Calleigh watched closely as the handsome arson investigator gently placed his large metal case on the burned-out remains of the building's ground floor. She had never been particularly keen on the smell of arson scenes; the aroma of melted plastic and fibres along with the cloying stench of burned flesh had always been enough to make her feel nauseous.
Standing in what was left of the living room she watched the small droplets of water falling from the charred beams, the damp atmosphere not helping the foul smell that emanated from the entire area. The fire service had done their bit in putting the fire out and now all that remained was the shell of a house. The only sound, that of her Fire Department counterpart and the steady dripping noise as discoloured water and blackened remains fell to the floor monotonously.
Daniel Sparks moved around the crime scene with a gentleness that belied his rather sturdy stature, being careful not to place his feet in areas that could compromise any potential evidence. He seemed lost in his own world as he nodded to himself and made what Calleigh believed were encouraging noises.
"Any ideas?" she asked as she saw him rise from a crouched position and stand to his full height, stroking his chin in a distracted manner as he did so.
He let out a deep breath, clearing his throat before answering. "Well, from the visual signs and the smell in here, I'm fairly certain that this fire was started deliberately." Daniel took in a deep lungful of air. "You recognise that smell?"
Naively, she copied his actions and ended up coughing as the foul stench and random dust particles filled her lungs, causing her to choke in a way that did little for her femininity. After regaining her composure she managed to creak out a reply. "Gasoline?"
She was rewarded with a nod of the head and a beaming smile from her counterpart as he clicked his fingers excitedly. "Exactly. How many people do you know who leave gasoline in their house? Not many, I'd wager."
Momentarily buoyed by the thought of some concrete evidence, Calleigh began to smile in spite of herself. The positive feelings were short-lived as a thought crossed her mind. From the outside of the building it was clear that the owners also had a two-car garage built onto the side of the house. Was it possible that an explosion could have caused the gasoline to spread as far as the living room?
"Could it have been stored somewhere else?" she asked, feeling somewhat deflated.
Daniel shook his head and motioned for Calleigh to follow him to the corner of the room. "If you look closely, you can just about make out a spill pattern on this corner wall. The fire didn't burn hot enough to remove all traces of the liquid, so I'm pretty sure that it wasn't made by gasoline being transferred in an explosion. If it had, you'd see a pattern much higher up the wall."
She still wasn't convinced. "What else makes you think that the fire was started deliberately?"
Daniel crouched down as he pointed to a charred electrical socket. The plastic around the wiring was melted and deformed, but there was still enough of the socket left to notice that it had been tampered with. "Looks like someone jimmied this and caused it to short out," he said as he pointed at it with a gloved hand.
"Could an electrical malfunction have caused the fire?"
Daniel frowned, looking up at the beautiful woman before him. "Unlikely. I'm guessing that gasoline was poured in several different areas around the building and ignited deliberately by someone using a match."
"Can you prove that?" Calleigh asked as she stepped a few paces closer, feeling the first sparks of excitement begin to grow within her. Her love life might have stalled, but it seemed as if they were finally making progress with the case.
Her close proximity didn't escape his attention. She was standing so close, leaning over his shoulder, that he could almost smell her perfume. Had it not been for the overriding aroma of burned wood and fibres, he would have been able to take a deep lungful of her alluring scent. Arson investigators had to have a good sense of smell; he thanked the Lord that he had been blessed with just the smallest hint of her, even if it was masked by the smell of the scene.
He found himself staring into her eyes for a moment or two, lost in the sea-green colour of her orbs, admiring how they were delicately framed by long eyelashes and smoky eye shadow. Could he have been mistaken, or was she staring straight back at him, too?
Clearing his throat - and mind - of lustful thoughts for his PD counterpart, he returned his attention to the job at hand. "I doubt it. In an electrical fire there would be too many uncontrollable elements. Arsonists tend to like to get to the point straight away. They want to see the results of their work…..instant gratification gets them off.
An arsonist isn't going to sit back and wait on the off-chance that the electrics might short out and cause a spark. Besides, the owners of the house would have smelled the gasoline a mile off, unless they were dead or unconscious before it was used."
Daniel frowned as he noticed the woman had taken a couple of considerable steps back, as if trying to deliberately distance herself from him. Had he been wrong when he felt the instant connection when their eyes met?
"So why do you think that the fire was started with a match then?" she finally asked as she deliberately avoided his gaze. There would be no way that she could look him in the eye, not after the momentary flash of attraction she'd felt for him the last time that their gazes met.
