Chapter 7: At the furnace
The beam of light held steady on the stairwell. Dust motes swirled like frantic galaxies in its harsh glare.
Rebecca stopped breathing. She pressed herself deeper into the shadow behind the furnace, the rough brick biting into her back through the thin wool of Ridge’s sweater. Her hand clenched around the burner phone. A single press of the ‘1’ would send an alert. But the creak of a foot on the top step froze her thumb.
“Basement light’s on.” A man’s voice, flat and unfamiliar. “Check it.”
“Probably just left it on. Place is a dump.” This voice was younger, with a nasal twang.
“Check it anyway. Vick said thorough. That means lights, corners, mouse shit. Everything.”
Footsteps descended, slow and heavy. The beam of the flashlight danced over the concrete floor, illuminating forgotten stacks of National Geographics, a broken chair, the ghostly shape of a dressmaker’s dummy.
Rebecca’s mind screamed at her to run, but the staircase was blocked. The only other exit was a small, high window painted shut decades ago. She was in a stone coffin.
The light swept toward the furnace. It lingered on the displaced tarp.
“Hey. Someone’s been back here.”
Two figures came into view. The first was a big man in a dark puff jacket, his head shaved to stubble. The one with the flashlight was younger, lean, with a narrow face and nervous eyes. They both wore gloves.
The big man toeed the open cardboard flap of the box Rebecca had just been holding. He squatted, pulling out a handful of brittle papers. He shone his own flashlight on them, scanning a few lines.
“Jackpot,” he grunted, a smile spreading across his broad face. “Payroll ledger. From ’87. Told you it wasn’t a ghost story.”
“What do we do?” The younger one’s voice tightened with anxiety. “Call Vick?”
“We do what we came for. We make it all go away. Clean.” The big man stood, dropping the papers back into the box. “Get the can from the bag.”
The younger man scurried back up the stairs. Rebecca heard a zipper, a clank of metal. He returned carrying a red plastic gasoline container. The sharp, chemical smell hit her nostrils instantly, cutting through the dust.
Her paralysis broke. This wasn’t just intimidation. This was eradication.
“You can’t,” she said, the words leaving her mouth before she could stop them.
Both men spun, flashlight beams converging on her. She was pinned in the light, blinking.
“Well, shit,” the big man said, his surprise melting into a look of cold amusement. “The bookstore princess. Hiding with the rats.”
He took a step toward her. Rebecca didn’t think. She moved. She grabbed the closest thing to hand—a long, rusted metal pipe leaning against the wall—and swung it in a wide, desperate arc.
It connected with a meaty thud against the big man’s forearm. He swore, more in annoyance than pain, and the flashlight clattered to the floor, rolling and casting crazy shadows. The younger one jumped back.
“Feisty,” the big man growled, shaking out his arm. “I like that.”
Rebecca swung again, aiming for his head. This time he caught the pipe mid-swing, wrenching it from her grip with terrifying ease. He tossed it aside. It rang against the concrete like a dead bell.
She tried to dart past him, toward the stairs. The younger one moved to block her. She shoved him hard, both hands against his chest. He stumbled, off-balance, and she got by.
She took two steps up the stairs before a fist grabbed a handful of the sweater from behind and yanked. The world tilted. She was pulled backwards, her feet leaving the steps. She landed on the concrete floor on her side, the breath knocked out of her in a painful gasp.
The big man loomed over her, planting a heavy boot on her chest, pinning her. The weight was immense, crushing. She clawed at his leg, but her fingers skidded off the slick nylon of his jacket.
“Just stay down, sweetheart,” he said, his voice conversational. “This’ll be over soon. You shouldn’t have come back.”
“Get off me,” she choked out, struggling for air.
The younger man stood by, holding the gas can, his face pale. “Carl didn’t say anything about—”
“Carl’s not here. I am.” The big man dug his heel in slightly, making Rebecca cry out. “Now, you’re gonna watch. You’re gonna see what happens when you become a problem.”
He nodded to his partner. “Do it. Start with the boxes. Soak ‘em good.”
Tears of rage and pain blurred Rebecca’s vision as the younger man unscrewed the cap on the gas can. The glug-glug-glug of liquid splashing onto cardboard was obscenely loud. The pungent reek of gasoline filled the air, thick and suffocating.
