4338.216 · August 4, 2018 AD
Ash Before Dawn
Stout's phone drags him from sleep at quarter to midnight. By the time he reaches Berriedale, the house that held the answers to two separate investigations is burning from multiple points simultaneously — and the officer posted to guard it saw no one. Someone who understood exactly what was inside those walls decided that thirteen minutes in the dark was enough to make all of it disappear. But destroying evidence doesn't erase it. It replaces it with a different kind.
The glow is visible long before Stout arrives. Every window a mouth of flame. The roof a jagged crown throwing sparks into the night sky. The heat reaches across the road and presses against his face before he's past the cordon. Sienna Blackwood is already there — pulled from bed, standing where the heat begins to push back, watching her forensic evidence burn inside a structure she'd spent two days building a case from.
Thirteen minutes. That's the gap between the posted officer's last circuit and full ignition. Someone entered a cordoned crime scene, set fires at multiple points through the structure, and left. In the dark. Without being seen. The fire captain who's spent eighteen years walking towards things other people run from says it plainly: houses don't burn like this without help. And whoever provided the help knew the building, knew the evidence, knew what had been collected and what hadn't been reached yet.
Stout doesn't leave. Neither does Sienna. They circle the cordon through the night from different positions, watching the fire win. When the grey dawn arrives carrying smoke residue and ash on every surface, and the ruins have cooled enough for hard hats and supervised access, they walk the wreckage together — and what the fire reveals by what it consumed tells them that whoever set it wasn't just destroying an investigation. They were protecting something specific. Something that was already gone before the match was struck.
