The Protector

  When she had her work schedule shuffled around for the coming month, Cassie said good night to her friend and pressed the off button on the phone. “Hang this back up?”

  “Sure.” Jack took the phone from her.

  She nodded to his ice cream. “I’d like some of that too.”

  “I thought you would. I fixed you a bowl. Do you want this along with or instead of the pizza?”

  “I’ll wait on the pizza.”

  “Back in a sec.” Jack returned to the kitchen to hang up the phone. He came back with her ice cream.

  With chocolate syrup he drew a smiley face on the ice cream and had given it a cherry for a hat. “Nice.” And fitting. Jack liked to make people smile.

  “Tastes good too.”

  He dangled a black plastic spider on a string over her face. The things he had in his pockets… She captured it, tugged, and he let go.

  “That one is smaller than the one I just killed under your sink. You need to move.”

  “Don’t you start too. Moving is work. I’m not moving.” Winter was coming. It meant she had to kill a few more unwanted guests as the building superintendent tried but could only do so much to keep the problem of pests under control.

  “How many people owe you favors?” Jack asked.

  “More than I can count.”

  “So collect. This place doesn’t have room for a Christmas tree. You definitely need to move.”

  “It’s a waste of time to drag a dying tree up to a second floor apartment, stuff it in the middle of the room, and never be there to see it. Then haul it out three weeks later and spend a few months picking pine needles out of the carpet. I’ll do a Christmas tree at the store. That’s plenty.”

  “You need more Christmas spirit.”

  “Not of the commercialized kind,” Cassie countered. “Besides, you know how many fires are started from dried-out Christmas trees overloaded with lights.”

  “Just because you have to do it smart, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy it. What do you want in your Christmas stocking?”

  She looked over at him. “I don’t have one.”

  “Cassie.”

  “Why do I get a feeling I’ll have a Christmas stocking this year?”

  “J. J. needs a new home.”

  “Don’t give me your mouse.”

  “I heard you had been missed in his travels.” Jack stretched out on the floor again. “Where’s the remote? Let’s restart the movie.”

  She shifted around on the couch to dig it out from between the cushions. She hadn’t told him yet that she was joining Gold Shift on Thursday. She should tell him. She needed to tell him. It would not be good just to show up. But the man brought funny movies and five-cent plastic spiders. She didn’t want to talk about serious subjects tonight. Cole could tell him.

  She circled around the smile on the ice cream with her spoon. “Jack?” He leaned back on his elbows, then looked over at her. “Why did you come over tonight? Really?”

  “Rachel told me to.”

  “Oh.” She wasn’t expecting that. Was really confused by it. She paused the movie again. “Why?”

  Jack shrugged. “Who knows? Rachel said go see Cassie, and I’m not one to question my sister. I learned a long time ago she’s smarter than I am.”

  He had come over because Rachel had asked him to. She had thought he had come over to see her.

  Jack reached back, picked up one of the pillows he was using, and tossed it at her feet even as he laughed. “Don’t look so disappointed. I was planning to come over this weekend. Rae just gave me an excuse to come over tonight. If you were busy when I rang the doorbell, I was going to blame her for the fact I was interrupting.”

  His laughter as much as his statement he’d been planning to come over made her feel better. “Were you?”

  “Hide behind her, or come over?”

  She wanted to say come over, but she offered the safer answer. “Using her as an excuse.”

  “Sure.” He pulled over another pillow to replace the one he had thrown. “That’s why guys have sisters, to get them out of awkward jams. And if you buy more ice cream I’ll probably come over again.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  Cassie started the movie. And made a mental note to buy more ice cream. She could use a friend who made her laugh.

  “Did you see Cassie?”

  Jack looked up from the disassembled snowblower engine spread across the garage floor to see Rachel coming up the drive. She was skirting around the trash barrel and blue recycling crate he temporarily moved to the driveway to make room for this necessary but messy task in preparation of winter.

  “I did. What are you doing here? Not that I’m not glad to see you, but I thought you were heading back to Washington.” And what was she doing wearing sweats? He had rarely seen his sister not dressed to make an impression, and if it wasn’t so hard to imagine, he would say someone also needed to hand her a hairbrush.

  “Change of plans. I’m staying. How’s Cassie doing?”

  “Better. She’s at the bookstore today.”

  “Got a copy of today’s paper?”

  “You came over for a newspaper?”

  “I came over to show you something.”

  Rushed over appeared to be more accurate. “Try the kitchen counter.”

  Rachel opened the door from the garage into the house and disappeared inside. She reappeared a few minutes later brushing the rubber band down the rolled up newspaper. “You haven’t read it.”

  “Read what?” He wiped the grease off his hands, then accepted the city section of the paper she tugged out for him.

  “Second page.”

  The photo of the burned-out house clued him in.

  Arsonist Targets District. Gage’s byline.

  “Rachel.”

  She took a seat on the steps going into the house, her dejection apparent. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was going to do it.”

