Silent Scream Read online

  “No, it’s pretty smooth.” They were alone now, the two of them rising in a three-by-four space. He briefly fantasized standing behind her, grabbing the rails on either side of her, caging her in. Pressing against her. Feeling her against him. But of course he couldn’t do that, so he stood at her side, contenting himself with breathing honeysuckle.

  There were so many things he wanted to ask. What’s between you and Barlow? Is there someone else? And the million-dollar question—why did you leave my bed?

  But this wasn’t the time for any of that, so he asked the one question in his mind that wasn’t personal. “What’s the significance of the ball I found?”

  For a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer. Then she sighed. “You’ll probably just Google it when you get home.”

  “Before I get home,” he said. “Left my laptop back at the firehouse.”

  “You can’t speak of this, not even to your partner.”

  “Zell?” David found his lips curving. “He’s a good guy, but he does have trouble keeping a secret. I won’t tell him. Cross my heart.” And he did.

  Her eyes had dropped to his bare hand and lingered a beat too long before lifting again to his face. Her cheeks were a shade pinker than they had been. “Environmental arson,” she said, throwing cold water on his thoughts. “It’s a glass globe. A radical activist group left similar etched glass globes at their fires more than ten years ago.”

  “Shit,” he breathed quietly. “But they shot that guard. Right in the heart. Those groups don’t normally target people.”

  “Not normally, although this group had an accidental death, twelve years ago.”

  He thought of the girl, her waxen face. Her fight to escape. “Like last night.”

  “Maybe. The girl held the ball. For now we have to include her with the suspects.”

  He shook his head. “She wasn’t dressed for arson. She wasn’t even wearing shoes. Barlow ran the sniffer over her. Nothing. No hydrocarbons on her hands.”

  She assessed him. “True. But she had the ball. We have to find out how and why.”

  “Has this radical group claimed credit?”

  “Not yet, and they always did twelve years ago.”

  “Maybe because they killed two people,” David said harshly and her eyes softened.

  “Maybe. We’re probably going to have to bring in the Feds at some point. They’ll want to talk to you. Just a heads-up.”

  “Thanks.” They’d risen to the fourth floor and he stopped their ascent. “This is where I found her.”

  She leaned forward, squinting. “I don’t see any handprints.”

  David switched on the spotlight and aimed it at the window. “Now?”

  She stared a minute, then shook her head. “No.”

  Thank you, he whispered in his mind, then stepped behind her, taking her shoulders in both hands. Lowering his head until his chin brushed her hair, he adjusted their angle until he could see the shimmer. “There,” he murmured. “See it now?”

  She’d stiffened in his hands and it was when she drew a shaky breath that he realized she hadn’t been breathing before. Which did bode well.

  “You saw that?” she asked, her voice gone husky, and a thrill raced across his skin. She cleared her throat and when she spoke again, it was briskly. Still, he’d heard the awareness in her voice. It was enough. It was what he’d been waiting for. “Barlow’s right,” she said matter-of-factly. “You do have good eyes.”

  A faint buzz of pride layered over the thrill. “It was easier to see in the dark.”

  She leaned forward and he let her go, stepping back to her side. “Can you get us closer?” she asked, pointing. “To that smear?”

  He maneuvered until the rail was an inch from where she pointed. “Close enough?”

  She looked up at him, a wry smile on her lips. “Now you’re just showing off.” Before he could think of an answer, she pulled the camera from the bag around her neck. “We need to get this window to the lab,” she said, snapping a picture.

  It was his turn to lean closer until he saw what she’d pointed to—a small dent in the impact-resistant glass, with barely discernible lines spidering outward. “You saw that?”

  “I’ve got good eyes, too,” she said lightly. “I also knew what I was looking for.”

  “What?”

  “I thought about her not wearing shoes. If she’d been one of the arsonists, she would have worn shoes she could get away quickly in. Boots. Sneakers at the very least. But she didn’t wear shoes and she held the ball. Why? She was about five-four, same as me.” Clutching the camera in one hand, she held it up, pretending to bang it against the window. “Dent’s right where it should be.”

