Blue Smoke

You get your messages?”
    “Yeah, I got them.”
    “That’s your dad’s face in the lame chef’s hat, isn’t it? Your sexy old lady drew it.” He laughed when she said nothing. “There’s another one waiting for you. At your brother’s clinic. Better hurry.”
    “God. Goddamn it.” She cleared the call, hit 911. “The clinic where my brother and his wife work. Two blocks away.”
    “I’ll drive.” O’Donnell rushed out the door with her.
    The Sirico’s wine list was in the gutter, and the building up in flames.
    “I’m suiting up.” She popped the trunk, pulled out her gear. “Help with suppression.”
    “Reena.”
    The surprise of hearing him use her first name stopped her. “You’ve been going what, closing on eighteen hours? Let the engine company handle it.”
    “He’s running us in circles, spreading us thin.” She slammed the trunk. “He can’t hit Sirico’s or me or my family directly, so he does this. Just pissing on me.”
    She stood, the helmet dangling from her fingers and the fire dancing in front of her. “He’s caught now,” she stated firmly. “He’s caught in it. He can’t stop, how can he stop? It’s hypnotizing. It’s so compelling.”
    “What else is there for him to hit? Everything left is under guard.”
    Smoke brought tears to her eyes. “The school, then Bo—but Bo was just, I think, a moment of opportunity. Giving me a little tune-up. Umberio’s wife, then John. Now Xander.”
    “Working his way to you.”
    “I’m the finish line. It’s all payback, but it’s not in order. Xander should’ve come after the school. Xander was the next step, then myfather, then the restaurant, and so on. So he’s bouncing, but it’s still a pattern.”
    “His old house. It plays,” O’Donnell added when Reena turned to stare at him. “They come to get his father there, he never comes back. He gets pulled out of the house himself by his mother.”
    She tossed the helmet into the car. “This time I’ll drive.”

30
    Flames licked out of the windows on the second and third floors of the house that had once been the Pastorellis’. There were no alarms, no screams, no crowds. There was only the fire, torching in the dark.
    “Call it in!” she shouted to O’Donnell, and grabbed her helmet, raced to the trunk for gear. “There are people in there. Two—probably second-floor bedroom. I’m going in.”
    “Wait for the squad.”
    She pulled on turnout gear. “I’ve got to try. They could be alive, restrained. I’m not going to let someone else burn to death tonight.”
    She grabbed a fire extinguisher, heard in some part of her brain O’Donnell’s voice clipping out the situation and address. He was right behind her as she raced up the steps.
    “He could be in there.” O’Donnell’s weapon was in his hand. “I’ve got your back.”
    “Take the first floor,” she snapped back. “I’m going up.”
    He’d left the door off the latch, she saw. Like an invitation to come on in, make yourself at home. She locked eyes with O’Donnell, nodded, then shoved through the door.
    There was light, the backwash from the street, silver slivers of moon. Shadows and silhouettes that were furniture and doorways, all swept with eyes and weapons while her heart galloped at the base of her throat.

    And there was ice in her belly as she raced up the steps where smoke bloomed along the ceiling.
    It gathered, that smoke, thickened and boiled in a filthy brew as she climbed. The sound of the fire was like a roll of raging surf that she knew could become a tidal wave. She tested a closed door for heat, found it cool. After a quick sweep, she continued down the hall.
    Fire danced on the ceiling over her head, surrounded the door like a golden frame. It licked slyly at her boots.
    She heard her own muffled cry of fear as she swept foam over flame. There were screams now, but of sirens. No one answered her shouts. She gathered her courage, her breath, and ran through the wall of fire.
    The room was blazing, a small mouth of hell. Fire plumed from the floor, clawed up the dresser where a vase of flowers was already engulfed. For a heartbeat she stood surrounded by it, its brilliance and fantastic heat, the colors and movement and power.
    Her weapons were so small, pathetic she knew, against the sheer passion of it. And she was already, pitifully, too late.
    He hadn’t lit the bed. He’d saved that for her, had wanted her to see.
    He’d arranged them, of course. After