Bad Boy's Touch (Firemen in Love Book 3) (33 page)

Marriage, hmm. Did I really want that out of life? Jayce and the others seemed happy, but my personal experience wasn't so cheerful.

What my dad did to my mother was unforgivable. If I turned into him...

“Hey, Brett,” Charlie hissed. “Look.”

I lifted the pillow just in time to see the dark figure of a person turn the corner.

“I think that was Harvey.”

“Bullshit.”

“Looked just like him, down to the potbelly and that ridiculous mustache.” He pushed his face against the bars. “Where is he going? Sign above that door says maintenance.”

Minutes later, the power went out. Prisoners screamed and shrieked in the darkness, so black I couldn't see my hands in front of me. Then the back-up power came on, albeit with much dimmer lights.

“What the devil's going on with this thing?” A guard whacked the bars with his stick on his way past. “Y'all shut up in there! Behave yourselves or you'll be in there even longer.”

He made the walk down the hall, past our cell, to the maintenance room. Soon after he disappeared, there was a yelp of pain and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. The guard didn't come back out.

“Uh, something's not right here,” Charlie muttered.

Harvey didn't reappear either. Then a loud noise rocked the building, an explosion almost, and the backup power went off too.

The inmates were freaking out now. I wasn't too pleased myself. Being trapped in a pitch-black room, in a cage, with a bunch of crazies on all sides wasn't my idea of a good time.

“You smell that?”

I did. It was smoke.

Orange flames from the maintenance room began to light the hallway in flickering orange and yellow. The sprinklers responded right away – and then, much to my amazement, all of the cell doors slid open at once.

“We're free!” yelled a scruffy man with a beard down to his chest. “God bless America, I'm innocent. You can't keep me down, brother!”

Charlie and I watched in disbelief as the prisoners fled for the exit. With the power totally failed, the regular security systems were out of commission. All the doors were electronically locked, including the main entrance.

Rico cackled as he bolted. “Told you ya couldn't keep me in a cage. Yo, Brett – next time we meet, I got a score to settle with you. It'll happen. Bet on it.”

He deserved to be locked up more than anyone in here, but I was too out of it to stop him.

“What are we standing here for?” Charlie pulled me toward freedom. “This is a damn miracle. Let's go!”

“But Harvey –”

“Who cares about him? If he burns to death, all the better for everyone.” He felt for his pocket. “Assholes took my phone. Now I'll have to steal another one.”

I felt a momentary stab of guilt for leaving, even though he and the guard were probably okay. This wasn't like the other time, was it?
I
didn't start the fire.
I
didn't stop the department from coming to put it out.

If this was my one chance to get back to Maddie, I was gonna take it.

The lobby area was miraculously empty. Crazed men and some women, people who had no business being roaming the streets, were for some reason taking anything that wasn't nailed down.

A lady almost knocked me over as she ran away with an entire computer, her eyes wide and bloodshot, her breathing raspy.

“See anything worth taking?” Charlie peeked over the counter. “Wonder where they put our coke. That cost me over twenty G's and I'd like to recoup some of that investment.”

“Cost
you?
Are you serious?” I nudged him toward the door. “Forget that. I don't ever want to see it again. If I get out of this mess alive, I'm done with all of it. Drugs, girls, fighting –
oof!
”

Somebody ran into my back and almost knocked the wind out of me. I was about to cuss him out when I realized who it was.

“James Ventura,” I cried. “They still had you locked up in here?”

“Yeah, but not anymore. I'm getting outta here and running far, far away to South America. They'll never catch me.”

“Man, you might not even have anything to worry about. We're trying to get the police chief arrested for all the shit he's pulled.”

“Oh.” He brightened. “In that case, I'd be happy to help.”

The three of us emerged from the building to prisoners running in every direction. They made a fine distraction as Charlie and I figured out our next move.

“I gotta find Madison.”

“Well, you ain't going in there,” he said, gesturing to the main building where she worked.

There was also the problem of no ride. Charlie, though, knew how to fix that quick. He found a parked cop car and tried the door.

“Lucky they didn't find my lockpick.” He pulled it out of his shoe and popped the door open fast. “Get in, y'all.”

“What do you think you're going to do?”

He smirked and sank into the driver's seat. “You pick up all kinds of fun tricks when you're trying to survive the streets.”

With ease, he found a couple of wires under the steering wheel and brought the ends together. There were a few sparks, then the car roared to life as if possessed.

“Get us out of here,” James wailed. “I want to see Melody. I miss her so much.”

“Melody!” I sat upright in my seat. “I bet Harvey was planning on blowing up her house. That's what the bomb was for. He's terrified she'll testify, that his game will be over, so he'd go that far to stop her.”

“
Whaaat?
”

The cruiser's radio came alive, and an officer spoke through it. “Approaching the West Bay Apartments now. Ready to acquire and disarm explosive device.”

“That's her,” James cried. “They're talking about Melody.”

“Would you calm down?” Charlie shoved him away from the radio. “There's no detonator. The bomb shouldn't go off without it.”

“What do you mean, shouldn't?”

While they argued, I got this feeling in my gut. If Victor sent some guys to get that bomb, it wasn't for any good reason. More likely, he planned to use it for his own gain, as always.

Madison wasn't the sort of girl who'd hide or rest on her laurels in this case. Even now, she'd defend justice until the end. That's how I knew exactly where she was.

“Hit the gas, Charlie,” I said. “Get to that address. Madison's there.”

He stared at me like I'd grown a tail. “How do you know that?”

