Fan the Flames (3 page)

“I'm trying to be there for him,” Ian said, his breath warming the top of her head. “I really am, but it's hard. He's either drunk off his ass or won't leave his bedroom, and I have to keep reminding myself that he's just lost his wife. Sometimes I'm so tempted to shake him and tell him to quit acting like an idiot, but then I feel guilty for being impatient. But, Jesus, I just lost my mom. I can't lose anyone else.” Rory felt a few strands of her hair flutter as he exhaled shakily. “Sorry. Don't mean to dump this on you.”

His grip loosened, and he stepped back.

Once her arms were free to move again, she didn't know what to do with them. How were normal people supposed to act when their friends were obviously hurting? Should she give him a conciliatory pat? Rory mentally swore at her impaired social skills. She blamed isolation and home schooling—well, that and the fact that her parents had been full-blown nuts.

Instead of offering him any kind of sympathetic gesture, she settled for an awkward smile.

“It'll get easier,” she babbled. “For Julius, I mean. Uh, and you too. It doesn't feel like it's going to at first, but it eventually does. After my parents—” She closed her mouth abruptly, appalled that she'd almost dumped a messy load of emotions on Ian Walsh, of all people. Sure, he was her friend, but he was also her perfect, gorgeous, unattainable, long-term crush, and he didn't need to know exactly how messed up she was.

“After your parents…?” Despite his nudge for her to finish her sentence, Rory pressed her lips together.

“Never mind.” Her gaze darted around the shop as she wished desperately for someone to arrive. She'd even be happy if Billy came storming in with Zup in tow. “Did you need anything else?”

When he didn't answer right away, she risked a glance at his face and immediately wished she hadn't. He was looking at her in that way he sometimes did, like his X-ray vision could see all the way to her hidden, insecure, terrified depths. Rory quickly shifted her eyes to the glass beneath her tapping fingers. Seeing the SwissMiniGun nestled in the display case settled her. After Ian finally left, she decided, she would pull out the Glock 21 that had been brought in that morning for cleaning. The familiar process would be soothing.

“No.” The belated answer to her question made her jump. “But since when did I need a reason to visit?”

“You don't. Of course you don't. I'm just…” She didn't know how to finish that sentence. She was what? Panicked? Clueless? Socially stupid? Silence stretched until it moved beyond awkward and into agonizing.

He still didn't leave.

“I have a Glock to clean, so…” Rory took a step toward the safety and comfort of the back room.

“Then I better get going.” Moving slowly, reluctantly, Ian headed for the front door and then paused, looking over his shoulder at her. His smile was small and a little sad. “Thanks again.”

She watched as the door swung shut behind him, her heart still beating just a little too fast.

* * *

To Rory's surprise, Billy hadn't arrived by closing time. At ten minutes after six, she turned the key in the front-door lock.
Something to look forward to tomorrow
, she thought with a wry smile, twisting the dead bolts and placing the bar across the door. After setting the alarm and turning off all the lights except those she kept on for security, she moved to the back room. Grabbing her coat from the rack, she headed outside.

Rory immediately shivered and zipped her coat. The wind was tossing sharp BBs of snow around her three-acre patch of evergreens, rocks, and scrub. As she pulled a stocking hat from one of the voluminous pockets, she glanced around at the property. Everything seemed quiet, except for the wind and the hard pellets of snow pinging off her ten-foot chain-link boundary fence—topped, of course, by razor wire.

Over by the chicken coop, her German shepherd mix lifted his head. Heaving himself to his feet, he shook off the snow clinging to his fur and trotted over. Although he occasionally would hang out in the shop with her during the day, he preferred to stay outside and watch over “his” chickens, barking at any hawks that ventured too close.

“Hey, Jack.” She rubbed his ears as he pressed his head into her hand with a low groan of delight. With a final pat, Rory headed around to the front of the shop. Jack followed her through the small gravel parking lot as she made her way to the front gates. Snow had settled into the tracks, and she kicked it free before pulling the gates together. Wrapping the chain around both where they met, she fastened the padlock.

