Chapter 18 Lucy
Lucy
I couldn't stop staring at the text.
Unknown Number.
Everyone you love burns. That's just who you are.
It was as if he had read my thoughts.
It was nearly eleven, and sleep wasn't coming.
Gabrielle had finally gone down an hour ago, her small body warm in the bassinet beside my bed, but my mind wouldn't stop spinning.
The words glowed on my phone screen, ugly and deliberate, and no matter how many times I read them, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was missing something.
Everyone you love.
Not "the firefighter." Not "Cal." Everyone.
I'd been turning it over all day, ever since the text arrived.
Through the chaos of Joanna's burst pipe flooding the café kitchen.
Through the phone call cancelling my evening shift.
Through dinner and dishes and putting Gabrielle down for the night.
The words kept circling back, insistent, like a warning I couldn't quite decode.
A knock at the guest room door. Joanna's voice, soft: "Lucy? You still up?"
"Yeah."
She pushed the door open, already in her robe, reading glasses pushed up on her head. Her face was tired. She'd spent most of the day dealing with the plumber and the insurance company and the mess of a cancelled evening service. "Saw your light on. Everything okay?"
I almost did it again, lied. Almost said I was fine, just couldn't sleep, nothing serious enough to worry about. But my phone was still in my hand, and Joanna's eyes dropped to it, and I saw her expression shift.
"What happened?"
I showed her the text. I watched her face go tight as she read it.
"When did this come in?"
"Last night. I called the sheriff this morning, they're 'monitoring the situation.'" I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice. "Same thing they always say."
We sat in silence for a moment. The house creaked around us, settling into the cold night. Outside, the wind had picked up, rattling the windows in their frames.
I started thinking about the café sitting empty downtown, dark and locked up since this afternoon. The burst pipe had been bad—water everywhere, soaking into boxes of supplies, shorting out the outlet near the walk-in cooler. Joanna had sent everyone home by two o'clock.
I was back to work, but I was switching shifts with Joanna, and as the chief, she kept everything in order even while away taking care of Gabrielle.
But unfortunately, my shift had been cancelled.
I'd been annoyed at the time, wanting the distraction of work, something to keep my hands busy and my mind quiet.
Now the coincidence sat strange in my chest, like a stone I couldn't swallow.
"Weird day," Joanna said quietly, like she was thinking the same thing.
"Yeah."
"Pipe's been fine for twenty years. Never had a problem. Then today, out of nowhere—" She shook her head. "Just one of those things, I guess."
I didn't answer. Couldn't shake the crawling feeling at the back of my neck.
"We're almost out of formula," I said finally. "I was going to wait until morning, but Gabrielle's been eating more lately, and if she wakes up hungry—"
"I'll drive you." Joanna was already standing. "The 24-hour place on Miller Road. I'm not letting you go anywhere alone. Not after this."
I didn't argue.
The grocery store was nearly empty at 11:30 PM.
One cashier, half-asleep behind the register, scrolling through her phone. An old man in the produce section, taking his time like the night stretched on forever. Flickering fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in that sickly yellow glow that made everyone look exhausted.
I had Gabrielle strapped to my chest in her carrier. She'd woken when I lifted her from the bassinet but settled quickly against my warmth, her dark eyes tracking the lights above us with that serious expression she got sometimes. Like she was taking notes on the world.
Joanna grabbed a basket and headed toward the baby aisle. "Formula's this way. What else do you need?"
"Diapers. Maybe some of those overnight ones."
We moved through the store together. But I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.
I kept glancing over my shoulder, scanning the empty aisles, looking for shadows that didn't belong.
Every sound made me flinch: the rattle of a shopping cart, the thump of produce being stacked, the distant hum of refrigerator cases.
I feared for the last person left in my life: Gabrielle.
Joanna noticed. Of course she did. "He's not here, honey. It's the middle of the night in a grocery store. We're okay."
I nodded, but my skin wouldn't stop crawling.
"I'll grab the diapers," I decided to take action, just to distract myself."They're one aisle over. Meet you at the register?"
"Two minutes."
I turned down the baby aisle, scanning for the overnight brand Gabrielle liked. The store was so quiet I could hear my own breathing, could hear Gabrielle's small sighs against my chest. Fluorescent lights hummed. Somewhere, a freezer case clicked on.
