Against the Fire (2 page)

Gabe spent the morning working away on his favorite project, the reconstruction of an old theater he owned on a street in Deep Ellum. The brick building had once been a local cinema, back in the days when they were extravagantly decorated and elegant. The ceiling was hand-painted in bright colors with lots of gold leaf. At least it was back in its heyday. The doors leading into the seating area were guarded by huge gilt Egyptian statues.

Wasn’t much of anything left when Gabe had first started. The red velvet seats were completely destroyed, turned into rust and mold by a hole in the roof that had let in years of rain. But the structure itself was still sound, the brick walls sturdy, once he’d had them reinforced.

He’d bought the place for a song, and a barrel of determination. He wanted to see the Egyptian restored and put back into use. He had already made deals with several local theater groups and the Deep Ellum Arts Festival folks. He had no doubt, once the elegant interior was restored, the theater would again be in great demand.

Besides, he had a personal love for the past that had started when he was a kid growing up in Wyoming. Wind Canyon was a true Western town and though he and his two brothers had been raised in a dumpy, run-down house near a set of abandoned narrow-gauge railroad tracks, the wooden boardwalks, long bar saloons and surrounding ranches had instilled in him a love of the West.

All three Raines boys had left Wind Canyon as soon as they had graduated high school, but a few years back his older brother, Jackson, had returned. He’d made a boatload of money in the oil business, bought himself twelve thousand acres of prime cattle land and renamed the old homestead Raintree Ranch.

Gabe had left Wind Canyon to join the marines. After a four-year stint, he had moved to Dallas and started working in the construction business. With Jackson’s help, he bought his first fixer-upper house, remodeled and sold it. He’d liked the work and the money he made and began doing a second one.

The real estate market was hot and Gabe was a hard worker. He made enough money to start his own company and the business had been growing ever since. Along with that, at Jackson’s advice, he’d invested some of his hard-earned dollars in Wildcat Oil, where his brother had worked as a geologist, and that had made money, too.

He been smart enough to see the recession coming and made changes that kept him from going broke like so many in the construction business had. There were a lot of opportunities, tax credits and incentives, he’d discovered, for doing downtown renovation and area redevelopment. So for the last couple of years he’d shifted his focus to that type of restoration and found he liked that work even more. Liked seeing a near-dead place come back to life, liked what it did for the people who lived in the area.

Gabe went to work with the nail gun, securing the floor of the stage. He didn’t do a lot of his own carpentry these days, but if he wasn’t too busy with meetings or solving problems at different job sites, he often lent a hand, doing what had gotten him started in the business in the first place.

The buzz of a nearby saw went silent and Gabe looked up to see two uniformed policemen sauntering down the aisle in his direction. Setting the nail gun aside, he rose to his feet, jumped off the stage, and strode up the aisle to intercept them.

“You Gabriel Raines?” the first patrolman asked, Gonzales, his name plate said.

“That’s me. What can I do for you?”

“The fire at the Towers was definitely arson. We’ve got a suspect in custody. We’d like you to come down and take a look, see if you might have seen him in the area last night.”

Arson. He’d been hoping it was just some kind of electrical problem. “Sure thing, I can do that.”

Officer Gonzales, with the hard-edged features of a seasoned policeman, and Delaney, the baby-faced cub of the pair, walked him back up the aisle.

“You can come with us or drive down on your own if you prefer,” Gonzales said as they stepped into the warm, humid early September air.

Gabe eyed the white-and-blue patrol car and shook his head. “I’ll meet you there.” In his younger years, he had ridden in the backseat of a police car more than once.

In high school, all three Raines brothers had been hell on wheels. At the rate they were going back then, half the town figured one or more of them would wind up in prison.

Then Steve Whitelaw, the school’s boxing coach, had recognized a talent in Jackson. Gabe’s older brother had been street fighting for years and he was good. Whitelaw taught him how to stop brawling and start boxing, showed him that boxing could mean a way out of the poverty the boys lived in, and Jackson began to change.

Once that happened, he made sure Gabe and Devlin gave up their wild ways, too. Which they did. Mostly.

