Flashpoint

by Desiree Holt

  “The accelerants used had very low flashpoints. Ignition would have been instantaneous.”

  They just looked at each other for a very long minute.

  “I have to tell someone,” she said at last.

  “No.” He shook his head. “No, you can’t do that. My source tells me a cop is involved.”

  “God.” Randi felt sudden nausea. Was it anyone she knew? She couldn’t imagine that as a possibility. Still, she guessed it couldn’t be eliminated.

  “I need your help,” Noah said, crouching down before her. “Will you give it to me?”

  “Noah, I have to talk to my boss. My partner. I can’t keep this to myself.” She could see him straining for control at her words.

  “You can’t tell anyone yet. We have no idea who’s involved. Which is why I need your help.”

  “But what can I do?” She twisted her hands together. Her simple fire investigation had apparently reached its flashpoint.

  “I need copies of your reports on this. Jeff is getting me copies of Dan Kessler’s reports but I need both sets.” He squeezed her hands. “Please, Randi. I really need you to do this.”

  “And you don’t think Jeff should take this to his lieutenant? Or better yet, how about if I bring Dan in on this. It’s his case, after all. And mine. You can ask him for the reports himself.”

  “I’d rather not.” He looked away from her.

  “You don’t think Dan is involved, do you? Damn, Noah, I’ve worked with the man for two years. I’d know if anything was going on.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Will you please just this once do what I ask and not argue?”

  She glared at him, anger twisting inside her. “I suppose the next thing you’re going to say is I should ask off the case.”

  She steeled herself for his answer, trying to ignore the anguish in his eyes. “If I thought you’d do it I would. It scares me shitless that you ever put yourself in harm’s way.”

  She didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or punch him a good one.

  “Noah, I could take a job as an admin and break my neck falling down a flight of stairs. I could work with computers, get in my care to go home and get killed on the Interstate. Everything has inherent danger. So you think I like it when you go haring off around the world in places no sane person would be found in? And if you say that’s different I really will punch you.”

  “Randi,” he began helplessly.

  “Please, Noah. Show me that you respect not only my job but my ability to do it safely. Can you do that?”

  She could see in his eyes, now the color of dark bitter chocolate, the battle he was waging with himself. Finally the fight seemed to go out of him. “Okay. But you can’t stop me from worrying about you.”

  “Same goes. And I promise to always be ultra careful. Now give Jeff a call and let’s get this show on the road.

  Chapter 7

  Randi insisted she go back to the firehouse right then to copy her reports onto thumb drive.

  “I really want to go with you,” he said, “but I know how odd that would look. Just get back here fast and safe.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “I’ll get on Jeff as soon as you’re gone.”

  “I wish you’d at least let me bring Captain MacNeill in on this,” she told him. “If he’s crooked I really will quit my job.”

  “I totally understand, but no. Not yet.” Noah shook his head. “Just us for the moment.”

  “Whatever you say, although I don’t necessarily like it.”

  “Understood.” He looked at his watch. “How long will it take you?”

  She wrinkled her forehead in thought. “It shouldn’t take me long. If I don’t get waylaid for anything I’ll be back here in two hours.”

  “I’ll let Jeff know. And if you see your partner, make up some kind of excuse why you have to take a few hours off. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  It bothered her that he was suspicious of Dan but she chalked that up to plain old jealousy. Male penis envy, even when there was no basis for it. That had to be it. She’d worked with Dan for two years. Outside of the fact that he kept hitting on her now and then, something she figured had become habit by now, he’d never given her a reason to distract him.

  There weren’t too many people around when she got to her desk. Good. She slid a thumb drive into the port on her computer and began copying the files. She had just finished and slipped it into her purse when her cell rang. She flinched when she saw Dan’s name on the screen.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I wondered if you’d finished running whatever errands you were off to and if you’d heard anything from the lab again.”

  Was that tension in his voice or was she now imagining things? This was Dan, for god’s sake.

  “No to both of your questions,” she said. “I asked the lab to let me know the minute they were finished, no matter how late it was. I’ll call you as soon as they do.”

  “How about meeting me for a cup of coffee? You sounded a little tense earlier. Something on this case I should know about?”

  “No.” She kept her voice as even as possible. “If there was I’d tell you. Listen, Dan, I’ve got to run. I have something personal to take care of real quick. I’ll catch you later, okay?”

  There was a long moment of silence. She didn’t want to even think about what might be going through his mind.

  “Okay. Let’s touch base later for sure.”

  “You got it.”

  Jeff was already at her house when she got back. He and Scott were sitting at her dining room table, laptops open.

  “Hey, Randi.” Jeff’s lips kicked up in a half-hearted grin. “Looks like we got ourselves a nasty problem here.”

  “Seems so,” she agreed. She took the thumb drive out of her pocket and handed it to Noah, “Here they are. All of them.”

  “Good. Jeff got copies of Dan’s so let’s go through each of them and see if anything sticks out. Even if it’s something that should be there but isn’t.”

