Let It Burn (A BBW Paranormal Erotic Romance) (8 page)

****

Jo arrived to the controlled chaos of the firefighters doing their best to save the storage facility. The building housed only ten storage rooms, and by the time Jo could make out anything through the smoke and people standing around watching, the building was no more. The pile of stone and ash brought tears to her eyes.  Never mind the supplies.  She could always buy more.  No, for Jo the real tragedy was in the loss of her paintings.  Ten years worth of her work was gone.

Moving closer to the edge of the
crowd, Jo saw Kevin. She shouldn’t have recognized him in his heavy gear, but he’d worked so far into her heart, there was no way she’d ever mistake him for someone else. He and another man were spraying down the piles of rubble, she assumed to put out any hot spots that might still be lurking beneath the concrete.

Thank God, at least he was safe.

Her tears were hot as they fell from her stinging, burning eyes, and streaked down her face.  She wiped at them with the backs of her hands, her heart breaking. Desperate for a distraction she turned to scan the onlookers. All of them were alarmed by the fire, frightened by the ferocity of the blaze.  Not to mention that it was the second such fire in less than a week.

Suddenly she felt bile build in her throat. Malevolence, hot and slick coated her skin. The person who set this fire
was somewhere among the crowd.   She could feel him watching. Watching…watching and waiting… for what? Jo wasn’t sure, but the hatred falling over the crowd like another thick blanket of smoke threatened to choke her.

Turning
, she walked through the milling throng, trying to discern the source of her
feeling.
Though this was no mere feeling.  This was an absolute. Her eyes blurred as the faces in the crowd ran together.

Dammit where are you?
She passed through the crowd twice unable to pick up anything more then a sense of glee and rage. Her frustration dried her tears, and she began to feed off the anger floating around her.

“Jo
?”  It took a long moment for her to pull out of her own mind and understand that someone was speaking to her.  “Baby?  What are you doing here?” Kevin appeared before like a dream. His helmet was off, his face streaked with black soot.  His gem-like eyes glowed in his grimy face.

“I…I had to see
it, Kevin. A lot of my work was in there.” The grief came back and she felt her face crumple.  He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to him. His heavy jacket dug uncomfortable into her skin, but she didn’t care.  It was the best, most necessary hug she’d ever gotten. She buried her nose in his jacket, the smell of smoke and sweat filling her head.  Clenching her hands into the stiff fabric she let herself sink into him.

“I’m sorry
, Jojo,” he stroked her hair.  “By the time I got here the building was gone.” He pressed a kiss to her crown, and she felt it clear to her heart.

“The firebug is here
,” she whispered. “I can feel him in the crowd, and he’s pissed off.”

Ke
vin pulled back. “Joanna, what are you talking about?”

“The person setting these fires.
He’s here and he’s angry.” She gripped his sleeves, eyes dark with worry.

“
Who is he, baby?  Where is he?”

“I don’t know who it is, only that
he’s here.” She watched his eyes go from concerned to indulgent. He didn’t believe her. He might not say it out loud, but it was in his eyes.  He was looking at her like an adult placating a child in order to avoid a tantrum. “You think I’m nuts don’t you?”

He pulled her back in
to his arms, kissing her temple.  She got the faint sense that he didn’t know
what
to think.

“I know you believe what you say
, and it’s possible, even probable, that
if
this fire was deliberately set then the arsonist is here.”

She pulled back enough to look him in the eye.  “There’s no question that this fire was deliberately set.”  She gave a little shiver and let her eyes wander over the crowd again.  “And the arsonist is definitely here.”

“Let’s just wait until we find out what the report says.”

All the emotion of the last two days caught up with her in a rush of anger, and
Joanna pushed at Kevin’s chest until he let her go. “Dammit, Kevin, don’t treat me like a child. I know what I’m talking about. You can pick and choose when you want to believe in my gift, but I’m not wrong about this.”

