CHAPTER 11

SARA LAY IN BED, trying not to think about what was living in the mattress underneath her body. The autopsy had taken ten brutal hours, and when they had finally gotten back to the motel, she had nearly cried at the sight of the filthy room. Sara knew there was a maid around here somewhere. Earlier this morning, she had seen the woman pushing around a large cart with all sorts of cleaners and a vacuum. Except for the bed being made, nothing else in the room had been touched. Sara hadn’t exactly been expecting a thank-you note for scrubbing the bathroom, but the woman could have at least vacuumed the rug. The green M&M she had seen under the table yesterday morning was still nestled in the shag carpet.

Sara closed her eyes and listened to Jeffrey humming in the shower, the water slapping against the plastic tub. She had cleaned the cut on his hand using some disinfectant they’d found in the morgue, but he would have to bandage it on his own when he got out of the shower. She was too tired to do it herself, and frankly, part of her could not let go of her anger from yesterday afternoon. They had spent the entire day together, yet neither one of them had been willing to break the ice and talk about what had happened.

Jeffrey seemed fine with this, which only served to annoy Sara more. The situation made her feel like the prototypical bitchy sit-com wife who was always harping on her poor, misunderstood husband. She had always supported Jeffrey, even when she’d thought he was wrong, and it was unfair of him to let her be cast in the role of shrew.

On top of that, Sara still had a bad feeling about Elawah and whatever Lena had drawn them into. The autopsy she had performed that day only served to heighten that sense of dread. Over the years, Grant County had seen its share of violent deaths but Sara was hard-pressed to think of a more awful way to die than being burned alive. She was usually adept at separating the victim from the crime. If you were going to cut into a dead body, you couldn’t think of it as a person anymore. You had to look at it as parts of a whole: circulatory, respiratory, tissue, organs, skeleton.

Still, as Sara worked on the woman, she’d found herself wondering about her life, the method of her death, the family she was leaving behind. Then, she began to wonder about the perpetrator. What kind of person could do this to another human being? Certainly not the kind of person she wanted Jeffrey talking to.

They had not waited for Fred Bart to come before starting the autopsy, which was a good thing considering the dentist had never showed. Removing the remains from the car had proven to be the easy part. Once the corpse was on the table, Sara found that the woman’s body had been so ravaged by fire that the usual procedures could not be followed. There was no need for the Stryker saw since the back of the skull had fractured off in Sara’s hand, allowing the brain to slip out like the pit of a ripe peach. There was no need for a Y-incision to open the torso when there was hardly any skin left to cut.

All but two of the ribs were fractured by the heat. The larynx and trachea were seared, the tongue cooked into the neck organs. The pleural surfaces of both lungs were charred, the air spaces consolidated with soot. Most of the skeletal musculature had a well-done appearance. The bone marrow was black.

The soot in the lungs proved the woman had lived long enough to inhale the smoke. Sara was certainly not an arson specialist, but she assumed that the gas tank explosion had been the result of a fire that started inside the car. The blast from the tank had gone up and out, mostly damaging the very rear of the SUV. The woman, even sitting in the backseat, would have been able to remove her seat belt, get out of the car, before the real damage started.

From all appearances, she had not been raped. Sara wondered why this came as a relief. Sara herself had been raped—brutally so, as a certain lawyer liked to point out. As awful as that experience had been, she imagined it was much more painful to be burned alive.

The thing that terrified Sara most was that the woman surely knew what was coming. There had been no obvious damage to the skull; no one had knocked her out before the fire was set. She had watched and waited as flames devoured her body.

The shower cut off, and Sara rolled over onto her stomach, wishing she’d thought to bring their pillows from home. She was wearing socks, sweatpants, and a long-sleeved shirt buttoned up to the collar, even though the room was stuffy from the heat and smelled of wet fried chicken. The remnants of a pizza they’d had delivered were on the plastic table, and she thought about getting another slice, but her body would not move. She would have asked Jeffrey, but earlier he had taken one look at the well-done ground beef topping and dry-heaved.

The bed shifted as he got in. She waited for him to turn off the light, to bunch up his pillow and arrange the blankets like he usually did before he settled down. He did none of this, asking instead, “You asleep?”

