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

  Another quote. Another quiz. “Machiavelli.”

  “Very good.”

  “At least those words fit you better than Ghandi’s.”

  “I’m the best of both.”

  “You’re not the best of anything. You’re a narcissist. A manipulator. A psychopath. Prison is where you belong. But I’m not here about you. Who took your son?”

  “That’s an easy question which I just answered.”

  “I must have missed it.”

  “Those I failed to injure severely enough.”

  “You’re trying to tell me this is about revenge?”

  “Why do people kill? Love. Money. Revenge.”

  “Not everyone thinks like you.”

  “You do.”

  The feeling of plunging that knife into Hess shivered up her arm, the sticky warmth of his blood, the guttural sound of his scream. She’d attacked him to save Grace, Oneida, Lund, but she would be lying if she said she regretted it.

  “It was satisfying, wasn’t it? Taking justice into your own hands? Hurting me like I’d tried to hurt you?”

  “You are so full of shit.”

  “An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.” He smiled. “Or even because you don’t want to see it, Chief Valerie.”

  “Gandhi again.”

  “You’re getting good at this game.”

  “It’s not a game, Hess. A little boy’s life is at stake.”

  “You don’t have to tell me what’s at stake. He’s my son. I understand what’s at stake more than anyone.”

  Val didn’t think for a second that Hess had any semblance of true feeling for the son he’d never met. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t use his charade to her advantage. “Then help me.”

  “Let me out, and I will.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You’re not willing to do what needs to be done. I am.”

  “Let me guess what you think needs to be done. Hmm… Torture? Homicide?”

  “Ending the threat. Protecting your own. Justice.” His voice took on a hard edge. “You think you’re morally superior, and yet you were willing to put a knife in my back. You wish you would have killed me. That leaves me to wonder, if you were pushed a little farther, what would you be capable of? What extremes would you go to if it meant saving the firefighter? Saving our sweet Grace?”

  Despite her best efforts to feel nothing, Val’s cheeks heated, pulse thrumming in her ears.

  Hess smiled, flashing those damned perfect teeth. “The body has its ways of telling our secrets, doesn’t it? Especially when you have that fair, fair skin.”

  “I’ll find him without you.”

  “I would love to say I have faith you will, but…”

  This was going nowhere. Val shouldn’t have come. She shouldn’t have given Hess the satisfaction. She placed the phone back in its cradle and started to stand, her legs unsteady.

  On the other side of the Plexiglas, Hess’s lips moved.

  For a moment, Val just stood there, leaning on the stainless steel table, wanting to leave, needing to stay. She sat back down and picked up the phone. “Don’t waste my time.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. I was just wondering…”

  “Wondering what?”

  “If you got your hands on a list of my visitors, I assume you can also go through my mail.”

  “I can.”

  “So read it. I’m curious to hear what you think, and it’ll give you a good excuse to visit again.” He made a kissing motion with his lips, then hung up the phone and waited for the guard to take him back to his cell.

  Grace

  Grace looked up at her grandmother’s old clock next to the fireplace. Instead of riding, she’d turned the horses out, even if they would rip the grass up a little, and she’d invited her father into the living room to wait for Aunt Val. They’d been talking non-stop ever since. She couldn’t believe the time had flown that fast, most of the day gone, just like that.

  “You have a hot date?”

  She shook her head. “Just wondering how Aunt Val is doing. I should have called her, asked her to come home.”

  “We’ve had a lot of catching up to do.”

  Grace smiled at her dad. Her dad. She never thought she’d be able to say those words, be able to look in his eyes, be able to know him.

  After he’d told her who he was, she’d seen him in a whole different way. She noticed the shape of his eyebrows, just like hers. She noticed the sharp line to his jaw, just like hers. Even the sound of his laugh was familiar, just deeper and louder.

  She knew Aunt Val wasn’t happy with him. She thought he’d taken advantage of Grace’s mom and then left. But before her mom died, she’d told Grace she didn’t hold anything against him. That she’d never even told him that she was pregnant with Grace, that he hadn’t done anything wrong. And Grace had assumed that meant she’d never know him.

