Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Fallon
I’m pulling on pants when I smell the smoke.
My cell phone still has no signal. I rush into the hall cradling Bruiser with one arm while I bang on the door to the guest room, trying to blow the smell from my nostrils. Something toxic makes me want to gag. Burning plastic? Wires?
Whatever it is, it’s toxic. Deadly. Which is what staying here is about to be.
Tomás stumbles out, hurriedly doing up his slacks. His normally well-styled hair sticks out in all directions.
“Do I smell smoke?”
There’s an ugly orange glow coming from the left of the stairs, where the entrance to the kitchen is. I can’t see for certain, but the flames seem to be originating around the back door. Smoke curls along the first floor, snaking upward as it climbs the stairs.
“We need to get out of here.” Flames lick along the wall, telling me it’s already too much for the small fire extinguisher I keep in the kitchen.
I’d have to get closer to the fire to retrieve it, anyway.
I peer into the downstairs area, but I don’t see anyone.
It’s hard to say for sure since it’s mostly shadow aside from the fire.
“This way.” I lead Tomás to the end of the upstairs hall, where there’s a decorative bench under the window. I open it and toss some throw blankets aside to reveal a collapsible ladder.
“Marina had this installed five or six years ago. I thought it was overkill at the time. Here. I’ll help you out, and then you take Bruiser.”
I slide open the window and pop out the screen. Then I hang the ladder out. “Go.”
Tomás, normally so confident, seems frozen in place.
“This is probably an awful time to let you know I’m afraid of heights.” He usually seems self-assured, but there’s a tremor in his voice.
I look to the stairs again. The glow from the kitchen is brighter. It won’t take long for the flames to start climbing the walls, the stairs.
Strangely, I feel more focused than I have in a long time.
“Go,” I tell him again. “You’re not jumping.
One step at a time. Get on the ladder, take Bruiser, and get away from the house until you can call emergency services.
I think someone has a jammer nearby. My security cameras are down and my phone has no signal.
If you don’t get down that ladder, we can’t get help. ”
That gets him moving. He throws one leg over the windowsill and sort of awkwardly shimmies until he gets a couple of rungs down.
After some nervous noises when the collapsible structure shakes, he manages another step.
I hand him Bruiser. Tomás tucks him into his shirt to keep him steady as he makes his way down.
I wait until they’re both at least halfway before I step on the window ledge to follow.
Something hits me in the back of the head. Pain explodes in my skull. My vision goes dark and spotty.
Before I can figure out what I’ve been hit with, I’m dragged backward along the hall floor. There’s a man dressed in dark clothes hovering over me. When I try to push myself up, I’m rewarded with a punch to the face.
“Fuck.” I’ve known masochists who got off on getting punched. I’m not one of them.
My eye explodes with pain. I scramble back and try to kick at the man’s legs. He’s about my size but clearly stronger. In one of my books, Betty takes down a larger assailant by kicking the side of his kneecap, which is what I’m going for. Clearly, it’s harder to do in real life.
I’m hoping I can at least knock him down. When I pull back to try again, I’m stopped by a voice I haven’t heard in ages.
“Don’t kill him, Scotty. That’s for me.”
Scotty I presume, straightens. One of his heavy, booted feet lands on my chest. Now I know how those crickets pinned under glass in my high school biology class felt.
What are the chances I’m hallucinating? I could swear the smoke’s gotten thicker. At least I’m breathing it less on the floor.
“You don’t fucking belong here, Fallon.” Eric’s bigger than I remember. Whatever he’s been up to, it helped him pack on muscle. His eyes are black and sharp, shining with hatred.
The oily, slightly manic, too charming grin? That’s the same.
I know I shouldn’t antagonize the psychopath who’s here to kill me. Adrenaline has hijacked my mouth. “You don’t belong here either.”
His face twists into a mask of contempt.
“Mom and Dad’s money was supposed to come to me, you know. They’d cut her out because of all her ‘problems.’ If she hadn’t nearly killed me, I’d have everything. When you think about it, Fallon, this is my house, yeah?”
“You didn’t think to let people know you’re alive? If you had, I promise you none of this would have been necessary.”
His boot comes down on my shoulder; a slow, grinding pressure that I’m fighting to wince against. “Not after Marina tried to kill me. It was a near thing, by the way. It took time to recover and time to build up the resources to get proper revenge against my bitch sister.”
“Marina’s dead.”
His expression turns almost sad. “I know. Still bummed. I didn’t get to do it myself, but all’s well that ends well.”
What the hell do I say to that? I don’t want to say anything, because the more time I’m stuck here under some guy’s boot, the more time the fire has to make it up to the second floor.
As I struggle under the powerful strength of a man who’s definitely got more muscle than I do, it hits me: there’s no universe in which Eric lets me leave this house alive.
It’s two against one, and I’m not exactly in peak physical shape. Calling my gym attendance this past year sporadic would be generous.
“Eric, if you wanted the house, you could’ve told me rather than burning it down. Could’ve just come in here and said something.”
He pulls a cloth out of his pocket and holds it over his nose and mouth. The smoke is getting thick.
“Where’s the fun in giving you a quick death when I could take away everything and then watch you die slowly?”
“You really are a fucking psychopath.”
He shrugs. “Not having a conscience comes in handy in my line of work.”
“And what—” My inhale sets off a coughing fit. “What is your line of work? PJ said homeless people in the East End are disappearing. Is that you?”
Eric doesn’t answer right away, but his eyebrows shoot up.
“Oh.” He snaps his fingers as if remembering something.