“Yes,” she lied. “Did you put something on your hand?”

He didn’t answer her question. “I shouldn’t have slowed the car.” He added, “Yesterday,” as if she needed some clarification, then repeated, “I shouldn’t have slowed the car.”

Sara closed her eyes. “I shouldn’t have slapped you,” she answered, though as much as she tried, as shamed as she felt for resorting to violence, Sara couldn’t bring herself to truly regret it.

Still, she rolled over, put her head on his chest. He gave a deep sigh, and she felt the last of her anger dissipate.

She said, “You smell like hotel soap.”

“It could be worse,” he pointed out, though thankfully didn’t tell her how. “Did you call your mother?”

“She was taking a nap with Daddy.” Sara added, “At six in the evening.”

Jeffrey laughed, but Sara had never told him that she was twenty-two years old before she found out that her parents’ ubiquitous Sunday afternoon “nap” excuse had been a cover for something far more illicit than sleeping. Nor did she tell him that her nineteen-year-old sister had been the one to inform her.

Jeffrey laced his hand through hers, suggesting, “Maybe soon we’ll be taking naps.”

A baby. Their baby.

He told her, “I checked the machine while you were doing your autopsy notes. The adoption agency didn’t call.”

“I checked it while you were in the shower.”

“They’ll call,” he said. “I can feel it.”

“Let’s not talk about it,” she told him. “I don’t want to jinx it.” The truth was that it could take years before a baby was available, though the fact that they had agreed to take a child up to the age of two and hadn’t asked for a specific race or sex had definitely moved them up the list. The woman at the agency had said that it could be next year or it could be any day now. All they could do was wait—something neither Jeffrey nor Sara was very good at.

Jeffrey stroked her arm, then her side. His thumb slipped just under the waist of her pants, and he suggested, “Maybe we could take a nap right now.”

She sat up on her elbow and looked him in the eye so that her answer would be loud and clear. “No part of my naked body is touching any part of this skanky motel room.”

He gave her one of his sly grins. “Is this some kind of come-on?”

Sara let her head fall back to his chest, not wanting to give him the chance to change her mind. “Please tell me that what I did today is going to help you so we can get out of here.”

“I don’t know that I can do that,” he admitted, stroking her arm again. “We still don’t know who the victim is. If Lena had stuck around, we probably could’ve found a lawyer to get her out by now.”

“Don’t mention lawyers,” she begged.

“We never did talk about that,” he said. “How the deposition went. What the strategy is.”

“It’s okay,” she said, but her voice caught in her throat. There hadn’t been a message from Buddy Conford on the answering machine, either. This meant that Global Medical Indemnity was still trying to decide whether or not Sara’s medical judgment was worth fighting for or to capitulate to Jimmy’s grieving parents.

For once in her life, she willingly changed the subject back to Lena. “I’m just glad it wasn’t Hank in that car.”

“You and me both,” he said, knowing better than anyone how easy it would be for the local cops to up Lena’s charges to murder if the victim had been her uncle. “I still don’t know how Jake thinks he’s going to make a case without an ID. There has to be a motive. If he can’t prove a connection between Lena and the victim, then game over.”

“Not knowing the victim’s name doesn’t negate the fact that she’s dead.” Sara smoothed down the hairs on his chest so they wouldn’t tickle her nose. “And Lena was at the scene. She had her foot on the gas can.”

“They probably won’t be able to get her prints off the can.”

“That doesn’t offer a resounding proof of innocence.”

“They don’t have a statement from her. She didn’t say a word to anyone.”

Sara thought to ask why he was giving Lena the benefit of the doubt when he would most certainly take her actions as an admission of guilt from anyone else, but she was too tired for the argument that would follow.

Jeffrey said, “I wish we could find Hank. He’s got to know something.”

“You’re sure he’s not at home? Hiding, maybe?”

“As far as I could tell, no one was there.” He added, “Valentine has a car right across the street. I’m sure he knocked on the door when Lena went missing.”

“Maybe you need to knock hard enough to open the door.”

He laughed in surprise. “I think being married to a cop is finally starting to rub off on you.”

