“Well, yeah. But I don’t want to go up in smoke with it,” Xander said.
Rusty snuffed out the flame with an abrupt jerk of his wrist, irritation flaring in his chest. “Do you really think I’m dumb enough to let that happen?”
“No, dude.” Xander’s answer came swiftly enough to mark it as genuine. “All I’m saying is, accidents happen. This shit’s really flammable, you know?”
He turned, his silhouette barely visible in the ambient light provided by the overhead streetlamp positioned at the front of the lot, and gestured toward the pair of plastic gas cans he’d filled at the Gas ’n Go on the way here. Rusty hadn’t been brainless enough to fill them himself. With all the surveillance cams at gas stations—even the shitty places had them now—he wasn’t about to take the risk. That Xander had been naïve enough to do it for him, and without a baseball hat on or anything, God, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
Or, better yet, setting them on fire.
“That’s the point,” Rusty said, giving in to the slow grin pulling at the unscarred corner of his mouth and forcing the other one to go along for the ride. “It’s really flammable because it’s made to burn.”
“Okay, but we’re supposed to be setting stuff on fire, not people,” Xander said, and Christ, the guy was turning into such a fucking whiner.
Rusty snorted. “Lose your skirt, would you? I already told you, you’ll be fine.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Huh. This pushback thing was a new development, and not one Rusty was sure he liked. “Okay. Then what are you talking about?”
Xander shrugged, but the tension in the outline of his shoulders canceled out any casualness the move might normally carry. “You said no one would get hurt, and that we’d be setting fires in vacant buildings.”
“Are you seriously still hung up on those two idiots at that bar last night?” Rusty asked. “For fuck’s sake, no one died, and I already told you, sometimes shit happens.”
“And I already told you, I’m not down with that. I want the money, not a murder rap.”
Although Xander’s words held a little more mettle than when he’d protested last night, that fear that had made Rusty zero in on him for this job in the first place was still there, lurking in his voice, and okay, it was time to remind Xander who was calling the shots here, once and for all.
“Do you think I was kidding when I said I own you?” he asked, his boots crunching over the gravel beneath them as he took a step, then another, in Xander’s direction.
The line of Xander’s shoulders tightened further. “I get it, Rusty, but—”
“I don’t think you do.”
In less than the span of a breath, he’d reached out, grabbing Xander’s arm in an unforgiving grip and twisting it around. The guy struggled—Rusty had to give him points for spirit—but this wasn’t Rusty’s first, or even tenth, spin on this particular dance floor.
There was nothing quite like making someone watch while their own skin burned.
“Jesus, Rusty! Fine! I’ll forget about those people. I fucking hear you, okay?” Xander hissed. Rusty torqued his hold on Xander’s arm until he grunted in pain, making absolutely certain Xander got the message that the only thing trying to run would get him was a dislocated shoulder.
“You’re about to hear me more clearly,” he said, flicking the lighter to life with his free hand. “See, you’re not special. I did you just like I did Billy Creed.”
At the sight of the flame, Xander renewed his effort at struggling, although, damn, it had to hurt. “What are you talking about?”
“Who went and bought all the supplies for these devices, hmm?” Rusty held the lighter steady so he could see Xander’s face, and—more importantly—Xander could see his.
“I paid cash for all that stuff,” Xander said slowly. “Just like you told me to. It can’t be traced back to either of us.”
Oh, to be so naïve. “It can when the receipts end up in your apartment with your fingerprints all over them, and, oh, by the way, you’ve been pretty active online, too. Seems you’ve been researching how to make remote incendiary devices and buying even more goodies from that new laptop you bought online.”
“What are you talking about?” Xander’s eyes narrowed in the scant firelight. “I barely have the cabbage for my rent. I sure as shit didn’t buy a laptop.”
“Sure you do. You snapped it up two months ago with that new credit card of yours. For the record, you probably could have gotten a better interest rate.”
Xander’s muscles went rigid beneath Rusty’s grip. “Are you kidding me? You’re setting me up?”
