Chapter 3 #3
Her eyes flick over. "Then why are you?"
I glance at the shelf she made me move twice and hand her the next author in sequence.
"Because now I need to see if your system works."
She stares at me for a second too long before turning back to the shelf.
"That's annoying."
I pick up another stack. "Thank you."
She snorts quietly and points to the next section.
The repetition gives me something to do with the frustration I'm not showing until by five o'clock the space reads like a bookstore instead of a pile of boxes.
Pancake and I leave at five-thirty. I drive home with the windows down, the harbor air still in my clothes, and by the time I'm inside I've got the arson case back in my head where it belongs.
Detective Carla Pham and I go back to when I was still a firefighter. About seven years ago she reached out after a string of fire code violations started lining up with property buys, and I've been feeding her what I can find since.
I ask her to run Shane Booker's name. Employment history, property records, family connections.
Pham says everything came back clean. That settles the background check and nothing else.
I'm still thinking about the case when Jonah calls at 8:16.
"Tell me you're not doing what I think you're doing," he says, which isn't a greeting.
I'm at my place with the security panel pulled up on my laptop and Pancake stretched across my feet like a three-legged anchor. "I'm watching TV."
"She's my sister."
I let a beat pass, like I'm considering arguing, then don't. "How's Malibu?" I ask instead, leaning back in the chair. "Or do I need to start forwarding you directions again? It's, what, thirty minutes without traffic?"
Jonah huffs a laugh under his breath. "You know damn well it's not thirty minutes with the way you drive."
"That's because I know how to get there," I say. "You just choose not to drive my way."
"Some of us have demanding jobs," he shoots back. "Twenty-four on, forty-eight off. When I'm off, I'm either sleeping or pretending I have a life."
"Pretending," I repeat. "So the part where you never come out here is intentional. Good to know."
"We're running short right now," he says, the humor thinning just enough. "Santa Anas are picking up. We've already had two brush calls this week and it's only Tuesday. They put us on call even when we're technically off. Last time it blew like this I was on for seventy-two straight."
I picture it without trying. Heat, wind, the way a line can turn on you in seconds. "You staying on shift tonight?"
"Yeah," he says. "Captain wants extra bodies ready in case something jumps."
"Sounds fun."
"You miss it," he says.
I drag a hand over my jaw and look at some papers in front of me like they have something new to offer. "I miss being part of the crew," I say. "I don't miss the part where the fire doesn't care what's in front of it."
"That's not an answer," Jonah says.
"It's the one you're getting," I reply, and shift in the chair. "You still running engine or did they finally trust you with a truck without supervision?"
"Nice try," he says. "Since you're so intent on dodging my questions, I'll say it again. She's my sister."
"That's not a question."
The pause on Jonah's end carries history and a clear kind of brotherly warning. "She's not like the women you go for. She keeps score, Cal. She remembers everything. And after our dad died, she had to fight to get the bookstore back."
"I know."
Another pause. Longer this time. "She's had people with money blow up her life already. I appreciate the favor you're doing me, but if you're not in, you need to stay away from her."
I don't answer.
"Cal."
"I hear you."
"Do you, though? Because I've known you almost twenty years and I can hear you not listening right now."
I scrub a hand over my face. Pancake shifts against my feet, her tail thumping once against the floor. "I'm not going to hurt her."
"That's not what I asked."
"It's the answer you're getting."
Jonah exhales hard enough that I hear static through the speaker. "Fine. Just don't be an idiot about it."
"Too late," I say, and hang up before he can respond.
I sit with the dead line for a moment, then open the Harbor Walk emergency contact list and add Avery's number.
Not the business line, her personal number that Jonah texted me two years ago for emergencies and that I never deleted.
I tell myself it's standard safety protocol for any new tenant, which is true, but not the whole point. I don't look at that too closely.
I set the phone down on the counter and push away from it, reaching for the cabinet like I'm going to make coffee or do anything that isn't stand here thinking about her.
My phone buzzes with a voicemail from Mick Torres.
Torres is a mid-level acquisitions coordinator at Stein Properties who owes me and won't say it, and who's been feeding me information in careful increments for months.
"Stein wants a face-to-face meeting," Torres says, his voice carefully neutral. "About the Surfside Drive warehouse."
And tagged on at the end like an afterthought that isn't one is a comment about the bookstore block on Harbor View Drive.
I set the phone down on the counter.
She's inside the target radius now, and Stein isn't circling anymore. He's asking about it by name.
I pull up a text to Pham, but don't hit send and think about Avery, but don't call her.
If I tell her now, she'll want details. She'll want evidence. She'll want to decide for herself what to do with it.
My thumb hovers over her name on my phone and I lock the screen instead.
It's a choice I'm making on her behalf without asking her. I know exactly what that makes me, and I do it anyway.