Skin Deep (2 page)

“Shit.” Kellan turned on his own flashlight, although it didn’t do much to help illuminate the place. Heavy curtains blanketed every window from sash to sill, and between that and the smoke, visibility grew more and more difficult with every step farther inside. Still, the ominous glow of flames around them said this fire was eating through the house at an alarming rate. Abandoned or not, they had to make sure no one was trapped inside.

“Even if it’s vacant, there could be squatters. Anything goes in this neighborhood,” he said, resolve flashing harder in his chest as he scanned the front hallway for a door that might lead down. Forcing his legs into gear, Kellan stabbed his boots into the floorboards with each decisive step, methodically ruling out a hall closet and a tiny bathroom before hitting the jackpot on the third door at the back of the narrow corridor by the kitchen.

“Basement,” he called out, pulling the door wide on its hinges and clambering down the unfinished wooden stairs. Visibility went from bad to you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me with every downward move, daring his pulse to rattle and his brain to spin back in time.

Thick air, clogging his throat, poker-hot in his lungs. Eyes stinging with sweat and sand and images he’d never forget. Screams. The screams…

This moment. Right now. Nothing else.

Ever.

Kellan’s boots hit the concrete landing, slamming his focus back into place. A long, dark hallway stretched out to both his right and his left, and he metered his breath on a three count, using his exhale to bellow, “Fire department! Call out!”

The only response was an eerie silence that sent a chill laddering up his spine.

“Hang on,” Shae said from the spot where she’d come to a stop at his nine. She took a handheld thermal imaging camera from one of the deep-welled pockets in her coat, using it to follow the beam of her flashlight from one end of the hallway to the other. “There’s a ton of heat building in these walls, Walker. We need to make sure no one’s down here and get the hell out of Dodge. I’ll take the Delta side.” She jerked her head down the left end of the hallway. “You take Bravo. Go.”

“Copy that.” Kellan pivoted on his heels, angling his body to the right. Visibility amounted to a jack with a side of shit, which meant he was going to have to get creative in order to be thorough
and
fast. Throwing both arms out from his sides, he exhaled with a hell yes as his glove-covered hands made contact with either wall. Reinforcing his limited vision with feel meant he’d have less of a chance of missing something. Not that there had been a whole lot in the house so far to miss.

Kicking his feet into rapid motion, Kellan moved down the shadow-cloaked passageway. The air down here felt cooler than the main level, which was only to say it wasn’t hell-hot and actively engulfed in flames. At least, not yet. But for now, that made the basement a logical place for someone to hide, especially if they thought they’d get into trouble for squatting in an abandoned house, and damn it, there were just enough signs that someone had been here recently to make the unease in Kellan’s chest go for a double.

He opened his mouth to broadcast another offer for help, but the words jammed in his windpipe when his right palm skimmed the edge of a doorframe. The knob refused to budge despite the firm twist he tried to put to it, and seriously, what was
with
the Fort Knox treatment in this place?

Screw it
. Not having the time for anything other than brute force, Kellan coiled up his energy on a deep inhale, sending all the power he could muster on a direct path to his leg as he unleashed a relentless kick. The door gave way with a crash, relief filling him in a quick burst as he crossed the threshold into the dank, smoke-tinged room.

“Fire department, call out!” The bellow of his own voice reverberated in his ears. The room was as dark as the hallway behind him, the one small rectangular window in the corner by the ceiling blacked out by a heavy layer of curtains. Kellan aimed his flashlight toward the far side of the space, giving the room a quick yet thorough scan from left to right.

Nothing much. Like the living room above, the furniture in here was sparse, just a large desk in the center of the room with empty pizza boxes and crumpled, grease-stained napkins scattered over its surface. Thankfully, no one was huddled up or trying to hide beneath it, and he turned to complete the sweep of the room. The beam of his flashlight landed on a set of bi-fold doors on the opposite wall, and
finally
, Kellan had found an opening in this place that wasn’t bolted shut.

He yanked the closet doors apart on their track, crouching down low to do a quick search of the crawl space beneath a set of crude wooden shelves. But before he could so much as open his mouth for a call-out, a burst of static sounded off from the two-way on his shoulder.

