“No,” said Chris.
“They’re lucky,” Marshal Faulkner said from behind him. “I understand two of you kids pulled a family of five out of . . .” He consulted a notepad, then pointed at a burned pile of rubble. “. . . that house.”
“Me and Nick,” said Gabriel. “They were right by the door. I guess that makes them the lucky ones.”
His words were sharp edged, a reaction to authority, and it was almost enough to make Michael snap at him. But he heard the fear beneath Gabriel’s snark, and he understood the reason behind it.
It gave Michael the answer to one question: his brothers hadn’t been trapped in the house at all. He’d crawled through smoke for nothing. He’d lost consciousness and started an earthquake for . . . nothing.
He swallowed his own self-doubt before they could see it. “Anyone who’s still sitting up and talking is lucky. Can you guys wait here for fifteen minutes while I check the house?”
“Where else are we going to go?” said Nick.
His words weren’t snarky at all. It was a genuine question.
“I’m working on it,” said Michael. “Sit tight.” And then he started walking.
Hannah and Marshal Faulkner were right on his heels, but he needed to get some distance from that ambulance before his brothers figured out that he didn’t have a clue about what to do or where to go. He didn’t even know the right answers to keep himself out of a police station.
When he hit the grass in front of his house, however, he stopped. The sidewalk was destroyed, but from what he could tell, the damage didn’t reach far below the surface. All the front windows had been smashed out, and the boards of the porch looked warped. The front door was hanging open, half off its hinges. Splintered wood surrounded the area around the lock and the knob.
“Wow. You really did break in,” he said to Hannah.
“Yeah.” She paused. “It’s procedure. The windows—we have to let oxygen in—”
She sounded guilty, and Michael shook his head. “I’m not blaming you, Hannah.”
“People blame the fire department all the time,” said Marshal Faulkner. “Broken windows are the least of their worries.”
His tone sounded conspiratorial, but Hannah’s earlier warning had Michael on edge. Was this a ploy, to get him to talk? Or just his girlfriend’s dad cutting him some slack?
Michael kept his mouth shut and climbed the steps.
A rapid cracking sound echoed from inside the house. Michael stopped short at the doorway.
Marshal Faulkner clicked on a flashlight and didn’t seem concerned.
“Is someone already in here?” said Michael. Some part of him rebelled against it. This was his house. No one had a right to be in here.
Then again, the shattered windows and broken door wouldn’t do much to keep out vandals. He’d need to board the place up. He started making a mental list.
“Someone is checking the walls,” said Hannah. “Making sure there’s no fire left.”
Gabriel would know for sure, but Michael couldn’t think of a reasonable way to ask for him to join them. When they stepped through the door, he automatically reached for the switch, then told himself to stop being an idiot.
“We killed the electric for the street,” offered Marshal Faulkner. “Gas and water, too.” He swept his flashlight across the foyer floor.
Michael almost wished he hadn’t. All the wide beam showed was a cone of smoke and dark dust swirling in the air. The light found the stairway bannister: all black. The carpeted steps, too.
“Jesus,” Michael whispered. He was glad his brothers weren’t here.
The flashlight beam moved higher. “We can’t go upstairs,” said the fire marshal. “I don’t like the look of those steps.”
Michael thought about what that meant. He had his phone in his pocket—if it had even survived the swim in the creek. The case was water resistant—an investment he’d made after losing a phone in a koi pond once. He checked now and found it working. Did his brothers have theirs? What about clothes? Schoolbooks?
Identification? Car keys? His own wallet was plastered inside his back pocket, but his ID and credit cards seemed intact. He had no idea what his brothers might have on them, if anything.
Marshal Faulkner hadn’t waited for a response. He’d moved into the dining room. Michael watched the flashlight beam play along the floor, the walls, then the table.
Everything had a fine layer of soot.
The marshal stopped at the far side of the room, until Michael couldn’t see him through the haze, just the bouncing beam of his flashlight. “How long did the fire burn?”
Michael shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“When we broke in, we didn’t see anything actively burning,” Hannah said. “The place was hot and full of smoke.”
The fire marshal’s flashlight stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. “Do you remember stopping the fire?”
“No.” Michael suspected Gabriel had, but it wasn’t like he could say that. His brother certainly wouldn’t have used a fire extinguisher. But Michael had no other explanation. If he admitted not being here when the fire started, would that look better or worse? He didn’t know.
Then his eyes followed the light beam as it stopped on the door at the opposite side of the kitchen, leading to the garage—where he kept all his landscaping equipment and supplies.
If this house had gone up in flames, he wouldn’t have just lost their home, he would have lost the business, too.
“No fire in here,” the marshal said. “Just smoke damage.”
“How can you tell?”
“No burn pattern,” said Hannah. “Look at the floor and the walls.”
He couldn’t see anything but dark grey ash everywhere.
The light centered on him. “You all right?”
Maybe the residual smoke was getting to him. He cleared his throat. His eyes burned and he rubbed at them. “Yeah,” he ground out. “Fine.”
Hannah found his hand in the darkness. She squeezed once.
