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He’d told her that in the diner, but his expression offered her a deeper view of it. The pain, the sleepless nights, the agony of wrestling with it. He’d handled it, accepted it. While it was a place she couldn’t conceive of ever reaching herself, the possibility helped her give more weight to what he was telling her.
“That may be as much why you came to me as any other reason. Because some part of you knew that.” He nudged a fork toward her. “Eat.”
She looked at the food. “I want to. It looks great, but maybe I need to call them first. Just thinking about it upsets my stomach.”
“You’ll handle it better with something on it. Try to eat some of the eggs and a pancake.” He reached over to cut the middle one for her. She stopped him, a hand against his. “You’ll ruin the face.”
His lips curved. He moved to one of the flanking cakes with the chocolate heart in the center, her hand still resting on his wrist. He cut down the middle of it, dividing the pancake, then forked up a piece with the gooey squashed heart on it.
She touched his wrist to steady the utensil and took the bite. As her belly churned, she chewed and swallowed. It did settle a little, proving his point.
“You said making the calls is a suggestion. If you were my Dom, how would it be different?”
“It would have been a ‘there’ll be hell to pay if you don’t listen to me’ order.”
She made a face at him, mainly to cover the nervous swallow. His gaze went to her throat, telling her she hadn’t fooled him. Her fingers still rested on his knuckles and wrist as he reached out with the other hand to brush a thumb over her lip. He took the chocolate melted there, like he’d done with her pie, and tasted it himself. Then he adjusted their hands so they lay clasped between their two plates.
“Eat your breakfast,” he said gruffly. “Christ, you and those big eyes.”
That made her smile a little. Looking for a distraction, so she could get those few more bites in, she reached for a folder next to the technical stack of books.
“Don’t open that.” He placed a hand on it, swiftly enough to startle her.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s not that. The material is confidential, but I’m not worried about you respecting that. That case involved fatalities, and some of the photos are of the victims.”
“Oh.” She glanced at it. “I don’t think it would be a problem. Me and Rick spend a lot of time together. My cadaver,” she supplied at his raised brow. “Plus, mealtime conversation among med students includes words like ooze, fester, rupture, and seep. Exploding diarrhea, running pus. Et cetera.”
Amusement filled his gaze, though his hand remained on the folder. “I expect that’s true, but this was two kids and a mother. It was a bad one. You probably heard about it on the news.”
“Not likely. Armageddon could happen and we’d be grumbling about the electronic patient system being down. Or our access to our practice exams being blocked.”
But she left the folder alone. What she saw in his eyes told her he’d seen the actual bodies, not just photos of them. Maybe because of the age of the victims, this one had made an impression, even on an experienced investigator like himself.
“Was it an accident?”
“Still working on that.” He bit into some bacon, wiped his fingers on the napkin in his lap. “Sometimes it can take weeks to sift through everything at a fire site and make that determination. Way too often, we can’t come to a conclusion because fire can burn up all the evidence. We get the occasional easy ones, though. Like the guy burning up his business to collect the insurance, but thinks all he has to do is toss around some gasoline and light a match. Accelerant leaves a streamer pattern, plus we can detect its presence from lab analysis on the building remains.”
A wry smile touched his mouth. “With arson, it pays to hire a professional.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Where would I find them listed? Craigslist? Fiverr?”
At his chuckle, she noted his shoulders had eased. It felt good to help someone she could help, if only with a listening ear. He consumed his breakfast in a cyclical pattern, a few bites of pancake, then eggs, then bacon, and back to the beginning. She also noted he was keeping a close eye on her rate of consumption, that stern look coming back as she pushed food around the plate. Dutifully, she took a few actual bites, though her stomach continued to gripe at her.
She worried she might be developing an ulcer. Thomas had had trouble with them a while back, though Marcus had gotten on top of that, with their mother providing firm reinforcement to get him the right medical care. A big part of what had caused them was the pressure of following a path he wasn’t meant to walk.
She didn’t like where that line of thought was headed, so she returned to the topic. “What’s making it look like an accident?”
“Space heater was the source and origin point. Right now the best accident hypothesis is a stack of magazines fell off a dresser and landed against it. Some of the kids’ toys were also too close. Mom had a drug problem. Needle was found melted into her arm, and it looked like she’d passed out at the kitchen table. Kids were in their beds.”
“How horrible.” It was terrible, but forensic details interested her. Seeing it, Brick put down his fork and drew the folder closer, selecting a photo from the contents. It was a close-up of the heater, surrounded by a border of cleared debris. “See the charring of the wood floor around it? The depth tells us how hot it got there, compared to other areas. That gives us evidence of where it started.
“They lived in a rural area outside Richmond, in a place where houses were spaced out from each other, with lots of tree cover between. As you and I know, burning trash isn’t unusual in the country, so the neighbors didn’t think anything about the smoke smell, not right away. By the time 911 was called and the first engine arrived, black smoke was coming out multiple windows. Black smoke can indicate man-made stuff, like synthetic building materials, are being consumed and possibly producing carbon monoxide.”
Though the subject matter was sobering, watching a serious and intelligent Brick McGuire working a case was undeniably hot. “So it was too late to get the family out?”
“Yes and no.” A muscle flexed in Brick’s jaw. “When the first engine arrived, the neighbor told them no one was home. The mom, Jasmine Whitfield, had told her they were going on a fishing trip with her boyfriend for the weekend. The neighbor said she saw them leave early that morning.”
