by Aiken, Ginny
Time to get herself together. Rand and his effect on her was not something she should spend time pondering. She had her father and three kids to worry about. Three kids who mattered.
Three kids she wasn’t about to start leaving now. When they were younger, they’d been willing to help her at the day care. Not so much anymore. But they still needed someone to run herd over them at all times.
On the other hand, she couldn’t see how she could stand to not spend all her free time at Dad’s bedside. She’d have to figure out something before school let out that afternoon.
And then there was the daycare.
She sighed on her way upstairs to Lindsay’s room. “It’s time to take a big-girl pill—for both of us.”
THREE
Telling Mr. and Mrs. Tucker about the fire and Wilma’s injuries proved harder than Rand had expected. But he’d gotten through it, holding Mr. Tucker’s frail hand, hugging Mrs. Tucker while she sobbed.
The one thing he’d left out of his retelling was, in his opinion, the most important detail. At this point, neither one of them could have handled knowing the basement of their theater had been co-opted for the production of methamphetamine.
Worse yet, they would never be able to handle the possibility of Wilma cooking the meth.
The Tuckers’ only daughter had always been a true eccentric, but drugs? Had Wilma changed that much while she’d been away from Loganton?
Evidence pointed to her. She had the access, and her parents’ care at the Pines cost plenty, not to mention all the money she’d sunk into the renovations at the theater. Drugs made quick cash.
Rand rubbed his eyes as he stared at the morning news on TV. He needed sleep, but he also needed to wind down before he stood a chance of nodding off.
What a night.
He’d taken the weekend off. Scotty Woodburn, a buddy from the fire department in Charlotte, had married his latest girlfriend on Saturday. Rand had gone to the wedding—Scotty’s third—and come home about an hour and a half before the call from the firehouse had come in.
When his cell phone buzzed, he’d looked out his bedroom window to see the orange glow rising from somewhere on Main Street. He’d jumped in his car and hurried over.
The last thing he’d expected to find was Cate Caldwell, looking more appealing than he ever thought possible, at the scene of a fire in Loganton.
She’d been a year or two behind him in school and they hadn’t had a lot in common. Her rebellious behavior and crazy stunts, however, had made her known to everyone in town. And that horrible Thanksgiving weekend when her sister and his cousin were killed would always be etched in his memory.
Rand had been the newest rookie at the fire station back then and while he’d never wanted a fire to break out, he had been looking forward to the chance to serve. His first call had been to that vehicle fire. He went through all the steps—donning his gear, hopping on the engine truck. The adrenaline pumped through his veins, while his youthful idealism reached its peak.
He’d never forget the sight of Ross’s van just feet away from the Caldwell driveway, the flames devouring everything they touched.
Across the road, two teens had stared at the devastation. Cate Caldwell’s purple Mohawk had been singed, and she’d held her infant niece in her arms, the two-year-old twin boys on either side of her. Her horror had seemed incongruous with all the studs in her pierced nostril, lip, eyebrows and ears.
To Rand, her whimpers had sounded weak in the face of her mother and father’s stark grief. Their sobs had echoed in the icy, silent dusk.
Cate had been dating Sam Burns, a kid known to have substance issues. After another argument with Joe, the two punk lovebirds had left the Caldwell house, on their way to yet another party. Mandy and Ross had been on their way home to the Caldwell’s place, where they’d been living while their home underwent renovation, after they’d enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner with Ross’s parents.
Sam had already had too much to drink. The kid should never have been behind the wheel of a car. Ross had swerved to avoid the inebriated teen and his van had hit an icy patch. The van struck a brick wall, which had crashed down on the front seat, killing the adults.
Only the children, strapped in their car seats in the back, had survived. Cate had had the wherewithal to go in and rescue them. By the time she was done, flames had engulfed the van.
Rand wasn’t sure why Cate had made such an impression on him that day. Maybe it had to do with the ludicrous contrast between the stark tragedy and the silly vanity of those piercings. The thought of all those holes had always made Rand cringe.
On top of everything else, she’d worn solid black, strategically torn and bedecked with large safety pins, carabiner clips and even the odd piece of gray duct tape here and there. She’d been quite the sight.
The Cate he’d found in the middle of Main Street a handful of hours ago had been far more approachable, softer—appealing, even. Fear for her father’s life had shown in her tense posture, the tight line of her lips, the edgy way her eyes darted from place to place, seeking, looking for anything that might bolster her hope.
Her hair had tumbled around her face to her shoulders in a tangle of tawny waves and he’d found himself wanting to ease it off her forehead, to touch it and see if it was as silky as it looked.
And Cate’s clothes? Well, it seemed she still chose to go the unconventional route. It was, though, entirely possible she liked to sleep in the college basketball T-shirt and blue plaid pants she’d worn. She might have been in bed when Neal called.
The urge to find out if she’d changed in the years since that horrible day caught him by surprise. He’d heard she had. But was she still skating on the edge of danger? Flirting with prosecution? Giving her poor father nightmares and ulcers? Rand hadn’t been home long enough to know.
Before he had the chance to examine his curiosity, the phone rang. Despite his exhaustion, he answered.
