The Widow's Protector

by Stephanie Newton

  She hadn’t heard this morning what the damage was. In fact, she’d heard nothing at all. Her dad had been by the hospital to check on her before he’d headed in to work, but her brothers and sister had been suspiciously quiet, suspiciously absent.

  Hunter, too. But then again, she had to remind herself, they were all emergency personnel. She should be used to making do without them.

  Sean had been spoiled rotten with Bridget, no drama there. She would get him back after school today. Thank God he hadn’t been with her at the store as he so often was.

  The thought of it made her stomach pitch. Their typical habit was for Sean to play on the floor with puzzles while she readied the store for the coming week. If he’d been with her, he could’ve been killed. His small body would’ve been no match for that kind of explosion.

  Her wrist ached as she pulled her sweater over the splint, a reminder of how close she’d come. The arsonist, whoever he was, was accelerating.

  In the kitchen, she poured herself a cup of coffee and downed a couple acetaminophen, her eyes landing on a photo of her and Sean and Jimmy, taken right before Jimmy was killed in the fire. She wondered what Jimmy would do now, though she really didn’t have to think about it.

  He would be scribbling his thoughts in one of his notebooks, a type of prayer journal. Jimmy always said that he didn’t have to wonder about God’s faithfulness, all he had to do was look back at his journals.

  They were all put away for Sean. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing a six-year-old would want to read or even hear, but one day, his father’s thoughts would be important to him. His father’s handwriting.

  So, Jimmy, she thought, as she looked at his picture, you would write in your journal to organize your thoughts. What else would you do?

  He would make her laugh. It didn’t matter how tough things were, Jimmy could make a joke. But you hadn’t been laughing much in the days before you died, she thought in her mind to the face in the picture. She hadn’t wanted to remember those days after the fire, she’d wanted to think about the good times. The times when their house was filled with laughter, as it so often was now.

  Sean had inherited that amazing sense of humor from his father. She took another sip of her coffee and walked closer to the picture.

  What she’d said to Hunter was true. She missed Jimmy. Missed his larger-than-life presence in their lives. The squeals as he chased Sean around the house. She missed the constant smell of barbecue sauce as he sought the perfect recipe for the yearly firefighters’ cook-off.

  She had even missed the constant mess and the cookie crumbs in the bedroom chair where he watched the late news at night before bed. The toothpaste cap always on the counter in the bathroom instead of on the tube.

  She missed it all. And the missing hurt so much. She had to move on. And that hurt, too. That the life she’d imagined for herself was a life she had to walk away from.

  Fiona leaned on the counter letting the tears roll down her face as she dropped her face into her hand. She was so tired of fighting. Everything was harder. The business, the parenting, just living.

  She swiped the tears from her cheeks. This week had been horrible. The fires had brought back all the anger and fear that had been her constant companion after Jimmy had died. The feelings that she’d thought were gone had somehow surfaced again.

  But through it all, through everything, she had her faith. She’d felt angry and afraid after Jimmy had died, but she knew she wasn’t alone. And when she had needed a human hand to hold, she’d had Hunter’s. She smiled though her throat ached, and picked up another picture.

  This one had been Jimmy’s personal favorite. It had been taken their junior year in high school. Jimmy’s dad was a fisherman with her Uncle Joe’s fleet and he’d arranged for her and Jimmy and Hunter to spend the afternoon on the fishing boat. They were exhausted and they smelled like bait. But they’d had a blast.

  Jimmy had said something that made her laugh, but it was Hunter’s face that caught her attention now. He was smiling into the camera, but he had the earnest, steady look on his face that was so much a part of who Hunter was.

  He wasn’t flashy like Jimmy, but he was there. Always. He’d even been there last night when her whole world blew up, keeping her together while she waited for the paramedics. She knew him so well, knew his sweet, steady heart.

