Chasing Fire (54 page)

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Authors: Nora Roberts

Tags: #Contemporary, #Fiction, #Romance, #Women fire fighters, #Suspense, #General

BOOK: Chasing Fire

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“I like to think so.”

“I wonder how you’d feel . . . I’d like to ask if I could move in here with you. If I could live with you.”

It took a minute for her brain to catch up. “You—you want to live together? Here?”

“I know you’ve got everything you want here, and we’ve only been seeing each other a few months. Maybe you need to—”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“I mean, I’ll have everything I want here when you are. So, yes, absolutely yes.” Delighted by his blank stare, she laughed. “How soon can you pack?”

He let out a breath, then picked up the mimosa, drank deep. “I thought you’d say no, or that we should wait awhile more.”

“Then you shouldn’t have asked. Now you’re stuck.”

“Stuck with a beautiful woman who knows me and wants me around anyway. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what I did right.” He set the glass back down. “I did this backward because first I should’ve said—I should’ve said, I love you, Ella. I love you.”

“Lucas.” She got up, went around the table to sit in his lap. Took his face in her hands. “I love you.” She kissed him, sinking in. “I’m so happy my son wanted me to jump out of a plane.” She sighed as she laid her cheek against his. “I’m so happy.”

WHEN HE LEFT,
she adjusted her plans for the day. She had to make room for a man. For her man. Closet space, drawer space. Space for manly things. The house she’d made completely her own would become a blend, picking up pieces of him, shades of him.

It amazed her how much she wanted that, how very much she wanted to see what those shades would be once blended.

She needed to make a list, she realized, of what should be done. He’d want some office space, she decided as she took out a notebook and pen to write it down. Then she tapped the pen on the table, calculating which area might work best.

“Oh, who can think!” Laughing, she tossed down the pen to dance around the kitchen.

She had to call her kids and tell them. But she’d wait until she’d settled down a little so they didn’t think she’d gone giddy as a teenager on prom night.

But she felt like one.

When the phone rang, she boogied to it, then sobered when she saw Irene’s readout.

She took two quiet breaths. “Hello.”

“Ella, Ella, can you come? Leo. Leo called.”

“Slow down,” she urged when Irene rushed over the words. “Leo called you?”

“He turned himself in. He’s at the police station, and he wants to talk to me. They let him call me, and he said he’s not saying anything about anything until he talks to me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t do anything. I’ll be right over.”

She grabbed her cell phone out of the charger, snagged her purse on the run. On the way out the door, she called Lucas.

“I’m on my way over to Irene’s. Leo’s turned himself in.”

“Where?” Lucas demanded. “Where is he?”

“He called her from the police station.” She slammed her car door, shifted the phone to yank on her seat belt. “He says he won’t talk to anyone until he talks to her. I’m going with her.”

“Don’t you go near him, Ella.”

“I won’t, but I don’t want her to go alone. I’ll call you as soon as I’m back.”

She closed the phone, tossed it in her purse as she reversed down the drive.

WAKING TO THE VIEW
of the Alaska Range and Denali lifted the spirits. As she stood in camp, Rowan felt the mountain was on their side.

The crews had worked their hearts out, had the burns and bruises, the aches and pains to prove it. They hadn’t slayed the dragon, not yet, but they’d sure as hell wounded it. And today, she had a good, strong feeling, today they’d plunge the sword right through its heart.

She knew the crew was banged up, strung out, but they’d gotten a solid four hours’ sleep and even now filled their bellies. With more equipment, more men, an additional fire engine and two bulldozers, she believed they could be flying home by that evening, and leave the final beat-down and mopping up to Alaska.

Sleep, she decided, the mother of optimism.

She pulled out her radio when it signaled. “Ro at base camp, go ahead.”

“L.B., Ops. I’ve got somebody here who wants to talk to you.”

“How’s my girl?”

“Hey, Dad. A-OK. Just standing here thinking and looking at a big-ass mountain. Wish you were here. Over.”

“Copy that. It’s good to hear your voice. Heard you had some trouble yesterday. Over.”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle with some bubble gum and duct tape. We softened her up yesterday.” She watched the cloud buildup over the park, and puffs of smoke twining up from islands of green. We’re coming for you, she thought. “Today, we’ll kick her ass. Over.”

“That’s a roger. Ro, I’ve got something you should know,” he began, and told her about Leo.

When she’d finished the radio call, Rowan walked over, sat down by Gull.

“Hell of a view,” he commented. “Libby’s in love. She’s talking about moving up here. Ditching us for the Alaska unit.”

“People fall for the mountain. Gull, Leo turned himself in this morning. He’s in custody.”

He studied her, then drank more coffee. “Then it’s a damn good day.”

“I guess it is.” She heaved out a breath. “Yeah, I guess it is. Let’s make it better and kill this dragon dead.”

“I hear that,” he said, and leaned over to kiss her.

IT SHOOK IRENE
to the core to walk into the room and see Leo shackled to the single table. He’d lost weight, and his hair, thinner, straggly, hung over the collar of the bright orange prison suit. He hadn’t shaved for God knew how long, she thought, and the beard had grown in shockingly gray around his gaunt face.

He looked wild. He looked like a criminal.

He looked like a stranger.

Had it only been a month since she’d seen him?

“Irene.” His voice broke on her name, and the shackles rattled obscenely in her ears when he reached out.

She had to look away for a moment, compose herself.

The room seemed airless, and much too bright. She saw the reflection in the wide mirror—two-way glass, she thought. She watched
Law & Order
, and she knew how it worked.