“Hawkins to Command,” the lieutenant clipped out. “We’re a negative on entrapment on the second floor. The house looks abandoned, but the structure’s fully involved. This fire’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”

“Command to Hawkins,” came Captain Bridges’ voice in return. “Fall out immediately, before this thing flashes over. Hawkins, Dempsey, McCullough, Walker, I want all four of you in front of me in sixty seconds. Do you copy?”

Kellan’s rib cage threatened to constrict, but shit, he had no time for body betrayal. He needed to finish clearing this room and find Shae. Now.

“Walker to Command. Copy. Falling out,” he said into the two-way. Steeling his breath, he sent his stare on one last tour of the closet before unfolding himself to standing. The back of his helmet banged against something in a hard thump—ah, fuck, he’d forgotten about the wooden shelves—and Kellan ducked back into the closet out of sheer instinct. His heart slammed in surprise as whatever had been on the now-upended wooden plank tumbled over his shoulder, hitting the concrete subfloor with a metallic crash.

He cursed under his breath, wrangling his pulse back down from its code red. There was no saving the lock box that had burst open at his feet upon impact, so Kellan stepped over the scattered papers and other items spilling over the floor. Racing toward the door, he swung himself back in the direction he’d come, his chest loosening just a fraction at the sight of Shae barreling in from the opposite side.

“I’m clear,” she said, and Kellan jerked his head in a nod, leading the way up the steps.

“Me too. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

They retraced their steps back to the main level, and holy shit, the fire up here had doubled in intensity in the sparse minutes he and Shae had been in the basement. Flames had snaked down the living room walls to grab hold of the curtains in their absence, illuminating the room in a rolling orange glow at the same time heavy billows of smoke clogged their path. But they were a dozen steps from daylight, and Kellan wasn’t stopping for love or money.

He charged ahead without pause, sweat stinging his eyes beneath his mask and his chest burning from exertion. Barging back through the front door, his boots punched over the porch boards, the sudden flash of over-bright sunlight leaving him momentarily disoriented. But muscle memory was a powerful thing, and his arms lifted up, his hands tugging off his helmet and mask even though his brain had little to do with the motions.

Breathe. In, two, three. Out, two, three, four, five
.

The cool air hit Kellan like a titanium-reinforced wrecking ball. Although he had zero doubt that Captain Bridges had eyes on him, he still reported in over the radio, and by the time he’d heel-toed his way back to Engine Seventeen, he was more than halfway back to all systems go.

“Nice to see you in once piece,” Gamble said, one corner of his mouth lifting in a rare smile. “Heard shit was going a little sideways in there.”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Shae answered from over Kellan’s shoulder, still on his six even though they’d more than cleared the hot zone.

Gamble jutted his chin at the water lines he and Slater had prepped per Captain Bridges’ orders. “Glad to hear it, because Hawk and Dempsey are clear and squad’s got a good vent on the roof. We’re about to get this place wet.”

The words shifted Kellan back into gear. He replaced his helmet over his sweat-damp head, buckling the straps in seconds. Captain Bridges’ command came a breath later, springing Kellan and the rest of his fellow firefighters into action. Move by move, minute by minute, the teams on both engine and squad worked in tandem to control the blaze, first from the outside, then strategically maneuvering their way back over the threshold once the flames had been partially subdued. Kellan tunneled in on each task, methodically completing the necessary steps with his team until finally, the fire had been completely put out.

“Jesus,” he breathed once they’d returned to Engine Seventeen, his inhale leaving the acrid taste of smoke on his tongue. “We haven’t seen a job this sketchy in a while, huh?”

Hawkins sauntered up from Squad Six’s vehicle, fixing him with a slow grin that said there was a whole lot of smartass incoming. “You know the drill, Walker. Just ’cause the fire’s out don’t mean the fat lady has sung.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kellan said, although the words were far from a grumble. Hawk was right—there was a helluva lot more to being a firefighter than the name suggested, and if they didn’t want this place to reignite for round two, they still had a lot of boxes to check. “You ready, McCullough?”

