The train was coming.
“Weren’t you going to bring him here? To see Summer?”
“What? No.” He shrugged. “You can’t do everything.”
“But he defied you.”
Wheels ticking on the tracks, louder and louder.
“Can’t do everything,” Galaz repeated, uncertain.
The train upon them now, the rumbling shaking the room. A sweeping wall of sound, so big that for a moment it obliterated all thought. They were in the maw of sound.
Concentrate! She had to try one more time for the knife. She straightened out her fingers as far as they could go and pressed down on the handle, edging it to her by pushing the handle down against the wood.
The thundering in her ears. Fear pushing its way up into her throat. “Musicman wins, then” she said.
“He won’t win. He won’t get Summer now.” Galaz unscrewed the cap and sloshed some of the liquid on the floor. The smell hit Laura, the rank high smell of pure gasoline.
The thing she feared most was dying in a fire.
Summer, whimpering with fear.
Get your fingers around—
Galaz produced a silver lighter from his pocket. Paused. Laura could see he was still working it out in his mind, seeing the evidence the way the fire marshal would see it, the detectives, the ME.
Get your fingers around the knife—
The sound of the train abating now, the wheels the noisiest part.
Laura curled her fingers. It hurt like hell, but fire would hurt worse. She closed her eyes and with an act of will, squeezed. The knife was in her hand. She’d have to rush him, but she could barely move.
She’d just have to aim herself at him, keeping the point of the knife to the front.
Five feet away.
She clenched her muscles even more, the pain excruciating.
Galaz’s back toward her. Splashing more gasoline on the walls, the windows.
Harnessing her adrenaline. Clamping down on muscles already stressed beyond the breaking point. Take a deep breath.
Now.
When Buddy heard the shot, he reacted immediately. Drawing his weapon, he tried the metal door, but it was locked. He stared at the windows, looking for the weakest point. The panes were fashioned of glass and wood, and in some places the wood strips were broken.
There would be no element of surprise. They’d see him coming.
Then he heard the train. He realized the tracks went right behind the warehouse. All he had to do was time it right. He doubted anyone would hear the breaking glass.
He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his gun. Picked the place where the wood had splintered, where there were stress fractures.
Waited.
The train coming, coming, the rumbling getting louder and louder until it enveloped him in an ungodly roar—
Now.
Laura pushed off from her feet and launched herself toward Galaz, flat end of the knife handle jammed into her side to keep it steady, using her body as a projectile. Trying not to think that it could poke her own guts out.
Landing far short, crashing on her hands, her knees, her chin, her hand cut, the knife skittering harmlessly across the concrete.
Galaz spinning around, his face a mask of surprise.
The stink of gasoline everywhere.
“You actually think—“
Shock in his eyes as a gunshot exploded through the small space, the momentum spinning him around and flipping him backwards into the wall.
Head cracking—an awful sound. Holding his side, his mouth open and working.
In his hands, the lighter.
Manicured fingers flicking.
A rough male voice yelling, “Drop it! Do it now!”
Laura recognizing the voice, but not sure—
An incandescent moment when metal struck flint, ignition. Spark—a runnel of flame swirling up Galaz’s arm to his waxy face and up the walls.
The delight on his face turning to terror.
A blur beside her: Buddy Holland going to his daughter.
Laura thinking: Shackles.
Buddy from cop to father, his face twisted in terror as he ran to his daughter, pulled at her shackles, saying, “Keys keys keys!”
Frank Entwistle, peering down at her. “You okay?”
What do you think? But she didn’t say it.
“What about Mickey?” Entwistle asked.
“Mickey?” What about him?
Entwistle nodded toward the man lying in the doorway. “He had the key to your handcuffs, didn’t he?”
Then she remembered: Mickey bending down to check Summer’s shackles.
Suddenly, a loud whoosh! Galaz lit up like a burning straw man, sheets of flame spreading to the roof, the whole place getting darker, almost black. Boiling black smoke on a river of flame—
Concentrate! He had the key to your handcuffs, didn’t he?
“Mickey!” Laura shouted.
Buddy looking up, perspiration running down his face, glowing in the flickering light; his eyes like a wild horse’s.
Summer screaming.
Laura nodding at the man lying in the doorway.
Buddy, an acknowledging nod, then on the man like a jackal, coming up with a key ring, including three small ones—cuff keys. Buddy fumbling, Laura unable to move, Summer screaming screaming screaming—
Get out now, her brain told her,but she had no answer for that. The air buzzing at her mouth and nostrils like a swarm of bees, sparks lighting on her, in her hair, panic scrabbling like rats in the walls, the fear pure and hard and all-consuming.
I don’t want to die like this.
Even with the incredible noise of the flames, she heard the click of the lock to Summer’s shackles. Buddy cursing, praying, his breath hitching. Summer whimpering.
Laura, trying to remember where the doorway was because the air was now black except for the oily flames. Crawling, pushing her body to move.
Buddy running past her. She didn’t see him, but heard his boots on the glass, felt the wind of his passing, something soft passing across her face—the dress?
Fire feeding on oxygen. Blowing toward her—she could feel it on her feet, her back. Going toward the air? Or was that wrong? She couldn’t think. Maybe she was going in the wrong direction. Where was the doorway? I should have reached Mickey by now. Her throat clogging up, her chest seizing with the need to breathe—
Banging, loud voices.
“Police!”
People in the room. Noise, men, legs, guns, SWAT.
Eyes stinging. Harder to breathe. Gasping for air. She could be dead any moment. Grateful that she lay on her face away from the smoke, that they were here. They were here, they would get her out now.
Legs milling, but no one coming to her.
What about me?
Entwistle looking down at her, his expression sorrowful.
Someone else—SWAT?—crouching down. Then she was borne up and carried like a bird in the grip of a hawk, up and out into the air, rushing headlong through the hurtling dark, the clean bright stars overhead.
57
Five days, twelve interviews, three interrogations, and reams of paperwork later, Laura decided she’d had enough. She had to go home and not just for a few hours of sleep. They were at the point in the investigation where it was all mopping up and putting it in one place for the County attorney. Down the line, she would have to make another trip back to Florida to testify in a related case, the death of Andrew Descartes, but not now.
That was good. Laura could barely wrap her mind around Andy Descartes’s death. She had erred seriously in not asking assistance from SWAT. She could rationalize all she wanted about giving the Apalachicola PD the benefit of the doubt, and that was true to a certain extent. But the real reason she had gone in that day with Chief Redbone and his two officers was hubris; she did not want to give up control of her case.