Welcome to Harmony (22 page)

He then settled back in his chair and told her of a woman he’d met who had a collection of a hundred clothespin dolls with faces all painted and dresses made to fit the wooden clothespin.

She laughed.

He didn’t tell Katherine that the lady’s family decided her collection should be buried with her. Tyler strongly suspected not one relative wanted to continue the hobby.

Katherine told him about having car trouble and having to deal with a mechanic who suggested changes she knew she didn’t need. She described growing up with a father who made her change her own oil and rotate her tires. He ran their house like it was a boot camp. She told of being able to make a bed a quarter would bounce on by the time she started school.

Tyler was impressed. He’d always considered himself being very mechanical when he refilled the wiper fluid, and he’d never made a bed in his life.

They talked for an hour before she wrote,
After midnight, have to get some sleep.

Me, too,
he answered.

Tomorrow. Good night, dear one. If I ever disappear for a few days, trust that it will not be by choice on my part.

I feel the same. Good night, my Kate.

He stared at the screen for a while. He was someone’s dear one.

ALEX REFILLED HER COFFEE CUP AND SAT BACK DOWN AT the table across from her deputy, Phil Gentry, and Trooper Davis from the highway patrol. They were both men with experience, trusted men. Davis followed his gut feelings and now and then stepped on a few toes, but he’d asked for this assignment, so she knew it mattered to him. Phil Gentry had been with the department in Harmony for more than twenty years and always thought out every possibility.

Trying to concentrate, Alex figured she was the weak link in the team. She couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about before she went for coffee. Translation, the only man she truly saw in the room this morning was Hank Matheson. He seemed all professional and distant, as if nothing had happened between them in the parking lot of a bar last night.

For once she wished she’d had enough to drink the night before to have trouble remembering what she’d done. Unfortunately, she remembered every word, and worse, she remembered every touch. It had all started with the way Hank gently handled her on the dance floor. No one had ever driven her so crazy with such an easy touch. He’d brushed her, pressed against her, moved with her through song after song, but he’d never taken it beyond the limit. If he had, she could have stepped away. She might even have slapped him and stormed off the dance floor. As it was, she’d been the one making a fool of herself.

“If our arsonist follows the pattern,” Hank said, tapping the map on the table without looking at her. In fact, he hadn’t really looked at her since he’d arrived exactly at seven. “I figure he’ll strike in about ten days, maybe two weeks.”

The others agreed with his assessment. Alex downed a big gulp of hot coffee, knowing her concentration was off. Hank had been ready to work this morning and so had she—in theory. She couldn’t help wondering if last night lingered in his thoughts the way it did in hers. She remembered the way he’d touched her breast, not like a man exploring, but more like a man who knew exactly what he wanted. The man before her now was nothing like the man who’d kissed her last night.

Hank circled a spot on the map with a highlighter as he said, “I’m guessing right about here. I could be a mile or two off in any direction, but this guy is playing some kind of game, and it looks like Harmony is in the center of his target. When he finishes roping us in, he’ll head for town.”

Alex leaned forward. The area he thought would be hit next took in one corner of the McAllen ranch, half of Hank’s land, and part of the old Truman place on Lone Oak Road, along with four other small places scattered in between.

“What do we do that we’re not already doing?” Trooper Davis asked.

“We could ask the farmers to plow a fire break between the farms. That, and the roads will keep most fires from spreading.” Hank frowned. “If flames reach the CRP grass here, and here, it’s tall and thick. That kind of fire might jump, even a road or a plowed line.”

“I could get county crews to mow anything along the roads,” Alex suggested.

“That’ll help, but we don’t want to cause our arsonist to get suspicious. He might move somewhere else, and we can’t watch every mile of road. I’m thinking right now he has no idea we’re on to him.”

“We don’t know much,” Alex admitted. “We don’t know what he’ll do once he’s made his circle.”

“And,” Hank added, “if he panics, he could set more than one fire at a time.”

“We need rain,” the deputy said.

Hank straightened. “We can pray for rain, but we plan for fire.”

They all agreed.

“One last thing.” Hank finally glanced at her, but she saw no emotion in his stare. “On the outside of this circle, a mile or so farther out from Harmony than he’s ever set a fire, there’s a small branch of the Palo Duro.” Hank hesitated, pointing to what looked like a root running across the map. The Palo Duro Canyon ran for hundreds of miles across the flat land of upper Texas. The canyons grew shallow and small, branching out in thin veins cutting into flat land. There were long stretches of miles where no roads had ever been cut.

“If our firebug sets a fire at this rim of the canyon, there are no farms close and no roads to get the trucks into the area fast. A grass fire could burn wide before we could get to it. I’ve got two trucks at the station, but we can’t battle a fire line miles long and have any chance of putting it out before it reaches a fence, much less a road.”

Deputy Gentry leaned forward. “What if we had Wild Derwood fly over those sections a few times a day?”

Hank shrugged. “Who’d pay for it? The fire department runs on volunteers, and last I checked the city and county budgets had no extra funds.”

“If we requisition money, everyone in town would know about it,” Alex added. “Whoever is setting these fires would love all the talk. This kind of guy lives off the excitement. He could be right in the middle of us and we’d never know.”

“Right,” Hank agreed.

Phil Gentry smiled that fake smile he always used in poker games. “Wild Derwood would love to be on the volunteer fire department, Chief.”

