Seeing Red Read online

  He didn’t know how to tell her that the stats weren’t going to get better. Fine as her body was, and as much as he enjoyed it, he lived and breathed his work.

  Except today. He couldn’t believe he was back. Here. Drawn now by something beneath the shelving unit, he put both his past and Cindy out of his mind and inched in a little closer.

  There were no windows in the basement to let in the early sun. The electricity had been blown in the fire, which might or might not explain why the overhead sprinklers hadn’t gone off. There was nothing but the narrow beam from his flashlight guiding him as he followed a curious burn pattern underneath the large, heavy, unbudgeable metal shelving unit. He fired off a few more pictures, then swung the camera around his neck to lie against his back while he studied a particularly interesting find with his light.

  “Anything?” his partner asked from behind him, still standing straight up, and probably nice and dry to boot.

  “Yeah, I’ve got—” Joe broke off as his flashlight suddenly highlighted two glowing eyes only inches from his outstretched hand. Accompanying those feral eyes came an unwelcoming hiss. Shit. Jerking upright, he smashed his head into the metal shelf above him.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Kenny from his helpful perch five feet back.

  Joe waited until the stars faded from his vision, but his heart still raced, pounding his ribs as he eyed whatever was currently eyeing him right back. “I’m not sure.”

  After the historic bushfires in the entire San Diego area two years ago, which had drawn rabbits, raccoons, deer, and even mountain cats into the suburbs, the gleaming, sorely pissed off gaze could belong to anything.

  And nothing he wanted to be this close to.

  “Well, don’t get bit,” Kenny said.

  “Thanks.” Joe watched the animal as it watched him. Neither of them moving. “Helpful advice.”

  “I try.”

  Joe shifted his flashlight over the cornered animal, but it didn’t help because the shallow water covering the floor made a crazy reflection. “I can’t see.”

  “Who needs to see? It’s growling like a wild possum on a bad PMS trip. Get the hell out of its way.”

  “I think it’s hurt.” And Joe had spent enough years growing up as the underdog to be unwilling to just leave it. “Do you think you could come closer than the two miles you’re standing back and give me a hand?”

  “I have a healthy fear of rabid, hissing animals.”

  “We were just hanging off the roof staring a thirty-foot fall in the face as we studied the loft and you didn’t blink, but a little animal scares you?”

  “I didn’t get enough love as a child. Are you sure it’s little?”

  Joe eyed the decidedly not-so-little silhouette hunched over and miserable. “It’s shaking like a leaf, does that count?” But since he couldn’t see its teeth, he still didn’t move. “Come distract it so I can back out of here.”

  Into Joe’s peripheral vision came Kenny’s two boots not caked in muck like Joe’s. Kenny’s boots rarely got dirty. In fact, Kenny rarely got dirty. It was just one of the strange little mysteries of life.

  “I’m going to scare it out from the back,” Kenny said. “So watch yourself.”

  “Wait.” Joe began to scoot out from beneath the shelving unit, his life flashing before the eyes he didn’t want to have scratched out. “Okay now,” he said, dirty water dripping off him.

  Kenny banged his flashlight against the metal, and with a screeching howl, the hissing thing zipped out from beneath the unit and into the inky blackness of the basement.

  Both Joe and Kenny whipped around, shining their twin beams across the wet, dank floor to the far corner, onto the large, orange…cat. She had white paws and a deep scratch down one side of her face, which held one green eye, and one brown.

  “A cat.” Kenny shook his head, a few drops of dirty water marring his glasses. He removed them and wiped the lens with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket. “A damn cat.”

  Filthy, wet, and overheated, Joe stripped out of the top part of his coveralls, letting the sleeves and torso hang off his hips. He wore a sweat drenched T-shirt beneath, but he left that on as he stepped closer in disbelief. “Socks?”

  Unhappy and wet, the cat shook first one paw and then another, glaring at him the whole time.

  Hunkering down, Joe outstretched his fingers. “Here, Socks.”

  Above them the building rumbled ominously. He knew there was still an entire firefighter crew out there clearing hot spots and checking the soundness of the structure. Everyone knew he and Kenny were down here.

  The ground shook again.

  Kenny and Joe stared at each other. Kenny pushed up his glasses and gestured to the stairs. “Let’s hit it.”

  “Yeah, but we’ll be back later.”

  “Why, what did you find?”

  “A rainbow-like sheen to the water beneath the unit.”

  They both knew that could indicate an accelerant, such as gasoline or paint thinner. Since there was nothing in the basement but boxes of stock for a furnishings shop, the appearance of such a chemical was automatically suspicious.

  Or was that simply because Joe had personally been in this very spot for another fire entirely? One that had ended in a terrible, tragic death?

  Either way, he and Kenny would know everything there was to know by the end of their investigation. If it had been arson, they’d uncover it. Conviction, however, was another story entirely. That was because arson was a sneaky bastard of a crime, usually done quietly in the dead of the night, a solo act more fervent than masturbation. The evidence never lied, but being able to actually prove motive and cause, not to mention tying a suspect to the scene of the crime, had often proved frustrating.

  Over the years, Joe had learned the hard way that the key to the job was detachment and an unflappable composure. But this case would test both because he had memories to battle here as well, memories strong enough to begin a low throbbing at the base of his skull.

  Socks had been just a kitten on that long ago day when everything had gone so terribly wrong, costing Tim Abrams his life, costing Summer Abrams the rest of her adolescence, costing Joe the only bright spot in his life at the time.

  But whether this cat at his feet was Socks or not, Joe couldn’t leave her down here, hurt and terrified. “Here kitty, kitty.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Kenny warned as Joe reached for her, and sure enough, the cat turned into a wild thing in Joe’s arms, hissing and spitting, using both paws to swipe down his chest, making him hiss as well. He didn’t look down to see if the damn feline had yanked out his heart or if it only felt like it, because at that moment the building shuddered wildly.

  Both their radios squawked to life. “Walker, Simmons. Get out,” came a booming voice in stereo. “Do you copy? Roof is going to collapse. Get out now.”

  “Copy,” Kenny yelled as dust rained over them. He snatched up their evidence-collecting bag and Joe’s flashlight. “Let’s beat it.”

  Joe still had his arms full of pissed-off feline. Chest burning from the scratches, he shook his head when Kenny turned toward the stairs that led up through the burned shell of the warehouse. “Not that way.”

  “It’s our exit, Walk. Time to get off this train.”

  “There’s a back door, and if it wasn’t destroyed in the fire, it’s a faster way out.”

  “If we die down here, I’m taking that cat to hell with me,” Kenny vowed, following so close on Joe’s tail he could feel him breathing down his neck.

  “We’re not dying, not today.” The dust and dirt falling on them turned to a cakey mud on Joe’s drenched body as they ran down a narrow hallway to a second set of stairs, leading up.

  The set he and Summer had always used when they didn’t want to be seen.

  “You weren’t here when they fought the fire last night,” Kenny said breathlessly as they began to climb the rickety wood steps. “And we haven’t seen the blueprints yet. How di