Black Heat (2 page)

Standing in the old dining room, Cal admired the way the tall windows let light in. The built-ins were peeling and dusty, but intact; he could imagine them stripped down and stained. It must have been a beautiful room once.

He continued into the kitchen. The cabinets and appliances had been removed; there was an old porcelain farm sink and some dusty shelves. There was room for a table, though nothing like the long pine table they had in the bunkhouse, which had once served a dozen farmhands at a time during the harvest season.

He continued through the rest of the rooms of the first floor, admiring the oak floors, the molding, the leaded glass windows. He paused at the bottom of the stairs, hand on the newel post. Halfway up, the walls were scorched from the fire, and the remains of the wallpaper hung in strips. It would be dangerous to try to go up the stairs; the upper hall was little more than a few timbers holding up the remains of the lathe-and-plaster walls.

Whatever the girl had been looking for, it wasn't up those stairs.

He shouldn't even be inside. He—and the girl—were lucky the place hadn't come down on top of them. Cal retraced his steps and pulled the door closed. Tomorrow, when it was daylight, he'd come back out and board up the door. What did they call a place like this—an "attractive nuisance," wasn't that it? Mimi could be in for a heck of a lawsuit if someone got hurt out here. And while he didn’t know the lady personally, he'd hate for her to bring unnecessary trouble on herself.

So that was that. Cal walked slowly back to the bunkhouse, enjoying watching the smoke curl up from the chimney into the crisp autumn evening. As he opened the door, he could smell something savory, and he heard Jimmy and Zane burst into laughter at something Matthew said.

For closed the door behind him, then stood in the unfinished front room and tried to hold the moment in time. The men in the kitchen—who were once his enemies—had become his friends. He was so close to becoming a policeman, the highest honor he could imagine. The mistake he’d made half an hour ago, when an old instinct had caused him to be reckless, could not happen again.

So he would bury it. Cal had gotten good at burying things that were too painful to think about. It was so much easier to move forward, leaving the memories forever where they belonged—in the past.

He fixed a smile on his face and consciously allowed the tension to drain from his body. Only then did he stride through the house and into the kitchen lit by the cheerful glow of the old wrought-iron chandelier.

"Cal!" a chorus of voices greeted him. Jayne, who was standing at the open refrigerator, tossed him a can; he knew without looking it would be Mountain Dew, because it was his favorite and Jayne made a habit of remembering and Matthew made a habit of keeping it on hand for him.

This
was the dream, Cal corrected himself. Having a place to call home and friends to make it worthwhile. Being a cop was going to be the icing on top.

CHAPTER TWO

Cal was awake at two a.m., but that was nothing new. He had been an insomniac for most of his life. It was common among foster kids, who got used to waking up and forgetting where they were, as they were shuttled from one house or institution to the next.

For a while, during high school, he'd tried things to get to sleep that only made everything worse. Drinking meant that the next day he'd be hung over. Weed made him fidgety. Sports helped—until he was kicked off the team for fighting.

Later, after his grandmother took him in his junior year, he'd learned to wait out sleep, focusing on his breathing, or counting backward, or doing math in his head. Sometimes he read, or watched TV quietly. Most nights he drifted off and caught a few peaceful hours before dawn.

Tonight felt different.

Cal lay on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes fluttering open. He had forgotten to pull the thick drapes closed; the moon had risen bright and full and cast luminous shadows around the room. Maybe it was the moonlight that had woken him.

But a moment later something caught his eye—the headlights of a passing car, perhaps, or the flash of a falling star.

Except the bunkhouse was at the end of a rutted dirt road, one which hardly anyone but the six of them ever traveled.

There—the same tiny flash, coming from the direction of the farmhouse.

Cal slipped out of bed and went to the window. Sure enough, there was a faint glow bobbing unevenly along the side of the house as a shadowy figure crept toward the front door. It paused only for a moment before disappearing, and Cal cursed himself for leaving the door unsecured. He should have nailed up boards last night after the girl ran away, even if he'd had to run Matthew's construction light on the long extension cord when it got dark.

He pulled on clothes even as he went over the possibilities, picking his jeans up off the floor and jamming his feet into his old Jack Purcells. His gun was locked up in the safe in the closet, and Cal didn't consider getting it, not for a moment. He wasn't about to make the same mistake twice, especially since the girl didn't look like she weighed more than a hundred twenty and there had been no sign that she was armed.

Cal walked slowly through the house, avoiding the squeaky boards in the hallway and kitchen floors. He let himself outside, breathing in the cold air and autumn smells of smoke and turned earth and night itself. Crossing the yard, he saw frost sparkling on the dead grass, and heard the owls that nested in the barn rafters.

Whoever she was, she'd left the front door open, and a bicycle leaning against the side of the house. An old bike, he couldn't help noticing, with heavy tires and worn paint and a cracked leather seat. Was that how she'd gotten away last night?

Cal trod lightly on the porch floorboards, easing up the steps on the outside where they were less likely to squeak, a trick he'd learned when he was sneaking home to his grandmother's house late at night. He slipped into the house and crept slowly around the side of the parlor, listening and barely breathing.

A sound coming from the back of the house caught his attention—a scratching followed by a muttered string of syllables he couldn't quite make out. It sounded like a curse. A moment later, however, the voice started humming and the scratching resumed.

Cal moved toward the sound. Faint light seeped out into the hallway from one of the back rooms. The door was open a few inches, and Cal was pretty sure the girl was behind the door.

This was crazy, he scolded himself as he hesitated outside the room. If she was a dangerous intruder, or even one bent on damaging or sabotaging the old house, he should be calling it in, not trying to deal with it himself. The whole point of becoming a cop was because he believed in the system—believed in the power of law and order and compassion to right wrongs in the world, to stop the forces that corrupted neighborhoods and ruined lives.

