Nothing Left to Burn (22 page)

“I kept messing up.”

I cursed silently. He must have tried to text me and couldn’t. “It’s okay.”

The look he gave me said it
wasn’t
okay, not by a long shot.

“Larry, you’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?”

Another shake of his head. “I didn’t do anything!” He swiped a knuckle under his nose.

“Okay. okay. Good.” That was some comfort at least. But I didn’t want to leave him alone. “I have to go to the fire station. Why don’t you come?”

His eyes snapped open and shot to mine. “No!” He leaped up, hurried to his room, and shut the door.

I stared after him for a moment, a heavy guilt squeezing my heart. Mr. Beckett had gotten me involved with the squad but not Larry, even though he was old enough. Did that mean Larry wouldn’t be here long?

Oh God!

The front door opened and closed. “Amanda? Larry? Come down and help me unpack the car.”

Mr. Beckett was home. On Sunday mornings, he usually got up early and headed out to run a bunch of errands, including a run to a warehouse store for supplies to stock his man cave, which was really the garage in the back of the house.

Larry came out of his room, muttering curses. “I got this. You’d better get to the firehouse before he notices you’re home.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’ll find you later and we’ll talk.”

Larry edged by me, and my nose wrinkled. I grabbed his shoulder. “Dude, have you been
smoking
?” I asked, horrified.

He wrestled free. “No!” He ran down the stairs before I could argue.

Jesus, he really had me worried now. Maybe I’d talk to Lieutenant Logan about Larry and grab the forms for him to start J squad too. Even if the Becketts sent him away, his next foster parents might let him keep up, especially if John and Chief Duffy put in good words. I knew Gage and the rest of the juniors would rally around Larry just the way everybody was doing for Reece. We’d get him trained in no time. And after we aged out of foster care, we’d still get to work together and hang out and be sort of siblings and—

Damn
it.

See how easy it was to plan? I forced myself to stop. I hurried downstairs and out the back door to begin the long walk to the firehouse. When I reached the fire station, I found all our vehicles back in their bays and the crews checking and rechecking equipment, inspecting gear. I walked in just in time to overhear Ken Tully and Chuck Avers talking about the fire.

“…saw trailers on the top floor. What was left of it.”

Ken whistled quietly. “Explains the separate fires. Conner’s on his way to the scene.”

Trailers were like kindling, strips of paper or other stuff arranged in paths to make the fire spread faster. Steve Conner was our fire marshal. If he was on his way to the scene, they suspected another arson.

I headed for the conference room, where Gage, Ty, and Kevin were already sitting.

Word travels fast.

I grabbed Gage and led him to a quiet corner. “What did you hear?” I asked.

“Okay, so near as I can tell, Bear and Reece called in the fire, and the chief said they could stay on-scene to help.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Holy crap! That’s insane.”

Gage rocked his head side to side. “I guess. Bear was on traffic duty, and Reece got crowd control. They left those posts to help Chuck resuscitate a few cats.”

I frowned. Okay, they did a good thing, but they should have cleared it first.

“And then they started chasing somebody down the block. Logan’s convinced the fire was arson and thinks some kid is the firebug.”

Holy crap, this was bad. Really bad. “Whoa. Are they…are they out?”

Gage shrugged. “I don’t know. Lieutenant Logan is upstairs with the chief now. From what I heard, there was some backtalk, but that was between the Logans.”

Oh God. That wasn’t good. Failing to obey orders was grounds for getting cut from the squad.

Reece and Bear could both be kicked out.

Chapter 21

Reece

He taught me everything—how to tie my shoes, how to piss standing up. He taught me everything you never did.

“Oh man, oh man. They’re gonna kick us out.” Bear kept rocking in the passenger seat of my mom’s car.

“No, they won’t. You heard the chief, Bear. He said to stay. He said to direct traffic and control the crowd, and we did. We obeyed orders.”

“We
didn’t
. We never should have chased down that kid. Your dad, oh jeez, he was pissed.”

Pissed? Please. That wasn’t pissed; that was his low setting. I pulled the car into my driveway, parked, and cut the engine. “Bear, just relax. Let’s go fix the wall and wait for them to call us, okay?” We carted the tub of drywall compound and the furring strips upstairs to the bathroom. I fetched all the other tools we needed. When I got back, he was sitting on the edge of the tub, still rocking.

