Page 101 of The Night Belongs To Fireman

“Sorry for what? For driving my father to put a rope around his neck? Stealing my childhood?”

“Then we’re even. You stole mine.”

He bared his teeth in a flash of white. She tried to remember his hair color. He might have close-cropped sandy-brown hair, or he might not, she couldn’t say for sure. He must have worked hard to fade into the background. “That month was the best time of my life,” he said in a thick voice that made her sick. “Knowing how much Kessler was suffering. Knowing all the control belonged to me. When you left”—the words seemed to leave a bitter taste in his mouth—“I knew this day would happen eventually. When you’d be under my thumb again.”

As she watched the flashlight trace an arc of light through the air, some of the familiar Krav Maga sayings ran through her mind. Switch from defensive to offensive as quickly as possible. Improvise. Use anything available. There had to be something she could do to fight back. An idea came to her. A risky one, and probably painful, but at least it was something. If she could get him to go after her with that flashlight again …

“Mr. Lee, I had nothing to do with what happened to your father. And these animals definitely didn’t. Forget them. What satisfaction will you get out of hurting a bunch of goats and turtles?”

“You forgot the dogs,” he said grimly.

Her breath stalled in her throat. Did he have a grudge against dogs, because one had helped her escape? “The dogs?”

“I hate dogs.” He lifted the flashlight and she winced, turning her face away. But instead of hitting her, he simply brandished the flashlight at her. She gave it as close a scrutiny as she could. It was one of those heavy-duty ones, the kind the guards carried. The side of her face still burned from where he’d struck her.

“Whatever. Whatever I call you, you’re still a coward if you hurt innocent animals. You should really get help, you know. Have you ever tried talking to a therapist?”

“Shut the fuck up. Just for that, I’m going to make you pour the gasoline. I got two cans’ worth, and if it’s not enough, you probably have extra in that hundred-mile-an-hour eco-mobile.”

He reached for her wrist but she danced backward. Letting him get his hands on her was not part of her plan.

“There’s nowhere for you to go, Kessler-bitch. You’re trapped here. You got no options except to do what I say.”

“You wish that were true. But there are always options. I just learned that recently, as a matter of fact. You have options too. You could consider pursuing something other than pointless revenge. I really think if you talked to a qualified counselor you could make real progress with your issues of abandonment and loss of control.” She’d had enough counseling herself to throw some valid-sounding terms around. “I’m a dog therapist, you know. But it probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to work with you. Tell you what, I won’t even charge you.” She inhaled a deep breath, praying this next bit would send him over the edge. “It would hardly be fair to charge you when my father ended up with all the money and yours got nothing. What’s it like to grow up with no father and no money? I can’t even imagine, but I guess I just got lucky. And know what? I still have a father and lots of money. Life just isn’t fair, is it?”

And here it came, just as she’d hoped. The flashlight sliced through the air with vicious force. Anticipating its trajectory, she slanted her face away, her hands flying up to meet the attack. It all happened at once, and so fast. The agony of the heavy metal object hitting her already injured cheek, the sudden pain of one of her fingers getting bent backward by the flashlight. Her primitive grunt as she flung her body away from him, using the momentum of the flashlight to wrest it from his hands. He lost his balance and took a few stumbling steps past her.

She was so shocked that her plan had actually worked that she bobbled the flashlight and nearly dropped it. Hearing him come at her, she clamped her hands around on the slippery metal and aimed the bulb directly into his eyes. He reared back, stumbling again. Then she switched the light off and, in the sudden darkness, ran as fast as she could toward the corral.

The thought of conking him on the head with the weighty flashlight was tempting, but she couldn’t risk him grabbing it back. Instead, she stuck it in the back of her pants, where it bumped awkwardly against her butt as she ran.

Finally, all of Mr. Eli’s lessons had paid off.

She undid the latch of the corral and swung open the gate, to the confused bleating of an alpaca and a mountain goat. Maybe the goats and other animals would provide a distraction. If he did set the place on fire, at least they’d have a fighting chance instead of being penned up. If all she could give them was a slight chance, she would.

If only she had time to free the birds in the aviary and the injured dogs in the kennel. And Greta. But she had to get her gun before anything else. From the front yard, she heard his angry voice and heavy footsteps as he stomped toward the guard shack.

“This isn’t going to work, Kessler-bitch,” he yelled. “One flashlight isn’t going to save you. I still got the gun and all that gas.”

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