Deadly Heat

Page 3

Her eyebrows rose. “Guess we’ll see about that.” Time for full disclosure. “And, yeah, for the record, I’m the one who called Keith Hyde.” A real long shot, but she’d had to take it.
She knew when a hunter was playing with fire.
Lora was tired of finding the dead in the ashes of her fires.
So she’d used her connection and gotten the direct line for Keith Hyde, the man who was, for all intents and purposes, the SSD. He’d started the team. Handpicked every agent. And he chose the cases they covered.
“So you think you’ve got a serial arsonist in Charlottesville?”
Think? “I know we do. When you start investigating, you’ll see the same thing.” But the lead county arson investigator refused to see what was right in front of his face. The guy didn’t want to admit that he couldn’t handle the investigation on his own, that it was bigger than his office could handle.
Too bad. She was tired of seeing the bodies. So she’d gone over Seth’s head. Or rather, all the way around him to pull in the SSD.
But she hadn’t gone without backup. The chief had been the one to give her Hyde’s number. Garrison knew the score, and he’d recognized they were being outgunned by a killer.
A door opened down the hallway. A uniformed cop poked his head inside, his hazel eyes serious. “Sir, the suspect is waiting for you…”
“Suspect?” Her brows rose and, yeah, that was hope hitting her in the chest like a fist.
But Kenton’s lips thinned. “The junkie from last night. There’s a Detective Peter Malone—”
Yeah, she knew him. Too well.
“—he thinks Old Larry might have had something to do with the vic’s death.” One shoulder lifted. “I’m sitting in on the interrogation.”
“Well, um…” Her left foot eased back. “Good luck with that.” Lora turned away.
“I’ll be right there,” Kenton called out.
“Yes, sir.” The door slammed shut.
She kept walking. Another door waited for her, just a few feet away.
“You don’t think this death is related to the others, do you, Ms. Spade?”
If she did, Lora wouldn’t be walking away. She’d have been running to that interrogation room.
“Why not?” he asked, voice rising. “Doesn’t this one fit your pattern?”
Had the guy done any homework? Her fingers curled around the doorknob, and she glanced back at him. “No, it doesn’t.” His gaze seemed so watchful. “The fire junkie we’re after—” And, sure, she thought of guys like this as junkies. The fire was just as addictive as drugs. Lora swallowed over the lump that rose in her throat and managed, “H-he doesn’t kill the victims. He lets the fire do the killing for him.”
“This is personal for you.” He shook his head. “You can’t let the cases get personal. You can’t—”
A broken laugh rattled her chest. “It’s been personal for me… for months.” Her lips twisted. “Far too late to worry about distance now.”
It had been too late from the moment that she’d pulled Carter’s body out of that inferno.
“I ain’t killed nobody!” Kenton didn’t wince at the yell, and neither did the detective in the chair to his right.
But Detective Peter Malone did lean forward and lock his bright blue gaze on their twitching subject. “He was locked in, Larry. Sealed in that closet and left to die. You were the only other person in that building…”
Larry lifted his hands, and there was no way to miss their shaking. “I didn’t—I didn’t know anybody was there! Thought it was—was just me!”
“Did you start the fire to cover the murder?” Peter demanded, not letting up. From what Kenton could tell, the cop liked to drill hard and fast in interrogation. Some cops worked that way. Others were slower, sneakier.
One of the agents he worked with at the SSD, Monica Davenport, now she was one fine interrogator. She could make any monster spill his guts in five minutes or less.
The lady had a talent—one that worked particularly well with serial killers.
The guy in front of him was not a serial, and Kenton didn’t think he was an arsonist either.
Just a man who’d let drugs eat his soul away.
“You set the fire,” Peter said, “because you’d knocked the guy’s head in, and you were covering your tracks.” He shook his own head. “But then you got caught by the flames. The fire messed up your exit, huh?”
“What? No, man, no! I was just—just…” He inhaled, hard. “I had some—some drugs.” Whispered.
Not a big surprise. The guy’s body language screamed user, and one look into the man’s eyes had shown the pinprick-sized pupils and the bloodshot gaze.
“I swear, I didn’t s-start no fire! I didn’t kill nobody!”
Larry’s rap sheet backed that up. Drug charges stretching for pages, but no assaults, nothing even hinting at violence.
“Maybe you got high, and you got mean.” Peter stood and strolled around the table. “And the poor vic just got in your way.”
“Nah, nah, it wasn’t—”
“Tell us his name, Larry. He’s probably got a family out there, someone waiting for him to come home. Give us a name, help us out. And we’ll help you.”
The cop was pretty good.
Kenton watched the scene and waited.
Larry’s head fell. “Don’t know,” he mumbled. “D-didn’t do it.”
Same story, same verse—the one they’d gotten for the last hour. Larry had to be jonesing. His sweat soaked his clothes, and those twitches were just getting worse. But his story hadn’t changed.
Because it was the truth. Kenton had seen more than his share of liars since joining the Bureau. When perps told lies, their stories always changed. They’d swap up details and forget the original facts. It was just harder to remember a lie, especially when you were riding high on drugs.
Kenton stood, the chair legs screeching as he shoved his chair back. Larry’s head snapped up, and those bloodshot eyes widened. “Larry, what did you see last night?”
The thick lines on Larry’s forehead deepened.
The cop cut him a hard look, and Peter’s blue eyes narrowed. So? Kenton wasn’t in the mood for a pissing match. The cop had gotten his turn.
Larry swiped sweat out of his eyes. “D-don’t know what—”
“Before the fire started, did you see anyone else in the building? Hear anything?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Was… sleepin’…”
More like passed out.
