Dark Horse

51

Life can change in a heartbeat.

I had nearly missed it. I had been a heartbeat from turning and walking away. Then, there it was: the real reason Paris Montgomery had taken this shitty house too far from the show grounds. I had thought she had come here to be away from prying eyes, and I was right. But her affair with Trey Hughes was not the only thing she had wanted to hide.

The trailer squatted in the overgrowth like something from a bad dream. The sight of it evoked memories I wished I didn't have.

Adrenaline runs through my bloodstream like rocket fuel. My heart pounds like a piston. I'm ready to launch.

I pulled my gun and moved in close along the side of the trailer. Only when I was right on top of it could I see the path where someone had walked around the end to get to the twisted, rusted metal stairs that hung off the back side of the trailer.

Despite the fact that the sun hadn't touched this yard in an hour or more, and the temperature was in fact cool, I was perspiring. I thought I could hear myself breathing.

I've been told to stay put, to wait, but I know that's not the right decision… wasting precious time… It's my case. I know what I'm doing…

I felt the same push now. My case. My discovery. But a hesitation, also. Apprehension. Fear. The last time I had made that decision, I had been wrong. Dead wrong.

I leaned back against the side of the trailer, willing my pulse to slow, trying to slow my thought process, trying to shut out the emotions that had more to do with post-traumatic stress than with the present.

Paris would have rented this property months ago, I reasoned. If this place had been chosen because of the privacy, because of the trailer, that extended the period of premeditation to before the season had begun. I wondered if Erin had been chosen for her job because of her potential as a groom or as a victim.

My hand was shaking as I pulled out my phone with my left hand. I dialed Landry's pager number, left my number and 911. I called his voice mail, left Paris Montgomery's address, and told him to get here ASAP.

And now what? I thought as I closed the phone and stuck it in my pocket. Wait? Wait for Paris to come home and find me in her backyard? Let opportunity and daylight pass, waiting for Landry to call me back?

It's my case. I know what I'm doing…

I knew what Landry would say. He would tell me to wait for him. Go sit in my car like a good girl.

I've never been a good girl.

It's my case. I know what I'm doing…

The last time I had thought that, I had been very wrong.

I wanted to be right.

Slowly, I went up the metal stairs that over time had sunken into the sandy earth and settled away from the trailer, leaving a gap of several inches between the two. Standing to the side of the door, I knocked twice, and called out "Police."

Nothing happened. I couldn't hear any movement within the trailer. No shotgun blasts came through the door. It occurred to me Van Zandt might be inside, hiding out until he could catch his plane to Brussels. He might have been Paris Montgomery's partner in it all, helping her to oust Jade and secure her place in Trey Hughes' life, while Van Zandt indulged himself in his hobby of dominating young girls. Perhaps the ransom was to have been his fee for helping to ruin Don Jade.

And Erin's role in the game? I wasn't sure now, in light of what Landry had told me about the videotapes of her being raped and beaten. The tape of her abduction, which I had watched a dozen times, made me question whether Erin was truly a victim. Perhaps Paris had lured her into the plot with the opportunity to punish her parents, and once the plan was in motion had given her over to Van Zandt. The idea sickened me.

Standing to one side, I held my breath as I opened the door a crack with my left hand.

Billy Golam jerks open the door, wild-eyed, high on his own home cooking-crystal meth. He's breathing hard. He's got a gun in his hand.

A bead of sweat ran down between my eyebrows and skittered off my nose.

Leading with the Glock, I ducked into the trailer and swept the barrel of the gun from left to right. There was no one in the first room. I took in only the swiftest impression of the furnishings: an old steel desk, a pole lamp, a chair. All of it covered in dust and cobwebs. Piles of old newspapers. Discarded paint cans. The stale, musty smells of dust and cigarettes and mildew growing beneath the old linoleum floor assaulted my nose. The sounds of the machinery outside seemed to resonate and amplify inside the tin can trailer.

Cautiously, I moved toward the second room, still leading with the gun.