  Then this morning, he’d walked back into her life.

  She’d had so much fun talking the afternoon away. Him telling her about his medical practice. Her filling him in on her college plans. It was like something she would have dreamed, if she’d ever allowed herself, if she ever thought she’d actually meet him. “This has been a great day.”

  “It has.” He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

  He was so handsome, so smart, so cool. A doctor. Her dad was a doctor. She couldn’t have made up anything more perfect.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “Famished.” She really was. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and didn’t realize her stomach was rumbling until now.

  “What do you say we go out for an early dinner? Is there someplace good in town?”

  “The supper club has great pan-fried Walleye. It’s right on the lake, and it probably won’t be too crowded yet.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “The horses. I need to get them inside before we go.” Grace peered out the window. Dark clouds formed on the horizon, moving toward the farm at an alarming speed. “It looks like it’s going to storm.”

  “Just tell me how I can help.” Her father stood, so tall and effortlessly cool in his polo shirt. She could imagine how great he’d look in scrubs. Like McDreamy from Grey’s Anatomy.

  Her father… Dad…

  Grace smiled. “Thanks.”

  “We’d better hurry then.” He followed her to the kitchen and out the door.

  The wind ruffled Grace’s hair. It felt as it had before. Hot. Dry. No scent of rain to speak of. But there was another odor riding the breeze. A smell that made her nose wrinkle and eyes burn. “Something’s wrong.”

  Lund

  “You don’t really buy his shit, do you?” Lund accelerated onto the highway leading out of Baraboo and toward Lake Loyal. He’d never been good at sitting still. Watching and listening to Val’s exchange with Hess on the security monitor, helpless to interject anything, had nearly killed him.

  “I’ll decide what I think once I’ve looked over his letters.”

  Lund glanced into the rear view at the file boxes on the back seat. None of the correspondence had alarmed county officials enough to investigate the senders, so Lund wasn’t expecting much. Still, he understood why Val needed to remain officially uncommitted until she reviewed the evidence. He just wanted to make sure she was not giving the psychopath a benefit of the doubt that he didn’t deserve. “When Hess isn’t gloating over how exceptional he is, he’s casting himself as a victim.”

  “Believe me, I understand him better than you think. I’m just worried about what happens if he’s right.”

  “What? That someone is after him? Trying to get revenge?”

  “Hess views the boy as his property, and in that way, an extension of himself. If someone was looking to hurt Hess, his toddler son would be the only way to get to him from the outside.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I want
ed to kill him. I tried.”

  “He was going to shoot Grace.”

  “And that was his point. I was protecting my own.”

  “That didn’t sound like a point to me. It sounded like a threat.”

  “With Hess, everything is a threat.” She stared out the window at the stubble of last year’s corn scrolling past.

  Hess’s words echoed through Lund’s mind. His threat hadn’t focused only on Grace. Hess had mentioned the firefighter, too, as if Lund was a source of vulnerability to be exploited, just like Grace. “Val? I’m not a victim here, you know,” he said.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her head turn his way. “I never thought you were.”

  “I protect my own, too.” Lund risked pulling his attention from the road, wanting to look into her eyes, to let her know exactly who he meant, who he wanted to be his own. But by the time he brought his focus to her, she was back to staring out the side window, face half hidden.

  A siren sounded behind them, a sound Lund knew as well as his own heartbeat. He glanced behind, but could see nothing over the swell of the bluffs. Today was officially his day off, even though he’d been working straight. And he hadn’t wanted to be called away from Val’s meeting with Hess. But that left him incommunicado. “I didn’t bring my radio. You have yours?”

  Val shook her head and reached into her purse. “Cell.”

  She pulled out her phone and checked the screen. “No reception. Wait until we get to the top of the ridge.”

