“Ms. Matthews. So lovely to see you this morning.”
The word lovely came out as a direct translation of “I’d rather be maimed in a car crash”, and Kennedy’s mouth filled with the sort of bitterness that usually accompanied the very last hour of a three-day tequila bender.
“Mr. McCory.” There was a zero percent chance this douche truck had come here for anything other than personal gain. “What brings you out to The Crooked Angel today?”
Ol’ Chaz sniffed and looked around the bar, his eyes skating over Xander the way a person might examine something they’d stepped in by unfortunate accident, and Kennedy inched closer to throwing the Armani-wearing POS out on the sidewalk just on principle.
“Community concern, of course. I wanted to check in personally to see how you’re faring after last week’s fire,” McCory said, spinning his assessing gaze in a wider arc around the dining room and frowning slightly at the sight of Gamble, whose back was—thankfully—to them. “Such a shame this neighborhood is going downhill so fast, don’t you think?”
Ugh, please. “The neighborhood is just fine. And the RFD has a handle on the fire investigation. I feel confident they’ll make an arrest soon.”
“Confident?” McCory repeated, his lips quirked up in an aren’t-you-sweet smile Kennedy would bet her right arm he reserved only for people with breasts and XX chromosomes. “That seems a bit ambitious. Then again”—he arched a brow at the RFD logo on the back of Gamble’s T-shirt—“you do cater to a certain kind of clientele, I suppose.”
At the ugly innuendo in his tone, Xander stiffened, but Kennedy shook her head in just the tiniest movement. There were a lot of things worth getting in a tangle over. A guy like Chaz, who likely had a different attorney for every day of the week and all the money in the world to use them, wasn’t one of them.
“Regardless of The Crooked Angel’s clientele, I’m sure whoever is responsible for the fire will be caught,” Kennedy said, smiling so sweetly that she could feel the cavities forming in her molars.
“Hmm. Well,” Chaz said dismissively. “It’s not too late for your boss to cut his losses and get out of this neighborhood while he still can. I’ve significantly upped the safety standards at all of my current properties, and I’m always looking for—”
Kennedy rolled her eyes and waited for the blah blah blah that always came next.
Only this time, it didn’t.
“Mr. McCory?” she asked, peering at the guy closely in confusion, and whoa. His normally magazine-worthy face had gone the color of old ashes, his mouth gaping like a ten-pound trout. “Are you okay?”
“I…” McCory straightened, staring at the TV over the bar before taking a step back. “I’m sorry, I’ve got an urgent matter to attend to. If you’ll excuse me,” he said, his face pinched and his nod fist-tight as he turned to strike a path out of the dining room.
“Wow.” Kennedy blinked in an effort to get past the truckload of WTF filling her head. “I wonder what the hell that was about.”
Xander shrugged. “Can’t say I’m broken up about him bolting out of here—that guy seems like a total jackoff—but yeah, that was a little strange. I mean, it’s just the news.” He nodded up at the TV, where some blond was starting to talk about the weather.
Kennedy’s attempt to piece together anything that made sense for McCory’s weird-ass behavior was cut short by Gamble’s return to the bar, and oh, God. Oh, God. “What?” she asked, her pulse knocking hard against her throat as she tried to process all the emotions in his glittering black stare.
“I finally got through to Hollister. Zach is awake, and he just positively ID’d Rusty as the person who started the fire.”
25
Gamble drove to Remington Memorial without breathing. Or at least, that’s how it had felt. But between his shock and his fear and his anger and his hope, there hadn’t really been room in his chest for air.
Zach was awake. He’d seen Rusty start the warehouse fire. Intelligence was going to make an arrest, and between this and Xander’s testimony, it was only a matter of time before Sinclair and his unit uncovered Rusty’s plan to set fire to the buildings downtown and linked him to the attempted bombing at Station Seventeen.
They had the little bastard by the shorthairs.
“Okay, so tell me what Hollister told you one more time,” Kennedy said, her dark brows gathered over the bridge of her nose as she strode over the sidewalk between him and Xander, all three of them aimed at the main entrance to Remington Mem.
