“ANOTHER FIRE?” REID stopped midstride, only peripherally aware of other people parting to go around him, barely sparing him a glance. The snowy sidewalk meant everyone needed to watch their footing. Having become accustomed to Southern California winters, he had almost forgotten that mid-and even late March did not qualify as spring in this part of Oregon.
It was Monday morning, and he had been striding from the parking lot toward the public safety building, wishing he’d worn boots for better traction, when his phone rang and he saw that Roger was the caller.
“Not as major,” Roger assured him. “Might’ve been the snow that made it fizzle.”
Reid stepped off the sidewalk into deeper snow on the lawn, separating himself from the stream of people heading into work. A late-winter storm had left three or four inches of snow the past couple of days. Gazing at the ice-rimmed Deschutes River, he asked, “What was lit this time?”
“Woodshed. One of the boys got up to take a leak and spotted it.”
Not Caleb, then. No, wait. Reid visualized where the woodshed was in relation to the cabins and lodge, and realized that Caleb could have seen this fire from his bedroom window. God damn it. Had this been a direct attack on Caleb?
Not a very effective one, he reassured himself. Caleb would have seen the flames in time to escape downstairs and out.
“Which boy?” he asked.
“Trevor.”
Reid grunted; he recognized all the boys by now, but couldn’t say he knew them.
“You think to do a bed count?”
“Yeah, I did. Felt like a shit, but I went cabin to cabin. Everyone was where they were supposed to be except Trev, who’d come running to get me, and his cabinmate, Diego, who’d dragged the hose over by the time I got out there.”
Both men were silent for a moment, Reid thinking. Video cameras were out. They’d need too many to cover grounds that extensive.
“Damn,” he concluded. “What you need are regular patrols.”
“Yeah, I think Paula and I are going to start taking turns making the rounds.” He gave a rough, unhappy chuckle. “Give us a couple nights, we’ll be feeling like new parents constantly having to get up with a screaming baby.”
“Yeah, you can’t keep doing that. I might sneak out and set up surveillance some night.”
“In this weather?”
“You’ve got some empty cabins.”
“Let me know so I don’t shoot you if our paths cross.”
“Good enough. Hell.” Reid rubbed the back of his neck and discovered his hand felt like a block of ice. “I don’t like this,” he said unnecessarily.
“You and me both.”
“I wish you were inside the city limits.”
“What would you do, send patrols by?”
Of course he couldn’t do that. “All right,” he said. “Let me know if anything develops.”
“Glad you’re here,” Roger said unexpectedly and then was gone.
The foot traffic had thinned somewhat while Reid had stood out in the cold talking. Snow crunched underfoot until he was back on the sidewalk, where the smooth sole of his dress shoes skidded. To hell with this, he thought. Nobody would notice or care if he wore dark boots with a decent tread. And...this was March. With April to follow. How many more times was it likely to snow before the seasons turned?
He wasn’t looking forward to his day. The morning plan was for him to interview a couple of applicants for the personal-assistant position. He’d been just as glad his temp apparently hadn’t wanted the job; she didn’t seem to be all that well-informed and he had the impression he’d scared her. He was hoping to hire internally; he felt so damn ignorant, it would be good to have a PA who knew the ropes. About once an hour, he cursed Colin McAllister for having taken his PA with him when he changed jobs.
This afternoon, he intended to take a tour of every department in the building, starting with Records in the basement. He was beginning to realize that he’d misinterpreted his “territory” when he arrived in Angel Butte. He’d felt satisfied after driving damn near every road inside the city limits, memorizing the way house numbers ran, which neighborhoods looked run-down, where the bars and taverns were, the location of parking lots that would be dark enough at night to put women walking alone to their cars in peril.
Truth was, he should have been mapping this building and the maintenance garage, where most of his responsibilities lay, so he had the slightest idea how to respond the next time someone came to him with a request.
Once the first applicant showed up, Reid blocked everything else from his mind, including both his afternoon agenda and the threat to Caleb and the shelter. His skill at compartmentalizing was useful.
This applicant currently worked in Technical Services and might be a whiz at computers and social media, but the way her eyes shied from his and her cheeks stayed rosy the whole time they talked, he could tell she was intimidated by him, too.
Irritated after he saw her out, Reid wondered—not for the first time—why he had that effect on so many people, not only women. He was a big man, sure, but lean, not mountainous. He didn’t have an alarmingly ugly face. He rarely raised his voice. So what the hell was the problem? Why couldn’t he find someone like—
There she was, in his head again. Anna Grant, of course. She hadn’t been afraid of him.
