Flashpoint

Chapter 17

Brooke ran back to the rig. Hopping into the driver’s seat, she pulled out her cell phone.

“No talking on the phone while you’re driving,” Isobel said.

“I’m not driving yet.” She punched in Zach’s cell phone number.

“We have a call. Eighth and Beach.”

“I know, but this is an emergency, too.” She got Zach’s voice mail. Damn it. “Zach,” she said, very aware of Isobel listening to every word. “I need to talk to you. ASAP.” She shut the phone and tried to order her racing thoughts. “We need to get someone else to take this call. Blake-”

“There is no one else. We need to go, now.”

“Fine.” She handed her cell over to Isobel. “Call the station, have someone come to get Blake. Then call Tommy Ramirez. Tell him-” What? What the hell could she say? All she had were suspicions. “Tell him I need to talk to him. That it’s urgent. Ask him to meet us at the hospital after we pick up our vic.”

But Tommy didn’t meet her. So after Brooke and Isobel had turned their patient over to the E.R., she tried the chief, and shock of all shocks, got him.

“This better be important, O’Brien,” he said in his sharply authoritative voice. “I’m in a meeting.”

“It’s about Blake.”

The chief was silent for a single, long beat. “What about him?”

Brooke moved away from Isobel so that she could speak frankly. “He was at the scene of the Third Street fire today, and he didn’t look right. And…” Oh, God, how to say this? “And I think he was trying to confess to arson.”

“You think? What the hell does that mean? And what arson?”

“He wasn’t coherent. He-” She frowned at the static in her ear. “Sir? Hello, Chief?” She’d lost him. “Shit.”

“You’re not supposed to swear while in uniform,” Isobel said.

Brooke contained the urge to wrap her fingers around Isobel’s neck and drove them back to the station.

The chief was there, waiting for her. “Blake isn’t at the hospital or at the fire.”

“What’s going on?” Cristina stood in the doorway, looking unnerved. “What’s the matter with Blake? Eddie went to go get him but he couldn’t find him.”

“He’s missing,” the chief said. “And he’s not answering his cell.”

“He was at the Third Street fire,” Brooke told Cristina. “He was walking with a crutch, definitely disoriented-oh my God.”

The chief turned on her. “What?”

“What if he went into the fire?”

“Why would he do that?” Panic raised Cristina’s voice. “He wasn’t suited up, he wasn’t working-”

“But he wasn’t himself,” Brooke said slowly, reviewing their conversation. “He was rambling, not making much sense, and just staring at the flames.”

“Rambling about what?” Cristina cried.

“He kept saying sorry about the fires, like he was trying to confess.”

Cristina gasped and covered her mouth. “He didn’t-he wouldn’t-”

“He didn’t look good, and then we got a call. He’d vanished.”

The chief headed for his truck with long strides while Cristina dragged Brooke inside, where she sank to the couch in the living room.

“That building is gone,” Brooke said. “Completely gone. I should have stopped him. I should have-”

“You couldn’t have stopped him,” Sam said, coming in behind them. “And he’s not that stupid.”

Cristina let out a low sound of grief.

“Look, he hasn’t been the same since Lynn died,” Sam told her. “We’ve all tried to talk to him about it, but you know how he is. He’s Eeyore. He’s stubborn. But not stupid,” he repeated. “No way did he go into that fire.”

“He was hurting,” Cristina whispered. “He lost his partner.”

“And he’s dealing with it.” Dustin said this very gently, coming in from the kitchen. “You can’t do it for him.”

Covering her face, she sank to the couch next to Brooke. “This. This is why I like to alienate people. Goddamn it, you made me forget to alienate him and now I care!”

“Cristina.” When she didn’t answer, Dustin crouched at her side. “Cristina.”

“Caring sucks,” she whispered through her fingers.

He pulled them from her face. “Not always.”

She just stared at him.

“Not always,” he repeated softly. “What I feel for you doesn’t suck. And what I’m hoping you feel for me doesn’t suck.”

“Damn it.” She closed her eyes. “It doesn’t. It only scares the living hell out of me. You should brace yourself now.” She opened her eyes. “Because I’m maybe falling in love, too. And it’s all your fault.”

Dustin looked staggered as he drew a shaky breath.

“Don’t you have anything to say?”

“Thank you?”

She stared at him, then with a shocked laugh at having her own words tossed back at her, she lunged up and hugged him tight.

Desperate to take her mind off Blake, Brooke tried to be happy for her partner. Putting himself out there had paid off for Dustin, in a big way. It was right then that she realized she hadn’t put herself out there for Zach at all. Instead, she’d done the opposite, hiding behind her six-week time limit. She’d even said goodbye already.

“You okay?”

She opened her eyes to Aidan. Was she okay? She was leaving a job she loved in less than a week. Her grandmother’s house was all but sold in spite of the fact that beneath all the clutter, she’d discovered a gorgeous, well-tended home that seemed to say Don’t sell me every time she walked in the door.

The truth was, this decision to move yet again wasn’t being dictated by family or school or anything but her own fear.

Funny, really.

And damned ironic.

All her life she’d been racing from one spot to another, and now she was free to do as she chose, go anywhere she wanted, and…and all she wanted was to stay.

