Firefly Mountain (6 page)

But still, she wasn’t ready to have sex with him.

They kissed for a few more moments until Cameron started wiggling her shirt up again.

“Knock it off, Cameron.” Gini swatted at his hands, but leaned in to start kissing again.

Cameron slid away from her and folded his arms across his chest. “When, Gini? When?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly. Suddenly that sticky spot on the seat mattered. She knew its diameter, felt the border between sticky and not sticky. Inched over to get in the not sticky zone.

“You’re killing me here. Really. I mean, I said I love you. What else do you want me to say?” He faced forward now. All the cuddling instincts gone to ice.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you
saying
something.” Gini shifted to face forward now too. She felt ridiculous with them both in the back seat as if they were waiting for a chauffeur to take the driver’s seat and whisk them away somewhere.

“Then what can I do to convince you that we’re ready to do this?”

“Nothing. I’ll just know when I’m ready, Cameron.”

“Great. Don’t I get a say?”

Not knowing what else to do, Gini put her hand on Cameron’s and yelped when he grabbed her arm. He pinned her down on the seat, right in the sticky spot, and pressed his length against her leg.

“I’m done waiting, Gini. We need to do this. We’re going to do this.”

His lips crushed down on hers, and she tasted blood. Gini shoved at Cameron’s shoulders, but he only pushed against her harder. She tried to maneuver around him, but the back seat of the car was already tight. She had no room. She couldn’t yell. She did the only thing she could.

She bit.

“Son of a…” Cameron sat up, straddling Gini. He wiped at his bleeding bottom lip, and in a lightning quick move, he slapped Gini across the face.

Sparks exploded before her left eye, and her ear rang. She couldn’t believe she was with the same boy who’d just told her he loved her. He’d never been violent with her before. Who was this kid? Anger that he would treat her this way swirled deep in her belly.

“Now you owe me, bitch.” Cameron unzipped his jeans and grabbed the waist of Gini’s shorts.

The explosion was what stopped him. Flames burst from the hood of the car. Cameron screamed when the windshield shattered, and the flames rushed in. Shock had them both paralyzed. When the fire jumped to the front seats, Gini snapped out of her hypnosis.

“Open the door, Cameron! We have to get out.”

Cameron didn’t move. His eyes were transfixed on the fire as it inched closer to them.

“Cameron!” Gini pushed the passenger seat forward and opened the door on that side. “C’mon.”

She pulled on his arm as she fumbled out of the car. When he didn’t follow right behind her, she poked her head into the back seat.

“Let’s go. Hurry!”

Slowly, he turned to face her. She reached out her hand, and as he shifted to take it, the back of his T-shirt caught fire.

Somehow finding the strength, Gini clamped onto his forearms and yanked Cameron out. They tumbled to the gravel roadway, and Gini kept them rolling until the flames were snuffed. When she looked up, the car was engulfed in an orange fury. They had to get away.

Gini pulled Cameron to his feet. He moaned in pain. How bad was he hurt? She didn’t have time to investigate because another explosion sent metal hurtling toward them.

It happened in slow motion.

She tried to push Cameron out of the way, but she wasn’t quick enough. Red-hot steel rammed into his legs and sent him careening to the ground like a bowling pin.

The sweep of headlights had Gini whipping around. A car pulled over, and a woman jumped out.

“Are you all right? I called for help when I saw the flames.” She stuffed a cell phone into her pocket. “Let’s get him a little farther away from that.” The woman motioned to the inferno that had become of the car.

Together, Gini and this Good Samaritan maneuvered Cameron toward the woman’s parked car. He cried out with each movement, and tears streamed down his face. Gini tried not to look at the bloody trail his body had left in the gravel.

“What happened?” the woman asked.

“I…I don’t know,” Gini said, although the feeling in her stomach told her she did know. Knew exactly what had happened. Exactly what she had done.

****

Gini snapped awake on the arbor swing, and Saber let out a hiss as he was jostled off her lap. She rubbed the palms of her hands over her face, brushed away the tears that had come in her slumber, in her remembering.

Cameron had healed, but it had been a painful journey. Multiple surgeries to repair the damage to his legs had him missing most of his senior year of high school. He’d had to repeat it. He and Gini didn’t talk much after the accident. Or incident, as Gini called it.

