Uh-oh. We’re back to formalities. “And that is?”
“These kids are not just campers coming to spend a week or weekend at Indian Lake Youth Camp. They are my responsibility. They look to me for guidance. I’m here to help them whether they have parents or not.”
He stepped closer. “I don’t mean any harm to you or these kids. But I have a job to do and I’m going to do it. I’ll be back with the report. I’ll expect to talk to Eli and Chris at that time.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine.”
He didn’t quite understand why he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Step back, walk away. But he couldn’t. There was something about her that held him like steel to a magnet. He admired her strength and her passion for the kids. He enjoyed talking with her when her feathers were ruffled. But now she looked at him like he was the enemy. He wanted to remind her that he’d saved her life, and Eli’s, only a matter of hours ago, but he doubted that would change anything.
Not now that the law had intervened.
As it always did, when wrongdoing was involved.
“Can I ask you something, Mr. Nelson? Professionally?”
“Sure.” He braced himself.
“Do you think I’d burn my camp down?”
“No. I do not.”
“Then you really want to blame the kids? I can’t believe for a minute that Eli or Chris would deliberately set a fire.”
“You might believe that, but I don’t know them. I can’t say what was going through their heads. But let’s say I give them the benefit of the doubt and find there was no intent. They still might be guilty of reckless burning. And that’s a punishable offense.”
“But they’re children!”
“Agreed. So their sentence would be lighter. My guess is that a detention judge would offer them informal diversion. It’s a program that allows for community service as a sentence. If the kids comply, they won’t go to court.”
“And that’s the best they can hope for?”
“Yes. Reckless burning is serious. As the Earth’s climate changes and we see staggering increases in forest fires due to drought and alien pests that cause diseases in our trees, the forests have to be protected more than ever.”
He had to give her points for the way she stood her ground. Her eyes didn’t flicker when he’d hit her with the severity of the situation. Now was not the time to tell her that his report—and his alone—could make all the difference in Eli’s and Chris’s futures. If he went hard on them, they’d be in detention hall. And if he discovered a lack of remorse in the boys, Rand had no choice but to comply with the law.
He’d been honest when he told her he didn’t know these kids.
But he also couldn’t deny that this wasn’t just a simple case for him. After all, he’d been the one to catch Chris when he fell from the tree. Something had happened to Rand at that moment.
“I’ll be back,” he said finally.
“Make sure you call me first. I’ll have to schedule you in.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, feeling the sharpness of his own words on his tongue.
He marched down the hall and shouldered open the screen door to the dining room as he walked into the blazing sun. He stuck his Ray-Bans on his face, walked to his truck and got in.
Rand wiped his palms on his jeans before turning the ignition.
He wasn’t quite sure what there was about Beatrice Wilcox that tossed his emotions from fascination to irritation faster than a rogue wave, but he’d never been bounced around by a woman quite as much.
One thing was for certain—he sure set her teeth on edge. He supposed he couldn’t blame her. She probably saw him now as an enemy. Once his investigation was over, he would be very happy indeed to put the Indian Lake Youth Camp and its owner on his list of accomplishments completed.
He rolled down the window, hung his arm over the edge and drove the truck carefully over the gravel so as not to disturb the white and gray stones.
* * *
SHOCK WAS NOT a new experience for Beatrice. She’d taken many blows in her life—from the day her father was shot and killed in the line of duty, to her mother’s announcement that she was moving to Los Angeles to star in a daytime soap opera, to yesterday’s fire, when Eli and Chris had gone missing in the inferno.
But this time it wasn’t just her who would suffer.
Knowing young boys, and Chris’s authority issues, she feared Rand would find that Chris and his brother did have something to do with why the fire had started.
And Beatrice didn’t doubt Rand’s inference that his testimony would weigh heavily with police and in a court of law. If it came to that.
She swept her palms over her face and realized she was perspiring. Her nerves affected her body in random ways. She could break out in a sweat on a subzero day. Start shivering in the middle of a heat wave. Her hands had a tendency to shake when she reconciled her checking account. A person prone to such tendencies probably wasn’t the best role model for children.
The kids.
It was the children that forced Beatrice to get a grip. Their trusting expressions and heartfelt, unselfish hugs gave her life meaning.
Beatrice knew how it felt to be abandoned. To be alone. Without real family. Once she’d moved out of Chicago and come to Indian Lake, she’d found real friends. To her, Mrs. Beabots, Maddie Barzonni, Sarah Jensen Bosworth were family—the big, huge family she’d always dreamed of.
Eli and Chris had been cast into the world with the worst of parents. A drug dealer for a father and an addict for a mother. They’d been raising themselves for years. She understood what that was like. That’s why she would do just about anything for them. Their lives had been far too difficult, and if they were accused of setting the fire, they’d be headed for a juvenile correctional facility. For a kid like Chris, who already had an “attitude” problem, he would emerge even more jaded, if not completely corrupted.
Beatrice had read too many testimonials from kids who’d been incarcerated and then released. The “scars of the bars” were burned on their souls. It took strength of character to overcome those years, and without some kind of parental love, somewhere in their past, they would never be rehabilitated.