So, okay, he needed a woman like her, someone brisk, businesslike, organized and determined. And, please God, someone who knew the police department from the lowliest of supply closets to the most obscure of requisition forms.
Applicant number two turned out to be a maybe. This one was a man who at least didn’t jump every time Reid shifted in his chair. He was internal only in the sense he was already a city employee, however; his current position was second assistant in the mayor’s office.
Maybe, Reid thought, hiding his grin, that was why the guy wasn’t scared. After all, he’d presumably gotten used to Mayor Noah Chandler, who was an ugly bastard and, rumor had it, tended to be brutally direct.
Reid thanked the man for coming, said he’d let him know and glanced at the clock. He was embarrassed at how much he looked forward to lunch.
Last week, Lieutenant Renner had told him the best place to eat lunch in Angel Butte was the Kingfisher Café, only a couple of blocks from the police station. Reid had given it a try on Friday, walking down there late enough to miss the lunch rush. The door had opened before he reached for the handle, and he’d found himself face-to-face with Anna. She had appeared as startled as he’d felt. After their dinner at the A&W, he sure as hell hadn’t intended to seek her out again.
But courtesy demanded they exchange a few polite words, during which he’d asked whether she was a regular at the café.
“I come at least two or three days a week,” she had admitted, then wrinkled her nose. “I know I shouldn’t eat out so often, but I’m not a morning person. Half the time, I forget to pack a lunch.”
“Ah. Well, maybe I’ll see you here another day,” he’d remarked and was unable to interpret a look that might have been wary, shy or hopeful.
Damn it, after that accidental meeting, she’d been in his head all weekend, with the result that here he was Monday morning, panting to sit down to lunch with her. Stupid thing to do or not, he wanted to talk to her.
Since finding his brother and moving to Angel Butte, Reid had never felt lonelier. He didn’t understand it and sure as hell didn’t like it. No matter who he was with, he felt an uncrossable distance.
The one exception was Anna. He refused to analyze why. Did it matter? She was someone he could talk out some of his confusion with, that was all.
He was going to be very disappointed if this happened to be one of the days she’d remembered to pack herself a lunch. It wasn’t quite time to leave yet, though, which gave him a few minutes to brood.
He envied Mayor Chandler his view of Angel Butte, the volcanic cinder cone that rose right in the middle of town and was topped with the huge marble angel that gave the town its name. His office looked out on the brick wall of the jail. Not bothering to swivel his chair to look out the window, instead, he frowned, unseeing, at the closed door while he let his thoughts rebound to the shelter and the fact that a second fire had been set only a week after the first.
He briefly pondered the timing. The first fire had been set on Saturday night, the second on Sunday night. Chance? Or was there a reason their arsonist had chosen weekends?
This fire wasn’t an escalation. That was a positive. The lodge or one of the occupied cabins, now, that would have been scary. This fire, too, could have been set for entertainment value. It could have been a warning...although of what, Reid couldn’t figure. What worried him most was the possibility it was part of a campaign of terror. Everyone at the resort must be edgy now. No one would be sleeping well. The boys would all be watching each other. The fight Caleb had been in wouldn’t be the last.
Nobody out there would feel safe.
This was where, reluctantly, he had to ask himself whether it was a coincidence that Caleb had been the most recent arrival.
What if Caleb was angry enough to light the world on fire? Or what if this was a campaign not to terrorize, but to make Reid believe he should take his brother home to live with him?
To keep him safe.
Or—and this was the most unwelcome speculation of all—was there any possibility that their father had found his runaway youngest son? Had Reid screwed up big-time by moving to Angel Butte? Could he absolutely swear that when driving out to the old resort a couple times a week, he hadn’t been followed?
“Damn,” he murmured.
He hadn’t let Caleb know how much that phone call from their father had shaken him. In the nearly twenty years since he had seen Dean Sawyer, Reid had tried to think about him as little as possible. He didn’t like knowing how much he resembled his father physically. Sometimes he’d stare at himself in a mirror with an incredulity he had to shake off. But he couldn’t have so much as described his father’s voice.
But the minute he heard it on the phone, the hairs on his arms had stood on end as if he’d come in contact with a bare electrical wire. The feeling that rushed over him had been bad. He’d been thrown back, as if all the years since had never happened. Dad had just walked in the door, and Reid could see that he was mad about something. Could have been anything—some imagined slight at work, a detective junior to him getting a headline for a press-worthy arrest, an asshole who’d cut him off on the drive home. Didn’t matter what, unless the “anything” had to do with Reid directly. Say, the school counselor had called and said, “We’re concerned about the number of bruises your son has had recently.” Those days were the worst.
