Up in Flames [The Heroes of Silver Springs 10] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic) (8 page)

“Probably because he doesn’t know it’s here.”

Regina stepped back and slammed into the solid wall of Max’s body. She stiffened as a riot of sensations raced through her. Wanting to stay there, to melt against him, to turn to him as his arms came around her, she chose the one thing she knew she must. She retraced the step and took three more to the side before she turned and let her temper fly.

“Do you have to stand so damn close?”

“You were talking about the door facing,” he fired back. “I moved in to get a closer look, too.”

“Well, stop.” She pivoted and marched along the rear of the building, her gaze once again scanning the structure from roof to ground. The siding gave way to concrete, and she judged if she were inside, she would have stepped out of the customer and office areas and into the garages. About twenty feet down, she spotted a window, followed the concrete down, and stopped. “There you are.”

“There what is?”

Max was right behind her again, peering over her shoulder. He even kneeled with her as she lowered herself to sit on her haunches.

She did her best to ignore the way his cheek brushed hers as he rested his chin on her shoulder and the way the day’s growth of stubble on his face tickled hers and sent a zing of heady desire straight to her pussy. She did her best, and failed miserably.

She gritted her teeth. “Would you please back up?”

“Only because you asked so nicely.” She felt him smile against her cheek before he lifted his chin and eased back. “Is that a footprint?”

Regina set her ready-to-go kit on the ground next to her and pulled out her digital camera. “It is.” She snapped several pictures of the print, zooming in to get a close enough shot of the tread of the shoe for further analysis later. “I’d say about a men’s size eight and a half, maybe a nine. I’ll let the officers out front know I need a cast made. It looks fresh.” She hooked her bag over her shoulder as she straightened and tipped her head back. “The window is open. It’s likely whoever did this used it as their means to make their escape.”

“You’re already figuring this was arson, then?”

“I’m not figuring anything. However, I was called to the scene today on the assumption that arson is a good possibility. I inspected this place myself less than a month ago. It passed every code. Every possible fire hazard was properly contained and handled, all fire extinguishers were in place, and the internal sprinklers were in working order.”

“Wait a minute. This place has internal sprinklers?”

Regina tossed a look over her shoulder and couldn’t pass up the chance to shoot him a satisfied smirk. “Missed that one, did you? Yes, it has internal sprinklers and a security alarm. Both of which, I’m quickly learning, were apparently not working when this fire was set.”

“Sounds to me like we should go inside and find out why.”

Regina had started walking again, but stopped at Max’s statement. She turned slowly to face him, her gaze dropping first to his bunker pants before climbing to meet his eyes. “We? You got in a mouse in your pocket today, Jasper?”

Max shoved his gloved hands in his pockets, pretended to dig around, then pulled his hands out and held them up. “Nope, guess you’ll have to stand in for Minnie today since it appears I forgot to grab her on my way out of my apartment this morning.”

Regina rolled her eyes and turned away quickly before he caught sight of the smile she was unable to hide. “You’re insufferable, Jasper.”

“Keep it up, Zimmer, and your name for me is going to be too long for you to say in one breath. So far, I’m Lieutenant Insufferable Nuisance Ass. Did I miss any of them?”

You mean like sexy, mind-blowing, sweet, and honorable to name a few?
“No, I think you got them all.”

“Good, because my insufferable nuisance of an ass is going with you into this building.”

Regina rounded the corner of the structure, her gaze still scanning the perimeter, though she didn’t pick up on anything else that might be evidence. “Don’t you have fires to go fight or a truck to clean or something?”

“I’ve been ordered to serve as your sniffing dog, seeing as you don’t have one at your disposal at the moment.”

Regina didn’t want to admit it, but Max did have a sense of smell that rivaled some of the best dogs in the fire service. It might come in handy if she were willing to spend the next hour or more in his company inside the charred remains of the automotive shop.

Doesn’t sound like you’re getting much of a choice.

“Great,” she moaned. “Remind me to thank Wolcott for that later.”

“Oh, I figured you’d be in the firehouse before shift ends to do just that.”

