Authors: Jennifer Bernard
Katie tried to calm her whirling thoughts. Had she stepped into a lost episode of
The Sopranos
? “This sounds like a horrible idea.”
“Why? We tried to do it ourselves. What’s the difference if we hire someone to do it right?”
Katie shook her head helplessly. It had to be different. It felt different.
“I already gave him a down payment.”
“
What?
”
“Yeah, so the least you can do is listen to him. Here he is.” Doug gestured at a pudgy, beaming man making his way toward their booth, mug of Guinness in hand.
“Good to see you again, Doug. And this must be Katie Dane.”
Katie blinked up at him. He didn’t look anything like her image of an arsonist. He put his mug on the table and held out his hand.
“Carson Smith, nice to meet you.”
She shook it automatically, then watched him maneuver himself into the booth next to Doug. With his rumpled tie and round, balding head, he reminded Katie of the pediatrician she’d gone to as a child, the one who always offered her lollipops. “Is Carson Smith your real name?”
“Within a syllable or two.” He gestured at one of the TV sets. “Mets are ahead by two, bottom of the seventh. You kids like baseball?”
“No,” said Katie quickly, thinking of her brothers. She didn’t want him knowing about them.
“Too bad. I have two extra tickets to tonight’s Dodgers-Giants game. Good ones, right down front.”
Doug shot Katie a quick look, but she shook her head violently. “No, thanks.” The thought of the long drive to Los Angeles with Doug, followed by a long baseball game, topped off with a long drive back home . . . She shuddered.
“Let’s not waste time, kids. You got me here, now tell me what you need.”
Doug started to speak, but Katie stopped him. “What are you? Who are you?”
Smith chuckled. “You get right to the point. I like that. If I had a job title, it would be problem solver. Professional problem solver. People—good people—come to me with their problems and I take care of them.”
That didn’t sound too terrible. “What sort of problems?”
“The kind you can’t find someone in the Yellow Pages to fix. But there’s a catch.”
“What?”
“I only take jobs I can feel good about. I help innocent people who have gotten in over their heads or who have run up against the wrong sort of element, that type of thing. I only take jobs that make sense, that won’t put anyone—including me—in danger. I only work with the good guys, put it that way.”
Katie liked the sound of that. She was pretty sure she’d fall into the category of “good guy.”
“Doug here told me a bit, but I understand you’re the real client. You want to fill me in?”
Katie took a deep breath. What harm could there be in telling him? He might not even want the job. Even if he did, she didn’t have to hire him. Besides, maybe he’d have a better idea than burning down the Hair of the Dog.
The man listened closely as she explained the situation with the bar, taking care not to tell him the name. He sipped now and then from his Guinness. It occurred to her that two months ago, she wouldn’t have been able to tell a Guinness from a Bud Light. And wouldn’t have cared. Somehow, the Hair of the Dog had taken over her life.
As she told him about the insurance bill, her father’s heart attack, the bachelorette party, a feeling of lightness came over her. Telling this “problem solver” all about it gave her an enormous feeling of relief. Maybe it was the way he listened, so sympathetically, without judgment. He looked capable. Soothing. Like he’d take care of everything. He looked like a nice old uncle who didn’t mind covering for you if you stayed out too late. Or a therapist who would ask questions like, “How does that make you feel?”
When she finished, she felt a hundred times better.
“I think I know the bar you’re referring to. Nice place, back in its day.”
“Yes.” She bit her lip. So much for holding back the name.
He deliberated, rolling a coaster back and forth. “It sounds like you’re on the right track. But it’s a good thing you came to me. The insurance company won’t pay if you start the fire, cause someone else to start the fire, or even if they can make a good faith allegation of either. So it has to be done with absolutely no trace. This is no job for an amateur.”
Katie swallowed hard, the full extent of her naiveté hitting home. Ryan had warned her about this. Her Coke curdled in her stomach.
“If I did this, I’d have to make sure no one got hurt. I’m not in the business of causing harm.”
She let out a whistling breath of relief. Now she felt a hundred
and fifty
times better. “That’s just it, we don’t want anyone to get hurt. That’s the main thing.”
The man mused for a while. “A Viking funeral. That’s how I’d see it.”
“A what?” Doug looked confused, but Katie knew exactly what the man meant. She’d learned about them in her Norse saga class in college. A smile spread over her face and her eyes got misty.
“The Vikings burned their dead on ships. That’s how they sent their warriors to Valhalla. In this case, the building itself is the warrior. It’s a fine and honorable way to leave the world.”
“You think so?” Katie leaned toward him eagerly. She’d never thought of her plan in that light, but maybe he was right.
