Chapter 8 - THE FIRE
Sebastián didn't return.
But trouble did.
At 1:16 a.m. on a dry September night, Mateo smelled smoke.
He opened his bedroom door.
Orange light flickered outside.
“The barn!”
Rodrigo ran barefoot from his room.
The north barn was burning.
Workers rushed from their cottages.
Valentina grabbed Sofía and carried her outside.
“Where's Tomás?”
Mateo turned.
His brother wasn't beside him.
Then he remembered.
Tomás had been sleeping in the hayloft because one of the ranch dogs had puppies there.
“Dad!”
Rodrigo didn't wait.
He ran into the burning barn.
Valentina screamed his name.
Smoke swallowed him.
Seconds felt like minutes.
Then Rodrigo appeared.
Tomás was in his arms.
The boy was coughing violently.
Rodrigo stumbled outside as part of the roof collapsed behind them.
Mateo threw himself around his brother.
Valentina grabbed Rodrigo's arm.
Blood ran from a cut above his eyebrow.
“Are you hurt?”
“I'm fine.”
He wasn't.
But Tomás was alive.
Firefighters arrived forty minutes later.
By dawn, the barn was gone.
The investigator found something near the rear wall.
A plastic fuel container.
The fire hadn't been accidental.
Someone had started it.
Rodrigo immediately thought of Sebastián.
Valentina thought of Esteban.
Neither said it aloud.
Then Mateo found something else.
A black button near the fence.
He recognized it.
Esteban's coat had been missing that exact button when he came to the ranch.
Valentina stared at it.
“No.”
Rodrigo looked at her.
“Valentina.”
“My brother wouldn't do this.”
But even as she said it, she wasn't sure.
That afternoon, the police arrived.
And by sunset, Esteban Cruz was under arrest.
The evidence seemed undeniable.
Too undeniable.
That was what bothered Mateo.
Because he remembered something nobody else did.
The night of the fire, he'd seen headlights near the south road.
May you like
Not one vehicle.
Two.
