Fire Born (Firehouse 343)

by Christina Moore

  “Which Breckon could then write off on his taxes,” Graham added. “I already want to bust him for fraud, Martie, but if he’s at fault for a fire that led to a man’s death, it’s a whole new ball game. I don’t think I have to tell you to do this buy the book. I wouldn’t want that slimy serpent to slither out of his well-deserved shackles on a technicality.”

  No, she mused, it was not necessary for him to remind her. Every step of her investigation thus far, all her interviews and research into Trevor Breckon and his business practices, had been documented. She wasn’t about to let him get by her—she’d figure out how he was involved in the fires and she’d have the proof to back it up in court. And if he was responsible for the firefighter’s death…

  …she’d make sure his ass got nailed to the wall.

  Her first move after leaving Graham’s office was to place a call to Robert Dresden, Gracechurch’s fire marshal. After dialing the number her boss had given her, she reached for the white legal pad she always kept on her desk for taking notes and a pen with which to write, clicking the utensil open to have it ready.

  “Fire Marshal Robert Dresden, Gracechurch Division of Fire. How may I help you?”

  Wow, that’s a mouthful, Martie thought, then introduced herself. “Marshal Dresden, I’m Lt. Martine Liotta with the Bureau of Fire Safety. Graham Henderson gave me your number.”

  “Yeah, I just spoke to him a little while ago,” Dresden said. “You’re… At risk of offending, when Graham said Martie I thought he was referring to a man.”

  Martie laughed. “No offense taken, Marshal, I get that a lot. Now, as I understand it, Gracechurch lost one of their own this morning?”

  Dresden sighed. “We did, yes. Damn shame, too. Cal was—Captain Calvin Maynard, the man we lost—he was elected by popular vote to command the new fire station. He was a good man, Lieutenant. Damn fine firefighter. He worked the job for thirty years—have you ever seen firefighters at work, Martie?”

  “I’m a certified firefighter myself, Marshal,” Martie replied. “My father and my brother are firefighters as well. All of us serve here in Billings—I drove the engine out of Company 23 for six years before switching track to arson investigation, and I work a shift at least once a week out of my old house. More than one if I can manage it.”

  “Then you know the life—the dedication and the sacrifices these guys make,” the marshal said. “Calvin was one of the best men Gracechurch has ever had on the job.”

  She didn’t ask him why he’d placed the call to the BFS—when a firefighter was injured on the job, it was standard procedure that the Bureau be notified. But Martie was sure it was more than following SOP that had motivated Robert Dresden. Based on how passionately he’d just spoken of Calvin Maynard, it was personal, too. His friend was dead and he wanted to know why. He wanted someone to blame, some outlet for his anger and grief.

  Her gut told her that Trevor Breckon was the one he should be angry with.

  “Marshal, you have my word that if there is someone to blame for this, I will find him,” she said resolutely.

  “Thank you. What do you need from me?”

  “If you could fax me a copy of the incident report to start with, I would very much appreciate it,” Martie said.

  “I’m afraid one hasn’t been filed as yet,” Dresden countered. “I got in here at the office about half an hour ago, but Calvin’s second in command is still at the hospital with his family.”

  Damn. She would have liked to get an idea of what had happened by reading that report. Then a thought occurred to her: Gracechurch wasn’t a very big city—some still referred to it as a town because most of the land area attributed to it was rural, and the population was less than ten thousand. Anyone suffering a traumatic injury would have been airlifted from Gracechurch Memorial to a larger city hospital…

  …and Billings was the closest city with a Level 1 trauma center.

  “Marshal, may I ask which hospital Captain Maynard was transported to?”

  Dresden replied, “St. Vincent’s, right there in Billings.”

  Bingo, Martie thought. It was not a task she was looking forward to, confronting the firefighters who’d known Calvin Maynard best so soon after his passing, but if she was going to get to the bottom of how that fire had started, she needed to speak to the people who had been there.

