Baptism In Fire
Baptism In Fire
Elizabeth Sinclair
The hypnotic flames pulled at her, urging her forward. But she couldn’t move.
She strained against the pressure of hands encircling her arms. Never taking her gaze from the inferno, Rachel pried frantically at the vise grip. The pain of reliving this nightmare became more than she could bear.
Maggie. Gotta save Maggie.
She had to block out the images.
She felt herself being shaken. “Rachel!” Luke’s stern voice catapulted her back to reality. “Let it go!”
Mentally she clawed her way out of the past. Slowly, very slowly, she relaxed. For a long moment she stared at him, trying to rationalize where he’d come from. Then she saw his eyes. Reflected there was regret, pain and something else she couldn’t name.
She pressed her face into his chest. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed his strength. His arms felt so right, so safe, so secure. His closeness blocked out the memories of the nightmare. If only they’d shared this comfort back then….
Dear Reader,
As a child, my favorite part of the Memorial Day Parade in our small town was always the firemen and the shiny, red fire trucks. I came from a firefighter family and then I married into one. Among my favorite movies are Backdraft and Ladder 49. Then there was 9/11 and the tragic loss of so many brave men…. Do you see where this is all leading? Writing a book about firemen was inevitable for me.
But Baptism in Fire is not only about firemen. It also addresses a subject that has, unfortunately, become a problem of major proportions in my home state of Florida and around the country: the abduction of children. Being a mother and a grandmother, this was the hardest part of the book to write, but a part that my heart told me I had to address.
I hope you enjoy the journey.
Blessings,
Elizabeth Sinclair
Baptism in Fire
Elizabeth Sinclair
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ELIZABETH SINCLAIR
In 1988, Elizabeth’s husband, Bob, dragged her kicking and screaming from her birthplace, the scenic Hudson Valley of upstate New York, to historic St. Augustine, Florida. It took her about three seconds to stop struggling and to fall deeply in love with her adopted hometown. Shortly after their move, at 3:47 p.m. on August 3, 1992, she sold her first romance, Jenny’s Castle, to Silhouette Intimate Moments
.
Despite the fact that she used to spend hours in the kitchen cooking big meals, Elizabeth’s husband, her most ardent supporter, has learned to enjoy hot dogs and delivery pizza as much as he used to enjoy spaghetti sauce from scratch. Oh, and he no longer complains about all the books she spends money on. Bob and Elizabeth have three children, four lovely grandchildren, a rambunctious sheltie, Ripley, and an affectionate adopted beagle, Sammi Girl, they found abandoned along the roadside and took into their home.
For more about Elizabeth, visit her Web site at www.elizabethsinclair.com.
In loving memory of my dad, Preston Charles Ronk,
a thirty-five-year member of the
Walden Hook & Ladder Fire Company, Walden, NY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would be remiss if I did not express my deepest gratitude to the three men who helped me delve through the world of firefighting and fire forensics and kept me on the authenticity track. Any mistakes or misrepresentations should be attributed to the author.
Ed Sulkowski, Operations Analyst, IFF South Brunswick, has been a fireman for over twenty years with the Highlands Fire Department in Highlands, New Jersey. He is trained in arson investigation, extrusion and fire prevention as well as standard firefighting techniques, and is a member of the ambient IFF industrial firefighters squad.
Wallace Arthur Lind, Senior Crime Scene Analyst (retired), was a police crime scene investigator for seventeen years. In October 1992, he was certified by the International Association for Identification as a Senior Crime Scene Analyst and has processed over 2,000 crime scenes, including homicides; about 1,500 scenes as the lead crime scene investigator; testified as an expert witness in crime scene investigation, bloodstain pattern analysis and scene reconstruction; and trained others in the field.
Dr. Harry R. Carter, a thirty-eight-year veteran in fire and emergency service, is a municipal fire protection consultant, educator and motivational speaker who holds degrees in fire service administration, public policy analysis, fire safety administration, the social sciences and business administration. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Fire Commissioners for Howell Township Fire District #2, and is a longtime contributing editor for Firehouse magazine and the Pennsylvania Fireman. He has authored seven books and more than 1,200 magazine, Web and journal articles.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Prologue
“I’d rather go through root canal without Novocain than go back to Florida,” Rachel Lansing said fiercely into the phone. She was unable to believe that a man who professed to be her friend was asking this of her. He knew why she’d left.
“Rachel,” A.J. Branson, the Orange Grove Police Department’s chief of detectives, sighed. “I know I’m asking a lot—”
“A lot? You have no idea.” She swallowed hard and fought for a long time to push back hellish memories of another place, another time, another life. A life she’d believed perfect until— “A.J., I left Orange Grove to put that part of my life to rest, not to mention save my sanity. I have a new life here in Atlanta. Why would I come back?”
“Because this involves kids,” A.J. said simply. “No one I know loves kids more than you do and no one I know can profile an arsonist like you.”
Kids.
Maggie.
Damn him.
Rachel rose from the couch and paced her small Atlanta apartment’s living room. No! She massaged her forehead in an effort to push back the insistent memories rising from the darkest recesses of her mind. But even as she denied them admittance, images of her tall, handsome husband holding their blond little girl as she clutched her worn, patchwork teddy bear seeped into her mind.
Oh, God! Maggie… My sweet baby girl.
Pain sliced through her, nearly drawing her double. Her knees dipped, threatening to collapse completely. She gripped the arm of the couch and took a deep breath.
Her white-knuckled fingers pressed the cordless phone tightly to her ear. “Dammit, A.J., that was a low blow.”
“I’m sorry as I can be, Rachel, but in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m desperate.” A pause. “You know I wouldn’t ask you to put yourself through this if I didn’t think it was important.”
Why hadn’t she gone out for dinner instead of coming home? If she had, she would have missed A.J.’s call, missed him stirring up—
“There are other people qualified to do this. Why me?” She tried but failed to keep the anguish out of her voice.
Another pause, then he spoke again, his voice quiet, earnest and firm. “This bastard is about as elusive as any arsonist I’ve come up against. We’ve tried for six months to find the answers but we can’t. I need an arson profiler who knows the ropes. One who can climb inside the torch’s mind. That’s you.”
A long pause followed, during which Rachel remembered the exhilaration of the hunt, the adrenaline rush of piecing together elusive clues like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and the satisfaction of finally nailing the arsonist and putting him behind bars. Nothing in her present life could compare to the challenge of profiling, of learning the intricacies of how a criminal mind worked and then outthinking him.
All this reminiscing magnified just how much she hated her present job as a secretary in a construction company’s office.
However, given the choice, she’d take the boredom of ordering 2x4s any day to reliving the agony of waking up in the middle of the night to find her home going up in flames and her baby gone. When compared to the painful reminders of her only child being kidnapped and probably killed and a husband who no longer loved her, arrogant contractors were infinitely easier to cope with.
“I’m sorry, A.J. You’ll have to find yourself another profiler.”
“Are you sure?”
A pregnant pause followed his question. Was she sure? Could she turn her back on those kids? Could she step back in time and face everything she’d left behind, step back into a lifestyle filled with memories too brutal to bear? The pain in her heart answered for her.
“Yes. I’m sure,” she said, but even she knew her voice lacked conviction. “Find someone else.”
Another pause stretched Rachel’s nerves to the breaking point. A.J. exhaled a long breath, as if he’d made a decision that didn’t sit well with him. “I called you because I need someone with an investment in finding this bastard.”
She went stone still. Her fingers tightened on the phone. Sweat broke out on her forehead. “Investment?”
“I didn’t want to tell you this over the phone, but this recent series of arsons has some definite similarities to your apartment fire.”
An icy chill washed over her from head to toe. “My fire?” She wasn’t sure if she’d said it or thought it.
The line remained silent except for her accelerated breathing. Then A.J. cleared his throat as if removing a knot of emotion from it. That didn’t surprise her. Maggie’s kidnapping and the collapse of Rachel’s marriage to Luke had hit A.J. hard.
“There are a lot of similarities, Rachel. I think it’s the same arsonist, and I thought you’d want the privilege of helping to collar this creep.”
Chapter 1
One Monday morning, after a two-year absence, Rachel walked into the Orange Grove, Florida, police station with a stride that bespoke unmovable determination. If any of the workers knew her, they would have known that look and given her a wide path. But the faces following her progress into the lobby were those of strangers, and instead, they threw casual, unconcerned glances her way and then went back to work.
Rachel surveyed the surroundings and smiled to herself. Maybe the faces didn’t ring any bells, but everything else was familiar. The noise level still reminded her of a hive of worker bees, and no matter how hard the cleaning crew tried, the place still reeked of unwashed bodies, stale coffee and cheap floor wax. Forest-green plastic chairs that Rachel wouldn’t have given house room bordered one wall and held an assortment of handcuffed suspects awaiting booking. Probably the source of the body odor.
There had been a time when her job as arson investigator and profiler for Engine 108 and her marriage to Detective Luke Sutherland had brought her here on a fairly regular basis. Back then, she’d always regarded this place as a familiar presence in her life. Now she found herself experiencing a fish-out-of-water sensation.
What difference does it make? You’re here to do a job, then leave. You’re not here to win friends or settle in permanently.
Rachel walked to the desk and waited while the one familiar person in the room, Desk Sergeant Tony Antola, processed a prisoner being released on bail.
The idle time allowed suppressed doubts to resurface and undermine her resolve. Was she really ready for this? Was she about to jump in over her head emotionally? If she did, was she prepared to face the consequences?
She glanced longingly at the front door and thought about how easy it would be to just slip out, climb into her car and drive back to Georgia. Then images of children without moms, husbands without wives, lives torn to shreds by some crazy bastard who got his rocks off by playing with fire…and her darling little Maggie bombarded her conscience.
Could she handle it? At this very moment, she couldn’t answer that, but she knew she had to try, for all those lives and dreams that had gone up in smoke and for herself. She’d never be able to get back what she’d lost, but she’d deal with whatever came her way—one step at a time. For them, for herself and for Maggie.
When Tony finally turned to her, she smiled. “Hi, Tony.”
“Rachel!” His eyes widened. He smiled broadly, then seized her hand and pumped it with enthusiasm. “Damn, it’s good to see you back here.”
“Thanks.” She returned his smile and accepted his welcome without explaining that she wasn’t really back. “I’m here to see Captain Branson.”
“Sergeant.”
The one-word command came from Rachel’s left and hit her with all the force of a baseball bat being slammed into her middle. It had been eighteen months since she’d last heard it, but she knew that husky voice as surely as she did her own. The owner of that voice had whispered love words to her in the dark of night, read stories to their daughter and promised they would have forever together—then he’d walked out.
Stiffening her back, she turned. Despite her determination not to react, her breath caught in her throat.
Her ex-husband, Luke Sutherland, leaned one broad shoulder against the wall, arms crossed over his wide chest, his hands tucked out of sight beneath his muscular biceps. That purposeful, arrogant stance was also familiar to Rachel. She’d seen it many times, especially in the last six months of their marriage. He’d closed himself off, made it impossible for anyone to see beyond the stern facade he presented to the world. In short, he’d deserted her emotionally and finally physically as well.
That shouldn’t have surprised her. Everyone she’d ever cared about had let her down in one way or another: a father who’d left when she was an infant and a mother who’d shut down emotionally and died too young. It was why Rachel had become so good at her job. If you were the best, you didn’t have to depend on anyone for anything. Rachel had clung to that independence for years, then she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. She’d met Luke and trusted him to take care of her. In the end, he’d been no better than the two people who had given her life.
Rachel had hoped to never see him again, and now, here they were, face-to-face. She fought to control her breathing, to paint the picture of a calm, in-control woman.
Why hadn’t she prepared herself for this? She’d known she’d be running into him. After all, he worked here. Why hadn’t she thought of that? But she knew the answer. Catching the arsonist who’d taken Maggie and probably murdered her was all she’d been able to think about from the time A.J. had hung up the phone. Besides, Luke didn’t enter into this equation. She had come here for one purpose and one purpose only, and it was not to take up again with the man who had torn out her heart and left it to bleed empty.
Now a whole new set of questions flooded her mind. Had he known she would be coming back? Had A.J. lied to her and orchestrated this to get his two friends to reconcile? No. A.J. wouldn’t do that. It just wasn’t like him.
Rachel stared at Luke. Words deserted her. Probably because they’d said all they had to say to each other over the deposition table in her divorce lawyer’s office. But that didn’t mean that his presence didn’t spark her pulse to racing. If she hadn’t reacted to him at all, she hoped someone had ordered her casket, because surely she’d died. Once he entered a room, Luke was not the kind of man any healthy woman ignored, not even one who had dismissed him from her life months ago.
“Hello, Rachel.” His voice was deep, rich and had the effect of silk shimmering over her skin.
He seemed to fill the windowless room. Rachel took a deep breath, hoping to dispel the sudden smothering sensation his presence produced, despite the laboring hum of the AC. “Luke.”
He looked past her at Tony. “I’ll take Mrs. Sutherland in, Sergeant.” Without waiting for a reply, he took Rachel’s elbow, but she shrugged him off.
“Lansing. Ms. Lansing.” She stared straight ahead, then, when he made no reply, glanced sideways to see if he’d heard her.
One dark eyebrow was raised, but Luke neither looked at her nor said anything. He just led her down the long hall. They stopped in front of a door with a frosted-glass panel embossed with gold letters outlined in black that proclaimed this to be the office of Captain Austin J. Branson, Chief of Detectives.
Luke swung the door wide, and Rachel, careful not to touch him, stepped past him and into the office of the man who had been their closest friend and the best man at their wedding. “A.J.’s at a meeting. He’ll be back shortly.”
The room thickened with an uncomfortable silence. Her back to him, she felt him move to the side of the room. It surprised Rachel that she could still sense Luke’s every movement without looking at him. But, then again, the man did have a presence that permeated all corners of any room.
“What’re you doing here, Rachel?”
His question stunned her. She jerked around to look at him. “A.J. didn’t tell you I was coming?”
He shook his head. A lock of dark hair slid over his forehead. With a huff of impatience, he pushed it back. “No.”
Luke had propped his thigh on the corner of the desk. The bunched muscles beneath the denim fabric brought images to mind of watching him during his daily workout, when sweat coated his tanned body and…
She pushed the thoughts away with both hands.
His dark gaze traveled slowly from her chestnut hair to her gray suit, then downward to her tanned legs, remaining there for a tantalizing moment before moving back to her face. Insanely, she wished she’d worn panty hose.
“You’re looking good, Rachel. Georgia agrees with you.”
Fighting off the magnetic pull of his gaze, she dropped her briefcase to the floor, then slipped into the chair in front of the desk and pulled her skirt over her knees, effectively cutting short his appraisal.
He smiled knowingly. “You always did have legs that magnetized a man’s senses.”
She gripped her hands together in her lap to cover their shaking. In an attempt to feed her suddenly starving lungs, she took a deep breath. What the hell was wrong with her? She was over him, over his charismatic ways, over falling victim to his pretty words. Nerves. It had to be nerves. After all, it wasn’t every day she embarked on a case that could lead her to the bastard who took Maggie.
Unwilling to prolong this conversation, she glared at him. “I didn’t come all this way to discuss my legs. You can leave. I don’t need you to babysit me. I’ll be fine until A.J. comes back.”
“I’ll wait,” he said and settled his back against the file cabinet beside the desk.
“Suit yourself,” she said, then picked up her briefcase and opened it. She glanced at Luke, then quickly averted her gaze to a handful of papers she’d extracted from the open case and attempted to read them. The words swam across the bright white paper. If he would just leave or, at the very least, stop staring at her.
Luke drank in the sight of his former wife. It had been so long. Why was she here? A.J. hadn’t mentioned that he’d been expecting her. Had she somehow heard about the arson case they’d been working on and come to offer her help?
If she had, she had a big surprise coming her way. As head of the task force investigating the arsons, he would never agree to having her join the team and, knowing what kind of emotional strain it would put on her, A.J. would never take her up on it. Both he and A.J. knew that Rachel was one of the best arson profilers in the business, but there were too many emotional ties connected to this case, ties she didn’t need tearing her apart. So, back to his original question. Why was she here?
She pushed her hair from her face and the light reflected off something at the open neck of her blouse. He waited for a better look, and when she straightened for a second, he saw it. The Oriental necklace he’d given her the week before Maggie was—
He broke the thought off abruptly before it had time to fully form. The last thing he needed right now was to be distracted by the guilt that seemed to ride his back and eat at his belly daily.
The gold necklace winked at him. Given that Rachel had done all she could to cut him out of her life—not that he blamed her—that she was still wearing it shocked him.
His gaze strayed from the necklace to the creamy white skin of her throat, then up to her face. God, she was beautiful. Could have been a model. But she chose to dig through the charred ruins of buildings and the sick minds that started the fires.
Luke drew in a deep breath to steady his libido. A.J.’s office normally smelled of the occasional cigars he indulged in and various other stale odors, but since she’d walked in, he was aware only of the intoxicating scent of her perfume—a scent she had specially made for her, an odd combination of spices and honeysuckle. Seductive and earthy at once, and all Rachel. Despite his efforts, his groin tightened. His pulse quickened. His throat went dry.
How had he ever found the strength to walk away from Rachel? You found it because she didn’t need your guilt hanging around her neck like a dead albatross. She had her own problems to contend with, and her strength could only support one set of battered emotions. That she had made a new life for herself proved that. Didn’t it?
Before he could think about an answer, the door opened and A.J. stepped into the room. His assessing gaze flicked from Luke to Rachel.
Rachel smiled, understandably happy to see her old friend after so long. Older than them by five years, A.J. had Nordic blue eyes and blond good looks that turned the heads of some women, but Rachel had always said she preferred Luke’s dark hair and eyes. Still, when she offered his boss the smile Luke craved for himself, he felt the faint stirring of the green-eyed monster. What he wouldn’t have given to get that kind of greeting.
She stood and opened her arms. “Hi, A.J.”
“Rachel.” He engulfed her in a tight embrace, plastering her slight body against his physically fit, six-foot-plus frame. “It’s so good to see you. How have you been? It’s been way too long.”
Gasping for air, she pushed at his broad chest. “I was fine until you did surgery on my rib cage with your belt buckle.”
“Sorry.” He laughed, then released her immediately. “So, what brings you here?”
Mouth agape, she frowned, then stared first at A.J., then at Luke. “I—”
Luke read the look of puzzlement on Rachel’s face. Suddenly, the reason for her presence struck him square in the gut. “Son of a—” Luke rolled to his feet. “Can the act, A.J. I may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I’m not stupid. You asked her to come, didn’t you?”
A.J. shrugged and looked for all the world like a child who had gotten caught drawing on the living-room wall. “Okay, I called her and asked her to consult on the serial arsonist we’ve been tracking. She said she’d think about it, so I wasn’t sure if she was coming or not. Until she made up her mind, I figured I’d keep my mouth shut for a change. I was afraid if I told you, you’d raise hell.”
“You got that right.” Luke glared at A.J. While his nerves screwed up into tight knots, something akin to panic began forming a ball inside him. He took a step toward his boss. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“Now, wait just a minute, Luke. I’m a big girl and I had the option of saying no.” Rachel looked him in the eye, her face grim, her lips set in a tight line. “Luke, I need to do this.”
