Chasing Fire
Page 44

Cards signed his name, the time and date on the repacked chute.
“I’ll walk down with you,” Gull told Cards, and brushed a hand down Rowan’s back as he walked by her.
She finished the job, choking down everything but the task at hand. When she was done, she labeled the pack. Chute by Swede.
She shelved it, then gladly left the headachy din of manufacturing. But she detoured to the ready room.
She wanted to see it again. Maybe needed to.
Two police officers worked with a pair of civilians—forensics, Rowan concluded. She knew the woman currently taking photos of the painted message. Jamie Potts, Rowan thought. They’d been stuck in Mr. Brody’s insanely boring world history class together their junior year in high school. She recognized one of the cops as well, as she’d dated him awhile about the same time as Mr. Brody.
She started to speak, then just backed out, realizing she didn’t want conversation until she had no choice.
Besides, looking at the torn and trampled, the strewn and defaced, only heated up her already simmering temper.
She shoved her hands into the pockets of the hoodie she’d pulled on over her nightclothes.
Halfway to Operations, Gull cut across her path. He handed her a Coke. “I thought you could use it.”
“Yeah, thanks. I thought you’d headed down for breakfast.”
“I’ll get it. It’s a bump, Ro.”
“What?”
“This.” He gestured behind them, toward the ready room. “It’s a bump, the kind that gives you a nasty jolt, but it doesn’t stop you from getting where you’re going. Whoever did that? They didn’t accomplish a thing but make everybody on this base more determined to get where we’re going.”
“Glass half full?”
She honestly couldn’t say why that grated on her nerves. “Right now my glass is not only mostly empty, it has a jagged, lip-tearing chip in it. I’m not ready to look at it in sunny terms. I might be once her vindictive batshit crazy ass is sitting in a cell.”
“They’ll have to call in the rangers or the feds, I guess. U.S. Forest Service property that got messed with, so it’s probably a felony. I don’t know how it works.”
That stopped her. She hadn’t thought it through. “L.B. called the locals. The feds aren’t going to waste their time with this.”
“I don’t know. But I’d think if somebody wanted to push it, that’s where it would go. Destruction of federal property, that could land her a stiff stint in a cell. What she needs is a big dose of mandatory therapy.”
The man, she concluded, was a piece of work. Good work at the core, and right now that core of good made her want to punch something.
Possibly him.
“You’re telling me this because you’re not sure if I want her to do time in Leavenworth, or wherever.”
“Do you?”
“Damn it. Right now I wouldn’t shed a tear over that, but at the bottom of it, I just want her out of our hair, once and for all.”
“Nobody can argue with that. Whoever did that to the ready room has some serious problems.”
“Look, you’ve had a few weeks’ exposure to Dolly. I’ve had a lifetime, and I’m finished having her problems become mine.”
“Nobody can argue with that, either.” He cupped a hand at the back of her neck, catching her off-guard with the kiss. “Let’s see if we can squeeze in a run later. I could use one.”
“Will you stop trying to settle me down?”
“No, because you probably don’t want to talk to a cop when you’re pissed off enough to bite out his throat if he happens to push the wrong button.”
He took her shoulders, got a good grip. And, she noted, his eyes weren’t so calm, weren’t so patient. “You’re smart. Be smart. The ready room wasn’t a personal attack on you; it was a sucker punch at all of us. Remember that.”
“She’s—”
“She’s nothing. Make her nothing, and focus on what’s important. Give the cop what he needs, go back to work on fixing the damage. After that, take a run with me.”
He kissed her again, quick and hard, then walked away.
“Take a run. I’ll give you a run,” she muttered. She veered off toward L.B.’s office, and realized Gull unsettled her nearly as much as Dolly’s sudden bent for violence.
Lieutenant Quinniock sat at L.B.’s overburdened desk with a mug of coffee and a notebook. Black-framed cheaters perched on the end of his long, bladed nose while eyes of faded-denim blue peered over them. A small scar rode high on his right cheek, a pale fishhook against the ruddiness. And like a scar, a shock of white, like a lightning bolt blurred at the edges, shot through his salt-and-pepper hair between the left temple and the crown.
She’d seen him before, Rowan realized—in a bar or a shop—somewhere. His wasn’t a face easily overlooked.
He wore a dark, subtly pin-striped suit like an executive—pressed and tailored, with a perfectly knotted tie of flashy red.
The suit didn’t go with the face, she thought, and wondered if the contrast was deliberate.
He stood when she came into the room. “Ms. Tripp?”
“Yeah. Rowan Tripp.”
“I appreciate you taking a few minutes. I know it’s a stressful day. Would you mind closing the door?”
The voice, she decided, mild, polite, engaging, fit the suit.
“Have a seat,” he told her. “I have a few questions.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve met your father. I imagine most around these parts have at some time or other. You’re following in big footprints, and I’m told you’re doing a good job of filling them.”
“Thanks.”
“So... you and a Miss Dolly Brakeman had an altercation a few days ago.”
“You could call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
She wanted to rage, to jab a finger in the middle of that flashy tie. Be smart, Gull had said—and damn it, he was right.
So she ordered herself to relax in the chair and speak coolly. “Let’s see, I call it trespassing, vandalism, defacing private property and generally being a crazy bitch. But that’s just me.”
“Apparently not just you, as others I’ve spoken with share that point of view. You discovered Miss Brakeman in your quarters here on base in the act of pouring animal blood on your bed. Is that correct?”