Playing with Fire (21 page)

Even as she recognized the need, a sick premonition came over her, and her mind raced into a terrifying game of “what if.”

What if Webb had given Beau enough information to piece it together? What if he was already on his way to Carolyn to confront her? What if Carolyn was waiting for him? What if Carolyn had arranged an accident for him?

She didn’t know Carolyn anymore, didn’t know what she was capable of or how her mind worked. Years in the ER unit had taught her that the only element of human nature she could count on was survival instinct. If Carolyn felt cornered by Beau, there was no telling what she’d do.

Someone needed to warn Beau.

Maggie focused on the empty office around her, looking for help. Someway to contact Beau. And then she realized—it was after five o’clock. Everyone was gone, even the clerks. She’d told Russell to take his time. She didn’t know where the lab was. He said “walk over” and that probably meant it wasn’t in the building. She didn’t know when he’d get back or if she could wait that long.

The headache she’d lied about became a reality. As she anxiously watched the clock, she kept repeating, “Don’t be a hero, Beau. Don’t try to save me by talking to her first.”

In her heart, Maggie knew that’s exactly what Beau would do.

When she saw Russell’s keys sitting on top of a stack of paperwork on his desk, she took them. She had no choice. If she hit every light just right, she could get to the shop before Beau.

Afraid he was running out of time, Beau found a pay phone and dialed the office. Russell must have been sitting on the phone. It barely rung.

“Arson.”

“Russell, I want—”

“Man, I’m glad you called! I was about to beep you. Maggie St. John took a powder.”

“Dammit! I asked you to watch her!”

“I did, Beau. She had one of those blood sugar attacks. I needed to go to the lab, and she didn’t look strong enough to go to the bathroom much less all the
way to the lab. What was I supposed to do? She was gone when I got back.”

“How long?”

“Not very. Maybe five minutes. She took my keys. She knows my car and my garage spot from this morning. What’s going on, Beau? You want me to call it in as stolen?”

“No, I think I know where she’s going. Don’t worry about the car. Find me an address on—” Beau switched the phone to his other ear. “—God, I can’t remember the business name. Hair salon. Shear something. Owner’s Carolyn Poag. I think she’s our torch. She’s been setting Maggie up all along to cover an old fire.”

“I’m on it.” The sound of the phone book being slapped onto a desktop came over the line. “The lab came through. We got accelerant on Bennett’s fire—hair spray. Someone poured it over the stove and floor.”

“The shoe print? Anything obvious?”

“Woman’s size seven. One of those thick-soled jobs that supports and cushions the foot.”

“Something that a nurse or a beautician might wear.”

“Right.” Russell found the salons. “Here are the shop names. Shear Cuts, Shear Indulgence—”

“That’s it. Give me the address.” Beau memorized it. “Find a car and meet me there. Don’t go in. I don’t know how tight Carolyn Poag is wrapped right now. She doesn’t need to see both of us.”

“On the way.”

“So is Maggie. One of us better make it there first.”

And Beau was closer.

Except for Carolyn’s car, the parking lot of the beauty shop was empty. Every mile of the drive Maggie had prayed she’d arrive before Beau, and now relief faded as she killed the engine and stared at the shop. Despite her fear, she’d opened the car door. Maggie needed the closure, and she didn’t think she had a chance of getting the truth unless she saw Carolyn alone first.

She couldn’t wait for Beau. This was family business, That’s why it hurt so much. That’s why she couldn’t let it go or let someone else take care of it.

No one had bothered to flip the open/closed sign to closed, so she flipped it. The shop was empty and quiet. There were no magazines changing hands, no preening customers, no combs clanking against glass bottles of disinfectant. Only silence and the smell of permanent wave solution. The day’s fading sun streamed in from behind her, but beyond the streak of light were gray shadows that gave the shop a tomblike quality.

“Carolyn?” Maggie walked past the first barber chair, until she could see the back room. The office door was closed. “Carolyn? We need to talk.”

