Chapter Two
Aiden cursed and caught onto Lexa. He latched onto her arm, dragging her away from that fire, from that window.
Not a second too soon.
The heat shattered the glass, sending a spray of shards all over the room. And right at them.
He pulled her behind one of the toppled chairs, both of them landing hard on the floor. They’d have bruises and scrapes. No doubt about that. But they’d have a whole lot more if they didn’t get the hell out of there.
Because it wasn’t just that one fire by that one window.
When Aiden glanced around, he could see that there were flames shooting up outside every single window. Someone was trying to burn them alive. Or cut them to ribbons because more glass shattered.
Lexa covered her head with one arm and gave the voice command for her phone to call 911. “This is Deputy Lexa Mullen. I need the fire department and police backup to the Yellow Rose Manor now,” she ordered.
Good. That was a start, but Aiden knew they couldn’t stay here and wait the ten minutes or so it’d take the responders to get here.
“Let’s move,” Aiden insisted.
He still had hold of Lexa’s arm, but she was already maneuvering herself off the floor. The moment they were both upright, they took off running in the direction of the kitchen toward what he hoped was an exit that hadn’t been cut off with yet more flames.
Hell, why fire?
Was it a bad coincidence, or was some sonofabitch trying to recreate the nightmare where Lexa and he had nearly died. Where they’d both failed to save a hostage and nearly died in the process.
This isn’t that fire , he mentally repeated to himself. This isn’t that nightmare .
Fueled by the reminder—and the strong desire not to get their asses burned—Aiden sprinted toward the back of the building with Lexa right along beside him. They skidded to a stop in the kitchen.
And both cursed.
The thick black smoke was crawling around and underneath the door, and there were more of those flames outside the window. Someone had really been thorough in setting up this death trap.
He thought of the layout of the building. There were no windows in the restrooms, but the changing room had one so that’s where they’d go. After they checked the other rooms to make sure no one else was trapped inside.
“This way,” Aiden said, racing toward the men’s room. Empty. And unlike the women’s toilet, there was no blood in here.
They threw open the door of a storage room. Again, empty. No windows either, but the smoke was getting thicker, making it hard to breathe.
Lexa and he went to the office next, and Aiden kicked in the door. There was a window here.
And more fire outside it.
The glass had already broken, and the flames were licking their way into the room. Aiden shut the door and kept moving. Kept looking.
Along with having to fight the flashbacks, Aiden was also battling the frustration over basically having the crime scene shot to hell and back. This smoke, the spewing glass from the windows, and Lexa’s and his own tracks were no doubt destroying potential evidence.
So, maybe this wasn’t about Lexa and him.
Not about them being forced to relive their trek through hell.
Maybe it was about a killer or attacker making sure there had been nothing left behind that could be used to ID him or her.
Lexa started coughing when they had to run through a thick cloud of smoke, and they darted into the changing room, no doubt tracking over yet more critical evidence. His eyes and throat felt like sandpaper, and his lungs weren’t fairing much better. Still, he could see well enough to realize there was no fire outside the small window.
“Keep watch,” Aiden told Lexa.
Her eyes widened, and it probably occurred to her that the arsonist could be waiting outside. Maybe ready to gun them down. So, they might be damned if they stayed or damned if they went.
But they were going.
He could fight a gunman, but there was no fighting this fire that was creating a pressure cooker of smoke and scorching heat inside the building.
Aiden unlocked the window and tried to hoist it up. Emphasis on tried . But it jammed shut. That spiked up his heart rate some, but he went to that hyperfocus place that he’d created in his head for missions.
Work the problem. Survive. Rescue.
Because he wasn’t having another repeat of what’d happened three years ago, when Lexa and he had ended up together battling a fire in a hostage situation. No. Wasn’t having that.
“Close your eyes,” Aiden told Lexa, and that was the only warning he gave her before he reared back and kicked the window.
Glass and bits of wood flew, but Aiden kept kicking, well aware this escape route was a double edge sword. Once the air was in the room, that would give the fire exactly what it wanted. Oxygen to feed and grow. And if there were flames already inside the building, they’d be racing like hell to get to their fuel.
Aiden gave the window another kick, and it finally gave way, enough of it falling so they could climb out. “I’ll go out first and deal with anyone out there,” he insisted. “You come out right behind me.”
