Chapter Three
She was going to kill him.
She’d already worked out how. It wasn’t a new fantasy, but it got the job done in bringing her heart rate back to normal.
Though, what could she really consider normal any time she was around him?
Pain shuddered through her jaw. Her dentist had warned her about grinding her teeth, but all this frustration had to go somewhere, and she couldn’t take it out on him in front of all these people.
What right did Murray Simpson have coming onto her scene and demanding she transfer to a different department?
The second any one of her teammates lost confidence in her, there would be mistakes.
Lives lost. She couldn’t afford that. The male rangers in her department weren’t the most accepting of her and Danny in the field, but they trusted her to get the job done.
Except now Murray had called her out in front of everyone, implying she was incapable of doing her job and keeping her fellow rangers safe.
The man was out of his mind and clearly in need of a punch to the groin after the way he’d acted.
Overprotective, unemotional, overbearing, berserk.
Had she expected anything less? From the moment Murray had found her beaten to a pulp as a scrawny thirteen-year-old kid, through the nights she’d climbed in his bedroom window to escape her foster mother’s tirades, and following her into this job, he’d made himself clear.
He knew what was best for her. It didn’t matter what she wanted, that she wasn’t that punching bag anymore or that she was capable of taking care of herself now.
For him to keep his promise to never let anything bad happen to her again, he would always impose his will over hers, but the pressure of being his perfect little project had started to break her in every regard.
He hadn’t made that promise out of anything but pity and a sense of obligation, and now all she got out of him was resentment.
She saw it in the way he’d watched her—disapprovingly—as the EMTs poked and prodded her skull, how he held himself with his arms crossed over his chest, intimidation on display.
The laceration at the back of her head was just that.
A cut from the crack in her hard hat after impact.
Nothing to suggest she would drop dead right here in the middle of the field, but with Murray scaring off anyone who got too close—even Danny kept her distance—she wished she could just shrivel up and die.
She didn’t have proof, but Aslen was fairly certain he’d driven off any guy who’d even dreamed of asking her out over the years, which left her isolated in that crappy house with a crappy excuse for a guardian during prom, homecomings and regular Friday nights.
“You’re making a scene.” Aslen took the lead as she headed for the now-cold remnants of the maintenance shed a few yards past the tree line.
She didn’t look back at Murray to see if he’d followed.
She could feel it. This ridiculous hyperawareness of his every move.
“Try to take some of the serial killer out of your expression. You’re scaring my coworkers. ”
“Soon the information rangers will be your coworkers.” His voice cut through the headache spiraling into the base of her skull, low and soothing as always. Jerk. “I doubt these rangers will come visit you.”
Aslen turned on him, which was laughable in and of itself.
The top of her head barely brushed his collarbone, and it took every muscle in her neck to meet his blue gaze, but she wasn’t scared of him.
Murray Simpson could intimidate anyone in a five-mile radius with one of his looks, but he’d never once raised his voice to her, moved to physically harm her or so much as gotten inappropriate.
For all intents and purposes, he was the big brother she’d never had.
And, considering his history, she didn’t blame him for his overprotective nature.
She pressed her index finger into his chest, trying not to appreciate the unyielding muscle underneath the thin cotton of his shirt.
“Listen to me, you barbarian. This is my job. This is what I’ve been trained to do.
I’m good at it, and no one—not even you—is going to tell me I can’t fight fires like the rest of these rangers because I have the wrong set of reproductive organs. ”
“Your biology has nothing to do with it, Aslen, and you know it.” If she hadn’t spent the past twenty-plus years studying his each and every mood based off the slight changes in his face, she might’ve missed the softening around his mouth.
His ridiculously full mouth surrounded by a thin layer of facial hair she’d thought about way too many times.
Nature had made its permanent impression in the few sunspots down his arms and lightened the dark brown hair at his temples at thirty-nine.
He wasn’t old in any sense of the word, but experience had injected a certain wisdom in the blue depths of his eyes.
Looking at him straight on—if anyone dared, that was—one would assume he’d come straight out of the military.
Same no-nonsense haircut since high school, no tattoos or jewelry.
He took better care of his fingernails and cuticles than she did and never went anywhere without the same worn pair of leather boots he’d picked up after college graduation.
The man kept to himself better than a monk but valued the people he let close.
Though she’d stopped being one of them around the time she’d graduated high school a few years after him, and she couldn’t remember the last time he’d dated anyone. Did he have anyone left?
Murray didn’t bother to give in against her finger digging into his chest, taking one step into her.
The big ape probably couldn’t even feel it, which only made her angrier.
