Page 8 of Burning Justice

“To maintain impartiality.”

“So they said.” Tom Willard was a decent enough agent with the same training Brett had received but not the same experience.

For a moment, Gemma didn’t say anything, just kept looking at him like he’d grown a third eyeball. “Do you agree with the final report’s finding that the fire was accidental?” she asked.

No. Twelve months later, his gut still told him it was arson. He’d reviewed Tom Willard’s case file more than a dozen times but found nothing to suggest it was anything but an accident. “The final report said it was.”

Gemma twisted her lips. “But you don’t think so.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You were thinking it, though.” She leaned in closer. “Weren’t you?”

The woman either had ESP or she was able to read him like a book. “It was owned by a flipper and was undergoing extensive renovation. A total gut. There was nothing in it but lumber, supplies, a few tools left behind for the day.” And two teenagers smoking weed, their lives callously snuffed out.

If only he had made it to the top of the stairs. If only he’d gotten there sooner.

Brett curled his fingers tighter around Blaze’s leash. If only I could have saved them.

“And three cans of MEK,” Gemma supplied. “That was also in the insurance company investigator’s report.”

“Yeah.” Due to MEK’s flammability, that fire had raced out of control before the local fire trucks had even left the station. “After the fact, we learned the house needed a complete plumbing and electrical overhaul. That part of the town is still on septic, and the leach field was shot. It also needed asbestos and lead abatement.”

Gemma made a hmm sound. “That’s a lot of expensive renovation. You’d think that, as a flipper, the guy would have seen all that before he purchased a money pit. Maybe, by the time he did, the only way to cut his losses was to burn down the house and collect on the insurance.”

Something Brett had already thought of. All the investigating agencies had considered that angle but never found proof.

“What was his name again?” she asked.

“Michael Hawkin of Hawkin Construction.” Age forty-two, married, no children, living in Longmont with an office on the northern fringe of Denver proper. “No criminal history. He was vindicated of any wrongdoing.”

If Brett was right, Hawkin had gotten away with it. Arson and felony murder of those kids.

Gemma arched a brow. “You say that like it tastes bad, and the look on your face says it does.”

Shit. Now he was wearing his emotions on his face for all the world to see. The foul taste in his mouth came from knowing someone was guilty of committing a heinous crime and not being able to do a thing about it. “Suspicion doesn’t convict, and it doesn’t carry any weight. The connection you’re trying to make to the warehouse fires and house fires you’re investigating is weak.”

“True, but it’s something, and I want to follow up on that mystery titling company. To do that, I need your help.” She swallowed with an audible gulp, as if the word “help” tasted about as bad to her as his inability to charge Michael Hawkin did to him.

She might need his help, but she didn’t want to need it. “What you need is a grand jury subpoena.” Something only law enforcement could get for her.

She shrugged. “Yeah. That, too.”

“What does your supervisor say about this case?” Brett asked. “Do you have backing from your own people?” He hoped so, because she’d been right about one thing. She had something he could use—direct access to the NICB’s ISO database, one of the largest private databases in the world and containing detailed records of insurance premiums collected and losses paid out, plus lots of other useful intel he couldn’t access on his own.

“Let’s just say my boss is skeptical. He wants something more concrete.”

“And you want to use me to get it,” he said flatly. Not that he had a problem with that.

As much as he hoped he’d caught the dumpster arsonist and the warehouse arsonist, he couldn’t deny that he had doubts. He’d registered that Aldrich said he hadn’t set “this” fire, meaning the warehouse fire. Maybe the kid had been telling the truth. Could be the only things he’d set on fire were the dumpsters.

And now, there was Gemma’s theory that something else was going on here, something that could connect all the dots right back to the Torrance Lane fire. Her access could give him a shot at digging up the truth once and for all.

She sat back against the bench. “I use you. You use me. It’s a match made in heaven.”

Or hell, if things went south.

Gemma Scott was intelligent, incredibly perceptive, maybe barking up the wrong tree, and…pretty. Hard not to miss that, but ignore it he would.