Deep Burn (Station Seventeen Book 2) Read online

  “Why?” The question was out before he could capture it, and Shae’s brows took a sky-high route over her forehead.

  “Beeeeecause less than an hour ago, he stumbled across a murder victim who’d lost more than half his blood volume from a wound that turned out to be four tendons shy of decapitation?”

  Heat crept up the back of Capelli’s neck at the obviousness in her tone, and the fact that he’d missed the visceral aspect she so clearly hadn’t. “All I meant was that he didn’t do anything wrong. Hale’s taking his statement, not interrogating him,” he said, but Shae’s brows—and her frown—didn’t budge.

  “And all I meant was that while Slater’s tough, he’s still a rookie. This was his first loss in the field. He’s taking it about as well as you’d expect.”

  Maxwell nodded, stepping toward her on the pavement. “Copy that. We’re all on the same team, McCullough. We’re not here to upset either of you. We just need to do everything by the book.”

  “I know,” she said, her courage sliding into concession fast enough to make Capelli a little dizzy from the whiplash. “I just…it was pretty bad in there. I think we left ‘upset’ in the rearview forty-five minutes ago.”

  Shae wrapped her arms around her rib cage, a visible shiver working a path over her frame. Not surprising, really, since she was standing in thirty-nine degree weather in nothing more than a sweat-damp RFD T-shirt and her bunker pants.

  “Where’s your coat?” Capelli asked, taking note of the half-dozen other firefighters milling around the street in front of them, all of them bundled to their chins in full gear.

  A wry smile tilted the corners of her mouth upward just slightly, although the gesture lacked any traces of true humor. “Did you miss the part about the victim’s blood volume, then?”

  Oh hell. Capelli’s throat tightened. “I don’t miss details,” he told her, shrugging out of his jacket reflexively. “I was just considering the established facts, and since you didn’t specifically mention you’d been the one to pull Denton from the fire…”

  Surprise skated over Shae’s face as her eyes dropped to the jacket he held out in offer. “Oh. No thanks. Calls like this tend to knock a girl’s body temp out of whack. I know it sounds crazy, but the cold actually feels nice.”

  Capelli was tempted—not a little—to tell her that with as much body heat as she’d probably spent on the call, welcoming a chill didn’t sound crazy so much as bat shit insane. Physiology didn’t work that way, for Chrissake. But in the entire time he’d known her, Shae had never done the same thing twice, let alone done anything in a logical fashion, so he settled on, “I take it you were the one who pulled Denton from the fire, then.”

  Although he hadn’t crafted the words as a question, Shae answered them anyway. “Yes. Slater made the find, but I made the extraction.”

  Capelli’s brain buzzed with a whole new set of inquiries. Maxwell must’ve been on the same wavelength, because he said, “Why don’t you start from the beginning and tell us everything that happened.”

  “Okay.” She launched into a play-by-play that covered most of what they already knew, from the presence of the reported meth lab in the house to getting an unconscious L-Man out to paramedics, and finally to Slater’s discovery of Denton on the other side of the house.

  “Hang on.” Capelli replayed her words in his brain, but wait, they couldn’t be accurate. “You disobeyed a direct order to go back into the house for Slater once he found Denton’s body, even though you knew how bad the fire was?”

  If the sudden stubbornness in Shae’s jaw was anything to go by, her report was entirely accurate. “My captain has already promised to read me the riot act, thanks.”

  “It just seems like a pretty reckless decision to put your personal safety on the line in those specific conditions. Not to mention breaking rank, which is never a good idea.”

  Shae’s chin snapped up, her hands moving to her hips as she took a step back on the faded asphalt to pin him with a stare. “You really see things in black and white, don’t you?”

  “I see facts,” Capelli countered, inhaling slowly to offset the uncharacteristic thrum in his chest. Christ, this woman pushed every last one of his buttons. “You knew the fire was going to flash over. Your captain gave you a direct order to fall out. You went back into the house anyway.”

