Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Roz wasn’t sure she understood what was going on, but when she entered the side door on the lower floor of the garage building, poised to climb to Craig’s apartment, she was ready if things went south.
Or at least she thought she was ready. Strength in numbers, right? And strength in the device in her hand.
She looked up the stairs. Voices drifted down to her, but she couldn’t make out the words. She couldn’t see much, just the ceiling of the apartment.
As she crept up the steps, the light abruptly changed, pulsating red. She blinked. Nope, it wasn’t just her. It really was flashing red. Craig wasn’t holding a rave. And there wasn’t an ambulance parked up there. So what was going on?
She stopped just shy of the top and peeked through the short railing, taking in the cluttered apartment and the two men in the middle. Alden’s brow scrunched with concern as he faced Craig.
“Can you stop it?” he asked Craig, whose back was to her.
Stop what?
“I could, but why would I?” Craig told him.
This was the guy who went to bomb tech school. Who knew all the ways to kill someone as the researcher for Enolia’s books. Roz didn’t know what “it” was, but it probably wasn’t good. So as Craig snapped again at Alden, she climbed the last couple of steps and called out.
“Craig?”
Craig spun toward Roz.
That’s when she saw the gun. And time slowed as several things happened at once, flickering like an old movie, but in red thanks to the po-po-style spinning beacon on the table.
Alden jumped forward and went for Craig’s wrist from behind, pushing up the hand holding the gun, and it fired: BANG!
A puff of dust drifted down from the ceiling.
As Craig struggled with Alden, Roz ran forward a few steps, lifted Enolia’s Taser, aimed and pulled the trigger.
The wires shot forward, punching barbs into Craig’s chest.
He stiffened in an instant, and his eyes glazed over. He groaned, dropping the gun. Then he fell, his head slamming into the table on his way down to the floor.
“Get out, Roz!” Alden shouted.
“What? Why?”
“This whole place is going to blow in, like, thirty-five seconds!”
Her heart flipped. “Can you stop it?” The same question he’d asked Craig.
Alden glanced down at the computer. “I don’t know how. We’ve gotta go!”
“Then we have to get him out of here!”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Alden gave her a helpless look.
“We can do it.” She dropped the Taser, ran to the crumpled Craig and grabbed one of his arms. The flashing red light added to the surreal sense of danger as Alden grunted—there was a world of disbelief in that grunt—and helped haul Craig to his feet.
They manhandled him past the table, dragging him across the floor.
Alden muttered, “Twenty-five … twenty-four …”
Roz cursed when she realized what he was doing. Counting down.
Then Alden did the most amazing thing. All in a moment, he yanked Craig’s dead weight away from her so the assistant fell to the floor, pulled on both his arms and hoisted him up onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
“Run, sweetheart,” Alden said, breathing hard, “or we’re all dead.”
So Roz ran down the stairs ahead of him and looked up as she hit the outside door.
Alden was right behind her, huffing as he hauled Craig.
She held the door open, and they sprinted across the front lawn through the palms and bushes, past the house, where Enolia stood on the front steps, looking anxious.
“Oh, my. Is Craig all right?” she called.
“GET INSIDE!” Alden screamed. “And get down!”
There was a note of terrified command in his tone that foiled any thought Enolia might have had of questioning him. The door slammed as she ducked inside.
Roz wondered if they should’ve gone inside, too, but distance seemed more important than negotiating the front door. So they kept running across the yard, trying to get as far as they could and —
BOOM!
The air shattered.
The shockwave literally blew Roz over. It knocked them all to the ground. Roz gasped for breath. It felt like a giant had boxed her ears.
She looked back in time to see what was left of the garage roof—which had launched upward—crash back down into the wreckage of the garage, whose upper floor had collapsed in on itself.
The lower walls were still there, but surely the rubble from above had fallen into the first floor.
It was hard to tell, since the remains were shrouded in billowing dark gray clouds of smoke and debris as orange flames twisted against the twilit sky.
“Look out!” Alden shouted as something hit the grass a few feet away.
It took her a second to grasp that objects were plummeting from above—pieces of ceramic roof tile—and thudding into the lawn.
She curled up and covered her head as more debris plunked around her.
