Fire at Twilight: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 1

by Lila Ashe

  A dog who sounded like Methyl.

  Sure enough, the little blond puppy was tied to a concrete post. She started wriggling as soon as she saw Grace, her back end jumping with excitement. “Okay! Here I am! Here I am.” She unsnapped the leash from where it had been secured to itself, and Methyl didn’t give her a second’s chance. She leaped up into Grace’s arms, scrabbling until she had her front paws on Grace’s right shoulder.

  Grace held the dog like a big, furry baby. “You’ve put on a bit of weight already, huh?” The relief was palpable. Here was Tox’s dog. Tox had to be okay, because he had a dog now. Even though the logic wasn’t sound, Grace clung to it, unable to think about the alternative.

  Lexie’s orange Mini pulled into a back parking stall. She jumped out. “I was down the coast. I headed back as soon as I heard the call go out—I know Sue and Wendy probably need help in there. Wanna come in?”

  “Yes,” said Grace. She did. Desperately.

  “That your dog?”

  “It’s Tox’s.”

  Lexie’s face registered her surprise. “Wow. I’m off a day and the whole world turns inside out.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Tox was put in his own room at the hospital, something the tiny Darling Bay ER rarely did. He knew it was done to keep him out of the mix, but he resented it. Hard.

  Unfortunately, he was strapped to the bed with not one but two IVs, and while he knew he could extricate himself from under the tubes and wires, he was too exhausted to do so. Yet. Just give him a few minutes, and Tox knew he’d be right up and fighting again.

  Chief Barger gave a short knock at his door and then entered. “How are you doing, champ?”

  The chief was only nice like that when he had an unpleasant task to do.

  “She didn’t make it, huh?” Tox looked straight at the chief, keeping an eye on the mustache. A lot could be told from Chief Barger’s mustache.

  “She’s still alive.” The mustache wobbled.

  “Great. That means she won’t be soon.”

  Barger shook his head. “I’m so sorry to tell you this, Clement.”

  Ouch. His first name. No one but HR used his first name. And the Chief.

  “But they’re going to harvest her organs tonight. Her parents have decided.”

  Harvest. As if she was some kind of field. As if that somehow made it okay. It didn’t. A child should never have to give up a life to save another child. Never.

  Tox rubbed his eyes, not caring how the IVs dug into the back of his hand. He was on so much pain medication he could barely feel it anyway. “Wait,” he said. “Her parents?”

  Barger said, “Yeah. That’s the good thing. Mazanti got Dad out and they got pulses on the way to the hospital. Mom was at work, she’s here now with him.”

  “Cause determined?”

  “Meth lab..” Barger’s voice was big, as if the louder he talked the quicker he could move through the moment and get out of Tox’s room.

  Fine by Tox.

  No matter what, that father had to wish he’d never woken up. That’s why it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. A man in Darling Bay this morning had a kid. Now he didn’t.

  Tox wanted to be alone so he could practice steeling his expression. “I’ll be fine, Chief.” What a load of crap. “I just need to get back to work and I’ll be fine.”

  The mustache jumped this time, and even through his morphine haze, Tox knew that was serious.

  “Look, Clement. You’re gonna be out a while.”

  “It’s my back. That’s all. I put it out coming down. My neck’s been hurting, it’s all connected, you know … I was running fast so I hit the ground the same way.” Tox wished he could remember running down the stairs with the little girl, but he couldn’t. He really wished he could remember handing her over to Sims, but that was gone, too. “I’ll take a week off and be back the next tour.”

  “It’s not going to be that easy, son.”

  “Oh, yeah. It is.” Insubordination didn’t count in a hospital, right?

  “You’ve had, what, nine deaths in the last twelve months?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You know Darling Bay has only had thirteen all year. You’ve been on three-quarters of them.”

  “I work a lot of OT. So?”

  “So that means time off.”

  “Says who?”

  The mustache firmed into a straight line. “Says me. Take the mandated time. And you don’t come back till you’re medically cleared.”

