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"Yes ma'am, we're certain of it. There was an accelerant used in the kitchen in front of the stove. That clicking you heard was likely a lighter or flint block to set it off."
"So, someone was in the house while I was in there?"
The chief’s lips thinned into a straight line. "I'm afraid it's very likely."
"Oh, God." She shivered, and he pulled her into his body, encircling his arm around her shoulders. A strange sensation filtered through him when her arms wrapped around his waist.
"I can let you in for only a minute, and you'll only be able to enter the living room and the bedroom; the floor isn't safe in the kitchen. And you'll have to promise not to touch anything other than grabbing your purse and your necklace that Mr. Montgomery mentioned you were looking for."
Nodding her head, she pulled away from him and started toward the house. Marcus had been leaning against the back of the chief's truck, listening and not saying a word. Giving him a long look—his worst look which usually made bigger men than him quiver in their boots—only elicited a smirk from Marcus, which Ford thought was rather curious. Then again, he was usually in the presence of drug lords, so a lowly bounty hunter was likely not scary.
The chief glanced at Marcus then. "Are you with them?"
"No," Ford quickly stated.
"You'll need to stay outside then."
"No problem." His tone was flat, but he looked at Megan when he spoke, and that irritated Ford more than him being here.
He turned and quickly followed Megan and the chief up the steps and watched as the chief lifted the door aside. "Stay to the edges close to the walls where the floor is safer."
Megan's gasp drew his attention. Her hand covered her mouth, her eyes glistening as the tears gathered. All her furniture was water-soaked and charred—the walls as well. The heavy thickness of the air inside was almost suffocating. Between the fire smell and the humidity of the water, mixed with the rising heat outside, this place wouldn't be habitable for a good long time.
"Oh my God, it's gone!"
Chapter10
The drawer where she kept her grandmother's necklace was opened and the contents emptied. "It's gone. Someone stole it."
"Are you sure it was here yesterday when you got home?"
"I'm sure…" She frantically looked around her bedroom and then tried remembering what she did when she got home yesterday. She'd come into the bedroom, dropped her purse into the closet, took off her shoes, removed her hair band, but she hadn't looked at the beside tables. "I don't know," she said dejectedly.
"Okay, and you're sure it was in that night stand and nowhere else?" the chief gently asked her.
What was worse, these two men looked at her as if they didn't believe her or that she was mistaken. She seldom left things out of place; neat and tidy was her thing.
"I'm very tidy. I keep everything in its place. I don't just let things lay around. I'm positive." She swallowed the panic that threatened to break her down. She glanced at Ford and saw that he was looking around the room as if to find something out of place and prove her wrong. Or maybe just looking around. A blush tinted her cheeks as she realized she was standing in her bedroom with two men. One of them, incredibly attractive and mysterious and sexy and … Shaking her head and closing her eyes, she took a calming breath. She let it out slowly and opened her eyes to see both men staring at her.
"Megan." Ford stepped toward her, his face showing concern. "Is there anywhere else it could be? Please check all of your drawers, anywhere you think it might be."
Walking to her closet, she picked up her purse from the floor, happy to see it wasn't soaked like most of the house. She pulled a few items of clothing from the closet. She'd wash them when she got to where they were going and looked in the built-in drawers in the closet; nothing in there. Picking up a canvas bag from the shelf above the drawers, she added her under garments, the clothing she picked out and a pair of tennis shoes. Stepping from the closet with her bag and her purse, she turned to her dresser and pulled open the top drawer. That was possibly the only other place her necklace could be.
"It's not here. It's gone. Someone took it." Sadness fell over her so cold and dark she thought she'd never feel light and happy again. Everything from her grandmother was completely gone. Wiped from the earth like she'd never even lived. How does that happen when a person had lived for more than eighty-three years?
"Megan, honey, we have to go." Ford was still there watching her try not to crumble. She looked up from her dresser and into his eyes, and it was there that she saw a softness she'd never believed could be there. All his hardness and sternness had faded into the blackened walls of what was left of her house, and a different man stood before her.
"Okay." She led the way out of her bedroom through the living room, staying close to the walls as directed earlier and stepped onto her porch, which just last year she'd so lovingly painted and now it was ruined. Grandma must be so sad.
She walked down the driveway, feeling as though she were having an out-of-body experience and she wasn't really herself. Walking past Marcus, she felt nothing, not even when he quietly said, "I'll be watching you, Megan. Waylon's certainly going to come looking to take care of you now."
She kept walking straight to Ford's truck and stood to wait for him to catch up to her.
"You okay, Meg?"
"Yes. We should put my bag and purse in the box of the truck, so they don't smell up the cab. Do you mind?"
"No, I don't mind, but let's do this right and turn your phone off so we can't be tracked." He unlocked the tonneau cover and lifted the lid, then gently took her bags from her shoulder and set them inside. She reached in and pulled her phone from her purse, held the power button in until it began to shut off, then she gently tossed it back into her purse.
