The Men With the Golden Cuffs(95)

Serena felt her stomach turn.

The door to the bathroom opened, and Jake barged in. “Serena, we have to go.”

She held up the letter. “He left this.”

Jake’s jaw firmed, and he grabbed her hand. “He did more than leave you a note, baby. I think he just burned down your house.”





Chapter Seventeen





Jake tried to listen to the cops, but his mind was still on the ruined husk of Serena’s house. The security cameras they had placed around the house hadn’t helped. Jake had looked at the feed he’d received before the whole system had gone down and all he had was a vague shot of the back of a non-descript man in a dark hoodie and jeans moving outside the backyard camera. And then the feed had gone dead.

“Ms. Brooks,” Edward Chitwood was saying, “obviously, this person is escalating.”

“You admit this person exists?” Adam said, his bitterness showing through. He had paced the halls of the police station until the detectives had called them in. Adam had been the one who had hustled them all away from the crime scene. Jake had just stood there watching Serena’s house burn, his whole soul in turmoil. Everything she had was in that house except for the small suitcase Alex had brought her the night before. Her whole world was burning down around her, and she wouldn’t let him hold her.

At least Adam had been thinking. He’d gotten them out of there as quickly as possible since there was a crowd gathered around watching as the firefighters put out the blaze. Any one of them could have been the man who had started the fire. Adam had been smart enough to roll video from his phone of the crowd. They would analyze it later.

And Jake had just stood there watching Serena, feeling his whole soul falling apart. He had to figure out how to reach her. No matter what happened, he couldn’t let her go. He knew that now. Even after all the shit he’d gone through, he couldn’t let Serena get away. He hadn’t been in love before, and it was so much more important than his own pride.

Chitwood frowned and leaned forward in his seat. “Yes, I think I understand that now. I, for one, don’t think Miss Brooks would go so far as to burn down her own home to get a small amount of publicity. Speaking of publicity, the press is asking questions. It will be on the news this evening.”

“Keep her name out of it,” Jake said. The last thing he wanted was for the story to break. It might have been Lara’s plan, but Serena herself had made it fail by refusing to play along. She’d called the cops and ignored the press. She’d guarded her privacy. It was the only damn thing she had left.

“At this point we’re simply saying it was a fire. I wish we had a witness, but apparently there was a big block party going on at the other end of the street.” Chitwood looked down at his report. “Tell me something, Mr. Miles, did you get anything off the CCTV tapes?”

Adam sighed and gave the cop a regretful shake of his head. “No. I’m still looking. It can be so hard to tell. Did your experts find anything?”

Their experts hadn’t met Lara Anderson. She would look like just another woman walking out of the library, talking on her phone. Jake had found her on the other library’s CCTV tape, but she’d had her face down in that tape, a scarf wrapped around her head. Adam had only identified her from her hand bag. There weren’t many suburbanites walking around carrying Chanel. He and Adam had decided to not let the cops in on this piece of their investigation. They had the same tapes. If they didn’t reach the same conclusions, it was their damn fault. Besides, it would only muddy the waters since Lara didn’t have anything to do with this. He’d called Ian, and Lara had been with him all afternoon, crying and trying to figure out how to help her client. If she was still working an angle, Jake couldn’t see it.

“No. I think that’s a dead end.” Chitwood closed his folder and looked at Serena with now sympathetic eyes.

Jake wanted nothing more than to reach over and thread his fingers through hers. “Has the fire marshal determined how the fire was started?”

Chitwood sighed. “Well, we’re sure it’s arson, but there are protocols. He’ll file his report in the next few weeks. We have a lot of evidence to sort through.”

“Of course.” Serena sat back, her eyes vacant. “I understand. Do you know how long it will be before the insurance adjusters can get in?”

Hernandez walked up behind his partner, his eyes narrowing. “It could be a while, Miss Brooks. Your insurance agent is going to want a full report. They don’t just pay out because the house burns down. They need to make sure you have a legitimate claim.”