Famous last words.
It takes six long minutes to put out the first tree. Just one tree in a row of twenty! All while the original trees burn to the fucking ground in a fiery blaze. My men help hold the hose, but I can feel their panic like a living thing, whipping back and forth behind me along with the hose.
A few minutes later, I’m no longer worried about saving any of the trees; I’m worried about saving the farm.
The other men direct their puny hoses at the fire, but it does little more than soak the ground. How is the fire moving so quickly? The summer hasn’t been that dry.
Where the fuck is the goddamn fire department? It’s been nearly half an hour; we won’t be able to hold out much longer if they don’t arrive soon. At some point, I’m going to have to call it and send the men back so they don’t risk getting injured—or worse.
We work laboriously to put out another tree, but it’s like the hydra of fires. As soon as we put out one, two more are set ablaze. At this rate, the whole farm is going to burn to the ground as we put out only a couple trees.
Panic claws its way up my throat, squeezing my chest and making me break out in a cold sweat of terror. I can’t lose this farm. It’s my entire life. I haven’t the faintest idea what man I would be without it, what I will do, what my brothers will do without it. Our family has owned this farm for nearly half a century. All of it could literally go up in smoke in just an hour.
We do our best to control the blaze, but it’s just not enough water. The hose can put out a powerful spray, but there’s only one hose and a veritable wall of pure, unstoppable fire. Seemingly everywhere I look, another part of my home is aflame.
Slowly but surely, the fire spreads. Each passing moment another inch, another foot cedes to the flames. This can’t be happening. It just can’t.
“Boss, I don’t think—”
“Keep it steady behind me!” I roar, because if there’s one thing in this nightmare I know for certain, it’s that I can’t do this alone. If they break rank out of fear and fatalism, I’m finished. This farm is finished.
I refuse to let that happen. Desperately, I try to rally the men, to convince them we can beat the fire, but my words fall on deaf ears. In a few minutes, this fire is going to eat up the very ground on which we stand. And there won’t be a thing I can do to stop it.
Chapter Fourteen
“We need to get out of here,” shouts Morris. A wave of agreement comes from the other men. Are they right? Is it really a lost cause? I refuse to just leave. I won’t abandon my farm.
Where is the damn fire department?
Suddenly, a large pickup truck careens around the corner of the field and comes barreling toward us. On the back, attached to its own hose, is a huge water tank, nearly the size of the truck itself. It’s so large it extends off the truck bed. Water sloshes around inside.
We all watch in stupefaction as Montgomery, my neighbor three miles away, whips around so the back end faces the fire. A second later, a torrential spray of water arcs out across the field. It hits the tree squarely on the base of the flames. Within a minute, the large torrent extinguishes the fire.
A few men cheer, pumping the air with their fists. But we’re not out of the woods. “Help me with the hose!” I yell as the truck moves on to the second tree and I keep spraying the one in front of me.
With two water sources, we’re able to match the fire’s pace. But we’re not gaining on it either. At this rate, we’ll just continue, a Sisyphean toil of extinguishing each tree while the next one burns. What are we going to do when Montgomery runs out of water?
Over the next few minutes, we scramble to put out the second line of trees. As we near the middle of the line, a huge siren splits the air as two fire trucks appear. The first is the water tanker, much like the one Montgomery is still spraying. The second one is a standard fire truck, complete with men hanging off the sides.
They immediately attack the fire, the first using the water tanker to spray with multiple hoses, the second shooting water out of a hose that extends off into the distance.
“Where is that water coming from?” I shout toward the nearest fireman.
“Montgomery’s pond!” he shouts back.
Of course. That’s why it took them so long to get here. They had to find a nearby water source. Montgomery’s pond is the only water around.
Their arrival turns the tide in our favor. With the help of professional firefighters and a tripled water output, we quickly extinguish the fire. When the last of the flames are finally put out, I drop the hose and bend over, hands on my knees, panting in exhaustion.
My body shakes in great shudders as adrenaline leaves my body. Christ, what a fucking close call. I almost lost the farm. The farm! What the hell even happened? If we hadn’t gotten there sooner, if Montgomery and the fire department hadn’t showed up exactly when they did, we might have—
No. I’m not thinking about what might have happened. It didn’t, and it won’t. We made it.
When I finally feel like I’m not going to hurl in absolute terror, I straighten up to determine if anyone is injured. I’m not the only one slumped over in exhaustion; many of my men simply slump to the ground. Montgomery leans out of his truck window, wiping the sweat off his forehead. Even the firefighters look winded.
I assess the damage. Two entire lines of trees have been burned in varying levels of scorched bark and incinerated fruit. My heart hurts just looking at them; I could be scorched myself and not feel it as much.
But two lines of trees is better than the whole damn orchard. Thank every miserable bastard in this place that we were able to save the farm. I need to get to the bottom of how the hell this even happened in the first place.
“All right, guys. Great work. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for preventing this fire from spreading. Take the rest of the day off—except the bastard who flicked his cigarette butt on the ground. You stay here.”
