Chapter Twelve
Reid
“Stand back, Robin!” I shout through the broken window at the back of the house.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Robin asks.
“Hopefully, saving your life. Get as far away from the window as possible. Completely out of its trajectory.”
“Got it.” She’s quiet for a second, then shouts out, “I’m in the bathtub!”
“Good.” I use the gutter’s downspout nearby to scale the wall. Bracing my arms and legs at the rooftop just above the window, I pump my legs out, swing my body down, and kick the wooden window frame. With a loud thud, the horizontal frame shatters. My legs dangle inside the window now, and I just need to hold on long enough for Robin to climb up, at which point I can hopefully teeter backward and drop to the ground outside. Neither of us can afford to have anything else go wrong, or we’ll both end up stuck inside the bathroom.
“I need you to climb up my legs now, Robin,” I tell her. “Make it quick. I’m not sure how long I can hold on.”
“Coming!” She steps up on the toilet tank. “Where am I supposed to hang on to you?”
“As high as you can reach on my chest.” I tighten my grip on the gutter. “Now, Robin.”
“I’m…just…trying to avoid…your junk.”
“Right now Robin! I’m losing my grip.”
“Okay!” She jumps up and clings to my neck, turning her body sideways.
Easing my back into a slight arch, I pull us out of the window. “Hold on tight and wrap your legs around my waist. I’m going to let go now.”
She does so with some hesitation, and with another slight kick backward, I let go. The fall isn’t too bad at all, and I manage to land feet first, but with the distance of the jump, the force pushes me backward, and I fall on my back, with her on top of me. I’ve never seen a woman scramble to get off of me so quickly.
“Thank you,” Robin says to me, dusting off her hands. “Did you call 9-1-1?”
“Yes. They’re on the way.”
She promptly turns around and heads to the front of the house in a jog. I pull her arm back when I realize she’s about to climb the front porch steps. “You can’t go in there.”
“But my phone is inside. Any my guitar, my purse and car keys… oh my God, my boss’s files!” She tries to wrench her arm away, but I pull her to the side of the house. “Let me go, Reid! I have to get some things.”
She must be in shock, or in denial about the blaze in front of us.
“We have to wait,” I insist. “The house is fully involved. Just look at it. Even your truck is damaged.”
Robin looks up and stares at the flames and smoke billowing up to the sky as though she is seeing it clearly for the first time. She looks up at me, takes my hand, and says, “Thank you,” like she means it.
* * *
Robin and I sit in my vehicle parked at the other side of the street while we wait for the emergency responders to arrive. The only three calls that she makes are to the boss at her day job, her insurance company, and her brother, Josh. She leaves a message for her boss, who is at a court hearing, and strangely enough, her brother was just redeployed from North Las Vegas where he works to support a forest fire emergency on the Carson Range spur of the Sierra Nevada. The insurance company takes some basic information to start her claim, and instruct her to call back once fire responders have had an opportunity to forward a report. Her parents, sister, and singing partner are all out of town at the moment.
“How did you know to come find me here?” she asks after some time, as I type out a text to let Leo know what I’m up to.
“After your ex-boyfriend got so worked up at Whiskey Jacks last night, I figured I’d pass by on my way to work to see if you’re okay.”
“I don’t understand how the fire started so quickly. There was a crashing sound in the living room, and then the smoke started seeping into the bathroom. I wasn’t even supposed to be here.”
“I saw. My SUV was a few vehicles behind you when you turned into your driveway.”
“So, wait. You saw me park? That means you must have seen how this happened.”
“Someone driving a dark gray, late model Honda sedan was following you. He parked a little way down the road, and I’m sorry, Robin. I wasn’t close enough to stop him. I saw him throw what must have been a homemade Molotov cocktail through your front window. The person was wearing a red baseball cap, but I’m almost sure it was your ex.”
Her jaw drops, and her lips start to tremble. “Dave? He did this? He tried to…kill me?”
“It happened so fast, I wasn’t able to stop him, not without leaving you inside.”
“So he’s still out there?”
“Yes, but the police will find him.”
If I don’t find him first.
I can’t stand witnessing her heartbreak on learning someone she was close to did this to her intentionally. I’m even more relieved to see an ambulance van and two police cars arriving on the scene in my rearview mirror, followed shortly by a fire truck. They all quickly move into action. A paramedic checks out Robin for possible smoke inhalation while firefighters set up to fight the blaze. The police direct the roadway traffic, and one of the officers takes Robin’s and my initial statements and our contact information.
We’re cleared to leave soon afterward, but Robin refuses to come to my place. She demands that I take her to her day job.
“You can’t go to work in this state.”
“I have to,” she tells me. “I just lost everything. I can’t just sit around.”
Her boss phones her back just in time. He tells her not to come in, thankfully, but that only fuels her need to remain outside her burnt up shell of a rental house. She won’t eat or drink. It takes a lot of coaxing to make her sip on a bottle of water to avoid dehydration. By the time the firefighters put out the last of the blaze, they come by and confirm what I expected. The structure is not cleared for re-entry until their fire investigators return to the scene to determine the cause. They’ve even cordoned off her truck.
Robin is shaking at the shock of the news.
I offer to take her to her parents’ place, but she can’t go there either. They’re out of town, and Robin’s spare key for their house is on her key chain—inside of her cordoned off rental house. She’s cried so much in the last couple of hours that she can hardly speak.
“You’re coming to my place,” I tell her. “It’s not a request. If Dave can do this once, he’ll try it again once he realizes he didn’t succeed the first time, but he won’t know to look for you at my condo. You’ll be safe. There’s lots of room. You can stay in the guest room until your family or friend gets back.”
Taking her nonresponse as consent, I drive her to my low-rise condo building and show her up to my unit. Robin uses the bathroom, drinks another bottle of water, and curls up on the spare room bed. I sit in the armchair beside the bed. After she drifts off to sleep, I go to my home office and use the time to get some work done.
Leo phones me for an update, and I keep up with emails and other tasks I can handle from home. I check her room every so often, but with the exception of bathroom pit stops, Robin doesn’t move from that bed for the entire rest of the day, evening and night.