Jack knew what came next, and he led the way back to the chicken coop. Dusk had fallen, and the last of the light was slipping away. Her hens had already abandoned the greenhouse and their expansive run for the warmth of the coop, so Rory just had to close and latch the door, keeping out any critters that might manage to circumvent the fences.

Returning to the back door with Jack close on her heels, she double-checked that the shop alarm was on. Rory removed her coat, shaking off the snow before hanging it on the coatrack. She jammed her hat back into her coat pocket and then engaged the dead bolts. Once her nightly routine was finally done, she moved over to a set of shelves lined with tools and cleaning equipment.

A hidden latch released a section of shelving, allowing it to swing toward her. Behind the shelving was a steel door, designed to resist forced entry. She entered the eight-digit code on the keypad next to the door, waited for the beep, and then pressed her thumb onto the biometric reader. When the light next to the screen glowed green, she used a key to manually open the lock. Each step was smooth, practiced—drilled into her by years of living in the bunker with her parents, before…

Well.
Before.

The door swung open to reveal stairs descending into darkness. Brushing past her legs, Jack trotted down the steps. Rory hit the light switch before the steel door closed behind her. She heard the familiar and comforting solid
click
as it relocked. After engaging the manual deadlock, she followed Jack down the stairs.

When she reached the bottom, she automatically turned off the stair lights as she illuminated the living room. Her entire childhood, she'd been taught to conserve electricity whenever possible. Her photovoltaic and wind system was expansive now, and she had two back-up generators in case of system failure—or even just a stretch of cloudy, calm days—but saving power was second nature.

All
of this was second nature.

Wandering over to her fridge, she frowned as she pulled out some leftover soup. Normally, she enjoyed this part of her day, when work was done, the animals were warm and safe, and she could unwind in the peace of her underground bunker. This evening, though, Rory felt unsettled.

She blamed Ian Walsh.

As she absently heated the soup on the stove, she thought back to how idiotically she'd acted with him at the shop. They'd been friends for years. Why was she still getting panicky and stupid in his presence? She was twenty-five, too old to keep hanging on to an adolescent crush.

But Ian was just… He was so…

Rory realized her hand not stirring the soup was rubbing her breastbone, as if to assuage the ache beneath it. She quickly lowered her arm to her side, hating how a visit from Ian left her raw, stripping away her usual contentment and leaving only loneliness in its place.

A steady beeping made her drop her spoon, splashing the broth over the side of the pan. Rory frowned as she turned off the burner and hurried over to the desk in the corner of the living room. There, the monitor displayed footage recorded by the security cameras scattered around her property.

When she'd taken over the gun shop three years ago, she'd had some trouble. For the first time in her life, she'd actually been grateful for her late parents' rampant paranoia. She'd even added on to the security system after the local militia group tried to break into the shop. A few flashbang grenades and a carefully placed rifle shot that had knocked their ringleader's weapon from his hand had sent the would-be burglars fleeing into the night. Although Rory sold guns to the militia members who'd sheepishly returned to her shop—this time as paying customers during regular business hours—she never forgot the lesson they'd taught her. She was young and small and female, and there were some who'd always see her as an easy mark sitting on a pile of guns.

A pile of guns they'd be only too happy to shoot her to get.

The alarm had been triggered at the front gate, so she pulled up the live feed from Camera Three. As she scanned the screen, a human-shaped shadow darted out of camera range. Inhaling sharply, she jerked back from the monitor. Despite her worries, she'd honestly thought she'd see a mule deer or a fox, not a person. Her heart pounded as she shifted to Camera Seven, which was aimed along the west boundary fence. She couldn't see anything except for grainy snowdrifts.

Reaching for the mouse, she rewound the video twenty seconds. Her knee bounced as adrenaline rushed through her. Although she was always prepared for the worst, she hadn't really expected it. Rory watched the playback with her nose almost touching the screen, but she still couldn't tell if the shadow was a person or just that—a shadow. Since the alarm had sounded, she decided to assume it was a person. Plus, her gut was screaming at her, telling her that someone was out there—someone looking for trouble.

