“What the-”
A dark blur swung through her peripheral vision and a savage blow caught her behind the ear, driving her against the wall. Panic spurted alongside pain as the darkness grew arms and legs, and a man’s weight pinned her.
“Help!” she screamed. “Help me!”
Then blackness.
Chapter Three
It was close to midnight by the time Max turned down Raine’s street in North New Bridge, Connecticut. It was too late to knock on her door, stupid even to be in her neighborhood, but he’d decided to do a drive-by. Familiarize himself with the area.
It was a nice enough neighborhood, middle-class residential with good sidewalks and signage. Max glanced from side to side as he rolled through a stop sign, looking for trouble, maybe, or insight into the woman who’d knocked on his door. She looked like Raine Montgomery, but she was different. She seemed harder than he remembered. Sharper.
Flashing lights appeared in his rearview mirror, wig-wagging blue and white.
“Oh, hell,” Max muttered under his breath and shook his head. A ticket for a rolling stop was just about the last thing he needed right now.
He cursed and pulled over. Instead of stopping, the cop flipped on his siren and sped past, sending a jolt of adrenaline through Max’s system.
Raine!
Gut tight, hoping it was a coincidence, Max hit the gas and peeled back onto the road. He gunned his truck around the next corner and slammed on the brakes when he saw two cruisers parked half on the snow-covered lawn of a small white two-story home. The house numbers matched the ones written on Raine’s file folder.
And the windows glowed orange with fire.
Max didn’t waste time cursing or asking questions. He slapped the transmission into park, leaped out of his truck and bolted across the snow-slicked lawn. As he hurdled a burlap-covered shrub, he heard the cops shout something behind him, but he ignored them.
Heat radiated from the walls of the burning house, warming the skin of his hands and face as he charged up the steps. The iron railing of the banister was flesh-hot to the touch. Smoke tainted the air, irritating his lungs with the promise of worse to come.
Max twisted the doorknob, barely registering the singe of hot metal. Unlocked.
He barreled through the door and skidded into a smoke-filled kitchen.
Heart thundering, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Raine? Where are you? Raine!”
He thought he heard an answer over the rush of fire, which was eating its orange, greedy way from the kitchen table to the counter, where a roll of paper towels blazed.
He shouted again, “Raine?”
There was no answer. Maybe there never had been.
The ceiling bowed down with unnatural fluidity, as though the walls themselves were breathing. A door on the other side of the main room listed sideways in a surreal yawn of heat and smoke. Or was he the one swaying?
Gasping for breath, sweating inside his lined leather jacket, Max crouched low and looped the edge of his flannel shirt over his nose and mouth while he squinted against the smoke and tried to get his bearings.
There was a short hallway ahead of him, opening onto what looked like an open living room with stairs at the far end, presumably leading to an upstairs bedroom.
He crossed the living room, barely registering the soft furniture, visible in the strange orange light that radiated from the walls, from the floor, from all around him. He was surrounded by the awful, animal rushing roar of fire. The structure of the house had been smoldering when he’d arrived.
Now it was fully involved.
Blood racing with urgency even as his brain faded from lack of oxygen, Max stumbled past the couch.
His foot struck something soft and yielding. A body. Raine! He dropped to his knees, needing air, needing to believe she was okay. He said her name, but the words were ripped away as the fire spread into the living room and ate at the couch, counting down the seconds before it would be too late for them to get out safely.
“Raine?” He coughed against the burning claw of smoke in his lungs and pressed two fingers beneath her jaw. “Raine, damn it!”
He felt a pulse, but had no time for relief. A splintering crackle surrounded them. The floor beneath him heaved. The ceiling gave way near the stairwell and the whole structure tilted to one side. This time he was pretty sure it was the house moving, not him.
He got one arm around Raine’s neck and the other behind her knees and lifted. She curled limply against his chest, feeling too light, as though the life had already been burned out of her. Her arms and legs dangled, and her eyes remained shut. Was she breathing? He couldn’t tell.
“Come on, baby, breathe.” The words were raspy with smoke, broken by coughs. He stood and staggered, then righted himself and headed for the door with one thought pounding in his brain.