“I do indeed. What better way to pass on than in a blaze of glory, with the additional honor of being able to provide for those who cared for you? I believe the Hair of the Dog would be proud of such an end. It deserves a proper funeral pyre.”
A funeral pyre. Yes, that’s what the Dog needed. The words fired her imagination. The image of a magnificent, noble, heroic bonfire blotted out words like “arson” and “dangerous.” “So this sounds like the sort of job you’d take on?”
“Let’s talk financials.”
“Well.” She hesitated. She had no idea how to negotiate such a thing. “Is there any way I could pay you after it’s done? With the insurance money?”
Carson Smith smiled gently. “Normally, no. But Jay Atwell sent you. And you seem like a sweet kid. I’d hate to see you taken advantage of by someone more unscrupulous. But I warn you, if something goes wrong and the insurance money doesn’t come through, I’ll still require payment.”
She swallowed, thinking of her fund. She could always fall back on that. At least her family wouldn’t pay the price if this got screwed up. “I understand.”
“Well.” He drained his Guinness. “Then we have an arrangement. But no time to waste if we want to beat the insurance deadline. I’ll get back to you with a plan after I’ve scoped the place out. We can take it from there.”
The sheer relief of handing her dilemma to such a capable person blotted out the last nagging questions in Katie’s mind.
T
he man nursing a Guinness at the other end of the bar looked vaguely familiar, but Ryan couldn’t put his finger on where he’d seen him before. He looked like a friendly enough guy, maybe fifty or so. He wore a light gray business suit, the jacket open over a pudgy belly. He looked completely harmless, like an accountant or a dentist.
So why did he give Ryan the creeps?
For one thing, Ryan didn’t like the way the guy kept scoping out the place. He had alert, pale gray eyes behind old-school aviator glasses. He wasn’t girl-watching. His gaze scanned right past a gorgeous girl in micro shorts two stools down from him. He eyed the bar in a cold, assessing way that didn’t sit right with Ryan.
He finished making a club soda with cranberry juice and strolled toward the man.
“How about those Dodgers,” he said. “Helluva game last night.”
The man flicked an uninterested look his way. Then his gaze stopped, arrested by something in Ryan’s face. A moment later, he shrugged and went back to sipping his Guinness.
“Not much of a baseball fan.”
“Do I know you?” Ryan frowned at him. He could have sworn the man recognized him. That meant he ought to recognize the man.
“You tell me.”
“Seems to me I’ve seen you before. Is this your first time in here?”
“No.”
Not much of a talker.
A group of college-age guys came in and commandeered the stools at the other end of the bar.
“Be right back,” Ryan told the man.
The man didn’t respond. He had the personality of a dust bunny. Ryan poured out three Buds from the tap, then ambled back to Aviator-Glasses Man. It bugged him that he couldn’t place the dude. Especially because of that creepy feeling.
“My name’s Ryan Blake,” he said, holding out his hand. “Ring any bells?”
“Can’t say that it does. I’m Carson Smith.”
The name meant nothing to Ryan. “What kind of work do you do, sir?”
Carson Smith flicked him another dismissive, pale-gray look. “Financial consultant.”
Ryan frowned. He couldn’t imagine a scenario in which he would have come into contact with a financial consultant. Even though Mr. Smith clearly preferred to be left alone, he risked one more question.
“You from around here?”
But he’d pushed it too far. The man deliberately lifted his mug, ignoring Ryan’s question completely.
“I’ll let you drink in peace, then. Let me know when you’re ready for another.”
Mr. Smith nodded from behind his mug. Something about the way his face was hidden set off a warning bell in Ryan’s memory.
He made sure no one at the bar needed anything then went back into the office. Katie hunched over a calculator, glaring at it as if it were a deadly snake.
“Katie, there’s someone here I don’t like the looks of.”
She didn’t look up. “You mean they don’t have boobs?”
Ryan decided to let that one go. Ever since that fiasco of a dinner with her and Danielle, she’d been acting strange around him. Maybe “distant” was the right word. And she seemed jittery.
“I can’t put my finger on it, but I have a bad feeling about him. I think I’ve seen him before, but I don’t know where. Maybe at a fire.”
Finally she looked up. Her eyes looked shadowed and a straight up-and-down line dented the space between her eyebrows. His heart went out to her. If only he could whisk her away and give her some playtime.
“Where is he?”
“At the bar. Come here, I’ll show you.”
She came next to him and peered under his arm. The delicious wildflower scent of her hair tickled his nostrils. He looked down at her dark head and noticed how the lights picked out little glints of amber in her hair. Something tugged at his insides. He felt himself harden. He wasn’t worried about that. The bigger mystery was this strange inner softness he experienced when he got around Katie.
