All I knew was that the warehouse was out past the industrial park where Ionix had its offices. In the blank stuff, the scrubby plains between Boulder and Longmont.
I ground the gears of the Mitsubishi and kept driving east. Not too fast, with the girls sitting behind me, but as fast as I maternally dared.
The trees started to thin out. I squeaked through a stoplight as it was just going yellow.
We were just past King Soopers when I saw the pillar of smoke.
I pulled the car up to the curb outside the entrance to the storage buildings.
Ionix wasn’t the only business to keep shit out here, but their logo was on the only building that was belching smoke and sparks out of its roof. Right up front.
There were four fire trucks and an ambulance beside it, parked all skewed like they’d shown up in a hurry. Which they had, of course.
A clump of guys was standing behind one of the trucks. Their faces and turnout coats were sooty and streaked. Nomex hoods under their helmets, respirators hanging loose around their necks.
First shift, tired out.
The building looked nothing like the one in my dream. It was all metal.
How the hell was it on fire, then?
I rolled down my window.
The wind shifted and I got a harsh full-face blast of sodden ash and that nasty sour fire-retardant smell, just like the place on Mapleton. I could hear the crackle of emergency radios.
Their voices were drowned out by a horrible creaking sound, right before this loud, sustained crash… the sound of beams colliding, maybe, or some big pile of weighty shit grinding and moaning as it collapsed in on itself.
Not the structure I was looking at, something inside it.
A second cloud of soot and sparks pillared up from behind the building’s roofline.
The guys who’d been taking a break moved back toward the building.
Slow motion.
I rolled the window up, then opened my car door and got out. Closed it behind me so the girls wouldn’t have to breathe any smoke.
Leave. Leave now. You shouldn’t be here.
But I was frozen in place. Might as well have been duct-taped to the side of the Galant, for all the ability I had to actually act on that admonition to myself.
There was one guy up in the air on a ladder, lifted high above the truck it was attached to and shooting a jet of hose-water down into the roof below.
Someone had battered a loading-bay door open.
Another helmeted guy came out of it, looking for all the world like some World War I trench soldier, what with the respirator covering most of his face. Another guy had an arm over his shoulder. Limping.
A firefighter.
Don’t be in there, Cary. Please God.
And then I was walking forward. Across the street.
A burly older guy in a white shirt and dark pants stepped forward to block me when I got near the trucks—both hands raised, his palms forward. “You can’t be here, ma’am.”
He was wearing a tie, too. Dark blue, same as his pants.
“Is Mimi Neff here?” I asked.
I didn’t know what else to say. Already, the smoke was hurting my throat.
“Ma’am,” he said, “you’re going to have to leave.”
Then I noticed a gold-bar name-tag thing, pinned to the left of the tie.
Chief Benjamin Davidian.
McNally’s pal Benny?
“I’m a reporter,” I said. “With the Boulder New Times.”
He stepped toward me, hands still up. “We’ve got a situation here, ma’am.”
“I’m working with Jon McNally. Covering the arsons.”
“Ma’am, be that as it may, I’m going to have to ask you to vacate the premises.”
“You the guy McNally used to smoke-jump with? He told me to get my ass over here, make sure I talked to you first.”
His hands dropped a little from the full-stop position.
“Benny, right?” I stuck out my hand. “I’m Madeline Dare. I shadowed Mimi for an article last week, that house up on Mapleton.”
He was listening. Taking me more seriously than I’d expected.
You sound more serious than you expected.
There was another cracking sound behind him, like a big tree snapping at the base, ready to fall. Benny turned to look, decided it was all right, then turned back toward me—suddenly all official around the mouth again.
“Ma’am…”
I was about to start babbling about lab results and accelerants and beers with Mimi, trying to sound all technical and impressive, when there was a long ripping sound and two far louder cracks.
Some guy behind us yelled, “Jesus Christ, Kevin… jump!” His voice loud and really scared.
Then half the long building caved in on itself, with dust and smoke and debris flying everywhere.
Benny threw his arms around me, tumbling us both to the pavement.
He’d knocked the wind out of me, but I realized he was curled over me, using his body to shield mine.
The crashing stopped, but the air was still thick and tough to see into.
Benny raised his head. “You okay?”
I coughed. “Yeah. Yes. Thank you.”
He jumped up off me and gave me a quick once-over, like to make sure I didn’t have a spike through my head or any other injuries masked by shock, then pulled me to my feet.
“Go home,” he said.
“I have to talk to Mimi. Is she here?”
“On her way,” he said.
“I have to wait.”
I’d seen something, before the building caved. Something I was refusing to look at again. Over by the edge of the grass.
I had to tell Mimi about it. Only her. Not this guy.
I felt snot leaking out of my nose and wiped the back of my hand across it.
It came away black. I tried to breathe through my nose but my nose was having none of it.
“I have to talk to Mimi,” I said again.
“Get back in your car. Drive to the end of this block,” he said. “Where you came in from. Can you do that?”
“Yeah.”
He looked at me funny. “You sure?”
I nodded. It made my head hurt.
“Quickly,” he said. “And I want you to stay there.”
I did what he’d told me, glancing back over my shoulder once to see him running full-tilt right back in toward the worst of it.
