Fahrenheit (20 page)

“Eve? She has nothing to do with this.” Another punch connected with his back. He would have fell to the ground if the goon behind him wasn’t literally holding him up with his own body weight. The man was huge in muscle and height. While Mitch wasn’t that far behind him in the height category he wasn’t a match for him—at least not in his current position.

“Wrong answer.”

“She’s just taking pictures of the fire; that’s all.” He hadn’t thought the bomber and the arsonist were the same, but maybe he was wrong.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the fires.”

“I don’t follow,” he said through gritted teeth. “Tell me what’s going on and I’ll gladly tell your story. Front page news,” he appealed to his ego.

“I don’t like the news,” he pushed the gun against his back again. “You know, I think I believe you. You wouldn’t lie to me, right?”

“Of course not,” he said. But of course he would lie to him. He just wasn’t lying about this. He didn’t know what Eve had to do with any of this, but he planned to find out—provided he got the chance.

“Good. I don’t like when people lie to me. It makes me kill them real slow,” he growled. “It’s your lucky day.” He stepped back and allowed Mitch to turn around. “I’m going to have to make this one a quickie,” he said and then he pulled the trigger. Mitch hadn’t heard a sound, but he felt one bullet rip through his flesh, and then another. And as he lay on the ground, Sylvester standing over him with the gun pointed at his head, he knew this was it. He was going to die the way he lived—always chasing after the story.

Eve couldn’t believe what she was hearing. There was just no way Mitch was dead. She had just talked to him yesterday. He was chasing after some story that he was keeping close to his vest. She had a feeling it was about the bomb because that story, and the story about the fires, were the only stories he had been working on—that he told her about anyway.

“So clearly we need you to partner up with Ramsey Fletcher now. He’s going to take over Mitch’s coverage of the fires.”

Eve looked at Ramsey, tall, dark chocolate, bald and thick with muscles. He sat with a passerby expression on his face. He just watched her, as if he didn’t want the pairing. Well neither did she. For all his faults, Mitch was an amazingly good partner. And now this…they hadn’t even given her time to grieve. They expected her to just go chase after another story and forget that he’s dead. She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t.

“I’ll expect the same dedication,” Ramsey said. “And I’ll expect you to listen to me.”

“I barely listened to Mitch and in all honesty, you’re no more special than he was so don’t think you can boss me around. If that’s what you’re looking for get yourself another photojournalist.” She stood, ready to walk out of there and leave the job behind. She knew the industry could be harsh but this was just cold. Mitch’s body had just been discovered this morning and already they, her bosses, were moving on.

“I’m sure the two of you can come to an agreement.” Harvey tried to interject some reason into the dispute.

“Eve, I need you to go with Ramsey to meet with the mayor, and then head on over to the Espanola for me. I hear the blaze has picked back up.”

“That fire boy you’re dating is working that one; isn’t he?”

She felt her fist itching to pound something—mostly Ramsey. He knew full well that Adam had been assigned to the Espanola. He knew that, not because of her, but because the mayor’s aid had called with details yesterday. She knew before the call because Adam had told her where he was going as soon as he found out. Ramsey just wanted to goad her into saying something laced with anger. This was not going to work. They were not going to be able to work together. She would finish out this story because she owed that to Mitch, but that was it. After this she would leave Florida—she didn’t know where she was going to go just yet, but she knew she was going to leave.

“By the way,” she looked back at him before exiting the office. “Adam’s a man, not a boy. And you should be thankful he’s out there putting his life on the line so you can have a home to go back to everyday.” She knew Ramsey lived near the fires. He had wanted the story when the fires first broke out because he said it was hitting closer to his home. But Mitch had got the story, and Ramsey didn’t have a say in that. Well, now he did. The story was his.

“We have a meeting with the mayor.”

“I have a car. I’ll meet you there.” She snapped before leaving the office, grabbing her camera off her desk, taking one long, hard look at the desk that used to be Mitch’s, but now belonged to Ramsey, and then she left. Seriously, Mitch wasn’t even in the ground yet and they had already reassigned his desk.

She flipped open her phone and waited for the voice on the other end. “Thomas,” she felt the tears threatening to break free. She handled a lot of things well. Death, clearly, wasn’t one of those things. “Somebody killed Mitch last night,” she sniffled.

“I’m sorry, Eve. Was it a robbery?”

“I don’t know what the official report says, but I think it was a story he was chasing. I think it started chasing him while he wasn’t looking. And Thomas,” she paused, trying to figure out how to phrase her words. She couldn’t guarantee that Mitch’s death had anything to do with the bomb at her complex, but her gut feeling said it did. “He was looking into the bomb at my old apartment complex. He met with a source, and now he’s gone.”

“Eve, get some place safe.”

“I can’t. I have to go do a meeting with the mayor today.”

“Eve!”

“I can’t. I owe this to Mitch to finish what he started. I don’t know if his death is related, but I think it might be, and I just thought you should know that you and Gavin, and Drake…you all may have been right.”

“Eve, I want you out of there, now.”

She could hear the harshness of his voice. “Let me just finish this, Thomas. I’m not planning to stay down here much longer. Trust me; the friendly ground is gone. I’m on hostile ground now and I don’t want to become what I’d have to become to survive that. But I’m not coming back to Boston.”

“Why not? I can keep you safe here.”

“I’m in love, Thomas. Adam is trying to get into a program out west—smokejumper training, and I think…I know, I want to go with him if he wants me there.” She heard Thomas blow out an exasperated breath. “I know we haven’t known each other super long, but I love him.”

