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

  MR ASHER: So you rescued Kelly, didn’t you? You were her knight in shining armor.

  MR. LUND: I was a man who wanted to be a good man, and after we married, a good husband. That’s all.

  MR. ASHER: A hero.

  MR. LUND: Being decent shouldn’t be considered heroic.

  MR. ASHER: No, it shouldn’t. So what happened, Mr. Lund?

  MR. LUND: I’m sorry, I’m not following.

  MR. ASHER: Why wasn’t Kelly happy with you? Isn’t it true that your marriage was having difficulties before your wife disappeared the first time?

  MR. LUND: Yes.

  MR. ASHER: You were separated at the time of her disappearance, is that right?

  MR. LUND: Yes.

  MR. ASHER: And can you tell us the reason for your separation?

  MR. LUND: It was Kelly’s decision, so you’d have to ask her.

  THE COURT: Please be straightforward in your answers, Mr. Lund.

  MR. LUND: I apologize, your honor. But I don’t know the answer.

  A.D.A. STENGEL: Objection. Your honor, Mr. Lund is not clairvoyant. He can’t possibly testify to the private motivations of another person.

  THE COURT: Mr. Stengel is right, Mr. Asher. What are you trying to get at here?

  MR. ASHER: I apologize to the court. I wish to restate.

  THE COURT: Go ahead.

  MR. ASHER: Isn’t it true that your wife Kelly gave birth to a child?

  MR. LUND: Yes.

  MR. ASHER: And who was the father of that child?

  MR. LUND: Not me.

  MR. ASHER: You know who the father is, though, don’t you? You paid for a DNA test once the baby was located, didn’t you?

  MR. LUND: Yes.

  MR. ASHER: Isn’t it true the father of the child was Dixon Hess?

  MR. LUND: That’s what the report said.

  MR. ASHER: So Dixon Hess fathered your wife’s child, isn’t that right?

  A.D.A. STENGEL: Asked and answered, your honor.

  THE COURT: Move on, Mr. Asher.

  MR. ASHER: So after you rushed in, the strong, capable hero, and rescued Kelly, she turned her passions toward my client. Did you have hard feelings toward Mr. Hess as a result?

  MR. LUND: Do you really want to hear about the hard feelings I have toward Mr. Hess? Really? Because I have a lot of them, and most center around him murdering people.

  MR. ASHER: Objection, your honor. Move to strike.

  A.D.A. STENGEL: Your honor, he asked about Mr. Lund’s feelings.

  THE COURT: You opened the door, Mr. Asher. I’ll allow the answer. If you’d like to change direction, feel free.

  MR. ASHER: Would it be true if I said you hate Mr. Hess?

  MR. LUND: Yes.

  MR. ASHER: So you would like to see him go to prison?

  MR. LUND: Yes.

  MR. ASHER: And what would you do to see that happen? Lie under oath?

  A.D.A. STENGEL: Your honor.

  MR. ASHER: I withdraw the question. I’m done with this witness.

  Chapter

  Nine

  Val

  Val didn’t know all he’d been through in that house, but she knew enough. And in light of the way Lund tried to hold on to people, to save them, she was a little surprised at his willingness to let it all burn. “You’re sure?”

  “Fire’s spreading. Fast,” Lund said.

  She glanced back to the smoke belching from the building, dark and thick, putrid with the smell of burning plastics, carpet, upholstery and glue. Another cloud rose from the yard and fields in back. Lighter in color, billowing into the air where it was whipped this way and that by erratic gusts.

  Lund fished his keys from his pocket and pressed them into Val’s hand. “Take my truck. Your farm is downwind. I’ll do my best to stop it, but this wind is a problem, and without fire hydrants out here, water’s scarce. You and Grace need to be prepared to evacuate, in case something goes wrong.”

  “We’ll be ready.”

  Lund handed her the keys, then held onto her hand a little too long. “Good luck.”

  Val threaded her way through the fire scene’s organized chaos and back to the pickup, Hess’s comments teasing at the edges of her mind.

