Burned Too Hot: A Thriller (Val Ryker series Book 2) Read online

  “Let me through.”

  “Sir, there might still be—”

  “I’m a doctor. I can help.”

  Val twisted around. Mark stood twenty feet away, at the edge of the driveway, his way barred by two firefighters. And behind him…

  She nodded to the men holding him back. “Let him through.”

  Grace moved to follow.

  “Not my niece.”

  The men closed ranks.

  Baker and Carruthers pushed through the perimeter as well, carrying two backboards and a stretcher. Carruthers reached the chief first. Mark knelt down next to Val.

  “You shouldn’t have brought Grace,” she said.

  Mark checked Lund’s pulse. “I couldn’t convince her to stay.”

  Val was sure that was true, but it wasn’t an excuse. Still… “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Mark gave her a nod, then brought his focus back to Lund. “Listen, if you want to get Grace out of here, go ahead. Between the EMTs and me, we have this covered.”

  Val was sure Mark didn’t know Lund from any other firefighter. How could he? But she wanted to tell him… somehow make him… what? Perform miracles? “Take good care of him,” she told Mark. “Please.”

  She thrust herself to her feet. Slipping around the firefighters barring Grace, she grasped her arm. “You need to get back. There might be another explosion.”

  “But David and my dad…”

  “Will be really mad if you get yourself blown up.” Val pulled the teenager with her. “Right now, we can help by getting out of the way.”

  Val didn’t really look at her niece until they were safely on the other side of one of the big fire engines. The girl’s face was pale, and although she wasn’t crying, her cheeks were wet and her eyes pink around the edges.

  A siren screeched from the road, and another ambulance turned into the circle drive.

  “David is really hurt, isn’t he?”

  It could be worse. He could be dead. But Val couldn’t see how pointing that out would help the situation. “He’s hurt, but his pulse is strong. Mark thinks he’ll be okay.”

  “And the other man?”

  “The fire chief. I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.”

  “I want to go to the hospital.”

  “They might not let you see him.”

  “I don’t care. He just needs someone there, you know?”

  Val smoothed Grace’s blond hair back from her face. She had been through so much in her young life, lost so much. “I’ll drive you.”

  “You have to work.”

  Val couldn’t argue with that. Best not to even try. “It’s okay. You need me.”

  “My dad can drive me.”

  Her dad.

  For a moment, Val wanted to tell Grace everything. The whole sordid history. What Mark had done. How their relationship had ended. But even as jangled as she felt at the moment, she recognized how self-centered that need was. “Listen, Grace. You don’t know your dad.”

  “I’m getting to know him. In fact, he wants to take me to one of the waterparks in the Dells. Maybe this weekend.”

  “Grace…

  “I know you don’t want me to.”

  “I think you might be taking this a little fast.”

  “He’s not going to be here forever. He has to go back to work.”

  Val clamped her lip between her teeth. She didn’t want to have this discussion, at least not until she heard back from Jack’s private investigator. It wasn’t as if she was worried he was an evil person. Even when Mark had been in the midst of his money problems, he’d been an exemplary doctor, saving lives, volunteering overseas. He’d disappointed her in the past, but it was a long time ago. Maybe he’d changed since then.

  Val certainly had.

  She craned her neck, trying to see what was going on near the house. Baker and Carruthers were transporting Jerry Fruehauf to the Lake Loyal ambulance, the crew from Baraboo following with Lund. Mark was circling the truck, making his way to them.

  When he arrived, Grace’s face brightened. “How’s David?”

  “The younger guy? Concussion. Possible internal injuries. But it doesn’t seem serious. His vitals are strong. He was very lucky.”

  “Is he conscious?” Val asked.

  “Yes, although he’s still a little confused.”

  “And the older guy?” Val asked, referring to Fruehauf.

  “He has a few more problems.”

  “Can we see David?” Grace asked.

  “At the hospital. Better to let them get on the road now.”

  “Okay, let’s go.” Grace started for the road, not waiting for an answer.

  Mark looked at Val. “I’ll take her to the hospital, feed her dinner and stay with her until you get home.”

  Val forced a nod. “She’d like that.”

  “For what it’s worth, I didn’t intend to ambush you.”

  Val nodded, noting the lack of apology, something she’d gotten used to with Mark.

  But she was sorry. Sorry that none of them had known Mark was Grace’s dad until now. Sorry she hadn’t had time to hear back from Jack’s PI in Chicago. Sorry Grace was lonely and scared and vulnerable.

  Not to mention that Lund was being loaded into an ambulance.

  “I’ll take good care of her, Val. I promise.” He started after Grace.

  “You’d better,” Val whispered, long after he was too far away to hear.

  Emily

  “Ethan? Where are you?”

  Now Emily was in for it.

  Maybe her dad was right. Maybe she was worthless, no good at anything. A bad girl.

  Here she only had one job. One really important job. Taking care of the sweetest little kid in the world, and she’d managed to lose him.

  “Ethan? Where are you? Time for playing in the tub.” She ran down the stairs, checked the kitchen, checked the living room, and checked the big room with seats like in a movie theater where she and Ethan would spend the night.

