It Had to Be You (54 page)

Not your problem…

But though he told himself that, repeatedly in fact, old habits were hard to break. His relationship with her was as long as it was complicated, but she’d been there for him whenever he’d needed her, no questions asked. In the past week alone she’d driven his mom to her doctor’s appointment, twice, fed and walked Kevin when Jack had been called out of county, and left a plate of cream cheese croissants in his fridge—his favorite. There was a lot of water beneath their bridge, but she mattered to him, even when he wanted to wrap his fingers around her neck and squeeze.

“You have any sausage ready?” she asked.

At the word
sausage
, Kevin practically levitated. Ears quirking, nose wriggling, the dog sat up, his sharp eyes following as Jack forked a piece of meat and set it on Leah’s plate. When Jack didn’t share with Kevin as well, he let out a pitiful whine.

Falling for it hook, line and sinker, Leah melted. “Aw,” she said. “Can I give him one?”

“Only if you want to sleep with him tonight,” Jack said.

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Trust me, you would.”

Coming up beside Jack, Tim waggled a brow at Leah. “I’ll sleep with you tonight. No matter how many sausages you eat.”

Leah laughed. “You say that to all the women in line.”

Tim flashed a grin, a hint of dimple showing. “But with you, I meant it. So…yes?”

“No,” Leah said, still smiling. “Not tonight.”

“Tomorrow night?”

Jack slid a look to Tim. “You have a death wish?”

“What do you mean?”

“Rookies who come onto Leah vanish mysteriously,” Jack said seriously. “Never to be seen again.”

Tim narrowed his eyes. “Yeah? Who?”

“The last rookie. His name was Tim too.”

Leah laughed, and Tim rolled his eyes. At work he reported directly to Jack, but he’d already been marked as having authority problems and he didn’t look chastened in the slightest.

“I’ll risk it,” he said cockily to Leah.

Jack wondered if he’d still be looking so sure of himself later when he’d be scrubbing down fire trucks by himself. All of them.

Leah yawned and rubbed a hand over her eyes, and Jack forgot about Tim. “Maybe you should switch to Wheaties,” Jack said. “You look like you need the boost.”

She met his gaze. “Tim thought I looked all right.”

“You know it, babe,” Tim said, still shamelessly eavesdropping. “Change your mind about tonight and I’ll make sure you know
exactly
how good you look.”

Jack revised his plan about Tim cleaning the engines. The rookie would be too busy at the senior center giving a hands-on fire extinguisher demonstration, which every firefighter worth his salt dreaded because the seniors were feisty, didn’t listen, and in the case of the female seniors, liked their “hands-on”
anything
training.

Oblivious to his fate, Tim continued to work the grill. Jack kept his attention on Leah. He wanted her happy, but that didn’t mean he wanted her dating a player like Tim. But saying so would be pretty much like waving a red flag in front of a bull, no matter how pretty that bull might be. She’d give a stranger the very shirt off her back but Jack had long ago learned to not even attempt to tell her what to do or she’d do the opposite just because.

She had a long habit of doing just that.

He blamed her asshole father, but in this case it didn’t matter because Leah didn’t seem all that interested in Tim’s flirting anyway.

Or in anything actually.

Which was what was really bothering Jack. Leah loved the challenge of life, the adventure of it. She’d been chasing that challenge and adventure for as long as he could remember. It was contagious: her spirit, her enthusiasm, her ability to be as unpredictable as the whim of Fate.

And unlike anyone else in his world, she alone could lighten a bad mood and make him laugh. But her smile wasn’t reaching her eyes. Nudging her aside, out of Tim’s earshot, he waited until she looked at him. “Hey,” he said.

“Aren’t you worried you’ll vanish mysteriously never to be seen again?”

“I’m not a rookie.”

She smiled, but again it didn’t meet her eyes.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Always.” And then she popped a sausage into her mouth.

Jack got the message loud and clear. She didn’t want to talk. He could appreciate that. Hell, he was at his happiest not talking as well. But she’d had a rough year, first with the French culinary school disaster, where she’d quit three weeks before graduation for some mysterious reason, and then
Sweet Wars
.

Rumor had it that she’d gone pretty far on the show, outshining the best of the best. He knew she was under contractual obligations to keep quiet about the results, but he thought she’d talk to him.

She hadn’t.

