The guy stood over her, and then looked up at the house. Unsteady on his feet, he went back to a pile of rocks that had been dropped in the middle of the yard. “I spent my entire life building up savings for my store. You had no right to close it on me. It’s your fault.” His words slurred a little as he spoke and he lifted a rock and chucked it toward the house. It bounced off the siding with a loud crack.

  “Stop,” she gurgled, still coughing. “Why are you doing that?”

  “It’s only fair,” he said. “I’ll take yours since you took mine.”

  “I didn’t take anything from you.”

  He ignored her, and continued to throw rocks at the house. Some did hit windows, and the glass gave way. Others bounced off the siding or didn’t even make it and they bounced on the ground. He didn’t seem interested in her being there, as long as he wasn’t stopped. “Were you the one who stole my purse?” She knew it was him but wanted to keep him talking. Where was Beau?

  “It didn’t have much in it.” He pelted the front door, and bent over for another rock. “You don’t carry much cash for a rich brat.”

  “I’m not rich,” she said. “I don’t have any money. When my father died, he left a lot of debt. That’s why the house isn’t kept up. That’s why there’s a big fat mortgage hanging over it. I couldn’t afford to replace those windows if I wanted to.”

  He stopped then and looked at her. “I don’t believe that. This big house? It’s worth a lot of money. You could sell it for millions.”

  “It is worth nothing. It’s mortgaged out the wazoo.” She sat up, putting a hand over her ribs. “The paperwork you stole from the desk was a lie. There wasn’t any money in those accounts.”

  “What paperwork?”

  She paused. “You’ve been in the house.”

  He shook his head, dribble collecting at the corner of his mouth. “No. I didn’t go in. You’re telling me there’s no money?”

  “None. The water’s been turned off. The phone was disconnected…”

  “Good,” he shouted, and he hurled another rock at the house. The rock crashed through one of the second floor windows. “It was my life’s savings that I put into my business. My wife told me I shouldn’t start a business in this town but it was my dream. It was good, too. I’ve been here for ten years. And now… now I have nothing. I’m making you pay for what you did. You had no right.”

  “You’re right, it wasn’t your fault, but it’s not mine either. I don’t work for the company.”

  “You lie. You represented the company tonight at that ball. I saw you there. It was all over the television about your connection to Logan Enterprises.” He turned then, rocks in hand, toward me. “You can’t lie to me.”

  As he was lifting a rock to hurl it at her, the car zoomed forward. He may have been high on something, but he was aware enough to drop the rocks and run once the car started zooming toward him. He ran for it, heading to the street, possibly to a car that waited out in the darkness.

  The car stopped for a moment when it got to where she was sitting in the grass. Mr. Sanders sat in the driver’s seat. He jumped out just as she was getting up and reached a hand out to help her stand. “You OK?”

  “What are you doing here?” It was surreal, seeing him standing there. His hair was a mess, and his jacket was missing, sleeves rolled up.

  “I was hoping you were here. I was in the house. Beau ran into me on the way in. He scared the shit out of me and I kind of hit him. He’s a bit dazed but he’s alright. Then I heard you with the car and I waited for a good opportunity.”

  Just then, Beau came out from around the house.

  “Nice timing,” she said.

  “Where’d he go,” Beau asked, rubbing at his head.

  She pointed.

  Beau went for the passenger door. “You drive, Mr. Sanders. Let’s find him.”

  Mr. Sanders took a quick look at her. “Stay right here. Lock yourself in the house.” He shut the door and then drove in the direction the guy had run.

  She was alone in the front yard, and breathed out slowly, trembling. She still couldn’t wrap her brain around it. Questions rolled around in her head, there were still too many and she was still wobbly on her feet.

  She stumbled over to the front porch when her phone rang. She walked into the house, answering. “Yup?”

  “I found something.”

  “We found the guy.” She tromped up the stairs. “Beau’s getting him.”

  Warren paused. “He got Sanders?”

  “What?”

  “Sanders started the scam businesses.”

  Celeste paused at the top of the stairs. “How do you know?”

  “After you left and we cleared the building, I went back to my office and Jemse and I searched through your dad’s files.”

  “So?”

  “I didn’t notice before, but a bunch of paperwork was signed by Mr. Cobalt.”

  “Jemse’s dad?”

  “Yeah. But they were signed for two months after he’d passed on. Someone was forging his signature and changing papers.”

  Celeste blinked. “Sanders took over Mr. Cobalt’s paperwork after he died.

  “Where are you right now?”

  There was a sound at the front door of footsteps and the knob being turned. Celeste leaped out of the way and around the next flight of stairs, up to her dad’s bedroom. It was every horror film gone wrong scenario, but she wanted to wait him out, and then slip down the back stairwell. She knew the house, even in the dark. If she made it to someplace to hide…

  She carefully closed her dad’s bedroom door and then stopped to listen. The house was silent. She went upstairs to her father’s bedroom on tip toes, opened the closet and found a spot to nestle, closing the door behind her.

  She tried to talk to Warren, but the call had disconnected. She punched in Beau’s number. The number rang, but he didn’t pick up. She could only imagine why he wasn’t picking up. It went to voice mail and when she called back, it went straight to voicemail.

