Free Cold Dawn by Carla Neggers Page B

want, Charlie?"
    "Our arsonist is back."
    Grit wasn't that surprised by Charlie's comment. Cars zipped past him on the residential street that ran perpendicular to the one he was on. The Buick was warm, the morning temperature almost springlike, but he didn't roll down his window. The car wasn't bugged--he'd checked. The Secret Service was onto his friendship with Charlie Neal. Jo Harper didn't like it, but Charlie's dad, the vice president, had decided Grit was someone the incorrigible teenager would listen to.
    A positive influence, Grit thought. Him.
    Preston Neal probably hadn't thought Grit and Charlie would be talking pyromaniacs again. Charlie had figured out a network of paid killers was at work back in November, before anyone else. He didn't need such nice-ties as evidence. He remained convinced a serial arsonist had been one of Lowell Whittaker's contract killers and was still on the loose.
    "Whose phone are you on?" Grit asked him.
    "A friend's."
    Defensive, vague. Grit knew better than to try to get specifics out of him. Charlie would be ten questions ahead by now. Being direct with the kid was his only chance. "The Secret Service know?"
    "I have to be in class in one minute forty-eight seconds."
    "Any candidates for who this firebug is?" Grit asked.
    "I have a list of names."
    Charlie would. Grit regretted his question. "'Firebug' can mean anything."
    "Serial arsonist, then."
    "Go take your calculus test."
    "I told you my sister Marissa has an ex-boyfriend in L.A., right? An actor. He writes screenplays, too. He dumped Marissa when Dad was tapped as veep."
    Marissa Neal was the eldest of Charlie's four sisters and a history teacher at his northern Virginia private high school. She was also beautiful, and she didn't think Grit was such a positive influence on her brother.
    "The only connection--and I use the word loosely--between your sister and this guy is an ex-boyfriend in California?"
    Charlie was undeterred. "Jasper Vanderhorn was a California arson investigator."
    "Do you know how many millions of people there are in California?"
    "He was based in Los Angeles County. The ex-boyfriend's in Beverly Hills. Well, maybe not quite. On the border. Close."
    "You're a genius, Charlie. Do the math on the odds--"
    "Nick Martini is a smoke jumper, and he was with Rose Cameron when she found the victim of yesterday morning's fire in Black Falls."
    "Charlie."
    "I asked Jo about it. She wasn't that nice."
    "Good."
    "You're missing the nuances."
    Grit felt the sun hot on the back of his neck. "I'm not good with nuances."
    "The ex-boyfriend and Marissa broke up eighteen months ago. Last June, Jasper Vanderhorn, the arson investigator, died in a suspicious wildland canyon fire north of Los Angeles. Sean Cameron and Nick Martini tried to get to him but they were too late. At the same time, Rose Cameron was nearby, searching for an eleven-year-old boy who'd wandered off when his family had to evacuate."
    "So? I'm not connecting the dots here, Charlie."
    Charlie ignored him. "Jo was assigned to protect Marissa then."
    "Special Agent Harper," Grit said, not letting it go this time.
    "Right. Special Agent Harper. Then last October, Marissa was almost killed when a gas stove blew up at a place she rented with friends in the Shenandoah Mountains. Jo--Agent Harper--saved her." When Grit didn't respond, Charlie took a breath. "Then in November, we had the fire at Myrtle's."
    "Miss Smith or Ms. Smith."
    "She said I could call her Myrtle."
    Grit was silent.
    "Miss Smith could have been killed. The same day as that fire, we had the improvised explosive device in Vermont that killed Melanie Kendall. Then in January, we had the two IEDs that almost killed Hannah Shay, Sean Cameron and Bowie O'Rourke--and Vivian Whittaker, too, but I'm not sure I want to count her. Awful woman."
    Grit tried not to let himself get sidetracked by Charlie's pinball-machine of a mind. "We don't know who set Myrtle's house on fire, but the bombs were Lowell