She was a terrible liar. He narrowed his attention on the woman he couldn’t pry from beneath his skin if he was armed with a crowbar, scanning her from scalp to chin. “What’s wrong with your head?”
“Oh, is this the law enforcement ranger you’ve been talking about?” Something along the lines of fascination hiked a wave of pink into the blonde’s face. Clear interest transformed her expression from concerned into something brighter and more put together. “He’s much more handsome than you described.”
It took everything he had not to roll his eyes. He was well aware of his influence on the opposite sex, but he was losing patience, which was already thin to begin with when it came to being around the one woman he couldn’t have. Murray framed Aslen’s chin with his index finger and thumb, forcing her attention back on him, and she came willingly. Despite his history of overstepping, he wouldn’t ever hurt her, and some part of her knew that. Allowed him to touch her, get close even. He softened his tone. “What happened to your head?”
“Nothing.” Aslen shook her head as if that would rewind time.
“The force of the explosion knocked her on her ass and cracked her hard hat.” Her friend nodded at the back of Aslen’s skull. “I told her to get assessed by the EMTs, but she refuses.”
Panic crested Aslen’s expression, and she wrenched free of his hold, adding a good bit of physical distance between them, as if his touch burned. Problem was, he was a man of his word, and the promise he’d made years ago to protect her would die with him. She gave him a clear view of the back of her head. And the crust of blood drying in her hair. “Traitor.”
Dread coiled at the base of his spine. She’d stood here acting as if nothing was wrong when she might’ve sustained a brain bleed? This woman would be the death of him. Curling his fingers around hers, he hauled Aslen into his side. “Your shift is over. You’re getting checked out.”
She tried—and failed—to overcome his hold. “I can walk, Murray.”
“And yet you chose to sit down knowing you’d hit your head.” This wasn’t up for negotiation. He didn’t care how much she hated him. She wasn’t getting out of this. “You think I’m going to trust you to take care of yourself now?”
Aslen kept up with him despite their size differences. “It’s not your job to look after me.”
“Someone has to do it.” He walked her over to an ambulance outside the perimeter, sitting her down harder on the back bay than he intended. “She hit her head. Run a full workup and make sure she’s okay.”
The EMTs scrambled into action, closing in on either side of her.
“This is ridiculous. I have a job to do.” She waved off the EMT shining a light into her left eye while the other bandaged the scrape on her face. “You know as well as I do embers can resuscitate a fire. Not to mention destroy any evidence the arsonist might’ve left behind.”
“Arson?” He’d almost forgotten the bite of chemical odor coming off her clothes. She’d gotten close to the source. Too close. Damn it. Aslen was lucky to be alive. Did she really not understand how close she’d come to being ripped away from him? “You’re sure?”
Crime of any kind fell under the purview of him and his division. If someone had started this particular fire, he would find them—plain and simple—but more, someone had put Aslen in danger to begin with, and he couldn’t let that go.
“Hard to miss the signs.” Aslen nodded toward what looked like a collapsed shed a dozen or so feet into the tree line, completely at ease with the two EMTs poking and prodding at her scalp. “Or the body they tried to get rid of in the process.”
Murray’s insides went cold. “Show me.”
Chapter Three
She was going to kill him.
She’d already worked out how. It wasn’t a new fantasy, but it got the job done in bringing her heart rate back to normal. Though, what could she really consider normal any time she was around him? Pain shuddered through her jaw. Her dentist had warned her about grinding her teeth, but all this frustration had to go somewhere, and she couldn’t take it out on him in front of all these people.
What right did Murray Simpson have coming onto her scene and demanding she transfer to a different department? The second any one of her teammates lost confidence in her, there would be mistakes. Lives lost. She couldn’t afford that. The male rangers in her department weren’t the most accepting of her and Danny in the field, but they trusted her to get the job done. Except now Murray had called her out in front of everyone, implying she was incapable of doing her job and keeping her fellow rangers safe.
