by Mary McBride
Suddenly, at the front door of the burning building, she saw Sonny talking to Bill Forrester, who was gesturing wildly toward the second floor.
"I'll be right back," she told Joan, then rushed toward the two men. Sonny was shrugging out of his jacket when she reached them.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"Emily's inside," Bill Forrester wailed. "She ran back to get her doll."
"Oh, God."
"Here, Mel." Sonny thrust his jacket at her, then wrenched off his shoulder holster and handed that to her, as well. "Hold these for me, will you? Don't put that weapon down anyplace. Just hold it."
"You're not going in there!" she exclaimed. "Sonny!"
He ignored her, turning to Bill Forrester to ask, "To the left or the right once I get up the stairs?"
"Left," the man replied. "Her room is the first door on the left."
"Sonny!"
"First door on the left," he repeated for Forrester's confirmation. "Okay. Got it."
"Sonny!" Melanie plucked at his sleeve, trying to get a grip on his arm.
"I'll be right back, babe. Better give me back my jacket. I might need it."
Rather than wait for her to hand it over, he pulled it from her grasp. Then, after brushing a quick kiss across the top of her head, he took the short flight of steps to the entrance in two leaps and pushed in the door. A thick haze of smoke immediately drifted out. And Sonny, with his jacket pressed to the lower half of his face, disappeared inside.
"Dear God, please let him find her," Bill Forrester said.
"He will." She gave his arm a reassuring touch. "I'm sure he will."
They both stood there staring at the smoke that was beginning now to roll faster and blacker through the open doorway. Melanie hugged Sonny's still-warm leather shoulder holster to her chest. She thought she was going to be sick.
Suddenly the sound of sirens blasted through the air and the ground almost shook with the approach of fire trucks and squad cars and ambulances. Brakes squealed. Doors slammed. Lights of every color cut back and forth across the Forresters' front lawn and all the people gathered there.
"You'll have to move back, sir. Lady."
The fireman who spoke was already gripping her arms, moving her brusquely aside, when Melanie said, "My husband's in there. He went in to try to find a little girl."
The man cursed and immediately yelled over his shoulder. "We've got civilians inside. Let's go. Let's go."
"He's not a civilian exactly," Melanie felt compelled to advise him. "He's a cop."
He cursed again, as if that were even worse than a mere civilian for some reason. "I just wish these hot dogs would quit thinking they can do our job."
Melanie had to bite her tongue to keep from saying "Well, somebody had to do it. You weren't exactly here, were you?"
Bill Forrester began to tug at the sleeve of the man's fireproof coat. "Hurry, please. My daughter, Emily, went back in for her doll. Upstairs. The second floor. The first door on the left."
Suddenly they were surrounded by half a dozen men, all looking huge in oversize black coats with yellow stripes, all of them gripping extinguishers or crowbars or axes.
"You'll have to move back, ma'am," a new arrival said. "You, too, sir. We'll…"
Melanie didn't move, but looked frantically at the front door just as Sonny staggered through it. "Wait. Look! There he is."
"He's got Emily!"
A spotlight from one of the patrol cars framed Sonny and the little girl in a circle of bright blue. It was an incredible sight, with little Emily clinging to Sonny's neck and his arms protectively surrounding her. Both of them were smudged with soot from head to toe so that the only bright spots on either of them were their eyes.
Emily's were huge and wet and dark in their circles of pale skin. Sonny's… My God. Even at that distance, Sonny's eyes were the endless and beautiful and beckoning aqua of the open sea. They nearly took Melanie's breath away. Then she stopped breathing entirely when she saw him close those eyes and press a gentle kiss to Emily's temple, when she read his lips telling the frightened child, "It's okay. It's okay."
Until that moment she'd never thought of Sonny as a father. Not once. A husband, yes. A mate. A lover, certainly. She'd thought of him as everything a man could be in this world except a gentle and protective father. Now the notion hit her with the force of a storm wave crashing on a beach.
