Tami Hoag: Dark Horse

"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.

Clutching the video camera against me, I tried to run toward him, my legs like rubber, weak from effort and relief.

"Elena!"

He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me along with him, dragging me away from the burning trailer toward Paris Montgomery's patio.

"Jesus Christ," he breathed, sitting me in a chair, going over me with his eyes, with his hands. His hands were trembling. "I thought you were in there."

"I was," I said, coughing. "Chad Seabright set the fire. He's in this with Paris and Erin. Did you get him? Did you get them?"

He shook his head. "No one in the house but her dog." The Jack Russell was at the patio doors bouncing up and down like a ball as it barked incessantly.

Sirens screamed at the front of the house. A deputy came running around the side of the garage. Landry went to meet him, holding up his shield. As I sat coughing the smoke out of my lungs, I watched him motion toward the house. The deputy nodded and drew his weapon.

"Are you hurt?" he asked me as he came back and crouched down in front of me again. He touched my cheek where the paint can had struck me. I couldn't feel it, didn't know if any damage had been done. I guessed not as Landry moved on, inspecting me.

"I broke my finger," I said, holding up my right hand. He took the hand gently and looked at the finger. "I've had worse."

"You goddam knothead," he muttered. "Why didn't you wait for me?"

"If I had waited for you, Chad would have burned the place-"

"Without you in it!" he said, standing. He paced a little circle in front of me. "You never should have gone in there, Elena! You could have compromised evidence-"

"We would have ended up with nothing!" I shouted back, pushing to my feet.

"We?" he said, stepping into my space, trying to intimidate me.

I stood fast. "It's my case. I brought you into it. That makes we. Don't even think of trying to shove me out again, Landry. I'm in this for Molly, and if it turns out her sister was a willing participant in this thing, I'm going to strangle Erin Seabright with my own two hands. Then you can put me in prison and I'll be out of your way for the next twenty-five years."

"You were almost out of my way permanently!" he yelled, swinging an arm in the direction of the fire. "You think that's what I want?"

"It's what everybody in the SO wants!"

"No!" he shouted. "No! Me. Look at me. That's not what I want."

We were toe to toe. I glared up into his face. He stared at me, his expression slowly, slowly softening.

"No," he whispered. "No, Elena. I don't want you out of my life."

For one rare moment, I didn't know what to say.

"You scared the hell out of me," he said softly.

Likewise, I thought, only I meant in the present tense. Instead, I went back to the other topic. "You said you'd share. My case first."

Landry nodded. "Yes… Yes, I did."

Trucks from the Loxahatchee fire department arrived, the lead truck barreling into the backyard. I watched the firemen leap to action as impassively as if they were on a movie screen, then looked down at my hands. I still held the video camera. I held it out to Landry.

"I saved this. You'll get fingerprints."

"This was where they held her?" he asked, looking back at the trailer.

"Chad said Erin was in on it at first, but that Paris turned against her. But if Paris turned against her, why isn't she dead?"

"I guess we'll have to ask Paris that question," he said. "And Erin. Do you know what Paris is driving?"

"A dark green Infiniti. Chad has a black Toyota pickup. And he's missing an eye. He might turn up at a hospital."

Landry arched a brow. "Missing an eye? You gouged out his eye?"

I shrugged and looked away, the horrible image still so strong in my mind it turned my stomach. "A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do."

He rubbed a hand over his mouth and shook his head. "You're some kind of tough, Estes."

I'm sure I didn't look tough in that moment. The weight of the emerging truth of the case was weighing down on me. The adrenaline rush of the near-death experience had passed.