Under Fire

by Jamie Garrett

  “Creamer?” Her voice broke Connor out of his thoughts, and he leaned up against the bench to hide what his thoughts had done to him. Was he ever going to catch a break? He’d only come minutes ago, but his dick didn’t seem to want to listen to reason where Scarlett was concerned. He was broken out of his musings once more as something warm touched his hands. Connor wrapped his fingers around the ceramic mug Scarlett was handing him, lifting his head to smile gratefully at her. He took a sip of the hot liquid, forcing himself to focus and get himself under control. The last thing he wanted was for his distractions over how gorgeous Scarlett looked just puttering around his kitchen to make her think he was avoiding her, or worse, disinterested.

  He watched her, taking another sip. She looked perfect, even doing the simplest things. He chuckled at the expression of disgust she made when inspecting the produce drawer of his refrigerator before she moved on to the pantry, emerging with a grin and a can of baked beans. She tipped the can into a bowl, nuked them in the microwave, and then messily scooped half into a fresh bowl, dropping a couple on the bench along the way before handing the bowl with sauce still dripping down the side to him. Connor grinned, accepting the bowl with a small bow of thanks. It wasn’t as if he would have done any better. Unless it was Matt’s day to cook, he usually skipped breakfast at home altogether and snagged something at the firehouse. On days off, he’d go for a jog, stopping off for food that undid any calories burned somewhere along the way.

  Connor looked back over at Scarlett, who had migrated to the kitchen table, where she sat surrounded by manila folders, absent-mindedly scooping up a spoonful of beans in between page turns. Even with work obviously strewn over his tabletop, this was way better.

  He followed her path, sitting opposite her, toying with the spoon and pushing it around the edge of the bowl. He swiped the dribbling sauce off the side of the bowl and sucked it off his finger, giving himself an imaginary fist pump when he saw Scarlett’s eyes glaze over and her cheeks heat at the action. It made his ridiculously happy morning all the better to know he wasn’t the only one so affected by their lovemaking the night before.

  That’s what it had been. It held all the passion, all the heat of their first coming together, but there had been something more, too. It had bubbled along under the surface. Neither of them had given a name to it, but was there in every touch, every bite of her lips against his skin, and every thrust of his hips as he pushed deep inside her, becoming one with her, as close as he could get.

  That morning, paperwork over canned beans, it was almost as mundane as you could get, but the night before . . . something had changed, and they’d both felt it, even if neither of them would admit it just yet. Connor didn’t care. The spark of heat in her eyes and the way she’d watched him too told him everything. There was hope, and he was taking it.

  “What are you looking for?” Scarlett’s head jerked up at his words. A spot of bean sauce sat in the corner of her bottom lip, and he resisted the urge to lean over and swipe it away, maybe with his tongue.

  Her tongue came out, and Connor suppressed a moan as it darted across her lips, removing the drop before she spoke. “There’s a connection here,” she said, gesturing at what could only be described as a small disaster of reports and scribbled notes, “but I can’t find it.”

  He picked up the paper closest to him, a report on vandalism at the local high school. It looked like a record from the police database, and judging by the stack of papers currently littering his kitchen table, Scarlett might have printed everything they had. He turned back to the report. Just kids being idiots by the looks, tagging stupid shit on the side of the gym. He looked up at Scarlett, raising his eyebrows.

  “I pulled everything they had mentioning triangles,” she said around the tip of a pen. Somewhere in the last few minutes, she’d swapped her bowl of beans for a battered old ballpoint, the end of which had been just about chewed into oblivion, and she had been scribbling something on the paper in front of her. “I may have gone a little overboard. But I spent most of yesterday getting exactly nowhere.” She shuffled the papers. “There’s something here, I know there is. I was on my way to the station to check the evidence log when the shit hit the fan.”

  She shrugged, saying no more on the topic, but the reminder was enough to finally chill Connor’s arousal. Getting the phone call from Scarlett the night before, the shaking in her voice obvious even as she’d actively tried to hide it, then the blood coating her arm, enough to soak through multiple layers of clothing. She could call it a graze all she liked; the thought of it still shook him to the core. Someone had been waiting for her last night, hiding in the shadows, and then deliberately aiming a gun at her. It didn’t matter that she’d only been wounded. Even if that had been their intent, what if the fucker had been a bad shot?! His stomach flipped as an image of Scarlett lying dead on the sidewalk pounded into his brain, and the beans threatened to make a reappearance.

  She stood, abruptly shaking him out of his thoughts as she spoke even as she was moving across the room. “Have you got a shirt I can borrow? My pants should still be fine.”

  Connor pushed the chair back, ignoring its catching on the rug and nearly toppling over. By the time she crossed through the bedroom door, he’d managed to catch up. “Where are we going?”

  She looked over at him from where she’d sat on the bed, one leg inside her pants. Now it was her turn to look puzzled. “No idea about you. I’m going to the station. Gotta get my hands on the report from those crazy-looking tanks at the second scene.”