He had to get them out of there.
Fire nipped at his heels, at his clothes, at his skin as he crossed the living room and kitchen, aiming for a door that seemed too far away. His feet burned and stuck as the rubber of his boots melted, and he felt the rivets of his jeans brand his skin.
Something crashed behind him, too close, and he broke into a coughing, shambling run as he cleared the door.
He made it down two of the steps before he slammed into a firefighter.
Time sped up, gained chaos, became sound and a burning chill as a flurry of suited men rushed him off the steps and out into the night air, which was refreshingly, painfully cold in his scorched lungs.
A firefighter grabbed his arm. “Is anyone else in the house?”
Max shook his head, “I don’t think so.” He had to shout over the crackle of flames, which was now joined by the hiss of water from a manned hose, and the sirens of an incoming fire truck.
“No husband? Kids?”
“No,” Max repeated. Her career was her baby. Her family.
“This way, sir. Bring her over here.” A pair of paramedics hustled him out to the street, where three ambulances were parked, part of an emer gency response that seemed too large and fast for the situation.
Max paused, considering. The flames had been barely visible when he’d arrived on the cop’s heels. “Who called in the alarm?” he asked, voice raspy with smoke.
The nearest paramedic, a tall woman with short, frizzy hair, shrugged. “Don’t know. Ask the cops-they were the first response units. You’re lucky it was so quick, though. Another few minutes…” She gestured to an unfolded gurney. “Anyway. You can put her down here.”
But Max barely heard the order because he knew the paramedic was right. If the alarm hadn’t been sounded…if he’d been a few minutes later…
He tightened his arms around Raine and felt a stir in response. He looked down just as her eyes opened and locked on him. There was no change in her expression, no flicker of recognition or surprise or fear or any emotion beyond simple acceptance. She slipped her arms around his torso, reached up, pressed her cheek to his and said, “You came for me. Thank you.”
He froze, peripherally aware of the firefighters’ shouts and curses as they gained control of the blaze, along with the growing crowd of gawkers and the hiss of the angry fire. He noticed all those things, plus the sting of burns and the catch of smoke in his lungs and throat, but the sensory inputs seemed so much farther away than the woman in his arms, who filled up a space that had been empty for longer than he cared to admit, longer than his apartment had been bare.
He shifted, intending to push her away, but she moved and their bodies realigned until her lips were a breath away and her eyes were locked on his. He saw her lips shape his name, and before he knew he would do it, before he could stop himself, he closed the gap between them.
And then, almost exactly three years and three months after the day she’d walked out on him, he kissed her for the first time.
FLAMES. FIRE. SEARING HEAT. Raine could have blamed it all on the burning building, but that would have been a li
e. The heat wasn’t coming from an external source; it was coming from inside her. From Max.
From the spark they kindled together.
Finally, she thought on a whisper of memory, as his mouth slanted across hers and his tongue demanded entry. She parted her lips and accepted him, tasted him and wanted more.
She remembered wishing for him as her attacker had knocked her unconscious. Then she’d come to and known whose arms held her. Whose heart beat beneath her ear. Who had come to her rescue.
Again.
Max. She fisted her hands in his flannel shirt and held on as a maelstrom built inside her, around her, swirls of heat and smoke and sensation roaring alongside the pounding beat of her heart. She felt his pulse drum beneath her fingertips, or maybe that was the race of her own heart; she wasn’t sure anymore; she only knew that he was there with her, beside her, pressed against her. He had come for her when she’d needed him.
He’d come. He’d rescued her, and-
And she was doing it again, Raine realized on a sudden shock of cold reality. She was putting herself in the middle of a rescue fantasy and grabbing onto the first man to step into the role.
She broke the kiss and stared at Max, whose eyes were very close to hers and dark with passion. She said, “Put me down.”
He lowered her to her feet and kept a hand on each arm until he was sure she was steady. Then they stood for a second, staring at each other, breathing heavily from the escape, from the kiss.
She saw the flames in his normally shielded expression, felt the answering surge in her blood and nearly reached for him.
But she didn’t. She couldn’t.
What the hell was she thinking? She’d been attacked. Thriller hung in the balance. She had to be the boss here, not the victim.
