Cara jerked out of a dream where she was hurling herself from a car being attacked by birds. Why she thought she’d be safer outside when they were pecking viciously at the glass, her conscious mind could not fathom, but there—
The tapping came again. Pushing up to her elbows, she glanced at the window first. No. Someone was pecking at her door. She blinked into the darkness, then figuring it was one of her parents coming to tell her they were off on their predawn errands, she croaked, “Come in.”
The bedroom door swung inward, but Wyatt stayed firmly on the other side of the threshold, his phone pressed to his ear. She sat up in her single bed, the covers drawn up to her chin, waving him in. The last thing she wanted to do was wake her parents.
“Emma Parker,” he mouthed to her, indicating the other agent was on the opposite end of the call as he stepped into her room. He glanced at the door and raised a brow. She nodded and he closed it behind him, sealing them both into the small bedroom. She hit the switch, and the glare of the ceiling light set them both blinking.
“You said someone called Cara’s phone? Which one?”
Cara threw back the covers and sprang from the bed. The display on her ancient clock radio showed it to be approaching 2:00 a.m.
“And what did they say, exactly?” he persisted. Cara scowled and tugged on his arm, but he held firm, his lips thinning as he listened. “I see. Any confirmation of damage?”
She tugged again, and he pulled away, then motioned for her to remain patient.
“What is happening?” Cara hissed between clenched teeth. She grabbed hold of his free wrist and squeezed. “Damage to what? Where? The condo?”
“Ah, okay. I see.” He nodded, then gently removed her hand. “I’ll let her know and call you back when we’ve had a chance to figure out next steps.”
He ended the call, then lowered the phone, his brow furrowed with worry. “What? What is it?”
“A little after midnight Emma had a call come through to your original mobile number from the new one and thought it was odd, so she picked up.”
Cara frowned. “After midnight? Is she working twenty-four-hour shifts?”
He shrugged. “We’re a small department and most of our work can be done off-site. We often take our work home.”
“You said something about damages. What happened?”
“The caller claimed there was a fire at your residence, then hung up. Emma checked the voice mailboxes for both numbers and found one where the caller said something along the lines of ‘accidents happen when you play with fire.’”
“Play with fire?”
“Emma put in calls to the LAPD and fire departments, and was able to confirm an emergency services call to your address, but they wouldn’t give any additional information and the detective assigned to your case has not returned her calls as of yet.”
She let out a breathy snort. “Yeah, I can believe it. I know they have their plates full, but...yeah.” She pushed a hand through her hair, and the corn-silk strands fell right back over her eye. “So what do we do?”
“Do you have anyone you can call who lives nearby? Zarah?”
Shivering, she tugged at the hem of her top, wishing she had long sleeves and pajama bottoms rather than the cotton T-shirt and sleep shorts Zarah had procured. Shifting to place one cold foot atop the other, she shook her head. “Zarah lives out in the Valley. We do most of our work virtually.”
“A neighbor? Your cat people?”
Color flooded her cheeks. “We, uh... I don’t have their phone numbers. Any of them,” she added, looking down at her hands clasped in her lap in bewilderment. “It’s not Arkansas. I’ve only lived there a few years and...”
He tried to pretend he understood, but the idea of not knowing at least some of his neighbors must have been almost incomprehensible to him. Little Rock was a good-sized city, but in many ways it was still as interconnected as a small town. The truth was, there were few degrees of separation between most Arkansans, and even the city folk tended to look out for their neighbors.
He cleared his throat, and plowed ahead. “Em has been on the forums.” He gave her a sympathetic wince. “The scuttlebutt online is it wasn’t an accident and the damage is pretty bad.”
“You think someone set fire to my house?” She blinked up at him, not quite certain they were speaking the same language.
He reached past her, plucked a hoodie from the bedpost where she’d hung it and handed it to her. “I’m telling you there was possibly a fire at your residence in Los Angeles, and we have heard rumors it may have been the result of arson, and the damage is extensive. Nothing is confirmed, and no one has tried to reach out to you. Not the local officials, not Zarah or any neighbors. For all we know, this is a hoax.”
Cara shrugged into the sweatshirt. “Someone is saying they set fire to my house,” she repeated flatly.
He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“They said they’d burn it all down,” she murmured as she huddled into the fleece-lined warmth.
“Who did?” he prompted, his brow furrowed. “Who said ‘burn it all down’?”
Cara shook her head, her bewilderment turning to helpless fury. “They did.” She practically spit the words. “The people sending me nasty messages and scaring my poor mother half to death. Whoever paid Gerald Griffin to pull a gun on me in an airport parking garage.” She threw her arms out wide, as if gesturing to the wide array of invisible threats closing in on her. “They are doing this. Whoever they are.”
“Until we can get confirmation from a trusted source, we need to assume these are simply rumors.” He held her phone out to her. “Emma sent the number for the person she spoke to with LAFD. You need to be the one to call.” She reached for the cell phone with a sticky note affixed to the glass, but he held firm for a beat too long. “It’s possible they won’t give you any information over the phone.”
