There were so many things he wanted to ask. What’s between you and Barlow? Is there someone else? And the million-dollar question-why did you leave my bed?
But this wasn’t the time for any of that, so he asked the one question in his mind that wasn’t personal. “What’s the significance of the ball I found?”
For a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer. Then she sighed. “You’ll probably just Google it when you get home.”
“Before I get home,” he said. “Left my laptop back at the firehouse.”
“You can’t speak of this, not even to your partner.”
“Zell?” David found his lips curving. “He’s a good guy, but he does have trouble keeping a secret. I won’t tell him. Cross my heart.” And he did.
Her eyes had dropped to his bare hand and lingered a beat too long before lifting again to his face. Her cheeks were a shade pinker than they had been. “Environmental arson,” she said, throwing cold water on his thoughts. “It’s a glass globe. A radical activist group left similar etched glass globes at their fires more than ten years ago.”
“Shit,” he breathed quietly. “But they shot that guard. Right in the heart. Those groups don’t normally target people.”
“Not normally, although this group had an accidental death, twelve years ago.”
He thought of the girl, her waxen face. Her fight to escape. “Like last night.”
“Maybe. The girl held the ball. For now we have to include her with the suspects.”
He shook his head. “She wasn’t dressed for arson. She wasn’t even wearing shoes. Barlow ran the sniffer over her. Nothing. No hydrocarbons on her hands.”
She assessed him. “True. But she had the ball. We have to find out how and why.”
“Has this radical group claimed credit?”
“Not yet, and they always did twelve years ago.”
“Maybe because they killed two people,” David said harshly and her eyes softened.
“Maybe. We’re probably going to have to bring in the Feds at some point. They’ll want to talk to you. Just a heads-up.”
“Thanks.” They’d risen to the fourth floor and he stopped their ascent. “This is where I found her.”
She leaned forward, squinting. “I don’t see any handprints.”
David switched on the spotlight and aimed it at the window. “Now?”
She stared a minute, then shook her head. “No.”
Thank you, he whispered in his mind, then stepped behind her, taking her shoulders in both hands. Lowering his head until his chin brushed her hair, he adjusted their angle until he could see the shimmer. “There,” he murmured. “See it now?”
She’d stiffened in his hands and it was when she drew a shaky breath that he realized she hadn’t been breathing before. Which did bode well.
“You saw that?” she asked, her voice gone husky, and a thrill raced across his skin. She cleared her throat and when she spoke again, it was briskly. Still, he’d heard the awareness in her voice. It was enough. It was what he’d been waiting for. “Barlow’s right,” she said matter-of-factly. “You do have good eyes.”
A faint buzz of pride layered over the thrill. “It was easier to see in the dark.”
She leaned forward and he let her go, stepping back to her side. “Can you get us closer?” she asked, pointing. “To that smear?”
He maneuvered until the rail was an inch from where she pointed. “Close enough?”
She looked up at him, a wry smile on her lips. “Now you’re just showing off.” Before he could think of an answer, she pulled the camera from the bag around her neck. “We need to get this window to the lab,” she said, snapping a picture.
It was his turn to lean closer until he saw what she’d pointed to-a small dent in the impact-resistant glass, with barely discernible lines spidering outward. “You saw that?”
“I’ve got good eyes, too,” she said lightly. “I also knew what I was looking for.”
“What?”
“I thought about her not wearing shoes. If she’d been one of the arsonists, she would have worn shoes she could get away quickly in. Boots. Sneakers at the very least. But she didn’t wear shoes and she held the ball. Why? She was about five-four, same as me.” Clutching the camera in one hand, she held it up, pretending to bang it against the window. “Dent’s right where it should be.”
He understood. “She tried to use the glass ball to break the window. There was no furniture yet, no chairs, nothing she could use to break the glass. God. Poor kid.”
“I know,” she said. “Barlow said the arsonists poured the carpet adhesive on the first and second floors.”
“True. I could show you the pour patterns if you want.”
“On the way down.” She crossed her arms, dangling the camera from her wrist as she frowned at the window. “If the arsonists only hit the first two floors and she was up here on four, and she wasn’t with them, how did she get the damn ball?”
“We think they poured on two floors, but started the fire on the first floor. That way they could get out. If they lit both floors, it could have spread before they were out.”
“Do we know how they got in and out?”
“Not that I know of. You’d have to ask Barlow.” He considered the night before. “We got here about five minutes after we got the call. We had to smash through the gate, so it delayed us another two minutes. The first two floors were fully engaged at the time, and it wasn’t safe to go in through any of the doors. We were fighting it from outside. That’s what I was doing in the bucket in the first place.”
She still faced the window, but her frown had become thoughtful. “Okay. And?”
“The fire doors on one and two were open. The smoke would have filled the stairwell. If she’d been squatting on one of the lower levels…” He thought about the hearing aid. “And if she wasn’t able to hear them coming…”
“She may have been asleep. Woke up from the smoke, tried to go down the stairs, found herself trapped.” She glanced up at him. “Would she have been able to get out of the stairwell and into the hallway?”
“Possibly. But the heat would have been intense.”
“Hot enough to blister her feet?”
He remembered the soles of the girl’s feet. “Yeah.”
She nodded, and he could almost see the wheels turning in her mind. “She would have been panicking,” she murmured. “Not thinking clearly. Smoke choking her. Maybe she drops to her knees, below the smoke. And somehow she finds the ball.”
“She wouldn’t have been able to see anything,” David said, his stomach turning at the thought of how terrified the girl must have been. “The smoke would have filled the first floors and the stairwell in minutes. If she stumbled on the ball, found it somehow…”
Her blond brows lifted. “Or if they used it to block open one of the fire doors?”
He’d admired her mind the first time they’d met. That much he clearly remembered. “Possible. So she picks it up, but can’t go farther, because it’s too hot. The smoke is too thick. She backs up, to the stairwell.”
“Back to the fourth floor. No fire yet on four. She still has the ball. People hold on to weird things when they’re scared. She gets to the window, tries to break it.”
“She could have hit it with that ball till kingdom come and that window wouldn’t have broken,” David said. “But I doubt she got more than a few hits in. Her lungs would have already been damaged by the smoke from the stairwell, if that’s where she’d gone.”
“Where did you say you found the ball?”
“About two feet from where her fingertips had been. She was lying on her stomach, her arms extended.”
“Her body’s angle to the wall?”
“Thirty, forty degrees, maybe.”
“So she tossed the ball, then pounded on the glass with her hands. She was desperate by then.” She studied the prints on the glass. “She smacked the glass with her palms and pounded with her fists.”