Caged Fire

by L M Preston

  EmVee snorted. “I beg to differ, Demi. You are still a mystery to me. This revelation coming from a girl that lives in a mausoleum?”

  Demi raised her finger. “Uh-uh, tiny home from a converted mausoleum. That’s different. It’s part of the tiny house craze. Everyone is doing it. Converting buses, shacks, storage containers, anything they can into a home. My dad got creative.”

  “Your dad, babe, is bad ass and strange.” Sax parked the car alongside the large home. It wasn’t a mansion, but it did sit on a few acres and was made from concrete. There were bushes and trees framing the home, making it seem inviting even though it was completely dark.

  “Now what?” Demi unzipped the purse she’d draped in a cross-body fashion. “I’m ready. I have mace, pepper spray, brass knuckles, a pocket knife, and my cute little lipstick Taser.”

  “What the …” Sax slid away from her.

  EmVee covered her mouth to hold back a belting laugh. “All that fit in your purse?”

  Demi grinned. “You should see what I have in the holster under my skirt. Daddy taught me well.”

  “O-kay, calm it down. It looks pretty quiet here, so let’s go.”

  Sax pointed to the side of the house. “I’m sure there is a back door. Let’s try there. I can disable any security system and pick locks.” He bent down and grabbed a black leather bag. “With the proper tools, you know.”

  “I don’t know who’s more dangerous, you or Demi. A match made in heaven.” EmVee smiled.

  EmVee led them to the back entrance. She pulled the hood of her jacket over her wild curls and tied it at the neck. Sax handed her some shades.

  “I don’t need these to see.” EmVee started to hand them back.

  “Take them anyway. They hide your face. You can use them to see in the dark. They are night shades, makes things show clearly no matter how pitch black it is.”

  EmVee nodded. “Thanks, but I’m fine.” She took them even though she doubted she’d need them.

  She touched the picture of the door on the cell phone and entered the information requested. Rocky’s daughter’s name, Sabina. She didn’t realize he was giving her clues to unlock his house—his secrets.

  The door was made of beveled glass; it had a beautiful design of roses, a garden, and glass in rich hues that was so intricate in its design EmVee was tempted to touch it.

  “He had a lot of money,” Sax whispered.

  “I think he had more enemies because of it.” EmVee bit her lip as the door opened on both the screen of her cell phone and in front of her.

  The house smelled of paint. Fresh paint as though the house was recently built. There was a strong scent of new carpet and fresh wood.

  “Here’s a flashlight, dimmed.” Demi handed it to EmVee.

  EmVee didn’t bother since her eyesight was crisp in the dark. A side effect she guessed that stuck with her after the vicious bite from her attack. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted just thinking on the moment before the attack. She couldn’t believe she was so stupid as to consider Silas one of the most handsome boys she dated. The creature never even understood the nature of love he’d proclaimed for her. He only wanted her for a meal, the sick-o wanted the taste of her flesh.

  “We should split up and investigate first.” Sax stepped in next to EmVee.

  “Okay, check upstairs, the bedrooms.” EmVee pointed at Demi. “Can you get the basement?” She nodded at Sax.

  “On it.” Sax gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Knowing Rocky, he had an office. I’ll start there,” she whispered.

  EmVee watched them go. She needed them far away. There was a scent in the house that hung beneath the smells she’d already deciphered. She didn’t know if it was the smell of an animal Rocky had or a residue from someone who had been in the house before them. Either way, she would be careful.

  The phone vibrated. EmVee jerked. She lifted the phone to eye level. She continued to walk, taking a moment to read the text that flashed in front of the app picture of his house.

  Hawk: Are you good? Did you find him?

  EmVee frowned and put on the shades. She didn’t want anyone who wasn’t her friends to recognize her, especially someone who might be after her father or Rocky. Maybe the Hawk person could be watching the house. She bit her bottom lip. EmVee touched the words, hoping it would lead her to the sender’s information. Who would be texting Rocky; she didn’t know? Was Hawk a real name or a code name?

