Consumed (Firefighters #1)

by J. R. Ward

  “You haven’t. You won’t.” She smiled. “I’m an Ashburn.”

  Her brother’s stare returned to her and he nodded gravely. “That you are. Through and through.”

  As they hugged again, Anne was aware of an uncoiling deep inside of her, that anger that had defined her for so long shattering like a mirror and dissipating. Growing up, all she had ever wanted was her father’s respect.

  It turned out that destiny gave her something even better, more worthwhile.

  She had earned her big brother’s.

  In the periphery, Anne was aware of Danny sitting back and watching the pair of them, the smile on his face wide and approving.

  When Tom reached out a palm toward him, Danny shook what was offered, a vow given and accepted on both sides: In the midst of chaos and death, a new family had been forged. One that was chosen as opposed to an accident of biology—and for that reason, more abiding and enduring.

  chapter

  54

  One week later, Anne left her office on a long lunch break. Don was going to watch Soot, who had become the investigation team’s mascot, and she had a feeling “watch” meant her boss was going to take the dog down the street to the deli and the two of them were going to share a turkey, cheese, and mayo foot-long and two bags of potato chips.

  No wonder Soot also thought that man was the World’s Greatest Boss.

  The strip mall that was her destination was nothing she had been to before, although she had driven by it plenty of times, and she found a parking space easy enough. She was early and the noontime sun was still fairly warm, so she took a leisurely stroll past the stores.

  The fallout around Moose’s death was sad. His body was being buried, but not with departmental honors. How could it be? He had endangered the lives of his fellow firefighters. Committed arson. Tried to kill her.

  The investigation into his crimes had expanded to include the FBI, given the interstate nature of Ollie Popper’s black-market activity. An LG burner phone had been found inside Moose’s house, and the calls to her cell had been in its outgoing log. An anonymous texting app, TextPort, was the only thing loaded onto it.

  The money trail was cold. There had been just over five thousand dollars in cash in Moose’s bedroom, but no clues so far on where it had come from. And as for Ripkin? That tie had not been exposed, but she still believed it was there. Moose’s spending had far exceeded a random thousand here or there.

  And that was why she truly believed it hadn’t just been office equipment in those fires. Ripkin was hiding secrets, although what kind, she didn’t know. She had filed her report on the most recent warehouse fire, and her amendments to the other five, but unless she was called into the Moose investigation, her official role was done.

  Which was frustrating.

  On top of that, she was worried about Danny. It was obvious that he was sad deep inside and keeping things to himself, and that worried her. It might have been the way things always had been, but that had to change. It just wasn’t healthy.

  Everything else was great between them, though. He had moved into her house by attrition, every night bringing over another bunch of clothes, not that he had much. He also brought his TV with him, and she had to admit it was a helluva of an improvement over her piece of crap.

  He was letting the apartment go. An era over. The four men who had started out as fraternity brothers graduating on to adulthood.

  Or the grave, in Moose’s case.

  Stopping in front of a dress shop, she tilted her head at what was in the window. Deandra had left town, quitting her job, packing up her stuff, and going off to God only knew where. She wasn’t free, though. Not by a long shot. The authorities had questioned her and she was still on their list as a person of interest. It was pretty clear she might have had the motive, but there was no concrete evidence that she hadn’t done anything criminal herself.

  But the investigation was ongoing.

  “Anne!”

  She turned and started to smile. “Hi, Mom. Thanks for coming.”

  As she met her mother halfway down the strip mall, she decided her brother was right. Their mom seemed much happier, and glowing, in the last week.

  Healing was good for people, wasn’t it.

  “You are not going to believe it,” Nancy Janice announced, “but I sold two of my oil paintings to a gallery this morning! I can’t stand it! Who would ever have thought anybody would want something I did?”

  Anne hugged her mother and was surprised by how easy it was. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Me, too.” Nancy Janice took Anne’s hand. “Now, let’s focus on you.”

  “Oh, God, this is a dumb idea.”

  “No, it is not. And I’ll be with you the whole time. Come on, let’s do this.”

  As they walked toward the hair salon together, Anne glanced over her shoulder. “And after we’re done, I want to go this other shop for a second. There’s something I want your opinion on.”

  * * *

  Danny could not frickin’ sit down. On that note, he wished the waiting room was twelve times the size it was.

  Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and—

  The door opened and Dr. McAuliffe smiled at him. “Well, hello.”

  “Hi, Doc.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “How’re ya?”

  “Good, very good. Come on back.”

  As she held the way for him, he hesitated. But then he forced his feet to get moving.

  “Thanks, Doc,” he muttered as went inside.

  “Sit wherever you like. You remember the rules. There really aren’t any.”

  He smiled because he felt like he had to, and chose the sofa. “Yeah.”

  The doctor sat down, and he noted she was in another variation on what she’d had one the previous meeting, although this time, there was some purple thrown in with the brown.

  “So I was surprised to hear from you.” She smiled gently. “But glad you called.”

