Crash and Burn (Wildfire Hearts Book 1) Page 6

  She tried to put her best face forward to the little girl. None of this was Hannah’s fault, but Maggie felt only resentment as she pushed the stroller through the bay doors and down the sidewalk. As the trucks rolled and bounced past them, Hannah waved and squealed and Maggie looked up in time to see a few of the guys waving back to her.

  They hit the park and played until the small bag of snacks ran out. She counted the cars that went by, suspicious of everyone and everything and hating being out in the open. But Hannah loved the park and the silver sedan wasn’t evil, just someone she didn’t know. When they were done, she pushed the stroller the five blocks back to her own home, her stomach twisting the whole way.

  She’d texted Rex multiple times but got no word back. So Maggie fed Hannah dinner and they watched the sunset out the front window.

  Even as Hannah squealed at a pair of squirrels running up and down the big tree in the front yard, Maggie looked at her watch. It had been five hours and there was no word.

  Were the guys safe? The fire must have been bigger than just a small call. They were called out for more than just smoke alerts and medical emergencies, though they got those, too. Sometimes wildfires came close to town, and their crew was added in with the smoke jumpers and stations from Lincoln or even Omaha.

  They were as safe as they could be, but it wasn’t a safe job.

  She checked her phone again as the front yard grew dark and she grew more and more worried. As she pulled Hannah away from the window, Maggie saw the silver sedan go by again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Maggie had slept on the couch in the living room the night before. The crick in her neck wasn't doing her any favors nor was the maybe four hours total sleep she'd gotten during eight different attempts.

  Stretching her arms up, she felt the pull of angry muscles. Maggie tipped her head side to side, glad that Hannah wasn't here. Having a toddler would have only made the night worse and heightened her paranoia.

  Rex had shown up and fetched Hannah about thirty minutes after Maggie had finally given up and put her to sleep. He'd managed to text a few minutes before he was on his way but it wasn't much warning. Still Maggie was glad to have Hannah with Rex where she belonged, even though it had meant Rex missed part of his shift.

  He hadn’t been able to find a babysitter at all. Maggie quashed her guilt. She felt bad that she couldn’t help him out, but she was concerned about having Hannah overnight before she’d seen the silver sedan go by at both the park and her house.

  So she’d stayed up late, fully dressed and sitting on the couch. She clutched her high-powered LED flashlight and sat in the dark, watching out the small slit in the front curtains. Maggie had hoped she would be able to see if someone came on her property. She was hoping the streetlights were bright enough she could catch the license plate if the silver sedan went by again.

  It hadn't.

  She’d given up around two a.m. then woken up numerous times throughout the night to various creepy noises. She’d shown the light into the front yard once and the back yard three times. If anyone had actually been on her property, the powerful beam had scared them off.

  In the morning, she’d headed outside and checked the grass for any new evidence. There had been no new footprints, but there hadn't been any new rains either and Maggie honestly didn't know what she was looking for. She thought about calling Sebastian and telling him about the silver sedan—just so someone else would know where to start looking if something happened to her.

  But the sun was coming in through the sheers and the fears of the night before began to recede. So, after she'd eaten her oatmeal and had her coffee, Maggie got dressed for the day and called the police station. She was hoping for a little bit of good news to tip her world back to upright.

  She waited on hold two different times as she was passed from department to department. Finally, Officer Balero answered the phone. “Miss Willis—”

  “Maggie, please,” she offered. Despite the strange tension lingering between Sebastian and the officer, Maggie liked her. Maybe she'd find out whatever that bit of gossip was later. “I was hoping to get my box of jewelry back. I've been looking through my aunt's records and trying to find who the tenants were. I’d like to return things to their owners.”

  “Oh,” Marina seemed surprised by the request and it took her a moment to respond.

  In the space before she answered, Maggie felt her stomach twist—a feeling that was becoming far too common in her life.

  Her best case scenario was simply that they wouldn't return the box. And though she was trying to find the owners, she really didn't care about the jewelry itself. Right now, she didn't know who it belonged to. If she found out who it belonged to, he could go to the police and request it back himself.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Marina’s next words stunned her. “We don't have the box anymore … Nor any of the jewelry.”

  “What happened to it?” Maggie blurted out the words before thinking. That was not her usual style. As a lawyer she'd been carefully trained to think before she spoke. But she felt she was blurting out so many things these days, because the world was moving both too slow and too fast.

  Her brain tumbled over ideas as if she were running too quickly downhill. Maybe it had been lost. She'd always heard about evidence going missing. If that was true, she didn't care, but it was the tone and the officer’s voice as she gave the information that had Maggie's tension ratcheting up again.

  “The FBI has the box.”

  “The FBI? Why?” Again, she blurted her thoughts.

  “They took it as evidence—” Marina seemed to cut off the last word, as though she were going to say more before thinking better of it.

  Maggie wasn't having any of that. Though she wasn’t a courtroom lawyer, she’d also been trained in tenacity. She’d harbored hopes that one day she and the officer might be friends. This was putting a damper on that, as her tone came out harsher than intended. “Evidence of what?”

