The Protector (24 page)

“Forty-two pages.”

“Oh, joy.” Cole checked the paper supply. “Shoot them to me. And thanks for the evening response.”

“Thank your administrative assistant. Your paperwork always arrives complete, with tracking numbers and labels preprinted for my convenience. I don’t mind expediting requests that only need my signature to prep. She’s even started sending the stamps.”

Cole smiled. “Before you ask, no, you can’t hire her away from me. I’m working on a raise if I have to pay it out of my own pocket.” The fax machine by the window came to life. “I see paper. Thanks, Kevin.”

“Anytime.”

Cole dropped the phone back into the cradle.

Forty-two pages were going to take a while to come through the fax. Cole rubbed his forehead at a rare headache and reached over to the inbox for the top inch of paperwork already waiting there to be read.

The problem with having an efficient staff was that paperwork that needed his attention rarely got delayed. If he initialed or signed something, made the mistake of writing an e-mail, action happened immediately. Inevitably that meant follow-up status reports coming back. His own success with hiring great staff often felt like the making of his own downfall. He could delegate work; he couldn’t delegate responsibility.

An official-looking binder with the red stamp budget was on top of the stack. It was a problem that would not go away. Every time Cassie got a draft that would work someone else on, the committee would make more changes.

He set aside the report to take home with him. It was part of the reality of command. He and Frank were fighting the bureaucracy. Between the two of them he had no doubt they would eventually get the aggressive training program they wanted in place, but it was like rolling a boulder uphill—all the pressure was coming from the other direction.

The next item was a blue folder clasp, used for personnel matters to protect confidentiality. Cole opened the folder and slipped out the two pages. The bottom line through the official paperwork: Chad wanted to come to work for him. A message from his assistant noted Chad had called again that afternoon. Ben had caught him yesterday over lunch to mention the doctor was releasing Chad for light duty.

Telling a firefighter on disability he couldn’t come back on shift work was hard, telling him there wasn’t even a place for him in the administrative side of the house felt like hitting a brother when he was down.

There wasn’t a seniority card he could play. He’d done that with

Cassie. She had enough seniority he could authorize paying her out of his own budget. To justify bringing Chad off disability meant having a clear permanent position available he was qualified to take.

Cole found a pen and made a note to his assistant that he would call Chad. He’d find some way to at least give the guy hope at Christmas, even if it meant calling in favors at every other fire company in the surrounding counties until he found someone with an opening. Ben was absolutely right, firefighters had to take care of their own. Cole dropped the paperwork in his out box.

The fax finally went quiet. Cole reached for the stack of pages, then sorted out the reports.

The third report was for him. Lab work was done on the evidence he had expedited from the fire department fire. He started reading.

The first popcorn arson fire had been pinned down to a match dropped with the right wind, humidity, and temperature conditions. In those fires, it had been the popcorn signature linking them.

The structure fires were different.

The fires starting in the walls had a strange burn pattern. They were very hot, with characteristics of a flash fire. That suggested a spark-triggered accelerant. But there were also odd characteristics of a slow, sustained burn.

Cole wasn’t surprised when the report pointed to chemical traces of fertilizer. That would explain the heat and flash characteristics of the fire.

The gold mine was found on page 2 of the report.

Tar.

That explained the way the fire clung.

He’d read just about every arson report this district had written in the last decade to strengthen his own understanding of what type of cases he would have to deal with. Tar was an interesting choice. An unusual one.

He reached for the phone book. He was about to get a crash course in how many stores and businesses sold tar.

Car headlights moved across the window. From his office, Cole couldn’t tell if the car turned in the visitor lot. There was the faint sound of a door slamming. That had to be Rachel. He locked away the reports and his log book, then grabbed his coat.

When he reached the door he caught a glimpse of Rachel already rushing along the sidewalk. Cole pushed open the door and hurried down the handicap ramp. He darted around the railing and caught her arm as she nearly got by. “Hold on, Rachel.”

She stepped on his foot. He was wearing boots, but he still felt it and wasn’t entirely sure it had been an accident. She’d been driving while crying. The realization made him mad. She should not have been behind the wheel. “I promised Jack you weren’t going to cry all over him. Don’t make a liar of me.”

“Let me go.”

“Not until you get your composure back.” He was bigger and broader and he got in her way, refusing to let her past. A sidewalk wasn’t the place to have this conversation, but she wasn’t in a mind-set to slow down at the moment. “Rae—Jennifer’s okay. She’s got some pain in her back from the fall, but she’s got good mobility; she’s alert. Tom’s going to call as soon as he has news.”

“You don’t understand. Where’s Jack?”

Her voice wobbled. He wanted to wince when he heard it. Rae normally handled crises so calmly that he was having to scramble to get in sync with where she was at. He hadn’t been expecting this, wasn’t ready to handle it, and he blamed himself for being the one who had put it in motion. If only he’d handled the situation differently when he called her. “We’ll find Jack in a minute.” He turned Rae back the way he had come. “Come on. Dry your eyes. You really don’t want to cry all over him, do you?”

She wiped her face with the back of her jacket sleeve.

Inside the building she turned to walk on through to the fire station, instead he turned her toward his office. Someone had been raiding his Kleenex box; he found it tucked on the bottom shelf of his bookcase atop a copy of an old edition of the fire science journal.

“You don’t understand,” she repeated. “I talked to Tom last night. Some preliminary blood panels came back.…” Rachel wiped at her eyes and blew her nose.