Luke looked from her to A.J., well aware of A.J.’s ability to talk the leaves off a tree, if the need arose. “Like I’m supposed to believe he didn’t pressure you into this.” Luke stared at her, his jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached. “You need to get out of here and go back to Atlanta,” he growled, his gaze locked with Rachel’s.
His attitude puzzled Rachel. He knew she was a damn good profiler. Why this sudden need to send her packing? It certainly couldn’t be because he had any concerns about her personally. The day he’d packed his clothes and walked out of their apartment, he’d given up any right to a say in her life.
“I’m here, and it’s a done deal.” She snapped her briefcase closed with a decisive click, then turned to A.J. “Can we get started?”
A.J. sighed, his tense expression melting into one of relief. “How long before you have to get back to Atlanta?”
Ignoring Luke’s reproachful scrutiny and his presence in the small office as best she could, she said, “I have two weeks of vacation time, so we’d better get to it.” Rachel took a pad from her briefcase and clipped a pencil from A.J.’s desk. “Tell me about the fires.”
Transforming from concerned friend to hard-nosed cop, A.J. glanced at Luke, then took his place behind the desk. He motioned for Luke to sit in the chair beside Rachel. When he didn’t, she glanced around.
“I’ll stand, thanks.” Luke leaned against the gray file cabinet, which, when she turned to face A.J., would put him just out of her range of vision. His arms were crossed, his flinty gaze silently castigating A.J.
Did his hardened expression mean that he was pissed because A.J. had brought in outside help? Or was it because the outside help was Rachel?
It didn’t matter. Either way, she was here and, like it or not, he’d have to learn to live with it.
A.J. waved a dismissive hand at Luke. “Suit yourself.” He opened a file folder and began. “In a nutshell, the three victims are women, one separated and two divorced, single moms living alone, ages twenty-eight to thirty, small children. Two blondes, one brunette. The fires were set at night and when each victim was alone. The kids were with relatives or friends. All were rendered unconscious with a rag soaked in chloroform. The first fire was set about six months ago. Cause of death in all three cases was smoke inhalation.”
He took a glossy photo from the folder and tossed it on the desk. “Marsha Adams, married but legally separated, bound with a lamp cord.” Other photos taken of the women at the fire scenes followed. “Jane Madison, bound with a lamp cord. Colleen Winston, tied up with duct tape. Both divorced.” He wiped a hand over his eyes. “This bastard wanted them to suffer, and they did. One other thing—” He took a deep breath, glanced at Luke, then back to her. “We found all of them in a closet with a Bible beneath them.”
Rachel stared at the photos. Instantly she saw the similarities to her own fire, which A.J. had alluded to on the phone. The closet. The lamp cord. The chloroform. The Bible.
The color photos swam before her eyes. Cold sweat broke out on her forehead. She was sure she’d prepared herself for this part. She’d been terribly wrong.
Rachel closed her eyes to shut out the images, but the same frustrating, disjointed memories that had been torturing her for years, memories that she could never put definition to, flitted in and out in snippets like a badly edited movie. No face to put on an arsonist. No one to tell her what happened to Maggie. Just a blur of indistinguishable events.
Sleeping peacefully. Something on her face. A sweet smell filling her nostrils. Sleep. Then waking in a closet.
Her bedroom engulfed in flames. The smoke. Choking.
Closet too small. Can’t move.
Hands tied behind her. Bible cutting into her chest.
Helpless to escape.
Helpless to save her baby.
Heat. Intense heat. A voice calling to her.
“Mommy. Mommy?”
Maggie?
Blackness.
Then fresh air seeping into her burning lungs. Wet grass beneath her, soaking into her thin nightgown. A fireman standing over her. Luke, cradling her close to his chest, crying, calling her name and Maggie’s.
“Rachel? Rachel? Are you okay?” Luke’s voice called her back from that terrible place she’d hidden inside her for so long.
Rachel snapped her eyes open. The images, images that mirrored a periodic dream she’d been having since that night, faded.
She blinked. Luke and A.J. were standing over her, their faces twisted in concern. She searched her mind frantically for something to excuse what had just happened. She knew her ex-husband too well. If she told him the truth, he’d send her back to Atlanta despite what A.J. said. And she made up her mind in that instant that she wasn’t going anywhere until she nailed this bastard.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, just a bit…dizzy. I was so eager to get here that I skipped lunch.”
Luke exhaled a huff of air. He crossed his arms over his chest again and glared down at her, eyebrow arched so high it almost disappeared in his hairline. He hadn’t believed a word of her explanation.
Determinedly, she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and forced her gaze toward the photos again. Silently, she employed a system she’d used when she’d started in the firefighters’ academy and was confronted with her first horrific fire scene.
You’re a professional. Detach yourself. You’ve got to prove to them that you can do this. If they send you home, you won’t be able to help anyone. Detach yourself. This can’t be personal. You are a professional. This is your job.
Slowly, the tension eased from her body, and her stomach settled. When she felt calm enough, she picked up the pictures. All three women were curled in the fetal position common after exposure to the high temperatures of a fire. Most of their hair had burned off, and the intense heat had split their skin in several places. In all three cases, their arms curled behind them, most of their bonds burned in the fire. Because they had been facedown, the underside of each body had escaped the heat. She could just make out the corner of a book beneath each woman.
She pushed the photos toward A.J. Quickly, he gathered up the pictures and shoved them inside the folder. Instead of handing her the file, he held on to it, glanced at Luke and then to her.
Doubts that hadn’t been there before lurked in his eyes and colored his expression. “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.”
“Amen to that,” Luke grumbled behind her.
Rachel leaned toward A.J. “If you take me off this case now, I swear I’ll stay and work it without the police department. He almost burned me alive, then he took my baby and—” Her voice broke. She glanced at Luke. The concern she’d seen in his expression before had been replaced by a pain she knew well. That of a parent who had lost a child. “And, though we never found her body, it’s been almost two years, and I know now that he killed her. I want this sick bastard.”
A.J. studied her for a long moment. Her gaze held his without wavering. He nodded and handed her the file folder. “Everything we have is in there—interviews with relatives, spouses, boyfriends, friends. If there’s anything else you need, just give a yell.”
“How about the arson investigator’s photos, the firefighters’ narrative reports?”
“They’re in there, too. I’ve designated a room in the annex out back for your office and a place for the task force to meet. The names of the two officers I’ve assigned to the task force are in the folder.”
Stiffening her spine, she clutched the folder. When she looked up, both Luke and A.J. were staring at her.
“What?”
“You okay?” A.J. asked.
Rachel knew she couldn’t wiggle out of answering him, but she refused to be treated like a porcelain doll. “Stop worrying about me, dammit.” A.J. seemed surprised at her sharp tone, but satisfied. Luke continued to study her. “I told you, I’m fine,” she said with much more confidence than she felt.
“Is anyone ever fine with crap like that?” Luke hitched a finger toward her briefcase, where she’d stowed the files.
Was he doubting her or goading her? His complexion seemed to have paled, and she wondered if they were fighting the same demons.
“No, never, but if I’m to do this job right, I need to be able to look at everything as dispassionately as possible.” Including you. She swung back to face A.J., who’d been watching them closely. “I’ll need to walk the fire scenes.”
“When you’re ready, I’ll walk them with you,” Luke said.
Another emotional mountain to climb. “No need. I can do it alone if someone will clear me to enter them.”
“I said, I’ll go with you.” Luke stared unflinchingly at her.
Rachel knew that fixed expression and his adamant tone. There would be no more discussion. She hated that he thought she needed to be babysat, but something deep down inside was glad he’d be with her. “I want to study all the notes and the photos first. I should be ready in a day or two.”
Putting off the walk-through was not going to make it any easier, but she swore she would do it before the end of the week. Now that she was here, there was no way in hell she would let Luke see her back down. More important, she had to see it through to the end. The time had come to exorcize her demons and what better way than to catch the maniac who was responsible for creating them.
“I’ll call you,” she said, deliberately leaving it open as to who she was addressing and avoiding eye contact with Luke.
It didn’t escape Luke’s notice that she conveniently forgot to ask for his phone number, nor that she quite obviously hoped he’d back down from his offer.
Luke knew that she’d envisioned herself and Maggie in those photos and not their victims, just as he had. He’d had to have been blind not to see the way they’d affected her. God knew, he was familiar enough with the sick, helpless feeling, the way it made his gut come up in his throat, the huge empty hole inside him that nothing and no one could fill.
He’d seen those photos innumerable times and still couldn’t look at them without seeing his beautiful daughter, without having to fight down the guilt eating a hole in his soul for not being home to stop any of the events that had torn his family and his life apart.
Knowing this could head into territory he faithfully avoided, he closed off that part of his mind. Turning his attention back to Rachel, he watched her closely. Though she hadn’t lost one ounce of her beauty, her shoulders didn’t seem as square as he remembered them. Her head lacked the proud angle it had always had. Her body had shed a few pounds and appeared, though he knew there was not a delicate bone in Rachel’s gorgeous body, almost fragile.
Self-disgust washed over him. Damn A.J. for bringing Rachel here and reminding her. Luke couldn’t change the past, but he could and would be there for moral support when she went through the fire scenes. And at the first sign she was breaking under the emotional strain, he’d ship her back to Georgia, kicking and screaming, if necessary.
“What about motive?” Rachel asked.
Luke noted the quiver in her voice. He was sure she’d tried to cover it up, but he’d heard that voice too many times not to be able to read every inflection.
Shaking his head, A.J. leaned back in his chair. “Nothing except the Bible, which points at something religious. Hell, for all we know right now, maybe his mother dropped him on his head at his christening. Who knows? That’s your department. Get into his head. Right now, all we have to go on is that the fires are being set by the same torch.”
Rachel nodded. “I’ll be able to tell you more after I’ve looked this stuff over.”
Luke moved to the side of A.J.’s desk. He knew her caution came as a result of her firefighter training and would keep her from making or voicing premature decisions that she’d have to eat later.
Rachel stood, grabbed her briefcase, clasped A.J.’s outstretched hand, then handed him a slip of paper. “I’ll be in touch, but in case you need me, here’s my private cell-phone number.” Offering nothing to Luke but a curt nod, she headed for the door.
“Rachel, one other thing.” A.J. looked from Luke to her. “Luke is heading up the task force and will be working closely with you on this. I trust this isn’t going to be a problem for either of you?”
“Saving the best till last, right, buddy?” Luke waited, sure she would ask to have him replaced and hoping she’d say she’d go home rather than work with him.
Rachel paused, her back to them. A long moment passed before she turned and looked directly at her ex-husband. “Not if he stays out of my way.”
Through A.J.’s open office door, Luke watched Rachel walk away. His gut instinct was telling him to go after her and do anything he could to convince her to go home. But, stubborn as she could be, he knew it would do no good. It still took everything he could muster not to.
Again, as he watched her disappear around a corner in the long hall, he wondered where he’d found the strength to let her go, to walk out of her life. Maybe because he knew she could make it alone, and she’d be safe without him. Maybe because walking out was easier than looking into her grief-stricken face every day and being reminded of his failure to protect her and Maggie. Maybe, as the days stretched into weeks, then months with no word, he just couldn’t face her undying belief that their little girl was still alive. Thank God she seemed to have reconciled herself to Maggie’s death.
“Here,” A.J. said, ignoring the emphasis Rachel had put on private, and copying Rachel’s cell number, then handing it to Luke. “If you tell her I gave it to you, I’ll say you swiped it.”
“Thanks.” Luke tucked the paper into his shirt pocket but continued to stare down the empty hall. He knew, if he encouraged A.J., his friend would make it a personal crusade to get him and Rachel back together. Not a good idea.
“Think she still has what it’s gonna take to handle this?” A.J. asked from behind him.
Sighing, Luke turned to his boss and friend. “When it comes to expertise and pure guts, I’d put her up against any man in this station.” Then he smiled. “But if you tell her I said that, I’ll deny every word.”
Guts? Yes. He’d stake his life on her courage, and had. But could she withstand the emotional buffeting she’d take investigating the arsonist who had kidnapped and killed their daughter?
Chapter 2
Back in the beach condo A.J. kept for relatives from out of town, Rachel threw her briefcase on the sofa, slipped off her gray suit jacket and shoes, then switched on the TV for background noise. While she unbuttoned the pearl studs on her white silk blouse, she stared at the blond, female news anchor on the screen.
“In local news, the Orange Grove Police Department has confirmed that arson investigator/profiler Rachel Lansing-Sutherland has been called in to consult on the serial arsons that have been plaguing Orange Grove for the last six months. Ms. Lansing’s own daughter was abducted two years ago on the night that the Sutherlands’ apartment burned down. The case remains officially open, and our sources in the department say that after such a long period of time, abducted children are rarely found alive.”
Choking back a sob, Rachel pressed the mute button on the remote. She threw it on the coffee table and headed into the bedroom, leaving the voiceless, female anchor on the TV screen resembling a bad mime.
It had taken Rachel a long time to concede to the belief that her beautiful little girl would never come home again, never laugh at her daddy’s silly jokes, never draw those unrecognizable pictures of houses and cows, never drift off to sleep while Rachel sang her favorite lullaby—
Unbidden, the words of the lullaby played through her head. Hush, little Maggie, don’t say a word—
Grabbing the edge of the dresser, Rachel bent double, clutching her heart. Would the pain never go away? The emptiness never leave her arms or her heart? How does a mother forget a part of her?
Maggie’s birth had been the most momentous thing that had ever happened to Rachel. When the nurse laid that tiny being in her arms, their daughter had completed the circle of love she and Luke had found. Rachel had marveled that the fiery passion she and Luke shared could have produced something so small, so perfect, so delicate. Luke adored their baby with the same intensity he applied to his work. Together, the three of them had become a family, sharing their love.
After Maggie’s birth, the love Luke and Rachel had for each other had grown by leaps and bounds until she was sure their lives could only get better. But she’d been very wrong. Ironically, all it took to shatter their happiness was a macabre twist of fate and one match.
Exhaustion pressing down on her, Rachel shook loose of the memories and began undressing for a shower. In the mirror above the dresser, she noted that the necklace she wore constantly had snagged in a strand of her chestnut hair. She disentangled the hair and allowed the chain to drop back against her skin. Staring in the mirror, Rachel picked up the medallion hanging from the chain. The artificial light from the bedside lamp caught in the grooves of the Oriental engraving on the gold disk. While in Japan to escort a prisoner back to the States, Luke had bought it for her. He’d told her it was the Chinese symbol for protection and, when she needed him, she had only to rub it and say his name. The whole idea had been foolish fun, but she had never taken the necklace off, not even after the divorce. During the worst times, after she’d ceased opposition to the certainty of Maggie’s death, just fingering it had provided her with a small sense of comfort, but no matter how often she had said his name, Luke had never come.
With the pad of her thumb, she stroked the familiar squiggle, noting that the edges of the design had become smooth and rounded, unlike the sharp carving it had been when she first got it. She thought of Luke, his infectious laughter, his charm, his magnetism, and wondered if this little hunk of gold had the power to protect her from him as well.
Showered, shampooed and feeling much better about the job she’d agreed to do, Rachel slipped into jeans and a pale green T-shirt emblazoned with Puppy Love Is Forever, flopped onto the sofa and opened the folder. Turning the victims’ photos facedown and moving them to the side, she began to go over the detectives’ narrative reports. Using a yellow legal pad she’d pulled from her briefcase, she divided the top sheet into two columns and headed them Similarities and Differences.
Rachel had just gotten started filling in the columns when her cell phone rang. She stiffened, then remembered she hadn’t given Luke her number. Digging through the congestion of gas and credit-card receipts, loose change and gum wrappers she’d stuffed into her briefcase during the drive south, she found the cell phone and flipped it open.
“Hello.”
“Rachel?” Luke’s voice sent a warm ripple through her.
“How did you get my number?” But he didn’t need to answer. She knew. A.J. When she and Luke divorced, it had been as hard on A.J. as it had them. She was sure this was his subtle attempt at mending the relationship.
“I’m sworn to secrecy,” he said, a hint of amusement in his tone.
“Well, you can tell A.J. that I’m glad it wasn’t my virginity I trusted him to guard.”
Once the words were out, Rachel was shocked at how easily she had slipped back into the habit of exchanging quips with Luke.
Would it be just as easy to slip into other things with him? Keeping an emotional distance between herself and the man she’d once loved beyond logic was imperative. She sat straighter.
He laughed. “Yeah. Where we’re concerned, he never got high marks for keeping a secret.”
An instant replay of the evening A.J. let it slip that Luke had an engagement ring for her crossed her mind. A.J. had waged quite a battle with himself, trying to make up his mind if he should stay and be a part of the big moment or if he should leave them to their privacy. Privacy had finally won out, but not before A.J. had inadvertently blurted out that he couldn’t be happier that his two favorite people had decided to tie the knot. She smiled.
A long silence hung on the phone. Why had Luke called? Just to show her he had the number?
“I’m going over the notes A.J. gave me. Was there something you wanted?”
“I just wanted to give you my cell-phone number.” He recited the number, and she wrote it across the tope of the legal pad.
“Anything else?” she asked, eager to get him off the phone before she obeyed her urge to see him, to talk to him about this big step she’d taken and ask him to please not fight her on it. Silence. She doodled absently while waiting for him to say something.
Then, “Did you eat dinner yet?”
“No,” she blurted a little too sharply, trying to kill the urge to say she’d love to have dinner with him.
He chuckled, deep and sexy. “Even grouches have to eat,” he said, reminding her of the first thing he’d ever said to her. She’d gone with him to dinner that night and every night after that. Their entire courtship had been like that, fast, furious and filled with passion and laughter. Then—
No, dammit, she refused to mourn their marriage. She had enough to mourn without adding that. She stiffened her spine.
“I’m not hungry. I’ll fix something later.” She rarely hungered for anything these days, except what she couldn’t have. Like her daughter in her arms.
And Luke? a little voice prompted.
Before he could say anything more, she heard the unmistakable interruption that signaled an incoming call. “I have to take this, Rachel. I’ll talk to you later. Don’t forget to eat,” he admonished, then hung up.
Rachel stared at the dead phone. An acute loneliness washed over her. She folded the phone and laid it on the coffee table. Not until she felt the cold metal on her fingertips did she realize she’d begun stroking the Oriental pendant. When she looked down at the legal pad where she’d written his number, she saw that she had doodled hearts all around it.
Hours passed, and she’d made good progress on assigning the similarities and differences she’d found in the notes. Under the column headed Differences, she’d listed: marital status, hair color and restraints. Under Similarities, she’d written: chloroform, charcoal lighter, victims alone at the time of the fire, all died from smoke inhalation, no signs of sexual assault, one child, each had a Bible placed under her.
Since starting, she’d added a third column to the paper, headed up with one word—Mine. All the similarities she’d listed also appeared under her column. The only differences were that she’d been married and the others had either been separated or divorced at the time of the fires, and she had not been alone.
The common thread that captured her attention was the Bible. Every serial arsonist had a signature. It could be anything from the brand and kind of accelerant they used to the type of incendiary device and where it was planted. This one evidently had religion and, since religious motives were a twisted version of the arsonist’s beliefs, it could make him one of the hardest to catch.
She was studying the columns, thinking about the profile of the arsonist, when the cell phone rang again. Rachel jumped.
