Page 28 of Burning For You

Definitely making it much harder.

But one guy caught her attention. Someone almost elbowing everyone out of the way and mumbling, “not again.”

“Hey,” she said, reaching for his arm. “This is nuts, huh?”

“It’s getting out of hand,” the man said. “I heard and came over.”

She frowned. “How did you hear so quickly?”

“What? Oh, sorry. I was walking with my kid and brought her home and raced over. I’m a fireman.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m Skye Lancaster, doing a news article on it. Maybe you’ve heard of me or read my piece on the last one.” She put her hand out for his.

“Yeah,” he said. “Alan Mitchell. Are you related to Tate by any chance?”

“My brother,” she said. “Doesn’t look as if he’s here right now.” She was looking around and trying to catch sight but couldn’t get that close. “Not sure if he’s even working.”

Since Alan was a lot taller than her, he could see, “No, he’s not out there.”

“So tell me, just by first glance, do you think it’s the same person?”

More people were listening to them now. Alan looked around as if he was unsure how he should answer.

Or if he even wanted to. Maybe he didn’t like the attention.

“That’s what I want to find out too,” Alan said. “Looks like it’s under control now.”

She looked around the side of him, noticed the fire was out in the back, the one in the front doing more smoking than anything.

“It’s the first the fire was in two parts of the vehicle, correct? Do you think it could be a distraction from what they normally do? Or maybe a progression?”

“Sorry,” Alan said. “I’m not the one you should talk to.” He pushed his way closer and left her standing there trying to tag close by, but his long legs left her in the dust.

By the time she caught up, he was talking to another fireman who’d been scanning the crowd also. Maybe doing what she was, trying to find a common person who’d been to them all.

She stopped looking though when she noticed Ash was the one talking to Alan.

The two men were serious, as if they were in thought.

Trying to get closer wasn’t working though. Alan had moved past the police and closer to Ash. No way she was getting through right yet. Not without Tate here.

She’d try though once things settled down. When the firetrucks took off, she’d gotten a few pictures for her story and hoped to get some more while she interviewed the fire captain again.

Looked as if the chief might be here too. Not surprising since it was the third fire in about two weeks.

She’d missed the first one, but not these two.

Another interesting tidbit to file away. Both had been on the same shift. She wondered about the first one.

She made a note to check into that.

Once the fire was out, most of the crowd took off.

Her eyes had been half on Ash moving around, and she hated herself for that. For remembering the hot jock in school who flirted with everyone, including her.

She knew what he was after back then. Just a good time.

But he gave her attention when few others did.