by Carmen Faye
“Oh come on now, Ash…” She tries to wiggle her arm out of my grasp, but my fingers around her wrist is too much.
“Don’t you dare talk back to me, Catty. Do you know who I am? What I say goes, and what I say to you stays in here. If I even hear a word about today, I will disavow you. All rights. All privileges. I’ll send your ass back to whatever dank ass trailer park you came from.”
She tries to pull away again, and I let her go. Her body flies away as she turns to grab her dress from the floor. It slips over her head as she walks straight out the office door half nude. I don’t even bother watching her go. Girls like Catty shouldn’t be worrying me at a time like this. I’ve got ten minutes till I’m to report to my men on the fires and I need to figure out if I’m going with the truth or if I’m going to play down all that’s gone on.
I sit back down on the chair and pull open my computer once more. It opens to the page I left on when Catty walked in. It’s a story about the fires and the victims. I scan the black and white spaces for what I want to find, and there in the middle is her name:
“Dani Stansville, 27, of Sterling, Oregon was one of the lucky survivors of the recent fires at Queen Estates. Eyewitnesses report a man dressed in all black carried the unconscious woman down a flight of stairs while also alerting other residents to the fire coming in from the roof area. The woman managed to escape with second-degree burns and smoke inhalation. After a 7-day hospital stay, she is to be released from Oregon Rose Medical Center tomorrow morning.
Police are interested in speaking with the unknown man as he disappeared from the scene. Expert Fire Detective Lt. Andrea Templeton would not say if he is one of the several suspects the Sterling, OR police have investigated, but she does name him as a ‘person of interest’ in the case.”
Shit. Person of interest. I know that term all too well. That’s how it starts. Now it just isn’t Remmy wondering what the hell happened. The police are on my tail, too. All this bull for saving a girl in a building. What does a guy get if he gets a cat down from a tree?
My phone alarm goes off over on the couch and I reach over to turn it off. Without another thought, I head outside and downstairs to the meeting room. Already thirty or forty of my men have taken their seats, beers and smokes in hand. The entire room fills with white tobacco clouds and the sound of men spitting out their week’s events. No empty seats. It’s a full house.
I take my place up at the front table in the very center while our Secretary Cam calls the meeting to order. The room goes deathly silent as Road Leader Ace talks through the schedule, the assignments for the runs down to the warehouse and collection points. It’s all part of the process -- so business-like for men running drugs to the good citizens of Sterling and beyond. By the time our Treasurer is up, you’d think we’re the damn American Legion.
Once past business is closed, it’s my turn. I stand slowly, my hands wrapped in balls on the wooden table. The men look up at me as I rise to my feet. I tap twice before deciding on the one course of action I know to be safest -- the truth.
“So you probably heard that I am a suspect in those fires around town. I want to clear it up for you so you know what you’re dealing with. As some of you may have heard or know, those buildings used to belong to us Devils years ago when we were just starting up. We got nothing to do with them now. But we can’t ignore that someone is targeting us. Someone is trying to frame us. The night that apartment building burnt to the ground, the captains and I have been looking at our old buildings and I was staking out the Queen Estates.”
I take a deep breath, trying to map out my words carefully. “When I saw that building go up in flames, I wanted to be just a bystander. I was going to turn back, but I saw some people trapped up in there and I ran inside. I shouldn’t have, and that’s my fault. But I don’t regret it.”
“What the fuck, Ash!” My head spins to my right where a Yelin stands up. “Do you know what you did!”
“I’ll remind me you who the hell you’re talking to.” I reply, my eyes peering at him through partially closed slits. He falls back to his chair while the rest of the men turn uncomfortably in their seats. “You think I want this? I thought I was being careful. I didn’t think I was seen. And I still don’t think I left a trail behind me. I was pretty well covered.”
“You haven’t heard, then, Pres.” Yelin mutters under his breath.
“Heard what?”
“They’ve got a picture. It’s all over the news. They’re coming for you, Boss.”
The room goes into an uproar, man shouting over man. Most are in support of me. They know better than to put me on trial for an order all the Captains agreed upon. My second-in-command, Iggy, stands and takes over as I sit back down like a defeated man. No good deed goes unpunished.
Chapter 5
If you ask anyone who knows me, they will tell you the worst possible thing that can happen to me is my voice being gone. I’m not talking a sore throat or anything -- I can push through that. I’m talking about what’s happening to me right now in this hospital bed. I’ve been awake for what seems like weeks now, and these doctors are still insisting on keeping these tubes down my throat.
It’s not like I can argue back and tell them, “No thanks, doc. I’d rather have some real food now.” or “Hey! It’s great you have a medical degree and all, but how can I tell you that I’m not in that much pain if you don’t actually let me tell you!” All they do is just stare at me with their exhausted, forgiving eyes and whisper their decisions to my mom.
That’s where the second main problem lies. My mom is nothing if not a pushover. She’s one of those types who can’t go five feet without a beggar convincing her to hand over her coin purse. When my dad was still alive, she practically lived and died for him. She would have happily spent her life waiting on him hand and foot if she could have. What he said was the final answer. And now it’s happening all over again with the doctors.
