Chapter 1 #2
“If we die down here, I’m taking that cat to hell with me,” Kenny vowed, following so close on Joe’s tail he could feel him breathing down his neck.
“We’re not dying, not today.” The dust and dirt falling on them turned to a cakey mud on Joe’s drenched body as they ran down a narrow hallway to a second set of stairs, leading up.
The set he and Summer had always used when they hadn’t wanted to be seen.
“You weren’t here when they fought the fire last night,” Kenny said breathlessly as they began to climb the rickety wood steps. “And we haven’t seen the blueprints yet. How did you know—”
“Been here before. Keep moving—”
From behind them came another foreboding tremble, and everything around them began to shake as if they were in an earthquake.
Not an earthquake, Joe knew, just a warehouse that had taken more punishment than it could withstand. He hoped to God everyone was off the roof because this sucker really was going to collapse.
It wouldn’t be the first time. Horrifying visions rushed at him.
Summer screaming for her father as she raced up the other set of stairs to the main floor, yanking open the door before he could stop her, allowing the smoke and fire to overcome her…
He’d torn up after her, through the licking, hot flames, just as the roof had collapsed through the center.
He’d stood there in the blinding smoke and dust, frantically yelling for her before finding her trapped in the rubble, unconscious and bleeding.
He’d dragged her outside, next to where Danny had escaped without trying to help.
The fire department had come that day, and so had an ambulance, but it’d been too late to save Tim Abrams from the collapsed loft.
It’d taken Summer two days to awaken from her head injury, and after a two-week hospital stay, during which time she’d missed her father’s funeral, she’d left town for the summer to join a river guide company in Colorado.
Joe hadn’t seen her again, she’d made sure of it.
She’d taken her high school equivalency test that fall, graduating two years early, and had worked at a different expedition company after that.
She hadn’t entered San Diego State with him as planned.
In fact, they hadn’t exchanged a single word since that terrible, stupid fight in the basement.
Now he and Kenny charged up the last few steps, shoved open the door to the outside, and stepped into the early morning salty sunshine. In the parking lot in front of them were two fire engines and an assortment of fire personnel, all visibly relieved to see them.
“Everyone accounted for?” Joe asked their chief, who nodded just as a huge, thundering crash had them all whipping around in time to see a section of the main roof cave in, shaking the ground beneath their feet.
“Jesus,” Kenny muttered and removed his glasses with a shaking hand, leaving him standing there with a perfectly clear imprint of the lenses on his filthy face.
The rest of the building stood firm, though looking a bit like an accordion on one side.
All around them, firefighters checked the perimeter and the hot spots.
A cop was helping to keep looky-lous at a distance and out of harm’s way, and on a summer’s morning near O.B.
, there were many of them, in a variety of dress.
Joggers, construction workers, students, the unhoused, rich patrons of the galleys nearby…
In the midst of all the chaos, Joe strode over to his city-issued truck, opened the driver’s door, and set the cat on the seat. “Don’t tear up anything.”
Socks gave him her back and stuck her tail in the air.
Damn thing didn’t remember him, a reminder that when it came to his past, not many did.
He slammed the truck door and put his hand to the front of his T-shirt, which not only came away muddy, but sticky with blood now flowing freely from his deep scratches.
“Nice,” he said to Socks through the window and wiped his hand on the thighs of his coveralls before tapping his iPad.
“You looking for the owner info?” Kenny asked, coming up behind him. His face was already clean. Joe had no idea how he’d done that. “Two sisters,” Kenny said, consulting a sheet of paper. “You going to call, or should I?”
“I’ll do it.” Joe glanced at the names, though he already knew what he’d see. Tina Wilson and Camille Abrams—Summer’s aunt and mother.
“Chief says he spoke to both in the middle of the night when the fire was still raging. They mentioned they have an unhoused personwho sometimes sleeps here. The old guy’s been known to leave odd things, or to try to start a campfire.
Camille Abrams was reportedly pretty shook up, and didn’t stay long.
But I’m surprised she hasn’t made another appearance in the light of day. ”
Joe knew exactly why Camille had been shaken up, and why she hadn’t made another appearance. She’d lost her husband here. With a heavy heart, he took his phone from his pocket and called her. She answered on the first ring. “Mrs. Abrams, this is—”
“Is this about the warehouse?” She sounded anxious. “Did you find my cat? She was there with me last night and then vanished, and finally I had to leave without her, but I’ve been worried sick—”
“I have Socks.”
“Oh, thank God. How’d you know her name?”
“I’m Joe Walker, Mrs. Abrams. Do you remember me?”
“Joe Walker…”
“I lived next door to you growing up.”
Silence.
