Into The Fire

“Then I’ll be doing my best to get the hell out of here. Just find me Nate’s stuff and I’ll give AAA a call.”

“What’s the hurry, princess? Nate’s been dead for three months—he’s not going anywhere.”

“Don’t you even care?” she demanded. “He was your best friend! A brother to you, and he died when he was under your roof. Don’t you feel anything? Grief, regret, responsibility?”

“I’m not responsible for Nate’s death,” he said in a detached voice.

“I didn’t say you were. But you’re the one who should have protected him. If he’d gotten in with a bad crowd you should have done something, anything, to help him….” Her voice trailed off in the face of his ironic expression.

“Maybe you better make those phone calls,” he said, rising and pouring himself a mug of steaming sludge. “You want any of this?”

“I’d rather die.”

“Sooner or later, angel face, you’re going to have to learn to lower your patrician standards.”

“You aren’t going to be around to see it.”

“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m looking forward to it.”

The smell of the coffee was tantalizing. She knew it would be awful—too strong, too bitter. It would wreak havoc on her stomach and her nerves, and even milk and sugar wouldn’t make it palatable. And she wanted it, anyway.

She rose, shoving a hand through her wet hair. He was watching her, and she didn’t like it. The sooner she was out of there the better. “So my car’s still in the ditch on…what road did you say it was?”

“Route 31.”

“Fine. I’ll call AAA, I’ll call my mother, and I’ll make arrangements to give you back your privacy as soon as possible. That’s what you’d like, right? Have me get the hell out of here?”

“Do you have any doubts about that?” He stubbed out his cigarette, looking up at her above the thread of smoke.

In fact, she did. It didn’t make sense, but he didn’t seem in any hurry to have her leave. “I’ll just go get my purse. Maybe my cell phone will work here.”

“Maybe,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee and not even grimacing. “But I wouldn’t count on it. I wouldn’t count on anything if I were you.”

She didn’t bother arguing with him. She didn’t bother wasting another word on him—she simply headed up the dark, narrow stairs, stepping over the stained spot where the rat’s corpse had rested, going straight to her room.

In the gray light of a November morning it looked even less welcoming than it had before. The room was Spartan—just the mattress on the floor, the sleeping bag and her suitcase.

And no sign of her purse anywhere.

It was cold up here. Nate never thought he would be so cold, looking down on them. It was an odd sort of feeling—floating, dreamy, and then everything coming into focus. He should have known she was coming—he just couldn’t understand what had taken her so long to get here. His death would have shattered her, and there was no way she could move on with her life without getting answers. She’d come here to face his old buddy Dillon. The man who had let him die .

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about it yet, even though he’d had a long time to think about it. Time had stopped making any sense, one day blending into another. He was trapped in this old building, unable to leave, but he’d heard her moving around, and known it was her .

The dead rat had been a nice touch. He left one every few days, not on a regular schedule. He didn’t want to be too predictable. He hadn’t expected Jamie to be the one to find it, but he didn’t mind. It meant Dillon had to come up with explanations, fast. And if he knew Dillon, he wasn’t about to tell her that the old factory was haunted by the ghost of her murdered cousin .

No, infested by rats was a preferable explanation. And it was. The rat of a man who’d betrayed his best friend and sent him to his death. And the King Rat himself, Nate Kincaid .

You can’t keep a good man down .

4

J amie searched, of course. It had been there when she woke up, hadn’t it? Dillon couldn’t have taken it—he’d been with her the entire time. And there was no way up to the second floor except that dark, rat-infested stairway, and no one had passed them while they sat arguing at the kitchen table.

Or maybe whoever had dumped her suitcase in the room had taken the purse. She wasn’t carrying a lot of cash, though her small supply of sleeping pills might appeal to some teenage druggie. And hell, what was Dillon but an overgrown teenage druggie? It had to be him.

She sat down on the mattress. She should go downstairs and confront him, demand that he return her purse. He’d deny taking it, of course. She was going to have a hell of a hard time getting out of here without her license and credit cards. No one would rent her a car, much less a room, without ID and credit. If he didn’t give it back to her she was stuck.