“Hello,” she said, expecting Luke’s voice to come back at her through the receiver.
“Rachel, it’s A.J. There’s another house fire. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”
Adrenaline coursed through her, bringing her to her feet. Blood pumped through her veins at an accelerated rate. “Is it our arsonist?”
“Not sure. We’ll know better when we get there. I think it’s worth looking into. We’ve never been on scene while it’s happening before. If it is our torch, we might just find him milling around in the gallery enjoying the fruits of his labor.”
By the time Rachel arrived with A.J. at the fire site, the south side of the house was a wall of flames. Slowly, she emerged from the car, her gaze locked on the burning wood-frame house. This was her first fire since Maggie’s death, and she’d forgotten the sheer power of flames that defied control, the destruction they wreak, the devastation they cause.
Rachel followed A.J. to a position just inside the yellow tape that confined the crowd of curious onlookers to the sidelines. Her training as an arson investigator kicked in, and her gaze automatically scanned the crowd, looking for any sign of someone consumed by sexual excitement, a more-than-helpful bystander, a loner removed from the other gawkers or the deadpan stare of a face transfixed by the flames.
Seeing no one that aroused her suspicions, she turned back to the burning house. The familiar, acrid stink of burning man-made materials filled the air. The sounds of firefighters battling the blaze, yelling orders and calling out words of caution mixed together into an earsplitting cacophony of noise. Then the roar of water leaving a pressurized hose added its voice to the din.
Suddenly, a man screamed a name. Rachel looked toward the voice and saw two firefighters restraining him. The man continued to scream, continued to fight the hands holding him back from running into the building. She stared at him, unable to look away.
“Rachel, I’m going to find the incident commander and see what he knows.”
A.J.’s muffled voice seemed to come to her through a thick fog. She nodded but never took her gaze off the distraught man. It brought back vivid reminders of Luke fighting off the firefighters’ restraining hands at their fire. Only when the man collapsed to the ground sobbing could she summon the strength to drag her gaze back to the house.
Rachel’s nerves began to tighten. She bit down hard on her lip. This is just a fire, she reminded herself. Any fire. Nothing personal.
Orange and red flames shot out the windows of one side of the house. Black smoke dotted with tiny glowing embers billowed toward the night sky. Heat waves blurred the outline of the house, twisting its form into a grotesque image of the actual structure. In her mind, as she watched, the image morphed, growing and changing, rising in the sky until it transformed into a high-rise apartment building, the building she, Maggie and Luke had lived in over two years ago.
In mesmerized horror, Rachel watched the flames licking out the windows and up toward the sky. She could hear someone’s tormented screams. Her chest tightened. Her vision blurred and time took a sharp nightmarish turn backward. Two-year-old images came rushing at her.
Roaring flames.
Thick, smothering, black smoke.
A hodgepodge of voices.
People running everywhere.
No! Not your fire…different fire…different, she told herself repeatedly, grabbing feverishly at her slipping control.
But the images persisted, growing sharper with each agonizing second. Her palms began to sweat. Her stomach heaved. Her nerves bunched into painful balls of icy fear.
Maggie. Gotta save Maggie.
The hypnotic flames pulled at her, urging her forward. But she couldn’t move. Something was holding her back.
Hands.
She strained against the pressure of fingers encircling her arms, but they only tightened. Never taking her gaze from the inferno, Rachel pried frantically at the vise grip of those damn fingers.
“Let go!” She heard her frenzied voice, felt the sweat beading on her forehead. Reality struggled to push through the sharp memories. The pain of reliving this nightmare became more than she could bear.
Can’t go there. Can’t go back.
God, images won’t go away.
She had to block out the images.
Then she felt herself being roughly shaken.
“Rachel!” Luke’s stern voice catapulted her over the final edge and back to reality. “Let it go!”
Mentally, she clawed her way out of the mire of the past. Slowly, very slowly, she relaxed.
For a long moment she stared at him, trying to rationalize where he’d come from and why he hadn’t been affected as strongly as she had. Then she saw his eyes. Reflected there was regret, pain and something else that she couldn’t put a name to.
“I knew A.J. shouldn’t have brought you back here,” he murmured, pulling her into the shelter of his body and holding her so tight she could barely breathe.
She pressed her face into his chest. She hadn’t realized until this very moment how much she had missed his strength. His arms felt so right, so safe, so secure. His closeness blocked out the memories of the nightmare that took their daughter and ultimately their love. If only he’d given her this comfort back then.
Reaching down into her gut, Rachel found the strength to pull away and face him. She tucked her hair behind her ears, then shoved her shaking hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I’m okay.”
“Like hell you are. You’re shaking like a nervous cat. If I hadn’t stopped you, you’d be in there, searching for—” He looked away.
She couldn’t deny it. She’d felt an equal pull only once before in her life—two years ago, at their own fire. That night, once she’d been able to breathe again, all she could think of was getting back inside to get Maggie. Little did she know that, by then, Maggie had been long gone, abducted by the arsonist. “I had it under control.”
His head snapped around. Disbelief filled his expression. “Bull.” His gaze bored into her. “And even if you did, which I don’t believe for a minute, what about the next time? What if I’m not around, Rachel?”
In her heart, Rachel knew that any future fires would be different. They wouldn’t have the kick in the gut that seeing her first fire in two years, up close and personal, had. Until this day, she’d studiously avoided fires on the TV, in the newspaper, and certainly had not stood in front of a burning building. This was just one more thing in the series of firsts she was facing: first photos, first fire, first death.
This time had been tough. She would get stronger.
With shaky hands, she wiped the tears from her cheeks, tears she hadn’t been aware she’d shed. “I’m fine now.” And deep down, she knew she was or soon would be.
Luke’s intense gaze studied her. She met him eye to eye, steady and sure. Irrationally, she was reminded of some of the many reasons she’d fallen in love with Luke Sutherland—his sharp instincts about people and his ability to read them, both of which made him an outstanding cop.
Unfortunately, when it had mattered the most, those same qualities hadn’t carried over into his personal life. When the chips were down, what should have drawn them closer drove a wedge between them that neither of them could get past. Luke hadn’t seen that she’d needed him desperately to help her withstand the loss of Maggie, to help her hold their life together. He hadn’t cared enough about their marriage to help her bind the open wounds and keep their relationship from bleeding to death. He’d thrown away all they had left after losing Maggie…their love. For that, she could never forgive him.
Averting her gaze, she searched the crowd of firefighters for A.J. He was talking to a man Rachel assumed was the fire company’s incident commander. After a moment, A.J. turned and walked back to them.
“We might as well get out of here. It’s gonna be hours before Rachel can get in there to look around and the fire company can determine if there’s another victim to add to our list. Right now, they’re classifying it as just another structural fire. Until they can get inside and look around, no one knows for sure.” A.J. stared at the blazing structure.
“Rachel’s not going in there tomorrow or any other time,” Luke said, his face set in determination.
“What?” A.J.’s shocked voice combined with Rachel’s.
Luke’s expression never wavered. “She’s going back to Georgia. We’ll find someone else. Someone who—”
“No!” Rachel’s fury nearly choked her.
He doubted her ability to come through on the job, all because of what had just happened. But the worst had passed, and she could attack this case with the composed professionalism she’d always shown on her job. His trying to cut her loose before she could prove it infuriated her.
When she spoke again, her tone clearly showed both men just how pissed off she was. Her gaze narrowed on her ex-husband. “Who in hell do you think you are that you can make that decision? I chose to come here from Atlanta to help you. The first time I flinch, you’re going to send me home?”
Luke glared back at her. “That was hardly a flinch. And as for who I think I am… I’m the one heading up this task force, and I need people who won’t fall apart on me.” He stopped, took a deep breath and spoke slowly, as if addressing a child. “I don’t want you here.”
She did flinch this time.
The flames behind them billowed skyward, their hissing roar a reflection of the anger Rachel felt. She took a step closer to him. “You weren’t the one who called me here. And as for me falling apart, I suppose you came to that brilliant conclusion from what happened a few minutes ago.”
“What happened?” A.J. asked.
They ignored him.
“Damn straight I did.” Luke clenched his fists. “I saw how those crime-scene photos affected you this afternoon, and now the fire. Bringing you here was a huge mistake, but there’s still time to fix it before your emotions get you killed.”
“What will get me killed is not having my mind on my job because I’m worried that you’ll throw me on the next bus home,” she shot back at him. “What about you? Are you gonna tell me that your emotions aren’t kicking in on this case?”
His whole body stiffened. “We’re not talking about me,” he said, evading her question. “We’re talking about you, and I say you go home.”
Rachel faced off with him and gritted her teeth.
“Whether I go or stay is my call, and I say I stay.”
“You’re both wrong,” A.J. said, stepping between them. “It’s my call.” He faced Rachel, his features set in an uncompromising expression. “No one knows if you’re up to this better than you do, Rachel. So, I’m only going to ask this once, and I expect you to level with me. Can…you…handle…this?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. She glared at Luke over A.J.’s shoulder, daring him to argue the point. “Yes, I can.” A.J. looked deep into her eyes, then nodded. “That’s good enough for me. I’ve known you for a long time, and in that time, you’ve never put yourself or anyone else at risk by taking on a job to prove a point or to feed your own ego. I’m assuming the same still holds true. If you say you can do it, then we’ll go for it.” He turned to face Luke.
Luke opened his mouth, but before he could say one word, A.J. raised his hand to silence further discussion.
“Meet her here tomorrow to walk this scene. Afterward, you can take her to the others. They’ve been officially released, so you’ll need a warrant to get on the premises. I’ll call Judge Hawthorn when I get back to my office and get the necessary paperwork out of the way.”
“Thanks, A.J.,” Rachel said, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Don’t thank me.” His demeanor had transformed from her friend, to a hard-nosed cop. “Do your job. If I think for one second that you’re giving me less than one hundred percent, I’ll replace you faster than my ex-mother-in-law decided she hated my guts.” He turned to Luke. “One more thing. Whatever personal issues you two have with each other, settle them on your own time and keep them out of this investigation.” He glanced at Rachel. “That means both of you. Am I clear?”
Rachel nodded.
Staring first at A.J., then Rachel, Luke cursed under his breath. “I hope to hell you both know what you’re doing,” he muttered, and walked away.
Luke ordered another neat scotch, then glanced around the crowded bar. A blonde almost wearing a red minidress made eye contact and smiled. For lack of anything else to do, Luke smiled back. She sauntered toward him, then leaned one forearm on the bar and thrust her ample, man-made chest inches from his nose. The top of her strapless dress nearly lost its precarious hold.
For a second, he imagined Rachel’s luscious body filling the flaming red dress, her full breasts overflowing the top. His groin tightened painfully.
“Buy a girl a drink?”
Luke gave her feminine display the once-over. When he was a young stud new to the force and during the two years since he’d last seen Rachel, this woman’s barely veiled invitation would have called out to his male libido, but not since Rachel had come back into his life. Since the moment he’d first seen her at headquarters, his head was filled with his ex-wife and that left no room for contemplation of a quick roll in the hay with someone else. He turned away and motioned for the bartender to give the woman whatever she wanted to drink.
A few minutes later, the man behind the bar set a frothy, pink drink in a Manhattan glass in front of her. Instantly Luke thought about Rachel and her favorite drink, gin and tonic. No frills. No pretense. Just like the woman. Suddenly, the all-but-nonexistent interest he’d had in the woman diminished to minus zero, replaced by a soul-deep need for Rachel. Would he ever be able to think of her without that excruciating pain of loss filling him?
“You alone?”
Luke shook his head. “I’m taken,” he said, and flashed the ring on the third finger of his right hand, the thin, gold band he’d never been able to bring himself to take off completely.
“Wrong hand,” the blonde said, her voice a low purr, her smile seductive and full of unspoken promises.
“I never could tell left from right,” Luke said, then downed the last of the scotch and flipped some bills on the bar. “I’m still taken.” And probably always will be, he added to himself.
The blonde looked around. “So, where is she?”
He tapped a finger over the left side of his chest. “In here.” Then he left the bar.
Outside, he stood on the sidewalk and looked absently up and down the street. The deafening music coming from the bar followed him. He glanced back at the open door and could see the baffled woman at the bar staring at him. He saluted her. She frowned, made a rude hand gesture and turned away.
He probably should have warned her that drinks didn’t always come with promises. Hell, little in life did. She’d read more than she should have into a friendly gesture. He could have lied to her, but he hadn’t. Rachel was in his heart, as much a part of him as his skin, and had been from the first day he’d seen her with soot on her nose and a determination in her expression that defied explanation. Ever since that day, there hadn’t been a night or a day he hadn’t thought about her, longed for her, pained for her.
He thought about her at the fire tonight, how scared she’d been, how tortured, and had a sudden need to affirm that she was okay. As he walked toward his car, he obeyed the longing churning inside him and reached for his cell phone, then punched in the numbers he’d memorized off the paper A.J. had given him and pressed it to his ear.
“Hello.”
At the sound of his ex-wife’s voice, a familiar band of pain tightened around his heart. He forced a lightness into his voice he was far from feeling. “Hey, Rachel. Hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No. I was just going over the files.” Silence. “What did you want?”
“Just to let you know I can meet you at the scene tomorrow around eight. I’ll bring the coffee.” He waited. “Is that okay?”
“Fine.” She sounded preoccupied.
He swallowed. Damn! He didn’t want to tell her this, but she’d find out anyway. “Rach, they found another woman in tonight’s fire.”
Rachel remained silent for a moment or two, then said, “Damn.”
“A.J.’ll give you the details tomorrow after we check out the scene.” He blew out a long breath. “I’ll let you get back to work.” While he climbed into his car, he continued to hold the phone to his ear, reluctant to break even this tenuous connection. “So…see you then.”
“Luke?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for…for being there tonight.”
“No problem.” He wanted to add I’ll always be there, but he knew she had no reason to believe such a promise, coming from him.
Silence.
“’Night.” The connection went dead.
“Dream of me,” he murmured into the car’s dark interior. It was what they’d said to each other every night before dropping off to sleep. It was what he still whispered into the darkness every night from his lonely bed.
He folded the phone and tossed it into the passenger seat. For a long moment, he stared down at the phone, then gripped the steering wheel and rested his forehead against his hands.
He’d lost his precious Maggie to this sick criminal. In his gut, he knew he could lose Rachel, too, if he didn’t find a way to protect her from herself. But how did you protect someone who didn’t want to be protected? Whose pride was so ironclad, it would take the Jaws of Life to get through it?
The next morning, at precisely eight o’clock, Rachel pulled up her rented Chevy Malibu outside the previous night’s fire scene. She refused to give Luke any reason to think she was letting her emotions rule her head. Digging through the burned rubble would be another first for her, another step back into her past, but she’d spent most of last night preparing for it and was determined to do it without any hitches.
She powered down the car window, then shut off the engine. The pungent yet familiar smell of wet, burned wood drifted to her on the humid morning air. A smell she’d never gotten completely out of her nostrils or her blood.
Leaning back, she sipped the coffee she’d picked up at the 7-Eleven and watched a handful of firefighters securing the scene and stamping out flare-ups, their soiled yellow helmets and slickers standing out against the black debris. Their sluggish movements told her they’d pulled an all-nighter, and they were badly in need of sack time.
She checked her watch. Eight-fifteen. Luke, always the prompt one of the two of them, had obviously decided to play with her head. He probably hoped that, if he took long enough, she’d give up and leave, not having the wherewithal to go into the scene alone.
She smiled. Not a chance.
Rachel finished the coffee, put her empty cup in the cup holder, then slipped from the car, making sure to grab the notepad, the pen and the camera she’d brought with her.
As she approached the ruins, firefighter Samantha Ellis came around the side of the fire truck. Rachel and Sam had been friends ever since they’d been the only females in their class of rookie firefighters. When Rachel had left the company to take the ATF arson investigators training program, she’d wanted Sam to come, too, but Sam had been happy to keep hauling hoses, and the lieutenant’s insignia on Sam’s helmet told Rachel she’d done well.
Over the past two years, Rachel had lost touch with Sam, as she had with most of the people who reminded her of the past.
Sam came toward her, her face set, a stern warning to stay out of the scene hovering on her lips, then recognition washed over her expression.
“Rachel?” Her face broke into a broad grin. “Great to see you.” Then she paused, a frown knitting her forehead. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi, Sam. Chief Branson invited me to your…uh…party.” She surveyed their surroundings with a critical eye.
Sam cast a quick glance toward the ruins. “Yeah, we’ve been having a lot of these parties lately.”
“So I’m told.” Rachel smiled. “Can you loan me some of your turnout gear so I can get started?”
“Sure thing.” Sam went to the standby truck and hauled out a helmet, a small shovel, one of the cumbersome jackets and a pair of boots.
Rachel took them, put the jacket aside, then sat on the running board of the truck to exchange her sneakers for the heavy rubber boots. After she’d slipped into the boots, she smiled up at Sam. “I’d forgotten how these things make you feel like you’re wearing your big sister’s clothes.” She stood and grabbed the jacket. “Did you find any trace of an accelerant in there?”
“We won’t know until the lab confirms it for sure, but my guess is this torch’s choice of fire starter was regulation, backyard charcoal lighter.” Sam gave Rachel’s clothes the once-over. “Better put on the slicker. You’ll trash your clothes in there.”
Rachel glanced down at her jeans and snowy-white T-shirt. Then, grinning at Sam, she plopped the helmet on her chestnut curls and shrugged. Having second thoughts, she glanced at the slicker. “These things always made me feel like I had a two-thousand-pound elephant sitting on my back.”
Sam sighed tiredly, but managed a grin. “Try carrying it around for eighteen hours.”
As she donned the weighty slicker, Rachel noted that Sam’s back was slumped with fatigue. Dark smudges rimmed her red eyes. Black soot encrusted the woman’s fatigue-lined face.
Under all that grime, it was hard to tell that Sam had once been a Miss Florida finalist. Rachel had never understood why Sam always played down her looks, no makeup, no salon hairdo. Even more, Rachel had wondered why she’d picked firefighting as a career. She’d asked once, but Sam had danced around the subject with all the expertise of a prima ballerina. Sam’s blatant avoidance convinced Rachel the subject should be left alone until Sam decided she wanted to discuss it.
“You’ll need these, too.” Sam handed Rachel a pair of latex gloves, then started toward what was left of the house.
Hauling on the gloves, Rachel sloshed through the wet grass behind Sam. The closer they got to the burned-out structure, the stronger the smell of burned wood and man-made fibers became. Her stomach churned.
Rachel stiffened and reminded herself sternly that she had a job to do. As she prepared to enter the house, determination cloaked any misgivings left over from the previous night.
“We’re about done in here,” Sam told her as she guided her through the opening where a front door once hung. “Fire’s out. Most everything that could burn did, except the woman they took to the morgue about eight hours ago. The closet door was closed—”
“Closed? It was always open with the others.”
“We figure the wind currents from the fire either closed it or it swung closed on its own. I doubt our torch did it. This sicko wants these women to see what’s coming for them.”
Rachel had blanked her actual experience of her apartment fire out of her memory. The doctors called it voluntary amnesia. Whatever it was, until this very moment, Rachel’d had no recollection of the actual fire. Now, as if someone turned a movie projector on and off quickly, a quick flash of the fire eating away at her bedding while she watched it from the floor of her closet, helpless and certain her death was imminent, passed through her mind. Though bits of the panic she’d felt that night and a tiny bit of residual memory remained behind, the image was gone before her mind could register all of it.
