“I just heard about the fire,” she said instead, sounding tight and grim. “Zach, when we were taking Phyllis out of the house, she tried to tell us that someone was standing on the edge of her property, watching us. A man with a blowtorch.”

His fantasy abruptly vanished. “What?”

“She was fighting us, trying to stall, saying whatever she could to get us to let her go back into the house. We didn’t listen to her. And now…”

“And now you just might have helped catch a serial arsonist,” he said firmly. “If you were here, I’d kiss you again.”

She let out a breath. “But what if—”

“Don’t kill yourself with the what-ifs,” he said. “I’ve been there. They don’t help.”

“OLD HEATING element,” Tommy told him the next morning when he found Zach waiting at his office. “Shoddy, unreliable, and as we saw firsthand, dangerous. Thank God Phyllis was still in the hospital and not at home.”

Zach just shook his head. “This was no more accidental than the Hill Street fire. The trash can—”

“Zach—”

“Look, Phyllis said she saw a guy standing on the edge of her property with a blowtorch.”

Tommy sighed and retrieved two Red Bulls from a small refrigerator on his credenza. “I can’t discuss the investigation.”

Zach declined the caffeine-rich drink. “Thought you were off caffeine.”

“Sue me.” Tommy drank deep and sighed again. “Just don’t tell my wife.”

“Tommy—”

“Look, I talked to Phyllis myself this morning. She’s incoherent and in and out of consciousness. She doesn’t remember a damn thing about yesterday. Not a guy with a blowtorch, or if she had a wire-mesh trash can or not.”

“That’s the drugs talking.”

“That’s all we have. The fire was put out, Zach. It was a job well done on our part. No injuries, no fatalities.”

And that was the bottom line. Zach got that. He just didn’t happen to agree. “It was also arson.”

“Goddamn it.”

“I suppose your next line is for me to leave this one alone, too.”

“Yes,” Tommy said very quietly. “It is.”

“You got the picture I sent.”

“I got the picture.”

“You’d better be on this, Tommy.”

“You need to go now, Zach.”

Yeah. Yeah, he did, before he did something he might deeply regret. Like lose his job.

When he finally got to the fire station and went to the kitchen for something to put in his empty, gnawing gut, Brooke was there. He’d hoped to see her last night at his place. In his bed. But clearly she’d thought a little too much. He tried to move past her, but she grabbed his arm.

“Brooke, don’t.” He felt raw. Exposed. If he let her touch him right now, it might make him all the more vulnerable. Pulling free, he backed up a step and came up against the damn refrigerator.