“Darlin’, please,” she said, affecting the heavy Irish accent that went with her heritage as she shoulder-checked him with a wry smile. “I was born ready.”

Even though he knew the move would buy him a ration of shit with sprinkles on top, Kellan nudged her right back, just like he would’ve with any of the guys. “If you say so.”

They fell into step next to each other and headed back up the concrete sidewalk. RFD protocol dictated that they monitor the scene of any structure fire with thermal imaging devices post-incident to make sure nothing got hot enough to flare back up. With a blaze this big, chances weren’t small that the house still had hot spots in the walls that hadn’t been destroyed, and they had to sweep every inch of the place just to be sure nothing lurked where they couldn’t see it.

“Okay, boys and girls, let’s make this easy,” Hawk said, tipping his chin at the front door Dempsey had put a hurt to. “Retrace the ground you covered on your search and rescue circuit. Scan everything you can safely get to, and mark off any rooms too hazardous to reach. We’ll use the aerial on Truck Three to get to ’em if we need to. Y’all copy?”

After a chorus of affirmative answers, the four of them crossed the threshold. The bitter tang of waterlogged ash and stale smoke filled Kellan’s senses and invited his throat to tighten, but he kept to his smooth cycle of inhale/exhale. He still had plenty of work left to do. No way was he going to take a chance on his system shorting out before this scene was secure.

Or, okay. Ever.

“Damn.” Shae whistled under her breath, her footsteps sounding off in soggy splashes as she swung her gaze around the living room. The fire had ravaged the curtains on two of the three side windows, allowing sunlight to spill past the burned-out spaces where the glass used to be. Although the couch and the bookshelf were still recognizable, they were pretty well torched, not to mention waterlogged, and all of the surrounding area in Kellan’s line of sight matched.

“Definitely looks like a total loss,” he agreed, leading the way back to the basement door and turning on the flashlight still strapped over the front of his turnout gear. “You think this was an accident?”

One shoulder rose and fell beneath the heavy black material of her coat. “I think with a fire this big, the guys at arson investigation always take a glance at the report. But truth? This house is old and vacant. Chances are there hasn’t been any upkeep in a while. With how fast the fire moved from floor to floor, it wouldn’t shock me if crappy electrical sparked the whole thing.”

“Makes sense,” Kellan said. The scorch marks spider-webbing over the walls sure backed up the theory.

Shae stopped at the bottom of the basement steps, just long enough to give him one last shrug. “Anyway. Shout out if you find something, yeah?”

“Sure. Back atcha.”

Kellan turned his flashlight down the right-hand side of the hallway. The basement had escaped most of the fire and water damage, although there were still signs of both in the musty passageway. He took careful heat readings on the walls regardless, working his way down to the room he’d checked just before getting the order to fall out. Shouldering past the door he’d kicked in, Kellan trailed his flashlight over the space, re-noting the desk, the pizza boxes, the discarded napkins.

His stare snagged on the lock box he’d knocked from the shelf, busted wide on its hinges from the fall, and shit, he hadn’t meant to wreck what little was left in the place. Bending down to plant one knee against the concrete, he reached out to gather the papers—no wait, they were photographs—scattered like confetti over the ground. He dusted off their surfaces with his gloved fingers, hoping maybe the move would knock off any ash or dirt marking the photos as a result of their trip over the floor.

But then the images in front of him registered, and all the air left the room.

“Walker to Command,” Kellan said into his two-way, trying like hell to steady his voice along with his suddenly slamming heartbeat. “We’ve got a problem in the basement.”

“This is Command,” came Captain Bridges’ voice over the line. “Do you need backup, Walker?”

“No, sir,” he said, dread cranking down on his gut as he looked at the pictures again.

“We need the police. I’m pretty sure they’re going to want to see what I just found.”

I
sabella Moreno pushed back
from her desk, trying with all her might to evil eye the paperwork at her elbow into submission. For every report she’d filed this morning, another three had popped up in its place, and after four hours, she was damn near ready to cry uncle.

