The Hotshot

by Myra Scott

  I opened my eyes, and the first sight I drank in was the face of an angel. The angel smiled, and warmth rushed over my body. I was weak, but he gave me strength. He reached for me, cupping his big hand over my cheek. I leaned into his touch, starved for it, desperate to be close to him again. His thumb lightly traced the curve of my bottom lip, and I winced a little, noticing how parched and cracked my lips felt.

  “You’re awake,” Luke said gently. “And most importantly, you’re alive.”

  There was relief and awe in his voice. I tried to clear my throat to speak, but at first nothing came out. I panicked for a moment, thinking maybe something terrible had happened to my voice box. Why couldn’t I talk? But Luke just shook his head.

  “It’s okay. Your lungs got pretty clogged up with smoke. You’ll have to take it easy on the talking for a little bit until it clears up. Not that you’re much of a chatterbox to begin with,” he added playfully.

  I smiled, even though I could feel my lips stinging with the effort.

  “You need some lip balm or something,” he said. “I’ll ask the doctor for some. Or the nurse. I’m sure someone will have it on hand.”

  I nodded, which was a herculean feat considering how stiff and achy my joints were. Luke gave me a sympathetic half-smile, cocking his head to one side. “You look like you’ve been to hell and back. And from what I’ve been told about the fire… that doesn’t seem too far off from the truth,” he told me. He took a deep breath. “You know, they tell me you saved me, Casey. That you went back for me. You nearly died in the process. I’m grateful, of course, and amazed, but I’m also just so angry at you. I can’t believe you would run straight into danger like that! You could have been hurt. Or killed.”

  I managed to shrug slightly, and Luke scoffed, shaking his head. “I’m serious, Casey. You’re hardcore. You’re the kind of guy I assumed did not exist outside of dramatic soap operas. You’re like a superhero or something. Does that make me Lois Lane? I guess it kind of does, huh? Damn it,” he swore, chuckling to himself. I smiled painfully again.

  “Luke Lane,” I whispered, my voice so rough and weak it sounded like a rusty door hinge. I coughed, the pain in my chest making me nearly double over. Luke hurried to put his hands on my shoulders, standing up to support me as though I might topple out of the hospital bed at any moment. I hated feeling weak like this.

  “Hey, hey, take it easy,” Luke insisted. “You’ve basically just had a brush with death, Casey, you have to relax a little. I know how hard that is for you, but it’s the doctor’s orders.”

  I leaned back and sighed heavily, rolling my eyes to the ceiling. There was a nasty brownish stain up there. I looked back at Luke. He was much more pleasant to look at. He sat back down and took my left hand, raising it to his lips and kissing it.

  “You’re going to be okay, but only if you rest,” he told me emphatically. “I’m just so glad you’re alive. I can’t believe it. You’re one resilient man, Casey Harlowe.”

  I opened my mouth to try and say something back, but just then the door creaked open. Chief Reyes came spilling into the room, a look of pure fear on his face. The panicked expression softened when he saw that I was awake and lucid. He grinned and held his hand over his heart, shaking his head at the sight of me.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. You did it again, kid,” he said gruffly. I could hear the emotion spilling over behind his words. He looked over at Luke, then back at me, raising an eyebrow. I rolled my eyes, which made Chief burst out laughing.

  “Even when you can’t speak, you still manage to find a way to sass me,” he said, walking over to Luke, who stood up. Chief held out a hand for Luke to shake. “I’m Mateo Reyes, Chief of the fire station. I’m Casey’s boss, but damn it, I love this tough guy like he’s my own kid,” he said, jolly as always.

  “I’m Luke Reynolds, head of marketing at the Sentry Casino. It’s good to meet you. Casey’s told me a lot about you and his other coworkers,” he replied. Chief chuckled.

  “All good stuff, I hope,” he said.

  Luke nodded, smiling. “All good.”

