The Fireman's Son

Reese pulled back and looked at the receiver. What kind of prank was Doris pulling, putting a kid through to him? Certain that his receptionist would have already determined there was no emergency, that she would never have put a kid on hold had there been one, that if there’d been one, the call would have come in through 9-1-1 and police dispatch, not the station’s number...

“Who is this?” he asked, trying to figure out the joke. It wasn’t like his men to play around at work. When it came to fire safety, he was a pretty serious guy.

But he’d already let one employee go that week—Chester Smith—the paramedic who’d been drinking while on call.

“I can’t say,” the young voice told him. “At least... I gotta know what happens, first.”

“Do you know who you’re talking to?” How well had Doris screened this call?

“Yes, um, you just said. You’re Chief Bristow. It’s...who I asked for.”

Sitting behind his desk, he glanced at the folders on top of it. His good mood rapidly dissipating, he thought about sending the call back out to his receptionist.

He wasn’t all that great with kids. Didn’t spend any time around them, but didn’t particularly want to offend one, either. Joke or not.

“What do you gotta know?” he asked, purposely using the kid’s vernacular. He assumed he was talking to a boy but wasn’t altogether sure.

“If I...confess...do I gotta go to jail right away? Or do I get to explain to my mom?”

He sat forward. And then stood. What in the hell were they dealing with here?

It had to be a joke. But the boy didn’t sound like he was kidding.

Which would make it the best kind of joke...

“You sure you don’t need to be talking to the police?” he asked, to buy himself another second or two.

“No, um, it’s you.”

He nodded and adjusted his tie. He would put on working blues later after his meeting with the city manager.

“I can’t answer your questions until I know what we’re talking about,” he said. And then, in case this was for real, added, “But if you’re under eighteen, then yes, you can talk to your mom. It’s the law. No one can question you without your mom or dad’s permission.”

Maybe this was a test. Of what, he had no idea.

Knew the thought was out there.

“I don’t got a dad.”

Or an English teacher, either, apparently.

“But you’re under eighteen.”

“I’m eight.”

The same age as Faye’s son? Not that he’d remembered or anything.

All week long, every thought had come back to her. If he ate something they’d shared in the past, he’d remember whether or not she’d liked it. After four years together, they’d eaten pretty much everything together, which meant every time he took a bite those past few days...

He stood still, putting a hand in his pocket.

“You going to tell me what you did?” Joke or no, this had to end.

“I set a fire.”

He glanced around the office as though the whole station had heard.

Did Doris know? And if so, why in the hell hadn’t she given him a heads-up?

“You did.”

“Yes.”

Was this his escalating fire threat? An eight-year-old in a size-ten tennis shoe?

He shook his head. “How many of them?”

“Just one.”

Not his threat. At least not entirely.

“Did you have help?”

“Maybe.”

They’d dismissed the idea that they were dealing with kids. Maybe too soon?

“Where did you set the fire?” he asked, thinking of the various unsolved small-fire crime scenes.

“In a trash can in the boys’ bathroom.”

Reese ran a hand through his hair. “Not outside?” he asked.

“No. Then it wouldn’t be contained.”

He hadn’t heard an “um” in a couple of minutes. And the kid’s grammar had improved. Because he was more comfortable now in speaking with him?

Or because he was repeating what he’d heard from someone else? Contained was an industry description.

“Who told you it had to be contained?”

“No one.”

“How’d you know, then?”

He had to find out the kid’s identity. Find out where he was. Send a crew out.

Heading out of his office, he motioned for Doris to get him the caller ID as the childish voice answered his question.

“My mom.”

“You mother taught you a fire had to be contained?”

“She didn’t exactly teach me. She just says stuff and I hear it.”

“Who’s your mom?”

The long silence gave him pause.

“What’s your name, son?”

“It’s not her fault. And it wasn’t s’posed to leave that black mark in the bottom of the can. They weren’t s’posed to find out.”

“But they did.”

