Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel) (9 page)

Navy veterans were allowed to wear their uniforms for special occasions like weddings, funerals, and important state dinners. A date with Cedar may not have passed the acid test for importance to the Navy, but it was very crucial to Boone. He wanted to make a great impression, to sweep her off her feet. Nothing swept a girl like a set of Navy full dress whites.

Full dress wasn’t in his
future, however, not for a date. Instead, he wore a nice jacket and a pair of dark jeans for the date, which was at a restaurant called The Pointe near Cape Hatteras. It was a bit of drive from Frisco, but the seafood was to die for, and the view from a pier that stretched two hundred feet into the Atlantic.

When the server seated them, the sun was just setting on the far side of the island, and you could see the yellow-orange of the light on the capping white waves. It lit up Cedar’s face and hair
, giving her a glow. It brought out her features and made her face even more beautiful. Funny how often she seemed to be framed by the sun.

Boone stood behind her chair and pushed it in as she sat. She wore a strapless little black dress that pinched her narrow waist and left her tanned shoulders naked to the sun. He swallowed hard, thinking how
good it would feel to kiss the soft, downy skin on the back of her neck.

“You look fantastic,” he said after he ordered
the wine. When the server asked his age, Boone flashed his military ID, and that was the end of the questioning.

“You’r
e looking pretty good yourself. Nice jacket.”

“This old thing?” he said. “It’s just something I picked up
at the thrift shop.”

She took at sip of water
. “Nice. I like a guy who knows how to handle his money.”

The server brought the wine and uncorked the bottle. Boone took it from there, pouring them both a glass. “A toast,” he said, passing a glass to her
.

“To?”

“The truth, and everything that comes with it.”

“I’ll drink to that,” she said and tapped his glass before taking a sip. “Wow.
That’s strong.”

“Let the wine sit awhile before you drink the rest,” he said. “Scuppernong grapes need to air out a little, or they can overwhelm you
r senses.”

“Sort of like you.”

“Like me?” Boone said, pretending to be offended. “How am I overwhelming?”

“Come on, you have to know. Your soldier swagger. This firefighter hero thing. Plus you’re really smart in class.” She took a sip of
wine as Boone shook his head slowly. “Seriously, all the cool girls think you’re hot and can't stop talking about you.”

Boone felt his face go flush. “What about you? What do you think about me?”

“Well,” she said and ran a finger around the lip of the wine glass. “I wonder why you'd be interested in a nerd like me.”

Boone
choked on the sip he was taking. “Oh please. Now you’re being coy.”

“No, I'm not!” She fired one of the cornbread muffins the server had just set d
own, and they both watched as it sailed past Boone straight into the waves below.

The server cleared her throat. “Ready to order?”

“Oops,” Cedar said. “I haven’t even looked at the menu.”

“Trust me?” Boone asked.

“You run into burning buildings,” she said, smiling, “and you ask if I trust you?”

He took the menu from her
and turned to the server. “Then we’ll start with she crab soup, followed by the spicy strawberry salad and the crab cakes. For desert—you like chocolate, right?”

“Boy howdy,”
Cedar said as a blush crept up her neck. She sat with her palms pressed together, turning her head just so.

“For desert we’ll
split the chocolate torte.”

The server caught Boone’s eye and winked. “Excellent decision, Chief Petty Officer.”

He knew, though, that she meant his decision to order for both of them. From Cedar’s body language, she liked a take-charge kind of guy.

While they waited for their appetizer, they discussed the research project that Cedar was doing. Then over the salad and entrée, Boone told her
of his theories about a serial arsonist at work. Unlike everyone else, she actually listened intently and found a few holes in his argument. She also split the rest of the bottle of wine with him, keeping up glass for glass until the chocolate torte made its appearance.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” she asked Boone as he poured the last drops in
to her glass.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

The blush that had started in her neck reached her cheeks. “Oh, eat your dessert.”

Boone cut a piece of the torte with the fork. “You first.”

She leaned forward with an open mouth, and he gently placed the chocolate on her tongue.

“Oh my g
od!” She covered her mouth with her hand. “That’s the best I’ve ever had.”

Boone smiled and offered up another piece. “Care to go again?”

“No, your turn.”

“I don’t eat
chocolate.”

