Ellery Mountain 1 -The Fireman and the Cop (4 page)

“I was cleared back to work,” Finn answered. To be fair, that that was the answer to every question Max had asked.
The expression on Max’s face changed immediately. From concerned and considerate to predatory. The change was stunning and complete in an instant. Max took a step closer and Finn had nowhere to go given the back of his knees were up against a display of citrus fruit. The size of Max, the height of him, the muscles that meant he could drag a man out of a fire, everything was in Finn’s space. Max pressed his free hand on Finn’s hipbone and deliberately dragged his fingers down his thigh.
If anyone who knew Finn came around the corner and saw the town’s new volunteer fireman this close, Finn knew his whole question of whether Max was in the closet would be a moot point.
“Dinner tonight?” Max said.
“I’m on duty at ten,” Finn admitted.
Max tilted his head then shrugged. “Barring emergencies, I’ll be home at six.”
Four hours. Well, three hours and fifty minutes, giving ten minutes to get dressed again. Wait. It was an invitation to dinner, not an invite for no-holds-barred sex. Groaning inwardly at the path his brain was taking, he nodded. Jeez, the guy was so big and tall—fuck, did Finn really have to wait until six? He shifted his stance and his free hand grazed Max’s thigh. He pulled the hand back like he had touched fire. Lust sparked inside Finn and at that moment, if Max had grabbed lube and condoms from the next aisle and bent Finn over the fruit and vegetables, Finn would probably let him in.
That would certainly disprove the closet idea.
“You’re in one of houses off of Main, aren’t you?”
Max raised an eyebrow at the question. “Good detective work,” he said softly.
Finn narrowed his gaze. Was Max accusing him of being up in his business or actually praising him for being a cop and knowing what was happening in his town?
“I’ll be at yours for six,” Finn said instead.
When Max grinned, he knew he was just being teased.
Probably six oh one…or maybe a bit before six just to be on the safe side
.
“Do you need me to bring anything?” He swayed towards Max then just as quickly realised what he was doing. Standing there surrounded by lemons and melons, he was reacting with visceral need to whatever the hell Max was suggesting.
“Just yourself,” Max responded. He smiled and the smile reached his beautiful eyes.
Beautiful? Since when did I see things as beautiful?
The two of them stood for a few moments looking at each other, and it was only when Mitzy on the tills called for a price that they moved apart. The grating nasal sound asking for assistance for cashier three was enough to break the spell that had woven its way around them. Max chuckled, looking left then right, and sauntered away towards the cereal aisle, leaving Finn bereft.
Finn deliberately went the opposite way and wasn’t sure where he was heading. He was only a little shocked when he realised he was standing right in the centre of the pharmacy aisle—nose to nose with condoms. Should he take some with him? Was that what he wanted? Hell yes, that was what he wanted. What would the cashier think? What if it was Mitzi—who for all intents and purposes was something like a cousin, their mothers were so close? Normally he bought that kind of thing in Knoxville, simply because that was where he had sex.
He didn’t want to make a big thing in Ellery about being gay. No one gave him grief but buying condoms from the town main store would not go unnoticed, and then his mom would find out. He wondered if he would be having the same feelings if he were his brother. Josh was in a new relationship with a girl at college. No one would bat an eyelid if Josh bought condoms, right? Resolving to say the hell with it, he scooped his usual brand into the basket and quickly left the pharmacy aisle to grab the rest of what he needed. Five minutes later, with the condoms safely hidden for the time being under milk and bread, he joined the short queue at the only manned till. Mitzi’s till.
Max had long gone, it seemed. So any condom purchase was going to be something Finn could keep to himself if Max only wanted dinner, or worse, friendship. When his turn came, he was lucky. There was no one behind him and Mitzi appeared distracted. She didn’t even hesitate when the small box was scanned and bagged. Finn paid with a thank you and had very nearly made it away from the checkout with no talking at all.
“I’m gonna have to call for a restock on those,” she said with a wink.
“Sorry?”
“Between you and the new guy there’ll be nothing left for the straight guys.”
Finn wasn’t entirely sure how long he stood there with his mouth open and not knowing what to say. The new guy? That had to be Max.
Did he…would he…hell.
Mumbling something like a goodbye, Finn left the shop at speed and in a few minutes had walked the length of the short street and turned onto his own road. It was only when he shut the door on his two-bedroom apartment that he let out the groan of embarrassment that had been stuck inside him.
Sometimes he hated living and working in a small town.

