Fade the Heat

by Colleen Thompson

  Almost.

  “This bullshit’s going to stop,” she told him.

  The smile curdled, and he stopped in his tracks.

  While she had him at a loss, she decided to make sure he was clear that she was no one’s doormat. “If you want me to hold my tongue about what you’ve been up to, I’ll expect you to quit running me down around the department. And I mean it, Beau. People are calling me and ratting you out. I’ve had enough of it.”

  He glanced up at the bird and then at the neighbor’s yellow cat, which was watching from its habitual perch atop a long-unused doghouse. He looked everywhere except at Reagan as he sat down on the far end of the bench.

  Noisily he cleared his throat. “I—uh—I was sort of hoping you’d called to say you missed seeing me around. We had some good times, Reagan.”

  He sounded pathetic, but she didn’t waste a moment feeling sorry for him. “You’ll be paying for the door you dented. I’ve decided I want a new one. And you’re damned lucky I don’t bill you for another garbage disposal while I’m at it.”

  He looked up at her. “The door I get, and yeah, I’ll take care of it. But you’re blaming me for breaking your disposal?”

  “That’s what happens when you shove papers down one. A diploma, for example. Beau, you broke into my house.” Try as she might over the past few days, she hadn’t been able to come up with any other possibility. But she still couldn’t wrap her brain around the idea of him going after Luz Maria.

  His expression shifted from hangdog to sullen at warp speed. “Look, I told you I was sorry that I knocked you on your ass. But if you think I’m some sicko who breaks into women’s houses and paws through panties and—”

  “Ugh. You went through my underwear drawer, too?”

  He shot to his feet, his fists clenching. “Ever since you’ve been screwing that Montoya, you’ve been acting like a goddamned bit—”

  “Why, Beau LaRouche. You bad, bad boy.” Peaches let herself and Frank Lee inside the gate, then unclipped the white greyhound from his leash.

  Instead of bounding to the rookie firefighter as he usually did, the dog hid behind Peaches’s legs, which were currently shrink-wrapped in violet-colored aerobics tights.

  As Beau’s glare turned on Peaches, Reagan latched onto the interruption. “You’re up awfully early,” she said to her neighbor.

  “Had to shoot a crime scene last night. Afterwards, I wasn’t in the mood to party. Frank and I had popcorn and watched an old Bette Davis weepie on the sofa,” Peaches explained, but the towering strawberry blonde still hadn’t taken her eyes off Beau.

  Marching toward him, she thumped the center of his chest with an index finger, then punctuated each word with another poke. “You…don’t ever again…mess with…my friend. Or any woman.”

  Beau shoved her hand away and sneered into her face. “Well, I guess that leaves you out, you fucking freak-show reject.”

  “Hey.” Reagan leapt up from her seat and grabbed Peaches’s arm just in time to keep her from throwing a very unladylike punch. “Don’t worry about this jackass. He was just leaving.”

  And he was, for, exactly as he had before, Beau turned on his heel and stalked back toward his Camaro. But this time, he hesitated at the car’s door long enough to tell her, “You’re making a big mistake, Reagan. You have no idea how big.”

  A moment later, the engine roared to life, and the gleaming car lurched backward to the street.

  Which would have made for an impressive exit, had it not been for the crunching impact of a blue pickup truck striking the Camaro’s left rear bumper.

  When Peaches broke up laughing at the fender bender, Reagan smiled and shook her head.

  “Serves the jackass right,” she said. But she couldn’t properly enjoy Beau’s bad luck. Not with the memory of his last statement clouding her mood like a portent of a mighty storm to come.

  “A person spends the best years of her life putting two children through college,” complained Candelaria Esmeralda de Vaca Montoya from the kitchen while she chopped onions—probably in the hopes of coaxing forth more guilt-inducing tears, “and the least—the very least—she should expect is to have them support her in her old age. And what do I have to show for all my hard work? Two good-for-nothings fired for bad choices, and not even a single nieto as consolation.”