Sam continued to brief her while Rachel fought off emotions from scattered memories of the worst night of her life. She pushed them aside. Later. She’d think about it later.
“Just like the other fires, the only thing that managed to survive with just water and smoke damage was the kid’s room. A.J. asked that no evidence be gathered until you saw it, so it’s all just as we found it.” She stepped over a fallen ceiling beam. “At first, we thought this one was different, just a house fire, then we found the woman in the bedroom closet, tied up with lamp cord, a Bible tucked under her.” Sam shook her head. “Freaking sicko.”
A half hour later, Rachel was squatting in front of the closet. On the floor, a partially unburned area told her where the woman had been lying. Next to that lay the Bible, wet, but, having been sheltered by the woman’s body, untouched by the fire. She leafed through the first few pages of the book, observing that the copyright date and the publisher matched those listed in the notes she had back at the condo.
The odor of charcoal lighter still hung heavy in the room. Sam had always been teased that she could outsniff any arson dog, and it seemed she hadn’t lost her touch for identifying an accelerant.
Standing, Rachel examined the room. Almost twenty minutes passed before her gaze fastened on what she’d been looking for—the point of origin. A black V started a few inches above the baseboard. The wood strip along the wall looked like the blackened skin of an alligator. The pattern splayed out and up on the wall opposite the closet, and the smell of charcoal lighter was much stronger here.
She glanced back at the closet and shuddered. The cold bastard had set the fire and, judging by the severe burn damage on the inside of the door, left the door open. With her hands tied behind her, he’d left the victim as helpless as a turtle on its back to watch the flames coming to get her. Just like he’d left Rachel. She shuddered but refused to allow her emotions to dampen her resolve to get this job done.
Rachel swung the door closed. The outside was burned, but not nearly as badly as the inside. Sam’s conclusions were probably right. The wind currents created by the fire had closed it, but too late to save the woman’s life. Methodically, Rachel snapped photos of the inside and outside of the closet, both sides of the door, the Bible, and the point of origin.
“Still have a problem obeying orders, I see.”
Luke’s deep voice sent shivers down Rachel’s spine. She jumped, nearly dropping the camera, then spun toward him. “You’re late.”
“You didn’t wait for me.” He strolled past her to look in the closet. “Here’s your coffee,” he said, holding out one of two cups he’d brought with him.
Grateful that he’d remembered and ready for a second dose of caffeine, she took it and flipped off the plastic lid. The smell of hot coffee wafted up to Rachel. Cautiously, she sipped the steaming liquid.
“Is it okay?”
Oddly enough, it was more than okay. “It’s perfect,” she said. “I’m surprised you remembered how I take it.”
“One sugar and a drop of milk,” he recited, then frowned. “I always wondered what difference that drop of milk made.”
Rachel set the cup on the edge of the charred dresser. “It’s an appeasement.”
He frowned. “A what?”
“Appeasement. When I was about sixteen, I started drinking coffee, and my mother said only men drank black coffee, so the drop of milk was an—”
“Appeasement,” he finished for her, then laughed.
It had a been a long time since she’d heard Luke really laugh. The sound sent ripples of pleasure shimmering through Rachel.
“Kind of like me suffering through those chick flicks you loved when I would have rather been watching James Bond.” He grinned. “But there were compensations.”
His words brought to mind what usually happened after they sat through one of those romantic movies. Usually a shower together, soap-slick bodies rubbing against each other, kisses heating blood to boiling, then a quick rush to the bed, if they could make it that far, then—
She glanced at Luke. He was studying her silently. This conservation was getting way too personal for her comfort. She tore her gaze away and dived into relating what she’d found so far.
“Point of origin.” She pointed at the baseboard. “Your torch used charcoal lighter.”
“Charcoal lighter, huh? Well, he’s consistent. Same accelerant used at each scene.”
She nodded. “But he brings the Bible with him. It’s the same copyright and publisher as the others they found. Can’t be a coincidence. Probably symbolic of bringing God into the lives of his victims.”
“Why in there?” Luke motioned toward the empty closet.
Rachel stopped in the process of turning over a charred shoe with the point of the shovel. “I’m not sure yet, but offhand I’d say it plays a significant part in the religious fire ritual.”
Luke ran his fingers through his mane of black curls. “The religious fanatics are always the hardest to nail down.”
“Not necessarily a fanatic, but don’t rule it out. This is definitely someone with strong religious ties. This guy has it in his twisted mind that he’s carrying out some kind of holy punishment. Question is, what? And why these particular women?” And why include me in the count? “There must be something these women had in common beyond being single mothers, alone at night. When we figure that out, we’ll be on our way to catching whoever it is. I’d like to meet with the task force tomorrow.”
“No need.”
She started and turned to him. “I disagree. I need to meet with them ASAP.”
Luke leveled a stare at her. “You won’t be here.”
She knew in her gut what he was about to say. “What the hell is your problem, Luke? Why do you keep telling me to go home?”
“Dammit, Rachel. I won’t let you do this.”
“You won’t let…” She laughed. “Why this sudden concern about me?” When he didn’t answer, she planted her hands on her hips and faced him squarely. “Let’s get this out of the way so I can get on with my job. Do I threaten your—”
Before she could finish, Luke took a step forward and grabbed her arm with his free hand. “I know what this is going to resurrect for you, and I don’t want to put you through it.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve given you enough to bear.”
Rachel frowned. The words were spoken so softly, she could barely hear them. That’s the closest he’d ever come to admitting he’d destroyed their marriage. But she didn’t want to discuss it. Not now. Maybe not ever. “We’ve been through all this. Bottom line is, A.J. wants me here, and I want to be here. End of story.”
“Then you plan on seeing this through?”
“Come hell, high water or Luke Sutherland,” she said.
Moments later, Luke watched Rachel drive off. No matter how much she denied it, he was certain this whole thing was ripping her gut apart a piece at a time. He wondered how long she’d be able to stand up to it.
Logically, he knew if they were going to nail this bastard, she was their best hope. He’d never met another investigator who could profile an arsonist the way she could. She seemed to have an inborn sense that led her to the torch, a way of putting herself in their heads. But this time was different from all the rest. This time she had a personal stake in finding the arsonist. Which was exactly why he worried that she was not emotionally equipped to see the job through without falling apart.
The Rachel he’d married had been strong, but that was before they’d lost Maggie. Afterward, he’d been so buried in his own guilt, he hadn’t seen her falling apart until it was too late. By then, he was trying to hold the pieces of himself together. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
The flaw in Rachel’s armor had always been her pride. She took pride in her work and pride in her abilities. And this time, if he didn’t find a way to stop her, that same pride could very well lead her into a place from which he’d never be able to bring her back.
Chapter 3
After leaving Luke, Rachel decided she could use some downtime, free from reminders of arsonists or Luke Sutherland, before going home to pore over case files again. What she needed, she decided, was a relaxing cup of coffee, with no one to bother her.
The smell of smoke still clung to her hair and skin. Though she’d worn the protective gear Sam had given her, a few black smudges of soot had managed to find their way onto her jeans. Oddly, she didn’t care. In fact, it brought with it a sense of having come home.
Determined to find the solitude she sought, she pulled into a parking space in front of the Latte Factory, a quaint little coffee shop nestled in a strip mall between a supermarket and a toy store, two blocks from her condo.
Purposefully, she turned off the engine, then switched off her cell phone, locked the car and headed for the front door.
She had barely settled at one of the wooden trestle tables facing the rest of the shop when Luke’s face appeared in her mind as clear as if he were sitting across from her. So much for forgetting. Instead of pushing the images away as she normally did, she allowed them to remain, to study him without him making assumptions about her inquisitiveness.
Time seemed to have ignored his craggy features and mesmerizing brown eyes. He had the same devil-may-care look about him as he’d had the day they’d met. Her heart had stopped then, just as it threatened to do now. Why couldn’t she look at him dispassionately, as she would any man on the street? Why did he have this tantalizing effect on her? The very last thing she wanted was to be affected by him in any way, and certainly not with the growing need she felt at each meeting.
She closed her eyes tight to erase his image.
“May I help you?”
Rachel jumped. Her eyes flew open.
A young waitress dressed in a cute French peasant’s outfit, the flouncy skirt short enough to be dangerous to bend over in and a name tag that proclaimed her to be Nina, stood beside her table and grinned down at her. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No problem. I was just daydreaming.” Day-nightmaring was more like it.
“What can I get for you?”
“A café au lait, please.”
“Foam or whipped cream?”
Though Rachel knew she could use a few calories to help replace the ten or so pounds she’d lost after Maggie’s kidnapping and never gained back, right now, after inhaling smoke all day, the idea of the sweet cream didn’t sit well with her empty stomach.
Rachel shook her head. “Foam, please.”
“You got it,” Nina said, and hurried back behind the counter.
Rachel glanced around the shop. The interior was warm and decorated to resemble an outside patio in the French countryside. Silk roses and plastic bunches of grapes hung from the fake-brick walls. Trestle tables nestled behind dividers that looked like garden planters, overflowing with greenery. The fragrant aroma of freshly ground coffee beans perfumed the air, along with the smell of the croissants that a sign proclaimed were baked on the premises. Next to it hung a picture of a mountain range advertising gourmet coffee.
Four other customers occupied the room. Two women sat at separate tables, both sipping large coffees. One of them had her head bent over a magazine, her long, chestnut hair falling forward to conceal most of her face. The other, a pretty, middle-aged blonde, stared out the large, plate-glass window, her expression vacant. A man sat in a corner pounding away on the keyboard of a small laptop and another man sat at the counter, his large beefy arms folded across his barrel chest, his gaze on Rachel.
Something about the way he locked his gaze with hers made Rachel cringe. Hoping to communicate her lack of interest, she quickly looked away.
It took a few moments before the unmistakable crawling sensation on her neck told her the man had not gotten the message. From the corner of her eye, she checked to see if she was right or just being paranoid. She was right. She twisted uncomfortably in the seat, turning half away from the counter and his piercing gaze.
Absently, she watched a gang of teenage boys pass in front of the window. One of the boys wiped a half-eaten apple over the hood of the car parked beside Rachel’s. She shook her head.
Nina returned with Rachel’s café au lait and placed the bill on the corner of the table. She reached for the slip of paper and in doing so was able to once more check on the man at the counter. He was still looking in her direction, his expression communicating his unmistakable interest.
For a time, Rachel stared at her coffee cup, absently tracing the logo of mountains with a coffee bean superimposed over it with the tip of her nail, hoping that if she ignored him, he’d lose interest. When she could stand it no longer, she glanced up to find him still staring at her. Just before she averted her gaze, she noted his sweeping inventory of her body. The jerk was trying to hit on her. A creepy chill shivered up her spine.
Unable to stand his appraisal any longer, she grabbed the bill and her coffee mug and made her way to the cash register. After Nina had transferred her coffee to a to-go cup, she paid her bill, then went to the ladies’ room to splash cold water on her face. Feeling more relaxed, she made her way back to the front section of the shop, noting as she did that everyone had left, except for the waitress washing cups behind the counter.
A relieved sigh escaped her. She was not normally a paranoid person, but there was something about that guy that made her skin crawl.
As she exited, the tiny bell over the door jingled. She walked toward her car and saw that a piece of paper had been tucked under the windshield wiper. Probably an advertisement for a local business.
Taking out her keys, she leaned over the hood and pulled the paper free, then unlocked the car and climbed inside. About to lay the advertisement on the passenger seat, she stopped dead. This was no advertisement. The letters on the paper were handwritten.
Leeve now…while you still can!
The misspelled words and the undisciplined scrawl shouted kid. The teenagers she’d seen with the apple maybe? They’d think something like this was very funny.
Tearing her gaze from the message, she twisted first left then right, checking every corner of the lot for any sign of them. If this was their idea of a joke, it was not funny and in her present mood, she was just the one to explain that to them.
Her hand had automatically gone to the pendant hanging outside her T-shirt. As she fingered the gold disk, her gaze swept the lot once more. No sign of the teens.
Grabbing her keys from the ignition, she got out of the car and went back into the coffee shop. The waitress looked up as the tiny bell announced Rachel’s arrival.
Nina smiled broadly. “Hi again. Forget something?”
“No. I was wondering if you saw anyone near my car while I was in the restroom.” Rachel pointed to her parked car.
Nina looked where Rachel pointed, then shook her head. “Nope. Sorry. I was washing dishes. Is there something wrong?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong. Thanks.” No sense getting the girl upset over what was probably a kid’s prank. Rachel turned to go, then stopped and swung back to face the girl. “That man who was sitting here at the end of the counter. Do you know him?”
The waitress shuddered and curled her nose as if she smelled something offensive. “Freaky, isn’t he? I’ve seen him go into that rooming house down the block from here. Mabel’s B&B, I think it’s called. I wish he’d find another place to get his coffee. He comes in here every afternoon and really creeps me out.”
Mabel’s was right across the street from where Rachel was staying. With that realization the chills returned, this time raising gooseflesh on her arms. Great! Just what she needed, a voyeur virtually living on her doorstep. She made a mental note to make sure her blinds were closed.
“Should I be worried?”
Nina shook her head, her long brown hair swishing across her shoulders. “No, I don’t think so. He’s never said anything to me except ‘Coffee, black.’ I think he’s just a looker who gets his kicks checking out all the ladies.”
Having worked with the police for a lot of years, Rachel knew the type well. They weren’t breaking any laws, but they made their share of women very uncomfortable.
“Thanks,” she said, and headed back to the car.
Before getting into the driver’s seat, she slid the note into her briefcase. Since Luke would use any excuse to be rid of her, he didn’t need to know about this. He’d have her on Interstate 95 heading back to Atlanta before she could freshen her lipstick. And that was not going to happen just because some kids thought it would be funny to rattle her.
She drove the short distance to her condo, got out and locked the car. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted a newer-model, green sedan had pulled into a space a little way away from her. No driver emerged from the car. Rachel shrugged and headed for the condo complex’s front door. As she was closing the door, the green sedan backed up and left the parking area.
Showered and shampooed, Rachel stretched out on the couch with her notes from last night’s fire. She’d barely gotten started when a knock sounded on the door.
Preoccupied with her thoughts, notes still clutched in her hand, she continued reading them as she wandered to the door and opened it.
Luke shifted one of the three large, white bags he held marked Wong’s Market. “Bad habit, not finding out who’s on the other side of your door before opening it.”
After the incident at the Latte Factory earlier, she couldn’t agree more, but she would never admit it to him. Then again, had she known it was him, she would have played possum and hoped he’d think she wasn’t home.
“Wouldn’t have worked,” he said, his lips curling in a heart-stopping smile. “I saw your car.”
That he still had the ability to guess what she was thinking before she said it unnerved her so much, she could only watch helplessly as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
By the time she’d recovered, Luke was in the kitchen unloading the bags. She joined him and began inspecting the items he’d lined up on the counter: boneless chicken breasts, soy sauce, sesame seeds, rice, broccoli, scallions.
“What’s all this?” She picked up a bottle of wine and read the label. White zinfandel. Her favorite.
“From experience, I know that eating alone is not all it’s cracked up to be, so I thought, why not eat together?” He grinned at her. “Get out the wok. You can stir-fry and I’ll chop.” When she didn’t move, he said, “You do have a wok, don’t you?”
Rachel shook herself loose of the web of his smile. “I…I don’t know. I have no idea what A.J. keeps around here.” She turned to the bank of floor-to-ceiling cabinets. “I’ve either been eating out or having something delivered.”
“Or not eating at all,” he added, doing a once-over of her body. “You’ve lost weight, Rach. You need a little more meat on those gorgeous bones of yours.”
His words brought on an involuntary shiver of awareness. God, she didn’t want him here, didn’t want to feel anything for him, didn’t want to react to his charm, his smile, his voice. But what her head wanted and what her body wanted seemed to be on opposing sides.
With an effort, she tamped down the wave of excitement building inside her, then covered it with an indignant huff. “I don’t see how my weight or my eating habits should concern you,” she snapped coldly.
He studied her for a moment, then turned back to cutting the boneless chicken breasts into narrow strips, but not before she noted the flash of pain resulting from her sharp tone and thoughtless words.
“It does when you’re working for me, and I need you to be one hundred percent on,” he finally said, his tone low and controlled.
She had lost weight. She was not eating well, and she’d noticed the difference in her stamina.
Damn! She hated when he was right.
Throwing a scathing glare at his back, she began searching the cabinets for a wok. Three cabinets and a lot of noisy banging of pots and pans later, she found one hiding under a colander.
When she spun around to place it on the stove, she almost ran straight into Luke’s wide, hard chest. Her pulse picked up speed. Her senses swirled like fallen leaves caught in an autumn wind. Slowly, she raised her head to find him staring down at her, his eyes filled with desire.
Before she could do something she’d live to regret, she moved quickly to one side in an effort to put space between them and lost her balance. He grasped her upper arms. A current of acute sexual tension shivered over her.
“This isn’t going to work,” she mumbled, referring to the limited space of the small kitchen. Her blue-eyed gaze lifted to lock with Luke’s.
Acutely aware of her silky skin against his palms, Luke had to fight to keep a coherent thought in his brain. “It will if we give it a chance,” he said, unsure if he meant the cooking arrangement or something neither of them seemed ready to address.
To avoid the off-limits thoughts chasing around his mind, Luke let her go, then surveyed the cramped kitchen. “I’ll move to the other side of the counter. You stay here and man the stove.” Quickly, he gathered the vegetables, meat, chopping board and knife and scooted around to the other side.
He’d just started working on the scallions, when the sound of the wok dropping against the glass cooktop drew his attention.
“Slipped,” Rachel said with a sheepish grin.
A wave of intense longing crashed over him. If this had been two years ago, that grin would have ignited a delay in supper and a quick trip to the bedroom. Food would have been forgotten.
But it wasn’t two years ago. It was here and now, and all they had between them was a tenuous, barely civil working relationship. He knew, better than anyone, that the chances of Rachel and him finding what they’d lost were zero to nothing.
As if this admission had opened a floodgate in his mind, the guilt and second guesses poured in. What if he’d handled Maggie’s disappearance better? What if he’d tried to understand more of what Rachel had been going through? What if, when Maggie had been declared probably deceased, instead of pulling away, he’d gathered Rachel to him and they’d lived out their grief together?
And the biggie… What if he hadn’t decided to work overtime that night and had been home where he should have been, protecting his family?
Luke had been beating himself up for two long years over the bad decisions he’d made, but none more than working that night. Rachel’s birthday had been a few weeks away, and he’d wanted to get some overtime in to take her to the Bahamas on the honeymoon they’d never had. As a result of his decision, a stranger had invaded their home, set fire to it, nearly burned Rachel alive and snatched Maggie.
Anger, hot and destructive as a raging forest fire, seared through him. His hand tightened on the handle of the knife. He sliced through the meat as if it were the throat of the person who had stolen their daughter and shattered their happiness.
Not until he heard Rachel’s gasp and looked down at where her gaze was fixed, did he realize that he’d cut his finger. She rushed around the counter and took his hand.
“Come with me, and we’ll get it cleaned out and bandaged.”
