45. forty-three
forty-three
. . .
CREW
“Your daughter.”
Those two words seemed to momentarily stun Mrs. Saunders, who gasped dramatically in their wake.
“That little bitch,” she hissed. “Missy has always been a cunt, but my daughter…I thought I raised her better.”
Before I could use her momentary distraction to my and Parker’s advantage and take her out, she bent and lifted the gas can, then disappeared up the stairs.
My eyes scanned the area in desperation. There had to be something , some way out.
“What are we going to do?” Parker choked out between sobs.
“Stay calm, Parker, and follow my lead.”
“What lead?” he hissed.
Good question .
Mrs. Saunders began descending, the can upended in her wake, splashing gasoline on the steps as she went.
Wordlessly, she moved into the kitchen, dumping more gas across the counters and appliances, doing the same in the bathroom before returning to face me and Parker as she emptied the rest of it on the ancient couch and tossed the can to the side .
“It seems my daughter has thrown a wrench in my plans, but all is not lost.”
I didn’t understand, couldn’t see how she could possibly get out of this without lighting herself on fire as well. She reached into her back pocket to withdraw something, likely matches if she was planning on torching this place.
I was proved wrong in a hurry.
Mrs. Saunders waved a nice little six-shot revolver around, the gun she’d threatened me with earlier, carelessly oscillating the barrel between my and Parker’s heads.
“I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to use this,” she said, tone almost resigned. “Shooting people is so…messy and personal.” With her other hand, she produced a lighter. “I much prefer the snap and crackle of flames, which I can enjoy from afar. But unfortunately, desperate times and all that. So here’s what’s going to happen. You two are going to stand at that wall.” She gestured to the one farthest away from the door. “If you move before I’m outside, I won’t hesitate to shoot you.”
Mentally, I weighed my options. I’d had no time to check if there was something upstairs I could use to leverage the windows or door open. At the very least, I could probably smash the windows out with the coffee table or microwave, right?
It came down to a simple question: did I like my chances better against a bullet or a fire?
The answer was simple. I walked into fire every day.
When I didn’t speak or move, Parker came to my side, and I shifted him slightly behind me so I could shield him with my body if need be.
Then Mrs. Saunders grinned. “It’s a shame Miss McKay couldn’t join us. She’ll forever be the one that got away, but I suppose as her lover, the pain she’ll suffer over your loss will have to do.”
This woman was absolutely sick in the head, completely deluded into thinking what she was doing was right. All because some guy scorned her at a meaningless high school dance? Seriously, I was sitting here right now, listening to this fucking psychobabble because a boneheaded teenage guy who was only capable of thinking with his dick had ditched her at her prom.
I couldn’t have made that shit up if I tried.
And the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.
Anger made people do stupid shit. There was a whole television series about what people did when they snapped.
My and Parker’s best chance was to take her out before she could light this place up. Eventually, my brothers would find us.
As though I’d conjured them, a voice carried to us from outside. Deep and distinctly belonging to Trey.
“Crew, take cover!”
My body understood the words far sooner than my mind did, and I jumped on Parker and rolled us both, hiding behind the sofa as the window we’d been standing in front of shattered, followed by the rest in the cabin. A moment later, several bang s echoed through the room, accompanied by flashes of light and clouds of smoke.
I did my best to cover my face, shielding my eyes with my forearm and tugging my shirt over my nose and mouth. At my side, Parker choked and coughed.
A beat later, I heard the telltale sound of the entrance being breached, the door slamming back into the wall, and the room filled with shouting voices— my brothers .
Before I could react or stumble toward those voices I knew meant safety, I was hauled upright, though I remained on my knees, that goddamn gun once again pressed into my skull. Parker stared up at me with wide, panicked eyes, though he wisely scrambled away from us. Finn grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and dragged him to feet, then shoved him in the direction. With a final glance in my direction, Parker stumbled out into the night .
He would live, and the realization relaxed my shoulders a fraction.
But there was still the matter of the fucking gun being held against my head and this cabin being doused in gasoline.
“Let him go, Kelly,” Lane warned.
“Stay back or I’ll bury a bullet in his brain,” Mrs. Saunders seethed from behind me, her voice hoarse, and she coughed to clear it.
My eyes watered heavily from the smoke bombs, blurring my vision, but I could tell we were surrounded. Not just by my brothers, but likely the entire sheriff’s department. She wasn’t getting out of this unscathed. It remained to be seen whether I would or not.
I needed to do something to help my chances, but once again, my damn mouth ran away with me.
“Little too up close and personal for you, don’t you think?”
I spoke loud enough to be heard over the commotion, and the barrel dug harder against my head before it disappeared entirely. By the time I turned to face her, Mrs. Saunders— Kelly, I reminded myself; she was going to try to kill me either way—was in the kitchen, standing at the stove.
Cranking the knobs on the burners all the way up.
“Fuck,” I breathed, glancing over my shoulder, eyeing each of my brothers, who now stood spread around the small space, in turn. “It’s gonna blow. Bail out!”
“Not without you!” West protested.
“I’ll be right behind you! Just go!”
“How sweet,” Kelly mocked. “Always gotta be the hero, protecting your brothers from suffering the same fate as you. But what about all the times you weren’t a hero, Crew? What about those years you lost to drugs and alcohol? Don’t you think you’d be doing your family a favor if you died right here? Personally, I do. It’s honestly a shame the drugs didn’t take you those years ago. ”
There was a time, back before Chief Madden saved my life, before I got my shit together and found the fire service, that Kelly’s words would’ve hit home. They would’ve burrowed their way under my skin and bred like maggots, crawling into all of my darkest parts and festering. Back then, I’d believed they were true, that maybe the world—especially my family—would be better off without dealing with my constant fuckups.
But I’d healed and grown a lot in the intervening years, and I knew without a doubt there was nothing I could do that would make my family stop loving me. And I reminded myself that I went to work every day and saved lives—like Aspen’s.
And my girl? The woman who had blown into town and flipped my entire life on its head in the best possible way…I knew she’d never forgive me if I died at the hands of the same sicko she’d survived.
A look over my shoulder confirmed my brothers had retreated, and I hoped they were backed up far enough to be out of the blast zone. The liquid gasoline combined with the unlit stove burners was going to blow the roof off this place—literally—the second a flame came near any of it.
As slowly as possible, I started taking steps backward in the direction of the door. Kelly watched me curiously, flipping the lid of the lighter open and closed. When the cool night air from the open doorway caressed my back, I spoke.
“I think the only one dying tonight will be you.”
As I turned and booked it out into the night, Kelly screamed in frustration, and the ignition switch on the lighter echoed in the space between us. The woman clearly didn’t give a fuck about surviving this anymore, not when surviving meant spending the rest of her miserable existence in prison. She just wanted to take me out in the process.
No fucking way was I letting that happen. For my mom, my brothers and sister, for Aspen , I had to live .
I raced outside, my head snapping up as someone shouted my name.
Even in the dark and across what had to be a couple hundred feet through a copse of trees, I recognized my girl immediately. I slightly corrected course, making for her. I knew everything would be okay if I could reach her…
A boom shook me to my very core.
My ears hollowed out, all sound suddenly vacuumed from the world.
Suddenly, I was flying, then landing in a heap. Sharp, unending pain bloomed across my entire body.
And then, blissfully, I was aware of nothing at all.