  “Last I knew,” the Gracechurch marshal was saying, “they were still in the waiting room on the surgical floor. Cal’s daughter and his fiancée were very distraught when the doctor came in and told us he didn’t make it through the surgery.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Marshal Dresden. And theirs,” Martie said softly.

  ***

  For a man who didn’t smoke, Chris sure as hell felt like he needed a cigarette. Or even better, an entire case of Budweiser to drown his sorrow in. It still felt unreal, the wound in his heart still too raw. But no matter how much he wished it weren’t so, Calvin was gone. The truth of that hurt so much it was hard to breathe.

  Although they had all wanted to stay, he had sent the rest of B Platoon home when the fire marshal had left them at about 5:30 that morning. They had a long drive ahead of them to get back to Gracechurch and they were going to need to sleep, even if it wouldn’t amount to much. Chris had said he was staying with the family. Irene had protested weakly that it wasn’t necessary for him to stay, that she would be alright looking after Tonja and Karalyn on her own. He had seen differently in her eyes. She and Cal might have been divorced for the last twelve years, but she wasn’t handling his death as well as she would like them all to believe, and he’d have to be blind not to have seen the gratitude behind her tears.

  The hospital staff had been very gracious about allowing them the use of the waiting room for as long as they needed. Both Tonja and Kara had been given mild sedatives to calm them down, and now all three of the women were sleeping. Chris knew he needed to sleep as well, his body craved it, but every time he tried closing his eyes he heard the sound of Calvin’s PASS over the speaker in his mask again. Not to mention the fact that with the couches taken up by his companions (and others waiting to hear about family members having surgery), he was left with only a chair to stretch out in. No way his six-foot-two frame was getting comfortable enough to sleep in a Naugahyde chair.

  Having given up on any chance of rest, Chris rose and headed for the door, closing it quietly behind him when he stepped out into the hall. He raised a hand to rub the back of his neck, trying to work some of the kinks out of his aching muscles, and wondered if he should try to eat something. He wasn’t really hungry but knew that he needed food to keep his energy level up, as sleep had chosen to elude him. He turned toward the nurses’ station just down the hall, stopping short at the sight of the shapely derriere of the tall, black-haired woman waiting patiently for the nurse behind the desk to get off the phone.

  She hung up as Chris forced himself to move forward again, and looked up at the woman. “So sorry about that, how may I help you?”

  “Two things, actually,” the woman replied, and he noted her voice was rich and throaty. Sexy. He could easily imagine that voice purring his name as he stoked the fires of her passion.

  And that thought brought him up short again. While he’d always been a man who appreciated female beauty, he couldn’t ever recall being so turned on just be the sound of a woman’s voice. And hell, after everything that had happened in the last twelve hours, it was hardly the time to be thinking about getting laid.

  “I would appreciate it if you could locate Dr. Alex Hoffman,” the woman was saying, and damn if his libido didn’t stir again. “I also need to see someone named Chris Paytah. He’s a firefighter—”

  “Who is standing right behind you,” Chris finished for her, all thoughts of sex fleeing at the sound of his name. Okay, maybe not all thoughts—she had said his name in that sinfully sensuous voice of hers, after all. But this stranger coming to see him—and the doctor who’d performed Calvin’s surgery,
the one who had come to tell them of his death, now that he recalled—had certainly put a frown on his face.

  She turned to face him, her eyes widening slightly. Chris took in the golden-brown orbs, aquiline nose, and full, pouty lips in a glance. She was clearly of Mediterranean descent, and though her nose was a shade too strong to label her a classic beauty, he would call her gorgeous nonetheless.

  Especially when she smiled, which she did somewhat hesitantly. “Lt. Paytah, I’m Lt. Martine Liotta of the Montana Bureau of Fire Safety,” she said, holding her hand out as she stepped toward him. “I regret meeting you under these circumstances. You have my sincerest condolences for your loss.”