“No! Stop!” She thrashed under the boot, but it was like trying to move a car.
“Then we do the stairs, the shelving down here. Let it wick up,” the big man continued, his plan methodical and calm. “We leave. We call it in from a payphone a mile away. Electrical fire in a old building. Tragic. All that history, up in smoke. Including some nosy bitch who couldn’t leave well enough alone.”
He leaned down, his face close to hers. His breath smelled of onion and coffee. “You get to be a martyr for your little cause. How’s that sound?”
The younger man finished dousing the boxes. The gasoline dripped onto the floor, forming shimmering, toxic puddles. He moved toward the wooden storage shelves lining the far wall.
This was it. The leverage, the store, her future—all about to be turned to ash and a news footnote. A raw, guttual sound of pure defiance ripped from her throat. She twisted violently, managing to sink her teeth into the man’s ankle, just above his boot.
He roared, more in surprise than pain, and jerked his foot away for a split second.
It was enough.
She rolled, scrambling on her hands and knees toward the fallen pipe. Her fingers closed around the cold, gritty metal just as his hand fisted in her hair. He yanked her head back, hard, exposing her throat. Stars burst behind her eyes.
“You stupid cunt,” he snarled.
She swung the pipe blindly behind her. It connected with something—his knee, his shin—with a solid crack. His grip on her hair loosened with a sharp gasp.
She stumbled forward, turned, and raised the pipe like a baseball bat, her chest heaving. Her side throbbed where she’d landed. The taste of blood was in her mouth.
The big man was limping, his face now a mask of genuine anger. The younger one had stopped pouring, watching, the gas can dangling from his hand.
“Alright,” the big man spat. “The hard way.”
He charged her. Not with skill, but with pure, enraged mass. She brought the pipe down, but he deflected it with his forearm again, absorbing the blow, and barreled into her. They crashed into a stack of hardcover overstock. Books exploded around them in a cloud of dust and flying pages.
His weight was on top of her, crushing the air from her lungs for the second time. His gloved hand closed around her throat. He wasn’t trying to choke her out. He was punishing her. The pressure was immense, deliberate. Black spots danced at the edges of her vision. She clawed at his hand, his face, her nails scraping skin.
“Watch the lights go out,” he whispered, his eyes inches from hers.
From the top of the stairs, a voice cut through the gloom. It was flat, devoid of all emotion, and it froze the scene solid.
“The boot.”
The big man’s head snapped up. The younger one yelped, dropping the gas can with a plastic clatter.
Ridge stood at the head of the basement stairs, backlit by the weak light from the store above. He wasn’t running. He was just there. A silhouette holding a long, heavy-looking Maglite flashlight by its end, like a club.
The man on top of Rebecca hesitated for a fatal second.
Ridge moved. He didn’t come down the stairs. He dropped. He landed in a low crouch on the concrete floor, the impact silent, absorbed. In the same motion, he swung the Maglite.
It wasn’t a wild swing. It was a short, brutal, upward arc. The heavy aluminum body connected with the big man’s jaw with a sound like a walnut cracking in a vice.
The grip on Rebecca’s throat vanished. The man grunted, his head snapping sideways. He slumped off her, dazed.
Ridge was already turning. The younger one fumbled for something in his waistband—a knife, a gun. He never got it clear.
Ridge closed the distance in two steps. The Maglite came down once, precisely, on the forearm reaching for the weapon. Bone snapped. The man screamed, high and thin. The second strike was a controlled, horizontal blow to the temple. The scream cut off. He folded to the floor and didn’t move.
The big man was shaking his head, spitting blood and a tooth onto the concrete. He pushed himself up onto his knees, his eyes blazing with animal fury. He lunged for the gas can, not as a weapon, but to hurl it, to spread the accelerant.
Ridge kicked it away. It skittered across the floor, gasoline sloshing from its open mouth.
“Game’s over,” Ridge said. His voice was still that same unsettling calm. “Vick sent you on a burn job. You failed. Walk out now, you get to tell him that. Try anything else, and you leave in a bag.”
The big man stared up at him, weighing his odds. He saw the absolute lack of tension in Ridge’s posture, the cool emptiness in his eyes. This wasn’t a bluff. He held his hands up, slowly.