She closed her eyes and hoped, hoped, hoped Alden was OK …
until finally, the noises more or less stopped, except for the crackle of the garage fire and the wail of sirens.
She lifted her head. Only gray ashes and the occasional pink bougainvillea blossom fluttered to earth around them.
Alden sat next to Craig, keeping half an eye on the prone assistant, who seemed unconscious but breathing. The man’s glasses had been lost somewhere along the way, and his few remaining hairs stuck up every which way.
“You all right?” Alden asked her.
“I think so. You?”
“More or less.”
“What about him?”
“He’ll live,” he said. “Unfortunately.”
Roz sat up, too, and turned at the sound of a fire truck pulling into the end of the driveway. Enolia must have called and opened the gate.
The house looked OK, maybe a little scarred, the landscaping a little charred. Some of the windows on the corner nearest the garage were broken. Chunks of blackened beams and concrete block littered the ground around the garage. It could’ve been a lot worse.
Then she remembered her hybrid. She looked to where she’d parked her car. All she could see of it under pieces of debris was dented metal and broken glass. It might as well have tumbled down a cliff.
Now it was worse.
“Roz!” Alden exclaimed. “Please go tell the firefighters that Craig used C-4, OK? I’m not letting him out of my sight.”
“Oh my God.” Roz jumped up and ran over to the firefighters. They were already suiting up in protective gear, and they listened and briefed her and told her to get as far away from the fire as possible, just in case.
“The fumes could be toxic, but it shouldn’t blow up again,” she informed Alden after she’d jogged across the big yard back to him. “They told us to stay far away. The wind is blowing the smoke out to sea, but maybe we should move out to the street.”
“Poor fish,” Alden said. “And what do I do with this guy? I’m not carrying him again.”
“Drag him?” Though Alden hauling the sad sack that was Craig had been pretty hot, all things considered.
An ambulance crew entered the gate on foot and made a beeline for them with a stretcher on wheels. Two familiar police officers came in right behind them.
“Duke,” Alden said dryly. “My hero.” He beckoned over the officers. “Here’s your killer. Can you take him off my hands?”
Alden stood to give them access to Craig, who groaned. “He basically admitted everything,” Alden said. “And he tried to kill me. And he almost killed Roz.”
Duke gave them both a look, as if to ask if they were sure, then nodded to Deputy Byrd. She secured Craig’s wrists before she let the medics roll him away.
“There’s an ambulance on the street,” she said. “You two OK?”
“Super,” Alden replied as they all walked toward the gate together. “But I’m just so sad.”
Roz gave him a sharp look as Duke asked, “Why?”
He gestured toward what was left of the garage. The flames were almost under control. “The Bentley.” He looked like he might actually shed a tear. “And the Mercedes!”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Roz said. “My car is toast!”
Alden stopped, looked around, and spotted the wreckage. “Oh, no. I’m sorry, Roz.”
She sighed. “It’s OK. We’re still alive.”
“You two are testing your luck this week,” Deputy Byrd said. “We’re going to need the whole story.”
“That’s right,” Duke said. “‘Basically admitted everything’ isn’t enough.”
“He indicated he sabotaged Wayne Vandershell’s vape pen,” Alden said, “and wired his car to explode.”
“Did you record it?” Duke asked.
Alden shook his head. “Not this time.”
“One more thing,” Roz interjected. “We think Wayne Vandershell tried to kill Sebastian. He stood to inherit all the money for the movie studio project and get the property for a song. I bet you’ll find evidence on his laptop.”
“We took a look at his laptop,” Deputy Byrd said. “There was a bunch of stuff in a folder labeled ‘script research’ about sabotaging small planes, particularly a Cessna 172.”
“Was using the wrong fuel one of the ways?” Roz asked.
“He’d highlighted that one,” Deputy Byrd replied. “We’ll have to talk to the NTSB. One of our people is looking at his financials.”
“And you’re going to want to talk to Enolia Honeywood,” Roz told them.
“After you beat the details out of Craig,” Alden added. “I can help with that if you want.”
Duke smirked. “We won’t beat him. But we’ll get it out of him.”
