The Dust and the Roar Read online

  Great flames licked up the side of the old commercial building from a blazing interior. Was it too late? I bolted from my bike. My entire being screamed for Isi. My rabid gaze fell on her car in the parking lot. The cobalt blue of her Chevy truck was brilliantly lit under the fierce glow of the fire.

  NO.

  I ran.

  Two men pulled me back. “You can’t! You can’t!”

  “Let me go! Isi’s in there! Isi!”

  A crash and a sickening crackle, another explosion. “There goes the roof!” The roof buckled, collapsed, and the flames instantly grew more vicious, devouring what they’d been fed.

  “Oh my God!”

  “Stand back!” a fireman gestured us back.

  “Isi? Isadora!” I shouted. “Isadora’s in there!” I ripped myself from their hold and ran. And ran.

  “Wreck.” That voice. A fist punch to my chest, taking my air with it. My body jerked around.

  Tear stained and staggering, red-faced, hair flying in the hard, hot winds. My pulse jammed. I ran. To her, to my life, my woman.

  “Baby.” I opened my arms, and she fell into me. “Oh my God, baby. I saw your truck, and I thought … I thought…” My throat stung against the worst words. “Oh fuck, you’re okay, you’re okay…” I rocked her, I pressed her into my chest.

  “My dad is in there.”

  “What?”

  “Dad…” She collapsed in my embrace, and I lifted her up in my arms.

  “Isi!” Isi’s cousin Ryan, the cop, came running over. My hold over Isi tightened, and her head fell back, her hair streaming over my arm. Isi helpless, Isi weak … no, not an option. Not her.

  I placed her down on in the grass and gave her CPR.

  Ryan hovered over us. “Isi? Come on, Isi!”

  “She said her dad was in there,” I said between sucking in breaths.

  “Uncle David? Oh, shit!” Ryan turned and spoke into his walkie-talkie, his jaw tight, his knuckles white as he gripped the device.

  A cavalry of firetrucks and ambulances arrived. Isi’s eyes blinked open at the wail of sirens. “Baby, I got you. You’re okay, you’re okay.” I squeezed every limb, rubbed the side of her face, her chest. I needed to feel she was alive, I needed her to feel me. She was in one piece, she was all right, but her eyes were filled with water, they were red. Her face was smudged with soot. Her hair was fine, not singed. Her beautiful hair.

  Two paramedics rushed at her. “Move to the side, sir.” I lost my balance and knelt over, my hands on my knees, taking in gulps of air. They administered oxygen and checked her vitals.

  “You okay?” said one.

  “I’m fine.” I pushed him away and fell in the grass next to Isi, knees to the ground.

  “I want to see. I need to see the warehouse.” She wrapped an arm around one of mine and cradling her back, I helped her sit up slowly. An hour later, when the flames had been killed, the firemen took a charred body out of the smoking remains of the warehouse, a hissing, smoldering mess.

  I planted a kiss on her head. “Let me take you home.”

  “Is, got to ask you some questions,” said Ryan.

  “Not now, man. Can’t you see she’s in shock?” I said.

  “I know that, Tallin, but her father died in there and that fire destroyed everything. Isi, why were you here tonight? Please try and remember. Tell me. Anything might help us in the investigation.”

  Her gaze strayed to Ryan and hung there. She was exhausted. Drained. “I-I was doing some last minute inventory at the store, but I needed to check on a few things here…”

  “So you came here, entered, and saw your dad?”

  She nodded, her eyebrows quirking oddly, her gaze distant. “I saw my dad, and suddenly I smelled smoke, and it came so fast, so fast. The flames … he stood there, and I tried to…” Tears streamed down her face. “I tried to get to him, but a beam fell between us, blocking me out, separating us. I screamed for him, but … he didn’t move, and then I ran.”

  “Ryan, come on—”

  “Were you able to talk to him at any point, honey?” asked Ryan. “Did he say why he was there?”

  Her spine straightened. “No, no … I don’t know. I don’t know…” Her face crumpled, and I took her in my arms.

  “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right,” I murmured against her hair. Hair that stank of smoke, so much smoke.

