Winter's Fire (Welcome to Covendale #7) (13 page)

Ben Schaeffer’s home was a tall, two-story brick structure with a small, scruffy yard and a wraparound porch. She parked the truck in the driveway and let herself in the front door, then felt the wall for a light switch. For an instant she worried that the power had been turned off. But when she found the switch and flipped it, light flooded the room.

The living room was neat and silent, with the faintest hint of mustiness. There was a couch and a chair, an entertainment center with a television, cable box and DVD player, and wall-built bookshelves that displayed books, knick-knacks, and framed photographs. No computer.

She moved further into the room, glancing at the shelves—and her gaze happened on a picture of Ben and Adam, holding beers and laughing over a fire pit. Tears stung her eyes at the sight. She almost turned the picture around so she wouldn’t see it again, but that felt disrespectful.

A quick circuit of the first floor turned up nothing in the way of a computer or hard copy files. The bedroom was the next logical place to look. She wasn’t sure how she felt about going into a dead man’s bedroom…but she told herself Ben would’ve understood.

At the top of the stairs, she tried the first door and got lucky. Bed, dresser, computer desk. There was also a small two-drawer metal file cabinet next to the desk. She’d check there too, in case he’d printed the files for backups.

The computer was more modern than the one at the fire station, a slim desktop model with a flat panel monitor and laser mouse. Encouraging, because it meant Ben had known at least something about computers. She sat at the desk and turned the machine on, watching the screen as it loaded. Windows 7—definitely an improvement.

While waiting, she leaned down and pulled the top drawer of the file cabinet. It didn’t open. She frowned as she spotted the barrel keyhole on the bottom corner of the drawer. He’d kept it locked, but maybe the keys were here somewhere.

A fast search of the desk drawers turned up nothing. By then the computer had finished booting, so she opened the Documents folder. It contained a few text documents and a handful of images, but nothing that looked promising. She opened the documents anyway. They were all warranties or manufacturer’s instructions for things like appliances and auto parts.

She tried the main C drive directory. A folder called VRFD—Valley Ridge Fire Department, she assumed—contained the right type of files, but none of them were the missing ones. She copied the file extension and ran a search for it.

There. Six files in one folder, named with nonsensical strings of letters and numbers and buried in multiple subfolders. If you knew something about computers but weren’t at a professional level, this was how you hid files.

She opened the first one on the list. It was an incident report and accident cleanup claim, one of the four she’d marked for review. She scanned the numbers and instantly realized the key figures were lower than the ones on the copies, and the ones reported to the insurance company. Much lower.

That was why they were blurred on the copies. They’d been changed after the report was filled out.

Barely breathing, she scrolled through to the end of the document and the signature page that had been cut off on the copies. The handwriting wasn’t the best, but the name was clearly legible.

Mike Smallwood.

“He’s the chief,” she muttered under her breath, trying to calm her racing heart. “This doesn’t have to mean it was him. It makes sense for him to sign off on claims.”

But she didn’t believe it, and she’d just realized why. Because when the chief said her name at the police station, he’d pronounced the first syllable strangely—
Soul-
uh-mon, not
Saul
-uh-mon like most people said.

The same way the man in her room at the Whispering Rose had pronounced it.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “It was him.” She went for her phone, desperately hoping that Adam had finished the call and would be able to answer. That was when she heard a soft, rustling sound behind her, like a shoe slipping on a carpet.

Before she could turn around, sharp pain exploded in the back of her head. There was a blinding white flash—and then darkness.

* * * *

The call hadn’t taken long, but Adam was still in a hurry when he got back to the station. The sense of urgency he’d felt ever since Winter insisted on going to Ben’s alone refused to fade.

He stripped his turnout gear and took the stairs two at a time, running for the records room. There he found Archer Black, one of the night shift firefighters, tapping away on the computer.

“Shit,” he said.

Archer looked at him when he spoke. “Problem, Lieutenant?”

“Kind of.” He gave a crooked smile. It figured—no one ever used the computer here, except right now when he actually needed it. “I was going to use that,” he said.

