Her eyes squeezed shut. “I just want to go back to the way things were before.”

Before a sick f**k had taken her, tortured her, and made her wish for death. “If you need more time off…”

“That’s not going to cut it. Maybe I need out.”

Now she had him tensing. “Of the SSD?”

Her dark eyes opened. “Maybe. Maybe I just can’t cut it anymore, Luke. Maybe I’m just tired of trying to figure out who the good guys are and—” She glanced at the window. “And who’s just pretending to be good.”

“Think about this, Sam. Don’t rush to a decision. You’ve just come back—”

“And I’m shaking apart!” She held her hands up, and he saw the quiver of her fingers. “I was in that damn room with Kenton, and I thought I was going to be sick. Every second, I was shaking. My stomach twisted, and my chest hurt so bad I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”

He hadn’t seen the interrogation, but he’d been in the hallway and he knew, “You didn’t run out.”

“What?” Her eyes narrowed. “No, of course, I didn’t—”

“There’s no ‘of course.’ ” Couldn’t she see that? “Maybe someone else would have left. Maybe someone else wouldn’t have ever been in the room. You stayed. So what if you were scared? Or sick? You didn’t back down.”

“I wanted to.” A tear slid down her cheek only to be roughly swiped away by her trembling fingers. “Maybe next time I will.”

“And maybe you won’t.”

“Maybe.” She gave a hesitant nod. “Luke, don’t tell anyone about this, okay?” Tears were in her eyes.

Appearances.

She was trying to keep up hers. And right then, she did remind him of Monica because they were both survivors.

Sam fumbled as she turned up the volume. “W-we’d better listen…”

“You were there when Mike Randall was arrested, weren’t you?” Monica’s smooth voice flowed into the room.

“Yeah, but so were at least three other cops!”

“A young girl died in the fire he set, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Did you think it was fair that her mother had to bury her only daughter, while Mike Randall didn’t even spend one single day in a prison cell?”

Silence.

“Detective Malone?” She pressed with that light southern drawl. “Did you think it was fair—”

“Fuck, no! But that dick in the DA’s office made a deal, and I had to be the one to tell Candace that the little prick who killed her girl was gettin’ therapy while Tonya Kelly was getting a hole in the f**king ground.”

“What kind of punishment did you think Mike Randall should have gotten?”

“How do I know?” He shook his head. “I’m not the damn judge.”

“And what if you were?” Her voice dropped. “What if you had the power to decide Randall’s fate? What would you have done?”

“Locked him in a damn cage!”

“For how long? When he got out…” She shrugged. “He just would have started the fires again. It was a compulsion for him.” Monica paused and stared at the detective. “So how do you stop someone like that?”

“Only a bullet can stop some of the killers out there. Otherwise, they just keep right on hurting people.”

“A bullet… or fire. Maybe that fire he loved so much was the perfect way to kill him.”

Malone’s fingers locked around the table and his knuckles whitened. “Maybe it was.”

Well, well… and just maybe that cop was getting close to a confession.

“No! No, let me go!” As she screamed, a woman with long red hair struggled against the firefighter who held her in his grip. Darkness threatened in the sky, pushing the sun away, even as the flames from the two-story house on Delaney Boulevard jumped higher.

A baby cried, the sound rising to a desperate wail, and Kenton saw the infant clutched tightly in the woman’s arms.

“Ma’am, let us check you out. Let us check the baby—”

“Brian is in there! I just wanted to get the baby out, but I’m goin’ back for my son! I’m goin’ back—”

“They never understand,” Garrison muttered, coming to Kenton’s side and keeping his voice low. “There’s no time for a second trip. You go back in when the fire’s spread so fast, you’re DRT.”

DRT. Dead right there.

“Brian!” She fell to her knees, screaming his name.

Two firefighters ran from the front of the house.

She jerked forward and hope lit her face, but their arms were empty.

“No!”

The flames shot higher.

It hurt to look at her and see that much pain and fear.

An EMT managed to pry the baby out of her hands. But then she tried to run again, heading right back for that burning house. The two firefighters who’d just come out caught her and dragged her back even as she begged for her son.

“Please, let me go back in, let me find him, let me—Brian!”

“Where’s Lora?” Kenton asked, voice rough, but he knew. Of course, he knew where she’d be. The two uniforms who’d been on guard duty for her stood to the side and watched the flames.

Garrison lifted his radio as he kept his stare on the fire. “That’s spreading too fast.” He pressed the button on the side of his radio. “If they don’t find him…”

“Where’s Lora?” Fear knifed through Kenton’s gut.

“Brian!” the mother screamed.

“Leading the team,” was Garrison’s curt reply. He glanced at Kenton. “She won’t leave kids behind.”

But at what price? What if the fire was too strong? What if—

“We don’t give up until hope is damn well gone,” Garrison barked.

Kenton could feel the heat from the fire blowing against his skin. So hot. He glanced toward the mother and found her sobbing on the ground.

“Brian!”

“Randall was sick,” Malone said as he leaned back in his chair and licked his lips. “That guy—he’d been in and out of psych wards for years. He caught his house on fire for the first time when he was eight. Eight.”

“And when he set the fire that killed Tonya Kelly, he was only sixteen.” Monica didn’t glance down at the paperwork before her. No need. She knew all the details. She made a point of always knowing. “Randall was just a kid, too. At least that’s what the courts thought. That’s why he didn’t get hard time.”

“Mike Randall wasn’t gonna stop.” His eyes slit at the corners. “We all knew it. The damn DA knew it. The guy was sick. If he hadn’t offed himself, he would have taken out someone else, another innocent—”

“Like his mother?”