I’ve tried a couple times to reach out and touch her arms, to shake my head as frantically as possible, to even grasp onto a pen. But I’m pretty much out cold on these meds flowing through my arm -- some drip mixture of painkillers and saline to flush out all that smoke I coughed into my lungs in the fire.
I hate to admit that after the third day of trying to get her and those doctors’ attentions, I’ve given up on having any say in my medical treatment. They were going to treat me like a corpse still fresh in this bed and I’ll take this as a vacation and just sit back and watch whatever crap television show my mom plays in the background. I don’t have to worry about anything. My mom always wants to take over those parts of my life, such as my bills and the insurance issues, so be it. This is my temporary Bahamas.
About five days later after I was first brought in, at least by my hazy count using my handy is it light outside still method, I woke up to no tubes down my throat, no force feedings, no beeping machines. I couldn’t believe how free I could be. They had even removed a majority of the larger bandages from my arm so I could move them cautiously from my bed to my chest.
As soon as I attempt moving, though, I know just how bad of shape I’m in. My whole body is having this shared experience with a cooked turkey. I’m raw to the point that my skin actually prickles whenever I feel the temperature change in my hospital room. And when I slide my hand into a patch of sunlight on my bed, I recoil almost instantly.
It’s early, probably only about 3 or 4 AM, but a night nurse must have heard me stir or my spastic movements triggered some alarm. She rushes in with such force that it actually causes me to jump in my hospital bed. When she flicks on the overhead light, her whole face changes, almost a relief. “You’re up! We thought you’d never wake up at this point. I know those drugs are strong, but your body was really fighting for a decent night’s sleep, eh.” She laughs at the end of her sentence as if whatever I’ve gone through isn’t that big of a deal. I go to talk back to her, lifting my hand in the air, but a sharp pain hits me almost instantly. “Oh, honey, don’t try
to talk too much just yet. Those tubes really mess up your vocal chords. How about I send up for some Jello and juice for you? It’ll help lube up everything. In the meantime, we left the pain medication in your IV line. You feel awful, you press that red button on the side of your bed as much as you want.”
And suddenly, I’m back to liking this woman. I nod my head emphatically as she gets on a phone and calls down to the cafeteria. As she lists off my flavor options, I shoot a thumbs up sign at the mention of strawberry and my stomach instantly roars back to life.
When the tray arrives with the few liquid items I’m allowed to eat, the nurse sits beside me as she runs through my vitals. “You were lucky, you know. I’ve been working with the burn team for ten years now, and they never come out this way. Smoke inhalation like yours…girl, you should be a goner. You better be thanking your lucky stars for that person who pulled you out. He got others, too, but you were the worst case by far.”
The person who got me out…As soon as she says it, I’m hit with this flashback of a man with his face covered in black springing through a window like some Olympian movie star. He picked me up with such deftness that I felt as if I were floating through the chaos and hell of fire and burning obstacles. But as soon as we hit that stairwell, my mind went dark, a complete blank slate. What happened after he got me through those fire doors? What happened to him?
The nurse takes out a small notepad and begins to write down my blood pressure, which has significantly gone up since thinking back to that night. I touch her arm gently and she looks over at me as I motion for the pencil.
As quick as I can, with nervous shaking hands, I scroll, “Who saved me?”
The nurse eyes the paper momentarily and then looks up at me with wide eyes that jump out of her brown rim glasses. She pushes back a strand of hair that’s fallen from her ponytail as she turns her head to clear her throat. She doesn’t want to tell me. Or maybe she can’t tell me? For some reason, that seems even worse to me. “Well,” she stutters, “That’s the thing, Dani, er, Ms. Stansville. The guy who brought you out -- it’s all over the news. He’s a suspect in the fire. They’re talking about double homicide for the two who couldn’t get out.”
I know I should be thinking about my neighbors when she says homicide. These were people I had known well for the last few years. They were part of the Queen Estates charm. But I am stuck on my mystery man being a suspect. How could anyone so brave, so selfless be the person who set this all into motion?
Being in fire department training meant I got a glimpse into burners, those arsonists who are obsessed with fire starting. Captain Quinn tells us that they either just want to watch something go up in smoke -- like an obsession. Or they are doing it to cause pain. The ones who want to watch a fire set flame to garages or dumpster, low pressure items without much cause and effect. They know the fire department will most likely be there to put it out before long. But those who want to hurt go to homes of their loved ones or apartment buildings full of innocent people like me who would never know. Most importantly, they leave before it gets too crazy.
Mystery guy doesn’t exactly fit either profile. I can’t peg him, and for someone who does a great deal of people learning, that drives me nuts. I spend the rest of the night thinking of him, begging myself to come up with those details that went up in smoke after the blackness took over. Did he have tattoos? He has lots of them. Were his eyes black or brown? Somewhere in between. Was that his hair or a hat? It was his hat. I remember those strands he blew with his lips floating upwards.
