Over the flames, p.18
Over the Flames, page 18
“I didn’t… I wasn’t…” Cold infused her veins. She didn’t know what to say, what to think. She couldn’t move or speak. Her mouth parted with a rebuttal, but subconsciously she understood there’d be no use. He’d made his mind up about her long before they’d started working this investigation together. He didn’t trust her, didn’t intend to fulfill his promise that he’d be there for her, and from his retreat to the front door she realized there was nothing she could say to convince him otherwise. “Lawson, wait. I wasn’t doing it for me. Please, let me explain.”
“Why? You’ve made your choice pretty clear. We made a deal. You gave me your word none of this would make it into the media, and now I see you’re willing to put this entire case at risk.” Lawson wrapped his hand around the door handle. He leveled his chin parallel over his shoulder but refused to look at her. “Another agent will make contact to take over your protection detail.”
He closed the door behind him.
Arden collapsed onto one of the barstools, and a new wound shredded through her. She’d helped him with this investigation. She’d made a difference this time, and he’d still discarded her as easily as he had before their divorce. A sob built in her chest. It didn’t matter what he’d promised. It didn’t matter how she’d helped him be honest with her. She’d never be good enough for him.
A soft knock reached her ears, and it took everything inside of her to force one foot in the front of the other. Arden set one hand over her stomach, wiping her face with the other, and ripped open the front door. “Lawson, I don’t want to—”
Pain exploded from every nerve ending in her body. Falling back, Arden dislodged the stun gun pressing into her ribs and miraculously directed fifty-thousand volts of electricity into the wall beside her. The buzz of the device ticked in her ears. She struggled to flip onto her stomach, clawing for something she could use as a weapon. The shadow of her attacker spread over her through the white streaks in her vision. Her spine curled in on itself involuntarily with another jolt of the taser, and everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Arden had lied to him. She’d given him her word none of what they’d uncovered during this investigation would be available to the public, but the draft she’d been working on, the notes and audio files he’d found in plain sight on her laptop, had exposed her for exactly the kind of woman she was.
Pain set up residence behind his ribcage as Lawson strode across the parking lot toward his SUV. Wrenching open the driver’s side door, he tossed his damp suit jacket, slacks and shirt into the front passenger seat and slammed the door behind him. He clung to the steering wheel harder than necessary, his busted knuckles protesting the pain. His lungs pressurized the longer he stared out over the parking lot outside her building.
She was off the case. It didn’t matter that Arden had identified the victims’ handwriting on physical drafts in Phil Anderson’s basement and discovered the connection between all three victims. It didn’t matter she’d located the scene where the first victim had been killed, and it didn’t matter that she’d kept Brent Hayward—the Arsonist—from escaping FBI custody. He’d taken the risk of including her in the investigation—against his better judgement—and now he had to be the one to clean up her mess. He’d meant what he’d said. She’d put the entire case at risk. Every piece of evidence she’d come into contact with, every lead she’d given could be used against the prosecution if this case made it to trial.
Lawson patted his jeans pockets and set his head back against the headrest. Determined to put as much space between them as fast as possible, he’d managed to grab Baldwin Webb’s tablet from her desk, but he’d left his keys in her apartment. “Son of a bitch.”
Hollowness flared, but he couldn’t force himself to move. He could still smell her perfume on his clothes, could still feel her weight in his hands as he’d carried her into the bedroom. It wasn’t just the fact she’d put the investigation at risk. Over the past three days, Arden had sanded down the effect of grief and loss left behind by Rey’s death and the end of his marriage. He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go back to being to the man he’d been before she’d manipulated her way into his life. Obsessed with finding answers, closed off, unable to sleep, relax, or unwind. As much as she’d contributed to the investigation and kept the case moving forward, Arden had done far more for him on a basic human level. She’d put him on a path to feeling whole, but now… Now he’d learned it’d all been a lie. She hadn’t done it for him. She’d used him to get what she needed for her own self gain.
