Watch What Burns (27 page)

“No problems, sis.” He stood up, wrapping everything together. “I’m going to throw this away then I want details on that fire yesterday.”

Tyler took his hand from Austin’s and ran them over his head, remembering that right now all of his work - and all of Grace’s drawings - were in cinders. “There isn’t anything to tell,” he spoke, stopping Tom from leaving. “There was a covered heater in my office. That’s the bottom line.”

“She repeated what she did on the house?” Tom asked in horror, not wanting to remember the grief that washed through their families during that time.

“Yeah,” Tyler nodded, “If there wasn’t enough proof that just finally put the nail in her coffin. The place wouldn’t have blown if it wasn’t for the fact she hid a gas canister in there too. I’ve barely been in my office since Grace disappeared. We’ve all been running in and out with every little thing we get, so I was barely there, and if I’m not there, I’m with Aus.” Tyler’s face darkened and he shook his head. “She’s being allowed all these opportunities and I hate it. I hate her for being one step ahead of us.”

“She’ll trip over soon,” Tom optimized, trying to keep hope alive in them all.

“We’ll have to see about that one,” Tyler grunted and went back to watching Michael. He noticed it didn’t take long for Austin to join him and it seemed they looked just in time.

Suddenly Michael shoved the cell phone into his pocket and stalked up to the house, his pace hastening the closer he got. He pushed the door open, not caring for anything right at that moment.

“We know where she is!”

Austin didn’t care about anything else, she allowed her husband to take her hand as they ran after Michael to where Grace was.

“I think you should stay here, Aus,” Michael said as he tried to slow Austin down.

“I think you should shut up and accept I’m coming,” Austin spoke back, her voice hard and unchanging. “You tell me you think you’ve found her, you cannot expect me to sit in there and twiddle my thumbs waiting on someone to call me and tell me if she’s there or not. I need to see it for myself.”

“It’s not even a dead certain lead though,” Michael tried to talk her down. He knew she needed to get to her daughter, but he also knew that rest was fighting for her body.

“But it’s a lead nonetheless,” Austin argued, unwilling to turn around and go back inside and wait. “You can’t blame me for holding onto every bit of hope, Mike. You can’t stop me from doing that.”

“I just don’t want to see you hurting over this,” Michael fretted over the matter.

“I’m already hurting over this,” Austin reminded him, keeping her eyes stuck on him. She was deliberately trying to get him to see how strongly she felt about this.

“Hurting over it more then!” Michael shouted back, trying to put up his argument.

“I’m sorry,” Austin apologized gently. “You have to let me do this.” She looked to Tyler, exasperated at the time they were wasting standing here. “Are we going?”

“C’mon,” he said, taking her hand and running down towards their car. He didn’t even stop his mission as a car pulled up onto the drive beside his car.

“Hang on!” Dean shouted, jumping down from his SUV. “Where are you all going so fast? We’ve brought Sienna home.”

“A welcome home is going to need to wait!” Austin yelled back, fast tracking for her and Tyler’s car. “We’ve found Grace!”

“We think we have,” Michael countered, correcting her on her statement. He had forgotten how forthright Austin could be and how, when she set her mind to something, there was no stopping her.

“No, it is Grace!” Austin stopped dead in her tracks. She turned back to Michael, shocking him with the sheer ferocity of her newly undertaken demeanor. “I know this is it, Michael. I know. Don’t you dare try and make me think otherwise. I can feel it in here.” She pressed a finger to her chest, right above her heart. “I can feel it in my heart that this is it. We’re going to find her, Mike, so don’t you dare take that away from me.”

Tyler stepped in, knowing his wife wouldn’t run off on a tandem like this unless she had good reason to. She wasn’t irrational; she was a mother holding onto hope that the end of the crisis in her life was near.

“I know this is it,” Austin fought as her voice finally fell into a fearful tremble. “So don’t make me wait anymore to see my daughter.”

“Okay,” Michael relented, throwing his arms up in the air and no longer looking at ways to deter her. “Okay.”

“Finally,” Austin groaned as Michael backed up and jumped into the back of her car. She went for the other side while Tyler hopped in the front after Tom told them he was driving. She noticed that Dean was back in his car, Sienna hurling abuse that she and Danny were following in order to get their niece back. She had no idea what their parents would do, but she was sure they’d all be hot on their trail.

As they started the journey, the silence drifted. They had no idea how long it would take apart from what Michael was telling Tom. He named no places, just offered directions for where to take them all. He told them it wasn’t far and that if this was the place, then Natasha had been right under their noses all along.

