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“When we made our agreement, she told me I had to destroy all evidence. Asked me if I had anything. I told her I kept the lipsticks. One for each woman. Seven if you counted her but I didn’t tell her that. Anyway, she made me promise to throw them away but I didn’t.”

“You added to the collection,” Josie guessed. “She found the box and realized there were more than six. You’d been collecting more and she thought⁠—”

“I wasn’t going to use them!” he shouted, startling Molly who began to wail. “She didn’t believe me. After the interview, I told her she’d made her point but she was going to meet with that reporter the next morning anyway. Alone. She didn’t want me or Dean there.”

They’d never know if Sylvia had intended to tell Trinity the truth. It seemed to Josie if she was going to come clean, it would have made more sense to go to the police, but maybe Trinity was a less intimidating place to start. Or maybe Sylvia had simply been trying to drive her point home with Carter. She had the power to destroy him.

It was a taunt.

“When I got there, she claimed she never intended to tell but like I said…” Carter paused the lighter over the top of another issue of Response Magazine and lowered the flame again, holding it close until the pages caught fire, “my mother was an excellent liar.”

Everything happened in the space of a few seconds. The fire flickered, reaching for the magazines on one side and the hymnal on the other. With each new item it stole, there was a whoosh. Black smoke billowed upward. Molly unleashed a scream so shrill and loud that it hurt Josie’s ears. She whipped her head around to keep the smoke from her face. The lollipop in her hair hit Carter in the eye just as Turner launched himself at Carter and Molly, tackling them both to the ground.

Josie was already moving, throwing up an arm to shade her eyes against the rapidly growing fire as she rounded the magazine stand. Turner and Carter rolled along the floor, punching at one another, fighting for dominance.

Molly was gone.

Fifty-Six

“Molly!” Josie called.

As the fire intensified, engulfing the entire magazine stand and jumping to the next one, more smoke filled the room. Josie’s heart lurched in her chest as she left Turner to fight off Carter. Three-year-old Molly West was her priority. Spinning, she tried to figure out which direction the girl had gone.

“Molly!”

Heat shimmered in the air as the fire continued to spread. As Josie ran toward the front of the room, her throat started to itch. The girl wasn’t at the door or in the play area. Josie searched under the tables but found nothing.

Somewhere, an alarm began to shriek.

Sweat enveloped her body and a cough bubbled up from her lungs. Didn’t they have a sprinkler system in this part of the church? The fire began overtaking the shelving, racing toward the front of the library. Turner was still in the back. Still fighting with Carter? She couldn’t worry about him right now. He was a grown man. Molly was a toddler.

Josie called her name again but she knew the girl wouldn’t hear her over the alarm. She had no choice but to go aisle by aisle. Starting at one end of the room, she crouched down beneath the rapidly thickening smoke, ignoring the tightness forming in her lungs. By the third aisle she was dodging the flames that ate their way through hundreds of books. Her eyes watered. The heat clung painfully to her skin.

By the fifth aisle, she was barely holding her panic in check. What if she didn’t find Molly? What if she did and they both died of smoke inhalation? What if she didn’t get to Molly in time to save her from getting burned? Josie had a sudden flashback to when she was fourteen, rushing into the primary bedroom in Lila Jensen’s trailer, and using a blanket to smother the fire melting Dex’s face.

A masculine roar came from somewhere nearby. She couldn’t tell if it was Turner or Carter. Didn’t want to think about whether or not the roar was one of agony or not. Whether Turner was going to make it out of this alive and without scars.

Crawling now, the concrete beneath the thin carpeting biting into her knees, Josie’s head swiveled back and forth, searching the bottom shelves, hoping Molly hadn’t climbed up any of them.

She turned down the seventh aisle and picked up speed. There, in the center of the aisle was a haphazard pile of books that looked as though they’d been knocked off the bottom shelf. Her throat, chest, arms and legs ached. There was no saliva left in her mouth. Sweat rolled off her in huge droplets. By the time she reached the pile of books, her voice was barely a scrape. Adrenaline surged through her veins when she saw Molly’s little feet near the edge of the shelf.

“Molly!”

The girl didn’t respond. She was curled into a fetal position. Terror shot through Josie, so fierce it drove out every physical sensation. Without hesitation, she fit as much of her upper body as she could beneath the shelf and scooped Molly up. Stumbling to her feet, Josie staggered toward the front of the library.

Everything had gone numb and quiet but when she felt a tiny hand fist the collar of her shirt, the world rushed back in, all sound and heat and pain. Her body felt weak by the time she reached the exit. Holding Molly to her chest with one shaking arm, she used the other to pull the door open. She fell to her knees in the hall. The cool, clean air washed over them until the smoke from inside the library began billowing out.

Josie cradled Molly in her arms. Turner was still inside and she realized that no one knew they were here. No one else had followed them from the church or they would have been here much earlier. No one would have known to look for them in the library. The building had probably already been evacuated.

No one was coming to save them.

She had to get Turner out.

But she couldn’t leave Molly alone. Mentally, Josie tried to map out the network of halls to figure out where the nearest exit was. Her thoughts were muddled. Each breath felt like an effort she might not have in her. There was an emergency exit somewhere.

She was wasting too much time.

Dragging herself upright, she chose a direction and ran. The glowing red emergency exit sign was like a beacon. She didn’t slow down, instead turning her body at the last minute so her back hit the bar that opened the door. Sunlight and fresh air had never been so inviting. Shouts and sirens sounded nearby. Josie searched desperately for anyone she could hand Molly off to so she could get back inside and find Turner.