Burned (Cunningham Security Book 5)

by A. K. Evans

  I looked to Trent and Holden. Trent looked like he was in deep thought about something. Holden had his attention focused on Leni, his expression pained.

  “Did you find anything on the cameras?” I wondered.

  My gaze went back to Pierce when he answered, “Yeah. We were able to see how it happened. And we’ve got a lead now that we can follow up on, too. We might have a possible suspect.”

  “That’s great news,” I exclaimed, my eyes widening. “Do you think it’s going to amount to anything? Will you find this guy?”

  Pierce didn’t have the chance to respond because Holden beat him to it. “Oh, we’re going to find him,” he promised. “And we’re getting started on it right now.”

  It was evident to me that there was something much deeper going on with Holden than I knew about. Since this was the first time I’d really met him, and we hadn’t even been formally introduced, I couldn’t say for sure if this was just how he was or if it was something else.

  Pierce added, “We’ve got to get to work on this now. I’m going to take Blaze back home before I run into the office. We should be back here in a couple hours.”

  “Okay,” I replied. “I’m just going to close the shop for today.”

  “Leni?” Holden interrupted.

  Her eyes went to his. Once he had them, he asked, “Do you need anything, sweetheart?”

  Tears filled her eyes as she stared at him. Eventually, she answered, “I need a place to work.”

  “We’ll get you up and running again. It’s just going to take a little bit of time,” he assured her.

  She gave him a nod but didn’t say anything. There was nothing else to say.

  With that, I moved through the shop and up to my loft to grab Leni a pair of sandals, a t-shirt, and a pair of pants while Pierce and the guys waited downstairs with her. She was wearing a sweatshirt Holden had given her when he arrived, but underneath she only had on a sports bra and a pair of tiny yoga shorts. When I came back downstairs, Holden carried Leni to my car before he joined Pierce and Trent and got back to work on the case.

  When we returned a couple hours later, we found that Leni’s landlord had arrived on the scene. I stayed with Leni so that she could speak with him and figure out what the plan was moving forward. He assured her that he would be working on it immediately and would do his best to see to it that she wasn’t down for a long time.

  Thirty minutes after we returned to my place, Tasha arrived with a bunch of food. And for the next couple hours, Tasha and I stayed with Leni at my loft. We did what we could to distract her and we listened to her when she talked. Callie even cuddled up to Leni, perhaps sensing she needed some love.

  “Would it help to stay here with me tonight?” I asked, unsure if Leni would want to be alone.

  “No. Thank you, though. I think I need to get back home and try to sort some things out. I have to try to see if I can find a place to work out of in the meantime,” she returned. “Thanks for being here for me today.”

  “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me,” I insisted.

  Leni gave me a nod and moved toward the door when she stopped and froze.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  She dropped her head. “I just realized that my car keys were in the studio. I can’t even drive myself home now.”

  Just then, my phone rang.

  “Hey, beautiful,” Pierce greeted me when I answered the phone. “How’s it going there?”

  “We’re okay; however, Leni has an issue,” I began. “She was going to head home, but she just realized that her car keys were in the studio.”

  “Holden will come and get her,” Pierce offered without a moment of hesitation.

  “Really?” I asked.

  Pierce let out a little laugh and confirmed, “Yeah. Make sure she’s okay with it and I’ll let him know now.”

  “Okay. Are you on your way here or are you still working?” I wondered.

  “I’m on my way. We’ve done what we needed to do today, so we’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  We disconnected, and my eyes went to Leni.

  “If you want me to take you home, I can,” I started. “Or if you’d prefer, Holden and Pierce are on their way here now. Holden won’t mind giving you a ride either. If you aren’t comfortable with that, though, I’m happy to take you.”

  For the first time all day, Leni smiled. It was short-lived, but something was better than nothing.

  “And there’s the silver lining,” she declared. “My studio burns down, but there’s a great-looking guy standing by to help me through my nightmare.”

  I smiled back at her and joked, “He is pretty handsome, isn’t he?”

  Leni let out a little laugh and rolled her eyes at me.

  Fifteen minutes later, the guys arrived and Holden took Leni home. Pierce spent the rest of the evening with me and we were just now settling in for the night. The events of the day had just filtered through my mind. I didn’t know what I could do to help and had just communicated that to Pierce.

  “Well, you’re not useless,” Pierce insisted. “Why do you feel that way?”

  “She’s going to have such a long and difficult road ahead of her,” I began. “I don’t know what I can do to help her right now.”

  “You’ve already started doing it, Zara. From the minute you stepped out of my truck this morning, you wrapped your girl up in your arms and you saw her through the initial shock of the trauma she’d gone through not long before you and I got there. And with each day that goes by, I know you’ll do anything you can to help her.”

  I knew how much Leni’s yoga practice meant to her. While I believed she probably had a space where she could practice for herself at home, it meant a lot to her to be able to share that practice with others. She knew how much her work benefited others and it was going to be difficult for her not to have that for the time that it took to rebuild her studio.

  “She can’t work, Pierce,” I said. “She loves what she does and she has nowhere to do it now.”

