“That would be great. We can cross you off quickly. Sergeant Barlow said you were the one to call 911. How did you know to come here?”

A sheepish expression stole over Hart’s face. “I installed a smoke detector in Bruno’s run. Just in case. It sends an alert to my cell phone. We were just finishing our last game when my phone went off. I got here, saw the fire, called 911. I dragged Bruno beyond the fence. I didn’t want him to get burned or trampled on by the firemen.”

“Why the dog?” Kane asked. “Did you have a problem with theft?”

“We used to store porcelain fixtures out here and had some vandalism. Kids, with too much free time. They’d break up porcelain, that kind of thing. Barney got the dog, hoping Bruno would bite one of them. The kids went elsewhere and Bruno stayed.”

“Video security?” Olivia asked.

“Cameras outside, none inside. Feed goes straight to a recorder inside. Old-fashioned. Barney didn’t think he needed anything fancy as long as he kept Bruno.”

“We’ll need a list of your clients and employees,” Olivia said.

“Talk to Jake Mabrow. He does our IT. I convinced Barney to set up an outside server about a year ago so that we’d have a backup. Jake will have access to our files. So will Weezie. She came in and made copies of everything on Barney’s computer the day before she filed for divorce. He didn’t know she knew about the temp.”

“What about you?” Kane asked. “What will you do now that this place is gone?”

“Retire. I’d been planning to anyway. Weezie promised me Bruno.” Hart’s head whipped to the side, focusing on a minivan that had just arrived. “Vet’s here.”

Olivia recognized the vet immediately. “Barlow called Brie’s dad,” she told Kane. “He’s a good vet,” she told Hart. “He takes care of my dog. Bruno’s in good hands.”

“I can go?” Hart asked and was gone with Olivia’s first nod.

“We need to get Tomlinson’s customer list,” Kane said. “See if KRB Corp or Rankin bought plumbing supplies from them.”

“We also need to pay a visit to the Widow Tomlinson. Sounds like she won’t be so grieving. This one shouldn’t be as hard as Mrs. Weems. It’s my turn, isn’t it?”

“It is. You did good with Mr. Hart, by the way.”

One corner of her mouth lifted. “You’re just saying that so I’ll give you my turn.”

His brows lifted. “Did it work?”

“No.”

“Damn.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Firefighters at your six.”

Olivia looked over her shoulder at Barlow and three firefighters coming their way. David was one of them. That her breath backed up in her lungs and her stomach rolled was an annoyance she’d just have to get used to. David Hunter was handsome. Gorgeous. Total eye candy. And a jerk. So live with it and do your job.

By the time the men reached them, she was steady.

“I’m Cunkle and this is Sloan,” one of the firefighters said. “We’re with Company Forty. And this is Hunter. He’s with Company Forty-four. Barlow said you wanted to talk to us.”

“We do,” Kane said. “Tell us what you saw inside.”

“Fire was fully engaged,” Cunkle said. “The office walls were burning and the ceiling crashed in. Sloan and I pulled the walls down and there he was.”

“He wasn’t alive. He’d been shot.” Sloan pursed his lips hard. “Face was gone.”

“What about his desk?” Olivia asked. “What did you see?”

“A bunch of papers, splattered with his blood. They hadn’t completely burned, so I checked with my flashlight. They were hard to see, but they looked like sex pictures.”

“Sex pictures? You mean, like porn?” Olivia asked and Sloan shook his head.

“No. Looked like the guy was him. Pudgy, lots of white skin. Really white.”

“This time they brought their own fuel,” Barlow added. “They found gas cans.”

“Pour patterns were similar to the ones we saw in the condo,” David said. “They spread the gas on the floor in a line, then dumped what was left into a puddle. Looks like they came from the east and west sides of the warehouse and met in the middle.”

“And the ball?” Olivia asked and he met her eyes, his unreadable.

“Propping open a side door, just like you thought they’d done in the condo. The ball is covered in gel. I got a picture of it. Look where the ball touches the floor.” He handed her his camera and Olivia turned it so both she and Kane could see the view screen.

“What am I looking at?” she asked and David looked over her shoulder, his chin almost touching her ear. Her lungs stopped working as he pointed at the screen.

“There. Piece of a fuse. They used the ball to hold one end of the fuse in place.”

David moved back, and Olivia breathed again. “When can we go in?” she asked.

“An hour or two,” Barlow said, “when it’s cooled. I’ll call you.”

“Thanks,” Olivia said, then gave Barlow a small smile. “Thanks for calling Brie’s dad. He’ll take good care of Bruno, and that’ll make Mr. Hart more cooperative.”

Barlow nodded. “Hart’s got an alibi?”

“Yes, but we’ll check him out. First stop is the widow. She had motive to kill Tomlinson and to burn the place down. Supposedly she copied her husband’s files, so we’ll see if we can get customer and employee lists from her.” She turned to the firefighters. “Thanks for the information. We’ll be in touch.”

She walked away without a word to David Hunter, feeling him watch her back. Kane matched her stride, checking over his shoulder.

“He’s watching you, Liv.”

“He’d better stop,” she said through her teeth, then made herself chill. “I’ve been thinking. What if Barlow was right yesterday morning, that this has nothing to do with the SPOT environmental group?”

“That the glass ball is just a smoke screen?” Kane asked.

“Yeah. What if somebody really wanted to kill a person they hated and set the first fire to establish a false pattern? That killing Tomlinson was their plan all along?”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing. Sounds like Tomlinson’s wife really hated him.”

“Let’s find out how much.”

Sloan and Cunkle went back to their duties, leaving Barlow standing next to David. For a moment neither of them said anything, then Barlow said, “Ouch.”

“What?” David muttered. “She was nice to you.”

“For the first time in a couple years, but I wasn’t talking about me.”

David hesitated, then shrugged. “Who was Doug?”

Barlow shot him a surprised look. “My friend, then and now. Used to be engaged to Liv. I introduced them, actually.”

“He left her.”

Barlow sighed. “He did. And I helped, which is why I’m persona non grata.”

David thought of Paige’s words. He was in it, too. “How did you help?”

“Doug had a fiancée long before Liv. They’d been college sweethearts, then she left him. He never got over her, but he met Liv and I thought they had a shot together. Time passed, they got engaged. They set a date. I was going to be the best man. Everything was fine. Then, a couple weeks before the ceremony, Doug’s old fiancée showed up. She begged Doug to take her back.”

“And he did?”

“Not right away. He came to me, asking for advice, and unfortunately I got involved. One of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.”

David frowned. “You told him to dump Olivia?”

“No,” Barlow said forcefully. “I just told him to imagine himself at eighty and see who he thought he’d be happiest with. He went off for a few days, thought it through, then chose Angela. Olivia was”-he sighed-“a lot more crushed than I ever thought a woman could be.”

I don’t play second-string. “How did she find out what you’d done?”

“That would have been me telling her, another stupid thing I did. See, a week after Doug left her, her father died. He was a cop, too, apparently. In Chicago.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m friends with Olivia’s half sister Mia. They share a father.” David’s shoulders sagged. Now the second-string statement made even more sense.

“You knew Liv’s father?”