“Then listen to me. I’m worried that Lena has done something to jeopardize Hank.”

Jeffrey took his time responding. “Has it occurred to you that it could be the other way around?” She didn’t answer, and he continued, “Hank’s probably back on drugs. Maybe he pissed off his dealer. Maybe Lena came down to take care of things, only the dealer didn’t want to be taken care of.”

She looked up at him, resting her chin on her hand. “Go on.”

“These guys don’t like being fucked with,” Jeffrey continued. “And they’re not afraid of cops.”

For the first time since they’d gotten here, Sara was finally hearing something logical. She could easily imagine Lena pissing off the wrong people, damn the consequences. The same pattern she had established with Ethan Green—provoking her skinhead lover until he retaliated with force—could be playing out again in Elawah County.

Jeffrey told Sara, “You didn’t see Pfeiffer up close. He was terrified. Maybe he thought they had sent me to finish the job.” He hesitated, as if he hadn’t quite worked out the next bit. “It could be that the reason Lena didn’t want to talk to me the other night was because she didn’t want to expose me to these people.”

Sara put her head back down on Jeffrey’s chest. She could not give the woman the benefit of the doubt, but she didn’t want the ensuing argument that might come if she voiced her opinion. “Do you think the man we saw at the hospital could have been Hank’s dealer?”

“Jake said the guy was a dealer.”

“He also said that the guy was there to visit one of his boys in the hospital,” Sara pointed out. “Jake had plenty of opportunity to tell you then and there that the man was supplying Hank and that Lena had gotten in the way.”

“I wasn’t exactly high on his list at the moment,” Jeffrey reminded her. “To his thinking, you and I had just helped Lena escape from custody.”

Sara didn’t want to dwell on that point. “Do you think Hank might have helped her?”

He shrugged. “To get out of town, she would need a car, clothes, money. Lena could do that on her own or she could find help.”

“I don’t know if I buy Hank being capable of coordinating all that.”

“He’s an old man,” Jeffrey allowed. “Then again, you don’t get track marks on your arms like that from going to Sunday school.”

He had a point. Actually, he had a lot of good points. She wondered why he hadn’t been thinking like this yesterday. It would have saved both of them a hell of a lot of trouble, not to mention nearly eight hundred miles on her car.

She asked, “So, what’s on the agenda for tomorrow?”

“Maybe knock real hard on Hank’s door.” He chuckled, obviously still pleased that Sara had come up with the idea. “Failing any response, I guess I’ll find out a little more about Jake Valentine. I’ve got some contacts at the sheriff’s academy over in Tifton. Hopefully, they can give me a better idea of the kind of cop he is. Then, I’m going to call Nick and get him to run a deep background check on Jake.”

“You can’t get Frank to do that from the station?”

“The GBI can go deeper than a look-see,” he said, using the slang for the routine checks he could run at the police station. “It takes several days to pull a complete profile.”

“Jake can’t have a record or he wouldn’t have made it through the Public Safety screening.”

“I’m going to cross-reference him for known associates.”

“Surely, they would’ve flagged his file if he was a known associate of a criminal.”

“Depends on how he’s known.”

“And if he has some connections near your connections, and they find out you’ve been digging around about him?”

“I imagine he won’t be too surprised to hear the news.”

She reached for his hand, her fingers brushing his skin until they touched a sloppily applied Band-Aid. She curled her hand around his. “Do you think Jake is part of any of this?”

“Jake grew up here. He was only a deputy for a couple of years before he moved up. I think he knows everything that’s going on in this town. Whether he’s involved in it or just standing on the outside looking in is the question.”

“When did you come up with all of this?”

She expected him to make a joke about his stunning brilliance or remarkable sleuthing abilities. Instead, he surprised her.

“That woman,” he began, and she understood he meant the charred body they had worked on all day. “There’s somebody out there who’s missing her. They’re either too scared to ask the sheriff for help, or they know that it’s useless, that Jake can’t or won’t help them.” She could hear the indignation in his voice. “If you can’t trust the police to take care of you, to do their jobs the right way, then what’s the point?” He paused, but she knew he wasn’t expecting an answer. “It’s not right, Sara. It’s just not right.”

