Gabriel came halfway out of his chair. “He was being a dick!
I didn’t burn down his house!”
“Sit down.”
“Damn it!” Gabriel’s hands braced against the table. It took everything he had not to shove it across the room. “I didn’t start those fires!”
“Sit. Now.” The marshal hadn’t moved. “Or the cuffs go back on.”
Gabriel sat.
“I didn’t start them,” he said. “I didn’t.”
“Don’t take this all on yourself, kid. Who else is in on it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“I don’t know who’s starting them.”
“What do you know?”
“Nothing!”
“What are your brothers going to tell me?”
Gabriel felt like there wasn’t enough air in the room. “They don’t know anything, either.”
“I have a report from a few weeks ago. You were caught with a few bags of fertilizer. Played it off as a prank, right? Was that supposed to be the first one?”
It was a prank. Tyler and Seth had beaten the crap out of Chris, so they were just going to screw with them. “What? No!”
“Your brother Christopher was with you. Is he the one starting the fires?”
“No.”
“Did he help you?”
“No!” It was taking everything Gabriel had to stay in his chair.
“He’s sixteen. We pull him in, he’ll be treated as a minor.
He’ll be held in juvenile detention until we get around to questioning him. What’s he going to tell ”
“You leave Chris alone! He had nothing to do with this!”
The lights blazed white hot and almost exploded, power pulsing in the air.
Gabriel reined it in, gasping from the effort.
The fire marshal had shoved back his chair, and he glanced between Gabriel and the lights overhead, which were settling back into a normal luminescence.
Gabriel swallowed. “Leave him alone,” he ground out. “Chris doesn’t know anything.”
“What do you know?”
“I don’t know who’s starting them.”