The meeting was far more interesting than Max expected. He thought he’d left arson back at the city, imagined that Ellery would be a whole different kettle of fish. But no. The fire had been started deliberately, and the forensics backed up with fire patterns and spread that could only mean the jar-and-gas idea had been used. He and Quinn had been called to a meeting with the police chief Carter Mayfield and the mayor. He found it weird to move from a situation where he was learning to support the mayor to suddenly being the experienced one.

Mayfield shook his head. “Nothing that was useable. Whoever it was took great pains to keep everything clean. But this is what I don’t understand. Why wipe prints and put the forensic trail that way at an end and then leave a fully set up cocktail ready to throw at the scene?”

“Maybe whoever it was expected to need to use two?” Quinn pointed out. “Maybe they didn’t think the place was going to go up so quickly? The explosion the cocktail caused then burned up grass outside the building and came close to where we think the perp was standing. Maybe he or she just got scared and ran?”

Chief Quinn tapped at his notes thoughtfully. “Max, have you come across something like this before? Where there is deliberate arson where the tools are left behind?”
Max paused for a moment. What he wanted to say was nothing new to the chief but maybe, just maybe, some of what he said could ring a bell with the cops. He was new to this town and didn’t have a handle on the general population yet. Settling his thoughts, he slid straight into where his experience and knowledge could help.
“Arsonists can be split into five categories. Most of all arsons are committed for either revenge or excitement. The remainder are committed as acts of vandalism, or to conceal a crime, or for profit, including insurance fraud. Leaving evidence at a site implies the firebug is new to all of this, but that doesn’t help us categorise him or her as the one wanting revenge or excitement. I think we can rule out concealing crime or profit given this is a public building and there was no crime in there to hide.”
“So in your opinion?”
“Revenge on a case? Vandalism against the cops, or a cop in general. Nothing else was hit, so it was clear that was the only target. Do you have any ongoing cases, or anything outstanding you should be tracking back?”
“No one who has an arson MO,” Quinn answered quickly. Frowning, he glanced down at the photos of the crime scene with the Fire Department markings. “This is kind of a quiet place. Only one murder in twenty years, and just your average kids’ stuff, nothing like attempted murder.”
No one mentioned the fact that Quinn had labelled it as attempted murder. Simply because it was. Whoever had thrown the bottle would have known people were inside.
Max left the meeting unsettled and when he stepped out on the sidewalk he took a detour back to the destroyed police house. Something itched at the base of his skull, a similarity with a case back in Nashville. A disgruntled ex-employee from a chemical company had targeted various pharmacies. There had been no chance of causing damage to his employers so he’d taken it out on the closest thing—pharmacies carrying the medications his ex-employers created. The one similarity here was that the same bottle was used. Max recalled, when questioned, the guy said he’d used the one that he’d researched on the Internet. Max sighed inwardly. He had never quite got over the fact people posted shit like that online—detailed instructions on how to burn a building to the ground in three easy stages simply using a bottle and accelerant. He had to check what was out there for people to follow now.
The whole area was cordoned off by tape, but there were contractors setting up a ring of fencing around the whole site. The place was still a crime scene, and until the cops and the fire team signed off on cause, it was likely to stay that way. Given the assumption that arson was the cause, Max wanted to just get one last look at what was left.
He ducked under the tape then circled the structure. With the ceiling and roof collapsing in it was hard to make an assessment of what had been where. Two storeys of old building had been destroyed through a combination of fire and water, and Max didn’t need witness reports to locate point of origin. The fire had spread outwards, and tracing the widest part back to the narrowest, there had been no question that whoever had thrown that first bottle had been standing to the rear of the building and on the slight hill that was behind. Max climbed until he was at that vantage point and looked down at what would have been here.
Quinn had already been out and done a review but something about this didn’t sit right with Max. He’d spent his lunch hour flicking through the witness reports. There had been three staff in the office. Kathy White, the dispatcher who had just been leaving to go off shift, Drew Bryant, the officer still with a few hours left on his shift, and Corporal Finn Ryan. Of course, there had also been Mike Fitzgerald. From all he’d heard, the man was the ubiquitous town drunk and records indicated Corporal Ryan had brought him in after picking him up in Broadfields Park just on the outskirts of town.
