Fade the Heat

by Colleen Thompson

  Swearing, he struggled to his feet, then shouted at Sergio’s retreating figure. “Damn you, stop! I only want to ask you about Luz Maria.”

  Instead of slowing, Sergio disappeared around the old house’s corner. Heading for the street, Jack guessed, and freedom.

  At Jack’s first step, his right knee collapsed, and he noticed for the first time his torn and bloody jeans. Gritting his teeth, he pushed past pain to rise again and lumbered off, now nearly as clumsy as the man he pursued.

  A wild, clearly female shriek hastened his footsteps and launched his heart into his throat.

  “Reagan!”

  He found them struggling on the ground between the boarded house and a bank of metal storage units. Sergio was on top of her, trying to pin her face-down while Reagan bucked frantically and fought to flip over.

  “Get the hell off of her!” Jack roared as he lunged forward.

  The next moment splintered into shards that impaled his heart. Sergio’s hand darted into the inner pocket of his jacket and emerged holding something that gleamed coldly beneath the security light. The distant shrilling of a siren, Jack sensed, could never come in time.

  With his free hand, Sergio grabbed the hair at the back of Reagan’s head, pulling it backward and bringing the handgun—some kind of big-ass automatic—to her throat, angling the weapon so a bullet would rip through her brain.

  Jack wanted to vomit, but instead he stumbled in his haste to stop.

  “Not…one…more step.” Sergio was breathing so hard, he could barely make himself heard. “I’m not going with you. Don’t you understand? Those fascist bastards would rather kill me than let us get a word out about the cause.”

  Reagan’s eyes had gone huge with terror, but dark determination flickered in their depths. Slowly her fists tightened, and the fear shafted through Jack that she might try to fight her way free.

  “Jesus, Sergio,” he said. “Let her go, please. I don’t—we don’t want to take you anywhere. It’s just—I have to know. About my sister, that’s all. Then you can go—go anywhere, goddamn you. I don’t care about that. I only want to know that Luz Maria’s safe.”

  From inside the boarded house there came the sound of clattering, maybe something falling over. As if the derelict hulk wasn’t so abandoned as it appeared.

  “Luz—Luz Maria?” Sergio huffed. “I haven’t seen…I came to look for her. The feds and cops—they’re getting too close. They’re all around my place. It’s time to cut out while we can.”

  “The police…” said Jack. Could they have been chasing Luz Maria when she tried to phone him? Had they arrested her? Maybe that explained why she hadn’t called back.

  “I’m out of here.” Lowering the gun, Sergio released Reagan and began to rise.

  Still kneeling, she turned toward her captor. Too quickly, for he raised the muzzle until it trembled only inches from her face.

  “No—please, no.” She raised her hands in surrender and stared past the gun into his face. “I—I only—I have to ask you. About the fire that killed my captain. I need to understand why. You have to tell me. Please.”

  “Reagan, let him leave,” Jack told her. Was she trying to get herself killed?

  “Keep still, both of you,” said Sergio. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I’ll do what I have to.”

  “Like you did with Luz Maria?” Reagan whispered, her question barely audible.

  Sergio shook his head emphatically. “No. Not to Luz Maria. Never. I told you, I went looking for her. I have no idea where she’s gone.”

  Jack wondered if Sergio had any inkling that Luz Maria was carrying his child, but a glance at Reagan convinced him not to risk pouring more fuel on the fire.

  “What about my captain?” Reagan repeated, her words full of pain.

  And love as well, thought Jack. A love so powerful that she would risk anything—even a bullet—for answers.

  Sergio frowned at her. “You mean that fireman? We didn’t do that—didn’t have a thing to do with those apartments. Why should BorderFree want to burn out friends?”

  “Friends?” Her voice was clearer this time. Looking up, she stared at Jack, her eyes widening in horror.

  “The cause needs more of his kind,” Sergio added. “Those brave enough to risk their careers, even their lives, for our people.”

