TRIAL BY FIRE by J.A. Jance

the smoke was changing from black to gray or even white, the fire crews must be making some headway in their fight against the two separate blazes.
    As Frances Lawless had directed, Ali took the General Crook Trail exit and drove under the freeway. Signaling for the left turn onto the frontage road, she caught sight of an ambulance speeding toward her with red lights flashing and siren blaring.
    Someone’s hurt, she thought. Is it a firefighter, or is it someone else?
    Pulling over onto the shoulder, Ali stayed out of the wayuntil the lumbering emergency vehicle roared around the corner and under the freeway. Once there, the ambulance turned south toward Phoenix, with its big urban hospitals and specialized medical practices. That probably meant bad news for the person inside, someone who was right that minute strapped on a stretcher and being rushed headlong through some kind of medical maelstrom.
    Ali was about to move back into the roadway but she again had to wait for oncoming traffic as an arriving fire truck came roaring up behind her with its lights flashing. As it sped past, she noticed the City of Sedona decal on the passenger door.
    Ali wasn’t surprised to see a Sedona-based fire crew so far outside the city limits. If the now four-alarm fire managed to spread from the burning structures to surrounding grass and brush, it would pose far more of a hazard to life and property, especially to the town of Camp Verde, itself a little to the north. That was no doubt why crews from other fire districts had been called in to supplement the locals.
    With the GPS firmly telling her that the frontage road she was driving didn’t exist and that she was Off Road, Ali drove to the scene. At the first police barricade, Ali flashed the credentials she had been issued by the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department. The officer examined her ID. Then, after directing her to an appropriate place to park, he stepped aside and let her through. Ali was relieved to see there were no reporters or cameras milling around so far. She had beaten them to the scene by arriving while emergency equipment was still en route. They would be coming soon, however, and Ali needed to be ready.
    Turning off the Cayenne’s engine, Ali opened the door and stepped out into a world of noisy, smoke-filled chaos. Shouted orders flew back and forth over the roar of the flames. Pulsingstrobelike flashes from emergency lights punctuated the darkness, while bright beams directed at the fires helped the firefighters who were battling the two separate blazes to see what they were doing.
    Ali removed the blue emergency beacon from the top of the car, switched it off, and then stood for a moment, taking in the scene. Both houses appeared to be completely engulfed. In fact, just as she shut her car door, the burning roof of one of the houses collapsed in a loud whoosh, sending another cloud of embers skyward like a dangerous volley of Fourth of July fireworks. Firefighters hurried after the glowing trail of embers, trying to find and extinguish them before they set fire to something else.
    Even without the roof, one wall of the collapsed building was still standing. Peering through the eye-watering smoke, Ali was able to make out one chilling detail. Scrawled in yard-tall spray-painted letters on the plywood walls were three letters— ELF.
    The Earth Liberation Front, Ali thought. America’s own special brand of homegrown terrorists.
    Dave Holman came up behind her just then. “Hey, Ali,” he said. “Are you okay?”
    She nodded.
    “Nothing like a trial by fire for your first time out,” he added.
    “An ambulance was leaving just as I got here,” she said. “Was someone hurt?”
    Dave nodded. “Since the houses were under construction, no one expected them to be occupied, but then one of the Camp Verde firefighters heard her screaming. He went in and brought her out.”
    “Her,” Ali confirmed. “A woman? Who is she? What was she doing there?”
    “I have