Crash and Burn (Wildfire Hearts Book 1) Read online

  But once she’d finished up with Mr. Mackey’s land division, she’d napped, made coffee, and pretended she was starting her day for the first time. Some of her research about the house and the area had been comforting and some of it had been absolutely petrifying.

  Maggie had not heard of the Blue River Killer before Mrs. Miller had decided it was excellent gossip. From what Maggie found online, Mrs. Miller needn’t worry as she was not the Blue River Killer’s target demographic. The upside was that Maggie didn’t fit the profile either.

  This murderer pulled women and young men from nightclubs and apparently talked them into walking with him and maybe even getting into his car. There was never any sign of a struggle near the point where they were last seen. No one had been abducted from their own home. And none had been a red-headed lawyer in her mid-thirties newly arrived in Nebraska. This guy liked blondes.

  Maggie had also been reading up on break-ins in general. She felt better knowing it was extremely rare for a burglar to come back to the scene. So when Sebastian had called that night and asked if she wanted him to stay, she’d been comfortable enough to say no.

  If things got bad, she would head to a hotel. But she didn't really have money for a hotel. Redemption wasn’t booming with legal needs, and if it wasn't for her volunteer position at the fire station and the friends she was making, Maggie would have considered packing up and moving.

  Hell, she was considering it anyway. She'd already contemplated selling the house, though it felt a little unfair to do so. Maggie had definitely been her aunt Abbie's favorite, though there had been three other grandkids related to Abbie the same way.

  If she sold the house now, she would feel compelled to split the money equally. But Abbie had left the house to her because she thought Maggie had loved the house. The problem was that as a child she’d loved its twisted servants’ staircase from the kitchen. The slim space had always felt like it was just her size. She’d loved the big backyard and the porch that wrapped all the way around the house. Here she’d had blackberries that lined the back fence and Abbie had let her scatter wildflower seeds along the sides of the yard.

  But what she’d really loved was spending summers with Aunt Abbie. Without her great aunt and her childhood adventures, the place wasn’t the same. The blackberries and wildflowers were still there, and so was the servants’ staircase. Though it was still really cool, cleaning the place was a bitch. As an adult, it wasn't quite as whimsical.

  She had only been here a few months, but it was past time to admit that it was killing her to keep it. The problem was, what could she sell it for? It was in disrepair, luckily falling into the “shabby chic” phase, but probably barely worth anything in a town this small with no real tourism.

  Maggie rolled out of bed Saturday morning thinking that the next day was A-shift at the station. She was going to go in and do her volunteer work and not interfere with her weekly work schedule. Filing the reports, making the dispatcher’s schedules and organizing the station house were at least tasks that were do-able. It felt good to be useful to the people keeping the town safe. She even looked forward to calling the medical cases from the week’s runs and seeing if they were doing okay. If she worked on her own house today, she could hopefully count more things checked off, and at least not be even further behind this week.

  She pulled on cut off jeans and an old t shirt worn thin in the wash. Maggie was confident she would still get too hot and sweaty doing the work, though. She pulled on sneakers and tied them into perfect bows, as if going slowly now would make her day run a little more smoothly.

  She hadn't heard any noises the past few nights. Though she'd woken up once around two am the night before, she had heard nothing but the wind and she’d managed to roll over and get back to sleep. Maggie decided to count that as a win.

  She procrastinated a little more by lingering over a bowl of oatmeal and starting a pot of coffee. Eventually, she headed into the room where the loose floorboard still sat sideways, leaving a gaping hole. She would have to fix that. She couldn't stand seeing it each time she walked in.

  But Maggie still hadn’t figured out the best method. So she wouldn’t touch it today. She didn't need the frustration of going down the rabbit hole of Do-It-Yourself videos. Plugging in the steamer, she decided to attack the wallpaper.

  One wall was mostly stripped when she heard a knock at her front door. Who was knocking on her door at nine am on a Saturday? Given what had transpired the other night, she was no longer saying hello and pulling the door open wide. On her tiptoes, she checked the peephole and smiled. She wasn’t surprised to see Sebastian.

  Now, she did throw the door open wide and stepped back as she said, “Good morning.”

  She didn’t formally invite him inside. He’d become that kind of friend. Hell, anyone who showed up in the middle of the night when you had a prowler automatically qualified.

  He didn't step over the threshold, but glanced at her up and down. For a moment she thought if she'd known he was coming over, she might have put some makeup on, or maybe not worn these shorts. The jeans were fraying with a few strings hanging down her thighs. Not her best look. But if you showed up unannounced, you got what you got.

  Sebastian saw the coffee mug in one hand and the hammer in the other. With a grin he asked, “Weapon or home improvement?”

  She laughed, “Home Improvement.”

  He hooked the thumb over his shoulder toward where his car was parked. Then he said maybe the best thing he could.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sebastian walked the hardwood floor in a grid pattern checking for other squeaks. He shouldn’t have shown up and offered to help. But it wasn’t as if Rex could take the day off and do it. And Sebastian was finding it hard to stay away.

