Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(112)

“But I didn’t. I stood there. I didn’t move a muscle. So she walked up and slapped me. ‘Go to your room!’ she screamed. Like I really was a little kid, and not the son she’d turned into a drug dealer and a gravedigger and God knows what else. I still didn’t move. She slapped me again, then again.

“‘Enough,’ I said, finally blocking her hand. ‘We’re done.’ I pushed past her, up the stairs to my third-floor room. I would grab my clothes and, of course, my stash of cash. Then I planned on doing exactly what I’d said. I’d throw everything in the car and take off down the drive. Then, once I was safely out of sight, I’d pull over and double-back through the woods to grab you. It would be perfect, I thought. She wouldn’t chase me; I was her son. And nor would she chase after you, as she couldn’t afford any more trouble, especially with Vero’s death to still handle.

“But she wouldn’t let me go. Instead, she followed me the whole way up the stairs. Enraged, shouting, screaming. The older two girls came out to see what was going on. On the second-story landing, Mother caught up with me. She smacked the side of my head; then when I still refused to stop, she threw herself at me. Literally tackled me. It was as if she’d gone crazy. Guess that’s what happens when nobody has ever told you no before. We struggled. And then . . .”

Thomas pauses. He stands six, seven feet away. Too far for me to see his face in the dark.

“She fell down the stairs,” he says flatly. “Landed on her neck. We all heard the crack. She was dead.”

I open my mouth. I close my mouth. I don’t know what to say.

“I told the girls to leave. They were the only people left in the house, and it’s not like they were sorry she was gone. I gave them the keys to the car. On their own, they ransacked the china, silver, crystal. Why not? It was the least they deserved.

“Then . . .” Thomas hesitates, seems to be composing himself. “If I just took off, left the body, of course there would be a major investigation. So I figured I needed to do something. It had been an accident; her neck was broken. Maybe if it looked like she’d been rushing out of the house. You know, because she was escaping from a fire.”

“No.” The second he says the words, my hands close over my ears again. I can’t hear this. My heart, rapid before, is now beating triple, quadruple time. The smell of smoke. The heat of fire. Her screams. “Please stop, please stop, please stop.”

The wind is blowing harder, feeding off my agitation. Battering both of us.

But Thomas doesn’t stop.

“I didn’t know, Nicky. Trust me. I never imagined . . . I grabbed the cans of gasoline from the garage. I poured them all over the second-floor bedrooms, landing, beginning with one of the fireplaces so it would look like, I don’t know, a log had rolled out, starting the fire. Four cans of gasoline I used, because it was raining out, and I needed the place to burn. You pulled yourself from a grave. Well, now I was helping us get a fresh start.

“When I was done, I returned the empty gas jugs to the garage. Then starting in the rear second-story bedroom and working backward toward the door, I tossed matches. Lots and lots of matches. Next thing I knew . . . whoosh! I had no idea. The exterior of the house might have been wet from the rain, but apparently, over the course of a hundred years, the wood on the inside had dried to kindling. I seared the hair off the back of my hands stumbling my way across the foyer and out the front door.

“It was magnificent. It was terrifying. Then I heard her scream.”

“No. No. Please, stop.” I doubled over, hands still covering my ears. Tears streaming down my face.

But Thomas doesn’t. He walks closer and closer. He won’t stop talking. And now, after all these years, I finally can’t stop remembering.

“She must not have been dead,” he whispers. “I mean, I was just a kid, checking a kid, and we’d never had an OD. Maybe she’d been unconscious, like in a coma. I don’t know. But the fire started and she woke up.”

I’m in the woods. I smell the smoke. It makes me crinkle my nose. Who would light a fire in a rainstorm?

Then I hear the first scream. Vero’s scream.

“She couldn’t go down. The second-floor landing was already completely engulfed. So she must’ve headed up. To escape the flames.”

I’m running now. Through the woods, wet branches smacking against my face. I don’t care anymore about Madame Sade’s wrath or Thomas’s pretty promise. I have to get to Vero. She’s screaming my name.

“I could see her,” Thomas says, the flashlight shaking uncontrollably in one hand, the shovel in the other. “Up in the tower bedroom, beating one of the windows with her fists. I tried, Nicky. I rushed back toward the front door, but already the heat was too much. Then I bolted for the garage, to where we kept the work ladder.”

From a distance, I spot her. Vero in the princess bedroom. She’s looking down at me. Already I can see orange flames dancing behind her head.

Vero doesn’t scream anymore. Vero presses her hand against the glass. Vero reaches out to me, as surely as I reach my hand toward her. Running still. So hard, so fast. Trying to . . . I don’t know what to do.

I simply race my way toward her, calling her name.

Now I’m the one screaming her name.

She disappears. The next instant, glass shatters. A chair comes flying through. One of the small ones from the child-size table. The fire roars its approval, inhaling fresh air, reaching hungrily for it.