The Fireman's Son

And that had just been one accident.

His second-in-command had told him that if he was ever dying on the side of the road, he’d want Faye to be the one who came to rescue him.

Reese was busy not thinking about her on Friday night, just past ten, when his scanner beeped. There were reports of a fire out of control near a backyard on a cul-de-sac five miles from him. No one was home. There was no sign of anyone near the fire.

His perp was back.

Reese wasn’t on call but had consumed only half a beer. He could be at the scene. Pouring the rest down the drain, he grabbed his gear, suited up at home and headed to the site.

The truck was there ahead of him. Brandt. Mark. Riley.

And Faye.

Cyrus had switched with her so he could attend a family event. Reese had seen the change come through on the calendar.

As before, his guys had the fire put out with little effort, but Reese didn’t like what he saw. They’d had to use the hose this time.

“He doused a bigger area with gas,” Brandt said as Reese approached. The rest of the crew were standing back, watching, knowing better than to contaminate his crime scene with so much as a footprint that wasn’t needed.

Their boots were distinct—far different from a size-ten running shoe—but they could still ruin an imprint.

“And he’s moved to private property,” Reese said.

“Which is bad, considering that we now have to start giving serious consideration to the fact that people are likely to get hurt if this continues...” Brandt’s concerned tone echoed what Reese had already been thinking.

“But it’s going to make it harder for him to continue without someone seeing something,” Reese added.

Police were already canvassing the neighborhood. They’d left the fire scene to Reese. Evidence bag in hand, he took a step closer.

For now, with the scenes so small, he preferred to be alone. They were a small-town fire department. Paid, not volunteer. If they wanted to stay that way, everyone needed to pull extra weight.

And Brandt did more than his share.

Truth be told, Reese liked the fieldwork. He hadn’t fully realized just how much of his time would be taken up with administrative duties when he took the job. He didn’t mind them most of the time, but they’d hired him for his wildfire, investigative and inspection skills, too. That was the work he loved.

Kneeling near the burning embers, similar to last week’s but in a larger pile than the previous week, he noticed what he thought was a small piece of something white. He shined his flashlight. There was nothing but ashes in the center of the clear gas burn that snaked out for several feet. Except that fleck of white. He had to get to it without disturbing the circle.

Camera in hand, he snapped pictures first. Plenty of them.

He took shots of the doused grass and dirt that hadn’t burned. He had samples packed up to prove they’d been doused, but he already knew. He’d smelled them while he’d processed them.

Now...to get to that...

“Reese?”

Shit. He almost dropped his camera.

The truck hadn’t left yet. Brandt would still be conferring with the police detail and any witnesses. The last thing he’d expected was to hear Faye’s voice right behind him.

“What?” His bark was brusque. She should know better than to disturb him at a crime scene.

“I just...”

The tone of her voice was anything but brusque. She looked...scared?

“What is it?” Where the softness suddenly entering his tone had come from he had no idea. He hadn’t thought he had it left in him to be soft.

Had rather hoped there was none left.

“I recognized someone...”

“Where?” He was all business now. Taking her shoulder, he turned her so that her back was to the others. “Who?”

“Back there.” She pointed to the crowd of neighbors gathered behind the taped-off crime scene.

“He was standing off by himself...you know...like we’re trained to watch for...”

Technically, as an EMT she wasn’t trained to notice a possible suspect in the back of the crowd watching his work...but he wasn’t surprised that Faye would pick up on the jobs going on around her.

And take on whatever responsibility she could.

No. He shook his head. The Faye he thought he’d known hadn’t existed. And this wasn’t about her, anyway.

“Who was it?”

“A kid from The Lemonade Stand. Kyle Dawson.” She sounded scared. “He’s older than they usually allow to stay there, and he’s in a bungalow with his mother. I think he’s being homeschooled there. But I just saw him. I know it was him.”

“It’s dark, Faye. And...”

“He’s taken Elliott under his wing, Reese. My son really looks up to him...”

And Elliott had had matches. He’d started a fire...