But the reflection stunned her. Who was that woman, that old, bony woman with dingy hair scraped back from her haggard face?

It’s me, she thought. I’m a stranger, too.

We’re not who we were. We’re not who we’re supposed to be.

Were they watching behind that glass? Of course they were. Watching, judging, condemning.

The idea struck what little pride she had left, kindled it. She straightened her shoulders, firmed her chin and looked into her husband’s eyes. She walked to the table, sat, but refused to take the hands he held out to her.

“You left me.”

“I’m sorry. I thought it’d be better for you. They were looking to arrest me, Irene, for
murder
. I thought if I was gone, you’d be better off, and they’d find the real killer so I could come back.”

“Where did you go?”

“I went up in the mountains. I kept moving. I had the radio, so I kept listening for word they’d arrested somebody. But they didn’t. Somebody did this to me, Reenie. I just—”

“To you? To you, Leo? I signed my name with yours, putting up our home for your bail. You left, and now I’m going to lose my home because even taking another job isn’t enough to meet the payments.”

Pain, and she judged it sincere, cut across his face. “I didn’t think about that until I’d already gone. I wasn’t thinking straight. I just thought you and the baby would do better if I left. I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t think I’d be alone with no idea where my husband was, if he was dead or alive? You didn’t think I’d have a baby to tend to, bills to pay, questions to answer, and all this right after I put my daughter’s bones in the ground?”

“Our daughter, Reenie.” Under the beard his cheeks reddened as he pounded his fist on the table. “And they think I killed my own girl. That I broke her neck, then burned her like trash in a barrel. Is that what you think? Is it?”

“I stopped thinking, Leo.” She heard her own voice, thought it as dull as her hair, her face. “I had to, just to get from one day to the next, one chore to the next, one bill to the next. I lost my child, my husband, my faith. I’m going to lose my home, and my grandchild.”

“I’ve been living like an animal,” he began. Then stopped, squinted at her. “What are you talking about? They can’t take Shiloh away.”

“I don’t know if they can or not. But I know I can’t raise her right on my own without a good home to give her, or enough time. The Brayners will be here tomorrow, and they’re taking her home to Nebraska.”

“No.” That stranger’s face lit with fury. “Irene, no. Goddamn it, you listen to me now.”

“Don’t you swear at me.” The slap in her voice had his head snapping back. “I’m going to do what’s right by that baby, Leo, and this is what’s best. You’ve got no say in it. You left us.”

“You’re doing this to punish me.”

She sat back. Funny, she realized, she didn’t feel so tired now, so worn, so full of grief. No, she felt stronger, surer, clearer of mind than she had since they’d come to tell her Dolly was dead.

“Punish you? Look at yourself, Leo. Even if I had a mind to punish you, and I just don’t, you’ve already done plenty of it on your own. You say you lived like an animal—well, that was your choice.”

“I did it for you!”

“Maybe you believe that. Maybe you need to. I don’t care. There’s an innocent baby in all this, and she comes first. And for the first time in my life I’m putting myself next. Ahead of you, Leo. Ahead of everydamn-body else.”

Something stirred in her. Not rage, she thought. She was sick of rage, and sick of despair. Maybe, just maybe, what stirred in her was faith—in herself.

“I’m going to do what I have to do for me. I have some thinking to do about that, but I’ll be leaving, most likely to move closer to Shiloh. I’ll take my half of whatever’s left once this is said and done, and leave you yours.”

He jerked back as if she’d slapped him. “You’re going to leave me like this, when I’m locked up, when I need my wife to stand with me?”

“You need,” she repeated, and shook her head. “You’re going to have to get used to your needs being down the line. After Shiloh’s and after mine. I’d’ve stood with you, Leo. I’d’ve done my duty as your wife and stuck by you, whatever it took and for however long. But you changed that when you proved you wouldn’t do the same for me.”

“Now you listen to me, Irene. You listen to me. Somebody took that rifle, took that gun, right out of my house. They did that to ruin me.”

“I hope for the sake of your soul that’s true. But you and Dolly made our house a battlefield, and neither one of you cared enough about me to stop the war. She left me without a second thought, and when we took her back, because that’s what a parent does for a child, she lied and schemed just like always. And you fought and clawed at each other, just like always. With me in the middle, just like always.”

God help her, Irene thought. She’d mourn her child for the rest of her life, but she wouldn’t mourn the war.

“Now she’s gone, and my faith’s so broken I don’t even have the comfort of believing it was God’s will. I don’t have that. You left me alone in the dark when I most needed a strong hand to hold on to.

“I don’t know what you’ve done or haven’t done, but I know that much. I know I can’t depend on you to give me that strong hand, so I have to start depending on me. It’s past time I did.”

She got to her feet. “You should call your lawyer. He’s what you need now.”

“I know you’re upset. I know you’re mad at me, and I guess you’ve got a right to be. But please, don’t leave me here alone, Irene. I’m begging you.”

She tried, one last time, to reach down inside herself for love, or at least for pity. But found nothing.

“I’ll come back when I can, and I’ll bring you what they say I’m allowed to bring. Now I’ve got to go to work. I can’t afford to take any more time off today. If I can find it in me to pray again, I’ll pray for you.”

L.B. HAILED MATT
as Matt came back from his run.

“Have you got your PT in for the day?”

“Yeah. I was going to grab a shower and some breakfast. Have you got something you want me to do?”

“We could use some help restocking gear and equipment as it gets inspected. The crew got in from Wyoming while you were out.”

“I saw the plane overhead. Man, L.B., did they have trouble, too?”

“Another bad pumper.”