Crime Scene Cover-Up Read online

  Mark knocked on the window, capturing her attention. “Ma’am? I need you to turn off your engine.” With a nod of understanding, she turned the key, killing any sparks in the motor that could set off an explosion and turn the small fire into a deadly inferno. Mark held up the crowbar, indicating his intention. “I need you to look the other way.”

  She turned, raising her hand as if it might shield her baby in the back seat. Mark found the precise spot on the window, shielded his own eyes and shattered the glass with a single blow. In a matter of seconds, he swept the glass shards from the ledge of the door and reached inside to unlock all of them.

  “Hang tight, ma’am. I’ll be right back.”

  “Save my little girl,” the woman pleaded, understanding Mark’s intention as he opened the back door and reached inside. “Is she hurt? It all happened so fast.”

  “You okay, little one?” A quick check indicated that the car seat had done its job protecting its occupant. Possibly a few bruises, and the child was good and scared, but she quieted and reached for Mark as he inched inside to release the carrier from the car seat. “I think she’s okay.” He climbed out and handed the baby in her carrier to Sid. “Can you get her up the hill?”

  Sid nodded and climbed slowly up the hill. “You come with me, sweetie. I know all about little girls. I have one named Jess. She’s a big girl now. But she’ll always be my...”

  The familiar voice faded as Mark turned his attention to the injured mother. With the seat belt jammed, he pulled out his pocketknife and cut through the straps, catching her before she could slide to the other side of the car. Pulling her arm around his shoulders, he carefully lifted her as he stepped to the ground. Her soft grunt of pain and lack of complaining told him she was probably the more seriously injured of the two drivers. And even though moving her risked aggravating any spinal injury, the spreading flames weren’t giving him any choice.

  He slid once in the grass, before finding traction and completing the climb. Sid had spread one of the sleeping bags out on the ground where Mark laid the woman. He asked the other woman to hold her hand and talk to her while Sid covered her with the other sleeping bag and set the baby carrier beside her. “There you go, sweetie. There’s Mama.”

  The sounds of distant sirens echoed through the hills as Mark ran to the back of his camper again, pulling out the small fire extinguisher he carried, and dropped back down into the ditch. The pickup’s hood was too hot to touch, but it had twisted enough that he could spray the fire-suppressant foam through the gaps and douse the fire. He wouldn’t have enough foam to put out two engine fires, but if he could stop the flames from spreading to oil lines and fuel tanks—

  “Hey! Mister!” Mark squinted against the stinging chemical fumes of the smoke and ignored the voices calling out.

  “Mister Mark! Hey, Firefighter Guy!” That was Wyatt. He turned toward the teen’s panicked tone. “He doesn’t look too good.”

  Mark followed his gaze past the two women and baby to where the other man was helping Sid move from his knees, where he’d apparently collapsed, to a sitting position. “Grandpa!”

  Sid Taylor was lying flat on his back on the shoulder of the road by the time Mark reached him. Ah, hell. He was pale. His skin was clammy. The subtle signs had been there, but Mark hadn’t been paying close enough attention. The pulse at his neck was thready at best.

  His grandfather was having a heart attack.

  “I’m feeling a little light-headed.” Sid’s dark eyes drifted shut. “That climb...too much...”

  “I shouldn’t have asked you to do it. Damn it, I shouldn’t have asked.” Mark dug through the front pockets of his grandfather’s jeans, pulling out the small bottle of baby aspirin. His fingers shook as he twisted it open. This shouldn’t be happening. They were supposed to be having fun this weekend. He and Grandpa Sid always had fun.

  “Nonsense... Happy to...” For one frightening moment, his voice drifted off.

  “Grandpa!” Mark bent his ear to his grandfather’s nose and mouth. Was he still breathing? He flattened his palm over Sid’s chest, searching for a heartbeat. Where the hell was his med kit when he needed it? Back at the station, on the truck, where it was supposed to be. He and Sid were on vacation. This wasn’t supposed to happen. “Grandpa, you hang in there.”

  After three compressions, Sid’s eyes slowly opened. But they were hazy, unable to focus.

