Always Watching (20 page)

At the top of the stairs, she stopped. The odor was much stronger, the pungent scent of death and decay made her want to hurl. But she couldn't leave now. If there was a body, she
needed the right people here to process it. Could be an animal, she reminded herself.

Olivia pulled the collar of her shirt up over her nose. It didn't help much. A slight creak from somewhere in the house made her pause.

Was that a footstep? She held still, breathing shallow breaths, and listened. Her grip tightened on the butt of her weapon. She went back down to the bottom of the stairs, stopping on the last step that would take her into the open foyer. She peered around the corner. Left. Right. Nothing. Another thirty seconds of listening convinced her it was just the house making noises. Probably.

She turned and started up the stairs again. When she reached the top, she found herself in the middle of a hallway. To the left were two bedrooms with a connecting bath and to the right a closet, then probably the master bedroom. Her pulse beat a fast rhythm and she could hear the pounding of her heart. Why was she so keyed up? She'd seen dead bodies before. Smelled them too. Had been one of two rookies who hadn't passed out, vomited, or left the room in a hurry during the autopsy she'd viewed while in the academy. Still . . .

Her phone buzzed and she pressed the button. “Yeah,” she spoke in a low voice, no more than a whisper. She cleared her throat. “Hello?” she said in a more normal volume. Her voice sounded loud, disturbing in the tomblike quiet of the house.

“Olivia?”

Wade's voice almost made her pause. She hadn't expected to hear him on the other side. “Yeah.”

“I've been trying to call you. Are you all right?” he demanded.

“I'm fine. I'm not sure Valerie is, though.” She paused. “Is Haley with you?”

“Of course.”

“Let me talk to her a second, please.”

She waited while he made the switch. “What's going on?”

Olivia told her.

“Have you found the body?”

“Not yet.” A low creak reached her ears and she froze. A footfall on the hardwood stairs. Then another. Coming up toward her. Okay, that was not the house settling. She lowered her voice. “I think someone's in the house with me, Haley. I'll call you back.”

“What? Get out of there. Stay on the phone with me.”

“Going to call Bree.”

“Olivia!”

She hung up and dialed Bree. It went to voice mail. She tried Quinn. Voice mail.

Great. She put her phone on vibrate.

Keeping a firm grip on her weapon, she moved to the master bedroom. The closed door mocked her. She placed a hand on the knob and turned.

Her phone vibrated. The door opened but she kept her back to the room, facing the stairs where the threat seemed to come from. She held her weapon ready, her nerves humming in spite of her mental orders for them to calm down. “Hello?” she whispered as loud as she dared.

“Liv, you all right?”

Bree.

Olivia watched the stairs, expecting to see someone appear at the top any second. “I'm still in Valerie's house.”

“You need help?”

“I think someone's in the house with me.”

“The dead body?”

“No, a very much alive one.”

“Liv, get out of there.” Her low voice full of concern made Olivia's blood pulse faster.

“Can't. I'm upstairs with no way out but down the stairs someone is coming up. Just checking to see when that backup's going to be here.” The adrenaline rushing through her made her shaky.

“Lock yourself in a room and stay there. Backup should only be about ten away.”

Keeping her eyes on the hallway in front of her, the phone in her back pocket but still connected to the Bluetooth and Bree, she backed inside. A shadow highlighted against the staircase wall. A large shadow in the shape of a human.

Olivia sucked in a deep breath, fought the wave of nausea the action brought with it, and shut the door. “There's someone on the stairs.” She was nearly mouthing the words, her whisper was so quiet. She hoped Bree could hear her.

“Where are you?”

“In the master bedroom off the back of the house.”

She twisted the lock, then turned and froze as her eyes landed on the floor behind her.

The nausea tripled and she fought the need to lose the contents of her stomach. A woman lay on the floor next to the bed, the covers twisted around her. Her mouth and eyes gaped. Olivia gasped and gagged.

“Olivia?”

“Found the dead body. Where's that backup?”

Bree paused, said something to someone, then came back to Olivia. “Five minutes.”

Olivia turned away for a brief moment before the need to survive kicked in. Footsteps fell on the thin carpet outside the room. The knob rattled but the lock held.

Olivia held her breath and listened, her gun trained on the door. Whoever was on the other side didn't speak or call out. Neither did she.

“Olivia?” Bree's voice came through the earpiece in her ear.

“Shhhh.”

Bree fell silent.

Within seconds Olivia heard retreating footsteps. She figured the person was going to look for something to help gain entrance and Olivia didn't plan to be there when the door opened. But first . . .

She removed her phone from her back pocket. “Hold on a sec.”

“You all right?”

“For the moment.” Olivia shot pictures of the body and the room. She tried not to focus on the fact that the woman on the floor had been a living, breathing person. A person with dreams and hopes. A person who didn't deserve to die like this.