  “I don’t want to be your martyr,” Jack protested. “I don’t want any part of BorderFree. Except for Luz Maria. I need to know she’s okay, that’s all. Then I don’t give a damn where you go, as long as it’s away.”

  Sergio nodded. “When I find her, I’ll see that she calls you. You have my word on that.”

  The word of a terrorist. The word of a man who held a gun on Reagan.

  Sergio backed away slowly, the pistol shaking harder than ever.

  “Wait,” said Reagan. “You have to tell me. If it wasn’t BorderFree, then who? Who set that fire, damn it?”

  Jack’s heartbeat thundered, and his nerve endings stretched painfully, dreading the crack of gunfire and the smoke-sharp scent of burning powder. Dreading the torrent of blood, bone, and brain matter that he was sure must follow.

  But instead of firing, Sergio sneered at her. “You want to know who torched that building? Then follow the money. At the end of the trail, I’ll bet you’ll find a can of gasoline.”

  He took another step back before he turned and ran, his injured leg slowing—but not stopping—his escape. Even as Sergio disappeared into the darkness, Jack grew aware that the sirens he’d heard had come no nearer, but faded out instead.

  Probably, no one had ever called for help. In this area at this hour, who was there to see or hear them?

  Not caring, he hurried to Reagan. But before he could drop beside her, she was struggling to her feet.

  “Don’t try to get up,” he warned, remembering her struggle with Sergio. “You might be seriously injured.”

  Though she grunted as she rose, she didn’t let pain slow her. “Come on,” she said, “or he’s going to get away.”

  Jack gripped her upper arm hard enough to make her cry out. “Are you insane? He has a gun.”

  “Let go of me, Jack. We don’t have to catch him. But if we can see which way he goes, we’ll tell the cops.”

  Still he didn’t turn her loose. He couldn’t—not until he was sure that Sergio had enough of a head start that he wouldn’t try to slow them down with bullets.

  Because even if it cost him his last chance to find his sister, Jack couldn’t bear the thought of risking Reagan’s life again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Though Reagan strained to hear the sounds of a motorcycle starting, she heard nothing past the renewed barking of the monster dogs behind the fence. Had Sergio abandoned his wrecked cycle and taken off on foot?

  Or would he choose a faster exit: the car she had left running?

  “Let me go, before he disappears.” Tearing loose from Jack’s grip, she vented her frustration on him. “Don’t you want him caught? Don’t you want to find your sister?”

  “I’m not giving him an excuse to shoot at us. God, Reagan. You were nearly killed here. Don’t you get it?”

  “Here’s what I get. My heap’s out there idling, and Sergio may need a ride now.”

  Leaving Jack behind, she took off toward the street. The motorcycle still lay where it had come to rest beside a wide puddle—and Reagan released the breath she had been holding at the sight of the Blue Beast parked beside it, its door open and its engine silent. Apparently, the thing had stalled.

  She ventured a smile toward Jack as he came up behind her. “Houston may have a car-theft problem, but it’s nice to know that at least some of our criminals have standards.”

  But even as her words died, her smile disintegrated into trembling—a full-blown bodyquake—as Jack’s words belatedly sank in: You were nearly killed here. Don’t you get it?

  She could still feel Sergio yanking her head back by the hair, could feel the gun jammed into her neck
. Could smell his sweat and blood and desperation—or had that been her own?

  And since he was on foot, he might still be somewhere close. Somewhere hidden in the darkness, where he could change his mind about leaving the two of them as witnesses.

  Her lungs constricted at the thought, and she heard the wheezing start anew. And hated herself for it—knowing that real firefighters, men like Joe Rozinski and her father, would never allow themselves to go to pieces this way.

  Jack took her arm again, to guide her toward the passenger-side door. “You don’t look good, Reag. You could be going into shock. Come on; get in. I’m taking you to the ER.”

  “The hell you are,” she hissed, yanking herself free again and stiffening her shoulders. “It’s a case of nerves, that’s all. Mine—mine are just a little louder than most people’s.”

