The One That Got Away (33 page)

Desperately hoping that the shotgun was still there, she ignored the carnage and ran to the closet. Inside she found ladies’ clothing but no gun. It confirmed her feeling that this was a woman’s house. Despite its sparseness, the place felt feminine. She didn’t detect a male’s influence in any way. She pulled a dress off a hanger and threw it on. It was floral and three sizes too big, but she’d wear anything to cover her nakedness.

Finding the dress was a nice bonus, but she still hadn’t found anything to cause a distraction. There was nothing here. The place was a damn shrine. It was all so useless. But that wasn’t true. Her mind shifted gears. Yes, this place was a shrine. She didn’t know why, and God only knew the damage it had done to Beck. But for some reason, he’d left it for posterity. Destroying his shrine would bring him running.

She ran back to one of the bedrooms and peered out of the window. A propane tank sat just outside. She’d seen it when she’d first reached the house. She just hoped it had some gas inside. She didn’t need much, just enough to start a fire.

She cut back to the kitchen and turned the knob on a burner. Gas leaked from it.

“Thank you, Jesus,” she said and turned it off.

She picked up a wooden chair and smashed it down on the floor. It buckled under the force. She smashed it down again, and it shattered. She tore one of the legs free. From the living room, she grabbed a doily and wrapped it around the leg. Her torch was complete. Now she just needed a flame.

She left the house with her torch and ran headlong back into the grass toward the blaze. The heat was intense. She felt every drop of moisture on her face evaporate and her skin turn brittle as she approached the oncoming fire. She jammed the torch into the flames. The doily blackened but didn’t ignite. The fire’s heat ate into her hand, but she kept it steady. The need for this to work outweighed any pain she had to endure.

“Burn, goddamn you.”

And her blasphemy was rewarded. The torch ignited.

She raced back to the house, shielding the flame with her hand. The makeshift torch was burning, but the flare was meager.

She reached the house just as the torch was going out. She took it into the living room and touched it to the sofa. The cheap, synthetic fabric ignited on contact and a blaze began. She tossed the torch on a lounger and darted into the kitchen, where she turned on all the burners on the range. On her way out of the house, she closed the door, leaving the marriage of propane and a naked flame to occur.

She hid in the grass again for cover. She ran parallel to the oncoming fire but away from the house and the all-important path back to the dirt road. That couldn’t be helped. She didn’t want to be anywhere close when the house went up. She had no idea how large a propane explosion would be, so the farther away from it she was, the better. She just hoped the blast was big enough to bring the cops running.

She saw her best bet for getting back to the road was retracing her steps from the stable. The exact route she’d taken was in flames, but for all the fire’s swiftness, it hadn’t claimed every avenue. The pasture behind the stable was virtually untouched. There was a portion that connected to a small horse trail, which would take her back to the stable, as long as she was quick. The shortest line to freedom was a straight line, but that would bring her close to the fire. It didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter. She had to go now.

She moved fast, using a combination of a crouched run and scampering along on all fours. Technique didn’t matter. Speed did. She stayed close to the fire line. Only the intensity of the heat and choking smoke kept her back.

Just as she was nearing the horse trail, an earsplitting explosion threw her to the ground. It was a huge shock, even at over a hundred yards away. The blast sounded like it was right by her head.

She gathered herself up and moved faster. She had only one shot at distracting the Tally Man, and this was it.

Marshall Beck had his back to the explosion. He’d been watching the south paddock for Zoë. He whirled to see glass and splintered wood shooting in all directions. He knew there was a risk that the fire might take out the house, but it hadn’t even reached it yet.

“Zoë,” he murmured. This was her doing. “Clever girl, but not that clever.”

Her blowing up the house told him exactly where to find her.

He raced back to his SUV, fired the engine, then rocketed the vehicle along the path to the house. Flames poured from the blown windows on the ground floor. Drapes fluttered in the breeze, burning tatters flying off in all directions. He couldn’t believe Zoë had the audacity to blow up Jessica’s house.

Had she gone inside and seen the rooms? He hoped so. That way she would finally understand what he was trying to do and why it was so important. He realized now that he should have taken her to Jessica’s house before taking her to the stable. Then all this mess could have been avoided.

He slid to a halt and leapt from his SUV, then raced up to the door and stopped in front of it as the heat blistered paint. A mix of emotions rooted him to the spot. The house wasn’t that special. It was just wood. It shouldn’t have meant anything to him, but it did. With Jessica’s teachings and punishments, this place had made him into the man he was. It was a symbol of what he’d become.

“Good-bye,” he said to the home.

Respects paid, he circled the house searching for Zoë. He half expected to find her laid out by the explosion, but she was nowhere to be seen. He scanned the tree line and the pasture for her, with no success.

“Where are you?” he said to the absent Zoë. She was nowhere close. She’d played him, drawn him away from the entrance road. She’d come so far since their first encounter. She was no longer the drunken slut. She was smart and resourceful—a born survivor. She had him to thank for that, if she had the courage to recognize it.

He scanned the dirt road for her and finally found his prey. She was on her knees next to the deputy.

“He can’t help you, Zoë. No one can,” he said and sprinted back to his SUV.

Just as Zoë reached the horse trail, she heard a car engine burst to life. It was Beck’s SUV. The tires churned in the dirt before the vehicle tore along the foot path to the house.

