Chapter 5 - Flames in the Master Suite
On the glowing screen of my phone, the live security feed from the smoke detector inside my old Phoenix bedroom showed a pair of heavy work boots stepping into the frame beside Chloe.
A thick-necked man in a gray mechanic's jumpsuit—Gwendolyn's ex-convict younger brother, Ray Brooks—uncapped a five-gallon red plastic jerrycan and began splashing clear gasoline directly across my mother's antique oak floorboards and lace window curtains.
"Make sure you soak the closet and the hallway stairs so the fire marshal blames it on an electrical short in the old wiring," Chloe's voice crackled clearly through the smoke detector's hidden microphone as she tucked a small velvet pouch from the floor safe into her designer purse.
"Once this dump burns to the ground, the insurance company pays out two million dollars on the new policy Evan wrote this morning, and whatever evidence Paige's dead mom hid under those boards turns to ash," Chloe laughed, stepping backward out onto the upper landing.
I felt a surge of white-hot fury that wiped away every trace of fear in my body.
They were not just stealing my mother's hidden safe—they were about to burn down the house filled with every childhood memory I had left to collect fraudulent insurance money and cover up a nine-year-old murder.
"Call the Phoenix Fire Department and the arson squad right now, Julian, and tell them an active firebombing is taking place at my address," I ordered, slamming my foot down on the accelerator of my car and roaring out of the Scottsdale garage onto the Loop 101 freeway.
Wait—the Phoenix house was twenty minutes away by highway, and Ray Brooks was already reaching into his pocket for a silver butane lighter on the live camera feed!
If Ray struck that flame right now, the dry cherry-wood cabinets and forty-year-old framing would be a roaring inferno long before the first fire engine ever turned down our street.
Thinking fast as I wove through afternoon traffic at eighty-five miles an hour, I tapped the smart-home master diagnostic panel I had installed on my phone two years ago when I upgraded the upstairs bathroom plumbing and fire-safety system for my father's homeowner insurance discount.
Gwendolyn had shut off the main street power grid earlier, which she thought had killed all the electronics in the house—but the upstairs smart-valve system ran on a dedicated solar battery backup mounted on the garage roof.
Even more importantly, the two-way voice intercom built into the ceiling smoke detector was wired at ninety decibels to wake sleeping occupants during a blaze.
Right as Ray Brooks flicked the wheel of his silver lighter and held the open flame two inches above the gasoline-soaked bedroom rug, I pressed the emergency megaphone button on my phone screen and screamed at the top of my lungs.
"RAY BROOKS, YOU ARE ON LIVE POLICE VIDEO right NOW, AND THE DOORS ARE LOCKED BY REMOTE CONTROL!" my voice boomed at ear-splitting volume from the ceiling directly above his head, followed immediately by the deafening shriek of the ninety-decibel burglar siren I triggered from the app.
On the camera screen, Ray jumped backward in sheer terror as if a ghost had screamed in his ear, dropping the unlit butane lighter onto the dry hallway threshold outside the room!
At the exact same instant, I tapped the manual testing override for the upstairs residential fire-suppression sprinkler line.
Freezing, rusty water stored at eighty pounds of pressure inside the attic pipes blasted downward from four brass ceiling heads, drenching Ray and Chloe to the bone and diluting the pooled gasoline across the floorboards before a single spark could catch.
Twelve minutes later, when I screeched into the circular gravel driveway of the Phoenix house right behind two screaming red fire engines and three Phoenix Police cruisers, Ray Brooks was already face-down on the wet front lawn in steel handcuffs.
Standing beside the weeping, drenched Chloe on the front porch was Detective Marcus Miller of the Phoenix Police Major Crimes Division, holding the soaked gasoline can as evidence while firefighters ventilated the upstairs hallway.
I ran straight up the front steps with Julian Vance behind me, showed Detective Miller the live video recording of Chloe and Ray pouring the gasoline on my phone, and watched with cold satisfaction as the officer snapped a second pair of steel handcuffs around Chloe's trembling wrists.
"Paige, stop them, you cannot let them put me in a police cage!" Chloe screamed, her mascara running in black rivers down her cheeks as two officers led her toward the back of the patrol cruiser.
"It was Evan and my mom's idea—I didn't even open the real box under the floor, I swear!" she sobbed hysterically as the cruiser door slammed shut.
Leaving Chloe screaming in the driveway, I hurried upstairs with Detective Miller into my water-soaked master bedroom and knelt beside the torn-up oak floorboards beneath the arched window seat.
Chloe had only grabbed a decoy velvet jewelry pouch sitting on top of the insulation; wedged six inches deeper inside the steel concrete floor beam was a waterproof titanium cylinder locked with a four-dial combination.
I spun the brass dials to the date of my birthday—zero, eight, one, four—and pulled the pressurized lid off the cylinder right in front of Detective Miller.
Inside lay two vacuum-sealed glass vials of my mother's poisoned evening tea from nine years ago, a gold signet ring engraved with a crowned lion crest, and an original hospital adoption waiver signed twenty-five years ago in Scottsdale.
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Detective Miller unfolded the adoption waiver beneath his flashlight, read the three lines of notarized text, and slowly turned to look at me with shock written across his face.
"Miss Mercer, according to this legal certificate your mother hid beneath your floor, Samuel Mercer is not your biological father—and Clara Mercer was not your biological mother either!"