  For a moment, she thought of calling Mr. Sanders’ number. She punched in Kris’s number out of reflex at first. So she switched and punched in Mr. Chandler’s number, hoping he could reach Mr. Sanders.

  After listening to the first half of the ring on the phone, she heard the sound of a cell phone beep downstairs.

  And then she heard the cell phone noise downstairs silenced, as if someone shut the phone off.

  The ringing from her cell phone ceased and was redirected to voicemail.

  Was it Mr. Chandler downstairs? Maybe he was on to Sanders, too.

  She blew out a breath, and hoped it was. She almost wanted to laugh, thinking of Mr. Chandler downstairs probably looking for her to help.

  She pushed open the bedroom door and headed down the stairs. She stepped softly, listening for Mr. Chandler. It was still dark and if he was looking for her, she didn’t want to scare him.

  She finally heard fumbling in the front foyer, along with an unusual smell that she couldn’t quite place. She walked down through the dark. Her eyes adjusted, as the outside light from the neighbor’s security light was filtering through the windows.

  While she was waiting, she felt a hand grip her arm.

  “Mr. Chandler?”

  She was pulled into the library, and then she felt a force against the back of her head.

  She saw stars, and went down on her knees, and then to her side. It seemed to take forever and a second all at once. She felt her head knock against the floor as a light spread through the room. She couldn’t see the source and she was too dazed to think of it. She felt a cut on the back of her head, and something wet dripping through her hair.

  She managed to angle her head just enough. Mr. Chandler held a rifle in his hands. The rifle her father had wanted to sell. The one Warren wanted to discuss with him at first. The one that was in the photo Sheldon took the day he was there.

  The one that had wasn’t there afterward when the police had arrived.

  She urged her arm up to reach for it, but it wasn’t moving. The light he held in his hand was flickering and it was making her nauseous.

  She managed to roll onto her back. The trickle of blood switched directions, making what felt like a zigzag across what she could only guess was a swollen cut.

  “Don’t bother getting up.” She smelled something like kerosene. It was strong and she wanted to move her hand over her mouth to stop breathing it in but she could barely move. “Just relax.”

  Don’t. Please.” She gasped. It came out in less than a whisper. She couldn’t find enough air to scream like she wanted. “No.”

  “You shouldn’t have been here. You should have left it alone.” His face swam into view. His hands held a lighter. His hand was shaking, his eyes wide and wild.

  “Mr. Chandler.” She gasped, feeling a new wave of pain from the gash at her head. She closed her eyes and it felt like a billion years passed. When she opened them again, his hands were still shaking above her, trying to light the lighter but unable to connect.

  Then he left her line of sight. She wanted to call out to him, but the strong smell of kerosene was making her gag. Despite her condition, her brain was trying to piece together what had happened. Mr. Chandler had hit her over the head. He was holding the rifle that had been missing. He was trying to light the place on fire.

  He was going to leave her in the fire to die.

  She struggled to her stomach again. She had an idea of wriggling like a worm toward the door. When she turned, Mr. Chandler was gone. The smell was still strong and she saw the dampness seeping into the carpet. She managed to get her hands on the floor, and then with every bit of strength she could muster, she was on hands and knees and made slow progress for the door.

  It was then she smelled smoke. It wasn’t so strong, but it was definitely there. In the dark, she couldn’t tell what direction it was coming from, but soon light followed from the back living room. She heard footsteps again and she sprawled out on the carpet again, trying to pretend she was still struggling. The light he had been holding swept over her once. It hesitated and then she heard more footsteps, the sound of banging, loud and she heard metal cracking, wood splintering. The front door opened and then he locked it behind himself.

  He left her alone.

  She managed to make her way back to all fours again, the smell of smoke getting stronger even from the ground. She had no idea if he had more gasoline but she knew if the fire stretched to the library before she could get out, she was toast.

  Scrambling on hands and knees, she felt her pants soak up gas from the carpet. Slowly, she made her way through the darkness until she felt for the wall. She tried to pick herself up, but it wasn’t happening, she was stuck on the floor. A wave of nausea washed over her and she choked it back. Feeling for the door, she crawled on the sleek wooden floor of the hall, her hands wet with gas and sweat. She got up again, fighting the urge just to lie down and sleep. Her heart was pounding so loud in her ears that she couldn’t focus on exactly where the smoke was coming from.

  It was then that she noticed that there was a trail where Mr. Chandler had weaved kerosene through the house. She looked up to see flames leaping out of the back rooms, and coming her way. He couldn’t light the fire while looking at her, so he torched the back rooms, allowing it to spread her way.

  It was fast, the flames lifting up, burning along the walls, but it stopped short of the stairwell. Close to her face, she braced for it so she could stomp a hand down and put it out, but it stopped. There was a split between the pools of kerosene and the fire was just burning up the liquid, rather than settling into the house quite yet.

  She crawled as fast as she could, knowing that it wouldn’t take long for the flames to stretch toward her or a spark to land on her. She lunged at the front door, lifting herself up to reach for the knob.

  The knob was gone. She felt around and there was only a hole where the knob had been. The top lock was broken.

