The Protector (9 page)

Amy tried to get her to put the mask back on and Cassie pushed it away. She tried to look around to see Cole. “No. I won’t go.”

The man was her former captain. The history between the two of them extended back a long way before the nursing home fire, and Jack could almost see the silent conversation going on. Cole finally nodded. “Neal, do what you can here. She’s not going.”

Incredulous, Jack turned, furious at him for that. A look from Cole silenced his words before he could speak.

Cassie closed her eyes and let Amy slip back on the oxygen.

Jack moved aside to give Neal room to work. “Cole—” He was ready to argue the point.

“I want my glasses,” Cassie mumbled.

Jack glanced at them in his hand. They were grimy with smoke residue. If he gave them to her, she’d just accidentally knock them off, possibly break them. “Later, Cassie. You can’t see right now anyway.”

She patted her shirt pocket. “Here. Only pair.”

“I won’t lose them.”

She opened her eyes enough to squint at him. “Swear?”

If she wasn’t protesting a pair of glasses, he would have laughed at the irritation in her question. “I promise not to lose them.”

She was reluctant to believe him. Jack reached down and gently squeezed her ankle. He understood why she would cling to something so simple. She’d spent three weeks with her eyes bandaged after the nursing home fire. Without the glasses her vision was very poor. “Promise, kiddo.”

“Cassie.” Neal got her attention. “I need to clean this hand. It’s going to sting.”

She just nodded at that. Jack supposed everything was relative. A sting wasn’t high on the pain meter compared to the pain she’d been through.

Jack turned his attention to his friend and pitched his voice low. “Cole, she needs to see a doctor.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Then why—?”

“She’d have to be dying before she would voluntarily step foot back into a hospital.”

Jack supposed if he had dealt with over a year of being in and out of hospitals, he might feel the same. “It doesn’t change the fact she needs to see a doctor.”

“So I’ll find one who makes house calls.” Cole pointed to the fire. “One of his?”

Jack forced himself to focus on the problem they had to deal with. “Fire in the walls,” he confirmed. “Better than even odds we’ll find his signature.”

“Peter Wallis owns this house.” The quiet statement was underscored by the significance of the information.

“Chairman of the fire district board?”

Cole nodded.

Jack could feel the open question of motive for the arsonist finding definition.

“That hurt.”

Jack turned at Cassie’s words, saw the taut edge of pain around her mouth.

“Almost done,” Neal sympathized. He had her hand clean, was dealing with a blister forming between her two small fingers. Jack stepped back to her side and let his hand touch her shoulder.

Cassie pushed away the oxygen mask. “This fire was set?”

“It looks that way.” Jack nudged the mask back on, wishing she was a better patient. She ignored him.

“He set it,” she murmured.

“What?”

She frowned and shook her head.

“Cassie, did you see something?” Cole pushed. “Anything?”

“By the drive. Watching the fire. Weird the way he was watching the fire,” she whispered. “A tall man, brown jacket, jeans.” She looked down at her hand. “I didn’t really get a good look. He was in the shadows.”

Jack shot Cole a look. They had been hoping for someone to see the man, but Cassie— Jack was afraid of what that meant. She had seen him; that meant he had seen her too.

Cole dug his keys out of his pocket. “As soon as they say she can move, take her to the station and get her statement,” he said quietly. “I’ll bring her car.”

Seven

J
ack knew Cole used his vehicle as his mobile command center. He hadn’t realized that meant there was barely room for people. In the back were empty paint cans to use for evidence collection, metal screens for sifting debris, shovel, rake, crowbar, garbage bags, a large red toolbox, and rolls of plastic sheeting to protect evidence.

Jack nudged down the volume on the radio dispatch calls, keeping his attention on the traffic even as his peripheral vision stayed locked on Cassie beside him. “Leave that oxygen on.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re still coughing between every other word.”

“It’s not the first time I ate smoke. It’s almost cleared.”

He frowned at her. “I can tell.”

She raised the mask again.

Cole’s jacket swallowed her slim frame. Cassie’s system had swung from overheated to chilled as it coped with the crashing adrenaline. Jack was feeling very responsible for her as she’d been entrusted to his care and he wasn’t all that happy about it. He wasn’t a paramedic.

She should have stayed under Neal’s and Amy’s watchful eyes for at least another hour. But she’d insisted she was ready to move and trying to stop her was like stepping in front of a steamroller.

“You didn’t tell me I shouldn’t have gone in.”

Jack turned his head long enough to look at her, surprised by the touch of irritation in her voice. He’d cleaned her glasses and her eyes seemed huge behind the lenses. They were still red and watering from the smoke irritation and she was blinking to try to clear them. A fact that just made her look cute. “Because I think you did the right thing.” He wondered why she had assumed he would have disagreed with her decision. It might have added about ten years to his life, and until she stopped coughing he was going to be wheezing in sympathy, but it had been the right decision. “You needed to go in.”

“I didn’t want to.”

Jack reached over, avoiding her left hand wrapped in a cold towel and settled for touching the grimy knee of her jeans. “You went in anyway.” There was admiration and lingering fear in that. She had been touched by fire once, and she still went in. She’d been touched by it again because they hadn’t been in time to help her. “It makes you even more of a hero.”

“Heroine.”

“You’re still lady blue,” he corrected.

“Thanks.” She sounded pleased…even touched.

“You’re one of us. Even if you aren’t around nearly as often as we would like.”

“The guys crowd me,” she said softly. “And it’s hard on their families.”

Jack hurt to hear that even though he understood it. She was the walking reminder of what families feared would happen. “They don’t mean it to be.”

