Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
“How do you feel about a little breaking and entering?”
At the question, Avalon paused. She’d just been stepping out of the shower. Water droplets skated down over her delectable body, and her wet hair trailed over her shoulders.
He lifted up a towel.
She took it. Slowly dried off and wrapped it around her body. “Is this just a general…do I think B&E’s are wrong sort of thing? Or are you asking specifically if I feel like breaking into a house with you?”
She’d covered her nipples when she wrapped the towel around her body. A crying shame. “The prison riot made the news.” He’d watched the story while she showered. “One inmate is listed as being killed.”
“Everett.”
“That’s what my money says.”
She eased forward on the bathmat. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I have a specific B&E in mind. Seeing as how we’re partners, I thought I’d extend a participation invitation to you.” He scratched his jaw and tried to keep his gaze on her face. “Don’t want to be accused of sidelining you again.” He also didn’t want to let her out of his sight.
After the attack on Everett…
You pulled strings, didn’t you, you bastard? You realized that Everett might be a weak link. You torched my place. You got Everett killed. What is next? The SOB had accelerated at an alarming rate.
Beau feared the “next” move would be a direct attack on Avalon. He was pretty sure she was the bastard’s end game.
Not on my watch.
“I appreciate not being sidelined. And thanks so much for the offer of committing a crime with you. Before I accept or decline, though, do you mind telling me whose house we’ll potentially be entering?” Steam drifted from the open shower.
“Slater Wade’s rental house.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Isn’t his place still a crime scene?”
“Probably.” Most likely. “But wouldn’t you like to see if we can discover something the uniforms might have overlooked?”
She pulled in her lower lip. Studied him. And Beau knew the answer even before she said, “Damn straight, I would.”
“Great.” He backed up a step. Two more. Kept his hands behind his back. “There are fresh clothes for you in the bottom drawer of my dresser.” He spun away.
“Beau.”
“Yes?”
“How are there fresh clothes for me in the bottom drawer of your dresser?” A sweetly asked question.
“I, uh, got some new clothes for you after the fire at your house.” He glanced back at her. Stay focused on her face. Not the little towel that could be so easily removed. “Remember? I had that bag waiting in the limo. I kept a few things here, too, just in case…”
“In case we wound up having frantic sex and you ripped my blouse?”
In his fantasies, oh, yeah. But in reality… “I kept them just in case the hotel wasn’t safe enough, and I wanted you closer.”
“That is both sweet and alarming.”
“Yep, that pretty much describes me when it comes to you. Now I’ve been good as long as I can be. You’re naked, and…it’s you. I always want you. But I’m trying not to pounce again. I’ll go wait in the den while you dress. Then we’ll do some B&E fun.” He faced the front and took a quick step forward.
“You’d really break the law for me in an instant, wouldn’t you?”
Now he glanced back once more. His beautiful Avalon. “Sweetheart…” He sent her a smile. “I would kill for you in an instant.”
“Both sweet…and alarming.” Her lips pressed together. “Want to know something else alarming?”
He waited.
“I would do the same for you.” Soft.
A fire truck raced past them with its siren blaring. Beau had pulled the Jag off to the side of the road when he’d first caught sight of the vehicle’s flashing red lights behind him. As the wail of the truck’s siren died away, he carefully merged back into traffic.
“I’m getting a really bad feeling,” Avalon muttered as her hands flattened onto the dashboard.
So was he.
But he kept driving slowly. He turned the corner up ahead. Then took another right. He was following the directions that his phone was giving to him. Directions that would take him right to Slater Wade’s rental.
Another turn. A left one, this time. And…
“Sonofabitch,” he rasped. He braked the car and stared at the flames shooting from the small house.
“I think the bad guy beat us here,” Avalon murmured.
He watched the flames. Watched the firefighters run in and out of the house. He was pretty sure he caught sight of Lieutenant Wesley Vaughn as the man stood beside a parked fire truck and held his helmet tucked under one arm. Looked like Wesley was barking commands to the men hauling the hose toward the house.
Smoke blackened the sky above the small structure. “Really getting tired of this shit,” Beau groused.
“Call me psychic, but I don’t think we’re going to find a whole lot of evidence left inside that place.”
“Psychic,” he called.
Her hand reached over and squeezed his as he gripped the steering wheel. “I know where the fire was more contained. Another place we can look that might have clues for us.”
Beau raised a brow as he waited for her to continue.