She watched Daniel as he stood to his full height once more, scratching the back of his head as he stood and turned 360 degrees to take in the view of what was left of the room. "Arsonists, like serial killers, have an M.O. They tend to develop a hunger for fire at quite a young age, and a match is usually the easiest thing for a young kid to get their hands on. They stick with what works and usually it's the tried and tested methods of their first few fires. Besides, I don't see any evidence of a Molotov cocktail or something similar being used. There are no shards of glass that I can see, so it rules that method of ignition out."
Daniel stood with his back to her for a number of moments as he arched his neck, trying to get a better look at the ceiling. She found herself getting lost in the movement of the muscles in his back and shoulders, knowing that she was treading a fine line between admiring a handsome man and flirting with the idea of being attracted to him.
She tried her best to push those thoughts firmly to the back of her mind. Her heart belonged to Horatio and she had promised not only herself, but Kyle too that she would wait for him to return a stronger and healed man. But then the snarky voice in the back of her head reminded her that Horatio had almost been swayed by temptation on that fateful day not so long ago when he met for a showdown with his ex-wife. He had admitted to kissing her and also to the desire of wanting to do much more. In a way, he had cheated on her already, and the vindictive part of her wanted to find any way she could to hurt him as much as he had hurt her with his leaving.
Maybe she too could put it down to the trauma of everything that had happened lately; blame it on the stress of the situation that she had found herself in. After everything she had done for the man she loved these past six months, didn't she deserve a little something in return?
Would it really be so bad to seek a little comfort from a handsome man while she was left to her own devices? Horatio had left her without looking back, setting off on some sort of quest to make peace with his past. Did he really expect her to just stand around and wait for him?
You're kidding yourself, girl, the rational side of her brain countered, you love Horatio. You're pissed that he's hurt you. If you do this you'll lose him for good.
She knew the voice was right, that it was just her wounded ego talking when the thought of cheating on Horatio crossed her mind. There was nothing more powerful than a heart scorned, and it had been the only reason that she had even entertained the idea of hurting the man she loved. An eye for an eye attitude would get both of them nowhere, she reminded herself. The last six months of stress and heartache would come to nothing if she chose to listen to a heart in pain, a heart that wanted nothing more to lash out in anger at the damage that had been caused to it.
Get your head in the game, woman!
Clearing her throat, she willed her thoughts back to the crime scene. "You find something else?" she asked as she readjusted the hard hat that Daniel had insisted she wore. It was a good job too, trying to get soot and the smell of burned remains out of your hair was a real bitch. It hadn't been the reason he had asked her to wear it, but it seemed better than admitting it was for protecting her head should a piece of the damaged building fall from above them.
Daniel turned around and met her gaze, disappointed when she averted her eyes quickly. Not wanting to give any sign that he was momentarily hurt by her rejection, he turned his attention back to the ceiling as he pointed at it. "You see these scorch marks up there and at the top of the walls?"
Calleigh nodded her head, pushing the bright yellow hard hat further back on her head to get a better view.
"That's evidence of a flashover," Daniel said triumphantly, looking as if he were the cat that got the cream.
Calleigh looked at him blankly, puzzled by a term that she did not instantly recognise.
"A flashover is something that occurs when a number of sources explode in a near-simultaneous fashion in an enclosed area," the arson investigator continued. "Were the victims found in this room?"
Calleigh nodded her head once more, deliberately keeping her eyes on the ceiling and not her Fire Department counterpart.
"Flashovers occur when certain organic materials are heated. Are you aware of the term 'thermal decomposition'?"
The question inevitably brought her gaze back to the handsome man standing a few feet away from her. Accessing the memory vaults of her mind, she tried to recall her college chemistry lessons. "It's when a substance is heated to the point that it chemically decomposes, right?"
He gave her one of his million-watt smiles, hoping to draw her back into the charged atmosphere that he'd felt between them only a short while ago. "You remember Chem 101? I'm impressed." His tone was deliberately flirty, trying to tease a smile from his reluctant companion. She failed to match his expression with one of her own. "Pretty much all of these chemical reactions are endothermic but if the decomposition is severe enough it'll cause a positive feedback loop, then you're looking at a thermal runaway and inevitably….an explosion.
By looking at the remains of the materials in this room, it's obvious to me that the temperature was high enough to cause the flashover. Pretty much most of what I left in this room looks like it was heated to its auto-ignition temperature. One little spark is all it would have taken to ignite those flammable gasses and this room would have lit up like a firework."
