“We can’t,” I said, drying my hands and face with a fresh towel. “She isn’t guilty of anything.”
“Yet,” Paisley muttered, and I silently agreed with her.
“Let me take care of it,” I said. “No need to get everyone else involved. Just hold off, Hansen, will you?”
Paisley nodded and followed me down the stairs, going left into the kitchen as I went right through the side door. Sure enough, just as Paisley had told me, Amanda sat in the parking lot in her car. The engine was idling, but she didn’t even catch sight of me until I walked up and tapped on her driver’s side window, pulling her out of whatever strange trance she’d just been in.
“Korbin,” she said, surprised, as though she wasn’t sitting here at my place of work. “Hi.”
“What are you doing here, Amanda?” I asked, and this seemed to catch her off guard. She looked around as though trying to figure out where she was. I was certain that she would have no idea and that we’d have to call the police after all.
“Just taking a drive,” she said dreamily. “I guess I ended up here.”
“Why?” I asked, and for a long moment, she didn’t answer, and it looked like she’d almost clocked out on me again.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. Her voice was strange like she’d been popping pills or sipping off a bottle of vodka the last few hours.
I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that no one was watching us from the window, then crossed around her car and tried the handle on the door, sliding into the passenger’s seat when it opened for me without a hitch. Amanda barely reacted to this. She seemed to be somewhere else.
“Listen to me,” I said, turning my body in the seat to face her. “If it’s you doing what we think you’re doing, rest assured that you will be caught. Arson is illegal, and only time stands between you and a prison cell.”
Even this didn’t seem to knock Amanda out of her alternate reality. In fact, she merely smiled, rolling her head to the side to look at me, but her eyes were far away.
“Did you know I was married,” she said, not to anyone, including me. I said nothing to this because there was no reason to delve into it with her. I knew more than she thought I did. “I was married,” she said again, head rolling from side to side. “To a wonderful man who treated me right. One of the few, actually,” she added with a thick chuckle.
“Are you drunk?” I asked her. “On drugs?” Even though I was confident she was, there wasn’t much I could really do about it. As a firefighter, we were always encouraged to care for the ones who needed it the most, but with the arson cases piling up in the office, I wasn’t sure Chief Davis would be too keen on opening the doors to this house to her.
“No,” she said with a small breath. “I just haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Amanda, you need to go home,” I said firmly. “Go home, sleep it off, and stay away from his department.” I had started to push open the passenger’s side door to leave when Amanda lunged across the seat suddenly, throwing herself at me, hands tangling in my shirt to rip me back towards her. Her lips met mine in a frantic, blurred moment, and she threw her leg over my waist as if trapping me there, her tongue delving into my mouth, sickly sweet and unfamiliar.
“Jesus!” I cried, ripping away from her. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“Me?” Amanda said. “I’m not doing anything.”
I wiped one hand over the back of my mouth and shook my head at her, throwing open the door to escape her unwanted embrace. Amanda stayed where she was, her eyes on me, a tiny, sinister smile playing on her lips. It made my stomach roll with nausea. I started to turn away and then stopped, glancing back at her. “If you are setting these fires, I look forward to the day they cuff and take you into prison.”
“Prison.” Amanda’s head rolled to the side to look at me, and she smiled. A smile so sincere, so sickly sweet, so fuckingsinister,an iced chill crawled up my spine. She giggled.
“Home,” I said again. “Now.”
Amanda finally pulled away right before I reached the station's side door. I stopped and looked back, watching her little car vanish down the road, swaying back and forth on the street. I shook my head, rattled. This wasn’t a good situation, not for anybody.
“Hey, Butler!” Hansen shouted as I came into the kitchen for some food. “Yourfiancéis here.”
“Hi, handsome,” Peyton said, rising from the chair she’d been sitting at around the table. “I hope you don’t mind that I dropped by. I brought us Subway.”
I took Peyton into my arms and kissed her, not caring who was around to see, and she kissed me back, the bag of sandwiches nearly falling from her hand. “I’m glad you’re here,” I said when we parted, praying to God that Peyton hadn’t seen me sitting alone in Amanda’s car. She would freak. Any of them would. I wondered if it was worth telling her about it for a brief moment but decided against it. Neither of us needed more stress.
“Saved by the sub,” Hansen muttered, dropping a large pot of ramen noodles onto the middle of the table. “I thought ramen would be a sure win.”
“Ramen is always a win for me, you know that baby,” Paisley said, sitting down at the table to dish up some noodles. She caught my gaze as she did this, and I could see the concern behind her eyes. I knew she wouldn’t bring it up in front of everybody. She wanted to know what happened with Amanda.
“Do you want to come to my office?” I asked Peyton, going to the fridge for two cold bottles of water. I took her hand, ignoring the taunts and teases behind us, and then led Peyton back to my office, shutting the door behind us. My office wasn’t as impressive as Chief Davis’s office, but it was mine nonetheless and perfectly private when some quiet was needed.
“Are you okay?” Peyton asked, sitting in my extra office chair on one side of the desk to lay out the subs and chips on the desktop. I nodded and sat in my own chair, wheeling it around my desk so we could sit next to each other while eating.
“I’m fine. Why?”
