As she ran, she was thinking about all the things that needed fixing, but she was also enjoying the scenery. Below she could see the Pacific Ocean and glimpse stretches of the ten-mile, clean, white sand beach. Years before, the little town of Courage Bay had clustered along the half-moon strip of verdant tableland below, but with time had come expansion. Now the streets wound up and down the steep side of the forested mountain that formed a backdrop to the old portion of the city.
The route Shannon followed was particularly hilly, and she pushed herself extra hard on the inclines. She’d been blessed with long, strong legs, and she needed them. Lifting ladders over her head and carrying people out of burning buildings required muscles.
She thought again of the mysterious stranger in the silver. He was well up there on the strength meter, all right. One way or another, she was determined to track him down, if only to prove to her crew that she wasn’t losing her marbles.
She sprinted the last half mile and burst through the door of the clinic, dripping sweat and puffing. Two elderly women, obviously sisters, looked up and smiled at her. Each held a small pug dog on her lap. They were staying as far as they could from the teenager with the Iroquois hairdo and multiple piercings, who was stroking a ferret on a leash.
Beside him sat a skinny woman covered with tattoos who looked to be high on drugs. Her eyes were closed, and her body was weaving back and forth to some unheard rhythm, while a monstrous cat on the chair beside her growled low in its throat and viciously ripped the stuffing out of the cushion on the chair. The animal was the size of a small cougar, and Shannon gave it a wide berth as she made her way to the reception desk.
The receptionist, a twenty-something ringer for a Barbie doll, was on another planet. She barely glanced up when Shannon appeared. She was painting her inch-long fingernails deep blue. The phone was ringing, but she ignored it, blowing on her nail polish. Shannon did a mental eye roll. For this, Lisa was paying well above minimum wage?
“Hi, Agnes. Lisa in the back?”
“Oh, yeah. Hi, umm…yeah. She said to tell you to just go right back.” Agnes had met Shannon maybe fifty times, and the hapless girl still didn’t remember her name.
Shannon headed along the narrow corridor to the examining rooms. The door to the first one was open. Lisa’s partner, Greg Seaborn, was in there, bent over a small ginger kitten. An elderly woman was hovering anxiously near his right shoulder, so Shannon just waved a hand at him and hurried on down the hall.
Lisa was in the second treatment room, applying an adhesive patch to the shaved belly of an unconscious black-and-white spaniel. The intense expression on her pretty face softened into a wide smile when she saw Shannon. “Hey, girlfriend, I’m almost done here.” She stripped off her surgical gloves and ran a hand over her mop of chestnut curls. “Greg says he’ll handle the waiting room for an hour while we eat. I missed breakfast and I’m starving.”
“He’s got his work cut out for him. There’s a monster of an evil cat out there I wouldn’t go near. He’s ripping up one of those cushions you got for the chairs, and his mother looks as if she’s tripping.”
Lisa rolled her eyes and groaned. “Don’t tell me Candy’s here with Tinkerbell again.”
“That monster’s called Tinkerbell? It’s bigger than Pepsi and twice as mean looking, which is saying something.”
“Tinker’s one of the largest cat breeds. He’s a Blue Colour-point Ragdoll, and he’s not a happy camper. Those and Norwegians are the giants in the cat world. They’re usually good-natured, but Tinker’s a notable exception.”
“Well, if Candy deserts that animal here, don’t factor me into the equation when you try and find a home for him.”
“I wouldn’t do that. I know you’re a dog person.” Lisa stroked the sleeping spaniel. “Now, Franklin here is a sweetheart, but he was a really randy sweetheart. So I did the inevitable—he’ll wake up and wonder what the heck happened to his libido while he was napping.”
“Salvage must be wondering the same thing about his back leg. How’s he doing?”
“Come and see for yourself.” Lisa picked up the limp spaniel and headed into the large room where the cages were. She gently placed him in one and pointed at another, where Salvage was lying.
