Marquez chuckled, the kind of laugh that came from a place too old to care. “Now that’s a riddle for the gods.”
I didn’t bother responding. My thoughts were already pulling me back to what I’d been trying to leave alone.
Two fires. One in the Hill. The other on the North Side. On paper, quiet. Nobody injured. No one even home. But quiet doesn’t mean clean. And Smoke’s warning to leave it be only made it louder in my head.
The Hill District property had been under Elijah Lewis’s name—some kind of community art house he’d been working on. Unoccupied. Renovations in progress. Supposedly untouched for weeks. But one of the neighbors said they saw a woman out front days before it burned— carrying something wrapped in canvas.
The North Side fire was different. Smaller house. Residential. Belonged to Franklin Harris, known to most as Butch. Him and his wife had been out of town when it caught. Lucky timing, or maybe not. No witnesses. No camera footage. Just ashes and silence.
Both fires had burned hot and fast. No accelerant trails. No visible device signatures. But I knew what I was looking at.
I opened the reports again, jaw clenching. Something didn’t add up.
I grabbed my coat and walked past Marquez.
“You headed out?”
“Yeah. Field call.”
“You coming back?”
I paused. “Not sure.”
“Be safe, Tariq.”
The Hill Districtruins were colder than I remembered.
The wind whipped through the broken slats of what used to be a porch. The smell of smoke still lingered in the air, stale and bitter like burnt upholstery. I stepped over caution tape, flashlight in hand, boots crunching against the brittle remains of a life no one had claimed.
I moved slow, scanning the corners, crouching near the foundation. Something glinted near the back door frame—barely visible beneath the collapsed edge of the wall.
I crouched, moved debris with gloved hands until I found it.
A ceramic housing. Split, blackened, but still intact enough for me to know what I was looking at—a modified incendiary timer. Old-school tech. Something repurposed from an HVAC unit, rigged to heat coils once the electrical circuit completed itself.
Someone had been smart. No obvious accelerants. No open flame. Just enough heat, delayed long enough to walk away clean.
I turned it over in my palm.
“Well damn,” I muttered. “There you are.”
Less than half an hour later, I stepped inside the Northside house, the floor groaning under my weight. Same layout, different story.
I headed straight for the kitchen, where the blaze had supposedly started.
And there it was again—tucked behind the false panel of a lower cabinet, half-melted but still recognizable. A twin to the first device. Whoever did this was methodical. Clean. And practiced.
I stood in the dark, flashlight beam casting long shadows, and felt a slow burn rise in my chest.
Whoever this was wouldn’t stop here. There was more coming.
I went home,showered before leaving back out, and drove straight to Sanaa’s building, used the key she gave me the other night, without a second thought. Her place was warm, the scent of something sweet lingering in the air—candles, maybe, or her skin.
Light spilled from the living room. I followed it like instinct.
She was on the couch, laptop open, her voice low and professional.
“Yes, I’ll take it,” she was saying, nodding at something on her screen. “Place a hold and confirm the provenance.”