  “There you are.” Mark popped the pill onto Sid’s tongue, lifting him slightly and running his hand along his throat to help him swallow. “You scared me, old man. Here. Take this.”

  Then he laid him flat on the pavement again and resumed compressions.

  Someone covered Sid with a blanket. Someone was talking on the phone to 9-1-1. Someone else was crying.

  “Did we save the day?” He’d never heard that voice sound so weak.

  “Yeah. We sure did, Grandpa.” Mark swiped angrily at the tears that clouded his vision. “As soon as the ambulance gets here, they’ll all be okay. So will you.”

  With a flop, Sid covered Mark’s hands with one of his, brushing his fingers against Mark’s wrist. His touch was cold, jerky. “My good boy. Good...man...”

  Sid Taylor’s eyes focused for a split second. And then they closed.

  “No!” Mark continued the compressions against the old man’s brave heart. “Grandpa!”

  Chapter Two

  Two months later

  “What is wrong with you?”

  Mark shied away from his brother Alex’s flick on the ear, dragged himself from the gloom and guilt of his thoughts, and frowned at his oldest brother’s reprimand. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Not the whippiest comeback, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances. Parked on the street in front of the empty butcher shop their grandfather had run for almost fifty years, Mark set the box he’d carried down from his grandmother’s apartment above the shop on the tailgate of his truck.

  Before he could push it into the bed of the truck, Alex picked up the box and carried it to the pickup parked in front of Mark’s, where his brothers Matt and Pike were tying down a dining room table and matching chairs. “That’s the third full box of Grandma’s things you’ve tried to load in the back of your truck. Her things go into Matt’s truck to haul out to the new house. Grandpa’s things go into your truck so we can put them into storage.”

  Alex might be the shortest of the four Taylor brothers—all adopted into the Taylor clan when they were kids—but there was no doubting his position as the oldest. And possibly the toughest, given his early years as a gang member on the streets of Kansas City. Finding a family like the Taylors, who’d embraced each of them despite their rotten childhoods and the emotional needs they came with, had been a real blessing. They all loved their parents, Gideon and Meghan, as well as their extended family. Brought together first in a foster home and then by adoption, they loved each other, too—and would fight to the death any outsider who threatened their family. But they were still brothers—and picking on the youngest had evolved into an art form over the years.

  Probably why Mark had learned at a young age never to back down from standing up for himself and expressing his own opinion. He pulled a black bandanna from the back pocket of his jeans and wiped away the perspiration trickling down his neck before tying it around his forehead to keep the sweat there from running into his eyes. The early summer morning had turned into a long, hot afternoon as it was all hands on deck to help their widowed grandmother move into a ranch-style home with no stairs.

  Mark rested his hip against the tailgate. “It doesn’t bother you that we’re putting Grandpa Sid into storage?”

  “It does,” Alex agreed, his dark brown eyes a mix of sympathy and reprimand. He stepped aside while brawny Matt pulled a cooler from the back of his truck and opened it to share some iced-down bottles of water. “But we’re here to
help Grandma today. Moving her to a new place where she doesn’t have to climb twenty steps just to get to the front door. Downsizing. Clearing out the apartment so that we can fix it up and she can sell it along with the butcher shop.” He tossed Mark a bottle of water and opened one of his own. “She’s the one who got left behind, little bro. She needs us to suck up whatever hurt we’re feeling and help her get through this.” As a SWAT cop, Alex was used to giving orders and expecting them to be obeyed. But he understood that he couldn’t just order Mark to stop feeling the grief that distracted him today. “Pike, you’re the logical one. Explain this to our baby brother.”

  The tallest of them, and the only one with blond hair, Edison “Pike” Taylor levered himself off the back of Matt’s truck and grabbed one of the water bottles for himself. His KCPD K-9 partner, Hans, was upstairs with his wife and two young children supervising the packing and distracting Martha Taylor from the sadness of the day. “Don’t put me in the middle of this. We all miss Grandpa. I’ve got a little girl who’s never going to know how much her great-grandpa would have spoiled her.” He rested an elbow on Alex’s shoulder, a long-ingrained habit that reminded their oldest brother that he wasn’t the boss here, and that, despite his best intentions, he didn’t have all the answers. “Mark was there when we lost him. Maybe that makes it harder for him to compartmentalize and move past it.”