  Chief crossed his arms over his chest and stood at the foot of my bed, staring down at me with wordless relief. I managed to choke out, “What are you looking at?”

  He smirked. “Just takin’ it all in. You know, when the doctors told me and your mother about your prognosis, I admit we were concerned.”

  “Mom?” I said, coughing.

  He nodded. “Yes. She’s been hanging around here without a single break ever since they brought you in. Kept trying to get them to let her be your nurse, then she asked if they would transfer you to her clinic. Needless to say, they told her no. Ironically, she only went home finally about an hour ago. The doctors convinced her to go get some rest. She’ll be a little miffed to know that you decided to wake up after she left. I’ll let her know you’re awake. I’m sure she’ll come back up here the second she finds out, so we should give her a little time to rest first.”

  “I wish I could have gotten a chance to say hello to her,” Luke remarked. I felt a rush of affection for him, even though the idea of introducing a debonair guy like Luke to my scatterbrained, overly talkative mom was a little nerve wracking.

  “You’ll get your chance. Karen Harlowe is a wonderful lady. Chatty, sweet as molasses. And one hell of a cook. I assume that’s where Casey gets it from,” Chief mused aloud.

  “Yes, I have been anxiously anticipating the day when I convince Casey to bake me something,” Luke said, grinning. “I would love to meet Mrs. Harlowe and thank her for raising such an amazing man.”

  My cheeks were burning, and I felt restless. It was uncomfortable having both men fawn over me like this without my being able to properly respond. It was nice to know they cared about me, of course, but I wasn’t used to people being so effusively kind and gentle with me. Chief seemed to catch onto this and changed his tone a little.

  “Anyway, Casey, I didn’t just stop by to say hello and check on you. Don’t get me wrong, I’m overjoyed to see you’re awake, and you have all your faculties about you. It sure is great to see some color in those cheeks again. You damn near scared us all half to death with that stunt you pulled,” he said, then seemed to realize he was bordering on a lecture again and pulled back. He sighed. “The point is, we’re glad you’re okay. But it is going to be a long road to recovery, kid. A long, winding road.”

  I frowned, forcing myself to sit up a little more. “What do you mean?” I coughed out.

  Luke put a hand on my arm. Chief shook his head and looked down at my legs. I was confused now, and worried. It seemed like he was trying to keep some big secret from me, and I didn’t like it. “What?” I asked again, my voice like pure gravel.

  “You fractured something in your right leg, Casey. Something about the way you fell when you collapsed. I don’t know how you managed to keep moving after that… the doctors say it must have been very painful. Agonizing. But you’re nothing if not stubborn. You pushed right through the pain and got Mr. Reynolds here to safety before conkin’ out cold,” Chief explained slowly and cautiously.

  “And?” I prompted.

  “And that means you’re going to be on bedrest for a few days. Then you’ll be in physical therapy for a couple weeks. You might need a wheelchair or at least some crutches and a brace temporarily. It’s not a forever problem, and to be honest with you, kid, you really lucked out. It could have been much worse. You must have one attentive guardian angel keeping watch over you. You got nine lives like a cat or something,” he sighed. “But what this means is that you’re going to have to take some more time off. That little vacation I made you take just got a little bit longer, I’m afraid,” he admitted at last.

  I sat up and shook my head vehemently. “No. I need to go back to work,” I said before getting caught up in a brutal coughing fit again.

  “Casey,” Luke said softl
y.

  “I can’t just sit in bed like a bum,” I protested, trying to swing my legs over the side of the bed. Luke and Chief rushed to stop me, but I was determined. I made an attempt to stand up, but as soon as I was upright, a lightning jolt of excruciating pain lit up through my right leg, and I let out a bellow of agony before crumpling back onto the bed. I had a pretty damn high threshold for pain, and even I could feel tears stinging in my eyes. Luke nearly jumped over the bed in his haste to come around to me. He knelt down in front of me, taking both my hands in his as I sat rigid and stiff with pain.

