by Nicole Helm
Cameron’s arm brushed hers as he reached around Free and helped to lift her high enough so they could give her a gentle toss out the window. She landed on all fours and immediately began barking incessantly.
“Now you,” Cameron said, and his firm, calm tone steadied her. “Be careful. I cleared it as best I could and the sheets should keep you from getting any cuts but don’t put undue pressure anywhere.”
She nodded and leveraged herself out the window. It was awkward and painful, but she managed to tumble to the ground without any major injury. Free rushed over, licking her face and whimpering. Hilly got to her feet, petting the dog in the process. She looked at the house, completely engulfed in flame, and couldn’t begin to wrap her head around what was happening.
But one thing she could wrap her head around was the fact Cameron hadn’t climbed out after her. She rushed toward the broken window. “What are you doing?” she yelled as Cameron moved deeper into the room.
“I’ve got to get my phone.”
“Are you stupid?”
“Keep an eye out. Whoever started the fire might still be around,” he instructed, getting down on his hands and knees and disappearing into smoke and flames.
Free whined from her position away from the flames and the heat and Hilly knew she should move back and away. She could feel the rawness in her throat from too much smoke, and nausea was curling itself in her belly.
Cameron was in there, the biggest moron to ever live, but a moron who’d gotten her and her dog out of a burning building first.
She wasn’t about to risk her neck for a phone, but she couldn’t convince her body to move away from the window where smoke billowed out. What was he doing? What if he died in there? Some kind of idiot who thought he was impervious to fire.
But then he was climbing out the window, pulling her with him as he moved away from the flames and smoke. The area around the cabin was completely filled with smoke so it took a while to reach fresher air.
His cough sounded tight and terribly wheezy, but he held up the phone as if he’d won some prize. Free whined at his heels as they walked and walked until the air was more clear than smokey.
He held the phone out to her.
“Dial 911,” he rasped.
She blinked at the phone he’d shoved into her hand. Dad had one, but she’d never been able to use it. A real woman doesn’t have any use for a phone or the outside world. Her home is her domain. Everything out there is a threat.
Cam coughed some more, but Hilly could only stare helplessly at the screen. There was only one button on the contraption and it didn’t seem to do anything.
“Cam, I...”
The quizzical look he gave her made her stomach churn almost as much as the nauseating smell of smoke. He was bent over and struggling to breathe, his hands on his knees, and she didn’t know how to do what he asked.
He took the phone back and poked his fingers against the screen. It seemed to do what he wanted and he stood to his full height, holding the phone to his ear.
“Uncontained fire,” he said in that military voice, commanding even with the hoarseness from smoke inhalation. “I don’t have an address, but I can explain somewhat where we are.” He gave pretty clear directions in that strained voice, not coughing until he’d hung up the phone.
“You don’t know how to use a phone,” he said.
“We don’t...believe in phones.” Which wasn’t true exactly, but it seemed less embarrassing than saying she wasn’t allowed to use them. She was a grown woman, and as much as she didn’t understand that world out there, she’d seen enough in that police precinct to know women used phones and likely did whatever they wanted.
That was the danger in it, after all.
“I’m going to call Laurel.” He coughed again, and it still sounded awful even if his breathing had eased somewhat. “We’ll wait for the fire department.” He surveyed the fire charring and melting her home of the past nearly twenty years into nothing. Provisions, money, equipment. Everything she’d ever owned, everything she’d ever known. Gone.
It was a large clearing, and the conditions weren’t dry, the ground a muddy wet from the spring thaw, but Hilly knew enough to know a fire like this could get out of control anyway. Her home might not be all that went up.
She only realized she was shaking when Cam took her by the arm. His hand was big and gentle. Even though his grip was firm it was very careful.
The shaking intensified, like she’d been shoved into icy water. Her teeth were even chattering and suddenly she did feel cold. Cold and sick.
“Sit.”
She looked up at him helplessly, but he nudged her leg until it buckled a little. She didn’t fall exactly, because he was holding on to her arm. It was almost as if he had the strength to simply lower her to the ground like that.
“Sit. Breathe. It’s okay to feel off. You’re in shock.”
“Shock,” she repeated. Free whined and crawled into her lap, muddy and shaking a little herself. There was some kind of relief in that, and she leaned into Free’s truly awful-smelling fur and did what Cam told her to do. She sat. She breathed. All the while he talked into his phone in low, raspy tones. She didn’t even try to make out the words.
She should try to hear. She had to protect herself. Protect Dad.
But her house was on fire. Their life was on fire and Dad was missing and all that was left were the clothes on her back and Free. She’d even left Dad’s weapons in there. He’d be so mad. So mad.
“Hey.” Cam was crouching at eye level, sympathy softening his features so much he almost didn’t look dangerous. He almost didn’t look like a stranger. For a blinding second she could almost believe he was a friend.
Don’t be stupid, Hilly.
“It would help a lot if I knew your name.”