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Elizabeth Sinclair
The hypnotic flames pulled at her, urging her forward. But she couldn’t move.
She strained against the pressure of hands encircling her arms. Never taking her gaze from the inferno, Rachel pried frantically at the vise grip. The pain of reliving this nightmare became more than she could bear.
Maggie. Gotta save Maggie.
She had to block out the images.
She felt herself being shaken. “Rachel!” Luke’s stern voice catapulted her back to reality. “Let it go!”
Mentally she clawed her way out of the past. Slowly, very slowly, she relaxed. For a long moment she stared at him, trying to rationalize where he’d come from. Then she saw his eyes. Reflected there was regret, pain and something else she couldn’t name.
She pressed her face into his chest. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed his strength. His arms felt so right, so safe, so secure. His closeness blocked out the memories of the nightmare. If only they’d shared this comfort back then….
Dear Reader,
As a child, my favorite part of the Memorial Day Parade in our small town was always the firemen and the shiny, red fire trucks. I came from a firefighter family and then I married into one. Among my favorite movies are Backdraft and Ladder 49. Then there was 9/11 and the tragic loss of so many brave men…. Do you see where this is all leading? Writing a book about firemen was inevitable for me.
But Baptism in Fire is not only about firemen. It also addresses a subject that has, unfortunately, become a problem of major proportions in my home state of Florida and around the country: the abduction of children. Being a mother and a grandmother, this was the hardest part of the book to write, but a part that my heart told me I had to address.
I hope you enjoy the journey.
Blessings,
Elizabeth Sinclair
Baptism in Fire
Elizabeth Sinclair
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ELIZABETH SINCLAIR
In 1988, Elizabeth’s husband, Bob, dragged her kicking and screaming from her birthplace, the scenic Hudson Valley of upstate New York, to historic St. Augustine, Florida. It took her about three seconds to stop struggling and to fall deeply in love with her adopted hometown. Shortly after their move, at 3:47 p.m. on August 3, 1992, she sold her first romance, Jenny’s Castle, to Silhouette Intimate Moments
.
Despite the fact that she used to spend hours in the kitchen cooking big meals, Elizabeth’s husband, her most ardent supporter, has learned to enjoy hot dogs and delivery pizza as much as he used to enjoy spaghetti sauce from scratch. Oh, and he no longer complains about all the books she spends money on. Bob and Elizabeth have three children, four lovely grandchildren, a rambunctious sheltie, Ripley, and an affectionate adopted beagle, Sammi Girl, they found abandoned along the roadside and took into their home.
For more about Elizabeth, visit her Web site at www.elizabethsinclair.com.
In loving memory of my dad, Preston Charles Ronk,
a thirty-five-year member of the
Walden Hook & Ladder Fire Company, Walden, NY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would be remiss if I did not express my deepest gratitude to the three men who helped me delve through the world of firefighting and fire forensics and kept me on the authenticity track. Any mistakes or misrepresentations should be attributed to the author.
Ed Sulkowski, Operations Analyst, IFF South Brunswick, has been a fireman for over twenty years with the Highlands Fire Department in Highlands, New Jersey. He is trained in arson investigation, extrusion and fire prevention as well as standard firefighting techniques, and is a member of the ambient IFF industrial firefighters squad.
Wallace Arthur Lind, Senior Crime Scene Analyst (retired), was a police crime scene investigator for seventeen years. In October 1992, he was certified by the International Association for Identification as a Senior Crime Scene Analyst and has processed over 2,000 crime scenes, including homicides; about 1,500 scenes as the lead crime scene investigator; testified as an expert witness in crime scene investigation, bloodstain pattern analysis and scene reconstruction; and trained others in the field.
Dr. Harry R. Carter, a thirty-eight-year veteran in fire and emergency service, is a municipal fire protection consultant, educator and motivational speaker who holds degrees in fire service administration, public policy analysis, fire safety administration, the social sciences and business administration. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Fire Commissioners for Howell Township Fire District #2, and is a longtime contributing editor for Firehouse magazine and the Pennsylvania Fireman. He has authored seven books and more than 1,200 magazine, Web and journal articles.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Prologue
“I’d rather go through root canal without Novocain than go back to Florida,” Rachel Lansing said fiercely into the phone. She was unable to believe that a man who professed to be her friend was asking this of her. He knew why she’d left.
“Rachel,” A.J. Branson, the Orange Grove Police Department’s chief of detectives, sighed. “I know I’m asking a lot—”
“A lot? You have no idea.” She swallowed hard and fought for a long time to push back hellish memories of another place, another time, another life. A life she’d believed perfect until— “A.J., I left Orange Grove to put that part of my life to rest, not to mention save my sanity. I have a new life here in Atlanta. Why would I come back?”
“Because this involves kids,” A.J. said simply. “No one I know loves kids more than you do and no one I know can profile an arsonist like you.”
Kids.
Maggie.
Damn him.
Rachel rose from the couch and paced her small Atlanta apartment’s living room. No! She massaged her forehead in an effort to push back the insistent memories rising from the darkest recesses of her mind. But even as she denied them admittance, images of her tall, handsome husband holding their blond little girl as she clutched her worn, patchwork teddy bear seeped into her mind.
Oh, God! Maggie… My sweet baby girl.
Pain sliced through her, nearly drawing her double. Her knees dipped, threatening to collapse completely. She gripped the arm of the couch and took a deep breath.
Her white-knuckled fingers pressed the cordless phone tightly to her ear. “Dammit, A.J., that was a low blow.”
“I’m sorry as I can be, Rachel, but in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m desperate.” A pause. “You know I wouldn’t ask you to put yourself through this if I didn’t think it was important.”
Why hadn’t she gone out for dinner instead of coming home? If she had, she would have missed A.J.’s call, missed him stirring up—
“There are other people qualified to do this. Why me?” She tried but failed to keep the anguish out of her voice.
Another pause, then he spoke again, his voice quiet, earnest and firm. “This bastard is about as elusive as any arsonist I’ve come up against. We’ve tried for six months to find the answers but we can’t. I need an arson profiler who knows the ropes. One who can climb inside the torch’s mind. That’s you.”
A long pause followed, during which Rachel remembered the exhilaration of the hunt, the adrenaline rush of piecing together elusive clues like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and the satisfaction of finally nailing the arsonist and putting him behind bars. Nothing in her present life could compare to the challenge of profiling, of learning the intricacies of how a criminal mind worked and then outthinking him.
All this reminiscing magnified just how much she hated her present job as a secretary in a construction company’s office.
However, given the choice, she’d take the boredom of ordering 2x4s any day to reliving the agony of waking up in the middle of the night to find her home going up in flames and her baby gone. When compared to the painful reminders of her only child being kidnapped and probably killed and a husband who no longer loved her, arrogant contractors were infinitely easier to cope with.
“I’m sorry, A.J. You’ll have to find yourself another profiler.”
“Are you sure?”
A pregnant pause followed his question. Was she sure? Could she turn her back on those kids? Could she step back in time and face everything she’d left behind, step back into a lifestyle filled with memories too brutal to bear? The pain in her heart answered for her.
“Yes. I’m sure,” she said, but even she knew her voice lacked conviction. “Find someone else.”
Another pause stretched Rachel’s nerves to the breaking point. A.J. exhaled a long breath, as if he’d made a decision that didn’t sit well with him. “I called you because I need someone with an investment in finding this bastard.”
She went stone still. Her fingers tightened on the phone. Sweat broke out on her forehead. “Investment?”
“I didn’t want to tell you this over the phone, but this recent series of arsons has some definite similarities to your apartment fire.”
An icy chill washed over her from head to toe. “My fire?” She wasn’t sure if she’d said it or thought it.
The line remained silent except for her accelerated breathing. Then A.J. cleared his throat as if removing a knot of emotion from it. That didn’t surprise her. Maggie’s kidnapping and the collapse of Rachel’s marriage to Luke had hit A.J. hard.
“There are a lot of similarities, Rachel. I think it’s the same arsonist, and I thought you’d want the privilege of helping to collar this creep.”
Chapter 1
One Monday morning, after a two-year absence, Rachel walked into the Orange Grove, Florida, police station with a stride that bespoke unmovable determination. If any of the workers knew her, they would have known that look and given her a wide path. But the faces following her progress into the lobby were those of strangers, and instead, they threw casual, unconcerned glances her way and then went back to work.
Rachel surveyed the surroundings and smiled to herself. Maybe the faces didn’t ring any bells, but everything else was familiar. The noise level still reminded her of a hive of worker bees, and no matter how hard the cleaning crew tried, the place still reeked of unwashed bodies, stale coffee and cheap floor wax. Forest-green plastic chairs that Rachel wouldn’t have given house room bordered one wall and held an assortment of handcuffed suspects awaiting booking. Probably the source of the body odor.
There had been a time when her job as arson investigator and profiler for Engine 108 and her marriage to Detective Luke Sutherland had brought her here on a fairly regular basis. Back then, she’d always regarded this place as a familiar presence in her life. Now she found herself experiencing a fish-out-of-water sensation.
What difference does it make? You’re here to do a job, then leave. You’re not here to win friends or settle in permanently.
Rachel walked to the desk and waited while the one familiar person in the room, Desk Sergeant Tony Antola, processed a prisoner being released on bail.
The idle time allowed suppressed doubts to resurface and undermine her resolve. Was she really ready for this? Was she about to jump in over her head emotionally? If she did, was she prepared to face the consequences?
She glanced longingly at the front door and thought about how easy it would be to just slip out, climb into her car and drive back to Georgia. Then images of children without moms, husbands without wives, lives torn to shreds by some crazy bastard who got his rocks off by playing with fire…and her darling little Maggie bombarded her conscience.
Could she handle it? At this very moment, she couldn’t answer that, but she knew she had to try, for all those lives and dreams that had gone up in smoke and for herself. She’d never be able to get back what she’d lost, but she’d deal with whatever came her way—one step at a time. For them, for herself and for Maggie.
When Tony finally turned to her, she smiled. “Hi, Tony.”
“Rachel!” His eyes widened. He smiled broadly, then seized her hand and pumped it with enthusiasm. “Damn, it’s good to see you back here.”
“Thanks.” She returned his smile and accepted his welcome without explaining that she wasn’t really back. “I’m here to see Captain Branson.”
“Sergeant.”
The one-word command came from Rachel’s left and hit her with all the force of a baseball bat being slammed into her middle. It had been eighteen months since she’d last heard it, but she knew that husky voice as surely as she did her own. The owner of that voice had whispered love words to her in the dark of night, read stories to their daughter and promised they would have forever together—then he’d walked out.
Stiffening her back, she turned. Despite her determination not to react, her breath caught in her throat.
Her ex-husband, Luke Sutherland, leaned one broad shoulder against the wall, arms crossed over his wide chest, his hands tucked out of sight beneath his muscular biceps. That purposeful, arrogant stance was also familiar to Rachel. She’d seen it many times, especially in the last six months of their marriage. He’d closed himself off, made it impossible for anyone to see beyond the stern facade he presented to the world. In short, he’d deserted her emotionally and finally physically as well.
That shouldn’t have surprised her. Everyone she’d ever cared about had let her down in one way or another: a father who’d left when she was an infant and a mother who’d shut down emotionally and died too young. It was why Rachel had become so good at her job. If you were the best, you didn’t have to depend on anyone for anything. Rachel had clung to that independence for years, then she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. She’d met Luke and trusted him to take care of her. In the end, he’d been no better than the two people who had given her life.
Rachel had hoped to never see him again, and now, here they were, face-to-face. She fought to control her breathing, to paint the picture of a calm, in-control woman.
Why hadn’t she prepared herself for this? She’d known she’d be running into him. After all, he worked here. Why hadn’t she thought of that? But she knew the answer. Catching the arsonist who’d taken Maggie and probably murdered her was all she’d been able to think about from the time A.J. had hung up the phone. Besides, Luke didn’t enter into this equation. She had come here for one purpose and one purpose only, and it was not to take up again with the man who had torn out her heart and left it to bleed empty.
Now a whole new set of questions flooded her mind. Had he known she would be coming back? Had A.J. lied to her and orchestrated this to get his two friends to reconcile? No. A.J. wouldn’t do that. It just wasn’t like him.
Rachel stared at Luke. Words deserted her. Probably because they’d said all they had to say to each other over the deposition table in her divorce lawyer’s office. But that didn’t mean that his presence didn’t spark her pulse to racing. If she hadn’t reacted to him at all, she hoped someone had ordered her casket, because surely she’d died. Once he entered a room, Luke was not the kind of man any healthy woman ignored, not even one who had dismissed him from her life months ago.
“Hello, Rachel.” His voice was deep, rich and had the effect of silk shimmering over her skin.
He seemed to fill the windowless room. Rachel took a deep breath, hoping to dispel the sudden smothering sensation his presence produced, despite the laboring hum of the AC. “Luke.”
He looked past her at Tony. “I’ll take Mrs. Sutherland in, Sergeant.” Without waiting for a reply, he took Rachel’s elbow, but she shrugged him off.
“Lansing. Ms. Lansing.” She stared straight ahead, then, when he made no reply, glanced sideways to see if he’d heard her.
One dark eyebrow was raised, but Luke neither looked at her nor said anything. He just led her down the long hall. They stopped in front of a door with a frosted-glass panel embossed with gold letters outlined in black that proclaimed this to be the office of Captain Austin J. Branson, Chief of Detectives.
Luke swung the door wide, and Rachel, careful not to touch him, stepped past him and into the office of the man who had been their closest friend and the best man at their wedding. “A.J.’s at a meeting. He’ll be back shortly.”
The room thickened with an uncomfortable silence. Her back to him, she felt him move to the side of the room. It surprised Rachel that she could still sense Luke’s every movement without looking at him. But, then again, the man did have a presence that permeated all corners of any room.
“What’re you doing here, Rachel?”
His question stunned her. She jerked around to look at him. “A.J. didn’t tell you I was coming?”
He shook his head. A lock of dark hair slid over his forehead. With a huff of impatience, he pushed it back. “No.”
Luke had propped his thigh on the corner of the desk. The bunched muscles beneath the denim fabric brought images to mind of watching him during his daily workout, when sweat coated his tanned body and…
She pushed the thoughts away with both hands.
His dark gaze traveled slowly from her chestnut hair to her gray suit, then downward to her tanned legs, remaining there for a tantalizing moment before moving back to her face. Insanely, she wished she’d worn panty hose.
“You’re looking good, Rachel. Georgia agrees with you.”
Fighting off the magnetic pull of his gaze, she dropped her briefcase to the floor, then slipped into the chair in front of the desk and pulled her skirt over her knees, effectively cutting short his appraisal.
He smiled knowingly. “You always did have legs that magnetized a man’s senses.”
She gripped her hands together in her lap to cover their shaking. In an attempt to feed her suddenly starving lungs, she took a deep breath. What the hell was wrong with her? She was over him, over his charismatic ways, over falling victim to his pretty words. Nerves. It had to be nerves. After all, it wasn’t every day she embarked on a case that could lead her to the bastard who took Maggie.
Unwilling to prolong this conversation, she glared at him. “I didn’t come all this way to discuss my legs. You can leave. I don’t need you to babysit me. I’ll be fine until A.J. comes back.”
“I’ll wait,” he said and settled his back against the file cabinet beside the desk.
“Suit yourself,” she said, then picked up her briefcase and opened it. She glanced at Luke, then quickly averted her gaze to a handful of papers she’d extracted from the open case and attempted to read them. The words swam across the bright white paper. If he would just leave or, at the very least, stop staring at her.
Luke drank in the sight of his former wife. It had been so long. Why was she here? A.J. hadn’t mentioned that he’d been expecting her. Had she somehow heard about the arson case they’d been working on and come to offer her help?
If she had, she had a big surprise coming her way. As head of the task force investigating the arsons, he would never agree to having her join the team and, knowing what kind of emotional strain it would put on her, A.J. would never take her up on it. Both he and A.J. knew that Rachel was one of the best arson profilers in the business, but there were too many emotional ties connected to this case, ties she didn’t need tearing her apart. So, back to his original question. Why was she here?
She pushed her hair from her face and the light reflected off something at the open neck of her blouse. He waited for a better look, and when she straightened for a second, he saw it. The Oriental necklace he’d given her the week before Maggie was—
He broke the thought off abruptly before it had time to fully form. The last thing he needed right now was to be distracted by the guilt that seemed to ride his back and eat at his belly daily.
The gold necklace winked at him. Given that Rachel had done all she could to cut him out of her life—not that he blamed her—that she was still wearing it shocked him.
His gaze strayed from the necklace to the creamy white skin of her throat, then up to her face. God, she was beautiful. Could have been a model. But she chose to dig through the charred ruins of buildings and the sick minds that started the fires.
Luke drew in a deep breath to steady his libido. A.J.’s office normally smelled of the occasional cigars he indulged in and various other stale odors, but since she’d walked in, he was aware only of the intoxicating scent of her perfume—a scent she had specially made for her, an odd combination of spices and honeysuckle. Seductive and earthy at once, and all Rachel. Despite his efforts, his groin tightened. His pulse quickened. His throat went dry.
How had he ever found the strength to walk away from Rachel? You found it because she didn’t need your guilt hanging around her neck like a dead albatross. She had her own problems to contend with, and her strength could only support one set of battered emotions. That she had made a new life for herself proved that. Didn’t it?
Before he could think about an answer, the door opened and A.J. stepped into the room. His assessing gaze flicked from Luke to Rachel.
Rachel smiled, understandably happy to see her old friend after so long. Older than them by five years, A.J. had Nordic blue eyes and blond good looks that turned the heads of some women, but Rachel had always said she preferred Luke’s dark hair and eyes. Still, when she offered his boss the smile Luke craved for himself, he felt the faint stirring of the green-eyed monster. What he wouldn’t have given to get that kind of greeting.
She stood and opened her arms. “Hi, A.J.”
“Rachel.” He engulfed her in a tight embrace, plastering her slight body against his physically fit, six-foot-plus frame. “It’s so good to see you. How have you been? It’s been way too long.”
Gasping for air, she pushed at his broad chest. “I was fine until you did surgery on my rib cage with your belt buckle.”
“Sorry.” He laughed, then released her immediately. “So, what brings you here?”
Mouth agape, she frowned, then stared first at A.J., then at Luke. “I—”
Luke read the look of puzzlement on Rachel’s face. Suddenly, the reason for her presence struck him square in the gut. “Son of a—” Luke rolled to his feet. “Can the act, A.J. I may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I’m not stupid. You asked her to come, didn’t you?”
A.J. shrugged and looked for all the world like a child who had gotten caught drawing on the living-room wall. “Okay, I called her and asked her to consult on the serial arsonist we’ve been tracking. She said she’d think about it, so I wasn’t sure if she was coming or not. Until she made up her mind, I figured I’d keep my mouth shut for a change. I was afraid if I told you, you’d raise hell.”
“You got that right.” Luke glared at A.J. While his nerves screwed up into tight knots, something akin to panic began forming a ball inside him. He took a step toward his boss. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“Now, wait just a minute, Luke. I’m a big girl and I had the option of saying no.” Rachel looked him in the eye, her face grim, her lips set in a tight line. “Luke, I need to do this.”