  Obvious surprise lifted Maxwell’s brows. “I think what Capelli meant to say is—”

  “Exactly what he did say,” Shae finished, although her stare never wavered from Capelli’s. “Yes, I knew shit was going sideways in the house, and yes, I disregarded a direct order to re-enter the scene anyway. But there’s another fact you’re forgetting, and it’s the most important one of all.”

  Either she was mistaken or speaking figuratively, because he never forgot a fact. Hell, he never forgot anything, not even when he desperately wanted to, but now wasn’t exactly the time for examining semantics. “And what’s that?”

  “When Slater and I crossed that threshold, I told him I had his six, which means when he needs me, I’m there. Period. I don’t just see facts, Capelli,” she said, her green eyes glittering with enough conviction to make his heart pump faster in his chest. “I see everything.”

  And just when he thought she couldn’t throw anything more unpredictable in his direction, Shae swiveled on her boot heels and walked away.

  Chapter 3

  Conrad Vaughn despised the sound of his name. Not that many people called him by it, or for that matter, even knew what it was. His last boss—sanctimonious bastard—had insisted on addressing everyone formally, and since the guy had also been a mouth-foaming sociopath, Vaughn hadn’t really felt the need to push the issue. Of course, now Julian DuPree was a dead mouth-foaming sociopath, which really just validated the shit out of Vaughn’s current plan.

  He needed a career path that didn’t involve having a spectacular fuckwit for a boss. The problem was, nearly every person he’d ever met fell squarely into that category. The rest? Well, they were even dumber.

  Kicking his worn-out black Converse sneakers over the cracked concrete beneath them, he let his always-racing mind take the thought and spin. In truth, Vaughn had always had a hate thing for working for the highest bidder. While the revenue stream of setting up security and counter-surveillance for Remington’s underbelly didn’t necessarily suck, it wasn’t enough to set him up in a tiki bar on Kauai, either—and the job security wasn’t exactly cement when chances were high that your employer could end up in cement. Not that Vaughn really minded the criminal activity, because playing for Team Dark Side sure beat the hell out of all that work-hard, honest-living bullshit most sheeple did.

  But each of his bosses had shared the same flaw; namely that they were all dumb enough to lead with their emotions rather than their gray matter. Which meant that at a certain point, shit always went tango uniform. DuPree was case in point. That motherfucker had been so far away from his happy place that he’d nearly gotten Vaughn caught in a raid by RPD’s finest. He’d been able to escape, of course, but only because the intelligence unit’s Head Geek In Charge had once been his partner in crime—literally and figuratively. As decent a hacker as James Capelli was, he was also as predictable as high tide. But even after eight years of total radio silence between them, Vaughn had still been smart enough to know the guy’s every move before the first neuron even fired to turn it into an action.

  No honor among thieves, really. Rapists or murderers either. But between hackers least of all.

  Still, James might be calculable to a fault, but he also didn’t have his head lodged quite as far in his colon as the rest of the RPD. After the whole DuPree debacle, Vaughn had needed to spend three goddamn months bouncing all over the grid in order to be absolutely sure he’d escaped his old buddy’s detection, all while staying off the grid in various flophouses and cesspools. The sabbatical had provided him with a much-needed reality check, as well as the time to come up with the perfect plan to fix his problem.
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  After all, he was far more intelligent, more calculated and intuitive, than anyone he’d ever met, let alone worked for. Why earn their money like a chump when he was smart enough to just take it instead?

  Good old-fashioned extortion might not be glamorous, but it was making for a hell of a payday. And on the rare occasion his former employers hadn’t bucked up and wired him the money he deserved for outsmarting them, he was all too happy to follow through on his threats to make them pay in other ways.

  Liiiiiike setting all their shit on fire and laughing while it burned.

  A grin slid over Vaughn’s face, his chest filling with satisfaction at the thought. Sinking lower in his hoodie, he took a sip of the sixty-four-ounce slushy in his hand and lowered himself over his favorite park bench. Okay, so ‘park’ might be a bit of a stretch for this section of Atlantic Boulevard, especially considering how many blow jobs and dime bags had likely been traded here in the last twelve hours, but really, he wasn’t about to alert the grammar police. It was the perfect spot for him to take care of business—solid visuals on all four arms of the compass for fifteen feet, three separate exit points in case he needed to ghost, no cops dumb enough to wander this far down the wooded path and no criminals likely to linger if they saw that the space was already ocupado.