  An arson investigator, he mused as he shook her hand. Not sure whether to be annoyed or relieved that Bob Dresden had set the ball rolling on the investigation so quickly, Chris merely nodded. “I don’t have to ask why you’re here to see me,” he said. “You want to talk about the Breckon Apartments fire.”

  Martine nodded. “I realize that you’re grieving the loss of a friend, Lieutenant, and that it may be difficult for you to talk about what happened. But it really is better for me to ask these questions when the incident is still relatively fresh in your mind. I’ll also need to speak to the rest of your platoon as soon as possible.”

  Chris hated to admit it, but she was right. It was well known that the first 48 hours of any criminal investigation were the most critical. “Very well,” he said with a sigh. “Will the cafeteria be all right with you? I’m afraid the waiting room is occupied right now. Calvin’s family is resting there.”

  “The cafeteria will be fine,” she replied, then turned to the nurse again. After pulling a badge wallet from her pocket, she flipped it open and held it out for the nurse to inspect, then pulled a business card out of the wallet’s pocket. “When you reach Dr. Hoffman, tell him Martie Liotta of the Bureau of Fire Safety needs to speak with him, and I will need copies of all of Captain Maynard’s medical records. He can find us in the cafeteria.”

  The nurse took the card and nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” she replied, reaching for the phone.

  The arson investigator turned back to Chris. “Shall we?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, let’s get this over with. I want to get back before Cal’s family wakes up.”

  “Lieutenant,” the nurse called out as they moved to walk away. “If any of the ladies wakes while you’re gone, I’ll let them know where you are.”

  “Thank you,” he told her, and then he and Martine—Martie, she had said to the nurse—headed for the elevators.

  They were silent on the ride down, during which Chris tried his hardest not to be aware of the incredible example of femininity standing next to him. She was close enough that he could smell her perfume, a blend of citrus and some flower he didn’t recognize—possibly orange blossoms. He didn’t want to be aware of the swell of her breasts or the curve of her hips, the perfect roundness of her ass. Calvin had been dead hardly more than six hours and he was lusting after the arson investigator assigned to his case. This was nuts.

  In order to avoid his eyes being drawn to her backside when she walked, he hurried off the elevator first when it stopped on the ground floor. Martie either didn’t notice his rudeness or chose not to acknowledge it, and simply fell into step beside him. In the cafeteria they each bought a cup of coffee and he led them to a table by the windows.

  After taking a sip of the bitter coffee, he set the paper cup down and said, “So what do you want to know, Lt. Liotta?”

  “Please call me Martie,” she told him.

  He nodded. “You can call me Chris, I suppose.”

  She smiled again, a fuller one this time. Chris ground his teeth and reached for his coffee again, resolutely ignoring the tightening in his groin.

  “Thank you, Chris,” Martie said, then reached into the messenger bag she’d had slung over her shoulder and pulled out a small voice recorder. “Do you mind if I record this? I find it easier to conduct interviews this way and translate them into notes later.”

  Chris shrugged. “Whatever you feel is best, I guess.”

  She switched the recorder on and placed it on the table between them. After reciting her name, the date, and giving his name as the person being interviewed, she said softly, “Tell me about yesterday, Chris.”

  He felt his chest squeeze tight just thinking about it. In his mind he could still see Calvin’s determined face when he said he was going to help Football and Terry search for the people trapped inside the burning building. He could still feel the unease settling into the pit of his stomach, that feeling that something just wasn’t right.

  Slowly, starting from the moment the call came over the station loudspeakers, Chris recounted the events of the day before. He told her everything that had happened on the scene as best as he recalled it—which was in unfortunately brutal detail. Martie didn’t ask him any questions until he had finished speaking.

  “Protocol says Captain Maynard should have stayed outside with the ground crew and sent you or another firefighter in to assist with the search,” she said. “Why do you think he didn’t do that?”

  He shrugged again. “I don’t know for sure, but if I were to hazard a guess it’s because he’s a parent too—or was—and wanted to ensure that little girl was reunited with her mother. Cal had a daughter too. She’s pretty broken up over this.”

