She looked around for Jeff’s car and when she saw it parked across the street out of the way she waved to them and headed toward her erstwhile partner. She hoped they’d stay put for the moment. After all, if Dan was involved, what could he do to her with all these people around?
“This is a disaster,” she told him as she approached. “This time they’ve outdone themselves. People are dead, others badly injured. We have to catch these guys, Dan.”
“They’re damn slippery,” he agreed. “That’s for sure. Come over here. I found something I want to show you.”
“What is it?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to go off with him.
“Come on. I think they made a mistake this time.” He clamped his hand over her arm.
“Wait, Dan.” She tried to pull away from him but in seconds he had dragged her around to the back of he second burning beholding. “Stop it,” she screamed. Then she realized with the roar of the fire, the babble of the crowd and the noise of the hoses no one could hear her.
“Shut up, bitch.” His voice was harsh. This didn’t sound at all like the Dan she knew. “God damn nosy bitch. I told you to step back from it. I could tell today you were onto it. Now you’ll go and fuck everything up.”
Randi dug in her heels, literally, and refused to move. But Dan was much bigger and stronger.
“You kill me and they’ll find my body. How will you explain that?”
“That you ignore warnings not to go into he building and ended up being burned alive. Which is about what I have in mind for you.”
He tried dragging her again and again she screamed for help at the top of her voice. If he got her to the burning building, he could knock her out and toss her inside, then make up some kind of story. She despaired of anyone hearing. Use your brain, she told herself. Suddenly she gave up all resistance, Dan stumbled backwards and she gave him a hard kick to the crotch.
“Ow!” Goddamn bitch! Fuck!” He doubled over, to cup his hands over his family jewels, just as two men appeared out of the dark. One of them pulled her close to his body, his arms tight around her. She thought it was Noah, but when she looked she realized Noah had punched Dan hard enough to knock him to the ground and was straddling him, still delivering punches.
“Stop.” She tried to get away from Jeff. “You’ll kill him, Noah. He’s not worth it.” She looked at Jeff. “None of this is any good if he ends up in jail instead of Dan.”
“Dan’s going there, make no mistake,” Jeff assured her. “Dan? “ He released Randi and jogged over to grab Noah’s arms. “Enough, buddy. The guy’s out cold. Come on. Let’s get the cops.”
But the first person to confront them was Captain MacNeill, still in his gear, a distressed look on his face.
“What the hell is going on here, Randi?”
She sighed, hugging herself tightly to stop the trembling that had suddenly set in.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on.” Noah was breathing hard, still straddling Dan. “This asshole tried his best to kill Randi.”
MacNeill looked at her. “That true?”
“Y-Yes.” Suddenly, despite the heat, she couldn’t stop shivering.
“Captain?” Jeff was just stuffing his cell back in his pocket. “I just called my lieutenant. Can we love this out of the public eye?”
“Good idea. Let’s all head to that cruiser parked across the street and sort this out.”
It took some doing to heft Dan, a big man, and take him in a fireman’s carry but eventually they were all safely out of range of both the fire and the crowd.
*****
Randi had put in some long nights, but none longer than the one that just ended. By the time the fire was under control, the dead and injured removed and Randi’s story repeated at least half a dozen times, it was close to sunrise. She was exhausted in every nerve and pore and just wanted to crawl into bed for a week.
Shock reverberated through both the fire and police departments as news of Dan’s complicity spread like, well, wildfire. Dan had made the official arrest and taken him to the station for booking. They’d gotten most of the story out of Dan, desperate to either save his own neck or take everyone down with him. The missing piece was his stepbrother, an attorney who did a lot of corporate work. He and Dan had purchased the apartment complexes with low down payments then leveraged each parcel to buy the next one. The only thing that would save them was burning down the buildings. They originally planned it for the insurance money but then they learned of the city’s mega million project and they saw a bigger pot of gold.
This was a scandal that would rock the city when it all came out. Randi still remembered the icy feeling of dread when she realized Dan was onto her and planned to kill her. At the moment she’d been too shocked to feel real fear. But Noah and Jeff had gotten out of their car when they saw her walking over to her erstwhile partner and headed in her direction. She still had trouble wrapping her mind around the whole thing.
At last both her boss and the police department were through with them and Jeff drove her and Noah back to her house, promising to call them later in the day. He had to get back to work at the moment as this case had been assigned to him.
Noah had filled her big claw foot tub with hot water and poured some of her bath salts into it.
“This will relax you,” he told
