Chapter 46
My hand ran over the wood beam, the smooth strength familiar under my skin as I tried to focus on work. But my mind was elsewhere.
With Frankie at her afternoon class, nearly broken with worry but forcing herself to keep focused.
Waiting for the Chief to call me with the good news of Danny’s arrest.
Wondering how Eli was handling it all and hating that he was in the middle of a shift at the firehouse.
I took a deep breath, forcing the worry from my shoulders as my phone rang.
Frankie.
I hit accept and lifted it to my ear, hoping for good news, when I got only chaos through the speaker.
A scuffle. Tires squealing.
A muffled cry.
“Frankie?” My voice cracked, and everything froze around me.
Her sobs bled through the line, muffled and frantic. Then Danny’s voice, sharp and menacing, filled my ear as he roared his rambling threats, incoherently slurred words of vengeance and violence.
Ice sliced through me.
I didn’t think as I grabbed one of my guys’ phones off the bench where they were taking a break. “Timmy, call 911 and tell them to patch through to this phone!”
My guy just stared at me, my crew falling silent, “Trav—”
“Do it!” I roared.
And then I was running. Out of the shop, into the truck, my keys shaking in my hands as I jammed them into the ignition. My tires squealed, gravel spitting in my wake as I tore down the road.
I had no idea where to go. But I listened to Danny’s sick voice telling her all the vile things he was going to do to her.
Her screams kept echoing in my head, rattling my bones, louder than the engine of my truck as I sped toward town, louder than the pounding of my pulse.
I opened the second phone and called Eli, praying he’d answer. “Sup, Timmy?”
“He has her.” I barked.
There was a slight pause on his line as I put Frankie’s phone on speaker with his, holding the phones together. “Trav?”
“She called me—” My voice cracked, “The line is open, and it’s on speaker. He has her, Eli. I can hear him. I can hear her crying.”
“Jesus Christ.” The roar of his pained voice echoed out as another scuffle happened on the line, and Eli and I both went silent. Listening to a car door slam, and then a struggle before Frankie’s clear scream ripped through the air.
“Frankie!” I hissed.
“I’m tracking her,” Eli spoke, clicking through his apps to locate her. It felt like a million years passed as we listened to Danny throwing stuff and destroying things around her, Frankie’s cries in the background. “The rental!” Eli yelled, “They’re at her rental!”
“I’m on my way!”
“Me too,” He yelled, directing orders to his men, and then the roar of the fire engine filled the speaker. “We’re not far.”
I couldn’t tell where Frankie’s phone was, but there was rustling, and we couldn’t make out what Danny was saying, just her replies and soft cries until it cleared up again, like she moved, getting the phone in a better position.
“Danny—don’t.” She spoke.
And there was something hauntingly calm about her voice. Something I didn’t recognize.
Then Danny’s sick voice came through clear as well. “This is what it takes, Frankie! Wipe the slate clean. I have to burn the lies, burn their fingerprints off you, burn their touch from this place. When it’s ash, it’ll just be you and me again.”
“Oh my God,” I hissed, driving faster toward town as the distinct hiss of flames crackled through the line. “Eli. He lit it—he fucking lit it—”
He barked out more orders and then the sirens of his engine blared in the background, the air horn sounded as they cleared around obstacles to get to her.
“Eli, you have to get to her. Please, Eli. You have to save her.”
“911 calls are coming in, Trav!” Eli barked, “Smoke showing from the house!”
“God,” I slammed my fist into the wheel. “No! Frankie, if you can hear me, we’re coming! Please just hold on, baby, we’re coming!”
Another scream ripped through the phone, one that didn’t sound human, one that shattered me right down the middle. I almost drove off the road.
“Get her out!”
Frankie’s screams echoed through the speaker, a repetitive broken record of horror as she burned, hollowing me out, shattering something I didn’t know could break.
I didn’t have to see it to know what was happening. I could feel it.
She was burning.
His voice was grim and steady, and it scared me more than anything. “We’re here. I’m going in.”
His line went dead, and I couldn’t hear anything else from Frankie’s. She’d gone silent as the noise of the fire burning around her filled the cab of my truck.
“Dear God,” I cried, getting closer to town just in time to see the smoke billowing up into the sky from three blocks away. “If you’ve ever believed in us, in mankind, then please, please save her. Because if you don’t, I’ll destroy everything around me in her wake. No one will survive my grief.”