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“Say no more.” Sam placed his cell phone on the counter in front of her. “I’ve got to go brush my teeth anyway. Call your father, and once you’re ready, then we can deal with the rest.”
“Thank you,” she said, the relief on her face obvious. “For everything.”
He didn’t want to baby her. Christ knew she was more than capable of calling her insurance company, replacing her cell phone, and using her laptop to order an Uber that would get her to the Thirty-Third. But caring for her was different than treating her like some sort of damsel in distress. And despite the fact that it was problematic as fuck, Samdidcare about her.
So he reached out to cup her face and said, “You don’t have to thank me. We’re a team.”
The next hour or so passed in a burst of activity, with Lucy using his phone to call both her father and her insurance company as he showered and changed, then him checking in with everyone at the fire house (“Yes,” he’d sworn to Shae, “I promise Lucy is okay. I like my balls where they are.”) while she’d done the same. Having a plan with definitive action items seemed to bolster her confidence, and by the time they’d had a bagel each and uploaded the initial police report to Lucy’s insurance portal as instructed by the rep on the phone, her shoulders were set and her expression determined. Sticking to business, she spent the car ride to the Thirty-Third reviewing the ground they’d covered yesterday at the arson investigation office, and the recap helped Sam focus. He texted Isabella as soon as they arrived at the precinct, and she met them in the lobby to get them signed in and through security.
“Hey,” she said, greeting them both with a warm smile. “I know last night was a lot. Did you manage to get some sleep?”
“A little,” Lucy said, her cheeks flushing just the slightest bit before she covered with, “Did you make any headway with my SUV?”
“Yes and no.” Isabella tilted her head toward the open staircase leading from the ground floor of the Thirty-Third up to the second story, where the Intelligence Unit’s office was. “Come on up and I’ll let Capelli and the team fill you in.”
They made quick work of the trip upstairs, following Isabella down the hallway leading to the Intelligence Unit’s office. The main room, where the detectives all worked, was a large rectangular space, flanked on one side by a wall of windows and the other by a long desk with an oversized six-screen array mounted above it, that served as Capelli’s workspace. The detectives’ desks dotted the open space in clusters, and a hallway off the back of the office led to what Sam assumed were interview rooms and probably Sergeant Sinclair’s office, although the man in question was in the main space along with all of his detectives, obviously waiting for Sam and Lucy’s arrival.
“Faurier. de Costa,” Sinclair said, greeting them both with a no-nonsense nod that matched what Sam knew of his personality to a T. “It’s good to have you working with the team.” To Lucy, he said, “I’m sorry about your SUV. We’ll do our best to find whoever vandalized it.”
Vandalized,Sam thought, his blood running hot. Lucy could have been hurt. Or worse. Sinclair had better hope that Sam didn’t find whoever had set fire to her SUV before his unit did.
“Thank you,” Lucy said. “Isabella said there’s good news and bad?”
Sinclair gestured to Capelli, who adjusted his black-framed glasses before nodding. “The good news is, I was able to retrieve all of your cell phone data from the cloud, including the video you shot.”
Ah, the guy was a fucking genius. “Thatisgood news,” Sam said.
“That’s the best of it, I’m afraid,” Capelli said, looking at Lucy in apology. “The device itself is beyond repair, so unfortunately, it’ll need to be replaced. And, while the footage does show the fire, it doesn’t contain any conclusive proof as to who might have started it, or how. I’m sorry.”
Lucy blew out a breath as Sam’s chest filled with a solid mix of disappointment and frustration. “What about the security footage?” he asked. “The academy’s got cameras on the parking lot, right?”
“They do,” said Detective Shawn Maxwell, tipping his chin at his partner, Addison Hale. Sam had always thought they were such an ironic pairing, Maxwell with his skull trim and bodybuilder frame covered in full-sleeve tattoos, and Hale clocking in at five foot two, her smile bubbly and bright and her blond ponytail bouncing off her shoulders. She was also his squad-mate Dempsey’s fiancée, and Sam had no doubt that even though Hale and Maxwell were physical opposites, she could equal the guy when it came to getting her job done well.
Right now, she gave Sam a sympathetic look that told him he wasn’t going to love what she followed it up with. “There are only two cameras that have views of the academy’s parking lot. One in the front”—she waited while Capelli pulled up an image with a handful of keystrokes, displaying it on the array—“and one in the back.” Another image popped up beside the first, making Sam’s heart race. “This is from last night, at about nine thirty.”
Lucy’s SUV was easy to pick out since it was the only one in the lot. But between the shadows and the distance separating the camera and her vehicle, the shot was fuzzy at best. With a couple of keystrokes, Capelli zoomed in, but if anything, it made the details even harder to see.
As if reading Sam’s mind—and he wouldn’t be entirely shocked if the guy possessed that capability—Capelli said, “I tried to enhance the images, but the lack of light and the distance made it very challenging.”
For a moment, there was no movement on the screen, just the outline of Lucy’s SUV in the back corner of the lot and the slight sway of a few tree branches from the grassy expanse beyond. But then a figure emerged from the tree line, moving with purpose across the narrow stretch of land separating the academy’s parking lot from the handful of businesses surrounding it, and Lucy inhaled sharply.
“Oh, my God,” she murmured, her eyes going wide. Sam’s pulse hammered as he watched the person move quickly to her SUV. He was tall and somewhat lanky, although it was hard to be one hundred percent sure the person was, in fact, a man from this far away. For now, though, it seemed like a fair logic leap, given the vandalism angle. The man wore a dark hoodie that obscured his face from the already grainy view, and some odd echo of—what? Recognition? Familiarity?—tugged in Sam’s brain.
But no. That was crazy. There was nothing familiar about the man. For Chrissake, Sam could barely see anything other than his outline. He damn sure couldn’t recognize him. But hecouldsee that the man carried somethingveryfamiliar in each hand, and his throat tightened as soon as the figure reached Lucy’s SUV.
“Gas cans,” he said. Adrenaline gave way to anger in his veins as he watched the person quickly smash the SUV’s windows, then unlock the doors to douse the front and back seats in gasoline. The flare of a match made a pinprick of light on the screen that turned into an overbright burst as the man tossed it into the SUV, and he stood with his back to the camera, watching the vehicle burn for about ten seconds before scooping up the gas cans and retreating out of the frame.
“Obviously, the footage isn’t clear enough for us to run any facial recognition,” Maxwell said, and fellow Intelligence detective Matteo Garza, who gave Maxwell a run for his money in the broody badass department, chimed in from his nearby desk.
“Even if it was, it’s doubtful we’d get a good enough angle on his face. This guy is smart.” Garza nodded at the screen, which was now paused, the image of Lucy’s burning SUV broadcast on the screen. “He kept his hood up and gaze down the whole time, probably to avoid the cameras.”
“Is that normal?” Lucy asked, looking first at Garza, then at the other detectives. “I mean, I get not wanting to be caught, but I thought vandalism was more…I don’t know. Brash. Impulsive.”
Isabella tilted her head in thought. “It’s true that vandalism is often impulsive, and can be a crime of opportunity. And, if this is the same guy who set fire to that storage shed and the other abandoned car, it very well could be that he chose your SUV because it was in a spot where he knew he could get away with it. Dark. Not near a main road. Cameras easily avoidable. Businesses closed, so no one’s around to witness the crime.”
“But,” Sam led, because he was with Lucy. This felt way more calculated than a simple crime of opportunity.
“But,Lucy may be onto something,” the unit’s rookie, Xander Matthews, said. “Vandals who are out to destroy property for grins or theft usually act in groups, and they are pretty brazen.”
