FIREBUG

A Short Story

Michael McBride

Firebug copyright © 2015 by Michael McBride

All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Michael McBride.

For more information about the author, please visit his website: www.michaelmcbride.net

Also by Michael McBride

NOVELS

Ancient Enemy

Bloodletting

Burial Ground

Condemned

Fearful Symmetry

Innocents Lost

Predatory Instinct

Sunblind

The Coyote

Vector Borne

NOVELLAS

F9

Remains

Snowblind

The Event

COLLECTIONS

Category V

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FIREBUG

FIREBUG

A Short Story

Michael McBride

Dedicated to the Thunderstorm faithful

Special thanks to Paul Goblirsch, Leigh Haig, NateSouthard, the incredible team at Thunderstorm Books; Shelley Milligan; Andrea Rawson; Jeff Strand; Kimberly Yerina; my amazing family; and all of my friends and loyal readers, without whom this book would not exist.

PROLOGUE

Twenty Years Ago

“Don’t shake it!”

“Why not? It’s just a firebug, Amelia. It can’t feel anything.”

“Yes it can. It feels just like we do. It even has a soul so it can go to heaven.”

“That’s not true. Who told you that?”

“It’s practically a fact, Emma. Look it up in the dictionary.”

“Encyclopedia, dummy.”

“Mom said not to call me names. And it’s a firefly, not a firebug.”

“They’re beetles, not flies. Besides, Dad says they’re ‘firebugs.’”

“He also says not to catch them in jars.”

“You’re not going to tell him, though.” The older girl leaned over the edge of the top bunk and glared at her younger sister. “Are you?”

“’Course not. We stick together.”

“That’s right. Sisters always stick together. Don’t forget it.”

The older girl shook the jar and set it on the windowsill. A brilliant yellow light flashed from the firefly’s rear end as it tapped against the glass.

“What do you think makes it glow, Emma?”

“Probably fire. Why else would people call them firebugs?”

“Fireflies. And the color’s too pretty for fire. I’ll bet that’s their souls. All fire does is burn.”

I

One Year Ago

Colorado Springs, Colorado

July 22nd

“Damn it, Carol! There’s no time to pack!”

She sobbed as she shoved everything of personal value into her suitcase. Jewelry, photo albums, sentimental trinkets. Anything that couldn’t be replaced. Her hands shook so badly that most of what she tried to take fell to the floor, which only served to make her cry even harder.

“Listen to me!” Raymond took his wife by the shoulders and turned her to face him. Her eyes were wide and wild. Tears streaked her mascara down her cheeks. He spoke as calmly as he could, carefully enunciating each word. “We need to get out of here right now or we aren’t going to make it.”

“This is all your fault!” She pounded her fists against his chest, his shoulders. He pulled her close and pinned her against him. Felt the fight drain out of her. “All your…fault…”

“We’re going to get through this.” He stroked her hair as he whispered into her ear. Struggled to hold her upright. “You and me, Carol. We’ve made it through hard times and we’ll do so again. Right now. Shh. Shh…Right now, though, we have to leave or we won’t be able to get out of here at all.”

She pushed out of his grasp and grabbed her bag.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the second-story window. Deep black smoke boiled against the sky. He could already see the brilliant glare of the advancing flames, working their way across the valley and up the slope toward his neighbor’s house. The fire was chewing through the dry weeds and pines like a runaway thresher.

Raymond turned and ran for the stairs. He caught up with his wife at the bottom. Ushered her toward the door to the garage. Looked back. Everything. Everything for which he had worked so hard. The house. The furniture. The books. The paintings. The pictures of his children. The memories. All of them were going to burn.

Carol opened the door and screamed.

Raymond pulled her away from the garage and slammed the door. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a silhouette in the darkness beside their SUV before it vanished behind the closing door.

It was already too late.

He took his wife by the hand and pulled her toward the sliding glass door in the family room. A carpet of flames swept across the back lawn. He slid the door open and a cloud of smoke billowed into the house. Rushed up the walls. Gathered near the ceiling. He coughed and covered his mouth and nose. Watched the flames race up the posts supporting the balcony above him.

No escape would be found through there.

He heard the wail of sirens in the distance.

Glowing embers gusted into the house, settled upon the carpet, and started to smolder.

Raymond dragged his wife away from the open door.

They ran up the stairs again. Through the living room. Into the foyer and toward the front door. He grasped the knob. Turned. It twisted in his palm but wouldn’t open. He put his shoulder into it. Quietly. No give. Harder. A thumping sound that made him cringe. Still no movement. It was somehow sealed from the outside.

The garage door burst inward with the sound of cracking wood. Struck the wall behind it.

Raymond opened the hall closet and shoved Carol inside, down on the floor, below the hanging coats. He ducked down out of the smoke and crawled across the tiled floor. Peeked down the stairs.

The silhouette stood framed in the back door as cinders gusted into its face. It stared through the smoke, the fire reflecting its bulky silver form. He could hear it breathing. Heavy. Labored. Mechanical.

It reached for the handle on the door.

Paused.

Raymond’s heart beat so hard in his chest it made his vision tremble.

Slowly, it slid the door closed. A fiery breath of cinders and ashes gusted through the narrowing gap until it latched with a click.

They were going to die in here.

He scurried back to the hall closet. Looked at his wife. So small, crouching there in the shadows. Tears streamed from her closed eyes. Her lips quivered.

Thump.

A heavy boot struck the bottom stair.

Thump.

Another. One step higher.

Raymond ducked into the closet. Pulled the door closed. Softly.

Thump.

Turned the handle until the tongue slid silently into the groove.

Thump.

A creak of the handrail, just on the other side of the wall.

Thump.

He scooted closer to his wife and pulled her into his arms.

Thump.

Smoke crept through the crack beneath the door. Burned his eyes, his throat.

Thump.

He tried not to cough. Kissed his wife’s hair.

Thump.

A shadow passed across the gap. The floorboards groaned. Large boots, scored black with carbon. Deep tread. They stopped in front of the door.

Again he heard the mechanical breathing.

Carol whimpered and he pulled her face to his chest. Felt the dampness of her tears. Prayed her death would be quick and merciful.

The shadow passed from beneath the door and Raymond wept in relief.

Maybe they had a chance after all.

The door swung open.

Carol screamed.

II

July 25th

“At times the smoke has been so thick we can’t see beyond that ridge over there to the west. Now I want you to look back this way, where you can see the flames rising from the roofs of the houses over the trees. So far, more than a hundred homes have burned and the fire remains zero percent contained…”

“…learned from the National Weather Service that there was no lightning data recorded within the last seven days in this part of Southern Colorado. Priority number one is getting a handle on this fire, but in the backs of their minds, though, they do want to know what started this destructive blaze…”

“…expanded—just within the last few hours—the evacuation zone to include an additional eighteen hundred homes.”

“As you can see behind me, these police vehicles racing past—We’ve just been informed we need to wrap this up and get out of here. Because of these high winds, the fire’s moving fast and becoming more and more unpredictable…”

“…investigators suspect arson as now more than one hundred and fifty homes have been consumed by the fire and upwards of thirty-five hundred evacuees remain in shelters around the city. Hotlines have been set up to help…”

“…saddened to report the first confirmed casualties of the blaze as firefighters and relief workers sift through the rubble left in the fire’s wake.”

III

Four Months Ago

Provo, Utah

March 4th

“You’re wasting your time coming all the way down here,” the medical examiner said. He was younger than most in his position and much better looking. He applied lip balm with his pinkie while he talked. “There’s not a whole lot left to see.”

