Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel) (14 page)

"Yes
, but—" Boone began.

"No
buts. You defied my direct order to stay away from that house."

"Just
a minute." Boone swept past Abner. "Do you really know everything? Did you know that we found a dead woman's body?"

"No
matter what y'all found, you still broke protocol."

"If
you really heard what happened, then you know that I was right about hearing distress calls. And I was right about Eugene Loach and those two other morons ignoring them. Instead of lecturing me, you should be telling me that the Bragg County sheriff has launched an investigation into their misconduct."

"
One of the first thing's you've got to learn in this business," Lamar said, "is don't rock the boat."

"I'm not following you."

"Those are dangerous charges to make about a firefighter."

"
The truth shall set you free, Captain."

"Not in Bragg County North Carolina
." Lamar said then fell silent.

He
and Mom traded a nod, and she slipped past him. She waved for Abner to follow. After a goodbye to Boone, he did. They both walked the path back to the house, several yards apart.

"Aren't
you going to say anything?" Boone said when he got tired of waiting. He threw his hands into the air and spun in a circle, as if he was trying to whirl his frustrations away. "This whole Clint Eastwood tough guy act is really starting to grind my nerves."

“There’s things you see that you’re not meant to see. If you let them, they turn into ghosts, and they haunt you every minute of every day. That’s the first hard lesson about fire. When you walk away from the job, you walk away from
the memories, too. You go on with your life like nothing happened, because it’s the only way you’re ever going to be able to keep doing the job. You ain’t learned that yet. This fire’s stuck in your craw, and until you get it out or learn to swallow, there ain’t nobody who’s going to trust you.”

“
I’m used to people not liking the way I do things,” Boone said. “I can live with that.”

"
Well, I can’t. You're dismissed from the Frisco Volunteer Fire Department," Lamar said flatly. His face was half hidden in shadow, and Boone was unable to read his expression. "That's all I've got to say."

He walked out, leaving Boone alone with his thoughts
, which had barely settled before there was a knock on the doorframe.

“Spare me, Mom
,” Boone said. “I’ve had enough lectures for one day.”

Cedar came inside, holding a
shopping bag. “Then I’ll skip the discussion on Newtonian physics. How about a snack instead?” She looked around at the samples on the shelves. “That’s your final project for bio class? Awesome. Disgusting, but awesome.”

“Hey.” He crossed over to her as she set the bag on a
workbench. “Sorry, I thought you were—“

“An over-reaching parent who doesn’t know how to land the helicopter?”
Cedar said. “Yeah, I’ve got two of those myself. Just one of the reasons I'm looking forward to transferring to State next fall.” She took out two containers. “Hope you like sweet and sour.”

“I like sweet.”

Boone took her free hand and turned her until they were facing. He ran a thumb along her cheek and leaned in for a kiss. As their lips met, he tasted her lip balm and caught a whisper of citrus from the soap she’d used in the shower. Wearing no make-up, dressed in only an untucked button-down and jeans, Cedar could make fresh-scrubbed the sexiest look on the Outer Banks.

“
That was pretty sweet,” Cedar said, catching her breath. She put her head on his shoulder and traced a hand over his rock-hard stomach. Those years of PT were finally paying off.

He laughed, running his fingers
through her shining hair. “I save the sour for other people.”

“So I noticed.” She looked up at him. “What’s been going on? Your folks looked really tense when I said hello.”

“It all started when Abner decided to take a little detour on the way home,” he began, then told her the whole story of finding the body in the ashes, Hoyt’s reaction, and Lamar’s dumping him off the fire squad.

“That sucks.” Cedar gave him a big hug, which made him grunt with pain, though he wouldn’t admit it. “If it weren’t for you, the body would still be there. Can't they see that?”

“They have a blind spot when it comes to me. They think I’m still a kid.”

“Well,
you’re not,” she said and picked up the food. “You’re grown man who’s about to enjoy a movie with a nerdy young woman. Where should we sit?”

Boone motioned to a bench near the horse stalls. “That will work.
But there’s no TV out here.”

“Check out my backpack.” She carried their meal to the bench. “There’s a laptop and a couple of DVDs inside.”

