Just like Marisol.
Isabella closed her eyes and fought the urge to be sick. She had to focus. She was standing in front of a crime scene, and it needed to be processed. If she could get inside, if she could just find one sliver of evidence linking DuPree to this fire, if she could figure out a way to trace the phone call she’d received, then maybe she could fix this. She had to fix this. She had to shut out the pain and work.
“Isabella.”
Although her name was little more than a whisper on Kellan’s lips, it cracked her wide open, and she sagged against him. Angel was dead. DuPree had murdered her. Isabella couldn’t fix this.
But she knew someone who could.
Pulling back from Kellan’s sturdy embrace, she slid her cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans. Her fingers flew over the screen, her heart racing along with them as she pressed the phone to her ear.
“Come on. Come on, come on, come on,” Isabella murmured, her heart catching in her throat when the call connected after the second ring.
“Hey, it’s me. I need you down in North Point, right now. It’s urgent.”
The next fifteen minutes were some of the longest of her life. She had questions—Christ, no less than a thousand of them—but despite the spinning in her brain and the pressure crushing her chest, she stood still and waited and remembered how to breathe. Kellan stood beside her, not saying anything but not budging either, until finally, a voice sounded off from behind her, low and serious.
“Would you like to tell me what the hell is going on here?”
Isabella turned to meet the unreadable expression Sinclair had paired with the demand, unsure whether to feel relieved or filled to the brim with dread. “Julian DuPree murdered two people here this morning. I don’t know if I can prove it, but I’m absolutely sure he’s responsible.”
With a deep breath, Isabella told her boss what she’d uncovered, from the intel Carmen had given her last week to the deal she’d struck with Danny Marcus in the park. Things got a little dicey when she got to the party she and Kellan had crashed off the books, but despite the steel-gray glint in his stare, Sinclair listened silently until she finished.
“Is that everything?” he asked, and she nodded.
“Yes. Look, I know you’re mad”—the glint in his eyes simmered darker, and she amended her statement—“furious. But Angel is dead. DuPree has to be stopped.”
Sinclair stepped in, his eyes moving from Isabella to Kellan, who still stood beside her on the front lawn of the fire-eaten house.
“Talk to me about this scene. Are there any signs of foul play?” he asked, and Isabella’s stomach pitched at the full ten seconds Kellan took before responding.
He swept a long gaze over the house before turning to look at Sinclair. “Best we can tell right now is that the fire started in the kitchen, where there’s evidence of a pretty big meth lab. It looks like someone got careless with the chemicals and the heat, which sparked an explosion that made the flames spread rapidly. Angel and Marcus appear to have been hiding to stay away from the fire, but the smoke inside the house was highly toxic. We did everything in our power to try and revive them both, but neither one made it.”
“Wait.” Isabella blinked. Processed. And came up with a big, fat oh hell no. “Are you saying these deaths look like an accident?”
“This fire hasn’t even been officially out for more than thirty minutes,” Kellan said slowly. “I can only tell you what things look like right this second, but the fire marshal will have to put all the pieces together to give you anything concrete. If he can even find anything in that mess.”
Deep inside Isabella’s chest, something snapped. “I don’t give a shit what this looks like! This fire, these”—her throat knotted, turning her words high-pitched and wobbly—“deaths, they aren’t an accident. DuPree is behind this, Kellan. These are killings. Angel and Marcus were murdered, and DuPree is responsible.”
She sucked in a breath to keep arguing, but Kellan’s next words stunned her into silence.
“I know, Isabella.”
“Y-you believe me?” she asked.
“Of course I do.” His expression went pale and grim as he shifted his stony blue gaze from her to Sinclair. “I’m just not sure you’re going to find enough evidence to prove it.”
Oh, yes she would. Isabella didn’t care if she had to comb every inch of this scene and not eat, sleep, or stop until she had DuPree dead to rights.
Just as long as Sinclair opened an official investigation.
“Sam,” she started, but he cut her off with a lift of one hand.