Page 25 of Over the Flames

A laugh rumbled through him as he took the photo, setting his head back against the wall. “I remember the one hundred-and three-degree fever. She was so mad when she woke up and realized she’d missed the whole thing.”

“Until you gave her a jar of seashells you’d spent the entire day collecting for her. She carried those things everywhere, even to bed, for months.” Arden stared down at the photo in her lap, one ankle resting under her opposite knee. The whisper of a smile dissolved from her mouth. “You were a good father, Lawson, and a good husband, and filing for divorce… It wasn’t about you. When Rey died,”—her throat worked overtime at the mention of their daughter’s name—“I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was the one who raised my brothers and sister growing up. I was the one who was home with our baby. My whole life, I was responsible for taking care of someone else, and without that, I disappeared into a cavern of emptiness. It sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but losing her felt like I’d failed, and that terrifies me.”

Lawson wrapped his hand around her shin and rubbed circles into the muscle there. “You were never a failure, and you were never to blame. If it hadn’t been for you, we wouldn’t have the memories we have left of her. You gave us that, Arden. You gave everything to make sure she had a better life than you did. You made Rey happy for the short time we had her, and I will never be able to repay you for that. I know you’re hurting—we both are—but she wouldn’t want us to spend the rest of our lives drowning in grief while we still have reason to keep going, while we have each other.”

“You’re right.” She swiped her hand beneath her nose and stacked the photos into a neat pile. A humorless laugh escaped past her lips. “She never did like it when we were fighting anyway.”

“She made us hold hands until we said we were sorry to each other.” Lawson peeled away from the wall and reached for her, intertwining his fingers with hers. Comfort spread from his palms, up his arm, and into his chest. “I’m sorry. For everything.”

“I’m sorry, too. For everything.” Her smile was back. She squeezed his hand, igniting an intimacy far more intense than the passion they’d shared the previous night, and triggered an explosion that destroyed the last barriers between them. “Maybe after this case is closed and before you take on your next assignment, we can talk more about Rey over coffee?”

“Are you asking me out?” He couldn’t stop the burst of amusement shooting through him. Without the bitterness, the anger, and denial clawing at the hollowness in his chest, Lawson studied his ex-wife with new appreciation. If it hadn’t been for her insight into this case, King County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI would still be stuck behind red tape, and he’d have never faced the truth. He was still in love with her. Hints of the warmth he’d fallen prey to years ago showed at the edges of her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Over the past few days, her gaze had brightened, her demeanor had lightened, and he’d uncovered glimpses of a woman more than capable of obliterating his distrust of the media.

His phone pinged from the other room, reality piercing through the bubble they’d created around them. Right. The case. “Damn it.”

“Your request to have the chemical warehouse files from Phil Anderson’s laptop forwarded to me was approved a few minutes ago. That’s what I came in here to tell you.” Tugging her hand from his, she gathered the clothing she’d kept in the box and handed them over. “As much as I hate to give up the T-shirt I stole from you after the divorce, it’s probably better you don’t continue your hunt for a killer with nothing but one of my towels on.”

“Why did you take it?” he asked.

Her bottom lip parted from the top, homing his attention to her perfect mouth all over again. Running a hand through her shortened hair, Arden cast her gaze to the box he’d pulled from her closet. Undertones of pink climbed up her neck and flushed her cheeks. “I guess I kept it for the same reason I’ve kept the tactical baton you gave me for our first anniversary. I was ready to find out who I was on my own for the first time in my life, but I didn’t want to be…alone. Having something of yours helped.”

“You never have to be alone again.” Gripping her wrist, Lawson tugged her into him. Her knees pressed against his hips as she straddled him, and blood immediately flooded to his groin. Threading his fingers into the hair at the back of her neck, he reveled in the feel of the freshly cut strands sliding across his skin. He notched his chin higher, staring up at her. “You’ll always have me.”

Arden encircled his wrists with long fingers and dipped her mouth to meet his, and he realized the interruption to his life, to his obsession for answers, to his mental dependency on his career, had been a long time coming. He’d been waiting for relief from the pain. He’d been waiting for her.

He hooked a foot beneath her shin and pressed her into the floor as she’d done the night before in bed, never breaking their kiss. He wanted her unlike anything he’d ever wanted in his life. Right there on the damn bathroom floor. Forever. The investigation, the Arsonist, the resentment between them—he didn’t give a shit about any of it. There was only Arden. Always at the back of his mind, always under his skin. He bit back a hiss as she nicked his bottom lip with her teeth, and a wave of tingling cascaded from his scalp to his toes. They’d been married for six years, but during that time the pure, physical need constantly simmering under his skin had never been this intense. Something had changed. Would it be this way between them from now on?