“Yeah. This morning when I got here, there was a meeting with all the kids. And no one should hafta get in trouble ’cause of me. ’Specially my mom, too.”

Reese started to relax. He was fairly certain that the call was legitimate and that caller ID would tell them the boy was calling him from the elementary school.

Not abreast with current parenting theories, he would have to tread carefully while he tried to figure out what to do.

The boy was obviously a good kid. He’d called the fire chief to confess, after all. But he must be troubled—he’d set the fire to begin with.

Back in his office, with the door shut, he asked, “Does she know you set the fire?”

“Uh-uh.”

Still perplexed as to why he was getting this call, Reese asked, “Are you ready to tell me your name?”

“Can my mom not be in trouble?”

“Why would she be in trouble?”

“Um...’cause you’re her boss and all.”

Reese sat down. Hard.

CHAPTER FIVE

“I DON’T KNOW what’s wrong with me...” Leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, hands clasped together, Faye sat on Sara’s couch and looked at the other woman. Sara’s shoulder-length blond hair framed her face and pretty blue eyes in a way that made Faye feel like she was talking to an angel.

Or her personal rendition of one.

Maybe it was just that she needed a guardian angel right then.

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” said The Lemonade Stand’s full-time counselor.

Faye wasn’t seeing Sara on an official basis. Faye had a weekly appointment with Dr. Bloom Larson for her own counseling. She’d just dropped off Elliott and found herself in Sara’s office.

“Oh...something’s wrong,” Faye said now.

Sara, leaning back against her desk, smiled at her. And shook her head.

“You’re alive, Faye,” she said. “Feeling sexual desire is a normal part of life.”

“Not for me it isn’t. Not since...”

She stopped. Thought of the previous night’s dream, with feelings that were so mixed up. Glorious and panic-inducing at the same time.

Wonderful mixed with devastating.

“What Frank did to you...it’s had an effect on you, Faye. You know that.”

She did. She’d been through counseling. “I thought I’d never feel sexual desire again.” Mostly, she’d been fine with the prognosis. She had no intention of having another man in her life, so sex was pretty much a nonissue to her.

“You might not. Not in the way you think...”

“But last night...”

“Was showing you that your ability to feel sexual desire is not completely dead.”

“Why now?” The words hurt her throat. But she had to know. For the rest of her life, there would be no more hiding. She’d promised Elliott.

And herself.

“My guess?” Sara asked.

Faye nodded.

“Reese takes you back to a time before Frank. To a time when you were on fire with desire.”

She stared.

“Am I wrong?”

Faye wanted to jump up and leave the room. Laugh the whole thing off. She just shook her head.

“It doesn’t mean that you’d feel those same feelings now,” Sara said, a warning note to her voice. “If he were to touch you, I mean.”

Okay. The tightening in her chest subsided a bit. She drew in a complete—and calming—breath.

“It’s just a trigger from the past. Not an indication of current—”

“What are you asking me?”

“The dream,” Faye said. “It doesn’t have to mean I’m still in love with him, right? Just that seeing him sparked a ‘muscle memory’ kind of response from my psyche in terms of sex.”

“Exactly.”

Well, thank God.

“I woke up crying.”

“That’s what you said.”

“Elliott was there. Awake.”

“Yes.”

“So...you’ll talk to him today?” Because she didn’t know how to help her own son. She had to rely on professionals.

“Just like every day.”

“Thank you.” She stood.

“Faye?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

She nodded. Then turned back to her. “Why do you say it like that?” Like she was really concerned.

Sara wasn’t smiling anymore. “Because you’re vulnerable. And I don’t think you’re letting yourself see that. These feelings for Reese—whether they’re real or just regression—feel real. And he’s right here. In your life.”

“You think I’ll fall prey and sleep with him?” If only Sara knew how far from possible that was. Reese hadn’t so much as met her eye in the two days they’d been around the station together. He hadn’t been on any of their rescue calls. And when he’d come into the training room and seen her there, he’d made an excuse and turned around and left.

