The Smoky Mountain Mist (17 page)

Painfully aware of the ticking clock, he reversed course and went back through the mudroom door. The heat here was stronger, pouring around him in slick, greasy waves. The odor of gasoline wafted toward him, and he realized there was an open container sitting right by the back door.

He set it outside quickly and looked toward the shed. The door was open and Delilah was inside, digging around. “I need a hammer!” he called to her. “Can you see a hammer?”

She emerged from the shed a moment later, carrying a large, old-looking claw-head hammer. He met her halfway to get it.

“The fire is spreading,” he told her breathlessly as he took the hammer. “Even if I get up to her, we may not have any choice but to get down by ladder. The sooner the better. I’m not sure we can wait for the fire trucks to arrive. Have you found a ladder?”

“I spotted it in the back. I have to dig for it. You get into the attic. I’ll get the ladder.” She squeezed his arm, encouragement shining in her dark eyes. Warmth spread through his whole body like a booster shot of hope.

“See you on the other side of the window,” he said.

He raced back into the burning house, dismayed to discover that in the few brief seconds he’d been outside, fire had licked closer to the mudroom. He could see flames dancing through the kitchen doorway, spreading inexorably closer. By the time he made it into the attic, the mudroom exit wasn’t likely to be a viable escape route.

It was going to be the ladder or nothing.

The heat in the bedroom closet was oppressive, though the door had not yet become engulfed in flames. Still, eerie yellow light flickered through the narrow slit beneath the door, and smoke pouring through the crack limited visibility in the crowded space to inches.

He pulled down the trapdoor ladder as far as it would go with the door nailed shut and hauled himself up on the rungs, praying the wood was sturdy enough to hold his weight while he worked. So far, the electricity in the house was still on, giving him enough light to see the nails he had to remove.

“Rachel?” he called, wondering if she could hear him on the other side of the trapdoor. Was she even conscious anymore?

“Seth?” Her faint voice sounded remarkably close, as if she was just on the other side.

“I’m right here, sugar. I’m pulling out the nails. But you have to get off the door or you’ll fall through, and I won’t be able to catch you.”

He heard scraping noises above him, then silence.

“Rachel, are you off the door now?”

When her voice came, it was faint. “You have to go. The fire...”

“You think I’m going to leave you up there alone?”

“It was Paul. Paul did this. I think he did everything.”

“That’s right, we know who it is now, so it’s going to be okay. We’ll get him, and then you’ll be safe.”

“You must hate me.”

He smiled at the plaintive tone. “Never.”

“I didn’t listen to you.”

“Yeah, you did,” he said, his voice coming out in a soft grunt as he struggled with a particularly difficult nail. “I told you I was trouble, and you listened. Smart girl.”

“I didn’t believe you—”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“No!” Her voice rose a little, her obvious fear tempered with frustration. “Listen to me. I didn’t believe...you did it.”

His fingers faltered on the hammer, nearly dropping it. “You didn’t?”

“I know you. Who you are when you’re not being a defensive jackass.”

A helpless smile curved his lips. “You do, do you?”

She didn’t answer.

His gut tightened, and he attacked the final nails with fierce determination, so focused that he didn’t realize until the ladder dropped to open the trapdoor that the fire had finally breached the closet door, the crackling flames waiting for him as he dropped. Fire snapped at his pant legs and singed his shoes as he scrambled up the ladder and into the attic.

Rachel lay on her side a few feet away, her eyes closed and her breathing labored. Her face was sooty from the smoke rising through the rough slat flooring into the attic. He crouched beside her, his heart pounding.

Her pale eyes flickered open, and her soot-stained mouth curved into a weak smile. “I knew you were a hero.”

He cradled her smudged face. “Yeah, well, we can debate that later. Right now, we’re going to get you out of here. Okay?” He helped her to her feet and crossed to the open window, praying Delilah had come through.

She was standing below on the flagstone patio, locking the extension ladder into position. Struggling with the unwieldy contraption, she positioned it against the wall beneath the attic window. It didn’t reach the windowsill, ending about five feet beneath.

Damn it.
Seth gazed at the gap between himself and freedom.

“You’ll have to climb down to it,” Delilah called. “I’ve seen you monkey your way up a fir tree. You can do it!”

He could do it, but what about Rachel? She’d have to climb out of that window into nothing but her trust in his ability to keep her from falling.

