“No, Edwin, don’t come here! Go to Bradley Road, the minimart. Stay there, stay with people. That way nobody can blame you for whatever happens.”
It was then that Kayleigh smelled smoke.
Edwin was saying something. She ignored him and turned her ear toward the door. Yes, the crackle of flames was coming from downstairs.
No, no! My house, my guitars! She’s burning them! Like Bobby and the file sharer and Sheri, she’s going to burn me too.
“Kayleigh, Kayleigh?” Edwin’s voice rose from her phone.
“There’s a fire, Edwin. Call the fire department too. But don’t come here. Whatever you do.”
“I-”
She disconnected.
And the bitter, stinging smoke began to seep under the bedroom door.
Chapter 64
THE SMOKE AND flames were growing.
My house, my house, Kayleigh thought as tears of sorrow, of pain from the smoke, of fear rolled down her cheeks. My guitars, my pictures… Oh, this can’t be happening!
The door was hot to the touch now and outside the window, reflections of the flames from downstairs flickered across trees and the lawn.
Kayleigh debated. Where was Alicia? She couldn’t stay downstairs in the flames, of course. She’d probably left.
Well, fuck her. I’m saving my house!
Kayleigh ran into the bathroom and grabbed a fire extinguisher, years old but, according to the gauge, still charged. She unlocked the bedroom door and eased it open. The fire was concentrated in the hallway on the ground floor and on the stairs themselves, the carpeting. It gave off thick clouds of astringent smoke from the flaming nylon. Sparks zipped through the air. Kayleigh caught a full breath of the foul stench and retched. She lowered her head and got a breath of more or less clean air, another. She stood. The fire wasn’t out of control yet. If Alicia had left she could put out enough of it to get to the kitchen, where there was a much bigger extinguisher. And the hose in the garden.
She eased out.
Just then a huge bang from downstairs resounded through the house, a flash in the smoke. A bullet plowed into the door near her head. Two more.
Screaming, she dove back into her room and slammed the door, locked it. Kayleigh decided she had no choice but to risk a twenty-five-foot jump to the ground. Would she break her legs and just lie there in agony until Alicia shot her? Would she get speared on the fence and bleed out?
But she wouldn’t burn to death, at least. Running to the window, she flung it open and looked out toward the road. Not a single flashing light yet. Then she gazed down, trying to judge angles and distances.
She found a place she might land, just past the fence. But then she saw, at the exact spot she’d land, Alicia’s shadow, moving back and forth, almost leisurely. She was at the front door and probably anticipating Kayleigh’s jump and aiming at that very spot.
Kayleigh sat down on the bed, grabbed a picture she had of Mary-Gordon and hugged it to her chest.
So, this was it.
She thought of the song she’d written for him years ago. “The Only One for Me.”
More tears.
But just then another gunshot resounded from downstairs… Then two or three more. Kayleigh gasped. Could the police be here after all?
She ran to the window and looked out. No, no one was here. The driveway was empty, except for Alicia’s truck. And there were no flashing lights on the horizon.
Two more shots.
And from downstairs, a voice calling her name.
A man’s voice.
“Kayleigh, come on, hurry!”
She opened the door cautiously and peered down.
Jesus! Through the smoke she could just make out the form of Edwin Sharp, beating down the flames on the stairs with his jacket. Alicia lay on her back, on the marble of the hallway, eyes gazing up, unseeing. Her face was bloody. She’d fallen onto a patch of burning wood floor and her clothes were on fire.
Kayleigh understood: Edwin had ignored her warning and continued to the house anyway.
“Hurry!” he cried. “Come on! I called the fire department but I don’t know when they’ll be here. You have to get out!”
His slapping at the flames wasn’t doing much to stop the spread, though he’d beat out a narrow path down the stairs to the ground floor.
She made her way along this now. He was pointing into the den. “We can get out that way, through the window!”
But she said, “You go! I’m going to fight it.”
“No, we can’t!”
“Go!” she shouted and turned the small extinguisher on the flames.
Edwin hesitated, coughing hard, and returned to flailing away with his jacket. “I’ll help you.”
She gave him a smile and called, “In the kitchen, there’s another extinguisher. Beside the stove!”
Choking, Edwin staggered through the arched doorway and returned a moment later with the extinguisher, much bigger than Kayleigh’s, and started to douse the flames too.
With a horrified glance at Alicia’s burning body, Kayleigh ran out the back door and returned a moment later with her garden hose. She began attacking the stubborn fire as Edwin, next to her, blew bursts of foam from the big extinguisher. They both retched and coughed and tried to blink away tears from the smoke.
The singer and her stalker held their own but only for a time. Soon Edwin’s extinguisher ran out and an outrider of fire melted her garden hose.
Too late… no! My house.
But then sirens sounded and outside the evening darkness filled with flashing lights as the first fire trucks arrived. Men and women in their thick yellow outfits hurried into the house with hoses and began battling the flames. One fireman bent over Alicia’s body, no longer burning but smoldering badly, and felt for a pulse. He looked up and shook his head.
Another ushered Kayleigh and Edwin toward the front door and they staggered outside. Kayleigh made her way down the stairs into the yard, coughing and spitting the terrible bits of soot and ash from her mouth. She paused on the lawn and vomited painfully. Then she looked back, realizing that Edwin was lagging behind.
She saw him on his knees on the porch. His hand was at his throat. He lifted his fingers away and looked at them. Kayleigh saw the digits were dark but not stained with soot, as she’d thought. Blood was flowing from a wound in his neck.
Alicia had shot him before he wrestled the gun away from her.
He blinked and looked at Kayleigh. “I think… I think she…” His eyes closed and he collapsed backward on the wooden deck.