Twenty-four hours ago, she had wanted to kill him, but now all that she could think was that she had never loved him so much as she did right now.

“Can you imagine how you’d feel if something like this happened in Grant County?”

Sara could not imagine such a violation. The first time she had met Jeffrey had been on the Grant County High School football field. She was team doctor, watching the game from the sidelines. Sara had turned around for some reason, looking up into the stands. That was when she’d seen Jeffrey with Clem Waters, the mayor. He loomed over the man, making Clem look like a dwarf. There was something about Jeffrey’s presence that made it difficult for Sara to breathe. She had never told him this before, but her heart had stopped at the sight of him. When she saw him walk down onto the field, her knees had actually felt weak. If a player hadn’t managed at that very moment to get the crap knocked out of him, she would have made an absolute fool of herself. As it was, she had only been a partial fool.

She wrapped her arms around him. “You wouldn’t let it happen,” she assured him. “Not in our town. Not ever.”

He pressed his lips to the top of her head, then reached over and turned out the lamp on the bedside table. Sara settled back in, curling her body into his. She felt herself relax just as she felt him tense.

She asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Do you smell something burning?”

“After today, that’s all I smell.”

“No.” Jeffrey turned the lamp back on. “I mean it. Something’s burning.”

“I can’t smell—”

He got out of bed and slipped on his jeans. Reluctantly, Sara sat up, knowing that he wouldn’t go to sleep until he located the source of the smell. Considering the state of the hotel, she wouldn’t be surprised if the electrical wiring was smoking.

He pulled back the drapes and checked the parking lot. “I can’t see anything.”

“I don’t suppose that means you’ll come back to bed?”

Jeffrey slipped on a T-shirt from the suitcase and opened the door. He stood there, letting the cold in, sniffing the air. “It’s coming from outside.”

She stood up. “I can smell it now.”

They both put on their shoes before walking out into the parking lot. Sara pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands to fight the nighttime chill. Outside, the odor was more intense, like smoke from a roaring campfire. The sound of crackling was obvious, too, and they both followed the noise to a tunnel that ran along the back of the motel’s front office.

There was a crowd of guests gathered at the end of the tunnel, all of them looking as if they were embarrassed to be seen here. Their fear of being caught by their neighbors and spouses could not compete with the desire to watch a spectacle. And spectacular the sight was: the building next to the motel was surrounded by flames, smoke wafting into the night sky.

As Jeffrey and Sara reached the front of the crowd, the windows blew out of the building with an earth-shaking explosion. Jeffrey put his arm around Sara, turning her away from the debris. There was another loud boom. The front door blew off and skittered across the parking lot.

Jeffrey had to raise his voice over the roar of the fire to ask, “Has anyone called nine-one-one?”

Someone from the crowd answered, “Twice.”

Jeffrey told Sara, “That’s Hank’s bar.”

“I hope no one is in there,” she answered, shielding her eyes with her hand to block out the intense light. The flames seemed to be concentrated around the periphery of the building, as if someone had poured gasoline around the outside and lit a match. With the windows gone, the fire was working its way in, following the line of the studs and beams, dancing across the roof. If there were fire sprinklers in the building, they weren’t working. Sara guessed the bar would be completely engulfed within the next five minutes.

There was a piercing noise, like a hurt animal or maybe a siren. Sara glanced down the road, expecting a fire truck, but there were only a couple of cars and a motorcycle driving slowly by.

“Lena,” Jeffrey murmured, striding toward the building.

Through one of the broken windows, Sara saw a figure move to the middle of the bar. In the glowing light, she could tell that the person was looking at something in his hands.

“Hey, you!” Jeffrey had obviously realized what Sara had: that the person inside wasn’t Lena after all, but a man with broad shoulders and a stocky build. He looked up when Jeffrey called again, but he made no move to leave.

Jeffrey turned back toward Sara. He nodded once, as if to say, “You know I have to do this,” then ran toward the building.

“Jeffrey!” she called. It was too dangerous. The fire would reach the man in seconds. “Jeffrey!”

