According to what Jay’s wife said she’d heard, teenagers were responsible for that fire. When brought in with their parents to be questioned, they’d broken down and admitted it. They’d been using the abandoned place to lay low. Apparently, they didn’t intentionally start the fire, but booze, cigarettes, and matches ended up being a bad combination.
Me: I’m sorry.
Violet: It’s fine. Comes with the job. I’ll eat a pint of ice cream and then I’ll be ready to start over tomorrow.
I glanced over toward the kitchen where one of our paramedics, Kyle Williams, was pouring himself a cup of coffee. I’d recently made the connection that he was one of Hattie and Savannah’s brothers. I got up and headed in his direction, leaning back on the counter next to him. He looked over at me with a raised brow.
“What was that ice cream place called?” I remembered him talking about it being the best in town when he and his wife were planning to take their kids after shift a few weeks ago.
“The Shack?”
“Right.” I pushed away from the counter. “Thanks.”
I ignored his grumbling as I walked away and sat back down in the chair I’d vacated a minute earlier, sending Violet another text.
Me: Want to go to The Shack?
Violet: Like together?
Me: …
Violet: I thought you don’t eat sugar?
Me: Ice cream is the exception.
Mostly because I could never say no to my niece every time she asked me to have some with her. But I really hadn’t had any since moving here. After the intense heat of the day, the frozen treat definitely sounded appealing.
Violet: They have the best ice cream.
Me: Is that a yes?
Violet: Sure. Hopefully this kidnapping debacle doesn’t take all night.
Me: What?
What the hell? I was struggling to believe this small town could have a kidnapping. Then again, Hattie was abducted outside of her family’s restaurant earlier this year by a crazed stalker, so anything was possible. But how come we hadn’t heard of it yet?
I cursed under my breath when the alarms went off and dispatch relayed the request for mutual aid for a wildfire in a neighboring town. We’d been dealing with our fair share in the last few weeks, I wasn’t surprised others were too.
Depending on how bad this was, it could keep us past the end of shift.
Which meant ice cream might be out of the question for the evening. That had me grumbling the whole way downstairs because, dammit, I was really looking forward to seeing her again.
Chapter Fifteen
VIOLET
I staredat the Ring camera footage hoping to get a glimpse of the offender. I’d wanted to smack Mrs. Jones when she came into the station earlier and announced, quite matter-of-factly, that she needed to file a kidnapping report.
The way the station went dead silent and stared at her was priceless.
I knew from the moment she stepped in the door she was about to send us on one of her godforsaken crusades. If it wasn’t the feud with her neighbor about feeding the squirrels, it was people parking on the street in front of her house, or a million other different things she’d complain about.
Although this time an actual crime was committed—not kidnapping though, only theft.
But still, someone did in fact steal her precious garden gnomes. Hopefully she wasn’t losing her mind and had just forgotten where she’d put them.
It took me long enough to get into her Ring account to even retrieve the footage. Of course she couldn’t remember her password. Why did she even have the damn thing?
