Chapter Twenty-Six

 

“Aye, but I’m already here,” Ash purred as he stepped into view.

He’d followed the shocked lady—and he used the term loosely—when she’d pranced into the home on the northwest corner like she’d owned the place. Up she’d gone, three stories up. First bedroom on the right.

But Ash had done his homework before he’d set one boot to the narrow staircase that led him here. The pungent smell of diesel fuel in the air confirmed his suspicions. ’Twas diesel Liam used to burn his childhood home after he’d killed his parents. And now he’d come to America to finish the job. Not bloody likely.

Liam was no small problem. Twice as muscular as Ash, he’d boxed as a youth, no doubt when he’d gotten his lust for blood and brutal violence. That alone demanded Ash quell the impulse to charge that woman and choke her spitless until she talked. What happened next had to be handled with finesse. There could be no gunplay or match. No metal striking against metal. Diesel wouldn’t allow it. Neither would Liam.

Of all the times to wonder if Colby—if she was in this building—still carried that slim little blade, the one he called her ankle-biter. She’d better not use it if she did. One flick of that blade might send this elegant fixer-upper to the moon.

There’d been no time to alert Kevin, simply because Ash didn’t want the FBI barging in, guns blazing. He’d watched the news. He knew how heavy-handed they could be.

Not. This. Time.

The little thing with her ear to the phone whirled on him like a cat with its claws already out and spitting. “How’d you get here so fast?” Her eyes widened. “You followed me!”

She thought she had the right to be indignant? He peered past her defiance into the dimly lit room, searching for sight of Colby or an accomplice. He had no doubt he could take this little lady, but he was quite sure she wasn’t acting on her own. No. It was Liam he needed to see. Liam he meant to kill—after he saved Colby. Where is she?

Before he’d followed the woman inside, Ash had already checked the perimeter of the house. There was no electricity, its power line disrupted by the owner’s need for that fancy sidewalk out front. Two kerosene lamps sat on the floor at her feet, but neither was lit. Still, Colby was in this house somewhere. She had to be.

He called out to her. “Colby?”

Urgent mumbling from behind the daft woman met his ear, inciting a ruby red rage at his peripheral. I knew it. If they’d hurt her…

The lady in the cape flounced a step closer, blocking his view, but she couldn’t block the growls from Colby Quaid. She’s alive, but she must be restrained, he thought. Or she’d be swearing a blue streak and kicking this chit’s ass.

He needed to get to her. Odds were slim there’d be survivors once this caped woman lit the diesel. Banking on the sure knowledge that the bullies of the world were too cowardly to risk their own lives, Ash took another step into the room.

“Stay where you are,” the skirt ordered, her eyes flashing.

Ash took a better look at her. Gaudy make-up. Perhaps an extra for some show in town? He couldn’t decide. “You grow that wart by yourself?” he taunted her ladyship.

She tossed her head, causing a cascading effect of tangles and spirals to spill over her cape. Her crafty fingers, and no doubt a wily detonator or a lighter, might be obscured in the folds of her skirt. But where he’d expected a pithy comeback, he got sauce instead.

The shrew giggled, then lifted both shoulders in what she probably thought was—cute.

“Where’s me brother?” he asked, tired of the game, and Colby’s time running out. To the darkness in the room, he bellowed, “Show yourself, Liam! For once in your life, step out of the shadows and be a man.”

Didn’t he get the surprise of his life? ’Twas not Liam who stepped around the skirt. ’Twas…

“Hammer?” Ash had to ask, not believing what he was seeing. “What are you doing here?”

But the dominos were already falling inside Ash’s head. The insurance policy he hadn’t signed. Hammer’s insistence that he sign. The rounds and rounds of drinking, all on Hammer’s tab. The backslapping. The sales pitch that would nah end until Ash walked out of Shenanigan Rose. The attack-dog investigator from Leviathan Mutual. Why was he convinced Ash had torched his own place? Because of the lies Hammer told him.

The woman giggled, swishing her skirts back and forth like a spoiled little girl who’d just gotten a pony for her birthday. “Told you he’d be surprised.”

Hammer didn’t look surprised. He looked—caught. Sweat gleamed off his bottom lip. He blinked rapidly now that he’d been forced to step into view. “It wasn’t supposed to go down like this, mate.”

“Mate?” Ash asked, his index finger pointed to his sternum. “Is this how you treat your mate? Your brother? You kidnap his woman and you set fire to his livelihood? You set him up to take the fall for what? Why?”

“Oh, pish posh,” the skirt tossed back at him as if this were a parlor game. “That old place of yours went up like—” She lifted one hand over her head and snapped her fingers. “—toast!” Just that fast, she sang, “Ashes, ashes. We all fall… down!”

Her squeal at the end of her idiotic song riled Ash. He lashed out at Hammer. “Who the bloody hell is she?”

