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eyes.
    A tug at his elbow jarred him awake. This time the blonde was directly beside him, and she looked even scarier than she had from a distance.
    ‘You’re expected, Mr White.’
    The blonde tugged him out of the elevator and escorted him through a maze of desks to a small office against the far wall. The room contained two wooden chairs, a plaincafeteria-style table and a fake leather couch.
    ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ the blonde said. ‘The detectives will be with you shortly.’
    After the door closed behind him, Sam crossed to the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out on the city. He flinched when he saw his reflection floating in the tinted glass. The weary face that stared back at him had aged a dozen years in the last few hours.
    Sam turned to the couch. It looked worn and soft and too inviting to ignore. He slumped on to the cushions and laid his head on the armrest. It was less comfortable than it looked, but his eyes were already closing.
    Sam jumped when the door opened just moments later, the cacophony from the large room beyond crashing in.
    Two detectives entered the room. They were both neatly dressed, but only one of them carried it with style.
    The first detective looked almost effeminate. His golden-brown hair was perfectly shaped to complement his long, smooth face and his short sideburns were cut to a matched razor’s edge. His fingernails had been manicured and buffed, and his shirtsleeves were fastened at the wrist by an expensive pair of gold cufflinks.
    ‘Thanks for coming in, Mr White,’ he began. ‘I’m Detective Hogan and this is Detective Preston.’
    In contrast to his partner, Preston wore a cheappolyester suit and had a sharp crease around his forehead as if he had just removed a hat. He was the broader of the two, and his heavy gut was cinched behind an oversized western-style buckle. His height was enhanced by a pair of well-worn, alligator-skin cowboy boots.
    Sam nodded hello.
    ‘We understand you work armed security, so you’ll know how this works,’ Hogan said. Friendly, brother-in-arms, let-down-your-guard stuff.
    When Sam finally spoke, his voice was weak and parched.
    ‘No one has even confirmed that Hannah and MaryAnn are dead,’ he said. ‘All I saw were two white bags. Are you positive they didn’t get out of the house before it exploded? We had a smoke detector. I checked the battery myself. Maybe they’re at a hotel or—’
    ‘I’m sorry to tell you—’ began Hogan.
    ‘The remains of two bodies were recovered from the ashes, Mr White,’ interrupted Preston in a gruff Texan drawl. ‘The coroner is working on them now.’

13
    Chief Medical Examiner Randy Hogg looked more like a soft-rock crooner than a county coroner, and he liked it that way.
    After slipping on a gangsta-style hairnet, Hogg snapped on a pair of disposable vinyl gloves and moved to the matching set of stainless-steel autopsy tables. Both bodies, blackened to the core, had been removed from their travel bags for his examination.
    Hogg studied the corpses and felt a dull thrum deep in his belly. Even after all these years, there were some cases he had trouble distancing himself from and fire victims were at the top of that list. He hated how the heat melted away the fat and shrunk the muscles, scalp and skull into the stuff of nightmares.
    Even though he knew they were just meat now, the look on what was left of their faces – a dying scream made flesh – sent a chill up his spine. The adult victim was the worst, as a heavy object,possibly a support beam from the collapsing ceiling, had landed on her head. The object had flattened the skull and cracked the eye sockets, but that wasn’t all. The force of the blow had also crushed cheek and nasal bone, shattering the lower jaw and elongating the mouth to disturbing proportions. Investigators still hadn’t found all her teeth.
    As his assistant videotaped the cadavers with a palm-sized digital camcorder, Hogg began his cursory