Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,132
don’t like crowds. I don’t like the feeling of bodies bumping, jostling, hemming me in. My heart rate is too high and that’s not simply from chasing Rocket.
I discover a little side street and exit the teeming masses. I take a moment to breathe more easily, exhaling little puffs of steamy air. Shouldn’t all these kids be on Christmas break? It’s been too long for me; I don’t remember how my own college calendar worked, let alone what a place like Harvard does. It makes me feel old—and, for a moment, adrift. The life I used to lead. The dreams I never returned to.
Okay, time to think like an arsonist. If I can’t follow Rocket, how can I out-anticipate him?
He’ll want money. Two big jobs in one day, he’ll return to his neighborhood to pick up his cash. Phil told me the police had it under surveillance, however, so that doesn’t feel like a good use of my time.
But wait—is Rocket done for the day? The criminal attorney’s stately brownstone must have taken some finesse. No way a fancy lawyer didn’t have a state-of-the-art security system—and no way a kid like Rocket didn’t stand out in a neighborhood that upscale. So, a finesse job. Like disguising himself as pest control for the Carters’ residence. He could’ve used the same ruse for Delaney, except the police sightings of him afterward didn’t reveal any uniform.
Maybe a delivery boy? Pizza? He’d just need a cap to pull that off. In a city of twenty-four-hour takeout, no one notices delivery people either. He could’ve stashed the gasoline earlier, as many of those town houses have patios in the back. A kid as athletic as Rocket could definitely scale a fence.
Then exit the same way. Watch his handiwork. Bolt when the police presence got too high or he needed to get moving to his next job. Which took him to the T stop. A simple transfer to the Red Line and Harvard Square it is.
Where he must’ve stashed his Molotov cocktail backpack somewhere out of site. In this day and age of constant vigilance, no unattended bag could’ve been left sitting at a T stop or, for that matter, near a college campus. So he would’ve had to have scoped out everything first. Prepared his supplies, identified key drop sites. Then once the first fire started in Delaney’s house, it was all go, go, go. Moving fast, leaving a trail of fire and chaos in his wake.
Which left me with the lingering feeling that he still wasn’t done.
Then something came to me. Like a whisper in the back of my mind. The media craning for a closer look of the Harvard fire.
The media that used to be camped out in front of Evie’s mother’s house. Documenting everyone coming and going. Making approaching that house nearly impossible.
The media, now drawn away to a string of fires on a college campus that was clearly more exciting than curb patrol.
My first instinct had been correct. Rocket Langley is still after Evie Carter. And he set the fires around the Harvard campus to lure away the media and expose his true target. Molotov cocktails for the foreplay. No doubt a fresh stash of gasoline for the main event.
I start to run.
Chapter 40
EVIE, D.D., AND FLORA
BY THE TIME I PULL my dazed mother out from behind my father’s massive desk, then convince her to leave her martini glass behind, the smoke is noticeable. We pass through the doorway, then draw up short.
Thick black plumes roll out of the kitchen.
I remember what I’d heard about the fire that took out my own home. It had most likely started on the stove top, some kind of homemade trigger system utilizing cooking oil, which had flared up, igniting a trail of gasoline …
I eye the edge of the open parlor in front of us, and almost as if I’ve willed it a thread of flame appears in front of my eyes and darts along the perimeter straight to the front door, where—whoosh—it hits the mother lode of accelerant.
My mother and I both stagger back, trying to shield our faces from the sudden heat. The entryway is gone, consumed in a wall of flame, while to our right the kitchen flares with fresh heat while belching out black soot.
My mother moves first. She tugs at my hand, moving in the direction of the stairs. I try to resist. We go up, and then what? Fire climbs, heat rises. We will only be trapping ourselves