Baptism In Fire. Elizabeth Sinclair

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