Even if Chris purposefully set the fire, Beatrice couldn’t sentence him to that fate. He didn’t need the book thrown at him; he needed love.
But how to convince Mr. Rules-and-Regulations of that?
CHAPTER EIGHT
TRUE TO HIS WORD, Rand called Beatrice to arrange for an interview with Chris and Eli. They settled on later that day. He wasn’t quite sure if Beatrice had stalled for time by demanding this formal request, or if she simply didn’t trust him.
Probably both, he surmised as he pulled into the camp drive and turned off his truck. He glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror and stared at the Ray-Bans he was wearing and his official ILFD short-sleeved black summer knit shirt with the banded collar. Hmm. Beatrice was right. He would look intimidating to a kid.
He whipped off the sunglasses and stowed them in the console compartment between the seats. He’d spent so much of his life being the official on the job—as a fire marshal, the captain of his smoke-jumper team, a smoke-jumper trainer—that talking to a group of frightened kids was intimidating to him. It was a fine line between making his point and scaring them enough that he didn’t get through or they wouldn’t let him in.
The devil of it was that he liked kids. Loved them, really. But when it came to safety rules, ones they should obey for their own good and welfare, he did get hard-nosed. He knew it.
But in the end, he couldn’t help it.
If he was a bit hard on the kids, maybe they would remember him and they’d heed his sound advice and experience. After all, the terror of potentially losing Chris and Eli to the flames was fresh and raw. Even to Rand.
He grabbed his cell phone, then the stamped and recorded forensic report from the passenger seat and the report from his captain.
As he got out of the truck, he rolled his neck around his shoulders to try and relax. It did no good. His muscles were taut, prepared for battle.
He walked across the gravel drive to the door. He cleared his throat and prepared himself for the interview.
He placed his hand around the latch, but the door was opened from the other side.
“I saw you drive up,” Beatrice said with a smile, but the tiny, tense lines between her eyebrows told him she was faking her kind greeting. She was nervous.
Did she suspect the kids of being guilty, too? Was she hiding pertinent information that by law she was required to divulge to him? Or was she going to hide behind her attorney again? And if she did, was that how their relationship was going to advance?
Relationship?
Where had that thought come from?
“Hi,” he finally said. “Sorry to be a little late.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Chris and Eli have been waiting in my office.”
Swell. How long had they been waiting? Both boys must feel like they were already on the hot seat. Anticipation like that could make a kid go left on him. Lie. Snark his way around the truth. Quibble and generally evade every question Rand would pose. He wished she’d allowed him to interview the kids hours ago, when he was first here. They would have been unprepared for his questions. He might have had a chance to get through to them.
But Beatrice had only been following her attorney’s advice and legal protocol. She’d impressed him again.
“Lead the way,” he said.
“Can I get you anything?”
He wanted to ask if the front door was the quickest exit. “No, thanks. I’m good,” he said quickly.
She hobbled on her crutches toward her office door and he couldn’t help noticing the scent of flowers and summery spices she wore. Rosemary and eucalyptus. Jasmine and rose. Then he noticed her burned hair. Obviously, she put the kids first and thought of herself last.
He lifted his hand to touch the crimped ends of her hair, where the raging flames had nearly taken her life. She probably had no idea how close she’d come to death, but that was his job, his experience. He shivered, though there was no air-conditioning in the building. Au naturel, Beatrice had explained. The place had filtered fans to sift out harmful airborne allergens and pollens, but the air was untouched by ions and artificial Freon.
It was pure and free.
Like her.
“Mr. Nelson.” She turned to him and caught him with his hand in the air.
“Um. Yes?”
She hopped away from the door, gesturing with her head for him to enter her office. “Eli and Chris are waiting for you. Aren’t you, boys?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused.
“You may sit at my desk, Mr. Nelson,” she said.
“That’s okay, I’ll stand.”
Beatrice moved behind the boys’ chairs as Rand walked in front of them. He looked up at Beatrice, who frowned and shook her head. She pointed to the chair. “Truly, I don’t mind if you sit,” she said with the terse direction of a school principal.
Rand gave her a single nod and went around the desk. He sat down.
“Better?” she asked.
“Um, better.” He squirmed under her glare. She was right. If he’d been one of these boys, he would have been scared out of his wits to look up at a guy who was all muscle and, in his work boots, nearly six feet five inches tall. Good call, he thought. Though he didn’t particularly like the idea that Beatrice was calling the shots before his interview even got started.
His eyes latched on hers. “You don’t need to stay, Miss Beatrice.”
“Oh, but my attorney insists that I do.”
Her attorney. Again. Sounded to him like they had been conversing a good deal. Rand knew now he had to get the truth out of these kids in the next few minutes.
“Chris, I’ll start with you. Why don’t you tell me exactly how you two came to be over there in the woods—”
Chris slammed his arms across his chest. “I’m not sayin’ a word.”
“Why not?”
“I want my own attorney.”
