Page 39 of Love Again

“You think he wanted to learn so he could set more.”

Luke moves the camera. “There were eleven more fires.”

In the end, he took four more series of shots, and though some of it was technical, he made it look easy, as always. That’s his gift: to make the hard things easy.

As he starts to pack up the camera, he asks, “Where do you suggest looking for a small bottle with a tooth?”

I sigh. “I don’t think it’s here. If this was a test site, he hadn’t built up a pattern yet. He wouldn’t have a message to sell.”

Nevertheless, to be thorough, we decide to step into our extrication suits and start meticulously going over the area.

Thank God it’s a relatively small house.

I can’t help but watch him dress behind the car. He’s uncovered from the waist up. The suits are one piece, really heavy, and zip up the front. He’s taken his shirt off in the brisk spring afternoon and stands next to the car, folding up his light sweater while the one-piece suit stays peeled back around his waist.

Though he’s lost a little weight, he looks amazing. He’s ripped, and the muscles of his back move as he hitches the suit up and puts one arm into a sleeve and then the other. His chest hair, swirling over hard pecs, comes together in a line for a deep dive under the suit, and I suddenly want to slip my hand down there.

Focus.

This is work.

One of your best friends died in a fire like this because you couldn’t think clearly.

His chest disappears inside the suit when he zips up. We put on masks for safety, though I can’t believe there are any hidden leaks or chemicals here anymore, and we search.

For three hours.

Nothing.

It’s actually easy to find excuses to not be around him. We cover different sections of the site and compare them digitally on our phones. We decide not to change back into street clothes and head home when Mateus calls again.

Portland police have a bottled tooth in their evidence room, and we need to check it out. Using Carlson’s matrix, this would have been fire number eight. If Carlson’s theory is correct in terms of how the guy is doubling back, returning to the next town from the list makes his next move predictable.

If he plans to stop. But there’s no indication that’s happening. Maybe he’ll start all over again from a different location.

΅

Forty-five minutes later, we’re back in the car with the evidence bag empty. We are sitting in pouring rain trying to decide our next move. It’s too late to go out to another site, which Luke clearly wants to do. This fire site was only four months ago at a storage facility, and the owners boarded the place up. He places a call to the fire marshal and confirms we have permission to be on site.

Tomorrow.

Lightning flashes sideways along the horizon of the building.

“I’m starving,” he says, his face in shadow. When clouds come in spring, they turn the sky to twilight. He turns his wrist to read his watch. “It’s almost six. There must be a good place around here. I could go for a drink. Like, alcohol.”

I have to admit, I’ve had nothing but two eggs and half an English muffin since early this afternoon. And I ate like an animal in the car, trying not to have food end up in my lap.

“There is a really good one actually, but I have to make sure of something first. Can we just keep compartmentalizing? And change into real clothes?”

He grins. “Happy to.”

΅

Bridgette’s is an amazing family-style restaurant with everything from steak and fish, to vegan lasagna, to beet and goat cheese salads, and cheesecake. It’s painted bright purple, and so are most of the walls inside. There’s an old jukebox in the corner and a line of people out the door, umbrellas up, determined to get inside.

Luke jogs across the parking lot as another flash of lightning splits the sky. The clap of thunder is almost immediate, and it’s very loud.

“Whew!” he says, slamming the car door and wiping water from his face and neck. “Cats and dogs out there.” He sniffs and looks at me, and I catch those hazel eyes, all green and brown with a circle of gray-blue right along the outer edge of the iris. “It’s an hour wait. Is it that good? Looks cute inside. Very purple.”