Page 25 of Through the Fire
Well, shoot. Dropping the gas can, Alex rushed to grab the door before Mrs. Jones could close it. Now I’m going to have to kill an old lady.
With a choked cry, Mrs. Jones lurched back, tripping over a braided rag rug and falling to the floor. Alex grabbed a wooden nativity stable from the display on a table and brought it down hard on the woman’s head. Mrs. Jones’s skull bounced off the hardwood floor, blood spattering across the pristine floor, and she went still.
There. That had been simple enough.
Piece by piece, Alex carefully replaced all the nativity figures to their appropriate spots in and around the stable before grabbing Mrs. Jones’s limp arms and dragging her down the hall.
“How unfortunate,” she said conversationally. “This moves my timetable up. I’d better get the wheels in motion before anyone notices you’re not answering your phone.” Letting go of Mrs. Jones’s wrists, she started opening the doors lining the hall. “Bathroom, closet… Oh, here we go—basement.”
Bending to grab hold of Mrs. Jones’s arms again, Alex felt a slight, almost clinical sadness at what she’d been forced to do, but she pushed it away. There was no time to dwell on things. She had a mess to clean up.
“I hope you have a nice, big chest freezer down here.”
Chapter 9
Kit woke the next morning with renewed enthusiasm, determined to win over her new partners and learn the ins and outs of her new town. Her optimism took a hit as she looked around the women’s locker room at the temporary police station. It was basically a bathroom with a small bank of lockers—all of them empty—added as an afterthought. The place was echoing and abandoned, confirming her suspicion that any female officers had headed for warmer places to spend the winter.
“This is creepy,” she muttered, and Justice, who was touring the perimeter of the room, sniffing along the tile baseboard, gave an absent wave of his tail at the sound of her voice. “How many horror movies have empty women’s locker rooms in them? Answer: A lot. How many good, nonviolent things happen in these vacant locker rooms? Not many.”
Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket, making her flinch in surprise. She laughed at her jumpiness. It was an old, empty bathroom. There wasn’t anything to get spooked at. Reaching in her pocket, she pulled out her phone, not at all surprised to see Hugh’s name on the screen. After one day working with him, she’d found that he called and texted a lot.
“Jernigan, where are you?”
Kit took advantage of her solitude to roll her eyes. It wasn’t like she was running late. In fact, there was almost an hour before her shift started, but she’d wanted to get a draft of her report on the body found in the burned house done before roll call. She tried to keep the sarcasm out of her tone as she answered. “At the station.”
“Cross the street. We’re having roll call.”
“Roll call? At the VFW?” She was confused.
“Breakfast, roll call, whatever. Get over here.” He ended the call.
She studied her phone for a few moments, trying to decide whether to go. Part of her felt a warm glow that she was invited to their pre-shift ritual, but the other part balked at his bossiness, especially after he’d so obviously kept her out of the loop on the case the day before.
“He’s your PTO,” she reminded herself, pulling on her coat. “It’s his job to boss you around for a few months. It won’t be long before you’re on your own, though.”
Grabbing Justice’s leash, she headed for the door. After making a detour to the animal control truck to put Justice inside, she crossed the road toward the VFW. As she looked around at the silent, snowy town, she wondered if she’d ever get used to the emptiness. The squeak of snow beneath her boots was too loud, the only sound in an otherwise quiet world. Kit had the same feeling she’d had the day before, like she was the only person left in the universe. A shiver ran through her at the thought.
It was a relief to push through the VFW door and hear the conversations and normal sounds of people breakfasting. She found Theo, Otto, and Hugh at their usual table, and Jules hurrying from one customer to the next, bearing coffee carafes and plates of steaming food. Kit’s stomach rumbled, reminding her that she’d been too tense to eat earlier that morning.
“’Morning,” she said, taking the place across from Hugh, the same seat she’d sat in the previous morning. She had to smile. It was only her second day, and she already had a spot at their table. The men greeted her in unsurprising ways: Hugh with enthusiasm, Theo with a grunt, and Otto with a stoic nod.
“Decided to come back for another day?” Hugh asked, smirking a little behind his coffee mug.
“Sure.” She made eye contact with Jules, who gave her a be right there wave. “Yesterday was so peaceful and relaxing, how could I stay away?”
Theo coughed, and Kit was pretty sure there was some amusement in the sound. “It used to be peaceful around here, especially in the winter. Not so much anymore.”
“Yeah, ever since Jules and the kids arrived—” Hugh started, but Theo cut him off.
“The bombs didn’t start going off until Grace arrived.”
“The diner,” Otto said quietly, gesturing with his mug as if to indicate that they weren’t inside the now-exploded diner.
Theo frowned. “That was on us, though, not Jules.”
Kit looked from one man to the other, listening intently. She’d pieced together some of the story, but there were still gaping holes in her knowledge about what had happened to her new town over the past few months.
