Page 2 of Fire Fight

Narrowly avoiding rolling my eyes, I answered.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Did you arrive?”

No, “hello, Aspen.”

No, “hi, honey, how are you?”

She cut right to the chase. That was my mother’s way.

“Just got here,” I lied smoothly. Every time I traveled somewhere new, though my parents hated my job, I had strict instructions that I let them know the moment I crossed town lines.

I tended to push the boundaries, mostly because I was thirty-three years old and didn’t need them babying me. I’m not sure Ieverneeded that.

They refused to get the memo, though Dad had loosened his reins a lot more in recent years. Still, it seemed for every inch of control he gave up, Mom picked up a mile of slack.

Frankly, it was fucking exhausting.

And they wondered why I rarely went home to Chicago.

I knew it came from a place of love and worry, but they were fucking suffocating me.

It had been that way ever since my sister died.

But I cut that thought off before it could fully bloom, unable and unwilling to go there right now. Not when I had a job to do.

My sister, Lola, had been everything I wasn’t. Bright and bubbly, never met a stranger, on her way to becoming an incredible pediatrician.

Until the fire that took her from us in an instant, and our entire world crashed down around us.

I was the only child they had left, and I understood wanting to protect me, but I wasn’t the sixteen-year-old girl who would crawl into bed with them at night because it was the only way I could stay whole when I felt like half of me had died with Lola. While they’d been dealing with their own grief, they’d still helped me navigate mine, and for that I was eternally grateful.

But that was a long time ago—over half my life had passed since then. They needed to let me live without this dark cloud of guilt and obligation hanging over me.

“You’re supposed to call when you arrive.”

This time, I did roll my eyes. “Mom, I’m literally still in my car. I haven’t even gotten to the motel yet.”

“Do you have your taser?”

“Yes.”

“Your gun?”

“Yes,” I replied, my eyes darting to the hump in the floor between the driver and passenger footwells, where my Ruger SR22 was safely stowed in its lockbox.

“And your self-defense keychain?”

“Yes,” I gritted out. My jaw ached from clenching my teeth.

She had given me the keychain as a gift a few Christmases back, and ithadcome in handy—mainly to open beer bottles that didn’t have a twist off cap. Usually, the infernal thing with all its bells and literal whistles remained in the center console of Black Betty, out of sight and out of mind.

I did keep the taser she’d bought me on my person at all times, though, more so than even my gun. I wasn’t above putting someone on their ass if they touched me in an uninvited or threatening manner. After all, I was a petite woman traveling alone. My parents worried needlessly because I wasn’t taking any chances where my safety was concerned.

“Don’t take that tone with me, Aspen,” Mom snapped.

“Sorry,” I mumbled without an ounce of feeling behind the word.