“He’s a victim,” she said, her tone pleading. Prompting another memory flash. Senior year of high school. Captain of the football team had made fun of Faye’s dad’s beat-up car in the parking lot. Reese had been ready to deck him. Her dad, a janitor, was an honest man. A good guy who worked a lot and who was raising Faye all by himself. Faye had stopped him from taking the kid out. Telling him that the kid’s own dad had just skipped town, leaving him and his mother and little sister without support.

He wondered what had happened to Len Browning. Where he’d been when Faye’s husband had been abusing her...

Shaking his head, Reese admonished himself for the inappropriate trip down memory lane. A dead-end road.

“I’ll put a call in to Lila,” he said, pulling his phone out of the holster on his belt.

She nodded. Took a couple of steps back, watching him, as though she wanted to say more.

But as he started to speak into the phone, Faye turned around and left him to it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

FAYE COULDN’T SLEEP. Not even on the couch in Elliott’s room. She just couldn’t shut down the worries clouding her mind. The fear slicing through her heart.

Was Elliott’s Lemonade Stand mentor their serial arsonist?

She’d been so grateful when Kyle had taken Elliott under his wing. Had felt like their luck was finally changing when Elliott had responded so positively to the older kid. She hated the thought of him in trouble.

Dots connected of their own accord.

Elliott had gotten his matches from someone he was protecting. Even Sara Havens couldn’t get him to ante up on that one.

Was her son being led astray at the very place where she’d taken him for guidance?

Life seemed to explode out of control right before her eyes. Kyle was a resident at the Stand. His mother needed to be there. Elliott was only there as part of a special counseling and education program for at-risk kids.

But there was another program he could attend.

On the east coast.

Was she going to have to pull up again and move to such an unfamiliar place? Recertification in another state would take time. Where would she work in the meantime?

And that assumed the shelter in New Jersey would even take her son, or that they could work with her on the fee for having him there.

The Lemonade Stand was essentially free to her—she could donate when she was able.

She’d been considering talking to someone about a position on the High Risk team. Fire and Rescue didn’t have a representative on the team...

But she was going to have to leave.

She couldn’t expose Elliott to any more risk.

He’d set a fire, for God’s sake! A fire, of all things. She’d told him over and over about the dangers. He knew that she worked with people who risked their lives every single time a fire got out of control.

Turning over on the slippery leather couch so she could better see her son, watch him while he slept just like she’d done when he was a baby, she feared all of the things that were affecting his life. Feared everything that was out of her control.

Like her father’s death. Who’d have thought a man as gentle and giving, as clean-living as Len Browning, would end up being beaten to death a block from his own home for the measly ten dollars he’d had in his wallet?

She and Frank had only been married a year. Elliott was less than six months old. Len had never even seen him. He’d disapproved of Frank, so Frank had banned him from their home.

In those days Faye had been trying to convince herself she loved her husband. Had been trying to be a good wife. Learn how to be a good mother. She’d told herself they had time for hearts to soften, imagined Frank one day welcoming her father into their home. She’d thought then that her dad would see Frank was a good husband. And Frank would see how much she missed her dad. How much she needed him in his life.

Elliott moved. Faye froze. Waited to see if he’d settle back to a restful sleep. Or get up.

He didn’t know about the fire she’d been at earlier that night. He’d already been asleep when the call had come in.

He didn’t get up. And eventually she fell into a restless on-and-off doze that took her to morning.

* * *

KYLE DAWSON DID not set the fire. After Reese called Lila McDaniels, he’d come in to interview the young man. It was after midnight on Friday. The boy and his mother were waiting for him when he arrived at The Lemonade Stand after he finished processing the scene.

“My aunt’s husband just left her,” the fourteen-year-old said. “Mom had to go to her and I couldn’t let her go out alone.”

Mandy Dawson nodded. “He was with my sister and I the entire time,” she said, one of the saddest looks Reese had ever seen on her face. Like a woman who’d lost all hope. “He’s afraid to let me out of his sight.”

