Blazing Fear

by Leisl Leighton

  ‘Maybe not. But one thing’s for certain, there’s no way a scared cat will come anywhere near you with that expression on your face.’

  ‘What expression? I don’t have an expression.’

  Reid leaned across and flipped down the visor, leaving Flynn to see his reflection in the mirror. He was frowning. Hard. Scary hard. Damn it. He snapped the visor up. ‘Okay, I’m angry.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Whoever’s starting these goddamn fires. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Sure. We’re all worried about that. But that was more than worry on your face back at the house.’

  Flynn ground his teeth together working really hard at forcing his clenched hands to stay on his lap. ‘I was thinking about what we can do about it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘I said okay.’

  He could feel Reid glancing at him as they turned onto the road that led to Wilson’s Bend and Prita’s burned out house. He wished he’d stop it. Hell, was this what he was going to have to deal with now? Worried glances? Pity? Questions hovering behind the usually inane, ‘How you doing?’ and ‘You okay?’ that people asked people every day. But now that asking was going to be different because they knew something was wrong with him. They knew he was weak. They were going to start treating him carefully. Like he could shatter any moment and take them all with him.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  He took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair, trying to calm himself down. He couldn’t lose it again. Couldn’t go back down that hole of shaking, sick-sweaty, fear-laden numbness again. He let his hand drop back to his lap and only realised then that it wasn’t shaking. Usually after an episode, he would be covering the shakes for hours after. But his hand was as steady as a rock. When had that happened?

  He’d been in full blown panic mode, unable to stop the cascade and then …

  The kiss.

  Everything had stopped the moment Prita’s lips had met his and he’d lost himself to the feel of her in his arms, the taste of her on his lips, his tongue, her scent a wild temptation surrounding him, caressing his senses.

  Her kiss.

  It had burned away the horrible weakness-induced shaking, a different kind of shaking flaring into existence. One that didn’t weaken him, but made him feel something far different. A something that gave him back his control.

  Holy-crapping-hell.

  Kissing Prita had given him back his control.

  ‘We’re here.’ The tyres crunched over the crushed stone and dirt of the verge across the road from Prita’s house, the ute jerking a little as Reid brought it to a halt. ‘I can’t believe part of it’s still standing.’

  Flynn looked across the road at the blackened skeleton of Prita’s house. The brick walls were, in most parts, still standing, the red-brick blackened and charred, a tragic shadow-imprint of the once glorious Victorian era building that had stood there for one hundred and fifty years. The side that was the clinic showed the worst damage, a ruin of rubble across the customer parking from where the explosion had blown the front of the office out and up. Skeletal remains were all that was left of the second floor on that side, charred and blackened wood stuck up here and there, like accusing fingers pointing at the sky. Surprisingly, part of the ‘family’ side and the tower were still standing.

  Reid opened his door. The scent of char and smoke wafted into the car.

  Flynn stiffened, thankful—so thankful—that Reid was looking at the wreckage of the house and not at him. Flynn wanted to yell at him to shut the door, to slide over and drive away, far away, to somewhere he could fill his lungs with something other than the scent of burn, of dying things.

  Bloody crapping hell. Why did he think he could do this? What madness had made him say he would look for Prita’s cat?

  Prita.

  He was doing this for her. For Carter.

  Yes.

  He could do this for them, surely? After he’d failed to run into the burning building to save her and had only helped by dint of the fact she’d run out of the house and into him.

  His hands began to tremble as he reached for the door. Shit. No. How could he stop this?

  Prita. She’d stopped this before. With her kiss. Maybe thinking about kissing her could do the same.

