Page 83 of Burning For You

It wasn’t as if it was her fault.

She stared at her phone and back to the message on her computer.

Ugh, she wanted to reply back but couldn’t.

She’d follow orders this time.

But she did snap a picture of it and sent it to Ash saying she needed to go to the police department if he wanted to go with her.

The phone rang in her hand. “I’m on my way now. I was just sitting around waiting.”

“I’ll be outside when you get here.”

She looked around her kitchen, made sure there wasn’t anything that could go bad on the counter and ruin her dinner, then shut the lid on her laptop, put sneakers on her feet and grabbed her jacket.

When she was opening the door to leave the building, Ash was pulling in, so she went right to his truck and climbed in before he could park.

“Why did you open it?”

“Because I’m an idiot.”

“Don’t be cute,” he said.

“Sorry. I was distracted with preparing dinner and just opened it before I could stop myself.”

“What did Tate say?”

“He’s not happy, but they traced it last time. They know it’s a burner, so I doubt they are going to get much again unless it’s still on.”

“We’ll find out.”

“Last I heard they are trying to find out who bought the phone, but that takes more time.”

“And is difficult if the person paid cash and it was in a place with no cameras.”

“Around here, I bet that is more likely.”

“Yep,” he said.

She hated the silence on the short drive. “You’re pissed at me.”

“I’m not happy. I wasn’t last night when I saw you, then it helped some, or eased some, when you said why you were there. I didn’t see your story so I can’t blame it on that. But I did see you talking to someone who didn’t look homeless. Who was it?”

“Believe it or not, one of my father’s old friends. He lived around the corner, saw the fire and came out to see what was going on. I didn’t recognize him, but he did me, then said he realized it was me writing the articles.”

“You don’t think that is odd?” he asked, a frown on his face.

“Not really. I mean, I remember him, but didn’t recognize him. He’s still married to Jill, who, thinking back, she’d been friends with my mother. Anyway, they wanted to talk sometime. I think maybe it’d be nice to see if they remember anything, so I gave him my card.”

“Do you normally do that, give your information out to strangers?”

She held her tongue from lashing out. “He’s not a stranger. And all I did was give him my card with my work email on it. Nothing more. I might never hear anything and don’t really care one way or another.”

“Fine,” he said. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get you worked up.”

“I’m not. I’m being careful, but I still have to live my life. And the article I wrote didn’t get bought. I didn’t think it would. Not that big a deal and wasn’t why I went. I dropped the ball and didn’t follow up with Tate. I didn’t even know someone said they saw who let the fire get out of control.” Because she was too focused on Steve approaching her.

“That wasn’t in the article.”