“There’s really only one thing I need to see.” Special Agent Emma Behrent wore her auburn hair in a ponytail threaded through the back of her FBI ball cap and the customary blue and gold windbreaker and jeans. She carried a Glock 23 .40 caliber in a sling under her left shoulder and a plastic grocery bag in her right hand. “And I should be able to find it regardless of the physical condition of the remains.”

“You’re the boss. I’m telling you, though, this is by far one of the worst I’ve seen.”

“I appreciate your concern, Dr. Doleman, but you’d be surprised what I’ve seen in the last eight months.”

She followed him down the corridor, past the autopsy suites, and into the morgue. She’d grown accustomed to the smell of formaldehyde and sawed bones, a scent that reminded her of getting a cavity filled as a child, and yet she would never be adequately prepared for the scent that emerged from the locker when the ME opened it and slid the body out on its tray. A cross between thawed, freezer-burnt meat and bloody stool.

Doleman drew back the plastic sheet covering the remains, which came away glistening with greasy, suppurated fluids.

“She’s all yours, but don’t take too long. I want to get this one done before it gets any riper.”

Behrent removed a mini LED Maglite and a stainless steel probe from her jacket pocket and leaned over the body. Carefully, she used the probe to pry the bared teeth apart.

“If you let me know what you’re looking for, I’d be happy to help you find it.”

She pretended not to hear and directed the beam through the gap she’d created.

“What can you tell me about the physical condition of the decedent?” she asked.

Behrent already knew the woman’s name was Cassandra Hopkins and the first responders had arrived at 11:32 p.m. last night to find her horse barn in flames. The neighbor from the adjacent ranch had called 911 eighteen minutes prior, when she first smelled smoke and noticed the orange glow on the horizon. It took less than ten minutes to extinguish the fire and even fewer to find Ms. Hopkins’s burnt remains in the wreckage of what was left of one of the rear stables, beneath the charred rubble of the wooden roof. While the fire marshal’s report had yet to be released, Behrent had no doubt the fire would be ruled accidental in origin, as she’d seen so many times already.

“Fourth-degree burns over the entirety of her body. Significant eschar on her digits and face. Fixed rigor places her time of death within the last twelve hours. Lack of pustules and hypostasis indicates she was already dead before the fire consumed her. I’d lay odds the cause of death was asphyxiation—the most common cause of fire-related deaths—but until I crack her open, I won’t be able to tell you for sure.”

“You’re saying she was overcome by the smoke?”

“That’s how it works. The smoke first makes the victim cough, then, as it intensifies, limits their oxygen intake. As the brain receives less and less oxygen, it passes from dizziness and disorientation to outright loss of consciousness. They’re generally dead before the fire reaches them, or at least well on their way.”

“Nothing else you can think of that might have caused asphyxiation other than the smoke?”

Behrent pried the teeth as far apart as she could and angled the beam from side to side to better see into the dead woman’s blackened throat.

“You can tell by the tissues in her mouth and oropharynx—right there—that she was breathing the smoke. In my field, you quickly learn that the obvious explanation is nearly always the correct one.”

“Did you notice the puncture wounds on her wrists and ankles or the ones on her cheeks?”

“Like I said, I have yet to perform a thorough examination.”

“Have an obvious explanation for them?”

He made no reply.

“How about the lacerations in the back of the throat?”

She leaned aside so he could see where the light struck the back of the dead woman’s throat. The small cuts were barely visible behind the bulge of her desiccated tongue, but were readily apparent as the heat and smoke had caused the edges to darken and peel apart.  

“That’s not the kind of thing you just happen to find. You’d have to know they were there to look for them. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Here. You hold her mouth open and I’ll show you.”

Dr. Doleman took the probe from her and applied traction to the mandible. Behrent opened the plastic bag and removed a canister of whipped cream. Shook it. Acknowledged the confusion on the ME’s face with a half-smile.

Within an hour of Ms. Hopkins’s death, Behrent had been on a plane from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, where a rental car had been ready and waiting to take her down I-15 to Provo. She’d used the time in the air to learn everything she could about Ms. Hopkins, what little there was, anyway. She was a single, twenty-eight year-old horse trainer, who’d never gotten so much as a parking ticket and whose Facebook account was about as uninteresting as they came. She inherited the Whispering Glade Ranch from her grandfather two years earlier and appeared to have no ambition when it came to the business itself. She had been a reasonably attractive woman, in a plain sort of way, with a slender, athletic build, pale white skin, and—most importantly—natural flame-red hair.

“What do you intend to do with that?” the ME asked.

“She may have asphyxiated from the smoke, doctor, but she had a little help.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where are the lights in here?”

“By the door, why…?”

Behrent killed them before he could finish his sentence. A bank of emergency lights on the other side of the morgue remained on, but it was dark enough to see what she’d flown four hundred miles and driven another sixty to see.  

She stood beside Doleman, removed the cap from the whipped cream, and inserted the nozzle between the dead woman’s teeth.

“Are you familiar with the Lampyridae family of beetles?”

“They secrete a toxin called lucibufagin when threatened that can cause hypertension and cardiac symptoms in large quantities, but there’ve been no reported cases of respiratory symptoms, let alone death, in humans.”

“This particular family also has another unique trait. It has a specialized organ in its abdomen called a lantern, in which a combination of enzymes—luciferase and luciferin, specifically—produces a complex chemical reaction that’s converted to bioluminescence.”

“Fireflies.”

“Exactly. And each different species of firefly produces a slightly different reaction so as to create a unique color, but all of them require nitrous oxide to trigger the reaction and oxygen to turn it off. They accomplish this through a specially adapted means of breathing, but it can also be artificially stimulated by other means.”

She pressed the nozzle on the canister. Pressurized gas hissed into the victim’s mouth and down her throat. The reaction was instantaneous. Green spots glowed from the dead tissue. And faded every bit as quickly.

“What the hell was that?”

“You’ll find traces of the lucibufagin toxin in the scratches from the firefly’s legs. When it was forced down her throat, it triggered her gag reflex, which made her muscles spasm and start crushing it, squishing out some of the fluid from its abdomen, including its lantern. Just enough for one final glow.”

“How does someone force a firefly down another person’s throat?”

“He binds their wrists and ankles behind them with barbed wire and wraps it around their jaws so they can’t close their mouths.”

IV

Yesterday

Colorado Springs, Colorado

July 26th

Behrent sat on the foot of the bed in her room and stared at the patchwork of maps affixed to the wall above the small writing desk. They depicted the American Southwest, from Southern California through New Mexico and Arizona, and north into Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. Dozens of locations were marked with colored pushpins, beside which notes, names, and dates had been scribbled. Once she developed this system, the pattern jumped right out and bit her. Each pin represented an individual death matching her profile: asphyxiation by smoke and fourth-degree burns of a red-haired female in her twenties to early thirties, and each color corresponded to a different season. A blue pin indicated the victim had died during the winter; green during the spring; yellow during the summer; and red during the autumn. Each color was clustered geographically. Blue pins lined the coast from San Diego to Los Angeles. Green pins traced a line from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City. Yellow pins stretched from Denver to Santa Fe and red pins traversed the route from Las Cruces to Phoenix. And each and every one of those pins represented a different year, a single death by fire in each location every year, so few as not to stand out as a statistical anomaly, but more than enough to draw a direct correlation, if you knew what you were looking for.

