Page 22 of Through the Fire
Kit’s hands were still shaking a few minutes later as she bumped over a rough stretch and the lookout tower came into view. It was actually quite pretty, with its stone base and windowed top with an observation deck circling the south side. The tower looked strangely out of place, like a lighthouse had been plucked from some ocean shore and deposited in the middle of the mountains. A small cabin sat next to it, making the tower look even taller in comparison.
As she pulled up next to the tower, Kit looked around the clearing. Despite the isolation, it was a beautiful spot that would’ve felt peaceful if she hadn’t just been terrorized. She would’ve loved to see the area in the summer, with blooming wildflowers and all kinds of animals roaming around.
Getting out of the truck, she walked toward the heavy door set in the base of the tower. She stayed alert, still twitchy from her encounter with the armed mountain folk. The thick wall of trees surrounding the site should have seemed serene, but they held an air of menace. The silence was heavy—too heavy. By the time she reached the door, she was full-on jumpy, although she refused to turn back.
Instead, she knocked firmly on the thick door and waited, doubting that the lookout had made it back before her. Only two seconds went by, however, before there was a soft beep, and the door swung in.
“Are you kidding me?” she muttered, peering into the dark entry. It didn’t look like anyone was there, except for a pair of snow-covered boots that sat on the mat to the right of the door. She grimaced. Her nerves were already shot to hell, and the spooky, self-opening door wasn’t helping. As bright as it was outside, with the sun reflecting off the snow, the thick stone walls blocked the light inside the tower, leaving it murky and dim. Chiding herself for acting like a nervous Nellie, she stepped into the tower.
Just after she cleared the entrance, the door closed behind her with a firm click. That sound, as soft as it was, made her jump.
“It’s just an automatic door, dummy,” she said quietly under her breath as she stood still, allowing her eyes to become accustomed to the dimness. Motion-sensing light fixtures had flickered to life as she’d entered, so it wasn’t as dark as it had first appeared. Thanks to the eerie, self-opening door, she’d expected the interior of the tower to be creepy and strewn with cobwebs, but it was actually clean and even rather charming, with the curved stone wall and a spiral staircase in the center.
Cautiously, she started up the stairs, gripping the railing. Her footsteps sounded too loud on the metal, but she reminded herself that she wasn’t trying to sneak up on the fire lookout. He was simply a complainant who’d first noticed the fire, so she was going to do a standard witness interview—the same type of thing she’d done hundreds, if not thousands, of times. Her frightening encounter, as well as the strangeness of her surroundings—not just the tower, but the whole isolated, bombed-out, deserted town—was making her twitchy, seeing danger where none existed.
Just as she talked herself into relaxing, a clicking sound made her freeze, her gaze locked on the top of the stairs. She waited as the sound got louder, a regular tap-tap-tap that made her tense up and reach toward her gun, although it wasn’t enough yet to make her actually draw her weapon. There was a whir, and a small metal face—set in a robot-looking thing the size of a cat—peered over the top step at her. The single “eye” looked like a camera lens, and Kit raised an eyebrow at it. It was almost cute in a strange kind of way.
“I’m Kit Jernigan with the Monroe Police Department,” she said to the metal cat creature, assuming that the fire-spotter was using it as a sort of mobile peephole to see who’d arrived at his door.
The mini-robot raised a…leg? arm? to give her a wave, and Kit had to smile. It was hard to stay on guard when a one-eyed pet/appliance hybrid was waving at her, especially when she already knew that its owner was an endearing dork who’d just saved her life. Spinning around, the fake cat clicked away from the top of the stairs, and Kit continued to climb. Although she was more relaxed than she had been before, it was still an odd situation. She wasn’t sure what she would find in the lookout room, and she’d had enough unpleasant surprises for the day.
As she reached the top, she took in the circular room, half of which was wall-to-wall windows. There was a couch and several tables, one covered in a topographic map while the other two looked more like workstations, with a professional-looking camera and laptops and tools and bits and pieces that—now that she’d seen the metal cat thing—could only be robot guts. A woodstove sat in the middle of the space, and a compact kitchen was tucked against the wall on the opposite side of the windows. A partially open door appeared to lead to a bathroom.
Her mountain-man ally, now in BDUs and a long-sleeved T-shirt, stood in front of an open laptop, his gaze fixed on her.
“Hello.” He gave her a tentative smile. “You made it back to your truck okay, then?”
“Yes. Thank you for your help.” The words seemed so inadequate when he’d basically saved her life. She wasn’t accustomed to being the one saved. With her job, she normally did the saving.
“You’re welcome.” He moved closer to her, stopping just a few feet away and leaning a shoulder against one of the vertical support beams. The way he crossed his arms made all the truly impressive muscles in his shoulders stand out, and she had to make a conscious effort to pull her attention back to what he was saying. “Sorry that happened to you. Most of my neighbors aren’t very welcoming, especially to government employees.”
The drastic understatement made her sputter out a laugh. “Yeah, I gathered that. Is this a common thing, then?” Her mind worked as she tallied up the pros and cons of making a report on the incident. It was one thing to threaten a cop who was chasing after them, but another if they were threatening people on a regular basis.
“No. Pretty much everyone leaves them alone. You startled them when you chased Bart, and then they felt trapped when they found out you were a cop. Despite what he said, I think he was scared when he ran from you.” He watched her, as if knowing she needed a moment to process, before asking, “Are you going to report what happened?”
“No.” Now that she and Justice were safe and unharmed, it was easier to see the advantages to not reporting Rufus and his family. “If they’re not a threat to themselves or others, then the only thing I’d accomplish by reporting them is make an enemy…well, five enemies. Besides, I promised I wouldn’t report them if they didn’t shoot me.”
He looked pleased by this. Both of them went quiet, and the moment started to stretch into awkwardness. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but closed it before any words came out. She racked her brain for something to say to break the uncomfortable silence, but her mind was a blank.
“So…I assume you don’t need more help backing any trailers,” he finally said.
She laughed, charmed by his awkwardness. It seemed such a perfect match to her own. Her muscles had been tight since she’d spotted the blood in the snow, but now she felt them slowly release. “No.”
“Did you need a different kind of help, then?” His shy smile was so adorably crooked that she couldn’t help but grin back, more of her tension slipping away. “I also have some general knowledge of computers.”
She realized that he was waiting for her to explain why she was in his tower, and here she was, just staring at him like he’d smacked her over the head. Shaking off her distraction, she focused on what she was there to do. “What’s your name?”
“Wes. Wesley March.”
Wesley March. The name burned itself into Kit’s brain, but she tried to ignore the giddy, swooping thing her stomach was doing. “Do you go by Wes or Wesley?”
He stared at her for another long moment—so long that she ran her question back through her head, trying to figure out if it could’ve somehow offended him. It seemed innocuous enough to her.
“Is something wrong?” she finally asked when she couldn’t take the silence any longer.
“No,” he said slowly. “It’s just that no one’s ever asked me which one I preferred.”
“So…” It was her turn to study him curiously. She didn’t know what to make of him. “Should I call you Wes or Wesley? Or Mr. March?”