That's when I heard his voice.
I knew it instantly.
It came from somewhere near the back of the store. Muffled by distance but unmistakable. That particular cadence. That cruel edge that had lived in my nightmares for years.
Evan’s voice.
My whole body went cold. I pressed myself against the end cap, heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat. Gabrielle squirmed against my chest, picking up on my fear, and I placed a hand on her back, willing her to stay quiet. Please, baby. Please don't cry.
He was on the phone and from the sounds of it, he was drunk. He was loud and careless in that way he got when he'd been drinking all day. His alcoholism had long ago stripped away the man I once knew, replacing him with a volatile shadow that lived between the bottle and the edge of a breakdown.
I remembered that voice. Remembered what came after, when the carelessness turned to cruelty.
But there was something else underneath tonight.
Excitement. Anticipation. The voice of someone watching a plan come together.
It was the most terrifying version of him: the addict who had finally found a way to gamble with something more valuable than his own life.
"You there yet?" He paused then: "Good. Remember what I said. Accelerant in the walls first, then the kitchen. Weak points are marked. By the time they figure out it's not a regular fire, the whole thing will be coming down."
My stomach dropped through the floor.
"No, I'm not there. I'm not stupid. I've got an alibi." He laughed, and the sound made bile rise in my throat. "By the time that firefighter boyfriend of hers gets inside, it'll be too late. Hero complex, remember? He'll go straight in when he hears she's trapped."
She. He meant me.
"Both of them should be there by now. Lucy had the closing shift, and Joanna never leaves before midnight." Another laugh, uglier than the first. "Two birds, one stone. Three, once the captain shows up to save her."
I couldn't breathe. The shelf in front of me blurred, boxes of diapers swimming in my vision. My hand pressed harder against Gabrielle's back, steadying her, steadying myself.
He thought I was at the café. He thought Joanna was at the café.
The burst pipe. The cancelled shift. The only reason we weren't there right now was a broken piece of plumbing that had flooded the storage room twelve hours ago.
A random malfunction. A stroke of luck. The thinnest possible thread between us and whatever was about to happen downtown.
That night, fate was on my side, but I had to play my part.
"She'll have no one left after tonight. No boss, no boyfriend, nobody running to save her. Just me." Evan's voice dropped into something possessive and ugly, something I remembered from closed doors and bruised wrists and whispered threats. "Then she'll remember who she belongs to."
Everyone you love burns.
He hadn’t read my mind; he had used it against me to keep me terrified. It was a promise. He'd been telling me exactly what he was going to do, and I hadn't understood, hadn't seen it for what it was.
"Yeah," Evan said. "Do it. Light it up."
The call ended. Footsteps moved toward the front of the store, heavy and uneven, fading into the distance.
I stood frozen behind the shelf, one hand pressed over my mouth to keep from screaming.
Joanna found me thirty seconds later. I looked like I’d seen a ghost.
"Lucy? What's wrong? You look like you've seen a—"
"The café." The words came out strangled, barely recognizable as my own voice. "Evan's burning the café. Right now. He has someone there, he just gave the order—"
"What?"
"He thinks we're inside, Joanna." I grabbed her arm, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "Both of us. He planned this. He's been planning this. The fire, the collapse, all of it. Cal's going to hear it's the café and he's going to think I'm inside and he's going to—"
I couldn't finish. Couldn't say the words out loud.
Joanna’s face went white when she realized what was going on. The café, her life’s work, was burning right now because a monster from my past wanted to hurt me, wanted to kill me. He had designed a trap to murder everyone I cared about in one efficient strike.
Then something hardened behind her eyes. That steel I'd seen in her before, the thing that had built a business from nothing and held it together through floods and recessions and every disaster the world had thrown at her.
"Parking lot. Now."
She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the front of the store. I clutched Gabrielle against my chest and followed. My legs were moving on autopilot while my mind was screaming.
I was supposed to die tonight. If not for a burst pipe, I'd be inside that building right now. Joanna too. And Cal would come running to save us, and the ceiling would come down, and Evan would finally have what he wanted.
Everyone I loved, burning. Just like he promised.