“It’s just reality. I’m not complaining.”

“And it’s hard to be around what you once had.”

“Yes.” She shifted Cole’s coat. “I smell like smoke. I don’t miss that at all.”

As a way to lighten the conversation, she had chosen a great point to make. “We both do.” The vehicle now smelled like a campfire gone bad. It was not exactly the way to make a good impression on a lady.

“Did you see where my leather jacket went?”

Jack was grateful she hadn’t asked how it had fared. The leather had done its job, deflecting burning embers, but it had been destroyed in the process. “Cole had it. I think he tossed it in your car.”

She eased open the cold towel to look at her blisters.

“Don’t start playing with the bandage and messing up Neal’s work.” The cold towel kept the gauze wet and the burns moist, a major factor for how it healed.

“Would you relax? They’re just blisters. A day or two and they will be calluses.”

“What did they give you for the pain?”

“I’ve no idea, but whatever was in the shot, it’s working.”

“Your words are slurring.”

“I don’t make much sense at this time of night anyway, so it’s probably not much of a loss.” She lost her voice on another coughing fit.

“I wish you had seen a doctor.”

“At this time of night they wouldn’t have let me go home.”

“That’s a big deal?”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t much of an explanation, but the emotions under the word were deep. Home was critical to her now. He tucked that fact away. Did she dream about the fire, need the comfort of her own bed to help her sleep?

“How are your forearms?”

“They hurt.”

She raised her hand, then stopped. “I wish I could rub my eyes.”

“There’s a clean handkerchief in my shirt pocket if you want it.” Jack would have reached for it and given it to her, but his hands were far from clean.

Cassie leaned over and tugged it out with her right hand. “Thanks.” She slipped off her glasses and wiped at her eyes.

“Need more eyedrops?”

“When we get to the station.” She slipped her glasses back on.

Jack rolled his shoulders and did his best to cover a yawn. It was embarrassing to admit how adrenaline sapped his energy.

“I can’t say I miss the middle of the night rollouts.”

He heard the amusement under her words. He glanced at the dashboard clock. 12:05
A.M.
He could forget sleep again tonight, and it was getting to be a bad pattern. When he was in his twenties it hadn’t been so hard to deal with. As he neared thirty-four he now felt every minute of the lost sleep. “At least you got me out of cleanup at the scene.”

“Oh, great.”

“What?”

She lifted her right knee and braced her foot against the dash. “These were my comfortable tennis shoes.” There was a hole in the canvas fabric at the top of her right shoe just above her little toes.

“They look like they were fit for the trash bin before this.”

“I like old shoes. New clothes, but old shoes.” She tugged at the laces with one finger. “Do you know who has my watch?”

“My pocket,” he reassured.

“I feel like I’ve left bits and pieces of me all over the place. I’m not sure what happened with the leftovers I was taking home. I probably tossed the sack in the backseat of my car when I smelled the smoke and managed to spill the food.”

“Cole will deal with it.”

“I hope he notices that the car needs gas.”

“I’m sure he will notice.”

“Is Cole coming back to the office? Or is he going to be at the scene for a while?”

“I’d guess he’ll be there until he can get the first look inside and get the security in place to close the scene. Regardless, I’m giving you a lift home. You don’t need to be driving with that hand.”

“I would appreciate it. I need my hair washed and a change of clothes.”

“You look like you walked out of a fire.”

“I feel like it. Just don’t bump us into someone I know or I’m going to be spending forever explaining.”

Jack turned into the Station 81 complex and pulled around to the parking lot behind the building. He parked the SUV beside Cole’s personal car. “Stay put. I’ll get the door for you.”

The cold air swirled in as he opened the driver’s door and stepped out. He circled the vehicle and opened the passenger door. Cassie braced her uninjured hand on his shoulder to keep her balance as she stepped down. He leaned in to make it easier. She was hurting, and he wished he had the right to lean in and kiss it better. Her hand tightened on his shoulder. “Don’t look like that.”

“Like what?”

“Interested,” she muttered.

“I am.”

“Your timing is awful.”

He hadn’t placed her as easily embarrassed, but she was now. “I think my timing is just fine,” he smiled tenderly, rubbing her chin with his thumb. “But I’ll let you think about it a bit.” Before she could pull back he turned to lead instead. “Come on, this way.”

The light at the back door to the station was on. Jack used his key, then held the heavy steel door open for her. He was here more often than home, and it was a comfortable if spartan place. They walked into a wide spacious corridor, the floor tiled and the walls painted cinder block. The corridor was lined with hooks for coats and jackets. To the right was a spacious kitchen with an extra large refrigerator, stove, two sinks, two microwaves, and a large work area. Whichever firefighter had KP duty for the day was cooking for fifteen to twenty for any particular meal.

To the left was the lounge where guys could hang out while off duty, past it the dorm rooms. The architects had changed the historical layout for this station, and instead put the dorms on the first floor, eliminating the much-loved fire pole. Too many men ended up with shin-splint injuries from repeatedly hitting the concrete floor to make it worth having.

The equipment bays were ahead, a huge part of the building, fifty-two feet long, forty feet deep, with twenty feet high ceilings and fastrising doors. As large as the bays were, they still felt cramped when two engines, a ladder truck, and two rescue squads were pulled inside at the same time.

He eased the coat from around her shoulders. “Okay?” She just nodded. Nothing could hide the fresh tears. Her arms were really hurting. “I’m so sorry, Cassie.”

She sniffed and smiled. “Just get me some Kleenex.”