Fireproof (16 page)

Twigs snapped in front of her. Something stirred in the tall grass that lined the ridge. She slipped to her knees and held her breath. She tried to reassure herself that wildlife probably lived down closer to the stream. It was probably a beaver or raccoon. Whatever it was, it was moving away from her and in the direction of the man.

She eased her camera up, slowly, quietly, keeping her eyes on
the grass. The zoom lens made the camera heavy enough that she had to use both hands. She started to raise it to eye level.

“Put down the gun.”

The voice from behind startled her so much she jumped. But instinct made her grip the camera tighter. At first she thought the warning was meant for the man ahead of her, but when she looked up for him, he was gone.

“Put it down.” The woman’s voice came with measured breaths.

“It’s not a gun.” Sam’s hands shook but she kept them from moving, from flinching under the camera’s weight. Would the woman really shoot her? In the back? “It’s a camera,” she tried to explain. “I’d rather not put it in the grass.”

Oh God, she couldn’t believe she’d said that. Jeffery would certainly say she had grown a pair of cojones.

“What the hell are you doing back here?”

“Wildlife photography,” Sam said without missing a beat, realizing Jeffery had taught her to be an instinctively good liar. “There was something in the grass.” Not entirely a lie. Even her mother would agree that lying for self-preservation was forgivable.

“At night?”

Sam shrugged. She was already going to hell. Then she said, “I have an infrared filter.”

The woman came around to face her, shining her flashlight into Sam’s eyes. She could still see the outline of the gun aimed directly at her face. Suddenly she realized this wasn’t a suburban housewife with a neighborhood watch group.

“Since when does a cable news station sponsor wildlife photography?”

Now Sam recognized the woman’s voice. The target of Jeffery’s documentary had just made Sam a target.

Back in the warm, dry kitchen Patrick suggested coffee to distract Maggie from still wanting to shoot the woman with the camera. He’d never seen Maggie so angry and wondered if she’d rather have found a serial killer stalking her than this photojournalist.

He insisted that Maggie prepare the coffee, pretending he didn’t know where she kept the filters. Fact was, he’d made coffee in her kitchen more in the last month than she probably had in the last several years. Since they’d come in out of the rain Maggie hadn’t put down her gun. She did so now, stuffing it into the back of her jeans’ waistband so she could make the coffee.

Patrick grabbed a stack of towels from a linen closet in the hall and offered one to the woman who had introduced herself as Samantha Ramirez. As she thanked him, her eyes—a gorgeous mocha brown—held his for a second too long before she probably realized he wasn’t on her side. He still wasn’t clear how this woman and Maggie had met. Maggie kept mentioning a hit piece on CNN. Ramirez didn’t offer any explanation. She seemed to recognize the situation was volatile enough and that it was best to say as little as possible.

“I don’t get it,” Maggie said as she smacked the coffeepot into its slot. “What’s so fascinating about me?”

She pushed the
START
button, then realized she didn’t have the machine plugged in. She yanked the cord free and shoved it into the nearby electrical outlet.

Before Ramirez could respond, Maggie continued, “I’ve gone through so much trouble to protect myself from killers—the fence, the security system, the stream at the back of the property—and you and your partner rip open my life for everyone in a matter of … what? Twenty-four, thirty-six hours?”

She pounded the coffeemaker’s
START
button again, and this time the machine sputtered and began to hiss.

“Why?” Maggie asked, and came to a standstill in front of Ramirez, who sat at the kitchen’s island across from her. “Why me?”

“Believe it or not, it’s not personal.”

Ramirez looked from Maggie to Patrick. It seemed as though she was imploring him to understand. Maybe she thought he would be more reasonable. Maybe she realized he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She toweled off her shoulder-length hair and sent the dark curls and waves into a wild cascade around her face. She reminded Patrick of some beautiful creature from Greek mythology.

“No, I don’t believe it’s not personal,” Maggie told her. She stared at Ramirez and crossed her arms over her chest. Then in almost a whisper she said, “Do you have any idea how close I came to shooting you?”

Ramirez’s head jerked up. Her hand with the towel froze in midair.

No, Patrick thought. She didn’t have any idea how close; neither did he.

Patrick continued to stay back like a spectator, watching the two women, close enough to intervene but far enough away that Maggie could ignore him.

Was she bluffing? Had she almost fired at the camerawoman?

In the fog and the mist it had been difficult to differentiate whether or not the camera was a gun. And Maggie had been upset, wound tight. He’d watched her once before confront a gunman. He’d seen her in action. He had watched Maggie shift into survival mode. It was like she had this on switch that when activated, she jumped into motion, single-minded and determined to do the right thing, whatever it took, no matter the consequences, no matter the risk to her own well-being.

It was one of the things he admired about his sister. She was a hero, just like their father had been. She was so much braver than Patrick. Yet at the same time, he understood how easy it was to let your emotions, your fears, your imagination get the best of you and drive you to panic. A panic that could prompt reckless assumptions and misperceptions. But despite this wave of uncharacteristic anger, he knew Maggie O’Dell would never have fired without being sure.