She’d gone around for a while denying she had caused the fire that exploded the engine. She went over the scene thousands of times, replayed every angle, analyzed every detail she could remember. The anger was what stuck out in her mind. The words Cameron had said. What he had planned to take from her. But anger couldn’t start fires. Could it?

Her father had combed through the remains of the car himself, several times, and with forensic consultation. No obvious cause for the engine to blow. No recognizable malfunction with the vehicle. No foul play. Nothing.

Nothing but Gini’s anger.

When she’d mentioned her theory to her father, he refused to believe her.

“Nonsense, Gini. Total nonsense,” he’d said. “I’ve been fighting fires for a long time, and there is no way you could have started it like that. Stop blaming yourself.”

She hadn’t mentioned what Cameron was trying to do at the time. Hadn’t mentioned how deeply he’d hurt her with his words and his actions. If she didn’t talk about it, perhaps she could pretend it didn’t happen.

Her daddy’s not believing her had stung. Her own flesh and blood telling her she was talking nonsense. Before she could stop herself, she’d stirred up some fresh anger. The mailbox at the end of their driveway had gone up like a firecracker as she and her father sat on the front steps of their house.

Her daddy believed her then and had been helping her keep this ability—this curse—under control. Her family had managed it rather well. She’d filled her days with happy thoughts and felt normal most of the time.

Until Patrick Barre.

Patrick and Midas sat on the bench outside Mason’s office. He was early, but that was the way he’d planned it. He hoped to get the formalities over with so he could put in most of the day at the fire station. Though his paperwork was always in order, every detail checked and rechecked, Patrick didn’t have an affinity for forms. He’d rather be at the station or building something.

He’d spent most of last night examining the photos Mason had emailed him. Though he had some mixed thoughts about Gini, he couldn’t deny she had a gift when it came to photography. Patrick had been studying incident photographs for years. Most of them merely showed the facts. Gini’s were pieces of art. As if she’d thought about angles and lighting, foreground and background, while she snapped her camera. The photos captured things he hadn’t noticed when going through the actual house, and he liked to think he was an observant guy.

Cookie crumbs on a patch of unmelted linoleum. Burn rings rainbowing across plywood. Blackened fringe on a Navajo-print blanket scrap. Shards of mirror, like glass snow sparkling on tile.

And the blue candle, its waxy, lopsided edges hiding beneath sagging white wicker.

“Morning.” Mason strode over with a coffee in his hands. “Sorry if I kept you waiting, but I’m no good without one of these.” He raised the cup and pointed to it with his other hand. “Want some?”

“No, thanks.” Patrick never touched the stuff. Never understood the fuss over coffee. He liked his water pure and unspoiled.

“Come on in.” Mason opened the door to his office and let Patrick enter first. Patrick would have liked to call the room messy, but that wasn’t the right word. Not at all. Words like “hurricane,” “devastation,” and “catastrophe” came to mind instead. He felt as if he needed a hard hat to sit safely in the crowded disaster that was Mason’s office.

“Dump those files off that chair there.” Mason stepped over three boxes of files on the floor next to his desk to get to his own seat. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“That your office needs caution tape?” Patrick gathered up the files and held them as he decided where to place them. Even Midas, who wasn’t particularly choosy about his hunkering down spots, didn’t know where to go.

“Funny. No, you’re thinking that there’s no way I can possibly solve any cases in this mess.”

“Yeah, okay. That was my second thought.” Patrick settled for resting the files on the top of a low bookcase under the only window in the office.

“Don’t worry. This all makes sense to me and I’m the one who has to work here.” Mason sat and placed his coffee atop his littered desk.

“As long as it works for you.” Patrick shrugged and gripped the file folder he’d brought as if he were protecting it. He didn’t want his papers to catch whatever had infected this office. He finally sat, and Midas nosed a box aside until a clear spot of floor appeared.

“So did talking with the neighbors turn up anything?” Mason asked.

“No, but I dropped off evidence bags at your lab. One of them includes the remains of a—”

“Blue candle.”

Gini walked into Mason’s office. She scooped up the papers on the chair beside Patrick’s and made herself comfortable without the blink of an eye. She was used to Mason’s mess.

