Lisa Unger - Smoke

Lydia thought about it. She saw where he was going suddenly. “Unless he killed himself.”

“Most policies have a suicide clause,” said Jeffrey.

“If he killed himself, no life insurance. If the IRS took everything else, he’d be leaving nothing behind for anyone.”

“That is the ultimate.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“So whoever is the beneficiary of that policy gets the big middle finger.”

They were quiet again and the darkness seemed to swell around them. The buzz was deafening and Lydia’s agitation at being trapped was starting to feel like something living in her chest. Her hands were tingling to get on a keyboard or a telephone pad to start finding answers to all her new questions.

“We’re not in much of a position to figure out who that beneficiary might be,” she said.

“No,” said Jeffrey, squeezing her shoulder. “We’re not.”

She took a deep breath and leaned her head against the cold concrete wall.

“So, as long as we’re questioning our assumptions,” she said after a minute, “what about Mickey?”

Jeffrey exhaled sharply and shifted back farther toward the wall, straightened out his legs.

“I guess I’ve been operating under the belief that he killed himself, maybe due to the maneuverings of The New Day in addition to the fact that he was depressed, feeling bad about the breakup and the failed business. Lily was grief-stricken, trying to hold onto her brother by proving that he didn’t end his own life. Maybe in tangling with The New Day, making serious accusations, threatening an exposé of the organization, she got in over her head. If she was good at what she did, she probably found out everything that Detective Stenopolis told you about Rusty Klautz and the others. She was a threat to The New Day, at least an inconvenience. She thought she was protecting herself by involving the FBI, not realizing that they were just using her and wouldn’t be any help in a jam.”

“How does that all change if Mickey didn’t kill himself, if Lily was right and he was actually murdered?”

She could hear him breathing. “I’m not sure,” he said finally.

“What if she found proof that Mickey didn’t commit suicide?” She heard Lily’s voice again. “I’m out of my league. Big-time.”

“Then it would mean that whoever was threatened by that proof is a likely suspect in her disappearance.”

“Right, so it would mean that there was another motivator in getting rid of Lily, not just another blow to Samuels.”

They both knew there was a big piece missing, a hole that ran through their investigation which had been there all along. They had just been too blinded by their assumptions to realize it.

“You know what else is bothering me?” said Lydia.

“What’s that?”

“Michele LaForge.”

“How she seduced both father and son?”

“That was okay when we were assuming that The New Day was trying to take Tim Samuels’ life apart. She seduced Tim as Marilyn and Mickey as Mariah, a siren luring them onto the rocks of The New Day.”

“Very poetic.”

“Thank you. But if we’re thinking that Mickey and Lily were going after The New Day and not the other way around, where does Michele LaForge come into all of this?”

Jeffrey was quiet. She felt rather than saw him lift his head and sniff the air.

“What?” she said.

“Do you smell something?” he asked, standing up and pulling her to her feet.

She took some air in through her nose. She did smell something. Smoke.

She put her hand against the metal door and drew it back quickly. It was burning hot. She backed away from the door, wrapping her arms around herself.

“Jeffrey.” Her throat suddenly went dry. Her heart started to pump in her chest. They were trapped and there was a fire raging outside the door.

“Come here,” he said, pulling at her arm, dragging her to the far corner of the room and pulling her to the floor. She lay down on her stomach in the corner and Jeffrey lay in front of her, protecting her body with his, so that she was between him and the wall.

“It’s okay. This room is made out of concrete and the door is metal. The heat will rise. We’ll be okay.”

It seemed wildly optimistic but she chose to be comforted by the sound of his voice and the feel of his body beside her, his arms around her. The smell of smoke was getting stronger and the temperature seemed to have risen twenty degrees.

“We’re going to cook in here,” she said, her voice tight with fear.

There was a pounding on the door then, and the muffled sound of a shouting voice.

“What was that?” asked Lydia.

More pounding and then the voice came again louder. Lydia couldn’t understand what he was saying but she recognized the cadence of the voice. It was Dax.

“What the hell is he saying?” she yelled at Jeffrey.

“I think he said to stay away from the-” Jeffrey started. “Shit. Cover your head.”

The explosion was so loud that Lydia wouldn’t hear right for hours. The metal door that had seemed immovable crumpled like paper and they were blasted with a wave of heat and concussion that Lydia was sure was going to kill them both. The silence that followed felt like a vacuum to Lydia. Then there was a high-pitched ringing in her ears as her body wracked with coughing from the concrete dust. She could see Jeffrey coughing too, but she couldn’t hear him. A bulky form emerged from the cloud. Dax. He was yelling something at them, then leaning in and dragging her to her feet, pulling on her arm. Jeffrey got up and stood behind her. She looked at Dax’s face; he was scared, angry, something, still yelling. She tried to read his lips.

“It’s on fire. We have to go,” he was saying.

“What do you mean it’s on fire?” she yelled. “What’s on fire?”

“Everything. It’s burning.”

He pushed Lydia and Jeffrey in front of him and they all started to run down a long hallway, toward cool air they felt flowing from somewhere, the heat of flames at their backs.

For a second Jesamyn almost lowered her guard as the knob started to turn and then stopped; whoever stood outside started jiggling the knob lightly. She had locked the door behind her like a good New Yorker. She thought, what if it’s Theo or Matt’s dad. But then the dark form moved in closer to the door and blocked all the light coming in from the nine glass panes. He was huge; she felt her heart drop into her stomach. Tired apparently of messing around with locked knobs, the form put a gloved hand through one of the panes of glass as if it were made out of cellophane, reached in and unlocked the dead bolt and turned the simple lock on the knob itself. Then, as if thinking now he should be quiet, he opened the door slowly and stepped inside. He had to bend his head to avoid hitting it on the frame.

From her place behind the couch, she had a good look at him as he entered the foyer. Giant, with a buzz cut so close to the scalp that his hair looked like a five o’clock shadow. His face was grim and blank of expression, deep lines carved between protruding bones, a long hook of a nose. She checked his body for the bulge of a gun and saw something inside his jacket that could very well have been a big revolver or a semiautomatic. He stood and lifted his nose to the air for a second and turned his head toward the living room, moved toward her slowly. She felt the reverberations of his footfalls in the floor beneath her own feet. She crouched lower. She’d need the element of surprise to have the advantage over his size. She’d need him to come very close to her before she revealed herself. The blood was rushing in her ears as he approached the couch. When he was not a foot away from her, she moved from her spot and held the gun in front of her, aimed directly at his center mass.