Chapter 43

As the sun rested until another day, the rays of pale yellow light that had moments before filtered through the gaps in the barn’s roof, faded along with the patter of rain. Natalie sat with her legs hanging over the edge of the loft, feet supported by a ladder rung, and watched Tony for signs of life. After a few moments, convinced none were forthcoming, she set her eyes on Rudy. He lay slumped motionless against the post. Flames lapped around what had been his face. The ropes had burned off now. He’d have been free except nothing remained but the burnt ruins of something minutes earlier had been a living being.

A loud crack overhead turned her eyes to a shower of sparks that fell into the hay in the corral. New hotspots erupted. Orange tongues had lapped their way up the roof and engaged some of the rafters. Black smoke filled the barn. Breathable air was being replaced by the dark smoldering cloud. It billowed toward her. She had survived one hell but, if she didn’t move now, the blaze held no hope of respect for anyone.

Barns she knew. They had been her playground growing up. Only one way out of this was left—through the main door. She twisted her body, found footing on the rungs of the ladder, and began to scramble to the floor. Once she reached the dirt, she ran between the two men to the door.

She tried to push it but, looking at the bottom edge, she saw it jammed into the dirt. She turned back a few steps and ran at it. Her shoulder rammed the door. The frantic attempt to budge it just enough to escape her fiery doom shuddered the barn but the door didn’t give.

Over her shoulder, she recognized she had no more than a minute or two before the tinder box was fully engulfed. The flames had already engaged the roof in the back of the barn. The reservoir of rage she had built over the last three days had been released on Tony. What remained was fear.

Between her and the inferno, the car sat as if it defied the existence of the disaster around it. With the perplexed look in Rudy’s eyes while he stared at the matrix of wires under the dash still in her head, she knew she didn’t have time to figure out how to hotwire the car. Her options were limited. With the helicopter overhead a few minutes ago, she needed to believe the police were on the way. Whether they would dare barge into this inferno was another question. Barricading herself inside the car, trusting it to protector her from smoke inhalation, was an option but, when the building collapsed, the windows might burst from the heat, or the gas tank could explode. The only other option coming to mind was to locate the keys.

She looked across at Tony’s still body. They had to be in his pocket. She didn’t want to get close enough to him to search—dead or alive—but if she wanted to live, she had no choice. As she ran towards the body, an approving roar of the flames testified to the collapse of one of the roof beams. It swung across the full width of the barn and brought with it a shower of blazing debris raining on the floor and Tony’s body. His clothes ignited.

Natalie flinched. Instinct threw her hands over her face to block the intense wave of heat blown toward her. She looked again toward Tony. His body aflame, she had no choice. She had to get the keys. She pulled the collar of her black leather coat over her head to protect from flaming fragments being hurtled at her and ran to Tony.

At this body, she paused for a moment. His head was twisted to the left and his eyes were closed. To protect her hands, she grabbed the body of her jacket, kneeled next to his still form, and smothered the hotspots around his pockets. There were no keys.

As she turned to the left to look for the tweed jacket he had worn, she heard a wheezing gasp behind her, a hiss caused as the fire boiled the sap in another wooden victim. So much clamor rose from the blaze, she ignored it.

The rake head lay among the rubble a few feet away. She ran to it. Next to the burning rope, the jacket smoldered. As she had done with Tony’s pockets, she grabbed the edge of the coat and made a frantic search pocket by pocket. Just as she found the solid lump on the right side, overhead, she heard another loud crack.

She tore her eyes away from the coat and looked up. A second roof support had burnt through. The beam crashed to the ground and bounced to rest just three feet away from her. She sprang away like a startled cat as a shower of orange and black shards landed where she had been squatting.

With the jacket still in her hand, she reached into the pocket and extracted the keys. As she rocked back to her feet, she heard a new sound over the bellowing conflagration—sirens. They were here but she couldn’t wait for them. A few more seconds and she’d meet the same fate as Rudy, burned alive.