  This place was too big.

  At least all the doors were locked. At least Ethan couldn’t get out to the lake. She and Ethan weren’t allowed outside. They weren’t allowed to even venture out on the deck or open the blinds. “Ethan? Where are you? Don’t you want to play in the tub?”

  “Play!”

  His voice came from upstairs. She’d already searched upstairs. She ran back up the steps, the sound of her breath rasping in her ears. “Ethan?”

  “Play in tub!”

  Oh, no.

  The bathtub was on the second floor. While she’d been searching the house for him, he’d sneaked back to the tub.

  The tub filled with water.

  She took the next flight of stairs two at a time, raced down the hall, and pushed through the bathroom door.

  Ethan stood in front of the bathtub, a package of diapers in his hands.

  “What are you doing with—”

  He giggled and tossed them into the water, right alongside the other two packages resting on the bottom.

  “Oh, Ethan. No!” She snatched the newest out.

  He laughed again. “Play in tub!”

  Emily shook her head. If her dad had been here, he would have spanked the little boy, probably with his belt. But Em didn’t feel like spanking. She felt like crying. Because she loved taking care of Ethan, and if anyone found out about how she’d screwed up, she’d lose her job for sure.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  Val

  There were a lot of sick and twisted people in the world. Val knew that more than most, but even she was surprised at some of the letters Hess received in jail.

  It was past midnight before Val and her sergeant, Pete Olson, had found a moment to hunker down in the conference room and start sifting through the letters. Now it was approaching one A.M., and drinking black coffee and listening to classic rock bleeding from the sports bar two doors down, Val sorted the missives into piles and tried not to think about Lund lyi
ng helpless in a hospital bed and Grace spending all day and evening with Mark.

  The search for Ethan Tiedemann was going full tilt as well as the fire investigation. Sergeant Olson had been at the Meinholz farm with the deputy fire marshal until it was too dark to see, and although the report wasn’t yet official, they had discovered the now-familiar M.O. of gasoline in a milk jug.

  And even though Val hadn’t been able to get to Baraboo, she’d called the hospital for updates. Three times so far. Lund suffered from a concussion and lacerations, but although he had to spend the night for observation, he would probably be okay.

  “Hess really thinks someone is out to get him?” Olson tossed one more letter into the already toppling pile of pro-Hess letters. “He’s a rock star.”

  There were indeed a small pile of threats, but the largest pile so far were requests for interviews from television stations, from journalists writing books, from psychologists writing books, from screenwriters writing movies, and from people with no discernible qualifications whatsoever writing… something.

  “It’s the women who bother me.” She added one more to the pile of love letters, some complete with nude photos, from what had to be some of the most depraved and desperate women walking the globe.

  “Tell me about it. Here’s one who says she looks like Kelly Lund. She goes on and on about how she checks out all these books from the public library that remind her of him. How she can see herself spending her lunch break at Rossum Park pushing his son on the swings.” Olson slid the letter into the follow-up pile. “Right at the spot where Kelly died. How sick is that?”

  “Recognize the name?”

  “No name. He saw these?”

  “The ones that complied with the rules. No polaroid pictures, nudity, threats, that kind of thing. All that don’t comply are waiting to be returned to sender.”

  “Waiting? For how long?”

  “The volume of mail he gets is staggering. That kind of thing can take a while. County said we have about two months’ worth here.”

  Olson’s eyes got wide. “Two months’ worth?”

  Val massaged a tight muscle stretching down the side of her neck and into her shoulder. “Blame cable news. They featured him twenty-four/seven.”

  Olson scrubbed a hand over the blond stubble on his head. “You ever think about doing something else?”

  Val eyed her sergeant. She hadn’t. Not once. But he obviously had. “You’re thinking of leaving?”

  He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “First Jeff. People dying in fires, a kid kidnapped. I just got to think there’s an easier line of work.”

  “Easier? That’s what you want?” Val wasn’t sure why, but that thought coming from Olson’s mouth made her teeth clench.

  “Not easier. Less… I don’t know… helpless, I guess.”

  “Helpless?”

  “Come on, Val. We’ve known Dixon Hess was bad news the minute he moved back here. Hell, some of the old timers will tell you what a scum bag his grandfather was. And yet, we have to tiptoe around, letting him out, throwing him a big-ass media-circus trial, letting him have mail in his cell, and for what? To have him end up just where we knew he should be from the first time we saw the bastard.”

  “What would you do? Besides going back in time and making sure that jury in Nebraska convicted him?”

  “Put him down the first time he stepped out of line here.”

  “Put him down? Like a sick animal? You know that’s not the way things work.” She didn’t add that they had put him in prison the first time, she had, and it turned out that he couldn’t have committed the crime.

  “Things don’t work. At least not for anyone but Hess. Someone needs to make this fucking system work.”

  Val looked back down at the letters in front of her. She had to admit, she felt the same frustration as Olson. “It’s almost over. Two days and he’ll be in maximum security for the rest of his life. Two days.”

  “Not soon enough.”

