Blue Smoke

gestured up. “Flashed back down there. He was already long gone.”
    They moved together, documenting evidence, recording, climbing up into the still living heart of the fire.
    It licked the walls, and men beat it back. It danced overhead along the charred ceiling with the guttural roar that always sent a finger of ice up her spine.
    It was gorgeous, horribly gorgeous. Seductive with its light and heat, its powerful dance. She had to block out the innate fear, and her own intrinsic fascination, concentrating instead on fuel and method, on the fingerprints of style.
    Gas, a stronger stench of it here, under the sharp smell of smoke, the dull odor of wet. The men who fought the leaping spirals of flame had faces blackened from the smoke, eyes blank with concentration. Water spat out of hoses and streamed in the broken windows from outside.
    Another portion of the roof collapsed with a kind of shuddering glee, venting the fire, feeding it so that it spurted up in a sudden storm.
    She jumped forward to assist with a hose, and thought of lion trainers slapping at a violent cat with a whip and a chair.
    The effort sang in her muscles, shook down to her toes.

    She saw where part of the wall had been hacked away to studs, and through the blur of water and smoke noted the char, the pattern.
    He’d done that, she thought. Initial point of origin.
    And knew, as her arms trembled and the fire slowly died, this hadn’t been his first.
    T he relief was wild, a kind of stupefying release, when he saw her come out. Despite the gear and her height, Bo recognized her the instant she stepped through the dense smoke.
    However casual O’Donnell’d been, whatever he’d said before, Bo heard his release of breath when Reena waded out through the smoke and wet and debris.
    Her face was black with soot. As she shrugged off her tanks, ash rained off her protective gear.
    “There’s our girl,” O’Donnell said lightly. “Why don’t you wait here, pal. I’ll send her over in a minute.”
    She took off her helmet—and there was a short spiral of dark gold as she bent from the waist, braced her hands on her knees and spat on the ground.
    She stayed there, lifting only her head to acknowledge O’Donnell. Then she straightened, brushed off a paramedic. Unhooking her jacket, she made her way toward Bo.
    “I have to stay, then I’m going to need to go in. I’m going to have somebody take you back home.”
    “You’re okay?”
    “Yeah. It could’ve been a lot worse in there. He could’ve made it a lot worse. No loss of life, building empty, school out for the summer. This was just for show.”
    “He left you that matchbox from your family’s place. So the show was for you.”
    “I can’t argue with that.” She glanced over where a couple of soaked, soot-covered firefighters were lighting cigarettes. “You notice anybody who seemed off?”

    “Not really. I have to admit after you went in, I didn’t pay much attention. Praying takes most of my focus.”
    She smiled a little, then lifted her brows when he wiped at the soot on her cheek with his thumb. “I’m not looking my best.”
    “I can’t begin to tell you how you look. You scared the hell out of me. We’ll save the buts for when you’ve got more time.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I figure we’ve got a lot to say to each other, and I’d rather do it without the audience.”
    She looked over her shoulder. They were doing a surround and drown, and the worst was over. “I’ll get you a ride. Look, I’m sorry how this turned out.”
    “Me, too.”
    She walked away, arranged for his ride home. And she thought that the fire had done more than hull out a building. If she wasn’t misreading the way Bo had stepped back from her, the fire had also turned a developing relationship into ash.
    She went to her car for her field kit, pulled it and a bottle of water she kept there out as Steve wandered to her. “So, is that the guy Gina said you’re seeing?”
    “That’s the guy I’ve been seeing. I think he’s just decided the whole cop, arson, fires-in-the-middle-of-the-night routine is more complicated than he likes.”
    “His loss, hon.”
    “Maybe, or maybe he just had himself a lucky escape. I am hell on men, Steve.”
    She slammed her trunk. Her car was coated with ash. And she stank, no question about it. She leaned on her car, opened the bottle to take a long drink of water to clear her throat.
    She passed the bottle to Steve, stayed as