Page 30

The smoke is visible from two blocks out. A dark column rising against the afternoon sky, wrong and ugly against the skyscraper backdrop. By the time Nash pulls to the curb, Fletcher’s people have already taped off the block, and two pack enforcers I recognize are keeping civilians back from the perimeter.

Firefighters are still blasting water through the windows, and there are no active flames I can see, but what’s left of Solano’s is still smoldering.

The new sign is gone. The windows are blown out, frames black and scorched. The front wall has partially collapsed inward, exposing the skeleton of the dining room where this morning there had been locals holding newspapers and Bobby at the bar and Claire making fancy lattes with the focused pride of someone who had worked hard to build a life worth being proud of.

I take it in for exactly three seconds.

Then I move toward it.

Nash follows, silent as a ghost.

Donahue meets me at the tape line. “Accelerant,” he says without preamble. “Multiple points of origin; kitchen, back storeroom, the bar. Whoever did this knew the layout.”

Of course they did.

“Crow?” I ask, my voice too high, but I don’t care.

“Over here.” Donahue leads me around the side of the building to where a pair of EMTs are working out of their ambulance in the narrow alley. Crow is sitting against the wall with his forearms resting on his knees, a burn dressing wrapped around his right hand and forearm, soot darkening his face and neck. My heart swells at the sight of him, and I find myself able to draw a breath that felt stuck before.

He looks up when he hears me coming, and his expression does the thing it does when he’s holding himself carefully together.

I crouch in front of him. He looks alive. He also looks like Ramsey burned something out of him that had only just started growing back.

“Hey,” I say, my heart breaking for the hollow look he wears.

“Hey,” he says.

“How bad?”

“Burns on my arm. Smoke inhalation.” His jaw tightens. “I'm fine.”

“Where’s Claire?”

He tips his head toward the end of the alley. I stand and find her sitting on the back bumper of the ambulance, a thermal blanket around her shoulders, a cut along her hairline already cleaned and butterflied shut. She’s staring at the ground with the emptiness of shock.

Even when I walk over to her, she doesn’t look up. “I tried to get to him,” she says. Her voice is flat. Scraped out.

“Who?” I ask.

“Bobby. He was at the bar when it started, and I went back, and Crow—" She stops. Swallows. “Crow pulled me out, but I couldn’t…”

“It’s okay.”

I take her hand, squeezing tight against the cold clamminess.

“I almost had him.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She finally looks at me. Her eyes are red-rimmed, not from crying but from smoke. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He just worked here.”

The words sit in my chest like stones.

“No,” I agree. “He didn’t.”

She looks back at the ground. I wrap both my hands around hers, which are cold despite the blanket. After a moment, her fingers turn and grip mine with a strength that tells me the shock is already starting to wear off. The grief is coming next, and I will sit here for as long as it takes for her to process it and come out the other side.

Without moving away from her, I do a quick scan of the area, assessing.