Mcqueen's Heat

“You sound like you’re talking from experience.” Her voice was ice. “You were a jakey once, too, weren’t you?”

He didn’t answer, but she took the slight flicker in his gaze for affirmation and went on, her tone edged. “Maybe you’re the one with an unresolved conflict about fire, McQueen. Except you just gave up the fight—gave it up so totally that today you were only minutes away from surrendering completely.”

She brought her face to within inches of his. “You’re the one who’s burning up,” she ground out. “What I’d like to know is who or what struck the match with you. Was it a woman? Is that how you were destroyed, Stone?”

With a slight sense of shock she saw her random arrow had found a mark. At her last words he froze.

“You got it a little wrong, honey,” he said woodenly.

Without making a move he seemed somehow to be looming over her. But his size wasn’t the most overwhelming thing about him, Tamara thought. What would strike even the most casual observer was the impression of power held just barely in check that appeared to be an integral part of him. Coupled with the aura of self-destructiveness she’d already noticed, the combination of the two seemed perilously volatile.

“The job destroyed me.” That velvet voice wrapped itself around her like an invisible snare. “But yeah, a woman struck the match, and I’ve been burning ever since. Maybe I could have done something about it once…but after all these years I think I like it.”

His smile was crooked. “You might find yourself liking it, too. Why don’t you try it and see?”

“You’re officially discharged, McQueen.” Lieutenant Boyleston was standing beside them, her expression quizzical. “Now all we have to do is find you somewhere to sleep tonight. Here, put this on before you get a candystriper all hot and bothered.”

She was holding out an orderly’s jacket to him, but as she spoke her eyes narrowed on Tamara’s set features. “I’d offer you a bed at my place, but for some reason Hank’s not real crazy about you.”

Without glancing at it, Stone took the jacket. His eyes were still locked on Tamara’s, and for one illogical moment she thought she saw the hard light in that smoky gaze replaced by a flash of regret. He looked away.

“Your husband?” Impatiently he wrestled into the jacket. “I don’t remember meeting him. Hell, Chandra, I can’t wear this thing.” Glaring at the white sleeves ending inches above his own wrists, he tried half-heartedly to pull the front edges across his chest.

“It was in a bar downtown last year. You were a little the worse for wear,” Chandra said tiredly. “The jacket’s a loaner, Stone, so don’t rip it. King, while I was at the desk—”

“Tell Hank I’m sorry.”

Boyleston’s lips tightened at the interruption. “What?”

Stone started to shrug, and stopped as a seam gave way. “Whatever I said, whatever I did—apologize for me, would you? You’re one of the few who stuck by me.” His voice dropped. “Hell, Chand, I wouldn’t want to think I’d lost your friendship, too.”

“You’ve come close a couple of times, Stone.” Boyleston held his gaze steadily. “But we go back a long way, you and me…back to before everything fell apart for you. I told Hank you were a jerk, but that deep down you were still one of the good guys.”

Her smile wavered. Sighing, she turned back to Tamara. “Like I was saying, King, your uncle Jack called. Apparently he dropped round to the stationhouse to chew the fat with some of his old buddies and some fool told him you’d been taken to the hospital. I told him it was nothing serious but that I was giving you a few days off to let that shoulder mend.”

“You’re putting me on sick leave?” Tamara shot the other woman a glance. “Come on, Lieut, it’s just a pulled muscle.”

“Until you can swing an axe or carry a hose you’re off the roster, and that’s not negotiable.” Boyleston frowned. “Count your blessings, King. Joey might never return to work. When will we get the message through to the public, dammit—smoking in bed is like drinking and driving. You just don’t do it.”

“What’s your point?” McQueen’s thumb was on the call button of the elevator. He looked impatiently over his shoulder.

“My point is that if the dead woman had exercised some common sense, her little girl would still have a mom, Stone. She was smoking in bed. The only reason her room didn’t go up in flames first was because a previous tenant had punched a hole in the drywall, and it acted as a kind of crude chimney.”

