McQueen's Heat

by Harper Allen

  “BOURBON AND SODA. ICE.”

  As McQueen strode into the bar and growled out his order, the bartender’s head jerked up. He took in the bloodied graze on his forehead, the aggressive set of the big man’s shoulders.

  “How about we do this the easy way for once, McQueen? I tell you to go. You leave. That way Cyrus and Eddie and Joe don’t hit me up for their medical bills.”

  From the vicinity of the pool table in the corner, three muscular necks swivelled their way. Three faces registered identical antagonism as they recognized the big man at the bar, and three hamlike pairs of hands tightened on their pool cues and began sliding them edgily between thick fingers.

  McQueen pulled a stool toward him and straddled it. “Hold the bourbon. Hold the rocks.”

  “Hold the bourbon, hold the—” The man behind the bar frowned. “You ordering plain soda water, McQueen?”

  McQueen threw a bill on the bar. “Yeah, I’m ordering soda water, Virgil. I’ll pay for the booze if that’s a problem.”

  The bartender set a glass on the bar, brought a bottle of mix from under the counter and filled McQueen’s glass with a colorless, effervescent liquid.

  “Stone McQueen, on the wagon,” he said with an unpleasant smile. “It won’t last, buddy.”

  Stone lifted the glass and stared at the bubbles fizzing through it. He lifted it to his mouth and took a swallow. He set his glass back down on the bar.

  “It’s been eight months, Virgil. I intend for it to last.”

  As he turned around, McQueen saw the thin man in the tweed jacket sitting in the booth behind him, a glass of beer at his elbow and a book open in front of him. Extending his hand, the man peered over the top of his half-moon glasses with a smile. “McQueen? How’ve you been, man?”

  “I get by, Professor.” McQueen’s answering smile was genuine.

  There’d been a time when he’d spent most of his time in places like this, he thought as he slid into the booth across from the man whose nickname stemmed from his scholarly demeanor. There’d been a time when the object of coming into a bar had been to get as drunk as possible as fast as possible, in the hope that some son of a bitch might take a swing at him and give him something to take his mind from the emptiness and futility of his life, if only for a while.

  The emptiness and futility were back again, and this time for good, he thought, listening to his companion’s casual conversation and once or twice managing a response. But the drinking was a part of his past.

  It hadn’t blotted out the memories of her before anyway, only dulled them a little. But this time he had the feeling even that wasn’t a possibility. He had the feeling that ten years from now, forty years from now, the pain would be as sharp and piercing as it was at this moment.

  His whole world was a silken swath of red-gold hair tumbling across his face, pink-velvet lips under his, blue eyes staring up at him, sometimes in exasperation, sometimes in annoyance, sometimes—he closed his own eyes and felt the heat running through him—sometimes glazed with passion, wide with anticipation, dark with desire.

  His whole world was her. She was the heart of his heart. He hadn’t deserved her, and so he’d lost her.

  “She must have been something.”

  He opened his eyes. The Professor was watching him.

  “What?” McQueen said stupidly.

  “She must have been something, the woman you lost,” his companion repeated. “You look like a man who’s been barred from heaven forever.”

  McQueen nodded. “Yeah, Professor,” he said softly. “That’s about right. But if I live to be a hundred I’ll never forget that just for a while I was allowed in. She wasn’t something, she was everything.”

  “People say you get over it,” the other man murmured absently. “You don’t. And that’s one of the few things I didn’t learn out of a book, my friend,” he added, lifting his glass to his mouth.

  He set it down on the table with a click. “You back investigating fires, Stone?” His voice was brisker, as if he needed to dispel some memories of his own, and McQueen made an effort to respond in kind.

  “Not officially, but I’ve been looking into one on my own time. There might be something you can help me with, Professor,” he said with a frown. “What could make a man feel he was responsible for another person’s life forever? What would someone have to do to put you under such an obligation?”