By fifteen, Reid had been as tall as his father; he thought he must be a couple of inches taller now that he’d reached his full height. But then he’d been skinny, like Caleb was now. Unable to stand up to a muscular, angry man.
He shook off the recollection, if not the shadow of the memory, of blows falling.
The day he’d called, the first words out of his father’s mouth had been “So you’re a cop like your old man.”
“Not like you,” he’d said flatly, just as he had to Caleb. “I’m the kind of cop who should have investigated Mom’s death.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Dean had snarled.
“Sure you did. I was young, not deaf and blind.”
“You ever make an allegation like that, you’ll find yourself in court and I’ll take you for every cent you make in the next fifty years.”
He had managed to sound bored. “Is there a point to this call?”
And that was when he’d demanded to know whether Reid had snatched Caleb.
It wasn’t even a lie to say no. Helping the boy get away was a whole other story.
But mocking his father...that wasn’t a good idea. It was bound to have made him suspicious.
Shit, Reid thought again. I need to find out whether he could be in Angel Butte.
His gaze strayed to the time at the bottom of his computer monitor.
Yeah, he’d have to make a few calls...but not now. Right now, he was going to wander down to the Kingfisher Café and hope to feed his unexpected craving for another person’s company.
* * *
ANNA TOLD HERSELF she’d chosen to sit where she did because the light was better if she ended up pulling out her book to read while she ate. Not so she could keep an eye on the door. If Reid happened to eat here again today, what were the chances he’d be alone? He’d consider the lunch hour to be a good time to conduct business.
But she remembered the way he’d asked You come often? And every time the door opened, she glanced that way.
The waitress was taking her order when he came in. Alone. He scanned the entire restaurant in one lightning sweep, analyzing and dismissing everyone he saw, until his gaze reached her and stopped. She felt as if a heat-seeking missile had just locked on target.
He lifted an eyebrow, the slightest of quirks, but it was enough to ask a question. Throat closing, Anna inclined her head toward the chair opposite her. He smiled, ignored the hostess as if she wasn’t there and crossed the room to Anna’s table.
“May I join you?” he asked in that deep, velvety voice.
The waitress turned, startled. “Oh!”
“Of course you may,” Anna said, then, to the waitress, “Why don’t you hold off on my order until Captain Sawyer decides what he wants?”
“Yes. Um, of course.” Plump and tattooed, the young waitress retreated in disarray.
He pulled out the chair across from Anna, immediately making her feel crowded. This table beneath the window was tiny, sized for two who knew each other really well. His knees bumped hers, and he murmured, “Sorry.”
She shifted to give him room. He made no move to open the menu she handed him. Instead, they looked at each other.
Deeper than usual lines creased his forehead and carved crevasses between his dark slash of eyebrows.
“Something’s wrong,” she said slowly.
“What?” He sounded startled.
“You look... I don’t know. Disturbed.”
He stared at her. “Hasn’t been the best of days,” he said finally. Now he did pick up the menu, but she sensed he was doing it as much for camouflage as anything else.
She waited until he’d apparently made a decision. Then she said, “Is it Caleb?”
The lines on his face became deeper. “Partly,” he said gruffly.
“What’s the other part?”
Now both eyebrows rose. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a nosy woman?”
She grinned. “I consider that a compliment. I wouldn’t be any good at my job if I wasn’t.”
“Speaking of...”
She raised her eyebrows, but he’d broken off at the waitress’s approach. Once he’d given his order, he said abruptly, “It’s the job.”
“Isn’t it...well, similar to what you were doing? I gathered from the article in the newspaper that you were supervising quite a few people at your last job.”
He grimaced, more expression than he usually allowed himself. “Supervising, I’m comfortable with. On the investigations side, I’m not used to always being one step removed. I get the feeling I’ll rarely be going out to a crime scene, for example. I’ll be sitting behind the desk nodding while my underlings report to me.”
“You mean, you won’t be doing real police work.”
“Right.” The trace of discomfiture lingered on his face. “That’ll take an adjustment, but I can make it. When it comes to the support-services part of my job, though, I feel like a fish out of water. What do I know about fleet and facility maintenance, for God’s sake? Did you know we have communication technicians? I’ve got to tell you, they talk right over my head.” He tugged his hair as if he wanted to tear it out. “Thank God Personnel and Human Resources are handled by the city.”
