18
Wrapped in a blanket, Rowan sat with a group in Jason and Julie’s driveway, numbly watching the fire. Julie had brought out blankets for her and Thor as Rowan inspected her dog for injuries and glass. She’d found blood on his back, but nothing was heavily bleeding. She’d removed a few pieces of glass from his fur, but no glass glittered in his pads.
Julie had fussed over Rowan’s bloody shirt, making her lift it so she could inspect her stomach. There were several long, deep scratches. Two continued to ooze, and the woman covered them with large bandages. Tiny sharp pains told Rowan there were glass splinters embedded in her skin.
There has to be glass in Thor’s feet.
She’d tackle that later, when she could see better. It’d grown darker, and Jason brought out a few bright camping lanterns, their road too rural for city streetlights. The orange of the flames was mostly gone, but smoke of all shades continued to pour out as firefighters sprayed water into the house.
It’d been her grandfather’s home, an inheritance that Rowan had purchased from her sisters after his will had been read a few years ago. The house was brick and the roof made of asphalt, but there had been plenty inside to burn. The home still stood, her earlier fears of it collapsing unfounded. But the house would be a hollow shell.
There can’t be anything left in there.
I need to call Evan.
Rowan had attended to her dog first. She patted her pants pockets.
Shit.
“I lost my phone,” she told Julie. She recalled grabbing it when she arrived at the fire but had no idea where it had ended up. Julie tapped in a password and pressed her phone into Rowan’s hand.
Rowan stared at the keypad. She didn’t have Evan’s number memorized. A curse of modern technology. She searched for the sheriff’s department’s number, called it, and asked to be connected to Evan. She was politely told they’d pass on her name and number because Detective Bolton was out of the station.
“Please,” said Rowan, her voice cracking. “There’s been a fire and we live together and I lost my phone and I don’t have his number memorized.” Her words ran together as tears burned. The struggle to reach Evan felt like a tipping point into emotional chaos.
I’m still in shock.
Rowan handed the phone to Julie. “Talk to them.” And then buried her face in Thor’s fur. He had promptly moved into her lap when Rowan had sat on the ground, not caring—or unaware—that he was not lapdog size. Rowan had wrapped her arms and blanket around her dog and watched everything she owned be destroyed.
It barely registered that Julie was speaking fiercely to the sheriff’s department, telling them that Detective Bolton needed to be contacted immediately because his home was burning to the ground.
Not the ground.
At the moment it was an important distinction to Rowan that the house still stood.
She didn’t know if ten minutes or an hour had passed when Evan came sprinting up the street, having been forced by fire personnel to park away from the scene.
“Rowan!”
Thor leaped out of Rowan’s lap, causing her to gasp, “Oof.” She shakily pushed off the ground to stand.
Evan’s arms were instantly around her, pulling her tight to him. “Oh my God,” he said four times, running his hands over her hair and her back, stepping back to take a look at her face and then hugging her again. “What the hell happened?”
Rowan shook her head against his neck, her eyes closed. She didn’t have an answer.
“We saw the flames,” Julie told him. “Both your vehicles were gone, so we’d hoped you weren’t home. There was no getting through the front door by then anyway.”
“Rowan made it to the door,” she heard Jason say. “Thought she was going to run inside the burning house to get Thor.”
Evan stepped back, his hands on Rowan’s upper arms, scanning her face. “Thor was inside?”
Miserable, she nodded, unable to look him in the eye. “I left him home to run an errand, and when I came back, I couldn’t get in the house.” Tears streamed.
“Fire lieutenant said she bashed in a back window and got him out,” said Julie.
Evan was still studying her face. “The slider?” he asked, referring to the door on the deck.
“No. Laundry room.”
He blinked several times. “Jesus. How did you get him out?”
Rowan pushed forward into his arms, unable to talk about it or meet his gaze, wondering where her mental and emotional strength had gone. It’d been there when she had to save her dog.
I used it up.
It was obvious Rowan was drained.
Evan couldn’t imagine her distress when she’d returned to find Thor trapped inside. His anxiety had exploded when the department switchboard had called and said it’d been reported that his house was on fire. He’d only stayed sane because he’d been told Rowan had made the call. Evan had called her phone a dozen times on the drive from the medical examiner’s office, even though he’d been told she’d lost it.
“Which one is the lieutenant?” he asked Jason, who indicated a man speaking with two other firefighters. Evan tightened his arms around Rowan. “I need to talk to him,” he told her. “I’ll be right back.”
She nodded. “I’m okay.”
Evan wasn’t so sure about that. He knew she would be but wasn’t just yet. His emotions and mental stress were still all over the place, and he hadn’t even been in the house. She had to be ten times worse. He tipped his head at Julie to take over.
As he strode toward the lieutenant, he accessed the camera views from his security system at the house. Understandably, all cameras were currently offline, but video had been backed up to a cloud. Evan stopped as he pulled up the camera view that had covered the street and watched as a black truck turned into his driveway and a man got out of the passenger side. The driver was impossible to see because of the glare of the home’s outdoor lights on the windshield. The passenger lit a device in his hand and prepped like an MLB pitcher before he hurled it through the garage window. He got another from the truck cab and did the same with the living room window. He calmly got back in the vehicle, and they drove off.
It was deliberate.
Evan paused the video and zoomed in on the passenger. He was dressed in black with a black baseball cap that blocked the view of his face the entire time.