“My house,” she told him, even as her gaze swept once more to the twisting, heaving fire. “The fire didn’t get to spread too far in my home. Maybe there is something there that can help us. Something Slater dropped. Something the arsonist left behind. Or if there isn’t anything in the house, let’s try talking to my neighbors. Maybe one of them saw something.”
Lots of options. He knew she needed to act. And not just wait while the world kept burning.
He glanced back to make sure the road was clear behind him. Then Beau threw the car into reverse. Whipped around. He hauled ass out of there, but when Beau peered in his rearview mirror, he blinked.
A firefighter—in full mask and turnout gear—was in the middle of the road. The firefighter seemed to be staring after them. Just staring.
Beau braked. The car screeched. “Sonofabitch.”
He jumped out, instincts screaming, but…
No firefighter was staring after him. All of the firefighters were swarming toward the house. No one was watching them.
But I swear, one was. One. Was.
“Beau?”
He climbed back into the car.
“Uh, want to tell me what just happened?”
Once more, he looked into the rearview mirror. “You can’t tell jackshit about them when they’re in their masks and turnout gear.”
“I think they wear that for protection. Fireproof stuff, you know.”
“You can’t tell who you’re looking at. You can’t tell if the person behind the mask is even a real damn firefighter.”
“What?” She squirmed and glanced back.
“You get the uniform. You get the mask. You blend right in.” His mind was going a hundred miles an hour. “One minute, the fire at my bar seemed to be out. The next, the place was igniting like a bomb went off inside of it.”
“You heard Lieutenant Vaughn. Reflashing can happen.”
Sure. Another arson could happen, too. “What if someone went in and restarted the fire? All of those people in uniforms…we don’t know who the hell belonged there and who didn’t. I was so sure the bastard was watching my bar burn. What if he was watching and wearing a firefighter’s uniform? No one would have even looked twice at him.” Such an easy way to get close to the fire.
Silence.
Great. She was probably going to tell him that he was being crazy. But…
“What if…” Avalon’s voice was halting. “What if he did belong there?”
He slanted a fast glance her way.
“The people who know the most about fires?” She pressed her lips together. “They’re firefighters. What if—all along—the bad guy has been someone that the rest of the world thinks is a hero?”
He pushed the gas pedal down harder and said once more, “Sonofabitch.”
“Firefighters!” Beau slammed the driver side door of the Jag and stalked around to Avalon’s side. He yanked open her door even as he kept the phone pressed to his ear. “Dammit, Lane, I know you heard me the first time!”
Avalon climbed out of the car. Her gaze darted from him to the dark house that waited about thirty feet away. Her house.
A yellow line of tape—CAUTION DO NOT ENTER—stretched from one column on her porch to the other. The tape flapped lightly in the hot breeze.
“We both know that you and Ophelia have access to not-quite-legal means of acquiring intel. I need you to look back at the fires in Louisiana and see which firefighters might have responded to all the calls. See who was on the scenes. Then see if any of those names match up with the firefighters who responded to the blazes that took the two victims that we have after New Orleans.”
When she stepped away from her car, he slammed the door shut. Her gaze remained on the front of her home. She’d loved that house. Loved the big azalea bushes on either side of the porch. Loved the giant oak near the slightly jagged sidewalk.
“And, yes, cross-reference everything. See if any names from New Orleans happen to pop up at any of the stations here in Savannah. Though, hell, we all know how easy it is to change a name.” He hummed. “Maybe we need to get physical descriptions of the firefighters and compare those.”
As she started to advance toward the house, Beau moved in perfect time with her.
“What do you mean, I’m asking for a miracle?” His voice rose. “I will pay for the miracle. Name the price. Ophelia knows I’m good for it, and so do you. Yes, yes, dammit, I get that firefighters are the good guys. But what if one isn’t so good? Think about it. Think about my blaze at LeBlanc’s. Everything was calm. And then—with all the firefighters right there, all the masks covering them—hell came calling.”
She heard Lane blast out a retort to Beau’s words, but she couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.
Avalon crept up the porch.
Beau’s hand flew out and curled around her wrist. One hand on her. One hand around the phone that still pressed to his ear. “Here’s an idea,” he spoke quickly into the phone even as he held her. “I bet they have old pics of the station crews over in New Orleans. Get the pics. Get someone to email you the ones from—” He broke off. “Yeah, buddy, I get how long it has been, and, again, I’ll pay for the miracle. If we can get names, if we can get photos, we might be able to get him. I will pay anything to bury him.”
She tugged her arm.
He didn’t let her go.
“Thank you,” he groused into the phone.
Her head turned. Her gaze met his.