Then she was pushed aside by firemen lugging hoses and uniformed cops clearing the area. In the general melee that ensued, she didn't see Sonny again until she happened to glance at one of the ambulances. He was sitting on its rear bumper holding an oxygen mask over his nose. She elbowed her way through the crowd, and reached for the soot-streaked hand he held out to her.
"Hey, babe," he said, lowering the translucent mask.
"Are you okay?"
Before he could reply, a brawny female EMT who was standing nearby said, "He says he's okay, but I think he's a liar."
"Nobody asked you, Doctor Demento," Sonny growled in the woman's direction.
"Are you okay?" Melanie asked again, reaching out to touch his sooty hair. "Really?"
"I'm fine," he said. "Here, Doc." He handed the mask back to the scowling woman.
"Well, all right." She sighed gruffly. "But you go straight to the E.R. if you have any tightness or pain in your chest, okay? Or if you get short of breath." Her skeptical gaze slanted toward Melanie. "Are you his keeper?"
"Sort of."
"Well, smoke inhalation can be serious, so don't let him try to tough it out. Any wheezing, hoarseness, coughing, you get him to the emergency room on the double, you hear?"
Sonny stood and offered his hand to the paramedic. "Thanks, Doc."
"Yeah. Yeah. Go on. Get outta here," she said.
"I'll take my gun back now, Mel."
She'd completely forgotten that the holster was slung over her shoulder, the pistol tucked under her arm. Sonny slipped it off and eased it over his own shoulder.
"Where's your jacket?" Melanie asked.
"Trash can. That smoke will never come out of it."
They stood there a minute, looking at the commotion. The fire seemed to be under control, if not out entirely. The rolling black smoke had turned to rising gray steam. Onlookers were shaking hands, saying good-night, heading back to their own homes. As they passed, all of them called their thanks to Sonny or sent him a thumbs-up bravo for a job well done.
Sonny looped his arm around Melanie's shoulders.
"Let's go home," he said.
The night air smelled wet and acrid, all of its sweet spring perfumes covered over by smoke. Sonny was so quiet while they walked that she began to worry again about the effects of the smoke on him, but when she asked, he reassured her that he was fine.
"Why don't you come in and take a nice, hot shower?" she asked him when they reached her front door.
The invitation took Melanie completely by surprise. She hadn't planned to ask him. At least, she didn't think she did. It seemed to just tumble out of her mouth before her brain had given its final approval.
Too late to take it back, she told herself that her sole concern was Sonny's welfare. He was filthy—from his soot-coated hair to his singed shoes. He needed a shower desperately, and if there was water at all next door, it probably wasn't hot. She was merely being humane. A good neighbor.
Her offer had absolutely nothing to do with their gut-wrenching kiss earlier. She certainly wasn't picturing his lean and solid body in her steamy shower stall, all slick with soap and hot water streaming the length of him and swirling about his finely shaped toes before it disappeared down the drain. Why, that image had barely even occurred to her.
"Thanks, babe. But I think I'll just go next door and crash." He kissed her forehead. Just the lightest brush of his lips. "Good night, Mel."
And just as she'd denied that she wanted him to stay, now Melanie denied her disappointment that he was leaving.
"Okay," she said. "Good night.
"
* * *
Chapter 9
« ^ »
It was barely light the next morning when Sonny was awakened by loud, relentless banging on his front door. For a moment after he opened his eyes, he didn't even know where he was. Then his head solidified. Oh, yeah. The house from hell. And the knocking was Mike Kaczinski's familiar, big-knuckled, ham-fisted triple knock.
Knock, knock, knock.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Come on in. It's open," Sonny called, reminding himself once again to pick up a damn lock. He really needed to make a list, he thought, without the slightest trace of sarcasm.
Mike stood just inside the front door, balancing two large coffees in one hand and what Sonny hoped was a bag of glazed doughnuts in his other hand. "Morning, Fireman Fred," his partner said, not bothering to suppress a chuckle. "I heard about last night. In fact, I not only heard about, I read about it. You're on the front page of the paper this morning."
