Chapter Six
Rachel was still glaring at Mick’s back when he reached his truck, the heavy snow pelting his coat. But no matter how infuriating his suggestion was that she would risk her daughters’ safety, he had a point. That Riley needed her help didn’t change the fact.
“It’s none of your business,” she said to him as though he could hear her through the glass and the wind bending the nearby trees.
Mick wasn’t paying attention to her, anyway, as he opened the quad cab’s rear passenger door and pulled out an ice scraper and snow shovel. Then he went to work, clearing the passenger side first.
After putting the van in gear, Rachel inched forward, then shifted back to Park.
Her father never would have forgiven her if she’d left someone stranded on the side of the road.
Even someone as frustrating as Mick Prentiss.
“We’re the Hoffmans. We help people,” her dad had always said, though only the men in the family had ever done that.
Either way, she couldn’t leave Mick until she’d at least made sure that his truck started.
“You’re lucky I’m driven by guilt,” she said, as she pulled her hat over her ears. According to the dash clock, she had fifty-five minutes before she needed to be back at the school.
Movement farther down the road caught her attention as she reached for the door handle.
Another vehicle had turned off the main roadway and was headed in their direction.
Something about it felt odd. Though it wasn’t unheard of to pass another car on one of the narrow county roads, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen three vehicles on one at once.
Particularly in the middle of a snowstorm.
Mick must have sensed that something was off, too. He’d been working his way around the tailgate, but now he positioned himself behind the truck to observe their visitor without being noticed. Rachel could only sit and wait.
The white SUV rolled at the same steady speed past Mick’s truck.
The driver didn’t pause near the driveway of the demolished house, either.
But when it pulled alongside her minivan, the vehicle slowed to a crawl.
Rachel pressed her back against the seat.
Even with just four feet separating them, she could see nothing more than shadows through the black-tinted windshield and windows.
The driver would have had no trouble seeing her.
Her pulse thrashed in her ears, her hands gripping the wheel so tightly that the texture had to make indentions in her palms through her gloves. All she could do was wait for the driver to stop. To roll down the window. To do…something.
And then it was over. Just past her rear bumper, the driver gunned the engine and sped away, barely fishtailing with the vehicle’s four-wheel drive capability.
She lowered her head and covered her mouth with her hands. Mick threw open her passenger door before the SUV had disappeared completely from her rearview mirror into a backdrop of white.
“My God, Rachel. Are you all right?”
She couldn’t stop shaking, let alone find the words to answer him as her heart tried to pound its way through her coat. Mick climbed back inside and closed the door, but when he reached over to touch her shoulder, she flinched. He withdrew his hand.
“Who…was that?” She continued to stare into her mirror though only snow remained.
“I messed up.” He yanked off his hood and shoved his hands back through his hair. “I thought it might be the suspect, coming to survey the damage. Or just a curious neighbor. So, I stayed hidden to get some photos. I didn’t realize they’d come there for—”
“Me?” She finished it for him, but she wasn’t ready to believe it.
“I didn’t know—I should have been—”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
He leaned forward, carefully watching her like one of his EMT patients. She folded her gloved hands at the bottom of her rib cage and lifted her gaze to his. If she could make her legs stop trembling, maybe he would even believe her.
“You don’t really think he was after me, do you?”
“They didn’t slow down near my truck or near the crime scene.”
She crossed her arms, needing the firm pressure of that self-hug. “From the road, they probably couldn’t tell you were there. And it still could have been the arsonist, just finding me there and wanting to scare me away from his work.”
“Could have been.”
His skeptical expression suggested that he didn’t think so.
“If they had nothing to do with the fire, then how would they know to find me here?”
“Were you watching closely enough to be certain you weren’t followed?”
She shook her head and took a deep breath, willing her heart rate to slow. “Well, did you get any pictures?”
Mick opened a photo on his phone and enlarged it to show that the SUV had no license plate. “I guess we could still take it to the police.”
“What would I tell them? That someone with no plate and illegal window tinting drove too close to my car?”
