Hot for You (9 page)

“I have a dull headache.” She pinched the
bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “I think the
Tylenol is helping keep a full blown headache away.”

“I’ll get you some water.” He stood and went
to the kitchen to get her a glass of ice water and returned a few
moments later.

After she’d taken a few sips of the water, he
set the glass on the end table. “You rest now. I’m going to check
on you every now and then. Okay?”

She let out a sigh. “Right now rest sounds
good.”

“I’m going to let you sleep for a couple of
hours.” He gently stroked her hair from her face. “I’ll wake you up
to check on you then.”

“I’m fine.” She sighed. “I’ll just relax a
little.”

In a matter of moments she fell asleep, her
breathing becoming slow and even.

He watched her until she fell asleep, her
features relaxed, the tension in her forehead vanishing. She was
beautiful with loose tendrils of her hair around her face, the
sprinkling of freckles against her pale skin. She was a little too
pale, but she should be fine with some rest.

Tension had formed in his chest the moment
she was thrown from the horse, and the tension had stayed. He’d
invited her to go riding and she had ended up being in an accident
and was now injured. He gritted his teeth. Thank God it hadn’t been
any worse.

He shook his head. It was possible Carilyn
would focus on the negatives of his lifestyle because of the
accident. He wouldn’t blame her, but he hoped that wouldn’t be the
case.

With one last look at her, he got up and left
her to sleep. He headed outside to take care of Holly and Molly in
record time so that he could check on Carilyn again.

When he returned to the house, he looked in
on her and she seemed to be sleeping peacefully. He walked away
from where she lay and headed through the archway to his office. As
he reached his desk, his cell phone rang. He drew it out of the
holster on his belt as he settled in his seat.

The caller ID told him it was Reese. “How’s
it going?” Cody asked as he answered.

“I have an update for you on the arsonist
case regarding Janice Barnhart.” Reese sounded grim. “We found her
vehicle abandoned in the Bradshaw Mountains. There’s no trace of
her with the exception of her purse, which was left in the
car.”

Cody frowned and started to pace as he spoke.
“Any chance she’s just out for a walk?”

“Her car is covered in at least a week’s
worth of dust and pine needles,” Reese said and then added, “We
located her parents in Phoenix and they haven’t heard from Ms.
Barnhart in a week. Her parents said she usually contacts them on
Sunday afternoons. They hadn’t been too worried because she has
missed a Sunday or two in the past.”

Reese’s mouth tightened as he continued,
“Janice told her parents that she would be in town this week
working on designing a new dress shop that she plans on opening in
the fall. Her parents said she would have told them if she was
going out of town.”

“Damn.” Cody bit out the word as he paced his
office. “This doesn’t sound good.”

“It sure as hell doesn’t,” Reese said. “I
obtained a warrant to search her apartment and the living room was
a mess, indicating there could have been a struggle. But it’s
possible she could just be a messy person. Toiletries were in the
bathroom, the clothes closets and drawers were full, there were
suitcases in the coat closet, an almost full gallon jug of milk in
the fridge, which was filled with groceries, and any number of
other clues that tells us she wasn’t planning on an extended stay
anywhere else.”

Cody pushed his hand through his hair in
frustration. “What now?”

“We’re treating it as a missing person’s case
and we’ve started a search,” Reese said. “We’ve started locally and
if nothing turns up we’ll be searching the area where we found her
car.”

Cody leaned back in his office chair. “Thanks
for keeping me up to speed.”

“No problem,” Reese said. “I’ll be in touch
if I have any news.”

When he’d disconnected the phone, Cody
absently flipped the cell phone in his hands as he thought about
what Reese had just told him. Did Janice Barnhart’s disappearance
have anything to do with the arsonist? Were the other victims of
the arsonist in danger, too?

He gritted his teeth. Damned if he was going
to let anything happen to Carilyn.

* * * * *

Carilyn’s head ached so badly she thought it
would split. She gave a low groan as she heard a voice calling to
her.