  The siren grew louder, and Engine One crested the bluff behind them, red lights flashing. Lund pulled to the shoulder and let the truck scream past. The smaller truck they called Unit One followed, the chief behind the wheel.

  Another siren still wailed behind. “Oh, shit. This must be big.”

  The district’s number one pumper truck raced by.

  Val tapped her phone. “I can’t get anything until we get out of this valley. Follow them.”

  But Lund was already pulling back onto the highway, accelerating. There was no logical reason to believe this blaze had anything to do with last night’s tragedy. But he couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that seized the back of his neck and bled into his shoulders.

  They wound up to the crest of the next bluff and turned onto Sunrise Ridge Road. Val tapped her phone and held it to her ear.

  Ahead, the trucks swung right off Sunrise and onto the road where Val lived.

  “Come on, Oneida. Come on…”

  Smoke billowed above treetops and haunted farm fields, the light breeze not robust enough to sweep it away.

  “Oneida. Tell me about the fire call.”

  They rolled over another hill and the trucks slowed. A dilapidated red barn appeared above clumps of sumac and box elder, and beyond it, black smoke poured from a white, clapboard house.

  “Oh, Lund.” Val said. She lowered the phone to her lap.

  Oneida’s voice boomed into the truck’s interior. “It’s the Meinholz farm, Chief. Grace was the one who called it in. She smelled smoke.”

  Her eyes on Lund, Val brought the phone back up. “Thanks, Oneida. We just arrived at the scene.”

  Engine One turned into the farm’s circle drive, the others following. A black-and-white blocked one lane of the narrow road, and Lund pulled his pickup behind it.

  Firefighters poured from their vehicles, outfitted in full gear, their businesslike voices shouting orders, organized chaos.

  Lund wasn’t sure how long he sat there, staring at flames roaring from the windows of the family farm he’d inherited from his wife. Five seconds? Twenty? Even though the house was still a good distance away, his eyes burned from smoke and his mouth tasted like ash.

  Val rested her hand on his arm. “You okay?”

  He covered her fingers with his, holding her hand there, not wanting to let go. “I’m not sure how to answer that.”

  “I don’t need an answer.”

  “No, but I do.”

  Giving her fingers a squeeze, he forced himself to turn away and climb out of the truck. Val fell in beside him, and together they marched to meet the fire.

  Next to Pumper One, Dempsey, Johnson, Blaski, and Sandoval spread out what looked like a giant kids’ swimming pool made of thick yellow rubber. The portable tank was used to hold water in rural areas that weren’t equipped with fire hydrants. Each truck would empty its water tank, and then race back to town to fill up. Even now, Lund could hear two more sirens on the air, another truck from their district or one from a neighboring district bringing more water.

  A truck-sized bucket brigade.

  They caught up to Jerry Fruehauf as the fire chief circled back in front of Engine One.

  “The fire is pretty far along. I don’t think we’ll be able to save the second floor,” the fire chief said. “There’s a chance we can salvage whatever’s downstairs and the outbuildings. But the fire is spreading, and with this drought…”

  Lund stared at the house that was more a torturous prison for Kelly Ann growing up than a home until Lund had talked her into accepting his ring and getting the hell out. From here, he could see the farm yard where Old Man Meinholz used to keep his burning barrel, the one where Lund had discovered the scorched bones he’d thought belonged to his then estranged wife. A tilt of the head, and he could also see the rickety front porch where he’d gotten his last glimpse of a woman he knew only as Chandler—a mistake he’d been lucky to survive.

  “Lund? Did you hear me?” the chief asked.

  “Keep it from spreading.”

  “You realize that means—”

  “Let it burn.”

  He could feel Val’s eyes on him. “You sure?”

  “Down to the fucking foundation.”

  Six weeks before…

  THE STATE OF WISCONSIN

  VS.

  HESS, Dixon G.

  PROCEEDINGS

  THE COURT: Mr. Asher? You’d like to cross examine the witness?

  MR. ASHER: Indeed I would, your honor. Thank you. Now Mr. Lund, you were married to Kelly Ann Meinholz Lund, is that correct?