“Okay,” he slurred through his broken mouth. “Okay. We’re going.”
Ridge shook his head and pulled out his phone. "Smile for the birdie." He took pictures of the two men, both of them scowling in the flash. As he put his phone back in his pocket, the telltales flashing red and blue lights from the street shone down the stairs. Rebecca jerked her head to look at Ridge. "Who called the police?"
Ridge chuckled. "I did. In all the running and hiding, I forgot that the law is actually on our sides on this. You are in your building; they are trespassing. I was hoping the police would put the fear of god in them. But they got caught trying to commit arson, with the tools. And then...". He grinned and kissed Rebecca's cheek hard. "They admitted it and I recorded it. Carl Vick's time as an employee of Corinth is definitely over."
A flashlight beam shone down the stairs followed by a gruff, "Found 'em. All of you, freeze!" Ridge nodded, "As you say, officer. The owner and I found these would-be arsonists."
The police officer’s flashlight beam swept over the scene, highlighting the gasoline puddles, the overturned box, and the two men on the floor. One was groaning, the other unconscious. The smell of fuel was overwhelming.
“Jesus,” the cop muttered, his hand resting on his sidearm. He was older, with a tired mustache and sharp eyes that took in everything. “Nobody move a muscle. Backup’s right behind me.”
Ridge slowly raised his hands, palms out. “The can is over there. The one with the broken arm tried to reach for a weapon. I defended us. I have audio of them admitting they were sent to burn the place and the evidence.”
Rebecca pushed herself up to a sitting position, her whole body a constellation of new aches. The concrete was cold and gritty beneath her palms. She could still feel the ghostly pressure of the boot on her chest, the grip on her throat.
“He was choking her,” Ridge added, his voice losing its flat calm for a razor-sharp edge. “Check her neck.”
The cop’s eyes flicked to Rebecca. Even in the bad light, the red, blooming marks were visible. He keyed his shoulder radio. “Dispatch, we’re gonna need a bus. Two for transport, one for a female assault victim.”
Sirens whooped right outside, painting the basement walls in pulses of blue and red. Sudden, loud footsteps pounded above as more officers flooded the store.
The big man, still on his knees, spat another glob of blood onto the floor. “She attacked me first. We were just… securing the premises.”
“With a five-gallon can of unleaded?” The cop’s voice was pure, dry disbelief. “Save it for the detectives. You,” he said, pointing at Ridge with his chin. “Keep your hands where I can see them. You,” he nodded to Rebecca, “can you stand?”
She could, but it was unsteady. Her legs felt like cooked spaghetti. A younger officer appeared at the bottom of the stairs and helped her up, his grip professional and impersonal. The world tilted slightly, then righted itself.
They were all escorted upstairs into the stark, fluorescent glow of the bookstore. It looked surreal now, this place of quiet and stories, now crowded with uniformed bodies and crackling radios. Someone had propped the front door open, letting in the cold night air and the murmurs of a small crowd already gathering on the sidewalk.
A paramedic wrapped a thin silver blanket around Rebecca’s shoulders and guided her to sit on a stool by the register. She started asking questions in a soft, practiced tone. “Can you tell me where it hurts? Can you take a deep breath for me?”
Rebecca complied, the ache in her side sharp on the inhalation. Her voice was hoarse when she described the boot, the hand on her throat. The paramedic’s fingers were gentle as they probed her ribs, her neck.
Across the room, Ridge was giving a clipped, precise statement to the lead detective, a woman with a severe black ponytail and a no-nonsense demeanor. He handed over his phone. “The recording starts when I entered the basement. You’ll hear the threats, the plan for arson, the assault.”
The detective plugged in earbuds, listening, her face impassive. After a minute, she pulled them out and nodded once. “That’ll do it.” She looked at the big man, now handcuffed and sitting glumly on the floor near Philosophy. “Your buddy with the concussion is waking up. He’s already asking for a lawyer named Fink. You know Fink?”
The big man just glared.
“Yeah,” the detective said. “He’s good. But he’s not a miracle worker. Conspiracy to commit arson, assault in the second degree, trespassing, unlawful imprisonment… and that’s just the warm-up act before the DA starts looking at who hired you.” She turned back to Ridge. “You’ll need to come down to give a full statement. Both of you.”
