12. ten
ten
. . .
CREW
Three hours later, after extracting multiple injured persons from a pretty gnarly crash out on the highway—no one died, thankfully, but they were all pretty banged up—and clearing debris from the scene, we finally made it back to the firehouse.
After rinsing the grime from my body and putting on clean clothes, I headed into the meeting room to find Chief Madden standing at a table, head bent over the drawing spread across it, Lane at his side.
“About time,” my brother grumbled.
I rolled my eyes. “Either you complain about me showering, or you complain about me not. I couldn’t win, so I went with the option I preferred.”
Chief chuckled and glanced at Lane. “You should be glad he rinsed off, Sheriff. That gear makes us sweat something fierce, and it’s a smell unlike any other when it comes off.”
I waved them both off as I approached the table, pushing a hand through my wet hair, attempting to brush that one stubborn lock off my forehead .
“I’m going to have Crew take over,” Chief said, backing away. “Fight nice, boys.”
Lane snorted but wisely silenced any retort.
“Alright, walk me through it.”
I tapped my finger at the side entrance. “This is where we breached. Davis from engine knocked down the flames in the doorway to get us through. We noticed the diesel smell when we got into the hall.” Moving my finger along the map, I indicated another point. “Tuck and I parted here. I sent him through the back before going inside to clear the main area and the offices.”
“Wait, back up. Why did you and Tuck separate?”
“Burns and Childers were breaching the back, so I wanted them and Tuck to clear the bays. There was more space to cover out here”—I swept my hand over the swath of open space on the schematic—“than the offices, which I knew I could handle myself. When they were done, I told Tuck to send Burns and Childers around the front again and come back for me.”
“Always gotta be the hero,” he mumbled.
Said the cop to the firefighter.
“I was doing my job, Lane. If someone is going to get pinned down in a sticky situation, I’d rather it be me than any of my men. As Captain, it’s my job to allocate resources, and I needed the bulk of those resources clearing the bays. I got out alive.”
Barely , I thought wryly, but he didn’t need to know that. He hadn’t been on duty that night, so he’d arrived at the scene after the roof had collapsed.
My brother merely grunted in response. “And which one did you find Miss McKay in?”
Lifting an arrow-shaped sticky note from the pack resting on one side of the schematic, I placed it at the edge of the office that butted up to the large bays. “It was completely empty except for her, laying on her side along the back wall. She had that filthy cloth in her mouth, and plastic zip ties around her ankles and wrists. The smoke had grown so thick, I knew we didn’t have a lot of time to bail out before things got really hairy. Only after I tried to lift her up did I realize how badly her side was burned.”
But how ? I wondered. How had she even gotten those burns? When I found her, the flames had been circling, sure, but they weren’t anywhere near her body to have caused the damage.
Lane hummed, his eyes having taken on a hazy expression that meant he was listening but also reconstructing the scene in his mind.
“We exited the offices as Tuck came back, and Davis laid down a line inside long enough to get us out.”
“Too fucking close, kid,” he breathed, clapping a hand on my shoulder as if to remind himself I was still breathing.
I understood the sentiment. None of us Lawless boys, except our oldest brother Owen, had ever been very good at keeping ourselves out of the line of fire. I literally walked into burning buildings for a living. Lane was a cop. Trey had spent eight years protecting a former President of the United States during his two terms, and Finn and West had joined the Army after high school, both becoming highly decorated Rangers.
We’d all settled back into this quiet, small town life, but that didn’t mean danger didn’t lurk around every corner for us all.
And after we’d lost our dad so unexpectedly all those years ago…well, we still fought. We were siblings after all, and men at that, but I also knew without a doubt I’d take a bullet for any one of them and our sister, Aria, and I knew they’d do the same for me.
“Alright,” Lane said, snapping us both out of the moment and focusing on the task at hand. “In your expert opinion, what’s your read on this guy?”
I considered that for a bit. When I’d been with the Chicago Fire Department, I’d been hungry and eager to learn everything I could about fighting fires. That included investigating them, so I spent six months in the Office of Fire Investigation, learning how arsonists ticked. Since my return to Dusk Valley five years ago, I’d dedicated considerable time to reviewing the Prom Night Arsonist files, as well as numerous other closed arson cases, attempting to form some sort of profile.
“He’s organized,” I told Lane at last. “Disciplined. There’s no chaos in his incidents. They’re carefully controlled, confined to abandoned buildings where nobody but his victim could possibly get hurt. The vic was the target. Full stop.”
“You’re sure it’s a man.”
I nodded. “I don’t think a woman is capable of disabling these victims and moving them from the abduction point to the crime scene. Not to mention, he has to have some sort of hidey-hole, right? Somewhere he kept Aspen between her abduction Friday night and the fire Saturday. So that’s three locations, and three chances to get caught. These aren’t crimes of opportunity.”
“But Aspen’s ordeal kind of toes the line, doesn’t it?” Lane prompted, picking up my trail of thought.
“She’s an obvious target because she’s looking into the case, but I don’t think she’s been in town long enough for this guy to conduct adequate surveillance and make a solid plan. My guess is he was at the Swallow that night, heard her asking about it, and used that to his advantage.”
“Maybe the lapse between the abduction and fire isn’t his normal MO, either,” Lane mused. “Maybe he needed that day to come up with the ideal way to dispose of her.” He withdrew his mini spiral-bound notebook from his pocket and jotted down something, then said, “I want to talk to Benny.”
“Like, the Swallow’s bartender, Benny?”
“The very same.”
“Why?”
“Because, little brother,” Lane said, grinning like a fiend, like maybe he was onto something and was excited to see where it went. “He was likely the last person to speak to Aspen before she was taken.”
“You don’t think… ”
“Nah,” Lane waved me off. “He’s too stupid to be a criminal mastermind, and he’s too young to be our guy. But he can at the very least corroborate Aspen’s memory of events and tell me if he noticed anything out of the ordinary that night.”
I nodded my agreement. “Might as well check the security footage while you’re at it. You know Red’s got that place strung up like a damn Christmas tree.”
Lane snorted. “Already on it.”
Narrowing my gaze at my brother, I asked, “What do you think your chances are of being the one to catch this guy?”
My brother pondered that for a moment, and the fact that he was taking a beat to think about it instead of shooting some cocky, off the cuff remark at me told me he actually liked his chances.
Finally, he said, “A lot better now that I’ve got a living victim.”