“
You rat! If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have let you order it.”

“How,” Boone
said grinned, “do you think you could’ve stopped me?”

In answer, she opened her mouth and leaned forward to take let him feed her again. As he did, the same knot formed in his stomach
, and he had to relax his hand to keep from shaking.

“That’s all,” she said through the next bite. “It’s delicious but too rich. I have to watch my figure.”

“I could watch it for you.”

“Haven’t you already been doing that?” she said, and her face erupted in a blush.

“Guilty as charged.” He raised his hand to signal the server to bring the check. “Care for a walk on the beach?”

“You read my mind.”

A few minutes later, they were strolling beneath the pier where they’d been dining, shoes in hand, fingers locked together. The tips of the waves nibbled at their feet, and the shadows of the coming night already silhouetting the houses on the beach. The wind had picked up, and Cedar shivered in the cold.

“Hang on.” Boone removed his coat and placed it gently on her shoulders. “How’s that?”

“That,” she said and turned her face up to his, “was about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Technically, you didn’t see it, since it’s already dark-thirty.”

“Just shut up,” she said and leaned into his chest, “and kiss me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Running the back of his hand along her cheek, his slipped his fingers into her hair and pulled her closer as he bent down, their lips coming together, gently at first. Then when the tip of her tongue touched his bottom lip, his nerves erupted and he yanked her tight, one hand on the back of her head, the other on the small of her back.

W
ithout letting go of him, Cedar eased her petite body into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself deeper into his mouth, her lithe tongue dancing around his, driving him so crazy that his body ached.

They kissed for so long that Boone lost track of time. He was only dimly aware of the rising tide washing over his bare feet. Then he realized that his hands
were both on Cedar, and he had dropped his shoes.

“If think,” he said as the kiss
faded, “that the ocean ate my footwear.”

“The perfect end,” she said, almost breathless, “to the perfect date.”

After his morning Carolina History class
, Boone traded texts with Cedar before going to volunteer at the homeless shelter, where he ladled out bowls of vegetable soup, along with stale bread toast covered with slices of processed cheese food. Afterwards, he helped out by stripping sheets from the bed and making them with clean linens.

When
he got home, there was more work waiting for him. The stalls had to be mucked, the barn raked, and the straw replaced. All night and all morning, he’d been thinking about that kiss. Of course, he’d wanted to go farther, and he had the feeling that Cedar had wanted to, as well. She was right about it being a perfect date, even if did cost him a perfectly good pair of shoes. It was worth it, just like it was worth it not to push Cedar. Moments like that mattered to a girl like her, and if he were being honest, they mattered to him, too.

That’s why when Cedar texted him firs
t thing with the message: OMG, he didn’t mind texting: DITTO in return.

He
finished the household chores in time to eat a late lunch. In the kitchen he fried four slices of bologna in a skillet and toasted four pieces of Mom's oatmeal bread.

When
the bologna gave off a smell like undercooked bacon, he knew it was done. He slapped together the meat and toast and then headed out the back door toward the deck. He ate as he walked. By the time he had come through the gate, he had devoured both sandwiches.

But they didn't hit the spot.
Boone really did have a sweet tooth. It was just a specialized form of sweet. It was only satiated by snickerdoodles. Mom’s snickerdoodles, which given the circumstances, Boone knew he had little chance of getting. Only one solution. He would have to make his own. Cooking was like chemistry, right? You get a list of ingredients, follow the procedure, and eureka! You’ve got cookies.

“Cookbook, cookbook,” he said aloud as he scanned the line of books on the shelf above the
stovetop. “Nothing for making desserts?”

Who knew there were so many books on preparing fish? That made sense, now that he thought about it. Cookies were naturally appealing. Making fish edible probably took a
higher level of skill. Fish. He snapped his fingers. That’s one species had not included in his science experiment. All of his subjects were mammalian. Which made sense because humans were mammals. But wouldn’t it be interesting to see if insects responded the same way to non-mammalian samples?

“No dessert cookbooks at all?
Barbaric.”

Instead, he settled on the Fanny Farmer cookbook because the name Fanny made him smirk and because it looked like a generalized text.
He found cookies in the table of contents and was delighted to discover the recipe for snickerdoodles.

