Chapter Thirteen
Parker
Nate clears his throat like he’s about to present a dissertation, then reaches for a set of rolled up floor plans near the end of the table. “Start here.”
The three sheets of thick paper catch on a stack of reports, sending documents labeled with green Post-It notes scattering. Inspection reports, occupancy certificates, permit applications… Not to mention enough handwritten notes to wallpaper the entire room.
Nate’s filing system is intense on a normal day. Whatever happened in this room over the last three hours is something else entirely.
The blueprints on the monitor match those in front of me, except the paper copy has been marked up so heavily it looks like Nate fought with it and lost.
Considering the highlighter smear on his right cheek, maybe he did.
I take another sip of coffee and follow one of the red lines he’s drawn through the building. It traces an evacuation route from the second-floor break room, through a corridor, and around a corner. Frowning, I go back to the start and follow it again.
“Nate.”
He doesn’t look up from the legal pad balanced on his knee. “Not bad, Parker. It took me twenty minutes."
I study the plan a third time, convinced I’m reading it wrong. “That’s not a fire escape. It’s a utility room.”
“Yep.”
I glance at the stack of inspection reports sitting next to his elbow. Then back to the blueprints.
“A utility room isn’t an exit.”
“Not unless there’s some sort of inter-dimensional time machine in there.”
I set my coffee down and pull the original inspection report from the pile. It doesn’t take long to figure out what Nate’s known for hours.
Before the building was certified for occupancy, the secondary egress routes had to be verified. Yet one of those approved routes ends in a utility room with no windows and only a single door.
“How does this happen? How does no one notice?” I sit back, ignoring the dull ache in my ribs.
Nate finally closes the legal pad and tosses it onto the table. “That’s what’s been driving me up a wall. The building was sold and retrofitted five years ago. That requires another inspection. A mistake happens once. This survived two separate inspections by different inspectors.”
Jerry Hollis died in that utility room. I assumed he’d gotten turned around. Panicked. Lost visibility in the smoke and gone right when he should have gone left. One bad decision amid the chaos of a fire that never should’ve happened.
But that wasn’t the case.
“Hollis… He followed the signs.”
Nate’s gaze lifts to mine.
“I think he did.”
We let the quiet hang between us. Outside the conference room, phones ring and people move through the bullpen, but it all feels strangely distant. My attention is glued to the floor plan. To that impossible route. To the official documents insisting everything was fine.
“What if this isn’t the only thing?” I ask.
A humorless smile crosses Nate’s face. “Exactly.”
He reaches over and taps a stack of reports thick enough to choke a horse.
“We’ve been treating this like a fire scene.” He pauses, then shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at.”
I glance at the signatures. The official stamps. And Eliot’s preliminary report that says the fire burned too hot and too fast to be natural.
The last vestiges of exhaustion banished, my voice is steadier than it’s been all morning. “It’s a fraud scene someone set on fire.”
Once we start pulling on threads, the next two hours disappear under a paper trail that would defeat a bloodhound.
We spend most of it trying to track down the inspectors who signed off on the missing egress.
The signatures were both illegible, but the license numbers were enough to start pulling records. Two hours later, we’ve got more questions than answers. Because one belongs to a man who seems to have disappeared, and the other doesn’t exist in any state database.
The conference room grows steadily messier. Piles migrate across the table. Nate’s color-coded filing system somehow becomes even more elaborate as he discovers new categories of things that irritate him.
“A fifth color,” he mutters, breaking the seal on a new box of highlighters. “I’ve never needed a fifth color before.”
“You’ve been dying to use a fifth color for years. Forget Captain Root Canal. You’re Captain Color Coding from now on.”
“Too long. Captain Collation? Captain Curious?”
I throw a wadded-up piece of legal paper at him. He bats it straight into the trash can in the corner of the room.
“Show off.”
“Captain Slam Dunk has a nice ring to it,” he says, a hint of weariness in his tone. “Or Captain Comatose. I need a coffee refill. Want one?”
“God, yes.” I gesture to my laptop. “The missing inspector might as well be a ghost. His driver’s license is expired, I can’t find utility bills or credit cards tied to any of his three known addresses, and the state has no record of him filing income taxes last year.”
Nate pauses at the door, mugs in hand. “If he turns up while I’m gone, tell him I want to know how he’s managing that level of commitment to not existing.”
I manage a weak laugh as the conference door snicks shut.
Opening a new search, I check death records next. Nothing under his social security number. Missing persons? His full name, Roger Haight, doesn’t return a thing. So I move on to misspellings.
The query is still running when Nate slips back into the room with two cups of steaming motor oil. My stomach twists in protest before I even catch a whiff from the mugs.
“You find that ghost yet?” he asks, setting my cup in front of me.
“It’s been five minutes. Cut me some slack.”
“Four.”
“What?”
“I was gone four minutes. Thus you get extra slack for the next sixty seconds.”
Checking my watch, I shake my head. “Should I be concerned you were counting?”
