His Heart Aflame (Beach Haven Book 2) (8 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Maggie managed to keep it together until she was safely out of the interview room. As soon as she knew Sean couldn’t see her any more, she started shaking. She wanted to break into a run, but she still had enough presence of mind to know that running out of a police station wasn’t a good idea. She was already in enough trouble.

He was right. She’d lied to him from the start, and her lies had ruined his life. She couldn’t think of one single excuse that didn’t come back down to the very simple fact that she had been thinking only of herself.

She was a terrible person.

I am not going to cry.
Maggie drew a deep, shaky breath and plunged onward toward the exit.
Out the door, to the train station, get the hell out of Dodge. Go home, get out of his life, stay away from Sean Jackson.

She’d find a job. No more shortcuts. No more looking for the easy way out. She’d just have to start at the bottom and work her way up if there were any gourmet restaurants in Chicago that would still have her. If not, she was just going to have to get a job as an over-trained burger-flipper at some diner where no one would recognize her as Maeve Renault.

No more running away. No more looking for the easy way out.

She pictured Sean’s face and suddenly her chest felt tight. She could see the trust in his eyes, the sincerity in the way he had reached out for her and tried to help her before he knew the truth, and she was ashamed of herself.

Out the door, to the train station, get the hell out of Dodge. Go. What are you waiting for?

Maggie shook herself and pushed open the police station door. And froze.

The parking lot was jammed with vehicles emblazoned with names of different TV and radio stations.  A throng of camera-waving strangers swarmed the entry, thrown into a frenzy by her sudden appearance.

“Maeve! Maeve!” they shouted. Those closest to her began to pepper her with questions about Sean and Devon. They pressed in on her until her back was flattened against the glass door she had just come through.

“Please, just let me --” she tried.

“Is it true you just talked to your kidnapper?”

“Are you still going to marry Devon Rock?”

“Why didn’t you try to escape?”

For a moment, she considered making some kind of statement and trying to clear Sean’s name, but she’d learned enough from her time on the reality show to know better than that. Anything she might try to say right now would only make things worse.

Through the crowd, she caught a glimpse of a familiar person moving quickly across the street.  He was tall and thin, and there was something sneaky about the way he kept glancing over his shoulder as he headed away from the crowd. She searched through her memory for a name and finally came up with Tim. The rookie firefighter that Sean liked to call Nipper because he was so excitable.

At last, a familiar face! He turned away to stow something behind the driver’s seat of his truck, but she had seen enough to be sure it was him.

“No comment!” she bellowed, and plunged into the throng, pushing at warm bodies and heavy cameras and really not giving a damn if anyone dropped or broke any of their expensive equipment.

By the time she broke through the paparazzi, Tim was in his truck. She shouted his name and sprinted across the street. He was just turning the key when she wrenched open the passenger door and jumped into the seat with him. He gaped at her, his freckles standing in stark relief against a very pale face.

“Please, just get me out of here,” she gasped. “I’ll explain later, just please
drive
!”

Tires squealed. Tim floored it and headed off through town as she buckled her seatbelt.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Train station. But can you drive around a little bit and try to lose them?”

“S-sure.” The young firefighter blinked a few times and glanced up in the rearview mirror. He seemed nervous.

“They think I’m somebody else,” she explained.

“Maeve Renault.” Tim grinned for a second, glancing at her, and quickly sobered. “My girlfriend loved that show. I can’t believe how different you look now.”

“You don’t look so hot yourself,” Maggie observed. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t look okay. He was terribly pale, and she noticed now that his hands on the wheel were trembling. He licked his lips nervously and looked up at the mirror again.

“I-I’m just tired. We had a bad call last night. Grass fire got out of control and took out a little rental cabin. I’m surprised Spiffy didn’t tell you -- oh, right.”

“Was anyone hurt in the fire?”

“Just Spiffy. When I got there, he was in the cabin eatin’ smoke. Me and the chief had to go in and drag his silly ass out.”

