The Winter Lodge (3 page)

Despite the warning, she already felt calmer as she tucked the bottle away. She smoothed her hand over her pants pocket.

Still thinking about Zach, she scanned the familiar neighborhood, a downtown of vintage brick buildings that housed businesses, shops and restaurants. Years ago, if someone had told Jenny she’d still be in Avalon, working at the bakery, she would have laughed all the way to the train station. She had big plans. She was leaving the small, insular place where she’d grown up. She was headed for the big city, an education, a career.

It probably wasn’t fair to let Zach in on an ugly little secret—life had a way of kicking the support out from under the best-laid plans. At the age of eighteen, Jenny had discovered the terrifying inadequacies of the health-care system, especially when it came to the self-employed. By twenty-one, she was familiar with the process of declaring personal bankruptcy, and just barely managed to hang on to the house on Maple Street. There was no question of her leaving Gram, widowed and disabled from a massive stroke.

The pill kicked in, covering the sharp edges of her nerves like a blanket of snow over a jagged landscape. She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, watching the cloud of mist until it disappeared.

The sky to the north, in the direction of Maple Street, seemed to flicker and glow with unnatural light. She blinked. Probably just the strange aftermath of the panic attack. She should be used to this by now.

Two

W
hen the monitor in Rourke McKnight’s squad car sent out an urgent tone alert and “any unit about clear” for 472 Maple Street, it flash-froze his heart.

That was Jenny’s house.

He had been on the far side of town, but the moment the call came, he grabbed the handheld mike, gave his location and ETA to dispatch and fired the sedan into action. His tires spewing snow and sand, he peeled out, the back end fishtailing on the slippery road. At the same time, he put in a call to the dispatcher. “I’m en route. I’ll let you know when I’m code eleven.” His voice was curiously flat, considering the emotions now roaring through him.

A general page had gone out that the structure—God, Jenny’s house—was on fire and “fully involved.” Besides that, Jenny hadn’t been spotted.

By the time he reached the house on Maple Street, the entire home was wrapped in bright ribbons of flame, with curls of fire leaping out of every window and licking along the eaves.

He parked with one headlamp buried in a snowbank and exited his vehicle, not bothering to close the door behind him, and did a visual scan of the premises. The firefighters, their trucks and equipment, were bathed in flickering orange light. Two pumper hoses attacked the blaze; men struggled to excavate a hydrant from the snow. The scene was surprisingly quiet, not chaotic at all. Yet the wall of flame was impenetrable and unsafe for the firefighters—even fully equipped and clad in bunker gear—to enter.

“Where is she?” Rourke demanded of a firefighter who was relaying messages on a shoulder-mounted radio. “Where the hell is she?”

“Haven’t found the resident,” the guy said, flicking a glance at another emergency vehicle parked in the road—an ambulance, its crew standing ready. “We’re thinking she’s away. Except…her car’s in the garage.”

Rourke strode toward the flaming house, bellowing Jenny’s name. The place burned like a pile of tinder. A window burst, and hot glass rained down on him. Automatically his hand came up to shield his eyes. “Jenny!” he yelled again.

In one instant, all the years of silence fell away and regrets flooded in. As if he could fix anything by avoiding her. I’m an idiot, he thought. And then he bargained with anyone or anything that might be listening. Let her be okay. Please just let her be okay and I’ll keep her safe forever and never ask another thing.

He had to get inside. The front steps were gone. He raced around back, slipping in the snow, righting himself. Someone was shouting at him, but he kept going. The back of the house was in flames, too, but the door was gone, having been hacked through by a firefighter’s ax. More shouting, more guys in bunker gear running at him, waving their arms. Shit, thought Rourke. It was stupid, but it wasn’t the dumbest thing he’d ever done, not by a long shot. Pulling his parka up over his nose and mouth, he went inside.

He’d been in this kitchen many times, yet it resembled a yellow vortex, all but unrecognizable. And there was nothing to breathe. He felt the fire sucking the air out of his lungs. He tried to yell for Jenny but couldn’t make a sound. The linoleum floor bubbled and melted under his feet. The doorway leading to the stairs was a tall rectangle of fire, but he headed toward it anyway.

