Page 18

Eighteen

Jackson

Stephanie looks pale in the harsh light of the ambulance.

She also looks pissed, mainly at me since I insisted she get checked out before me.

After I made sure she and Ash were safe outside, I was able to grab a few random things I wrapped in a bedsheet. Some clothes, stuff off the bedside table which included Stephanie’s phone, and a couple of things I’d manage to snag from the top of the dresser. Not enough, not nearly enough, but it was all I could get before the heat got too much. I was lucky, I almost tripped over my prosthesis hopping back to the window and was able to rescue it too, but unfortunately the heat already got to parts of it and it’s going to need some repairs.

After the roof collapsed, I knew any efforts to go back in another way to try and salvage anything else would be moot.

Stephanie ended up calling 911, but I knew they’d be at least ten minutes if not more. While waiting for emergency services to get here, we got dressed in the few things I was able to grab off the floor. We’re both barefoot and dressed haphazardly at best, but at least the important parts are covered.

“Minor smoke inhalation. Rest, avoid irritants, and if your throat feels raw, you can take some cough medication,” the EMT tells her before adding, “If anything changes, get checked out in the emergency room.”

The woman turns to me. “Now, let me see what you’ve got going on.”

As it turns out, I get off with a few second degree burns, which are treated on the spot at my insistence. For smoke inhalation I receive the same instructions Stephanie got.

I climb out of the ambulance just as Jonas pulls up, the pale face of my mother visible through the windshield as she leans forward in the passenger seat.

“Jackson!”

The moment the SUV stops, she’s out and running for me. I’m not too stable on one leg, but manage to brace myself against the side of the ambulance when she hits me full force, her arms banding around me.

“Jesus, kid. Scared the living crap out of your mother,” Jonas mutters when he walks up, carrying my spare prosthesis.

From the slight waver in his voice, it sounds like Ma wasn’t the only one affected.

“Shit, Alex,” he grumbles. “Let the man put his leg on before you take him to the ground.”

Ma reluctantly lets go as I’m handed my leg, and Jonas tucks my mother under his arm.

“How is Stephanie?” she asks.

I look around to see where she went. She went with the sheriff’s deputy to answer some questions when I was being looked at in the ambulance. That was fifteen or so minutes ago.

“Junior!” I yell out when I catch sight of the sheriff, who must’ve just gotten here as well. “Have you seen Stephanie? She was with Dale earlier.”

“She’s not with him now. Dale is back there.” He cocks his thumb over his shoulder at the water truck, where I can see the deputy talking with some of the fire crew.

Stephanie is nowhere in sight, and suddenly the same sense of panic I felt when I first woke up, disoriented as smoke filled the room, making it difficult to see where I was, is back.

“I’ll go see where she went,” Jonas offers, reaching out to give my shoulder a squeeze before he takes off.

“She’s not wearing any shoes,” I mumble as my eyes scan the clusters of first responders and the surrounding area.

“I brought you some clothes. I wasn’t sure…” Ma pauses. “I grabbed some things that might fit Stephanie too, just in case. Jonas will find her. And JD will be here soon too, we called him on the way over.”

She’s rambling, and I can hear the barely contained emotion in her voice, as I struggle to strap on my spare prosthetic. It’s not fitting properly without the liner, which is probably still in my closet somewhere at the cabin, but this will have to do for now.

“I didn’t think about footwear. Should I call JD back and ask him to bring some boots or something?”

“Ma, it’s fine,” I reassure her. “I need to go find Stephanie.”

I watch as Jonas approaches a group of firefighters and see one of them point toward the creek. Wobbling a little on the ill-fitting limb but going as fast as I can, I set off in that direction.

It’s surprising, with all the commotion around the trailer, how quiet and peaceful it is back here. The moon is out, reflecting its silver light off the water, and any noise from the scene I left behind fades into the background.

But I don’t see Stephanie.

At least, not immediately.

A sharp bark draws my attention to a rocky outcropping jutting into the water to my right, where the creek makes a sharp bend. I see her then, sitting with her feet dangling in the water, Ash standing guard by her side.

It’s tough going on the uneven ground on one bare foot and one unstable prosthetic, but I make it over to the rock. As Ash comes up to greet me, I notice Stephanie is still staring out at the water. I sink down beside her.

“I burned down JD’s trailer,” she mumbles without looking at me.

“Why do you say that?”

“I left the candle burning in the kitchen.”

The candle she talks about is a small tea light on the kitchen counter she lit before we sat down to watch TV.

“No, you didn’t. I looked over when we went to bed and it had burned out.”

It’s not until I drape an arm around her shoulders and pull her close, that she turns her face up to me. Tear streaks cut through the soot on her face and her eyes shimmer with unshed ones.

“I don’t know what happened—I’m sure we’ll know more once the fire inspector gets here—but it wasn’t a burning candle.”

She nods and I brush some hair out of her eyes before grabbing the edge of the shirt I was wearing today, and wipe some of the wet dirt off her face.

“I can’t believe everything is gone. JD’s trailer, everything I brought with me, my laptop…” She chokes out a half laugh, half sob. “Even my Honda. Did you see?”

I did see. It must’ve been when the roof caved in the burning debris fell onto her SUV, because there wasn’t much left of it either. My truck, which was parked back a bit, received a little heat damage, but other than that—and of course, the four slashed tires—it seems to have survived.

“It’s stuff. You can get other stuff. I’m sure JD is insured, plus, he took his most important belongings with him when he moved in with Janey. He’ll be fine.”