Rebecca watched as the two intruders were led out in cuffs, their heads ducked against the flash of a camera from a local news stringer who’d materialized on the sidewalk. The spectacle of it, the public unmasking, should have felt like victory. It just felt hollow and exposed.
Ridge walked over to her, the detective’s card in his hand. “We have about an hour before they want us at the precinct.”
His knuckles were split and raw. She hadn’t even seen him get hit. “Your hand.”
He glanced at it, flexing his fingers. “It’s fine. You?”
“I’ll bruise impressively.” She tried for her old smile, but it felt like a cracked plate. The adrenaline was gone, leaving her shivering violently under the crinkly blanket. “They were going to burn it. With me in it.”
“They weren’t.” He said it with a certainty that brooked no argument. “I was already at the alley door when I heard the first shout. I called it in and came in through the front. They were on a timer the second the cops were dispatched.”
“You couldn’t know that.”
“I did.” He held her gaze. “But you didn’t. And you still picked up the pipe.”
A sob rose in her throat, unexpected and humiliating. She clenched her teeth, forcing it down. She would not cry in the middle of her ransacked store surrounded by cops. Not now.
The paramedic finished and packed her kit. “Ribs are just badly bruised. Your throat will be sore. Keep an eye on the breathing.” She handed Rebecca a small card with aftercare instructions, her expression sympathetic. “You’ve had a hell of a night.”
That was one word for it.
As the last of the police vehicles pulled away, the stark quiet returned. It was different from the closing-time quiet. This was a violated silence. The ‘Closed’ sign hung crooked on the door.
Ridge locked it. He righted a toppled display table, methodically picking up scattered books. “We still need the boxes,” he said, as if commenting on the weather.
She stared at him. “You can’t be serious. The police just left. My ribs feel like they’re in a vise. I smell like a gas station.”
“All the more reason.” He stopped stacking books. “Vick’s assets are in custody. His attention will be on lawyering up, on containment. He’ll assume the police took the evidence as part of their investigation. He won’t expect us to go back down there right now. It’s the cleanest window we’ll get.”
It was ruthless logic. The kind that ignored shock and trauma in favor of tactical advantage. She hated it. She also knew he was right.
“I can’t carry them,” she said, her voice small.
“You won’t have to. I’ll bring the car to the alley. You point. I’ll carry.” He was already moving toward the basement door. “Five minutes. Then we’re done.”
The basement was a crime scene now, tagged and photographed, but the physical reality was unchanged. The gasoline stench was eye-watering. The spilled papers were still there. Ridge stepped over the police tape strung across the bottom of the stairs.
He moved with efficiency, hauling two boxes at a time up the narrow stairs and out the alley door to his waiting hatchback. Rebecca followed, a sentry in the cold, her arms wrapped tight around herself. Each box that left felt like a piece of the tumor being cut out.
On the fourth trip, Ridge paused beside the furnace where she’d hidden. He looked at the space on the floor where she’d been pinned, then at her. He didn’t say anything. He just reached out and brushed a smudge of dirt from her cheek with his thumb. The gesture was so unexpectedly gentle it stole her breath more thoroughly than the boot had.
“Almost done,” he said softly.
The final box loaded, he closed the hatchback. The car sat low on its suspension, weighed down with decades of hidden sins.
“Where do we take them?” she asked, sliding into the passenger seat. The heater was on, blasting dry, warm air.
“Somewhere Vick, or anyone like him, would never think to look.” He pulled out onto the deserted street. “Eleanor’s condo board has a private, climate-controlled wine cellar. She reserved a locker this afternoon. Under her late husband’s name.”
Of course she had. Rebecca leaned her head against the window, watching the city slip by. The fight was out of her, leaving a deep, weary emptiness. The sharp, metallic fear had morphed into a dull, chronic dread.
They drove to a sleek, modern high-rise near the park. Eleanor was waiting in the lobby, wrapped in a silk robe over pajamas, her face bare of makeup and full of worry. She didn’t ask questions. She just used a key fob to access a private elevator, then led them down a carpeted hallway to a discreet oak door.
