Fade the Heat

by Colleen Thompson

  “Don’t worry,” he shot back. “Once she realizes how obnoxious you’ve gotten, she’ll scratch you off her list of hot prospects.”

  “Huh. I can be plenty charming when people aren’t unreasonable—or accusing me of things I didn’t do.”

  She led him inside a comfortable-looking living room with gleaming yellow pine floors and overstuffed blue furnishings clustered around an old-fashioned braided oval rug. Near the center of a bank of built-in bookcases, a twenty-one-inch TV was tuned to a local newscast. On the shelf above it, a fire helmet—undoubtedly her late father’s—sat in a place of honor beside several framed photographs, one of Patrick Hurley in his department uniform, another of a younger, trimmer version in a boxer’s robe, his grin radiant and his gloved fist held high by a referee. Among the pictures sat the snow-white pillar of a partly burned-down candle.

  No wonder she’s not married. What living man could possibly compete with the memories centered in that shrine?

  At her whistle, the skinny white dog jumped down from the sofa, where he’d been lounging upside down.

  “Beat it, Frank. We have company,” she said, then turned toward Jack. “Would you like to have a seat? Maybe something to drink?”

  He wasn’t about to get all chummy with her, no matter what she knew. “What I’d like to do,” he said, “is find out who wrecked my truck so I can report it to the police.”

  Yawning, the dog slipped beneath one of her hands and leaned against her leg.

  “All right, have it your way,” she said as she stroked the narrow white head. “When I finally got out of your clinic—with nothing for my trouble, I might add—this big green car came barreling toward me. I had to jump back out of the way to keep from being hit.”

  “Did you get his license number?”

  She shook her head. “He disappeared too fast. The guy was really moving.”

  “Did you see him, or notice what kind of car it was?”

  She hesitated, looking toward the ceiling as if trying to remember.

  “Something American and four-door,” she said. “Maybe a Plymouth or a Chrysler, one of those old tanks. And it was painted that ugly avocado color, like they used to make back in the seventies.”

  “What about the driver?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. A guy, I guess. I don’t think he was black, but beyond that, I’m not sure. He had one of those stocking-cap things pulled down low, the way a lot of the gang kids do these days.”

  Old car, stocking cap—it probably was some kid, slamming into Jack’s truck for some imagined slight. Maybe his baby sister had squalled when Jack had given her a vaccination. Wounded machismo so often defied logic. Jack had seen men stabbed for the craziest things, especially on Fridays, when young men flush with weekly paychecks blew a good part of them on liquor.

  Over Reagan’s shoulder, flames danced on the TV screen and tugged at Jack’s attention.

  “Could you turn that up?” he asked, realizing it was the building, not the fire, that had hooked him. “That looks like my apartment complex.”

  Sparks shot angrily into the night sky as a two-story building collapsed upon itself, while above it, the underbelly of a smoke cloud pulsed orange with reflected fire. As the floodlit image faded, a chill ran up Jack’s spine. Though there were probably a number of similar complexes around the area, his gut clenched with the certainty that it was not only his building but his apartment burning—along with a number of others.

  Reagan turned around and snatched a remote off an end table. The volume climbed as the Asian-American anchorwoman’s expression sobered. “Recapping our top local story, about twenty minutes ago, a Houston firefighter was rushed to Memorial Hermann Hospital’s Trauma Center in what appeared to be very serious condition. So far, we are unable to release that firefighter’s name, but as soon as relatives are notified, we expect to have that information for you.”

  As the woman’s voice-over gave the address—Jack’s address—the screen flashed on an image of an ambulance pulling away, its lights and siren going full blast. Near the corner of the screen, Reagan pointed out a fire truck.

  “That’s my station’s pumper—and that’s my crew on the scene.”

  Her fear and horror sliced through Jack, wrenching his mind from thoughts of his neighbors’ safety and his possessions. Turning, she rushed toward a cordless phone—only to have it ring before she reached it.

  She grabbed it up, her eyes wild and her body trembling as if someone had injected her with pure adrenaline. “Beau? Is that you, Beau? Who’s down? Who is it?”

