LOVE ME TO DEATH - Chapter 1

Maggie Shayne
6 days ago
6 min read

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne

Present Day

Boston, Massachusetts

David Nichols lifted the visor of his helmet and stood gazing at the sodden, still smoldering pile of rubble that used to be a diner, wishing his crew had been able to do more. The business owners, a man who looked like a biker and his small-by-comparison wife stood silently holding each other. Fat tears rolled down the big man's face. The woman’s grief wasn’t as silent. She was sobbing hard.

David's fellow firefighters were rolling up hoses, gathering equipment. He went to the couple, taking his helmet off as he did. “I’m so sorry. If we’d got here sooner—”

“My fault,” the man said. “The alarm system went haywire last week. I should have had it fixed, but I put it off, and now—” He looked at the wreckage that had been his livelihood and shook his head.

“You’re insured, right?” David asked, relieved when the woman nodded. “I know it looks bad now, but you’ll be okay. You will. I’ve seen enough of this to know. And really, thank your lucky stars nobody was inside. Nobody was hurt or killed. It could’ve been a lot worse.”

“We know you did all you could,” the woman said.

David nodded and moved aside as the couple were surrounded by friends and loved ones who’d rushed to the scene. They would be okay.

As for him, hell, he never would. It wouldn’t have made a difference if he had saved the structure. He would still feel the black knot in his stomach that had never gone away. No matter how many kids or pets he’d carried out of how many burning buildings, no matter how many lives he’d saved, he would never erase the stain from his soul.

The two years he’d spent in juvenile detention hadn’t come close to being a fair price to pay for what he’d done as a kid. But Sierra had been poor, and of mixed blood. Her mother was East Indian and had left Sierra and her white father to return to her family in Delhi. Dave and the guys-–who'd come, forward refusing to let him take the blame alone–were upper-crust white boys on their way to college. So they’d been tried as minors, sent off to juvie until they turned eighteen, and then set free with their records wiped clean.

A fresh start. A second chance. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, and he’d never been at peace with it.

A second chance was more than Sierra Terrence had been given.

He walked back to the truck, shrugging out of his heavy yellow coat as he did. Climbing into the driver’s seat, he saw that his cell phone, lying on the dash, had Missed Call shining from its face.

Frowning, he picked it up, recognized the photo assigned to the number and hit the voicemail button. But it wasn’t his old friend Mark’s voice on the recording.

“David, it’s Janet. Mark’s been in an accident. It’s...serious.” That word emerged as if it barely fit through her throat. And her voice was tighter, deeper after that. “He’s asking for you. All of you. Please come...soon.”

That was it. There was nothing more. All of you, she’d said. All of you. And that could only mean his closest friends and himself. They’d bonded twenty-two years ago. Oh, they’d been friends, good friends, before the drunken debacle that had cost a young woman her life. But afterward, their friendship had taken on a depth David figured few men experienced. When he, David, had confessed, he hadn’t given up any of the others. But they had all come forward, one by one, to shoulder their share of the blame. And then in juvie, hours from Port Lucinda and surrounded by really messed up young men, they’d needed each other just to stay sane—and safe.

And while they no longer lived in close proximity, they still kept in touch and got together on all the important occasions. Weddings. Kids being born. Summer holidays. Mark was the only one who’d stayed in Port Lucinda—he’d taken over his father’s little grocery store there.

So when Janet said, “All of you,” she could only have meant Randy, Kevin, Brad and David. The reformed arsonists who would never wash the blood of a sixteen-year-old girl from their hands.

His phone was ringing again a half hour later. He glanced at the screen, and saw his assumption confirmed. It was Randy. He answered with the words, “Janet called you, too?”

“Yeah. Did she tell you what happened?” Randy asked.

“Accident, she said.”

“He was hit by a truck, Dave.”

“What?”

“Right outside the store. I got the feeling his prognosis isn’t good.”

“Yeah, I got that, too,” David admitted, though even saying the words brought a lump to his throat. “So when are you coming?”

“I’m flying out late tonight, overnight flight. I’ll land early tomorrow morning," Randy said. "Kevin and Brad have early flights tomorrow, so I’m just going to rent a car and wait for them at the airport. Then we’ll all drive into Port Lucinda together.”

“You going to room together or—”

“My dad still has the cottage there,” Randy said. “He said we could use it. There’s plenty of room for all four of us. And it’s only twenty minutes from the hospital.”

David nodded, recalling the “cottage” of which Randy spoke. It was a two-story house perched on the cliffs, overlooking the rocky Atlantic shore. Breathtaking place. Randy’s parents had lived in an ordinary house in town, and rented the cottage out to summer visitors to make extra money. David had never understood how anyone could own a home like that one and not want to live in it.

“Thanks, Randy. I’d love to stay in the cottage with you guys. I can’t think of a better place, in fact. Listen, I’ve got an overnight shift to finish, then I’ll to pack up a few things and hit the road. I’ll drive in—it’s only a few hours from here. I should be there by nine, nine-thirty tomorrow morning.”

“You’re not going to sleep?”

“I don’t think I could if I wanted to—not knowing, you know?” David had to swallow again; his throat kept clenching up.

“Yeah,” Randy replied. “Listen, just be careful. I don’t want to have two friends to visit in the hospital tomorrow, okay?”

“You, too. I’ll see you in the morning.” David ended the call, lowered his head, thought about Mark and Janet. They had twin sons, both seniors in high school. And while Janet was not the girl Mark had been pining over the night they’d been such idiots, she was the love of his life.

Hell, none of the guys had ended up with the girls they’d been so wrought up over back then. Brad had met his wife Cindy in college. She was a nurse in his booming chiropractic practice in Philly. Kevin had been married and divorced three times now, and was currently into dating models. He lived in New York, made a living doling out financial advice to the wealthy and powerful.

Randy had a successful career writing commercial jingles, though he really wanted to be a rock star. At thirty-eight, he still couldn’t admit that wasn’t going to happen. He’d come out of the closet a year after they all got out of detention. He lived with his partner, Albert, in San Francisco.

David had never married. He’d become a firefighter, and he didn’t need a shrink to tell him that he did it as some kind of self-imposed penance for his past mistakes. Maybe that was why he stayed single, too. He didn’t feel he deserved to fall in love, get married, have kids—all those things Sierra Terrence would never have the chance to do. So he devoted himself to work, engaged in one-night stands now and then, and aside from his four best friends, never let himself get close to anyone. And he was fine with that. He’d chosen it, and it was fine.

Now, though, one of them was facing mortality. And dammit, David knew what Mark must be feeling right now–that he didn’t want to die without having made up for what he’d done—he didn’t want to face judgment with that girl’s death on his side of the scale.

David knew it. Because he felt the same thing every time he walked into a burning building. Every single time.

Dying didn’t scare him. But the thought of seeing Sierra again—of looking into those dark, deep eyes of hers and having to explain why he killed her—that thought terrified him, kept him awake nights and haunted him. Especially lately. He’d been dreaming…

For just an instant, the recurring dream flooded his mind, pulling him into its depths. Sierra, all draped in flowing white, floating toward him, more beautiful than ever. And as he reached out for her, she said, “I’m coming back, David. I’m coming back.”

He snapped out of the fantasy with a gasp, just as he had for the last five consecutive mornings. Why? God, why now?

Maybe because of Mark.

Poor Mark. If he was dying, and knew it, he must be suffering the fires of a thousand hells. And there wasn’t a damned thing that David or any of the other guys were going to be able to do to ease that.

They would all face exactly the same thing, in the end.