Sean didn’t like anything about this. Not the smoke, which had quickly grown thicker as they descended the stairs. Not the fact that the kid hadn’t answered his call. And especially not the absolute certainty in his gut that what was happening right now had something to do with the Inquisitor.
Despite the reality that the cops were probably closer to the killer than they’d ever been before, Sean had never expected the bastard would just give up. But he also hadn’t expected he would so radically change a methodology that had been successful for more than seven years.
This was no longer about stalking his next victim. It had become personal. Between the two of them. With Jenna as the pawn.
He had known he would have to be on his guard every second. He just hadn’t believed that the maniac would try to burn the house down around them.
“I think it’s coming from the kitchen.” Jenna coughed, holding her hand over her mouth as, pulled by the natural ventilation created by the two stories, smoke now swirled up the staircase. “He was going to set up there.”
“Daniels. In the kitchen. He said he needed coffee to make it through the night.”
That might explain why the cop hadn’t answered. If he had been in the room where the fire broke out, it would have taken only a matter of seconds for him to be overcome by smoke. People always believed they had longer than they did before the oxygen ran out.
“Front door,” Sean ordered, taking Jenna’s arm to pull her down the remaining steps.
“What about—” The rest was lost as her lungs tried to expel the toxins she’d breathed in.
It didn’t matter that she hadn’t finished. He knew what she wanted him to do. Under any other circumstances, he would have agreed. Under these…
“He’s on his own.”
He managed to get the words out, but opening his mouth to do it let in enough of the choking fumes to set off his own coughing jag. Ignoring his need to breathe, he continued to pull her down the stairs.
They were almost to the bottom. On this level there seemed to be no air left inside the thick pall that obscured the front door. Its pale rectangle had been clearly visible from the top of the stairs. Whatever was on fire was creating an enormous amount of smoke, and it was filling the house very quickly.
Jenna’s sudden stop pulled her elbow from his grip. “It’s only been a couple of minutes. If you get him into fresh air—”
That was followed by more coughing. In the midst of it, he caught the words “fire department.” Surely, given the house’s vaunted security system, she was right about that.
His willingness to try to rescue Daniels wasn’t the problem. Maybe it was better Jenna didn’t realize what was.
Deciding not to waste breath arguing, Sean concentrated on finding the door. When he had, he located the knob and turned it with his left hand. Nothing happened.
Night latch.
Fingers searching like a blind man’s, he finally found the latch and threw it. This time the knob turned. He jerked the door open, but it caught hard after moving inward an inch or two. Still, the rush of night air that came in through the narrow opening was like an elixir.
He drew in deep draughts of it even as he reached up to dislodge the chain. Jenna’s fingers were there before his.
She pushed the door closed again, shutting off the precious supply of air long enough to slip the end of the chain from the slot. Then, finding the knob with the ease of long familiarity, she got the door open.
He shoved her through, following her across the wide porch and down the brick steps. Coughing, eyes and throat burning, they ran a few feet out onto the lawn before they stopped almost simultaneously.
Jenna bent over, drawing in ratcheting lungfuls of the moisture-laden air between paroxysms of whooping. Although he ached to join her, that was a luxury Sean couldn’t afford.
He held the Glock out in both hands, blinking to clear eyes blurred with tears. He scanned the manicured grass and the trees beyond. Nothing stirred in the darkness. There was no sound but rain, which fell with steady tranquility around them.
“Sean.”
He turned and found that Jenna had straightened and was looking back at the house. In their haste to get out, they’d left the front door open. The outside air pouring through it would fuel the conflagration.
He looked to the left of the entrance, expecting to see flames consuming the rooms beyond the glass of the windows. There were none. Nor was there the eerie glow normally associated with them.
Maybe, despite the thickness of the smoke, the fire itself was still confined to the kitchen. Or maybe Jenna had been mistaken about its location.
His gaze swept the entire length of the house. Wherever the blaze was, it wasn’t visible from the exterior. And if it wasn’t in the kitchen, then…
Then it was possible Daniels was alive. Maybe he’d been overcome by smoke before he could make it to the front door.
Sean glanced back at Jenna. She was looking at him as if she were waiting for him to do something. And the only thing he could do—
Where the hell were the fire engines? he thought, physically turning to look toward the road that fronted the property. And more importantly, the paramedics they would carry? It wouldn’t do any good to get Daniels out if there was no one here to give him the treatment he would need immediately.
He glanced at Jenna again, her eyes dark in a too-pale face. She was still breathing as if she’d run a race.
They both had. One that had determined whether they lived or died. And this time they’d won.
Life and death. How many times had he thought that since this had begun. Decisions that hinged on a thread. Like Carol Cummings’s decision to get into a car with a stranger.
Or going back inside that cloud of toxins to look for a fallen man? One who could be anywhere on the smoke-shrouded first floor?
The familiar words and the burden they had conveyed throughout his career echoed inside his head. A fallen man…
But not his. And not his responsibility. Except that which every human being has for the life of another.
Despite what he’d thought when he’d heard the alarm, there had been no indication that the killer had anything to do with this. If he were here, he’d missed his best opportunity to take Sean out when, blinded by the smoke, they’d come through the front door.
Jenna was safe. And the kid inside…
The image of the baby in the photograph Daniels had shown him would haunt him if he didn’t try. He, as much as anyone, knew what this kind of loss would do to her.
“Here,” he said, holding the Glock out to Jenna.
“What’s that for?”
