Dark Burning: Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 6

  Dark Burning

  Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 6

  Lori Ryan

  Contents

  Dark Falls

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  Also by Lori Ryan

  About the Author

  Dark Falls

  The DARK FALLS Series

  * * *

  Dark Falls - Lori Ryan (Oct. 9, 2018)

  Dark Secrets - Savannah Kade (Oct. 9, 2018)

  Dark Legacy - Trish McCallan (Nov. 6, 2018)

  Dark Nightmares - Becca Jameson (Nov. 6, 2018)

  Dark Terror - Sandra Owens (Jan. 8, 2019)

  Dark Burning - Lori Ryan (Jan. 29, 2019)

  Dark Echoes - Savannah Kade (Feb. 26, 2019)

  Dark Memories - Sandra Owens (Mar. 26, 2019)

  Dark Rage - Becca Jameson (Apr. 23, 2019)

  Dark Tidings - Trish McCallan (May 21, 2019)

  Dark Obsession - Lisa-Marie Cabrelli (June 25, 2019)

  Dark Prison - Lori Ryan (July 30, 2019)

  Copyright © 2019 by Lori Ryan

  Published by Brighton Parker Rose LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Chapter One

  “Is it one of ours?” Detective Eric Cantu kept his voice quiet, facing away from the line of gawkers at the perimeter of the crime scene tape. The media was there, lined up and ready to attack, a certain redhead front and center, her eyes laser-focused on Eric and his partner.

  Dark Falls Police Department had taken hits lately. A lot of them. Everything they were doing as detectives was being called into question, doubted, condemned. When you had a cop who was a serial killer and lab techs who falsified evidence among your ranks, it was hard to defend your department.

  So for now, they had an FBI agent stationed in their building and the press hounding them. From what Eric had heard, the mayor was breathing down the brass’s necks and second-guessing everything the department was doing. All-in-all, they were in a hell of a spot and there probably wasn’t going to be a light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon.

  Eric’s partner, John Sevier, stood to one side of him, Noelle Gray to the other. His question was directed to Noelle. She was the arson investigator for the string of fires they’d been chasing for the last four months. She didn’t need to be told what he was asking.

  He wanted to know if the scenes matched. If the same type of accelerant had been used. If the same boot prints had been found at the scene. If the same perpetrator was likely responsible for this fire.

  If the answer was yes, they were looking at fire number five. That they knew of. It was highly possible there were others.

  But they had four on their list so far. And he wasn’t happy to be adding to it.

  Fire was damaging. Whatever evidence the fire didn’t eat, the fire fighters and water or chemicals necessary to putting out the fire could easily destroy. They were lucky to have the little they did in terms of evidence.

  Noelle gave a slight nod, walking them carefully into and through the rubble of the home. Out of sight of prying eyes.

  Her dark brown eyes scanned the scene again. She was short and fit, light brown skin with a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. The way she kept her braids wrapped tightly in a circle at the base of her neck added to her no-nonsense appearance.

  Noelle was a sharp investigator but Eric knew she was overworked. The city could use two or three more of her, but they wouldn’t get them. Noelle was a shared resource, partly funded by Dark Falls and partly by the surrounding counties. Budget-wise, they were lucky to have one. Most Colorado cities relied on the state’s arson investigator to come over when they had a suspicious fire.

  She pointed out burn patterns as they moved. They were inside the skeleton of the home where the press couldn’t observe, so she spoke clearly now. “There are multiple points of origin. I need to test some samples to be sure, but it appears that he poured the largest volume of accelerant in the closet. The other spots were splashes.”

  Eric nodded. The other sites had been the same and they surmised that he started the fire in the closet first, then doused spots throughout the rest of the house with accelerant on the way out. Even the one that had taken place in a warehouse had been like that. There had been an old storage closet as the largest point of origin there with a concentrated area of accelerant on the floor and walls of the small space.

  “First time he’s gone for a building that’s not abandoned.” John made the observation, crossing muscled arms in front of his chest as he looked around them.

  Eric nodded again. They had already been told the house was lived in, though luckily the residents weren’t at home at the time of the fire. He and John had been partners for five years and they often had the same thoughts at the same time. They had the sort of shorthand you get after working together for so long.

  They’d need to talk to the homeowners. Eric had seen them pull up but they were waiting to talk to them. He and John agreed, they wanted to get a sense of what might or might not be different at this scene before the interview. For now, a uniformed officer was keeping the family away from the house.

