Page 149 of Fire Fight

thirty-nine

. . .

CREW

“What a fucking mess,”Lane grumbled as he steered us into his office at the station.

“It’s not possible.”

Trey was clearly in shock, moving like a zombie since we’d left Missy’s, but I was inclined to agree with him. There was no fucking way.

“Trey,” Lane said gently, using that tone I’d often heard him adopt with families of accident victims. “The writing is on the wall.”

“No!” I insisted, and Trey nodded. “That’s even more ludicrous than our killer being Ward.”

“Take your feelings about the family out of it and look at it logically,” Lane implored us both. “Aspen and I both thought Wyatt knew more than she was letting on the day we interviewed Ward. And while Aspen didn’t get any bad vibes from him, I wasn’t entirely convinced. I thought maybe Ward was a sneaky tech genius and had managed to dupe the system.”

“Not possible,” Trey muttered, some life returning to him. “For starters, the security logs are iron-clad. No offense to Ward, but he’s not smart enough to manipulate the system like that. Noone in that family is. Hell, it’smysoftware, and even I’m not smart enough to do it.”

“Which means Ward and Wyatt were telling the truth. But there’s a third member of that family, and after the interview with Missy, it makes perfect sense.”

“I think you’re reaching,” I told Lane. “There’s no fucking way Mrs. Saunders is responsible for forty years’ worth of serial killings.”

Lane shrugged. “The evidence says otherwise.”

“What evidence?” Trey shouted, shooting from his seat. “You’ve got the town whore telling us Kelly went to prom with Roger and some bad vibes from the Ward interview. Quite frankly, you’re jumping to conclusions, and I won’t allow it.”

Trey’s chest rose and fell rapidly as he stared down at Lane, who blinked in shock at the outburst. Before Lane could respond, though, his phone rang.

“My FBI friend,” he explained before he answered. “Hey, Addison. Heads up, you’re on speaker and two of my brothers are here with me.”

“Hey, Lane. Hey, other Lawless brothers.”

Trey and I mumbled greetings, and Lane said, “What’ve you got?”

“So, the team and I took a look at all the files you sent over, both the police reports and incident reports from the fire department. And after consulting with a few colleagues at Quantico, we’ve built a profile. I’m emailing everything over, so take some time to review it, and give me a call if you’ve got any questions.”

On cue, Lane’s computer pinged with an incoming email. “Thanks a lot, Addison. I owe you one.”

“A beer next time I’m down that way.”

“Deal,” Lane grinned then hung up.

Trey and I were on the edges of our seats while Lane navigated to the email and scanned the contents.

“HA!” he shouted.

The chair next to me creaked, and I looked over to see Trey had gripped it tight enough to bleach his knuckles, the wood groaning with the force.

“No,” he said.

Lane gathered himself as he looked at our older brother. “I wanted to be wrong.”

“About what?” I asked. “Tell me what the fuck that profile says.”

“‘Based on the information provided to this office courtesy of the Dusk Valley Sheriff’s Department and Dusk Valley Fire Department, we have built the following profile of the so-called “Prom Night Arsonist.” We believe we’re dealing with a female, likely in her late fifties in accordance with the date of the first kill. This killer is…’”

I stopped listening after that, though Lane continued to read, mostly to himself.