Chapter Five
Laney
Lucas Moore cleaned up well.
She was already seated at the restaurant, her body cooling in the air conditioning and a tiny flame flickering in the white vase on the table, when the firefighter walked into the restaurant and spotted her. He’d changed from the nondescript gray shirt and pants he’d been wearing at the station into a pale blue button-down over dark jeans. His hair was freshly washed.
“Hey, there,” he said as he slid into the booth across from her.
“Hey, yourself.” She smiled. He was wearing date clothes and she was pleased he’d made the effort, which probably meant she had very few professional ethics. Though using her red dress on Lucas Moore should’ve been her first clue.
A waitress came by to take their drink orders, and she ordered a beer while Lucas grabbed a soda and ice water. He doesn’t trust himself around me, Laney thought as she quickly perused her menu. He doesn’t want his guard down.
Laney knew that if she wanted him to open up, she’d have to give him something. She hadn’t even known him four hours, but she could tell he was an honorable guy. Of course, most of the time Laney believed in those even less than little green men.
After the waitress had taken their empanada orders, she began talking. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she admitted. “You’re right about that.”
“Thought so,” Lucas said, studying her carefully.
“I read this article about Cattleman’s Crossing and realized the 20th anniversary was coming up,” she continued. “On a lark, I pitched a piece to a publication that pays well, and they said yes. But they wanted me to find the people from the original tragedy and do interviews. I thought of having some of those people stay at the inn, and of course they agreed.”
“So even though you don’t believe in ghosts, you’ll do it for the money.”
Laney shook her head. “It’s not quite like that. I don’t need money, I need my own money, the kind you earn from hard work. Honest work.”
He studied her. “You think this article is the ticket?”
“Exactly.”
“And you need to stay at the inn tomorrow night? You can’t just do these interviews and be done with it?”
“They’re expecting it,” she said. “I need this article to be amazing. They’re a good publication, and I’d like to write for them again. Plus, they’ve already paid me part of the money upfront.” She patted the black purse beside her.
Lucas leaned his forearms on the table. “What can I tell you so that you send that money back and keep the hell away from there?”
“Nothing, it’s a done deal.” Laney tilted her head. “Why are you so keen to keep me from staying there? You and I both know ghosts don’t exist.”
He didn’t say anything, but fear sparked in his eyes.
“What did you see that night, Lucas?”
He didn’t respond.
“Adele Lyons will be there,” Laney pressed on.
At this, Lucas stirred. “You have Mrs. Lyons coming? I just…” He ran a hand through his hair and leaned back in his seat. “This shouldn’t be happening.”
“She wants answers,” Laney said. “Her husband died in that fire twenty years ago, and she’s been trying to find out why ever since. She’s going to try to contact him or the spirit world or whatever.” Now it was Laney’s turn to lean forward. She lowered her voice. “You and I both know that’s not going to happen. But maybe it’ll give her some closure, you know?”
“Huh.” He gave a harsh laugh. “This is so messed up.”
“What, an older woman wanting closure?”
“No, just…” He sighed. “She sends me a card every year for my birthday, did she tell you that?”
Laney smiled. “She’s a sweet woman.”
“A sweet woman who doesn’t deserve to be dragged into this again.”
Laney stopped smiling. “She said she’s been looking for this opportunity for a long, long time. She wants to see you, you know.”
He tried to hide it, but Laney could see his face crumple a little in what Laney recognized as guilt. Good.
“So she’s doing this willingly,” Laney continued. “I didn’t have to persuade her like I’m trying to persuade you.” At this, she crossed her legs and moved her foot under the table until it met with his calve. Then she teased the toe of her sandal against his leg.
He reached down and gripped her foot in his strong hand, but he didn’t push it away. “You’re too much,” he said. “I shouldn’t have asked you to dinner.”
“But you did.”