“I’m buying an insurance policy,” Rusty corrected. The idea of letting a dipshit like Xander take the credit for his magnum opus rankled, and not a little. But Xander was weak. In the end, Rusty wouldn’t need to play this card, just as he hadn’t played it with Billy. He’d kill Xander first—hell, he might kill him anyway, when this beautiful, brilliant job was said, done, and burned to the ground. Until then, Rusty would use Xander’s fear as leverage to get him to do whatever he was told from now until Rusty no longer needed his sorry, sniveling ass.
Speaking of which… “Buying all that stuff and researching how to commit arson isn’t nearly the worst thing you’ve done, though, is it?” Rusty asked. “I mean, you stole this car”—he sent his glance to the Camry, but only for a split second before returning it to Xander—“and unfortunately for you, there are pictures of that going down. And then there’s the surveillance video from the gas station where you filled these cans up, and video of you arriving here, where this car is going to burn, just as the sun was going down. It all looks really bad. But here’s the thing. All of that can go up in smoke.”
He laughed at his own joke, but Xander, the freaking killjoy, wasn’t nearly as amused. “Listen, Rusty, I—”
“Stop interrupting,” Rusty bit out, yanking up on Xander’s arm as a fresh shot of anger burst through his veins. Xander grunted, reminding Rusty just how weak he was, and yeah, it was time to get to the good part of this lesson. “Let me spell it out for you, since you seem to have missed this last night. This plan is set. There is no backing out, not even if someone dies. You’ll do what you’re told, and you’ll do it without complaint or question from now on. Am I clear?”
Xander’s breath emerged on a strained huff, sweat forming a sheen on his forehead. “Yeah, man. Fine. We’re cool.”
“Good. Then let me give you a little reminder. A souvenir, if you will, just in case you ever think of changing your mind.”
Rusty brought the flame closer to the thin skin on the underside of Xander’s forearm, his pulse jumping in wild anticipation.
Xander’s eyes widened. “You…you don’t need to do that, dude. I mean it. The dead body thing just freaked me out for a second, but I’m solid now, just like I was before.”
Too little, too late. “You won’t struggle. You won’t close your eyes, and you won’t look away,” Rusty told him, making sure Xander knew he fucking meant every syllable of what he said. “You’ll watch every second, or I’ll keep burning you until there’s nothing left. Do you understand?”
“Rusty—”
Rage surged up from his chest, making him crank Xander’s arm up so high that the bastard hit his knees. “Do. You. Understand?”
Xander gave a shallow nod. “Y-yeah.”
“Good. Eyes up, then. Oh,” he added nonchalantly. “Don’t worry about the smell. You get used to it.”
Without waiting, he moved the flame over Xander’s skin, his smile growing wider with every scream.
9
Gamble squinted through the Sunday afternoon sunlight, watching as his rookie stood in front of the fire house and beat the shit out of a tractor tire with a sledgehammer.
“Easy. Pace yourself,” he warned with a frown, hoping like hell that de Costa took his advice before she pulled something vital. There were worse things to be than gung-ho, he supposed, and she’
d been trying to prove her worth since day one—being the daughter of one of the city’s most respected battalion chiefs was a helluva rap to have to navigate. But given that Gamble’s current mood could only be labeled piss-poor and de Costa wouldn’t learn how to swing a sledge properly if she puked or passed out on the cement, her enthusiasm wasn’t about to deliver him to his happy place.
“Like this?” she asked, slowing down a fraction. Her gray RFD T-shirt was already darkened with sweat around the neck and both shoulders, where the bright red suspenders attached to her bunker pants slid against the fabric with every swing. Her brows creased, forming a deep V of concentration over her medium brown skin, and Gamble huffed in frustration.
“Only if you want to turn your rotator cuff into Silly Putty.”
“Oh.” de Costa stopped, her frown growing stronger. “But you said to swing with purpose and hit hard. Isn’t that what I’m doing?”
Ah, hell. That was the thing with rookies. They made rookie mistakes. And as tempted as he was to snap at her for going so hard when he’d told her a hundred times before today that it would burn her the hell out, it wasn’t her fault he was tired and distracted.