  So he lied to himself about small town charm and being neighborly and he showed up on her doorstep. He’d now put the missing floorboard back into place. Patching the hole made the room look less sinister, and he hoped it gave Maggie a little peace of mind.

  When he didn’t hear anything this time around, he wanted to believe he’d gotten all the squeaky boards. Only fifteen more rooms to go. That would be a lot of time around Maggie … if he could handle it. He looked across the room to find her peeling back the paper on yet another wall.

  “Wow, that’s impressive.”

  Her sincere thank you made him smile, probably a little broader than he should have. She was using a steamer and a wide scraping tool to pull off the layers in gooey sheets. It shouldn’t have been attractive. Damn Rex. And damn himself for not asking her out sooner.

  “Sebastian, come look at this.”

  “What is it?” He was afraid it was another hidey hole with another sinister surprise, but thankfully it wasn’t.

  “Look at this,” she said holding up a layer of wallpaper she’d peeled away. She’d revealed the layer of white wallpaper with burgundy colored line drawings of French families playing in the countryside.

  “There are a lot of layers on this wall,” he commented. “I didn't know there was a toile under here.”

  Maggie raised one eyebrow at him, seemingly surprised he understood. His mother loved the stuff, that’s how he knew what a toile was, but he didn’t say anything.

  “It's not that it's toile,” she said, and pointed at several different spots. “Look closely. It has monkeys. This is monkey toile.”

  “Is monkey toile even a thing?” He’d not seen it with anything other than people and a few birds before.

  “I guess it is. Someone clearly manufactured it.” She shook her head at the wall as though it were misbehaving. “It still has to go.”

  “If you want to peel the layers separately, you can frame a square of it to keep if you want.”

  “Look at you, Mr. Home Improvement,” she teased and turned back to working on the wall.

  He watched her stand on tiptoes in those short shorts, her legs stretching as she reached up high. Her shirt pulled up when she moved her a
rm over her head, revealing a slice of smooth skin at her waist. It was all making Sebastian a little crazy.

  Rex should be here, not him.

  He understood that Rex couldn’t be here and he wasn’t going to encroach on a fellow firefighter’s girlfriend. But Maggie needed a hand and a spare set of eyes on the lookout. If anyone saw him looking at Maggie's ass, well, he’d have to figure out something to say for that, too.

  In an effort to shift his thoughts, he shifted the conversation. “How has it been here at night?”

  He’d driven by himself at least once each night, wanting to keep her safe, and also trying to respect the choice she'd made not to have him stay over. She’d gathered plenty of information, and she convinced herself—and mostly him, too—that she was safe enough. Her burglar had gotten inside the house and hadn't found what he wanted. He'd been actively chased off and he shouldn’t have reason to come back.

  “I’m doing better,” she said, as she kept working. “The police are driving by a little more. I’ve heard them passing at different hours some nights.”

  He didn’t comment that she might have heard him checking on her, too.

  “Have they gotten back to you?” He was curious what the results were from all the jewelry in the box.

  “Nope,” Maggie shook her head, seeming happy. “I figure that has to be good news. If that box was full of serial killer trophies, someone would know, and we would have heard before now.”

  Sebastian nodded along. That reasoning made sense. Plus, he and Marina Balero had dated for almost six months—nothing hot and heavy, and when they had broken up it had been relatively amicable. He wanted to believe she would tell him if there was something he needed to know.

  He hadn't heard anything either, which was another relief. But he didn't say this to Maggie. She would wind up asking about the obvious history between him and the officer. He wasn't ready to volunteer his past.

  They worked together through periods of easy silence and bursts of conversation. He learned all kinds of things about Maggie and it bothered him that the information all made him like her more. He wanted to find something that would make him back off. But this was, once again, having the opposite effect on him.

  She'd been on the dance team in high school and always wanted to be a lawyer. She was a little frustrated with the slow speed at which her business had been growing in Redemption, but she countered quickly. “I knew this was a possibility, but I told myself it would happen faster. I was here when I was a kid, but I’m not really a local. So I guess I don’t have that advantage of everyone knowing me and trusting me right off the bat.”

  He'd agreed. People were just a little insular that way. Even though they liked Maggie, it would take a while before they brought their business to her. It wasn’t like she was selling hardware at a discount either, she was offering personal services like contracts between friends and partners, wills and prenups. Maybe he could talk Rex and the others into promoting her business as a thank you for her volunteer work.

  At lunchtime, she insisted on buying him a sandwich. Then he tagged along to the paint store—like a friend, and not like a man who desperately wanted a woman he couldn't have. Sebastian wound up providing commentary on paint colors.

  She raised a delicate eyebrow at him once again, a look he was coming to appreciate.

  “Do you just do everything?” she asked.

  He finally confessed to why he knew these things. “No, but my dad is a master carpenter—he’s done construction and contracted houses—and my mother is an interior designer. So I know things. Ask me about your color palette and whether you want modern, farmhouse, or cool beach tones.”

  At least he’d made her laugh, and the sound diffused through his system. Rex was an idiot.

