Page 135 of Fire Fight
My heartrate kicked up, and Crew wrapped his arms tighter around me.
“It’s okay, little phoenix,” he murmured. “Nothing can hurt you.”
I nodded, swallowing around the lump that had lodged in my throat.
“You already told me about your abduction, so I won’t make you replay that,” Lane started, and I shot him a grateful smile. “Close your eyes for me and relax. Like Crew said, nothing can hurt you. You’re safe here.”
My eyelids fluttered closed, though my hand found Crew’s and squeezed tightly.
“Do you remember waking up prior to the fire?”
Instead of trying to force it, I let my memories come to me, gliding forward like waves on a shore, rolling gently to the forefront of my brain before receding when they weren’t what I was looking for.
An image appeared, blurry at first but sharpening by the second.
“I did,” I gasped, eyes still shut. “I was in some sort of vehicle. A van, if I had to guess. The walls were grey and stripped down to the metal, as was the floor.”
“That’s great, Aspen. Then what happened?”
“We came to a stop a bit later,” I said, the images coming quicker now, almost too fast for me to make sense of them, my pulse ticking up with them. “My captor opened the back doors—it had to have been a van.”
“Could you see anything that would help identify them?”
I shook my head. “It was dark, and they were all dressed in black and…backlit?”
Why were they backlit? Lane repeated the question as though he’d plucked it right from my brain.
“I think…there was some sort of house behind them? But I can’t see anything else. Not like a spotlight. More like the glow of a lamp or something.”
“Could be a cabin in the woods,” Trey mused. “There are all sorts of hunting shacks on the outskirts of the county.”
“That would make a lot of sense,” Lane agreed. “Somewhere quiet and out of the way to keep her until they figured out what to do with her.”
Crew’s hand smoothed up and down my arm. “You’re doing amazing, baby.”
My eyes remained closed. “Before they got me out of the van,” I told Lane, “they tased me and knocked me out again.”
“You had to have woken up again.”
I squeezed my lids tighter together, trying to hold onto the crystal clear images, but my memory had once again gone hazy. “I’m sorry,” I said, popping my eyes open. “There’s nothing until I literally woke up on fire.”
Crew inhaled sharply, his grip on me tightening. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“It’s why the burns are localized and weren’t worse. I came to, realized what was happening, and rolled across the floor to put them out.” Tears streamed down my face. Fuck, I thought I’d gotten past this, but reliving even a fraction of the time I’d spent captive was…a lot. “I’m just glad it worked.”
“And then I came for you,” Crew said, pressing a kiss to my hair. “I’llalwayscome for you.”
Lane was quiet, though he stopped the recording and tapped around on the phone screen, then held it out to me. Trey merely watched us all with a contemplative expression.
“Flip through those three photos and let me know if this man looks familiar to you. Could he be the guy from the street—or the one who took you?”
I squinted at the screen. The man in the photos was dressed similarly to the man I’d seen on the street, though there was no hood up to shield his face from the security cameras. And honestly, in a small, blue collar town such as this, that wasn’t abnormal. These were hardworking, dusty boots and Carhartt kind of men, not prissy, suits and thousand dollar loafers city boys. The man also wore a ball cap with some company logo I couldn’t read in the dim and grainy picture.
“I can’t be sure,” I said. “They aren’t the best photos. I mean, maybe? The height appears to be about right. I didn’t get a look at the guy’s face on the street or when I was taken, though.”
“What are those from?” Crew asked.
“Stills from depot footage,” Lane said, and Crew nodded like that meant something to him. For me, he clarified. “It’s where all the county vehicles gas up and have maintenance done. Fire, ambulance, police cruisers, the road crews, etcetera. This guy owns a landscaping company and has for years. The diesel fuel Crew and his guys noticed at the incident sites got me thinking, so I ran some things down. He’s the right age to have been around when Vicky and Roger were killed, he’s big enough to handle hauling bodies around, and he’d have access to all kindsof places like the Lees’ home and Mack’s shop thanks to his job—especially since he’d just bought it.”
