Playing with Fire. Rachel Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ patted her hip. “I took a fall during a barn fire. Can’t climb ladders anymore, and frankly carrying the equipment got painful, too.” She sat. “We’re not so busy that I don’t get bored.” She held up an e-reader. “But I do read lots of good books.”

      Charity laughed. “There are advantages to most things. I volunteered with a fire department for a while.”

      “Yeah?” Interest sparked in Donna’s gaze. “Why’d you quit?”

      “It was a temporary thing from the start. Sort of job training so I’d be a better arson investigator.”

      “Ah.” Donna studied her as if she didn’t much care for Charity. It had to be the expensive suit. “Arson infuriates me.”

      “Me, too. Do you see much of it?”

      “Kids sometimes get careless. But in the past year or so...” She shrugged. “Sometimes things come in bunches. Chief says three fires have been arson, including the last one at the Buell Ranch. Say, can you tell me something?”

      Charity tensed. Her investigations had to remain private. “If I can.”

      “Edna Buell’s a friend of mine. I’m worried about her and her family. Does your insurance cover arson? I’ve always wondered.”

      Well, that was easy. “Unless the arsonist is the owner of the property or his agent, yes.”

      “Good.” Donna swiveled her chair a bit as if trying to loosen up some back muscles. “Must be difficult to figure out sometimes.”

      “It’s always difficult.” Even more difficult when you had some guy with loads of money breathing down your neck and you suspected he’d gotten tired of owning that building. Or couldn’t pay the taxes or upkeep. Some guy who could afford to pay some slime to start the fire. But you had to prove it.

      “You gonna be here long?”

      Charity shrugged. “Only as long as it takes me to clear the Buells. A few days, I hope.”

      “Bet you work with cops, too?” Donna asked.

      “When it’s needed.”

      “Must be an interesting job.”

      Charity nodded, watching through the plate-glass window as the next important tasks were carried out. No rest for the weary. Equipment had to be cleaned, checked out and stowed. Then the truck would get babied. No relaxation for these men for hours yet to come. By the time they hit the showers, they’d be dead on their feet, probably.

      Fighting a fire took a lot out of person, she’d learned. Not just the weight of all their equipment, but the heat inside the protective gear, the inevitable adrenaline rush, a lot of hard labor... Fatiguing. This hadn’t been a terrible fire—they’d only battled it for an hour or so—but they were guzzling water from bottles as if they’d spent a week in the Sahara.

      A door to one side of Donna opened and Chief Wayne Camden stepped in. He was swigging from a water bottle, too, and his hair was damp. He must have just showered, because the soot was gone.

      He wore the simple blue uniform of this department, with black work boots on his feet. Apparently he didn’t always follow the custom of white shirt for higher-ranking members. For the first time she noted that he was tall, lean and muscular. Staying in shape was important in this job for a variety of reasons, and he apparently knew it. His hair looked almost black, maybe because it was still wet, but his eyes were a silvery gray that reflected some of the blue in his uniform.

      “Ms. Atkins,” he said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

      Charity rose, smiling. “For good reason, I think. You took quite a risk going for that baby.”

      He shrugged it off. Of course he’d taken a risk. That was what firefighters did. She felt almost stupid for even saying it. “Come into my office. It’s not the neatest place in the world, but it works.”

      She saw what he meant as he ushered her through the narrow door. Files were stacked everywhere, as if the filing cabinets had run out of space. They were neat stacks, but still stacks.

      “It’s all on the computer,” he said, gesturing to the machine on his desk. “Eventually the paper goes to the archives.”

      “How many years does that take?”

      He glanced at her as he motioned her to take a seat, then sank into his own chair on the other side of the desk. Battered leather, it had clearly seen better days, and it creaked beneath his weight. “Seven years,” he answered, then laughed. “You’d be surprised how often the paper is needed.”

      “Probably not,” she said, returning his smile. “Bureaucracies.”

      “At every level.” He leaned back and the chair creaked some more. “So you want to examine the Buell place.”

      She nodded, wishing his gaze was less steady. Something about it made her aware that he was a man. She didn’t want it, didn’t need it, and she wouldn’t be here long anyway. The sting of her last breakup was still fresh. She needed to focus on the task at hand, not this man. “You said it was arson.”

      “It most definitely was. You ever walk into a building a day after a fire?”

      “Quite often.”

      “Then, you know. You can sometimes smell the accelerant. I always thought that was odd, that it can leave behind an odor when it should all burn up. The aromatics should be gone.”

      “Aren’t they usually?”

      “True. But the stench of kerosene and gasoline cling for a long time. If you use too much and some of it doesn’t burn...” He shrugged one broad shoulder. “Of course there are some you can’t smell.”

      She wondered why he was schooling her. She was the arson specialist. She might have gotten annoyed at being patronized, but somehow he didn’t give her that feeling. It was more as though he was trying to shift mental gears and get into the groove on the Buell fire. He drank more water and offered her a bottle from the small fridge beside his desk. She accepted it gratefully. Flying always left her parched.

      Suddenly he zoomed in on her and on the subject at hand. He leaned forward, as if he had finally fully switched mental zones. “It was arson, all right. I don’t think the Buells did it, and you can’t smell accelerant in the house—just in the barn. More important, it went up too hot and fast. Who the hell around here would know a different way to start a fire?”

      He had her full attention now, too. And now she understood why he’d mentioned aromatics, the things you could smell. He hadn’t been schooling her. He’d been working up to something.

      “Do you think the Buells did it?” he asked her.

      “I haven’t seen the site.”

      He shook his head almost irritably. “Don’t fence with me. You’re the insurance carrier, you know their coverage. Do they stand to gain from this?”

      “It’s always possible,” she said truthfully. “Even the minimally insured have been СКАЧАТЬ