  The only way out had been broken.

  She struggled to breathe as smoke filled her lungs. She moved through to the parlor. Crawling on her knees, she felt glass under her, and then blinked as she picked up her hand, looking at the blood from her palm.

  The psycho- whoever had done her a favor.

  She reached for one of the antique lamps sitting on a side table, hurling it at the already broken window. The lamp shattered the bottom of the panel of glass, sending more shards to the floor. She reached for cushion from one of the couches and then pushed it up against the window, crawling over glass to lift herself up. The glass was gone from the top and sides and the hole was big enough, but leaning against the wall, she was disoriented and felt she was going to fall over. She leaned forward with the cushion, her knees bleeding and her head swaying. She tried to fall forward through the window, hoping to land on grass or at least a bare patch that she could crawl away from easily.

  She felt hands gripping at her shirt and she pulled backward, clawing at the hands to get away. She screamed, but it was short, running out of air to fill her lungs. The hands grabbed at her arms and pulled her outward toward the night.

  She landed on her back outside, and a shadow hovered over her. Red and black washed over her eyes so she couldn’t tell who it was. She heard shouting, and then lights were all over the place. She felt herself lifted and carried off.

  And then she remembered nothing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  The fire had burned the entire house. Once the kerosene caught on through the front library, everything lit up on the bottom floor and blazed upward, bringing the whole house down. The fire department could only contain it so it didn’t spread.

  When Celeste asked Beau at the hospital later, he said Mr. Sanders had pulled her from the window. Beau had detained Mr. Chandler. They couldn’t find goatee guy and was coming back for her when they spotted Mr. Chandler’s car pulling out of the driveway as they were pulling in. Mr. Chandler tried to ram Mr. Sanders out of the way and then pull his car around so he could leave, but Beau managed to get back in Mr. Sanders’ car and collided. Mr. Chandler surrendered.

  Mr. Chandler had been the CFO at Logan Enterprises for twenty years. He should have known everything going on, approved all financial matters. If her father had been funneling money out of the company, he would have known. As it was, he did know, because he’d done the funneling, leaving trails that lead to her father being the culprit behind him. It wasn’t intentional; it started out as borrowing money to start his own company. When the company folded, he had to keep paying it money to stop it people from outing him in public. When he ran out of company money that he could get away with using safely, he’d taken her father’s money. He made even more bad financial decisions, including pyramid schemes. Bad money following more bad financial decisions, until finally the mess was unfixable.

  Mr. Cobalt had been on to him, though it happened when he got sick. He told Mr. Chandler he was looking into some discrepancies from the accounting department. So Mr. Chandler appealed to him to keep it discreet, and when he wasn’t looking, replaced his pills with salt tablets. When he died, Mr. Sanders had taken over the paperwork, but with so much going on, he had Mr. Chandler look over the numbers. Mr. Sanders only signed his name to the paperwork.

  It was her father that had invited Mr. Chandler to the house to help him figure out where money had gone after a call from the insurance company over a bounced check. Mr. Chandler followed him up the stairs to his office, where Mr. Logan managed to piece together part of the truth. Mr. Chandler still claimed that he never pushed him down the stairs, but he couldn’t quite remember. What he did remember was that he was worried someone would think he did it on purpose and that Mr. Logan would live to reveal his financial trouble.

  So Mr. Chandler found the closest item in the room, a rifle sitting on the table. He grabbed it, hit Mr. Logan over the head to be sure he was dead. He messed up the area around the stairs to make it look like a crazy fall, including knocking over the coat rack on top of him. The problem was, he didn’t realize what he had grabbed, or that he had left it in the house. When the death was reported as an accident, he realized the only thing that could really counter that was gun, but in the madness, his memory blocked out exactly what the object was. He returned to the house several times, including the time when Kris had been there trying to install security cameras. Rather than get caught, he hit her over the head. Knowing she hadn’t seen him, and knowing that someone else had been harassing Celeste, he left her there, thinking they’d look for the crazy guy who had robbed Celeste.

  After Mr. Chandler’s confession to the police, the goatee guy was shortly brought in. He was caught trying to piss on a security guard in the front lobby of Logan Tower. He admitted to the things he had done, too.

  Celeste stopped by one last time to the now scarred lot, with black and ashes now littering the lawn. It was so out of place on Kiawah Island, where everything was held in pristine beauty and peaceful splendor. Now this gash was here, and it broke the spell.

  The neighbors must really hate her, she thought.

  She was just about to leave when a black car pulled up, and Beau stepped out of the driver’s seat, Mr. Sanders was in the passenger side. He looked over at Beau. Beau nodded and remained at the car where he was while Mr. Sanders approached where Celeste was standing in the yard.

  She turned to him. “I guess this is kinda my fault.”

  “Just a little,” he said. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

  He always did know how to get under her skin.

  Sanders pulled an envelope out from an inner pocket. “Here.” He placed it in her hands. “This is yours.”

  She opened it up. Inside were documents about the house insurance, a check from a life insurance company, and a check from Logan Enterprises. She looked up at Mr. Sanders, his hair giving way to the breeze coming up the beach. “What’s all this?”