  “I will be.”

  “And by medically,” Barger tapped his forehead. “I mean up here.”

  “A shrink.”

  “It’s not the end of the world.”

  Tox stuck out his chest, a frustrating thing to try to do while lying almost flat in a hospital bed. “I’ll get cleared in one visit.”

  “Good for you, then. We want you back, son. But we want you back with a sound back and a clear mind.”

  Tox chewed the inside of his lip. The thing he wanted to ask he couldn’t take back.

  “What?” Barger was itching to get out of the room, Tox could tell. He was almost out. He couldn’t blame him.

  “Would anyone have lost her, you think?”

  Barger’s eyes softened and his mustache drooped. “I wasn’t going to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “But it’ll come up in the after-action report … You don’t remember?”

  Tox’s heart quickened. “I don’t remember anything after picking her up.”

  “You went the wrong way. You went into a closet with her. Dropped her. Mazanti had to leave the guy, go get you, turn you around and give you back the little girl.”

  Tox saw a veil of black dancing at the edge of his vision. “It was my fault.”

  “We’ll never know, Tox. She was probably too far gone, even then.”

  It wasn’t true. That’s what they told each other when something went wrong. You can’t fix dead.

  Only sometimes they could, and that was his job, to fix dead when he could. Especially when a little girl’s life hung in the balance.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Barger.

  As if words could do anything to dull the roar Tox heard in his head.

  A nurse entered briskly, her scrubs covered with tiny rainbows. “How’s your pain?” she asked.

  “Too high.”

  The nurse nodded and filled a needle. Barger nodded sympathetically and left.

  Tox closed his eyes and felt the morphine blaze up his back and then drag him under. He wished he could shut out the world for a lot longer than the medicine was going to help him do. Forever, maybe. So he could apologize to the girl. He didn’t even know her name.

  Right before he slept, a nurse touched him on the hand. “There’s someone here who says she wants to see you.”

  Grace, Tox thought groggily. “No.”

  “Are you sure? She’s got flowers and a real worried look.”

  “Sure. No. Send her away.”

  He didn’t deserve her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  It hurt.

  Grace couldn’t deny that it hurt a lot. Tox didn’t want to see her.

  At all.

  She’d gone back to the hospital three times, once with flowers, once with a dumb little teddy bear, and once she’d sweet-talked the nurse into letting Methyl in inside a crate.

  And every time, he’d said no. She couldn’t come in.

  At the clinic, she worked with her patients like normal, but Mrs. Little asked why she was so sad and if acupuncture would help her, too. “It probably would,” Grace said. “I should find a practitioner, I guess.”

  From the other side of the room, Steve Swanson hooted. “You should find a boyfriend, that’s what I think.”

  Mrs. Little shushed him, and Grace laughed lightly, but the embarrassment cut deep. It cut even deeper still when Mrs. Little said sotto voce, “I heard about you and that firefighter. None of
them are any good, dear. My husband was a police officer. I know about firefighters.”

  “Oh,” was all Grace could think to say as she checked a point on Mrs. Little’s hand.

  “Lazy,” she whispered. “Just want to sit in their recliners all day. They don’t really want to help. Ninety percent of the time there’s a medical emergency, it’s the cops who get there first and fix it, you know.”

  “Ah.”

  “You don’t believe me. But you’ll see.” Mrs. Little nodded with authority. “You’ll probably keep seeing him, because that’s what young girls do. They like to do what’s not good for them, but …”

  “That’s not true,” interrupted Grace. She couldn’t help it. “I’m not young, I’m thirty-three. And I always do what’s good for me.”

  “Then why do your eyes look so sad, dear?”

  An hour later, as Grace locked the front door after the last patient, she asked herself the same question. Why was she so devastated by the rejection of a guy she’d gone out with once? She’d slept with him, yeah. Was that the problem? Grace didn’t think so—she didn’t place overmuch weight on worrying whether a sexual action was right or wrong. It just was. Sex was sex. Bodies were bodies. She knew how to treat them, how to make them feel good.