  Pierce gave me a squeeze and shared, “Holden’s working on that for her.”

  I lifted my cheek from his chest and rested my chin on my hand that was planted there. “What’s his deal anyway?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Pierce replied. “But it’s my thought that Holden just happened to find a woman today that he wants to help rebuild her studio. Since there are things out of his control with regard to that happening given she’s renting, he’s going to find other ways to help her continue doing what she loves doing.”

  “Do you think he likes her?”

  Pierce’s body vibrated with laughter beneath mine. “I think that’s a safe assumption. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have been as angry as he was today. Holden’s incredibly smart and very methodical. He knows how to keep his emotions out of any case he’s working on. That changed for him today and I think Leni’s a big part of the reason for that.”

  “Will he be good to her?” I pressed.

  “I’m not saying she’s not special, but there are very few people in the world like Holden Locke. Leni would be lucky to have a man like him share his life with her.”

  Hearing that made me happy. Leni hadn’t ever spoken of a boyfriend, and her reaction today when I told her that Holden would take her home let me know that she was unattached. She was a great woman, so I knew that if things progressed between the two of them, they’d both find themselves to be fortunate.

  I dropped my cheek back to Pierce’s chest and cuddled closer to him. We let the silence fall between us for a long time before I eventually spoke.

  “Did your lead pan out today?” I asked, unsure if he’d share the information with me.

  “We think so. We’re going to spend our time following the suspect. If we’re lucky, he’s the guy and we’ll be able to stop any additional fires from devastating a business. If not, we could be back to square one.”

  My body tensed. Of all the fires tha
t had happened, I’d always found myself feeling sad for the business owners. I could only imagine what they were going through. Today I got an up-close look at it and realized just how tragic the consequences were.

  “What are the chances that this is your guy?” I pushed for more.

  After Pierce took in a deep breath and let it out, he explained, “We can’t know for sure just yet. We did a lot of investigative research today when we learned who our suspect might be. That research told us that there is a definitely a motive if it turns out it is him. Now we’ll just wait for him to make his next move.”

  “Why don’t the police just arrest him and question him? It would stop him from completely destroying someone else’s business.”

  “Jumping the gun and accusing someone before we have enough evidence to back up what we’re accusing the guy of could backfire on us. We’re diligent. If he’s the one behind this, trust me when I tell you that there won’t be another fire.”

  I felt my body relax into Pierce’s. His fingers traced over the skin at my hip as I let my thoughts drift. I could feel the exhaustion of the day beginning to creep in, but one thought wouldn’t let me go.

  “Why would someone do this, Pierce?” I pondered.

  Pierce stopped tracing circles on my hip and was silent a moment before he replied, “Sometimes, people have all the right reasons for doing all the wrong things.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what that means.”

  “I can’t give you more than that right now, beautiful. But just think about life in general. Sometimes people do things. They have just cause for feeling the way they do, but they go about making it right in all the wrong ways.”

  “That sounds like revenge,” I suggested.

  “To some degree it is,” he admitted. “The biggest problem with it is that innocent people are being put in the line of fire. If this guy is our guy, what he did to Leni today and all the other businesses over the last several months, is unacceptable, no matter how justified his reasoning may seem. There are places to put your anger when you’ve been wronged. He isn’t putting his in the right place.”

  I didn’t like what I was hearing, and while a lot of what Pierce was saying made sense, part of it sounded like he was talking in circles. My brain was fried after the day I had, so I tried to shut it down for the night.

  Pierce seemed to know that I was struggling. His voice was low when he urged, “Go to sleep, baby. I’ve got you tonight.”

  Taking his words to heart, I allowed my eyelids to drift shut. Within seconds, I gave into the exhaustion and let Pierce’s warmth keep my mind safe.

  It was approaching three o’clock in the morning.

  I was in my truck, outside his house, watching and waiting. Logic told me that if Joe Sanders, the owner of Joe’s Smoke Shop, was the man responsible for the fires we’d been investigating for the last several months then he wouldn’t be going out only hours after his last fire to set another one.

  I didn’t care about logic anymore.

  Sure, I could have been home in bed sleeping if I’d listened to reason. But I had to be honest and admit that I wouldn’t have found sleep easily anyway.

  Because my mind would have been where it was now.

  On that beautiful woman who came close to losing her life today. Or, at the very least, she could have been so badly burned she’d never recover emotionally from the physical scars that would have been left behind.

  After hearing what happened to her, I got angry. Then, I saw her as she stood in front of her burnt down studio and struggled not to break down. The minute I moved toward her, Leni’s eyes connected with mine and she let it go. When I had her planted against my chest, sobbing, my anger turned to a mix of rage toward the person that was responsible for doing this to her and an overwhelming urge to do whatever I could to see her through this.

  So, as I sat there outside Joe’s house, I tried to find ways to stop myself from doing precisely what I wanted to do, which was to go inside and make him confess. And once I got that confession, I’d make him beg for mercy.

  I knew Pierce and Trent viewed this case a bit differently than I did. They could see it as it should be seen. Good guy gets screwed and makes bad decisions. It’s never an excuse, but it makes him seem just a bit more human and little less like a monster.

