McQueen's Heat

by Harper Allen

  With a slight sense of shock she saw her random arrow had found a mark. At her last words he froze.

  “You got it a little wrong, honey,” he said woodenly.

  Without making a move he seemed somehow to be looming over her. But his size wasn’t the most overwhelming thing about him, Tamara thought. What would strike even the most casual observer was the impression of power held just barely in check that appeared to be an integral part of him. Coupled with the aura of self-destructiveness she’d already noticed, the combination of the two seemed perilously volatile.

  “The job destroyed me.” That velvet voice wrapped itself around her like an invisible snare. “But yeah, a woman struck the match, and I’ve been burning ever since. Maybe I could have done something about it once…but after all these years I think I like it.”

  His smile was crooked. “You might find yourself liking it, too. Why don’t you try it and see?”

  “You’re officially discharged, McQueen.” Lieutenant Boyleston was standing beside them, her expression quizzical. “Now all we have to do is find you somewhere to sleep tonight. Here, put this on before you get a candystriper all hot and bothered.”

  She was holding out an orderly’s jacket to him, but as she spoke her eyes narrowed on Tamara’s set features. “I’d offer you a bed at my place, but for some reason Hank’s not real crazy about you.”

  Without glancing at it, Stone took the jacket. His eyes were still locked on Tamara’s, and for one illogical moment she thought she saw the hard light in that smoky gaze replaced by a flash of regret. He looked away.

  “Your husband?” Impatiently he wrestled into the jacket. “I don’t remember meeting him. Hell, Chandra, I can’t wear this thing.” Glaring at the white sleeves ending inches above his own wrists, he tried half-heartedly to pull the front edges across his chest.

  “It was in a bar downtown last year. You were a little the worse for wear,” Chandra said tiredly. “The jacket’s a loaner, Stone, so don’t rip it. King, while I was at the desk—”

  “Tell Hank I’m sorry.”

  Boyleston’s lips tightened at the interruption. “What?”

  Stone started to shrug, and stopped as a seam gave way. “Whatever I said, whatever I did—apologize for me, would you? You’re one of the few who stuck by me.” His voice dropped. “Hell, Chand, I wouldn’t want to think I’d lost your friendship, too.”

  “You’ve come close a couple of times, Stone.” Boyleston held his gaze steadily. “But we go back a long way, you and me…back to before everything fell apart for you. I told Hank you were a jerk, but that deep down you were still one of the good guys.”

  Her smile wavered. Sighing, she turned back to Tamara. “Like I was saying, King, your uncle Jack called. Apparently he dropped round to the stationhouse to chew the fat with some of his old buddies and some fool told him you’d been taken to the hospital. I told him it was nothing serious but that I was giving you a few days off to let that shoulder mend.”

  “You’re putting me on sick leave?” Tamara shot the other woman a glance. “Come on, Lieut, it’s just a pulled muscle.”

  “Until you can swing an axe or carry a hose you’re off the roster, and that’s not negotiable.” Boyleston frowned. “Count your blessings, King. Joey might never return to work. When will we get the message through to the public, dammit—smoking in bed is like drinking and driving. You just don’t do it.”

  “What’s your point?” McQueen’s thumb was on the call button of the elevator. He looked impatiently over his shoulder.

  “My point is that if the dead woman had exercised some common sense, her little girl would still have a mom, Stone. She was smoking in bed. The only reason her room didn’t go up in flames first was because a previous tenant had punched a hole in the drywall, and it acted as a kind of crude chimney.”

  Boyleston raked a hand through her cropped hair. “That’s a preliminary assessment, of course, but I doubt the official investigation’s going to find different. The bed smoldered just enough so that the woman died from asphyxiation, but the fire itself went into the walls and the attic.”

  “Nice theory.”

  As the elevator doors slid open Stone planted one hand solidly against them. Lieutenant Boyleston stepped in, but Tamara paused, alerted by something in the big man’s tone.

