Fire Born (Firehouse 343) (32 page)

“Chris, if either one of us shoots him, we run the risk of his arm jerking and the knife breaking her s
kin,” Scott said then.

He could hear the sirens from the
engine, ladder, and rescue units as they approached. He knew his boys would perform as excellently as always, but he also know they would be too late.

“Scott, we don’t have a choice,” he told him. “They’re going to die,
either by his hand or the fire
.”

They stared at one another for a moment, hardly daring to breathe for the smoke.
Then Scott drew his weapon and clicked the safety off. “Alright,” he said quietly. “But we
gotta
move
quick
.”

“You don’t have to go in. Just kill the fucker.”

Scott said nothing, merely nodded his head toward the door. Christ stepped back in front of it, though the heat from the flames forced him to stand back against the wall. As soon as he saw him, the kidnapper jerked on Martie’s hair and she cried out. His chest became painfully tight as he noted the fire inching closer to them.

“What’re you going to do, red man? You going to stand there and watch us burn?” the man
asked in a sing-song voice. “It’s not like firefighters carry a gun, so you can’t shoot me.”

“No, but cops do, asshole,” Chris fired back, and at that Scott swung into the madman’s view, his gun raised and read
y to shoot
. The report of the weapon being fired
a split second later reverberated in the confined space of the narrow hall, and he watched
the next moments unfold as if i
n slow motion.

The kidnapper’s eyes widened and he jerked up on Martie’s hair again. The knife drew to the right across her throat as the bullet struck him in the shoulder, and the impact threw him backward. He fell hard to the ground, pulling Martie with him.

Fueled by adrenaline, Chris pushed Scott out of the way, th
en threw an arm over his face and
ran headlong through the flames across the doorway. He was protected somewhat by the bunker gear he still wore, but the open jacket left his chest exposed, and a spark hit him, lighting his t-shirt on fire. He swiped at it as he ran for Martie, who now lay motionless on top of her captor.

He reached for her and picked her up, then turned back for the door. The sight that met him there warmed his heart—Logan and Football. The two of them stepped through
the flames as though ignorant of their presence, one moving immediately to his side and the other to the second prone form on the floor. Football picked up Ronnie as Logan pushed him toward the door.

“Watch her head,” he said, and Chris nodded.

Taking as deep a breath as the smoke allowed, he choked on a cough and ran through the fire, praying that he made it to the other side without getting himself or Martie burned.

***

She was unconscious now. The doctors had given her supplemental oxygen to help her lungs recover from the smoke, and morphine for the pain she likely suffered. Chris’s blood continued to simmer with rage as he sat next to a sleeping Martie in her hospital bed, hating Graham Henderson even more with each passi
ng minute. He’d beaten Martie—h
ad hit her hard enough to not just cause bruises and swelling, but
also hairline
fracture
s in
her right cheekbone.
There were three stitches at the base of her throat where the knife had cut into her
, and two more where she’d been pistol whipped
. She would make a full recovery, but t
he doctors wanted her to sleep for at least twelve full ho
urs to help speed it
along
.

Chris wanted to climb into the bed with her. He wanted to hold her close, to
whisper in her ear that he would never let her go for as long as it took for her to wake up, to believe he meant every word.
But he also didn’t want to disturb her, and so he sat ho
lding her hand and brooding,
futilely urging time to move faster.

Larry, though still in serious
condition—and under guard in another wing of the hospital—had recovered enough to answer some of Scott’s questions. The man he answered to was his half brother, Graham Henderson—as in Deputy Director of the Montana Bureau of Fire Safety Graham Henderson.
The face he presented to the public was a devout Christian who was married with three children, wh
o didn’t smoke and drank rarely—he didn’t even like to use curse words.
But according to Larry
, the man beneath the mask was somebody altogether different, someone who could be truly terrifying.

Graham had never reall
y loved
his wife,
Theresa
,
and had only married her for her family’s money and political connections.
He sired children with her only because it was expected. But ever since her
cancer scare some years back
he’d had a string of mistresses; Ronnie was only one of hundreds.
He
had
also
apparently had political aspirations of his own. He wanted to be Governor of Montana first—had been planning to finally make a run for it next year—and then President. But when Ronnie had gotten pregnant
, he’d thought it all at risk. He feared being cut off from the cash flow his wife’s family provided, feared the public backlash a scandal like an affair and a lovechild were liable to cause. He refused to let Ronnie shame him like that, and so he had ordered her to get an abortion. Graham hadn’t counted on Ronnie having a backbone or motherly instinct—or that she was willing to simply disappear in order to raise her child.

He’d searched for
her
intermittently over the years, all the while building his public image
—making himself into the perfect man to lead the state, and eventually the country. Discovering her location at last—and living in a building owned by a man the Bureau was already investigating for insurance fraud, no less—had seemed like the answer to his prayers. It was kismet—the very words he had used, Larry said. He, the younger half-brother sired during an affair on the part of their father, had been enlisted by Graham to move to Gracechurch and get a job, to find a way to insinuate himself into Ronnie’s life so that he could learn her comings and goings. He swore that he had no idea at first that Graham was planning to kill Ronnie and Jessica, as he’d been led to believe his brother simply wanted to pay her off.

