Page 37 of Ink and Ashes
He hums. “Who said I haven’t told anyone else?”
I shrug. “I assumed Dom would be the first you’d tell, given you know he’s been helping me. But he hasn’t said anything.”
“I wanted to see if you guys could find anything first.”
“But aside from the timeline, we haven’t. And that pattern is garbage now anyway since no calls came in yesterday. So why do you suddenly want to hear about the investigation?”
“Because the pattern isn’t garbage. We spent all night fighting fire number nine.” Colson’s jaw flexes. “Got the call at eleven last night.”
My eyes widen. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t a wildfire, though. It was a structure fire.”
My brows pull together. “A structure fire?”
Colson nods.
“Where was it?”
He shrugs. “Some old barn about twenty minutes south of here. It was caught before it had a chance to spread into the forest, but fighting it got me thinking about your suspicions and what you might know.”
“Has Dom told you anything?”
Colson shakes his head. “Just that you had a feeling a fire would happen yesterday, but when I questioned him further, he said I should suck it up and talk to you. So that’s what I’m doing.”
I pull my lip between my teeth, unsure whether or not to share everything I’ve found or not. But I need Colson on my side. The only way to get him there is by sharing what I know.
I start by telling him the same things I told Dom, about the weather records and area covered. I explain that every fire so far has happened within a 2,000-hectare radius, with Ember Grove dead centre.
“The first three fires and then fire number eight were allzombie fires,” I add.
Colson’s brow raises at my use of firefighter lingo, but I ignore it.
“Dom confirmed that. We also visited the scene of the fourth fire, but Dom wasn’t able to find the cause of that one.”
“Nothing?”
I shake my head.
His jaw flexes before he speaks again. “Okay. Then what’s the pattern with the timeline?”
I exhale deeply. “Each fire that’s spanned more than a hectare has occurred the same number of days after the previous, plus one day.”
His brows pull together. “Wait, what?”
I shake my head. It sounds confusing as hell trying to explain it, so I spin around in the chair to pull my laptop out of my bag.
“Hold on. I’ll show you.”
Setting it on the desk, I open it to the folder of all the evidence I’ve collected. After navigating to the timeline I created, I hold my laptop out Colson. He takes it from me and stands from the bed, leaning against the desk while he reads. The knot between his brows is prominent as he examines the dates on the page.
“The fire yesterday may not have been a wildfire, but it does follow the pattern,” I add, because it’s not currently listed. “Well, date-wise anyway. I’m guessing it was smaller than a hectare, so I’m not sure what to make of that yet.”
“How have I not realized this before now?” he asks, more to himself than me. “Better yet, how has no one else noticed it either?”
I shrug. “It took me a while too, because it’s not an obvious pattern. And you guys have been busy actually fighting the fires. It makes sense that you wouldn’t have a record of the exact dates, especially since no one suspected anything until I came around,” I say, though he isn’t really listening.
Instead, he hands my laptop back to me and pulls a binder down off the shelf. Flipping it open, he starts shifting through all the pages.