"Great," Sonny said sourly, taking one of the coffees and the paper sack from Mike and then continuing along the dark hallway toward the kitchen. "Remember in fifth grade when we were trying to decide whether to be firemen or cops?"
"Yeah."
"Well, we made the right decision, pal. That is one nasty occupation. I still can't smell anything but smoke."
Entering the kitchen, Mike gave a series of exaggerated sniffs while he glanced around the little room with its rust-stained sink and rotted linoleum. "Probably beats smelling anything else in here," he said.
"Still pretty much of a pit, huh?" Sonny shrugged helplessly, thumbed the plastic lid from his coffee cup and then blew on the steaming contents before taking a sip.
Mike nodded. He tried his own coffee, then said, "The word going around the shop this morning is that the arson guys found something suspicious down the street."
Sonny raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"
"Like an accelerant tossed through a busted back window."
"Oh, yeah?" He spoke as he dug through the half-dozen doughnuts in search of a glazed one. "Any idea why the family would have been a target for something like that?"
Mike shook his head. "Nope. Not yet. They're going to talk to them today. But there's another theory going around I thought you might want to hear about."
"Oh, yeah. What?"
"That the torch got the wrong house. That maybe he got the wrong street."
Sonny dipped the doughnut into his cup, then bit off the soggy end. "Meaning what?" he mumbled, leaning back against the sink.
"Meaning the Forrester house doesn't look all that different from this one, Sonny. I just drove by the place. They're almost identical."
"Well, almost. Except one's fairly decent and the other one's a real pit."
"They're both pits now," Mike said. "Similar street
numbers, too. Theirs is 12024. Yours is 1224."
He hadn't paid any attention last night to the appearance of the burning house or its address. "Does this theory come with any names attached to it?"
"A couple," Mike said. "Slink Kinnison. Elijah Biggs. Ring any bells?"
"Yeah. But not fire bells."
"The Big Man is looking for you, Son. He has a bone to pick about one of his girls. You know who I mean?"
"Lovey," Sonny said. "She hasn't turned up anyplace yet, has she? Has she contacted Heilig or White?"
"Nope. Not a word. Nobody's seen her on the street, either. At least not that I'm aware of." Mike glanced at his watch. "Gotta go, partner. You watch your back, okay?"
Sonny nodded. "Keep me posted, okay, Mikey?"
"Will do." He started for the door, then turned back. "Hey, how's it going with Melanie? Connie wants to know when you guys are coming to dinner."
"Soon," he answered without much conviction. "Soon."
After Mike left, Sonny polished off a couple more doughnuts as he gazed out the kitchen window. He turned Mike's information over in his head just once before tucking it away. He didn't want to think about the job. Not this morning.
Melanie had asked him in last night. If he'd accepted her invitation, he'd still be there this morning. He knew that as well as he knew his own name because he'd seen the heat in her eyes that had nothing to do with having just witnessed a fire.
It had been that body-slamming, heart-stopping kiss in the alleyway after dinner. The fire that kiss had started in him was comparable to the one in the house down the street. And Mel had caught fire, too. He'd tasted the flames.
Which was why he'd been a good boy, kept his gun in his holster, and gone home last night. He knew it was too soon for their bodies to reach the sweet accord that their minds hadn't yet agreed to.
This was too important to let unpremeditated sex get in the way.
This was his life.
What was left of it, anyway.
* * *
Melanie sat at her kitchen table, sipping coffee, attempting to read the paper but continually turning back to the front page to look at the picture from the night before. The photographer must have snapped it at the exact moment she was staring at Sonny and viewing him as a potential father.
In the photograph, just as she had witnessed last night, his eyes shone like soot-circled aquamarines. Little Emily's arms were flung around his neck, and his strong hands held her with such tenderness that she might have been a fragile porcelain doll rather than a flesh-and-blood little girl. His lips were just about to fashion the reassuring words that Melanie had seen him whisper to her. "It's okay. It's okay."
