Baptism In Fire

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—”