Up in Flames [The Heroes of Silver Springs 10] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic) (7 page)

What was in front of her face now was a glorious piece of art. Oh, the firefighters had extinguished the flames, but the shadows of them remained. The automotive shop wasn’t the pile of rubble the Flame Jumper had hoped for, but the charred frame still painted a superb picture. She should have brought more of her little homemade treat and spread it further before igniting it. She had stood here among the clueless spectators, her insides leaping with excitement, her fingers crossed that the gorgeous flames would spread and spread. She had seen the cars in the garages on the end of the building and had hoped her work of art would live until it reached them. Wouldn’t that have been a fantastical sight?

It was no matter. Regina Zimmer was here now, and the Flame Jumper would make sure the bitch saw beyond the remains. The Flame Jumper would make certain she earned the investigator’s admiration and undivided attention. This time, the Flame Jumper would make sure she got the recognition she deserved. She would wait to be sure the red-headed bitch put today’s masterpiece in connection with the second wreck the Flame Jumper had initiated. If she didn’t, the Flame Jumper would have to start all over again.

And if you do, we’ll proceed to the next step and the next until I give you the final piece that will make you understand everything.

The Flame Jumper had never allowed anyone to see what she knew would be her greatest piece of art. She’d saved it, nurtured it, waiting for the right time to let it out to the world. That time hadn’t come with Ethan Zimmer, but it would come with his daughter. The Flame Jumper understood now how and when it had to be done. She hadn’t yet found the perfect location, but she didn’t doubt it would present itself just as this place had done. Time was of the essence, but, soon, everything would fall into place. The chain would at last be totally complete, and the Flame Jumper’s retribution would be finished with Regina Zimmer.

* * * *

“What a way to start a morning, huh?”

Dean Wolcott tore his attention from the open bay door of the garage and started to smile at Regina Zimmer before he noted the weary expression on the fire investigator’s face. She looked paler than normal. Her eyes were haunted and underlined with dark half-circles, and her usually well-groomed hair was all over the place.

“Looks like you’ve had a rougher start than me.”

Regina grimaced. “Do I look that bad?”

Dean dropped his voice, though he doubted anyone standing close enough would hear him anyway with everyone’s attention focused on the building. “What you look like, Regina, is a woman who had one hell of a sleepless night. I’m guessing you still haven’t made your decision?”

Regina sighed and looked away. “More like I still haven’t come to terms with the decision I have to make.”

Dean let a few seconds pass as he studied her. Every day, she was looking less and less like the spitfire investigator she’d been when he first met her. God, he hated seeing her this way.

He hooked a finger beneath her chin and pulled her face back to his, forcing her to meet his gaze. “The decision you feel
obligated
to make,” he corrected. “It’s not your only option, you know?”

She shook her head, sending her short red strands flying. “I did sleep last night. I passed out, if you want to know the truth. So, I’m a little slow on the up-fire this morning.” She shot a pointed look at the garage. “Dispatch relayed the message you requested an investigator on the scene. Is everything under control in there?”

“Seems like. Graham and Houston have backed their way out of the building there.” Dean pointed to the west end of the building where the customer service area had been. “Shannon and Karlston took care of the roof. Magee, Barrett, and Jasper handled the garages.”

“I see Magee and Barrett rolling up the hoses.” She shifted her attention back to Dean. “Where’s Jasper?”

“Still inside.”

Her shoulders stiffened, and a muscle ticked in the smooth line of her jaw. “Sticking that nose of his in my job again, I assume.”

Dean bit back a smile, relieved to see a glimpse of the spitfire investigator he enjoyed so much. “That nose of his has picked up on something he thinks you’re going to find interesting.”

“I bet it has,” she muttered. “Am I clear to go inside?”

Dean shook his head. “Not even close. We’ll be on the scene for a while, checking for hot spots and watching the stability of the structure. With the amount of fire that shot through that roof, I’m surprised it hasn’t collapsed.”

“What was it like when you arrived on the scene?”