Anger started to burn away the shock of seeing the evidence of such violence. She'd seen a lot of horrible stuff as a police officer and she'd never gotten used to it. She'd learned to hide her reaction, mask her horror that people were capable of inflicting such evil on other humans, but she never got used to it. She'd promised herself she'd quit if she ever became indifferent to seeing scenes such as the one before her now.

Urgency pushed her and she snapped shots from every angle she could before she knew she had to leave.

Finished with the pictures, she moved to the French doors to see out. No tree to climb out on and shimmy down. Just a wrought iron balcony overlooking the backyard.

The sharp smell of gasoline overpowered the dead body smell and she turned toward the odor, frowning. Wha—

Smoke curled under the door and understanding hit her. “He's set the house on fire, Bree. He's smoking me out.”

Wade sat in the passenger seat of Haley's car and made a conscious effort to relax his jaw. “How much farther?”

“About a minute.”

“Why isn't she answering her phone?”

“I don't know. She's probably busy taking care of whoever's in the house with her.”

He shot her a perturbed look she missed because her eyes were on the road. “She said there was a dead body.”

“Yes.”

“You don't seem concerned.”

Her fingers flexed on the wheel. “I'm concerned.”

Wade sent up prayers for Olivia. When Haley had asked about a body, his heart had dropped to his toes. Then Olivia said someone was in the house with her and he grabbed his keys.

Of course Haley had no choice but to take him with her. She'd snatched the keys from his fingers, told him to get into her car, and she climbed into the driver's seat. Now the clock was ticking and Olivia wasn't answering her phone. “So does she have help by now? Are the cops there?”

“I sure hope so.”

“Can't you call Bree or Quinn?”

“Olivia said she was calling Bree. If Olivia needs me, she'll call me back. I don't want to be a distraction.”

The muscles at the base of his neck and across his shoulders felt like they might snap. He rotated his head to no avail. He wouldn't be able to relax until he knew Olivia was safe.

“Can you get out?”

Olivia was shocked at how quickly the smoke filled the room in spite of the fact that she'd moved fast and crammed a bedsheet into the crack of the door. The bedroom door was hot to the touch. No going out that way. She wasn't worried about contaminating the crime scene at this point. She just wanted to get out alive. Flames had eaten through the bedsheet and now licked along the floor where the gasoline had soaked through.

Sirens screamed in the distance and relief filled her even while it was short-lived. Help might be on the way, but she had to help herself too. She twisted the knob on the French door. It didn't move. She shook it, rattled the knob, pushed. Nothing. For the first time since she'd realized she wasn't alone in the house, panic started to creep in. Through the haze, she tried to see if there was a latch or something she needed to release in order to open the door.

There. At the top. A sliding lock. She reached up and pushed, but again to no avail. Stuck. She wanted to scream in frustration, but refused to waste the breath. Each time she inhaled, she brought smoke into her lungs.

Lungs that were starting to burn.

She coughed, stepped back, and brought her leg up. She gave the area near the handle a hard kick. The door shuddered, but
didn't open. Flames crawled along the carpet and started on the bed coverings.

She spun and grabbed the lamp off the end table, then whirled back to aim the heavy base at the glass doors. With a grunt, she slammed it into the glass.

The door shattered outward onto the deck. Fresh air rushed in and hit the flames. Heat and smoke surrounded her. Dizziness assailed her and she stumbled, coughing. The flames now licked at the drapes of the window to the left of the French doors.

She looked back, wondering if she had time to wrap Valerie's body and drag her out of the room. She wanted to preserve the evidence but didn't want to die trying. The heat smothered her. Smoke choked her. The bed was already burning. No time.

She kicked out more of the glass to make room for her to slip through. The smoke followed her out onto the small deck made of wood and wrought iron. No bigger than six feet by five, there were no steps leading down and the wood beneath her feet was old and warped. And dry. If it caught fire, she'd have only seconds. Fresh fear hit her. She had nowhere else to go.

Except over and down.

Sirens screamed to a stop at the front of the house. She faced the backyard. Bree was still connected via the Bluetooth. “I need help getting down and I need it fast.”

She looked down again. The small deck was on the second floor, which wouldn't be such a terrible drop if it wasn't for the fact that the house backed up to a sharp incline leading down to a creek with woods on the other side.

She'd break her leg. Or her neck. The smoke thickened around her. The flames spread further. The stench of burning flesh reached her. She closed her eyes for a split second while she swallowed against the nausea rising in the back of her throat. Poor Valerie.

Better to break bones or fry? “Come on, Bree, I need a ladder.”

“Hang tight.”

She looked down, coughing, dizzy, and still nauseous. The fire arched around her. “Hang tight,” she whispered. “Afraid that's what I'm going to be doing.” Sparks shot at her and she hissed as they landed on her exposed skin. The dry wooden floor of the porch caught fire, the flames licking up the dry wood. Fast. The porch shuddered beneath her. “Uh oh.”

“What?”

Olivia didn't have a choice.

She swung a leg over the wrought iron railing. A loud crack sounded over the roar of the fire and she flinched. Her right cheek stung like she'd been attacked by a swarm of bees.