Luke looked from her to A.J., well aware of A.J.’s ability to talk the leaves off a tree, if the need arose. “Like I’m supposed to believe he didn’t pressure you into this.” Luke stared at her, his jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached. “You need to get out of here and go back to Atlanta,” he growled, his gaze locked with Rachel’s.
His attitude puzzled Rachel. He knew she was a damn good profiler. Why this sudden need to send her packing? It certainly couldn’t be because he had any concerns about her personally. The day he’d packed his clothes and walked out of their apartment, he’d given up any right to a say in her life.
“I’m here, and it’s a done deal.” She snapped her briefcase closed with a decisive click, then turned to A.J. “Can we get started?”
A.J. sighed, his tense expression melting into one of relief. “How long before you have to get back to Atlanta?”
Ignoring Luke’s reproachful scrutiny and his presence in the small office as best she could, she said, “I have two weeks of vacation time, so we’d better get to it.” Rachel took a pad from her briefcase and clipped a pencil from A.J.’s desk. “Tell me about the fires.”
Transforming from concerned friend to hard-nosed cop, A.J. glanced at Luke, then took his place behind the desk. He motioned for Luke to sit in the chair beside Rachel. When he didn’t, she glanced around.
“I’ll stand, thanks.” Luke leaned against the gray file cabinet, which, when she turned to face A.J., would put him just out of her range of vision. His arms were crossed, his flinty gaze silently castigating A.J.
Did his hardened expression mean that he was pissed because A.J. had brought in outside help? Or was it because the outside help was Rachel?
It didn’t matter. Either way, she was here and, like it or not, he’d have to learn to live with it.
A.J. waved a dismissive hand at Luke. “Suit yourself.” He opened a file folder and began. “In a nutshell, the three victims are women, one separated and two divorced, single moms living alone, ages twenty-eight to thirty, small children. Two blondes, one brunette. The fires were set at night and when each victim was alone. The kids were with relatives or friends. All were rendered unconscious with a rag soaked in chloroform. The first fire was set about six months ago. Cause of death in all three cases was smoke inhalation.”
He took a glossy photo from the folder and tossed it on the desk. “Marsha Adams, married but legally separated, bound with a lamp cord.” Other photos taken of the women at the fire scenes followed. “Jane Madison, bound with a lamp cord. Colleen Winston, tied up with duct tape. Both divorced.” He wiped a hand over his eyes. “This bastard wanted them to suffer, and they did. One other thing—” He took a deep breath, glanced at Luke, then back to her. “We found all of them in a closet with a Bible beneath them.”
Rachel stared at the photos. Instantly she saw the similarities to her own fire, which A.J. had alluded to on the phone. The closet. The lamp cord. The chloroform. The Bible.
The color photos swam before her eyes. Cold sweat broke out on her forehead. She was sure she’d prepared herself for this part. She’d been terribly wrong.
Rachel closed her eyes to shut out the images, but the same frustrating, disjointed memories that had been torturing her for years, memories that she could never put definition to, flitted in and out in snippets like a badly edited movie. No face to put on an arsonist. No one to tell her what happened to Maggie. Just a blur of indistinguishable events.
Sleeping peacefully. Something on her face. A sweet smell filling her nostrils. Sleep. Then waking in a closet.
Her bedroom engulfed in flames. The smoke. Choking.
Closet too small. Can’t move.
Hands tied behind her. Bible cutting into her chest.
Helpless to escape.
Helpless to save her baby.
Heat. Intense heat. A voice calling to her.
“Mommy. Mommy?”
Maggie?
Blackness.
Then fresh air seeping into her burning lungs. Wet grass beneath her, soaking into her thin nightgown. A fireman standing over her. Luke, cradling her close to his chest, crying, calling her name and Maggie’s.
“Rachel? Rachel? Are you okay?” Luke’s voice called her back from that terrible place she’d hidden inside her for so long.
Rachel snapped her eyes open. The images, images that mirrored a periodic dream she’d been having since that night, faded.
She blinked. Luke and A.J. were standing over her, their faces twisted in concern. She searched her mind frantically for something to excuse what had just happened. She knew her ex-husband too well. If she told him the truth, he’d send her back to Atlanta despite what A.J. said. And she made up her mind in that instant that she wasn’t going anywhere until she nailed this bastard.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, just a bit…dizzy. I was so eager to get here that I skipped lunch.”
Luke exhaled a huff of air. He crossed his arms over his chest again and glared down at her, eyebrow arched so high it almost disappeared in his hairline. He hadn’t believed a word of her explanation.
Determinedly, she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and forced her gaze toward the photos again. Silently, she employed a system she’d used when she’d started in the firefighters’ academy and was confronted with her first horrific fire scene.
You’re a professional. Detach yourself. You’ve got to prove to them that you can do this. If they send you home, you won’t be able to help anyone. Detach yourself. This can’t be personal. You are a professional. This is your job.
Slowly, the tension eased from her body, and her stomach settled. When she felt calm enough, she picked up the pictures. All three women were curled in the fetal position common after exposure to the high temperatures of a fire. Most of their hair had burned off, and the intense heat had split their skin in several places. In all three cases, their arms curled behind them, most of their bonds burned in the fire. Because they had been facedown, the underside of each body had escaped the heat. She could just make out the corner of a book beneath each woman.
She pushed the photos toward A.J. Quickly, he gathered up the pictures and shoved them inside the folder. Instead of handing her the file, he held on to it, glanced at Luke and then to her.
Doubts that hadn’t been there before lurked in his eyes and colored his expression. “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.”
“Amen to that,” Luke grumbled behind her.
Rachel leaned toward A.J. “If you take me off this case now, I swear I’ll stay and work it without the police department. He almost burned me alive, then he took my baby and—” Her voice broke. She glanced at Luke. The concern she’d seen in his expression before had been replaced by a pain she knew well. That of a parent who had lost a child. “And, though we never found her body, it’s been almost two years, and I know now that he killed her. I want this sick bastard.”
A.J. studied her for a long moment. Her gaze held his without wavering. He nodded and handed her the file folder. “Everything we have is in there—interviews with relatives, spouses, boyfriends, friends. If there’s anything else you need, just give a yell.”
“How about the arson investigator’s photos, the firefighters’ narrative reports?”
“They’re in there, too. I’ve designated a room in the annex out back for your office and a place for the task force to meet. The names of the two officers I’ve assigned to the task force are in the folder.”
Stiffening her spine, she clutched the folder. When she looked up, both Luke and A.J. were staring at her.
“What?”
“You okay?” A.J. asked.
Rachel knew she couldn’t wiggle out of answering him, but she refused to be treated like a porcelain doll. “Stop worrying about me, dammit.” A.J. seemed surprised at her sharp tone, but satisfied. Luke continued to study her. “I told you, I’m fine,” she said with much more confidence than she felt.
“Is anyone ever fine with crap like that?” Luke hitched a finger toward her briefcase, where she’d stowed the files.
Was he doubting her or goading her? His complexion seemed to have paled, and she wondered if they were fighting the same demons.
“No, never, but if I’m to do this job right, I need to be able to look at everything as dispassionately as possible.” Including you. She swung back to face A.J., who’d been watching them closely. “I’ll need to walk the fire scenes.”
“When you’re ready, I’ll walk them with you,” Luke said.
Another emotional mountain to climb. “No need. I can do it alone if someone will clear me to enter them.”
“I said, I’ll go with you.” Luke stared unflinchingly at her.
Rachel knew that fixed expression and his adamant tone. There would be no more discussion. She hated that he thought she needed to be babysat, but something deep down inside was glad he’d be with her. “I want to study all the notes and the photos first. I should be ready in a day or two.”
Putting off the walk-through was not going to make it any easier, but she swore she would do it before the end of the week. Now that she was here, there was no way in hell she would let Luke see her back down. More important, she had to see it through to the end. The time had come to exorcize her demons and what better way than to catch the maniac who was responsible for creating them.
“I’ll call you,” she said, deliberately leaving it open as to who she was addressing and avoiding eye contact with Luke.
It didn’t escape Luke’s notice that she conveniently forgot to ask for his phone number, nor that she quite obviously hoped he’d back down from his offer.
Luke knew that she’d envisioned herself and Maggie in those photos and not their victims, just as he had. He’d had to have been blind not to see the way they’d affected her. God knew, he was familiar enough with the sick, helpless feeling, the way it made his gut come up in his throat, the huge empty hole inside him that nothing and no one could fill.
He’d seen those photos innumerable times and still couldn’t look at them without seeing his beautiful daughter, without having to fight down the guilt eating a hole in his soul for not being home to stop any of the events that had torn his family and his life apart.
Knowing this could head into territory he faithfully avoided, he closed off that part of his mind. Turning his attention back to Rachel, he watched her closely. Though she hadn’t lost one ounce of her beauty, her shoulders didn’t seem as square as he remembered them. Her head lacked the proud angle it had always had. Her body had shed a few pounds and appeared, though he knew there was not a delicate bone in Rachel’s gorgeous body, almost fragile.
Self-disgust washed over him. Damn A.J. for bringing Rachel here and reminding her. Luke couldn’t change the past, but he could and would be there for moral support when she went through the fire scenes. And at the first sign she was breaking under the emotional strain, he’d ship her back to Georgia, kicking and screaming, if necessary.
“What about motive?” Rachel asked.
Luke noted the quiver in her voice. He was sure she’d tried to cover it up, but he’d heard that voice too many times not to be able to read every inflection.
Shaking his head, A.J. leaned back in his chair. “Nothing except the Bible, which points at something religious. Hell, for all we know right now, maybe his mother dropped him on his head at his christening. Who knows? That’s your department. Get into his head. Right now, all we have to go on is that the fires are being set by the same torch.”
Rachel nodded. “I’ll be able to tell you more after I’ve looked this stuff over.”
Luke moved to the side of A.J.’s desk. He knew her caution came as a result of her firefighter training and would keep her from making or voicing premature decisions that she’d have to eat later.
Rachel stood, grabbed her briefcase, clasped A.J.’s outstretched hand, then handed him a slip of paper. “I’ll be in touch, but in case you need me, here’s my private cell-phone number.” Offering nothing to Luke but a curt nod, she headed for the door.
“Rachel, one other thing.” A.J. looked from Luke to her. “Luke is heading up the task force and will be working closely with you on this. I trust this isn’t going to be a problem for either of you?”
“Saving the best till last, right, buddy?” Luke waited, sure she would ask to have him replaced and hoping she’d say she’d go home rather than work with him.
Rachel paused, her back to them. A long moment passed before she turned and looked directly at her ex-husband. “Not if he stays out of my way.”
Through A.J.’s open office door, Luke watched Rachel walk away. His gut instinct was telling him to go after her and do anything he could to convince her to go home. But, stubborn as she could be, he knew it would do no good. It still took everything he could muster not to.
Again, as he watched her disappear around a corner in the long hall, he wondered where he’d found the strength to let her go, to walk out of her life. Maybe because he knew she could make it alone, and she’d be safe without him. Maybe because walking out was easier than looking into her grief-stricken face every day and being reminded of his failure to protect her and Maggie. Maybe, as the days stretched into weeks, then months with no word, he just couldn’t face her undying belief that their little girl was still alive. Thank God she seemed to have reconciled herself to Maggie’s death.
“Here,” A.J. said, ignoring the emphasis Rachel had put on private, and copying Rachel’s cell number, then handing it to Luke. “If you tell her I gave it to you, I’ll say you swiped it.”
“Thanks.” Luke tucked the paper into his shirt pocket but continued to stare down the empty hall. He knew, if he encouraged A.J., his friend would make it a personal crusade to get him and Rachel back together. Not a good idea.
“Think she still has what it’s gonna take to handle this?” A.J. asked from behind him.
Sighing, Luke turned to his boss and friend. “When it comes to expertise and pure guts, I’d put her up against any man in this station.” Then he smiled. “But if you tell her I said that, I’ll deny every word.”
Guts? Yes. He’d stake his life on her courage, and had. But could she withstand the emotional buffeting she’d take investigating the arsonist who had kidnapped and killed their daughter?
Chapter 2
Back in the beach condo A.J. kept for relatives from out of town, Rachel threw her briefcase on the sofa, slipped off her gray suit jacket and shoes, then switched on the TV for background noise. While she unbuttoned the pearl studs on her white silk blouse, she stared at the blond, female news anchor on the screen.
“In local news, the Orange Grove Police Department has confirmed that arson investigator/profiler Rachel Lansing-Sutherland has been called in to consult on the serial arsons that have been plaguing Orange Grove for the last six months. Ms. Lansing’s own daughter was abducted two years ago on the night that the Sutherlands’ apartment burned down. The case remains officially open, and our sources in the department say that after such a long period of time, abducted children are rarely found alive.”
Choking back a sob, Rachel pressed the mute button on the remote. She threw it on the coffee table and headed into the bedroom, leaving the voiceless, female anchor on the TV screen resembling a bad mime.
It had taken Rachel a long time to concede to the belief that her beautiful little girl would never come home again, never laugh at her daddy’s silly jokes, never draw those unrecognizable pictures of houses and cows, never drift off to sleep while Rachel sang her favorite lullaby—
Unbidden, the words of the lullaby played through her head. Hush, little Maggie, don’t say a word—
Grabbing the edge of the dresser, Rachel bent double, clutching her heart. Would the pain never go away? The emptiness never leave her arms or her heart? How does a mother forget a part of her?
Maggie’s birth had been the most momentous thing that had ever happened to Rachel. When the nurse laid that tiny being in her arms, their daughter had completed the circle of love she and Luke had found. Rachel had marveled that the fiery passion she and Luke shared could have produced something so small, so perfect, so delicate. Luke adored their baby with the same intensity he applied to his work. Together, the three of them had become a family, sharing their love.
After Maggie’s birth, the love Luke and Rachel had for each other had grown by leaps and bounds until she was sure their lives could only get better. But she’d been very wrong. Ironically, all it took to shatter their happiness was a macabre twist of fate and one match.
Exhaustion pressing down on her, Rachel shook loose of the memories and began undressing for a shower. In the mirror above the dresser, she noted that the necklace she wore constantly had snagged in a strand of her chestnut hair. She disentangled the hair and allowed the chain to drop back against her skin. Staring in the mirror, Rachel picked up the medallion hanging from the chain. The artificial light from the bedside lamp caught in the grooves of the Oriental engraving on the gold disk. While in Japan to escort a prisoner back to the States, Luke had bought it for her. He’d told her it was the Chinese symbol for protection and, when she needed him, she had only to rub it and say his name. The whole idea had been foolish fun, but she had never taken the necklace off, not even after the divorce. During the worst times, after she’d ceased opposition to the certainty of Maggie’s death, just fingering it had provided her with a small sense of comfort, but no matter how often she had said his name, Luke had never come.
With the pad of her thumb, she stroked the familiar squiggle, noting that the edges of the design had become smooth and rounded, unlike the sharp carving it had been when she first got it. She thought of Luke, his infectious laughter, his charm, his magnetism, and wondered if this little hunk of gold had the power to protect her from him as well.
Showered, shampooed and feeling much better about the job she’d agreed to do, Rachel slipped into jeans and a pale green T-shirt emblazoned with Puppy Love Is Forever, flopped onto the sofa and opened the folder. Turning the victims’ photos facedown and moving them to the side, she began to go over the detectives’ narrative reports. Using a yellow legal pad she’d pulled from her briefcase, she divided the top sheet into two columns and headed them Similarities and Differences.
Rachel had just gotten started filling in the columns when her cell phone rang. She stiffened, then remembered she hadn’t given Luke her number. Digging through the congestion of gas and credit-card receipts, loose change and gum wrappers she’d stuffed into her briefcase during the drive south, she found the cell phone and flipped it open.
“Hello.”
“Rachel?” Luke’s voice sent a warm ripple through her.
“How did you get my number?” But he didn’t need to answer. She knew. A.J. When she and Luke divorced, it had been as hard on A.J. as it had them. She was sure this was his subtle attempt at mending the relationship.
“I’m sworn to secrecy,” he said, a hint of amusement in his tone.
“Well, you can tell A.J. that I’m glad it wasn’t my virginity I trusted him to guard.”
Once the words were out, Rachel was shocked at how easily she had slipped back into the habit of exchanging quips with Luke.
Would it be just as easy to slip into other things with him? Keeping an emotional distance between herself and the man she’d once loved beyond logic was imperative. She sat straighter.
He laughed. “Yeah. Where we’re concerned, he never got high marks for keeping a secret.”
An instant replay of the evening A.J. let it slip that Luke had an engagement ring for her crossed her mind. A.J. had waged quite a battle with himself, trying to make up his mind if he should stay and be a part of the big moment or if he should leave them to their privacy. Privacy had finally won out, but not before A.J. had inadvertently blurted out that he couldn’t be happier that his two favorite people had decided to tie the knot. She smiled.
A long silence hung on the phone. Why had Luke called? Just to show her he had the number?
“I’m going over the notes A.J. gave me. Was there something you wanted?”
“I just wanted to give you my cell-phone number.” He recited the number, and she wrote it across the tope of the legal pad.
“Anything else?” she asked, eager to get him off the phone before she obeyed her urge to see him, to talk to him about this big step she’d taken and ask him to please not fight her on it. Silence. She doodled absently while waiting for him to say something.
Then, “Did you eat dinner yet?”
“No,” she blurted a little too sharply, trying to kill the urge to say she’d love to have dinner with him.
He chuckled, deep and sexy. “Even grouches have to eat,” he said, reminding her of the first thing he’d ever said to her. She’d gone with him to dinner that night and every night after that. Their entire courtship had been like that, fast, furious and filled with passion and laughter. Then—
No, dammit, she refused to mourn their marriage. She had enough to mourn without adding that. She stiffened her spine.
“I’m not hungry. I’ll fix something later.” She rarely hungered for anything these days, except what she couldn’t have. Like her daughter in her arms.
And Luke? a little voice prompted.
Before he could say anything more, she heard the unmistakable interruption that signaled an incoming call. “I have to take this, Rachel. I’ll talk to you later. Don’t forget to eat,” he admonished, then hung up.
Rachel stared at the dead phone. An acute loneliness washed over her. She folded the phone and laid it on the coffee table. Not until she felt the cold metal on her fingertips did she realize she’d begun stroking the Oriental pendant. When she looked down at the legal pad where she’d written his number, she saw that she had doodled hearts all around it.
Hours passed, and she’d made good progress on assigning the similarities and differences she’d found in the notes. Under the column headed Differences, she’d listed: marital status, hair color and restraints. Under Similarities, she’d written: chloroform, charcoal lighter, victims alone at the time of the fire, all died from smoke inhalation, no signs of sexual assault, one child, each had a Bible placed under her.
Since starting, she’d added a third column to the paper, headed up with one word—Mine. All the similarities she’d listed also appeared under her column. The only differences were that she’d been married and the others had either been separated or divorced at the time of the fires, and she had not been alone.
The common thread that captured her attention was the Bible. Every serial arsonist had a signature. It could be anything from the brand and kind of accelerant they used to the type of incendiary device and where it was planted. This one evidently had religion and, since religious motives were a twisted version of the arsonist’s beliefs, it could make him one of the hardest to catch.
She was studying the columns, thinking about the profile of the arsonist, when the cell phone rang again. Rachel jumped.
“Hello,” she said, expecting Luke’s voice to come back at her through the receiver.
