From Winter's Ashes: Girl Next Door Crime Romance Series - Book Two (34 page)

But time was of the essence, and he didn’t want to tap dance around any bureaucratic red tape. He wouldn’t put Archer in that position when every minute that passed could be Joselyn’s last.

And now that he knew
why
this guy had a taste for fire, his skin prickled, and his neck heated, recalling the agonizing touch of the flames. Knowing Joselyn could be burning alive at this very moment was incinerating him from the inside out.

Finn shuddered and set his fist to the door again. He’d walk through fire again and again to be the hero she needed. And not because he had something to prove to himself anymore. He could see now who he was and where his strength came from. Helluva time for that to finally sink in. But this time he had something to prove to
her
. Love had cost her too much and brought her nothing but pain. And it was time for that to change.

“You can stop yelling at me. I know I should have waited, but there’s nothing we can do about it now, so let’s get on with it.”

Finn sat in the interrogation room with Archer roughly forty minutes later. The man was fuming, but at least Finn’s initiative had paid off. Archer would get over it; he simply wasn’t used to people defying his orders. And since he was about to acquire an obstinate wife in a few short weeks, it was good practice, Finn thought wryly, surprised he could find anything even remotely amusing at a time like this.

“I
am
trying to get on with it. The kid will be here any minute. Agent Mackenzie, you know, the one you stole Stuart’s address from? She’s bringing him in. But apparently the roads are in bad shape due to the weather.”

Archer assured him things were coming together quickly. It had only been two hours since they’d left the crime scene. At this point the clock was irrelevant. The countdown was racing down to zero in his chest, each heartbeat of waiting an eternity of imagining life without her. But sitting in this tiny room waiting for, what they hoped would be, the final piece of the puzzle, proved to be the longest fifteen minutes of Finn’s life.

“Did they at least get a BOLO out on the car now that I got the license plate?”

“Yeah. We’ve got everyone on it. Don’t worry, Finn, we’re close.” Archer’s ire softened to something much more frightening. Sympathy. As if it might already be too late.

It couldn’t be.

Finn clung to the smallest hope. Just over an hour ago a divine whisper had propelled him out that door on a collision course with the information they needed. For the first time in far too long, Finn felt like he’d surrendered the burden of his own expectations. He couldn’t control everything. But he was poised to be the ready weapon in the hands of the warrior who could fight the battles he couldn’t win alone.

It was as if the blinders had been lifted from his eyes. How else would he have sensed that the flowers were significant? Or zeroed in on Tobin’s file in that massive stack within minutes of searching?

Good things came in threes because the hat trick was complete when Stuart finally opened the door to his apartment. 

His stalker-den had been plastered with pictures of Joselyn. Candid and hauntingly beautiful shots of her being surveilled serving as wallpaper, sparing no inch of blank space.

Of course, Stuart hadn’t exactly rolled out the welcome mat, but a few aggressive shoves, and a quick rundown of the evening had granted Finn access to Stu’s “security detail” of Joselyn’s street in the days leading up to the fire.

And that’s when Finn struck gold. Or rather a battered and rusty navy blue Honda Civic. The car had appeared down the street from Joselyn’s every day that week, each time in front of a different house.

Finn had snatched up the photos and rushed to leave, but a firm grip on his arm had stopped him at the door.

“I can see that you love each other.” Stuart had produced a picture of Finn and Joselyn from outside the restaurant on their first date.

Big surprise, Stu had been there to document it.

Finn had hesitated long enough to drink in the captured moment, once again ensnared by the memories. Joselyn was nestled in his embrace, their eyes locked. Their emotions so transparent they’d been almost too easy to miss up close but from a distance seemed ironically magnified with perfect acuity.

The moment from the image came alive in his mind. The silk of her hair beneath his fingertips. The sweetness of her mouth millimeters from his but still imprinted on his lips. That look in her eyes he hadn’t been able to decipher until now.
Love
.

“It’s up to you now to keep her safe.” Stuart’s words had brought him back to reality. And Finn had eyed the resigned man who loved Joselyn too—in his own hopeless way. He couldn’t condone the guy’s methods, but Finn supposed he could relate to being totally gone over Joselyn Whyte.

Finn had accepted his mandate with a terse nod and had set off again, phoning Archer—who’d still been en route to Stuart’s and consequently on the other side of town from the registered owner of the blue Civic. Crappy cards on that score, but he had the ace in his pocket.

So now they waited. And waited. Until finally, sixteen-year-old Billy Levenworth stumbled into the interrogation room.

The gangly teen in a hoodie boasting Spock and the words “
Trek yourself before you wreck yourself”
sat warily in the metal chair, his tawny brown eyes darting with confusion under the sloppy mess of his curly dark mop-top.

