Trial by Fire (29 page)

“That’s right, bitch. Get up nice and slow. We’re going to take a walk. I want to show you my cabin. It’s not as nice as the one Nate built. But then, by the end of the night mine won’t be here. It’ll be gone. Up in a puff of smoke. Along with you.”

Laura’s words ended in a hideous giggle that sent streaks of terror racing up Erin’s spine. Having to believe that someone was overhearing their conversation, Erin tried to signal her location. Given that she was virtually frozen with fear, Erin was surprised her voice sounded as calm as it did.

“I don’t understand how you saw me. There aren’t any lights on the private road from the highway. I could barely follow the road.”

Laura gave a caustic laugh. “Who needs lights when I have cameras every fifty feet from the highway to my front door? How do you think I warned myself, if one of my lovers happened to approach while I was ‘entertaining’ another?”

Once again, she crowed. The shrill, piercing sound shattered the still night.

Shadows hid much of Laura’s lovely face, but even in the dark, her rage was apparent—as was her derangement. Erin had known the woman was unstable. But tonight Erin saw the signs of genuine psychosis. Not knowing what would set her off, Erin took a chance, and provoked her.

“You said that Nate would be here.”

“And you believed me, didn’t you? In your heart you knew he couldn’t resist me.”

Erin forced her voice to firm, to be calm. “No. That’s not true. But I knew if you did manage to get him here, you intended to hurt him.”

Laura barked a shriek of laughter.

“And you! Pitiful little you? Came to
save
Nate
?”

Laura’s derision rallied Erin. She knew now that she was going to take this woman down or die in the process. And she had too much to live for.

She said simply, “Exactly.”

Laura kicked Erin hard in her ribs. Erin couldn’t suppress a surprised cry. She tried to muffle it, but to press the point, to prove that Erin was at her mercy, Laura kicked her again. When the heel of her boot landed in the same spot, Erin heard the bone crack. She fell to the ground, fighting the urge to scream as the pain seared through her.

Laura struck Erin’s thigh with the tip of her boot, shrieking with laughter at Erin’s stifled cry.

“Get up, slut. We have a lot to do to get you ready for your final moments.”

Erin rose as gracefully as she could, determined not to show how much Laura had hurt her. She knew enough about trauma to know that if her rib wasn’t broken it was either cracked or badly bruised.

When they neared the cabin, Erin smelled a distinctive odor. She instinctively pulled back, eliciting another crazed peal of laughter from her tormentor.

“Ahh, good. Does the little firefighter woman detect a familiar smell? I hope so. Part of creating a death scene is building anticipation. Mine, and the person who will be most directly affected. Who, in this case my simple little slut, is you. Take Mike. He was weeping with anticipation. Or was it terror? Mmm. Probably both. But then, that scene took much longer to set up. We couldn’t leave any clues. Tonight is easier. Fire is so much cleaner, isn’t it? No fingerprints, no other inadvertent clues. Everything is gone.
Poof!
In the flash of the moment.”

Shoving Erin against the doorway, Laura ranted, “Did you honestly think you could take Nate away from me?
You
? Oh, I’m sure he was attracted at first. The frightened, vulnerable woman with her big eyes and bigger tits. But soon the memories of me, the comparison to me must have kept him awake nights trying to figure out how to get rid of you. But you know how men are. So indecisive.”

If the enormity of what she was saying wasn’t so terrifying, Erin might have laughed. Nate indecisive? Unwilling to act? When they walked into the small cabin, the stench of gasoline nearly bowled her over. Laura’s ridiculous ravings were lost in the noxious vapors. Her eyes smarting from the fumes, Erin began calculating. She was a firefighter, after all. She knew that one spark and this place would blow. She needed to signal to anyone who might be listening that the situation was dire. A true emergency. She prayed to every God she’d ever heard of that either Connor or Nate was hearing her words.

She began coughing loudly as if she were choking. “This… is a lot of gasoline, Laura. Did you pour it on the furniture?”

Within a minute, though, Erin didn’t have to pretend to choke; she was gagging, struggling to breathe. The stench was overpowering.

Laura didn’t seem to notice. Either she’d been in the room long enough before to become accustomed to the toxic fumes or she was simply too demented to notice. As she spoke, her voice became louder, more shrill, less coherent.