But Lexa didn’t respond to that. She ran back to the center of the room and grabbed the dress. She wrapped it around him like protective gear before she shoved him out the window. There were still bits of broken glass clinging to what was left of the frame, and he could feel and hear them ripping away at the dress as he climbed through. That was good thinking on Lexa’s part, and it saved him from needing stitches and losing some blood.
The moment his boots landed on the ground, Aiden did two things. He checked around them for a would be killer, and when he didn’t spot anyone or anything other than smoke, he shoved the dress back into the opening, cocooning Lexa in it before he dragged her through the window.
Aiden didn’t have to tell Lexa that they needed to run and take cover because like him, she hit the ground on the move. She tossed the dress away from the building, and she didn’t just look around. Lexa also scoped out where they should run.
Her attention landed on the same spot Aiden’s had seconds earlier. A fountain in a fancy-looking courtyard. No doubt a photo op spot for brides and grooms, but it was concrete and would provide a lot more protection than them being out in the open like this.
Lexa and he sprinted toward it, and with each step, Aiden braced himself for them to be shot at. That didn’t happen. And when they finally were able to dive behind cover, they automatically pivoted, moving back to back so they could give themselves 360 degrees of surveillance.
And what he saw wasn’t good.
No attacker, none that he could spot anyway. It was dark, going on nine pm, and there were wispy clouds covering the moon. But the fire was providing enough light for him to see the flames consuming the building. A whole hell of a lot of accelerant had been used to cause this much of an inferno this fast.
He felt the muscles in Lexa’s back tense, and she shifted her gun toward some trees at the back of the property. Aiden shifted, too, looking in that direction, and he caught some movement. It was just a blink. Too fast for him to figure out if it was a person or just a moving tree branch.
Aiden considered rushing there to check it out, but that would mean darting right out in the open where he could be gunned down. Ditto for Lexa since she would almost certainly go with him. So, it was best to wait for backup and then they could search the grounds.
In the distance, he heard the wail of sirens, but Aiden tried to shut out the sound. Tried to tamp down his own heartbeat thundering in his ears. He had to listen. He had to be able to hear if anyone was moving in to ambush them.
Despite his best efforts, more of those flashbacks came. Images chopped and smeared together of smoke and blood. So much blood.
And the dead hostage.
He’d seen people die before. It came with the territory. But he’d never had someone die in his arms like she had.
Yeah, that wasn’t going away ever .
Thankfully, the flashing blue lights cleared out the worst of the images. They were cutting through the darkness and smoke, too, and several moments later, an Outlaw Ridge PD cruiser sped into the driveway of the manor. He saw a welcome sight. His brother, Deputy Shaw Brodie, and the other swing shift deputy, Callie Brandon. That meant, they’d left his other brother, Declan, manning the office.
Shaw and Callie barreled out of the vehicle, not racing toward Lexa and him but rather taking cover behind the cruiser while they looked around.
“We’re over here,” Lexa called out. Aiden and she stayed behind cover as well.
“Is anyone in the building?” Shaw immediately wanted to know.
“I don’t think so,” Aiden replied. Of course, there could be a body stuffed somewhere inside, but the person who set the fires would have needed to be outside to do that.
“Are you hurt?” Callie asked.
“No,” Lexa and he answered in unison. “But it’s possible someone was killed inside,” Aiden provided. “There’s a hell of a lot of blood.”
He heard Callie and his brother curse, but their voices were drowned out by the pulsing siren of the fire engine. It roared to a stop, and those responders sprang into action.
Since Aiden figured an attacker would now be on the run, he stood, still staying vigilant. Lexa did as well, and she gathered the wedding dress into as much of a ball as she could. Esther had been right about the poofy part. But the woman had been wrong about vandals causing the damage.
No, they were looking at something much worse than vandalism.
And the person who’d bled all over the Yellow Rose Manor could be out here somewhere.
That reminder got Aiden moving. “Fan out,” he called out to Shaw and Callie.
No need for him to explain what they should be looking for. Like Lexa, Callie was a veteran cop with more than a decade of experience. Shaw had been an Air Force Combat Rescue Officer and was currently a Strike Force operative and temporary deputy. They’d be on the lookout for anything and everything.
When Lexa headed toward the south end of the property, Aiden took the north, and he went to the right of the driveway where there was some fancy rose garden setup. He’d only gone a few yards when he spotted something.
Two large gasoline cans.