  Sure, she thought, as she fell into the rocking chair on the glassed-in porch. Sex was good. Positive. It benefited the body, mind, and soul. Any connection with another human being was a good thing.

  It was just that she’d had such a connection with him. Foolishly, she’d deluded herself into thinking it could be more.

  That, combined with the fact that she had no idea where Samantha was … Grace felt helpless.

  She pulled out her phone and stared at the face of it as she had approximately one million times this week. No text from Sam. Nothing from Tox.

  Nothing at all.

  Grace wasn’t usually scared to death of the big things. She’d nursed her mother until she died, not minding washing her, taking care of the body that had brought her into the world as her mother left the same. She’d taken care of her sister over and over again, never sure it was going to work, never confident Samantha would straighten out, would really drop the drugs, leave the men, never sure if she’d really mean it when she said she was starting over. And Grace had opened this practice by herself, with money she’d saved by working her butt off for other people, ordering water and salads when she went out to eat with friends, knowing every penny saved was another penny toward her dream. She wasn’t scared to go after what she wanted. Usually.

  But sending these texts?

  She was terrified.

  The first one was to Samantha. “I’m sorry. I love you. I support you. I believe in you.”

  She sat, rocking nervously, the phone clutched tightly in her hand. She waited for the telltale conversation dots that would tell her her sister was typing back.

  Nothing.

  Her heart curled into a tiny ball inside her.

  Grace took a deep breath and pushed her shoulders back, just like she told her patients to do. All right. On to the next, then.

  The second text was to Lexie. “I need Tox’s home address.” He’d listed the station’s address on the intake form he’d filled out at the practice.

  The response was almost instantaneous. “No way.”

  “Yes way.”

  “He would never forgive me,” Lexie texted back. “I have to work with the guy. He’s a beast when he’s grumpy.”

  “I don’t care.” Grace punched the send button with extra emphasis.

  “No.”

  “I have to return his dog.”

  “Ow. 180 Canfield. Don’t tell him it was me or I’m never splitting a sundae with you at Skip’s ever again.”

  “Liar. How’s next Thursday?”

  “I’m in.”

  Grace’s cell went dark. Quiet. She closed her eyes and hoped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Tox had been ignoring everyone who came to his door for the last three days. He hadn’t even looked out the blinds. He knew—could tell by their knocks—who’d come by.

  Coin’s knock was polite but determined. He had stayed on the porch, knocking in a steady rhythm, for ten minutes.

  Barger’s knock was demanding. Easy to tune out. Tox had just turned up whatever inane TV show—something about cooking squid—was on until he went away.

  Lexie had the food knock, and she left the tuna-fish casserole (the only thing she said she could cook) on his doorstep. He’d eaten it out of the glass dish with a plastic spoon.

  He was waiting for Grace’s knock. She had Methyl, after all. Lexie had texted him with the information when he was still in the hospital, and he’d felt a high level of relief—the dog was okay—with a similar level of resentment. Grace couldn’t just have his dog. Methyl was supposed to be with him. He missed the feeling of her floppy, silken ears. He missed the soft panting she did when she sat on the couch next to him.

  He also missed the way Grace smiled at him, like he was something special. Something to be watched, enjoyed.

  So he stayed on his couch, waiting. He didn’t know what he’d do if she came by.

  When he finally heard her cheerful knock, though, Tox knew. He lifted his head once from the couch, looked at her shadow on the blinds, and lowered his head again. He wouldn’t even stand up. Because if he moved, he’d open the door, and then he’d let her in, and that would be just about the worst thing he could do. He didn’t trust himself, not an inch.

  Holding his breath, he waited for her to knock again.

  She didn’t. Her shadow disappeared.