  He understood. “She tried to use the glass ball to break the window. There was no furniture yet, no chairs, nothing she could use to break the glass. God. Poor kid.”

  “I know,” she said. “Barlow said the arsonists poured the carpet adhesive on the first and second floors.”

  “True. I could show you the pour patterns if you want.”

  “On the way down.” She crossed her arms, dangling the camera from her wrist as she frowned at the window. “If the arsonists only hit the first two floors and she was up here on four, and she wasn’t with them, how did she get the damn ball?”

  “We think they poured on two floors, but started the fire on the first floor. That way they could get out. If they lit both floors, it could have spread before they were out.”

  “Do we know how they got in and out?”

  “Not that I know of. You’d have to ask Barlow.” He considered the night before. “We got here about five minutes after we got the call. We had to smash through the gate, so it delayed us another two minutes. The first two floors were fully engaged at the time, and it wasn’t safe to go in through any of the doors. We were fighting it from outside. That’s what I was doing in the bucket in the first place.”

  She still faced the window, but her frown had become thoughtful. “Okay. And?”

  “The fire doors on one and two were open. The smoke would have filled the stairwell. If she’d been squatting on one of the lower levels…” He thought about the hearing aid. “And if she wasn’t able to hear them coming…”

  “She may have been asleep. Woke up from the smoke, tried to go down the stairs, found herself trapped.” She glanced up at him. “Would she have been able to get out of the stairwell and into the hallway?”

  “Possibly. But the heat would have been intense.”

  “Hot enough to blister her feet?”

  He remembered the soles of the girl’s feet. “Yeah.”

  She nodded, and he could almost see the wheels turning in her mind. “She would have been panicking,” she murmured. “Not thinking clearly. Smoke choking her. Maybe she drops to her knees, below the smoke. And somehow she finds the ball.”

  “She wouldn’t have been able to see anything,” David said, his stomach turning at the thought of how terrified the girl must have been. “The smoke would have filled the first floors and the stairwell in minutes. If she stumbled on the ball, found it somehow…”

  Her blond brows lifted. “Or if they used it to block open one of the fire doors?”

  He’d admired her mind the first time they’d met. That much he clearly remembered. “Possible. So she picks it up, but can’t go farther, because it’s too hot. The smoke is too thick. She backs up, to the stairwell.”

  “Back to the fourth floor. No fire yet on four. She still has the ball. People hold on to weird things when they’re scared. She gets to the window, tries to break it.”

  “She could have hit it with that ball till kingdom come and that window wouldn’t have broken,” David said. “But I doubt she got more than a few hits in. Her lungs would have already been damaged by the smoke from the stairwell, if that’s where she’d gone.”

  “Where did you say you found the ball?”

  “About two feet from where her fingertips had been. She was lying on he
r stomach, her arms extended.”

  “Her body’s angle to the wall?”

  “Thirty, forty degrees, maybe.”

  “So she tossed the ball, then pounded on the glass with her hands. She was desperate by then.” She studied the prints on the glass. “She smacked the glass with her palms and pounded with her fists.”

  “Probably in the reverse order,” he said quietly. “Her hands were flattened on the glass when she collapsed to the floor. You can’t see them well, but there are streaks from her fingers.”

  “Poor kid.” She was silent for a moment while he studied her profile. It had been a long time since he’d been this close to her—two and a half years if he didn’t count the minutes she’d sat next to his bed in the hospital after he’d rolled down an embankment in Evie’s old Mazda last February. And he didn’t count that time as his eye had been too swollen to see clearly. She’d been little more than a hazy image, but he’d known it was her by his bedside as soon as he’d smelled the honeysuckle.

  Abruptly she lifted her eyes to his, blue and intense. “That is one hell of a hole,” she said. “I’m… I’m glad you’re okay.”

