Page 4 of Up In Smoke

Jo shook her head, and Ivy felt her heart fall as though this were the straw that would break her. But Jo's words were at least a little better than she expected.

“We won't know about it until the last of the fire is out and we do a final inspection. We'll open the garage and see.”

That was better than the car simply being gone.

“The keys are on the hook, just inside the kitchen,” Ivy told her as though they might find her car was drivable and that Jo might deliver it.

High hopes.

When Jo turned back to the work, Ivy tried to step toward the house to get a better view of the damage. She had to know what was wrong before she could fix it.

“You can't go in.” Luke Hernandez held his arm in front of her, the touch jolting even through all his padding.

Still, she tried to move her way past his bulk. “I’m not going to go inside.”

Was her voice really that raspy? Did her breath hurt just a little or was she making it all up because she was traumatized? Ivy also tried to snap the words out, though she wasn’t sure she’d really achieved it.

She knew better than that. “I just wanted to get close and—”

“But you can't.” He cut her off. “It’s too dangerous.”

But sheneededto check. She needed to count what was salvageable and what wasn’t. She couldn’t plan and prepare if she didn’t know. And she believed that if she could just get a handle on it, she could save herself from the overwhelming feeling that the fire had been cosmic.

Luke had found her in the back room and praised her for getting to the safest place, but she hadn’t done any such thing.

She’d turned the odd little back room into her office because it had more windows, even though it moved through another room first. She’d been back there into the late hours and had fallen asleep at her little desk. Not because she was escaping the fire, but because it was her anniversary.

Every year on her anniversary, she allowed herself to search for anything she could find. The rest of the year, she let them not even exist to her. Last night, she’d found a new baby and a wedding.

They weren’t easy to find, and she’d eventually fallen asleep across her open laptop. The firefighters had saved her from that room. There was at least smoke damage and maybe more. Maybe her computer was burned, but maybe when the firefighters went in today to inspect the damage, they would see what she'd been looking at.

And how would she survive if they knew?

Chapter Four

“Did Ivy seem off to you?” Luke asked to the open room and anyone who would listen.

It was Ronan who answered. “Dude, her house just went up in flames. Any one of us would be off and we're firefighters. She's not.”

“No.” Luke shook his head. “It was more than that.”

But Ronan dismissed him, once again suggesting that barely getting saved from a house fire was more than enough to account for it.

Maybe he was wrong, Luke thought. He’d possibly just misread the whole thing. Lord knew, he was more than a little “off” right now himself. Maybe he was trying to drag everyone's attention away from the fire, simply by stoking the conversation with something new.

It was five a.m. before the last truck had left the street where Ivy lived. Yellow tape had been cordoned around the yard and a police officer had been stationed to keep any lookie-loos from getting too close and to keep teenagers from killing themselves thinking they were being brave. And to keep anyone—maybe even the arsonist—from tampering with the evidence that would need to wait until it had cooled off and until there was daylight to see it.

Technically it wasn’t his problem anymore, but Luke knew it was. And it was going to be his problem for quite some time. Chief Taggart and Sebastian Kane would head back after the sun was up and do a thorough arson inspection. Though even in the dark of night and through the roiling black smoke, all the firefighters agreed, it looked like an accelerant had been used.

The whole place had gone up in flames, looking like the fire had started at the base of the foundation. He might not be a trained investigator, but Luke had been able to see clearly that the area around the house had been doused.

Aside from going in to rescue the librarian, they'd mostly been concerned with staying safe and making sure no one was caught in a flashover or under a falling beam. It seemed the good news was they caught the fire early enough to stop it. A neighbor had been smart enough to call it in at the first sign of odd smoke. But the flames had spread quickly before the time the trucks had arrived.

Even now his heart clenched at the sheer luck that Ivy had been lucky to be in that back room. And for that Luke was grateful. Live saves were rare. He wasn't sure if this one counted.Hell, if anyone else knew what he knew, it wouldn't count at all.

If they knew what he knew, he would be getting carted off to prison.

When they’d returned, he’d entered the station, feet dragging as he waved the others into the showers first. They had it down to a science so all the firefighters could go through in two quick rotations. Tonight, he’d been more than willing to be in the second round.

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