Face to Face (23 page)

The dial tone flat lined. She raised the handset, hesitated. Then called Drake. His phone went straight to voice mail. She hung up without leaving a message. What would she say? Ask him what really happened in the bar last night with Monica Burns? Yell at him for getting drunk and fighting with Tony? Or beg him to come back so they could work everything out.

Maybe the first two. Definitely the last. 

She showered, fed the cat, and he still hadn't called. Could they have actually arrested him? Maybe he was in a detention cell somewhere? 

She sank down onto the sofa, pulling Gram Rosa's quilt around her. It was hot enough she wore only shorts and a tank top, but she needed the comfort the generations-old hand sewn heirloom offered. Having Drake's arms around her would have been better. But if he was being detained then at least he was safe.

That thought took her into sleep.

<><><>

Cassie wasn't sure what woke her. She sat up on the couch, disoriented, surprised she wasn't in her own bed. The cat screeched from somewhere in the rear of the house.

"Hennessey?" Cassie called. Had she forgotten to feed the poor thing? She wrapped the quilt around her and walked towards the kitchen. Then she stopped. 

A thin beam of light danced through the air. Someone outside the kitchen window.

The cat raced past her. Cassie tiptoed towards the phone halfway between her and the kitchen. Before she could reach it, glass crashed, showering over the kitchen floor. Followed by something bright and on fire flying through the air where the window had been.

Cassie turned and raced towards the front door but only made it as far as the living room when the explosion hit.

She felt it more than heard it. A wall of air more solid than steel slapped her body. The strange, rock hard wind sucked the breath from her lungs and her ears roared with pressure.

Cassie slammed into the couch. When she opened her eyes the room was lit by tendrils of flame racing along the heavily polished hard wood floors and up her bookcases and drapes and onto the ceiling. She looked in the direction of the kitchen. Like looking into the mouth of hell.

Cassie dropped to the floor, holding the heavy quilt around her body. Glass crackled as shards flew through the air like shrapnel as tendrils of flame rushed over to her, licking at her flesh and Rosa's quilt.

Thick, black smoke filled the air. A new wall of flames broke out behind her as the fire found the rag rug. She crawled towards the door, eyes squinted shut, filled with smoke and tears. Her lungs burned as she held her breath against the searing air.

Move, move, move was her mantra, keeping in time to the pounding in her ears as she scooted across the floor. 

She didn't have far to go, less than eight feet, but it was like swimming through black tar. She hoped she still headed in the right direction as she pressed her body as low to the floor as possible. 

Finally she hit the glass of the sidelight, felt her way up to the doorknob and fell through the opening to the porch outside.

She lay there like a freshly hooked trout in a fisherman's creel, gasping for air. Flames, fed by the new oxygen source, sped after her, shooting through the open door, reaching out towards her.

Coughing, Cassie pulled her feet under her and ran. Fire sparked on the lawn as flames rained down from the roof. She dodged these, zigzagging down the porch steps. Her neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Ferraro, appeared on their porch across the street.

"Roll, roll," Mr. Ferraro shouted in what seemed to Cassie like a foreign language. He met her in the middle of the street, hauled her down onto the asphalt, and began to tumble her body.

It wasn't until then that Cassie realized she was on fire.

CHAPTER 26

Drake was still trading barbs with the IAD detectives at 9:30 pm. Figured the longer he kept these two goofballs tied up, the more freedom Jimmy and the real detectives would have to do their jobs. Maybe even actually find the actor who shot Burns instead of making assumptions without any evidence.

Which was what Ventura and Sandosky were doing. Had been doing for the past five hours. Hansen kept looking at his watch like he was late for the symphony, but Drake didn't care. 

"So you still claim you have no knowledge of the victim's movements after you vacated the bar?" Ventura asked, trying to impress Drake with his vocabulary.

"No."

"Witnesses state she left with you."

"No. I was with Spanos in the alley behind it, then I left alone."

"How about her movements in the bar?" Sandosky cut in. "Do you remember those?"