Give her thieves, rapists, and gang-banging street thugs any day. But all the requisition-this and document-that required by the Remington Police Department? Now
that
could really kill a girl.

The sound of her boss’s throat clearing kicked her chin to attention and her pulse into third gear. “All right everybody, listen up,” Sergeant Sam Sinclair said in a clipped voice that reminded Isabella—and probably every other cop in the Thirty-Third, maybe even all of Remington—that he was as tough as he was dedicated to the job. “We just caught a double. Convenience store robbery over in South Hill and a report of something suspicious found at the scene of a house fire over on Glendale.”

“Something suspicious?” Isabella asked, her chest tightening by just a fraction. “Like a body?”

“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?” Detective Shawn Maxwell threw her a wry smile from his desk across the squad room, and she worked up an identical twin to the expression in return.

“Yeah, that’s me.” She snorted, although not unkindly, because truth? Maxwell’s sarcasm wasn’t poorly placed. “All hugs and rainbows and unicorns.”

“And bodies, apparently. Overachiever,” he lobbed back. Of the four detectives in the Thirty-Third Precinct’s intelligence unit, she and Maxwell had the most seniority at the RPD, and shared a warped sense of cop humor as a result. Kind of funny that he was the oldest detective in the group while she was the youngest, but hey. Experience was experience, and they both had a buttload.

“The suspicious find is not a body,” Sinclair said, shooting a glance in her direction. “But first responders are calling it evidence of a possible crime.”

Despite the brashness she wore like Kevlar, her sergeant’s gruff affirmation allowed Isabella to breathe a little easier. As much as she loved her job and would stop at nothing to get it done, the grim parts were still…well, grim. Victims most of all.

Crimes, she could solve. But saving a victim after the fact was as impossible as hitching a wagon to the moon.

Not that Isabella hadn’t spent the last eleven years of her life trying.

Knock it off
, she silently chided, pushing back from the stack of paperwork strewn over her blotter and the three half-to-mostly-empty cups of tea surrounding it. “Which call do you want me and Hollister to take?” Isabella asked, reaching for the car keys in the top drawer of her standard-issue metal desk. Grim or not, there were still bad guys out there who needed to be put to justice. It was time to shove up her sleeves and make that happen.

“Actually, neither.”

She froze, her eyes darting from her partner Liam Hollister’s don’t-look-at-me expression to Sinclair’s impenetrable blue-gray stare. “Sorry?”

“Hollister’s going to back up Maxwell and Hale at the robbery.” He jerked his crew cut at the three detectives sitting at their respective desks, all of whom started to move at the action. “You and I are headed to the fire over on Glendale.”

Oooookay. Although it was on the tip of her tongue to ask what she’d done to deserve special snowflake status, Isabella refrained. Despite the fact that she and Hollister were technically partners, the four of them worked interchangeably on cases. She worked apart from the group often enough—mostly when she requested extra assignments or volunteered to fly solo, but still. Anyway, the two years Isabella had worked for Sam told her in no uncertain terms that questioning his methods—in front of the team, no less—wouldn’t land her anywhere she wanted to be.

“Copy that,” she said. Double-checking the Glock and badge combo at her right hip, she grabbed the least cold cup of tea from her desk and followed her sergeant down the hallway of the intelligence office. She steadied her pulse to keep time with her footsteps, smoothing the thump-thump-thump into a steady rhythm until she and Sinclair reached his city-issued unmarked Chevy Tahoe.

“Everything okay?” Isabella lifted her brows just slightly, pulling her seatbelt across the front of her fitted black top. They didn’t stand on a whole lot of pretense in intelligence, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have to play this just right in order to figure out why her boss was acting nine kinds of cagey about this call.

Sinclair’s blond brows went up to mirror hers. “You mean other than the suspicious evidence found at this fire?”

Alllllrighty. If Sinclair wanted to get right to the case, she certainly had no problem jumping feet-first into work. It was, after all, her MO. “Suspicious evidence is a little vague, huh? We got anything else to go on?”

