Page 7 of Over the Flames

“The time of death suggests the killer wrote that message to lure you to the scene.” Lawson’s eyes burned in the dim light from the tablet between them, and a wash of awareness flooded over her. “What makes you think Baldwin had the report at all? The killer could’ve tricked him into going there with the promise of information the same as they lured you.”

She folded her arms to add that small bit of protection he seemed to strip from her with every look. Studying the edges of the tablet, she noted the slightly dented corner on the lower left. The person who’d forced her mentor into that chair, who’d burned him alive, had been at that warehouse when she’d arrived. Arden had no doubt about that. “The sound I heard before I found him, it sounded like something metallic crashing against the cement. It could’ve been the killer trying to destroy the tablet, but I didn’t notice any other footprints in the ash while I was there. Baldwin’s entire life was on this device, all of his work. Why go through the trouble of destroying your victim’s tablet if there isn’t anything on it you didn’t want the world to see?”

“The killer could’ve had any number of reasons, assuming that was the sound you heard. Both Jacqueline Day and Baldwin Webb were murdered with a viscousness that matches cases I’ve seen where the killer didn’t just want to kill their victim. They wanted to destroy every part of them. Their bodies, their families, their friends, their reputations,” Lawson said. “Do you know what Baldwin might’ve been working on before he showed up to that warehouse?”

Jacqueline Day had been murdered. Hollowness spread in her gut as she counted the ten-digit configuration on the device’s screen over and over. She pinched the fresh cut on her thumb with her index finger to stay in the moment. “He didn’t tell me. He always kept his work to himself until he was ready to publish, but our editor might know.”

“All right. I’ll run through some of Baldwin’s past articles and put a call into your editor when the phone lines are back online. See if anything connects back to Jacqueline Day or might shed some light on a reason he could’ve been killed.” Lawson stood, powerful thighs stretching the boundaries of his damp slacks, and collected Baldwin’s tablet from the bed. “You should get some rest. It’s been a long day. As soon as the DOT reopens the ferries, I’ll assign a protective detail to your apartment, and you can go home.”

That was it? He’d rushed into her life in a haze of blue and red patrol lights and interrogation questions only to throw her back to the mainland when he was finished with her? No. She hadn’t come this far to stop now. Baldwin’s killer was out there. She stood, highly sensitive to the fact his oversized shirt revealed a lot more beneath the fabric than she’d expected when she’d put it on. “I’m not going to stop, Lawson. You can send me back to the city. You can try to keep me at arm’s length from your investigation or have me arrested for taking that tablet from the scene. You can try to get me fired, but it was my friend who I found in that warehouse. Someone took him from me, and I want to know why. I’m going to do whatever it takes to uncover the truth. With or without your help.”

“Haven’t you done enough?” His voice warned her not to push. “You’re not the police. You’re not the FBI. You’re a rookie, part-time journalist barely a year on the job, and the more you push, the more you put yourself at risk.” The anger eased from his expression the longer he stared at her through the dim cast of light from the fireplace below. “I’ve already buried my daughter. I don’t want to have to bury my wife, too.”

Her mouth dried. She didn’t know what to say to that, what to think, but his sentiments had come two years too late. He was right. She was a rookie. She didn’t have as much experience as other journalists in this city, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t find the truth. She had just as much of a chance as any of them. Baldwin had never backed down from a story, no matter how difficult, threatening, or career-ending it might be. Neither would she. He’d put her on this path. She owed him enough to see it through to the end.

Crossing her arms, she barricaded herself against the warmth Lawson’s sudden concern had shot through her. She wasn’t in his cabin because he’d been concerned about her safety or as an offer from that Good Samaritan heart of his. She was a witness, a witness who’d removed evidence from a scene, and a journalist who could uncover the truth before he and the rest of the Violent Crimes Unit had the chance. He wanted her isolated and unable to do her job, but she wasn’t the same women he’d been married to for six years. Losing their daughter had changed her, destroyed her. She was standing here because she’d picked up the pieces of her life and put herself back together. Without him. She had to remember that. “I’ll put you in touch with Baldwin’s editor as soon as I have a signal, but right now, I want to put this entire day behind me if you don’t mind.”

Understanding filtered across his expression, and he nodded. Baldwin’s tablet tucked between his hand and outer edge of his thigh, Lawson turned back the way he’d come. “Goodnight, Arden.”

“Goodnight, Lawson.” She watched his broad shoulders disappear as he descended the stairs back to the main floor, waiting. A minute. Maybe two. Sliding onto the edge of the bed, Arden pulled her bag into her lap and tugged her phone from the depths. She didn’t have Baldwin’s tablet passcode, but that didn’t leave her empty-handed. The oily smudges on the screen had been enough to give her the four most frequently used numbers.

She just had to find the right combination.

Chapter Six

The storm raged on until morning, but it was nothing compared to the anger stirring in his gut. Lawson stared at Baldwin Webb’s shattered tablet beside his own on the coffee table, not really seeing anything in particular. Arden had removed a piece of evidence from the scene and lied to him about it. Even worse, she’d destroyed any kind of chain of custody on the device if this investigation ended in court. What the hell had she been thinking?

Gray clouds swirled outside the front windows of the cabin. He wouldn’t get anywhere with the tablet, no matter how sure Arden was it held the answer as to why Baldwin Webb had been in that warehouse. Not without the tech to break through the manufacturer’s encryption.

