally, after thirty-two seconds of bone-jolting, stomach-churning destruction, the earth settled down and lay flat.
He knew the stillness wouldn’t last for long. Aftershocks could be just as dangerous as the earthquake itself. Quickly, he sent Rachel a text. Are you okay? When she didn’t answer, he tried calling; when that didn’t work either, he turned on the car radio. The news announcer sounded just as shaken as the rest of San Gabriel. “Preliminary reports say this was a 6.3 on the Richter scale, centered just to the north of San Gabriel. This is the biggest earthquake San Gabriel has experienced since 1942, when a 6.5 struck at four-thirty in the morning on Easter Sunday. Damage reports are just starting to come in, but we know that several neighborhoods have been hit hard, especially on the north side of town.”
The Refuge was on the north side of town. He had to get to Rachel, now.
Fred turned the key in his ignition and pulled back into the road. All around him, drivers were getting out of their cars, turning to their neighbors. The streetlights had blinked off; power must be out across the city. The only light came from headlights and the peaceful, unworried stars overhead. Fred rolled down his window and cruised along the street, quickly scanning passersby for injuries. If someone needed help, he’d be in a real bind, since every second away from Rachel felt like an hour.
Everyone seemed shaken up, but unharmed. “Drive slowly and carefully,” he warned people as he sped up. “Watch for obstacles in the road. Keep your radios on.”
The Night Belongs to Fireman Page 29