“
Sweetheart, calm down.”  He tried to pull her back into his embrace, but Jo wasn’t about to let him seduce her out of her anger.

“You listen here Kevin
Kryszenski, I am right about this and by choosing to disbelieve me you could very well be setting up the next fire, because
he’s not done
.” 

Jo backed away from the temptation of his arms, wrapping her own arms around herself in a vain search for comfort.  “I’m a package deal, Kevin.  I can’t turn off my gift, even if I wanted to. When you decide you’re ready to be with me, with all of me,
you know where I am.”

****

Kevin watched as Joanna turned on her heel and walked away from him and wondered what the Hell had just happened. He wanted to believe her, there was even a part of him that
did
believe her, but he just couldn’t take that leap of faith.  Not until the arson investigators made a determination about both the fire at the Community Center and this fire, too.  Frankly, Kevin hoped like Hell that Joanna was wrong, because if she was right it meant they had a serial arsonist running around town.

Chief
Caldwell approached him. “Good fight tonight, Kev.”

“Thanks
, Chief.” Kevin muttered wondering ironically if the Chief meant the fire or the scene with Joanna.  Dammit, he’d hurt her, though he hadn’t meant to. It was hard to suspend belief and accept that she
saw
and
felt
things. He was a practical man and psychic phenomena didn’t fit into the practical category.

“I thought I told you to make up with that
little gal,” the Chief ribbed him.

“I had…I did. She’s just…
She’s upset.”

“Well, I imagine she’s pretty devastated.  She’ll probably have to let the whole fire mural thing go now
. I don’t guess she can afford to start it over again.”

Kevin shook his head.  “It was her older work that was destroyed here, not the mural.  I think it’s at her home studio.  That’s not why she’s so pissed.”  He
felt foolish even repeating her words. “She insists that this fire was deliberate, and that the firebug is here somewhere.”

The Chief
’s brows drew together in concern. “What else did she say? Did she have any details?”

“No
, boss, nothing but that he’s around here somewhere.”  The Chief looked troubled, and Kevin asked in surprise, “You don’t believe in all that shit do you?”

The Chief shrugged.
“Does anyone? But this is two fires in one week. You sure she didn’t say anything else?”

“Yeah
, she did. She said whoever did this was pissed as hell, and he wasn’t done.”

****

“So what’s the deal with you and Joanna Spooky?” Travis wiggled his eyebrows at him as Kevin bit back a growl at the nick name.

“Nothing you need to worry about.” He dried off and threw his towel to
ward the hamper.  “And don’t call her that.” Grabbing a fresh pair of boxers, he jerked them up and headed toward the bunks. 

“You sure as H
ell are touchy all of a sudden.” Travis followed him into the room.

“You know she thinks she can
see things.
” Kevin exaggerated the words by moving his fingers.

“Maybe she can. Strange shit happens all the time.” Travis’ statement surprised Kevin. His best friend was even more a skeptic than Kevin was.

“What, you believe her?”

Travis folded his a
rms over his chest and shrugged.

“Bullshit.
How many times have I heard you refer to her as the town kook?” Now that Kevin thought about it, his best buddy deserved a punch in the gut for making those kinds of remarks about his Joanna.

Whoa, wait
.
His Joanna? 
When had he started thinking of her as his? He shook his head at himself, because he knew the exact moment. When she’d come all over him in her bed, all the while drawing the most intense, soul destroying orgasm of his life straight from his soul through his dick.

“Ok
ay, man, I never ever told anyone this ‘cause of how everyone around here thinks about her but…”

Kevin felt his face get red
, and he tried to ready himself for what his friend was about to reveal. Fuck, he was actually jealous, jealous that Travis might have been with her first, known her as intimately as he did.

