Jack was unpleasant, but his answers sounded honest.
But then who? Why?
The only person who knew about her past was in prison. It didn’t make any sense.
She drove out of Pineapple Port, her mind sifting through possibilities, none of which seemed viable. At the first traffic light, she looked behind her to see if anyone had pulled up, and finding no one, dropped Jack’s phone out the window.
Chapter Twenty-Five
After the investigators left, Charlotte talked Fire Chief Mac into letting her inside her charred house. She told him she needed medication, knowing he’d be too polite to demand to know what sort, but what she really needed was Jamie Moriarty’s fingerprint book.
Jamie had compiled a photo album filled with the fingerprints of her WITSEC clients, so she had some proof of their real identities, before they entered witness protection. Each page held one enlarged finger print and the true initials of the criminal. No doubt, she’d used the book to blackmail her pets into helping her with her own devious plans.
The sheet Frank had found looked something like the sheets in the book. The fingerprint was smaller, the initials handwritten and near the print instead of in the lower right corner, but—
Did Jamie leave it on Frank’s porch?
And if so, why? Was she trying to point them to someone else?
Anytime something strange happened in Charity, the odds of tracing it to someone in the fingerprint book were pretty good. It didn’t reveal the new identities of the people or provide pictures, but it confirmed they had some tie to Jamie and the Witness Protection Program. Sometimes, that tenuous thread was enough to push Charlotte and Sheriff Frank on the right track.
Hopefully, it would come in handy this time, too.
Charlotte opened the little door in the side table beside her best sitting chair to find the book sitting there, unharmed. Charlotte closed her eyes as her body flooded with relief.
It didn’t burn.
“Not too bad,” said Declan, who’d insisted on accompanying her inside. He stood with hands on hips, studying the hallway damage, looking adorable in his singed running shorts.
“I don’t think anyone is going to attack me in my burned-out home,” she said.
He ignored her. She’d never get him to leave her side now.
Charlotte slipped Frank’s fingerprint sheet between the pages for safekeeping and set the fingerprint book on the table.
She took her first good look at her enforced remodeling. The damage in the living room appeared minimal. The side of the sofa closest to the hall looked like a piece of overdone toast. The walls and ceilings in the hallway, as well as her bedroom door, needed to be replaced. The glass hallway light had shattered and then melted into an odd, drippy shape hanging from the ceiling like an alien stalactite, but she’d always hated that light anyway. The rest of the rooms would need touchups where fire had licked, but Declan and her ancient fire extinguisher had stopped the spread before she had to redo the whole house. When she first saw the wall of flames outside her bedroom, she’d feared she’d lost everything.
“Could have been worse,” said Declan, inspecting the handle of her back door. “We’re going to have to get you a better door and better locks back here, too. Cops said this is how they got in.”
She nodded. “New hall, new doors, and I’m afraid I might smell like a hotdog for the rest of my life if my clothes sit in here. I’d leave all the windows open, but the hurricane...”
“This is bad timing. You could throw your clothes in a bag and take them to my house?”
“Mac gave me strict instructions to avoid the hall. The floor might give way, especially if I’m hauling a giant bag of clothes.”
“Are the bedrooms windows unlocked?”
“Should be.”
“Okay, then that’s what we can do. We’ll pull the nails out from the outside and I’ll hoist you into the bedroom. You can grab everything.”
Charlotte clapped her hands together. “Ooh, good idea. You are useful. Good ideas, saving my life...”
He hung his thumb in his belt and touched the tip of an invisible hat. “That’s what I’m here for, Little Lady.”
She snickered and then frowned. “Ugh. They need to dust those windows for prints. The arson guys didn’t do that part. That’ll be the cops. We probably shouldn’t mess with the windows.”
“You think whoever did this would be dumb enough to leave prints?”
“No, but they’ll still do it. Maybe we’ll get lucky if the culprit was lazy, figuring the sills would be ash by the time the fire had done its thing.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll get clothes tomorrow. I think I have some things at your house and what I don’t have, I’ll borrow from you. With the hurricane coming, it’s not like I’ll need a fancy ballgown.”
“Good, because you absolutely cannot borrow my fancy ball gown. It’s Givenchy.”
Charlotte giggled. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
She threw her arms around him and he hugged her to him.
“I was so scared I’d lost you,” he whispered.
She squeezed him tight, hiding the act of wiping tears on his shirt. “I wouldn’t leave you like that,” she whispered.
They stayed that way for another minute before he let her go and she stepped back, turning so he wouldn’t see her eyes.
My emotions are all over the place. So embarrassing.
Her gaze fell to the singed sofa. “I think this sofa is shot. Good thing I know the local pawnshop owner.”
He huffed. “You want a discount, too?”
“Sorry. I’m very high maintenance today.”
Charlotte moved into the kitchen to retrieve a box of trash bags she could use to gather things later. “These smell like lavender. Seems my choices for the foreseeable future will be smelling like a campfire or smelling like
