“Yes, sir,” Gamble said. “That’s accurate.”
Sinclair’s exhale telegraphed his displeasure, his gray-blond brows lifting up toward his crew cut. “And you didn’t think it would be wise to let the RPD help you find your brother and investigate this by the book instead of potentially putting yourselves in harm’s way?”
Kennedy’s eyes glinted in the fluorescent office lights, and damn it, nothing good was going to come of whatever she was about to say. “With all due respect, Sergeant, Gamble and I took a couple of trips to my old neighborhood, which is hardly dangerous. Yes, I know we—I—should’ve come to you sooner. Gamble wanted to, and I convinced him not to. But I didn’t know about this psycho or that the fire was definitely arson until last night, and I was worried about my brother. People from North Point don’t always get the benefit of the doubt.”
Sinclair looked like he wanted to argue with her on several points, but instead, he turned to Xander. “Okay. I’ve heard your sister’s version of this story. Now, it’s time for yours.”
“I’m not sure there’s much to tell,” Xander said sullenly, and Isabella leaned forward with both forearms on the table.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning? Who is this guy, and how did you meet him?”
Talk about something Gamble wanted to know, and Kennedy, too, if her expression was anything to go by.
Xander let out a breath, closing his eyes for a heartbeat before opening them again to reply. “He goes by Rusty, but I don’t know his real name or his last name. He’s about five ten, not huge but not scrawny. He’s got red hair and a burn scar on his face.”
“He’s not from North Point?” Hollister asked.
“He’s not born and bred, no. The first time I remember seeing him around was maybe a year and a half or two years ago. I’m not sure where he’s from, but he came up hard. You can tell.”
None of the cops in the room needed the “how” of that spelled out for them. “So, you met him in the neighborhood,” Sinclair prompted, and Kennedy flinched slightly at Xander’s nod.
“Yeah. For a long time, I’d just see him around here and there. He mostly kept to himself. But then, six months ago, we were both kicking back at the bar at Houlihan’s when Brandy O’Donnell came in, all crying about how Mickey Fletcher had thrown her a beating for spending their last thirty bucks on groceries when he wanted it for blow. Mickey’s a dick”—Xander paused, an apology in his eyes as he looked at both detectives and Sinclair, none of whom looked fazed in the least—“I mean, he’s really a jerk. So, I said he really needed to pick on someone his own size. That was when Rusty leaned in and asked me if I wanted to do somethin’ about it. I figured we’d just go find Mickey and tune him up a little, you know? Teach him not to smack girls around.”
“But that’s not what happened,” Isabella said, and even though there was no question in sight, Xander shook his head.
“No. Rusty torched Mickey’s car, right in front of the dude’s house. Just tossed a Molotov cocktail right through the back window, easy as breathing, then stood there and laughed while the damned thing burned. I was surprised, but…”
Xander broke off, looking at his hands, and ah hell, Gamble knew that look on his face. He knew what the kid was going to say before he quietly continued with, “Mickey deserved it, and the karma felt good. After that, Rusty and I started hanging out. Nothing major. Every once in a while we’d do something like that, set a small fire or a fake bomb or something, just to scare somebody, but it wasn’t a lot, especially at first. Mostly, we’d just drink beer and bitch about work and all the rich people who have it so easy living downtown and stuff.”
“So, that escalated when?” Sinclair asked, his stare unflinching from across the table.
“About four weeks ago,” Xander said. “Rusty came to me and said he had this job opportunity and that there was a lot of cash in it, was I interested. Before you ask”—he swung a look at Kennedy, who had made a soft noise of frustration from between him and Gamble—“yes, I knew it sounded sketchy. But money is money, and I live in The Hill. It’s not like I have a lot of the stuff. Plus, he said the only people who would lose out would be rich, snobby developers who had too much cash to know what to do with, anyway. It wasn’t like we’d be ripping off anyone honest. So I told him I was listening.”
Kennedy’s frown was practically a living, snapping thing, and even though Isabella couldn’t possibly have missed it, she stayed focused on Xander instead.
“Okay. We’re not passing judgment,” she said, and either she was the world’s best liar, or the honesty on her face was entirely genuine. “We just want to know what this guy Rusty is up to.”
Xander sat back, his shoulders tight against the back of his chair. “He said he needed help setting up a couple of really big fires in vacant buildings that are under construction—some crappy, older places that had been bought up by a bunch of slick developers so they could turn them into a bunch of upscale condos and restaurants and shops. Rusty swore he could make it look like an accident with the new electrical going in, and that we’d set the fires at night so no workers would be inside. It was the only reason I didn’t stop listening right then and there.”
“So, this has to be some kind of insurance scam, then,” Hollister said. “Buy a couple of run-down buildings on the cheap and torch them before renovations get too far underway to keep the loss at a minimum. Then cash in on the easier money once the policies pay out.”
Gamble had to admit, it made sense. At least, until you looked past the surface. “I don’t know. In order to get an insurance payout, he’d have to actually own the buildings. Rusty clearly doesn’t have the kind of assets to let him snap up a couple of investment properties downtown—not even at a steal. And with really high-dollar payouts, insurance companies send out privately contracted teams to do independent investigations on top of everything the RFD and the fire marshal’s office conducts. There’s a metric ton of red tape. It could be years before anyone saw any money, even if the fire is ruled accidental.”