Samantha Ramirez, however, was not sure at all. “Look,” Ramirez began, and Patrick thought he saw her hand shake. “Jeffery’s an asshole sometimes. I honestly have no idea why he does half the things he does.”

“You just go along?”

“Basically, yes.”

“You have no journalistic integrity?”

Patrick could see Ramirez’s back go straight and her nostrils flare. “You know what I have?” she said, fear quickly firing over into anger. “I have a six-year-old son and I want him to grow up
without having to clean toilets or wait on some asshole like Jeffery Cole. I have a Mexican mother who watches
Jeopardy!
as faithfully as she prays to the Virgin Mary so she can learn English well enough to pass her citizenship test. I have a shitload of bills and a mortgage twice the amount my tiny little two-bedroom home will ever be worth. So excuse me if I can’t afford your precious integrity just yet.”

The two women stared each other down. Rain began to pelt the windows again, only now it sounded more like sleet. The coffeemaker sputtered to an end, filling the kitchen with its fresh-brewed aroma.

Just when Patrick wondered if Maggie would throw Ramirez out into the storm, Maggie said, “Do you use cream or sugar?”

Maggie tried not to give in to the hammering inside her head. She had thought once she was back inside, out of the rain and the cold, that the
thrum-thump
would subside. She was wrong.

She had not shot at Ramirez, but how close had she come?

She unleashed her anger on the woman, but, quite honestly, she was angrier with herself and a bit unnerved that the pain at her temple could blur her vision and challenge her judgment.

The rain had turned to sleet. When Maggie offered Ramirez the sofa for what little of the night was left, the woman stared at her as if looking for a trap. Finally she relented, calling her mother to explain while Patrick, almost too enthusiastically, went to fetch blankets and a pillow.

Ramirez was on the phone in the living room and Patrick in the upstairs linen closet when Maggie heard a thump and a scrape against the back door. She grabbed for the gun tucked against the small of her back. Still, she jumped when she saw the face at the back-door window.

Benjamin Platt’s hair was soaked, his smile anxious. Immediately Maggie realized she had forgotten to call him back. But how
crazy to come all this way just to check on her. It wasn’t until she opened the door that she saw he had Jake with him.

“Oh, my God! Where did you find him?”

She pulled them both in and saw that Ben had his own dog, Digger, tucked under his arm. Harvey came running into the kitchen, whining and nosing and butt-welcoming the huge black shepherd and the small white Westie.

Maggie threw a towel around Jake along with her arms, hugging and wiping at the sleet that stuck to his fur, for as long as Jake would allow. Ben wiped down Digger before he started on his own head.

“How in the world did you find him?”

“You forget that Digger earned his name. I figured he’d know where to look.”

The dogs started tussling with one another, and Maggie stood back and watched Ben.

“The first time Digger got out and didn’t come back, Ali was crushed. She took it so personally.”

“It’s hard not to.”

“I know. I could hear it in your voice.”

Rain dripped from his chin and he wiped it with the sleeve of his jacket, which was equally drenched. Ice crystals stuck to his hair and eyelashes. Maggie pulled a fresh towel from the pile that Patrick had brought earlier. Instead of handing it to Ben she came to him, held his eyes, and gently began wiping his hair, his face, his neck.

She felt him shiver under her touch when she unzipped his jacket. Her hands hesitated on his chest before she pushed the jacket off his broad shoulders, easing it down his arms and enjoying the feel of his muscles going tense beneath her fingertips.

His button-down shirt was soaking, too. She started unbuttoning it with no resistance from Ben. The look in his eyes made her fingers eager. Of course, she had forgotten about Ramirez until the woman cleared her throat behind them.

“Sorry.” Ramirez looked genuinely apologetic. Then with a forced smile she added, “I hope you’re not going to wish you’d shot me.”

Maggie stepped back and introduced the two by first names only, not wanting to share any more information than necessary for the photojournalist to take back to Jeffery Cole.

Ramirez pointed to the wet dogs. “So you must be the guy in the ball cap I saw out back. I thought you might be looking for a dog.”

“Out back?” Maggie asked.

“I saw him just ahead of me. Right before you busted me. For a minute I thought you were casing the property.”

Maggie glanced at Ben, who had already spun around and was looking out the back window.

“I wasn’t at the back of the property,” he said as he ran a hand up over his soaked head. “And I didn’t have a ball cap on.”

The TV profile had finally put a name to the woman cop. Margaret “Maggie” O’Dell. Actually, he wasn’t surprised to find out she was an FBI agent. That only contributed to the intrigue.

A couple of hours earlier he had tracked her all the way home after their encounter underground. Though brief, he got to watch her in action and it only fueled his desire to see more. So he followed her. His vehicle was one that she’d never suspect. No one did. It made him almost invisible, and he was able to drive practically to her front door.