Smoke And Ashes

“Are you sure that it’s okay if I stay, Kevin?”

“I can go. I’m sure that I can stay with—” She stopped before she said Brittany. Her only other friend didn’t have a place in her life for Heather’s mess. She had her hands full dealing with the fire at her house. “I can stay at a hotel or something.”

“You’re not staying at a hotel.” Kevin set her bag next to the wall, but his movements were awkward and tight. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need.”

“Kevin, I…Thank you.” She didn’t know what to say. Thank you just didn’t seem like enough when what she really wanted to say was that he was part of the reason she had the strength to leave.

He had shown her there could be more in the world. That there could be something besides heartbreak and the constant thoughts that she could be doing something more to make someone else happy, even if that meant being miserable in her own skin.

Kevin had saved her life and he probably didn’t even realize it.

Smoke and Ashes

Danica Winters

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DANICA WINTERS is a bestselling author who has won multiple awards for writing books that grip readers with their ability to drive emotion through suspense and occasionally a touch of magic. When she’s not working, she can be found in the wilds of Montana testing her patience while she tries to hone her skills at various crafts (quilting, pottery and painting are not her areas of expertise). She always believes the cup is neither half-full nor half-empty, but it better be filled with wine. Visit her website at www.danicawinters.net.

This book is dedicated to those men and women who have lived through the turbulent cycles of abuse. May this book help you find your voice, live your truth and experience the love you desire.

This book would not have been possible without the support from a multitude of firefighters and law enforcement agents, including: Sergeant Ryan Prather, Retired Training Officer Jerome Kahler, and the men and women of the Frenchtown Rural Fire Department. Thank you for taking the time to help answer questions and making sure that events portrayed in this novel were accurate. You make this world a safer place.

A thank-you cannot be complete without thanking Lane Heymont, Denise Zaza and the Harlequin team. Thank you for helping to bring this book to life.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

He looked down at Heather Sampson as he pulled the matchbox from his pocket. The box dropped from his hand, spilling matches onto her bedroom floor in a heap of deadly promise. Crouching down, he scooped them back into the container, careful to move quietly, afraid that at any second she would awaken and find him standing over her.

Her eyes were closed and her lips slightly parted, as if she waited for a kiss from her Prince Charming. She should have known better. There was no such thing as Prince Charming. There were only toads and a precious few men like him—men who worked to make everything just.

The sad truth was that there was no justice in marriage—at least not in any of the marriages he had witnessed. No. Marriage was one lie after another. One hurt feeling masked with a fake smile, only to have another lie strip it away. It was an endless cycle of pain.

What was the point? What was it all for?

As far as he could tell, it was for nothing more than ego and some idealistic hope that if they acted happy, if they faked it well enough, maybe they could finally believe it themselves.

He was here to make her a martyr, not that she would understand, but this was his chance to show her and the world what her marriage truly was—nothing more than smoke and ashes. A fire that had yet to burn itself out. But at last the time had come. The hour was here for him to stoke the flames and let them consume every crumb of her failing marriage.

The inferno could have it all.

He walked out of her bedroom and made his way downstairs, where the glorious scent of gasoline filled the space. Unlike the others, Heather’s house would go up in a flash. In one giant fireball the whole charade would be over—the secrets, the lies, the fake smiles and the hurt feelings. It would all be gone and all her pain could be for a higher purpose.

The night air blew into the house, diluting the gas’s perfume. He made sure to leave the door open as he stepped out and walked toward the garage. A puddle of gas sat on the sidewalk, just waiting for him.

He struck the match.

It was so much easier this way.

The fire’s smoke curled skyward, creating a trail that led to the heavens. If he had his way, life would be better and she would be free.

Chapter One

A few days earlier

The note had been simple. Two little words. Two haunting, terrifying and humbling words. Words that had the power to rip out Heather’s heart.

I’m leaving.

The paper sat on the kitchen counter where David had left it, a glass of water as a paperweight. The condensation on the glass had dripped down, leaving a ring of water. Like her tears, it was long dried, but it would never disappear.

She fought the urge to turn around and leave the kitchen, lunch be damned for the second day in a row, but the pressures of the day and her nagging hunger drove her forward, past the stained note on their newly installed granite countertops to their perfectly polished stainless-steel fridge.

David had been adamant that they have the finest of everything—the finest appliances, the finest table, all the way down to the silk table runner they’d had specially made and shipped from India. Now, in the lifeless kitchen, the bloodred runner made the entire room seem like a picture out of a home decor magazine, but nothing like a home.

None of it had ever really mattered, not when all she was left with was an empty kitchen and anger in her gut.

