Nothing Left to Burn

  Reece waited a beat. “Okay, so what was used at the other fires?”

  Steve scrubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. “Reece, you’re a cadet. I shouldn’t be talking to you at all, but you two are my best leads right now.”

  “Hey, Conner.” Ken Tully stuck his round face in the door and jerked his chins toward the hall.

  “Be right back.”

  Reece and I watched Steve talk to Ken for a few minutes. Reece elbowed me. “He left the files right there. I mean, right there.”

  I’d noticed that. I shifted my eyes to the door, but Steve and Ken were deep in conversation. When I looked back to the files on the table, Reece already had them open.

  “Different accelerants. Different metals. All foreclosed properties. Huh. The same charred wood fragments. Mulch, maybe. I don’t see any analyses of the wood…” Reece muttered.

  Mulch. Hmm. I remembered the charred piece of wood I’d stepped on the night Larry woke me up making his midnight snack. He swore he hadn’t been outside that night. I’d found more of it last week after the fire. Larry hadn’t been home, only—

  “Got chromatograms though. Acetone, toluene, xylene, and—Jesus—potato chips?” Reece muttered the results under his breath.

  Potato chips.

  “Don’t touch Mr. Beckett’s potato chips.”

  I froze when the outrageous thought arrowed through my brain and then lunged to my feet. “I have to get home. Will I see you in school Monday?”

  “What?” Reece looked up. “Oh right. Yeah, I’ll be in school.” He narrowed his eyes. “You okay? You’re really pale.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled. “Fine. I have to run before I get in trouble. I’ll, uh, text you later. Bye.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Reece had his face buried in the files and never noticed the way my hands shook when I waved. I turned and ran from the firehouse.

  ***

  I jogged all the way to the Becketts’ house, where I found Larry home alone, huddled on a corner of his bed.

  “Potato chips,” I said, gasping for breath.

  His eyes snapped to mine, and all the color faded from his face. “Don’t tell, Amanda. Don’t.”

  “Oh God! You did know. Jeez, Larry, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “This is our house now. I had to protect it.” And then his eyes shut and his shoulders sagged. “And because he’ll say it was me. Us.”

  The blood chilled in my body. In front of me, Larry was shaking, and I was abruptly mad. Furious. We liked it here. Mr. Beckett wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. He was…nice. God. Goddamn it.

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “You know how it works. If there’s trouble, they’ll blame us.”

  Jesus, he was right. “We won’t let that happen, Larry. I promise. Where are they anyway?” Their cars weren’t in the driveway, and the first floor was dim.

  “Mrs. Beckett had car trouble. He went to help her.”

  I grabbed Larry’s arm and pulled him off the bed. “Come on. We have to move fast.”

  “Move where?”

  “The garage. The man cave. If we can find proof, we can use it against him before he can use it against us.”

  Larry shook his head violently, his hand tightening around mine. “And then what? Where are we gonna go?”

  I blinked and tried to find something to say, but I had no answers for him. “I don’t know. But we have to do something.”

  “They’ll send us back. I’ll never see you again.”

  His voice was low and steady and shot straight to my heart. “You will. I won’t ever forget you.” Slowly, I sat next to him on the bed and wrapped both arms around him. “So how long have you known?”

  Against my shoulder, I felt him shrug. “Couple weeks.”

  “How? How did you know?”

  “I got hungry.” He laughed once and shrugged against my shoulder. “I got up in the middle of the night and saw Mr. Beckett out back in the garage. He had…bottles, so I figured he was just gonna get drunk and watch a movie out there.”

  Made sense. Mr. Beckett had a TV and a couch in the garage.

  He wriggled out of my arms. “I made myself a sandwich and watched out the kitchen window. There was this, this—” He broke off and then poofed his hands apart. “Flash of light. No sound, just the light.” Larry hunched over his knees and stared at the floor. “I thought he got shot or something. I went out just to see, I guess. He had on those goofy chemistry glasses and was holding a lighter to a bunch of those potato chip bags. He lit them up, one at a time. That’s why we’re not supposed to have any. He um…uses the bags.”