  She went silent, visibly straining with every cell to listen. And crying out in response to something that the caller said.

  “I should have been there. This was my shift, my shift, damn it.”

  Jack was overcome with the urge to lay his palm on her shoulder, to offer her whatever comfort human touch could. But she’d started pacing frantically, her body language all but screaming, Keep your distance. Clearly sensing her distress, the white dog tried to follow, nervously winding himself around her legs.

  “I’m—I’m going to the hospital,” she said into the phone, pushing past the greyhound. “And sure, sure—I’ll be careful driving over. Get back—get back to work. Stick with Zellers, and get that fire out, Beau. Kill the bitch for me, and for him, especially. Kill that fire for the captain.”

  As soon as she’d hung up, Jack said, “I’ll be glad to drive you, Reagan. They took him to Ben Taub, right?”

  She turned, staring at him oddly, as if she had forgotten he was there. A moment later, the fog appeared to lift, and she shook her head emphatically. “It’s all right, Jack. I’ll be fine.”

  “I know shock when I see it, and besides, that’s my apartment complex burning. It could be that all this is related—that car you saw, the damage to my truck, the fire.”

  She pursed her lips. “Maybe, if it really is your place.”

  “Don’t you think the cops are going to want to talk to both of us?”

  Again she shook her head. “I didn’t see much—barely got a quick glimpse of the driver. Besides, I don’t give a damn what the police want. All I care about is getting to my captain as soon as possible.”

  “Then quit arguing and let me drive you,” he insisted.

  She took a deep breath, as if winding up to shout at him. Instead, she nodded and said, “Fine—if you can handle a stick shift. We’re going to take my car.”

  “But why? Mine’s running just fine.”

  “Yeah,” she said, her expression darkening, “but mine doesn’t have a big, fat target painted on the side of it.”

  Chapter Four

  “This has gone too far,” Jack was telling her as he drove toward the hospital. “Damn Darren Winter—I never cared about the politics, never gave a rat’s ass where those kids or their parents came from. All I wanted to do was keep them breathing.”

  “Hurry up, Jack, please. You drive like my grandmother,” Reagan complained, unable to focus on anything but Joe Rozinski. Her father’s captain and now hers—a friend to both of them. More than a friend; in her case, he was the man who’d taken her hand at her father’s funeral. The man who’d helped her find the strength to say good-bye.

  Part of her understood that Captain Rozinski had consoled her in order to help himself get through the guilt and trauma of losing one of his men. But it didn’t matter why he’d done it, only that the kindness planted that day had taken root…and sustained her through those nightmare years in her mother and stepfather’s house.

  Though Jack was still talking, saying something about one of her headlights being out, the strains of bagpipes overrode his words. The bagpipes that had played at her father’s memorial service.

  Her throat closed around what felt like a pinecone wedged inside it, and approaching headlights turned kaleidoscopic in the prism of her tears. Rozinski couldn’t die; he couldn’t. She couldn’t stand to join the parade of dark blue uniforms that marched in
silent homage, couldn’t bear the memories of watching from the front row while hundreds, perhaps thousands, of firefighters filed into the space in a hush so profound it made her want to scream to shatter it.

  Only this time, instead of holding her hand and reassuring her, he would lie inside the casket while she joined the surreally silent cortege. And the specter of their final conversation would forever poison decades of fonder memories.

  As Jack turned into the parking garage, Reagan’s sense of urgency evaporated into terror. He pulled into a second-level space and shut off the engine, but icy fingers clamped around her throat. She couldn’t move—could barely breathe—for fear of whatever news awaited them inside the hospital.

  Jack laid a hand on her arm. “Are you all right, Reag?”

  The shortening of her name jerked her back to the days when she had tried to tag along with him, an eight-year-old shadow to a thirteen-year-old boy. Most often, he’d yelled at her, “Get on home, Reag. I got things to do with the vatos. Us guys can’t have no bebés followin’.”