“M-my wife.” Hammer blinked as if stunned Ash didn’t know. “Delores. I thought I’d introduced her before. Surely you’ve met.”

Ash shook his head, disgusted. His fists clenched to knock Hammer’s bugger of a mate into the harbor and him with her. “I do nah understand. You loaned me your car. Why? Did you bug it or…” He wouldn’t dare! “Have you been spying on me? Did you put one of those GPS tracker things in it?”

Hammer shook his head so hard the sparse hairs on his head bobbed. “I wouldn’t do that to you. I did it to be… nice.”

“Nice?” Ash dug his hand over his head. “Nice?”

“Just leave,” Hammer urged, his shaky hands forward, as if placating an impossible situation. “You don’t need to see this. It’ll just hurt your feelings, and—”

As if burning Colby to death behind his back wouldn’t hurt his bloody feelings? “I’ll not leave without her. Colby!” Ash roared. “Where is she? What have you done to her, you feckin’ sot?”

The psychotic bitch at Hammer’s side rolled her eyes and her haughty head rolled with them. “Shut up, Callahan. Your little girlfriend’s right here.” Stepping aside, she waved him into the room. “See? Right where you can’t get to her.”

Ash finally saw Colby, tied to a chair in the farthest corner with streaks of dark blood on her face and down the front of her t-shirt. Two desperate eyes gleamed back at him, but the poor thing was gagged. She jerked forward, but the chair didn’t move.

His vision dimmed red with rage. “Let her go,” he bit out, “or so help me—”

“So help you what?” Delores sneered. “This is all your fault you know, Mr. Callahan.” Sarcasm ripped out of her. “He tried to tell you what could happen if your place burned down, but did you listen? Even once? Oh no…” She swiveled her hips, taunting him. “The mighty Scot always knows best. All the time and money my boy wasted trying to get you to buy—”

“He’s Irish, Delores,” Hammer murmured out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes glued to Ash.

“He’s what?” Her brows clashed together like two pieces of a very scary puzzle.

“He’s from Ireland. He’s Irish, not Scottish.”

“Whatever. It’s still his fault.” She stabbed her index finger at Ash. “If he’d been a smart Irishman and signed with you like you told him, none of this would’ve happened. You’d have gotten a fine commission, and I’d have my baby!” That last word screeched out of her mouth with a menacing step in Ash’s direction. “It’s all your fault!”

Hammer cast an exasperated, sad look at his wife.

“Is that what these fires are about? My not signing an insurance policy? Not signing with you?” Ash growled at Hammer, puzzled that these two thought torching his place and hurting Colby would change his mind. What the bloody hell were they smoking?

“Not really.” Hammer shook his head in the sneaky way of a weak man who didn’t want his wife to catch him.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Ash’s eyes finally opened. “‘Tisn’t you, is it? Ye’re not the one who started the fires.” He turned to Delores. “‘Tis you!”

She curtsied, that same blood-red fingernail now stabbed to her chin. “It’s been me all along, you big dumb ox.” Again with the hip swish of her skirts. “I’m the clever one, huh?”

Ash turned on his traitorous friend. “And what are you, her protector?” Not bloody likely. The man had no balls!

Another furtive glance at his wife, and Hammer lived down to Ash’s expectations. He ducked his head into his shoulders like the guilty boy she’d called him. Like I said!

But Delores couldn’t have carried Colby up three flights of stairs. Hammer was up to his neck in this daft scheme. He’d known how crazy she was since the first fire on the dock. Since the first shipping container. Because he’d been there with her.

“What’d you do? Buy the petrol for her and put it where she told you to like a good little boy?” Ash bit out, ready to knock this jerk on his ass. “Did you stay long enough to watch me place burn? Did you see me…?” He refused that last word. Never would he admit to shedding one tear to this liar.

Hammer’s shamed gaze hit the floor at his feet, but proud Delores pitched her neck forward and whined, “I can’t carry all those heavy cans by myself.”

It all made sense now. Hammer was the brawn, she the twisted brains behind the arsons. “You told her everything about me. The woods I use. My hours. My orders. You forged illegal orders. I could’ve gone to prison!”

“If you lived.” The witch had the nerve to shrug. “I was pretty upset with you.”

Upset! How can a mother simply be…

“Where are your wee ones? Your children?” There’d been none at Hammer’s home in Cambridge. He couldn’t bear the thought. “What have you done with them?” Did you burn them too?

“What do you care?” Her hands fell to the folds in her skirt. “I can’t buy another now, can I?”

Ye gods, the woman was as daft as the robins that ate the fermented plums on his da’s farm in spring. Children were not bought and sold like things. They were treasured. Loved. Not possessed!

“I trusted you,” Ash told his lying friend. “And you used me. You set me up.”

Delores lifted her palms out from her skirt and raised them to the ceiling with a sing-song rendition of, “Ring around the rosie. Pockets full of posies. Ashes. Ashes. You’ll both fall down!”