SAM’S HEART BEAT QUICKLY. Maybe because she was afraid for Stanley. Maybe because she was in Braden’s office again, working on the computer on his desk.
Braden was gone. He’d raced off to find Stanley. Hopefully he would get through to the kid. She suspected his chances were better alone than with her present. She had only been around for a week; she was a relative stranger to the teenager.
What did he know?
He hadn’t been in town long when that first fire had happened. He’d already been working at the firehouse, though. So he’d met the entire Hotshot team. He knew all of them.
There were some volunteers as well who covered the firehouse when the Hotshots were out West. But she had already checked them out.
Most were older retirees. Fortunately the arsonist hadn’t set any fires when they were covering for the Hotshots, or the entire town probably would have burned down. Or was Stanley working for one of the Hotshots? Owen James? Was Owen angry that his former classmate had passed him over for promotion, instead favoring Wyatt Andrews and Dawson Hess?
Had he manipulated Stanley into doing his dirty work for him? The kid was sweet and naive enough that it would be easy to coerce him.
She sighed and leaned her head down, tempted to pound it against the surface of the desk. But then she heard the noise, the footsteps padding across the concrete floor.
Had Stanley come back?
Or could it be the arsonist? He seemed to frequent the firehouse when no one was around. And maybe Stanley and the arsonist were one and the same. She couldn’t take any chances. She reached for her purse and withdrew her gun. She’d just raised the barrel when the office door opened.
A man gasped and raised his hands. All the color drained from Owen James’s face, leaving it stark but for the jagged scar on one cheek.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice sharp as she steadied her grip on the Glock.
“I stopped by to talk to Braden.”
“Talk to him?” Or hurt him?
Owen’s dark eyes narrowed. “Yes, talk—about what’s been going on...” His hands shaking, he gestured at the gun she still held, the barrel pointed at him. “Are you going to put that down?”
She wasn’t so sure that she should. So she hesitated.
“I heard you got a note, too,” he said. “So I understand why you would be a little nervous.”
“Cautious,” she corrected him. “Not nervous.” She wasn’t afraid of the arsonist; she was just determined to catch him. And it had less to do with her career now than it had to do with Braden—with making sure he was safe.
“How did you hear about the note?” she wondered. Because he’d smashed her window and put it in her car?
He shrugged. “Northern Lakes is a small town. I grew up here. I know everyone.”
He was the local hero—for surviving his deployment, for acting as an EMT when he was back in town. Nobody would suspect him of being involved in the fires.
Nobody but her.
“Where is Braden?” he asked.
Did he really want to find Braden or just make certain she was alone? She shivered, but lowered the gun. She wasn’t putting it back in her purse, though—not until he was gone. “He went to look for Stanley.”
Owen chuckled. “What? Did that kid get lost chasing after his dog again?”
“I hope he’s not lost,” she murmured. Hopefully Braden had found him, protected him as he tried to protect everyone.
Owen raised a dark blond brow. “What’s going on? Is the kid in trouble?” He seemed curious but not overly concerned. If he was working with Stanley, wouldn’t he be worried that the kid had talked?
She intended to find out, so she said, “I questioned him today—”
“Stanley?” He sounded shocked, but then he lowered both brows and slowly nodded. “Stanley...”
“What?”
“It makes sense,” he said. “He’s always around here.”
“But what’s his motive?” she asked.
He shrugged shoulders, which were nearly as broad and muscular as Braden’s. Every member of his Hotshot team was in excellent shape. Requiring that was another way for Braden to protect them—to make sure they were prepared to do their dangerous jobs. Her father prepared his smoke jumper teams the same way.
“I don’t know what his motive could be,” Owen said.
“Braden doesn’t think he’d hurt anyone.”
Owen smiled. “Braden always thinks the best of everyone.”
Even his ex-wife.
“Yes, he does.”
“It’s just not realistic,” Owen said. “There are bad people in the world—so many bad people.”