They passed through the gate. As they stood on the sidewalk, drivers slowed to gape and shoot videos—which reminded Roz to get a few shots of the fire with her phone.
She and Alden gave the deputies more details about Wayne and Enolia and the writer’s bonkers assistant.
How Roz figured Craig’s expertise in explosives, and his lies about his background, suggested Alden might be walking into trouble.
How Enolia had given Roz her Taser “just in case” when she went to investigate.
And why the jealous and angry Craig wanted to kill Wayne.
As darkness fell and the firefighters doused the blaze, Duke retrieved Enolia, walking her out to the sidewalk.
The deputy handed Roz the bag she’d left in the house.
“That’s so sweet of you,” she said, grateful.
“No problem.” Duke smiled.
Alden rolled his eyes.
Enolia seemed flustered. “Is Craig dead?”
“He’ll be fine,” Alden groused. “He blew up your garage.”
Enolia blinked at them. “That’s not possible. He wouldn’t do that to me.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Roz asked as Duke took notes.
“Because he’s loyal. And he loves me. Oh, I didn’t give him any reason to think I returned his feelings. Perhaps we had the occasional night when we kept each other company, but—that isn’t going in the article, is it?” Her eyes widened. This evening’s catastrophe must have broken her filter.
Alden shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going into the article at this point.”
“Did you know Craig was behind Wayne’s death?” asked Duke. “That’s what he told Alden here.”
“Impossible!” Enolia exclaimed. “He’s a gentle soul. He would never.”
“Does that mean you killed Mr. Vandershell?” Deputy Byrd asked, mostly just to throw off the diva, Roz thought.
Enolia’s mouth opened and closed like that of a goldfish bounced out of her bowl. “Of course not.” She squared her shoulders and lowered her voice. “I suppose if Craig told Alden he did it, then he did it. But forgive me if I have trouble imagining my longtime friend being a murderer.”
“Friend and collaborator?” Alden asked.
Enolia gave him a keen look. “He is my researcher and a very fine one. I would not call him a collaborator. It’s very sweet that he thinks of himself that way. But he’s a wretched writer. Poor man.”
Fatigue washed over Roz. She looked at Alden.
He seemed to read her mind. “Can we go?” he asked the officers. “We have a story to write.”
Duke and Naya Byrd exchanged a glance. She turned to them. “Go ahead. But we’ll want to see you first thing in the morning at the station to go over it all in more detail.”
“Can’t wait,” Alden said.
“See you then,” Roz added more brightly. She, at least, wanted to stay on good terms with the deputies.
She and Alden walked away from them and stopped where they had a better view of the chaos through the open gate.
“One moment.” She pulled her real camera out of her bag and took more photos and video of the ruins and first responders.
The smoke glowed eerily in the flashing emergency lights, against the backdrop of a purple sky. “How are we going to get home?”
“I’ve got a guy.” Alden pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped the screen. “And my phone still works.”
“Despite your best efforts to destroy it and you.” Roz pulled out her phone, too. “While you ping Toby, I’m ordering a pizza.”
“That’s the girl I love.” Alden leaned in and kissed her cheek, then pocketed his phone, watching the scene.
Roz finished the order, stowed her gear in her bag and flashed back to that moment when Craig had Alden pinned down with the gun. She’d almost lost him. Again.
She turned to him and tilted her face up to his. An invitation.
His eyes as smoky as the sky, he pulled her close, and she angled her head to drink in his kiss.
The heat, the connection helped dissipate the anxiety she hadn’t realized still churned in her gut.
As they parted, warmth and longing filled her.
It was funny how you could be right next to the person you cared about most and still miss them. Still want more of them.
“I’m glad you’re OK,” she said softly.
Alden ran his fingers through her hair, and bits of dusty debris fell out. “Thanks for saving me. And for ordering pizza.”
“Always.”
He smiled and put an arm around her. “You’re writing this with me, right?”
“I’ll tell you what I got from Enolia, but you can write. I’ll edit your story tonight. I want you to have this byline,” she said.
“No. It’s our story.” He stared her down.
She caved. “All right. But you’re the one who got Craig so upset he blew up my car.”
“Honey, your car isn’t the real victim here. Think of the Bentley!”