Always a Temp

Callie wasn’t familiar with the name. “John Marcenek retired then?” She was actually kind of hoping he’d been voted out of office.

“Yes. He’s chief of the volunteer fire department now.”

That sounded like the perfect retirement gig for Nathan’s dad. Something where he could be in command and throw his weight around.

Callie left the sheriff’s office and went back to Grace’s house, where she ordered her college transcript online, requesting that it be sent directly to the State Department. The extreme shortage of subs in the district meant her application would be expedited, according to the district office secretary. As soon as the paperwork was approved, all she had to do was wait for a call.

And in the meantime, she could try to force out some words.

Callie went into the kitchen with its sparkling linoleum floor, waxed in a bout of insomnia the night before, and glanced out the back window at the grass she needed to mow as soon as it cooled off. Then she smiled.

The baseball, which had disappeared from the birdbath a few hours after she’d put it there two days ago, was back, next to her bottom step. She went outside and picked it up, wondering if the owner was anywhere nearby.

The fence separating her property from the alley and the vacant lot next door was solid wood, but on the other side chain-link divided the backyards, so Callie was able to see Alice Krenshaw pruning her bushes near the corner of her house.

“Hey, Alice,” she called, her first voluntary contact since the memorial. She figured if they were going to be neighbors, however temporary, then they needed to develop a working relationship.

Alice looked up from under the brim of her gardening bonnet, her pruning shears still open, prepared for the next snip. “Do you know a little white-haired kid in the neighborhood?”

“He lives in the rental on the other side of the vacant lot. The Hobarts.” Alice pointed to the two-story house, which was a bit ramshackle, with worn paint and missing screens.

“Thanks. I need to return something.” Callie held up the baseball and Alice nodded before returning to her pruning.

Callie went through the back gate into the alley, half expecting to find a kid crouched in the shadow of the fence, waiting for the opportunity to retrieve his ball. She walked along the buckled asphalt to the house Alice had pointed out. The backyard wasn’t fenced and the weeds of the lot that separated the house from Grace’s were encroaching into the dried grass. A few toys were scattered about—a yellow dump truck and bulldozer, a half-deflated plastic swimming pool. Dead bugs and leaves floated on the remaining water.

No kids.

Callie looked up at the second floor windows and clearly saw two children looking down at her—the white-haired boy and a darker blonde girl. Callie held up the ball and they both instantly disappeared from view. But they didn’t come out the back door as she expected. She waited for several minutes, and when it became obvious that she could be cooling her heels for nothing, she walked down the alley and around to the front of the house, where she rang the doorbell. The bell made no sound, so she knocked. And knocked again.

Nothing happened.

Okay… Then it hit her. The kids must be home alone and had been told not to answer the door. It made perfect sense. Callie set the baseball on the weathered porch boards and headed back to her own house.

Maybe she could do a piece on latchkey kids….

NATHAN MOUNTED THE road bike and expertly locked his shoe cleats into the clipless pedals, then started down the road leading out of town. It had not been a good day, with deadlines stacking up like cordwood and a phone call from the big boss, Vince Michaels, insisting that Nathan put Vince’s high-school-aged son, Mitch, to work again. Mitch had worked as an intern the previous semester and had been about as useless as a screen door on a submarine. Then to complicate matters, Nathan found out Mitch had been harassing Katie, the part-time billing clerk, with sexual innuendos. Nathan had put a quick stop to that and had called Vince, who hadn’t taken the matter seriously until Nathan mentioned the potential for a harassment suit. Then he’d taken notice. Mitch had sulked and stayed away from Katie, but he’d continued to be as useless as ever.

Nathan didn’t need Mitch hanging around again, doing nothing and upsetting the people who were actually working, but he had him. Another Vince-related headache. Nathan had a lot of autonomy working at the Star, but there were areas where the boss needed to back off and keep his fingers out of the pie.

Nathan geared down as he approached the first big hill, and the tension on the pedals eased as revolutions per minute increased, allowing him to maintain speed as he climbed. The first time he’d ridden after getting out of the hospital, he’d gone all of a mile. His good leg had had to do the work; his injured leg had been along for the ride, the foot locked onto the pedal by the cleat mechanism in his shoe, the leg doing little more than bobbing up and down as the pedals turned. But as time passed, the remaining muscles in that leg started doing their job, and now he rode fifteen to twenty miles a night, sometimes thirty, depending on how late he left the office and how stressed he was. Despite the deadlines, he’d managed to get out relatively early tonight, before seven o’clock, anyway, because Chip had turned in two decent articles, proofread and well written for once.

It was twilight by the time Nathan had completed the loop around the edge of town, dipping down near the river, then back through the older section of town, where he lived. When he rounded the last corner before his house he saw his younger brother, Seth, backing out of the driveway. Seth caught sight of him and pulled the truck forward again.

