“Not everything.”
She tilted her head. “You want me to lie to you, or you want the truth off record?”
“Answer me like you’re not trying to make me pick one.”
She stepped in close. “Some clients want what money alone can’t buy. The things time tried to erase—Gullah masks, Harlem canvases, Black brilliance nobody ever appraised. I find it.Sometimes it’s legit. Sometimes…” She looked back at the house. “It burns.”
I let the silence hold. I hated how much I understood.
“I’ll be in touch once we file the official request.”
She nodded. “My clients won’t wait that long.”
Then she turned, didn’t wait for a goodbye, just wrapped herself back into her coat and went to the man and the woman—who was calmer now, but still trembling.
I didn’t move.
Not until the flames died out, and the hiss of water was all that remained. Not until the crews started packing up, and the sky went dark with exhaustion. I told my team to get me everything—gas samples, floor plans, camera footage. Then I drove.
I left the station after going over the preliminary report and organizing the follow-up site visit for the next morning. Still, the whole ride to my parents’ place, my head ran laps around what Sanaa had said—and what she hadn’t. That damn fire was still burning in my mind, but it wasn’t the flames that haunted me. It was her. That look in her eye. The way she showed up again like fate was stacking coincidences just to mess with me. Or maybe to remind me that some things don’t burn away clean.
Their house sat in Stanton Heights, perched where the hills rolled into sky, with enough distance from downtown to breathe but close enough to feel it buzzing beneath your feet. Porch lights glowed amber against the dusk.
I let myself in and was hit with the smell of good food and comfort. A warmth that lived in the walls. One that had raised me right.
“Tariq?” Ma called from the kitchen.
“Yeah.”
Dad looked up from the living room, glasses sliding down his nose, paper in hand, Miles Davis easing from the speakers behind him. “Another call?”
“Northside. Might be arson.”
Ma came around the corner, drying her hands on a dishtowel patterned with Black Santa faces. “Anyone hurt?”
“No. House is gone though.”
Her face tightened. “Your jaw’s tight again.”
“It’s fine.”
She handed me a glass of water, brushing my knuckles with a soft touch like she used to when I came in scraped up from ball. I sat down heavily on the edge of the couch.
“Sanaa was there,” I said.
That stopped everything. Dad lowered the paper. Ma stood still.
“Again?” he asked.
I nodded. “Client’s house. Harlem Renaissance-era art collection inside. Rare, valuable. Could be motive.”
Ma exhaled slow. “You think she’s involved?”
“I don’t know what to think. But she keeps showing up in the middle of this.”
Ma looked at me, eyes sharp like she could read past the facts into the fear under my skin. “Do you trust her?”
“I want to,” I admitted.
