Lisa Childs - Hot Pursuit

“Press charges? For an accident?” she scoffed, shaking her head. Her cheek throbbed.

But she could tell she didn’t feel as bad as Braden did. He stared at her solemnly from across the tavern. The Filling Station was just around the corner from the firehouse. It was a blue-collar bar with peanuts strewn across the floor. Braden had already apologized—profusely—and had offered to go into the firehouse to get an ice pack for her.

Trooper Gingrich had wanted to take her to the state police post so she could press charges. She’d assured them both that she was fine. Then Braden had suggested coming here—for that ice pack.

Gingrich had insisted on coming along, and he’d been so obnoxious Sam had worried he’d provoke Braden into taking another swing. So she’d told Braden to let her talk to the trooper alone. He’d reluctantly left her—to join a few guys in a back booth near the pool tables. But just moments later, a confused waitress had brought her an ice pack.

She knew who had ordered it for her. Gingrich hadn’t even offered to buy her a drink. But that was good. She didn’t want a blowhard like him interested in her.

“I’m not the one Braden wanted to hit,” she said.

“He’s a hothead.”

She would have agreed after how she’d seen him act just moments ago. But his anger had quickly evaporated. So she suspected he wasn’t really as quick-tempered as he’d briefly appeared. He was just a man who had been under a lot of pressure for a long time, and Trooper Gingrich had purposely added to Braden’s stress until it was too much for anyone to endure.

“I’ve never heard that about him,” she said. Her father had told her quite a bit about Braden Zimmer when he’d asked if she was investigating the Northern Lakes fires. Of course Mack had no problem singing the praises of the men he’d worked with; it was her praises he never sang.

“I’ve known him a long time,” Gingrich said, his puffy face flushing with anger. “We went to school together.”

She narrowed her eyes to study the trooper’s face, but the skin pulled on her swollen cheek and she flinched.

It was her fault she’d gotten hit. She knew better than to get between two angry alpha males. And if she was ever tempted to forget, she could just look at some of the scars she’d gotten for her efforts to stop her brothers from fighting. Though, like Braden, her brothers had always felt bad when she’d gotten hurt.

Gingrich didn’t feel bad—despite his goading—that she’d gotten hurt. In fact he’d been smirking right afterward, and now that smirk curled his thin lips again. “I know more about Braden Zimmer than he knows himself...”

“Really?” she prompted him. “What do you know?”

His face flushed a deeper red, and he shook his head. “Nothing to do with the fires...”

“You pretty much accused him of setting them,” she said. As a former firefighter herself, she knew how angry that would make her. Maybe she shouldn’t have tried to stop that fight. But if Braden had struck Gingrich, she had no doubt the trooper would have immediately arrested him for assaulting an officer.

Gingrich snorted. “He’s the most obvious suspect.”

She tilted her head and considered it. She had already begun to suspect that a Huron Hotshot could be the arsonist. But the superintendent? Risking the lives of the team he’d seemed so passionate about protecting?

Not that she hadn’t been lied to and misled before...

“Come on, you see it, too,” Gingrich said patronizingly, as if she would be an idiot if she didn’t.

“But what evidence do you have?” she asked, because she had seen nothing in the state police file. There had been photos of the crime scenes but no evidence that pointed to a suspect—any suspect.

“Do you have eyewitnesses who saw him in the area right before any of the fires?” she asked. She knew he’d been in the vicinity afterward because he and his team had put them out. “Do you have copies of any receipts you can trace back to him for the purchase of gasoline or hay bales?”

The trooper’s face reddened an even darker shade. “If I had anything like that, I would have arrested him by now,” he said, his voice still condescending.

“So you have no evidence,” she concluded. “What exactly do you have against Braden Zimmer?”

“I—I don’t—It’s not like that,” the guy stammered. “He’s just...”

Better than him. Taller. More handsome. Smarter. Stronger. She knew guys like Gingrich—guys who’d hated her brothers just because of who they were. Of how effortlessly they’d been good at everything.

While she’d never hated her brothers, she had resented them from time to time. She’d definitely resented not being as strong as they were. Because of her small size, she had barely made the requirements to be a US Forest Service firefighter. She hadn’t been big enough to make a Hotshot team or to become a smoke jumper. She wasn’t physically capable of packing one hundred and ten pounds for ninety minutes—that would have been like carrying her own body weight. But her small stature wasn’t her brothers’ fault; she couldn’t blame them.

Just how much did the trooper resent Braden? Enough to try to get back at him by starting those fires? She leaned a little closer and studied Martin Gingrich’s flushed face. In addition to the arson-investigation courses, she had a degree in criminal psychology. She’d also attended seminars on FBI profiling at Quantico.

“Go on,” she prodded. “Braden Zimmer is what?”

Gingrich leaned back and forced a nervous-sounding chuckle. “A psychic—if you believe him. He claims he’s got some sixth sense about when a fire’s coming.” He snorted again, derisively.

Sam couldn’t be so dismissive. Her father had that sixth sense—about people. He could read them so well. He’d once told her she’d inherited that ability from him—when she’d caught the Brynn County arsonist—but she wasn’t as good as he was. She had made her share of mistakes over the years.

Like Chad. And Blake...

She flinched again, but not because of the pain in her cheek. Chad had reinforced her determination to stay away from alpha males. And Blake had proven beta males could be jerks, too. She wouldn’t make those mistakes again. It was smarter to focus on her job—and at the moment that job was catching the Northern Lakes arsonist.

“I take it you’re a nonbeliever?” she remarked.

“I don’t believe in that psychic hocus-pocus stuff,” he said. “I’ve been to the freak show at the carnival and wasted five bucks on some chain-smoking fortune-teller predicting my future. It never happened. That stuff’s not real.”

She tilted her head. She could have given him examples from Mack’s experiences. But she didn’t have to. “So has Braden been right? Did the fires he sensed actually happen?”

He jerked his chin, which was barely a point in his round face, up and down in a quick nod. “Yeah, but the only reasonable explanation is that he’s the one setting the fires.”

She understood his logic. Of course someone could predict what would happen if he personally made certain it did. Could Braden Zimmer be setting fire to the territory he’d been assigned to protect? Could he be the one putting his own team in danger?

She glanced across the room and met his gaze. He hadn’t stopped staring at her since he’d sat down at the booth. The men he’d joined kept glancing her way, too—probably wondering what was drawing his attention.

What had? Was he concerned because he’d unintentionally struck her? Or because he was worried she might discover who was really responsible for setting the fires in Northern Lakes?

* * *

BRADEN’S STOMACH TWISTED into knots of apprehension. He’d been such an idiot to let Marty get to him. Not only had he hurt Sam, but he’d also left her alone with that blowhard. Gingrich thought the worst of Braden and his team and was determined to make certain everyone else did, too. Unfortunately he might succeed in convincing Sam McRooney.