"I was only with her for twenty minutes or so–"

"According to the bartender, it was an hour. During that time you drank a beer, a Long Island iced tea, and a total of two shots of whiskey."

Drake looked up at that. It had been a long time since he'd had that much to drink in one sitting. Probably since last year and Pamela. He grimaced. Think he'd grow up and learn one day. But it wasn't enough to explain his hangover symptoms this morning. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that Burns had drugged him.

He replayed the bits and pieces of the night that he could remember. Saw her handing him his beer. Then her drink.

She could have easily slipped something into either. But why? Surely not to set him up for her own murder.

And who the hell shot her?

"And your only alibi is Dr. Hart?" Sandosky interrupted Drake's chaotic thoughts.

"I slept on her couch."

"But she can't verify this?"

"She wasn't watching over me all night long, but she could tell you what time I arrived at her house. Anything more and you'd have to ask her–I was dead to the world."

They looked up at that. Poor choice of words. This was definitely wearing thin.

The two detectives exchanged glances, sensing he was close to breaking. More from irritation than their cutting-edge interviewing techniques, but they didn't know that. "Do you have a backup gun registered to you?"

"You know I do. Two, in fact. The Glock on my ankle right now and a Baretta nine millimeter." 

"Where is the nine millimeter?"

"Secured in a lockbox bolted to the trunk of my car. Per department regulations." Too late, he saw where they were going. And he had no choice but go along for the ride if he wanted to know what they knew.

Ventura smiled and it wasn't a pretty sight. "Would it surprise you to learn we found your gun in a storm drain across the street from your apartment building?"

"Or that it's the same weapon used to kill Monica Burns?" Sandosky added.

Shit. But it made sense. Whoever took his car would have had keys to the trunk and lock box. It was only damn luck he'd had the locks changed on his apartment and Jimmy had the only keys—otherwise the frame would have been air tight and Burns would have been killed there.

So. Someone at the Stone—like Spanos. Or someone who followed Drake there. Which could have been anyone. Or someone Burns called after she drugged him. She must not have realized that she was also being set up as a victim. Damnit, all this and back to square one.

"What? No comment? Detective, did we hit a sore spot?" Sandosky asked.

The door opened and Janet Kwon entered. "Drake, Jimmy just called. Something's happened to Hart."

Drake was on his feet before she could say anything more. 

"Where are you going, Drake? We're not done yet!"

"We can finish later," Drake told them.

"My client is here of his own volition," Hansen reminded the IA team.

"If he leaves now it's without his badge and gun," Ventura said. 

Drake spun on his heel to glare at the excuse for a police officer in front of him. They didn't have the authority to suspend him, not without going through their superiors, but he didn't care.

All he cared about right now was Hart. Drake flipped his badge onto the table then removed his Glock from its holster, spinning it across to Ventura, followed by his Baby Glock from his ankle holster. The IA detective was startled and fumbled at the guns like he'd never held one before. 

"Let's go," he told Kwon, stalking from the interview room.

"Is she all right?" Drake asked once the elevator doors had closed behind them and there were no prying ears or video cameras.

"I don't know. There were a bunch of 911 calls on the scanner for fire and EMS to her neighborhood. Then Jimmy called and said to get you over there, so here I am."

Drake digested this, trying to ignore the knotting of his stomach. Too little information. It might not even be her, he told himself. Don't waste energy on worry until you know for certain what's going on.

That's what his mind was saying. The rest of his body surged with adrenalin, ready to fly to Hart's side.

Kwon was smart enough to know this, handing him the car keys to her departmental Intrepid without him even asking. Drake appreciated that; anyone else would have wasted precious moments arguing with him.

As they sped through the light Sunday night traffic, Kwon tried to raise Jimmy on his cell. "No answer," she told him. Drake clamped his jaw tight and hit the accelerator.

<><><>

"Keep that oxygen on now," the paramedic told Cassie before glancing away from her to the spectacle of the fire. He wasn't the only one fascinated. The entire neighborhood turned out to watch the firefighters in their futile attempt to save her house.

