by Bella Andre
"Don't worry about it," he said to his foster brother.
He turned and headed for the office to face down Maya. It was time to do some serious damage control.
CHAPTER NINE
A SIGN on the office window said the private airport wouldn't be staffed until later that morning, but the door would be unlocked so that people could use the bathroom. Maya locked herself in the single stall to get her thoughts in order before facing off against Logan. Again.
She gulped down some ice-cold tap water to clear her head and returned to the small room just as he let the door close behind him, his broad shoulders and six-plus feet effectively blocking all sunlight. He looked like he hadn't gotten much more sleep than she had, and still, he was so gorgeous she lost her breath just looking at him.
"You're a pyromaniac."
Logan didn't bother to deny the truth. "I used to be. A long time ago. But I'm not that kid anymore."
He couldn't think he was going to get out of it that easily, could he, that his charming good looks would make her say Oh, okay, never mind.
"I might have believed you yesterday when I asked you point-blank why you went to live with Joseph. But now you've forced me to reexamine things. To ask myself why you were hiding something so important from a fire investigator. To consider whether or not you're guilty, after all."
"Look," he said, "I used to light fires. I was a stupid teenage boy who didn't have a clue."
Even as he tried to talk his way out of the extremely damning evidence against him, his kiss was still imprinted on her lips. She could still smell him. Taste him.
Damn him for having such power over me!
"Why should I believe you? All I know is that you were seen putting out two fires near the ignition point-- and you used to light fires for fun."
"I can see how you'd think that. But this time, it doesn't add up. You asked me about my past yesterday. Well, here it is: I lit fires when I was a kid because my dad was an asshole and it made me feel powerful. I didn't get that fires could destroy things, that they could spin out of control and kill people. I was a fucked-up kid. That's all it was. I swear to God, Maya, my past has nothing to do with these fires."
It was incredibly difficult to hold tight to her doubts in the face of his sincerity.
"How can I be absolutely sure that it really is all in the past?"
She thought back to her interview with Joseph the previous afternoon, how sad it must be for Logan to see a once-strong man fade away.
"Joseph took you in during a difficult time in your life. He was good to you, he treated you like another son, and now his health is failing. It must be incredibly hard for you to deal with. You wouldn't be the first person to act out of grief." She took a deep breath. "Like me. With you. When Tony died. You wouldn't be the first person who'd screwed up in the heat of the moment. Or the last person."
"Of course I'm worried about Joseph," Logan agreed. "I want to get him to a doctor. I want him to move in with me so that I can keep watch over him. I want to hire a cleaning crew to wash his clothes and empty out his sink and make sure that he eats. But there's a big difference between making out with a stranger and arson."
"Really?"
Her voice shook on the lone word as she thought back to that day in the bar, when it had seemed like her whole world was crashing down around her.
"Are you sure there is?" she found herself asking.
He moved closer. "It's all tied into your brother, isn't it? This case. Me being a firefighter. Being here in Lake Tahoe."
She instinctively pulled her bag up over her chest as a shield. Why did he always have to go to the one place that hurt the most? "No. Tony's case is completely separate from this one. I know what I'm doing."
At least she used to. Before everything got so damn complicated. Which was why she needed to focus on the facts at hand. And not the way her libido spiked whenever he came within five feet.
"The fact is that pyromania is a huge strike against you, Mr. Cain."
He came closer again and she felt her throat move as she swallowed, saw his eyes catch her nervous reaction to his nearness.
"Right now there's nothing to connect me to the fire other than speculation. And we both know that speculation won't hold up in court."
He was right. And she hated it, along with his ease around her, the fact that he wasn't taunting her in any way, wasn't even attacking her for coming after him.
"Some cases come together faster than others," she said, feigning tranquillity she certainly didn't feel. "I'm not going to give up."
"I know you won't, Maya," he said in the same voice he would have used to coax a frightened kitten out of a tree. "Can't you see? We're on the same team. I want to find the arsonist. I want to make sure he pays for what he's done, for dragging my name through the mud and my men with it."
His inescapable logic combined with the sensual force of his bright blue eyes, his white teeth against tanned skin, was enough to break her, to get to her agree to anything he desired. He'd had a lifetime to practice his charming lines on unsuspecting females who fell for the gorgeous picture he presented.
"I know Desolation Wilderness like the back of my hand. I can help you find the real arsonist."
Goddamn it, she hated that he was making sense. Even more, she hated how tempting his offer was. The chance to be near him tugged at her insides. Even though he'd just admitted to having been a pyromaniac. She was crazy to even consider his offer.
His cell phone rang and her first thought was that she'd been saved by the bell.
"Robbie? What's happened?"
She was halfway out the door when the anguish in Logan's voice stopped her midstride. A rush of words echoed in the small room, and as his face lost all color beneath his tanned skin chills ran up her spine.
A firefighter reacted like that only when something bad had happened to one of his men. Something really, really bad. And Maya knew better than anyone just how deadly fires could be.
"An explosion? Gasoline? Are you sure? I'm heading to the hospital right now." Logan pushed past her and out the door.