  Pierce and Trent were removed from it. I should have been, too.

  I had been.

  Until I held her in my arms today.

  And because I knew that I had to see to it that he was caught and prosecuted for the crimes I was convinced he committed, I simply sat in my truck and watched his house.

  I did it thinking of Leni.

  And her face was the only thing that kept me calm when I wanted to be anything but.

  It was early afternoon on Saturday, four days after the fire at Leni’s yoga studio.

  I’d just closed the shop a half hour ago and was waiting at my loft for Pierce to arrive. He was picking Callie and me up to go to his parents’ house.

  Mark and Kathy Reynolds were away on vacation and since Pierce and I hadn’t had an opportunity to go swimming yet, we were doing it today. He had wanted to take me swimming at the lakes, but the temperature had been dropping each week to the point that doing any swimming that wasn’t in a heated pool would have been a bad idea.

  Last night was Pierce’s night to work late, but he called and told me that he wanted to take me swimming today. So, he spent the morning catching a few hours of sleep while I worked.

  Just as I zipped up my bag with my suit, a towel, and a change of clothes, there was a knock at the door.

  I barely got the door open when Pierce walked through, slipped his arm around my waist, and pulled me close to kiss me.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he said after he’d disconnected his mouth from mine.

  “Hey. What was that for?”

  Pierce cocked an eyebrow and asked, “Do I need a reason other than the simple fact that I love you and missed you?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  He smiled, bent down to pick up Callie, and showed her some love. “Are you ready to go?” he asked.

  I turned and walked toward the counter where I picked up my bag and held it up. “Just finished.”

  Still holding Callie in his arm, Pierce stepped forward and took the bag from me, and instructed, “Get your keys and lock up.”

  “You’re not wasting any time, are you?” I pointed out.

  “I spent my morning sleeping but did it dreaming about you in your bikini. I’ve been looking forward to swimming with you ever since we had to cancel our plans a few weeks ago.”

  He dreamt about me. I couldn’t be angry at him.

  “Well then, let’s not waste any more time.”

  Thirty minutes later, Blaze was running around the Reynolds’ massive property. He was having the best time.

  After she’d done a bit of exploring, Callie curled up on a blanket on one of the lounge chairs situated around the pool.

  And finally, my arms and legs were wrapped around Pierce in the pool. He was holding me close and had already spent a good deal of time kissing me.

  When I’d given him what I thought was ample time to get reacquainted with me, I asked, “How was work last night?”

  “Uneventful,” he sighed. “Not that I want to see anything else bad happen, but it’s a bit frustrating feeling like you’ve finally solved a case and need to wait around for someone to make a move.”

  “I’m sorry,” I lamented. “Hopefully you can wrap it up soon.”

  “Yeah,” he returned. “I’d much rather spend my nights in bed with you instead of on a stakeout.”

  I agreed, “Me too.” After giving him a quick kiss, I shared, “I saw Leni today. She met her landlord over at the property. They’re going to try to rebuild as quickly as possible, but she’s still looking at a good three to four months before she’ll be up and running there again.”

  “Did she tell you that Holden found a
place for her to work out of in the meantime?”

  I nodded and smiled, “Yeah. I don’t really know much about him, but I already like him for what he’s doing for her.”

  “He’s a good guy and he’d always do what he could to help someone who needed it, but I get the feeling there’s a little more to it this time around.”

  “Well, regardless of what it is, I’m just glad she has someone who is there to help her out. I’ll do whatever I can for her, but I don’t exactly have many connections here in town.”

  “You have me,” Pierce teased, giving me a squeeze.

  “I know. I’m pretty lucky, aren’t I?”

  Pierce narrowed his eyes a bit before he reasoned, “You’re here in this pool wearing this sweet, little bikini with your arms and legs wrapped around me. I’m going to have to say that I think I’m the lucky one.”

  “So you like my bathing suit?”

  “It’s nice, but you’re what I really like,” he corrected me. “You look phenomenal, baby.”

  My limbs tightened around him. “Thank you. I feel great,” I started. “In fact, this is the best I’ve looked and felt in years. Physically, I feel really strong and healthy.”

  “I’m proud of you for finding your self-confidence, Zara. You never should have doubted your beauty.”

  “I know that now,” I assured him. “I think losing that weight I put on helped me gain some confidence, and I have no doubts that the way you’ve loved me has been a big part of it, too.”

  Pierce moved us to the side of the pool, where there was a ledge to sit and still be in the water. He sat and urged me to straddle his hips. When I did, his hands roamed over my body as he kissed me.

  As he peppered kisses along my jaw and down my throat, he breathed, “It’s your body, but you should know, I love it the way it is now.”

  “I know,” I whispered back.

  He trailed kisses down over the top of my chest. “What I’m saying is…I hope you aren’t looking to lose any more weight.”

  He didn’t want me to lose any more weight?

  I found this shocking. I did not have, by any means, what I’d considered to be my ideal body. While I’d gained a lot of confidence over the last few months, I still had areas I wanted to work on.