  Going over the reports was a painstaking, arduous task. Randi interpreted for them anything the didn’t understand. She was stunned and sickened to discover how much was missing from the reports Dan had turned in.

  “I don’t understand.” She sat back in her chair and raked her hair away from her face. “Didn’t he think anyone would ever compare these?”

  Jeff shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he figured he could fake it. That your captain and his lieutenant wouldn’t compare what you guys turned in.”

  “But we always put one report together,” she protested.

  “Then I don’t know.”

  “And I don’t want to think of what he really had in mind,” Noah put in. “Randi, I’m not minding your business, just trying to show you the truth. You can’t trust him any more.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  “Then I’ll apologize to both of you. Meanwhile, we need to figure out where they’ll strike next.”

  “But how?” she wanted to know. If every complex is owned by a different corporation, you have no way to tie them together.”

  Noah pointed to his laptop. “I’ve got a program that can do wonders s arching for stuff. I just shared it with Jeff so we can both do a search for ownership all over the target area.”

  “And what do you want me to do? I can’t just sit and do nothing.”

  “Come sit next to me.” He tugged her chair over. “Maybe something you see will strike a chord.”

  They had gotten about halfway through the lists when her cell rang.

  “It’s Captain MacNeill,” she said, showing Noah the screen. “I have to take it.”

  “Okay, but don’t clue him in to anything just yet.”

  But the phone call changed everything.

  “We’ve got another one, Randi.” MacNeill sounded exhausted. “Two of the four buildings went up. And Randi? This time we’ve got fatalities.”

>   She wanted to throw up. People had been killed because of someone else’s greed. If only she’d had her brainstorm earlier could she have stopped it?

  “Here’s the address,” MacNeill said. “I already called Dan. You’d better get going.”

  When she hung up she relayed the information to both men.

  “We’re going with you.” Noah didn’t sound like he’d put up with any argument from her.

  She swallowed her objections. “Okay, but let’s be sensible. There’s a possibility Jeff night show up at the scene, but not you, Noah. So if you insist on going, you guys follow me in your car and hang back. Let me see what’s going on there.”

  Noah didn’t much like it nor did Jeff but in the end they both agreed with her. As she raced to the scene of he fire she prayed that she’d find something tonight that would help her close this case and stop this from happening any more.

  The fire scene was easy enough to spot, even from a few blocks away. From the number of people and vehicles she could tell it had been called as a three alarm fire. Two ladder trucks were stationed by the still-burning buildings, spraying the flames that looked like the fires of hell. Red and orange and yellow tongues danced against the blackness of the sky. The water hissed as it hit the flames, sounding as if a huge snake was spitting into the air. Smoke was everywhere. Most of the firefighters work oxygen masks but not the onlookers who were choking on it.

  Nothing seemed to be doing much good. Whatever had been used as an accelerant and an ILR had obviously worked fast and destroyed the buildings. It had been strong enough to soften and melt the mortar between the bricks and as the interior collapsed it brought down much of the exterior walls. Randi thought it all looked like the scene from a war movie.

  There were several ambulances there and EMT crews working on badly injured survivors. Off to the side she saw where bodies were zipped into black bags and placed out of eh way for the morgue to pick up. Captain MacNeill, in full gear, was standing beside one of the trucks, talking to one of he firefighters. When he saw her, he waved her over.

  “This is a real bad one, Randi.” He sounded tired. “Seven dead, twelve injured. They’re still fighting the blaze.” He point to an area beside the second building. “Dan’s already here. Look. He sees you, go find out what eh ants and if he’s seen anything.”

  She looked around for Jeff’s car and when she saw it parked across the street out of the way she waved to them and headed toward her erstwhile partner. She hoped they’d stay put for the moment. After all, if Dan was involved, what could he do to her with all these people around?

  “This is a disaster,” she told him as she approached. “This time they’ve outdone themselves. People are dead, others badly injured. We have to catch these guys, Dan.”

  “They’re damn slippery,” he agreed. “That’s for sure. Come over here. I found something I want to show you.”

  “What is it?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to go off with him.

  “Come on. I think they made a mistake this time.” He clamped his hand over her arm.

  “Wait, Dan.” She tried to pull away from him but in seconds he had dragged her around to the back of he second burning beholding. “Stop it,” she screamed. Then she realized with the roar of the fire, the babble of the crowd and the noise of the hoses no one could hear her.

  “Shut up, bitch.” His voice was harsh. This didn’t sound at all like the Dan she knew. “God damn nosy bitch. I told you to step back from it. I could tell today you were onto it. Now you’ll go and fuck everything up.”

  Randi dug in her heels, literally, and refused to move. But Dan was much bigger and stronger.

  “You kill me and they’ll find my body. How will you explain that?”

  “That you ignore warnings not to go into he building and ended up being burned alive. Which is about what I have in mind for you.”

  He tried dragging her again and again she screamed for help at the top of her voice. If he got her to the burning building, he could knock her out and toss her inside, then make up some kind of story. She despaired of anyone hearing. Use your brain, she told herself. Suddenly she gave up all resistance, Dan stumbled backwards and she gave him a hard kick to the crotch.

