Free Playing With Fire by Gail Anderson-Dargatz Page B

I beamed back at him. In that moment I felt he had put on this show entirely for me.
    As the men started to roll up the hoses, I walked over to the fire chief. “That’s the fourth shed fire this month,” I told him. “Have we got a firebug on our hands?”
    Jim took off his fire helmet. “I hate to say it, but I do think we have an arsonist in town. He’s likely some teen who gets a thrill from setting fires. Up to this point, he’s only burned empty buildings where no one was likely to get hurt.”
    “But this shed is right in town,” I said. “The other fires were out in the country.”
    “The arsonist is getting braver. This is the first building he’s set on fire that was still in use. Looks like his obsession with fire is growing.”
    I glanced around at the crowd. “Isn’t it often the case that firebugs like to watch the fire they set?”
    “That’s what I understand, but the arsonist could be anyone. With all these kids on their way to school, there’s a dozen teens here now. The firebug could have been any one of them.”
    In the crowd there was a sickly-looking kid eating a breakfast sandwich. A chubby kid picking his nose. Over to the left, there was a tall lanky guy who must have been on the basketball team. He stood head and shoulders over everyone else.
    Then there was a young stud in his late teens dressed in a hoodie and jeans. A girl with flaming-red hair leaned against him. The dye job had to be his girlfriend.
    I felt that familiar twinge in my gut. I knew something about this kid wasn’t right. He bit his thumbnail. He was jittery, too nervous for a guy that good-looking.
    “Hey,” I said, walking over to him. He startled, then immediately darted through the crowd. “Hey, wait!” I called out again.
    The kid bolted across the parking lot. A glove dropped from his pocket, landing on the pavement. He paused as if to pick it up but saw me following and took off.
    I ran after him, but when I turned the corner, the kid was gone. He had disappeared down one of the many alleys between buildings.
    I walked back to the pet-store parking lot. I hoped the guy’s girlfriend was still there so I could get his name, but she was gone too.
    I paused before picking up the kid’s glove. I knew if I touched it, I might have a vision as I had the night before. The feeling wasn’t pleasant. The vision had left me dizzy and a little frightened.
    Still, I had to know where the kid had gone. He could be the arsonist who had started all those fires. I picked up the glove and held it in both hands.
    All at once the vision hit me. I was there , standing at the back of the feed shed, but the fire hadn’t started yet. In my mind, I had returned to the past. I couldn’t see much, just a hazy figure. The person held what looked like a jerry can full of gas.
    “Claire, are you all right?” As soon as the fire chief took my arm, I was back in the present, in the pet-store parking lot. The burned feed shed smoked as the firefighters mopped up after the fire.
    “What was that all about?” Jim asked me.
    I was confused a moment, thinking the fire chief was talking about my vision.
    “I turned and saw you run off around the corner,” he told me.
    “Oh, that,” I said. “I was chasing after a kid. The guy was nervous, like he was afraid of something. He took off when I tried to talk to him. I think he may be the firebug.”
    “Do you know who the kid is?”
    “No.” I looked down at the glove. “Chief, he dropped this. When I picked it up, I had a vision.”
    “Like the one you had last night about Amber?”
    I shook my head. “This one was different. When I had that vision about Amber, I felt like I was with her in the present. This time I had a vision of the past. In it, I saw someone setting that fire.”
    “The boy you just chased?”
    “I was holding the kid’s glove when I had it, so I guess it must be him. In the vision, I didn’t see the firebug’s face. I only saw a guy’s back. At