  “Listen to me,” he said. “We can’t hang around here. I heard something in that old house. There may be gang-bangers inside, or—”

  “Probably just some junkies wishing we’d leave so those dogs’ll shut up.” She slid into the passenger’s seat with enough deliberation to make it seem like her idea.

  He shut her door, then circled around and climbed behind the wheel, where he peered out through the windows. “Looks like Sergio’s long gone. But right now, I’m more concerned about you. You really need to see a physician.”

  “Must be…my lucky day. I can see you just fine. Now take…just take me home, please. I’m only a little banged up, and I’ve got…I’ve got my inhaler in my pocket. Besides, do you really want to spend the next eight hours talking to the authorities again after someone at the hospital files a report?”

  Maybe he was thinking of his own hours spent in interview rooms, or maybe the incident with Sergio had shaken him up more than he’d admitted. Whichever was the case, he restarted the engine—despite its coughs of protest—and drove toward Reagan’s house.

  “Go ahead and take a couple puffs,” he told her, gesturing toward her pocket.

  “I’ll be fi—”

  “If you don’t, I’m driving you straight to the hospital, where they can put it in your records.”

  “Don’t try to blackmail me again,” she said, “and stop trying to push me around. You may be a doctor, but you sure as hell aren’t mine.”

  Nonetheless, she ripped the inhaler from her pocket and, turning away from him, took one puff and then a second. She leaned her head against the cool glass of the window, allowing the shame to seep through her even as the medication relaxed the swollen tissues of her lungs.

  “It’s not so bad,” Jack told her. He laid a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Plenty of people deal with worse things. You ever think that maybe you’re too hard on yourself? And on everyone who cares about you?”

  She didn’t speak until her breathing eased. “You know what my last conversation with my captain was about? He was telling me how I was dragging the crew down, how I was useless to them. He would have made me transfer back to the ambulance, for my own good—and for theirs.”

  Jack turned onto Washington Avenue, where a number of empty businesses and parking lots were lit up despite the hour. A handful of motorists drifted in the lanes behind them or passed from the opposite direction. But to Reagan, their lights all seemed as distant and indistinct as the hidden stars above them. As if each glow were a separate galaxy and this all-too-quiet car a universe unto itself.

  “And the h-hell of it,” she whispered, her voice breaking, “is that Joe was right. And I—I couldn’t even tell him. I couldn’t even thank him for standing up to me when I was wrong.”

  She was crying now in earnest, and inside her, she felt a door slam shut. A door she’d been wedging open for far too long.

  God, how it hurt to hear it close for the last time…

  “I’m sorry,” Jack said simply, wise enough not to offer platitudes.

  “I didn’t tell you this before,” she said, “but Joe Rozinski and his wife—not Donna, but a sweet lady named Flo, who died of cancer—took me in when my mother kicked me out, back when I was sixteen.”

  “Your mother…?”

  “Mom wanted to forget she’d ever had another husband.” She shrugged. “I was a reminder—and I didn’t exactly go out of my way to make things easier on anyone.”

  “That I can believe.” Despite his words, she heard the flicker of a smile in his voice. “Still, I can’t understand how she could kick you out.”

  “We all make choices.” Reagan could hardly believe she had brought up this old garbage at a time like this. Maybe she really was drifting into shock. Even so, the words floated from her mouth, as light as puffs of seed from white dandelions. “She chose Matthias Wooten over me.”

  “Matthias what?”

  “Wooten,” she repeated. “My stepfather, Mr. Got Rocks. A real charmer—with some interesting notions on how to keep a teenaged girl in line.”

  “He didn’t…didn’t…hurt you, did he?”

  For a long while, she let the question hang while the old arguments played out in her head. Arguments fostered by Wooten’s need for control along with her instinct to lash out at the pain caused by her mother’s indifference.

  Or at least Reagan had believed it was indifference at the time. Shaking her head, she sensed a thick fog lifting from the past, leaving everything so painfully crystalline that the memories’ edges sliced like broken glass. “All of us—we hurt each other. Maybe…well, there’s no maybe about it. I was as wrong as either of them. But at the time, I couldn’t see it.”