Regina stopped in front of Max so abruptly he reflexively caught her waist to keep from barreling into her back. She whirled in his hands, her expression livid. If looks could kill, he figured he’d be climbing into his coffin while his soul knocked on the great pearly gates right about now.

“What the fuck was that supposed to mean?”

Max blinked at her, struggling to rewind his memory. Damn if he could remember what he’d just said, but whatever the hell it had been, he’d obviously let the pit bull out of her cage again. “What was what supposed to mean?”

“That little wisecrack about me coming by the firehouse to talk to Wolcott before B-shift ends its rotation.”

“It wasn’t a wisecrack. It was a statement.” Max dropped his hands from her waist and raked one of them down his face. “C’mon, Zimmer. You know as well as I do you’ll be stopping by the firehouse to fill in the captain on whatever theor—facts,” he quickly corrected himself, “and opinions you come up with after checking out the crime scene. Besides—” He snapped his mouth shut when the shrill of dispatch alarm sounded through his radio.

“Have fun on your fire call. I’ve got my own job to do.” Regina spun on her heel and stomped away.

Max wanted to follow her, but took the time to make sure Hazmat 2 wasn’t being toned out before he shot into action. He tossed a salute at the rest of his crew as they loaded up in the trucks, initiated the sirens, and pulled onto the main drag. He found Regina inside the garage, her camera in hand and finger on the trigger as she methodically snapped pictures of the crime scene. His booted foot sloshed in the water covering the concrete floor of the garage and he saw her shoulders stiffen before she shot a look at him that was equal parts irritation and dismay.

“Shouldn’t you be leaving with the rest of them?”

“Not unless there’s a second call requesting Hazmat 2 for assistance.”

She pocketed her camera in her bunker pants, pulled a clipboard from the bag on her shoulder, and kneeled where she stood. “You know, Jasper, Hazmat 2’s assistance is no longer needed here either. You can leave. You should leave. I know good and well you don’t just run calls when there’s a threat of explosive chemicals. You’re B-shift’s lieutenant, too. Don’t you think the firefighters under your command would appreciate if it their lieutenant was there doing his job with them?”

Max ignored the dig to his ego and rank. He was damn good at being B-shift’s lieutenant. Maybe he didn’t fancy himself as good as his predecessor, but, hell, in his eyes, very few people could live up to the wisdom and skill of the now Battalion Chief Tripp Barrett.

Rather than allowing the snide comeback tingling on his tongue to spill from his lips, he tipped his nose in the air and took a deep, audible breath. “Smell that?”

Regina balanced the clipboard on one knee and scribbled something on the top sheet of paper. “I smell a lot of things, Jasper.”

“Including the tinge of napalm still lingering in the air?”

Her pen froze on the paper, and for several seconds nothing moved except her head. She turned it slightly right, then left, angled it up, and sniffed. “It’s something similar. The gas smell is heavier, like it was the base for whatever mixture was used to get the napalm effect.”

Max moved to stand next to her. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too, a homemade concoction of some sort.”

“It wasn’t a bomb.” Regina pushed to her feet, shrugging the apparently waterproof pack off her shoulder and leaving it on the floor where she’d been kneeling as she continued her examination of the garage bays. “If it had been, the whole place would’ve gone up. Whoever did this doused the areas rather than keeping it in a concentrated spot and then allowing it to spread. The fire didn’t make it this far,” she said, sounding like she was talking more to herself than him.

Max answered anyway. “We got to it first.”

She shook her head, not looking at him. “It wouldn’t have moved further than this without help. There’s no path of accelerant through the other garages, but whoever did this might have expected that oil drum to go up. If that had happened, the resulting explosion would’ve turned this entire garage into a fireball, especially seeing as how the flames would’ve then reached the other drums and likely ignited the cars on that end as well.”

“You’re saying that’s the point of origin,” Max concluded, pointed to the place where she had been kneeling mere moments ago. “It’s where the fire started.”

Regina glanced at him, her eyes narrowed and a no-shit-Sherlock expression on her beautiful face. “I know what a point of origin is, Jasper.”

