Consumed (Firefighters #1)

by J. R. Ward

  She found the axe propped up the tool table and picked the thing up. Given its weight and the fact that she was one-handed, she was not going to be able to control it well enough, so she tossed it aside.

  Only one way to do this.

  Taking out her gun, she went back to the trailer and leveled the muzzle at the lock. Making sure that there was nothing but woods on the far side of her trajectory, she started to pull the trigger.

  In the back of her mind, she was aware that she was breaking the law. But this was kind of like telling Emilio to head to the second floor without her. Urgency over procedure, apologize, don’t ask permission.

  Get the fucking job done.

  As the bullet exploded out of the gun, and the metal rang like a church bell, she lowered her weapon and went over to pull the busted lock hinges free. Opening one half of the doors, she took a deep breath.

  Computers. Phones. Monitors. Laptops—

  “Fucking hell, Anne. Now I gotta solve you like a goddamn problem.”

  Anne jerked around. Moose was staggering out of the house, his shirt stained with blood, a gash on his face, one foot trailing behind.

  He looked tired. Frustrated. Exhausted. A stranger wearing the mask and body of the friend and colleague she had once known and loved like a friend.

  “Moose,” she breathed. “What the hell are you doing?”

  The guy stopped and looked down at himself. “I crashed the Charger. It’s somewhere in the woods. I was chasing Deandra off. And then I kept drinking.”

  “No, about this.” She pointed the trailer. “What are you doing with Ripkin?”

  He threw up his hands—and that was when she saw the small black box in his right palm. “What was I supposed to do? I need the money. Deandra is expensive. Was.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “What—no. I kicked her out. She’s at her sister’s. We’re done.” His bloodshot eyes finally focused properly. “But now, I gotta deal with you. I’m not going to jail, Anne. I can’t.”

  She took a step back and raised her gun at him. “Don’t come near me.”

  “Is this where you arrest me?”

  “You killed people. You put the lives of your own crew in danger. You did this all while you were in turnouts.”

  “Don’t get judgy with me, Anne,” he bit out. “You’re the sister of the fucking fire chief. Your life is all worked out. I got nothing. Nothing! My own parents didn’t want me. I barely graduated from college. I couldn’t make the SWAT team. Deandra didn’t even want me, she wanted Danny!”

  Her eyes flicked down to what he had in his hand. The antenna gave it away—and she did the math quick.

  Moving away from the trailer, she triangulated the distance to her car. “Look, Moose, I don’t have to turn you in, okay? We can just forget—”

  “No, I know you. I fought fires with you for how long? You’re lying because you think I’m going to kill you and you’re right. I’m not picking you over me. Sorry.”

  The explosion was instantaneous, triggered as he initiated some button on that remote, the force of the blast throwing her off her feet and carrying her some distance through the air. When she landed on her back, the breath was knocked out her and the gun flipped out of her hand.

  All she could do was stare up at the blue, cloudless sky.

  Moose’s face came over her own. “You know, I liked you, I really did.” He brought up her own gun. “And I’ll do this quick and easy so you won’t hurt—”

  The gray flash came out of nowhere, whatever it was moving so fast, it was just a blur.

  But Soot knew what he was doing. He launched his attack at Moose’s forearm, swinging that arm away from Anne, the bullet discharging into the air. Moose let out a curse and started punching the dog in the head.

  Not that Soot noticed. Growling, snarling, his muscled body was a weapon in addition to his teeth, and he would not let go as he thrashed.

  “Leave my dog alone!”

  Anne launched herself at Moose, going for his throat before she realized she didn’t have two working hands. But she had a great weapon.

  She took the hard fingers of her prosthesis and speared Moose in the eyes.

  He screamed and went onto his back.

  For a moment, she was convinced they had won. But then a boot came at her head and she couldn’t duck in time. The heavy tread caught her right in the face, blood spooling out of her nose as she spun like a top.

  And then there was a yelp and whimper from Soot.

  chapter

  52

  Danny drove up to the front of Moose’s cocksucking ranch and slammed the brakes on the truck so hard, he kicked up gravel. The bastard’s yellow Charger wasn’t around, but there were pink clothes and high-heeled shoes all over the front lawn. He knew Moose was home, however. Vic Rizzo from the 617 had texted everyone that after a drinking spell at Timeout: that muscle car had been found wrapped around a tree by two NBPD-ers and its inebriated driver had been returned to sender out here in the sticks.

  Getting out, he—

  The explosion was so violent, it rattled the windows on the house, and Danny ducked down to take cover as shrapnel dropped from the sky.

  As a phone receiver hit him in the head, he cursed and jogged over to the front door. Going inside, he saw total chaos. Someone had taken a knife to all the oversized black and white furniture, and there was stuffing and pillows everywhere.

  Every single one of the wedding pictures had been punched, bloody fist and palm prints marking the walls.

  Danny ran to the back. Outside, by the garage, the box trailer was in flames, the curling smoke blowing toward the house and obscuring the view.

  “Moose?” he called out.

