Flashpoint (11 page)

“I'm not asking you the status of
your
love life.”

“Ha!” He grinned victoriously. “So you admit there
is
a love life.”

They arrived on scene, mercifully saving Brooke from having to answer, since she didn't know the answer. The truth was, she no longer knew anything at all about what she and Zach were doing. Stepping out onto the sidewalk, she craned her neck, searching the three large trees out in front of Phyllis's place for the cat.

No Cecile in sight.

“Dustin,” she said, watching as Aidan and Zach pulled up, moving with steady purpose toward the house, not the yard. “What's going on?”

Dustin put the radio mic back in its place, his expression suddenly serious. “It's not Cecile after all. Grab your bag.”

For a split second, she stared at his back as he headed to the front door, then grabbed her bag and ran after him.

Inside the house, the shades were drawn, but she could still see well enough. As her grandmother's place had been, the house was filled to the brim with furniture from another era, upon which knickknacks covered every inch. But there wasn't a speck of dust anywhere, even the wood floors had been shined.

“In here!”

She and Dustin followed Zach's voice down a hallway, its walls hidden by photographs from at least five decades, to a bedroom filled completely with lace. In the center, on the floor, lay Phyllis. Far too still at her feet sat Cecile, gaze glued to her mistress, tail twitching.

Zach was kneeling at Phyllis's side, holding her hand, saying something to her.

Phyllis, eyes closed, responded with a nod. “Yes, Zachie, I can hear you. Tell Cecile I'm okay. She's worried.”

“Phyllis, about your meds.” Zach spoke calmly, evenly, any personal concern well tucked away, but Brooke could see it in his eyes. “Did you forget to take them?”

“No, I took my damn pills. You hound me enough about it, I don't forget.”

“Okay, good.” Zach squeezed her hand. “That's good.”

Dustin moved in and crouched at her other side, and began taking vitals. Brooke recorded everything, all the while watching Zach be so sweet and gentle and kind.

Why she was surprised, she had no idea. She'd seen him in action before, with many victims by now, and he was always sweet and gentle and kind.

He'd been nothing but those things with her, as well.

And once, on a rock beneath a star littered sky, he'd been much, much more…

When it was determined that Phyllis had to be transported to the hospital, Zach helped get her on a gurney, where the older woman began to panic. “I can't leave. What about Cecile?” Reaching out, she gripped Zach's shirt with an iron fist. “I don't want to go!”

“Phyllis.” Zach took both her hands in his. “Your doctor wants you to meet him at the hospital. He wants to stabilize your condition—”

“Condition shmondition. I don't have time for him. I'm fine. Completely fine, I'm telling you.”

But she wasn't. Her color was off, her breathing coming too shallow and too fast, and, given the grimace on her face, she knew it, too. “Damn it,” she said, sagging back. “Damn it. I'm not going.” But she said this much weaker than before. “I'm not. You can't make me.”

“Phyllis.” Zach stroked back her gray hair as he leaned on the gurney to look into her eyes. “You do this for me and I'll take care of Cecile. Okay?”

“You'll take care of her?”

“I promise.”

Phyllis covered her mouth with a shaking hand and nodded. “Your mother would be so proud of you. I hope you know that.”

He squeezed her hand. “Just get better.” He gestured to Dustin and Aidan, and they carried her out of the bedroom, navigating down the tight, cramped hallway.

Zach looked around Phyllis's room with an unreadable expression. Then, with a sigh, he grabbed the unhappy cat and tucked her into the crook of his arm. Turning to leave, he found Brooke watching him.

As it had since the beginning, their odd connection caused a spark to pinball off her insides, from one erotic zone to another, and all the ones in between—but this wasn't about their crazy physical attraction. Standing there, looking at him, she suddenly knew. It didn't matter that she'd told herself she wouldn't get her heart involved.

It already was.

“You okay?” she whispered.

“Yeah. It's just that she—” Shutting his mouth, he shook his head. Brooke moved closer and put her hand on his arm.

Something went between them at the touch. Not the usual heat but something much, much more.

Yeah, her heart was involved. Big-time.

 

P
HYLLIS RESISTED
getting into the ambulance. She wanted to stay home, she wanted her cat, she wanted everyone to get the hell away from her. She even tried a diversion technique.

“There was a man in my yard,” she claimed suddenly as they loaded her inside the rig. “Did you see him? He was holding something.”

“Phyllis,” Dustin said gently. “You're going to the hospital. If not for me and Brooke, then for yourself.”

“I recognize his face, I just can't quite place him…”

“It's going to be okay.” Brooke sat with her and held her hand. “You're going to be okay. We're just going to the hospital so your doctor can check on you—”

Phyllis shook her head, her eyes cloudy as she struggled to get up. “You people are idiots.”

