Wild Heat (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #1)(29)
Author: Bella Andre

Firefighter morale was a funny thing. Most of the time guys could block out the bad stuff until they’d finished doing their job and the fire was out. But this was a special case. His only option was to say very little about Robbie’s true situation. After his brief talk with Dr. Caldwell, he wasn’t at all sure Robbie was going to pull through.

Logan weighed his words carefully. “He’s hanging on.”

The guys nodded and ate some more, knowing better than to push for details they couldn’t handle. Sean pointed to the gear in Logan’s hand. “She letting you back in the game, man?”

Maya finally spoke. “Let’s get going, Mr. Cain.” She turned on her heel and walked back out to the car.

Andy whistled. “What a waste of a hot piece of ass.”

Logan clenched his jaw, feeling more than a little proprietary about Maya’s curves. “Keep your focus on the fire,” he warned, knowing it was exactly what he needed to be doing himself. “I’ll be back in action as soon as I can.”

He headed outside and threw his gear into the back of his truck. He slid behind the wheel.

“Must be rough.”

Maya didn’t say anything, but her full lips were a tight line.

“Your father was a firefighter. And today you’re the enemy, the one they all love to hate.”

She shifted in her seat, turning away from him, her hands clasped tightly on her lap. “I don’t have to investigate firefighters very often, but when I do, I don’t treat their cases any differently.”

“Are you sure you can do that?” Logan asked, even as he wondered why he cared so damn much. Especially when she sure as hell wasn’t making it easy for him.

She was silent for a long moment. “I never expected to run into you again, let alone for you to be my lead suspect. And then after what happened at the motel, after getting that note—” She stopped, and started over. “Trying to separate this case from what happened to my brother is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But I promise you—and your men—that this is not a witch hunt. I’m not simply looking for someone’s head to jam on a stake. And I don’t want any more of your men to get hurt because of a serial arsonist.”

She wasn’t hiding her distress from him, and he felt that maybe he was starting to gain her trust.

“Thank you for that,” he said. “For your honesty. And for thinking of my men.”

She twisted the sniffer in her hands. “I don’t want you to get hurt either, Logan. Getting evidence is too dangerous. I can’t let you do this.”

But danger no longer mattered. He needed to find out who’d set up the explosion to make sure it didn’t happen again and take out another one of his men.

“Robbie was my friend. He didn’t deserve this. Some ass**le thinks he can get away with it. He probably thinks no one will be willing to walk up to that fire and find out what caused it.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “That ass**le is wrong.”

“It’s too dangerous. I wish you’d reconsider.”

But they both knew he wouldn’t. “What do I need to know about operating the sniffer?”

“Be sure to hold the red button down for at least thirty seconds or the sample size won’t be large enough to register on the meter. I’ll also need a couple handfuls of dirt and grass, and anything that isn’t native.”

She looked like she was going to say something else.

“Go ahead. What else do you want me to know?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“I can take it,” he said in a soft voice. He could feel her warring with herself in his passenger seat, could practically see the wheels turning in her head.

Suddenly she said, “Just be careful, okay?”

Of all the things he expected her to say, that wasn’t anywhere on the list. “Nice to know you care.”

“Yeah,” she said, her mouth quirking up on one side, “it would suck to lose my top suspect.”

He found himself grinning in the face of the hellish thing he was about to do, appreciating her quick comeback as much as her luscious curves.

“I can’t believe how big these houses are,” Maya marveled as he used his universal remote to open the gates to the ritzy housing development and they drove past a row of huge recently built mansions.

He knew she was trying to lighten the mood between them in the face of oncoming danger—and probably evade their growing connection while she was at it.

“They’ve all got killer views,” he said, playing along. “I used to hike up here before the houses went in. It was a damn shame when the public lost this land.”

Not to mention one more pain-in-the-ass development for his crew to protect, despite owners who went out of their way to create fire hazards. Protecting people took first priority. But saving expensive houses was a close second.

He followed the winding road up the hill to a dead end. He could feel the heat from the fire even at this distance. It was going to be hotter than hell on the other side of the wall. And a hundred times more dangerous. All it would take was one spark to land on an untouched patch of gasoline.

He jumped out of his truck and quickly suited up, but when he came around to her side of the car Maya held tightly onto the sniffer and mason jar.

“Wait here.” He dropped his keys in her lap and pried the sniffer from her fingers. “But if you see flames start to come over that wall, get away as fast as you can, then get on my radio and report it.”

She curled her fingers around his keys. “I’m not leaving without you.”

“No use in both of us dying,” he said, then leaned in and stole a quick kiss before he walked straight into a firestorm.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MAYA WANTED to call out Logan’s name as he opened the gate, and demand that he come back. A blast of hot air knocked into the truck, pushing through the cracks in the metal, vibrating against the windshield.

He’d told her to stay put, but she couldn’t just sit in his truck while he risked his life to procure evidence for her investigation, not when she could hear and smell and feel the blaze as if it were right next to the truck rather than beyond the neighborhood wall. She was the only one who could keep watch over him. She had to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid.

Running up the brick walkway of the nearest house, she knocked on the front door and rang the bell several times in rapid succession before she realized no one was home. The homeowners had likely been evacuated. She ran around the side of the house, searching for a way up to the roof. Fortunately, a huge extension ladder was propped against the back wall. The owner had likely used the ladder to water down the roof until the evacuation order came.