Confessing to the Cowboy - By Carla Cassidy Page 0,64

café and into the snow alone and vulnerable.

Thank God Cameron had been doing hourly drive-bys and checking out the perimeters of the café and had seen the fire blazing when he had. By the time Cameron arrived, Matt had already climbed out his window and was crying for his mother and Twinkie.

When Cameron realized Mary was still inside, his heart had frozen with fear. Now, with all three of the occupants safe in his car, he raced back to see that the firemen were pulling their hoses back through the broken main door of the café.

The chief of the fire department, aptly named Smokey Johnson met him in the kitchen. “Fire is out, only mortality is a sofa and some smoke damage mostly contained to the main room in the back. No question that it was arson, probably gasoline poured over the sofa material. There’s a broken window in the room, probable point of entry for whoever lit the fire.”

Smokey pulled off his helmet, his ragged features indicating exhaustion. “We don’t get called out at three in the morning very often.”

“Thank God you got here before any real damage was done or somebody lost their life,” Cameron replied. He slapped Smokey on the back. “I’ll be in touch for your official report sometime tomorrow. In the meantime if you all could board up the broken windows before you leave I’d appreciate it. I’ve got Mary and Matt in my car and I want to get them someplace safe and warm for what’s left of the night.”

“We’ll take care of everything,” Smokey replied. “And when we’re finished we’ll let your men move in for whatever they need to do.” Cameron knew he could depend on the fire chief, who had served efficiently in his capacity for the past ten years.

After speaking with Deputies Larry Brooks and Brent Walkins about their own crime-scene investigation in the café, Cameron hurried back to the car, his goal now to get Mary and Matt settled in at his place.

The interior of his patrol car was nice and toasty and Matt had already fallen back asleep with Twinkie curled up on his chest.

However, Mary still had the shell-shocked look of a woman somebody had just tried to kill. Her hair was wild around her face and one cheek sported a smear of smoky residue.

“I’m taking you to my place,” Cameron said as he put the car into gear and headed out of the Cowboy Café parking lot. He was grateful she didn’t object. He wasn’t exactly in the mood for objections from anyone.

“How bad is the damage?” Her voice sounded faint, as if she were trapped in a dream and couldn’t wake up.

“You’re going to need a new sofa and there’s a lot of smoke damage, but that can be fixed with a little elbow grease and some new paint.”

He felt her gaze on his as he carefully maneuvered the dangerous curve he had to drive in order to get to his ranch. “You know it was probably Jason. He was probably hoping the whole place would come down.”

“Maybe, but I was doing cursory checks around your building throughout the night. It was on this last check that I saw Matt standing outside his bedroom window in the snow, crying for you and his dog.”

Mary straightened in the seat. “You weren’t the man who broke his window? You didn’t tell him to get out of his room?”

Cameron shot her a quick glance, his jaw tense. “No, he was already out when I arrived.”

Mary worried her fingers together in her lap and shot a quick look over the seat to her sleeping son. “Matt told me somebody tapped on his window, then broke it out and told him to get out of the building because it was on fire. It had to have been Jason.”

She stared out the passenger window and then turned back to Cameron. “He must have run away when you arrived. Jason’s intention was to kill me and take Matt. Thank God you came when you did.” She shivered, as if any other scenario filled her with ice.

With the thick layer of snow, Cameron hoped his deputies would be able to find footsteps to follow that might lead them to tire tracks and from those they could at least figure out what kind of vehicle the person was driving or something physical about the person who had left behind footprints.

Mary fell silent and Cameron desperately tried to keep his attention on the snowy road