The restaurant was crowded, and dim enough that no one could see the movement of Laney’s foot under the table and the direction she played at it heading, which, from Lucas’s expression, was somewhere he wasn’t about to let it go and a place he wanted her desperately to touch. His hand on her foot tensed. His jaw was tight and the expression on his face was hard—though not as hard as Laney imagined he was other places. Lust heated his eyes and a matching desire ignited her nerve endings.
She had him where she wanted him. That Stonewater blood flowed through her veins, all right.
Laney felt a clench of pleasure pulse low down in her body, and a heat that had nothing to do with the outside temperature rise in her veins. It had snuck up on her. She’d been teasing him, seducing him, but her own body had grown ripe and ready in response.
She couldn’t remember the last time she wanted a man before their lips had even touched. Especially one that was nice enough to like getting birthday cards from old women.
“This the first time you’ve tried to use sex to get a source on an article?” he asked her in a strained voice.
“Yes,” she admitted. She wasn’t sure anymore whether she wanted to nail the piece or just really, really wanted to nail Lucas Moore.
His eyes fell to her cleavage, and she glanced down to see her chest flushed, her breast rising and falling with quick breaths.
“Stay with me,” she managed to breathe.
“Not there,” he said, and the control he had over his voice—greater than her own—irritated Laney to no end.
They were at impasse, and a torturous one at that.
To find her footing—literally, if not figuratively, she repeated, “What did you see that night?”
At that, his gaze cooled and he dropped her foot.
They both looked away, squirming in their seats, but then Lucas surprised her.
“You know my parents were out that night, I assume?” he said. “That I was alone at the inn with a babysitter?”
Laney looked back at him. “Y-yes,” she said, shocked he was finally answering her question—or so it seemed.
“Well, after a while, the babysitter stepped out into the hall because we both smelled something funny. After a couple minutes, I followed her.”
Laney nodded.
“Something wasn’t right at that place,” he continued. “Not that night—and not before, I don’t think. I was a kid, so I couldn’t really put words to it, but something was off from the moment I stepped into that building.”
“Off how?”
“I don’t know, just—off. Did the others you talked to say that? The other people staying at the inn that night?”
His expression looked genuinely curious. This wasn’t an act. If Lucas Moore rarely thought about that night, he talked about it even less. Even with people like Adele, who’d seemed to think they had experienced whatever he had.
Laney shook her head. “Not really. They all mentioned the smell, though. And the heat, once the fire started spreading.”
His eyes fell to the table. “I couldn’t find the babysitter once I got in the hallway. So I went to the stairway that went up to the third floor for some reason.”
“Towards the fire,” she added. “While everyone else was running down the stairwell to the first floor, including your babysitter.”
Their food came then, and she cursed the waitress’s terrible timing. But once their dishes were set down and neither moved to touch the steaming empanadas in front of them, he started speaking again.
“I don’t remember much about walking up those steps,” he said, “but I remember how hot it was, and that terrible smell. Then I reached the top floor and it was like I was stepping into an oven.” He shook his head. “I was so stupid, but as a firefighter, I’ve seen it happen so many times. People don’t know what’s happening, or they get curious. They think they’re invincible.” He paused. “And they walk closer to a place they should be running from as fast as they can.”
Laney willed herself still so he would keep talking.
“The far end of the hall was already burnt, and it was dark—too dark. I should have run then when I saw how dark it was. Halfway down the hall, the flames were spreading towards me. It was almost beautiful,” he said, his voice taking on a dreamy note. “The colors of the flames as they danced along the walls and ceiling. I remember the ceiling near me turning brown like toast. I just stood there staring into the darkness. It felt like something was there. And then a door opened.”
“The Lyons’ room,” Laney couldn’t help but whisper.
He nodded once. “Bill Lyons. He came out first and froze. He was looking in the direction I was—into the dark beyond the flames. Because something was coming towards us.”
“What was it?”