“The mystery is solved.”

The recipe was simple: Butter, sugar, cream of tartar, eggs, vanilla, flour, and cinnamon. The instructions were straightforward like a science lab. What was the big deal here? With directions like these, anyone could cook.

An hour and twenty minutes later, he pulled a pan of cookies out of the
oven and set it on the stove top next to the three glass bowls he had used for mixing, which were stacked next to a metal dish he had used for working the butter, as well as the decanter of sugar he had spilled on the counter when he burned himself putting the raw cookies in the oven.

The kitchen was sort of a mess, he had to admit, but he would clean it up while he enjoyed his snickerdoodles. He poured himself a tall glass of milk. He set it on the table. He used a spatula to gently lift the cookies from the pan and arranged them on a clean white plate. He sprinkled them with cinnamon twice because there’s no such thing as too much cinnamon. Then he put the plate on the table next to the milk.

“Now for the taste test,” he whispered and took the first bite.

He waited for the rich, buttery flavor to fill his mouth, the w
armth to spread over his tongue and the cold of the milk to harden the cookie so that it crunched satisfyingly between his teeth.

“
What the hell!” he said and ejected the cookie. “Bleh! Bleck!”

He grabbed the milk and emptied the glass. He refilled it and emptied it again.

The cookies tasted like paste. He picked one up from the pan. He held in the light, turning it over and over. It made no sense. He had followed the recipe precisely. The shape was right, the consistency was right, but the texture was all wrong. It was lumpy and grainy, like congealed cream of wheat. And the flavor. Damn. It was nothing like Mom used to make.

The recipe was
defective. That was the only explanation.

He picked up the pan and carried it to the gallery.
“Bon appetite, birds,” he said and flung the cookies into the yard. The crows would eat them for sure.

As he put the bowls and the pan into the sink,
his pager went off. The readout indicated a house fire in Nagswood, a wide place in the road on Highway 12

"That's
only ten miles away," he said quietly. "Nobody has a chance of getting there first." Since Lamar had put him on probation, he had been chafing at the bit for another chance to prove himself.

No
heroics this time. Rules and regs, just like Lamar wanted.

"I'll
follow the speed limit," he promised as he started the truck. His turnouts were on the seat next to him, and the hooligan tool was on the gun rack.

He
radioed Julia, who was working dispatch, cringing a little when he did. If he’d known how great the date with Cedar was going to be, he never would’ve had sex with Julia. Now, seeing her would be even more awkward.

"I'm 10-76
and running 10-39,” he said, meaning that he was responding. "I have an ETA of ten minutes."

"You're
first responder," Julia replied through the static. "You know the drill. Status report only. Don’t take action till the Captain gets there."

"Roger that."

He glanced back at the barn before leaving. If he needed any reason why he should follow directions, there was a fresh load of horse apples directly outside the mare's stall to remind him. There was nothing like a pile of steaming manure to inspire better behavior.

Like the Tin City property, the house in Nagswood was set well off the highway, down a mile long dirt road that was so overgrown with yaupon trees and loblolly bays, it was difficult to navigate. If not for a For Sale sign, marked SOLD from Landis Commercial Real Estate, he might have missed the whole road, and he definitely would've missed the sharp left turn through a hedge row, even though there was a thick column of smoke already rising into the blue sky.

A
few yards beyond the road, a stream cut the boundary between this property and the next. The ground looked scorched in a few places near the edge of the creek. It was lined with electrified wire and two large signs warning trespassers that violators would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. No Trespassing signs were ubiquitous in this part of the county. The growth of the towns in the east had forced wildlife west into this area. The hunters followed along behind, and property owners found their weekends destroyed by early-morning gunfire and the baying of Treeing Walkers, a breed known for their ability to flush out small game. Reading, though, was not one of the dog’s abilities, and they, along with their owners, ignored the signs.

"
Number 17 on site," Boone said as he parked the truck next to an old tobacco barn a hundred yards from the house. There was another truck already there, a half-ton pickup with dual rear wheels. Three firefights stood beside the truck. They were already dressed in yellow turnouts with orange piping, the uniform of the Atamasco Volunteer Fire Department.

"Roger,"
Julia replied.

