Free Fade the Heat by Colleen Thompson Page B

monitoring the oxygen levels in his blood. There’s damage to his lungs and trachea, and they’ve put him on a ventilator to keep him from losing any more ground.”
    She closed her eyes against the burning. “Do they think he’ll make it?”
    “They’re ‘cautiously optimistic,’ but he’s still critical.”
    Struck mute by disappointment, she swallowed past a painful lump. Maybe it was her exhaustion or the endless interviews, but the situation had taken on thefeeling of a nightmare, one she prayed she would wake up from any minute.
    “What the hell happened?” she asked.
    Beau flinched, a sign that he’d already been asked this question more than once. “The captain, Zellers, and me were making our secondary sweep when part of the roof gave way. All this debris rained down and buried Rozinski. We couldn’t even find him ’til his PAS went off.”
    That would mean Rozinski had been down for thirty seconds, which would have triggered the personal alarm system. How much longer, Reagan wondered, before they’d dug him out and gotten him outside? She didn’t ask, though, for she trusted that Beau and Zellers, a seasoned, solid firefighter, had done everything they could—and because they would have to endure more than enough second-guessing as it was.
    Beau’s gaze flicked up to meet hers.
    “Everyone’s been wondering—why have they been questioning you? ” The question tumbled out of him sounding bewildered—and more than slightly hostile. “What could you have to do with this? You weren’t even at the fire.”
    “I don’t have anything to do with it,” she said, “but I may have seen something earlier. I saw a man who might have vandalized Jack Montoya’s vehicle and could’ve set the fire, too. At least, that’s what the cops and arson seem to think.”
    “Montoya? Wasn’t he the guy we were looking for inside the apartment?”
    She nodded. “Yeah. I happened to be in the neighborhood of his clinic today. He’s a doctor on the East End.”
    She decided to keep to herself the part about her visit to his office.
    “Is he the one you showed up with? His picture ran on the news, and C.W. said he saw the two of you come in together. You know him?”
    “Not lately. We grew up in the same neighborhood, that’s all. But we were talking about the damage to his SUV when you called me about the captain.”
    “Tell me the two of you aren’t dating. From the stuff on TV, the man’s trouble. Huge trouble.”
    Once again, Reagan found herself denying a relationship with Jack.
    Beau’s gaze hardened, and she recognized the same skepticism she had seen from the detective. Why was the simple truth so hard for them to believe? It wasn’t as if she had a reputation for sleeping around. Hell, it had been months since she’d even gone on an honest-to-goodness date. She liked men well enough—too well, upon occasion—but her odd hours and her refusal to get involved with coworkers or suffer through another blind date hadn’t exactly filled her dance card.
    “I’ll cover for you,” Beau said, “but if I were you, I’d stay as far from Jack Montoya as you can. Because I got a gut feeling that by the time this investigation’s over, his ass will be in jail. And maybe on death row, if the cap…if the captain doesn’t…”
    Beau pinched the bridge of his nose as his voice hitched, but it didn’t matter. She understood what he was trying to tell her. In Texas, an arson leading to the death of an on-duty firefighter was a capital offense.
    And if Joe Rozinski died, the union and its members would push hard for an arrest, a conviction, and the execution of whichever parties they deemed responsible.
    “I’m asking you again”—Jack looked Arson Investigator Esteban Salinas directly in the eyes—“am I a suspect here?”
    When Jack had first asked whether he should call an attorney, the investigators had told him it was certainly his prerogative, but they’d also assured him that no one was