The first episode had finally aired on TV the night before. Jack had watched every minute of it, cheering her on through the first elimination round task of creating puff pastries on the clock for a panel of celebrity chefs who yelled—a lot. Most of Leah’s competition had been completely rattled by their bullying ways, but Leah’d had a lifetime of dealing with someone just like that. She’d won the challenge, hands down. And even if Jack hadn’t known her as well as he did, he’d have pegged her as the winner of the whole thing.

But the thing was, she wasn’t acting like a winner.

Had she quit that too?

Because the truth was, she tended to run from her demons. She always had, and some things never changed.

She met his gaze. “What?”

“You tell me what. Tell me what’s wrong.”

She shook her head, her pretty eyes surprisingly hooded from him. “I’ve learned to fight my own battles, Jack.”

Maybe. But it wasn’t her battles he wanted to fight, he realized, so much as he wanted to see her smile again and mean it.

Present Day

J
oe Walker couldn’t believe his bad luck. He lay flat on his belly in an inch of cold, mucky water, surrounded by grime and soot and the thick stench of smoke, all of which was slowly permeating through his coveralls, his skin, and the mask he wore to protect his lungs. Just another day at the spa.

Or a day in the life of a fire marshal who worked for MAST, the Metro Arson Strike Team out of San Diego.

The fire had occurred only hours before. Now he turned on his camera, clicked the shutter, checked the digital display to make sure he had what he wanted, and blew a speck of dirt off the lens.

Firefighting was a dirty business. But inspecting the damage, searching for burn patterns, putting together the story of what had happened and ruling for natural causes or arson, was dirtier.

Even so, he’d never expected to be
here
again, in the very basement of the warehouse that had so irrevocably changed his life twelve years ago. It was just past the crack of dawn—he stifled a yawn as he glanced at his watch—far too early to think about the past.

Damn he hated getting up before the sun, but given that the majority of arson occurred at night, early mornings were a common fact of his life. A common fact that never failed to annoy Cindy.

“Being the lover of a firefighter was supposed to be exciting,” she’d murmured as he’d crawled out of her bed at four a.m.—an hour ago now. “Not utterly exhausting.”

He opened his mouth to correct her—he’d gone from firefighter to fire marshal two years ago—but she’d run a hand down his torso, her eyes going molten as she did.

That she found him so desirable still stunned him. He’d never told her that he’d been the fat loser all through school, or that he couldn’t have gotten laid if he’d begged, a phenomenon that had lasted until the sheer physical labor of firefighting had gnawed away at his baby fat.

“Come back here.” Her soft voice had floated on the predawn air as he’d stumbled through her bedroom trying to find his clothes.

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can.” She opened her legs, danced her fingers between them.

His tongue had nearly fallen out but he buckled his belt and added his gun and pager to it. “Cindy. I have to go.”

“Fine.” She turned over, exposing a mouth-watering ass as she stretched for a pillow, which she then aimed at his head. “But don’t even think about coming tonight. Figuratively or literally.”

He’d caught the pillow an inch from his face and sighed as he’d grabbed his shoes on the way out. After dating her for the past two months, he knew he had to give her a break. Nearly half of their overnights had been interrupted.

He didn’t know how to tell her that the stats weren’t going to get better. Fine as her body was, and as much as he enjoyed it, he lived and breathed his work.

Except today. He couldn’t believe he was back.
Here.
Drawn now by something beneath the shelving unit, he put both his past and Cindy out of his mind and inched in a little closer.

There were no windows in the basement to let in the early sun. The electricity had been blown in the fire, which might or might not explain why the overhead sprinklers hadn’t gone off. There was nothing but the narrow beam from his flashlight guiding him as he followed a curious burn pattern underneath the large, heavy, unbudgeable metal shelving unit. He fired off a few more pictures, then swung the camera around his neck to lie against his back while he studied a particularly interesting find with his light.

“Anything?” his partner asked from behind him, still standing straight up, and probably nice and dry to boot.

“Yeah, I’ve got—” Joe broke off as his flashlight suddenly highlighted two glowing eyes only inches from his outstretched hand. Accompanying those feral eyes came an unwelcoming hiss.
Shit.
Jerking upright, he smashed his head into the metal shelf above him.

“What the hell is that?” asked Kenny from his helpful perch five feet back.

Joe waited until the stars faded from his vision, but his heart still raced, pounding his ribs as he eyed whatever was currently eyeing him right back. “I’m not sure.”

