“Sorry,” she murmured in a small voice as she resumed walking. “Thank you.”
Ethan nodded. “Better.” Grinning, he fell into place beside her as they went down the hall. “I thought I’d give you a hand viewing them. There’re two monitors in the room and two sets of eyes are better than one.”
She hadn’t realized that there were two monitors, but even if she had, she wouldn’t have expected anyone else to volunteer for the tedious job of looking for the same face to pop up somewhere within every crowd shot of the various fires.
She stopped walking and looked at him in astonishment. “You’re actually volunteering, of your own free will, to help me go over the tapes?”
Arriving at the room, he shifted the box to one side, balancing it on his hip in order to open the door for her. He stepped back and allowed her to go in first. “I think if you play back the conversation, that’s what I just said.”
Walking in, she deposited the box on the long, metal-top table that served as a desk. Both monitors with their VCRs were on it.
“Why?” she asked, turning to face him.
He put down his box next to hers. “Because that’s what partners do, and like I said, for better or for worse, we’re temporary partners.” He pulled out his chair and sat down. “The sooner we get done with these, the sooner we can move on to something else. Maybe even catching this guy,” he added.
Considering the way she’d treated him, O’Brien was being incredibly nice. She wondered if it were a mistake, letting her guard down just a little. She didn’t like leaving herself open. But verbally sparring with him after his offer of help didn’t seem right, either.
“Thank you,” she finally said. “That’s very nice of you.”
He took out the first tape. The writing on the label was exceptionally neat—and small. An ant would need glasses to read it, he thought.
Ethan gave her a glance. “Remember that the next time you want to take my head off.”
She supposed she had that coming. She hadn’t exactly been the most easygoing, even-tempered person to work with.
“It’s not your fault, you know,” she murmured, sitting down. “The way I react.”
“Never thought it was,” he answered glibly. Ethan paused, waiting. But she didn’t say anything further. So he did. “Okay, whose fault is it?”
Again, Kansas didn’t answer right away. Instead, she seemed to be preoccupied with taking tapes out of the box and arranging them in some preordained order on the long, narrow table that they were using. It was a balancing act at best. Most of the space was taken up by the monitors. She remained silent for so long, Ethan decided she wasn’t going to answer him.
And then she did.
“My husband’s,” she replied quietly. “It’s my husband’s fault.”
Ethan stared at her. To say he was stunned would have been a vast understatement. His eyes instantly darted to Kansas’s left hand. There was no ring there, which caused another host of questions to pop up in his head. Men didn’t always wear a wedding ring. Women, however, usually did. But she didn’t have one.
“You’re married?” he asked, the words echoing in the small room.
“Was,” Kansas corrected him. “I was married. A long time ago.” She took a breath, because this wasn’t easy to admit, even to herself, much less to someone else. But he was still a stranger, which in an odd way made it somewhat easier. “Biggest mistake of my life.”
The statement instantly prompted another thought. “He abused you?”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, Ethan felt himself growing angry. Growing protective of her. The only other time he’d ever felt that way was when his mother had told them about their father. About being abandoned by the only man she’d ever loved, which to him represented abuse of the highest degree.
“Not physically,” Kansas was quick to answer. Which only led him to another conclusion.
“Emotionally?”
She laughed shortly, but there was no humor in the sound. “If you call bedding the hotel receptionist on our honeymoon emotional abuse, then yes, Grant abused me emotionally.” And broke her heart, but she wasn’t about to say that part out loud. That was only for her to know, no one else.
She knew that kind of thing couldn’t just happen out of the blue. A guy didn’t become worthless scum after he pledged to love, honor and cherish. The seeds had to have been there to begin with.
“You didn’t have a clue what he was like before that?”
Yes, she supposed, in hindsight, she had. But she was so desperate to have someone love her that she’d disregarded any nagging doubts she had, telling herself that it would be different once they were married.
Except that it wasn’t. It just got worse. So she’d ended it. Quickly.
Kansas shrugged carelessly. “I was in love and I made excuses for him.”
Ethan looked at her for a long moment. She didn’t strike him as the type who would do that. Obviously he was wrong. His interest as well as his curiosity was piqued a little more.
“If he came back into your life right now,” Ethan asked, selecting his words carefully as he continued unpacking tapes and lining them up in front of him, “and said he was sorry, would you take him back?”
Kansas regretted having said anything. He was asking a question that was way too personal, but she couldn’t blame him. This was all her fault. She’d opened the door to this and O’Brien was doing what came naturally to him—prying. And besides, the man was being helpful to her. She supposed she owed him the courtesy of an answer.
“That depends,” she said tentatively.
He raised a quizzical brow. Definitely not what he would have expected her to say. He decided to push it a little further. “On what?”
And that was when he saw the lightning flash in her eyes. “On whether or not I could find a big enough barbecue skewer to use so that I could roast him alive.”