Gabe arrived at the police station a few minutes later and shoved through the glass front doors. A female officer behind the desk announced his arrival to someone in the back room, and a few minutes later the fire investigator with the silver-threaded hair he remembered from last night walked into the waiting room.

“Thanks for coming,” Captain Daily said. Gabe knew the arson squad worked with the Dallas Fire Rescue Department, but figured now that there had been an arrest, the police were also involved.

“No problem.”

“We think we may have found the kid who set the fire at the Towers.”

“Kid?”

“He’s seventeen. He was pulled over in the vicinity on a routine traffic stop—broken taillight. One of the guys remembered him from the fire he set a couple of years ago.”

“And you want to know if I saw him last night.”

“He’s in a lineup. Let’s see if you can pick him out.”

“All right, but I wasn’t paying that much attention. I was mostly watching the crew work the fire.”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Sure.” Gabe followed the investigator down a long stark-white hallway into a small room with a glass window on one side that looked into a staging area. Five men of varying sizes and ethnicities stood on a platform against the far wall. All of them were fairly young. One looked vaguely familiar.

An image popped into his head of a boy, short and muscular, with dark skin and coarse black hair. He’d been standing next to another Hispanic kid about the same age.

“Number three,” Gabe said as the image formed clearly in his mind. “I saw him last night. He was talking to another boy. They were standing on the sidewalk when I drove up.”

Daily nodded. “Your friend, McBride, was down here a couple of hours ago. Picked out the same kid. Name’s Angel Ramirez. Looks like we’ve got our perp.”

Gabe’s gaze returned to the boy who was being led away. “What’s the kid have to say?”

“Said he was nowhere near the fire last night. Be interesting to see what he has to say now.”

“You say he’s done this before?”

Daily nodded as he pulled open the door leading out of the viewing room. “Three years ago. Set an old abandoned building on fire. Fortunately no one was hurt, but the building was mostly destroyed. Kid was sentenced to two years in juvenile detention for that little trick. Got out in twelve months for good behavior. Makes you wonder.”

Daily walked Gabe back down the hall.

“As I said, thanks for coming in.” The captain extended a hand and Gabe shook it.

“Good luck with the investigation.” Gabe turned and started for the door. He was halfway across the waiting room when a redheaded whirlwind raced through the glass doors and bolted toward the desk.

“Excuse me. My name is Mattie Baker. I need to talk to whoever is in charge of the fire investigation at the Dallas Towers.”

Gabe paused as the information sank in. She was there about the fire. Pausing, he gave the woman a more thorough inspection. About five-foot-four. Late twenties, maybe early thirties. Slender but nicely curved, though it was hard to tell for sure in the conservative brown suit and pale yellow blouse she wore. A great pair of legs, though, and that hair. It wasn’t just auburn; it was warmer, hotter, reminding him of the flames last night.

Gabe inwardly smiled. The lady was a looker. The splash of freckles across her nose and the high cheek bones only seemed to emphasize the fact. And yet the clothes she wore and the way she had drawn all that glorious hair into a tight knot at the nape of her neck made him wonder at the sort of woman she was.

Curious now, Gabe waited patiently as the older blond officer behind the desk looked down at her computer and finally came up with the answer to the lady’s question.

“The man in charge…that would be Captain Thomas Daily. I assume you have information in regard to the fire.”

“Yes, I do.”

“The captain’s here. I’ll tell him you wish to see him.”

When it came to women, Gabe was usually more the pursued than the pursuer, but there was something about this particular female that intrigued him.

He crossed the several feet between them, used the name he had overheard. “Ms. Baker?”

She turned at the sound of his voice. “Yes?”

“I’m Gabriel Raines. My company was working on the remodel of the Towers. I couldn’t help overhearing. I gather you have information on the case.”

“Actually, I’m here for a friend.” She flicked an anxious glance toward the long white hallway where Gabe had viewed the lineup. “The police believe he is somehow involved in setting the fire.”

“And you don’t?”

