Blind Pursuit

59

Annie knew what this was.

Her familiar nightmare.

Smell of smoke and gasoline. Whisper of flame. Heat on her face. The house in Sierra Springs ablaze.

She roused herself, eyelids fluttering, vision swimming into focus.

Around her, a blazing light show. Showers of sparks. Blooms of flame.

She wasn’t awake yet. Couldn’t be. The nightmare was continuing, taking a new and more vivid form…

A wave of heat pulsed over her. The stench of gasoline bit her nostrils. She choked back a cough.

No dream. Reality.

She remembered her last waking moments. Gund at the car window. Voltage coursing through her body.

Comprehension hit her like a punch in the stomach.

“ Erin?”

From directly behind her, less than a yard away: “I’m here, Annie.”

Though her sister’s voice was ragged, her tone-measured and steady-gave an impression of something close to calm control. An illusion, certainly, because no one could be calm here, calm now.

“What the hell’s he doing to us?” Annie heard raw terror in her own voice. “Christ, what’s he doing? ”

“Don’t panic, Annie. Please don’t.”

The words made no sense. Panic? Of course she would panic. Who wouldn’t panic, for God’s sake? Didn’t Erin understand what was going on? Didn’t she see? Gund had set the house on fire, they were going to burn, burn to death No. Quit it. Quit it.

With trembling effort she forced down her rising fear.

As a child in a blazing death trap she had yielded to terror, become hysterical; but she was not a child any longer.

Head lowered, she looked herself over for the first time and found that she was seated on the floor, chained to an appliance of some sort, a water heater or a furnace or something. Stubby metal legs, bolted in place, held the base of the contraption six inches off the floor.

Potbelly stove. That’s what it was. She remembered it from snapshots in Lydia’s photo album.

She strained against the chain links, trying to release her arms. No use.

“Isn’t there any way to get free of this thing?” she yelled.

“Chain’s wound tight. And it’s-” A spasm of coughing interrupted Erin’s reply. “It’s padlocked.”

Padlocked.

Annie blinked.

Twisting her right arm, she thrust her hand into the pocket of her skirt, and yes, there it was, the key ring she’d taken from Gund’s apartment.

As she pulled the keys free, it occurred to her that there was something funny about her having them, something that ought to disturb her, but there was no time to think about it now.

“I’ve got his keys!” she shouted.

“What?”

“Gund’s keys. Can you reach the padlock?”

“Think so.” Now it was Erin’s voice that quavered, not with fear but with barely suppressed hope.

“Okay,” Annie said. “I’m gonna slide ’em to you.”

“I’m ready.”

She placed the keys on the floor, took a breath, and flicked them backward, between the stove legs.

For an endless moment there was no response, and she was sure she’d blown it, blown it, hadn’t pushed the key ring far enough, and now it lay somewhere under the stove, out of her reach and Erin’s, useless to them both, their last chance wasted.

“Got them!” Erin called.

Thank God. “Do they work? Does one of them work?”

“Give me a second.”

Annie waited, tasting smoke, trying to be brave.

Fumbling one-handed, Erin found two small padlock keys on the ring. She wedged the first one between two fingers and lifted the key to the padlock at her waist.

Hard to keep her attention narrowed to this tight focus when everywhere the smoke was thickening, the heat rising to a murderous intensity.

Little time left. Couple of minutes at most. Combustion was entering its second, still more deadly phase.

The wood of the walls, ceiling, and floor, dried out after years in an arid climate, could not feed the flames for long; already the fire was fading in patches to a dull glow as it burrowed into the timber, snouting out the carbon still trapped inside. The heat would further weaken the cellulose and lignin that gave the wood its structure and strength, until the roof beams and wall panels simply fell apart, collapsing the house on top of Annie and herself in a cascade of burning debris.

The smoke might get them sooner. It was a witch’s brew of carbon monoxide and outgassed toxins from the walls-vaporized varnish, paint, glue, and insulating material. The fire was rapidly consuming the room’s remaining oxygen; before long there would be only poison to breathe.

Her hand shook, and she nearly dropped the key ring.

Come on, Erin. Concentrate.

The keyhole wasn’t visible from her angle; she had to stab the key at the bottom of the padlock case several times before it slid into the plug. She twisted her wrist.

Nothing happened.

Wrong key, then. Try the other one. Hurry.

She rotated the key ring, isolated the second padlock key, inserted it.

