Flame (The Firefighters of Darling Bay Book 3) by Herron Rachael

Author:Herron, Rachael [Herron, Rachael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HGA Publishing
Published: 2013-12-16T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THERE WERE EIGHT women in the new class, and Hank knew all but two of them. It was a small town—he shouldn’t have been surprised that Dot Rilo from the post office had signed up with her best friend, Kayla. They never did anything without each other.

Gina and Tina and Kelly were there, too, which was a little more surprising. The three sisters were joint owners of the Wooden Duck, all in their early thirties. They’d inherited the bar from their dad, but all of them had worked there since they were of age to serve liquor. If anyone could handle themselves around ill-intentioned men, he would have thought it would have been them. Somehow, seeing them laughing together, their giggles sounding a little nervous, made the purpose of the class even more real.

Linda McCracken was there, too, and Hank was glad. He knew her from having responded to her house regularly when her husband was dying of prostate cancer. In the six months it had taken him to die, he’d gotten thinner and thinner, and Linda had wasted away along with him. It got to the point that when she would call 911 to get him back to the hospital, Hank would take a precious fifteen seconds to run to the kitchen to throw together whatever they’d eaten for dinner—pot roast piled on a plate with some leftover asparagus, or some chili tossed into a bowl—and while the medics packaged Len up, Hank would heat the food in her microwave while hiding her car keys. “No,” he’d say. “No driving to the hospital until after you’ve eaten that.” It got to the point where Linda didn’t even try to talk him out of it. She’d sit obediently at the table, eating whatever it was with a blank expression. She moved slower every day. The afternoon the ambulance had taken Len away code three, the day Hank had known her husband wouldn’t ever come back to the house, Hank didn’t make her eat. They hadn’t let her drive, either, taking her themselves. She’d finally cried that day. She’d cried the whole way.

He hadn’t seen her in more than a year, probably. She smiled to see him, and hugged him. She’d lost even more weight. There was no way she could weigh more than ninety pounds, even with her big sneakers on.

The two women he didn’t know—both of whom looked like soccer-moms—looked sideways at each other and carefully avoided eye contact with both him and Wally.

It felt weird to be instantly sized up as “a potential assailant,” as Samantha had done when introducing them. Hank had been tall since his first real growth spurt at fourteen, but he’d never felt as hulking as he did now. He tried to school his features into a neutral blandness.

He tried to think about kittens and puppies. Puffy puffs of…soft puffiness.

And even still, Hank felt menacing in his skin.

Samantha was good at her job. After the first couple of minutes, during which she took

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