One victim for each season in an annual cycle that started on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in the summer, headed west through the Sonoran Desert in the fall, followed the Pacific coast in the winter, and completed the circle through the Mojave in the spring.

For six consecutive years.

And no one might ever have made the connection had the man she had come to think of as the Firebug not incinerated a twenty-seven year-old high school teacher in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her name was Amelia Behrent and her older sister, a Special Agent working out of the field office in Denver, had dismissed her concerns that someone was stalking her three days earlier in what would be the last conversation they ever had.

That was thirteen months ago now, in what would come to be known as the worst summer for wildfires in the history of Colorado after a blaze a month later destroyed more than one hundred and fifty homes, forced the evacuation of more than ten thousand residents, and claimed the lives of a married couple, whose remains were found in a closet where they apparently took refuge in an attempt to flee the smoke.

It was in Amelia’s mouth—her little sister’s burnt mouth—that the presence of the lucibufagin toxin was first discovered. From the subsequent pathological assays, it was determined that the specific toxin was endemic to one particular species of firefly, Luciolinae luciola. A firefly native to Japan. One that had never been encountered on either the North or South American continent. One that could never have found its way into her sister’s mouth had someone not forced it inside.

The Japanese firefly averaged approximately an inch in length; however, based on the thin lacerations in the soft tissue, the one that had been inside her sister’s oropharynx was closer to two inches, presumably as the result of generations of selective captive breeding. Its lantern glowed an almost fluorescent green, and in traditional Japanese lore, represented the vessel in which the souls of the dead traveled.

The monster who murdered Amelia believed he was capturing the souls of his victims inside the fireflies and then incinerating every trace of evidence.

Or so he thought.

Behrent had discovered his modus operandi and had been hunting him ever since, coming closer to him with each passing season. She was slowly getting inside his head, gaining an understanding of how his mind worked, an appreciation for how he selected his victims. She’d studied the final days of each and every one of his victims in as much detail as she could find. They were all single and tended to live a more reclusive lifestyle. They were all routine-oriented, from shopping at the same grocery store on the same day to filling at the same gas station to taking the same routes to and from work at the same times every day. Theirs was a lifestyle of predictability, one that made them easy prey.

That was why Behrent rented this house two months ago, why she’d adopted a fictitious life of her own careful design. She’d gone to great lengths to make herself the most accessible target possible. The house was in an area known as Woodmen Valley, which featured homes on large lots surrounded by a vast wilderness of pines and aspens. The only way in or out of the development by vehicle was through a bottleneck granting ready access to I-25, the main thoroughfare from Denver to Santa Fe, while one could approach invisibly on foot through the dense forest by merely straying from the public recreational trail or the railroad tracks to the east, walking overland from the Air Force Academy to the north, or wending through the newer neighborhoods to the west. She stopped at the same coffee shop at the same time every morning, drove the same stretch of highway across town to the same park where she walked around the same lake before heading to the same ground floor office where she worked at a computer in front of a window through which anyone passing her on the street could see her. She walked to lunch at the same sandwich shop at the same time every day, one clearly visible from two major downtown intersections and the highway, and drove home along the same stretch of highway at the same time, stopping only long enough at the same grocery store to shop for her evening meal, which she made in a kitchen surrounded by windows. As she had every day for the last two months.

The house had a security system that featured views from four exterior cameras she could watch on her laptop day and night, as could the agents posted in another rental house three blocks away. The same agents took turns following her to work in different vehicles and spent their days surveilling her leased office space from another unit on the fourth floor, while she watched the same feeds on her computer and pretended to be an accountant. It was a tedious routine that became more frustrating with the passage of each uneventful day. The only thing keeping her going was the relief from opening the morning paper and discovering that there had been no fire-related fatalities in his summer hunting grounds.

She set her laptop on the nightstand beside her bed and tilted the screen so she could clearly see it with her head on the pillow. Each of the four quadrants showed the same thing they did every night: aspen trees with leaves that shivered in the breeze, pines with swaying boughs, wavering waist-high weeds, clusters of scrub oak, and the seemingly sentient shadows lurking beneath and inside them. She picked up the two-way, battery-powered transceiver from beside it and brought it to her lips.

“Ten o’clock guys,” she said. “You know what that means.”

“You got everything locked down for sure?” Special Agent Troy Abrams asked from three blocks away, where he watched the same feeds. His partner, SA Warren Young, took the first shift sleeping.

“Crap. I thought you guys were going to lock up.”

“That gets funnier every night, Behrent. Anything to report? We’re still tracking the same commuter vehicles on this end, but so far they all check out. Just ordinary folks going to and from work at the same time as you. And no one out and about in the neighborhood. You see anything we’re missing?”

“Today was the second day in a row there was a jogger at the lake who—”

“Davis Peele. He’s a solar engineer for Excel. Nothing about him stands out.”  

“And the guy at the coffee shop?”

“Neal Alpert. Mortgage broker. Removes his wedding ring in his car every morning before going in. I think he’s sweet on you.”

“Wonderful. Anything on your end?”

“All’s quiet on the western front.”

“Do me a favor. See if you can put together a database of car and foot traffic by day of the week. I want to see if there are any patterns there that we might not have recognized.”

“We’ll see what we can do. You want any company up there tonight?”

“That gets funnier every night, Abrams.”

“Get some sleep, princess. Tomorrow promises to be another day like every other.”

“One of these days it won’t be.”

Behrent set the transceiver back on the nightstand. She watched the security cameras around her house and thought about her little sister until sleep finally took her.    

V

Nine Months Ago

Tucson, Arizona

October 14th

Behrent clicked on her flashlight and stepped across the threshold where once the front door of the small stucco house had stood. Broken ceramic tiles crunched underfoot. The floorboards were still soft from the sheer quantity of water they’d absorbed. The plaster of the walls had been consumed, exposing the burnt skeletal framework through which she could see the blackened appliances in the kitchen, the remains of the furniture in the living room, the tiled bathroom, and the nearly unidentifiable furniture in the bedroom. Firefighters had found the victim, a twenty-six year-old leasing agent named Ashley Freeman, in the walk-in closet, where she appeared to have been trapped by a fire that originated in the kitchen.

All that was left of the closet now was a soggy mess of the burnt contents of the fallen shelves toward the rear. She nudged through them with the toe of her shoe. She didn’t know what she hoped to accomplish by coming out here. Maybe a part of her hoped she might stumble upon something the firemen and the fire inspector missed. She knew deep down, though, that if anything had ever been here, if the fire hadn’t destroyed it, then the high-pressure hoses had. Or maybe she just needed the right setting to put her in the proper frame of mind to contemplate the profile Behavioral had generated for her.

Their unknown subject was a Caucasian male in his mid- to late-thirties. There was nothing extraordinary about his appearance, one way or the other. He would have stood apart from the crowd while stalking them if he was anything other than unexceptional, which excluded his having red hair himself. He was of average height and unthreatening build, and above-average intellect. His was a white-collar job that required significant travel or lengthy periods of relocation. Behrent had initially suspected a trucker or someone in the interstate shipping business as his hunting grounds followed the course of the major highway routes: I-5 up the coast of California, I-15 and I-70 through Nevada and Utah, I-25 from Colorado to New Mexico, and I-10 and I-8 back through Arizona to Los Angeles, each chosen by the season when a death by fire would be least likely to stand out and betray his pattern.

