Fanning The Fire Marshal's Flame

Calling It In

She sat in her car in and dialed Naomi’s number. As her team leader, she reported everything and anything to her and in this moment, she needed Naomi to know someone was investigating Lita’s fires. More specifically, she needed to report in, the person inspecting their fires was living in her house for two weeks and his gut and theories were dangerously on point. He was good at his job. They needed to be better.

Naomi answered on the third ring, “Hey Lolita, it’s a Sunday evening and rumor has it you have a Greek mafia guy chasing you and instead of being on your back you’re calling me. What’s up?”

She frowned, “how did you hear this?”

“Saw Chavez earlier at HQ. She was laughing because Stavros called Torben and asked how it was he wooed Jesse. It seems you hanging out with Jesse makes him think you two are similar.”

“Jesse and I are nothing alike. I’m the girl you all drag to the dance floor, she’s the one dragging me there.”

“True but we’re wearing you down. Eventually you will be louder than all of us.”

“Uh, I’ve been hanging with Corry for seven years. I’ll never be as loud as her. In fact, if I tried to be as loud as her, she would one-up me. And there’s only one person louder than her and it’s,”

“Cat,” they both said simultaneously before laughing.

“Well, if you’re not calling me to give me the dirt on the way you passed out in the guy’s bed from multiples, then why are you calling me?”

She grunted and considered she needed to get into a ring with Chavez and kick her in the a*s. “I didn’t pass out. I fell asleep. I’m calling though with a problem.”

“What kind of problem? Need me to kill someone for you? Is the guy who tried to run with you last week becoming an issue. I’ll let Bliss snipe his a*s for you.”

“My dad’s old friend is staying with us two weeks until his condo is ready.”

“Is he hot?” Naomi chuckled. “Is your problem you want your dad’s friend to bone you?”

“He’s a Fire Marshal.” She waited for Naomi to catch up.

“Truthfully, I never understood the fascination with firemen but I’m a lesbian so my opinions might be flawed.”

“He’s gorgeous, built like a tank and fitter than most.” She gave a loud sigh, “he’s also investigating a series of fires. I memorized his email address printed on one of the forms. I’m going to give it to you to give to Clara. His gut and his supervisor’s gut are telling him they are connected.”

“Why are you calling this in?”

“Because I set all eight of the fires in one way or another,” at Naomi’s silence she continued, “with Bellona assistance.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Then I yelled at him because he’s giving me flashbacks and anxiety. Dad was going to get him to leave, but I told him to get him to stay. I can keep a closer eye on his investigations and the direction he’s going if he’s underfoot. I don’t like the guy, but I’d rather have close and be able to see what he’s doing firsthand than not.”

“Woah,” Naomi drawled the word out as if she were suddenly connecting dots, “Lolita, this is not Diarmid Clooney. Federal Fire Marshal Diarmid Clooney. The guy who promised you a dance and then didn’t show to the fireman ball?”

“The one and the same.” She admitted quietly and stared at the dash of her car. Her heart racing uncomfortably. Naomi and Bliss knew her well. She knew Naomi far longer than Bliss and there was even a short few week period where Naomi was angry at her for working with Bliss, but they got it sorted. Typically though, Naomi was her mama bear almost as much as Clara was.

“I think Clara can remotely monitor his investigation Lita,” Naomi shortened her name in uncharacteristic fashion. “Do not put yourself in emotional harms way over this guy. Bellona has never been caught. We won’t get caught now.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“But in your mind at one time, his ditching the dance was the catalyst to you being in the path of Reardon. Being in his presence is emotional t*****e. You don’t need to do this. We can take control of the investigation from our end. He’s the reason you got hurt.”

“It wasn’t his fault.” The whispered admission made her close her eyes as she struggled with her breathing, “It wasn’t my fault. Five men are to blame, one of them more than others. I need to let go of the anger. Who knows, perhaps having him here will be cathartic? It’s only two weeks. I can handle it.”

“I want you to report to Psych-One in the morning.” Naomi instructed.

“I will.”

“Give me the email address. I’ll get it to Clara, and I’ll call this into Artemis. Don’t panic over this Lita. There isn’t any way shape or form this gets attached to you or Bellona.”

“Naomi, what if it does? This guy has a hell of a track record according to my father. I might not have laid eyes on him, spoke to him or even breathed the same air as him for the last eight years, but I’ve heard about every damn thing he’s accomplished since he moved to Boston. My dad is like his mentor. He considers my dad a very close friend. They have talked at least once a week and sometimes more. I know this guy is good at what he does. I’m scared,” she whispered hating she was admitting it.

“Hey,” Naomi spoke sharply, “you can be scared. You can’t be a f*****g p***y about it though. I didn’t train you and Clara didn’t train you, Bliss, Jesse, Cat, none of us have trained you to accept the things which get thrust in your face as the status quo. You get your s**t together and you take control of the situation and own this stuff! He’s investigating your f*****g fires, my little firebug, but it doesn’t mean he’s ever going to catch you. Sweetheart, we could let you set the f*****g city on fire, and he would never, not in a million years, ever connect you to any of it. Not even remotely. You have nothing to be afraid of. If it makes you feel better to have a sexy fireman you used to crush hard on around the house just so you can watch his investigation go round in circles like turd in a toilet, then do it, though I think it’s a stupid idea.”

“You have a way with words,” she chuckled. “A turd in a toilet?”

“I spend my days with a child who lives to press buttons.” Naomi groaned, “I swear she makes more s**t and fart jokes than an old man in a nursing home.”