  It was a long article, under the Weekend Focus banner. Jack started reading. Gage had four of the six arson fires identified. Lincoln Park, Ash Street, the Assley fire, this latest one targeting Peter Wallis. Gage didn’t have the popcorn signature yet, but he had most of the details for how the fires had started within the walls of the two homes. There was an entire sidebar on Cassie, including her picture, a long recap of the nursing home fire, and her role in this last fire.

  The more Jack read, the deeper his fury grew. From somewhere Gage had found a copy of the letter his sister Lisa had written to the newspaper editor a month ago expressing her concerns with the dangers inherent with the fire department consolidations and the added risk it was placing on him. A forensic pathologist, his sister had to deal with those who had died in fires and her letter was both poignant and personal.

  For Gage to turn Lisa’s letter into the basis for an article was distressing. Gage used the arson fires to show Lisa’s worries had come true. He had shown the series of fires, shown Jack had fought them all, then gone on to show how Cassie had been forced to risk entering a burning house because the new hub stations put help too far away. “How did he get all this?”

  “I think I told him some of it,” Rachel whispered. “We need to call Cassie.”

  Jack heard the we. Rae intended to duck behind him. “Forget Cassie; someone needs to warn Cole.” He saw her dismay. “Rae, Cole doesn’t yell at ladies.”

  “I told Gage what Cole had said because I was worried about you.

  I wanted his help to find the guy responsible for these fires. But I didn’t mean for this to happen. For you or Cassie to be pulled into it.”

  She had meant well; it just hadn’t turned out well. Gage was her friend and she trusted him. Jack thought the man was driven first and foremost by the anger and grief he still felt. Gage was going to compromise this investigation if he didn’t carefully exercise a reporter’s discretion. This was the first article to tell the public about the link. The dominoes had begun to fall and they wer
e going to end up with panic and copycat fires.

  Jack got to his feet and settled his hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “Come on. Go borrow my comb, clean up. I’ll talk to Cole.”

  “Would you?”

  “What are brothers for, if not to hide behind?”

  Thirteen

  Well, at least her life was no longer boring. Cassie struggled to get her shoes on, finally gave up, and kicked her dress shoes across the room. She got up to retrieve the casual flats she had picked up earlier and set aside. She was going to be late to church if she didn’t leave soon, but she refused to look like she was falling apart even if it felt like she was.

  The phone rang.

  “I’m not home,” she muttered as she listened to it ring, rejecting the idea of answering it. If she had to tell one more friend the story or duck one more reporter, she was going to scream. That newspaper article had about sunk her.

  If she were smart, she would be late to church on purpose just so she could slip into the back row and not have to answer questions. If not for her friend Linda, the last twenty-four hours would have been unbearable. Linda had juggled her schedule and come over to the bookstore Saturday for a few hours just to answer the phone that had never stopped ringing.

  Friends called, worried about her after reading the newspaper article. Reporters were leaping all over her actions angling for details to feed further articles. By tomorrow’s newspaper, the hype would be unchecked. She’d lived through it once after the nursing home fire. She did not want to live through it again.

  Gage had been fair. He kept the quotes he used in context of what she said when they had spoken. But the last thing she needed was a focused sidebar. What she had done was worth a buried sentence late in the article. And the way he had shaped Lisa’s letter— Cassie knew Jack would be furious about that. It was way out of bounds to use a letter Lisa had written to further Gage’s own purposes.

  It didn’t help that Cassie was going back on shift. She was nervous. Cole was counting on her. She was going back to work to find an arsonist.

  The person she had seen and the impression that it had been Ash continued to haunt her. Time had only strengthened that impression.

  Lord, why am I in this position? Who am I supposed to be helping? Protecting? Jack? Ash? Rather than prayer clarifying the issue or bringing a sense of peace, there was an overriding weight coming down on her shoulders. The realization was growing that her first impression may have been the correct one, that she had seen Ash.

  I can rationalize him doing it.

  Cassie shoved aside items in the bathroom drawer as she searched for her perfume.

  Late at night, edge of the district, set to destroy the structure—the fire reports spooked her. She had seen that signature of fires within the walls once before. She had been a rookie still in training. They were conducting a controlled fire as a training exercise at an abandoned house the county was going to tear down. Cassie had watched Ash set the fire using small flowerpots filled with fertilizer set between the joists in the wall. It had created a hot fire similar to an electrical fire beginning in the walls.

  The last thing she wanted to do was tell Cole about the flowerpots Ash used ages ago only to find out she had just implicated her partner. The mere thought had the queasiness she was fighting intensify; she reached for the glass of 7-Up she had been sipping through the morning.

  Cole had blacked out sections of the reports. She didn’t know what the arsonist used as a mechanism for starting the fires. And if it was pottery between joists? Ash had been setting training fires that way for years. How many other rookies going through the academy had seen that signature? A few hundred?

  Loyalty to her friend against a suspicion she couldn’t prove—figuring out what she should do was impossible. Cole knew her initial impression was Ash. She wasn’t hiding it. But without more information to go on, she didn’t want to take it further.

  Lord, I can’t sit idly by while this suspicion lingers, but what can I do?