  A fist squeezed his heart and he struggled for what to say. But before he could find the words, she’d turned her gaze toward the lake. “How high does this bucket go?”

  He cleared his throat. “Hundred feet. We’re at about fifty feet now.”

  “Can you take me all the way up?”

  Sweet God. He sure wanted to try. Focus, Hunter. Do not blow this again. “Yes.” The word came out gruffly, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Why?”

  “We were wondering how the girl knew about this place. We don’t think she’s from around here. You can’t see the condo from the road, but you can see it from the lake.”

  He lifted the bucket past the roof. “What are you looking for?”

  “Don’t know.” She held the camera to her face, searching and snapping photos with the zoom. “A path through the trees, a hidden boat, something that shows us how she found this place. We should probably get someone on the ground, checking for a path through the woods.”

  “You could try dogs.”

  She lowered the camera, looking up at him. “To track her?” A new light filled her eyes. “It might work.” She jumped a little. “Cell phone. Can you hold these?” She handed him the black bag with the binoculars and grabbed for her cell. “Sutherland.”

  Her little smile disappeared as she listened. “We’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

  “Problem?” he asked when she hung up.

  “ME. He has something on the girl. Can you take us down?”

  “Sure.” He started their descent, debating his next words, filling his senses with honeysuckle while he could. “Olivia.”

  She stiffened and he realized it was the first time he’d said her name that morning. “Yes?” she asked, her gaze focused on the lake.

  Look at me. Give me something. Please.

  Then he watched her draw a deep breath and let it out. Only her head turned, her eyes meeting his. “Yes?” she asked again.

  “I…” Say it. But years of fruitless waiting for the wrong woman had dulled his skills when it came to the woman who just might be the right one. “I need to talk to you,” he blurted. “But not here, where everyone can hear.”

  She stared at him, then after what seemed like an eternity, nodded, just once. “I’ll call you when I get a break later. When are you off shift?”

  Relief swamped him. At least she hadn’t said no. So whatever he’d done, it couldn’t have been that bad… right? “About two hours ago. I’m on OT now.”

  The bucket reached the ground and she unhooked the belt herself, looking for Kane who stood next to the captain ten feet from the truck. “Kane, Ian called. He wants us at the morgue. I told him thirty.” She hopped down from the bucket gracefully. Her knees bent and for a moment she hung there, then straightened like a gymnast sticking a landing. “Thanks for the view. I’ll be in touch,” she said briskly.

  Still in the bucket, David watched as she strode to her car, Kane ambling behind her. She didn’t look back, not once. It wasn’t until Kane’s car had disappeared through the front gate that he realized she’d never reclaimed her binoculars.

  He pocketed them. That had gone far better than he’d expected.

  Chapter Five

  Monday, September 20, 10:55 a.m.

  A question, Mr. Marsh?”

  Eric looked up, stunned to see that the classroom had cleared and his professor stood staring at him. “No, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “Mr. Marsh, when you sleep, you snore. When you are awake, you participate. You did neither today, and you arrived fifteen minutes late. Is anything wrong?”

  “A girl,” he said, feigning embarrassment. “I’ll have to get the notes from someone.”

  “Fine. Just be on time for Wednesday’s lecture.”

  “I will.” Eric made his escape, then slumped against a wall outside. If anyone got suspicious, the prof would say, He looked upset, preoccupied. “Terrific,” he muttered.

  He had to tell the others. This impacted them all. Would they burn another building? Would he tell them about the video? Joel would freak. No telling what the idiot would do.

  Albert, he thought, would not be surprised. Albert knew someone else was there, that someone else had murdered the guard. Because they had not.

  Like anyone would believe that. “We are so dead,” he whispered, then, still slumped against the wall, pulled out his own cell phone. The texter’s phone was in his pants pocket, set to vibrate. Couldn’t have that bastard chirping at him during lecture.

  Meet me outside the library at noon, he typed, then addressed the text to Albert, Joel, and Mary. Before he could hit SEND, his cell vibrated. It was Mary. “What?”

