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“Standard procedure. Fire and Rescue doesn’t want to run the risk of evidence contamination, even from people who know how important that evidence is in a case.” Jocelyn put the vehicle into Park. “The fire marshal is waiting for us.”
“You called Gary?” Baker shoved out of the SUV, a little worse for wear. Hell, his whole body hurt from this morning’s events. How did Jocelyn do it—moving as though she hadn’t been impaled by a piece of debris as she pulled something from the back seat?
Gravel crunched under his boots as he followed the short path from the asphalt to the base of the station stairs. “I can’t even get him to return my calls. Seems he doesn’t agree with my choice in baseball teams. Though I’m not sure why he would take that so personally.”
“You just have to know how to make him talk.” She produced a plate of plastic-wrapped goods and grabbed her phone. With the swipe of her thumb, she raised the phone to her ear and rasped in a thick, Russian accent, “I have what you asked for.”
She hung up. Waiting.
“Are we in the middle of delivering a ransom payment I don’t know about?” Movement registered from the corner of the station to Baker’s right. Instant alert had him reaching for his sidearm. Then recognition tendriled through him as Alpine Valley’s fire marshal hauled his oversized frame closer. He relaxed a fraction. “Gary.”
“Chief.” Not Baker. Seemed grudges died hard with this one. Gary cut his gaze to Jocelyn, and the marshal’s overall demeanor lost its bite. Yeah, she had the tendency to do that—ease into a person’s subconscious and replace any darkness with rainbows and silver linings. “I believe you have something for me.”
She handed off the plate as though embroiled in an illegal trade. “Fresh batch of oatmeal. No raisins. They’re all yours.”
“You got ten minutes before Albuquerque wants me to check in.” Gary had suddenly lost the ability to make eye contact, his entire focus honed in on the disposable plate in his hand.
“Thanks. We won’t be long,” Baker said.
The marshal didn’t bother answering as he headed for his pickup across the street.
Baker motioned her ahead of him. “Seems you have your fingers in all the pies around here.”
“Like I said, you just have to know how to get people to talk.” Jocelyn took the lead up the stairs and produced a blade from one of her many cargo-pant pockets. The woman was better prepared than an Eagle Scout.
Cutting through the sticker warning trespassers of what waited for them if they were caught breaking into a crime scene, she braced her foot against one corner of the door to let him by. “With Gary, it’s straight through his stomach. He kept coming back for my oatmeal cookies at the fundraiser last year. Later, I found a pile of discarded raisins in the parking lot.”
“Here I thought the best way to a man’s heart was through his third and fourth ribs.” He unholstered his flashlight from his duty belt, then maneuvered past her, though he couldn’t help but brush against her as he did. The physical contact eased the unsettled part of him that knew he was breaking a dozen different laws crossing into this crime scene, which he’d have to answer for, but the clock was ticking. The bomb squad’s investigation could last days, maybe weeks. Possibly even months, if Chief Andrew Trevino’s murder was anything to go by. They didn’t have that kind of time—this was the first lead he’d had on Sangre por Sangre in months. He couldn’t let it die.
Once inside, Baker punched the end of the flashlight, and a beam cut across the charred, debris-coated carpeting. “You always been able to read people like that?”
“I have a good sense for it.” Jocelyn followed along the path through the building that the bomb squad had cleared for techs. She walked past what used to be the small kitchenette the former dispatcher had set up opposite the evidence room. “I see you more as a home-cooked-meal kind of guy.”
“What gives you that impression?” The bitter scent of fire lodged in the back of his throat. Caustic. Suffocating. Baker felt his heart rate tick up a notch. He blinked to focus on the scene in front of him, but there were too many similarities. Sweat broke out across his forehead.
“You turned down my cranberry-lemon cookies this morning.” Jocelyn’s voice warbled there at the end. “And considering you’ve been crashing in a police station trailer armed with nothing but a microwave, I’d bet that dinner we had earlier hit the spot.”
Baker couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Every cell in his body put its energy into studying a half-destroyed coffee stirrer, and he lost any ability to get his lungs to work.
“Baker?” His name sounded distant. Out of reach.
Gravity held him hostage in that one spot despite the left side of his brain trying to catch up to the right. The flavor of smoke changed, contorting into something more acidic and nauseating. He took a step forward, though the layout of the station had vanished. He was walking toward the barn. What was left of it, at least. Intense heat still clung to the charred remains, flicking its tongue across his skin. “Linley?”
His shallow breathing triggered a wave of dizziness. She wasn’t here. She couldn’t be here. Because if the cartel had done this... No. He couldn’t think like that. Baker took another step, his boots sinking deep into mud. The barn door nearly fell off its hinges as he wrenched it to one side. The entire building was about to crash down around him. All of this damage couldn’t be from the result of a random fire. This was something far more explosive.
“Baker.”
He knew that voice. Well enough to pull him up short. It whispered on the ash-tainted air around him. Like he could reach out and grab onto it. Jocelyn?
“Can you hear me?”
The fragment of memory jumped forward. To him standing in front of the body positioned in the center of the barn. Nothing about the remains resembled his sister, but he knew the cartel had done this. That they’d kept their word to burn his entire world to the ground if he didn’t comply with their demands. And he’d let it happen. All because he’d gone into town for more hay.
Fury and shame and grief clawed through him as he sank to his knees. “I’ll find them. Every single one of them. I give you my word... I’ll make them pay.”
“Baker!” Strong chocolate-brown eyes centered in his vision, replacing the horrors. Jocelyn fisted both hands into his uniform collar and crushed her mouth to his.
The past dissolved from right in front of him, replaced by physical connection tethered to reality. Her mouth was soft—hesitant—on his. The horrors clinging to the edges of his memory were displaced by the mint taste of her toothpaste and the slight aroma of oatmeal cookies. Baker lost himself in the feel of her mouth against his. On the slight catch of the split in her lip.