The men make the long way toward the parking lot, except for one of the new kids, who stares at the ground, face deathly pale. So he’s the shit who almost ruined my life. Suddenly, I’m seeing red. I don’t care if this guy’s Mother Teresa. I’m going to end his godforsaken life.
“Are you the fucker who started this fire?” I growl.
The kid has enough sense to keep his eyes averted, staring at the ground as if it might open up and swallow him whole. “Yes, sir.”
“What the fuck were you thinking? Aren’t you well aware we have a strict no- smoking policy on this farm? Did your stupid little brain fucking forget?”
“No, sir.”
“So, what? You thought you’d just ignore that rule? Did you think it was there for shits and giggles? You could have destroyed this entire farm, you little shit! My entire livelihood, the paychecks of everyone you know, literally gone up in smoke. If you weren’t nearly half my age I’d beat the ever-loving shit out of you.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t think—”
“Yeah, you didn’t think, all right. I’m surprised you have any brain cells left to rub together after the blunt stupidity you just displayed. You’re lucky I don’t kill—”
“Axel.”
I turn to one of the firemen, who nods for me to follow him. When we remove ourselves from the others, he says, “Look, I get you’re pissed he started the fire. I’d be, too; he’s a stupid shit. But you and I both know I can’t just sit here and listen to you threaten the kid. I don’t want to get you in trouble too. It’s going to be hard enough with the investigation.”
“What investigation?”
“We have to investigate the fire. Standard procedure. Need to make sure everything happened the way people said it did.”
“The idiot just admitted he did it. A criminal mastermind, he is not.”
“Nevertheless, we have to do things by the book. Both of you need to come down to the fire station to answer some questions. Get the whole thing on the record while it’s still fresh. You know Scotty w
ill have my ass if we don’t.”
Scotty King, my cousin, is Ovid’s fire chief. I love the guy, but he’s a real stickler when it comes to rules—and that’s saying something, coming from me. I sigh, nodding once in capitulation.
“Fine. We’ll follow you. Thanks again for coming, guys. You really saved my sorry ass. I don’t know what I would’ve done—”
“Don’t worry about it. Glad to see the farm isn’t entirely ruined.”
Entirely being the operative word. Fuck.
I send the firemen away, promising to follow, then head over to Montgomery to extend my hand in thanks. After we chat a few moments about the carnage, and I thank him again, I turn to the kid, who’s wisely not moved from where I left him, and jab a finger toward the house.
“Get in your car, and go to the fire station. If you don’t go, or if you go anywhere else first, I will know, I will hunt you down, and I will ensure you never walk straight again for the rest of your goddamn life.”
“Yes, sir!” He literally runs away from me. Good. If he has any wits about him whatsoever, he better be fucking terrified.
Once I arrive at the station, I spend a good hour and a half recounting everything I know about the fire, which isn’t much since I was toiling away in the office when it started.
Then I have to sit there, listening to the kid explain multiple times how he was harvesting all day and really needed a smoke, so he took a break for only a few minutes to relax. Apparently, it didn’t occur to him that leaving a still-lit cigarette butt near dried-out brush might end horrifically. When asked why he disobeyed the no-smoking policy, he tells Scotty that since so many of the men on the farm do it, he didn’t think anything of it. That it was just one of those rules that wasn’t really a rule.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Who the fuck thinks that?” I roar, unable to keep silent even though I promised to do so.
“Axel,” Scotty says in warning.
“No, fuck this. Who told you that you could smoke?”
The kid glances beseechingly at Scotty, like he might prevent me from grilling his dumb ass. At the end of the day, though, Scotty is my blood, so he just glares at him.
He pauses, clearly not thrilled at the thought of telling me.
“You have five seconds, or so help me—”
“Axel, cool—”
“Howard always said we could if we did it in a safe spot!”
I rear back. No fucking way. Howard’s always been a safety nut; there’s no way he’d let people smoke on my farm. And yet …
I’m going to kill that bastard.
I surge out of my chair, sending it flying back from the table. The kid flinches away. Scotty rolls his eyes at me in exasperation.
“Consider yourself permanently unemployable in this county,” I say, jabbing a finger at him.
“But—”
“Be glad I don’t prosecute your ass!”
That shuts him up real quick.
I’m utterly finished. I need to crawl home, shower the soot off my disgusting body, eat something, and then fuck Andrea’s brains out.
I pause, frozen on the sidewalk outside the fire station. Where the hell did that thought come from? My default should not be to reach for her when I’m upset. Sure, I enjoy fucking her, but anticipating it? Needing it? That implies a pattern, expectations.
I don’t do expectations with women.
I shake my head, physically removing the thought from my mind. There are other things I need to worry about. But then I glance up and I swear it’s like I summoned her to me.
Andrea is walking into the café down the street.
Chapter Fifteen
What the hell? It’s the middle of the workday. She shouldn’t be in a café. Wait, where the fuck was she during the fire? She didn’t do a goddamn thing to help us. She just disappeared. And now, on top of that, she’s taking a fucking break to go to a café?
Indignant rage—I refuse to see it as hurt—steals over me. If she thinks she’s going to get away with abandoning the farm when it needed her most, she’s in for a nasty fucking surprise. I go after her, following her into the café, but when I walk through the door and I see who she’s meeting with, all previous thoughts go out the fucking window.
