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The man wandered over, giving them an inquisitive look. “Yeah?”

“I was just wondering if you could tell us about this fire,” Agent Won said. “It was a few months ago, right?”

“Yeah, pretty bad business,” the foreman said, tilting his head to look up at the structure as if reassessing it for the first time. “One single candle was left on as a display item, and the whole place went up. We’ve been brought in to remodel and build it back up from what it was.”

“It’s going to be a candle store again?” Laura asked, surprised. She’d mostly expected to find an abandoned lot, if anything. It hadn’t sounded in the news report as though Michael Noran had much intention of coming back.

“No, no,” the foreman said, shaking his head. “We’re building a restaurant. The lease for the store never got renewed after it was burned down, so I guess the owner thought it was time to move on. Get some more income in.”

“So, there’s no more candles?” Agent Won asked. “Or he just moved somewhere else?”

“No more candles. I don’t know for sure, and you can ask him yourself, but I heard the guy who owned it lost everything in the fire. He didn’t want to start all over again. Maybe couldn’t. It’s a real shame; tourists liked it a lot.”

“Thanks,” Agent Won said, letting the man go back to his work. He turned to Laura, his hands on his hips. “Sounds like we need to talk to the owner to get a better picture of what happened here.”

Laura nodded. “I’m intrigued,” she said. “The news report said it was a stray candle that started the whole blaze, and that guy just repeated it. But how would they know?”

“What do you mean?” Agent Won asked, frowning.

“Well, you have a whole store full of candles and other flammable items,” Laura said, gesturing to the blackened arch above one of the empty windows. “When you go and look at it all later, how do you know that one of those candles started it? And even if you know there was no accelerant or other signs of arson, how do you know for sure that a candle was the original source? There would be no way to trace the fire to a single, individual candle.”

“You think this could be the work of our pyromaniac?” Agent Won asked, his eyes lighting up.

“I wouldn’t get too excited just yet,” Laura said, studying the building one last time. “But maybe. Let’s go talk to this Michael Noran and find out what he has to say about the whole situation.”


Tags: Blake Pierce Thriller