Page 63 of Up In Smoke

“Drink more.”

“I'm good.” The harsh cadence of her words was enough to make him smile.

Shit. Had she just made herself into a worthy opponent?

She curled her fingers around the bottle, the weight of the water comforting. But he'd managed to give her one of the high-end recyclable bottles that Leo favored for sustainability. It was made of less plastic and crumbled down to almost nothing. Unless she could throw the contents in his face, the water was worthless as a weapon.

“Now that you're awake, you can join my fun.”

Ivy hadn’t noticed the static of the radio before. But as he pushed the small device across the table between them, the signals in her brain cleared. The noise became a voice and she made out the words of the dispatcher.

It was an old model scanner, tuned to local dispatch. It probably ran on batteries and it might make a good weapon. There seemed to be no electricity in the old place to plug it in. A couple of D batteries might make it reasonably heavy if she could pick it up and wield it.

But Carlos only tapped on top of it, as if motioning her to listen to the words. One of the officers reported he was leaving the scene from writing a ticket.

But almost immediately, dispatch crackled over the line again, reporting a fire.

The address sounded familiar, but Ivy couldn't quite place it.

“That's the barn,” Carlos told her, a small grin settling on his lips. Pride.

She tried not to let it show that she read it and was disgusted by it. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her emotions. But even as she thought that, she made the stunning realization that her car was still at the barn.

She heard the response from Patrick Kelly, Captain on B-shift and acting chief at night, as he replied that the engines were rolling.

Carlos sat with her, waiting, moving with infinite patience. She tried to show no reaction, but she wasn’t confident he hadn’t seen when she realized her car at the scene would make them think she was in the barn.

Long silences gaped between dispatch notices. One engine arrived, and the other came for backup. She listened as Captain Kelly—who’d sold Jo her new fridge—called in her license plate number.

This time she was working hard to keep her expression flat as Carlos smiled. “You know they already know it's yours. They're just checking to be sure.”

Sure enough, RPD was back in less than twenty seconds, listing her name and her home address under the car’s registry. They said they'd send someone to knock on her door.

Luke!she thought. At least that would wake him up.

But Carlos had an uncanny ability to read her. That he saw her recognition of Luke being told she was in the fire, her stomach rolled.

“Now he'll know for sure.” He smiled at her. The problem was, it wasn't for sure.

She had wondered what Carlos was doing when he’d left her car at the barn and realized now that her offer to follow him from the library—her concern about getting into a car with a stranger—had played right into his hands. Had her car been left alone at the library parking lot, it would have been far more suspicious.

She should have ridden with him, but that would have meant trusting him. It would have meant not having her own route home—something she'd treasured. Her ability to hop in her car and leave anywhere at a moment’s notice was her sole definition of freedom.

Again, the scanner crackled to life, the report coming in that they suspected there was a person inside the barn.

She couldn't help the cringe that showed across her face. B-shift was going to go into a dangerous situation to look for her. And she wasn't even there.

“It's good, isn't it?” He grinned with pride.

No. It's anything but good.

“The beauty of it is—” Carlos elaborated, “By the time they get here, they won’t think anyone is inside, because no one was in the barn …”

“They’ll think I’m not in here?” She was confused.

“Oh!” Another smile, another point of pride. “Did you not realize this place is next?”

Chapter Forty-Six

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