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It took five hours to get the fire under control. That was five hours when I could have been anywhere else, helping move the investigation further. I’d known it was a trap the moment we rolled up and saw the first explosion. Nothing like that had ever happened before.
I saw Alaina leave to go track down witnesses and turned my attention back to the blaze. There was no reason to go back inside, but that didn’t mean there weren’t things I could do to help. I split my time between offering support for the hoses and helping the EMTs with their jobs.
By the time I came up for air, Alaina was gone and had taken the dogs with her.
Stacia refused medical attention. She eventually got up from the pavement and took a seat in the back of the firetruck. Removing her heavy gear, she reached for a bottled water. I kept half an eye on her as I raced back and forth between first responders.
Well past midnight, we managed to reduce the building to a smoking ruin. The fire was out, and the threat had passed. In the morning, someone would have to come back to check for bodies, but we were all beat and needed to sleep. It would be the duty of the dayshift workers to pick up where we left off.
I drove myself home and crawled into bed, not giving a second thought as to where my girlfriend was. Presumably, she had returned to her own apartment to sleep, and we could meet up the following day to debrief. Before I passed out, I sent her one hurried text just to make sure she was okay.
I’m home safe. U?
A second later, my screen flashed with the answering message. Same. Talk tomorrow.
I put my head down on my pillow and fell asleep.
The next day, I woke early. It wasn’t that I didn’t need to sleep, I did. It was just that the residual energy from the fire last night combined with the anxiety over Rossi’s whereabouts left me unable to relax. I checked my phone to see what time it was and realized I’d only gotten four hours of rest.
I sighed, staring up at the ceiling in dismay. I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower, restoring some much-needed energy under the hot water stream. I knew that Alaina was probably awake. Nobody had the luxury of letting their guard down with Rossi on the loose and accelerating his crime spree.
I wanted to check in with Stacia. I’d left her with her fellow firefighters after she vigorously assured me that she was okay. I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t have the energy to argue. She wasn’t beholden to me anymore, and she made it abundantly clear that she could take care of herself.
I thought about taking a jog but didn’t have the energy for it. Besides, there was a lot of work to do, and I didn’t want to waste any time. I changed into a button-down shirt and a pair of jeans and walked down to my car.
The first stop on my personal agenda was Mike Harper. The guy had sold us out, and I wanted to make him hurt. I didn’t want to loop Alaina into it because that would mean doing things aboveboard. She was a cop, and she had to deal with all that red tape. I, on the other hand, was just a man, and I had the ability to level with the guy. If fists were involved, so much the better. I could use a good fight to get some of the adrenaline out of my system.
I pulled up to his driveway at seven in the morning. It was early enough that none of the residents had gone off to work, but late enough that I encountered some school buses on the road. It bothered me that one of Rossi’s goons was living in such a family-friendly environment. He didn’t deserve to mow his lawn and trim his hedges with the rest of them.
He should be in jail, and I was going to take care of that as soon as I confronted him about the fire last night. He was the one who’d told us about it, and I didn’t believe for a minute that he wasn’t involved.
The whole point of the incendiary bombs had been to trap firefighters in the inferno. That meant me and Stacia specifically, and anyone else who was heroic enough to attempt rescuing innocent residents. For that, Mike Harper had to pay.
I pulled on my parking brake and stepped out of the vehicle. The day was cold, but my blood was hot. I thought about grabbing the tire iron from my trunk but decided against it. I didn’t want to kill the guy; I just wanted to let him know that I knew and that he needed to come clean.
Banging on the door, I aroused the suspicion of Mike’s neighbor. An older woman with a watering can was attending to potted plants on her front steps. She glanced over to see who was causing such a stir so early in the morning. I ignored her.
“Mike Harper!” I bellowed, continuing to pound.
If he was asleep, I was going to wake him up. He didn’t get to indulge in any shut-eye while the rest of us were pounding the pavement, looking for his boss. I should have known his cooperation was too good to be true.
“What?!” Mike demanded, swinging the door open with a vengeance.
He stood there in his pajama bottoms, looking like he had just rolled out of bed. Good. I was happy to have disturbed him.
“You set us up!” I accused him, barreling into the house and forcing him up against the wall.
He lashed out, not so much at my words but at my actions. Shoving me back, he took a stance like a practiced street fighter. I was willing to meet him on the battle ground and swung the first punch.
Mike ducked, coming toward my rib cage with an uppercut. I blocked him, falling back on my training. While firefighters aren’t police officers, a lot of the guys traded jabs at a local gym in preparation for intensive labor. Fighting kept us on our toes, and it was good for situations in which people panicked, something that wasn’t particularly uncommon.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man,” Mike swore.