“Damn, girl. You think of everything.”

“Not everything,” she said smiling. “But pretty close.”

They spent the rest of the day eating Chinese and watching one movie after another, sitting on the bench at first, then snuggled under a blanket in a pile of clean straw.

It was well after dark when they finally finished the last film. The stars were out when Boone walked Cedar back to her car, and the moon was a huge ball of light on the horizon, bright enough to cast shadows on the
fields.

“Thanks,” Cedar said after he put her on the hood of car and softly kissed her goodnight. She still smelled like oranges, while he was sure he
stank like old boots and hay.

He took her hands in his to warm them. “Thanks for what?”

“For not pushing me.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Just the two of us under a blanket? Nobody watching? Making out during the slow scenes like something from a romantic comedy? It would’ve been really easy for you to ask for more. And you didn’t.”

He ran a ha
nd through his short-cropped hair. “If we’re being truthful, it’s not like I didn’t want to.”

“I know.” She kissed him on the cheek and slid off the hood. “That’s
why it was special that you didn’t.”

He opened the door for her and closed it when she was behind the wheel. She started the engine and hit the headlights
.

“I hate to go,” she said.

He leaned down as she lowered the window. “I hate for you to.”

“Better get some rest. We’ve got that last bio lab tomorrow, and you don’t want to oversleep.”

“I have a feeling,” he said and smiled, “that I’m going to rest pretty well tonight.”

“On second thought, I’ll be here a 7AM to pick you up. Don’t make me drag you out of bed.”

“You could never drag me out of bed,” he said and flashed a grin. “Or push me.”

She blushed a little and put the car in gear. “Step back, before I run over your foot.”

As she pulled out, he did as ordered. When the lights were out of sight, he turned toward the house, where Mom was standing on the porch. As they made eye contact, she looked away and went back inside.

Give it up, Mom, Boone thought. Your little boy doesn't need
a chaperone anymore.

The next morning in bio lab,
Luigi was training his eyes to see molecules. Or so Boone surmised because why else would he squint at the computer screen in biology class, instead of just putting on glasses?

"What
happened to your specs?" Boone asked him while stretching to work out the intense soreness in his ribs. They were working on the data analysis for the rat lab.

‘Specs?”

“Eyeglasses.”

"They
are broken."

"How
did that happen?"

"Something
broke them."

That
something, Dewayne Loach, was sitting in his usual spot on the opposite side of the classroom.

Boone
knew what Luigi was driving at. He had decided the attack was in the past. He would no longer speak of it, even when his best friend in America tried to lead him into it. It went against Boone's values, but he decided not to harangue Luigi. That didn't mean he had to like it.

"You
have a backup pair, right?” Boone asked. “Your mother would never let you travel six thousand miles with only one pair of glasses."

"
Hai, hai
," he said, leaning into the screen, and sucking in air. Obviously, Boone wasn’t the only one that was sore.

"Where
are they then?"

"I
prefer not to wear them."

"Why?"

"I believe the term for them is
Coke bottles
. How will I win Gretchen Nunzi's heart if I look like a gobber?"

"You mean goober."

"That, too."

"Move
over then," Boone said as he pushed Luigi out of the chair and took the seat himself. "I'm taking the writing comm, captain. I'm not such a great writer, but I'm faster than a half-blind Japanese guy typing in his second language."

"Third
language."

"I
didn't know that," Boone said. Luigi had better grammar than most of the kids at Coastal. "What's your second language?"

"Australian."

"Very funny." Boone said. "Australians speak English. I’ve been to Sydney.”

Luigi
laughed. "Got you. No, Spanish is my second language. It is very unusual in Japan. English. Mandarin, and Russian, these are common languages in our schools."

"Why
take Spanish, then?"

"
Because it is so uncommon. Good jobs are very difficult to get. I want to work in international business. A Japanese man who can speak English and Spanish can do well in the Western Hemisphere, no?"

"
Hang on to that thought while I clean up these data tables. Did Cedar do this? She calculated to wrong decimal point."

"I will tell her."

"Stow that," Boone said. "Never tell Cedar her math is wrong. Unless you want punched."

