He’d asked her about it almost every day this week. What was his name? Where had they met? What did he do for a living? So far, she’d managed to evade. Mostly thanks to a lot of well-timed calls at work.
“And I don’t know why you won’t talk to me about it,” he said.
Because there was nothing to talk about. She had no idea who she’d be taking to the wedding. She couldn’t give him a name because she didn’t have a name.
“Why do you think it’s Meadows?”
“Because I saw the way he was looking at you when I walked in.”
“And how was that?” Victoria asked, more than a little curious to hear Graham’s answer.
He grinned. “Like he was terrified.”
“Terrified? Why on earth would he be terrified?”
“Because all men are when they finally meet the right woman.”
Victoria rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Are you reading those romance novels Tabitha left at your place again?”
In all the years she’d known him, he’d never blushed, but color bloomed on his cheeks, and she almost felt bad for teasing him.
“If you really want to understand someone, you should read the books they love.”
And what had Graham learned about Tabitha? Whatever it was, it evidently made him sad. He flicked at invisible crumbs on the countertop, looking as forlorn as she’d ever seen him.
Hoping to cheer him up, she said, “And what does it say about me that the last book I read was titled Beer in America?”
Graham smiled. “That you like beer?”
Victoria grinned back. “And America apparently.”
And it was true enough. But surely there was more to her story than that.
At least she sure as hell hoped so.
Chapter 4
Victoria pulled herself up into the ambulance next to a stone-faced Mike Flaherty. Thanks to Bob calling in sick, she was stuck riding with Flaherty—the grumpiest man alive. It took everything she had to work up the energy to make the best of it and be friendly. “That address—that’s a daycare center, isn’t it?”
“Think so.” Two words. That’s all she got. That’s all she ever got from Flaherty. Not that he was much more chatty with other people. But other people sometimes got complete sentences. Victoria? Victoria got one and two word answers.
Flaherty couldn’t stand her.
Which proved the adage that every rule had an exception. The rule was that there was an unmistakable bond between veterans. And the exception was Mike and Victoria. No bond there.
She could understand if she’d been Air Force and he’d been Army. But no. They were both Army, and he still barely tolerated her.
She’d once hoped he was just your run of the mill chauvinist. The thought had actually been comforting. If that had been true, then at least his disdain wouldn’t have been personal. But no. She’d seen him treat other female paramedics and cops with a respect he never showed her. Which made her think perhaps he’d heard the rumors about her.
And believed them.
She pushed that worry aside. She had other things to be concerned about. Like what they might find when they arrived at the daycare center. Dispatch said the caller reported a small explosion in the kitchen.
The sirens blared and Flaherty drove with precision, expertly navigating the line between speed and safety.
When they arrived on scene, Victoria jumped out of the rig, barely waiting for Flaherty to come to a full stop. Children were lined up a safe distance away across the street from the center, but a middle-aged woman in scrubs was heading back toward the building.
“Ma’am!” Victoria jogged to catch up with her. “Ma’am, you can’t go in there.”
“My headcount’s off!” She didn’t even pause in her steps, but continued right up the path.
Victoria grabbed her arm. “The firefighters will go in. Please, you need to wait outside.”
She pulled away, glancing back at Victoria, eyes filled with panic. “Sixty-seven. I counted sixty-seven. But we’re supposed to have sixty-eight today.”
“It’s all right.” Victoria rushed in front of the woman, blocking her path. Her nametag read Tonya. “They’re here, Tonya.” Gently, she steered the woman away from the building. “The firefighters are here. They’ll clear the building.”
Right on time, the ladder truck pulled up and Graham and the rest of the team rolled out in full gear. “Her headcount’s off,” Victoria yelled. “She thinks there’s one more inside.”
“Got it,” Graham called, heading in.
“I know there’s supposed to be sixty-eight.” Tonya’s voice reached the level of hysteria. “I wrote it down for the lunch count. Sixty-eight.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Sixty-eight!”