“Wake up, Carilyn.” A male voice was speaking
her name and a warm hand was on her shoulder. “I need to check on
you.”

She didn’t want to wake up, but she was
inclined to obey. She blinked her eyes to a dim room and looked up
to see Cody bent over her.

He ran his knuckles along her cheek. “This
might seem like a silly question, but what’s your name?”

It did seem silly but then she surprised
herself when she hesitated. “Carilyn,” she said as she pushed
through the fog and grasped the answer.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked.

She had to think for a moment. “On your
ranch. Outside of Prescott.”

He gave a nod. “Do you know what happened to
you?”

She frowned. “I…” She had to concentrate
hard. Her thoughts seemed so elusive. “There was a rattlesnake and
I was thrown from your horse. From Molly. I landed on the ground
and hit my head.”

“Very good.” He raised a cup of water. “I’d
bet you’d like some more Tylenol about now.”

“You’d bet right.” She tried to smile. It
hurt.

He helped her sit just enough to swallow the
tablets and she chased it down with sips of water. Her mouth and
throat were dry and she was glad to have something to drink.

“You can keep on sleeping.” He checked her
eyes, probably looking to see if they were dilated. Despite her
confusion, she seemed to remember that much. “You need to relax and
recover. A concussion is nothing to take lightly.”

“Okay.” She felt too foggy to argue with him.
As much as she felt the need to get home and work on her laptop,
she also realized the last thing she should be doing now was
driving. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate on work, anyway.

He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed
as he looked down on her. “Rest,” he repeated.

“I will,” she said before she drifted off to
sleep again.

***

He hadn’t meant to kill her.

Nathan stared at the body of Janice Barnhart,
in the abandoned old warehouse, his stomach churning. He had only
wanted to scare her.

Right?

But he had pushed too far and everything had
gotten out of control.

He tilted his head as he studied Janice where
she lay slumped on the concrete floor against the metal support.
She looked a lot like the charred blonde Barbie he’d just set fire
to in front of Janice while she’d still been alive. He’d tied a gag
around the doll, and bound her wrists together and her ankles too,
using a chain necklace…just like Janice had been bound with heavy
chain.

He hadn’t expected Janice’s clothes to catch
fire.

Or had he known perfectly well what would
happen when he tossed the burning doll at Janice’s feet?

Her clothes had caught fire so quickly he’d
known there was nothing he could do to save her. He’d thrown the
blanket he’d covered her with in the car into the fire. The burning
blanket had finished the job.

He’d watched her burn. The fire had been
amazing, had filled him with an excitement he’d never experienced
before.

The gag had muffled her screams and the metal
support she was chained to had kept her from moving. The concrete
floor in the empty part of the vast warehouse hadn’t allowed the
fire to spread and it had burned itself out.

The sickly smell and the smoke had him
coughing and his eyes stung. Still, he stared at her body,
fascinated.

He’d never taken a life before. Instead of
sickening him, a sense of power flooded his veins. It was as if her
lifeforce had flowed into him and strengthened his own.

Taking her to the warehouse after keeping her
in his apartment for a week had been a spur of the moment thing.
He’d gotten tired of her constant moaning and hadn’t been sure what
to do with her once he’d had her.

Rape was distasteful, but even without that
he’d felt confident and powerful having her in his possession. He’d
been in control of everything she did, day after day.

And now the final testament to his power… Her
life had been in his hands… And he’d snuffed it out.

He frowned. What should he do with her body?
He looked around the warehouse with all its junk, old and rusted
tools, broken down machinery, and refuse. His gaze landed on a
group of rusted red and green fifty-gallon drums. One of those
would do.

The body was burned beyond recognition,
including what had been lovely blonde hair. He didn’t want to touch
her so he went to his car that was parked nearby in the warehouse,
and pulled a tarp out of the trunk.

Once he was back, he crossed the chalk line
he’d drawn and poured gasoline on. Carefully, avoiding contact with
Janice’s charred skin, he unlocked the chains that bound her to the
steel support and also removed the chains from around her
ankles.