Andrea is sitting at a table with none other than Howard Dawson.
For a long moment, I simply stand there, too floored by the betrayal to do anything other than glare. What the fuck is she doing with him? I must be hallucinating. She knows I fired him. She knows I’m still furious with him for what he did. And yet she goes right back to him?
Hell. No.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
All the heads in the café whip toward me. I spare none of them a second look. I’m too busy staring at Andrea, who’s paled under the heat of my stare. A few people, when they realize it’s me, actually get up and leave. That’s probably for the best, because this is about to get real fucking ugly.
I stalk over to their table. Andrea gapes at me, but Howard is as coolly collected as ever. Nothing ever ruffles that man.
I tower over them, glad I can intimidate people into telling the truth. “What the fuck are you doing with this asshole, Andrea?”
She just blinks at me. I know I’ve gone well past the point of polite behavior and am venturing into real asshole territory, but I just don’t give a shit. The last few hours have been the worst of my life, and here she is, sitting with the man who betrayed me, whose policy literally led to the fire—and she didn’t even try to help me when I needed her.
“Where the fuck were you when the farm burned down around us? Did you think the fire was just going to put itself out?”
“I—”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses. I don’t have time for you to make up some shitty reason for why you weren’t there. I needed you. I needed every single person I could get to help me put out that fire. And where were you? Nowhere. Absolutely fucking nowhere. Oh wait. I’m wrong. Apparently, you were on your way to meet this asshole.” I jerk my thumb toward Howard.
“Axel—”
“And you, you dickless bastard, do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Howard stops talking.
“You don’t, do you? You haven’t a fucking clue what your little policy did.”
“Why don’t you explain?” he says calmly.
Is he serious? The asshole should be on the ground begging for forgiveness. He should be weeping in sorrow for what happened to my farm. Instead, he’s just sitting there, politely asking me to explain why he nearly cost me everything.
“That fire started because you told the men they could smoke. You said it was fine, as long as they did it in a ‘safe place,’ whatever the fuck that means. Everything that’s happened is because you decided to disregard the most important safety rule we have!”
Howard pales. That’s right, asshole. “They’re supposed to put it in a bucket full of sand. It extinguishes any butts. It’s supposed to prevent precisely what happened from occurring.”
“Nothing should have occurred because no one should be smoking, period! And yet, you try to defend yourself?”
“Come now, Axel,” Howard snaps, the first time I’ve ever heard him raise his voice. “You can’t tell a smoker not to smoke. They’re addicted to it. They’ll do it regardless of any rule you give them. The best you can hope to do is ensure they do it safely. Thus, the designated smoking bucket that should be brought out to the harvest every day. Are you saying the men stopped using that?”
Fucking hell, that makes sense, but I’ll be damned if I’ll cede an inch right now when I want to rip his fucking face off. How should I know if they’re using some shitty-ass smoking bucket? Until a few hours ago, I didn’t even know they were smoking at all!
“If you think that’s adequate justification for what happened, you’re out of your goddamn mind. There is no excuse for that fire. Safety rules are there for a reason—even if it’s not likely they’ll be obeyed! You can�
�t just create a rule and then disregard it on the sly and expect people to take it seriously!”
“Axel, I’m obviously very upset this happened, but—”
“No. I don’t want to hear another goddamn word, Howard. I didn’t ask for your opinion, or your regret. I have nothing more to say to you. The only thing I want to know, the only thing I just can’t fucking understand, is how the two of you can be sitting here, calm as you please, when I very nearly lost the farm a couple hours ago!”
“If you would—”
“I don’t want to hear it, Andrea. I can’t believe you just … left. Especially after what we—” I don’t finish the thought. Thinking about last weekend hurts too much. “You weren’t there when the farm needed you. You weren’t there when I needed you. If you think you can abandon all of us while you cozy up to this one, well, you’re in for a rude awakening.”
Andrea huffs in exasperation, which only makes me more furious. “Axel, I know the last two hours have been upsetting, but you’re being irrational right now. Everything is okay. Everyone is safe. You just need to take a minute to calm down. Neither of us has been conspiring against you, or whatever it is you think we’ve done. In fact—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! This isn’t a calm fucking situation. I am not being irrational. Let me tell you what’s fucking irrational. Irrational is not doing a goddamn thing when your employer literally goes up in flames. Irrational is fraternizing with a person you know did something absolutely shitty and is no longer an employee of said employer.
“But let me tell you what’s not irrational. Irrational is not firing your ass for what you’ve done!”
Andrea gasps, then her face grows cold and remote. Her eyes narrow as she eyes me up and down in distaste. Regret lances through me, buoyed by the small part of me that screams I’m out of my goddamn mind. I didn’t really just fire her, did I?
But once I make a decision, I commit to it. Andrea wasn’t there when the chips were down. When I truly needed her the most, when everything went to shit and the world literally went up in flames, she was nowhere to be found. I can’t have a partner like that. I mean, I can’t have an employee like that. Period.
Devil (King Brothers #2) Page 9