  “Nice theory but what?”

  He shrugged. “Nice theory but it’s crap.”

  The elevator doors started to close and he slammed them back into place. This time Tamara heard the seam in the borrowed jacket give way completely, but his next words drove everything else from her mind.

  “That fire today was arson—and whoever set it was targeting your friend and her child.”

  Chapter Three

  “I thought you knew who the kid was! I didn’t know I was the only one she’d talked to.”

  Stone swung his gaze from the woman sitting beside him in the waiting room. He was handling this all wrong and he knew it, he thought. It would have helped if Chandra had come with them but the child’s attending physician had stood firm on that, so it was just him and the woman.

  And already it wasn’t working.

  Tamara was sitting as stiffly as a statue, her face white, the strands of auburn hair escaping her braid like tiny flames flickering around her. He began again, aware that beyond the swinging doors was a ward full of sick children.

  “Like I said, she was in the bathtub when I got to her. She already knew her mother was dead.”

  And when I tried to lie about that, I just about lost her trust right then and there, he added silently, remembering the almost adult note of scorn in the childish voice.

  “If Mom’s only sleeping, why isn’t she breathing?” He’d had an arm around the small shoulders while he’d been hastily dipping a torn sheet into the water, and he’d felt a tremor run through them. “She’s dead. She was dying of cancer anyway, so I’m glad. This way it didn’t hurt. It—it didn’t hurt, did it?”

  That question he’d been able to answer truthfully. “She wouldn’t have known anything, Tiger,” he’d told her.

  He blinked, torn from his thoughts by the quiet approach of the nurse entering the room. She was young and pretty, he saw. He was relieved. The kids behind those swinging doors deserved to hear a soft voice, see a kind face.

  “Dr. Pranam says if you’d like, we can phone you when she wakes up.”

  “I’d rather wait.” Tamara’s lips barely moved. “Tell Dr. Pranam I appreciate him bending the rules for us. I know visiting hours are over.”

  “We bend a lot of rules.” The nurse smiled, but there was sadness in her voice. “Some of these little ones won’t be leaving, so we do what we can to make them happy. And like Dr. Pranam told you, the only way we could calm her when she arrived was to tell her that we’d find Mr. Stone and bring him to see her.”

  “Stone.” He looked away uncomfortably. “It’s my first name. Stonewall.”

  “Like the general?” The nurse laughed softly as she pushed open the swinging doors. “That explains a lot. I hear you laid waste to the fifth floor.”

  “Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own troops.” As the nurse exited Tamara spoke, her face still white but the blank look in her eyes replaced with a glitter of anger. “So unless you want the similarities between yourself and your namesake to go further, I’d suggest you tell me everything you found out from Claudia’s daughter—starting with why you’re so certain she is her daughter. Why would Claudia come back to Boston to see me?”

  “Petra said she was dying of cancer.” Stone saw her lashes fall over the angry blue of her eyes. He continued, wanting to get it over with. “Petra’s the kid,” he added. “I told her to call me Stone, and she told me what her name was. I was trying to keep her mind off what was happening.”

  Tamara nodded tightly. “Go on.”

  He didn’t want to go on. In fact, he didn’t want to be here at all, Stone thought savagely. The whole damn thing was bringing back t
oo many memories—memories of other vigils in other hospitals—and the urge to just walk out was overpowering. Walk out and find a bar, you mean, an amused voice in his head said. So why don’t you, McQueen?

  “She wanted you to take care of her daughter when she was gone,” he said shortly. “That’s why the photo was so important to Petra. She knew that with her mom gone she’d have to find you all by herself.”

  “She didn’t mention her father?” Tamara was rubbing her thumb against a smudge of soot on her jeans. “She has to have a father, for heaven’s sake. Where’s he?”

  “He died in a car accident before she was born, if I understood her right.” The smudge was now a smear, he saw. “I wasn’t listening to everything she said. I was too busy wondering what our chances were of getting out of there alive.”

