Riptide

thirty-seven

Fire.

He’d started a fire in the house, and the old wood, the antique furniture, the century-old drywall would go up like so much tinder.

She pushed on the trapdoor, trying to force it open, but made no headway.

The smell of smoke was stronger. She was going to die in here. Die in the House of Silence.

She ought to have been afraid. What she felt was rage.

Since childhood she’d been trapped in this house, trapped by memories and family history, bloodlines and madness. She’d tried to make peace with the past, but still it smothered her, choked off her life like the tendrils of smoke curling through the crack in the door.

Maura was right. Family loyalty was not a suicide pact.

And she was damned if she would let this goddamned house kill her now.

She braced her shoulder against the trapdoor and shoved with more strength than she’d known she had.

And the door moved. Only an inch, but it yielded. Red glare, flickering wildly, shone through the gap.

Then the weight of the sofa overwhelmed her, and the trapdoor dropped shut again.

The house still wouldn’t let her go. It would hold her till the end.

“Fuck you!” she screamed.

She tried again, lifting the door two or three inches. The cellar brightened, waves of heat pulsing through the opening like the blast of an oven, the sofa’s legs grinding in protest as they shuddered across the pantry floor.

She was going to do it. Another few seconds-

The sofa stopped with a thud.

She strained against the trapdoor, but the sofa surrendered no more ground.

It must have hit the wall. It was wedged in place. She couldn’t move it.

Maybe she didn’t have to. Though the door wasn’t fully raised, there was an opening that might be wide enough to crawl through.

She wriggled through the gap, twisting and turning as she hauled herself into an orange blaze thick with clots of smoke.

Halfway out now, her upper body stretched across the floor, only her hips and legs still trapped below. She was caught on something. Her fingers probed for the snag. Found it-her blouse, speared by splinters of wood around the smashed dead bolt. She tore her shirt free and climbed the rest of the way out, snaking past the sofa, then rising to her feet, bent double to keep her head low and avoid the worst of the smoke.

In the pantry there was a fire extinguisher. She grabbed it before heading into the living room. The walls and drapes were ablaze. Everything was on fire, the heat beyond belief.

With the fire extinguisher, she might be able to get through the scrim of flame that hung between her and the front door. But Casey was still in the house.

She turned toward the rear hallway. Both sides were blazing, but a narrow aisle down the middle remained open.

Gulping air, fighting the sting of tears from the acrid smoke, she plunged into the corridor.

The heat here was even more intense. It was like standing on the sun. Lurid red-orange glare surrounded her. Choking smoke hung in gray drifts of poison cloud. She couldn’t breathe, the air was too hot, it seared her throat. Squinting against smoke and light, she squeezed the fire extinguisher’s handle. The white spray cleared a path as she made her way down the hall.

The cylinder was getting lighter, its contents disappearing all too quickly. She moved faster, trying to ration the remaining spray but needing it to make any progress at all. She stumbled once, on a floorboard warping in the heat, and nearly fell. Time slowed as she struggled for balance, knowing that if she fell against the wall she would be instantly immersed in flame.

Somehow she kept her footing and reached the end of the hall. The study lay to one side. Before her was the back door. The instinct to flee into the backyard was almost irresistible. She willed herself to enter the study.

Casey was there, the broken lamp alongside him on the floor. There was no fire in here, not yet. She could breathe. She drew in a great swallow of air, too much, and coughed uncontrollably, expelling a viscid stream of black ooze.

The fire extinguisher was empty. She pitched it aside, crouched, felt Casey’s head, found a bulbous bruise on his scalp. No blood, no indication that his skull had been opened. A sluggish pulse beat in the carotid artery at the side of his neck.

He lay face down, eyes shut. She shook him. Slapped his cheek. No response. And the room was getting hotter, smokier, the flames advancing this way.

She shouted in his ear. “Casey!”

He groaned, and his eyelids twitched, but he was still out.

She couldn’t rouse him. And he was too big and heavy for her to carry. But she could drag him. Maybe.

She rolled him onto his back, grabbed his arms and tried pulling him across the floor. Damn, he weighed a ton. He was weighted down by boots and belt, and she didn’t have time to strip him of his gear. The room was becoming an oven, and the smoke was thicker, and there was an awful stink in the air.

Gasoline. That was what she smelled.

Now she understood how the flames had spread so fast. She didn’t know where Parkinson had obtained the gas, and she couldn’t stop to puzzle it out now. All she knew was that the house would be completely engulfed in flame before long.

She struggled with Casey, fighting to haul him across the carpet, but it seemed impossible to make any progress. She had exhausted much of her strength, and the heat and smoke were rapidly sapping what was left.

She wouldn’t leave him, though. She would rather die than abandon him to burn.

The muscles of her arms and back screamed with effort. Somehow she managed to drag him to the doorway of the study.

The main part of the hall was fully ablaze now. No going back that way. But the fire hadn’t reached the very rear of the house, except for a few smoldering spots ignited by wafted embers.

She might have a chance, if she could get him to the back door.

Again she tried to rouse him. “Casey, wake up!”

Casey mumbled something, but when she peeled back one eyelid, his eye was still rolled up in its socket.

If she’d had water, she would have splashed it in his face, but there was no water, only heat and smoke and flame.

She took his arms and resumed pulling. She got him halfway through the door of the study before his gun belt caught on the frame. It cost her precious seconds to work him free.

More embers floated past like clouds of fireflies. Spot fires were breaking out. The rear of the house was starting to catch. She dared a glance toward the back door and saw sparks falling lazily onto the surrounding walls, setting the wallpaper aflame.

She had him out of the study now. She ran to the back door. Parkinson had left it unlocked. She tried to pull it open. It wouldn’t yield. She tugged harder at the knob, but the door remained stuck.

The heat must have warped the frame, wedging the door, sealing it shut. She couldn’t get it open. She couldn’t get out.

She turned to face the hallway, a tunnel of roaring flame.

Fear left her, and anger, and desperation. She saw how simple it was.

She was going to die here. It was how she’d always been meant to die. The house had wanted her all of these years. It had bided its time, and now at last it would claim her as its prize.

She returned to Casey, knelt by him. The heat was very bad. She wondered which would kill her first, heat or fumes or flames.

She hoped it wasn’t the flames. Burning to death-that was a bad way to go. But it didn’t matter.