  Holy crap. Mrs. Beckett bought cases of those single-serve chip bags.

  “That’s not all, Amanda. He poured out some of whatever’s in that bottle. He takes it from school. You should have seen him. God!”

  “What’d he do?”

  Larry lifted his face with a look of such horror, my stomach clenched. “He clapped his hands and giggled. Like a little kid.”

  “Oh God, Larry.”

  “Yeah. I know.” He looked down again and sniffled. After a moment, he swiped a hand under his nose and looked around. “Shit, I really liked it here.”

  “Me too,” I admitted on a sob. I pulled in a deep breath and stood up. “Did he set Saturday’s fire?”

  Larry nodded. “Yeah. When I saw him with the bottle, I followed him. He was there. Watched the whole thing from down the street, inside his car.”

  He sniffled again, and then his entire body curled up. A great big hiccuping sob came out of his mouth, and then he was crying, and so was I, because it was gone, everything that we had.

  Gone.

  And we both knew it.

  Tears dripped, and I knew we didn’t have time for them. I wished my mom were here and that we were back in the little apartment where I grew up before Dmitri came along to fuck it all up. God! I hated her for letting him.

  Larry straightened, grabbed a backpack from the chair at his desk, and started stuffing his few belongings into it. “Let’s do it,” he said, his voice flat.

  Out back, the garage was dark and the door was locked, but Larry knew how to get around that. He led me inside, unfolded his phone, and held the faint blue light over the worktable in the back. There was a funk over the room, more than the stale ash from Mr. Beckett’s playtime. A whiff of alcohol—where was that coming from? Oh. The open Sterno cans. On a shelf over the table, jugs of chemicals, judging by their labels. There was a beat-up metal trash bin beside the table, half-filled with the remains of things he liked to burn. Jesus, it was a pyro playground. Did Mrs. Beckett know what he did back here at night?

  I unzipped my own backpack and grabbed some of the potato chip bags, the ashes, and a bottle of boric acid from the shelf. “Take pictures, Larry. We’re gonna show the fire marshal.”

  “It’s too dark.”

  “Give me your phone and turn the light on and stay by the door. Turn it off the second you hear the car pull in.”

  Larry tossed me his phone and flipped the switch by the door. I snapped pictures of the trash can, the chemical bottles, the charred dishes on the worktable—all of it. I switched to video mode and—

  “You broke the rules.”

  At the sound of Mr. Beckett’s voice, we both whipped around.

  “Run, Larry!”

  We grabbed our packs and ran from Mr. Beckett, ran from the best foster house we’d ever had.

  Chapter 31

  Reece

  When I’m at the firehouse, missing Matt doesn’t hurt so much. Oh, it always hurts. But it hurts just a little less.

  I skimmed through all the reports in Steve’s files. Chemical after chemical. Larry must have been sneaking stuff out of Mr. Beckett’s lab for months. I didn’t understand how Mr. Beckett hadn’t noticed his stock dwi
ndling. The labs at school have to be kept locked, though Larry had a key. He was robbing them blind, and nobody noticed. Nobody did inventory checks? I shook my head. This smelled funny.

  I grabbed a whiteboard marker and drew a time line on the board. The first suspicious fire was seven months earlier. I added the date and address to the line and then plotted the rest, ending with last weekend’s fire a few blocks away from Amanda’s foster home. Where was Larry Ecker on those dates and how did he travel to these locations? Long Island wasn’t exactly a hub of public transportation. In fact, the closest county bus stop from the school was over a mile away, on Main.

  He could easily have gotten a ride with a friend or biked, so that wasn’t what bugged me. I stared at the board, and it hit me. The date of the second fire was the week of standardized tests at school. I couldn’t be sure Larry had actually been in school, but based on what Amanda said about him being a good kid, a good student, and doing whatever it took to not get booted out of the Becketts’ foster care, I’d be willing to bet he hadn’t skipped.