  He paused. “You don’t want her to be Claudia’s daughter, do you? You don’t want to believe any of this.”

  “And I don’t believe it.”

  Abruptly she stood. She walked over to a bulletin board and stood there studying flyers for a hospital fund-raiser, her back to him. Stone rose, too, his movements more controlled than hers.

  “What’s not to believe? If nothing else, she had that photo of you. How the hell do you explain that away?”

  She lifted stiff shoulders in a shrug. “Chandra thought it might have fallen from Joey’s helmet. It seems like the most logical explanation.”

  “For the love of Mike—logical? Isn’t it more logical to accept that the kid’s telling the truth?” He had the sudden impulse to take her by the shoulders and force her to listen to reason. With an effort he turned away.

  He was getting too involved in this, he told himself tightly. He’d spent the past seven years making sure any involvement he had with the rest of the world was as minimal as possible, and lately he’d come to realize even that was becoming too much to take—although her accusation that he’d been ready to detach completely in that rooming house today was far from being a given, he thought, frowning.

  He’d wanted to look into its face. He’d been pretty sure he would see his own staring back at him. Instead he’d looked around and seen her, and that had been the biggest shock of all. He closed his eyes.

  Beyond those swinging doors was a little girl whose world had been smashed to pieces—a little girl who was asking for him. He knew why she wanted to see him. He hadn’t told the woman who’d been her mother’s best friend everything that had passed between him and the child, he thought heavily.

  He’d crashed through the doorway of the rented room. It had been years since he’d run through a burning building but all at once he’d been back in the past, knowing that there had to be clues if only he could see them, knowing that in seconds those clues could disappear forever.

  The woman had been lying on a smoldering cot by the wall. Even before he’d fallen to his knees beside her and placed his thumb firmly on what should have been the pulse-point of her neck he’d known instinctively that Joey had been right. She was gone. An even earlier habit had come back to him, and without conscious volition he’d swiftly crossed himself.

  “Rest easy, sister.” For some reason it had been important to put it into words, just in case any shadow of her had lingered and could hear him. “I’ll take care of her for you. I’ll get her out of here.”

  As he’d started to rise the information he’d automatically noted even while he’d been concentrating on the woman clicked into place and his heart sank. Between the fingers of the outflung hand was the burned-down butt of a cigarette, the sheet the hand had been resting on now only charred fragments. The cot itself had caught and smoldered, he’d realized, and whatever outdated material it had been filled with had thrown off the toxic fumes that had proven so fatal for its occupant. But at some point the smoldering should have become a full-fledged blaze. Why hadn’t it? And how had the fire skipped to the rest of the building, leaving this room untouched?

  He’d gotten swiftly to his feet. Finding the child and getting her to safety was his main concern. Giving the woman on the cot one final glance, he’d seen a remnant of the sheet leading from the cigarette to the emptiness of the hole knocked into the wall, and had realized he was looking at the answer to the questions he’d just dismissed.

  But as he’d lifted Petra into his arms only moments later, he’d known that the most deadly question hadn’t been answered at all.

  “You’re going to find out who killed my mom, aren’t you, Stone?” In the shadows her eyes had been wide with anguish and fixed stubbornly on his. “You’ll put him in jail, right?”

  He hadn’t answered her right away. He hadn’t known what to say, since the truth was too brutal. Gee, Tiger, your mom started it herself. She was smoking in bed, see, and the cigarette just rolled from her fingers when she fell asleep. Maybe one day the kid would find out, but he wasn’t going to be the one to—

  Except the cigarette hadn’t rolled from her fingers. It had burned right down to her hand. The pain would have woken her immediately.

  But by then she was already dead, McQueen. In fact, I’d lay odds she was dead before that damned cigarette was lit. The voice in his head had been coldly professional. His voice when he’d answered the child staring so trustingly up at him had been hoarse with sudden anger, but she’d seemed to know his anger wasn’t directed at her.

