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Fourteen
“Dammit.”
She was halfway down the sidewalk by the time I got my zipper surgically removed from my straining hard-on. Watching her heart-shaped ass sway in front of me didn’t help my situation as I caught up with her. I slid my hand into hers, and she looked up at me in surprise, but she quickly laced her fingers with mine.
Cole got out of the black car I’d spotted when we first arrived. He slid aviators onto his face and met us at the taped up door. “I was about to check the car if you two didn’t come out in the next five minutes.”
Teagan blushed. “We were talking.”
Cole gave us a bland look. “Have you checked out if we’re allowed on the premises?”
“The arson chief said we could go in today.” I tightened my hold on Teagan’s hand when she tried to slip away.
“Good enough.” Cole climbed the stairs and flicked off the tape
. “Let me do a walk-through and make sure it’s safe.”
Teagan gnawed on her lower lip and craned her neck after him. “What does he think he’s going to find in there?”
“Think he’s more worried about who.”
“Oh.” Deflated, she slid her fingers of her other hand around my wrist.
Cole stuck his head out and waved us inside.
We followed him in, walking side by side. Just before she crossed the threshold, she hesitated. I wrapped my other arm around her then pulled her back into me for a moment. I lowered my lips to her ear. “Whatever it looks like, I’m here, okay?”
She nodded and took a deep breath then walked ahead of me, her hand still clamped in mine.
She gasped as she entered the foyer. Eighty percent of the room was a sickly dark gray ash soaked in water. It smelled like someone had drowned an ashtray full of cigarette butts. Her living room was a complete loss. The succulent plants that had been tucked into every spare corner were singed, and some had even split from the heat of the flames. The aloe plant she’d always taken such meticulous care of along the kitchen window was a pile of green spiky goo.
My gaze tracked the trampled wreckage from the firemen and the investigators. Her couch was upended, cushions singed, melted, and waterlogged. The posters and tapestries that usually covered her walls were curled up from fire damage, save for one rope-looking thing. Macramé? Looked like something my mother had in her craft room. The piece was still heavy with water and soot, but it was remarkably undamaged compared to the rest of the room.
There seemed to be a strange semi-circle of charred areas, as if gasoline had been splashed wide and lit without a care. The air smelled of some sort of accelerant. I’d been in enough fire-bombed places all over the world with the Rangers that I knew the smell.
Arson, for sure. And by the looks of it, a sloppy job. Whomever had done it hadn’t even bothered trying to make it look like an accident.
Teagan quietly picked through a few things in the far corner. Her fingers shook as she picked up a framed photo and held it close to her chest.
I wasn’t sure if I should go to her or give her a minute with her obvious grief. I hated feeling helpless. I wanted to rip the fucker’s face off who had done this to her.
Thank God she hadn’t been home.
Ice slid down my spine. Here with all the proof of the fire, it was even more ominous. Had they set the fire because she wasn’t home? Or would they have done it regardless?
Cole peeled back a bit of waterlogged shelf liner on a shelving unit in the kitchen with a pocketknife. He pulled off his sunglasses and stuffed them in his pocket and gave me the high sign with a nod.
I checked on Teagan one more time. She was crouched in front of a bookcase, pulling out boxes. I didn’t want to leave her, but I followed him down the hallway toward the door.
“What’s up?”
“I spoke with Noah before I came over. The arson investigator asked about cigarettes.”
My eyebrows rose. So, that was where Noah had come up with that particular question. “Yeah, he asked her if she smoked, and she said no. He wouldn’t tell us much.”
“Still an ongoing investigation. Insurance will be held up until they rule out that she did it.”
“Fuck that.”
