King? Did he mean Anderson King? She hadn’t seen the sheriff with anyone. Her whole body jerked as the realization hit. It hadn’t been Deputy Macavoy. The sheriff had been moving Anderson King’s body that night.
Slowly, deliberately, Tyler moved closer, leaving a thin trail of gas behind him. Snapping out of her shocked daze, Daisy bolted for the stairs. None of the rooms would be safe downstairs. With their barred windows—or no windows—she couldn’t escape even if she’d been able to force herself outside. Briefly, she considered the front door, but terror instantly smashed that idea. Even with her home on fire, the thought of leaving it liquefied her insides with fear.
Sheer instinct drove her toward her bedroom, her sanctuary, even though she knew it would become her coffin. Her lungs felt tight in the haze of smoke, not allowing her to pull in enough air. After all those miles on the treadmill, all those sessions with Chris, terror and smoke destroyed her fitness, leaving her gasping as she climbed a single flight of steps. At the top of the stairs, she looked over her shoulder to see Tyler, backlit by red and yellow flames, pouring gas in patterns across her hall floor.
“Tyler!” she called, her voice cracking, and he turned to look at her. Heat rushed up the stairs, as hot and dry as if she were baking in an oven. “Tyler, please stop! Why are you doing this?”
“I can’t stop!” His voice broke, as well, but Daisy couldn’t tell if it was from emotion or the smoke. “I have to take care of this. It’s my turn to be a man. Dad protects me, and I protect him. That’s what families do!”
The raw emotion in Tyler’s voice gave Daisy hope. Maybe she could reason with him, get him to stop burning her house. “Your dad wouldn’t want you to hurt me,” she said hoarsely. The smoke was thickening, threatening to choke her, and she held off a cough, since she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop once she’d started. “He wouldn’t want you to do this.”
“Shut up!” His arms flew wide in a vehement gesture, sloshing gas onto her wall. “You don’t know anything. I’m doing this for him! You saw him with Anderson King! He didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t have a choice. King was a blackmailing drug dealer. And what happened to Mr. Gray was his own fault. He’d taken pictures of me at the fires. They would’ve ruined everything!”
The horror of what she was hearing merged with her hellish surroundings. Despite the fact that she knew Tyler, this boy, had stood by while his father killed people, she gave one last attempt at convincing him not to burn her alive. “Please, Tyler. I don’t want to die.”
“I’m sorry.” He stopped playing with the fire and walked to the stairs, his gaze fixed on her face. “You’re nice and really hot, and I don’t want to hurt you. I have to protect him, though.”
“My phone’s in my room, and I’m going to use it to call Chris,” she bluffed. “He’s going to be here in seconds, and he’ll be pissed. You should get out while you can.”
The sound of his laugh made the back of her neck prickle with aversion. “Good luck with that. Dad killed that phone remotely before he called Chris.”
“What?” Confusion made her hesitate. “How could he do that to my phone?”
“It’s not your phone.” He started climbing the stairs, the flames rolling up the walls next to him. “Dad broke in through the crawl space and switched your phone for a matching one. You can’t call for help. You’re not getting out of this house…ever.”
She reeled back as his words hit her like a physical blow. It was her private nightmare, that she would die alone, still trapped in this house. When Tyler laughed again, Daisy knew it was no use. He was going to burn her house to the ground—with her inside.
Darting into her bedroom, she slammed her door and locked it. Turning, she fought the instinctual urge to hide under the bed or in the closet. It wasn’t Tyler who was going to kill her, but what he brought with him. She couldn’t hide from fire and smoke. It would find her.
Her frantic glance took in her room, trying to find a way out. Her computer was downstairs in her study, and it was useless for communicating without power to the modem, anyway. Her gaze locked on the window. Even if she couldn’t force herself to leave through it, she knew she could open it. If she yelled, surely someone would hear her?
Running to the window, she put her hand on the crank. Before she could turn it, she looked across the street at number 304 and went still. Framed by the picture windows, the sheriff was standing in front of Chris, his face buried in his hands. As she watched, Chris stepped closer, placing a hand on one of Rob’s slumped shoulders.
“No!” she yelled, struggling to open the window. “It’s a trap!”