He didn’t squeeze back—but he didn’t let go either. He followed the arcing light back into the foyer.
Here, he could see what they meant about the burn pattern. The carpeting was black, but too black. The stairwell had been on fire. He could smell the difference, too, now that he was paying attention. Something stronger and more acrid than the smoke alone.
The flashlight hit the living room carpeting and illuminated the edge of the sofa.
Or what was left of the sofa. Michael only recognized it from its position in the room. No more green upholstery. Nothing left but the arm of a charred shell.
The fire marshal stepped back into the archway separating the foyer from the living room, shining his light along the carpeting, then along the ceiling.
The drywall had burned away, and Michael was looking at charred beams and exposed insulation. Then the light skittered down the opposite side of the room, where a few bookcases and cabinets had been built into the wall.
Michael remembered being eight years old, resentful of his three toddler brothers who never shut up. He remembered sulkily “helping” his father install those wall units, probably just an excuse to keep him out of his mother’s hair.
Why are we building this, Dad?
Because your mother wants bookcases.
Then why isn’t she building them?
Because I want to give them to her.
He couldn’t remember how much he’d actually helped, but he remembered holding a hammer, his father’s hand secure over his as he showed him how to hit a nail. He remembered being proud of the finished product, of his mother’s reaction.
Now there was nothing left. Just a burned shell of where the bookcases used to be.
Hannah edged closer to him. “If this is too much—”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.”
It wasn’t. He wasn’t.
Hannah didn’t move away. Her voice was very soft. “You’re shaking.”
<
br /> He was. He made sure his voice wasn’t. “It’s nothing. It’s cold.”
A new voice spoke from down the hallway. “Want me to grab a blanket off one of the ambos?”
Michael turned, glad for the distraction, for the reason to look away from those goddamn bookcases. I’m sorry, Mom.
Like he was a kid again, and he’d broken her favorite dish or something.
No, worse. Like he’d burned down her house.
You did burn down her house.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m good.”
The new firefighter clicked on his own flashlight, creating another beam in the hallway, his feet crunching on grit as he came over to join them. When he got close, Michael recognized him as the firefighter who’d been with Hannah. The guy was tall, taller than Michael, and built like a linebacker. He had a bar in one hand, one end resting against his shoulder. A camera-like device hung around his neck.
His flashlight beam lifted almost to Michael’s face, so he could see everyone clearly, but no one was blinded. His expression was some mixture of surprised and intrigued. “I still can’t believe you’re upright and talking.”
Michael wasn’t sure what the right response to that was. “Give me an hour.”
“I checked the walls on this level. Thermal imaging doesn’t show anything. I think you’re clear.”
Again, no appropriate response came to mind. This man had dragged him out of a house unconscious. He’d helped perform CPR. He’d watched Michael lose his shit.
Actually, if he’d walked in here a minute later, he would have seen Michael lose it for a second time.
“Thanks,” Michael finally said.
“No problem.”
“This is Irish,” said Hannah. “Irish, this is Michael.”
Michael knew he should be following social niceties, but his brain wasn’t providing the automatic responses. Maybe it was the dark, maybe it was the residual haze of smoke in the living room, maybe it was the fact that his life had literally turned into a pile of crap around him. But he could only stand there, silent, staring at Irish like he had two brain cells left.
“Could you shine that light over here?” said the fire marshal.
His words broke through the awkward tension. Irish pointed the flashlight toward the other beam.
“Look.” Marshal Faulkner gestured with his flashlight along the floor. “Can you see the pattern of the burn?”
Michael just saw a whole lot of burned carpeting. “It’s all burned.”
“Look. Follow the light. See how it’s darker along this line?”
The light traced a path through the thin smoke, following a stretch of charred carpeting.
Then Michael saw it, a clear line of darkness through the rest of the blackened material. “It’s darker. Why?”
“Burned hotter,” said Irish, as if it were obvious.
Hannah glanced up. “Accelerant does that.”
“Like gasoline?” Calla had used accelerant to start the fires a few months back. She’d been drawing pentagrams in the houses she destroyed, in an attempt to call the Guides. Was this a pentagram? It was too dark to tell, and he couldn’t ask without sounding more involved than he was.
Guides marked houses with pentagrams, too, but he’d never heard of it being done by fire. Then again, anything was possible. Neither she nor the Guides would have needed accelerant to start a fire—unless they wanted to send a message. Like now.
Everything here pointed in both directions, leaving Michael feeling like he sat squarely in the line of fire.
Hannah’s father shrugged. “Could be gasoline. Or kerosene. Lighter fluid. Anything, really. Pretty clear pour pattern. No one tried to hide anything here.” The light flicked back to Michael. “Deliberate. No question. Not that I had any doubt, with four other houses going to ash right this second.”
“Who would do this?” said Irish.
His tone was the same as the fire marshal’s: not quite an interrogation, but almost. Michael waited for Marshal Faulkner to say something cop-like, maybe, I’ll ask the questions here, but he didn’t say anything. Maybe he was waiting for the answer, too.
At least Michael didn’t have to lie. “I have no idea. Is that Ryan Stacey kid still behind bars?”
