Flirting With Fire (Hometown Heroes) (20 page)

“Ouch.”

“Ouch is right. Man,
was she pissed.” I looked around to make sure no one was within earshot of us,
then fixed my gaze back on Jessica and lowered my voice. “And to be honest, I’m
kinda scared of what she might do. See, there’ve been these fires cropping up
around town.”

“You mean the firebug?”

I nodded. “From
what I’ve heard, all the fires happened within a few blocks of where I work.
And the fires didn’t start until
after
I got a job there.”

“Could be a
coincidence.”

“Maybe, but
she’s been glaring at me since day one. She wanted to fill in for Dawn, but
they hired me to do it instead. And the first time we had to evacuate the
building? Well, Bunni was quick to point out that she’d seen me in the alley
just before the fire started.”

“You think she’s
trying to run you out of town?”

“I don’t know
what to think. All I know is the fires seem to be following me, and if there’s
anyone who stands to lose by me staying in town, it’s her. What are you doing?”

Jessica had
pushed her empty lunch plate aside and was now fishing around in her purse.
After a moment, she produced a small notepad and pen. “Give me this chick’s
name, will you? I’ll have Nate run it in the police system and do a little
background check on her.”

No sooner had
she jotted the information down, than Jessica’s cell phone launched into a rock
and roll snippet that sounded vaguely familiar. Boston’s ‘Foreplay’, maybe?

“Hi, babe.
What’s up?” Her brows furrowed. “No, I’m at JJ’s with Liz. Are you serious? Oh,
no. Okay, be safe. Love you, too.”

Jessica’s gaze
lasered to mine.

“What? What is
it?”

“That was Nate.
He just got dispatched to go help with traffic control downtown. Your new apartment
building? It’s on fire.”

* * * *

I raced back to
work and dashed inside to tell Xavier what was going on. The blaring sirens in
the background helped add to the immediacy of my dilemma, and my boss quickly
offered to cover my one-thirty appointment while I went to check on my
apartment. In a flash I was back downstairs and sprinting down the sidewalk, hoping
like crazy that the fire wasn’t as bad as it sounded. That all my belongings
hadn’t just gone up in flames.

How could this
have happened? And could it have anything to do with the pink bra episode from
last night? I hadn’t stuck around the spa long enough to see if Bunni was there
or not. But was she really crazy enough to set a building full of people on
fire?

I took a
shortcut through the middle of the Grand Wayne Center, drawing glares and a few
shouts from business people mingling in the halls. When I burst through the West Jefferson side of the building, though, a wall of spectators stopped my progress. They
lined the sidewalk, shaking their heads and snapping pictures with their cell
phones. Out in the street were several fire trucks and an ambulance. Two police
cars were parked perpendicular to the street half a block to our west, their
drivers now standing in the road, redirecting all downtown traffic onto side
streets.

Once the initial
shock of the scene passed, I began weaving through the crowd, eager to get
closer to my building. I needed to see for myself just how bad it was. The
smell of something burning tickled at my senses, though I saw no signs of flames
or clouds of smoke in the air.

“Liz!”

My gaze swept
down to street level. A man in street clothes stepped away from one of the fire
trucks, gave me a wave, then jogged toward me. Torrunn. What was he doing here?

Under any other
circumstances, I would have blushed at seeing him today. Especially after the
great bra debacle yesterday. Today, however, all of that was trumped by yet
another fire. One that struck too close to home.

“What happened?”
I called, eager for answers. “Is everyone okay?”

 “Yeah,” he said,
coming to a halt before me. “The fire alarms tripped twenty minutes ago.”

“False alarm?” I
said hopefully.

“Afraid not. According
to Joe, a fire was set in one of the underground parking garage’s trash
receptacles.”

I studied the serious
look on his face and let the gravity of the situation sink in. “The firebug
again?”

“I hope not.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because this
fire could have caused a whole lot more damage than the others set so far. If
it’s the same bug, they’re either getting more desperate for attention, or harboring
less regard for their possible victims.”

A small cry
lodged itself in my throat. What if I was right? What if it was Bunni out to
get me? She knew exactly where I lived. And that my apartment was on the third
floor. I might not survive a jump from there onto the sidewalk below. Had she
thought maybe I’d gone home for lunch today?