“No. Angel wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

“From what I understand, he set another fire a few years back. And I saw him at the Towers last night. If he didn’t set the fire, why was he there?”

Huge blue eyes a softer shade than his own stared up at him in disbelief. “You…you saw Angel there? At the fire?”

“That’s right. He and another kid were standing on the sidewalk when I got out of my truck. It was still very early. Not too many people had shown up yet. That’s the reason I remember seeing him.”

Her shoulders drooped, then subtly straightened. “I need to talk to him. There has to be some other explanation.”

“Excuse me, Ms. Baker,” the desk clerk said. “Captain Daily will see you now.”

Gabe reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his wallet. He drew out a business card and handed it to Mattie Baker. “This has my address and phone number. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

Mattie took the card. “Thank you. I will.”

“Good luck,” he said, figuring she would need it if she planned to help the kid.

The desk clerk pointed toward the hallway and Captain Daily appeared at the entrance. Mattie started hurrying in that direction, strands of fiery hair flying out from the tidy knot at the nape of her neck. Gabe headed for the door, wondering if he would ever see Mattie Baker again.

And hoping like hell he would.

Two

“I didn’t do it, Mattie.” Angel fidgeted on the seat across from her. He was smaller than other kids his age, only five-foot-five, with a stocky build and wide-set brown eyes, but he was a handsome boy, and smart. At least most of the time.

“I learned my lesson three years ago,” he continued. “I would never do anything like that again.” He looked up at her and she could see the fear in his eyes. “You believe me, don’t you?”

Mattie sighed. “If you say you didn’t set the fire, I believe you. Just tell me what you were doing downtown last night.”

Angel glanced away.

“Angel, look at me.” His troubled gaze returned to her face. “You live in central Oak Cliff. You were seen last night at the fire. I need to know what you were doing all the way down at the Towers.”

His blunt brown fingers twitched on the top of the table. “I was just driving around. I saw the fire and I stopped to watch, just like everyone else. That isn’t a crime, is it?”

Mattie ignored the remark. “The police say you may have been there with someone else. Who was it?”

Angel shook his head. “It was just me. And I didn’t set the fire.”

“All right, you didn’t set the fire, but I can see by the way you’re behaving you aren’t telling me everything that happened. I can’t help you unless you’re honest with me.”

He swallowed and for an instant his eyes glistened. “I didn’t set the fire.”

Mattie sighed in frustration. “Then tell me—”

“Time’s up, Ms. Baker.” A policeman stood in the doorway. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”

She was surprised they had let her see him at all, since she wasn’t a member of his family or his attorney, but Captain Daily seemed moved by her staunch defense of the boy and her obvious concern.

“I’ll get you a lawyer,” she told him as she walked out the door. “And I’ll be back to see you as soon as I can.”

Mattie left the small room and was crossing the waiting area when the front door swung open and a familiar black-haired woman rushed in. Angel’s mother, Rosa Ramirez, spotted her instantly and ran forward, her ten-year-old daughter, Elena, and her seven-year-old son, Manny, hurrying along, trying to keep up with her.

“Mattie! I am so glad you are here. The police came to the house this morning. They have arrested Angel. They think he set a fire in some building downtown.”

“The Dallas Towers. Yes, I know. Angel called me.”

Rosa’s thick black eyebrows shot up. “You talked to him?” She was a large, big-busted woman, but short like her son. “Did you tell the police he is innocent?”

“I spoke to Angel just a few minutes ago. Unfortunately, someone saw him at the fire last night. That doesn’t look good for him.”

“Dios mio.” Rosa crossed herself. “He didn’t do it. I know he didn’t. The fire he set before… He was just a boy acting out against his father. But he learned his lesson. He is getting good grades in school. He wants to go to college. He wouldn’t do it, Mattie.”

“I don’t think he did it, either. But I need to know why he was there and who was with him. Can you help me?”

Rosa shook her head, moving the braid hanging down her back. “I thought he was home. I did not know he left the house.”

“What about the friend he may have been with? Any idea who that might have been?”

“Angel has lots of friends.” She looked down at her children. “Do either of you know who your brother might have been out with last night?”