Somehow he managed to roll her body onto the
tarp without touching it, and he wrapped her in it. He tied cord
around the corpse to keep the tarp from coming off and dragged the
body to one of the drums and let the body drop to the floor. It
took the crowbar that he took from the back of the car to get the
lid off the empty drum.

Nathan wasn’t a big man and her dead weight
was a challenge to get into the drum. Her tarp-covered body finally
slid off his shoulder and fell into the drum with a hard thump. He
tossed the remnants of the burned Barbie inside with the body.

With relief, he put the lid back on the drum
and used the crow bar to bang the lid down tight. The sound of
metal hitting metal echoed in the warehouse.

When he was finished, he tossed the crowbar
and the chains into the back of the car. As he made sure he didn’t
leave anything behind, he worked the scene over and over in his
mind.

He thought about how she’d burned…the terror
in her eyes…the screams behind her gag…

Unexpectedly, his dinner churned in his belly
and started to come up. The next thing he knew, he was puking all
over the concrete floor.

Finally, he finished and wiped his mouth with
his shirtsleeve as he blinked his watery eyes, and tried to spit
the acidic taste out of his mouth. He stared at the mess he’d made
then slipped outside into the darkness, scooped up dirt with an old
tin can he’d found in the warehouse, and returned to pour the dirt
over the vomit. For good measure he found some old crude oil and
poured it over the dirt. Puke no doubt would have his DNA, and he
didn’t want to take any chances.

When he’d finished gathering his supplies, he
rolled up the warehouse door and drove his car out. He got out to
roll the door back down again and then headed home.

As he drove, the urge to burn again was
strong. He should wait. It had just been days ago that he’d torched
the redhead’s car. And he’d just played with fire once again, for
the first time killing his victim.

First things first. He needed to research
everything his target did and photograph her.

While he drove from the outskirts of town,
his thoughts drifted to the redhead. She had been a spur of the
moment decision. He’d needed a redhead and there she was. It had
been the perfect opportunity.

Where was she now?

Wherever she was, he would find her.

***

Every couple of hours, Cody had woken Carilyn
to check on her after insisting she lay on his bed, and he’d slept
in the guestroom. She’d been so out of it that every time he woke
her it had seemed unreal, like a dream.

Now, as she blinked her eyes open, she
squinted against the early morning sun coming in through his
bedroom window. The clean sheets he’d put on his bed felt wonderful
and the T-shirt he had loaned her felt soft against her skin. His
scent surrounded her. She liked the way he smelled, a heady
masculine scent.

A part of her had wanted to get home at once,
and another part knew she had no business driving. Her head was
splitting and she still felt foggy, and was having a hard time
thinking clearly.

Cody walked into the bedroom, smiling as he
saw that she was awake, his brown eyes warm. Despite her headache,
she couldn’t help but admire the pure masculinity of his presence.
He wore a T-shirt that fitted snugly to his muscular frame,
stretching around the width of his biceps and across his chest.

He came closer and stood beside the bed,
looking down at her. “How are you doing?”

“Hi.” She managed a return smile and started
to push herself up in bed. Her head swam and she put the heel of
her palm to her forehead as if that would stop the spinning. “I
guess I’ve been better.”

“You can stay here as long as you need to.”
The mattress dipped beneath his weight as he sat down on the bed
beside her. “There’s no rush in leaving.”

“You don’t need to take care of me.” She slid
back down again though, fighting a wave of nausea. “Maybe you could
give me a ride home to Leigh’s and I’ll get the car later.”

“Not happening.” He shook his head. “I’m
going to watch you for a full twenty-four hours. After that we’ll
see how you feel. If Leigh was here to check in on you, that would
be one thing. But I’m not leaving you alone.”

She sighed. “All right. I hate being any
trouble for you.”

He rested his hand on her wrist and she
looked at it. The hair on his arm was a brownish-gold against his
tanned skin. His fingers were long and strong and his touch felt
warm and comforting. “You’re no trouble.”