  The other man shrugged. “Many religions teach that we’re our brother’s keeper. And the Chinese have a saying that if you save a person’s life you’re responsible for him forever. Of course—”

  “What was that?” McQueen’s voice was sharp. “You save a guy’s life, you gotta cover his butt forever?”

  “I’m not sure if that’s the exact translation, but yes, that’s the gist of it.”

  “The jakey was arguing with Pascoe over setting the Mitchell Towers fire,” McQueen said slowly. “He knew it would destroy a man whose life he’d saved, a man he felt some liking and responsibility for. But Pascoe said if the saying was true, someone called Davidson would be under the same obligation, because he’d saved the jakey’s life,” he said under his breath. “Except Davidson was dead.”

  “Sorry, McQueen, I missed that,” the Professor said mildly. “If we’re now on the subject of motorcycles, I’m afraid I can’t be of much use to you in that area.”

  “Motorcycles?” McQueen frowned impatiently. “Who the hell said anything about—”

  He stopped. His gaze swung over to the bar and the middle-aged bikers standing there.

  “Harley,” he said hoarsely. “Katz remembered it wrong. The dead man was Harley, not Davidson. Harley saved the jakey’s life, and the jakey saved another man’s life sometime later.”

  “Harley even hauled me to safety once when a floor gave way underneath me.”

  Jack Foley had told him that this very morning.

  And Jack Foley had saved McQueen’s sorry butt at the Corona fire.

  McQueen got to his feet and strode toward the pay-phone on the wall. Jack, who always knew the latest scuttlebutt, would have heard by now about the mysterious blaze and that a man and a woman had barely escaped from the fire.

  “You’re no slouch when it comes to putting two and two together, Jack,” McQueen muttered as he listened to the ringing at the other end of the line. “You’re going to figure Tam and me found Pascoe, and since we didn’t contact you you’re going to think there’s a chance he talked.”

  No one picked up. He let the receiver drop from his suddenly-numb fingers and strode back to the table.

  “I need to borrow your car,” he said tensely. “I don’t have time to explain why, but it’s an emergency. And if you’re a praying man, Professor, this is the time.”

  His eyes blazed with pain and his jaw tightened. “Pray that I don’t screw this one up,” he said huskily. “Pray that this time I make it come out right.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  She and Stone were flying into the heart of the sun. His arms were around her and he was telling her the truth—that he’d fallen in love with her the moment he’d met her.

  Why hadn’t she seen it before? Tamara wondered hazily. It hadn’t been a stranger who had taken her that night, it had been the man who loved her so much he’d wanted to take away all her pain, the man who’d tried desperately to change the past for them both, and make it come out right this time.

  It had been Stone.

  She opened her eyes and saw darkness. She tried to move and found she was bound hand and foot.

  “Watch out, Tammy. You’re pretty close to the edge, and it’s a long way down.” Uncle Jack bent over her. There was just enough light from the street below to illuminate the concern on his familiar features. “You feeling a little sick, punkin? It should be okay to take the gag off now. There’s no one around to hear you except the blind man, and I saw him toddling down the street a while ago.”

  Everything came flooding back. As he untied the knot at the back
of her neck and the gag fell from her lips she spoke, her voice a rusty croak.

  “Why?”

  The man who’d wrapped her around with the protection of his love from childhood until today misunderstood her.

  “I’d give my life for you, punkin, and you would have betrayed me. You broke faith with me first.” He squatted beside her, his hands on his thighs. “When our own turn against us, they leave us no choice. Claudia thought she could simply walk back into your life after she’d destroyed it. I’d once loved her like a daughter, too.”

  It’s all justifiable to him… Pascoe’s words came back to her, and she choked back a nausea that had nothing to do with the chloroform she could still taste in her throat.

  “Dear God, you thought you were doing it for me, Jack?” She couldn’t bring herself to call him by the affectionate term she’d used all her life. She knew she’d never call him that again. “Did she come to you first?”

  “She phoned me and asked if I thought you’d see her.” Foley’s voice was hard. “I went to her room that night. She hadn’t told me she had a child.”