  Running toward the garage, he got smoke in his eyes and he coughed.

  And then he saw something on the lawn behind the fire. People rolling around. Something else out there.

  Was he killing Deandra?

  “Moose, will you stop! We weren’t together, she’s lyin—”

  Off at the tree line, parked at the head of a dirt lane about one hundred yards away, was Anne’s Subaru. What the hell?

  He sidestepped the heat and the crackling burn, coming around the front of the garage. As the smoke got blown in another direction, he got a clear view of something that made no sense. Anne and Moose were rolling around, fighting. Soot was on the periphery, barking, snarling, limping badly like he’d been hurt.

  Slow motion.

  Everything went into slow motion.

  Moose flipping Anne on her back. Reaching, straining to something in the grass. Soot snapping at his hand.

  Something in the back of Danny’s mind put the pieces together faster than his thoughts could organize. With every ounce of power he had, he surged forward at a dead run, and on his way to the fight he picked up the first weapon he came to.

  A long-handled axe.

  Just as Moose found a gun in the grass, Danny skidded into place, swung the blade, and caught the would-be killer in the back of the head.

  Moose stiffened in a full-body seizure, and Anne was on the split-second delay. Even though she was bleeding from the nose, she twisted and caught the nine-millimeter, snatching it out of the man’s control.

  And then she shoved herself free, scrambling out from under the now-limp deadweight that lay flat on the ground.

  Danny released the handle. Tripped. Fell back onto the ground and stared at the axe as it held its own against gravity, sure as if he’d buried the blade in nothing but an oak stump.

  “Soot!”

  Shaking himself, he glanced at Anne. She was trembling as she kept the gun pointed at Moose and pulled her dog in against her, the animal licking at her, nuzzling, whimpering.

  When she finally looked at him, he put his palms up into the air like she might shoot him,
too.

  Silence came over the scene, his mind trying to connect with a reality he didn’t understand. Couldn’t possibly grasp. Anne seemed to be in a similar state of shock.

  Why had his old roommate been trying to kill her?

  “Are you okay?” he said roughly.

  Her eyes, wide and glassy, locked on his face. “Danny . . . it was him. It was Moose. He lit the fires at those warehouses . . . and he was going to kill me.”

  Danny slowly lowered his hands. What the hell had Moose fallen into?

  “He did it for the money,” Anne mumbled. “That’s where all the money came from, for the wedding, this house, that Shelby in the garage. He was disappearing evidence in those fires, but I wasn’t able to connect him with Ripkin. I still don’t know how Ripkin is involved.”

  Danny rubbed his face. “All I care about right now is that you’re okay.”

  He reached out and took her hand. When she didn’t pull away, he brought her up against him and squeezed his eyes shut. Holding her tight, he looked over her shoulder at the body of his old friend.

  The sadness was so deep he felt certain his heart was going to stop. He still didn’t know how a man he had lived with for all these years had turned so bad, but the one thing he was sure about was that Anne was alive.

  Nothing else, even Moose, mattered more than that.

  Easing back, he brushed some of the grass from her hair. “I need you to know I wasn’t with Deandra the night before the wedding. Put a bullet it in me now and send me to my twin brother, I will swear to that on my soul. She lied to Moose to make him mad, and she did it in front of the whole stationhouse, but it wasn’t true. I wouldn’t have done that to Moose.”

  He let Anne looked into his eyes, for as long as she needed to, all the while praying that the truth was something she could recognize in him.

  After what felt like a lifetime, she whispered, “You saved my life again, Dannyboy.”

  “I will always be there for you.” As her hand raised up to touch his face, he captured it and pressed a kiss to her palm. “Always.”

  chapter

  53

  Anne sat on the back of the ambulance and held the ice pack to her nose. The bleeding had stopped, but she was worried it was broken. Every time she poked it, it made a crunching sound and that was not good news.

  “—so that was when you decided to come out here and confront him?” the detective said to her.

  Two more police vehicles came up to the scene and joined the four that were already parked in a circle around the ranch. The uniforms who got out were folks she remembered from her nights at Timeout, and absurdly she wanted to wave and say hello to them, like she was the hostess of this shit party.

  “Anne?”

  “Sorry.” She refocused on the woman. “Yeah, I decided to come talk to him. It seemed like everything was adding up, but I needed to be sure. When I got here, I opened the back of the trailer”—edited to remove mention of her shooting the lock off—“and I saw the office equipment in there.”

  “What kind of office equipment?”

  “Laptops. Computers. Phones. I’m guessing that Ripkin Development was either hiding things they wanted to destroy in Ollie Popper’s extensive collection, or they have far more extensive dealings in the black market than law enforcement can even begin to contemplate.”

  “Okay, so then what happened?”

  Her mouth started to move again, words leaving in a stream, and she guessed she was making sense. The detective was nodding and making notes.

  But Anne had stopped listening to herself.

  Danny came walking around the corner of the house, two uniforms with him, the three men talking intently. When he saw that she was looking at him, he stopped, like he wasn’t sure whether he was welcome or not.

