On Fire (24 page)

“Help me,” he shouted, pivoting in a circle.

“Bailey,” Cassie said faintly. Then, flatly, “Jackson.”

“Did you call 911?” Jackson asked her. She was lying in a pool of her own blood. Her phone was in his pocket. “Did you call them?” He didn’t know if they would come if you couldn’t actually tell them where you were. Did they have ways to track cell phones?

“Jackson, we have to save Bailey,” she said.

Like hell
, Jackson thought.
So he can kill us both?

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “Call 911 and we can do that.”

“
We
have to save him,” she insisted.

“We will. After you call 911,” he repeated. “And we need to get the handcuff key. Do you know where it is?”

“Bailey,” she said. Then her eyes fluttered shut.

•  •  •

“Jackson’s phone is ringing,” Damon reported. “He’s not answering.”

“We think my boyfriend’s been kidnapped by these people,” Lydia told the dispatcher. “He’s Jackson Whittemore. They were robbing his house. Can you patch into his phone and find out where he is?”

“I’m sorry, but we don’t have the ability to do that,” the dispatcher said.

“But there’s an app,” Lydia said. “I can give you his user ID and password.”

“I’m sorry, but we can’t do that,” the dispatcher said. “But please tell me everything you can about the kidnapping.”

“I’m downloading Where’s My Phone onto my phone,” Damon reported. “It’ll take a few minutes.”

“Hurry,” Lydia told Damon’s phone.
“Please.”

“The units are on their way, miss,” the dispatcher told her.

Beacon Hills

Six Years Ago

It was Thursday, two days before Wolf Moon. Derek’s relatives had gathered in the Hale house for the reunion. Derek was in charge of moving out all the furniture and breakables in the underground chamber so that the werewolves among them could den together for the next few days and nights. Sleeping bags, air mattresses, and cots were brought in, and they would let their wolf sides out to savor the bonding. The chamber was festively decorated for the occasion with large stone vases containing bouquets of lilies, roses, and iris, traditional flowers of France. The evocative scent of rosemary, another native French plant, filled the room. On Saturday, Derek would challenge Josh in human form; then, after the moon rose, they would vie for status as wolves.

Still without a car, Derek had managed to wrangle his Uncle Peter’s motorcycle from him, and he left the chamber with his helmet on his hip, preparing to ride to school.
Laura, who was driving the Subaru, was sipping coffee as she walked to the car.

“Do you think I should ask Dad about giving Kate the Bite?” Derek whispered, not wanting any of his relatives to overhear.

Laura shook her head. “It’s too soon. You haven’t known her long enough. Maybe next year.” She sat down behind the wheel and set her coffee in the drink holder. Then she shut the door.

“You don’t think it’s going to last, do you,” Derek said, poking his head through the open window.

His sister let out a sigh and cupped his cheek. People said they looked so much like each other that they could be twins.

“I think you’re crazy in love with her,” she replied. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad. She’s human, but we have human family members. Maybe she’s doing a cougar on you. I don’t know,” she added quickly, as he opened his mouth to protest. “But you are going to have to tell Dad about her soon. This is getting serious.”

“I will,” Derek promised.

He knew he should have told his father about Kate—he didn’t call her Ms. Argent anymore—way before now. Maybe he should have requested permission before he’d given Kate the ring she now wore. It wasn’t an engagement ring or anything like that, just a token of how he felt about her. It was gold-plated and set with green stones, the best he could afford when he still didn’t actually have a job. His Uncle Peter had given him some money in return for running a few errands.

He rode to school, got through classes, then did his laps with Kate until she’d put in her lifeguard hours. And then he went home with her. Within minutes of closing the door, the only thing she wore was his ring. They fell into each others’ arms and made soulful, passionate love. She had taught him how to please her, and he did everything imaginable to her. In return, she aroused him to such heights that he had to turn away to hide the glow in his eyes, the lengthening of his teeth. He wanted to make love with her as a werewolf; he dreamed of it constantly, even though what they did now was more pleasurable than he had ever imagined.

Spent and exhausted, they would drowse together, and Derek would hear the call of the moon. He longed to run with her beneath its glow. He would prop himself up on his elbow, running his fingertips along her hair, staring at her, choked with love.

“I love you, Kate,” he would whisper, but only when she was fast asleep.

That night, he had planned to ask her if she was going to chaperone the homecoming dance. He never went to anything at school, but Laura did, and she had suggested that he attend stag. All her girlfriends wanted to hang out with him and she was tired of disappointing them. He figured it was Laura’s way of trying to get him interested in girls his own age, even if they were human.

He would have said no on the spot, but if Kate went as a chaperone, then at least they could see each other. Derek didn’t dance, but the thought of seeing her in a formal gown would make enduring all the rest of it worthwhile.

But Kate was asleep, and he didn’t want to wake her. He got up, showered, and dressed. She was still fast asleep when he got on his motorcycle.

He was nearly all the way home when he realized he had forgotten his school backpack. He called her. There was no answer. He tried again. Finally he turned around and rode back. He hated to bother her, but he knocked on the door—he didn’t have a key—and she didn’t answer. He rang the bell, and waited. He lowered his hand, not sure what to do.

Then he smelled her strong, wonderful scent, and moved to her bedroom window, cracked slightly open. He slid it open farther, removed the screen, and crawled inside.

