“I don’t mean asking him to break the law, Hannah.” He paused. “The other night, you implied that he doesn’t care about you. I think you’re way off base.”
Hannah wanted to snap and disagree, but she kept hearing her father’s voice in her bedroom this morning. I just want to keep you safe.
“He knows Michael,” she said, her voice losing some of the anger. “It’s not like I’ve been spending time with a foreign arms dealer or a drug smuggler.”
“No, you’re attached to a guy who’s been at the scene of two major crimes in the course of twenty-four hours.”
Fury flared, hot and quick, and Hannah almost came off the bench to get in his face.
Irish put up a hand. “I don’t even know the guy. I’m just saying. You can support someone and keep your eyes open at the same time.”
Her brain wouldn’t even wrap around this possibility. “He’s never given me any indication that he could be involved in anything like this.”
“Didn’t you mention to me that he’d been distant the last few weeks?” He paused. “And wasn’t his brother involved in something recently?”
“Yeah, but—” She stopped herself. Laid out like that, she wondered if she was being an idiot.
I don’t want you seeing Michael Merrick anymore.
She’d spent years resenting her father for the way he treated her. Was that blinding her to truths that might be right in front of her face?
The fire truck slowed to make a turn off Ritchie Highway, and she glanced out the window, catching a glimpse of the road sign.
“Chautauga?” she said. “There’s another fire in this neighborhood?”
Irish slid open the window separating them from the main cab. “What are we running, Chief? Another fire down this way?”
The fire chief glanced over his shoulder. “Looks like another dwelling fire on that last house on the cul-de-sac. At least we know it’s vacant. Report came in from law enforcement.”
“What?” said Hannah. “Wait. The last house—”
“That’s your boyfriend’s house, right?” said Irish.
She stared at him, thinking of the destruction on the first night, of the bombing on Friday. “Someone came back to finish the job?”
“Sounds like it,” said Irish. His tone was grim. “Or maybe someone is destroying evidence.”
CHAPTER 21
Hannah stared at Michael’s house as the fire truck rumbled across the broken pavement. A truck she didn’t recognize sat on the road in front of his driveway—and beside that was her father’s work truck. Someone had boarded over the front windows of the house, but the door hung open. Smoke billowed from the back of the house.
Despite what the chief had said, she hadn’t believed it until she’d laid eyes on the house.
“You okay for this one?” said Irish.
She met his eyes, wondering if he was teasing about the bombing. But his eyes were serious.
“I’m fine,” she said. Then she straightened, remembering something that had been a concern on the night of the first fire. “The garage. It’s full of landscaping equipment. Lots of fertilizer and chemicals—”
Irish jerked open the window to the main cab again. “Chief. You need to hear this.”
Within two minutes, they had a plan.
Within five minutes, she had an oxygen mask and helmet in place, and she was following Irish into the house, dragging a hose with them.
It was different this time, knowing Michael and his brothers were safe and far from here, that she could keep her mind focused on firefighting. She tried not to think of what Irish had implied, that this could be an attempt to hide evidence. The house was dark and clouded with smoke, but some of the other guys from her unit were prying the plywood away from the windows to allow oxygen back into the home.
They found the fire in the kitchen, already eating away at the walls. She and Irish attacked the wall closest to the garage first, working methodically to ensure the fire didn’t spread back to areas they’d already cleared. They worked backward, chasing flames away from the walls, leaving only the floor on fire.
Someone had to have spread accelerant for the floor to be burning this hot, this long.
Not Michael, she thought. He wouldn’t have done this.
Right?
She could see the vinyl flooring melting into a clear pattern of lines below the flames. She turned the nozzle, ready to attack the floor next.
Irish grabbed her hand and kept the water directed at the wall. His voice came across her radio. “Hannah. Wait. What do you see?”
She stared. She saw fire. A lot of fire.
But then a pattern started to emerge. “A message?” she guessed. Then she looked more closely. “A star? What does that mean?”
“That’s not a star,” said Irish. “But it’s definitely a message.”
“It’s not a star?”
He let go of the hose, and water streaked across the flames on the floor.
“No,” he said. “That’s a pentagram.”