As she turned to run back to the car, she froze in place. She couldn’t believe what met her eyes. His right eye swollen shut, Tony blinked his left and fought to suck in a breath. The wheeze from his lungs was the same boiling-sap sound she thought she heard seconds before. His head hadn’t moved. His eye—a mask of sadness—gazed at her.

Her body tensed, ready to leap away from his grasp but then she realized his clothes were still on fire and yet he didn’t stir to extinguish the flames. He must have broken his neck in the fall, she thought. With him paralyzed, she entertained for a moment the perfect justice it for him to make his way to the pit of Hell already on fire. And then, she did what she couldn’t understand. She stripped off her coat, ran to him, and smothered the flames consuming his body.

“What . . . are you . . . doing?” Tony’s voice croaked. The damage Natalie had caused to his larynx made his words came out in a raspy broken whisper. He inhaled another wheezing breath.

She couldn’t respond. The look that met hers was utter desperation. As much as she wanted him dead, she realized he didn’t want to be alive either. She grabbed his hands and began to pull him away from the collapsing barn.

“Let me . . . die,” he forced out another whispered directive.

“Shut up!” she said, as she continued to pull him across the barn floor. Once they were next to the Subaru, she released him and jumped into the driver’s seat. The keyring had five keys. One looked right and she tried it. When it slid into the ignition, she turned the key and sent a quick prayer.

*

Special Agent Hawk stepped from the black SUV and stared at the fully involved hellhole before her. The sirens in the distance, the pulsating lights of emergency vehicles already on the scene, and the roar of Captain Seth Parker’s helicopter twenty-five yards away didn’t register. If Natalie was alive inside that firestorm, all the firefighters in the county, still several minutes away, couldn’t save her now.

“Damn it,” she said as the back of the barn fell in on itself.

*

As the Subaru came to life, another thunderous sound drew Natalie’s eyes away from the ignition. The air filled with orange hail as the roof and walls crumbled. They covered the place where Tony had fallen with a cascade of glowing flame, black soot, and gray smoke. The ravenous blaze ignited the loft and it, too, fell victim to the fire’s voracious appetite.

Through the windshield, she saw the roof over her now fully involved as well. Within seconds it’d collapse on top of Tony and the car.

“Don’t . . . save . . . me,” Tony’s broken voice crackled above the thrash of the snarling flames. “Save yourself. I must . . . die. You were destined to . . . kill me.”

Natalie looked at the pathetic waste lying just outside the car door and knew she could do just that without regret. This had been his plan all along. He not only wanted to die but he wanted her to kill him. What insanity? All the destruction and terror he caused just to make her angry enough to kill him but, for what reason? Oh, he had that and so much more coming, but he manipulated this outcome. Why she realized she might never know.

She slammed the car door, jammed the gearshift into reverse, and stomped her foot on the accelerator pedal. The car hesitated as if it too had a death wish, unwilling to leave the halls of Hell behind. She realized the parking brake must be set and searched the compartment until she found the release.

Natalie tromped the pedal to the floor again. The back tires spun violently throwing a cloud of dust into the face of the billows of smoke rolling toward her. The Subaru jerked to a start and began to race backward toward the wooden door.

*

Like the Phoenix rising from its funeral pyre, Angela saw a sedan, the Osorio’s Subaru she had pursued most of the afternoon, burst through the barn door. It gave way without resistance. Who sat behind the steering wheel she could only imagine was Tony Alonso. She pulled her service weapon, dropped to one knee crouched prepared to give fire.

*

Natalie slammed her foot on the brake pedal and tore open the car’s door. She met another gun. A silhouette frozen against the strobe lights of emergency vehicles pointed a weapon at her.

“Natalie Beaumont?”

“Yes,” Natalie said and jumped from the car. She cleared the door and ran back toward the barn.

“You can’t go back in there,” Angela shouted.

“One of them is still alive,” Natalie yelled over her shoulder. “I’ve got to save him.”