  “Ow!” Goddamn bitch! Fuck!” He doubled over, to cup his hands over his family jewels, just as two men appeared out of the dark. One of them pulled her close to his body, his arms tight around her. She thought it was Noah, but when she looked she realized Noah had punched Dan hard enough to knock him to the ground and was straddling him, still delivering punches.

  “Stop.” She tried to get away from Jeff. “You’ll kill him, Noah. He’s not worth it.” She looked at Jeff. “None of this is any good if he ends up in jail instead of Dan.”

  “Dan’s going there, make no mistake,” Jeff assured her. “Dan? “ He released Randi and jogged over to grab Noah’s arms. “Enough, buddy. The guy’s out cold. Come on. Let’s get the cops.”

  But the first person to confront them was Captain MacNeill, still in his gear, a distressed look on his face.

  “What the hell is going on here, Randi?”

  She sighed, hugging herself tightly to stop the trembling that had suddenly set in.

  “I’ll tell you what’s going on.” Noah was breathing hard, still straddling Dan. “This asshole tried his best to kill Randi.”

  MacNeill looked at her. “That true?”

  “Y-Yes.” Suddenly, despite the heat, she couldn’t stop shivering.

  “Captain?” Jeff was just stuffing his cell back in his pocket. “I just called my lieutenant. Can we love this out of the public eye?”

  “Good idea. Let’s all head to that cruiser parked across the street and sort this out.”

  It took some doing to heft Dan, a big man, and take him in a fireman’s carry but eventually they were all safely out of range of both the fire and the crowd.

  *****

  Randi had put in some long nights, but none longer than the one that just ended. By the time the fire was under control, the dead and injured removed and Randi’s story repeated at least half a dozen times, it was close to sunrise. She was exhausted in every nerve and pore and just wanted to crawl into bed for a week.

  Shock reverberated through both the fire and police departments as news of Dan’s complicity spread like, well, wildfire. Dan had made the official arrest and taken him to the station for booking. They’d gotten most of the story out of Dan, desperate to either save his own neck or take everyone down with him. The missing piece was his stepbrother, an attorney who did a lot of corporate work. He and Dan had purchased the apartment complexes with low down payments then leveraged each parcel to buy the next one. The only thing that would save them was burning down the buildings. They originally planned it for the insurance money but then they learned of the city’s mega million project and they saw a bigger pot of gold.

  This was a scandal that would rock the city when it all came out. Randi still remembered the icy feeling of dread when she realized Dan was onto her and planned to kill her. At the moment she’d been too shocked to feel real fear. But Noah and Jeff had gotten out of their car when they saw her walking over to her erstwhile partner and headed in her direction. She still had trouble wrapping her mind around the whole thing.

  At last both her boss and the police department were through with them and Jeff drove her and Noah back to her house, promising to call them later in the day. He had to get back to work at the moment as this case had been assigned to him.

  Noah had filled her big claw foot tub with hot water and poured some of her bath salts into it.

  “This will relax you,” he told her. “You need this.”

  “What I need,” she told him, “is for you to get in that tub with me, put your arms around me and never let me go.”

  So now they were both in the fragrant, steamy water, Randi leaning back against him, his muscular arms wrapped around her, his hands cupping her breasts as his thumbs teased her nipples. She really did
wish she could stay like this forever, never moving, in the security of his embrace. Later today she knew, unfortunately, she’d probably have to go back to the firehouse but for now this was her entire world. She needed it.

  “I’m still in shock over Dan,” she said, leaning back against the hard wall of his chest. “How stupid am I that I never suspected?”

  “Not stupid. You trusted him and until now he hadn’t given you any reason not to.”

  “To think he’d been using all the arson sights we’d studied to learn about different chemicals and accelerants and how to create a quicker flashpoint. I’ll be a long time getting over this.”

  “But you will,” he promised, “and I’ll help.”

  They lapsed into silence again, letting the water lull them and ease the tension in their bodies.

  “Thank you,” she said at last.

  “For?” he prompted.

  “Not saying I told you so.”

  He gave a rough laugh. “Would it do me much good? You’re the smartest woman I know, Randi, but everyone has a blind spot. For you it was Dan Kessler.”

  “He seemed like such a together cop. I never ever suspected he’d be involved in something like this.” She ran a fingertip along the wet hair on one of his arms. “Lesson learned, thought.”

  They were both quiet for a long moment just reveling in the fact that everything was over and they could be together like this.

  “You did good tonight, firecracker. Got him right in the nuts.”

  Her laugh was tinged slightly with hysteria. “I did do good, didn’t I”

  He kissed the top of her head. “You bet.” He bent his head and nibbled the lobe of her ear. “I’m always going to worry a bout you. I can’t help it. I love you. A lot.”

  Her heart stuttered. “You love me?”

  “Randi, that was never in question. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. I was just scared to death for you and stupid enough to think I could order you what to do with your life.”

  “And I was mad enough to fight back and not try to see it from your point of view.” She paused. “I’m not giving up my career, Noah. I want you to understand that. But—“ She bit her lip.