The sadistic nature of the barbed wire bondage suggested both sexual and emotional dysfunction. Binding their wrists and ankles behind their backs was meant to make them feel utterly helpless; his way of demonstrating his control over them when he believed he was in control of so little else in his life. The barbed wire itself was more than a means of ensuring they wouldn’t be able to move or close their mouths, it was to deliberately inflict the greatest amount of pain on a category of victim that represented a female in his life who had wronged him in some way. An ex-lover or object of his affections who spurned his advances. A person in a position of trust from his childhood who abused that relationship, possibly a teacher or family friend. Someone who manipulated his emotions and made him feel physically inadequate.

Maybe it was that association that had drawn him subconsciously to fire in the first place, a correlation between the red hair and the flames or its indomitable will and that of the person who imposed hers upon him.

It was that fascination with fire that stood out most. Something about its destructive and irresistible nature spoke to him on a primal level. Perhaps it was the way that fire killed in an almost merciful manner before violently consuming its victims; a dichotomous aspect of its nature that reminded him of himself. He knew it intimately, respected it to a degree that could almost be classified as worship. And he understood its actions under various environmental conditions and how to control it to such a degree as to make its origin appear accidental, how to bend the flames to his will. The profile suggested his affinity dawned at an early age and he’d chosen a career path that allowed him to work with it from a distance, in potentially some form of research or investigatory capacity, some job that allowed him to further develop his relationship with it, to hone his ability to control it, rather than putting him in a position of having to destroy it. On some level he resented and abhorred firefighters, which would make him want to spend as little time in their presence as possible and his interactions with them strained, if not downright hostile.

And then there were the fireflies, which he had somehow romanticized. Theirs was a fire of their own creation that they could turn on and off at will, one that could only be extinguished in death, one that it used to attract its most suitable mate. Perhaps that was what he was trying to do on some level, attempting to win over the woman who rebuked him or to catch the eye of the one who never noticed him. Or maybe he really believed he was capturing the souls of his victims inside their abdominal lanterns. Whatever the case, his use of the Japanese species reflected a westernized, literal interpretation of the mythology that suggested his knowledge came from books rather than from firsthand experience.

Yet none of that knowledge brought Behrent any closer to finding the man who murdered her sister.

She kicked the moldering pile of debris and screamed in frustration.  

A light snapped on in the window of the house next door. Its fence was scored with carbon and the bushes lining it were brown and wilted.

She clicked off her flashlight and stared up into the night sky. The stars made her feel even more insignificant than she already felt. She’d discounted her sister’s fears and allowed her to be killed and then let another innocent woman die because she couldn’t catch the man who did it. At this point, she didn’t even know where to begin. He’d been doing this for so long now that he had it down to a science and she had only just figured out that he existed at all.

Behrent stepped out of the scorched wooden framework of the closet, no better off than she’d been when she arrived. She caught movement from the back yard.

Stopped.

Her right hand found the butt of her Glock.

At first she thought she’d seen flashlights at a distance, but that couldn’t possibly be the case with the fence less than thirty feet away. She walked across the cracked pavestones and the flooded ornamental rock garden to where a half-dozen blinking golden lights swirled around a bird fountain.

It was the same kind she and her sister used to catch when they were children. They hadn’t called them fireflies in Colorado back then.

They’d called them firebugs.

VI

Today

Colorado Springs, Colorado

July 27th

Behrent surreptitiously watched the passersby on the sidewalk over her computer monitor. She recognized the regulars by now, but not well enough to feel confident that one of them wasn’t her guy. Even the dogs they walked could be props. In a neighborhood like this, a man fitting the Firebug’s profile would blend in just about perfectly. Assuming she’d even done enough to attract his attention. And there was still the chance that after spending so much time stalking her sister he’d recognized her right off the bat. She and Amelia hadn’t looked as similar as a lot of sisters she knew, but they did look enough alike that there was no mistaking the resemblance if they stood side-by-side.

Amelia.

There were so many things Behrent wished she’d done differently. So many things she wished she’d had the chance to say. Most of all, she wished she could hear her sister’s voice, her laugh, if only one last time. All she could do now was make sure that this monster didn’t kill again, and even that was starting to feel like a hopeless proposition.

She’d gone through every case file so many times she could almost recite them by heart. She knew the names of all twenty-three of his victims, knew nearly as much about them as their mothers did. There was nothing to link them together outside of their physical similarities and their geographical locations. She’d pulled on every possible string she could think to pull, from first boyfriends to jilted lovers to coworkers and neighbors with criminal records. She’d looked into nearly every interstate sales and distribution firm and thousands of their employees. She’d beaten her head against every possible wall in hopes of making the breakthrough that eluded her. If she hadn’t done enough to attract him, then he was just going to keep on killing until she figured out another way to stop him. And the blame for every death hereafter would fall squarely on her shoulders.

This was her best chance and she knew it. If he’d seen her here and then saw her three months from now outside of Phoenix, he’d make her in a heartbeat. And if he went to ground, there would be nothing they could do about it until he popped back up on their radar.

If he ever did.

He was nothing if not patient, which in many ways marked him as unique among serial killers. Most enjoyed periods of escalation, during which their bloodlust became so insatiable they accelerated their timetables and took risks they might not ordinarily take. This was when they were most likely to be caught. Yet not once had her unsub—unknown subject—given in to his primal urges and broken from his pattern. Not once had he taken a victim out of season. His restraint bordered on superhuman. To think that not once had he slipped...

Behrent tapped her fingernails on her desk as she stared out the window. A woman in spandex jogged past behind a stroller.

What if he had slipped and they simply hadn’t noticed?

She closed her eyes and tried to follow that elusive line of thought. If he’d taken another victim who fit the profile, she would have caught it right away. She’d searched every fire-related death across the country during the past six years so as not to see only what she wanted to see. Approximately 2,500 people died every year in residential fires, the majority of them children under four and adults over sixty-five. She opened her eyes. What if he only picked off a victim here or there, just enough to keep the demons at bay? 

Behrent logged into the U.S. Fire Administration database on her laptop. What if she factored out those age groups, as well as the most common at-risk groups? Smoking was the leading cause of fire-related deaths and alcohol use was the single greatest contributing factor. African and Native Americans represented the greatest cross-section of fatalities, as did people who lived in rural areas and prefabricated homes. She limited it to the previous year, filtered out all of those factors, and initiated a search.

Still more than six hundred deaths.

She broke it down further into just the six southwestern states.

Forty-eight.

January through March. California.

Five deaths. She read the brief summaries. A fifty-six year-old female in Sherman Oaks died after improperly stored linseed oil caught fire. A seventeen year-old male in Sacramento while attempting to make a pipe bomb in his garage. Moira O’Reilly, victim number eighteen. Two twenty-four year-old males in Barstow in a meth lab.

March through June. Nevada and Utah.

Four deaths. A forty-three year-old male and twenty-six year-old female in a one-car accident that resulted in the gas tank exploding. A sixty-three year-old female in Reno who failed to put out a grease fire. Natalie Wilkins, victim number nineteen. 

June through September. Colorado and Arizona.

Five deaths. Amelia Behrent—her baby sister—victim number twenty. Four fatalities associated with the Mountain Vista Fire, which burned more than a hundred and fifty homes and forced the evacuation of nearly ten thousand people: two volunteer firefighters—a fifty-one year-old male from Saguache and a twenty-eight year-old male from Lincoln, Nebraska—and a forty-eight year-old male and forty-seven year-old female, whose remains were discovered in the rubble of their home within the evacuation zone.

