Treasured.
Peter Rouse wasn’t worth her time after all, was he?
She looked at her bag of tools on the kitchen counter, where she’d dropped it after coming home from her night’s work. The bag, a little black leather satchel like an old-school doctor might carry, had been her gift to herself way back when she’d graduated and received her pin.
She wouldn’t part with the bag. But she could afford to get rid of a few of the tools it held. Since they knew it was arson, they were going to need an arsonist. Peter Rouse’s punishment wasn’t quite complete. Yet.
“Two freaking weeks,” Mason said. It was his routine now. The first thing he said every morning when I walked into his hospital room was an exaggeration of how long he’d been imprisoned there. I showed up at my usual time. Eight o’clock with a Box O’ Joe, a pair of breakfast sandwiches and a couple of doughnuts.
“Ten days,” I corrected. “You’ll survive, I promise.” I pulled the bedside tray around and adjusted the height, cleared it of books, magazines and an empty plastic Jell-O container from the night before, and set the feast for him. I even poured his coffee. I was spoiling the man rotten. And I still hadn’t told him I loved him, because there were bigger things going on. Okay, and because I was a fucking chicken. I’d managed to decide that I’d say it back if he said it to me again. I’d do it immediately. So all he had to do was say it again and make it easy on me.
What if he’d changed his mind?
“Earth to Rachel,” he said,
I blinked out of my own head and said, “I brought you a great big present today.”
“My discharge papers?”
“Better.” I slid my bag off my shoulder, took out my laptop and set it on the nearby easy chair, my new workstation. I worked on my book-in-progress right here in his hospital room, every day until noon. Then I headed home for a few hours of quality time with my dog, and then I came back with the boys in tow as soon as school let out for the day. I didn’t mind it a bit. The four of us usually had dinner together, cafeteria food or takeout, depending on what I had time to grab, and then I took the kids back to my place for the night.
Amy, my personal assistant, was handling everything else. Copy edits, Facebook and Twitter posts, newsletter mailings, and fan letter replies. I needed to come up with a new title for Amy, because personal assistant didn’t begin to cover it. Maybe something like “She Whose Quitting Would Result in My Complete and Utter Annihilation.” Yeah, that would do it. Goth chick had made herself indispensable to me. Probably all part of her evil plan for the ultimate in job security. As long as I stayed flush, she’d stay flush. And I was staying flush.
I pulled a manila envelope out of my bag and slapped it onto the tray in front of “my detective.” I’d been calling him that inside my head ever since the night of the fire, when I’d screamed it at the Binghamton FD.
Mason was in mid-coffee-sip, but he stopped when he looked at the file. “What’s this?”
“The full case file. Everything to do with it, from the arson investigator’s report to Rebecca Rouse’s autopsy report. It also has Rosie’s notes from the interrogation of Peter Rouse, the victim’s estranged husband.” He knew that Rouse was our most likely suspect, being that his wife had taken the kids and moved out only a few weeks prior to the fire.
“Finally!” He set the coffee down and tore open the envelope. “You didn’t even peek?” he asked.
“I did not. I promised Chief Sexy-pants that it would get into your hands unopened, and you can now verify that I lived up to my word.” I moved up beside him so I could read while he did. And I grabbed my doughnut out of the paper bag because, you know, I’d already resisted it all the way here, and I was only human. He was lucky I hadn’t eaten them both and read the file.
He was skimming, though, flipping pages so fast I couldn’t keep up. Police speak required slow, careful reading for me. It was not my native tongue. “Whathitthay?” I asked around my delicious cream-filled, chocolate-frosted bliss.
Mason correctly interpreted my question, which proved he was my perfect mate, and said, “Gas line was tampered with. Marks that appear to have come from a hacksaw were found on the pipe. The killer let the basement fill with gas, then remotely activated a simple detonator to create a spark.”
“A spark?” I asked. “A single spark?”
He nodded. “That’s all it took.” He was still skimming. “They found the detonator in the rubble, but what was left wasn’t much to go on.” He read some more, nodded. “Search warrant was executed on Peter Rouse’s place. They found a hacksaw in the back of his pickup. Forensics matched the shards in its teeth to the gas line that was sawed through. Teeth marks matched, too.”
“Not the brightest murderer on the block, is he? Keeping that stuff in his pickup.” Mason frowned at me. I shrugged. “Not saying I don’t think he’s guilty, just saying he’s also effing stupid.” Then I lifted my brows. “Notice how I abbreviated the cuss word there?”
“I did notice. Nice job. The boys must be having a good influence on you.”
“I’m turning into Carol fucking Brady.” I clapped a hand over my mouth, but he just kept grinning at me. I sighed at my own difficulty with habit breaking and tried to steer us both back on topic. “So the almost-ex is not only guilty but stupid,” I said.
“Not too stupid to figure out how to remotely ignite the fire,” he said softly. “Arson investigator says it’s tricky to know how long to wait to spark one up with a gas leak.”
I shook my head. “Those poor kids down the hall don’t have a mother anymore, and now they’ve got to deal with the fact that their father killed her.”
“They’re not down the hall anymore. They were moved to the pediatric hospital last night,” Mason said.
“That’s good news, isn’t it?” I hoped to God it was.
“Yeah. Not even in ICU. They put them in a regular room, my nurse said. They’re out of danger. Probably going home—or somewhere—in a day or two.”
“Have you seen them yet?”
“No. I haven’t tried.”
“But you saved their lives, Mason.”
He shrugged. “And I’m not going to go present myself to them in hopes of receiving their undying gratitude. They’ve got enough to deal with right now.” He sighed and closed the file. “Speaking of kids, how are the boys?”
“They miss you. I mean, visiting you for a couple of hours every day isn’t the same, you know? They miss their stuff, too, or so they keep saying, though I don’t see how they could. We’ve hauled most of it to my house by now.”
His face turned serious. I hadn’t meant to wipe his smile away. “They’ve taken over your place. I’m sorry, Rache. I know how much you love your home and value your space. Any damage so far?”
“Don’t be a dumb-ass.