  Maybe it did.

  Mark had saved every life that day except for the one who really counted.

  His KCFD counselor kept reminding him to focus on the positive when he got stuck in his head like this. “Try telling that to the parents of that teenage boy—to the husband and father of that mother and baby.”

  “Try telling that to my grandmother. Or parents. Or brothers.” Try explaining how he’d let Sid Taylor, the patriarch of this large, wonderful family who’d rescued him, die on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.

  “Hey.” The truck shifted as Matt sat on the tailgate beside him. “Get out of your head. This is not your fault.”

  “Yeah? Just like the death of our birth parents wasn’t your fault.” The shock that flared in Matt’s brown eyes was hidden away as quickly as it had appeared. Mark shook his head in apology, hating the way the words had come out of his mouth. He knew the pain his older brother carried. “Hey, man—I’m sorry. That was a low blow. You were a little kid—not even in school yet. No one blames you. Hell, you saved my life that night. It’s just...” Mark shrugged. “I know you’ve struggled with that. When you figure out how to let that one go, you let me in on the secret, okay?”

  Matt’s gaze narrowed with a considering look. Then he threw an arm around Mark’s shoulders and hauled him in for a tight, quick hug. Then he was pushing Mark away and rising to his feet. Ever a man of few words, Matt finished off his water, crumpled the bottle in his fist and went back to his truck. The four brothers packed the remaining boxes into their respective vehicles and headed up the inside stairs to their grandmother’s apartment for the next load.

  After another hour of packing, they sat down on folding chairs and the floor to share one last Sunday dinner at their grandparents’ home. Mark had never left this place hungry, and today was no different. He wolfed down two helpings of potato salad and deli sandwiches, along with samples from the last batch of chocolate chip cookies Grandma Martha would ever bake in this home, where she’d lived with Grandpa Sid for almost fifty years. Somewhere along the way, Mark’s mood lightened as his dad and grandmother shared family stories. Hans accepted the offering of a roast beef sandwich from Pike’s son to several “Oops” and “Oh, no”s and quick corrections for both dog and boy. And Alex and his wife, Audrey, announced they were taking a class to get certified to adopt a child, which generated a round of hugs and congratulations. Mark wrestled his dad for the last cookie before discovering smarty-pants Pike had already eaten it. Then there was a round of cheers and applause when Grandma Martha pulled a plastic container filled with more cookies from a secret stash in one of the boxes.

  Mark was finally laughing when his phone vibrated in the pocket of his jeans. The noise in the big apartment quieted as other phones buzzed or rang with incoming calls and texts. His mother, Meghan, a station captain; his father, an arson investigator and deputy fire chief; as well as his brother Matt—all firefighters—got the same page on their phones.

  “Looks like Station 13 needs backup,” Mark reported. “They’re calling in all off-duty personnel who weren’t on the last shift.”

  “Must be something big,” Alex observed.

  “I got the same message from my firehouse.” Their mother swung her long blond braid behind her back, shifting into command mode as she shared the gist of the message while Mark read the all-call on his phone. Meghan Taylor might be diminutive in size compared to her husband and the four sons they’d adopted, but as the ranking KCFD officer, Mark and Matt automatically deferred to her. “Looks like volunteer firefighters in Platte County have lost control of a wildfire up north. The winds have shifted and pushed it into our jurisdiction. They thought they had it contained to the brushland and trees, but it’s threatening a new housing development and farm homes close to the airport.”

  Their father, Gideon, was already putting his phone to his ear and striding out of the room. “I’ll put in a call to the city—see if we can get some water trucks up there.”

  Meghan crossed the room to her white-haired mother-in-law. “Martha, I don’t want to leave you here. I know this is a tough day for you.”