She looked out the window again. At the mail carrier walking down the opposite side of the street with his bag over his shoulder. At the teenage girl who managed to juggle a Starbucks cup, a cell phone, and a purse, while carrying a dog that looked more like a rodent. At the lengthening shadows of the trees stretching across the road.

A middle-age couple who stayed in their home even as the fire consumed the houses surrounding them and the air filled with smoke.

The worst summer for wildfires in the history of the state.

She tapped her nails on the desk again.

Opened a new window and initiated a search. Their names were Raymond and Carol Waldon and their remains were found in what was left of their house at 136 Ponderosa Lane, near the theorized source of the fire. All sixteen houses on their street burned to the ground before the first emergency responders arrived on the scene. The majority of their neighbors had been at work, but those who were at home when the flames swept up the slope of dry grass and shrubs claimed to have smelled the smoke with enough time to hurriedly pack and evacuate before they saw the first hint of fire. Even their retired neighbors managed to flee before their houses were gutted. Only Raymond and Carol Waldon remained to watch the fire rise up like a tsunami and crash down upon their home. Only Raymond and Carol, the local franchisee of a national insurance company and his wife, organizer of an annual 5K race to benefit breast cancer research.

Behrent stared at their pictures on the screen. Maybe Raymond was past his prime, but looked like the kind of guy who jogged in the morning and spent his weekends on the links. Carol was obviously a runner and still in the kind of shape she enjoyed flaunting in tennis shorts and spandex. These weren’t the kind of people who were generally the first to be overcome by smoke, nor were they the kind who had all of their money tied up in their physical possessions. They were undoubtedly so well insured they could have walked away from their incinerated house better off for it. So what caused them to stay in their house while those around them fled? Why were a businessman and a socialite both home on a weekday anyway?

Behrent pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed a number she knew by heart.

“We’re knocking off early today, boys,” she said. “There are a couple of stops I want to make on the way home.”

She hung up and stared through the window. A man stood beside the thick trunk of an elm across the street, staring right back at her. The hood of his sweatshirt was drawn down low so she couldn’t see his eyes, only the smile that formed on his lips when he caught her looking.

A UPS truck emerged from the corner of her vision.

When it passed, the man was gone.

VII

“I’m telling you,” Behrent said. “He was there.”

Young flashed through a series of menus on his tablet as they hiked up the steep path between the new growth of aspens and willows and scrub oaks that were barely taller than they were. Only the occasional chunk of blackened wood or scorched earth showed through the grass and weeds as a reminder of the devastation. A year ago, this entire valley, right up through the foothills and into the Rockies, had burned for nearly two weeks straight. She remembered news footage of smoke so thick you could barely see the headlights of cars, policemen in respirators directing traffic with glowing embers settling on their shoulders, firefighters with soot-blackened faces and goggles chopping down acres of forest in a rushed effort to build a firebreak while the same violent wind that fanned the flames hurled ashes and cinders into their faces, cars lined bumper-to-bumper on all of the roads leading away from a mountain made of flames. It was the kind of nightmare that would have scarred her, were she not already completely overwhelmed by the grief of losing her sister in such a horrific manner only weeks before.

“I can access the security footage from here and you can see for yourself,” Young said. He was as broad as he was tall and wore his blond hair buzzed short. He’d left his cap and windbreaker in the car, but his physique and bearing still screamed law enforcement, if his sunglasses didn’t give him away first. Abrams waited with the cars at the foot of the trail, simultaneously scrutinizing the traffic wending upward into the neighborhood and filing his report for the day’s surveillance. “Right about quarter to one, you say?”

“12:43. I made sure to note the time.”

He passed her the tablet and she selected the quadrant that gave her the best chance of seeing the man she positively knew had been there. The camera was positioned in such a way as to focus on the sidewalk in front of the office building and anyone who so much as slowed to look at her through the window. The cars parked at the meters along the curb were clearly visible, as was the asphalt beyond them. Traffic passed in colored blurs. She could read the license plates of the cars parked diagonally across the street and hints of the opposite sidewalk between them. She saw just the thinnest strip of grass at the top of the screen, the very bottoms of the trunks of the elms, and the uneven earth from which their thick roots snaked. She located the tree behind which the man had stood and watched it clear up until the brown blur of the UPS truck eclipsed it.

“I’m sorry, Behrent. If he was there, we didn’t get him.”

“What do you mean ‘if’?”

He held up his hands when she rounded on him.

“No offense. It’s just that we’ve been running through this same routine for so long we’re starting to look for things that might not be there, you know? All of us, Behrent. Abrams and I both feel like we’re projecting what we want to see rather than observing what we actually do see.”

Behrent backed up the recording and played it again. She watched the very top edge of the screen and nothing else. A shadow appeared on the grass. It moved ever so slightly, but not in time with those of the branches of the trees. A brown blur. When it passed, the shadow was gone.

“Watch the very top of the recording.” She passed the tablet back to him. “Then tell me I’m seeing things.”

“Emma…”

She tried to recreate his image in her mind, but the harder she concentrated, the more elusive he became. All she clearly remembered was the hood of his sweatshirt drawn low over his brow so that his eyes remained in shadow. She remembered a lower face like any other and a smile unlike any she’d ever seen before. It was the kind of smile that belied the expression, the kind that would haunt her until her dying breath.

It was predatory.

Evil.

The trail wound back to the north and granted her a magnificent view of the valley. A dry streambed lined with saplings cut through the bottom. It was clogged with charcoaled chunks of trees that had run downward from the higher country. Grasses that shimmered golden in the afternoon sun lined the northeastern slope. With each gust of wind, ripples raced upward toward the houses perched on the crest.

The fire started somewhere down there and ran uphill through the dry grass, growing taller as it gained momentum. In a matter of minutes, it crowned the knoll, consumed the hedges, and sped across the lawns. By the time all was said and done, one hundred and fifty-three houses had burned to the ground and there was a great black stain upon the mountains large enough to be seen from space. As no source of the fire had been identified, the investigation had turned to arson. The case remained open.

Behrent imagined a man with his hood drawn over his eyes standing downhill in the shadows of the mature pines. He held something silver in his hand. A flick of his wrist and it produced flame. He smiled at her and touched the flame to the crisp mat of dead leaves and pine needles and vanished into the smoke as the wind accelerated the flames up the hillside toward the conspicuous gap amid the new construction.

She broke away from the trail and ascended through the spear grass and yuccas and cacti. The topsoil was crisp with windswept charcoal and crunched underfoot. She stopped in what had once been the back yard of the Waldon house and stared downhill. The way the wind blew, she could almost see the exact path the fire had taken. A total distance of maybe a hundred yards and it would have been visible the entire time. It looked like it would have reached the neighboring house to the north first, then followed the topography right across the back of Raymond and Carol Waldon’s.

“Abrams just received the coroner’s report,” Young said. “He’s forwarding it now.”

Behrent nodded as she surveyed the neighborhood. The houses to either side of her were brand new and composed of brick and stone with ceramic-tiled roofs. Same with the ones across the street. Only this one lot had yet to be built upon, presumably because the insurance guarantor was tied up in court battling being held to the full payout for an expensive home that was only going to be inherited by the Waldons’s children and resold for a profit while the company was stuck with the tab.