Maggie’s heart pounded at the thought of Sean being dragged out of a burning building. She opened her mouth to question the rookie, but stopped as she became aware of a strong odor of gasoline. She sniffed and started looking around.

“See, that’s the thing about grass fires,” Tim was saying. “They don’t hurt anybody when they just burn
grass
, you know? Our guys are usually fast enough; we put everything out before anybody gets hurt. Nobody’s supposed to get hurt.”

“Tim, why do I smell gas?”

He glanced at her again and said nothing.

“S-Tim . . . please tell me you’re taking home gas for your lawn mower or something.” She glanced out the window and realized they were outside the city limits, driving through the green countryside. “Would you please take me to the train station now? I think we lost the paparazzi.”

“I’m so sorry, Maggie,” he said softly. “I can’t do that.”

# # #

“All charges have been dropped?” Sean asked for what seemed like the hundredth time. He stared at the little pile of his belongings -- wallet, watch, pager, cell phone -- and shook his head in disbelief

“You had a pretty good alibi,” Dan Harding told him. “Not to mention a couple of stellar witnesses who could place you at the scene of a grass fire at the time of the ‘kidnapping’.”

Sean glanced over at Chief Griswold, one of those “stellar witnesses” who had vouched for him. He wasn’t sure just how much the chief had told the policeman.

“Spiffy, as far as I’m concerned, you’re still my Lieutenant,” Griswold said, as though reading his mind. “I never accepted your resignation, and I don’t see that you’ve done anything wrong.”

“But I left the scene--”

“No, you didn’t. You left a con artist running around in the woods in a wedding dress at three in the morning, that’s all. You identified yourself as a firefighter and made every reasonable effort to locate her. She made the choice not to accept your help. End of story.”

“But the pictures on the beach--”

Harding held up his hand. “The girl says it was consensual. And honestly, the less we know about your sex life, the happier all of us are going to be.”

“Just avoid beaches with cameras in the future,” Griswold added. “Good Lord, Spiffy, your
mother
saw those pictures. She was ready to come in here and tear your head off for being so damn stupid. Only reason she’s not here right now is that I fed her some line about you needing a superior officer down here overseeing the case. When she finds out I lied to her . . .” His voice trailed off and he shuddered, obviously unhappy about incurring the wrath of Suzanne Jackson.

Sean signed the forms that Harding put in front of him and put his things back in his pockets. He stared at his badge for a long moment before carefully putting it away. “So what do we do now?” he asked.

“We go back to the station and try to figure out who our firebug is.” Griswold clapped him on the shoulder and turned toward the exit. “That last fire was definitely arson, and it’s a whole different ballgame now that a building has been destroyed. He’s escalating.”

“Might want to go out the back way,” Harding called after them. “Buncha Hollywood people out front trying to get pictures. I thought I was going to have to send an armed escort out there for Maggie, but she’s not as helpless as she seems.”

That’s not the only way Maggie isn’t what she seems
, Sean thought. “I’m sure she had them eating right out of her hand,” he said bitterly.

“Well, no, she didn’t. That’s what was so odd. She looked about ready to cry, but all of a sudden just shot through the crowd like a bat outta hell. She flagged down one of your guys and jumped in his truck.”

“’One of my guys’?” Griswold frowned.

“Yeah, the Connor kid. You know, the one with the fancy green truck that’s about to be repo’d. He was across the street, at the gas station.”

Sean looked back and forth from Harding to Griswold. “Chief . . . wasn’t Tim just talking about getting a huge check this quarter because of all the grass fires?”

“Yep. Funny thing, he was also the first on scene at the structure fire last night.”

“Come to think of it, he’s been the first on scene at a lot of grass fires lately.” Sean didn’t like the direction his thoughts had taken. “Dan, what could you see what Tim was buying at the gas station?”