“What was it they actually found?” Tyler broached the subject he had been begging to. “What has you so sure?”

Michael ran a hand over his chin, feeling the stubble growing. Between being with Sienna in the hospital and helping search for Natasha, he had barely enough time to shower let alone shave.

“Well?” Austin asked, pressing him to speak up.

“Apparently Robert owns some buildings. The tech back in New York found that he had them hidden under another name, a Christopher Pearson.”

“He used that name to gain visitation to see Natasha,” Tyler broke into Michael’s statement.

“That’s what the tech found out too,” Michael countered, he had more than pieced this all together. “The buildings haven’t been used; they’re just rundown and abandoned. I have no idea why he’d buy something like this and leave it to gather dust.”

“Robert was planning to give Natasha her own business,” Tyler commented, looking to Dean who had been privy to that talk once before. “He used to speak about it a lot, but when Austin came back, all the plans went on hold for a bit. Then Natasha ended up how she did. I guess he was serious about giving her everything she wanted.”

“Well he purchased it after she was put away, and he’s kept it ever since. He had some plan for it, or he bought it as a way to keep a hold on Natasha. Something
like a memento.” Michael looked at Austin who sat motionless and he wished their lives hadn’t had to cross these paths. “You know I want nothing more than for us to find Grace, right?” he asked her, keeping his voice gentle. He hated how Austin only seemed to let Tyler truly in right now, and as much as he understood it, the bitterness still stung. He watched her nod. “I will make sure you and Ty have her back at all costs.”

“Remember, we don’t make promises we know we can’t keep,” Austin scolded him, turning her gaze back to the window.

He took her hand, shaking it to make her look at him. “I promise you I will have her back with you. Even if it kills me.”

“And what will Sienna have to say about that?” Austin asked him back, cocking an eyebrow at the idiocy of his own statement. “You really think I’m going to let you risk your life when my sister is madly in love with you?”

“You don’t get a say,” Michael retorted back unimpressed. “Plus, I can’t see Natasha hurting anyone anymore,” Michael chose to optimize, he smiled smugly at Austin trying to get her to lighten up, but he realized quickly how wrong he was.

“Really?”
Austin gasped, laughing incredulously at his growing stupidity. “We know she’s dangerous, hell, she’s still got a gun, and you’re telling me you can’t see her hurting anyone again?”

“I think we can get her before she does anymore damage. Your husband’s a cop; I’m part of the FBI. Between us, we have the upper hand.” Michael continued to try and convince her.

“She’s got Grace,” Austin finalized his argument with three small words. “So drop the smugness and don’t do anything stupid or I will make sure you regret it, Michael. Mark my words, if you pull any of your old stunts, I will go so bat-shit crazy on you, you’ll wish you’d never introduced yourself to me on my first day in New York.”

Michael laughed, sat back and got himself comfortable. “Good to know the inner fight’s back in you, Aus. It’s been missing. I knew it was coming back at the house before we left, but I needed to get you completely ticked off.” He didn’t say anything else as he caught Tyler smiling at him through the rear-view mirror on the windshield. “Ouch!” he yelped as Austin’s hand came and hit him. “What was that for? I was helping!”

“For being so cocky!” she quipped at him, her demeanor back to being fiery and scary. “You push all the wrong buttons on me and then sit back and congratulate yourself! For Christ sake, Mike, I have enough fight in me right now. I need to get there with a clear head. I don’t need to be panicking about you and your idiotic moves. Ty might have been working with you since Grace was taken, but he doesn’t know what stupid ass moves you like to pull when you’re protecting others or trying to save your own people!”

“Oh I know that he’s caught a bullet more than a few times for victims on cases,” Tyler announced, turning to face her for a moment. “Sorry, Aus, but he has told me, on more than one occasion, how you’ve strung him up by his bollocks for getting hurt while on the job.”

“Well that’s good, because if you do the same then I’ll do the same to you,” Austin told her husband, falling back against the leather of her seat and smiling sanctimoniously. She flashed her eyes to him and saw him just staring at him. “Don’t give me that look, Handsome. I want my daughter back, Natasha gone, and no one hurt okay?”

“I think you’ve lost this one, Man,” Tom quipped, laughing gently at his sister’s attitude. She was burning through so many emotions it was unreal, and he just prayed that after giving her husband and best friend the riot act, they would sit up and listen and it wasn’t all for nothing.”

