She couldn’t wait for the cops. They could be around the corner or fifty miles away. She needed to get to Beck’s SUV and bust out of here. But Beck wasn’t dumb. He’d be expecting her to try something, so she’d have to distract him. There had to be something in this house she could use.
The house was vast, with six bedrooms and several bathrooms. She went from room to room, searching for something, anything to divert his attention. After experiencing the punishment room, she feared what she’d find in the other bedrooms. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find Norman Bates’s mummified corpse in a rocking chair, and if she had, she would have taken it. It would have made a great body double. But there was just cheerless bedroom after cheerless bedroom. Each housed two to three mattresses, all without box springs. Bare walls greeted her where teen-idol posters should have given the rooms personality and life. Clothes and possessions were absent. Whether they were taken or they never existed, it was impossible to tell. One bedroom was different—the master. That room was a real room, fit for a person—a queen bed, complete with linens, a nightstand, dressers, photographs, paintings, and drapes. Only one thing marred the perfect room—a spray of rust-colored stains covering one wall and the ceiling. Zo? didn’t have to check to know someone had eaten a shotgun at some point in the past. What the hell had gone on in this place?
Desperately hoping that the shotgun was still there, she ignored the carnage and ran to the closet. Inside she found ladies’ clothing but no gun. It confirmed her feeling that this was a woman’s house. Despite its sparseness, the place felt feminine. She didn’t detect a male’s influence in any way. She pulled a dress off a hanger and threw it on. It was floral and three sizes too big, but she’d wear anything to cover her nakedness.
Finding the dress was a nice bonus, but she still hadn’t found anything to cause a distraction. There was nothing here. The place was a damn shrine. It was all so useless. But that wasn’t true. Her mind shifted gears. Yes, this place was a shrine. She didn’t know why, and God only knew the damage it had done to Beck. But for some reason, he’d left it for posterity. Destroying his shrine would bring him running.
She ran back to one of the bedrooms and peered out of the window. A propane tank sat just outside. She’d seen it when she’d first reached the house. She just hoped it had some gas inside. She didn’t need much, just enough to start a fire.
She cut back to the kitchen and turned the knob on a burner. Gas leaked from it.
“Thank you, Jesus,” she said and turned it off.
She picked up a wooden chair and smashed it down on the floor. It buckled under the force. She smashed it down again, and it shattered. She tore one of the legs free. From the living room, she grabbed a doily and wrapped it around the leg. Her torch was complete. Now she just needed a flame.
She left the house with her torch and ran headlong back into the grass toward the blaze. The heat was intense. She felt every drop of moisture on her face evaporate and her skin turn brittle as she approached the oncoming fire. She jammed the torch into the flames. The doily blackened but didn’t ignite. The fire’s heat ate into her hand, but she kept it steady. The need for this to work outweighed any pain she had to endure.
“Burn, goddamn you.”
And her blasphemy was rewarded. The torch ignited.
She raced back to the house, shielding the flame with her hand. The makeshift torch was burning, but the flare was meager.
She reached the house just as the torch was going out. She took it into the living room and touched it to the sofa. The cheap, synthetic fabric ignited on contact and a blaze began. She tossed the torch on a lounger and darted into the kitchen, where she turned on all the burners on the range. On her way out of the house, she closed the door, leaving the marriage of propane and a naked flame to occur.
She hid in the grass again for cover. She ran parallel to the oncoming fire but away from the house and the all-important path back to the dirt road. That couldn’t be helped. She didn’t want to be anywhere close when the house went up. She had no idea how large a propane explosion would be, so the farther away from it she was, the better. She just hoped the blast was big enough to bring the cops running.
She saw her best bet for getting back to the road was retracing her steps from the stable. The exact route she’d taken was in flames, but for all the fire’s swiftness, it hadn’t claimed every avenue. The pasture behind the stable was virtually untouched. There was a portion that connected to a small horse trail, which would take her back to the stable, as long as she was quick. The shortest line to freedom was a straight line, but that would bring her close to the fire. It didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter. She had to go now.