“Who’s Ryan Stacey?” said Irish.
“Local kid,” said Hannah. “He was setting houses on fire a few months ago.”
Ryan had been helping Calla. They didn’t know that, but Michael did.
Not that he could volunteer that information.
“Ryan Stacey didn’t do this,” said Marshal Faulkner. “Not from prison. New question.”
Michael coughed. He felt like the room was spinning. “Shoot.”
“Looking at this room, your house should be rolling like the rest of the street. I’m going to ask you again. How’d you stop the fire?”
Michael had no answer for that. He ran his hands across his face. “I don’t know. I don’t—it must have burned itself out.”
“That’s not how fire works, and I’m pretty sure you know that as well as I do.”
He did know that. He also knew he didn’t have any answers to give. His thoughts were still trying to make sense of the fires—and who had started them.
There was someone in the woods.
Was it just Chris? Or someone else? Was it a coincidence this happened when he’d been chasing his brother?
Had he been lured away?
He didn’t know. He couldn’t even answer his own questions, much less the fire marshal’s.
Michael rubbed at his eyes and wanted to sit down. “Are you going to arrest me because the fire stopped?”
Marshal Faulkner held his eyes across the haze. “Not yet.”
“He’s not going to arrest you at all,” said Hannah. Her voice was firm.
“Hannah—”
Irish cleared his throat. “I’m going to go help run lines.”
“Take her with you,” said Marshal Faulkner.
Hannah inhaled to object, and her father said, “Don’t think I won’t order you out of here.”
“It’s okay,” Michael said. “He’s doing his job.”
“Come on, Blondie,” said Irish. He gave Hannah a pat on the shoulder and gestured toward the front. “We’re shorthanded anyway.”
Blondie. Michael tucked that away in his head to think about later. Along with the casual way Irish had touched her.
But she gave Michael a last, lingering squeeze of her hand. “Find me before you leave, okay?”
“Okay.”
And then she was gone, following Irish through the door.
Leaving him there with the fire marshal.
Michael wondered if he could make a run for it, or if the guy would take that as guilt and just shoot him.
But then Marshal Faulkner said, “I’m going to let you take your brothers out of here.”
His voice was almost kind, and for an instant, Michael wished he was seventeen again, that the marshal could call DFS and find someone else to make all this go away. He nodded. “Okay.”
“Not far. You understand me?”
“Yeah,” said Michael, making no effort to hide the exhaustion in his voice.
Marshal Faulkner pulled a card from his coat and held it out. “I want you to call me later, after you’ve gotten some sleep. After you talk to the insurance company and get yourself settled.”
Michael reached for the card. He nodded.
The man didn’t let go of it. “I expect to hear from you within twenty-four hours. Clear on that, too?”
“Yes. Clear.” He took the card.
“Good.” The marshal clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go see if you have a working vehicle.”
CHAPTER 6
The truck was undamaged, so Michael had a working vehicle. Three, really, if you counted Hunter’s Jeep and their SUV, but they wouldn’t all fit in the jeep, and the keys to the SUV were upstairs, in a backpack or on top of a dresser. Unreachable, at l
east for now.
His brothers and Hunter said nothing when he showed up at the ambulance again, the fire marshal at his side. They silently piled into the truck while Michael turned on the heat. His brothers climbed into the back, while Hunter sat up front, Casper curled up between him and Michael.
He wondered how long he could sit here with the car in park before they’d realize he had no idea where to go.
He wondered how long this shocked silence would last.
Did they blame him? Not like it mattered. Michael blamed himself. His fingers felt like icicles, and he flexed them in front of the vent, willing the car to warm up more quickly.
They were waiting for him to say something. To do something. Their expectations sat like a weight against his skin.
He shifted into gear and glanced at the clock on the dash. Four o’clock in the morning. He could check into a hotel at 4 AM, right?
Nick cleared his throat from the back seat. “I texted Adam. He says we can go to his place.”
Adam was Nick’s boyfriend. He was nineteen and he had his own place—but that didn’t mean they’d all fit. Michael glanced at Nick in the rearview mirror and tried to ignore how driving over the fractured driveway pavement felt like driving over downed trees. “You have your phone? Who else has one?”
They all did.
Michael had no idea why it was important, but his worries eased just a notch knowing he could reach them if he had to.
And where would they be going?
He wove between the remaining fire trucks sitting in the cul-de-sac. He hadn’t seen Hannah since she’d walked out of his house, and he hadn’t been able to look for her. Her father had actually walked him and his brothers to the door of the truck.
“Tell Adam thanks, but we’ll go to a hotel.”
“And then what?” said Nick. “Sleep in these clothes? Live on fast food?”
“You think the five of us are going to fit in a one-bedroom apartment for long?”
“You think the Holiday Inn is going to let us check in looking like this? With a dog? At least at Adam’s we can wash our clothes and get something to eat.”
“Nick—” Michael sighed. Those were all good points, and he was too tired to argue. “Fine. Whatever.” He reached out and spun the dial to turn the heat higher. He couldn’t stop shivering.