Max had gotten about half of the bottom part of the fire, and was trying to spray the top, since he’d realized what we were doing.
As soon as we got there, he abandoned the extinguisher and together we held onto the tarp.
“On three. High up, so it hits the flames before it falls to the ground,” Ben grunted out the words. “One… two… three!”
It worked. Somehow, it worked. Maybe it was that there was a lot of humidity in the air and the fire hadn’t caught too badly as it climbed, or it was her inability to do it right, but by the time the sirens we’d been hearing for good five minutes got turned off as the fire engine rolled into the yard right behind the cruiser, we were sitting in the grass, guarding who I now knew was Holly Gerrell, the estranged wife of Holden’s nemesis, former Sheriff Gerrell.
The firemen checked our work and went in the house too just to be sure the fire hadn’t gotten inside.
Holden stopped by us and sighed as she looked at the woman by our feet. “It was smart to only drive halfway up the driveway. What wasn’t smart was to leave the vehicle in the middle of the road. We had to push it into a ditch to get past. You also reek of booze. What the fuck, Holly?”
She sniffled, then some anger entered her watery eyes that had hard time concentrating. “Fuck you, Drumm! This was supposed to bemy house!”
She grabbed a rock off the ground next to her and tried to throw it at Holden.
“Holden, did I just see her attack an officer of the law?” A young woman in a uniform similar to Holden’s asked.
He sighed and tilted his head as he looked at Mrs. Gerrell. “You know, Deputy Fischer, I don’t think you saw anything.”
He was going to go with grace. While I respected that, I was also annoyed.
“Boys, Mikayla here will take your statements while I take Holly to the station, okay?” he said firmly as he and Deputy Fischer, Mikayla, pulled her off the ground by her upper arms.
“Okay,” I said quietly.
“Can we do it inside?” Max asked Mikayla after Holden had walked Gerrell to his cruiser.
“Of course. The smells must be horrible to your noses,” she made an educated guess.
Holden was about to step into his vehicle when we rounded the corner. “And boys? I’ll call Brodie.”
“Holy shit, I didn’t even think that,” Ben murmured and groaned.
I choked out a laugh. “He’s never gonna leave the property again.”
Max just snorted and shook his head. “At least they were coming home tomorrow anyway.”
Then Mikayla turned around, her eyes widening. “Wait, you’re Luca Moretti?”
The three of us might’ve lost it laughing just a little bit.
Chapter Seventeen
Max
Just as we’d expected, Brodie and Kye got an earlier flight home.
Rian was so pissed off when he got home that he wanted to drive back to town to rip Holly Gerrell apart. It wasn’t unreasonable, really, but we distracted him with research on fireproofing the house and the outbuilding.
Holden came home late, having dealt with the situation with the interim Sheriff—since Holly’s husband had fucked up so bad he couldn’t show his face in town again, let alone be the sheriff.
Despite everything, the whole pack was sad that she’d done this to herself. An arson was a felony and even if we wouldn’t have wanted to press charges, the DA was going to make an example of her.
We understood, but it still sucked. She was a victim of her husband’s actions just like we were. I wished she would’ve done something more reasonable like taken out our windows with a baseball bat or something. Fire was different.
In a way I got it, though. She hated her husband and his broken promises so much that she wanted to destroy the housebecause she couldn’t have it. She hadn’t come to our property to destroy us. Hell, once she sobered up, her first question had been if anyone got hurt.
Sadly the remorse didn’t do much in the grand scheme of things with what she’d done.
