A Firefighter in the Family

She stopped Eric with a quick, cutting hand gesture. “Let’s focus on figuring out what happened here. Any ideas?”

Randi retreated into her job, quizzing her brother about the fire and the building’s owner.

“Eric, come on, we got work to do.” Will’s voice wasn’t that of an older brother, but rather a superior officer.

“Coming.” Eric looked back at her. “You’ll be around?”

“Yeah.” She scanned the rubble. “Looks like this might take a while.”

“You staying at Mom and Dad’s?” He always asked the question, even though the answer never changed.

“No. I’ll get a room.” She ignored the sad look in Eric’s blue eyes.

“I’ll call you on your cell then. We’ll grab a bite.”

“Eric!” Will sounded more irritated.

“Go on before he really gets his drawers in a wad.” She smiled, trying to make light of the situation.

Taking a chance at angering their older brother, Eric leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I’d hug you but I’m pretty rank at the moment.”

“Thanks for keeping your sweat to yourself.”

He smiled again, his white teeth standing out against his blackened face. “Catch ya later.” He slogged through the mud in his splattered boots, and she remembered when they’d been kids, running through puddles after a fast-moving coastal rain.

“Let’s get to it,” she said to Thor as she stirred the ash. He began sniffing the remains of the building, searching for accelerant.

When the breeze shifted and replaced the scent of char with the freshness of the ocean, Randi breathed deeply and closed her eyes, remembering how she used to crawl up onto her parents’ roof to soak in the sun and watch the waves roll in. When she wrapped this case, she’d take some vacation time to relax. Every firebug in Florida had picked this spring to torch all available combustibles, and the worst drought in a decade wasn’t helping. She and Thor were more in demand than ever.

“You going to catch the bastard who did this?”

At the edge of the burned-out area stood a tall man with gray hair and a tan that would rival George Hamilton’s. This guy must spend every daylight hour outside without a drop of sunscreen.

Randi raised from her crouched position. “Mr. Oldham?”

“Yeah.”

Randy carefully picked her way across the building’s innards toward its owner. “Any idea what might have started this fire?”

“I have no doubt someone torched the place,” he said.

Randi crossed her arms and watched Oldham for the slightest change of expression. She kept her voice even and nonaccusatory as she asked, “What makes you say that?”

“Locals have an aversion to progress.”

“So there was opposition to the construction?” She’d once known every piece of gossip in town, but not much Horizon Beach news made it to her present home in Pensacola.

“You could say that.”

“From whom?”

He gestured inland. “Damn neighbors, a park ranger, some of those freak greenies. Hell, might even be that stupid bar guy,” Oldham said. “Don’t think I’m his favorite person, either.”

She asked about each potential suspect and took thorough notes on them.

“You mentioned a ‘bar guy.’ Can you be more specific?”

“Parker. Owns a little shack of a bar on the beach.”

Her heart beat wildly for a moment at the mention of the name Parker, until her mind caught up and struck the possibility of it being Zac Parker. Zac was a firefighter, not a bartender.

Oldham pointed to the southeast. “I tried to buy him out, wanted to put a pool where he’s at, but he wouldn’t budge.”

Randi cloaked herself in her professional persona instead of memories. “Sounds as though your condos weren’t too popular. Why build them here?”

He directed his “watch your smart mouth, girlie” gaze at her, but she didn’t look away. She’d interviewed too many people who’d torched their own homes and businesses for the insurance money to let this guy bother her.

“Have you seen the rest of the Florida coast?” he asked. “High-rise condos are a dime a dozen, hard to make them stand out among the hordes. Here, it’d be the only one.”

“For now.”

“That’s what matters.” Oldham looked at the heap that used to be his investment. “You really think you can find out how this happened?”

Thor barked, deep and throaty, the distinctive bark that meant he’d completed a mission. She and Oldham looked to where Thor stood at a spot close to what had been the southwest corner of the building.

Randi nodded toward Thor. “That’s a step in the right direction.”

ZAC PARKER CURSED under his breath when the breeze shifted, bringing the smoky smell of the burned building into his open-air bar. Once, he’d considered that smell a part of everyday life. Now, it just brought back bad memories.

“Guess he ticked off one too many people, huh?”

Zac looked up from where he was pulling a cold Budweiser from the bottle cooler beneath the bar. Adam Canfield, his friend and regular bar patron, stared at the remains of Bud Oldham’s controversial venture into Gulf Coast realty.

“Maybe,” Zac said. “Could have been wiring or someone forgot to turn off a torch.”

Adam looked back at Zac and accepted the beer. “You don’t really believe that.”

Zac shrugged. “Don’t know. Not my problem.” He would not admit to any instinctive curiosity about the fire. Or the sliver of satisfaction he’d experienced thinking about that pompous jackass Oldham getting a little payback. He didn’t like the feeling. He’d spent nearly a decade of his life fighting fires, first in Tallahassee, then in Horizon Beach, before he’d walked away.

And the Beach Bum, with its thatch roof and position next to the condos, could have been destroyed if the wind had blown the opposite way and carried embers in that direction. Fire had destroyed his life once. He was damn lucky it hadn’t performed an encore.

“Well, it’s gonna be somebody’s. Hell, maybe Oldham got tired of all the opposition and burned it himself.”

Wanting to steer the conversation away from Bud Oldham and fires, Zac pointed at the fishing pier jutting into the Gulf of Mexico. “They catching much?”

Adam glanced toward the pier, which was already lined with people and their fishing poles. “Mainly pompano and channel bass,” he said as he gave Zac a look that showed he knew he was deliberately changing the subject.

That was Adam—Mr. Observant. He was also the closest Zac had to a best friend. After a dozen years of the army telling him how to dress and sending him to one hot, dusty location after another, Adam had said “screw it” and returned to Florida where the sand actually had some water next to it. He’d plopped down in the Beach Bum after his first day as a Horizon Beach resident and announced, “Sand, surf, fishing, cold beer and bikinis as far as the eye can see. I’ve died and gone to heaven.”