Maggie Shayne – Deadly Obsession (страница 2)

She got out of the car, walked to the house in the darkness. It was a quiet neighborhood. No one noticed her. She angled into the backyard and moved to the casement window, crouching low.

Through binoculars, she’d watched as Rebecca had tucked her two kids—Jeffrey, who was eight years old and had his father’s eyes, and Rose, who was three—into their beds and walked back downstairs for a little quiet time. The whole neighborhood was in that quiet-before-bed phase of the evening. Watching their TV shows, reading their novels. No one paid attention to her. Not even a dog barked.

She picked up her small digital meter and pulled the dangling sensor out through a tiny hole she’d cut in the windowpane, then quickly smoothed a piece of duct tape over the opening. Then she checked the readout. The gas-to-air ratio in the basement had reached a beautiful 8:1. Oh, this was going to be something.

Dropping the device into a pocket, she walked quickly back to the car. Then she started the engine and put the car into Drive but kept her foot on the brake as she pressed the button on the remote.

There was a delicious moment between cause and effect, a moment lush with anticipation of the delight to come. The release. The birth. The precipice of a full-body orgasm.

And then it came, a newborn spark followed by the instant ignition of all that lovely gas. The baby gobbled it all up and grew so fast it exploded into a fireball. The roar reverberated way down deep in her belly, and the glow of it burned in the night like the flaming sword of an avenging angel.

And that’s what it was, in truth.

Shuddering in gut-deep pleasure, she released the brake and drove away.

1

So if the bullshit I wrote was true, then why the hell didn’t I practice what I made so much money preaching? You know, that whole “live in the moment” and “milk the joy out of every second of your life” bit.

I should. I knew I should. It was just a hell of a lot easier to tell other people what to do than to do it myself. Because, seriously, if I were giving advice to me—and I was, because my inner bitch never shuts the hell up—the conversation would go something like this:

Inner Bitch: “Say it back.”

Me: “I can’t say it back.”

IB: “Why the hell can’t you? He said it. He laid it right out there for you. He said, I love you. And what did you say back to him?”

Me, flooded with shame: “I said, ‘You’re shitting me.’”

IB: “Yeah. Real romantic.”

Me: “I was fucking surprised. Shocked. I wasn’t ready.”

IB: “No one’s ever ready, dumb-ass. You still have to say it back.”

Me: “It’s too late now. I let the moment pass.”

IB: “He’s waiting for you to say it back.”

Me: “Or maybe he’s changed his mind. He hasn’t said it again, after all.”

IB: “Why would he say it again? That would be like sticking his finger into a socket for the second time, hoping for a different result. Say it. Or you’re gonna lose him.”

Me: “I’m not gonna lose him.”

I glanced across the car at my favorite cop and silenced the imaginary conversation in my head. Actually, it wasn’t all that imaginary. My inner bitch and I had been having it over and over again since that night by the campfire a couple of weeks ago when I’d absolutely blown the chance to move this relationship up to the next level.

And I was sure there was no getting that moment back.

I was also sure that things had been a little awkward between Mason and me since then. My fault, I knew. I hadn’t responded the way I wished I had. But dammit, I was scared shitless to think of changing anything about this thing between the two of us. It was good. It was more than good. It was freakin’ amazing. It was bliss. Why fix what isn’t broken? Why move things to another place when the place they’re in is so damned wonderful? Why risk screwing it up? Why?

He looked at me, caught me staring. “What? Have I got fettuccine on my face?”

“No. You have gorgeous on your face. It’s all over you, in fact. Damn irritating.”

He smiled, flashing the dimple of doom. “Thanks.”

“De nada.”

Say it. Tell him. Just tell him. You can’t leave him hanging another minute.

I hated to admit it, but Inner Bitch was kinda right.

“So,” I said, as we rounded a corner, “Mason, um, I’ve been meaning to, uh, you know talk to you about—”

“Holy shit!” He hit the brakes so hard that my seat belt hurt me. Then he jerked the wheel, gunned the car to get us out of the road and hit the brakes again. I saw the flames, then the people standing around outside—one filming everything on his damn smartphone—and then Mason was getting out of the car and shouting at me to call 911 as he ran toward the chaos.