The moment he saw them, the black Lab struggled to his feet and started to bark with excitement. Shannon went over to him. “Hey, old buddy, look at you, already getting used to three legs.” She opened the cage door and the dog practically leaped into her arms.
“Whoa.” Shannon staggered back a little, laughing, as Salvage lathered her face and whimpered a joyful greeting. “I guess this means we’re buddies, huh?” She set him down and crouched beside him, taking his head between her hands. “You’re not a bad-looking guy, considering how skinny you are and what you’ve been through.”
“He inhaled his breakfast, and we gave him a bath. He was pretty dirty.”
Shannon petted the dog. “He cleans up good, huh? I wish he could talk. He’d be able to tell us his story.”
And back her up about the mysterious guy who’d rescued them.
Together, Shannon and Lisa put the Lab back in the cage. He whined pitifully when they left the room.
“When I get back, Greg will take you out for some exercise,” Lisa called to him. “I’ll keep him here for four or five days,” she told Shannon, “until the incision is healed. Dogs adapt really fast to amputation. In a short time he’ll be running around as if he was born with three legs.”
They washed up in the bathroom, and then Lisa said, “Let’s sneak out the back. If Candy sees me, I’ll never get away. She has the mistaken idea that Tinkerbell likes me.”
Lisa went to have a word with Greg, and then they escaped through the back door, down a short alley and along the street to a comfortable little café they both knew and liked. They sat at the counter and ordered eggs, hash browns and pancakes with their coffee.
“I had a bowl of oatmeal earlier, but I’m hungry again,” Shannon said. “Although if I eat all this, I won’t be able to run home.”
“I’ll give you a lift—anything to avoid dealing with that cat.”
While they waited for their order, Lisa said, “How’s your new tenant working out?”
Shannon had just rented one of her two upstairs bedrooms to an older woman, Willow Redmond.
“I haven’t seen much of her. I’ve been working and she just moved in the other day, but I like her. She’s an advertisement for mature women. Even at sixty something, she looks hot in jeans.”
“You said she’s an old friend of your mom’s?”
“Yeah. They were friends years ago. She used to play guitar for the group Mom sang with. But they lost touch. Willow got married and moved to New Jersey, and Mom met Dad and settled here.” The waitress came with their orders, and they were quiet for a few moments as they both attacked their food.
Lisa swallowed and took a sip of coffee. “So how’d she end up in your upstairs bedroom?”
“According to Mom, she’s left her marriage. Willow and her husband had been together something like forty years, and I guess he’s always been a pain in the butt, controlling and really jealous. Apparently he accused her of having an affair with one of her night school instructors, and she just up and walked out with two suitcases, a guitar and something that looks like a toolbox.” Shannon cut up her pancakes and added more syrup.
“A toolbox, huh?” Lisa laughed. “I like her style.”
“Me, too. She’s one feisty lady. Mom says Willow flew to L.A. for no other reason than because it was a long way from New Jersey, and one night after she got here she saw a rerun of that documentary Linda did about Sean.”
A renowned television news photographer, Linda had been sent to Courage Bay to make a film on smoke jumpers. That’s how she’d met Sean.
“Willow recognized the name O’Shea,” Shannon added, “and she called Mom. Of course Mom invited her here for a visit. She stayed with my parents for a week and dec
ided she wanted to live in Courage Bay, but she didn’t want to impose on my folks any longer. So Mom asked me about renting her my upstairs bedroom.”
“Good thinking. It probably helps with the mortgage.”
“Yeah, and she also likes the dogs. She’s offered to take them for walks and feed them while I’m working, which lets Dad off the hook.”
“Willow’s an unusual name.”
“It suits her. She’s a pretty woman.”
“She got a job? Or isn’t money an issue?”
“It has to be, or she wouldn’t be living in my attic. It’s not exactly the Ritz up there.”
“Think she might want to work at the clinic? If she has any computer skills, that is. That dipstick Greg hired is leaving, thank goodness. Get this, Agnes says the job isn’t fulfilling her spiritually.”
