Page 3 of Over the Flames

“The only reason for the bureau to take over jurisdiction on this case is because they believe Jacqueline Day and Baldwin Webb were murdered by the same killer.” Her full mouth, thin nose, and sharp cheekbones were enough to convince the most hardened criminal to incriminate himself if given half the chance, but her charms hadn’t worked on him in a long time. “Is that your official statement, Special Agent Mitchell? That Jacqueline Day’s death wasn’t accidental as police originally reported?”

“Give us a minute,” Lawson said to the deputy. “I’ll get the rest of her statement myself.” Seconds ticked by, the air between them changing as the deputy gathered his things and closed the conference room door behind him. Leaving Lawson completely alone with the woman he’d vowed never to see again. “First, you know as well as I do any information you’ve collected during this investigation belongs to the FBI. You won’t be able to print any of it. Second, the medical examiner hasn’t been able to confirm the victim’s identity. So what makes you believe the remains you discovered belong to Baldwin Webb? What was your relationship with him, and why were you meeting him at that warehouse?”

“And you know as well as I do the public deserves to know whether or not there is a killer targeting victims right outside their front doors.” She scratched at something stuck to the glossy surface of the table. Calm, collected. Not at all the warm, open, and generous women he’d planned to spend the rest of his life with so long ago. She’d turned into someone he didn’t even recognize. “Baldwin is a colleague from the paper. As I told the deputy before you forced him out of the room, he messaged me to meet him at that warehouse, but he never showed. I haven’t been able to reach him on his cell or at the office, and his editor hasn’t heard from him. He said he had information for me concerning a possible homicide, but when I went inside to see if he was already there, I found a body instead.”

Times changed. Relationships changed. Hearts shattered. Lawson sat back in his chair. “A possible homicide. Did the meeting you scheduled with Baldwin have anything to do with the Jacqueline Day case?”

She didn’t answer. Because he already knew the answer.

“Tell me about the message Baldwin Webb sent you to meet him on the island.” Lawson slid the manila file folder—the one with the medical examiner’s initial findings from this newest scene—and opened it.

Color drained from her face and neck. She folded her arms across her chest, accentuating lean muscle under her light gray coat. Florescent lighting from above reflected off the plain white-gold Mother’s Day ring on her index finger. He couldn’t read the engraving from here, but the invisible knife in his gut twisted hard all the same. He hadn’t realized she’d kept it all this time. Reaching into her coat, she pulled her phone from her pocket and unlocked the screen. She set it on the table between them. “He texted me around 4:30 p.m. Said he didn’t think Jacqueline Day’s murder three days ago had been as accidental as the police had claimed, and I needed to meet him at that warehouse on Vashon Island in two hours so he could prove it.”

Her phone records confirmed receipt of the message in that time frame, as did the message itself on her phone’s screen. Lawson took note on the inside flap of the file. “Just the one message? Nothing else?”

“You can read the extent of the conversation right there on the screen yourself. Other than fact the ME found traces of gasoline in Jacqueline Day’s stomach, which he claimed he’d gotten from an early copy of the autopsy report, he didn’t respond.” Frustration edged into her voice, a change he knew all too well. Good to know he could still get past that wall of indifference after all this time. “I got to the warehouse. There was black smoke coming out of the building. I went inside to find the source. I heard someone else there, but when I went looking, I found the body tied to a chair and burned instead.” Her last word hitched higher. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Traces of gasoline in the first victim’s stomach. That detail hadn’t been made public. “The medical examiner hasn’t released Jacqueline Day’s autopsy report,” he said. “How did Baldwin Webb get a hold of it?”

“I don’t know.” The defiance in her voice said even if she was lying, she wouldn’t have given up another journalist’s source.

The pen in his hand hesitated over his notes, but he didn’t dare look up at her. Didn’t dare replay what she’d told him. “You said someone else was there?”

“Yes, I heard something drop onto the cement, but when I went to investigate, I didn’t see anyone. Only the remains.” Arden sank lower in her seat, her gaze focused straight ahead out the conference room window. She bit down on her thumbnail, an old habit he recognized when she was trying to calculate what to say next, and his instincts hiked into overdrive. She motioned toward the door. “I told all of this to that deputy who took my statement before you kicked him out.”

Heat flared into his neck and up his face. Someone else had been in the warehouse while the victim’s body smoldered, and she’d run straight at them. What the hell had she been thinking?

