Lemon Pies and Little White Lies (15 page)

Finn returned carrying three pizza boxes and a paper grocery store bag. “I had no idea what toppings you like, so I told the pizza guy to surprise us.” He put the boxes on the table and handed Ella Mae a paper plate. “I hope you’re willing to live dangerously.”

“Just this once,” Ella Mae said, lifting the lid of the first box to reveal a buffalo chicken–and-bacon pizza. She showed it to Finn. “What’s in box number two?”

He peeked inside, “Half Hawaiian, half Margherita. This
is
an adventure. You open the last one.”

“Looks like an Italian buffet. There’s salami, pepperoni, onions, and banana peppers.” She sniffed. “And loads of garlic.”

Finn held out his plate. “Perfect. Did I mention that this warehouse is home to several vampires? They should be dropping from the ceiling any minute now.” He examined his watch. “Yep. It’s officially feeding time.”

“In that case, I’d better have a slice of that Italian fest too.” Ella Mae pointed at a small piece. “It’s a good thing I have a full pack of gum in my purse.”

“Pffft!” Finn reached into the grocery bag. “That’s what the wine is for. The better to smell you with, my dear.” Using the Swiss Army knife on his key chain, Finn deftly removed the cork from the wine bottle and passed it to Ella Mae. “Can I start bombarding you with questions, or should I be a gentleman and let you eat first?”

Ella Mae poured wine with one hand and held a slice of pizza with the other. “I can multitask. Fire away.”

Completely at ease with each other, the pair enjoyed their food, drank red wine from Solo cups, and talked.

Finn was in the middle of asking Ella Mae about payroll taxes when he stopped mid-sentence. A deep furrow appeared in his forehead as he stared intently at something over Ella Mae’s head.

“Is it the vampires?” she asked, turning around to peer into the gloom.

Rising slowly to his feet, Finn grabbed the lantern off the table and raised it. When the light illuminated the shifting shapes, Ella Mae sucked in a sharp breath.

“Are those butterflies?” Finn murmured.

There were hundreds of moths and butterflies darting about. Monarchs, swallowtails, skippers, satyrs, admirals, and emperors flitted among tiger, sphinx, and luna moths. Ella Mae could tell they were agitated, so she closed her eyes and waited for them to deliver their message.

She saw smoke first. Smoke curling into the night sky. Smoke snaking through tree branches. Smoke hovering above a roof. The roof was burning. From the air, she had no idea what building the roof belonged to, so she willed the butterflies to show her more. And when she recognized the structure, she cried out. Her eyes flew open and she bolted from her chair.

“Finn!” she shouted, her voice shrill with urgency. “I need your keys! My aunt’s barn is on fire!”

To Finn’s credit, he handed her the key chain without hesitating. And he was right behind her as she sprinted for the door.

Ella Mae barely registered his presence. She couldn’t think. Her mind was filled with the butterflies’ final vision. In the midst of the hungry orange flames, she’d seen the body of a metal bird—wings crumpling as they melted—fall to the barn floor.

And next to where it fell, she’d caught a glimpse of a human hand. The fingers were curled like a claw, the skin bubbling and blackening.

Inside Dee’s barn, someone was burning.

Chapter 8

Ella Mae drove at a reckless pace through the bustling downtown. Her dangerous speed earned her a plethora of angry horn blasts and hand gestures, but she didn’t notice. Her entire focus was on getting to her aunt’s place as quickly as possible.

She was so intent on her destination that she nearly forgot Finn was in the car. He hadn’t spoken since they’d left the warehouse, and Ella Mae was grateful for his silence. Her mind was consumed by the image of the curled hand and the horrific thought that her aunt was lying unconscious and helpless inside a burning barn.

Motivated by desperation and fear, Ella Mae increased her speed even more.

The moment she rounded the final curve of Dee’s driveway, she saw flames stretching into the night sky. She brought the car to a screeching halt as close to the barn as she dared and leapt out without bothering to turn off the ignition or shut the driver’s-side door.