  Which was stellar, since killing people in public was such a pain in the ass to cover up.

  And, hey, speaking of murder…

  Vaughn set his drink aside and took the burner phone he’d bought for this very occasion out of his back pocket, keying in a number from memory. The call wasn’t necessary, per se, but since he hadn’t been able to extract a payday from Raymond Allen, a.k.a. Little Ray and the leader of the Scarlet Reapers, a little payback was the next best thing.

  The phone on the other end rang only once, and outstanding—Ray was keyed up enough to give him the upper hand right out of the gate.

  “Who the fuck is this?” the guy demanded, and okay, rightfully so. It’s not like gang leaders gave out their private cell numbers like Halloween candy.

  Which was exactly why Vaughn had called it. “Now, now. Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

  And three, two, one...Yahtzee. “You little piece of scrawny, no-good shit! I’m going to rip your goddamn head off and piss down your neck,” Ray snarled, and Vaughn gave up a soft tsk.

  “Such nasty profanity. I’m hurt, Little Ray. Truly.”

  “Not yet, but you’re gonna be, Shadow.” Even covered in venom, the name Vaughn had earned made him smile as Ray hissed it into the phone. “After what you did today, you’re a dead man.”

  “Actually, I’m alive and kicking,” Vaughn told him, slapping a bored-as-hell expression over his face as he scanned the park around him in a covert three-sixty. All clear, exactly as he’d predicted. Duh. “Heard you had a pretty bad afternoon, though.”

  The silence humming over the line was so loaded, Vaughn could’ve used it to make a kill shot from fifty feet away, and finally, Ray bit out an answer. “A bad afternoon? You blew up my business. Killed Malik and the L-Man. Cut Malik’s throat from ear to ear.”

  Yeah, that had been irritating. Vaughn had always hated wet work. The stink of blood and piss and pure, primal fear didn’t wash off for fucking days. He’d tried to just tranq the guy into next week like he had the L-Man. At least that way Vaughn would’ve been able to let the smoke do the job and keep the shoes he’d put on this morning. But the sufentanil he’d jammed into Malik’s neck hadn’t knocked the dude out fast enough to just leave him there to die from smoke inhalation, and no way was Vaughn dumb enough to chance letting him survive. He’d been forced to go with his backup plan, i.e. actually using the scalpel he’d pressed to Malik’s jugular when he’d stealthed up on him from behind. But at least the hack job he’d done afterward would be some added fun for the cops to try and (not) figure out.

  “To be fair, I told you I would,” Vaughn said, his pulse moving faster in his veins even though his words remained perfectly metered. “Or did you think I was bluffing when I said you could either pay me two hundred thousand dollars or I’d torch you to the ground?” He paused just long enough to let the salt sink into the wound before he topped it off with rubbing alcohol. “Oh, you did. That’s so unfortunate for you. Ah, well. I guess now you know.”

  “You think I’m just gonna stand by for this?” Ray spat into the phone. “Nah, man. I’m gonna find your skinny ass, and when I do, you’re gonna wish your momma had never spread her whore legs for your old man in the first place.”

  The insult struck unexpectedly, swift and deep, and anger beckoned from the place in Vaughn’s belly where he kept it well-buried. But emotion was for pussies, and the anger would only make him weak and impulsive, so he stuffed it back with a smile. “To be honest, I’d rather you’d just paid me like I told you to. But it looks like neither one of us is going to get what he wants, so we might as well call this a draw.”

  Ray let out a lungful of disgust. “After what you just did, you want me to let you walk?”

  Shifting his weight over the cold, rickety slats of the park bench, Vaughn sighed. Emotions made people so fucking stupid, honestly. “I’m sure you won’t, but the reality is, you should. Look at the facts. I ran the Scarlet Reapers’ security for six months. That makes me pretty much the high lord of your dirty laundry. Add in the harsh reality that me and my skinny ass managed to singlehandedly kill two of your most loyal associates and turn your biggest operating center into a giant pile of ash, and it’s not really a logic leap to know you shouldn’t keep messing with me.”