  “Daddy…”

  “Shh.” My eyes traveled over every inch of Isi. Red was seeping the material of her pants. Blood.

  I grabbed the paramedic’s shoulder. “She’s… she’s bleeding…”

  He darted toward Isi. “Let’s get her in the ambulance,” he said loudly.

  A blur of flashing lights and shouts and screaming sirens. Screaming. My body shuddered, my hands went to my aching skull. My heart galloped too fast for my pulse, my lungs crushed together in my chest. I blinked taking in the evergreens, the gravel.

  I’m not there, not there. I’m here. I’m home. And Isi needs me. Isi’s in trouble.

  But the sirens kept on screaming.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I spent the night with Isi in the hospital. One night for observation.

  She’d been pregnant.

  She’d lost it. A baby. Our baby. Gone.

  Had she known she was pregnant? How the hell did that happen when she’d been taking the pill? Of course, you miss one dose and you could have a problem. I didn’t know, I didn’t care, that wasn’t important. My head hurt, my heart ached. Oh, dammit, a baby. A baby, and now it’s gone before we even had the chance to wrap our heads around the possibility…

  I’d never thought of marriage and kids. All that was for other people, not me, and not with my lifestyle. It didn’t interest me, at least I thought it didn’t. Now, as I traced lines up and down Isi’s arm as she slept in her hospital bed, I felt … what was I feeling?

  Lost. I was fucking lost.

  Even though we’d been together and solid for a handful of years, we’d kept to not defining what we had. We would have welcomed the kid, though. Our kid.

  She woke up, and I got her some fresh water to drink, helped her to the bathroom to pee and—

  “I’m okay, I can brush my own teeth,” she’d murmured as she closed the bathroom door behind her, her gaze averted. I moved her pillows around so she’d be comfortable. She got back into the bed, and the two of us remained silent. She stared at the ceiling. I was slumped in a chair pulled next to her bed, my feet up on the edge of it.

  “I didn’t know I was pregnant,” she said. “I didn’t realize. I’m sorry—” She clutched at my hand. “I’m sorry.”

  I covered her hand with mine. “You got nothing to be sorry about, sweetheart.”

  “Would you have wanted it? The baby?” She turned over in the bed and faced me, her cheeks flushed.

  “Yeah, oh yeah, honey.” I stroked her hair back from her face. “Our baby? I would’ve wanted it.”

  A tear slid down her face, another. “Me too,” she said on a gasp, her fingers curled up tight in the sheet. “Me too.”

  I wiped the wet from her face. “It’s okay, Is.”

  “Doesn’t feel okay. I don’t know what I’m feeling—”

  “Me neither…” A jumble of words stuck in the back of my throat like jagged cardboard. My lungs ached, my heart thudded dully in my chest. But I had to be strong for Isi. “It’s so strange to feel a loss where you didn’t even know you had that something in the first place, huh?”

  “I can feel it at the tips of my fingers, as if it slipped away—a life with our baby. Like I let the baby go—”

  “That’s not what happened, honey. It was a terrible accident.”

  “I should’ve known I was pregnant. I’d been so tired lately, my mind was dragging, I didn’t know why. I couldn’t eat, but I figured it was fatigue and overdoing.”

  “You’re always doing too much.”

  “But it’s never enough, Wreck.”

  “Oh, it is
, honey. It is.” I pressed my lips against her damp forehead. “We’ll make another baby, Isi. We will.”

  “You don’t have to say that.”

  “I want to say that, Is, I want to,” my voice rasped. “Let me say it.” My eyes filled with water, my head hung, and she tugged her fingers through my hair. She let out a small cry and took my arm and tucked it against her chest. We held each other, our tears falling on each other’s skin. “You could’ve gotten killed, Isi,” I breathed. “Thank God you got out. Angels were watching over you.”

  “It was Leo,” she said, threading her fingers with mine. “Leo got me out.”

  “Leo?”

  I knew she hadn’t seen Leo since he’d left town three years ago. Jake had told me today that he’d seen him, and I was planning on telling her tonight at Pete’s.

