Playing With Fire
Authors: Taylor Lee
Playing with Fire
By
Taylor Lee
Praise for
Playing with Fire
...
“A bad-assed cop
who flaunts every regulation falls for the beautiful rookie firefighter only to
discover she is his #1 suspect in a double murder.
~KDR
“A rookie
firefighter escapes an abusive past only to find herself accused of setting the
fire that kills her husband and his mistress. A heroine that will tug at your
heartstrings and a hero that is as outrageous as he is irresistible.”
~RomanceRus
“Cops AND
Firefighters? An alpha – male lovers delight. A SEXY kick-ass hero and a
beautiful, vulnerable woman in a life and death face-off can’t resist their
voracious appetite for each other. This is one SIZZLING romantic suspense!”
Erotica Rocs
“An edgy mystery
thriller with pulse pounding action and steamy romance. Unforgettable
characters that will capture your heart.”
Action Junkie
Erin sucked in heavy breaths of air. She thanked God for the
oxygen tank strapped to her back. All around her, men yelled orders, screamed
cautions. She didn’t need to be warned; she understood the danger of a burning
building. Especially one that had virtually exploded three hours before. The
dispatcher’s calls determining the engine order came through loud and clear on
her com channel. She heard the Chief’s warnings and brusque commands as if he
were standing next to her shouting in her ear. The clash of pike poles
penetrating the rotten roof beams allowed in the incongruent beauty of the
starlit sky. She was prepared for the heat even through her hood, helmet and
SCBA mask. She’d trained to wear the heavy uniform, and handle her irons as
easily as a one-hundred-fifteen-pound woman could. Clutching her halogen bar in
one hand, she moved next to Connor. The RIT Team had sent word of the bodies.
They’d impressed it on her from her first days at the Academy that in any fire,
you always assumed there might be people inside. This was her third major house
fire — but the first time the intervention team had shouted out the presence of
bodies. She was prepared or so she thought, for the sight of the charred bodies
in front of her. Except that they were larger and longer, they reminded her of
the remains of campfire logs… long after the logs had burned and disintegrated.
What she wasn’t prepared for was the smell. It wasn’t the
smell of the fire itself. That had become a familiar stench. It was the bodies.
She listened to Connor and Ralph speculating how long the victims had been dead
before the explosion. Their consensus after lengthy deliberation was at least a
week, given the bloated rancid state of the remains. Fighting waves of nausea,
Erin tugged desperately on Connor’s sleeve, motioning that she felt sick. She
needed to get outside and get her mask off, now!
Connor frowned, then his eyes twinkled through the heavy
shield of his mask.
“Sorry, half pint. I keep forgetting you’re a rookie. C’mon,
let’s get outside and let the RIT team grab what’s left of these bodies for the
EMT’s, and the M.E. if he’s here.”
When they cleared the building, Erin jerked off her mask and
bent over, her hands on her knees. Taking in huge gulps of air, she willed
herself not to throw up. Just when she thought she had her vomit reflex under
control, the teams carting the charred human remains passed next to her and it
was all over. She vomited repeatedly until she had nothing but a gaping hole in
her stomach.
She glanced up to see Connor standing next to her, a
sympathetic frown creasing his brow.
“Damn, half pint. I’m sorry. Forgot to give you some
mentholated ointment, to protect against the smell. If you rub it under your
nose, it smells like shit — but a hell of a lot better than that.”
He gestured to the bodies that thankfully had been moved
several yards away downwind.
“Don’t call me that! It’s bad enough that I’m sick….”
Erin yanked her mask over her face, trying not to gag at the
stench of vomit on her recirculating breath. Smoke roiled through the air and
she knew she should protect her charred nasal passages and her raw throat.
Connor put a protective hand on her arm.
“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re not the only one
who’s thrown up at the smell of a burnt corpse. Your first one, right?”
Erin nodded, shoving down her nausea at his casual reminder
of the state of the corpse.
“See you got a new recruit there, Cuz.”
A deep voice shook Erin out of her discomfort. Looking up —
way up — she saw a tall blond man grinning at her. Obviously he found her
vomiting amusing. Before Erin could tell him what she thought of intruders on a
crime scene, especially one who looked like the cover model for
Men’s
Fitness
, Connor clamped his arm around the tall man’s shoulder.
“Bout time you got here, Cuz. We’ve got some serious foul
play goin’ on.” Motioning to the charred mass on the stretchers, he added,
“Don’t know if you saw those bodies close up but my guess is they were here at
least a week, maybe a month before someone decided to blow them up.”
Connor nodded at Erin. “Nate, this is my new trainee, Erin
McFadden. Erin, this casual-looking son of a gun is my cousin, Nate. Also known
by the badasses who dare to tangle with him, as Feared Detective Nathan D.
Stryker.”