  A flicker of emotion crossed his features. “I hadn’t planned on that, punkin, believe me. As soon as Claudia turned to close the door behind me I hit her hard enough to knock her unconscious. It wasn’t until I had her arranged on the bed with the cigarette and went back into the hall to get my can of fuel that I saw the cot set up by the bathroom. By then I couldn’t turn back.”

  “You killed a woman in cold blood. You were willing to let a child die,” Tamara rasped. “You couldn’t turn back?”

  She took a trembling breath. “My father was your best friend. What did he find out about you that made you kill him—him and my mother and my seven-year-old brother? What made it impossible for you to turn back that night?”

  “For God’s sake, Tammy, I didn’t kill your family!” Horror filled his voice. “How could you think that of me?”

  She stared at him. He’d been able to function all these years because he kept the two halves of his persona in separate compartments, she thought. He’d been the decorated hero, the loving husband to a good woman, the father figure to the little girl he himself had orphaned. No one had ever suspected there was another side to Jack Foley—an implacably murderous side that brooked no opposition, forgave no wavering of loyalty.

  Tonight the compartments had split open. He wouldn’t be able to function much longer, she thought. But it would be long enough for what he planned to do with her.

  “If you didn’t strike the match, you handed it to the man who did,” she said. “I just want to know the truth before I die. My whole life’s been based on a lie, and it’s caused me more pain than you’ll ever realize.”

  “I never wanted that for you, punkin. I never wanted any of this, but once it started there was nothing I could do to stop it.” He heaved a sigh.

  “I had a gambling problem that got out of hand. Bracknell Curtiss was a millionaire with a shady background who bought up my debt, and when I couldn’t pay him he proposed a deal. I was to help him out with information about properties he wanted torched, and in return he would tear up my marker. I was desperate. Kate had warned me about the gambling, and I couldn’t face losing her. So I agreed to be Bracknell’s contact in the department, and that meant I was Robert Pascoe’s contact, too. He was Curtiss’s hired arsonist,” he said heavily.

  “I know some of this,” Tamara said steadily. “McQueen’s file on Pascoe was extensive, and tonight I actually talked to the man himself. Before he turned into a human torch,” she added harshly. “You probably realized we’d tracked him down when the report of the fire came in.”

  “I had the scanner on,” Foley admitted.

  “He didn’t tell us it was you. You might have gotten away with it without me ever finding out.” Tamara shook her head. “But that’s not important now. My father discovered your connection to Curtiss, didn’t he?”

  “He never knew who I was working with, just that I was connected with a fire that gutted a rental property.” Jack rubbed a hand across his forehead. “Chuck told me he was going to have to turn me in. I asked him for time to break the news to Kate, and he agreed to hold off on his report for forty-eight hours. That was the weekend of the hockey tournament.”

  “He cut you a break because you were his friend. You repaid him by having him murdered.” Tamara’s voice shook.

  “I told you, I wasn’t responsible for that. I thought Curtiss might threaten him, maybe have his thugs pull a little rough stuff. When I informed him we had a problem, I made it clear I wouldn’t stand for anything more than that.”

  He’d told himself that particular lie for so long he probably believed it, Tamara thought sickly. But he’d known when he carried the news to Curtiss that their whole operation was in danger of being exposed he was signing the death warrant of a man who’d been his friend.

  “I needed to contact Pascoe the next day, and I was told he was out of town on business,” Jack went on. “I realized then what I’d done. I went to the motel to try and stop him, but I got there just seconds too late. I—I saw you coming out of that window, and I vowed I’d spend the rest of my life being the father to you that you’d just lost.”

  “I saw you there.” She saw a flicker of shock in his eyes. “The memory didn’t come back until today, but some part of me always knew. You told me when I first came to live with you and Aunt Kate I kept trying to run away, remember? I grew up knowing deep down that I couldn’t trust anything in my world, Jack. You did that to me.”

