Flash Point - Savannah Kade Page 0,23
the new girl was the point of failure. But nothing about Jo Huston had indicated anything other than competence, and he needed to start treating her like it … if only for his own well-being.
But … “We don't have caves in that direction.”
“Well, according to Mr. Gentson, and this article that Ivy found on an old case, you do. Mr. Gentson said he and his brother used to hide there when they were kids.”
Holy shit, Leo thought. Joely Huston, new person and possible pain in his ass, may have just provided him the best lead.
“Are you willing to go back out?” He asked because he couldn't go alone. She was the last man standing and he needed a partner.
But before she answered, lightning cracked the sky, cutting it in half again.
Chapter Fourteen
“So where are you from?” Leo asked into the silence of the car.
What was it with these men and their questions? Jo wondered.
They had decided to sit and wait for Luke Hernandez to return with the ambulance, as well as for the bulk of the storm to pass. They were trained for rain, but the lightning and the heavy, icy downpour meant they wouldn't be able to see past the end of their own arms. Basically, they were stuck now waiting for the chance to go out again.
“I'm from Boston,” Jo told him, not elaborating.
“I don't hear it in your voice.” Leo had broken out the chicken noodle soup after they'd agreed to send Kalan home with the last of the coffee.
Her fellow firefighter still hadn't texted that he'd made it safely, and Jo was running on faith that he hadn't fallen asleep at the wheel. She'd become a firm believer in his ethics, though. Smith would simply pull over and sleep on the side of the road before driving if he was really too tired to do so.
But she was stuck here now, in the front seat, alone with Leo Evans. And no way to avoid his personal questions. “Of course, you don't hear the Boston in my voice.”
For a moment, she wondered how he'd missed her mother's visit, but he wasn't at the fire station. Leo didn’t know that not only had her mother shown up unannounced, she’d come back at eight am the next day, demanding that Jo change clothes and come for a nice breakfast … in Lincoln. Maybe her mother didn’t know how far that really was. Or maybe she didn’t care that her daughter had just come off a twenty-four-hour shift.
Jo had gone along, knowing it was easier to placate the woman than argue with her. Certainly not when the rest of her very life was an argument with her mother. “My mother made sure that I had classes in etiquette and deportment. It more than made certain that there was no trace of Boston left in my voice.”
He frowned at that for a moment, as if to ask why would anyone even do this?
Jo decided to throw it all out in the open. Why not? She might not last that long in Redemption anyway. She trusted Sebastian Kane, but Leo Evans, not so much. Trying a different tactic from playing her life close to her vest, she dumped it all in his lap … well, not all of it.
“I'm a trust fund baby. I grew up in a mansion outside of Boston … in Brookline. I went to Harvard. I drive a BMW. And this is my fourth fire station. Are we good?” She shouldn't have added the last part, but she didn't want to sit here for half an hour, reliving everything she’d tried so hard to leave behind.
There was a long moment of silence before he asked. “Do you want to know about me? I mean, since we'll be out there in horrible weather as the only ones who have each other's backs.”
Jo didn't usually ask questions about people's pasts. Lots of people didn't want to volunteer it. So she didn't press, but what should she do now? Just sit in silence and stare out the window? And something about Leo Evans made her want to know. So she said, “Yes.”
“I grew up the oldest of two boys. In Pleasant Hill.”
“Where is Pleasant Hill?”
“About two hours north, in the middle of nothing.”
“I haven’t heard of it.” She thought she’d heard of a lot of the local places by now.
“Of course you wouldn’t. It doesn’t even have a good state road that runs to it, and it makes Redemption look like