“Damn it.” Lawson shouldered out of the SUV. Crisp morning air battled the nausea churning in his gut. He crossed the parking lot, hit the button for the elevators in the lobby, and rode the car to Arden’s floor. He had to detach. It’d be the only way to face her again. Stepping off the elevator, he headed down the hall and stopped in front of her door. He knocked.
No answer. No sounds of footsteps or movement from the other side of the peephole.
“Arden, it’s me. Open the door. I left my keys.” Hell, he should just call another agent from the Seattle office to pick him up. Still no answer. He pounded his fist against the door in case she hadn’t heard him the first time. Pieces of their conversation bled into focus. He’d lost his temper. He’d been trained to effectively handle stress under high-adrenaline situations, but every ounce of that training had vanished the moment she’d admitted she’d broken his trust. “Arden.”
Anxiety edged into him. Unholstering his sidearm, he leaned into the peephole to get a distorted view inside. He tested the handle, and the door swung open. Something wasn’t right. Pressing his back into the wall beside her door, Lawson craned his head around the corner. No sign of a break in or a struggle. Everything was exactly as he’d left it less than fifteen minutes ago. He maneuvered into the apartment and cleared the front room. “Arden?”
No answer.
Shit. Lawson heel-toed it across the front of the kitchen island where they’d spent breakfast together and rounded into the hallway toward her bedroom. Empty. The bathroom and closet, too. She wasn’t here. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Something was wrong. He’d coached her enough over the course of their marriage to look out for herself, to defend herself if necessary, and she wouldn’t have walked out of her apartment knowing a possible killer had motive to want her dead. Her laptop sat open with her phone beside it on the desk, her purse hung over the back of the chair. No. Arden wouldn’t have left her wallet and phone behind. Not willingly. He ran through the space a second time. There had to be something here—anything—that could tell him what’d happened in the time he’d left the apartment and him coming back for his keys. “Where the hell are you, woman?”
There. Holstering his weapon, he narrowed his attention on two small black dots, one stacked over the other, near the still open front door. His knees popped as he crouched to get a better look and traced his thumb over the blackened indents. He’d spent the past twenty-fours in this apartment, memorized every inch of it in addition to the woman he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off of. These weren’t here before. The autopsy report from all three victims. No defensive wounds had been found on the bodies, as though they’d been unconscious before the killer had soaked them in gasoline and lit the match. The bone burns. It hadn’t come from a standard taser. “The killer modified it to render the victims unconscious.”
Arden.
Straightening, Lawson unpocketed his phone, dialing the sheriff from his list of recent calls. He hadn’t seen anyone coming in or out of the building when he’d left, which meant the killer had gotten access from somewhere else. The line picked up on the second ring, and he straightened. “Sanders, Arden Olsen has been taken from her apartment in the past ten minutes. Pull everyone you’ve got. I need Seattle PD and your department on scene to help with the search. Now.”
“Back up is on the way.” The sheriff ended the call before he had a chance to respond.
Desperation simmered under his skin. There was no proof Arden hadn’t simply walked out of her apartment on her own two feet, but his instincts screamed the same killer who’d murdered the victims in the case had caught up with her, too. He shouldn’t have left her unprotected. He should’ve waited for the agent he’d requested to take over his detail to arrive. If anything happened to her…
Swallowing around the thickness in his throat, Lawson retraced his path into the hallway, eyes cast to the floor. Arden had turned into everything he hated right in front of him, but he wasn’t going to leave her to fight a killer on her own. There had to be something—anything—that would tell him how the suspect had managed to get Arden out of the building without anyone noticing. Two lines of agitated carpet trailed in the opposite direction of the elevators, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He slowed, studying their path back to Arden’s door. Drag marks. He’d clocked his ex-wife around a hundred and twenty pounds. Light enough for an attacker to get out of the building without being seen? He followed the marks until they ended at the stairwell at the west end of the building where concrete interrupted carpet.
Hell. There was still a chance they were still here.
