“When you’re raised with it all around you,” he said, “I think you do two things. You either get sucked into it, and you become a mini-me, or you get to the point where you look around and say, ‘That’s not what I want for my life,’ and you find a way out.”
“Well, I found a way out, but then I found trauma nursing very difficult to handle.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s a failure on your part,” he said.
She shook her head. “I didn’t expect you to pick up on that.”
“It’s amazing what we think of as failures,” he said, “because I did the same thing after my accident. I figured it was my fault that I’d gotten shot. And, of course, nobody would even listen to that theory because it was garbage. Of course it was garbage. I wasn’t responsible, and I wasn’t at fault for having taken a bullet. But I felt like I’d let everybody else down, let my team down, because I couldn’t be there for them anymore.”
“Survivor guilt,” she murmured. “Or just plain guilt. Seems like, if we don’t have a reason to rack ourselves up and down over these things, we create a reason.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” he said with a grin.
“See? We have a lot in common,” she said, slowly liking him more and more. Of course she loved him for saving Bernie—the dog—right at the beginning. Being decisive with a take-charge attitude also appealed in a big way.
“We do,” he said, nodding.
She looked over at him. “Where have you been staying before you came here for the dog?”
“I was in New Mexico, in Santa Fe,” he said with a bright smile, “with friends of mine.” And he explained about Badger and Badger’s team.
“Wow,” she said, “that is a nice thing to hear. The fact that they are still friends after all that and the fact that they’ve rebuilt their lives, giving purpose to it, that’s huge.”
“It is,” he said, “and we often forget that they did it themselves. So we have to give them credit for all that as well.”
Their trip was completed a few minutes later, as Tucker followed the GPS’s directions, and they pulled into the parking lot to see a man standing outside his white truck, waiting for them. “That’s my soon-to-be brother-in-law, Rodney,” Tucker murmured.
They hopped out, and she came around to Tucker’s side, eyeing the tall sandy-haired man with a bridge of freckles. He grinned at the sight of Addie and held out his hand to shake hers. Tucker made the introductions, then stepped back and brought Bernie forward.
Rodney crouched in front of Bernie, held out his hand. She was very well mannered, sniffed his hand, her tail wagging; then she looked up and nudged his hand with her nose. “So this is the dog that we’re talking about?”
“Yep, she was trained for fire, arson, bombs as well,” Tucker said.
“Well, let’s hope no bombs are here,” Rodney said. “But I’ll take all the help I can get. I can’t keep this up.”
“No, it’s usually a simple case for the dog,” he said. “How many crewmembers do you have here right now?”
“Too many and they’re all looking for paychecks,” he said with feeling.
“Well, take me first to the arson scene,” Tucker said. “Then we’ll talk.”
“I want to watch you and the dog work,” Rodney said.
“That’s fine. The only thing is, I don’t know if Bernie will take it as a distraction, once we get to the fire site,” Tucker said, pointing to the dog. “And the fewer distractions, the better, since the dog is well trained, but I’m not.”
Rodney hesitated and nodded. “I’ll stay in the background.” He looked at Addie. “Are you going?”
“Absolutely,” she said. And she walked up to Tucker’s side. “You don’t have a problem with me coming, do you?”
He hitched out his elbow, and she tucked her hand in because it felt right, and Rodney led the two of them to the respective building. She didn’t know who this Tucker guy was, but she knew she wanted to get to know him a whole lot more than she had. She knew Rodney eyed them speculatively too, figuring out just what their relationship was, and she was okay with that. Because, if he figured it out, he was doing better than they were. And, with that, they walked into the building.
A few feet inside, Tucker stopped, and both the dog and Addie stood beside him and stared. “Interesting fire pattern,” he murmured, staring at the skeleton remains around them.
Rodney behind him said, “Exactly, right?”
“It’s concentrated in the far corner of basically this unfinished portion of this building,” he said. “You haven’t got a roof on this one yet.”
“I know, so the damage is a whole lot less here, but structurally all these trusses have to be replaced.” Rodney pointed up to where some of the fire had charred the wood.
“And yet,” Tucker suggested, “it could have been so much worse.”
“Which begs the question as to whether the firebug had intentionally set this to do minimal damage or if he’s just not good at this.”
“A first-time firebug? Yeah, could be,” Tucker added. He stopped to look at his brother-in-law and asked, “Have you been threatened at all?”
The question completely took the color right out of Rodney’s face. He stared at Tucker in shock. “How did you know that?”
“Because this would be the next step,” Tucker said. “So why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t even know what’s going on,” he said in frustration. “It makes no sense. A couple months ago I started getting some protestors, people blockading us, not letting us drive in, all about this construction here. We’ve got all the permits. We did all our due diligence, and everything’s clear to go.”
“So it’s locals?”
“Well, certainly a lot of locals seemed pissed off about it, but nobody would give us a reason as to why, not a legal one. Just that they didn’t want this condominium complex here. They wanted to keep their pristine land unobstructed and don’t want the community to get any bigger.”
“Which is an old story,” Addie said. “It’s beautiful around here. I can see, if I had lived here all my life, how I probably wouldn’t want to see growth and commerce coming in either.”
“It’s also a very poor area,” Rodney said, “and everybody has to commute a long way for work.”
“Which is what people moving in have to do as well, correct?” Addie asked.
“Yes,” he said, “it’ll add to the sleeping community feel of the place, but very little affordable housing is in town, and, because this is out of town, it will be that much more affordable.”
“Was this a popular hiking trail or something like that?” she asked, Tucker listening in.
“Not really,” Rodney said. “However, it was one of the original homesteads. We bought it for a song because the heir apparent just wanted his cash.”
“Maybe if the locals knew that,” Tucker said, “it would make them more upset.”