Against the Fire by Kat Martin Read Free Book Online

suit.
    “Gabe, this is Sidney Weiss,” Mattie said. “Sid, meet Gabriel Raines.” The men shook hands. “And this is Angel.”
    The boy met Gabe’s assessing gaze squarely. “I didn’t do it, Mr. Raines.”
    Gabe took a seat across from him. “Maybe you didn’t. Your friend, Enrique, said the two of you were downtown tagging walls. Vandalizing other people’s property isn’t arson but it’s still against the law.”
    The kid never looked away. He had a square face and somewhat blunt features, but he wasn’t a bad-looking boy. “We weren’t vandalizing. We were beautifying.”
    Gabe had to smile. “That’s what you call it?”
    “In this case, I do. I was hoping…maybe you would be willing to take a walk with me and Mattie. I could show you what we were doing that night.”
    It seemed a fair enough request. And he didn’t mind spending more time with Mattie. Watching her with the boy, seeing her concern, made him even more curious about her. On one hand, she seemed purposely remote. On the other, extremely approachable.
    “It’s just off Commerce, so it isn’t that far away,” Angel continued.
    Gabe flicked a glance at the boy’s attorney. “I presume this is all right with you, Mr. Weiss.”
    “I trust Mattie to look out for Angel’s interest,” Weiss said.
    “Fine, then. I could use a walk, stretch my legs a little. Angel, why don’t you lead the way?”
    The boy shoved back his chair and they followed him single file down the hall. The waiting room had a couple of people sitting in chairs as they passed, a black teenager with round flat earrings in his ears and an older Hispanic woman.
    “We have counselors on hand at certain times of the day,” Mattie explained. “We’re still a small organization. But we have ten professional, full-time staff members, plus about twenty volunteers. Mostly we deal with families trying to get their lives together after dealing with violence and abuse.”
    The three of them headed down Commerce and turned onto a smaller street a few blocks later. There was a vacant lot on the north side. Next to it sat an empty three-story concrete building. Angel led them into the lot then stopped halfway across. The boy turned and pointed.
    “I brought Enrique here so that he could finish his painting.”
    For the first time, Gabe noticed the huge mural on the wall. It was a painting of the neighborhood around the building, the scene populated with a variety of interesting and unusual people. Vibrant color leaped from the concrete canvas, snagging the viewer and pulling him inexorably into the scene. The vacant lot was there, but the dirt paths were gone. Instead there were walkways of brilliant red brick lined with pink, yellow, blue and purple flowers.
    The painting itself was beautiful, the scene perfectly drawn, each line precise and in exactly the right proportions. But there was something else, something in-definable and strangely compelling that made the mural stunning.
    For several long moments no one spoke.
    “Amazing is too small a word,” Gabe finally said. “This is incredible.”
    Angel smiled. “When we became friends, Enrique told me his dream was to become an artist. He showed me some tagging he had done on some walls in our neighborhood. I thought they were the most beautiful pictures I’d ever seen. I knew no one would see them there, no one who could make his dream come true. I saw the empty wall down here when I came to the center. I wanted to help him so I drove him down at night. He’s been working on the mural for nearly two months.”
    “It’s wonderful, Angel,” Mattie said.
    “We finished the mural that night. We saw the flames and went to see what was happening, but we didn’t set the fire, I swear.”
    Gabe turned to Mattie, his mind still filled with the scope and colors of the painting, the kaleidoscopic effect and emotional pull of the work. “Did you know about this?”
    Mattie stared at the painting as if she couldn’t drag