Chapter 3 Zane
ZANE
By eight-thirty the next morning, Sandpiper Shores looked like it was trying to pretend nothing had happened.
The sun was out, bright and almost cheerful, and the ocean breeze carried that familiar mix of salt, warm asphalt, and fresh coffee from the shops opening along Harbor Street.
The tourists would keep coming, the locals would keep smiling at one another, and the town would keep leaning on routine as if routine could tape up cracks and stop them from spreading.
Fire Chief Zane Evans didn’t buy it.
He’d been in the fire service long enough to know the difference between calm and denial. Some towns carried tragedy the way people carried old injuries. Quietly. Carefully. With a limp they pretended not to have. At the moment, Sandpiper Shores had a limp.
He walked at a steady pace, hands in his pockets, his gaze doing what it always did. Not drifting. Not daydreaming. Scanning. Not because he was paranoid, but because it was a habit, and because habit kept people alive.
He wasn’t on shift yet, technically. Zane didn’t have to be anywhere until later, and he’d told himself that the walk was simply to stretch his legs after a night of too little sleep in a place that still felt half like home and half like a memory.
That was the excuse. The truth sat heavier.
Zane had come early, and he hadn’t told anyone he’d come early, because he didn’t want the circus.
He didn’t want the speculation. He didn’t want the sideways looks that said, Chief Evans is here because he doesn’t trust his own people, or he’s here to either shut down the station or fire people.
Oh yes, Zane was fully aware they called him Fire Chief Hatchet.
He trusted his people. That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that these fires were eerily familiar to a pattern from ten years ago.
The old veterinary clinic came into view as he turned down the side road, and his steps slowed without him meaning them to.
The building looked smaller than it had in his mind, as if time had shrunk it, but the blackened scars at the back made it impossible to forget what it had been.
There was a smell in the air that hadn’t fully left yet, even though they’d scrubbed and aired and stripped and hauled away everything that they could.
But smoke had a way of lingering in a town, not just in walls and insulation, but in people.
There were workers there already, and not just contractors. Volunteers too. Men and women in jeans and work boots, hauling salvageable items from inside, sorting what could be cleaned, what could be donated, what could be repurposed for the new clinic in the old post office building.
Zane recognized half of them. Sandpiper Shores always showed up when it mattered.
“Chief Evans!” someone called, and Zane turned to see Travis McCall, a local builder with forearms like tree trunks and a laugh that filled whatever space he was in.
Zane lifted a hand in greeting. “Morning, Travis.”
Travis grinned as he came closer, wiping sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. “How are you, old friend?”
“As good as can be expected,” Zane said with a smile. “Not as young as I used to be.”
“I think most of us from our era are feeling like that,” Travis said with a nod, while he stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Is there something we can do for you?”
Zane forced a small smile. “I’m here to have a look around. If you don’t mind.”
“Mind?” Travis shook his head. “Of course not. Come in. We’re just grabbing what we can before the place gets boarded up properly.”
Another volunteer, an older man Zane knew as Patrick, tipped his cap. “Morning, Chief Evans.”
Zane nodded. “Morning, Patrick.”
They moved aside to let him pass, and Zane stepped into the building, feeling the temperature shift as he crossed the threshold.
It was cooler inside, and the air carried that faint, stubborn scent of burned wiring and wet plaster.
The front area looked almost normal now, if you ignored the boxed debris and the stripped shelves.
The worst of the damage was at the back, where the fire had bitten the deepest.
Zane had read both the fire examiner’s and Captain Parker’s reports. Although he tended to rely on Willa’s reports more, as she was very thorough in them. She documented what she saw, what she didn’t see, what she couldn’t prove, and what she worried about.
Zane had learned to read between her lines a long time ago.
He walked through slowly, letting the scene speak to him as he went. His eyes were taking it all in.
This wasn’t a crime scene in the official sense anymore.
The police had their evidence, the fire department had theirs, and the town had already started cleaning up because that’s what small towns did when one of their own was hurting or in need.
They didn’t sit and stare at ruins. They picked up a hammer.
Still, Zane felt the old pull in his gut as he moved deeper inside.
