James Patterson - 7th Heaven

This impromptu getaway was Cindy’s idea. She had corralled us in a conference call only hours before, saying, “Since our first attempt at a Women’s Murder Club Annual Getaway Weekend was canceled due to someone answering a call to return to work, we should grab this opportunity to drop everything and go now .”

Cindy added that she’d booked the cottage and that she would drive.

There was no saying no to Cindy, and for once I was glad to turn the wheel over to her.

Yuki and Claire had both slept in the backseat during the drive, and I’d ridden shotgun with Martha in my lap, her ears flapping in the wind. I listened to Cindy talk over the car’s CD player, my mind floating blissfully as we neared the ocean.

Once we’d arrived at the rose-covered hobbit house with its two snug bedrooms plus picnic table and grill in the clearing at the edge of a forest, we’d slapped each other high fives and dropped our bags on our beds. Yuki had left her box of files in her room and come with Martha and me as we took a short run up a moonlit trail to the top of a wooded ridge and back again.

And now I was ready for a meal, a margarita, and a great night’s sleep. But when we got back to Rose Cottage, my cell phone was ringing. Claire groused, “That damned thing’s been ringin’ its buttons off, girlfriend. Either turn it off or give it to me and I’ll stomp it to death.”

I grinned at my best friend, pulled the phone from my handbag, saw the number on the caller ID.

It was Jacobi.

I stabbed the send button, said hello, and heard traffic noise mixed in with the wail of fire engine sirens.

I shouted, “ Jacobi. Jacobi, what’s up ?”

“Didn’t you get my messages?”

“No, I just caught this ring on the fly.”

The sirens in the background, the fact that Jacobi was calling at all, caused me to imagine a new fire and another couple of charred bodies killed by a psycho looking for kicks. I pressed my ear hard to the phone, strained to hear Jacobi over the street noise.

“I’m on Missouri Street,” he told me.

That was my street. What was he doing on my street? Had something happened to Joe?

“There’s been a fire, Boxer. Look, there’s no good way to say this. You have to come home right now.”

JACOBI DISCONNECTED the phone call, leaving static in my ear and a god-awful gap between what he’d said and what he’d left out.

“There’s been a fire on Missouri Street,” I announced to the girls. “Jacobi told me to come home!”

Cindy gave me the keys and we piled into her car. I floored the accelerator and we bumped down the twisting roads of the backwoods of Olema and out to the highway. I called Joe as I drove, ringing his apartment and mine, and I rang his cell, pressed redial again and again, never getting an answer.

Where was he? Where was Joe?

I don’t ask God for much, but as we neared Potrero Hill, I was praying that Joe was safe. When we reached Missouri at Twentieth, I saw that my street was roped off. I parked in the first empty spot, gripped Martha’s leash, and dashed up the steep residential block, leaving the girls to follow behind.

I was winded when I caught sight of my house, saw that it was fenced in by fire rigs, patrol cars, and bystanders filling the narrow street. I frantically scoured the faces in the crowd, saw the two female students who lived on the second floor and the building manager, Sonya Marron, who lived on the ground floor.

Sonya reached through the crowd and gripped my arm, saying, “Thank God, thank God.” There were tears in her eyes.

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No,” she said. “No one was home.”

I hugged her then, relieved at last that Joe had not fallen asleep in my bed. But I still had questions, a ton of them. “ What happened ?” I asked Sonya.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

I looked for Jacobi, but I found Claire shouting at the fire captain, “I under- stand it may be a crime scene, but she’s a cop . With the SFPD!”

I knew the fire department captain, Don Walker, a thin man with a prominent nose, weary eyes peering out from the soot on his face. He threw up his hands, and then he opened the front door. Claire gathered me under her wing, and along with Yuki, Cindy, and Martha, we entered the three-story apartment house that had been my home for ten years.

I WAS WEAK-KNEED as we mounted the stairs, but my mind was sharp. The stairs hadn’t burned, and the doors to the two lower apartments stood open. The apartments looked untouched by fire. This made no sense.

But it all became clear at the top of the stairs.

The door to my apartment was in shards. I stepped through the shattered door frame and saw the stars and the moon where my ceiling used to be. I lowered my eyes from the night sky, finding it hard to take in the grotesque condition of my little nest. The walls were black, curtains gone, the glass in my kitchen cabinets blown out. My crockery and the food in my pantry had exploded, making the place smell crazily like popcorn and Clorox.

My cozy living room furniture had melted down into hunks of sodden foam and wire springs. And then I knew – the fire had taken everything. Martha whined and I bent to her, buried my face in her fur.

“Lindsay,” I heard someone shout. “Are you okay?”

I turned to see Chuck Hanni coming out of the bedroom.

Did he have something to do with this?

Had Rich been right all along?

And then I saw Conklin right behind Hanni, and both of their faces were sagging with my pain.

Rich opened his arms. I held on to him in the smoking black ruins of my home, so glad he was there. But as I rested my head on his shoulder, the stark realization hit me: if Cindy hadn’t called with her impromptu getaway plan, I would have been home with Martha when the fire broke out.

I ripped myself away from Rich and called out to Hanni.

My voice was trembling.

“Chuck, what happened here? I have to know. Did someone try to kill me?”

HANNI SNAPPED ON the portable lights inside what was left of my living room, and in that blinding moment, Joe burst through my splintered door frame. I flung myself at him, and he wrapped me in his arms, nearly squeezing the air out of me.

I said, “I called and called -”

“I turned off my damned cell at dinner -”

“From now on, you’ve got to put it on vibrate -”

“I’ll wear an electric shock collar, Linds. Whatever it takes. I’m sick that I didn’t know you needed me.”

“You’re here now.”

I broke down and cried all over his shirt, feeling safe and lucky that Joe was okay, that we both were. I only vaguely remember my friends and my partner saying good-bye, but I clearly recall Chuck Hanni telling me that as soon as it was daylight, he’d be all over the building, looking for whatever caused the fire.

Don Walker, the SFFD captain, took off his hat, wiped his forehead with his glove, saying that Joe and I had to leave so he could secure the building.

“Just a minute, Don, okay?” I said, not really asking him.

I went to the bedroom closet and opened the door, stood there in a daze, until I heard Joe say behind me, “You can’t wear any of this, honey. It’s all a loss. You’ve got to walk away from it.”

I turned and tried to take in the utter ruination of my four-poster bed and photo albums and the treasured box of letters that my mother wrote to me when I was away at school and she was dying.