“What about the fire evidence?The blueprints, the sprinklers, the electrical analysis?”
“I’m adding my evidence to your package.When it goes to the Montana Department of Justice, it needs to be airtight.Every piece documented, sourced, and cross-referenced.You’ve done excellent work, Gray.The evidence you brought me is rock solid.”
The evidence also pointed at a man whose barn had killed eight firefighters, and that man was still sitting in an office next to a woman who now knew the truth and had to pretend she didn’t.
“You made it clear to Bonnie she can’t say anything to anyone yet?”
“I did.I told her she can talk to you or me about it any time, but nobody else.Not even the WoWS.”
“How did she react to that?”
“She balked a little.She thought the other widows would keep their mouths shut so the arsonist doesn’t catch wind of the investigation.But she was in such a state of shock after I showed her everything that she agreed pretty readily when I told her it was vital that no one else know.”
“Keep an eye on her,” Cooper said.
Gray got the impression Cooper wasn’t particularly worried about Bonnie spilling the beans.He was worried more about Bonnie’s emotional well-being.“I am.”
He hung up and went back to his textbook.The words still wouldn’t cooperate.
She showed up at the fire station at noon.
He didn’t hear her car pull in.One moment he was alone in the day room reading, and the next Bonnie was standing in the doorway from the engine bay, her face set in an expression he’d never seen from her before.
It wasn’t grief.It wasn’t anger.It wasn’t the brittle composure she’d worn like armor since the day he met her.
It was ...he took his best guess.Resolve?
“I want to help,” she said bluntly.
Gray closed his textbook.“Pull up a seat.”
She didn’t sit down.She paced.Back and forth, then around in circles, then back the other way.Her hands were shoved deep in her coat pockets, and her shoulders were rigid.
“I have access to everything in that office,” she said.“Every file.Every database.Every document he’s ever signed.The only thing I can’t get into is his personal safe, and I don’t need to because the most important thing in that safe is already in Cooper’s hands.”
She stopped pacing and turned to face him.“If there’s more evidence in his office, I can find it.I know how every file is organized.I know which drawers he uses and which ones he doesn’t.I know his schedule, his patterns, when he’s in the office and when he’s not.His health keeps him out at least two or three days a week now, and when he’s gone, I have the place to myself.”
Gray studied her face.The circles under her eyes told him she hadn’t slept any more than he had.But the set of her jaw and the clarity of her gaze told him the woman who had sat in this room two days ago holding his hand had spent the intervening hours doing exactly what he would have done in her position.
She’d analyzed the problem, identified her assets, and formed a plan.
The competence that had been her armor for four years was still present.But it wasn’t serving loyalty anymore.It was serving something harder and more honest.
“What could you look for?”he asked.
“You tell me.What information are you and Cooper still missing?”
Gray answered promptly, “The insurance report.Cooper’s been trying to get a copy of it for months.Every request he files gets lost or redirected or denied.The insurance company wants nothing to do with this case being re-opened.”
Bonnie nodded.“I’d bet good money it’s in Lucas’s files somewhere.He keeps copies of everything related to the ranch.”
Gray leaned back in his chair.“Cooper thinks the report was deliberately withheld from the final report on the fire.”
“Of course it was.”The flatness of her voice told him she’d already moved past surprise and into something colder and more functional.“The insurance company paid out.Lucas collected.The investigation was closed.Everything about that fire was designed to be signed off on fast.”She added lightly, bitterly, “and it almost worked because everybody involved was either paid off or too devastated to question the official story.”
She finally sat down in the recliner beside his.“I was too devastated to question it.For four years.”
“You’re questioning it now.”