“Not much, I’m afraid.” Sinclair slid a pair of aviator sunglasses over his face and pulled the Tahoe out onto Franklin Street, headed toward Remington’s north side. Having lived in the city her whole life, Isabella knew the place as well as her own last name. Not an entirely small feat considering it was the second largest city in North Carolina.

“Well it’s not a body,” she prompted, and Sinclair nodded to reaffirm.

“Story I got from the call-in was that RFD responded to a house fire, and after the flames were out, they found something they deemed serious enough to have us take a look at.”

The back of Isabella’s neck prickled beneath her ponytail. Something about this still wasn’t gelling. “And you’re doing the walk-and-talk because…?”

“Captain Bridges out at Seventeen called it in.”

And there it is
. “That’s why you’re coming out with me instead of sending Hollister or Maxwell or Hale? Because Seventeen is on-scene?”

“I’m coming out with you because I enjoy your sparkling personality, Moreno.” God, he put just enough good humor to the words to make the sentiment stick, too. “But to address your concern, yes. Kellan Walker made the find. Since you two have a little history, I thought I’d tag along.”

Isabella’s stomach pinched beneath the top of her jeans. “Kellan Walker and I don’t have any history. And he definitely doesn’t concern me,” she said. Piss her off? Check. Drive her bat-shit crazy? Check. Hell, he’d even turned her on a little (translation: a lot) with those crystal blue eyes and stupid-broad shoulders and dark, sexy scruff. At least, he had before the whole Chicago debacle three months ago. But nobody—nobody—
concerned
her.

Because Isabella knew far better than to let them.

“Okay,” Sinclair said, a pop of surprise moving through her veins as his tone backed up the word. “Then we shouldn’t have any issues.”

Sure. Just as long as she and Walker didn’t have to speak, they’d be peachy. Not that
she
was the one with the problem. She’d busted her ass three months ago on his sister Kylie’s case, which had been a doozy and a half, thank you very much. In order to keep Kylie safe after she’d witnessed a brutal murder halfway across the country, Isabella had trusted a former colleague, and Kellan had trusted her.

Funny thing about a house of cards, though. If even one was crooked, the whole lot of them came crashing down. Isabella had unknowingly promised Walker’s sister protection she hadn’t been able to deliver when a member of her old colleague’s team turned out to be dirty, and the case had culminated in a violent shootout. Even though Kylie had ended up unharmed, it hadn't been due to Isabella's slick detective skills. Walker had been furious with her that his sister's safety had been compromised.

But not as furious as Isabella had been with herself that she’d inadvertently put a murder witness in harm’s way.

She shoved back the fresh shot of remorse blooming in her chest. “So what exactly did these guys find, anyway?” she asked, focusing her thoughts on this call, where they belonged.

“I don’t know, but we’re about to find out.”

Sinclair pulled up to the uni directing traffic around the sea of emergency response vehicles, flashing his badge to gain entry to the scene. They got as close as they could, which wasn’t saying much under the circumstances, but Isabella didn’t mind hoofing it a little if it meant she could observe the scene of a crime from the outside in.

She and Sinclair got out of the Tahoe about a half-block from what—as best she could tell—was ground zero for the fire. Every last one of her senses pinged to life as they moved over the seen-better-days sidewalk and past a couple of detached row houses. The neighborhood wasn’t great, which meant the intel likely wouldn’t be great, either. People in bad neighborhoods tended to have selective memories when it came to recounting suspicious activity. But if the address of the fire had popped anything weird in their database, Sinclair would’ve mentioned it. So right now, Isabella had to fly on what they had.

Which was a whole lot of French-fried house. Damn, the thing smelled as bad as it looked, the bitter-burnt punch of smoke combining with the scorched siding and smashed out windows to hammer home the suggestion that the structure was a total loss. She scanned the scene, her stomach tightening involuntarily at the sight of the firefighters milling around and storing their gear in various response vehicles.

Stop being an idiot
. She and Kellan might not have the best history in the galaxy, or okay, even be on speaking terms right now. But a job was a job. There was no reason for her stomach to get all traitorously jumpy over clapping eyes on him again.

Even if he
did
hate her guts.

