Richard

“I’ll be fine,” I said, giving her an optimistic smile before I turned around and headed out the door. I only hoped I was right.

My friend Simon and I had gone to community college together—not the most glamorous of institutions, but it got me the education I needed to become a firefighter.

Simon, on the other hand, became a cop—at least, for a few years. After he was denied his detective’s shield, he decided that he’d fair better in the private sector. And he was right.

I saw him the moment I walked through the door—he was the guy in the oversized goat and fedora. It killed me every time the two of us had lunch together, he loved all that Dick Tracy shit—and so did his clients. They ate it up and even recommended all their friends. Cheating husbands, fraud, corporate espionage—you name it, Simon took care of it.

“Gunner!” he called, waving me over the second he spotted me. I just shook my head as I sat down in the booth, watching him take a bite of a BBQ-sauce-covered chicken wing.

“You still eat this crap?” I asked, waving down the waitress and ordering myself something off the appetizer menu. “You’re going to have a heart attack.”

“I could think of worse ways to go,” Simon said, shrugging as he took a drink of his beer. As unprofessional as I found Simon, it was almost endearing. “How’s shit with you? I almost didn’t think I’d ever hear from you again.”

I snorted. “You slept with my date!”

“She didn’t have your name on her.”

“Yes, she did,” I replied, laughing.

“Ok, fine. She was a little weird. Never tattoo someone’s name on your arm, especially not after the first date!”

“Do you have something for me, or not?”

Simon laughed, wiping his mouth on an already stained napkin, careful that none of it got on his “priceless” coat.

“I do! And this is very interesting. I mean, there are people who would pay a fortune for the work that I’ve done here for you today.”

“I’m still not paying you, Simon.”

“You hurt my feelings, Gun! This is a favor between friends! I would never ask for any kind of compensation—”

“I’m already picking up the bill, Simon. Out with it!” I said, sighing as my order of mozzarella stick was set down gently in front of me. I gave the waitress a smile in thanks before I began to eat.

“You know what you mentioned before? About how this freak talked about killing his mother?”

“Yeah, you found something?” my eyebrows raised as I leaned forward. I hadn’t expected results this fast from Simon.

“Yup. Unsolved homicide about a year ago—Sandra Williams. COD was asphyxiation. She had—and I quote—‘her panties forced down her throat, blocking her airway.’ Sounds a lot like what your sister talked about. This could be our link, my friend.”

I frowned. “What’d you find out about her?” I had really hoped that whoever was after my sister had just been trying to sound tough with the whole “I murdered my mother” line.

“She was in her early fifties, and had_._._._” He stopped a second, flipping through something on his phone. “_._._._two kids. Husband left when they were younger. She had a son named Connor and a daughter named Chelsea. She liked her ‘C’ names, apparently. Not to mention the brother had a few temporary restraining orders filed against him and a sealed jury record.”

“What for?” I asked, dreading the answer. I didn’t like the sound of this one bit. It was one thing if this guy was just a bit off, but from what Simon was saying, he was almost a dead match for Tanya’s stalker.

“Your favorite—arson.”

I sighed, pressing my head into my hands. This was just perfect. It was like the pieces of a puzzle all falling into place, all pointing to this guy, Connor.

“Tanya has a friend named Chelsea. She was talking with her right before she got that fucking text.”

“You think she might be involved in all of this?” Simon asked, taking another bite off of a drumstick.

“She just might. Or at least, she might know what the fuck is wrong with her brother. You have an address?”

“I have one for her, but not for the brother, and once I’m done with my lunch, we can—”

“Now, Simon. Not later.”

“How about letting me get a to-go box then, yikes! Impatient, much?” He picked up his plate and carried it over to the counter, grumbling all the way. I wanted to get out of here and get to this girl Chelsea’s house as soon as possible.

I left a couple of twenties on the table, more than enough to cover Simon’s enormous plate of wings and the tip while he shoveled every scrap of meat he could into a box. Something deep down told me that if we waited any longer, something bad was going to happen.

---THE FLAME---

Firemen in this town stood out like sore thumbs.

It wasn’t the uniform or the gear. It wasn’t the crappy cars they drove. It was in everything they did. Everything they were. The way they walked and talked; the ubiquity of their swagger. It was all over them like a putrid stench. They lived and breathed firefighter.

And here came one now, sauntering through the hotel doors fresh from handing the valet his keys, the ones that went to a Volvo straight out of the nineties. Dark hair, medium build. An older man, one of the rough sorts.

He was sinew and muscle. That was fine by me. Agility beat raw power every time. As long as you didn’t get hit, at least.

The hard part was ending up in the same elevator with him and not making it look intentional. Firefighters weren’t cops. They didn’t have the nose for the job. But they weren’t too far removed, either. Fruit from the same rotten tree. I couldn’t let him get suspicious. I couldn’t allow him to even get a whiff of what I had planned. I had to be something other—other than a criminal, other than an arsonist. Other than myself.

Deception. Lies. I knew all about those. So did William Blake. So did my mother.

How could she have deceived me so completely? How could she have pretended to be dead, only to rise again in the body of that stripper—that whore?

My hands were shaking as I slipped into the elevator just ahead of the fireman. It was the only elevator currently on that floor, and I sure as shit knew he wasn’t about to take the stairs all the way up to that whore’s room. I played it cool as the doors began to close, idly tapping a few buttons on my cell phone.

“Wait!” the fireman cried. “Wait! Hold the doors!”

I looked up, wide-eyed, and hit the button. The doors stopped closing and bounced back open, and the firefighter stopped running and sighed.

“Jeez. Thanks, kid.”

“Welcome,” I told him as he entered the car with me.

I hit the button for Tanya’s floor. I’d enquired at the front desk about their honeymoon suites, so I knew where it was. Maybe I didn’t have the exact room number, but I didn’t need it. Not with the fireman here.

The bitch’s stepbrother was one of them. No doubt he’d sent this man to guard her. It was a stupid move with someone like me watching. Then again, everyone I knew had always underestimated me.

“Where to?” I asked casually.

The fireman glanced at the buttons. Furtively, I eyed him. The clothes wouldn’t be a perfect fit, but they’d do.

“You got it,” he said after a moment. He let out a little laugh. “Some coincidence, huh?”

I didn’t tell him there was no such thing—that everything, absolutely everything, happened for a reason. Death, life, rebirth: it was all controlled by fate. Destiny. For some men, that meant a long life with plenty of money and love and women. For the rest of us, it meant getting justice whenever we could.

Fate played dirty, but I was used to its tricks. I knew how to game the system. And by sending this firefighter to me in my hour of need, fate had sacrificed one of its precious pawns.

I smiled at him, all teeth. “Some coincidence,” I agreed.

Chapter 16

Tanya