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Jack’s T-shirt.
    Opening car doors was easy, especially on older vehicles without modern alarm systems built in, but she’d never been a burglar. She would have been stuck waiting in the hall the night before if Jack’s landlord hadn’t been too distracted by her pajamas to wonder why she needed his key.
    Even if she had her own keys, they would only have helped her get through her front door’s two dead bolts. They wouldn’t have helped with the shiny new padlock the police had put up to stop anyone undeterred by yellow crime scene tape.
    Some kind soul had already closed the place up, covering the shattered windows with heavy boards borrowed from the new fence her neighbor had put in a week earlier. It wasn’t a permanent repair, but it would keep animals and teenagers with spray-paint from doing any more damage.
    The front of the house was impregnable.
    Walking around the side of the building, she let out a breath. The side window had escaped the fire undamaged, and no one had closed it. Honey put a hand on either side of the screen, lifted herself up, and crashed her way through. Her shoulder slammed into the ground, her body crumpling awkwardly against the remnants of her coffee table. Not exactly the most graceful move she’d ever made, but it got her where she wanted to go.
    The living room looked like the inside of a charcoal briquette. She bit her lip to keep from crying. If the crater in the floor was any indication, the fire had centered under her couch. The area by the hall door was clearer.
    Moving forward, she tested each step before putting her full weight down.
    In the hallway the soot merely stained the walls instead of being embedded in it. The house was a mess. Burned plaster was scattered across the floor. Even the parts of the house that had survived the fire hadn’t escaped completely unscathed. A direct hit from a fire hose had turned her bureau into a sodden mess. Standing next to it, the scent of mildew almost overpowered the stench of smoke.
    Everything smelled like smoke.
    Ducking around the corner, she let out a sigh of relief when she saw her dryer. The door was closed. Yanking it open, she took in a deep breath. The clothing inside smelled like citrus dryer sheets. She changed quickly, pulling on clean underwear, a T-shirt, and a pair of short shorts.
    After changing she resumed the inspection. Except for the flame scars and the water damage, everything was exactly where she’d left it. Right down to the jewelry box she kept hidden in her linen closet under the towels.
    She opened the box. All her jewelry was still there, everything down to the gold cross she’d been given for her first communion.
    “Damn it.” It should’ve been good news, finding her jewelry untouched, but there were only a few things of value in her house, and the jewelry topped the list. If the arsonist hadn’t wanted it—if the fire hadn’t been to cover up a theft—why had he burned down her house?
    One terrifying thought kept circling back to her. The fire wasn’t about her house or her things. It was about her. Someone wanted her dead.
    She grabbed an old canvas backpack from her bedroom closet and tossed the box inside. Like a thousand other houses in the San Fernando Valley, Honey’s place had been built out of cardboard. It was easy enough to break into. That’s why her grandfather had installed a safe in the crawl space under the house—to keep his valuables away from prying eyes and petty thieves.
    Her nose wrinkled at the thought.
    The safe wasn’t exactly a secret. Honey had lain awake at night as a kid listening to grown men crawling around under her bed. Most of them were relatives.
    The safe was large and old-fashioned. A metal box with a lock built into the door. How much damage could the fire have done to it?
    No time like the present to find out. She tucked Jack’s badge into the backpack with an album full of family photos from the top of her dresser and a strand of pearls she’d