Sea Haven 01 - Water Bound

few miles from here. The mist is thick, but not enough to create this kind of flooding.”
    269

    He was fishing. A good tactic, but Lev was comfortable with silence and said nothing.
    Jonas sighed. “Do you want to catch this asshole or not? You have to tell me everything.”
    “What does a hard rain have to do with catching him?” Lev countered.
    “And I could catch him myself. His tire tracks are all over the place. He works with fire. His face is messed up and requires stitches. He comes from the same city as Rikki. And he’s in your town. I’ll bet he’s not that hard to find.”
    Jonas crouched again, this time finding the spot where the owls had attacked the arsonist. There were spots of blood in the wet grass, but not as much as Lev thought there would be. The rain had stamped out the fire, but it had also destroyed evidence. Jonas searched the ground, moving first in a tight circle, and then widening it slowly. He found two feathers and several spent cartridges. All of it went into evidence bags and then he added several scrapings of the blood. Again, he took his time, very thoroughly going over the ground.
    “What the hell was he shooting at? You? Or the birds?”
    “He fired off a few rounds at me, both from here and back there.” Lev turned to indicate the spot where the assailant had stood. “Then he was shooting at the owls.”
    “The ones that attacked him.” There was open skepticism in Jonas’s voice.
    “I don’t carry spare owl feathers in my pocket,” Lev said.
    “Yeah. I’ll bet you don’t. I’d like to know what you do carry there,”
    Jonas muttered, under his breath, once more crouching low and shining his light over the ground. “He went up that way to the road. There are drops of blood scattered along his trail.” He placed the measuring tool and took several pictures of the shoe prints in the mud.
    “He prefers that spot over there,” Lev pointed out. “He can see Rikki’s house and has a great view of her back porch, where she likes to spend most of her time when she has company.”
    “He’s sheltered here,” Jonas said, circling the area, shining his light over the ground.
    Lev let him find the small blackened area where the arsonist had idly played while watching Rikki. Jonas spent another few minutes placing markers and photographing everything, concentrating on the pattern the arsonist had created.
    “He’s sure of himself, isn’t he?” Jonas commented.
    “Not anymore.”
    270

    “No,” Jonas agreed. He sighed and straightened, turning to face Lev.
    “Now he’s going to be angry. He’ll go to ground for a while, until he’s healed, but when he comes back, he’s going to go for the money play this time.”
    Lev wondered if the sheriff knew what that would be. The arsonist would be afraid to approach Rikki’s house with the owls playing guard. He would go for her boat. Rikki loved her boat and whether or not he got her with that fire, taking her boat would hurt her. And the arsonist definitely wanted to hurt her—to make her suffer.
    “How does she escape?” Jonas wondered aloud. “He’s got to be furious over that. How many times has she slipped away from him? And who hates a child that much?”
    “Another child.”
    Jonas stopped abruptly and turned on Lev. “What the hell did you just say?”
    Lev shrugged. “You asked who hates a child that much? Not an adult.
    What adult could harbor that kind of concentrated hatred for a thirteen-year-old girl? Especially one who is autistic? This has to be a personal attack. It’s directed at Rikki. Not at the foster families or even her fiance. This is about wiping her from the earth. Cleansing the earth, so to speak.”
    “Maybe someone who targets autistic children?” Jonas mused. “I’ll check the other fires in the past, see if any of the families have children who might be autistic.”
    Lev nodded in approval. “Good idea. Although ...” He trailed off.
    “Spit it out,” Jonas took pictures of the prints leading up to the road and the tread marks of the tires in the mud. “Any idea is worth listening to.”
    “It feels personal to me. He’s seething with hatred for her. Not just any child. Rikki. He wants her dead. Otherwise, why select houses that were empty when he was practicing, when he couldn’t find her? Why not just select another autistic child?”
    Jonas’s frown conceded the point.
    An owl cried out, drawing Lev’s attention. He glanced overhead and two owls circled