Special Agent Lien-hua Jiang leaned against the pillows of her hotel bed with her notebook computer on her lap. Fighting the bleariness in her eyes, she scrolled through the case information about the serial arsonist.
For the umpteenth time.
With San Diego’s dry climate and dense population, the city officials were nervous about any fires-especially with the memory of the Santa Ana winds that caused the devastating fires of 2007 still fresh in their minds.
Lien-hua had first worked on this arsonist’s profile last fall, but since then there’d been six more fires and the police still didn’t have any solid leads, and lately he’d been progressing, waiting less time in between fires. So, Lieutenant Aina Mendez, the head of San Diego’s Metro Arson Strike Team, or MAST, had called Lien-hua back to update the profile. And this time Lien-hua had asked Special Agent Patrick Bowers to help analyze the timing and sites of the crimes.
She told herself that she’d asked him to come because of his expertise at finding serial offenders, and not because of any kind of personal interest she might have in him.
That’s what she told herself.
He’d agreed to the assignment immediately, just as she knew he would.
Even though Lien-hua had six solid years of experience as a behavioral profiler, she’d never seen anything quite like this before.
By its very nature, arson is one of the toughest crimes to solve.
The fire destroys evidence, and the suppression and rescue efforts leave the crime scene contaminated. Because of that, arson is a great way to hide one crime inside another.
So, when she’d started on the case last fall, she began by looking for motive. What other crime might the fires be masking?
Insurance fraud wasn’t the issue; she’d checked on that right away. The property value on the buildings was comparatively low by San Diego standards, and the owners had no apparent ties to each other. No fatalities so far, thankfully, so he didn’t seem to be setting the fires to cover up a crime-well, not murder at least.
But what, then? If not for profit or to cover up evidence, why start the fires?
Maybe for the sheer thrill of watching things burn?
Possibly, except Lieutenant Mendez and the Metro Arson Strike Team had interviewed and followed up on everyone in the crowds at each of the fires-even the responding officers and firefighters.
A few leads so far, but nothing substantial.
From everything Lien-hua had seen, this guy didn’t stay to watch.
So then… what was his motive? Why did he do it?
During her career Lien-hua had mostly worked homicides rather than arsons, but Lieutenant Mendez told her that the efficiency of the fires pointed to someone who understood the flow patterns of buoyant gases and could locate the most ideal point of origin so that the building would come down fast.
In other words, a professional.
But if he was a professional, who was hiring him?
And why?
Even now, after fourteen fires, the police still didn’t have a single suspect…
They had thousands.
Lien-hua sighed and massaged her forehead with a tired hand. She left her laptop on the bed and walked to the vase sitting beside her purse on the desk. She’d brought the vase with her, as she always did, and bought the flowers when she arrived in town.
Traveling as much as she did, she’d found that she needed something in addition to yoga and kickboxing to calm her mind and recenter her spirit when she was in the middle of a case.
The simple act of creating beauty and symmetry out of chaos brought her a sense of calm and a welcome escape from the pressures that come with being an FBI profiler-not to mention the grace that the flowers brought to the nondescript hotel rooms she stayed in so often.
Ten years ago, in the months following the “accident” that no one in her family ever dared to talk about-and that Lien-hua still didn’t believe was an accident-her mother had started flower arranging. And over the next seven years, before the car wreck that took her life, Mei Xing had become somewhat of an expert.
After her mother’s death, Lien-hua had decided to take up flower arranging in her place. Maybe in honor of her mother, maybe to work through her grief, she wasn’t sure. After all, the hardest person to know, the hardest person to profile, is yourself.
Flower arranging is supposed to be peaceful and relaxing, but at first Lien-hua found it to be just the opposite.
Frustrating, exasperating, time-consuming? Yes.
Calming and soothing? Not quite.
And yet, in time Lien-hua had learned to distinguish the different moods that a slight change in the arrangement of a single petal could produce. Tranquility. Excitement. Wonder.
Allure.
She angled the two cyclamen to face the white irises and tilted one of the star-of-Bethlehem petals so that it would gather more light.
Using all white flowers in a white vase gave the room an elegant feeling. Pure and innocent.
Lien-hua stepped back. There. Much better.
She plopped onto the bed again and pulled up the computer files, but just as she was about to look over the list of possible accelerants, her cell rang. She answered. “Yes?”
“Lien-hua, I need your help.”
“Pat?” He sounded upset. “What is it? Are you OK?”
“There was an accident. I’m with Tessa-”
A cold chill. “You’re not hurt-”
“No. We’re fine, but listen, can you come get Tessa, take her back to the hotel? I need to stay here, give my statement to the police. If you can just hang out with her for an hour or two until I get back, it would really help out. I think she’ll be all right, I just don’t want her to be alone.”
“Of course. Where are you?”
He gave her the address and they ended the call.
Lien-hua grabbed her purse, but in her rush she bumped her elbow against the vase and it toppled off the desk, scattering her flowers across the carpet.
She took a moment to evaluate the mess and then quickly slipped the flowers back into the vase. She could refill the water later when she had more time.
As she set the vase onto the desk, she noticed that some of the petals had been bruised by the fall.
Wounded petals.
Bruised innocence.
She thought back to the incident that had brought all the flowers into her family’s life. An awkward drop of guilt splattered inside of her.
The arrangement will never be the same again.
Never the same.
As she left the room, she shut the door harder than she needed to, then hurried down the hallway to pick up Tessa from the site of the accident.