“Billy, I’m Special Agent Archer Hayes. I need to ask you some questions, and it’s really important you’re completely honest with me. Understand?” Archer’s tone, while calm and collected, could strip a coating of paint off a steel beam.

The young boy’s gulp echoed through the small room, and his pencil neck bobbed his head in compliance.

Archer laid a print from Stuart’s collection on the frigid metal table and slid it across to Billy’s laced, white-knuckled hands. “Billy, is this your car?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“About three weeks ago, do you remember parking your car on North Harrison Avenue in Kirkwood every day around noon,” Archer produced another picture, “near this house.”

The boy’s bushy eyebrows pulled together despite the lack of distinction between them. A bead of sweat dripped from beneath the matting of bangs down the slope of his nose.

“N-no, sir. I have perfect attendance at school. And I don’t have a parking pass so my car is at home during the day. I’ve had to ride the stupid bus for the past month while my parents are on their European cruise. What’s going on? Why was my car there?”

Archer ignored the questions and pressed on. “Do you know a man named Tobin Devore?”

His brows disappeared further beneath his bangs. “My uncle Toby took my car?”

“Uncle? I thought Devore didn’t have any living relatives,” Finn interrupted.

Billy nodded, “That’s because he’s not technically my uncle. My mom and Toby grew up in the system. They lived in the same foster home for four years. After the fire—and even more so after that Declan Whyte d-bag fired him a month later—Uncle Toby kinda snapped. Stopped going to church with us. Grew this gnarly beard. Sold all his stuff and moved into this nasty old hunting cabin in the middle of East Jesus. I mean there’s no electricity, or running water, or anything. It’s like a shack.

“Anyways, my mom’s been really worried about him so she asked him to come and stay with us for a while. Plus, she needed someone to keep an eye on me while they were on their cruise. Lotta good that did because I’ve only seen him twice in three weeks. And one of those times he was dressed up as an EMT. I swear, he’s totally lost touch with reality. Outer limits, for sure. He’s battling some serious demons. Like Luke verses Darth stuff. And there’s like this … deadness to his eyes. When I look too deep I can feel the dark battle of all that spiritual warfare. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s freaky.”

“Where is this hunting cabin?” Archer stood, economy and urgency in his movements.

“Leasburg, Missouri, I think? Somewhere near those campgrounds off of I-44. I’m not even sure there’s an address. He paid some guy off the books a tiny hunk of cash for it. Like I said, it’s not much of a house. I only saw it once in a picture.”

Finn and Archer darted out the room. Finn flashed a parting Vulcan ‘live long and prosper’ symbol for the poor kid with a perplexed look on his face.

They were approaching the Suburban some twenty seconds later, and Archer was already ending a clipped phone conversation. “Leasburg is about fifty miles west. We’ll head that way. I’ve got a chopper and local backup en route. I think it’s safe to say Devore is planning on setting his cabin on fire with Joselyn in it. Not sure where the cabin is located, but hopefully they’ll find it before we do. Or before we see the smoke.”

They slipped into the car, and Archer tore away, tires screaming over the icy pavement.

Finn braced himself as his body lurched with the violent jerk of the car.

“Better buckle up, Finn. And keep praying we’re not too late.”

Chapter 44

Joselyn Whyte

It felt like she was floating. Swaying. Dancing. Whatever the reality was, Joselyn knew she wanted to remain blissfully ignorant of it as long as possible. With her eyes closed she could almost grasp the memory of Finn’s embrace. Cradled in his arms, the music had all but faded as she swayed with the rhythm of his heart.

But this … this was different than that. So very different.

Nature’s fury rained down above her. Pelting sounds of ice and rain warred against a strange surge of peace that entranced her mind. But the increasing violence of the hail on the roof above pinched stray nerves in her head, ricocheting random sparks of pain through her throbbing skull. The splitting headache and slick of blood seeping into her eye suggested another blow to the head. But that couldn’t touch the agony that radiated from her shoulder. The only explanation she could warrant was someone had ripped her arm from her body.

Straining against the weight tearing at the joint, her body swayed too much. A rush of delirious pain shook a gasp from her throat. Without summons, tears washed the blood from her eye and the pain threatened to steal her questionable consciousness.

Stay awake
!
Open your eyes.
Open them!

She winced, fighting for strength to both open her eyes and hold back the curtain of darkness pressing heavily from the pain.
Oh
.
Oh God.
The meager tentacles of lantern light in the dilapidated shed produced enough light to arouse a fair amount of panic.

What kind of
Sling Blade
horror movie had she been cast in? Rusty blades of all shapes and sizes hung from hooks on the walls. A blood-soaked wooden table against one wall held the lantern and a length of chain. The place reeked of rotting carcasses. But animal or human, she couldn’t say.

When she was done scanning what could only be described as a butcher shed, she blinked up and saw the source of her pain.

