Page 31 of The Night Belongs To Fireman

“What?”

“The missing bridesmaid. I happen to know that you received a thank-you note from her. I’ve been hitting one dead end after another. None of the other bridesmaids will tell me anything.” She pouted. “Women can be so difficult to work with. The limo driver is useless. None of my usual sources will give me anything. My investigative instincts are telling me there’s something interesting going on here. And now you, dearest sweetest Fred, have the only hint of a clue. So, let’s deal.”

He stared at her. Maybe calling her an anaconda was too kind. “Why do you care about finding someone whose only claim to fame is getting rescued from a crushed limo? You interviewed everyone else, why isn’t that enough?”

“Because, since you seem to forget, I am a reporter. Something tells me there’s more to this story. Why did she run away? Why is she so hard to identify? Why did my killer footage of her punching you disappear from our news archives? It doesn’t make sense. Think of it this way. If she’s perfectly innocent and has nothing to hide, then it won’t matter if I talk to her. If she isn’t, well …” She shrugged. “Then you’ve done nothing wrong by telling me where she is.”

A niggling seed of doubt entered Fred’s mind. Ella was right. There was something odd going on. Rachel was very secretive and she had run away for no good reason. Something was going on. Something she hadn’t told him.

But right now, none of that mattered. With a lightning-quick move, he flipped Ella off her feet and over his shoulder in the classic fireman’s carry. Then, as she pounded her fists on his back, he marched her down his front walkway. He deposited her next to her BMW and pointed to the sidewalk.

“See that line?” He indicated the seam where the sidewalk met his front lawn. “You step one foot over it and I’m calling the police. I’ll file charges of trespassing and invasion of privacy. Not to mention being a total B word.”

Ella flounced toward the driver’s seat of her little convertible. “You’re in for it now, Stud.”

“Bring it,” he growled, hands planted on his hips. “Just don’t try any crap like this again.”

The convertible peeled off in a plume of expensive German exhaust. That made twice in a week that he’d pissed off a woman in a BMW. Hopefully they wouldn’t all form a gang or something. Fred took a moment to catch his breath, then jogged back inside his house.

Rachel and Greta were gone.

Chapter 9

Rachel slipped out the side door and paused at the edge of the lawn long enough to see Fred manhandle Ella Joy into her sports car. She and Greta hopped into her dark blue Saab with its tinted, bulletproof windows. Then she drove home, refusing to think about what she’d witnessed until she was safely inside the cocoon of her own apartment.

Marsden, of course, was waiting in the foyer of the building. He frowned when he saw her and lumbered to his feet. Greta trotted happily toward him for some cuddling. “Home early, eh?”

“A reporter showed up at his house,” she said glumly. She’d sworn Marsden to secrecy about her dinner at Fred’s. “Greta and I had to make a quick escape behind his back. Now he probably thinks I’m even weirder than before.”

Marsden grunted, then fell silent as he walked her to the private elevator that serviced her floor. He turned the key and the cherrywood doors opened silently. All three of them got in. Rachel steeled herself as the doors slid shut, enclosing them in claustrophobic, luxurious privacy, as if preserving them in amber for some future generation.

A sense of defeat gathered in the pit of Rachel’s stomach as the elevator lifted them upward, away from Fred’s world, into her private, lonely sanctuary. So much for a nice, normal evening with a cute fireman. Why had she even bothered to try? It was impossible. Every time she tried to step out of her own little bubble, something happened to drive her back in. The only saving grace was that her father didn’t know about Fred.

“You could tell him the truth,” Marsden commented.

“Tell my dad? There’s no need. I won’t ever see Fred again.”

“Not your dad. Fred.”

She whipped her head around, shocked down to her toes. “Tell Fred the truth about what?”

“Who you are. Why you left.”

For a moment she was too stunned to say anything. “How can I do that? My father would freak out.”

“It’s possible,” Marsden acknowledged. The elevator came to a gliding halt at the top floor and the doors whispered open. Rachel stepped out quickly, with her usual sense of relief at being released from a small space.

Marsden did his routine check of the apartment and the security system while she opened a can of dog food for Greta. The only other people in San Gabriel who knew her real name were her roommates at San Gabriel College. And her father had insisted on vetting them, interrogating them, and asking them to sign confidentiality agreements. It had been humiliating. Sometimes she suspected that the staff members at the Refuge might know, though none of them had ever said so.

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