“Mason, wait, where the hell are you—” I jumped out of the car, too, phone to my ear, running after him. “Mason!”

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

“Um, house fire. Big one. Right off State Route 26 near Glenn Aubry.”

“Yes, help is on the way, ma’am.”

I clicked off and shoved the phone into my pocket, running now, despite my killer heels, because Mason hadn’t slowed down. Someone was screaming that there were kids trapped inside, and I wanted to punch them in the face, because there would be no stopping him now. Mason and kids was like me and...bulldogs.

Somehow I caught up to him and grabbed his arm from behind. Smoke stung my eyes and throat, and the heat was like a living thing. There was roaring and smoke, that acrid smell of burning stuff that wasn’t like any other smell. House fires didn’t smell like wood fires or campfires. They smelled like destruction.

He glanced back at me, removed my hand firmly, looked me right in the eyes and said, “I have to.”

“I know you do.” Dammit, dammit, dammit.

And then he was gone again, pulling his shirt up over his face and charging right through the front door, into the jaws of hell.

I swore it got hotter and wondered if that was because he’d just provided additional fuel.

You really should’ve told him.

“I know, Inner Bitch. I know.”

I stood there for what felt like a hundred and ten minutes but in truth was really only two. Fire trucks came screaming up. I ran over to the first one that stopped, jumped up on the running board and yanked the door open, startling the firefighters inside. “Hurry. My detective is in there!”

“Your—”

“Someone said there were kids inside. Detective Mason Brown went charging in to save them. Go get them out. Now.”

“We’ve got a cop inside!” the driver shouted to his fellows as he jumped out. By then more men were jumping out of the other trucks. Hoses had been unrolled and water was cranked on. They all started beating the hell out of the flames with their hoses. A couple of them, wearing so much gear I didn’t know how they could walk upright, ran inside.

I’d never seen anything like this fire. No matter how much water they put onto it, it kept burning, kept coming back to life, like one of those trick birthday candles you can’t blow out. The crowd had backed up into the street now. Neighbors in their bathrobes and slippers, some of them even barefoot, shaking their heads and muttering to each other, and hugging their kids close to them. I glimpsed them in my peripheral vision but couldn’t take my eyes off the front door. Flames were shooting from the roof and licking out from every window. I was way too close. My face felt like it was getting an extreme sunburn. Someone grabbed my arm and said I should move back, but I just jerked away from his touch and stared at that door.

“Universe, if you take him from me, I swear I’ll never write another word. Don’t you dare even think about—”

Then I saw him. Mason came stumbling out the front door with a limp, unmoving child in each arm, their heads bouncing against his shoulders. They were both bundled in blankets. He wasn’t. His whole face was black with soot and he dropped to his knees before he even got clear of the flaming wreck of a house, just at the bottom of the front steps. Firefighters surged around him. The first two took the kids, unmoving in their blankets, and the next two picked Mason up by either arm and carried him across the lawn. Someone shoved a gurney under him, and his bearers dropped him onto it as it trundled toward a waiting ambulance.

The crowd closed between us, but I fought my way through it to get to his side, elbowed myself up close, grabbed hold of his hand, and saw that the skin was peeling off it and sticking to mine. I sort of yelped and yanked my hand away, and swore and cried all at once. The EMTs were working quickly, putting an oxygen mask on him and then cutting away his shirt to reveal that his left arm was badly burned, and the flesh underneath was trying to come away with the ravaged fabric.

Oh, God, it looked awful! They draped a clean white cloth over his arm and started soaking it in bottles of sterile water. I’d lost track of the kids. I think they’d been put into the back of another ambulance, and I knew they were as surrounded by EMTs as Mason was. But I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving.

When one of the guys adjusted the oxygen mask, he smeared the black away from Mason’s cheek, and I realized it was soot, not charred skin, and almost sank to the ground in relief.