SCORCHED: A Firefighter Stepbrother Romance Thriller (14 page)

---THE FLAME---

Firemen
in this town stood out like sore thumbs.

It
wasn’t the uniform or the gear. It wasn’t the crappy cars they drove. It was in
everything they did. Everything they were. The way they walked and talked; the
ubiquity of their swagger. It was all over them like a putrid stench. They
lived and breathed
firefighter.

And
here came one now, sauntering through the hotel doors fresh from handing the
valet his keys, the ones that went to a Volvo straight out of the nineties.
Dark hair,
medium build
.
An older
man, one of the rough sorts.

He was
sinew and muscle. That was fine by me. Agility beat raw power every time.
As long as you didn’t get hit, at least.

The
hard part was ending up in the same elevator with him and not making it look
intentional. Firefighters weren’t cops. They didn’t have the nose for the job.
But they weren’t too far removed, either.
Fruit from the same
rotten tree.
I couldn’t let him get suspicious. I couldn’t allow him to
even get a whiff of what I had planned. I had to be something other—other
than a criminal, other than an arsonist.
Other than myself.

Deception.
Lies. I knew all about those. So did William Blake. So did my mother.

How
could she have deceived me so completely? How could she have pretended to be
dead, only to rise again in the body of that stripper—that
whore?

My
hands were shaking as I slipped into the elevator just ahead of the fireman. It
was the only elevator currently on that floor, and I sure as shit knew he
wasn’t about to take the stairs all the way up to that whore’s room. I played
it cool as the doors began to close, idly tapping a few buttons on my cell
phone.

“Wait!”
the fireman cried. “Wait! Hold the doors!”

I
looked up, wide-eyed, and hit the button. The doors stopped closing and bounced
back open, and the firefighter stopped running and sighed.

“Jeez.
Thanks, kid.”

“Welcome,”
I told him as he entered the car with me.

I hit
the button for Tanya’s floor. I’d enquired at the front desk about their
honeymoon suites, so I knew where it was. Maybe I didn’t have the exact room
number, but I didn’t need it. Not with the fireman here.

The
bitch’s stepbrother was one of them. No doubt he’d sent this man to guard her.
It was a stupid move with someone like me watching. Then again, everyone I knew
had always underestimated me.

“Where
to?” I asked casually.

The
fireman glanced at the buttons. Furtively, I eyed him. The clothes wouldn’t be
a perfect fit, but they’d do.

“You
got it,” he said after a moment. He let out a little laugh. “Some coincidence,
huh?”

I
didn’t tell him there was no such thing—that everything, absolutely
everything
, happened for a reason.
Death, life,
rebirth
: it was all controlled by fate.
Destiny. For some men, that meant a long life with plenty of money and love and
women. For the rest of us, it meant getting justice whenever we could.

Fate
played dirty, but I was used to its tricks. I knew how to game the system. And
by sending this firefighter to me in my hour of need, fate had sacrificed one
of its precious pawns.

I
smiled at him, all teeth. “Some coincidence,” I agreed.

Chapter 16

Tanya

“Man,
when someone puts in a call, you guys sure do come a-
runnin
’,
huh?”

Tom
Stoggins
smiled at me. He was one of Gunner’s best friends
in the department, apparently, and here to keep an eye on me until my
stepbrother could get back. I guessed Gunner had gone easy on the
details—it wasn’t like him to broadcast a torrid affair with his
stepsister to all his friends.

I
wondered how much he knew about the other thing, though. About my stalker and
all the threats he’d made.

Poems about roses and flying
worms.
Shit,
dude, could you vague that up for me?

“Hey,
when a brother asks for help, might as well be the tones
soundin
’,”
he said, and I stepped aside to let him in. “Nice digs you got here. Guess if
you
gotta
hole up somewhere on account of a crazy
stalker, this would be the place.”

“The
room service is what sold it,” I said, locking the door behind him. “But the
view’s not bad, either.”