She was the next animal to be slaughtered, it would appear. Her hands were strung above her head. Suspended from the beam that traversed the pitched ceiling of the fifteen-by-fifteen death lair, she hung from bound wrists, one of which craned at an awkward angle and was surely broken. The other wrist appeared intact, but as she let her eyes slip the length of her arm, she saw that this arm was much longer than the other. Almost as if her shoulder no longer connected her arm to her body. 

The agony was unlike any she’d ever felt. The physical pain could match and possibly surpass the emotional devastation of her tragic life. Each torturous moment felt like an eternity of suffering. Each breath a desperate hold on consciousness.

And yet, even as the delirium threatened to steal what she assumed would be her last waking moments on earth, she felt warm, unafraid. The drafty shed was no match for the hostility of the December wind, and the insulation of her designer gown wasn’t much warmer than a slip, but somehow, when Old Man Winter’s icy fingers raked over her skin, the chill that should have frozen her bone deep was overcome by a strange hug of heat.

“I’m not alone.” She closed her eyes to erase the surrounding threat. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Her breath emerged shaky, a wellspring of hope bubbled up in her chest. “I can feel you.” Her lips formed a tremulous smile. Tears coursed down her face. “I don’t understand this. I don’t understand a lot of things, really, but I’ve been so lost and alone for as long as I can remember. I wanted …
needed
someone to love me. And now you’re here. Just in time to carry me home.”

Beloved.

Love whispered, possibly a mirage born of delirium, but as sure as the pain ravaging her body. In the stillness, it came again.

Beloved, I have held you in your darkest moments. Carried you to safety. Fought for you and won. I have loved you from the very beginning.

As if viewing a highlight reel, Joselyn was back on the icy road that fractured her family, seeing the explosive flames pass over without touching her. She was then wandering the streets for Yia-Yia, somehow knowing exactly where to turn to bring her home to safety. And then still, about to swallow a handful of Gloria’s sleeping pills after prom, when Erwin came in from the stables early with heartburn. And finally, she was resigned to die in a fiery prison when Finn came to her rescue.

“Oh, God.” She closed her eyes and prayed, the locks breaking open and the words in her heart the sweetest surrender.

“He’s not gonna save you.”

Joselyn’s eyes shot open. The door that slammed behind her killer made her flinch—sending another circuit of misery through her body.

Shaking the pellets of ice from his derelict onyx hair, he tossed aside a dripping sheet of gray tarp and what looked like a spool of ribbon.

“Already has.” The pain was no more manageable, but an unlikely peace ascended on her and took the edge off enough to clear the haze from her eyes.

He looked familiar, but she struggled to place him. His midnight hair and unruly beard hinted at a rugged lifestyle, but it was the untamed fury in his wild, obsidian eyes that made him belong here in this horrifying shack.

“Wrong. You’re gonna die today.” His eyes flashed hot with rage. “Soon as the rain stops and I remove the tarp keeping this place dry. I’m not taking any chances this time. Guess you can thank your precious
God
for the storm delaying your inevitable fate.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She felt strong. More confident than she’d ever felt. Even in the face of certain death, she was no longer afraid. “I’ll be home. You, on the other hand, will rot in prison for the murderer that you are, or you will live haunted by the life you robbed from me. But it’s not too late.”

“I am not a murderer! I am a servant of justice. Your life is the price to be paid for retribution. An eye for an eye. Even
God
himself knows about that one.” The man pumped his hands into fists at his sides. It was an odd gesture, but it triggered a memory.

“Vengeance, huh? That’s what this is all about?” Something clicked. “Wait, I do know you. Tobin, right? You used to work for my father.” And though he was harrier, and lined with stress not from advancing age but from despair, she could see the man who’d been her father’s prodigy. The brilliant young inventor who would usher Whyte Enterprises into the brass ring—the cutting edge of technology. She remembered him when she’d once dropped in on her father at work on her birthday bearing cupcakes and a foolish hope that she might get a morsel of his time.

But there’d been nothing sweet or special about that day. Instead of the moment of connection she’d craved, she’d witnessed her father tearing apart a team of young scientists in lab coats, one absently squeezing his hands into fists while he received the brunt of the lashing. When they’d been thoroughly dressed down and demoralized she’d watched them leave. One woman had tears in her eyes. Several other faces had been lined with distress. But one, the man with the white-knuckled fists in rapidly clenching hands, had walked past and looked directly at her. His eyes unfathomably cold and empty, she remembered feeling the chill in them sweep through her like a winter wind.

Then her father had come to the open door of his office, and everything in her shook from the uncertainty she felt squishing around in her tummy. Fear. Longing. And a spark of hope that died when he looked on her with annoyance and said, “I don’t want you here. Leave.” before he slammed the door in her face, not hearing her sniffle and whisper, “But it’s my birthday.”

