Page 32 of Love Again

I started coughing again. “Any way out of here?

I couldn’t hear him shaking his head, so there was a beat filled with coughing, and then, “No.”

The irony of this infuriated me on some level. The idea that we were on a boat, in water, and going to die in a fire, was twisted. I couldn’t let that happen.

I still had the rock.

In the end, it took four hits with the rock to bash out the windows. They were triple-paned, and the sills were oak. Each window was only about a foot and a half high.

There was a one-second argument about who would go second.

Carlson lost.

To his credit, he waited for me, treading water until I splashed in a moment later, nearly colliding with him and definitely hitting the sandy bottom.

We weren’t out of the woods yet.

There was petrol on that boat, and in the glimmering, orange light, a skim coat on the surface of the water told of a leak somewhere.

“Go-go-go,” I said and pointed diagonally toward shore.

Sirens wailed in the night as the light of the fire danced on the water. I ended up putting an arm around his waist and helping him as we ran in thigh-high water the rest of the way. Staggering under a large pier, we hit the pebbly beach when a giant explosion tore through the air and knocked us down.

Ears ringing, I reached around for him, and he grabbed me as we continued staggering up toward the parking lot.

Even the most highly trained person isn’t ready for the damage a fire commits.

Carlson watched his house burn. Of course, I discovered later he had an actual home on dry land. He just preferred this space.

But it was gone now, and he stood there, with firefighters and police surrounding him, trying to piece together what had just happened in his life.

A day later, he called me once more into the police station, shut the door to his office, leaned his new crutches against the wall, and said, “Thank you for what you did the other night. I believe there’s an arsonist moving from Boston to Portland to Camden and back down, and I’ve been tracking this person for three years. I read your statement . . . about the pipe.”

His color wasn’t good. Carlson is a handsome guy with a generous mouth and dark, nearly black, hair. Back then, he was starting to go a little salt-and-pepper. His pallor came from anger, though, not the pain in his ankle.

“You think this was retribution?”

He shook his head. He didn’t know. “Assumptions are easy, and I refuse to be paranoid. That wasn’t an accident.”

I had no idea where he was going with this.

“I’m telling you this because I’m not going contact you again. I don’t want you in any kind of danger because of me. You saved my life, and I will forever be in your debt.”

I tried to dissuade him of that idea—that he owed me—and explained that this is all part of what I do. It’s how I function, it’s in my DNA, and I can’t imagine ever not doing it. But he couldn’t hear it—wouldn’t hear it.

“I can tell you now, Devon, if I ever get to the point where I think I might be close to figuring out who this arsonist is, I’m going to let you close it with me.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

He sipped a cup of coffee from a chipped mug that read Heroes do it bravely, and explained, “I’m in this profession because I want to be a part of something bigger, something that supports the idea of justice. I want you to have that sense of justice too.” He paused. “Why do you do what you do?”

“I don’t really know. I’ve always wrestled with my demons. Maybe this is a way for me to try to control them. I want to help people.”

“I want to help people too,” he said. “So here’s some advice. Put the past behind you. Go talk to David Keller.”

΅

This is why I’m surprised Carlson asked for me to work with Mateus and Luke.