Fade the Heat

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Authors: Colleen Thompson
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concern.” The district chief then introduced both himself and the younger firefighter. After they shook hands, he added, “According to the paramedics, Rozinski’s injuries appear life-threatening. He was down for ten minutes, his mask knocked off his face, and the hot gases…” Breaking off, he shook his head. “This is one of the best trauma centers in the country.”
    Jack nodded. “If I were seriously injured, this is where I’d want to be.”
    “You have any idea who the caller could have been, or what this is all about? You have an enemy?”
    “Apparently,” Jack said. “Someone vandalized my truck this afternoon in the parking lot of the clinic where I work. One of your firefighters, Reagan Hurley, may have seen the man as he was leaving.”
    “Hurley?” the district chief echoed.
    The younger man said, “Patrick Hurley’s girl. Remember him? On-duty death in the mid-eighties, that big warehouse fire off of Washington Avenue. She joined the department a few years back. Real gung-ho type, from what I hear.”
    The district chief nodded, and Jack said, “I’ve had some trouble lately. It seems that someone at my clinic either gave or sold Darren Winter one of my patient’s medical records, and he’s called my diagnosis into question.”
    The younger man whistled through his teeth, and the district chief said, “So you’re the guy. The police are going to want to speak to you—to both you and Ms. Hurley, I imagine. But they won’t be the only interested parties. You’ll have to talk with investigators from Houston PD, arson, the state fire marshals, maybe even the feds, depending on what comes up in the investigation. I’m afraid this is going to be a very long night for everyone involved.”
    Jack nodded, numb with the thought of how his life had spun out of control. A man lay near death, he and his neighbors had lost their homes, and now, it seemed, every detective in the region would be burrowing into the case, masticating details like a host of strong-jawed beetles chewing a fallen tree to pulp.
    If he’d had any chance of keeping his treatment of the other children from the media, it had just gone up in flames…along with what was left of his career.

Chapter Five
    “We had to call in the feds,” Reagan heard an arson investigator say to the HPD detective outside the administrative office where they had left her waiting. In spite of the odious detective’s demands that she stay put, she had edged near the open doorway in hopes of slipping out for an update on Rozinski. Instead, she’d found the two men conversing about eight feet down the corridor.
    Unlike suppression firefighters and EMTs, the guy from the arson division—she thought she’d heard him called Salinas—wore cowboy boots and a denim shirt with a pair of jeans that fit his long, lean body to perfection. “That joint task force’ll be all over this now that BorderFree’s faxed a statement to the media.”
    Could he mean BorderFree-4-All? A sick chill gave Reagan gooseflesh at the thought of the bombing in San Antonio. She remembered the images from the news as if it had happened yesterday and not last spring: survivors screaming, a mosaic of shattered glass glittering on the sidewalk, three bodies beingcarried out of the Immigration and Naturalization Service District Office under bloodstained sheets, hooded militants sending videotaped demands for open borders to the television stations. Terrorism right here in Texas.
    She had to bite her tongue to keep from running through the door and demanding to know what a radical, anti-immigration-law group could possibly have to do with the fire at Jack Montoya’s apartment. Could it be, despite the vandalism and Winter’s radio attacks, that Jack had never been the target in the first place? After all, what did an East End Clinic doctor have to do with U.S. policy?
    “We probably have a half hour before the FBI and ATF get here,” the pale and lumpy Detective Norman Worth

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