Carefully, she placed her phone back on the bedside table. Maybe there was a way she could investigate on her own. The Simpson Star, the weekly local paper, would be online at noon. She could check the section where the emergency calls and responses were posted. If a deputy had been sent to number 304, it would show up in that week’s “Sheriff’s Report.” In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to check if any missing-persons reports had been filed recently.
Instead of logging on to her laptop, though, she sat on her bed, shifting until her back was against the headboard. Pulling one of her pillows out from under her hip, she wrapped her arms around it. As she stared at the window across the room, she hugged the pillow and tried not to think about dead bodies, murderous deputies…or how desolate her life would be without Chris in it.
*
The flames followed the line of gasoline, lighting the fumes with a whoosh. Tyler grinned. That was his favorite part, when the fire went from the tiny flicker of a lighter to a ravenous monster intent on consuming an entire building. Heart pounding, he watched as the pile of cardboard caught fire, red and black crawling around the edges of each piece before the yellow flames appeared, growing until they almost touched the garage rafters.
Tyler coughed, eyeing the thickening layer of smoke. As much as he wanted to watch the fire close up, it was time for him to leave. Breathing was getting harder, and the owner—or a neighbor—would notice the smoke and flames. That meant the big red trucks would be arriving soon…and so would his father.
A twinge of guilt ran through him as he moved toward the side door, the one not facing the house. Tyler had promised he’d quit, and he’d tried. It was just such a rush—the roar of flames, the crash of a collapsing structure, the spreading glow as tree after tree ignited in an ever-widening circle, all because of him. He’d created that destruction with some accelerant and a flick of his lighter. It was tempting to tell everyone at school, all those kids who thought he was nothing—when they even thought of him at all. Tyler wouldn’t tell, though. His dad had a hard enough time covering for him as it was.
Cracking open the door, he checked for any observers. A breeze brushed through the doorway, and the flames crackled and danced. After admiring the growing fire for a proud moment, Tyler slipped outside and darted for the cover of the trees.
It only took another minute or two before a cry came from the house, and the owner ran outside, wearing a coat over her pajamas. Tyler watched as she shouted into her cell phone while struggling to hook up the garden hose with her free hand.
The woman reminded him a little of Lou, and he shifted as he remembered, exhilaration and guilt surging through him. That had been the first time he’d set a fire knowing someone was inside. It had been freaky and intense to see her lying limp on the couch in a drugged sleep, to know that he was about to kill her. He’d felt a little bad, since she’d always been nice to him, but she’d been too interested in Willard Gray’s death. She had to be stopped.
Tyler’s dad always told him that being a man meant accepting responsibility. When Lou wouldn’t stop poking around in the Gray investigation, Tyler knew he had to take action. His dad was always protecting Tyler. It’d been his turn to protect his father. He’d failed, though. Lou had lived.
A wail of a siren brought his attention back to his current creation—and destruction. The windows blew out in a shower of broken glass, and Tyler couldn’t hold back an exultant laugh. He’d done that. The garage owner cried out and shifted away from the building, the forgotten hose still clutched in her hand. She stared at the fire, her face and body lit by the flames, as water poured from the hose and pooled uselessly around her feet.
The fire trucks pulled up to the curb just seconds before the sheriff department SUV arrived. Tyler’s dad climbed out of the driver’s seat, his gaze scanning the tree line. Even though Tyler knew he was hidden, he couldn’t stop himself from shrinking farther behind a pine, instinctively trying to avoid that piercing gaze.
The wind picked up, making the flames shoot higher into the night sky. Since Tyler’s gaze was locked on his father, he saw the sheriff’s jacket flap open, revealing a black top that wasn’t his uniform shirt. As if he’d felt his son’s eyes on him, Rob glanced down and then zipped his coat, the tan one with “Sheriff” emblazoned on the back.
As his dad headed toward the fire chief, Tyler gave the fire one last longing glance before disappearing into the trees.
*
“Looking a little rough there, Dais.”
Yawning, she shrugged, too sleepy to be concerned about her bed head. Once Chris was through the doorway, she allowed the door to close behind him and fumbled with the locks. Her hand-eye coordination apparently took longer to awaken than the rest of her.
“What are you doing up so early?” she asked when she eventually managed to secure the final chain.
“It’s ten.” He paused in the middle of untying his boots to look up at her. “That’s not early. In fact, you could probably call that late.”
“Not when you’ll be on nights in a few days.”