If she was armed—and for all he knew, she could be high as a kite and carrying an arsenal—he was putting himself directly into harm's way, risking his whole reinvention before he even got it off the ground. If she was a runaway looking for a place to crash, then there wasn't anything he could offer her, and the authorities were going to have to get involved anyway.

And if he did end up having to make the call after trying to handle it himself, he was going to have some explaining to do, which wasn't going to help make his case any easier. All that stood between him and a place on the Conway police force were the last of the exams and the background check and references. Chief Byrd had shaken his hand and told him "It looks good for you, son." Which wasn't a legally binding contract. If he had any sense at all, Cal would turn around and walk back to the house and let the people who already had their badges handle this.

But there was something about that bike. The tape wrapped carefully around the worn seat; the decals on the fenders. The way her hair had streamed behind her as she ran from the house yesterday afternoon. She looked...vulnerable.

And Cal remembered how that felt.

With one finger, he gave the door a little push, positioning himself against the wall where, if he'd misjudged the situation, he could get out of the way fast.

Crouched down on her knees, illuminated by the golden light of the flashlight that she had rested on its side to point at the wall, the girl was mostly obscured by her long hair. It was thick and wavy, a deep shade of chestnut that lightened at the ends. She was wearing heavy black motorcycle boots and well-worn jeans, and she was sliding a screwdriver along the floorboards next to the wall, testing the gap between the molding and the worn oak and tapping at the wood.

No guns. No drug paraphernalia. Just a tired old backpack patched with duct tape.

"Hey," he said softly, not wanting to spook her. "What's going on here?"

She dropped the screwdriver and looked up at him. Her eyes were wide and depthless, shining black in the dim light. Her lips were parted; the tune she had been humming cut off abruptly, its echo still in Cal's mind.

He could see her calculating frantically, looking to his left and right, to the door a few feet behind. He knew the second she made her decision, because her shoulders tensed and her fingers splayed against the floorboards as she rocked forward on her heels.

He was ready for her. She was fast and agile, and she almost made it, feinting to the left as she streaked past him, but he caught the hood of her sweatshirt and she stumbled and fell at his feet, her arms flailing and her legs kicking.

He pulled her arms behind her back and lifted her to her knees, facing away from him so she couldn't connect a kick with his body. She never stopped fighting him—and she never said a word.

#

At least she hadn't found it tonight. That would have been the last straw, Roan thought as she rubbed her aching forearms, sitting with her knees pulled up and her back against the wall. It was bad enough that she hadn't found
Grandpop's treasure, but it would be a thousand times worse to find it only to have it taken from her by some low-life squatter.

He was sitting next to the door, his forearms resting casually on his knees, watching her in the light of the flashlight he’d taken from her. He kept it pointed down, careful not to direct the beam in her eyes, and she’d been able to steal a few glances at him. He looked like he was in his late twenties, with three or four inches on her own five-seven and a solid, broad-shouldered build. His thick, straight hair was so dark it might have been black, and his eyes were unreadable. He moved fast—she had to give him credit for that—and he was strong. He'd picked her up like she weighed nothing, and he knew more about fighting than she did, because she hadn't been able to get a single jab in. But since Roan's fighting career consisted of a single summer in jujitsu, back when Mimi's step-mothering playbook featured keeping Roan in activities around the clock so she wouldn't have to deal with her, Roan was rusty, to say the least.

"So," the man finally said. His voice, despite being low and raspy, as though he didn't use it much, was surprisingly gentle. “You want to tell me what's going on?"

She shook her head.
Say nothing
, Roan reminded herself. She needed to get out of here and come up with a plan B, since she had only a week to help Angel.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Nothing. Nothing is going on. I used to live here, is all. A trip down memory lane. How about you tell me what you're doing here? Because as far as I can tell, you're trespassing."

One thick dark eyebrow shot up. "Seriously? I'm a tenant. I rent a room in the bunkhouse next door. And unless your name is Mimi Brackens—and from what I understand, she's in her sixties—then
you're
the trespasser here."

At the mention of her stepmother's name, Roan couldn't help flinching. And she could tell he saw it. He was watching her like he was trying to read a book, and it was making her uncomfortable. Roan didn't like to be looked at—never had. Which was why, when Walt hired her, she had asked to be trained for a job in the workshop rather than out front with the customers. Why Hank called her their "spokes-girl," a teasing reference to her shyness around the customers and her preference for the tune-ups, brake replacements, and chain repairs that filled her workday.

She let her hair fall forward, obscuring her face, a trick she'd learned when she was a little girl and one that still served her well.

"Mimi married my dad after my mom died," she muttered. "I lived in this house from the day I came home from the hospital until I was eighteen."

"Then why didn't you just ask Mimi for a key? It
was
you who cut the lock off, wasn't it?"

Roan felt her face flush. "We're not exactly on the best of terms. But what I'm looking for is mine. I'm not trying to steal anything."

Technically, that might not exactly have been true, since Mimi had inherited the house and land and outbuildings and everything inside them. Her dad had left Roan a small inheritance that she would come into when she was thirty, six years from now, which would be enough for a nice down payment on a place to live, or money for school—she'd decide when she got there. He'd also left Roan her mother's jewelry, though somehow it had gotten "lost" in the estate, and her grandmother's china, which was carefully wrapped and boxed under her bed.

Everything else had gone to Mimi. But her father had never known about the treasure: Grandpop always said that was a secret between him and his best girl Roan. He would have wanted her to have whatever valuable item he had secreted away inside the house, she was sure of it. Not some trampy bleached-blond gold-digger who married his son when he was still grieving, then ran off to town the minute he died.