Authors: Jennifer Bernard
“Perfect.”
Danielle scooted closer to the bed. She leaned her elbows on the edge and stretched confidingly toward Ryan. “It’s private,” she warned Katie and Melissa over her shoulder.
“We’ll be right over here,” said Melissa, smiling and backing away.
Katie grabbed her chance and followed Melissa to the foot of the bed. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure. I’ve been wanting to talk to you too.”
“Have you heard what they’re saying about Ryan?”
“Who hasn’t?” Melissa rolled her eyes. “I always say the only places more gossipy than newsrooms and hair salons are firehouses. Everyone’s talking about what happened.”
“So Captain Brody, your husband . . . he’s heard the rumors?”
“Yes.”
“He doesn’t believe them, does he?” In her anxiety, Katie grabbed Melissa’s arm.
“It’s not up to him. He’s not an arson investigator. He’ll have to abide by whatever the investigation turns up.”
Katie stared at the older woman, biting her lip. She liked Melissa, how calm and cool under pressure she seemed, how unique in her own particular beauty, with her deep green eyes and hair like bittersweet chocolate. “The thing is, I know Ryan didn’t do it, and I think I know who did, but I don’t have any proof. I don’t want Ryan to get blamed. You still do investigations, don’t you? For the news?”
Melissa shook her head gently. “I’m sorry, Katie. I understand how you feel, but I can’t touch this one. It’s a little too close to home. Ryan’s like a brother to me. And Danielle was nearly—” She broke off.
Katie took her hand. “I’m so sorry. It must have been so awful for you.”
Melissa took a moment to pull herself together. “Do you know what she did after they landed on the lawn outside the bar?”
“No, what?”
“She wouldn’t leave Ryan’s side. She just kept yelling and calling for help. She’d had an asthma attack inside. But Ryan had talked her through it. She wouldn’t leave him. Fortunately, she has an ear-splitting scream. Someone heard her right away and came running. But, God, when I think about it . . .”
Sympathetic tears welled into Katie’s eyes, somewhat to her surprise. She thought she’d cried all her tears already. The two women clasped each other’s hands, picturing the frightful moment.
A weak, scratchy voice interrupted them. “So that’s what that god-awful racket was.”
Katie spun around. Where Ryan’s eyes had been closed a few minutes ago, she now saw the merest hint, the narrowest slit of blue. A tiny smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.
Danielle jumped up and down. “I woke him up! Mama, I woke him up!”
Melissa yanked open the curtain and called into the corridor. “Nurses! Doctors! Come quick!”
Katie couldn’t move. She wanted to fling herself on top of him, kiss him all over his swollen face. But would he want her to, especially once he knew about all the craziness going on?
Besides, Danielle was way ahead of her. Her first shock gone, she climbed up on the bed next to him. “I woke you up!”
“Yeah you did. How are you, kiddo? Breathing okay?”
She nodded and put her little arms all the way around his chest and hugged him tight.
A wince tightened Ryan’s face.
“Sweetie, his ribs,” warned Katie, coming forward. Danielle loosened her grip but stayed right where she was.
“Ribs?” Ryan’s eyes opened a crack wider, wide enough to meet Katie’s.
“Yep. And your tibia.”
“Oh, that old thing.” He attempted a smile that wound up looking ghoulish. “Never broken one of those before.” He lifted a hand off the bed, beckoning to Katie. “You’re so far away.”
She hesitated, a second too long. In the next moment, a swirl of white coats and blue scrubs surrounded Ryan and swept him away into very serious and important medical chatter.
R
yan followed the doctors’ instructions, taking a deep breath when he was told to, following a penlight from left to right. The tiniest movement seemed to take an enormous effort. Even his thoughts felt like thick pea soup. But not green. More like heavy gray sludge. The doctors seemed very concerned about his eyesight, which seemed fine except for some weird dancing spots.
The medical people sent Katie, Melissa, and Danielle away while they did their testing. Ryan didn’t mind. He was too exhausted to talk to anyone. And besides, hurt nagged at him. Why hadn’t Katie looked happier to see him? Her eyebrows had been drawn together, her face had gone pale. Something was wrong, but figuring it out felt impossible. Only one thing felt doable right now.