“Hey, stranger,” Sheriff Hal Benson said. “How long have you been back? A month? Six weeks? I’m feeling neglected here. A call would’ve been welcome.”
Rand chuckled. “Not from what I hear. Newlyweds don’t often want an old friend butting into their bliss.”
“Yeah, well. This old friend has time for Rand Mason. But I’m calling for professional reasons, actually.”
“Go ahead and shoot. Don’t know if I’ll have the answers you want, but I’ll try.”
He heard Hal’s rough inhale. “I don’t have questions as much as a favor to ask.”
A touch of excitement unfurled in the pit of Rand’s stomach. “Go for it.”
“Joe Caldwell said he found the remains of a meth lab in the theater basement. Looks like the stuff exploded. In the last couple of years we’ve put away one dealer and prosecuted his accomplice, but we’ve also racked up a couple of deaths. We haven’t been able to put them out of business. As soon as we shut them down in one place, they pop up in another.”
Rand knew what was coming. Half of him couldn’t wait to dig into a fresh arson investigation. The other half feared the effect another dive into the pits of the underworld might have on his humanity, especially because this case touched on the lives of folks that mattered to him. “Sounds about right.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re dealing with more than home-grown opportunists here. Someone somewhere is calling the shots. You’ve followed more than one arsonist to his organized crime pals. We need your experience if we’re going to have any chance at getting more than just the guy who calls the shots here—starting with last night’s fire, which I’m sure is already sitting on your plate. We’ll get further much quicker if we join forces and we might catch more than the random meth cooker, which is all we’ve done so far. Will you give us a hand? Cross-agency cooperation?”
After years as an arson investigator, he’d come back to Loganton to get away from this very thing. He’d been looking to put out fires and help keep the folks in Loganton safe. That was it. But now…<
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Now things had changed. And Rand did want to work with Hal Benson, who’d just been reelected as county sheriff, to try and catch the mastermind behind the lab, to put them out of business permanently.
It might soothe his battered soul to mingle with the good guys for a while, rather than just muck around, undercover, where the bad guys roamed 24/7.
And yet, he couldn’t deny that certain hesitation, that touch of reluctance. Why was he so torn? What was holding him back?
He ran a hand through his hair, irritated with his double-mindedness. Sure, he knew his darkest fear. He didn’t want to learn he’d lost his ability to empathize, that he’d turned into a robotic investigator, the kind of man he’d watched other arson investigators become.
A man like Scotty, who kept others at arm’s length, and went through women like most men did cars.
But he wanted to find out who was behind all this, even if it was Wilma—or Cate. Or maybe he just wanted the opportunity to see Cate again. Regardless, he needed to do this.
Rand sat up tall in his dad’s old recliner. He would just have to believe his concern meant all wasn’t lost. Yet.
“Sure,” he said. “How can I help?”
Cate grabbed her purse and car keys. “Come on, you guys! We’ve got to get to school and we’re running way late.”
Lindsay left the kitchen and slipped by her on the way to the car. The boys continued to drag their feet.
“I have soccer practice after school,” Tommy said. “But I can’t find my cleats.”
“Anybody see my math homework?” Robby asked. “I can’t find it. And I did it—every last dumb problem.”
Cate looked around in search of the elusive homework. “Cleats are in the laundry room. After your last game, they had more mud on them than our flower beds, so I scraped them clean for you.” When she saw nothing that might resemble the missing assignment in the kitchen, she headed for the dining room, where she found the AWOL homework under the china hutch.
With her patience stretched to its utmost, Cate eventually herded everyone into the car. Phone calls to the nurses’ station didn’t satisfy—she wanted to get to her father’s side and see him herself as soon as possible.
The drive to the elementary school took less than ten minutes. Once she’d delivered the kids to the halls of academia, she raced to the hospital.
She ran into the lobby, the shoulders of her white shirt damp from the drippy braid that swung from side to side each time she turned her head. Who cared what her hair looked like when Dad was in the ICU and the kids were, well, their usual, challenging selves?
As Cate approached the elevators, a woman called out her name. “Your dad’s up in surgery right now. To reset his leg. You might want to go wait in the OR unit’s family lounge. Let one of the nurses up there know where you are, and Doc Shields will come tell you how everything went once they’re done.”
Cate thanked the hospital administrator and slipped inside the elevator, punching the appropriate button. She stopped by the nurses’ station, gave them her name, grabbed a cup of coffee and eyed the comfortable-looking armchair in the far corner of the waiting room. A long swig of the hot, strong brew warmed its way down her middle.
“How’s he doing?”
She gulped, blinked and set the coffee down on the side table by her seat. “Rand. I didn’t see you when I walked in.”
He dropped down into the chair next to hers. “I just got here. Wilma’s about to go into surgery and her parents wanted to see her. I drove them over. Thought I’d hang around until she comes out.”
“That’s nice of you. How’s she doing?”
“Considering a portion of the balcony collapsed on her and your dad, I think she’s doing great—both of them, actually. Joe’s in surgery, too?”
“They’re setting his leg. It looks like they’ll have to use a metal plate. He’s going to be the Bionic Man when he leaves here.”
“I’m glad to hear he’s well enough for surgery.”
