she and Jack Spencer were in this together. She could interview and interrogate, but she couldn’t arrest or serve warrants. Spencer could.
He glanced around the sooty, soggy room. “Can’t you already tell if it’s arson?”
“I approach all fires as if they are, but I need proof.”
“Well, something’s fishy. Why else would he have been tied?”
She curled her shaking hands into fists around the instrument she held. Her voice cracked as she asked, “Was he dead before the fire?”
“I don’t know.” Sympathy and an unidentifiable emotion flashed through his blue eyes before he turned toward the M.E. “Mason?”
“You know it’s too soon for me to have anything for you yet, Jack.”
Numb and still reeling, a part of her noted the cop’s clean soap-and-water scent she caught beneath lingering smoke. Someone had tied up Harris, but why? So he couldn’t escape the fire? Or for another reason?
This was too much. She couldn’t process it all right now. She needed to test for accelerants and the firefighters from Stations Four and One were waiting. If she wanted to unravel this puzzle, she had to start somewhere. She turned to scan her instrument across the most burned part of the wall above the nightstand.
Jack Spencer snagged her elbow; she looked sharply at him.
He released her, but his gaze lasered into her. “Since the victim was a friend of yours, I’ll need to interview you before I leave here.”
The victim had a name. Terra bit off the sharp words, resisting the urge to rub the place where he’d touched her. The cop was doing what she should be doing—putting his emotions aside so he could do his job.
His features were just as exacting as his eyes. The stubborn chin, rough-hewn cheekbones and shadow of whiskers did nothing to soften a jaw that looked as if it could take a few blows.
“I’ll also be conducting an investigation,” she said.
“I’ll notify the family, talk to the firefighter who found the body.” He scribbled in the small notebook he held.
“That should give you time to do some things you need to do, then you and I can talk.”
“Harris had only an ex-wife.” Thinking about Cecily Vaughn unsettled Terra’s stomach again. “His parents passed on some years ago.”
“Thanks. That confirms what I learned from his neighbor.” Jack Spencer tucked his notebook into the inside pocket of his lightweight tweed blazer. “Anything else you can tell me? Had he made anyone mad recently?”
She frowned. “He’s retired.”
Broad shoulders lifted in a shrug.
She shook her head. “I had dinner with him tonight. He was fine.”
Spencer’s gaze sharpened. “We can talk more about that when I see you again.”
“All right.” She flipped the switch on her “sniffer” and turned toward the charred wall.
“Should you be working this case? He was your friend, after all.”
Having her doubts voiced only served to tighten her jaw. “I am working it.”
“Look, I apologize for what I said when I first walked in, but seeing him obviously affected you. I don’t want anything to jeopardize this case.”
“Neither do I. And nothing will. What happened earlier was shock. I’m not used to seeing my friends burned to a crisp,” she said sharply.
“I know you’re the only fire investigator we have, but maybe someone else could help you out, give you some space.”
“What I need to do is my job, and I will. Maybe you could do yours.”
His lips flattened. “I’ll be by to talk to you once I finish my preliminary interviews.”
“You know where to find me.”
She wondered if his blue eyes were that hard all the time, then she pushed the thoughts away and focused her attention on piecing together what had happened to her mentor.
Chapter 2
He wished he hadn’t touched her, although he couldn’t have let her fall flat on her face. That was where Terra August had been headed when he’d first seen her. Jack could still feel the taut curve of her waist, smell the hint of sweet woman beneath the acrid burn of smoke.
Late the afternoon following the fire, he scrubbed a hand over his face. The setting sun glared through the windshield of his pickup as he drove back to the fire scene. He’d stopped in town to interview a possible witness in a car-jacking, one of his several active cases, but his thoughts were mainly on his newest case. A mix of appreciation and admiration still flared when he thought back to his earlier meeting with Presley’s fire investigator. Professional admiration was where he should draw the line, so he did. She’d put her personal feelings aside and done her job. Despite the raw pain in her eyes, she’d been careful and attentive at the scene. Now he needed to know how much, if any, progress she’d made.
Jack bit off a curse.
Terra August had been on the fringes of his mind like a shadow, not keeping him from his job, but a distraction he’d been unable to dismiss. Was it the vulnerability in her face when he’d first seen her at the fire scene? The agony in those jade-green eyes when he’d stuck his foot in his mouth about her friend? He rubbed at his eyes, scratchy from lack of sleep.
The reason she lingered in his mind had to be because she was still on his suspect list. Until he’d interviewed and cleared her, she would be. Still, his gut told him she was innocent. Which didn’t explain why he’d thought so much about her.
Why Terra August? What was different about her? Since Lori’s death three and a half years ago, Jack hadn’t noticed anything except work. Certainly not women. Not like this.
Some of his time today had been spent asking questions about Terra. She’d spent nine years fighting fires on the front line with Station Four. The last four had been spent as a fire investigator. Orphaned at age fifteen by the death of her parents in a car wreck, she’d moved in with her grandfather, a firefighter who’d died of smoke inhalation in a fire about ten years ago.
She was also divorced from Keith Garcia. Garcia was a sharp young defense attorney with a prestigious law firm making a name for himself in the state. Jack found himself wondering what had gone wrong between the two of them.
He turned into the Hunter’s Ridge subdivision. As he reached the yard squared off with fluttering yellow police tape, he noted a lone police cruiser. It appeared the fire investigator had finished here.
He stopped and rolled down his window.
Pope, the officer at the scene, stepped up to Jack’s truck. “Hey, Jack.”
“Hey. The fire investigator still inside?”
“No,
