Chapter Sixteen #2
I ran toward the sound and saw the back corner of the house in flames. There was a young woman standing nearby, looking almost shocked at what she’d done.
I registered the small gas canister by her feet.
“Get the hose!” Ben yelled somewhere behind me.
I glanced at the wall, the flames climbing, and I roared. I saw red. My fangs descended and I tasted blood. I leapt at her, barely registering my elongated fingers as I bowled her over and snarled in her face as I loomed over her.
She screamed, and the acrid smell of her losing the control of her bladder pushed aside the alcohol on her breath and the gasoline for a brief moment.
I had never been this angry. Not even when I learned my bandmates had broken the vow we’d made to never, ever touch drugs. Not when my parents had practically disowned me for choosing to live.
I was furious.
“Luca, stand down,” Ben said firmly somewhere nearby. “Let her go.”
I couldn’t do that. I had my fingers around her neck, and I didn’t know when I’d done that.
“Luca. I’ve called Holden. They’re coming. Let me grab her, okay? Then go get the extinguisher from the foyer.” A hint of sternness and frustration entered his tone. “Luca. The house.”
Oh shit. The house. I leapt off her and ran to get the extinguisher. I knew how to use one. In theory.
We were twenty miles or so from town. It would take the emergency services too long. We needed to act now.
“Max!” I yelled as I ran past Ben and the woman again.
“Give me that!” he called back, and I realized the hose was halfway unwound toward the fire.
When I started toward it, Max yelled, “It won’t help! Water will just spread the gasoline. We need to smother it!”
Jesus. Okay. We had more extinguishers. I ran back inside and into the kitchen. We also had one extra somewhere. Gods. Where had I seen it? The closet upstairs.
I had never been as happy to have the speed I now had than I did at this moment.
I was back out in no time, trying to think what to do next.
I dumped the extinguishers by Max’s feet and ran to the other side of the yard.
“Ben! I need help!” I yelled. The woman could try to run; she wouldn’t get far.
Ben caught up with me as I grabbed a tarp from the toolshed and started to shovel sand from the remaining pile on top of it.
Understanding what I was doing, he picked up another shovel and soon we were carrying a large amount of sand in a squeaking, barely-holding-together tarp. We didn’t need to communicate, we’d just wordlessly lifted it instead of dragging, and I would’ve smiled at that if time wasn’t of the essence.
Max had gotten about half of the bottom part of the fire, and was trying to spray the top, since he’d realized what we were doing.
As soon as we got there, he abandoned the extinguisher and together we held onto the tarp.
“On three. High up, so it hits the flames before it falls to the ground,” Ben grunted out the words. “One… two… three!”
It worked. Somehow, it worked. Maybe it was that there was a lot of humidity in the air and the fire hadn’t caught too badly as it climbed, or it was her inability to do it right, but by the time the sirens we’d been hearing for good five minutes got turned off as the fire engine rolled into the yard right behind the cruiser, we were sitting in the grass, guarding who I now knew was Holly Gerrell, the estranged wife of Holden’s nemesis, former Sheriff Gerrell.
The firemen checked our work and went in the house too just to be sure the fire hadn’t gotten inside.
Holden stopped by us and sighed as she looked at the woman by our feet. “It was smart to only drive halfway up the driveway. What wasn’t smart was to leave the vehicle in the middle of the road. We had to push it into a ditch to get past. You also reek of booze. What the fuck, Holly?”
She sniffled, then some anger entered her watery eyes that had hard time concentrating. “Fuck you, Drumm! This was supposed to be my house!”
She grabbed a rock off the ground next to her and tried to throw it at Holden.
“Holden, did I just see her attack an officer of the law?” A young woman in a uniform similar to Holden’s asked.
He sighed and tilted his head as he looked at Mrs. Gerrell. “You know, Deputy Fischer, I don’t think you saw anything.”
He was going to go with grace. While I respected that, I was also annoyed.
“Boys, Mikayla here will take your statements while I take Holly to the station, okay?” he said firmly as he and Deputy Fischer, Mikayla, pulled her off the ground by her upper arms.
“Okay,” I said quietly.
“Can we do it inside?” Max asked Mikayla after Holden had walked Gerrell to his cruiser.
“Of course. The smells must be horrible to your noses,” she made an educated guess.
Holden was about to step into his vehicle when we rounded the corner. “And boys? I’ll call Brodie.”
“Holy shit, I didn’t even think that,” Ben murmured and groaned.
I choked out a laugh. “He’s never gonna leave the property again.”
Max just snorted and shook his head. “At least they were coming home tomorrow anyway.”
Then Mikayla turned around, her eyes widening. “Wait, you’re Luca Moretti?”
The three of us might’ve lost it laughing just a little bit.