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Billy let his head fall back against the cushion. “You’re really fucking irritating, Griffin.”
Mo’s low chuckle rumbled through the room. “Translation: I’m batting a thousand. Good to know.” When he spoke again, his voice had lost that humor. “She was upset after you left. I get why you got out of there. But what I don’t get is whatever happened between you since then. And whose fist you ran into. Repeatedly.”
“Do you know a vet named Gordon Rizzo?’
“Aw, you gotta be shitting me,” Mo exclaimed. “You went to that underground fight club again?”
Billy’s head whipped up. “Again?”
“You think that didn’t make its way back to me, son? I’ve been in this city a lot longer than you.”
“Well. Shit.”
“Uh huh.” Mo shook his head. “Don’t even think of pulling shit like that again. Somebody liable to shank you as well as punch you in there. Gimme your word.”
“I needed the release, Mo.”
“Gimme your word.”
Billy heaved a deep breath and all of a sudden he felt every one of his bruises. “Fine. You have it.”
“Now, tell me what you did to chase Shayna away.”
Fuck. Mo wasn’t giving him an inch, was he? Not that he really deserved it.
Boom!
Billy and Mo both flinched as a thunderous noise pierced the afternoon quiet. Whatever it was made the glasses rattle against each other inside his kitchen cabinets.
“What the hell was that?” Billy asked, foreboding crawling down his spine and his heart galloping as his brain threatened to pull Billy back into his past.
Into the ambush. Another explosion. The pain of fire all across his skin.
“Something big,” Mo said, frowning. He pulled out his phone and started typing. “Texting Riddick. Even when that boy isn’t on shift he’s got that incident scanner going.”
It only took a minute or two before Sean responded. “He says, ‘Probable natural gas explosion at an apartment complex.’”
“Shit,” Billy said, blowing out a shaky breath. “That sounded close.”
Mo eyeballed him in a way that made it clear he understood what was happening to Billy. “You could’ve planned something a little less elaborate to divert me from this conversation, you know.”
Billy actually managed a chuckle. He scrubbed at his face and heaved a deep breath.
Mo’s phone buzzed another incoming message, and a big frown settled across the man’s face as he read it. “Billy, I think you need to go grab your laptop.”
He rose. “Why?”
“Just go get it.”
Ice skittered down his spine, and Billy made quick work of grabbing the laptop off his bedroom chair. He settled next to Mo on the couch when he returned. “What am I looking for?”
“Go to the Gazette’s page on Facebook.”
Oh, fucking hell. How was the Gazette a part of this? Billy did what Mo said. “What? What am I looking for?” he asked again. And then he saw it. A live video in progress of a massive fire.
He shuddered. He fucking hated fire.
A disheveled man with multiple lacerations and a pair of broken glasses narrated the scene. “If you’re just tuning in, this is Washington Gazette reporter Andy Katz reporting from the scene of an apparent explosion and three-alarm fire at the Northern Arms Garden Apartments. My photographer, Shayna Curtis, and I were at the scene covering an unrelated story when we witnessed the explosion at approximately eight minutes after three o’clock…”
