He held her gaze in one of those stare-downs that neither of them ever won. He had patience on his side and Maya had badassery, and it worked out about even.
“Is that why you hauled your busy self all the way over to this side of the building? Is something up with our bond proposal?”
“No, it’s something else.”
“S.G.?”
“Nothing new there. I still have some inquiries out. But she seems fine where she is, so I’m not in a big rush to distract myself from town business.”
“Good.” He nodded and sat back, feeling exhaustion drag behind his eyes. “It might be more disruptive for her than anything else.”
“That’s what I’m thinking too. No, it’s the fires we’ve been experiencing the last few weeks. A lot more than normal, right?”
That woke him up fast. “Yes. More frequent, but not damaging—so far. You got any theories?”
“It’s not a theory, just something odd that I noticed. I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of them. Logging each fire, location, damage, date, and so forth. I turned that data into a graph. Want to see?”
“Sure.” He leaned his elbows on the desk and she whipped her iPad from under her arm. A colorful bar graph marched across the screen. He blinked at it; his eyes felt like sandpaper. “There’s a gap there.”
“Yup. A pretty noticeable gap.”
“What does it correspond to? Long night, no sleep, no data comprehension.”
“This gap represents the last few days. There was another fire this morning, that’s this.” She pointed to an orange bar labeled Nightly Catch. “The fire before that was here. The Dunfords’ bear cache. On May sixth.”
May sixth. That was the day before he and Kate had flown to Los Angeles. He stared at the graph, double-checking the dates of each fire she’d logged.
“There were no fires while I was gone. I know, Nate told me. Two medical calls, a creek rescue, but no fires.”
“Right. Not a single fire while you were gone.”
“We’ve gone days without fires before this.”
“Yes, but not so many days. If you include every fire and every nuisance call, the way I did here, the longest gap before this was only a day and a half.”
His gaze flew to meet her steady brown eyes. “What are you saying? I didn’t set those fucking fires.”
Her expression didn’t shift. “Didn’t say that you did.”
His brain clicked over to the next possibility.
“Are you saying Kate did? That’s absurd, she wasn’t even here when the first few broke out. Look, you’ve been tracking them since January, and—”
“Of course Kate didn’t set any fires,” she said irritably. “But the fact is that we don’t know when the first suspicious fire broke out. This graph includes all the fires since the start of the year. I wanted a baseline to start with. The fires don’t exactly match the time that Kate’s been here, but they did tick way up over the past few weeks.”
He dragged a hand through his hair. This, he didn’t need right now. He needed a nap or a drink or a motorcycle ride. Not together, obviously.
He forced himself to focus on the data Maya was showing him. “You’re saying the fires might be connected to Kate being here?”
“They did stop when she left.”
“They also stopped when I left.”
“True that. Something you want to tell me, Chief?”
“Yes, fighting fire in a town the size of a paper towel is boring, so I wanted to spice things up a bit,” he snapped. “No, there’s nothing to tell you. I have no idea what’s going on here.”
Except that maybe he did. Maybe it had something to do with Kate’s enemies. But what? Why would anyone travel all the way to Lost Harbor and set random fires that didn’t even do much damage? None of them were even related to her.
It didn’t add up at all.
But it was worth mentioning to Kate. And worth urging her to tell Maya everything before the police chief made a bar graph out of her.
“I’ll talk to her and see if she can think of anything that might help,” he said finally.
“Good. Because an arson spree is a crime. So that’s my territory.”
He glared at her. “You want a turf war over a bunch of nuisance fires?”
“No. I’m just saying that I can talk to Kate in case you don’t want to intermingle your professional and personal relationships.” She lifted one eyebrow at him.
“Don’t worry about our personal relationship.”
A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “So you’re saying you have one.”
“I’m not saying shit other than I’ll talk to Kate as part of my investigation.”
She snorted and retrieved her iPad, then stood up. “I find out everything sooner or later anyway. But good luck fooling yourself.”
“Thanks for putting that graph together,” he called after her as she headed for the open doorway “Can you email it to me?”
“Sure thing, Chief.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
Darius rummaged for an aspirin bottle that he kept on hand for post-hockey aches and pains. Definitely called for right now. After downing a couple with a swig from the least sketchy mug on his desk, he hauled himself to his feet. Time for a quick inventory of the firehouse, before Nate and the crew returned.
Quite a few strange things had occurred in this firehouse. Last year, one of the volunteer firefighters had gone off the deep end and tampered with Padric Jeffers’ boat. He’d nearly killed Lost Harbor’s biggest celebrity.
Then there was S.G. and her adventures. Not only had she hidden here for weeks, but the trapper had hunted her down and nearly kidnapped her in the apparatus bay.
Oh yes, the Lost Harbor Fire Department had no shortage of weirdness. If there was something extra strange behind these fires, it wouldn’t surprise him.
Chapter Twenty-One
After several hours of sleep to recover from the trip, Kate drove out to the farm to check on Emma and the peonies. Truth was, she’d missed both.
“Well,” Emma said as soon as she caught sight of her. She was on her knees, weeding the Festiva Maxima. Little shoots of pushki were already poking through the Typar. “You look like you’ve been rode hard and put away wet.”
“That’s a horrible saying and I think you should remove it from your vocabulary.”
“Eh, let an old lady say what she wants. Help me up.” Kate held out a hand to help her to her feet. Emma rubbed her lower back as she straightened. “I’m glad you’re back. Those kids have been driving me bonkers.”
“Kids?”
“S.G. and her friend. Dylan, I think his name is. Always in that hoodie.”
Right, the kid from the hockey rink. So much had happened since then, she’d forgotten that she’d given S.G. permission to bring her friend to the farm. He was living at Denaina’s now; she’d signed his paperwork. “I told S.G. it was okay. Is it not working out?”
“Oh, I guess it’s fine. It’s good to have the help. He’s a hard enough worker, but he and S.G. go off together and talk about lord knows what. He’s got a phone and you can’t tear him away from that device.”