Chapter Three
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The fire lit up the night like a nightmare she couldn’t wake from.
Lily stood frozen at the edge of the gravel drive, boots rooted to the ground, staring at the flames tearing through her house. Her lungs burned with smoke and disbelief. The heat hit her in waves, wild and crackling, and she couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
Her house—her damn house—was going up in flames.
She didn’t remember opening the truck door. One second she’d been sitting beside Griff, the next she was standing in the cold with her fingers clenched into fists and her heart pounding in her throat.
Griff was on his phone, already calling it in, voice low and clipped. Professional. Controlled.
She felt anything but.
The shock was there first, hot and sharp, the kind that made her stomach drop and her brain freeze. But it didn’t last long. Anger pushed through the haze. And fury settled hard in her chest, solid and steady and burning hotter than the flames.
Someone had done this. Someone had stood in the dark and watched her house burn.
She whipped around, scanning the shadows, heart racing. The road. The tree line. The empty space between her property and the next.
She wasn’t the only one looking.
Griff stepped up beside her, eyes sweeping the darkness with that same sharp focus she’d seen in interrogation rooms and crime scenes. “Back in the truck,” he said, voice low but firm.
“Griff—”
“We don’t know if they’re still out here,” he interrupted.
She didn’t want to turn away. Didn’t want to leave the sight of her home, her things, the pieces of her life being devoured by fire. But she knew he was right.
Gritting her teeth, she backed up slowly, the heat licking at her face, her throat tight with rage. She got into the truck. And promised herself that whoever did this would regret it.
The flames chewed through the house with terrifying speed. Each second dragged, but the fire moved like it had a purpose, as if it knew exactly how to destroy what little she had.
Lily sat stiff in Griff’s truck, her hands balled in her lap. She couldn’t take her eyes off the blaze. Couldn’t blink.
It gutted her, not because she’d lost anything expensive or irreplaceable. Heck, most of her furniture was secondhand, and her clothes certainly didn’t have designer labels on them.
But this place?
It had been hers.
She’d never had that before. Not really. In San Antonio, she’d had an apartment with beige walls and locks she triple-checked every night. A place to sleep, not a place to land. Not a place to breathe.
Out here, on the edge of Outlaw Ridge, she’d started to believe she could build something solid. Quiet. Real. And now it was burning to the damn ground.
“The fire department’s on their way,” Griff said from the driver’s seat. His voice was calm, but his posture was tense, alert. Watching the road, the tree line, every shadow.
She glanced at him, gave a slow nod, but shifted her attention back to the blaze.
“It’s already too late,” she murmured.
As if to prove her right, the roof gave a sickening groan and collapsed inward with a thunderous crash, sending a storm of embers and thick black smoke into the sky. The glow pulsed brighter for a moment, then dimmed as the structure sagged inward.
Lily swallowed hard. “That wasn’t random,” she said. “The same person who slashed my tires did this.”
Beside her, Griff made a low sound of agreement. He didn’t say I know. He didn’t have to. His eyes never stopped scanning the darkness beyond the windshield.
Someone had gone after her. Not just to scare her. To ruin her. And if they thought this fire would stop her, they didn’t know her.
They’d only lit a match under everything she had left.
Griff tensed beside her, sudden and sharp. His hand moved fast, drawing his weapon as he twisted to look out the rear window.
Lily’s pulse spiked. She reached instinctively for her own gun but froze when she followed his gaze and saw the figure emerging from the trees behind them.
It was just Mrs. Diane Riggins, her widowed eighty-something neighbor from the next lot over.
She wore a flannel robe over a long nightgown, her white hair tied back in a loose bun, slippers scuffing along the gravel as she hurried toward them.
She squinted through her thick glasses, one hand shielding her face from the heat and smoke.
“That’s Mrs. Riggins,” Lily said under her breath, lowering her hand from her weapon. “There are trees between the houses,” she murmured to Griff. “She probably didn’t see it right away.”
Griff was already climbing out of the truck, weapon lowered but still watchful. “Ma’am,” he called out, keeping his tone steady but firm, “I’m Deputy Griff Abrams. I need you to go back inside. It’s not safe out here.”