“You must have known you’d be heading those departments when you took the job,” she said tentatively.
His grunt was half laugh. “Sure I did. I just thought I’d be accountable for their budgets, hiring or firing heads of departments.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know they’d expect me to understand what they actually do.”
Anna wondered if he knew how plaintive he sounded, but suspected he did and hated it.
“So, how are you handling it? Dodging phone calls?”
This rough laugh was closer to the real thing. “Something like that.”
Their orders arrived, but neither reached immediately for their forks. “Is there any reason you can’t admit ignorance and say, ‘Educate me?’”
“Sure, if it was just one area. But across the board? I don’t even work on my own car. Who am I to decide whether we ought to be performing the regular maintenance on the vehicles in our fleet every three thousand miles versus four thousand, or, hey, five...? And I’m competent on a computer, but do you know how fast technology is changing?”
She frowned at him. “Yes, but that’s why you employ experts in every department. You can’t know everything. Anyway...” She hesitated. This probably sounded stupidly elementary, but she decided to say it anyway. “I’ll bet you’re good at research. Why not look at each problem the way you would some aspect of a crime you’re investigating? Haven’t you become an expert, however fleetingly, on some esoteric field because it was entwined in a crime?”
She couldn’t read his stare at all until he nodded slightly. “Yeah. I have. I know more about health regulations on tattoo parlors than you’d want to hear, and the handling of bodies in funeral homes. Not to mention midwifery—that one turned out to be a murder—and appropriate practices in pest control.” His eyes crinkled with a real smile. “Thank you.”
“Surely you’ve been going at it already with that attitude,” she said, wondering if he was humoring her.
But he shook his head. “I’ve been discovering how much I dislike feeling out of my comfort zone.”
“You look so—” She tried to stop herself, but that eyebrow of his insisted she finish. “I don’t know. Untouchable. Invincible.” Not a word she could ever remember using before, but it seemed to fit.
“Invincible,” Reid echoed in a strange tone. “We can try, but is achieving that possible?”
“I...don’t know.” Was he saying he wanted to make himself impervious to all human failings? Or the tumult of human emotions? “It wouldn’t have occurred to me to go for it.”
“No,” he said. “Not you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
His mouth curved. “Nothing that deserves your indignation. Only that...I’m beginning to think you’re always willing to care.”
“Beginning to think?” Now she was indignant.
He held up a hand. “Pax. I’ve met plenty of social workers who are just going through the motions, not throwing themselves in heart and soul.”
“Well, I’m not sure I do that.”
Reid only smiled and began to eat. After a moment, Anna did the same.
He started talking, telling her a few anecdotes that had led to his awareness of how deep and wide his ignorance was, and when he asked about her week, she told a few stories in return.
She liked listening to him, and the way his attention never wavered from her when she talked. What she didn’t do was make the mistake of thinking this happenstance lunch meant their relationship was going anywhere. He’d made it clear enough he had no intention of letting that happen.
She was nosy, though, so she asked over coffee how things were going with his brother.
“No better.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I’m following your advice and hanging in there.”
“Good.” She smiled at him. “At least he’s taking your calls. If he really wanted to reject you, he wouldn’t.”
Something fleeting crossed his face. As usual, she was unable to interpret it.
“He...dodges me when he can,” he said. “Speaking of dodging.”
Had they been? Oh—departmental queries.
“You said you don’t have any kind of relationship with your father,” she said, remembering, and then discovered how completely he could close down.
“No.”
She’d never heard a word uttered so impassively, while conveying emotions so bleak. All she could do was nod.
“How’s Yancey doing in the new foster home?” Reid asked in an obvious change of subject. He hadn’t so much as moved a muscle, but she somehow knew he was itching to be gone.
“Really well.” She finished her coffee and reached for her wallet from the messenger bag sitting at her feet. “Carol insists he’s musically gifted and has put him in piano lessons. Apparently, he played the trombone back in fifth and sixth grades, and now he may join the middle school jazz band.”
“Ah. Clever woman.” He barely glanced at the waitress, but she veered toward the cash register.
“Carol has a gift for, well...”
“Finding out what other people’s gifts are?”
“Exactly.”
The waitress presented their bills. Reid tried to take both. Anna said, “No,” and handed hers with a twenty-dollar bill back to the waitress. “I don’t need change,” she said pleasantly and tucked her wallet back into her bag. When she stood, he did, too, and walked out with her. Fortunately, she’d been lucky enough to find a parking spot right in front. She used her remote to unlock before looking at him. “Thanks for your company over lunch.”