Gamble did a mental scan of the conversation for the fiftieth time since it had ended twenty minutes before. Shit, he could hardly process it all himself, and he’d been the one on the other end of the phone.
“Hollister didn’t want to give up much over the phone. He said the kid”—Gamble broke off for a redirect, finally allowing himself enough emotion to put the name to the face—“Zach, regained consciousness about an hour ago. Garza and Maxwell were able to talk to him, and he put Rusty at the scene. Said he didn’t hesitate with the ID when they showed him a photo array.”
“And he said Zach definitely saw Rusty set the fire?” she asked, her voice bright with hope.
Gamble nodded, although, damn, he was almost scared to let himself believe it, let alone say the shit out loud. “Hollister said Zach witnessed ‘suspicious activity’ and they were working on an arrest warrant to bring Rusty in for arson.”
“Son of a bitch,” Xander muttered, his jaw cranked down tight. “I should’ve known he wouldn’t wait until this other job was ready to go before he torched something.”
“You didn’t have any way of knowing that for sure,” Kennedy said, rather firmly as a matter of fact, but somehow, Xander looked entirely unconvinced.
“He’s obsessed with fire. It’s like an addiction for him, worse than Molly or H or any of that shit, and I’ve seen it firsthand. So, yeah, I did.”
Gamble stepped over the brightly painted curb, checking to make sure no bystanders were within earshot of their conversation before saying, “Okay, but Kennedy’s right. You couldn’t have known about this fire unless you’d been in his pocket twenty-four/seven. None of us saw it coming. Anyway, Zach ID’d him, and that’s all that matters.”
Yet still, the spot between Gamble’s shoulder blades that always tingled when things weren’t quite right had been pinging full bore ever since he’d hung up the phone. As ironclad as the news about Rusty was, getting a read on Hollister during the brief conversation had been tough. Not that Gamble hadn’t asked a shitload of questions or tried like hell to gauge the guy’s tone in order to take his temperature, but he’d gone sparse as hell on the details.
“I told Hollister I was with the two of you at the bar and he said it would be easier for us to update in person,” Gamble said. “He’s supposed to meet us in the lobby.”
“Okay.” Kennedy nodded, slipping her hand through his. The contact was simple and not at all sexual—hell, people clasped up in public thousands of times a day. Lovers. Friends. Parents with their kids. But despite its simplicity, the move said I’ve got you. This woman, who had to be just as chock-full of emotions right now as he was, recognized what he needed even before he did.
Fuck, he didn’t want to let go of her. Ever.
“Here we go,” Xander said, jutting his chin at the automatic doors outside the hospital’s main entrance. Hollister stood just inside the spacious waiting area in the lobby, and holy shit, the guy had seen better days.
“Hey. Good, I’m glad you guys made it here fast,” the detective said, running a hand through his already-messy auburn hair, leaving the strands to stick up in a bunch of different directions. “The hospital staff has given us a conference room for privacy. We should talk up there.”
Gamble’s heart started to bob and weave in his rib cage, but he knew better than to press until they were in a secure spot. They’d already had the media in their faces during the fire. There might not be any reporters in sight right now, but tha
t didn’t mean they couldn’t show up at a moment’s notice.
Squeezing Kennedy’s fingers, he followed Hollister through the maze of hallways and into an elevator. They made it to a small conference room, where Moreno, Garza, Hale and Maxwell sat around a conference table littered with empty cardboard coffee cups, the first two murmuring into their cell phones while the other two pored over a stack of what looked like hand-written notes. Capelli and Sinclair were positioned at a much smaller table at the front of the room, the former clacking away on a laptop while the sergeant alternated between reading whatever had come up on the computer screen and frowning like it was his only purpose in life.
“Oh, good. You guys are here,” Hale said, and even her normally bubbly demeanor had turned sledgehammer-serious as she lowered the piece of paper in her grasp to the stack of identical ones in front of her.