She stretched out on the thin mattress, staring at the cracked ceiling. He didn’t want her here. Why the hell would he do something that would keep her trapped here? Why, when he’d never liked her? If he even remembered that night so long ago, all he’d remember was what an idiot she’d been. What an embarrassing, pathetic idiot.

Twelve years ago

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said, and the soft breeze of early summer riffled through his too-long hair. “Come here.”

Jamie sat frozen in the front seat of the old Cadillac, practically wedged between the seat and the door. The beer bottle in her hands was empty, and in the gathering dusk Dillon Gaynor looked like every good girl’s worst nightmare. And secret, shameful dream.

She’d had her share of them. They all had, all the good girls of Marshfield, Rhode Island. He was wicked, he was sexy, he was as pretty as sin. Just the sort to daydream about. Just the sort to keep away from. And she was sitting in the front seat of an old Cadillac convertible with him, alone in the woods, and she’d been fool enough to bring up the subject of kissing.

She didn’t move. “I was just kidding,” she said, unable to keep the thread of nerves out of her voice.

“I wasn’t.” He took the empty beer bottle out of her hands and threw it into the woods. And then he reached for her, pulling her across the broad front seat. The old leather was so soft and smooth she slid easily, until she was touching him, thigh to thigh, and he was looking down into her breathless face. “So where do we start?”

“You drive me home, then come back and get Nate and his girlfriend?” she suggested in a nervous voice.

“I don’t think so.” He picked up her hand and looked at it for a long, contemplative moment. “Baby-pink nail polish. Did that match your prom dress?”

She’d chosen the shade just for that purpose, but she wasn’t about to admit it. He wasn’t expecting her to. He just held her delicate hand in his large, callused one, rubbing his thumb over her palm, slowly, sinuously. “Such an innocent hand,” he said. “What naughty things have you done with it?”

“Nothing.”

“I can believe it,” he murmured, pulling her hand to his mouth. He put his mouth against her palm, and she felt a shiver run through her body. And then he licked it, and the feel of his tongue against her skin shocked her. “Time you learned,” he said. And he put her hand against his chest.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been wearing the usual ratty T-shirt. But tonight he wore a faded Hawaiian-style shirt, and it was partly open, and her damp palm was pressed against his warm flesh without the safety of thin cotton between them.

He was hot. His skin burned beneath her cold hand, and she could feel the slow, steady pulse of his heart, beating against her palm, moving down her arm and into her body, so that her heart was beating with his, but faster, much faster, and she was cold where he was hot, and she stared up at him, paralyzed.

He kept her hand captured in his, pressed against his heart, as he leaned forward and flicked on the car radio. U2 was playing—Bono was singing about sex and love, just what she didn’t want to hear. He leaned back in the seat again, his fingers touching hers, caressing them, one by one, as he slowly unbuttoned the rest of his shirt with his other hand.

She felt like a small white rat facing a hungry python. Mesmerized, she sat in the front seat of the old convertible and waited for him to make the next move.

This was Dillon Gaynor, the object of her teenage fantasies since the first time he’d walked into her parents’ house, whether she’d wanted to admit it or not. It was his skin beneath her hand, and he was moving his head closer, and he was going to kiss her, he actually was, and she closed her eyes, holding her breath, waiting.

He tasted like beer. And cigarettes. And sin, sweet sin. The baddest of all bad boys, and he was kissing her, his mouth moving slowly over her closed lips, his hand pressing hers against his hot skin, holding it there. She closed her eyes, telling herself this wasn’t happening, and since it wasn’t, she wasn’t doing anything wrong or dangerous, and she could just lean back against the ratty leather seat and let him kiss her. He lifted his head.

“Is that the way you kiss your boyfriends?”

The nice dreamlike haze vanished, and she opened her eyes, trying to sit up. He held her down. “I know there’ve been boyfriends,” he continued, and she realized he was moving her hand across his stomach, in slow, erotic circles. “Nate’s told me all about them. Jimmy McCarty and Jay Thompson. You have lousy taste in boys.”

“Is that why I’m here with you?” she said.