Set the Dark on Fire

by Jill Sorenson

  “Yeah.”

  “You walked all the way home?”

  “We made it to the highway and Angel’s friends picked us up.”

  Shay placed a hand over her pounding heart and took a calming breath. Stealing, drinking and driving, sexual assault … She’d had some wild nights in her youth, but nothing like that. She was shocked by the story and concerned for Dylan’s welfare, but she was also proud of him for helping the girl next door.

  On top of all that, Shay was ashamed of herself for suspecting her own brother of arson. She studied him from across the cab, wondering what he was thinking. With his dark blond hair and vivid blue eyes, he was the spitting image of their father. She and Dylan had been on their own for most of their lives, but sometimes she didn’t think she knew him at all.

  Every day, he drifted a little farther away.

  Dylan squirmed under her perusal. “You don’t believe me,” he guessed. Like her, he always assumed the worst.

  “I believe you,” she said, saddened by their stunted relationship. “And I think Angel should report Travis.”

  “She doesn’t want her father to shoot him.”

  “What if Travis attacks another girl? He might not get interrupted next time.”

  “I’m pretty sure he learned his lesson.”

  “Why’s that?”

  The corner of his mouth turned up. “She kicked him really hard in the balls. His mom had to take him to the ER the next morning. I talked to him yesterday.”

  “What about Chad? Has he called you?”

  “He came by to apologize.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Shay smiled. “What time did you and Angel get home that night?”

  “About two.”

  “And you didn’t see Yesenia? You didn’t see anyone else at the Graveyard?”

  “Just the people I told you about,” he said with a frown. “I guess we’re lucky the lion didn’t kill us instead of her.”

  She nodded, thinking Yesenia had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But where, exactly, had she been?

  “Go on,” Shay said, gesturing for him to keep driving. By the time they reached Palomar High School, she was plagued by worries. Her brother was acting out in some of the same ways she had as a teenager. Hanging with the bad crowd, living on the edge, taking unnecessary risks.

  What a mess she’d been after her mother’s death. Ten years later and she still wasn’t over it. Neither was Dylan, she suspected.

  “You won’t fight with Chad?” she asked as he pulled into the parking lot.

  He shrugged.

  Shay watched with growing panic as he got out of the car and tugged on his backpack. She stepped out also, meeting him in front of the bumper.

  “Dylan,” she began, holding on to his arm. Her heart was beating fast again, her pulse racing, throat dry. “You know I love you, right?”

  For a second, his eyes widened with surprise, and she saw her own pain reflected there. Then it was gone, shuttered behind the walls he always put up between them. “Whatever you say,” he muttered, and pulled away from her, just like he’d done a thousand times before.

  14

  Mike Shepherd was waiting for Luke when he came in to work that morning. Luke was late and it was Garrett’s day off, so the sheriff’s office was closed. About a dozen members of the press were camped outside the door anyway.

  Mike didn’t look happy.

  The warden of San Diego County’s Department of Fish and Game wasn’t one of Luke’s superiors, but he wasn’t someone Luke wanted to piss off, either. Groaning, he weaved through the media vans and parked as close to the building as possible, shouldering past photographers and reporters with a firm “No comment.”

  Christ. The autopsy report hadn’t even been released yet.

  Fumbling with his keys, he unlocked the front door, letting Mike and himself in before he locked the press out.

  “Nice uniform,” Mike said drolly.

  “Thanks,” Luke muttered, smoothing his hand down the front of his T-shirt. Both of his summer-weight uniforms were dirty, so he didn’t have much choice about the casual attire; one set smelled like smoke, the other stank of skunk.

  “I heard you and Shay ran into some trouble yesterday.”

  “From who?”

  “Clay Trujillo.”

  Luke had met Mike only once before, so he wasn’t sure how much information to reveal about the ongoing investigation. Shepherd was Native American, not Luiseño or Cahuilla, but from one of the many other tribes local to the San Diego area. He was the kind of man Luke had always envied, able to move about freely between both worlds, respected by the Anglo community but maintaining that elusive reservation credibility.

