Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  “Why, though? I mean, people do fucked up things, Becks. No one’s perfect. Ever.”

  He was right to a degree, and his words struck home. But with Uncle Zeke it was different. He wasn’t just any man, he was the man who’d saved me from a miserable life, who had helped me pick up the pieces of my existence before I even knew what that meant. He never hurt me, hindered me, or tried to belittle me. It was always about healing and hope and moving forward with him.

  “Because,” I began, “if I start to believe that Uncle Zeke did do it, everything about my life gets called into question, you know? It’s like if you found out Superman was really a bad guy after all these years. That he was just lulling all of humanity into a false sense of security so he could come crushing down on us at the end, or just let Lex Luthor put all his evil plans into motion. How wrong would that be? How awful would we all feel?”

  “Yeah,” he said, giving me a little half-smirk as he nodded, “I think I understand. Having your whole life crashing down around your head. It’s just awful. Wake up one day, and it’s all just changed or over.”

  I frowned a little as I squeezed in closer to him and put my arms around his chest. At least, even with the world being as bleak as it was, I still had Derrick. I might not have been able to count on anything, whether it was Matthew protecting me and being by my side on this, or Zeke being pure as the driven snow.

  But no matter what happened, whether it was the guy I cared about most, even after such a short amount of time, betraying my trust or my uncle still being accused of burning down his store, I always knew Derrick would show up to help carry me through. He always showed up when I called.

  After all, that’s what best friends were for.

  Chapter Forty-one – Matthew

  Chief Beckett, two of our other volunteers, and I all disembarked from the engine on the side of the road. The fire was just off the main road, but with the winds driving the way they were, we needed to move fast if we wanted to contain it and protect any more of the wild lands from being consumed.

  “Alright, guys,” Chief Beckett called as one of the other volunteers and I took turns checking the webbing on our packs, which held extra water and a hatchet, and our turnout coats for any holes or issues. I wasn’t in my normal gear, either, so it was especially important on my part. “You got enough water? Remember, we’re going to dig a firebreak out ahead of this thing first, then start moving in on the flanks. Need you on your toes out there. No heroes, no solos, just keep it clean and keep it safe as you can. Don’t make me explain to the missus why you’re coming home with burns, or not at all. Capisce?”

  “Got it!” we all shouted.

  “Now, ain’t gotta remind you, but you keep an eye on your water, and you keep your asses moving. You cover each other, okay?”

  “Yes sir!”

  This close to the freeway, there was no telling what had caused the brush fire. In all likelihood, probably a cigarette or a joint someone had tossed from their car window without even thinking about it. This far out, it wasn’t that big of a concern as far as it reaching Enchanted Rock or anything. But during fire season, a small grass burn like this could easily take hold in the dried out-pine needles that covered the forest floor. What made it even worse was that we’d had a pretty heavy winter, which meant more run-off from the mountains during spring. And that meant a better growing season for plants, which dried up once we hit summer.

  We headed out to the spot as Chief Beckett worked on getting the hose off the engine and laid out behind us. He and one of the other volunteers would drag the line along behind us as we went on the attack, digging a firebreak, a trench that was all the way down to mineral earth, across the front. We needed to get all the possible fuel away from the main fire to keep it from spreading, and the only way to do that was to clear all vegetation and roots from the surrounding area. You dig it deep enough and wide enough, and you could stop a brush fire in its tracks and mitigate the amount of damage it caused.

  I gripped my borrowed fire rake and tugged at the sleeves of my turnout coat, agitated, as we made our way to the fire. Stupidly, I’d forgotten my gear back at the office when I’d run out to make the call. Maybe I’d been too focused on the case or Rebecca turning away from me, but I was going into this thing in borrowed gear that was a size or two too small.

  Definitely not ideal.