  “Thanks for fitting me in.”

  “Of course.”

  He looked around, seeing all the Purposely Calming details. Or maybe that was really her; maybe it wasn’t all a calculation, but rather an expression of a compassionate soul at peace in the world.

  “I guess I should explain why I’m here,” he said.

  “You can start, there. Sure.”

  Clearing his throat, he rubbed his thighs. “I, ah, I’m in love.”

  “Really! That’s wonderful.”

  As he smiled, he ducked his eyes and blushed. Like an idiot. Like a schoolboy. Like someone confessing to his mother he was going out with a girl.

  “She’s amazing.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “She’s a firefighter, too. Or was. Until she . . . well, it’s Anne. You know, Anne Ashburn.”

  “Really.” Dr. McAuliffe smiled. “That sounds like a beautiful relationship.”

  “I want it to be. She means so much to me, and I would do anything to protect her and make her happy.” Abruptly, he focused directly on the doctor. “And that’s why I’m here. I don’t want me to be what fucks it up. ’Scuse my French.”

  “No offense taken.”

  “I thought maybe we could talk about things that are up here.” He tapped himself on the head. “Things that I can’t unsee, things I can’t undo, things I wish were different.”

  Like Moose.

  Like Emilio, who was back at work and looking like road kill.

  Like Sol, who they shouldn’t have lost.

  “I think that’s a really good idea, Danny. Where do you want to start?”

  He thought about the old lady on that bed in that burning apartment. The axe going into the back of Moose’s head. Anne and her hand. Emilio in the hospital bed. Sol screaming, “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me,” right before he was cr
ushed by debris.

  He thought of himself regaining consciousness at the bottom of the collapsed warehouse wall, his mask cracked, his body crushed, his breathing bad.

  And then he thought of John Thomas.

  “I want to talk about my twin brother.”

  “Okay. Tell me about him. Tell me all about him.”

  Danny had to blink his eyes as they started to burn. But then he smiled. “Oh, Jesus, he was an annoying little shit when we were growing up. He used to wait for me to fall asleep at night and then . . .”

  chapter

  55

  It seemed right that rain started to fall as Danny entered the cemetery. There was no gatehouse or visitor check-in because this was the budget burial place, not the fancy old one on the other side of the tracks with the monogrammed crypts and the statues of angels and saints. Hitting the brakes on the truck, he checked the Kleenex box he’d scribbled the directions on and then went left.

  He’d been at Anne’s when he’d gotten the call back, and the gray and yellow tissue box had been the first writeable surface he’d grabbed.

  As he wound around the clusters of the dead, there were all kinds of Irish Catholic names and Celtic cross markers, and he deliberately took the long way to the section he was looking for. John Thomas was buried in the northeast corner, along with their parents, and although he was turning over a new leaf with Dr. McAuliffe, he wasn’t ready to head over there quite yet. He did think he’d bring Anne some day.

  Seemed right to introduce her to the family. His parents had died way before she’d come into his life, and John Thomas, per departmental policy, had been stationed at another firehouse so he hadn’t really known her.

  They would have loved her. Who wouldn’t?

  Rounding another corner, he eased off on the gas. Across a mowed lawn of browning grass, beneath a canopy of red and gold leaves, two groundskeepers were pulling a casket out of an unmarked van. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

  Moose. God. . . what happened to you, Moose?

  His truck rolled onward, carried by a subtle slope in the lane that amplified the engine’s idle. When he hit the brakes by the new gravesite, both of the men looked over at him.

  He lifted his hand and got no response. The groundsmen just muscled the coffin over to a hole that obviously had been dug by the mini -dozer sitting off to the side, a union worker taking a contractually required break.

  Danny reached for his cigarettes and lit one. He’d sworn that he would stop, but the only thing going through his mind at the moment was Not today, motherfucker.

  Getting out, he approached the groundsmen. “Excuse me, but is-”

  “You here for Robert Miller?” the one in front asked as the van drove off.

  “Yes. Moose is—yeah, I’m here for him.”

  “You family?”

  “I don’t know.” Used to be, he thought. Kinda. “Do I have to be?”

  “We don’t care,” the other guy said.

  They both grunted as placed the casket on a mechanized platform that was going to lower it into the grave. As they straightened, they looked like brothers, both stocky and balding, Igors without the humps or the Mad Scientist bosses. Their dark green work uniforms were by the same maker that the firefighters used, their baseball caps with the bended-bough logo of the cemetery above the brim.

  “You want a minute before we put him down in there?” the one on the left said.

  They were identical twins, Danny thought as he looked back and forth at their weathered faces. Just like him and John Thomas.

  “Yeah. If you don’t mind.”

  “We gotta go dig another two holes anyway. Take your time.”

  One got on the Toro and the other went on foot, and as they disappeared, he wondered if their names matched, too. Jim and Tim. Bob and Rodge. Fred and Ted.

  Daniel Michael and John Thomas were an Irish rhyme, his mother had always said. Whatever that meant.

