Page 89 of Secret Seduction

“Yeah!” I bark, watching as the house burns to the ground. “I locked eyes with her.”

“What about the guy she was with?”

“I didn’t see anyone but her.”

“Why the hell would she do this?” he asks, shaking his head. “And where the fuck is the guy she was with? We’ve had eyes on the house, and nobody’s come out.”

“I don’t know. Maybe she thought, with her being framed for the mayor’s death, she was done for. I only saw her in the fucking basement.”

My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I press play on my earbud.

“Incoming text message from … Unknown: I handled your little problem. Now you owe me. I’ll be in touch.”

Sirens sound in the distance.

“We need to go,” I say to my men. “We can’t be here when the fire department arrives.”

They nod, and we take off down the back street, away from the direction the fire trucks are heading. While I drive, I call Eddy, asking him to pull up the cameras since we have access to all of them.

“Fuck!” he barks. “Someone is trying to override them.”

I can hear him typing away on his keyboard, but my mind is stuck on the text message I received.

“I handled your little problem. Now you owe me. I’ll be in touch.”

It doesn’t make any sense.

Unless the guy that was with her turned on her?

I call Hughe, the DA.

“Antonov.”

“The mayor’s house is going up in flames.”

“Shit,” he hisses.

“There’s a woman in the basement⁠—”

“Florida homes don’t have basements.”

“This one fucking does,” I bark. “And there’s a woman in it. I think it’s Leysa Santiago, but I need proof.”

“On it.”

We hang up, and I drive around, trying to wrap my head around what the fuck just happened.

After an hour or maybe longer, Hughe calls me.

“Yeah.”

“You were right. A woman was in the basement. The firefighters pulled her out before I called, trying to save her, but they were too late.”

“Anyone else in the house?”

“Not from what they found.”

“Is it her?” I ask.