The dispatcher said a call had been made and Corporal Ryan was asked to pick him up on the way back from wherever he was through town. He hadn’t even been on duty and was just picking the guy up—as every cop at this small station had at some point or another—as a favour. Five minutes after making Fitzgerald comfortable in temporary holding, in Finn’s words, ‘just to keep him safe’, the fire had started. Kathy and Drew had been downstairs. Finn had stood signing paperwork in the small area outside holding upstairs. Then the explosion. Drew reported it as like a firework that had kept on going, crackles and sparks and a great whoosh of sound. That was consistent with the use of an accelerant and the old construction style of the building.
Finn, on the other hand, said he’d been immediately overwhelmed with heat even before he’d heard a thing. Which implied the entry was on the upper floor. So whoever had been throwing had aimed up and away from them. They evidently had no clue how much damage the accelerant and fire could cause. In a building that old there would be no need for a second attack, but whoever had stood there and thrown that first bottle had a second bottle just in case. That was focused and personal and not at all a random thing.
Kathy and Drew had used the front door and the fire had been between Finn, who was forced down the stairs, and Fitzgerald in holding. Yet as soon as Finn had his wits about him he’d gone back in. Risked himself for a guy who appeared to have little love from his fellow townspeople. There was a whole layer of bravery and stupidity wrapped in the action. Max could understand why he had done it.
“What do you think?” Max looked up to see the chief staring down at him in his crouch.
“I don’t think we can help anymore,” Max concluded. “Forensics on this won’t give us anything else. It’s a cop matter now.”
“I came to the same conclusion.” Quinn sounded tired and Max stood with a stretch. The expression on the other man’s face was one of confusion and defeat.
“We can’t always have the answers,” Max offered.
Quinn nodded. “Twenty-four years I’ve been here, first as a lieutenant, now a chief, running the place on a shoestring, and six months from retirement and an arsonist falls in my lap. I wanted everything tied up before I move on. Let’s pray this is a one-off that can be sorted.”
Max glanced at his watch. Half past five. He needed to make a move if he was going to get a shower in before Finn arrived at his place. Easy. Until, of course, his beeper went off. Then he and Quinn were scrambling down the grassy hill behind the burned remains and making their way direct to the station. Skidding to a halt, two other volunteers arrived at about the same time.
“House fire, all occupants out, need us for backup.”
The next few hours were a blur. The house, a large stilted place on the side of the mountain, wasn’t easy to get to. The fire was restrained to one area but that didn’t make it any easier. The surrounding trees were fall damp but the two crews wet down the surrounding area just in case, and finally, at just past nine, everything was under control and the crew from Ellery were making it back to town. Some of the biggest problems around this town were the inclines and the twisted roads, and getting down to Ellery took another forty minutes.
Max guessed the gap for dinner was over and wasn’t surprised when there was no trace of Finn at his place. Like the man would sit on the small porch waiting? W
hat is in your head, Max?
“Heard you got called out.” The voice was clear and from behind him, and Max spun on his heel with a smile on his face.
“Structure fire,” Max confirmed.
“So they said. Two fires in a week, what are the odds of that? It’s out my way on the mountain and I know what a fucker it is to get to the houses there.”
“You live on the mountain?”
“Way high,” Finn said. “One day you’ll have to come see the view from my porch.” The invitation hung in the air with an anticipatory moment of silence. “Anyway, I still have an hour unless you’re too tired?” Finn held up bags. “I brought takeout thinking you may be hungry.”
Max was hungry all right, but it wasn’t exactly for food, and where the hell had that cliché come from? Max opened the door and stood to one side. “Come on in.”
Finn smiled and moved past him. The scent of Chinese food edged its way past the smell of smoke in Max’s nose and his stomach rumbled. There was a small Chinese restaurant next to the mayor’s office and he had smelt the tempting scents since he’d started work there. Toeing off sneakers, he followed Finn and shut the door behind them. They had an hour. A whole hour.
Finn switched on a light in the kitchen and placed the bags on the side. He turned to Max with an expectant smile. “Plates?”
Max could no more ignore Finn in his kitchen than he could remember where the plates were located. Maybe it was the fire, maybe it was because it had been too long since he’d been intimate with anyone, whatever it was, he really didn’t want food. Two steps and he had the sexy cop in his arms and pressed back against the work surface. Kissing Finn was just as he’d hoped it would be. The other man was as eager as he was to taste and learn—just as needy. Finn’s hands twisted behind Max’s head and fingers raked his hair and it was all Max could do not to push Finn into the bedroom there and now.
