Ten
“Just left,” Trevor said, his footsteps echoing off the concrete. “She’s fighting to stick around another day.”
Before she could respond, Lark’s sharp, low growl cut through the air.
The dog brushed past her feet sticking out from under the car, her claws clicking against the floor as she darted toward the far end of the garage.
Helena jerked, her knuckles knocking against the oil filter as the jack gave another unsettling creak.
“Get out from under there. Now,” Trevor commanded.
Helena frowned, wiping her greasy hands on her coveralls. “Why? What’s—”
Before she could finish, Trevor lunged forward, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her out from under the vehicle just as the jack gave a final, gut-wrenching groan.
The car lurched, the jack slipping out from under it as a thin line of fluid spilled out and sparked against the concrete floor, igniting in a sudden burst of flame.
Someone had been here. Set this flammable disaster up. Someone who knew their way around a garage.
Helena stumbled back, her heart hammering as Trevor shoved her behind him, one arm outstretched as Lark tore past them, the dog’s barking echoing through the smoke-filled garage.
She caught a glimpse of a figure slipping through the back exit, the door clanging shut as the fire crackled to life, licking at the spilled fluid.
“Go!” Trevor shouted, his voice sharp. “Get the extinguisher!”
She didn’t argue, her legs moving on autopilot as she sprinted for the red canister mounted by the door, the pungent bite of smoke filling her lungs.
Whoever had set this trap to crush her beneath the car and burn her to a crisp had come dangerously close to making it work.
Helena’s boots skidded on the oil-stained concrete.
Smoke clung to the rafters, thickening with each passing second, a suffocating blanket that turned every shadow into a looming threat.
She reached for the fire extinguisher mounted beside the pegboard, ripping it free with a deafening crack as the mounting bracket gave way.
The source of the fire roared near the back corner, where a cracked plastic gas can leaked hungry fingers of flame across the floor, licking up the legs of her father’s old workbench.
She squeezed the trigger and the extinguisher’s spray burst forth, a white, choking cloud that pushed back the fire’s advance.
She moved closer, teeth gritted, aiming low to cut off the fire’s base, starving it of oxygen.
She counted the seconds in her head, forcing herself to stay calm, to focus.
This was just another fire, just another blaze threatening to take more than it deserved.
The hiss of the extinguisher drowned out the crackle of burning wood, the rush of her own pulse in her ears and the jagged, unwanted memory of Trevor pulling back, his rejection sharp enough to cut through the haze of smoke.
When the fire finally surrendered, the room fell into a suffocating quiet. She stepped back, the extinguisher’s lever creaking as she released it, her hands shaking slightly as the adrenaline caught up to her. The garage reeked of melted plastic and chemical residue.
She kicked the melted remnants of the gas can aside, her boot clanging against the scorched metal legs of the workbench.
The fire hadn’t reached her father’s toolbox or the old engine parts stacked in the corner, but the damage was done.
She breathed in through her nose, the acrid air biting at the back of her throat.
Her pulse roared in her ears. This wasn’t an accident. Someone had set this fire, knowing exactly where to strike. They had planned for her to be crushed under the car, the fire an added cruelty.
Outside, she caught a flicker of movement near the tree line.
Lark’s bark cut through the lingering smoke.
Trevor shouted for her to stay back as he gave chase and then his phone was to his ear, calling the incident in.
But the figure had already vanished into the trees, gone as quickly as the fire had roared to life.
Helena dropped the empty extinguisher, the hollow metal clanging against the concrete, and stalked out to her truck, mind already racing ahead, piecing together the fragments of this new, more dangerous puzzle.
“Helena!” Trevor called. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. This is all too much, Trevor. My house. My garage. Almost dying on the mountain…” She left out the kiss and the promise of something that was extinguished as quickly as it had sparked. She needed to think. Needed to breathe.
Alone.
“It’s not safe. We’ve been followed before.”
“And we know that, so I’ll be more careful. I just want to be alone. You of all people should understand that.”
“I do but…”
“My dad might not be the good guy we thought he was. He might have hurt my best friend. He could have started a fire in that barn before rescuing that girl.”