“I know,” he sighed. “It happened that fast for me with Thena too. There was that instant feeling of recognition that this was the woman for me. It hit Gavin pretty fast too. Jeeze, we need to get in the habit of taking a little more time on these things.”

“Life is too short for holding back, Thomas.” She meant that in every way. If he loved Thena, if he wanted to marry her, then he should do it. “Anyway, I think you should check some things out and see if you can find out anything on your end. Because if Mitch’s death was linked to that story then I think you need to know.” She couldn’t guarantee that it was. Mitch could have just as well found out about the identity of the arsonist, but somehow she doubted that was the case. If Mitch had the scoop he would have broken it wide open with a piece for the website and had another article ready to appear in the morning’s paper. He wouldn’t have driven down to the worst neighborhood in Daytona in the middle of the night. He was down there on a fact finding mission; she was sure of that. The question was what fact was he trying to find?

Chapter Thirteen

“W
ell where is he?” Eve felt her heart pounding in her chest. Adam was out there somewhere, out in that hellish blaze and another hot spot had just lit up the monitor. Somebody needed to go in there after him.

“I don’t have time for the press!” Jerold Hendricks of the Rapid Response team barked at her. She didn’t care if he had time for her or not. She wanted him to make time for Adam. They all knew darn well if they were out there he would do anything to get them out.

“You never leave a man behind,” she yelled.

“Eve,” a rather calm voice tried to reason with her. “I’m Hank. I work with Adam, and trust me I don’t want to leave him out there. I know this is hard, but we have to stop this fire before it jumps the line this way or we’re going to have a lot more people in danger. We can’t split the resources right now. The
FireFlight
is being commissioned. We’ll request a drop near his last location as soon as we can.”

She felt her stomach twisting into knots. “Where was his last location?” She looked at the monitoring device.

“Here,” Hank pointed to a spot on the screen. “This is where I left him.”

“And you think he’s still there?”

“I don’t know for sure. The last I heard from him he was marching east, and then that hotspot lit up not too far away from,” he traced his finger over the screen. “Here,” he tapped his index finger on a location. “He could be anywhere between this spot here, and that spot there.”

It looked like a distance of inches on the screen, but she knew it was much farther on foot. “There,” she nodded. Adam would never get himself intentionally stuck between two fires and then lose contact with the base. So something had happened; maybe he surprised the arsonist, and if that was the case then he was probably either dead in that hotspot, or, unconscious. She had to believe he was just unconscious and needed help because believing he was dead was too heart wrenching to bear.

Hank walked away from her. Everybody was so busy trying to build a trench line that nobody noticed her requisitioning supplies. She took a fire blanket, just in case she needed it, strapped a pack with two bottles of water on it to her waist, and took some rags to use as a mask for her nose and mouth. She wasn’t going to leave him out there. She would start in the middle, right between those two fires and then she would…what? Work her way back east or should she go west to his last known location? She would only have a chance to go one way or the other, but not both. There was no way she could make both directions.

She would figure it out when she got there. She grabbed a radio and quietly walked into the tree line, being sure nobody saw her. She was going to get her man even if it killed her.

The farther she walked, the heavier the smoke became. Breathing was getting difficult, visibility was getting low and her eyes were burning now from the smoke. “Adam!” She tried to yell as loudly as she could. She could hear the crackling of bushes and trees burning in the distance. “Adam!”

She thought she heard a noise. She stopped walking, although she knew she couldn’t stay put for long. She wasn’t familiar with the area at all, but she had one thing going for her. She could look at a map and remember it as if it had been implanted as a chip in her brain. She saw the monitor; she knew basically where she was going. What she didn’t know was how to find the quickest way out after she found Adam. She was well aware that the fire approaching from the west might cut off the way she took to get in because the area had far more dead brush growing wild right down to the roadway.

“Eve!” She heard his voice.

“Adam! Where are you?” She waited for a response and when she got one she had an idea that he was east of her position. “Keep talking to me so I can find you, Adam. Don’t stop talking!” She raced toward his voice. He was alive. How badly was he hurt? Could he walk? Could he get himself, and her, out of there before the fire closed in on them? She didn’t have time to process a response to her questions because when she found him he was there with his arms locked around the tree and handcuffed there.

“Oh my God,” she pulled on the cuffs as if pulling on them would unlock them.

“What the hell are you doing out here? Are you crazy?”

“I came after my man and I’m not leaving without you so stop chastising me and start offering some help here.”

“Eve, you have to go. I don’t have a key—”

“I am not leaving you,” she growled. “There has to be something, there has to be.”

“He hit me from behind,” he said absently. “I didn’t even see it coming and when I woke up my legs were wide with the tree between them and my arms like this…he didn’t even leave right away. I couldn’t see his face from my position, but I heard him laughing. He was ranting about the response team, something about not being able to stop his art. I think he mentioned the mayor, but my head was in such a fog that I couldn’t tell you with certainty what he said.”

“Don’t think about that now,” she said soothingly.

“He went east.”

“He set another fire,” she reached up into her hair and pulled out a bobby pin. “Let’s hope this works.”

“Another fire?”

“Uh, huh,” she focused on trying to pick the lock of the cuffs. She had done it once before when Thomas had taught her how, but never with a bobby pin.

“East of us,” he groaned. “We’re in deep because those fires are both headed this way. It’s even worse because if those fires converge with each other...with the cold front and this wind, God that thing is going to burn until there’s nothing left to burn.”

She didn’t care about that right now. First concern was getting Adam free. Second concern was getting out of there. Third, was hoping the firefighters could stop this thing before it became a monster.