As they approached the small building, a wave of heat escaped the doorway.She signaled the officers to fan out, although there appeared to be only the one door.
“Sheriff's Department!”she called out, positioning herself to one side of the doorway.“Come out with your hands visible!”
No response but the crackle of flames.
Jenna exchanged a glance with Jake, a world of communication passing between them in that brief moment.He positioned himself, and they moved as a unit.
The heat hit full force as they entered.The brick oven roared at the far end of the small room, its iron door flung wide, flames dancing inside like living things.Smoke hung near the ceiling, not yet thick enough to choke, but stinging Jenna's eyes.
Through watering vision, she took in the scene with a swift glance: the frail, tiny figure of Ida Billings on a wooden bench to her right, bound with rope but stirring now, her thin frame moving weakly against her restraints.And directly before the oven, a woman stood motionless.
Her hair hung about her head in limp strands, unwashed and wild like a tangle of winter-dead vines.Her eyes, sunken into dark hollows, held an unnatural brightness.
Vivian Crane,Jenna had no doubt, but looking older than her photographs, and quite mad.
“Hands where I can see them!”Jenna commanded, weapon trained on the woman—”Step away from the oven, now!”
Vivian didn't move, didn't even seem to register their presence.Her shoulders shook with what might have been laughter or sobs—the sounds indistinguishable over the roar of the fire.
“Jake, check on Ida,” Jenna instructed, never taking her eyes off Vivian.“Ramirez, Chen, secure the suspect.”
Jake holstered his weapon and moved quickly to Ida's side, dropping to one knee beside the elderly woman.“She's breathing,” he reported, already working to loosen the knots that bound her wrists.“Mrs.Billings?Can you hear me?”
A feeble cough was his answer, followed by Ida's quavering voice.“Where...what's happened?”Her words were slurred, confused.“So much smoke...”
“You're safe now,” Jake assured her, helping her to sit up once her hands were free.“We need to get you out of here.”
Meanwhile, Officers Ramirez and Chen had moved in on Vivian, who had turned away, gaze fixed on the flames even as they took hold of her arms.
“Free now,” Vivian murmured, her voice barely audible above the fire's crackle.Her expression became eerily serene.“The flames have set her loose.”
“Vivian Crane,” Jenna said, moving forward now that the suspect was secured, “you're under arrest for the attempted murder of Ida Billings, and the murders of Claudia Kingsley and Rebecca Hartley.”
“She thanked me,” Vivian continued as if Jenna hadn't spoken, her voice dreamlike.“All these years, and she thanked me for burning her.”
A chill ran through Jenna despite the oppressive heat of the room.“Cuff her,” she instructed Ramirez.“Read her rights and get her out of here.”
As the officers led Vivian away, the woman offered no resistance, moving with the vacant compliance of someone whose mind had retreated far from her body.Her final words floated back to Jenna as they guided her through the door: “Loyalynne is free.”
Loyalynne?
Vivian's words pulled Jenna forward, drawing her closer to the flames despite the searing heat against her face.There, among the burning logs, she saw it—the blackened remains of what had once been a doll.Porcelain fragments glowed orange-red in the heat, cracking further as she watched.A charred scrap of fabric that might have been a dress curled into ash at the edges.Glass eyes, partially melted, caught the firelight in a final, grotesque wink.
Jenna stepped back from the oven, feeling a deep unease.The doll was just an object, she knew—porcelain and fabric and paint.Yet standing there, watching it disintegrate in the flames, she couldn't shake the feeling that something more than simple arson and attempted murder had occurred here today.
Jake had helped Ida to her feet.When the old woman swayed, he swept her up in his arms.
“I'll get her outside,” he told Jenna.“We’ll call for EMTs.”
Jenna followed them, feeling a certain cold dread—the sense that she was glimpsing only the surface of something deeper and darker than she could comprehend.
Outside, sirens announced the arrival of more units, the wail cutting through the afternoon air—Spelling’s highway patrol, she was sure.
This case was ending—Vivian apprehended, Ida saved, no more victims to mourn.Yet as Jenna moved away from the bake oven house, from the smoldering remains of Loyalynne, she carried with her the unsettling certainty that some flames, once lit, continue to burn long after the fire appears extinguished.And some stories, once started, never truly end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Later that night, Jenna sat in her mother’s kitchen with her wrapped hands around a mug of chamomile tea.The warmth was a small comfort after the day's darkness.Across the worn oak table, her mother's face was a map of conflicting emotions—horror at the details of Vivian Crane's confession, relief that the case was closed, and something else—a mother's quiet pride that both her daughters sat at her table tonight.