  Soot, who had been by her side, let out a chuff in greeting.

  “That’s all for right now. We’ll let you get treated, and you’ll have to make a formal statement.”

  “Anytime you want me at the station, I’ll come down.”

  “Thanks, Inspector Ashburn. We appreciate your cooperation.”

  As she was left alone, Danny said something to the pair of cops and came over. “Hey. Nice nose job.”

  She took the ice pick off. “Do you think it’s too much? I was just looking to get the bridge narrowed and the tip turned up a little.”

  “I think we need to wait until the swelling goes down.”

  “Yeah. Plastic surgery is like that.”

  “Can I say hi to your dog?”

  Like they were strangers. “He loves you.”

  Danny got down on his haunches, that knee of his crouching. As he put his face into Soot’s, he said, “You okay there? You were limping.”

  “I think Moose kicked him. At least neither of us got shot.”

  As she regarded Danny, she measured every inch of him, from the way the sunlight flashed in his jet black hair, to those stupidly huge shoulders of his, to his hands. Those amazing, strong, blue-collar hands.

  That had saved her life twice.

  Because the truth was, she had been losing physical strength fast. And if Moose had gotten hold of that gun—and the man would have—he would have put a bullet in her head.

  Tears flooded her eyes, so she closed them.

  “Anne,” Danny said in a broken voice.

  There was a shuffle, and then he was sitting next to her on the ambulance but not touching her. “Give us a minute,” she heard him say to someone.

  She sniffled herself back into order—or tried to. Jesus, her nose hurt.

  “So in the rules of evidence,” she said roughly, “the court allows deathbed confessions even if they’re heresy outside of that situation. You know, because people don’t lie when they’re just about to die.”

  “No. They don’t.”

  “I’m thinking it’s probably the same with people right after they kill their best friend.” She closed her eyes. “Oh, God, did this just happen. I mean, really?”

  A warm, calloused hand took hers. “Yes. To both, I mean.”

  “What?” Her head just couldn’t seem to process anything. “I’m not thinking straight.”

  “I didn’t lie, about Deandra.” As Anne looked at him again, he stared right back at her. “You don’t have to be with me if you don’t want to, but I need to you know the truth. I didn’t lie about her. She came in yesterday morning all pissed off, spouting shit to lash out at everyone around her. The night of the rehearsal dinner she came on to me back at my apartment, it’s true, but I turned her down. Moose might have seen her dress on the floor, but what he didn’t catch was me frog-marching her out the door and locking things up so she couldn’t get back in. She wasn’t for me. She never was.”

  When Anne took a deep breath, her ribs hurt, and she grimaced. Which made her nose hurt more.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I just . . . I believed what was in front of me.”

  She fell into confirming her hypothesis, which had been that Danny was too good to be true.

  “It’s okay.” He looked down at the ground. “It is what it is—”

  “I love you.”

  His head turned back to her so fast, she heard his neck crack.

  “Just figured I should tell you.” Anne shrugged. “It’s too little, too late, but—”

  The kiss came out of nowhere, his mouth fusing with hers, and she was too shell-shocked to respond. At first. She got with the program quick, though.

  When they finally parted, she couldn’t get enough of staring into those blue eyes. “I’m sorry about Moose, too. I know . . . I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now.”

  He nodded as he brushed her hair back. “None of it seems real at all. Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

 
His face settled into hard lines. “If anyone tries to hurt you, I will come for them. And I will take care of the situation in any way I have to.” Anne’s first instinct was to tell him she didn’t need the help, but that was reflex, not reality. She wanted him in her life in all the ways that counted, and the knight in shinning armor stuff was part of that mix.

  Reaching up, she smoothed his furrowed brows. “Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Two can play at that game.” She smiled a little. “I’ve got your back when you need it, too. I’m your partner, not a princess in a tower.”

  “And that, my fair lady, is why I love you.”

  He kissed her again, and she thought about all the emotions in the air between them, hope, sadness, gratitude, anger, and confusion at Moose . . . fading terror. She had been through enough bad accident scenes and fires to know there would be a tail on all this. They would get through it together, though. What choice was there. You were either a survivor or casualty.

  And they were survivors.

  “Anne.”

  At the sound of her brother saying her name, they pulled apart. Tom was standing by the back of the ambulance, tall as always, autocratic as ever—with eyes that were tearing up.

  Anne shifted off the steel bumper and went to him. There was an awkward moment, as they had never been huggers—

  Her brother’s heavy arms came around her and drew her against his big chest. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath.

  For a moment, the past and the present blended together, and she felt an echo of the way it had been for her as a child with her father, sheltered in the lee of something greater and stronger than herself. But then all that had gone away, the hero image replaced by a human with devastating flaws.

  Which was why people needed to stand on their own two feet.

  Pulling back, she looked up. The vulnerability in her brother’s face was a shock. He’d never looked to her for grounding or support. He never looked to anyone for that.

  “It’s okay,” she told him. “It’s all okay. I promise.”

  He shuddered and dropped his head. “I can’t lose you, Sister.”