Page 30 of Over the Flames

“Bandage them and give me a damn phone.” He took the phone one of the techs offered as they patch up another long scratch from his left elbow to his wrist, locking his back teeth against the pain. He punched Sheriff Sanders’s direct number and raised the phone to his ear. The line rang twice. Three times.

“Sanders,” she said.

Lawson brushed debris from his hair. “It’s me.”

“Please tell me you’re not the reason the entire Seattle Police Department is sectioning off four square blocks downtown due to an explosion in the middle of the city.” Authority and frustration bled into the sheriff’s voice as her siren echoed in the background.

“The killer had the pickup rigged to explode as soon as they abandoned the vehicle. There was no one inside before the explosion. They must’ve had a car already in position to make the switch.” Firefighters battled the flames from every angle, but the accelerant—most likely gasoline—only made the job harder. “Were you able to confirm the truck’s registration from the partial license plate I gave you?”

“I did. It’s Baldwin Webb’s truck, but I’m not sure how that is going to help us now,” Sheriff Sanders said. “Are you okay?”

“A few scrapes and bruises, but I’ll live.” He ignored the doubt in the EMTs expression and took in the condition of his SUV. “Where are you at? I need a ride.”

“Let me take a wild guess. Your vehicle is the one that’s also on fire.” Her patrol car chirped, echoing off the surrounding vehicles and through the phone at the same time, and he turned to search her out. Sheriff Sanders ended the call and flashed her lights.

Shirking the EMTs off, he handed back the tech’s phone. “Thank you.” He stumbled through the mass of police, firefighters, and other first responders. Pain shot up his right leg, but it wasn’t going to stop him from getting to Arden. The clock had started ticking the moment he’d given the killer the opportunity to take her. Wrenching open the passenger side door of Sheriff Sanders’s cruiser, Lawson collapsed inside. “We need to talk to Rose Hindley again.”

“The journalist who accused Baldwin Webb of plagiarism? Are we seriously not going to talk about the fact that this is a hell of a lot more than scrapes and bruises?” Her overly intelligent gaze studied him from head to toe, and in that moment, he had the distinct feeling the sheriff saw a lot more than the physical injuries he’d incurred. She twisted the steering wheel to flip the cruiser around. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“No!” His bellow filled the patrol car and forced Sheriff Sanders to step on the brakes. He struggled for breath, feeling coming back into his hands and feet. He’d suffered a concussion, but he’d never been thinking more clearly in his life. His ragged inhales and exhales broke through her hardened expression, and a hint of understanding dimmed the green in her eyes. Lawson clutched the dashboard. Arden had broken their deal not to publish the details of this investigation. He wasn’t denying that, but beneath the betrayal and invisible lacerations bleeding him dry inside, there was a patch where the hole Rey’s death had caused had been. His ex-wife had done that. In the span of three days, she’d brought him back from the brink of hopelessness, of fear, of ever feeling that kind of loss again. She’d made him whole, and he owed her more than their last conversation. “She’s out there because of me. Because I let my beliefs about how far she’d go to get this story get in the way of the truth. We had a deal. She wasn’t going to publish the details of this case in order to advance her career, and she broke that deal. Arden Olsen is the most driven, frustrating, inflexible woman I’ve met in my life.”

The truth surfaced as his heart rate decelerated. There wasn’t anyone out there like her, and he’d gone against his word to keep her safe. He’d abandoned her, just as he had after Rey’s death. Son of a bitch, he was an ass. “But she’s also the most protective, creative, and determined, and she goes out of her way to help the people she cares about. She confronted the fact her mentor had been murdered in order to help us with this investigation, and she sure as hell doesn’t deserve to be burned alive. No one does.”

“You love her.” Sheriff Sanders let her grip slide down the steering wheel, and pressure built behind his sternum. She shook her head, long, red hair slipping from the low ponytail at the back of her head. She slammed on the accelerator, and the car jolted forward. The sheriff hit the lights and activated the siren as she fishtailed onto the next street and gunned it toward the east side of the city, and Lawson braced for impact. “I guess now would be a good time to tell you Arden wasn’t planning on publishing the details of this case to advance her career, Agent Mitchell. She contacted your special agent in charge for permission to publish a series of articles concerning the investigation under the pen name Baldwin Webb and the two other victims were using in order for their families to receive the payments issued by the paper.”

“What?” Confusion ripped through him as they took another hard turn. Arden had gone over his head? “How the hell do you know that?”

“The FBI Seattle office called me to vouch for her. As much as I didn’t like the idea of a civilian involved in the investigation, the decision was up to you as the case agent, and I couldn’t deny her insight into the case. She’s done a lot of good.” Sheriff Sanders pulled the cruiser into the ferry parking lot, and they rushed to board the next boat with minutes to spare. Maneuvering the vehicle into position, she shoved it into park. “It’s none of my business what happens between you and your ex-wife, but she didn’t break your deal. I believe Arden Olsen was trying to do what she could to pay back Baldwin Webb for everything he’d done for her by telling his story.”