Now that he would have expected to hear, Ethan thought, doing his best to keep a straight face. “I had no idea you were so bloodthirsty.”
“I’m not,” she admitted after a beat, “but he wouldn’t know that—and I’d want him to sweat bullets for at least a while.”
Ethan didn’t even try to hold the laughter back. “How long did you stay married?” he asked once he finally sobered a little.
Kansas didn’t answer him immediately. She hadn’t talked about her short stint as a married woman to anyone. In a way, it almost felt good to finally get all this out. “Just long enough to file for a divorce.”
That, he thought, explained a lot. “Is that what has you so dead set against the male species?” he asked, voicing his thoughts out loud.
“Not all of it,” she corrected. “Only the drop-dead handsome section of the species.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “Because drop-dead handsome guys think they can get away with anything.”
She was looking at him as if she included him in that small, exclusive club. But there was no way to ask her without sounding as if he had a swelled head. Ethan opted for leaving it alone, but he couldn’t resist pointing out the obvious. “You can’t convict a section of the population because one guy acted like a supreme jerk and didn’t know what he had.”
“And what is it that you think he had?” The question came out before she could think to bank it down. Damn it, he was going to think she was fishing for a compliment. Or worse, fishing for his validation. Which she didn’t need, she thought fiercely. The only person’s validation she needed was her own.
“A woman of substance,” Ethan told her, his voice low, his eyes on hers. “You don’t just make a commitment to someone and then fool around.”
No, he’s just trying to suck you in. He doesn’t mean a word of it.
“And you, if you make a commitment, you stick to it?” she asked, watching his eyes. She could always tell when a man was lying.
“I’ve never made a commitment,” he told her honestly. “It wouldn’t be fair to hav
e a woman clutching to strings if there weren’t any.”
Why was her breath catching in her throat like that? This was just talk, nothing more. There was absolutely no reason for her to feel like this, as if her pulse were just about to be launched all the way to the space station.
Shifting, trying to regain her bearings, her elbow hit one of the tapes and sent it falling to the floor. She exhaled, and bent down to pick it up. So did Ethan. They very narrowly avoided bumping heads.
But other body parts were not nearly so lucky. Stooping, their bodies brushed against one another, sending electric shock waves zipping through both of them at the same time. Kansas sensed this because just as she sucked in her breath, she thought she heard him do the same, except more softly.
When their eyes locked, the circuit seemed absolutely complete. Rising up, his hands on either side of her shoulders as he brought her up to her feet, Ethan didn’t think his next move through, which was highly unlike him. What he did was go with instincts that refused to be silenced.
Ethan bent his head, lightly brushing his lips against hers. And then he savored a second, stronger wave of electricity that went jolting through his system the moment he made contact.
He would have gone on to deepen the kiss, except that was exactly the moment that Dax chose to walk in with the third box of tapes.
Dax looked from his cousin to the fire department loan-out. It didn’t take a Rhodes scholar to pick up the vibes that were ricocheting through the small room. The vibes that had absolutely nothing to do with the apprehension of a firebug.
Clearing his throat, Dax asked a nebulous question. “Either of you two need a break?” His tone was deliberately mild.
Ethan glanced at her, then shook his head. “No, we’re good,” he assured Dax.
Yes, he certainly is, Kansas couldn’t help thinking. Even a mere fleeting press of his lips to hers had told her that.
She was definitely going to have to stay alert at all times with this one, she thought. If she wasn’t careful, he was going to wear away all of her defenses in the blink of an eye without really trying.
This was not good.
And she didn’t know if she believed him about not making any false promises. He sounded convincing, but it could all be for show, to leave her defenseless and open. After all, she didn’t really know the man.
But she knew herself.
It wasn’t in her to play fast and loose no matter how much she wanted to. She wasn’t the kind who went from man to man, having a good time with no thought of commitment. If she succumbed to this man, it would be a forever thing, at least on her part. And she already knew that there was no such word as forever in O’Brien’s vocabulary.
“Good.” She seconded Ethan’s response when Dax turned his gaze in her direction.
“I’d send you a third pair of eyes.” He addressed his remark to both of them, then waved at the equipment they were going to be using. “But there are only two monitors to be had.”
“That’s okay, Dax,” Ethan answered for both of them. “We’ll manage somehow.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Dax promised. Then, with a nod toward Kansas, he left the room, closing the door behind him. The lighting in the windowless room went from soft to inky.
It felt to Kansas that she’d been holding her breath the entire time. She stared at the door as if she expected it to open at any moment.
“Do you think that he saw us?” she asked Ethan uneasily.
“If he had, he would have said as much.” There was no question in his mind about that. “Dax doesn’t play games. None of the Cavanaughs do. They’re all straight shooters.”
She laughed softly, shaking her head. “That puts the lot of them right up there with unicorns, mermaids—and you.”
He grinned at her. “Always room for more.”