  He swallowed as his stomach flip-flopped again. Damn, why was he being such a nervous wreck? He charged into buildings that were on fire on a daily basis, for God’s sake. He thought back to the scene the other day, where Scarlett had found the piece of metal that had started this whole hunt. He’d been worried about her digging around in the damn ashes when not long before he’d charged into the house itself while burning ceiling beams dropped just feet from him and his team.

  Connor huffed out a breath. Who was he kidding? It was entirely different when the person you loved was the one putting themselves in danger. That was even harder than admitting it to himself. He loved her. The seed had been planted on their first night together. There had been something more there already, and now, watching her work under pressure, how brave and brilliant she was, he’d fallen completely.

  And now he had to watch her throw herself in front of danger. Over and over again, because that was what they did. She got that about him, and he wasn’t about to turn into every other person in her life right now, trying to shelter her from the world. She knew what a fucked-up asshole fate could be. No one needed to teach her that. Scarlett didn’t need anyone to stand in front of her. Plus, she’d likely maim him for trying. What she did need was for someone to stand beside her and have her back. That, he’d do in a heartbeat.

  He stepped over to a chest of drawers and pulled out a shirt he’d accidentally shrunk in the wash once. One of his favorites, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw it away, and now he could see why. The shrunken fabric clung to Scarlett, wrapping around her body and pulling in all the right ways. She looked up at him, meeting his gaze. In an instant, she saw it all, and thank God she smiled back. Grinning, she picked up his jacket that he’d slung over a chair and threw it to him one-handed. “Let’s roll.”

  15

  Scarlett

  Thankfully, the two pain killers she’d dry-swallowed as they left Connor’s apartment were starting to kick in by the time they got to the station. She’d let Connor drive, taking the time to make some sense of the order of papers in the folder on her lap. She’d snagged a hoodie from the back of one of Connor’s chairs on the way out, hiding the injury from her boss.

  Connor trailed after Scarlett as she walked to the station entrance. Was he keeping an eye on the surroundings, or just not sure if he should be there? She couldn’t tell, but it was clear he was watching carefully as they crossed the parking
lot. She could have parked out front; probably no one would have minded that morning, but it would also give them one more reason to bench her. If her captain got wind of any requirement for special treatment . . . no, she’d park where she always did and walk in the back like anyone else. It didn’t matter that just twelve hours prior someone had been taking pot shots at her from that exact place. She would face this. There was no way in hell she was letting some asshole chase her away ever again. That part of her life was done.

  Even with the thought, a shiver went through her. Scarlett pushed it away, forcing her body to relax. Her hands clenching a little harder than they needed to on the folder was all she allowed as an outlet. She held her head up high, shoulders back and relaxed, nodding and smiling at colleagues as she maneuvered through the hall. A few of them looked a little strangely at Connor behind her, but Scarlett figured most of the station knew about her temporary reassignment to the task force at the firehouse. She was just switching it up today, needing access to the local network in the station to look up a few reports.

  She sat at her desk and logged in, nodding at a chair sitting nearby for Connor. He took the cue and placed it next to hers, and by the time the lab report was opening, he was reading over her shoulder. What she had thought were air tanks had turned out to be something else entirely—portable cooling tanks. Insulated, and possibly custom made from the shape, the tanks were designed to hold something inside, something that had to be kept very cold. A latch system was built in, one she hadn’t even noticed. The surface of the polished metal was smooth, the seam only noticeable if you got right up close, and then maybe poked at it a little.

  Being in the same room as they were in had given her the heebie-jeebies at the scene, and so thankfully the lab guys had been willing to fully investigate what the hell they’d found. Scarlett snorted. Having a bomb tech in the special suit on hand probably helped with their willingness. She would have been happy to get closer, too, if she didn’t think she might have been five seconds away from blowing herself up.

  “So what were they moving?” Connor said over her shoulder, his voice so quiet it was almost a whisper.

  The memory slammed into her hard enough to make her jump. Connor’s presence fell away, and she heard his chair scoot back on the linoleum floor. Her shoulders dropped. Great, now he thought his nearness had scared her. That wasn’t it. Could never be it. What had freaked her the fuck out was a memory of the last time she’d sat in this same chair. The last time she’d been browsing through old case files and documents for any semblance of a lead or clue.

  TATP. A primary high-explosive. Extremely sensitive to shock, friction, and heat. The fucking stuff had to be mixed over ice water just to be made, and then transported wet, or at least cold, to limit the chances of the courier going boom. Not that it mattered sometimes. This case would be far from the first where an asshole managed to blow themselves up instead of the target using the stuff. One madman in Britain had stored the stuff in the family refrigerator, where one scuffle or knock could have made the whole thing explode, destroying the entire block.