Now that he wasn’t looking, I blew my nose into my fingers and flicked the snot on the grass.
Then I inhaled.
Yeah. The air reeked of gasoline.
The shakes set in the minute I’d reached the car. And then I started hacking up a bunch of nasty brown-black stuff I’d apparently inhaled.
Get the girls out of here.
The air started to clear just a bit. I could see Benny yelling into a radio now, standing at the driver’s window of a red-and-white-painted Bronco with a seal on its door.
Mimi can wait. Get the hell out of here.
That’s what half my brain thought, anyway.
The other half was apparently incapable of making me act on that suggestion.
I could hear more sirens starting up in the distance, louder and louder as they raced toward us all.
Another ambulance rushed in first.
Right behind it came Mimi’s pickup.
I saw her eyes flash white, widening when she realized it was me standing next to my car, but she didn’t stop.
She hit the truck’s brakes and pulled up behind Benny’s Bronco, jumping out of her truck’s cab.
The ambulance guys ran past them, hauling a flat oval stretcher between them, tipped sideways like a surfboard.
The guy in front had something else tucked under his other arm. Might have been a neckboard.
Whoever Kevin was, his buddies were pros, and they weren’t fucking around.
I’d wrapped my arms around my chest and was rocking, forward and back.
I realized I was talking to myself, muttering not Cary, not Cary, not Cary rapidly under my breath.
Over and over. A mantra.
But he was in there. I knew it for sure now.
And nobody was rushing to bring him out.
I got into the car and slammed the door behind me as quickly as I could, then started it up and drove well away from all the havoc.
“Mummie okay?” asked India, when I’d pulled over to the side of the road again.
“Yes, sweetie,” I said, as calmly as I could.
Okay, but totally fucking stupid.
I knew Mimi would come back out and find me.
And that was a good thing.
Because Cary’s bike had been lying on its side in front of the building. At the edge of the grass.
And this wasn’t the serial-arsonist guy’s MO. Whoever set this fire hadn’t started it with acetone.
I had to wait until I could make sure Mimi knew that. Then I could take my children home.
I was far enough away now. So I got out of the car and sat down on the curb. I wanted her to be able to find me.
For some reason, I was sure she would.
It felt like I’d been sitting there thirty seconds. Or maybe a month. Time was rubbery.
My ass was numbly asleep on the cold concrete, but I was still rocking myself, forward and back, forward and back.
Getting dark now.
I felt a hand gripping my shoulder.
“Madeline, what the hell are you doing here?” Mimi’s voice. “There’s a fatality. We haven’t even—”
“Cary,” I said, cutting her off.
I kept rocking.
“Madeline?”
“His bike’s out front. In the parking lot. I wanted you to know. And this was started with gasoline, Mimi. Not acetone. You can still smell it. McNally told me you could, even after they hit a place with water. He was right.”
Mimi squatted down in front of me, got a grip on both my shoulders. “Look at me.”
She made me stop rocking. I started shivering instead.
“Yeah,” I said. “No shit.”
“We need to get you home.”
The ambulance started up with a growl. It raced past us, sirens cranking up.
I tried to make my eyes focus on Mimi. “How’s Kevin?”
I figured they wouldn’t be going fast if he’d died, so it might be safe to ask.
“He’s all right,” she said. “Broken collarbone. Lucky as shit.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“I’m going to get you a blanket, okay? And something to drink. You gonna be all right sitting here by yourself for just a minute?”
I nodded and started rocking again, arms tighter around my knees.
I saw her walk away. Couldn’t really focus my eyes, or even shift what I was looking at. A line of trees. Nothing special about them.
When Mimi came back, she had an army blanket and a bottle of apple juice.
“I want you to drink this,” she said. “You need a little sugar.”
I drank down half of it and started coughing again. Hacked and spat on the sidewalk, once I’d gotten my breath back.
“Let’s get you home,” she said.
“I think I know who did this, Mimi.”
“You drove here?” she asked. “I thought you couldn’t drive?”
“Listen to me.”
“Madeline, we have to leave.”
“Mimi?” I started crying. “You have to look at Bittler for this.”
“Just get back in your car,” she said, grabbing me by the shoulders and turning me around. “Passenger side. I already cleared it with Benny. I’m going to drive you home now.”
I didn’t move, so she pushed me forward until I stumbled into movement, then walked behind me around to the other side of the car.
She leaned me against the back door, opened the front one for me.
“Jesus, Madeline,” she said, looking into the backseat. “You brought your children?”
I was about to nod but instead I leaned forward and puked the apple juice back up, all over her shoes.
Mimi didn’t say a word—just cradled me into the car and fastened my seat belt.
She used the blanket I was still wearing to wipe off my face.
So gently.
Then she shut my door, walking quickly around the front of the car.
The door on that side opened. She climbed up behind the wheel and started the engine.
India said, “Mimi!”
Parrish said, “Winnie-the-Pooh.”
I couldn’t stop crying, the whole drive home.
I tried really hard not to make too much noise, hoping I wouldn’t scare my children.
When we parked in front of the house, I realized that I didn’t even care anymore that Dean was away.
He couldn’t have comforted me, not even if he’d been waiting for all of us on the front porch, arms opened wide to gather us in.
I didn’t want my husband. Because this was all too awful.
I wanted my mom.