Up in Flames

“Why did you run, Rosanna?” Natalie asked.

She darted up the sidewalk and onto the porch, then jammed her key toward the keyhole in her apartment door. Her fingers shook, though, and she dropped the key, then had to bend to retrieve it and start all over.

How could she explain without revealing the truth about her childhood? Without divulging her secrets? Secrets she’d guarded over for the past twenty-four years.

“Rosanna?” Natalie said softly. “Come on, tell me what’s wrong? You looked spooked back there.”

Rosanna pivoted, wondering if her new friend had a sixth sense. The experiment she’d joined at the Coastal Island Research Park involved testing for special abilities. Some of the participants were control subjects; others claimed to have various gifts ranging from telekinesis to psychic powers to those who communed with the dead. They were beginning a support group session this week, but so far no one had been forced to share his or her reason for being involved in the study.

“I don’t like cops,” Rosanna said, admitting the partial truth. “They make me nervous.”

Natalie arched a dark brow. “Hmm. I thought those two at the scene of the fire were kind of cute.”

Cute was not a word Rosanna would have attached to the hulking male cop who’d stared at her through the crowd. He was tall, broad-shouldered like a linebacker, with a square jaw, strong nose, cleft chin and thick hair as black as the soot from the embers of the charred wood. Even his eyebrows were thick and powerful looking, framing his eyes in a way that emphasized his coldness.

He had a dark side. Whether it was anger, his job, or the criminals he’d dealt with, something had hardened him.

Still, for a minute when he’d looked at her, she’d felt some cosmic force draw her to him.

The reason she’d run. The last person she’d ever get involved with was a cop.

Rosanna pushed open the door and hurried into the foyer, trying to shake the cobwebs of lust from her brain.

After her father had died, she’d been sent to live with her grandmother, a descendant of a witchdoctor. Rosanna had grown up a recluse with Granny Redhill, shunned by some, yet welcomed by the underground population of Savannah’s believers in the supernatural.

She had never had a boyfriend. Had never wanted a man before. And it had never bothered her that she was alone. She liked being alone.

So why had she been drawn to that detective?

“Earth to Rosanna?” Natalie said with a laugh. “What are you thinking?”

“About that fire,” Rosanna said. “There were two others in the past few weeks.”

“But they weren’t related,” Natalie said. “Besides, it’s been so dry with this heat wave that fires have been breaking out all across the South.”

True. So why was she nervous?

“Come on, Rosanna, let’s go to the Pink Martini. They have live music on Saturday nights. Maybe we’ll meet some guys.”

Rosanna sighed and dropped her purse onto the ottoman in the den. She’d read her own tarot cards, and a lovelife was not in her future. “You go ahead, Nat. I’ll just curl up with a good book tonight and go to bed early.”

“No,” Natalie protested. “It’s the Fourth of July celebration. Don’t you want to see the fireworks?”

“We just saw enough fireworks for me,” Rosanna said.

Natalie pushed her toward her bedroom. “Not for me. I’ve been begging you for weeks to party with me, and I’m not taking no for an answer. Now go put on something sexy.”

Rosanna glanced down at her colorful skirt and sandals. She liked her gypsy look. “I don’t exactly have good luck in the relationship department.” Because she could never be her true self. Her own parents had thought she was a devil child and hadn’t been able to love her. And she’d proven her father right that fatal day…

“Please,” Natalie said, giving her another push. “It’s not safe to go barhopping alone. I need a buddy.”

Her last words convinced Rosanna. With the recent crime wave in town, Natalie was right. Rosanna didn’t have very many friends. She didn’t want to lose this one.

In her bedroom, she slipped on a black sundress, strappy silver sandals and silver hoop earrings. Nothing she could do with her mop of hair, so she left it loose, then added some lip gloss. Seconds later, she and Natalie headed back outside into the hot, sultry summer air.

But once again, a chill of foreboding tiptoed up her spine as they strolled toward River Street.

She spun around twice to see if someone was following her, but saw nothing. Still, tension charged the air, and she sensed something dark and sinister in the shadows.

HE STILL FELT the heat of the flames from the café burning his hands, singeing his hair, the smoke filling his lungs. And he tasted the fear.

Laughter bubbled in his chest. The terrified screams of the onlookers was music to his ears. Food for his hungry heart.

While the firefighter raced to extinguish his handiwork, he had stood in the shadows of the live oaks, letting the spidery web of Spanish moss shroud him. His heart raced, his blood hot from the excitement of watching the flames light up the inky sky and the knowledge that he had exerted control over all of them.

They would never catch him because he had left no evidence behind. Laughter bubbled in his throat. Detective Bradford Walsh would spin in circles.

Perfect. He hated Bradford Walsh.

Now the woman was a different story. He’d felt her presence, sensed that she was like him. Different.

What her talents were he didn’t know. But he would find out.

And he would use her if needed.

He followed her now. Had seen her before, but couldn’t place where.

She was dressed to kill and heading toward the party end of town. Probably on the prowl for a man to fulfill her fantasies.

He had fantasies of his own.

His thirst for another fire already burned inside him, stronger and more intense than before. The city would host a fireworks show in the park tonight, but those would be pitiful compared to his work.

The café fire was only the beginning of the festivities he had planned.

But he had cut short his fun in watching the flames die down at the café because of this woman. He wanted that lost time back, those lost moments of joy, of seeing the final embers dwindle to ashes. That part usually satisfied and fed him for hours. Sometimes days. But not tonight.

She had robbed him of that pleasure.

And she would suffer.

In fact, he just might set her afire and watch her skin erupt into flames like kindling.

Chapter Two

Bradford spent the next two hours interviewing the witnesses from the café fire.

Frustration gnawed at him. No one stuck out as a possible arsonist. No one had seen or heard anything suspicious.