Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(113)

I eye the edge of the open parlor in front of us, and almost as if I’ve willed it a thread of flame appears in front of my eyes and darts along the perimeter straight to the front door, where—whoosh—it hits the mother lode of accelerant.

My mother and I both stagger back, trying to shield our faces from the sudden heat. The entryway is gone, consumed in a wall of flame, while to our right the kitchen flares with fresh heat while belching out black soot.

My mother moves first. She tugs at my hand, moving in the direction of the stairs. I try to resist. We go up, and then what? Fire climbs, heat rises. We will only be trapping ourselves on a different level. But on the other hand, both first-floor exits are now blocked. I give up and follow.

My mother doesn’t talk. I can hear her ragged breathing as she hits the stairs, still holding my hand, still pulling insistently.

“Fire extinguisher?” I manage to gasp.

“In the kitchen.”

Which certainly isn’t going to help us. “We should … call … nine-one-one,” I try next.

“How can they not know?”

Indeed, a fire already this big in a neighborhood with houses this close together, half of Cambridge has probably dialed by now. Given the intensity of the flames, however, the fire engines need to get here miraculously fast.

Keep climbing. Help is coming. I have to believe it.

I choke on more fumes, use my free hand to cover my mouth, and think immediately, This can’t be good for the baby.

We make it to the second floor. My bedroom suite is to the right, but given how greedily the fire is burning in the entryway beneath it, we don’t dare risk it. We head toward my mother’s rooms instead, which are positioned over the kitchen. Halfway there, we pass the guest bath. I stop abruptly. My turn to tug at my mother’s hand.

“Wet towels,” I manage to choke out, the smoke growing heavier. “Wet towels … wrap around … our faces.”

She gets it. For once in our lives, we move together. I’m throwing bath towels in the tub, she throws hand towels in the sink, and we’re both running cold water, soaking through our piles. No more words. Working as quickly as we can. I throw the first dripping bath towel around my mother’s shoulders to try to block the heat, as she pretty much slaps the smaller version on my face.

It takes a few minutes to come up with our new ensembles of cold, wet white; then we brave the hallway once again. Only to find the shadow of a man standing right in front of us.

My mother screams.

Me, I simply stare at what the man has cradled in his arm: my father’s shotgun.

—

“THERE!” D.D. YELLED, hitting the dash with her hand, just before Phil hit the brakes. “Rocket Langley. Just took off through that yard.”

Phil didn’t even get the vehicle pulled over. She already had the door open, was tumbling out into the snowy bank. Her phone was buzzing away in her pocket. She grabbed it out of habit, taking off in pursuit even as she heard Phil on the radio, calling for backup behind her.

“Rocket Langley torched the Harvard campus as a distraction,” D.D. heard Flora exhale in a rush. “Evie’s mother’s house is his real target.”

“I’m on Langley. In pursuit now.”

“Okay. I’m almost at the house—shit! House is on fire. Repeat. Front windows totally engulfed. He got here first. Goddammit!”

“Are Evie and her mother inside?” D.D. demanded. There, Rocket’s black hoodie, disappearing around the corner. She attempted to put on a fresh burst of speed, slid in the slush, and forced herself to move more lightly. This is why a Boston detective wore decent boots even in December.

“Car’s in the drive,” Flora said tensely. “A second car, too. Uh … luxury SUV. Lexus.”

“Dick Delaney,” D.D. muttered. “Listen to me, Flora. He’s our shooter. He set this all up. If he’s in that house, they’re in double trouble.”

“That’s how Rocket did it!” Flora snapped. “I was trying to figure out how he could access such a prime target. Delaney set it all up for him!”

Up ahead, the firebug in question was gaining ground. The kid was young, fast, and all limbs. Just for a moment, D.D. really hated being a middle-aged woman who was none of those things.

But you didn’t have to be fresher. Just smarter.

“Phil’s called for backup,” she gasped, watching the kid dart forward, working the next line of angles, preparing her play.

“I’m on it,” Flora said.

D.D. clicked off, jammed her phone back into her pocket. Knowing it was her job to nab the arsonist.

And that she’d just sent her CI—a woman she respected, and even worried about—into the flames.

—

IT OCCURS TO me again that I don’t know fire. For all my training, preparations, dangerous scenarios, this isn’t something I know. How to start a fire in survival conditions, sure. But I studied fire as a tool, not as a threat for me to survive.

I shudder at the irony. I never worried about fire, because Jacob didn’t like fire. Further proof that all these years later that motherfucker is still running my life.

I seize my rage. Good things can be forged from bone-deep fury.

The front of Evie’s mom’s stately Colonial is an inferno. Porch windows shattering, flames roaring up in response to the fresh influx of oxygen, dancing around what has to be some kind of fire-rated front door in pure frustration.