by Gayle Wilson
Recognizing that even for him, that kind of thinking bordered on sacrilege, at least right now, Jace turned away from the tiny, wavering flames dotting the field to look across the sea of people standing in the bleachers. Although his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he couldn’t make out individuals, simply a mass of humanity silhouetted against the night sky.
He wasn’t sure why he’d come. To get a feel for what the community was thinking? Or to find out how the students were reacting to the suicide? Or because his gut continued to tell him that Andrea’s suicide wasn’t what it seemed?
Or rather, not only what it seemed. Up until the moment when she’d walked in from work and discovered her daughter’s body, the mother had thought the girl was doing well. They’d both been proud of her progress. Reassured that finally she had turned things around. Even her therapist, with whom he’d talked this afternoon, had agreed with their assessment.
Which had left Jace with a question he couldn’t answer. On a day when everyone at Randolph-Lowen had assured him nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, why had Andrea Moore gone home from school and slit her wrists, watching as blood pooled in the bottom of the shower until she passed out and died?
He took a breath, trying to push the image that had haunted him from the time he’d been called to the scene last night out of his head. And then he took another breath. This one deeper. Longer. With purpose.
Something was burning. His first thought was the candles. His gaze returned to the field, sweeping the mass of flickering lights, looking for anything that might explain the smoke. No blaze, other than that from their small, individual wicks.
He raised his eyes to survey the guest stands on the opposite side of the stadium. Made of wood, both smaller and lower than the concrete bleachers provided for the home crowd, they, too, offered no explanation for what he smelled.
With the lights out, it should have been easy to spot a fire large enough to produce smoke. His eyes searching outside the stadium, Jace became aware that not only had the floodlights illuminating the field been extinguished, so had every light around. The entire area was black as pitch.
He turned, reassured that the streetlamps on the main road were burning. Those would provide light for the parking lot, the most likely area for mischief. And one that would be especially vulnerable while everyone’s attention was concentrated on the field.
He began to push his way through the spectators who’d crowded the area between the concession stand and the front gate to watch the ceremony. As he neared the fence surrounding the stadium, he saw that no one was collecting tickets at the gate.
It was only halftime, yet when he’d come to the game last week, Lindsey’s friend had told him tickets were required until after the third quarter.
Tickets.
Lindsey had been working the ticket booth again tonight. Shannon Anderson hadn’t been there, her place taken by a man Jace hadn’t recognized. In the pregame rush, the guy had taken his money and pushed the ticket under the burglar bars without making eye contact.
Although Jace had deliberately chosen not to go to the window where Lindsey was working, he’d watched her while he’d waited for his change. She, too, had been focused on the crowd lined up in front of her, her face pale and strained in the shadow of the fluorescent light above her head.
Remembering that moment, Jace began to run, unable to explain his sense of urgency. In his hurry to get outside the gate, he bumped into someone he hadn’t seen in the darkness. Child, he realized, as he caught the little boy by the shoulders to right him before he fell.
“Sorry. You all right, big guy?”
“I’m okay.”
“Sorry about bumping you. Okay now?”
“No harm done. I told you to stay with me, Nathan,” a man Jace assumed to be the kid’s father said. “Thanks.”
“My fault. It’s hard to see out here.”
“That’s why we stopped. I didn’t want to take a chance on losing them in the dark, but he just had to see the band.”
Behind Jace, the last notes of the trumpet faded away into stillness, as the voices of the crowd, now several thousand strong, sang the final word of the hymn. In the momentary silence between that and the rustle of the spectators once more taking their seats, Jace finally heard the screams.
“Help. Somebody help me.”
“Call 9-1-1.” Jace said to the man with the boy. “Tell them there’s a fire at the stadium.” He didn’t wait to see if his orders were obeyed. Even if they were, it might be too late by the time the fire trucks arrived.
As he ran, he yelled over his shoulder at the people who had begun to follow him toward the exit, “I need a fire extinguisher.”
On his right, someone said, “Maybe the concession stand.”
“Get it.”
By that time, Jace was through the gate. He didn’t stop at the barred window, although he could see Lindsey leaning down to yell through the narrow opening at its bottom.
The front of the booth wasn’t on fire. A reddish glow came from its back, which was under the bleachers and thus hidden from the crowd. As was undoubtedly the intent.
He rounded the corner of the small building, stripping off his blazer as he ran. When he reached the back, the flames were already so high they licked at the roofline. And the door to the booth, the one at which he’d met Lindsey to take her to dinner last Friday night, was at the heart of the conflagration.
Hand shielding his eyes, he tried to see what was fueling the blaze. Although it was obvious something was piled on the ground right in front of the door, he couldn’t tell what.
Using his coat to beat back the flames, he tried to get close enough to the building to kick whatever was there away. The intensity of the heat drove him back.
Where the hell was that extinguisher? He glanced over his shoulder. In the light from the fire, he could see several people watching him. None of them seemed eager to help.
“Extinguisher,” he yelled again. Someone broke away from the crowd that had begun to collect and disappeared around the corner of the booth.