  Fiona picked up her purse from the small table beside the rear entry and locked the door behind her as she left. She gave the brand-new door a quick wiggle to make sure it was really locked before she started down the driveway. Her house and the store backed up to the same small side street. It was literally at her back door, and yet, she found herself wishing she could drive so she wouldn’t be out in the open those few steps.

  Her heart thudded in her chest as she realized just how terrified she was. Her son had been caught in a fire. She had almost been killed in an explosion. Jimmy’s death had proven just how willing this arsonist was to take a human life.

  She wasn’t taking any chances. Her hand closed around the can of pepper spray in her purse. Small comfort when you were up against a foe you couldn’t see. A foe who liked to set traps. Her fingers ached as she gripped the small canister.

  The store was deserted, yellow crime tape flapping in the brisk April breeze. She shuddered involuntarily as she saw the door that had been blown off its hinges to land on top of her. And the question that kept circling was the one that had haunted her for the past two years. Who could do such a horrible thing?

  * * *

  Hunter sat at the metal table in the interrogation room. He’d been here all night with no more answers than he’d started with. So far, they hadn’t told him anything. Keira had come in and brought him a cup of lukewarm water at one point.

  So now he’d been sitting here for hours, he had no answers and he had to go to the bathroom. The clock on the wall said 7:00 a.m. Since it had been approximately correct when they brought him in here, he had to assume that it was correct now.

  Douglas opened the door to the room.

  Hunter laced his fingers on the table but other than that, didn’t move. He wanted answers and he wasn’t talking until they gave him some.

  The police captain seated himself at the table with a slim file in front of him. He opened it and pulled out a clean sheet of paper. He slid it and a pen halfway across the table to Hunter. “If you want to confess, it would save us all a lot of time and heartache.”

  Hunter’s chest tightened in anger and confusion, but he forced himself to sit still. “Confess to what? I didn’t brush my teeth this morning?”

  “Sarcasm isn’t going to help you in this situation.”

  It was humiliating that this family he’d so often thought of as his own had dragged him down here for questioning. He glanced at the mirrored window. Others would be watching from there, possibly even Chief Aiden Fitzgerald. It would be a huge boost to Aiden’s mayoral campaign if they caught the arsonist who had been plaguing their town. Hunter could make it easy on them and tell them right now…they had the wrong guy.

  Hunter forced his gaze back to Douglas’s. He said it again. “What do you want me to confess, Douglas? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Where were you the night before Jimmy was killed?”

  Hunter opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again. “I have no idea. I wasn’t on duty. I guess I was at home. Douglas, why are you asking me this?”

  Douglas opened the file and slid a photograph toward him. “Is this you?”

  Hunter stared at the grainy photo. “Maybe. It looks like my truck, but how many navy blue trucks are there in this county? I don’t understand what this has to do with me being questioned.”

  “You bought gas using your ATM card at that gas station the day before Jimmy died.” Douglas pushed a photocopy of a bank account ledger, Hunter’s bank account, with an entry highlighted. “It’s less than a mile from the warehouse where Jimmy Cobb died.”

  “I didn’t th
ink it had ever been proven that gasoline was the accelerant used in that fire.” Hunter sat back in the chair, his mind leaping forward. Were they actually trying to pin this on him? “So far you have absolutely nothing. Maybe I bought gas there. I’m willing to guess you bought gas that week, too.”

  Douglas flattened his hands on the table. “I’m giving you a chance to come clean, Hunter. We’ve been friends a long time. If you tell the truth now, I promise I’ll do what I can for you.”

  That Douglas would truly suspect him caught Hunter by surprise, though it shouldn’t have. He tried to muffle it, knowing he had to keep his wits about him. Douglas was smart and, for whatever reason, he had it in his mind that Hunter was behind these crimes. Hunter needed to know why. And he had to find out without giving Douglas any more reason to suspect him. “If I bought gas there the day before Jimmy died, then why are you just now questioning me? It’s been two years.”