He jumped back as a wall of flames shot up in front of him, but would not give up. Ignoring Sara’s pleas, he circled the building, looking for another way to reach the man.

“No,” Sara whispered, helplessly watching Jeffrey dart into the burning building. Inside, the man’s shirt was on fire now, but insanely he turned away from Jeffrey, disappearing farther into the building. Jeffrey chased after him, reaching out, then they both vanished.

“No,” Sara repeated, waiting, watching the open doorway for Jeffrey. She circled, glass crunching under her shoes, scanning the building, looking through the gaping holes where windows used to be. She had gone halfway round the bar and was standing at the edge of the woods when there was a loud explosion, this one so intense that it knocked her to the ground.

Seconds passed. Her ears rang, her brain felt enveloped in static. Sara shook her head, debris falling from her hair. She pressed her hands into the packed dirt and sat up on her side. Flames shot up from the building. Her skin felt singed by the heat. She managed to get to her knees, but could not stand. Her mouth opened, but she could not speak.

“Sara!” Jeffrey came running out of the woods, sliding on the dirt as he dropped to his knees beside her. “Are you okay?” He put his hands on either side of her face. “Are you hurt?”

She put her hands over his. “I thought—”

The distinctive wail of a siren filled the air. This time, there was no mistaking that the noise came from a fire truck. The back wheels screeched as it pulled into the parking lot, an ambulance right behind it. The firemen scrambled like ants as they hooked up hoses and directed people away from the blazing building.

“Sara,” Jeffrey repeated. “Talk to me. Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, collapsing against him, her arms so tight around his waist that she was surprised he could still breathe.

“You’re okay,” he told her, stroking back her hair. “You’re okay.”

Sara couldn’t trust herself to open her mouth without sobbing. She felt numb, caught in a vacuum that muffled sound and sensation.

Jeffrey coughed, and she loosened her grip around him but did not let go.

She’d thought he was dead. For that split second, she’d seen her life without him, felt what it would be like to lose him.

“He ran into the woods,” Jeffrey told her, as if she gave a damn about the man who’d lured him into the building. “He had something in his hands. I couldn’t see what it was.”

One of the paramedics knelt beside Sara, put his hand to her back. “Ma’am, are you okay?”

She managed to nod her head. Shock. She must be in shock.

The other paramedic asked, “Can you breathe? Do you need some oxygen?”

She had to clear her throat before she could tell him, “No.” Obviously he did not believe her. He tried to put a mask over her mouth but she pushed him away.

Jeffrey looked worried. “Maybe you should—”

“I’m okay,” she told them all, feeling foolish having so many people fuss over her. She pulled on Jeffrey’s shirt, trying to stand. He practically lifted her off the ground, his arm around her waist. She put her hand over his to keep it there.

She told him, “I want to go back to the room.” He didn’t ask questions. He led her through the crowd, using his hand to push people aside and make a path. They were all staring, and Sara looked down at the ground, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, holding Jeffrey as closely as she could.

“Hold on, Chief.” It was Jake Valentine.

“Not now,” Jeffrey told him.

He took off his ball cap. “If you could just—”

“Not now,” Jeffrey repeated, tightening his grip around Sara’s waist. The lights from the snack machines were flickering as they walked by, the compressors buzzing like a hive. Sara hadn’t closed the door properly when they’d left the room and Jeffrey slowly pushed it open with one hand. She could feel his body tense as he looked around, made sure no one was inside.

He tried not to make a big show of it, but he kept Sara behind him as he checked out the small room that held the toilet and the tub. Once he was certain they were alone, he turned on the faucet and took a rag off the towel rack.

“I want to know why he ran,” Jeffrey said, wetting the cloth, his mind still on the man in the building.

Sara pushed herself up onto the countertop, feet dangling above the floor. Her senses were coming back. She could smell an acidic mix of smoke and sweat coming off Jeffrey’s body. His shirt was wet with perspiration and soot.

He said, “I couldn’t get a good look at him. Smoke was everywhere.”

“Can you breathe okay?” she asked, the doctor part of her brain whirring to life. “Does your chest or throat hurt?”

