ABBY POUNDED ON THE ACCELERATOR as soon as the engine caught. She saw Kelsey’s taillights three blocks away as they disappeared to the right at the corner. She was heading north. Abby bet she was going home. The woman had a town house in North Long Beach. Abby knew that because from time to time she had read in the LBPD daily log of officers being dispatched there to pick up paperwork when Cox was a deputy chief.

Squealing tires and narrowly avoiding a collision with an unsuspecting motorist, Abby made the same right the fleeing woman had and saw nothing. She was forced to cool her heels at a red light. Tapping the steering wheel while she tried to calm down and think clearly, Abby prayed she was right and it was the townhome Cox was headed to.

She floored it when the light changed and drove for the Bixby Knolls area of North Long Beach. When she turned onto the main street that ran along the town house complex, she slowed until she saw Cox’s car parked illegally at a fire hydrant red curb.

Abby yanked the wheel and parked in front of Kelsey’s vehicle, half on the sidewalk. As she lurched from her car, her phone began to ring. Guessing that it was Luke or Woody probably trying to calm her, she ignored it and, taking only her gun, sprinted for Kelsey’s home.

In the middle of the complex, all the units looked alike. Abby paused to get her bearings, trying to remember the number. She wandered, the minutes ticking, frustration growing. Then she recognized the address and charged toward it.

The door was unlocked, and she shoved it open. Stopping at the threshold, she tried to calm her breathing and racing heart.

“Kelsey?” she called out and listened. She heard a rustling of papers and smelled smoke. Had she set her own place on fire?

Gun up in a two-handed grip, Abby peered inside. “There’s no way out. Just come clean. I know you weren’t the ringleader in all of this.”

Tiptoeing forward, Abby entered a small, tiled entryway. Straight ahead was the living room; to the left a kitchen and to the right a staircase. The smell of smoke was in the air, and Abby felt a nudge of urgency, but which way?

The floor creaked upstairs, and Abby made her decision and quickened her gait, gun extended in front of her as she climbed the stairway. The smell of smoke was stronger here, and she heard the whirr of a bathroom fan. The sound of rustling paper was louder.

At the top of the stairs to the right was the master bedroom, and Abby slowly moved that way. A tendril of smoke curled from the top of a doorway inside the bedroom and ran along the ceiling.

Abby inched into the bathroom and brought her gun on target. Kelsey Cox was feeding pieces of paper into the bathtub, where a fire greedily devoured them. The bathroom fan was on, but it was not successfully removing all of the smoke.

“Stop!”

“Or what? You’ll shoot?” Cox pointed a gun of her own but kept dropping paper in the fire. “I don’t think so. I should have started this so much sooner. I just don’t trust a shredder to do the job.”

Rage welled up in Abby as she realized she was once again going to be denied proof of the truth. Her finger tightened on the trigger, knowing the shot would be justified.

But killing Cox would solve nothing. Her anger cooled.

Gritting her teeth, she lifted her finger from the trigger and placed it along the frame but kept the gun on target. “You killed my father?”

Cox laughed and sounded a little hysterical. “Yeah, I did. He threatened to expose Gavin as the Triple Seven killer. Wouldn’t you kill to protect the man you loved?” More papers fell onto the fire.

“Why not just take him to jail? He killed Shea. He wouldn’t have been a credible witness against Gavin.”

“I did what was necessary at the time. I made the hard choice. I’m good at that, always have been.”

For a second her attention was distracted as the fire flared, and Abby stepped toward her.

“Not so fast!” The gun swung around. Kelsey dumped the rest of the papers from the counter into the tub.

The fire sputtered and then flared again, and the flames shot up. Cox coughed, and Abby herself felt the sting in her eyes and the burn in her throat. Then the plastic shower curtain caught, and pungent black smoke filled the air.

The fire kindled the beginning of fear inside Abby, and the sudden screech of the smoke alarm in the bedroom almost made her squeeze the trigger.

She backed out of the bathroom, coughing, a headache starting because of the smoke.

Kelsey followed, wiping one eye and keeping her gun trained on Abby.

What was her endgame? Abby wondered and almost asked.

But Kelsey started talking. “I had no problem with your parents; neither did Gavin. We were planning on having our wedding reception at the Triple Seven.”

She swung her gun up and smashed the smoke alarm, mercifully ending the screech while the smoke got blacker and thicker. Abby had no chance to react. Cox quickly had the gun pointed at her again.

It doesn’t matter, Abby thought. She could already hear sirens in the distance. She retreated from the bedroom, wanting relief from the smoke. “Gavin killed my mom. I know Alyssa ordered it.”

That surprised Cox, knocked her back a step.

“How’d you know it was Alyssa? She drove Gavin and Piper to the restaurant that day, and she was the reason it all went bad. They were just supposed to scare your folks into quitting the buyout talk. But your mom was intractable. She threatened Alyssa with throwing a wrench into Lowell’s career. Gavin told me that she claimed to know something that would end any political dream Alyssa and Lowell had. And that was what got her killed. You don’t threaten Alyssa.”

More smoke, and another alarm went off in a different part of the condo.

“My dad left a letter. He said it was all Alyssa. He could have stopped her then. Why did you kill him?” Abby repeated the question; suddenly the answer was so important. She was at the top of the stairs now, wanting to take Kelsey into custody, get the gun out of her hand, but how?

“Your dad showed up at my house on Granada a couple days after the fire. He’d been told to disappear permanently, but as usual, he didn’t listen. Gavin was still limping around with his leg injury. Buck wanted to take him to the station and get the whole story out, tell the investigators what really happened. He hoped that he could prove self-defense in the killing of Piper Shea, and get you back. But he knew Gavin would have to be arrested for your mother’s death. That was the only way all the truth would come out.” Harsh coughing interrupted Cox briefly. “What a sap your dad was. He truly believed that if Gavin went to jail, Lowell would finally see what a manipulator his wife was.”

The smoke thickened and the harsh hacking worsened, but Cox kept her gun up. “They were arguing. He didn’t see me come in behind him. I hit him with a shovel.”

Abby felt numb and she tightened her grip on her gun. The dense smoke made it difficult to see, to breathe, to think.

“Just so happens we were putting in a pool. There was a grave ready and waiting for your father. Imagine the pool company’s surprise the next day when we told them we’d changed our mind and now we wanted a concrete patio instead of a pool. I never imagined anyone would dig that backyard up ever again.”

Cox collapsed in a coughing fit as the pop of breaking glass sounded from the bedroom.

Abby flinched and fought the urge to turn and run down the stairs and out of the burning town house.

“You better let me go,” Cox said, voice harsh and raspy, “or we’ll both die here.”

“You’re not going anywhere but prison.” Except Abby was already weakening, the smoke close to incapacitating her. She knew she had to do something.

Before she could move, the carpet caught fire behind Kelsey, and she screamed. She dropped her gun and dove forward, tackling Abby and knocking the gun from her hand. Chest burning, Abby tried to stay on her feet but couldn’t. She and Kelsey fell in a tangle down the stairway.

They stopped when Abby’s head hit the tile floor at the bottom, hard. The last thing she thought before losing consciousness was that she was going to burn to death with the woman who killed her father.