Chapter 64

THE SMOKE AND flames were growing.

Love is fire, love is flame….

My house, my house, Kayleigh thought as tears of sorrow, of pain from the smoke, of fear rolled down her cheeks. My guitars, my pictures…. Oh, this can’t be happening!

The door was hot to the touch now and outside the window, reflections of the flames from downstairs flickered across trees and the lawn.

Kayleigh debated. Where was Alicia? She couldn’t stay downstairs in the flames, of course. She’d probably left.

Well, fuck her. I’m saving my house!

Kayleigh ran into the bathroom and grabbed a fire extinguisher, years old but, according to the gauge, still charged. She unlocked the bedroom door and eased it open. The fire was concentrated in the hallway on the ground floor and on the stairs themselves, the carpeting. It gave off thick clouds of astringent smoke from the flaming nylon. Sparks zipped through the air. Kayleigh caught a full breath of the foul stench and retched. She lowered her head and got a breath of more or less clean air, another. She stood. The fire wasn’t out of control yet. If Alicia had left she could put out enough of it to get to the kitchen, where there was a much bigger extinguisher. And the hose in the garden.

She eased out.

Just then a huge bang from downstairs resounded through the house, a flash in the smoke. A bullet plowed into the door near her head. Two more.

Screaming, she dove back into her room and slammed the door, locked it. Kayleigh decided she had no choice but to risk a twenty-five-foot jump to the ground. Would she break her legs and just lie there in agony until Alicia shot her? Would she get speared on the fence and bleed out?

But she wouldn’t burn to death, at least. Running to the window, she flung it open and looked out toward the road. Not a single flashing light yet. Then she gazed down, trying to judge angles and distances.

She found a place she might land, just past the fence. But then she saw, at the exact spot she’d land, Alicia’s shadow, moving back and forth, almost leisurely. She was at the front door and probably anticipating Kayleigh’s jump and aiming at that very spot.

Shadows …

Kayleigh sat down on the bed, grabbed a picture she had of Mary-Gordon and hugged it to her chest.

So, this was it.

Mama, Bobby, I’ll be with you soon.

Oh, Bobby …

She thought of the song she’d written for him years ago. “The Only One for Me.”

More tears.

But just then another gunshot resounded from downstairs…. Then two or three more. Kayleigh gasped. Could the police be here after all?

She ran to the window and looked out. No, no one was here. The driveway was empty, except for Alicia’s truck. And there were no flashing lights on the horizon.

Two more shots.

And from downstairs, a voice calling her name.