“I got this, Bear. Why don’t you take off? I’m sorry I got you into trouble. It’s me he’s pissed at, not you. I’m sure you’ll be just fine.”

He waved a hand and grabbed for the drywall saw. “No. No way, bro. You helped me, I help you. That was the deal.” He stuck the saw into the hole I’d made with my fist and made a vertical cut down, then across and all the way around, widening the hole into an even square.

“What’s next?”

“Measure the hole and cut a piece of drywall to fit it.”

I grabbed the tape measure, transferred those measurements to a scrap piece, and drew pencil lines to mark them. Bear told me what to do and when to do it. I just followed the directions. We cut a piece of the furring strip, stuck it through the hole, and then screwed it to the existing wall. Then we put the patch over the hole and screwed it to the strip.

“Nice. We ready to tape now?”

“Yep.” He grabbed the bucket and smeared some compound over the screws and the seams. I stretched tape over the compound, then spread more compound over the tape, covering up all the edges.

“That’s it? We’re done?”

“Yeah, pretty much. You have to let this set and then sand it down, maybe put on another coat. Sand it, prime it, paint it. Then you’re done.”

I wiped my hand on my jeans and stuck it out for him to shake. “Thanks, man. I owe you big time.”

He smiled and jerked his thumb at the drying patch. “You do this or the lieutenant?”

“I did,” I admitted with a wince. “But he factored in.”

“I’ll bet.”

My cell buzzed, and a second later, so did Bear’s. We exchanged anxious glances and then answered our calls.

“That was my dad,” I reported after I’d ended the call.

“I got the chief himself.” Bear’s eyes were round and horrified. “He said to come immediately to the station.”

“Yeah. Same here.”

Bear swallowed hard. “Gonna kick us out, right?”

I shook my head. “No. No, Bear. We did what we were supposed to do. They can’t kick us out for that. They
won’t
.”

We cleaned up as best we could and climbed back into my mom’s car. It was a short ride, silent and anxious. It should have taken us fifteen minutes if we’d hit every light. We got there in five. Did that mean something? I tried not to think about it while I was pulling around the back. When I killed the engine, Bear didn’t move. He just sat there, staring straight ahead. “Bear.”

He lifted his eyes to mine.

“I’ll take the heat.”

His eyes went round. “No. No way. You—”

I flung up a hand and cut him off. “Come on. I’ve only got a few weeks in. You’ve been on the squad for years. Besides,” I added with half a laugh. “It’s not like anybody expects me to actually succeed.”

“No.”

“Bear—”

“I said no, bro. I ain’t a coward.” He shoved out of the car, slammed the door, and abandoned his trademark shuffle to stalk off. I caught up to him in the main corridor.

“Logan!”

With a foot on the steps, I looked over my shoulder at Gage and Amanda. They’d just come out of our squad room. Bear kept walking, so I shook my head.

“I messed up, Gage. We have to go talk to the chief now.”

Gage blew out a sigh of annoyance and shoved his hands in his pocket. But Amanda took a step closer. “Will you tell us? After?”

“If you want.” I shrugged and smiled. Bear and I continued upstairs and down the long corridor, past the smiling faces of the ghosts that filled every firehouse across the country. The chief’s door was shut. Bear and I exchanged a glance.

This was it.

I knocked on the door and braced for the worst.

Chapter 22

Amanda

He smiled at me.

How could he do that when the chief and his dad were probably ready to roast him over a spit?

I watched him climb the stairs to the offices, his shoulders back, head high. Even Bear stood at attention. They walked up the stairs, ready to be kicked out—it was written on both of their faces—but they walked toward that fear.

Like firefighters.

“Amanda, where are you going?”

I followed them up the stairs, Gage hissing behind me that we weren’t allowed, but I didn’t care. I
had
to be there. I had to know what the chief was going to do. I had to try to stop it if I could, because like it or not, Reece was part of this house now and deserved our support.

The door clicked shut just as I reached it.

“Man,” Gage said. “You have to stay cool.”

“Stay cool? Seriously?”

“Looks to me like you’ve got a thing for Logan. How’d that work out for you last time?”