“I think that you could find yourself in a situation where you think what you’re feeling is real and make love with him...”

“Not going to happen.”

“The more you deny the possibility, the more at risk you are.”

“I’m not denying the possibility of my own feelings going haywire. I’m not planning to trust them to guide me.” She didn’t do that even on a good day anymore. Except when she was working.

The paramedic, she trusted implicitly. The woman, not at all.

“I just know that Reese isn’t going to let us get even close to a near encounter.”

“And what if he does?” Sara asked.

Faye knew the answer to that one. “I’m grabbing Elliott and running for the hills.”

She wasn’t going down the man road again. Particularly not until her son was man enough to watch out for himself.

* * *

HE’D TOLD HER to stay the hell out of his life. So why in the hell was Reese standing around in a too-small conference room, watching his palms sweat, while he waited to meet the kid who should have been his?

No. The one who should have been his had been his, at least for the few weeks his wife had been pregnant. Even if he hadn’t known about it.

Faye’s child had not been meant to be his. Her defection had told him that. You’d think, after almost ten years, he’d have gotten that one down straight.

He was meeting the kid alone. Whether or not the boy’s mother knew about it was none of his concern. Lila McDaniels—managing director of The Lemonade Stand—had set the whole thing up. Reese had called the Stand as soon as he’d recovered from talking to the boy.

Faye had said Elliott had problems and that he spent his days at the Stand. And now here was Reese, through no wish of his own, having agreed to meet with the boy and hear what he had to say.

Someone thought it was best for Elliott.

Reese damn sure knew it wasn’t best for him.

Meeting Faye’s kid was about the last thing he wanted to do, right down there with having his toenails pulled off one by one without anesthetic.

Maybe one below that.

At the moment, physical pain, in any amount, seemed preferable to—

He turned sharply as the door opened.

Lila, with her gray bun and wearing a gray suit, stood there. She had her hand on the shoulder of a thin, sandy-haired boy with determination on his face.

He looked straight at Reese, almost as if daring him to take him right to jail. The blue in those eyes, so like his mother’s, prevented Reese from moving at all.

Faye’s son.

The boy that he’d thought would be his own. Already half grown up.

“I’ll leave you two, then,” Lila said, nodding at Reese as she ushered the boy in and then closed the door.

Reese and Lila had known each other since before Reese had taken the job as Santa Raquel’s fire chief. He’d had a meeting with her at the request of the city manager and chief of police. All public services, and most particularly rescue services, were available to provide any help the Stand might need.

While no members of Reese’s staff were on the High Risk team that coordinated social services, counselors, doctors and teachers in an effort to prevent domestic violence deaths, Reese was well aware of the team. He reported to them anytime anything suspicious came across his desk.

“Are you here to take me to jail?” The boy tilted his chin up, skinny arms crossed as he stood here in a striped polo shirt and brown baggy shorts. As if to say he didn’t care.

The way his lip trembled gave him away but Reese wasn’t going to let on to that. At least not yet.

Lila had asked him if he’d talk to the boy. Try to find out anything he could about what he’d burned, where he’d gotten the matches, why he’d set the fire.

So far, the boy was refusing to speak to anyone else.

“I don’t carry handcuffs,” Reese said now. He was the man here. Elliott was just a scared little kid.

And it sure as hell wasn’t the kid’s fault his mother had chosen another man. He pulled out a chair. Sat. Motioned for Elliott to do the same.

Without hesitation, the boy did so and tilted his chin up again. Like he was some kind of cool dude who wasn’t going to be intimidated.

Reese wasn’t sure what to do. Truth was, he had no plan at all. He was there as a favor to Lila.

Nothing more.

“Tell me about the fire.”

“I already told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“I did it.”

“Where?”

“In the trash can in the boys’ bathroom by where we do gym.”

“Why that bathroom?” As Reese started focusing on his purpose for being there, the questions came easier. He was an investigator. A damn good one.