  And whosever it was, I didn’t like their smell. Something about it just seemed off. Or like I’d smelled it before. Not like on one of the normal guys. There was a hint of something else I couldn’t detect. The whole thing, combined with the unfamiliar feel of the gear, just made me even more disorienting and uncomfortable.

  But I was on call and fire didn’t give two shits whether or not you were uncomfortable about the way you went in. It was a force of a nature, and all it wanted was two things: to spread and to burn. And didn’t get one without the other.

  The guys and I attacked the blaze with our fire rakes, wooden poles with a rake-like head that had four strong, sharp blades that could chew up the earth like a wolf chewing up a deer haunch. Fire needs three things to burn: heat, oxygen, and fuel. Out here in the wild, you can’t remove the second one, so you have to remove the third. Fuel.

  We sliced through limbs with our rakes, chopping through roots like a scalpel through diseased flesh as we tried to stem the spread. And, as we went to work cutting off the path of the flaming beast in front of us, we chopped through grass, roots, rocks, and topsoil to cleave the earth open. We had to get out every speck of organic matter because fire consumes everything. It’ll even travel through root systems and come up on the other side of the firebreak if you’re not careful.

  Fighting fires is hot work, hotter than standing next to an oven or working in a kitchen on a summer day. Sweat pours down your body, trying to keep you cool, but it doesn’t help. Because not only are you dealing with the fire in front of you and the sun bearing down on your head and shoulders, you’re also wrapped up in a heavy fire-retardant coat that does the exact opposite of breathe. It’s thick and insulated, meant for protection against the heat.

  Anytime you try to keep something out, you’re also going to keep something in.

  The whole time you’re doing this, you’re working like your life and the lives of the community depend on you. Within minutes, your core body temperature begins to rise and begins to outstrip how quickly your body can cool itself.

  With our front firebreak dug and the heat rolling off the flames like a blast furnace, we spread out and took to the flanks of the beast. You slow the front first, then move to the sides before it can try to go around your bulwarks, spreading like a rampant disease through the tissue of the land. I circled around to the left, taking one of the other men with me. With our rakes and the hose finally coming in over the top to put down the flames, we went to work.

  Moments later, I was getting tapped out by Chief Beckett, with him shouting in my ear for me to go cool off. With all the frantic work, it had felt like thirty seconds, or conversely an hour, not just ten minutes. He pulled me off the line and went to work with his own rake, moving like a heavyweight madman as he attacked the ground with gusto, like it had killed his father.

  I retreated to the rest station and began to strip my coat off as I got far enough from the fire. There, we had ice buckets and cooling off spots. Sweat poured down my body like a waterfall, dripping down my back and between my pecs. I could practically feel it running over my abs as I tossed the borrowed bunker coat on the ground and plunged my arms into the buckets of ice water. Surprisingly, no steam rose from the buckets when I quenched my body, rapidly bringing my temperature back down to a safe zone.

  Out here, fighting fires like these, heat stroke was your biggest enemy. Within just the ten minutes I’d been on the line, my core had probably risen four or five degrees, getting to a point where I was basically running a fever. Your arms, though, help to regulate that body temperature, and bringing them down with ice is one of the most
effective ways to keep the brain cool.

  “Jesus,” I breathed, looking back over my shoulder to see how the progress was going.

  Already, they’d encircled the fire and begun to close it in a tight ring of a firebreak. Not much longer now. Another of the volunteer firefighters came off the line, tapped out by one of the hose guys.

  I clamored to my feet, barely noticing the extra fifty pounds of gear on my body, and grabbed up my tossed-aside bunker coat. I grabbed one of the bottled waters from my backpack, drank a mouthful, and headed back out with my rake in hand.

  As I did, though, the wind shifted a little, bringing me a whiff of a smell I hadn’t caught in ages from the fire engine some fifty feet behind me. Ammonium fertilizer and kerosene.

  Ammonium nitrate fuel oil. ANFO. The same stuff used in the Oklahoma City bombing. The same stuff that blew up the little town of West, Texas.

