Dread filtered through Jo’s shock, not that the man might be dead, but that Becca would have to live with having shot him. She clawed her hair out of her eyes and saw her, Becca, who ate four pounds of chocolate a day, holding an Amazon stance in the scant moonlight with one chobo balanced over her shoulder like a baseball bat. Jo noted vaguely that Becca also carried the Spiricom and Jo’s bag, crisis mode having rendered her amusingly thorough.
“I could only find one in the dark,” Becca gasped, waving the chobo. “Are you all right? Are you all right?”
Jo didn’t have the breath yet for speech so she just lifted a hand in reassurance. The man was still heaving for air, too. At least he wasn’t dead. Becca had clubbed him neatly and well. He was out cold. Jo took his hair again, none too gently, and turned his head. She realized she could see his features, outlined in red light. Behind them, the house had begun to burn in earnest.
“Do you know him?” she rasped at Becca.
Becca knelt gingerly at his side, gazing at his face with wide eyes. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure. He’s alive, right?”
“He’s alive.” Jo heard him moan, a rumble deep in his chest, and she was taking no chances. She searched him swiftly, swiveled, and sat solidly on his back, pinning him to the ground.
“Good idea.” Becca plunked herself down on his legs, eliciting another groan, but the man lay still beneath them.
“You went back into a burning house,” Jo panted, “for your sticks?”
“I smacked him good, too,” Becca pointed out proudly. “You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m peachy.” Jo touched her brow and winced. She lifted her head and heard the far-off whine of a siren. “I think we woke the neighbors.” The clattering of the toolbox down the stone steps would have roused the dead. She nodded across the street toward the cemetery. “Perhaps all of them.”
“Good.” Becca sighed. She took Jo’s hand and cradled it on her knee.
They sat side by side on their unconscious stalker and watched the house of Becca’s nightmares erupt in flames. The night air crackled now with the ugly snap of burning wood, and scarlet light flooded over them. Becca rested her head on Jo’s shoulder, an odd take on a couple seated before a romantic fire, and they waited together quietly, content, for the moment, with safety and silence.
Becca’s first bout of shakes had taken her and passed by the time Pam Emerson pulled up in her efficient Kia. The neighborhood was still awash in revolving red lights and the flickering gold of the smoldering house. Their arsonist had been treated by EMTs and was strapped to a gurney, and Pam had grilled her and Jo thoroughly. Becca was distantly aware that they were standing in a puddle of water, one of several left dotting the ground by powerful hoses.
Dawn was at least an hour away. Smoke still wafted through the street, but the fire was under control. At least the adjoining houses were no longer in danger from showers of sparks. Clumps of people stood on the dark sidewalk on either side of the property, kept at bay by firefighters and assorted police. The distant warbling of radios cut through the air at intervals.
Becca looked around for a place to sit, but benches were in short supply. She had allowed Jo to leave her long enough to put her bag in the rented BMW, but she still cradled the Spiricom in her arms. Becca realized she was stroking it like an electronic cat, and she leaned against Jo ruefully.
“I’m glad you saved this. You already lost one very pricey vehicle and every precious toy in your office in this deal. At least we salvaged your favorite Spiricom.”
“We salvaged everything that’s precious to me, Becca.” Jo slid her arm around her shoulders with an ease that touched Becca as much as her words.
She closed her eyes against Jo’s breast. With the house in flames, Jo had rescued her Spiricom, and her bag, and Becca. Becca had rescued only her chobos and the flat bottle of Scotch she still carried in her shirt.
“Okay, ladies.” Pam joined them, looking rumpled in the shorts and loose tank top she probably slept in, but her dark eyes were snapping and alert. “Medics checked you both out, right?”
“Yes, we’ve been checked.” Jo shrugged off the light cotton blanket the EMT had insisted on draping over them. “What do you know so far?”
“Well, the gentleman over there is awake. Might have a concussion, but he’ll live. We’re running him to Harborview’s ER. No ID, and he won’t tell us his name, no big surprise. But we’ll print him, and I intend to sit with him for the next twenty hours or so, and ask him lots and lots of questions.” Pam smiled like a shark. “We’ll find out who he is.”
Jo nodded. “I’m taking Becca to my place. We’ll call you once we’ve had some sleep.”
“Can I talk to him first?” Becca couldn’t believe she was sug-gesting this, but it felt important. “Now, before he’s fogged up by meds?”
Pam squinted at her. “Yeah, if you’re up to it. He might spill something to you he wouldn’t to us. He’s strapped down,” she added unnecessarily, but Becca appreciated the sentiment.
She looked up at Jo, who stayed right beside her as they made their way to the cluster of police and medics around the gurney. Pam spoke to two of them, who parted to let them come closer.
The man wasn’t as young as Becca had assumed. That was her first impression. This was no kid. He looked older than her or Jo. And sick, or at least chronically malnourished. His weathered face turned toward them, and he stared at Becca.
“All right, Smoky,” Pam addressed the man dryly. “Those rights I read you are still in effect. You remember, anything you say, can and will.” She lifted her chin at Becca.
Becca cleared her throat, and the circle around them fell silent. “Do I know you?”
The man didn’t answer, and for a long moment Becca thought he would refuse. Then he smiled, displaying the distinctive, ruined teeth of a chronic meth user. His voice emerged in a harsh drawl.
“You tell my daddy hello for me, Becca.”
Becca stood still. He said no more, and she didn’t ask anything else. She didn’t have to. She recognized his voice.
“Becca?” Jo’s warm breath stirred her hair, but she couldn’t move.
Music played in Becca’s head. The experience didn’t feel psychotic or particularly alarming, just a soft and happy sprinkling of notes.
Olivia Newton-John, a song from Grease. Becca had just seen the movie, and loved it. A brief but clear vision of a party outside on the grass. A cake with candles. Hands holding out a wrapped present, the one that delighted Becca the most that day. The box that contained the doll she would clutch so desperately late that night, after her parents died.
“The gift held blood.”
The hands that gave her the wrapped box at the party were the same ones that pressed the doll into Becca’s arms that night. And they were not her mother’s hands.
Finally, the medics wheeled the gurney away and loaded it into a waiting ambulance.
“Hey.” Pam touched Becca’s arm. “What gives, Bec?”
Becca shook her head. She looked up at Jo, moved out from under her arm, and walked toward the cemetery.
She was starting to remember who shot her parents, and she wanted a drink.
Chapter Nineteen
“Leave us alone.” Jo’s words were abrupt, but Pam was clan and she understood; she just nodded.
Becca wasn’t hurrying and so Jo didn’t either, but she was unstoppable as a truck, or a brakeless Bentley. Barefoot and still clutching the Spiricom, Becca found no hindrance in the barred iron gate of Lake View Cemetery. She simply climbed over it. Jo could have caught her there, but she let her walk ahead, into the silent darkness of the grounds beyond.