Opening the desk drawer, she pulled out her baby, a Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver with a six-inch barrel. It was as accurate as Rory could aim, had a soft kick, and was just plain pretty, with its mirror-shined, stainless-steel finish. As soon as she wrapped her fingers around the grip, her nerves settled slightly. Jack watched her, his ears pricked and eyes alert.

“Let's see who came to visit,” she said, surprised by her calm voice when her insides were all jittery. As she moved toward the stairs, Jack followed with an eager whine. She flicked off the lights in the living room but didn't turn on the stair light. Instead, she moved through the darkness. Even as her feet found their way with the ease of long familiarity, the utter blackness made her imagination go wild. All sorts of bogeymen hid in the lightless spaces around her, making her jump at the sound of her foot scuffing against a stair.

Despite the way her fingers itched to reach for a light switch, she kept her hands firmly at her sides. The front of the shop had glass blocks lining the tops of the walls to allow natural light to enter. Although she'd be opening the door in the enclosed back room, she didn't want to chance any light seeping out and alerting her intruder that she was on the move. Panic was her enemy. She needed to keep calm and do what she had to do with a clear head.

At the top of the stairs, she paused to check the monitor set to the left of the steel door. The screen was divided into four sections, each showing a different angle of the shop, front and back. Everything looked quiet, so she unfastened the dead bolt locks with shaking fingers and let herself into the back room, closing the steel door and pushing the camouflaging shelving back into place.

After disabling the alarm, she took a minute to slide into her coat and hat. Her aim wouldn't be improved if she was shivering with cold as well as nerves. She picked up a small flashlight from the shelf by the door and slid it into her left coat pocket before she unbolted the multiple locks on the back door and slipped outside, Jack close on her heels.

The wind slapped her immediately, peppering her exposed skin with sharp flecks of snow. She tucked her hands in her pockets, her right one still holding the Python, and her left fingers wrapped around the flashlight.

Instead of heading for the front gate, she followed the line of pine trees past the greenhouse and chicken coop, allowing the shadows to help hide her from any watchful eyes. Her footfalls were almost silent, except for the slightest crunch as her boots compressed the frozen snow, and her heartbeat was thudding in her ears. Deep, even breaths didn't help. As much as she didn't want to admit it, Rory was flat-out scared. She may have been prepared and well-armed, but she was just one person sitting on an arsenal every criminally minded group in the area would kill to get their hands on.

The waxing moon was almost at the halfway point, casting an eerie blue light that was reflected by the windblown drifts of snow. She circled around the pole barn that housed her vehicles but then hesitated, reluctant to leave the shelter of the trees for the more dubious cover of the wooden walls. Fifty feet separated the pole barn from the west fence line—fifty feet of exposure, fifty feet in which she'd present a clear target to anyone hiding in the trees beyond the fence.

Her fingers tightened around the grip of her revolver. She needed to
move
. She could imagine her father's disappointment if he were still alive, the impatient push he'd give her to break her paralysis. Shaking off all thoughts of militia snipers and fatal gunshot wounds, Rory forced herself into the open space surrounding the pole barn.

That first step was the hardest. Keeping her body low, she moved quickly but quietly, as she'd been taught, until she was standing in the narrow shadow cast by the pole barn. The darkness that pooled around the pines could easily hide someone—or multiple someones—from view. Rory waited, trying to be patient, her eyes trained on the line of trees. Nothing moved. Besides the wind, there was no sound. The human-shaped shadow in the camera feed started to feel more and more like a figment of her paranoid brain.

Her heart didn't agree, though. If anything, it beat even faster.

Rory glanced at Jack. He'd settled next to her, lying in the snowdrift like it was a cushy, warm dog bed. His pricked ears were cautious, but he didn't seem to be fixated on anything or anyone beyond the west fence. Still, she hesitated to leave her hiding place. But when an extra-cold, extra-strong gust of wind cut through her clothes to rake her skin, she shivered and stepped away from the pole barn.