He exited the vehicle and tossed the board back onto the truck bed. Never leave even casual evidence. Details. The devil and difference between success and failure was in taking care of the details.
That’s why he’d liberated this truck from a dealer of junk cars over in Kemp. Everyone suspected that not all the vehicles were legally obtained. If a truck disappeared from where he kept his merchandise in his front yard, who was he going to call? Ghostbusters?
He snickered at his own joke. First time he’d cracked a smile all day. He put the truck into drive and continued toward his destination.
His failure three weeks ago to make the final cut from seventy to the final thirty selected to become firefighters came at a high price. It caused him to make a mistake. A big one. The result was lodged in his brain, humming like a hornets’ nest night and day.
FIRE KILLS HOMELESS MAN: ARSON SUSPECTED.
Every day since, the headline played through his every thought like the crawl at the bottom of a newscast.
He jerked the wheel to avoid a water spigot in the field.
He wasn’t a killer. He scouted his sites regularly, never knowing when he’d need one. No evidence of squatters, or even the occasional homeless seeking shelter that night. He’d walked the perimeter himself.
Should have checked the second floor.
He would have if he hadn’t been sobbing so hard he couldn’t hardly function. He was always careful.
No, he wasn’t a killer. He’d been made a killer.
By Noah Glover.
He’d nearly gotten his revenge too.
But then his most detailed and cunning plan was wrecked. By a woman.
He pulled up in front of the abandoned mobile home. Gloves on, he grabbed a can from the rear and moved toward the trailer, anticipation a boiling rage in his gut.
Finally, he drew out the lighter, the only thing his father ever gave him.
Bright flames of light soon licked at the structure.
He stood well back and watched as dozens of glowing cinders flashed through the rising column of smoke like fireflies on a summer night. The anxious gnawing in his stomach soon turned to butterflies.
Finally, cleansing release.
And a new plan began to emerge.
Of course. Why hadn’t he thought it before?
Better than death. Prison. Glover would be alive to suffer, a long time.
He grinned, wishing he could stay longer. But that would be careless.
He didn’t turn on a light until he reached the road again. He could see cars coming. The fire must be seen for miles now.
He pulled onto the highway, watching to see if anyone noticed. But the first vehicle slowed and then turned into the field that he’d just left. Maybe he hadn’t been seen. His gaze flickered back and forth from rearview mirror to unlit road. When the second vehicle paused at the same turn in, he knew he’d gotten away.
He drove into Mansfield and left the truck with a friend who let him park it on his property. He checked the truck carefully, grabbing up the floor mats his feet had rested on. Then he carefully folded up the plastic drop cloth he’d sat on while he drove. Finally, he walked over to his fire truck, emblazoned with the Edgecliff Village Fire Rescue decal and dumped his evidence inside, along with the gloves and shower cap.
His mind was clear.
All of his problems began and ended with Glover. No Glover. No problems.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She couldn’t breathe. Blistering heat pressed in on her from all sides. Smoke invaded her nostrils, forcing its way into her throat, blocking her scream.
She couldn’t move. Merciless darkness held her down.
Her chest heaved. Spasms of fear quaked through her.
In the distance a dog howled, long and mournful.
She was dying. She didn’t want to die. Not yet.
Carly sat up in bed, cold sweat trickling down her back. Even with eyes open, she couldn’t shake the sense of terror. Darkness blanketed what should have been familiar. Where was she?
Possibilities skittered through her thoughts as she strained for clues.
Was this Brooklyn? The track of an elevated train ran at eye level outside the tiny efficiency apartment that she’d shared with two other hopeful models. But no, no sounds of that urban lifestyle filtered back to her.
Was she in the Parisian Left Bank studio she’d later shared with several rotating flight attendants? They’d seldom slept there, only dropped off bags and changed clothes between parties and flights.
She held her breath, waiting to hear the ancient wrought-iron elevator that clanked up and down the building like an elderly relative.
Nothing.
Piombino, Italy? No, the suffocating sense that still held her in its grip was the opposite of the fresh, sea salt–tinged air of the Italian port city where she and Arnaud—
Where was Arnaud?
She felt in the darkness beside her. The bed was empty. Then she remembered.
Dead. Arnaud was dead.
Shivering, she reached to turn on the bedside lamp that revealed the small bedroom of her latest home, a loft apartment on Vickery in Fort Worth, Texas. She lived alone. She was alone. As she had been for the past four years.