Fire Born (Firehouse 343) (22 page)

“I don’t
even
know why I should bother talking to you,” he added
as he turned slowly to face her
fully
.

“Then maybe you could listen for a moment,” she countered.

“Right now I don’t think you have anything to say that I want to hear.
”

Martie scowled and marched closer. “Too bad, because I’ve got plenty to say.”

“Oh really?”
Chris asked snidely.
“About what?
Is it about how you went behind my back and had me investigated? For no fucking reason, I might add.”

“I was told that I should take a closer look at you before I got involved with you, Chris,” she snapped in return. “I listened to the advice.”

He scoffed as he pushed past her and stalked over to a cooler that was sitting on a folding table, reaching inside to pull out a can of beer. Popping the top, he took a swig and listened for a moment to the sounds of the construction crew working out in the garage. Turning again, he propped himself against the table by a hip, crossing his arms over his chest as he said, “If you do this to all your boyfriends, it’s no wonder you’ve been through the
w
ringer more than once. Haven
’t met a guy yet that
like
d
it when the woman he cares about sneaks behind his back and has him investigated
,
when all she ha
d to do was ask him questions.”

Chris tried not to care when her face pinched at the barb about her dating history. Right now he really wasn’t in the mood to give a damn whether or not her feelings were hurt.

Martie fisted her hands on her hips. “And would you really have answered my questions? If I had asked you if you’d ever committed a crime, would you have been honest with me?”

“Yes.”

She blinked rapidly. Chris took another long draw from the beer and swallowed. “Surprised? Well you shouldn’t be. Why the fuck would you expect me not to answer you honestly, Martie? I’ve got no reason to lie, and I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“I shouldn’t have to ask you if you’ve got a criminal record,” she countered. “A fireman shouldn’t have one.”

He snorted. “Nobody’s perfect, Martie. I know plenty of firefighters who screwed around and got in trouble when they were kids. I’ve met cops with
juvie
records.”

She shifted her stance, co
c
king a hip and crossing her arms as she retorted, “Are any of those cops or firefighters guilty of arson? Did any of them set a house on fire with three people inside?”

“They weren’t in any real danger,” he said.

Martie’s eyes grew large. “’Weren’
t in any real danger’?” she said rhetorically. “Are you
kidding
me?
Their house burned down
, Chris!”

“I’m aware of that. I’m the one who set it on fire, remember?” he snapped angrily.

Martie lifted a h
and and ran it over her face
as she
paced
away from him. “I don’t get it. I just don’t get how you can be so fucking blasé about it. You committed a felony.”

“I paid my penance for that,” Chris reminded her.

“You were damn lucky you were only charged as a juvenile,” she said, then turned back to him. “You could have—and probably should have—been charged as an adult.
”

“I’m aware of that too,” he told her, and chugging the last few swallows of the beer, he crushed the can and flung it aside. “And technically speaking, the house didn’t burn
down—only one wall had to be replaced.
That and some furniture.”

Shaking her head, Martie threw her hands up in the air. “There you go again.
Making light of the fact that you committed a crime.”

He shr
ugged. “I was sixteen.
Kids that age do some really stupid shit, and I happened to be one of them. Consider me a statistic,” he said, deciding on nonchalance as his conversational tactic.
Acting like he didn’t give a damn seemed to make her angr
ier, and that was fine with him
as long as she said what she had to say and left.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the angry flush of her cheeks and heaving of her breasts had sent his groin on a mission of betrayal—Martie was the epitome of “beautiful when angry.”

Resisting the urge to adjust his privates into a more comfortable position (not that such was likely possible, as hard as he was), he crossed his arms again and said, “Anything else?”

She frowned. “So you have nothing to say? No argument in your own defense?” she asked.

“Why should I bother?” Chris retorted. “You’ve already made up your mind about me. I’m no good for you because of one
dumbfuck
thing I did twenty
fuckin
’ years ago. Apparently it don’t matter to you that I’ve done nothing but good since I ended my two years as a guest of the state. It doesn’t matter that I have a college degree, or that I passed the state firefighter’s exam in t
he top ten percent of my class… O
r that I have served this city—
shedding blood and sweat and all but giving up on having a life of my own for ten thousand p
eople I don’t even fucking know—
for nearly half
my life.”

Shoving off from the table, he walked back over to where he’d left his nail gun. He picked it up and, ey
e
ing the wall, prepared to finish nailing the plaster to the studs.

“I guess that’s it then,” Martie said after a moment.

“Yup,” Chris replied, then raised the gun and fired a nail into the wall.

He shot three more before he heard her walk out.

***

Though he had to get up early to get back to work tomorrow, Chris found himself utterly unable to sleep.
He tossed and turned for a couple of hours, finally looking at the clock and seeing that it was a quarter to one. Groaning in frustration, he threw the sheet back and got up. He walked into the kitchen and reached into the fridge for the milk, chugging a couple of swallows before he put it back.