Unholstering his weapon, he shouldered through the door and leaned over the railing. The slam of metal against concrete echoed down the four floors of stairs, but there was no movement below. No movement above. The killer couldn’t have taken Arden far. “Damn it.”
He descended the stairs to the third floor, cleared the landing and glanced through the small, rectangular window revealing the hallway on the other side. Nothing. Tension infused the muscles down his spine as he cleared the second. The slam of a door from below hiked his pulse into overdrive, and Lawson took aim at the potential threat.
A young woman laughed as she pulled the man she was with in for a deep kiss and pressed him into the wall on the far side of the stairwell, neither of them older than twenty or twenty-one. The couple remained oblivious as he rounded onto the first floor and pulled his phone from his pocket. He faced the device toward them, Arden’s driver’s license photo filling the screen. “Have either of you seen this woman in the last few minutes?”
“Get lost, man,” the guy said, barely diverting his gaze from the barely legal woman in his arms.
He didn’t have time for this. Lawson holstered his weapon then shot a hand toward the guy’s throat. The woman screamed as she dodged out of the way, giving him enough room to pull the man in his grip closer. His exhales combined with that of the guy in his grasp. “Listen to me, you pain in the ass, my wife has been kidnapped by a psychopathic killer who’s setting people on fire around the city, and I’m not in the mood to wait around until you’re done sowing your wild oats. You understand?” He maneuvered the phone between them, forcing the kid to take a long, good look. “Have you seen this woman? Yes or no.”
“Yeah, yeah. Some lady was helping her walk through the lobby. She seemed kind of out of it, like she was drunk.” The guy nodded, wide eyes steady on the screen. “I swear, man. I didn’t know she was in danger. I would’ve called the police.”
“How long ago?” He jerked the guy into the wall.
“Just a minute ago! Right before we came in here.” The kid wrapped both hands around Lawson’s wrist.
He released his hold around the witness’s neck and dove for the door. Crisp air slid under his collar and fought to cool the sweat beading across his chest. The stairwell door closed behind him as he targeted the main entrance. He sprinted through the lobby, pushing his legs as fast as they would go, and shoved through the double glass doors. Pulling up short, he scanned the street, every car, every face staring at him with confusion and fear contorting their features. Interlacing his fingers behind his head, he tried to catch his breath, but the pain in his chest wouldn’t let up. Not until he knew Arden was safe.
The thundering slam of a car door caught his attention off to the right, to a bright red pickup truck with Washington plates and a glimpse of short blonde hair in the passenger side mirror. Instant recognition speared through him, and Lawson jogged toward the vehicle. Baldwin Webb’s missing vehicle. The tinted back window kept him from identifying the driver, and he unholstered his weapon. “FBI! Get out of the truck—”
Tires protested against asphalt as the truck sped away from the curb, leaving a cloud of black smoke between him and the driver. Burnt rubber filled his lungs and burned his eyes as he took off toward the parking lot around the corner and sprinted for his SUV. Once inside, he redialed Sheriff Sanders and fishtailed out of the lot in the direction the red pickup truck had gone. “I’m in pursuit of a red Ford F-150 with Washington plates I believe to be Baldwin Webb’s. First three numbers on the plate are Alpha-Zulu-Nine. I didn’t get a look at the driver, but Arden was in the passenger seat, unconscious.”
He flipped on the siren and dashboard lights, swerving in and out of traffic, but didn’t see any sign of the truck. He squeezed the wheel and tossed his phone into the passenger seat, still on speaker.
“Acknowledged.” Sheriff Sanders’s voice filled the cabin of the SUV. “Seattle PD is now en route. CSU is ten minutes out from the victim’s apartment building. I’ll have them report directly to you if they give us an ID on our suspect.”
His heart rate spiked as a flash of red pulled his attention down one of the cross streets. There. Lawson twisted the steering wheel as hard as he could, barely avoiding the parked cars along the street, and pressed his foot into the accelerator. “Find out who would seek revenge for Salena Greer’s and her son’s deaths, Sanders. They’re the only one who could be behind this.”
