Page 109 of The Family Cross

The fourteen-year-old was breathing but seemed unconscious. I saw fresh blood on her left temple and tiny pieces of soot on her face and clothes. Bits of cinder were falling from the ceiling and covering the floor. That’s when I noticed I was getting hit with drops of rain as well.

I looked up and saw that the fire had left only a weak lattice of charred joists and burned boards on the floor above, and, higher still, the roof of the building gaped open to the drizzly sky.

I crouched beside Emma. She had a pulse and moaned when I touched her shoulder. “Emma?”

“Huh?” she said weakly.

Sampson came in behind me, and I said, “Call for backup, John, and an ambulance. Let’s get them out of here. The rain’s coming in and that ceiling looks like it might collapse any second.”

Before Sampson could reach for his radio, Luke started crying and holding up his wrists. Boog groaned behind his gag and did the same. Sampson went over and pulled the gag from Luke’s mouth. The nine-year-old immediately asked, “Is my sister okay? Is Emma alive?”

“She’s alive, Luke,” I called over as Sampson cut the young boy’s bonds. “We’ll get her to a hospital, and she’s going to be good.”

John pulled off Boog’s gag. The teen looked over John’s shoulder and screamed, “Detectives, look out!”

I stood up next to Anna’s daughter; Sampson stood in front of her son and his friend. Colin O’Hare was in the apartment doorway, aiming a pistol at us.

“Drop your weapons or you all die right now,” Bing Bang said. “At this distance, I never miss.”

JOHN SAMPSON CROUCHED AND set his weapon on the ground. I did the same.

“Backups,” Colin O’Hare said. “I know the game.”

I drew the small Ruger nine-millimeter from my ankle holster and Sampson got his .40-caliber double-barreled derringer from a holster at the small of his back. We set them down beside our Glocks.

“Slide everything toward me, into the hall, then back away and sit against the wall next to the kids,” O’Hare said. “Nothing funny.”

We did as O’Hare instructed, sliding the pistols across the floor and then sitting with our backs to the wall. The former Special Forces operator came into the little living area.

He gave Emma an indifferent glance and tossed a handful of zip ties at us. “You know the drill.”

“What will you do?” Sampson said, taking one and putting it around his ankles.

“Haven’t decided,” O’Hare said.

“So you’re the Firebug killer,” I said, putting a zip tie around my own ankles. More of the annoying black cinders were falling with the drizzle from the burned-out floor above.

“Not all of them,” Bing Bang said, wiping the watery grit from his face.

“What does that mean?” John said, looping a second zip tie around his wrists.

“It means I didn’t kill those first guys,” O’Hare said. “Not the dude in that other building where Choir Boy and I used to squat and not the guy in the Audi below the bridge.”

“But?” I said.

“But I decided to copycat.”

Sampson said, “Corey McGovern.”

The former Special Forces operator ignored him. “Finish your wrists. Pull those ties tight with your teeth.”

I got a zip tie around my wrists and pulled the tag end tight with my teeth. Sampson did the same.

“You shot and burned Corey McGovern,” John said.

“The little bitch gave me no choice,” O’Hare said, his voice flat. “She was wild on ecstasy when I ran into her in back of the Avid Eyeball, tried to stick me with my own blade. Had to shoot her. When I saw the gas can there behind the tool place, yeah, I lit her up and left.”