The house had been razed, but the foundation remained intact. She could see where the garden level main floor opened onto the yard. There would have been a door and windows giving right onto the yard. The fire would have been clearly visible through any of them. The black nubs of the posts that once supported a balcony framed the patio. There’d been a fireplace off of the family room and a door accessing the three-car garage, now a cracked apron collecting puddles of water. Another concrete pad spread across the leveled hillside where the kitchen and formal living room had once been. She walked around to the front steps and tried to find where the foyer closet in which the Waldons died had been. She stood inside what remained of the frame and turned in a circle.

The fire had rushed uphill toward the back of the house. There would have been no hope if fleeing in that direction. That left the garage door and the front door, both of which opened on the complete opposite side of the house from the flames. Why had they not gone out either, and instead chosen to hide where she stood now? Raymond had underwritten enough insurance policies to know that there was absolutely no percentage in trying to save his physical possessions and that the most important thing for anyone to do in case of a fire was get the hell out of the building.

“Here we go. You want the husband or the wife first?”

“The husband.”

“Decedent: Raymond Leonard Waldon. Autopsy: ECCS070113-06C. Autopsy authorized by Dr. William Gustafson for the El Paso County Coroner’s Office. Identified by dental records. Rigor: absent. Livor: purple to black. Distribution: left ankle, hip, and shoulder. Age: forty-eight. Race—”

“Skip ahead to the findings.”

“External Examination: Fourth-degree burns with significant eschar development cover ninety to ninety-five percent of the surface area. The remaining five to ten percent have second- to third-degree burns and represent the points of contact with the ground. No pustule formation. The third through fifth digits on the right hand and the lateral four digits on each foot are absent. No indication of traumatic amputation.”

Bahrent listened as she walked through what was left of the house. She kicked at detritus that had blown into corners and inspected anything left of the original construction, no matter how small or burnt.

“X-rays: Total body x-rays demonstrate heat-induced patina fractures of the calvarium and skull base and transverse fractures of bilateral scapulae and ilia. A fracture of the right ulnar styloid process appears perimortem. As do the penetrating injuries to the cortices and cancellous bony surfaces of the bilateral radii and ulnae, and tibiae and fibulae, and, to a lesser degree, the occipital bones.”

“Son of a bitch,” Behrent said. “This was our guy, all right. But what made him break his pattern to go after these people?”

“Do you want me to keep going?”

“Skip ahead to cause of death.”

“Asphyxiation.”

“Manner of death?”

“Accidental.”

“Disposition of the remains?”

“Cremation.”

“Damn it. Any further mention of the non-heat-induced fractures?”

“They found them buried under the second story of the house, Behrent.”

She knelt, brushed through a pile of detritus that had accumulated in a corner of the foundation on the main floor, and extricated a twisted length of rusted metal. Rolled it over in her palm. Wiped it off with her shirt. Held it up to the sun and inspected it. It was maybe an inch long, all told. Coiled twice in the center and sharp on either end. No doubt about it.

It was a barb from a length of barbed wire fencing.

VIII

“I’m Douglas Waldon.” The twenty-five year-old broker extended his hand. He was the eldest child of Raymond and Carol and looked like a miniature version of his father. “How can I help you?”

Behrent shook his hand and used it to guide him away from the assistant who’d fetched him from his office.

“Can we talk in private?”

His expression was one of confusion, but he gestured toward the office door and allowed her to lead the way. She was already seated when he closed the door and took his seat on the opposite side of the desk from her.

“What can I do for you, Miss…”

“Behrent.” She flashed her badge. “Special Agent Behrent. I have some questions I hope you’ll be able to answer for me.”

“Sure. If I can.”

His face and posture were both open. No sign of deception in either. He was a recent graduate of the business school at the University of Northern Colorado and had been in process of completing his training at the corporate headquarters of the agency franchisor when his parents died. Now he was the inheritor of more than just his father’s job.

The office had obviously belonged to his father, as well. While the framed picture of his desk was of an attractive brunette about Douglas’s age and his diplomas and certifications adorned the walls, the remaining framed pictures on the wall were of his father with various people Behrent didn’t recognize.

She’d learned on the drive over that the fire had nearly crippled Douglas on a personal level. The loss of his parents was compounded by the financial losses of his clients. Having to deal with so many families whose entire lives had gone up in smoke inside their burnt homes, all of their tears, and all of their condolences had driven him to the point of discreetly trying to sell the office and seeking psychiatric care.

The last thing she wanted to do was to tell him that she believed his parents’ deaths hadn’t been accidental.

“This is a regional office,” Behrent said. “Is that right?”

“Yes, this is the base of operations for the southwestern region. We handle the insurance needs of roughly two million people out of offices in six different states, including the southern half of California.”

“Who runs those offices?”

“Managing partners who essentially enter into a subcontract agreement. Our overall percentage is relatively small compared to what the parent company makes, especially considering we bear the brunt of the risk.” He paused. “Can I ask what this is all about?”

She’d come prepared with a story.

“We’re investigating fraud in an industry with a similar organizational structure and we’re looking for a better understanding of the overall functionality and accountability.” He nodded as though the explanation made a certain amount of sense. “So what I want to know is how you oversee all of these managing partners, how you make sure they toe your line.”

“We have weekly managerial meetings via FaceTime and bi-annual organizational retreats.”

“That doesn’t sound like a whole lot of supervision.”

“We invest a lot of time into researching our prospective partners and limit our appointments to only those agencies we’ve identified as having long-term growth and profit potential. We’re not only accountable to our partners and our clients, but to our parent company and its shareholders. As such, we also employ a regional supervisor who serves as our proxy and performs monthly physical and financial audits to ensure that both image and accountability are in compliance with corporate standards.”

A tingling sensation passed through Behrent’s abdomen.

“This proxy physically travels to each of the individual offices once a month?”

She had to concentrate to regulate her breathing.

“He’s on the road two weeks out of the month. It’s a good thing we’re paying for the car and not the mileage.”

“And which states are in your region?”

“Arizona, Southern California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.”

Her mouth became dry, her palms damp.

“I wonder if it would be possible to talk to this proxy.”

“I’m sure Wes would be happy to help you out. He’s one of the nicest guys on the planet. He’s still on the road, though. You want me to give you his cell phone number?”

“Sure, but I’ll probably just wait for him to get back.” She attempted a smile. “How long has he been with the company?”

“I don’t know for sure. Five, six years? He’s been here since before I came on.”

The ground tilted underneath her.

“Is he in any of these pictures?”

Her heartbeat.

Thupp-thupp. Thupp-thupp. Thupp-thupp.

“Yeah, that’s him up there with my dad and John Elway.”

Blood rushing in her ears.

She stood and leaned closer to the picture. Three smiling men in suits in a luxury box at Sports Authority Stadium. Two of them she recognized, but it wasn’t until she reached up and covered the upper half of the third man’s face that she recognized him, too.

“What did you say his name was again?”

“Wes. Wes Moore.”

IX

The ranch-style house was located on five heavily wooded acres northeast of town. It was built in the late seventies and showed its age. The majority of the driveway was gravel and weeds grew from the cracks in the concrete apron by the garage. There were blackout blinds over every window and it was impossible to tell whether or not there was a car in the garage. Despite the younger Waldon’s insistence that Wes Moore was still out of town and the GPS in his company Explorer showed its current location to be in eastern Utah, Behrent knew what she had seen and wasn’t prepared to take any chances.