Maggie’s heart jumped into her throat at the click of the lock, and she irrationally wanted to call a time-out. The office door opened a crack and widened so slowly, it didn’t seem humanly possible. Maggie knew the phenomenon. It happened in ER all the time. Stress created time warps, telescoping or stretching time.

When Carolyn finally stepped out of the room, she wore a smile and then faltered as she read the truth on Maggie’s face. “You remembered.”

“You knew I would.”

“I tried to get you to stay at my house that night. I
knew if you went home, you’d think too much. You left me no choice but to burn the barn.” Carolyn pulled a gun from behind her back and pointed it straight at Maggie. “You weren’t supposed to come. It was supposed to be that detective. I had it all planned.”

“Then don’t worry. Beau’s not far behind.”

As she made the promise, Maggie realized he always would be close behind her, and she finally figured out what her mother had never been able to grasp. There were no guarantees in the world, and never would be. Men weren’t shining knights who grabbed you up and carried you off to a perfect world. Beau’s job wasn’t to keep her safe, but to catch her when she fell. Beau’s job was to love her. No matter what.

“You shouldn’t have remembered, Maggie,” Carolyn warned, coming closer. So close that missing her target would have been impossible. Close enough that Maggie could see the shaking hands that belied the resignation in Carolyn’s voice. “You’ve ruined everything.”

The woman in front of her was a stranger, her eyes hard and haunted. Swallowing her fear, Maggie asked, “What are you going to do with that gun?”

“I didn’t want it to be you.”

“Like you didn’t want it to be Sarah?” Maggie asked as she heard a noise at the door. She didn’t turn her head; she knew who it was, and fought the urge to run to him. “You killed her, Carolyn, and for eighteen years you let me think I did it!”

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” Carolyn said, shifting her eyes to Beau at the door and back to Maggie, talking to them both, pleading. “I thought she was dead. You have to believe that.”

“Then what about Maggie?” Beau asked softly. “Wasn’t she asleep in that house?”

Beau forced himself to focus only on Carolyn, trying to compare the woman he met earlier with the woman in front of him. How out of control was she? Was she capable of pulling that trigger? Beau had his gun out, but he wouldn’t risk the shot. He could hit Carolyn stone cold at this range. Any rookie could. But he had to worry about the reflex shot. When a gun went off, human instinct was to pull your own trigger.

Right now Carolyn’s gun pointed at Maggie.

“Were you willing to burn me up too?” Maggie asked.

“I forgot you were there.” Carolyn’s justification and apology were robbed of remorse for Maggie because the gun never wavered. “I called the fire department. See? I wasn’t trying to kill anyone.”

Maggie remembered how fast the trucks got there. The fire barely showed through the windows, yet they were already on the way. “It was too little, too late to save Sarah.”

“I panicked. I was a kid.
I didn’t have any choice.
” Her voice rose with each sentence. Maggie guessed she’d told herself these excuses a million times over the years. And they hadn’t worked. Even now she could hear the doubts.

“You’re not a kid anymore,” Beau told Carolyn, his voice as hard and unforgiving as the weapon in his hand. “You had a choice, and you set Maggie up. You were ready to send her to jail, ready to sacrifice her.”

“You don’t understand,” Carolyn said, recoiling from the truth.

“I do,” Maggie assured her. “You stayed in touch all
those years I was in the group home, not because you cared but because you had to know if I remembered anything.”

“Maybe at first but not—”

“But nothing,” Maggie cut her off ruthlessly. “All you cared about was if I remembered the fight. If I saw you in the shadows. Well, you don’t have to worry anymore, Carolyn. You don’t have to invite me over for Christmas dinner or buy me a birthday present. It’s over. I heard Sarah call you a whore. I heard you slap her, and I heard her fall.”

“You heard an accident,” Carolyn protested, and for the first time the unearthly calm that had held her together since she came out of the office began to crack. Tears welled up, and Maggie had to steel herself against Carolyn’s pain. She couldn’t forget. She wouldn’t forget.