“You sent us into a burning building that you knew was a trap!” I countered, unwilling to see things any other way.
I took a swing and missed. So far neither of us had had any luck connecting. Mike ducked behind the sofa. He was big but pragmatic, an ex-con who knew enough about the system to want to stay out of trouble.
“I didn’t know,” he insisted. “If it was a trap, Rossi set it, not me.”
“Yeah, but you were in on it,” I accused, pushing an end table aside and shattering a lamp.
“Don’t,” Mike warned.
“You put myself and Stacia in danger,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Stacia?” Mike gulped. “Is she okay?”
“No thanks to you,” I snapped.
“What do you want me to say?” Mike yelled. “I had no fucking idea that Rossi was lying.”
“Because you know him so well?” I questioned sarcastically.
“I didn’t know he was on to me,” Mike replied. “I’ll find a different source. Now it’s personal.”
I pulled back, finally satisfied with his reaction. In a fair fight, I wasn’t sure which of us would win. I had youth on my side, but he had experience. He was bigger than me, but he wasn’t quite as energetic. The way I was feeling, I could easily have crushed him, creating a mess that Alaina would eventually have to sort out.
I allowed my pulse rate to slow. It wasn’t worth going to jail over an assault charge. The guy seemed to genuinely care for Stacia, and I had a hard time believing that he would knowingly put her in danger. Still...
“If I find out you had anything to do with this...” I threatened.
“I didn’t,” he promised. “I was just trying to help Stacia.”
“You did a piss poor job,” I spat.
“Get the hell out of my house!” Mike found his spine, pointing toward the door.
I kicked the couch again to prove my point before stalking back out the way I’d come. I didn’t accomplish much, but I satisfied myself that Mike wasn’t the source of our misinformation. He might be a criminal, but he was fairly reasonable. He drew the line at hurting innocent people and seemed to actually care about Stacia, more than her own father did.
I stormed back to the car, my vision narrowed on the street. Aside from feeling slightly better about Mike’s role in the fire, nothing had been gained from coming to visit him. If Silvio had fed Mike bad information knowing that he would give it to the cops, then Mike wasn’t going to be any use to us as a source. We were right back where we started.
I thought about going to the police station to connect up with Alaina, but there was something I wanted to do first. I drove back to Littleton. The twenty-minute drive was becoming habit at this point. I knew exactly where to turn and when to get off the highway. I even noticed a coffee shop along the way, although stopping to relax wasn’t on the agenda.
I pulled into Stacia’s apartment complex and chose a parking spot near the entrance. Without the flowers this time, I walked up to her door to see whether she was all right. When I’d left her last night, she had been adamant about feeling fine and just needing a good night’s sleep to recover. The EMTs were reluctant to let her go, but they had their hands full with people who wanted medical intervention.
I just wanted to make sure that Stacia was actually okay. I knew bravado well enough to recognize it in other people. She could easily be hurting and just not want to admit it. A quick check-in was warranted before getting on with the rest of my day.
I knocked on the door and was pleased when Ryan answered. The two were obviously living together, and it was better for Stacia than living alone. Not that I wanted Ryan in the line of fire. I didn’t know the guy, but I wouldn’t throw anyone under the Silvio Rossi bus. But for Stacia’s sake, I was glad she had company.
“Hey,” Ryan said.
“Hey,” I responded.
“Travis, right?” Ryan guessed.
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m just checking in on Stacia—I mean Tricia. I just want to make sure she’s really okay.” I made it clear that it was a welfare check and not a social call.
“She’s sleeping,” Ryan said, standing aside to let me in.
“Were you on the job last night?” I asked. I couldn’t remember seeing him at the scene.
“No, I wasn’t on shift,” Ryan replied guiltily. “Although if I’d known what was going to go down, I would have gone anyway.”
“I understand,” I said, knowing exactly what he was going through.
When I thought Stacia had been killed and I was simply not on duty that night, it drove me crazy with grief. I blamed myself for not being there and wondered if I could have changed things by simply going to work that night. It turned out that Stacia had staged it all, and that my presence wouldn’t have made a difference. But it took me two years to discover that. If Ryan cared about the woman half as much as I had, he was dealing with some of the same backlash.
“No, man,” Ryan continued, as if I hadn’t been in his shoes two years ago. “I really should have been there.”
“It’s okay,” I assured him. “I was.”
“Thank you for that. Tricia didn’t want to talk about it, but I heard what happened from some of the other guys.”
“I wish she would retire,” I muttered, not expecting him to agree so quickly.
“I hear that,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “She is one unlucky firefighter, and I’ve never known someone to survive long without luck.”