How used to his mess was she? How well did she know Mason?
Patrick didn’t like the flash of unexplained jealousy that zipped through him.

Gini faced Mason and offered him a sunny smile, but didn’t toss one Patrick’s way. She didn’t look his way at all.

Okay. We can play it that way.

“Hiya, Gini,” Mason said. “What blue candle? I don’t remember seeing it in the photos you sent.”

Patrick cleared his throat to answer, but Gini already had a photo from her ridiculously big purse in her hands. She got up and leaned over the desk as she put the photo in front of Mason. Patrick’s pulse stopped for a moment as the hem of Gini’s army green shorts edged up a little higher. The back of her thigh summoned his fingers, but he clenched them into a fist and forced himself to look away.

“It’s right here.” She tapped the photo.

Mason picked up the picture and studied it more closely. “Point of origin, Patrick?” The detective looked at Patrick over the top edge of the photo. Gini still didn’t look at him as she sat back in her chair.

The bad guy act worked. She genuinely hates me. Going to pretend I don’t even exist.
Why did that make his stomach ache? It was what he’d wanted. No Gini, no calendar photo to worry about.

Shaking his head, Patrick focused on the business at hand. “Definitely. That candle is the point of origin. Coupled with the gasoline trail Midas found, it ignited that blaze. No doubt. It had a scent too. Cinnamon.”

“Cinnamon?” Mason and Gini repeated together.

“Yes.”

“Cinnamon is an aphrodisiac,” Gini said.

Patrick wondered just how much Gini knew about aphrodisiacs and had to shake his head clear of the thought.

“We’ll wait for the lab results, but I agree this candle is our starting point.” Mason took the rest of the hard copy photos Gini handed him and fished around in his desk drawer. “There are empty folders in here somewhere.” He shuffled around in the drawer, scattered the rubbish on his desktop, and mumbled to himself.

Unable to take it a moment longer, Patrick offered his file folder. “Here, Mason. Use this one. It’s already got case-related information in it.” Patrick reluctantly handed over the folder.

“Thanks.” Mason slid the photos inside. “Look at this. It’s all labeled and everything.”

Gini chuckled, and Patrick’s gaze shot to her.
Was she laughing at him?

She swallowed, and the dimple in her right cheek faded as she put her serious face back on. Her hand clasped the straps of her purse, twisted, wrung. She struggled to not look his way. Patrick knew it.

“I’ve got to go.” Gini stood. “You’re all set, right, Mason?”

“Yeah, Shutterbug. Your work here is complete. As usual, you have proven most useful.”

“Oh, go on, Mason. The things you say.” Another easy smile for Mason. “Don’t know why the gals aren’t lined up to hear your poetic words.”

Mason grinned. “Me neither.”

“Could be this office scares them away.” Patrick rarely joked around, but he wanted to see if Gini would laugh again.

He was richly rewarded. She let out a full giggle this time and almost looked at him. She caught herself though and averted her gaze to the window instead.

“Later, Mason.” Gini slipped out of the office.

She hadn’t said Patrick’s name once, but she’d known he was there. Gini Claremont was a bigger mystery now and damn if Patrick didn’t love solving a mystery.

****

Gini leaned against the wall outside Mason’s office. The walls had threatened to close in on her in there. That had never happened before. She had always been more than comfy in Mason’s office. He was a sweetheart. True, he was a sloppy sweetheart, as Patrick had noted, but she could always be herself with him. He was her brother’s best friend. One of her best friends. Easy to be around.

Patrick Barre was another story, but her plan had worked. She’d considered him invisible and kept her feelings neutral. Okay, maybe it was a little funny he was so out of place in Mason’s disorder. That the chaos had eaten at him. How could he be so rude one minute and humorous the next? And why did he smell so good? Like sawdust and blueberry muffins. She hadn’t expected it to be so hard to ignore him. Hell, she’d spent most of her life ignoring feelings of attraction to men. Wouldn’t be fair to reel one in and risk hurting him. She wouldn’t let what had happened to Cameron happen to anyone else.

But it had taken every muscle straining in her neck to not look at Patrick. All her focus to not speak directly to him. She was drained, but at least she wasn’t angry.