“A firefighter competing with a model? You foolish girl! Do you know how many lingerie covers I was on? Sixteen! Sixteen covers! You thought you could steal Nate from me? A sex symbol recognized the world over? Do you know what Nate told me? That soldiers in Iraq, in Afghanistan, all over the world envied him because he was married to me. To ME! Laura Chambers! And you? You? Thought you could take him away from me? Oh no. No. No. No. And when you are gone? Oh, he’ll be sad. For a while. And maybe angry. But then, he’ll come to me. Back to me. The only woman he’s ever loved. “

Erin couldn’t resist. Her anger had calmed her fears. She was steady now. She just had to keep Laura talking. Keep her waving the gun. Stop Laura from pointing it in her face.

“If you loved him so much, why did you leave him?”

Laura’s sneer contorted her face. It deepened the lines that rage had traced across her surgically altered skin. Erin had heard that could happen. It you got the skin too tight, normal expressions were impossible. They became exaggerated.

“Because, you pathetic nothing, as much as I loved Nate, I love money more.”

Her eyes gleamed demonically bright. She purred, a drop of saliva leaking out of the corner of her mouth when she grinned.

“And now I will have them both.”

At that moment, Laura looked away and Erin made her move.

Chapter 29

Connor held up his phone. “She sent me a code red.”

“What the hell?” Nate lunged for Connor’s phone as Erin’s voice skittered across the room of startled men. He clutched the phone in his hand trying to suck her voice through the ether. He listened, but barely heard Pete explaining.

“Erin put her phone on record. She must have hit redial, Connor. That’s how she got you. Erin doesn’t know if anyone is listening, but it’s her only way to send a message. Jesus God. She’s calling for help. Pray to God she shut her sound off. An incoming call will shatter the connection and alert Laura to the phone.

Nate nodded; grinding his back teeth so hard he thought they might splinter. He whirled on Pete. His voice was a steel knife cutting through the frozen silence.

“I put a tracer on her phone. After the kidnapping last year.”

“Coordinates? Passcode?”

Nate rattled them off as Pete cracked open his iPad and punched in the numbers.

“Highway 2, about six miles out. By the old Swenson place.”

Nate was already out the door, Connor and Sam were hard on his heels. Nate yelled to Pete.

“Call Sam’s phone. Keep us on the line. Tell me where to go.”

He tossed Connor’s phone to him. “Keep this line open like her life depends on it. Because it does.”

Nate’s terror rose, hearing Laura’s ugly words. Her craziness that had long simmered below the surface was painfully apparent. Her words were bizarre, but they painted a hideous picture. He pounded on the steering wheel and shouted a stream of expletives when he heard Erin cry out. The sound of Laura’s boot hitting her flesh was audible. His rage competed with his fear.

“You want me to drive, Nate?”

Sam’s suggestion brought him back to where they were. The speedometer was hovering past ninety mph, closing in on 100 mph… and they were on city streets. He shook his head. Nodded to Connor.

“No. Have Charlie put out the code red. No sirens. Hook Pete in with the dispatcher.”

Pete’s quiet, sure voice was balm over Nate’s raging spirit.

“Turn left on Elm. Hit Highway 2. You’re gonna take the second right after Mason’s Mobile station. Looks like the cabin is a little over a half a mile from the highway.”

Listening to Erin’s calm voice, a striking comparison to Laura’s crazed tones, Nate heard Erin say that she’d come to save him. Protect him. What the hell was she talking about?

As if he read Nate’s mind, Sam spoke quietly from the backseat. “Laura must have told Erin that she had you there. That somehow she got you to her cabin.”

“And… and for Christ’s sake? Erin went by
herself
to
save me
?”

Connor’s growl was almost as fierce as Nate’s.

As they passed the Mobile station, Connor yelled, “There, Nate!”

Nate wrenched the wheel in a hard turn to the right, then brought the car to a shuddering stop. His heart hammered against his chest when he saw Erin’s car in the ravine. Good God, without the voice on the phone… the tracer… they never would have found her. Some tormented pathway in his brain began planning how he was going to implant a chip in her body the way they did with puppies….

“We have to take a chance on the cameras. No time to find ‘em and take them out. Hand signals only from this point on. Stay low to the ground.”

Nate knew Sam would understand his silent commands. Even without their training, no question but that Connor would keep up with the two of them. He was as amped on adrenalin as Nate was.

