Light flickered behind her head. For a moment, she was disoriented. Then a smoky, roasting smell assaulted her nostrils. She shot bolt upright and jumped off the couch. Flames were licking her curtains, producing waves of thick, black smoke. She sucked in a lungful of hot, acrid air. The fire was contained to the curtains, but it was moving quickly. And she didn’t have a fire extinguisher. She ran to the bathroom, grabbed a towel, and drenched it in water. Tossing it over her head, she backtracked to the living room and threw open her front door.
Shit. She shouldn’t have done that. The sudden draft fanned a new line of flames that crept across the floor to the sofa, the same sofa she’d been sleeping on just a moment ago. She bolted into the hall. The fire alarm box was on the opposite wall. She smashed the glass and pulled the lever. A piercing siren blasted through the building. She banged on her neighbor’s door.
“Fire! Everyone out! Fire!” She shouted. “Someone call the fire department!”
Her neighbor across the hall, a graduate student at Northwestern, opened his door. A portable phone was glued to his ear. His roommate hovered behind him. Both were in t-shirts and boxers. “I just called.”
“Good. I’m going up,” Georgia yelled. “Get the first floor on your way out.”
The men sprinted down the steps. Georgia slammed her door closed and raced up to the third floor. She banged on Pete’s apartment. “Pete. Get out. There’s a fire!”
A woman with a panicked expression opened the door across from Pete’s. Inside a baby was crying.
“Take the baby and go,” Georgia shouted. “Now!”
The woman nodded and spun around. “Okay, sweetheart. Mommy’s coming.”
Georgia looked downstairs to the second floor. Despite the fact that she’d closed her door, curls of smoke were seeping under the edge. Eventually, they would rise and balloon out on the ceiling. If she kept low to the floor, she’d be okay. Pushing the towel further down on her forehead, she pounded on Pete’s door again.
“Pete. Wake up! Now!”
Georgia counted to five, then banged again. Pete’s neighbor charged past her, the baby in her arms. “I haven’t seen him all day,” she shouted as she hurried down the stairs. “Maybe he’s not home.”
Georgia stopped. If Pete wasn’t home, she was wasting precious seconds. She should get out of the building while she could. But Pete had a broken ankle. He was on crutches. She thought about breaking down his door and doing a quick search. But that would take time.
The smoke in the hallway thickened and started to billow on the ceiling. She tasted grit. It was getting hard to breathe. She threw herself against the door one last time and beat on it until her knuckles were sore. “Pete Dellinger. If you’re in there, get the hell out. There’s a fire!”
Another ten seconds went by. Smoke blanketed the air, and heat pressed down on her. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. She looked back down the steps. An uneven light under her door told her that flames had reached the wall. She couldn’t wait any longer. She sprinted down the steps two at a time. She had just cleared the second floor and was on her way to the first when she heard a latch turn upstairs. A thin voice called out.
“Help!”
She stopped. “Pete?”
“Georgia?”
She spun around and raced back up to the second floor landing. She saw orange under her door. Smoke rolled over her in waves, thickening her throat and nose. She kept going. “I’m coming!”
She scrambled back up to the third floor where she found Pete leaning on his crutches. His face was covered with sweat, and he was wheezing. She slipped the towel off her head and tossed it over. “Cover your head with this.” Then she squatted on the third step from the top. “Throw the crutches away and climb onto my back.”
He took the towel but shook his head. “No. You won’t be able to support me.” His voice was raspy and tense.
“We have to try. Hurry. We don’t have much time.”
She doubled over, giving him her back.
“This will never work,” he said shakily.
“Damn it, Pete. Get your ass on the floor and scoot yourself onto my back. Then grab on and don’t let go.”
He did as she said, but when she felt his weight settle on her back, whatever air she’d managed to keep in her lungs flew out. She grimaced. She couldn’t carry him down two flights of steps. But she had to try.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
She bumped her rear end down the stairs, one step at a time. She got three steps down, but the strain on her back was excruciating. She glanced downstairs. Flames were in the hall now, climbing the wall outside her apartment. The heat was unbearable. She heard sirens cut through the air. Thank God. But they were still minutes away.