He met her eyes briefly. “I don’t know. It looked like a man from a distance, but the way it walked… Under the roar of the fire, there was this sound like keys or something, and it was awful. Then the thing is right in front of me and it’s touching me and it hurts so bad. And Mr. Lyons steps in front of me and says, ‘No.’” Lucas scrubbed his face with his hand. “Anyway, this thing, it reached out and pulled him into the dark, and he just—burned or something. He just disappeared. And his wife is in the doorway to their room screaming, and there’s this pounding and suddenly a fireman’s there, and he grabs me and Mrs. Lyons and I don’t remember anything else.”
“You blacked out,” Laney said. “I spoke with the fireman. He’s retired now. He got to you in time, before you were injured by the fire. He said you just collapsed in his arms, and he was able to rush you and Adele Lyons away from the blaze.”
Lucas didn’t respond.
“When it got closer, what did it look like, the thing you saw in the fire?” Laney pressed. “The fireman said he didn’t see anything, just a burning building.”
“It was…”
“What?”
He wiped his hand over his face again and looked to the side. “Something that shouldn’t have been there.” He looked back at her. “Something that had flames in its eyes and smelled of death.”
“O-kay.” Laney took a sip of her beer. Maybe it wasn’t just Adele who needed closure on the events of twenty years ago; it looked like Lucas could use that, too. If he stayed the night at the inn, maybe it’d help him realize that it was just an old building that caught fire and nothing to still be scared about. Not that she’d print that, of course. Maybe he’d be grateful she helped put his past to rest. Maybe he’d be really grateful. She crossed her legs.
Lucas regarded her with a keen look in his eye, like he knew what she was thinking. “You were wrong when you said I wasn’t injured. You and the fireman.”
“What?”
“Maybe he didn’t see it, but I was burned that night.”
“You were?”
Still speaking, he began rolling up his shirtsleeve. “Adele knows; I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.” He pushed his shirt up to the middle of his bicep, and there was a faded red scar, the skin stretched and shiny, in the shape of a—
“A hand,” Lucas said, giving rise to her thoughts. “It’s from the hand of that thing that touched me before Mr. Lyons saved me.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “So when I say I don’t know what that thing was, I damn well mean it.”
Laney studied him. The scar was strange, but so were the memories of children. This man had obviously undergone a scary experience. It made sense his mind filled in the blanks, made a monstrous fire that had damaged a building and taken a man’s life into an actual beast.
“One last question,” she said. “Why did you become a firefighter after all this?”
At that, he huffed out an almost-laugh. “Because I’m good at it. Because it’s the right thing to do.”
Laney smirked. “And it has nothing to do with the fact that women go crazy for hot firefighters?”
At that, he shook his head. “Do you not believe in someone having good intentions?”
“Nope.”
He sighed. “I figured if Mr. Lyons saved me, I should pay it forward. Save others’ lives. Prove that I have a right to still walk on this earth.”
“Who are you proving that to?”
He shrugged and picked up his drink.
Laney studied him for a moment before speaking. “I’ll give you two thousand dollars to do this.”
His eyes narrowed and he set down his drink.
“Okay, three thousand.” It was all she had left in the account her parents had set up, but Laney was a gambler, and she was betting on Lucas Moore.
“You’re really going to do this?” he asked.
“I’m really going to do this.”
A flicker of emotions danced across his face. But then suddenly his expression relaxed, though he still looked wary. “Okay.”
“Okay? So… you’ll do it?”
“I’ll do it.”
See, even honest men with good intentions had their price. Laney guessed firefighters weren’t exactly raking in wads of cash. Her dress had gotten him to dinner, and the rest of her parents’ ill-gotten money would get him to the Cattleman’s Crossing Inn.
After she gave him those three thousand dollars, she’d have nothing left. But with quotes from Lucas revisiting Cattleman’s Crossing, she’d have a piece that would earn her many more writing credits from the magazine.
Laney took a long swallow of beer to hide her smile.