“She’s hilarious.” Lita giggled. “When I was there with Bliss the other night, she asked me to help her with her homework. The entire time we were reviewing her math she kept looking at Bliss and saying, ‘I told you that you were wrong’ and I could see the smoke billowing from Bliss’ ears.”

Naomi chuckled, “she told Bliss yesterday just because she was smart twenty years ago didn’t mean she is still smart today. She also let her know she’s let herself go. Told her point blank ‘mama, you’ve let yourself go. You need to go to the gym.’”

“Oh f**k,” she giggled into the phone. “She’s brutal.”

“Walked into our bathroom this morning when I was in the shower and peeked in and looked me up and down and said, ‘mom could do so much better’.” She groaned at Lita’s bark of laughter, “therefore today we both ran five hundred miles on the treadmill and spent an hour lifting weights because the little fucker is in our heads. I tell Bliss every day it was all her idea to have a kid and I should have refused.”

“Pretty sure Bliss told me when she was born you loved her so much you begged Bliss for a second one and maybe a third.” Lita mocked her.

“I’m so glad our eggs didn’t take and if you tell my wife I said this, I’ll deny it and shoot you with your own gun.” Naomi laughed and then moaned, “I love her to pieces, both of them. My wife is the most incredible mother and the level of patience she demonstrates every single day reminds me of how blessed I am to have her. She didn’t lie either.”

“Bliss is a great person,” Lita agreed, “and so is your kid.”

Naomi admitted with an uncharacteristic giggle, “Watching her nurse our daughter for the first time made me want her to have ten more. f**k she’s beautiful all the time but when she’s mothering our child, she’s a damned goddess and it makes my chest ache in the weirdest way. Seriously Lolita, if anyone had told me before Bliss, a woman would make me forget being a slave to six men from the time I was thirteen until I was seventeen, I would have thought they were nuts. But she keeps me sane. My kid keeps me sane. Marriage and a kid aren’t for everyone, and I can list a hundred women in our organization who should never, ever procreate and I was on the list myself at one time, but my wife, well she deserved to be a mother and my kid deserves her for a mom.”

Lita smiled at the rare outpouring of emotion from her friend, “you’re such a softie Alpha,” she teased her friend and mentor.

“Only where those two are concerned,” she admitted with a sigh. “I don’t even know how we got here to this conversation but I’m suddenly wanting to hang up on you and go stab a perv.”

Lita laughed outright, “you told me I could watch Diarmid’s investigation swirl like a turd in a toilet.”

“Ah yes,” Naomi chuckled. “Go eye-f**k the Marshal if you must but don’t stress over it. We got it and you covered. I promise. You have my word and the word of Bellona. Don’t forget debriefing in the morning. I need to know you’re okay. You lie better than most of the entire organization and it includes Draxton so you could be bullshitting me right now saying you’re fine when you’re not.”

“Well, she has been the grasshopper on my shoulder a long time. I took good notes.” At Naomi’s laugh, she grinned, “Thanks Naomi.” She was about to hang up when the piercing shrill of Naomi’s daughter demanding to know who she was talking to, caught her ear.

“I’m talking to Lita. Go finish your dinner.”

“I want to talk to Lita.” The child whined loudly.

“Do you mind?” Naomi asked. “If I don’t let her, she’s going to refuse to eat, and I’ll probably not get laid tonight.”

“Put her on,” Lita laughed and when the kid gave a breathless hello she grinned, “are you driving your mama and your mom nuts?”

“I would never, Lita. I’m an angel. Did you know my mom can swear in eight languages? I heard her say a word today I never heard, and she told me I wasn’t allowed to say it, but I asked Alexa what it was, and she told me. When I told mom, she asked what’s the point of knowing all the curse words in other languages if I’m just going to understand them.” She roared with laughter, “my mom was pissed off.”

“I bet,” she grinned, “did you get your homework done? You ready for school in the morning?”

“Yes. Weekends are the worst. I miss my friends at school. Mom never lets me have anyone over and I never get to go to their houses.” She gave an exaggerated sigh, “mom said next weekend we can probably go upstate and find a pumpkin patch. Sounds boring.”

“You’ll like it,” she chuckled at the bored tone of the precocious child. “My dad took me to a pumpkin patch once and they had a corn maze and we got lost and my grandmother was so embarrassed by us she left us there and drove all the way back home without us.”

“She left you there?” the little girl was cackling at the story.

“She did. She was a tough lady, like your mama Naomi.”

“She’s not tough. Mom is way tougher.” As if knowing she was being discussed the yell of Bliss calling to her to get back to the table and finish her dinner or she wasn’t getting her dessert filtered to Lita. “See, I told you so.”

“Go finish dinner, kiddo. I’ll come see you this week and I’ll bring a surprise for us to do in the garden.”

“An experiment?”

“Yup but I don’t want to hear you were shooting your mouth off at either of your moms. Give them a break, huh?”

“Lita,” the kid asked suddenly, “do you ever get sad not having a mom?”

The question came out of left field, and she blinked at the surprise of it, “yeah. I do sometimes. She died a long time ago, so I’m used to it I guess.”

“I’m lucky I have two,” she said suddenly wise beyond her years.

“You sure are.”

“if you ever need a mom, you can borrow one of mine.”

“Thanks kid, I might do that.” She pursed her lips at the notion making a mental note to tell Naomi her kid had offered her up as a surrogate.

“Oh s**t, mom’s mad now and she’s coming. I have to go.”

Lita giggled at her screaming, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” with Bliss yelling in the background just before the phone hung up. She sat staring at the ended call for several minutes, grateful she had the support of the women in Bellona. She trusted them. She only hoped their trust in her wasn’t misplaced as she considered her actions now had them under investigation.