Page 24 of Roark
“Because it was easier.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Because it was her life. I couldn’t imagine how it felt to lose a husband.”
“You lost a father.”
“And I dealt with that. I’ve been investigating that fire since the day it happened, and I keep coming up with nothing. Except that letter.”
“That letter could be nothing.” Or it could mean everything. Roark was still trying to decide.
“You don’t believe that,” she said. “Because if you did, you wouldn’t have run to the hospital last night. You wouldn’t have stayed there with me to see what the outcome was, and you definitely wouldn’t have brought me here. So why don’t you tell me who we’re meeting who aren’t exactly police? And then tell me why you thought it made sense to call them.”
There was a lot he could tell her, more pieces to the gigantic puzzle they’d both stumbled upon, but he wasn’t sure the time was right. He glanced down at his watch before standing. “We should get going. We don’t want to be late.”
“Late? We’re going to the scene of a crime, not showing up to the office.”
There was something about her edgy sarcasm that rubbed him the wrong way, but that wasn’t the part of Tamika Rayder that had Roark twisted in conflict this morning. The sexy allure of this gutsy and tenacious woman appealed to him in ways he’d never thought of before. She wasn’t the type of woman he was normally attracted to and yet, she was just the type of woman he thought he might need at this moment in his life.
That last observation was oddly confusing, and that wasn’t a feeling he wanted to keep. “I’m going out to the car. Be there in five minutes if you’re coming along.”
As he turned and walked out of the kitchen without waiting for her to say another word, his stomach twisted at the thought of him running from someone, or something. Roark never ran from a challenge or a fight—it wasn’t in his nature. Yet, his legs couldn’t carry him away fast enough from the woman who was awakening things in him he’d never known existed.
Chapter 9
Special Agent Pierce Rawlings looked like he should be on the front page ofGQ. Dressed in a black suit, crisp charcoal-gray shirt, no tie and laced leather shoes shined to perfection, he stood in front of the cottage, appearing as out of place as Tamika had felt the first day she’d arrived.
“Nice to meet you,” Pierce was saying as he pulled his sunglasses off and extended a hand to her.
Roark had introduced them and she’d been standing there ogling the very attractive, dark-chocolate-complexioned FBI agent with the ominous black eyes.
“Nice to meet you too,” she managed to say and accepted his hand for a quick shake.
“We should get inside.” Roark started toward the door, and Pierce immediately followed.
With the formalities over, Tamika stepped forward. “I have the key.” It was a reminder to the men who were charging ahead of her without a means to get into the cottage. They both stepped to the side and let her pass them, and she hunted the key out of her jacket pocket. She hadn’t brought her purse with her, had just stuffed her cell phone in one pocket, keys in the other.
“Fire Brigade’s coming in at nine, so we’ve gotta make this quick.” Pierce’s voice wasn’t as deep as Roark’s and he didn’t sound as if he were barking a command or suppressing his rage, the way Roark usually did.
“How do you know when they’re coming?” she asked as she pushed the door open and stepped inside. The charred scent was still strong and filled her nostrils in seconds after entering through the hallway.
“I’ve got someone on the inside at the Brigade and the MPD. They said they think the fire started in the upstairs bedroom.” Pierce was standing to her left, and he nodded ahead of them toward the front of the house.
Tamika took a breath. Pressing her lips together she pushed aside her personal feelings and stepped firmly into the role of investigator. “My mother’s room. It’s the largest one in the front. We can go up these back stairs.”
When she glanced at Roark, saw his intense gaze steadily focused on her, she almost faltered. For whatever reason, there was an urge to sigh and admit that next to the day she’d entered her father’s office after he’d died, this was the worst moment of her life. Instead, she turned away from him and led them both around a corner and down another hall to the second set of stairs in the cottage. These were used mostly by Tuppence to take clean linens and other supplies up and down without guests seeing her. “The fire stayed pretty focused on this front half of the house. It hadn’t started to spread too far before the Fire Brigade arrived.” She talked as she walked, looking at everything from the ceiling to the walls and the floors.
Focused now, letting the scents filter through her mind without any emotional attachment was easier. Char patterns started on the floor and spread halfway up the wall in the hallway just before the first bathroom on this end of the floor. She remembered the wall was covered in a pale green wallpaper with tiny pink flowers. The parts of the paper that hadn’t been scorched to a sooty black hue were bubbled and already starting to peel from the incessant heat. The char pattern stretched back toward the bedroom, and she followed it.
“From their preliminary findings, the Brigade noted the flames were most intense in this room here,” Pierce noted.
Still staring at the blackened path, she tamped down on how hot it must have been in here during the fire and how frightened her mother and Tuppence were. “Started here, burned here the longest.”
“And quickly spread down this hallway into the bathroom. First victim made her way up the other set of stairs, grabbed second victim and dragged her out into the hallway, but something happened, and second victim was injured. Firefighters found both down in the hallway, that way.” Pierce pointed toward the stairs they’d came up.
“First victim is Tuppence Gregory. She’s been working here for fifteen years,” Tamika said as she stepped into the bedroom, her fingers shaking slightly. “Second victim is my mother, Sandra Paulette Rayder. She was in this bed.”
Tamika stared down at the floor as she walked. Her pristine new designer tennis shoes crackling over the ash of carpet burned nearly to the floorboards. “Fire burns up in a V-shape pattern.” Walking around the bed to the side closest to the window, she turned back and went to the other side, where there was a nightstand, about ten feet from the double-door of the closet. “See, this is a narrow V-shape, spreading out this way.”
She pointed down to the floor and walked back out into the hallway, where she kneeled down and touched her fingers to the floorboard. Burned to a crisp. This fire had burned hot and fast. And her fingers were still shaking. Yanking them back, she stood and walked toward the bedroom again. Pierce and Roark were still standing in the room, Roark on the side of the bed closest to the window and Pierce looking in the closet.
