by Julie Miller
She stopped once, turned, wondering if Derek had gotten past the security guard and was trying to see if she would call 9-1-1 and report him for being in possession of key evidence. But she saw no one suspicious, nothing unusual. There was a group of older teens, probably freshmen here for some kind of orientation or camp, moving in a loud, laughing pack from the fine arts building over to one of the fast-food places in the student union. But no Derek. No other adults on the sidewalks. No slow-moving car tracking her across campus.
Although the group of young students had come from the music wing of the fine arts building, she lifted her gaze to the windows of the art department where she’d once had a tiny office. Where she’d taken numerous classes and posed in Preston Worth’s studio. Preston no longer worked at the university, but there was a light on in the window that used to be his office. A shadow moved behind the blinds and disappeared. Amy gasped for a breath. It was probably just the cleaning crew at this time of night. Some other professor worked in that office now. Preston had served his time and moved to a remote town in Montana where he taught at a community college and probably had some other impressionable young student he was preying upon. The attorney who’d handled Amy’s case kept tabs on him. She would let Amy know if he was anywhere back in Kansas City. Plus, he was persona non grata at Williams University. If he stepped foot on campus, he could be arrested.
So, not Derek. Not Preston. Not anyone she could see. Still, she had a hard time hearing anything beyond the drumbeat of her pulse pounding in her ears.
Amy swallowed her fears and turned away from the window. She was just projecting her imagination after the vile things Derek had said tonight and done to Jocelyn. “I’m fine,” she whispered out loud, hurrying her pace. “Just get to the truck and you’ll be fine.”
Once she reached her truck without anyone showing his face or accosting her, Amy didn’t waste any time climbing inside and locking the doors. She tossed the laptop and her purse on the seat beside her and started the engine, racing out of the parking lot in an effort to put Derek and her cruel imagination behind her as quickly as possible.
At the first stoplight, she exhaled a breath she’d been holding for far too long and pulled out her phone to text Mark. Was he busy at work? Had she pushed him away so many times that he didn’t believe she wanted to see him?
She typed quickly before she lost her nerve and denied herself what she wanted, what she was afraid she needed. I’m sorry I gave you any reason to doubt my interest. I DO want to see you. I could use some friendly Captain Good Guy vibes right about now. Wish you’d answer. I’m stopping by tonight if that’s ok.
Amy sent the message and had just typed in a search for the street address for Fire Station 13 when her phone rang. A moment’s excitement, expecting to see Mark’s name and hear his voice, evaporated in an instant when she saw her grandmother’s name instead. What was Comfort Hall still doing up at this hour?
Amy instantly answered. “Gran? I know I’m running later than I said, but—”
“Amy. Sweetheart. You need to come home. Right now.”
“What’s wrong?” The light changed, and the car behind her honked. Amy steered her truck toward the highway and home, instead of turning toward Firehouse 13. “Are you all right? Is it your blood pressure? Did you take your pills today?”
“Of course I did. I’m fine. It’s not me.”
Then what warranted this hushed urgency? “What’s going on?”
“I’ve already called the authorities.”
Not reassuring. She pressed harder on the accelerator. Something was seriously wrong. “Authorities? Gran?”
“You know the rental house those two road workers shared?”
“Yes?”
“It’s on fire.”
Chapter Eight
Fortunately, the highway patrol wasn’t out in force to clock Amy flying down the interstate toward home.
Despite the urge to call her grandmother again, she resolutely kept both hands on the wheel, slowing down only when she reached the turnoff to Copper Lake. She sped past the older suburban neighborhood, gas stations and convenience stores near the highway exit, then wound through the hills and trees beyond.