Rand lowered his chin and rolled his eyes up at Chris. “This isn’t a court of law, Chris. It’s just an informal question-and-answer period. I’m just trying to find out what happened.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Excuse me?” Rand barked.
Beatrice coughed.
Rand ignored her.
“Chris, just tell me what happened.”
Chris cocked his head backward, toward Beatrice, but never took his steely eyes off Rand. “If she can have an attorney so can we. It’s the right of the land. I know about these things. All you want to do is pin something on me and Eli so’s you can send us off to some juvie hall or correction center. Then neither you or Miss Beatrice have to deal with us. Now or ever.”
“That’s not true!” Beatrice exploded with sorrow-filled emotion.
“Now, just a minute, Chris. It’s nothing like that at all,” Rand said. “I have a right to the truth, and so does Miss Beatrice. She’s been very kind to you and your brother from everything that I can see. So tell me what happened!” He hit his fist on the desk.
Quickly, he slid his hand underneath the desk. He’d gotten carried away. Blast it! But then, he’d been in one too many situations when a junior fire jumper hadn’t listened to him, had not obeyed the rules. Had taken risks—and lives had been lost.
Chris was only a kid, but if he’d started the fire, he was at fault.
While Rand stared at Chris, he’d forgotten that Eli was even in the room. The skinny kid had inched away from his brother to the far side of his chair. His hands were clasped in his lap and his head was lowered, his chin so far into his little chest, Rand was certain it had left an indelible dent.
Rand’s eyes slid surreptitiously to Eli and then back to Chris, who was still glaring at him.
Beatrice put both hands on Chris’s shoulders and massaged them gently. She whispered something into Chris’s ear, then kissed the side of his cheek.
Rand saw Chris’s eyes slowly close, as if he was taking in every single gesture of affection she gave him. The boy’s cheeks flushed pink, though that faded fast, as if he wasn’t used to endearments or caresses.
Rand felt his heart pinch. His own mother had done all those things to him so many times growing up. Heck, just last Sunday she’d given him a hug for grilling the family some bratwurst. She’d kissed his cheek when she left and there had been love in her eyes, and more, pride.
What had it been like for Chris and Eli to have never seen pride in their parents’ eyes?
“We stole stuff,” Eli mumbled.
Rand’s head whirled to the younger boy. “What?”
Beatrice moved to Eli and leaned down to him. “What are you saying, sweetheart?”
Eli’s voice warbled like a newborn baby robin. “We—we snuck out of our cabin.”
“Eli, shut up!” Chris shouted.
Eli kept his head down and didn’t look at his brother or the adults in the room. “No, I have to tell the truth, even if you hit me.”
“I’m not going to hit you, Eli.” Chris reached for his brother’s forearm. “But don’t do this. They could send us to jail.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want anything bad to happen to Miss Beatrice. Don’t you see? She loves us.” Eli raised eyes that were swimming with tears to his brother.
“Just what did you steal, Eli?” Rand asked with a voice he hadn’t meant to be quite so gravelly and accusatory.
Beatrice shot him a quelling I’ll-kill-you-later look. To the little boy, she said, “Eli, sweetheart. You know
there is nothing here in the camp that isn’t meant for you children to use. You know that, right?”
“I do,” he sniffed.
“Then what did you steal?” she asked, whisking his tears from his cheeks.
“Me and Chris never had s’mores like you made for us. We couldn’t believe it. Graham crackers and marshmallows and all that chocolate melted together! I told Chris I thought we were living in heaven. There were so many times when we had no food and Chris gave me his. So I wanted him to have another treat. I told him I would go to the pantry after lights out and get us the stuff to make more s’mores. Plenty of chocolate. It was his idea to go out into the woods across the street, where no one would see us. We’d make a little fire so we could melt the marshmallow and chocolate, just like you did, Miss Beatrice.” He looked at Beatrice as a new round of tears filled his eyes, magnifying the size of his irises, a sea of blue in a forlorn face.
“Go on, honey. It’s okay,” she urged Eli, but it was Chris who continued.
Rand sat spellbound.
“It was a small fire,” Chris said. “I only had a few sticks and some pine nettles.”
“But the ground was strewn with dry pine nettles that quickly caught fire, too,” Rand said.
“It was so dark.” Chris lowered his voice as regret rattled through his voice. “I didn’t see them. I didn’t know...”
“It’s my fault,” Eli said. “I wanted Chris to have that s’more. He likes them.” Eli gulped back another round of tears.
Beatrice hugged Eli to her chest and rubbed her hands on his thin back. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Chris stiffened his neck and pinned Rand with his eyes. “So are you going to press charges against us?”
“Son, I’m only making out a report. That’s not my call.”
“But your report could send us to juvie hall,” Chris said firmly.
Beatrice cut in. “Mr. Nelson has told me that you would have had to deliberately set the fire to be punished with time in a juvenile detention center. And this was an accident.” She looked at Rand with pleading eyes.
Their story had softened Rand’s heart to butter. He’d write the most favorable report for them he could, and if circumstances did put the boys in front of a judge for a hearing, he’d speak up for them and request community service. Their restitution would be minimal.
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