A strong hand on his shoulder hauled him back. Rourke tried to fight him off, but a second later, something—a railing from upstairs, maybe—came crashing down, raining fire and plaster. The firefighter shoved him out the back door. “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled. “Chief, you need to get back. It

’s not safe here.”

Rourke’s throat burned as he gulped in air, then coughed. “No shit. If you won’t send anyone in, I

’m going myself.”

The firefighter—a deputy chief Rourke vaguely recognized—planted himself in the way. “I can’t let you do that.”

Fury flashed through him, an unreasoning sting. In one swift movement, Rourke’s arm whipped out, shoving the guy out of the way. “Step aside,” he barked.

The firefighter didn’t say a word, just fell back with his hands raised, eyes darting behind his face shield. “Listen, we’re both on the same side. You saw what it’s like in there. You wouldn’t last thirty seconds. We don’t think the resident’s at home, honest, we don’t. If she was home, she would’ve gotten out.”

Rourke unfurled his fists. Damn. He’d been about to clock the guy. What the hell was he thinking?

He wasn’t thinking, that was the problem. That had always been his problem. He needed to figure out where Jenny was. Possibilities streamed through his mind. Maybe she was at her best friend Nina’s house. But at this time of night? Or maybe Olivia Bellamy’s? No. Though related, the two women weren’

t close. Shit, was she dating some guy Rourke didn’t know about?

Then it hit him. Of course. “Damn,” he said, and bolted for the car.

Jenny was still standing outside the bakery, waiting for the dawn, when a blue-white flash lit the sky. The sudden lightning was eerily out of place in the middle of winter. Then she heard the quick yip of a siren and realized it was emergency lights. The vehicle sounded close, as though it was in the next block. Busy night, she thought, heading back into the bakery. She passed through the kitchen, where Zach was wheeling more dough out of the proofer.

She was about to get back to work when she heard an urgent rapping on the front door. “I’ll see who it is,” she called to Laura and Zach, and walked through the café, which at this hour was dimly lit only by the buzzing neon sign of a coffee cup with squiggles of steam rising from it.

The electric blue of a squad car’s emergency overhead lights slashed through the empty café.

Hurrying now, Jenny undid the lock. The bell over the front door jangled, and Rourke McKnight strode inside, his long coat swirling on the winter wind.

Avalon’s chief of police looked the part. His square jaw was clean-shaven, his shoulders broad and powerful. Though he was blond and blue-eyed, a crescent-shaped scar on his cheekbone kept him from being too pretty.

“I have a feeling you’re not dropping in for a cup of coffee,” said Jenny. These were probably the first words she’d spoken to him in years.

He gave her a smoldering look, one that made her wonder what it would be like to be his girlfriend, a member of the parade of bimbos who seemed to march through his life with serial regularity.

Right, she thought. Why would she want to join a parade of bimbos?

Rourke grabbed her by the upper arms. “Jenny. You’re here.” His voice was rough, urgent.

Okay, so this was interesting. Rourke McKnight, grabbing her, pulling her into his embrace. What on earth had she done to deserve this? Maybe she should have done it long ago.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, and glanced at his hands on her. She and Rourke didn’t touch, the two of them. Not since…they didn’t touch.

He seemed to read her thoughts and let her go, jerking his head toward the door. “We’ve got a situation at your house. I’ll give you a lift over there.”

Despite the fuzzy edges of reality imparted by the pill she’d taken, she felt a deep, visceral disturbance. “What kind of situation?”

“Your house is on fire,” Rourke said simply.

Jenny formed her mouth into an
O,
but no sound came out. What did one say, anyway, when confronted with such a statement?

“Go,” Laura said, thrusting her parka and boots at her. “Call me later.”

The fuzzy edges did not alter as Jenny got into the squad car Rourke drove on the weekends.

Even the swirling lights sweeping the area in an ovoid circuit didn’t make her flinch. Yet she was sharp with attention. The wonders of modern chemistry, she thought.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Call came in, a 911 from Mrs. Samuelson.”

Irma Samuelson had lived next door to the Majeskys for years. “It’s impossible,” Jenny said. “I—

how could my house be on fire?”

