Fire with Fire, page 38
Leanne’s picture dominated Here, the same one that had been floating around since the siege, of the broken-faced woman being led from a car in cuffs to a holding cell. There wasn’t much sympathy for Leanne Browning. But what little there was painted Leanne as a kind of underdog, whose criminal actions paled in comparison to those of Elsie and Ryan. In keeping Tilly Delaney secret but safe for two years, Leanne had acted to protect her monstrous son. Again, Charlie didn’t have the energy, or the heart, to place Leanne Browning somewhere in a hierarchy of bad people doing bad things. He flipped past her page quickly, avoiding her empty eyes.
Here, Brad Binchley’s arrest at a gas station outside Rimrock was relegated to a side column between a story about an actor arrested for drunk driving and one about a drive-by shooting on a nail salon. Binchley was pictured in cuffs, pressed against a squad car, wind-whipped and cracked-lipped and angry-looking. Charlie wished the picture were bigger.
Among the regret-inducing images of the Hertzberg-Davis building and its blown-out windows, Charlie did notice one image that settled his stomach somewhat. It belonged to a new piece Here that was focused more on the events since the siege than on the day itself. The picture was of Jonie Delaney holding open a car door, the arm of a little girl with curly brown hair extending from inside the vehicle to brace herself as she got out. The caption told Charlie that Jonie and Tilly were depicted arriving at Century Regional Detention Facility to visit with their mother while she recovered from surgery in the infirmary. While a columnist had filled half the page with a scathing rant about Elsie Delaney being allowed to see her children, Charlie found himself looking instead at the girl he’d last seen drugged and curled up on a hospital bed, alone in the dark.
In a mere week, Jonie Delaney seemed to have filled out, aged, grown taller, her elbow resting on the top of the car door as she leaned confidently and caringly into the car to catch her baby sister should the kid stumble. She looked like a mother, Charlie thought. He didn’t know how to begin forming an opinion on whether or not Elsie should be allowed to see the little girl for whom she’d given up her freedom, and the lives of others, to prove she still existed somewhere. He didn’t know who was more at fault—the police who hadn’t looked hard enough for Tilly, or the parents who had looked too hard. But something about the image of the child and her older sister getting out of the car in the parking lot at CRDF made him feel like the great storm of news around the siege was going to blow away and, with it, the heartache of the two girls in the picture. And that was all right with him.
Charlie heard voices rising in Saskia Ferboden’s office, like goodbyes were being said. He quickly flipped through to the back of the newspaper to see if there were any mentions of him or the aftermath of Operation Hellfire, but there were none. As he’d hoped, the siege had completely obscured any and all notable incidents around Los Angeles from that week. There was also nothing about Surge or his part in the investigation into Tilly Delaney. The ex-police officer’s assault charges against Bailey and his men had dissolved magically within a few hours of his arrest, and he’d been set free. That’s the way it always happened with Surge. The only mystery was whether it was his past favors performed for the criminal world or police world that melted his legal complications. As usual, Charlie assumed he’d never find out.
There was nothing about Lamb. Charlie expected that her involvement in recovering Tilly, along with his, would be a tightly held secret for the LAPD. It wouldn’t look good for anybody that it had taken the efforts of a recently fired twenty-one-year-old police rookie and a deeply problematic victim of a botched undercover job to find the missing kid. Better that the public believed simply that it was a “crack investigative team” who had brought Tilly home. Which was true, Charlie thought.
When Lynette Lamb opened Saskia’s door and stepped out into the hall, Charlie was struck with the same impression he’d had when he looked at Jonie Delaney in the photo in the paper: that he was looking at a person who had arrived sometime recently on the edge of their adulthood. Lamb did a double take when she saw him sitting there, her body already turned toward the elevators. She adjusted the sling around her neck and came to him, and he handed her the second coffee he’d bought, which had been sitting on the bench by the paper. She looked briefly at the boots on his feet. Wide-bridge, classic-cut Waybournes in what she guessed was a size twelve and a half.
“How’d you know I was here?” Lamb took the coffee numbly. “You didn’t—”
“No, I didn’t.” Charlie lifted his crutch from where it leaned against the wall. “I told you I wasn’t going to plead your case to Saskia, and I meant it.”
“Oh, good,” Lamb sighed. “Because if I’d just given that whole speech in there without needing to, I’d have kicked somebody.”
“I was keeping an eye on your hospital admission,” Charlie said. “I knew you’d stay in for the full amount of time they told you to. So I know you were released three hours ago. I figured you’d go home, shower, change, and come straight here.”
