Against the Fire Read Online Free Page A

was herself.
    Mattie had taken those words to heart. She’d worked hard to put herself through UCLA, graduated at the head of her class and continued to live by that philosophy ever since.
    She glanced at the files neatly stacked on the credenza behind her desk and the stacks beneath the window, but ignored the itch to pick one of them up and get to work. Instead she sat down at the desk, grabbed the phone and called Sidney Weiss, an attorney who did legal work for the FRC.
    “Sid? This is Mattie Baker.”
    “Hello, Mattie. What can I do for you?”
    “Sid, I need your help.”
    Briefly, she filled the attorney in on the fire at the Towers and the arson charges against Angel Ramirez. Weiss agreed to take Angel’s case, assuring Mattie he would advance the money, post bail as soon as it was set and get the boy released.
    As she hung up the phone, a trickle of relief slid through her and she tried to think what else she might do.
    A sudden thought struck. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out the business card she had been given at the police department.
    Raines Construction. Beneath it, Gabriel Raines, owner. An address and a couple of phone numbers were printed at the bottom of the card.
    A memory stirred of a tall, dark-haired man with a powerful build, long legs and wide, muscular shoulders—if the fit of his faded cambric work shirt and worn blue jeans were any indication. His working man’s tan set off brilliant blue eyes above a hard, square jaw softened by a mouth curved faintly in a smile.
    Testosterone seemed to seep from his pores and though a man like that was hardly her type, she had to admit he was handsome. And the glint of male interest in those amazing blue eyes might be something she could use to her advantage.
    She needed to know who Angel had been out with the night of the fire and if Gabriel Raines had seen the two boys, maybe she could identify the other kid from his description.
    Mattie tapped the card a couple of times and set it down on the desk in front of her. Needing to get to work, she retrieved one of the files she was working on, a remodel of a downtown art gallery, and opened the folder.
    Later, she vowed, she would get in touch with Gabriel Raines.

    Early the following morning, Gabe stopped to talk to Sam at a site they were working on down by the Farmer’s Market: the redevelopment of a dilapidated apartment building—condemned by the city—that Gabe had purchased last year. He was remodeling the units into attractive, affordable rental housing and he was pleased at the progress being made.
    His construction trailer sat in front of the job site, a place for file cabinets, a couple of desks and the part-time secretary who worked for him three days a week. Gabe climbed the metal stairs and opened the door.
    “Everything going okay, Becky?” She was forty-one and happily married, with curly blond hair and a weathered complexion from too much time in the sun.
    “Just need you to sign some checks, boss.”
    He ambled over, took the pen from her hand and signed what she needed. “Anything else going on?”
    “Mr. Parsons called about the damage to the Tower’s lobby. I told him to call you on your cell.”
    “I talked to him. I’m meeting him this afternoon.”
    “That’s about it, then.”
    Gabe nodded and Becky turned back to her computer. He left the trailer and drove over to McKinney Court, his biggest undertaking yet—a four-story office building uptown at McKinney near Olive. It was the future headquarters of Wildcat Oil, the small but successful oil exploration company his brother, Jackson, had once worked for as a geologist. Even with the current economic downturn, oil made money, and there was no lack of funds to complete the building.
    He pulled up in front where a huge crane hoisted steel beams into position. The foreman, Jake Turner, a big, beefy man with iron-gray hair, had twenty years experience building multistory structures.
    “How’s it going,