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“Where’s the captain?” Priscilla asked as she cut the lasagna into large squares so it would cool faster.
“He’s got someone in his office.”
Priscilla hoped whoever it was wouldn’t keep the captain so long that he missed a hot lunch. She liked Captain Campeon. He was stern and humorless, but he kept strict order, and she approved of that. She didn’t function well in a chaotic environment.
Priscilla noticed no one was touching the salad she’d put out. “You can eat the salad while the lasagna cools.”
She served some salad for herself. The mixture of field greens topped with fresh garden tomatoes tasted pretty good as far as she was concerned. But her fellow firefighters seemed to thrive on red meat and a variety of breaded, fried foods—along with a steady diet of action movies on TV, twangy country music on the radio and off-color jokes just about everywhere.
She was adjusting.
The guys went for the whole-wheat rolls and butter she’d put out. Only Bing tried a little bit of the salad, making faces as he chewed.
“Hey, Priscilla,” Bing said. “Where’d you get these leafy things? Did you pick ’em from that weedy patch out back?”
She just shook her head. The only lettuce most of these guys had ever seen was the soggy iceberg they put on their hamburgers. She started to say something to that effect, but the captain chose that moment to appear with his guest in tow.
Roark.
Priscilla’s heart thundered so loud she was sure everyone would hear it. Tony and Ethan knew of the deal she’d struck with Roark, but no one else did. She hoped he wouldn’t say anything. If he did, there would be no end to the teasing she would get, and any credibility she’d built up would disintegrate.
The others greeted Roark like an old friend—which he was by now. Since the men who’d died in the warehouse fire had come from this company, Roark’s investigation had brought him to their station quite a few times.
“Captain Epperson is gonna have some lunch with us,” Campeon said. “Then he wants to talk to you—all of you, one on one.”
The solemn note in the captain’s voice was troubling. Everyone was wondering what this was about. Since this station responded first to the warehouse fire, Roark had no doubt interviewed everyone already, probably more than once. Why do it again?
But Roark reassured them with his easy smile. “You guys don’t mind if I mooch some lunch, do you?” He didn’t make eye contact with Priscilla, which was a relief. Perhaps he didn’t want to be ribbed any more than she did.
“Join us at your own risk,” Bing said. “Priscilla made lunch.” He nodded toward the lasagna pan. “We think it might still be moving.” A couple of the other guys couldn’t help laughing. Even Tony cracked a smile.
She couldn’t really blame them. Her previous meals had been pretty awful. But she was sure this would be different. Yes, it was a vegetarian dish, but her father loved it. Even Cory had loved it when Lorraine had served it at a Garner family dinner, and he was a meat-and-potatoes guy all the way.
Still, she didn’t like Roark witnessing the guys making fun of her. She didn’t like appearing incompetent in front of him—or anyone.
Priscilla quickly served the squares of lasagna, oozing with cheese and fragrant with fresh herbs. The men stared at their plates, but no one seemed willing to take that first bite.
Finally Roark took a leap of faith. “This looks good.” He put a big forkful in his mouth. Others followed suit.
Priscilla took a bite, too—and almost spit it out. Her mouth was on fire. It tasted as if the sauce contained a quart of jalapeño pepper sauce, though she’d used only a drop or two.
Horrified, Priscilla looked around the table to see faces turning red, eyes watering, hands grabbing for glasses of tea or milk to try to wash down the offending substance.
“Um, interesting,” Tony said, barely managing to swallow. “Where did you get the recipe, Pris? The Cataclysmic Heartburn Cookbook?”
“It’s my mother’s recipe,” she said, bewildered. She’d followed the recipe exactly. There was no way….
Then she saw that one man at the table hadn’t taken a bite. Bing Tate was trying to hide his mirth—and not doing a good job of it.
Suspecting she’d been sabotaged, she got up and stalked over to the cabinet were they kept spices and found the bottle of jalapeño sauce she’d bought recently. It was nearly empty.
She marched back to the table. “Bing Tate, did you dump a whole bottle of jalapeño sauce in my sauce when I wasn’t looking?” She remembered he’d been in the kitchen that morning, getting a refill on his coffee and taking a little too long to do it.
“Who, me?” he said with feigned innocence. Obviously she’d found her culprit. Though what Bing had done was mean, she was relieved the disaster wasn’t her fault this time.
She struggled not to react with anger. Practical jokes were a part of life around here, a natural product of boredom and too much testosterone, and anyone who wasn’t a good sport only got hit with more foolish mayhem.
But no one else seemed to think Bing’s joke was funny. Otis put some more salad on his plate and drowned it with ranch dressing. “The salad’s good, anyway, Pris,” he said grudgingly, and she could have kissed his shiny bald head.