“Stanley’s just a kid.”
“And kids don’t do bad things?” Owen challenged her.
They did. Matthew Hamilton had when he’d destroyed his mother’s boyfriend’s property. But maybe that hadn’t been such a bad thing if the guy was as nasty as he sounded.
“Why would Stanley?” she asked. “He doesn’t seem like an angry kid.”
“Sometimes he seems afraid,” Owen said. And now his brow furrowed. “It reminds me...” His face grew pale again, and she could imagine what it reminded him of. Afghanistan. Iraq. Wherever he’d been deployed when he had gotten that horrible scar.
“When I was deployed with the Marines, those kids,” he said, “over there. They didn’t want to strap on those explosives. They didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Why did they?” she asked.
“They had been threatened,” Owen said. “Most commonly, their families had been threatened. They were given no choice but to do bad things.”
A chill raced down Sam’s spine. She shivered in reaction. “Of course.”
“But Stanley has no family,” Owen pointed out.
“Yes, he does,” Sam said. “He has the Hotshots.” But would he hurt one of them in order to protect the others? Would he hurt Braden?
She shouldn’t have let him go off to look for the kid alone. It wasn’t safe. Nowhere was safe for Braden until the arsonist was caught.
She shoved her gun back into her purse and slung the strap over her shoulder. Braden was out there with no protection.
“What’s wrong?” Owen asked.
She didn’t pause to explain. She just pushed past him and hurried out the door. She hoped she wouldn’t be too late. She hoped that Braden was okay.
* * *
BRADEN BRACED HIMSELF for the blow. But while Cody had doubled his hands into fists, he didn’t swing them. He just paced the front porch around Braden.
“How dare you let her interrogate that poor kid!” Cody exclaimed. “He just tore out of here in tears.”
Braden hadn’t seen Stanley’s rusted Pontiac in the driveway. But it hadn’t passed him, either.
Since the boardinghouse had burned down, Cody, Serena and Stanley had been staying at Wyatt’s house in town, and Wyatt had moved in with his fiancée, Fiona. Wyatt’s small house was on the side of the firehouse away from town. Stanley must have headed toward the forest, because he hadn’t passed Braden.
So he’d stopped to talk to Cody, to see if he knew where the boy had gone.
“I don’t care that she’s Mack’s daughter,” Cody continued. “She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing. You need to get her off this case.”
“I kind of asked her to do it,” Braden admitted.
Cody’s mouth fell open, and he stared at him in shock. “How could you?”
“I had to,” Braden said. “We have to stop the arsonist.”
Now a gasp slipped through Cody’s lips. “You can’t seriously believe that Stanley is the arsonist.”
“He fits the profile,” Braden said. Like Sam, he had taken some profiling courses at Quantico. “He has the same kind of background—the rough childhood—so many serial arsonists have.”
Cody’s throat moved as if he were choking. Then his voice rasped, “So do I.”
Braden reached out. But Cody flinched and stepped away from him. “I would never doubt you.”
“You shouldn’t have doubted Stanley, either,” Cody said. “He would never hurt anyone.”
Braden couldn’t say the same anymore. He knew he’d hurt Stanley. And now he’d hurt Cody, too. Regret and guilt twisted his stomach into knots.
“Sam thinks Stanley knows something,” Braden persisted. “That he’s protecting someone.”
Cody’s brow furrowed. “You think he would protect the arsonist?”
Braden wondered about his question—until he noticed that Sam stood at the bottom of the steps leading up to the porch and Cody had asked her the question directly.
She stared up at Braden, a look of relief on her beautiful face. “You’re okay,” she murmured as if she’d been concerned about him.
He nodded. “Of course.” Though he wouldn’t have blamed Cody had he hit him. Braden actually might have felt better if he had. Maybe it would have eased his guilt a little.
“Who do you suspect?” Cody asked Sam.
“What about Matthew Hamilton?” Sam asked as she joined them on the porch. “Would Stanley protect him? Or let him bully or coerce him?”