The distraction had worked, but not perfectly. She’d hoped to take the Honda. She’d have to make do with the cop car and prayed it had some gas left in the tank. She sprinted up the trail, through the corridor of fire lining it on both sides. She ignored every stone and rock her bare feet struck. Once, she stumbled and fell, but clambered back up. She sucked in the scorched and smoke-ridden air and coughed it out. It all hurt, but she told herself it was temporary. One way or another, it would end soon.

As she raced up to the cop on the ground, she looked toward the house. Beck was out of the SUV, looking at it.

“Stay there, you bastard,” she murmured.

She dropped down at the cop’s side. She didn’t have to check whether he was dead or not. He stared blankly up at the sky.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The radio on his shoulder crackled. A female voice asked for a status update.

Zoë tore it free and keyed the mic. “Hello. Hello. I’m at a place that has a stable. I don’t know where. A man called Marshall Beck abducted me and killed the officer you sent here. Hello?”

“Did you say our officer is down?”

“Yes, I’m looking at his dead body.”

“Ma’am, what’s your name?”

“Zoë Sutton. None of that matters. He’s burning the place down. He’s going to kill me.”

“Ma’am, I need you to be calm.”

“Fuck calm. Do you know where I am? Are you coming?”

“Yes. We know your position. I’m dispatching units now. Get somewhere safe.”

Is anywhere safe?
she thought.

A roar of an engine jerked her attention away from the dispatcher. Her distraction had run its course. Beck was on his way back.

“You’d better get someone here now. He’s coming.”

She dropped the radio and snatched up the pistol the cop had dropped. She looked at the weapon. It was an automatic. She had no idea how it worked. Her self-defense training went only as far as hand-to-hand combat. She’d never bothered with weapons. Point and shoot, she hoped.

She looked up. Beck wasn’t bothering to stick to the path from the house. He made a straight line for her, barreling across the paddock, straight into the fire. The vehicle bumped and crashed over the rolling surface. Flames licked at it, but none took their toll.

She jumped behind the wheel of the police cruiser. The key was in the ignition. She twisted it and the engine turned over but didn’t catch. The gas gauge registered just above empty.

“Start, damn it.” She deserved for something to go her way, and it finally did when the engine fired.

She pulled on her seatbelt, then jerked the shifter into reverse. She looked over her shoulder at the dirt road that would take her to freedom. Was it freedom? She’d run before and escaped nothing. If she escaped, he’d just hunt her down again. She was his obsession. Fleeing would be just another stay of execution. Even if the cops put him in jail, there was always the chance he’d get out. She couldn’t have that. It was time to end this one way or another. She shifted into drive and stamped on the gas.

The cruiser leapt forward into the blaze. She plowed through the paddock’s fire-ravaged fence, heading toward Beck. Flames and embers flew up over the hood and windshield as it gathered speed. The needle on the speedometer passed forty miles per hour. She fought to keep the car on course. It bottomed out on the dips, and the rear end went airborne on the rises.

Beck was doing better at riding the bumps. His SUV kept coming at her. She wanted to meet him head-on, but she was struggling to keep her car on course and the distance between them was running out. They were so close now she could see him through the flames. His expression was simple—total focus. He hadn’t let emotion take over. He had a job to do, and he was going to do it. The simplicity of his drive scared her. How could she compete?

She hit a dip, which wrenched the steering wheel from her hands. The car slewed right, teeing her up for Beck. He slammed the SUV into the rear passenger-side corner of the police cruiser, sending it into a spin. The cruiser threw up dirt and mowed down burning grass. The world was lost to her in an explosion of sound and a blur of flying dirt and embers. The car came to a sudden halt at a right angle to Beck’s SUV.

His vehicle was a wreck. The crash had collapsed the front end. He wasn’t going anywhere. But was she? The cruiser’s engine was dead. She jammed the shifter back into park and tried the ignition—nothing. She tried again and again. Each time the engine turned over but failed to fire up. So many things could be wrong—heat vaporizing the gas or smoke being sucked into the intake or luck just running out on her.

Then movement caught her eye. Beck swung open his SUV’s door. Zoë’s mouth gaped as he stepped into the fire with his fist wrapped around the knife. The flames here were only knee deep, but the heat had to be intense. She marveled at his twisted desire. “Zoë, there’s no escaping your punishment,” he said, staggering toward her.

She couldn’t believe the sight, the insanity of it all. But it was coming to an end. Sirens filled the air. Authority figures were en route. But she couldn’t let it end their way. Their way left room for error. It had to end now, between victim and victimizer. The engine fired on the third attempt. It sounded rough, but if it was running, it was the sweetest sound in the world. She jammed it into drive and a terrible racket came from the car’s rear as it lumbered forward. Something was broken back there, but it wasn’t enough to stop its momentum.

She aimed the car straight at Beck and smashed into him. The force pinned him to the hood of the cruiser. Zoë kept her foot down. She plowed into her tormentor’s SUV, pinning him between both vehicles. He yelled out in pain and thrust his knife into the cruiser’s hood, as if stabbing the car would help him. His display reminded her of a toddler’s temper tantrum. He was lashing out at the world because it didn’t do the things he wanted it to do. It was sad and pathetic. Just like him.