Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

brAN

By the time I finally get home, I’m so exhausted, I can barely see straight. My shift ended I don’t even remember when, but with a wildfire so out of control, it’s not like you can just clock off and say, “See ya tomorrow.” We need everyone we can get, for as long as it’s safe for them to stay. There have been times when I’ve been rotating in and out for days on a fire, only getting enough time off for sleep and food. Thank fuck this fire didn’t turn into one of those situations.

“Cody?” I call, kicking my shoes off in the tiny cupboard we call the utility room. “You home?” He’d better be—I’ve gotten enough calls from his teachers lately about him not turning in homework assignments.

“What?” he yells.

He’s home, then. Good.

“Just letting you know I’m back.” I pad through to the kitchen in my sock feet. All I really want right now is to collapse and sleep, but I know if I don’t eat something, my stomach will wake me up later. “What are you doing?” I grab a portion-sized container of lasagna and send up mental thanks to whoever came up with the idea of meal prepping… and made my teenage brother someone who likes to cook.

Still not sure where he got that gene from.

Cody appears in the doorway just as I sit at the counter with the container and a fork. “Jeez, aren’t you even going to heat that up? You’re such a caveman.” He snatches it from me, and I make a sound of protest.

“Cody! I’m starving.”

“This’ll take two minutes. Eat an apple.” He tosses me one while putting the lasagna into the microwave one-handed. “Cold lasagna is gross, bro. The cheese is all solid and blech.” He shudders as the microwave kicks on, and I take a bite out of the apple, wishing it was lasagna.

It’s probably not a bad thing for me to eat some fruit, though.

“So,” I say between bites, “how was school?”

He shrugs one shoulder, face turning sullen. “Boring. Fine.”

Guilt stabs at me. He’s too smart for that school—all his teachers have said so. He should be somewhere that caters for gifted kids, but that’s expensive, and the schools we looked at that were able to offer him even a partial scholarship were too far away for him to live at home. I did consider letting him board, but he point-blank refused. He won’t leave me and Mom.

Even though Mom doesn’t even know who we are anymore.

I also looked into moving us all closer to one of those schools, but not only was that way more expensive than I could afford, all of Mom’s doctors also advised against it. She’s settled well in this facility, and she has a routine and people she’s kind of familiar with. Moving her would cause a lot of stress for her. Cody said not to bother, and he’s been doing online college classes to stretch his brain, but still, I feel guilty.

I’m supposed to be looking after him. I’m all he’s got in the way of responsible adults. It’s not fair that he’s not getting the opportunities he deserves.

“You know,” I start, “if you graduated early, you could?—”

“Stop, Bran. We’ve talked about this. I don’t want to be the freak sixteen-year-old college freshman who makes half the class look stupid.”

“Modest, much?” It’s true, though. The college credits he’s been working on prove that.

“I’d rather finish school on time and get to experience college when I’m legal and my classmates won’t be afraid to date me in case of felony charges.”

Can’t argue with that point. “Then we need to find you a project.” I’ve said it a billion times, but neither of us has thought of anything yet. All the stuff that would be great for him needs cash to get started—not a lot, but more than we have to spare.

“I’m good,” he promises me. “And I’ll try harder to do homework so the teachers don’t bug you.” The microwave dings, and he goes to get my dinner while I try not to feel bad about making him feel bad. I know the reason he doesn’t hand in homework is because he forgets to do it, not because he can’t. The teachers know that too—it’s why he hasn’t failed a class yet. Once we remind him and he gets it done, he hands in A+ work. He’s just so bored with the assignments that he puts them out of his mind until it’s too late.

A plate of steaming pasta is put in front of me, and I snatch up the fork. “Thank you,” I say gratefully. As far as teenagers go, he’s such a good kid.

He slides into the chair beside me. “No biggie. I heard you finally got that wildfire out,” he adds, trying to sound casual.

I nod and swallow my food. “Yeah. Thank fuck. Second shift is dealing with the rest of the cleanup and the paperwork.”

“It’s early for such a big fire, isn’t it? That’s not a good sign.”

I automatically rap the surface of the table to ward off bad luck. “Don’t put that out there,” I warn him. “We’re not borrowing trouble.”

It’s his turn to nod. “Yeah. Sure.” The words are steady enough, but he can’t hide the worry on his face, and for the millionth time, I wonder if I should look into changing jobs.

I don’t have enough brain cells still awake to think about this again. “Listen,” I say, desperate to change the subject. “I need to ask you a favor. It’s… kind of weird. Okay, so it’s very weird, and if my boss finds out, he won’t be happy.”

Cody immediately perks up. “Oh yeah? What is it?”

God, am I really about to do this? “Remember that guy I told you about? The one who always seems to be turning up to the big fires? The one I thought I saw walking out of a fire that one time?” Even I have to concede that was unlikely—probably the result of too much smoke, not enough sleep, and dehydration. It happens. But the guy was definitely there that day.

“Sure. The redhead you think might be an arsonist.”

I wince. That theory didn’t go down well with my captain or the chief when we had the guy arrested and then he was freed due to lack of evidence. For the record, I didn’t actually accuse the guy of being an arsonist. I just said he’d been seen at a lot of the really out-of-control fires, regardless of location, and that it might be worth keeping an eye on him. I’m pretty sure there’s some stuff the chief was told that he’s not sharing, but I’ve basically been told to stay away from the redhead. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“What about him?” Cody’s definitely interested. When I first mentioned the guy to him, years back, he spun this huge conspiracy theory that the redhead might be setting fires to hide the bodies of his murder victims. That led to a pile of research that probably set off some kind of FBI crime alert while he poked holes in his own theory, and now he’s interested in any scrap of information I can give for his “profile” on the guy.