“I’m the one who owes you the thanks.” This time his voice was a little huskier than usual. “You give good advice.”
“My gift.”
“Maybe,” he said. She passed him to step off the curb, and he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Any chance you’d like to meet about the same time here on Wednesday?”
Anna went utterly still. “So I can give you more advice?”
“Because...I like you.” He frowned a little, his hand dropping from her arm. He stepped back. “If you’re not here—” and now he sounded completely indifferent “—I’ll get the message. Have a good day, Anna.” And he walked away, leaving her stunned, even though I like you wasn’t exactly the stuff of soaring romance.
After a moment, she circled her Toyota and got in.
* * *
REID DECIDED TO make the call to the Spokane P.D. right after lunch, before he began wandering the departments under his authority.
“Sergeant Sawyer has today off,” the voice on the phone told Reid woodenly. “I can switch you to his voice mail if you want to leave a message.”
Sitting at his desk staring at a blinking red light indicating an incoming call waiting, Reid thought, Sure. I want to leave a message on the voice mail that Dad can access from anywhere. Say, Angel Butte. That would answer all his questions.
“No. Uh, what about Mike Reardon? Is he in?”
“He retired last year.”
Retired? Well, damn. Reid adjusted his thinking. Yeah, some of Dad’s cronies had been graying even back then. Stood to reason they were getting up to retirement age now.
“What about Bob Sarringer?”
There was a little silence. The guy was polite enough not to ask whether this was old-home week. “Let me check.” He came back in a moment. “Lieutenant Sarringer is in.”
A familiar voice came on. “This really Reid? Dean’s kid?”
“That’s me.”
“You’ve got a nerve calling. You know what you did to him?”
A hot flash of temper seared Reid’s usual composure. “I know what he did to me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” his father’s old friend blustered.
“You were around. You heard the rumors. The allegations. And you’re surprised I lit out? And, what a shocker, his younger son did the same?”
“He was hard on you. That’s all. He wanted you to be half as tough as him.”
“You have any idea how many broken bones I had? How many implants and bridges I have in my mouth to replace teeth he knocked out? For Lee’s sake, I sure as hell hope your idea of raising ’em tough wasn’t the same.”
The silence felt stricken. Reid had been friends with Lee Sarringer. He’d never had the guts to ask whether Lee’s dad knocked him around, too.
“You being straight with me?” the lieutenant asked.
“Yes.” Suddenly impatient, Reid said, “I’m trying to find out if Dad’s in town. I’m told he’s off today.”
“He’s taken some time. I think he’s looking for Caleb— Wait, do you know where he is?” Suspicion had crept into Sarringer’s voice.
Reid managed a natural-sounding snort. “I don’t care where Caleb is, as long as he found a good bolt hole. I didn’t even know I had a brother until recently. Dad called and threatened me. I’d just like to know if he’s completely gone off his rocker and is hunting me, or whether he’s actually showing up for work mornings and acting more sane than he sounded.”
“He’s taken a couple of long weekends,” his father’s crony finally admitted. He sounded shaken. “Like I said, he’s looking for his boy. He didn’t say anything about you. I didn’t even know if you were still alive.”
“Oh, it turns out Dad’s known where I was for years. I took a new job a couple of weeks ago, and he knew all about it. I admit, recently I’ve had a few moments of wondering if Daddy isn’t watching me. Don’t much care for that feeling of having the hair rising on my neck, if you know what I mean.”
Sarringer was a cop; he knew. But he had his loyalties, too, even if Reid had just damaged their underpinnings. He asked what Reid did for a living, and they had a reasonably civil chat.
When Reid ended the call, there it was, that prickling feeling on his nape.
The drive from Spokane to Angel Butte wasn’t that long. His father could have set both fires. Maybe swooping in to recover his youngest boy and getting the Hales shut down wasn’t enough for him. If he’d figured out that this was where Reid, too, had gone to ground all those years ago, he might like the idea of a punishment that, in his eyes, fit the crime. A little psychological torture might be just his style.
And if, in the end, some of the boys who lived there got torched, too, he’d figure they were getting what was coming to them.
Reid swore out loud.