After all, despite the cashier at the store smirking at him, he’d bought enough condoms to last some time. Standing there and kissing, he subtly shifted his centre of gravity so Finn could feel exactly what effect he had on Max. Finn groaned low in his throat and tilted his head to deepen the kiss. Everything was fast and rough and right-here-now and Max swore he could get off just on this touch. Moving slightly, he snaked his hands from where they rested on Finn’s hips around to cup his ass, and with a small lift they were aligned and hard pressed to each other.
How easy would it be to lose himself in these kisses? This was a breath-stealing ride and he began to move as the embrace grew even more heated. One of Finn’s hands pushed between them, fumbling with zippers even as their lips never separated, and finally Finn succeeded in getting his fingers touching Max.
Max inhaled sharply, just the touch of fingers on him was enough to drive him wild. Finn had loosened his own jeans and Max reached for skin, pushing past shorts and rubbing a finger from ass cheek to where he wanted to be inside. There was a heat building in him to bend Finn over and rub himself off on the man in his arms.
Finn released the kiss and tilted his head back, exposing his throat and moaning at Max’s light touch. Fuck. Finn was so responsive. Releasing his hold on Max’s dick, Finn pushed him away and they stood momentarily frozen and breathing heavily. Then Finn pushed his jeans down to just below his butt and turned to face the counter.
“Do it, just get us off,” Finn ordered.
Max almost lost it there and then. This guy, slim, muscled and gorgeous, was leaning on the counter exposing his ass and ordering Max to get on with it. Max considered condoms but there wasn’t time for everything he wanted to do to Finn Ryan. With way less than an hour to go and smelling of fire, this wasn’t the right place for a first time. Sue him, but he wanted the first time to be after he had brought Finn to the edge so many times the younger guy was begging. He pushed his own jeans down then took that single step and rearranged Finn so he was slightly away from the counter.
Everything Max wanted was here, and in seconds he had his hand wrapped around the length of his new lover and he was pressed flat against Finn’s ass. In time with his breathing and in counterpoint to the slide of his hand up and down Finn’s heavy cock, Max pressed himself into the space between ass cheeks. Pushing Finn’s white shirt up and out of the way, he tasted heated skin with his tongue, tracing the bumps of Finn’s spine and stopping at each one to lick and bite. God how he wanted to be inside but he wasn’t letting that happen today. Not now.
Tomorrow…the day after…fuck…soon…
He was so far gone he couldn’t hold back, but they hadn’t set rules, talked safety, switching, shit, nothing that would make this planned. Everything was emotion and want. Setting up the rhythm, listening to Finn begging for more, for harder, for faster, had Max close in minutes. Pressing, pushing, sliding between Finn’s gorgeous ass and his thighs and suddenly orgasm stole Max’s breath and he was coming hot and wet on Finn’s lower back. For a second he stood as waves washed over him and he gasped at the intensity of sensation. “Max…” Finn’s voice was dripping with need and he hadn’t come yet.
In a smooth movement, despite the post-orgasm lethargy, Max turned Finn and moved him to sitting on the counter. Everything was in reach. Finn had his eyes closed and head thrown back. He stroked his hands along the length of himself.
“Don’t touch,” Max tried to order. “Please,” he added. His voice didn’t sound like his, broken and panting. He wanted to get Finn off here.
He
wanted to be the one who milked Finn of everything he could give.
Finn groaned but let his hold go, and, far too quickly to warn Finn, Max bent his head and swallowed Finn to the curls at the base of his dick. He gagged at the weight of Finn’s dick on his tongue and touching his throat, but it felt just right. So long since he’d curved his tongue around the shape of a man—too long.
Finn cursed above him, stiffened then slumped into Max’s support, unable to hold back.
“Fuck—I’m—Max—off—”
Finn was a jumble of curse words and warning and Max did what he’d been told. He replaced his mouth with his hands, Finn’s heavy dick obscenely wet and hard. Max stood and stole open-mouthed kisses that were nothing more than a duel for power. Each move of his hand was base to tip. He dipped his finger into the slit, just a small touch, and Finn was yelling his release.
Finn gasped and lost it over Max’s hand, his shirt, and his own belly with his groan swallowed in a final kiss.
Breathing heavily, they slumped together and the only thing holding Max up was the counter and his own leaning stance. Finn’s breathing was a little harsh and Max suddenly regretted he had been so unforgiving and forceful. Fuck, Finn was only just out of hospital.
“Fuck, are you okay?” Max asked.
“Okay,” Finn repeated the question with a dazed expression.
“Finn, your chest—”
“I’m…” Finn’s voice tailed off as his stomach rumbled.
They looked down like they could see the empty space where food should be.