Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel) (7 page)

She gave him a not-so-reassuring smile.

Luigi pinched a hotdog from Boone's plate. "Yum. Delicious. Do you know what would make these better? Some
nattō
with yellow mustard.”

Nattō
was fermented soybeans so sticky and pungent, it felt like swallowing snot. It was the only Japanese food Boone refused to eat when he was stationed there.

Luigi
offered the hotdog to Cedar. "Want some?"

"Think
context," she said. "Finger plus food does not equal appetite. It equals regurgitation. Luigi, do you need a ride home?"

"
I will walk," Luigi said. "My host family lives only one mile from here."

"That's
a long walk," Boone said, "and it's almost dark. I’ll be glad to give you a ride.”

But
Luigi refused. "In Japan, I walk three miles to the train station every day. One mile is nothing. I need to make my legs stretchy."

Cedar
smiled. "That's
stretch your legs
."

"Idioms
suck." Luigi laughed and wiped his face with a napkin. He ran his hands through the shock of black hair that covered his brow, making it spike in all directions.

They
left the event in a pack. Boone and Cedar went to their cars, which were parked in adjacent slots. Luigi waved as he turned down the road toward the home of his host family. A quarter mile down the way, the road turned from pavement to sandy soil. Boone noted that Luigi's shiny ankle boots were completely the wrong footwear for walking in the country, especially on dirt roads.

"
Don’t change the subject. You're not getting off the hook that easy," Cedar said over the top of her VW Bug. "Still on for dinner tomorrow?"

“You worried I changed my mind?”
he said and leaned on the hood.

She flashed a smile. “My schedule’s pretty full, and I don't like changes to it.”

“Like your coach’s surprise practice tonight.”

“Exactly.
He fouled up my plans.”

"
You can count on me," Boone said opened her door. “I won’t call a surprise practice.”

Cedar
slid behind the wheel and after starting the engine, down the passenger window. "Sorry to be neurotic. I’m not very good at curveballs."

"
Some theorize that a curveball is actually an optical illusion."

Cedar
tilted her chin just so. Even sweaty from practice, she looked amazingly kissable. "Lyman Briggs used wind tunnel testing to prove that the backspin on the ball causes it to break, so a curveball does curve."

"
I’ll keep that in mind the next time I need to throw one."

Boone
reluctantly closed her door. He watched her pull onto the highway, then speed off. He sighed and shook his head. “Boone, you’ve got no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

He looked down at
Stumpy’s finger, which he’d half forgotten about, and immediately, his mind was on the Tin City fire again. He put the finger on his front seat and fired up the truck.

On the way back to the cabin, Boone drove
with only half of his mind on the road. How did the finger find its way into Stumpy's hands? Better yet, who did it belong to? Abner might be able to tell him, or he would know someone who could.

He dialed his grandfather and got voicemail. “Hey,
Abner. Call me back. I’ve got something to show you.”

Boone's family
lived at the end of Tobacco Road, named as a joke after a trashy novel, in a split-timber log home that Lamar built himself. The farm was about two hundred acres, and on it they grew organic blueberries, scuppernong grapes, and raised horses, miniature goats, and thirty head of Angus beef. Lamar had inherited the farm from his parents, who grew tobacco for fifty years. They passed away just before the tobacco market in North Carolina collapsed under the weight of Brazilian competition and a massive government buyout of the tobacco quota. Unlike many farmers in Bragg County, Lamar had taken the death of tobacco in stride and diversified. He hated smoking anyway. It had killed both of his parents.

Boone
came into the cabin as Lamar was pulling food out of the microwave. Dinner was warmed up lasagna, one of the three he had baked over the weekend, which was when Lamar did the week's cooking. With two firefighters and a veterinarian in the house, they never knew when dinner would be, and Lamar liked to be prepared for any emergency. It seemed like life was a potential emergency for him.

Lamar,
dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans, didn't look up, even though he had to know Boone was home. The cabin was surrounded on three sides by wooden decks, and you could hear somebody coming a mile away.

At
first, Boone thought of heading upstairs to the loft. If Lamar was ignoring him, maybe he should play the same game. But he knew that doing so would only prolong the inevitable, so he threw his bag on the couch, put the plastic container way in the back of the freezer, and grabbed a can of beer from the fridge.

He
leaned against the edge of the kitchen wall. He finished the beer as Lamar set the glass casserole pan and a tossed salad on the table.

"Plates,"
Lamar said, which was a command for Boone to set the table.

"Silverware?"
Boone asked.

Lamar
grunted a reply.

It
was easy to tell when Lamar was perturbed. Most people yelled when they were upset, and the angrier they were, the louder they got. But Lamar was the opposite. He got very quiet. And he started fixing things. In middle school, Boone learned about Occam ’s Razor, which posits that the simplest solution to a problem is usually the right one. When his mom remarried after the divorce, Boone learned about something called Lamar's Hammer, which posits that the first step in fixing anything is to give it a good whack.

Did
the TV have lines rolling through it? Whack.

Glove
box rattling in the truck? Whack!

Vent
fan humming too loud in the bathroom when you’re using the facilities? Whack!

Fortunately,
Lamar didn't believe in hitting people, so he decided to fix his dining table chair, which seemed to have a wobbling leg. He turned it upside down, holding the wooden base in his left hand and hammering the offending leg with the palm of his right.

