Burn for You (38 page)

Probably both, he thought with a grin.

He started across the parking lot, eager to wrap her up in his arms and finally tell her what he should’ve said last night. She started walking toward him too, and the relief of seeing her alive and well swelled painfully in his chest.

They’d covered half the distance to each other when Kearney called her back to the rig, yelling something Jason couldn’t quite catch at this distance.

Short blond hair blowing in the breeze, she nodded at Kearney then turned back to Jason, holding up a finger. “One minute,” she called out. “Be there in a second, okay?”

Jason nodded, watching her go around to the back door of the ambulance. After she disappeared, he turned back to watch EFD continue to set down the blaze at the Tech Building across the street.

Preparing to roll out, the police officers who’d been dismissed returned to their squads. Car doors slammed all up and down the parking lot. Soon the lot would be clear of all excess personnel.

Couldn’t be soon enough for Jason.

He squinted, trying to see if the fire at the Tech Building was getting any worse. From here, it appeared to be almost completely out. No sign of flames to be seen.

He felt it before he saw it. The sonic boom hit him in the middle of the chest and radiated out.

“Son of a bitch!” McCann ran toward Jason and away from the fireball that used to be his SUV. “Get down!”

McCann tackled Jason to the ground and the heat from the blast had both of them crawling to get away. Jason tried to move fast, but he couldn’t put weight on his broken hand. The gas tank exploded and more debris flew over their heads.

“Over there!” McCann pointed to a nearby squad car they could take shelter behind.

Placing the squad between themselves and McCann’s burning SUV, they both sat leaning against the car. McCann got on his radio. “Send backup fire trucks to the parking lot on Sheridan. Police SUV just exploded. Let’s get the bomb squad over here too.”

Another explosion, this one closer to where Jason and McCann had taken cover.

“Fuck-n-A,” McCann yelled over the blast. “Another squad!”

“LT, we gotta move! The cars are rigged.” He pulled McCann away from the squad with his good hand and they ran across the parking lot, yelling at everyone to get out of their vehicles.

“Get out!” Jason banged his bandaged hand on the hood of one of EFD’s command staff SUVs. “Get out! Get out of your car!”

Victoria.

Running faster, he dropped McCann’s arm and made a beeline for Victoria’s ambulance. “Victoria! Kearney! Guys, get out of the rig! Victoria!”

Right before his eyes, the ambulance exploded, the ball of fire bigger and brighter than any squad car. “Victoria!” he screamed and ran harder, getting close enough to the flames that the heat singed the hair on his arms.

“Get back!” Arms came around him and he tried to fight them off.

“Victoria!” He twisted and pulled. “Victoria!”

“Stop!” McCann’s voice was rough and ragged in his ear. “Stop. You can’t get any closer, son.”

“No! Victoria!”

He was surrounded by shouting. More hands holding him back. “Keep him back. Help me. Get him the fuck back!”

He fought harder, dragging the weight of those who tried to stop him, welcoming the heat that burned his skin. “Victoria!”

He screamed her name. Again and again. Over and over. Until his voice was shredded.

Shredded. Just like his heart.

Chapter 28

“Chief Bines?” Victoria smiled, puzzled to see the chief’s shiny black loafers sticking out from under the back of the ambulance like the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East. She bent over to peek under the ambulance. “Hey, Chief. Whatchya doing under there?”

“Nothing. Just checking something out.”

“Oh, anything I can help with?”

“No, no. I’m all done anyway.” He awkwardly scooted his large frame out from under the rig.

“The ambulance seemed to be driving fine—”

The sound of a huge explosion sent Victoria crouching for cover.

“What the hell was that?” On her knees, she peeked around the corner of the ambulance. “Oh, my God. Chief! A police SUV just blew up.”

Jason
.

When she’d last seen him, he hadn’t been far from that blast. She started that way, but the chief grabbed her hand and spun her back to him.

“I’m sorry, Russo.” He held a gun pointed directly at her face. “I sure didn’t want to have to do this, especially not to a nice kid like you.”