  Val read a postcard from a Florida woman who wrote in loopy, pink ink and called Hess “Pookie,” another from Birmingham offering him salvation if he’d accept Jesus, and an eight pager that confessed a woman’s long, sad life history to her psychopath confidant.

  “Here’s something you need to see.” Olson slid a typed sheet toward her.

  Val picked it up with her weak hand, trying to blink some tears into her blurry eyes. The page was printed off a computer, the format neat, the writing including punctuation in all the right places, but that’s where the manners ended and profanity began.

  “Here’s another, too.” Olson handed it over.

  You’ll pay for what you did. If you’re smart, you’ll commit suicide.

  Olson gave her another, and before she could start to read, he shuffled a fourth in front of her.

  Despite the heat, Val felt chilled. If she grabbed a random handful from the pile, the first four letters would promise undying love, the next would pulse with hatred.

  On some level, she’d hoped the letters would give her a hint about the arsonist’s motive for taking Ethan Tiedemann. If it was revenge he wanted, he’d have to let Hess know he was about to lose his son, make him suffer. If the arsonist was working for Hess, they would have to have a way to plan, communicate how he was going to spring the killer and unite father and son. Either way, Val figured there was a chance she’d find something. But the more she read, the more desperate those hopes seemed.

  Little Ethan had been gone for twenty-four hours. No matter what the motive in taking him, each minute that ticked by made his return less and less likely.

  “Makes me sick.”

  Val looked up. “The hate?”

  “No, that we are now going to have to harass good people whose only crimes are wanting Hess dead.”

  “They threatened him.”

  “That bastard deserves some threatening.”

  “And it will earn them some questioning from the police.”

  “These are good people, Val.”

  “Really? How can you tell? You knew Hess was bad news the first time you saw him, and you know these people are good just by reading their letters? What if one of them actually intends to carry out their threats? What if one already has carried them out against an innocent family?”

  “You’ve got a point. But don’t tell me you haven’t thought of killing him.”

  How could she forget it? That made twice in one day that she’d been reminded. “It’s our job to uphold the law. It’s our duty.”

  “Then maybe I do need another job.”

  He thrust up from his chair and paced around the table. “I could have written one of these letters, Val. I’ve thought all these things. I dream of killing him almost every night.”

  “But you won’t act on it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know because you’re a cop and a good man. You’ll do the right thing.”

  “How is killing him not the right thing? He’s hurt so many people. And then the rest of this shit?” He gestured to the letters covering the table top. “Books written about him? Promises of sex? Declarations of love? That’s what he gets as a reward?”

  “He’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison.”

  “The people he killed don’t get to have a rest of their lives.”

  Val leaned back in her chair. She couldn’t do this. Not now. Not with Olson. “We haven’t slept for almost twenty four hours.”

  “I’m not saying these things because I’m tired.”

  “Then why are you saying them? What would you have us do? Let someone who has committed arson, kidnapping, and murder walk because we understand his rage against the biological father of a toddler?”

  “I want Hess dead, not Tiedemann, and not the kid.”

  Returning to the letters, Val gave him a minute, then stretched it to two. “I know it’s tough, Pete. Believe me.”

  He shook his head, avoiding eye contact.

 
“For the record, I sometimes think about it, too.”

  “Good to know you’re human.”

  The room folded into silence, only the shuffle of paper and occasional scrape of a chair leg on the tile breaking the still. Val’s eyes were really starting to bother her, and a spasm tightened her neck and shoulder. The avalanche of paper seemed endless. The follow-up pile grew, toppled, then turned into two piles.

  Three.

  Four.

  “Val…”

  The tone of Olson’s voice made a chill run over her body. She looked up from a second letter from the woman who saw herself playing with little Ethan at Rossum Park, reading Chicken Soup for the Soul this time. “What is it?”

  He didn’t answer, just pushed a typed sheet of paper with three photos printed at the bottom across the table.

  The message was simple.

  A GIFT TO CELEBRATE YOUR UPCOMING RELEASE.

  XXOOXX

  Val moved on to the snapshots. Judging from the tone of her sergeant’s voice, she expected the pictures to be of Ethan Tiedemann, maybe at the park or playing in his yard. What she saw knocked the breath from her lungs.

  Standing at the end of their driveway, waiting for the bus.

  Outside her school, smiling and chatting with friends.

  Astride Banshee, riding all alone along the shoulder of a country road.

  Her sweet Grace.

  Chapter

  Twelve

  Val

  Val was still vibrating when she reached the hospital. It was late, almost three, and she figured Lund would be sleeping. That didn’t mitigate the void that opened up inside her when she saw that he indeed was.

  Olson had sworn he would help her protect Grace. She believed him. He was a good cop, and he loved Grace as if she was one of his own kids. Yet it was to Lund Val wanted to confide her fear. Lund she needed to weigh in on what she should do. Lund whose hand she ached to hold until she figured out how to make everything okay.

  She watched his chest rise and fall under the thin waffle-weave blanket and hospital gown. Then she turned and left, her shoes tapping a lonely rhythm as she walked down the sterile hall alone.

  Grace