Falsely Accused. Shirlee McCoy

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      He rolled down the window, inhaled fresh cool air and the unmistakable scent of a fire. He glanced in his rearview mirror, saw black smoke billowing up from the valley.

      Surprised, he turned the truck around and sped toward the plume of smoke. It was too big to be coming from a trash pile. Was someone’s house burning? He called 911 but, without an address, could only be vague about the location. The road wound its way down into the valley, the forests opening into farmland. He drove several miles, his attention on the road and the smoke wafting across the sky. It took him too long to realize where it was coming from, and by the time he did, he was almost at the gates that opened onto Abigail’s two-hundred-acre property. The old farmhouse stood on a hill in the center of a lush green lawn. Gray siding. White shutters. Wraparound porch.

      The smoke was coming from behind the house.

      Or from the back of it.

      He drove through the open gates, speeding up the gravel driveway and giving the address to the 911 operator as he parked. If he didn’t do something, the two-hundred-year-old farmhouse would be consumed by flames before help arrived.

      He raced to the backyard, hoping an outbuilding or trash pile was on fire. Flames shot from the roof of the kitchen addition that had been added in the fifties. Abigail loved to tell the story of how her father had surprised her mother with the extraordinary gift of a modern kitchen. In the years since, nothing had been changed. The subway-tile backsplash, the Formica counters and glossy pink cupboards were all exactly as they had been. The oven, the refrigerator, the old icebox. They stood exactly where Abigail’s father had placed them.

      He bounded up the porch stairs. The back door was open, the room beyond filled with smoke. He could see flames lapping at the floor and moving toward the dining room, which was part of the older building.

      All the aged and dry wood would be kindling for the inferno. He grabbed the garden hose that Abigail used to water the flower beds and turned on the water.

      It wasn’t much, but if he could wet down the wood, he might be able to slow the fire. He aimed for the interior of the kitchen, listening as the fire hissed and steamed, moving into the room as the flames diminished.

      There was a trail of liquid on the floor, and the flames followed it, shooting along through the pool of what had to be accelerant.

      He aimed at that, spraying water across the floor and into the dining room, skirting past smoldering floorboards and making his way deeper into the house.

      He could smell it now—gasoline.

      And he could see it, splattered on walls and on the floor, just waiting for the spark to get it going.

      Someone had been trying to burn down the farmhouse.

      Who?

      Why?

      And what did it have to do with Ryan’s death?

      Titus didn’t believe in coincidences, and he didn’t believe the two things weren’t connected.

      He sprayed the floorboards, stretching the hose as far as it could go. Once he’d reached its limits, he headed back into the kitchen. The flames were out there, smothered by the deluge of water, but the damage was massive. He doubted the addition could be saved, but the fire marshal would make that determination.

      He caught movement in his periphery vision and turned as a figure lunged from the doorway that led to the back stairs. Something glanced off his head, the pain less immediate than his need to stop his attacker from escaping.

      He dropped the hose and tackled what looked like a scrawny teenager. They fell into a puddle of gasoline-tainted water. Titus had the kid pinned, his forearm to the boy’s throat.

      “Let me go!” the kid whined.

      “Not until the police arrive.”

      “Police? I was trying to put the fire out!”

      “You can tell them all about it,” Titus said.

      The kid’s gaze shifted. Just a little. Just enough that Titus had a millisecond of warning. He dove to the side as something whipped through the air. It hit his shoulder, the impact stealing the breath from his lungs.

      Not a bullet. He rolled sideways, pulling his gun, aiming at a man who was swinging a baseball bat in the direction of his head. The shot hit its mark, but momentum kept the bat spinning through the air. It hit Titus in the temple.

      He saw stars.

      Then he saw nothing at all.

       THREE

      Black smoke rose from the back of Abigail’s farmhouse, the dark streaks of soot-filled heat drifting into the sky. No flames that Wren could see, but that didn’t make the situation better. Something was burning. The house or the porch behind it. Not an outbuilding. The smoke was too close.

      “What in the world?” Annalise Rivers muttered as she pulled up in front of the house. One of the FBI’s top-notch defense attorneys, Annalise had arrived at the hospital two hours after Wren had called the field office and requested help. She’d brought Special Agent Radley Tumberg with her. A member of the Special Crimes Unit, Radley had been part of Wren’s work world for years. Determined and tough, he knew how to go after the answers he needed to solve some of the most complicated crimes.

      Any other time Wren would have found comfort in having him there. Right now, all she felt was confusion, grief and anger.

      “Call the fire department!” she shouted as she jumped out of the vehicle, the soft cast the hospital had set her wrist in banging against her chest as the sling bounced with her movement. She’d had the bullet wound cleaned and stitched and the bone set. Until the stitches came out, her arm would remain in the soft cast. She had been released from the hospital with instructions to keep the arm elevated and to rest.

      She had planned to go to the rehab center, explain to Abigail what had happened and then return to the farmhouse. Instead, she’d received a call from a nurse at the rehab center. The sheriff had broken the news of Ryan’s death, and Abigail was distraught, begging someone to bring her the photo album that contained pictures of Ryan when he was young.

      Wren had been enraged at the sheriff’s callousness. She knew he had intended to arrest her. Only Annalise’s law enforcement savvy had kept that from happening. Wren’s hands had been swabbed for gunpowder residue. When it wasn’t found, she’d been told she was free to go.

      For now.

      If her arm hadn’t been broken, she’d have been at the rehab center before the sheriff. Instead, she’d headed to the farmhouse to get the photo album.

      The farmhouse that seemed to be on fire.

      She shouted for Annalise to stay back and raced to the side of the house, feet pounding the packed earth and soft grass. She’d planned to pull up the shrubs that were edging too close to the siding this week. The Realtor Abigail had hired had suggested it.

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