How,
Boone wondered as he called in his arrival, had they gotten there before him? Did they drive like bats out of hell down the highway or were they just hanging out in a part of the county so remote, there was no cell coverage. Math wasn't Boone's forte, but something wasn't adding up.

"The
Atamasco VFD's already on the scene," he told dispatch, more than a hint of disappointment in his voice.

"That's
real quick," Julia said. "Lamar called in right before you. He says to radio in a status check."

"Roger
that." Bean clicked off the radio and pulled on his turnouts. He grabbed his helmet and the hooligan, then walked across the patchy grass field toward the other firefighters.

As
he approached, the leader said something to the other two, and they moved toward the house. They split up and took either side of the building. Boone wasn't sure what procedure they were following, but something didn't seem right.

"You
got here quick," Boone told the leader. "Thought I'd be first responder."

T
he leader, who sported a mop of black hair and a threadbare beard, wore a blood-red shirt under his unbuttoned yellow fire coat. His eyes were hidden under wraparound sunglasses. When he stepped up, his head barely reached Boone's chin, but he was broad and stump-shaped so that he looked bigger. "Looks like you thought wrong."

The other
two vollies wore hand-me-down turnouts, and sweat-soaked T-shirts. Their hair was stringy brown and hung down past their necks. They looked exactly alike.

"Atamasco is a long way from here," Boone said.

"We're out hunting the Black River, all right? Not that it's any of your goddamned business."

Boone
drew back like he had been backhanded. The man's antagonism came of nowhere. There was something familiar about his face, though, the way his teeth jutted forward from a pronounced prognathism. "Boone Childress, Frisco VFD."

"I
know who you are, rookie. My kid brother Dewayne goes to school with you."

So
that explained the animosity. Dewayne had an older brother, Eugene, who Boone knew was with Atamasco. The brothers looked nothing alike, except in the shape of the mouth. That's why he had seemed familiar.

"What's
the situation?" Boone turned to the fire.

Loach spat tobacco juice onto the ground a few inches from Boone's boots.
"Farmhouse is on fire. Looks like it's going to be a total loss."

Ignore
him, Boone thought, be professional. "I'll do a visual assessment for my captain."

"Don't
waste your time. The house's been empty since tobacco died."

"You know the owners?"

"Doesn't everybody?"

"
Not everybody," Boone said. "So you know this area pretty well?"

"
Who says? Ronnie! Donnie! Y'all done yet?"

"You
just said—"

"Shut
it up, rook. I got a fire to take care of."

Nobody
could walk up to a house that looked like ground zero in Hiroshima and instantly assess the extent of the situation. The dots didn’t connect. But other ones did. A deserted farmhouse. An isolated location. A fire burning so hot and fast, it was a loss before the first responders reached it.

"Keep a safe distance and let the professionals handle this."
Loach said and spat tobacco juice on the ground again. This time, it hit Boone's boot.

Boone
kicked the wad of tobacco juice back at Loach. "This is a pitiful excuse for an investigation, if you ask me."

He
grabbed Boone's arm around the bicep. "Didn't nobody ask you."

Boone
sidestepped, rolled his arm over Loach's, and pushed hard on his straightened elbow. "I'm not in the mood for dancing," he said.

"Let
go of me, ass wipe, or I'm filing a complaint with your captain."

Boone
released Loach and then offered his hand. "No hard feelings?"

He
looked Boone over like he had lice. His eyes narrowed and he leaned so close, Boone could smell his breath. It stank like lighter fluid. "I wouldn't shake your hand if you was a native-born President of the United States, you goddamn socialist."

Boone
held up his hands and backed away. Loach obviously had issues, and Boone wasn't having any part of them. His orders were to give the Captain a status, and that's what he intended to do.

After he finished the visual inspection, Boone returned to his truck and radioed Julia. "Got an ETA on the tanker or the Captain?"

"They
're still ten minutes out. Cap says for you to call him on the radio."

Boone
thanked her and then called Lamar. "Got your status update, Captain."

"What's
the situation?" Lamar said back through the static.

"We have a level three
fire on a single residence, stick built, approximately one thousand five hundred square feet with multiple stories." Boone stretched out the mic cord as he stood on the sideboards of the truck. "The fire has spread to all areas, and flames are coming through the roof in three, no check that, four different areas."