  Especially, his tone had said, the white daughter of the couple who owned the bungalow his family rented. Though the house Reagan’s family lived in was barely any bigger, his behavior hammered home the unbridgeable expanse between owner and tenant, white girl and Hispanic boy.

  But when no others were around, he would sometimes allow her to help him as he fixed a bike chain, or join in her efforts to rescue a stunned fledgling from a neighbor’s tomcat and nurse the little mockingbird to health. On one memorable occasion, he had even helped her with her homework.

  But never, ever, would he have touched her, the way he touched her now. And never had he looked at her as he was looking at her this evening, his dark gaze so serious and earnest that it made her fidget. And God knew, she had never been so aware of the masculine squareness of his jaw, the way his throat worked as he swallowed…or her own desire to touch the hollow just beneath it, to feel the way it moved.

  Jerking her arm away, she told herself she’d been wrong about him earlier. He must be a damned good doctor if he could shunt aside his own horrendous problems to feign interest in hers. That was all it was, she told herself, no matter what else it might feel like.

  She sucked in a breath. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll be okay.”

  Because whatever happened, she’d be damned if she would let him see her fall apart. Once he saw how strong she was, how well steeped in the stoicism of her mostly male department, he’d forget his reservations about signing off on her return to work.

  Her mouth dried instantly as guilt knifed through her. Had she sunk so low that she would use her captain’s injury to try to thwart the man’s own wishes?

  Jack climbed out of the car and came around to her side, meaning, she could tell, to open the door as if she were an old lady or an invalid. Or as if, in the twenty years since she had seen him, he’d acquired a polish he hadn’t had before.

  She beat him to the punch, emerging on her own and hustling toward the ER’s entrance, which she remembered from her days riding the ambulance.

  Despite her earlier resolve, she nearly lost it in the hospital’s family consultation room, where she found Donna Rozinski, Joe’s blowsy and big-hearted second wife, slumped on one end of a comfortable-looking sofa across from a muted television. As Donna tugged absently at a long lock of her blond-streaked red hair, her green eyes remained dry. What struck Reagan most, though, was the way the outsized, forty-something woman, always so extravagant with both her laughter and her tears, seemed to have shrunk into herself…and how irredeemably alone she looked.

  Breaking from Jack’s side, Reagan rushed toward her, only to see her crewmember Cal Wilkins heading in the same direction, a cup of coffee in one callused hand, a diet cola in the other. For a moment, his jeans and plain gray sweatshirt jarred her, until she remembered that he was on vacation, supposedly at his brother’s Hill Country hunting lease. Maybe the rain had washed out his plans, or maybe some premonition had kept the fifty-year-old veteran home today.

  C.W. frowned at her, the brown skin of his forehead crinkled in confusion. “Figured you’d be on today or I’d’a called you, too.”

  Reagan said, “I’m glad you’re here, C.W.”

  “Same goes,” he said before leaning toward Donna. “Why don’t you have something cold while we wait for the doctor? You like a Diet Coke, right?”

  When she ignored the offered can, Reagan took it and set it on the narrow table beside the sofa. Unlike the impersonal waiting areas situated around both the trauma and medical sections of the ER, the family room was as cozy and inviting as if it were in someone’s home. It was also the spot where the ER staff ensconced the families most likely to be hearing the worst news.

  “I’m here, too, Donna” Reagan lowered herself into a crouch and fought off the tickle of a cough. “I’m here for anything you need.”

  Donna nodded but turned her face so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact. Rising, Reagan backed off, thinking of how she’d pulled away from Jack out in the car, how his sympathy had threatened to breach the fragile hull of her composure. Whatever happened to Donna’s husband, before this day was over, Donna risked sinking beneath a flood tide of heartfelt offers and kindly meant advice. Reagan remembered that much from her father’s death, remembered her mother shrieking, “I can’t stand it anymore. Why can’t they just leave me alone?”

  As she and C.W. stepped back into the corridor, she saw Jack out of the corner of her eye as he flagged down one of the nurses. For a moment, Reagan’s attention snagged there, painful as a ragged nail when it caught and tore on fabric. Would the small Hispanic woman tell him it was over—that someone was coming to tell Donna Rozinski her husband of two years was gone?

