Nothing Left to Burn (23 page)

“Reece Logan. Heard a lot about you.”

Reece shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at the floor. Steve took off his glasses, tossed them to his desk, and held out his hand. “Pretty damn gutsy.”

“What?” Reece’s head snapped up at that.

“Joining squad, facing your dad.”

Reece opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again. He took Steve’s hand and shook it. “Thank you, sir.”

Steve waved him off and sat back down. “What can I do for you three?”

“Today’s fire, Steve. Bear and Logan were on-scene and want to know how you build a case for arson.”

Steve crossed his arms, considered that for a minute, and nodded. “Okay. Reece, do you know about the fire triangle?”

Reece’s eyes shot to mine, and I nodded my encouragement.

“Um, yeah.” He squinted and frowned the way he always did when he tried to recall something he’d read from all the other
somethings
stored forever in his brain. “Heat, fuel, oxygen sources.”

Steve angled his head. “What about them?”

“Um.” He squirmed and frowned some more. “Well, I know the fuel source can be any flammable substance. And I read that the heat source has to be whatever the fuel source’s ignition temperature is.”

Steve shot up a hand. “Okay, good enough. In arson investigation, we immediately look at those three factors, see if any of them are out of whack. Arsonists like to add fuel to fires, so we look for excessive flammable materials or accelerants. Your smarter firebugs know that adding oxygen to the fire can help it spread, so we look for punched holes. Make sense?”

Reece and Bear exchanged a glance and nodded.

“It smelled funny,” Bear admitted. “It wasn’t just wood burning. There was a really bad smell—something chemical.”

“Yeah. And the upstairs flames were kind of green,” Reece added.

“Green?” Steve leaned forward. “Copper does that. So does boric acid.”

“Okay, copper is used in residential pipes, but what’s boric acid used for?” Reece asked.

Steve scratched his chin and swiveled in his chair. “Boric acid’s all over the place—antiseptics, some insecticides, LCD TV screens, even fireworks.”

“Any of which could have been in that attic,” Reece said with a sigh. “Okay. I get why this is so hard.”

Steve grinned, revealing a gap between his front teeth. “We’re just getting warmed up. In fact,” he added as he glanced at his watch, “I have to go interview the guys who were on-scene, get their reports.” He was a tall, thin guy and walked around his desk in two strides. “If you want to learn more, take a look through the NFPA guidelines.”

“Yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“You bet.”

Two more strides, and Steve was down the hall.

“Damn.” Bear winced. “Forgot to show him your video.”

“Yeah, let me see it,” I said and wiggled my fingers.

Reece smiled and queued up the footage. It was shaky but pretty good. Guess it paid to have a good cell phone like his. I watched the exchange between Reece and some guy who liked his nacho chips, if the stains on his T-shirt were any indicator. Reece did a good job keeping the swelling crowd back, across the street and out of the way. The recording showed a nice slow pan of the crowd, then zoomed in on a slight figure, hunching over a cell phone. He wore clothes too big for him, and his phone was clearly new, judging by the trouble he was having with his text mes—

Oh
my
God.

“Amanda, what’s wrong? Do you know this kid?” Reece gripped my arm, and I nearly launched into orbit. I kept my eyes down, forced my face to remain neutral, but Reece—Jesus, I had to get out of here.

“What? No. I thought he looked familiar, but jeez, he could be any kid, you know?”
Shut
up, Amanda, shut up, shut up.

Reece’s eyes narrowed. “He does look familiar. I definitely know him from somewhere, and you do too, don’t you?”

I shoved the phone away. “Back off, Logan. I said I don’t know him.”

He laughed once. “You’re lying. Who is this kid, Amanda? Why are you protecting him?” His dark eyes flashed, and a muscle twitched in his jaw. While I stared, willing every muscle fiber in my limbs to obey my brain and not my heart, he changed. He shut his eyes, and when he lifted them again, his fury was gone.

“Why can’t you trust me?” he whispered.

Oh
crap, oh shit. Reece, I could never explain it so you’d understand.
A knuckle rapped on the open door to Steve’s office.

