I wondered, if I stepped through the doorway, who I would confront. Paris? Van Zandt? Trey Hughes?
I moved into the doorway and leveled my gun on Chad Seabright.
"You're going to lose your seat on the student council for this."
He stared at me as paint thinner puddled on the floor around his shoes.
"I'd ask what you're doing here, Chad, but that seems obvious."
"No," he said, shaking his head, eyes wide. "You don't understand. It's not what you think."
"Really? I'm not watching you prepare to destroy evidence of a crime?"
"I didn't have anything to do with it!" he said. "Erin called me from the hospital. She begged me to help her."
"And you-a complete innocent-just dropped everything to commit a felony for her?"
"I love her," he said earnestly. "She screwed up. I don't want her to go to prison."
"And what would she go to prison for, Chad?" I asked. "She's supposed to be the victim in all this."
"She is," he insisted.
"But she told you to come here and burn the place? She told the detectives she didn't know where she'd been held. How is it you knew to come here?"
I could see the wheels spinning in his mind as he scrambled for an explanation.
"Why would Erin be in trouble, Chad?" I asked again. "Detective Landry has the videotapes of her being beaten and raped."
"That was her idea."
"To get beaten? To be raped? That was Erin's idea?"
"No. Paris. It wasn't supposed to be real. That's what Erin said. It was supposed to be like a hoax. That's what Paris told her. To ruin Jade so she could take over his business. But everything got way out of hand. Paris turned on her. They almost killed her."
"Who are 'they'?"
He looked away and heaved a sigh, agitated. Sweat greased his forehead. "I don't know. She only talked about Paris. And now she's scared Paris will try to take her down with her."
"So you'll burn the crime scene and everyone calls it even. Is that it?"
His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "I know how it looks."
"It looks like you're in it up to your eyeballs, Junior," I said. "Up against the wall and spread 'em."
"Please don't do this," he said, blinking back tears. "I don't want any trouble with the cops. I'm supposed to go to Brown next fall."
"You should have thought of that before you agreed to commit arson."
"I was only helping Erin," he said again. "She's not a bad person. Really, she isn't. She just- It's just that- She always gets a raw deal. And she wanted to get back at my father."
"And you didn't?"
"I'll graduate soon. It won't matter what he thinks. Erin and I can be together then."
"Up against the wall," I said again.
"Can't you have a little sympathy?" he asked, crying now, taking a step toward the wall.
"I'm not the sympathetic sort."
I moved farther into the room as Chad moved toward the wall that divided the spaces. A slow dance of unwilling partners trading places. I kept the gun on him. My gaze darted to the side as I stepped past the open door.
Paris Montgomery was coming up the steps.
As I turned my head, Chad turned and charged me, his face twisted with rage.
My gun went off as he hit my forearms and deflected my aim. I stumbled backward, his weight coming against me, paint cans and stacks of old newspapers tripping me. My breath went out of me as we hit the floor, the back of my head banging so hard I saw stars.
The Glock was still in my right hand, my finger jammed through the trigger guard. The gun was out of position, my trigger finger bent at an unnatural angle. I couldn't shoot, but brought the gun up and slapped the body of it as hard as I could against Chad Seabright's head. He grunted, and blood ran from a gash in his cheek as he tried to get a hand around my throat.
I swung and hit him again, the barrel of the Glock tearing across his right eye. The eyeball exploded, fluid and blood raining out of the collapsing tissue. Chad screamed and threw himself off me, hands over his face.
I rolled away from him, trying to get my legs under me, slipping through paint thinner, clawing at anything that might give me purchase.
"You bitch! You fucking bitch!" Chad screamed behind me.
Grabbing the leg of the metal desk, I pulled myself up. I glanced back to see Chad, one hand pressed against his ruined eye, the other swinging a paint can. The can caught me on the left jaw and snapped my head sideways.
I fell across the desktop, grabbed the edge with one hand, and dragged myself over as Chad struck at me with the empty can again and again.
Hitting the floor on the other side, I fumbled to pull my gun free of my broken finger. Adrenaline blocked the pain. I would feel it later-if I was lucky.
I expected Chad to come over the desk, but instead as I looked up I saw the translucent flash of orange and blue across the room as the paint thinner was ignited and the gases exploded upward.
Gripping the Glock, my left forefinger on the trigger, I pushed myself to my feet and fired as Chad went out the door and slammed it shut behind him.
The far side of the room was in flames, the fire licking hungrily up the cheap paneled wall to the ceiling, catching on the piles of paper on the floor. It burned toward me. It burned toward the second room. The trailer would be fully engulfed in a matter of minutes. And as far as I could see, there was no way out.
L andry could see the glow of the fire a mile away, though he hoped against hope-even as he stepped on the gas and went with lights and sirens-that the source of the blaze would be something else, somewhere else. But as he neared the address Elena had given him, he knew it wasn't. The county dispatcher was calling the code over the radio.
Landry pulled in the yard, jumped out of the car, and ran to the back of the property.
The walls and windows of a small house trailer were silhouetted against the backdrop of orange.
"Elena!" He screamed her name to be heard above the roar. "Elena!"
Jesus God, if she was inside…
"Elena!"
He ran toward the trailer, but the heat pushed him back.
If she was inside, she was dead.
Coughing, I ran for the second room, flames chasing me, flames already shooting up the wall around the doorway. I could smell the paint thinner that soaked my shirt. One lick of a flame and I would be swallowed whole.
Another exit door was located in the far back corner of the second room. The smoke was so thick, I could barely see it. Stumbling over chairs, I ran for it, hit it running, turned the doorknob and shoved. Locked. I twisted the deadbolt and tried again. Locked from the outside. The door wouldn't give.
The fire rolled into the room like a tide on the flimsy ceiling.
Jamming the gun in the back of my jeans, I grabbed the video camera off the tripod, tossed the camera on the bed and swung the tripod like a baseball bat at the window where Erin Seabright had written the word HELP in the dust. Once. Twice. The glass fractured but stayed in the frame.
I slammed the end of the tripod against the glass, trying to knock the glass out, afraid that when I did the flames would rush to the fresh oxygen. It would char my skin and melt my lungs, and if I didn't die instantly, I would wish that I had.
I saw the flames coming and thought of hell.
Just when I'd thought I might redeem myself…
One last time I rammed the tripod against the glass.
Elena!" Landry screamed.
Once more he tried to approach the trailer and was knocked flat as something inside the place exploded. Flame rolled out the broken windows in billowing clouds of orange. In the distance he could hear sirens coming. Too late.
Shaken, sick, he pushed himself to his feet and stood there, unable to do anything or think anything.
M y first thought was that it was Chad standing in the yard, watching his handiwork, thrilled with the idea that he had killed me. Then he started toward me and called my name, and I knew it was Landry.