“What’s going on? Hollister said you have a witness who saw Rusty start the fire last night?” Kennedy asked, and damn, Gamble had to admire her no-bullshit approach. After all, it matched his to a fucking T.
Hale and Maxwell exchanged a glance more loaded than a Howitzer, waiting for the door to close behind them before answering. “Yes and no,” he said slowly.
“Okay,” Gamble said, stretching the word out into a question, and what was with the grim look on the guy’s face? “How can it be yes and no? Either we have a witness or we don’t. Zach’s awake, right?”
Hale hesitated, her Bahama-blue stare sliding over to Sinclair, whose expression looked more serious than all of his detectives’ combined as he walked over to join the group.
“Zach regained consciousness long enough to tell us that, before he went up to the second floor of the warehouse, he saw a man he didn’t know on the main level. Said the guy came in after everyone else had arrived, but stuck to the periphery. Zach noticed him because he kept playing with a lighter, and every time the flame caught, he could see the scar on the guy’s face.”
“Oh my God,” Kennedy breathed, and Gamble’s thoughts moved so fast they collided like a ten-car pileup on the goddamned freeway.
“So, Rusty was definitely there,” he said.
Sinclair nodded. “Zach said Rusty didn’t talk to anyone, but he bent down a few times to mess with something behind the old furniture the teenagers had brought into the place over the course of the summer and the wooden pallets that were left behind when the company that had been renting the space went out of business last year. He couldn’t see exactly what, but then Rusty left, and the party continued.”
The process lined up in Gamble’s head all at once, his breath sticking to his lungs at the realization of what Rusty had done. He’d bet his left nut Delacourt would find remote ignition devices identical to the one they’d pulled from the dumpster outside of The Crooked Angel in all the places Zach had seen Rusty lurking. Good Christ, the guy was getting more brazen by the second. “But the party didn’t continue for long, did it?”
“No,” Sinclair agreed. “Zach went to the second floor after that, and said he smelled smoke and heard screaming about ten minutes later. The fire traveled extremely quickly. Zach’s friend, Emily, was too scared to try to get down the hallway to get out and he didn’t want to leave her. Finally, he convinced her they had to make a run for it.” Here, the sergeant paused, a muscle in his clean-shaven jaw pulling tight. “Zach pushed Emily toward the door, but the ceiling collapsed before he could get out.”
A low oath slid between Gamble’s teeth, and Kennedy’s expression echoed it. “Okay, but Zach positively ID’d Rusty, right? From a photo array?” Between what Zach had seen and what Xander could offer up about Rusty’s future plans, obtaining an arrest warrant should be a slam dunk.
“He did,” Maxwell said, his voice low and serious, and Gamble recognized the look in the detective’s eyes a split second before the unease that went with it became a tidal wave of full-fledged denial and dread.
We did everything we could…Perez’s injuries were too severe…I’m so sorry…
Gamble shook his head, his throat so tight, he could barely push out his words. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Sinclair nodded. “Zach sustained third-degree burns over a large surface area of his body. Between that and the crush trauma from the beam…he succumbed to his injuries about ten minutes ago.”
“What? No,” Kennedy gasped, her eyes going as wide and round as dinner plates at the same time Xander let go of an audible exhale. “Zach died?”
“I’m afraid so,” Sinclair said. “Dr. Sheridan, the trauma doc, said they did everything they possibly could, but Zach’s injuries were too grave.”
All of the fear and anger Gamble had felt on the way to the hospital radiated up from his gut, and fuck, it took every ounce of his willpower to keep his emotions in check. “Did anyone else see Rusty at the scene?”
Maxwell shook his head while Hale stepped in to put her hand on an obviously-shaken Kennedy’s shoulder. “No. We’re obviously still piecing everything together”—Maxwell gestured to Moreno, Garza, and Capelli, all of whom were backing up his claim a billion percent, either on their phones or hunched over laptops at the far end of the room—“but we’ve interviewed all of the other teens, and none of them have mentioned seeing anyone fitting Rusty’s description.”