Jace turned his attention back to the blaze. He could wait for the fire trucks, but once the wooden wall really caught, it might be too late even for them to get Lindsey out.
Besides, the heat and the smoke were as dangerous as the fire itself. Once it burned through to the inside of the building, the air from the windows at the front would only fuel the growing inferno.
He beat at the flames again with his coat, dropping it when the material flared up in his hands. Unless he could push whatever had been piled in front of the door away, he wouldn’t be able to put this out. And in a matter of seconds the wooden wall would be fully engaged.
Stepping back from the heat, he scanned the area under the bleachers. He needed a board or a pole of some kind.
Just as he decided there was nothing like that to be found, someone pushed past him. A man, a rake or a shovel in his hands, rushed toward the flames. Braving the heat, he thrust whatever he carried into the pile at the bottom of the door. After several attempts, he succeeded in pulling part of the burning debris away from the building.
“Here.” Someone from the crowd finally put an extinguisher into Jace’s hands.
Although it wasn’t standard size, intended to be kept in a car or a truck rather than a building, it was better than nothing. Pulling the seal, Jace directed its contents against the door. As the extinguisher began to beat back the fire, he saw that the padlock had been inserted into the hasp of the door and snapped shut.
If there had been any thought in Jace’s mind about the possibility that this was an accident, that single, cold-blooded act destroyed it. Someone had locked Lindsey in the booth and then stacked something flammable against the door.
Although it smoldered, smoke rising from the charred wood, the door itself was no longer burning. And the man with the rake continued to maneuver whatever had fueled the fire farther and farther away from the booth.
; Reversing the empty extinguisher, Jace used it to pound on the hasp. The lock itself held, but after a few blows of Jace’s makeshift hammer, the nails holding the hasp pulled free from the charred frame.
He dropped the container and retrieved his ruined jacket from the ground. Wrapping it around his right hand, he gripped the edge of the door, jerking it open. Smoke billowed out from the interior, driven by the cross draft created by the ticket window. In the darkness, he could see nothing.
“Lindsey?” He took the single step up into the booth, the smoke eddying away from him as he moved inside. “Lindsey?”
He never saw her, but suddenly she was there, her arms wrapping around him as if she didn’t intend to let go. The strength of that embrace reassured him about her safety. And reminded him of how close a thing this had been.
He pulled away, putting his arm around her back to direct her outside. As they emerged from the booth, the lights around the stadium came on, revealing those who had looked on as he and the man with the rake fought the fire.
Jace’s eyes went immediately to his helper. White haired, heavyset, and wearing a county maintenance uniform, the man leaned against his rake, trying to catch his breath. A few feet away the remains of what appeared to be a blackened crate stuffed with refuse continued to smolder.
“You okay?” Jace asked.
The man nodded, air wheezing in and out of his mouth in labored gasps. “You two?” he managed.
“We’re fine. Thanks to you.”
“I told ’em they needed to fix those.” The man nodded toward a melted tangle of wires dangling from the charred roof.
Before they’d been damaged by fire, they must have run from the building to one of the poles holding the stadium lights, Jace realized. The power supply for the booth?
“Must have overheated and set off that trash sittin’ there,” the worker went on. “Told ’em a dozen time it was dangerous to have that much stuff plugged into a jury-rigged source like that.”
Even if it was possible that had been the cause of the blaze, it didn’t explain the locked door. Opportunistically locked? Jace didn’t buy that. Not for a minute.
In the distance he finally heard the wail of sirens. As the sound grew louder, more and more people came crowding into the space behind the small building.
Jace realized why it had taken so long for anyone to become aware of the fire. The booth had been built to extend beneath the concrete bleachers. Only when the smoke had risen high enough to drift over its roof had the smell reached inside the stadium. Even then, if he hadn’t heard Lindsey’s screams…
He looked down, realizing that he still had his arm around her. She was leaning against him as if exhausted.
“You all right?”
She nodded, her hair brushing against his chest. The movement seemed to set off a fit of coughing. When it was over, she lifted her hand, touching the side of his face.
“You’re burned.”
If so, he hadn’t been aware of it. Given the ineffectiveness of using his coat to beat out the flames, he wasn’t surprised he’d suffered collateral damage.
Collateral damage. The words reverberated unpleasantly.
He moved his head so that her fingers no longer made contact with his cheek. Reflex rather than a conscious rejection of her concern, but he knew from her expression how she’d taken it.
He’d been raised in a family of four brothers, where the cardinal rules for dealing with injuries had been ingrained from an early age. If it was a scrape or a bruise, you rubbed dirt on it. Anything internal, you walked it off. And as long as you could do either of those, you kept your mouth shut. He still wasn’t comfortable talking about his pain. Not any of it.
Lindsey’s body stiffened slightly before she straightened, breaking away from his hold. “Thank you. I was terrified that…I didn’t think anyone was ever going to hear me.”
