Page 51 of Slow Burn
“It’s crossed my mind.”
He rubbed his palm over the white grizzle on his chin. “What do you need with Sally this time?”
“Aside from this new fire?”
His mouth tipped up.
“She was Mama’s best friend back then. She might know something I don’t. I’ve been digging, Uncle Joe. Digging deep, looking at old reports, making notes. But nothing beats talking to people who were there.”
Understanding lit in his gaze. “True enough.”
“Before seeing Sally Anne,” she said, “I want a shot at Ned Turner. Start with the harder case. You know where he lives?”
Joe’s lips pursed. “I do. But, Honey, I don’t know about you goin’ after him.”
She bristled but managed a tight smile. “I’ll be nice.”
“It’s not you bein’ nice I’m worried about.”
“I’ll be alright, Uncle Joe.”
He grunted.
When she rose to clear the dishes, Joe stopped her with a shake of his head. “You got stuff to do, Jossie, and you’re my guest. Let me handle it.”
She shot him a soft smile. “I’m family, not a guest.”
He gave his head another firm shake. “No, ma’am. I have a lot to make up to a lot of folks, you and your nan most of all. Please, let me take care of ’em.”
The earnestness in his face made her relent, if reluctantly. “Alright.”
She bent to kiss his cheek, and he smelled of sandalwood and menthol cigarettes.
“Give that old porcupine hell,” Joe said with a raspy chuckle as she headed out.
twenty
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark…” - Ayn Rand
Cole pounded down his usual running route like he was trying to outrun the mess inside his own head. Normally the looping roads and sloping hills burned the edge off, but today his mind ran faster than his legs.
And every one of his thoughts boiled down to one thing: Jocelyn.
He wondered how she’d slept after the fire. Hell,ifshe’d slept. Wondered where she’d laid her head. Wondered if she’d thought about their last fight, or if she was preparing to shut him down when he offered help again.
Finally, he wondered if she’d given up. But, no. Her reaction was burned into his memory—that was the kind of mad that didn’t cool off. The kind that kept you moving. She hadn’t come back here to fold. She came hunting answers, and she wasn’t leaving ‘til she had them.
He barreled through the old mill district, the dead brick factories crouched like watchmen in the shadows. Felt like a ghost town these days.
He pushed harder, lungs heaving as the road tipped uphill into the canopy of trees. Sun and shadow striped across his skin like paint strokes, carrying him out toward the crooked cluster of homes on the other side.
That’s when he heard it. Voices sharp enough to cut over the bass thumping in his headphones. Arguing.
He might’ve kept on—small-town drama wasn’t his business—if not for the car in the drive with North Carolina plates. Jocelyn.
A jolt of electricity shot through him, and he was veering before he’d even thought about it. He tugged his earbuds out, stuffing them in his pocket, and cut up the gravel drive. And there it was: Jocelyn’s voice.
“I just wanted to—”