Gamble filled in the blanks easily enough. “Which means, you don’t have enough evidence to arrest him.”
“Okay, wait,” Kennedy said, her gaze growing frustrated as she moved it from Hale’s to Hollister’s to Sinclair’s. “There’s got to be another way we can catch him, right? There has to be something we can do to make sure he pays for this. He’s a murderer, for God’s sake!”
Sinclair nodded. “We’re working a couple of angles right now, but I’m not going to lie. Without Zach’s ID, everything else we have so far is circumstantial. It won’t be enough for a warrant.”
“What other evidence have you got?” Gamble asked. When the detectives swapped apprehensive looks with their boss, he didn’t wait for the party line. He’d had enough of it from Bridges last night, fuck you very much, and anyway, if he didn’t have something to focus on other than the fact that he hadn’t been able to pull Zach out of that warehouse before the kid had been so badly injured, he’d lose what little was left of his goddamn sanity right now. “Look, I get that we’re not cops, but the three of us are already in this up to our molars. No disrespect, but we all want to catch this bastard before he does any more damage, and you need all the help you can get.”
For just a breath, Gamble thought Sinclair would give in to the oh really that had just flashed through his ice-blue stare and tell him not to let the door bang him too hard on the ass on his way out. But then—mercifully—the sergeant turned to lift his chin at Hollister and said, “Go ahead and run it from the top.”
Hollister nodded and turned toward Gamble, Kennedy, and Xander. “All of the kids we interviewed have pretty similar stories. The warehouse was a known place to hang out, drink, hook up, so that’s why they were all there. There’s no electricity, so visibility wasn’t great, but they used their phones and a couple of those battery-powered camping lights to get by.”
“That means you can prove the fire wasn’t an accident, right? It couldn’t have started from faulty electrical work if there was no power,” Kennedy said.
Hale nodded, offering up a nearby chair for Kennedy as she reclaimed the one she’d been sitting in when they’d arrived. “Delacourt is still working on it. Garza’s on the phone with her right now. But yes, it does rule a few things out, which works in our favor.”
“No one said they saw anything terribly out of the ordinary, like ignition devices, when they got there, although more than half of the teens reported a funny, chemical smell they didn’t recognize, and a few noticed that the furniture and wood pallets that were usually on the main floor had been moved around since they’d snuck in a few days ago.”
“So, Rusty altered the floor plan, too?” Gamble asked, his mi
nd turning over the intel bit by bit since his only other alternative was to let his emotions have his way with the part of him that wanted to drive his fist through the nearest wall. Rusty had done everything possible to ensure maximum damage, even though he’d known there would be kids inside that warehouse when it ignited. Hell—Gamble scraped in a breath—maybe that had been the point.
“Looks that way,” Hollister agreed. “There’s not much left, but arson is mapping it out as best they can.”
“I don’t get it.” Kennedy swung a confused stare around the table. “Why is the furniture even important?”
Xander, who had been unusually quiet since they’d gotten the news about Zach, blew out a shaky breath. “Because you can increase the likelihood for significant damage in a fire by creating a burn path that will spread quickly. The more kindling within reach of the heat source, the bigger and faster the fire can grow. With enough time, you don’t even need accelerant to end up with a fire that causes a boatload of damage. It’s the whole idea behind these ignition devices.”
“So, Rusty snuck into this warehouse to move everything around, then used the remote ignition devices to test how they’d work in something bigger than a dumpster and splashed around some sort of accelerant to make sure the place burned all the way to the bricks?” Kennedy asked, her lips parting in surprise, and Gamble had to admit, the guy seemed to be stepping things up dangerously fast.
“Looks like that’s a yes,” Detective Garza said, pulling his cell phone from his ear and turning toward the group. “Delacourt’s team found the remnants of what look like six remote ignition devices, all of them strategically placed around the warehouse’s main level near items likely to burn. They also found residue and burn patterns that suggest some sort of accelerant was present. They’re running tests to determine exactly what, but—”
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