He closed his eyes and sledded back into sleep.
The next time he woke up, he felt a hundred times better. A different batch of people gathered at his bedside. Vader and Joe the Toe gazed down at him like two buff bodyguards. At first they were a little blurry, but with some concentration he was able to focus on them. The spots didn’t seem as bad as before.
“Why’d they let you guys in? Did you beat up the security guards?”
He must be feeling better, if he could rag on them. He sat up, then leaned against the pillows as a wave of dizziness passed over him.
“We offered your home phone number to some nurses,” said Vader.
Joe the Toe glared at Vader. “Nurses are professionals and certainly don’t deserve your sexist drivel.”
“My what? All I heard was ‘sex.’ ”
Joe the Toe ignored Vader and focused on Ryan. “All your tests show you’re recovering like the magnificent specimen you appear to be. Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah, actually.” He blinked and shook his head, testing the effects of movement. No pain. No more dizziness after that initial rush. “I can think now. When I first woke up I was seeing stars and my head felt like a puddle of molasses.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
Chaotic images flashed through his mind. Danielle’s nostrils turning sooty. His cell phone disappearing across the floor. Breathing in the bitter, acrid smoke. The determined roar of the fire. The long drop from the window. The all-encompassing pain.
“I think I do. I dove out the window with Danielle. She’s okay, I saw her when I woke up. No injuries. Gutsy little thing.”
“What do you expect? She’s the captain’s daughter,” said Vader.
“True, that.” Ryan smiled, remembering how brave she’d been.
Joe dragged over an armchair and settled his bulk into it. He steepled his fingers and gave Ryan a serious, professorlike look. “We finagled our way in here because we felt you ought to know what’s being said.”
“Said?” Ryan looked from Joe to Vader, who suddenly seemed extremely worried about his own feet.
“The fire was deliberately set.”
“I know. They set fires, in front and behind. Maybe on the other side too. Don’t know. They used some kind of accelerant.”
“They’re saying—” Joe broke off.
Vader, still analyzing his own feet, continued the thought. “They’re saying it must have been a pro. Someone on the force. And since you worked there, well . . . They’re fucked in the head if they think you could do that. Fucked. But no one’s asking us.”
Ryan’s jaw fell open. The room tilted around him like a ship hitting a reef. He grabbed onto the bedsheets to steady himself. “You mean . . . they think . . .” He couldn’t finish.
“Doug, that friend of Katie’s, is saying he saw you there,” said Vader, as if every word was a sharp razor blade he had to spit out.
“Yeah, I was there. Nearly getting burned to death.” He fought back the panic.
Accused of arson
. “Why would I . . .” He realized he was yelling, and brought down his voice. “Why would I set a fire with myself inside? Not to mention Danielle?”
“Calm yourself,” said Joe, putting a giant hand on his shoulder. Ryan shook it off angrily. “If they think we’re upsetting you, they’ll eject us.”
It took every ounce of willpower Ryan possessed to settle down. He dredged up a breathing exercise he’d learned at the monastery. In, out, in, out. “Okay, I’m okay. Go on. Explain to me why I’d nearly incinerate myself and a little girl.”
“You’re angry at the wrong people. We don’t believe any of this blasted rubbish, or we wouldn’t be here.”
“You’re right, you’re right. Thank you. Go on.”
Joe picked up a large cup with a straw and handed it to Ryan. “Sippy cup. Drink.”
Obediently Ryan took a long swig of cool water. It helped. He nodded to Joe. “Let me have it.”
“All right. I’m going to tell you everything so you can be prepared. Vader and I thought it best. But don’t believe for a second that simply because you’re in a hospital bed, I won’t defend myself if you forget and try to take your anger out on me. I outweigh you and I haven’t been unconscious for three days.”
“I’m not going to whup your ass. Though I could,” muttered Ryan. “Even from a hospital bed.”
Joe the Toe ignored that. “Two things. Point one. They’re speculating that you wanted to play the hero to get back on the force. Your past record of impulsive, life-threatening actions is considered to support that theory.”