Could she do that?

“Rachel?”

Her eyes fluttered up to meet his, her pupils dark and wide. “What?”

“I have to go out the window to the ladder.”

She shook her head fiercely. “No ladder.”

“We have to go out this way. The closet below is already on fire.”

Her chin lifted. “Then you have to go without me.”

“No,” he said firmly. “We live together or we die together. Your choice. But I’m not going out there without you.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Please, Seth. I can’t do it.” Panic sizzled in Rachel’s veins, driving out anything but fear, as black and deadly as the smoke filling the room at her back. “You go. Now.”

His hands closed around her face, forcing her to look up at him. His face was soot-smudged and dripping sweat, but in his clear green eyes she saw a blaze of emotion that sucked the air right out of her aching lungs.

“I will not go without you.” Each word rang with fierce resolve. His hands clutched her more tightly in place, as if he planned to drag her out the window with him, whatever the consequences.

“Okay.” She peeled his hands from her face and gave him a little push toward the window. “Be careful!” she added with a rush of panic as he hauled himself onto the windowsill.

He disappeared over the side, only his fingers on the windowsill remaining in sight. After a harrowing moment, his face appeared over the sill again. “Okay, sugar. Your turn.”

Terror gripped her gut, and she almost turned around and ran toward the trapdoor, preferring to take her chance with the fire. But his hand snaked over the side, grabbing her wrist as if he’d read the panic in her expression.

“You can do this. I braved the fire. You brave the heights.”

Fly, baby. You can fly.
Her mother’s voice rang in her ears, a fierce, mean whisper of madness.

No. I won’t fly.

I’ll climb down like a sane person.

She closed her eyes a moment, mentally working her way through the next few seconds. She’d get settled on the windowsill, get her balance. Seth would be just below. He wouldn’t let her fall.

He’d never let her fall.

She swung one trembling leg over the windowsill, clinging to the frame until she was straddling it, more or less balanced. But her imagination failed her. She couldn’t visualize a way to get her other leg over the sill without plunging out the window.

“Take my hands, Rachel.” Seth’s voice gathered the scattered threads of her unraveling sense and tied them together. “Just take my hands and swing your leg over the edge.”

She caught his hands. Fierce strength seemed to flow through his fingers into hers, and she swung her leg out of the window. She was hunched in an uncomfortable position, but she maintained her balance.

“This is the hardest point. Get this right, and we’re home free.” Seth released one of her hands and braced his against the wall. “I want you to slide off the ledge and onto my arm, turning around to face the wall as you do it. Okay?”

She stared at him. “That’s your plan?”

He grinned up at her. “Take it or leave it.”

She realized, in that scary, crazy moment, that she was helplessly in love with Seth Hammond. Faults and all. Any fire-phobic man who’d haul a drugged, acrophobic basket case out of a burning house was a man in a million. Whatever had driven him in his sin-laden past, he was a hell of a man in the present.

And if he thought he was going to talk her out of what she was feeling, then he had one hell of a surprise coming to him.

“Remember what we did this afternoon?” she asked, sliding her butt off the sill and into the curve of his arm.

His green eyes snapped up to meet hers. “Yes,” he answered warily.

She slid the rest of the way into his grasp, anchoring her fingers on the ladder rungs. The hard heat of his body behind her felt like solid ground.

“As soon as I sober up, we’re doing that again. Understood?”

She felt his body shake lightly behind her as laughter whispered in her ear. “Understood.”

Step by careful step, they reached the safety of the patio together just as the fire trucks pulled into the driveway.

* * *

“T
HERE
’
S
NOT
MUCH
to salvage, I’m afraid.” Delilah kept her voice low as she crossed to where Seth sat next to Rachel’s hospital bed. The E.R. doctor had insisted she stay overnight for observation, given how much smoke she’d inhaled. But he was optimistic that she’d be fine in a day or two.

“I know she’ll hate losing the mementos of her family,” he murmured, brushing his thumb against the back of her hand where it lay loosely in his palm. “But I don’t think she’ll miss that damned attic.”

“You’re right about that.” Rachel’s voice, thick with sleep, drew his attention back to the bed. Her eyes fluttered open. “So, we lived, huh?”

He squeezed her hands. “Yes, we did.”

She rubbed her reddened eyes. “I feel like I swallowed a smokestack.”