But Faye had seen the boy outside.

“When the next-door neighbor called, saying there was a fire, Kyle jumped up and ran out to see,” Mandy said, looking at her son with moist eyes. “My sister and I were actually excited to see him act like a normal kid again—even for a second.”

“I’m a normal kid, Mom...” The boy watched his mom with the concern of a much older man. Then he turned to Reese. “Mom’s...my grandfather...and then my dad...she doesn’t defend herself.”

“I didn’t want them to hurt Kyle,” the woman said. And Reese knew he was in way over his head.

No, Reese, my ex-husband hurt me, not our son.

What did you do with that?

The beast he was trained to fight raged by certain rules. You just had to assess the weather and the mood of the fire, then apply the right process. There was never a fire that they wouldn’t win against. It was just a matter of how long you had to fight and how much damage you could or couldn’t prevent in the meantime.

But this...

“And now here we sit,” Mandy said, looking at Reese, her eyes still wet with unshed tears. “Because Kyle ran outside, he’s suddenly a suspect? What has he ever done? My son’s a great student. He’s never been in any kind of trouble. He’s a good boy...”

Reese was done here.

“He’s not in trouble,” he said. But just to be certain, he had to ask, “What size shoe do you wear?”

“Nine, why?”

“No reason.”

He looked at the boy, knowing that he could fix at least one small portion of Mandy Dawson’s hopelessness. “We’re questioning everyone who was outside tonight,” he said. “Because you are both residents here, we wanted to make certain you got back safely, first and foremost. We’re just looking for anything you might have seen, however innocuous, anything you might have noticed or that caught your attention, for whatever reason. A candy wrapper on the ground. A person standing alone—”

“I know that my father’s white truck was nowhere to be seen, and that he wasn’t outside with the other people standing around...”

The boy had been looking for signs of his father. He hadn’t noticed anything that could help Reese. The fire truck had just been arriving when he’d run outside. He’d noticed plenty while he’d been standing there, just not anything that might point to a perp. Clearly Kyle was interested in the business of fighting fires. If Reese had hired someone to report on the activities of his crew, if he’d been running a secret performance review, he’d have just received a great one.

Reese thanked Kyle and his mother for their time, apologized for having created any unnecessary angst by requesting a meeting with them and left.

He spent the entire drive home resisting the temptation to go back. To ask if he could do anything to help. He spent the next hour at home, telling himself not to call Faye. He was out of his league on this one.

There was nothing he could do.

The urges he was feeling were his own issue—a product of living with bone-deep regret. Of having lost someone close to him because he hadn’t been aware enough. Hadn’t done enough.

His skills lay in firefighting.

It was best if he just stuck with that.

* * *

FAYE WAS OFF all weekend and spent every waking moment with her son. Trying to fill the two days with happy memories, as though they could wipe out years of frightening ones.

He wanted to go to the beach, so they spent both days there. She made picnic lunches. Bought him a boogie board and herself an umbrella with a weighted stand. She bought sunscreen and beach towels—all things they’d had in their old life but she’d left behind.

Elliott was fine with the plans—as long as they didn’t include her.

“I’m not sitting with you,” he said as she packed up their gear on Saturday morning. He’d come into the kitchen in his new fluorescent green and blue suit with a drab green T-shirt, carrying his new boogie board. She’d picked up the oversize shoulder bag with her blanket, two beach towels and the book she wanted to read.

“Fine.”

He didn’t usually sit when they went to the beach. He played in the water.

The cooler sat on the counter, filled with ice and food. Another bag held drinks and cups and paper towels. “Could you get the cooler, please?” she asked him, putting her purse on her opposite shoulder. “It will fit on top of your board.”

“No.”

“Elliott.”

“You wanted the dumb picnic, you carry it.”

The whole “happy memory” plan in mind, she picked up the cooler.

“Could you at least get the bag?”

“No.”

“Elliott!”

“No. I don’t want that junk. I shouldn’t hafta carry it.”