“He looks fine to me.” She wheeled around and went back to the desk. “Quiet, well-behaved. He’s not hitting on anyone. What do you want me to do?”
“My gut says kick him out.”
She fixed him with wide brown eyes. “Why?”
“We don’t need a reason. My instincts say he’s trouble. He told me his name’s Carson Smith, but I know it isn’t. I know him from somewhere, and that wasn’t his name.”
“He’s fine. Leave him alone.” She returned to glaring at her calculator. “Believe me, as long as he’s drinking, he’s my new best friend.”
Ryan stood for a moment, puzzling over their exchange. She’d seemed tight, nervous. There was something she wasn’t telling him. He didn’t like it. And they still hadn’t had That Conversation—the one that had felt so essential, for reasons he didn’t quite remember.
“Katie . . .”
She pecked at the keys. “Hm?”
But the moment wasn’t right. His little speech seemed superfluous. Obviously Katie didn’t have a thing for him. He could hardly drag her attention away from the calculator. Logan would have had him up against the wall as soon as he walked in. And yet he’d turned her down.
None of this made sense. He threw up his hands and left the office. He knew one thing for sure—he planned to watch Carson Smith like a hawk.
But when he got back to the counter, Carson Smith was gone. He’d left a twenty-dollar bill on the bar, enough to cover his Guinness and then some.
Ryan still didn’t like him. And then he remembered who he’d seen the man with. His father.
C
arson Smith called Katie’s cell phone about an hour later.
“We might have a problem.”
Uh oh. Had Smith figured out she had a fireman working at the bar? “It won’t be—”
He cut her off. “Your bartender, Ryan Blake. I knew him when he was a kid.”
“
What?
”
“He’s a no-good, run-amok troublemaker. You shouldn’t have someone like that working for you. I hope you keep the key to your cash drawer in a safe place.”
Katie’s mouth dropped open in shock. She glanced at the open door of her office to make sure Ryan couldn’t overhear. “Hang on.”
She got up and closed the door. “Okay, tell me more.”
“That’s about it,” he answered impatiently. “He was a bad kid. I’m surprised he isn’t in jail, quite frankly. His father always said he’d end up there.”
Katie couldn’t stand hearing him talk about Ryan that way. “Well, he didn’t,” she said hotly. “As a matter of fact, he’s a fireman.”
“
What?
”
“I mean, he
was
a fireman. Right now he’s a bartender.”
“Why?”
“What does it matter?”
“I need all the facts, Miss Dane. That’s the only way I can do my job.”
Katie felt terrible telling this stranger anything about Ryan, but the man had a point. She had to trust him, the way she had to tell her childhood pediatrician how often she brushed her teeth. She cupped her hand over the receiver so Ryan couldn’t possibly overhear, even through the closed office door.
“He took a leave of absence. Now he’s trying to get his job back. He’s been working here in the meantime, and he’s been a model employee.”
A significant silence followed. “Leave of absence, eh?”
“It wasn’t like that!” She didn’t actually know what it was like, but she hated that note of contempt in Carson’s voice.
“Sure. Well, this changes things. It’s more dangerous now. I can’t do what you ask with a fireman on the premises.”
“You’re backing out?” For a moment, Katie went dizzy with relief. The bar wouldn’t burn down. The Hair of the Dog would live. Too bad it would drag her family under and ruin her father’s retirement.
“Of course not.” He sounded mightily offended. “When I take on a job, I pursue it to the end.”
“Okay, sorry,” she muttered. She wondered if the man had some kind of personality disorder. It was hard to predict how he’d react to anything.
“But you have to make absolutely sure the Blake kid isn’t nearby.”
“Well, of course.”
“You’re not understanding me. I’ll need visual confirmation of his whereabouts.”
Katie stared blankly at the calculator, whose yellow digital readout still showed the amount of yesterday’s take, which was fifty dollars short of where it needed to be to break even for the week. “You want me to follow him?”
“Whatever it takes. I’ll try again on Saturday night. I’ll need to know where he is before I set foot on the premises.”
She didn’t like the way he kept using the word “premises.” It sounded so impersonal. “I’ll put LoJack on him, how’s that?”
“I’m not joking. That boy’s got a temper like a rocket. And a punch like a jackhammer. It was the only thing his father liked about him, as I recall.”
“I’ll make sure he’s not here.”
“Not anywhere nearby.”
“I’ll make sure he’s nowhere within a two-mile radius.”
Carson Smith still didn’t sound entirely happy. “And of course my fee will go up. You should have told me you had a fireman working for you.” He ended the call.