The barn windows were far off the ground. Someone could escape from the inside by climbing on a chair or a workbench and hauling themselves up to the sill, but seeing that they were still intact, Ella Mae feared that she was too late to save Aunt Dee.

“Break the windows!” Ella Mae shouted at Finn over her shoulder.

She then bolted to the front of the barn, taking in a potent chemical odor and the industrial-sized spray canisters scattered around the ground, only to discover that a heavy metal chain had been looped around the handles of the main doors. In the middle of the chain hung a massive padlock. Someone had deliberately locked Dee inside.

Ella Mae’s cry of rage and anguish mingled with the wail of approaching sirens.

She pounded on the door for several seconds, screaming Dee’s name and listening for a reply.

None came, so when she heard glass shattering, she ran back to the side. Finn had found a shovel and was using it to smash the windows. Shards of glass rained down on his head and shoulders, but he didn’t stop. He raised his arms and swung the shovel like a kid clouting a party piñata, but the confetti falling around him was jagged and dangerously sharp.

“Someone locked the doors!” Ella Mae yelled as smoke billowed through the holes in the glass. “I need a bolt cutter, but all Aunt Dee’s tools are in there!” She gestured wildly at the burning barn.

Finn pointed at the car. “We have a battering ram. Stay here and warn anyone inside to move away from the door.”

As he rushed back to his mother’s sedan, Ella Mae called out to her aunt. Fear made her voice hoarse, and it was hard to make herself heard over the violent noises of the fire. Just
as Ella Mae paused to listen for a response from inside, there was a roar of crashing wood as the fire chewed through one of the rafters, and a chunk of roof collapsed.

Ella Mae was about to urge Finn to hurry, but there was no need. He already had the car aligned with the barn door and was reversing from the building as fast as possible in order to give himself room to build up a decent amount of speed. He paused only to switch gears and then hit the accelerator. The sedan slammed into the wooden doors, and they broke apart with a sickening crunch. The hood of the car was immediately engulfed in angry orange flames.

While Finn backed out of the splintered cavity he’d created, Ella Mae darted in, her gaze desperately sweeping the barn’s interior as she continued to scream for her aunt.

And then she saw Dee.

Huddled in a far corner with a cat in her arms, Dee looked like a frightened child who’d tried to hide, to make herself as small as possible so that the nightmarish flames couldn’t reach her.

Disregarding the heat and the fire raging all around her, Ella Mae picked her way over charred wood and lumps of melted metal until she was at her aunt’s side. She didn’t bother trying to rouse her. Instead, she attempted to pull Dee upward so she could get her over her shoulders, but there was no way to move Dee without dislodging the cat.

“I’ll have to carry you both!” she cried to her unresponsive aunt.

She wrapped her arms around Dee’s waist and gave a mighty heave, groaning with the effort. Suddenly, her burden became lighter, and Ella Mae realized that Finn was lifting Dee from behind.

“I’ve got her. You take the cat!”

The second the cat was safely pressed to Ella Mae’s chest,
Finn draped Aunt Dee over his shoulders and headed for the exit.

As they drew closer to the fractured doorway, Ella Mae could feel the heat roiling over her. The smoke burned her skin, eyes, mouth, and throat. She thought she heard men calling out to one another, but it was difficult to tell above the crunching and cracking sounds of the insatiable fire. All she could think about was getting out and breathing pure air again.

To her immense relief, two firemen appeared in the space where the doors once stood. One aimed a jet of water at the flames threatening to lick at Finn and Ella Mae while the second darted forward to help Finn carry Dee to the waiting EMT truck. Cradling the cat in her arms, Ella Mae followed behind, her thoughts divided between a bone-chilling dread over her aunt’s condition and the image she’d seen of the blackened hand. Dee’s hands were red—too red—but not black.

“Someone else might be inside!” she told the fireman once he and Finn had carefully set Dee on a gurney.

“Got it,” he said, leaving Dee in the hands of the paramedics.

Ella Mae watched one of them place a cushioned mask over Dee’s face. As soon as it was in place, the second paramedic began pumping a bag, sending precious oxygen down Dee’s throat and into her lungs.

“Pulse is thready. Starting an IV.”

