Diesel’s roommates didn’t just listen to loud music at night. It was twenty-four hours of techno interspersed with the occasional shout of “Fuck off.” On the second day Diesel went to the corner store and bought ear plugs. They helped. A little. By the third day, he was seriously considering jamming pencils into his ears. Permanent injury would be worth it as long as the noise stopped.
His phone pinged. Diesel had a new message. He rolled over to look at the screen. It was Reese, returning the email he’d sent that morning. He read it quickly then rolled back to stare at the ceiling.
His body ached all over, but his side was beginning to feel better. He’d checked himself out in the mirror after his shower. The skin around his stitches was tender and pink, but it was also healthy looking. In a couple of days he’d be fine. Maybe then he could call Jack and figure things out. Fuck, he missed him.
Today’s music had more of a funky edge than usual. Diesel pulled his pillow over his head. Blissful, blissful silence. That didn’t usually work. He tugged the pillow down a few inches. It was still silent.
Someone had turned off the music.
Good.
“Diesel!” The shout came from the living room. “Get your ass out here. You’ve got company.”
Jack. Diesel’s lungs squeezed tight. After he’d told Jack to leave him alone, it had been radio silence. Nice and respectful. He should be grateful. Instead, he felt lonely. They hadn’t spent that much time together overall, but somehow the firehouse captain had snuck his way into Diesel’s heart.
“Coming.” He rolled onto his feet and ran his fingers through his hair. The reflection in the mirror was pale. Dark circles stained the skin under his eyes, but that couldn’t be helped. He changed into an emerald green shirt that made his skin look a few shades healthier, shoved his phone in his pocket, and hustled out of his room.
The living room was empty except for a tall man facing the other direction.
A man with a mop of pale hair.
Diesel’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn’t reach for it.
“Chase,” Diesel said quietly. That white-blond hair was unmistakable, so was the icy attitude.
His heart was beating faster. He wanted to run away, but Chase was standing in the way of the door. “It’s been a while.”
“Not too long.” Chase turned in his direction. His smile had always been bright, but this was electrifying. His teeth gleamed. His clothes fit like they’d been made for him. Maybe they had. The state’s attorney had insisted until the end that Chase had money hidden in offshore bank accounts, and it didn’t look like he was hurting for anything. “You didn’t visit me.”
“I—” Diesel swallowed hard. He didn’t want anything to do with Chase, but he got the feeling it’d be a bad idea to tell him that. “I had a hard time after you left. It was too hard to see you.”
“I heard you got in a little trouble.” Chase’s eyes ate him up like some kind of wild predator. “Don’t worry, beautiful, everything’s going to be okay from now on. I’m going to take care of you.”
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me.” He needed a partner, like Jack. “I’ve got a job, a life.”
“Working in the fire department? They don’t even pay you enough to have a grown-up apartment. Besides, I saw what happened to you the other day. You could have been killed.”
He saw? So Chase had been following him, after all. His gut churned and bile flooded his throat. His phone was still buzzing desperately in his pocket. He really needed to answer it, but by the time he had it out and in his hand the call had gone dead.
“You got some coffee in this shithole?” Chase’s eyes were crazy. Teeth flashed in his mouth. Too many teeth. “I’ll pour us a couple of cups, and then we’ll talk about you coming home with me. Where you belong.” He turned to go to the kitchen, and his shirt pulled tight across his back.
Bright metal gleamed in the living room’s low light. A gun. Diesel froze in place. Chase might have been a secret criminal, but he’d never carried a gun before. Diesel would have noticed. Right?
His phone was buzzing again.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” Chase asked.
“What?” He glanced down at the screen. It was Jack. “Right. Of course.” He pressed talk. Now he just needed to figure out what to say.
* * *
Three days. Three days without hearing from Diesel, not that that’d stopped Jack from checking his cell phone half a million times. He’d been patient. Really. Truly. But if he didn’t find out what was going on soon, he’d lose his ever loving mind.
He wasn’t the only one. Eric had spent the past three nights at his mother’s, declaring Jack too moody to be around.