  MR. LUND: Yes.

  MR. ASHER: I’d like to start by saying how sorry I am about your wife’s death.

  MR. LUND: Thank you.

  MR. ASHER: Isn’t it true, that each time it was believed your wife was murdered, you were the one who discovered the bodies?

  MR. LUND: Yes.

  MR. ASHER: I’m sure that was painful.

  MR. LUND: Yes.

  MR. ASHER: And wasn’t it also true you were a suspect in both cases?

  MR. LUND: And both times I was cleared.

  MR. ASHER: Your honor?

  THE COURT: A simple yes or no will suffice, Mr. Lund.

  MR. LUND: Then, yes.

  MR. ASHER: Thank you, Mr. Lund. I know that was painful. Now how did you meet Mrs. Lund?

  A.D.A. STENGEL: Your Honor, Mr. Lund is not on trial for murdering his wife. He was totally cleared. What does this have to do with the matter at hand?

  THE COURT: Mr. Asher?

  MR. ASHER: I’m allowed to show how his emotional state might compromise his earlier testimony.

  THE COURT: Proceed.

  MR. ASHER: Thank you, your honor. Now Mr. Lund, can you briefly tell us how you met your wife?

  MR. LUND: I first met her in high school. She was two years younger, and I was assigned to be her chemistry tutor.

  MR. ASHER: A tutor. That’s nice. How did you start dating?

  MR. LUND: I asked her to a dance. Isn’t that the way it usually goes?

  MR. ASHER: I need something more specific than that. And I have a police report describing the incident. If you’d prefer, I could read that.

  MR. LUND: I was helping her with chemistry in the library, and her dad came in and was angry.

  MR. ASHER: Why was he angry?

  MR. LUND: He was always angry. How the hell should I know?

  THE COURT: Mr. Lund…

  MR. LUND: I’m sorry. I don’t know why
he was angry exactly. It didn’t matter much with him. He wanted Kelly to be doing something he wanted her to be doing, that’s all.

  MR. ASHER: And when he came into the library, what did he do?

  MR. LUND: He tried to drag her out by her hair.

  MR. ASHER: And what did you do?

  MR. LUND: I stopped him.

  MR. ASHER: How did you do that?

  MR. LUND: He was five-foot-seven. I was considerably bigger. Even back then what he was doing was considered abuse. He backed down. Apologized. The school let him.

  MR. ASHER: And did he let you date his daughter after that?

  MR. LUND: Not at first. Not officially. Not until I was out of high school. But then he decided training me was his best bet.

  MR. ASHER: Training you?

  MR. LUND: Making me a Man.

  MR. ASHER: And how did he do that?

  MR. LUND: What does it matter? It didn’t work.

  MR. ASHER: You didn’t become a man?

  MR. LUND: I didn’t become a small-pricked, abusive son-of-a-bitch.

  MR. ASHER: But you did win Kelly.

  MR. LUND: Win? Kelly wasn’t some kind of fucking ribbon. We fell in love. I cared for her.

  THE COURT: Mr. Lund, this is a warning.

  MR. LUND: Family court, huh?

  THE COURT: Excuse me?

  MR. LUND: Sorry, your honor.

  THE COURT: I hope so. Proceed.

  MR. ASHER: So what happened when you asked Kelly to run away with you? Get married?

  MR. LUND: She said yes.

  MR. ASHER: And you had a big family wedding?

  MR. LUND: We ran away. Her father wasn’t exactly supportive.

  MR. ASHER: Isn’t it true that the night you and Kelly ran away, you found her shackled to the floor in the house’s basement? Beaten and assaulted and half-starved because she refused to do what her father said?

  MR. LUND: Yes, that’s what happened. The law didn’t exactly see it that way, though.

  MR. ASHER: Kelly’s father wasn’t convicted, was he?

  MR. LUND: No. He blamed Kelly’s abuse on me. But it didn’t stick. You know why? Because it was a lie.