Ella Mae watched in mute horror. Her aunt had been reduced to a human doll. The paramedics pumped her unresponsive body with oxygen and fluids. Glancing down at the cat in her arms, Ella Mae saw that she’d wet the animal’s fur with her tears.

Dropping to her knees, she laid the cat on its side, reached under its arm, and put three fingers to its chest. She was so happy to feel the feline’s rapid heartbeat that she nearly cried
out, but she still wasn’t sure if the cat was breathing. Without asking for permission, she reached into the paramedic’s kit and grabbed a piece of gauze.

Holding it under the cat’s pink nose, she saw it move a little and knew the cat was breathing.

“Is she pregnant?” Finn asked, and Ella Mae looked at the cat’s belly.

“I think she’s nursing.” She stroked the soft fur on the cat’s neck. “There’s an emergency vet on the road heading south out of town. You’ve already done so much, but would you bring her there? I need to be with my aunt.”

Finn nodded. Helping himself to one of the emergency blankets stored in the side of the nearest fire engine, he tenderly transferred the cat onto it and wrapped it around her body as if he were swaddling a baby.

“They’re both going to okay,” he said as he got to his feet. “I promise.”

Ella Mae swallowed a sob and squeezed Finn’s arm. “I’ll never forget what you did tonight. Thank you.”

There wasn’t time to say anything else. The paramedics loaded the gurney into the ambulance, and Ella Mae hopped in next to Dee. It was only when they were underway that she noticed the dreadful burns marking Dee’s legs, arms, and hands.

“No, no, no!” she moaned, letting the tears fall freely. She wanted to touch Dee, to offer her comfort, but she didn’t want to cause her more pain, so she grabbed the side of the stretcher.

“Is she conscious?” Ella Mae asked the paramedic who was rhythmically squeezing the oxygen bag.

He shook his head. “That’s probably a mercy, miss. Hopefully, when she wakes, her burns will be cleaned and dressed and she’ll be hooked up to a morphine drip. We
doused the burns with water, but there’s not much else we can do.”

“Heaven help her,” Ella Mae murmured miserably and stared at her aunt’s chest. As long as it was rising and falling, there was hope, and Ella Mae clung to that hope with every fiber of her being.

The trip to the hospital seemed to last forever. The wailing of the ambulance echoed Ella Mae’s anguish, and she longed for silence. Trying to block out the rhythmic shriek of the siren, she leaned over and whispered into Dee’s ear, assuring her that everything would be fine and that she was in good hands.

Without her purse, which she’d left behind at Finn’s warehouse, Ella Mae couldn’t call her mother, her aunts, or Reba.

She needn’t have worried, however, because they were all waiting outside the hospital’s double doors when the ambulance pulled into the bay reserved for emergency vehicles.

Ella Mae’s family stood shoulder to shoulder, gray-faced and silent with fear. The paramedics wheeled Dee into a restricted area, and a nurse with a kind but no-nonsense manner prevented Ella Mae from entering.

“Sorry, sugar. You need to go through those doors to the waiting room. I’ll come out and talk with you just as soon as I can.”

The automatic doors closed with a soft hiss, and Ella Mae stood inert, listening, until her mother put her arm around her shoulders and gently pulled her away. She led her to where the rest of the women stood. They all proceeded into the waiting room and stared at the plastic chairs. No one sat. No one spoke.

“How did you know?” Ella Mae whispered, looking from one grim face to the next.

“My police scanner,” Reba said. “I was relaxin’ after our
crazy day when the dispatcher used the code for fire followed by another code requestin’ EMTs. I thought I must have had too much to drink when the woman gave out Dee’s address, but when she repeated it a second time, I knew it wasn’t a mistake. I called your mama from the car and Verena phoned the dispatcher. She told us they were bringin’ Dee here.”

Aunt Sissy balled her hands into tight fists. “Tell us, Ella Mae. How bad is it?”

“She’s alive,” Ella Mae said. Her voice trembled and she fought to keep it steady. “The EMTs were giving her oxygen, so I’m not sure if she can breathe on her own. And they said her pulse was thready.”