  Oh no, this wasn’t just a brush fire. It was a trap.

  Someone was trying to blow us up.

  Chapter Forty-two – Rebecca

  What I thought was thunder rolled through the sky over Enchanted Rock, shaking the floor and rattling the windows of my little house. At the same time, though, it was like an ice pick was stabbed into my heart, sending a frigid chill down my spine.

  Eyes wide, I leaped up from the couch, from Derrick’s arm around my shoulders. “Matthew!”

  I didn’t know what had caused me to exclaim his name that way, but it was nothing more than a passing feeling, like someone walking over my grave.

  Derrick tried to pull me back down to the couch. “Becks, you okay?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head as I pushed him away, my heart still jack hammering as my hands and feet began to tingle. “I don’t know,” I said, stammering a little. “I really don’t know. Was that thunder? We weren’t supposed to have a storm today, were we?”

  “Thunder?” he asked, sitting up a little and looking back over the couch at the backyard. “No, doesn’t look like thunder. Sky’s perfectly clear.”

  I turned my eyes to the backyard, confirming that he was right. It was beautiful outside. Sunny, with the sky that faded blue hue you only found in the summer, when the sun seems twice as large as normal, but still just as beautiful as it hangs over your head. The sight of such a wonderful day, though, didn’t do anything to help. A gloom, a sneaking suspicion that something awful had happened, hung over me like a shroud.

  “You feeling okay?” Derrick asked, looking back to me in concern. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll grab a drink for us?”

  I clenched my jaw a little tighter and shook my head. “No, I’m fine. I just had an awful feeling. Like-like something happened to Matthew Jones.”

  He looked surprised at first, but his brows quickly furrowed in concern. “Because of some thunder? Come on, Matt’s fine. Have some wine and relax.”

  His words didn’t do anything to help allay my feelings of fear and dread, though. Something had happened. I knew it as surely as I knew up was up and down was down. I could sense it in the marrow of my bones, this aching loss. No, having a glass of wine and trying to relax wasn’t going to help this. What I needed to do was find out if Matthew was okay. I turned away from Derrick and rushed to find my phone.

  “What are you doing?” he asked as I went into the kitchen and pulled my phone off its charger.

  “Just making some calls,” I replied. “I really don’t think that was just thunder.”

  “Well, I didn’t hear anything,” he said as he eased himself up from the couch with a sigh.

  “You sure?” I asked as I pulled up Matthew’s contact info and called him, sticking the phone to my ear. “It rattled the windows.”

  Derrick, standing in the kitchen doorway, just shrugged. “Nothing. Sorry.”

  I shrugged back as the phone rang and rang and rang in my ear.

  Finally, he picked up. “Hello you’ve reached Matthew Jones–”

  “Shit,” I said, hitting end and dropping the phone on the counter. “Voicemail.”

  “Well, maybe he’s just in the bathroom or something? Doesn’t want to answer your calls?”

  I sighed. Maybe he was ignoring them. Especially after the way I’d treated him back at his office.

  “I bet he’ll call you right back,” Derrick said, stepping into the kitchen and grabbing a beer from the six-pack still sitting behind me on the counter.

  “Maybe,” I said. I could feel him standing right behind me, the way you can sometimes feel another person standing in a pitch-dark room. You may not be able to see them, but all of your other senses are telling you they’re right there. “I just can’t get over this feeling in my gut. Like something bad has happened to him, Derrick.”

  “It’s nothing,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I promise. Matt’s a smart guy and he’s capable. Nothing’s going to stop him.”

  “Thanks,” I said, putting my hand over his.

  He reached around and gave me a hug from behind, his arm right across my chest as he pulled me back into him.

  I relaxed into his touch, the touch of a friend. I reached up, patted my hand on his big forearm. “Thanks again,” I said. “For being here for me.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, putting his other arm around me, pulling me tighter against him. I could hear him breathing in my ear a little.