Neither man had counted on Larry developing real feelings for Ronnie. He genuinely liked her, had wished he wasn’t getting to know her under false pretenses. He’d have even liked to meet Jessica, he told Scott, because he had a fondness for children with special needs, having suffered from a speech impediment in his youth caused by damaged hearing (itself a result of constant ear infections as an infant).
When asked why he didn’t confess the truth to Ronnie or even deny Graham’s request outright, Larry’s answer had been simple.

Fear—he was deathly afraid of Graham, who could be “one hell of a scary bastard when pissed.” Larry had long suspected that his brother was not a hundred percent sane
,
but was too afraid to suggest he seek the help of a therapist for his obsessive tendencies. He merely did as he was told out of fear for his own personal safety
—

—which
includ
ed
spying on an innocent young woman who had never done harm to anyone.

Scott also asked him about who had started the original fire, but Larry could give him nothing on that. He reported that Graham claimed to have hired someone else for that task, as he didn’t trust Larry to do it.
He had no idea who the other man was or where Graham might have met him—or where he might be now—as those were details his brother had kept to himself.

Chris knew Larry had asked about Ronnie’s condition, and though in his mind the little prick didn’t deserve
to know, Scott had informed him
that Graham had hit
her
a
number of times
and stabbed her twice in the stomach. No vital organs
or blood vessels had been pierced
, thank goodness, but she
had still lost a lot of blood, and her traumatized body would take several weeks to recover. Like Marti
e, she had been given
sleep aids
so that she would rest for several hours
.
Karalyn
had brought Jessica to the hospital long enough to assure the little girl that her mother would be al
l
right, though she’d had a fight on her hands getting her to leave again. Only a solemn promise that they would come back in the morning right after breakfast had enticed the little girl out of her mother’s room.

“You must be Chris.”

He jumped, startled out of his dark reverie by the sound of a voice behind him. Chris scowled as he looked over his shoulder. His expression relaxed only a fraction as he recognized the family resemblance. The visitor and Martie had the same Roman nose.

“You must be Tony,” he said, turning back without waiting for the man’s answer.

“Indeed,”
came
the reply, and Martie’s brother stepped further into the room. “Antonio Octavian
Liotta
the Third.”

“Christopher Leland Paytah the First,” he retorted
snarkily
. “Want to exchange family histories now?”

“No. I’d rather say thank you,” Tony returned.

Chris looked up. Tony
Liotta
had moved to the other side of Martie’s bed, and on his face as he looked down at his sister
was an expression of pain that he
was fairly certain
bore a close resemblance to the one he wore each time his eyes fell upon the bruises marring her beauty.

“You saved my sister’s life,” the other man said. “For that, my family and I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

Sighing, Chris replied, “I wish it hadn’t been necessary. I wish she’d never been in harm’s way, and I’d have gladly taken her place if I could.”

Tony nodded. “I can see you mean that, which makes me feel both better and worse.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Better,” Tony said as drew the chair behind him close to the bed and sat, “because it means you care about her.”

“I love Martie,” Chris told him.

“I can see that as well
, w
hich is why I feel bad.”

Chris ran his free hand over his face. “Dude, you
gotta
stop talking in riddles. I
have no idea what the fuck you’re
going on
about.”

“La
st week, I called
Martie
at work, to see what she was up to and ask her to lunch
.
She sounded upset about something, so naturally I asked her what was wrong.
She told me that she’d had a conversation with her boss that bothered her
, and when I asked her what it was about, she said that she’d confessed to developing feelings for someone
involved in her current case
. Said his name was Chris and that he was a firefighter. Martie said that he—meaning you—wasn’t a suspect in the arson so there wasn’t a conflict of interest, but that Graham had suggested taking a closer look at you before becoming involved. That there might be skeletons in your closet she couldn’t live with. I told her that given how many times she’d had her heart broken, she should probably take her boss’s advice.”

Tony sighed then. “Considering her boss is the same
obsessed,
psycho
nutjob
that just tried to kill her, I suspect he played on the insecurity she does her damnedest to hide from the world,” he said. “My agreeing with him only made it worse. Whatever happened between you
that’s
made her miserable for the last week is probably our fault.”

Chris snorted. “Oh, so
yours
is the advice she listened to? You and the obsessed psycho
nutjob
got her so worked up that she not only ran a background check on me, but somehow managed to convince a judge to unseal my
juvie
record. We got into a fight about it because it pissed me
off,
and rightly so. So thanks, Antonio, for ruining a perfectly good relationship before it even got started.”

“You’ve got a
juvie
record?” Tony countered.

He snorted again. “Figures that’s the only thing you’d pick up on,” he said sardonically. “Look, what I did as a dumbass kid twenty
fuckin
’ years ago is nobody’s business but mine, and Martie’s if and when she chooses to listen—preferably with an open mind, and not one clouded by insecurities which are fed by brothers that are better off keeping their noses out of personal business.”