Page 16 of Up In Smoke

He wasn't normally ashamed of the car. He simply spent his money on other things. Unlike Kalan, who drove a sleek sports car and flaunted it, Luke was a cosigner and often mortgage payer on his mother's small home right now. The shitty Chevy represented what was left over after sending Mario to rehab and making sure his mother had a roof and his own rent was paid. He wasn't quite ready to fold Ivy Dean into the passenger seat.

“Why don't we head back to my place? Or yours?”

Ivy shook her head. “Not to Jo's. She's home today sleeping.”

She didn’t comment that maybe Luke should be, too, since he worked the same job as her friend. But she stalked away, getting into her own car. It was clear as he turned the key and started the engine that she was going to make him go first. She was still tailing him; Ivy wasn't going to let him shake her off. When Ivy Dean wanted answers, she found them.

Maybe the car ride would be a good chance to put his thoughts together and be more organized before he opened his fat mouth. But he found himself pulling up her driveway as her garage door lifted, probably triggered from a remote in her car. He pulled into the open space in front of the house and followed her through the garage door into the kitchen.

He, too, shivered a little bit, not quite dressed for the cold snap that had decided to invade the town today. They'd had an ugly ice storm not that long ago. But the weather had kicked back and been relatively nice. That was about to be over.

Ivy walked through the kitchen, obviously wanting him to follow. They'd painted this space an inviting muted peach. The living room was a soft shade of sunshine. Ivy liked color—and that wasn't something he would have guessed from the outfits she wore to work.

As he stepped inside, the large empty space to his right let him know that she hadn’t found a new refrigerator yet. The cabinet doors they had stained together were now hung. Ivy had been working even when he wasn't here. He got the impression that she merely slept at Jo's, then filled her hours at the library, earning her paycheck, and came back here and filled every spare minute with the task of putting her home back together.

He was in an apartment, so he didn't have that kind of investment, but he admired her for hers. As much as he'd been amazed by her mad carpentry skills that she'd never quite let on beyond that “barn raising” comment, he’d held his tongue. Now wasn’t the time. She’d managed to hold onto her mad all the way from the edge of town.

She stalked into the middle of the living room, still an empty space that only made her anger bigger. There was no coffee table, no chairs, no TV, and he wondered if he could scrape together the cash to replace the model Jo had told him was lost in the fire. But Ivy wasn't thinking about furniture.

She turned, arms crossed in the middle of the sunny space, and stared him down, her own expression as cold as the wind that was kicking up outside as the sun fell. “Why did someone try to burn down my house, Luke? Because it belonged to your old friends?”

It hit him that he'd lied to her about that.

He told himself he wouldn't lie to her, but he’d been fudging the truth too much. It wasn’t all for her own protection either, some of it was for his.

“But it wasn't your friend's house, was it?” she demanded, moving side to side until he finally looked right at her.

Shaking his head no, he watched as everything snapped together for her.

“This wasyourhouse.”

Why did she have to be so damn smart?Even the chief hadn't caught on to it yet. Or if he had, he hadn't called Luke on it. So maybe it was that Ivy was smart and had an incredibly low tolerance for bullshit.

He nodded. “The arsonist is targeting places that I know.”

“He's after you?” Ivy demanded answers where he didn’t really have any. “He came after me because of you?”

“I don't think that's it.”

“Which part? That he's after you or why he came after me?”

“None of it,” Luke said. Seeing that she didn’t believe him, he tried to explain. “I mean, the arsonist could be after me, as in, trying to kill me and make it look like an accident. Honestly, it could be that he’s trying to frame me.”

He watched as her eyes flew wide. She clearly hadn't considered that possibility. Even though she'd seemed to put together that he was intricately connected to the series of fires around town.

“Were all the fires in your homes?”

He shook his head but said, “We moved a lot. So there are more houses to hit if they want to do that.”

“That’s what you’re driving past when you loop the town.” The way she said it told him this wasn’t the first time she’d followed him around.Shit.

“They took out a place where I held a summer job. But Tiago worked there, too.”

“Tiago?”

“My oldest brother. My brothers lived in the houses with me and so did my mom. For a while so did my dad. But he left so I don't think this is about him.”

“You don't think the arsonistis himor you don't think they'retargetinghim?”

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