Which means this is probably a really bad idea.

But… the guy was there again today. And yesterday, and the day before. Today, though, there was another guy with him, and something about the two of them… I don’t know. It just felt off.

Which is why I sneakily took a photo of him when nobody was paying attention.

“I got a picture today. Is there any chance you can?—”

“Yes! Send it to me.” Cody whips out his phone and looks at me eagerly.

This was a mistake. “Cody?—”

“C’mon, Bran. It’s fine. I’ll do a reverse image search and find his social media or something. I’ll have a look, find out he’s a perfectly respectable guy who likes hiking and hates that fires destroy so much, and we can all let this go. That’s it.”

I hesitate. “You know, fires can be destructive, but they’re actually really good for the forest in the long run. They?—”

“Bran! I don’t need your conservationist lecture right now. Send me the photo, then go to bed. You showered at the station, right?”

“Believe me, you’d know if I hadn’t.” Reluctantly, regretting the decision that led me to this point, I pull out my phone and send Cody the picture I took earlier. “Do not do anything that could get you charged with stalking… or any crime.”

Cody holds up his hand. “Scout’s honor.”

“You were never a Scout.” I pick up my empty plate and take it to the sink while he laughs.

“Bran? Bran, bro, c’mon. It’s been nine hours, and now you gotta wake up.”

Groaning, I pull myself from the warm depths of sleep and blink through the dimness at my little brother. “What the hell?”

“Listen, wake up. You normally get up for work in a couple hours, so it’s not that early, and I need to talk to you.”

Huh? “What time’s it?”

“Just after three. Are you awake?”

Huffing, I haul myself up to sitting and lean over to switch on the lamp. “Cody, why are you waking me at three in the fucking morning? Are you sick?”

“Nah, listen?—”

“Did the care facility call?” I’m pretty sure they didn’t—they’d have tried my cell first, which I can see from here, and there are no missed calls on it.

“Bran, listen ! I found your guy.”

I blink slowly at him, my brain still not finished sleeping. “What?”

“Your guy, the redhead! I found him.”

Staring at my brother, I wonder if the social services people were right and I should have considered placing him with a foster family. People who could have raised him in an environment that was more normal than what he’s got now. “Have you been to bed yet? Please tell me you haven’t been up all night.”

“For fuck’s sake, Bran, that’s not important! I found him.”

His barely leashed excitement gets through to me, and I square my shoulders. “I’m guessing he’s not a hiker.”

Cody shrugs. “He might be. I didn’t see anything about that.”

“Is he supposed to be in prison or something?” God, please don’t let me have pointed my baby brother in the direction of an escaped serial killer.

“No. He’s a conservationist… I think.”

“He’s… what?” That makes no sense.

“Listen, this guy has zero social media presence. Nothing . He doesn’t look old, so there should be something—it’s almost impossible to grow up in this day and age and not have someone tag you in a photo online.”

It doesn’t sound that impossible to me. I don’t have social media either—not really. Just the accounts I set up so I could monitor Cody’s online presence.

“Like, he’s not even on any hookup apps,” Cody continues, snapping my attention back to him.

“How would you know?” I can’t be that bad of a stand-in parent, can I? “Show me your phone.”

He rolls his eyes. “Relax. I checked from your phone. Oh, and I might have accidentally matched you with some guy.”

I moan. “It’s too early for this. I’ve had no coffee.”

“It’s good that you’re bisexual, because otherwise I would have had to change some of your settings,” he continues blithely while I contemplate how much more peaceful my life would be if I’d been an only child.

“Do you have a point, and can you either make it or go away? It’s my day off,” I beg.

“I’ve been trying to tell you. I finally found a picture of the guy online, and it’s a recent one. He was in the background, in profile, with a bunch of other guys, which is why it took so long, but that hair is hard to miss.”

“Uh-huh.” My eyes start to drift closed.

“The photo was from a press conference at Krills Institute about research that proves pollution here in North America can affect seaweed or something in Asia. I didn’t read the article properly—I was looking for names.”

“Mmm. Find them?”

“Not your guy, but I got the name of the marine biologist who did the research… and I found another photo of him with one of the guys who was in the background. The caption said it was his boyfriend.”

“That’s great.” I can probably get a couple more hours?—

“ Bran! The boyfriend had blue hair and was hanging out with our guy! This marine biologist probably knows him!”

That gets my attention, and I open my eyes. “Okay, so… what? You’re probably right about him being a conservationist.” Weird as that seems.

Cody scoffs in disgust. “Why are you this way? We can go talk to the biologist and find out who our guy is.”

“That sounds like stalking, Cody. Do we need to have a talk about not doing illegal things?”

With a dramatic sigh, my brother says, “Dr. Peters—the biologist—is giving a talk at Krills this Saturday about his research. Let’s go. If the chance comes up to talk to him, we can maybe ask some leading but not stalkerish questions. That’s all I’m asking.”

Somehow, I doubt it’s that simple, but he’s giving me big, sad, “I’m practically an orphan and not getting the mental stimulation I need” eyes, so I nod.

“Fine. Now let me sleep.”