“Why don’t you come over here?” Victoria tried again to lead Tonya away from the daycare center. A small amount of smoke was curling up from the back of the building, presumably from the kitchen. The other engine had pulled around the back and the guys were getting the hoses ready. This woman probably wasn’t in any immediate danger, but Victoria wanted her as far from the building as possible just the same. Always better to be safe than sorry.
But it was too late.
A blast blew out the building’s front windows, the force of the explosion knocking Victoria and Tonya to the ground. Instinctively, Victoria covered Tonya’s body, shielding her from debris.
Her ears rang painfully. She worked hard to draw breath back into lungs that had had the wind knocked out them. And then she fought against the splitting of her mind.
It was happening again.
A fission between reality and the past. A wormhole that tried to suck her in.
*
Everything sounded muffled—almost like being underwater. There was chaos. Shouting. And the smell of burned flesh.
She tugged at her ear, as if she could somehow make her hearing return. Her hand came away slick with blood, her eardrums likely ruptured.
Shaking herself out of her daze, she crawled over to PFC Harding. “Harding? You okay?”
He moaned. Or at least Victoria assumed he did by the vibration she felt when she touched his back. She rolled him over. He was covered in dirt, the sandy earth and little bits of debris from the IED blackening his face. The gash on his temple would be difficult to clean, but his limbs were all intact, and he was moving on his own. All good signs.
“You’re going to be okay. You hear me? I got this.”
Squinting with pain, Harding nodded. She placed her fingers on his carotid, making her assessment. His breathing was shallow, his pulse rapid beneath her fingers. Shock would be a concern.
Victoria looked around, trying to quickly assess the other men. Most looked dazed. But everyone was up and moving, thank fuck. The radio operator was calling in the choppers, and Sergeant Black and PFC Reynolds were setting up cover, hiding behind the second armored truck—the one that hadn’t detonated the IED—and scanning the area for insurgents.
There wouldn’t be any, of course. They were long gone, having left their IED buried in the road a long time ago.
She shrugged her pack off and rummaged through her supplies. She always carried extra materials for bleeding control when she accompanied the troops on missions. Most days she returned to camp with her supplies untouched. Or if she used something it was to bandage an Afghan boy’s burned arm. Or to treat an infected cut for a little girl running the countryside with no shoes. But today, she was thankful for every little item that weighed down her pack.
“You’re going to be fine, Harding.” She rinsed the wound as best she could with a squirt of saline and then applied the bandage. The bleeding wasn’t nearly as big a concern as the blow to his head. “Harding? Talk to me, man. Where are we today?”
“Fucking Kandahar, Afghanistan.” His voice was muffled and faraway-sounding to her ears, but with a little lip reading, she made out his answers.
“And what are we doing?”
“Patrol.”
“June fifth. Twenty-thirteen.”
“Good. That’s real good, Harding.”
“Driscoll.”
“What about Driscoll?”
“Where is he? He was right next to me…”
Victoria scanned her surroundings again. Had her count been off? She thought she’d seen all of the men, but come to think of it, she hadn’t seen Driscoll. Still holding the gauze to his temple she twisted around and looked back at the vehicle they’d been thrown from. The explosion had flipped the truck on its side, and now that the dust had settled she saw a pair of legs coming out from under the truck.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” She grabbed Harding’s hand and pressed it over the gauze. “Hold this.” She ran over to Sergeant Black, tapping him on the shoulder, figuring he couldn’t hear any better than she could. “Get everyone over here,” she shouted. “It’s Driscoll. He’s trapped.”
She ran back toward the truck, but Black grabbed her arm, stopping her. “I know. We saw. But it’s no use, Russo. It’s no fucking use.”
Confused, she turned back to Black. He pointed toward the rear of the truck.
Impossibly far from Driscoll’s lower body, was Driscoll’s upper body. Or part of it anyway.