“Fuck you, Gage.” I slid down the wall to the floor.

Gage cursed under his breath. “I told you not to get involved with him. Do you have any idea how messed up Logan is?” he whispered.

“And
you
do?” It wasn’t messed up to want your dad’s respect, and it wasn’t messed up to do whatever it took to keep your family together. It was brave. I clenched my teeth together and shot him a look.

“Yeah, I do,” he said. He waited a beat, but I never asked him for the details he was so obviously dying to provide. He cursed and sat next to me. “Okay, look. You know that paper he keeps in his pocket? The one he’s always scribbling on when he thinks nobody’s looking?”

I sucked on my cheek, patience stretched to the brink of snapping. “Yeah. What about it?”

Gage looked up and down the corridor, inched a little closer. “I got a good look at it at the training facility. It’s a letter to his dad. It’s full of some angry words and bad memories, but that’s not all.” Another glance up and down the hall.

I let my head fall back to the wall behind me and shut my eyes. “What, Gage?”

“He wrote, ‘I’ll be at his altar,’ Mandy. He underlined
his
.”

I blinked and waited for the big reveal. “So what? Just get to the damn point.”

Hurt flashed over Gage’s face, and then it was gone. He stood up and dusted off his jeans. “Look it up when you’re not so busy.” He left me there alone, and I frowned at his retreating back.

I sat there for ages. I could hear some yelling, some thumping—Chief Duffy liked to bang a fist on his desk—but no discernible words. Finally—finally!—the door opened, and I scrambled to my feet. The chief gave me a stern look, but Bear flashed a grin and a thumbs-up. I sighed in relief.

Chief Duffy shut the door. I looked at Reece, he looked at Bear, and Bear looked at me, and suddenly, everyone was doing a silent happy dance. Bear actually lifted Reece off the floor and spun him in a circle, a huge grin splitting their faces.

“Oh my God, dude, I thought we were out. I really thought we were done. I can’t believe it.”

I offered Bear a fist to bump. “Come on, you guys. Let’s go downstairs before the chief hears us.”

We headed downstairs and out the bay door from the apparatus floor. In a corner of the parking lot, I looked around, then demanded, “Tell me everything.”

Bear leaned against the wall of the firehouse. “Okay. Me and Logan were driving back from the do-it-yourself store and hit some traffic, so we took a shortcut. We saw all these people running, so we looked and saw smoke from this boarded-up place. Logan pulled over, told me to call it in, and went over to get in some old dude’s face.”

I turned to look at Reece. He shifted and looked away. “He was going in. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“How the hell could you stop him?”

He shifted again and shot me a wry grin. “Um, well, I just figured he wanted a shot at playing hero, so I pointed out the blocked hydrants. He, uh, took care of them.”

“Smart.” I meant that as a compliment, but Reece squirmed and turned red. I spread my hands and waited a beat. “Is that it?”

“Um, not really, no. We waited for the crew to arrive. Chief Duffy told us to stay put. He told Bear to control traffic and told me to control the crowd.”

“Yeah, and Reece got excellent video on his phone. The chief thinks it will help find the guy.”

I snapped up straight, eyes wide. “It’s officially arson?”

“He’s not saying.” Reece angled his head. “Why, did you hear something?”

“I heard Ken tell Chuck he saw trailers.”

Reece covered his face with both hands and rubbed hard. “No. No, that doesn’t fit. He was just a kid. How would he know about trailers?”

I shot him a smirk. “How do
you
know about them, Logan?”

Reece laughed once. “Touché.” He scratched his head, frowning. “Okay, so suppose he did what I did and read about trailers in some book. Shouldn’t be too hard to prove, right?”

“Arson is
really
hard to prove, Reece.”

His frown deepened. “Amanda, we have witnesses who can put him at the scene.” He waved his hand between Bear and himself.

I thought about that for a minute. “Come on.” I stood up, led the guys back up the stairs, and knocked on the door to the first office on the left.

“Yeah?”

I opened the door. “Hey, Steve, can you spare us a few minutes?”

Steve Conner, the LVFD fire marshal, stood up but stayed behind his desk. “Mandy, five minutes. I’m on my way out.”

I nodded. “You know Bear Acosta. But you probably haven’t met—”