  Sitting cross-legged on her own bed, Luz Maria flinched at her mother’s mention of a grandchild. Though she hadn’t spoken of the miscarriage since that day in the hospital nearly two weeks earlier, Jack was almost certain she hadn’t gotten over it.

  Quietly he closed her bedroom door so the two of them could finish their conversation in peace. Their mother’s fiesta of self-pity continued unabated, a maudlin murmur from the kitchen as she worked on her tortilla soup. But now, at least, her children could not make out the words.

  “You should explain to her that you weren’t fired,” LuzMaria told him. Perched on her bed, she put away the book she had been reading and looked directly at him, her reddened eyes wells of regret. Her left forearm, in its hot-pink cast, served as a vibrant reminder of the night he’d thought he’d lost her.

  He shrugged. “It’s just a matter of semantics. ‘Encouraged to resign’ is pretty much the same thing.”

  “God, Jack, I’m so sorry. So sorry about stirring all this up. I was such an idiot. I really thought he loved me, and I was so caught up in the idea of doing something noble that I totally lost sight of—”

  “Hey, it’s all right, LuzMaria. We’ve been over this before.” She’d apologized about a hundred times, though she still stuck to her claims that she remembered almost nothing about her former lover or the organization he had convinced her to support. The feds had leaned hard on her, dangling the carrot of immunity for testimony. Their mutual lawyer advised them, however, that the authorities had little chance of getting an indictment against LuzMaria, especially considering the macabre nature of the assault against her—and the publicity that had followed.

  Shaking her head, she grabbed more tissues from the nearly empty box beside her. Next to it sat an empty pint container of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream and a spoon. She’d emptied one a day since coming home. As far as Jack knew, the ice cream was the only thing she was eating, in spite of their mother’s efforts to tempt her appetite with healthy and delicious meals.

  “It’ll never be all right,” said Luz Maria. “But at least you’ve had another offer. I suppose you’ll be taking it and moving to the Valley.”

  Jack stifled a sigh. “I don’t know. It’s a hell of an opportunity, but I’m not sure about it.”

  Isaac Mailer, the director of the Trust for Compassionate Service, had called Jack personally to say the organization had been looking for someone to run a new clinic. It was to be built in one of the poorest pockets of the country, an overwhelmingly Hispanic section of the Lower Rio Grande Valley almost devoid of medical facilities. Though rich in wildlife and tropical beauty, the southern tip of Texas had recently gained notoriety for its obscenely high numbers of birth defects and cases of cervical cancer and malnutrition.

  “We’re looking to make a difference by educating the community,” Mailer had told him, “and to do that we need a bilingual doctor who cares about the people—not the politics.”

  “What’s not to be sure of?” Luz Maria asked. “They’re even going to pay off your student loans if you stay at least three years. And think of all the good you could do there, totally unfettered by the strings attached to government funding. This job sounds like it’s tailor-made for you.”

  “As if somebody knew exactly what it would take to get me out of town—or earn my gratitude.” Jack hadn’t yet mentioned that there was a social worker’s position for Luz Maria there, too. He didn’t want to get her hopes up until he met this evening with Sabrina McMillan, who had clearly orchestrated the offer, and determined exactly what Sabrina expected in return.

  But that wasn’t the only reason he was ambivalent about moving. Som
ehow his sister seemed to tune in on his thoughts.

  “It’s that firefighter, isn’t it? Tell me you aren’t waiting for a woman who won’t return your calls. Tell me you haven’t gone and picked up Rubia Fever.” This was LuzMaria’s expression for the “disease” of Hispanic men who chased Anglo blondes. “God, Jack. I would expect more sense from you.”

  Anger heated his words. “Forgive me if I don’t think you’re the best person to offer me advice on romance.”

  He felt like the planet’s lowest life form when her good hand reached for another handful of tissues. Though he’d saved his sanity by learning to ignore his mother’s crocodile tears, he’d never been able to inure himself to any woman’s real pain. And even if he someday built an impenetrable fortress around the territory of his heart, he had long ago turned over its keys to Luz Maria.

  Sitting down beside her, he hugged her to him and stroked her wavy hair, the way he had when she was a child.