  Silence reigned from the other end of the line.

  Maggie tried a tactic she knew when waiting out a client, one that let them off the hook. Legally they could say later that they’d never told her anything. “Okay, if I'm wrong, tell me no. The FBI took my jewelry box as evidence because they think the jewelry in it links to a crime.”

  Silence stretched again and Maggie waited, hoping the officer would say something to put her at ease, but nothing happened.

  Maggie pushed a little harder, not liking where this was going, but needing answers. “They took it because they think it's related to the Blue River Killer.”

  Again, Marina Balero didn’t speak

  Holy shit.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Kane! Come around to the front with me.”

  The chief motioned for Hernandez to take Sebastian’s place on the fire hose. They were soaking the final corner of a home that had been almost fully engulfed just hours before. Only the front of the home had survived, making it look a little surreal from the street view.

  He operated a stepwise hand-off with Luke. The power of the firehose could get away and cause more problems if the exchange wasn’t well orchestrated. When Hernandez was successfully in his spot, Sebastian headed toward the wet and dirty front yard. It had been a long night to say the least.

  At the front entry, he waited as his boss slowly placed a foot, and then his whole weight, on each of the steps from the front porch. It looked as though the area had remained untouched by the fire, but they both knew looks could be deceiving.

  Firefighters all learned early on to be rule followers, for their own safety and that of their brothers. So Sebastian followed rank and waited until the chief turned around and motioned for him to follow. Only then did he pull his mask off and breathe open air.

  “I need your head in the game on this one,” the chief told him, as he opened the front door, a silly gesture given that the back half of the house was mostly gone.

  Sebastian
wondered what the chief had meant about his head being in the game, but he nodded in agreement. It had to mean that all his distractions and worry about Maggie had been showing. As it ran through his head quickly, he took a brief moment to decide what to say.

  Rex was another firefighter that the chief was having trouble with. Though it wasn’t anyone's fault, and they all knew it, it might help if the chief knew what was going on. Sebastian spoke up. “Before you go in … I don't know how much of this Rex knows, because he's been so swamped lately, but Maggie's had a burglary at her home.”

  “She told me all of it a while ago,” Chief answered as though to ask if there was anything else.

  That was good at least, Sebastian bought. “So you know about the jewelry box?”

  Now his chief frowned at him. Maybe she hadn’t told him all of it. “She found a box of jewelry shoved under the floorboards and it looked very suspicious. It's been given to the police.”

  “Interesting.” The chief drew out the word as though the story had finally become pertinent. “Do they think the two are related?”

  “We don't know yet,” Sebastian said. “But that's where my head has been. I've been trying to help out.”

  The chief nodded at him and Sebastian fought the flush that wanted to creep up his cheeks as though his father had caught him crushing on some high school girl. He stumbled through the words to cover it up, and probably did a crap job. “You said to get my head in the game. It is, but that's where it's been, and I thought you should know since she's our volunteer.”

  The volunteers were considered part of the team and this was a job where being distracted could get you killed and though it hadn't been comfortable, Sebastian was glad he’d brought his boss fully up to speed.

  Though Sebastian was ready to head inside and investigate, the chief turned back to him and offered up, “That might have something to do with why she and Rex broke up and why she's not watching Hannah anymore even though the new babysitter quit. It's been a cluster.”

  Sebastian tripped over his own thoughts at the information. They’d broken up?

  That was the last thing anyone should have said to get his head in the game. So with sheer force of will, he turned his thoughts back to the building. “Well, now that everyone's up to date. What's going on in here?”

  “We're looking for any obvious signs of arson.” The chief opened the door and gingerly headed into the room. “Can't get into the back half of the house yet, but I'm curious if anything might be visible here.”

  Sebastian nodded and stepped inside. The carpet squished under his feet and he lifted his mask back to his face taking a hit of cleaner air. His nose had tickled at the telltale scents.

  Every firefighter was trained in recognizing the signs of arson. Investigators would be brought in for more detailed analysis if the situation warranted. Often the insurance companies paid their own investigator after the fact. So he and the chief were just the first wave of inspection right now.

  The chief was of course the most highly trained local investigator—except for Sebastian. Last year, he'd won a coveted position at Quantico training. Now, he was on his way to being name district’s official arson investigator, a position the chief now occupied. It was a question of whether the chief handed him the role or if Sebastian would have to wait until the older man retired.

  Sebastian had even considered throwing his hat in the ring for chief. That meant working toward his next promotion now, and there was no time like the present.

  Together they scanned the area and for a few moments, neither said anything. His thoughts were focused on the sound of the water buffeting the last wall in the back of the house, the words of firefighters issuing commands through the slightly staticky comm at his shoulder.

  Sebastian tried to see the place with unbiased eyes as he and the chief each came to their own conclusions before sharing. But to Sebastian the burn trail across the carpet was clear. Someone had lit the fire in this room and it had snaked along the trail and into the back half of the house.

  The chief broke the silence first, since this didn’t require much discussion. “It’s pretty clearly accelerant.”

