Page 76 of Her Silver Fox Firefighters
“Nothing, kiddo. Please go back to bed. Everything is okay,” Leo tells him.
But Luke can see his dad is restless, pacing around the living room and scratching his beard as he tries to think of a way forward.
“Dad, what happened?” Luke insists. The kid picks up on our moods quicker than we can control them. “Where’s Olivia?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” I tell him. “Go on upstairs, kiddo. Let us handle this. We’ll all laugh about it at breakfast tomorrow morning.”
“But Uncle Dax?—”
“Please, Luke. It’s late,” Leo says. “I’ll let you know as soon as we do what’s going on, okay? Please.”
Luke gives him a long, sullen look. His concern is understandable. The kid has survived hell, and he cares deeply for the people in his life—Olivia included. If we’re worried about her, he’ll be worrying about her, too. With a heavy sigh, he mutters, “Fine,” and reluctantly goes back to his room while I try calling Olivia again.
“Fuck,” I hiss as I realize that I still can’t get through to her.
“We need to figure out where they went,” Beck says, checking his phone. “Carlos said he was going to take the I-22 into town after he sent us that update about Marcus’s fingerprint.”
Leo scoffs. “We have to assume that Marcus might’ve been on to them.”
“He’s been here for months,” I say. “Why attack now? What’s his endgame? Fucking hell, there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense here.”
“I agree, but we need a systematic approach,” Beck replies. “As tempted as I am to lose my fucking marbles about it, Carlos and Olivia are missing.”
Ten minutes later, we burst through the doors of the sheriff’s department. Some of his deputies are hard at work, going over the arson case files again now that they have the updated intel from Carlos.
“Deputy Wilkes,” I say to Carlos’s partner. “Any sign of him or Olivia yet?”
“No, and we haven’t found his car either,” he says with a deep frown as we shake hands. “And given that they were in his personal vehicle, which isn’t GPS tagged like our department issued cruisers, we’re going to have to canvas in and around Ember Ridge until we find them.”
Beck points at one of the computers in the sprawling bullpen. “Can you ping their cell phones?”
“Only up to the nearest cell tower,” Wilkes replies. “There’s a lot of them around our district. The signal could’ve bounced off any one of them.”
“Worth a shot,” I suggest.
Wilkes passes the order down to another deputy, then turns the investigation board around for us to see. Marcus Bennett’s photo is now taped at the top. He’s their main suspect. The more I look at his face, the clearer my memory of seeing him at that warehouse fire.
“Look familiar?” Wilkes asks me.
“I can’t say with the utmost certainty. He was too far away at the time. But if you compare all the prints you collected from the warehouse and the other fires, you might get lucky and confirm that he was at all four.”
“Son of a bitch,” the deputy growls. “He puts all of us to shame, smearing the badge like that.”
“Carlos and Olivia were driving back into town. According to their last communication, they were leaving Wendell’s Diner up on the I-22 and heading over to our house. It’s been over an hour since they last checked in.”
The sound of rushed heels clicking make us turn around in time to see Jocelyn come into the bullpen, a beige overcoat thrown over her loosely buttoned shirt and blue pencil skirt. Judging by her attire and tired eyes, she was still in her office when she got the call.
“I just heard,” she says, giving me a worried look. “Have you found them yet?”
“No,” I reply. “What exactly are you doing here?”
“The serial arsonist is still my case,” Jocelyn scoffs, dumping her purse on the desk closest to her, then taking her coat off. “And Carlos is still someone I care about.” She pauses and looks at Wilkes. “Deputy, I understand you released my suspect earlier?”
“We had no reason to hold him anymore,” Wilkes explains. “The sheriff told us to let Benson go.”
Jocelyn throws her hands up in dramatic exasperation. “Fucking great! Who’s to say he didn’t go after Carlos right after you cut him loose!”
“Because Benson is currently at the Golden Ox, getting drunk,” Wilkes shoots back. “He’s the first guy we checked when Dax told us he couldn’t reach Carlos anymore, ma’am.”
