Page 38 of Burning Justice

He was getting paranoid. Then again, paranoia had saved many an agent’s life.

The boys began tossing a ball back and forth. He watched as they followed their parents into the hotel and disappeared. Other images—twenty-five-year-old memories—flashed before his eyes of two other boys, his childhood friends, Ryan and Cody. But instead of playing ball, they were screaming when the fire blocked their escape. Brett squeezed his eyes shut, trying to push away the horrific memories and failing miserably.

His heart raced, the beat thrumming loudly in his ears. As the firefighter had dragged Brett down the ladder, screaming from inside the house intensified. Then it stopped. The helplessness he’d experienced back then crashed down on him all over again.

Pressure built dead center in Brett’s chest. Breathing hard, he dragged a hand down his face. It had been over a decade since he’d had that particular nightmare. The fire a year ago had triggered them again, but this was the first time he’d had one during the day when he was totally awake.

Shit.

When he turned to head back to the hotel room, Gemma stood in the open doorway, watching him with a curious expression. “What was that about?” she asked as they headed inside.

“Nothing.” Except that he was on edge. Too on edge. He wanted to nail this arsonist so badly he could taste it. He couldn’t bring his friends back. He couldn’t bring those teenagers back. But he could stop it from happening again.

“You sure?” She placed a hand on his arm, eyeing him worriedly. “It didn’t look like nothing.”

For a moment, he gazed down into her eyes, so full of warmth and genuine caring, he was tempted to tell her everything. How the past could still torture him as if those events had happened only five minutes ago, not two-and-a-half decades ago. Instead, he shook his head, then covered her hand with his and squeezed it gently. “Thanks. I’m good.” As much as he wanted to, this wasn’t the time or the place for him to spill his guts again.

He gave her hand another squeeze, then closed the door. They both sat at the table. Gemma started typing, and he reentered the password into his laptop. What he needed to do was get back to the evidence.

An email from the fire marshal caught his attention. “Got an email from Grant. He said he couldn’t get in touch with the owners of the house we were at today. Thinks he must have a wrong number.”

“Interesting.” Gemma stopped typing. “I have a list of all the owners of those twenty-one houses. I’ve called about a third of them so far and haven’t been able to reach a single person. The numbers are either not in service or belong to someone else.”

“What about the attorneys handling the closings?”

“Same thing. It’s like they don’t exist. The owners or their attorneys.”

Brett sat back. “Suspicious, but it’s not anything we can use as evidence.” Yet. “Who owns the Leadville house?”

“Thomas Williams.”

Brett ran a DMV search for Thomas Williams at 986 Ruby Road. Nada. Next, he ran Thomas Williams through Accurint and Choice Point, two investigative databases used by law enforcement to ID people, their assets, addresses, phone numbers, businesses, and a host of other records designed to help locate people.

“Well?” Gemma asked a few minutes later.

“Thomas Williams is a common name, but there are no DMV records for any Thomas Williams at Ruby Road. There are a few records in Accurint and Choice Point associating him with that address, but those records all trace back to the title and deed. Other than paperwork, there’s no record of him ever having physically been in Leadville.” He reread Grant’s email, searching for the phone number the fire marshal had called, but it wasn’t there. “What’s the phone number for Thomas Williams in Grant’s file?”

She flipped through a few pages, then handed one to him.

Brett called the number. It had a Chicago area code.

“Vitaglio’s,” a thickly accented voice answered.

Brett narrowed his eyes. “I’m looking for Thomas Williams.”

“Who? This is pizza. You wanna order a pizza?”

“No, thanks.” Brett ended the call. “It’s a pizzeria.” Another dead end. “You have that list of the owners you compiled for the other houses?”

She nodded, then stood and leaned over the bed to reach for her portfolio, giving Brett an even better view of her perfect backside. First her lips, then her toenails and calves. Now her ass. On top of everything else, she was a genuinely nice person. Exactly the kind of woman he didn’t deserve in his life.

“Here.”

When she handed him her list, he scanned it quickly, then grunted. Smith. Jones. Williams. Anderson. Garcia, Wong…

“What is it?” she asked.

“Stand by.” For kicks, he did an internet search for the most common surnames in the United States, then compared it to Gemma’s list. “Did you know that every one of these last names is one of the most common in the United States?”