“Olivia!”

“Bree—”

The wooden floor collapsed and her tenuous grip on the wrought iron shifted as the structure sagged with the combination of the dropping wood and her weight. She clung, but her left hand slipped off—and her right wasn't far behind.

Haley froze. With the windows down, the chaos surrounding the situation was loud and clear. Another fire truck squealed to a stop and firefighters in their gear crawled down from their trucks like ants on a mission.

A loud blast echoed through the neighborhood. The firefighters stopped and looked at each other.

“What is it?” Wade asked.

“That was a gunshot!” Haley said.

Wade stared in horror at the flames licking through the roof toward the back of the house. He got out of the car and Haley yelled something at him.

He ignored her. “Is Olivia in there?”

She grasped his upper arm. “Get back in the car.”

He jerked away from her. “Is she in there?”

“I don't know!”

A black sedan rolled behind Haley's vehicle. Bree and Quinn got out. Bree didn't bother to shut the door, but took off toward the back of the house like she'd been shot from a cannon. Wade followed after her. He thought he heard Quinn shout at him, or maybe it was Haley, but he didn't look back. Olivia had been talking to Bree on the way over. Wherever the detective was going, he was sure to find Olivia.

Bree rounded the corner of the house. Wade followed her. A sharp drop-off to his right. He looked left.

And gaped. “Olivia,” he whispered.

“Oh my g—” Bree shot forward with Wade right behind. “Hang on, Liv!”

“I'm trying!” Olivia dangled two floors up, one hand grasping the wrought iron railing, feet trying to find a foothold around the part of the railing that would lead her to the ground. If she could wrap her legs around it, she could ride it like a firehouse pole. But she couldn't quite reach it.

Another crack sounded, kicking up the dirt in front of him. Bree hollered and dropped to the ground. Wade flinched, but stood his ground, never taking his eyes from Olivia. If she dropped, the momentum might carry her down the rocky hill. She hung low enough that if she dropped to the ground just below her and didn't roll, she should be fine.

Haley barreled into him and shoved him behind her.

“I'm going after the shooter!” Quinn shouted.

He heard Quinn's footsteps head to the woods where the gunshot had come from. Bree was on her phone screaming for someone to get around to the back of the house with a ladder.

“I'm really not happy with you,” Haley said in his ear to his right. He noticed she'd placed herself between him and the direction the bullets had come from. She tried to move him in the direction of the car, to safety. Guilt stabbed him. “Haley, please protect yourself. I'm not moving to safety until Olivia's out of danger.”

“How is getting shot going to help her?”

“It won't. But look. If she falls—”

Haley finally saw what he saw and swallowed, glanced in the direction Quinn had disappeared and nodded.

“Yeah. We can't let her fall. Where's that ladder, Bree?”

Wade moved closer, his heart thundering, prayers lifting from his lips as he focused on Olivia. If she let go or lost her grip, he was going to catch her. Or at least break her fall and keep her from rolling down the hill and into the creek. Rocks, sticks, broken branches, and tree stumps littered the drop-off. If she fell onto one of them, she could be impaled. Just like her friend.

He knew she'd already thought of that. Probably why she hadn't let go yet. His pulse thundered in his ears. He waited for the sound of another crack, the feel of a bullet to pierce his skin, but he wouldn't move.

“Got the ladder! Everyone out of the way!”

He met Olivia's eyes. Desperation and pain stared down at him. Along with a harsh determination. Flames licked around her. The heat had to be intense. Wade could feel it and it almost drove him back. How was she holding on?

And then she wasn't.

She tumbled toward him. He let his body relax and accepted her hit. He wrapped his arms around her as he went down. The force of the impact from both Olivia on top of him and the ground beneath blew the breath from his lungs.

He lay there stunned, his world fading to gray, sounds dull
ing, his lungs straining. And felt himself start to roll down the hill. He thrashed his legs. Anything to stop the momentum.

Then he jarred to a stop, heard the chaos, felt Olivia pulled from his grip. “Watch her hands, she's got burns,” he gasped.

“Sir? Are you all right?”

He was finally able to drag in a full breath. He coughed and struggled to sit up. No sharp pains so he figured he hadn't broken anything. “Olivia? Is she all right?”

“Let's get you away from here.”

“Olivia?”

“She's being treated, now come on,” Haley urged him. He felt her tug on his arm. “Can you stand up?”

“Give me a second.” The world quit spinning and his eyes settled on the firefighters aiming the hose at the blaze that had taken out most of the back of the house. Sparks flew, debris fluttered down, and smoke curled around them. He coughed and allowed the paramedic and Haley to help him to his feet. “Did they catch the shooter?”

“Bree and Quinn have gone after him,” Haley said.

“Him?”

“Or her. Whoever it was.”

Wade nodded, but his eyes sought Olivia. And found her on a gurney being led to the back of an ambulance. She had a sheet pulled all the way over her head.