What did that even mean? she wondered. Was O’Brien just bantering, trying to tease her? Or was there some kind of hidden meaning to his words? What if he was saying that he and she could—
Stop it. Don’t be an idiot. That’s just wishful thinking on your part. How many Grants do you need in your life before you finally learn? We come into this world alone and we leave it alone. And most of us spend the time in between alone, as well.
“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” she told Ethan.
“Fair enough,” he commented. And then he looked back at the piles of tapes. “We’d better get to work before Dax assigns us a keeper.”
She merely nodded and applied herself to the task at hand.
And tried very, very hard not to think about the firm, quick press of velvet lips against hers.
* * *
“So?” Dax asked when Ethan and Kansas finally returned to their desks two days later and sank down in their chairs. They had brought in the boxes of tapes with them and deposited them on the floor next to their desks.
Ethan groaned, passing a hand over his eyes for dramatic effect. “I may never look at another TV monitor again.”
There was only one way to take that comment. Disappointment instantly permeated the room. “Then you found nothing?”
“Nothing,” Ethan confirmed. “Except that a lot of people could stand to have complete makeovers,” he quipped.
Dax looked over toward the fire investigator. “Kansas, have you got anything more informative than that for me?”
She really wished she did. After all, looking through the crowd footage had been her idea. “No, I’m afraid not. Neither one of us saw anyone who turned up at all the fires—or even half of them,” she added with an impatient sigh. “Because a lot of the fires took place in close proximity, there were some overlaps, the same people turning up at more than one blaze, but they definitely didn’t pop up at enough fires for us to look for them and ask questions.”
Dax didn’t look as if he agreed with her. “How many overlaps?” he pressed.
“One guy turned up four times,” Ethan interjected. Dax looked at him, listening. “Another guy, five. But five was the limit,” he added. “Nobody showed up more than that.”
Ethan opened his bottom drawer, looking for the giant bottle of aspirin. Finding it, he took it out. Then, holding it up, he raised an inquiring eyebrow in Kansas’s direction.
Kansas nodded, the motion relatively restrained because of the headache that was taking over. Shaking out two pills, Ethan leaned over and placed them on her desk, along with an unopened bottle of water that seemed to materialize in his hands. She didn’t know until then that he usually kept several such bottles on hand in his desk.
“So here we are again, back to square one,” Ortiz complained, looking exceedingly frustrated. “No viable suspects amid the known arsonists and pyromaniacs, no firebug hanging around in the crowd, bent on watching his handiwork, secretly laughing at us.”
Youngman added in his two cents. “Only good thing is that, except for that old man the other day, there haven’t been any casualties at these fires.”
Dax pointed out the simple reason for that piece of luck. “That’s because the fire department always turns up quickly each and every time. Don’t know how long that lucky streak’s going to continue.”
“Yeah, lucky for the people involved,” Youngman commented, picking up on the key word. “Otherwise they’d most likely be being referred to in the past tense right about now.”
Kansas began to nod, then stopped as Youngman’s words as well as Dax’s words replayed in her head. When they did and the thought occurred to her, she all but bolted ramrod straight in her chair.
Ethan noted the shift in her posture immediately. She’d thought of something, something they hadn’t covered before. It surprised him how quickly he’d become in tune to her body language.
He told himself he was just being a good detective. “What?” he pressed, looking at Kansas.
She in turn looked around at the other three men on the task force. “Doesn’t that strike anyone else as strange?” she wanted to know.
“What, that the fire department turned up at a fire?” Ortiz asked, not following her. “It’s what they do.” His puzzled expression seemed to want to know why she was even asking this question. “You of all people—”
But Ortiz didn’t get a chance to finish.
“No,” she interrupted, “the fire department turning up early. Each and every time. Doesn’t that seem a little odd to anyone? It’s the same firehouse that answers the call each and every time, as well.” And it was her firehouse, which made her pursuing this line of questioning even worse.
“There’re only two firehouses in Aurora,” Dax pointed out. “These fires are taking place in the southern section.”
She was well aware of that fact. And aware that in many towns, there were no fire departments with firefighters who were paid by the city. Instead, what the townships had were dedicated volunteers who responded to the call whenever it went out, no matter where they were and what they were doing. Aurora was lucky to have not one but two firehouses charged with nothing more than looking out for their citizens.
But these early responses were definitely a lot more than just happy coincidences. Something was off here.
“I know that. But getting there in time to save everyone, the odds start to rise against you when the number of occurrences goes up. And yet, each and every time, the fire department is practically there just as the fire starts.”
Dax looked at her sharply. “What are you getting at, Kansas?”
She took a deep breath before saying it. And then she forced the words out. “That maybe whoever is setting these fires is one of the firefighters.”
Chapter 10
Her statement had gotten all four detectives to sit up and stare at her. Frustration and exhaustion were temporarily ousted.
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