Boone
winced. Even though calluses as hard and thick as a horse hoof covered Lamar's hand, it still hurt to watch him striking hardwood with a bare hand.

"Where's
Mom?" he said.

"Horses."

To the untrained eye, that meant that Mom was out feeding the horses. Boone knew different. It meant that she was as angry as Lamar, and that she had put herself in timeout. Taking care of the horses calmed her down, soothed the edges of her ragged temper. Unlike Lamar, when Mom got angry, she got loud. It didn't last long, but her temper was a sight to behold. That kind of flash fire anger didn't bother Boone. It had always been Lamar's stoicism that unnerved him the most.

As
soon as Boone finished setting the table, Lamar flipped his chair upright and then sat down. It didn't rock anymore.

"Let's
eat."

Boone
sat opposite Lamar. "What about Mom?"

"She'll
be along."

For
five minutes, neither one spoke. Boone didn't have much of an appetite, and he was driven to distraction by the presence of the finger in the freezer. He wanted to get it to Abner tonight, before anyone could find it.

Finally,
after shoveling in forkfuls of lasagna and salad coated with Thousand Island dressing, Boone’d had enough. He set his fork on the table.

“There’s something I want to run past you,” Boone said.

Lamar nodded for him to go on.

“R
emember the house fire over in Duck that was in the paper? It followed the same pattern as the Tin City fire, I gathered artifacts that shows they were both—"

Lamar set his fork on
the table. "Did you know that once all the firefighters leave a site, you need a search warrant if you want to look around again?"

"I didn’t know that
."

"Now you do."

Lamar stared into the distance, like there was something there that only he could see. He wiped the corners of his mouth. The longer he took to speak, the more curious Boone became about what he had to say.

"Boone,"
he began, "serving as a firefighter is serious business. It takes determination and discipline. It also takes teamwork.”

“
I known that, Lamar. I’m not a kid.”

“Which is why I’m giving it to you straight.
Today, you broke some of the most sacred rules of the job. You tried to be a hero, and you just about got yourself killed. Rookies make mistakes. Lord knows I've made my share of them, too, but you took it to a new level today."

“And yet you toasted me this morning, using beer that I bought.”

“That’s tradition. What was I supposed to do, embarrass you in front of your friends?” Lamar took a cloth napkin from the table and wiped his palms. He looked into the distance again, growing silent.

Boone waited until he couldn’t stand not to.
"What're you trying to tell me?"

“S
peaking as your captain, you're on probation from the fire department. "

"Probation?"
Boone said as his phone buzzed.

Lamar
nodded. "One more slip up, and you're suspended."

Boone felt the rushing sound in his ears. He wanted to say something, but his tongue was in a state of
rigor mortis. It was probably better that he didn’t talk. Lamar never listened once he had come to a decision, and he was following the rules and regs to the letter.

But ru
les and regs didn't prevent Boone from acting on the information that he already had in hand. With some analytical work and help from Abner, he could prove the arsons were related, and maybe, if he connected enough dots, he could solve the case and prove that the brotherhood of firefighters was where he belonged.

“Have it your way, cap,” Boone said and walked outside to the back porch to answer a text from Julia in private.

JULIA
: Meet me at station. Important.

BOONE: What’s up?

JULIA: Need your help with something.

BOONE: Be there in 15.

He
stared at the phone. No way was this legit. What kind of help did Julia need at this time of night? He came back inside and grabbed his jacket, even though the night wasn’t cold.

“Going out!” he called to Lamar.

“Don’t be late,” Lamar called back.

Fourteen minutes later, Boone opened the side door of the fire station and hit the lights. The bay was illuminated. The big pump engine glistened in the light. They had buffed it just yesterday, when it seemed like there would never be a call to respond to.

“
Julia?” Boone called out.

“Up here,” she called. “I need
a hand with something.”

Boone looked up the fire pole, where
Julia was peering down at him. “What’s so important that it couldn’t wait till tomorrow?

“Oh this definitely can’t wait.” She smiled and waved. “Come on up. There’s something I’m just dying to show you.”

Boone climbed the stairs.

When he got to the top,
Julia was waiting for him, dressed in her fire coat. Her feet and legs were bare. She dropped the coat and stood in front of him, wearing only a black lace bra and see-through panties.

Her ivory skin glistened with sweat.

“You look hot,” Boone said.

She licked her lips. “I hope you mean that in the way I intended.”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether or not you have good intentions.”

She walked toward him, hands on her
hips. She reached around and unclasped her bra. Cupping her breasts, she pulled the bra loose and dropped it on the floor. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

It sure is, he though
t, although his intentions were definitely not good. He found himself wondering if he should go through with this when it looked like he and Cedar might do more than smile over dissected animals. But they didn’t have anything, not yet and maybe not ever.

Julia
moved into his arms. Her breasts pressed against his chest as she pulled off his shirt. Her skin was hot, and her nipples were so hard, he felt them rub against his stomach. As she turned her mouth up for a kiss that he gladly delivered, her hands unbuckled his belt and unsnapped his jeans. He turned his hips to give her better access while her fingers slid inside his zipper, where his hardness was straining for her touch.