“Whoa!”
Tom trotted to the window and stare wide-eyed over the city. “You sure you
can’t rent out your stalker? Nice hotel room, gets me away from the wife and
kids . . . I’ve had worse gigs.”

“You
want a mimosa?” I asked him. “I was thinking of having room service come up
again . . . ”

“Oh,
none for me, doll. Thanks,” Tom said, flashing me a winning smile. “I’m good.”

I put
the paper menu away and slipped my hands into the pockets of my shorts. I’d
heard Gunner talk a little about Tom, though I’d never met him. From all the
stories he told, I figured the guy would’ve been older. But he was about
Gunner’s age, or maybe closer to my own. And he talked like one of those guys
from the FDNY—that stereotypical accent, the hardness of his words. Dude
was weird.
Like some kind of paradox.

Maybe
that was why Gunner liked him so much. My stepbrother sure did love complicated
shit.

“Hey,
there was this guy out there,” Tom said, squinting at the sidewalk below. “Came
up to me on my way in. He was real weird. Like the kid in high school used to
write poetry about all the girls who wouldn’t suck his cock and then stash it
under his bed.” He turned and looked at me, hands on his waist just above his
belt. “You think that could’ve been him?”

A chill
slithered down my spine. I hadn’t seen the guy’s face—at least, not that
I knew of—but Tom’s description fit when I imagined he was like: some
hypersensitive, entitled, Elliot Rodgers type. From both life as a woman and
working as a stripper, I knew one simple truth: lonely men were usually the
most dangerous.

“Maybe,”
I answered. “This guy . . . my stalker . . . he’s
really into poetry. Some guy called Blake.”

“
William
Blake?” Tom said with a laugh.
“Oh, shit. Yeah. That guy’s one of my favorites. Learned about him back in
college—they don’t teach real art like that in high school.”

He
cleared his throat, then very dramatically recited,

“I was
angry with my friend;

I told
my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was
angry
with
my foe:

I told
it not, my wrath did grow.”

Tom
chuckled once he was done. “How about you, Tanya? You
ever
been
pissed at somebody?”

I
frowned. There was something stirring in my guts—a sense of unease, of
suspicion and distrust. Was William Blake really that popular? Maybe he was,
but for a firefighter? Really?

And he
just . . . knew all that off-hand?

“I . . . guess
so,” I answered, taking a step away from him. I tried to make it seem casual,
like I wasn’t eyeing the spot I’d laid my burner phone.

“You
guess so?
” Tom stared at me, his face
scrunched. “No, no, Tanya. You’d remember anger. It’s that thing that strangles
you in the night. Haunts your dreams. Taints your memories. That hangman’s
noose that just won’t let go.”

When I
didn’t answer, he sighed, kind of like I’d disappointed him. He paced in front
of the window, shaking his head.

“It’s
like a poisoned tree. You let it grow and fester inside you. Feed it with your
hate. Any fruit it bears might be sweet, but ultimately, it’s poisoned, too. It
can only cause hurt and pain.” He stopped moving and stared at the ground.
“Took me a while to figure that last one out, but now that I know, I
ain’t
gonna
forget. I had plans
for my anger, but now I think I’ll have to change ‘
em
.”

I
smiled at him as I turned away just enough to put my left hand out of his view.
“I’ve known a lot of that, sure. I mean
,
my
dad—well,
Gunner’s
dad—was
a real bastard.
Is,
” I corrected
myself. I was starting to slip—to stutter. “
Is
a real
bastard.
Far as I know.”

“Oh,
yeah?” Tom seemed interested in me again, though his eyes were distant, glazed.
“What’d he do to you?”

I
inched toward the end table. “The usual. Screaming. Yelling. Telling me I was
no good.
That I’d never amount to anything.
How I was
useless. How nobody would ever love me. Blaming me for my stepbrother
takin
’ off on us . . . ”

Tom
narrowed his eyes. “He beat you?”