“I
saved
lives with those actions! And I saved Danielle.”
“But risked your own life. Why? Because you’re hooked on the rush. You’re not so much a fireman as a junkie, according to this scenario. And as a junkie deprived of his fix for a year and a half, you couldn’t resist the opportunity for a blaze of glory, so to speak.”
“
Bullshit
.”
“Point two,” continued Joe, ruthlessly. “You’d conceived a liking, a tendre
,
for Miss Katie Dane. You knew the bar was in financial trouble, so you decided a fire would be the ultimate form of courtship, one that would make sense given your training.”
“What?”
“As I understand it, that one’s been discarded in favor of the theory that you and Katie colluded to set the fire once she learned you’re an expert in the field. The insurance company is particularly fond of that scenario.”
“That’s crazy. I tried to make her—” He bit his words back before he could let the wrong thing slip out. Dizziness threatened again. He sank against his pillows.
“Sippy cup.” Joe the Toe thrust out his hand, and Vader slapped the cup into it. Ryan took another deep, long sip.
“What else?”
“You want more? The arson squad is investigating.”
“Did they check out—” Ryan stopped himself again. John Springer, aka Carson Smith, ought to be the prime suspect, not him. But turning in Springer would implicate Katie, and he couldn’t do that, not until he’d talked to her.
“What about Katie? What’s she saying?”
Joe the Toe shrugged his massive shoulders and glanced up at Vader, who shook his head. “We haven’t seen her. The Hair of the Dog was completely destroyed. I think she’s been busy dealing with the mess.”
Ryan gave that information a moment to sink in. Not a surprise, from what he remembered. He braced himself before asking the next question.
“The captain? What does he think?”
“He’s got your back. But it’s not up to him.”
Ryan shut his eyes. He wanted them gone. He wanted everyone gone. He wanted to reverse time to the day before he walked into the Hair of the Dog. No, to the days when he’d still been part of San Gabriel Fire Station 1. Before everything had gone to shit.
He looked at Joe and Vader, who suddenly seemed like ghosts to him. “I’m a little tired,” he managed to say. “Thanks for coming by.”
“We did good, right?” Vader asked anxiously.
“Yeah. I needed to know all this.”
After they’d left, he rested his forearm across his eyes. What a fucking mess. Three people, that he knew of, had already tried to set fire to the bar. Doug, Katie, and John Springer. Either Katie had lied to him and hadn’t called Springer off, or she’d set the fire herself, even though she’d promised not to. But he couldn’t believe that.
Or Doug had done it and she was, as always, trying to protect him.
M
elissa had told Katie that Captain Brody had meetings all morning, but would be at the station in the afternoon. Time seemed to be passing at about the speed of her high school chemistry class, which she’d always figured had bent the time-space continuum with its tedium. This was worse. For one thing, she was stuck with her family, and she couldn’t say a word to them about what had really happened . . . or what she planned to do.
She didn’t want them to talk her out of it.
Now that the Hair of the Dog had been picked over by investigators, the Dane family was allowed to remove whatever valuables—using the term loosely—they wanted to salvage. All six of them gathered in their grungiest clothes. Even Bridget wore an old pair of sweatpants that had become loose in the crotch. Jake and Todd, in the last hours of their visit, delved into the mess with relish, but everyone else moved with a kind of solemn sadness.
“There’s gotta be some liquor in here somewhere,” said Jake.
“All the bottles exploded from the heat, doofus,” Katie explained in her nicest voice, given the circumstances.
“Man, I wish I could’ve seen that. Course, my eyeballs probably would have exploded too.”
She gave him a scathing look. “Daddy, what about the sign?” She lifted up the only remaining fragment, still warm to the touch.
“ ‘Og’? That’s it?”
“Good name for a gnome,” said Todd.
“We could hold a garage sale with all this stuff.” Bridget held up a blackened frying pan, touching it with only thumb and forefinger. “Or donate it to a homeless shelter.”
“Why would a homeless person need a frying pan? They don’t even have a home,” pointed out Nina, whose immaculate sleeves were rolled up above her elbows.