Luigi
didn't answer. He had drifted away to talk to Dr. K. He said something about needing some advice for his research project, and she whisked him over to a desk.

"Hi,"
came two voices in tandem behind him.

Boone
saw the girls' faces reflected in the computer monitor. Although Boone knew their names, he doubted they knew his.

"I'll
be finished with the machine in about ten minutes," he told them without turning around.

They
laughed. He watched in the reflection as they rolled their eyes.

"No,
silly, we wanted to talk to you. You're the guy that like found the dead woman, right? That was totally cool."

Slowly,
Boone spun around in the chair. They both had blue eyes and wore mascara on the top and bottom sets of lashes.

"I'm
Britney."

"I'm
Heather."

"I'm
Boone”

"We
know," Heather said and giggled. “The whole town’s talking about how you found that dead woman. Are you like a fireman or something?"

"I'm
a firefighter."

"Cool."
Britney twirled a sprig of blonde hair around her finger. "Everybody says the body was like a really big roasted marshmallow."

She
waited for his answer. It was fine that everybody knew about it and that they thought he was a hero because who didn’t wanted to be known as heroic? But he also wanted them to know the truth. He was also starting to see Mom's point about treating the dead with dignity.

"No,
it wasn't like that all. Human remains don't just melt like a marshmallow."

"Cool,"
Heather said. “Anybody tell you that you’re totally hot?

“Only when I’m putting out fires.”

"Huh?" Britney said.

"But you make
fireman stuff totally like interesting and stuff." Heather pulled up a chair and wiggled close to him. "What else can you teach us?"

"Were you really in the hospital?
” Britney said. “Some kids said you almost died from breathing smoke."

“Smoke kill somebody like me?” Boone said. “Not likely.”

“Maybe smoke can’t,” Cedar said from behind him. “But I can think of a few other things that could.”

Boone turned around to find
Cedar right behind him. Her arms were crossed, and she was giving the girls a sizzling look hot enough to fry bacon.

“Hey,” Boone said.

“Hey you damn self,” Cedar said. “Heather, Britney, don’t you have somebody else to do?”

“Huh?
” Britney said as her friend grabbed her by the arm.

“Come on, Brit,” Heather said, “
looks like some other cat’s got her claws out.”

Boone watched them go for a second, then
turned back to Cedar. “Hey. Didn’t know you were here. Lucky for me you came along when you did.”

“Lucky?” She folded her arms across her breasts and narrowed her eyes. Her mouth was a straight, flat line of fury. “Is that the word for it?”

“You don’t think I’d go for that?” He pointed at the two other girls. “I’m not interested in their kind of lucky.”

"Yeah
, you’re lucky,” Dewayne Loach cut in as he walked over to them. “Lucky my brother pulled your ass out of a burning building. But did you bother to thank him? No, all you do is act like you're the big hero and treat him like he's a piece of crap."

"He
didn't rescue me," Boone said. "He was too big of a coward to help with the rescue."

"What
rescue?" Dewayne said. "She's dead, ain't she? You call that a rescue?"

"
Know what I call it?" Boone said, rising out of the computer chair. "At the very least, I call it an act of cowardice by your brother and his friends. At the worst, I call it murder."

Murder.
The word murmured through the class.

The
sound caught Dr. K's attention. She lifted her head from the catalog she was showing Luigi. "Back to work, people. Those lab reports aren’t going to write themselves."

But
Dewayne wasn't listening. He bumped his chest into Boone's ribs, sending pain arcing through them. "Careful what you say. It might come back to bite you in the ass."

"Are
you threatening me? Because the thought of your teeth near my ass is very scary."

"I'm
promising you, Childress. You want to risk your life for some old Mexican, go ahead on. But don't be stupid enough to get on my brother's bad side."

The
bell to end class punctuated Dewayne's threat. The students who had gathered around dashed for their books and made for the exit. Out in the hall their voices rose to high pitch, signaling Boone that they were already gossiping about what they had just seen.

Dewayne
was one of the first out the door, giving Boone the finger as he left.

“What was that about?” Cedar said.