“PJ must be that adorable little twunk who’s been putting you on your knees and choking you with his cock, huh?
Gotta say, it was a dark day when you disabled my security cameras.
You two were incendiary together. The way he’d fuck you into the mattress and then tuck you in like a sad little boy? Priceless.”
I get a flash of the video from my email. Bile rises in my throat at the thought of someone, anyone, especially Eric seeing us like that together.
Eric said the last bit in a sing-song voice that sounds weird as hell on any level, especially since the downstairs of my house is burning, and aside from the cloth on his face, he’s acting as if we’re all hanging out at cocktail hour.
“I knew it. I fucking knew the cameras and the video were your doing.”
“Good, right?” Eric waggles his eyebrows. Asshole’s having the time of his life right now. I refuse to die here under this disgusting asshole’s boot.
“You’re fucking sick.” I glance toward the stairs. “You need to get out of here if you don’t want to die.”
Eric doesn’t look bothered, but Scotty, the other giant boot on my chest, shifts with restlessness.
“It’s fine,” Eric says calmly. “We’ll use the ladder that you so helpfully already hung on the windowsill.” He pauses. “After we kill you.”
I struggle harder, pushing at the back of Scotty’s tree-trunk leg. If I can get his knee to bend or even twist his ankle, I might get an opening to roll out from under him. But Scotty doesn’t budge, and Eric only laughs at my struggle.
My reprieve comes a few seconds later. Eric’s laugh is cut off by an angry yell. Both boots ease off my chest, and I gasp for breath when I hear someone growl, “I’ll fucking kill you.”
Not someone. PJ.
Relief floods my body. I pull in a deep breath, only for the smoke to make me cough and sputter.
Scotty’s distraction causes him to stumble backward, and then I really do go after his kneecap.
From the corner of my eye, PJ appears to be wailing on Eric with…a baseball bat? He’s managed to get some good hits in, and the blood running down Eric’s face is gratifying.
The glint of Eric’s gun has me rushing forward, but fucking Scotty spins me around with his fist cocked. I duck and aim for his stomach, shoving him backward with a pained “oof.” It almost works. He loses his footing, bracing himself in the doorway to Marina’s studio.
The studio. With the external electronic lock on the door.
Channeling PJ’s fighting growl. I get as much of a running start as I can in the hallway, and then I throw all of my weight into Eric’s henchman. Hard.
There’s a jarring pain in my shoulder and a rattle in my teeth as Scotty stumbles back into the room. The second I hear his body thump to the floor, I slam the door shut. My hand hits the lock on the keypad, and I allow a quick sigh of relief.
Looking for PJ, I race for the stairs, ignoring the thumps and shouts from behind the locked door.
Eric must have pushed him down the stairs. Worse, he’s gotten hold of PJ’s bat.
“No. No!” My legs are jelly. I’m racing through quicksand.
Eric looks dazed, staggering as he makes his way toward PJ. PJ, who’s on his back with one hand to his forehead. There’s a head wound I can’t see. There must be, because he’s got blood running into his eyes.
I’m not even sure he can see.
The man I love is grasping, reaching, trying to move. But he isn’t. He can’t, and Eric is standing over him with the bat in one hand.
I’m not sure how I make it to the bottom of the stairs, only the pain of hitting my elbow on the banister at the end. And then my knee banging into the coffee table.
Where I put Marina’s glass sculpture after Tomás knocked it over earlier.
It’s a heavy thing, a few pounds at least, this image of a couple embracing. Kind of bat-shaped in its own way. I send up a silent thanks to Marina and her short-lived glass-blowing obsession. I hate to destroy it, but somehow I think she’d approve.
While Eric is focused on lifting the bat over his head, I swing the sculpture toward the back of his skull.
I’m not prepared for the sickening scent of blood.
Or the jolt, the urge to drop the sculpture when my hands absorb the force of one object hitting another. Eric’s surprised gasp is almost human.
Then he collapses. On top of PJ.
“Fuck. Okay. Hang on.” When I roll Eric’s body sideways, his eyes are open, staring at nothing. They weren’t like that before. When Marina poisoned him, they were closed. If I hadn’t been so shocked at the time, I might have realized that was a reason to check.
I’m struggling to breathe through the smoke, but this time I take a few seconds to look for a pulse. I check the wrist and the throat, and then for good measure I kick at the body a little to be sure he’s not going anywhere.
Banging comes from upstairs. That Scotty guy is trying to break down the door. Which won’t be hard to do. It’s a regular old bedroom door. The lock was only to prevent prying eyes or the stealing of Marina’s ideas.
“PJ.” I lean down, shaking him, begging him to move. He must have taken a good knock to the head. He seems truly disoriented.
“PJ, we have to go.”
He groans again. The smoke thickens around us. We’re running out of time.
Coughing, I give up and drop to my knees, hooking my hands under his arms and dragging him toward the front door. It’s an ugly, awkward shuffle, but it gets us to fresh air.
I’m racked with shivers as the clean oxygen rushes into my lungs. I swear I’ll never take breathing for granted again.
Thank fuck there’s a fire truck barreling up my usually quiet street.
I wait until we’re down the driveway before I stop, letting us both collapse in the soft grass at the edge of my property.
“PJ, Talk to me.” It looks as if he’s still breathing. I hope. Please let him be breathing.
“I was going to kill him for you,” PJ mumbles.
“Shh. It’s okay.” I pull him close, placing a gentle kiss on his temple. “You said once in a while we could switch. I took care of it this time.”