SCORCHED: A Firefighter Stepbrother Romance Thriller (15 page)

Chapter 17

Gunner

Chelsea
lived in a rundown apartment complex on the east side of town, which Simon was
able to discover due to a domestic violence report she’d filed three months
before. From the restaurant the two of us headed straight across town, where I
was hoping to get a few answers.

“Do you
think she’s home? I mean, she might be at work,” Simon said as we climbed out
of my car.

“Well,
let’s hope she’s here. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

That’d be a change of pace . . . 

The two
of us entered the dilapidated entryway, with its shabby wallpaper and crusty
carpets. Simon and I walked past the unmanned front desk—something that
would have meant the pinnacle of class back in the day. From what I could tell,
this place hadn’t had anything resembling a receptionist in years.

“No
accounting for taste,” Simon muttered as he pulled his coat a little tighter
around him. I shook my head and pushed him a little to signal that he needed to
pick up the pace.

We
mounted the stairs, heading all the way up to the fourth floor. Something about
that place gave me the creeps, almost like something was in the air, making
everything seem oppressive and claustrophobic. The
fuckin
’
walls were closing in, and I hated every minute of it.

Near
the end of the hallway lay Chelsea’s apartment, 410. The dingy brass letters
could hardly even muster the faintest glimmer underneath the fluorescent
lighting. Everything about this place seemed to exude hopelessness. In a way,
it reminded me of the hospital.

“You
want to knock, or—?”

I
pushed Simon aside as gently as possible, rapping my knuckles against the
peeling red paint on the door. Everything grew a little quieter, as though the
entire floor were holding its breath as Simon and I waited for someone—anyone—to
answer.

“Who’s
there?” came a clear, feminine voice from the other side of the door. “If this
is Mr. Caputo, I don’t need to give you rent for another week.”

“It’s
not your landlord,” Simon said. “You know Tanya?”

The
scratching of a deadbolt being undone reached our ears just before the door
jerked open. The door groaned, the wood swollen so much that it had almost
sealed shut.

“What’s
wrong with Tanya?” The woman on the other side asked. She blinked those big
baby blues at me and wrinkled her nose. “Is this about the—”

“Tanya’s
fine,” I said, moving in front of Simon. “My name is Gunner. I’m Tanya’s
brother.”

“Holy
fuck,” she said, her doe eyes going even wider. “She never told me you were hot!”

Simon
let out a caw of laughter from behind me, while all I could must was an eye
roll. This was my baby sister’s best friend?

And why
the fuck hadn’t she told her I was hot?

“Can we
come in? We need to ask you a few questions.”

“This
is about the guy right? The one from the club—with the mask?”

“The
same,” Simon said.

“
Gimme
a second.”

The
door slammed shut for a moment, at which point the scraping continued as
Chelsea undid the chain from the top of the door and—with another groan
of protest—it swung it wide to let us by.

“I
almost didn’t believe her when she’d told me about it. I mean, who
fuckin
’ does something like that,
y’know
?
That’s some
Law & Order
-grade
shit right there.”

Simon
and I gave one another a quick look before turning back to Chelsea as she
closed the door behind us, putting all of her locks back in place.

The
inside of her apartment was, surprisingly, very nice. The walls were freshly
painted, the floors were tiled, and the smell that had bothered me so much out
in the hallway was conspicuously absent.

“Are
all the apartments this nice?” I asked, looking around.

“Nah,”
she said, grinning, “But the landlord is a regular, so he let me get away with
a little renovating in exchange for a few private shows.”

“Right,”
I said, doing my best to leave my
judgement
at the door.
To Simon, I added, “She’s a stripper. Not a hooker. Put your damn wallet away.”
And then to Chelsea again, “You work with Tanya?”

“Yup,
for a long time now. We even moved clubs together.”

“So,
you two are around one another a lot?” Simon asked.

“Sure,
we go out all the time when we’re not
workin
’. Blow
off a little steam at the clubs, and whatnot.”

“What
about your brother?” Simon pressed. “Does he know Tanya, too?”

At the
mention of her brother Chelsea froze. She almost looked like she’d been physically
stuck as she considered the question. Her face went ashen, but her cheeks
turned rose red. She was embarrassed and terrified all at the same time.

“How do
you know about my brother?”

“He’s
got quite a record,” I said, my eyebrows raised. “Restraining orders, arson
charges? I mean, he sounds like a pretty troubled guy.”

She
folded her arms and drew away from me. “I thought you were a firefighter? What,
do you moonlight as a cop or something?”

I held
up my hands in mock surrender. “I just want to find out who’s trying to hurt my
stepsister, Chelsea.”

Too
late.
She was already on the defensive.

“Connor’s
just a little . . . different. He was always a weird
kid—he didn’t get along with everyone when he was growing up.
Y’know
, he was one of those ‘outsider’ types.”

I
sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose in frustration. She was trying to protect
him, which wasn’t helping me get any answers.