“Oh. I’m almost finished—just typing up a paper for class.” Archer gestured to a stack of handwritten pages on the desk beside him. “Or I can just save this and wait until you’re done.”

“No, it’s fine.” He was surprised to get an explanation. Archer rarely spoke to anyone unless he had to. This was the most words Adam had ever heard from him. He was a good firefighter, but something of an enigma as a person. “I’ll just ask the chief if I can use his.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Thank you, though.”

Archer nodded and turned back to the screen.

Adam left the room, jogged down the hall to the chief’s office and knocked. “Hey, got a minute?” he called before he turned the knob and pushed the door open.

But there was no one in the room.

Adam glanced at the wall clock and realized it was later than he thought. Chief must’ve gone home for the day. Shrugging, he went in, sat at the desk and turned the computer on. Mike wouldn’t mind if he printed a few files.

While he waited for the machine to load, he pulled the rollout keyboard tray. It came out halfway and stuck. He jiggled it a few times, but it wouldn’t move beyond the halfway point.

“Huh.” He stuck a hand into the space, feeling for the tray bracket. One of the wheels was probably misaligned. His fingers brushed something smooth and cool along the underside of the desk above the keyboard—and then flapped the stiff corner of what felt like a file folder.

Frowning, he bent to look under the desk and up. It was too dark to see what he’d touched, so he turned his phone flashlight on.

And found a small stack of manila folders jammed into the top rails of the keyboard tray.

A heavy weight settled in his gut. He knelt on the floor and started working the folders loose, trying not to rip them. Finally, they pulled free with a flat thunk, and he counted them.

Six folders. Six missing files.

“No,” he muttered, opening the first one. “This can’t be right.” He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he knew what these papers were. Incident reports. Insurance claims for accident cleanups. He flipped to the last page in the folder and looked at the signature.

Ethan Goddard.

“What the hell?” That didn’t make any sense. If it was really Ethan, why did the chief have the missing files? Adam moved out carefully from under the desk, and his gaze fell on the small wire wastebasket next to the chair. It contained a brown paper bag, a few food wrappers, and a crumpled ball of paper. Acting on instinct, he reached in for the crumpled paper and smoothed it out.

A row of signatures marched down the page. Ethan Goddard, over and over again—each signature slightly different than the one before it. Near as he could tell, the final signature matched the one on the incident report.

Chief Smallwood had forged Ethan’s signature. He was framing him.

Oh, God. Winter!

The chief wasn’t here, and she’d gone to Ben’s place alone. Did he know that’s where she was headed? Adam had no idea, but he wasn’t going to wait around here to find out.

He bolted across the office. Just as he reached the door, the station alarm pealed out a strident warning, and dispatch came over the loudspeaker.

“Engine One, Engine Two, Rescue Four respond. Structure fire, three-five-seven Kings Way. Repeat, structure fire, three-five-seven Kings Way. Engine One, Engine Two, Rescue Four respond.”

Suddenly unable to breathe, Adam sprinted the rest of the way.

Chapter 15

Winter groaned as consciousness slowly returned, bringing pain and rising panic with it. She was on the floor, and her head felt like an entire troupe of clog-wearing performers had done the riverdance on it. She managed to lift a hand and gingerly felt the back of her skull. Her fingers encountered sticky blood.

And there was something else lurking just outside her awareness. Something worse than the splitting headache.

She gasped suddenly, remembering. Chief Smallwood was the fraud, the killer. He must have heard them talking to the sheriff about coming here tonight. So he’d followed her, snuck up on her, and knocked her out with something heavy. Was the blow meant to kill her? No, he’d said it would be an “accident.”

That was when she smelled the smoke.

She scrambled upright, but a wave of dizziness knocked her back down and she nearly passed out again. Forcing herself not to panic, she waited for the feeling to pass and sat up slowly. The pounding in her head calmed enough for her to hear the crackle of flames, somewhere outside the door.