“Woke up… s-smelled the smoke…” He sniffed. “Ran to the window…”
Kenton didn’t tense. “And what did you see outside?”
“You.”
Great.
Kenton turned away. This wasn’t their guy.
“Other… b-bastard didn’t help, but you—you c-came in…”
Kenton glanced back. “What other bastard?”
“Th-the one in the baseball cap… running… running down the street.”
Not many joggers in that part of town.
“Did you see the man’s face?” Peter asked.
Ah, now that would be the big question.
Larry gave a sad shake of his head.
Fuck.
The music blared, the drinks flowed, and the come-ons, well, came, but Lora sat in the back, cradling her beer and knowing that she really didn’t fit in at Mickey’s.
She couldn’t laugh with the others anymore. Couldn’t flirt. Couldn’t tease. Because she always felt like she had to be on her guard.
So tired of feeling eyes on me.
Either she was going crazy—yeah, a possibility…
Or somebody was screwing with her.
Lifting the beer, she took a long swallow. Heather wouldn’t be showing up tonight. She’d gotten the text just moments ago, and Lora knew she’d be cutting out soon, too. Can’t be here alone.
The band blared louder, voices laughed and cheered, and when she lowered the beer, he was there.
GQ.
She raised her brows and let her voice mock. “Well, if it isn’t the special agent man.”
He shook his head. “Don’t mess with me, Lora.”
Lora. She shouldn’t like the way he said her name. But with his deep voice, the name rolled on his tongue, and yes, okay, she could easily imagine him saying her name in that same way when they were alone.
And na**d.
Too long without a lover.
Her fingers curled around the chilled beer bottle. “What are you doing here?”
He sat down beside her. Uninvited. It figured he’d do something like that. “You said you’d be here.” A pause. “And I needed to talk to you.”
The guy still smelled good. Looked good. “So talk.” They were getting stares already. Lora caught the eye of Tony Long, one of the firefighters on her crew. He raised his beer bottle toward her.
Ah, the night couldn’t get any better.
The news about their little meeting would spread like wildfire. Because with cops and smoke eaters filling the room, the gossip vine would run fast.
“I want your help.”
She blinked and all semblance of bitch faded. “Uh, run that by me again?” Bitch was her defense mechanism, so what now?
Those gray eyes were steady, and he seemed to inch closer. No, maybe he was just so big that he took up a lot of space. Her space. “I’m not leaving, not until I’m sure the area’s clear.”
The tension in her shoulders eased. “Good.” Because Lora didn’t think the fires were going to stop, not until they stopped the pyro out there.
“I want you to help me,” he said again. “I need a contact at the station. Someone to walk me through the crime scenes. Someone to tell me what the hell I’m looking at in the fire.” His arm stretched behind her, almost caging her. “I need you.”
Her breath came, real slow. “You have to—you’ll have to get approval from my chief.” But the chief knew the score. He’d been the one to send her to Hyde.
“Already got it.”
So the agent worked fast.
“Like I said… I need your help.”
She hesitated because there was something there in his eyes. This wasn’t just about the cases. There was a dark awareness lurking in his gaze. A hunger, a need she understood.
One that she shouldn’t be feeling.
But one that stirred in her gut anyway. One that had her thighs tensing, her heart beating a little too fast, and hell, had her wanting.
“Do you want to catch this guy?”
“More than anything.” I can still hear the screams.
“Then I guess for the time being…” He offered her his right hand. “We’ll be partners.”
Her eyes held his. Slowly, she reached for that hand. His fingers curled around hers, warm and strong.
A lick of heat shot right through her.
His mouth hitched into a half smile. “I think I’m gonna like working with you, Lora Spade.”
She pulled her hand back. “Working only, Kent.” The shortened version of his name rolled easily off her tongue. “Not screwing.”
Just to be clear.
He blinked. “Didn’t say anything about screwing.”
“You didn’t have to.” A woman knew signals. His weren’t easy to miss. Even if he did a good job of keeping those eyes up and off her chest. “I’m not looking for a lover.”
Just a killer.
“Seems a shame…” That smile faded. “But I’m not asking you to work with me so we can f**k.”
Ah, blunt. She could like that.
Like him.
But she wouldn’t.
She didn’t want any more pain. Special Agent Kenton Lake was the kind of man who could hurt a woman. Because he was the kind who’d walk away when the job was done, and leave her in the ashes.
Been there, not doing it again. No matter how sexy the package.
“Then I guess you have yourself a partner.” Her smile was a little mean, and she knew it. “We will bring the guy down.”
• • •
Some habits were hard to break.
He watched the man stumble down the street. The guy flashed cash at some punk kid and got a small bag in exchange.
The kid vanished. His prey didn’t.
He’d started to think about the man last night. Wonder about him. The guy had been pulled from the second story of that hell on LeRoy.
How long had he been up there? What all had he seen? Heard?
The flickers of fear had come then, and he wasn’t one given to fear.
Larry Powell. Finding out the guy’s name had taken two minutes. Picking apart the guy’s life—five.
Larry had made him change his plans. He wouldn’t have chosen tonight for the flames, but he couldn’t afford to wait. Not with Larry talking to the cops and that a**hole agent.
No time to waste.
Larry scurried down the street, slinking and hiding like a rat in the dark.
This rat wasn’t gettin’ away. Not this time.
The fingers of his right hand rolled the match he carried.
“I read the case files.” Kenton leaned back and heard the vinyl booth cushion groan as he motioned for the waitress. “Different accelerants were used in all the crimes, different points of origin for the fires—hell, even different structures.” The woman might not believe it, but he actually did his homework.
On all of his cases.