“Damn it, Arden.” His fingers curled tight around the pen in his hand. The evidence bag in his suit jacket pocket nearly burned a hole in his shirt. “You didn’t think to call police then? What if that’d been Baldwin’s killer, and you happened to stumble in on him trying to escape? Do you think he would’ve let you walk out of there alive, or was chasing the story more important than your life?”

Her eyes snapped to his. She sat a bit straighter, the fire she kept hidden behind multiple layers of emotional calmness breaking through to the surface. “I don’t need your concern, Agent Mitchell. It’s about two years too late for that.”

Blood drained from his face and neck. Instant resentment burned through him as she slid back into a neutral position in her chair.

“You might not be my wife anymore, but it’s my job to protect the public at all costs. That includes you,” he said.

“You can save your hero speech. I’ve heard enough of them over the years to know they’re nothing more than empty promises.” She pulled her bag closer to her body and shoved to her feet. “I’ve told you and the sheriff everything I know. Unless you’re going to arrest me for trespassing on private property, I’m leaving.” She maneuvered around the opposite end of the table, and Lawson found himself not wanting her to leave.

Defeat crushed the air from his lungs. She was right. He couldn’t keep her here without arresting her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t important to this investigation. She’d found the body, and that kind of trauma messed with the human brain of witnesses who hadn’t been trained to deal with it. The information he needed was in her head. He and Arden hadn’t exactly left their marriage on the greatest of terms, but his gut said she was trying to get out that door because she’d uncovered something at the scene, heard something. Something that would help him solve this case. He had one journalist in the morgue and possibly another on the way in a body bag. There was more to her statement, and he needed to know what it was before the killer added any other victims to his roster. “You’re not the only one who misses her.”

She wrenched open the conference room door, but hesitation slowed her escape. A waterfall of long, blonde hair shifted over her shoulder, creating a blockade between him and her expression. “Don’t you dare use her so you can keep me here.”

Her hand visibly tightened around the doorknob, and Lawson set his pen down, pushed back in his chair and stood. Rounding the table toward her, he caught another hint of her perfume and filled his lungs as much as he could. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that scent. Hell, if he was being honest with himself, he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed having a partner to come home to, but that wouldn’t stop him from getting what he needed from her when it came to this investigation.

Lawson pried her hand from the door. Instant warmth chased back the stiffness in his hands from freezing temperatures out at the scene, and he wrapped his grip around hers in an effort to hold onto that a bit longer. But there wasn’t anything warm about his ex-wife anymore. Not since she’d ripped their family apart. He read the small black letters engraved on the outside of her index finger ring. Rey Olivia. “I’m not the one who wanted to forget her.”

“Our daughter died.” Venom laced her voice, and his gut twisted with the cheap shot he’d taken to get her to stay. She wrenched her hand back. “I haven’t forgotten her. I read her name on this ring every day, and it drives me to be better.”

“Better?” He leveraged his hand on the edge of the door above his head. “You never were happy being where you are. Is that why you’re chasing this story? To prove you’re better than all of the other journalists in the city, to get the truth before any of them have a chance, even if it means lying to law enforcement about what happened at that scene?”

Two seconds. Three. Arden took a deliberate step back and neutralized her expression. “I’ve told you everything I remember, Agent Mitchell. If there are any other questions the FBI or the King County Sheriff’s Department has for me, contact my lawyer.”

He reached into his jacket and pulled the single evidence bag from within. Tossing it across the table, he watched her every move, every change in her expression as she studied the gold pocket watch the medicolegal investigator had recovered from what was left of the victim’s remains at the scene. The fire had destroyed the contents inside and erased the design stamped into the precious metal, but he had no doubt who Arden had found burning in that warehouse. His voice dropped into dangerous territory. Lawson leaned into her slightly and tapped the corner of the evidence bag. “You recognize that?”

A storm thundered in her eyes.

The watch, publicly photographed with the victim on several occasions, suggested Baldwin Webb had in fact been bound, drenched in gasoline, and set on fire in that warehouse.

“Gasoline itself doesn’t burn. It’s the vapors that ignite and spread. It burns around fifteen-hundred degrees, enough to warp this pocket watch, but according to the ME, the fat in the human body allows the flames to keep burning much longer. Like a candle. She was able to narrow down how long the body had been on fire before you got to the warehouse, Arden. Close to ninety minutes.” He pressed his hand into the table. “Which means that text message you received an hour before you found the victim? It couldn’t have been from Baldwin.”

---