* * *
CALEB SWUNG THE ax and watched the round of pine split in half. Man, his shoulders ached. Hearing voices, he immediately positioned one of the pieces and swung again. Truong and Diego appeared around the corner of the lodge. Working in silence, they filled their arms with another load of the firewood he had split. Instead of carrying it to the woodshed, they’d been ordered to start a pile under a sheltering eave on the other side of the lodge. Not until they were out of sight around the lodge did they start talking again.
So much for Diego being his friend, Caleb thought.
He stretched and groaned. It pissed him off that Roger was driving them all so hard. It was almost spring. They wouldn’t need most of this firewood until next winter. Why not let it dry, and then they could split and stack it on a warm summer day instead of a shitty day like this, when each piece fell into slush and his feet were both wet and cold? Big brother hadn’t mentioned his perfect sanctuary included forced labor.
In the days since the second fire, things had gotten really lousy. Mostly, everyone was looking at him. TJ was second in contention, no surprise—they were the two newest, and neither of them had a roommate, which supposedly made it easier for either to sneak out whenever they wanted. As if Roger and Paula weren’t listening for them. And the front door of the lodge was heavy and thudded when it closed, while the hinges on the kitchen door squealed like a girl who’d just seen her best friend after a two-hour separation. And then there was the fact that TJ and him, they heard each other whenever they had to get up to piss.
Like last night. However quietly TJ opened his bedroom door, Caleb roused enough to notice. He’d waited to hear either the bathroom door or the toilet flushing, but instead there had been a long silence followed by...a creak. He knew that creak. It was the third step from the top. You couldn’t avoid it without skipping the stair altogether. Tensing, he’d waited. Was that the back door? What happened to the squeal?
Wide-awake by then, Caleb had gotten up and peered out the window, but hadn’t seen anything. No dark shape slipping around the side of the lodge, no orange glow of fire. He had thought about waking Paula or Roger, but TJ might have had some other reason for wanting to go out. Or maybe he had gone downstairs to the kitchen to get something to eat, or wanted to go online without anyone knowing. Things were bad enough between them already. Caleb wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone else, but he was a little bit afraid of TJ, who was older, bigger and meaner than him.
It had to be an hour before he heard the soft sound of the bedroom door across the hall closing again. No squeak on the stairs. He’d remembered to step over that one this time.
Caleb had stayed awake for quite a while longer anyway, expecting...something. He’d seen the square of his window turning lighter before he’d dropped off again.
This morning, the first thing he’d done after going downstairs was to experimentally open the back door. No squeal. Heart pounding, he’d closed it and turned, only to find Roger right behind him.
“Somebody oiled the hinges,” Caleb blurted.
Roger stepped past him and opened and closed it a couple of times. Then he studied the hinges, finally touching them. When he withdrew his hand, Caleb saw the thin streak of fresh oil on his fingertip. His expression when he looked at Caleb was hard.
“You’re right. Somebody did.”
Feeling sick, Caleb didn’t say anything.
“You knew,” the older man said.
“No, I—” A lump seemed to be jammed down his throat. “I just...opened it.”
“Caleb, if you know something...”
“I don’t!” he had yelled. “You think I’m stupid? I want to get burned alive?”
Roger had studied his face for a good minute before his jaw flexed and he’d nodded abruptly. “All right, son. Breakfast is on the table.”
Halfway through the meal, Roger had said suddenly, “Thanks to whoever oiled the hinges on the back door.”
Heads jerked up, including Paula’s. Watching surreptitiously, Caleb saw only surprise or indifference. TJ had kept eating, his expression flattest of all. Caleb had gone back to his breakfast without looking at TJ again.
Now he wondered if Roger would call Reid and tell him about the door hinges. Whether Reid, too, was beginning to wonder about him, Caleb.
Filled with turmoil, Caleb swung the ax and then again when one of the two pieces remained standing. If TJ was doing all this crap, why hadn’t he pointed his finger at Caleb?
Right now, everybody probably figured he and TJ were in it together. The fact that they detested each other...they could be faking it. Good theory, he thought bitterly.
He set the ax down and peeled off one of his gloves to inspect his stinging palms. Damn. One of the blisters had burst and it now seeped bloody pus.
“You’d better go put something on that.”
Caleb started. He hadn’t heard Diego approaching, but he was right there, looking over his shoulder.
Caleb shrugged and pulled the glove back on. Like a bandage was going to help. Without a word, he grasped another round and set it in place, then reached for the ax. Diego backed up, and Caleb swung.
Thud.
One thing you could say for this wood, he decided. As green as it was, it might not burn even if it was saturated with gasoline.
Good thing, since it was being stacked right underneath his bedroom window.