He shook his head. “Come here.” Carefully, he washed her face with the rag, saying, “There’s a stream that runs behind the building, some kind of shack beside it. The guy tripped down the bank and fell into the water. I thought I’d catch him then, but he just disappeared.” Jeffrey picked something out of Sara’s hair and threw it into the trashcan. “I couldn’t tell if he dropped what he was carrying. Whatever he had, he thought it was worth running into a burning building for.” He rinsed out the rag. She could see that it was spotted with dirt and wondered what her face looked like. He finished, “Then the building blew, and I saw you go down.”

She felt something cool on her cheeks and realized that she was crying.

“Hey, now,” Jeffrey said, wiping her tears. “You’re okay.”

Emotions came rushing in. Sara didn’t give a damn about herself. “I just…you went into that building, and then the next thing I saw…I thought you were…”

He gave her a curious smile, as if she was overreacting. “Come on, babe. I’m fine.”

She touched his face, tried to keep her hands from shaking. Sara knew that Jeffrey was attracted to her toughness, her independence. She couldn’t be that person right now, couldn’t let him think for a moment that she could survive without him. “I don’t know what I would do if something happened to you.”

“Come on.” He tried to make a joke of it. “You’d have a line of guys waiting to take my place.”

Sara shook her head, unable to play along. “Don’t say that.”

“Maybe Nick Shelton would finally get his shot. Y’all could get matching necklaces.”

She kissed him, feeling grit on his lips. Sara didn’t care. She opened her mouth to him, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his hips, pulling him as close as possible. She wanted to feel every part of his body, to know that he still belonged to her. Something frantic took hold, and she tore the neck of his shirt trying to take it off.

“Hey—” He pulled back, that same curious smile on his face. “We’re okay, all right? We’re fine.”

We, he had said, but that had never been her concern. She could see right through him—that his smile didn’t really reach his eyes, that he was talking too fast, that he was worried about something—too worried to tell her about it. She touched the tips of her fingers to his lips, let them travel down his neck, his chest. When she scratched her fingernails down the front of his jeans, he finally stopped smiling.

“Don’t ever leave me,” she told him, unbuttoning his jeans, opening the fly. It sounded like a threat, but she was speaking out of sheer terror at the thought of her life without him. “Don’t ever leave.”

He was ready even before she wrapped her hand around him. His tongue went deep into her mouth as he kissed her, long, firm strokes that matched her own. Sara kissed back harder, used both hands to tease him until he jerked down her pants and spread her legs apart. She slid to the edge of the counter, putting her full weight onto him as he pushed inside of her. Again he tried to slow her down, but she gripped the counter with one hand and thrust against him, quickening his pace.

“Fuck…” he breathed, slamming her back against the mirror, kissing and biting her neck. She felt his teeth graze her breast, his hands gripping her ass as he pushed harder, deeper. Sara dug her fingernails into his back, knowing how close he was, wanting nothing more than for him to let go.

“You feel so good,” she whispered putting her lips to his ear, letting him feel her breath. “So good…” She kept talking, coaxing him along with the words she knew would push him over the edge.

He gasped, the muscles along his back tensing like wire. Sara squeezed her eyes closed, focusing everything on the warm flowering at her center as his body shook with release. He slowed his pace and this time she let him, relishing each stroke, wishing she could hold him in forever.

He shuddered again as he finished, falling against her, his hands gripping the counter as if he needed help standing. She traced her fingernails lightly up and down his back. His skin was hot and sticky but still she wanted to feel every part of it. Sara kissed his shoulder, his neck, his face.

“Jesus,” he panted. “I’m sorry I couldn’t…” He shook his head. “Jesus.”

Sara put her mouth to his, gave him a soft kiss. She could count on one hand the number of times Jeffrey had let himself finish before she did. She could also honestly say she had never felt closer to him in her life.

He was smiling again, that half-smile that could infuriate her and make her love him at the same time. “I bet you Nick couldn’t do that.”

She leaned her head back against the mirror, still not ready to make a game of this.

“You know what they say about short guys overcompensating.”

She looked at him, saw that he needed her to play along. “Give me a little credit,” she relented. “I think I can do better than Nick.”