  He shut his eyes and reached for the feeling of her lips on his. Her hands in his hair. Her scent filling his nose. The taste of her filling his mouth. Oh god, he loved the way she tasted. The way she smelled. He’d never thought to feel that about another woman and when he’d started to feel those tendrils of insidious desire for Prita, he’d used everything in him to deny them, to ignore them when they couldn’t be denied. Then he’d given in, once, twice, three times, always after he’d already lost control, and she’d made him feel such desire, so much outside of himself and yet wholly himself in a way he’d not felt since Anna died, that everything else hadn’t mattered in those moments. Not until after when he’d felt the full impact of the betrayal of his promise to Anna. He’d said he’d never forget her, never replace her, and being driven into a relationship by an unstoppable mutual desire, even though he had tried so hard to not give in, was still a betrayal of that.

  But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe, given what he’d just discovered about Prita meant he didn’t have to fight anymore. She was married. If he’d heard right in the hospital, that wasn’t going to change any time soon. She had real reasons for not wanting to enter into a serious relationship with him. Just like he had entering into one with her. Being in a relationship, a long lasting, forever kind of relationship—he was a forever kind of man—was the betrayal of his promise to Anna.

  Sex on the other hand, with a woman he liked and desired but couldn’t have a relationship with other than friendship—what did they call that? Friends with benefits? Yes, friends with benefits … well, that was another thing entirely. Especially if it gave him back the control he so desperately needed if he was going to get through this fire season, be the hero to his son that he must be.

  Maybe this desire they shared wouldn’t be his damnation. It could be his salvation.

  And Prita had told Chandra she deserved to be with someone in that way if she wanted to. Had played along with his claim of being lovers. Maybe it didn’t need to be pretend.

  Reid’s voice as he called for Machiavelli brought him out of his reverie. He stared at his nephew who was more like a brother they were so close in age, and thought about how Nat had been the solution for Reid in overcoming his grief and fears after losing his best mate, Luke. Reid was a changed man. Not that he could ever have—or ever wanted—to have what they had. He’d shared that with Anna and in that regard, he was a one-woman man. But he knew from whispers he’d overheard between Nat and Reid, things he’d heard Barb say about when they’d first hooked up and the change in both of them, things he’d observed himself, that the desire between them, the passion, it had most definitely been a large part of the healing. It had helped them both.

  Could it help him?

  And how on earth did he bring it up as a suggestion to Prita without giving away the reasons he needed it?

  Was it as simple as saying that neither of them wanted or was interested in starting a relationship, but what was stopping them from becoming friends with benefits? Maybe. She was a sensible woman. He liked that about her. Maybe if he just treated this like a sensible solution to the desire they were both having trouble fighting, she’d be right on board. Did he have the guts to try?

  He looked out at the smoking ruins of her house, the scent of the burn and char still coming in the door Reid had left open making his stomach roil and heave, sweat to prickle his skin, his chest to tighten. He filled his mind with Prita again, the burn of desire as it swept through him when her tongue was in his mouth, her hands in his hair, on his body. The prickling changed, became a rushing, sparking of a different kind of fire, a welcome fire that burned the fear and gut-wre
nching weakness and left a strange kind of strength in their wake.

  Prita. She was the answer. He had to have the guts to ask her to enter into a friends with benefits relationship with him.

  He didn’t have a choice.

  ‘Nasty business, hey? I didn’t think they’d get it under control.’

  He jumped as that fellow—Max Smith he thought Prita had called him? The bloke opening up the candle store and who seemed to have a crush on Prita by all reports—came up to the car. He swung his legs out to stand, thinking of Prita again when the scent of coal and smoke lingering in the air from the fire hit the back of his throat like battery acid. ‘You were here last night?’

  ‘Yeah. I saw the fire and came down to help. You were pretty out of it.’

  ‘Yes.’ He remembered Max being there now, helping Prita. ‘Thanks. For the help.’

  ‘No problem.’

  The man kicked the dirt at the side of the road. ‘Is Doctor Brennan okay?’

  ‘She’s fine. She’s at CoalCliff.’

  ‘Oh?’

  So he was interested in Prita. A curl of something nasty tightened in his stomach, and he straightened, enjoying the fact he had inches and breadth on the other man. ‘Yeah. She’s staying at my place. We’re going to help her run her clinic out of the cottage until insurance comes through and she can rebuild here. She’ll be up and running in a few days.’