Brooke sighed. “You promised Zach you'd do this, remember?”

The old lady closed her eyes. “Zachie.”

“Yes. He gave you his word that he'd take care of Cecile. And you gave him yours that you'd go get checked out.”

Phyllis's mouth tightened, but she stopped fighting at least. Zach's name had calmed her down.

Brooke had a feeling Zach had that control over every woman in his life, whether he realized it or not.

“There really was a man in my yard with a blowtorch, or something like one,” Phyllis grumbled, sounding more like her old self.

In the back of the unit as she was, Brooke couldn't see out. She met Dustin's eyes in the rearview mirror and he shook his head. He didn't see a man.

Brooke squeezed Phyllis's hand.

The older woman held on with surprising strength as she looked into Brooke's eyes, her own filled with grief and fear. “I really want to stay home.”

“You'll go back soon.”

“Promise?”

She was so scared. Brooke's throat tightened, burned. If there was one thing she never quite got used to, it was the helplessness she felt over the things she couldn't make better. “Yes,” she whispered. “I promise.”

 

A
FTER DROPPING
Phyllis off in the ambulance bay of the E.R., Brooke and Dustin were called to another transport. The minute they were free again, Brooke tracked down a nurse to find out what she could about Phyllis's condition.

The nurse pulled her chart. “She's in renal and heart failure.”

Brooke's brain refused to process that. “What?”

“Yes, the doctor was just with her.”

“Oh my God.”

“It's been happening for quite a while. Apparently the patient has actually known for months. She'll be staying a while this time.”

“But—I promised her she'd be back home soon.”

The nurse frowned at her over the chart. “It's not your job to make promises of any kind.”

“I…” Brooke knew that, so she had no idea why she'd done so. “I didn't know about her condition.”

“Of course not, because you're not her doctor.” The nurse looked down her nose at Brooke, reigning supreme. “Do yourself and your future patients a favor and don't make rash promises. Don't make any promises.” Spinning on her heels, she walked away.

Brooke staggered to a chair and let her weak legs sink until she was sitting. Renal and heart failure…

“Rough day?”

She looked up at Zach, in full firefighter gear and looking a little worse for wear himself. “Yeah. Rough day.” Damn it, she could barely speak past the huge lump in her throat. “But not as rough as Phyllis's.”

“So you know.”

When she nodded miserably, he sighed and crouched in front of her. He was in her space but in a very lovely way, his big body sort of curled around her protectively, his eyes easy and calm and full of something she hadn't known was missing in her life.

Simple and true affection.

“I've got Cecile at the firehouse,” he said. “Happily scratching the furniture and terrorizing the crew.”

He'd made a promise and had followed through. For some reason, that got to her. “Zach. I screwed up.”

“We all do.”

“I promised Phyllis she could go home soon. But—” Her voice cracked and she stopped talking. Had to stop talking because she couldn't stand the thought of breaking a promise. Her past was a virtual wasteland of promises broken by her mother, and she'd made it a rule to never, ever do the same thing.

Zach let out a long breath, then reached for her hand.

“Now's probably not a good time to be nice to me,” she managed. Damn it, she hated this. Hated that she'd failed, much less failed a woman she cared about. “When I'm near a breakdown and someone's nice, I tend to lose it.”

“You should know I'm not so good with tears.”

She pulled her hand free and closed her eyes. “Well, then, you're not going to like what's coming next.” Eyes still shut, she felt him shift his weight. When he didn't speak, she figured that he'd left her by herself, which was definitely for the best. With a sigh, she opened her eyes, prepared to be alone.

As she always had been.

But to Brooke's shock, he'd never left her side.

Z
ACH WATCHED
Brooke's expression register surprise on top of the pain already there. She'd really believed that he'd walked away. Tears or no tears, he wouldn't have left a perfect stranger, but she'd actually expected him to abandon her. He knew that wasn't a reflection on him, but on her own experiences. People didn't stick in her life.

Odd how he wanted to. “Phyllis wouldn't want you to lose it over her.”

“I told her everything would be okay. I
promised
her. But everything isn't going to be okay.”

He knew that, too. Heart heavy, calling himself every kind of fool, he sank into the chair next to her and leaned his tired head back to the wall and studied the ceiling.

It didn't matter that he wasn't looking at her. He could still see her; she'd been imprinted on his brain. A body made for his. A mouth that fueled his fantasies. Eyes that destroyed him with every glance. “Promises are a bad idea all the way around.”

Especially the one he'd made to her. Not to fall for her. Man, that one was going to haunt him.

“I know.”