  “Yeah, Tiger, we’re gonna find the person who killed your mom.” Striding toward the open door, he’d tightened his hold on her. “We’re gonna find him and put him away. That’s a promise.”

  Only then had he felt the stiff little body in his arms suddenly go limp, as if upon his words she’d finally been able to hand over a burden too heavy for her to bear…

  He’d gotten her out safely, as he’d vowed he would, Stone thought now. He’d told Boyleston what he’d seen before the fire had roared through the room, obliterating the telltale signals that made it arson, not an accident. With that information, the investigative team’s initial hasty evaluation would have to be reversed. He’d passed on the burden to the people who were paid to shoulder it.

  So he could just walk away. He’d gotten good at walking away from things these past few years.

  But this time he wasn’t going to be able to. Petra had asked for him. He’d made her a promise. And whether Tamara knew it or not, she was a part of it.

  “She told you her name was Petra?” Tamara’s voice was barely audible. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he said steadily, taking in the rigidity of her posture, the bleakness in those blue eyes now holding his gaze. “Does it make a difference?”

  “Claudia’s father died when she was a baby so she never knew him, but she used to say she would name her own child after him when she became a mother,” she rasped. “Peter if she had a son. Petra if her child was a daughter.”

  “Then that clinches—” he began, but she cut him off, her voice still low.

  “Let me tell you a story, McQueen. It’s about two little girls who’d both lost family and who were both lonely. Except then they met each other, and it was like getting a part of their families back again.”

  She smiled crookedly at him. “When they were ten years old, one of them snuck an embroidery needle out of her mom’s sewing box and they gathered up enough nerve to prick their palms with it. It was something they’d read about.” She shrugged. “They clasped their hands together and took a blood oath, promising to be sisters until death. Dumb, huh?”

  She was a world away from the tough, helmeted figure who’d bulldozed him out of that room today, Stone thought, watching her. Who was the real Tamara King—the firefighter who put her life on the line everyday without thinking twice about it, or the woman standing only inches away from him, her eyes haunted, her whole body so tense that it seemed as if she was in danger of breaking apart right in front of his eyes?

  Maybe she was both. She went on, her tone devoid of emotion.

  “Even after we grew up, I knew that no matter wha
t else happened in our lives we would always be able to count on each other. I was wrong. She betrayed me with the man I loved, and I never saw or heard from either of them again.”

  Her voice was a fraying thread. “So tell me, McQueen—if she was dying, if she was out of her mind with worry for the child she was going to be leaving behind—why would she come back to me?”

  She shook her head decisively. “She wouldn’t. Don’t you see? It wasn’t Claudia. Claudia didn’t come to Boston looking for my help. She didn’t die in that rooming house today, worried and frightened and hoping for my forgiveness.”

  Her eyes, blue and glittering, were fixed on his. Stone took a step toward her, feeling all at once too big and too clumsy. “I wish I could tell you different, but I can’t.”

  Awkwardly he reached out for her, but even as his hands clasped her shoulders she stiffened and struck them away.

  “You have to tell me different!” The harsh whisper seemed torn from her throat. “No matter what happened between us, I don’t think I could bear it if I thought that was how it ended for her!”

  “She died in her sleep, overcome by the smoke. She would have died hoping the bond between the two of you still held. She would have been right,” he added huskily.

  This time when his hands went to her shoulders she did nothing. The brilliance overlaying her gaze wavered and became a shimmer, but he knew with sudden certainty that she wasn’t going to allow herself to cry.

  “I think I knew it was her as soon as I saw the child, but I wouldn’t let myself believe it.” Her voice cracked. “Do you want to hear why, McQueen?”

  I think I already know, honey, he thought, sudden self-loathing sweeping over him. What was it he’d so recklessly accused her of only half an hour ago—that she wanted to look into the destruction? That she thought she might see her own face staring back?

  Tamara King had already stared into the heart of darkness. She’d already recognized it in herself. The knowledge was tearing her apart.