Page 46 of Up In Smoke

She ran a few more checks, shining the light into Ivy's eyes, double checking her reaction times. Then she smiled and declared, “I think you'll be good as new. I'll come back in a few hours. We’ll check again, and I hope to be signing you out.”

She next headed over to Jo, who grumbled before she was even asked anything. “I don't need pain medication.”

To which the doctor replied. “How about we just give you some anyway? In a lot of cases, people are grumpy because they're in pain even if they don't realize it.”

Across the two beds, Luke watched as Leo's mouth dropped open. Jo was still facing Ivy, so—over her back—Leo looked up at the doctor and nodded and gave a thumbs up.

Luke fought to keep a straight face since he was in Jo's line of sight. But it was Ivy who looked her friend in the face, now able to focus on her and said, “Take the damn medicine, Jo.”

“Fine, fine.” Jo grumbled as she rolled over. “I'm going to miss my shift.”

“Jesus, Jo,” Leo sighed. “You're going to miss several, and it's going to be just fine. Seriously, you're missing shifts because you worked a live fire without gear. You get a pass, baby.”

This time, no longer in her line of sight, Luke did laugh.

He felt better as Ivy turned and smiled at him. It was difficult to hold back what he'd learned at his mother's, but he'd managed it all night, mostly because Ivy was asleep. Now the nurse came in, and the two women placed orders for hospital food breakfast. Leo headed out, claiming he needed to brush his teeth and change his clothes.

Ivy leaned forward and whispered, “I'm okay if Jo knows.”

Luke nodded and moved his chair to the space between the two beds, watching as Jo shuffled to be part of the conversation.

Jo might have been born a pampered rich princess, but he got the feeling that, even in the cradle, all her family's efforts simply hadn't stuck. She looked him in the eyes now and said, “So tell me about this arsonist and tell me why you know things the rest of us don't.”

He and Ivy explained what they'd found out. And, while he wished Jo had some sudden lightning strike of an insight, she hadn't.

By early afternoon the two women had been released. Still, the process had taken well over an hour from start to finish before everyone who needed to had signed off and Jo and Ivy were finally headed to the cars. They were wheeled out by staff members as Luke and Leo both pulled under the awning to drive them each home.

As they were finally released onto their own two feet, Jo in loose sweat pants that allowed for the bandages on her legs and Ivy walking of her own accord now able to see clearly, Jo looked to Leo. “We're following them. They've got things we need to see.”

Luke simply nodded. It wouldn’t hurt to have more eyes on it.

The hospital wasn't in Redemption, and it took them a while to get home. Again, Luke watched as Ivy breathed a sigh of relief when she saw her house stood intact on her street. And again when she opened the garage door and walked into the kitchen and everything smelled fresh and not charred.

She hung her keys and her purse on a hook that she had placed by the door and ushered everyone in. It took her only a few moments to head into the back office, into the two rooms where Luke had offered to take down the cheap dividing wall and make it into one room again. She told him she was putting thaton the list. But she had other things to do that were more pressing.

She’d quickly brought out a file and laid out the paperwork on the butcher block kitchen table that now had four chairs around it. Luke tried hard not to think about the things they'd done on that table. And Ivy’s no-nonsense approach to the problem in front of them at least helped most of the time.

She pointed to each piece, looking at Luke for permission, before opening the sealed juvenile records, his own and his brothers’. But he didn’t hesitate to share the information now. Ivy had been attacked twice. There was nothing in his history he wouldn't give up to make that stop.

Laying everything out on the table, Ivy and Luke watched as Jo and Leo looked at it for the first time. They took a few moments, picking up sheets and reading, checking over Ivy’s notes and then looking at something else before Leo put his finger on one of the open juvenile cases.

“This,” he said, “I think this is more damning than you're giving it credit for.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

“What do you mean?” Ivy glanced across the table at Leo, glad that she could finally see clearly.

She'd been worried for a while, at least until Luke had come in, that she might not see again. Luke had been right, she’d been replanning her whole life around possibly being blind.

Now Leo's finger rested on the document detailing how Mario and Carlos had been arrested over the squirrel as kids. “This torturing animals is introductory sociopathic behavior. Maybe psychopathic, depending on how you define it.”

Though Jo and Luke shook their heads not understanding, Ivy nodded. “There are no strict distinctions between the definitions of the two words. Lots of therapists use them interchangeably and lots of people say they are different, but no one agrees on exactly how. So when you say psychopath—” she looked at Leo, “—do you mean actual violent behavior?”

“I don't know about violence, but definitely deviant. We deal with wildfires out in the parks all the time.” This time Leo turned to Jo and Luke. “And people start them for all kinds of reasons. Many are accidental. Many are stupid—so stupid, that calling them accidental is far too kind. And some are deliberate. It's the deliberate ones that are what I think of when I say psychopath, I meanintending to cause harm. Whether or not that's actual pain to another creature? I don't know.”

Ivy nodded, she wasn’t really asking. “You think this arsonist falls into that category. But we've crossed off Carlos and Mario here. Targeting me makes it look like it was either Luke or one of his brothers.”

Luke held up his hands as if to sayhey now!and Ivy reached out and playfully swatted at his shoulder. “You were on shift too many times. You've alibied out.”

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