by A. J. Goode
“You should go, Sean.”
“Why? I thought we were being honest with each other here. I’m just wondering if your dad is worried about you.”
Of course he’s worried about me, she wanted to say. He’s also furious at me for being on the reality show, and for quitting my last five jobs, and probably for stealing Devon’s car and leaving everyone in the lurch. He’s probably telling all of his buddies that “Shortcut Maggie strikes again!”
Instead, she sighed. "It’s getting late. I believe you said something about having to go to a cookout . . . ?"
"Damn! What time is it?" Sean sat up quickly and looked at his watch. "6:30? Oh, man. I'm going to be late. Please, say you'll come with me. I have to go to this thing, but I want to spend time with you too. Please?"
She hesitated.
“Come on, Maggie. I’m sorry I pried into your personal business. Just come with me and have a burger. It’ll be worth it just to try Alex Hale’s macaroni salad and help me figure out what her secret ingredient is. It’s out of this world.”
Lindsay had ordered her to "lay low" and stay out of the public eye, but surely there couldn't be any harm in joining a handful of firefighters and their families for a little dinner. Slowly, doubtfully, she nodded.
Chapter Nine
Exactly thirty minutes later, Sean pulled into the driveway of Chief Griswold's home. Maggie felt a sudden surge of shyness as he took her hand and led her toward the crowd. Her months on the reality show had gotten her into the habit of spending hours in the styling chair before any appearance, sitting still while experts applied make-up and hair extensions and told her what to wear. While it was a relief to return to her usual low-maintenance beauty routine, she felt somehow naked with her finger-combed blonde waves and make-up free face. She was painfully aware of her rumpled blue sleeveless dress and worn-out sandals.
Sean seemed to read her mind. "You look great," he murmured. "Don't worry." He introduced her to his fellow firefighters, but she quickly lost track of names and ranks, especially when he added spouses and children to the introductions. The men and women laughed easily and made her feel welcome, even if she couldn't remember which name went with which face.
"Why do they call you 'Spiffy'?" she asked Sean, after they had filled their plates and found places at one of the picnic tables.
"We all have nicknames," he told her. "Alex is Lug Nuts, Tim is Nipper, Dave is The Chihuahua, and I am Spiffy, and so on. No big deal."
"But why? How did you get that name?"
"Because he's such a spiffy dresser," Alex Hale laughed. She leaned closer to Maggie and spoke in a loud stage whisper. "Way back when he was a rookie, Spiffy here showed up for a call, all decked out in a tux and shiny black shoes, and we've given him a hard time about it ever since."
"I was at a wedding when the tones dropped," Sean explained, his face reddening. "There was a car in water, upside-down, with kids inside. Volunteer firefighters don't have time to run home and change our clothes. We respond just the way we are when we hear the tones, even if that means standing in a snow bank, directing traffic in a rented tux."
"Did you save the kids?"
Sean laughed. "It was one kid, and he was the 16 year-old driver. He lost control on ice and slid the car backwards off the road into a drainage ditch. 'Car in water, upside-down' turned out to be 'car with back end in eight inches of water'. The kid panicked and exaggerated a bit when he called it in." He shook his head and helped himself to another heaping scoop of macaroni salad. “I ended up having to buy that tux.”
"What about some of the other nicknames?" Maggie wanted to know.
"Tim over there is Nipper, because he's an excited little rookie who bounces around like a damn puppy," he told her. "Same story with The Chihuahua, except he's always running his mouth like one of those yippy-yappy little dogs. T.O.K. stands for 'The Other Ken' because we used to have two guys named Ken. And Jason over there is Bob."
"'Bob' is his nickname?"
"Yeah, we have too many Jasons on the department."
“That . . . actually makes sense,” Maggie admitted. “I’m not sure why it does, but it does.”
"Wait till you hear how Alex got her nickname," he chuckled.
"Watch it. I outrank you, Spiffy." The Assistant Chief shot him a dirty look.
"Aw, be a good sport, Lug Nuts.”