“
Last summer I was riding the trails back behind the house.  I miscalculated a jump and hit a tree that had fallen over. I flipped over and the bike caught on a branch bringing part of the tree over on me. I was fucking pinned, no cell, no radio. I thought for sure I was screwed.  But about an hour later, this woman came bursting through the woods, screaming her lungs out. She kept yelling ‘where are you?  Are you okay?’” Travis threw his own towel on the foot of his bed and sat down. “It was your artist. She helped me get free. I wasn’t really hurt except for the burn from the exhaust, so I gave her a ride back to her place. It was weird.  When she got off the bike I asked her how she knew where to find me and she just shook her head and laughed. She told me my cussing and swearing woke her out of a sound sleep.”

Kevin knew that was entirely impossible since Travis’ place was twenty minutes from town.

“She knew something, how I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t dismiss her so easily.”

“It’s not that easy, Trav.” 
Kevin rubbed his eyes.  “Some of the things she sees… things she
might
see… they’re not so pretty.”

Travis gave him a sympathetic smile.  “So it’s not that you don’t believe her, it’s that you’re scared of what she might see.”  His friend reached over and cuffed Kevin on the back of the head.  “Dude, you take responsibility for things that you have no control over.”

Kevin started to shake his head, to tell Travis he didn’t know what he was talking about, but the other man spoke over him.  “Every fire that kicks our asses, from the one at your house to the one we fought this morning, you’ve blamed yourself, buddy.  I’ve known you way too long for you to deny it.”

Kevin wanted to deny Travis’ words, but he couldn’t. 

Travis shook his head.  “Dude, she’s a little strange, but she’s a nice girl.  If you can’t deal with what she
sees
,” he mimicked Kevin’s earlier woo-woo hand motions, “then you need to walk away.”

“I don’t think I can
,” he muttered, reaching for his jeans.

Jo stood back and surveyed the storyboard she’d finally finished for her mural of Ludington’s Great Fire. 
The first step for Jo in creating one of her murals was to plot out the entire image on large sheets of graph paper.  She would then create a grid on the sheet of tin that would serve as her canvas.  Finally she would chalk in the outline of her images before adding the detail that would bring the images to life in vivid oil paints.

Now, staring at the storyboard clipped to a bulletin board along the wall of her studio, Jo frowned at what she saw.  As she’d mentioned to Chief Caldwell, it was an amazing story.  During the summer of 1960, a fire had started behind the local five and dime.  It had been a dry summer, and the usually lush landscaping that wound through the town had been brittle and dry, perfect fuel for the blaze.

By the time the fire department, at that time a volunteer force, had been called into the station and had rallied to fight the thing, the blaze had swept through the entire downtown area, devastating homes and businesses alike.

It had been a rallying point for the citizens of Ludington.  They’d pulled together to care for those who’d lost their homes and livelihoods and, in some cases loved ones,  in the way that only a small town can.

Now, forty years later, there was still an entire generation of town folk who told stories of the fire and following several years in hushed and horrified voices.  There had been a lively debate over whether the event should even be memorialized.  It was finally old Amos Whitlock who’d made the deciding argument.  He’d lost his seventeen year old son to the fire when the boy had joined the volunteer firefighters in trying to defeat the blaze.  Amos argued that he’d be perfectly content to have future generations see exactly what his son had fought and died for.  And, he added sadly, it wasn’t like he didn’t see that fire every night when he closed his eyes.

Jo frowned at the image before her.  Crouched behind the five and dime she’d sketched a boy of about ten.  His overlong hair, ragged jeans and striped shirt lent an air of childish innocence that was belied by the cigarette he was dropping behind him, clearly trying to hide it from the man approaching him from around the corner.  She hadn’t added details, but Jo knew that when she did there would be an expression of angry disappointment on the man’s face, and embarrassed defiance on the boy’s.  It was a normal enough scene; it wasn’t the situation that had Joanna frowning.  It was the fact that the boy was dropping the cigarette right against the wooden wall of the dime store.  With a sudden flash of insight, Jo knew exactly what had started the mysterious, devastating fire.