Against the Fire (3 page)

They solemnly shook their heads, their attention focused on the uniformed policemen walking around inside the building and the people being led into the back of the station.

“I want to see him,” Rosa said.

“Talk to the lady at the desk. She’ll be able to help you. I told Angel I would get him an attorney. As soon as bail is posted, we’ll be able to get him out of here.”

“Bail? I have no money for bail.”

“It shouldn’t be too high. I’ll take care of it, Rosa.”

Rose grabbed hold of her hand and pressed it against her lips. “Gracias. Thank you, Mattie. You have always been good to our family.”

Mattie nudged the stout woman toward the counter. “Go on now, tell them you want to see your son.”

Turning away, Rosa herded her children toward the desk. Mattie was convinced that she had been right and Angel was innocent, yet certain there was more to the story.

Was he covering for the person who actually set the fire? If so, who was it?

And why would Angel risk himself that way for an arsonist?

Mattie was still pondering the boy’s predicament as she arrived at her downtown office building. She crossed the lobby to the bank of elevators and pushed the button for the fifteenth floor. She couldn’t help thinking of the sullen teenager Angel had been when she had met him three years ago at the Family Recovery Center, a nonprofit organization that dealt with domestic violence.

When she wasn’t working long hours as an architect at Dewalt, Greeley and Associates Design, a job she loved, Mattie spent her spare time volunteering at the center. Though she had been raised in a happy home, her friend, Tracy Spencer, had been a victim of family violence. Mattie had discovered her best friend’s secret, but Tracy had begged her to keep silent and ten-year-old Mattie had agreed.

It was a mistake she had always regretted. Mattie’s work with the FRC was a way of making up for that mistake.

She had been working at the center when Angel and his family had first come in for help. The next day, Angel had suffered another of his father’s vicious beatings. Setting fire to the old empty building was his way of fighting back.

A year later, after Angel got out of juvenile detention, Mattie had been one of the volunteers assigned to his case. He was a sweet boy, and determined to turn his life around. He studied hard at school and volunteered to help other boys his age at the center.

They wound up spending a good deal of time together at the center, and Mattie had even helped him get a part-time job that summer in the mail room at her office. He used the money he earned to help his family.

There was a goodness in Angel Ramirez. Mattie didn’t believe the teenager had set the fire at the Towers and she was determined to prove it.

The elevator opened with a ding. She walked out into the hallway. She pushed open the glass doors etched with the name Dewalt, Greeley and Associates Design, and made her way into the reception area of the busy architectural firm.

“Mr. Brewer called about the gallery,” the pretty receptionist, Shirley Mack, said. “And your mother called.”

Mattie took the messages from Shirley’s outstretched hand. “Thanks.”

“How’s she doin’? Your mom, I mean. Didn’t she just get remarried?”

“Believe it or not, it’s been nearly a year. She and Jack seem happy.” But her mother had been wary of a second marriage after the death of Mattie’s father and the hardships she had suffered. Mattie hoped this time would be different.

“Well, I’m glad for them,” Shirley said.

“Me, too.” Mattie made a mental note to return the call. They spoke on the phone at least twice a week, but her mother had moved to San Antonio to be with Jack, and Mattie missed her.

Passing the receptionist’s desk, Mattie walked through an open area where busy draftsmen sat at their computers using sophisticated software programs to tackle the work of designing offices, schools, condos and luxury homes.

She caught a wave from Aaron Kreski, a coworker and friend. Thanks to her innovative designs and the overtime she put in, she had recently been promoted to head designer and given an office of her own. She was on her way to becoming a vice president, a step up the ladder in the career she so determinedly pursued.

Pushing open the tall walnut door, she walked over to the matching walnut desk. Polished to a glossy sheen, the desktop was bare, except for a sleek, twenty-inch computer monitor, a calendar, a brown felt desk pad, a black-and-gold pen-and-pencil set, and an old, cherished photo of her parents.

Unconsciously, she reached out to touch the gilded frame. The picture reflected the good, happy years, the times she liked to remember. Then her dad had died in a car accident when she was twelve and everything had changed.

