by Julie Miller
“I don’t need you to rescue me!” All at once the air rushed from her lungs and her expression changed. On first glance, he might have thought her unadorned face was rather unremarkable. But those green-gold eyes offered a fascinating glimpse of her emotions. They were darker now, as green as the charred landscape around them should have been. She wasn’t crazy. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong. Something clutched inside him as she patted the KCFD logo over his heart. “I need you to help me.”
“Help you do what? Get yourself killed?” Her hands settled against his shoulders and he felt her arms stiffen. She was getting ready to bolt again. He calmed his tone, hoping to reason with her. “You’re running toward the flames, not to safety.”
“Isn’t that what you do? Run toward danger?”
“One of us is trained and the other isn’t.”
She pushed and tried to twist free. The soft, frightened moment had passed. Her eyes were sparking again. “Then be a hero and help me find my friend. She’s somewhere out here in the middle of all this.”
“I’m no hero.” Her description grated against Mark’s guilt, but he shoved his feelings aside and worked harder to assess the situation before she escaped again. “I’m just doing my job. Now tell me about your friend, and do not run from me again.”
Her arms relaxed their stiff posture and he released her. “Jocelyn Brunt. College roommate. Best friend. She’s the yin to my yang. Introvert-extrovert. Scientist-artist—you get the idea. Jocelyn’s a researcher, working on her PhD in environmental science. She was working up near the apple trees that run along the eastern property line. She’s been living with my gran and me the past couple of semesters.”
He noted the direction of her pointing thumb. “The old farmhouse by Copper Lake? Weren’t you ordered to evacuate?”
“Of course we were. I drove Gran into the city to stay with one of her friends.”
“But Jocelyn didn’t go with you?”
“Would I be here if she had?” She gestured to the top of the hill behind him, frustrated with his lack of clairvoyant understanding of her concern. “There are still several old buildings on the property. Jocelyn uses one of the old feed sheds to store her equipment when she’s out in the field checking the soil and plant growth, so she doesn’t have to haul it back and forth every day. I called her as soon as we were notified the fire had changed course. One of the things she studies is how fire affects different kinds of soil with different kinds of crops or grazing land like this, so I thought maybe she was taking a little extra time to pick up her data. It’s my fault I didn’t check in with her right away. She said she was on her way to the shed to lock up her stuff, and then she’d join us.” The breeze whipped her long bangs across her face again, and Mark squeezed his fingers into a fist, surprised by the instinctive urge to brush the russet waves aside and tuck them behind her ear. “That was six hours ago.”
“Did you try calling her again?”
“Of course I did. I’m not an idiot. Her phone goes straight to voice mail.” She tilted her nose into the air as the wind shifted. Mark could smell it, too. Smoke. All the more reason to solve this woman’s problem and get her out of the fire zone. “She could be trapped out here somewhere. I hoped that she had gone back to the house because you guys stopped the fire, but her Jeep wasn’t there. What if she holed up in the shed, thinking that was safe? Or she tried to hike back to the house but got cut off by the fire? You saw that roadblock and the scorch marks on the ground—all the way down to the creek. I’m afraid something has happened to her.”
Now he understood. There was another life to save. “Where is this shed?”
“I’ll take you.”
“No, that’s not what I...” But she was already jogging ahead. Mark turned his face to the smoky sky and swore before hurrying after her. He caught her arm and stopped her again. “Fine. I’ll give you fifteen minutes. You lead the way. But if I see anything I don’t like, if I think you’re in immediate danger, I will order you to stop, and we will leave.”
“Fine.” She was running again.
Mark clamped his hand over her arm once more and turned her to face him. Her eyes were deep green with emotion now—she was probably pissed at him for being so bossy. But he meant business. He took the time to radio in a sit-rep and give his team an approximate location and their destination before he spoke to the woman again. “What’s your name, Red? That O’Brien guy called you Crazy Amy. I don’t intend to do that.”