“They’ll give me the information. If being a semipublic figure is good for anything, it’s being recognized.” She yanked the phone from his grasp.
She stared down at the name scrawled below a number with the familiar area code. Investigator Shanna Gleason. The moment the call connected, she introduced herself and, reading from the sticky note he’d handed her, asked to speak to Investigator Gleason.
A moment later a woman picked up. “ACTS, Gleason here.”
“Um, hello. Yes,” Cara stammered, her gaze darting to Wyatt. “Am I calling the Los Angeles Fire Department?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A huff of self-conscious laughter escaped her. “Sorry. I guess I expected you to say LAFD when you answered, but you said something else and I wasn’t sure,” she rambled.
“Who’s calling?” the other woman asked.
“Oh, right. This is Cara Beckett. I’m calling about reports of a fire at my house on Sunset Drive in Los Feliz,” she said, focusing on the facts. “I believe you were contacted by Special Agent Emma Parker with the Arkansas State Police trying to confirm there was a fire?” Again, her gaze found Wyatt’s, and he nodded encouragingly.
“Yes, ma’am, I spoke with Agent Parker,” the investigator on the other end confirmed.
When she said nothing more, Cara gestured her frustration at Wyatt. “Ask to put her on speaker,” he whispered.
“Ms., uh, Investigator Gleason, I’m here with Special Agent Wyatt Dawson of the Arkansas State Police. Do you mind if we put you on speaker?”
There was a moment of hesitation on the other end, then a curt response. “Sure.”
Cara pressed the speaker button, then nodded at Wyatt. “Investigator Gleason, this is Agent Dawson. I work with Agent Parker and am currently with Ms. Beckett. What can you tell us about these reports of a fire at her property?”
“Are you currently in police custody, Ms. Beckett?” Investigator Gleason asked. “Isn’t it the middle of the night in, uh, Arkansas?”
“It is, but I am not,” Cara answered, stiffening at the implication. “Agents Dawson and Parker are working on a case in which I was the victim.”
“I see,” the other woman answered in a cautious tone.
“Ms. Beckett has been the target of several credible threats to her safety,” Wyatt informed her. “One of those threats turned into a reality when she landed in Little Rock. I am here with her now as both an investigative and protective partner.” He caught her eye and held her gaze. “Tell me, what does ACTS stand for?”
“Arson Counter-Terrorism Section,” she replied crisply.
“I see,” he replied.
Cara only whispered, “Arson.”
“You believe someone set the fire intentionally,” Wyatt prodded.
“I’m afraid so. I’m happy to hear you were not in the structure at the time, Ms. Beckett. Can you confirm whether anyone else should have been on the premises in your absence? House or pet sitter? Guests?”
“No. No one.”
Cara pressed her fingertips to her chin to keep it from trembling. She loved her house. It was the one extravagant purchase she’d made since the app took off, and she’d spent countless hours making it her sanctuary. Now, because some jerk hacker decided to post her address for all the trolls to see, someone had violated her sanctuary. Again.
“How bad is the damage?”
“Looks worse than it is,” the woman on the other end assured her. “You’ll need to contact your insurance company and get someone out there to start restoration. It may take a while, but in my estimation, the house should be habitable again.”
“I’m assuming you found evidence the fire was set intentionally?” Wyatt asked.
“We didn’t have to look very hard. They left gas cans in the yard. And before you ask, no, we weren’t able to get any physical evidence from them. I’m assuming our firebug wore gloves.”
“I see.” At a loss for how to proceed from here, Cara sought Wyatt’s steady reassurance again.
He nodded to her cell phone. “We’ll ask Ms. Beckett’s assistant to help with the insurance and getting the place secured. Has Agent Parker shared any information with you on the case we’re working here?”
“Only to route all attempts to contact Ms. Beckett through your office for the time being.”
“Thank you. I do have some information I can share. I think it may be helpful to you. If you would send me your email address, I will send you a link to the files. I warn you, it’ll be encrypted and will ask for about everything but your blood type and the guarantee of your firstborn son.”
He said the last in a lighter tone, but Cara couldn’t even muster the weakest smile.
The other woman chuckled. “My son is acting every minute of his fifteen years these days, so if you want him, you are welcome to him.” She paused to take a breath. “I’m curious to see what you have in your file, Agent Dawson. As long as it doesn’t have one of those ‘click on pictures of bridges’ things,” she added. “And Ms. Beckett?”
“Yes?” Cara responded in a reedy voice.
“I’m very good at catching firebugs,” Shanna Gleason assured her.
Cara straightened her spine and inhaled through her nose as if taking in the other woman’s confidence. “I’m sure you are. Thank you,” she added, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
She ended the call but didn’t relinquish the phone.
Wyatt looked down at her and sighed, his expression troubled. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you until I knew more.”
“No.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Don’t shut me out. What I don’t know can hurt me, Wyatt. It can hurt me badly. I don’t want you withholding information from me.”
He inclined his head. “I agree. So now you know.” He stepped back, groping for the doorknob. “It’s unlikely we’re going to get more information at this hour.”
