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“I’m going to write a book about it so it won’t be bragging,”
Andy said as he pulled on one of his shoes.
Maggie stuffed her tissue in her pocket again. She lifted
Andy’s leg so his foot rested on her hip as she tied his shoe
laces. “Ben said a beam landed on his head,” she said. “Uncle
Marcus was with him.”
Marcus. I remembered what the ATF agent had said: Two kids
and one adult. And for the second time that night, my fear and
worry shifted from my son to my brother-in-law.
Chapter Four
Marcus
I DIALED LAUREL’S NUMBER FOR THE THIRD TIME as I
swerved onto Market Street. Voice mail. Again. Cute, Laurel.
Now’s not the time to pretend you don’t know me.
“Call me, for Christ’s sake!” I shouted into the phone.
I still couldn’t picture Laurel letting Andy go to a lock-in,
especially one at Drury Memorial.
I’d just come out of that fire pit when Pete ran up to me.
“Lockwood!” He’d only been a few feet away, but he had to
shout above the racket of generators and sizzling water and
sirens. “Your nephew’s at New Hanover. Get out of here!”
It took a second for his words to register. “Andy was here?”
I shrugged out of the air pack and peeled off my helmet. My
before the storm
47
hands had been rock steady inside the church. Suddenly, they
were shaking.
“Right,” Pete called over his shoulder as he raced back to the
truck. “Drop your gear and get going. We’ll take care of it.”
“Does Laurel know?” I shouted as I stripped off my turnout
jacket, but he didn’t hear me.
I ran the few blocks to the fire station, yanking off my
gear along the way until I was down to my uniform. Jumped
into my pickup and peeled out of the parking lot. They’d
closed the bridge to all traffic other than emergency
vehicles, but when the officer guarding the entrance recog
nized me, she waved me through. I’d tried Laurel at home
as well as her cell. Now I called the emergency room at New
Hanover. I had to dial the number twice; my hands were
shaking that hard. I set the phone to speaker and dropped it
in the cup holder.
“E.R.,” a woman answered.
“This is Surf City Fire Marshal Marcus Lockwood,” I shouted
in the direction of the phone. “You have a patient, Andy
Lockwood, from Drury Memorial. Can you give me a status on
him?”
“Just a moment.”
The chaos at the hospital—sirens and shouting—filled the
cab of my pickup. Someone screamed words I couldn’t make
out. Someone else wailed. It was like the frenzied scene at the
fire had moved to the hospital.
“Come on, come on.” My fists clenched the steering wheel.
“Mr. Lockwood?”
“Yes.”
“He’s being treated for smoke inhalation and burns.”
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diane chamberlain
Shit.
“Hold on a sec…”
I heard her talking to someone. Then she was back on the
phone. “First-degree burn, his nurse says. Just his arm. He’s
stable. His nurse says he’s a hero.”
She had the wrong boy. The words “Andy” and “hero” didn’t
go together in the same sentence.
“You sure you’re talking about Andy Lockwood?”
“He’s your nephew, right?”
“Right.”
“His nurse says he led some kids out of the church through
the men’s room window.”
“What?”
“And she says he’s going to be fine.”
I couldn’t speak. I managed to turn off the phone, then
struggled to keep control of the pickup as the road blurred in
front of me. As nerve-racking as the fire had been, it hadn’t
scared me half as much as those last couple of minutes on the
phone.
Now that I knew Andy was going to be okay, I was royally
pissed off. The fire was arson. I had been on the first truck out
and done a quick walk around. The fire ring was even on all
four sides of the building. That didn’t happen by accident.
I understood arson. I’d been the kind of kid who played with
matches and I once set our shed on fire. I tried to blame it on
Jamie, but my parents knew their saintly older son would
never be that stupid. I don’t remember my punishment—just
the initial thrill of watching Daddy’s oily rags explode into
flame on his workbench, followed by terror as the fire shot up
the wall. So I got it—the thrill, the excitement. But damn it,
before the storm
49
if some asshole had to start a fire, why a church filled with kids?
Why not one of the hundreds of empty summer homes on the
island? The building itself was no great loss. Drury Memorial
had been on a fund-raising kick for years, trying to get the
money to build a bigger church. So, was that just a coinci
dence? And was it a coincidence that the lock-in was moved
from the youth building to the church? Whatever, it felt good
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