The Red Hunter(98)

I moved toward the kitchen, but a wall of heat and smoke pushed me back, coughing. The house was groaning, the air growing more toxic by the second. If I’d lain unconscious, I’d have been dead from carbon monoxide poisoning inside a half hour—no doubt what they had in mind when they left.

I raced to the front door, greedily sucking in the outdoor air, still coughing, as I ran to the cellar entrance I knew was on the side of the house. I came to a stop at the two metal doors in the ground locked with an old padlock. I summoned my strength and used the hard sole of my combat boot, drawing strength from my hips to kick at the lock. Once. Twice. Three times. On the fourth kick, the rusted door latch came loose, and I reached down to swing open the doors.

“Here!” I yelled. “Come out this way!”

A moment later, a woman and a young girl, a lanky, squinting boy came into view down below and climbed up quickly. Behind them was Josh Beckham. I watched him as coughing, red-faced, he tumbled out onto the ground. The woman and her daughter fell into each other sobbing. The boy sat beside them, his head in his hands. Josh Beckham just stared, like he was seeing a ghost. I stared back. I never saw his face that night, but I’d seen him many times since then.

“Zoey,” he said, finally. He was pale, as if he was seeing a ghost. And maybe he was. Maybe I was a ghost. “Zoey Drake.”

All three of the others lifted their eyes to stare; they obviously knew my name. Josh moved closer, but I held up a palm. He was a victim that night, too. Or anyway that’s how I saw it. He was in the thrall of older, dangerous men, one of them his brother. I hadn’t forgotten that he tried to hide me, to keep his brother from getting to me. Of course, he hadn’t done much else to help. He’d kept quiet all these years, never turned them in. But he wasn’t much older than I had been.

“Thank you,” said the woman.

She extracted herself from her daughter and came over to me. She had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. “Thank you for saving my daughter. All of us.”

She lay a gentle hand on my arm. If she wondered what had brought me here in the first place, she didn’t ask. I nodded, words failing me.

“You’re hurt,” she said, touching a finger to my head. She was bleeding, too, from the nose, a black eye forming. “Let us call the police.”

“No,” I told her. “Don’t do that. Not yet.”

“Where is he?” asked Josh from the ground. He got to his feet.

“He left with some woman,” I said. “Where is he going? Who is he meeting?”

We stood there, sizing each other up.

“The house,” said Claudia with a choking sob, as though she’d just realized it was on fire. “Our house.”

A big billowing cloud of black was rising into the sky. Someone would see, call the fire department. When a window exploded from the heat, Claudia grabbed the kids, each by a hand, and dragged them away. In the distance, I heard the first wail of sirens. Once the authorities got here, everything was coming out, all of it.

“Where did he go?” I asked again. I saw some kind of battle play out on Josh’s face. In the sad shape of his eyes dwelled fear, regret, a deep despair.

“What are you going to do?” Josh asked.

I didn’t answer, just stood waiting, looking at him right in the eyes.

“The only reason I came here today was so that no one else would get hurt,” he said. He looked back guiltily at Claudia, who was holding her daughter again.

“That’s not the reason I came here,” I said.

The world crowded in around us—the burning house, the crying girl, the low gray ceiling of sky, the approaching sirens. He bowed his head and told me where Rhett Beckham was going.

“Wait,” said Claudia.

I knew her from the blog, her name, her history, her hopes for this house. I could have told her it wasn’t going to work. Some places don’t want to be renovated, some things can’t be fixed. For this house, for this history, maybe fire was a good thing.

“Wherever you’re going,” she said. It was weird; I felt a connection to her, as if I’d known her a long time. “Don’t. Just stay here, let the police come, let all the secrets come out. Once you’re in the light, the healing begins.”

The sirens were louder now, the trucks couldn’t be more than a few minutes away. It was good advice, true and right. I had a moment. I really did.

But finally, I turned away from her and took off in a run for the Suburban.





forty-one


In the gloaming, I approached the warehouse from behind, pulling up slow through the deserted streets with my lights off. There were other vehicles parked: the black car I saw Beckham toss the bag into, and another, a beat-up old red pickup with New York plates. I snapped a shot of the tag with the camera on my phone. That’s when I saw that Mike had called three more times. He’d left a few messages, which I’d listened to on the way up.

“Hey, he’s doing better,” he said. “He’s stable and asking for you. Come to the hospital when you get this.”

Then: “What’s up? Where are you?”

Then a text: “Zoey, he wants to talk to you. I’m trying to keep him calm. Where are you?”

I wanted to go back. I couldn’t, not yet. I wanted to call Mike or Paul, their strong sensible voices always advising temperance, calm. I couldn’t do that either. Mike would know what I was doing. He’d try to talk me in, and he might be able to. I was weak and tired, hurt. I finally—finally—got what he was saying, what my imaginary dad was saying. When seeking revenge, dig two graves. One for yourself. But it was too late. I was too far gone. I was tumbling, falling into that dark place, and maybe that’s where I’d been headed all along. And wasn’t there a part of me that wanted to go?