  Your sister’s a grown woman, he heard Reagan’s voice remind him. It had been a sore point between them, the way he tried to both protect and make the best decisions for Luz Maria.

  Maybe it was past time that he stopped. Drawing away from his sister, he moved back to the computer chair where he’d been sitting.

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’ll tell you what, let’s make a deal. I won’t bring up Sergio if you don’t mention Reagan.”

  Nodding, Luz Maria wiped her eyes. Tears had clumped her lashes, and the edges of her nostrils were chapped and reddened. “Truce,” she promised.

  “All right. But I need to talk to you about that job in the Valley. I didn’t mention this before, but you’ve got a stake in this decision, too.”

  She crumpled the tissue and tossed it in her trash can. “How’s that?”

  Handing Isaac Mailer’s card to her, he recounted the details of their conversation—along with his misgivings about the mayor’s campaign manager.

  “That seems really strange,” she said. “I’ve been praying for some good to come of my mistakes, but this—it sounds almost too good. And pretty conveniently timed, too, since the election’s in—what—is it two days?”

  “Three. Today’s Saturday.”

  For the first time since her injury, the fire returned to Luz Maria’s dark eyes. Distracted from her guilt, she quizzed him about details of both Isaac Mailer’s offer and his conversations with Sabrina McMillan.

  Afterward, she frowned. “I want this, Jack, for both of us. But not without understanding what the price is. Call the woman. Go meet with her if that’s what it takes. While you’re doing that, I’ll check out this foundation on the Internet.”

  As Jack rose, she took a seat at the computer, the air around her fairly crackling with impatience. He smiled at the sight, relieved that she was moving toward recovery—and equally pleased that “The Piranha” would tear into this research with the same stubborn intensity she’d used to tackle problems in the past.

  Kissing her crown as a good-bye, he said, “Some good has come of your mistakes already. For one thing, I’m realizing how much I’ve underestimated you.”

  Luz Maria smiled at him. “All I can say,” she told him, “is it’s about damned time.”

  Laughing, he left his sister—and prepared to beard the mayor’s lioness in her den.

  As she sat alone in the darkness of the watch office, Reagan could hear men’s laughter from the station’s kitchen. She smiled and idly wondered what prank she was missing, but although her new coworkers had done nothing to make her feel unwelcome, she didn’t go out and join in the fun.

  She had a call to make and, for once, the privacy to do it. Picking up the telephone, she dialed, her fingers hurried by the knowledge that at any moment she could be interrupted by a series of tones and one of the dispatch computer system’s nearly unintelligible, but almost always urgent, summons.

  Her heart pounded within her rib cage, thumping out the message, Maybe you should be calling Jack instead.

  At least his messages had left her certain that, unlike the person she was calling, Jack wouldn’t hang up on her. In a way, she’d like to talk to him, to get his take on Beau’s denial about breaking into her place. But he could call until the end of time before she’d forgive him for what he had said about her father.

  “Sad and stunted soul, my ass,” she muttered as her mother’s line rang once, twice, and then a third time.

  They’re off on that cruise after all.

  With a grateful sigh, Reagan moved to return the receiver to its cradle. Then froze at the sound of someone picking up, followed by a warm and feminine “Hello?”

  Her mother sounded cheerful and mildly expectant, as if she anticipated a pleasant social call. Obviously, thought Reagan, she hadn’t checked her caller ID unit, if she even had one on her phone.

  For half a beat, Reagan considered hanging up, but instead she plunged ahead with the words she’d been rehearsing. “Mother—Mom, it’s me, Reagan. I—I’ve been thinking, it’s been too long, way too long, since we’ve talked.”

  She didn’t count the brief call after Joe Rozinski’s death. Certainly, it hadn’t qualified as conversation.

  “Is everything all right?” Her mother’s voice had lost its carefree innocence of a moment earlier. She sounded guarded now and worried, as if she feared more bad news—or an attack.

