Edge

Chapter 35

THE DEVICE MUST have been made up of a grenade or small plastic explosive charge attached to a large container of gasoline. I could smell the distinct, astringent odor of burning fuel. In seconds, the fire was racing up the walls and consuming the rugs. I kicked the basement door closed but the flames and heat muscled it back open, as the fire spiraled outward and up.

“Freddy, anybody down there?” I shouted.

He called, “No. After they cleared it they came upstairs.”

I started forward again toward the den. Yet every time I edged a few feet through the smoke, there’d be another flare-up and I’d have to spin backward to keep from losing eyebrows and skin. I looked around for water or a fire extinguisher or even a blanket I could use to protect myself to get to the scrapbooks and shoe boxes and save as many as I could.

I supposed that Freddy wasn’t as convinced of the importance of the memorabilia as I was but he knew that this was my expertise-dealing with lifters and hitters from a strategic, rather than tactical, position-and he helped me push furniture against the vents and fling rugs over the flames that sprouted from the floorboards. I didn’t think we could control the fire-it was going to win-but at least we might contain the flames long enough to get to the books.

We tried for three or four minutes but finally the heat was too intense, the smoke blinding. I was close to vomiting from the fumes and ash. I grew light-headed and knew that to faint here would mean death. Choking, our eyes streaming, we had to retreat. The living room was now a mass of flame and so was the kitchen. We kicked out a side window and rolled onto the ground. The rest of the agents were nearby and, thinking that the fire could be a diversion, they were covering the trees, the logical position for a sniper to take out those fleeing the house.

But there were no shots. I wasn’t surprised. Loving, I knew, would be gone.

“Report!” Freddy shouted. His fellow agents called back about their condition. They were all accounted for. One had a slight burn and another had been cut, breaking through a window to flood the basement with water from a garden hose-a futile effort, of course. There were no serious injuries, however.

No, the only victim here was Henry Loving’s past.

I rubbed my stinging eyes, wondering if, as I’d speculated, this had in fact been a trap all along.

I was alive but this round of our game was a decided loss for me.

Scissors cut paper…

The roar of the flames was so loud that the fire trucks were almost to the property by the time we heard the sirens.

Freddy said, “A shoe box with pictures in it. He destroyed everything else. Why’d he save that? What’s inside?”

A good question and one that I knew I’d ponder into the early hours. Did it contain photos of his sister? Of himself and her? Some place he liked to go? Pictures of a cabin in the woods or a lake somewhere he planned to retire to? I said nothing but stared at the fiery tornado that had been the family house. I walked back to my car to call the safe house in Great Falls and check on my principals.

I didn’t, however, get very far.

Two black vans, with flashing red and blue lights on top, skidded to a stop not far away and a small entourage got out, making right for me.

My eyes closed momentarily as I realized who was leading them: Jason Westerfield and Chris Teasley, his assistant, possibly sans pearls. She wore a zipped-high jacket; I couldn’t see any necklaces.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to see these two. I now realized that, of course, Westerfield would have learned about the house and that I’d probably be here, because we were on record: We’d gone to a federal magistrate to request a warrant to search Loving’s family’s house. The U.S. attorney had sped directly here to find the man who’d lied to him and sent him an empty armored van.

I’d hoped that he’d be satisfied with a dressing-down in front of the troops and I could get back to work, but he had a different agenda. He glanced toward Freddy, standing nearby, and announced, in a voice louder than I thought necessary under the circumstances, “Arrest him. Now.”