The fact she didn’t care that she’d shown up in an old Northwestern sweatshirt with spaghetti sauce splatters on it, a pair of faded jeans, and running shoes told him more than she realized. “The remission is over.”

“Tom—he hasn’t told her about the panels until he gets the results from a more sensitive series over the next couple days.”

Cole pressed another Kleenex into her hand and guided her into a chair. “That’s why he went out to buy a dog today,” he murmured, adding another piece to the puzzle of what had happened in Texas. He felt for Tom, having to face the fact Jennifer was taking a turn for the worse so that he needed to move the holiday presents up.

“Yes.”

It was serious if Jennifer’s remission was indeed showing signs it was over, but it didn’t explain this. Rachel was falling apart.

Cole had watched her step into trauma situations on a moment’s notice where she faced putting back together the shattered lives of children. He watched her deal with Jennifer’s cancer for five months. Rachel had gone through far more difficult crises than the incident tonight without this kind of fight for emotional control.

He wished their relationship was such that he could ask what was wrong and she’d trust him enough to answer. Something was very wrong.

It was not the time to try and pry.

He reached over and squeezed Rachel’s hand. “I’ll go get Jack.”

Twenty-six

A
n interesting shift.”

“That’s an understatement, Cole.” Cassie pushed a mug of coffee across the table to him and resumed her seat. It was approaching 1
A.M.
The fire station was quiet. The skeleton crew working through the night handling routine paperwork and monitoring dispatches in the various districts had retired to the communications room. “Every moment past midnight has been a relief. I’ve never watched a clock like this before.”

“It’s tough to watch and sit on edge.”

“Should I take coffee down to Rachel and Jack?”

“Let them be.”

She wanted to head to bed as she was so tired she was about to fall asleep in her chair, but it didn’t feel right to leave Cole sitting alone at the kitchen table. He showed no sign of leaving even though she knew he had been here before 6
A.M.
He had to be exhausted too. She straightened, abruptly realizing the obvious. “Your car keys are in your office.”

“Yes.”

“Cole.”

“Let it go. Rae needs Jack’s attention, not an interruption.”

“I thought the phone call at eleven was good news. Jennifer’s home with only bruises and the need for a heating pad for her back. I know they were going to conference call with the others in the family, but that was some time ago. Do you have any idea what they could still be talking about?”

“I’ve got a suspicion.”

Cassie hesitated. She wasn’t in the same position as Cole who had known both Rachel and Jack for years. “Is there something I should know?”

“Stay close to Jack. He’s going to need a friend.”

“Jennifer’s cancer?” Cole didn’t answer her. He didn’t have to say it. His expression told her what he feared. “Christmas with his sister dying,” she whispered.

“It looks that way.”

An arsonist targeting him. Jennifer taking a turn for the worse. Jack had a freight train coming toward him.
Jesus, what am I supposed to do to help?

“Cole,” she hesitated. “I was hoping I’d be able to show Jack the real meaning of Christmas this year. He’s been asking a few questions.” She amended that. “He’s been asking hard questions.”

Cole smiled at her observation. “Cassie, don’t get fooled. I’ve watched you take Jack at face value over the years and you’re making a mistake by doing that.”

“What do you mean?”

“His questions don’t surprise me and they shouldn’t surprise you. He’s forthright and transparent in a way I admire. He laughs at life. But under that tapestry—you let his humor and casualness suggest that is how he also thinks. That’s a mistake. Watch him around the station. He’s a natural leader in his instincts. He listens, probes for details, is not afraid to make a difficult decision and act on it. When Jack talks about faith—he’s got a lot of respect for the people making the claims, but he’s not comfortable the claims are right. So his response is to respectfully keep listening. That’s very revealing. He’s trying to understand.”

“I’m simplifying, but he seems to think Christianity is nothing more than a myth that grown-ups believe in.”

“He’s not yet convinced that a baby in a manger and the King of kings should and could logically be the same person—Jesus.”

“A hard question to resolve.”

“Don’t feel like you have to force the questions, or worse, force his conclusions. God has been tugging at him for a long time. Jack will slowly keep working through the claims to decide what he thinks.”

“I wish it were easier to start that conversation. I feel like I’m stumbling around sometimes. He hadn’t mentioned Jennifer’s cancer.”

“Cassie—” Cole winced and rubbed his forehead.

“Need more aspirin?”

He shook his head with much more care. “A little less caffeine.”

“What were you going to say?”

“How long have we been friends?”

“Long enough probably to handle what you’re about to say.”

“I wish you and Jack could get on the same page.” Cole leaned forward and folded his arms on the table. “I see the frustration he feels at times, but I don’t know that you see it.”

“Over what?”

“You’re honest, but not open. And it has an impact when you try to talk about something like religion and why you believe. In a rush to convince Jack of the truth, you gloss over eighteen painful months. Faith doesn’t stand in a vacuum. He knows you’re not telling him everything when you talk about other things, so he listens to you talk about God and wonders what it is you’re not saying.”

“Cole—”

“Just listen, Cassie. You hurt him when you hide the scars. Not just the cosmetic ones, but the deep ones. Jack knows it’s been a rough eighteen months, yet you’re wanting to tuck it away and downplay it with him on the assumption that it would be a drag on the friendship. Over Thanksgiving it would have helped had you been straightforward that you were fighting the depression of a holiday without Ash.”

She winced.

“I don’t mean it in a harsh way. I know where you go when you are retreating as a means to cope. I know the things you turn to and hold on to. But Jack doesn’t have that history with you. So he gets worried. And he’s a man who prefers to act, not worry. He about took my head off for this insane idea of you riding along on the fire calls.”