I hadn't seen the video of Erin's beating, but I knew from Landry's description this was where it had taken place. A bed with a metal-framed headboard sat against the back wall. A filthy, stained mattress with no sheets. Bloodstains.

I pictured Erin there as Landry had described her: naked, bruised, chained by one arm to the headboard, screaming as her assailant beat her with a whip. I pictured her as a victim.

A few feet from the foot of the bed stood a tripod with a video camera perched atop it. Behind the tripod a table littered with empty soda cans, half-empty water bottles, opened bags of chips, and an ashtray full of butts. There were a couple of lawn chairs, one with a copy of In Style magazine left on the seat, the other with clothes tossed carelessly over the arm and back and dropped on the floor beside it.

A movie set. The stage for a twisted drama with a final act yet to be played out.

The roar of the machines outside had ceased. I felt the silence like a presence that had just come through the door. The skin on my arms and the back of my neck prickled with awareness.

I moved to stand beside the wall next to the doorway into the first room, the Glock raised and ready.

I could hear, but not see the exterior door open. I waited.

Movement in the front room. The sound of shoes scuffing and thumping on the old linoleum. The rattle of the old paint cans knocking together. The smell of paint thinner.

I wondered, if I stepped through the doorway, who I would confront. Paris? Van Zandt? Trey Hughes?

I moved into the doorway and leveled my gun on Chad Seabright.

"You're going to lose your seat on the student council for this."

He stared at me as paint thinner puddled on the floor around his shoes.

"I'd ask what you're doing here, Chad, but that seems obvious."

"No," he said, shaking his head, eyes wide. "You don't understand. It's not what you think."

"Really? I'm not watching you prepare to destroy evidence of a crime?"

"I didn't have anything to do with it!" he said. "Erin called me from the hospital. She begged me to help her."

"And you-a complete innocent-just dropped everything to commit a felony for her?"

"I love her," he said earnestly. "She screwed up. I don't want her to go to prison."

"And what would she go to prison for, Chad?" I asked. "She's supposed to be the victim in all this."

"She is," he insisted.

"But she told you to come here and burn the place? She told the detectives she didn't know where she'd been held. How is it you knew to come here?"

I could see the wheels spinning in his mind as he scrambled for an explanation.

"Why would Erin be in trouble, Chad?" I asked again. "Detective Landry has the videotapes of her being beaten and raped."

"That was her idea."

"To get beaten? To be raped? That was Erin's idea?"

"No. Paris. It wasn't supposed to be real. That's what Erin said. It was supposed to be like a hoax. That's what Paris told her. To ruin Jade so she could take over his business. But everything got way out of hand. Paris turned on her. They almost killed her."

"Who are 'they'?"

He looked away and heaved a sigh, agitated. Sweat greased his forehead. "I don't know. She only talked about Paris. And now she's scared Paris will try to take her down with her."

"So you'll burn the crime scene and everyone calls it even. Is that it?"

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "I know how it looks."

"It looks like you're in it up to your eyeballs, Junior," I said. "Up against the wall and spread 'em."

"Please don't do this," he said, blinking back tears. "I don't want any trouble with the cops. I'm supposed to go to Brown next fall."

"You should have thought of that before you agreed to commit arson."

"I was only helping Erin," he said again. "She's not a bad person. Really, she isn't. She just- It's just that- She always gets a raw deal. And she wanted to get back at my father."

"And you didn't?"

"I'll graduate soon. It won't matter what he thinks. Erin and I can be together then."

"Up against the wall," I said again.

"Can't you have a little sympathy?" he asked, crying now, taking a step toward the wall.

"I'm not the sympathetic sort."

I moved farther into the room as Chad moved toward the wall that divided the spaces. A slow dance of unwilling partners trading places. I kept the gun on him. My gaze darted to the side as I stepped past the open door.

Paris Montgomery was coming up the steps.

As I turned my head, Chad turned and charged me, his face twisted with rage.