John Logan stood there, hands in his pockets. He sucked in a deep breath, raked a hand over his graying hair, and shifted his weight. “Reece, I need to talk to you.”

I stepped back. Hurt filled Reece’s eyes for a moment, but he nodded at his father. I used that opportunity to take off but hovered out in the hall.

“What, Dad?” Reece asked.

John cleared his throat. “Ah, you did good today.”

I froze outside Steve’s office.

Reece didn’t say anything. I couldn’t see him but figured he must be staring openmouthed at his father.

“You kept your head. You prevented a civilian from losing his. You saved a few animals, and you did follow orders, up until the part where you chased that kid. Proud of you.”

I inched my way back, because I had to know what was happening. Big, tough John Logan looked like a middle-school boy trying to ask a girl to his first dance. Reece stared at his father, eyes round, and then a slow smile spread across his face. I pressed both hands to my face to cover the sob that all but exploded out of me. I ran down the stairs and started the long walk home.

He did it. He managed to get the most stubborn guy I knew to come around. Reece would get his family back, and I—God. I was going to lose what little I had.

Chapter 23

Reece

It’s funny. I joined squad to force you to deal with me. I didn’t expect it to matter this much. I didn’t expect to be good at it. And I am good at it. I know that I am.

I wriggled under my dad’s penetrating gaze and felt a hot flush crawl over my body. I’d waited my entire life to hear words like the ones he’d just spoken. So why wasn’t I flipping cartwheels down the corridor? Instead of happiness, sixteen stored-up years of disappointment ignited like papers hoarded in a hot and dry attic. It took everything I had to tamp that down.

And then, I looked at him.

Jesus, he looked like he was in labor or something. Getting out those words had needed a push from every abdominal muscle he had. The fire in my gut went out, and I managed a laugh. “Thanks, Dad.” I held out my hand, and he shook it.

“Chief Duffy said you snagged some video of the scene?”

“Yeah, we came to show Captain Conner, but he had to interview the crew.” I held out my phone, cued up the video, and tapped play. “I don’t know him personally, but he’s familiar. I know him from somewhere, so we should be able to find him as soon as I remember where I’ve seen him.”

“You don’t remember?” Dad looked at me sideways. “You actually can’t remember? I don’t get it.”

My eyes snapped to his, looking for the smirk, the taunting expression in his eyes, but there wasn’t any.

Okay.

I guessed a serious question deserved a serious answer, so I attempted one.

“I will. I just have to go through events.”

He shook his head. “You can do that? Just go through all the events in your life like a drawer full of files?”

My entire body heated up again. “Yes, I can. I know it’s not normal to you, but it is to me.”

He flung up both hands. “I’m not making fun of you. I’m just trying to understand how it works.”

I studied him carefully and finally nodded. “I don’t know how to explain it. I just replay all the times I met people, try to match the faces. I never met this kid directly. If I had, I would already have remembered his name. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t
seen
him.”

“School?” Dad offered after a moment, rubbing the scruff on his chin.

“Most likely. Could be a grade or two behind me or something.”

Dad scowled. “Okay. Do whatever works, Reece. We’ve had enough of these incidents. If he’s the guy, I want him caught before there’s another one.”

“Copy,” I said.

Dad smiled—a tiny, tight-lipped quirk—and strode down the corridor. The hall was empty. Amanda was gone. I should have expected that. The only reason she was here today was because Bear and I made it to a fire scene.

But she knew something—I was sure of it.

“Hey, Dad?” I called out to him before he reached the stairs.

He turned and waited. “Yeah?”

I caught up to him and held up the phone. “I think Amanda knows who this kid is. Knows but won’t say.”

Dad’s eyes popped and then narrowed. “Come on.” He led me back inside Steve’s office and shut the door. “You think she’s protecting this kid? What for?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know what to do. Amanda’s been great and—”

“Yeah, yeah, you like her. I figured that out already. But, son, this is an arson investigation. The law comes first.”

I didn’t hear a word he said after
son
. The word just kind of filled up my brain like some sort of fog, slowly surrounding me. I suddenly realized it was my turn to talk. “What should I do?”