Hank frowned. “Derwood’s crazy. Everyone knows that. He stole his dad’s Cessna and went joy riding when he was twelve. He flies over the cemetery every Sunday to wave at his mom, and his favorite topic of conversation is clouds. A few years back he told me he was born with cloudaphobia and had to fight like hell to overcome it. I think he may have gone too far in the other direction.”

“He brought the plane back safe that day he was twelve, so we know he’s a good pilot. And good pilots always watch clouds,” Gentry said, “and you can’t fault a man for loving his mother.”

“That doesn’t make him sane.” Hank folded his arms. Everyone at the table knew Derwood also occasionally smoked the weeds he grew in his backyard, but no one mentioned it or they’d have to deal with the problem and in so doing lose the town’s only good pilot.

“So, if his only flaw is insanity”—Alex looked from Phil Gentry to Hank—“what does that make him?”

Hank frowned.

Phil smiled. “A firefighting volunteer.”

Alex choked down a laugh. Hank looked like he’d swallowed a horned toad. She knew he didn’t want Derwood around the fire station, but he also saw Phil’s point. One plane could do more good at spotting a fire than twenty men.

She watched Hank fold up the map and shake hands with the other men as they moved to the door. He didn’t say a word to her. She told herself everything was back to normal. Last night had been a lapse into a place neither of them planned to go.

If and when she was ready to get involved with a man, it wouldn’t be Hank Matheson. He’d always seemed so much older than she was. When she was sixteen, going to her first dress-up dance, he and Warren had been like two fathers, questioning the boy, taking pictures on the porch. Half the conversations she’d had with Hank in her life had been when he was telling her what she should do or ordering her to listen to her brother or telling her to grow up and act like a lady.

Alex frowned as she took a seat behind her desk. She hadn’t acted like much of a lady last night. But then, he wasn’t exactly acting like a big brother.

She knew they should put this attraction for each other aside, but when this was over she had a feeling a different kind of sparks were going to fly.

“Alex.” Hank’s voice snapped her back from her thoughts.

“Yes.” She grabbed a pen and spent a few seconds looking busy before she glanced at the door. She couldn’t help but notice he looked a little hesitant. “What is it?”

He took one step into her office and stopped. “I told Noah he could come over to the station this afternoon and I’d start his training. I want him more aware of safety before he stops to help out at another site, if that’s all right with you?”

“It’s a good idea.” She knew no one in her family could stop Noah. She’d been a wild child, but her little brother was both wild and brave, a far more dangerous combination. “Thank you, Hank.”

“No problem.” He leaned against the wall. “You know, when he learns enough to go on a call, I’ll do my best to keep him out of harm’s way.”

“I know.” She smiled. “He’s stubborn.”

Hank gave her a pointed look. “It must run in the family.”

He was five feet away and she swore she could feel his hand on her breast. This man drove her mad. He wasn’t her type. He knew every fault she had, every wild thing she’d ever done. She wasn’t looking for a man, and if she were, it wouldn’t be him.

She liked her men reckless and out of control with the taste of danger on their lips. Hank was steady and solid. How reckless can a man be who lives with his mother, two sisters, two great-aunts, and a four-year-old? The man had so much baggage he needed his own U-Haul.

Last night in the parking lot was probably as close as he’d ever come to being out of control. And even then, he’d been the one to stop, to think of what a scene they’d make, to think of her.

The memory of how he’d handled her in the dark flooded back, and she felt fire in her cheeks.

She looked up and saw that he was still standing by the door staring at her. “What are you looking at?” she snapped.

“You,” he said, and his slow smile told her he had guessed what she was thinking.

He turned and walked out of the office.

Alex put her elbows on her desk and held her forehead in her palms. “That’s it,” she whispered. “When this is all over I’m going to check myself in for observation. I’m losing my mind.” She slapped her forehead. “Or, maybe I’ll go flying with Wild Derwood and let him tell me about clouds while we fly over the cemetery and wave at his mom.”

REAGAN SAT IN THE PACKED STANDS OF THE HARMONY rodeo waiting for the bull riding to begin. Everyone in town was at the rodeo grounds tonight, and most had come to see Noah “Preacher” McAllen ride. She’d heard talk that many thought he might just be a better rider than his father, Adam, had been. Adam McAllen had put Harmony on the map in his youth. When he’d ridden in the national finals, it was said that more than a hundred folks went to Las Vegas to see him win.

Adam McAllen was a legend. Even when he moved to Amarillo three years ago and separated from his wife, he still told reporters in interviews that he was from Harmony.

Reagan didn’t care about Adam McAllen. All she cared about was his son. She hadn’t seen Noah except at school for almost two weeks. Since the night of the fire at the McNabb place, Noah had been hanging out at the fire station when he wasn’t training for this one eight-second ride tonight.

At lunch, he’d told her all about it, until she felt she knew as much as he did about how to fight fires. She also learned that both his sister, Alex, and Hank Matheson were worried that there would be more fires. Hot, dry weather warned of it, and spring seemed to have nothing but hot, dry days coming one after the other.

She and Noah had sat on the tailgate of his pickup one afternoon and planned what would have to be done on Jeremiah’s place if fire came. Reagan hated the thought of it. She didn’t mind that the spooky old trees to the main road might have to be cut down, but she didn’t like the idea of scarring the earth with a plow. Jeremiah loved looking out over his land and it wouldn’t be the same if they plowed a fire line.