Harding thought about it. “Let’s not jump the gun here,” he said, after a moment. “Tim’s got that big place over on Phoenix Road, with a lot of grass to mow. He may have been buying gas for his mower or tractor. But yeah, he was putting a couple of gas cans behind the seat.”

“You think he might be our firebug?” Sean asked.

“I think he’s a pretty strong suspect,” Griswold told him. “Wouldn’t be the first time a firefighter crossed the line. Can’t hurt to go have a little chat with him, right, Dan?”

“Chief, he’s . . . got Maggie.”

“Which is why you’re not going with us,” Harding said firmly. “You’re going to go home and wait to hear from one of us. I don’t want you anywhere near that girl until all of this mess is cleared up.”

Sean knew both men well enough to know that it was useless to protest. He nodded and watched them leave together before making his way toward the back door of the police station. His truck was there, having been towed to the police lot during the investigation. The thought left him shaking his head, wondering how he had been so oblivious to the woman hiding out in the back of his truck that night.

He slid into the seat and leaned his head back against the headrest for a moment, remembering. He’d been so exhausted that he could hardly think straight, and he’d dismissed the open tailgate as his own mistake. He had even looked under the tonneau cover with his flashlight without noticing her.

His thoughts were interrupted by the high-pitched tones that represented his department. “
Beach Haven Fire, stand by for dispatch to a possible barn fire
.” The dispatcher read off an address that was becoming uncomfortably familiar to him.

Ben Jacobs’ barn was on fire.

The barn where Maggie had hidden Devon Rock’s car.

Griswold thought the arsonist might escalate at this point, burning buildings instead of open fields. And if Tim was the arsonist, he had Maggie with him.

Griswold’s orders to stay away were forgotten in an instant. Sean ran with lights and siren.

Chapter Sixteen

Thick black smoke was pouring out the door of the sagging old barn when Sean arrived. He recognized Tim’s new Ford F-250 parked out in front and swore out loud. Right up until that minute, he hadn’t wanted to believe that the rookie firefighter was really an arsonist. He’d repeated it to himself over and over all the way here:
It can’t be him, I must be wrong, it can’t be Tim.

Sean parked beside Tim’s truck and hopped out. On impulse, he reached inside and grabbed the other man’s keys.

“Spiffy?”

Sean spun around. Tim stood just a few feet away, staring at him. The younger man’s face was flushed and streaked with black soot. His lip was swollen and there was a long row of deep, painful looking scratches across one cheek.

“Where’s Maggie?” Sean demanded.

“I--I don’t . . . the barn was already burning . . .”

“Where is she?
”

Tim said nothing. He reached up to touch the scratches and winced before glancing over his shoulder at the smoke billowing toward them.

She must have put up one hell of a fight.
Sean tried to push the other man out of his way, but Tim caught his arm.

“It’s too late, Sean,” he said. “Nobody was supposed to get hurt. Don’t you see? It was just a few extra bucks, that’s all. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”

“Let me go!” Sean jerked his arm away and broke into a run. He had made it only a few steps, however, when he was hit from behind in a jarring tackle. Both men slammed into the ground.

“Nobody was supposed to get hurt!” Tim repeated.

“Get off me!” Sean twisted, turned, and felt a brief moment of satisfaction when he landed a solid blow to the other man’s jaw. Tim reeled back but clung doggedly to him.

It was time to try something else. “Tim, please. Listen to me,” he begged. “This is murder. You’re not a murderer. Let me go get Maggie.”

“Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”

“I know. You said that. So let me go get her. Come on, Tim, you don’t want anybody to die.”

The rookie sat back and blinked, suddenly looking confused. In doing so, he relaxed his hold on the Lieutenant. Sean seized the opportunity and shoved him aside, springing to his feet. When Tim tried to grab him again, Sean slugged him so hard that his own arm ached from the impact.

Tim went down as if in slow motion. Sean didn’t wait to see if he got up again. He left the rookie sprawled in the dirt and dashed into the old barn.

