Consumed (Firefighters #1)(77)

“Did he come on to you?” Danny asked in a low voice.

“Not in the slightest.” Anne shrugged. “He just did a lot of posturing, none of which impressed me.”

Jack put his clean plate down—which made him worthy of a medal, as far as she was concerned. The lasagna had been like an MRE.

“You know, I have a case you might be interested in.” The guy sat back on the enormous white couch that was big as a river barge. “You talked about finding a lot of office equipment in those fires? Well, we served an arrest warrant on a guy with previous offenses and gun felonies, and found an entire room full of cords, chargers, and parts of monitors and computers, as if he’d been storing a Best Buy’s worth of phones and PCs there, but had had to move them quick. He was obviously a black market dealer, and here’s the thing. The warrant took us a week to serve because we had to go looking for him. The timing is interesting, is all. I mean you’re talking about office equipment in these fires—and he’s been up on so many charges over the past two years that I wonder if he didn’t burn evidence a number of times.”

Anne was unaware of having sat up straight until she nearly slipped off the slick cushion. “I want to talk to him. And see the case file.”

“You got it.” The guy took out his phone. “Come to our HQ Monday morning. I’ll show you everything, and then you can work your channels to interrogate him.”

“That’s great. Thanks, Jack.”

“My pleasure. I’ll text you tomorrow after I get it all set up.”

Danny got to his feet. “Hey, Anne, come help me with the pan out in the garage? I think we can get it out.”

“Sure. No problem.”

As she followed him into the kitchen with her plate, she felt like she was walking into a brick wall. The vibe was tense at the table, Duff and T.J. playing eyeball ping-pong, Deandra sitting with her arms crossed over her chest, Moose cracking open another beer. Deshaun was getting up with that coat of his on.

“We going back out?” Moose said with all the hope and anticipation of someone about to be called up from the DMV line.

“There’s dessert, you know,” Deandra said. “But fine. It’s not like you ate anything.”

“I’ve got to go,” Deshaun interjected. “Thanks for dinner.”

Duff stood up and T.J. was a split second behind. “We’ve got to head, too. Sorry. But we’re on shift tomorrow, which was why we weren’t drinking.”

“Aw come on, you guys can stay a little longer.” Moose looked back and forth between them. “You got to stay. It’s frickin’ eight o’clock.”

But there was no stopping the tide, and Anne was glad to be on the forefront of the evac, even if she was arguably heading deeper into their territory instead of away from it.

She and Danny were quiet as they walked back to the garage, and as she entered its cool confines, he stayed by the open bay and lit a cigarette with his Bic. The sun had long since set, and it was dark out, but the lighting from the house silhouetted him, making him seem even bigger.

As he exhaled over his shoulder, she went over to Moose’s tool zoo. Working through the tangle, she started to make piles of screwdrivers, wrenches, vises.

“You’re a huge help, you know.”

She looked over at him. “I’m glad you asked me. It feels good to be doing something with my hands. Hand.”

“Yeah.”

“Deandra is a god-awful cook.”

“Moose could stand to lose some pounds.”

“He’ll be lucky if that’s the only thing she takes off of him.” Anne shook her head. “I knew they were making a mistake at that wedding. I just didn’t expect it to get this bad this soon.”

“It’s their bed. They gotta lie in it.” He turned his cigarette around and stared at the lit tip. “Listen, I got a favor to ask you.”

“What’s that?”

“Talking about hands and all. I could use an extra set out at the farm tomorrow. I don’t have many good working days left on the property, and I could finish what I started if I had another hauler for the debris, another person on the saw.”

Anne followed his example and inspected the star-shaped tip a Phillips head. The idea of being outdoors, conquering a tangle of brush, having something with an easy start and finish was exactly what she needed. But Danny was always a complication.

“I’d really appreciate it,” he said.

She thought of her mother. Sundays were church, lunch with her girlfriends, and usually a movie and tea. Lots of people, public places, busy, busy. There was a chance that she might feel compelled to stay home to be polite, though.

“Can I bring Soot?” Anne asked abruptly.





chapter




35



To Vic Rizzo, fall Sundays were sacred, and not because he was religious. He was as lapsed a Catholic as a man could be, much to his mother’s disgust and heartbreak. No, if he was lucky enough to get the Lord’s day off of rotation, he worshipped at the altar of ESPN, prepared to do nothing but veg in front of the TV and work the remote around college and pro ball games.

Seeing no one. Talking to no one.

Just sitting on the ratty couch across from his concave screened paradise, breaking only to re-beer and re-chip.