He could have asked her if she remembered him sneaking into Summer’s window to escape his father’s fists. On the worst nights, Camille had brought him homemade healing tea and toast with cinnamon and extra butter. His first experience with basic kindness from a woman, and his first comfort food.
“Joe Walker?” she repeated softly.
“I’m a fire marshal now,” he told her. “I’m at your warehouse. With Socks.” If she gave any indication she found this as unsettling as he did, she gave nothing away. “The cat’s safe in my rig, though she appears to have a cut on her face. Your building—”
“I’ll have to get her to the vet.”
“Yes. Your warehouse—”
“I know. It burned again.” Her voice quivered, giving her away. So she did remember. “No one died this time.”
“No, ma’am,” he said gently, wishing he’d taken a seat to make this call because his legs felt a little wobbly. Whether from his own close call or the memories, he had no idea.
“Thank you, Joe.”
He hadn’t done much, but he wished he could. “Mrs. Abrams—”
She disconnected.
He stared down at the phone. “Yeah, and how are you? Me? Oh, I’m good. And Summer? Jesus.” The ball of memories lodged in his throat, and he shook his head. “Idiot.”
“So, Idiot. Who’s Summer?” Kenny handed over a first-aid kit, presumably for the scratches burning a slow path of fire down his chest.
“No one.”
Kenny eyed him thoughtfully. He was nine years older than Joe’s thirty, and he believed those years gave him license to know everything.
They’d been partners for two years and had grown close as brothers.
Bickering brothers. That suited Joe fine, as he’d never had a smooth relationship in his life, starting with Summer.
He rubbed his chest, not sure if it was the scratches or his heart that ached like a son of a bitch.
“You okay?” Kenny finally asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“You look pale. Want to sit?”
“Do you?”
“I’m not pale.”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay,” Kenny said, sounding unconvinced.
“I am.”
“Whatever you say.”
A car pulled into the parking lot. A faded blue VW Bug with the windows down blared music out of the speakers. When the engine turned off, silence descended everywhere but within Joe, because he knew.
His heart took off again, just as Summer got out of her car.
He’d heard about her career leading rafting, hiking, and biking treks all over the world for some big expedition company, but he hadn’t heard she was back.
Why would he? He no longer lived next door to her mother’s house, and she’d never sought him out.
She stood there by the Bug, eyes covered in mirrored shades, head turned toward the warehouse. Twelve years ago she’d been a beanpole, long and too thin, with waist-length auburn hair Joe had thought looked like pure fire.
Now she wore some sort of gauzy sundress that clung to her body, still long and lean, but graced with the curves of a full-grown woman.
Her hair was reined in. Sort of. It was piled on top of her head in a careless, precarious knot with strands escaping to brush over her bronzed shoulders.
The eyes he knew to be a soft, dreamy jade were hidden, but seemed to take everything in with disbelief, and even from his distance of twenty-five feet, he saw her breath catch.
Was she remembering the last time she’d been here? The smoke and flames and sirens wailing in the distance, in tune with her own screams?
She turned and unerringly caught his eye, and her sorrow shimmied through him so that he nearly staggered. He actually took a step toward her, with some idea of trying to comfort her, but a polite smile crossed her lips.
And if he’d thought Socks’s scratches had dug deep, it was nothing to this.
She didn’t recognize him.
Jesus, what a day. It wasn’t often he felt eighteen again, leaving him stupid, pathetic, and yearning for a doughnut, but she’d done it to him in a blink.
“Who’s that?” Kenny wanted to know.
“Summer.”
“Summer, the No One?”
“In the flesh.”
At his flat tone, Kenny looked at him. “You know her.”
“She’s related to the owners.”
“But you know her.”
“We grew up next door to each other,” Joe said.
“Ah. She’s the one you were in love with. The one who loved you back but only as a friend.”
Joe shot him a long sideways look and shook his head. “Thanks for the recap.”
Kenny placed a hand on his shoulder. “No problem, buddy.”
Having clearly decided the two of them were the closest authority figures, Summer shut her car door and started toward them, marching into Joe’s world the way she’d once marched out of it; like a wild, magnificent, deadly twister, leaving awe and destruction in her wake.
Her hips swung, the soft material of her sundress molding to her thighs and legs, her breasts.
Joe let out a grim smile as his heart skipped a beat, then turned his back, the burning scratches providing a welcome distraction. “I don’t want to do this. Not now.”
“I’ll see what she needs,” Kenny said.
Joe nodded gratefully, and Kenny moved to head her off at the pass.
Joe got into the MAST truck, and while stripping out of the coveralls, glanced at an equally miserable cat.
Socks hissed.
Joe sighed. “Yeah. I know just how you feel.”