With Zach.

“Brooke?”

She looked at Aidan. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“Even if that was true, if you’re fine, how’s Zach?”

“When I left there, he was in a little pain but-”

“Not what I meant.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “He was…good.”

“He’s the master at good. Look, I love the guy, but-”

“I’m sure you two will be very happy together.”

“You’re funny.” He shook his head. “Look, neither Zach nor I have ever really needed a woman in our life.”

“I know. I get it.”

“No, see that’s the thing. Zach looks at you differently. He has from the beginning. If you leave, it’ll be like losing his parents all over again. Or his brother.”

“He lost his brother?”

“Caleb moved to L.A. the day Zach turned eighteen, pretty much deserting him. Can’t blame the guy. He hadn’t signed on to be a parent, but still, it was rough on Zach. He’s not good with opening up. He’s afraid.”

She tried to picture the big, laid-back, easygoing Zach Thomas afraid of anything. After all, the man faced danger every single day on the job without so much as a flinch.

But that wasn’t the same.

In a way, work was much easier because it was pure testosterone and adrenaline. Putting himself on the line probably made Zach feel better about his losses, almost as if he were offering himself up to fate, as well. And as a bonus, he never had to open up emotionally, except with these guys, the brothers of his heart.

She got that; she’d done the same with her chosen career.

But Cristina and Dustin had managed to find something real, and Brooke wanted that. It was time, past time, to get it for herself, because if she’d learned anything today, it was that life was too damn short not to go for it. She stood up.

“What are you going to do?”

“It’s…complicated.”

“The best things are.” Aidan hugged her. “I hope it’s good complicated.”

“I hope so, too.”

“I tried calling you, Zachie.”

Zach sat at the side of Phyllis’s hospital bed. “I’m sorry. I can’t find my cell phone. I think I lost it in the warehouse fire.”

“Don’t worry.” Her voice sounded shaky. “You asked me not to demolish the house if someone asks, and I won’t. I was just telling Blake the same thing.”

“Blake came here to see you?”

“Yes. He wanted to talk about my house fire.”

“Why?”

Phyllis had a razor-sharp memory, but she’d been too doped up on meds for anyone to take advantage of that. Until now, apparently. “Because he was there. Yes,” she said at his surprise. “It finally came to me. It was Blake I saw standing on the perimeter of my property, holding a blowtorch.”

The air deflated from Zach’s lungs. Blake at the scene just before the fire, with an ignition device…“Phyllis, are you sure?”

“Well, when I brought it up, he said no, my memory was all twisted from the trauma, but…” She shook her head. “But I don’t believe it. I remember.”

Blake was the missing link? Blake connected all the fires?

Blake was the arsonist? It made no sense, and yet…and yet in a crazy way it made perfect sense-Blake’s ongoing obsession with fire, any fire, and his need to be near it, even the bonfire from the chief’s birthday party. “Phyllis, listen to me. I need you to trust me, okay? I have to go but I’ll be back.”

“Will you bring Cecile?”

“I’ll bring you more pictures of her, I promise.”

When he got to the parking lot and into his truck, he remembered-no cell phone. Running back inside the hospital, he went straight to a pay phone and called Tommy.

Tommy listened to every word and then said, “Go home. You hear me? Get home and keep your ass right there or I’ll get it fired.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Trust me, I’ll find a way.”

Frustration beat at Zach as he drove home, feeling useless and helpless-two emotions he couldn’t resent more. God, Blake…Could it be true?

And yet the evidence was there, at least circumstantially. The blowtorch at Phyllis’s was huge. And he’d been quiet and withdrawn and secretive for months, pushing all of them from his life.

Zach had to go see him, had to look into Blake’s eyes and judge for himself.

But Blake wasn’t home, so Zach went back to his place and paced a groove into his living room floor, which did nothing for his adrenaline level.

At the knock on his door, he opened it to the one person he’d have given everything to see.

Brooke, still wearing her uniform, eyes shadowed, mouth grim, looking like the best thing he’d seen all damn day.

“Damn, are you a sight for sore eyes,” he said.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” she said. “I forgot to clock out at work.”

“Good. Because I’m not here, either. I’m on my way to find Blake’s ass and probably get mine fired.”

“You know where he is?”

“No.”

They both stood there and stared at each other, unsure what to say next.

“I’m really not here,” she finally said again, “telling you that I take back my goodbye.”

“Then I’m not really doing this.” Hauling her to him, he covered her mouth with his.

She sighed in pleasure and sagged against him, fisting her hands in his shirt to keep him close.

As if that was necessary.

“Zach,” she murmured. “We need to talk.”

“Yeah.”

But then she nipped at his lower lip, making him groan. He stroked his tongue to hers, his hands running down her body, filling them with her glorious curves. “We’ll talk,” he promised her. “In a minute. Maybe ten.” He needed to lose himself in her before he faced the unthinkable-that one of their own was an arsonist.

Not going there, not yet. He kicked the door shut, tugging her upstairs to his bedroom.

She stared at his bed. “First I really need to tell you what I came for-”

“You haven’t come yet.” He nudged her onto the bed and followed her down. “But you’re going to.”