  “I’m fine,” said Reagan, though she really didn’t feel it. She’d been so damned confused of late, shaken and sleepless with so many doubts. But she thought she’d figured out this one thing, and she meant to say the words before she lost her nerve. “I just wanted to tell you that I…that I finally understand. Why you got rid of Dad’s things. Why you couldn’t stand to listen to me talk about him and make plans to follow in his footsteps. I was so focused on the way your reaction hurt me, I never saw the bigger picture. I never really tried to put myself in your shoes.”

  Her mother whispered, “For-forgive me, Reagan. I was so weak…and so wrong.”

  In the background, Reagan heard her stepfather asking, “What’s going on? Who is that, Georgina?”

  But instead of breaking the connection, her mother told him, “It’s all right, Matthias. I want…I need…to talk to her.”

  Gratitude welled up in Reagan. That, and the desire to prove Jack Montoya wrong. She’d faced fires, fought boxing opponents far more talented than she; hell, she’d even challenged a man who’d held a gun on her. What were a few mundane emotions compared to that?

  Though her heart was pounding, she forced herself to say the words she’d kept locked up. “I love you. I love you and I realize now, you’ve always loved me, too. And Matthias…he helped me. He helped me understand. I—I appreciate that.”

  Even for her mother’s sake, Reagan couldn’t say she loved the man, but she figured that she owed him thanks, at least.

  “Oh, God.” Her mother was crying now, but something in her voice had lifted, a darkness that had weighted it for all too many years. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited—oh, Reagan. I should have been the one to reach out first. But—but I’ve been so afraid, and so certain you were lost forever to me. And I was sure it was no more than I deserved.”

  Reagan wiped away her own tears, but she was smiling, too—and breathing more easily than she had in a long time. “If we can both forgive each other, maybe—maybe it’s possible we can forgive ourselves while we’re at it. I’m really sorry—sorry for all the things I did to hurt you and to make your life more difficult.”

  “Then it’s true, what I heard?” asked her mother. “You’re leaving the department?”

  “What?” Reagan felt as if someone had hit her across the back with a lead pipe. “Who would say a thing like that?”

  “I—I’ve kept tabs on you. I still know a couple of the wives. Women whose husbands worked with your father. P-Patrick.”

  “Well, they’re wrong,” said Reagan, rising to her feet. “I don’t know where they got such an idea, but I’ll never—�
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  Then it happened. The alarm sounded, and a call came—a 911 hang-up with an address near the old Plaza del Sol.

  “Gotta catch this run,” said Reagan before she dropped the phone into its cradle.

  Rushing toward the ambulance, she struggled to shift her focus to the call—which would more than likely prove to be some kid playing with the telephone—and away from the bile-bitter questions pushing themselves into her throat.

  Had her mother’s love and forgiveness stemmed from Reagan’s phone call?

  Or were they contingent on the hope, the same one that Reagan had just dashed, that she was putting not only firefighting, but the department, behind her once and for all?

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Ignoring the ache in her left forearm, Luz Maria pulled a pair of reading glasses from her desk drawer. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t be caught dead in the things, but her eyes felt raw and sore from days of crying. Not so much for Sergio—she’d been stunned by how quickly the mirage of their love faded in his absence—but out of shame at how caught up she’d been in the delusion that the justness of a cause excused every act done in its name, even those that harmed the innocent. She had been so firmly snared by the sticky webs of that false logic that she had been willing to sacrifice her own brother to the lie.

  Though the events surrounding her accident remained a great, gaping hole within her memory, she had no doubt that somehow her own sins had set it in motion—and led directly to the loss of the most innocent life of all.

  At the thought of her miscarriage, she shoved aside the soup bowl her mother had brought in. Luz Maria was surprised to see she’d finished all of it, though the broth had tasted as salty as her tears.

  Once more, she felt grief’s sticky fingers, but this time, she shook them off and continued her one-handed typing. So far, her search for information on the Trust for Compassionate Service had proved frustrating. She had found no website and only a scant handful of mentions in a couple of articles from a Brownsville paper, where the trust was listed as a contributor to a childhood immunization program and to a grass-roots group teaching English to parents of school-age children.