Out Of The Ashes. Cynthia Reese
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all ruffled and his clothes a wrinkled mess, he had that angelic-choirboy look that made girls his age flock to him and old ladies beam at him with trusting adoration.
Jake was beautiful, her beautiful, gorgeous brother. If he’d wanted and had lived in a larger city, he was so arrestingly attractive that he could have landed a male modeling gig.
Next to him, Kari had always felt a little...dull. Not so shiny. Not so pretty. And yet, just like everybody else, when she’d been fourteen, she’d wanted to be in his orbit, soaking up the glamour-by-association cachet having such a good-looking brother had afforded her.
“Hey, Kare, what are you doing here? I figured you’d be downtown.” He did a double take, his eyes rounding. “Oh, wait, man, you don’t know? It was a fire—wicked bad. One of my buddies told me—we went down there. Sick, man.”
Relief flooded through Kari. Jake hadn’t set the fire. How could she have so instantly blamed him?
Because he set one years ago.
“I know. I came to tell Mom.”
“Somebody said it was arson.” Jake’s words came easily. Unlike their mother, he didn’t stumble over the word arson. “What? Old Charlie decide the insurance money was better than the rent money?”
Kari set the timer on the oven and waited to compose herself before she turned back to face him. “I don’t think it was Charlie. Why would he burn a perfectly good building?”
Jake snorted and flopped down into a chair beside their mom. “You cooking? Righteous. I’m about to starve. And I can’t believe you’re calling that dump a perfectly good building. Just yesterday you and he were in a screaming match about everything that was wrong with it.”
Kari felt her stomach churn. That very public argument was one more nail in her coffin. It was her motive. She could hear the DA’s opening argument already— revenge because her landlord wouldn’t repair the building.
She met Jake’s eyes. They were coolly speculative. “Jake...”
“You didn’t light it up yourself, did you, sis?” her brother asked.
“No!” She began dumping the dirty dishes in the sink, rinsing them out and loading them in the dishwasher. “Of course I didn’t.”
“So, was it? Arson?” Jake pressed.
“Yes, Jake, it was, but don’t badger your sister. She’s got a lot on her shoulders.”
“So do you, Mom. I mean, she burned up your retirement money, didn’t she?”
Kari slammed the dishwasher door shut a little too hard. “I did not burn—”
“Relax, sis. It’s too easy to get your goat.” Jake gave her that crooked little grin that worked on so many people—for at least a while until they realized that he had no interest in actually following through on any of his promises. “I was just joking.”
“Jakey!” her mom scolded. “Don’t even think about joking about this. Kari could get in real trouble—and think what she did for you. You should be grateful. If the police knew...”
Jake fixed Kari with a level stare. “But they don’t know. And they wouldn’t believe her now anyway. And, Mom,” he added, not moving his gaze from Kari, “I swear, scout’s honor, it wasn’t me. You can’t keep blaming me for every fire in a fifty-mile radius.”
Kari wanted to believe Jake. And she understood well enough how badly it felt to be the usual suspect in whatever trouble that surfaced.
His mom rushed to smooth things over. “Of course it wasn’t you, nobody said it was you—”
“Sure sounded like that to me,” Jake grumbled.
“I tried to call you—” Kari began.
“See? You’re still trying to pin it on me!” he snapped.
“No, that’s not what I—”
The doorbell rang—the front door bell. Jake was apparently ready to snatch at any excuse to end the conversation, because he leapt out of the chair and said, “I’ll get it.”
As he went down the hall to answer the living room door, Kari’s mom hissed, “Now, see? You’ve hurt his feelings.”
“Mom, I didn’t—”
But Jake’s voice rose and fell in counterpoint to whoever was at the door. Something about the timber of that other voice—male, deep, the barest hint of amusement in it, caused Kari to stiffen.
She heard Jake say, “Sure, she’s in the kitchen. You’re just in time for whatever she’s cooking. C’mon.”
Footsteps sounded closer and closer as Jake approached the kitchen with his companion.
She froze and watched.
“Hey, Kare...somebody here to see you. Didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
Jake strolled back into the kitchen. Kari looked past his shoulder to see none other than Rob Monroe in his wake.
“Pardon me for tracking you down,” the arson investigator told her. “But I have just a few more questions for you.”
ROB TOOK ADVANTAGE of Kari’s flustered silence to let his gaze slide around the kitchen. It was straight-up middle class suburbia, updated sometime in the past few years with granite counters and stainless steel appliances, but Rob knew a working kitchen when he saw one. And this kitchen? It wasn’t a working kitchen.
This one wasn’t like Ma’s—it showed none of the telltale wear that a kitchen offers when it’s used every day. No, Chelle Hendrix’s kitchen looked fresh out of a home improvement store brochure. And there was something about it that made him think that the whole thing was a wannabe setup. The appliances didn’t look substantial enough for the industrial look they aspired to. The floor and the cabinets and the hardware were all too...shiny, perfect, basically unused. There were no scuffmarks, no scratches, no worn finish around the doorknobs. Ma’s kitchen was scrupulously clean and cared for, but worn around the edges. This kitchen? It was too pretty to be a working kitchen.
But it sure smelled like a working kitchen. Something golden brown and delicious assailed Rob’s nostrils—blueberry muffins, if he knew his baked goods, and thanks to Ma and a family of good cooks, he did.
The guy who’d let Rob in—there was enough resemblance in the face to peg him as Kari’s brother—lounged against the too-pretty stainless steel fridge. “So, cool, you’re with the police, huh? I thought you were Kari’s main squeeze.”
Kari coughed in embarrassment. “Jake, Mom, this is Rob Monroe. He’s—what did you tell me? Fire marshal and arson investigator? He’s determining the cause of the fire at the bakery.”
“You mean the whole downtown, huh, sis?” her brother corrected.
There was something of a smirk in that correction. Rob couldn’t explain the instant and visceral dislike that flared up within him at Jake’s response. Maybe it was because, despite all the teasing that the Monroe brothers inflicted on their sisters, they knew the value of basic human kindness. He’d never kick Maegan, Cara or DeeDee when they were already down.
But not everybody was like him or his brothers. He pushed the thought away and concentrated on Kari’s reaction. Her head bowed, and she managed a tiny nod.
“Yes. You’re right, Jake. It wasn’t just my shop that burned. Thanks for reminding me not to be so self-absorbed.”
Rob did a double take. Kari’s tone was completely devoid of sarcasm—in fact, a mix of humility and gratitude bubbled up out of her words.
If