  Sebastian pointed into his boss’s line of sight, his big glove making the gesture almost too obvious. “It's a shitty job. I don't know if they thought the fire would cover the evidence. It could be they’re an idiot for not hiding their own tracks. Or maybe this was blatant, and they wanted us to know.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Maggie had been awake all night. She was exhausted, wired, and mad at the world.

  At one am coffee had seemed like a good idea. But at seven, as the sun came up, it was clear she’d been making bad choices. She hadn't been in danger of falling asleep; she was far too concerned about every noise and every car passing on the street.

  She had not seen a silver sedan again, which was a relief. However, a police car had cruised her street three different times. She knew this, because every time she heard an engine, she dashed to the window. Each time a tree tapped on a window, she ran frantically around the house looking for intruders.

  So she sat with her fifth—or seventh?—cup of coffee and watched the sun come up out her back window. The sunrise was gorgeous, though maybe if only because it indicated that her night was over. She was a wreck.

  The entire night was a stunning reminder of what a shitty job she'd done of making friends.

  When she’d first moved to Redemption a few months ago, she’d thought she could reconnect with her childhood friends here. That had been a pipe dream, because she knew adults didn't really work that way. And it hadn’t happened. Maggie wasn’t a local, she was a summertime visitor at best. Instead, she’d been raised in Los Angeles and still carried the city vibe.

  She didn’t fit in. And asking if there were women’s clothing shops and then not shopping at them because they weren’t her style didn’t help. But she desperately wanted to fit in, to make a home here. It just wasn’t happening as fast as she’d like. She’d spent days with the tight clench in her chest worrying her that she’d always be an outsider.

  So when Rex had asked her out, she’d instantly said yes. She liked him and hoped for more, and she’d fit in easily with his circle of friends. Maybe she was also trying to prove to herself that Ryan and Celeste were not her fault. That finding her groom in bed with her best friend a week before the wedding was on them and not her. To add to the horrifyingly cliched betrayal, her father insisted that she go through with the wedding. It had been far too expensive to let something so miniscule get in the way.

  That was how she’d come to believe that her parents’ marriage had not been a faithful one, a harsh blow for any adult who’d grown up with other ideas. She’d been too young when her mother died to see it, but now …?

  Looking back, Rex had seemed a safe bet. Maybe because she knew she’d never really fall for him and he couldn’t hurt her. Maybe because the circle of his friends had made her feel as if she might belong.

  Now, she was confident he had retained the friends in the breakup.

  And Maggie was back at square one, only now she was on her own with a serial killer looking for things in her house.

  She needed help. The two people she could pick up the phone and call were Rex and Sebastian, not that Rex could do anything. Revealing the glaring absence of a friend circle even more, both men worked the same shift at the fire station. So for a minimum of one day out of every three, she had no one.

  A-shift had been on duty yesterday and last night. And Maggie had no one to call since she’d learned that the FBI believed her stupid jewelry box might be associated with the Blue River Killer. At least it looked like the police had stepped up their drive by checks of her house, but she still felt incredibly exposed.

  Sebastian had volunteered several times to stay over and Maggie was ready to take him up on it. Screw what the neighbors thought.

  Let them believe she was sleeping with a firefighter. Her business might take a h
it, but it wasn’t like it was thriving anyway. And she'd still be alive later to give it another try or move back to LA with her father … a thought that churned her gut as much as the jewelry box.

  She was already calculating the loss of income. Her brain churned through possibilities like a brush fire. One option was to sell the house and move away and ignore what that would look like to her cousins. Yes, the house had been willed to her because Aunt Abbie knew she loved it. But if a serial killer was breaking in, wasn’t that plenty enough excuse to get the hell out of dodge?

  Still, she didn’t want to leave.

  She was exhausted from staying up and running around like a fool every time a light passed by. She’d tried to read, but she didn't dare turn on the TV for fear that it would mask any noises and the killer would be standing in the doorway before she knew he was even in the house.

  Though it was daylight and she was breathing easier, she still couldn’t go to sleep. She had three clients, starting at nine. Thank God.

  It had originally surprised Maggie that the town's older residents were the ones turning up on her doorstep. She'd fully expected her clients would be closer to her own generation but, two days earlier, Mr. Muskogee, had been very clear. “Sabbie told me you were excellent. So here I am!”

  It seemed the vast majority of her business roster had been handpicked by Aunt Abbie. Even before she died, she’d been drumming up business for Maggie.

  Sitting on her couch, and contemplating the sorry state of her life, Maggie started to cry. Tears rolled quietly down her cheeks and threatened to drop into the mug of coffee that had gone cold in her grip. She missed Abbie fiercely, but she could hear her aunt’s voice in her head.

  Abbie would tell her to buck up. She'd say, “You've got a baseball bat and your brains. What else do you need?”

  She needed friends! She needed a home, and Redemption wasn’t it, not yet. Los Angeles wasn’t a safe haven to flee to. There was nothing. But the Abbie voice was right. Even through the tears, Maggie smiled.