With no life insurance and only a high school education, her mother had been forced to take a job at a local Kmart to support them. Through those difficult times, her mother became convinced that a woman could never truly count on a man, even one who loved her. The only person she could count on was herself.

Mattie had taken those words to heart. She’d worked hard to put herself through UCLA, graduated at the head of her class and continued to live by that philosophy ever since.

She glanced at the files neatly stacked on the credenza behind her desk and the stacks beneath the window, but ignored the itch to pick one of them up and get to work. Instead she sat down at the desk, grabbed the phone and called Sidney Weiss, an attorney who did legal work for the FRC.

“Sid? This is Mattie Baker.”

“Hello, Mattie. What can I do for you?”

“Sid, I need your help.”

Briefly, she filled the attorney in on the fire at the Towers and the arson charges against Angel Ramirez. Weiss agreed to take Angel’s case, assuring Mattie he would advance the money, post bail as soon as it was set and get the boy released.

As she hung up the phone, a trickle of relief slid through her and she tried to think what else she might do.

A sudden thought struck. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out the business card she had been given at the police department.

Raines Construction. Beneath it, Gabriel Raines, owner. An address and a couple of phone numbers were printed at the bottom of the card.

A memory stirred of a tall, dark-haired man with a powerful build, long legs and wide, muscular shoulders—if the fit of his faded cambric work shirt and worn blue jeans were any indication. His working man’s tan set off brilliant blue eyes above a hard, square jaw softened by a mouth curved faintly in a smile.

Testosterone seemed to seep from his pores and though a man like that was hardly her type, she had to admit he was handsome. And the glint of male interest in those amazing blue eyes might be something she could use to her advantage.

She needed to know who Angel had been out with the night of the fire and if Gabriel Raines had seen the two boys, maybe she could identify the other kid from his description.

Mattie tapped the card a couple of times and set it down on the desk in front of her. Needing to get to work, she retrieved one of the files she was working on, a remodel of a downtown art gallery, and opened the folder.

Later, she vowed, she would get in touch with Gabriel Raines.

Early the following morning, Gabe stopped to talk to Sam at a site they were working on down by the Farmer’s Market: the redevelopment of a dilapidated apartment building—condemned by the city—that Gabe had purchased last year. He was remodeling the units into attractive, affordable rental housing and he was pleased at the progress being made.

His construction trailer sat in front of the job site, a place for file cabinets, a couple of desks and the part-time secretary who worked for him three days a week. Gabe climbed the metal stairs and opened the door.

“Everything going okay, Becky?” She was forty-one and happily married, with curly blond hair and a weathered complexion from too much time in the sun.

“Just need you to sign some checks, boss.”

He ambled over, took the pen from her hand and signed what she needed. “Anything else going on?”

“Mr. Parsons called about the damage to the Tower’s lobby. I told him to call you on your cell.”

“I talked to him. I’m meeting him this afternoon.”

“That’s about it, then.”

Gabe nodded and Becky turned back to her computer. He left the trailer and drove over to McKinney Court, his biggest undertaking yet—a four-story office building uptown at McKinney near Olive. It was the future headquarters of Wildcat Oil, the small but successful oil exploration company his brother, Jackson, had once worked for as a geologist. Even with the current economic downturn, oil made money, and there was no lack of funds to complete the building.

He pulled up in front where a huge crane hoisted steel beams into position. The foreman, Jake Turner, a big, beefy man with iron-gray hair, had twenty years experience building multistory structures.

“How’s it going, Jake?”

“Better than it should be.” Jake lifted his hard hat, mopped his forehead with a handkerchief, then stuffed the cloth into his hip pocket. “Always makes me nervous when things are going too well.”

Gabe thought of the destruction at the Towers and hoped that evened things out, at least for a while. “I know what you mean.” He toured the site with Jake, made a few suggestions, then fired up his truck and took off for the theater.

As he pushed through the ornate front doors, looking forward to continuing his work on the stage, his cell phone began playing the first few bars of Brooks & Dunn’s “Hard Workin’ Man.” He unclipped the phone from his belt and flipped it open. “Raines.”