“No…” There had to be something she could do. She had to fix this. She’d stop the bleeding. Start morphine and fluids and wait for the birds to show up. She started toward the truck, but Black’s arms came around her, holding her back. He likely feared another explosion, but Victoria didn’t care. It was her job to do something.
Black’s arms tightened around her. “Russo, he’s gone.”
She fought against his hold. “No!” Stop the bleeding. Start morphine and fluids. Wait for the birds. She could do this. “Lemme go!”
“He’s gone. There’s nothing you can do.”
Victoria’s muscles went lax. She stopped struggling against Black, but he held on to her just the same, as if he knew she needed the support. And maybe he needed to give it too.
Her chest ached. Driscoll was gone. Driscoll—with his young wife and son back home, his quick smile, and goofy sense of humor—he was gone. Not a stranger. Not a soldier she didn’t know. Not a civilian brought in for treatment. But one of their own. Driscoll was family.
And now he was gone.
Her throat closed and tears stung her eyes.
Breaking for the first time since she’d landed in this godforsaken place, she sagged against Black, barely coherent words still streaming from her lips. “No. Stop the bleeding…start morphine and fluids…wait…wait for the birds…”
*
“I know I’ve said it before, but I’m really sorry about vice, man.” Adjusting his holster so he could sit, Nick Tomaras lowered himself into a chair across from Jason at the burger joint where they’d decided to take their dinner break.
Jason shrugged. “It’s not your fault.”
“McCann’s an ass. He just can’t resist an opportunity to wield his power over someone.”
“I don’t know. He’s just doing what he thinks is right. I’m sure he’s hoping I’ll learn something—have some come-to-Jesus moment where I finally appreciate all his policies and procedures.”
“Well, I told him personally, when I left vice that I wanted you for my replacement.” Nick unwrapped his burger. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. Seems like he withdrew your application just to make sure I knew he was in charge of those decisions. And not me.”
“He does like to be the boss.” Jason took a sip of his ice water. “But he’s not as bad as some of the brass upstairs.”
“True.” Nick gazed longingly at his burger before two-handing it. Jason couldn’t be sure, but it almost looked like Nick was smelling the damn thing. “I heard he’s been riding your ass about the warehouse that caught fire a few weeks ago.”
“He is.” Jason used a plastic knife to cut his chicken, being careful not to break the flimsy thing. “But I’m not ready to come to any conclusions just yet.”
“What’s stopping you?” Nick asked. “You found charcoal ashes in the warehouse. Seems pretty cut and dry to me.”
“I know.” Jason picked a piece of wilted lettuce out of his grilled chicken salad and tossed it in the paper bag. “It just doesn’t sit right with me. Why would our homeless guy be babbling about demons coming for him if he knew he’d started the fire by lighting charcoal?”
“Uh…” Nick talked around a giant bite of greasy hamburger. “Because he was homeless. Likely mentally ill and unmedicated. Tends to make for a lot of nonsensical talk.”
“Right, I know. That’s what I keep telling myself.” Still, something felt off about it. “Did you hear we found the whole back of the warehouse lined with demolition explosives? It’s a damn miracle they didn’t detonate. Fire’s quick response prevented the flames from getting that far.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. The building was slated for demo in the morning, so it makes sense the explosives were there, but I talked to a foreman from the demolition company. He says the explosives had been moved. All stacked up in one spot, instead of strategically spread out for demo.”
“Why?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?”
McCann wanted him to close this case, but he found himself not quite convinced the as-yet-unidentified homeless man was responsible. Ever since Victoria had expressed her doubts, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it.
Hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her either, but that was neither here nor there. It just meant he hadn’t been laid in a while. If he wasn’t so damned busy with work these days, he’d work on remedying that.
“You’re the only person I know who orders a salad at a place like this.” Nick’s observation pulled Jason from his thoughts.