  A knock at the open door and heavy footsteps approached us. Officer Ryan stepped in the room. “How you doing, Is?” He raised his chin at me.

  Isi chewed on her lip as she sat up, wiping at her face. “I’m okay. Better.”

  “We’re taking care of the funeral arrangements for your dad, so I don’t want you worrying about anything,” he said.

  “Thanks, but I really should—”

  “You should be resting. I’m sorry, but I got to ask you a few questions about the fire. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Did you know your dad would be at the warehouse, Isi?”

  “No, I didn’t. He was supposed to be home relaxing. His arthritis had been bothering him, and he told me he was going home to lie down and watch TV. I offered to come with him, make him dinner, but he said, no, that I should stay and finish and get the inventory done, so that’s what I did. But I was missing these tablecloths that Mrs. O’Reilly had special ordered, and I didn’t want to have to go to the warehouse in the morning and get them. So I thought, let me go get that over with now and then I won’t have to think about it. So I did. I got to the warehouse, but it wasn’t locked, I walked in and heard voices.” I laid down next to her, an arm around her, taking a cold hand in mine.

  “So your dad wasn’t alone at the warehouse,” Ryan said.

  “At first I thought he was talking to himself, he does that when he’s frustrated and trying to find something … but I recognized the other voice. I knew.”

  “Who was it, Is?”

  “It was Leo.” Her voice cracked, a rough whisper. “It was Leo.”

  “Why would Leo be at the warehouse?” Ryan asked. “He’s been gone for a few years now, right? Had you seen him before last night?”

  “No. I didn’t know he was back in Meager,” she replied.

  “Does he stash his stuff there, Is?” Ryan’s lips twisted.

  “He did once, years ago, but I got mad at him, and he promised me he’d never do it again, and he hasn’t. He’s never gone back on a promise with me. Never.”

  “Were he and your dad fighting?” I asked.

  “The two of them were sniping at each other in that nasty way they always argue.”

  Ryan moved closer to the bed. “Do you think Leo got mad and set the fire? Is that what happened? Did you see him throw anything—”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything.” She swiped her hair behind her ears. “When I called out to them, Leo took off. Dad got mad that I was there. Go home, Isi, go away! he said. The tone in his voice was so odd. So odd. His face … tense, angry. Then I smelled the smoke, and Dad walked farther into the building. It was dark, I couldn’t see. I bumped into a few boxes, one fell on me.”

  “Isi—

  “I don’t remember what happened after that, it was all so fast … but I got trapped between two shelving units that had fallen over, and I tried crawling over a pile of stuff, and the smoke kept getting thicker. Suddenly, two hands grabbed me and pulled me out and dragged me out of the building. It was Leo. Then he took off.”

  The lines of Ryan’s face tightened.

  “I don’t want you working at the store on your own ever again. You can’t,” I said.

  “I appreciate you telling me what I can and cannot do,” she said, her voice heated.

  “Sweetheart—”

  “He’s right.” Ryan’s sharp voice sliced between us. “You shouldn’t be there alone.”

  Isi let out a huff of air. “Well, there certainly won’t be much to sell now that the inventory went up in smoke.”

  “There been any mysterious break-ins at the warehouse before last night?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Nothing gone missing? Stolen?”

  “No, not that I was aware of.”

  Ryan shifted his weight. “The whole damn thing lit up like a box of tinder. We had a lot of stuff for the feed store in there too, you know.”

  “I know.” Her gaze fell to our hands.

  “Isi, we all know what Leo’s up to,” Ryan said. “I need to find him. Do you know how to contact him?”

  “I don’t know where he is, Ryan. He’s been gone for three years. Tonight was the first time I’ve seen him since. He found me and pulled me out of there. He saved my life.”

  Ryan’s pointed gaze darted to me then back to Isi. “He might have started that goddamn fire, Is.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know…” she murmured.

  “Ryan—” I cut in.

  He ignored me. “If he contacts you, Isi, you got to tell me. I need to talk to him, and I’d like to be the one who gets to talk to him first. Is he going to go to his dad’s funeral? Fuck knows—”

  “Is it something else?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve been hearing things about Leo. Things I don’t like,” Ryan said. “He's gotten his wires crossed with … this bike club up in Montana.”