“Chelsea,”
Simon cut in, answering my prayers, “you filed more than one of these
restraining orders. I know that he’s your brother, but I think deep down you
know that he’s a little more than just ‘troubled.’ ”

She
turned, walking into the kitchen and out of sight of the two of us for a few
moments. A few seconds later we heard the clattering of a cutlery drawer before
she came back into view, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in her hand as she plopped
down at her dining room table.

Simon
and I looked at one another for a moment before making our way over to her as
she opened took her first spoonful of Phish Food.

“Connor’s
just . . . ” she began, taking another moment to
compose her words while she mulled over the ice cream in her mouth. “He
ain’t
normal.
”

“What
do you mean?” Simons asked, sitting down across from her at the table. “
Normal’s
a pretty
broad generalization. Not everybody fits
normal.
”

“Especially
not you,” I muttered, giving him a nudge and a look that said,
C’mon, dude. Don’t make me be your Bad Cop.

“He was
never really been like other kids,
y’know
?” she
elaborated. “He was always
doin
’ shit that didn’t
seem crazy, but just felt a little off. The way he’d look at you, or the way
he’d just not speak for days at a time. He liked to hover, too.”

Chelsea
punctuated her exposition with another scoop of ice cream.

“But it
got really
fuckin
’ weird after Dad left—piece
of shit.”

Christ, does everybody have a deadbeat dad?
“Weird
how?” I asked her.

“He got
this obsession with being ‘the man of the house,’ like now that Dad was out of
the picture, he had to take care of everything. He started getting really
controlling over a lot of shit, like how I looked and dressed when I went out
with friends.” She shook her head, resting it on her palm. “That fucker even
tried to ground me once. Can you believe that? My
younger brother
tried to ground
me.
”

“What
happened when you said no?” Simon asked.

Chelsea
didn’t answer for a long while, her eyes locking onto the reflective surface of
her empty spoon, as though trying to gain some kind of confidence from her own
reflection.

“He
tried to ‘punish’ me,” she whispered, her teeth clenched. “He took me by my
fuckin
’ hair and threw me on my bed. And then he started to
undo his pants.”

She
might as well have punched both Simon and I in the gut. Everything in me wanted
to leap back in time and rip that fucker’s head off. “He raped you?”

“No,
but he sure as hell tried to. Piece of shit couldn’t even get it up—what
a fucking joke. I ran as fast as I could and never looked back.”

“You
left Connor there with your mother?”

“An
abusive bitch, that’s what she was.” Now Chelsea seemed a little
remorseful—if only a little. “God only knows what happened between them
after I left. I moved in with friends and Connor stayed with her. I was
eighteen, and as far as I was concerned, they were perfect for one another.”

“Tell
us about the arson,” Simon said, trying to steer the conversation toward
Connor’s other criminal activity.

“Yeah.”
She nodded, eyes still locked on her reflection. “He tried to set this old
theatre on fire, but he got caught before he could light the place up. Connor
was nuts about drama and the arts. Mom always called him a faggot whenever he’d
bring it up. Those were the times I actually felt bad for him.”

“Did he
have a history with fire?” I asked. “Did he get burned when he was a kid?”

“Oh,
sure, lots of times. That was how our dad would punish him when he’d been
bad—he used to put his hand on the stove, or put his cigarette out on
Connor’s arm. Upper arm, though. Where nobody could spot it. The stove thing
stopped when Connor’s school called.”

Chelsea
sighed and shook her head, wiping away a few errant tears that had begun
streaming down her face.

“ ‘Fire
fixes everything,’ he’d say.
Fuckin
’ bastard.”

“Do you
remember the last time you saw Connor?” I asked her. My heart was
racing,
I hoped that maybe this would be the lead that would
get us closer to him—closer to finding out where this freak was hiding.

I knew
it was
him
. It had to be. And as bad as I felt for
Chelsea, as much as I understood how badly she wanted to protect him, when I
found her brother, I was going to
tear
his motherfucking throat out.

“Last
time I saw him was at mom’s funeral. I didn’t say a single word to him the
entire time. He just stared right at me while the preacher was talking, with
this . . . ” She gestured vaguely, disgusted. “This
weird-ass smile on his face.”

“And
you haven’t seen him since? Do you know where he lives?”

“No,
and I never wanted to find out. Last I heard he didn’t even have a
job—but what do I know? A lot can change in a year.”

Simon
leaned forward on the table. “It’s important that we find Connor,
Chelsea—we think that he’s got everything to do with what’s been
happening to Tanya. She needs your help on this.”

Chelsea
ran her fingers through her hair, lost in her thoughts for a few moments before
looking up at me with a half-hearted shrug.

“The
only place I remember Connor ever hanging out was at that theatre—the one
he tried to torch back in high school. If he’s anywhere, he’ll probably be
there.
Corner of 32
^nd
and Marathon.
You
can’t miss it. It’s a fucking eyesore.”

“It’s
better than nothing,” Simon said, shaking his head. Chelsea hadn’t been as
helpful as I’d hoped, but knowing where Connor hung out was better than leaving
empty-handed.