Shannon laughed. “I don’t suppose it’s doing much for you and Greg, either.”
Lisa rolled her blue eyes. “You got that right. They say everybody has the capacity for murder, and Agnes brings mine to the surface.”
“No wonder, she’s a total ditz. I bet Willow would jump at the chance to work for you. I heard her telling Uncle Donald she knows about computers. You want to meet her first, size her up for yourself? I don’t know her all that well. You might have a different take.”
“If she’s home this morning, you can introduce us when I drop you off. Otherwise, you talk to her. If she’s your mom’s friend, and you like her, that’s good enough for me. If she wants the job, send her over to fill in the forms. Agnes, of course, didn’t give us any notice. She’s history the end of the week.”
“Shouldn’t you check with Greg?”
“Nope. He hired Agnes. Anything I do has to be an improvement.”
The waitress refilled their coffee cups, and then Lisa said, “Of course, I was fantasizing about some incredible hunk with a gentle soul sitting out there, but what the heck. Maybe Willow has hunky sons who’ll come to visit.”
“I think Mom said she has one. Didn’t that good-looking guy with the parrot ever call you, Lise?”
“Yeah, I went out with him twice. He’s weird in an intriguing way, really sexy, but I have a hunch he’s married. I heard him on his cell, having this intense conversation. He said it was his sister.”
Shannon blew another raspberry. “Yeah, right. Men. Wouldn’t you think they’d be able to come up with something more believable than that?”
“Somebody ought to write an instruction book for them,” Lisa declared. “How about you. How’s it going with that new resident from the hospital? What’s his name again?”
“Diego Larue. Great name, great guy, really great hair, rides a honking big Harley, which intrigues me. I’ve always lusted after one of those babies.” Shannon sipped her coffee and gave a wry grin. “Now, that would drive my mother right over the edge on the worry meter, if I bought a Harley. Anyhow, he took me for a spin a couple Sundays ago. I loved it. But I’ve decided not to go out with him again.”
“Why ever not? He sounds hot, and nice to boot.”
“Nice, yeah, but no sparks. And it would never work timewise. I’d be at the firehouse, he’d be at the hospital. I’ve tried that before. I dated that obstetrician for a while, remember? It was crazy-making. We hardly saw one another.”
“Wasn’t he the one who bought you all that gorgeous underwear?”
“Yeah, just before I dumped him. That was part of it—it was all size six. It made me think his fantasies weren’t really about a six-foot lady who wears size ten.” Shannon shook her head. “Sometimes I think my only option is to hook up with a firefighter. Who else would understand the hours? And they’re usually bigger than I am, which is not an insignificant advantage. But then we’d be on different shifts, so we’d barely see one another.”
“A match made in heaven—no time for conflict. So did Diego give up that easily?”
“He’s called a couple times, but there’s not enough chemistry there for me. You wanna meet him, Lise?”
“Nope. Leftovers never work.”
“You ever thought of giving Greg a little encouragement? I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
Lisa shook her head. “Greg’s a super guy, but there’s no sparks there, either. He’s like a brother. By the way, he said he saw you on the late news last night. There was a shot of you carrying Salvage outside that burning warehouse.”
Shannon groaned. “Everybody’s seen that but me. Because of it, I got roped into doing an interview for California Woman magazine.” She told Lisa how Dan had pressured her into it.
“I think your chief’s right—that’ll make a great story,” Lisa declared. “Other women get inspired when they find out you’re a firefighter. Greg said the clip was really moving. You were holding Salvage up over your shoulder.”
“It must have been right after your so-called angel dragged us out of the inferno. I can’t figure out why nobody got a shot of him.”
“You find out any more about him?”
“Nothing. It’s as if he disappeared into thin air. And the guys are giving me a real hard time, saying I imagined him.”
“I told you he was an angel.”