Beacon Hills

Six Years Ago

I
n Randy Andy’s Bar and Grill across the street from her apartment, Kate bought Mr. Harris, the chemistry teacher at Beacon Hills High, two more shots. The empties were lined up in front of him. He was a hard-drinking alcoholic. And he sure knew his fun facts about arson.

His love of Randy Andy’s was precisely what had prompted her to rent her apartment. Though he hadn’t seen her around school, she had quickly figured out that he was a man who could help her. She’d pinpointed him as someone who was weak. Someone who could be manipulated.

Someone she could use.

“So,” she said, “let me go through this with you one more time.” She described the process by which you could burn down a house and not get arrested for it. He had explained
it all to her a few nights prior. He was so drunk right now she doubted he’d remember this conversation.

“Yes. Hypothetically, of course,” he said, staring down at her cleavage. She was wearing her pendant, the ancient family heirloom commemorating their triumph over the Beast of Gévaudan.

“Want another drink?” she said after a beat.

“Oh,” he said, jerking his head back up to her face. He nearly fell off the bar stool. “Sure.”

She gestured to the bartender to order another shot. Then she pulled a wad of bills from her wallet and dropped them onto the bar. The cheap but sweet ring Derek had bought for her glinted in the subdued light in the bar. It was a little bit too big and she played with it while she toyed with Harris.

“I have to go home now,” she told Harris. “You should probably call it a night soon, too.”

“I’m so drunk,” he informed her, his head lolling.

“Poor baby,” she cooed as Harris’s last shot of the evening was placed before him on the bar.

Then she left. As she crossed the street, she spied Derek walking out of her apartment with his backpack.

Walking through the front door.

The door that had been locked.

She froze. He’d broken into her place. She couldn’t believe it.

So, had he known all along that she was playing for the other side? Was
he
playing
her
? Had he found anything incriminating? Was her plan blown all to hell?

As she watched from the shadowed porch of the bar, the
neon light casting pastels over Derek like a lightly woven blanket, he got on his motorcycle, kicked it, and zoomed out onto the street.

Weighing various possibilities, she waited until he was out of sight. Then she darted across the street and jumped into her car. She drove after him, maintaining a safe distance as she followed him through the city of Beacon Hills, then up behind the preserve. The Hale house loomed in the darkness beneath the nearly full moon. Wolf Moon, on Saturday. There were cars everywhere. Full house, that Hale house.

Unwilling to get to close to the house, Kate parked and crept through the trees with a pair of binoculars. She followed Derek’s progress as he entered a door set in the earth beneath the house. That would be the basement, the place where they congregated for special occasions, or used when their young wolf cubs couldn’t control the shift. Shadows were moving around. So the family had moved down there for Wolf Moon. Nice. All she had to do was lock that entrance tight as a drum and throw in a few firebombs. She and her partners would douse the house proper, and ensure that all the Hales—werewolves or not—were taken care of.

Kate waited for a while to see if Derek raised some kind of alarm, which would indicate that he had found something in her house that had tipped him off to her plan. But the house and the werewolf den stayed dark.

Kate drove back to her place, body thrumming with the thrill of the chase. It was on. Without realizing it, Derek had thrown down the gauntlet, set the play in motion. If she
found anything back at her apartment indicating that Derek knew about her plan, she’d cancel the operation, pack, and leave.

After she parked, she opened the door and hurried inside, to find a note from him on her entry table.

Dear Kate,

I left my backpack here and you weren’t home. The window in your bedroom was slightly open and I came in that way. I put the screen back and walked out through the front door, but I made sure it was locked. I hope you don’t mind. I won’t do it again. It’s just that all my homework was in the pack.

Lo
Yours,

Derek

She breathed a huge sigh. That had been very careless of her. She took note that he had begun to write
Love
and changed it to
Yours.
Sweet, unsure Derek. She was about to free him from his unending teenage angst.

By then, it was almost time for her late-night appointment, the last of her busy night. His name was Garrison Meyers, and he was an arson investigator. Kate’s associates had authorized her to pay him a huge sum of money to declare that the fire at the Hale house they were about to set had been caused by an electrical wiring malfunction.

The fire had been planned for Saturday before dawn. But Derek’s unexpected appearance in her house had
scared her badly enough for her to want to get it done as fast as possible.

While she waited for Meyers, she placed a call on her cell phone.

“Dawn,” she said. “Tomorrow. We’re not waiting.”

She got the answer she expected, and hung up.

The doorbell rang. Meyers had arrived.

It’s showtime,
she thought.

And smiled.

•  •  •

Dawn the next day.

It was not yet light out when Kate stopped at the gas station to fill up her gas can. She wanted to douse something with it—maybe the Alpha—and strike the match herself. She wanted—
needed
—to watch one of the Hales go up in flames the good, old-fashioned way, by her own hand. Maybe it was foolhardy to expose herself like that, but after the fire, she would be long gone.

She did take the precaution of going into the minimart to pay for the fuel with cash, rather than paying at the pump with her card. The man behind the counter was on his cell phone and he looked pissed off.

“I
told
you, I get paid
next
week,” he said impatiently. “Jeez, Melissa, I get fired, and you complain. I get a job and you complain.” He listened a moment. “Scott doesn’t even need that damn inhaler,” he went on. He saw Kate. “I gotta go. I have a customer.”

He hung up.