“Fine. Salvation Army. Whatever. It’s the thought that counts,” Bridget grumbled.
It occurred to Katie that the family hadn’t worked together like this in a while. “I appreciate everyone coming to help.”
Bridget straightened up. “Well, why wouldn’t we? It’s our bar too. It’s our million dollars down the drain too.”
Katie hung her head. The lost insurance money ate at her conscience. She’d lain awake last night thinking of new cars, vacations, new washing machines, all the things her family could have done with a million dollars.
“Anyway, it’s not like it’s your fault,” continued Bridget. “It’s Ryan’s fault. I don’t believe you were in on it no matter what they say.”
“He didn’t do it!” Katie said for the hundredth time since the fire.
“I knew he looked too good to be true. Anyone that gorgeous has to have a flaw. Turns out his is that he’s a criminal.” She dropped the frying pan into the pile of kitchenware.
Katie launched herself across the pile of rubble and tackled Bridget. Bridget spun around just in time. She stepped aside so Katie went soaring past her. She hit the ground, rolled into a somersault, then sprang to her feet to go after Bridget again.
Bridget braced herself in a martial arts stance, hands held before her like claws. “I’ve studied Tae Bo, Gidget. Don’t mess with me.”
Katie ignored the horrified protests from her parents and the hoots of laughter from her brothers, and barreled toward Bridget again. This time Bridget grabbed her by the shoulders, stopping her in her tracks.
“Are you psycho? I’m twice your size.”
“Stop saying that about Ryan.”
“I’m only saying what everyone else is. You don’t even really know the guy. Are you so sure he didn’t do it?”
“
Yes.
Why won’t you listen to me? You never listen to me!” She swung futilely at Bridget.
“Katie girl, if you’re in need of any assistance, we’re right over here.” Archie’s booming voice cut through her haze of fury.
Katie looked over her shoulder. Archie, Sid, and the rest of the Drinking Crew stood in a tight knot at the edge of the sidewalk. Even with their canes and Dr. Burwell’s oxygen tank, they looked feisty and ready to rumble. Mr. Jamieson was polishing his glasses, Archie rolling up his sleeves.
“That’s . . . uh . . . okay.” She dropped her fists and took a long, shaky breath. “You know Bridget, right? We’re having a sister bonding moment. Right, Bridget?”
The expression on Bridget’s face at the sight of the old men would have made Katie laugh, if things weren’t so all-around awful.
“Right. Like a pillow fight without the pillows,” said Bridget gamely.
Archie didn’t look convinced. “She’s our girl. We can’t allow her to get beaten up. She’ll always have a place of honor with us after the way she poured her heart and soul into this place.”
“Hope you appreciate her,” piped up Sid. “Even if the Hair of the Dog’s no better than a burnt sausage now.”
Katie winced.
Her father strode over to the Crew and shook their hands. “Thanks for stopping by, gentlemen. Came to say good-bye to the old place, eh?”
“We’re tying up loose ends,” said Mr. Jamieson. “
Veni, vidi, solvit
.”
“Eh?”
“Translation, we came, we saw, we paid our tab.”
Archie whipped out a worn leather wallet and extracted a check. “We realized, upon reflection and calculation, that we were in arrears with our bar tabs. We hope this helps.”
Tears sprang to Katie’s eyes.
Frank looked down at the check. “Well thank you, fellows, but this is made out to Katie.”
“She worked her fingers to the bone,” said Archie dramatically. “She deserves it.”
“As the French say
, Bon sang ne saurait mentir
, right, Katie
?”
Mr. Jamieson winked at her.
Blood will out
. She tried to speak but couldn’t.
“You got yourself a fine daughter,” said Sid. “A real peach.”
“Don’t I know it. Come here, Katie girl. Come take this kind gift. You earned it, my dear, putting up with this crew.” Her father beckoned to her, holding out the check. His loving eyes, surrounded by new worry lines, twinkled at her. The Drinking Crew leaned on their canes and smiled at her expectantly. Jake and Todd ran to join them, no doubt to see how big the check was. Her mother looked unexpectedly thrilled. Even Bridget seemed excited. She nudged Katie in the back.