He knew why he was rest
less—his argument with Martie.
It pissed him off to no end that she had run the background check on him, but what hurt worse was that she hadn’t just asked him about his past. He would have told her the truth—why didn’t she believe that?

Perhaps he should have known better. They barely knew each other, so expecting her to simply trust
him
had probably been foolish. But he trusted her—or he had, until he’d learned of her betrayal. Not once in the five days since he
’d met her had he questioned anything she’d told him, or doubted that she’d be honest with him if he asked her a personal question.

Maybe that had been his mistake. Trusting her so completely when he’d only just met her.

He was on his way back to the bedroom to once again fight for sleep when he was startled by the ringing of the phone. Though he didn’t recall having given her his home number, Chris nevertheless wonder
ed as he walked over to it if
Martie
was
calling. He wondered if he’d be able to maintain his temper if it was her.

A look at the caller ID showed him his mother’s number, and fearing that something had happened to one of the family, he snatched up the receiver quickly, saying, “What’s wrong,
iná
?
”

“Hello to you too,
t
ȟ
akóža
,” replied a gravelly voice that could only belong to one person.

“
Thunkášila
?”
Chris queried. “What are you doing calling so late? Are you okay?”

His grandfather lived with his parents—his mother and father had taken him in due to his having developed the early signs of dementia, and they didn’t have the means to send him to live in a nursing home or assisted living community. Not that his mother would have wanted to or his grandfather wo
uld have allowed it. Leland
Redhawk
had long been a firm believer in the old traditions
—
that children should care for their elders when they grew weak as they had once been cared for
when they were weak
. He had instilled that value in his two daughters
, and had his parents not honored those beliefs and tried to put him in a home, Chris knew that his grandfather would have raised holy hell and made life at the facility miserable. Probably to the point that he’d be kicked out, at which time one of his girls would have had to take him in anyway.

“I am well,
t
ȟ
akóža
,” his grandfather replied. “It is your spirit which is not at peace.”

Chris had to laugh. His grandfather had always had the uncanny ability to know when someone in the family was out of sorts, though how he could have known about his own disturbed spirit from as far away as Wolf Point was beyond him.
His sensibility told him it was more than likely the old man had also found
himself
unable to sleep and had decided to dial his number just to talk.

Nevertheless, he asked him, “And how would you know?”

The answer was the same as always.
“I had a dream,” Leland told him
. “There was a beautiful woman, and she carried my
ákta
t
ȟ
akóža
. But she was sad because you were not together
.
There was much anger in your heart, and you had left her.”

Chris turned and sat down on the couch. His grandfather’s dream was much too close to his reality, although to his knowledge, Martie was not pregnant. Five days was simply not enough time to know for sure. But he
was
angry with her, that much was true, and his grandfather’s words were hitting a little too close to home for his comfort.

“You should forgive your lady,” his grandf
ather was saying. “
Iktomi
is afoot.”

“How in the world do you even know I’ve met someone?” Chris countered, ignoring, for the mom
ent, his words about the trickster of Lakota legend
.

“I saw her in my dream,
t
ȟ
akóža
. It was clear that her heart belonged to you. You have chosen well, but take care
that you do not lose her to
Iktomi
.
”

Frowning, Chris
now
wondered at his grandfath
er’s references to
Iktomi
, the spider-trickster
. In many Native mythologies, inc
luding that of the Lakota, the t
rickster
was a mischievous spirit t
hat thrived on stirring up trouble and leading people astray.
In the legend of his own people,
Iktomi
was on
c
e a
man
who was turned into a spider by other powerful spirits who despised him
.
When the people began to make fun of his new looks,
Iktomi
retaliated by playing malicious tricks on them.

“Grandfather, what mak
es you think that
Iktomi
is
involved?” he asked, despite not wanting to give any credence to the possibility that Martie was in danger. Even as angry as he was about what she’d done, the thought of her being hurt reawakened every protective instinct he had.

“There was darkness surrounding the both of you. It has driven you apart,” the old man replied.

Chris scoffed. “No,
Thunkášila
—
Martie
is the one who
drove us apart. She
betrayed my trust in her.”

“That was the Trickster’s doing. Don’t let him take her away from you,
t
ȟ
akóža
.”

His grandfather sighed. A moment of silence passed and then, “I’m going to let you go now—I know you wi
ll do what is right
.”

Before Chr
is could even reply, his grandfather hung up. He held
t
he phone out and stared at it for what seemed a long time, wondering just how much faith he should put into the ramblings of an old man who was slowly losing his mind.

Still, he was unnerved by what he’d been told.
While he appreciated hearing sage words of wisdom once in a while, he’d long ago
made a vow of ignoring the pr
emonition
s h
is grandfather
rattled
on
about every so often
. Unfortunately, the elder Lakota
’s
prophetic
dreams had a really bad habit of coming true, and this one was about Martie—a pregnant Martie who was carrying his child.
The thought of her being in
trouble bothered him.
A lot.