  I put a big question mark over that incident. I studied the next fire, barely a month later. Larry couldn’t have started this fire either. Larry’s grade had a field trip to New York City. I remember it distinctly because it was only the second time in our school’s history that one hundred percent of the class participated. Usually, you had a handful out sick. I put another question mark on the board and blew out a frustrated breath.

  He had the means but not the time. Which could mean only one thing. It wasn’t Larry. I took out my phone and rewatched the video I’d shot, carefully watching Larry’s face. I played it again. Then I scrolled through all the stills I’d shot of Bear directing traffic.

  There it was. The reason Larry Ecker was anxious.

  Holy fuck.

  “Well. You’ve been busy.”

  I turned and found Steve standing in the doorway, arms crossed. “Yeah, I know. Take a look.” I indicated my question marks on the board and explained why I’d marked those events.

  Steve let out a low whistle. “If you’re right, the kid couldn’t have done it.” He tossed the files on the table and cursed. “Does Amanda know this? She sure left in a hurry.”

  Maybe. Maybe she did.

  “Steve, sit down,” I began. “I want you to listen to this theory. I admit, it’s—” I broke off. No sense editorializing it before I’d even pitched it. “Forget that. Just listen.” I walked over to the far right of the board, where last week’s fire was plotted. “This address is a few blocks from the Becketts’ home. Bear and I witnessed Larry Ecker on-scene and acting strangely.” I handed Steve my phone and cued up the video again. “What got my attention in the first place is this. See how he isn’t watching the fire the way everyone else is? He was watching something—or someone—else.”

  Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “You think he has a partner?”

  I shook my head. “Look at his face.” I pointed. “Larry’s anxious. Worried. I thought it was because he was afraid he was gonna get caught. But now I think it’s because he was afraid someone else—the real firebug—would.”

  “The real firebug?” Steve repeated. He grabbed the phone and replayed the video. “You think he’s protecting somebody.” He stared at me hard.

  I showed him the photos I’d snapped.

  “There’s Bear, directing traffic, and—” Abruptly, he broke off, pressed his lips together, and shook his head. “Reece, you’re reaching.”

  Maybe. But what if I was right? “All the fires this year, four fires, four different chemicals, and by the reports in those files, in quantities a lot higher than your typical household usage. All were in houses that were empty.”

  “But what about Larry stealing chemicals from the school lab? You saw him yourself.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t stealing them. I think he was returning them.”

  “Why would—” Steve broke off when the answer kicked him in the teeth. “Oh my God. He was protecting him.”

  I shook my head. “Not just him. He’s protecting his whole family.” Amanda told me over and over again how much she and Larry liked living with the Becketts.

  Steve considered that for a moment. “So that’s why Amanda practically bolted out of here.”

  I frowned, thought about that for a long moment, and couldn’t deny it. “Yeah. I think she figured it out while we were reading your files.”

  Steve grabbed his plate of chicken bones, tossed them into the trash can near the door, sank back into his seat, and hung his head. “Hell, Logan. I don’t know what to do with this. There’s no evidence to support it—any of it.” He pressed his lips into a grim line. “We need more. Speculation and opportunity aren’t proof.”

  The tones sounded.

  The PA system began broadcasting. “Engine 21. Truck 3. Rescue 17. Structure fire. 1097 Southern Street.”

  I watched the crew members who were in-house don gear and roll out, followed by Chief Duffy in his vehicle. Steve stayed behind. He didn’t respond to routine calls, only the suspicious ones. He turned on the radio he wore on his belt. We listened to the trucks respond.

  “Dispatch, Engine 21. We are 10–8 and proceeding to alarm.”

  “Engine 21. Acknowledged.”

  The sirens faded, and the bay doors rolled back in place. We turned to walk back into the conference room. We’d taken no more than a few steps when the lights cut out and even the always-present current that hummed inside the house faded until there was nothing.