“Sergeant. Detective.” The familiar voice knocked Isabella back to the present tense. Captain Tanner Bridges, who they’d dealt with from time to time at crime scenes and had always been as helpful as he was fair, greeted them on the sidewalk in front of the burned-out house. “Thanks for coming out so quickly. I wasn’t sure who else to call.”

“Not a problem,” Sinclair said, shaking the man’s hand. “Can you tell us what you’ve got?”

The captain paused, his brown eyes flashing with uncertainty. “Probably best to show you.” He jerked his head toward the house’s front walk, starting to lead the way. “We responded to a nine-one-one call a few hours ago, and when we got here, the house was pretty heavily involved. Best we can tell, the place looks vacant. Cause of the fire is still unknown, but at first blush, I’d guess some bad wiring kicked things off.”

“Okay,” Isabella said, all question, and the captain answered with a nod.

“After we put the fire out, firefighter Walker was doing a sweep of the scene to prevent flare-ups when he found something suspicious in a basement closet. Watch your step.” Bridges indicated the water and ash-covered porch boards as they crossed the threshold together, and the acrid smell of old smoke hit her like a punch in the nose. “I had some extra lights brought downstairs for better visibility, but no one’s been in here except my firefighters.”

Isabella took in the scene on the first floor, her heart picking up the pace. There wasn’t a whole lot here, and what little was left was pretty torched. What on earth could Kellan have possibly found in a place like this?

She followed Bridges to a staircase at the back of the house, her eyes taking a split second to adjust from the daylight that had spilled in through the main level windows to the shadow-casting glare thrown off by the spotlight lamp at the bottom of the basement steps. He led her and Sinclair down the right-hand side of the hallway and over the threshold to the only room Isabella could see. Her brain smoothly catalogued the scene. Smallish room, maybe twelve by twelve, one desk dead center. Unfinished drywall, cement subfloor.

And one firefighter whose stare had suddenly gone as dark as storm clouds over a raging sea.

Irritation flashed over Kellan’s face, along with a hint of surprise as he turned from Isabella to his captain. “You called intelligence?”

Sinclair’s brows popped at the same time as her pulse. Her boss knew all about Walker’s beef with her, and not only was he fiercely protective of his detectives, but he wasn’t exactly known for his stellar composure.

Thankfully, Captain Bridges was. “Of course I called them,” he said, just as calm as a lake at sunrise. “This falls under their jurisdiction, and it could be evidence of a potentially serious crime.”

The irritation on Walker’s soot-smudged face coalesced at the mention, and Sinclair didn’t waste time or words getting right to business.

“You want to tell us what you found?” he asked.

After an ever-so-slight pause, Walker nodded. “I covered this section of the basement for search and rescue during the fire. When I got to the closet over here, this lock box fell off the overhead shelf and broke open. Captain Bridges gave the order to fall out before I could see what had been inside—the fire had gotten pretty hairy on the second floor at that point. But when I came back for the prevention sweep after the fire was out, this is what I found.”

He gestured to an old, dented metal lock box, the kind someone would store cash in at a yard sale, and a pile of photographs, along with a bundle of thin nylon rope and a plastic baggie containing what looked like a few pairs of women’s earrings.

“I gathered the pictures before I saw the images on them,” Walker continued, pointing to the tidy pile next to the lock box. “But once I did, I put them down, and I didn’t touch any of the other stuff, just in case.”

It didn’t escape Isabella’s notice that he’d kept his eyes lasered in on Sinclair and only Sinclair as he’d recounted the story, even going so far as to turn his shoulder to give her half of his back while he spoke. But screw that. Despite what he thought, she was a damn good cop, and if something had gone down here, she was going to be part of catching whoever was responsible.

“Is this everything you found?” Isabella asked, pulling a pair of nitrile gloves from the pocket of her jeans and snapping them into place.

He looked over the broad ridge of his shoulder, his bright blue gaze covered in frost. “Yes.”

The unspoken “duh” riding shotgun with his answer tagged her right in the gut, and she heard the unintended implication in her question just a beat too late. As displeased as they were with each other, Isabella knew Kellan would never withhold potential evidence. He was pissed, not dirty.