“Tom’s at Hunter’s mother’s,” he finally confirmed. “Mrs. Hunter is on her way over. I told Max to stay with Caroline just in case.”
The next minutes crawled like molasses in winter. Details registered with clarity as Dana struggled to stay focused. To stay sane. Evie was in there. Burning. Three fire trucks from two separate towns showed up, Wheaton and nearby Lawndale. Two firemen braved the flames to search for Evie. The others set about the task of putting out the fire.
Dana and Ethan could do nothing but stand helplessly and watch as the Hunter homestead cracked and crashed and burned. Against the haze she could see dark figures battling the flames with hoses from the truck. Mia and Abe stood closer to the house, their radios to their ears as they paced the allowable perimeter. Dana started running to the house, struggling against Ethan’s grip, when one of the firefighters emerged.
Empty-handed.
“No.” She could feel the scream in her raw throat, but the sound was lost in the roar of the flames. “She’s in there.” She lunged forward, free of Ethan’s restraining hands, her feet running, stumbling toward the house. Her ears ignoring his shouts to stop. She fell and picked herself up, each sobbing breath burning more than the last.
“Dana, stop!” Ethan was behind her, grabbing a handful of her shirt.
She wrenched away, and ran up to the firefighter who was now talking to the second man who’d come from the house empty-handed. She grabbed on to his coat, gulping for air. “Please.” Tears were running down her face, burning her eyes. “Please look again. I know she’s in there.” She tensed as a fit of coughing racked her. “Please.”
The men looked at each other, then over her shoulder at Ethan who was gently pulling her hands from the firefighter’s coat from behind her. “Nobody’s in there that we could find,” the first man said.
“Are you sure she’s in there?” the second asked.
“We’re not sure of anything anymore,” Ethan said grimly. “Come on, honey. Let the men do their jobs.” He tugged until she sagged against him weeping and gasping.
A third firefighter was pulling a hose around the front of the house. “Get out of this area,” he yelled, just as a crash shook the ground. Not needing to be told twice, Ethan scooped Dana up in his arms and ran, her hands clutching his shirt, her face pressed against his chest. She was sobbing uncontrollably, hysterically, and the sound broke his heart.
She yanked on his shirt, helplessly. “She’s in there, Ethan. I know she’s in there. Please make them go back.”
Ethan turned, walking backward, his eyes on the upper windows. If she was in there, she’d have inhaled a hell of a lot of smoke by now. A pane of glass from one of the upstairs windows shattered and rained shards of glass around them. Ethan hunched his body over hers and kept moving.
“Sir.” He looked over his shoulder to see a female firefighter approaching, settling her hat more firmly on her head. “My name’s Stephanie Kelsey, sir. I’m an EMT with the Lawndale Fire Department. My partner over there asked me to see to the lady.”
With quick hands Kelsey helped him ease Dana to her feet. Dana gave them no struggle, now standing quietly, her eyes fixed on the house, tears still running down her face. Kelsey tipped Dana’s face up and away, searching for obvious injuries. “Did any glass from that window get her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“She’s in shock.”
He looked at Dana’s eyes, riveted to the flames. Shock was very probable. “She’s been through a lot the past few days,” he said. “She’s exhausted.”
“We’ll fix her up. Don’t worry. This way.” Kelsey led them around the far side of the house. Ethan frowned. This wasn’t where the ambulance had stopped. The hairs on his neck lifted and it was if a brick hit him square between the eyes. The poor fit of Kelsey’s coat registered. And the tennis shoes on her feet.
A trap. It was a trap. Conway. Skidding to a stop, he wrenched Dana from the woman’s grasp and drew his weapon from his back waistband. “No.”
But he was a beat too late. He thought it even as Conway’s gun flashed silver in the glow of the conflagration, lifting, pointing straight at his face. Another crash shook the ground as timbers fell inside the old house. No one would hear them here. No one would hear a cry for help. Or even a gunshot. It would sound like crashing timbers. Hell.
“Dana, move.” He saw a flash of white in front of him, heard Dana cry out a split second before a blast knocked him back, knocked him to his knees. Sent waves of burning pain down his chest. His right hand fell open and his gun dropped to the grass.
He’d been hit.
He’d been hit and it hurt. Dammit, it hurt. His left hand instinctively rose to the wound, pressing hard against the blood that had already soaked his shirt.
“You!” He could hear Dana scream it, her voice hoarse from the smoke.
