Chapter 10 - The Fire Nobody Questioned
My mother had died eight months after a warehouse fire weakened her lungs. We called it bad luck. An electrical fault. A cruel twist that no doctor could reverse.
Now June pulled up the original incident report. The report said a faulty outlet started the fire in a storage office. But a new attachment, recovered from an old backup, showed that someone had disabled the sprinklers before midnight.
"Who had access?" I asked.
"Salazar. Carlos. And two managers who left the company the same week."
I thought of my husband arriving at the hospital with flowers, telling me to stop blaming myself. We'd been married less than a year. He'd stroked Mom's hand and promised to take care of her daughter.
"Are you saying Carlos tried to kill her?"
Adrienne shook her head. "We can't say that. We can say the fire deserves another investigation. We need evidence, not a theory."
She was right. Still, a memory rose up so sharply it hurt. Mom, coughing into a towel, had grabbed my wrist and whispered, "Never let a stranger become the only person who knows where your keys are."
Back then, I'd thought she meant a physical key. Now the sentence felt like a warning from the dead.
Santos called from Manila. Investigators had found that the suspicious package was connected to an intermediary who had met Marta two days earlier. They were tracing payments, she said, but couldn't promise an arrest yet.
"What do you need from me?" I asked.
"A truthful statement and patience. Don't contact your husband."
May you like
I agreed. Seconds later, an incoming video call filled the screen. Carlos stood in our living room, smiling. Beside him sat Marta, dressed for church.
"Elena," he said, "we need to talk about your mother."
