Chapter 4
Four
Declan
The report sits heavy in my hands. I’ve read it twice already, but I go over it again, every clipped phrase. Likely accelerant.
Somebody wanted that fire to spread.
I lean back in the chair, the hum of the station filling the space—coffee brewing, radios squawking, boots scuffing on tile. My gut twists, not from what the report says but from what it doesn’t. This wasn’t random. Someone meant for that blaze to trap whoever was inside.
Tarryn.
Her name alone sends a weight through me.
Seeing her last night, pale in the glow of emergency lights, shook me more than I’ll admit.
She’s tougher than she looks, but nobody walks away from a night like that unchanged.
The image of her coughing against my chest keeps circling back.
Her hair tangled with soot. Her body trembling against me.
If I hadn’t been on shift, if the response time had been slower—
I slam the file closed. No. I can’t let myself spiral. I need control. The job demands it. What matters is finding the pattern. The file isn’t enough. I need threads, links, anything that points to who did this.
“Looks like you’re about to eat that file,” Dan says as he drops into the chair across from me, a donut already half gone in his hand. Dan Johnson and I went to the Firefighting Academy together and have been friends ever since.
“Feels like it’s eating me,” I answer.
He props his feet on the table, smearing powdered sugar across the edge without a second thought. “So? Faulty wiring? Candle left burning?”
“Neither. Report says no malfunction detected and signs of an accelerant. I have the reports that say the fire detector was checked two months ago, and they were gutted. Looks deliberate.”
His grin vanishes. “Deliberate like arson deliberate?”
“Exactly that.”
Roger Peterson slows as he passes, the word enough to pull him back. “Did you say arson? At the Paradise Hill cottage?”
I nod. “Accelerant signs, no electrical issues. Somebody set it.”
Roger whistles low. “Hell. You remember the warehouse blaze last year? Same language in the report. ‘No malfunction detected. Possible accelerant.’”
“That was ruled suspicious,” Roger adds. “Never pinned anyone.”
I sit forward. “Same wording showed up again last night. And you’re telling me we’re supposed to chalk this up to coincidence?”
Dan leans closer, voice dropping. “Pattern’s there if anyone bothers to line them up. Warehouse, the barn fire out by Miller’s property, and now, this cottage.”
“Three times not a coincidence,” I mutter.
“Chief ever say anything?” Roger asks.
Dan shrugs. “You know Walker. He doesn’t like speculation unless it’s got steel under it.”
I push the report toward them. “Is this enough for you?”
They skim it, trading uneasy looks. Roger rubs the back of his neck. “If someone’s lighting up properties on purpose, they’re escalating.”
“Exactly why we can’t just file it away,” I say. “Eric Reynolds is the marshal on this. I don’t know if he is aware of the other fires.”
“Let him know.” Dan squints at me. “This about the women inside?”
“It’s about the fire.”
He doesn’t buy it, but he lets it slide.
“Chief’s gonna want a meeting if you’re reaching out to Reynolds,” Roger says. “You bringing this up, or do we let him?”
“I’ll bring it,” I decide.
Roger leaves, but Dan lingers. He chews slowly, watching me like he’s waiting for me to crack. “Did you used to date a Paradise?”
“Yeah.”
“Trying to get back in there?”
I give him a look.
He raises both hands. “Just asking. You looked like you’d been punched when you saw her.”
The memory hits—Tarryn freezing in her flannel pajama pants and winter coat, soot streaking her face, her eyes locking on mine. Years vanished in an instant.
“We were close once,” I say carefully.
Dan smirks. “Close like holding hands close, or close like—”
“Drop it.”
He chuckles. “Fine. Still, it’s written all over you. You can’t stop thinking about her.”
“Because she almost died,” I snap. I don’t want to admit to him that she’s the reason I came back.
“Because she’s Tarryn Paradise,” he corrects.
I shake my head, but the truth sits between us. She was fire and light when we were kids, stubborn as hell. I thought time dulled that. Seeing her sitting with her parents in her pajamas outside the burning cottage proved otherwise.
Dan softens. “Look, if she matters to you, all the more reason to dig into this. Nobody deserves to be targeted like that.”
“She doesn’t need me reopening old doors.”
“Maybe she does.”
I stare at the report again. What if I hadn’t been there? What if another team had rolled slower?
Dan sets the donut down, voice quieter. “Hey. You kept her safe. Don’t twist that around.”
“She shouldn’t have been in danger in the first place.”
“You can’t carry that,” he says. “Not yours to hold.”
My chest tightens. “Feels like it. We have history. She’s the reason I came back. I wasn’t ready to see her. I needed to do a few things first.”
“Okay, that’s blown. So what’s your move now?”
“I’ll oversee this file and try to fix what I broke when I left.”
Dan points at me. “There. A moment of unity. Someone write that down.”
The humor lands, breaking the heaviness for a second. But the quiet after makes me restless. My thoughts drift back, unwillingly, to Tarryn.
I see us as teenagers, sitting on the tailgate of my old truck after a late summer bonfire.
She’d stolen a bottle of soda from her family restaurant, barefoot in the grass, laughing like she owned the night.
She’d said she wanted to escape the weight of her family name, that she wanted something real.
I’d promised her she could always run to me.
I swallow hard. Last night, it felt like the same promise all over again. Except this time it wasn’t a choice.