There could still be time. On hands and knees, she crawled toward the door, reached up and felt the handle. Warm, not hot. Black smoke trickling into the room through the crack beneath the door. She turned the knob, pushed it open slowly.

The crackle became a rushing roar. Fire had swallowed the stairs and was eating its way across the carpet, headed for this room.

Winter closed the door and fought fresh panic. She could survive this. She would
not
end up like Autumn, a burning torch plummeting to her death. She had extensive fire safety training—she just had to use it.

Still dizzy and far weaker than she liked, she crawled to the bed and pulled the blanket off. Back to the door. She stuffed the edges of the blanket beneath it as tightly as she could, and then rolled the rest. For a while, that would keep the smoke out so she wouldn’t choke to death, or pass out and die breathing in fumes.

Now, the window.

The house was tall, the second floor higher than in most houses. Still, if she climbed out carefully and hung from the frame before dropping to the ground, she might only break a leg. It was better than dying. She stumbled to the window, feeling her strength drain with every step, and tried to push it open.

It wouldn’t budge.

Straining would take too long and sap too much of her energy. She had to break it. There wasn’t much in the room she could use to shatter glass, but the small ceramic lamp on the bedside table looked promising.

It took precious minutes to unplug the lamp and bring it to the window. She paused to gather as much strength as possible, held the lamp in both hands above her head, and smashed it hard against the window.

The lamp shattered. The glass only cracked.

Winter fell to her knees, panting despite her attempts to breathe shallowly. Black blossoms exploded behind her eyes. Much more of this and she’d pass out again—and maybe she’d never wake up.

As she stilled and attempted to stay conscious, a new sound rose above the flames. Sirens. The fire department was on the way. If she could stay alive for just a few more minutes, they would find her. Save her.

Unless they didn’t know anyone was in this house. If Adam hadn’t gotten back—or if the chief had found a way to take him out—they wouldn’t. You couldn’t rescue someone if you didn’t know they needed saving.

She had to break the window. Even if she couldn’t make her way out it, at least they’d know she was here.

Her vision dimmed as she searched the room again, and suddenly she knew exactly what to use. The computer tower. Heavy enough to break glass, and if she threw it outside, she’d save the evidence on the hard drive from destruction by fire.

She crawled for the desk, her energy fading—and began to cough as smoke penetrated the makeshift barrier and filtered into the room.

* * * *

Adam jumped from the side of Engine Two before it came to a full stop. He’d nearly skipped putting on the turnout gear, but decided at the last second that was a stupid idea. He couldn’t rescue anyone if he killed himself trying to enter a burning building unprotected.

The sight of Ben’s house chilled his heart. The entire front face was engulfed in flame.

“Move!” he shouted at the engine crew as they worked to set up the hose. “There’s someone in there!”

The one closest to him, Jimmy Lewis, gave him a puzzled look. “This is Ben’s place,” he said. “It’s empty.”

“Trust me. It’s not.”

“Okay, man.” Jimmy turned toward the other two behind him. “Hey, guys, Adam says there’s someone in there. Haul your asses!”

“Thanks,” Adam said, and turned his attention to the house again. There was no way he’d get in through the front—but the fire was only halfway up the roof slope, so it hadn’t spread to the back yet. He yanked an axe from the truck and ran around the place, telling himself with every jarring step that it wasn’t too late. Winter was going to make it.

He burst into the back yard and stopped short. A figure in full yellow gear, including gas mask, stood in front of the back door—as if he was guarding it.

“What the hell?” Adam shouted, striding toward the firefighter. “There’s a goddamned fire right behind you, in case you didn’t notice. Whoever you are, you’re fired.”

The figure reached up and pulled the mask away.

Chief Smallwood.

Adam stood his ground, gripping the axe tighter. “Move aside, Chief,” he said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to use this on you, but I will.”

“Sorry, Rhodes. You won’t get the chance.” The chief pulled something from a pocket—a gun. Probably the same one he’d used to threaten Winter. “Drop the axe.”