Page 13 of Over the Flames

Lawson paused in front of the living room window. Slowly leveling his gaze with hers, he brushed his coat out of the way of his weapon holstered on his belt. “I don’t think he did.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Stay here.” Thick muscle flexed along his legs as he hauled himself back onto the porch beside her. He tested the doorknob, and the door swung open. Unlocked. With a brief glance at her, Lawson pressed one long index finger against his lips and stepped across the house’s threshold. He withdrew his weapon.

A rush of warm, putrid air slammed into her as he disappeared into the darkness, and her stomach revolted. Covering her mouth with what she could of her coat sleeve, Arden turned away and listened for signs of movement—anything that would tell her if someone else was inside the home. The seconds ticked by, maybe a minute. Tension built down her sides the longer she waited, and she reached into her bag for the tactical baton he’d given her for their first anniversary. Something wasn’t right here. She couldn’t explain why or how she knew it, but with Lawson inside, she felt…exposed. Vulnerable. Extending the baton fully, she scanned the corner of the house where the grass bled to dirt before continuing on toward the backyard.

One step. Two. She descended down off the porch and followed the single, long-neglected flower bed to the corner of the home and slowed. Towering maple trees, possibly hundreds of years old, surrounded the property on three sides. Winter had stripped the branches bare, soggy foliage covering nearly every square inch of this side of the house, but the pattern of crushed leaves and disturbed mud drew her closer. A straight line from the front of the house to the back. Crouching, she gripped her baton and studied what looked like footprints frozen into the ground.

Confusion slid through her. Any number of storms had come through this area over the past six months. Even now the wind worked to disrupt the pattern of tracks she’d left behind, but the pattern in these leaves was fresh. At least within the past few weeks or so, if she had to guess. Noting the electrical and gas meters hadn’t been installed on this side of the house, Arden pushed to her feet, the baton heavy in her hand as she brushed a damp palm down her thigh. If the house had been abandoned as Lawson had theorized, who’d been here?

Movement registered from behind. “Arden?”

She spun around too fast and collided with the wall of solid muscle. A quick grip caught her baton midair a split second before it connected with Lawson’s head. Her heart shot into her throat as she struggled to catch her breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was you.”

“Everything okay?” He released her baton, straightening to his full height. Those mesmerizing gray eyes studied the tree line over her head, and a dangerous suspicion smoothed his expression.

“Yeah.” She turned back toward the trail of disturbed foliage, realizing most of it had been disrupted by the battering rains from last night’s storm. Threading her hair out of her face and behind her ear, she faced him. A pattern that resembled footprints wasn’t solid evidence, and even if he believed her about its existence, there was no way to tell who’d tracked through the property. “Were you able to find anything inside? Maybe something that would tell us where Phil Anderson might go? Like a lake house or what kind of vehicle he owned?”

Her nerve endings caught fire with the intensity in his eyes. “The house is empty, but there’s something you should see.”

Following in his footsteps, she detracted the baton and stored it back in the bottom of her bag. Fresh air had whipped away most of the stale odor from inside the house, but she couldn’t exhale hard enough to dislodge it from her senses completely. Her boots echoed off the hardwood floors, dust circulating with her every step as she crossed the threshold. Shadows arced across the living room to her right as the clouds rolled in a frantic dance and threw the small space into shadow.

“Make sure not to touch anything, and follow my footsteps exactly,” he said.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Fragments of the coffee table peppered the stained carpet, the TV screen shattered. A lamp she assumed had stood on one of the couch end tables lay across the floor. Papers and books had been crumpled and torn, and her heart rate kicked up a notch. “There was a struggle here.”

“I’ve already put in a call to Sheriff Sanders for a crime scene unit.” Lawson pointed to the spattered stains across the stained, light carpet. He avoided stepping into the room. “Once forensics compares the blood to the victims we’ve recovered so far, we’ll have a better picture of what happened here. There aren’t any signs of forced entry on this door. It’s possible Phil Anderson had every reason to want Baldwin Webb to pay for destroying his career. Maybe he invited Baldwin here, let him in, and Baldwin fought back.” He nodded toward the bloodied, round bookend in the middle of the floor, something that looked to have a lot of weight to it. Like a shot-put with engraved gold lettering. A National Newspaper Award. “Phil Anderson reaches for the closest thing he has for a weapon and finishes the job. Until we have the test results, this is all speculation, but it’s a start.”

Arden flinched at the images playing across her mind. Was that how Baldwin had been killed? Not by the fact his killer had forced gasoline down his throat and burned him to ash but by blunt force trauma? That didn’t sound right. None of this did. “No. I’ve followed enough homicide investigations to know if Phil Anderson had planned to bring Baldwin here to kill him, he would’ve taken the murder weapon with him when he got rid of the body. If I had to guess, that’s not Baldwin’s blood at all. I think it belongs to Phil Anderson, which would make him another victim. Not a suspect.”

