Baptism In Fire

He folded the phone and tossed it into the passenger seat. For a long moment, he stared down at the phone, then gripped the steering wheel and rested his forehead against his hands.

He’d lost his precious Maggie to this sick criminal. In his gut, he knew he could lose Rachel, too, if he didn’t find a way to protect her from herself. But how did you protect someone who didn’t want to be protected? Whose pride was so ironclad, it would take the Jaws of Life to get through it?

The next morning, at precisely eight o’clock, Rachel pulled up her rented Chevy Malibu outside the previous night’s fire scene. She refused to give Luke any reason to think she was letting her emotions rule her head. Digging through the burned rubble would be another first for her, another step back into her past, but she’d spent most of last night preparing for it and was determined to do it without any hitches.

She powered down the car window, then shut off the engine. The pungent yet familiar smell of wet, burned wood drifted to her on the humid morning air. A smell she’d never gotten completely out of her nostrils or her blood.

Leaning back, she sipped the coffee she’d picked up at the 7-Eleven and watched a handful of firefighters securing the scene and stamping out flare-ups, their soiled yellow helmets and slickers standing out against the black debris. Their sluggish movements told her they’d pulled an all-nighter, and they were badly in need of sack time.

She checked her watch. Eight-fifteen. Luke, always the prompt one of the two of them, had obviously decided to play with her head. He probably hoped that, if he took long enough, she’d give up and leave, not having the wherewithal to go into the scene alone.

She smiled. Not a chance.

Rachel finished the coffee, put her empty cup in the cup holder, then slipped from the car, making sure to grab the notepad, the pen and the camera she’d brought with her.

As she approached the ruins, firefighter Samantha Ellis came around the side of the fire truck. Rachel and Sam had been friends ever since they’d been the only females in their class of rookie firefighters. When Rachel had left the company to take the ATF arson investigators training program, she’d wanted Sam to come, too, but Sam had been happy to keep hauling hoses, and the lieutenant’s insignia on Sam’s helmet told Rachel she’d done well.

Over the past two years, Rachel had lost touch with Sam, as she had with most of the people who reminded her of the past.

Sam came toward her, her face set, a stern warning to stay out of the scene hovering on her lips, then recognition washed over her expression.

“Rachel?” Her face broke into a broad grin. “Great to see you.” Then she paused, a frown knitting her forehead. “What are you doing here?”

“Hi, Sam. Chief Branson invited me to your…uh…party.” She surveyed their surroundings with a critical eye.

Sam cast a quick glance toward the ruins. “Yeah, we’ve been having a lot of these parties lately.”

“So I’m told.” Rachel smiled. “Can you loan me some of your turnout gear so I can get started?”

“Sure thing.” Sam went to the standby truck and hauled out a helmet, a small shovel, one of the cumbersome jackets and a pair of boots.

Rachel took them, put the jacket aside, then sat on the running board of the truck to exchange her sneakers for the heavy rubber boots. After she’d slipped into the boots, she smiled up at Sam. “I’d forgotten how these things make you feel like you’re wearing your big sister’s clothes.” She stood and grabbed the jacket. “Did you find any trace of an accelerant in there?”

“We won’t know until the lab confirms it for sure, but my guess is this torch’s choice of fire starter was regulation, backyard charcoal lighter.” Sam gave Rachel’s clothes the once-over. “Better put on the slicker. You’ll trash your clothes in there.”

Rachel glanced down at her jeans and snowy-white T-shirt. Then, grinning at Sam, she plopped the helmet on her chestnut curls and shrugged. Having second thoughts, she glanced at the slicker. “These things always made me feel like I had a two-thousand-pound elephant sitting on my back.”

Sam sighed tiredly, but managed a grin. “Try carrying it around for eighteen hours.”

As she donned the weighty slicker, Rachel noted that Sam’s back was slumped with fatigue. Dark smudges rimmed her red eyes. Black soot encrusted the woman’s fatigue-lined face.

Under all that grime, it was hard to tell that Sam had once been a Miss Florida finalist. Rachel had never understood why Sam always played down her looks, no makeup, no salon hairdo. Even more, Rachel had wondered why she’d picked firefighting as a career. She’d asked once, but Sam had danced around the subject with all the expertise of a prima ballerina. Sam’s blatant avoidance convinced Rachel the subject should be left alone until Sam decided she wanted to discuss it.

“You’ll need these, too.” Sam handed Rachel a pair of latex gloves, then started toward what was left of the house.

Hauling on the gloves, Rachel sloshed through the wet grass behind Sam. The closer they got to the burned-out structure, the stronger the smell of burned wood and man-made fibers became. Her stomach churned.

