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Controlled Burn (Scarred Hearts)

Page 16

by Nikki Duncan


  Darkness shaded the edges of his mind. “No.”

  He may not like to talk about the fire, but he was a man who responded best to directness. Delancey seemed to have figured that out because she never wasted time with useless or idle talk when it mattered most.

  “They have a surveillance video of the fire from a nearby business. Someone is fleeing the scene just before you go in.”

  Hope, the tiniest and brightest ember, winked from within the darkness. From that ember sparked a memory he hadn’t recalled before. Someone had run out of the building while he’d been on his way in.

  He’d given the arson investigator a list of clients. If they’d found an image of the suspect, someone, the cops or Schneider, should have brought it to him first. Since he couldn’t ask why they hadn’t, he went for something she might know. “Before I went in? Does it show a face?”

  “Only Schneider and the cops know that. For now.”

  The darkness blotted out the ember of hope with her dread-filled words. “What does that mean?”

  “They’re going to play it on the news to see if anyone will come forward.”

  The darkness deepened. Having his life’s worst day splashed on the news once had been hard enough. Hearing it was going to be done again, only with video, carried him through pain to anger.

  Months had passed since the fire. Though he understood investigations took time, it wasn’t unrealistic to think a story should lose media interest after so long. “They don’t care if what they do bothers me, do they?”

  “I’m sure if you asked them that they’d claim the end justifies the means.” She set the ice bag and towel on the table and shifted to more directly face him. “You could try to stop them.”

  “How do you see that happening?” He may actually take her advice if it meant ending the public viewing of his loss.

  “Call Schneider. Tell him you’ve been thinking about his last visit and ask if he has any new information.”

  “You think that will work?”

  “I think it gives them the chance to include you.”

  “You sure you weren’t a cheerleader? Or are you on mood stabilizers that keep you forever positive?”

  “Optimism is easier in the long run and is preferable to a perpetual bad mood.”

  Natural or not, she made him want to try her approach. If a conversation with Schneider kept his life from becoming news and ended the media coverage he’d have a reason to be happy. “You win.” He reached for his cell. “I’ll call.”

  Delancey kissed his cheek while he dialed. As he talked to Schneider she curled against Logan with her fingers laced with his. Her outlook made him want to try for happiness. Her connection, the impression of her body against his, gave him the courage to try.

  “No, that will be fine. See you then.” With the phone call over, Logan gently tossed his phone onto the table. He couldn’t say a weight had been lifted, but it had at least shifted to a more bearable spot for the moment.

  “What did he say?”

  “He’ll stop by.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as he gets in touch with the detectives in charge of the case. Hopefully within the hour.” Logan wasn’t keen on the idea of more than just Schneider coming over, but the man made a compelling point that the police should be involved since it wasn’t a simple arson case.

  She traced a nail along the collar of his shirt, lightly tickling him. The touch spiked his heart rate and heated his blood. Now that he was expecting Schneider, he wanted nothing more than he wanted to be alone, naked, with her.

  “You hungry?” she asked.

  “I could eat.” You.

  “We could order something.” She ran that fingernail down his chest and flicked his nipple through his shirt. “Or we could make out until they get here and eat after.”

  The woman made reaching for happiness very easy. “I may not stop at making out. In fact—” careful not to move her too fast, he pulled her onto his lap, “—I quite like the idea of having you before and after.”

  “Less talk.” Delancey, always quick to respond, slipped her fingers into the waist of her workout pants and lifted her hips to shove them down. “More having.”

  Hard and ready, he followed her cue and slid off his own sweats. He’d barely settled his ass back on the couch before she was straddling him. He grabbed her hips and held her close when he shifted up, deeper. “And I thought all women needed to get warmed up.”

  “Logan.” She nibbled at his neck, a spot she now knew drove him crazy. “For a man like you, a woman is always warmed up.”

  Thrusting into her silken heat, he grinned. “Wonder how long that will remain a truth for you.”

  A grin brightened her face, lighting her eyes with a brilliance more stunning than the most brilliant diamond. She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and sighed as her inner walls massaged him through orgasm.

  The bliss of her sigh soughed through his soul and in the hushed span between two heartbeats, when their bodies and gazes were interlocked, he saw another truth.

  He didn’t just like Delancey or care for her. It happened gradually, but somewhere between meeting her gaze in the fire and putting an ice pack on her swollen ankle, he’d lost himself to love.

  Logan’s sense of calm vanished at the doorbell’s ring. Sweat beaded his palms and the nape of his neck. He wiped his hands on his pant knees and blew out a long breath.

  “You want me to answer it?” Delancey asked.

  “Yes.”

  She moved to stand, but he shot a hand out and grabbed hers. Patience and understanding, like she saw into him better than he did himself, was all he saw when he looked into her gaze. The sensation was as settling as it was unsettling.

  “I need to do it.” Allowing her to be his buffer was a weakness that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable, and because it wasn’t, it therefore needed to be avoided if he was to ever stand on his own. “And you need to stay off your foot.”

  “Would you feel more comfortable handling this alone?” she asked with a nod toward the door.