With Theo arrested, the brass had let Jack go back to work while they waited for Reese’s preliminary report to be turned in. He’d been given strict instructions that he was to stay in his office. Anything out on the scene could be dealt with by his lieutenants. It didn’t matter. He was just damn grateful to be back on the job. All the little annoyances that had been piling up didn’t bother him anymore. He didn’t care if he spent the rest of his career filling out stupid forms as long as he got to do his best. Besides, the forms were important. He’d requisitioned some much-needed equipment and signed off on Luke coming back to work part-time.
“It’s freaking annoying,” Troy said, flopping down in one of the spare chairs next to Jack’s desk. “Everybody’s looking to me to make decisions.”
“And I know you’re great at it,” Jack said.
“Sure, but if something goes wrong there won’t be anyone around to blame.” His cheeky smile made it clear he wasn’t really worried. He put his feet up, balancing them oddly on the side of Jack’s desk. Clearly, he’d been spending too much time in the office. He was beginning to treat it like his own living room.
Jack glared at him until the feet dropped back down to the ground. “Are you in here for some specific reason?”
“Yeah.” Troy rifled through his pockets until he came up with his cell phone. “Alex’s niece is interning at a television station. It was supposed to be nice and fluffy, something to fill out her resume, but she’s really getting into it. Anyway, I was talking to her about what was going on here the other day, off the record, and she had an idea.”
Troy’s fingers tip-tapped across the phone’s screen. “Her station wasn’t at the restaurant fire, but sometimes they get footage online from ‘citizen journalists.’ It’s a fancy term for any jackass with a phone. She spent the past few days tracking down all the footage she could get from when the truck broke down. I’m sending it to you now.”
“Why bother?”
“Because we’re both feeling pretty fucking useless. I thought we might be able to pick Theo out on tape. Reese is supposed to be here in twenty minutes. I figure, if we’ve got actual tape of Theo doing the dirty then maybe he won’t climb up our asses.”
“Reese is just doing his job.”
“And I respect that fact. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” After a little more tapping on his phone screen, Troy dropped the device back into his pocket. “Pull up your email.”
Jack received four emails from Troy in rapid succession. Each had two video attachments. They were in for a long afternoon.
He double-clicked on the first video. It took a while to load. The city budget was never going to stretch to top-of-the-line technology. He drummed his fingers against the keyboard. The place was still a mess from their meeting the other day. Papers were everywhere. The half-empty box of stale croissants was abandoned on the far side of his desk. He’d meant to clean up, really, but he hadn’t been able to start. Not when it would mean throwing away Diesel’s cold cup of coffee. “You hear from him recently?”
“Reese?”
“Diesel.”
Troy shrugged. “Alex called him yesterday. He didn’t have a lot to say... You think he’s embarrassed because Theo called him out?”
Not embarrassed. Scared. Diesel had moved across state lines to get away from his last firehouse and anyone who could put him together with Chase Phillips. Then there was the part where he’d already been pulling away. “He thinks he’s protecting me. Like if he stays away the guys in the big office will go easier on me.”
“And if he’s right?”
“He’s not right.” The computer let out a ping to indicate the file had finally finished loading. Jack pressed the play button. The video was oversaturated and choppy. It had clearly been taken with a cell phone and not one of the good ones. On the screen Diesel was going into the building. Smoke filled the air, but the fire had been put out. Most of the firefighters milling around looked relaxed. Even the crowd visible on the other end of the street looked calm, except for a muscular blond who kept trying to sneak his way past the barricade. The video kept playing for a few more minutes and then a sharp shout sounded. Red metal rolled into view.
“This doesn’t show the engine before it breaks down.” Jack closed the video and went for the next file.
Two videos later and they’d only caught the back of Theo’s head as he walked over toward the firetruck. It wasn’t going to help with any prosecution.
But something was bugging him.
“This guy.” He pointed at the blond man pushing across the barricade. The videos were all different lengths. They started at different times, and the blond was in all of them. He hadn’t walked up midway through the fire. He’d been there from the beginning. The muscles in Jack’s shoulders tightened. “The Ice King. Do we have a better angle on him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Right.” Jack scrambled to work the mouse with his left hand. He flipped through three more videos, but this time he didn’t watch them all the way through. He was only looking for one thing. The Ice King with the silver-blond hair and the bad attitude.
When he finally stopped, the man’s face was frozen on the computer screen. He was big, handsome, and familiar. Shit. Jack’s heart thrummed. His breath was coming faster. “I know who that guy is.”