  C.W. touched Reagan’s elbow. Unlike most days, today the man’s age showed in deep grooves beside his brown eyes and a gray cast to his skin. “Nobody’s come out yet, but from what I hear, a ceiling came down on Joe, a heavy beam across the back. He wasn’t breathing when they pulled him out. Paramedics revived him, but—”

  “So he was alive, right? He was breathing on his own by the time they got him here?”

  C.W. nodded stiffly. “He was, with oxygen. Took a lot of smoke, though. His mask got knocked off. And they had to dig him out from under a big pile of debris.”

  “The captain’s strong. He’ll make it.”

  Her gaze locked with C.W.’s and dared him to defy her. When she’d first been transferred to the station, he had made no secret of the fact that he had no use for a woman on the crew.

  “ ’Specially one the captain didn’t bother asking me about first,” he had told her, “one that’s practically a family member to him.”

  Though C.W. was the only black man on the shift and he had never bothered taking a promotional examination, his courage, work ethic, and long experience made him far more a leader among the men than many who outranked him. So Reagan had set about winning him over, buying off the man in his own coin. If he charged into a burning building, she not only hung with him, she tried to learn from him and make herself useful in the process. If he decided to clean the fire truck when it came back filthy after a 3 A.M. blaze, she was in on that, too—even when she suspected he was only doing it to try to convince her to go back to the ambulance—or at least to transfer to another station. After a few months, he’d put the word out that she would make a decent firefighter, and, as she’d expected, the other guys fell right in line.

  His big hand grasped her forearm. “He’ll make it. He’s too damned stubborn not to. But even if he doesn’t, we’ll do right by him—and his family, too.”

  Reagan clasped his arm back and felt something flow between them, a kinship and a calling she would never in a million years be able to explain to the likes of Dr. Jack Montoya.

  Not even if it were the price he set upon his signature.

  “I’m sorry,” Analinda Alvarez told Jack. A tiny woman with short dark curls and huge brown eyes, the traum
a nurse looked tired, yet pumped up on the breakneck speed of her work. “I haven’t heard anything about him. We have a lot of patients—there was some kind of rush-hour pile-up on the freeway. It’s a little early still, but we’ve already got the makings of another wild Friday night.”

  Jack nodded at his former coworker. He remembered all too well the accidents and knife wounds, the shootings and the overdoses, people rushing headlong toward mortality in their eagerness to celebrate the end of the workweek.

  He thought fleetingly of Luz Maria on the back of that macho asshole’s motorcycle. Maybe he’d call her cell phone later, make sure she was all right.

  “But you might try asking them.” The nurse gestured toward a pair of men who stood talking farther down the hallway.

  Jack spotted the blue uniforms of the Houston Fire Department and thought he recognized the older of the two men, a heavyset man with a graying brown comb-over, as Robert Anderson, an official who often made statements on the television news.

  As Jack approached, the men’s conversation ceased, and he introduced himself.

  The younger of the two, a wiry, dark-haired man with a wide gap between his front teeth, jerked to attention at the mention of the name. “You said Montoya. Are you Dr. Jack Montoya?”

  “Yes. I wanted to talk to you about—”

  “Can you show us some ID? Something with your address.”

  Despite his confusion at the request, Jack pulled out his driver’s license.

  The younger man whistled through those widely spaced teeth. “Here’s our man, Chief.”

  “We’ve been searching for your body,” said the man with the comb-over. He gestured toward the other firefighter, who was already pulling a walkie-talkie from his belt. “Call dispatch and let ’em know we have him here.”

  The man stepped aside to carry out the order.

  “What the hell is going on?” Jack demanded.

  “A few minutes after the first pumper reached the fire at the Newgate Apartments, an anonymous caller tipped off Channel Four news that—this is a quote, sorry—‘that fuckin’ greaser Jack Montoya’s cookin’ in there.’ The news crew called 911 right away to report it.”