“Blowing and going. Flames shooting through the roof there”—Dean sidestepped slightly to point to the back of the east side of the building—“extending down to a barrage of them that spread through the dividing wall and into the garages. The front doors were closed to the customer area. All that broken glass would be our doing. The door to that first garage was standing wide open.”

Surprise flickered over Regina’s face. “How far into the garages did it get?”

“Jasper, Barrett, and Magee cut it off before it stretched past the first bay.”

“Anyone here when you got here? Any witnesses?”

“Just Mr. G himself as far as I know.” Dean shot a glance over his shoulder. “SSPD’s got him over there now. Unless he’s telling them more than he did me, he doesn’t have a clue what or who started it. He said the garage was open when he got here. He saw the flames, rushed inside, couldn’t get further than that first garage, and came back out to call 9-1-1 when he heard us pulling up.”

Regina lifted a brow. “Are you doing my job for me now, too, Dean? Interviewing my witnesses and potential suspects and letting your firefighters snoop around my scene after their job is done?”

Because Dean saw the hint of a smile playing around her lips, he didn’t bother to bristle at her scolding tone. “Seeing as there is still a possibility of there being hazardous chemicals in those garages that could’ve overheated, the lieutenant’s job is definitely not done.” He glanced over his shoulder at Reuben Gadsby and the tall, lanky officer talking to him. “I hate to speak ill of a fellow city employee, but you might want to take over that interview before that guy asks another poorly thought out question and Gadsby decks him.”

Regina threw her head back, closed her eyes briefly, and moaned. “Felipe Somersby. How that man manages to put one foot in front of the other is beyond me. How he ever made it through the police academy really boggles my mind. He knows I’m here. I saw him look at me when I walked up. See how he’s standing now, trying to make himself look larger than life. Please.” She rolled her eyes. “I’d root for Gadsby to deck him if I knew it wouldn’t land the man behind bars. Who was the first firefighter to go into the building?”

Dean rolled with the conversational shift and took a moment to think about the order in which he’d sent his men in. “That would have been Magee. Barrett was right behind him.”

“I’ll need to talk to both of them as soon as they’re finished with what they’re doing.”

Dean nodded. He’d expected that. Talking with him first and then the initial firefighters to enter the scene was standard procedure on any fire investigation. “Regina.” He shot a hand out, catching her forearm as she started to walk away. Her gaze fell to his hand and then slowly lifted to his eyes. “One way or another, you’re going to have to make a decision and follow through with it. You can’t keep going on like this.”

She stared at him for a long moment with so many emotions swimming in her eyes he couldn’t even begin to define them all, nodded once, and gently tugged her arm from his grasp. He watched her walk away and then shifted his gaze back to the structure and found Max standing just outside the opened garage door looking from her to him and back again, suspicion, anger, and pure desire etched into the lines of his long, angular face.

* * * *

Regina detoured back to her car and pulled her set of turnouts from the trunk. Suiting up, she scanned the slowly dispersing crowd on the street. She saw a couple of SSPD officers she recognized and deemed to have far more experience and brains than Felipe Somersby talking with a few of the bystanders, taking down their statements, and turning their notepads around for the witness’s signatures. Those officers would turn the statements over to her for further inspection later.

She grabbed what was known in the investigation unit as her ready-to-go kit, compiled of her evidence collection tools and camera equipment, from the trunk, tossed the strap of the bag over her shoulder, and closed the lid. She may not have been able to enter the structure just yet, but she could get a quick look around it.

She slipped her hands into a pair of latex gloves as she approached the building slowly, her attention traveling from the roof to the ground as she studied it for any obvious evidence she could collect before it got further damaged by the firefighters still trampling about. She walked the full perimeter of the structure, stopping at the back door for a closer inspection.

