Hosed (Happy Cat #1)(54)

“Burn it down,” Savannah mumbles. “Burn it all down.”

“Okay, okay,” Cassie soothes. “We’ll figure it out. Just don’t do anything crazy before I get there to help, okay?”

Jessie taps the end button. “There’s more, but that’s the relevant part.”

“It’s a stretch, chief,” I say, shaking my head. But I can’t deny there’s a whisper of doubt in my head that wasn’t there before. I’m still ninety percent sure this is an innocent conversation taken out of context, but…

“It is,” Jessie agrees. “And like I said on the phone, it’s inadmissible in court. But the fingerprints they pulled from the chemical drums Sheriff Briggs found at the dump yesterday are going to be enough to put Cassie in a tough spot.”

“What chemical drums?” I ask, propping my hands low on my hips.

“The sheriff got an anonymous tip from a concerned citizen, probably the same one who sent him this conversation.”

“How did they get their hands on that conversation, by the way?” I ask, jabbing a finger at Jessie’s phone. “That was clearly private.”

Jessie’s shoulders rise and fall. “I don’t know. Maybe someone was recording outgoing calls from the factory. Or maybe someone suspected Savannah was on the verge of doing something dangerous and tapped her phone.”

“Sketchy. And not someone I’m inclined to believe. If they’re so righteous and concerned, why not come out of the shadows?”

Before Jessie can answer, the wailing of sirens echoes through the square. We turn in time to see a fire truck rush by and we hurry out of the alley.

“I’ll call dispatch, see what’s up,” Jessie says, but I already know what’s up.

Or what’s been lit up.

The smoke rising from the end of Main Street could be coming from the post office or the taxidermy shop, but I instinctively know it’s not. It’s Sunshine Toys.

On fire.

Again.





Twenty-Seven





Cassie





* * *



I’m an idiot.

I noticed the back door felt warm to the touch, but I went in anyway. I pushed inside, got doused with a rush of foul-smelling liquid someone must have propped above the door, and now I’m trapped in a smoke-filled room. Something’s on fire in the staff locker room and the door I came in through is stuck tight.

I haul on the handle, throwing my full weight into it, but it doesn’t budge and soon I’m coughing too hard to stand up straight.

I fall to my knees, sucking in deep breaths. The air is cleaner down here.

After a few moments my head clears, and I start toward the staff bathrooms on my hands and knees. There’s a window in the women’s bathroom. It’s high and tight, but there’s a chance I can get through it. Even if I can’t, I can at least soak my clothes with water and huddle in the far stall until the cavalry arrives.

The fire department will be here soon, before this fire has the chance to become too dangerous.

I’m sure that’s what whoever started it was counting on.

Someone started this fire, I realize in a burst of clarity. Someone started this fire and then summoned me here so I’d be right in the middle of it when Happy Cat’s finest showed up to put it out.

I’m getting angry—really angry—and then I push through the door to the bathroom and look up to see a pair of shoes disappearing through the open window.

They’re Italian loafers.

Italian fucking loafers.

I know those loafers. Savannah bought those loafers the last time she came to see me in San Francisco.

As a present.

For the sheep-fucker.

“Steve!” His name emerges as a croak from my smoke-raw throat and my demands for him to get his ass back here and confess to what he’s done end in a coughing fit. I shut the bathroom door behind me, but the smoke is still getting in somehow.

A vent? The ceiling?

I have no idea, but by the time I crawl-cough down the aisle of toilets to the window, I’m dizzy and my lungs feel like they’ve been clawed at from the inside. I stand, reaching for the window ledge, but I’m too short. I can barely curl my fingers around it and there’s no way I’m going to have the strength to pull myself up. Even a rock-climbing badass my height would struggle with this one, and I am no kind of badass.

I’m an idiot. A fool covered in foul-smelling funk, coughing her head off on the floor of a bathroom, reduced to praying that someone will come save her before it’s too late.

My gut says Steve didn’t intend to kill me—just frame me good and proper—but that might not matter.

I could die here, I realize, head spinning as I sag against the wall, tears rising in my eyes. I could die and Ryan will never know why I left his bed or how I came to be here. He might even assume I really am behind all this and that…

Well, that is maybe the saddest thing ever.

My chest goes tight, so tight, and raw. And then my head is spinning and I’m sliding onto the white tile for a nap, visions of Steve being stabbed with a hundred tiny pitchforks while demon sheep tap dance on his spine spinning through my head.

Then there’s nothing.

It’s all smoke and fog and a buzzing sound, high and insistent in my ears.