Rachel stiffened and reminded herself sternly that she had a job to do. As she prepared to enter the house, determination cloaked any misgivings left over from the previous night.

“We’re about done in here,” Sam told her as she guided her through the opening where a front door once hung. “Fire’s out. Most everything that could burn did, except the woman they took to the morgue about eight hours ago. The closet door was closed—”

“Closed? It was always open with the others.”

“We figure the wind currents from the fire either closed it or it swung closed on its own. I doubt our torch did it. This sicko wants these women to see what’s coming for them.”

Rachel had blanked her actual experience of her apartment fire out of her memory. The doctors called it voluntary amnesia. Whatever it was, until this very moment, Rachel’d had no recollection of the actual fire. Now, as if someone turned a movie projector on and off quickly, a quick flash of the fire eating away at her bedding while she watched it from the floor of her closet, helpless and certain her death was imminent, passed through her mind. Though bits of the panic she’d felt that night and a tiny bit of residual memory remained behind, the image was gone before her mind could register all of it.

Sam continued to brief her while Rachel fought off emotions from scattered memories of the worst night of her life. She pushed them aside. Later. She’d think about it later.

“Just like the other fires, the only thing that managed to survive with just water and smoke damage was the kid’s room. A.J. asked that no evidence be gathered until you saw it, so it’s all just as we found it.” She stepped over a fallen ceiling beam. “At first, we thought this one was different, just a house fire, then we found the woman in the bedroom closet, tied up with lamp cord, a Bible tucked under her.” Sam shook her head. “Freaking sicko.”

A half hour later, Rachel was squatting in front of the closet. On the floor, a partially unburned area told her where the woman had been lying. Next to that lay the Bible, wet, but, having been sheltered by the woman’s body, untouched by the fire. She leafed through the first few pages of the book, observing that the copyright date and the publisher matched those listed in the notes she had back at the condo.

The odor of charcoal lighter still hung heavy in the room. Sam had always been teased that she could outsniff any arson dog, and it seemed she hadn’t lost her touch for identifying an accelerant.

Standing, Rachel examined the room. Almost twenty minutes passed before her gaze fastened on what she’d been looking for—the point of origin. A black V started a few inches above the baseboard. The wood strip along the wall looked like the blackened skin of an alligator. The pattern splayed out and up on the wall opposite the closet, and the smell of charcoal lighter was much stronger here.

She glanced back at the closet and shuddered. The cold bastard had set the fire and, judging by the severe burn damage on the inside of the door, left the door open. With her hands tied behind her, he’d left the victim as helpless as a turtle on its back to watch the flames coming to get her. Just like he’d left Rachel. She shuddered but refused to allow her emotions to dampen her resolve to get this job done.

Rachel swung the door closed. The outside was burned, but not nearly as badly as the inside. Sam’s conclusions were probably right. The wind currents created by the fire had closed it, but too late to save the woman’s life. Methodically, Rachel snapped photos of the inside and outside of the closet, both sides of the door, the Bible, and the point of origin.

“Still have a problem obeying orders, I see.”

Luke’s deep voice sent shivers down Rachel’s spine. She jumped, nearly dropping the camera, then spun toward him. “You’re late.”

“You didn’t wait for me.” He strolled past her to look in the closet. “Here’s your coffee,” he said, holding out one of two cups he’d brought with him.

Grateful that he’d remembered and ready for a second dose of caffeine, she took it and flipped off the plastic lid. The smell of hot coffee wafted up to Rachel. Cautiously, she sipped the steaming liquid.

“Is it okay?”

Oddly enough, it was more than okay. “It’s perfect,” she said. “I’m surprised you remembered how I take it.”

“One sugar and a drop of milk,” he recited, then frowned. “I always wondered what difference that drop of milk made.”

Rachel set the cup on the edge of the charred dresser. “It’s an appeasement.”

He frowned. “A what?”

“Appeasement. When I was about sixteen, I started drinking coffee, and my mother said only men drank black coffee, so the drop of milk was an—”

“Appeasement,” he finished for her, then laughed.

It had a been a long time since she’d heard Luke really laugh. The sound sent ripples of pleasure shimmering through Rachel.

“Kind of like me suffering through those chick flicks you loved when I would have rather been watching James Bond.” He grinned. “But there were compensations.”

His words brought to mind what usually happened after they sat through one of those romantic movies. Usually a shower together, soap-slick bodies rubbing against each other, kisses heating blood to boiling, then a quick rush to the bed, if they could make it that far, then—