Sweet Justice. Cynthia Reese

left her? You left my sister in a burning house?”

      “Well...yeah, it’s protocol.” Andrew shrugged one shoulder. “Order of priority. We go after fellow firefighters first, civilians second and property third—a really, really distant third. And she obviously had air—so that meant we had time.”

      The warmth Andrew had given her with his reassuring smile and his care package coalesced into an icy block within Mallory.

      “Protocol?” she choked out. “Why would your...protocol dictate that a civilian is saved after a firefighter?”

      Andrew blinked. “A firefighter wouldn’t be down in the first place if it weren’t for having to go in after the civilian. And—I mean—he’s my buddy. I got his back, he’s got mine. He would have done the same for me.”

      “You’re saying...that since my sister is a—a civilian, she gets left in a burning house?” This blindsided Mallory. It didn’t square with her idea of firefighters running into houses that were aflame or rescuing cats up trees. It didn’t sound in the least heroic.

      “I guess you could say that,” Andrew said slowly. He had a wary look on his face, as though he realized all of a sudden that he had said the exact wrong thing.

      “I am saying that!” The ice grew inside her, a cold fury that rivaled the chill outside. “You took the time to help your buddy to the front porch, and you ignored my sister?”

      “It was a bad injury, and the stairs were too much of a risk for us to go up that way, so Captain said we’d use a ladder—”

      “You just said your buddy was fine—a broken rib, a bump on the head—didn’t you? Did I hear that right?”

      Andrew stood up, took a step toward the door. “Uh, maybe it was a bad idea, me coming here. I just—felt bad. You know. For Katelyn. Because she—” He broke off, ducked his head.

      “Because you left her. All this—” She swept her hand at the cooler, the blanket. “It’s because you feel guilty, right? You knew you shouldn’t have left her.”

      Andrew passed a hand over his hair, not meeting her eyes, his mouth grimacing. “I didn’t want to leave her. I do feel bad. But—I mean, my buddy. I had to take care of him.”

      “Your buddy is fine! And Katelyn—Katelyn may die.” Split-second decisions—with no thought to the consequences—like the guy in the eighteen-wheeler who’d thought he could make the light and instead T-boned her parents’ car.

      And now another decision just like that—another one was going to cost her the last bit of family she had left on this earth. “You were there,” Mallory sobbed. “In the house. And you heard my sister calling for help—”

      Andrew’s face tensed. “Look, I don’t expect you to understand. You weren’t there.”

      “Apparently,” she shot back, “you weren’t there, either, not for my sister. Your buddy? Well, he had gear, right? Gear to keep him from getting burned, and a mask to help him breathe, and—and training—he knew what to do in a fire—it was his job—but my sister...she’s just a kid! And all she had on was—was yoga pants and the pink bunny slippers I gave her for Christmas—”

      Mallory felt the dinner she’d just eaten rise in her throat, her stomach churning. She put her hand to her mouth and ran from the room. She had to get away—away from Andrew Monroe.

CHAPTER THREE

      Three months later

      THE EARLY-JANUARY sky stretched out in a deceptive azure blue over the country road Mallory drove down, the sun bright as it shimmered across the asphalt. A sky like that called to mind balmy temperatures, not the forty degrees it was, made even colder by the brisk breeze that feathered through the tall thickets of pines on both sides of the road and buffeted the canvas top of her convertible.

      Beside her, Katelyn riffled through the stack of papers. “Yeah, this is the road. See? Stanton Mill Road.”

      Mallory dared a glance at the brochure from the therapy facility that Katelyn had shoved into her line of vision. The ugly scar on her sister’s small hand—a starburst with a long tail—gave Mallory a fresh jolt.

      And that’s the least of her scars. Mallory pushed away the thought. No, she had to be positive. Katelyn was here, in this car, able to talk, able to get around in her wheelchair. She’d come so far, first at the burn center, and then in an in-patient rehab facility.

      And maybe this last round of therapy would actually get Katelyn up, out of that wheelchair, and on her way back to college.

      Focusing her gaze back on the road ahead, Mallory said, “So we just keep our eyes peeled for the sign—Happy Acres Farm? Right?”

      As if she didn’t know. As if Katelyn hadn’t begged and wheedled and pleaded, like she was so good at doing. When she’d first mentioned it, Mallory had thought she’d lost her mind. Hippotherapy? She’d never heard of it.

      Somewhere, somehow, Katelyn had gotten hold of the shiny, colorful brochure featuring uplifting photos of kids and grown-ups on horses.

      Katelyn had always been crazy about horses—why, Mallory couldn’t say. Anything that big and hulking, that could tumble you off and trample you, couldn’t really be a pet, could it?

      Whether it was Katelyn’s horse obsession or someone’s assurance that hippotherapy would get her out of that wheelchair, the brochure hadn’t left Katelyn’s possession. Over time, the corners had become dog-eared, the folds so frail that one of them had to be mended with cellophane tape. The brochure had become Katelyn’s talisman. Happy Acres Farm, the thing she’d work toward when nothing else would motivate her, when she’d wanted to simply give up.

      Mallory couldn’t blame Katelyn for those times. Her sister’s screams of agony as nurses cared for her burned legs and feet still echoed in her head. And even now, Katelyn had days of unrelenting pain.

      There’d come a point during a particularly bad day of therapy when Katelyn had given her scarred legs and feet a disgusted grimace.

      “Nobody’ll ever want me,” she’d said. “I won’t ever be able to walk again. What’s the point? Maybe I should just be happy with what I’ve got. I’m alive, okay? Isn’t that enough for you, Mallory?”

      It wasn’t. Mallory had to give her sister her life back—she owed it to their parents. Their mom and dad would expect that, would want her to do whatever she could.

      Even if it means getting lost in the middle of the pinewoods of south Georgia trying to find a horse farm.

      “Hey! There it is!” Katelyn pointed. She jumped up and down in the seat beside Mallory. “See? Happy Acres Farm! You found it, sis!” She gave Mallory an ebullient punch on her arm.

      Sure enough, a big wooden sign with a silhouette of a horse announced the facility. Mallory followed a long post-and-rail fence down to the sign and bumped along the gravel driveway. Here she saw the green metal roof of low buildings—stables, she assumed, and hopefully an office.

      “Oh, wow! It’s pretty, isn’t it? Ooh, Mallory! Look! Horses!”

      It was pretty—Mallory had been worried that the place wouldn’t live up to the bucolic photos in the brochure. The rehab facility surely hadn’t—no happy, smiling staff members and triumphant patients to be found in all their time at that facility.

      Happy Acres Farm appeared as advertised. Horses frolicked in the cold, crisp air across pastures of impossibly green grass. Beyond them, a pond reflected the blue sky, with clouds of fog still hovering close over its surface.

      The stables—if that was what the long, low building was—were fastidiously neat, light green, with dark green trim and shutters. Everything seemed perfectly groomed—and perfectly deserted.

      Where