  “Maybe.” Because if he was alone he could tell himself he was strong enough to handle life alone. Ashley would tell him real strength came from allowing himself to rely on someone else. “Please stay.”

  Delancey settled into the couch cushions and propped her ankle on the pillows. Pleasure more pure even than when she orgasmed graced her lips. That pleasure, raw and rare, buoyed his resolve.

  In its infancy, his resolve wavered when he opened the door to find Schneider and two cops. In pressed jeans, button-down shirts and jackets, the cops, obviously detectives, were more crisply dressed and sharper eyed than Schneider, who looked and smelled like he lived in a fire.

  “Mr. Mathis,” Schneider said. “This is Detective Holley and his partner, Detective Parish.”

  The detectives nodded when Schneider said their names. Parish said, with a lingering look at the left side of Logan’s face, “Thank you for seeing us.”

  Logan swallowed the urge to shrink away and wished for his hoodie as he motioned for them to enter. He kept them on his right as much as possible. Parish’s stare had him regretting the decision and wishing he had done a better job of it. Holley didn’t seem able to look elsewhere either.

  “What’s this new lead?” Logan sat in the chair on Delancey’s left, leaving the men the opposite end of the couch and the other chair. “Why’s it just now being found?”

  Schneider remained standing and pointed at Delancey. “You’re a firefighter.”

  She only nodded.

  Schneider looked from her to her foot and then back. “You were injured at today’s house fire.”

  Logan didn’t miss the note of you-wouldn’t-have-been-if-you-were-in-your-place-as-a-woman in Schneider’s voice. Logan leaned forward, ready to put the inspector in his place, until Delancey shrugged and said, “It’s nothing major. And I’m not why you’re here.”

  “You are why they’re here,” Logan sa
id. “I won’t pretend they intended to call me.” He looked at the detectives and Schneider, not trying to hide his dissatisfaction with them. “Why is it, by the way, that I wouldn’t have been contacted about case updates before you turned to the news to see if you could learn more?”

  Detective Holley cast a hard glance Schneider’s way. The inspector leaned back in his chair and seethed. Holley faced Logan. “Parish and I had no intention of moving until speaking to you. You shouldn’t have heard about the video the way you did.”

  Marginally appeased to be dealing with Holley instead of Schneider, Logan nodded.

  Parish stepped into the conversation while pulling his phone from his jacket’s inside pocket. “A business owner near your building called this morning. While reviewing his security tapes because of an employee issue he discovered some footage of the fire.”

  That they’d only had the recording since that morning made it easier to digest.

  “We contacted Schneider to validate the date and time and to see if he might recognize the man leaving the building.”

  Logan nodded at the phone. “And?”

  Parish told him everything Delancey already had, but he upped the ante when he passed the phone to Delancey, who handed it to Logan.

  He touched the screen to start the video. He felt Ashley’s presence behind him, her hand resting on his shoulder while she leaned close to see the screen. Unable to stop himself, he raised his left hand to his right shoulder, covering the weight of her ghostly touch. Together they relived those early moments.

  When the man exited, Logan tapped the screen again to pause it. He tried to put himself in the scene, to go back and see the man face-to-face. All he managed was to watch the limited view of the screen.

  “That’s him,” Ashley said.

  An identification made by his sister’s ghost wasn’t going to do anyone any favors. He didn’t recognize the man, and he wouldn’t lie about it.

  “Do you recognize the man?” Holley asked.

  “I’ve never seen him.”

  A plethora of questions sprang to life and had to go unanswered if Logan wanted to stay out of the crazy ward.

  “Never?”

  “I saw someone running out as I arrived, but my mind was already inside with Ashley. You think he’s the arsonist.” It was sound logic, but he couldn’t identify a man he hadn’t really seen.

  “He’s definitely the man who hit me.” Ashley spoke again, as if she could be heard or Logan could repeat her answers and make them the truth.

  Her identification of her killer and Logan’s incapability to perjure himself was his clichéd rock and hard place. He didn’t want to see the video on the news, but he needed to see her killer arrested and prosecuted. He needed to see the investigation end.

  “Does he have a tattoo? I remember something about a dragon.” His head ached with the effort to come up with a logical identification.

  “There was a Chinese symbol on a wing,” Ashley said.

  Logan wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, because it felt like he was trampling the line between honesty and lies, but he reworded what Ashley said and made it sound like he was remembering for the first time. He assuaged his guilt by telling himself Ashley deserved a voice in her own death.

  Holley and Parish pulled out notebooks and jotted notes.

  Memories of that day mixed with memories of Ashley’s post-death visits.

  “You have any Chinese clients?”

  “A few, but no one I’d have thought capable of murder or arson.”

  Holley and Parish exchanged glances before turning back to Logan. Leaning forward, Holley braced his elbows on his knees. “Mr. Mathis, I understand you called because you heard we were going to run the video on the news.”

  He nodded. He’d hoped to stop them from running it, but knew he’d failed to give them reason enough.

  “It could be a sound way of getting an ID.”

  “Or put a target on anyone he thinks is too close,” Ashley said.