“Dale O’Brien is a bully and a prig.” She muttered a choice expletive that made Mark wonder what the pudgy contractor had done to her. But that conversation was for another time. And a different man. This was a rescue op, not a get-acquainted date. “I’m Amy Hall.”
“All right, Amy Hall. I will help you find your friend. But you do what I tell you, when I tell you, or I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you away from that fire myself. That’s the only way we’re moving forward.”
She seemed to consider just how serious he was about the over-the-shoulder threat—or maybe she was just desperate to end this conversation and get to her friend.
But then she nodded. “I can live with that.” She shifted her grip to lace her fingers together with his and pulled him into a jog behind her. “Let’s go, Fire Man.”
It was a steeper jog down this hill, and Mark was glad he had a hold of Amy when her feet slipped from underneath her. She didn’t complain about the soot mark on the rump of her khaki shorts, but simply thanked him and fell into step beside him again as they climbed to the top of the next hill.
They both halted when they reached the devastation waiting for them there.
“Oh, my God.” Amy’s hand tightened convulsively around Mark’s. Then she released him and ran toward the burned-out shell of a Jeep. “Jocelyn!”
“Hold on.”
“Jocelyn!” After a quick circle around the Jeep to inspect its empty interior, Amy dashed over to the carbonized wood planks and metal debris that had once been the feed shed.
Mark spared an extra minute to make sure the fuel lines were secure and there was no gasoline or oil pooling beneath the vehicle that could start another fire.
“Amy!” The wildfire had blazed a trail across the top of the hill, turning everything in its path to ash before moving on. If her friend had taken refuge here, or the flames had moved too quickly for her to escape, she hadn’t survived.
There was only one woman he could help now.
Amy lifted a board with her bare hands, and it disintegrated. She lifted the one beneath it and tossed it aside. That board hit the ground and kicked up a cloud of black that could be charcoal dust or smoke. He climbed through the wreckage of the old shed after her. “Amy, stop! There could still be hot spots underneath the debris.”
“Jocelyn? Please tell me you were smart enough to get out of...” She spotted something at the bottom of the pile and climbed over some charred chunks of metal he assumed had been Jocelyn’s equipment. “Oh, no. Please no.”
He saw it, too. The charred remains of a body.
“Amy, stop.” Mark pushed Amy behind him and took over clearing the debris around the ghastly skeleton. “We don’t know who it is. Someone else could have taken shelter. I need you to stand aside...”
But Amy was kneeling in the area he’d cleared. Her cheeks were pale at first, then flushed with emotion as a tear rolled down her cheek. Mark knelt beside her, intent on pulling her away from the remains.
But once again, Amy Hall refused to do what made sense. She reached down to tug at the blackened chain that had fallen inside the victim’s rib cage. Mark draped an arm around her shoulders as she rubbed the soot off the chain’s pendant to reveal a glimpse of knotted silver.
“That’s just like yours,” he whispered.
Amy dropped the necklace and wrapped her fist around the pendant at her own neck. “I made it f
or her. Jocelyn...” A sob broke free and Amy turned her face into Mark’s chest. He wrapped her up in his arms and pulled her to her feet, tucking her face against the juncture of his neck and shoulder and holding her as Amy wept for her friend. “It’s her. I’m too late. It’s her.”
As Mark held on tight, shielding Amy from the gruesome sight, he recognized something, too—scorch marks across and around the body. While his heart grieved for Amy Hall’s loss, another, darker emotion welled up inside him.
Anger.
The scorch marks were the pour pattern of an accelerant crisscrossing the corpse, indicating the woman had been doused in some sort of chemical and set on fire—postmortem, he hoped. Burning alive was a hell of a way to die. And if he wasn’t mistaken, the dent in Jocelyn Brunt’s skull suggested something even more sinister.
Amy’s fists gradually eased their death grip at the back of his shirt, but he held on as he walked her away from the dead body. Keeping Amy’s face averted from the gruesome scene, Mark reached for his radio and called it in.
This fire was no accident. He needed to inform the scene commanders that at least part of today’s wildfire was the result of arson—a fire deliberately set to cover up the scene of a murder.
