Slow Burn, Chapter 15/21

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

John Grady had spent the last while trying steadfastly to ignore the somnolent brunette behind him.  He truly was sorry to have hurt her – he’d meant that when he said it.  Anger had just gotten the best of him, as it sometimes did.

But today his anger was completely justified.  Nothing today was panning out as planned.  This was supposed to be a goddamn surgical strike…in and out in less than ten minutes, clean tasings all around, only one shot fired – straight through the heart of that conniving, frigid, traitorous bitch, Hawkins.

She was the one who’d cost him so much.  The one who had left no stone unturned, until every worm and beetle of his past had crawled out into the light of day.  Hell, nothing I did was any worse than what half of the city council is winking at – or doing – with their interns behind closed doors.  I’ve been keeping this city running since before most of them were old enough to vote.  And I’m the one who has to stand scapegoat?!

He figured guilt had made them do it.  A twisted belief that if they crucified someone who had committed the same sins, they would somehow find absolution for their own.  Guilt.  That, and the knockout beauty who’d transferred to LAFD headquarters without any intention of either putting out or shutting up.  Who did she think she was?  An empress above all the give-and-take that real women use to get ahead in life?  One who’d shed a tear for the mob, then sit back as they give her everything on a silver platter?

And give it to her they had – in this very station.  It had to be Paradiso.  Some council whackjob’s idea of a fucking joke.  Paradiso had been Grady’s first command, many years ago.  But, by God, he’d worked for it!  And here was Hawkins at thirty-one, five years younger than he had been, setting up to run the place?  Potential?  Yeah, sure, whatever.  She had it.  But when did she ever earn anything?

He leaned against the window frame, looking out the narrow portal to Paradiso Street beyond.  This was the best vantage point to see if Hawkins was approaching – and to see the slowly growing crowd at the press conference pavilion across the street – but that wasn’t the only reason he stood watch here.  It’d always helped him think, back when this was his office.  He’d lost track of how many times he’d done it over the two years that Paradiso was his baby.  Now he had reassumed his thinking post, trying to figure out how things had gone so far off the rails in his life.

If he turned a bit to the left, he could still see the faded spot where he’d hung the framed quote from Chief Thomas Strohm, one of the pillars of the LAFD back when it had formed in the nineteenth century.  The same frame that was now sitting in his shitty apartment in Fresno.  But he didn’t need the frame in front of him; he could picture it in his mind’s eye, and read it from memory.

“Fire is a tool, like anything else.  It can help or harm.  The true measure is in how you use it.  And there is one fire that a truly excellent firefighter should never extinguish – the one in his own heart.  The one that drives him to excel, to cast fear aside, to put himself last.  The one he stokes every morning of his life.”

Grady had to admit he’d seen some of that fire in Lorelei Hawkins.  You didn’t serve as Department Chief for over a decade without learning to recognize it.  And he hadn’t ever promoted firewomen to headquarters work for their looks alone, no matter how much Pullman had whined that he should.  He’d brought the women on board because she had the necessary spirit to be a great leader in the department.  She’d only lacked the humility to play by the rules of the long-established game.

He thought he’d recognized some of that same spirit in the face of the young reporter stretched on the divan behind him.  Something about the eyes…the set of the jaw.  Grady didn’t mind seeing resolve in a woman; in a way, it was actually insanely attractive.  He just wanted that resolve firmly yoked beneath his own – to acknowledge his essential dominance in the matter.  To recognize his right to the things he desired or deserved.

Impertinence.  That’s the word.  The word describing what happened when resolve corrupted a woman, made her forget her ever-loving place.  Like what happened with Hawkins, or Reed.

It was something about that intangible resemblance between the two that made his current prisoner so distracting.  That shared exotic mixture of bewitching beauty and fiery spirit.  The brilliance that shone from their toes to their fingertips to the end of each lock of hair.  The fragile vibrancy now so defenseless, ready to yield before him.  That delicate, insatiable inner fire.

That fire was a tool in the hands of a man who could master it.  And it was a fire he would either master or extinguish – there was no third option.  Hawkins…he had already resolved hers must be extinguished.  Reed’s…he hadn’t quite decided.  He stepped over and leaned close, looking over the reporter’s lovely body again.

Grady had always been able to put business before pleasure, when the two of them conflicted.  He’d been the one to remind Pullman of that principle this morning.  But now business consisted of standing vigil for a vengeance that couldn’t keep appointments.  Pleasure, however, was close at hand.

The way her pert mouth drooped open...the way every aspect of her languid form beckoned…

He’d touched her before.  The seal was already broken.  Best if used by…  He reached out his hands again.

Just then he heard the faint report of a gunshot from deep within the station, followed by several more.  Shit!  He unholstered his own pistol, cast another sidelong glance at the senseless Dina, and rushed out of the office.

His mind teemed with suppositions as he raced toward the kitchenette.  What’s happened that tasers couldn’t handle?  He rounded the corner into the kitchenette, and was shocked by what he found.