Mrs. Riggins stopped, blinking at the fire. “Good Lord,” she whispered. “Lily, is that your—”
“Please, ma’am,” Griff said again, stepping closer, not unkind but leaving no room for argument.
The woman hesitated, her hand fluttering near her chest like a bird trying to settle. “I’ll pray,” she said softly, turning back toward her house. “I’ll pray for you.” Then she disappeared into the trees, the shadows swallowing her up.
Lily let out a breath she’d been holding. No way did she want her neighbor hurt, and there was no telling what kind of threat was out here. Lily turned back toward her house, or what was left of it, the glow of the fire still burning hard against the night.
And then, in the distance, there was a low, rising wail.
The fire engine.
The sound grew louder as the truck approached, red lights flashing through the trees.
But just as she’d known right from the start, it was too late. The damage was done.
The fire engine roared into view, lights slicing through the smoke-choked dark as it pulled into the gravel drive, tires grinding hard against the earth. Lily didn’t move. Couldn’t. Her hands were still folded in her lap, her fingers stiff and cold despite the lingering heat from the blaze.
Griff opened the driver’s side door and leaned in. His voice was quiet, even, but carried that steady weight she’d come to expect from him.
“Is it all right if I handle the fire crew?” he asked. “You stay put.”
She nodded, barely turning her head. “Yeah. Okay.”
The door shut, and she watched him stride toward the firefighters as they jumped down from the truck.
They moved fast, already unspooling hoses, shouting to one another over the roar of the flames.
One of them ran toward the side of the property, another yanked open a side panel and powered up the pump.
It was a strange thing, watching people try to save what was already gone.
Smoke coiled upward into the night, thick and oily. The air smelled like scorched wood and plastic and something worse. Something acrid and personal. Lily blinked against the sting, her eyes raw, her heart still locked behind the numbness in her chest.
A few minutes later, Griff jogged back to the truck and climbed in, brushing a bit of ash from his sleeve.
“They need to shut down the road,” he said, “and to keep the fire from spreading. I’ve got to move us out of the way.”
She nodded again, wordless.
Griff put the truck in gear and eased them back onto the main road, pulling into a small clearing just past the bend.
Behind them, the engine hissed as water blasted toward the flames, drowning what little remained of the home she’d tried to build.
As the fire hissed and cracked and finally began to dim, Lily felt something inside her harden.
Someone had taken everything. And she wasn’t going to let them walk away with it.
Griff didn’t ask if she wanted to go anywhere else. He just drove, one hand on the wheel, eyes steady on the dark road ahead. Lily didn’t argue. She barely had the mental energy just to keep breathing.
The fire was behind them now, but she could still smell it on her clothes, in her hair. A sour, clinging reminder of everything she’d lost.
They turned off the main road a few minutes later, the truck bumping onto a long dirt drive flanked by open pasture and stretches of cedar. The wind had picked up, and the branches swayed in rhythm with the tires crunching over gravel.
Griff’s place came into view around a low bend in the road.
It was an old ranch house, wide and square, with a wraparound porch and a few rusted remnants of fencing still standing where a corral must’ve been years ago.
A barn sat farther back, the roof clean and recently reinforced.
The porch light was on, warm against the cold dark.
He slowed to a stop in front of the house.
“This used to be a working ranch,” he said, shifting into park.
“One of the places that Owen had renovated when we brought in temporary deputies. Figured it’d help with housing, give us a foothold while things got rebuilt.
I ended up buying it. I decided I could keep it as a home base when I go back to Strike Force. ”
Lily glanced out the window, eyes tracking the shape of the barn in the dark. The place was simple, solid. Clean lines, no frills. Like Griff.
She realized after a second that he was still talking, not to fill the silence but to give her something to hold on to. To steady her. To keep her from falling apart.
Lily didn’t tell him it was working.
She just opened the door and stepped out, the night air cold against her skin, the scent of fire still clinging to her.
The porch creaked under their boots as they stepped up, the wood solid beneath her feet. Griff pulled out his phone and tapped the screen. The door lock clicked a second later.
Of course he had an app for that.
He pushed the door open and held it for her. Inside, the house was warm and quiet. The kind of space meant to stay that way. No clutter, no noise. Just clean walls, polished wood floors, and a faint scent of coffee and cedar.