Cavanaugh Reunion

“Tell me,” he said, lowering his voice as if he were about to share a secret thought. “How do you manage to stand up with that huge chip on your shoulder?”

Her eyes hardened, but to his surprise, no choice names were attached to his personage. Instead, using the same tone as he just had, she informed him, “I manage just fine, thanks.”

“Kansas!” The fire chief, at least a decade older than his men and the young woman he called out to, hurried over to join them. Concern was etched into his features. “Are you all right?”

She flashed the older man a wide smile. “I’m fine, Chief,” she assured him.

The expression on the older man’s face said that he wasn’t all that sure. “Someone said you ran into the burning building.” He gestured toward the blazing building even as he leaned over to get a closer look at her face. “They weren’t kidding, were they?”

She shrugged, not wanting to call any more undue attention to herself or her actions. “I heard kids screaming—”

Chief John Lawrence cut her off as he shook his head more in concern than disapproval. “You’re not a firefighter anymore, Kansas,” he pointed out. “And you should know better than to run into a burning building with no protective gear on.”

She smiled and Ethan noted that it transformed her, softening her features and in general lighting up the immediate area around her. She was one of those people, he realized, who could light up a room with her smile. And frost it over with her frown.

It was never a good idea to argue with the fire chief. “Yes, I do, and I promise to do better next time,” she told him, raising her hand as if she were taking an oath. “Hopefully, there won’t be a next time.”

“Amen to that,” the chief agreed wholeheartedly. He had to get back to his men. The fire wasn’t fully contained yet. “You stay put here until things are cool enough for you to conduct your initial investigation,” he instructed.

The smile had turned into a grin and she rendered a mock salute in response to the man’s attempt at admonishing her. “Yes, sir.”

“Father?” Ethan asked the moment the chief had returned to his truck and his men.

Kansas turned toward him. He’d clearly lost her. “What?”

“Is the chief your father?” The older man certainly acted as if she were his daughter, Ethan thought.

Kansas laughed as she shook her head. “Don’t let his wife hear you say that. No, Captain Lawrence is just a very good friend,” she answered. “He helped train me, and when I wanted to get into investigative work, he backed me all the way. He’s not my dad, but I wouldn’t have minded it if he were.”

At least, Kansas thought, that way she would have known who her father was.

His curiosity aroused, Ethan tried to read between the lines. Was there more to this “friend” thing than met the eye? Lawrence was certainly old enough to be her father, but that didn’t stop some men. Or some women, especially if they wanted to get ahead.

“Friend,” Ethan echoed. “As in boyfriend?” He raised an eyebrow, waiting to see how she’d react.

She lifted her chin. “Unless you’re writing my biography, you don’t have the right to ask that kind of question,” she snapped.

Ethan’s smile never wavered. He had a hunch that this woman’s biography did not make for boring reading. “I’m not writing your biography,” he clarified. “But there are some things I need to know—just for the record.”

She bet he could talk the skin off a snake. “All right. For the ‘record’ I was the first one on the scene when the shelter began to burn—”

He’d already figured that part out. “Which is why I want to question you—at length,” he added before she could brush the request aside. “I need to know if you saw anyone or anything that might have aroused your suspicions.”

“Yes,” she deadpanned, “I saw the flames—and I instantly knew it was a fire.”

He had nothing against an occasional joke, but he resented like hell having his chain yanked. “Hey, ‘Kansas,’ in case it’s escaped you, we’re both on the same team. It seems to me that means we should be sharing information.”

She was sure that he was more than eager for her to “share” and doubted very much that it would be a two-way street as far as he was concerned. Until he brought something to the table other than words, she was not about to share anything with him.

“Sorry.” With that, she pushed past him.

“I bet the box that said ‘works and plays well with others’ always had ‘needs improvement’ checked on it,” he said, raising his voice as she walked away.

She looked at him over her shoulder. “But the box labeled ‘pummels annoying cop senseless’ was also checked every time.”

Ethan shook his head. Working together was just going to have to wait a couple of days. He had a definite hunch that she’d be coming around by then.

“Your loss,” he called after her and turned just as he saw Dax Cavanaugh coming toward him.

Right behind him were Richard Ortiz and Alan Youngman, two other veteran detectives on the force who now found themselves part of the arson task force. Remarkably, none of the men seemed to resent his presence despite the fact that they were all veterans with several years to their credit, while this was his very first assignment as a detective.

There were times he could have sworn that his shield was still warm in his wallet.

“What have you got?” Ortiz asked him, looking more than a little disgruntled. “And it better be worth it because I was just about to get lucky with this hot little number.”

“He doesn’t want to hear about your rubber doll collection,” Youngman deadpanned to his partner.

Ortiz looked insulted. “Hey, just because you’re in a rut doesn’t mean that I am,” the younger man protested.

“Guys,” Dax admonished in a low voice. “Playtime is over.”

Youngman frowned as he shook his head. “You’re no fun since they put you in charge.”

“We’ll have fun after we catch this arsonist and confiscate his matches,” Dax replied.

Overhearing, Kansas couldn’t help crossing back to the men and correcting this new detective. “He’s not an arsonist.”

Dax turned to her. His eyes, Ethan noticed, swept over the woman as if he were taking inventory. What was conspicuously missing was any indication of attraction. Brenda must be one hell of a woman, Ethan couldn’t help thinking about the man’s wife.

“And you would know this how?” Dax asked the self-proclaimed fire investigator.

“An angel whispered in her ear,” Ethan quipped. “Dax, this is Kansas Beckett. She says she’s the fire department’s investigator. Kansas, this is Dax Cavanaugh, Alan Youngman and Richard Ortiz.” Three heads bobbed in order of the introductions.

It was more information than she wanted, but she nodded at each man, then looked at the man conducting the introductions. “I didn’t say I was the fire investigator. I am the fire investigator. And how did you know my last name?” she wanted to know. “I didn’t give it to you.”

“But remarkably, I can read,” Ethan answered with an enigmatic smile. “And it was in on the ID you showed me”

“How do you know it’s not an arsonist?” Dax persisted, more emphatically this time.

She patiently recited the standard differentiation. “Arsonists do it for profit,” she told him, moving out of the way of several firefighters as they raced by, heading straight for the building’s perimeter. “Their own or someone else’s. The buildings that were torched, as far as we can ascertain, have no common thread drawing them together. For instance, there’s no one who stands to profit from getting rid of a battered-women’s shelter.”

Ethan turned the thought over in his head. “Maybe there’s a developer in the wings, looking to buy up land cheap in order to build a residential community or a king-sized mall or some vast hotel, something along those lines.”

But she shook her head. “Too spread apart, too farfetched,” she pointed out. “It would have to be the biggest such undertaking in the country,” she emphasized. “And I don’t really think that’s what’s going on here.”

Dax was open to any kind of a guess at this point. “So who or what do you think is behind these fires?” he asked her.

She was silent for a moment. Almost against her will, she glanced in Ethan’s direction before answering. “My guess is that it’s either a pyromaniac who’s doing it for the sheer thrill of it, or we’re up against someone with a vendetta who’s trying to hide his crime in plain sight with a lot of camouflage activity.”