Elliott shrugged. His clothes looked new, as did the leather sandal he was tapping rapidly on the commercial tile floor. “It was furthest from anybody.”

“So you didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

He was there to get the kid to trust him. To talk. Nothing else.

“Uh-uh.”

“But you know fire’s dangerous.”

“’Course I know. My mom’s told me about a hundred times that...” He broke off.

“You broke your mother’s rules.”

Elliott’s chin came up again. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“’Cause she’s not always right. ’Cause she thinks she knows best but she doesn’t.”

Interesting.

But in terms of the investigation?

“So you think setting a fire in the boys’ bathroom trash can was right?”

“Sorta.”

“How can something ‘sorta’ be right?”

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“I can’t promise not to. Not until I hear what you have to say.”

Elliott shook his head. “When we talk in there, no one can say what we say.”

Reese studied the boy, investigating a possible subject. He had to consider the fact that he knew, from Elliott’s mother as well as from Lila, that the boy was in a dangerous place. That the rest of his life could well depend on his time at the Stand.

Counseling sessions were confidential.

“Did your fire have something to do with something that happened during one of your group meetings with Sara?”

He had no idea if the kids knew they were in counseling, but he knew that Sara Havens was overseeing Elliott. Lila had told him that Sara was the one who’d recommended that Reese be allowed to speak alone with the boy. Because Elliott had reached out to him.

Elliott’s nod gave Reese a curious kind of confidence. He had this.

In spite of extenuating circumstances that would not be named.

“Sara didn’t tell you to start a fire.”

He shook his head.

“What did she say?”

Elliott stared at him.

“She told Lila to call me in to speak with you. I’m sure they told you that,” Reese said at the boy’s continued silence.

Elliott nodded.

“So she expects you to speak to me, which means you can say what you say in there.”

The boy’s brow furrowed. He puckered his lips. And then said, “Sometimes we write stuff. To get it out.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Elliott shrugged. He was patting the side of his leg over and over with the tips of his right fingers. “Bad stuff.”

“Okay.”

The boy sat there.

“So you wrote about starting a fire.”

Elliott’s gaze seemed to be seeking something from him as he once again shook his head.

“You wrote bad stuff.”

The boy nodded again.

“And?”

“A way to stop it from bugging you is to write it and then throw it away.”

Understanding dawned.

“But you didn’t throw yours away.”

Elliott shook his head.

“Why not?”

He shrugged.

“I’m not asking you what you wrote, Elliott, I’m asking why you didn’t just throw it away in the trash can. Why did you start a fire with it?” He was certain he was right about this part.

“Because I didn’t think just throwing it away where it still could be read would be good enough.”

A thought many mature adults had, as well. Adults who had the means to find access to a fire pit, a fireplace, a burn barrel...

“Where’d you get the matches?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not a snitch.”

“Did someone steal them for you?”

“No.”

“Did someone else give you the idea to burn what you wrote?”

Another shrug. “Can I just go to jail now?”

The boy was not going to give up his source. Reese’s job was done here.

Except...

“Why did you call me?”

“So you don’t fire my mom.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because she said that I have to be really good and not make her late on work days, that we can’t mess up at all, because bosses fire people and then we’d have to move because there aren’t any other EMT jobs here except yours.”

Reese was still recovering from the sentence, nowhere near finding a response to it, when the boy said, “And because you’re the fire chief. Mom always says if I’m ever in trouble to go straight to the principal. Or to Lila. You know, the boss. I’m not supposed to talk to strangers or trust people we don’t know, even if they’re adults.”

Because his father could send someone for him?

Faye had said they weren’t in danger. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have residual trust issues stemming from what she’d been through.

What she’d been through...

He pushed the thought away.

“I wanted you to know it’s not her fault,” the boy finished. “Can we go now?”

Reese leaned forward, elbows on his knees, saw his hands shaking and clasped them together. He and Faye used to sit in front of each other, face-to-face, that way, clasping hands when they were talking about serious things.

The memory flashed by out of nowhere.