  No closer to answers, Schneider and the detectives saw themselves out. Logan ran their client list through his mind, mentally searching for any Chinese connections, but finding none that rose alarms.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Men may not be demonstrative creatures, but growing up with brothers and cousins and working with all men had clued Delancey in on how to read them. After Schneider and the inspectors left, during the visit even, Logan had drawn into himself.

  She’d briefly tried to pull him out of his mind and get him talking; her efforts failed. To give him some time she went to the kitchen and put together some sandwiches from the food she’d sent home with him before her last shift.

  Plates in hand, she limped toward the office where Logan sat before his computer, rubbing the stubble growing along his scar.

  “Find anything?”

  “No.” He glanced up and immediately got out of his chair. “What are you doing? Where’s your crutch?”

  “I only made some sandwiches.”

  “You shouldn’t be doing anything.” He took the plates away from her, sat them on the desk and led her to a chair, taking the majority of her weight onto himself.

  “You seemed to need some time alone.”

  “Noticed that, did you? Sorry.”

  He stretched a little where he stood, making her wonder how stiff he’d gotten. She said nothing, though. He didn’t want her to be a nursemaid any more than she wanted to be one.

  “The only female in my life growing up was Mother,” she said. “By nine, I knew more about dealing with men than I’ll ever know about women.”

  “Your family is missing out.”

  Delancey wasn’t a crier, but tears pricked her eyes and their weight suppressed any quick response she might have had. He’d said it with such simplicity and suddenness and lack of facial expression that it had to be a core belief. No one had ever suggested she was a better person because she wasn’t falling in line with Mother’s desires.

  “You okay?” he asked. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No. Yes. I mean, yes, I’m okay. No, you didn’t saying anything wrong.” She wanted to go to him, to kiss him, to show him her gratitude for what he’d said. Doing so would open the door to all the things that made her tick, when what mattered most was how he was handling the idea of his story hitting the news yet again.

  “Changing the subject,” she said, “what are you hoping to find on your computer?”

  Logan pulled his chair around to sit beside her. “The tattoo and Chinese symbol.”

  “Ashley tell you about them?”

  He smiled like she’d hoped he would, but it barely dented his serious mood. “I’m not crazy.”

  “Didn’t think you were.”

  Logan rubbed his neck, pinching at what had to be a spot of tension. “She was here.”

  “Here, as in in the room with us?” Delancey had noticed a difference in Logan’s speech, a caution, that hadn’t been there before. She hadn’t thought it would be because of Ashley. “That’s why you were answering the way you were, because you shouldn’t know what you know.”

  He nodded. “Ashley identified him but doesn’t know who he is. We were such a new firm; our clients were all referrals.”

  “So you think he was one too?”

  Logan nodded. “Our longest-standing client to send us referrals and who had any Chinese connections was the owner of Egg Drop Haven.”

  She knew Egg Drop Haven. The crew had eaten there a couple times during shift.

  Logan didn’t need to say anything to indicate the agreement that was written boldly on his face. Anything that allowed Ashley’s murderous arsonist to go unpunished, especially if he could stop it, was agonizingly impossible to stomach.

  “What are you willing to do to find him before the story runs?”

  “Anything.”

  She considered suggesting they go to dinner at Egg Drop Haven. Then Logan rose and began pacing. His tone morphed from frustr
ation into anger, becoming harder and more clipped. “She sent me on that damn coffee run because she wanted to be alone with Cameron. She protected me even by accident.”

  Delancey released the idea of going anywhere.

  “I’ve heard that’s part of loving someone.” They’d never been tested, but she suspected Chad might have done that for her. Andy did. Her crew had when they pulled her out of the collapsed floor.

  “An annoying part.” Logan tapped his fingers on his shoulder, sort of like he had while talking to Holley and Parish. “If I want to stop that video from making news, I need to find something useful.”

  “How can I help?”

  He looked down at her, eyes wide and breaths ragged. When he finally spoke it wasn’t to say what she’d thought or hoped he’d say. It was instead to repeat a question he’d already asked several times. “Why? Why are you doing all this for me?

  “You keep asking that.”

  “I don’t need another protector. I am all for you being a friend and lover, but I don’t want you here if it’s out of guilt or because you need to tell yourself you’ve made sure I’m okay.”

  Insecurity in any form was difficult to argue with and Logan’s came with some freshly ripped scabs. And they had little to do with his physical scars. She only knew one way to answer him, though he wasn’t coming across as a man in a place to believe her.

  “Yes, I want to know you’re okay. Yes, I want to protect you from ever being hurt again. And yes, I know I have no control over either of those wants.” She wanted to curl herself into him, to pour as much warmth as possible into him. His crossed arms and stiff shoulders warned her against trying.

  “None of that,” she continued, “is why I’m with you. It has very little to do with why I want to help you find Ashley’s killer.”

  His shoulders dropped and though he didn’t uncross his arms the rigidness eased. “Then why?”

  “I love you.” She hadn’t intended to say it. She hadn’t allowed herself to name it until the words crossed her lips. Now she just had to hope he could believe her, or at least accept the possibility. “You’re grumpy and moody. You hide from the world full of people who would love to know you. You second guess the motivations of anyone who wants to get close, telling yourself they’re going to leave.”

 

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