“Liz.” Torrunn rested
a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back to the here and now. “I have to ask: where
were you twenty minutes ago?”

“At lunch,
across town with a friend. Why?”

He glanced over
his shoulder, then turned back and met my gaze. “Just making sure you have an
alibi in place before Captain Stevens asks.”

* * * *

Stevens eventually
found me, and pulled me off to the side of the chaos. There he grilled me on my
whereabouts, took Jessica’s name and number to verify my alibi, and then let me
be. I stayed to watch until they reopened the building and traffic resumed on West Jefferson. Knowing there was nothing more for me to do and no harm had been done to my
apartment, I turned to head back to work. The members of Torrunn’s battalion caught
me as I was leaving, and each offered me a hug and words of encouragement.

“We’ll find the
bastard responsible for this, Liz,” Joe told me, a look of determination in his
eyes.

“Thanks, Joe. I
appreciate it.”

Though I’d
forgotten to look for her before I raced out earlier, I made sure to check and
see if Bunni was at the spa when I returned. Like a cold you can’t shake, she
was in fact there, acting like everything was hunky-dory. When the others asked
for an update on the fire, her eyes widened and her hand came up to her mouth.

“Another fire?
Where?”

As if you
didn’t know.
“At my apartment building.” I stared her down, looking for any
hint of guilt. “Innocent people could have been seriously hurt.”

“Oh, how
terrible
,”
she replied, shifting her hand to cover her heart.

Tony and I
exchanged a quick glance, neither of us fooled by her act of concern. But no
matter how badly I wanted to call her out, I didn’t know for sure she was in
fact the bug. And to add to that uncertainty, Jessica texted later with news
that the only thing Nate could find on her record were a few parking tickets.
I’d hoped for an outstanding warrant or two, to get her off the street, but no
such luck.

So I returned to
my apartment that night, nervous as a cricket in a lizard’s lair. If someone
was trying to spook me, they were doing an excellent job. If they were out to
harm me, they hadn’t succeeded. Yet.

To add to my
stress, at 6:08 my cell phone blew up. First it was Sarah, frantic over the
news story she’d just seen. She was both relieved to hear I was okay, and
furious that I’d failed to text her when it happened—especially after I’d
promised to keep her better in the loop.

Truthfully, it’d
slipped my mind. So had texting Mitch and letting him know I was okay. He was
the second caller, which gave me the perfect excuse to escape from the rest of
Sarah’s tirade. But it was out of the frying pan and into the fire—Mitch was also
concerned and as much if not more frustrated than her at my lack of communication
about the matter. He muttered something about the fires getting out of hand,
and threatened to drive into town and bring me ‘home’ himself.

Before I had
much of a chance to tell him he was overreacting, a third caller beeped in.

“Sorry, Mitch,
but I’m going to have to go. It’s my mom. But I’ll be fine. Really.”

“Promise me
you’ll be safe.”

“I promise. See
ya this weekend.” I tapped my phone and switched to my mother’s call. “Hi, Mom.
Before you ask, yes I’m fine and no, I don’t have to find somewhere else to
stay tonight.”

“Somewhere else
to stay? Darling, is everything okay?”

“So, you didn’t
see the news?”

“News? What
news?”

With a sigh I
pushed my now-cold dinner plate away. “A dumpster caught fire in my building’s
parking garage today while I was at work. But before you worry, I’m fine, the
apartment is fine, everything is fine.” Except my sanity. That was definitely
not fine.

“I’m so glad to
hear you’re alright! Oh, my. So much coming at you lately! How are you holding
up, sweetheart?”

My gaze shifted
to the back sliding-glass door and the beautiful ball diamond beyond. “Okay, I
guess. It’s a little creepy, not knowing from one moment to the next what might
land on my doorstep.”

A knock sounded
at my door. With my nerves wound as tight as they were, I jumped clear out of
my seat. Surely Mitch hadn’t been serious about driving up here and dragging me
back to Autumn Lake, had he? And there was no way he could have gotten here so
fast. But who else could it be?

A new
possibility popped into my head: Bunni.