The image of the flames leaping to the black sky flashed behind her eyes. Cate shuddered. “Me, too.”
Just then, police chief Ethan Rodgers and sheriff Hal Benson walked into the waiting room. They headed straight for Cate and Rand.
“‘Morning,” the chief said. “Mind if we ask you a couple of questions?”
Cate looked from one newcomer to the other, then to Rand and finally back to the chief. “You mean me?”
The chief nodded. “We’d like you to tell us what your father said in the ambulance last night.”
“Not much. He told us he’d found a meth lab in the basement of the theater.”
“That’s it?” Disappointment rang in Rand’s voice.
“He also said something about an explosion. But that’s it.”
The three men exchanged looks.
“An explosion means it might have been accidental,” Ethan said. “But we do have a witness. She says she saw someone at the side entrance after the film let out.”
Cate frowned. “Then that wouldn’t mean an accident.”
“Not necessarily,” Rand answered. “If they set fire to the lab, it could have exploded, too. Meth requires enough flammable material to blow a building to bits.”
Hal Benson looked from one to the other. “The question here is whether the person this witness saw was at the theater or just a passerby. Did they burn the place to erase evidence? Or did the meth just explode?”
“In either case, it means they hadn’t abandoned the lab,” Rand added. “The one who torched it—if it was torched—might still be around. We stand a chance of catching them.”
Cate stared but read nothing in his neutral expression. “We? I thought I’d heard you’d come back to sell books—when you weren’t putting out fires, that is.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
Confusion didn’t come close to describing her state of mind. “Are things so bad in Loganton that we need both the DEA and an arson investigator here?”
“Retired,” Ethan said. “Saw too much, got too banged up. It was time to get myself a whole new life. So here I am, new job, new wife, new life. I’m a happy man.”
Rand nodded. “Me, too—sort of. Minus the wife, of course.”
“Back to your question,” Hal inserted. “They’re much welcome here. We have crimes to solve. Of all kinds.” He waved toward Cate. “How’re you feeling? How’s your head?”
She dismissed his question with a careless wave. “I’m fine. But it sounds as though my town might not be.”
“We can handle whatever comes our way,” Hal answered. “But we’ll never turn down help. And you guys are always willing to help, right, Rand? Ethan?” The sheriff waited for Rand’s nod. “We can’t let this stuff snag any more of our kids. Think about it, Cate. You have Mandy’s three to raise. Do you want a meth lab in their hometown?”
The screech of tires burned again in her memory. She closed her eyes and saw Mandy and Ross’s van feet away from Sam’s car. She heard the crash, the cries, saw the mangled metal and the crumbled brick wall.
Substance abuse had ravaged her life. She knew the destruction it brought. Nausea threatened, but with a prayer for strength, she brought herself under control. She forced her eyes open and found Rand staring at her.
“What?” she said. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Again, the three men looked at each other. After the briefest nod to the other two, Rand leaned toward her.
“During his first go-through at the scene, Neal Hunter made a discovery in that basement. He found a body in the meth lab. We’re waiting for an ID.”
Cate drove to the day care center once her father had gone back to the ICU after surgery, her thoughts in a whirl, her nerves knotted.
She’d had a chance to see him, but the nurses had chased her out when he’d started to fade. She would have been happy to stay by his side, just to keep him company as he slept, but she knew how strict rules were in the unit. Family members were allowed
to visit only for limited periods of time throughout the day. She planned to take the kids to see him after school let out.
Now she had to deal with Mrs. Washburn and the day care. As if it were a normal day.
But nothing could change reality. A fire had consumed a historic building, injured her father and Wilma and evidently killed a drug dealer. Nothing was normal anymore.
She didn’t feel normal. Fear kept trying to take root, but another, more potent feeling nudged it aside. Cate needed to know who had been behind the lab, the fire and Dad’s and Wilma’s injuries.
Not only did she need to know, but she also needed to see that person behind bars and the drug banished from town.
Her experience years ago gave her a certain level of insight, of urgency. She hoped others agreed.
At Cate’s Cozy Corner, she walked in to a chorus of greetings. The kids always made her feel needed and she loved to make them smile. As she peeled one crumb-crusher after another off her legs, she communicated with Dena by means of head bobs and eyebrow waggles.
Geri Harwood, another of Cate’s teachers, snagged the next munchkin intent on latching onto Cate’s legs. “You and Dena go on. I’ll keep the natives from getting too restless.”
“We won’t be long.” She felt so blessed, being able to count on her terrific employees.
Dena waited only long enough for Cate to close her office door. “What’s up?”
Cate propped a hip on her desk. “Way, way too much. As far as Dad’s concerned, it’s going to be a long haul. And I’m going to be out more than in. We’re going to need to hire additional help.”
“Do you want me to contact that agency you used to find Geri?”
She tried to smile. “Are we twins separated at birth?”
Dena laughed. “No, but I’ve worked for you since you set up shop. I think I know what we need around here.” She put on a mock stern glare. “And if you’d only quit being such a control freak, Boss Lady, I could help you carry some of that stress you haul around with you. You know. A burden shared, and all that.”
“I’m not stressed—”