Baptism In Fire

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.