The headline came to her mind next.
“Family of Whyte’s head of R&D, Dr. Tobin Devore, dies tragically in their Chesterfield home.”

The man was broken. Just like she had been. Joselyn’s voice softened, and though her physical misery was powerful enough, her heart began to ache for this man. “Your wife and your four-year-old daughter. I remember. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Her father was known for overworking his employees. Guilting or threatening them into excessive overtime. Slinging money at roadblocks and problems as if it could solve anything.

Because he was a man of incalculable influence, she’d often pondered the potential domino effect of her father’s greed. Rather, she wondered how exactly it affected others. She knew all too well how it affected her.

But then last year after Devore’s family died in a house fire while he worked late into the night, she’d seen the depth of her father’s cruelty. About a month after the accident that robbed Tobin Devore of his family, a major project he’d been working on had fallen apart, and Declan Whyte had fired him. It was heartless. Unconscionable.

Her life would now serve as the ultimate repercussion of her father’s selfishness.

An eye for an eye, Devore said. He’d lost his wife and daughter. Now Declan Whyte would too. And the worst of it was, he wouldn’t care.

Devore worked in silence, unrolling the white ribbon and scattering it in the room.

“This isn’t going to heal your pain, Tobin. Nothing can. Nothing but love. And not the kind that can be lost in the fire. It’s not too late.” The truth swelled within her, resurrected from the deep recesses of her mind. And then the verse from Isaiah unfurled from her heart like a captive being set free. 

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine … When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”

“Stop!” Tobin hissed on a ragged breath. Flinging down the last of the ribbon, he stormed to where Joselyn hung from the beam and withdrew a gun.

The barrel stared Joselyn down, point blank. She swallowed down a tremor. “D-Don’t y-you s-see? Even if you d-do this, you can’t escape it. You’re already redeemed by blood that won’t wash away with your mistakes, even this one. I know you’re hurting, but this won’t bring your family back. Nothing you do to me will erase the pain of losing them. Just like, in all my lonely years, nothing I did could bring back my mother or win my father’s love.”

The gun shook in Tobin’s hand. Heaving hot white air into the frigid space between them, his jaw jutted to one side, his eyes filling with barely leashed emotion.

“But you’re not alone, Tobin. And if you think back, past the heartache, you might realize you never were.”

Backing away, Tobin’s eyes were unseeing, looking through Joselyn as if he’d already made her a ghost. The gun still absently trained on her head.

Oh help. I don’t know what else to say.

Just then Tobin’s retreating backside collided with the bloody table. The lantern crashed to the floor, and before the faint flicker of darkness settled, the floor ignited, the snaking pattern of ribbon erecting walls of blinding white fire all at once.

Like an explosion, without the bang.

Too numb with the shock of pain to move, Joselyn heard her own scream sail over the villainous roar of the flames eating up the empty spaces, teasing the flesh of her bare feet, slithering over the beam that held her from the instant inferno below.

The heat consumed her—her eyes stinging from the smoke and sweat pooling in her pores. And she knew with certainty, there was no escape.

This is it. Finn will never know that I’ve forgiven him. That he is so much stronger than he realizes. And, that despite my efforts to hate him … I really, truly loved him like crazy.

Satan’s hands reached up from hell, his fiery talons clawed at her feet. Through the burning wreckage, Joselyn saw Tobin pressed against the only portion of wall relatively untouched by fire. The door was only a few steps to his right, but he remained in place. His eyes coated with the drunken daze of the smoke. He squeezed them tight, uttered something she couldn’t hear or read through the wild dance of the flames consuming the shack.

And then he raised his gun. Aimed at her.

Pulled the trigger.

The split of the round silenced the hiss of the flames for a mere moment before the hellish inferno rose from beneath her dangling feet. She had a fraction of a second to recognize that the bullet must have severed the rope before crash-landing onto the molten floor. Immeasurable agony flared out to each offending limb. The falling catch of air in her dress huffed away a scant scrap of flames now more eager to backtrack and devour her.

Like Devore’s mystical arson ribbon, the full force of the pain exploded through her body tenfold. The scorch of each kiss of fire on her skin manifested in a blood-boiling scream that choked from her throat over and over.

Reenacting her fight to survive from the fire that started it all, Joselyn struggled to stand, the blazing board beneath her feet rapidly disintegrating to ash. She leapt forward. The searing heat melted through her dress, each layer of flames lapping at her skin. The smothering scent of smoke and burning flesh called her to death, mocking her coming defeat.

And yet, something pressed her forward. The fabric burned at her feet, but she was almost to the door. The air was useless, but she couldn’t remember breathing. A flash of gun metal to her right caught her eye. The snub nose poised where it would do the most damage.

Tobin’s face streaked with sweat, soot, and tears.

“NO!” Joselyn lunged at him.

But it was too late.