  “It was very convenient that you showed up at the fire at the Sweet Shoppe even though you weren’t on duty that day. In fact, you’ve been at every fire that has turned out to be arson. Every single one of them.” Douglas’s blue eyes were the hard cold blue of sapphires. “Two years ago we had no reason to suspect you.”

  Hunter leaned back in his chair. He didn’t know what was really going on, but what he did know: He couldn’t protect Fiona if he was locked behind bars. “I don’t have anything to say.”

  All Douglas had was circumstantial pieces. The cops needed a confession to make anything stick and Hunter wasn’t confessing for the obvious reason.

  He didn’t do anything.

  Douglas turned to the mirror, raised his hand and gestured with two fingers for whoever was back there to come in.

  What now? Hunter suppressed the sigh. He was exhausted and uncomfortable, which he was sure was their intent. They wanted him to get tired enough to tell him what they wanted to hear. The joke was on them though, because he had no clue what they wanted him to say.

  Nick Delfino, Fiona’s soon-to-be brother-in-law, walked in with a file folder of his own. It seemed so strange that the last time he’d been with these men had been around the fire at Fiona’s family home and he’d been one of them. He jiggled his knee under the table, the only sign of nervousness he allowed himself.

  The former Boston detective didn’t smile or greet Hunter, just tossed the file folder on the table. “Go ahead, take a look.”

  Hunter reached for the file, sliding aside the pen and paper that Douglas had left there earlier.

  Opening the folder he saw papers that looked like a bill of some kind. He drew his eyebrows together, giving Nick a look and a shrug. “I don’t know what this is.”

  “Look closer.”

  Hunter pulled the bill out, sighing loudly. This was a waste of his time and theirs. They needed to let him go. They should be out looking for real evidence, searching for the real killer. He glanced over the charges; the highlighted one was for a post office box in a small town about twenty minutes from here. He raised his eyes to meet Nick’s. “What is this?”

  The cop’s eyes were hard and flat. “Note the name at the top of the page.”

  Hunter swallowed hard and looked closer, feeling the first nudges of fear begin. The address wasn’t his. It was a post office box he’d never seen before. But the MasterCard account that the box was charged to was issued to Hunter Reece.

  “What was in the post office box that you didn’t want sent to your house, Hunter?” Douglas leaned one elbow on the table, playing the good cop now that Nick was in the room, the one who Hunter could trust, as a friend.

  Hunter looked at the paper again. Two years after Jimmy’s death, someone was trying to frame him. What had seemed like inconvenient questioning now seemed much more dangerous.

  He looked up again. “I think I’m going to need a lawyer.”

  * * *

  The Reading Nook was worse than Fiona thought it would be. She stood in the doorway to the storage room, gripping the canister of pepper spray, realizing again as she did so the relative silliness of thinking her weapon might be effective against an arsonist.

  She wanted to cry. What hadn’t burned was smoke damaged and water logged. The ceiling of the storeroom was on the floor. Boxes of books that had lined the shelves—her stock for the next month—were now either burned to ash or in a pile behind the building.

  Instead of sobbing she took a deep breath and pulled out her smartphone, beginning “the list.” Hunter made fun of her for her endless lists, but they made her feel more in control. And there was always a chance that once she started going through things, she would find more to be optimistic about. She looked around the blackened room. Maybe in the main part of her store.

  She heard a step behind her and turned around swinging her arm out, too fast. The sore muscles in her back and neck seized up and she cried out.

  “Hey, slow down there, Red. I don’t think you’re ready for hand-to-hand just yet.” Hunter’s voice was low and amused, rough with lack of sleep.

  “How did you know to find me here?”

  “I stopped by the hospital and they said you’d left. It was deduction from there.” He ran a soft finger down her bruised cheek. “Oh, Fee. This should not be happening to you.”

  Fiona swallowed hard and fought the urge to lean into him. He was her friend. He’d been her mainstay, her strength when she didn’t have any of her own. She was strong enough to handle this, but she was stronger with him beside her. “I need to take a look in here and see what the damage is. I’m scared.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  Her eyes caught on his when she turned back. His were serious and sweet. Deep, rich brown. Worried.

