Page 41 of Burning Justice

Brett struck her as being different, but she would be a fool to let down her guard. That was the real reason she’d slammed the brakes on what could very well have been a night of amazing sex.

Not that I’m thinking about it or anything. Definitely not about all the sensual things a body like Brett’s could do to her.

She stole a glance at his hard profile. His lips were pressed together tightly. The creases over the bridge of his nose had deepened in the last twenty minutes. He was stewing about something. Probably not about kissing her. More than likely, he was mulling over the investigation. Occasionally, he frowned, then tapped his finger on the wheel.

Behind them, Blaze snored away in his kennel.

Needing a break, Gemma stared out the window. It never ceased to amaze her how different this part of the state was. Unlike the mountainous region they’d just come from, Burlington sat on the eastern edge of Colorado’s arid Central Plains at an elevation of about 4,200 feet and only about fifteen minutes from the Kansas border.

They passed one agricultural field after another, some brown and dry, others lush green from copious irrigation. Occasional windmills dotted the horizon. A quick glance at the dashboard thermometer said the outside air temperature was eighty-four degrees.

“Find anything interesting?” Brett nodded at the laptop propped on her knees.

Confirmation received. Definitely not thinking about kissing. For which she ought to be grateful. After all, she’d been the one to end it.

“Give me a minute.” She quickly tapped in the code to tally the new column at the end of the spreadsheet, one that would automatically calculate the profit or loss from the pre-fire purchase price of the homes and the post-fire sale price. She hit enter, then sucked in a breath.

“What?” Brett asked.

“Even with a burned-out shell of a house, between the insurance claims and the riders, eight of the properties I’ve looked at so far sold for between twenty and forty thousand dollars more than what they were originally purchased for. That’s how much property values are skyrocketing.”

“No kidding.” Brett took the first exit for Burlington, population 3,053, according to the sign they’d just passed. At the end of the ramp, he braked, then turned to face her. His eyes burned with an odd light. “What you’re saying is all those homeowners made a nice little profit.”

“Pretty much,” she agreed.

He turned right onto a local road. “Assuming we’re right about this, I’d say the motive is what we expected.”

“Money,” they both said at the same time.

“Right.” Brett nodded. “Except for the Johnny Nash warehouse revenge fires. Those still don’t mesh with the arson-for-profit theory.”

Only Johnny Nash could explain those.

A few minutes later, they turned onto a heavily rutted dirt road. At the end of the road sat a debris field, the remains of which had once been an eighty-year-old farmhouse. Not a single wall was standing. Littered everywhere were window frames, pieces of sheetrock, and yellow insulation. A large cathode ray tube TV sat twenty feet off to the side of the debris, its glass shattered. Charred beams lay everywhere, crisscrossed over the other debris like a game of Pick-Up Sticks. Luckily, no other houses were situated close by.

Another isolated location.

Brett parked twenty feet from the edge of the debris and left the engine running. “Another common denominator. This house and the one we were at yesterday are so far off the beaten path they’re not visible from the road, and there are no neighbors close enough to have witnessed anything.”

Yikes. Not only did they have awesome kissing chemistry, if there really was such a thing, but they were so investigatively in sync it wasn’t funny. A tiny shiver meandered up her spine. This was the kind of sympatico her parents had. Frankly, she didn’t know how she felt about having it with Brett.

The same man who’d had his tongue down her throat and his hand on her ass.

Refocusing, Gemma looked at what was left of the house. Not much more than a few studs and ceiling beams that resembled charred twigs.

The phone Brett had clipped into a dashboard cradle rang. The name on the screen said: Kevin Nungaq.

“This is my buddy in Alaska. He’s serving the subpoena for us.” Brett put the call on speaker. “Kevin, how was your vacation?” he asked, adding, “Before you give me the gory details, you’re on speaker. I’m working with an NICB agent, Gemma Scott.”

Kevin laughed. “You have my sincere condolences, Gemma.”

“Wiseass,” Brett muttered.

“Vacay was awesome,” Kevin said. “Good to be back, though. I tried serving your subpoena on Kobuk Titling. The address is a front. It’s a packing store. I sweet-talked the manager into forking over some info without another subpoena. Turns out Kobuk’s been renting that box for the last four years.”

“Who rented the box?” Brett asked. “Someone had to have shown ID and paid for it.”

“It was rented by John Smith. The address listed on the driver’s license Smith used to rent the box comes back to another box. This one’s a P.O. box in Hawaii. I ran the DL… There’s no one by that name connected with that P.O. box number.”