Angie stepped back then and stared at him for a moment, as if she had no idea who he was or how he had come to fall to the floor with the last of his life's blood pumping out of him as he gurgled and gagged. Then she looked at the knife, dripping blood, her hands covered and sticky with it, and slowly she turned toward Kate.
QUINN DROVE WITH no regard for the laws of the road or of physics, driven himself by a growing sense of panic in his gut. Kovac hung on, braced himself, screamed more than once as Quinn swept the Caprice around and between cars.
“If he's smart, he's already blown town,” Kovac said.
“Smart's got nothing to do with it,” Quinn said above the roar of the engine. “He brought Kate on the case as part of his game. He killed Melanie Hessler because she was Kate's client. He left a calling card in Kate's garage the other night. He won't leave town without finishing the thing between them.”
He could see the hall light on as the car skidded to a stop in front of Kate's house. The light glowed through the sheers at the goddamn sidelights she should have known better than to have. Quinn slammed the Caprice into park before it fully stopped, and the transmission made an ominous sound. He was out of the car before it could stop rocking, running for the house as a pair of radio cars screamed up the street. He thundered onto the porch and pounded on the door, tried the handle. Locked.
“Kate! Kate!”
He pressed his face to the glass of one sidelight. The hall table sat askew. Things had tumbled over on it and off it. The rug was cockeyed.
“Kate!”
The shout that came from somewhere in the house went through him like steel. “No!”
Quinn grabbed the mailbox, ripped it off the wall, and smashed out the sidelight just as Kovac ran up onto the porch. Another few seconds and they were in. His eyes went to a smear of blood on the wall near the den.
“Kate!”
Her cry came from somewhere deep in the house. “Angie! NO!”
ANGIE TURNED THE knife in her bloody hands, staring at the blade. She let the tip of it kiss the fragile skin of her wrist.
“Angie, no!” Kate shouted, straining against the ties. “Don't do it! Please don't do it! Come cut me loose. Then we'll get you some help.”
She couldn't see Rob, but knew he lay crumpled on the floor near the drier. She could hear gurgling sounds coming from his throat. He had knocked the candelabrum over as he crashed, and the flames had found some of the lighter fluid he must have poured around while Kate had been unconscious. It ignited with a whoosh.
The flames would follow the trail of fuel in search of more fuel. The basement was crammed with posibilities—boxes of junk her parents had saved and abandoned, stuff she'd been meaning to throw out but hadn't gotten to, the obligatory half-empty cans of paint and other hazardous chemicals.
“Angie. Angie!” Kate said, trying to pull the girl's focus to her. Angie, who stood looking into the face of her own death.
“Michele won't love me,” the girl murmured, looking at the man she had just killed. She sounded disappointed in herself, like a small child who had written on the wall in crayon, then realized there would be a bad consequence.
“Kate!” Quinn's bellow sounded above.
Angie seemed not to hear the shouts or the thunder of big male feet. She pressed the blade of the knife lengthwise against the shadow of a vein in her wrist.
“Kate!”
She tried to shout “In the basement!” but her voice seized up so she barely heard herself. The flames caught hold of a box of clothes destined, oddly enough, for the Phoenix, and leapt with enthusiasm—far too near the table. Kate jerked at her bindings, succeeding only in pulling them even tighter around her wrists and ankles. She was losing the feeling in her hands.
She tried to clear her throat to speak. Smoke rolled thick and black from the boxes.
“Angie, help me. Help me and I'll help you. How's that for a deal?”
The girl stared at the knife.
The smoke detector at the top of the stairs finally blew, and the thunder of feet homed in on it.
Angie pressed the blade a little harder against her wrist. Tiny beads of blood surfaced like little jewels in a bracelet.
“No, Angie, please,” Kate whispered, knowing the girl couldn't have heard her if she'd shouted.
Angie looked at her square in the face, and for the first time since Kate had met her she looked like exactly what she was: a child. A child no one had ever wanted, had ever loved.
“I hurt,” she said.
“Call the fire department!” Quinn shouted at the head of the stairs. “Kate!”
“Joh—” Her voice cracked and she began to cough. The smoke rolled along the ceiling toward the stairwell and the new source of fresh air.
“Kate!”
Quinn led the way down the stairs with a .38 Kovac had lent him, his fear obliterating all known rules of procedure. As he dropped below the cloud of smoke, his focus was instantly on Kate, bound hand and foot on a table, her sweater cut open, blood pooling on her skin. And then his attention went to the girl beside the table: Angie DiMarco with a butcher knife in her hands.
“Angie, drop the knife!” he shouted.
The girl looked up at him, the light in her eyes fading away. “Nobody loves me,” she said, and in one quick, violent motion slashed her wrist to the bone.
“NO!” Kate screamed.
“Jesus!” Quinn charged across the room, leading with the gun.
Angie dropped to her knees as the blood gushed from her arm. The knife fell to the floor. Quinn kicked it aside and dropped to his knees, grabbing the girl's arm with a grip like a C-clamp. Blood pumped between his fingers. Angie sagged against him.
Kate watched with horror, not even acknowledging Kovac as he cut her loose. She rolled off the table onto feet she could no longer feel, and fell in a heap. She had to scramble to Angie on her knees. Her hands were as useless as clubs, swollen and purple, and she couldn't make her fingers move. Still, she wrapped her arms around the girl.
“We have to get out of here!” Quinn shouted.
The fire had begun licking its way up the steps. A uniformed officer fought it down with an extinguisher. But even as he cleared the stairs, the flames were working their way across the basement, following the trail of lighter fluid, pouncing on everything edible in its path.
Quinn and a uniform took Angie up the basement steps and out the back door. Sirens were screaming out on the street, a couple of blocks away yet. He passed the girl off to the uniform and ran back to the house as Kovac came with Kate leaning heavily against him, both of them coughing as thick black smoke rolled up behind them, acrid with the smell of chemicals.
“Kate!”
She fell against him and he scooped her up in his arms.
“I'm going back for Marshall!” Kovac shouted above the roar. The fire had come up through the floor and found the river of gasoline Rob had poured through the house.
“He's dead!” Kate yelled, but Kovac was gone. “Sam!”
One of the uniforms charged in after him.
The sirens blasted out front, fire trucks bulling their way down the narrow street. Quinn negotiated the back steps with Kate in his arms and hustled down the side of the house to the front yard and the boulevard. He lowered her into the backseat of Kovac's car just as an explosion sounded from the bowels of the house and windows on the first floor shattered. Kovac and the uniform staggered away from the back corner of the house and fell to their hands and knees in the snow. Firemen and paramedics rushed toward them and toward the house.
“Are you all right?” Quinn asked, staring into Kate's eyes, his fingers digging into her shoulders.