He knew where the camera was.
The truck’s front license plate was covered, and the rear never came into view of the camera. Evan fast-forwarded until he saw Jason tear up his driveway. Several minutes had gone by, and smoke nearly hid Jason from view. It’d been too little, too late.
This was well planned.
He continued to fast-forward the video, watching various neighbors enter and exit the smoky camera angle. Then it abruptly stopped. The fire had been too much.
As Evan approached the lieutenant, the heat from the smoking house baked his face.
How did Rowan get near the front door?
Evan held out his ID for the lieutenant to see. “I live here too,” he said grimly.
“That’s your wife?” The man pointed at Rowan.
“Girlfriend.” Evan didn’t like the word. It didn’t fully convey their relationship.
“I’ve seen people do dangerous things to get to their pets,” said the lieutenant. “She was lucky that her dog was in a safer part of the house, but I don’t know that she would have gotten him out if I hadn’t given her a hand. They were in a tight spot.”
“She would have made it happen somehow.” Evan shuddered, fully aware Rowan would risk almost anything to save her dog. “What happened? I heard there were broken windows.” He would show the lieutenant the video in a minute. He wanted to know what was being said about the fire first.
“That’s what I was told too,” the lieutenant said. “If the home cools down enough tomorrow, they’ll start the investigation. Possibly the next day.”
“Think something was thrown through the windows?” asked Evan. “Some sort of Molotov cocktail?”
“If that’s the case, it won’t be hard to confirm. Accelerants leave signs that the investigators can spot.”
“I have video from the front camera,” said Evan, pointing to where the camera was positioned under the eaves, now a useless black shell. He showed the lieutenant the video, watching anger cross his face as the devices were thrown through the windows.
“Our fire investigator will want that footage,” he said.
“Not a problem. I want them caught.” Evan stared at the smoking home. Rowan loved the house, and his heart broke for her loss.
We’ve been very happy here.
They would be happy elsewhere too. Belongings were replaceable. Rowan and Thor were not.
Was the house targeted?
The thought made him uncomfortable. Yesterday he’d nearly been shot in the head, and today had been a close call for Rowan and Thor.
Did someone think I was home?
He couldn’t comprehend why someone would target Rowan. All she did was help people. And love dogs.
Me ... on the other hand.
He easily saw himself as a target. He’d pissed off plenty of people over the course of his career. Evan thought about how he’d been searching through Rod’s files for an angry suspect who might have gone after the retired detective.
Is the same thing happening to me?
It felt like his life had been going to shit the last couple of days. Rod killed, Sophia missing, the near-miss gunshot, and now the fire. Two gunshots. If Charlie Graham hadn’t made Evan step back, the first shot could have hit him.
And my fingerprints in Rod’s office.
He was confident that would turn out to be an error; he hadn’t touched anything in the office. But damn, Evan hadn’t liked the look on Ogden’s face as he questioned him. It’d made him feel guilty for something he hadn’t done.
Or did someone place my prints in there?
Evan shook his head. He was being paranoid. The last two days had been stressful and long, making his thoughts run wild. He needed to sleep for a day or two.
But that won’t be in our house.
Evan watched the video again, zooming in on the useless covered front plate. The truck was a dark-colored Ford—
“Shit.”
Evan played with the video, backing up and forwarding through every image of the Ford truck. He was positive it was black.
Like Rod’s missing truck.
Evan racked his brain, trying to recall if he’d previously noticed anything about Rod’s truck that could indicate this was the same vehicle.
A hand slipped into his. Rowan had stepped next to him, Thor at her side. She held up her other hand to block some of the heat from her face. He saw an N95 had left a faint outline on her nose and cheeks. “I’m ready to leave,” she told him, exhaustion in her eyes and voice.
“Where should we go? Iris or Ivy’s house? Your parents’?”
Rowan shook her head. “Can you imagine the smothering we’d get from my sisters? I guess my parents’ is a better option. But I really don’t want to face anyone and answer a bunch of questions right now.”
“A hotel, then.”
She looked at their smoking home, her lips pressed together. “It’s gone, isn’t it?”
Yes.
“We’ll see,” said Evan. “We don’t know what kind of damage has been done.” He squeezed her hand. “I think a hotel is a good idea,” he said, trying to redirect her thoughts. “Quiet. No one talking to us.”
“I don’t have any clean clothes,” Rowan said slowly. “I can shower, but how will I get the smell of smoke out of these clothes?”
The problem was minuscule in light of what had just happened, but Evan suspected she was still in shock and that to her the issue seemed important at the moment. “I’ll borrow some things from Jason and Julie. We can shower at the hotel.”
“Okay.” Some of the worry left her face.
One problem at a time.
He knew she’d be more like herself the next day.
“But maybe we should stop at the emergency room first,” Rowan said. She let the blanket fall from her shoulders and lifted her shirt.
Evan was stunned by the sight of the blood-soaked bandages under her stained T-shirt. Long bleeding scratches raced down her torso.
“I thought it’d stopped bleeding. I guess not,” Rowan said slowly, staring down at her belly. “I can feel glass in the cuts.”
Evan turned the two of them in the direction of his vehicle. “Hospital first. Everything else can wait.”
He would tell her about the video on the way to the hospital. It was going to be a long night.
But everyone is safe.