Page 50 of Burning Truth

The detective shook her head, sighing. “I’m glad you’re okay. Did you recognize anything about the bomb, or the setup?”

Severn shook his head. He pulled the mask off his face. “I think he was either here watching, or he had us undersurveillance. He would want to see what happened. He would need to see what happened. And he’s going to be pissed that we got out.”

She nodded, looking grim. “That’s already occurred to me. I’ll let the chief know we may be in for a bumpy ride.”

The detective turned and headed toward the sergeant that had taken the C4. Severn nodded his head at Dan, who had been lurking in the background behind the detective. Something in his expression let Severn know he had news. With a wave, he slipped off the ambulance gurney and crossed the few feet to Dan. Addie tucked herself in at his side.

“What?” Severn leaned his head down to his guard.

“I found where he was watching you,” Dan said. “And I might have pictures of him.”

Dan showed him the game cam he had wrapped in a shirt. With a head jerk, Severn moved them toward the truck. He’d been released by the ambulance crew and advised to go to the emergency department if he had problems breathing, but he knew he wouldn’t.

They had an arsonist to catch.

15

As they drove back to Lost and Found, Dan explained that he’d found disturbed earth beneath a tree stand, like the guy had fallen out or something. He’d taken pictures of a very definite body shape where the summer foliage had been broken down.

“And how far away was this deer stand,” Addie asked. She still had a death grip on Severn’s hand as he drove, but neither one of them seemed to want to let the other go. He’d pressed a kiss to her lips as he’d helped her into the truck, and as soon as he was settled and on the road back to the office, he’d reached for her hand again. She was not complaining, even though it was mid-eighties outside.

“It was across the street in a stand of trees. There’s a rectangle of about thirty acres of woods, and the stand was fairly new. No way to know if he put it up or the landowner. I’m going to assume the landowner, because they would have been the ones to strap the game cam around that opposite tree. It has a perfect view of the tree with the stand in it, as well as the woods beyond it.”

Man, if luck was with them, they could possibly see the arsonist that had been stalking her.

Severn cleared his throat again, and she knew his throat had to be raw. There had been a lot of smoke billowing out of the van, and both Jake and Severn had been breathing it in. Jake had been transported to the hospital for smoke inhalation. Since he’d been sitting higher in the driver’s seat, and unable to move, he’d taken the brunt of the smoke. Severn had been on the floor of the van, away from most of it. Though his legs had been red from the proximity of the flames. She’d seen that herself.

Later, she’d head to the hospital to check on Jake.

After they looked at the memory card from the game cam.

Parker met them at the front door of the building. “You okay, buddy?” he asked, reaching for Severn’s shoulder.

Addie watched Severn nod, then cough. His skin was dark from the smoke, and he reeked. She wondered if they had a shower here he could clean up in.

Parker led the way up the stairs to Gabbie’s office and they all crowded inside. Gabbie wrinkled her nose at Severn’s smell, and tossed him a bottle of water, then took the memory card from Dan. She slid it into a device, then reached for her mouse. Within seconds, Gabbie had pictures up on the large TV where they’d watched footage before. Severn sank down into the chair, and Addie sat in the one beside him. Once again, he reached for her hand.

Addie’s stomach was in knots as she watched green pictures of woods flash by. They needed a break in this situation so badly.

Then something tan flashed on the screen. Gabbie paused, but it was just a deer. She started scrolling again. There was a flash of dark blue. Gabbie stopped and scrolled back. There were jeans and tennis shoes, heading up the ladder to the tree stand. Just the lower half of the man.

Gabbie went to the next one, and Addie could have leapt for joy. She settled for squeezing Severn’s hand.

There was a man laying in the grass at the base of the tree, his hands held upward like he’d just been holding onto something. He was a little lopsided, like he had something on his back. Maybe a backpack. She watched as he tried to sit up slowly. The game cam was about twenty feet from the base of the tree, and the quality wasn’t great, but they could see his face in profile. Longish nose, light, wispy brown hair. He looked very average, and a little familiar. He was scowling in pain, and Addie hoped he’d broken something.

“Is that BrikBrak?” she whispered.

“Well, he’s not wearing camo, so he’s definitely not hunting. And the time stamp lines up. It looks like he fell right after Severn made it out of the van,” Dan said, and she saw he was right.

“That’s him, then,” Severn said.

The man sat, dazed, and it looked like he was struggling to breathe. If he’d fallen out of the tree stand, it had obviously knocked the breath out of him.

The man glanced toward the mechanic’s lot, and they finally got a full-face look. Gabbie paused the video and swung her chair around. She started typing furiously into a second keyboard, and it looked like she took a screenshot of the man’s face.

“I’ve seen him somewhere,” Addie murmured. “But I can’t remember where exactly.”

She’d seen and talked to so many people in the past few months. There was no way she could remember everyone’s name. She could remember faces, though, and this one definitely seemed slightly familiar.

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