Fatal Burn (West Coast 2)

Shannon drove in the little Mazda without the benefit of air-conditioning. With the windows rolled down she guided the little car through familiar streets. Nate’s insinuations rang through her head: That her father had been the Stealth Torcher, that one of her brothers was following in dear old Dad’s footsteps as the new and improved version of a twisted, murdering arsonist.

Did that make sense?

Was it even possible?

She knew the date Dani Settler had been abducted. Had double-checked. All of her brothers were accounted for, though their alibis were for each other. All of them, it seemed, had had the opportunity. Shea had taken two vacation days that he had tacked on to a weekend and he’d gone fishing. Alone. Robert had time off because of his schedule. Aaron worked for himself.

And now Oliver was dead.

Some of the shock and pain was wearing away and, as the hot September wind tangled her hair, she was angry as hell. She didn’t believe for a minute her brothers were capable of the things Nate had suggested, and she was angry with him for his crazy ideas, angry that he’d lied and used her, and was feeling the same way about Travis. Hadn’t he gotten close to her only because he was looking for his daughter? Hadn’t he initially suspected her of abducting Dani? She’d seen his face this morning, the guilt when Nate had accused him of using her. So she was simmering at him as well as at her brothers for keeping secrets from her.

Worse yet, she was furious with herself.

For being so damned trusting.

Her fingers tightened around the hot steering wheel of the Mazda, and she took a corner a little too quickly, nearly gliding into the oncoming lane where a teenager wearing earphones blasted her with his horn.

Shannon barely noticed. Her thoughts were miles away to her dead father, a gruff man with Santa Claus white hair, a ruddy face and the perpetual scent of Irish whiskey and cigars. He’d been quick with a smile, quicker to anger, and had used a thin black belt on her brothers to keep them in line. Never had he even hinted at whipping her, but when one of the boys screwed up, he’d slowly walk upstairs to his room where the belt hung in his closet, return downstairs, his heavy tread creaking each step, then, without a sound, nod toward the back porch and the offending son, either shaking and crying or stiff with rebellion, would march outside.

Patrick had been a firm believer in “spare the rod and spoil the child,” just as his father had been. But it seemed unbelievable that he might have been a criminal. An arsonist. A murderer.

Could she believe that Patrick Flannery had been the Stealth Torcher? No…No…

So what about the anagram of the first letter of your names?

Had he named his kids with a cryptic anagram as some kind of sick, ironic joke? Who was this man who had sired her?

She slowed for a red light, nervously tapped a tattoo with her fingers on the steering wheel, tried to stem her rage. The fact of the matter was she was pissed off at just about everyone she knew, living or dead. How about Brendan Giles, the coward who had left her at the first whiff of learning she was pregnant? Or Ryan, whose only form of communication had ended up being his fists? Or her twin brothers, the ones she felt were closest to her, both of them now deserting her, whether intentional or not.

“Damn it all to hell,” she growled, tromping so hard on the accelerator as the light changed that the Mazda’s tires screeched.

She passed St. Theresa’s school and wouldn’t let her mind wander down those hallowed, dark halls. A few seconds later she pulled up to a spot in front of her mother’s house. It looked so much the same as it had when she’d grown up here she started to wonder whether it, too, was a lie. As she extracted the key to the Mazda and dropped it into her purse, she began to think that nothing she’d trusted, nothing she’d believed in had been what it seemed.

She stormed up the sidewalk. She was in no mood for excuses, no mood for platitudes, no mood for anything but the truth.

She took the porch steps two at a time. At the front door, she placed her hands on the thick oak panels and took a deep breath. Knocking twice, she yanked open the unlocked door and stepped inside.

The smells of her youth assailed her: the lingering odors of burning candles and cigarettes; a faint scent of fish cooked, no doubt, on Frida

y, though no one but her mother seemed to observe that old tradition.

For the first time since she could remember, she didn’t feel a wistful bit of nostalgia when she spied the family portrait, taken when she was seven, which hung over the mantel in the living room. It was framed in gold-painted wood, a picture taken when all the siblings had lived under this roof. In the portrait, her brothers stood around a bench where she was seated with their father and mother. The boys wore matching sport coats and nervous, toothy smiles. Some had acne, others a bit of facial hair, all carbon copies of their father with their blue eyes, black hair and strong Irish chins. The twins stood on either end, looking so much alike that she knew that Oliver was the one on the left end of the photo standing next to Aaron only because it had been discussed over Thanksgiving turkey year after year, when the dining room table had been lengthened and stretched through the entry hall and into the living room to accommodate all the members of the once-growing Flannery family.

But no longer.

Because of some madman.

Neville was missing.

Oliver and Mary Beth dead.

“Shannon?” Shea appeared, looking over the half wall to the entry hall. His eyes were shadowed and pained, his skin tight over his face. “Glad you could make it,” he said with a trace of sarcasm.

She ignored his dig and hurried up the worn carpet of the stairs. She wasn’t going to have any guilt tossed on her. She’d called twice, explained when she’d show up. “How is she?”

“How would you expect?”

“Not good.”