I twisted up onto my knees and peeked between the blinds. The dark outline of a sedan crept steadily closer.
“You think it’s the cops?” Vero asked.
I swung back around, palms sweaty against the floor. The lady at the security company had said she would cancel the alarm, but maybe I hadn’t given her the safe word fast enough. “They’re probably just doing a quick check of the place. We parked behind thetrailer. They can’t see your car from the parking lot. If we’re quiet, maybe they’ll go.”
“You think they saw the lights from the road?”
“I don’t know.” The car hadn’t turned onto the gravel road until after I’d switched off the desk lamp, but the trees along the edge of the property were bare of leaves and the night was clear. It was anyone’s guess what the police might have seen from the road if they’d been looking this way.
“Come on!” Vero said, grabbing my hand. “We’ll jump out the back window.”
“We can’t leave! They’re too close.” Even if we did manage to make it to the car, they’d see our taillights if we tried to escape through the rear of the farm, the way we’d come. “Let’s just stay calm. They might not even get out of their car. It’s safer to stay hidden and wait until they’re gone.”
We pressed our backs to the wall as the car crawled to a stop in front of the trailer. I listened for the telltale squawk of a police radio through the thin window glass above our heads, but all I heard was the low purr of the engine as it idled.
A car door clicked open. A foot crunched down. Then another. Vero squeezed my hand as the footsteps grew closer, stopping right behind us. Vero made the sign of the cross, her mouth moving in prayer through an excruciating silence. We both gasped as a long, forceful stream of fluid spattered against the siding.
“Is he pissing?” Vero hissed. I clapped a hand over her mouth as the spatter waned to a slow dribble. A pause followed, broken by the familiar scrape of a cigarette lighter. Vero tore my fingers away from her face and whispered, “Is he seriously taking a smoke break now?”
I tipped my head back, eyes squeezed shut. It could take him a full five minutes to finish that damn cigarette. And if he happened to walk around the trailer while he did, he might spot Vero’s car. Or worse, peer inside the back windows and see us.
“Just stay still,” I whispered, clutching her hand as the lighter scraped again. “It’s dark in here. He probably can’t see any—”
The window shattered. We hit the floor as shards rained over our heads and glass smashed against the opposite wall. The car’s engine roared outside, its tires spinning, the spray of gravel against the siding lost in a suddenwhoosh.
The room erupted in flames around us. I pushed up on my knees, dragging Vero up beside me, coughing as the air thickened with fumes. Black smoke poured through the broken window. I waved it from my face in time to catch the flash of taillights fishtailing onto the road.
Vero tugged me toward the door. “We have to go!”
I turned back to the room. The fire was already climbing the walls, its fingers curling over the arms of the sofa, staining the ceiling black. I darted feverish glances around the office, wondering what, if anything, I could save. This trailer held everything Steven had worked for, and it was going up in flames before my eyes.
Vero grabbed me by my coat, shouting over the crackle and hiss. “We have to get out of here, Finlay! Now!”
The smoke chased us as we stumbled out of the trailer. Vero rushed to get the car while I locked the door behind us. My hands shook as I fought with the key, the metal already hot. The Charger’s engine growled to life, the headlights painting eerie beams through the thick pockets of smoke as it rounded the corner.
“Get in!” she shouted. I ran for the passenger side, slamming the door as Vero made a tight turn and sped toward the back entrance of the farm, both of us breathing hard as bright yellow flames flickered through the smoke behind us. “What the hell just happened?”
“Someone firebombed Steven’s office, that’s what happened!” I gripped the dashboard as the Charger raced past the barren field Vero and I had dug up a month ago. The line of cedars at the rear of the property loomed ahead, and she slowed at the end of thegravel road, careful not to leave skid marks as she turned onto the asphalt.
The Charger picked up speed, hugging the winding road too tightly. Everything inside the car smelled like charcoal, and my throat grew tight around my swallow.
“Pull over,” I said, bile threatening to rise as the car soared over another bump.
Vero’s eyes narrowed on the curves ahead. “We can’t stop here.”
“I said, pull over!” My hands tightened on the passenger door. The tires squealed, kicking up smoke as the car skidded to a stop on the narrow shoulder. I flung open the door, heaving the meager contents of my stomach into the ditch.
When it was over, I rested my sweaty forehead on my smoke-blackened hands, my elbows braced on my knees and my butt perched on the edge of Vero’s bucket seat, waiting for the feeling to pass as I remembered the way the flames had curled around the sofa.
“Steven slept on that couch,” I said, my voice ragged with acid and smoke.
I could feel Vero’s tension fill the car as she pieced together the bits I hadn’t said. Steven had only moved into his new house a few days ago. Up until last week, Steven had been living in that trailer. Sleeping on that couch. The only addressFedUphad shared in the post was for the farm. IfEasyCleanhad staked Steven out before taking the job, like Vero suspected, she would have known he’d been sleeping in his office.
A tongue of orange flames licked the sky in the distance, clouds of black smoke smudging out the stars. I wondered if Steven’s security system was tied to his smoke detectors. If it would alert the authorities in time for anything from his office to be spared, or if it would all burn to the ground before anyone reported the fire.
I wiped the last of the sickness from my mouth and shut the passenger door.
“WhoeverEasyCleanis, she wasn’t exactly neat.” Vero shook her head at the flames. “You and I would have done a much better job.”
