Page 79 of In Safe Hands
Remembering Tyler’s comment about his dad not teaching him to drive, she grimaced in sympathy. “Poor kid. What about a girlfriend?” When Chris shook his head again, she made a sound of frustration. “Isn’t there anyone he gets along with?”
Instead of answering, he paced in silence for a few minutes. “This isn’t like Rob,” he finally burst out, startling Daisy. “I’ve worked with him for over eight years. He’s not—” Chris cut off his words as he made another pass across her bedroom. “He’s one of the good guys.”
Daisy hadn’t gotten a good-guy vibe off the sheriff, but she kept that to herself. “We’re just speculating,” she said instead. “You know him much better than I do. What is your gut telling you about how he’s been acting?”
He finally came to a halt behind her. Craning her neck, Daisy watched him settle his shoulder against the wall so he could stare out the window over her head.
“He’s been…strange. Distracted. Evasive.” Pausing, Chris let out a deep breath, sagging a little harder against the wall. He looked tired. “Acting like he’s hiding something.”
Reaching behind her, she caught his hand and pulled it over her shoulder so she could hold it. “Whatever’s going on, we’ll figure it out.” She injected as much confidence as she could into her words.
He shifted so he was standing close enough for her to feel his body heat against her back. Holding her breath, she eased back the half inch it took to make contact. When he didn’t move away from her, she exhaled and leaned a little harder against him. Instead of jerking back, he wrapped his free arm around her upper chest. Despite her worry about what was going on outside, she was glad to be in his arms. Being held against Chris always made her feel so safe, even as the fire raged across the street.
They stayed like that, silently watching, until the firefighters put away their hoses and someone pounded on Daisy’s front door.
Chapter 16
When Daisy, flanked by Chris, pushed the intercom button, it turned out that the “someone” was actually two “someones.”
The fire chief, Winston Early, was an older man wearing bunker gear, minus the gloves and helmet. After she invited him and the sheriff into the kitchen, he introduced himself. His wide, beaming smile made her automatically return it. “Mind if we ask you a few questions, Daisy?”
“Sure.” She kept her gaze on the friendly face of Chief Early. The sheriff loomed in her peripheral vision, and she was afraid she’d show her nervousness if she looked directly at Coughlin. “Was there much damage to the house?”
“The one bedroom is pretty much gutted, and there’s a ventilation hole in the roof, but the rest of the house is salvageable. If you hadn’t called Rory, we probably could’ve only saved the basement.” The chief’s smile widened.
“Jennings.” The sheriff looked pointedly at Chris and then at the door. “Why don’t you wait outside? I’ll talk to you as soon as we’re done in here.”
Chris looked like he wanted to object, but he just nodded stiffly at Coughlin, squeezed Daisy’s shoulder, and left the kitchen. Daisy watched him go. From the set of his shoulders, she could tell that he was unhappy about being dismissed.
“Okay, Daisy,” the fire chief said, giving her another smile. “We’ll make this quick. Why don’t you tell us what happened tonight.”
“There’s not much to tell.” She shifted her weight, wishing she could sit. Since she didn’t want this interview to last any longer than it had to, though, she ignored her ingrained manners and didn’t ask if the two men wanted to go into the living room. If they weren’t sitting, then she didn’t want to be, either. It would make her feel too…vulnerable or something.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I was at my window seat at about two thirty. I saw an odd light coming from the left top window of the empty house across the street, number 304, and I realized it was flames. I called Ian, but he didn’t answer, so I tried Rory, who called it in. After that, I called Chris. Right after I got done talking to him, I saw something move on the far side of the burning house.”
That got both men’s attention. “What exactly did you see?” the sheriff asked.
“Not much,” she admitted. “Just something moving next to that funny-looking, squatty pine tree. I kept watching the area after I saw it, but that was it. Chris was taking pictures over there, though, of someone’s shoe print in the mud.”
The two men glanced at each other, and Daisy locked her teeth together so she didn’t start defending herself. She’d seen what she’d seen, and there was nothing she could do if they didn’t believe her.
“Ms. Little,” Coughlin said, “how much sleep have you gotten over the past few nights?”
“About the usual amount,” she lied. “Why?”
Instead of answering, he asked another question. “When you saw the flames, why didn’t you call 9-1-1?”
Since she didn’t think it was a good idea to tell them that the sheriff would have wasted too much time if she’d called Dispatch directly, she shrugged. “I was a little frantic, so I just started going down my recent calls list. Ian didn’t answer, so I called Rory.”
“Why have you been calling Walsh?” Coughlin really knew how to inject accusation into his even tone. “Aren’t you and Deputy Jennings a couple?”
Her tired brain couldn’t make the connection of why he was asking her that. She was tempted to say that she’d tell him the answer as soon as she’d figured it out herself, but she reminded herself that smart-assery was not going shorten this interview.
“Ian called to see if our training group was meeting last Wednesday,” she said instead.
Both men looked at her blankly.