  Could the killer be right? Could this be about revenge?

  Lund wasn’t the only one who had a history in this place. Dixon Hess did, too. Working as a hand on the farm. Wooing Kelly. And then there was the time he’d spent here after Kelly was dead. Torturing. Killing.

  Val understood Lund having conflicting feelings about the place, but she was glad to see it burn.

  It took only minutes to reach her farm. In the driveway, a car was parked behind Grace’s VW, the license number the same one she’d called in to Oneida this morning.

  She gripped the wheel, focusing on the telltale tingle in her hand. Her immune system attacking the nerves, shutting them down.

  Her day was about to get even worse.

  Val let herself in through the kitchen door, a tremor burrowing under her ribs. If there was a God, and She was benevolent, Mark would have three chins, a beer belly, and a really nasty rash.

  He was sitting on the couch, his head visible above the high-backed cushions. Grace faced her from the loveseat, her face animated, her skin glowing.

  “Aunt Val! You’ll never believe—”

  Val glared at Mark. “What are you doing here?” Her voice trembled as hard as her body.

  “Aunt Val?”

  He stood up and turned to face her.

  He looked so much like he had all those years ago. The glint in his eyes, the rugged jaw, the way his mouth crooked a little higher on one side when he smiled. He even had a hint of five-o’clock shadow, and for a second, Val remembered the whisker burns he used to leave on her cheeks… and her thighs.

  “Val, I need to talk to you.”

  “You should have called.”

  “I know.”

  “Why are you here? Money?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  She clutched her right hand in her left. The wind, the fire, Dixon Hess… Her head spun. “I really can’t deal with you right now.”

  “Aunt Val?”

  Val yanked her focus from Mark. “Honey, will you go upstairs? Gather your most important things?”

  “What? Why?”

  “The fire. It’s spreading. We have to be ready to evacuate.”

  “The horses.” Grace started for the kitchen door.

  Mark went after her. “Tell me what to do.”

  “I need you to leave, Mark. We can talk some other time.”

  Grace whirled around. “Aunt Val!”

  “This is between me and Mark, sweetheart. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  Grace glanced from Val to Mark and back again. “How can you say that? It has everything to do with me.”

  “Everything?”

  “He’s my dad.”

  Val looked at Mark, then back to Grace. She didn’t understand. This made no sense.

  “I didn’t know,” Mark said, looking down at the floor. “Not until yesterday.”

  Val shook her head. An avalanche of emotions threatened to flatten her, one indistinguishable from the other. She couldn’t process this. Not now. “We don’t have time.”

  Mark gave her a look, one she remembered well. Strong and compassionate. His best bedside manner. “Let me help.”

  “We can handle it. Just go. That would help.”

  “You just said there was a fire.”

  “And that we can handle it. Do you have selective hearing?” Val knew she wasn’t being rational, but at that moment, she didn’t care.

  Grace’s dad? How could Mark be Grace’s father?

  Standing in the doorway, Grace started to cry. “Why are you doing this? I already lost my mom. Why would you want me to lose him, too?”

  “The horses, Grace,” Mark said in that damned steady voice. “Let’s go.”

  Grace nodded, and the two of them left Val alone
with nothing but a weak hand, blurred vision, and what was fast becoming a splitting headache.

  Lund

  Because Lund had spent six weeks training in Colorado with a coyote crew fighting wildfires, he was considered the department’s expert. The terrain in Wisconsin was simple compared to the mountains, but he knew better than to underestimate the effort it would take to extinguish this one.

  Thanks to almost no snow last winter and the continuing drought this spring and summer, the sandy soil was dry as the Sahara. The brown grass would ignite like flash paper, the brush burn like kindling. And to add to the problem, the bluffs made wind currents unpredictable. And if the trucks running water from town couldn’t keep up… He gave his head a shake, not willing to even finish that thought.

  “We’ll use the road as one flank, the creek as the other,” Lund told the chief, his words half lost in the whipping wind.