“Stand right here.” He pulled her roughly over to the oak that centered the right side of the yard, positioning her so that her back was against its massive truck. “Don’t move until I get back. If you see anybody out here besides me or Daniels or the firemen,” he added, trying to cover his bases, “point this at them—” He thrust the gun into her hand, wrapping her fingers around the grip. “And squeeze the trigger. Don’t try to aim. Hold it out in front of you like when you were a kid playing cowboys.”
At the look on her face, he knew she’d never done that. She’d probably been the kind to play with dolls.
Then pray God she wouldn’t need those hurried instructions, all he had time for if he had any chance of getting the cop out alive.
Suddenly he realized there were a dozen other things he needed to say. Some he hadn’t known he felt until this moment. And because of that, it was probably better he didn’t say them.
He turned and ran back across the lawn toward the open door. As he took the steps two at a time, he inhaled, filling his lungs with the clean night air. Then, without looking back, he plunged again into the swirling mass of smoke.
As he entered, he tried to remember the layout of the house. Because he was unable to see anything to orient him, he couldn’t even be certain he was headed in the right direction. The oxygen he’d taken in wouldn’t last long enough to search the foyer and hall on his hands and knees, the only sure way to locate a body in this darkness.
All he could do was keep going in the direction he thought would lead to the kitchen on the off chance he might stumble over Daniels’s body. And if he didn’t—
He blocked the possibility of that outcome as he moved, hands outstretched in front of him. The fact that there was no light coming from the back of the house indicated the fire was advanced enough that it had gotten to the wiring. If that was the case, he didn’t understand why he couldn’t see or hear it.
Suddenly he broke into a clearing in the dense pall that had surrounded him since he’d come through the front door. The smoke seemed to eddy away, revealing the kitchen doorway.
He ran through it, forcing his burning eyes to search the room that seemed remarkably clear, considering the thickness of the fumes in the front of the house. White cabinets gleamed dimly in the darkness and across the room—
He sprinted toward the dark shape sprawled on the pale tiles. He bent, grabbing the cop’s shoulder to turn him so he could see his face.
By that time he’d understood the significance of the black circle underneath the body. Although his eyes were opened wide, staring up at Sean with a silent entreaty, Daniels’s throat had been cut from ear to ear.
Realization was instantaneous. Sean released his hold on the body, allowing it to fall back facedown on the floor.
He sprang to his feet and was in the act of turning back toward the kitchen doorway, when something exploded against the side of his head. He fought to remain conscious, reaching out to grab onto the figure that had materialized in front of him.
It moved, eluding his fingers. And then, unable to do anything else, Sean watched as whatever his assailant had hit him with the first time again connected with his skull.
Too long. Far too long.
Jenna wished she’d at least tried to look at her watch when Sean had gone back inside. That had been the last thing on her mind. Now, as more and more time went by, she wasn’t sure whether her anxiety was turning seconds into minutes or whether he’d really been inside as long as she thought.
She’d still heard no sirens, she realized, glancing once more toward the highway. Surely by now the volunteer fire department that served this area had had time to respond.
She took a tentative step away from the oak, but Sean’s words echoed in her brain. She raised the Glock, holding it in front of her as she had seen him do, while she scanned the area around her.
She understood Sean’s fears. She even shared his suspicion that the fire was too coincidental.
But two lives were at stake. How could she continue to try to protect her own at the possible cost of theirs?
She took another step and then another until she was running toward the open door, only to slow as she approached it. The smoke that had been thick enough to obscure every object in the foyer seemed to have dissipated in the time she’d been outside.
Of course, fresh air had been pouring into the room. Since there seemed as yet to be no visible flames, maybe whatever had been on fire had literally burned itself out. Maybe Daniels had been cooking something and had fallen asleep.
Even as she postulated that, she knew there had been too much smoke for that. Whatever the reason for it, she had to find Sean and somehow get him out. Maybe by then the firemen would be here. Even if they were too late to help Daniels…
As she progressed down the hall toward the back of the house, the smoke thinned before her, so that by the time she reached the kitchen doorway she could see it. Obviously not the source of the fire as she’d thought.
She turned, looking back down the hall. From this point it seemed as if the whole house was continuing to clear. Although her throat was still raw, she discovered that she could take a breath without setting off that terrible coughing.
“Sean?”
There was no response. She took a step back toward the front door, pitching her voice in that direction.
“Sean? Where are you?”
Nothing.
The only thing she knew for certain was that, on her advice, he’d been headed to the kitchen when he’d entered. Without information to the contrary, that seemed to be the place to start looking.
There was a door there leading out to the pool. If Sean had found Daniels, it would make more sense to drag him out through that exit than back to the front of the house.
She turned and walked toward the kitchen doorway. Remembering Sean’s warning, she raised the weapon he’d given her, holding it in front of her in hands that trembled.
“Sean?” she called as she stepped into the room.
She looked through the wide windows toward the pool area first, hoping to find the two of them outside. There was nothing out there except the chaises and her mother’s plants, exactly as she’d last seen them after supper tonight.
Her gaze swept back, checking the door. It was still closed. And in the kitchen…
She heard some sound before she picked up movement in her peripheral vision. The force of the downward blow that struck her outstretched arms knocked the gun out of her hands.
For a few seconds her forearm, which had taken the brunt of that vicious hit, was blessedly numb. Then, as the shock to the nerve endings wore off, pain, worse than any she could remember in her life, sent her to her knees.
From that position she looked up, still stunned by that agony, so that the movement of her head happened almost in slow motion. Standing beside the doorway, where he’d obviously been waiting for her, was a figure from a nightmare.
Her nightmare.
A black ski mask, especially incongruous in this locale, obscured his features. Despite that, there was no doubt in her mind who he was.
And no doubt that, despite the promises everyone had made to her, it was her time to face the Inquisitor.