“Anyone want a ham sandwich?” Priscilla asked brightly. “I can’t mess that up.”
“The guys can make their own sandwiches,” Campeon said, clearly irritated by the incident. “I think Captain Epperson would like to get on with his interviews. Garner, he can start with you.”
“Me?” The order took her by surprise. “I wasn’t even at the warehouse fire.” She’d still been in training, and up until now Roark hadn’t ever included the rookies in his investigation.
“You,” Roark confirmed. “We can talk in the captain’s office.”
Chapter Three
Roark’s breath caught in his throat the way it did every time he saw Priscilla. Even in the loose-fitting department uniform of dark pants and a golf shirt, her caramel-brown hair pulled back in a braid, she looked touchable. He stepped around Eric Campeon’s desk and sat in the captain’s chair, putting a large amount of polished oak between them.
“Is that the kind of crap you have to put up with all the time?” He’d been surprised by the protective instincts that had arisen when he realized she’d been the victim of a mean joke. And then he’d been impressed by the cool, controlled way she’d handled the situation.
“It used to be worse.” She took the chair opposite. “I wasn’t very popular when I was first assigned here. None of us were, because we were taking over for the three men who died. And, let’s face it, it’s pretty hard to fill the shoes of a martyr.”
“I can imagine.”
“But we all just kept our mouths shut and did our jobs, and gradually the others began to accept us. Except maybe for Bing Tate.”
“The guy’s an ass.” Roark had seen how hard Priscilla was trying, how much she was hoping the guys would like her lasagna. When he’d realized what Tate had done, he’d wanted to wring the scrawny jerk’s neck.
Priscilla shrugged. “I’ll get him back in some passive-aggressive way. Maybe I’ll short-sheet his bed.”
Roark didn’t think she would. She wouldn’t stoop to Bing’s level. He liked that about her. She wasn’t vengeful or petty. He’d seen her take a lot of crap during training, and she’d always been a good sport.
He suspected sometimes the taunting had hurt more than she let on. She wouldn’t show any weakness, though. Not Priscilla.
“So what’s going on?” she asked. “Why do you want to talk to me?”
Truthfully, he would have invented any excuse to get her alone for a few minutes. Unfortunately he did have a legitimate reason. “I think the serial arsonist is someone connected to the fire service.”
Priscilla’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. I really hope you’re wrong.”
It was a sad fact that many arsonists turned out to be firefighters or former firefighters. A person might be drawn to the fire service because he wanted to serve his community or save property or because the lifestyle appealed to him or his father and grandfather were firefighters. But it might just as easily be an unhealthy fascination with fire.
Clearly this particular perpetrator wasn’t your average firebug—a teenage mischief maker or someone out to collect on insurance. This guy knew a lot about fires—and how not to get caught setting them.
“We don’t know for sure, but the evidence is leaning that way,” Roark said. “The fires aren’t set just to watch something burn. The guy is deliberately trying to injure or kill firefighters, which indicates he has some emotional connection. I’ve been investigating every firefighter who’s left the department under less-than-favorable circumstances in the past ten years, but so far none of them look good as a suspect. I’m wondering now if it’s someone still currently employed, maybe someone who got passed over for promotion.”
“But surely no one from this shift. I mean, they were all here when the warehouse fire started. They couldn’t have started it.”
Roark lowered his voice. “This isn’t common knowledge, but there was a timer on the ignition device. The whole thing could have been set up several hours before.”
“I don’t want to believe this. It can’t be any of the guys here.”
“What about Tate?”
“Not even him. Every one of those guys out there has grieved for the men who died. I’ve watched them.”
“It’s only a possibility at this point. It could be anybody, from any shift, any station.”
“So why are you talking to me about this? How could I possibly help?”
“Maybe you weren’t here for the warehouse fire, but you’ve been around for several months now. You could see or hear something as easily as anyone. For instance, if there’s anyone with an ax to grind with the department—any scuttlebutt going around—that’s the kind of information I need.”
“You want me to rat on my brothers?”
“To stop this guy from killing more firefighters? Yeah. And he will kill again. If he goes unchecked, it’s only a matter of time.” The arsonist often left a little surprise for the firefighters. Once, it was a vicious dog that had bitten Murph McCrae when he’d tried to rescue it. Another time, the serial arsonist had left a homemade bomb, though fortunately the thing hadn’t detonated.
Priscilla sagged a little in her chair. “I know he’s got to be stopped.”
“Anything you tell me is confidential,” Roark continued. “I’m asking everyone the same thing. If there’s anyone I should look at more closely…”
“I wish I could help. But I’m the last person anyone would trust or confide in,” she said a little testily.
