Page 39 of Arsonist’s Match (Blaze and Badge #1)
“It’s OK.” The look in Athena’s eyes said it all. “Hey, Engine Twenty-five. Why don’t you stay and help?” she suggested. “We’re off to chase down our unsub. Campbell, drive the van. Be ready to block off a street.”
As he raced away, Flash caught Athena’s arm and attention. With a determined stare, leaving Athena no room to argue, she vowed, “I’m coming with you.”
Athena’s lip twitched. She slapped a hand on her hip and shook her head, then acquiesced. “Fine. Let’s go. Ice, Hernandez, you cover the next street to the right, and we’ll go left. Let’s find this guy.”
While Firehouse Twenty-five got to work, Flash and Athena darted down the street, looking for someone acting suspicious. To Flash’s surprise, Athena set an ambitious pace and stuck with it. That’ll teach me to underestimate a femme, she thought, heat flushing her face with pride.
More sirens sounded in the distance as her feet pounded the pavement. Eyes scanning, blood pumping. A dog barked. Flash jerked her head around, but the rottie on a chain seemed to be barking at them. Lightning cascaded through a smoky cloud overhead.
“Give me something,” Athena snapped into her com.
“Chopper’s on the way,” Paulson replied. “Extra manpower too.”
The pavement trembled up Flash’s aching legs as they ran. The fire had been her turf, but now? Where is he? Will we find him? Will he have a gun? The memory of being chased by a murderer, shooting at her, flickered across her mind. This time, we’re doing the chasing.
“We stopped a jogger, but he wasn’t our guy,” Ice said. “We’re going to check out Emancipation Park.”
“Roger that. Howard?”
“Scoured some vacant lots, behind the old mission, and are heading over to the Project Row Houses now.” He sounded winded.
“What if he’s ins ide a house?” Flash ventured and was met by a scalding stare. Images of a crazed killer with a gun crossed her mind again. He could be inside, gun aimed from a window, ready to finish what he started.
“If we turn up empty, we’ll have dozens of officers knocking on doors for the rest of the day,” Athena answered, solid as a rock.
A glance at the thickening clouds suggested otherwise.
The cool breeze rushing down the street refreshed and warned Ivanna was close.
They pressed forward, alert, aware of every movement.
A woman was walking her dog like normal.
A group of kids shot hoops in a driveway, blissfully unaware.
An old dude watering his lawn … what? Didn’t he get the memo about Hurricane Ivanna?
No sign of a shady-looking character fleeing justice.
“I’ll check the corner store,” Athena said, starting to pant now. “You take the laundromat.”
With a crisp nod, Flash veered into the stuffy laundry facility, slowed to a walk, and glanced around. Washers churned. Dryers spun, shooting hot air into a place straight out of the fifties—before air conditioning. She wiped away the sweat blurring her eyes and blinked. Nothing suspicious here.
Athena rushed up to her when she reentered the street. “We got a tip. Suspicious man, mid-twenties, talking to himself, seen crossing Winbern. He must have doubled back.”
“It’s only a couple of blocks.” Changing directions, Flash sprinted alongside Athena.
In heavy turnout clothes and bullet-proof tactical gear, neither was dressed for the sweltering humidity.
Flash almost couldn’t wait for the storm to arrive.
She promised herself she’d take time to appreciate this athletic side of Athena, pumping her legs in boots and dripping with sweat, when the chase was over and the arsonist in custody.
Helicopter blades whirred overhead. A squad car sped down the street. Flash and Athena took a sharp right.
“About a block ahead of you,” Paulson relayed. “Suspect ducked into an alley.”
Churches, a few businesses, and rows of houses. Then the alley gaped ahead, just across the street.
“It may or may not be him,” Athena cautioned as they slowed their pace, both breathing heavily by then. “And he could be armed. I’m going first.” She turned on her body cam and drew her sidearm. With her pistol barrel pointing the way, she stepped into the alley—Flash, her ever-ready shadow.
The rancid stench of an overflowing dumpster stung her nose. Overgrown trees, shrubs, homeless tents, and boxes cluttered the space. Broken glass crunched under their boots. And there he was, dousing the area around himself with BBQ lighter fluid, the distinctive odor unmistakable.
“Stop! FBI!” Athena ordered, her aim trained on an average-looking man whom Flash didn’t recognize.
Not the De León fellow.
“Don’t come any closer!” he yelled, lifting a metal lighter in his other hand. Then he squirted the accelerant on himself.
“Don’t do it, Simon.” Command, laced with compassion, rang in Athena’s appeal. Her stance was rock steady, her aim sure, and Flash knew how much her girlfriend—her partner—didn’t want to pull the trigger.
“Why not? You caught me. You win and I lose. Loser’s got to pay up.”
“Not like this,” Athena answered. “Simon, I don’t believe you meant to kill anyone in the fires you set. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Fear rolled off Simon in waves as he flung the lighter fluid bottle. It bounced and rolled to a destitute man lying under his makeshift shade.
“What the fuck, man?” the bony fellow with a scraggly beard yelled.
“What the fuckin’ fuck? I don’t wanna die!