Something flashed in Trevor’s eyes.
“What? You know something. What is it?” she demanded.
He kicked at the pavement. “My mom said she thought Rick might have dated your mom, but she wasn’t sure.
She tutored him and they spent a lot of time together, but she did say she was friends with Twila, and that Twila was certain she never had a lantern in the barn.
Someone must have done it. She also said she thought she heard someone inside before the fire ignited. ”
That was when the rift between Dad and Uncle Rick had started… Then Mom picking Dad over Uncle Rick… Alicia in the crawl space… Helena didn’t want to make her mind go there. The thought was too overwhelming. Too tight, pressing in. She wanted to push away the truth.
But she couldn’t.
It was too glaring.
And then an idea hit. One that was more palatable.
“Do you think that the person trying to kill me might have killed my dad up on that mountain? What if my dad was onto him? He’s never stopped looking into arsons even after retirement.
” It was way easier to believe her father was killed for knowing a devastating truth about someone else than it was to believe that her father was a firebug himself.
Trevor held up his hands. “Whoa. You’re making a lot of connections that are circumstantial and potentially far-fetched.
You have no proof his death wasn’t an accident.
Look how fast the rocks gave way on you.
Furthermore, you have no idea that whoever set fire to your house knew about Alicia in the crawl space.
And if your dad was… I can hardly say it…
a killer and arsonist, then why would he care what this college girl killer is doing? ”
Trevor made sense. Helena was letting her imagination run away with herself.
Unless…what if the college girl killer’s crimes interfered with something her father was doing and had been doing?
Had other fires been set? Ones that hadn’t necessarily killed people.
Maybe that fire in Twila’s barn hadn’t been meant to kill her but to simply watch the barn burn.
A firebug.
Arsonists obsessed with fire didn’t typically kill humans intentionally. It wasn’t about homicide. It was about the need to watch a fire eat and devour and consume.
“We need to look into fires around Lavender and Colorado Springs in the past twenty years or more. Fires that didn’t necessarily kill anyone but could have accidentally. I think I am on to something.”
Dad wasn’t a killer. Except, Alicia had been murdered.
What if it had been out of necessity to hide his secret?
What if she had seen something she shouldn’t have that night while she was outside?
Like her father leaving the house or returning to the house with accelerant or smelling like smoke, or anything that could incriminate him.
“We also need to see if any fires had been set the night Alicia went missing.”
Trevor rubbed his chin. “You think Alicia saw something that night she went out to talk to Denton. Something she shouldn’t have, and it got her killed. You think your dad was a firebug, don’t you? That’s why he went into firefighting.”
“I might. As much as it pains me to believe something so dark about my father, it’s possible.
Your mom has confirmed what Uncle Rick hinted at but wouldn’t outright say, maybe for fear of tainting my father or not having hard facts.
My parents did fight a lot, now that I look back and let these memories in.
Hushed whispers. My dad left on long weekends and said he was going to the hunting cabin and hiking, but what if he didn’t, Trevor?
What if he was…?” She couldn’t bring herself to say that he might have been out starting fires. She didn’t know what to believe.
“My laptop is in my office.” She started for the stairs, Trevor and Lark following.
Upstairs, she shoved open the door to the loft apartment above her garage, her boots heavy on the creaking wooden steps. The laptop sat on the battered workbench. Thankfully the damage hadn’t reached this area.
She snapped open the screen, the fan whirring to life.
The search bar blinked at her, a blank invitation to dig deeper.
Her fingers flew over the keys, pulling up old fire reports, local news clippings and public safety logs.
She filtered the results to the last twenty-five years, the digital archives crackling to life like dry tinder catching a spark.
Trevor may have already done this, but she wanted to see it all for herself. Needed to.
One fire in Colorado Springs, only thirty minutes away, the night Alicia died, leapt out first—a raging inferno that had injured two people but, according to the old article, claimed no lives.
Helena chewed the inside of her cheek as the time of fire was about 10:30 p.m. Alicia had gone down to talk to Denton at midnight.
Dad could have left and they’d have never known.
They’d been upstairs watching a cartoon marathon and listening to music.