  “It’s okay, Ryan. Wreck knows everything.”

  “Good.” He tipped his head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you stay with Wreck. Don’t go back to your house, don’t stay there by yourself, you hear me? Until we know what’s going on, you stay close to Wreck. If Tommy—”

  “You mean Claw,” she muttered.

  Ryan’s chest puffed up. He meant business. It was personal. “If that fuck is involved in this, swear to God, Is—”

  “You think that fucker might have set the fire?” I said.

  “Why not?” Ryan’s eyes blazed. “To get back at Leo, at Isi, hell knows. And then we got the Hildebrands. I mean, the whole damned town knows how we feel about them sniffing around our properties. I don’t know if they’d go this far, but from what my dad said, there was a tug of war for a while there over the land the warehouse is on, so who the fuck knows. Money makes people do crazy shit.”

  “It sure does,” Isi murmured.

  “And you—” Ryan shot me a glare. “Things had cooled down there for a hot minute, but now we got the Feds breathing down our necks again.”

  “We had nothing to do with this, Officer Ryan,” I kept my tone even. “Why don’t they investigate The Shepherd while they’re in town and do us all a favor?”

  Ryan only licked at his bottom lip and returned his gaze to Isi. “I want to be sure you’re safe, Is. That’s the most important thing to me right now.” Ryan dipped his head and planted a kiss on Isi’s cheek. “Take care. I’ll be in touch. Georgia’s on her way, okay?” He strode out of the room.

  “What was that about the Hildebrands?” I asked.

  Her head fell back against the pillows. “Old family story.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You’ve heard of the Hildebrands? They’re commercial realtors, own a big ranch. Lots of property.”

  “I’ve come across a couple of them at our parties over the years.”

  “I’m sure. They’ve been after the land the warehouse is sitting on for a long time. That and the go-kart factory property our grandfather had that went belly up. Grandpa put the factory land in our names when we were kids, saying that business made toys for young bucks and it was the future for Meager—like we were. That it w
ould be up to us to continue its success. So much for that.

  “Once upon a time, all our family businesses thrived, but now, only the feed store breaks even and does a little better off and on, and that belongs to Ryan and his dad. But the five and dime hasn’t done well for a long while. My momma wanted to make it the next Wall Drug. She had all sorts of ideas to pull in the tourists during Sturgis season, but after James died, she lost all desire to do anything. Lost all her spark. Anyway, it’s the land the Hildebrands are after. Always the land. They’d own all the Black Hills if they had their way.”

  “You think this is them playing dirty?”

  “Not sure. This would be pretty dirty for them. But they’ve been after my dad for the warehouse, trying to get him to lean on Uncle Walt. I’ve heard Mr. Hildebrand tell my dad that business wasn’t that great anyhow, why did we need a warehouse, it was old, an eyesore and more of a burden than anything. Yeah, maybe it is, but it’s our business, and it’s our land, been in our family for generations, from the beginning.” Her breath hitched. “We needed time to figure it all out. Taxes on that property have always been an issue, but I never realized how bad until recently. But Grandpa always said never sell to the Hildebrands. Made all of us kids promise we never would.

  “We have to find Leo, Wreck. Please. We have to find him before anybody else does. Claw can’t find him. If Leo did set that fire, if he left something behind that the police are going to find, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Our dad is dead. I can’t—I can’t have Leo being hunted down for Dad’s murder. I can’t!”

  “Shh, shh, baby, I know. I don’t want that either, but if your brother—”

  “No!”

  “Okay, listen, maybe he’s been sleeping at the warehouse, keeping his money there? He must know the warehouse real well, and has all sorts of good hiding places, right?”

  “He always did.” She tilted her head. “That had been the plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “After the robbery, Claw and Leo were going to stash their money at the warehouse and only use a little at a time.”

  “Maybe the Demon Seeds have been tracking Leo, and they knew he’d be at the warehouse, and they set the fire as a threat? Maybe your dad found out he’s been going there and went to confront him and shit got out of hand? Anything is possible at this point.”