  “Ah!” a surge of pain pounded her back. She was tackled forward. Twisting around with lightning speed she’d not realized she had, she kicked the assailant in the chest. His ski-cap concealed face didn’t hide the shock in his eyes. His body hit the wall, creating a hole that crumbled at the edges as he fell.

  EmVee crouched, ready for the next attack. Her fingertips burned with fire she’d only dreamt of consuming her. Now it felt like it was bubbling to get out.

  The man stood, shook off the debris as if it was nothing and charged. He punched at her; she ducked low and elbowed his knee, causing him to stumble. Then she yanked his loose dark jacket toward her, head butting him and sliding her arm around his neck.

  He reared back, smashing her into the wall. He pried her arm from his neck with a growl. Bending, he flipped EmVee over his head and threw her across the dining table. EmVee’s head and arms hit the glass vases and wineglasses while she scrambled to her feet.

  EmVee stood on the huge table, glad for its oversized wood frame.

  The assailant jumped on the table with ease, his approach sleek and predatory. It reminded her of another: the boy who consumed her nightmares, who wanted to eat of her flesh like a rabid dog. She’d escaped him, but this one she would hurt. He stood between her and finding her father’s killer.

  “Ahhh!” EmVee charged then slid low, landing a punch in his rock-hard stomach then in his face. Bolting upward, her elbow connected with his jaw.

  The table broke, crashing them to the floor with splinters floating around them.

  She jumped up, fist raised, and with a twist of her neck, her hood fell down and shades slid off. Her burnt auburn curls framed her face.

  The opponent froze. His fist dropped. He tugged the knitted ski mask from his head as if it smothered him. Tawny tinged hazel eyes that glowed gold stared back at her. His brown wavy hair framed a strong chin with a dimple in the middle.

  “EmVee?”

  Kayson was larger than she remembered. Even then, as a football player, he was thick with muscle and height. Her breath caught in her chest. EmVee balled her fist. The air in her chest pounded against her ribs. Her heart constricted. As much as one part of her wanted to embrace Kayson, another part of her blamed him for everything.

  She charged him with her entire body vibrating. “You!”

  “Wait!” Kayson’s hands went up, palms out.

  EmVee punched him. Kayson blocked and ducked. She was lifted into the air and struggled against his hold.

  “My family died there!”

  “No! No, they didn’t.”

  EmVee kicked at his chest. Kayson tightened his hold on her legs and tossed her on the nearby leather couch then leaped over the couch to straddle her.

  “Liar! Get off of me! Killer! Murderer!”

  “I am not! Listen to me.” Kayson tightened his knees around her waist and lifted her arms high, holding her down. “Look at me.”

  “Get off of me!” EmVee shook her head. “You knew what Silas was, what he did to me.” Tears fell from her eyes as she gulped. “My mother, my siblings died because of the car crash that you…you were there!”

  “I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t.” Kayson slid his fingers between hers.

  EmVee stopped struggling. “I’ll listen, but get off me first.” She bucked her hips up, not believing his strength matched hers.

  “Only if you promise not to try and kill me again.” His gaze studied her.

  She nodded and stopped struggling.

  The thumping of running feet echoed behi
nd them, and the lights blinked on.

  “Get the hell off my friend!” Demi waved her lipstick Taser like a sword.

  EmVee flexed her fingers against his. Kayson released her hand and slowly moved off of her. She narrowed her gaze at him. His hands lifted, and he stood.

  “It’s okay, he wants to talk.” EmVee turned to sit on the couch. “But keep the gun on him, Sax. Demi, drop the lipstick.”

  EmVee crossed her arms then her legs. She allowed herself to inhale his scent. He smelled heavenly. Part of her wanted to rub her nose at his neck, to get closer. No one she’d met since the accident had a scent that appealed to her. Not even her father. Silas’s attack had changed her. She was still trying to decipher how its effects would impact her sanity. Kayson was the only other person she knew who could tell her about Silas and the mystery of what his brutal attack could do to her. She didn’t know if he heard the rumors about her and Silas being seen the night he went missing or if he blamed her for what people perceived as Silas’ death. Only talking with him would reveal what he knew about what happened that night.

