Outside, the glare of flames at ground-floor windows showed him the tense face above the hands that dragged him. Jamie. Her green eyes fiercely reflected the fire as she pulled him to the left side of the balcony, onto a railed-in, motorized platform that had allowed Karen to lower her wheelchair into the backyard.
He heard Jamie's strident breathing, then the sound of a motor as the platform descended. Sirens wailed.
The platform jerked to a stop. The fire must have burned the electrical wires, Cavanaugh realized. He peered over the edge, seeing ripples of reflected flames on the lawn five feet below him.
Jamie opened the platform's gate, squirmed over the side, and let go. She landed, then braced herself and reached up as Cavanaugh squirmed over. She grabbed him as he dropped, the two of them sprawling on the lawn.
The fire reached the back windows as the sirens wailed louder.
Jamie pulled Cavanaugh to his feet and tried to keep a distance from the burning house, guiding him along the right side.
"No," Cavanaugh murmured. "The back."
"What?"
"Backyard. Gate."
The relatively clear air chased the grogginess from his mind while he stumbled away from the house, heading through the backyard. Jamie kept pace with him, holding him up.
At the front of the house, firefighters shouted. Engines roared. Ladders and other equipment banged and rattled.
The backyard was spacious. Past two hulking trees, the shadows were thicker. The glare from the flames would soon reach this far, but for the moment, they had the cover of darkness as they came to a gap in a hedge. A high white wooden gate filled the space.
"Karen had it installed"-Cavanaugh breathed-"so the kid in the house behind hers"-he breathed again-"could bring a mower through and cut her lawn."
"What if it's locked?"
"We try climbing."
Abruptly, the gate swung open. A man, woman, and teenaged boy rushed to help them.
"What happened? Are you all right?"
"Visiting Karen," Cavanaugh managed to say. "Looks like… started behind a wall. Spread so fast. Barely got out."
"What about Karen?"
"In the basement." Cavanaugh kept stumbling across their backyard. His sport coat hid his pistol. "Couldn't get to…"
"We heard shots."
"Paint cans exploding. Tell the firefighters to try to get Karen."
Silhouetted by the burning house, the man and the teenager rushed into Karen's backyard.
The woman lingered.
"Save your house," Jamie said.
"What?"
"Spray water on your roof so sparks don't set it on fire."
The woman turned pale. She ran toward a hose connected to an outdoor tap.
As she sprayed water toward her roof, neighbors crowded into the backyard, shoving, ignoring Cavanaugh and Jamie, trying to see the blaze.
10
Cavanaugh did his best to walk straight and not look injured as he made his way along a dark street two blocks over.
Headlights turned the corner behind him, coming from the direction of the fire. Worried that it might be a police car, he stepped among bushes.
But instead of the distinctive rack of emergency lights on a police car's roof, Cavanaugh saw the anonymous silhouette of a Taurus approaching at moderate speed. He returned to the sidewalk.
When Jamie stopped, he got in and slumped on the passenger seat.
She drove away at an equally moderate speed.
"Any trouble getting the car?" Cavanaugh asked.
"On the contrary. The police were glad to see me move it so they could have room for another fire truck. How bad are you hurt?"
"I reopened the wound."
Neither of them spoke for several moments.
"You could have been killed trying to save me," Cavanaugh said.
"I didn't think about that."
"You weren't afraid?"
"Only for you."
Cavanaugh looked down at his shaky hands. "Tonight, I felt afraid."
Driving, Jamie glanced from where her headlights illuminated the darkness. She gave him a quick stare. "You just had a lot to react to."
"It was more than that. Something happened to me in that basement." Cavanaugh trembled. "For the first time, I found out what fear is." He felt more blood oozing from his wound. "I was hoping we wouldn't have to do this. We passed a Wal-Mart on the way from the motel."
"Wal-Mart?" Jamie asked, bewildered.
"We're going to need some things. Trash bags. A hotplate. A saucepan. A…"
PART FOUR. Threat Confrontation
1
The hotplate's coil glowed. Through steam escaping from the open bathroom door, Cavanaugh could see the unit on the counter in front of the makeup mirror. A vague outline of a saucepan was visible on top of it. The pan contained boiling water, a curved sewing needle, and fishing line.
Cavanaugh was slumped in the tub while the hot shower sprayed smoke and grime off him.
"You've got more bruises," Jamie said. "By morning, you'll have trouble walking."
"I won't need to walk. We're spending tomorrow in the car."
"And maybe part of tonight?"
Cavanaugh turned his head and studied her. "You're as quick a learner as Prescott."
"Except I don't go around setting fires. We can't stay here much longer, correct?"
"Correct. There's always a neighborhood busybody who notices unfamiliar cars on the street. He or she will remind the police about it. One of the policemen will remember the attractive woman who moved the car after the fire started. Meanwhile, the neighbors behind Karen's house will tell the police about the injured man and the attractive woman who ran out of the house and disappeared. It'll take the police a while to get organized, but before midnight, they're going to be looking for a man and a woman in a dark blue Taurus. Time to hit the road."
Jamie glanced toward the pan on the hotplate. "Think it's boiled enough?" she asked.
"Ten minutes. If the germs aren't dead by now…"
"Turn off the shower." Jamie blotted the wound with surgical gauze, then coated it with Betadine germicide that she'd bought from Wal-Mart. The gouge looked clean enough that there wasn't a need to put Cavanaugh through the pain of more hydrogen peroxide. Quickly, she applied antibiotic cream. Then she hurried to the pan and used tongs, which she had swabbed with rubbing alcohol, to take the needle and fishing line from the boiling water. She set them and disinfected scissors onto antiseptic pads at the side of the tub.
"You should have been a nurse," Cavanaugh said.
"Yeah, that's always been my ambition: to sew up gunshot wounds. You're absolutely sure you need to do this?"
"The wound has to stay closed, and the bandage isn't working."
"We could always try barbed wire and a staple gun."
"Funny."
"Keep laughing." Jamie knelt beside him at the tub. "No matter how gentle I try to be, this'll hurt."
Cavanaugh's face felt as taut as his nerves. "I've had it done to me before."
"I imagine."
"But the guy doing it wasn't as good-looking as you."
"Flattery's great. Tell me more sweet things while I do this."
"You're tough."
"So are you." Jamie pushed in the needle.
2
Cavanaugh woke to the rhythm of the car. As headlights flashed past, he found himself lying on the backseat on a blanket, one of the items that Jamie had bought from Wal-Mart. Then he was alert enough to see the imitation sheepskin covers on the front and rear seats, which Jamie had bought from Wal-Mart as well and which concealed the bloodstains he'd left. The car was brand-new, but already it was on its way to being trashed. Somehow he found that amusing.