“Oh, no.” Once she left the lights of civilization behind her, Amy spotted the smoke, a darker shade of black roiling up above the horizon into the night sky and blotting out the familiar stars. She tried to confirm the location of the fire, logically knowing it was too far down in the next valley to be her grandmother’s house. But it was still too close. And there’d been too many fires. Amy didn’t breathe any deeper or ease her concern over her lone surviving family member until the hills opened onto Copper Lake itself and she saw the spotlights and swirling warning lights of several fire engines silhouetting the rental house on the north side of the lake.
She drove through the Copper Lake subdivision and was sickened to see Dale O’Brien’s white truck parked in front of his office trailer. Why was he always around whenever trouble screwed with her life these days? Every light in the trailer was on, as though he was working through all the commotion without a care that his neighbors’ property and lives were in danger. Several of his workers stood around their vehicles, watching the excitement and using their phones to record the devastation across the lake. With no sidewalks yet, the men were standing in the middle of the road, forcing Amy to slow her truck to a crawl to move safely past them.
“Miss Amy!” someone shouted. Amy glanced out the passenger window to see Richie Sterling’s sunburned cheeks puffed up like apples as he beamed a smile and waved. “Glad to see you’re okay.”
“Thanks.” Automatically, Amy raised her hand in a wave. Judging by their state of dress and the tool belts a few still wore, the construction workers had been here since the end of their workday. She stepped on the brake, rolled down the passenger-side window and waved Richie over. She hated to think these men were hanging around because they saw the destruction of her property and the threat to her tiny family as some kind of morbid entertainment, like drivers who stopped to study the aftermath of a car wreck. “What are you all still doing here? I didn’t see any roads blocked off. Is the fire department keeping you here for a reason?”
Brad Frick appeared in the window next to his friend, sticking his beak-like nose into their conversation before Richie could answer. “It’s Friday. We’re all waitin’ for our paycheck.” He curled his work-gloved fingers over the bottom of the window, and Amy idly noticed the scrapes and bruises on Richie’s hands gripping the door frame beside him. True workman’s hands.
What was her fascination with men’s hands lately? Brad’s were hidden. Richie’s damaged. Derek’s hand had been crushing and Mark Taylor’s strong, yes, but infinitely gentle.
Mark. Amy glanced across the lake to the firefighters battling the flames. She needed to get home. She needed to see Gran. She wanted desperately to talk to Mark.
Wait. These men were waiting for a paycheck late on a Friday night? “Don’t any of you have direct deposit?”
Brad muttered something under his breath. “O’Brien says there’s something wrong with the computer payroll system. He can’t make it work. So, he’s writin’ out paper checks. Of course, Richie and me are at the bottom of his list.”
Richie nodded. “Yep. No matter what job we do, we’re the last to get paid.”
“Shut up.” Brad elbowed him out of the way. “You got any work for us, Miss Amy? We’d be happy to come out this weekend, or come in early Monday, or stay late, whatever you need.”
Wanting this conversation to end and to be on her way right now more than she wanted the two men hanging out at her place with everything else that was going on, Amy halfway agreed. “Once the fire is out, there will probably be some debris that’ll need to be hauled away. Of course, KCFD and the investigators will have to clear the scene. Probably not this weekend, but I’ll call you as soon as
I know anything.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Here you go, boys.” Brad turned away from her truck as Dale O’Brien came out of his trailer, waving a stack of envelopes in his hand. He started calling out names and handing out the paychecks. Once the men grabbed their envelopes, they headed for their trucks and cars, thankfully turning their attention to something besides her family’s misfortune across the lake. Before he was done with the checks, O’Brien handed them off to one of the men to finish distributing them and filled up Amy’s window before the road ahead cleared and she could drive away. “How’s your grandmother?” he asked, as if they’d shared friendly chats like this a hundred times. She couldn’t help but notice the pristine manicure on the fingers he drummed against the door. “I hope this latest fire hasn’t frightened her.”
“Now that your men have cleared the road for me, I intend to find out. But I’m sure she’s fine.”
And here came the relentless sales pitch. “You know, with that old house gone, that’s just one less place for me to clear when I start building over there.”
