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The sergeant pulled back the curtain and stepped inside.
“Hello, Mrs. Merrill. How’s it going, Asher?”
Spencer glanced at his arms as if to answer the question for himself and then pointed to the bandages. “Been playing with matches again?”
“Do all Coltons have to make a joke out of everything?” Willow asked.
“Sorry, ma’am.” Spencer straightened. “I’m here on business, anyway.”
“If you’ve come to ask us if we saw anything suspicious before the fire, I’m not going to be able to help you,” Asher said. “I came in through the front of the house instead of the exterior stairs to the apartment.”
“I didn’t see anything, either, before meeting Asher in the center,” Willow told him.
Spencer jotted a few notes in his tiny notebook. “I checked with the guards you had watching the house. They didn’t see anything either.”
“Hiring them was money well spent.”
His cousin shrugged. “Apparently, the arsonist came through the back.”
“So, what are you going to do now? Someone is obviously out to get Willow.” He shivered at just how close the arsonist had come to succeeding.
“Have you been able to find the connection between the events at Tender Years and the attacks on my family? There has to be something.”
“There isn’t,” Spencer said.
Asher had just been getting on a roll with his suspicions, but at the sergeant’s words, he stopped.
“How can you be sure?”
“What do you know?”
Willow’s words trampled his.
Spencer held his hands wide. “Because we have a suspect in custody. Arrested right outside the house in the crowd of onlookers. He confessed.”
Willow came up from her seat. “Who is it? How do I know him? Why would he want to hurt my business? Or us?”
Spencer held out his hands, palms down, and lowered them, signaling for them to calm down. “The suspect’s name is Alan Hunter. Ring a bell?”
She shook her head, squinting. “Should I know him?”
“I don’t think so. As far as we can tell, Alan didn’t so much want to hurt you as he wanted to please her.”
“Her? I don’t understand. Why would a woman want to hurt me?” She stopped and tilted her head to the side. “Wait. Was she an angry former client? Did she leave the reviews?”
“That’s what Detective Kerry Wilder is trying to find out right now. We have Ms. Williams in custody.”
“Ms. Williams?”
Willow repeated the name is if testing it against her memory bank and making no connection.
“Her name is Audrey Williams. Does that ring a bell?”
The color drained from Willow’s face, and she dropped down in the chair again, her eyes closed, her hands forming a steeple beneath her nose.
Asher wished he could climb out of that ridiculous bed and take her in his arms. He didn’t care if the local police sergeant was there to witness it.
“You know her, don’t you?”
