she’d never hated her brothers, she had resented them from time to time. She’d definitely resented not being as strong as they were. Because of her small size, she had barely made the requirements to be a US Forest Service firefighter. She hadn’t been big enough to make a Hotshot team or to become a smoke jumper. She wasn’t physically capable of packing one hundred and ten pounds for ninety minutes—that would have been like carrying her own body weight. But her small stature wasn’t her brothers’ fault; she couldn’t blame them.
Just how much did the trooper resent Braden? Enough to try to get back at him by starting those fires? She leaned a little closer and studied Martin Gingrich’s flushed face. In addition to the arson-investigation courses, she had a degree in criminal psychology. She’d also attended seminars on FBI profiling at Quantico.
“Go on,” she prodded. “Braden Zimmer is what?”
Gingrich leaned back and forced a nervous-sounding chuckle. “A psychic—if you believe him. He claims he’s got some sixth sense about when a fire’s coming.” He snorted again, derisively.
Sam couldn’t be so dismissive. Her father had that sixth sense—about people. He could read them so well. He’d once told her she’d inherited that ability from him—when she’d caught the Brynn County arsonist—but she wasn’t as good as he was. She had made her share of mistakes over the years.
Like Chad. And Blake...
She flinched again, but not because of the pain in her cheek. Chad had reinforced her determination to stay away from alpha males. And Blake had proven beta males could be jerks, too. She wouldn’t make those mistakes again. It was smarter to focus on her job—and at the moment that job was catching the Northern Lakes arsonist.
“I take it you’re a nonbeliever?” she remarked.
“I don’t believe in that psychic hocus-pocus stuff,” he said. “I’ve been to the freak show at the carnival and wasted five bucks on some chain-smoking fortune-teller predicting my future. It never happened. That stuff’s not real.”
She tilted her head. She could have given him examples from Mack’s experiences. But she didn’t have to. “So has Braden been right? Did the fires he sensed actually happen?”
He jerked his chin, which was barely a point in his round face, up and down in a quick nod. “Yeah, but the only reasonable explanation is that he’s the one setting the fires.”
She understood his logic. Of course someone could predict what would happen if he personally made certain it did. Could Braden Zimmer be setting fire to the territory he’d been assigned to protect? Could he be the one putting his own team in danger?
She glanced across the room and met his gaze. He hadn’t stopped staring at her since he’d sat down at the booth. The men he’d joined kept glancing her way, too—probably wondering what was drawing his attention.
What had? Was he concerned because he’d unintentionally struck her? Or because he was worried she might discover who was really responsible for setting the fires in Northern Lakes?
* * *
BRADEN’S STOMACH TWISTED into knots of apprehension. He’d been such an idiot to let Marty get to him. Not only had he hurt Sam, but he’d also left her alone with that blowhard. Gingrich thought the worst of Braden and his team and was determined to make certain everyone else did, too. Unfortunately he might succeed in convincing Sam McRooney.
With the way she was staring across the room at him—speculatively—she might have been considering what the trooper was saying. She might have begun to wonder if it was possible Braden or one of his team members was responsible for setting the fires.
She wasn’t the only one being forced to listen to an idiot, though.
“You’ve been out of the dating pool a long time,” Cody Mallehan was saying to him. “So let me explain to you how this works. When you think a woman you see in a bar is hot, you’re supposed to send her a drink—not an ice pack.”
A grin tugged at Braden’s mouth. Cody was an idiot only because he got so much enjoyment out of giving everyone else a hard time. Other than that he was one of the best Hotshots Braden had on his team. He would trust the younger man with his life.
But he’d never previously trusted his dating advice, despite Cody’s womanizing reputation—or more accurately, because of it. Things were different now, though; Cody had recently fallen, and fallen hard, for a sweet woman. So Braden might have been tempted to listen if he had any intention of dating Sam McRooney. But he had no such intention—with her or anyone else.
“I’m not trying to pick her up,” Braden said. “I accidentally hit her earlier.”
A breath whistled out between Cody’s teeth. “Man, you really have been out of the dating pool a long time—since the caveman times—if you think you can club a woman and drag her off. Sounds like something Ethan would do.”
Ethan Sommerly glanced across the table at Cody and glared. With his bushy black beard and long hair, he did look a bit like a caveman.
Owen James followed Braden’s gaze. “Her left cheek is swollen,” the EMT said, assessing her condition even from across the room. He was a Hotshot, but when they were back at home base in Northern Lakes, he was also a paramedic.
Braden’s stomach lurched with guilt and regret. “I accidentally caught her with my elbow.”
“She’s not pressing charges, is she?” Trent Miles asked. “Why’s she talking to Gingrich?” He grimaced with disgust. During the off-season, Trent worked out of a firehouse in Detroit. He worked closely with law enforcement in the city since a lot of the fires set there were arson, so he had a healthy respect for officers. Real officers. He’d made it no secret he didn’t consider Marty a real officer.
“She’s not going to press charges.” At least that was what she’d told him. Marty might have convinced her otherwise, though. “She’s talking to him about the arson investigation.”
“Why?” Cody asked. “If she knows something, she should be talking to you.” He’d apparently assumed Sam was a witness with information. “He has no business investigating the fires. He’s gotten nowhere.”
“Neither have I,” Braden admitted. “That’s why I called the chief’s office. The woman talking to Gingrich is an arson investigator with the US Forest Service.”
Cody leaned back in the booth and uttered a ragged sigh. “Good. We should have already stopped this son of a bitch...” Then his girlfriend wouldn’t have recently lost her home and very nearly her life.
“Yes, we should have,” Braden agreed. Guilt overwhelmed him again. He pushed the beer Owen had poured for him across the table. He hadn’t taken a sip and had no interest in it. His stomach already felt queasy enough.
“Is that why you called the meeting for tomorrow?” Trent asked. They’d been back only a couple of days from fighting a blaze out west. Usually they had more downtime than that between assignments, so he’d been smart to conclude Braden had called the team together for another reason.
Braden nodded. “I was going to wait until the meeting tomorrow to share this. But...”
“What?”