At the mention of the teenager’s name, Cody glared at her. “You had no right to talk to Stanley without a lawyer.”
She shrugged. “He didn’t want one.”
“He’s not mature enough to make that decision on his own,” Cody insisted.
“He’s eighteen.”
“Why are you asking about Matt again?” Braden interrupted them.
“Because his name has come up a couple of times,” Sam said. “And Stanley might try to protect him if he thinks they’re friends.”
Cody sucked in a breath. “Matt? No way. He’s Fiona’s brother. He’s like Wyatt’s little brother.”
“He was really upset when he didn’t get a position with the US Forest Service fire department,” Sam replied.
Braden regretted now making note of that in his investigation. But he’d followed up. He reminded her of what he’d told her the last time she’d brought up the twenty-year-old. “He has an alibi.”
“His mother alibied him for the fires,” Sam said.
Cody snorted derisively. “His mother?”
“I can’t speak personally about mothers,” Sam said. “But I have a dad who would do anything to protect his kids.”
Cody studied Sam with renewed admiration. “Yeah, I’ve heard about those kind of parents.” But he hadn’t had them. The people who’d adopted him had returned him after a few years, claiming he’d put a stress on their marriage.
Braden was fortunate his parents had been loving and supportive. They still were, even though they’d moved out West. He visited whenever he had time when he was working fires out there. And they called often—too much when he’d been going through his divorce. Everybody had been trying to get him to talk, when he’d just wanted to forget about it.
“So Matt’s off the hook because of his mother, and Stanley’s SOL?” Cody asked defensively.
“Matthew doesn’t just have a mother who would do anything for him,” Braden said—though he couldn’t deny that Mandy would. She had felt terrible that her son had gotten in trouble all those years ago because of her bad choices in men. She’d even sworn him and Wyatt to secrecy, so they wouldn’t tell Fiona. Her relationship with her daughter was shaky at best. “He has security footage from the hotel where she works. It’s time-stamped, so it supports the alibi she gave him.”
Cody pushed a shaky hand over his short blond hair. “I want to be happy for Matt and Fiona. But I want you to find who’s really responsible so you can leave Stanley alone.”
“We need to find Stanley,” Braden said.
“To arrest him?” Serena asked the question as she joined them on the porch. The black-haired beauty’s usually tanned complexion had paled with fear.
Braden shook his head and assured her, “Neither Sam nor I think he’s responsible, but we’re concerned he might know who is.” And that knowledge would put him in danger.
The arsonist had already threatened Sam, who didn’t know who he was. What would he do to someone who did? What would he do to that trusting kid?
Serena held out a note, and her fingers were trembling. “I just found this in his room.” She turned to Cody. “He took all his stuff and Annie, too.”
Braden took the note from her. And Cody took Serena, closing his arms around her as she clung to him. Sam stepped close to Braden’s side and peered around him at the paper in his hand. She sucked in a breath, and he turned to her. But her attention was on the paper, so he looked down at it, too.
A breath escaped his lips in a gasp. The blocky handwriting matched the notes the arsonist had been leaving. But the handwriting was the only thing that matched. This was no threat. It was two simple words: I’M SORRY.
“I know what this looks like,” Cody said, as he glanced at the note, too. “But it’s not that. Stanley could never hurt anyone.”
Braden didn’t know what to think anymore. He had misjudged people close to him before. He’d misjudged Ami for damn certain. And if he believed Sam, there might be someone else on his team he had misjudged—someone who was a danger to everyone else if those previous accidents hadn’t really been accidents.
But he struggled to believe Stanley could have acted alone. The kid just didn’t have it in him to be a criminal mastermind, and the arsonist was smart or he would have been caught before now.
Usually arsonists didn’t work in pairs; he knew that as well as Sam did. But maybe someone had used Stanley—for access to the firehouse and to write those notes. So Stanley was still in danger—just like everyone else.