He smoothed back her hair. “Do you know that I have loved you pretty much since the first time I laid eyes on you?”

She laughed. “You had a hot date lined up the very same night.”

“I did not.”

She poked him in the ribs. “You had to call her to tell her you’d be late.”

He brushed his lips across hers. “I love you, Sara.”

She felt her throat tighten. She gave him her usual answer, her joking answer that had driven him crazy the first year they were together because she would never say the words back to him. “I know.”

“You know what else?” he asked, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You are a dirty, dirty girl.” Sara felt herself blush crimson and he laughed out loud. “That, too, but I meant literally. Look in the mirror.”

She turned and checked her reflection. He’d managed to wipe off most of the dirt from her face but she still looked as if she’d been hit by a truck.

He said, “I have to be honest. I don’t like what you’ve done with your hair.”

She turned back around. “You’re not exactly the prize pig at the fair.”

“Then why don’t we finish this in the shower?” He glanced down, ran his hands up her thighs. “Or did you want to give me a chance to redeem myself right now?”

“You think you remember how?”

They both jumped as a loud banging shook the door.

Sara slid off the counter, pulling up her sweatpants and closing her shirt in one swift motion. Her heart was pounding like she was eighteen years old again, caught in the back of a Buick with a boy instead of an old married woman who had every right to be in a cheap motel with her husband.

There was more pounding on the door, almost like a hammer. Light streamed in at the top where the flimsy plywood bent from the impact. The plate glass window overlooking the parking lot made an ominous creaking sound.

Sara buttoned her shirt as Jeffrey tucked himself back into his jeans. “If that’s Jake Valentine,” he began, but didn’t have time to finish his sentence. The window shattered, glass flying into the room, curtains billowing as a large object smashed onto the plastic table, then fell to the floor.

Jeffrey had dropped to his knees, his arms covering his head. “What the—”

Wheels screeched on asphalt outside.

Sara’s mouth opened in surprise. The object was a man. Someone had just thrown a man through their window.

Instinctively, she ran toward him but Jeffrey caught her hand, yanking her to the ground.

“Go into the bathroom,” he ordered, reaching under the mattress and pulling out his gun. “Now.”

Sara ran in a crouch as Jeffrey moved toward the door. He put his hand on the knob, tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

He pressed his back to the door, then the wall, making his way to the window. Quickly, he looked out the window, scanning the parking lot, then kneeling back down under the ledge. He did this twice, and Sara held her breath each time, waiting for his head to be blown off.

Jeffrey glanced back at Sara. “Stay here,” he told her, then jumped through the broken window.

Sara held her breath, ears straining for the sound of gunshot. She crawled on her knees toward the man, trying to see if he was alive. Glass was everywhere, and she picked around it, trying not to cut herself. She kept her head down as she pressed her fingers to his neck, but wasn’t sure if what she felt was a pulse or her own shaking hands.

“Sara.”

She screamed, ducking down at the same moment that she realized it was only Jeffrey.

“Whoever it was is gone.” He used the butt of his gun to knock away some glass before climbing back through the window. “Is he dead?”

She finally looked at the man. He was on his left side facing the window. The white pearl handle of an expensive-looking folding knife stuck out of his back. A large shard of glass was fixed in his neck but there was only a trickle of blood, not the expected spurt generated from a beating heart. Still, she pressed her fingers to his carotid just to make sure.

She told Jeffrey, “Nothing.”

He seemed almost relieved. “The door’s been nailed shut.”

Sara sat back on her knees, said a silent prayer of thanks that it was just a man thrown through the window and not a flaming ball of fire.

Jeffrey tilted the man’s head, looked at his face. “I think it’s the guy from the bar.”

“It has to be,” she told him. The man had obviously recently been in a fire. His eyes were open but the lashes were singed off. His close-cropped hair was covered in soot. His shirt was burned away in large patches, the flesh underneath showing first-and second-degree burns.

Jeffrey started to tear open the man’s shirtsleeve.

“Don’t,” Sara told him, thinking there might be evidence on the shirt, but she saw Jeffrey’s reason soon enough.

Tattooed onto the dead man’s arm was a large red swastika.