Damn, the woman was borderline freaking insufferable! Why in the hell did he keep trying?

You’re crazy about her, dude. Can’t get any more plain and simple than that.

Yeah, he was, and apparently he was a glutton for punishment, too.

“I also know what a means of escape looks like,” she said smartly. “Or did you not pick up on that?” She pointed to a high window in the back wall of the third garage bay. It was the same window where she’d found the footprint on the ground outside.

Max pursed his lips, his attention falling to the workbench beneath the window. “Can’t say as I did, though, in my own defense, I didn’t spend much time thinking on how the guy got in or out of this place. I was a little preoccupied with making sure the whole damn thing didn’t go up in flames.”

“But not too preoccupied to come up with your own theory, right?” Her tone and expression said she was clearly mocking him. “Didn’t you tell me out there you had one?”

Max held his cool. It was a struggle. To think he’d actually hoped after last night they’d managed to form some kind of friendship or, hell, an acquaintanceship that didn’t include snipping at one another all damn time. “I told you I had a theory about how the fire started, yes. My first thought about how the arsonist got in and out was taking in the obvious.”

“The garage door standing wide open.” Regina tipped her chin toward the still open door in question. “I’m aware that sometimes the most obvious answer is the right one, but not in this case. The guy opens the garage door, comes inside, starts a fire, then leaves out the same door which just so happens to be a front door of a business on a highly busy main city street…” She shook her head. “I’m not buying that one. The evidence doesn’t support it either.”

“No, it doesn’t appear to,” Max conceded. “So, he got out through that window. How’d he get in?”

Regina pursed her lips as she started walking. Each step she took was slow and methodical as she moved across the garage to the inside glass door leading to the customer area of the structure.

Max hesitated, watching her, admiring every detail from the fire helmet that rode low on her forehead to the fire-retardant boots that resembled clown feet on her slender frame. Her turnouts bore signs of use and attempts to clean, and fit her figure like a rag doll. Why she looked so freaking sexy decked in bunker pants and a heavy turnout coat was beyond him, but apparently not a mystery to his stiffening cock.

“This door was already open.”

Max tore his thoughts from his perusal of her body and forced them back to the moment he’d entered the burning structure. Though she’d made it more statement than question, he said, “Yeah, it was.”

She flattened a hand on the wall that separated the garages from the customer area and pushed. The wall didn’t budge. “The concrete is still stable and that door is made of fire-resistant glass. If the door had been shut, the fire wouldn’t have progressed into or out of this garage.”

“So the arsonist propped that door open, started the fire in the garage, and monkey climbed his ass onto that workbench and out the window?”

Regina didn’t answer as she dropped to her knees again. She reached for something, made a face, then sliced her attention back through the garage. “Hand me my kit, will you?”

Max scooped up the bag she’d left on the floor and carried it to her, then watched as she dug inside it for a scraping tool. She chiseled off a piece of the charred debris on the door frame and held it to her nose before offering it up to him for a sniff.

“Accelerant was used around the door, too.”

“Yep.” She smacked her lips as she rummaged through the bag again, pulled out an evidence tube, and shoveled the piece inside. “The fire was set over there.” She pointed to the place she’d determined as the point of origin. “The basics of fire behavior and dynamics leads me to the opinion the fire wouldn’t have traveled through this doorway, even with it open, as quickly as it did without help.”

She spun around and pointed to the opened door of the garage. “It got oxygen from that door.” Her finger dropped to the concrete floor, started at the point of origin, and dragged until it stopped at her feet. “The accelerant painted a path for it to follow all the way here where it came in contact with more fuel to feed its way around the frame and through the door.”

Her head tipped back as she stepped through the doorway into the customer area, her eyes moving rapidly in their sockets as she scanned the ceiling, walls, and, finally, the floor. “The fire was hotter in here, thicker. It gained momentum when it got through the door.”

“Which means the accelerant was even heavier in here,” Max concluded.

“Which tells us the arsonist didn’t want the place to blow,” Regina countered. “It would’ve been easier to make that happen if the fire had moved the opposite direction,
into
the garages rather than out of them.”