She. He meantme.
"Both of them should be there by now. Lucy had the closing shift, and Joanna never leaves before midnight." Another laugh, uglier than the first. "Two birds, one stone. Three, once the captain shows up to save her."
I couldn't breathe. The shelf in front of me blurred, boxes of diapers swimming in my vision. My hand pressed harder against Gabrielle's back, steadying her, steadying myself.
He thought I was at the café. He thought Joanna was at the café.
The burst pipe. The cancelled shift. The only reason we weren't there right now was a broken piece of plumbing that had flooded the storage roomtwelve hours ago. A random malfunction. A stroke of luck. The thinnest possible thread between us and whatever was about to happen downtown. That night, fate was on my side, but I had to play my part.
"She'll have no one left after tonight. No boss, no boyfriend, nobody running to save her. Just me." Evan's voice dropped into something possessive and ugly, something I remembered from closed doors and bruised wrists and whispered threats. "Then she'll remember who she belongs to."
Everyone you love burns.
He hadn’t read my mind; he had used it against me to keep me terrified. It was a promise. He'd been telling me exactly what he was going to do, and I hadn't understood, hadn't seen it for what it was.
"Yeah," Evan said. "Do it. Light it up."
The call ended. Footsteps moved toward the front of the store, heavy and uneven, fading into the distance.
I stood frozen behind the shelf, one hand pressed over my mouth to keep from screaming.
Joanna found me thirty seconds later. I looked like I’d seen a ghost.
"Lucy? What's wrong? You look like you've seen a?—"
"The café." The words came out strangled, barely recognizable as my own voice. "Evan's burning the café. Right now. He has someone there, he just gave the order?—"
"What?"
"He thinks we're inside, Joanna." I grabbed herarm, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "Both of us. He planned this. He's been planning this. The fire, the collapse, all of it. Cal's going to hear it's the café and he's going to think I'm inside and he's going to?—"
I couldn't finish. Couldn't say the words out loud.
Joanna’s face went white when she realized what was going on. The café, her life’s work, was burning right now because a monster from my past wanted to hurt me, wanted to kill me. He had designed a trap to murder everyone I cared about in one efficient strike.
Then something hardened behind her eyes. That steel I'd seen in her before, the thing that had built a business from nothing and held it together through floods and recessions and every disaster the world had thrown at her.
"Parking lot. Now."
She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the front of the store. I clutched Gabrielle against my chest and followed. My legs were moving on autopilot while my mind was screaming.
I was supposed to die tonight. If not for a burst pipe, I'd be inside that building right now. Joanna too. And Cal would come running to save us, and the ceiling would come down, and Evan would finally have what he wanted.
Everyone I loved, burning.Just like he promised.
We burst through the automatic doors into the cold night air. The wind hit my face, sharp andbiting, but I barely felt it. Joanna was already running for her car, keys in hand.
I fumbled Gabrielle into her car seat, fingers clumsy with panic, the straps fighting me until they finally clicked. Every second felt like a lifetime.
"Call the station," she said, throwing the car into reverse. "Now."
I dialed the number for the fire station with trembling hands. Hit call.
One ring. Two. With every ring, my heart skipped a beat.
"West Valley Springs Fire, this is dispatch."
"I need to reach Captain Bennett. Captain Cal Bennett. It's an emergency." My voice came out high and frantic, words tumbling over each other. "The fire at the Mountain Café—it's a trap. The building has been rigged to collapse."