“Lawson.” His name on her lips, breathy and uncontrolled, nearly threw him over the edge. “Your phone is ringing.”

He stilled, the muted vibration breaking through the pound of his heartbeat behind his ears. Despite the fact holing up in her apartment with her had felt like an alternate reality they’d created together, they couldn’t ignore the fact a killer was still out there, that they both had a job to do. He dropped his head against her shoulder, securing the towel around his waist as he rolled his weight off of her and collapsed onto his back beside her. “Fine.”

“I’ll take that kiss as a ‘yes’ to coffee after the case is closed.” Staring up at the ceiling, she laughed, her whole body shaking.

Craning his head toward her, Lawson worked to engrave the sound into his brain. Hell, she was beautiful, warm, intelligent. She was…everything. “It’s a date.”

“In order to close the case, though, you’re going to have to get dressed.” She pushed off the floor, raking the length of his body from head-toe, and an invisible heat flamed as though she’d physically touched him. “Such a shame.”

“If you keep looking at me like that, I might forget we’re supposed to be working a case altogether.” Shoving to his feet, Lawson offered her a hand and pulled her to stand. He pressed his mouth to hers, memorizing her feel beneath his touch, her taste, and finally had enough sense to let her go. “I hope you have rations and water because I’m happy to never leave this bathroom again.”

“Sure, if you consider ranch dressing and ketchup as rations.” She kissed the inside of his wrist before pulling away, her laugh trailing after her as she headed back into the living space. “Get dressed, Agent Mitchell. You’re going to need your strength.”

His phone pinged with an incoming message. After discarding the towel, he dressed in the jeans and T-shirt Arden had hung onto all these years, almost too tight now that he’d put on more muscle, and collected the device from the nightstand beside her bed. Five missed calls. Seven text messages. Two voicemails. He scrubbed a hand down his face and hit the return dial for Sheriff Sanders. The line rang twice before a click registered.

“If the words ‘good’ or ‘morning’ come out of your mouth, I’m going to have you arrested,” Sheriff Sanders said.

“I take it Brent Hayward’s alibi checked out. He moved Phil Anderson’s body into the shed, but he’s not our guy.” Lawson bit back the mounting frustration as he rounded into the living room and caught sight of Arden at her desk. “Was the medical examiner able to provide any other evidence as to who our killer might be? How tall, male or female, any particulates in the ash around the bodies?”

“If you’d checked your phone between the hospital and wherever the hell you are now, you’d know the answer to that question, Agent Mitchell.” Defeat interlaced Sheriff Sanders’s voice. “I emailed you the autopsy reports for Phil Anderson, Jacqueline Day, and Baldwin Webb. The ME discovered burn marks on all three victims, two prongs to the neck from behind, deep enough they left evidence on the bone. The bodies were burned so badly, she hadn’t spotted it before now.”

“The victims were tasered? A commercial device wouldn’t burn all the way down to the bone.” The details lined up in his head. “Had to be something stronger, possibly homemade. Is there anything else she might’ve missed?”

“Not as far as I know,” Sheriff Sanders said. “But we were able to back track ownership records for the warehouse where Baldwin Webb was killed. The property belongs to Vashon Chemical. They had to close it down due to financial strain from a class-action lawsuit claiming their waste was poisoning the island’s water supply. I sent you a list of plaintiffs who filed to be part of the lawsuit. You should be getting it now.”

“The water supply.” Brent Hayward had been right. Exposing the Arsonist’s real identity hadn’t been the only project all three victims had worked on together, but that didn’t explain the differences between the killings. “Jacqueline Day was killed in her vehicle, and Phil Anderson on his own property, but Baldwin Webb was lured to and killed in that warehouse. Give me a minute.” Lawson scanned through his email and tapped the file Sheriff Sanders had sent. Three columns of names. He settled his gaze on Arden, and his instincts kicked into overdrive. Vashon Chemical owned the warehouse. They wouldn’t risk losing the property by committing murder to warn off anyone who looked too closely at their past waste disposal protocols, and Baldwin Webb’s colleagues were already dead. So why leave the third victim there? Lawson straightened as a single name registered from the list of class-action lawsuit plaintiffs. Son of a bitch. He should’ve seen it before now. He sent Sheriff Sanders a message while he still had her on the line and raised the phone to his ear. “I just sent you a request for a background check on one of the names from the list. The killer was sending a message, and I have a good idea who it was meant for.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Lawson ended his phone call, his shoulders under an invisible weight far heavier than a few moments before. “That was Sheriff Sanders. She said the ME found taser marks on all three victims, strong enough to burn down to the bone. The killer incapacitated each of the victims before soaking them in gasoline and lighting the match. If the taser is homemade, there’s no way we can tie the device to the murders unless we get our hands on it.”

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