had been able to find a clue in the debris that was missed. His goal had been to solve the arson, but the Fire Marshall had seen Mason as trying to one-up him, and it caused tension.
“Roberts got over it,” Mason said.
“Still. Leave it to the right department. We’ve done our job. You might even want to spend some of your free time going on a date.”
Mason scoffed. “Just because you’re happily involved doesn’t mean we all have to be.”
“I’m just saying. Get a hobby. Find a girlfriend who lives in town. Because Kenya—she’s always off jet-setting, so she can’t be here to distract you.”
“And she’s not really my girlfriend.”
“That’s my point. You need to find someone. I know you, man. You have a tendency to work way too hard. The fire’s out.”
Mason nodded. “All right. Job well done. Let’s get the guys back.”
As he started back to the street with Tyler, Mason’s mind was still on the situation at hand. He planned to be involved in as much of the investigation as possible on his end, no matter what Tyler said. He would do whatever it took to see the culprit caught.
As a firefighter, arson was truly the worst part of the job. Because it was a crime that destroyed people’s lives. Sure, some arson cases were instances of insurance fraud, and typically in those cases no one got hurt. But Mason had seen fire used as a weapon. A weapon of hatred, a weapon of revenge, or as possibly in this case, a weapon of intimidation.
Nearly twenty years ago, fire had killed Mason’s mother and his five-year-old brother. Even two decades after their deaths, Mason wondered if the fire had been arson, though it had been ruled an accident. But what had troubled Mason at the time and still haunted him today was the fact that there had been no official cause. Not a stove left on, not a cigarette burning on the sofa, not a curling iron plugged in and forgotten in the bathroom. There had been no real answers.
For Mason, who had been away at summer camp at the time, learning that his mother and brother had been killed had not only crushed him, but it had become a driving force in his life. That tragedy led him to a career in the field of fire and rescue.
He hadn’t been able to save his mother and brother, and though he knew it wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t been able to forgive himself. Maybe he couldn’t—not without real answers as to what caused the fire. What if the cause had been something that he, a fifteen-year-old boy at the time, would have been alerted to? His mother had often taken sleeping pills to calm her anxious mind, and once the fire had started she hadn’t had a chance. But had he been there, Mason believed wholeheartedly that he would have smelled the smoke, heard the alarm and gotten his family to safety.
His father should have been home at the time of the fire, but instead had been out drinking with friends.
Mason flinched when he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder. “Hey, you all right?”
Mason faced Tyler. “Yeah,” he said. But he felt the tightness in his chest, one that had nothing to do with the toxic fumes the fire had produced.
Some people wondered why he had become a firefighter, given that he had been a prodigy of sorts at a young age. At the age of nineteen, Mason had been an NBA top draft pick, with a hefty contract. The eight-figure deal was the kind people could only dream of. However, five years into his career, he had walked away from it all. A controversial decision that die-hard basketball fans still talked about.
For Mason, it had been easy. Basketball had been something he was good at, but it hadn’t been the burning passion in his heart.
Ever since losing his mother and brother, his heart told him that he should do something to help people. In a way, by battling every fire, he tried to atone for the fact that he wished so desperately he could turn back the clock and save his mother and brother on that terrible summer day.
Gritting his teeth, he tried to force the painful memory away. But it wasn’t going anywhere. It was always there, like a physical wound that would never heal. He had learned to live with it, but the guilt prevailed.
His best friends and everyone else he knew had told him that it wasn’t his fault, and rationally he knew that. He’d been a kid, needing to get away from a turbulent home by going to summer camp, the one highlight of the summer. But in retrospect, he hated that he had left his mother and little brother alone with his father, whom he’d known had always drank too much. If he hadn’t gone to summer camp, wouldn’t he have been able to save them that night?
It was the “what if” that continued to haunt him.
“The hoses are back on the truck,” Tyler said. “The guys are ready.”
Mason nodded. Then he called out to his team, “Stephenson, Eisler, Duncan. We’re ready to roll out of here.”
Chapter 2
Sabrina Crawford stared at the photo of Mason Foley on the screen of her Mac computer. It was a candid shot of him, taken while he was standing over a stove in the firehouse. He had been caught midlaugh, and the photo seemed to capture a confident and playful nature about him.
He was the next firefighter scheduled to come in for a photo shoot for the calendar she was working on with the Ocean City Fire Department. As she had done before each firefighter came into her studio, Sabrina checked out a candid shot of the man in order to get ideas on how best to utilize him in the shoot. Usually something about the man’s eyes, smile or expression would lead to inspiration in terms of what kind of pictures she would take of him.
But right now, her mind wasn’t coming up with any ideas. How could it, when all she could think about was the letter she’d received?
Glancing at the letter, which she had discarded on her desk, Sabrina swallowed. A painful lump lodged in her throat as she picked the letter up and decided to read it a second time.
Sabrina,
I am taking the time to write this letter because you are clueless. Why on earth would you think that I would ever want to hear from you? You have done enough to destroy my family. The fact that you can’t even figure that out shows the kind of person you are. Selfish and horrible.
For once in your life, think about someone other than yourself! You need to stay away from me and my family. Forever. Never try to contact me again, you pitiful excuse for a human being. If you don’t heed this warning, I will have to involve the authorities.
I am being as nice as I possibly can given your harassment, but none of us is interested in having anything to do with you.
You should never have been born!
Sabrina felt the same way she had when she’d read the letter half an hour earlier—as though someone had ripped her heart out of her chest. Because although the letter was unsigned, she knew who had sent it. And after simply trying to reach out to her, this awful letter was the last thing Sabrina had expected. The words made her out to be some sort of evil person. And even though she knew she wasn’t the words still stung.
Especially the part about how she never should have been born. Given the circumstances under which she had come into the world that comment truly hurt.
Sabrina
