Free Up in Flames [The Heroes of Silver Springs 10] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic) by Tonya Ramagos

than allowing the snide comeback tingling on his tongue to spill from his lips, he tipped his nose in the air and took a deep, audible breath. “Smell that?”
    Regina balanced the clipboard on one knee and scribbled something on the top sheet of paper. “I smell a lot of things, Jasper.”
    “Including the tinge of napalm still lingering in the air?”
    Her pen froze on the paper, and for several seconds nothing moved except her head. She turned it slightly right, then left, angled it up, and sniffed. “It’s something similar. The gas smell is heavier, like it was the base for whatever mixture was used to get the napalm effect.”
    Max moved to stand next to her. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too, a homemade concoction of some sort.”
    “It wasn’t a bomb.” Regina pushed to her feet, shrugging the apparently waterproof pack off her shoulder and leaving it on the floor where she’d been kneeling as she continued her examination of the garage bays. “If it had been, the whole place would’ve gone up. Whoever did this doused the areas rather than keeping it in a concentrated spot and then allowing it to spread. The fire didn’t make it this far,” she said, sounding like she was talking more to herself than him.
    Max answered anyway. “We got to it first.”
    She shook her head, not looking at him. “It wouldn’t have moved further than this without help. There’s no path of accelerant through the other garages, but whoever did this might have expected that oil drum to go up. If that had happened, the resulting explosion would’ve turned this entire garage into a fireball, especially seeing as how the flames would’ve then reached the other drums and likely ignited the cars on that end as well.”
    “You’re saying that’s the point of origin,” Max concluded, pointed to the place where she had been kneeling mere moments ago. “It’s where the fire started.”
    Regina glanced at him, her eyes narrowed and a no-shit-Sherlock expression on her beautiful face. “I know what a point of origin is, Jasper.”
    Damn, the woman was borderline freaking insufferable! Why in the hell did he keep trying?
    You’re crazy about her, dude. Can’t get any more plain and simple than that.
    Yeah, he was, and apparently he was a glutton for punishment, too.
    “I also know what a means of escape looks like,” she said smartly. “Or did you not pick up on that?” She pointed to a high window in the back wall of the third garage bay. It was the same window where she’d found the footprint on the ground outside.
    Max pursed his lips, his attention falling to the workbench beneath the window. “Can’t say as I did, though, in my own defense, I didn’t spend much time thinking on how the guy got in or out of this place. I was a little preoccupied with making sure the whole damn thing didn’t go up in flames.”
    “But not too preoccupied to come up with your own theory, right?” Her tone and expression said she was clearly mocking him. “Didn’t you tell me out there you had one?”
    Max held his cool. It was a struggle. To think he’d actually hoped after last night they’d managed to form some kind of friendship or, hell, an acquaintanceship that didn’t include snipping at one another all damn time. “I told you I had a theory about how the fire started, yes. My first thought about how the arsonist got in and out was taking in the obvious.”
    “The garage door standing wide open.” Regina tipped her chin toward the still open door in question. “I’m aware that sometimes the most obvious answer is the right one, but not in this case. The guy opens the garage door, comes inside, starts a fire, then leaves out the same door which just so happens to be a front door of a business on a highly busy main city street…” She shook her head. “I’m not buying that one. The evidence doesn’t support it either.”
    “No, it doesn’t appear to,” Max conceded. “So, he got out through that window.