Alex gave him a good-natured swat, but Sean ducked and kept talking.
“One day, Lug's husband decided he was going to do some work on her truck," he began, ignoring her. "He backed it up on the ramps, took the lug nuts out of the back tire, and then got called into work. He told her not to drive the truck that day. Left it right up on the ramps and everything.
"Well, after a while, she decided she just had to make a trip to the feed store. So she hopped in the truck, drove it right off the ramps and headed into town. Now, everything was okay for the first few miles, until the tire fell off and Lug had to pull over."
"Which I did without damaging the truck," Alex pointed out.
"So, there she was, all alone on a country road, watching her tire roll away toward town without her," Sean went on. "Did she use her cell phone to call her husband or a friend for help? No, that would have been too easy! She grabbed her radio instead and called it in as a firefighter in need of assistance. Dispatch sent it out as an emergency, and every department in the area rolled trucks. We all showed up imagining the worst, and found her sitting on the tailgate with a can of diet pop and a crossword puzzle book."
"That was eight years ago," Alex told Maggie. "I was a rookie, and I got a little bit over-excited about using my new radio. I can’t believe these idiots still give me a hard time about it. Every year for Christmas, I get boxes and boxes of lug nuts as gag gifts."
"If things keep up the way they have been, we'll all be able to afford better gifts than that," said the young firefighter Sean had identified as Tim. "This quarter's paycheck is going to be huge."
"Paycheck? But I thought you were all volunteers."
"We are," Alex replied. "Paid on-call volunteers. In other words, we get paid an hourly rate for every hour we spend actually responding to a call, but that's it. It doesn't add up to much."
"Almost enough to buy a tank of gas every quarter," Sean said. "Nobody’s in this to get rich."
"Except for this quarter," Tim said. "This check is going to be great, thanks to all of the grass fires."
Maggie saw a look go back and forth between Alex and Sean, and made a mental note to ask him about it later. “So what happens if there’s a fire tonight, while you’re all here together?” she asked.
“We roll trucks,” said the man Sean had identified as the Fire Chief. He was a big, bulky man who looked to be several years older than Sean. Maggie wondered how long he had held the position of Chief. He ran a hand through his graying hair and sighed. “Volunteers are never off-duty. That’s why I don’t serve beer when we all get together like this. Can you imagine what would happen if we had to sit back and let our neighbor’s house burn because we were all too drunk to drive a fire truck?”
“Well I hope there aren’t any fires--” Maggie’s words were drowned out by the sudden, panicked outcry that arose.
“Don’t say it!”
“NO!”
“Shut her up, Spiffy!”
“--tonight,” she finished lamely. Around her, Sean’s fellow firefighters groaned. She looked at him helplessly.
“Its bad luck,” he explained. “Never, ever say that you hope there are no fires, or that you hope it’s a quiet night, or anything like that. Never comment on how quiet it’s been, or that it’s been a while since the last call. As you as you say it, you’re doomed.”
“Firefighters are a superstitious group,” Alex told her. “We used to have a guy on our squad who was really bad about it. He was flat out goofy about things like black cats or ladders or spilled salt, but he was just plain crazy when it came to fighting fire. Always enter a building with the
right foot first, spit if a certain word was said out loud, never work in groups of three. . .” her voice trailed off.
An uncomfortable silence fell across the group.
Chief Griswold cleared his throat and raised his bottle of cola. “To Mikey Garcia,” he said softly. “You were a hell of a firefighter.”
“To Mikey.” All around the picnic tables, men and women raised their drinks in a quiet salute.
Sean’s cell phone rang just then. He excused himself to take the call, leaving Maggie alone with the group. Alex Hale leaned in close again and spoke in a quiet voice. “It was a structure fire about six months ago,” she murmured. “Mikey and two others were inside when part of the roof caved in. We got all three of them out, but Mikey didn’t make it.”
“First and only fatality from my department,” Griswold added. “I plan on keeping it that way. Almost lost Spiffy and TOK that night, too.”
Maggie caught her breath at the thought of Sean being so close to death.