“Chief?” Dumbfounded, she stood frozen while he unclipped her radio and tossed it into the open rear doors of the ambulance.

“Come on.” He grabbed her by the arm, forcing her to walk in front of him, while he pressed the muzzle of the gun to her lower back. “We can’t do this here. So, get walking.”

He steered her away from the ambulance, in the opposite direction of the blast.

The parking lot was in chaos and no one seemed to pay much attention to the two people walking away. All eyes were on the fire burning on the far side of the lot.

Another explosion sounded, and Victoria whipped around, trying to see what had happened. “Keep walking,” the chief said, pressing the gun into her spine.

She closed her eyes.
Please, let Jason be okay. Let my guys be okay. Let everyone be okay.

The chief led her to the tree lined edge of the parking lot. The blockades keeping the public away from campus meant there was no street traffic. Sirens wailed in the distance, but they came from the north. Haven Street was empty. Her only hope was that perhaps a pedestrian, trying to get a look at the drama, would walk by and see them.

“Why?” she asked. “Why are you doing this?”

He pushed her across Haven Street and behind a row of bushes. “Get down.”

She sat down, hidden from the view of any who might pass by, thanks to the stupid hedges. The chief remained standing, surveying the destruction he had obviously caused.

A third explosion sounded. This one louder and longer than all the others. It was the ambulance. She knew it without even looking. The size of the rig, the huge gas tank. It would be a fireball like no other.

“Why?” she asked again, her heart beating furiously.

Had Bob been inside the ambulance? He’d asked her to get some water for a hydration run for the guys fighting the fire. With any luck, he wasn’t inside. But if he’d gone looking to see what was taking her so long…

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to run a fire department?” the chief asked.

“I can’t imagine this is making it any easier,” she said.

His eyes still on the pandemonium of the parking lot, he ignored her sarcastic comment. “For a few years after 9-11 people took us seriously. The city was willing to fund the things we needed. Top of the line emergency vehicles. Funds to hire plenty of personnel. But they’re starting to forget, you know?”

Across the street, people were shouting orders, calling for help. It was impossible to make out what was being said in the chaos, but the panic was palpable.

Bines’ voice was eerily calm, his eyes drinking in the scene before him. “I asked for funding to outfit a HAZMAT team and they told me we didn’t need that. I reminded them that we have one of the premier universities in the country—that it could easily be a target of terrorism—and they told me there wasn’t enough money. But I’ve got their attention now, don’t I?”

There was something not quite sane about the satisfied smirk tugging at his lips, and she stayed silent, hoping he’d forget about her and whatever intentions he had for that gun in his hand.

“But then you had to come along.” He turned away from the fires and pulled her up, his grip biting painfully into her arm. “I can’t have you telling people it was me. They’re supposed to think it was that hot-shot cop.”

He steered her toward a nearby administration building that’d been evacuated some time ago.

“You were trying to frame Jason,” she whispered.

“I had him too.” He pulled the door open and nudged her inside, pressing the gun into her back. “His own police department was ready to start investigating him. I figured eventually someone would pick up on the periodic table clues, and they’d wonder who could possibly think up such a thing.”

“The chemical engineer.”

“That’s right. See, I did my research on him. He has all the makings of a sociopath. Horrible past. Prostitute, drug-using mother. Sent to a military reform school. And a genius to boot. It’s only a matter of time before they put it all together.”

“But why? Why Jason?”

The chief seemed to be improvising, opening doors as they passed, looking into the rooms for something and then moving on when he didn’t find whatever it was he was searching for.

“Nothing personal. Just needed the arson investigator out of my way. I’ve been running this town my way for years.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. Maybe if she could keep him talking, he’d let his guard down, and she’d find her opening.

“You’d be surprised what a well-placed fire can do to rid this world of its scum. Dealers. Gang-bangers. You name the criminal, I’ve helped get rid of them.”

He was insane. He thought himself some sort of vigilante arsonist, but he was taking lives and there was no excusing that. “But targeting first responders? That doesn’t make any sense…”

He stopped. Evidently, he’d found a room that met his specifications. A broom closet with a heavy sliding bolt latch.