  “You ain’t the high lord of a goddamn thing. How do you know I didn’t change all that security shit up after you left?” Ray asked, and oh, look. Vaughn’s favorite bluff.

  “Because while you may be a bottom-feeding Neanderthal, you’re surprisingly not a terrible businessman. You hired me because I’m the best. And even on the off chance you did change the security system you paid me to implement after I left”—of course he knew the guy hadn’t, because he’d left loopholes in the Scarlet Reapers’ system like any halfway decent hacker would and should—“you don’t really think I didn’t keep my own records, do you?”

  The string of nasty swear words that followed led Ray exactly where Vaughn wanted him. “You little fuck! I’m going to take you apart, one limb at a time.”

  “No you’re not,” Vaughn said with a laugh he actually felt. “I’m the Shadow, remember? I could be right behind you and you wouldn’t know it until I tapped you on the shoulder.”

  He waited out the obligatory five seconds it would take the guy to check his surroundings out of paranoia before continuing. “This is your endgame, Little Ray. You can’t exactly file an insurance claim against your losses, so you’re out all that product, your biggest and most productive meth lab, and the personnel.” Vaughn ticked each one off on his fingers even though the bare trees around him were his only company. Oh, the numbers were so fucking beautiful, though, constant and predictable and precise. “You can’t go to the cops for the murders without them looking at everything about you, right down to what you ate for breakfast. And while you can spend all your time and energy trying to get revenge, it’ll only be a waste of both.”

  Vaughn pushed to his feet, and this time, his heartbeat did accelerate, his mouth curling into a smile. “I’m a shadow. You’re not going to catch me, man. No one ever does.”

  Popping the lid on his slushy, he didn’t even bother pressing the button to end the call before dropping the burner phone first into the cup, then into the nearest trash can on his way out of the park.

  After forty minutes in the shower and half a bottle of vanilla-scented body wash, Shae gave up trying to get the stench of that afternoon’s call off of her. It was figurative, of course—although between the second victim’s blood and the giant cocktail of toxic fumes in the air at the scene, she hadn’t exactly smelled like posies when they’d finally returned to Seventeen. She and her engine-mates had filed
back into the fire house without conversation or fanfare, although she’d definitely caught the severity of the frown and side-eye combo Gamble had pinned her with as he’d handed over a replacement coat from the equipment room.

  Blowing out a breath, Shae cranked the lever for the shower farther toward “hot” even though her skin already stung from the heat of the spray. She was well-acquainted with the symptoms of adrenaline letdown, along with the best methods to compartmentalize the grislier aspects of her job so as not to go nuts on toast. Sadly for her personnel file, Shae was also rather cozy with her emotions writing her an engraved invitation to the hot seat. Between Gamble and Captain Bridges, the censure she surely had in her immediate future was going to smart like a sonofabitch.

  Not that she wouldn’t pull on her big girl panties and take it. After all, no matter how much of a no-brainer her actions had been, she had disregarded a direct order when she’d gone back into that house for Slater, which meant she’d earned every syllable of the ass-chewing waiting for her outside the shower door.

  But hot seat or not, she wasn’t going to change the way she did her job. Yes, she’d been tenacious (and okay, maybe a teensy bit insubordinate), but she hadn’t put anyone but herself in possible danger, and she hadn’t signed on at the academy because she’d wanted a thumb-twiddling nine to five. She’d learned the life-is-short lesson the hard way, and God, if her number could be up at any moment, she was going to make all her moments count, risks be damned.

  It just seems like a pretty reckless decision…

  Capelli’s words echoed in her ears, hiking her chin to attention beneath the shower spray. Reaching out, Shae stopped the water with a swift turn of her wrist, her heart beating faster even as she took a deep breath to counter it. She might jump in with both boots first most of the time (okay, fine. All the time), but she was still a damn good firefighter. She wasn’t going to make any apologies for that.