She refolded the newspaper, slapped it down on the table and set her coffee cup directly on top of the haunting, front-page picture, glad that at least somebody was okay because she certainly didn't feel that way herself.
She felt churlish, the best word she could come up with to describe her reaction to the wildly wavering emotions inside her. If she hadn't known precisely, almost to the minute, where she was in her monthly cycle, she might have blamed her mood on PMS, but that wasn't the case.
She loved Sonny Randle, but she couldn't live with him. Still, she didn't want anybody else to live with him, either. She wished he'd moved to the other side of the planet instead of the house next door, but at the same time she wished he were here inside her house. And not just in her house but in her bed.
She wanted him gone. She wanted him—period.
Her head felt as if it were going to explode from all the contradictory thoughts, and her heart was probably going to start fibrillating from all the crazy emotions there.
Everything had been fine until he'd moved next door. She'd missed him, but she'd coped with that while she got on with her life. Her plans for the baby had been honed to perfection, and now they were unraveling faster than a ball of yarn in a roomful of kittens.
Worst of all, Sonny—the man who almost prided himself on being lousy father material—was starting to look just the opposite. And in full color on the front page of the paper, no less!
It all just made her head hurt, and she was about to lower it into her hands when the object of her distress trotted down his back steps. His thumbs were hooked in the pockets of his jeans as he started a lean, loose-limbed walk down his driveway like a gorgeous guy who didn't have a problem in the world.
Melanie's immediate, knee-jerk reaction was to think, He better not be heading over here, even as her heart picked up speed in anticipation of greeting him at her door. She sat at the table, ignoring her pulse rate, waiting for the inevitable chime of the doorbell.
Waiting.
And waiting.
Well, if he wasn't coming over to her house, where in the world was he going? She hustled into the living room to peek out one of the front windows, but she didn't see him anywhere. He was just gone.
Good.
Sort of.
* * *
Sonny stood on the sidewalk awhile, pondering the burned building that was now festooned with bright yellow police department tape. Mike was right. It did look a lot like his house with its ro
ugh, red sandstone bricks and tall, arched windows. The small front porches were similar, too, and but for the zero in the center of the numbers, their addresses were nearly the same. The Forresters lived at 12024 Channing while his house sat at 1224 Kassing. It would have been an easy mistake for a firebug to make, especially at night and if he were in a hurry, which of course he would have been.
Slipping under a line of yellow tape, Sonny walked around to the rear of the house. He called through what was left of the charred back door. "Hey! It's Randle, Third Precinct, Vice. Can I come in?" Most of the arson investigators in the city were prima donnas who tended to get squirrely if anybody walked unannounced onto one of their scenes.
"Hold on a sec. I'll come out," a voice grunted just before Eddie Zeile sucked in his gut and passed between the burned door and its blackened frame. "How's it going, Randle?" The fireman stuck out a meaty, soot-streaked hand.
"Fine," Sonny responded. "You find anything yet, Eddie? Any idea who did this?"
"Yeah," he said. "An amateur with a glass jar of kerosene and a pack of matches. Good help is hard to find these days, huh, Sonny?"
Although he chuckled at the fireman's black humor, there was nothing funny about it. It was looking more and more as if the fire at the Forresters' had been a mistake. Still, there were more than a hundred other houses in Channing Square
to choose from. Hell, maybe the dimwit firebug was supposed to torch a place on Fanning Street
halfway across town.
"Thanks, Eddie. If you could send an extra copy of your report to me at the precinct, I'd appreciate it."
"No problem. So you're the Cop on the Block? How's that working out?"
"So far, so good," he answered, deciding there was no sense telling him that in the four or five days since he'd taken up residence there had been a rape and a fire of suspicious origin. "Well, I'll let you get back to work, Eddie. Thanks for the information."
"Take it easy, Sonny."
The fireman went back into the burned-out house and Sonny continued on down the street, deliberately avoiding a glance into the alleyway where he'd practically mauled Melanie the night before. He was really going to have to keep a tight lid on that caveman stuff from now on.