Free Convict: A Bad Boy Romance by Roxie Noir Page B

almost two hours before I realize Chad is there, directing traffic away from the scene. I only realize it because I walk out from under the overpass, trying to see whether the flames were large enough to leave soot on the outside.
    “The fire was on the inside,” he calls. “You get lost that easy?”
    I don’t bother answering and just look up at the bridge over the road. There’s a little soot, as expected, but nothing to indicate that the fire was bigger than we already thought.
    “I’m surprised you stuck around after the firemen left,” he says, waving a car away. “I bet if you’d asked, you could have gotten them to take their shirts off.”
    I still don’t answer, and shine my flashlight up at the overpass. It’s always got a couple graffiti tags on it, but there’s something odd.
    Most of the spray paint is under the soot, at least as far as I can tell — it’s past midnight, so it’s dark. But way over, almost at the end of the bridge, there’s one symbol in orange that looks like it’s on top of the soot. A dollar sign, inside a circle, inside a triangle. I photograph it.
    I’ve seen it before, and I stand there, trying to sort through everything in my brain so I can remember where I saw it. As I’m thinking I look down.
    There’s a spray paint can on the ground. I pick it up with one glove and put it in an evidence bag.
    “Try not to break a nail and cry,” Chad calls. I look at him for the first time since I walked over here, because that’s just nonsense. I don’t have nails long enough to break. I never have. He’s just shouting shit in the hopes that something pisses me off.
    I glance at the symbol on the overpass one more time, and it hits me: the same thing was on Eddie’s gate. I don’t think I’d ever seen it before that.
    “Rivers, are you crying ?” Chad calls, continuing his stream of dumb bullshit, because I’m obviously not.
    “Direct traffic and let the grownups do their jobs,” I call back, walking back toward the scene.

    * * *
    I spend the next morning interviewing the cars’ owners, but it doesn’t turn anything up. They were both visiting friends in the nearby neighborhood, perfectly normal, nice people who are bewildered that their cars were torched. They don’t even know each other.
    I’m disappointed, but I remind myself that this is how it goes. You follow leads until something turns up.
    The afternoon I spend at my desk, my feet still dangling in my sort-of-fixed chair, going through photos of graffiti until it feels like my eyes might start bleeding. I’m looking through every vandalism photo from the central coast for the past year, looking for that weird symbol, while Batali calls gas stations and asks for surveillance footage, so we can see if anyone filled gas canisters in the area.
    Finally, she puts down her phone and looks over at my screen.
    “In ancient times, purple dye came only from a certain kind of sea snail and was very hard to get,” she says, looking at a purple graffiti tag on my computer screen. “That’s why it was reserved for royalty.”
    “Okay,” I say, assuming that this is going somewhere.
    “Fingerprints from that can you found came back,” she says. “Stone Williams. The mechanic from Big Eddie’s.”
    I blink, slightly taken aback.
    “Really?” I say.
    Batali nods. I’m already typing his name into the police records database.
    “His prints were also on the paint cans at Big Eddie’s,” Batali says. “I’d prefer for you to do the interview. You seemed to establish a rapport when you spoke with him at the scene.”
    That’s one way of putting it, I think. My heart thuds in my chest like someone stomping on a wooden floor.
    “Sure, no problem,” I say, trying to sound casual.
    I could ask her to do it, but she’s a damn good detective. I’d be confessing within five minutes, and in another five, I’d probably be asking her why he kissed me and then ran away, wanting to know what is wrong with me.
    I