“But . . . I mean, what people? And where are you setting fires? In houses?”
“Some, but mostly commercial spaces. Most of my clients—”
“Clients?” That word sounded so, so . . . businesslike. So prim, or something. Something vulgar in its propriety.
He nodded. “Most of my clients were business owners on the brink of bankruptcy, or else they’d cooked their books or otherwise fucked themselves into a corner, and needed quick cash and a way out. I go in, I set up a scene—finesse some wiring, or maybe it’s a faulty space heater, left on too close to a trash can full of paper. Maybe it’s industrial—the right rags soaked in the exact sorts of chemicals you’d expect to find in whatever place of business it was, too close to a heating duct that’s got too much dust built up in it. Whatever accident fits the scene.”
“Accident,” she repeated.
“Seeming accident, yeah. The key is to design the fire to burn through quick.” He sounded excited now, talking faster, gesturing like he was recounting a boxing match. “You leave the right windows open in the right sort of weather, keep others closed, control the spread. Make sure the building goes down quick, ideally before the authorities can even arrive.”
“The firefighters.”
Casey nodded.
Her stomach turned all the way over, three hundred sixty degrees. “My grampa was a firefighter, and my uncle.”
Casey sat up straighter, snapping out of his animated state in a blink. “Oh, honey—don’t worry. Nobody ever got hurt by any fire I set. I was careful.”
“Because you didn’t want to get caught,” she inferred. Anger was simmering now, melting some of the ice in her veins. Anger was her least favorite emotion, the one she avoided at all costs. But just now, trying to square the look in Casey’s eyes with the facts he was telling her . . . She was pissed, yeah. “Only because if you did get caught, and somebody had gotten hurt, you’d probably be in way more trouble.”
“Yes, because of that. But because I didn’t want to hurt anybody, period. We were careful. We made sure no other buildings were in danger of going up. We made sure there were no people around, no pets in the buildings. Hell, I did industrial jobs where we had to make sure we weren’t going to release a load of toxic smoke too close to a residential neighborhood. We were careful,” he repeated. “If anybody suffered, it was the multibillion-dollar insurance industry, and they’re a load of cons themselves.”
“But somebody could have,” she said. “A firefighter could’ve been hurt or killed, responding to what you did. They could’ve gotten trapped and died, had a ceiling collapse on them, or . . .” She was about panting now, feeling suffocated. “I can’t help but imagine it was my grampa or my uncle Hal who was in there. What could’ve happened to them.”
“Don’t picture a fire like you see on TV. We accepted these jobs because they were ripe for it. Remote, or out in industrial areas, dead after dark.”
“But you couldn’t know that something wouldn’t go wrong. That somebody wouldn’t get hurt. This was in Texas. You could’ve started a wildfire.”
His smile was weak, and definitely guilty now. “No, I suppose you can’t ever know for sure. All I know is that it all worked out. Every single job.”
She felt hot all over, agitated and verging on out of control. She hated this feeling. This feeling had made an addict out of her, made her want to feel nothing, rather than sit in the discomfort of her own emotions. She focused on other questions, to keep in control of herself.
“Who’s we? Who did you work with?”
“Small teams. Very small. I did the research and all the planning and set the fires. I worked with one of two drivers, who got me and the materials in and out, and monitored the police scanner. And then another one of us was in charge of brokering the deals—finding the jobs, setting the terms, working with me to pick the right time for it to all go down. Three people per job, just four of us, total, that I ever worked with. Though the woman who did the brokering, she worked with more teams than just the one I was on.”
“Woman?” Why was that so especially disconcerting?
Because we’re raised to be kind. To care about people and want to keep them safe. Raised to defer and be good and please others. Especially men. Though where exactly had those values landed Abilene, anyhow?
Casey nodded. “Yeah, she’s a woman. My partner.”
“How long did you work together?”
“A little over three years.”
“When was the last . . . job you did?” Job. That word tasted sarcastic on her tongue. Sour.
“End of June, last year.”
“And what was it? Where, and what kind of a building or whatever?”
Another apologetic smile. “I can’t tell you that. That’s beyond just my own business. But I can tell you that nobody got hurt, and the client got paid. So did we. I used a lot of that money to buy into Benji’s with Duncan, and some I gave to Vince, to help with our mother.”
She froze. So her wages were paid in dirty money. Jesus, she’d thought she’d moved past all this when she’d put her foot down with James, told him he had to go straight. But all this time, every bag of groceries Casey had brought her, every check she’d let him pay in the diner . . . Every single one of those dollars could’ve left somebody dead. Somebody who’d dedicated their own life to helping others, at their own risk.
Christ, she had fuck-all clue what to do with any of this.
“Say something,” Casey prompted after a minute’s silence. “You’re making me nervous.”
“You . . . But all of this is over, right?”
“Yeah, I’d say so.”
Her eyes widened. “You’d say so?” She’d heard him on the phone with someone, that night when they’d first kissed. His so-called partner, maybe. He’d told that person to fuck off, in no uncertain terms.
“I’d been on the fence about one final job, but I never agreed to it. So yes, it’s over.”
“You said you’d gone straight.” Hadn’t he? Or had she merely assumed? “You said you wanted to be a better man, from now on.” Because of me. Because of us.
“The bar’s nearly cleaned me out. I can pay my rent, keep food in the fridge and gas in my car, but there’s other things I need a little padding for. One night’s work, thirty thousand bucks. There’s a lot of good I can do with that kind of money.”
“But the money itself is bad,” she spat, catching how hysterical she now sounded, and not caring. “And the bar is full of that same bad money.” How on earth could it possibly succeed, when it was built on a pile of dirty cash? “Does Duncan know about all this? About how you made the money you used to go into business with him?”
Casey shook his head. “He knows it was shady, but he never asked for the details.”
She wished she didn’t know those details herself . . . But she had to, didn’t she? Without them, she’d been falling in love with a stranger. With a man as bad as James had been. Maybe the bad that James did left marks on people’s bodies, and bullet holes, and maybe he didn’t apologize for those things. But he’d never taken pleasure from his job, she didn’t think. Whereas Casey . . .
“Did you enjoy it?” she asked. “Those jobs?”
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.”
She stared down at his hands for a long time, more than a minute. Hands that had held her baby—the hands that had held her before any other person in the world. Hands that had made Abilene feel wonderful in ways she’d all but forgotten about. And hands that had struck matches and started fires, counted money, but in all likelihood never come together to pray for forgiveness.
“Say something, honey.” There was worry in his voice, the excitement she’d sensed all drained away.
“I don’t really know what to say. I’m not even sure what I think just now.” All she knew for sure was that this changed everything.