"Bulls.h.i.t," replied the other. "How?"

"Good behavior, if you can believe it."

"Unreal. We're talking, what...almost a full year?"

"Something like that."

"Someone is pulling some strings somewhere," came the reply.

Avery knew the name Desoto well. After all, she had managed to take him down, along with four of his best men. It was one of the cases that had made Avery something of a figurehead around the A1. Desoto was the head of at least two gangs-maybe more-and had gained such a boogeyman status that a lot of people had not even believed he really existed-not until Avery had brought him in. And now that there was a chance he was getting out early...

That's another little treat to look forward to, she thought. He'll be looking for revenge right away when he steps foot out of prison.

"You good?" Ramirez asked her, gently nudging her arm.

She blinked her thoughts away and nodded. "Yeah, I'm good," she said, taking a sip from her beer.

"You really don't feel good about Adam Wentz, do you? You really don't think he's our guy?"

"No, I don't. And I think it's almost criminal to hold him."

"Yeah, but even if he isn't our guy, he might know something, right?"

"I doubt it. He would have told me when he started to crack. He was crying like a baby when I left that room."

"So tell me this: if we did find out it was him and tomorrow this case is closed, would you be okay being wrong?"

She thought about it for a moment and then shook her head. "No. It's never okay to be wrong. But in this case, there's no worry. I'm not wrong."

He sighed and then chuckled. He ordered another beer as one of his work-buddies came over. His name was Eldridge and although he was a d.a.m.ned good cop, he was also something of a frat boy at heart. Finley, who had become a good friend to Avery over the last few months, was shadowing him.

"You guys having a love spat or something?" Eldridge asked.

"Hardly," Avery said.

"I know s.e.xual tension when I see it," Eldridge said. "I can say this with full confidence because the tension stage is about as far as I ever get."

"A stand-up specimen like yourself?" Avery asked sarcastically. "I don't believe it."

"What are you two doing here anyway?" Finley asked. "A long day of work, I think a better reward than a beer would be some stress-s.e.x."

Avery decided not to say anything else. She didn't know if they were insinuating something or if they knew about them somehow. She and Ramirez had been teased about a s.e.xual relationship before, but never as bad as they had been over the last day.

Apparently picking up on Avery's shift in mood, Ramirez recovered for them both. "If you two think she'd sleep with me in the first place, you're s.h.i.tty cops. She's got standards, man."

Eldridge and Finley laughed at this and after some further goodhearted ribbing, they got their drinks and headed back to their end of the bar.

"Sorry about that," Ramirez said. "Look...I haven't told anyone."

"I didn't say you had."

"Maybe it's just the afterglow," he joked. "Maybe the s.e.x is so good, we have an aura about us or something."

"Getting c.o.c.ky now, are we?" she said, her voice low.

"Are you kidding? I slept with you last night and woke up with you this morning. So yeah...I'm feeling a little arrogant."

She smiled at him and a large part of her thought Eldridge might have been right. Maybe she would rather be in a bed with Ramirez than in a bar. On the other hand, if they left together that would only add more fuel to the fire. And she hated to be in the spotlight...especially over something like this.

"They might be on to something, though," Ramirez said. "You want to get out of here?"

"I am after this beer," Avery said. "But I'm going home alone."

"You sure?" he said.

"Yeah," she said. "And that's nothing against you...I just need to try to get ahead on this case."

He nodded and smirked. "That's one of the reasons I like you, Avery."

She finished her beer and returned his smirk. "Careful," she said. "With talk like that, people might start to think there's something going on between us."

When she was in her apartment with the case files spread out around her, she knew she'd made the right decision. And she was pretty sure Ramirez knew her well enough to know that she had, too. She looked over the notes that Forensics had mocked up and although they made little sense to her, she knew enough about them to know that there were no answers there to be had.

The one thing of note they had managed to come up with was that there was a chemical present in the ashes but it was so disintegrated that it was hard to make out what it was. It could have been anything from basic rubbing alcohol to a toxic agent.

Probably some kind of burning accelerant, she thought. Could be something as simple as gas or kerosene.

Midnight crept up on her faster than she'd expected. When she turned out the lights and readied herself for bed, she thought it would be nice to have Ramirez there. She nearly called him but did not want to seem needy. In fact, she wasn't needy at all. What had happened the night before had been nice but she did not want him to think that she needed it. She had never needed a man in order to feel complete and she wasn't about to start now. Yes, she supposed she cared for Ramirez, but was she ready to settle down and commit herself to a relationship?

That was a stretch...

She lay in bed for fifteen minutes before she realized that sleep was not going to come as quickly as she hoped. There was just too much on her mind. The case, Ramirez and the complications he brought with him, and, perhaps most burdensome, Rose.

Thinking of Rose, Avery sat up in bed and flipped on her bedside lamp. It was too late to call her, but maybe a text that she'd get in the morning would be okay.

Avery considered it for a moment but then decided not to. Instead, she opened up Facebook. Sadly, Facebook had been her only reliable outlet over the last year to see how her daughter's life was going.

She pulled up Rose's page and saw that she had been blocked.

She knew it should be a silly offense at most, but it actually hurt her. She checked Instagram and Twitter as well but she was blocked there, too. Apparently, her backing out of their girls' day had been the last straw.

The h.e.l.l of it was that Avery didn't blame her. She'd just have to figure out a way to make it up to her-if Rose would even let her try, of course. And at this point, there was no guarantee that she would.

She sadly set her phone down and tried to drift off to sleep. When she finally did, it was a fitful sleep. There was no real rest, just a frantic mind trying to relax while also sorting through the chaos that its owner's life had become.

