Willow Traynor's eyes opened to the blackness of deep
night as the noise and flash of an overbusy dream receded
into the mist of her subconscious.
She held her breath as her eyes adjusted to the square
edges of the dresser across the room, the dim reflection
of light in the mirror, the ghostly drift of gauzy white
curtains above the heat register. Something had awakened
her.
She knew the dream had not been a nightmare, because in
the past two years it seemed as if nightmares had become
her constant companions. She would have recognized the
aftereffects. She didn't feel them now — no racing heart,
no night sweats, no rush of relief upon waking to discover
that she was still alive.
Something else, then. A noise? Perhaps a passing car, or a
boat on the lake? The neighbors in the apartment complex?
Sometimes the two little Jameson girls got rambunctious
late at night, and Mrs. Bartholomew in the unit next door
called to complain.
Willow sat up and peered toward the small digital numbers
on the nightstand clock. Two-thirty, April 1. Probably
wasn't the children.
It might be something as insignificant as the unfamiliar
silence. Even after two weeks she hadn't yet adjusted to
the move — or rather, the escape — from bustling Kansas
City to her brother's rural log cabin six miles south of
Branson in the Missouri Ozarks. Major change.
She had never lived this far out in the country. Although
the eight-unit apartment lodge her brother managed meant
they weren't exactly isolated from civilization, it was
nothing like city life. Living in the cabin, situated on
the shore of Table Rock Lake, was more like being on
permanent vacation. Willow still struggled to come to
grips with the comparative solitude.
As she stared into darkness, the square of sliding glass
door at the far end of her room seemed to emit a pulsing
glow. She blinked to clear her vision, but the glow
increased. Headlights from a boat on the lake, perhaps?
Except she heard no sound of a boat motor.
She turned her back to the light and plumped her
pillow. "None of my business anyway," she whispered into
the darkness.
Her brother, Preston, certainly didn't want her help
keeping track of the renters. As he'd told her several
times in the past two weeks, she needed to take a break
and heal.
After a little more than twenty-three months, she'd almost
given up hope of that. True, she no longer relived the
night she'd received the visit from the police chief to
tell her that her husband had been killed in the line of
duty. At least, she didn't relive it every single night.
Maybe more like once a week now.
And she no longer had the nightly awakenings to cries of
her forever unborn child. Only a couple of times a week
did she cringe when someone invaded her personal space.
People did that all the time now, because her personal
space had extended, in the past twenty-three months, to
include whatever room she was in. She usually allowed
people she knew into her personal space, but there were
still those times when she could do nothing but withdraw
from the world.
Since two attempts had been made on her own life after
Travis was killed, she'd found herself suspecting
practically everyone. She had known when she married
Travis that he had one of the most dangerous jobs
imaginable — not only was he a cop, but he was an
undercover narcotics agent.
Here in Missouri, the Bible belt, the heart of the nation,
a war raged against illegal drugs, particularly
methampheta-mines. She had never dreamed the danger would
extend to the cop's family. But with Travis's death, it
most certainly had.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, exhaled, tempting
sleep with as much entreaty as she could muster, willing
her body to relax. The art of relaxing had become a lost
skill for her.
Since arriving here in the middle of March, she'd assured
herself daily that the only things she had to fear in this
place were her memories. If she died, it would be a side
effect of the grief that had imprisoned her since the day
she lost Travis.
There's nothing out there. It's your imagination. Again.
Wasn't that what everybody kept telling her? Even Preston.
They hadn't exactly told her they thought she was
imagining the attempts on her life, but after the
investigations turned up no evidence of foul play, she had
felt her friends and her brother looking at her
differently.
Try as she might, her eyes refused to remain closed. A
faint flash of light greeted her again from the wall. She
sighed and rolled from the bed, irritated by her
exaggerated sense of responsibility. Maybe one of the
renters was wandering around the yard with a flashlight,
or maybe there was a party going on.
She slipped noiselessly to the glass door and unlatched
it. All she needed was to prove to herself that no one
hovered in the shadows watching her, waiting for her to go
back to sleep so they could pounce.
And yet, what if someone was there this time?
She slid the door open and frowned. She caught a faint
whiff of smoke, with an underlying scent of something
else, pungent and strong.
What was it? Turpentine? Like the bottle of stuff Preston
had been using in the shed a couple of days ago? No. Not
turpentine...kerosene?
No.
Her frown deepened. Had Preston left the door open to the
utility shed in the back? He'd spilled some gasoline on
his clothes yesterday when he was working on the boat
motor, preparing it for the coming warm days of spring.
She sniffed again. Smoke. Fuel.
She caught her breath. Smoke? "Preston!" she cried over
her shoulder. "Fire!"
She shoved the door wide and dashed onto the cold deck.
The wood chilled her bare feet. The odor of smoke blasted
her. She scrambled down the steps and around the west side
of the cabin, racing between it and the east wall of the
apartment lodge.
Light flared as she reached the front corner of the cabin.