“You nearly did.”

The door of the hospital room opened, and Rafe Hunter breezed into the room on the sheer force of his personality, his wife, Janeane, bringing up the rear. Rafe nudged Seth aside and grabbed his niece’s hands. “Rachel, darling, are you all right?”

Rachel gave Seth a quick look over her uncle’s shoulder.

“I’ll be back in a little while,” he promised her, backing out of the room to let her family have time with her. Delilah came with him, laying her hand on his arm as he started to slump against the wall.

“There’s a waiting room down at the end of the hall,” she said, hooking her arm through his. “Ivy and Sutton need to talk to you.”

Seth didn’t like the bleak tone of Delilah’s voice. “What’s going on?” he asked as she led him into the small waiting area at the end of the corridor.

Inside were a handful of hospital visitors scattered among the rows of chairs and benches. At the far end, near the big picture window looking out on the eastern side of Maryville, Sutton Calhoun and Ivy Hawkins had their heads together with a grim-looking Antoine Parsons.

All three turned when he and Delilah walked up. “What’s happened?” Seth asked, his gut tight with dread.

“Paul Bailey is dead.”

Seth stared at Antoine. “I thought you caught him and took him into custody.”

“We did. We booked him, and he was waiting in his cell for his lawyer. The guard near his cell had to go referee a fight between a couple of drunks down the hall, and, when he got back, Bailey was dead.”

“Murdered?”

“We’re not sure.” Antoine sounded apologetic. “We don’t know if he ingested something or what. The coroner’s got the body already and should have the autopsy done in a few days.”

“He didn’t do all of this by himself,” Seth said firmly. “Someone was pulling his strings.”

“That’s what we think, too,” Ivy assured him. “This case isn’t over.”

Seth ran his hand over his jaw, his palm rasping over the day’s growth of beard. “Is Rachel still in danger?”

“Probably not,” Sutton said gently. “Paul Bailey was clearly the link. If he was in charge of the company, then whoever had control of him had access to the trucks. Without him, there’s no entry point. Whoever did this will just look for another fool to manipulate.”

“So the man behind the curtain just gets away with five murders and weeks of tormenting Rachel?” Rage burned in Seth’s gut, as hot and destructive as the fire that had licked at his heels in Rachel’s house.

“He won’t get away with it if we don’t let him,” Delilah said. “I’ve been thinking about what you told us. About Adam Brand.”

There was an odd tone to his sister’s voice that he hadn’t heard before. A vulnerability that she’d never really shown, not even as a girl. He looked at her and saw anxiety shining in her dark eyes.

“What about him?” he asked.

“I’ve been trying to reach him, going around the obvious channels. I called some people we both knew back in the day. And that story about his being on vacation? It’s bull. It’s just the official story, at least for now.”

“What’s the real story?” Sutton asked curiously.

Delilah’s expression went stony. “The real story is that he’s gone AWOL. And the FBI is investigating him for espionage.”

Seth shook his head firmly. “No way. Not Brand.”

His sister’s eyes blazed at him. “Something’s really wrong, Seth. Because there’s no way in hell Adam Brand would do anything to hurt this country. And now I’m wondering if what’s going on with him has anything to do with his reason for having you follow Rachel.”

“How?” Seth asked, not sure how to connect the two ideas together.

“I don’t know,” Delilah admitted. “I can’t see an obvious connection.” Her chin lifted. “But I’m going to find out.”

She pulled out her cell phone and walked over to an empty spot on the other side of the room.

Sutton’s gaze followed her movement briefly, then turned back to Seth. “I guess we owe you an apology.”

Seth shook his head. “Not yet. Let me get a few more years of the straight and narrow under my belt and then maybe you’ll owe me.”

“You’re really out of the life?” Ivy asked, more curious than disbelieving. “I hear it has a way of sucking you right back in.”

“I don’t want the guilt,” he said simply. “It’s not a life you can live if you have any sort of conscience, and apparently my daddy didn’t blow mine up in that explosion after all.”

Sutton looked at him through thoughtful eyes and gave a brief nod. “Good for you, Hammond. Prove everybody wrong.”

“Speaking of daddies, you talked to yours recently?” Seth asked.

“I went by to see him once I was back in the country,” Sutton answered. “He’s getting back a lot more of his functions than I think he ever believed he would.”