It stood wide open, offering a clear view of the charred office inside. Gadbsy’s office, she remembered from her last inspection of the automotive shop. Placing a careful hand on the outside wall, she leaned forward, peering further inside. Water dripped from the overhead beams, pooled in a shallow pond on the floor, and glistened on the scorched surfaces of the desk. In her mind’s eye, she saw what the office had looked like before. The desk had been a combination of sturdy metal with a wooden trim. A desktop computer had sat on top along with the usual paperwork, paperweights, stapler, and other items that often occupied the tops of desks. Two wooden chairs had sat before it and the wall to the left had been laden with metal filing cabinets.

The desk had withstood the flames rather well, though the computer and other items on the top hadn’t stood a chance. The chairs lay on the floor in the water, their frames so obviously cooked they’d likely crumble to splinters if touched. The filing cabinets remained, but she figured it a good guess their contents likely hadn’t faired so well.

“Find anything back here?”

Startled, Regina jerked back, straightening and whirling on the culprit who’d nearly made her jump out of her skin. She narrowed her eyes as her gaze slammed into Max’s. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the garage looking for hotspots and endangered chemicals?”

The corner of Max’s lips quirked up. “Endangered chemicals? Nice.”

Regina huffed a breath and glared at him. In the light of a bright, sunny, sober morning, he
looked ten times more dangerous, more powerful, and God help her, more appealing than ever.
Every female hormone in her body sighed in appreciation of him even as every alarm in her head sounded to get away from him as quickly as possible. “I didn’t mean for it to sound cute.”

The smile faded from his lips. “So we’re back to normal, huh?”

Regina ignored the hurt she heard in his tone. She couldn’t take this, not right now, not after last night, and certainly not when the dregs of the hangover were still pounding lightly in her head and weighing down her system. She needed time to think, to get her bearings back, and damn it, she definitely needed that part of her that had always been able to resist him.

Well, hell. That’s easy enough. Just be your usual, unreasonable self. Get angry with him.

“I’m here to do a job.
My
job,” she added, poking a latex-covered finger at her chest. “And you’re supposed to be in there doing yours.”

“I was, I did, and I still am. I came looking for you on the off chance you might want to know my theory on what happened in there.”

“I don’t work off theories, Jasper. I see facts and form opinions. But, if that’s your way of coming to tell me I’m cleared to enter the structure, then I’ll finish up here, do a quick interview with Mr. Gadsby, and head inside.”

“You can finish up here and you can go inside, but the quick interview with Gadsby isn’t going to happen right now unless you plan to chase him down the street.”

“What! He left?”

Max lifted a shoulder. “Somersby let him go.”

Regina growled, the fuse on her temper sparking hot enough to start another fire right where she stood. “That son of a bitch knows I’m on the scene.”

Max held up both gloved hands, palms out. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”

Regina scowled as she turned back to the door of the building. “You’re not a messenger. You’re a nuisance.”

“Well, gosh, and here I thought I was losing my touch,” he said dryly.

Regina didn’t say anything to that. She couldn’t when hearing that simple word “touch” flow from his lips brought the memories of him doing exactly that to her slamming back to her mind. Her nipples beaded as she recollected the feel of his calloused hands on her breasts. Her pussy lips contracted, juices slicking her sensitive folds, at the memory of the way she’d ground her belly against his stiff cock, begging him with her body to fuck her.

She’d touched him, too. She covered his cock with her hand, and sweet God of hormones, even through the thick denim of his jeans, she’d been able to feel how impossibly long and wide his cock was.

She felt him even now, though he’d yet to lay a hand on her. He didn’t need to. His presence was enough to have her system sparking into a cacophony of emotions, wants, and desires she didn’t have the strength to handle today.

“Do you know if any of the firefighters opened this door from the inside?” she asked without looking at him.

“You were sticking your head through that doorway when I walked back here. Did it look to you like anyone could’ve gotten to that door from the inside without being a roasted marshmallow?”

Regina closed her eyes as she took a deep breath and let it out slow. “All right, stupid question. I’ll give you that one. There’s no sign of forced entry here, meaning it had to have been opened from the inside. Dean—” She broke off, silently cursing herself for using the man’s first name on the job. “Wolcott said the first garage bay was open, and you guys were responsible for the double doors in the front. He didn’t mention this door.”