I don’t sleep that night. I don’t even think I blink. I don’t want to lose the memories I’ve refound. They were clues I had to hold onto. I even asked the nurse for a piece of paper so I could jot it all down. One by one, I throw the papers in a drawer next to my hospital bed as the rest of the hospital began to wake up.
A few short hours later, as the sun pours in through the closed blinds, my mother walks in, coffee in hand. The nurses must have warned her I am awake and moving. There is no shock about seeing me, just a satisfied smile that her burden is over. “Danielle, darling. It’s good to see you up. I’d offer you a coffee, but I don’t think you can speak yet, can you?”
I coughed slightly before opening my mouth slowly. A few sounds squeak out as I gain more and more strength. “I…can talk. Not many words.”
“Good, good. You’re going home today. Well, not home. You’re going back to my place. Your home insurance offered you a hotel while that mess gets sorted out, but it was over along Oceanview. I told them you would pass. You need to be cared for right now.”
My head hits the pillow frustrated. This is my mother -- overbearing, focused on what she thinks is best without even considering who the most important person is. I look over to her with weary eyes as I try to be as diplomatic as possible, “You don’t have to care for me mom. If the doctors say I can go home, they think I can do it on my own.”
“I understand that, Danielle, but that’s just not going to happen. Your coworker is going to come over with your car and drive it to the house.”
My mind comes to a screeching halt. “My coworker? Who?”
“James?”
“Jamie,” I correct. I should have guessed.
“Jamie. What a nice guy. He’s been here every day and brings me food. He sits with you while I’ve had to go into the office. And he’s been talking to the police over the last few days, too, to try to get an ID on that guy.”
“That guy? The man who pulled me out?”
“Yes, of course. They got an image of him fleeing the building. Why would he run if he didn’t have anything to do with it?” My mother looks down at the old silver wristwatch she never leaves home without and then walks over to the bed and grabs the remote for the television from my side.
The flat screen hanging above my head flicks on to a news program. Within a few minutes, the morning news replays with the number one story being the police’s big effort to identify the man dressed in black. A man dressed completely in black darts across an alleyway, his jacket pulled up over his face as his dark eyes dart back and forth. He finally disappears into a clearing of trees where you can see the small headlights of a motorcycle flash on.
The reporter, dressed in a funeral black suit, lowers his voice as the screen pans to a picture of a man in a police photo. “Police believe the man featured in the surveillance tape is none other than 1% motorcycle club president Ash Cooper. Cooper was last arrested and jailed for a interstate drug ring that led police on a wild chase throughout the state and ended up in the death of two people.”
I sit up higher in my bed, my elbows forcing to hold my weight despite the pain of the burns still lingering. I have to get a better look at that man. Ash Cooper. Ash Cooper with the dark hair that falls in his face, the tattoos along his arms and neck, the black jacket and bandana, the eyes that spell out danger with every glance. That is him. That was my rescuer, my superhero, my personal firefighter.
The beeps on my heart rate monitor pick up speed as all of the blood rushes from my face to my feet. It feels as though the literal bottom of me has dropped out with the news. Am I wrong? Could the person so wonderful as to risk his life to save my neighbors and me actually be the person who started the fire -- or worse, was a convicted murderer?
“Danielle?” My mother is by my bedside as she reaches for my forehead as if I’m three years old with a fever. “Tell me what’s going on. Are you all right?”
I shake my head viciously, burying it deeper in the pillow as I reach across the covers for the red button the nurse pointed out last night. In seconds I feel a warm rush as all the pain in me disappears, and I float back to sleep. There, I can hold on to the image of the man, the good man, rushing into hell to save me.
Chapter 6
“I need to know what you got on her. Anything.” I sit down quickly next to our Treasurer, a smart guy named Duane. He used to be a private eye back before he joined up with the Devil’s Crucifix. He even
worked with me and the Hells Rangers. But most importantly, he is the only guy in the club I can currently trust. He knows how to get information without raising eyebrows.
He hands me a small file as he apologetically says, “I didn’t have much time, but I managed to pull some records for her. Not terribly interesting. Danielle Stansville. Lived at the Queen Estates for the past few years. Lived in Sterling all her life. She’s ironically training to be a fireman. Or woman. Whatever you call them. If she makes the force, it looks like she’d be the first woman in history to do so. She’s got a mother and a dead dad -- car accident. But that’s about it. The only other person I see connected to her is a friend named Eva from high school and this guy Jamie who pops up a ton on her social media pages.”
“Like a boyfriend?”
“No. I don’t think so. She doesn’t post any pictures of him except for a few with her firemen training. Looks like he’s a coworker who either is up in her business a lot or is looking to nail her. Typical stalker delusions.”
“Heh,” I laugh to myself thinking about the term stalker. “Sounds like a creep.” It doesn’t feel right asking Duane to track down this info on the girl I saved. It’s not like I know her or have any connection to her life that justifies me doing this. But I can’t stop wondering if she suspects me, too.
