Page 19 of Sachie's Hero

Sachie opened her mouth as if to say something and then closed it. “Right. I need to get to work.” She walked past him to the door. She didn’t say anything as he carried the gym bag out to his SUV and tossed it in next to her suitcase. The silence continued as he drove through the streets of Hilo.

He’d consigned memories of his life before he’d joined the Army to the back of his mind. Having been part of the foster care system since he was eleven, he hadn’t had a place he could call home.Before foster care, his father had been enlisted in the Army. They’d moved four times before his eleventh birthday. When his father, mother and sister had died in an automobile crash, he’d lost any chance of a permanent home. He would have died in that crash as well if he had been wearing his seat belt. Many times throughout the rest of his childhood, he’d wished he had died.

The guilt he lived with made him act out with each of the many foster homes he’d been shuffled around to.

A siren sounded behind him, yanking him out of his past and into the present. Just ahead of them, a fire engine pulled out of a station house onto the road.

Teller slowed to let the huge truck make the turn, heading in the same direction as they were.

The engine picked up speed, the siren wailing now, lights flashing.

Teller gave the truck a decent amount of space before he continued along the road. A glance at the map indicated they were nearing Sachie’s office.

Over the top of the fire engine, a plume of sooty gray smoke rose into the air.

“Oh my God,” Sachie leaned forward in her seat. “That’s my office! It’s on fire!”

Teller pulled into the parking lot of an auto parts store a couple of blocks short of Sachie’s office.

“Why are you stopping here?” she demanded. “My office is up there. On fire.”

“And we need to stay clear and let the fire department do what they’re trained to do,” Teller said. “There might be more trucks and emergency vehicles on the way.”

As if to prove Teller’s point, a police car roared by on the street and stopped a block short of the fire. The officer then turned his vehicle sideways in the street, blocking the oncoming traffic.

The fire engine was parked in the middle of the street. Men in fire-resistant suits jumped down and unrolled hoses from the truck, hurrying to attach one end to a fire hydrant.

“I’m going to get closer,” Sachie pushed open her door and jumped down from the SUV.

Teller quickly followed suit, racing to catch up to her before she reached the burning building.

Before they could get close, the police officer blocking the street held up his hands. “You’ll need to stay back until they get that fire under control.”

“That’s my office,” Sachie cried.

The roof of the building chose that moment to crash in, sending a cloud of smoke and glowing cinders into the air.

The officer glanced over his shoulder and shook his head. “Not anymore.”

Sachie stood in the middle of the street, her shoulders drooping and her eyes welling with tears. “What’s happening?”

Teller slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. Teller didn’t have an answer for her, but he sure as hell would find out.

CHAPTER 5

After Sachie had spenthours watching the fire department put out the fire and talking to the fire chief and the police, suddenly they were done. She wasn’t needed. She couldn’t sift through the rubble until they’d conducted a thorough investigation to identify the source of the blaze. The fire chief and the police told her she could go.

But to where?

Going back to her cottage was out of the question. The office where she’d set up her practice was gone. She’d ended her lease on her apartment in Honolulu. She had nowhere to go.

As if she could read her friend’s mind, Kalea called. “Teller told us what happened.”

Tears filled Sachie’s eyes. “I was just trying to decide where to go from here.”

“You’re coming to Parkman Ranch. Teller will drive you here. You can stay as long as you need to.”

“I can’t do that,” Sachie said. “I’ve already brought trouble to the island. I won’t bring it to your doorstep. You’re eight months pregnant. You don’t need that kind of stress.”

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