Brooke still sounded way too close to tears for his comfort. Turning his head, he found her watching him, eyes still thankfully dry. “Don't be too hard on yourself. We all break promises.”

“Some of us do it more spectacularly than others.”

“I don't know about that.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “Zach…I've not handled any of this well.”

“This.”

“The new job. Making friends at the new job.” She lowered her voice. “You.”

“What about me?”

“Sleeping with you and thinking I could just walk away. It was supposed to be letting loose, but you should know I'm having some trouble with that whole walking-away portion of the plan. I have no idea how people do the one-night thing, I really don't.”

“There was no sleeping involved.”

“What?”

“Our night. We didn't sleep. It's an important clarification, because sleeping implies intimacy.”

“What we did felt pretty damn intimate,” she said.

“Temporarily intimate. There's a difference. Now, if we'd been getting naked every night since…that would be true intimacy.” He looked at her, wanting a reaction, but hell if he knew what kind of reaction he wanted, or why he was even going there.

“You agreed readily enough,” she reminded him. “And it's what you do, anyway. Light stuff only.”

She was watching him carefully, and sitting there in the hospital chair, surrounded by strangers, the scent of antiseptic and people's suffering all around them, she was clearly waiting for him to deny it. And given how he kept baiting her about it, it made sense that she was confused.

But what he wanted didn't really matter. Not when she was out of here in less than two weeks. But apparently his mouth didn't get the message from his brain because it opened and said, “Whatever this is, clearly we're going to drive each other nuts for the next two weeks, so we might as well take it as far as we can.”

She blinked. “You mean…”

“Yeah.”

At his hip, his pager beeped. Hell. Rising to his feet, he looked down into her still surprised face. “Think about it.”

“I…will.”

 

Z
ACH'S CALL
was to an all-too-familiar address for a house fire.

Phyllis's.

When they pulled down her street, his stomach hit his toes. The house was lit up like a Fourth of July fireworks display. The flames were hot, fast and, as it turned out, unbeatable. Even with Sam and Eddie's engine already there, and two others from neighboring firehouses, in less than twenty minutes they'd lost the entire structure.

Afterward, with the crew all cleaning up, Zach slipped inside the burned-out shell. He moved through the clingy, choking smoke, down the blackened hallway where Phyllis's pictures were nothing but a memory. Inside her bedroom, he took in the soot, water and ashes.

And a wire-mesh trash can, tipped on its side.

On the wall above it, black markings flared out, indicating a flash burn. Probably aided by an accelerant.

Just like the Hill Street fire.

And the two before that.

Jaw tight, Zach stared at the evidence, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket to take a picture, which he e-mailed to both Tommy and himself. This time, whatever happened, he was going to have his own damn evidence, because no way had Phyllis had a wire-mesh trash can in here, not in the lacy, frilly, girly room.

His cell phone rang, and when he saw Brooke's name on the I.D., he experienced a little jolt.
I've thought about it,
he imagined her saying.
Do me, Zach…

“I just heard about the fire,” she said instead, sounding tight and grim. “Zach, when we were taking Phyllis out of the house, she tried to tell us that someone was standing on the edge of her property, watching us. A man with a blowtorch.”

His fantasy abruptly vanished.
“What?”

“She was fighting us, trying to stall, saying whatever she could to get us to let her go back into the house. We didn't listen to her. And now…”

“And now you just might have helped catch a serial arsonist,” he said firmly. “If you were here, I'd kiss you again.”

She let out a breath. “But what if—”

“Don't kill yourself with the what-ifs,” he said. “I've been there. They don't help.”

 

“O
LD HEATING
element,” Tommy told him the next morning when he found Zach waiting at his office. “Shoddy, unreliable, and as we saw firsthand, dangerous. Thank God Phyllis was still in the hospital and not at home.”

Zach just shook his head. “This was no more accidental than the Hill Street fire. The trash can—”

“Zach—”

“Look, Phyllis said she saw a guy standing on the edge of her property with a blowtorch.”

Tommy sighed and retrieved two Red Bulls from a small refrigerator on his credenza. “I can't discuss the investigation.”

Zach declined the caffeine-rich drink. “Thought you were off caffeine.”

“Sue me.” Tommy drank deep and sighed again. “Just don't tell my wife.”

“Tommy—”

“Look, I talked to Phyllis myself this morning. She's incoherent and in and out of consciousness. She doesn't remember a damn thing about yesterday. Not a guy with a blowtorch, or if she had a wire-mesh trash can or not.”

“That's the drugs talking.”

“That's all we have. The fire was put out, Zach. It was a job well done on our part. No injuries, no fatalities.”

And that was the bottom line. Zach got that. He just didn't happen to agree. “It was also arson.”