Boyleston raked a hand through her cropped hair. “That’s a preliminary assessment, of course, but I doubt the official investigation’s going to find different. The bed smoldered just enough so that the woman died from asphyxiation, but the fire itself went into the walls and the attic.”

“Nice theory.”

As the elevator doors slid open Stone planted one hand solidly against them. Lieutenant Boyleston stepped in, but Tamara paused, alerted by something in the big man’s tone.

“Nice theory but what?”

He shrugged. “Nice theory but it’s crap.”

The elevator doors started to close and he slammed them back into place. This time Tamara heard the seam in the borrowed jacket give way completely, but his next words drove everything else from her mind.

“That fire today was arson—and whoever set it was targeting your friend and her child.”

Chapter Three

“I thought you knew who the kid was! I didn’t know I was the only one she’d talked to.”

Stone swung his gaze from the woman sitting beside him in the waiting room. He was handling this all wrong and he knew it, he thought. It would have helped if Chandra had come with them but the child’s attending physician had stood firm on that, so it was just him and the woman.

And already it wasn’t working.

Tamara was sitting as stiffly as a statue, her face white, the strands of auburn hair escaping her braid like tiny flames flickering around her. He began again, aware that beyond the swinging doors was a ward full of sick children.

“Like I said, she was in the bathtub when I got to her. She already knew her mother was dead.”

And when I tried to lie about that, I just about lost her trust right then and there, he added silently, remembering the almost adult note of scorn in the childish voice.

“If Mom’s only sleeping, why isn’t she breathing?” He’d had an arm around the small shoulders while he’d been hastily dipping a torn sheet into the water, and he’d felt a tremor run through them. “She’s dead. She was dying of cancer anyway, so I’m glad. This way it didn’t hurt. It—it didn’t hurt, did it?”

That question he’d been able to answer truthfully. “She wouldn’t have known anything, Tiger,” he’d told her.

He blinked, torn from his thoughts by the quiet approach of the nurse entering the room. She was young and pretty, he saw. He was relieved. The kids behind those swinging doors deserved to hear a soft voice, see a kind face.

“Dr. Pranam says if you’d like, we can phone you when she wakes up.”

“I’d rather wait.” Tamara’s lips barely moved. “Tell Dr. Pranam I appreciate him bending the rules for us. I know visiting hours are over.”

“We bend a lot of rules.” The nurse smiled, but there was sadness in her voice. “Some of these little ones won’t be leaving, so we do what we can to make them happy. And like Dr. Pranam told you, the only way we could calm her when she arrived was to tell her that we’d find Mr. Stone and bring him to see her.”

“Stone.” He looked away uncomfortably. “It’s my first name. Stonewall.”

“Like the general?” The nurse laughed softly as she pushed open the swinging doors. “That explains a lot. I hear you laid waste to the fifth floor.”

“Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own troops.” As the nurse exited Tamara spoke, her face still white but the blank look in her eyes replaced with a glitter of anger. “So unless you want the similarities between yourself and your namesake to go further, I’d suggest you tell me everything you found out from Claudia’s daughter—starting with why you’re so certain she is her daughter. Why would Claudia come back to Boston to see me?”

“Petra said she was dying of cancer.” Stone saw her lashes fall over the angry blue of her eyes. He continued, wanting to get it over with. “Petra’s the kid,” he added. “I told her to call me Stone, and she told me what her name was. I was trying to keep her mind off what was happening.”

Tamara nodded tightly. “Go on.”

He didn’t want to go on. In fact, he didn’t want to be here at all, Stone thought savagely. The whole damn thing was bringing back too many memories—memories of other vigils in other hospitals—and the urge to just walk out was overpowering. Walk out and find a bar, you mean, an amused voice in his head said. So why don’t you, McQueen?

“She wanted you to take care of her daughter when she was gone,” he said shortly. “That’s why the photo was so important to Petra. She knew that with her mom gone she’d have to find you all by herself.”

“She didn’t mention her father?” Tamara was rubbing her thumb against a smudge of soot on her jeans. “She has to have a father, for heaven’s sake. Where’s he?”