Page 1 of Burning for Alexander
1
ALEX
DrunkenPoet:Anyone in this forum available to answer a few questions about ICS-100 certification?
IndexEcho:Yeah. I have ICS-400, ARFF, and NIMS IS-700. What do you need?
_____________________
If the accidentalconflagration had occurred at any other time, it wouldn’t have been a problem. We’d have put it out with a wet bar mop before anyone was the wiser and gone on with our lives.
Unfortunately for me, tonight was not my night.
So when the fire started, it happened to be at the exact same moment our town’s new fire chief walked into my restaurant with the sheriff.
“What the actual fuck?” the angry man in a navy blue Legacy FD fleece asked again, glaring at me.
He stood too close, wedged behind the bar,wielding my two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Amerex fire extinguisher… which he’d just discharged all over my beautiful, hand-carved bar as if he had no idea the effect potassium citrate and acetate had on burled walnut.
I ignored him and called through the opening behind the bar to the kitchen. “Karim, please grab some clean, damp cloths and dry cloths. Quickly!”
Chemical solution came close to dripping from the edge of the bar as I lunged to stop the flow with the towel tucked into my back pocket. “Fuck.Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. “Can you please move? I have to clean this before it gets all over everything.”
The man reached for the small bottle lying next to the charred remains of my napkin and straw holder and held it up.
It was the sanitizing spray Tavo had been using, too close to the Bacardi 151 float I’d been flicking a lighter on. The combination of the two had caused the flaming kerfuffle in the first place.
The grumpy fire chief nudged me back with a fingertip to the shoulder. “You will not touch anything.”
I ignored the odd twinge I got from feeling his finger on me. The older man was sexy as fuck, no doubt about it. Thick, wavy hair that was more salt than pepper, dark eyes that seemed happiest pinning people like bugs on a board, and broad shoulders. Most of all, a commanding presence.
But so far, it seemed like he had the personality of a meat grinder.
He continued with another soft poke. “This is now a crime scene, and disturbing it is a violation of?—”
“Crime scene?” I barked out a laugh. “Guy, it’s a small mishap at best.”
“Your ‘mishap’ appears to be deliberate arson, and as such, I will be doing a full investigation.”
I opened my mouth to tell him just how ridiculous he wasbeing when I remembered the first time he’d come in here a few weeks ago. “Wait, is this about the day we met? About me not knowing who you were? Is this some kind of retaliation for my bad memory?” Hopefully, my voice didn’t sound as high-pitched and unhinged as I felt. Annoyance and incredulity bubbled up, and I wanted to deck the man. “I told you, we’ve never met before!”
And I could say that with certainty because the man was sex on a stick. I would’ve wanted to climb him and beg him to do dirty things to me. But now that it turned out he was an asshole, maybe it was a good thing we’d never met.
His jaw clenched. “We’ve met. More than met, in fact. And if you want to pretend otherwise, that’s your decision. But, no, this has nothing to do with our previous… encounter. It has to do with fire safety.Publicsafety.”
“When exactly did we meet?” I asked, letting Karim take over the cleanup from the other side of the bar while I kept the chief’s focus turned slightly away. The less “evidence” of this minor incident, the better. “Because I’d remember you with all this…” I waved my hand to indicate the whole of him. “Bluster and general assholery.”
His eyes widened and then narrowed. “Three years ago in Amsterdam. Ring a bell?”
I thought back to the only time I’d ever been to Amsterdam. It was during a layover from France on the way to meet the rest of my family in Iceland. But that had been more like eight years ago because I’d been at Château de Pommard finishing my level three WSET qualification.
Before I could tell him any of this, Sheriff Westland approached and made eye contact with the frothing fire chief.
“Chief Kincaid, I’m sure this was nothing but an accident, and since you were so quick to react, there’s not much harm doneother than a ruined… whatever that was,” he said, nodding toward the melted napkin caddy.
“And the finish on my bar from the K-class extinguisher,” I muttered under my breath.
Chief Kincaid made a growling sound, clearly directed at me. I kept my eyes averted and tried to look innocent as a lamb.