After the historic bushfires in the entire San Diego area two years ago, which had drawn rabbits, raccoons, deer, and even mountain cats into the suburbs, the gleaming, sorely pissed off gaze could belong to anything.

And nothing he wanted to be this close to.

“Well, don’t get bit,” Kenny said.

“Thanks.” Joe watched the animal as it watched him. Neither of them moving. “Helpful advice.”

“I try.”

Joe shifted his flashlight over the cornered animal, but it didn’t help because the shallow water covering the floor made a crazy reflection. “I can’t see.”

“Who needs to see, it’s growling like a wild possum on a bad PMS trip. Get the hell out of its way.”

“I think it’s hurt.” And Joe had spent enough years growing up as the underdog to be unwilling to just leave it. “Do you think you could come closer than the two miles you’re standing back, and give me a hand?”

“I have a healthy fear of rabid, hissing animals.”

“We were just hanging off the roof staring a thirty foot fall in the face as we studied the loft and you didn’t blink, but a little animal scares you?”

“I didn’t get enough love as a child. Are you sure it’s little?”

Joe eyed the decidedly not-so-little silhouette hunched over and miserable. “It’s shaking like a leaf, does that count?” But since he couldn’t see its teeth, he still didn’t move. “Come distract it so I can back out of here.”

Into Joe’s peripheral vision came Kenny’s two boots
not
caked in muck like Joe’s. Kenny’s boots rarely got dirty. In fact, Kenny rarely got dirty. It was just one of the strange little mysteries of life.

“I’m going to scare it out from the back,” Kenny said. “So watch yourself.”

“Wait.” Joe began to scoot out from beneath the shelving unit, his life flashing before the eyes he didn’t want to have scratched out. “Okay now,” he said, dirty water dripping off him.

Kenny banged his flashlight against the metal, and with a screeching howl, the hissing thing zipped out from beneath the unit and into the inky blackness of the basement.

Both Joe and Kenny whipped around, shining their twin beams across the wet, dank floor to the far corner, on the large, orange…cat. She had white paws and a deep scratch down one side of her face, which held one green eye, and one brown.

“A cat.” Kenny shook his head, a few drops of dirty water marring his glasses. He removed them and wiped the lens with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket. “A
damn
cat.”

Filthy, wet, and overheated, Joe stripped out of the top part of his coveralls, letting the sleeves and torso hang off his hips. He wore a sweat drenched T-shirt beneath, but he left that on as he stepped closer in disbelief.
“Socks?”

Unhappy and wet, the cat shook first one paw and then another, glaring at him the whole time.

Hunkering down, Joe outstretched his fingers. “Here, Socks.”

Above them the building rumbled ominously. He knew there was still an entire firefighter crew out there clearing hot spots and checking the soundness of the structure. Everyone knew he and Kenny were down here.

The ground shook again.

Kenny and Joe stared at each other. Kenny pushed up his glasses and gestured to the stairs. “Let’s hit it.”

“Yeah, but we’ll be back later.”

“Why, what did you find?”

“A rainbowlike sheen to the water beneath the unit.”

They both knew that could indicate an accelerant, such as gasoline or paint thinner. Since there was nothing in the basement but boxes of stock for a furnishings shop, the appearance of such a chemical was automatically suspicious.

Or was that simply because Joe had personally been in this very spot for another fire entirely? One that had ended in a terrible, tragic death?

Either way, he and Kenny would know everything there was to know by the end of their investigation. If it had been arson, they’d uncover it. Conviction, however, was another story entirely. That was because arson was a sneaky bastard of a crime, usually done quietly in the dead of the night, a solo act more fervent than masturbation. The evidence never lied, but being able to actually prove motive and cause, not to mention tying a suspect to the scene of the crime, had often proved frustrating.

Over the years, Joe had learned the hard way that the key to the job was detachment and an unflappable composure. But this case would test both because he had memories to battle here as well, memories strong enough to begin a low throbbing at the base of his skull.

Socks had been just a kitten on that long ago day when everything had gone so terribly wrong, costing Tim Abrams his life, costing Summer Abrams the rest of her adolescence, costing Joe the only bright spot in his life at the time.

But whether this cat at his feet was Socks or not, Joe couldn’t leave her down here, hurt and terrified. “Here kitty, kitty.”

“I wouldn’t,” Kenny warned as Joe reached for her, and sure enough, the cat turned into a wild thing in Joe’s arms, hissing and spitting, using both paws to swipe down his chest, making him hiss as well. He didn’t look down to see if the damn feline had yanked out his heart or if it only felt like it, because at that moment the building shuddered wildly.