“I’m concerned about a lot of things. Like lunch. Lunch is a very big concern of mine right now.” He sinks back into his chair and stares at the coffee mug like it’s about to bite him. “I had to dig into my emergency stash of granola bars hours ago.”
“I could put away some enchiladas. Want that tofu taco salad from Mario’s?”
Nate drops his pen. “You said salad.”
“I did. You love salads.” My mouth twists into a frown—salads barely count as food in my book, but after three years, you get to know what your partner likes, and what they absolutely won’t eat. “If you’d rather I order burgers and fries—”
“No. Tracking down the first guy to sign off on the Round Rock building is going to take the last three brain cells currently holding this entire organizational system together. Salad is my only hope.”
Before I can tap the Food Dude app, my phone vibrates with a new message, and Eliot’s name fills the top of the screen.
I’ve got the detailed report from Round Rock. You and Hardison need to see it ASAP. I’m on my way in. Do you want hot or iced coffee?
My lips curve. Nate notices immediately.
“What are you grinning at?” he asks, brows pinching together. “Please don’t tell me they’re out of tofu.”
“It’s Eliot. He’s on his way with the full Round Rock report.”
Nate slides his laptop closer, flicks his gaze to me for a moment, then returns his focus to the screen. “In three years, I’ve never once seen you smile at your phone while trying to stop smiling at your phone.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. Admit it, and I won’t tell Flint when he gets here.” Picking up a purple highlighter, he grins at me across the table.
“You wouldn’t.” We stare one another down, and I realize he absolutely would. “Fine. He offered to bring me coffee.”
I thumb out a quick reply.
Iced, please.
Nate watches, an amused look on his face. “We’ve been partners for three years, and you’ve never replied to one of my texts that fast.”
“You send me case files.”
“I sent you a meme last week.”
“It wasn’t funny.”
“It was extremely funny.” He uncaps the highlighter with his teeth and goes back to the second Round Rock inspection report. “If he’s springing for coffee…”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, I’ll pass your order along.”
Can you grab Nate an iced soy milk latte? Otherwise, he’s going to be insufferable.
The phone vibrates almost immediately.
Done.
I switch over to the Food Dude app and grab the link to Mario’s menu to send him.
We’re ordering lunch. What do you want?
Whatever you’re having.
A flush starts low in my chest, working its way up my neck to my cheeks. Nate lifts his eyes briefly, huffs out what might be a laugh, and goes back to his laptop.
That’s not an answer.
When Eliot’s response comes in, I want to melt into the floor.
It’s the only one I need.
By the time Eliot arrives, Nate’s stacked the piles of paperwork neatly along the far half of the conference table and arranged the takeout containers so Eliot has to sit right next to me.
Traitor.
Eliot stops in the doorway, cardboard drink carrier in one hand, and a thick file folder in the other.
I’m in the middle of a LexisNexis search for our missing inspector, but can’t remember which record I was about to click on.
Not with how good Eliot looks in dark blue Wranglers and a charcoal button-down shirt—one that’s not stained with soot and my blood.
His hair’s tousled again, he’s freshly shaven, and he clearly slept longer than I did last night.
I try not to resent him for that.
“Parker.”
The corner of his mouth lifts slightly as he crosses the room and hands me a large iced coffee.
“You have no idea how much I needed this.”
Nate makes a quiet sound that suspiciously resembles a laugh.
I shoot him a look.
He pretends to be fascinated by a packet of jalapeno vinaigrette.
Eliot slides Nate’s latte across the table. Small lines crinkle around his eyes, almost like the movement cost him. “Soy, man? Really? Oat is so much better.”
“Oat tastes like grass and despair,” Nate says, his hands wrapping around the cup like it’s worth an entire month’s salary. “Now, hemp…that I can get behind.”
“Agreed. But the only place in town I’ve found hemp is Alabaster’s kiosk, and they closed hours ago.
” Eliot sets the file folder on the table.
“Preliminary findings from Cedar Park. Expanded reports from Round Rock, including a thumb drive with all the high-res photos I took. Some of the lab work is still pending, but enough came back to confirm these fires weren’t random—or unrelated. ”
Nate reaches for the paperwork with one hand, a fork in the other. “We’ve got…too much and not enough at the same time.”
Eliot eases himself into the empty chair next to me and sweeps his gaze around the room. “The ‘too much’ I can believe. This…”
“Don’t flatter him. He’s already ordered a new set of highlighters. Ten colors this time.”
“You forgot about the Post-It notes. Pastels, neons, and earth tones. I’m diversifying,” Nate says through a mouthful of tofu with spicy dressing. “And the file folders.”
“AJ’s gonna take away your expense account.” I turn to Eliot, expecting a hint of a smile. Maybe even a chuckle. But instead, he looks…wistful.
Nudging his shoulder with mine, I lower my voice. “You okay?”
Whatever had a hold of him vanishes with a blink. “Just hungry. Let’s eat, and then I’ll walk you through my findings.”