He nodded, aware once more of the press of people. Soon the paramedics would arrive to check them both out, which wouldn’t be a bad idea. As the adrenaline began to fade, Jace became conscious that the burn Lindsey had noticed on his face wasn’t the only one he’d suffered. He’d been oblivious to pain as he’d fought the fire, but now injured nerve endings clamored for attention. If he ended up in the hospital tonight—
He had turned his head, speaking low enough that only she could hear. “No matter what he says about the wiring, this was set. They locked the door,” he went on, because she needed to understand, “and then they piled trash in front of it and set it on fire.”
Eyes bleak, she nodded, the movement tight and controlled.
“You see anybody around here before the lights went out?”
She shook her head before she remembered. “Some man with his little boys. Maybe three and five years old.”
“They come from behind the booth?”
“I watched them walk up from the parking lot. And then I watched them walk in through the gate. I wanted to be sure that whoever was taking tickets admitted them. I didn’t charge him because he asked if he still had to pay, and I thought maybe it was a strain…” She stopped, seeming to realize that had nothing to do with the information Jace was looking for. “There was nobody else out here. I think most of the crowd had heard about the candlelight service and wanted to get inside to see it.”
“When was that decision made?”
“About the ceremony? Maybe…forty-five minutes before the game. I asked Dave to okay it myself. The cheerleaders wanted time to tell the students and to give out the candles.”
So a good half hour before the game most of the people in the stadium would have known the lights were going out at the half. Plenty of time for someone to put this into play.
As for why the lights were out everywhere instead of just the field, he’d have to take that up with whoever had set this in motion. From what Lindsey had said that would be Campbell.
“You folks all right?”
Jace glanced up to find that the fire department had finally arrived. The paramedic who’d asked the question moved them aside so that the firemen could get close to the building.
“You need to check out the guy with the rake,” Jace said. “He seemed to be feeling the smoke and exertion. Older man in a maintenance uniform. White hair.”
“I’ll do that. How about you, ma’am?”
“Just a sore throat from the smoke.”
“We’ll check you all out. Can you two make it to the truck?” He tilted his head in the direction of the emergency van that had been pulled up onto the inner edge of the parking lot. “Wait there and I’ll see about the other gentleman.”
“I’m fine,” Jace said.
“You got burns that could be deeper than you think. Let us take a look at them to make sure.”
Lindsey’s hand slipped into his. “Let them look.”
“Tell them not to do anything with the crate and that trash over there,” Jace instructed the EMT. “I’ll send someone to pick them up.”
The paramedic turned his head, looking at the smoldering pile Jace indicated. “What for?”
“Evidence,” Jace said tightly.
The man’s eyes swung back to his face. “Of what?”
“Arson for a start. Then we’ll go from there.”
Thirteen
The paramedics had insisted on taking all three of them to the regional medical center. Although Jace had protested, Lindsey hadn’t argued.
Maybe they would keep her overnight, she reasoned. That way she wouldn’t have to face her empty house or explain to her parents why she wanted to sleep at theirs.
Besides, her throat and chest really were raw from the smoke she’d inhaled. Maybe they could give her something for that. And something that would help her sleep.
“Everything looks fine,” the doctor who’d examined her announced as he came back into the treatment room where he’d asked her to wait.
He was younger than she was, but that difference hadn’t prevented him from flirting. After J
ace’s reaction to the feel of her hand on his cheek, the resident’s attraction had been balm to her battered ego.
“Lung function’s good,” he went on, thumbing through the results of the tests he’d asked for. “The coughing and rawness are the result of smoke irritation. It should clear up completely within twenty-four hours. If they don’t, you can make an appointment with your regular physician or come back here. Got any questions?”
“What about the man who was brought in with me?”
“Guy with the burns? Superficial. You were both lucky. Of course, I’d say that’s par for the course for him.”
“I’m sorry?”
“A little ER humor. You want to see him?”
“Is that okay?”
“No reason why not. They’re putting dressings on a couple of the places, but you can go in and watch. Give him a little moral support. I’ll show you the way.”
He offered his hand to help Lindsey off the table, his fingers closing firmly around hers. He waited to release her until he was sure she wasn’t lightheaded.
He and the nurse watched as she gathered up her purse and the papers they’d given her, including the prescription for the sleeping pills she’d asked for. Then the resident led her out of the room and down a long, glass-walled corridor.
He opened the door to another treatment room without knocking and ushered her inside. “You got company.”
A nurse was putting a square of gauze over an angry-looking patch of skin on Jace’s left shoulder. His bare shoulder, Lindsey realized, her mouth suddenly dry.
Jace Nolan, fully dressed, was a force to be reckoned with. And he was undeniably more impressive without his shirt.
His skin was darkly and evenly tanned, the chest it covered broad and firmly muscled, like that of a well-conditioned athlete rather than someone who had lifted weights to achieve that look. Her eyes traced along a defined six-pack, bisected by a dark arrow of hair that disappeared into the top of his khaki trousers. Despite the fact that he was sitting on the end of the examination table, bent slightly forward as the nurse worked on his burns, there wasn’t a hint of fat around his waistline.