Fire Country Season 1 Episode 17: A Cry for Help

An arson investigator from Cal Fire is sniffing around: Erika Snow is collecting evidence and believes it points toward Jake as a serial arsonist. She tells Sharon about her suspicions, hoping Sharon will be impartial. But Sharon chooses another path, because she is close to Jake — she sees him as another son, his mother is her best friend, and he nearly gave her a kidney. She does not want to believe he is troubled or that he would willfully hurt people. So sure is Sharon that Jake would not do this that she sets out to investigate the arsons herself, roping in Manny to help.

Manny tells her they have to tell Vince; Sharon does not want to, because she knows what Vince will say — that they should wait for an official investigation before forming an opinion.

Vince finds out about the secret investigation anyway, because of something Jake says, and after noticing that Jake is not at his best he tries to talk to him. Jake has been cryptic lately, so Vince goes home to discuss it with Sharon — and overhears her discussing the investigation with Manny. Vince busts them, and Manny is relieved while Sharon fears what her husband will say. Vince tells her he does not think Jake is innocent the way she does: he remembers that Jake started a fire as a kid, one that he and Sharon covered up because they thought it was an accident.

They did not want it to affect his future, but Vince now looks back at that encounter and wonders whether they did the right thing — that fire could have been Jake starting out as an arsonist, and if they had been honest from the beginning Jake might never have gotten a job with Cal Fire, might not have fallen in love with fires, and could have had a different job that was not as triggering. Vince says all of this to Sharon, and she does her best to dismiss him.

Sharon continues to investigate Jake, later asking him why he visited a particular town that day. She expects Jake to tell her everything, but for some strange reason he does not want to say why he was in that town on the day of a fire, and he makes excuses instead. He will not talk to anyone, including his best friends. Bode takes a work job at the fire station; he has not heard from Jake since the kidney donation fell through and is worried about him.

Bode is there when Erika Snow comes by and tells everyone she is investigating a serial arsonist. Jake freaks out, realizing why Sharon has been asking all these questions lately, and makes a huge scene in front of everyone — shouting his innocence for all to hear and getting angry that no one automatically believes him, even though they all have reason to doubt him. Eve, his best friend, was never told about Riley and had to wait for Bode to return to learn the truth; Bode, once Jake's best friend, never knew Jake set a fire as a kid — but Erika knew before he did.

Erika learned about it from Collin O'Reilly, the probie working with Gabriela. Collin had bonded with Jake because they supposedly both lost their dads young, and Collin claimed to be the son of Kirk O'Reilly, who used to work with Bode's parents — so Bode found it odd that he had never heard about Collin before Collin joined Cal Fire. Bode begins looking into Collin once he learns Collin ratted Jake out.

Bode tells Manny, and Manny contacts a buddy on the police force. It is later revealed that Collin O'Reilly is in fact Alex Shawcross — the serial arsonist. He has been trying to frame Jake for his crimes, so Bode's instincts were on point. Bode and the others are called out to the scene of a large fire, where it is Alex's car that explodes: his private car, which he drove to the scene and which held so much flammable material that when the fire spread to it, it exploded.

Alex is detained by the firefighters until the police arrive to arrest him officially, and Erika's investigation had also led back to Alex, so there is plenty of evidence to lock him away.

It still does not answer the question of what Jake was doing in Drake County. Jake refuses to tell Sharon or Vince, and tells only Bode — because Bode was the only one who asked him why he set the fire all those years ago. Jake set a fire as an eleven-year-old because he had found out his father had fathered a child with his affair partner and could do nothing about it, and his father died not long after he learned the truth. Jake was visiting his half-brother in Drake County on the day of that fire.

He could no longer donate his own kidney, so he thought his half-brother might be a match for Sharon and was trying to help her by reopening old wounds — and Sharon was still suspecting him and asking him all those questions. Jake could see that both Sharon and Vince had suspected him of being the arsonist, and it broke his heart.

The arson mystery is resolved: Collin O'Reilly is revealed to be Alex Shawcross, the serial arsonist who was framing Jake, and he is arrested after his own flammable-filled car explodes at a fire scene. Erika's investigation independently leads back to Alex.

The episode leaves the human damage open. Jake has learned that both Sharon and Vince suspected him, and it has hurt him deeply; his relationships with the Leones are left unresolved. The question of why Jake was in Drake County is answered only to Bode — that he was visiting a half-brother he hoped might match as Sharon's kidney donor — and it is left open whether Jake will reconcile with Sharon and Vince, and whether the half-brother can help Sharon.