  “No, I wanted to come here first. I love this place. It’s more home than home, if that makes sense.” She looked around. “Oh, Hunter. It’s bad. Even my list isn’t helping.”

  He didn’t smile, but the dent in his cheek deepened. “It’s really bad if the list isn’t helping, but you still need to eat, especially if you’re taking meds.”

  “I’m only taking over the counter stuff, but you’re right anyway. Maybe things will look brighter after some food.” She took as step toward him.

  “All right. Breakfast first, then we’ll come back and see what’s what with the shop. Okay?” He took her uninjured elbow and turned her toward the street.

  “It’s too late for breakfast.”

  He looked at his watch. “I haven’t had breakfast and you haven’t, either. Maybe we can get the chef at the Sugar Plum to take pity on us. When we come back, we’ll work on that list.”

  “You’re coming back with me?” She knew he needed sleep probably as much as he needed food.

  “Of course. I would never leave you to face this alone, not if I could help it.”

  She stopped. She could hear the fatigue in his voice, but there was something else. He was tired, she could tell, but he also looked worried. He sounded worried.

  “Come on. I’m hungry.” He pulled on her good arm. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Mostly superficial. Trust me, I’m an expert at this stuff.”

  She dropped her phone in her pocket and reached for his hand, letting his warmth seep into her cold fingers. “I do trust you, Hunter.” She left her hand in his as they turned the corner to cross the park. “Did you get called in last night? I can tell you didn’t get any sleep.”

  Hunter drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “That’s a long story. It’s one I want to tell you, but I’m going to need coffee.”

  Slowly, she navigated the park, trying not to jostle any of her bruises. The ribs hurt the worst. Breathing even hurt. “You have a reprieve until coffee and then you talk.”

  “Agreed.”

  A police cruiser eased past them. She glanced up to see who it was, moving too fast, and yelped as her sore muscles protested.

  Hunter steadied her with a hand at her elbow, but shot a glare at the police car. For a second, she wondered what that was about, but as
the steps loomed in front of her at the inn, she had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. “I feel like an old lady.”

  “You should be at home on your sofa with ice on all those bruises.” The soft concern in his voice nearly undid her stoic determination to be strong.

  “You know me, Hunter. I’m not one to let a little concussion get me down.” She smiled and was rewarded with a reluctant chuckle. “Somewhere inside there’s a woman who believes if she pretends everything is normal, everything will be normal.”

  He opened the door for her. “I wish that were true.”

  She opened her mouth to question him, but Charlotte Newbright’s eyes widened as she rounded the hostess station and came straight at them. “Oh, honey. I heard about the explosion last night. Are you all right?”

  Small-town life. Fiona smiled wanly at the older woman, who kept everyone at the Sugar Plum Café and inn on their toes. “What’s the saying? You should see the other guy? I gave the back door on my shop a real shiner.”

  Charlotte tsked in sympathy as she led them to the table and handed them a menu. “Coffee coming up. You look like you could use it.”

  “Do you think you could sweet talk the chef into scrambling some eggs?” Hunter’s dimple deepened as he smiled at Charlotte. “I’d love a number three with an extra side of hash browns.”

  “I’ll just have the pancakes. Thanks, Char.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Charlotte tucked her order pad into her pocket and swung toward the kitchen.

  Hunter removed his jacket while Fee took the opportunity to really study Hunter’s face. He had a smudge of exhaustion under his eyes. “Talk to me, Hunter. Why didn’t you sleep last night? You weren’t at the hospital.”

  “No. I wanted to be.” He looked down at the table. “Fee, this is serious.”

  “Hunter, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

  He didn’t move, but raised his eyes to meet hers. “I’m apparently a ‘person of interest’ in the arson cases.”

  “Person of interest…you’re a suspect?”