Page 104 of Burning For You

It didn’t look too out of control, but the house was highly damaged. At least the front of it, and the upstairs was going to have water damage on top of it where they were trying to make sure it didn’t spread.

It wasn’t going to be livable for the foreseeable future.

“Why am I not surprised you’re here,” Tate said.

“She’s not alone,” Ash pointed out.

“Thankfully.”

Skye pulled her phone out. “What can you tell me?”

Tate lifted his eyes to Ash. He just shrugged. He was going to do what he’d said and look around for anything out of the ordinary. See if something, or someone, caught his eye.

“The homeowners said they heard glass breaking and woke up immediately. They went down the stairs and there was a fire in the living room. The stairs are in the back, the wife ran back upstairs to get the kids while her husband tried to put it out with an extinguisher.”

“Didn’t seem to work,” he said.

“No. The wife called nine-one-one while she was getting the kids out of bed and everyone got out okay.”

“So, arson for sure,” she said.

“Not the same thing,” Ash argued. “Not even close.”

“I’m going to talk to the homeowners.”

He wanted to tell her no, but she was going to argue that she was doing her job. A fucking sucky job in his mind, but he knew enough to keep his lips sealed.

She stepped away but close enough that he could still see her. “What do you think?” he asked Tate.

“I think it’s not the same thing. The one girl, the daughter, she was screaming at her brother saying it was his fault or something. This was one of his pranks gone too far.”

“What does that mean?”

“From what I can gather, the kid is a bully, kind of terrorizing weaker kids. Maybe someone is getting back at him. We’ll be questioning them more, but giving them some space just now.”

“Hmm, sounds like things never change. We had our fair share of assholes growing up.”

His mind went to Skye’s brother, Sean.

Tate knew what he was saying without the words coming out.

They wouldn’t say it either.

“So it’s just finding out who it could be.”

“They don’t have cameras, but the neighbors do. I’ve already talked to them and they showed it to me. We’ll have people go through the footage, but the face was covered with a mask. On foot, running, no cars up or down the road. Almost looks like the body of a teen or young adult.”

“Which doesn’t mean it’s not our person, but I don’t think so.”

Tate shook his head. “Highly unlikely. This house is newer, so the smoke alarms were going off almost immediately. The last fires, they are steering clear of that. That arsonist wants to see it go up in smoke, not be caught fast.”

“So this is something else.”

“Yeah. Maybe they didn’t even mean to go through the window. From the video, the person looked shocked. Like an ‘oh shit’ moment. Almost as if they wanted to try to go back and get it. A lit rag in a bottle.”

“Guess we’ll find out some more tomorrow,” he said.

“What’s the news on this one?”