But he shook his head, just as she knew he would. “That woman wasn’t innocent. Hell, she made Randall into the monster he was.”

Something nagged in her mind. Teasing, but just out of reach.

“She burned him when he was a kid. Burned him. I saw the doctor’s reports. The woman took cigarettes to him when he was six years old. She f**ked him up, made him think the fire was something good.”

And not death. Monica cleared her throat. “So she was being judged, too?”

“I didn’t do anything to them. Not to either of them.”

She was starting to believe him. The guy wouldn’t crack. “Tell me, Detective Malone, have you ever been in a fire?”

“What?” He shook his head. “No, no, and I sure don’t want to be in one. I’m not one of the firefighters, lady. I don’t run into the fires.”

Click.

But she had to be sure. “I’m going to send in a male agent. I want you to submit to a physical examination.”

“What? You’re shitting me, right?”

“Prove to me that you don’t have a burn scar on you, and you can walk out of this office.”

But it’s not all pain, is it? When the fire lances your flesh…

When Phoenix had said that, he’d been talking from personal experience. She knew it. She’d heard the truth of those words in his voice.

The way he spoke of the fire—he personified it, called it a lover…

“That’s all it’ll take?” Malone shoved to his feet. In an instant, he’d wrenched off his shirt and tossed it to the floor. “Special Agent, look your fill.”

Flames burst from the doorway of the house on Delaney. Voices rose and fell, and sweat trickled down Kenton’s back.

Come on, Lora. Come out. Come on…

“They have to pull back. Shit.” Garrison spat on the ground, and his finger hovered over the radio button. “I hate like hell to lose—”

A firefighter burst out of the flames, flying right out the front door.

No kid. Was that Lora? The firefighter looked to be the right height. He couldn’t tell, though, not for certain. Kenton couldn’t see the uniform clearly enough.

Another firefighter streaked out of the flames. Kenton’s breath choked out. This one ran out, arms up, held tight around—

The boy.

“Brian!”

The mother tried to lunge forward, but a paramedic and a firefighter held her back, even as EMTs swarmed around the kid. The EMTs took him away from his rescuer and pushed a mask over his face to give him oxygen.

That second firefighter shoved back his mask with a gloved hand. No, not his. Hers. Lora. Grimy face. Sweat-slick hair.

The most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen.

Kenton lunged forward.

She took a deep breath and hurried to follow the kid.

“I’ll be damned,” Garrison whispered.

“Hell, yeah!” Rick shouted.

Then the firefighters were running toward her. They were laughing and shouting, and the mother was on her feet, the baby in her arms, and no one held her back now as she ran to her son.

Lora.

When the others surrounded her, she looked small. Weak, with the house burning behind her.

Others still worked on the flames. They held tight to hoses and shot water at the house.

A car slammed to a stop with its brakes screeching. Kenton looked over his shoulder and saw a man jump out. “Jennifer!” Fear there. No, terror was on the guy’s face as he stared up at the house. “Jennifer! Brian!”

The father.

Kenton hurried to him. “Everybody’s out.”

The guy staggered.

“They’re over there.” He pointed to the ambulance near the road. They’d loaded up the boy. His mother stroked his head, brushing back wet strands of hair and crying.

Crying, but also smiling very wide.

And Lora, she was there. She reached for the kid and ruffled his hair. The tilt of her lips was so beautiful that staring at it hurt.

Cameras flashed behind him. A news van hurtled up the street. The mother grabbed Lora and held her tight.

A cover story. That’s what this would be tomorrow. Just another story on the news.

But right then, it was a hell of a lot more.

“Our guy is scarred,” Monica said, and Ramirez raised his brows. “I could tell by the way he talked about the fire’s touch.” And she should have focused on this sooner. “He’s felt it. We’re looking for a perp who’s suffered burn wounds.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “That narrows the field.”

“It sure as hell does,” Luke said from behind Monica. “And if you’re right, it excludes the detective in there. Stripper boy is clear.”

She’d figured as much. “We need to check the hospitals. Get a listing of burn patients in the area.”

“Uh, you know there’s such a thing as doctor-patient confidentiality, right, Davenport?” Ramirez drawled.

Monica looked at Sam. Getting through a hospital’s security system would be a snap for her. “The records should go back for at least twenty-five to thirty years.”

“That long?” Luke brushed by her, squinting as he looked through Interrogation. Malone was dressed, sitting at the table again, and tapping his fingers. He looked pissed, but not scared.

Because the guy didn’t have anything to hide.

“That long,” she said, nodding, because most arsonists started when they were kids—when they were sloppy. So easy to make mistakes with small hands. So easy to burn. “Confine the search primarily to Charlottesville, maybe with a fifty-mile radius. No more, though, because our guy is local.” It fit. Every bit fit.

But why, why had he stopped killing for six months? Why stop, then start up again with such a vengeance all of a sudden? What had been the trigger?

Find the trigger, find the killer.

Seven A.M.

Kenton had stayed in the background. He’d watched Lora secure the scene and waited until the fire was only smoke and dust.

He’d watched the news crews leave. He’d seen the satisfaction on the faces of the firefighters and the desperate relief on the family’s faces.

Time had crawled by. Those hours… so very slowly.

They were back at the fire station now. He’d sent the two uniforms home because he planned to stay with Lora. The firefighters were wrapping up their reports. The new team was coming in, getting briefed, and Lora was about to slip away.

With him.

She wore a white T-shirt. Her blond hair had been washed, and it curled a bit around her face. No makeup, not here. Just clean, shining skin. The faintest traces of shadows lurked beneath her lashes because the woman was tired. Hell, she should be tired. Her lips were pale, but when she walked toward him, they curved, just a bit.