She nodded. “I will be.”
Behind us, the suppression crew had knocked the bulk of it down. Steam rolled off the structure in heavy clouds now, the angry orange replaced with that wet, smoldering gray that meant the fight was nearly over.
One of the captains waved me over.
“Hunt. You saw first ignition?”
“Rear,” I said, standing. “Accelerant. Fast climb up the interior chase.”
He nodded. “Matches what we’re seeing.”
We walked a few feet closer—not into the scene, just enough to observe while overhaul started. A section of siding had burned away near the back corner, exposing the skeletal structure beneath. Clean cuts in the sheathing. Too clean for collapse.
My eyes tracked lower. Near the foundation, half-hidden under char and runoff, something metallic caught the light. Small. Rectangular. Melt-warped but not destroyed.
A timing device housing. Not consumer-grade. Not improvised.Placed.
I stared at it longer than I should have. Long enough for my brain to start assembling questions. Long enough for the old part of me—the investigator, the one who chases patterns until they bleed answers—to start waking up.
Marquez shifted beside me. “You see something?”
Yeah. I saw exactly what this was. I also saw Sanaa sitting twenty yards away, wrapped in a blanket, watching me like she already knew the choice sitting in front of me.
Smoke’s voice echoed in my head.
Let it go… to keep your woman safe.
I exhaled.
Then I looked away from the device.
“Just confirming what we already know,” I said. “Set fire. Nothing accidental.”
Marquez studied me for a second. But he didn’t push.
He just nodded. “Yeah. That’s what it looks like.”
The captain called for additional photos. Documentation. Standard procedure. Nothing more.
I walked back to her. Not the scene. Not the evidence. To her.
She reached for my hand the second I got close, like she’d been waiting for me to decide where I belonged. I laced my fingers through hers, and that was that.
20
The softest part of the afternoon filtered in through Tariq’s windows. Light gold, nearly still, like the day didn’t know how to move forward just yet. I understood that feeling. My body rested against the curve of his couch, wrapped in the faint scent of his cologne—and something elsethat hadn’t quite left me yet. Hospital air. That sterile, too-clean scent that clings no matter how long you’ve been discharged.
A small plastic bag sat on the table beside me. Discharge papers. An inhaler they said I’d “probably never need.” A bottle of pills I hadn’t opened. The adhesive mark from the IV was still faintly visible inside my wrist, tender when I brushed it.
Observation, they called it.
Hours of oxygen. Machines beeping softly. A nurse checking my lungs again and again while I tried to convince everyone—including myself—that I was fine.
Tariq never left the room.
Now he was across the apartment, leaning over a case file, pen tapping the margin in that restless rhythm I knew too well. Working. Pretending to work. Watching me when he thought I wouldn’t notice.
I caught his eyes again. This time he didn’t pretend to look away.