The weight of Lawson’s attention crushed the air from her lungs as she caught a hint of surprise in the dark gray depths of his eyes. His sharp, angular features relaxed as he considered her for a moment longer, rocketing her body temperature higher. “I’m impressed.”

Shock exploded from the pit of her stomach as his approval stretched through her. The corner of her mouth lifted into a half smile, but Arden couldn’t let it go to her head. She wasn’t here to impress him. She wasn’t here to forgive the past. She was here to find out what’d happened to her closest friend and mentor, and somehow Phil Anderson was tied to that thread. “Assuming Phil Anderson was attacked here based off the evidence of a struggle, his killer would’ve had to get in and out of the house without being seen by neighbors.” She motioned toward the door. “I noticed a trail in the leaves along the side of the house that led into the back yard. It’d looked as though the grass had been stepped on recently, but the storm has disturbed a lot of the ground.”

“Let’s see where the trail leads to.” Lawson kept his path to the back door centered in the middle of the floor to avoid straying into possible evidence. Bright white cabinets and subway tile gave the kitchen a light and airy impression compared to the rest of the home and the blood staining the living room carpet. A lie to hide the terror that’d occurred within these walls. Lawson slowed ahead of her, bending at the waist as he extracted a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket and snapped them into place. Turning the back doorknob, he hauled it open slightly and crouched to inspect the deadbolt mechanism. “There are scratches around the keyhole.” He directed his attention out into the backyard and pushed to his feet. His mountainous shoulders filled the door frame. “Someone came in through the back door, surprised Phil Anderson, killed him, then must’ve gone around the side of the house to escape.” He opened the door wider, giving her a sightline to the back yard. “But not before dragging the body into the backyard.”

“How can you tell?” she asked.

“There’s blood on these stairs and drag marks leading straight to the fence.” Stepping around the dark spots she hadn’t noticed until now, Lawson extended his hand toward her to help her to the same.

She slid her palm into his and held onto him as he directed her around the blood evidence. An invisible quake weakened the backs of her knees at the contact, something so simple but earth-shattering. She hadn’t allowed anyone this close since the funeral, fearing any kind of connection would open the doors to the past, to the hurt, and her chest constricted as she realized how warm he was. How good it felt to feel his skin pressed against hers, which was ridiculous. He was holding her hand to help her avoid stepping on blood. There was nothing romantic behind the gesture, nothing that proved he cared about her anymore.

Once at the bottom, Arden released her ex-husband’s hand and forced herself to focus on his path to the fence. She had to follow his every step, had to avoid contaminating the evidence. Studying the flattened trail of grass, she traced it to the corner of the house where she’d felt she hadn’t been alone. As though the trees had been watching her, waiting for her to venture farther. A familiar odor settled at the back of her throat as she neared the shed. “There’s something in there. I can smell it.”

Lawson lifted the latch on the shed. Old hinges screamed in protest as he swung the barn-door-like doors wider and stepped back.

Arden covered her mouth and nose as best she could before the fumes dove deep into her lungs, but after a moment, she realized there weren’t any. Only the faint scent of gasoline filled the air and was swept away a moment later. Her eyes stung, blood rushing to her ears. There was no way to tell if the remains bound to the chair in front of her belonged to Phil Anderson, but they couldn’t deny the connection between them and the previous two victims in this case. Black, crusted skin peeled from the victim’s body as gusts shook the trees above, the victim’s mouth frozen in agony. Like Baldwin’s had been. She stumbled back as bile built in her throat. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Shaking her head, she tried to dislodge the truth right in front of her. “I don’t… I don’t understand. Phil Anderson hasn’t been seen for weeks. He’s been in his own shed all this time?”

Lawson leaned down and picked up a bent frame of wire-rimmed eyeglasses she hadn’t noticed until now. He brought them up enough for Arden to recognize the shape before he turned back to study the remains. They matched the frames Phil Anderson had been pictured with in his Daily Herald bio. “We thought he was the one who’d come after Baldwin for plagiarism, but it looks like Phil Anderson has been here for quite some time.”

Chapter Twelve

They were back to square one.

The original theory of the crime—that Phil Anderson had taken revenge for losing his job, his marriage, his life on a man who’d supposedly plagiarized his work—didn’t explain the fact the journalist had obviously been killed prior to Jacqueline Day and Baldwin Webb. The medical examiner—Dr. Vanessa Moss—had estimated Phil Anderson’s time of death two months prior, leaving no opportunity for the former Daily Herald journalist to kill the other two victims. But Lawson couldn’t ignore the fact all the victims had been journalists for papers in Washington State, and every single one of them had been burned beyond recognition.

There was a connection there. Something he hadn’t uncovered yet.

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