Page 46 of Burning Justice

“Everyone okay?” Brett shouted as he holstered. “Is anyone hit?” After the men shook their heads, Brett looked at the customers, gratified to see they also appeared unhurt.

He pulled out his cell phone and called 911. “This is ATF Special Agent Tanner. I’m reporting a drive-by shooting at Piggly’s on Morrison Road. No injuries. Suspect vehicle is a white SUV heading west on Morrison. The driver is armed with a handgun.” And probably long gone by now. “Everyone stay inside, and stay down,” Brett shouted after ending the call.

He went back outside to wait for the Lakewood PD. Already, he could hear sirens in the distance. As he waited, he turned back to face the restaurant.

Had this guy been shooting at Piggly’s?

The restaurant’s shattered window could certainly be evidence of that.

Then again, the shattered window on the car he and Blaze had been standing in front of when the driver had opened fire could suggest they were the targets, and the restaurant window had been hit accidentally.

It wasn’t unheard of for a federal agent to be targeted. What were the chances the shooter’s vehicle would also be a white SUV?

No charges had been filed yet on the case he and Gemma were working, so it would be virtually impossible for anyone to know they’d even opened an investigation.

Brett rubbed his jaw. He refused to believe there was a leak inside any of the agencies working the case. But what about the witnesses they’d spoken to? Especially Sally Nash.

The woman had been lying about something. She could have called her brother the second he and Gemma had walked out the door. But again, neither he nor Gemma thought Nash had anything to do with the house fires all over the state. Which brought him full circle back to the white SUV.

He didn’t have enough evidence to voice it, but if this white SUV was the same one they’d spooked up in Leadville, the driver could have circled around and followed them to the hotel. It wasn’t completely inconceivable they’d been tracked from the moment they’d left Leadville. I-70 was a busy highway. He could have missed the tail.

Which meant someone was extremely motivated to take him out of the picture. Permanently.

He went back to his Expedition and tugged the tactical flashlight from his belt. A minute later, he’d confirmed there were no tracking devices attached to the undercarriage.

His stomach hardened as he tried not to let his paranoia take hold and overshadow common sense.

If this was about him, and it was about the investigation he was working on, Gemma could be a target, too.

Flashing red-and-blue lights flooded the road as patrol cars sped closer. Brett stepped aside, tugging Blaze with him so they wouldn’t inadvertently get run down by the good guys. He whipped out his phone and called Gemma.

The first patrol car blew into the parking lot and screeched to a stop. Still waiting for Gemma to answer, Brett unclipped the badge from his belt, tugged out the chain, and slipped it over his head. With his holstered gun exposed, the last thing he wanted was to get drilled by friendly fire.

“C’mon, answer, dammit.” Gemma’s phone had already rung three times, and he was a microsecond from hauling ass back to her place.

…

Gemma went into the bedroom to feed Jaws. She really did enjoy having the little guy around. Okay, so he wasn’t warm and furry like Blaze, but she didn’t care what Brett had said.

“Don’t listen to him.” She uncapped the plastic jar and sprinkled food into the tank. “You can too smile.”

Jaws sped to the surface, gulping down the flat, desiccated flakes with the same enthusiasm she’d enjoy chunks of lobster drenched in gobs of butter.

Her stomach growled, and her tastebuds watered at the thought of food. Any food at this point. She sat in front of her laptop and yawned. The moment Brett had dropped her off, she’d dug into the assignment he’d given her.

All the boxes in the profit-and-loss chart she’d assembled for the twenty-one houses, now twenty-three, including the Leadville and Burlington homes, were nearly full. There were only a few locations with missing data. Not unexpectedly, the sellers had all made tidy profits by collecting on the insurance, the riders, then selling the land. One such transaction, in an especially trendy section of Aspen, had netted the seller close to a hundred thousand dollars.

That would, hypothetically, mean twenty-three cases of arson-for-profit. Suggestive data and suspicion would never be enough to charge anyone, though, and they still didn’t even know who to charge.

Her phone rang. By the time she got to it on the kitchen counter, it had already blared out three bars from “Manly Men,” the theme song from Two and a Half Men that she’d assigned to Brett’s number. Her heart did an awkward little blip at seeing his name on the screen. “Where’s my food?” she answered just before the fourth ring. “I’m starving.”

“Yeah. About that.” Sirens wailing came through the phone.

As Gemma listened to Brett describe the shooting, her jaw dropped. While she’d been sitting in the comfort of her house, working on her laptop, Brett and Blaze had been getting shot at. Actually shot at.

Her heart lurched. “Is Blaze okay?” Images of Brett with a bullet hole in his chest was bad enough. If Blaze had been hurt, too…

“He’s fine,” Brett reassured her, “but we’re going to be stuck here for a while working with the police on this. At this point, we can’t tell if the shooter was targeting me or the restaurant. Sometimes, people seek retribution on the agent who’s investigating them. If that’s what’s going down here, and it’s because of the arson case we’re working, you could become a target, too.”