Chapter 2

Gracie

I was so mad I could see red like flames of fire around the edges of my vision.

Benched?

Clarence actually benched me from active duty?

I was just doing my job. It"s not my fault I have a unique skill set that sometimes terrifies others.

Pissed off and ready to lash out, I decided to give myself the day off. Screw Clarence. Screw all of them.

"Come on, it can"t be that bad," Andrew said, swatting me with a wet towel. It stung my arm.

"Ow. Knock it off, asshole."

"Uh-oh. Chief got your panties in a bunch, Gracie Lou?" Dan teased.

"You know damn well my middle name isn"t Lou," I growled. This was an ongoing joke around the station, and it was funny at first, but it was getting old quickly. They were going to ruin my favorite movie at this rate.

"You"re not Gracie Lou Freebush?" he said, feigning shock and causing the rest of the room to hoot with laughter.

"It"s getting old, boys."

"I"ll never get old," Dan insisted. "Right, Rodney?"

"Never," he confirmed.

"I hate all of you."

"Well, if that were true, you"d have quit this job a long time ago, baby girl," Richard "Big Dick" Montgomery said.

"Keep it up Big Dick, you"ll be sorry."

Andrew snorted. "She"s going to punch you in your big dick again if you don"t watch it."

He shrugged good naturedly. "I"ll take my chances."

"Speaking of chances. What do you guys think our odds of yet another fire tonight are? Because I have a date," Dan confessed.

"The hell you do," Guffy Grimes challenged.

"Shut the hell up. I do have a date tonight."

"With who?" Rodney asked.

"That"s my business, and I know better than to tell you idiots."

"Yeah, it"s bullshit. He just wants the night off and playing the sympathy card," Big Dick insisted.

"Believe what you want. I don"t give a shit what you think. Besides, we were talking about Gracie Lou, not me."

"Ms. Freebush, heard you got benched for that little solo act last night," Guffy teased.

My fists balled at my sides and I had an overwhelming desire to punch someone or something, preferably someone. Someone named Guffy would be even better right about now.

"Watch out. I swear I see steam coming out of her ears," Andrew warned.

"You assholes, just laugh it up. Your day is coming and you"ll know how it feels."

"Nah. Won"t happen. Nothing we can possibly do will be as dumb as what you did last night," Dick challenged.

"You did set that bar pretty high," Guffy agreed.

"I can not die, not by fire. So really, I put no one in danger, not even myself. Why can"t everyone just realize that. I knew exactly what I was doing."

"Baby girl, it"s nasty. No one wants to see that," Dick insisted.

"I don"t need this shit. I"ve been benched. I"m just taking the rest of the day off."

I turned to stomp out in a dramatic exit that I rarely allowed myself while at the station. It wasn"t always easy being the only female on the team.

"Gracie," Chief barked.

I sighed.

"What?" I yelled back.

"Get your ass in here. I have a job for you."

It wasn"t like Clarence to change his mind, but maybe he was coming to his senses and realized I hadn"t really put myself or anyone else in danger.

"Yes, sir?" I asked, peeking my head into his office, feeling suddenly optimistic.

"Need you to drive to the site of last night"s fire and finalize the field report. Ryan"s going with you. Perhaps he will offer a fresh perspective. You may want to take him to the other sites as well. We"ve agreed to look at them as one issue for now."

"Arsonist?" I asked. That was the first I"d heard about it.

"Possibly. Five fires in five days, Gracie. I don"t believe in coincidences. So with that in mind, take another look at all the sites. What do they have in common? What story are they telling?"

"You want me to do paperwork for you? We have a team for this kind of shit."

"I"m aware, but if I"m right, we need to get ahead of this thing and fast, so I"m doubling up our resources."

"Then give me Andrew or Dan, anyone. Ryan doesn"t know jack shit about fires. No offense."

"None taken."

Ryan Davenport had been two years ahead of me in school and the most popular guy in our school. I"d had the biggest crush on him. Hell, there wasn"t a girl in school that didn"t have a crush on him at one point or another.

We weren"t kids anymore though, and he'd grown up into a respectable citizen of the Congress. The mayor even. Like what the hell?

Mayors are supposed to be old stodgy men or sophisticated righteous women. Not him. He was like a god around Ravenden, part of the elite and wealthy Davenport Flock, with a body that looked like it was carved out of marble and should be put on display.

I didn"t understand how a man who worked as much as Ryan could manage to find time to work out, but he had to. No one looked like that without regular time in the gym. And with all of his suits custom tailored to accentuate ever ripple of muscle, it was sometimes hard to concentrate in his presence. Hell he looked good. He knew it too. A man couldn"t be that hot and not know it.

Fire couldn"t hurt me. Some days I couldn't decide if it was a gift or a curse. And other days it was both. But messing around with a man like Ryan would surely burn me. I may be considered reckless at times, but I wasn"t stupid.

Still, it was hard to ignore the way my body reacted in his presence. It was almost like I was on the verge of touching a live wire.

Davenport witches had power and the ability to control electricity, so maybe there was something scientifical to it. Because there had to be a reason that I got goosebumps and felt like I was warming from the inside out every time I was near him.

A rush of heat pooled between my legs.

Holy hell, what was he doing to me? Sure, I hadn"t had sex in a long time, longer than I wanted to admit, but with my job it just wasn"t that simple. I had a firm policy of not screwing around at the station. I"d worked my ass off to prove myself in a male dominated career and no lay was good enough to destroy that.

But Ryan? Yeah, I wanted to, but I could never allow it to happen. He might not be in the fire department, but he had enough pull and connections that it would look bad.

I pushed all thoughts of the serious man in the suit, who looked so out of place amongst us common folk, and shoved him into the "do not engage" box. For my own sanity I just prayed he stayed there.

"Gracie?" he said in a deep voice that reverberated through my chest and down—nope!

"Huh?"

Real elegant, Gracie Lou Freebush.

Could I just crawl under a rock now?

"I asked if you want me to drive."

"What?" I said a little sharper than I meant to.

"Is she okay?" he asked my boss.

"What? I thought we agreed I"d take Andrew or Dan along instead."

"Are you okay, Gracie?" Chief asked me.

"I"m fine," I snapped.

"Well, we just had an entire conversation and agreed Ryan will be the best partner for you on this. He has the day free, and I want the boys to get some sleep so they can be on alert for the next incident."

"You really think there is only one person behind all these fires?"

I didn"t have it in me to admit I"d completely zoned out of that conversation and probably needed sleep myself. Though, since I was benched from active duty, I supposed I"d be getting plenty of that tonight.

"I do," Clarence confessed.

If the Chief was that certain, then I had to believe there was something there. I may not be putting out fires in my foreseeable future, but if this truly was one arsonist and I could crack the case, it would look really good and give me a bit more leverage around here.

I"d served my time but in some ways was still treated like a rookie. Or at least that"s how it felt. Would the Chief finally see some value in me if I did this?

Excited and feeling challenged, I walked to the door before turning back to Ryan.

"Are you coming or not?"