“Rusty definitely doesn’t own the buildings,” Xander said with a shake of his head. “Not that he wouldn’t buy a couple of places and torch them just for grins, if he could. But with the kind of money it would take to buy a building and the amount of cash he promised me for helping him, someone else is bankrolling this.”
Sinclair raised his brows and sent a look at Isabella and Hollister that was loaded with all kinds of nonverbal shorthand Gamble couldn’t decipher. “He mentioned any names?”
“Nothing other than ‘The Money’.”
“The Money?” Isabella echoed, and Xander nodded.
“Yeah, you know. ‘The Money wants this’, ‘I met with The Money last night’, that sort of thing. Someone else is definitely pulling the strings. Plus, Rusty’s done plenty of stuff for hire. He brags about it all the time, going on and on about how he nearly blew up a fire house for some gang guy a couple months ago.”
Gamble froze, pinned into place by his own slamming heartbeat. “What did you say?”
“What, about the fire house?” Xander asked, although Gamble barely heard him past the white-noise rush of blood whooshing in his ears. That bomb, which had been commissioned by Remington’s most ruthless gang leader after Seventeen’s paramedics, Quinn Copeland and Luke Slater, had gotten tangled up with him on a call a few months ago, had not only nearly killed Gamble and everyone else in the fire house, but it had been one of the most sophisticated devices he had ever seen—and definitely the most well-made one he’d ever disarmed.
“Yes,” Isabella bit out, and Christ, who could blame her? Kellan had been front and center in that bomb scare, too. “The fire house. Rusty planted that bomb?”
Seeming to get the gravity of the situation, Xander didn’t wait to fork over any intel. “That’s what he says. He never told me who hired him to do it, but he did say the job was really high profile, and that the device was the real deal. Said it would’ve gone off withou
t a hitch if the guy who was helping him hadn’t tried to back out and cost him extra time. He also told me…”
Here, Xander’s words crashed to a halt, his gaze whipping toward Kennedy’s.
“What?” she asked. As badly as Gamble wanted the answer to the question, his gut panged in warning, his unease spreading like a low, hot flame at Xander’s exhale.
“Rusty told me he killed the guy and burned his body, and that he’d do the same to me if I tried to back out of this job.”
13
Kennedy was going to vomit. The room in the back of the intelligence office, which had been decently comfortable until a few minutes ago, had suddenly shrunk to the size of a shoebox and heated by about fifty degrees.
Her brother’s life was being threatened by a deranged serial arsonist-slash-bomber, and the maniac had made it clear he wouldn’t hesitate to take Xander piece by piece if he had to.
No. No. She couldn’t let anything else happen to him. She’d already let things get this bad.
She had to keep her brother safe.
“That’s not going to happen,” Kennedy told him, steeling her voice to keep it from sounding as small and scared as she felt. “Do you hear me? I’m not going to let that happen.”
“None of us are going to let that happen,” Isabella said, and Hollister and Sinclair nodded in quick agreement. “But in order to get there, we’re going to have to catch this guy with enough evidence to arrest him. And whoever he’s working with.”
Kennedy scraped for a breath, and okay, yeah. Arresting this fucking psycho sounded good. For starters. “So, how do we do that?”
“First thing’s first,” Sinclair said. “We open a case. Hollister, see if Hale and Maxwell are in yet and grab Garza so we can bring everyone up to speed. Also, tell Capelli to start running preliminary searches on the nickname Rusty to see if anything pops. Moreno, get arson investigation on the phone. We’re going to need to loop them in on this and find out everything they can tell us about that device from the dumpster.”
“Copy that,” came the chorus from both detectives as they pushed to their feet and moved toward the door.
Sinclair surprised Kennedy by refocusing his attention not on Xander, but on the spot where Gamble sat silently next to her at the table. “I’m going to need to know everything you remember about the bomb that was planted under your fire engine so arson investigation can run it against the device from the dumpster. If this guy’s got a signature, a unique method for putting these things together, or specific materials he likes to use—anything we can potentially track or trace—I want to know it.”
“I’m happy to tell you everything I know about that bomb,” Gamble said, his voice low and quiet. “But I’m not sure the information will do you any good.”
Sinclair started, “Sometimes even small details can help build a profile or break a case…” but Gamble cut him off with a shake of his head.
“I meant with the investigators, not the facts. Frank Wisniewski, the head of the department for a couple of decades? He just retired from arson two months ago. Moved down to Florida. Natalie Delacourt took over as the lead investigator. She’s not bad at her job,” Gamble added, likely in an attempt to quell the panic that had probably just made the trip from Kennedy’s chest to her face, or maybe to reassure Sinclair, who looked less than happy at the news, as well. “But she’s only led three investigations since Wisniewski left, and none of them were ruled arson in the end, so she doesn’t have a whole lot of experience. Especially with cases as tangled up as this one. That’s all.”
“I see.” Sinclair shifted forward without breaking eye contact with Gamble. “And what about you?”
