Flashpoint

She’s still mad at me.

I really thought I was doing the right thing, telling her what I thought of her bohemian lifestyle and the shocking way she drags that child across the world for her own pleasure. I thought she needed to hear my opinion.

For years I thought that.

Now I know different. I know it’s her life to live as she wants,and if I’d only arrived at this wisdom sooner, I wouldn’t be alone now, with no one to belong to and no one to belong to me.

Brooke remembered that year. Her mother had gone after some guy to Alaska, and she’d entered junior college in Florida, feeling extremely…alone. Hugging the diary to her chest, she stared blindly out the window, wondering how different her life might have been if stubbornness hadn’t been the number one trait in her grandmother’s personality…

Or her mother’s.

Or hers…

IF ANYONE had asked, Zach would have said he spent his days off surfing with Eddie and Sam, and replacing the brakes and transmission on his truck.

What he wouldn’t have mentioned was how much time he spent thinking about Brooke. They most definitely had some sort of an attraction going on, one he wanted to explore. He wished she’d taken him up on spending some of their days off together. His weekend might have turned out differently if she had.

But with too much time to think, he’d gone over and over the Hill Street fire, the one he was so sure had been arson.

Tommy wouldn’t give him any info. He and Tommy went way back to when Tommy had sat on the hiring board that had plucked Zach out of the academy, but the inspector wasn’t playing favorites. Sharp as hell and a first-rate investigator, he was as overworked as the rest of them and frustrated at Zach’s pressing the issue. All week his response had remained the same: “I’m working on it.”

Still, Zach found himself driving to the site, where he’d gotten an unhappy shock. Back on the night of the fire he’d only had three minutes before the chief had ordered everyone out, just long enough for him to catch sight of two points of origin. One in the kitchen beneath the sink, the other in the kid’s bedroom inside a wiremesh trash can.

But now the kid’s bedroom had been cleaned, and there was no sight of the wire-mesh trash can or flash point marring the wall.

And no sign of an ongoing fire investigation.

What didn’t shock Zach was finding Tommy waiting for him at the start of his next shift.

Tommy was a five-foot-three Latin man with a God complex compounded by short-man syndrome. Added to this, ever since his doctor had made him give up caffeine, he’d been wearing a permanent surly frown; now was no exception as he stalked up to Zach as he got out of his truck. “We need to talk.”

Zach shut his door without locking it. No one ever locked their doors in Santa Rey. “Still off caffeine, huh?”

“The Hill Street fire.”

Zach sighed. “What about it?”

“I just left the scene.”

“Okay.” Zach nodded and grabbed his gear bag out of the back of his truck. “So maybe you can tell me what happened to the second point of origin, the one I saw in the kid’s bedroom the night of the fire.”

Tommy’s jaw bunched. “The fire is out. Your job is done.”

Zach turned to look at him, and it was Tommy’s turn to sigh. “We found the point of origin in the kitchen. Beneath the sink. There were rags near the cleaning chemicals, which ignited. The fire alarm was faulty and didn’t go off. It wasn’t called in by anyone in the house, but by an anonymous tip reporting smoke.”

“There was a metal trash can in the kid’s room—”

“Zach, stop.” Tommy’s voice was quiet but his eyes were intense. “The chief’s signing off on the report today. Accidental ignition.”