Cassie clamped the oxygen mask back on her face then let it drop once more as soon as his back was turned. They were just annoyed because she had refused transport. Medics got touchy about things like that. 

She shivered despite the summer heat. She was lucky. A few minor cuts and burns, but Gram Rosa's quilt had taken the brunt of the damage. The lining was seared, but the carefully pieced quilt top had been next to Cassie's body and had sustained only minor cosmetic damage. The quilt now resided safe at hand in a red plastic biohazard bag.

"Everyone back," a fireman called. The crowd looked up in anticipation as the roof bucked then twisted, finally wrenching free from the feeble bonds that tied it to the earth. There was the sound of a deep sigh as if the roof were trying to take flight. It collapsed inward, sending a new shower of sparks and flames into the night sky.

Cassie worried about Hennessey while a few of the onlookers clapped and cheered, the ones who brought their own beer and chairs. 

Most of Cassie's neighbors shook their heads and looked over at her with expressions of relief. Relief that she hadn't been seriously injured, but most of all that it had happened to her and not them.

Watching her home burn was almost as bad as watching her father die all over again. His furniture and books and collection of records–all fodder for the flames. Her mother had died when Cassie was born and the only memory she had of her was a portrait Drake painted based on the photos jammed into albums on her bookshelves. The same bookshelves the fire devoured so eagerly as it chased after Cassie.

Gone also were any trace of Padraic and Rosa–except for Rosa's quilt. Gram Rosa's quilt saved her life when she escaped from the Nazis. Cassie wasn't surprised this seemingly frail piece of silk and velvet had been the sole survivor of the current holocaust that had overtaken her family.

Just as she was. The sole surviving Hart, the last person alive with any of Rosa Costello's blood, at least living on American soil.

All alone. And what to do next? Out of a job, out of money, out of a home. Out of options.

Cassie watched as the brick walls teetered then fell. She wanted to cry, but the tears had been seared from her by the heat and smoke. 

She wanted to scream in anger and frustration but her throat was burnt raw and the only sound she could make was a small croak.

She wanted to hit something, to strike back at the human who so callously took everything she had except her life. 

But there was no one there. 

Naked as a newborn. She'd lost her job, her home, the few mementos of her past. Whoever had done this had stripped her clean of all encumbrances.

Except Drake.

He would be the most painful piece of herself to shed. But necessary. 

Cassie closed her eyes against the glare of headlights and the dancing flames. Very necessary. Because it was the only way to keep him safe. 

Whoever had done this had intended to terrorize her. But what Cassie felt wasn't fear.

Cassie was angry. And willing to do anything to protect the only important thing left in her life: Drake.

Her eyes flicked open and she scrutinized the crowd gawking at the death throes of her house.
He
was out there somewhere, she was certain. 

As she watched, she slid her hand inside the bag and stroked the soft velvet and silk. The quilt had the blood of a Nazi soldier soaked into one of the pieces, a soldier killed by her grandmother's own hand.

She shrugged off the oxygen mask and stood up, moving in a circle, her shadow cavorting in the strange light cast by the fire. Come and get me, she broadcast the invitation with her gaze as she looked upon the strangers gathered around the corpse of her home, of her life.

Come out, come out, whoever you are.

<><><>

She was weaving her way around the EMS vehicles when Jimmy Dolan and Ed Castro, her old boss at Three Rivers, appeared from down the block. Their worried expressions did the asking for them.

"I'm fine," she told both men. "I can't find Hennessey, though." She said the last with a one-shouldered shrug, knowing it sounded pathetic after losing everything else, but she couldn't help it. The thought of Hennessey caught inside the house—

"I'll go look," Ed volunteered while Jimmy wrapped his arm around her shoulder and guided her back to the ambulance.

"You sure you don't need to go to the ER, get checked out?" he asked. "The medics said you refused treatment."

Cassie ignored him, riveted by the death throes of her house. "It's a total loss, isn't it?" she asked, her voice still hoarse but gaining in strength.

Jimmy nodded and squeezed her hand. "I'm sorry."