  “Well, go on. Tell me why you think my family is alive. When I escaped, there was an explosion, and I remember seeing you. It was you in my hospital room that they put me in after the accident. Weren’t you?”

  “I was the reason your father and you got out alive. Rocky was supposed to get the rest of your family. My job was to give you and your father a way out of The Void.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it.”

  Demi stepped forward, taking the gun off of Sax’s hip, then grasped it high over EmVee’s shoulder. “The Void—what do you mean? Is that even a real place?”

  “It is a place. Between Rhode Island and No Where. The Void is a prison, a mind screw for those trapped there.” Kayson eyed Demi nervously.

  EmVee swallowed. Her palms were sweaty; she squeezed her finger trying to force away the rumbling in her stomach. “It wasn’t a problem for my father and me to leave after the explosion in the hospital.”

  Kayson shook his head and stepped closer.

  “Uh-uh…uh.” Demi waved the gun at him.

  “Rachel made that possible. You don’t remember exactly how you got from the exploding hospital to the deserted road you and your father ran on to safety, do you?”

  “Rachel?” EmVee recalled a loss of time and space. She’d never dwelled on it before.

  “Your friend.” He frowned at the gun pointed at him. “Your best friend who has the ability to get people out of The Void or into it. Not by herself, I’m sure. I don’t know how, but I swear she knows someone.”

  “How do you know my mother and siblings are alive?”

  “I saw them being taken by a group of men when I escaped the building.”

  “Do you know who they were?” EmVee leaned forward, pressed the palms of her hands on her knees.

  Kayson sighed. “Not yet. But Rocky may have left a clue. I was meeting him at the fight to get the name of the alleged doctor who is creating creatures, unnatural to The Void. But someone killed him.”

  “I don’t need your help finding them.”

  “You do, but I need to find them because—” His pain filled eyes met hers. “—they murdered my father and framed me.”

  EmVee inhaled. Her heart spasmed in her chest. She hurt for him. His father was all he had. She stretched then stood. Demi moved back and placed the gun in EmVee’s hand. EmVee handed it to Sax, who put it on his hip and moved out of Demi’s reach, winking at EmVee. Demi dug into her pocket to put on her brass knuckles then held up her pepper spray. EmVee tried not to smile and twisted the spray’s nozzle away from Sax and toward Kayson.

  “I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?” Her gaze traveled from his face to his chest, his raised hands, then back up. “Until I get what I want. You and Silas were friends, best friends. There is no way I can trust you when your best friend tried to kill me.”

  “What do you mean?” Kayson stepped closer.

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go to the office. I think I know where that clue is.” EmVee pushed past him.

  Demi caught up to her and grabbed her arm. “Are you seriously going to let him in on this? If what you said back there is true, I wouldn’t trust him. He’s best friends with a killer! I’d get rid of him.”

  EmVee winked. “Sometimes the best way to do that is to play along.”

  She allowed the others to search the office in the back of the house while she played with Rocky’s cell phone. The app had an animated view of the office they were in. EmVee forced the pounding of her heart to slow by taking calming breaths. She took her time capturing every detail of the items in the office and compared them to the floating picture of it on the phone.

  “Where’s the damn computer?” Kayson kicked the leather chair backwards as he searched the drawers in the large desk.

  “You think someone got here before us?” Sax helped Kayson lift the desk and move it.

  EmVee couldn’t help but watch him. Kayson was the first person she met in The Void. He’d been nice then. Too nice for her taste at the time since she had some obsession for guys with an edge. She learned from the stupid lesson that nice guys should finish first. Now Kayson was in the same box she put Silas in: bad, sexy with too much baggage. Definitely someone she would stay away from when the time came. It made her wonder if he’d always been that way but hid it behind his friendship with Silas.

  She blinked at the painting on the wall. It was perfectly staged, not crooked like the picture on the phone app.

  “The picture…” EmVee walked over to the painting. It was of a boy sitting by a lake, talking to a mermaid whose blue hair floated on the water’s surface. EmVee felt Kayson behind her. He was taller and thicker than Silas, her ex-boyfriend, and had a different vibe than her others.

