“I can go, too.”
“Thanks,” I said as we headed back. “It looks like they are starting to get some control on the fire. I guess we go see what’s left of our lives?”
Aiden groaned, but he headed towards the building with us.
For one more day of my life, I would get to sift through the ashes and see what I had left.
I was going to kill whoever did this. That was pretty easy to decide on, but that nagging voice still made me wonder if it was Cameron.
And if it was, what I did to him was going to be so much worse than death.
A few hours later, the fire department cleared out, leaving us with a smoldering shell of a building. None of the bikes made it. Even my backup bike was ruined. The office we had was gone. Luckily, most of the back of the garage had nothing in it except steel and our toolboxes, which were charred, but everything inside made it.
“My computer is trash,” Evie said, looking at her little corner that had her desk. “I’m going to need a new setup immediately.”
“And where the fuck are you setting it up?” Hero asked. “Going to set up thousands of dollars of computer equipment in the alley?”
“Shut up, Hero. I don’t need your smartass comments,” Evie snapped.
“No? I have to deal with your smartass comments all the time. What’s the difference?”
“Fuck you,” she snapped.
“You wish,” Hero said. I knew he meant it as a joke, but I wasn’t in the fucking mood for his jokes. Aiden apparently wasn’t either.
He stomped over, throwing one punch to Hero’s jaw.
Hero stumbled back, already coiling to throw a punch back at Aiden, but I froze, hearing the squeal of tires on pavement before they did.
“Shut the fuck up,” I yelled, turning back towards the road. The building was so burned, I could see out the front easy enough. A car peeled out, the back of it disappearing before I even had a chance to look at the plate.
Everyone finally stopped bitching long enough for all of us to head out front. A heap of clothes sat near the road. I keptmoving, getting close enough to see part of an arm sticking out from the clothes.
My heart stopped.
It was a body.
Zack, Kane, and Regan weren’t here, which meant all three of them were a possibility. I ran now, rolling the body over with a small sigh of relief.
It didn’t last long when I realized that I did know who it was.
My informant, the guy I had worked with for years, was now rolled over dead in our driveway.
A bloodied note was stapled to his body.
“You’re next,” Aiden read over my shoulder. “Is this for you?”
“Me or all of us,” I said, looking the guy over. It seemed like he had been beaten to death, but there really wasn’t a way to know if he had been shot.
“So someone is burning down our place and threatening us on the same day?” Mason asked.
“Looks that way. I’m guessing it has to be the same person,” I said, standing up and pacing. I needed to think. I needed to figure out what was happening, and I needed to do it fast.
But I wasn’t even sure where to start.
“What are we doing now?” Hero asked, picking up the bloodied note to inspect it more.
I looked from the burned building to the beaten, wrecked body of the man I had worked with for years. He wasn’t an upstanding citizen by any means, but he was a good guy and didn’t deserve whatever torture they put him through.