“Seat belt,” he said, and the moment she clicked the buckle, he peeled away from the curb.

“Are you sure there’s no mistake?” she asked. “Maybe it’s someone else’s house.”

“There’s no mistake. I checked. God, I thought—God
damn
—”

Was his voice shaking? “Oh, no,” she said. “Rourke, you thought I was in the house.”

“It’s a safe assumption at this hour of the morning.”

So that was why he’d grabbed her. It was relief, pure and simple. As they sped toward Maple Street, she became aware of a peculiar smell. “It reeks of smoke in here.”

“You’re welcome to roll down the window if you don’t mind freezing.”

“Where did the smoke smell come—Oh, God. You went into the house, didn’t you?” She could just picture him, pushing past firefighters to battle his way into the burning house. “You went inside to find me.”

He didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. Rourke McKnight was always rescuing people. It was a compulsion with him.

“Did you leave the stove on?” he asked her. “Maybe an appliance…?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. The questions ticked her off because they scared her. Because it was possible she
had
been careless. She lived alone now, and maybe she was turning strange. Sometimes she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was doomed to live the life of a loner, an outcast with nobody to turn off the coffeemaker if she left it on. She could end up like that old cat lady she and her friends used to make up stories about when they were kids—alone, eccentric, with nothing but a smelly house full of cats for company.

“…zoning out on me, are you?” Rourke’s voice broke in on her thoughts.

“What?” she said, giving herself a mental shake.

“Are you all right?”

“You just said my house is burning down. I don’t think I’m supposed to be all right about this.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean. Do I seem anxious to you?”

He flicked a glance at her. “You’re cool, under the circumstances. We’re not there yet, though.

Do you know what it means when the fire department says the structure is fully involved?” he asked.

“No, I—” She choked on the rest of the sentence when he turned the corner and she caught a glimpse of her street. Her heart tripped into overdrive. “My God.”

The street was barricaded at both ends and jammed with emergency vehicles, workers and equipment. Amber lights on tripods blazed from the shadows. Neighbors in winter coats thrown over their pajamas were clustered in their front yards or on porches, their heads tilted skyward, their expressions openmouthed with wonder, as though they were watching a Fourth of July fireworks display.

Except no one was smiling, oohing or aahing.

Firefighters in full turnout gear surrounded the house, battling flames that lit up the entire two-story height of the building. Rourke stopped the car and they got out. A row of upper-story windows had been blown out as if someone had shot them, one after the other.

Those windows lined the upstairs hallway, which had been hung with family photos—an old-fashioned wedding portrait of her grandparents, a few of Jenny’s mother, Mariska, who was eternally twenty-three and beautiful, frozen at the age she was the year she went away. There was also an abundant, fast-changing array of Jenny’s school portraits through the years.

As a little girl, she used to run up and down the hall, making noise until Gram told her to simmer down. Jenny always loved that expression: simmer down. She would stand with her hands on her head, making a hissing sound, a simmering pot.

She liked to make up stories about the people in the pictures. Her grandparents, who faced the camera lens with the grave stiffness typical of immigrants freshly minted from Ellis Island, became Broadway stars. Her mother, whose large eyes seemed to hold a delicious secret, was a government spy, protecting the world while in hiding in a place so deep underground, she couldn’t even tell her family where she was.

Somebody—a firefighter—was yelling at everyone to get back, to stay a safe distance away.

Other firefighters ran up the driveway with a thick, heavy hose on their shoulders. On a raised ladder that unfolded from the engine truck, a guy battled the flaming roof.

“Jenny, thank the Lord,” said Mrs. Samuelson, rushing to greet her. She wore a long camel-hair coat and snow boots she hadn’t bothered to buckle, and she cradled Nutley, her quivering Yorkshire terrier, in her arms. “When I first noticed the fire, I was terrified you were in the house.”

“I was at the bakery,” Jenny explained.

“Mrs. Samuelson, did someone get a statement from you?” Rourke asked.

“Why, yes, but I—”

“Excuse us, ma’am.” Rourke took Jenny’s hand and led her past the fire line to the rear of the engine. An older man was giving orders on a walkie-talkie, and another was rebroadcasting them with a bullhorn.