  Luke had never figured out how to walk that line.

  During his summers on the rez, kids with light hair and blue eyes had taunted him about not being Indian enough. Kids who looked like Clay Trujillo, now that he thought about it.

  Luke decided not to share his suspicions about tribal police or to mention his own deputy’s shady dealings. Either way, he’d seem disloyal.

  “The medical examiner called me yesterday when he couldn’t reach you,” Mike continued.

  “What did he say?”

  “Tests indicate the presence of more than one blood type on the samples taken from the victim’s body.”

  “Human blood?”

  “Yes.”

  Luke’s mind swam with possibilities. Perhaps Yesenia had been assaulted in the hours or moments before the attack. Transfer of evidence was common in violent crimes. When one person hit another, he often picked up a little blood and left a little behind.

  “DNA won’t be back for weeks, but the doctor was able to determine blood type and the sex of the donor.”

  “Male?”

  Mike shook his head. “Female.”

  Luke sank to a seat behind the desk in his office. “Hell.”

  Mike checked his appearance in the small mirror on the back of the door. From gleaming black ponytail to polished black boots, he was formidable. “The media won’t leave without a sound bite, but I think it would be best to keep the … unsavory details quiet. When we catch the proper lion, no one will be the wiser.”

  Unless the animal struck again, Luke thought. “Have there been any incidences of a lion attacking multiple victims?”

  Mike moved his gaze from the mirror, meeting Luke’s eyes. “Unfortunately, yes. A few years ago a mountain lion took down two people in the same twenty-four-hour period, killing one and seriously injuring the other.”

  “Hell,” Luke repeated, rubbing a hand over his tired face. He really, really wished he’d slept last night.

  As far as keeping the details quiet, it was Luke’s call. Failing to alert the press about a rogue lion might pose a threat to public safety. Then again, having a dozen gun-toting good ol’ boys roaming the woods might be worse.

  “What do you want to tell them?” Luke asked.

  “Just that we have a lion in custody and are processing the evidence.”

  Luke threw open a desk drawer, searching for the uniform shirt he kept there and sorting through his mental list of suspects. None of them were female.

  Jesse Ryan, the last known person to see Yesenia Montes alive, was a smoker with a motive for lighting the fire. And yet, Jesse didn’t strike Luke as the violent, vindictive type. Guys like him coasted through life, playing it cool, manipulating women, and taking the easy way out. Sneaking around didn’t gel with his bad-boy image.

  Garrett Snell was sneaky, but he was smart. Driving out to Los Coyotes in broad daylight to burn down the place didn’t seem in character for him, either. Besides, he’d been in the office all day yesterday. Hadn’t he?

  Clay Trujillo may have had the opportunity to start a fire, and if the movement of the body was tied up in reservation politics, he also had a motive, but he seemed genuinely fond of Shay. The arsonist wouldn’t have been concerned with
additional casualties.

  Fernando Martinez found the body, so that automatically put him under suspicion. Other than the unfortunate sequence of events leading to the dissolution of his marriage, Luke didn’t think there was anything odd about him, though.

  He found his extra shirt in the back of the desk drawer, still in the package. It was a generic tan button-down with front pockets and no rank patches, but with his star pinned to the breast pocket, he’d look official enough from the waist up.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said, pulling his T-shirt over his head. He changed into the uniform shirt and tucked it in, his frustration increasing by the moment. His list of suspects was useless, he had no evidence that any crime had been committed, and the media was going to have a field day with this fatality.

  If word got out about the lion mix-up, his career would be over.

  Again.

  “You’re going out there?” Mike asked, surprised. He knew the circumstances of Luke’s transfer.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have a death wish?”

  “It’s not like I’m undercover here,” he said, running a hand over his jaw, wishing he’d taken the time to shave. “The press has already seen me. What do you expect me to do, hide?”

  Mike studied him anew. “It’s your funeral,” he said finally.

  Luke disagreed, but he didn’t bother to say so. His funeral had been in Vegas a few months ago. This place was more like hell.