“You set the house on fire,” Maggie told her coldly. “That was no accident.”

“I thought she was
dead.
Don’t you think I cried myself to sleep for years knowing that she wasn’t?”

Maggie fought tears, too—tears of frustration and rage and bitterness. “Don’t you think
I
cried? You knew how it ate me up inside to think that I could have killed someone. Especially Sarah. You knew, and you kept silent all these
years.
”

Beau moved closer to Maggie, and said, “That kept you dependent on her.”

“That’s not true,” Carolyn argued, crying openly now as the gun wavered and snapped back to Maggie. “Stop telling her those lies. Do you think I wanted any of this to happen? She knows what I did for her. She knows. Nobody else
wanted
her. No one else came to see her.
No one else sent her letters. No one came to her graduations. Just me. Who do you think was her family all those years? Who do you think she counts on when things get rough?”

Beau felt those hard truths strike home, knowing that they were tearing Maggie apart, and he couldn’t do anything to stop the hurt.

“And Andrea,” Carolyn added, playing her trump. “My daughter loves her.”

“Oh, my God,” Maggie whispered. “That’s why Sarah called you a
whore.
Webb Garner is Andrea’s father, isn’t he?”

“But don’t you see now, Maggie?” Carolyn pleaded. “Can’t you understand? I was going to go to the police after the fire. I was going to tell them everything, but then I found out I was pregnant. I had to think about the baby. My baby.”

Beau risked another step closer to Maggie, then said, “Is that how you bought his silence about that night? Did you make a deal?”

“He doesn’t know about Andrea.” Carolyn’s shoulders seem to crumple as the weight of wrongs piled up. “I never used her against him or asked for anything. If he suspected, he never did anything about it. Not even when Daddy threw me out of the trailer. If you’re old enough to get pregnant, you’re old enough to fend for yourself. That’s the Poag family motto.”

Her head came up as if to refuse any sympathy. “There was no deal. Sarah’s death was traumatic enough. I didn’t see the need to broadcast how I’d betrayed her.”

“Especially since you killed her,” Beau told her.

“What would you have had me do?” Carolyn said the
words so quietly. “Confess? Go to jail? Give up my baby?”

Maggie fought it, but the first twinge of compassion blunted her anger and pricked her tears. She couldn’t forgive what Carolyn had done to her, but she knew the bond between Carolyn and Andrea. She could imagine the horror of having to choose between the child you desperately wanted and clearing your conscience with confession. Carolyn’s real family would never have helped her, would never have raised her child.

The pain and plea for understanding in Carolyn’s eyes was too much to bear. When she turned away, she sought Beau. His arms were locked, that huge gun cradled in two hands. He didn’t look at her, but Maggie had no doubt he was aware of her. Every step he took brought him closer. He was angling in front of her. She suddenly realized that Beau had made a decision. If anyone got shot, he’d take the bullet.

“And what about when Andrea was bigger?” Carolyn continued, angry as she wiped away tears. Mascara left a wide swath of black across her cheek. “Should I have done it then? Should I have confessed and condemned her to the same system that screwed up Maggie? Or don’t you know Maggie’s secret?”

Maggie braced herself, but Carolyn never got the chance to tell Beau anything because he stole her thunder.

“Save your breath. Maggie played with matches—but this isn’t about her. This is about you, about fires you set. This is about now. Your daughter’s grown. You had a choice, and you sacrificed Maggie again.”

“Andrea’s the only good thing I’ve ever had in my
life,” Carolyn cried. “I couldn’t bear for her to know. Can’t you understand? I just wanted better for her, more for her than I had myself. I wanted her to go to college. How can she do that if I’m not working?” Turning to Maggie, as if she’d found an ally. “She wants to be a nurse. Did you know that?”

Maggie shook her head, and a tear slipped out as Carolyn’s misery sneaked in. The first burst of anger and betrayal was over. The second wave of emotion was sweeping through her—the aching loss of the only family she’d ever known. She could forgive and help Carolyn, or she could hold on to the hurt and grow bitter.