Chalk that up to a long night spent outside of a shitty dive bar, looking for a guy who didn’t want to be found.
Taking a deep breath, Gamble looked at de Costa and gestured for the sledge, which she passed over. “You need to widen your grip a little bit more, like this.” He wrapped both hands around the sledge handle, one close to the head, the other much farther down. “The movement’s not just coming from your arms, so set your feet and tighten up through your core.” Because he was a practice-what-he-preached kind of guy, he firmed his muscles, turning to face the tire head-on. “When you swing, let your right hand really slide through so you can use that energy and control your aim with the left. Like this.”
Gamble went through the motion, the steel head of the sledge bouncing off the tire with a precise, satisfying thump. Although it was way more muscle memory than conscious effort, his body still sang from the small coil-and-release, to the point that he went for three more rounds before handing the sledge back to de Costa.
“And for the love of God, slow down,” he said. “It’s ninety-two degrees out here with a billion percent humidity. I’m not too interested in having to get Luke or Quinn to come start an IV to rehydrate you because you worked yourself into too much of a damned lather. You copy?”
“Yes, sir.” She grasped the sledgehammer and put his advice to work, popping off a couple of awkward swings before finally connecting with one that didn’t look like it would destroy her shoulder.
“Good,” Gamble said. He stepped back to keep an eye on her, quickly getting lost in the (thankfully slower) repetition of the thump-thump-thump against the tractor tire. His thoughts drifted back to his trip into North Point, to the silent yet tender-hearted way Kennedy had slipped Darlene some cash before they’d left, so far on the down low that if Gamble hadn’t been watching her every move, he’d have missed it, then to Kennedy’s somber silence as they’d headed to that rat-hole bar, Houlihan’s, to try to find Xander at the pier. After four hours of loitering in a bunch of places that smelled even worse than they looked, he and Kennedy had finally given up and gone home, empty-handed.
Her brother was a ghost.
“Damn, it’s hotter than hell’s hinges out here.”
Gamble’s pulse escalated at the unexpected voice sounding off from behind him, and damn it, he needed to lose this distraction, and fast.
“A burning building is hotter,” Gamble pointed out, tilting his head at his fellow engine-mate, Kellan Walker, as the guy strolled the rest of the way across the front walkway toward the spot where he stood a few paces away from de Costa.
“That, my friend, is a fact. Just wanted to let you know, Shae and I finished checking all the equipment and we’re good to go after this morning’s call.”
It was SOP—not to mention, just plain smart—for them to check all of their equipment after going on a call that required they use it. This morning’s minivan fire on the freeway had been pretty standard-issue, as far as calls went. But since their masks had come out and their SCBAs had been kicked on while they’d taken care of business, Gamble had dialed up a full equipment check when they’d returned.
“Copy that.” Gamble paused to eyeball de Costa, whose swings looked considerably better than when she’d started. “Okay, DC. Now, switch sides and do it again.”
The look on her face was pure confusion. “You want me to hit the other side of the tire?”
“No. I want you to do the entire drill again. Left-handed.”
Her chin snapped up, one black corkscrew curl escaping from the ponytail where she’d tethered the others. “But I’m not left-handed.”
“A fact of which I’ve been aware since the first day you set foot in this fire house,” Gamble said. “But you never know when you’ll be stuck in a situation where the only way you’ll be able to swing is left-handed, so go ahead and give me fifty on your other side.”
“Are you trying to kill me?” de Costa asked, and the fact that she’d raised the question with nothing but pure honesty was the only reason Gamble didn’t turn the fifty into a hundred.
“I’m trying to make you a firefighter,” he said, sending a pointed stare at the sledge in her hands. “You’ll either get there, or you won’t.”
Kellan chuffed out a soft laugh. “Don’t complain, Lucy, or he’ll have you go at these in full turnouts. Coat, hood, helmet. The whole nine.”
The rookie’s amber-colored eyes widened, and she scrambled to start the drill, left-handed and all. Gamble lifted a brow at Kellan in a silent really? and the guy returned it with a shrug.