  After the press conference, Luke went with Mike Shepherd to the Graveyard and then revisited the burned-out area on Los Coyotes Indian Reservation. They didn’t find any more clues, but Mike was able to set up security cameras at both locations in hopes that the perpetrator (or the lion) would come back to admire his handiwork.

  Shay called while they were gone, leaving a message in a husky, emotional voice that made Luke’s stomach clench and his pulse skyrocket. He’d been trying not to relive those stolen moments in the fertility cave, trying not to remember the feel of her body and the scent of her skin, to no avail.

  After Mike left, Luke listened to the recording three more times, just to torture himself.

  “My little brother told me he was at the Graveyard on Friday night with a couple of his friends. Chad Pinter and Travis Sanchez. I don’t think they know anything about Yesenia.” She paused, said, “This is Shay,” and hung up.

  Something about her forlorn tone, and the way she assumed he wouldn’t recognize her voice, ripped him to shreds.

  He wanted to throw the phone through the window. Instead he grabbed the receiver and called Garrett. “Tell me what you know about Dylan Phillips,” he ordered when his deputy answered the phone.

  “He’s a punk.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s got a foul mouth and a bad attitude. I’ve arrested him a few times.”

  “What for?”

  “Being out after curfew and, uh, starting a fire in the Dumpster behind the post office.”

  Interesting. No wonder Shay sounded upset. Luke looked down at the names on his list. “What about Chad Pinter and Travis Sanchez?”

  “I don’t know Sanchez, but Pinter’s a troublemaker like Dylan Phillips. Drives a beat-up Chevy Nova like a bat out of hell.”

  A Chevy Nova was a car, not a pickup. It couldn’t have made the marks he’d seen on Yesenia Montes’s body. “I need you to come in,” he decided. Luke had interviews to do, and bad help was better than none at all.

  Garrett breathed heavily into the receiver, probably wanting to refuse. “I can be there in an hour,” he muttered.

  Luke didn’t bother to thank him before he hung up. Frowning, he rifled through the papers on top of his desk, looking for the fax from the emergency room at Palomar Hospital. He’d requested the names of any patients from over the weekend on the off chance that whoever bled on Yesenia Montes had gone there for treatment.

  Travis Sanchez was on the list.

  Luke sighed, annoyed with the direction the investigation was taking. Every time he turned around it widened, and he had the feeling that the answers he was searching for were getting farther and farther away.

  He took the autopsy pictures out of his top desk drawer and studied the dark, linear bruises, the dried blood, the marks on her neck. “Who moved you?” he murmured, brushing his fingertips over the surface of the photo.

  Shay dropped by her house before heading out to Dark Canyon, deciding a meal and a hot shower were imperative. There was a message on her answering machine from Mike Shepherd, telling her not to worry about coming in to work.

  He must have heard about her knee.

  Feeling anxious, she called to leave Luke a message of her own, knowing Dylan would hate her for ratting him out. She’d promised not to ground him, but she’d never said she wouldn’t tell anyone.

  For once, Shay wasn’t hungry, and the shower that should have relaxed her sore muscles only left her tied up in knots. Dry-eyed and damp-haired, she collapsed on top of her unmade bed and buried her head in the pillows, struck by the overwhelming urge to cry. Her relationship with Dylan was in shambles. She missed Jesse, although their “friends with benefits” arrangement had been sporadic and unsatisfying. Her connection to her father was tenuous, worn as thin as the postcards he’d sent.

  Getting involved with Luke was just another recipe for heartache.

  When the phone rang several hours later, she came awake with a start, surprised she’d drifted off. “Hello?” she mumbled into the receiver.

  “Mrs. Phillips? This is Rose from Palomar High School.”

  Shay sat up in bed. What had Dylan done now?

  “Sheriff Meza has asked to speak with your son—”

  “My brother,” she corrected. As many times as she’d been in there, the staff should have been able to remember their relationship correctly.

  “Yes, of course, your brother. As his legal guardian, we need you to sign a release.”