“Just keep your eyes and ears open.”
“I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”
“Believe me, I don’t like it either. And I hope I’m wrong. But it’s my responsibility to catch this guy, and I’ll do whatever it takes. Even if it ticks people off.” He would not allow another person to die on his watch.
“Is that all?” She stood, preparing to make her escape.
He stood, too, and stepped around the desk. He didn’t want to end their meeting on such a negative note. “Have you told your mother all about me?”
She nodded, inching away from him, putting more distance between them. “Mother is thrilled. She got on the Internet so she could read all the newspaper articles you’ve been quoted in. She printed them off to show my aunt Clara.”
“Aunt Clara being…the mother of the bride?”
“Good guess. She and my mom are sisters and they’re intensely competitive. It’s killing Mother that Clara’s daughter is getting married before hers, especially since…”
“Since what?”
“Well, since last year Mother thought she heard wedding bells. Turned out to be a funeral dirge.”
“The guy you were rebounding from?”
She nodded. “When we broke up, Mother was more disappointed than I was, I think.”
“And now she has something to pin her hopes on again.”
Priscilla nodded, wincing. “I hadn’t realized it was going to get this complicated. I thought this plan would buy me some peace, at least for a few months. Maybe I should claim we broke up at the last minute.”
Roark smiled. “I wouldn’t do that to your mother. But I do have one question for you.”
“Yes?”
“How is anyone going to believe I’m your boyfriend when you look like a scared rabbit every time I get within two feet of you?”
“I’ll do better,” she promised hastily.
“Maybe we should rehearse. You know, practice looking fondly at each other. Hold hands.” With every suggestion, her eyes got a little wider.
“That’s not necessary,” she said. “We’ll do fine.” Then she did escape. But Roark wasn’t too discouraged—if anything, her skittishness raised the bar. Would he even want a woman if she was a pushover? He enjoyed the challenge.
ROARK HAD BEEN LOOKING forward to this day like a kid counting the days to Christmas. The wedding of two people he’d never met. He could devote the whole evening to Priscilla. She would be his captive, stuck at the wedding and unable to flee. And he intended to see how far that could take him.
He pulled up to the curb in front of her two-story frame house in Oak Cliff’s historic district and cut the engine. He was late by five minutes, which was probably good. He didn’t want to appear too eager. He checked his hair in the mirror and then laughed at himself for being vain. His brothers and sisters had always teased him about that, about the fact that he liked to dress well and look his best even if he was just running to the grocery store for milk.
When he rang the bell, Tony Veracruz promptly opened the front door. He held a crying baby in one arm and a cat in the other and he was wearing a big smile.
Roark had been to this house before. Tony had invited him over a couple of times to play shuffleboard. He knew that Priscilla owned the house and lived in the upper apartment, renting the main floor to Tony. But he’d never been up the stairs.
“Priscilla will be down in a minute,” Tony said.
They were standing in a small vestibule. A set of steps to the immediate left of the door led upstairs. Roark wanted to see what kind of apartment a woman like Priscilla called home. But she apparently didn’t want him up there.
“Come on in,” Tony was saying. “Sorry about the racket. Josephina is teething.”
Last he’d heard, Tony didn’t have a baby. A nine-year-old daughter, yes. And there was Jasmine, perched on a chair in the living room, holding a baby bottle.
“Jasmine and I are babysitting,” Tony explained. “The baby belongs to Julie’s chef. Her regular sitter is sick.” Julie was Tony’s wife and also the owner of Brady’s Tavern and Tearoom, across the street from Fire Station 59.
Roark could see that Tony and his daughter had been exerting considerable effort to distract the baby from her teething pain. Toys of every description were spread out over the coffee table and a large area rug in the living room.
“Jasmine,” Tony said, “run upstairs and tell Pris her boyfriend is here.”
Startled, Jasmine stared at Roark. “Priscilla has a boyfriend?” She sounded almost scandalized.
“Go,” Tony said.
When she’d gone, Roark asked, “You aren’t giving Priscilla trouble over this fake boyfriend thing, are you?”
“Are you kidding? After all the grief she gave me when Julie and I got engaged, I couldn’t let a golden opportunity like this pass by.” He paused, put the cat down and shifted the baby to his other shoulder. “I shouldn’t do that, huh?”
“It’s a bit of a sore spot with her, I think,” Roark said carefully. “She’d probably never admit that.”
“Yeah, heaven forbid she show any weakness.” Tony jiggled the baby and offered her a teething ring, which she promptly rejected. “Aw, come on, little one.”