“You were right.” Lamb smiled. “Good instincts.”
“What did she say?”
“She said I’m back in.” A smile was dancing about the corners of Lamb’s mouth, but she was managing to keep it contained. “Turns out you can get reinstated, even if you’re dumped on your first day on the job. All you have to do is solve a cold case, almost get murdered by a biker and crushed by a palm tree, then kill a guy, and they let you right back in.”
“So you’ll go back to Van Nuys?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was too scared to ask. But I’ve got a month off, no matter what happens.” She adjusted her sling again. “Can’t do anything for four weeks. Doctor’s orders.”
“Great,” Charlie said. “That’s exactly how long I’ve got on the bench, too.”
She stopped beside him, made curious by his strange tone, and he took the file he’d been carrying under his arm and handed it to her. It was a thin file. Light. Filled with unanswered questions, just as the Tilly Delaney one had been. Charlie watched Lamb flip through it, and then she lifted her eyes to his, and the two officers stood in the hall and grinned at each other.
“Imagine how much we could do together,” Charlie said. “With more than one day to do it.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As an author, I’m not only a product of my lived experience, but also of the time, effort, and care that was devoted to my training in the craft by good teachers. So as always, I’d like to thank the people who honed my writerly ways at the University of the Sunshine Coast, the University of Queensland, and the University of Notre Dame.
I also have a brilliant (and always growing) team of publishers, editors, and agents across the globe. Beverley Cousins and her crew at Penguin Random House Australia take care of me at home, and Kristin Sevick and her team at Tor/Forge look after me in the US. I’m so grateful to be with Thomas Wörtche and Suhrkamp Verlag in Germany and so many others around the world for both my solo and collaborative works. My hardworking, long-suffering, and always supportive agents are Gaby Naher in Australia, Lisa Gallagher in New York, and Steve Fisher in Los Angeles.
This book is dedicated to the Troppo team. While writing it, I got to experience the almost unreal process of having a book adapted into a blockbuster tv series with skilled writers, an awesome cast and crew, and a relentless production effort. Business turmoil, funding sagas, a global pandemic, and a host of other challenges stepped in the way of this fierce group of people, but they adapted and overcame because they believed in the project. Thank you to every single person who worked on Troppo.
When it comes to research for this particular novel, I’d like to thank Lauren Gadson, an emergency room superhero, who has provided medical advice to me on demand for books for years. The notorious and wonderful former homicide detective Gary Jubelin provided context on undercover operations and hostage crises for me. Homicide detective Adam Richardson of Santa Barbara took me on a tour of the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center and has been ever ready to answer my questions for a long time. Gaby Naher gets another mention here, not for her work as an agent, but for answering questions based on her experience as a sea witch. Thank you to her family of other ocean dwellers for naming Mina and for their encouragement.
Thank you to the friends I have made in the Australian crime writing community, who listened and helped me through, particularly in those tough lockdown times. Tim Ayliffe, Loraine Peck, Andy Muir, and Anna Downes, in particular. My friend and mentor James Patterson was also an absolute rock during this time.
And to Tim, Violet, and Noggy. My beautiful family. In the end, it all comes down to you. Thanks for loving me and letting me love you back. Famwich!
FORGE BOOKS BY CANDICE FOX
Crimson Lake
Redemption Point
Gone by Midnight
Gathering Dark
The Chase
ALSO BY CANDICE FOX
Hades
Eden
Fall
WITH JAMES PATTERSON
Never Never
Fifty Fifty
Liar Liar
Hush
2 Sisters Detective Agency
The Inn
Black & Blue
(BookShots novella)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CANDICE FOX is the award-winning author of Crimson Lake, Redemption Point, Gone by Midnight, Gathering Dark, and The Chase. She is also cowriter, with James Patterson, of New York Times bestsellers Never Never, Fifty Fifty, Liar Liar, The Inn, and 2 Sisters Detective Agency. She lives in Sydney.
Visit her online at candicefox.org, or sign up for email updates here.
facebook.com/candicefoxauthor
Twitter: @candicefoxbooks
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Four Days Ago
Two Days Ago
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Forge Books by Candice Fox
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
FIRE WITH FIRE
Copyright © 2023 by Candice Fox
All rights reserved.
Cover photographs: pier by Scott Trento; paper by Arcangel Images; flames by Shutterstock.com
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates / Tor Publishing Group
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-87596-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-89560-8 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250895608
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First Edition: 2023
Candice Fox, Fire with Fire