His disrespect couldn’t be ignored. Sara had made that point very clear. “We don’t have to go.”

“Fine.”

Dropping his new board on the floor, he stepped on it, and then off, dropping into a chair, his arms on the table. “I didn’t want to go to the stupid beach, anyways,” he said.

“I thought you did.”

“Not with you, I didn’t.”

Two years’ worth of battling his hateful words still hadn’t thickened her skin enough to prevent their sting.

“But you want to go.”

He shrugged.

“And you’ll get hungry and not want to have to come home with me for lunch. You like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which is what I packed.”

He didn’t budge, his expression sour.

“So...you carry the cooler down with your lunch and I won’t walk beside you once we get to the beach. Or put your towel down by my blanket.”

Muttering something under his breath, Elliott took the cooler from her, put it on his board and stood sullenly by the door, waiting for her to unlock it and set him free.

* * *

SUNDAY DIDN’T GO much better. He didn’t think he should have to make his bed because Sundays were days of rest.

“Making your bed keeps the sheets clean for when you climb back between them,” she told him. Sara had told her to set boundaries, to give him rules and chores—not too many, but enough—and then to stick to them. To build a source of security, and also a sense that she meant what she said. That her word was something upon which he could rely.

But it was Sunday. After spending the day before utterly alone at the beach watching her son in the water, watching him sit on his towel several feel from hers while he ate his sandwiches and walking behind him back to the car, she was tired.

She didn’t want to fight with him, and an unmade bed wasn’t a big deal.

But keeping her word was.

“Bed made before breakfast,” she said. “Come on, Elliott, you know the rules.”

“Yeah, like you think beds aren’t dirty.” The words were soft. Barely reaching her. But their slap took her air.

He’d heard her say words Frank had made her say. She hadn’t known then. She did now. More, Frank. I’m a dirty girl in a dirty bed.

Turning her back so he wouldn’t see the sudden flood of tears, she said, “I’m making pancakes. When your bed is made, you can join me for breakfast. If you choose not to make it, you will not be eating this morning.”

He was in the kitchen before the first pancake was off the griddle.

He didn’t apologize. An hour later, when she was back in the kitchen and once again packed and ready for a day at the beach, he picked up the bag with the drinks and paper towels and put it on his boogie board. He left the cooler for her to carry.

Faye didn’t thank him, didn’t say a word. She didn’t want to push him to the point where she’d be forced to make them stay home. The idea of spending all day cooped up in their apartment with him was too much to contemplate.

She could force him to go shopping with her but knew that if she did, he’d very likely just make rude comments to and about her the entire time—loud enough for others to hear.

With the blanket bag on one shoulder and her purse on the other, Faye picked up the cooler. She walked a couple feet behind her son when they arrived at the beach. Kept an equal distance when she ate her sandwiches. He ate every bite of his.

She watched him play. He made friends with a couple of brothers that were about his age and laughed so loud in the waves she could hear him from her spot on the beach.

And Sunday night, as she waited for him to climb into bed—he wouldn’t let her tuck him in—and turn out the light in his room, he gave her three words that made all of the effort worthwhile.

“Today was fun.”

The words sang her to sleep and took her to work on Monday. They were still ringing in her ears when she picked Elliott up from The Lemonade Stand Monday afternoon. Still in uniform, she’d be heading back to the station for the rest of her twelve-hour shift as soon as she dropped him at home with Suzie. She’d be on call all night, as well.

Reese, thank goodness, was off on Mondays. At least she’d been able to relax as she did her chores at the station, worked out and helped prepare the noon meal. There’d been no looking over her shoulder or worrying about being hit with completely inappropriate and unwanted sexual feelings at the unexpected sight of him in the distance.

She’d barely stepped inside the private section of the Stand when Elliott approached, his backpack slung over his shoulder, and said, “Let’s go,” in a tone that didn’t bode well.

Head slightly bent, he didn’t look at her. When he brushed against her on his way to the door, he didn’t do so gently.