Couldn’t he, for once, stop trying to bend everyone to his will, and listen?
“You’re putting yourself in unnecessary danger chasing after these fires, and now you’re telling me someone left behind a body and used accelerant to cover up the crime.
I can’t have you putting yourself anywhere near someone capable of this kind of evil. ”
“That’s not really your choice though, is it, Ranger Simpson?
” The use of his title was a reminder of where they were, who was watching.
He’d charged onto a scene uninvited and demanded a ranger not under his supervision to leave an active investigation.
He’d outright used his authority against her, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive him for that.
For embarrassing her. For overriding her own authority in this unit.
He had a point. No part of her wanted to be anywhere near a suspect capable of disposing of a body without any consideration for the damage that had followed or the lives that had been put at risk due to the fire’s spread, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it to him.
This job was important. Couldn’t he see that?
Choosing to be a ranger here in Zion had given her something of her very own.
Something the state or guardians or social services couldn’t take away as they had so many times before.
It was hers. She’d worked hard for it all through college with her degree in emergency management, and she wasn’t letting it go.
Aslen wasn’t sure where this newfound confidence had come from, but she’d hold on with everything she had.
She’d spent far too many years bowing to his every word, worshipping the ground he walked on and never standing up for herself in a stupid hope he’d notice her.
Not the obligation of a promise. Not the weak kid he’d pulled into the closet or back to his bedroom night after night when her foster mother drank too much.
Her. But that wasn’t ever going to happen.
They had too much history. Too much pain they couldn’t acknowledge and couldn’t overcome on their own. “The body is over here.”
Her breath shook through her chest as she breached the tree line.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she considered the fallout of what she’d just done, calling Murray out like that.
She’d never done it before, but there was also a strange current of power coursing through her veins at the thought of finally standing up to him.
Despite his distorted perception of her and their years of history together, she wasn’t some wallflower who needed a big, strong man to get her through life.
She’d come to Zion for independence and to show herself she wasn’t a victim.
That she could be something more. And, yeah, she wanted to maybe find someone to share it with.
But Murray had gone and ruined that, too.
Her boots sank deep into mud created by the hoses and ash.
Hints of gasoline caught at the back of her throat as she passed the surrounding trees.
She could smell it even twenty feet from the destroyed shed, clinging to the blackened, flaking bark.
Two firefighters sprayed another round of water across the shed to make it safe for investigators to come through.
Again, Aslen felt more than confirmed Murray’s presence at her back.
It was the subtle shift of her teammates’ body language, a predator coming into their territory.
It took everything she had not to roll her eyes.
What did they think he was going to do? Go for their throats for looking at her?
“The gas can was most likely full before the fire got to it. We can’t be sure if the canister was already in the maintenance shed or if the perpetrator brought it in to aid in getting rid of the body, but we can confirm the fire started here with a good helping of accelerant.
We found traces of it in the brush surrounding the shed. ”
She motioned to the perimeter, the grass here a slightly different color in a weblike pattern. “It looks like whoever set the fire was throwing lines of gas, probably in a panic, up and over the shed compared to strategically dousing the wood.”
The weight of Murray’s attention pressurized along the side of her face, and she couldn’t shut down the need to meet his gaze. He stared at her as though he’d never seen her before.
“What?” She scraped the back of her hand over her mouth, drawing his attention lower. “Do I have spinach in my teeth?”
“No.” He seemed to shake himself out of whatever thought had held him paralyzed. “Show me the body.”
Aslen rounded the still-standing corner of the structure.
The gasoline explosion had blasted outward into the opposite corner of the small building—toward her and the four other firefighters—leaving only a few beams still standing.
Crouching, she held her breath against the stench of gasoline and seared flesh and hair.
“She’s female based off the shape of her pelvis and the diamond stuck in her ring finger.
The gold melted underneath her hand. Your medical examiner will need to confirm, but my guess is she’s older, considering how quickly her bones burned.
The gasoline could also have something to do with that. ”
“You got all that just from looking at her for a few minutes?” Murray arrowed his attention on the remains.
Well, what was left of them. There were a few good limbs still missing due to the explosion, but her team would navigate the scene to help investigators recover as many as possible. It was part of the job.
“To be fair, I think there are pieces of her stuck in my hair I got a good look at.” Ugh.
She’d never get the smell off her, but she’d survived worse smells—and fires—than this.
“But yeah. We’ve all been trained in death estimation for burn victims. I’m sure any one of them can help during your investigation. ”
“I don’t want anyone else on this investigation.” Murray stood, turning that unreadable gaze on her. “I want you.”