Page 120 of At First Spark
I crouch. Beckett circles wider, scanning the tree line, the road, the angle back toward the house. Lark stands just over my shoulder. I can feel her there before she speaks.
“Nolan found them.”
That shouldn’t feel strange. He’s been working the site longer than anyone and knows the layout better than most.
Still…something about him being the one to find it sits wrong. Not because I think he did anything, but because I don’t know how long he’s been looking.
I look up at her. “Where is he?”
“In the back hall. Taking photos.”
Already documenting. Already moving. Like he expected something to be there. I hate that the thought comes with immediate resentment anyway.
The deputy rolls in just as I straighten, lights off, engine low. Good. No performance. No scene. Just a middle-aged manin a tan uniform who knows enough not to trample the area before he’s seen it.
He takes one look at the tracks, and his expression shifts from routine to attentive.
“Anyone touch anything?”
“No,” I say.
Lark adds, “Nothing except the tarp where my contractor Nolan lifted it back into place.”
The deputy nods once and starts his own slow circuit of the gate, the materials stack, the edge of the burned-out carriage house. He calls something in over the radio about possible scene contamination tied to prior fire damage and requests somebody from the marshal’s office to take a look if they can spare the time before dark.
The next twenty minutes happen in questions. Who was here and when. Had anyone seen a vehicle on the road. Had anyone noticed anything missing. Bailey remembers a dark sedan idling near the end of the lane when they arrived, but hadn’t thought much of it because “it’s a road.” Hadley insists it was weird because the driver didn’t wave when she waved first, which somehow feels like both the least and most useful detail in the world.
Nolan emerges from the back hall midway through it, phone in one hand, expression tight when he sees the deputy. He starts to say something, spots me, thinks better of it, and redirects the whole of whatever that was toward the law enforcement side of the yard instead.
Good decision. I don’t have room for him right now. Not with Lark standing close enough that every time the deputy asks another question, and she shifts half an inch nearer, some uglyprotective part of me calms for exactly one second, then gets worse when I notice it happened.
Clouds continue to thicken overhead as the deputy works. The first edge of storm wind finds the side yard and moves through it, carrying the smell of wet earth before the rain has fully arrived. It rattles the loose tarp again. Makes the half-burned boards near the carriage house creak softly in the gusts.
Kenzie’s face keeps trying to slide back into my thoughts. When the deputy asks whether anyone in town has reason to target the property or its owner, my attention goes to Lark first, then away before she can see it. Her gaze drifts toward Nolan, catches the movement, and narrows just slightly. He notices too.
The deputy finally steps back and dusts off his hands. “I’ll have somebody swing back through after the weather passes,” he says. “In the meantime, keep the side gate secured and don’t leave this area unattended if you can help it.”
If you can help it. That might as well be a challenge in a situation like this.
I thank him, and so does Lark, and the moment his cruiser pulls away the wind picks up hard enough to make the porch chimes at the inn’s front entrance rattle against each other like teeth.
“You’re not staying here tonight,” I say because I can sense that determined tenseness coming off Lark as she wants to protect her inn.
Lark turns to me too fast. “That’s not your decision.”
“It is if somebody is coming around your property after dark and we don’t know why.”
Hadley folds her arms and looks at Lark. “Farm.”
Bailey nods once. Lila already looks like she made that call ten minutes ago. Lark looks at me. And there it is again. That small, impossible moment where choice lives between us and somehow still feels like trust.
“Fine,” she says.
The word should feel like victory, but instead it feels like borrowed time.
The storm hits full on the drive back. Not all at once. First a spatter of rain against the windshield, then thicker drops, then sheets hard enough that the wipers struggle to keep up. Nolan stays behind at the inn, insisting he wants to lock up properly and cover what he can before the worst of the weather rolls through.
I do not like leaving him there. I like leaving Lark there less. So I take the win where I can get it.
