Flashpoint Read online

  The older woman held on with surprising strength as she looked into Brooke’s eyes, her own filled with grief and fear. “I really want to stay home.”

  “You’ll go back soon.”

  “Promise?”

  She was so scared. Brooke’s throat tightened, burned. If there was one thing she never quite got used to, it was the helplessness she felt over the things she couldn’t make better. “Yes,” she whispered. “I promise.”

  AFTER DROPPING Phyllis off in the ambulance bay of the E.R., Brooke and Dustin were called to another transport. The minute they were free again, Brooke tracked down a nurse to find out what she could about Phyllis’s condition.

  The nurse pulled her chart. “She’s in renal and heart failure.”

  Brooke’s brain refused to process that. “What?”

  “Yes, the doctor was just with her.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “It’s been happening for quite a while. Apparently the patient has actually known for months. She’ll be staying a while this time.”

  “But—I promised her she’d be back home soon.”

  The nurse frowned at her over the chart. “It’s not your job to make promises of any kind.”

  “I…” Brooke knew that, so she had no idea why she’d done so. “I didn’t know about her condition.”

  “Of course not, because you’re not her doctor.” The nurse looked down her nose at Brooke, reigning supreme. “Do yourself and your future patients a favor and don’t make rash promises. Don’t make any promises.” Spinning on her heels, she walked away.

  Brooke staggered to a chair and let her weak legs sink until she was sitting. Renal and heart failure…

  “Rough day?”

  She looked up at Zach, in full firefighter gear and looking a little worse for wear himself. “Yeah. Rough day.” Damn it, she could barely speak past the huge lump in her throat. “But not as rough as Phyllis’s.”

  “So you know.”

  When she nodded miserably, he sighed and crouched in front of her. He was in her space but in a very lovely way, his big body sort of curled around her protectively, his eyes easy and calm and full of something she hadn’t known was missing in her life.

  Simple and true affection.

  “I’ve got Cecile at the firehouse,” he said. “Happily scratching the furniture and terrorizing the crew.”

  He’d made a promise and had followed through. For some reason, that got to her. “Zach. I screwed up.”

  “We all do.”

  “I promised Phyllis she could go home soon. But—” Her voice cracked and she stopped talking. Had to stop talking because she couldn’t stand the thought of breaking a promise. Her past was a virtual wasteland of promises broken by her mother, and she’d made it a rule to never, ever do the same thing.

  Zach let out a long breath, then reached for her hand.

  “Now’s probably not a good time to be nice to me,” she managed. Damn it, she hated this. Hated that she’d failed, much less failed a woman she cared about. “When I’m near a breakdown and someone’s nice, I tend to lose it.”

  “You should know I’m not so good with tears.”

  She pulled her hand free and closed her eyes. “Well, then, you’re not going to like what’s coming next.” Eyes still shut, she felt him shift his weight. When he didn’t speak, she figured that he’d left her by herself, which was definitely for the best. With a sigh, she opened her eyes, prepared to be alone.

  As she always had been.

  But to Brooke’s shock, he’d never left her side.

  11

  ZACH WATCHED Brooke’s expression register surprise on top of the pain already there. She’d really believed that he’d walked away. Tears or no tears, he wouldn’t have left a perfect stranger, but she’d actually expected him to abandon her. He knew that wasn’t a reflection on him, but on her own experiences. People didn’t stick in her life.

  Odd how he wanted to. “Phyllis wouldn’t want you to lose it over her.”

  “I told her everything would be okay. I promised her. But everything isn’t going to be okay.”

  He knew that, too. Heart heavy, calling himself every kind of fool, he sank into the chair next to her and leaned his tired head back to the wall and studied the ceiling.

  It didn’t matter that he wasn’t looking at her. He could still see her; she’d been imprinted on his brain. A body made for his. A mouth that fueled his fantasies. Eyes that destroyed him with every glance. “Promises are a bad idea all the way around.”

  Especially the one he’d made to her. Not to fall for her. Man, that one was going to haunt him.

  “I know.”

  Brooke still sounded way too close to tears for his comfort. Turning his head, he found her watching him, eyes still thankfully dry. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. We all break promises.”

  “Some of us do it more spectacularly than others.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. “Zach…I’ve not handled any of this well.”

  “This.”

  “The new job. Making friends at the new job.” She lowered her voice. “You.”

  “What about me?”

  “Sleeping with you and thinking I could just walk away. It was supposed to be letting loose, but you should know I’m having some trouble with that whole walking-away portion of the plan. I have no idea how people do the one-night thing, I really don’t.”

  “There was no sleeping involved.”

  “What?”

  “Our night. We didn’t sleep. It’s an important clarification, because sleeping implies intimacy.”

  “What we did felt pretty damn intimate,” she said.

  “Temporarily intimate. There’s a difference. Now, if we’d been getting naked every night since…that would be true intimacy.” He looked at her, wanting a reaction, but hell if he knew what kind of reaction he wanted, or why he was even going there.

  “You agreed readily enough,” she reminded him. “And it’s what you do, anyway. Light stuff only.”

  She was watching him carefully, and sitting there in the hospital chair, surrounded by strangers, the scent of antiseptic and people’s suffering all around them, she was clearly waiting for him to deny it. And given how he kept baiting her about it, it made sense that she was confused.

  But what he wanted didn’t really matter. Not when she was out of here in less than two weeks. But apparently his mouth didn’t get the message from his brain because it opened and said, “Whatever this is, clearly we’re going to drive each other nuts for the next two weeks, so we might as well take it as far as we can.”

  She blinked. “You mean…”

  “Yeah.”

  At his hip, his pager beeped. Hell. Rising to his feet, he looked down into her still surprised face. “Think about it.”

  “I…will.”

  ZACH’S CALL was to an all-too-familiar address for a house fire.

  Phyllis’s.

  When they pulled down her street, his stomach hit his toes. The house was lit up like a Fourth of July fireworks display. The flames were hot, fast and, as it turned out, unbeatable. Even with Sam and Eddie’s engine already there, and two others from neighboring firehouses, in less than twenty minutes they’d lost the entire structure.

  Afterward, with the crew all cleaning up, Zach slipped inside the burned-out shell. He moved through the clingy, choking smoke, down the blackened hallway where Phyllis’s pictures were nothing but a memory. Inside her bedroom, he took in the soot, water and ashes.

  And a wire-mesh trash can, tipped on its side.

  On the wall above it, black markings flared out, indicating a flash burn. Probably aided by an accelerant.

  Just like the Hill Street fire.

  And the two before that.

  Jaw tight, Zach stared at the evidence, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket to take a picture, which he e-mailed to both Tommy and himself. This time, whatever happened,