” Leaving his tattered sleeping bag behind, he jumped up and stumbled off.
A few others still lay sleeping under a tarp or in oversized boxes.
Drug paraphernalia littered the narrow alley.
The rusted shell of a Volkswagen Bug. Dry branches and leaves—a feast waiting for fire to devour like Thanksgiving dinner.
Agents Ice and Hernandez appeared beside them, gasping for air, guns trained on Simon.
“Mr. Neel, don’t do anything foolish,” Travis advised.
“Me, foolish? I’m the victim here,” he ranted. A nervous laugh escaped his twisted lips. “You can’t help. Nobody can—except maybe my friend fire. ”
“I’ve read your history, Simon,” Athena said.
“I know your stepdad abused you, that you had a rough beginning. And the accident that burned down your home. They should never have left a little boy home to go through such a trauma alone. Then the fire academy? They should’ve given you another chance.
If someone had mentored you, taken you under their wing, everything would have been different. ”
“Hell, yeah!” He stomped, eyes wild. “They should’ve never kicked me out. And the one man who tried to help?” He lifted his palms toward the darkening sky. “Where’s he now, huh? Liars. Thieves. Traitors. Can you hear it calling, the fire that cries to be born? It alone speaks truth.”
“Come on, man,” Hernandez interjected. “Let us help you.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Flash spotted Agent Howard shimmying along the roofline behind Neel.
“That bitch dumped me by text, and then the same day, stupid ass work fired me for no good reason. Too much. I snapped,” Simon lamented. His lighter hand quivered. He flicked it, flame blazing to life. “See? See how beautiful and pure it is?”
“No, Simon,” Athena instructed like a mother would a child. “Close that back up so you don’t hurt yourself.”
“Huh?” His visage morphed into confusion. “I’m not gonna hurt myself.” Euphoria replaced hesitation. “I’ll free myself!” he proclaimed with glee.
Three addicts curled up under their shelters were oblivious to the danger. A pair of robins took to the air, leaving a withered crepe myrtle behind. The sky continued to blacken, echoing the storm rising in Simon’s mind.
“You won’t take me to prison,” he roared in newfound fury. His hand swung in an arc, a gust shimmying the flame. Flash slowly edged away from the agents, gradually picking a path toward the abandoned sleeping bag while Athena kept his attention on her.
“We can get professional help for you,” she promised. “You should have had help from a doctor years ago, only nobody took you.”
“You don’t care about me,” he blasted back. “And you don’t know. Fire is my friend.” A deranged smile filled his face. “It won’t hurt me. I can be one with the flames. Caressed, lo ved, joined. I want to know, to feel … to be the flame. It’ll be glorious!”
“No!” Athena screamed. Simon pressed the lighter to his soaked shirt, making his twisted wish come true.
His wail of horrific ecstasy was excruciating but short-lived. Flash acted on instinct. Diving for the sleeping bag, she threw it over Simon’s burning clothes and dropped on top of him.
For an instant, Athena’s soundless world moved in slow motion as Flash covered the ravenous flames with her body.
She couldn’t lose her, and surely not for a pyromaniac arsonist. The shop blast had been intense, gut-wrenching, but this—this was Flash rushing into danger on purpose.
She was always doing that—and always would.
Athena would have to accept it for their relationship to move forward.
But she had no room to complain, considering she frequently put herself in the line of fire. It was just a hard pill to swallow.
Then she remembered—Flash’s gear, her training. She exhaled. Flash had it under control, smothering the last embers. Although it seemed ages, it only took seconds from the instant Neel lit himself up to the moment Flash suppressed the flames. She was OK. Everything would be OK.
Athena rushed to them, crouching on the pitted concrete beside them, Ice and Hernandez right behind.
The strong, sickeningly sweet smell of burning flesh assaulted her nose as Neel’s screams battered her ears.
The scene was pitiful enough to tug on her heartstrings.
All she had to do was recall the three people who had burned to death in his fires to stiffen her resolve.
“No!” Simon cried, thrashing under the force of Flash’s hold. “What have you done? This isn’t how it was supposed to end? Betrayed! I was betrayed!”
Once the fire was completely out and Flash had control of the lighter, she stepped out of the way.
Agents Ice and Hernandez hoisted Neel to his feet, followed by Athena reading him his rights.
Part of her wanted to chastise him, to say she was glad he got a taste of his own medicine and hoped his scars would be a constant reminder of his crimes.
The other part recognized the mental illness behind the destruction.
“Simon, you’ll ge t help with your emotional and mental health needs in prison, and, if you cooperate, we can make a deal that keeps you off death row.
Even if unintentional, whenever someone dies in the commission of a felony, it’s treated as murder—not to mention the attempted murder of three FBI agents and a firefighter. ”
“Why?” he whimpered, face slick with sweat and lighter fluid. He had suffered some burns and must be in pain, but it was mild compared to what it could have been. He shifted a confused expression to Flash. “Why’d she do that? I was ready to die. Why’d she have to go and save me?”
Athena secured his hands behind his back with restraints, the distinctive blare of an ambulance drawing near. “Because that’s what Firefighter Cash does. She saves people.”