“Yep. Now look at this.” She handed him a sheet of paper with a list of the recent arsons.
“Interesting.” Each one of the arsons was owned by an LLC that Dr. Torres was a member of.
“Do we think he was padding his pockets with the insurance money?” It was possible whoever he was working with had gotten greedy and didn’t want to share. “There’s no way he was actually the one setting the fires.”
Maybe a disagreement had gotten him killed.
“It definitely looks suspect,” Glover said. “We need to keep pounding the pavement and chase these leads down to find out who murdered our witness.”
“Okay.” He leaned back in his chair. “We’ve got arsons being set on buildings owned by a few different LLCs. The only connection between the buildings and LLCs is this Dr. Torres guy. Apparently he had agreed to tell them what he knew about the Shadow Syndicate in exchange for leniency on his other charges.”
“Seriously?”
“Then he ends up dead in a property he owns under his real name, not one of the LLCs.” Liam shook his head. “Maybe they wanted him silenced.”
“It just so happens that the property is rented by a witness of ours, making our jobs harder in the process.”
“A witness who has been getting into trouble at school with kids suspected of starting the fires. One of whom is murdered similarly to Dr. Torres.”
“This is a tangled mess.” Glover looked at him. “Sounds like someone just making it look like it’s connected, but they didn’t check all the details, so it only seems like the same string of incidents on the surface—until you look deeper.”
“Yeah, but hopefully we’ll pull the right string and everything will unravel.” His mind wasn’t just on this as a US marshal. It was personal. He wanted to give Sam and Bella the peace they deserved.
TWENTY
The firehouse smelled faintly of coffee, the usual morning bustle having died down. Heat pooled behind Sam’s ribs as she remembered Liam’s attention—how he acted like a doting boyfriend at the station and when the girls were around. The occasional hug, holding her hand. Focusing on her in a room full of people in a way she’d begun to crave. When they were alone, he was professional but not distant or cold. He kept his physical distance but still engaged in conversations with her. Listened like he cared what she had to say.
She’d learned that his favorite television show was a classic black-and-white show about a widowed sheriff raising his boy in a small town.
He prayed over meals, and she’d seen him study his Bible on more than one occasion.
Last night, she’d sat on the bed and again pulled out the Bible that Barbara from the church had given her. Barbara and Liam had both mentioned Joseph, so after quickly googling where to find his story in the Bible, she’d read about how his brothers had sold him into slavery. How he’d been falsely accused and sent to prison. And then she’d read:But the Lord was with Joseph andshowed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.
God hadn’t rescued Joseph. And yet it said the Lord was with him and showed “steadfast love.” Honestly, she’d felt a bit indignant on Joseph’s behalf, and she wasn’t sure what to do with that.
In the end, she’d put the Bible back on the nightstand and gone back out into the front room, where the girls had talked them into watching a rom-com. Liam had sat next to her the entire time, arm laid across the back of the sofa. She hadn’t been able to focus on the movie, only on the weight of his presence.
All she could think about was how close his body was to hers and how it would feel if he dropped his arm to her shoulder and held her. Like he really was her boyfriend and this wasn’t all some lie concocted to keep her and her sister safe.
The walls around her heart were in danger of crumbling for a man who didn’t really have any interest in her outside of a job he had to do. A name in a file.
She’d grown too comfortable with Liam, and that scared her. Of all the people in the world to get comfortable with, her handler wasn’t supposed to be one of them.
Six years with the guys at the station, putting their lives on the line together, and those walls had stood. A couple of days with this man and she was losing control of her emotions. She was relying on him too much, and that kind of dependence made her uneasy.
“Earth to Sam.” Greer snapped his fingers next to her, cutting through her thoughts.
She shook her head. “What? I’m sorry.”
He cocked his head to the side. “You’ve been staring at the countertop for a while now. Everything okay?”
“Yes. I was just lost in thought.”
“Thinking about a certain marshal?” he teased.
Heat climbed up her neck and spread across her face. She ducked her head to keep him from seeing how her face betrayed her. “I have a lot of things on my mind.”
“I like this on you,” he said softly.