Chapter Four
“When was the last time you saw Ms. Brunt?” The female detective with the long brown ponytail and seriously unfriendly frown tapped her phone with her metal stylus. “I mean alive, of course.”
While KCFD investigators pored over the burned-out wreckage of Jocelyn’s Jeep and the old shed on the north edge of the property, and a medical examiner took her friend’s body to the crime lab, KCPD detectives had brought Amy back to the house to take her statement and go through Jocelyn’s things.
Amy flicked her gaze over to Detective Cathy Beck’s cold green eyes, but quickly dismissed the shorter woman’s mood as they stood together inside the doorway to Jocelyn’s bedroom. “Early this morning. Breakfast.” Nervously fingering the silver knot that hung from the chain around her neck, Amy watched Detective Beck’s partner, Dean Carson, toss the bedding. Less than a week ago, she and Jocelyn had sat up all night on that bed, pigging out on coffee ice cream and discussing the mess of their respective love lives and work woes. When the compactly built blond detective left the quilt and pillows in a pile and bent down to study something on the exposed sheet more closely, Amy asked, “What is he doing? He’s making a mess of her things. Jocelyn didn’t entertain guests here.”
Detective Beck tapped something into her phone. “Did she entertain them somewhere else?”
Amy shook her head, closing her fist around her necklace. Jocelyn had kept her room organized and uncluttered. The speed with which the burly detective was destroying all that twisted a knot in her stomach. “She was focused on finishing her PhD,” Amy answered. “She was excited about the fires adding a new dimension to her dissertation. All she had left was this semester and orals in the spring.”
“So, Ms. Brunt was completely focused on her work.” Detective Beck jotted a note on her phone. “Was there a boyfriend—or girlfriend—who felt neglected?”
“She had a boyfriend on and off.” A lot of that last late-night ice cream bash had centered around Jocelyn’s ex, Derek Roland. Amy shrugged. “But they were off. They were doing similar research, and she thought there might be a conflict of interest when it came time to present their findings to the dissertation board.”
“Conflict of interest?”
Man, she really did not want to talk about the prejudices and bias that an assistant dean and group of professors could exert over a doctoral student, especially a female one. But she wanted to identify whoever had killed Jocelyn more. Her own experience was water under the bridge now. If answering questions that dredged up those uncomfortable memories was what it took, then she would do it. “Jocelyn was worried the professors might think she’d copied Derek’s research. More likely, Derek would have copied hers. She was brilliant and determined, and he was...lazy. Always looking for shortcuts.”
“Did Ms. Brunt ask for the time off from their relationship, or did he?”
“Jocelyn suggested they take a break.” Amy shivered uncomfortably. These questions felt like she was ratting out someone else she had considered a friend, too. But Derek’s charm had worn thin when his demands on Jocelyn’s time had made Jocelyn question whether he was interested in her or her research. Amy almost laughed when she considered Derek’s aversion to spending endless hours out in the field. Would he literally dirty his hands in the soot and blood of the crime scene? Much less hurt the woman he professed to love? “Until after her orals. He agreed.”
Detective Beck’s grunt of agreement made Amy wonder if the woman with the badge doubted the mutual decision of Jocelyn’s breakup. “Does Derek have a last name?”
Amy spelled out Derek Roland’s last name. “He’s a doctoral student at Williams University, too.”
Detective Carson was pulling open drawers on Jocelyn’s dresser now, touching all of her friend’s things with his gloved hands. “I’ve got a box of condoms in here,” he announced to his partner before stuffing T-shirts and jewelry back inside. “But I’m not finding any obvious signs of a struggle. No love letters or threatening notes. The only pictures are in that album beside the bed. A lot with the boyfriend.” He thumbed over his shoulder as he moved on to the next drawer. “And Ms. Hall there.”
“This feels like we’re violating her privacy,” Amy protested when Detective Carson grabbed a fistful of underwear to look underneath it. “Jocelyn was supersmart, but shy. I’m the one who got into trouble, not her. She was all about studying and work.”
