Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

J ulio pulled up to the curb in front of the house, feeling better than he had in a long time. He wasn't entirely sure how to process the range of emotions coursing through him. Most of them centered around Samantha and the way she had kissed him. He hoped she understood the difference in his kiss.

Where she had needed to pour out all her frustration, he had wanted to give back peace. Each had found what they needed in that moment.

He hoped they could continue to work things out between them. With all that entailed—plus the part where they went to church together.

Julio put the truck in Park and turned to Samantha. "I know we need to get inside, but I just want to say this."

She looked over at him, her elbows splayed. Using the hair tie from her wrist to secure her blond hair back. Switching from the Samantha he had been making out with, back into Detective Jesse. Exercising a little control where she felt like she didn't have much.

"If we are going to do this again"—he signed we —"we should do it differently. We should go to church together."

Samantha nodded, a soft expression on her face. "We do need to get back to work." She grasped the door handle. "But I agree." She got out of the truck, closing the door firmly.

Julio pocketed the keys and followed her up the front walk, glad to see she had bounced back in a way that meant she was going to draw her professionalism around her like a coat and finish the rest of the shift. After that, they could go somewhere quiet and talk. Spend time together.

He'd been thinking about taking her to the firehouse because she hadn't been there in a while. Who knew what they were making for dinner tonight, but it was usually something good and there was always plenty just in case community members dropped in at mealtime. She could see his captain's office, and he could show her his life the way she had shown him hers.

Definitely a lot safer to be in public than in either of their homes and risk their relationship falling back into the old way of doing things.

Samantha knocked on the door, and it started to swing open, creaking. The sound echoed through the house. A single-story structure that didn't look like it had a basement. Probably a crawlspace under the floor. A carport in lieu of a garage, covered with a metal roof that leaned against the right side of the house. Grass on the front lawn that had grown to four or five inches, an ocean of thin stems with tiny flowers on them.

He heard the snick as Samantha drew her weapon from its holster.

She stepped into the house, and he followed her, staying back. Not because he wanted her to be the one the bullet hit if anything started flying. More like he didn't want to get in the way if she had to defend them both.

"Do I need a gun?" he asked.

"I'll let you know if you do," she replied.

He figured that meant she thought he didn't need one.

"I have a gun at home, in my safe." Not something he usually carried at work, and it was his personal weapon anyway. If there was trouble here, he could quickly dial 9-1-1—which had him pulling out his phone and getting it ready just in case. Samantha might be a cop, but she didn't need to think he wasn't capable of protecting her if it came down to it.

"I don't think you're going to need it today." She hesitated, then stepped into the kitchen. "The smell is usually a lot worse than this."

Julio peered over her shoulder and spotted a man tied to a wooden dining room chair, his hands behind his back. Blood on his chest and face. One of his eyes was almost completely swollen shut. Blood had dripped down the chair to pool on the floor. Not much, but apparently enough that he had succumbed to blood loss.

Samantha circled the room, sticking to the edges. Looking around furniture and out all the windows. "I need to call this in."

"I'll do it." Julio got on the phone with dispatch and moved around the table so he could crouch in front of the man. He explained to the dispatcher who he was and asked for the police. He nearly added a request for the medical examiner, but something caught his eye. "Hold on."

He put the back of his hand in front of the man's mouth and nose. The faintest hint of breath touched his skin.

"He's alive." Julio patted his cheek. "Mitchell, can you hear me?"

Across the room, Samantha gasped. "How can he possibly be alive? Look at him."

Into the phone, Julio said, "We need an ambulance. Now."

"Dispatching now." The guy on the other end of the phone gave him a three-minute ETA.

Julio hung up even though he wasn't supposed to, and pocketed his phone. "I need something to cut him free, and we need to get pressure on these wounds."

Far as he could see, the guy had been carved up on his chest. Beaten, probably punched. The knife lay on the table—something the police would hopefully be able to use to get fingerprints. Whoever had done this wanted information from the man, surely. Why else torture him?

Julio wondered if the assailant got it and that was why he was gone now.

But he'd left the man alive, instead of leaving him for dead. Which meant when this guy woke up, he would hopefully be able to identify his assailant.

"I have to check out the rest of the house." Samantha handed him a pair of scissors she'd found in a kitchen drawer.

"I've got this." He wanted to squeeze her hand, or kiss her forehead, but there was no time. They were professional enough not to be distracted by personal feelings when a man was dying in the room, and they had a murdering arsonist to find. But the longer the case went on and their feelings continued to be unresolved, the harder it would become.