  Fire and rescue had left the scene hours before. The family would be allowed in within the next few hours to see what they could salvage of their belongings. Eric looked around. The lower portion of the home was almost gutted and the damage extended into the ceilings of the first floor. It was terrifying how fast fire could spread, eating through everything in its path without conscience or hesitation.

  Eric scrubbed a hand over his jaw. He should have taken the time to shave. With his heritage, he couldn’t really skip a day the way John could. John’s hair was light brown. When John skipped shaving, he got that five o’clock shadow thing. Eric would have a full-grown beard of his almost-black hair by the end of the day. In high school it had been cool. Now? Not so much.

  “He’s getting more confident,” Eric said. The first four fires had been set in abandoned properties—three homes and a warehouse that were almost falling down with neglect before the fire finished off the job.

  “How did he get in?” Eric asked. With the other four fires, their arsonist hadn’t needed to break and enter. The doors on the structures were eith
er missing or hanging off the hinges. He’d been able to take his time, too. They were in isolated areas, without neighbors to call in the fire or notice someone entering the property who shouldn’t be there.

  They would need to canvas the neighbors. See if anyone saw him. They suspected this guy liked to watch his handiwork, but they had no evidence of that yet. It would be harder for him to do that with this location. Harder to get in and out without notice.

  Noelle pointed toward the back of the house. “Broken window pane in the back door. There’s a tech checking it for prints or blood.”

  Eric shook his head. All too often, people didn’t have keyed deadbolts, or if they did, they left the key sitting in the lock or hanging by the door where a burglar—or in this case arsonist–could reach in and use it to open the door.

  “You’ll send us your workup when you’re finished here?” John asked Noelle.

  “You got it.” Noelle turned back to her work as John and Eric went toward the back of the house.

  “Anything?” Eric asked the technician dusting for prints at the back door.

  The tech stood, stretching his tall thin frame. His brown hair was pulled back and tucked into a disposable cap meant to keep stray strands of hair from falling into anything he was examining on the scene.

  “Smudges,” the younger man said. “Nothing clear or useful so far.” He looked around at the ground where he stood. “I got images of the shoe and boot prints, but there are a lot of prints from the firefighters here. I doubt we can isolate anything.”

  John and Eric didn’t need to be told that. It was standard for a scene like this. The firefighters’ priority was getting the fire contained and making sure no one was in the house. Life and property took precedence over evidence.

  Still, they had prints of a size ten boot from two of the other scenes. They might be able to match prints to those and confirm that this was the same person. It would help with conviction when they caught their fire starter. The more arsons they could link to their guy, the longer they could put him away.

  Next up was the interview with the homeowners. Not fun. The trauma of a fire wasn’t as bad as when they had to do a notification of death, but it was pretty bad.

  The minute they walked outside, Eric was aware of her presence. It was hard to miss Merritt McKenna with her dark red hair and eyes that seemed to penetrate like she could see right through anyone she was focused on.

  Her hair wasn’t the typical red hair. He didn’t honestly think it could just be called plain red. There had to be a name for it. It was such a dark red, it was almost brown, but it definitely wasn’t plain old brown, either. Maybe chestnut?

  And, wow, he was thinking about hair colors. He had to get past this thing with Merritt McKenna.

  Whatever this thing was.

  “Press is here,” John said, trying to hide the way his mouth was itching to curl up at the corners.

  Asshole. “Uh-huh.” Eric didn’t have more of a response than that.

  Initially, Merritt was the only reporter following the fires. Since the first four fires had been in abandoned buildings, they hadn’t been on the radar of any of the other news outlets in town, and they certainly hadn’t hit the national news. Dark Falls might have a serial arsonist, but until today, no one other than the police and Merritt seemed to be concerned about it. There was no big money involved or lives in danger, so it wasn’t sexy news.

  Sexy. She's sexy as hell.

  She stood outside the crime scene tape, her eyes taking in everything around her, the small tablet that seemed to be an extension of her arm poised for typing. She would tap tap tap at the thing with those nails of hers.

  He remembered the way those nails had dug into his back.

  Hell.

  Eric turned his back on her and followed John to the family sitting with the uniformed officer. There were a mother and father and two young boys. The Cho family. These people had gone off to work or school or whatever, and they were coming back to nothing.