CSPD officers had every road into and out of the area closed off and secured. Moore’s immediate neighbors had been evacuated and were currently under federal protection and Young’s supervision, although so far none of them used anything other than kind words when asked about Mr. Moore. Snipers had taken up position in the ponderosa pines and SWAT teams were prepared to go through the front and back doors on her mark. She and Abrams wore Kevlar vests beneath their fire-retardant gear and were prepared to follow SWAT through the front door. Behrent knew that her evidence was circumstantial at best and that she wasn’t the only person who’d climbed out onto a limb on this takedown, but she’d be the one who took the fall if it failed. Were it not for the fact that Moore had potentially caused the most destructive fire in the history of the state and cost the community more than forty million dollars in firefighter expenses, there was no way any judge would have executed the warrant. That he’d been one of Raymond Waldon’s weekend golf buddies probably played a considerable role, too.

This was her one and only shot.

A miss, and Moore likely walked, free and clear.

If he was even the man she’d seen for the briefest of moments across the street.

Her transceiver crackled.

“On your mark, Special Agent Behrent.”

From where she knelt roughly a hundred yards away behind a stand of junipers, she could barely see the house, let alone the men with Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns and full tactical gear hidden in the bushes, prepared to converge on either door on her go. A single knock and either Moore opened the door or they knocked it down and went in hard and fast through the smoke and blinding glare of a flashbang.

“You sure about this?” Abrams whispered. “We don’t get a do-over on this one.”

Behrent drew a deep breath and blew it out slowly to steady her nerves. Her hands shook and she could barely think over the thrum of her heartbeat. She rolled her head on her neck. Was she sure? If she was wrong, her sister’s murderer would remain on the streets to kill again. And again.

She stared at the house through the maze of trees.

Behrent had never been more certain of anything in her life.

She pressed the button on her transceiver.

“I want him taken alive.”

A half-dozen men in black materialized from the forest, streaking toward the front door.

She readjusted her grip on her Glock.

One raised his fist and pounded on the door. Stepped back. Paused. Two others moved in front of him, a battering ram held between them. They drew it back, swung it forward—

A blinding light.

Behrent barely had time to raise her arm to shield her eyes. A wall of heated air struck her and tossed her backward onto the ground. She heard a thunderous crack, then nothing over the ringing in her ears.

She opened her eyes and looked up to find the branches above her burning. Pine needles curled and blackened and rained down to the forest floor. She tried to stand. Couldn’t. She was on her back, her fire-retardant jacket smoldering on her chest.

The high-pitched tone in her head toyed with her vision. Her balance.

She fought to her feet. Swayed. Stumbled forward. Fell to her knees. Grabbed her two-way from the ground. Shouted into the microphone.

“The place was rigged to blow! Everyone’s dead!”

Pushed herself to her feet. Staggered toward the house.

The bushes and weeds all around her were on fire. As were the body parts scattered across the dirt between them. She couldn’t hear the crackle of the flames or her own voice as she shouted for survivors. Only the infernal hum.

One of the snipers dangled from a fiery pine by the cord he’d used to secure himself. His entire body still burned. Even his skin.

A hand on her shoulder.

She screamed. Turned around. Thrust her pistol into Abrams’s face.

His face was black with soot and blood flowed freely from a gash across his hairline. His nostrils and lips were caked with ash. He pinched his eyes shut tight. Steadied himself against her shoulder. Opened his eyes and pointed at his ear.

She nodded her understanding and made a sweeping gesture toward the ground. Judging by the expression on his face, he obviously hadn’t seen what had happened to the SWAT team yet.

Both raised their weapons and advanced toward the house. The smoke grew thicker and the heat intensified. The detritus underfoot served as the perfect fuel for the fire, which raced across the forest floor in every direction.

Behrent struggled with the realization that the front door had been rigged with explosives. She’d never considered the possibility. For her lack of foresight, sixteen men had paid with their lives.

There was a crater where the front door had been and the flaming roof had collapsed onto the living room. Glass from the shattered windows twinkled like rubies. The garage door was buckled outward far enough to see the rear bumper and tires of an SUV inside.

Behrent coughed and buried her mouth and nose in the crook of her left arm, which did little to spare her the smoke. She could barely see her Glock in her extended right hand through the haze, which obscured the house, save for the flames burning from the impromptu entrance.

The heat was hellacious, like nothing she’d ever experienced before. It singed what little hair had come untucked from beneath her cap and made her eyes water so badly she could hardly keep them open. She choked and coughed and felt the dry smoke invade her lungs. It swirled on the waves of heat, revealing just the hint of a living room full of furniture burned to the bare wooden framework before hiding it once more.

Beneath the ringing she heard the faintest roar of the inferno, so loud in actuality that it reverberated in her chest. She felt Abrams’s shoulder against hers and drew strength from his proximity.

The smoke funneled through the back of the kitchen, where she could only assume the back door had once been. The doors must have been rigged to blow together. The appliances were crumpled and smoldering and melted glass had fused to the linoleum.

There was a hallway to the right, past the stairs leading down through the smoke and into the basement. She shouted directly into Abrams’s ear for him to guard them while she cleared a guest bedroom that had been converted into a home office and a master bedroom that looked like something out of a catalogue. Only actively burning. Wherever he slept, it wasn’t in there.

“Watch the smoke!” Abrams shouted into her ear when she returned to the head of the stairs.

It took her a moment to see what he meant. The smoke neither moved up nor down the staircase; it merely filled the space between the walls on the landing below.

There was no airflow.

The fires burning all around them were drawing air through the blast holes, through the broken windows, down the flue from the chimney. She could positively feel it rushing past her, feeding the flames that would soon consume this entire structure.

The basement was sealed.

Behrent nodded to Abrams and started down. One step at a time. Holding her breath in an effort not to cough, which made her chest lurch. She followed her pistol down to the landing, then around to the flight leading into the basement.

The door at the bottom and the surrounding wall were covered with blown insulation secured by a layer of foil. The door itself had a pressurized seal and a wide handle and reminded her of the kind they manufactured for industrial coolers. It made a popping sound when she pulled it open.

The air screamed around the seal and past her face, sending her cap bounding up the stairs. She braced her feet and lowered her shoulder to absorb the impact with the door, which nearly knocked her to the ground.

She stepped out of the way and it slammed into the wall hard enough to embed the handle in the drywall.

Behrent stared into the unblemished darkness with cool air that smelled of damp earth buffeting her in the face.

Sighted down the barrel of her Glock.

Swallowed hard to stifle a cough.

And advanced into the pitch black.

X

The rushing sound of blood in her ears metered the high-pitched ringing.

She swiveled from left to right, praying to see anything at all. Her sense of hearing was shot and she couldn’t see a blasted—

A beam of light streaked across the basement from the mini-Maglite in Abrams’s hand as he pulled the door shut behind them, sealing off the smoke and the flames. He flashed it quickly from one side of the basement to the other, then more slowly back again.

Insulation that had to be several feet thick covered the walls and the only windows were sealed with metal sheets screwed into the frames. Skeletal framework cast long, thin shadows across the floor leading up to what she at first mistook for an indoor garden.

Carefully tended bonsai trees and ferns grew from a rich medium of black soil and sphagnum moss. Running water flowed along the ground between them in a wide, winding oval shape, in the center of which was a small pond with stagnant water and lily pads. Abrams shined his beam down into it and inch-long nymphs wriggled down under the rocks.

Behrent took him by the wrist and raised his arm so the beam pointed into the trees. There were large beetles everywhere. Crawling up the trunks and on the branches, on the undersides of the leaves and all over one another. She leaned over and touched one with her index finger.