  I stiffened a little as he pressed his body against mine, visions of Matthew Jones filling my head. I swallowed hard. “Derrick?” I asked. “What are you doing?”

  “What am I doing?” he asked, his voice soft and soothing from right beside me. “Just giving you a hug.”

  “Well,” I said, trying to pull away, “that’s enough, alright?”

  His arms didn’t budge, though. Instead, they just tightened, keeping me against him as one of his arms moved up to my neck.

  “Enough?” he cooed in my ear. “Just trying to give you a hug, Becks.”

  My heart began hammering again as I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat barely sliding over his forearm. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, but I knew it was something I didn’t want. This wasn’t right for my friend to be hugging me like this, not while I was worrying about the man of my dreams. “Yes,” I said, struggling against him, trying to break free. “Let go, Derrick. Let me go.”

  “Let go?” he asked again, repeating my question obnoxiously. “But I just want to give you a hug.” As he said those words, his forearm tightened on the side of my neck as his other hand shoved my head downwards.

  The world began to go dark around the edges, like everything was gently fading out. The blood rushed in my ears like a raging river. I tore at his arms, trying to get them away from my throat, but to no avail.

  “Derrick,” I choked out, my voice gagging as he continued to strangle me. “What are you doing? Please stop!”

  “Oh, but Becks, sweet Becks,” he said sweetly in my ear, “we’re just getting started.”

  Chapter Forty-three – Matthew

  “Is everyone okay?” I yelled as I clambered up from the body of the volunteer, Fred Nooman, I’d tackled to the ground. My ears were ringing despite the earplugs I wore, and smoke covered the site of the brush fire they’d just finished putting out. “Anyone hurt?”

  Groans came to my ears as I pulled the plugs out and tossed them aside. Through the smoke, I caught glimpses of firefighters strewn around the yellowing grass like rag dolls. My whole body ached from the shockwave of the explosion, the concussive bubble an explosive force created in the area.

  I looked down to my right, at a chunk of the fire engine fender buried less than two feet away from Fred Nooman’s head. “Fred?” I asked, offering him a hand as he tried to sit up. “You okay?”

  He gripped my hand, nodding, his big bushy, heavily waxed beard all mussed from I’d tackled him. He’d been the guy coming just off the line, and tackling him to the ground was the first thing I thought to do.

  “Feel like I was trying to line
back for the Broncos,” he said, shaking his head as he wiped a hand down his face, “but I’m fine, thanks for covering me. Come on, buddy, let’s go see about the others.”

  I nodded and we ran off to the fire site.

  My radio was crackling in my suit, and guys were already running out of the smoke towards us. Chief Beckett was up front and center, screaming for all of us to get to the truck. “Dig a fucking line! A firebreak in case it spreads!”

  “Keep ‘em back from the truck!” I yelled as I got closer. “Could be another bomb in there, Chief!”

  “You heard the man,” he yelled. “Big circle, keep it wide and use the highway as the backstop. No one get close to that goddamn engine, like Matt says.” The chief looked me over and clapped me on the shoulder. “You alright?”

  I nodded and sucked in a breath. “Been worse.”

  “Any idea what the fuck that was?” he asked. “You tackled old Fred before the thing even went off.”

  I knew exactly what it was. But how could I explain to him that I’d smelled the explosive coming in over the wind before I saw or felt the actual explosion? The answer was, I couldn’t. “Just a hunch, chief, what with everything that’s been going on.”

  “Well, whatever it was, you saved Fred’s life. Now, come on, let’s get that firebreak dug!”

  Together, we all hustled to the burnt-out hulk of a fire engine, its blackened burning metal sending flames licking into the sky. The back end of it was destroyed like one of those old exploding cigar tricks you saw in cartoons, the shreds of it bent in every direction away from the source of the blast. Whoever planted this bomb clearly had intended for the victims to still be on it, or nearby, not out fighting a fire over a hundred feet away.