“What?” Kellan murmured, his easygoing smile still front and center. “You can’t tell me you weren’t thinking it.”
Gamble couldn’t argue because, of course, it was exactly what he’d been thinking. Instead, he shrugged by way of reply, his shoulder muscles vise-gripping his bones in a reminder of all the tension he’d been accumulating that he couldn’t seem to shake.
“So,” Kellan said, watching de Costa struggle through her first few left-handed swings before continuing. “At the risk of you telling me to fuck straight off, I’ve got to ask. Are you okay?”
Gamble continued his silence, simply looking at Kellan with one brow arched up. But Kellan had balls, and what’s more, the same sort of loyalty to his fellow firefighters that Gamble did.
“I’m not trying to get in your shit or anything,” he continued, metering his voice low enough to keep their conversation from de Costa’s rookie ears. “It’s just that you seemed a little…I don’t know, off the other night at The Crooked Angel. Then there was that fire and everything, so I just want to be sure you’re straight.”
The question didn’t surprise Gamble as much as it should’ve. Kellan had spent years as an active-duty Army Ranger before becoming a firefighter. He was as likely to miss details—even subtle ones—as he was to stick himself with pins just for fun.
Gamble nodded. “Yeah, man. I’m solid.”
Fuck, he hated to lie. But since the truth involved either talking about the four fallen recon squad-mates he hadn’t properly honored the other night, or a fire that may or may not have been started by the long-lost brother Kennedy seemed hell-bent on protecting no matter the cost, coming out with the truth wasn’t really an option.
Kellan ran a hand over the front of his uniform shirt, looking for all the world like he was going to argue. But then an all-too-familiar car pulled up in front of the fire house, with an all-too-familiar brunette behind the wheel, and damn, it looked like Gamble was about to do a swan dive from the frying pan right into the fire.
“Keep an eye on de Costa for me,” he murmured, noting and ignoring the curiosity splashed all over Kellan’s face. Kicking his boots into motion, he covered the small patch of grass in front of Station Seventeen in short order, stopping when he reached the agi
ng Nissan Kennedy was now standing next to. She was wearing a pair of skin-tight black pants with knee-high boots to match, and even though her sleeveless white top was doing this flowy thing that made the fabric hide her curves and cover her ass for the most part, the sight of her did absolutely zero in terms of helping Gamble focus.
“Sorry to bug you here at work,” she said, shooting a glance over his shoulder toward the spot where Kellan and DC stood, hopefully not staring. “But I didn’t want to do this over the phone, and I don’t have your number, anyway.”
“That’s okay.” Gamble looked at her more closely, trying to take her temperature a little, but between her sunglasses and her game face, he came up with a whole lot of nothing. “What’s up? Did you hear from Xander?”
“Not yet,” she said with a sigh. “But Officers Boldin and Lynch stopped by the bar earlier to let me know that guy, Fenton—you know, the jackass?”
A bitter taste formed in Gamble’s mouth at the mental image of the guy Kennedy had tossed from The Crooked Angel. “Yeah, I remember him.”
Kennedy nodded, her expression suggesting she had about as much love lost for the guy as Gamble did. “Well, the cops caught up with him yesterday afternoon. It looks like after I threw him out of the bar, he went to the 24-hour convenience store two blocks over. Their security footage shows him buying cigarettes at 1:07 a.m., then, the outdoor camera shows him standing in front of the place, smoking, until he got into a car six minutes later. Fenton claimed it was an Uber, and the company confirmed the car was one of theirs. The driver dropped him off at his apartment in Grant Park.”
“That’s fifteen minutes from The Crooked Angel,” Gamble said after a quick mental measure.
“Yep. With that sort of distance and timeframe, there’s no way he could’ve started the fire. So he alibi’s out.”
In truth, the fact that the douche truck had an alibi was just a formality as far as Gamble was concerned—not only did Fenton not have the stones to do something like set that fire, but Kennedy had seen Xander, not Fenton, speeding away from the bar. As far as the RPD went, though, the alibi was a relief. Fenton might be an ass, but he didn’t deserve to get tabbed for a crime he didn’t commit.
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