She shook her head, and had to close her eyes against the flash of anger in his. But he didn’t lash out. He didn’t yell and he didn’t hurt her. He rose. “Can you walk?”
She swallowed and dared to look up at him. He stood there, arms crossed over his chest, a serious, determined expression on his face. Whatever anger or irritation had been there was gone now.
“I can walk,” she managed. She nudged Free off her lap and got to her feet. He wrapped his hand around her arm again when she swayed.
It was strange. Her arm tingled like there was something chemical in the contact, but her shirt was long-sleeved so they weren’t touching skin to skin.
Skin to skin. How...odd.
Once she was steady, he let her go and began to make his way through the trees in a slow circle around the house that still blazed and smoked. “We’ll see if we can see anything. A clue as to who did this. We might get some footprints. The fire department should be here soon, and once we’ve talked to them and know we won’t be interrupted we’ll listen to what I recorded.”
“Do you really think your phone picked up any—”
He stopped on a dime near the front of the house, so quickly she almost ran into his back. He frowned at the now-familiar sight of burning building, and that was when Hilly saw it.
Spray-painted haphazardly in the muddy grass of the front yard was one word.
Confess.
She could practically feel Cam’s suspicion sliding over her and weighing her down. But she had nothing to confess. She’d committed no crimes. She’d barely ever left this cabin or clearing since she’d moved here when she was a little girl. Whatever this was, it wasn’t anything to do with her.
“I don’t have anything to confess. I can’t even think of one possible thing.”
“You’re not the only one who lives here, though.”
“You think this is for my father?” But, of course it had to be. She wanted to believe it was a mistake, but... Dad had disappeared. Someone wanted him to confess. “It has to be a mistake.”
She hated the pitying expression on Cameron’s face. He thought she was stupid. She wasn’t. She knew it could only be about Dad. But it didn’t mean it had to be right about Dad. And it didn’t mean she had to...
“It’s fine. Believe whatever you want. Don’t tell me your name or his name. That’s your choice. I can’t help you the way I’d like, but it’s your choice.”
Help you.
No one ever wanted to help her. She existed to help Dad, not the other way around. But Dad was gone. Home was gone. And this man wanted to help her, or at least said he did.
“My name’s Hilly,” she whispered.
“Hilly.” He searched her face, and she knew she’d regret this at some point. Dad’s words would turn out to be right. You couldn’t trust anyone, and strangers would only hurt you.
But, God, she didn’t know what else to do right now. She had to trust Cam’s kind eyes. This man who knew what to do in a crisis. “My name is Hilly Adams.”
Chapter Five
Thanks to the isolated location, it was tough for the fire department to put the blaze out, but over time they managed. Cam had shrugged off the EMT about four hundred times, but since Laurel was here questioning everyone, the EMT just kept coming back as urged to by his sister.
“I’m fine,” he growled when Laurel approached him with the man in tow again.
“You sound like you swallowed glass.”
“I’m fine.”
Laurel sighed heavily, but nodded toward the EMT, who walked back to the group of first responders huddled around the fire site.
Laurel stood next to him, but her gaze was on Hilly, who sat on a blanket, another draped over her shoulders. The dog was curled up in her lap despite being far too large to be a lapdog.
“She’s not talking,” Laurel offered.
“She talked. She’s just not giving you the answers you want. She doesn’t know anything. Not about the fire or the spray paint.”
“Dad disappears. A man who doesn’t exist on any public record as far as I can tell. Then she hightails it out of the station without telling us much of anything. Her place gets burned down, same day. Confess is written on the ground. Ground that’s technically on public land and not owned by anyone. You said she was armed to the teeth with enough surveillance equipment to make my department weep with jealousy. She knows something.”
“I don’t think so.” Evidence mattered, sure, but so did a gut feeling. So did the fact Hilly didn’t know how to use a phone and had looked absolutely wrecked when she’d told him her name.
“Don’t let a pretty face and breasts fool you, Cam,” Laurel said, surprising him enough to have him bristling.
Yes, Hilly might be an attractive woman, but as much as he wasn’t a cop or detective like his sister, he was former military. He knew a thing or two about reading people.
“I’m taking her home.”
“Cam.”
“She’s a victim in all this, Laurel. I know it. I’ve dealt with my fair share of victims.”
Laurel’s expression got pinched, a sure sign she was weakening in her surety that Hilly was a suspect.
“She didn’t set the fire herself,” Cam added. “Two men. I gave you my descriptions.”
“Descriptions that could be anyone.” She glanced at the spray paint on the ground. One of her deputies had taken pictures of it at a variety of angles. “She claims she doesn’t know any other names her father would go by, and now it looks like we won’t be able to find evidence of any.”
“Listen to the recording on my phone. I couldn’t hear anything, but maybe if you get somewhere quiet it’ll tell you something.”
“I’ll see what we can do with it,” Laurel returned. “You know to call if you think of anything else. If she tells you anything else. And I mean anything.”
