SCORCHED: A Firefighter Stepbrother Romance Thriller by Evelyn Graves

moment,” he said, his face setting
into a deep frown.

 
    “Listen,
Cap, if this is about the girl—”

 
    “It’s
not. This problem’s way more serious, Cole. Just
please, get into my office and have a seat. I’ll be in there in a minute.”

 
    I
frowned, a strange tightness starting to creep into my chest as I gave the
captain a silent nod. Something was up, something the Cap didn’t want to talk
about in the hallway. Maybe he’d decided to take action against me after I
punched Garfield the other day.

 
    His
office was empty save for a red folder set squarely in the center of his desk.
I didn’t like the look of it. Something about how out of place it seemed just
put me on edge.

 
    I sat
in one of the two chairs in front of the captain’s desk, my hands set awkwardly on the arm rests as I waited for him to return.

 
    It
didn’t take him long, and behind him came a tall, bald-headed black guy I’d
seen a few times before, but couldn’t remember from where. My mind jumped
automatically to the thought that this man might have been some kind of HR rep
from the city, or something, here to talk to me about the plentiful accounts of
unprofessional conduct I’d perpetrated on multiple occasions.

 
    Unfortunately,
the truth ended up being much more grim.

 
    “Gunner,
this is Lieutenant Frasier,” the captain said. “He’s with the arson unit, and
he wanted to ask you a few questions.” Then he delicately maneuvered his belly
around the edges of his desk and flopped into his ratty, worn-out swivel chair.

 
    I
narrowed my eyes. “What the hell does the arson squad need from me?” The fire
investigative unit was where all the police transfers headed when a few cops
decided their jobs were a little too tough for them. Cops and the firemen
didn’t get along—in a sort-of-friendly-but-not-really kind of way—and
having some cops hanging around pretending to be firemen never sat too well
with me.

 
    “It’s
actually your sister we needed to speak to, but the number we have on file
isn’t in service any longer,” Frasier said, sitting down in the chair next to
mine. “I heard from the captain that she was staying with you and wanted to set
up an interview whenever she’s available.”

 
    “An
interview to find out what, exactly?
You think the fire at her apartment was intentional?” If my
suspicions—and hers—were true, then it was. But something about the
way Frasier said it made my hackles raise . The fuck
was he thinking, wanting to question my baby sister?

 
    Cool it , Gun . Let’s be a
professional. Shit, Tanya had me thinking all kinds of
things, feeling all kinds of
things—all of which were driving me nuts.

 
    “We
just wanted to see if she had maybe witnessed anything before the fire. Or if
her landlord was in any kind of trouble that she knew of.”

 
    “So it was arson,” I mused, clenching the arm
of the chair. My mind immediately flashed to Tanya’s stalker, the way he’d
broken my Mustang’s window and the scorched brick sitting on my counter back
home.

 
    “That’s
what our investigation is pointing to, yes,” the lieutenant affirmed. “We found
evidence of an accelerant at a few points around the building. It was
sloppy—maybe a crime of passion, or maybe he’s just new to burning shit
down on this kind of scale—but he’s done his homework. There was a hole
busted through the dry-wall near the building’s
laundry facility and a few gas-soaked rags shoved inside. Once he lit those
rags, the walls went up in no time.”

 
    Firefighters
like me don’t usually spend a whole lot of time contemplating the why and how of the calls we respond to. For us, it’s a lot simpler than
that. Is it on fire? Okay, then how to we put it out?

 
    We
don’t think a lot about the specifics. About the victims. Yeah, sure, we think about them when we’re saving them. And we think about them
in this sort of abstract way—every guy fantasizes