The man was out of his mind and clearly in need of a punch to the groin after the way he’d acted. Overprotective, unemotional, overbearing, berserk. Had she expected anything less? From the moment Murray had found her beaten to a pulp as a scrawny thirteen-year-old kid, through the nights she’d climbed in his bedroom window to escape her foster mother’s tirades, and following her into this job, he’d made himself clear. He knewwhat was best for her. It didn’t matter what she wanted, that she wasn’t that punching bag anymore or that she was capable of taking care of herself now. For him to keep his promise to never let anything bad happen to her again, he would always impose his will over hers, but the pressure of being his perfect little project had started to break her in every regard. He hadn’t made that promise out of anything but pity and a sense of obligation, and now all she got out of him was resentment.
She saw it in the way he’d watched her—disapprovingly—as the EMTs poked and prodded her skull, how he held himself with his arms crossed over his chest, intimidation on display. The laceration at the back of her head was just that. A cut from the crack in her hard hat after impact. Nothing to suggest she would drop dead right here in the middle of the field, but with Murray scaring off anyone who got too close—even Danny kept her distance—she wished she could just shrivel up and die.
She didn’t have proof, but Aslen was fairly certain he’d driven off any guy who’d even dreamed of asking her out over the years, which left her isolated in that crappy house with a crappy excuse for a guardian during prom, homecomings and regular Friday nights.
“You’re making a scene.” Aslen took the lead as she headed for the now-cold remnants of the maintenance shed a few yards past the tree line. She didn’t look back at Murray to see if he’d followed. She could feel it. This ridiculous hyperawareness of his every move. “Try to take some of the serial killer out of your expression. You’re scaring my coworkers.”
“Soon the information rangers will be your coworkers.” His voice cut through the headache spiraling into the base of her skull, low and soothing as always. Jerk. “I doubt these rangers will come visit you.”
Aslen turned on him, which was laughable in and of itself. The top of her head barely brushed his collarbone, and it tookevery muscle in her neck to meet his blue gaze, but she wasn’t scared of him. Murray Simpson could intimidate anyone in a five-mile radius with one of his looks, but he’d never once raised his voice to her, moved to physically harm her or so much as gotten inappropriate. For all intents and purposes, he was the big brother she’d never had. And, considering his history, she didn’t blame him for his overprotective nature. She pressed her index finger into his chest, trying not to appreciate the unyielding muscle underneath the thin cotton of his shirt. “Listen to me, you barbarian. This is my job. This is what I’ve been trained to do. I’m good at it, and no one—not even you—is going to tell me I can’t fight fires like the rest of these rangers because I have the wrong set of reproductive organs.”
“Your biology has nothing to do with it, Aslen, and you know it.” If she hadn’t spent the past twenty-plus years studying his each and every mood based off the slight changes in his face, she might’ve missed the softening around his mouth. His ridiculously full mouth surrounded by a thin layer of facial hair she’d thought about way too many times. Nature had made its permanent impression in the few sunspots down his arms and lightened the dark brown hair at his temples at thirty-nine. He wasn’t old in any sense of the word, but experience had injected a certain wisdom in the blue depths of his eyes. Looking at him straight on—if anyone dared, that was—one would assume he’d come straight out of the military. Same no-nonsense haircut since high school, no tattoos or jewelry. He took better care of his fingernails and cuticles than she did and never went anywhere without the same worn pair of leather boots he’d picked up after college graduation. The man kept to himself better than a monk but valued the people he let close. Though she’d stopped being one of them around the time she’d graduated high school a few years after him, and she couldn’tremember the last time he’d dated anyone. Did he have anyone left?
Murray didn’t bother to give in against her finger digging into his chest, taking one step into her. The big ape probably couldn’t even feel it, which only made her angrier. Couldn’t he, for once, stop trying to bend everyone to his will, and listen? “You’re putting yourself in unnecessary danger chasing after these fires, and now you’re telling me someone left behind a body and used accelerant to cover up the crime. I can’t have you putting yourself anywhere near someone capable of this kind of evil.”
“That’s not really your choice though, is it, Ranger Simpson?” The use of his title was a reminder of where they were, who was watching. He’d charged onto a scene uninvited and demanded a ranger not under his supervision to leave an active investigation. He’d outright used his authority against her, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive him for that. For embarrassing her. For overriding her own authority in this unit.
