Into the Fire by Keira Ramsay Read Free Book Online Page A

behind your
testosterone-driven manness, I’d kick you to the curb.” She sighed.
“But regardless of our history, past and present, you’re right. I
won’t let our relationship muddy the waters when a fresh set of
eyes might solve this case.”
    She started the car and backed out of
the parking slot before addressing him. “It’s a clothing store this
time. The dispatcher said it’s a total loss because of the
flammable product inside.”
    “ Makes sense,” he answered,
taking care to keep his voice neutral instead of jubilant. He’d
broached one of her shields. Sex wasn’t his problem. His
understanding of her psyche, her needs and goals, was.
    She grunted in response, and he kept
his silence for the long, twenty-minute drive to the scene, even
though it killed him.
    He wasn’t an “after action report”
kind of guy, but, dammit, their sex had always been the best he’d
ever had, and she was acting as if it hadn’t even happened. Damned
if he’d be the one to broach the subject, though, even if it was
eating him up inside.
    Charly pulled into the parking lot of
the obvious crime scene. His engine company was on-scene, as he’d
expect since the locale was smack-dab in the middle of their
coverage area. That made his radar start to ping.
    “ How many of the other
torches have been in my company’s turf?”
    Charly cocked her head and looked at
him. Her eyes were light-years away from half an hour ago. While
he’d love to see that look of complete abandon again, the deep
thought in her eyes fired him up even more. She took his comment
seriously, as something of merit.
    “ All of them. It’s a
higher-crime neighborhood, so the locations were a given.” She
considered him through the eyes of a professional now. “Good call,
Nate. While we plotted everything, I was looking at the crime-rate
correlation, rather than at the profiling possibility.” Her voice
now held a bit of chagrin.
    “ Hey, if I wasn’t a first
responder myself, it would never have occurred to me,” he replied,
warmed by her acknowledgement of his vision.
    “ Doesn’t matter in the long
run, with the exception of our performance reports. And personally,
I don’t give two shits about those.” She unbuckled and opened the
car door, which forced him to mirror her action. “I just want to
get this guy before he kills someone.”
    Nate regarded her over the roof of the
car. “I played promotion games for eight years in the Air Force. I
agree, they’re bullshit. Let’s catch this fucker.”
    Charly looked at him long and hard
before nodding.
    * * * *
    Charly completed her initial
interviews while the crews finished their clean-up and Nate
discreetly videotaped the crowd. Just like the other blazes over
the last month, she found a whole lot of nothing.
    A concerned motorist, who’d seen the
flames as he drove by, had made the initial call. Her questioning
of him was comically short; he was an EMT on his way home from work
at the local ambulance service. His supervisors confirmed his
departure time, and it squared exactly with his drive-by of the
scene. He hadn’t had the time to set the fire. If her impressions
were anything to go by, and they usually were right, then he was
exactly what he purported, an innocent bystander who’d done the
right thing. He’d called 911 and then used the back stairway into
the overhead apartment to ensure no one was home; he earned a minor
case of smoke inhalation in the process.
    The people in nearby
businesses hadn’t seen anything suspicious, and there were no
familiar faces in the crowd that had gathered. The investigation
was stalled where it had been with the last fire, exactly
nowhere.
    Nate got his battalion chief’s
blessing to enter the building and slid into a set of borrowed
turnouts and gear, then followed Charly into the still-smoldering
building, toting the evidence case for her. The charred building
was a stand-alone structure, unlike the video store from a few days
ago, and the