If Lila or Sara had been present, he’d have been reprimanded for that. Faye knew she was expected to say something, as well. And she would.

Sometime before her son went to bed.

But more pressing than her son’s long-term counseling was finding out what had upset him. She had to deal with one before she could have any effect on the other.

He didn’t immediately and automatically listen to her, as he did Sara and Lila. That hurt her feelings more than it should.

Reminding herself that Elliott loved her, she pushed the automatic unlock button on her key fob so he could get in the car as soon as he reached it.

If he thought he was going to subject her to another sullen and silent ride home, he had another think coming. She had to go back to work. And she wasn’t leaving him this way.

Her son was angry with her for letting his father hurt her. At himself for being angry with her. At the world for giving him a father who was mean instead of loving to his mother.

She looked weak in his eyes for not stopping what was going on behind closed doors. And her weakness was a huge source of his insecurity.

Reminding herself of what they were dealing with—as she’d been counseled repeatedly to do over the past two years—Faye got in the car ready to speak.

“How could you?” Elliott practically spat the words. His blue eyes, once so sweet and trusting when they looked up at her, were more like points of glass.

Laced with bitterness.

Nothing an eight-year-old should be experiencing, let alone shooting toward his mother.

“How could I what?” she asked, banking down the hurt feelings to focus on him.

“You told on Kyle.”

“Elliott...”

“You did. I know you did.” The boy was looking straight at her, his thin shoulders far too little to bear all of the weight he continued to put upon them.

She’d spoken with Lila briefly that morning to find out what the situation would be with the older boy. She’d wanted to prepare Elliott for the other boy’s absence if nothing else.

Lila had assured her that everything was fine. She claimed Kyle had had nothing to do with the fire and that he and his mother were still at the Stand.

“I don’t...” She couldn’t lie to him. She knew what he was talking about. She just didn’t know how much he knew.

“Can you calm down enough to tell me about it? And then I’ll tell you what I did or did not do.”

“There was a fire Friday night by his aunt’s house. He and his mom had a safe trip to visit her for something...”

Safe trip. It was one of the terms they sometimes used with kids to describe trips away from protective custody during at-risk domestic violence times. A term most kids never heard. The fact that it had become a normal part of her eight-year-old son’s vocabulary hurt her heart.

“He went out to look and then when they got back to the Stand, he had to go talk to Chief Bristow in a little room with his mom there.”

“Maybe that was just to see if he knew anything.”

Elliott shook his head. “You told, Mom. Kyle never saw anyone he knew so no one else could have told on him. It had to be you.”

She took a deep breath. “You said Kyle is in trouble,” she said. “What kind of trouble is he in?”

The little boy’s shrug was telling—most particularly to a mother who used to be able to read him like a book.

“He’s not in trouble, is he?” she pressed.

Elliott shrugged again and folded his arms against his chest as he stared out the front windshield.

“You’re a snitch.” The boy’s tone had softened considerably. His chin rested against his chest. “You snitched on my friend.”

“I told Chief Bristow that I recognized Kyle,” she said. She’d promised him the truth and she was not in a position to go backward on the climb to rebuild his trust. “But I did so for his sake as much as anything else,” she said. “I was concerned about him being out on the street where his father could have had access to him.” She didn’t figure then was the time to tell her son that officials believed the fire was part of a serial arsonist’s work.

Elliott looked at her.

She started the car and drove home, feeling his stare the whole way.

When she pulled into their apartment’s drive, he didn’t immediately reach to undo his seat belt.

“Look, Elliott. I’m not perfect by any means. But I did the right thing Friday night. And I would do it again.” They’d told her to be firm. To be consistent. To set boundaries.

He sat still, staring out the front window.

And she forgot counseling for a second. “You hate it that I didn’t tell on Dad for what he was doing.”

“So?”

“So, I wasn’t a snitch then. And it was wrong.”

His gaze swung toward her and she continued.

“Sometimes you have to tell,” she went on. “And if there’s a possibility that someone could get hurt, you have to tell every time. That’s something I know now.”