My gun went off as he hit my forearms and deflected my aim. I stumbled backward, his weight coming against me, paint cans and stacks of old newspapers tripping me. My breath went out of me as we hit the floor, the back of my head banging so hard I saw stars.

The Glock was still in my right hand, my finger jammed through the trigger guard. The gun was out of position, my trigger finger bent at an unnatural angle. I couldn't shoot, but brought the gun up and slapped the body of it as hard as I could against Chad Seabright's head. He grunted, and blood ran from a gash in his cheek as he tried to get a hand around my throat.

I swung and hit him again, the barrel of the Glock tearing across his right eye. The eyeball exploded, fluid and blood raining out of the collapsing tissue. Chad screamed and threw himself off me, hands over his face.

I rolled away from him, trying to get my legs under me, slipping through paint thinner, clawing at anything that might give me purchase.

"You bitch! You fucking bitch!" Chad screamed behind me.

Grabbing the leg of the metal desk, I pulled myself up. I glanced back to see Chad, one hand pressed against his ruined eye, the other swinging a paint can. The can caught me on the left jaw and snapped my head sideways.

I fell across the desktop, grabbed the edge with one hand, and dragged myself over as Chad struck at me with the empty can again and again.

Hitting the floor on the other side, I fumbled to pull my gun free of my broken finger. Adrenaline blocked the pain. I would feel it later-if I was lucky.

I expected Chad to come over the desk, but instead as I looked up I saw the translucent flash of orange and blue across the room as the paint thinner was ignited and the gases exploded upward.

Gripping the Glock, my left forefinger on the trigger, I pushed myself to my feet and fired as Chad went out the door and slammed it shut behind him.

The far side of the room was in flames, the fire licking hungrily up the cheap paneled wall to the ceiling, catching on the piles of paper on the floor. It burned toward me. It burned toward the second room. The trailer would be fully engulfed in a matter of minutes. And as far as I could see, there was no way out.

L andry could see the glow of the fire a mile away, though he hoped against hope-even as he stepped on the gas and went with lights and sirens-that the source of the blaze would be something else, somewhere else. But as he neared the address Elena had given him, he knew it wasn't. The county dispatcher was calling the code over the radio.

Landry pulled in the yard, jumped out of the car, and ran to the back of the property.

The walls and windows of a small house trailer were silhouetted against the backdrop of orange.

"Elena!" He screamed her name to be heard above the roar. "Elena!"

Jesus God, if she was inside…

"Elena!"

He ran toward the trailer, but the heat pushed him back.

If she was inside, she was dead.

Coughing, I ran for the second room, flames chasing me, flames already shooting up the wall around the doorway. I could smell the paint thinner that soaked my shirt. One lick of a flame and I would be swallowed whole.

Another exit door was located in the far back corner of the second room. The smoke was so thick, I could barely see it. Stumbling over chairs, I ran for it, hit it running, turned the doorknob and shoved. Locked. I twisted the deadbolt and tried again. Locked from the outside. The door wouldn't give.

The fire rolled into the room like a tide on the flimsy ceiling.

Jamming the gun in the back of my jeans, I grabbed the video camera off the tripod, tossed the camera on the bed and swung the tripod like a baseball bat at the window where Erin Seabright had written the word HELP in the dust. Once. Twice. The glass fractured but stayed in the frame.

I slammed the end of the tripod against the glass, trying to knock the glass out, afraid that when I did the flames would rush to the fresh oxygen. It would char my skin and melt my lungs, and if I didn't die instantly, I would wish that I had.

I saw the flames coming and thought of hell.

Just when I'd thought I might redeem myself…

One last time I rammed the tripod against the glass.

Elena!" Landry screamed.

Once more he tried to approach the trailer and was knocked flat as something inside the place exploded. Flame rolled out the broken windows in billowing clouds of orange. In the distance he could hear sirens coming. Too late.

Shaken, sick, he pushed himself to his feet and stood there, unable to do anything or think anything.