“Rachel, it’s A.J. There’s another house fire. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”
Adrenaline coursed through her, bringing her to her feet. Blood pumped through her veins at an accelerated rate. “Is it our arsonist?”
“Not sure. We’ll know better when we get there. I think it’s worth looking into. We’ve never been on scene while it’s happening before. If it is our torch, we might just find him milling around in the gallery enjoying the fruits of his labor.”
By the time Rachel arrived with A.J. at the fire site, the south side of the house was a wall of flames. Slowly, she emerged from the car, her gaze locked on the burning wood-frame house. This was her first fire since Maggie’s death, and she’d forgotten the sheer power of flames that defied control, the destruction they wreak, the devastation they cause.
Rachel followed A.J. to a position just inside the yellow tape that confined the crowd of curious onlookers to the sidelines. Her training as an arson investigator kicked in, and her gaze automatically scanned the crowd, looking for any sign of someone consumed by sexual excitement, a more-than-helpful bystander, a loner removed from the other gawkers or the deadpan stare of a face transfixed by the flames.
Seeing no one that aroused her suspicions, she turned back to the burning house. The familiar, acrid stink of burning man-made materials filled the air. The sounds of firefighters battling the blaze, yelling orders and calling out words of caution mixed together into an earsplitting cacophony of noise. Then the roar of water leaving a pressurized hose added its voice to the din.
Suddenly, a man screamed a name. Rachel looked toward the voice and saw two firefighters restraining him. The man continued to scream, continued to fight the hands holding him back from running into the building. She stared at him, unable to look away.
“Rachel, I’m going to find the incident commander and see what he knows.”
A.J.’s muffled voice seemed to come to her through a thick fog. She nodded but never took her gaze off the distraught man. It brought back vivid reminders of Luke fighting off the firefighters’ restraining hands at their fire. Only when the man collapsed to the ground sobbing could she summon the strength to drag her gaze back to the house.
Rachel’s nerves began to tighten. She bit down hard on her lip. This is just a fire, she reminded herself. Any fire. Nothing personal.
Orange and red flames shot out the windows of one side of the house. Black smoke dotted with tiny glowing embers billowed toward the night sky. Heat waves blurred the outline of the house, twisting its form into a grotesque image of the actual structure. In her mind, as she watched, the image morphed, growing and changing, rising in the sky until it transformed into a high-rise apartment building, the building she, Maggie and Luke had lived in over two years ago.
In mesmerized horror, Rachel watched the flames licking out the windows and up toward the sky. She could hear someone’s tormented screams. Her chest tightened. Her vision blurred and time took a sharp nightmarish turn backward. Two-year-old images came rushing at her.
Roaring flames.
Thick, smothering, black smoke.
A hodgepodge of voices.
People running everywhere.
No! Not your fire…different fire…different, she told herself repeatedly, grabbing feverishly at her slipping control.
But the images persisted, growing sharper with each agonizing second. Her palms began to sweat. Her stomach heaved. Her nerves bunched into painful balls of icy fear.
Maggie. Gotta save Maggie.
The hypnotic flames pulled at her, urging her forward. But she couldn’t move. Something was holding her back.
Hands.
She strained against the pressure of fingers encircling her arms, but they only tightened. Never taking her gaze from the inferno, Rachel pried frantically at the vise grip of those damn fingers.
“Let go!” She heard her frenzied voice, felt the sweat beading on her forehead. Reality struggled to push through the sharp memories. The pain of reliving this nightmare became more than she could bear.
Can’t go there. Can’t go back.
God, images won’t go away.
She had to block out the images.
Then she felt herself being roughly shaken.
“Rachel!” Luke’s stern voice catapulted her over the final edge and back to reality. “Let it go!”
Mentally, she clawed her way out of the mire of the past. Slowly, very slowly, she relaxed.
For a long moment she stared at him, trying to rationalize where he’d come from and why he hadn’t been affected as strongly as she had. Then she saw his eyes. Reflected there was regret, pain and something else that she couldn’t put a name to.
“I knew A.J. shouldn’t have brought you back here,” he murmured, pulling her into the shelter of his body and holding her so tight she could barely breathe.
She pressed her face into his chest. She hadn’t realized until this very moment how much she had missed his strength. His arms felt so right, so safe, so secure. His closeness blocked out the memories of the nightmare that took their daughter and ultimately their love. If only he’d given her this comfort back then.
Reaching down into her gut, Rachel found the strength to pull away and face him. She tucked her hair behind her ears, then shoved her shaking hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I’m okay.”
“Like hell you are. You’re shaking like a nervous cat. If I hadn’t stopped you, you’d be in there, searching for—” He looked away.
She couldn’t deny it. She’d felt an equal pull only once before in her life—two years ago, at their own fire. That night, once she’d been able to breathe again, all she could think of was getting back inside to get Maggie. Little did she know that, by then, Maggie had been long gone, abducted by the arsonist. “I had it under control.”
His head snapped around. Disbelief filled his expression. “Bull.” His gaze bored into her. “And even if you did, which I don’t believe for a minute, what about the next time? What if I’m not around, Rachel?”
In her heart, Rachel knew that any future fires would be different. They wouldn’t have the kick in the gut that seeing her first fire in two years, up close and personal, had. Until this day, she’d studiously avoided fires on the TV, in the newspaper, and certainly had not stood in front of a burning building. This was just one more thing in the series of firsts she was facing: first photos, first fire, first death.
This time had been tough. She would get stronger.
With shaky hands, she wiped the tears from her cheeks, tears she hadn’t been aware she’d shed. “I’m fine now.” And deep down, she knew she was or soon would be.
Luke’s intense gaze studied her. She met him eye to eye, steady and sure. Irrationally, she was reminded of some of the many reasons she’d fallen in love with Luke Sutherland—his sharp instincts about people and his ability to read them, both of which made him an outstanding cop.
Unfortunately, when it had mattered the most, those same qualities hadn’t carried over into his personal life. When the chips were down, what should have drawn them closer drove a wedge between them that neither of them could get past. Luke hadn’t seen that she’d needed him desperately to help her withstand the loss of Maggie, to help her hold their life together. He hadn’t cared enough about their marriage to help her bind the open wounds and keep their relationship from bleeding to death. He’d thrown away all they had left after losing Maggie…their love. For that, she could never forgive him.
Averting her gaze, she searched the crowd of firefighters for A.J. He was talking to a man Rachel assumed was the fire company’s incident commander. After a moment, A.J. turned and walked back to them.
“We might as well get out of here. It’s gonna be hours before Rachel can get in there to look around and the fire company can determine if there’s another victim to add to our list. Right now, they’re classifying it as just another structural fire. Until they can get inside and look around, no one knows for sure.” A.J. stared at the blazing structure.
“Rachel’s not going in there tomorrow or any other time,” Luke said, his face set in determination.
“What?” A.J.’s shocked voice combined with Rachel’s.
Luke’s expression never wavered. “She’s going back to Georgia. We’ll find someone else. Someone who—”
“No!” Rachel’s fury nearly choked her.
He doubted her ability to come through on the job, all because of what had just happened. But the worst had passed, and she could attack this case with the composed professionalism she’d always shown on her job. His trying to cut her loose before she could prove it infuriated her.
When she spoke again, her tone clearly showed both men just how pissed off she was. Her gaze narrowed on her ex-husband. “Who in hell do you think you are that you can make that decision? I chose to come here from Atlanta to help you. The first time I flinch, you’re going to send me home?”
Luke glared back at her. “That was hardly a flinch. And as for who I think I am… I’m the one heading up this task force, and I need people who won’t fall apart on me.” He stopped, took a deep breath and spoke slowly, as if addressing a child. “I don’t want you here.”
She did flinch this time.
The flames behind them billowed skyward, their hissing roar a reflection of the anger Rachel felt. She took a step closer to him. “You weren’t the one who called me here. And as for me falling apart, I suppose you came to that brilliant conclusion from what happened a few minutes ago.”
“What happened?” A.J. asked.
They ignored him.
“Damn straight I did.” Luke clenched his fists. “I saw how those crime-scene photos affected you this afternoon, and now the fire. Bringing you here was a huge mistake, but there’s still time to fix it before your emotions get you killed.”
“What will get me killed is not having my mind on my job because I’m worried that you’ll throw me on the next bus home,” she shot back at him. “What about you? Are you gonna tell me that your emotions aren’t kicking in on this case?”
His whole body stiffened. “We’re not talking about me,” he said, evading her question. “We’re talking about you, and I say you go home.”
Rachel faced off with him and gritted her teeth.
“Whether I go or stay is my call, and I say I stay.”
“You’re both wrong,” A.J. said, stepping between them. “It’s my call.” He faced Rachel, his features set in an uncompromising expression. “No one knows if you’re up to this better than you do, Rachel. So, I’m only going to ask this once, and I expect you to level with me. Can…you…handle…this?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. She glared at Luke over A.J.’s shoulder, daring him to argue the point. “Yes, I can.” A.J. looked deep into her eyes, then nodded. “That’s good enough for me. I’ve known you for a long time, and in that time, you’ve never put yourself or anyone else at risk by taking on a job to prove a point or to feed your own ego. I’m assuming the same still holds true. If you say you can do it, then we’ll go for it.” He turned to face Luke.
Luke opened his mouth, but before he could say one word, A.J. raised his hand to silence further discussion.
“Meet her here tomorrow to walk this scene. Afterward, you can take her to the others. They’ve been officially released, so you’ll need a warrant to get on the premises. I’ll call Judge Hawthorn when I get back to my office and get the necessary paperwork out of the way.”
“Thanks, A.J.,” Rachel said, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Don’t thank me.” His demeanor had transformed from her friend, to a hard-nosed cop. “Do your job. If I think for one second that you’re giving me less than one hundred percent, I’ll replace you faster than my ex-mother-in-law decided she hated my guts.” He turned to Luke. “One more thing. Whatever personal issues you two have with each other, settle them on your own time and keep them out of this investigation.” He glanced at Rachel. “That means both of you. Am I clear?”
Rachel nodded.
Staring first at A.J., then Rachel, Luke cursed under his breath. “I hope to hell you both know what you’re doing,” he muttered, and walked away.
Luke ordered another neat scotch, then glanced around the crowded bar. A blonde almost wearing a red minidress made eye contact and smiled. For lack of anything else to do, Luke smiled back. She sauntered toward him, then leaned one forearm on the bar and thrust her ample, man-made chest inches from his nose. The top of her strapless dress nearly lost its precarious hold.
For a second, he imagined Rachel’s luscious body filling the flaming red dress, her full breasts overflowing the top. His groin tightened painfully.
“Buy a girl a drink?”
Luke gave her feminine display the once-over. When he was a young stud new to the force and during the two years since he’d last seen Rachel, this woman’s barely veiled invitation would have called out to his male libido, but not since Rachel had come back into his life. Since the moment he’d first seen her at headquarters, his head was filled with his ex-wife and that left no room for contemplation of a quick roll in the hay with someone else. He turned away and motioned for the bartender to give the woman whatever she wanted to drink.
A few minutes later, the man behind the bar set a frothy, pink drink in a Manhattan glass in front of her. Instantly Luke thought about Rachel and her favorite drink, gin and tonic. No frills. No pretense. Just like the woman. Suddenly, the all-but-nonexistent interest he’d had in the woman diminished to minus zero, replaced by a soul-deep need for Rachel. Would he ever be able to think of her without that excruciating pain of loss filling him?
“You alone?”
Luke shook his head. “I’m taken,” he said, and flashed the ring on the third finger of his right hand, the thin, gold band he’d never been able to bring himself to take off completely.
“Wrong hand,” the blonde said, her voice a low purr, her smile seductive and full of unspoken promises.
“I never could tell left from right,” Luke said, then downed the last of the scotch and flipped some bills on the bar. “I’m still taken.” And probably always will be, he added to himself.
The blonde looked around. “So, where is she?”
He tapped a finger over the left side of his chest. “In here.” Then he left the bar.
Outside, he stood on the sidewalk and looked absently up and down the street. The deafening music coming from the bar followed him. He glanced back at the open door and could see the baffled woman at the bar staring at him. He saluted her. She frowned, made a rude hand gesture and turned away.
He probably should have warned her that drinks didn’t always come with promises. Hell, little in life did. She’d read more than she should have into a friendly gesture. He could have lied to her, but he hadn’t. Rachel was in his heart, as much a part of him as his skin, and had been from the first day he’d seen her with soot on her nose and a determination in her expression that defied explanation. Ever since that day, there hadn’t been a night or a day he hadn’t thought about her, longed for her, pained for her.
He thought about her at the fire tonight, how scared she’d been, how tortured, and had a sudden need to affirm that she was okay. As he walked toward his car, he obeyed the longing churning inside him and reached for his cell phone, then punched in the numbers he’d memorized off the paper A.J. had given him and pressed it to his ear.
“Hello.”
At the sound of his ex-wife’s voice, a familiar band of pain tightened around his heart. He forced a lightness into his voice he was far from feeling. “Hey, Rachel. Hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No. I was just going over the files.” Silence. “What did you want?”
“Just to let you know I can meet you at the scene tomorrow around eight. I’ll bring the coffee.” He waited. “Is that okay?”
“Fine.” She sounded preoccupied.
He swallowed. Damn! He didn’t want to tell her this, but she’d find out anyway. “Rach, they found another woman in tonight’s fire.”
Rachel remained silent for a moment or two, then said, “Damn.”
“A.J.’ll give you the details tomorrow after we check out the scene.” He blew out a long breath. “I’ll let you get back to work.” While he climbed into his car, he continued to hold the phone to his ear, reluctant to break even this tenuous connection. “So…see you then.”
“Luke?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for…for being there tonight.”
“No problem.” He wanted to add I’ll always be there, but he knew she had no reason to believe such a promise, coming from him.
Silence.
“’Night.” The connection went dead.
“Dream of me,” he murmured into the car’s dark interior. It was what they’d said to each other every night before dropping off to sleep. It was what he still whispered into the darkness every night from his lonely bed.
He folded the phone and tossed it into the passenger seat. For a long moment, he stared down at the phone, then gripped the steering wheel and rested his forehead against his hands.
He’d lost his precious Maggie to this sick criminal. In his gut, he knew he could lose Rachel, too, if he didn’t find a way to protect her from herself. But how did you protect someone who didn’t want to be protected? Whose pride was so ironclad, it would take the Jaws of Life to get through it?
The next morning, at precisely eight o’clock, Rachel pulled up her rented Chevy Malibu outside the previous night’s fire scene. She refused to give Luke any reason to think she was letting her emotions rule her head. Digging through the burned rubble would be another first for her, another step back into her past, but she’d spent most of last night preparing for it and was determined to do it without any hitches.
She powered down the car window, then shut off the engine. The pungent yet familiar smell of wet, burned wood drifted to her on the humid morning air. A smell she’d never gotten completely out of her nostrils or her blood.
Leaning back, she sipped the coffee she’d picked up at the 7-Eleven and watched a handful of firefighters securing the scene and stamping out flare-ups, their soiled yellow helmets and slickers standing out against the black debris. Their sluggish movements told her they’d pulled an all-nighter, and they were badly in need of sack time.
She checked her watch. Eight-fifteen. Luke, always the prompt one of the two of them, had obviously decided to play with her head. He probably hoped that, if he took long enough, she’d give up and leave, not having the wherewithal to go into the scene alone.
She smiled. Not a chance.
Rachel finished the coffee, put her empty cup in the cup holder, then slipped from the car, making sure to grab the notepad, the pen and the camera she’d brought with her.
As she approached the ruins, firefighter Samantha Ellis came around the side of the fire truck. Rachel and Sam had been friends ever since they’d been the only females in their class of rookie firefighters. When Rachel had left the company to take the ATF arson investigators training program, she’d wanted Sam to come, too, but Sam had been happy to keep hauling hoses, and the lieutenant’s insignia on Sam’s helmet told Rachel she’d done well.
Over the past two years, Rachel had lost touch with Sam, as she had with most of the people who reminded her of the past.
Sam came toward her, her face set, a stern warning to stay out of the scene hovering on her lips, then recognition washed over her expression.
“Rachel?” Her face broke into a broad grin. “Great to see you.” Then she paused, a frown knitting her forehead. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi, Sam. Chief Branson invited me to your…uh…party.” She surveyed their surroundings with a critical eye.
Sam cast a quick glance toward the ruins. “Yeah, we’ve been having a lot of these parties lately.”
“So I’m told.” Rachel smiled. “Can you loan me some of your turnout gear so I can get started?”
“Sure thing.” Sam went to the standby truck and hauled out a helmet, a small shovel, one of the cumbersome jackets and a pair of boots.
Rachel took them, put the jacket aside, then sat on the running board of the truck to exchange her sneakers for the heavy rubber boots. After she’d slipped into the boots, she smiled up at Sam. “I’d forgotten how these things make you feel like you’re wearing your big sister’s clothes.” She stood and grabbed the jacket. “Did you find any trace of an accelerant in there?”
“We won’t know until the lab confirms it for sure, but my guess is this torch’s choice of fire starter was regulation, backyard charcoal lighter.” Sam gave Rachel’s clothes the once-over. “Better put on the slicker. You’ll trash your clothes in there.”
Rachel glanced down at her jeans and snowy-white T-shirt. Then, grinning at Sam, she plopped the helmet on her chestnut curls and shrugged. Having second thoughts, she glanced at the slicker. “These things always made me feel like I had a two-thousand-pound elephant sitting on my back.”
Sam sighed tiredly, but managed a grin. “Try carrying it around for eighteen hours.”
As she donned the weighty slicker, Rachel noted that Sam’s back was slumped with fatigue. Dark smudges rimmed her red eyes. Black soot encrusted the woman’s fatigue-lined face.
Under all that grime, it was hard to tell that Sam had once been a Miss Florida finalist. Rachel had never understood why Sam always played down her looks, no makeup, no salon hairdo. Even more, Rachel had wondered why she’d picked firefighting as a career. She’d asked once, but Sam had danced around the subject with all the expertise of a prima ballerina. Sam’s blatant avoidance convinced Rachel the subject should be left alone until Sam decided she wanted to discuss it.
“You’ll need these, too.” Sam handed Rachel a pair of latex gloves, then started toward what was left of the house.
Hauling on the gloves, Rachel sloshed through the wet grass behind Sam. The closer they got to the burned-out structure, the stronger the smell of burned wood and man-made fibers became. Her stomach churned.
Rachel stiffened and reminded herself sternly that she had a job to do. As she prepared to enter the house, determination cloaked any misgivings left over from the previous night.
“We’re about done in here,” Sam told her as she guided her through the opening where a front door once hung. “Fire’s out. Most everything that could burn did, except the woman they took to the morgue about eight hours ago. The closet door was closed—”
“Closed? It was always open with the others.”
“We figure the wind currents from the fire either closed it or it swung closed on its own. I doubt our torch did it. This sicko wants these women to see what’s coming for them.”
Rachel had blanked her actual experience of her apartment fire out of her memory. The doctors called it voluntary amnesia. Whatever it was, until this very moment, Rachel’d had no recollection of the actual fire. Now, as if someone turned a movie projector on and off quickly, a quick flash of the fire eating away at her bedding while she watched it from the floor of her closet, helpless and certain her death was imminent, passed through her mind. Though bits of the panic she’d felt that night and a tiny bit of residual memory remained behind, the image was gone before her mind could register all of it.