My blood ran
cold. While my mother rambled about some fright she’d had years ago as a young
mother, I darted across the room to peek out my peephole. Thankfully, there was
no vicious blonde standing outside my door with a flame thrower or Molotov
cocktail. There was, however, someone who I was starting to consider much more
dangerous. The possible kindling to all these fires. Her boyfriend.

“Uh, Mom? I
gotta go. One of my, um, neighbors is at the door. Probably wants to talk about
what happened downstairs today.” That part, at least, was probably true.

I hung up and
tossed my phone aside, then checked my look in the entryway mirror before
reaching for the door. My pink t-shirt and baggy jogging shorts weren’t exactly
an outfit I usually wore when entertaining guests. Then again, the man at my
door wasn’t an invited guest. Again.

I opened the
door and kept hold of the knob, lest I give the impression I was in the mood
for company. Which I wasn’t. At least, that’s what I told myself. In truth,
being alone was a touch scary tonight.

A
serious-looking Torrunn stood before me, wearing a navy t-shirt and holey pair
of jeans that sported a fashionable rip just above his right knee. My eyes
lingered on the rip, and the glimpse of fine, dark leg hair that lay beneath.
Hair I’d run my hands through on more than one occasion now in the massage
room. I swallowed hard, and forced my eyes up to his.

“You lost or
something, buddy? Work is a few blocks north of here.”

A humorless
smile tugged at his lips. “Funny, it seems like lately everywhere you are, I’m
ensured some level of job security.”

“True. So, what,
your captain send you over to drag a confession out of me?”

I expected a
chuckle, a grin, something. Instead, he glanced up and down the hall then asked,
“Can we have this conversation inside?”

Worry wrapped
its claws around my chest. With a nod, I stepped aside to let him in. He walked
past me and stopped in the living room. I shut the door behind him, and did my
best to ignore the all-too-appealing scent of his cologne as it wafted past.

“To answer your
question, no, Stevens didn’t send me over here. Though, he’s pretty skeptical
about the whole thing right now. Doesn’t believe you’re the bug, but these
fires keep pointing back to you. He’d probably be pissed if he knew I was over
here.”

“Great. I’m a
marked woman.” But the wrong woman. Oh how I’d love to point Captain Stevens in
the right direction. “Does Bunni know you’re here?’

“No.” He
answered, turning away from me to look out over the ball diamond. “And it’s
probably best she doesn’t.”

I snorted. “Well,
I sure as heck won’t be rushing into work tomorrow to tell her.”

He remained
quiet for another moment, then turned to spy my cold, half-eaten dinner on the
kitchen table. “I take it I haven’t been the only one checking to make sure
you’re okay tonight?”

“Is that why
you’re here?”

He didn’t answer.
After a minute his gaze shifted to mine, the look on his face foreign to me. No
crooked grin, no teasing eyes. Tonight his lips were slightly parted, his eyes
darker than usual. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, unsure of
what to make of it all.

“You could have saved
yourself a trip and just called me, you know,” I said. “Or did you all lose the
business cards I handed out last night?”

“No, I needed to
see for myself.”

I tried to remember
to breathe as he closed the distance between us. Tried to pretend I didn’t feel
the heat rolling off his body as he reached up and tucked a strand of stray
hair back behind my ear. Warning alarms sounded in my head, reminding me he was
off-limits for more than one reason.

“Well.” I
cleared my throat. “See? I’m fine. Just peachy. So you can…just…”

Torrunn’s
fingertips trailed from my ear, along my cheekbone, then traced my lower lip,
silencing me. “It’s alright to admit you’re scared, Liz.”

“Scared?” My
heart began to hammer wildly in my chest. Oh, no. No, this could not be
happening. I couldn’t let it happen. And yet, instead of stepping away, I was
somehow frozen beneath his fiery gaze. “I’m not scared.”

His face began
to lower toward mine, his gaze shifting to my lips. Okay, of
this
I was
scared. Of getting involved with the wrong guy, at the wrong time. And yet I
was trapped, watching him steal closer as if in slow motion. I suddenly realized
just how much I’d been lying to myself. How badly I wanted that kiss. Wanted
him
.