M y first thought was that it was Chad standing in the yard, watching his handiwork, thrilled with the idea that he had killed me. Then he started toward me and called my name, and I knew it was Landry.

Clutching the video camera against me, I tried to run toward him, my legs like rubber, weak from effort and relief.

"Elena!"

He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me along with him, dragging me away from the burning trailer toward Paris Montgomery's patio.

"Jesus Christ," he breathed, sitting me in a chair, going over me with his eyes, with his hands. His hands were trembling. "I thought you were in there."

"I was," I said, coughing. "Chad Seabright set the fire. He's in this with Paris and Erin. Did you get him? Did you get them?"

He shook his head. "No one in the house but her dog." The Jack Russell was at the patio doors bouncing up and down like a ball as it barked incessantly.

Sirens screamed at the front of the house. A deputy came running around the side of the garage. Landry went to meet him, holding up his shield. As I sat coughing the smoke out of my lungs, I watched him motion toward the house. The deputy nodded and drew his weapon.

"Are you hurt?" he asked me as he came back and crouched down in front of me again. He touched my cheek where the paint can had struck me. I couldn't feel it, didn't know if any damage had been done. I guessed not as Landry moved on, inspecting me.

"I broke my finger," I said, holding up my right hand. He took the hand gently and looked at the finger. "I've had worse."

"You goddam knothead," he muttered. "Why didn't you wait for me?"

"If I had waited for you, Chad would have burned the place-"

"Without you in it!" he said, standing. He paced a little circle in front of me. "You never should have gone in there, Elena! You could have compromised evidence-"

"We would have ended up with nothing!" I shouted back, pushing to my feet.

"We?" he said, stepping into my space, trying to intimidate me.

I stood fast. "It's my case. I brought you into it. That makes we. Don't even think of trying to shove me out again, Landry. I'm in this for Molly, and if it turns out her sister was a willing participant in this thing, I'm going to strangle Erin Seabright with my own two hands. Then you can put me in prison and I'll be out of your way for the next twenty-five years."

"You were almost out of my way permanently!" he yelled, swinging an arm in the direction of the fire. "You think that's what I want?"

"It's what everybody in the SO wants!"

"No!" he shouted. "No! Me. Look at me. That's not what I want."

We were toe to toe. I glared up into his face. He stared at me, his expression slowly, slowly softening.

"No," he whispered. "No, Elena. I don't want you out of my life."

For one rare moment, I didn't know what to say.

"You scared the hell out of me," he said softly.

Likewise, I thought, only I meant in the present tense. Instead, I went back to the other topic. "You said you'd share. My case first."

Landry nodded. "Yes… Yes, I did."

Trucks from the Loxahatchee fire department arrived, the lead truck barreling into the backyard. I watched the firemen leap to action as impassively as if they were on a movie screen, then looked down at my hands. I still held the video camera. I held it out to Landry.

"I saved this. You'll get fingerprints."

"This was where they held her?" he asked, looking back at the trailer.

"Chad said Erin was in on it at first, but that Paris turned against her. But if Paris turned against her, why isn't she dead?"

"I guess we'll have to ask Paris that question," he said. "And Erin. Do you know what Paris is driving?"

"A dark green Infiniti. Chad has a black Toyota pickup. And he's missing an eye. He might turn up at a hospital."

Landry arched a brow. "Missing an eye? You gouged out his eye?"

I shrugged and looked away, the horrible image still so strong in my mind it turned my stomach. "A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do."

He rubbed a hand over his mouth and shook his head. "You're some kind of tough, Estes."

I'm sure I didn't look tough in that moment. The weight of the emerging truth of the case was weighing down on me. The adrenaline rush of the near-death experience had passed.

"Come here," Landry said.

I looked up at him and he touched my face with his hand-the right side, the side that I could feel. I felt it all the way to the heart of me.

"I'm glad you didn't die," he murmured. I had the feeling he wasn't talking about now, about the trailer.

"Me, too," I said, leaning my head against his shoulder. "Me, too."