I threw her a dark look as she tucked the pistol gleefully back in her pants.
Roddy thundered up the fire escape with Ty on his heels. Nick took a moment to debrief them before they escorted Stu from the roof.
“Wait,” I said, running to catch up to them. I stood in Stu’s path and asked in a low voice, “When you said the people you vetted had all done worse things than you, what did you mean?”
Stu lifted his chin. His glasses had broken when I’d tackled him. They sat crooked on his nose, the lenses cracked, but he seemed to see right through me when he said, “What is it you’re really asking, Ms. Donovan?”
“Why did you agree to kill my ex-husband?” I whispered.
He turned away from me. “I’m not saying anything more until I speak with my attorney.”
“Now you decide to listen to Wade’s advice?” I dropped Stu’s arm, backing away as Roddy nudged him toward the stairs. Stu’s perspective on right and wrong had become so warped. The man was clearly disturbed. I was probably worrying for nothing.
Nick limped across the deck toward me. He took me by the shoulders, holstering me snugly in his arms as he whispered into my hair. “When I woke up and you were gone, I called Ty to make sure you’d made it back to your room. He said you were fine. Jesus, Finn, if I’d known you were up here, I would have called a SWAT team.”
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked into his coat.
He drew back to look at me, brushing a few windblown strands from my eyes. “The hospital called and said Joey was missing. A few minutes later, I got a voice message from him, telling me to call Roddy and Ty and meet him on the tower roof.” He pressed his lips to the top of my head. “What the hell were you thinking, coming up here?”
“I might be able to answer that.” Joey massaged his scalp, looking a little woozy as he knelt over the duffel. He cut the zip tie with a pocketknife and unzipped the bag, turning it upside down. Twenty-five bound stacks of paper towels tumbled out of it. Joey looked up at me with an incredulous smile. “Looks like someone was pretty determined to catch her ex-husband’s would-be killer.”
Wade grinned around his cigarette as he hunched over his lighter. “We should all be lucky enough to have an ex-wife like that.”
“Don’t encourage her,” Nick said. “She could have been killed.”
“Cut her some slack,” Wade said. “You have to admit, that was some pretty impressive detective work. She’d make a hell of a vice cop.”
“What’s the going salary for that?” Vero asked.
A slightly hysterical laugh bubbled out of me. I was ready to go home, cuddle my kids, and get back to worrying about fictional bad guys. Though maybe I could make room in my life for a not-so-fictional good one.
Wade gave me a furtive wink as he shouldered his way past Nick on his way to the fire escape. Nick stopped him with a hand to his chest. Wade looked down at it and exhaled smoke through his nose, as if he was too tired to do much else about it.
“Do I want to know what you were doing up here in the middle of the night with my girl?” Nick asked through a smirk.
Wade glanced over Nick’s shoulder at me, a wicked gleam in his eye as he flicked his ash. I shook my head, furiously mouthing the word no. “Are you asking me for an official statement about it?”
“No,” Nick said.
“Then I ain’t tellin’。”
Nick laughed to himself, satisfied. “Fine, but don’t go anywhere. I am going to need a statement about everything else. Want me to call down for a first aid kit?” he asked, gesturing to the blood on Wade’s forearms.
“Just a couple of scrapes.” Wade hitched a thumb toward Joey. “The snitch might need a few stitches though.”
Joey touched the crown of his head as he scowled at Vero.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she warned him. “Wade gave me permission to shoot you.”
Nick pulled Joey aside before a fight could break out. Vero and I hovered close, listening to their conversation. “What the hell are you doing here?” Nick said. “You’re supposed to be in the hospital.”
“Cam must have hacked the hospital computers. He found me and called my room. He said it wasn’t safe to talk, but he was monitoring the blackmailer’s email address and something was going down on the fire tower at three. He said Feliks’s blackmailer would be here.”
“You should have called me,” Nick said. “I would have handled it.”
“I would have, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I was walking into. Or who.” Joey and Nick exchanged a long look.
A long sigh billowed from Nick as he leaned back against the half wall. “You thought you’d find Charlie up here. And you were afraid I might choke and let him off the hook.”
Joey leaned on the wall beside him. “It was a bad hunch. I’m glad I was wrong. Gotta admit, I never even considered Stu for a suspect.” He turned to me and Vero. “When did you two figure it out?”
“Around the same time you did,” I said ruefully. “Let’s just say we had a few bad hunches along the way as well. Sorry about that.”
Joey rubbed the back of his head. “Me, too.”
A light bulb hummed to life over the fire escape. An indicator panel flashed on the side of the pump house, glowing green in the dark. Sidewalk lights and security spotlights flickered on across the campus in sections as the power came back to life. “It’s about time,” Vero said, rubbing her hands together. “I could really use a hot shower.”
Joey drew an exaggerated breath through his nose. Nick did, too. “You smell that?” he asked Joey, pulling a face.
“That’s not funny,” Vero snapped.
I started to laugh, but then I smelled it, too.
The sulfurous reek of propane was thick in the air. That was all the warning we had before the green light on the indicator panel turned red and smoke began to pour over the roof.
CHAPTER 36
Nick checked the indicator lights on the side of the pump house, squinting against the smoke. He waved it from his face as he moved quickly to the roof ledge, frowning down at the tiny outbuilding below. He pulled out his phone and thumbed in a number.
“What’s happening?” I asked, coughing into my sleeve.
“This building is used to train firefighters,” Nick said, as he waited for someone to answer. “The whole tower is one giant simulator. It’s designed to withstand an actual blaze. It’s all run by computers from a control room in that outbuilding down there. The power surge must have triggered the training simulators when the electricity came back on.”
My eyes watered as I swatted at a band of smoke. “Why isn’t anyone shutting them off?”
“It’s four in the morning. The whole campus is asleep.” Nick tried another number as black clouds billowed from the windows below us.
Wade rushed up the fire escape, his clothes and face stained with soot. “The fourth floor is already engulfed. Stairs are too hot,” he called out to us.
Joey paced the ledge, looking for another exit. “Unless somebody’s got rappelling gear, that fire escape is the only way down.”