Gamble’s shoulders hit the back of his chair with a hefty thump. “What about me?”
“You disarmed the bomb under the fire engine, right?”
Oh, God. “You did that?” Kennedy blurted, her lips falling open in shock. She’d heard the nuts and bolts of the story, of course, since some of her best friends had been targeted in the attempted bombing, but everyone involved had been pretty tight-lipped with the details. She’d assumed it had been because none of them had wanted to relive something so terrifying, but now…
“Yeah,” Gamble said, his gaze flickering to hers. “We didn’t disclose it to the media since the investigation into the gang leader who had been after Quinn and Luke was still ongoing at the time, and Kellan, Luke, Shae, and I all worked with the bomb squad as a team once we found the device and knew we couldn’t evacuate. But I have”—he paused—“experience disarming IEDs, so I did the hands-on part and disarmed the bomb.”
“And you have firsthand knowledge of what this guy Rusty’s work looks like, in addition to your familiarity with explosives and incendiary devices. Like what was found in the dumpster,” Sinclair pressed.
“I do, but I’m not sure how that signifies.”
Determination sharpened the sergeant’s already-hard features, turning his stare ice-blue and immoveable. “I want you on this case.”
“What?” Gamble and Kennedy both asked at the same time, and even Xander, who had been taking everything in without comment, lifted his dark brows in shock.
“You want me to work on this case?” Gamble reiterated after a second.
Sinclair nodded. “As long as you’re willing and Captain Bridges is okay with it. But you’re the closest thing we’ve got to an expert right now, and you’re definitely the only person who’s had a close-up look at Rusty’s handiwork. I could use your eyes on the device that was pulled from the dumpster. Along with anything else Delacourt and her people have pulled from the scene.”
“This bastard put the lives of my entire team at risk and now he wants to start fires in the middle of the city,” Gamble growled. “I’m good for whatever you need to gutter-spike his ass to the nearest wall.”
“Excellent. Now that we’ve got that out of the way…”
Sinclair turned toward Xander, but before he could continue or Kennedy could work up one of the two hundred questions she had about how they’d keep Xander safe while they went after Rusty, her brother beat them both to the punch.
“So, this is where you arrest me, right? For stealing the car and buying all that stuff for Rusty and being with him at The Crooked Angel when he started the fire in the dumpster.”
Kennedy was so shocked that, for a heartbeat, she could only listen, pinned to her chair, as Sinclair said, “Actually, that’s not up to me, although, technically, it is an option.”
“What?” Kennedy half-barked, half-choked out as she found her voice with startling speed. “You’re going to arrest him and call the ADA? He came here willingly and he answered every single question you asked him!”
“Your brother did come here willingly,” Sinclair agreed. “But he also admitted to committing at least one felony, not to mention being a willing participant in this arson scheme.”
“But—”
“Kennedy, stop.”
Xander straightened, and God, he looked like he’d aged ten years in the last two. “It’s cool. I told you this was how it was going to go. With all the shit I’ve done, I wouldn’t trust me if I was on the other side of this table, either. At least this way, I got to say my piece, and maybe now Rusty will get caught.”
He went to push to his feet—God damn it, she’d trusted Sinclair to give Xander a fair shake!—but the sergeant stopped him, mid-shift.
“You didn’t want to hear the other option, then?”
“Sorry?” Xander asked, clearly confused, and okay, that made two of them.
Sinclair tilted his head, the slightest of smiles ghosting over his mouth. “I said arresting you is an option, but I never said I was going to do it. Your sister is right. You did come in to tell us about Rusty’s plan, and you didn’t lawyer up or use the intel just to get a deal.”
“Maybe he should have,” Kennedy muttered. Gamble arched a brow at her in a nonverbal shush, but oh, no. No way was she going to just let Sinclair haul her br
other off without a fight. Especially when his life was on the line.
Sinclair continued. “You could have taken your chances with the arson investigation, or even run, but you didn’t. You came here instead. That tells me you must really want Rusty behind bars.”
“He’s got my ass in a sling.” Xander shrugged, but the movement was just stiff enough to file the edge off the nonchalance he’d surely meant to accompany it. “I don’t do what he tells me to, he kills me. I come to you, and he makes it look like the whole scheme is my idea. I can’t really win, either way.”
“That would be true, except for one small thing,” Sinclair said.
“And that is?”
“I believe you.”
The words knocked Kennedy’s breath from her lungs. Xander looked equally stunned, although his expression quickly morphed into doubt.
“What’s the catch?”
Sinclair’s hesitation was Kennedy’s first clue that she wasn’t going to like what he had to say. When he leaned forward over the desk to be sure he had Xander’s full attention? That was when her gut did a full-on nosedive.
“I told you, you have options. We could arrest you and keep you incarcerated while this plays out. We could also hold you in protective custody while we investigate the case. But that could take weeks, and if you disappear, chances are pretty high Rusty will figure out that you came to us, and he’ll cover his tracks or change his plans. Either way, it’ll make him hard to catch. We can’t arrest him without concrete evidence of a serious crime, and if the case against him doesn’t stick…”
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