Opening the fridge, she was met with its cold, stale air. The only contents were a single bottle of Perrier and a half-eaten piece of week-old cheesecake. God, she loved cheesecake. The way it melted on the tongue, leaving behind the luxurious texture of butter. David hated for her to have it, complaining it made her gain weight.

She grabbed the plate and folded back the plastic wrap. David could hate the cake and her all he wanted. He had made it clear he was leaving. If she wanted to eat cake, she could. He wasn’t here to stop her.

Grabbing a fork, she stabbed the tines into the cake and lifted it to her mouth. The scent of cream cheese filled her senses, making her mouth water. David would have hated this defiance.

She threw the fork and the uneaten bite into the sink and dropped the cheesecake, plate and all, into the garbage bin. David would come back. He always came back. And when he did, he would know she had gone against his wishes.

She stared down at the garbage. David would notice the plate was missing from the stack of exactly eight.

She had every right to be angry, but she would pay if he thought she had done something to intentionally upset him.

Reaching into the bin, she retrieved the plate and scraped the cheesecake off the edge. She couldn’t disappoint him no matter how much he disappointed her.

She stood at the sink and washed the plate as she stared outside. There had been so much more that she had wanted to do with her life. When she’d been young she had dreamed of helping people, of being a nurse. She smiled as she thought of her old teddy, Mr. Bear, who’d always stood in for a tragic victim of some terrible accident. She would use Band-Aid after Band-Aid fixing his wounds. Now he sat at the top corner of her closet, a reminder of a path not taken.

Because of David, she had given up everything,

There was a knock on the door and she set the plate in the drying rack. Reality was calling. Grabbing David’s note, she stuffed it into her pocket.

There was another knock, this time harder, more urgent.

“Coming.” She made her way out to the living room.

Looking in through the window in the door was her neighbor Kevin. He smiled and his eyes lit up as he saw her. As he moved, his sexy, prematurely graying hair sparkled in the sunshine. Heather tried not to notice the wiggle of excitement she felt at seeing him.

She opened the door. “How’s it going?”

“Great, but I need your help,” Kevin said. “I just got called to work. Do you think you could keep Lindsay for a while?” He pushed his daughter out from behind his legs.

Lindsay clutched the straps of her pink backpack. “Hi, Mrs. Sampson.”

“Hi, sweetheart. Why don’t you come in?” Heather dropped her hand onto the girl’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I’m glad you’re here. I got a bunch of new craft supplies. There’s a new bracelet designing kit you’ll love. And I needed a friend today.”

“Awesome!” Lindsay beamed.

“Thank you so much, Heather. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Kevin reached out. “Lindsay, can I get a hug before I go?”

Lindsay threw herself into her father’s arms. Kevin closed his eyes and squeezed her as if no one was watching. “Love you, honey. Be good, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy.” Lindsay let go.

“Don’t forget you have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in your backpack if you need a snack.”

Lindsay nodded.

Kevin turned to leave and Heather couldn’t help but glance down at his black uniform pants. As he moved, they seemed to hug the muscular shape of his body. Warmth rushed through her.

“Wait,” she called out to him, hoping to see his handsome, slightly mischievous grin one more time. “Where’s Colter?”

He looked back and the grin reappeared, making the heat in her core intensify. “He had baseball this afternoon. He should be done in time for the Millers’ barbecue. You going?”

Weeks ago David had promised they would go, but now, with everything that had happened between them, he would never agree.

“I’m not sure.” Heather forced a tight smile.

“I hope you do. It’d be nice to catch up.” Kevin paused. “I’ll be back to pick her up as soon as I can.”

Heather nodded. “No rush.” She needed all the excuses she could get to keep from having to focus on her life, and a nine-year-old girl and her much-too-handsome father were the perfect distractions.

“Thanks!” Kevin rushed off, heading toward his white truck that was emblazoned with the golden words Fire Inspector.

Heather pasted a smile on her face as she closed the door. Everything would be okay. “You ready for some fun, Lindsay?”

“I need to do my homework. It’s due tomorrow.”

“Homework? You only have a few weeks of school left.”

Lindsay shrugged as she sat down in her regular spot on the couch. She took out her worksheets. “It shouldn’t take long.”

“You need me to go over it with you?” Heather silently wished she could help.

“Nah, I got it. Thanks, though.”

Her hope deflated. “Okay. I’ll be in the kitchen. Let me know if you change your mind. When you’re done we can make those bracelets.”

“Okay,” Lindsay said, sounding preoccupied.

Heather walked back into the lifeless kitchen, picked up her cell phone and unlocked the screen. She tapped in David’s phone number and when the phone rang her stomach twisted with nerves. He would pick up, wouldn’t he?

It rang again.