“You talk to Steve Conner and let him handle this.”

“But what if I’m right? What if Amanda
does
know this kid and I get her kicked out or something?”

He gave me an impatient shake of his head. “That’s not on you, Reece. It would be on her for omitting information crucial to an investigation.” He frowned at me and, to my total astonishment, reached out and put a hand on my shoulder, gave me a hard squeeze. “Reece, you signed up to do a job. That’s what you do. You do the job. Okay?”

Suddenly, I shot back in time to a day when I was about four years old. We were at a family picnic deal. Way too many people near me and way too many sounds. Things just got
too
much
for me to manage, and suddenly, I was scared. Not some wimpy
Eep
scared; this was a full-out, heart-stopping, all-the-way-to-the-bone kind of panic that used to make me want to disconnect my eardrums from my brain. I had episodes like this frequently when I was little. This one had been
bad
. I was batshit terrified, and the only thing that would have pulled me out of it was something—or someone—familiar, like my dad. But that didn’t happen. Maybe I scared him. Or maybe he just didn’t know what to do for me. It was Matt who helped me. When I finally calmed down enough to notice my surroundings, it was Matt’s arms holding me. He would have been no more than five. Once I was calm, I’d wanted my dad, so I ran to him, and he’d put his hand on my shoulder, bracing me.

I searched through all my memories, and this was the first time since that day that he’d repeated that gesture. With my heart racing at warp speed, I nodded and smiled. “Okay.”

“Attaboy.” He thumped me on the back and left to do his paperwork. Alone in Steve’s office, I fell to a chair in front of the desk, my entire system fried.

I
did
it.
My father was proud of me.
I
promised
you
I’d do it, Matt.I made Dad proud.

Do
the
job
, Dad said. And the job was to prove conclusively that my suspect was guilty of arson.

And my suspect had some kind of connection to Amanda.

I stared at the open door to the fire marshal’s office. I flexed the muscle that was still warm from my father’s backpat. He said he was proud of me. The date and time of this moment were now fixed permanently in my mind.

But I wasn’t celebrating.

Amanda was freaked out by my video. The only question left was what was I going to do about it? I glanced at the empty doorway. Dad was probably downstairs, barking at his guys. Any pride he had in my firefighting ability was because I had tons of help. Help from Amanda and everyone else on J squad.

“What should I do, Matt? Goddamn it, what the hell should I do?”

I rocked back and forth on the chair and waited for a sign from heaven. I had it, I had the one thing I always wanted and—and I left the fire marshal’s office.

***

I found her, standing in a ray of sunlight, staring at the burned-out shell of the house. I pulled over to the curb across the street, killed the engine, and watched her. She didn’t know I was there, not yet. If I didn’t know her, I’d say she was just another curious neighbor, the kind who thanked God it wasn’t her house that burned.

But I
did
know her now.

I’d worked with her for weeks, running practice drills side by side. I knew the hands hidden inside the pockets of her station pants were clenched into tight fists. I knew she itched to pry a board off a window and get a glimpse of the destruction inside. I knew by the way she went white in the fire marshal’s office that she knew who the boy in the video was.

Knew but said nothing.

She lived for the department; why would she lie about this kid? A chilling thought skated up my back. Was she protecting him? Was he the reason she’d joined J squad—to stay one step ahead of the fire department?

“What the hell are you doing here, Logan?” she demanded after she spotted me. She looked anxiously up and down the block, where a couple of kids shot hoops in a driveway across the street.

“We need to talk.”

“What? No. You need to leave. Right now.”

“Amanda, I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who this kid is.” I held my phone in front of her face. She didn’t even glance at it.

“Not now.”

“You know him, don’t you? Did you know what he was doing? Did you help him? Who is he, Mandy?”

She raised her eyes, a funny half-smile on her lips. “I think that’s the first time you ever called me Mandy.”

Shaking my head, I tried again. “You’re trying to change the subject. Who is he?”

“He didn’t do it.”

“Who the fuck is he?” I took two strides closer to stand over her.