When Erin signaled the presence of gasoline, Nate gave up breathing. He knew then that they likely had seconds, not minutes, to save her. As he broke into a hard run, he heard Connor call in the code. Pete’s quiet voice from some other space echoed the charge to the emergency team.

Laura’s ranting was getting louder, making less and less sense, when a gunshot rang out. A piercing scream followed the blast and within seconds a terrifying volley of gunshots split the air. Nate’s legs ate up the ground and he doubled his speed when he spotted the cabin. He was within fifty yards when there was a huge explosion and a surge of flames shot to the sky. The blast was so fierce it knocked him to the ground, taking Sam down as well. They both rolled to their feet as the roof of the cabin collapsed and a torrential rain of fire, wood and debris poured from the sky. In some far off corner of his brain, Nate registered the fact that Erin was somewhere inside that burning inferno.

~~~

Erin’s body had been tight with the strain. Over Laura’s shoulder, she saw the monitor hung on the wall. It had to be Laura’s connection to the cameras along the winding road. Keeping her focus on Laura, Erin glimpsed shadowy figures moving rapidly through the forest. Knowing Nate was near, her heart leapt with joy. She knew she had seconds at the most to get free before the cabin blew. She had to keep Nate from coming any closer.

Time slowed to a crawl. As though in a dream, she saw Laura’s eyes shift, and in the seconds that seemingly stretched to hours, she made her move. With one hand she shoved the table at Laura, hitting her in the gut, then dove for the floor. When Laura’s gun went off and she felt no pain, Erin registered that she wasn’t shot. Reaching for her own pistol, she aimed and fired. She didn’t have time to line up the red dot but the piecing scream that followed her shot confirmed she’d hit her psychopathic target.

In the wild volley of shots that followed, Erin saw the bullet strike the gas can in the corner. The explosion brought her careening back to real time.

Built into her subconscious was every firefighter drill she’d practiced in the last year and a half. Pulling her jacket over her head, she dragged herself across the floor, clawing her way toward the door. Through the smoke she saw Laura stumble through the doorway. Erin prayed that the widening stain of red on Laura’s shirt was blood. Blessedly she saw that she was only inches from the door, and in seconds was scrambling outside through a rain of fiery debris.

A strong arm grabbed her and hauled her against him. She could only whisper his name. “Nate.” Then she warned, “Be careful. She’s got a gun.”

~~~

Nate knew it would take several lifetimes to rid his mind of the sight of Erin crawling through the dirt from the burning cabin. She’d pulled her jacket over her head and live coals bounced off the leather shield. Without that protective armor, her hair would have been a fiery torch.

Dragging her away from the burning pyre with one hand, he held his raised Glock in the other. He’d seen the flash of Laura’s shirt and knew she was within yards of them. Out of the fog of his adrenalin-charged brain, he heard Sam’s quiet command.

“Give me your clip, Nate.”

“Are you fucking crazy?”

“You can’t do this, Nate.”

Nate’s harsh whisper burned through his lips.

“Like
hell
I can’t.”

“You don’t want it to end this way, bro. If anyone takes a shot, it’s me. For what it’s worth, I’m a sharpshooter, was SWAT for three years in L.A. Besides, an ill-fitting orange jumpsuit for the rest of her unnatural life is a more appropriate punishment than a quick bullet.”

For a lifetime of seconds he hesitated… then Nate lowered his Glock.

“White shirt. By the tree. At your eleven o’clock.”

“I’ve got her.”

Sam rolled to his belly. Propped on his elbows he took two rapid shots. Laura’s screams filled the air. An angel’s choir couldn’t have sung a sweeter song.

Sam gave Erin an incongruous wink.

“I got each of her knees with those shots. So much for the showgirl legs. How about it Erin, want me to aim for one of those cover girl breasts?”

Erin gave an embarrassed shrug.

“I tried, but I missed. I got her shoulder instead.”

Sam’s soft laugh filled the space. “You did good, girl.”

Fire engines roared up the narrow dirt road followed by careening squad cars. Within minutes dozens of uniformed men surrounded what was left of the burning structure. Fierce streams of water attacked the shooting flames that could have taken out an acre of forest. In the blur of his mind, Nate saw the EMT’s buckle a screaming Laura onto a stretcher and put her in an ambulance. He felt Connor’s hot breath on his neck as his cousin gathered both Nate and Erin into his huge grasp. The Chief’s pale, strained face loomed at his side.