  “What? You think there’s a safe or something behind it?” He reached over her shoulder, not touching her, to tilt the picture in the direction of the phone app’s moving image of the office.

  The electricity at the nearness of him made her sidestep away from him.

  Embedded in the wall was a keypad. No numbers were on it. EmVee tapped the animated resemblance of the picture. It disappeared and showed only three squares of the keypad.

  “I know the combination.” EmVee moved closer to the keypad and pressed the numbers that matched the pattern on the phone app.

  The wall safe slid open. She grasped the small laptop, keys, and envelope inside. Then she pivoted around, brushing against Kayson on her way to the empty desk.

  “What do you think is on the laptop?”

  EmVee opened it. “Answers. He was able to steal my father’s notes on the rash of murders in The Void before you got there. It goes deeper than I thought. It may lead to the origins of The Void and explain how and why we were trapped there.”

  EmVee bit her lip and tried to unlock the password on the computer. She remembered Rocky telling her his real name. It meant mist, but started with…a C. “Got it,” she typed in Ceochan The Void. The computer unlocked and revealed a screen that had only one folder on it.

  “That’s it. The name of the file. It’s my father’s badge number.” Kayson pointed at the screen.

  Sirens whined in the distance.

  “Copy it. We can’t stay here.” Sax went to the window. “I think the police are coming.”

  EmVee took the USB cord hanging off the computer and plugged it into the cell phone.

  Kayson held open the office door. “I got a place we can stay until we decide our next move.”

  Demi tapped on the desk. “I don’t know if we are ready to get that close.”

  EmVee held up her palm to Demi. “But now we don’t have a choice, remember. You have a car?”

  “A motorcycle, you can follow me. There’s a back exit.”

  EmVee closed the laptop. “Sax, take this and follow us. I’m riding with him.”

  Demi said, “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll be all right. Don’
t lose us.”

  Sax patted her shoulder. “I won’t. Can’t make my woman upset.”

  “You better not. I’ve seen Demi mad; she has a temper and a Taser.”

  Sax chuckled, and Demi elbowed him in the stomach, “Traitor,” she mumbled.

  Kayson headed toward the door. “You won’t be sorry for trusting me.”

  “We’ll see.” EmVee followed. Her grip on the cell phone tightened then she stuffed it in her bra.

  She held tightly to Kayson’s dark jacket. His scent teased her nose, and she released him to dig into her pocket for a mint she’d swiped off of Rocky’s desk. She needed the strong kind this time to combat his alluring aroma that called to her like a kindred spirit. EmVee didn’t want to feel anything for Kayson but distrust and indifference. Being angry would only make her risk getting the information she needed from him. If there was a chance her family was alive, she had to deal with him until she could find them.

  “We’re here,” came through the mic in her helmet.

  They sped down a side road; houses were hidden from the street by a thick crush of trees. The frogs were singing, and birds flew from the branches as they drove on the gravel road to the house framed in the darkness by the moonlight. The leaves waved, and their rustling seemed to push them on.

  The house appeared worn. It was antique in its appearance, with blue shingles and brown window frames. The windows were decorative and shaped with a curved tipped point. The front double doors were white trimmed in wood. EmVee couldn’t wait to get inside, to be in a home—something she hadn’t done in almost a year.

  EmVee released him as he put down the motorcycle’s kickstand. Closing her eyes briefly, she inhaled. The aroma of trees, grass, and even some honeysuckle teased her nose. She shook herself out of her temporary escape. Kayson got off the seat. EmVee stretched as she stood.

  Sax’s car pulled in beside them, and EmVee smiled at Demi. The girl vaulted out of the car to race around to meet her.

  “What are we doing here?” Demi whispered. She pulled at EmVee’s arms. “How do you even know him? So many doubts here.” Demi stomped.

  EmVee exhaled. “I will tell you all the dirty details of my situation with Kayson after we unlock these files.” EmVee put an arm around a much shorter Demi as they walked toward the porch and the opened door.