She knew it was a nightmare right from the start, but that did nothing to make it any less horrific. She was walking through the lot where they had discovered the remains. There was a new pile of bones there, only these weren't as cleanly stripped and pearly white as they had been in real life. Meat still clung to these bones. Flies buzzed almost comically around them.

From the back of the property, where the marshy ground began, Rose came walking toward her.

"Messy, huh?" Rose said.

"Did you see it?" Avery asked. "Did you see it happen?"

"I don't see much these days," Rose said. "Especially not of you. But maybe this will help."

With that, Rose pulled a lighter from her pocket, flicked the flame to life, and threw it at Avery. Avery was alight at once, her pants catching on fire. The flames blazed upward instantly, charring her shirt and the underside of her chin.

She screamed. From behind her, she heard Ramirez calling her name. She turned to him and saw that he was there with an arm outstretched and a blanket like the fire department often carried into fires to put out burning victims.

"Just take my hand," Ramirez said. "I can save you. You just have to trust me."

And although she badly wanted to, she did not reach out. In response, Ramirez screamed her name.

Avery fell to the ground, the flames now catching her arms and hair. She burned quickly, her skin like wax as she fell to the ground. She did not writhe, but merely lay there and looked back at Rose.

Rose held a stick with a marshmallow at the end of it. She hunkered down on the ground and held it over her flaming mother.

"I'll take the quality time however I can," Rose said with a laugh.

It was then that Avery finally screamed. Flames erupted from her mouth as her entire body went up in a flash of ash, smoke, and intense white light.

Avery jerked awake in bed, the dream-scream locked in her throat and dangerously close to springing forth into the land of the waking.

It took her a few moments to realize that she was awake and that she had been pulled from sleep by the ringing of her phone. She reached for it with her heart hammering in her chest and saw that it was 5:15-thirty minutes before her morning alarm usually woke her. On the caller display screen, she saw Connelly's name and number.

"Yeah?" she said as she answered it.

"Get up, Black," he said. "We've got another body."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

When Avery pulled her car into the dusty and vacant lot behind what had once been a flour mill, something about the scene instantly jarred her. Faded white letters along the front of the building had once said STATLER BROTHERS FLOUR but the letters were barely visible now. She wondered how long ago this place had last seen a work day. Easily fifty years, she guessed. It was nothing unique, really. Nothing on this side of town had seen much activity in a very long time. These were more than the outskirts of Boston-this was just on the edge of the Mattapan area, a place that at times felt like some weird borderland that time had forgotten.

When she stepped out into the lot and headed over to the gathered policemen at the edge of the back lot, she could actually smell the neglect of the place. These were the sorts of places that were perfect for young experimental couples to explore the back seats of cars or for drug dealers to peddle their wares. But it felt different here for some reason...it felt wrong to display the end of one's life in such a forgotten place.

When she reached the gathered group at the edge of the lot, one of the policemen was finishing putting up the crime scene tape. There were only three others, one of whom was Connelly. Finley was also there looking excited yet a little hesitant as usual. He had a pale look on his face as he took in the scene beyond the crime scene tape.

Avery joined them, ducking under the crime scene tape and hunkering down about six inches from what the tape was blocking off.

It was another pile of remains-more bones and ashes. Only this time, there seemed to be much more ashes and fewer bones than before. The skull was the easiest to pinpoint. Avery also saw a femur, a few ribs, and what looked like a fractured wrist. She leaned down closer, inhaled deeply, and found that she could catch traces of the chemical smell that had been detected at the last crime scene.

What the h.e.l.l is that? Pretty sure it's not something common or basic. Maybe he's having to special order an accelerant from somewhere. If so, that could be potentially easy to trace.

"How did we find this?" she asked.

"Some guy on the highway department turned around back here about two hours ago," Connelly said. "He said he only saw it because he got out of his truck to take a leak."

"So we have no idea how long these remains have been here?" Avery asked.

"Nope."

Avery scanned the rest of the area. The ashes and bones were in a fairly tidy pile like the previous crime scene. That led her to believe that everything else about this scene would also be identical to the previous one. The first indication of this was the several shards of what looked like broken porcelain or colored gla.s.s about five feet away from the ash.

"Looks just about the same as the shards from the last site," Avery pointed out.

"I noticed that," Connelly said.

As she was about to duck back under the crime scene tape and have a look around the area, she watched as two police cars came barreling into the lot. Their flashers were on but their sirens were silent. The lead car came to a screeching halt and the driver wasted no time in getting out.

"You guys from the A1?" the cop asked as he hurried over to them.

"Yeah," Connelly said. "Why?"

"Well, this is about a mile or so outside of your jurisdiction," the cop said. It was clear that he was irritated; there was an edge of annoyance to his voice. "This is a B3 matter. While we appreciate the interest and help, we can handle it from here."

"I'm sure you can," Connelly said. "But this scene is an exact replica of one we found yesterday. It's highly relevant to our case."

"But this is our turf," the cop argued. "This is-"

"Really?" Avery asked. "Your turf? This isn't some gang war. We've got two bodies so far...and no rhyme or reason to the attacks. If you want to talk about people stepping on your turf, take it up with your captain. We're too busy trying to catch a killer to worry about if we might be infringing on someone's turf."

"You better believe I'll take it to my captain," the cop said.

"You do that," Connelly said. "And by the time the right calls are made and the forms are filled out and filed, we'll be done here."

"a.s.shole," the cop said.

"Oh, I've been called much worse," Connelly said.

"You can't just take over a crime scene when it's outside of your jurisdiction!"

"We can if it's directly linked to a murder that was in our backyard. If anything, you and your boys should be gladly a.s.sisting."

"This is our jurisdiction," the B3 cop said. "You'll be doing the a.s.sisting."

"Yeah, that's not going to happen," Connelly said.