Clockwise turn, and the padlock released.

She stared at it, stunned, then tried to laugh and hacked out a ragged cough instead.

“Annie, it worked! It worked! ”

Another spasm of coughing racked her as she kicked free of the chain. She crawled around the stove and found her sister untangling herself from the heavy links.

“This way!” Erin yelled. “Front door!”

Smoke had turned Annie’s eyes to water. “Can’t see.”

“Take my hand.”

Annie obeyed.

Erin crawled toward the doorway, guiding Annie through the inferno, just as she had led her sister through another burning house so many years ago.

Char and soot and white mineral ash whipped around them in a swirling haze. Clouds of sparks like fireflies singed their hair.

The door wasn’t far, less than twenty feet away, but it was separated from them by a river of gasoline a yard wide, its surface webbed with kinetic ripples of flame.

Have to jump across, Erin thought. If we can.

Behind them, an echoing groan.

She glanced back and saw the rafter directly above the stove splitting cleanly in the middle, raining sparks and splinters.

Close. Too close.

“ Move!”

She yanked Annie forward. At their backs the ceiling beam pitched down in a rush of charred timber.

Thunderous impact. The house shook. The rafter disintegrated into a vortex of burning brands. The last of the wood’s stored energy ignited in a monstrous shout of flame, exploding like a bomb at their backs, the pressure wave hurling Erin flat against the floor, and for a second she was certain a seething comber of fire would surge over her and Annie and consume them both.

It didn’t. The flame contracted and winked out, its fuel supply devoured in an instant, leaving only a tempest of smoke and, rising above the background roar, Annie’s screams.

Erin spun toward her sister and saw her writhing on the floor as flames crawled over her skirt and blouse.

“ Help me, oh, Jesus, help me!”

With her bare hands Erin slapped the flames, trying desperately to smother them. In her mind she was seven years old again, in the stairwell of another fiery house, beating her sister’s flaming pajamas with the stuffed bear called Miss Fuzzy.

Pain. Pain in her left arm.

Embers had drifted from Annie’s clothes to her own, setting the sleeve of Erin’s blouse ablaze.

She broke free of Annie, pawing at herself, smacking wildly at the bright blemish of flame, but even as she did, new hot spots erupted on her skirt, her blouse, her hair, and she was burning, burning — Oliver had won-after twenty-three years he’d had the last word, God damn him, he’d murdered them both.

Dragon hiss.

Jet of chemical spray.

An arc of aerosolized powder, soaking her and Annie in a white drizzle.

Fire extinguisher. It was a fire extinguisher.

Erin lifted her head, glimpsed a dark figure in the doorway-a man struggling toward them, sweeping the canister from side to side, cutting a narrow swath in the river of fire along the room’s perimeter.

“Michael?” The hoarse, whispery voice was Annie’s.

Over the threshold, a shuddering creak.

Another ceiling beam threatened to give way.

Erin grabbed her sister’s hand and pulled her upright.

Sparks rained down as the beam weakened. The man called Michael took a last step forward, reaching out to them.

Erin’s fingers locked on his wrist. He pulled her, stumbling, through the doorway. Annie clung to Erin’s hand and followed.

Inside the house, a sudden wrenching groan.

Erin looked back in time to see the rafter above the threshold plunge down in a curtain of fire, engulfing the doorway in a roaring shower of debris.

Together they staggered across the gravel court. Fifty feet from the house they stopped, safely distanced from the waves of blistering heat and the torrent of smoke.

Erin’s knees unhinged. She sank into a crouch. Annie knelt beside her, coughing weakly.

From the direction of the gate came the squeal of tires, the pulse of dome lights-police cars arriving at the scene.

Erin looked at the man kneeling beside her. “Who… who are you?”

“Michael Walker.” He forced out the words between harsh gasps. Sweat streaked his face and neck, pasting the open collar of his shirt to his skin. “Tucson P.D.”

“Got here… just in time.”

“Should have been sooner.” He looked at Annie. “Much sooner.”

Annie rubbed the smoke from her eyes. “Well”-she managed a smile-“better late than never.”

Walker’s startled laugh died in a wheeze.

Erin had one other question, but almost no strength to ask it. She tugged Walker’s sleeve, met his gaze, and voiced one word.

“Gund?”

“Dead.”

Slowly she looked away, toward the burning house, and nodded.

“Good.”