“It’s not your land to build on,” Amy reminded him.
His belly jiggled as he chuckled. “I’d still give you a fair price, despite the loss of that house devaluing the property.”
“Sounds like a great scam. Setting fires to devalue our property so you could scare us away and buy it cheap.”
He straightened from the door. “Are you accusing me of something, Crazy Amy?”
Amy’s knuckles were white with tension as she shifted the truck into Drive and pulled away. “Good night, Mr. O’Brien.”
Amy drove on as quickly as she dared, circling around the lake, feeling soiled somehow, as she did after almost every encounter with the greedy contractor.
She skirted the spinning lights and red-and-gold engines blocking the asphalt road and cut into the ditch, driving straight across the dead grass until she reached her driveway. Once she parked and climbed out, she did an immediate assessment of her surroundings. She spotted her grandmother standing on the front porch in her robe and pajamas. Their neighbor, Gerald Sanders, stood beside her, his arm draped around her shoulders. Her grandmother clasped her hands together like a prayer and blew a kiss to Amy when she stepped out. Amy answered back by blowing a kiss before turning to the fire itself.
Although there was little breeze and the smoke seemed to billow up straight into the night, her eyes stung with the scents of sulfur and ash floating in the air. She clung to the side of her truck as a beam or wall crashed to the floor inside and she heard a noise like the snap of a dozen matchsticks before flames shot up through the roof. There was a thunderous rush of water from the main hose attached to the hydrant, and another, smaller hose, pumping water from one of the engines itself. The man in a white helmet shouted orders, just as Mark’s mother had, and others responded.
Her stomach clenched when she saw the Lucky 13 logo on the sides of every fire engine and knew Mark and the men and women he served with were here. She tried to find him on one of the hoses or stamping out burning embers with dirt and shovels between the burning structure and Gerald Sanders’s home. Amy spared a quick glance of panic at Gerald’s house. It appeared to be a far enough distance away to be safe unless the firefighters missed one of the embers and it floated onto his roof.
Where was Mark in all this well-orchestrated chaos? Was he safe? Was this another arson fire set by her number one suspect, Dale O’Brien, or some other lunatic with a grudge against her, putting these brave men and women in harm’s way? Did that fire monger realize how much she cared about Mark?
Amy waited a few moments longer, hoping to see him and assure herself he was okay. With the dancing shadows, bright lights of the fire and engine lights on their faces or the distortion of their masks the firefighters closest to the blaze wore, it was nearly impossible for her to identify anyone.
The one exception was Mark’s brother. Simply put, Matt Taylor was the biggest guy out there. He hauled an ax over his shoulder and reported something to the captain in the white helmet.
The captain shouted his response over the noise. “Tap into the hydrant across the lake if we need it. We’ll pump out of the lake itself if we have to. Keep this line going until our men are out.”
“Yes, sir.” Matt, clearly a second-in-command, whatever that title might be, pointed to two other firefighters and relayed an order that sent them running to move one of the trucks. Then he turned to Amy, startling her. She flattened her back against the side of the truck. She thought she was staying out of the way. How had he even noticed she was here? But a few long strides brought him to her. Up close, she could see the perspiration and grime marking his face beneath his helmet. His expression was as grim as Mark’s was friendly. “We’ve got it under control. Go up to the house.”
He was imposing, yes, but he was a Taylor and Mark had joked about him, so she wasn’t afraid. “Where’s Mark?” she asked.
Stern stoicism aside, Matt at least had the grace to give her a straight answer. “He and Jackson are doing a room-to-room search to make sure whoever set this didn’t get trapped inside.”
That aching knot in her stomach intensified as she glanced beyond him to the fire. “He’s inside that?”