“Unfinished business.” The pager clipped to Boone's belt went off. “Hang on a sec.”

He
read the brief message from dispatch. There was a fire on the other side of the county near Black Oak Shelter, a United States government-owned stretch of swampland and scrub pines that had been used for munitions testing during the second World War, Korea, and Vietnam. President Clinton had closed it during the 1990's, and it sat empty, overgrowing each summer and waiting for the next lightning strike or stray cigarette to start a fire. This time of year, brush fires happened all of the time. It would have been Boone's first, if Lamar hadn’t suspended him. He turned off the pager and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans.

Boone
stood as if he were paralyzed. To the naked eye, he was staring off into space, even as Luigi gathered both their backpacks and brought his over. But his mind wasn't on space. He was replaying what Dewayne had just said:
Risk your life for some old Mexican
. On the radio this morning, Sheriff Hoyt had told the reports that he had not determined the identity of the woman from the fire. But Dewayne already knew she was a Latina, which he translated to mean Mexican.

Boone
nodded to himself. His worst suspicions were true. Eugene Loach had known she was in the house. The question now was what was the next step? He would have to tell Sheriff Hoyt about Dewayne's slip of the tongue. Abner, too. But he wasn't sure about telling Lamar, whose mind was like a steel trap. Once it was closed, it was almost impossible to get it open without losing a body part.

“
Don’t blow me off, Boone. What the hell was that all about?” Cedar said as she grabbed him by the arm.

Though Boone hated the cliché of “you’re beautiful when you’re angry,” in Cedar’s case, it was true. Her face with flushed scarlet, and her shoulders were tensed hard. She lifted her chin while her eyes cut him like a laser
shaping a diamond.

“Dewayne’s full of shit,” he said. “You know he’s just running his mouth.”

“That’s not the
that
I meant.” She pointed at Brit and Heather walking down the hallway, stealing looks back at him. “That’s the
that
I meant!”

“Oh,” he said. “That.”

“Yes, them!”

“Is it them or that?”

She stepped toward him, seething. “Them, damn it! The hootchies!”

“That them,” he said and wrapped an arm around her because hell, she was so close he might as well, and drew her
tight, “mean nothing to me.”

She punched him in the chest and broke out of his
grasp. “Then why were you flirting with them, jerk face?”

“There are too many meds in my system for me to care about
hootchies, and besides, they were flirting with me.”

“Same thing!”

“Not really.”

“Listen, Boone Childress,” she said, sticking a finger under his nose. “When you’re dating me, you’re dating just me, not flirting with a couple of
hootchies. Got that?”

“Who says we’re dating?” He was playing with her, but he really didn’t know if they were officially dating. One hot kiss on the beach didn’t always lead to
a relationship. Neither did cuddling under a blanket.

“You did,” Cedar said, “when you kissed me on the beach.”

“Technically,” he said quietly, “I kissed you on the lips.”

“Don’t try to charm me
with semantics, mister,” she said, but the tone in her voice let him know that she was losing her edge. “And no flashing those cute dimples. I’m immune to it.”

“That’s good,” he said and smiled. “I’d
hate to think that I’d coerced you into not being mad at me, since I believe that males and females should be equal in any relationship, and in the future, I’ll make sure to ask your permission before—“

“Just shut up,” she said and threw her arms around his neck, “and kiss me
again.”

Hands on her hips, he lifted her until she stood on tiptoes, then leaned in, his lips brushing hers lightly. He parted her lips with the tip of his t
ongue and felt her body tremble as he tasted her mouth, warm and wet and hungry.

The kiss was as short as it was sweet. Reluctantly, he broke away. When he opened his eyes, Cedar was staring up at him
.

“I’m still mad at you,” she said, smiling.

“Let me make it up to you.”

“What have you got in mind?” she said, still smiling.

Pulling that dress off and kissing every inch of that body, he thought as he felt a jolt of raw energy shot through his spine. But before he could process that thought into words that didn’t sound so honest and dirty, someone slapped him on the back, which sent an electric jolt of pain through his ribs.

“Hey, Cedar!” Luigi said. “Are you ready to go?”