Before Erin could do more than nod at the big man in the
tight black t-shirt and worn blue jeans, the wind changed and the hideous
stench from the rancid bodies hit her full force. She barely got her mask off
before she began to retch. Again and again she heaved, mortified that she was
embarrassing her partner like this, but helpless to stop.
The golden-haired Adonis groaned, not hiding his disgust.
“Damn, Connor. Can’t cha take ’em on a field trip to the
morgue or let ’em watch a few dozen autopsies, before you bring them on site? Just
listening to your little buddy pukin’ up his guts is enough to make the whole
bunch of us hurl.”
“C’mon, Nate. I bet you can remember the first dead body you
saw — and smelled. Bet it wasn’t as bad as Erin’s intro to the world of the
living dead.”
Nate’s voice was suddenly diffident. “You’re right about
that, Cuz. Even though it was my mother, it took me a while to realize she was
dead. The drugs made it hard for her to wake up most mornings. Guess I
shouldn’t have been surprised that this time she didn’t. But hell, you know how
vacant six-year-olds can be.”
Erin stared at him, shocked at his casual tone.
She realized he was staring at her as if seeing her for the
first time. A dark cloud passed over his face that moments ago had seemed
handsome, way too good-looking. She swiped at her mouth, horrified at the
flecks of spittle on her chin.
Nate frowned and glared at his cousin as if it were Connor’s
fault she wasn’t who he thought she was.
“What the hell, Connor. Thought you said his name was
Aaron.”
Erin lifted her chin and returned his glare.
“It is. Spelled E.r.i.n.”
To her surprise, Nate walked away shaking his head, but not
before she heard him mutter. “I should have known. No guy would let himself
make a scene like that.”
Erin was too surprised to respond. Before she could speak,
Connor put his arm around her shoulder.
“Sorry, half pint. My cousin isn’t the most tactful guy. And
he’s had… well let’s just say he’s had some bad experiences with women in and
out of uniform. Doesn’t have the greatest respect for them. Sorry he took it
out on you. Nate spent six years in special ops in some of the worst hellholes
in the world. Kinda took the polish off his Sunday school manners. Doesn’t
excuse his bad manners, but maybe makes the barbs less personal.”
He smiled at her. “Really. Don’t let it get you down, Erin.
You did great today. I can promise you — you weren’t the only one who spewed
their lunch over those corpses. I was proud of you, rookie.”
Erin looked down, fighting the tears threatening the backs of
her eyelids. How could such a great guy like Connor, so kind yet by far the
competent Lieutenant in the house, be so understanding… and have a cousin who
was a chauvinistic asshole?
“Thanks, Connor. I appreciate that. I’m sorry if I
embarrassed you. It won’t happen again.”
Nate looked back over his shoulder and grimaced at the sight
of his soft-hearted cousin obviously excusing his bad behavior to the little
rookie. And hell, he did behave badly. But damn, what’s a guy to do? The
firefighter’s unions had knuckled under to the pantywaists in Washington, and
had to take in firefighters that looked like Erin. Christ, if she weighed a
hundred pounds, he’d be surprised. How the hell could she have passed basic?!
He wondered with a snort how many chumps at the Academy she’d slept with, to
get through the training. With a shrug he reminded himself there wasn’t a damn
thing he could do about it. It was a fact of life. Unfortunately, also a fact
of death. His gut heaved at the injustice. His strong, incredibly competent
cousin — more a brother than a cousin — was endangered every day on the job
because politicians thought it was cute (and brought them votes) to have curvy
blue-eyed Barbie dolls in their recruitment brochures.
He shook his head in disgust and went over to examine the
bodies. Chief Halloran and the M.E., Dr. James Patterson, joined him. The chief
spoke first.
“I’m sure Connor told you, Nate, this was no accidental
explosion. The way this thing blew, something ignited that gas. “
Jim Patterson added, “It doesn’t take much to see that these
bodies didn’t die in the fire. They could have been dead a month or more.”
Nate tugged at his chin.
“So you think, Jim, that they were planted after they were
killed, and some asshole waited for the auspicious moment to blow them up?”
The grey-haired little man shrugged. “That’s my best guess.
What do you think, Chief?”
“I agree. Sure looks professional to me. But we’ll have to
wait until the great Detective Nathan Stryker gets his claws in and starts
digging around before we know the truth.”
Nate tossed him an ironic grin at the backhanded compliment.
He nodded thoughtfully.
“Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Whoever killed them could
have just left them there. In these rotgut hangouts, the absentee landlord who
owns the building wouldn’t have found them for months, years maybe. And it’s a
cinch no one would have noticed the smell — not in this dump. But someone
wanted them found.”
Looking around at the myriad squad cars, fire engines,
ambulances and spectators hovering around the gutted building, Nate nodded.