Both their radios squawked to life. “Walker, Simmons.
Get out,
” came a booming voice in stereo. “Do you copy? Roof is going to collapse.
Get out now.
”

“Copy,” Kenny yelled as dust rained over them. He snatched up their evidence-collecting bag and Joe’s flashlight. “Let’s beat it.”

Joe still had his arms full of pissed-off feline. Chest burning from the scratches, he shook his head when Kenny turned toward the stairs that led up through the burned shell of the warehouse. “Not that way.”

“It’s our exit, Walk. Time to get off this train.”

“There’s a back door, and if it wasn’t destroyed in the fire, it’s a faster way out.”

“If we die down here, I’m taking that cat to hell with me,” Kenny vowed, following so close on Joe’s tail he could feel him breathing down his neck.

“We’re not dying, not today.” The dust and dirt falling on them turned to a cakey mud on Joe’s drenched body as they ran down a narrow hallway to a second set of stairs, leading up.

The set he and Summer had always used when they didn’t want to be seen.

“You weren’t here when they fought the fire last night,” Kenny said breathlessly as they began to climb the rickety wood steps. “And we haven’t seen the blueprints yet. How did you know—”

“Been here before. Keep moving—”

From behind them came another foreboding tremble, and everything around them began to shake as if they were in an earthquake.

Not an earthquake, Joe knew, just a warehouse that had taken more punishment than it could withstand. He hoped to God everyone was off the roof because this sucker really was going to collapse.

It wouldn’t be the first time. Horrifying visions rushed him. Summer screaming for her father, as she raced up the other set of stairs to the main floor, yanking open the door before he could stop her, allowing the smoke and fire to overcome her…He’d torn up after her, through the licking, hot flames, just as the roof collapsed through the center. He’d stood there in the blinding smoke and dust, frantically yelling for her before finding her trapped in the rubble, unconscious and bleeding. He’d dragged her outside, next to where Danny had escaped without trying to help.

The fire department had come that day, and so had an ambulance, but it’d been too late to save Tim Abrams from the collapsed loft. It’d taken Summer two days to awaken from her head injury, and after a two-week hospital stay, during which time she’d missed her father’s funeral, she’d left town for the summer to join a river guide company in Colorado.

Joe hadn’t seen her again, she’d made sure of it. She’d taken her high school equivalency test that fall, graduating two years early, hiring on at a different expedition company after that. She hadn’t entered San Diego State with him as planned. In fact, they hadn’t exchanged a single word since that terrible, stupid fight in the basement.

Now he and Kenny charged up the last few steps, shoved open the door to the outside, and stepped into the early morning salty sunshine. In the parking lot in front of them were two fire engines and an assortment of fire personnel, all visibly relieved to see them.

“Everyone accounted for?” Joe asked their Chief, who nodded just as a huge, thundering crash had them all whipping around in time to see a section of the main roof cave in, shaking the ground beneath their feet.

“Jesus,” Kenny muttered, and removed his glasses with a shaking hand, leaving him standing there with a perfectly clear imprint of the lenses on his filthy face.

The rest of the building stood firm, though looking a bit like an accordion on one side. All around them firefighters were still checking the perimeter and the hot spots. A cop was helping to keep looky-lous at a distance and out of harm’s way, and on a summer’s morning near O.B. there were many of them, in a variety of dress. Joggers, construction workers, students, bums, rich patrons of the galleys nearby…

In the midst of all the chaos, Joe strode over to his city-issued truck, opened the driver’s door and set the cat on the seat. “Don’t tear up anything.”

Socks gave him her back and stuck her tail in the air.

Damn thing didn’t remember him, a reminder that when it came to his past, not many did. He slammed the truck door and put his hand to the front of his T-shirt, which not only came away muddy, but sticky with the blood now flowing freely from his deep scratches. “Nice,” he said to Socks through the window, and wiped his hand on the thighs of his coveralls before flipping through his clipboard.

“You looking for the owner info?” Kenny asked, coming up behind him. His face was already clean. Joe had no idea how he did that. “Two sisters,” Kenny said, consulting a sheet of paper. “You going to call, or should I?”

“I’ll do it.” Joe glanced at the names, though he already knew what he’d see. Tina Wilson and Camille Abrams—Summer’s aunt and mother.