AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His expression didn’t change. “No, Hannah. You loved it.”
Hannah stared at him, too shocked to come up with an immediate response. He was right about her, of course. She’d been so proud of her father when she was little. Her mother still had a massive box of crayon drawings from when she was a child, and just about every picture featured a fire truck on its way to a blazing building, or a tall, blond fireman rescuing a kitten.
Her father spoke into her silence. “Don’t get me wrong. Your mother loved it when we were first dating. But after we were married, she seemed to realize that firefighting carried a little more risk than a desk job. Every time I had a tour, I had to watch her choke back a handful of anxiety pills.”
Hannah thought about her mother, the perfect homemaker, the perfect mother, the perfect grandmother. Always calm, always even-keeled. “Mom never said a word about that.”
“You think your mother would have wanted to pass that along? To tell her ten-year-old that every time her father walked out the door, they might never see him again?”
Hannah watched her breath continue to cloud. She tried to wrap her head around this new information, but there were too many memories, too many years to scroll through quickly. “But she’s been so supportive of my becoming a firefighter. She watches James at the drop of a hat.”
Her father gave her a look. “He’s her first grandchild. Your mother would watch James if you were jumping out of planes all day long.” He paused. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but . . ” He trailed off.
“Yes. You should definitely tell me.”
“I don’t want to drive a wedge between you.”
“You don’t have to worry about my relationship with her.”
He winced, then hesitated so long that Hannah worried she wouldn’t get an answer at all. “She hates it just as much that you’re a firefighter. She’s counting down the days until you get your paramedic license.”
“She’s never said a word!”
Her father narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure? She hasn’t encouraged you to find a less stressful job?”
ire marshal sighed. He looked back at the body, then at Michael. His eyes were tired—no, exhausted. “Wait and see, Mike. Wait and see.”
CHAPTER 23
Hannah found her father at the police station.
She didn’t find that out from him, of course. He’d been gone from the scene before she and Irish had been ordered to bag the body of the man he’d killed. He wouldn’t answer her texts or her calls, and he wasn’t at his office by the courthouse—she’d already checked there. Her mother only knew that he’d said he’d be late—without anything more specific than that.
So Hannah had been left to find him like a child who’d lost her mommy at a grocery store: by asking any adult who might have a clue. In this case, it meant someone with a badge.
Even when she walked into the precinct and found him sitting at an empty desk, surrounded by forms and file folders, he barely looked up at her.
“I’m busy, Hannah.”
She didn’t move. Police officers moved about the room, creating dense background noise, but his words and the tone behind them came through loud and clear. It should have felt like a slap to the face, but for some reason, right now, his words hit her as nothing more than that: just words. He didn’t sound angry; he sounded worn out. In the bright fluorescent lighting, she realized she’d never noticed just how much grey had spread through his hair, or how many lines had etched the skin around his mouth and eyes. Her mind always thought of him as the hero fireman, maybe mid-thirties, with blond hair and a bright smile.
Not as this stern taskmaster who lived and breathed by procedure and code, who looked as if life had chewed him up and spit him back out.
Her father looked up more fully when she kept staring at him. His eyes were hard, a cold blue. “I’m not kidding, Hannah. I’ve got a mountain of paperwork—”
“I see that.”
“Then what do you want?”
I wanted to see if you were okay. But she could never say that. They didn’t have that kind of relationship.
Then again, she knew he’d never killed anyone before. Maybe she was just remembering the man he’d been, the firefighter who took every life as seriously as if the victim were a member of his own family. Ten years ago, this would have bothered him. A lot. After his last job as a firefighter, when he’d failed to save everyone, he hadn’t slept for a week. She remembered.
She didn’t want to think too much about the flip side: that he wouldn’t have used deadly force unless his own life was in danger.
At first glance, he didn’t seem bothered. But his knuckles were white, as if he gripped his pen too tightly. The set of his shoulders looked almost painful.
“Hannah?”