Katie threw her phone onto the desk and paced around the office, shaking herself to get rid of the icky feeling the conversation had provoked. The things he’d said about Ryan . . . blech. But she’d seen Ryan fight. He did have a punch like a hammer, at least to an outside observer.
So maybe he had been a troublemaker in his youth. But he’d changed, hadn’t he? She hadn’t seen him lose his temper once since he’d been working at the Hair of the Dog.
Not that it mattered. It’s not like they were dating or anything. Or ever would. If it turned out she’d hired a dangerous brawler to be her bartender, it would be one more in a string of bad decisions she’d made as manager. And even that wouldn’t matter, since the place was about to get burned down.
To that end, she had to figure out a way to keep an eye on Ryan Saturday night. She’d have to secretly follow him and maybe stake out his house. After she got April Chin’s party set up, she could skip out. If she got really lucky, she’d have a front-row seat for the Ryan and Logan show.
K
atie borrowed Doug’s father’s Saab on Saturday. She felt ridiculous following Ryan home from work. But also ridiculously relieved. Because he actually went home. Alone.
At least she could stop imagining the horror of following him to Logan’s house and sitting outside in a car while Ryan had sex inside. Her other fear remained. What if he spotted her following him? She’d have to pretend she was stalking him instead of spying on him on behalf of an arsonist.
Ryan parked his truck out front, sauntered up his front path, stretched, yawned, and disappeared inside. She parked across the street. The Saab had tinted windows, so she hadn’t bothered with any kind of disguise. She waited for a while, in case he planned to change his clothes and head out barhopping or something.
Then she called Carson Smith.
“The swallow has returned to the nest.”
“This is not a joke.”
“I know. Sorry. He’s safe at home. Can I go now?”
“Call me in an hour. I want to make sure.”
Katie sat in the Saab for another hour. If only she’d brought something to read. She didn’t dare turn on the radio, in case that might draw attention. She scrunched down on the leather seat and tried not to fall asleep. It had been a long day, longer than usual. On most days, the pleasure of having Ryan around kept things moving. Today, after that phone call from Carson, she’d felt uncomfortable around him.
After all, how well did she really know Ryan Blake?
By one in the morning, all his lights were off except the one in the kitchen. She called Carson Smith. “All quiet on the Western front.”
“We’re a go, then. Go home and stay tuned. Make a call from your home phone to confirm you’re there.”
Good thing he’d thought of that, since she certainly hadn’t. She started up the Saab. What would happen now? Would she hear sirens? Get a panicked call from her parents? This entire thing was surreal. A heavy feeling weighed on her. She had a sudden, unruly longing for one last look at the Hair of the Dog before it got torched. She’d been in such a hurry to follow Ryan home that she’d barely given it a glance before skipping out the back.
The old place deserved better than that. Feeling worse than she ever had in her life, she drove toward home.
A
t the Hair of the Dog, Ryan sat on a bar stool and stared at the manual. He hadn’t been able to ignore the bad feeling tugging at him ever since he’d laid eyes on “Carson Smith.” Especially once he’d figured out the dude was a friend of his father.
His father’s friends tended to be armchair revolutionary types who wanted to overthrow society, even if all that meant was harassing the occasional census taker. But some of them had acquired various criminal skills—and records—and something told him this man fell into that category.
He wished he could call his father. But the man didn’t have a phone. Zeke Blake didn’t want anyone to be able to find him—kind of like the Unabomber, except he lived near the suburbs and spent his time ranting rather than actually bombing anything.
Tomorrow was Sunday, and the Hair of the Dog would be closed. Maybe he’d drive out to see his dad. Christ in heaven. He couldn’t believe he was actually considering a visit to his father.
The things he did for Miss Katie Dane.
In the meantime, he’d hang around the Dog to make sure nothing bad happened. He could study here just as well as in his kitchen, after all. And the coffee was better.
T
he sound of a marimba band woke Katie up from a sweaty, restless sleep. Her cell phone rang again, as everything came rushing back. The Hair of the Dog. Carson Smith. Ryan. Fire. She nearly threw up in her anxiety as she clicked on the phone.
“Damn it, I told you to make sure he was gone.” Carson Smith. She clutched the phone with sweaty hands.
“I did!”
“He’s sitting in the bar right now. I can’t do a thorough inspection while he’s there.”
“Shit.”
“Were you watching his door every single second?”
“No-o. I mean, mostly.” She wasn’t some professional spy, for God’s sake.
“Today, you make sure you’re with him. All day long. All night long. It’s our last chance.”
“I don’t know . . .”