  “You could have reminded him of the SOP and insisted on going inside instead,” Martie pressed. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because protocol also says that the commanding officer’s orders are to be followed by his subordinates,” Chris replied sharply. “It was Calvin’s call.”

  “Of course,” she conceded mildly. “And Marshal Dresden? He should have taken command on his arrival and did not—he left you in charge and departed almost as soon as he’d arrived. What do you think of that?”

  Chris frowned, and his voice was sharp once again as he replied tightly, “I think that his friend of more than 30 years was more of a priority to him than a building that was not worth saving.”

  She surprised him a little when next she asked, “How is that little girl, by the way? You said her name was Jessica?”

  “It is. And last I heard she was resting comfortably at Gracechurch Memorial. Cal’s actions, covering her like he did, saved that kid’s life,” he said.

  Martie nodded. “I’ve no doubt of that, Chris.”

  The softness of her voice, the way she all but breathed his name, and once again he found himself wanting her. Those lips were just begging to be devoured, her body to be explored. Or maybe his grandfather was right and it had been too long since he’d had a woman in his bed. Whatever the case, as insane as it was given the emotional roller coaster of the last day, there was just no denying that he found Martie Liotta attractive.

  But when the hell could he ever do anything about it?

  ***

  Oy mio, Martie thought as she got into her car. Her hands holding the wheel, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back to the headrest. Chris Paytah was nothing like what she’d expected. Well, she really hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t a tall, muscular Native American with short, ebony hair and dark chocolate eyes—and a mouth that had drawn her gaze more times than she cared to admit. Unbidden, his face came to her mind’s eye and once again she found herself staring at a top lip that reminded her of a bow, and a full bottom lip that looked just right for pulling with her teeth. She’d also noted the bottom of what appeared to be a sleeve tattoo on his right forearm. If it was a full sleeve, then…damn. That was sexy.

  Telling herself to get a grip, Martie sat straight and put her key into the ignition. She had notes to translate—she still needed to speak to the other men from Chris’s team, getting their perspectives on the incident. Although she could probably conduct those interviews over the phone, she knew she wouldn’t. She preferred a hands-on approach. Talking to the men in person would make her appear more sincere, which in turn m
ight incline them to be more open with their opinions. Being a woman and playing the sympathy card wouldn’t hurt, either.

  Not that she was making light of the fact that a man had died, someone that both Chris and Robert Dresden had clearly respected and admired a great deal. Chris, in fact, had referred to Calvin Maynard more than once by Calvin or Cal—the latter being a short name only a friend would use. His captain had been more than his boss, and the pain he felt at his loss had been clear in the stiffness of his back, the set of his broad shoulders, his pinched expression. She’d had to fight the almost impossible to resist urge to reach across the table and caress his face, to trace his lips with her fingers so that he would forget for just a little while how much he was hurting.

  And that’s what had really thrown her—that she had found herself wanting to comfort him when she should have been grilling him for answers. Instead she had simply let him tell his story and had asked only a handful of questions. That wasn’t her usual mode of operation. She was tougher than that. It was how she got things done—asking the hard questions, pushing when others might back away, forcing witnesses to see things from every angle and suspects to confess just to get her to leave them alone.

  Of course, her usual hard-nosed tactics hadn’t worked on Trevor Breckon so far…but she’d get him.

  And she’d have to talk to Chris again, a thought that made her happier than it should. As she pulled out of the hospital parking lot, she wondered if she’d get to see him again before either one of them left town, and whether or not it was wrong for her to be hopeful that she would. It wasn’t as if she wouldn’t see him in Gracechurch when she went there to interview his crewmates. She didn’t need to talk to him again until she talked to the rest of his unit.

  But whether or not she would—or could—wait that long was a question that plagued her the rest of the morning. Back in her office, she found herself listening to the sound of his voice on the recorder and fantasizing about him using that deep baritone to talk her out of her clothes instead of typing up the interview like she was supposed to be doing.