Maya's stomach twisted. A gasoline-fueled explosion didn't sound like another blowup. It sounded like arson at its worst. And based on nothing more than Logan's horrified reaction to the news, she knew he wasn't responsible.
She ran after him and reached his truck just as he was turning on the ignition. She yanked open the side door, barely jumping into the passenger seat before he slammed his foot on the gas pedal.
"What happened? Has there been another accident?"
A muscle jumped in his jaw and she knew that if she were in his shoes, she'd pull over on the shoulder of the freeway and kick him out the passenger door.
"I know you don't trust me, Logan, but I think you were right when you said the only way we can catch the arsonist is if we both know everything."
He didn't look away from the road at her deliberate use of the word "we," didn't outwardly react to her using his first name for the first time, but she knew he'd heard.
"I'm taking you up on your offer."
"Don't fuck with me, Maya. Not now."
She could understand his need to lash out at someone, anyone. He'd just found out horrible news about one of his men. She'd made it her mission to be a pain in his ass, and she was the only person within striking distance, so it was perfectly reasonable that he'd take his pain out on her. But an explosion that had hurt one of his men changed everything.
This was no longer the same case she'd opened Friday afternoon. The initial Desolation Wilderness wildfire had looked fairly cut and dry. But with the fire in her motel and this explosion, she was sure they were up against a dangerous serial arsonist. Again she wondered about the strange voice on the tip line. Had someone wanted to hurt Logan by framing him as an arsonist?
"If someone is setting off explosions to hurt your men, it could be the same person that lit my motel room on fire."
She'd do whatever she needed to do to
catch this arsonist. Even if it meant partnering with a former pyromaniac whose mere presence played havoc with her insides.
"Logan, I need your help before they hurt anyone else. I need to know what happened."
She'd barely finished her plea when Logan slammed on the brakes at a red light. The air rushed out of her lungs as she flung toward the windshield, her seat belt locking into place just in time.
"Jesus, I shouldn't be driving this fast. Are you okay?"
"Yes. Don't worry about it. Just tell me what's happened. Please."
"Late last night the fire shifted direction toward a second housing development."
She could hear the pain in the raw timbre of his voice and when he didn't elaborate, she pushed him forward. "Given what I saw from the helicopter, it didn't look like the fire had touched any of the houses yet. Has that changed?"
"No. Not yet."
She waited silently, as patiently as she could, for him to continue. She knew what it was like to need some time to process information, to try to figure everything out in your own head before you told anyone. It was precisely why she hadn't talked with anyone about Tony since his death.
The strange thing was, she suddenly realized, Logan knew more about how she felt than anyone else. For some reason, she'd felt comfortable talking to him about Tony. Was it simply because he was a firefighter? Or was something else there that she didn't want to see?
Logan's voice brought her back to the present situation. "Gary thought he was giving Robbie one of the safer jobs. Robbie's young. Too green to be in the thick of the fire. He was lighting a backfire a quarter of a mile from the property line. It's textbook." His mouth tightened with rage. "Anyone who knows wildfire behavior would have lit it there. There's no way this explosion could have been an accident."
"Has anyone tested samples yet to make sure it's gasoline?"
Dennis and the heavy smell of fresh gasoline on his hand immediately sprang to mind. Could he have been involved with the explosion in some way?
"Robbie wouldn't be in the burn ward fighting for his life if some motherfucker hadn't gone out there and doused the entire area. He didn't stand a goddamn chance. The grass blew up in his face. Gary said he was covered in flames, head to toe, and was unconscious by the time anyone could smother the flames and get to him."
Logan's voice didn't break, his armor didn't fall, and that was what got to Maya the most. It was his job to hold himself together even in the worst of circumstances, when the men he loved were dying.
"He's a goddamned rookie. A great kid with a pretty girlfriend in town."
"I would have given my life for my brother's," she said gently, knowing that Logan had to feel the same way, that he believed he'd personally let down Robbie by not being beside him to pull him away from the flames.
No one should go through that kind of helpless pain alone.
"We'll find out who did this to him. I promise." Logan fishtailed into the hospital parking lot, then leapt out of the truck. She ran through the glass sliding doors a beat behind him.
For the hundredth time, Maya seriously questioned Logan's guilt. There was no way he could have poured gasoline over dry grass in the middle of the night, knowing one of his men might go up in flames. This explosion smacked of a psychotic arsonist who didn't care whom he hurt.
In five years of involved investigations, Maya had never heard the clock ticking so loudly, or so quickly. She was up against a serious threat. They all were.
Logan pushed through a glass-fronted door, and when she saw what had happened to Robbie, her spinning thoughts ground to a halt.
My God.
Tears filled her eyes and it took every ounce of will for her to remain standing. Memories flooded into her system, rising up from the linoleum floor tiles through her feet, gunning for her heart, trying to break her again, just as they'd broken her before.
Robbie lay on the hospital bed, hooked up to a life support system, wrapped head to toe in white gauze. When he woke up--if he woke up--he would be in more pain than anyone should ever have to live through.