He crossed his arms, frowning. “Whether you go to the police or not, you have to take this seriously. Just like the emails, it was a warning.”
It felt like more than that, but she decided not to say so. She didn’t need for him to push her harder to report the incident. “I’m taking it seriously,” she said instead. “Right now I just don’t know what I’m up against. Or who’s even on my side.”
“I am.”
Two little words shouldn’t have been so powerful, but her throat filled over them. And for just a moment, she didn’t feel so alone. “I suppose you’re expecting me to ask you to help me now. For the girls’ sakes.”
The side of his mouth lifted. “Wouldn’t be the worst idea you ever had. And it looks like the driver didn’t see me, so I can still be that back channel.”
He crossed and uncrossed his legs, signaling it still bothered him that he’d failed to be there for her.
“But how can I be sure you won’t take everything I tell you and give it to the investigators trying to build a case against Riley?”
“You can’t.”
She squinted at him, holding her hands wide. “And how will I know that you won’t be one of the people searching for evidence against my brother?”
“You won’t.”
Then he looked into her eyes, his gaze steady like her dad’s as he asked her to trust him when her history told her she shouldn’t. She swallowed and nodded.
“Now go start your truck, so I can get back to the school.”
His lips lifted. “That’s why you didn’t drive back earlier. You couldn’t bear to leave me stranded. You’re a good person.”
“Whatever.” He was wrong, but she found his words strangely comforting.
“Thanks for the ride.”
He hopped out of the van like he had earlier. Only this time he glanced over his shoulder as he returned to his pickup. Then he climbed inside and started the engine.
Rachel waved as she drove past him, her throat as tight as when the driver had been so close to her.
She’d just put her trust in someone who would have access to information that could hurt her brother if she were wrong to believe in him.
But like with so many other things in her life lately, she didn’t have a choice.
* * *
Mick shifted in that miserable office chair at the end of his workday, wishing he could stay focused on the binder filled with printed applications in front of him.
He flipped through the pages, each packet containing reference letters added at the back and photos of hopeful teen boys and girls paper-clipped to the cover letters.
This was supposed to be a fun part of his job, where he would help select candidates for the Mount Isabel Fire Cadet Program.
But today he found their optimism exhausting.
Most of them had used the word hero under the question: “Why would you like to explore firefighting as a possible career?” Good firefighters never thought of themselves as heroes, and always credited their training rather than their own skills.
These kids wanted to throw on capes and wave in parades, and what they were really looking at was a job with dirty and often grueling work, even if it came with an undeniable adrenaline rush.
A calling where the tragedies rubbed some of the shine off victories.
Someone needed to tell them the truth, but he wasn’t the one for that job.
He shut the binder. In this mindset, he wouldn’t give the candidates a fair evaluation, anyway.
He returned the book to the organizer on top of the filing cabinet and went back to the stack of files he’d been studying.
How was it possible that since mid-January, the Mount Isabel PD had recorded sixteen intentionally set fires of sheds, barns, garages and now a residential home?
A normal rate would have been one or two total fires a month, sometimes less, with cooking incidents accounting for nearly half of them.
The fire investigator’s reports showed that some of the events were sophisticated, with multiple ignition points.
Others were haphazard, as if the suspect had tossed a burning, automotive-grease-covered rag behind him and hoped flames would catch.
Nothing seemed to connect them other than an intent to destroy property by fire.
Mick stared down at the reports until the words blurred on the pages and then closed those files as well. He rubbed the back of his neck with both hands, shifted in his chair, then stood and paced.
How was he supposed to keep his mind on even the most recent incident when he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to Rachel earlier when she’d driven him back to the scene?
A tremor slid through him at the memory of watching that white SUV creep past her van, the driver’s identity masked behind smoky glass.
“You just left her out there,” he muttered, his belly knotting over his failure to recognize the driver’s target earlier. He hated even thinking about what could have happened if those inside that vehicle had come with more sinister plans than a warning.