  “Casey, you can’t be so cavalier about this. It’s serious. You’re going to make a full recovery, but you have to give yourself a chance to heal,” he insisted.

  “Not again,” I muttered. “Not again, damn it.”

  “Kid, you’re going to be alright. Take your time. Get well again. You can’t save anyone if you’ve got a bum leg, alright? Don’t worry. The fire station will still be there waiting for you when you’re recovered. You can come right back to work like nothing ever happened. But for now, you have got to relax,” Chief ordered.

  A moment later, the nurse came back in to administer more pain medication and bring me a very pale and sad-looking lunch on a tray. Chief stayed for a little longer before heading back to work, and Luke stayed by my side, mostly just holding my hand and reminding me that everything was going to be okay. Even though, to me, it sure as hell didn’t seem that way.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - LUKE

  “I want the minutes from this meeting forwarded to the band’s manager as soon as we’re finished,” I said to my assistant as he hurried after my long strides down the pristine hallways of the Sentry’s offices.

  “Shouldn’t I forward them to Zane first to make sure—” she started, but she trailed off as I shook my head preemptively.

  “No, send them no matter what. I want complete transparency with the band at all stages of this, because the clearer we are about trying to make things right on our end, the easier it will be to negotiate with them when things get hairy.”

  “What does ‘get hairy’ mean?” she asked. My assistant was a young woman named Laura, who reminded me a lot of myself at her age.

  “Meaning we almost certainly have a lawsuit on our hands no matter what happens,” I said in a low tone as we neared the conference room door. “With that in mind, anything that looks like we’re trying to hide could be used against us very easily.”

  “Understood,” she said with a quick nod.

  “Good,” I said. “Ready for this?”

  I put my hand on the door handle of the conference room, and Laura nodded.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I pushed open the door and strode inside with all the confidence of someone who owned the casino, and I was greeted by many anxious-looking faces.

  This was a meeting with the technicians who set up the pyrotechnics equipment and the engineers who designed them. None of the Sentry’s four owners were present this time—it was all me and our lawyers. Rodney was already in the room, and he nodded to me as Laura and I made our way to the seats next to him.

  “Thank you all for meeting me today,” I began, giving everyone in attendance a respectful nod. “I know we’ve all already communicated over email, so let’s get right down to it.”

  “Gladly,” said the head technician. “I’ve outlined a few points I’d like to make on behalf of our entire staff but let me start off first and foremost with something that everyone on our team has urged me to say.”

  I nodded to him, holding out my hand as if offering him the floor, so to speak.

  “Right,” he said, looking resolutely at me. “We have conducted a very thorough inspection of the equipment plans and held our own interviews with our stage setup crew, and between that and the security footage the Sentry very kindly forwarded to us, my engineers and I are confident in saying that there was no reason we can tell that this accident happened.”

  I stared at him for a few moments.

  “I would certainly hope it’s never your goal to intentionally start a fire,” I said more calmly than I felt.

  “That isn’t what I mean,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean that everything was set up to our exact specifications, and we’ve done much more elaborate and frankly ambitious pyrotechnic stunts like this at other shows, and nothing like this has ever happened. There was no oversight that we can find on either your or our end of things. Mr. Reynolds, this setup was perfect—there’s absolutely no reason this should have happened, objectively.”

  I crossed my arms and stroked my chin thoughtfully, exchanging a glance with Rodney, who quirked an eyebrow.

  “That would be a very convenient claim,” I said cautiously. “Saying that this was a freak accident would take the fault off all parties involved.”

  “I’m not even willing to say that,” chimed in one of the other technicians. “I supervised the setup personally, Mr. Reynolds, and my techs worked to my exact specifications—the same specs we’ve run a hundred times or more at bigger venues.”

  “Okay, so what would you call it?” I asked him, drumming my fingers on the table. This meeting was taking an unexpected turn very early on.

