Fatal Burn (West Coast 2)

His cell phone jangled and he picked it up. It was Carter, but there was still no news about Dani. A field officer from the FBI would keep him posted. Paterno had been called and Carter had given him the same news he now gave Travis: Blanche Johnson had two ex-husbands, a handful of boyfriends and a couple of kids. Carter promised more information later in the day.

They hung up. Travis absorbed this information, wondering how it fit in. Through the window he spied Nate Santana walking toward the house with Shannon, and his gut twisted. They took off their boots and entered the house, familiar with each other, as if they’d done it a million times before. He felt more than a twinge of jealousy. He remembered how Santana had touched her on the night of the fire, how he’d taken control, how it had seemed that he and Shannon were lovers, which she swore wasn’t the case.

But now Shannon’s face was hard and set. She cast a glance at Travis and he knew instantly something was wrong. More bad news. “What is it?” he asked, climbing to his feet.

“Nate has something to get off his chest,” she said.

Travis gazed at Santana. The man hesitated, then nodded curtly. “It might affect you as well,” Santana admitted.

“So tell us,” Shannon prodded. “What the hell’s been going on?”

“I was involved with another woman,” he said. “You got that right.” Travis felt a build up of tension in the air. Where the hell was this going? “The only problem is that she’s dead.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Shannon asked. “Who’s dead? Mary Beth?”

“No!” Santana clenched his fists and walked to the window, looked outside. “Dolores Galvez.”

“Who?” Travis asked, but the name was ringing distant bells.

“Dolores died in a fire nearly three-and-a-half years ago,” Nate stated flatly, his emotions on a tight leash. “She was the only victim in the series of fires attributed to the Stealth Torcher.”

Shannon visibly paled. She grabbed the back of a chair for support. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, staring at Santana. “You mean…Ryan killed her?”

He shook his head. Turned and faced them both. His jaw was set, his lips razor-thin, and the fury burning in his eyes ran deep. “I don’t think so,” he said, his fingers curling over the windowsill until his knuckles showed white. “Ryan Carlyle wasn’t the arsonist who took her life, Shannon. He wasn’t the Stealth Torcher.”

Chapter 29

“What do you mean? Why don’t you think Ryan was the Stealth Torcher?” Shannon asked, stunned, as she stared at the man she’d thought she’d known for nearly two years. At her feet Khan whined for attention, but for once, Shannon ignored him. The house felt suddenly stuffy. She brushed past Nate to the window, cracked it open, hearing a crow cawing from the roof of the stables as if laughing. “How would you know that he wasn’t?”

Nate leaned against the counter, his hips pressed against the lower cupboard. “I don’t know, not a hundred percent yet, but I’m working on it.”

“Working on it?” she repeated. Things started clicking in her head. She remembered meeting Nate at a horse auction, how they’d struck up a conversation, how they’d seemed to have so much in common, how in subsequent meetings he’d mentioned that he was looking for a place, hoping to become a partner in a business involving training animals, how she’d mentioned that she was looking for someone to work with the horses…She felt suddenly sick inside when she realized she’d been played for a fool. She felt totally and utterly betrayed. “You set me up,” she whispered as the ugly truth dawned. This man whom she’d defended to the teeth was suddenly a stranger to her.

Travis scraped back his chair. “What the hell’s going on?”

Nate held up a hand. “Let me explain.”

“Then get to it.” Travis was on his feet and the kitchen seemed suddenly small. Claustrophobic.

“Let’s go outside, I can’t breathe in here,” Shannon said. She opened the back door. Khan bolted outside and she followed, her head thundering with lies, the deceptions, all the half-truths she’d heard for so many years. From people she’d trusted. People she’d believed in.

She slipped into her boots and stood on the porch, hearing the shuffle of feet as the men, both coiled like rattlers ready to strike, followed her. “Okay,” she said once Nate was standing under the overhang of the porch. Behind him she saw the shed, black and burned, and wondered what, if any, part he had in its destruction. “So…go on.”

Nate rested a hip on the top rail surrounding the porch. “The long and the short of it is that I met Dolores in a restaurant where she was a waitress. We started dating and things heated up. Quickly. We were getting serious and fast, but she wanted to keep it quiet, hadn’t broken it to her family because she’d had a pretty bad track record. One divorce, two broken engagements. Her family didn’t exactly trust her judgment when it came to men, and now, looking back, I can’t say as I blame them. At the time it made me crazy.” He let out a mirthless laugh. “It was ironic in a way. I’d always been a man who didn’t want to be tied down, thought marriage was a death sentence, liked doing my own thing, you know, being free and easy, but then I met Dolores and a dozen red flags should have popped up in my head.” His jaw tensed, slid to the side. “They did, every last one of ’em, but I ignored them. Thought she was ‘the one,’ if there is such a thing.”

Shannon couldn’t believe her ears and yet the lines of strain on Nate’s face convinced her he was telling the truth.

“So one night, we’re supposed to meet at this old, abandoned restaurant. She picked the place, I don’t know why. But I got tied up. I was running late from my job, traffic was hell, she didn’t have a cell.” His fingers curled hard over the rail. He closed his eyes as if envisioning the entire scene. “I got there half an hour late and the place was ablaze. She was already dead.”

“And you never stepped forward?” Shannon was incredulous.

“I didn’t trust the cops. Period. Telling them we were lovers wouldn’t have brought her back. It just would have caused trouble. I would have had to meet her family, explain why we’d decided to meet there, which to this day I don’t know. I think it was random, she’d worked there years before, thought it would be safe. Jesus…”

“I can’t believe this,” Shannon said. She glanced up at the garage where Nate lived. “I trusted you with my life,” she whispered. “We’ve lived twenty yards from each other, worked together and never once did you say a word!”

Travis asked in a deadly voice, “So what happened?”

“Like I said, when I arrived at the restaurant it was already fully engulfed. Firefighters were hosing it down. I was frantic and pushed through the crowd. I heard a reporter interviewing people. The gist of the conversation was that the fire was set by the Stealth Torcher. And then I saw the body bag and