Fire at Dawn: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 2 (13 page)

The little girl that day hadn’t been breathing when they pulled up, and she still hadn’t been breathing when the ambulance screamed away toward the hospital. She never breathed again. Coin was the one who caught the mother in his arms when she came running down the street toward them, alerted by a neighbor that something was wrong. He was the one who’d held her as she kicked and beat and clawed at him. He put her in the engine with Tox’s approval, normally something they never did, and he rode in the back with her, holding her like he was the seat belt that could keep her from this awful, unacceptable crash from which the woman would never recover.

And he knew for one moment—for those sixty seconds—what it would feel like to know his own daughter would never breathe again.

They’d dropped the mother off at the hospital. They’d checked in with the rescue squad who were as shaken as the engine crew. They went to the grocery store and bought the steaks they’d forgotten to get in the morning shopping trip because that’s what firefighters did. They just kept moving and doing what had to be done. If someone died on you in the morning, it didn’t mean you automatically got to save the dead guy in the afternoon.

When they’d gotten back to the station, he hadn’t told anyone what had happened to him. The way he’d seen his daughter instead of the patient—that was the kind of crap that got you kicked off the line if you weren’t careful.

But Lexie had known in her usual Lexie way, and that night, when he’d gone down to take her a leftover brownie from a pan a citizen had dropped off, she’d said, “What happened?”

He had shrugged. “She died. It happens.”

“No,” she had said. “What happened to
you
?”

He’d told her, and if he was perfectly honest with himself, he could admit that he’d cried that night. She’d pretended not to notice, but she’d shoved the Kleenex box closer to him and had made a pot of coffee so he could collect himself. Then she’d told him to call Serena before he went to bed, something he didn’t always do, and hadn’t even thought about doing that night. It was such an obvious answer. It had just taken Lexie listening to him to get the answer he needed.

Now, as they drove toward the water, he said, “Sorry. I’m being awkward, huh?”

“Yeah,” she said, keeping her gaze out her window. “But that’s okay. I’m used to you being awkward.”

He laughed.
I love you
, he wanted to say. He couldn’t say it. But damn if he didn’t want to.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The cemetery. He’d taken her to the cemetery.

Lexie couldn’t decide whether to be happy or to punch him in the arm. She settled on just saying, “I had no idea you were a vampire.”

He reached into the bed of the truck and pulled out a black backpack. “Vampires don’t hang out at cemeteries. Only ghouls do. And goths. I suppose they do, too.”

Feeling for a moment as if she should dig in her heels, Lexie said, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Cheerfully, Coin said, “Nope.”

“You’re not?”

“Not even a little bit. But I’m hoping it’s a good idea. I’m hoping it’s a great one, actually.” He turned to face her, and Lexie realized that even with the early fall evening around them, he filled her vision in a way she’d never noticed before. He seemed taller than the clear blue sky above them. A vineyard skated the edge of the cemetery and the yellow leaves of the grape vines echoed the color of the sycamore leaves. Far in the distance, over the rooftops of Darling Bay, the ocean sparkled blue and deep green.

And she couldn’t take her eyes off Coin.

He smiled at her. “You can do this,” said Coin. “Besides, I have something I want to show you.”

“Don’t take me there,” said Lexie. She couldn’t go to her father’s grave. She hadn’t been back since they’d buried him, not once.

“I won’t. Not unless you want me to. I have something else to show you.”

“This is officially the worst date I’ve ever been on in my life.”

He smiled. “Just wait! It gets worse!”

Lexie reached forward and took the hand he offered. There was no way she was going to walk down those paths alone.

<>

Night dropped slowly as they walked, turning the air a soft blue. The cemetery was enormous—something Lexie had forgotten. It was beautiful, she could admit that, especially in the golden fall sunset. Low rolling green hills were dotted with markers that went as far back as the early 1800s, something that wasn’t common on a stretch of land so far west. The settlers who were buried here were the ones who’d fought their way to the coast, battling their way across mountains and deserts with a desire to see the Pacific and make a new home.

To the right, where Coin was leading them, were the crypts that resembled small, ornate houses made of marble. Some were from the turn of the last century, but Lexie could tell some were newer. Cleaner. People were still building homes for the afterlife, something that struck Lexie as both morbidly strange and eerily hopeful.

“Over here.” Coin said. He gave her hand a squeeze, and for one moment Lexie imagined pulling on his hand, making him turn to hold her. She wanted Coins arms wrapped around her shoulders. If she could just bury her face in his jacket for a moment, maybe she wouldn’t be feeling so lightheaded … What if they accidentally walked past her father’s grave? That day had been such a blur—she couldn’t remember where on the grounds his stone was. What if she just glanced down and read the words
Robert Tindall
? She felt her hand go clammy in Coin’s. Her stomach muscles contracted, and her footsteps slowed.

“Hey, now.” Coin stopped. “You okay?” He looked carefully at her face. “We can go back if you want.” He touched her shoulder.

Lexie gritted her teeth, sucking air around them. Then she said, “Is this going to be worth it?”

Coin touched her chin. “I’m taking you to see where my dad is, not yours.”

His father? That was enough to shock her out of worrying about herself. He
hated
his father. It was the one thing Lexie had never been able to get him to tell her much about. “Why?”

“I just want you to see what he was like.”

It was a good enough answer, for now at least. Lexie straightened her spine. “I’ll follow you.”

He hiked the backpack up his shoulder and nodded toward the green hillock on their right. “Almost there.”

The crypt Coin led them to was one of the biggest crypts in the cemetery. It was in the shape of a pyramid, at least twenty feet high at its uppermost point. A path to the sealed door cut through the grass, and Coin went up the two steps to sit on the stoop in front of it. “I call this his front porch.”