He ended the call, pushing the vehicle harder. The red pickup wound through traffic, car horns breaking through the labored sound of his own breathing. The truck cut off a sedan and took another hard right turn a block ahead. Civilians maneuvered off to the side of the street as much as they could as Lawson gave chase. “You’re not getting away from me that easily.”
Turning onto the street the pickup had vanished down, he locked his arms against the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes. Midday sunlight reflected off the electric red paint of the truck parked in the center of the street. Both the driver’s side and the passenger side doors had been left open. No sign of the driver. No sign of Arden. Shoving the SUV into park, Lawson unholstered his weapon and shouldered out of the vehicle. He motioned to the bystanders on the street. “FBI, get back in your vehicles!”
Fear bled into his pores from the frantic movements of the onlookers around him, but he only had focus for the truck, on finding Arden alive. He approached the pickup from behind, still not able to see through the dark tint covering the back window. Nothing in the bed of the truck other than two gas containers. Pivoting, he pressed the left side of his body into the driver’s side door and searched the cab.
Arden wasn’t here.
Smoke billowed from the backseat, compromising his vision. Covering his mouth, he scanned the surrounding sidewalks and alleys as a face full of fumes burned the back of his throat and nostrils. He only had a moment for his senses to translate the implications before realization struck. His heart kicked into overdrive as he spotted the gas can in the back seat with the burning rag visible inside the nozzle. Lawson spun and ran, waving back the few bystanders who’d stuck around to see what was happening. “Get back! Everyone get—”
The explosion seared across his back and neck and catapulted him into a sedan parked along the other side of the street. Glass shattered under his momentum, and ear-ringing destruction filled his head. His SUV rocketed back and landed upside down in the middle of the street. Air squeezed from his lungs as though every inch of his body had been crushed, and he collapsed onto the pavement. Engulfing both the pickup and his own vehicle, flames spread toward him as unconsciousness dragged him under.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Pain.
Arden tried to pull her head up, but the ache pounding at the back of her skull had taken control. She rolled her fingers into her palms, only to grasp something that felt like splintered wood. The burn in her side screamed with every humidity-filled inhale. Blood glistened on her shirt and highlighted the two distinct areas of her wound. The taser… She’d blacked out after being stunned with a taser, but it hadn’t been like anything she’d seen before. Stronger? Modified? The last few seconds of a struggle flashed across her mind.
“I know you’re awake, Arden. You can’t pretend with me.” The confident grate of the woman’s voice from the shadows raised her nerve endings into over-stimulated consciousness. Soft footsteps echoed off stained cement under Arden’s feet. Stinging pain spread across her scalp as her attacker fisted a handful of her hair and wrenched her head back. “I’ve waited a long time for this. The least you could do is look me in the eyes when I kill you.”
“Rose.” The last piece fit into the puzzle of this investigation. The plagiarism claim against Baldwin, the misdirection leading her and Lawson to Phil Anderson’s home, the suspicion against the Arsonist. It’d all been carefully planned by the investigative journalist staring her down. Pine green eyes remained steady on her, and Arden tugged against the zip ties securing her wrists and ankles to the chair, but there was no give. No slack. A hint of smoke and gasoline fumes triggered her gag reflex. The warehouse. Rose Hindley had brought her back to the beginning, where she’d killed Baldwin on Vashon Island. “You killed Baldwin. You killed them all because they were looking into Vashon Chemical poisoning the island’s water supply.”
“Rose. I never really liked that name, but it’s done its job. It’s brought me to this point, to you. The entire time you sat across from me in that house, you never realized who I was, did you? You never considered the possibility the woman who lost everything because of you would make you pay for what you’ve done.” A humorless laugh and a one-sided smile lightened the woman’s severe features, and the sense Arden had experienced the moment she’d stepped into Rose Hindley’s home two days ago returned. Familiarity. Recognition. The pressure drained along her scalp as Rose released her hair.