He blinked up, saw Dana’s hands vised around Conway’s wrist, a look of raw rage on her face as she battled Conway for the gun. “You did this.” Tears still coursed down her cheeks. “Goddamn you, you did this.”
He remembered the gun pointing in his face, but the pain was eight inches lower. She’d tried to stop Conway from shooting him, kept her from getting a head shot. The thought penetrated the pain as Sue grabbed Dana’s arm and twisted it behind her. Shoved the gun to Dana’s head. The barrel of the gun pressing the bone behind Dana’s ear was silver. Dana’s .38. He’d been shot with Dana’s gun. Dammit, it hurt.
Sue was dragging her away. The thought pierced his mind sending a burst of adrenaline to his legs. With a roar of his own he lurched to his feet, grabbing his gun from the ground with his left hand. He made his feet move. Stumbled. “No.” He gritted it out as Conway pulled Dana farther from the house, one arm around her throat, the other hand holding the gun to her head. “You can’t have her.”
His vision grayed and he fell to his knees. He could see Dana’s eyes in the light of the blaze. Wide. Terrified. Her hands clawing at Conway’s arm. Fighting to get away. Then her head jerked sideways when Conway jabbed the gun harder and her struggling ceased. Now she backed up, moving like a robot, her eyes shifting from the burning house to him.
He pushed himself to his feet once again and staggered after them, only to see Conway dragging her to a white car with a light bar mounted to its roof. She forced Dana into the front seat and slid in beside her. Ethan could see the emblem of the Wheaton Fire Department painted on the driver’s door. The white car crossed the grass along the woods that bordered the Hunters’ home, heading for the lane that led to the main road.
Help. He needed help. Suddenly the two hundred feet to the house seemed a thousand. Trembling, he dropped his gun, fumbled for his cell phone. Watched, detached, as the phone slipped to the ground from his hand, slick with his own blood. And he remembered Dana’s dream. The blood on her hands. The face on the body had been hers.
Not today. He fell to his knees, searching for the cell phone in the dry grass. Wiping the palm of his left hand dry on his pants when he found it. She wouldn’t die today.
Chicago, Friday, August 6, 5:50 A.M.
The sky had just started to grow light when Sergeant Elliot of the local Wheaton PD introduced himself. “You mind telling us what this is all about?”
“No problem.” Mia looked around as another car came to a squealing halt just beyond the fire truck. A tall dark man jumped out and started running in their direction. A tall blond boy got out of the passenger side. Tom. He was helping an older lady up the lane, past all the parked cars. “Looks like the family’s here. That’s David Hunter, brother of the man who lives here. The young one’s Tom Hunter.”
Elliot frowned up at the house. “Dr. Max Hunter. I know him. Coaches my son’s basketball team at the Y. His wife was hurt in a hit-and-run Monday night.” He turned to her, his brows bunched. “This was deliberate, Detective. We found empty gas cans inside the house. What the hell’s going on here?”
“I think I can explain most of it. Just wait.” She looked up to David Hunter when he ran up to them, breathing hard, his face a mask of dread. The ground shook as another timber crashed inside the house and Hunter grabbed her arm.
“What happened, Mia?”
“We think Conway set it. Dana got a call from Evie about an hour and a half ago. Evie had managed to sneak Conway’s cell when she stopped to get gas. Dana met us here.” Mia’s heart skipped a beat, then another as a notion embedded itself. And grew. “Oh, God. Where’s Dana?” She whipped around, saw Abe talking to the Wheaton fire chief. “Abe, where’s Dana?”
Abe’s head lifted, his eyes instantly alert, looking around. “I don’t see her.”
Beside her, David Hunter whispered, “Oh, God.”
The fire chief frowned. “The lady with the short red hair? She tried to get my men to go back in the house, to look for the missing girl. Her boyfriend carried her away.”
Another firefighter stepped up, wiping grime from his face. “I saw them go with an EMT.”
“Describe him,” Mia said tersely.
“Not a him,” the firefighter said. “Her.”
The Wheaton fire chief looked sick. “We don’t have any female EMTs.”
The Lawndale firefighter faltered. “Neither do we.”
“Fuck,” Mia hissed. “Which way?” The firefighter pointed and she was already running when the cell phone in her pocket started to ring. A glance at the caller ID made her blood run cold. “Where is she, Buchanan?”
“She’s gone. White car. Fire department.”
Mia rounded the corner of the house, her eyes searching. “Where are you?”
“Horseshoe pits. Dammit.” His voice slurred.
