Free Fade the Heat by Colleen Thompson Page A

him a ‘martyr to the cause.’ ”
    She thought about it for a moment before speaking. “Aren’t martyrs usually dead? Why would they think that unless they were the ones trying to kill him—”
    “Every possibility will be investigated.”
    Including that of Jack’s collusion in some kind of plot to ruin Winter , Reagan added mentally. She didn’t bother arguing the point, though. Otherwise, this detective would undoubtedly jot “hysterical girlfriend” next to her name on his pad.
    Standing, she rubbed the small of her back, then twisted until she felt a satisfying pop. “Is the inquisition over? I’ve been sitting here forever, and I could really use a break.”
    He shrugged and flipped through his notepad once more. “I think I have all I need for now. But arson wants to speak with you again.”
    She groaned. She’d talked to those guys twice already, and she had nothing else to add. “Not before I find a ladies’. Unless some of you folks want to follow me there, too.”
    “Be my guest,” he told her.
    She hotfooted it out of there before he could change his mind—or some other investigator could jump in. She supposed they were tag teaming, switching off between her and Jack, and she wondered how much more pointed, even accusatory, their questions were to him.
    And why, exactly, she should care.
    It was only the late hour, she told herself. That and the fact that since the two of them had been together when he’d learned about the fire and she’d heard about Rozinski, she had begun to feel almost as if they were comrades in arms.
    But despite what she had told Detective Worth, how could she know for certain that she and Jack were fighting on the same side? As Worth had reminded her, before this afternoon she hadn’t seen the guy in twenty years. Who was she to say what he had gotten into? And even if he had nothing to do with BorderFree-4-All, he hadn’t denied Winter’s charges. By sidestepping the legal guidelines for the treatment of undocumented aliens, hadn’t Jack Montoya set in motion everything that followed?
    Including, she realized with a sickening jolt, Joe Rozinski’s injuries.
    Her misgivings intensified when she stepped into the family consultation room. The captain’s wife had dozed off, leaning against an older woman who looked as if she might be Donna’s mother. But it was the way C.W., Beau LaRouche, and three other uniformed crewmembers looked at her that made Reagan’s stomach drop into her shoes.
    “Is there…has there been any news?” she asked, telling herself she was only imagining the suspicion in their faces.
    Beau raked his fingers through wavy, sandy-colored hair that was always an inch or so too long for regulation. Tanned, muscular, and younger looking than his twenty-four years, Beau generally put Reagan more inmind of some rich woman’s boy toy than a rookie firefighter who’d grown up in a rough north-side neighborhood. Tonight, though, his reddened eyes and nervous movements made him seem edgy and unpredictable, almost dangerous.
    During the nine months he’d been at the station, he and Rozinski had had their run-ins—usually over both his hair and his unauthorized variations on the official uniform. Even so, Beau would follow Rozinski to fight the fires of hell itself, and Reagan was almost sure he’d been with the captain during the building collapse. Knowing Beau as she did, she was certain, too, that if Rozinski died, Beau would blame himself.
    After darting a glance toward C.W. and the other firefighters, Beau gestured for her to follow him into the hallway.
    Her heart in her throat, she stepped outside and waited until he closed the door behind him. He opened his mouth to speak, but she was faster on the draw.
    “Has something happened?” she asked. “What did the doctors say?”
    He hesitated, some question in his deep brown eyes.
    When he finally did speak, toothpaste-commercial-white teeth flashed against his golden skin. “They’re