  “I protected you,” Foley said swiftly. “You and Kate were my family, and I protected you. After what happened at the motel I realized that whenever Curtiss felt my usefulness to him had come to an end, he wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate me.”

  “So you stole some of Pascoe’s accelerant and set fire to Curtiss’s house. But you still weren’t free, were you? You found you’d tied yourself to Robert Pascoe.”

  She gave a short bark of laughter. “Do you realize just how much blood you have on your hands? You could have stopped him years ago. You could have prevented the deaths of those five firefighters, Jack. But you stood by and did nothing in the end. You stood by when Stone was trying to persuade the department that Pascoe existed, and you watched him crash and burn when no one would believe him. How did you live with yourself after Donna Burke’s funeral?”

  She’d pushed him too far, she saw immediately. His expression became shuttered, and he stood.

  “I was going to turn Pascoe in then, and hang the consequences,” he said coldly. “But that was the day your best friend ran off with your groom, if you’ll recall. I made one last deal with Pascoe, Tammy. I made it for you.”

  He turned from her. There was just enough light to see him lift something from the temporary flooring on which he was standing. She saw him unscrew the top of the gas can.

  She was to be the sixth firefighter to die in a fire at the Mitchell Towers, Tamara thought dully. She’d known that as soon as she’d found herself here. But watching her murderer prepare for the blaze that would take her life brought the full impact home.

  Except she couldn’t die.

  She hadn’t told him she’d loved him. He’d been right—the core of betrayal at the very center of her existence had prevented her from letting him in completely. But tonight she’d learned the truth and as terrible as that truth had been, it had set her free.

  He was her heart’s heart. He was the only man she would ever love. She needed to live so she could finally tell him.

  Her back was against a steel reinforcement rod and by moving slightly it was possible to bring her bound hands to the sharp edge of the metal. Cautiously she began sawing at the cord around her wrists.

  “I told Pascoe he’d crossed the line with the deaths of those firefighters.” Jack glanced over at her, his face set. “I said the choice was up to him—he could either stay in Boston and have me blow the whistle on him or he could leave and never come back.
If he chose the second I would keep my mouth shut, but only if he did a job for me.”

  With care he tipped the can until a thin stream of liquid splashed out onto the flooring. Immediately the sharp smell of gasoline assailed her nostrils.

  “Rick was already cheating on Claudia a couple of months after he dumped you. You were better off without him, punkin.” If he realized how grotesque it was that he should be using the lifelong endearment at the same time as he was preparing her death he gave no sign. “Pascoe assumed the woman in the car with Rick was his wife, not a girlfriend. He reported to me that our deal was complete.”

  After everything he’d told her tonight, after everything she’d learned, for some reason this seemed the most hideous revelation of all, Tamara thought numbly. It had been murder-for-hire. In Jack Foley’s twisted mind, it had been done to avenge her.

  Reckless fury boiled up inside her.

  “You’re completely insane,” she said tightly. “Maybe once upon a time you were Jack Foley, but the minute you made that first deal with Curtiss and Pascoe you became the beast. I’m glad Aunt Kate died before she found out what you really were—and people are going to find out. Knopf for one suspects you. If McQueen hasn’t already figured it out, he soon will.”

  “Knopf’s a fool and Stone McQueen created a man that never existed,” Jack snapped. “He rigged a second fire at the Mitchell Towers to resurrect the spectre of Robert Pascoe—the arsonist only he could battle, the arsonist the department needed him to fight. That’s what they’ll say. Who’s going to believe him over the hero who once saved his life?”

  “Nobody, Foley. So I guess I’ll have to stop you now.”

  Tamara’s heart leapt as a broad-shouldered figure emerged from the shadows at the far side of the structure, where earlier that evening she’d seen a set of jerry-rigged stairs rising from the lower stories to the top of the half-constructed building. Stone came toward them.

  “You don’t want to do this, Jack. You love her. Even you can’t go through with something like this. Are you okay, honey?” he added in an uneven aside to her.