“Georgia, stop.” Pete said. “We can’t do this.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
She inched down another step. Two more and she’d be at the landing. She tried to take a breath but breathed in hot, smoky air. She kept going. She made it to the landing.
“I have to rest,” she gasped.
He let go and rolled back on the floor. She took in more smoke and started coughing. She twisted around. Pete struggled to sit upright. She crawled to him and propped him up. When he was stable, he shook his head. “You keep going. I’ll—I’ll get myself down.”
The sirens were louder now. Someone yelled from downstairs. “Georgia, where are you?”
She tried to answer, but her voice came out as a whisper. Pete’s voice overrode hers. “Second floor.” He croaked. “Need help!”
“We’re coming. Just hold on!”
“Georgia...” Pete’s voice sounded muffled, as if from a distance. “You’ve got to get out of here. I’ll—I’ll manage.”
She tried to stand, but the heat and the flames and the smoke were too much. Her feet slid out in front of her. Everything started to spin. Black crept across the edges of her vision. Then there was nothing.
***
When she came to, she was lying on a shriveled patch of lawn. She heard the staticky sound of two-way radios, voices shouting, the drone of idling engines. Slowly she cracked her eyes. On her left, a whirling mass of red and blue lights. On her right she sensed, rather than saw, a crowd of people.
“Hey, she’s coming to,” a male voice called out. Blurry faces appeared in her field of vision. “Give her some room. Everybody back off.” The faces retreated, leaving only two. As she focused, she saw that one was a cop in uniform. The other was a woman in blue surgical scrubs and a sweat shirt. A paramedic. She took Georgia’s wrist and stared at her watch.
“How’s... Pete?” Georgia croaked. Her voice sounded muffled. Her mouth and nose were covered with an oxygen mask.
“Don’t talk,” the woman ordered, keeping her eyes on her watch. A few seconds later, she released Georgia’s wrist and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm. Georgia waited for her to finish, then stripped off the mask.
“The guy with the broken ankle,” she said again. “How is he?”
The paramedic took her stethoscope from her ears and unwrapped the cuff. “He ate some smoke, but he’ll be okay. We’re taking him in for the night.” She reached for the mask.
“Everyone else?”
“They made it out just fine, but you need to put this back on.”
Georgia shook her head and raised herself on her elbows. She sucked in cold air. It tasted so fresh.
“Did you hear me?” the paramedic scolded. “The mask.” She adjusted the mask and put it back on Georgia’s face. “Don’t want you to hurt yourself before a doctor sees you.”
She shook her head again. “I’m not going to the hospital.” She muttered through the mask.
“You may not have a choice.”
Georgia stared her down.
The paramedic blinked, got up, and went back to the ambulance. Georgia turned to the cop, checked to see that the paramedic was out of sight, and tore off the oxygen mask. “So? What was it?”
“One of your candles fell over and started a blaze. At least that’s what we think.”
“That’s never happened before.”
“Not to you, maybe. But it does happen. A shitty accident, but an accident just the same.” He cocked his head. “I have a couple of questions. Feel up to it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not really.”
“Help me up.”
The cop pulled her to a sitting position. A wave of dizziness passed over her. She kept her head down until it passed. Someone brought a blanket and draped it over her shoulders. She looked up gratefully; now that the fire was under control, the night air was chilly. Smoke was still wisping out of her window, and an occasional ember floated seductively to the ground.
Hoses stretched to the front door and curled up a ladder to the second floor. Firemen and cops milled around, some cracking jokes with the forced levity people assume once danger has passed. Back by the ambulance Pete was laid out on a stretcher, and the paramedic who’d taken her vitals was with him.
Suddenly, a movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. On the fringes of the crowd a figure slipped around the rear of a fire truck and into the shadows. She only caught a glimpse, but she was sure it had been a man with curly dark hair and a slender build that was all too familiar. Matt-familiar.
“Officer.”
The cop at her side looked up from a form he’d just attached to a clipboard. “Yeah?”
“Who was that?”
“Who?”
She pointed to the fire engine. “The man who just disappeared behind the truck.”
The cop squinted in that direction. “I didn’t see anyone.”
