“And, like you said from the beginning, the intentionally set fires around town are just a smokescreen to ensure that secrets stay buried.”
She tilted her head, studying him. “Did I say that?”
Mick lifted and lowered his shoulders. She hadn’t. He’d added that part all by himself. “Something like it. That someone was willing to burn down half the city to keep it quiet.”
“And now you believe me?”
He rubbed the back of his neck as he considered her question. Had he gone from skeptic to lukewarm supporter to radical believer, all in a matter of days? And had he let a leisurely exploration of her body inspire him to take that final leap? But then he pushed back his shoulders and told her the truth.
“I believe you.”
Rachel blinked several times. Her eyes were damp, but she turned her head away so he couldn’t see.
An ache settled in his chest that she’d had no one on her side, and he hadn’t helped. “I’m sorry I didn’t from the beginning.”
She surprised him by chuckling. “Why would you have? We were strangers. And I was this angry woman in your office offering, like you said, ‘convenient’ excuses to protect my brother.”
“I should have at least not dismissed it so easily. I, of anyone, should know that stories aren’t as simple as they seem from the outside.”
“At least you believe me now.” She squinted down at the pile of papers. Then her gaze snapped up to his. “But if the fires are connected crimes involving Stan…and whoever else, then why didn’t someone just burn downhishouse? If he had any incriminating evidence against them there, it would have gone up in flames, too.”
“I don’t know,” he said, the same question still bothering him. “But maybe someone was smart enough to recognize that a suicide of one family member, possible criminal charges against another, and then a fire in their home might raise suspicions. Even from investigators who aren’t looking all that hard.”
“So you can finally admit that—” She stopped when he offered a close-lipped smile.
“You were right about that, too. There might be a few who are searching hard for answers, but I’d say they’re in the minority. Some don’t want to know the truth.”
“But I do. No matter where it leads.”
He met her gaze and held it for a dozen heartbeats. “And so do I.”
She pulled the confession off the top of the pile and again angled the papers so they both could read.
* * *
As much as his heart ached for her in losing the parent she’d believed was an honorable man, he couldn’t help but admire her determination. Whatever his other faults, the former fire chief had raised an amazing daughter and likely a fine son as well, almost entirely on his own.
And, if he could admit it to himself, he was in grave danger of falling in love with Stan Hoffman’s daughter.
Chapter 19
At somewhere close to three o’clock in the morning, Rachel braced an elbow on the table and rested her jaw in the curve of her hand, eyelids heavy. Her gaze shifted to the sofa, where she and Mick had already made up a bed for him two hours earlier with a pair of twin sheets, a pink, heart-shaped pillow from the twins’ room and one of her mother’s quilts that she’d kept in the closet.
She’d been too exhausted to argue when he’d brought up staying over again. Now she couldn’t imagine corralling the energy to climb the stairs herself.
In the chair next to her, Mick sipped from a mug of coffee that was four hours cold. She winced on his behalf.
“Did you find something else?”
She almost prayed that he hadn’t. Already, they’d located several documents connecting her father to Bilton Holdings and the Bilton Foundation. Like the confession, they were copies, but if there’d ever been other signatures at the bottom, they were whited out in these versions. Though she had to agree with Mick that her father, whom she could only think of as “Stan” now, couldn’t have committed all the crimes alone, so far, all of the evidence pointed to him. Only him.
As she reached for one of the most damning pieces they’d found, nausea built in her stomach. The soil study showed the possibility of an oil reserve on the property owned by Bilton Holdings. Only it was dated two years before oil was discovered. And two months before the Bilton group even purchased the land the Mount Isabel council had looked into buying for an assisted-living facility to serve low-income seniors. Worst of all, the same Ben Morrison, who Stan had claimed as his murder victim, was the geotechnical engineer who’d written the report. A quick obituary search had confirmed that he was, indeed, dead.
“Do you think this report was ever filed with the state of Michigan?”
“What do you think?” His skeptical expression gave away his opinion.
“Yeah. Probably not. Paying off the author of that report might have been the first crime.” She pointed to the confession that she’d placed in the middle of the table.