  John introduced himself and Eric as a neighbor came and whisked the boys away and Eric was glad for that, though why they hadn’t done that sooner, he didn’t know. People always wanted to stay and watch the show when something like this happened, but the kids should have been distracted someplace else so they didn’t have to see everything go up in smoke. Literally.

  The neighborhood was a nice one, but not too upscale. The kind of place where families with multiple incomes lived, which might explain why the house was empty. People didn’t have the money for one parent to stay at home in this neighborhood.

  “Can you tell us where you both were when the fire happened?” Eric kept his tone polite, professional. The couple had already been informed the fire was the result of arson not an accident. “We want to get a sense of whether today was routine for you, whether someone might have known you wouldn’t be home.”

  He was also making sure they had alibis, but he didn’t want to get their defenses up and make them resistant to answering his questions. It was highly unlikely they were involved in this.

  “We were both at work,” the wife answered. She looked around, like she was still trying to take in what had happened. “We both work. Gary dropped the kids at school on his way out this morning. I went in a little later. Nine or nine thirty, I think it was.”

  Her husband nodded. “I dropped the boys at school then went to the office.”

  They would corroborate that if things headed in that direction later. For now, it looked like this was connected to the previous arsons.

  “Have you seen anyone in the neighborhood lately who didn’t belong here? Maybe someone who seemed out of place or suspicious for any reason?” John asked.

  The couple shared a look before shaking their heads, each with the kind of frown that said they couldn’t think of anything.

  “Not that I’ve noticed,” Mrs. Cho said. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her husband rubbed her back. She looked like she was trying to hold it together, but if the trembling in her chin was any indication, Eric had a feeling she’d be crying again soon.

  “Can you think of any reason someone might target you?” Eric asked.

  Mrs. Cho sucked in a breath and Mr. Cho redoubled his back-rubbing efforts.

  “No. We’re normal people,” Mrs. Cho said. “Who would do this? We’re normal people,” she said again, and Eric knew it was the shock of what he was suggesting. That someone might want to hurt them on purpose this way instead of just a random incident.

  John pressed. “Have you had any arguments with anyone lately? Any friction at work or with a friend or maybe an ex?”

  There were any number of possibilities when it came to personal grudges. Eric knew John was trying to jog their memories for any little thing. They needed a break of some kind in this case.

  Again, head shaking and denials by the couple.

  “Have you lived here long?” John asked.

  “No,” Mr. Cho answered this time, wrapping an arm around his wife and pulling her to him as he did. “We moved in about two months ago. It was empty before that. The woman who rents it to us didn’t have tenants for about a year before that, I think.”

  “She was asking too much for it,” Mrs. Cho said, a hint of censure in her tone. “Wanted two thousand a month.”

  The uniformed officer who had greeted them on the scene had referred to the couple as the homeowners. Eric had stupidly assumed that meant the officer had asked the couple if they owned the home. He knew better than to rely on someone else to do the legwork for them.

  He wondered if there was anything to the fact that this home had been empty recently and the other homes had been empty. Although, this was nowhere near the state the other homes had been in, so he doubted it. Still, if they could come up with some hint as to how the arsonist was choosing his locations, they might gain insight into who their guy was.

  They explained the process of waiting for the arson investigator to release the scene, got the contact info for th
e homeowner, and suggested the family make arrangements for staying with a friend or checking into a hotel.

  Eric felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and pulled it out. It was his mother’s nursing home again. He needed to check his bank account to make sure their check had cleared. That was the only time they ever tried to reach him.

  He didn’t have any choice but to pass Merritt and the rest of the press as they left the scene.

  “Detective,” Merritt said, as he and John approached the crime scene tape and ducked under it. “Can you tell us if this is the same person who started the other fires? Do you have any suspects?”

  Eric growled at her as John gave the standard “no comment” line.

  John waited until they were out of hearing range of the reporters and halfway to the car before he asked, “Did you just growl at her?”

  Eric growled again, drawing a laugh from John. His partner was too damned happy lately. Eric guessed falling in love would do that to a guy. He wouldn’t know.

  “Detective Cantu.”

  Shit. He knew damned well it was their captain.

  With any luck she hadn’t been close enough to hear him growling.

  He turned.

  Yup. She had.

  Captain Scanlon wasn’t a woman you messed with. He expected to find a pissed-off look on her face when he turned, but instead it was carefully blank.