“Someone was watching us. Over there. Then he moved away.”
An engine turned over about a hundred yards down the street. A car pulled out and drove away.
Georgia craned her neck. “There he goes.” She stretched her hands out and tried to get up.
The cop blocked her. “You can’t do that now. The paramedics’ll kill us.”
She let him move her back into a sitting position. A cloud of unease settled over her.
DESPITE THE
paramedic’s insistence that she go to the hospital, Georgia borrowed a cell and called her friend Sam, who drove over and took Georgia back to her place. The next morning Sam drove her back to assess the damage. The hardwood floor was badly burned with black scorch marks across it, and her living room furniture was beyond repair. Between the smoke and the flames, most of her clothes in the hall closet were ruined, too. Had she been the type of woman who liked to shop, it would have been a windfall, but for her, replacing them would be a chore.
Her neighbors had fared better. Aside from the smoky odor that permeated the building and would linger for days, no one had suffered a significant loss. In fact, everyone, including Pete, was back in their apartment.
She was making another tour of the place when she noticed a ring of spidery concentric circles on the bottom of the living room window. She stopped to examine the markings. In the center of the circle was a small but distinct conical hole. She knew what made a hole like that. It wasn’t a fire.
A chill ran up her spine. She peered through the window at the house across the street. She saw the tricycle and the red wagon, the embankment in back. Plenty of space for a sniper’s nest. She turned around, imagining the trajectory of a bullet across her living room. She hurried to the opposite wall. There was a black hole in the drywall, the kind of hole that could have been made by a bullet that penetrated into the wall. She looked back at the table where she’d placed the candle that started the fire. It was along the same trajectory.
***
“Who did you tick off?” the Evanston dick asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. She’d debated whether to call the police, then decided it was stupid not to. When they arrived, she pointed out the embankment across the street where the shooter was likely holed up. She wasn’t surprised when they didn’t find any shell casings or footprints or other evidence. They didn’t find the bullet, either. It had probably burrowed into the wall and was buried somewhere in the building’s studs, maybe even the brick on the other side.
“So you have no idea who might have taken a shot at you?”
She told him she was working on the Sara Long case but said she had no idea who might be responsible. He said they’d investigate. He also said he’d talk to Robby Parker.
“And Dan O’Malley,” Georgia said.
He nodded, but she didn’t expect much. Evanston PD would run with it for a while, but without hard evidence beyond a bullet hole, or a victim, they’d move on. Drive-by shootings weren’t unheard of in Evanston. Still, she was glad that they’d tell Parker. Maybe it would make him think twice about the strength of his case. And if anything happened to her, at least it was on record she’d been threatened.
After the detective left, Georgia drove to Carson’s and bought three pairs of jeans, a couple of sweaters, turtlenecks, and a new jacket in less than an hour. Then she stopped in at the drug store to pick up a few essentials. She spent the rest of the day filing an insurance claim, replacing her driver’s license, cell phone, and calling around for estimates on new furniture.
She thought about calling Lauren to suggest she ditch school for a day or two. Whoever was coming after
her
might turn their attention to Lauren instead. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for her to lay low. But she didn’t; she didn’t want to scare the girl more than she already was. What she
should
do was call Lauren’s mother and tell her to take care of her daughter. To stop drinking her Goddamm wine and pay attention to someone else. No one, even Lauren, should have to cope with the lack of a mother’s protection.
But she didn’t do that either. Andrea Walcher would almost certainly hang up on her before she delivered the message.
***
That night at Sam’s, Georgia borrowed her friend’s computer and went online. She entered the new password for “Yvonne’s” email account. Her breath caught. A message had come in. She stared at the screen for a moment, then clicked to it.
“I would like to sample the new stock. Tomorrow,4
PM
. The McCormick Hotel. Charlie.” Her pulse pounding, she emailed back a confirmation.
***
Georgia was back at Carson’s the next morning waiting for the doors to open. She bought a pair of black pants on sale and a black bolero jacket. This was probably as formal a get-up as she would ever wear, she thought as she drove back to Sam’s. Later that afternoon, she dressed and started to put on makeup.