  “I’ll be just fine, Meg.” Martha Taylor might have lost some height and gained some arthritis over the past few years, but nothing could diminish her innate strength or the bright warmth in her blue eyes. She cupped Meghan’s cheek and smiled. “I was married to a marine. And we raised enough cops and firefighters to know that when duty calls, you answer. Don’t you worry about me.”

  Alex slipped his arm around their grandmother’s thinning frame. “Audrey and I will stay with her, Mom.”

  Pike draped an arm around Martha from the opposite side. “Hope and me and the kids, too. Grandma won’t be alone.”

  Martha reached up and squeezed both Alex’s and Pike’s hands where they rested on her shoulders, and Mark suspected she was finding the comfort she needed to ease today’s abrupt departure as she leaned first into one grandson and then the other. “I never have been. Go. It’s because of this family that I have always felt safe.”

  Meghan nodded and the two women exchanged a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too, dear.”

  Then Meghan turned to Mark and Matt. “Boys?”

  Mark imagined they could be sixty, seventy, eighty years old, and their mother would always summon them with Boys. Mark didn’t mind. He knew he was a lucky son of a gun to be included in this family. Alex, Pike, Matt and he were the boys that, because of a tragic event early in Meghan’s life, she’d never been able to have. To his way of thinking, it made the bond between them that much more special because she and Gideon had chosen the four of them to be their boys.

  Their father strode back into the room. “The tankers are on their way.” He grasped their mother’s hand. “Shall we?” He nodded to Mark and Matt. “Why don’t you boys drive separately? It sounds like we might need to spread out our resources.”

  “Yes, sir.” Matt swallowed Martha up in a hug against his broad chest and dropped a kiss on the crown of her hair. “Love you, Grandma.”

  “Love you, too, Matthew. Be safe.”

  Her blue eyes locked on to Mark’s across the room. Were they sad? Troubled? Or was that the reflection of his own thoughts he saw there? “I love you, too, Mark.”

  He was the one who’d made this day necessary. How could she say she loved him when he’d taken the love of her life from her?

  But her outstretched arms demanded he obey Alex’s directive and suck it up to do whatever was ne
cessary to ease their grandmother’s pain. After the unfamiliar hesitation, he crossed the room and leaned down to wrap her up in a gentle hug. Her slight frame was surprisingly strong as she held on a little longer than he’d planned. “You keep your head in the game and be safe,” she whispered against his ear. “I’ll be all right.”

  He didn’t deserve her kindness or forgiveness or whatever this was. Still, he tightened his arms as much as he dared because, with everything else she had to deal with right now, he didn’t want to add to her burden. “You’d better be,” he whispered back before pulling away. “I love you, Grandma.”

  Then he was jogging down the stairs, following Matt and his parents to their respective vehicles, answering the call for off-duty personnel to provide backup for the exhausted firefighters in North Kansas City.

  It was time to go to work.

  Time to make sure nobody else died on his watch.

  Chapter Three

  “Mr. O’Brien, if you could just sign—”

  “Do you see how close that fire came to my model home?” Dale O’Brien ignored his assistant, who tried to push a pen and notebook with a page of typed checks toward the contractor, who was building new homes in the area at the edge of the wildfire they’d finally put out. With a heavy sigh that bespoke too little appreciation on too long a day, she hugged the notebook back to her chest and followed her boss as he approached Mark’s mom, the local scene commander. Mark watched from his perch on top of the Firehouse 13 truck as the contractor pointed a stubby finger at Meghan Taylor. “I have two buyers who are ready to move into their houses, and eight more lots sold. I have a substantial investment here.” O’Brien, the owner of the Copper Lake subdivision near the KCI Airport, had a right to be concerned about the safety of his construction employees and damage to the property he owned.

  But a faint accusation laced the tone of the man with a gut pushing over the top of his belt buckle. O’Brien insisted on pointing out the negative instead of focusing on how Mark, Matt and the rest of the KCFD off-duty volunteers who’d answered the call for backup had cleared a trench through the neighboring farmland and watered down a protective perimeter around the new subdivision so that not one of O’Brien’s fancy Copper Lake homes and construction sites had sustained any damage from the approaching grass fire.