Crush - Alan Jacobson [44]
No, keep going. Cover mouth, keep going . . .
As she fought the intense heat, flames all around her, crackling, black smoke—the room door burst open. She couldn’t lift her head but two arms grabbed her and yanked her hard, and she felt herself being lifted into the air and thrown against a body. Robby . . . thank God . . .
She was bouncing up and down, helpless, a rag doll bobbing about on Robby’s back as he ran away from the burning building, the adjacent hedges now lit up like a bonfire.
coughing—
hair in her face—
and an explosion behind her—a fireball rose up into the sky, wood shards slamming into her back and above her, to the side, all around, and—
Robby, move faster!
He kept going, the smoke still thick, and she kept bouncing around as he ran into the graveled parking lot. Eyes burning. Tearing. Can’t see—
Off in the distance, a siren.
Vail lifted her head.
Forced her eyes open, then closed, then open . . .
... saw two blurred headlights jumping in the darkness. They stopped, someone running toward her, and she was suddenly laid down on the gravel, looking up and seeing—
“Karen! Oh my god—what happened?”
She looked up, blinked repeatedly, eyes thick, and Robby was only a few feet away, running toward her. And then he was leaning over her, lifted her up and embraced her, held her close.
“Are you okay?” He pushed her away, held her at arm’s length, looking at her. “Karen—Karen, are you okay?”
Vail coughed, hard, nodded, her senses coming back to her with the cleaner air starting to infiltrate her lungs. With her pulled hard against his body, his long arm and large hand wrapped around her body, grabbing her hip, Robby led her farther away, toward his car. But he stopped, turned, and said, “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
Coughing.
“I’ll be fine.”
And then he was moving her toward the car again.
JOHN WAYNE MAYFIELD sat in the thicket, a pair of Carson Super-Zoom binoculars pressed against his face. Normally, seeing in the distance at night would require a specialized night vision apparatus. But he didn’t have such equipment—and with the intense illumination given off by the fire, the area was lit just fine for his needs.
He had never experimented with fire, but watching the flames jump and consume and devour—he had to admit, it carried a certain excitement. A certain power.
But how would you leave your mark? How would others know it was you who set the fire?
Most of all, it was so distant, so removed from the action. The thrill just wasn’t there, at least not the same level of thrill he sought. That he craved. He was a tactile person. He needed to feel the death with his hands. And watch, up close.
As he sat there, he considered the virtues of various methods of killing. Guns, arson, poison . . . they all caused death but they just didn’t possess the qualities he sought. Still, he had to admit, fire setting had its merits. To arsonists, the scene before him was, in fact, the kindling that stoked their desires. Their internal fires.
Mayfield lifted the binoculars back to his face and watched.
THE SIREN WAS LOUDER NOW, filling her ears, floodlights and headlights and movement all around her. Firefighters jumping off the truck, pulling hose, paramedics rushing to her side, grabbing her left arm, Robby steadying her on the right, moving her quickly, lifting her off the ground and carrying her away from the fire truck, away from the commotion, from the smoke.
They sat her down on the ambulance’s bumper, strapped an oxygen mask to her face, and one of the men started examining her, bright light flicking across her eye as he checked her pupils.
Vail looked over at Robby. “Thank you, thank you . . .” she said through the mask. “You saved my life. You saved me . . .” As tears started rolling down her ash-covered and soot-stained face, the paramedic was saying something, turning her head back toward him.
She heard something. Robby was talking to her.
“Don’t thank me.”
What?
Don’t thank me. That’s what he said.
And then it registered. Vail turned her head away from the medic,