On the outside of the door.

Instinct forcing her to resist, she planted her feet, but he pushed her inside forcefully. She fell against the closet’s back wall, sending a mess of brooms and mops clattering. Turning back, she found him blocking the doorway with his large frame. The tight space of the closet closed in around her, making her feel claustrophobic. Caged. Trapped.

Pointing the gun at her, he answered her question. “Collateral damage, unfortunately.”

She’d never have believed that someone who looked so calm and coldly rational could epitomize insanity so well. Heart racing, she reached behind her back and grabbed a broom handle, waiting for the right moment.

“Don’t you see?” he asked, still leveling the gun at her head. “I had to get their attention. The town wasn’t giving me what I wanted, so I had to up the ante. No one cares when criminals die. But heroes? That shit’s been all over the news for months.”

“So what now? You’re going to shoot me and leave me for dead in this closet?”

“Ah, sugar. I thought you’d have realized it by now. That’s not my style.”

Knowing her time had run out, she whipped the broom handle toward the doorway, but instead of striking Bines, it hit solid wood.

The bolt scraped and clicked when Bines slid it into place. She grabbed the doorknob, but it turned ineffectually in her hand.

“No. Don’t do this.” In the darkness, panic squeezed her lungs, making it hard to breath. “Please! Don’t do this.” She beat the door with her fists but stopped when rational thought returned. There was no one here to hear her.

Backing up as far as she could, she took a running start toward the door, hoping to break the bolt from the doorjamb.

It was no use.

She couldn’t get enough momentum in the small closet, and three attempts later, she was closer to dislocating her shoulder than she was to budging the door.

Frantically, she groped in the dark for something, anything that might help her escape. And several minutes later, when the acrid smell of smoke hit her nose, she willed herself not to panic.

* * *

Racing through the parking lot, Jason searched for Victoria.

Once McCann had talked him down, he’d realized she couldn’t have been inside that ambulance. The explosions would’ve lured her out of the rig. At the first sign of danger, she’d have been looking for people to help, not hiding inside the truck. He was certain of it.

Except that he’d been up and down this parking lot three times, and he hadn’t found her yet. She hadn’t answered her radio either.

Slowing his jog, he stopped to catch his breath.

“Jason.”

He turned at the sound of Lieutenant McCann’s voice, ignoring the prickle of apprehension caused by the lieutenant’s use of his first name. “You find her?” he asked, his voice raspy and broken—either from breathing the smoke-filled air or screaming Victoria’s name. Probably both.

“Jason, listen. Why don’t you come over here and sit down?” McCann put an arm over Jason’s shoulder and led him to one of the many ambulances that had arrived on scene in the last fifteen minutes. “Let them take a look at your arms. And that hand.”

Jason complied and sat on the bumper but didn’t drop his question. “Has anyone seen her?”

“No.” McCann signaled a paramedic to come over. “Bob Kearney said the last time he saw her, she was headed into the ambulance.”

Jason craned his neck in order to see McCann over the paramedic bent over his unraveling bandages. “But when was that? Before the first explosion, right?”

McCann nodded.

“Then I’m sure she got out after that. She’s here somewhere. She has to be.” Any other outcome was completely unacceptable.

McCann held his earpiece, listening to some communication. “They’ve got the ambulance fire contained. I’m going to take a look.”

Jason stood and tried to walk with McCann, but he was tethered to the paramedic re-splinting and wrapping his hand.

“I got this,” McCann said. “I’ll be back in a sec. Just sit tight.”

He sat back down, letting the paramedic examine his reddened arms, murmuring one-word answers when asked about his pain. He removed his shirt when instructed, so the paramedic could clean and bandage a few spots where burning debris had hit him in the chest and torso. McCann had been just as close to the explosion as Jason, but he’d been better protected by his long-sleeved uniform and bullet proof vest. Jason, on the other hand, had just been wearing a thin cotton police polo.

Scanning the crowd of emergency response personnel, he barely paid attention while the paramedic droned on about the treatment of first and second degree burns.

Several minutes later, McCann returned. A twisted piece of melted black plastic in his hand.