  She pulled her keyboard closer and started typing, her eyes widening as the first results came in—everything from warnings to how-to manuals and then videos of explosions. Some were controlled in a lab, while others looked like bored teens messing around in abandoned lots. Oddly, what scared her the most were the careful lab setups, the precise experiments. There, she could see exactly how much of the substance had been used, and an amount she could hold on the tip of one finger was enough to blow a coin right out of frame. She thought back to the size of the canisters at the last fire, and a cold hand wrapped itself around her spine, chilling her entire body. She swallowed, almost choking. If they were full, it would be enough to flatten the entire town.

  Easily.

  Scarlett was locked to her chair, so frozen by her search that she didn’t hear the door behind her open. It wasn’t until her captain’s voice bellowed across the space that she realized he was even there. “Christensen! My office. Now.”

  Connor raised his eyebrows, and he started to stand, but she waved at him to sit back down. “Keep looking,” she hissed, she hoped quietly enough not to be overheard. If she was right, she couldn’t afford to waste a minute’s access to the databases. She hoped she’d still have her access when she stepped out of the captain’s office, but just in case . . . maybe Connor would find the missing piece while she was getting her ass chewed. She could only pray. She’d been at it for days without a break—something had to come soon. Then again, if her suspicions were right, it was likely to be a long haul, if anyone would believe her at all. Their small town had seen more than its fair share of lunatics in the last year or so; arsonists, stalkers, they were one thing. Terrorists manufacturing explosive devices were another entirely. That kind of shit just didn’t happen in her town.

  Except it did. Small-town America was changing, along with the rest of the world. She couldn’t assume anywhere was safe. Not anymore.

  Captain Harrelson sat behind his desk, gesturing to a chair in front of him with a grunt. Scarlett debated staying standing for a moment, but gave it up. Despite his gruff nature and his ridiculous desire to try to protect her, the captain was good police. He’d been there when she’d been a green newbie, a friend of Derek’s, too. He’d even been at their wedding. Whether it was through a misguided sense of responsibility or trying to be some kind of father figure to the younger ones under his command, she couldn’t bring herself to fault the man sitting in front of her. Under all his bluster, he’d also been the one to hold her in the rare moments she’d broken down. She’d refused to cry—to show any emotion—in front of her colleagues. She couldn’t bear it. Somehow, the captain made it easier to forget about being a cop, even for just a few moments, and just be a grieving widow.

  That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to push back now. Fuck no. She’d let the man have his say, he deserved that from her, but there was no way she was backing down. This case was hers. She’d been the one to wonder first if there was something more than just a fire, and she’d run with it. They’d have to pry the case from her cold, dead hands before she’d hand it over to anyone else. Besides, Monroe wasn’t exactly a major city. The couple of detectives they had apart from here were all busy on their own tasks. If she got passed over now, the fires would likely be bumped to someone with far less experience and time to bother with anything properly. Hell, there hadn’t even been a ruling yet on the fires. That was taking nearly as long as the damn lab report had.

  She glanced out the office window and over at Connor. He had shuffled over in her absence and was casually flipping through a screen she’d left open, his hand sneaking up to click the mouse every so often. She smiled. The man was good. His face was open, accepting and friendly, and anyone bumping into him outside of work greeted him with a smile, and often a friendly greeting, too. Unless he started digging through department files, it was likely no one would even look twice at him sitting at her desk.

  Her eyes trailed along his arm and up to his shoulder, and she bit her bottom lip. Her desire to stay on the case, to stay working at the firehouse, had nothing to do with the sexy hunk of a firefighter squeezed into a chair at her desk. It truly didn’t. There was something going on in Monroe, way more than just a few strange fires. She knew it in her gut. That didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the perks of the job.

  The captain cleared his throat, and Scarlett turned back. He’d poured them both a water and was smoothing over his tie. Crap. Fortunately, it looked like he hadn’t been sitting there long while she’d been gazing out the window.

  “So, Christensen. Going to tell me what the hell you’re doing here today?”

  Her eyes widened for a second before she could stop herself. “What, sir?”

  More tie fiddling, then shuffling of papers on his desk, before he looked up and nailed her dead-on with his famous stare. “Had a little excitement outside last night. I thought you’d be smart e
nough to take the day off.”

  Scarlett shifted in her seat. The wound on her arm itched, and she grabbed the arm of the chair to stop her hand from inching toward it to scratch. One thought of what was waiting for her back on her computer screen had her whole body twitching anyway.

  If the chief was looking for an excuse to take her off the case, then even a whiff of that level of trouble would do it. No, she had to keep her suspicions to herself until she had more than just supposition. She’d tell Connor. She could trust him. Maybe the guys at the firehouse would be able to help. Scarlett took in a deep breath. Would their arson team have any training with this level of shit?

  She looked back at Harrelson. Damn. He was still waiting for an answer. “Just some random idiot taking pot shots outside, Captain. Nothing to worry about.”

  His hands moved from his tie to a pen lying on his desk, tapping it in an incessant rhythm against his desk. He wasn’t pleased. “See a doctor yet?”

  She nodded. She’d seen Connor. He had medic training, she was almost sure. Most of them down at the firehouse did. That was close enough. “Just a graze, sir. I’m fine.”