Lexie shaded her eyes against the last rays of the setting sun. To the west, the ocean sparkled a dark blue agate and a thin line of fog at the horizon stood at the ready. Overhead, two seagulls argued in an in-flight squabble.

She sat next to him. “The concrete is cold.” It was, bone-chillingly so. Or was that just because she knew what was behind her? Her stomach was still so tight it almost hurt.

“I’m sorry, I meant to bring a blanket, but I forgot to put one in the truck.”

“You usually bring a blanket on your dates? Is this something you do? Seduce women in the graveyard?” She kept her voice light.

He brushed his hair back as he opened the backpack. “This is a first.”

Strangely, Lexie felt relieved. She was the only one he’d brought here. That was okay, then.

From the backpack, Coin pulled a bottle of red wine. “It’s Forget Me Not’s red zin from two years ago.”

“Oh! Valentine’s winery.” Truck One’s tillerman owned a small vineyard just up the coast that was his off-hours baby. “I liked that one. He gave me a bottle for Christmas.”

Coin took out two plastic wine glasses and screwed on the stems. “Classy, right?”

“Mmm.” Lexie looked again at the view. From here she thought she could just see the top of her house, if she was guessing the right color roof. For some reason, she couldn’t picture her roof at all right now. She could picture Coin’s dark eyes without looking his direction at all. But the color of the roof she’d lived under since she bought her house five years ago? She didn’t have a clue.

“Here,” he said. “Let’s toast.”

Lexie bit her bottom lip. “All right. On your father’s grave, literally. What should we toast to?”

“Obviously, to health.”

Lexie nodded. “L’chaim.” She clinked her glass against his—really more like a plastic tap—and sipped. She kept her eyes on his, as one should do when toasting, and ignored the fact that her stomach went from knots to flips.

He really did have the sexiest bedroom eyes.

Which was an inappropriate line of thought to have while sitting on a tomb.

While Coin took food out of the backpack, she scooted backward so she could sit cross-legged. She touched the concrete at her knee with one finger. She cast her mind for something—anything—that she could say that might distract them from the awareness of where they were, but Coin didn’t seem at all weirded out. He seemed relaxed, as if he hung out here all the time. And, heck, maybe he did.

“When was the last time you were here?”

Coin looked into the air as if calculating. “He died when I was twenty. I came back once with my mom before she died. So I guess it’s been thirteen years or more.”

She gaped. “You don’t come here, either?”

“No reason to. I hated the guy.”

It didn’t make sense. If they both avoided the cemetery … “Why are we
here
?”

“He was important to me.”

“I thought you said …”

“I said I hated him. That’s true. But he’s the reason I am who I am, and specifically, he’s why I’m the father I am.” Coin tore a piece of bread off the baguette and looked at it, as if he’d forgotten why he’d brought it.

Maybe this time he would tell her about it. “Talk to me.”

Coin took a deep breath. “He was a horrible guy. Really, there was nothing good about him. Check this out,” he said, gesturing at the crypt, his arms wide open. “Doesn’t this look like somewhere you’d like to spend eternity?”

“Maybe,” said Lexie, trying to be charitable. “If I were Egyptian, or wanted … to stand out in California.”

He snapped his fingers and then tapped the tip of his nose. “Bingo. He wanted to stand out. He always wanted the biggest. The best. He’d read about some actor who had a tomb built like this, something about it holding the life force inside, so he had this built when he could afford it. Of course, then he went and crashed his car, having left no life insurance for my mother. He had, however, bought half of this before he died, so they buried him, and then my mother went on paying for it for two years after he died. Charming, no?”

“Where is she?”

Coin laughed, but the tone of it was off. He wasn’t amused. “He didn’t want her near him. She had to buy her own plot, so she chose a spot next to her mother’s grave in Birmingham. But just imagine that. A man who didn’t want his own wife with him. Too stingy to make a place for her inside this behemoth. Wanted it all to himself.”

“You’re the opposite of him.”

Coin took a taste of wine and then help up the plastic cup. “I hope so. Anyway, that reminds me.” He took a smaller bottle out of the backpack. “Whiskey for the old man.” He uncapped it and poured it at the base. “One for the homie. Oh, never mind, just have all of it, Dad. You always did.” He paused. “You know, one time I made a list, thinking that if I listed all his bad qualities I might be able to remember a good one. I just wanted one. Know what I came up with?”

Lexie shook her head.

“He liked bacon. That was his best quality. Not that he cooked it well, or liked to make BLTs for the family. That would have been a good thing, and I couldn’t find one of those. I just know that he liked bacon. To eat.”

It clicked. “That’s why you hate bacon.”

“Yep.”

“I just thought you were a bad person.”

At that, Coin gave an unexpected hoot of laughter. “No. That’s not why. Though by the way everyone talks about it, you’d think that was the case. It’s just salted pork, people. Why is it such a big deal? I even hate the smell of it.”

“I know.” It was why, when they were on Sunday shift, Coin usually spent the morning in dispatch if there wasn’t a call.

Well. She’d
thought
it was because of the bacon …

Shaking her head to clear it, she said, “So now tell me how he was bad.”

“Oh, you know. The usual way. He wasn’t even an interesting kind of awful. He was a hitter. And a drinker. He liked to get loaded on cheap whiskey and knock my mom around.”

Lexie winced.

“When I got tall enough to be in his way, he knocked me around the same way. I thought he was normal, though. I thought that dads hit and moms cried, and that was why I was never going to fall in love and have children, because I never wanted anyone to feel as scared as I did, listening to him whale on my mother.”

“Oh, Coin.”

He shrugged. “It was what I knew. Then I met Janice, and we got pregnant on accident. I thought my life was over, and I could just see myself going down that road. I think that’s what pushed me and Janice apart—my fear that I would turn into him.”