“Take this left and it’s about eight hundred yards down,” Michael cut in quickly, leaning forward to point to the road that Tom needed to turn. He looked to Tyler and gulped before looking to Austin. “Are you ready for this?” He didn’t add any details to that comment, he meant it ambiguously. He wanted them ready for whatever they found, even if it was nothing.

“Yes,” they both agreed in unison and he got himself ready to find out what was behind the doors of Robert’s property.

“Before we go,” Michael broke their focus to leap from the car and run inside the building across the street from them, “Maybe Ty and I should go. We have our guns, we can do a sweep.”

“Not yet. I’m calling for backup,” Tyler grunted, his own gut telling him this was it. He didn’t care about rationality; he had to be ready for whatever they came up against. “I want to rush in there, but I want to be prepared. I know Steve lives near here. He can be here in an instant.”

“Call him,” Austin pushed him, coercing him to hurry. She was pulling on her bottom lip in a bid to rid her of her nervousness. She watched as he did so, and the moment he was done, she was out of the car.

“You can’t just run in there!” Tom yelled as he got out and caught her, stopping her from ruining this and
possibly getting hurt. “You can’t just go in there alone, Aus. You, out of all of us, know how dangerous that woman is!” He threw his arm to the storefront with the windows smothered in sheets of newspaper. “It’s not that simple!”

“It is,” Austin ground out, feeling her nerve beginning to dwindle.
“She’s in there, Tom. I know she is. I can’t just wait here any longer.”

“I know you know that. To be honest, I think we all do, but we have to be rational and safe about this. If we’re right and she’s in there, she’s still with a woman who’s clearly on a psychotic break, Aus. That’s a variable none of us can change until we’re in there and able to try to talk some sense into her.” Tom tried to sound more professional, hoping his medical knowhow would win him enough kudos to talk Austin down from this edge. “Until we’re at that point, we need to stay calm and be sensible over this.”

Austin still tried to shrug him off, but she knew he was right. The last thing she wanted was to put Grace in harm’s way any further than she already was. She just had to trust in everyone around her, trust in Tyler to do his job, put faith in Michael to shine through with his professionalism. She knew it was no longer a simple job of going into the building, picking up Grace, and walking right back out again. It was much more complicated, and there was so much at risk. She was thankful her brother had stopped her from doing something she would regret.

Having watched his wife’s inner battle grow and develop into some monster, he had waited for crunch time, and this was it.

“Aus,” Tyler said as he stepped in. He managed to push her back towards the car, sitting her down on the backseat. “We can’t all storm the building. If we do, we risk Gracie’s life, and I know you could never forgive yourself if that ever happened.” He watched her fight with herself for a reason to go with them. “I’m right aren’t I?” She remained silent in front of him. “Aren’t I?”

“Yes,” she finally whispered. “I just want her back, Ty. It’s been too long. I need her back.”

“And we’ll be getting her back,” he told her, holding her hands as he did so. “We’ll have her back soon.” He watched her settle a little. “Right, I’m going to go and make a plan with Michael, maybe see if we can use Dean, Danny, and Tom until Steve gets here with back up. Will you be okay here waiting for me?”

“Yeah,” she agreed, finally feeling weakened after her continual outbursts. She looked back at Tyler and
saw her sister sitting in the car, arguing with Michael to let her out. She knew it was impossible considering she was on crutches, but Sienna was a Pearson and their fight was scary.

“We’ve got movement!” Danny suddenly broke into the calm Tyler had created around Austin. Everyone froze and was on high alert.

They all watched the building, seeing the door open quickly. Natasha came out from the store, dragging a reluctant, disheveled Grace behind her. She was moaning, grumbling some insult at the crying child when she suddenly realized she was surrounded. She halted, and if it wasn’t for Grace’s cry to her father, Natasha wouldn’t have computed that her luck had finally ended.

“Stop being a little, whiny brat!”
Natasha scolded Grace and got ready to unlock the car just outside of the storefront. When she looked up she saw the cars gathered, the familiar faces staring at her. Immediately she turned on her heels, picking Grace up haphazardly, and ran back inside for cover.

It was involuntary, but Austin felt her lungs constrict mere seconds before she was screaming for her daughter. “Grace!” she screeched out, leaping from the car and sprinting for the abandoned
building. The yelling of her daughter fastened her pace and she allowed nothing to stop her getting through the door. No one and nothing could stop her, even the thought of seeing Grace one last time.