  ‘Oh, well, if there’s anything I can do to help.’

  ‘No. We should be fine. Thanks.’

  The rumble of a car coming closer stopped their conversation and he turned to see a cop car pull up behind him. Reid turned from where he was standing calling for Maccy near the bush that separated the drive from the paddock next door, and lifted a hand in greeting as Constable Thomas Bruce got out of the car. There was a frown on the young constable’s face, his fingers looped into his belt, shoulders back, cap on. Not here for a neighbourly chat, then.

  Flynn nodded as the constable approached. ‘Constable Bruce. Have you spoken to Prita yet?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here. She just gave her statement, so this is now an active arson sight. I was about to tape it off and am waiting on the fire inspector to come up, so I can’t have anyone here disturbing any evidence.’

  ‘You suspect foul play?’ Max asked.

  The constable’s chin squared off. ‘I can’t talk about an active investigation.’

  Reid was frowning as he looked between them. ‘Arson? This wasn’t an accident?’

  Flynn rubbed at a vein that had started to pulse in his temple. ‘Prita said there was someone here when she got here last night. Inside the house. She believes they started the fire.’

  ‘What? Who would do that?’

  ‘They’d also left a dead possum and a message written in blood on the back door. I saw them when I arrived. I expect you’ll want to interview me about that,’ he said to the constable.

  The constable pulled out his phone. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  He pressed record and recited the time, date and Flynn’s name and then asked, ‘Why were you here last night, Mr Findlay?’

  ‘What? Wait,’ Reid said, holding out his hand. ‘Flynn isn’t under suspicion of anything. The fire had already started by the time he got here and prior to that he was with Nat and Barb and me at our place. He followed Prita here.’

  ‘Why did you follow her here?’

  Flynn waved Reid’s concern away and answered as best he could.

  ‘How far behind her do you think you were?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. About forty-five minutes. I don’t think she drove straight here.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘If you’re suggesting she’d set the fire herself, you know you’re chasing down the wrong lead. Aside from the fact that there is no reason why she would set fire to her own house, she was inside fighting the fire, putting her life in danger.’

  The constable nodded. ‘I have to ask these questions.’

  ‘Do you?’

  They shared a long silent look until Max piped up. ‘Doctor Prita wouldn’t have burned down her house. What about that Bob Thompson? He was harassing her a few weeks ago. I saw him.’

  The constable dropped his gaze down to the phone in his hand and cleared his throat. ‘We’ll certainly look into that. Did you see anything else last night, Mr Smith?’

  ‘No. I arrived after the explosion. I can tell you what I saw then.’

  ‘I’ll get to that, but given you were there before the explosion, Flynn, perhaps you could tell me what you saw.’

  Flynn would rather not have to relive that moment again, especially standing next to the smouldering remains where the sight, the smell and sounds of shifting, crumbling charred wreckage could set him off at any moment.

  Thankfully Reid chose that moment to butt in. ‘Do you mind if we do this back at CoalCliff? We’d like to find Carter’s cat and get it back to him as soon as possible. The little boy has lost too much already.’

  Yes, the cat. He had to find the cat. That gave him something to do to ignore the tremors starting in his extremities. ‘I’ll go find him. I’ll answer the rest of your questions at CoalCliff later.’ He didn’t wait to hear the constable’s response, just turned and limped off down the drive to the back garden, forcing himself to call out the cat’s name, trying not to remember the flames and smoke and smells from last night. Trying not to think about what he’d do if he found the cat dead, another victim of a fire he couldn’t stop.

  His knee ached like a bitch, the pain giving him something to hold onto as he rounded the edge of the house and made his way across the rubble-strewn lawn of the backyard. Prita was going to give him hell if he hurt it more. That was something to look forward to. The thought helped him to ignore the sweat that sprang up on his skin, prickling the back of his neck, his nerves and muscles twisting and trembling as he tried not to look at the destruction of the house, think about how close they’d come to losing Prita. He’d done so well so far. He couldn’t give in now. ‘Machiavelli,’ he called out, voice hoarse with the effort to sound something close to normal.