“I guess not,” she conceded.
Then she heard a muffled cough from down the hall. Her parents. Biting her lip, she looked up at Wyatt, her expression pleading. “Listen, can we keep this quiet for now? I don’t want to worry my parents any more than I already have.”
He nodded solemnly. “What happens in California stays in California.” Wyatt held out his hand. “I’d like to hang on to the phone. Emma and I are still checking incoming messages and voicemails regularly.”
She placed the device in his hand without protest. She was discovering how pleasant it could be to have a buffer between her and bad news. “Take it.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Try to get some rest. There’s nothing we can do from here. We can come at this fresh in the morning.”
She sank back onto her heels and smirked. “Are you going to sleep?”
“I’m going to try.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “I know things start earlier around here than they do in Little Rock.”
She glanced at the ancient clock radio on the bedside table. “My dad will be up and out in a few hours.”
“Try to sleep. There’s nothing we can do right now. Your house can be fixed, and we know you’re safe here.” He started to back out of the room. “We’ll go after them again tomorrow.”
“Right,” she said, though she couldn’t imagine how he planned to go after anyone. She felt like Don Quixote, fighting off imaginary foes. “We’ll go after them again tomorrow.”
“Good night, Cara.” He pointed to the poster on her wall, then hit the light switch as he backed into the hall. “Try to get some sleep. Dream about boy bands,” he added in a loud whisper.
Cara snorted and wondered why her mother had left the poster tacked to the wall for all these years. “Good night.”
The door clicked shut behind him, and Cara climbed back into bed. Pulling the sheet and quilt up over her legs, she leaned back against the pillows, the hood of her sweatshirt pushing up against her ears. She yanked it up over her head and sank into it.
Trolling, threats, doxing, attempted assault, thwarted kidnapping and now arson. Uncrossing her arms, she stretched them wide before drawing them into her sides. The ceiling stared back at her. Closing her eyes, she reached deep into her bag of tricks.
It took three rounds of deep sleep meditation before she landed on a course of action. Decision made, her mind quieted and she finally drifted off.
W YATT WAS UP a while longer. Grumbling about the slow internet connection, he attempted to comb through the hundreds of direct messages, forum entries, social media posts and emails sent to Cara within the past month. Sure enough, he found some reference using the phrase “burn it all down” in every mode of communication. Bone tired, he created a folder titled “Fire” and added screenshots of each one to it.
When he was finished, he powered down his laptop and set it aside in favor of pen and paper. But rather than making case notes, he reached into the bag of tricks he’d picked up from the LYYF app in an attempt to clear his mind. Pen in hand, he numbered a blank page in the battered composition notebook he carried with him with numerals one through ten. Then he did his best to distill everything nagging him into a list of no more than ten bullet points to be addressed the following day.
Thoughts, hunches and random observations. He listed them all in no particular order. Everything from his suspicions about Cara’s business partners to the need to talk to Jim about getting better locks installed on his doors. He noted the guest room was decorated in a trendy farmhouse scheme, but Betsy Beckett had left a poster of a boy band taped to the wall of Cara’s old bedroom. He started an entry about her blue eyes, but caught himself in time to change it to a more businesslike inquiry regarding whether she wore prescription eyeglasses. Then, annoyed with himself, he recopied the list of IP addresses he’d isolated and wanted to run the next day as punishment for getting too personal.
In the end it was a mishmash of to-do items, reminders and worries a desk jockey like himself was in over his head on a protection detail. He was forgetting something. What was it?
Tapping the end of his pen against the paper, he gnawed his lip until he tasted blood. When was the last time he’d been to the shooting range? He’d been raised in duck-hunting country and firing weapons since he was big enough to hold a pellet gun, but being responsible for the safety of a living, breathing woman was a far cry from shutting down phishing schemes and heading off malware attacks.
He set the notebook aside and rolled out of bed and padded down the hall to check the door locks. If nothing else, he could cross number three off his list straight off the bat. Satisfied they were as secure as the flimsy lock sets would allow, he returned to the guest room. The notebook teetered on the nightstand. The inside of the waistband holster he preferred took up much of the free space. He’d found an outlet for his phone charger behind the headboard. It sat charging and silent since the call from Agent Parker. He could only assume everyone was in bed. As he should be.
But his mind would not slow.
On impulse, he grabbed his phone and scrolled through his contacts until he found the number for a guy who’d graduated from the academy not long before him. For most of his career with the Arkansas State Police, Ryan Hastings had provided personal security for politicians, visiting dignitaries, sports figures and, most recently, a very high-profile heiress before retiring to start his own agency.
Having done all he could do for now, he toed off his shoes as he tapped out a quick message for Ryan to contact him at his earliest convenience, then stretched out on the bed without bothering to undress or pull back the duvet.
Wyatt stared at the ceiling for a full fifteen minutes before his flighty thoughts landed on the thing he’d forgotten. Grabbing his pen and paper, he scrawled, “Follow the money,” on his list of things to do, before tossing the pad and pen on the unused pillow.
He was asleep in seconds.