“Maggie? Can you hear me?” There was so much smoke! He could barely see, and he didn’t know where to start. There was no time for a search.

Then he heard a faint cry from somewhere off to his left.

Maggie
!

Coughing, he ran to a row of stalls and bent down low to peer inside each one. He found her in the third one, curled up on the floor with her hands tied in front of her and her ankles bound. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with terror, and tried to speak.

“Save your breath,” he told her. He tugged at the ropes at her ankles, but the knots were too tight.

She said something he couldn’t make out.

He took his own advice and saved his breath. Without another word, he hauled her to her feet and hefted her across his shoulders.

For the second time in less than two days, he found himself struggling for air as he made his way through a burning building without any gear.
Stupid, stupid, stupid
, he told himself, although he wasn’t entirely sure whether he was scolding himself, Tim or Maggie.

The impact came out of nowhere and caught him right across the middle, knocking any remaining air from his lungs. He tumbled backward and heard Maggie’s muffled cry of pain as he landed directly on top of her.

Blow after blow rained down on his face. He struggled against his assailant, landing a few good hits of his own, but nothing seemed to slow Tim down. Sean felt Maggie squirm free from beneath him and offered up a quick prayer of thanks that she was still moving.

Tim kept shouting that nobody was supposed to get hurt. Through the thick smoke, Sean could barely make out his face, twisted with rage and fear, and he knew there would be no reasoning with the rookie. Tim was beyond hearing anything he might try to say, and there was just no way for Sean to win this fight. The crazed kid had too much of an advantage.

And then Tim suddenly keeled over sideways. He hit the ground and lay there unmoving.

Sean saw Maggie then. She knelt beside him, with a large splintered plank between her bound hands.

He rolled to his knees and seized her. She sagged against him. He could feel and hear her wheezing gasps for air as she struggled to speak.

“Tell me later,” he coughed.

She spoke again, her lips close to his ear, just as he heard the welcome sound of sirens approaching. He shot one last despairing glance at his unmoving fellow firefighter before hoisting Maggie over his shoulder once more.

The smoke was thicker now, and Sean could see more flames. But there was still a clear path to the exit if he made it there now. Maggie had stopped moving, although he wasn’t sure if she was trying to be still to make it easier for him, or if she was so still because she had succumbed to the smoke. Either way, he had to get her out of there.

He staggered on shaking legs, stumbling a few times. Each time, he dragged himself and his precious cargo back up, back toward the clear air they both needed so desperately.
I won’t give up, Maggie
, he vowed silently.

He dumped her unceremoniously in the grass as soon he was clear of the building. In the distance, he saw the flashing red and blue lights of the rest of his department’s approach.

They were still too far away to help Tim.

Sean swore.

He dragged Maggie’s still form away from the danger and left her at the base of a large maple tree. She stirred, blinking up at him with bleary brown eyes.

“I’ll be right back,” he told her.

She shook her head and clutched at him.

“Maggie . . . I have to go back for him. No matter what.”

No matter what.

Tim was on his knees by the time Sean made his way back through the smoke and flames to the barn stall. Wordlessly, he put the rookie’s arm around his shoulders and helped him up. Together, they made their way back toward the exit one last time, only to find their way blocked by flames.

“I’m sorry, Spiffy,” Tim choked.

“. . . got . . . to be another way . . . out,” Sean muttered, ignoring his words. A barn had to have more than one door, didn’t it? Problem was, his mind was spinning and he couldn’t hang onto any thought long enough to form any logical ideas. He found himself thinking back to playing in this very barn as a child, stealing kisses here with a local girl as a teenager, popping open the door to Devon Rock’s stolen car just a few days earlier.

He sank to his knees, barely aware of Tim hitting the ground beside him. He became dimly aware of flashing lights and distant shouts, but he knew it was too late to respond.

His last thought before unconsciousness claimed him was Maggie and her frantic whispered words in his ear in the smoke-filled barn, and he wished he would have taken the time to answer her.

I love you too, Maggie.