“She managed to rescue a couple kids,” I said generously. It was actually a dual accomplishment, but making career decisions for her while she was sleeping made me uncomfortable.
“She’s good, don’t get me wrong,” Ryan was quick to confirm. “She just doesn’t have that luck factor, and I think that’s going to be her undoing.”
“Can I talk to her?” I asked.
I didn’t want to intrude, but I’d driven all this way, and I needed to make sure that she was actually healthy. If she was faking it or lying to her boyfriend, I would be able to pick up on it and get her to the hospital. I wasn’t going to lose her again, even if we were no longer romantically involved.
“Okay,” Ryan agreed, pointing to the bedroom.
I knocked softly, putting my ear to the door before letting myself in. The room was dark and warm, a cozy place to relax and catch some Zs. Blackout curtains covered the windows, refusing to allow any natural light in. The bed took up most of the space, with a simple dresser in one corner. The place was tidy, as I expected from the woman I had once loved. I approached the bed, reaching out to touch her shoulder.
She started, as if a jolt of lightning had traveled from my fingers straight into her heart. I flinched, not expecting that kind of violent reaction. She quieted down as soon as she saw who it was, but the implications were unavoidable. She was terrified of waking up to the wrong person, and we both knew exactly who that person was.
“It’s just me,” I said, holding my hands up in a gesture of peace.
“Travis,” she whispered. “What time is it?”
“About eight,” I answered.
She ran a hand down her face to squeeze the sleep from her eyes. Shaking her head out, she straightened her shoulders. “I’m awake.”
“You don’t have to be,” I said gently. “I’m just checking in on you. I want to make sure you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” she responded with a scowl. She had always deflected attention from herself, as long as I knew her, but I wasn’t going to let her do it this time.
I held up one finger. “Let me feel your grip,” I said.
She wrapped her palm around my finger and squeezed. The pressure was good, so she passed that test. I checked her pupils for dilation and found a circumference given the low light in the room. Waving my index finger from left to right, I monitored how well she followed it. Finally, I put my hands on her skull to check for bumps.
She endured it all with a razor-thin patience, waiting until I was done with all the standard concussion tests before throwing the blankets aside. Knowing that she had passed, she stormed out into the living room and disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
I emerged from the bedroom, satisfied that she was physically healthy. If she was pissed at me for giving a shit, I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to propose to her anymore. I didn’t want to start a life together. She was just going to have to put up with a fraternal concern on my part and get over it.
“What happened?” Ryan asked.
“I checked her for concussion,” I said.
“She’s okay,” Ryan told me.
“Had she been checked out before?” I asked pointedly.
“No,” he admitted. “But I didn’t see any issues last night.”
“I just wanted to be sure,” I said. After a moment, I got the feeling that Stacia wasn’t going to come out of the bathroom until I was gone.
It was fine. A thank-you would have been nice. That was twice I’d saved her life in just a few weeks. She could have recognized that all I really wanted was to make sure she was okay. But knowing what I knew about her childhood, the fact that she had difficulty accepting love or friendship was understandable.
“Do what you can to get her to quit,” I told Ryan.
“She doesn’t listen to me,” Ryan said.
I walked up to the bathroom door and knocked.
“I’m busy!” Stacia’s voice came back. I didn’t believe for a minute that she was on the toilet, but I wasn’t going to test that theory.
“We’re going to catch your father,” I said clearly. “And when we do, you’ve got to retire.”
She yanked the door open and stared me down. It looked like her eyes were a little puffy, but I couldn’t be sure. If she had locked herself in to cry, that just hurt on all kinds of levels. She ignored Ryan, saving her worst accusations for me.
“I can’t stop fighting fires,” she said, almost pleading with me for a different solution.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” I said softly. “You want to stop him. I want to stop him. Once that’s done, you don’t have to worry anymore. You can get a job as a veterinarian, or a retail clerk.”
She smirked, her demeanor suddenly brightening. “Is that what you think I want to be? A vet or a salesperson?”
I shrugged. “You have choices.”
Stacia looked over my shoulder at Ryan, who stood there, interested but not invited into the conversation. I checked with him as well to see if he was backing me up. He nodded encouragingly, making it two to one in favor of retirement.
“Okay,” she relented. “If you catch him, I’ll quit.”
“Great,” I said, holding out my hand for a shake.
She took it, and we pantomimed businessfolk sealing a deal, before I left the two of them alone to wake up on their own terms. Walking back to the car, I felt a little bit lighter. All we had to do was catch Silvio Rossi, and Stacia would live a long and happy life out of the spotlight. Alaina’s father would be avenged, and the city would be able to sleep at night. If only it were that easy.