Its hind end emitted a greenish glow as it took to flight.

The response spread through the startled fireflies until the entire room lit up like it had been strung with Christmas lights.

She shuddered at the thought of what Moore intended to do with them.

There was a lone egress behind the habitat. Another freezer door set into the insulated wall. Abrams’s beam focused on the handle as they worked their way around the habitat and the banks of lights and filters that serviced it. Behrent reached it first and closed her hand around it.

Cool to the touch.

Abrams shined the beam around the seams. No indication of tripwires or other rigging. They could easily be on the other side, though.

Along with her sister’s murderer.

Behrent pantomimed for Abrams to step to the opposite side of the door while she swung it outward toward her. He’d go through low while she came high around the open door.

She held up five fingers.

Four fingers.

Three.

She finished the count silently while Abrams watched her lips.

Two.

Adjusted her grip on the handle with her left. The Glock with her right.

One.

Pulled the handle. Fought the suction. Felt the release. Swung the door wide open.

A blur of darkness as Abrams ducked around the wall and across the threshold.

Behrent shouldered past the rebounding door and registered a flickering reflection from the wall of glass at the back of the room. Smelled a petrochemical accelerant. Raised her Glock. Shouted for Abrams.

He turned to his right. Brought his pistol around.

Too slowly.

She saw another reflection on what she recognized as a trophy case, the reflection of a man in shimmering silver. He stepped forward from around the corner and the nozzle of a flamethrower appeared, a tongue of fire protruding it. Mere inches from Abrams’s head.

The expulsion of flames was blinding. A molten liquid wrapped around his skull and filled the doorway. He screamed and threw himself to the ground. Covered his head with his arms, which only started to burn, too.

Deep black smoke billowed through the doorway as Behrent shoved through, bringing her weapon to bear on the golden face shield of the silver fire entry suit. She saw her distorted reflection in it. The flames burning up the wall behind her. Her wild eyes. The barrel of her Glock.

Searing heat encircled her abdomen. Her skin blistered and her clothes ignited.

She screamed and pulled the trigger.

The pistol bucked.

A black hole appeared in the golden mask. Cracks spread away from it.

A starburst of blood spattered the wall behind the silver hood.

The report was deafening.

The impact lifted the man from his feet. Slammed him against the wall. He lost his grip on the flamethrower and the molten rainbow splashed across the floor toward the glass case. He toppled to the ground with the clanking sound of the tanks on his back striking the concrete.

Behrent fell to her hands and knees in front of him, her entire midsection engulfed in fire.

She screamed as the pain took root beneath her skin.

Fell to her chest. Rolled over and over. Smothered the flames. Ignited the nerve endings.

Struggled to all fours. Crawled toward the man slumped against the wall in his silver fire entry suit. Pulled off the hood. Looked into his eyes. One was bloody and misshapen and fringed with bone shards; the other barely acknowledged her before rolling upward under the lid. Blood ran down his cheek and dripped from his chin.

“Not yet!” she screamed and crawled back out through the doorway. Every muscle in her abdomen and lower back sang in pain. Fluid dripped from burns that felt as though they’d eaten clear through her. An icy sensation crept upward from her toes. “You don’t get to die yet!”

She found what she needed and dragged herself back to where the liquid fire spread across the floor toward the trophy case. Crawled into the murderer’s lap. Felt his legs tremble. Pulled herself up his chest. Opened his one good eye as wide as it would go. The iris slowly rolled down until she saw the pupil and the fading light in its depths.

Behrent held up the object so he could see it. Watched its reflection as revelation dawned, before being eclipsed by sheer terror.

Epilogue

Colorado Springs, Colorado

August 3rd

Behrent sat on the back porch of her rented house, watching the shadows of the trees lengthen across the mat of brown needles and leaves. The first stars twinkled through the upper canopy of the pines even as the crimson sun set behind the Rockies on the other side of her house. The night air felt divine in her lungs, and even better against the skin underneath her T-shirt. For a while she thought she might never feel anything other than pain again. The doctors assured her the skin grafts were healing nicely, although they still had a patchwork look to them. Not that she was complaining. Abrams had gotten the worst of it and it would be months before what was left of his face would be healed enough to even attempt a graft. Longer still before he’d be released from the plastic isolation chamber in the burn unit. He served as a daily reminder of just how lucky she’d been.

Weston Franklyn Moore wasn’t quite as fortunate. He hadn’t been able to reach the escape tunnel from the back room in the basement, which would have allowed him to pop up outside of the police cordon and vanish forever. No one was entirely certain whether he’d stuck around to finish off his pursuit or to protect his case full of trophies. Likely, no one ever would. As it was, the teams from Behavioral had their hands full trying to make sense of everything they found down there, including an altar of sorts to his father—a firefighter who died in the line of duty—he’d built back in the trees surrounding the small pond, and the decomposed remains unearthed from the fertile soil filled with firefly cocoons. The working theory was that they belonged to Moore’s stepmother, who’d married his father after his mother’s death, when he was a child. While the results of DNA analysis were still pending, the pictures of her they were able to find showed a woman of the same approximate height and bone structure, natural red hair, and a string of Japanese characters tattooed above her left breast. It took a matter of minutes to translate the word “Firefly,” but the implications would forever be the subject of speculation. As would his reasons for killing Carol and Raymond Waldon—his longtime friend and employer—who could easily have stumbled upon a picture and an insect in the glove compartment or a fire entry suit in the trunk of the company-leased vehicle and innocently enough asked why they were there.

The trophies in the case, however, were self-explanatory. There were more than fifty pictures, dating back to the early-nineties, pinned to a giant sheet of corkboard behind the glass. Pictures of red-haired women from all across the country. Pictures taken from a distance and enlarged so that their faces were clearly visible as they struck a specific pose, one in which they were photographed looking back over their left shoulders at the camera.

And pinned in the center of each one was a firefly.

There was no doubt that the DNA collected from the microscopic bits of human tissue excised from the sharp tips of their feet would match that of the victims whose mouths they had been inside, even if it was impossible to compare them to the lacerations.

No one even thought to look for the cuts in the back of Moore’s throat, however. Nor did they compare the crescent-shaped wounds on the backs of her fingers to his teeth. They hadn’t thought twice about the non-functioning flashlight Behrent had commandeered from her partner or connected it to the melted batteries fused to the concrete. They’d even kept it safe for her in the ER with the rest of her belongings. By the time she transferred its lone contents—the firefly she’d crawled to the habitat to collect, even as she burned—into a jar, it was barely still alive.

Now, its abdomen glowed fluorescent green as it repeatedly tested its confines.

While darkness descended, Behrent thought about two young redheaded girls and contemplated what made the lantern of the firefly in the jar glow.

When she finally stood, it was with tears in her eyes. She set the jar on the barbecue grill, lit the charcoal, and watched the flames lick the glass before engulfing it. The firefly darted from one side to the other, faster and faster, until the jar turned black and she could see it no more.

She watched until the glass shattered and the flames chased the smoke high into the air, where glowing embers danced like fireflies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael McBride is the bestselling author of Ancient Enemy, Bloodletting, Burial Ground, Condemned, Fearful Symmetry, Innocents Lost, Sunblind, The Coyote, and Vector Borne. His novella Snowblind won the 2012 DarkFuse Readers Choice Award and received honorable mention in The Best Horror of the Year. He lives in Avalanche Territory with his wife and kids.

To explore the author’s other works, please visit www.michaelmcbride.net.