Because he’d stood in buildings like this before. He’d seen what accidental fires looked like, and he’d seen what deliberate ones looked like, and he’d seen what happened when someone wanted to send a message.
The back room was worse than the front, and Zane’s eyes adjusted to the dimmer light as he stepped through the doorway.
Most of the ceiling had been torn out. A section of wall was blackened down to the studs.
The back door was now reinforced with temporary braces, sitting at a crooked angle as if the fire had tried to warp it into surrender.
Travis followed him. “We’re not taking anything from this area, by the way,” he said, nodding toward the most damaged section. “Captain Parker told us to leave it alone unless someone official tells us otherwise.”
Zane appreciated that. “Good, thank you, Travis.”
“If you need anything, just shout,” Travis said as he turned and left Zane to it.
He crouched near the wall, not touching anything, simply looking. The burn patterns. The soot trails. The areas where the heat had flared hotter than it should have if the fire had started in one place and moved naturally.
He could see the wording of Willa’s report in his head. Zane straightened, his eyes narrowing.
Ten years ago, the doubt had sat in the back of his mind like a splinter. Not big enough to disable him, but sharp enough to remind him it was there every time he leaned the wrong way.
And the name attached to that splinter had been Gilbert Fry.
Zane had never liked the Gilbert Fry story that had been spun ten years ago. It was too neat. Too theatrical. Too convenient.
The official motive had been that Gilbert had wanted to create a YouTube sensation, boost his channel, and bask in the chaos he’d supposedly orchestrated.
It was a storyline the media loved as they had a modern villain on which to pin the tragedy of losing four brave heroes.
Gilbert became the man chasing fame with a match in his hand.
It would’ve been believable if Gilbert had been desperate for the views and money.
But Zane had found out that Gilbert hadn’t been desperate.
Gilbert Fry had already had the kind of audience most YouTube content creators could only dream of.
Nearly one and a half million followers, if Zane remembered right, and a reputation for chasing scandal like a dog chasing a scent trail.
The man’s stories captivated not just the young, but anyone who wanted the thrill of watching someone drag secrets into the sun.
Gilbert didn’t need Sandpiper Shores to build his platform.
So why had he come here? Zane’s brows furrowed. That was the one mystery he couldn’t explain, as there was nothing suggesting why.
Why, out of all the towns in Florida, had he chosen Sandpiper Shores, a place that usually made the news only when the fish were biting or a hurricane grazed the coast?
Zane moved closer to the back door, letting his gaze travel over the frame and the surrounding wall.
He remembered those early fires a decade ago.
Small ones. Strategic ones. The kind that made people nervous, the kind that tested response times and resources.
The kind that could be dismissed as kids or accidents until they couldn’t be dismissed anymore.
Then there were the other incidents that went with them.
Incidents not really reported but spoken about in a report that Willa had issued to him a few weeks after the tragic fire that had killed her husband and three other firefighters.
Zane could see why she’d put them together with the fires.
Zane blew out a breath and shook his head. Like Willa, he couldn’t fit Gilbert into any of the incidents that happened ten years ago. It had never felt like Gilbert’s style.
Gilbert chased conspiracy theories, high-profile cheating spouses, and macabre plots. He liked headlines. He liked spectacle. He liked an audience that could watch him point and gasp.
Sandpiper Shores didn’t offer spectacle. The only logical explanation was that Gilbert had stumbled on something here that was spectacular. Something he wasn’t supposed to see.
The thought tightened Zane’s chest, not with panic, but with the old, familiar frustration of not having enough pieces to finish a puzzle.
He stepped outside into the backyard and walked the perimeter slowly, boots crunching on gravel and debris. Two gates closed off the property. According to the police report, neither gate had been tampered with. No broken hinges. No forced locks. No obvious damage.
So the perpetrator had either climbed in or had access.
They could’ve had keys to the gates, which meant they were somehow connected to the clinic or Lacey.
Or someone being let in by someone else who didn’t realize what they were opening the door to.
Zane paused, looking back at the building.
He didn’t say the next thought out loud, because it wasn’t a thought he wanted to give power to, but it pressed against his skull anyway.
Is this ten years ago coming back?