Chapter Nineteen
Eliot
I pause in the doorway, taking stock of the room while my dick throbs faintly and I can still taste Parker on my lips.
Fuck.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to notice her.
Or care about her. Or want her. I haven’t let myself want anyone in more than seven years.
Now, after less than a week, I’m in so fucking deep, I made dinner reservations at three different restaurants.
Because this night needs to be everything she wants it to be.
I don’t know what she likes. Chili and beer at a dive bar?
A fancy, three-course meal with wine pairings?
Something in between? I want to find out.
Parker doesn’t look up from her laptop, but her shoulders hitch and her fingers still on the keyboard. A tiny ripple of tension runs through her body.
Is she as uncomfortable as I am? Probably.
Across the table, Nate watches me. I don’t know him well enough to understand if that glint in his eyes is amusement or a warning.
Every step from the door to the chair is actively painful. My knee doesn’t give a shit about the movement, but I’m starting to think whoever designed Wranglers never had a hard-on. I know they never tried to sit down with one.
A whiff of Parker’s shampoo—citrus and something soft—is enough to remind me how she felt in my arms. Not that I’d truly forgotten. Just tried to shove the thought down enough to focus on why we’re here.
Two fires. A dead security guard. A murdered building inspector.
“I’m good,” Nate says, leaning back in his chair, his sharp gaze swinging between me and Parker. “In case anyone thought to ask.”
“I don’t care about alliteration anymore,” Parker mutters. “You’re Captain Last Nerve. You will always be ‘Last Nerve.’ You could be knighted and I’d call you Sir Last Ner— Oh God, no. Scratch that. I’m never calling you Sir anything. Ew.”
Nate’s expression falters for half a second. “Well, that’s one sure way to ruin my dreams of being knighted. But back to my being good…” He flips through several pages of his legal pad. “Based on observed behaviors, the two of you beat AJ’s prediction by forty-eight hours.”
“You…and AJ…were betting on…us?” Parker sputters.
“Betting involves money,” Nate counters. “Also, uncertainty. We were tracking whether or not one of you would make a move before you were eligible for AARP.”
Parker finally turns and gives me a subtle eye roll. “I told you he’d be insufferable.”
I fight the urge to smile. Despite my growing fear about what’ll happen the next time Nate and I are alone in a room together, I feel like part of a team for the first time in seven years.
“I’m merely reminding you that my use of spreadsheets and color coding produces real results.” For a long moment, Nate turns his stare to me. “And while the two of you were…otherwise engaged, I got enough Vitamin D to delay rearranging Mallon’s face.”
The implication is enough that I swallow hard and open my laptop.
“The full Cedar Park report came in. I requested additional photos in a couple of spots, and a couple of our techs went out there with a ladder for close-ups.” Mirroring my laptop screen on the wall monitor, I bring up the sprinkler system zone map on file with the city, then the first set of pictures.
At my side, Parker leans in, her shoulder brushing against me. If we were alone, I’d link our fingers under the table. Or nudge her back. But instead, I force myself to focus. Nate smirks and uncaps a highlighter.
“Look at the pipes. Notice anything?” I aim the laser pointer in the general area of the problem.
“Son of a bitch,” Parker snaps. “They don’t connect to the main line.”
“Nope. There’s a full set of heads in the southeast quadrant, but exactly zero water flow into the pipes they’re on.”
“So the map filed with the city is…wait for it,” Nate says, “…a pipe dream?”
Parker gives him a look that clearly says she’s not amused, and I press my lips together so I don’t chuckle. It was a good joke, even if fire ain’t funny.
“Then we’ve got the load-bearing steel columns in that area.
” The next photos aren’t a puzzle I expect the Rangers to solve.
“There should be a coating on them. Like a thermal barrier that slows down the heat transfer to the steel itself. This is what keeps buildings from collapsing when they burn. It stops fifteen feet up. The top half of it is bare steel.”
“How can you tell?” Parker asks.
Zooming in, I show her where to look. “See the texture difference? I noticed it when I was on scene, but couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a trick of the light. Cather—he’s one of my techs—took a sample for testing.”
Nate moves to the whiteboard. “Round Rock. Missing sprinkler heads, no firewalls, and a secondary egress that ended in a utility room.” Each item is carefully listed in blue under a photo of the burned exterior of the building.
He switches to a green pen. “Cedar Park. Pipes disconnected from any potential water supply, and uncoated steel.”
“All deficiencies that would have been caught by even the most incompetent of inspectors,” I add.
Parker reaches for a stack of documents on the other side of me. The motion puts her lips so close to mine, I wonder if she’s trying to torture me. Though, given the tiny, strangled sound catching in her throat, I’m not the only one struggling here.
Her cheeks are flushed when she sits back. Until she focuses on the single piece of paper in her hand. “Well, slap my ass and call me a toaster. The Cedar Park building was sold last year. It had to undergo a full inspection while it was in escrow. Approved by one Roger Haight. The day he died.”