God, now he prayed Lila had gotten straight into her car and ran as fast as she could from him. He would do just about anything if she wasn’t in that clinic. He hadn’t seen her, but he couldn’t see much from his vantage beyond the reception desk. Though it was getting easier to see in the dark clinic because the fire was growing, glowing with ghostly light.

Dixie nodded. “I’ll get Roxie here as soon as I can. Be careful.”

The station house was just around the block. Roxie and Major were both on duty. They wouldn’t bother with a car. They would come running, but he couldn’t wait.

Dixie raced back to the café and Armie pulled his sidearm. The reception desk hadn’t set itself on fire, and Lila wouldn’t have done it. Now he knew the arson inspector was wrong. Her house had been purposefully set on fire. There was no question about it.

“I don’t see why we had to do that.” The words were in a harsh whisper, but Armie could hear it plainly because the night was quiet around them.

Fucking Bobby Petrie. He should have found a way to keep him in jail. He should have protected her better.

If she was dead, he wasn’t sure what he would do. He might lie beside her and let the fire take him. God, she couldn’t be dead.

He forced the terror down and clung to the side of the building, stepping as lightly as he could. Every bit of training locked in, holding the fear at bay and allowing him to go cold.

“Listen here, little brother. I did what I had to do for the sake of our family.” That had to be Donny Petrie.

“But she was going to take me to Carrie,” Bobby insisted with a nasally whine.

“She was lying. Carrie isn’t coming back, and you need to man up or we’re going to lose half our damn boat. Now we need to get out of here. Those two bitches will die from smoke inhalation and we’ll have an alibi. No one’s seen us since we went out on the boat this morning. We get back to the boat and bring her in and head into Guidry’s. I want her own brother-in-law to have to testify we were out on the water all day long.”

That was not going to happen.

He couldn’t wait for Roxie or Major. Lila was inside and it sounded like she’d been alive when they’d started that fire. He couldn’t waste a single second. He came out from behind the wall and rounded on the Petrie brothers, getting them both in his sights in an instant.

“Put your hands up. Now.”