Calleigh felt momentarily uncomfortable at the blasé way that Daniel was talking about the crime scene, as if he were doing no more than reciting the latest college football scores to her. But experience had taught her that the best crime scene investigators were those that could separate their feelings from the job at hand. After doing the job for so many years, she too was becoming hardened to the tragedies that befell innocent victims every day in Miami. It was much easier to work a crime scene when you looked at it with a sense of detachment; the time to mourn the dead would come later, when the perpetrators of such barbaric crimes were brought to justice.
"I'm gonna take some samples so that we can nail down some concrete evidence. That might take a while. I can catch a ride back with one of your uniformed officers if you like?"
He was giving her that charming smile again, the one that unnerved her and made her doubt her own self-control. She wasn't blind, he was deliberately flirting with her, giving her those green eyes and welcoming expression. Had he picked up on her momentary lapse in judgement and taken it as a sign that she was interested in him?
She hoped not. Her heart belonged to Horatio and he had taken it with him on his trip to New York. She felt bereft of the two most important things in her life, both of them hundreds of miles away in a city at the other end of the country. It felt as if Horatio had sunk his hand in and pulled her still-beating heart straight from her chest, leaving her with raw and open wounds; wounds that were refusing to heal.
Like a thief in the night, he had stolen her heart. Taking something so precious from her that she feared she would never get it back. Even if he did return from his journey with her heart, would it still be in any condition to ever work properly again, or would she end up just as badly damaged as the man she loved?
She had willingly let Horatio into her life, knowing the emotional baggage that he came with and not caring about the risk to herself. Losing her heart to him had not been a conscious choice. It only took the smallest of cracks for him to gain some purchase as he slowly crawled his way deeper into her. He had taken her heart without even meaning to and had left her broken and lonely with his decision to pack his bags and leave. She had always known that love came at a price, but surely the cost was too high for either of them?
Would it be better to make a clean break, to distance herself from Horatio before he had the chance to hurt her further? Much in the way that he had left her, would he one day come to the realisation that she had done the same for him? That she had set him free so that he could finally take the time that he needed to come to terms with who he was now?
She remembered little from that fateful night, apart from the fact that he had told her that he had to go, that he needed time and space to figure out what was right for his present and his future. She remembered each and every one of his final words and had replayed them in her mind on a constant loop. But the one thing that she remembered more than anything was that he had not pleaded with her to wait for him.
Never once had he asked her to keep their fledgling relationship alive in his absence. Was he giving her his unspoken consent to leave him and do as she pleased? He had left her home, knowing full well that he may no longer have a place there when he returned. Had that been why he had been so upset as he kissed her with all of his might? Did he know then that, by leaving, he was risking his future happiness with the woman he loved?
But they were so intrinsically linked by the bond of love between them that neither could leave the other even if they had tried. Although hundreds of miles apart, their hearts were linked in such a way that they could never be separated again. Their hearts were fused together and much in the same way as a pair of Siamese twins, any attempt to separate them would likely result in catastrophic loss. After breaking it in two, they would never be able to place the pieces back together again and make it whole.
He possessed something so fundamental about her that she was only half a person without him. For better or worse, he made her whole and complete. Even in the times when their relationship was at its lowest, she was the happiest that she had ever been with a man. Maybe they brought out both the best and the worst in each other, but the fact remained that they touched places deep inside that no other person could reach.
For all of her hurt and disappointment, she would hold on to the fact that Horatio loved her as best he could and that his heart now belonged to her. He had entrusted her with the job of protecting it, keeping it safe with what was left of her own until he returned. He was the most selfless man that she knew, and each time that she found her anger building, she would remind herself of the repeated sacrifices that Horatio had made for those around him, never asking for anything in return.
Mind made up, she promised herself that nothing would sway her from the course she was about to set for herself. People like Daniel could flirt and try to charm her as much as they wanted. She would remain resolute throughout, never giving in to the temptation to hurt Horatio as much as he had hurt her. It wasn't her style and it certainly wasn't the behaviour of the woman that he had fallen in love with.
She told herself that she would give Daniel short shrift if he tried any of his lover-boy moves on her. She would make it clear that she was not available and certainly not interested in anything of a personal nature that he had to offer her. Taking a leaf from her lover's book, she would remain professional and detached, never taking her eyes from the job at hand; never letting useless emotions get in the way of what was right, of what needed to be done.
She gave Daniel a sharp look, making sure that he was under no illusions that she was being anything other than professional. "No, it's ok. Collect what you need and then we'll take it back to the lab. When I start a job I like to see it through to the end."
She turned her back to him and walked into the next room, leaving her counterpart confused and unsure of exactly where he stood with her.