“Hell, yes, I’m watching her. Got my eyes on her right now.”
He actually wore sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt his stare.
“Yes, I was with her at the prison.” A pause. “No, I don’t know how the hell that scene went down in the yard. I want to talk to Moses when he’s off his shift and see what he’s heard. My gut is telling me someone ordered a hit on Everett. Someone with enough pull to get multiple inmates to attack. I swear, it feels like a gang hit to me.”
And Beau would know about that. A shiver skirted down her body.
“Everett knew the identity of the arsonist. And the arsonist got too scared that Everett would give him up. So he sped up the SOB’s execution date.”
The wind blew against her, but it didn’t feel so hot any longer.
“We’re checking her house. No, no, it’s not a B&E if it’s her house. What am I? A criminal? Uh, huh. Right. Look, I’ve got to go. Call me when you know more. And, man? Thanks. Thanks to you and Ophelia.” He hung up. Shoved the phone in the back pocket of his jeans.
How to phrase this delicately? “You’re being very optimistic to think that they will be able to turn up records from so long ago.”
“I’m an optimistic kind of guy.”
Her brows lifted. Since when?
“Lane and Ophelia already talked to the arson investigators who were in charge back then. They have contacts. One of their contacts can get them the information that they need. And if the current contacts don’t work, Lane and Ophelia are resourceful. I trust them to uncover what we need by other means.”
She realized he meant that. Total faith. “They’re your friends.”
“Damn straight.”
“And so is Royal.”
“Right. And if you can’t get your friends to break the law and help you catch a killer, then who can you count on?”
Avalon shook her head. “Beau…”
“Let me go in first. Could be dangerous in there. Don’t know if the fire did any structural damage. As soon as possible, I want a construction crew out here. I will have your house built back so well that you’ll never know this happened. I swear it.” He took off his sunglasses and hung them on his shirt. Beau brushed past her, ducked under the yellow tape, and made his way onto the porch. “The front door is still broken. What is this shit? Couldn’t the cops at least patch it up? Anyone could get inside, at any time.”
Not so reassuring.
She slipped under the tape, too. Avalon followed him inside the house. And, at first, things weren’t bad at all. The foyer looked mostly normal. Sure, the chandelier was covered in soot and there was a heavy, smoke smell in the air but…
She made her way to the den. Froze in her tracks. Her piano had burned. Her books were ashes. And her white bookshelves that she’d carefully painted? What remained of them was a scary, darkened husk.
“Rebuild,” Beau promised, voice grim but determined. “We absolutely will rebuild. Picture it the way it will be, sweetheart. This will be gone.”
So many things were already gone. The piano that she’d loved. The books that she’d had since she was a teenager. She and her mom had bought most of those classics after the fire. Because the first fire—the one in New Orleans—had also taken away her cherished books. And her mother’s beloved piano.
That monster fire had taken the whole house.
This time, the fire had been limited to the ground floor. Primarily to the den. The books were gone. The photos on the shelves that she’d had of her family were gone. Pictures from childhood—gone. And the piano. Gone.
She turned around, frowning. “The things that mattered the most to me.”
Beau was near the remnants of the piano. At her words, he frowned over at her. “I can get everything back.”
She knew he wanted to, but…the childhood photos? They’d been given to her by her grandparents. All of her other photos from when she’d been a kid had been lost in the Garden District fire. Yes, they could buy more books. They could buy another piano.
Don’t get hung up on this stuff. He lost his bar. Beau isn’t bitching and moaning when he lost the thing that mattered most to?—
Her breath caught. She spun back to stare at the bookcase. “He took the things that mattered most to both of us. Targeted. Deliberate.”
A loud creak came from upstairs.
Her head whipped back as she looked up.
Another creak.
Was the ceiling about to cave in? Beau had mentioned being worried about the structure of the place but?—
He was running for the stairs. “Beau!” she called out.
“Someone is up there!” Beau paused only long enough to yank a knife from his boot. He’d had that strapped to his ankle?
Avalon snapped her mouth closed and gave chase behind him. His feet pounded up the stairs. So did hers. Whoever was up there had to hear them coming. At the landing, Beau didn’t hesitate. He immediately turned for her room. The door was partially open.
He shoved open that door fully. She heard a gasp. A thud. Avalon rushed inside.
Beau had a dark-haired man pinned to the wall. The man wore blue coveralls, black safety shoes, and a safety helmet tilted to the side on his head.
Beau’s knife was at the man’s throat. “Who the hell are you?” Beau demanded. “And what are you doing in her house?”