Judging from the way they were laying on their sides, they were empty.
Aiden used the flashlight on his phone to examine the area around the cans, and he thought he spotted a shoeprint. Unlike the bloody one in the bathroom, CSI would be able to examine this one.
He looked up when there was a slash of headlights. Not the CSIs though as he’d hoped. But he recognized the blue truck. And the driver.
Brady Kern.
The soon-to-be groom.
“Shit,” Aiden growled, and he started toward their visitor. What was he doing here?
Brady threw open his truck door, practically falling out. His eyes were wide and fixed on the blaze that was still going strong. “Chloe,” he shouted, and he started a mad dash toward the manor.
Aiden cursed again and took off running so he could intercept him. The activity must have gotten Lexa’s attention, too, because she tossed down the gown and sprinted in their direction.
“Chloe!” Brady yelled.
Aiden hooked his arms around the man, holding him in place. He outsized Brady by a good thirty pounds, but adrenaline was a big factor here, and his former SEAL pal was fighting like a wildcat to get loose. Aiden couldn’t blame him. If he believed someone he loved was in that building, nothing would have stopped him from rushing inside.
And probably getting killed in the process.
Both Brady and he had plenty of training, but the firemen were the experts here, not them. They’d just get in the way. It was impossible for that to get through to Brady though, and the man kept trying to push off Aiden’s hold.
Lexa moved in to help, and the three of them ended up in a wrestling match that landed them on the ground. During all of the fray, Brady didn’t take his eyes off the manor.
“Chloe,” he repeated, but this time it wasn’t a shout. It was a hoarse sob that tore from his throat. “She’s in there. Chloe’s in there.”
“Lexa and I didn’t see her, but if she’s there, the firemen will look for her,” Aiden assured him, and he checked over his shoulder to verify that some of the firemen were indeed going in. They were. “Why did you come here?” he tacked onto that.
For a moment or two it didn’t seem as if Brady had heard the question, but he finally muttered, “Esther Drummond. She called me and told me there’d been trouble at the manor.”
Hell in a big assed handbasket. He wished Esther hadn’t done that, but then word would have quickly gotten around anyway. Gossip could travel faster than the speed of light in a small town.
“Are you sure Chloe came here?” Lexa asked.
Brady nodded, along with making another of those sobs. He still didn’t take his eyes off the building.
“Chloe’s car isn’t here,” Lexa pointed out.
Another nod from Brady. “She told me yesterday she was coming, that she’d already dropped off her dress, and that she’d walk from her place.”
Aiden had to thumb through his memory to recall where Chloe lived. On Third Street, not far from the high school, and the manor was all the way at the edge of town, at the end of a road. Not exactly right around the block from her. It was more like a half of a mile.
“Chloe was going to try on her shoes and practice coming down the aisle,” Brady explained. “They’re a higher heel than she usually wears, and she didn’t want to trip.”
“Other than you, who knew that Chloe would be coming here tonight?” Lexa pressed.
Brady finally tore his gaze from the fire and looked at her. His forehead bunched up. “I, uh, don’t know. Why?”
Lexa and Aiden exchanged a glance, and even though they didn’t say anything to each other, he understood what she was thinking. She didn’t want to mention all that blood, but Brady’s attention slid in the direction of the wedding gown that Lexa had tossed on the ground.
“Is that Chloe’s dress?” he asked, even more alarm creeping into his eyes.
Lexa didn’t get a chance to answer because Shaw called out, “Aiden, Lexa, back here.”
There was plenty of urgency and concern in his brother’s voice, and Aiden and Lexa got to their feet. “Stay here,” Lexa told Brady. “And that’s an order. Let the firemen do their jobs and stay out of their way.”
That might work, but Aiden continued to fire some glances over his shoulder at Brady as Lexa and he made their way toward the far back left of the building. There were no flames here, just a small semicircle of yard rimmed with massive oaks. Shaw and Callie were standing next to one of those trees, and they had their attention staked to the ground.
“What is it?” Lexa asked, hurrying to them.
“Blood and drag marks,” Shaw provided. He pointed to something. “And that.”
Callie had her phone flashlight aimed at a spot where the grass ended and the mulch around the tree began. On top of that mulch, the flashlight glinted on something.
Hell.
It was an engagement ring. A familiar one. And the last time Aiden had seen it, it’d been on Chloe’s finger.