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Goran and Coyne stood on either side of the door, facing the street. Arnett’s porch light had activated, flooding the front yard with light. “I’m not seeing any movement,” Coyne said.
“She has to be here somewhere,” Arnett said.
“Not out front.” Goran strode back down the porch, scouring the yard as he went.
Coyne called out from the side of the house. “Bushes clear.”
“Maybe she expected us to exit via the back,” Jo said, turning around. “You two stay here and we’ll go— Oh, God.”
The men swerved to follow her gaze. A hundred yards away, the neighbor’s house was also on fire—and the flames were far up the sides, already licking around the upper windows.
“What the fuck,” Coyne said, and did a one-eighty to the neighbor on the other side. “That one, too. What did she do, set the whole damn neighborhood on fire?”
Arnett jutted his head at Goran and pointed to the south-most house. “Radio the fire department, then head over to that house and get the Parsons out. Jo and I will go take care of Mrs. Visniky.”
“No fucking way,” Coyne said. “You stay with us.”
Arnett raised his hand to cut Coyne off. “The fire’s spreading too fast. Mrs. Visniky uses a wheelchair and needs help in and out of bed. If I don’t help hernow, she’s dead.”
CHAPTERSIXTY-ONE
The moments between when I activated the devices and when the fires caught were some of the longest of my life.
I’d done test runs out in the woods, of course. But homemade incendiaries, let alone remote-activated ones, are fickle. The internet assured me that if I shoved the device in a dryer vent, the built-up lint inside would go up like a tinderbox. But there’s only one dryer vent per house, so my secondaries were set amid piles of dry leaves and twigs at the base of walls. And since my cameras didn’t cover all of them, I had no way of knowing if they’d been discovered or interfered with by rats or raccoons under cover of night. So I sat, hunched down in the dark, stomach churning while the seconds stretched like hours.
Then a flicker of the flame broke through the darkness. Adrenaline replaced the stomach-churning as I watched the light intensify and waited for the first shouts.
When they came, I took a deep breath and flashed my mini Maglite down at my gun. I’d removed the safety. It was loaded. I flashed the light through the space in front of me—I had a clear shot.
Now, if I’d gambled correctly, it was just a matter of moments.
CHAPTERSIXTY-TWO
Jo grabbed Arnett’s arm and lowered her voice. “That’s exactly what she wants, for you to rush in there. It’s a trap!”
He yanked his arm away. “You think I don’t know that? But Mrs. Visniky isn’t gonna die because ofme.”
“So letusgo get her,” Goran said.
Arnett pointed at the flames. “The houses’ll be fireballs in minutes, and you don’t know the floor plan. Go help the Parsons, they’ll just need to be guided, not carried.Now!” He turned and ran.
Despite the frustration clutching at her, Jo nodded to them. Once Goran and Coyne took off toward the other house, she raced after Arnett, pushing down her desire to strangle him. “We need to be smart about this.”
He didn’t slow. “Don’t start with me.”
She put on a burst of speed and circled around to block his path. “I don’t have time to navigate your I-feel-guilty death wish right now.” He tried to push past her, but she continued. “Listen to me for one damned moment and maybenobodyhas to die. Including Woods, because I want her to pay for what she’s done, but we need her alive. So stop acting like amartyrand start acting like a fuckingcop.”
He stopped, clenched his fists, and stared up at the flames. “Talk to me.Quickly.”
CHAPTERSIXTY-THREE
I struggled to count the voices as they came closer. One was a woman—that would be Fournier. But were there more than two male voices? I couldn’t tell. I stared blankly into the pitch black and tried to ignore the acrid smoke as I strained to hear. A man said something about floor plans, and yelled at someone to save the others.
Then I couldn’t make out anything—they must have been running to the house, because when I heard the woman next, they were much closer.
“Your stubbornness is going to kill you one of these days. I’ll take the front and you make sure she doesn’t escape out the back.”
I squinted into the darkness. Did she really think I was that stupid? That my plan was just to have him run inside while I ran out back? What would be the point of that? No, she was smarter than that. So what was she really up to?
