Killing Casanova (9 page)

More shuffling feet and shouts followed, and Cassie heard a voice, deeper than Jake’s but eerily similar. “Troy, what’s going on?”

Cassie’s ears rang with Robert Caswell’s panicked voice saying, “Troy, we got Starlight out, but the roof’s still burning …” His voice broke off abruptly, as she heard Jake’s father choke on relief. She imagined the look on Robert’s face as he saw Jake push himself onto his hands and knees, coughing spastically and gasping for clean air.

He attempted to speak. The raking of his throat only managed another spasm of coughs as she heard him roll onto his back to get farther away from the still burning timbers of the stable.

“Cassie?” Troy choked, crouching beside her seated against the rail. “How did you? How did you … ?”

Troy made a sobbing sound as Cassie wiped her eyes and cheeks, probably smearing soot all over. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said with a cough, “but Jake needs oxygen and some water. Did anyone call an ambulance?”

Troy’s answer was drowned in a screech of fire alarms and ambulance sirens, and Cassie rose to her quavering legs. Troy reached out and grabbed her arm as she ducked beneath the rails to let a group of EMTs pass. Troy took her stumbling feet back to the rail fence she had left so brazenly before. She leaned over the top rail breathing in the warm, crisp air and feeling the faint drops of water from the fire engines spray across her bare arms.

“Are you all right here if I go check on Jake?”

“Troy?” she asked hesitantly. “Did everyone make it out?” Troy put one arm around her shoulders and held her firmly for another minute as he assured her.

“It was Jake and the horses, Cass. The fire wasn’t enough to really hurt them, but the fertilizer and the hay and the leather created some sort of noxious gas, and Jake was trapped at the back of the stable with the mare and the foal. He got Starlight far enough through the smoke for us to get to her, but after he went back for the foal, he had inhaled too many fumes, and he couldn’t get back through. If you hadn’t broken away that gap in the stone …” Troy stopped as her shoulders began to convulse against him. He held her more tightly as her body began shaking and her legs gave way beneath her weakening knees.

An hour later, Cassie sat wrapped in a rough woolen blanket on the tailgate of the ambulance. She took deep breaths occasionally from an oxygen mask in her hand, but the shaking had stopped and now she listened only for the words to confirm that Jake was all right.

Debra Caswell sat beside her briefly, making sure she was all right before going to her son’s side. Jake had singed his esophagus, and the level of smoke inhalation had lowered his oxidation to frightening levels. He had refused transport, stubbornly insisting he would be fine, but accepting oxygen to help him recover. A few low voices talked quietly around her, but it was the croaking rasp of Jake’s voice that brought her face up to find the sound beside her.

“You risked a lot and worked awfully hard to save a guy you don’t see much in,” he said as he lowered himself onto the tail gate beside her.

Cassie grimaced tightly and then bumped her shoulder against him, “I was actually worried about the horses,” she teased with a broken smile. “You were just extra credit.”

Jake laughed darkly and then coughed, breaking apart a rattle she heard from his chest. “The horses … owe you their lives. But I guess I can relax that I’m free of that debt.”

Cassie took a long draw of air from the mask in her palm and smiled weakly, “You don’t owe me anything, Jake. I just thought of a way to help, and it was worth a shot.”

Jake drew a long breath through his mask as well, then shoved it backwards into the emergency rig.

“That actually makes it so I owe you more. You did all that without seeing anything. In the stable today with the smoke and the smell, I felt as if I were floating in darkness and was paralyzed to know what to do. Troy said you were perfectly safe in the truck and you left it, alone, blind … to help with a fire you couldn’t see. And, more amazing, you are the one who figured how to get us out.”

Cassie tried not to smile at him, but she felt his discomfort as he too noticed that he was rambling.

“I have to admit when I found out you were blind, I felt better about the fact that you don’t seem to like me much …” he broke off again, and Cassie bit her lip. She was starting to feel a twinge of guilt as he spoke. She had forgotten about their earlier difficulties and hearing the vulnerability in his voice brought it all to the forefront of her thoughts.

“I’m not used to being the victim instead of the hero. How do I reward you for this?”