  She wondered at the suddenness of the revelation, after all these years. Was it the captain’s death, Jack’s clear love for his family, or the act of staring down a gun barrel that had somehow altered her perception?

  “So what are you going to do about it?” asked Jack.

  She shrugged. “What’s to do? It’s all water under the bridge now. And hey, we do exchange cards sometimes. Christmas, anyhow.”

  She’d been going for a note of levity, but the effort fell flat. Instead, she changed the subject as they turned into her neighborhood. “So how are you holding up, Jack?” Glancing toward him, she saw something she hadn’t noticed earlier. “Is that—is that blood on your knee?”

  Though he didn’t make eye contact, she caught his fleeting grimace.

  “Let’s worry about you right now. Your breathing sounds much better.”

  She waited until they pulled into her detached garage, where she noticed the overhead light must have burned out. Stepping out of the car, she nearly bumped into Jack, then realized he’d been coming to open the door for her.

  “You have to stop that.” Though she stood less than two feet from him, she couldn’t make out his face in the weak light.

  “Stop what? Don’t tell me you’re one of those women who’s insulted by a little courtesy.”

  She shook her head. “Not that. I’m talking about the way you changed the subject when I asked how you’re doing. Is that how it always is with you? Do you bury your own pain by tending to someone else’s?”

  “So now you’re analyzing me? I didn’t think they taught head-shrinking at the academy.”

  His voice was a rough rumble, reminding Reagan of the sound of Sergio’s motorcycle engine. Clearly, she’d offended him.

  But it wasn’t as if she hadn’t pissed people off in the past. So why should it bother her so much that she’d hurt him?

  “Come on inside,” she told him. “I may only be a lowly EMT, but I can squirt Bactine and slap on Band-Aids with the best of ’em.”

  “I don’t need—”

  She couldn’t suppress a smirk. “Shoe’s on the other foot now, right? Better set a good example, show me how to be a decent patient.”

  She figured it was an indicator of his stress level that he didn’t put up more of a fight. With Jack two steps behind her, she walked up the steps, unlocked the back door, and flipped on the kitchen light switch.

  Except it didn’t work.

>   Remembering the dark bulb in the garage, she stopped dead in the doorway.

  “Frank?” she called. “Frank Lee.”

  But the greyhound didn’t come. She figured he must be sound asleep—probably on her bed.

  “What is it?” asked Jack, yet he kept his voice low, as if he, too, sensed something wrong.

  Her gaze swept the kitchen. “The power’s out, I guess. The lights aren’t working, and I don’t see the digital display on the microwave, either.”

  Taking a step back, she looked toward Peaches’ window, only to see the bluish flicker of the television’s light.

  “The circuit breaker must’ve flipped. The wiring’s pretty old, and maybe Peaches was playing with my appliances again. She forgets you can’t run the microwave, the dishwasher, and the garbage disposal all at the same time.”

  “So where’s the fuse box?” he asked.

  She tried to slip past him. “It’s behind the house—hey.”

  “You aren’t going back there by yourself.”

  She rolled her eyes, though she knew he couldn’t see her. “Is this some kind of macho Mexican thing, or are all you docs so obnoxiously pushy?”

  “My sister’s missing, my place has been torched, and someone’s just held a gun on you. So tell me, Reagan, is it just a blond thing, or are all you firefighters so idiotically reckless?”

  She couldn’t help herself. She laughed, surprised to hear that Jack could still give as good as he got. “And here I thought they’d gone and laid the polish on at med school with a trowel. You’re all right, Montoya. Let’s go together, then.”

  When they did, Reagan was surprised to find Frank Lee in the fenced portion of her small back yard, hiding beneath one plant in a thick row of bushy oleanders. Peaches must have been more shaken up by Luz Maria’s phone call than she’d let on. She’d never forgotten the dog outside before.

  “Hey, boy,” Reagan called softly, bending as she reached toward the greyhound.

  Though he allowed her to approach, he slipped out of range of her touch, whining and sidling away from her like a spooked horse.