“Why are you calling?” he answered.

“No ‘hello’?” Heather asked, trying to keep her anger from seeping into her voice. “I thought maybe by now—”

“By now what? That I’d want to come back to the house?” David growled. “Listen, Heather. We can’t keep doing this. Did you get my note?”

Her fingers moved to the letter in her pocket. “I did, but I was hoping—”

“What?” he interrupted. “That I didn’t mean it?”

“David, we can work this out. We just need to go to counseling. I would do it for you.” She pulled the note from her pocket and flattened it on the island.

“If we went to counseling that would imply that there’s something to save. At this point, Heather, just seeing you makes me sick.”

Her knees gave out under the weight of his words and she fell onto a barstool. “I’m sorry, David. I didn’t mean—”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Heather. I told you that you weren’t allowed to talk to Andrew anymore. I see the way you look at him. And the way he looks at you. You’re having an affair.” David paused. “Don’t you care how it makes me look that you’re sleeping with another doctor?”

When she’d seen Andrew at the Easter fundraiser for the American Heart Association, he’d been overly friendly—maybe even approaching flirtatious with her—but it had been nothing more than banter. If David hadn’t kept bringing up the incident, she would have forgotten it by now, but David wouldn’t let it go, no matter how much she pleaded.

“I’m not. I never—”

“If you’re not having an affair, then why did I see you talking to him outside the hospital the other day?”

She stared at the wrinkles in his note. “He stopped me. He just wanted to ask about you. I told him you didn’t want me to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Was he trying to find out the next time it was safe to come into our house and screw you?”

Hot, unwelcome tears rolled down her cheeks. “It was nothing like that. He just wanted to know if you’re okay.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Do you think I’m stupid? That I don’t know when someone’s lying to me?”

“I promise. I never lied. Just come home,” Heather said, her voice like that of a trapped animal. “Tonight’s Brittany’s barbecue. Please, you have to go...”

“First you have an affair, and now you want me to come home? You are nothing, Heather. Why would I want to be seen with a woman like you?”

She crumpled his note in her hand. She wasn’t weak...but it was hard not to be crushed when the world around her was collapsing.

Chapter Two

The windows of the sage-green house were intact, and a basket full of half-dead pink flowers waved lazily in the breeze as Kevin parked his truck. Aside from the flurry of motion and yellow caution tape, it would have been hard to tell this had been the location of an active fire.

Something about the place reminded him of Heather. Maybe it was the way it seemed so perfect, so put together on the outside, but if he looked a little deeper he saw whispers of turmoil within. Yet, with the house, he could open its doors and uncover its secrets, whereas with Heather there were too many things standing in the way—he could never truly know her.

A fire crew milled around the yard as they mopped up the scene, and the battalion chief, Stephen Hiller, was writing something in his notepad. Kevin killed his engine and the BC turned and gave him an acknowledging tip of the head. Hiller’s face was pinched and his eyes tired, as though he was just waiting for him to arrive so his crew could hand off the chain of custody.

On the porch of the neighboring white row house a little boy, his thumb in his mouth, sat in a turquoise patio chair. The boy smiled and waved at him, his chubby arm wiggling.

Something about how the boy’s eyes lit up reminded Kevin of Colter when he’d been younger. Colter used to love waiting on the porch for him to come home. The second he’d arrived, his son would rush down the steps in a hurry to welcome him.

How things had changed.

For the millionth time, he wished he could turn back the clock, but life was fickle and moments fleeting. If he’d only known then what he knew now, he would have run to Colter and scooped him up in his arms and carried him inside to where baby Lindsay had been. He would have spent every spare moment he had with his wife and his perfect little family. Yet, most nights, he had just pat him on the head as he brushed past him on his way toward the fridge and a cold beer.

Allison had hated his routine, the way he was so wrapped up in his job when he’d come home from work. She had never understood how badly he’d needed a moment to wind down, to relax after a crazy day fighting fires. Then again, he had never really understood what it must have been like for her, waiting for someone to come home, only to have him arrive in body but not in mind.

There was no going back.

The little boy’s mother opened the door and hustled the boy inside. After a moment the curtain in their living room shifted slightly as if the woman was watching.

Hiller walked up to the truck and tapped on the window. “Glad to see you could make it, Jensen.”

“Sorry I’m late. I had to find someone to watch Lindsay.” His thoughts moved back to Heather, the way her hair had haloed her face and her jeans had hugged her perfect hips when she’d answered the door.

Hiller nodded, but it was easy to see from the puckered look on his face that he didn’t really understand—or care.

“We’ve been waiting an hour.”

“I’m here now.”

“Next time be quicker about it. Some of us have work to do.”