“Goddamn it.”

“I suppose your next line is for me to leave this one alone, too.”

“Yes,” Tommy said very quietly. “It is.”

“You got the picture I sent.”

“I got the picture.”

“You'd better be on this, Tommy.”

“You need to go now, Zach.”

Yeah. Yeah, he did, before he did something he might deeply regret. Like lose his job.

When he finally got to the fire station and went to the kitchen for something to put in his empty, gnawing gut, Brooke was there. He'd hoped to see her last night at his place. In his bed. But clearly she'd thought a little too much. He tried to move past her, but she grabbed his arm.

“Brooke, don't.” He felt raw. Exposed. If he let her touch him right now, it might make him all the more vulnerable. Pulling free, he backed up a step and came up against the damn refrigerator.

She merely stepped in against him, trapping him there. He could have shoved past her, but he didn't. Her warm, curvy body pressed to his, her eyes wide and open, reflecting her sorrow, her sympathy.

“The house is completely gone?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Was she right about the guy she saw? Was it arson?”

“I believe so.”

“Tommy—”

“Told me again to stay out of this.”

“Oh, damn. Zach, I'm sorry.” She slid her hands up his chest to cup his jaw. “I'm so sorry.”

But not sorry enough to have come to him last night. Knowing that, he might have been able to resist what she did next, except he didn't. She pressed her mouth to his cheek, and then to the corner of his mouth, and then, because he'd apparently lost his mind, he turned his head and hungrily met her lips with his.

Reason went out the window. Everything went out the window as he did his best to inhale her whole. She had her arms wound around his neck, her hands fisted in his hair. He had a hand up the front of her shirt cupping her breast over her bra, the other down the back of her pants, when he vaguely heard someone clear his throat behind them.

Shit
.

Lifting his head, he locked eyes with Blake over Brooke's head.

“Bad time?” Blake asked drolly.

Brooke squeaked and hid her head against Zach's chest.

“Very bad,” Zach said.

Blake gestured to the refrigerator at Zach's back. “But I'm hungry.”

With a choked sound, Brooke stepped away from Zach. Without a word, she walked out of the kitchen.

Blake just arched a brow, gesturing to the fridge.

“Jesus.” Zach pushed away from the refrigerator and let Blake at it.

 

T
HE NEXT NIGHT
, off duty and at home, Zach sat at his own kitchen table with all the evidence he had on the arson fires so far spread out on a board laid in front of him. He was trying to connect the dots instead of thinking about Brooke when the doorbell rang.

It was pizza delivery by Aidan. His partner handed off the extra-large, loaded pie and pushed past him to get inside.

“Well, gee,” Zach said dryly. “Come on in.”

“We've got to talk.” Aidan moved into the kitchen and helped himself to a beer in the refrigerator. He twisted off the top, drank deeply, then gave Zach a long look.

“It's not good,” Zach guessed.

“It's you. And what you're doing.”

“Look, we're both adults. If we decide to go at this until she leaves, it's our business.”

Aidan looked confused. “Huh?”

“You're not talking about Brooke?”

“No.” Aidan cocked his head. “Although, I did hear some interesting rumors today, which I ignored. Erroneously so, apparently.”

“It's no big deal.”

“Okay.”

“It's just casual.”

“Okay.”

“But Jesus, the way everyone's going on about it, I might as well marry her.”

Aidan's eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “Whoa. The M word? Out of
your
mouth?”

“It's just a word.”

Aidan was still eyeing him like a bug on a slide. “Why are you harping on this?”

“Because you are.”

“I said okay about twenty minutes ago, dude. It's all you.”

Zach opened the pizza box, pulled out the biggest piece and stuffed a bite in his mouth. “Jenny brought me pizza a while back. Hers was better.”

“That's because hers came with a hot bod. You boinking her, too?”

“No.”

“Then can I boink her?”

Zach sighed. “Why are you here again?”

“To yell at you. But not for the women. I only wish I had half your woman problems.”

“Hey, you've had your problems.”

“Name one.”

“Okay, how about you doing Blake's soap-star-diva sister and not telling him about it.”

Aidan winced. “Hey, she wasn't a soap-star diva at the time. And besides, I was really young and really stupid back then.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You're unusually testy. You're either PMSing, or those new rumors are definitely true.”

“Which are what exactly?”

“That you and Brooke nearly did it up against the refrigerator. Which, by the way, if it's true?
Nice.
”

“Do you ever think of anything besides sex?”

“Alas, rarely.” Aidan grabbed his own huge piece of pizza.

“Fine. But I don't want to talk about Brooke.”

Aidan shot him an amused look. That rankled. “Okay.”