I had no answer for him. He shrugged, floored it, and left that den of corruption behind us in a cloud of red dust.

Chapter 25 - Madison

Melody's apartment was all the way west, near the freeway, in a rundown part of town. It was quite a lifestyle change from what she had been used to living with Freddy.

“You just ran a stop sign,” Jenna announced. “That's three in five minutes. Impressive.”

“Stop playing law-breaker bingo and help me find this place.” I peered down the darkened streets. “Don't see any cops here yet, so maybe we beat them.”

Funny. I didn't see myself as one of “them” anymore.

“There's the apartments.”

Jenna pointed to an old brick building that looked like it had been a factory once. I shuddered to think what would happen in the bomb went off in there.

Had Harvey no conscience? No, he'd totally snapped. He was so desperate for revenge, and to protect himself, that he no longer cared who he hurt.

He thought he was the hero, but he was no better than those who had a hand in his son's death.

“Her unit is five hundred one, so I guess that means the top floor,” I said as I stopped beside a parking meter. It demanded to be fed a quarter, but I ignored it and jogged to the entrance.

Several teenagers, all of whom appeared to be smoking and drinking cheap beer, eyed me up and down. I was suddenly glad I brought the Charger and not my cruiser. Gangsters like these seemed the type to shoot cops on sight.

“Hey, sweetie,” one called to Jenna, slurring his words. “Come back here. Nice ass.”

I whipped around and flashed my badge. Stupid, maybe, but nobody talked about her that way.

“Keep talking, and you'll find yourselves spending the night in a cozy cell,” I growled. “Pretty sure it's illegal for kids to be getting drunk – and what's that you're smoking, huh? Doesn't smell like tobacco to me.”

They panicked and fled down the alley, dropping their bottles and blunts as they went. Jenna beamed.

“You're like a superhero, Mad.”

“I sure don't feel like one.” I put the badge away. “Let's get up there. We're running on borrowed time, and so are Brett and Charlie.”

The lobby was darkened and empty. A lone man, who looked pretty homeless to me, lay asleep on the first-floor landing. Since this building had no elevator, we were forced to jump over him on our way up.

“Why is Melody living in this dump?” Jenna wondered. “Freddy was like, a billionaire.”

“Yeah, and now his mansion is in ashes and he's nowhere to be found. He knows what happened, of course, and he's staying well clear of the city until all this blows over.”

“So he just leaves his girlfriend broke and out on the streets? What a dick.”

“He's a murderous drug lord.” My foot nearly fell through a rotted stair board. “Yeah, I'd say he's kind of a dick.”

We reached floor five at last. Jenna watched the road through a window while I knocked on the right door.

“Who is it?”

“Officer Madison with the police department,” I said. “Open up. It's urgent.”

She hurried to undo several chains and a couple of deadbolt locks, then opened the door a crack and peeked out.

“Oh, it's you again. Uh, how can I help you, officer?”

“I need to come in. I've reason to believe there's a bomb in your apartment.”

She paled and stumbled back. “W-what?”

Jenna and I made our way inside. She'd recently moved in; there were boxes stacked in the corners yet to be unpacked. That bomb could be in any of them, and we hadn't time to search them all.

“What are those?”

She frowned. “Just a few things I had in storage. I lost all the rest of my stuff in the fire, y'know. Now, what's this about a bomb?”

“Did you let anyone in here today? Notice anything suspicious or different?”

“No, nobody. I've been here all day long, and didn't see...” She gasped. “Wait a minute. There
was
something strange.”

She took a box off the kitchen counter and brought it to me. Inside, underneath all the bubble-wrap packaging, was a laptop.

“A mailman delivered this a couple of hours ago. It came with this letter from James.” She produced a folded piece of paper with a typed note on it. “He said he got it for me to replace the one I lost in the fire.”

“But James is in jail,” Jenna said softly. “How could he have sent you this?”

She bit her lip. “Never really thought about it. I'm sorry; ever since that fire my head's been a mess. Nothing makes sense anymore.”

I carefully picked up the laptop. It seemed totally normal: no ticking, no foul odors. Then again, what was I looking for anyway? I had no experience with this sort of thing.

“Well, Mad? You think that's it?” Jenna peered over my shoulder. “We gotta get out of here before –”

A cacophony of squealing tires stopped her mid-sentence. We rushed to the window just as three police cruisers pulled up and six officers piled out.

“Oh, no. Now what?”

“I don't understand,” Melody said. “I thought they were with you?”

One man kicked open the building's front door, and they all filed inside. They'd be up here in a minute, and we were trapped.

“Lock that door,” I ordered Melody.

She did, but even I wondered what good it would do. Jenna paced in circles, nibbling on her nails.

“We're stuck,” she wailed. “They're gonna get the bomb, and God knows what they'll do to us.”

I was usually good at thinking on my feet. This time, I saw no way out. Their footsteps thundered on the steps, closer and closer.

“Maybe we can hide. You got an attic or anything?”

“Not that I know of.”

I clutched the laptop under my arm. Somehow, the battery panel fell off and a weird object dropped to the floor with it.

It was a white cube of something resembling putty. Wires wrapped around that and connected directly to the laptop's innards. I had no idea what I was looking at, but it wasn't normal, for sure.

“That's got to be it,” Jenna howled. “The bomb!”

Someone pounded on the door so loudly, all three of us jumped.

“This is the police. Open this door immediately or we will use force if you don't comply.”

“Find a way to hold them off,” I whispered to Melody.

She was confused, but nodded. “Uh... Just a minute, officer. I've only just gotten out of the shower.”