Page 78 of Catching Fire

Kalan's heart felt like it lifted in his chest.He was right.

Tapping Verner on the arm, he motioned to her phone, waving his hand and silently insisting that she put it on speaker. Though she rolled her eyes, she did it, and Kalan inserted himself into the conversation.

“Accelerant?”

“Doesn’t look like it. I’m standing at the edge of the property, so I’m a good way off, but I know fire.” The voice replied, though Kalan had no idea who he was now talking to.

“Can you tell the ignition source?” Kalan hoped his language was proving that he was the right person to handle the call—not Verner—when it came to arson. The firefighter outranked everyone here in that case.

“I’ll know more when the team gets here. I was nearby, and I’m first on the scene. Honestly, it smells like a bomb.”

Kalan heard the words in every fiber of his body. “Can you tell what kind?”

He was staring at Verner now. Though her expression was still firmly in the neutral zone, she was at least looking a little more curious.

“Smells like household cleaners but I can’t tell more until I get close.”

Yes!Kalan thought, relief flooding through his system as he handed the phone back to Verner.

“That's Seline,” he said. “She made a chemical bomb.”

Verner was now nodding along to whatever the other firefighter was saying.

But one of the other agents on the other side of the room was looking at him like he was crazy. So Kalan turned around and nearly yelled, “She's a chemist!”

He jabbed his hand toward the back of the house. “She built her own laboratory in the back of the house. And one of Sanders houses just blew up with a bomb made from common household ingredients.”

“Probably.” Verner held her hand up to keep him from jumping to conclusions.

But he was jumping right off that cliff. “Seline was there and she's alive.”

Chapter Fifty-Two

The water sloshed from the cups, as Seline bolted across the open field. She was down to a quarter of what she had started with.

She risked a pause to raise the cup to her mouth. It was a risk with Sanders still very alive and likely coming after her now. But she was burning energy fast, and it was better to drink the water than to lose it. She had no idea when she would find more.

The work boots were a godsend. Though the soles of her feet were still cranky and angry, she could move quickly. Her sure step was much faster than she had been moving the night before. She cut a straight line this time, no longer needing to avoid corn rows. Still, she could feel when she stepped on a sharp rock or a stalk that didn't give way, but this time she didn’t have to worry that she'd injured herself further.

She’d tied the laces just a little too tight, anticipating a run—and that was paying off now. She was probably visible to anyone who looked this direction as the field had already died off a bit for autumn. The grass and the corn was low to the earth—not high enough to dive into to hide. The pale colors of wheat and corn made her jeans and the blue flannel shirt stand out. So she kept pushing forward.

Drinking while she ran was proving too difficult. So she stopped for a moment and glugged as much water as she could. Then she poured one cup into the other and used the empty one on top, hoping to keep as much of it as possible from sloshing out.

With her quick task accomplished, Seline took off again as fast as she could. It had been a calculated risk. Stopping gave Sanders a chance to catch up, however brief her break had been. Having a moment to breathe and having more water in her system gave her the opportunity to go for longer. She had no idea right now if her gamble would pay off.

She ran away from the house and not toward anything. There wasn’t anything to run toward. Either the earth curved away before anything of value was on the horizon, or another line of trees had impeded her sight. Behind her, Sanders occasionally bellowed out that she was a bitch or that he was going to find her.

He at least seemed confident there was no one around to hear him.

She just wished she knew whether or not he had a gun. But if he had one, he hadn't yet fired it. Still, there was every possibility that he was simply waiting to get close enough before using it.

Seline might never know. There might be no warning; she might simply feel the sting of a bullet in her back as she went face down onto the hard ground. But until that happened, she would keep running.

She passed through another tree line and considered stopping and climbing again. But she now had the water and the bag of clothes and food. Stopping might be the right choiceifshe knew she could hide, but she didn't know that. She didn't dare look back, but she made another calculated guess—this time she estimated the distance between them by the volume of his voice, and she had to pray that she had a decent enough lead.

While she'd initially run hell for leather, she was now trying to regulate her pace. This was a long game and, if she could run until he was tired, she might get away.

He was older, though probably still in good shape. One of the times he'd passed her before he'd been jogging.

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