“Yeah, well, if he was, I wish he’d reappear at the firehouse so I don’t get permanently labeled as a loony. I’m beginning to be sorry I ever mentioned him.”
BY LUNCHTIME THAT DAY, Shannon had even more reason to regret ever referring to the man in the silver suit. The phone had rung nonstop from the moment Lisa dropped her at home. Willow wasn’t in, so Lisa hadn’t had a chance to meet her.
The first call was from her mother, and Shannon braced herself. When it came to her job, her mother always made her feel defensive, and this time was no exception.
“I saw you on the news,” Mary said, sounding hurt. “Why didn’t you phone and warn me? Seeing you on TV with that warehouse blazing behind you and your face all black with soot scared me half to death. You looked as if you were dazed, Shannon, standing there holding that dog. And you were coughing. Did you get smoke in your lungs? You know what that does to you long term. Goodness knows you should. Your father gets pneumonia every single time he gets a cold, and it’s from his years as a fireman.”
Shannon sighed and tried to stay calm. “I’m not going to get pneumonia, Mom. I did get a little whiff of smoke, but not enough to do anything but make my nose run.”
“And cough. I’ll bet you coughed half the night.” Mary figured she knew everything there was to know about firefighters and the injuries they could suffer on the job—and she probably did. Shannon’s father, Caleb, had been a firefighter all his life, and her brother Patrick had been fire chief before becoming mayor. With both Shannon and her brother Sean still working in the profession, Mary had become paranoid. With good reason, Shannon had to admit. They’d all had close calls at one time or another. But knowing that her mother had some legitimate concerns didn’t make it any easier to deal with accusatory calls like this one.
“Honest, Mom, I’m absolutely fine,” Shannon insisted. “And I didn’t save the dog on my own. There was a guy in there helping me.” She gave an expurgated and revised version of what had occurred. Shannon and Sean, like their father before them, had an unspoken agreement that the less Mary knew, the better she’d sleep at night.
“That man was an angel,” she declared when Shannon finished. “He was sent to rescue you. It wasn’t your time to go, thank God.”
When her mother, a deeply religious woman, said things like that, Shannon usually bit her tongue to hold back some smart remark. But this time, she remembered being surrounded by fire and truly thinking that she was about to die. After all, who was she to argue against angels? Whoever he was, the dude had certainly gotten her out of a tight spot.
“So how’s Linda feeling?” Shannon had learned that her sister-in-law’s pregnancy was a good way to divert her mother. For the next ten minutes, she listened to details about Linda in particular and pregnancy in general, and finally her mother e
nded the call.
The next caller was Linda herself. She, too, had seen the news, and Shannon related the story again, this time sticking a lot closer to the truth.
“So some huge hunk in a silver suit dragged you and the dog out of a burning warehouse? Wow, that’s so romantic. Also good drama. Care to tell it on camera for the human interest portion of the news?”
Linda had just started working at the local television station, interviewing and photographing newsworthy people and events in Courage Bay.
“Sorry, I’m already booked.” Shannon told her about the upcoming interview with California Woman.
“You gonna talk to them about your hero in aluminum foil?”
“Not in this lifetime,” Shannon said vehemently. “Everybody thinks he’s either an angel sent from heaven, or a definite sign that my mental health is deteriorating, and I’ve had it with the whole subject. Let’s discuss your morning sickness instead.”
Linda, like Mary, was easily diverted. “It’s my bladder, actually. I’ve started considering just sleeping on the toilet. It would save getting out of bed fourteen times a night.”
They chatted a few more minutes, and Shannon had no sooner hung up than the phone rang again. Groaning, she picked up.
“Morning, Ms. O’Shea,” a professionally cheerful voice said. “My name is Melissa Child. I’m a staff writer with California Woman.”
Shannon’s heart sank. Melissa Child hadn’t wasted any time.
“I spoke with Dan Egan earlier this morning, and he tells me you wouldn’t mind talking to me about your job as a firefighter?”
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