Chapter Twenty-Four #2
More sirens announced the arrival of the ambulance. After it parked, more EMTs descended on her, rechecking all the levels that Brice had already noted and then insisting that she climb onto the stretcher for a trip to the hospital.
But as they pulled away from the house she’d grown up in, she was convinced that she’d lost far more than two boxes of records that day.
* * *
In his office late that afternoon, Mick clicked through a series of photos on his computer monitor that crew members had shared with him.
Crowd photos of interested residents, some more curious than others.
They all looked the same, just a bunch of bundled farmers and some underdressed city workers with shoes too pristine for the mud-streaked snow.
Some of them hadn’t even bothered to get out of their cars.
They’d just parked along the road and waited to view the action.
He hit the arrow for the next picture, grateful to have something to distract him from the scene he’d made with Rachel or from wishing he could’ve gone to the hospital with her.
They’d had it out in front of the whole crew—heck, the entire town, given the crowd size and the proficiency of the rumor mill. They might as well have taken out an ad in the Informer to announce they were together. Only they weren’t. And wouldn’t be.
“What did she expect me to do? Leave her in a burning building?” He glanced at the door to see if he’d been overheard, blew out a breath and lowered his chin.
Should he have tried to bring out the boxes with her?
Should he and Felicia have taken critical seconds to transfer those things out a second-story window?
He shook his head, knowing that if he were given the same set of circumstances, he would have made an identical decision ten times out of ten.
“People, property and environment,” he whispered the statement he’d first learned in his Firefighter Level I training all those years ago.
Those priorities had never changed, other than today the “People” part had taken on a whole new significance.
He hadn’t just wanted to rescue any victim.
He’d needed to save her. From the fire. From herself. Whatever it took.
A knock on the door allowed him to avoid further dissecting the events that had led up to that scene. She’d lied to him, not once but twice in the past eighteen hours, and he’d still ridden in on his white stallion to save her. What was he supposed to do with that truth?
After a second, Felicia pushed open the door and leaned her head through the opening. “Can I talk to you for a minute, Chief?”
He waved her inside. This would be awkward, but he needed to get it over with.
Leaving the door partway open, Felicia took one of the guest seats, crossed her left ankle over her right knee and folded her arms. “So today was…interesting.”
“You did a good job out there, Lucas.”
“You, too, Chief. But that’s not what I came here to talk about.”
“Didn’t figure.”
She shifted in her seat, chewed the corner of her lip and then leaned forward. “You know a lot of us love the whole Hoffman family. Mourned Stan’s loss. Hated the events that led to Riley’s firing. And resented you for showing up to fill the void they left.”
“Well, you’re the first to say it out loud, but thanks for that.”
“From what I’ve seen, you’re a good man. I’ve known Rachel for a long time, too. Since she was a teenager, battling it out with her dad.” Then she gave him a wide smile. “It doesn’t surprise me that she’d fall for a guy like you. You’re a lot like him, you know.”
Tightened his arms to his sides, the last part giving him chills. He didn’t want to be like Rachel’s father. That Felicia had suggested it made him want to pull rank and send her off for more training. “I’m not. I mean, we’re not…you know…together.”
“Yeah, I saw how not together you were. Inside the house and outside.” Again, she smiled.
“But you wish you were. You also wanted to be the one to bring her out. Thought I was going to have to arm wrestle you to get to go in first, and as uncooperative as she was, we needed you to bring her down the ladder.”
“Good thing you didn’t have to challenge me, either. Your reputation as a scrappy champion precedes you.”
She chewed the corner of her lip as though considering whether to say more. “Don’t give up on her, Chief. She’s had more than her share of dark days for someone so young. I don’t know what’s going on with her family right now, but she needs someone. I’m thinking that you might, too.”
Felicia held her hands wide and grinned. “And you don’t work together, so you’re not even breaking any regulations.”
With the reminder of the list of personal rules he and Rachel had set and then broken, Mick shifted in his seat and then pushed back from his desk and started to stand. “Not that it matters now.”
“You mean the boxes Rachel begged us to bring out? You made the right call. We both did. There was no time to get anything else out. Just precious human cargo. People first, right?”
“Always.”
He would have tried to stand again and let her know that their awkward meeting was over, but Felicia pointed to the monitor behind him. “Checking out the curious neighbors?”
Mick swiveled in his chair to face the computer. “Just seeing if anyone sticks out.”
“Isn’t that Kenny Davison? I didn’t know he lived around there.”
“Several people came out from town,” he said, but he would have to pay closer attention since the village manager was one of them. “Some saw the smoke. Others have been following us on the scanners.”
“Guess we’ve been as exciting as a Red Wings game lately.”
He studied the screen again. Davison couldn’t have looked more out of place in his suit, tie and overcoat when standing next to local farmers in duck coats and muck boots.
But it was the young man next to him in the photo, fitting in perfectly among the others, who caught Mick’s eye. Where had he seen him before?
Was it the grocery store? The city offices?
The hotel? He’d been so busy helping Rachel since he’d arrived that he still hadn’t had a chance to check out many places in town.
But he’d seen the kid in the photo somewhere.
Closing his eyes, he tried to picture the location, and then his eyes popped open, his pulse racing. And he knew.
Slowly, he turned back to Felicia, who was already standing.
“Looks like you have another meeting.”
Captain Nash stood in the open doorway, a file folder in his hand. “You got a minute, Chief?”
Mick straightened in his chair as the firefighter left, and the officer replaced her. They were about to discuss the humiliating scene he’d made on the call, and as command, Nash had every right to bring it up. Even a responsibility to do so.
“Look, Captain, I’m really sorry about—”
Louie waved off his apology. “I just wanted to let you know about some paperwork that the investigator located at the scene. You know, the MIPD is opening an attempted murder investigation, don’t you?”
“I suspected they would.”
Still, hearing that fact spoken aloud made it so much worse.
Mick sneaked a shallow breath, wishing he could stop blinking.
They’d been able to recover some of the papers?
Would it be enough to prove whatever Rachel thought she could with those boxes she’d found?
And would she be able to forgive him for forcing her to leave them behind?
Louie wouldn’t have noticed Mick’s oversize reaction, anyway, as he sat staring down at the folder in his hands. But he didn’t open it or rest it on the chief’s desk.
“After the upstairs came down, I didn’t think anything in the house would have been recoverable, let alone paperwork.” He shook his head, still not believing it. “Did he find something from the boxes in the office?”
Louie shook his head, chuckling. “No, not in the house. Stan’s place was so full of books that it burned like a paper company.”
“Then what are you…?”
“Someone dropped this at the scene. The investigator found it, not near the house but where the crowd was standing.”
The captain rested the folder on the desk between them and opened the file. Inside was an inkjet photo of a sheet stored inside a clear evidence bag. The note itself had been folded so many times that it had square marks all over it.
Mick’s breath caught as he took a closer look.
The word TORCH had been handwritten at the top of the page in what looked like pencil.
A kid’s handwriting. The sheet itself was a formal document with one-inch margins, a readable font, numbered sections and bulleted details.
But as he read the list, his fingertips went cold.
Someone had left a step-by-step, how-to guide for setting buildings on fire.