Troy’s gaze darted back and forth between the computer screen and Jack. He waited a long moment and then slumped back in his chair. “Okay, I don’t get it. Who is he?”
“Chase Phillips.” His face had been all over the news. Off-white hair, cheekbones sharp enough to cut somebody, and a twist to his lips like he couldn’t breathe without sneering.
Troy frowned. “Diesel’s ex?”
“The arsonist.” There’d been a chemical smell at the restaurant, one he hadn’t been able to place. He looked around at the piles of paperwork. “Where’s the fire report from the restaurant? Did they find any accelerants?”
“There was definitely something hinky at the scene.” Troy rummaged around, flipping through the folders closest to him. “I remember some of the guys talking about it. They said it went up like a damn powder keg, but I thought that was from the stove. Remember that thing last year where the fryolator exploded?”
“But this place didn’t have a fryolator.” It barely had a working kitchen. Damn. He should have noticed it, but at the time he’d been too distracted, worrying about Diesel. Next thing he knew he was waking up in the hospital.
Since then it had all gone crazy.
Worry over Diesel and dealing with the trouble caused by Theo’s dirty work meant Jack hadn’t thought too hard about some do-nothing fire. Diesel had been worried about Chase watching him. If he went back through every scene they’d been to over the past few weeks, how many times would he find Chase lurking somewhere in the background?
He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and dialed from memory. After three rings an automated voice told him to leave a message after the beep. He killed the call and tried again. Three times. Nothing.
If Chase was using fires to try to draw Diesel out, then he’d made a mistake. Firefighters worked as a team. He was never alone at the scene. Hell, between long shifts at the firehouse, his crowded apartment, and spending so much time with Jack, Diesel was hardly ever alone.
Or he hadn’t been until he’d run out of the firehouse three days earlier and Jack hadn’t gone after him.
Hell, he hadn’t given Diesel any reason to stay.
Diesel had walked away because he thought it was the best thing for Jack’s career, and Jack hadn’t told him otherwise. He’d been an idiot. His job was great, whether he was out pounding the pavement or working in the office to make sure the men had everything they needed, but he was more than just a job. He wanted Diesel back. He loved him, damn it, and he’d left him alone. Vulnerable. Out there in the open where any jackass could grab him.
He tried calling one more time.
Ring. Ring. Click. “Boss,” Diesel said. “You keep calling, someone’s going to think it’s a real emergency. Did Luke call out sick again?”
Weird. Luke wasn’t out sick. He was on medical leave, and he wouldn’t be back until his physical therapist signed his paperwork. Jack cleared his throat. “Luke’s fine.” He needed to be careful about how he introduced the topic. No point in scaring Diesel if it wasn’t necessary. “I was watching some video from the last fire, and there’s someone in the crowd—”
“Hey, beautiful,” said a voice in the background almost too faint to make out. “Can I use this milk?”
Something scratched against the inside of Jack’s brain. “Who’s that?”
“One of my roommates.”
Which could be true. Except Diesel hated his roommates almost as much as he hated being called beautiful. Chase called him beautiful. Shit. “Don’t answer if it’ll get you in trouble.” He needed to think. “That’s Chase, right?”
“I can’t take that shift. My buddy’s in from out of town.”
“Hold on.” Jack shoved his chair back and jerked up onto his feet. The cast on his right arm banged awkwardly against his desk, but he was getting used to it now. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Thanks, I’ll see you sometime soon.” Diesel hung up.
Jack’s heart was slamming against his chest. He needed his bag and his wallet. “I’ve got to leave early. It’s a family emergency.”
Troy shook his head. “Reese has been nice about this whole thing, but if you’re not here, he’ll be pissed.”
It didn’t matter.
Not while Diesel was out there and alone. Damn, Jack loved him, and this time he wasn’t about to let anything happen. Their relationship might be on the skids, but that wouldn’t stop him from coming to Diesel’s rescue. Maybe showing up would be enough to claw Diesel from Chase’s clutches. Maybe Jack would need to toss him to the curb. And if it was all some big confusion? If Diesel was already safe and Chase was sucking down cocktails somewhere in New Jersey? Then at least Jack would have an opportunity to tell him exactly how he felt.
Even if it meant he’d never work again.