There was the faint essence of apple, maybe even lemon? As I caught onto that tendril, I discerned cinnamon. Maybe pumpkin spice?
Frowning, Austin muttered, “Do you scent pie?”
My lips twitched. I loved our twin brains. “Yeah, I do. Apple, right?”
He dipped his chin. “So what? She was wearing a costume as a waitress? Or she was selling pie somewhere on site?”
“Maybe. Or it was her final meal.” I heaved out a sigh. “Okay, we need to clear the blood away.”
“Happen to bring along twenty gallons of soapy water, did you?”
“Smart-ass,” I mumbled under my breath, but I reached into my pocket and said, “We need to set fire to the stand.”
His eyes rounded. “There’s someone in there.”
“I wasn’t suggesting we kill them,” I grumbled at him, shooting him a scowl that would have felled a lesser man. “You need to distract them. Get them out of there.”
“How am I supposed to do that? There’s one way in and one way out.”
“I’ll start the fire, you tell the server you can see smoke, then run around the side, and I’ll head in and grab them and get them out without standing in the blood.”
“Not a bad plan,” he mused. “Do you have a cigarette on you?”
I glowered at him. “No.”
He simply cocked a brow. “Don’t bullshit me. This is no time to be in denial about your habit.”
Though I carried on glowering at him, I reached into my coat and grabbed the packet of poison sticks that had been manhandled over time.
They were old. Not as old as my habit, but I had them in there just in case. Some days, you needed a crutch, and in our job, those days came often.
Still, I hated being dependent on human poison, so I went as long as I could before falling on my sword.
He flicked a glance at the packet, then instructed, “Make sure it’s the cigarette that starts it. Otherwise, the fire department will look for arson, and it needs to appear accidental.”
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” I muttered, flipping him the bird as he wandered around the side of the stall. Halfway around, when the back of the stand caved in to reveal the contents on sale, he shot me a look and grinned.
From that grin alone, I knew there was at least one woman manning the stand.
When his charm came on thick and fast in the next few minutes, I looked around for some paper that would get the fire going nicely.
If we were in the city, or maybe even a bigger town, I knew there’d be a major problem with our plan. But this was Drake’s Point County. The firemen were volunteers and weren’t exactly experts. On top of that, most of the town’s crimes were handled by the pack, leaving the sheriff and his two deputies to deal with the parking and speeding tickets, as well as domestic issues that were out of the pack’s reach.
If things came to a head, which I doubted, I knew Eli would smooth things over with the sheriff, who knew about us, as did all the sheriffs who served the county, but I preferred to keep things nice and simple.
Using the season to my advantage, I grabbed some of the leaves that had been tossed all over town, thanks to the nasty winds that had torn through the county, clumped them together, and tossed them on the bloodstain. When the area was covered with foliage, I grasped some more, checking they weren’t wet from the day before yesterday’s downpour, then lifted the lighter to them and waited, patiently, for them to catch on fire.
I rolled my eyes when I heard Austin charm the staff tending the stall. There were two of them, two females as luck would have it. I never understood why women always lifted their skirts for Austin. His charm wasn’t charming at all, but it always worked.
Gently blowing the lit leaves until the flame was stronger, I carefully placed it onto the pile of detritus I’d crafted and watched as the fire slowly began to grow. I fanned the flames until a mushroom cloud of smoke billowed up from the pile.
Eying it and trying not to cough, I reached for the door to the stand and opened it. As I peered through the gap I made, I saw my brother flirting with the women, and waited until I caught his eye. Nodding slowly, I opened it farther, smiling when the blaze