Sam continued to brief her while Rachel fought off emotions from scattered memories of the worst night of her life. She pushed them aside. Later. She’d think about it later.
“Just like the other fires, the only thing that managed to survive with just water and smoke damage was the kid’s room. A.J. asked that no evidence be gathered until you saw it, so it’s all just as we found it.” She stepped over a fallen ceiling beam. “At first, we thought this one was different, just a house fire, then we found the woman in the bedroom closet, tied up with lamp cord, a Bible tucked under her.” Sam shook her head. “Freaking sicko.”
A half hour later, Rachel was squatting in front of the closet. On the floor, a partially unburned area told her where the woman had been lying. Next to that lay the Bible, wet, but, having been sheltered by the woman’s body, untouched by the fire. She leafed through the first few pages of the book, observing that the copyright date and the publisher matched those listed in the notes she had back at the condo.
The odor of charcoal lighter still hung heavy in the room. Sam had always been teased that she could outsniff any arson dog, and it seemed she hadn’t lost her touch for identifying an accelerant.
Standing, Rachel examined the room. Almost twenty minutes passed before her gaze fastened on what she’d been looking for—the point of origin. A black V started a few inches above the baseboard. The wood strip along the wall looked like the blackened skin of an alligator. The pattern splayed out and up on the wall opposite the closet, and the smell of charcoal lighter was much stronger here.
She glanced back at the closet and shuddered. The cold bastard had set the fire and, judging by the severe burn damage on the inside of the door, left the door open. With her hands tied behind her, he’d left the victim as helpless as a turtle on its back to watch the flames coming to get her. Just like he’d left Rachel. She shuddered but refused to allow her emotions to dampen her resolve to get this job done.
Rachel swung the door closed. The outside was burned, but not nearly as badly as the inside. Sam’s conclusions were probably right. The wind currents created by the fire had closed it, but too late to save the woman’s life. Methodically, Rachel snapped photos of the inside and outside of the closet, both sides of the door, the Bible, and the point of origin.
“Still have a problem obeying orders, I see.”
Luke’s deep voice sent shivers down Rachel’s spine. She jumped, nearly dropping the camera, then spun toward him. “You’re late.”
“You didn’t wait for me.” He strolled past her to look in the closet. “Here’s your coffee,” he said, holding out one of two cups he’d brought with him.
Grateful that he’d remembered and ready for a second dose of caffeine, she took it and flipped off the plastic lid. The smell of hot coffee wafted up to Rachel. Cautiously, she sipped the steaming liquid.
“Is it okay?”
Oddly enough, it was more than okay. “It’s perfect,” she said. “I’m surprised you remembered how I take it.”
“One sugar and a drop of milk,” he recited, then frowned. “I always wondered what difference that drop of milk made.”
Rachel set the cup on the edge of the charred dresser. “It’s an appeasement.”
He frowned. “A what?”
“Appeasement. When I was about sixteen, I started drinking coffee, and my mother said only men drank black coffee, so the drop of milk was an—”
“Appeasement,” he finished for her, then laughed.
It had a been a long time since she’d heard Luke really laugh. The sound sent ripples of pleasure shimmering through Rachel.
“Kind of like me suffering through those chick flicks you loved when I would have rather been watching James Bond.” He grinned. “But there were compensations.”
His words brought to mind what usually happened after they sat through one of those romantic movies. Usually a shower together, soap-slick bodies rubbing against each other, kisses heating blood to boiling, then a quick rush to the bed, if they could make it that far, then—
She glanced at Luke. He was studying her silently. This conservation was getting way too personal for her comfort. She tore her gaze away and dived into relating what she’d found so far.
“Point of origin.” She pointed at the baseboard. “Your torch used charcoal lighter.”
“Charcoal lighter, huh? Well, he’s consistent. Same accelerant used at each scene.”
She nodded. “But he brings the Bible with him. It’s the same copyright and publisher as the others they found. Can’t be a coincidence. Probably symbolic of bringing God into the lives of his victims.”
“Why in there?” Luke motioned toward the empty closet.
Rachel stopped in the process of turning over a charred shoe with the point of the shovel. “I’m not sure yet, but offhand I’d say it plays a significant part in the religious fire ritual.”
Luke ran his fingers through his mane of black curls. “The religious fanatics are always the hardest to nail down.”
“Not necessarily a fanatic, but don’t rule it out. This is definitely someone with strong religious ties. This guy has it in his twisted mind that he’s carrying out some kind of holy punishment. Question is, what? And why these particular women?” And why include me in the count? “There must be something these women had in common beyond being single mothers, alone at night. When we figure that out, we’ll be on our way to catching whoever it is. I’d like to meet with the task force tomorrow.”
“No need.”
She started and turned to him. “I disagree. I need to meet with them ASAP.”
Luke leveled a stare at her. “You won’t be here.”
She knew in her gut what he was about to say. “What the hell is your problem, Luke? Why do you keep telling me to go home?”
“Dammit, Rachel. I won’t let you do this.”
“You won’t let…” She laughed. “Why this sudden concern about me?” When he didn’t answer, she planted her hands on her hips and faced him squarely. “Let’s get this out of the way so I can get on with my job. Do I threaten your—”
Before she could finish, Luke took a step forward and grabbed her arm with his free hand. “I know what this is going to resurrect for you, and I don’t want to put you through it.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve given you enough to bear.”
Rachel frowned. The words were spoken so softly, she could barely hear them. That’s the closest he’d ever come to admitting he’d destroyed their marriage. But she didn’t want to discuss it. Not now. Maybe not ever. “We’ve been through all this. Bottom line is, A.J. wants me here, and I want to be here. End of story.”
“Then you plan on seeing this through?”
“Come hell, high water or Luke Sutherland,” she said.
Moments later, Luke watched Rachel drive off. No matter how much she denied it, he was certain this whole thing was ripping her gut apart a piece at a time. He wondered how long she’d be able to stand up to it.
Logically, he knew if they were going to nail this bastard, she was their best hope. He’d never met another investigator who could profile an arsonist the way she could. She seemed to have an inborn sense that led her to the torch, a way of putting herself in their heads. But this time was different from all the rest. This time she had a personal stake in finding the arsonist. Which was exactly why he worried that she was not emotionally equipped to see the job through without falling apart.
The Rachel he’d married had been strong, but that was before they’d lost Maggie. Afterward, he’d been so buried in his own guilt, he hadn’t seen her falling apart until it was too late. By then, he was trying to hold the pieces of himself together. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
The flaw in Rachel’s armor had always been her pride. She took pride in her work and pride in her abilities. And this time, if he didn’t find a way to stop her, that same pride could very well lead her into a place from which he’d never be able to bring her back.
Chapter 3
After leaving Luke, Rachel decided she could use some downtime, free from reminders of arsonists or Luke Sutherland, before going home to pore over case files again. What she needed, she decided, was a relaxing cup of coffee, with no one to bother her.
The smell of smoke still clung to her hair and skin. Though she’d worn the protective gear Sam had given her, a few black smudges of soot had managed to find their way onto her jeans. Oddly, she didn’t care. In fact, it brought with it a sense of having come home.
Determined to find the solitude she sought, she pulled into a parking space in front of the Latte Factory, a quaint little coffee shop nestled in a strip mall between a supermarket and a toy store, two blocks from her condo.
Purposefully, she turned off the engine, then switched off her cell phone, locked the car and headed for the front door.
She had barely settled at one of the wooden trestle tables facing the rest of the shop when Luke’s face appeared in her mind as clear as if he were sitting across from her. So much for forgetting. Instead of pushing the images away as she normally did, she allowed them to remain, to study him without him making assumptions about her inquisitiveness.
Time seemed to have ignored his craggy features and mesmerizing brown eyes. He had the same devil-may-care look about him as he’d had the day they’d met. Her heart had stopped then, just as it threatened to do now. Why couldn’t she look at him dispassionately, as she would any man on the street? Why did he have this tantalizing effect on her? The very last thing she wanted was to be affected by him in any way, and certainly not with the growing need she felt at each meeting.
She closed her eyes tight to erase his image.
“May I help you?”
Rachel jumped. Her eyes flew open.
A young waitress dressed in a cute French peasant’s outfit, the flouncy skirt short enough to be dangerous to bend over in and a name tag that proclaimed her to be Nina, stood beside her table and grinned down at her. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No problem. I was just daydreaming.” Day-nightmaring was more like it.
“What can I get for you?”
“A café au lait, please.”
“Foam or whipped cream?”
Though Rachel knew she could use a few calories to help replace the ten or so pounds she’d lost after Maggie’s kidnapping and never gained back, right now, after inhaling smoke all day, the idea of the sweet cream didn’t sit well with her empty stomach.
Rachel shook her head. “Foam, please.”
“You got it,” Nina said, and hurried back behind the counter.
Rachel glanced around the shop. The interior was warm and decorated to resemble an outside patio in the French countryside. Silk roses and plastic bunches of grapes hung from the fake-brick walls. Trestle tables nestled behind dividers that looked like garden planters, overflowing with greenery. The fragrant aroma of freshly ground coffee beans perfumed the air, along with the smell of the croissants that a sign proclaimed were baked on the premises. Next to it hung a picture of a mountain range advertising gourmet coffee.
Four other customers occupied the room. Two women sat at separate tables, both sipping large coffees. One of them had her head bent over a magazine, her long, chestnut hair falling forward to conceal most of her face. The other, a pretty, middle-aged blonde, stared out the large, plate-glass window, her expression vacant. A man sat in a corner pounding away on the keyboard of a small laptop and another man sat at the counter, his large beefy arms folded across his barrel chest, his gaze on Rachel.
Something about the way he locked his gaze with hers made Rachel cringe. Hoping to communicate her lack of interest, she quickly looked away.
It took a few moments before the unmistakable crawling sensation on her neck told her the man had not gotten the message. From the corner of her eye, she checked to see if she was right or just being paranoid. She was right. She twisted uncomfortably in the seat, turning half away from the counter and his piercing gaze.
Absently, she watched a gang of teenage boys pass in front of the window. One of the boys wiped a half-eaten apple over the hood of the car parked beside Rachel’s. She shook her head.
Nina returned with Rachel’s café au lait and placed the bill on the corner of the table. She reached for the slip of paper and in doing so was able to once more check on the man at the counter. He was still looking in her direction, his expression communicating his unmistakable interest.
For a time, Rachel stared at her coffee cup, absently tracing the logo of mountains with a coffee bean superimposed over it with the tip of her nail, hoping that if she ignored him, he’d lose interest. When she could stand it no longer, she glanced up to find him still staring at her. Just before she averted her gaze, she noted his sweeping inventory of her body. The jerk was trying to hit on her. A creepy chill shivered up her spine.
Unable to stand his appraisal any longer, she grabbed the bill and her coffee mug and made her way to the cash register. After Nina had transferred her coffee to a to-go cup, she paid her bill, then went to the ladies’ room to splash cold water on her face. Feeling more relaxed, she made her way back to the front section of the shop, noting as she did that everyone had left, except for the waitress washing cups behind the counter.
A relieved sigh escaped her. She was not normally a paranoid person, but there was something about that guy that made her skin crawl.
As she exited, the tiny bell over the door jingled. She walked toward her car and saw that a piece of paper had been tucked under the windshield wiper. Probably an advertisement for a local business.
Taking out her keys, she leaned over the hood and pulled the paper free, then unlocked the car and climbed inside. About to lay the advertisement on the passenger seat, she stopped dead. This was no advertisement. The letters on the paper were handwritten.
Leeve now…while you still can!
The misspelled words and the undisciplined scrawl shouted kid. The teenagers she’d seen with the apple maybe? They’d think something like this was very funny.
Tearing her gaze from the message, she twisted first left then right, checking every corner of the lot for any sign of them. If this was their idea of a joke, it was not funny and in her present mood, she was just the one to explain that to them.
Her hand had automatically gone to the pendant hanging outside her T-shirt. As she fingered the gold disk, her gaze swept the lot once more. No sign of the teens.
Grabbing her keys from the ignition, she got out of the car and went back into the coffee shop. The waitress looked up as the tiny bell announced Rachel’s arrival.
Nina smiled broadly. “Hi again. Forget something?”
“No. I was wondering if you saw anyone near my car while I was in the restroom.” Rachel pointed to her parked car.
Nina looked where Rachel pointed, then shook her head. “Nope. Sorry. I was washing dishes. Is there something wrong?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong. Thanks.” No sense getting the girl upset over what was probably a kid’s prank. Rachel turned to go, then stopped and swung back to face the girl. “That man who was sitting here at the end of the counter. Do you know him?”
The waitress shuddered and curled her nose as if she smelled something offensive. “Freaky, isn’t he? I’ve seen him go into that rooming house down the block from here. Mabel’s B&B, I think it’s called. I wish he’d find another place to get his coffee. He comes in here every afternoon and really creeps me out.”
Mabel’s was right across the street from where Rachel was staying. With that realization the chills returned, this time raising gooseflesh on her arms. Great! Just what she needed, a voyeur virtually living on her doorstep. She made a mental note to make sure her blinds were closed.
“Should I be worried?”
Nina shook her head, her long brown hair swishing across her shoulders. “No, I don’t think so. He’s never said anything to me except ‘Coffee, black.’ I think he’s just a looker who gets his kicks checking out all the ladies.”
Having worked with the police for a lot of years, Rachel knew the type well. They weren’t breaking any laws, but they made their share of women very uncomfortable.
“Thanks,” she said, and headed back to the car.
Before getting into the driver’s seat, she slid the note into her briefcase. Since Luke would use any excuse to be rid of her, he didn’t need to know about this. He’d have her on Interstate 95 heading back to Atlanta before she could freshen her lipstick. And that was not going to happen just because some kids thought it would be funny to rattle her.
She drove the short distance to her condo, got out and locked the car. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted a newer-model, green sedan had pulled into a space a little way away from her. No driver emerged from the car. Rachel shrugged and headed for the condo complex’s front door. As she was closing the door, the green sedan backed up and left the parking area.
Showered and shampooed, Rachel stretched out on the couch with her notes from last night’s fire. She’d barely gotten started when a knock sounded on the door.
Preoccupied with her thoughts, notes still clutched in her hand, she continued reading them as she wandered to the door and opened it.
Luke shifted one of the three large, white bags he held marked Wong’s Market. “Bad habit, not finding out who’s on the other side of your door before opening it.”
After the incident at the Latte Factory earlier, she couldn’t agree more, but she would never admit it to him. Then again, had she known it was him, she would have played possum and hoped he’d think she wasn’t home.
“Wouldn’t have worked,” he said, his lips curling in a heart-stopping smile. “I saw your car.”
That he still had the ability to guess what she was thinking before she said it unnerved her so much, she could only watch helplessly as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
By the time she’d recovered, Luke was in the kitchen unloading the bags. She joined him and began inspecting the items he’d lined up on the counter: boneless chicken breasts, soy sauce, sesame seeds, rice, broccoli, scallions.
“What’s all this?” She picked up a bottle of wine and read the label. White zinfandel. Her favorite.
“From experience, I know that eating alone is not all it’s cracked up to be, so I thought, why not eat together?” He grinned at her. “Get out the wok. You can stir-fry and I’ll chop.” When she didn’t move, he said, “You do have a wok, don’t you?”
Rachel shook herself loose of the web of his smile. “I…I don’t know. I have no idea what A.J. keeps around here.” She turned to the bank of floor-to-ceiling cabinets. “I’ve either been eating out or having something delivered.”
“Or not eating at all,” he added, doing a once-over of her body. “You’ve lost weight, Rach. You need a little more meat on those gorgeous bones of yours.”
His words brought on an involuntary shiver of awareness. God, she didn’t want him here, didn’t want to feel anything for him, didn’t want to react to his charm, his smile, his voice. But what her head wanted and what her body wanted seemed to be on opposing sides.
With an effort, she tamped down the wave of excitement building inside her, then covered it with an indignant huff. “I don’t see how my weight or my eating habits should concern you,” she snapped coldly.
He studied her for a moment, then turned back to cutting the boneless chicken breasts into narrow strips, but not before she noted the flash of pain resulting from her sharp tone and thoughtless words.
“It does when you’re working for me, and I need you to be one hundred percent on,” he finally said, his tone low and controlled.
She had lost weight. She was not eating well, and she’d noticed the difference in her stamina.
Damn! She hated when he was right.
Throwing a scathing glare at his back, she began searching the cabinets for a wok. Three cabinets and a lot of noisy banging of pots and pans later, she found one hiding under a colander.
When she spun around to place it on the stove, she almost ran straight into Luke’s wide, hard chest. Her pulse picked up speed. Her senses swirled like fallen leaves caught in an autumn wind. Slowly, she raised her head to find him staring down at her, his eyes filled with desire.
Before she could do something she’d live to regret, she moved quickly to one side in an effort to put space between them and lost her balance. He grasped her upper arms. A current of acute sexual tension shivered over her.
“This isn’t going to work,” she mumbled, referring to the limited space of the small kitchen. Her blue-eyed gaze lifted to lock with Luke’s.
Acutely aware of her silky skin against his palms, Luke had to fight to keep a coherent thought in his brain. “It will if we give it a chance,” he said, unsure if he meant the cooking arrangement or something neither of them seemed ready to address.
To avoid the off-limits thoughts chasing around his mind, Luke let her go, then surveyed the cramped kitchen. “I’ll move to the other side of the counter. You stay here and man the stove.” Quickly, he gathered the vegetables, meat, chopping board and knife and scooted around to the other side.
He’d just started working on the scallions, when the sound of the wok dropping against the glass cooktop drew his attention.
“Slipped,” Rachel said with a sheepish grin.
A wave of intense longing crashed over him. If this had been two years ago, that grin would have ignited a delay in supper and a quick trip to the bedroom. Food would have been forgotten.
But it wasn’t two years ago. It was here and now, and all they had between them was a tenuous, barely civil working relationship. He knew, better than anyone, that the chances of Rachel and him finding what they’d lost were zero to nothing.
As if this admission had opened a floodgate in his mind, the guilt and second guesses poured in. What if he’d handled Maggie’s disappearance better? What if he’d tried to understand more of what Rachel had been going through? What if, when Maggie had been declared probably deceased, instead of pulling away, he’d gathered Rachel to him and they’d lived out their grief together?
And the biggie… What if he hadn’t decided to work overtime that night and had been home where he should have been, protecting his family?
Luke had been beating himself up for two long years over the bad decisions he’d made, but none more than working that night. Rachel’s birthday had been a few weeks away, and he’d wanted to get some overtime in to take her to the Bahamas on the honeymoon they’d never had. As a result of his decision, a stranger had invaded their home, set fire to it, nearly burned Rachel alive and snatched Maggie.
Anger, hot and destructive as a raging forest fire, seared through him. His hand tightened on the handle of the knife. He sliced through the meat as if it were the throat of the person who had stolen their daughter and shattered their happiness.
Not until he heard Rachel’s gasp and looked down at where her gaze was fixed, did he realize that he’d cut his finger. She rushed around the counter and took his hand.
“Come with me, and we’ll get it cleaned out and bandaged.”
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Elizabeth Sinclair
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Baptism In Fire, электронная книга автора Elizabeth Sinclair на английском языке, в жанре современная зарубежная литература