Jake’s hand was suddenly holding her knee, and Cassie‘s whole body stiffened beneath the familiar tender touch. She heard the edge of charm, dripping from his tongue again.

“It’s fine, Jake. You don’t owe me anything. I was never in danger, and I would have done what I could no matter who was inside that fire.” Cassie stood from her seat and put the mask next to him in the ambulance before she made her away back to Troy’s truck.

Climbing in the cab, she slammed the door and stared into familiar nothingness. She was letting him get to her. She couldn’t let that happen. The last time she had believed the too-smooth words and tender touches of one of these guys … Cassie shook her head, discarding her train of thought as Troy opened the driver’s side door beside her.

“You ready to go home, super girl?” he teased, climbing up into the truck. Cassie cast her eyes toward his voice and grimaced.

“Do me a favor, would you? Let’s keep my part in this little disaster a secret. The last thing I want is for Miriam to worry about me every time I’m away from The Rocking J.”

“Too late,” he stated cheerily. “Debra has already been on the phone with Miriam, she knows the whole story.”

Troy laughed and then cleared his throat to stifle it as he maneuvered the truck back onto the dirt road leading away from Caswell Farms. Cassie sat silently on the drive towards the highway and throughout the quiet trip back.

• • •

When they arrived at The Rocking J, Miriam met them with concern and congratulations. Everyone had a thousand questions about what happened, but Cassie remained quiet and serious amid the barrage. Troy filled Miriam in on details, and Cassie tried to withdraw from the attention.

After Miriam hugged her and she found her way back to her apartment above the garage, Cassie took a long hot shower and took the rest of the day off. She attempted listening to one of her audio books, as well as catching up on her therapy notes, but every time her mind was too still, the sound of Jake’s apology drifted through her thoughts. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t untangle the sweet charming hiss of her past snake winding with Jake’s rasping cough.

“Cassie!” Jana’s voice along with the pounding of her fists against the door woke Cassie from her unintended nap on her futon. Her book sounded softly in her ears as she shut the digital player off and rubbed her bleary eyes. Pressing her palms against her eye sockets, Cassie attempted to hold back the headache now trying to claw its way free of her pounding skull.

Jana battered the door again, and Cassie stood, walking to the door and unlocking the deadbolt. Before she could open it all the way, Jana pushed inside, dragging Cassie with her to collapse on the narrow love seat.

“Cassie,” Jana said. “I just heard about the fire. Are you all right? Is Jake? What happened? How did you get to him?”

Jana’s questions were flung like machinegun fire, and Cassie waited for a break in her assault before answering.

“I’m fine, Jana. Jake is all right too, I hope,” she added suddenly concerned that maybe she had left too quickly to really know the answer to that question. She shook her head briefly and focused her wandering thoughts back on Jana’s frantic questions. “I don’t know how the fire started or how I found him. I just wanted to help get some air to him … them.”

Jana’s voice became an interrogation. “Them? Did Jake have someone with him, and that’s why you look so irritated when you say he’s fine?”

Cassie pulled back sharply from Jana and glared with her mouth pinched. “Them,” she enunciated, “is him and the foal. He was in the rear with a brand-new colt and neither of them could get out.”

Jana sighed with heavy relief in the sound. “Good, you only get that look on your face when he’s done something charming for some girl. If I didn’t know you better I would think you were jealous.”

Cassie’s mouth dropped open with Jana’s teasing and her mind wanted to argue the point, but Jana was right.
He bothers me too much,
she thought guiltily.

Cassie wrinkled her brow and bit her lip. “No wonder he keeps trying with me. If I’m acting as if I’m jealous, he would think I’m interested.”

“I would think he’s used to random girls being jealous of his attentions on other women. It probably bothers him that he’s being punished for another man’s mistakes.”

Cassie rose from the love seat and went to her small kitchen. Retrieving two bottles of water, she gave one to Jana and took the lid off her own. Her thoughts fought against Jana’s words as she felt her iron grip squeeze the liquid onto her hand.

“What? What do you mean?”

Jana took a long sip from her bottle and waited as Cassie dried her hand and carpet with a dishtowel before carefully answering. “I don’t think Jake is your problem. I think you’re trying to punish him because what you’d like to do is pummel Dylan.”

