Burn for Me

Three cop cars, their sirens screaming, barreled down the opposite lane. Good. As far as I was concerned, Mad Rogan could deal with them and leave me the hell alone.

“Remember you told me about how the Great Chicago Fire wasn’t started by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow? Your professor had some sort of alternative theory about it?”

Bern gave me a funny look. “Did you see the bus halfway in the ground?”

“I don’t want to talk about the bus.”

“Okay,” Bern said in a soothing voice. “We don’t have to talk about the bus. We can talk about the cow instead.”

“Is there any chance we could talk to your professor?”

“Professor Itou? Sure. I think he has office hours today. I’ll check when I get home. Why?”

“Something Harper said. She called Adam a glorified O’Reilly’s cow. I think she meant O’Leary.”

“She might have been using it figuratively,” he said.

“Sure, but I just want to tug on that string and see where it leads. It was so random and out of nowhere.”

“No problem, I’ll take care of it,” he said. “MII called. Twice. Sounded annoyed. They want you to call them back.”

Figured. House Pierce wasn’t happy about Adam setting an office tower on fire, so they likely leaned on Augustine Montgomery, and now he would lean on me. Crap rolled downhill.

I would have to call Augustine Montgomery. I wasn’t looking forward to it.

The cuts on my neck and wrists turned out to be shallow. Catalina helped me clean up and put Neosporin on them. I didn’t get much of a chance to recuperate. Bern came back with Professor Itou’s office hours, which were between two and four. I fixed my makeup and hair, put on a business suit—not one of my expensive ones but the simple middle-of-the-road grey—then we jumped into the car and drove to the University of Houston.

We found Professor Ian Itou in his office in the history department. He had someone with him, so we sat in the hallway, twiddling our thumbs. Students hurried back and forth, dragging their bags and overly caffeinated drinks. Everyone seemed so young. I wasn’t that much older, but for some reason I felt ancient. I was probably just tired.

Even when I was in college, people seemed young to me. I had a full-time job. For me, going to college meant get in, sit in class, turn my stuff in, and get out as soon as I could. I went to one fraternity party, and that was because I had a crush on the guy in my Criminal Justice Organization and Administration class. He had huge brown eyes and freakishly long eyelashes. Every time he blinked, it was an experience. We went on three dates, agreed that this was a bad idea, and parted ways. Eventually I ended up dating Kevin. He was a great guy, and he made my sophomore and junior years awesome. I was so comfortable with him. He just had this way of putting me at ease, and he almost never lied to me. We talked; we hung out; we had good sex and did all of the things that two young people in love usually did. I thought I would marry him. Not that he asked or I did, but back then I could see myself being married to him. It wasn’t a wildfire, high drama, heart-pounding-excitement kind of relationship. People started telling us we were like an old married couple three months after our first date. Kevin was just solid, like a rock. Being with him was so easy. No pressure.

My mother didn’t like him. She thought I was settling because Dad had died less than a year before and I wanted stable and normal. At the time it didn’t feel that way. Then, in our senior year, Kevin got accepted into a graduate program at CalTech. He invited me to move with him to Pasadena. I told him I couldn’t. My family was here, my business was here, and I couldn’t just abandon it all. He said he understood, but he couldn’t miss this opportunity. Neither one of us ended up being that upset about it. There was no ugly breakup, and there were no tears. I was bummed out about it for the first few weekends, and then I moved on. Kevin was in Seattle now, working for an engineering firm. He was married and he and his wife had twins six months ago. I had looked him up on Facebook. It made me a little sad, but mostly I was happy for him.

The point was that, while I was in college, I didn’t do all those typical things. I was never in a sorority. I didn’t belong to any clubs. If I came home at dawn, it was because there was some surveillance involved. People spoke about their college “experience,” and I really had no clue what it was all about.

I glanced at Bern. “Hey. You know, if you want to join a fraternity, you totally can.”

My cousin’s shaggy eyebrows crept up. He reached over and carefully put his hand on my forehead. Checking for fever. “I’m worried about you.”

I pushed his hand off. “I’m serious. I don’t want you to feel like you have to miss out on anything.”

He pointed at himself. “Programmer and cybermagician. We don’t join fraternities. We hide in our lairs in darkness and bloom under the glow of computer screens.”

“Like mushrooms?”

“Just like that. Except that mushrooms don’t bloom. They produce spores.”

The door to Professor Itou’s office opened and a girl with a dark ponytail walked out, waving a stack of papers. She glared at us. “He can take his B and shove it. A B! It was the best essay in the class!” She stomped down the hallway.

Bern caught the door before it closed. “Professor? I emailed you earlier?”

“Come on in,” a cheerful male voice called.

Professor Itou was about my height and about fifteen years older, athletic, with a compact, powerful build and hooded dark eyes. He seemed full of energy as he shook my hand and sat behind his desk, poised against a massive bookcase filled to the brink. His expression was cheerful.

“What can I do for you, Ms. Baylor?”

“I was hoping to find out more about your theories regarding the Great Chicago Fire. Bern mentioned that you didn’t think the cow had started it.”

Professor Itou smiled, threw one leg over the other, and braided his fingers on his knee. He looked like someone had just told him a really funny joke and he was still inwardly chuckling over it.

“It’s not something that’s often talked about in historians’ circles. In fact, my research into it has actually made me an object of not so gentle mockery. Academics.” He opened his eyes wide in pretended horror. “Vicious beasts. They’ll rip your throat out if you aren’t careful.”

Bern grinned. I could see why my cousin liked Professor Itou. This one academic clearly didn’t take himself too seriously.