“What, do you have a girlfriend waiting?” Kevin joked, but Hiller’s face remained motionless. Kevin coughed, trying to dispel some of the tension. “Anyways... Ya wanna fill me in?”

“The crew arrived on scene at 5:03 a.m. I arrived a few minutes after. Fire started on the second floor. They managed to get the homeowner—one Elke Goldstein—out of the house in a matter of minutes.”

“Anyone else in the house at the time of the fire?”

Hiller scanned his notes. “She was the only one. I asked her a few questions, but Ms. Goldstein wasn’t especially forthcoming with information. She seemed relatively unharmed, but was adamant she had to leave.”

“Do you know anything about her? Does she work? Is the house underwater?” There were no for-sale signs in the yard and the grass was well-kept, but it was amazing how good a house could look even when the owner was only a piece of paper away from losing it.

“As far as I know, everything was on the up-and-up, but she didn’t really want to talk to me.”

“Making friends again?”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you’re popular.”

“Why don’t you stop worrying about me and start worrying more about your investigation?”

Kevin chuckled. “You know where Ms. Goldstein went?”

“She said she had to go to work. Someplace called Ruby’s.”

Kevin grabbed his clipboard. “What else can you tell me about the fire?”

“Fire was small. Confined to the second floor. Extinguished quickly. There was a suspicious mark in the upstairs hallway.”

“Was anyone seen running from the scene? Anything suspicious?”

“One of her neighbors...” He pointed to the white house where the boy had been sucking his thumb. “They reported seeing a man leave the house a few minutes before the smoke started.”

“Ms. Goldstein didn’t tell you about him?”

Hiller shook his head. “Not a word.” He handed Kevin a copy of the fire report. “Here’re my notes. I’ve been more than thorough.”

“Great.” He clipped the report in his clipboard.

Hiller turned around to face his crew. “Let’s go, guys. Now this is someone else’s problem.”

“Wait. Leave me a couple of guys. I need them stationed outside the door until I’m done.”

“How long you want to keep the scene intact?”

Chief Larson’s words echoed in his mind—Things are tight, Jensen. We need to cut costs. If he didn’t watch it, he would be getting the ax. But he had to get back to Heather’s to pick up Lindsay, and he had promised Colter he would swing by his baseball practice. Heather would help him, if he needed—she always did—but something in her beautiful, hazel eyes told him that today was one of those days that she needed him. He couldn’t let down her or his kids.

“I’m going to need at least a day or two.”

“Jensen, time costs money—money the city won’t give us. What little we have would be better spent on something other than chasing down a ghost. You know the chance of finding whoever is behind this is slim to none. Don’t waste my time and the taxpayer’s money. Let the insurance company write her a check.”

“I’m trying to save the taxpayer’s money by stopping this from happening again.”

“You haven’t even been in the house yet, Jensen. Who the hell knows? Maybe it was just some kid playing around. Why do you always have to assume the worst?”

“Hoping for the best is a rookie mistake.”

Hiller slammed his fist against the truck. “This is coming out of your budget.”

“No problem,” he lied.

The fire inspector’s budget was closer than a hair on a gnat’s ass every month. If he found adequate evidence of arson, maybe he could convince the chief to cover the cost of keeping the chain of custody going for the next thirty-six hours, but probably nothing more.

“You need to step into line with the rest of the department, Jensen,” Hiller threatened. “It’s been long enough since Allison died. You’re starting to cost us money because of your inability to do your job.”

He cringed. Why did Hiller have to remind him? The weeks and months after Allison’s death, he’d get into the flames and all he’d been able to think about was his wife, sitting in her hospital bed as the chemo burned through her veins.

Three years ago, after Allison’s death, the department had taken him out of the fire and put him in an office chair, but even as fire inspector things weren’t going as they should be. He’d been taking too long on investigations, but he rationalized it by telling himself that he was holding his responsibilities to a higher standard than his predecessor—a senior firefighter who had been happy playing by the unwritten rules while he sat back and waited to collect his pension.

“I’ve got this, Hiller.”

“Time is money, Jensen.”

“Do I need to remind you of our motto: protecting lives and saving property? Lives come first, Hiller. Money isn’t even in the equation.”

Hiller glowered at him but said nothing.

“Just give me the men I need.”

Hiller looked out at his crew. “The rookies can stay behind.” He pointed at two twentysomethings that had just been hired. “You guys monitor the house!”

They nodded and walked to the front of the yard.

Hiller turned back to him. “Get this handled. I need my guys. Our work actually makes a difference.” Then he stormed off.

Kevin ignored the retreating cavalry as he looked down at Hiller’s notes. At least he had a description of the man—dark haired, around six feet tall and an average build.