  While fire could spread along the ground quickly, especially pushed by wind like this, it wasn’t the only way. Heat could radiate or travel by air currents to ignite grass, leaves, needles and brush. Lund was confident the road would stop the fire on one side, and although the creek was little more than a trickle, it should do the trick on the other. That left one area vulnerable.

  Lund pointed out to a grassy ridge studded with boulders of purple quartzite. “We need to clear a fire line on the other side of the ridge.”

  A fire line was built by clearing, scraping, plowing, and often digging trenches to remove the fuel sources in a swath large enough to thwart all types of spread. It could be nearly as destructive a process as the fire itself. But at least in this, they had an advantage. Lund owned the land and could destroy it however he pleased.

  “The neighboring farms?” Fruehauf said.

  “Val… Chief Ryker is aware of the danger. We need to send someone to warn Kasdorf.”

  Sandoval, one of the toughest firefighters Lund ever had the honor to work with, raised his hands, palms out in surrender. “Don’t look at me. The last time I tried to save that nut, I got a bullet for my trouble.”

  “You’re still whining about that?” The chief chuckled. “The cops can deal with Kasdorf.”

  Sandoval started for the little ATV they used for spring prairie burn offs. Dempsey and Blaski climbed into Unit One, firefighters Hofstetter and Vaughan already hoofing it for the ridge.

  “There’s a rutted path leading back to the hay field,” Lund said, pointing as he started for the barn. “It will lead most of the way. I’ll meet you at the creek.”

  Lund had been inside the barn only a handful of times since Kelly Ann died, but thankfully there was no time today to dwell on memories. He grabbed the door handle, laid his hip into it, and yanked. Wood creaking, the door slid open on tracks that hadn’t been lubricated in years, rusted steel shrieking against rusted steel. Shafts of sunlight beamed through dust and smoke, the odor of moldy alfalfa heavy in the air.

  He passed empty stanchions and headed for the tractor parked at the far end of the driveway, still hitched to a rusted plow. After checking the gas and making sure the plow blades were raised, Lund climbed onto a seat covered with dust, spider webs, and the droppings of barn swallows. Opening the choke, he stomped down on the gas and turned the key.

  Whirr, whirr, whirr.

  Clunk.

  Shit. He’d last driven the thing back when he’d first met Kelly’s father and was trying to impress him, back before he knew how monstrous the man could be. Cal Meinholz had berated him for failing to start it, accusing him of trying to get out of work. After that, Lund had worked on starting it until he figured out Kelly’s father’s trick.

  How had his father-in-law started the damn thing?

  Two pumps on the gas? Open the choke, then close it half way? Pray to Satan and rage at the world for his own shortcomings before cranking the key?

  This time the engine coughed three times.

  That was something, at least.

  Lund tried again. It fired and caught, settling into a steady chug, chug, chug. He clutched and shifted, and the beast jolted into gear and crept out of the barn.

  He switched into second, bouncing out the gate and into the old hay field. When he came to the banks of the creek, he lowered the plow and took a perpendicular route just to the other side of the ridge.

  Heat rises, and because of that, flame spreads quickly up hill. Plowing and trenching on the other side of the ridge’s crest, as the slope was starting down, made sure the fire was weakened before it even reached the line.

  His fellow firefighters worked in front of him. Using axes, they cleared brush and small trees, removing fuel sources and clearing the way for the plow.

  The blades sliced through grass, churning up the earth. In a normal Wisconsin spring, that earth would be moist. Today it was drier than dust, and the breeze lifted it into erratic swirls behind him.

  They’d nearly completed the fire line, when the head of the fire became visible over the ridge, first as thick, white smoke, then as tongues of flame. It was moving fast, devouring the grass in front and pushed by the whip and toss of the wind.

  “Out of the way,” he yelled to the men in front of him.

  The fire crested the ridge and started down the other side. When fighting a wildfire, it was important to keep an open escape route, so the fire couldn’t overrun man and machine. To connect the fire line to the road and cut off all chance that the flame would spread to Val’s property, Lund would have to race the flame.