The pretty blonde lieutenant had been stripped of most of her clothing – like some of the other women in the room – but she was lying in a small pool of her own blood on the kitchenette floor.  The young medic was bent over her, working feverishly.  She was muttering under her breath.  “Come on, give me an exit wound…”  Pullman was tying a silently sobbing redhead into a chair; most of the prisoners wore looks of anguish or despair.  And Ybarra stood in the center of it all, with a gun in his hand and an expression of sordid satisfaction on his face.

“What the hell happened?!” Grady growled.  All in the room turned toward him, recognition blossoming across the faces of the restrained girls.  Even if they hadn’t met John Grady during their time with the LAFD, they’d all seen him through the cameras.  But Grady paid them no notice.

Ybarra looked like a kid who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  “Uh…jefe…one of ‘em started to escape.  Had to stop ‘em somehow.”

Grady was still aghast.  “You had to shoot the lieutenant to keep her from escaping?”

“Well, uh, no…”  The short man dawdled over his words awkwardly.  “It was that one tried to escape.”  He jerked his head toward Pullman’s girl.  “I had to shoot this one to get the other to come down out of the ceiling.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”  Grady’s mind was reeling.  He didn’t believe for a second that Ybarra had had to shoot anyone – the mere threat of such force should have been enough.  The plan had been going to pieces since they’d arrived, but now he had a gutshot girl on his hands.  This is a whole new level of shitstorm.  It wasn’t supposed to go this way at all…

Grady knelt down next to the softly moaning blonde, across from the medic.  He looked over and said quietly, “What do you need?”

The chesnut-haired girl looked up in disgust, a streak of blood across her forehead where she’d wiped her bangs out of the way.  “A fully equipped ambulance.  And a hospital.”

Grady gritted his teeth.  “Is there anything we can get for you here that you don’t have?”

Her eyes had a faraway look.  “Help me get her onto one of the cots over there, as soon as I get her able to move.  Other than that…no.”

“Fine.”  He straightened, and looked at Ybarra.  “You – watch them, and help her the moment she needs it.  Pullman, come with me.”  Grady headed out, with Pullman following.

He stormed into the office, and slammed the door once Pullman had entered.  The sound seemed to pierce Dina Reed’s veil, as she stirred a bit on the divan.  But Grady had no time for the bombshell brunette right at the moment.

“You let him shoot one of them?  Goddamn, Pullman, you were supposed to be keeping an eye on him!”  Grady had always thought Ybarra had a few screws loose, ever since he had joined the department nine years before; but Grady had considered that a benefit for this particular plan.  He’d only wanted men loyal or loopy enough – or enraged enough about being cashiered in the sexual harassment shakeup – to fully commit to the scheme.  Now he was beginning to regret one of his choices.

Pullman spread his hands in protest.  “It all happened in the blink of an eye!  By the time he did it there was nothing I could do – I sure as hell wasn’t getting in his face while he was waving that gun around.”

Grady ran a hand through his thinning hair.  “We came here to kill off one bitch.  Not to start cutting a swathe through the whole department.  For fuck’s sake, they’re still LAFD.”

“Still hurting people you didn’t mean to, Chief Grady?”  A feminine voice murmured weakly from the divan.  Grady looked over to see that Dina Reed had regained consciousness, and even struggled into a slouched siting position.

“I had nothing to do with this,” he protested.  “Fucking loose cannon on the crew.  His damn fault.”

“Nothing except leading him here and putting the gun in his hand.”  Her voice was gaining strength as she blinked the sleep from her eyes.  “You should have stayed in Fresno.  Welcome back to the City of Angels, Mr. Grady.  Was this really how you pictured your return?”

The older man’s voice grew heated.  “Don’t lecture me about L.A.  I had this town in the palm of my hand before you were a gleam in your daddy’s fucking eye.”  His eyes grew unfocused.  “I only ever wanted to help this city…”

“Spoken like a true civic servant.”  The spark – that entrancing, dangerous, all-too-familiar spark – flared in her blue-gray eyes again.  “And now you’re terrorizing and murdering fellow firefighters.  How the hell does that help the city?”

He struggled to meet her gaze, his voice faltering.  “I spent 45 years working for this city, and last year it turned its back on me.”  He instead looked at his hands, which still carried a few stray droplets of Lieutenant Thompson’s blood.  “Today, for the first time in a long while, I am working for myself.”

Pullman, who had taken a stray glance out the window, interrupted.  “Say, boss, you better have a look at this.”  He pointed out the window.  Grady rushed over and peered through; sure enough, the small parking lot adjacent to the station had gained an additional car.  And Lorelei Hawkins was emerging from it.

She tucked a strand of caramel hair behind her ear as she shut the car door.  Then she bent down to retrieve the bag she’d set on the ground.  She was wearing the skirt again.  She looks as tantalizing as the day she first walked into my office.  Fucking cunt.  Who dresses like that and doesn’t expect to get what’s coming to them?

“Pullman – you’ve got the keys.  Run like hell and unlock the front door for her.  Then get her back here.  Maybe we can finally finish this.”  The tall man went.

Grady looked back at Dina, whose accusing eyes bored into him.  Still unable to meet her gaze, he turned back to the window to watch his unsuspecting quarry.