A pretty blonde girl who'd been weeping beside Robbie ran into Logan's arms, and he held her tight as she sobbed against him. When the girl finally stepped out of his comforting embrace a few minutes later, Maya could have sworn she'd taken some of Logan's strength with her.
The girl left the room in a daze, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. Maya watched Logan kneel on the floor beside Robbie, his head tucked down along the side of a bandaged hand. She didn't know if he was praying or simply hiding his tears.
She'd been through hell with her brother, and still she didn't know a damn thing about dealing with it.
She blinked and wiped away the tears leaking out from beneath her lashes. When the apartment building had collapsed around Tony and his body had been pinned beneath a thick ceiling beam, the other firefighters hadn't been able to drag him out. The heat of the flames had destroyed everything. Even his bones had been reduced to ashes. She'd been so angry for so long at not even being given the chance to say good-bye to him in a hospital.
But now that she saw Robbie surrounded by machines, she wondered if Tony had been the lucky one. In all likelihood, her brother had died on impact. Whereas pain would be Robbie's constant companion for the next several years ... if he survived.
She pushed away from the window and wiped her eyes dry. She couldn't allow long-buried grief, or its fresh counterpart, to muddy her thinking. She had to stay focused on the investigation. But it took a long moment to remember where she'd been when Logan heard the news about Robbie. She'd been standing in the airport office questioning Logan and wondering about Dennis's motives.
Intent on finding out more about Dennis, she headed to a nurses' station.
"This is going to sound like an odd request, but I really have to get online to look something up. Could I use one of your computers for thirty seconds?"
The two nurses sitting behind the counter frowned. "I'm sorry, ma'am," one of them said, "but I'm afraid we can't permit you to do that."
Maya swallowed a frustrated snarl. She wasn't simply wanting to check her e-mail to see if her nonexistent boyfriend had sent her a note. But they didn't know the severity of the situation. Somehow, she needed to walk the fine line between confidentiality and disclosure.
"I'm an arson investigator," she said quietly. "And I desperately need to print out a document regarding the hotshot who just came in. It's a vital clue in my search for the person that did this to him."
One of the nurses leaned forward and looked both ways down the empty hall. "You can use my computer. But hurry, honey. I don't want anyone to see."
Maya slipped through the swinging door and took the woman's office chair.
"Ellen, you could get fired for doing this," the other nurse hissed.
Maya quickly pulled up a government background check on Dennis Kellerman as Ellen responded to her coworker with a snort.
"You heard her. She needs to catch an arsonist. I don't want to see another kid with third-degree burns over eighty percent of his body come in here."
Maya cringed. Eighty percent. My God, she'd known people who'd recovered from third-degree burns on one arm, and their pain had been excruciating. Her heart broke again at the thought of what Robbie would go through if he managed to pull through the initial physical shock.
With shaking hands, she printed the document and logged out. "Thank you," she said to Ellen as she retrieved the pages from the printer.
"No, honey, thank you." She patted Maya on the shoulder. "Now go find the bad people and lock them up. We're counting on you."
Feeling the weight of expectations on her shoulders-- her own the biggest of all--Maya quickly read through Dennis's short file. She sensed Logan before she saw him, and when she looked up he was looming tall and dangerous over her shoulder before she could hide the document.
"Dennis? Why are you doing a background search on him?"
Confidentiality was
crucial. She shouldn't tell Logan anything, should never have let one of her suspects see a copy of another suspect's background check, even if she'd suggested they share information. She felt like her own back was against the wall.
"I have to be suspicious of everyone, Logan. It's the only way I'm going to find out who started these fires."
"There's nothing on Dennis. He's as innocent as they come. Jesus, Maya, the longer it takes us to find the real arsonist, the more people are going to get hurt." She read the grief, the anger on his face and felt them as her own. "One kid is already lying half dead in a hospital bed. We can't wait for another one of my men to end up covered in bandages."
She put her hand on his arm, then yanked it away at the surge of heat between them. "Neither of us wants that, Logan. And if I'm wrong about your foster brother, I'll back off. But if I find something there, I have to do my job and look into it."
He stood in the hospital hallway watching her, his shoulders so broad they almost looked like they were going to bump against the pale green walls.
"Tell me why Dennis is suddenly on your list."
An hour ago, she wouldn't have even considered letting Logan in on her investigation, but after having seen him with Robbie, she was absolutely certain he hadn't set off this explosion. Watching him at Robbie's bedside as much as made her decision for her: They would work together to investigate this new fire, and along the way she hoped to get some answers regarding the initial wildfire.
"I smelled gasoline on his hands."
"He's a helicopter pilot. He probably just filled the tank before your flight."
"Maybe." Maya noticed that the nurses were hanging on their every word. Either that or drooling over Logan. Probably both. "Let's go outside, where we can talk privately." They stepped under the covered entryway. "I've been thinking about some of the things Dennis said to me during our flight. Things he told me about you."
When Logan didn't respond, she asked, "Don't you want to know what he said?"
"He didn't do it."
"Humor me, okay? Would you say that you and Dennis have a good relationship?"
"Yes."
"Is your relationship with Dennis strained in any way?"