  Not smart.

  Not that it mattered.

  Lund pushed the accelerator, the tractor chugging for all it was worth. The ridge dipped and rose, throwing the machine off balance and nearly sending him rolling down the other side of the hill.

  He clutched the jolting wheel, leaning forward like a kid who believed shifting his body weight would make his red wagon streak down the hill faster.

  Ten yards.

  Five yards.

  The tractor dipped down into the ditch, then up to the road. The plow’s blades screeched against asphalt. Lund slowed the machine to a hiccupping idle and turned around.

  The flame paced the line, burning everything it could get, before starting to die. Ahead Sandoval bounced up the hay field road in the dune buggy, racing to meet the rest of the team for mop up.

  By the time the team made it back to the burning house, the second floor had collapsed. Small fires still smoldered in lilac and honeysuckle around the foundation, but soon all that would be left was the investigation.

  Lund stared at the wreckage. After all he’d experienced here, he expected to feel something. If not grief, then a sense of relief, of lightness.

  He felt nothing at all.

  The chief headed straight for him. “The underground fuel tank, near the house…”

  Lund shook his head. He didn’t know of an underground tank, but such long forgotten tanks were common on old farms, and he was sure his former father-in-law didn’t go out of his way to comply with the law. “We need foam.”

  Lund joined with the chief, making for the closest engine when out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash. He lunged for the chief, trying to throw him to the side, to shield him.

  Then a force shuddered through his skull and everything went black.

  Chapter

  Ten

  Val

  An explosion rattled the window panes of Val’s house. She gripped the rail outside her kitchen door. Almost before her first conscious thought registered, she was stumbling down the steps and racing for Lund’s truck.

  “What was that?” Grace shouted, running toward her from the barn’s direction.

  “Stay here.” Val climbed behind the wheel, shifted into reverse, and gunned the accelerator. She couldn’t let herself think too much of what she’d heard, what could have happened and to whom it could have happened to. Whatever it was, she’d deal with it when she got there. Reaching the road, she shifted into drive, pulling her phone from her pocket with a shaking ha
nd. “Oneida? Explosion on the Meinholz farm.”

  “The fire?”

  “You hear anything?”

  “Can’t say I— Wait. Calls coming in.”

  Val hung up, freeing Oneida to do her job. She reached the neighboring farm. Pulling to the shoulder, she killed the engine, flung herself out of the truck, and dashed for the house. One side of the structure was nothing but broken boards, ravaged siding, and melted insulation. Dirt lay in clumps and a pit gaped, exposing rock that used to form the foundation.

  Pulse beating in her ears, she stumbled into the fray, looking for the chief or Lund or anyone who could brief her about what had happened.

  She caught a glimpse of what looked like two crumpled firefighter uniforms, tan with reflective yellow…

  Not uniforms.

  Men.

  Someone grabbed her arm. “Chief, wait. The—”

  She wrenched herself free and ran straight for the closest of the injured firefighters. “Do we have EMTs?”

  Someone yelled something that sounded affirmative.

  Bix Johnson hunched over the downed man. He glanced up at her. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “We need a stretcher,” Val yelled.

  Someone yelled something about being on their way.

  Val moved to the other prone body. Dempsey headed her off. “He’s alive. Unconscious.”

  She didn’t think about who the he was, she just knew. “Paramedics. Now.”

  “They’re coming.”

  He sprawled on his stomach, his thick, dark hair, a little long, peeking out from under his helmet, a bleeding gash running along one cheekbone.

  She fell to her knees beside him, thrust her hand between helmet and turnout coat, feeling for a pulse. Dempsey had said he was alive, and she trusted him. But this time, this time she had to feel it herself. “Lund?”

  A steady beat thrummed under her fingertips.

  “Lund?”

  Except for a slight movement of his eyes, he didn’t answer.

  “Where are the damned EMTs?”

  “On their way,” Dempsey said.

  Voices rose, shouting orders, calls for help. Firefighters moved back, widening the perimeter.