  ***

  “Why haven’t the emergency lights kicked in?” My voice echoed off the corridor walls.

  “Give it a minute,” Steve replied.

  We stood there for a full minute, but the emergency lights never illuminated.

  “Hell,” Steve muttered. “You got your phone?”

  I pulled out my smart phone, tapped a button, and we had light. Steve did the same.

  “Logan, let’s go check the generator.” Steve led us to the closest exit, which faced the front of the firehouse. We hurried around to the rear entrance that led to the kitchen. “Jesus, you can still smell the fried chicken.”

  The generator was in a green utility box, and that was inside a cage on the side of the building near the kitchen. Steve opened the gate and then popped open a panel on the box. He held up the light from his phone and frowned. Abruptly, he stood and scanned the area. “Reece, somebody deliberately interrupted this circuit. I want you to call 911, tell them that LVFD is on fire, and the fire marshal suspects arson. Tell them no one is here except me and you.”

  The bottom fell out of my gut, and my heart plunged straight to the ground. “Uh, right. Copy that, Captain.” I called in the 911 report just as he’d directed. Steve moved to the rear door, the one that led directly to the kitchen, and jiggled the handle.

  We heard screams.

  Steve looked at me. “Did you hear that?” He banged on the door. “Hello!”

  “Steve! We’re trapped!”

  My stomach dropped to my feet. “Amanda. Oh God, that’s Amanda!”

  “Reece, stop!” Steve grabbed my arm when I ran. “Look. This door’s hot.” He put my hand over the kitchen exit, and I felt the heat.

  Okay, okay. I could do this. Think! I tried to remember my training. Smoke wisped out from the top of the door. I dragged both hands through my hair. “We can’t wait. We have to help her.”

  Steve nodded and ran back to the front of the station house to the main entrance. The doors wouldn’t budge. He rattled them, but it was no use. “Look.” Someone had chained them together.

  “The apparatus bay,” I suggested.

  Steve clapped my back. “Good thinking. Let’s go.” We ran around the building and tried to pry up one of the bay doors. “What I wouldn’t give for a Halligan right now,” Steve said.

  “How about this?” I grabbe
d a long branch.

  Steve grabbed it and wedged it under the door. Frantic, I searched the area and found a cinder block someone had left near the Dumpster. I hefted it up and hauled it to the door. Together, we pushed the branch down on the block, and inch by inch, the door lifted.

  Teeth clenched, Steve held the branch down. “Can you shimmy under, hit the control?”

  “Copy.” I dropped to my stomach, army-crawled under the edge of the door, and hit the control panel. Nothing happened.

  “Use the manual!” Steve shouted.

  I cursed. The power was cut; of course the controls wouldn’t work. I grabbed the chain and hauled the door up so Steve could enter.

  “Okay, Logan, listen up. The panel out back was sabotaged, and there are chains on the door. What does that tell you?”

  Jesus, did we really have times for guessing games? “He’s here. Mr. Beckett. And he’s got Amanda.”

  “And there’s smoke in that kitchen. So you and I are going to suit up in full PPE, and you are going to follow every one of my instructions to the letter, is that clear?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  We ran to the storage room on the side of the apparatus bay. Steve unlocked the door and handed me gear. I kicked off my shoes, stepped into the boots, and snapped on the suspenders. He did the same. In two minutes, we were fully dressed.

  “Tank level?” He spun around so I could see his gauge.

  “Green, sir.”

  “Turn around.”

  When I did, he slapped my back. “You’re green too.” He moved down the wall and grabbed some fire extinguishers. “Take this. And this.” He handed me a can and a Halligan tool, then grabbed an ax for himself. As we left the storeroom, I grabbed another bunker coat.

  Amanda had no gear.

  I swallowed down the terror that nearly paralyzed me at the thought of her burning and followed Steve.

  We flipped on the flashlights clipped to our bunker coats and headed down the main corridor. Steve waved a hand at the smoke wisping at the ceiling.

  “Conserve your tank. Got it?”