  The disappointment was thick in his throat, unexpected and chilling. She sure hadn’t tried very hard. He’d thought maybe … but no. She was probably just trying to get his dog back to him. He’d get Lexie to pick Methyl up. Tomorrow, maybe. He couldn’t do it today.

  Tox stretched, pulling up the blanket so it came to his chin again. It was almost time for another pill, and even though he didn’t want to take it, he knew he probably would. Just to escape this awful darkness for a couple of hours.

  Then he heard a noise in the back yard. It wasn’t loud—just a soft thud followed by a louder click. Exactly as if someone had climbed the fence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Grace had never broken into anything more than song and she expected to hear sirens at any moment. How fast did the cops come when a burglar alarm went off?

  But the fence, really. It was chump change. She’d scaled it in seconds, her heart juddering in her chest. She was short of breath from the fear she felt, not from the physical exertion it caused. She landed on the balls of her feet and stood, ready to run.

  Grace heard nothing. She opened the fence and led Methyl into the back yard, holding her leash tightly.

  This was really pretty stupid. If Tox didn’t want to answer the door, he didn’t have to. Cripes knew, he had a good reason to avoid talking to anyone. His job had gone as wrong as any job could go—losing a child—and he was probably drunk and passed out on the floor, like any other reasonable person.

  Then again, drinking on the meds he was surely on wouldn’t be a good idea. Grace reached a slow hand out to the back doorknob and thought about the way alcohol metabolized when combined with prescription pain medication.

  It was why she’d jumped the fence.

  Someone had to check on him.

  As she turned the knob, she hoped two things: that he wasn’t dead, and if he was alive and awake, that he didn’t have a gun.

  The door opened with a slow creak. She closed her eyes and contorted her lips into a grimace, but it didn’t quiet the door. Crap.

  She stepped into a kitchen that looked as if it were normally neat and tidy. There was a place for everything, heavy-looking copper-bottomed pots hanging over the industrial stove, knives gleaming in a dark wood block. But the sink was full of dishes, and on second glance, she noticed that it was mainly glasses and cups, as if he’d been livin
g on liquid.

  Poor guy.

  She heard something to the right, a scuffle. She should call out—she knew she should. But what if he was asleep and she scared him to death? That wouldn’t be fair.

  Grace skated across the floor in her tennis shoes, as quiet as she could make herself. She barely breathed. As if Methyl knew what they were doing, the puppy stuck close to her right foot, moving silently.

  The open door led to a living room.

  Across the room, next to the large plate glass window, was a couch.

  On the couch with a blanket pulled up to his chin, Tox slept.

  It wasn’t fair, really, how handsome he looked while at the same time retaining such vulnerability. She sneaked closer, moving on tiptoe.

  A foot away from him, Grace felt lightheaded, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she was so close to him or because she’d forgotten to breathe.

  His chest moved, and something inside her released, something she didn’t even know she’d been holding on to. His breath was slow, even.

  He was sound asleep.

  Indulging in a brief fantasy, Grace let herself imagine lying down next to him, tucking herself along the length of his body. She would press her nose up, into the space there, just under his jaw, where it would be prickly and warm. In his sleep, he would roll to her, murmuring something she couldn’t understand. And then, if she was lucky, she’d feel him becoming aroused … He would get hard against her, and she’d tuck her hips, angling them against him and his arms would come around her, and he’d take a kiss from her, a kiss she’d be eager to give …

  No. Grace had to stop thinking like this. She could feel her heart rate speeding up, and she felt a thin trickle of sweat between her breasts. Plus, it was all she could do to prevent Methyl from jumping up on Tox. She had to stay bent over, one hand at the dog’s collar, and Methyl still pulled. Grace did, though, understand the motivation to jump on that guy. She sure did. “C’mon, girl,” she whispered. “We’ll let him rest.”

  In the kitchen, she talked Methyl into lying on the dog bed, new and clean and plush. “He got you a pink sparkly dog bed? Wow, dog, someone must love you.” That word—love—felt heavy and warm on her lips.