Cassie stopped rubbing the carpet in front of her and fought back the sting of tears. After that first night with Jana at Mcgoo’s, she told Jana about Dylan Haskins, her ex-fiancé. Now the sound of his name in this conversation suddenly called forth angry tears, and she knew Jana was right. Regardless, just because Dylan was a snake with blue eyes, she did gain one good thing from her experience with him; she developed the ability to hear lies disguised as truth in the tone and tenor of a man’s voice.

“You never met Dylan, Jana,” Cassie said tartly. “If you could hear the similarities, you would recognize the need for me to at least be irritated with Jake.”

Cassie took the damp towel back to the kitchen as she let Jana muse silently over her words. When she came back into the room and sat beside Jana again, Cassie felt the awkward tension of unfinished conversation between them. There was no way to explain this to a sighted person, and there was no way for her to see what Jana was trying to point out to her. After another moment of silence, Jana sighed.

“Miriam wanted me to tell you she’s doing Dutch oven tonight just for you, so make sure you come down for dinner, okay?”

Cassie smiled mirthlessly and took another drink from her bottle. “I’m sorry, Jana,” she said as her friend stood to leave. “These scars are old and deep, and I really don’t want to work on getting over it with some part-time cowboy. If you are right about this, then Jake’s better off, too.”

Jana squeezed Cassie’s hand before opening her door and stepping out onto the narrow staircase. “Jake has scars, too, Cassie. Why do you think he never stays focused on one girl for too long?”

The sound of the wooden door slipping into its casing seemed to reverberate in Cassie’s head. Of course Jake had scars; he wasn’t hiding them that well. Who was he beneath those scars, and could she take a chance that it was even worth looking?

“Jake?” His mother’s voice drifted beneath his bedroom door.

Jake immediately turned his face into his thick cotton pillow to muffle another coughing spell, to keep his mother’s worried face from appearing in his room again. His chest and throat burned with the remnants of the fire, and he stayed in bed, lacking the energy to do anything else. His mind flashed back to when his survival instincts had dissipated with the lack of oxygen in his blood, and he’d heard the constant pounding of Cassie’s rock against the stable wall.

Crouched on the floor near the wall at the back of the stable, Jake had pressed his face as near to the floor as he could. In the blinding smoke and fumes, his fingers located a splintered board, allowing a whisper of air, where Ruiando had kicked them loose.

In the smoky darkness, Jake heard only the sounds of help just beyond his sight. When the stone had fallen away and air poured into his suffocating vacuum, his mind had cleared and instinct and anger took over.

Freedom from that prison had only brought on new shackles, though. The prospect of death had seemed impossible — until he had realized that living burned, scarred, and mutilated by flame would have been worse. When he had washed away the soot from the fire, he noticed a deep chemical burn that was sensitive to the touch beneath his tan, and in his mind his features had melted like molten wax. Every time he looked in the mirror, he could only see the dissolution of everything he was … and wasn’t.

He shook his head, then dressed and went down to breakfast.

• • •

“Jake,” his mother snapped before he’d barely had a chance to sit. “It’s been two weeks. You have to do something besides go to the reservoir and work on the irrigation.” Jake looked up from his breakfast to see his mother’s bright blue eyes flinging daggers at him like a Chinese knife thrower. Jake pushed away from the table where he had been picking at his food. Glancing at Heidi’s oblivious expression across from his seat, Jake stood and took his nearly full plate to the sink before turning back to face his fuming mother.

“What are you suggesting I do? Dad’s been crazed with the beef buyers and rebuilding the stables. Someone has to take care of the reservoir and the other chores. If I’m not helping out enough, tell me what I haven’t gotten to yet and I’ll do it first, but I have work to do on Mustang Mountain.”

Debra rolled her eyes at his sullen speech, and she grinned wickedly in response.

“Oh, I want you on the mountain. I just don’t want you up there from sunrise to sunset … alone.” Jake opened his mouth to argue with her as he stepped away from the sink, but his mother held up her hand, and he pinched his mouth again. “I know you have a lot to do up there, baby,” she crooned, moving to stand in front of him and running the palms of her hands over his twitching arms. “I just think you shouldn’t be so isolated.”