Bell jogged down the drive, but this time, Declan followed.
“What’s your deal, Jim?” he asked.
“We’re finished here.” He almost reached his car, pulling out a set of keys.
“No.” Declan put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around. “I know you.” The words spilled out the moment they hit his brain. He did know this guy. But from where? “How?”
Beads of sweat formed on Bell’s upper lip. “I have no idea.”
“No. No. I’ve met you before.” He rooted through his brain, back in time. Twenty years. The station. A training session. Dad was there. “Jamie Bell. You were a volunteer.” But not a very well-regarded one, he remembered. Some of the guys had called him Lamie Bell.
“A hundred years ago,” he said, reaching for the door handle.
“Twenty years ago,” Declan corrected. “Were you here? Did you work the fire that night?”
He yanked the door open and threw Declan a look. “I was not at the fire, and that is not my lighter, and I’m done.”
Then there might have been a completely different reason for why he’d lost his lighter here.
“Then why was this on the grass after the fire?” He flipped the lighter. “Catch!”
He whipped his hand out and snagged the air, just missing the toss. But before he could bend over and pick it up, Declan grabbed his arm, twisted it back, and got right into his face, hearing the man’s keys hit the ground. “What the hell was your lighter doing in the yard?”
Blood drained from the other man’s face, leaving a dusting of orange freckles over pale skin. “I don’t know,” he ground out. “I lived in this town briefly a long time ago, and I was on the vol roster. Maybe one of those blowhard guys in the department stole it from me. You ever think of that, Mahoney?”
“Nice try. Then why do you want to get inside this house so bad that you cooked up some stupid story about buying it for your fiancée? To find something you lost?” Even as he said the word, things started to make sense. Sickening sense.
Bell wouldn’t be the first firefighter to start a blaze. And a volunteer who never got called?
The other man looked down, his gaze on the lighter on the ground. “Are we done?”
“No. Not even close.” Declan backed him up against his car. “Were you here for another reason that night? Because what better way for you to get called in for work than to start a fire at the town’s favorite landmark?”
At Declan’s question, whatever blood was left in the guy’s face drained. Declan grabbed his chin and forced him to face forward.
“Were you at this house that night?” he demanded.
Bell stared at him. “I just told you. I wasn’t called to that fire.”
“But you wanted to be,” he ground out.
Terrified eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “I see where you’re going, but the fire started because chemical-soaked rags left behind by the lady of the house exploded. No arson, big shot.”
“Is that how it started? Or did it start because someone squirted lighter fluid in the sunroom?” He pushed him harder against the car, adding a hand to his throat for emphasis. “Were you in the house that night?”
He could feel Bell’s Adam’s apple rise and fall with…guilt.
“Tell me what happened, or I will squeeze it out of you.” He added enough pressure to his throat to make good on the threat.
“He saw me.” The words came out in a rough whisper as Bell’s voice cracked.
“What?”
“He saw me trapped in the sunroom and…” Tears pooled behind his wire frames, askew on his face. “I wanted to buy the house and raze it to wipe away the memory.”
“Are you talking about my father? That’s why he…”
Bell dropped his head on a sob. “Yes, I wanted to be called in. I went in to start the fire. Not a big one and not where people were. The door to that garden room wasn’t even locked.”
“What happened, Bell? Start from the beginning.” It took everything Declan had not to shake the guy until his bones rattled.
He shuddered. “I squirted the lighter fluid, and before I could even get the fire started…wham. The damn rags blew up, and I was stuck inside. If I left through the house, I’d be caught. The engines came and got people out, and they didn’t know I was back there. Until…he saw me.”
“Dad saved you.”
“Yes.” He sobbed the word. “His partner moved away for some reason, and he saw me and…walked through the fire to get to the door. I ran out. Got away. Dropped the lighter. And the balcony collapsed on him.”
Declan barely understood the garbled words, but he got enough. He was standing here with his hand on the throat of the man who walked this earth because his father died saving his life. Yes, Dad had broken protocol by leaving his partner. But to save someone’s life?
Joe Mahoney would do that.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Bell cried out. “I got in over my head, and it really was an accident, but I can’t forget. I can’t…forget…”
Declan loosened his grip as an unexpected bout of sympathy hit him. “Hardly an accident.”
“It was!” he insisted, finally lifting his pathetic head to look at Declan. Past Declan. “And so was that. I swear to God. I accidentally broke the oil lamp and—”
Declan whipped around and looked at the house just as a smoke alarm started to shriek loud enough to be heard through the windows. At the back of the house, the first billow of smoke rose.
Swearing, he let go of Bell, and the guy used the moment to try to get in his car, but Declan grabbed him and threw him to the ground, slamming a knee on his chest to pin him. “Give me your phone,” he demanded. “Now.