  “Oh God.” Her voice was unsteady, hollow. Scared. “Did you hear about Joel?”

  His dread intensified. Had Joel told? Damn him. “Hear what?”

  She sniffled and he realized she was crying. “He didn’t show up for class.”

  Eric breathed a sigh of relief. Is that all? Mary was overreacting, as usual. Eric hadn’t wanted to include her from the beginning, but Joel had insisted. Being around Mary always left Eric feeling hyped up and edgy. He’d never understood why Joel was so stuck on her. The sex must be good. “He’s probably holed up in his room.”

  “No. He’s dead.” Her voice broke. “Joel is dead.”

  Eric felt the air leave his lungs. Wow. Albert worked fast. “How?” he asked.

  “He was in his car, on his way to school.” She was sobbing now. “He ran off the road, hit a tree. He went through the windshield. He bled to death.”

  “Hell.” He’d told Albert to make it so that it wasn’t painful. That sounded pretty damn painful. But it was done. And they’d have to live with that, too.

  Better a guilty conscience than life behind bars.

  But now Joel wouldn’t be available tonight. All of them had to participate or the video would be leaked. I should have told Albert, he thought grimly. We needed Joel.

  Maybe the texter would accept a note. Please excuse Joel from any extortion-related arsons, as he is dead. Eric closed his eyes. Frickin’ unbelievable.

  “Who told you?” he asked.

  “His sister called me. His… his parents didn’t know about us. Joel said they wouldn’t have approved. But his sister knew about me and knew I needed to know. But don’t say anything to the Fischers. I don’t want to get his sister in trouble.”

  Joel’s parents were Orthodox Jews. Mary was Irish Catholic. That they wouldn’t approve was expected. That Joel hid his and Mary’s relationship… well, Eric had known Joel since kindergarten, and that wasn’t surprising either. I should be crying, too, he thought. I should feel something. But all he felt was weary dread. This whole mess was Joel’s idea. So in a way, it was kind of his fault.

  “We need to meet. The three of us. Library. Noon.”

  “I can�
�t,” she said numbly. “I’ve got class.”

  “Skip it,” he snapped. “This is important.” He hung up. He had choices to make. Hard ones. To torch a stranger’s warehouse or risk prison? To tell the others or not?

  They could flee. Leave the country. They could be in Canada in less than three hours. From there… wherever people go who are fleeing the cops. To whatever country doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States. He needed money. He needed new ID. He needed to buy some more time. But he had only thirteen hours.

  Maybe the texter wouldn’t follow through. Why wouldn’t he? He had nothing to lose. And I have everything to lose.

  Eric dug into his pants pocket and flipped open the disposable cell, checking the warehouse address again, even though he remembered it perfectly.

  Who owned it? Were they good or bad? Maybe the owner had done something horrible. So horrible that taking out his warehouse might be doing a public service.

  And I am lying to myself. I need to buy some time. Torching the stranger’s warehouse would buy him that time. As long as no more people got hurt, it was just stuff. Stuff could be replaced. That’s what insurance was for.

  Hadn’t he said that himself just yesterday? Yesterday when they were still environmental avengers? God. How had things gone so wrong?

  He couldn’t think about that. Now he needed information about the stranger whose warehouse would be ashes by midnight tonight. He needed to find a way to convince Albert and Mary that they were doing the right thing. He needed to buy some time.

  Monday, September 20, 10:55 a.m.

  Olivia was steady by the time she and Kane walked into the morgue, but David’s voice still filled her head. I need to talk to you. About what? Why he’d been hiding for seven months? Or would he go for the tried-and-true It’s not you, Olivia, it’s me?

  She’d kept it together in that bucket. Having him that close was a dream and a nightmare, all rolled into one. But she hadn’t turned to goo, even when he’d put his hands on her shoulders and whispered in her ear. Even when he’d said her name, all husky and sexy. The man exuded sex. So considering, she’d done okay. Held her own.