  With no ideas, only churning turmoil, she forced herself to push it aside and start thinking about practical realities.

  Where had she stored her extra uniform shirts? It had been a tear-filled spring afternoon after a bad day in physical therapy when she ripped open her dresser drawers, opened the walk-in closet, and sent the evidence of her profession into a pile on her bed. By the time she finished the purge, not only the clothes of her profession but also the specialized tools of the trade she’d acquired over the years had been tossed out. She had no idea where those boxes were stored.

  She’d need to find extra socks, sunglasses, and a book to read after the workday portion of the shift ended. It had been so long since she packed to work a department shift she knew she would forget something. And she realized last night that Cole had snuck one in on her with that efficiency report assignment. She’d need to double-check that she had a good briefcase; efficiency reports influenced pay incentives and it would be more than just the reporters who would like to read over her shoulder.

  The owl clock over her dresser sounded the half hour. Cassie pulled open the closet and retrieved her long coat. This was not the mood to be in for leaving to go to church.

  Lord, forgive me for not being ready to worship. I’m bringing a lot of baggage with me this morning. Calm me down and give me again Your peace that is bigger than these problems. You’ve gotten me through a lot more uncertain and stressful moments than this, and I should be remembering this last year and relaxing.

  She found her purse on the kitchen floor near the pantry beside a case of soda and a plastic grocery sack with cookies and paper plates she had bought for the youth group. A search of the bottom of her purse yielded her store keys but not her house keys. Cassie yanked out her billfold and checked the torn inner lining that seemed to eat her keys every time. Nothing.

  She reached for her spare set of house keys in the catchall drawer. There wasn’t time to find the missing set. It was frustrating how often it happened when she was in a hurry. With her blistered left hand she reached to tug close the apartment door, which had shut but not latched, and paid for the mistake. The pain rippled. Her hand had settled to a dull throb this morning, so she didn’t always stop to think before she acted.

  She headed downstairs. A stack of newspaper sales circulars had been delivered to the building and sat on the bottom step. Yesterday her mailbox had been jammed full with Christmas sales flyers. The annual deluge had begun. She opened the building door and shivered as the cold morning air rushed in. She never enjoyed winter and this one had arrived early. When she stepped outside she found her breath was visible.

  Jack was leaning against the passenger door of her car. He was dressed for the weather, wearing a leather jacket over a thick black cord sweater and jeans, cradling a Styrofoam cup. Steam rose from the cup, wavering in the cold air. Cassie was stunned to see him.

  There must be news about the fire, news either Jack or Cole thought needed to be delivered in person. Ash. Cassie took a deep breath, all the tension she felt coalescing as she braced for the news Ash had returned and it had been him behind the fires. “This is a surprise.” Her steps slowed as she approached him.

  “I’m here to take you to church. You don’t need to be driving until that hand heals.”

  Church. Cassie struggled to reorient her thoughts.

  Jack had protested her driving herself to the bookstore yesterday and she conceded the point, letting Linda give her a lift. But today she could have driven herself. She was surprised that he had not called ahead, only to realize if he had she’d ignored the call. “Did Rachel ask you to do this too?”

  “I have a few original thoughts. You look pretty, Cassie.”

  The compliment delivered with such a lazy smile had her smiling back. She glanced down at the blue pantsuit she was wearing. She’d been after practical and warm. But it was one of her favorites and it did look pretty. “Thanks.”

  “You’re very welcome.” His expression
turned serious. “I also want to talk to you about the newspaper article.”

  “Cole called me last night. He said you had been over to see him after reading it.”

  “You should have told me last night you were coming back to work.”

  She pushed her right hand deeper into her coat pocket, hating having Jack frown at her. She was worried he would react this way. If he knew part of the reason she was doing it was to try and protect him— “Cole thinks I can help.”

  “You’re going to go out on calls to look for the man you saw.”

  “I have to do something.”

  “Not this,” he replied grimly.

  He was pushing down his anger. It was fascinating to see and realize it was being felt on her behalf. “I appreciate your concern but—”

  “He’s dangerous.”

  She had seen a man who was setting escalating fires, who had written the word murderer. “I know.”

  “I don’t want you getting involved.”

  He wanted to protect her. She was grateful, but it left her between a rock and a hard place. “I’m already involved. To do nothing—that’s not an option, Jack.”

  His frustration was obvious, but he glanced away, checked what he was going to say before he looked back at her, then shook his head. “I know, Cassie. But this option is a lousy one.” He pushed away from her car and moved over to his. “It’s cold. We’ll talk as I drive.” He opened the passenger door. “How’s the hand?”

  “Sore.” She wrestled to get the seat belt fastened. The heat had been on in his car. And while it had cooled as he waited for her to arrive, it wasn’t as cold as her car would’ve been. She was thankful for that as she settled in.

  “You’ll have to give me directions.”

  She thought he’d been to the church the department volunteer chaplain pastored in the past, but that assumption had apparently been wrong. She gave him directions as she shifted her feet to be under the floor heating vent.

  Jack backed out of the parking spot. “What time are you coming in to the station Thursday?”