Studfinder (Busy Bean #5) - L.B. Dunbar Page 0,70

His hand catches mine over his shoulder.

“You didn’t need her,” Nolan says, and something about his touch and the tone of his voice has the hairs on the back of my neck rising. Stepping back around the front of the wheelchair, I lower to my haunches and glare up at my brother.

“Why would you say that, Nolan?”

“She was talking to that fancy lawyer, all chummy and hugging. They probably laughed about your conviction, saying how easy it was to put you away.” Nolan licks his lips, and his lids close once more.

“Why would you say that? Did you hear something?”

“I didn’t need to hear anything. She kept looking at me like she knows.”

More hair raising. A cold sweat starts next. “Like who knows what, little brother?” My voice is tight while I try to coax whatever it is he isn’t saying out of him. I remember having to do the same thing when he was younger. He’d be in trouble at school but didn’t directly say what he’d done to cause it. And typically, when trouble occurred, Nolan was the culprit. Softening my voice, lowering to his level, I learned how to speak to my brother to get him to open up. Of course, it was never Nolan’s fault. Someone else always made him do whatever he’d done.

“She knows about me. She knows about us.”

Having lost me, I pinch my brows in question. “Us?” Immediately, I think back to Lisa. Was Lisa standing near Nolan? Did Rita sense that something happened between my ex and my brother after all? My stomach churns again. The beers I drank slosh around in my belly.

“I just wanted to take care of you. For once, I wanted to do right by you.” Nolan awkwardly reaches out from my face and pats my cheek several times until he’s nearly slapping me. I catch his hand and crush his fingers.

“Nolan, what are you talking about?”

“I wanted them to know we were needed. The State needed more manpower. We needed you.” His eyes widen in emphasis, coherent for just a moment, but I’m the one confused.

“What are you talking about?” I repeat.

“The warehouses. We needed their attention. They needed to see how important we were. Firemen put out fires.”

“Nolan,” I hiss, eyes rapidly blinking as fear courses through my veins. “What did you do?”

The mystery of those three warehouse fires comes back to me. Electrical tampering. Chemicals nearby to ignite the flame further. The judge’s voice as he sentenced me, saying he’d seen it before. Firemen setting fires to save a department.

“Nolan,” I whisper, my throat thick. He shakes his head from side to side, his face lowered.

“I never thought they’d catch me.”

“They didn’t!” I suddenly shriek. “They caught me. They thought I did it.”

Nolan’s head shakes more vigorously. “I messed up.”

“Tell me you didn’t set the fires? Tell me you didn’t burn down that school?”

I’m going to be sick. For all the guilt I felt over a crime I didn’t commit, my heart races faster as I think of Rita.

“They weren’t paying attention. The empty warehouses weren’t enough of a sign for them.”

“A sign?” I question, not understanding his thought process.

“I needed to go bigger. No one cared about the warehouses. I needed to go somewhere where they’d take notice. Someplace with more meaning.”

“The school,” I whisper.

“An empty school.”

“But the school wasn’t empty,” I remind him, tightness filling my voice.

“I didn’t know,” Nolan says, finally lifting his head, tears in his liquid, red-rimmed eyes. “I didn’t know.”

My fist clenches in his shirt, tugging him forward in his chair. “What the hell did you do?”

“I just wanted you to keep your job. I wanted that promotion to chief. No one was going to get hurt.” My eyes drift to his legs, paralyzed in the chair where he sits. Bitterly, he laughs, following my gaze.

“When I came out of that coma, you were arrested. I had faith in the system. They wouldn’t find a thing.” A tear slips from Nolan’s eye. “You’d get off. There wasn’t any evidence it was you.”

Releasing my brother, I fall back on my ass to the cold kitchen floor and stare up at him in his chair. A shaky hand swipes over my mouth. “But there was evidence.”

Circumstantial but substantial evidence.

“The images at the school were me. The wire cutters were mine.”

Suddenly, I recall the tools submitted as evidence for stripping wires, intended to shorten them. As a case was built against me, the tool was discovered in the garage. They belonged to