The wine cellar was cool and silent, lined with hundreds of bottles behind locked glass fronts. Eleanor opened a small, unmarked locker. “It’s not archival quality, but it’s secure and dry,” she whispered, as if in a library.
Ridge began transferring the boxes from a wheeled cart. The transaction felt absurd. Priceless, dangerous evidence swapped for bottles of Burgundy.
When the last box was stowed and the locker locked, Eleanor handed Rebecca the key. It was small, brass, and warm from her hand. “This is yours. I don’t want to know where you keep it.”
Rebecca closed her fist around it. The metal bit into her palm, a tangible anchor.
Back in the car, Ridge finally spoke. “Where to? Your place isn’t secure. My place is… my place.”
She knew what he was offering. Not romance. Not comfort. A fortified location. A tactical partner for the night. She thought of her loft, empty and waiting, with its skylight and its view of the street where a black SUV had idled.
“Your place,” she said. “But I need a shower. A long, hot one. Even if it’s a coin toss.”
At his apartment, he went straight to the bathroom. She heard the pipes clang and hiss. He emerged a minute later. “Water’s hot. For now.”
The shower was a small, white-tiled cubicle. She stood under the scalding spray until her skin turned pink, washing away the smell of gasoline, basement dust, and fear. The bruises on her ribs and neck were a livid purple in the steam. She toweled off and pulled on the same clothes, which felt contaminated.
She found him in the living room, cleaning his split knuckles with antiseptic wipes. He didn’t flinch. The laptop was open on the coffee table, showing a local news website. The headline read: “Arson Attempt Thwarted at Historic Bookstore.”
“They lead with the store, not the assault,” she noted, reading over his shoulder.
“The story they want is a property crime. A battle for a city landmark. It’s cleaner.” He tossed the bloody wipe into a small trash can. “The assault, the connection to Corinth… that’s a slower burn. The DA will have to peel that onion.”
She sat on the far end of the sofa, pulling her knees up to her chest. The empty calm was gone, replaced by a jangling, post-crisis anxiety. Every sound from the street made her muscles tense. Ridge studied her and then put his arm on the back of the couch. "I can hold you if you've got the shakes."
“I keep feeling the boot,” she said quietly, not looking at him.
He was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “That doesn’t go away. It just gets filed. Eventually, you remember the feeling without the panic attached. It becomes data. A fact of the event. Not the event itself.”
Rebecca scooted down the couch and leaned on Ridge, her head on his chest. He gently draped his arm over her shoulder, lightly massaging her back.
“Is that what happened with your scars?” The question was out before she could stop it.
He looked down at his hands, then slowly pulled up the sleeve of his pullover. A pale, ropey scar twisted around his forearm. “This one? I got it falling through a plate-glass window chasing a skip in Newark. The data is: don’t assume a fire escape is bolted to the wall.” He let the sleeve fall. “The panic was the fourteen stitches without anesthetic because the clinic was out. I filed the panic. I kept the data.”
It wasn’t an answer, not really. But it was a piece of him, offered. A way of saying he understood the filing system.
Her burner phone, sitting on the table, buzzed. The screen lit up with a number she didn’t recognize. She and Ridge looked at it. Let it go to voicemail.
A minute later, her personal phone, charging on the counter, chimed with a new email. The sender address was a jumble of letters and numbers. The subject line was blank.
Ridge picked it up, his expression grim. He opened it.
There was no text. Only a single, high-resolution photograph attached.
It was a picture of Eleanor, taken today, walking her small, fluffy white dog in the park. The time stamp in the corner was from four hours ago. She was smiling, unaware, bending down to pick up the dog’s leash.
The photo was cropped tight. In the background, slightly blurred but unmistakable, was Carl Vick. He was sitting on a park bench, wearing sunglasses, apparently reading a newspaper. He was looking directly at the camera, a faint, cold smile on his lips.
Ridge put the phone down. The quiet in the apartment became something else entirely.
“They’re not contained,” Rebecca whispered, the dread solidifying into a block of ice in her gut.
“No,” Ridge said, his eyes going back to the screen. “They’re just changing tactics. The direct assault failed. Now it’s psychological. They’re showing us the map of every person we care about.”
He zoomed in on Vick’s smirking face in the background. “And they’re telling us he enjoys the view.”