Jason pointed to the burger in Nick’s hands. “Do you have any idea the additives and preservatives you’re consuming right now?”
“No. And please, for the love of God, don’t tell me about them. I’m enjoying my meal immensely.”
“It’s your funeral,” Jason said, goading his friend. “If it makes you feel any better, this salad’s probably not much better. I’m sure the lettuce has been sprayed with a sulfite solution of some sort. But I suppose this was the lesser of the evils on the menu.”
“It’s a real shame you learned about all the crap that goes into food when you were in college. It’s really ruining a lot of delicious food options for you. And me.”
“Well, when I die, it better be because of something a helluva lot more interesting than a disease caused by GMOs or food additives.”
“Speaking of healthy eating, when my wife gets here, we’re switching meals.”
“The fuck we are.”
“C’mon. Be a pal. Now that she’s eating for two, she’s on a crazy health food kick. And apparently, I’m supposed to—” he made air quotes while still holding the burger “—be supportive.”
Jason smiled, wishing he’d been a fly on the wall when Nick’s spunky wife Sandra had suggested her husband be supportive by eating what she ate. If he knew Sandra, it hadn’t been a suggestion. It’d been an order. And probably peppered with some hormonal cursing.
“Well, you can’t have my food,” he said. “You’re on your own, man.”
“Nikos. Christos. Tomaras. What are you eating?” Sandra waddled through the door, having already seen through the window what kind of contraband her husband was stuffing in his mouth.
“Kardia mou, can you blame me? You’ve been starving me. And then you torture me by suggesting my favorite burger joint. Where, incidentally, they serve burgers.”
She rolled her eyes, but her smile was affectionate. “Well, what choice did I have? Your dinner break isn’t long enough for us to eat anywhere else.” She turned to Jason. “Now, look at this. Jason’s eating a grilled chicken salad. Why couldn’t you order a salad?”
Jason stood and gave Sandra a friend
ly kiss on the cheek. “Because he doesn’t deserve you, cupcake.” He’d always enjoyed flirting with Sandra, mainly because it was never going to go anywhere. And because it seriously annoyed Nick. A real win-win.
“All right. Back off, Meadows. She’s taken.” Nick pulled his wife down next to him and gave her a proper kiss.
Jason was about to start coughing to remind them he was still there when he caught his number being called over the radio. He pressed the earpiece back into his ear.
Noticing his move, Nick pressed his earpiece back in too. Sandra went still and silent.
Jason pressed the button on his radio and dipped his head down toward the mic. “9-6-2. Go ahead.”
“Yeah, Lieutenant McCann got a call from Chief Bines. That suspected kitchen fire at the daycare center about ten minutes ago is now a possible arson.”
“Ten four. Can I get that address again?” Committing the dispatcher’s answer to memory, he stood and collected his garbage. “Ten four. I’m en route from Dempster and Dodge Avenue.”
Jason nudged his salad toward Nick. “I gotta bounce. You want this?”
“Hell no.” Nick grinned at his pouting wife. “I’m sorry, babe. I love you, but I’m not eating that.”
Jason smiled and winked at Sandra. “Remember what I said, cupcake. Just say the words and we’ll run away together. He can have his greasy burgers, and we’ll have each other.”
Sandra laughed. “Oh, go on. Get out of here. I know you’re full of shit.”
Jason smiled, but it quickly faded when the dispatcher clicked back on the air. “9-6-2, be advised. There’s been a second blast, possible injury to a paramedic. Additional ambulances are en route.”
A buzz of adrenaline worked its way into his chest. A second blast? What the hell was going on over there?
“Ten four,” he said into the radio. Not even bothering with goodbyes, he walked briskly out of the restaurant. Nick and Sandra would understand. When they called your number, you went.
An image of a smiling shorthaired blonde came to mind and his pulse kicked up another notch. He hit the pavement outside and broke into a jog, hurrying to his squad.
Burn for You Page 4