“Laurel.” It felt like an odd invasion of privacy to reveal what he’d observed regarding Hilly, and yet Cam couldn’t help but think it was important. “She didn’t know how to use a phone. I think she’s been living here, isolated from the world, since she was a little girl.”
“Cult?”
“But only the two of them by all accounts.”
“Lone-wolf militia type. Weapons and paranoia. It’d fit. I don’t know how much infighting goes on in groups like that, but maybe he has some kind of enemy. I’ll work with the fire department, look into any similar arson cases, but if these are antigovernment types, profiles or information will be hard to come by. Especially considering his name isn’t even in our system.” Laurel glanced at Hilly again. “I can’t believe she doesn’t know more about that. About his fake name or whatever he does.” Laurel looked up at him, fierce and determined in the midst of her job. “I need you to convince her working with us is her best option.”
“Except if her father is involved in something criminal, that isn’t true.”
“My job is to find the criminal, Cam.”
“But mine isn’t.”
“I can’t believe you,” Laurel replied, not even bothering to hide her surprised disgust when she usually kept her emotions firmly under wraps when in uniform.
“You wanted me to help her. Well, I’m helping her. My job means keeping clients safe.” Usually a client actually asked him to work for them and paid him, but that was just semantics. Hilly had offered to pay him, after all.
“I hope for your sake you’re right and she doesn’t know anything, because it’s not going to do your reputation or your business any favors if you end up helping a criminal.”
Irritated with a lecture from his younger sister, Cam smirked. “Or is it?”
Laurel huffed and turned away from him, marching back to the group of first responders. He ignored the little sliver of guilt at needling her while she was on duty. She was being short-sighted and too focused on her job, and not thinking about the actual person affected by all this.
Cam moved toward Hilly. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the charred remains of her cabin, but when he approached she spoke.
“You’re fighting with your sister?”
“She’s just a little frustrated with me. Not unusual when it comes to siblings.”
Hilly’s eyebrows drew together. “I wouldn’t know.”
“As the eldest of four, I’m going to assure you, you’re very lucky.”
Her eyes tracked the scorched, wet remains of her blackened cabin. Yeah, not that lucky. Cam didn’t think Hilly Adams knew much about luck.
“Let’s go,” he offered, nodding toward the huddle of police. “Someone will take me back to my car.” He held out his hand to help her up. The dog got to its feet and pushed its head under his hand.
Cam chuckled, petting the happy, friendly dog for a moment before holding his hand out to Hilly again, but she wasn’t paying attention to him. She was staring at the remains of her home.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she whispered, gold-brown eyes suspiciously shiny.
“You’re going to come home with me,” he said firmly.
Her eyes widened and moved to him. “With you?”
“Whether you like it or not, I’m a part of this now. I told you my business is keeping people safe. Consider yourself my business.”
She swallowed visibly. “I don’t have any choice. I don’t have anything. I don’t...”
He grabbed her hand and tugged her to her feet. He held her gaze, and he made her a promise he wouldn’t allow himself to break. “At the end of all this, you’re going to have both.”
* * *
IT HAD BEEN strange to ride in the police car to the police station. She hadn’t been in a car for years. Decades, really. The truck they had moved to the cabin in had broken down when she was ten, and Dad had never felt the need to get another one.
That you know of.
She closed her eyes against that ugly voic
e, a voice that wasn’t hers. It was in the whispers and looks of everyone who’d asked her a question today. Deputy Delaney. The earnest young man in a matching uniform to Cam’s sister. The firefighters. The paramedic.
Their questions were pointed. Their responses to her answers were judgmental at best. Cam was the only one who talked to her as though he believed her, even though he kept looking at her a little sideways, like she was some fairy creature he was scared to take into the sunlight for fear she might fade away.
But that didn’t stop him.
She was in his car. He was driving. It was even weirder than the ride to the police station. She was trusting a stranger, not just to drive her, but to offer her shelter. She was trusting Cam with far too much.
He drove them through a town that looked vaguely familiar. Something about the boardwalk sidewalks and shoved-together buildings that lined Main Street nudged at some long past memory.
Maybe they’d driven through it when they’d moved here. She couldn’t remember the name of the town they’d lived in before Dad had moved them to the cabin. Most of her memories before the cabin were fuzzy half memories, but Dad had always spoken as if it was far, far away.
Is anything Dad told you true?
Hilly closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the window. Everything about doubting her father made her feel guilty and sick, and yet he’d allowed this seed of doubt to grow and grow.
Confess.
Confess.
Confess.
“Here we are,” Cam murmured.
Hilly opened her eyes. They’d left town behind and were now driving up a curving paved drive. The house at the end was... Sparkling was the first word that came to Hilly’s mind. Huge was the second. Gleaming wood and pristine windows and just acres and acres of wide-open space and mountains.
There was a small cabin in a secluded area a ways away that looked far more like what Hilly was used to.
“This is your house?” she asked. She knew nothing about the outside world, but this kind of extravagance had to mean Cam was important somehow.