  ‘Miaow.’

  He turned, certain he’d heard the sound, that he hadn’t imagined it.

  ‘Machiavelli.’

  A streak came running from behind the shed and over the grass towards him. He bent, still shaking, arms outstretched to the cat who leaped into his arms and burrowed into his chest. Flynn rubbed his face against the cat’s soft fur, taking comfort from the warm little body as much as it took the same from him.

  He’d found the cat. It was alive. This fire hadn’t taken everything.

  ‘That’s incredible,’ Reid said as he came up behind him. ‘I called and called and nada. I can’t believe that cat just came up to you. Anna always did say your way with animals was what had attracted her to you in the first place.’

  At the sound of Anna’s name, Flynn stilled. Reid paled, an ‘oh shit’ expression crossing his face. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought you said last night you were okay to talk about her now.’

  ‘I am. I always am.’ Flynn rubbed his face against the cat’s head as it bumped at his chin, purring. ‘I didn’t realise until you said it last night that I didn’t talk about her. She is on my mind so much, feels so present all the time, I never realised I didn’t speak those thoughts out loud.’ And in so doing, he’d managed to almost wipe her from existence without realising that’s what he was doing. He’d been so busy trying to live up to his promise to never forget her, making her live large in his mind despite the pain that brought and didn’t realise she was being forgotten outside of it.

  What an absolute and utter clueless arse he was.

  ‘You okay?’

  That question again. He so wanted people to stop asking him that. He hadn’t had to endure the annoying ‘you okay?’ for many years, not since that first year after Anna died, but in the last few days he’d endured it over and over again and it was a
lready driving him berserk.

  Reid didn’t deserve anymore of his shits though. He’d been served up enough today, seen way too much already. Enough was enough. He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of dusty, leaf-and-gum-nut strewn cat, and drew his control around him like a horse blanket to ride out the storm. Then he opened his eyes. ‘I am happy to talk about Anna, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  He took in another deep breath. ‘Let’s get this cat home to Carter.’

  Reid smiled. ‘He’s going to be so happy. And Prita will be so relieved.’

  ‘Yes.’ She would. She would do anything for her little boy. Remembering her conversation with her husband, he thought maybe she would do anything for those she cared for.

  Did she care enough for their friendship, for him, to do the same for him?

  He hoped so. Because if she didn’t, he wasn’t quite certain with this fire bug lighting fires all around CoalCliff, how he was going to get through the next dangerous few weeks.

  He was about to get back in the car when his name was called. He turned and saw someone heading up the road from Finchers B&B.

  ‘Who is that?’ Reid asked him.

  ‘Chandra. Prita’s so-called husband.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Yeah. Oh.

  ‘Do you really want to stay and chat to him?’

  ‘No.’ Flynn wanted out of here but he made himself stand where he was and watch the other man’s approach, a nasty thought in his head suddenly that he couldn’t seem to banish.

  What if this was all about him wanting Prita to come home so he could have his nice little life back? What if he’d already come up here and was the one to set the fire and make the calls and threats?

  Nothing the man had said in the hospital screamed arsonist and possum killer. But you never knew about someone. Perhaps it was worth having a chat and sussing him out a little more. Even if that meant staying here for longer than he wanted to.

  Chandra, the man Prita had married to make his life easier, approached them, his gaze darting to Reid and then back to Flynn then back to Reid again. He faltered, got that stupid look on his face so many people did when faced with a celebrity. Ah hell. Just what he needed—to stand around and witness Reid’s stardom in action. He almost turned and hopped into the ute, but stopped himself. He was sussing the man out for Prita’s safety’s sake. If he had to stand here and hear him gush over Reid at the same time, then so be it.