“Onmybirthday, you’re all going fishing inmyboat,” Ryder declared. “Even if it’s raining.”
When Chase slipped back inside, Kinley popped to Laurel’s side. “You should see the cake I got her,” she said proudly. “It was all I could do not to eat it myself. Bonita outdid herself.”
Channeling a skill she had mastered well over the past five years, Laurel pushed her negative emotions—the sadness, anxiousness, and dread—into an imaginary box and closed the lid. There was plenty of time to face the hard truths before Jenkins returned. Tonight, she wanted to enjoy this blessedly perfect evening with her best friends.
Hours passed in a blink. The group had relocated to the firepit area, and Chase even poked at the pit as if there were a fire. She kept sneaking glances at him, wondering if he’d been able to forget about the case long enough to enjoy the evening. Mostly, she thought yes. But every once in a while, she caught a flicker of something in his eyes that made her think otherwise.
Laurel emptied her diet soda and stood. “Anyone need something to drink while I’m going in?” She took a couple of requests and slipped into the mostly dark kitchen. The overcast sky made the Alaskan summer night duskier than usual, teasing at rain they needed but would not get.
Out of habit, Laurel started to clean up the counters. Covering the macaroni salad and sticking it in the fridge, closing chip and hamburger bun bags, filling a trash bag and tying it shut.
“You get lost again?” Chase teased, the door sliding closed behind him. “Our friends are thirsty.”
“The macaroni salad was still out,” she answered, as if that explained everything.
He closed the distance between them, making her regret leaving the light off. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to kiss him again, because that’s all she’d been thinking the whole evening. Chase was the only man who’d ever made her body tingle from a single graze of his lips.Adoption. That word rang in her head again.Maybe . . .
“Laurel, you have that troubled look in your eyes again. What is it?”
She glanced out the window, watching her friends laugh and toss the ball around for the only dog not completely worn out—Zeus. They didn’t seem put out by the absence of their hosts. She could tell him now, while she was as close to brave as she was going to get about this.
“There’s something I never told you.”
Chase tucked her loose blonde curls behind her ear, his fingertips blazing a trail across her cheek. “Another secret?”
“Yeah.”Just spit it out, Laurel. It’s not going to get any easier. “I can’t have—”
Chase’s radio blared from the counter with its familiar emergency tone. He grabbed the radio and waited for the message from the dispatcher. Ryder was inside half a second before she spoke.Fire and rescue needed immediately at 459 Choke Cherry Lane. Structure fire and at least one known injury. The rest of the message was a blur to Laurel as the men urgently rushed about. The three darted out the door together, heading to the fire hall and leaving the women and dogs gathered in the kitchen.
Ava popped the lid off the half-eaten sheet cake, picking up a fork and diving in. “They’re going to be a while,” she said casually, as if she weren’t the least bit worried about her brother or fiancé heading out to the second fire in less than a week.
Kinley handed Laurel a plastic fork. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. They’ll have the fire trucks out there in minutes since it’s in town. Fire will be out in no time.”
Laurel wanted to feel comfort in that thought, but two fires in one week in Sunset Ridge felt ominous. She couldn’t help but wonder if they were related, which only made her wonder if she was turning into some sort of conspiracy theorist.459 Choke Cherry Lane. She picked up her phone and pulled up her map app.
“That’s a couple blocks from your parents’ place, right?” Kinley asked between bites of cakes.
“Yeah.” From the map app, she couldn’t be certain. But she thought the address was awfully close to the Davenport residence. She considered going home, watching the events from the hill her parents’ house sat on. But one look at Zeus and she decided she couldn’t abandon him. Despite all the warning bells going off in her head, tonight she’d stay until Chase came home.
Chapter Ten
Chase
Chase stood on the curb with folded arms and studied the scene. Hours later, the fire threat was eliminated and all surrounding homes, outbuildings, and trees were safe from going up in flames. But the usual relief he felt once a fire was out didn’t come, and in its place was suspicion. Everyone else was labeling this fire a coincidence. ‘Lucky’ was also a word he’d heard tossed around because the flames were centrally located in the detached garage and never spread to the house or any neighboring properties.
That it was the Davenports’ detached garage thataccidentallywent up in flames didn’t have anyone batting an eye, aside from a few gossipy neighbors and the newspaper report Glenn kept chasing away.
To Chase, though, everything about this situation reeked of ill intentions.
“You’ve got that serious, sour look on your face,” Chief Bauer said, joining him on the street while the rest of the crew searched for the last embers. “Please tell me you’re not convinced Henry has enemies. I don’t need another conspiracy theory floating around. Evelynn Marsh will eat that right up and get the whole town in a tizzy. It was hard enough to convince her to go home tonight. This was an accident, nothing more.”
Had it not been for Laurel’s sharp eye, he might’ve agreed with that theory. But the scrap of mail in the fire—the one with most of Henry Davenport’s name—unsettled him. Though it seemed like a stretch, there was the thought that he might’ve set a fireintown to make it look as though they were being targeted. No one with half a brain would try something so stupid during a burn ban. Henry was a lifelong Alaskan well aware of that risk in a dry spell.
A few minutes later, half the block could’ve been up in flames.
“You believe their story, then?” Chase asked, failing to hide the exasperation in his tone. If he wasn’t careful, Glenn would insist on taking over this investigation. It would be written off before anyone second-guessed it. Keeping his mouth shut might be the only thing that gave him a chance to dig into this the right way.
“What’s not to believe? Henry forgot to turn the kerosene heater off in the garage. It caught fire. Ever see the inside of his garage? He’s not exactly a tidy guy.”