To her horror, she saw several jagged lines of flame
streaking across the yard — snakes of fire, winding
through the darkness.
She blinked and stared, stumbling in the grass, fighting
confusion. What was going on? The flames pitched in
headlong flight directly toward the cabin.
"Preston!" she screamed. "Oh, Lord, help us!" Please, let
this be another dream.
She raced toward the front door. She couldn't shake the
impression that she'd stepped into one of those B movies
where a long, glowing fuse raced toward a bomb. Fuses.
That was what those ribbons of flame looked like.
Before she reached the front steps, she saw her brother's
dark form stumbling out the door onto the porch.
"Get away!" he called. "Willow, get —"
A curtain of flames suddenly blasted across the wooden
porch with all the force of an explosion. Preston leaped
free of the fire and caught Willow in a tackle that rocked
her backward. They crashed into the privacy hedge
separating the cabin's yard from the wider lawn encircling
the entire complex.
He shoved her forward, through the hedge. She cried out as
roots and stones bruised her bare feet. Preston kept
pushing her farther from the danger.
They collapsed into the grass. "Willow, you okay?" Preston
asked, his deep voice harsh with alarm, breathing as if
he'd run for miles.
"Yes. What's happening?" She stumbled to her feet and drew
back the hedge branches to stare at the fire, nearly
deafened by the roar.
He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her around to face
him. "Listen, Willow, help me get the others out. I'll
call 9-1-1 as soon as I get to a phone, so don't worry
about that, just get the people out of here! Take the top
level, I'll take the bottom, but keep a close watch on the
fire."
She swallowed hard, her attention returning to the
holocaust as if she were a human moth.
He took her by the shoulders, his fingers digging into her
flesh with urgency. "Willow, go now. Hurry!"
Slipping on the damp grass, she scrambled toward the first
unit. The lodge was built into a hillside, so both floors
were at ground level, and both had scenic views of the
lake below.
She reached unit One A and pounded on the door as she rang
the doorbell, remembering the two little girls and their
single mom who lived there.
"Sandi!" she shouted. "Get the girls and get out. Sandi,
please wake up!"
She glanced over her shoulder. Preston was gone. Fire
engulfed the cabin. Smoke billowed into the sky, casting
an eerie glow. It was crazy! Those streaks of fire...like
fuses... what was happening? As she watched, headlights
came on about a quarter of a mile away, brushing the
treetops with their probing beams.
No one answered at Sandi Jameson's apartment. Willow
picked up a decorative flowerpot on the porch and flung it
through the glass pane in the door. The crash of
shattering glass should have awakened anyone inside.
"Sandi?" she shouted through the gaping hole. "Fire! Get
out of there. Now!" She reached through the window,
fumbled for the door latch and snapped it open, catching
her right arm on a glass shard as she withdrew her hand.
The sharp point sliced through the tender flesh of her
inner forearm.
Gasping, she bent over with the shock of pain. There was
no time to deal with it. She shoved her way inside. No
light, no one came running into the room. Could they be
gone?
She rushed through a kitchen cluttered with dirty dishes
and trash of unbelievable proportions, past the living
room. She found her way to the bedrooms at the far west
end of the hall.
"Sandi!"
She heard a startled squeal through one of the doors and
burst inside to find Sandi's two little girls, Brittany
and Lucy, huddled together on the lower level of a set of
bunk beds. They wore tattered, oversize T-shirts for
nightgowns.
"Girls, it's okay," Willow said, rushing to them. "We've
got to get out of this apartment now. Where's your mother?"
"Sissy, she's bloody!" five-year-old Brittany wailed,
clinging to her older sister.
Willow looked down at her right arm and saw the blood
dripping at a rate that alarmed her. "It's okay, honey.
I'll take care of it later. Right now we've got to get you
out of here. Please tell me where your mother is."
"Not here," said seven-year-old Lucy. "We can't leave the
apartment. Mom said never leave the apartment when she's
not here."
"Your mother's gone?"
The girls stared at her, one pair of green eyes and one
pair of brown eyes wide with apprehension.
"Your mother will want you to leave this time," Willow
said. "I need to get you out of here to safety. You can
trust me. I'm not going to hurt you." She reached for
Brittany, who cried out and backed away, staring at
Willow's arm.
"But what's wrong? What's happening?" Lucy asked.
"Preston's cabin is on fire." Willow forced her voice to
remain gentle and reassuring, though she felt anything but
calm. "We need to get you out of here because the cabin is
too close to the lodge."
"A fire?" Brittany wailed.
"It's okay, I'll get you to safety." Willow would deal
with the negligent mother later. She switched on the
overhead light and reached into the connecting bathroom
for a towel.
In deference to the squeamish child, she wrapped her wound
with the not-so-clean towel, then scooped the youngster
into her arms and grabbed the older sister's hand. "Girls,
you'll have to trust me. This way."
Brittany trembled in Willow's arms, but held tightly
around her neck and burrowed against her shoulder.
There were more people who needed to be warned. Would she
reach them all in time?