“Gunner,
more than me,” I divulged. “But yeah. Sometimes. Never where anyone could see,
though. Then everyone would know what kind of drunk, piece of shit monster he
was.”

I was
so close to the table. Just inches away. But I couldn’t just reach out and grab
the phone. I had to make it look like I was doing something else. Something
innocuous. And since I was barefoot, the old
tyin
’-my-shoes
trick wasn’t
gonna
cut it.

Instead
I took a hairband out of my pocket like I was going to tie my wild locks back
into a ponytail. Then I let it drop to the ground and bent to pick it up with a
little “oops.”

Eye-level
with the phone now. I’d just have to scoop it into my hand when I stood.

“I had
a dad like that, too. Seems like these days, everybody does. Mom wasn’t much
better, though. But she liked to hurt me in a different way.”

“I’m
sorry,” I replied, reaching for the phone.

“Anything
sexual?” Tom asked me after a pause. “He ever,
y’know
 . . . touch
you, while you were
sleepin
’? Play with your tits?
You ever wake up with his cum on your face?”

My
stomach turned so violently I thought I would puke. “No. Jesus, no.” I
swallowed my bile and grabbed the tie with my right hand and the phone with my
left, standing back up. “It wasn’t like that.”

“You
sure?” he pressed me. He gave me an appraising look. “C’mon. You’re
tellin
’ me Daddy never fucked you?”

Keep calm. Play it cool.
It was
easy enough to think it—lots harder to pull off. My hands were shaking.
My stomach was a mess. Tom was playing with me—if this even
was
Tom. Maybe it had been Tom all
along, my brother’s best goddamn friend, but I had no way of knowing. And he
knew that, the bastard.

He was
the cat. I was the mouse. He had all the power here—the size, the killer
instincts, the claws. Best I could hope to do was outrun him. He seemed to
sense my thoughts, stepping between
me and the door
. I
felt a bead of sweat form on my nape, sticking to my hair.

“Never,”
I told him, shooting him another quick, but shaky smile. “Jim was an asshole,
sure. But he never . . . ”

Tom
frowned. “Huh.” Then he cocked his head. “So where do you think you get it
from, then?
The whole sex thing.
Y’know
,
with Gunner?”

He
shocked me so bad that instead of gently lifting the phone cover, I snapped it
open. That
click
might as well have
been a gunshot. I saw his eyes dart to my hand.

Clumsily,
I tried to cover it with a, “What . . 
. ?
”

But Tom
was on me with an open-hand slap, one that got me right in the cheekbone and
made me see stars.

You
ever been hit like that before? It spins your
fuckin
’
head. Boggles the mind. Takes you off guard.
Off balance.
My vision was blurry and at the same time, way too sharp. Colors were too
bright. My neck hurt from the way my head twisted at the impact, a warm pain
that bloomed all the way up into my skull.

“Fuck—”

I tried
to pull away, tried to jam Gunner’s number into my phone, but Tom grabbed my
arm and slammed my wrist into the table. A new arc of pain sizzled through my
bones. I held tight to the phone, curling my fingers around it.

“No!”

He
struck me again, but when my grasp didn’t break, he brought my hand to his
mouth and bit. Hard.
Right on my knuckles.
I screamed
when he broke the skin, dropped the phone, and came at him with my right hand,
the one with the bandages on it. I was operating on animal instincts. I didn’t
think about the consequences. When I slapped him, it only hurt me worse, and
that moment of hesitation when the pain took me over gave Tom enough time to
grab my hand and twist it, bringing it to my knees.

“Help!”
I screamed. “Somebody, help—”

And then
he slugged me—a good one, right to my jaw. He might as well have hit me
with a Mack truck.

There’s
a nerve there, in your jaw. One that keeps the lights on upstairs—or
shuts ‘
em
off, if
you’re
not
very lucky. One good hit and it’ll knock you right the fuck out.

As I
hit the floor right at the feet of the man who was
gonna
kill me, I couldn’t help but feel like the
unluckiest girl in the world.