“Mr. Raines, this is Mattie Baker. We met at the police station.”

“I remember.” Gabe thought of the woman with the tantalizing auburn hair. She had a damned sexy voice to go with it.

“You mentioned you would be willing to help me with Angel, and I had a couple of questions I was hoping you might be able to answer. I was wondering if you might have time to meet me for a quick cup of coffee.”

“Sure, I can do that. Where would you like to meet?”

“Well, I work in the Coffman Building. There’s a coffee kiosk in the lobby. Any chance that would be convenient?”

“Not a problem. My condo’s just a few blocks away.”

“Great. How’s four o’clock?”

Gabe checked his watch. He’d be finished with his meeting with Parsons by three. “That’ll be fine. I’ll see you there.”

Mattie thanked him, and Gabe closed the phone. She wanted to see him. He might have found that interesting if he hadn’t heard the strictly business note in her voice. Still, he couldn’t help a trace of anticipation. Aside from an occasional sleepover with one of his old girlfriends, he hadn’t been seeing anyone for the past six months.

His brother had recently married. Jackson was happier than Gabe had ever seen him. After the devastating breakup his little brother, Devlin, had suffered with his fiancée, Amy Matlock, Dev was an even more dedicated bachelor than Gabe.

Which didn’t mean he didn’t like female companionship. He just didn’t really think the pretty little redhead was going to be his type, no matter the physical attraction.

Still, he had promised to help if he could. The Ramirez kid was only seventeen and he remembered the mistakes he had made himself when he was young.

Gabe thought of his four o’clock meeting, thought of the redhead and smiled.

Three

Mattie sat at a small, round, iron-mesh table in front of the coffee kiosk in the lobby of her high-rise office building. The place was only six blocks from her condo, the reason she had decided to buy it, allowing her to walk to work in the mornings.

Apparently Gabriel Raines lived somewhere in the vicinity, though she had never seen him until their accidental meeting at the police station. She took a sip of her cappuccino, which was hot and foamy, just the way she liked. It was one minute after four. She wondered if Raines would be on some kind of ego trip and make her wait.

She hated the games people played.

A subtle wave of relief slipped through her as she spotted him crossing the lobby, heading for the neon sign above the kiosk. She guessed him to be in his early thirties, maybe three or four years older than her twenty-nine years.

She stood to meet him. “Thank you for coming.”

“I said I’d help if I could. Mind if I get myself a cup of coffee before we talk?”

“Not at all. I’m completely addicted myself.”

Raines smiled and went to the counter. He had a nice smile, she thought, recalling she had seen it before. She had a feeling women fell all over themselves to get one of those easy smiles, silently grateful he wasn’t her type in the least.

Paper cup in hand, he sat down in one of the little white wrought-iron chairs, making it look like it belonged in a doll house. “Now, what can I do for you, Ms. Baker?”

“It’s just Mattie, and I’m hoping you can help me figure out who Angel was with the night of the fire.”

“Well, I probably won’t be much help. Like I told the police, I wasn’t paying all that much attention to the spectators. I was more concerned with watching the fire guys put out the blaze.”

“But you recognized Angel.”

“From a lineup. Yes, I did.”

“What did the other boy look like?”

Gabe took the lid off his coffee, blew over the liquid to cool it, then took a sip. She could tell he was doing his best to dredge up a memory of the second boy he had seen.

“Mind if I ask what your connection is to the Ramirez kid?”

She considered how much to say, then decided she had no reason to keep her work a secret. In fact, she was proud of the help she had given families who needed it.

“I do volunteer work at a neighborhood center that helps recovering victims of family violence. Several years ago, Angel’s mother showed up at the center. Her husband was abusing her and the children. She didn’t want to leave him, but she couldn’t take the beatings any longer.”

“What happened?”

“Angel and his father got into an argument the next night and Benito beat the hell out of him. Two days later, Angel set fire to an old abandoned building in the neighborhood. He was arrested. Because Rosa, his mother, had come to the center for help, one of the FRC attorneys got involved.”