  Danny took a drag and exhaled over his shoulder even though there was no one around to offend with second hand smoke.

  The coffin was simple, not one of those carved mahogany ones with brass rails and tufted satin interiors, and as sprinkles dappled its black lid, they left glossy prints that were perfectly round. He wondered what Moose was wearing in there. Who had chosen the clothes. Whether the axe blade’s damage had been repaired before the embalming had been done.

  The hypothetical answers he considered and discarded were like the speculation about the twin groundskeepers, a way to give his brain a break from the reality that someone he had been close to for years, who he had thought of as a brother, who he had worked along side . . . had been someone he hadn’t really known.

  He thought about Anne and her father. Just the other night she had talked about what had happened after Tom, Sr., had died, about the secret that had come out afterward. She had told him all about her frustration with her mother, her anger at her father. The disillusionment and disgust and betrayal.

  A hero she had once put her faith into hadn’t proven to be merely human, but a bad guy.

  She would understand exactly how he was feeling about Moose, and also how he was recoloring previously positive memories with a dark filter.

  Moose had been the genial loser who’d struggled to keep up with the big dogs, a good guy with a heart of gold who never quite made it, but always managed to smile in the midst of his failures.

  A Ralph Kramden, first of the frat house, and then later at the apartment and the stationhouse.

  The idea Moose could light fires that hurt people and accept money from crooks . . . and try to kill someone, kill Anne, for fuck’s sake, meant that all of that had to have been a lie. Because the man Danny had known and lived with would never have hurt anyone, much less one of their own.

  He’d loved Anne.

  Or . . . at least he’d seemed to act like it.

  “Fuck,” Danny said into the cool fall breeze.

  The low growl of a motorcycle brought his head around and he frowned. The black Harley he knew well, but he had not expected to see it or its owner out and about for another three months.

  As Mick Roth, his old roommate, killed the engine and dismounted, the guy removed his helmet and put it on the seat. His dark hair had been recently cut and a tan dimmed the colorful tats that wrapped around his throat. Blue jeans had holes in them. Leather jacket was beat to shit.

  Eyes were alert, but had black circles under them. “Surprised?”

  “Yeah. But glad.”

  The guy strode over the cropped grass, sidestepping the grave stones. “So what’s up, Dannyboy?”

  The two embraced, and Danny held on hard. “What are you doing out of rehab? I thought you were supposed to be in Alabama another ninety days.”

  “Arizona.”

  “Sorry.” They stepped back. “Did you walk out on the program?”

  “Not exactly. I told them I’d come back after I saw you and made sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Party line, huh.” Mick looked around. “What the fuck are we doing here?”

  “I don’t know.” As a blacked out truck came over the rise, Danny shook his head. “And then there were three.”

  Jack parked his Ford behind the Harley and got out. He was in SWAT clothes, the black T-shirt with the crest on the pec and the camo pants accessorized by a couple of forties and a hunting knife holstered around his waist.

  “You found it okay,” he said to Mick.

  “Yeah.” They clapped palms. “Thanks, man.”

  And then the three of them just stood around the coffin, staring at the closed lid that had gathered enough rain so that the water dripped off its sides, tears that should have been shed, but could not fall in any other fashion. In the silence, a bird chirping in a golden-leaved tree was louder than it should . . .
God, he could still remember meeting Moose during pledge week. The guy had been determined to out-drink anyone who challenged him, as if he’d recognized that consumption was his sole recommendation for the fraternities. Jack, on the other hand, had been recruited for his game with the females. Danny, they’d wanted as a bouncer. And as for Mick?

  The frats been scared of what he might do if they turned him down.

  “Someone should say something,” Jack muttered.

  “Yeah.” Danny took a deep breath. “Shit.”

  That about covers it,” Mick said dryly.

  Danny put his hand into the pocket of his pants and took out his Marlboros. After offering and lighting one for the other roommates, he put the mostly full pack and his Bic on the top of the coffin and then he hit the gear switch so that the casket lowered into the earth.

  Each of them cast a handful of dirt into the grave.

  As it turned out, it was the last cigarette he ever smoked.

  And he called Anne as soon as he was back in his truck and alone.

  “Hello?” she answered. “Excited for tonight? I know I am.”

  He had to hit his wipers as he left the cemetery. “Yes,” he said roughly. “I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I am now.” Danny released a long slow exhale. “I just needed to hear your voice. Listen. . . I’m going to wanna talk about Moose.”

  There wasn’t even a second of pause, and her voice was strong and steady. “Anytime. You can talk to me about anything at any time.”

  Just one more reason to love you, he thought as he drove on through the downpour.

  chapter

  56

  At eight o’clock on the dot, Anne parallel-parked her Subaru on the street and sat back in the driver’s seat. After a minute, she pulled the visor down and checked her face. As a set of headlights flared, she got a good look at herself.

  With lipstick on.

  Like, proper lipstick. Not a coat of gloss, but real, live L’Oréal stuff that had been applied after she’d used a lip liner.