Titan (Old Ironsides Book 2) by Dean Crawford

was in place, and then aimed out of one of the filthy windows, sighting over Foxx’s right shoulder at where Ricard would have been standing. It took him only a moment to position himself accordingly and then he called out to them.
    ‘Okay, you can get up now!’
    Nathan holstered his pistol and pulled out a flashlight as he illuminated the ground before him. A dense carpet of leaves and soil covered the ground, and he carefully began sifting through it as he sought any sign of anybody who might have stood here when Ricard was shot dead months before. Foxx and Samson joined him in the warehouse’s shadowy interior.
    ‘What are you doing?’ Foxx asked.
    ‘Police work.’
    ‘The warehouse was scanned at the time of the shooting,’ Samson said. ‘We’re wasting our time here.’
    Nathan ignored him as he sifted through the debris and then slowed as something scraped against the floor. He shone the flashlight down and saw a dark patch on the dull gray flooring, saw more of it scattered among the dead leaves.
    ‘What’s that?’ Foxx asked as she crouched alongside him and he smelled a waft of perfume on her skin, scented like the wildflowers outside.
    ‘Ash,’ Nathan replied, ‘probably from scorched debris. My guess is that when the shooter fired their weapon a small amount of plasma fell here and scorched the debris at their feet. They wouldn’t have known about that because they would already have fled to avoid being seen by anybody outside.’
    Nathan stood and turned to Samson. ‘How come this wasn’t in the forensic report?’
    Samson shrugged. ‘No disrespect, but nobody was looking for it because nobody was taking Reed’s claim seriously. Besides, it could just have easily been caused by somethin’ other than plasma fire. Ash is ash, right?’
    Nathan didn’t reply as he moved to the window and pulled the latch before he tried to open it. The window moved freely up and down in his grasp. He crossed to the other one and popped the latch, but this window would not budge until he heaved his shoulder against it and it finally slid open with a grating sound, the mechanism rotting and stuck with the filth of ages.
    Nathan stood back from the window and looked expectantly at Foxx.
    ‘Okay, you’ve got my attention,’ she said.
    ‘Are you serious?’ Samson asked them. ‘What here says anything about Reed being innocent?’
    ‘The window,’ Foxx replied with what sounded to Nathan like a little bit of pride as he walked away from them. ‘One window is jammed with age but the other moves freely, as though it’s been used recently. It’s the same one that I’m guessing Nathan sighted through when we were outside.’
    Nathan turned and moved across the warehouse until he found another door, this one closed. He slipped on a latex glove and opened the handle carefully, pushing the door until it opened out onto a path that led to their left. Nathan ignored the path, and instead peered directly down the hillside before him, strewn with rocks and rubble from which sprouted foliage and hardy bushes basking in the sunlight.
    ‘You think the shooter came out here and ran?’ Foxx said as she joined him.
    ‘Straight down that hillside,’ Nathan said. ‘With the chaos over there, by the time anybody at the scene of the shooting might have thought to check out Reed’s story, the shooter would have been well out of sight and likely long gone.’ He turned to Samson. ‘Is there a road down there?’
    ‘A what now?’
    ‘Can vehicles traverse the hillside further down?’
    ‘Sure,’ he replied, ‘there’s an arterial route for hover cars maybe a quarter mile away from here that heads out toward North Island and the marinas.’
    ‘Would your police department have any kind of record of traffic movements from the time of the shooting?’
    Samson appeared to think for a moment. ‘Records are normally kept for six months if they’re needed in a case, but the law only requires three months of storage