I saw a glint—of what, jealousy?—in Alex’s eyes as he sized Will up. “You’re the guardian?” he asked finally.
Will straightened a bit and looked over his shoulder, then stepped closer to us. He nodded.
Alex used the end of his shirt to dab at a cut on my cheek. “Hell of a job you’re doing, buddy.”
I put my hand on Alex’s arm and stepped aside, just out of his reach. “It’s not his fault.”
Will and I exchanged glances and Alex put up his hands, palms out, and sucked in an exasperated breath. “Okay, fine, whatever. We need to find Nina. If your buddy here wants to come along, he can follow us.”
“I’m looking after Sophie,” Will said.
“So am I,” Alex replied.
The men exchanged staunch, tight-lipped glares and under any other circumstance I would be updating my Facebook status, letting the world know that two incredibly hot men were fighting over me. Instead, I stepped between them.
“We have to find Nina. Now.”
Another fireman ran up to us. He looked from Alex to me and then expectantly at Will. “Are you taking care of this, Sherman?”
Will nodded curtly. “The detective here was just telling me what happened.”
“Fire bomb,” Alex reported, his eyes focused on the second fireman, who wore a water-slicked yellow coat with the name ALLEN sewn on it. “Thrown from the outside when Ms. Lawson was inside.”
Allen nodded and Will raised a suspicious eyebrow. “And Ms. Lawson was inside because?”
Alex cleared his throat. “She was with me. I was escorting her back to her apartment after a second round of questioning when a call came in about a suspected burglar at this address. I asked her to stay in the car. It’s not like anyone was guarding her though.” Will’s eyes flashed as Alex continued. “She must have just slid in behind me.”
I watched the gold flecks in Will’s eyes glitter angrily at the bit of smile that hung on Alex’s lips. Allen looked at the three of us, oblivious to the volumes of subtext going on, and nodded. “Looks like you fellas have got this under control. Just make sure to escort the lady home.”
Will stepped toward me and Alex cut him off, blocking me with his body. He clamped a hand on my upper arm. “I’ve got this under control,” he told Will.
Will went eyebrows up but stepped back. Alex steered me away from the clutch of firemen and flashing lights, and when we were out of earshot, I shrugged him off.
“What was that? You’ve got this under control? Don’t you mean you’ve got me under control? And what was the stare-down for?”
“Really, Lawson? We’re going to do the woman’s lib thing here in the shadow of your father’s raging inferno?”
“I guess not,” I relented. “But that doesn’t mean it’s over!”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Alex said.
I glanced over my shoulder at the smoldering house, at the firefighters working to tame the huge flames that thrust out of windows and licked the tops of nearby trees. I felt an odd sense of loss; I had just found my father—I saw his collection of books, what he kept in the fridge (nothing), the way he decorated a room for his daughter—and now it was gone. Going up in smoke.
I walked up to the neighbors pushing against the wooden barricade. A woman in a velour housecoat was clutching her lapel. Her eyes were so intensely fixed on the fire that I could see flicks of yellow flame reflected in them.
“Did you know the family that lived there well?” I asked her. “What were they like?”
The woman looked down, blinking at me as if I had just materialized out of thin air. “The family that lived there?” she asked. “No, honey, nobody lives in that house—and thank God, now. It’s the model home for the new development going up just over there.” She pointed to a clutch of houses one street over, all glaring with brand-new beige stucco and eco-friendly trim.
“What? But I went inside. It was furnished.”
“Yeah,” the woman said, turning back to watch the flames, “they decorate the house as if someone lives there, but everything inside is fake. Fake plants, fake books, even fake computers and TVs. They just put it up so people feel comfortable, so they can see what their houses will look like once they’re lived in.”
“Oh,” was all I could manage.
I let Alex lead me to the car. He all but clicked me in my seat belt as I gazed dumbly ahead of me.
“It was all made up,” I mumbled.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, plugging his key in the ignition.
“The house. Everything in it. It was fake.”
Poor, poor baby sister ... Ophelia whispered. Losing the childhood home she never even had. No home, no daddy, and now, no best friend. Ophelia giggled in my ear while the fury reawakened in me. I tensed.