Lawson leaned back in his seat, still dizzy from Sheriff Sanders’s defensive maneuvers through the city as the boat pushed off from the dock. Shame worked up his throat as his and Arden’s last conversation filtered through his head. Why hadn’t Arden told him about her plan? The answer settled crushed him. He hadn’t given her a chance to explain, so afraid of letting the loss he’d felt with Rey win again, but Sheriff Sanders had been right. He loved Arden. He’d undeniably, inexplicably, irresponsibly fallen for her, and, faced with the possibility she’d put her career before everything that’d occurred between them, he’d destroyed any chance they’d had at a future. “Why wouldn’t she tell me?”

“Probably to avoid exactly what happened between you,” Sheriff Sanders said. “You come off a bit intense sometimes. Just something I’ve noticed working this case with you. Works for interrogations. Not so much the people who care about you.”

“I’ll be sure to work on that after I save my wife from a sadistic killer.” Anxiety clawed up his throat as the ferry docked on the northwest side of Vashon Island twenty minutes later, and Sheriff Sanders eased the patrol car off the boat. They sped to Rose Hindley’s house and skidded to a stop outside the small, yellow, cottage-style home he and Arden had visited a few days before. Nothing had physically changed between that first visit and now, yet an internal shift had tipped the entire world on its axis. Slamming the car door behind him, Lawson unholstered his weapon and rushed through the picket fence gate up toward the front door, Sheriff Sanders close on his heels. He pounded his fist into the wood as hard as he could in rhythm with his racing heart rate. Seconds ticked by, a minute.

No answer.

Nodding to Sheriff Sanders, he tested the doorknob and twisted. The door swung open. “Ms. Hindley, FBI! Come out with your hands where I can see them.” His voice echoed off the bare walls and hardwood flooring, but there was no answer. “Ms. Hindley?” He stepped over the threshold and swung high as Sheriff Sanders entered and cleared the other side of the living space. They moved as one through the main level then branched off as they hit the hallway leading to a series of rooms. He kicked in the first door, a small four-piece bathroom. “Clear.”

Sheriff Sanders threw open the door opposite the bathroom and vanished inside. “Clear.”

He moved down the length of the hallway toward the last bedroom, presumably the master, and pushed open the door. Empty. Something wasn’t right here. Rose Hindley had hired a nanny to care for her son while she worked, but there wasn’t evidence of toys, children’s laundry, snacks. Nothing but the baby monitor.

“Agent Mitchell, you’re going to want to see this,” Sheriff Sanders said from down the hall.

“What do you have?” He retraced his path back to the room the sheriff had cleared and holstered his weapon. Angling into the room, he took in the baseball theme, the twin-size bed, the photos of a woman remarkably close to Rose Hindley in appearance and a boy about six or seven smiling in multi-colored frames. A cough registered from nearby, and he spun toward the closed closet.

Sheriff Sanders pointed to the nightstand beside the bed where a baby monitor and a phone had been left powered on. The cough broke through the silence again, and instant recognition charged through him.

The series of coughs he and Arden had heard through the baby monitor while they’d interviewed Rose Hindley… These were the same bursts, the same duration. Lawson raised his gaze to Sheriff Sanders’s. “Rose Hindley told me she had a son. We heard him coughing through the baby monitor while we questioned her in the living room.”

Sheriff Sanders unpocketed an evidence bag from her jacket. “If that’s the case, why go through the trouble of recording him on this phone to play back later?”

“Because she was using him as an alibi.” The pieces of the puzzle fell into place the longer he stared at the photos of the woman with the young boy placed on the dresser. Lawson picked one up, studying the woman’s bone structure, the same pine green eyes as Rose’s. The likeness was undeniable. A few nips and tucks, a bottle of bleach blonde hair color, and he could almost superimpose his memory of Rose Hindley over the woman in the photos. “Rose Hindley is Salena Greer. She’s our killer. She faked her death then tasered and burned all three victims, and plans on doing the same to Arden because of an article accusing her of poisoning her son.”

“That’s some deep-seeded rage right there, but why kill Phil Anderson, Jacqueline Day, and Baldwin Webb?” Sheriff Sanders asked.

“They got in her way.” He flipped the frame over and removed the photo inside, folding it in half before tucking it into his shirt pocket. “Baldwin Webb was looking into the Vashon Chemical class-action lawsuit. Rose Hindley—Salena Greer—is one of the plaintiffs, and she couldn’t afford them ruining her plan to get to Arden before she was ready.”

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