  Sebastian stayed with her as late as he could, hanging out and working until Maggie decided her day was over. She fed him soup that she'd made and frozen earlier in the week. Then she thanked him profusely, until it was clear that she was ready to be home alone for the evening.

  There were no hugs, just a friendly goodbye, no matter how much he would have loved if there was something more between them. But as he got in his car and pulled away, Sebastian still couldn't quell the uneasy feeling that had grown steadily throughout the day.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Maggie sat across from the chief, trying to keep her hands from fidgeting and showing her nerves. It was like being called into the principal’s office as a kid, only she knew better than to squirm now.

  She pushed her hands between her knees and tried to sit calmly, as though that would hide her irritation. Rex sat next to her and leaned back in the chair. His butt slid toward the front edge, his hand on his forehead and, as irritated as she was, she felt surprisingly sorry for the man.

  “I don't know what's going on with you two,” Chief Taggert said, but he shook his head as though he didn’t want to know. Turning to look directly at Maggie, he said, “We love having you here. We need you as a volunteer. And I was happy when you came back on A-shift.”

  She nodded. She already knew that, and she knew it was because they had volunteers on the other two shifts already. He'd been willing to let her trade shifts to babysit Hannah in a domino effect to keep both his volunteer and his firefighter when Rex suddenly inherited his daughter. But now, things were supposed to have gone back to normal and he was as frustrated as they both were.

  “Rex,” Taggert turned to her now-ex-boyfriend, his hands clasped together on the desk. “I can’t have your child dropped off here.”

  “I know. I told the sitter that, but clearly I can't control what she does.” He sounded so defeated that Maggie wanted to help, but she couldn’t always take up the slack.

  Rex’s new babysitter had made it through only one and a half shifts. Not even that, Maggie thought. The older woman had come in today with Hannah and her stroller and a fully packed bag. The firefighters had all smiled and said hello and Maggie had thought how nice it was to be on this end of things for once. But then the woman had pulled Rex aside and apparently explained that her daughter had gotten a horrible diagnosis, and she was leaving town … right that moment.

  Maggie had heard part of the conversation. “I understand,” Rex had assured the woman. “I'll find another sitter for Thursday.”

  Though Maggie hadn't heard the rest, it had become very clear when the sitter left and Hannah didn’t. Rex had to explain to the chief that his child was in the station and he suddenly had no childcare for her.

  It had been hard enough finding this woman. Maggie didn’t know what he would do.

  The chief wasn’t done. “Either someone takes your daughter—quickly—or you take a sick day and I call in a sub.”

  Rex hated taking sick days, Maggie knew. In fact, he picked up most of the spare shifts that he could. Since Hannah had arrived he’d worked exactly zero extra hours.

  It was costing him, especially now with the child care on top of the loss of income. He’d been paying child support, but now he was paying everything. The last Maggie knew, he'd heard nothing from Hannah's mother.

  The chief looked back to Maggie. And she understood what he was silently asking. She was the easiest fix to the situation—even if she didn't like it.

  So she turned to her ex. “Three hours. I will take her for three hours until you find another sitter.” She hated to have to be so harsh, but she had to get her business going or it was going to fail. There was also the issue of the house. “I can’t keep her overnight. And if I don’t get my business going, I have to go back to LA. Then there’s no sitter and no A-shift volunteer at all.”

  “I thought you were doing fine.”

  “I am. But only if I have the hours to run my own life.” Maggie tried not to grind her teeth, but maybe he just wanted to be sure she was okay. He was a decent guy, just in a shitty situation. “But if someone breaks in again, you don’t want Hannah there!”

  Wow, she thought, just those words coming out of her mout
h were concerning enough. Rex nodded. She held up a hand to the chief who was looking alarmed. “Nothing has happened since last week. I'm doing okay. The police are sending patrols by. I don't think my burglar is coming back. But if he does—” she turned back to Rex, “—and Hannah was in the house with me, I would never forgive myself.”

  He wouldn’t either. She knew that much. If anything happened to her, he’d blame himself and his circumstances with Hannah and his ex. But it wasn’t his fault, and Maggie wasn’t his girlfriend anymore. She said the words again. “Three hours.”

  “Thank you. Really. I appreciate it.”

  She looked between the two men who seemed to believe that that fixed everything, but it messed everything up. Her volunteer work was cut an hour short, but the chief seemed to think it was worth it to get his firefighter back and not have to call in a sub.

  Heading out into the main room she found Hannah squealing and running around. She was playing with Sebastian and Kalan. Apparently one of them was chasing the other two, but Maggie couldn't figure out quite which way it went. When it calmed down, she packed the little girl into her stroller and gathered Hannah's things along with her own, making it look more like a camping trip than a walk home.

  As she said goodbye, knowing the guys were watching her, and thinking … well, whatever they thought about her doing all this for Rex and Hannah, She heard the Chief’s phone buzz and her heart sank. Sure enough, thirty seconds later the alarm rang and the men scrambled into action. She heard the call—both trucks. It could be nothing, but there was every chance that Rex wouldn’t even be done with this call in three hours, let alone have another sitter lined up to get his daughter.