  “We don’t know,” the first engineer said, looking around at his fellow workers. “We have a few thoughts that we’re not comfortable sharing until we have further proof. That’s why we want to offer to pay for an outside agent to come inspect everything. It isn’t just the Sentry’s reputation on the line, but ours as well. With your approval, we can get an outsider to run the same inspections and see if a third pair of eyes will serve us better.”

  “That sounds reasonable to me,” I said. “Do you have the details of the setup available?”

  “Of course,” he said, and he slid a large folder across the table to me. “Take your time—that includes the blueprints for the machines as well as the field checklists the workers use to sign off on what they’ve done, all set and backed up by the supervisors on site.”

  “Excellent,” I said, and the people on my side of the table came closer so that we could begin reviewing the information.

  An hour and a half of deliberations later, Laura and Rodney and I were walking out of the conference room shortly after the group of technicians. I had a throbbing headache after slogging through a mountain of technical data and manuals. Thankfully, if there was one thing I did learn well in school, it was how to digest new information quickly. Between my work and the engineers doing their best to explain what we were looking at, the three of us came to the agreement with the other team that we may well be looking at a freak accident.

  “...and frankly, that would be the best-case scenario for us,” Rodney was saying as we took the elevator to the next floor up. “A freak accident has nobody to blame. The Devils’ Tongues might not use pyrotechnics in their shows anymore, but it’s as close to a get-out-of-jail-free card as we can get.”

  “If the outside inspector pulls through for us,” Laura pointed out, and Rodney frowned, nodding.

  I was slow to convince, because that seemed almost too convenient. My instinct was always to claim responsibility in some way—it was a hectic afternoon getting everything set up, so it wasn’t unreasonable that someone somewhere screwed up in a way that the engineers just weren’t able to pick up on.

  A situation like that would cover our asses, but it wouldn’t do justice to the injured people, and that was what I wanted: the right thing for everyone.

  But I wasn’t about to voice that in front of the two of them just yet.

  “Well, save your theories for cocktail hour,” I said as the elevator reached the next floor. “We aren’t out of the woods with these meetings just yet.”

  We headed for yet another conference room where someone else was waiting for us. This time, we had to deal with the band itself and its manager. I wasn’t looking forwar
d to this one nearly as much as the previous meeting.

  Because as soon as we walked through those doors, I knew we were going to get hit with a lawsuit. Rodney knew it too, which was why he stiffened as we made our way in.

  The band was sitting just like it was a few weeks ago, when everything seemed so bright and hopeful for the concert. I hated that this would definitely give me a bitter taste for the Devils’ Tongues, but that was just how things went in this business sometimes.

  “Mr. Reynolds, good to see you—all of you,” the band’s manager greeted us as we stepped inside and closed the door behind us. We all took our seats and exchanged polite nods with the others.

  “Thank you all for meeting us,” I said. “I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting to see the rest of the band here as well—most of you, at least. You’re missing one, it looks like.”

  “Yeah,” said the singer, crossing his arms. “Scott’s still in the hospital.”

  “That’s the band’s bassist,” the manager explained, and I held a straight face, but I was cringing on the inside. That spelled bad news.

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said. “Please, give him my best wishes when you see him next time.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, he’s got more bouquets of flowers to deal with than he knows how to handle,” the drummer laughed, and I smiled.

  “That’s good to hear,” I said, turning to the manager. “On that subject, am I right to presume that we’re here to discuss damages for the injuries that you would like the Sentry to claim liability for?” In other words, I was asking if the manager was here to sue for their hospital bills, along with any emotional damages.

  “That would make our cheerfulness a little sinister, wouldn’t it?” the manager said with a gruff smile. He was a short, balding man in a cheaper suit than I would have expected, but he had a down-to-earth charm about him that I appreciated. “On the contrary, Mr. Reynolds, we wanted to talk to you about something interesting that Sue here has pointed out to us. It’s about the starting of the fire itself.”