She shakes her head and turns back to the water.

“It’s not all just stuff. Some of it was irreplaceable.”

“Like what?” I gently probe her.

“My mom’s hairbrush,” she whispers. “After all these years, I can still smell her shampoo. Or maybe that’s just my imagination, but it was the only tangible thing I had left of her.”

* * *

Stephanie

“Come with me.”

I’m abruptly pulled to my feet and almost dragged back toward the emergency vehicles.

“What are we doing?”

But I don’t get an answer as Jackson pulls me along, aiming for the south side of the trailer. The one side still standing, albeit minus a roof. The side of the bedroom were we narrowly escaped through the window.

“There,” he says triumphantly.

He’s pointing at what looks like a pile of dirty laundry, but is in fact the sheet he tossed out the bedroom window with some clothes wrapped inside. When he picks up a corner and shakes it out, several items come tumbling out. A bottle of moisturizer, a half-squeezed tube of toothpaste, the charger for my phone, a pair of my panties, and…my mother’s brush.

“I couldn’t see, I just grabbed what was there. But I remember something felt like a hairbrush,” he explains.

I throw myself in his arms, and start crying all over again.

I know it’s silly, it’s just a brush, but to me that piece of plastic is worth more than my clothes, my laptop, and my Honda combined.

“You found her,” I hear Alex’s voice from behind Jackson. “Good. Let’s get you guys back to the ranch to get cleaned up. The sheriff says he’ll meet us back there later.”

Twenty minutes later, I’m in a shower the size of my apartment in Kalispell, and Jackson is shampooing my hair. I try not to think and enjoy the sensation, but inevitably my thoughts go back to the fire.

If I didn’t leave that candle burning, then what could’ve been the cause? The investigator in me immediately wants to connect it to Jackson’s slashed tires, which is something I should’ve looked into right away. But I gave Jackson’s mental state priority last night, and pushed everything else to the background. I’m wondering if that was a mistake.

“I can hear the wheels in your head churning,” Jackson observes when we dry off in the large fluffy towels Alex left out for us. “Wanna talk it out with me?”

It’s what I would do with my fellow agents. We’d meet up, hash out details of the case, and toss around ideas. More often than not, we’d walk away with at least a plan of attack.

“The damage to your truck and the fire…I’m having trouble trying to believe that was coincidence.”

“Agreed,” he concurs. “Although, I fail to see the motive for either. Slashing my tires was small potatoes—I was actually wondering if Vallard had a petty streak—but the fire is a different level.”

“You think it was set?”

He shakes his head, sending water droplets flying. “Not a doubt in my mind.”

A sharp rap sounds on the door.

“Get your asses dressed,” Jonas barks from the other side of the door. “The sheriff is here; he wants to talk to both of you.”

That kicks us in high gear, and I throw on the sweats Alex left out for me, before helping Jackson pull the stubborn sleeve over the still-damp skin of his stump. I twist my wet hair up in a messy bun with a clip I find on the vanity, and follow Jackson downstairs.

It’s not even five in the morning, yet when we walk into the large kitchen, the place is already bustling with activity.

It’s a ranch, I’m sure they get an early start, but that doesn’t explain why Ama is already in the kitchen, working on what smells like a full breakfast, complete with bacon. Or why JD and Janey are both here on a stool at the large island. I awkwardly wave at James, Sully, and Fletch, who are sitting at the dining table, and smile back at Dan, who is pouring coffee from a large thermos into a row of mugs on the sideboard.

Janey gets to her feet and comes over to greet me with a big hug.

“So glad you’re okay,” she whispers in my ear as she holds me in a viselike grip.

“Where is Ewing?” Jackson asks behind me.

“Waiting in Jonas’s office,” Ama is the one to answer. “But grab a coffee first.”

I see she is wearing a dress, something I haven’t seen before. She’s usually in jeans. When she turns her back I notice she cut her hair. She had a long braid down to her behind before, but the hair she has tied back in a ponytail now barely reaches her shoulder blades.

“Your hair…”

She glances at me over her shoulder with a sad smile. “It grows back.”

Then it hits me, it’s Thomas’s funeral this morning. She’s dressed up and cut her hair to honor him. That’s why people are assembling so early.

I turn and face Jackson. “You should stay and have coffee with your brothers. I’ll handle the sheriff.”

“Good luck with that,” Janey mutters under her voice as the guys collectively chuckle.

All Jackson does is shoot me an intense look I can’t quite decipher, grabs my hand, and starts marching down the hallway to the office, dragging me along. We’re going to need to have a word about that later.

“The fire was set,” Ewing confirms moments later what we already suspected. “Fire inspector found some large blister charring around the dryer and the roof vents. Not sure what was used yet, but he suggests some kind of liquid accelerant was sprayed into the vents and set alight.”

“Someone has it in for you,” Jonas directs at me.

“Or me,” Jackson suggests. “My tires were slashed earlier in the evening.”

“I noticed that. I was going to ask you about it,” Ewing states. “Tell me what happened. From the beginning.”

Over the next twenty minutes, Jackson and I fill the sheriff in, telling him everything we know. I even shoot him the snapshots I took of the damage to Jackson’s truck, since those were taken prior to the fire. By now those footprints I photographed are probably covered by many others.

“Regardless of who the target was,” I observe. “Whoever set the fire did a piss-poor job of it.”

“Hmm,” Ewing hums his consent.

But Jackson brings up another possibility.

“Unless someone is toying with us,” he suggests. “Distracting us.”