  Shay blinked at the clock. It was afternoon already. “I’ll be right there,” she said, hanging up and swinging her legs over the edge of the bed.

  Twenty minutes later, she was in the front office. Dylan, Travis, and Chad were sitting on a wooden bench in the waiting room, wearing identical expressions of affected discontent. Chad was also sporting a dark bruise under his left eye. When he saw her, he gave her a disgustingly thorough once-over. “Hey, Mrs. Phillips.”

  Shay wanted to sock him in the other eye. Unlike Rose, Chad knew damned well she wasn’t married, and he liked to annoy her by pretending he thought she was Dylan’s mom. Once she’d overheard him referring to her as a MILF. Needless to say, she wasn’t flattered.

  Rose, the receptionist, craned her neck to look over the top of the counter. “If you could just sign here,” she said, tapping the sheet of paper with her fingernail.

  From her vantage point, Shay could see Luke and Garrett standing with Principal Fischer in his office. She forced her gaze down to the form in front of her. “Can I be with him during questioning?”

  “If you insist. The other parents didn’t.”

  Shay signed it and turned to Dylan. “Do you want me to stay?”

  He scowled. “Hell, no.”

  It was the answer she’d expected, but it still hurt. From Principal Fischer’s office, a rumble of male laughter caught her attention. Logically, she knew the men hadn’t been discussing her, but when she glanced their way, Garrett’s deep-set eyes met hers.

  He looked from her to Luke, who was engaged in conversation with Principal Fischer, and arched a brow.

  Shay felt the blood drain from her face. Had Luke told Garrett about last night?

  Luke turned his attention her way also, as if sensing her discomfort, and Principal Fischer glanced over, too, reading the tension in the room.

  Shay was aware of all eyes on her, scrutinizing, criticizing, judging. She hadn’t given a thought to her appearance before she left, but now she regretted showing up in a state of dishabille. The brief shorts and T-s
hirt she’d been sleeping in were comfortable, but totally inappropriate for the occasion. She couldn’t have felt more self-conscious if she’d been wearing a scarlet letter on her chest.

  Tightening her grip on the handbag under her arm, she turned back to Dylan. “I’ll see you after basketball practice.”

  Chad regarded Dylan with a self-satisfied smirk. “Why don’t you kiss your mommy good-bye?”

  Dylan answered in kind, suggesting Chad do something far more explicit with his own mother. A minor scuffle ensued, after which Principal Fischer threatened to suspend the next boy who moved, and Rose glowered at Shay, as if her moral ambiguity were responsible for Dylan’s bad attitude.

  Well, maybe it was.

  Feeling tears burning in her eyes, clogging up the back of her throat, she fled the scene. She’d never been more aware of how every mistake she’d made in life, and she’d made a lot of them, affected her brother. God, she was such a screwup. She’d screwed him up, too.

  The best she could do for Dylan now was to make sure he got out of Tenaja Falls, as far away from her as he could get.

  ——

  Luke was struck by the absurd temptation to go after Shay, who was visibly shaken, and take her in his arms.

  Of course, that would only solidify Garrett’s assumptions. Luke’s deputy knew they’d spent the night together, and although he hadn’t said anything, his smarmy attitude spoke louder than words.

  With some difficulty, Luke tore his gaze from Shay’s retreating form, aware that every male in the room, Dylan excluded, was watching her butt jiggle as she hurried away.

  Animals.

  Luke gave Garrett a cold stare, daring him to make a sexist comment. He wisely refrained.

  Principal Fischer cleared his throat. “You can use the meeting room,” he said, ushering them into a small space with a long rectangular table.

  Luke wanted to talk with Travis first. He was the smallest, the most nervous, and looked the most likely to cave under pressure. Hopefully, the other two wouldn’t kill each other while they waited.

  Luke hadn’t interviewed a teenage boy in a while and he’d forgotten how tiresome it could be. Travis Sanchez stuttered, mumbled, lied, and evaded. Given three different tries, he told three different stories. A criminal mastermind he was not.