“I should have insisted he keep up with the therapy,” Seth said with regret. “I’m sorry.”

“He wasn’t ready then. You couldn’t have made him.” Sutton shrugged. “You went above and beyond. I owe you.”

“Not yet,” Seth repeated with a faint smile.

He waited a few more minutes, giving Rachel time with her family, until he could stand it no longer. He left the waiting room and headed back down the hall to her room.

Her aunt and uncle had gone, but Rachel was still awake. “Where’s the family?” he asked as she smiled sleepily at him.

“I asked them to call Diane,” she told him, her smile fading. “To let her know what’s going on with Paul.”

She didn’t know Paul was dead, he realized. He was tempted to keep that information from her until she felt better.

But that wasn’t fair, was it? Keeping things from her would only convince her she couldn’t trust him. He’d damned near been burned—literally—by his secrets. If he was serious about the straight and narrow, serious about becoming a man who could deserve a woman like Rachel Davenport, he had to start by telling the truth, even when it was unpleasant.

Even when it hurt.

He pulled up a chair by her bed and took her outstretched hand. “I just talked to Ivy and Antoine about Paul.”

Her fingers tightened around his. “He’s in really bad trouble, isn’t he? That’s why I wanted Uncle Rafe to talk to Diane. She’s always liked him. He’ll break it to her gently.”

“I don’t know how to say this but just say it. Paul is dead.”

Her fingers went suddenly limp in his. “Dead? How?”

He told her what he knew. “It’s possible he smuggled something into the jail. If we’re right about someone pulling his strings, it may be that he found death preferable than whatever his puppet master had in store for him.”

“He used to gamble in college—Diane used to bail him out all the time—but he went to rehab for it.”

“Sometimes—a lot of the time—good intentions aren’t enough. Sometimes, rehab doesn’t stick.”

Silence fell between them as they each considered the double meaning of his words. Rachel spoke first. “Someone made Paul do this. I don’t think he’d have done anything this terrible if he wasn’t under extreme pressure.”

Seth wasn’t as inclined to give Paul Bailey’s motives the benefit of the doubt, but he couldn’t argue with her logic. “The police are looking into Paul’s background, trying to figure out who he owed. If we figure that out, we’ll be able to protect you better.”

“So you think I’m still in danger?” She sounded deflated.

“Not the way you were, no. We don’t think so. Paul was the leverage to get a foothold in the trucking company. Without him, whoever was pulling his strings can’t get control over the trucks, and we’re pretty sure that’s what he wanted.”

“You don’t have any idea why he wanted control of the trucks?”

“Obviously the idea is to use them to ship some sort of contraband. We just don’t know what.”

“Couldn’t they buy their own trucks?”

“Probably not without greater scrutiny.”

“So he might already be under investigation?”

Seth thought about Adam Brand. Had the FBI agent tugged the tail of the wrong tiger? “Probably. We just have to match the suspect to the crime.”

“We do?” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “You’ve joined the Bitterwood P.D. now, hero?”

He smiled at the thought at first, but his smile quickly faded. It was a surprisingly tempting idea, he realized. And if he hadn’t burned his reputation to the ground, maybe he’d have had a chance to try his hand at being one of the good guys. “No, but I’m interested in the outcome of the case.”

Her lips curved again. “Because of me?”

Helpless to say no, he nodded. “Because of you.”

Her smile widened briefly but quickly faded. Tears welled in her eyes, and she brushed them away with an angry swipe of her fingers. “Poor Diane. She’s lost everyone.”

“She didn’t lose you. Right?”

Her fingers tightened around his. “Thanks to you.”

He kissed her knuckles. “There were a few minutes there I thought I was going to have to stay in that attic with you until the fire got us.”

“I wouldn’t have let that happen,” she said firmly.

He smiled at her confident tone. “Yeah, you say that now.”

“I meant what I said up there.”

Heat flushed through him as he remembered what she’d said, but he didn’t want to assume they remembered the same thing. She’d been drugged, after all. “Which part?”

Her lopsided smirk reassured him that they
were
thinking of the same thing. “You know which part.”

He shook his head. “What am I going to do with you?”

Her smirk grew into a full grin. “You need me to remind you?”

“I’m still a risky bet, Rachel. Not everyone’s going to be able to see beyond my past. They’re going to think you’re crazy for wanting to be with me....”