Detective Beck touched Amy’s shoulder to keep her from crossing the room to halt her partner’s search. “Trust me. Getting to know your friend—any secrets, any conflicts, any habits—is the first step in figuring out who wanted to harm her. Especially with as little forensic evidence as we’ll get from that crime scene. We’ll be as respectful as we can be with her things, but we need to do this.”
Amy swallowed her outrage, hugged her arms around her waist and drifted back into the doorway. “I don’t know anyone who would want to hurt Jocelyn. None of this makes sense.”
“Our job is to help it make sense.” Detective Beck’s frown faded beneath the hint of a compassionate smile. “Would Ms. Brunt’s things be anywhere else in the house?”
“Clothes in the laundry room. Some of her food is in the kitchen. She was a vegetarian. Gran didn’t even want to touch her tofu.” Amy rubbed her fingers along the rolled-up sleeves of her soiled blouse. Even though she’d washed her hands and splashed cool water on her face to ease the feverish aftermath of her tears, she realized she still wore the grubby, soot-stained clothes she’d had on that afternoon. By the time she’d gotten back to the house, the police had asked to see Jocelyn’s room, and she’d had no time to herself from that moment on. “Jocelyn kept the rest of her work stuff in the shed that burned. Or in her car. She carried her life in her backpack, and she always had that with her.”
“Where is her backpack now?”
“No sign of it here,” Detective Carson confirmed.
Detective Beck tapped herself a note before looking up at Amy. She could only answer the truth. “I don’t know.”
Had she seen the backpack at the crime scene? She didn’t remember seeing straps around the corpse’s shoulders, but maybe even that tough nylon material could have burned to the point of disintegration. She’d like to ask Fire Man Mark if that was a possibility. She wanted to ask him if he thought Jocelyn had suffered before she died, too. She wanted to know if he’d consider wrapping those buff arms of his around her again to make the vision of the devastating scene she’d witnessed recede a little bit again.
Amy was taller than many of the men she knew. She was taller than Detective Carson over there. Her grandfather had always called her a healthy girl. And though she was rea
sonably fit from the training classes she’d taken after her last relationship had ended so badly, no one would ever call her skinny. Still, Mark Taylor had made her feel delicate, feminine, safe. It was probably the whole firefighter/rescuer vibe he gave off. But Amy was used to rescuing herself. Life had trained her to be self-sufficient, not to rely on someone else’s love and support to sustain her when the going got tough. She’d forgotten how vulnerable a punch of grief could make her feel. Or how good it felt to not have to be the strong one for a change.
And that whole throw-her-over-his-shoulder caveman threat had been surprisingly...intriguing. Fire Man Mark hadn’t meant anything sexual by it, of course. But some errant hormone deep inside had lit up with interest as if it had been. His words and steely-eyed glare had felt like some kind of dare—and for a split second during her search for Jocelyn, she’d foolishly wanted to call him on it.
Okay, sexy, strong and attractive in a ruggedly masculine way was all well and good for her hormones. But depend on him? That was dangerous thinking.
Accidental death, malicious intent and now murder had ripped away every support system Amy had ever counted on. With the exception of her grandmother, whose age was beginning to shift the balance in that relationship, even, Amy knew better than to put her trust in anyone but herself.
“Did Ms. Brunt keep an office at the university?”
Detective Beck’s question pulled Amy from the fruitless turn of her thoughts. Amy nodded. “But Jocelyn never used it. Not when she was out in the field like she was this semester. Everything she needed was in that shed or on her laptop in her backpack.”
The dark-haired detective nodded. “All right. We’ll make finding that backpack priority one.”
Amy’s phone rang in the back pocket of her shorts. Automatically, she pulled it out, despite Detective Beck’s apparent impatience at having the interview interrupted. But when Amy saw the name on the screen, her breath tightened in her chest. She knew any other questions would have to wait. “I need to take this call. Is that all right?”