“Good ride?” he asked, getting out. He had on his wilderness clothes—a light green microfiber shirt, khaki pants, hiking boots. His hat was jammed in his back pocket instead of on his close-cropped, dark blond hair. Out to commune with nature, no doubt. Or to rescue someone. He was driving the official beaten-to-death truck with the SAR—Search and Rescue—insignia on the door.

“Every ride’s a good ride,” Nathan answered, pulling off his helmet and shaking his sweaty hair. For a while he’d been afraid that he’d never ride again. “What’s up?”

“I’m on my way out of town and needed to borrow your GPS.” He held it up. “Mine’s on the fritz.”

“Help yourself to my stuff anytime,” Nathan said as he pushed the bike into the garage with one hand on the seat. “You know how much I like it.”

“Oh, I will,” Seth said with a laugh. “Has Garrett talked to you at all?”

“About?” Nathan hung the bike on a set of supports attached to the wall, hooked his helmet over the bar extender, then peeled off his gloves.

“He’s all ticked off about some fight he had with Dad. Don’t tell him I told you.” Seth started for his truck.

“Hey, he’s the one who wanted to live next door to Dad.” Nathan was surprised that his dad had fought with Garrett, though. Usually he saved his arguments for Nathan, the kid he didn’t understand.

“No. He’s the one who wanted to live rent free,” Seth corrected, and he had a point, since their father owned the house next door and didn’t charge Garrett rent in return for minor property upkeep. “Want anything from the city? I’m stopping in Elko on my way to Jarbidge.”

Nathan shook his head. “I’m good. What’s going on in Jarbidge?” The isolated mountain community boasted a population of less than a hundred.

“Probably a party, but we’re going up for specialized search and rescue training starting early tomorrow morning.” Seth got into the truck and was about to close the door when he said conversationally, “You aware that Callie’s still in town?”

“I am.” His brothers were the only people who knew the truth about what Callie had done to him. As far as everyone else knew, they’d parted by mutual agreement.

“Just wondering,” Seth said casually.

“No big deal.” Because it wasn’t—except that whenever he thought about her coming into his office, cool as could be, his blood pressure spiked. He was really looking forward to the day she put Wesley behind her. Then the coronary he was working on would result from deadlines alone.

As his brother swung out onto the sealed blacktop, Nathan lifted a hand, then went into the house through the side door, hitting the switch to close the garage as he went in. He’d barely peeled out of his sweaty shirt when the town fire siren blew. He grimaced and put the damp shirt back on again. He hated going to fires, but Chip was leaving town for two days, so he was the only one there to cover the story.

He really had to hire another reporter.

But it wouldn’t be Callie. He didn’t care if she stayed for a decade.

CHAPTER THREE

CALLIE WOKE to the smell of smoke. She pushed her hair back from her forehead as she sat up, disoriented until she realized that, despite the noise of the antique cooling system churning in the window beside her, she’d conked out on the sofa. That would teach her to wax floors at midnight.

She got to her feet, rubbing the crick in her neck as she went out on the front porch. The neighborhood was quiet, but the smell of smoke was strong. She walked out to the middle of the street, where she could see over the tops of the houses, and sure enough, a column of dark smoke rose into the rapidly darkening sky on the north edge of town, where housing developments encroached on the desert and Bureau of Land Management property. It was the season for wildfires, but black smoke meant a structure was burning.

Maybe she’d find something to write about.

Callie went back in the house, ran a comb through her sleep-flattened hair, then grabbed her car keys. By the time she’d followed the smoke to the outskirts of town, about a mile away from Grace’s house, several vehicles bearing volunteer firefighter license plates had sailed by her.

A crowd of onlookers gathered on the last street of the development, which had new tract houses on one side and vacant lots on the other. Maybe seventy yards away, on the undeveloped side of the street, firemen were dousing flames that had engulfed a derelict trailer parked in a weed-choked lot.

Ever conscious of not getting in the way of people who had a job to do, because that tended to get one banished from the scene, she parked her car several yards from the closest vehicle, hugging her wheels to the ditch to keep the roadway clear. She left the car and casually walked up to the knot of bystanders, wanting to blend in as she took in the scene.

“Any idea how it started?” she asked the teenager next to her, a sandy-haired kid with baggy pants. The sky was clear, so if the fire had been caused by lightning, it was a freak strike.

The teen shrugged without looking at her, but the middle-aged man standing slightly in front of her turned, frowning as if he was trying to place her. Probably not too many strangers showed up at neighborhood fires, so Callie couldn’t blame the guy for thinking she might be a firebug there to enjoy the results of her handiwork.

“I’m Callie McCarran,” she said, saving him the trouble of trying to memorize her face or get her license plate number.

“Doug Jones.” He turned back toward the action, but Callie caught him watching her out of the corner of his eye.