Sean rejoined them then. “That was Dan Harding,” he told her. "He’s our Police Chief. He needs me and my tow truck. Ben Jacobs just found a stolen car behind the old barn on his property, and it looks like it has something to do with some missing woman from a reality TV show."
Maggie almost dropped her drink.
Sean didn't seem to notice. “Maggie, I have to go take care of this. Will you be all right here?”
She nodded. “I understand,” she told him, her voice barely above a whisper. He leaned over to kiss her cheek.
“We’ll give her a ride back to Carrington’s,” Alex offered. ”I’ll tell her all your secrets while you’re gone.”
“As long as she finds out the secret ingredient in your macaroni salad!” he called back over his shoulder.
Maggie barely heard him. She was already planning her escape.
Chapter Ten
Ben Jacobs’ property was just a few miles east of town, near the curve on County Road 388 where Sean had nearly lost control of his truck a few nights ago. Driving his tow truck off the main road and down the rutted two-track road that led to Jacobs’ barn, Sean clenched his teeth and fought the steering wheel with both hands, mentally cursing the idiot who had abandoned a car out here in the middle of nowhere.
The car was parked on the far side of the barn, barely visible in the shadows of the setting sun. Police Chief Dan Harding was standing beside it, next to a short, balding man that Sean recognized as his mother’s lawyer, Ben Jacobs. Both men were so intent on the car that they barely noticed him approaching them.
As far as Sean could see, the car was fine. Better than fine, actually. It was gorgeous. Sleek, black and shiny, even with a thick coat of road dust on it. He felt a ridiculous urge to pat it on the hood and tell it that everything was going to be okay.
“Nice, huh?” Harding asked, seeing the expression on his face.
“Nice doesn’t even begin to cover it,” Sean agreed.
“Belongs to Devon Rock,” Dan told him. “Ever hear of him? No? He’s an actor, just did a big reality show with a bunch of pretty girls competing for a chance to marry him. My wife loved that show.”
“So of course you just had to watch it with her.”
“Shut up, Spiffy. Anyways, poor guy had a really bad night. He was supposed to get married on live TV, and the bride just took off, right in the middle of the show. Left him standing there at the altar, jilted in front of God and everyone. Then the poor guy goes outside and finds out his car has been stolen.”
Sean winced sympathetically. “So you need me to tow it back to the Police lot?”
“Yeah, after I look inside.” Dan sighed, shooting a dirty look at the lawyer. “Apparently, I’ve got to treat it as a crime scene because of the missing bride. A car like this deserves better than a fat old cop with a Slim Jim, and you’re the only one I trust to open the lock without damaging the car.”
Sean almost dropped his tool box. “M-missing bride?”
“Her name is Maeve Renault,” Ben Jacobs told him. “She hasn’t been seen since she left him at the altar. Since she and the car disappeared at the same time, I think it’s safe to assume that the two disappearances are somehow connected.”
Sean knelt beside the car and went to work on the lock, his heart pounding.
“Of course they’re ‘connected’,” Harding snorted. “She stole the car and ran like hell.”
“We don’t know that for certain,” Ben corrected him. “The show publicist wants us to believe that the girl was kidnapped by whoever took the car.”
Harding snorted again.
Both men were silent as Sean finally managed to get the car door open. The dome light came on, and all three gathered close to peer inside.
Harding spoke first. “Don’t touch anything,” he snapped, all traces of humor gone from his voice.
Sean stumbled backward, wishing he had never seen the smears of blood on the cream-colored upholstery or the torn bits of gray duct tape on the floor near the passenger seat. He closed his eyes, trying to un-see the small heaps of long blonde hair littering the floor near the duct tape.
“When --” No, his voice sounded strangely high-pitched, even to his own ears. Sean cleared his throat and shook his head. “When did this happen?”
“Monday night, probably sometime around midnight.” Dan told him, pulling on a pair of gloves. “Show started at nine, bride and car disappeared shortly after that, and it takes about two and half hours to get here from Chicago.”