Very little else had turned up at the scene. No fingerprints left behind, no recognizable tire treads in the gravel, or fibers for the crime scene unit to collect or photograph. Nothing. Not even the victim’s truck. The killer had seemingly walked into that warehouse, done what they’d come to do, and walked back out. A ghost.

He’d have to work backward.

Start with the victims.

Jacqueline Day and Baldwin Webb seemingly only had one connection between them: their jobs. As far as Lawson had been able to tell, they’d worked for separate papers, hadn’t lived near each other, or frequented the same restaurants or stores. The killer hadn’t chosen them because of how they looked, which was a dominate identifying factor in most serial cases. They were too different. It had to be something else, a piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit quite right. He’d gone back over a year to find similar crimes in and around the city and had come up with nothing. What was it about these two journalists that had drawn their killer’s attention? Their years on the job? The chance they were closing in on a secret the killer hadn’t wanted exposed? Lawson wouldn’t know until he was able to connect with Baldwin’s editor and question Seattle’s chief medical examiner to confirm if she’d leaked Jacqueline Day’s autopsy report.

He glanced at the open file on his tablet, studied the aftermath of smoke and ash in the side-by-side comparison of the crime scenes. Two kills. Two journalists. Same MO. Different locations. There had to be a reason the killer had chosen to kill Baldwin Webb in that warehouse and wanted Arden to be the one to find the body, but the fact cell towers were still down, along with data providers, meant he couldn’t do a damn thing until the storm cleared. As far as he knew, it’d been abandoned for more than a year, which made it the perfect location to get rid of a body, but this killer seemed to want these victims found. Wanted the world to know what they were capable of. The sooner he understood the victims, the better he’d understand the killer.

The crash of waves against the shore ripped him back into the moment. He was working against Mother Nature out here. He studied the timeline given in the ME’s preliminary report concerning Webb’s time of death and double-checked when the ferries had been shut down. He leaned back against the chair. “You didn’t have enough time to get off the island. You’re still here. Hiding.”

That only left eleven thousand possibilities in the suspect pool.

Movement registered from the loft above, and nervous energy stirred in his gut. He’d become far too conscious of every movement Arden had made throughout the night, every whisper in her sleep, every slither of sound from the sheets. He’d imagined those long legs peeking out from beneath the covers, her skin warm despite dropping temperatures, and he’d doomed himself to a night of discomfort and misery. Despite their differences—the end of their marriage—she was still the most enthralling and the sexiest woman he’d ever met. She’d had that effect on him since the moment she’d dumped an entire pint of beer into his lap her first week on the job as a waitress at his favorite bar on Second Avenue.

Arden wouldn’t give up investigating these killings herself. If anything, she’d dig in deeper, commit more, but he couldn’t afford to let her involvement distract him from this case. What’d happened between them didn’t matter. This wasn’t about him, wasn’t about her. He was on this damn island to find a killer and keep everyone in their deadly path from ending up like the first two victims. As soon as the ports were back up and running, Lawson would send her back to the mainland, and he’d see this case to the end.

“You’re up early.” Her sleep-addled voice resurrected the internal heat he’d ignored all night with three words. She’d tied the sweats he’d lent with what looked like a hair tie, which pooled the material at her ankles and fit awkwardly around her narrow waist, but Lawson had never been so grateful he’d packed an extra set of sleep clothes than he did right then. Arden headed straight for the bubbling coffee machine on the kitchen counter and set about searching the cabinets for a mug. “You were still going by the time I fell asleep around three.”

He was, but not to work on the case. Standing, he forced one foot in front of the other toward the kitchen to show her where he’d found the mugs, and not focusing on the fact she’d obviously been as attuned to him as he’d been to her during the night. Reaching for the cabinet door near her head, he inadvertently trapped her between the counter and his body as he pulled a mug from the shelf. She turned into him, gaze down, and satisfaction raced through his veins. Good to know there were still some things that could get through that guarded exterior. He handed her the coffee cup. “I caught a couple of hours.”

“Were you able to make any progress with Baldwin’s tablet?” Turning her back to him, she set about pouring coffee into her mug, and his instincts prickled. She wasn’t asking for the sake of the case. She wanted information for her own investigation. Setting the coffee pot back into the machine, she held her ground between him and the granite countertop.

“No.” He reached around her, his hand brushing against the bare skin of her arm, and his pulse rocketed into his throat. His gut tightened at the sound of her slight gasp. So soft, he would’ve missed it if he hadn’t been standing right behind her. Lawson poured a cup for himself then stepped back to give them both the distance they needed. Wind screeched through the edges of the windows. “There’s only a certain number of field agents the bureau allows to carry the decryption to break passwords on smart devices. I’m not one of them. I’ll have to take the tablet back to the field office so the tech guys can get their hands on it.”

Even if he’d been able to access Baldwin Webb’s data, he couldn’t share what he’d found with anyone outside the investigation. There was too much at risk.

“I think I’ve come up with a way to unlock it.” Setting her low back against the counter, she took a sip from her mug, those brilliant eyes leveling on him. Waiting. Thick waves of blonde hair fell around each side of her collarbone, highlighting the angles in her face and the hint of a smile. If she wasn’t so determined to prove the woman he’d once fallen in love with hadn’t ever existed, he might think she was trying to charm him. “Your CSU team couldn’t save Baldwin’s phone at the scene, which means the killer most likely threw it into the fire to destroy the device and everything that was on it. We might be able to use the tablet to recover the call log or deleted messages since all of Baldwin’s devices share the same cloud storage.”

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