He sat back.

“You aren’t going to jail, Elliott,” he said. “You’re going to stay right here. Your punishment is up to Lila and Sara. And your mom.” Then he stood. “But if I ever hear of you so much as having matches again, we’ll have to rediscuss this.”

The boy was in danger. Thinking he could get away with playing with matches was not cool.

Elliott’s blue eyes were wide now as he nodded. “So I’m not going to be in trouble with you?”

“Not this time.”

“And my mom? Is she in trouble?”

“Not at all. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

He nodded, his lips puckering in a new way now. A little-boy way.

Like he might be about to cry.

Reese yanked open the door, relieved to see both Sara and Lila on the other side. With a nod to both of them, he strode out.

Lila could call him to find out what he knew. When she was ready.

In the meantime, he was ready for a tall one.

CHAPTER SIX

I CAN’T BELIEVE Elliott set a fire. I can’t believe it. I cannot believe he did that...

Faye paced by the side door on Reese’s house, back and forth, back and forth. Waiting for him to get home. If he was even coming home.

She worried about a lot of things where Elliott was concerned—the fact that he harbored such resentment against her sometimes. The possibility that he’d learned to disrespect her from Frank’s example.

The chance that he could have some genetic predisposition to anger, as Frank had. The need to know if that was possible.

Where was Reese? He’d left the station. She’d called to find out.

She’d have gone to work to find him two hours ago—when she’d heard from Lila and Sara about what had been going on that day—except that he’d laid down the law. No one was supposed to know they knew each other.

Or rather, had known each other.

The always-serious, always-businesslike, strict guy Reese was now wasn’t the man she’d known.

But then, she probably didn’t even remotely resemble the girl he’d once known.

One thing about him was the same—besides his apparent appeal where her screwed-up sexual psyche was concerned—he was fair.

She hoped.

Would he let her keep her job?

What had he thought of Elliott? She’d spent so many hours mentally playing out that moment when Elliott and Reese came face-to-face. Would Elliott like him?

Would Reese care at all?

Or would Elliott just be someone else’s child, with no attachment value whatsoever?

Had Reese liked him?

When his shiny blue truck pulled into the drive, she welcomed the interruption from thoughts that served no purpose. Stepping away from the house, she waited for him to notice her. She’d purposely left her car parked down the block, not wanting him to see it and turn around before she had her shot at him.

The scowl on his face as he climbed down from his truck didn’t bode well.

“I know, you don’t want to see me,” she said, approaching him with her hand out in front of her like a stop sign. “But I can’t talk to you at work, and I was afraid you’d hang up on me if I called and...”

“You’re right, I would have.” He walked past her and toward his door. “You can show yourself out,” he said, climbing the two cement steps and putting his key in the lock.

She wasn’t in. Was he maybe more rattled than he was letting on?

The house had a lovely front porch by the front door. But the side door was by the garage.

She’d known that was the one he’d use.

Some things hadn’t changed.

“Reese...”

He was still in uniform...all official looking in dress pants and shirt with his tie over one arm.

“If you want to keep your job, I suggest that you leave now.”

He said the words in the most congenial tone. Still, her feelings might have been hurt if not for the first part. If you want to keep your job.

He wasn’t firing her.

She turned before he could see the tears of sheer relief that flooded her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, and pretty much ran back to her car.

* * *

HE WAS NOT going to get involved between her and her son. Hadn’t asked a single question.

It wasn’t his business.

He didn’t want to know.

If the kid was punished...if they found out where he got the matches... What had Elliott written that was so bad he’d had to destroy it?

None of it was anything he needed to worry himself about.

And Faye...

She did her job well. Damn well, according to Brandt, who had her riding with him most of the time. Calm and cool in the most hideous circumstances...and compassionate, too.

She’d started an IV on a screaming four-year-old in seconds, finding the vein immediately. Dealt with the mother, whose face had been severely damaged by the crash, and had done CPR on an elderly occupant of the car. Everyone was still alive.