Since he must have considered that a rhetorical question, he didn’t answer. “Your house is a safe distance from the job.” The job? He called this life-threatening destruction of a nearly hundred-year-old home that could potentially kill his brother a job? She supposed she had a lot to learn about firefighters. Matt pointed his gloved hand up to the porch where her grandmother and Gerald were watching. “Beyond those front steps is not. Stay with them. Keep them out of harm’s way.”
His deep-pitched command was not open for discussion. She wondered if he was simply giving her something to do in an attempt to alleviate the worry that must be etched all over her face, or if he thought she’d be a distraction to Mark. Whatever the reason, Amy nodded. “Thank you for talking to me. Thank you for being here.”
Behind Matt, there was a loud crash as the front bay window shattered. Another firefighter cleared the glass and broken frame pieces, and Mark climbed out behind him, carrying a limp body wrapped in a shiny silver blanket in his arms. When they were several yards away from the structure, the two men laid the body on the ground. Mark tugged the mask off his face and shouted, “Medic!”
Although soot and sweat camouflaged his exact expression, there was no mistaking the direction of his gaze, seeking out Matt beside her truck, then darting briefly to her. He nodded an acknowledgment of her presence and she hugged her arms around her waist. The tension in her stomach unknotted a fraction and she knew the silliest urge to either smile or start crying.
Matt’s heavy hand dropped to her shoulder, turning her toward the house. “Go.”
His touch wasn’t much in the way of comfort, yet she found Matt’s terse order oddly reassuring. While she was relieved to see that Mark was in one piece, it was frightening to realize that someone had been caught in the fire and was seriously, if not fatally, injured. She hadn’t fallen apart when she’d been the object of violence herself, and she wouldn’t fall apart now when Mark, his brother and the rest of the Station 13 crew, her grandmother, and that poor victim on the blanket needed her to be strong. “Thank you.”
While Matt jogged back into the fray, Mark and two paramedics unwrapped the person he’d rescued, put a breathing mask on the victim’s face and began their examination. With a team of paramedics swarming around, it was impossible to identify anything more than charred clothes on the blanket. Meanwhile, Amy finally plucked those painful shoes off her feet, curled her toes into the cool grass and hurried up to the house.
Get out of here. Do something useful. Clearly, she wasn’t the one who needed to be rescued tonight, nor did she want to be.
“Amy!” Comfort called to her as Amy ran up the porch steps. T
he two women wrapped each other up in a hug. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
Amy tightened her hold as much as she dared when she felt the coolness of her grandmother’s cheek pressed against hers. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Isn’t this terrible?” Comfort finally pulled away to tighten her robe. She crossed her arms in front of her, rubbing her hands up and down her sleeves. “So many fires in such a short time. These can’t all be accidents.”
Amy was beginning to wonder if any of them besides the one she’d set when she’d burned up the last bits of her life with Preston Worth could be accidents. As she draped her arm around her grandmother’s shoulders and let the older woman lean against her, she noticed that Gerald was wearing a pair of slippers and a pajama shirt with the jeans and sweater he must have hastily thrown on. Both of them must have been sound asleep when this tragedy started. “Thank you for being here, Gerald. I came home as soon as I heard. I appreciate you staying with Gran. I might not have worried so much if I’d known you were with her.” He curled his gnarled fingers around a bar of scaffolding, moving slightly away, yet making no show of leaving. “You discovered the fire?”
“I smelled the smoke. Came up to the house to make sure Comfort was all right.” He glanced down at Comfort, then quickly turned his gaze back to the fire, making Amy wonder, not for the first time, if the reclusive older gentleman had a bit of a crush on her grandmother. “Then we saw the flames and she called 9-1-1.”
The three of them stood together a few minutes longer, watching KCFD battle the blaze. Thankfully, they seemed to be winning, although Amy was certain it would be a total loss by the time the fire was out. And that poor victim who’d been trapped inside.
Once the paramedics drove away in the ambulance, Comfort reached up to pat Amy’s hand. “What did that firefighter say to you? Was it that nice Mark Taylor you’ve had your eye on?”