Page 65
Back in the conference room, Brandon rolled out the big whiteboard in the kitchen, drew a crude map of Sweet Bloom, and started marking the fire sites. Desiree stood beside him, reading through Patty’s files, highlighting and annotating with color-coded sticky notes.
He circled the three sites: warehouse, feed store, and the cotton gin.
Desiree came up behind, watching over his shoulder, and for a split second he almost felt her breath on his neck.
He marked each fire with a red circle. “So, what’s the pattern?”
Desiree tapped the list. “All three had ownership disputes. All three had contracts tied up with the same holding company.”
He drew lines between the sites. “If you had to guess, what’s the motive?”
She answered without hesitation. “Get the properties off the market. Lower the value, spook the sellers, force them to unload to the only buyer left at a fraction of the cost they were originally asking.”
Brandon took a step back and admired her logic. “So, you think this is a developer move?”
“I think someone is going out of their way to lower the value of these properties.” She reached for his marker and, without asking, drew lines from the three fire sites to a fourth parcel just outside the town circle. “My guess, the cotton gin will be the next target. If there’s another fire, it’s going to be there.”
They stood there, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the map. For the first time, Brandon felt like they were actually working together, not just in parallel.
He capped the marker and turned to face her. “You want to go stake it out with me?”
She looked at him, and for a second the ice thawed. “Yeah, let’s see what happens next.”
It didn’t take long for them to reach the parking lot of the old Cuvey Cotton Gin. They settled into their seats and quietly watched, neither of them saying anything for the first several minutes.
Brandon finally broke the silence. “You ever wish you’d picked something less….” He searched for the word. “Complicated for your profession?”
Desiree didn’t answer right away. She stared out the window, hands clenched in her lap. “You mean like a desk job in an office building?”
He shrugged, then caught her glance and decided to just go for it. “I mean, it’s got to be hard, doing this job the way you have to do it.”
She stayed still, then finally looked at him straight on. “It’s like being the cleanup crew in a place nobody wants to admit is dirty. Every promotion I got, they acted like it was a fluke. Even after I caught the guy who started the Hill County church fire, they still put my name second on the paperwork under the arson investigator.” Desiree’s voice stayed tight and clipped. “I had to figure things out on my own. I learned early that nobody’s going to hand me anything—I had to fight for what I wanted.”
Brandon nodded, not trusting himself to say much. He didn’t want to break the spell. He just waited.
She watched him for a second, like she was measuring whether he was going to laugh or argue, then seemed satisfied. “What about you? You ever feel like you didn’t have a choice? Like you’re just filling your father’s shoes rather than walking your own path?”
He started to give a sarcastic answer, then decided against it. “Some days, it’s like I’m playacting, like I’m still the rookie who doesn’t quite fit, only now I have to tell everyone else how to do their job. Feels like I’m still waiting for my dad to walk in the door and tell me I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time. But on days I get it right, I know this is the job I was always meant to do, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Desiree nodded, just once. Then the radio ripped through the quiet. “Structure fire—the old pizzeria on Willow Street. Flames visible.”
Brandon’s adrenaline hit so fast it was like a punch. He was already turning the key over in the ignition. The drive was a blur, Desiree in the seat next to him, reading the incoming reports. “Owner’s not on site. Witness called it in from the gas station down the road. Heavy smoke, no one seen entering or exiting.”
Brandon kept his hands tight on the wheel, knuckles white. He knew the building, an old cinderblock rectangle with a shingled roof. Was this random or was it connected to the first two fires? And if so, did this mean something else was going on? This wasn’t one of the disputed properties.
At the scene, the air was thick with smoke, and the walls were already up in flames. Engine 1 was already there and setting up for containment.
Brandon went straight into command mode. “Kimble, pull line to the west entrance—we need to keep it away from the gas station. Ruiz, hit the rear windows. Keep eyes open for anyone moving in or out.” He pulled on his spare gear from the back of his SUV and snapped his helmet on before turning to Desiree. “You stay outside until it’s safe.”
Desiree nodded but started documenting from a distance, camera snapping from different angles.
Brandon led the entry. The floor was already wet, steam boiling off the concrete, and the interior walls glowed with a pulse that made it impossible to see more than ten feet. He barked through the radio that the main area was all-clear, then ducked into the back office.
That was where he saw it—the char ring, perfect, deliberate, and new. A twin of the other fires. He was about to radio in the find when the wall beside him gave a loud crack. It bounced around him like a gunshot.
He barely had time to notice a whole section of shelving falling toward him, the weight slamming into his left leg and pinning him to the floor. The pain shot up his spine, a white flare that nearly blacked him out. He heard the roof groan, letting him know that at any moment, it was going to give in as well.
Brandon tried to push the shelving off, but it wouldn’t budge. His leg was trapped beneath a heap of metal and a mess of old manuals. The heat was suddenly a living thing, clawing at his face mask, but he knew better than to take off his helmet.
