Page 5 of Crash and Burn

Sebastian's brows shot up.

“Not like that!” She held up a hand.Why did it feel so awful that Sebastian thought badly of her?“It wasn't that harsh! They knew Aunt Abbie was older, and she told them repeatedly that they would have to find somewhere else to live when she died. She told me she was leaving the house to me about three or four years before she passed. I gave them five months to find somewhere to live and all of them were out within four. So no one actually got evicted.”

Sebastian was nodding along and Maggie was relieved.

“Because it was all handled by the estate attorney—” she opened the door to the back room, “—I don't know who was in this room, and I don't know where they went. But they buried that strange box of jewelry under the floorboards in here.”

Chapter Five

Sebastian didn't like the feeling in his gut as Maggie pulled the box out of the empty closet. She’d put it back into this room,out of sight?She clearly didn’t like it either.

He didn't know what it was that made him feel this way, but it was the same visceral premonition he got right before a fire flashed over. It was like the sinking sensation when they were standing on a roof and he yelled, “Let's get out of here” moments before it caved in. Sometimes he yelled too late.

That was the feeling tugging hard at him now.

It wasn't any kind of psychic intuition. It was just about having been on the job long enough for the back of his brain to sometimes put things together before the front of his brain did. He looked at Maggie, who sat on her knees in her nice business suit and set the box between them.

The old room had been emptied except for a nightstand and a dresser. Old wallpaper lined the walls with puffy roses that had faded to a pale pink over the years.

He’d always wondered how Sabbie had housed grown men in such frilly rooms. He flipped the lid open and looked again at the jewelry. Though nothing in the box looked like something the older woman would have picked out—she’d always worn work pants and men’s shirts when he’d seen her—he reminded himself that what he knew about women in general could have fit in a box this size. “Is any of this maybe your aunt’s?”

“I don't think so,” Maggie told him, rocking back a little bit. She shrugged as if she truly had no clue what the box was, or why it was here.

For a moment his tongue got stuck. He’d told her she looked nice when he walked in the door. Had that been a good thing or a mistake? He reminded himself that it didn't matter. She was with Rex, and he'd been too slow. He’d asked her about wanting kids, thinking that if she didn’t it would help him slough off this useless crush he was carrying around. Instead, she’d made it grab him even harder.

But Rex was a fellow firefighter, part of the brotherhood. So there was no making a move on Maggie.

“No!” Maggie interrupted his pity party. “This can’t be Aunt Abbie’s. She had a box of jewelry that was given to my cousins as part of her will.”

Sebastian nodded absently, still trying to make heads and tails of what he was seeing. There was a small handful of necklaces. The one with the diamond. Two looked cheap, like something you’d win at a county fair. The bracelet and the anklet—not just a large bracelet apparently. He wondered if Maggie wore anklets, because they looked sexy.

But as he peered into the box a little more carefully, he thought she was right. The mix was odd.

“I don't like it.” Maggie’s words mirrored his own thoughts. “It feels weird.”

She didn’t mention Kalan’s comment, but they had to both be thinking it.

Sebastian was now very curious. The rumors about Sabbie had been wild and too varied to believe. Some said she was hiding cash under the bed. Others whispered that she'd been dirt poor or that she was in love with one of the boarders. Sabbie would tell anyone who asked that she'd never been married, and she liked it that way, but the rumors flew that her true love died in one of the wars, and so on.

“The jewelry she gave my cousins was only a small handful of necklaces. A couple of rings—one of them had a jade that was a couple of carats. But nothing crazy, no crown jewels.” She laughed a little and seemed as though she reached her hand out to touch him. But then she pulled it back. When she waved toward the open box and spoke again, she sounded a little strained. “But it was nothing as expensive or as cheap as some of this stuff. All the things Aunt Abbie left were clearly out of fashion. There was maybe one jade necklace I would wear, if I had to attend a ball or something.”

For a moment, his mind cut to the annual Firemen's Ball and how she would look in a green gown with a jade necklace. Then he quickly reminded himself that she would look that amazing onRex'sarm, not his. And he reminded himself again that he was an idiot for not asking her out when she first got to town and had still been single.

So he forced his mind back to reality and the boyfriend she had. “Did you show Rex?”

She shrugged again, though it wasn’t about not knowing the answer. “He saw it at the station house, same as you.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Only that Kalan shouldn’t have scared me like that.” Her jaw tightened and he could see she didn’t like the implication that she was frightened over nothing.

Then she dropped a bombshell.

Chapter Six

“Ithought someone was in the house the other night …”

Maggie let the words hang between her and Sebastian. She knew Rex would brush her off, but if Sebastian did too, she would finally let it go.

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