Monday night. The same night he had seen a mystery woman in white running down a dark and lonely road in the middle of the night. A white wedding gown, perhaps?
She hadn’t been a hallucination; she’d been running for her life.
And he had driven away, leaving her there alone with her kidnapper.
Oh, God.
“You all right over there, Spiffy?” the Chief asked. “Looking kinda green.”
“Just . . . thinking about that poor missing girl. What was her name again?”
“Maeve Renault.”
Maeve Renault. He said her name to himself, over and over again as the night wore on. At one point, Ben pulled up a publicity still on his smartphone, and Sean found himself unable to get the image out of his mind.
She was a glamorous woman in a frilly, sequined wedding gown with a full skirt and long train. She had a dark beauty mark on her left cheekbone, with heavy make-up that emphasized almond-shaped eyes and full red lips. The mass of bouncy blonde curls tumbled wildly down to her waist from beneath an extravagant jeweled tiara with a full veil.
When he closed his eyes, he saw the ghostly figure in his headlights again, a blur of white that seemed to glow like some ethereal being. Damn it, he'd looked for her! He'd gotten out of the truck and gone into the woods with his flashlight, calling out to her. Why hadn't she answered him?
Because she couldn't, a little voice murmured somewhere in the back of his mind. Her captor must have been holding her, preventing her from answering his calls.
Sean felt sick at the thought that he might have been Maeve Renault's last chance for escape. He'd let her down, left her alone with God-knows-who to do God-knows-what to her while he went home to sleep in his warm and cozy bed. He had to come forward with the information. He had to.
He could lose all of his certifications for leaving the scene and not reporting what had happened, he realized. He might even face criminal charges. He was done as a firefighter.
Done.
After waiting for the Dan Harding to finish taking pictures and collecting evidence, Sean delivered the car to the police lot and returned the tow truck to Jackson Auto. He collected his own truck and drove aimlessly around the small town, not ready to go home yet but not sure where else to go.He finally found himself sitting in the parking lot at Carrington Manor, debating whether to go in and talk to Maggie or not.
On the one hand, he hardly knew her well enough to trust her with this. On the other, he had to talk to someone, and
he didn’t know who else he could turn to.
He lost track of how long he sat there. He had just decided that it was too late to bother her when a sudden tap on the window startled him.
It was Maggie. She tapped on the window again, and he opened the door.
"Everything okay?" she asked. “You’ve been sitting here for a long time.”
He shook his head.
"Want to talk about it?"
He shook his head again
"Sean, I need to tell you something—"
Sean lurched out of the truck and moved unsteadily toward the beach. He needed to be alone, away from the visions of the missing woman, away from the guilt that gnawed at him. He heard Maggie moving along behind him, but didn't stop until he reached the water's edge, where he sank to his knees and covered his face with his hands.
She knelt behind him, wrapping her arms around him and laying her cheek against his shoulder. He shrugged her away.
"You're scaring me," she whispered.
"Good!" He whirled on her, suddenly furious. "You should be scared of me! You don't know the first thing about me, do you?"
"Don't be silly, Sean, I—"
He seized her then, crushing her lips with his own. He sank one hand into her hair and held her so tightly that she couldn't escape from his kiss. His other hand stayed on her back, pulling her against him. His tongue forced her lips apart and assaulted hers, seeking out every deep recess as she struggled in his grasp.
"Did that feel 'silly'?" he demanded, breaking free of the kiss. He could hear how broken his voice sounded.
"N-no." She looked up at him with eyes that glistened with unshed tears.
"Go!" He hissed through clenched teeth. "Get away from me. You shouldn't trust me. You don't know what I've done."
Slowly, Maggie reached up to touch his face. She touched her fingers to his lips. "I'm not going anywhere," she whispered, brushing her lips against his.
He made a helpless sound and seized her again, flinging her back against the sand and pressing his weight against her. She touched his face again, and he grabbed her wrists, pinning them above her head in the cool sand. And he kissed her savagely, angrily, in a way he had never kissed any other woman.