Mia looked over at David Hunter who was running alongside her. “Where are your horseshoe pits?” Hunter pointed and Mia squinted in the gray semidarkness of the dawn. And saw Buchanan, crawling across the grass. “Shit. He’s hit.” She turned, walking backward. “Abe, Conway took her in a white fire department car.”
“We passed one on the way in,” David said thinly. “Turning west on the main road.”
Abe was already on his radio, calling for backup. Sergeant Elliot was running for his own squad car and the fire chief was barking for his EMTs to assist.
“Detective, wait.” The firefighter who’d seen them leave with the EMT pushed through the mass of gathering uniforms. “She was wearing full gear. With Lawndale’s insignia.”
Mia grabbed the fire chief’s arm. “Make sure all the Lawndale men are accounted for. You may have one down.”
People were running, hands pushing him to the ground, cutting his shirt off his body. Ethan blinked up and saw two EMTs frowning down. “Are you hit anywhere else?” one asked and he managed to shake his head. His eyes flicked left, saw Mitchell, her face grim. “She got her, Mia. Dressed as an EMT. Tricked me. Dammit.”
“I know, Ethan.”
“Stop talking, sir,” the second EMT ordered.
“Took her,” Ethan said, ignoring him. Full awareness washed over him and a sob rose in his throat. “Find her,” he said hoarsely. “She fought like hell. Saved my damn life.”
Mia grabbed his bloody hand, squeezed. “I will. I promise.”
“Back, please,” the first EMT ordered. “On my count. One, two, three.”
Ethan groaned when he was lifted onto a gurney. Strapped in. Felt the tears spill from his eyes. Looked up to see Max Hunter looking down, running alongside the gurney as it bumped over the uneven ground. Hunter can’t run, he thought dully, remembering the man’s cane. He blinked, cleared his eyes. David Hunter. In love with Dana. Couldn’t blame the man. Damn easy thing to do, fall in love with Dana Dupinsky. Might even try it someday myself.
“Buchanan.” David’s shout cut through his mental wandering and he looked up, fought to focus. “Did she hurt her?” David was asking. “Please. Is Dana alive?”
“She was.” Ethan gasped for a breath. “I tried to stop her, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry, Hunter. I tried.”
“Back off,” the EMT shouted. “One, two, three.” Another groan as he was lifted and pushed into the back of an ambulance.
“Where are you taking him?” Hunter shouted.
“County. He’s got one hell of a hole in his arm. Local unit’s not equipped to deal. Now move.” The EMT sat next to Ethan and the doors slammed shut. “I’m going to start an IV, sir. You’ll pull through just fine. You’ve just lost a lot of blood.”
He gritted his teeth as the EMT packed his shoulder with batting. In his mind he saw Dana’s terrified eyes as she was dragged away. “I’ve lost a hell of a lot more than that.”
Chicago, Friday, August 6, 6:05 A.M.
“Well, that was fun.” Sue settled into the driver’s seat of a gray Ford Taurus with a merry chuckle. “Nothing like a little excitement to get your blood moving in the morning.” She turned to Dana with a smile as they moved down the highway, away from Caroline’s house. Away from Mia and Abe. And Ethan. “So good to see you again, Miss Dupinsky.”
Dana sat in the passenger seat, staring at this woman she’d welcomed into her shelter one week before. She’d shot Ethan. With my gun. He’d lost a lot of blood, but still he’d tried to come after her again and again. He’ll be all right, she told herself. She pushed her fear into the box. Someone will find him soon. Locked the box shut. He’d live.
I, on the other hand, may not. They’d left the fire department car along the side of the road and Sue had pushed her into this car, which she’d apparently left for this purpose. Mia would know she was gone soon and if Ethan was still conscious, he’d tell them about the fire department car. Mia would find her. Eventually.
Mia would search just as she was searching for Alec and Evie. Alec. Hopefully he was still in the motel in Gary and the police had found him by now. If not, Dana would try to give them as much time as she could to look. She wouldn’t let on that she knew all about Sue and Alec. She would know this woman only as Jane, and her son was Erik.
“What have you done with Evie?” she asked coldly and Sue cocked a brow.
“Got her little phone call, huh? I was hoping you would. You’re damn hard to find.”
“Where is she, Jane?”
Sue sneered. “Look behind you.”
Dana did, twisting to see into the backseat. And saw nothing. Just a worn blanket in a heap. Her blood went cold. Sue was taunting her. Evie wasn’t here. “Is she dead?” Dana heard herself ask, her voice flat.