Page 100 of The Night Belongs To Fireman

Officer Lee produced something that might have been a smile, she couldn’t tell in the dimness. “The fingerprints wouldn’t survive anyway.”

“Oh.” She put a hand to her head. There was something surreal about the moment, the quickly falling darkness, Officer Lee’s eerie calmness, his odd statements. She felt thickheaded, the way she had after the kidnapping. Back then, it had been such a challenge to put everything together, to make sense out of things. Words hadn’t gone with objects, objects shifted, words kept disappearing or changing their meaning. It had felt like pinning a million butterflies to a wall and making them stay put.

Watching the policeman calmly circle her car, she had that same feeling, that nothing was adding up. She had to do what she’d done back then. Pin a butterfly to the wall. One step at a time.

Very carefully, she asked, “Officer, I’m not completely understanding you. Why wouldn’t the fingerprints survive? Because of the surface material of the tracker? Or because you already touched it when you took it off the car?”

He gave a long, quiet laugh. It would have been reassuring if dread hadn’t been flickering up and down her spine. “No. Nothing like that.” Then his voice deepened, the way things happen in dreams, one thing seamlessly shifting into another.

And the familiar tones of this new voice made bile rise in her throat.

“The fingerprints won’t survive, Miss Rachel Allen Kessler, because this entire place is going to get burned to the ground. Nothing’s going to survive. Except me. I always survive.”

Chapter 29

“Who are you?” Rachel’s heartbeat drummed in her ears.

Officer Lee smirked. “Surprise.” He lowered his voice, until it sounded exactly like the one she’d never managed to forget. “I still have the hair I chopped off your head.”

“Why?” Now that the kidnapper of her nightmares was standing right in front of her, the fear that had shadowed her all these years felt different. Her heart raced and adrenaline flooded her body, but her head was clear. She was entirely focused on this moment, on him. Seventeen years had changed him, added bulk and a hunch to his shoulders. She’d never seen his face, and in the darkness still couldn’t make out his features.

He kept playing the flashlight across her face, as if looking for her fear. She didn’t give it to him.

“Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “Who are you? Where’s Mick?”

“Mick got sick,” he said succinctly. “I sent him home. I’m the man who’s been waiting for this moment for seventeen years. Knew if I joined the local heat I’d get my shot. Couldn’t have planned it better, with that nut job going after you.”

“You were behind that?”

“No. As if I cared about animals. I want you here. With your damn animals.”

His words flashed back to her. This entire place is going to get burned to the ground. “The animals?” she whispered. Greta. Everything in her wanted to check her car, make sure Greta was okay. But she didn’t want him to know her dog was so close, so she forced her gaze to stay fixed on him.

“There it is.” He looked at her greedily, shining the light on her face. “I knew that would hit you where it counted.”

“Why do you have to hurt the animals?” She had to force the words through her frozen throat. “Why? Why not just hurt me?”

“Oh, I will. But first I want you to watch your precious creatures get burned to a crisp.”

“But why?” She couldn’t keep her horror from showing. Part of her knew she was in the presence of something she could never really comprehend. Someone so damaged and twisted her mind wouldn’t be able to grasp his motives. The other part of her wanted, needed, to know why?

“KZ Ventures,” the officer said succinctly.

“What? That old partnership?” Before Kessler Tech, there had been KZ Ventures. But there’d been a split, and her father had gone on to create an empire. “That was forever ago. My dad and …” She drew a blank on the name.

The earned her a sudden blow across her cheek from Lee’s flashlight. She wheeled around, remembering almost automatically how to take his punches. You fell away as they struck, going with the momentum of his fist rather than fighting it.

“Zander,” he said tightly. “Paul Zander. My father. I use my mother’s name.”

With a hand to her cheek, stopping the flow of blood from the slash he’d left, she stared at him, still not understanding. “They were friends. Paul Zander was my dad’s professor. Then they went their separate ways.” It had all happened before she was born, so she knew only what her father had relayed.

“Separate is one way to put it. Kessler became a billionaire. My father became a suicide.”

“I … I’m sorry.” The night shadows were drawing in closer. The only light came from Lee’s flashlight, which was moving restlessly from her face to the grounds beyond, and the guard shack at the far end of the corral. Her eyes dropped to the pistol at his hip. Her gun lay in the bottom drawer of her office desk. He held the advantage in every way.

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