One kiss hadn't fixed their relationship. But two was a start.

Julio cut the man free and eased him onto the floor. His weight made his lower body drop hard, but Julio braced the guy's upper body with all the strength he had, and then lowered him down. He set the man's head down last, cradling it in his hand. Mitchell didn't need more injuries than he already had.

Julio ran to the front door and pushed it open wide. Then he hit the bathroom and grabbed the towel he found and a stack of rags that were probably washcloths or for cleaning.

The guy kept a decently neat house. He lived minimally, but plenty of people chose to do so. Not much as far as personal effects scattered around the house. The file Samantha had put together that they'd read over before they left indicated he worked for a local tech company in a cubicle, coding or doing some kind of programming.

Not something Julio understood. All he'd ever done was fight fires.

The idea of working in a tiny box and doing the same thing every day, typing away on a computer, sounded like his idea of a nightmare. He much preferred to be active. When his duties became rote, he'd done the work to form a bomb squad with two other firefighters, two police officers, and one of the EMTs in Benson.

One day the mayor would sign off on the team as legit and they would receive more than minimal funding. But it hadn't happened yet.

One day…

Right now, the future looked a whole lot brighter than it had even just this morning.

"Captain Coda!" The man's yell echoed down the hallway.

"Kitchen!" Julio called back.

The EMTs raced into the room a few seconds later, carrying duffel bags and pushing a stretcher down the hall with them. "What have we got?"

Julio pressed the towel against the man's chest wounds. "Mitchell Sylvana. Thirty-two-year-old male. Multiple stab wounds to his chest. Bruising, contusions, and swelling on his face. The side of his ribs looks nasty as well. His pulse is low, and his breathing is very shallow."

He was pretty sure that covered all they needed to know, but he probably missed something. It had been a while since he used any of the EMT training the department required all the firefighters to have. Being a captain meant he didn't go on many routine calls.

If he were honest, he did miss it. Not just because he did a lot more paperwork these days.

"We've got it from here."

"Copy that." Julio rocked back on his heels and straightened out of his crouch while the EMTs took over assessing the guy. They would lift him onto the stretcher and wheel him out as fast as they could, rushing him to the hospital so he could be treated. But the first job would be stabilizing him.

In the hopes he'd make it to the hospital alive.

Julio was pretty sure they were looking at the arsonist as the main suspect for who had done this. However, despite Tennet's press conference, the taskforce still had no idea who that might be. Even with the FBI looking at the letters Richard Sylvana had received, all they really had was a personality profile. And unless the suspect made himself known, how were they going to find him?

The press conference announcing him as a copycat had probably been a long shot, and Captain Tennet likely knew they would all disagree with his decision to go ahead with it. Probably why he never told them.

Julio didn't like being blindsided much more than he liked being left out of decisions made concerning a team he was part of.

Was Samantha right that it would either tip off the suspect to the fact they were looking for him, or maybe send him on a rampage out of anger? No matter what came of the press conference announcement, it was already done. All they could do was deal with the fallout.

He and Samantha knew well enough that the past wasn't something they were able to change. Considering the moment they'd had in the truck, he figured she was onboard with him and looking to the future.

Maybe being more successful this time around.

He wandered through the house, looking for Samantha. She was probably doing her police detective assessment of the man's things. Out the living room window, he saw a black-and-white police car pull up.

Romeo had gone to interview the employees from the warehouse, so it wouldn't be him unless he'd heard Julio's call to dispatch and was able to get away.

Julio checked in empty room, with one single cardboard box in the corner. Next down the hall was the bathroom, also empty. He went to the bedroom because it was the last place to look.

But Samantha wasn't in here.

He frowned, turning in a circle. Pulled out his phone and called her number, listening to it ring while he checked the closet. It was the only other space he hadn't looked in, the single bathroom being in the hallway. She didn't answer.

"Where did you go?"

No one answered his muttered question. The call switched to voicemail, and he heard her tell him to leave a message after the beep.

Julio hung up and opened his messages. He found Bristol in his contacts and sent her a text.

Can you look up Samantha's location on your phone?

He wandered through the house back to the front door, figuring she was likely out there if she wasn't inside the house. Or was she in the backyard? Maybe she had seen something and gone outside.

The two uniformed officers walked up the front path toward the door.

Julio said, "Have you seen Detective Jesse out here?"

Both shook their heads. His phone buzzed, so he looked down at the screen. Bristol had sent him a screenshot of a map with Samantha's GPS location. Not entirely accurate usually, so he wasn't sure how far he could trust it. But Samantha seemed to be two streets away.

What was going on?