I threw up my hands.“Maybe they’ll bring them back because of how pathetic my career is!”
“Get in the car, Damien.Let me drive you back to the house.”
I looked from him to the very visible bulk of Witte House and back again.“It’s less than two hundred yards away.”
“Damien.Let me do this.”
He was so insistent, his cheeks pinking, so I sighed and caved.“Alright.Save me some steps I guess.”
Heath waited until I was buckled in and looking at him expectantly before shifting the car into drive again.“I was actually on my way to the house to talk to you when Cherry called about Grubbins losing his cool.”
Crap.“Oh?Missed me that much?I was sure you wouldn’t want to talk to me any time soon unless it was in an official capacity.”
His color went from pink to ruddy.“Look, one of the hardest parts of this job is trying to balance professional and personal relationships, you know?And just because I think you might have some...possibly plausible points, it doesn’t mean I can just ignore procedure and law.How would that look for me?For the department?And,” he said before I could break in, “how would it look foryou?People would assume you’reliterallygetting away with murder because we’re friends.”He paused, then added, “We’re friends, right?”
The petulant brat in me wanted to sayno, my friends don’t make me feel small and dumb,but I swallowed that urge down and sighed.“Yeah,” I said.“New ones, but friends.”
Something seemed to lift away from him then and he visibly relaxed.“Okay then.”He pulled into the drive behind Ben’s subtly fancy Beemer and turned off the engine.
“You said you were coming to see me before Cherry called,” I reminded him.“What was that about?”
And that uneasy look was back, his shoulders hunching inward and chin dropping.“We should go inside.”
Crap.
#
BEN EMERGED FROM HISoffice as Heath cautiously sat on the edge of the armchair in the front study."What's going on?"Ben demanded, lawyer voice in full effect."Heath, if this is a legal matter—"
"It's more of a concerned warning," he said, turning his hat between his hands.He wore one of those cowboy hat type deals that was a little too broad, a little too hard to be anything but a uniform piece.Without it, in the rest of his uniform, he looked like he was a teenager dress up with his blond hair flattened and the lean planes of his face exposed, too young for whatever was going on in his head."The major crimes unit the state sent down from Augusta found fingerprints on a lighter left at the scene of the Old Yacht Club fire.”
My stomach executed a slow, lazy roll and slipped down somewhere near my feet."I don't smoke."
"Neither do I but I still have a few around my place and even in my office," Heath sighed.Glancing at Ben, who stood blank-faced and quiet, he pressed on."The general consensus is it's a little weird, this lighter just sitting there in the rubble, you know?It wasn’t noted on the first pass-through but sometimes things get missed in the chaos.” That sounded like a practiced line.“But it's there.And it has your fingerprints on it."
"Just his?"Ben asked quietly."Only his, no one else's?"
Heath nodded."That's the other weird thing.The lighter has smudges, like it was wiped down before you handled it."
"I didn't—"
"I know," Heath soothed."I know.And, thankfully, the MCU group thinks it's weird enough to be suspicious and they're not jumping directly on blaming you.They're running it past an arson investigation team again.”
"What does that mean for me?"
The two of them exchanged a look, years of working with the legal side of crappy choices flowing back and forth between them."It means nothing," Ben finally said."Heath's giving you a head's up."
"I wouldn't decide to take a six-month tour around the world any time soon," Heath put in quickly."But this bit of evidence is pinging some radars as strange.You'll likely be getting a call or visit from a member or two of the unit soon."
"Don't talk to them without Mario on a video link," Ben said sharply.
I nodded."Right.Right.SO I'm not in trouble but I should act like I am."Muffin, the giant sweetheart, picked up on my stress and came over to lean heavily against my legs.As much as I wanted to be flippant and bratty about this, I knew better.Cooperation was key here, making sure there was no reason to look twice at me.But..."Wait.Was it a metal lighter?"
Heath straightened."How do you know that?"
"Because you said it was in the rubble," Ben pointed out."A plastic gas station lighter would likely have melted."
"Not necessarily.It would depend on—"