Not a woman.
She drew a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
A moment later, between one heartbeat and the next, his expression blanked. He muttered something unintelligible and gave her a long, measured look. Then gestured to the gurney and the waiting paramedics. “Let them check you out and get you to the hospital. You’ll need to be treated for smoke inhalation, at the very least.”
She batted his hand away and stood on her own two feet, doing her best not to wobble. “Don’t boss me around, Vasek. I’m fine.” She lifted her hand to the back of her head and winced when she found a large, tender bump. “Okay, a few bruises and a sore throat, but nothing I’m going to the hospital for. Where are the police? I saw the guy who grabbed me. I can give them a description of the bastard.”
She fanned the flames of outward anger, but the realizations bounded through her head in a terrifying litany. She’d been attacked. In her own home. Her place had been torched with her in it. She should be dead.
She would have been, if it hadn’t been for Max.
She didn’t know what he’d done to get her out, but she knew she owed him a hell of a debt, so she touched his arm. “A man was waiting for me when I got home tonight. He knocked me out, then set the place on fire several hours later. Don’t you see? This could be related to what’s going on at Rainey Days. It could have something to do with the Thriller deaths.”
His brows lowered and he seemed to grow bigger and more menacing, though she knew he hadn’t moved a muscle. “Exactly,” he said, voice low. “Which is why you should leave it to me.”
She froze. “You’re taking the case.”
Maybe that should have been obvious. Otherwise, why would he be in Connecticut? But she needed to hear him say it, needed to know she had someone on her side.
“I’m taking the case.” He held out a hand and she shook almost numbly, two businesspeople sealing a deal in the strangest of settings, standing in the darkness as firefighters slowly gained control of the inferno that had once been her house.
Then Max’s lips twisted. “I had planned on mentioning professional detachment, and how it would be a good idea to keep our previous association separate from our business deal. But I’d say that horse has already left the barn.”
Raine lifted her fingers to touch her mouth, which still hummed with his touch, his flavor. “I don’t know-” She broke off and took a deep breath. “The kiss was my fault. It won’t happen again.”
She couldn’t let it.
She’d had little security as a child, bouncing from one foster home to the next, so many different schools, so many different friends that it was easier not to bother. Longing for stability, she’d been too quick to grab on when Rory had wanted to take care of her. Rory, who’d barely been able to take care of himself.
No, Raine thought, this time she was going to succeed on her own. She would hire the help she needed to prove that Thriller was safe, that something-or someone-else had killed those four women. Max was the best man for the job, but so what? That didn’t mean she needed to lean on him.
Didn’t mean she needed him.
He looked at her for a long moment, but before he could say anything a thin, graying man approached from the driveway, where a wide stream of water ran beside her SUV and down to the street, looking oily and black in the darkness.
“Is this your car?” the stranger asked. He was dressed in street clothes, but a uniformed officer hovered at his side with the deference of a subordinate.
A detective, then, or maybe an arson investigator, Raine thought. Lord knows she’d need one of those.
She stepped forward and was aware of Max’s steady presence close behind her when she said, “My car. My house.” She clasped her hands together in front of her body to keep them from trembling. “I was inside. Max here got me out.”
“I’m Detective Marcus.” The gray-haired man indicated the officer at his side. “This is Officer Nichols. Why don’t you walk us through what happened?”
After providing her full name and salient personal details, she described her return home and what she remembered of the attack, which wasn’t much. She was able to give a general description of her attacker-white, medium height, brown hair and eyes-but though she could swear she’d seen him up close, the details eluded her. In the end, she had to shrug. “He was pretty average.”
As she spoke, she was acutely conscious of Max’s presence. She was too comforted by the warm solidity of his body, too aware of his every gesture and expression, and the silent hum of tension that ran between them.
When she finished, he took over the narrative, saying, “I got here just as the second cruiser arrived on scene. There wasn’t much smoke, and I could just see the flames through the window, so the neighbors wouldn’t have noticed the fire yet. I take it there was a hard-wired alarm system in place?”
That earned him a long look before the detective shook his head. “It was called in from the two-family across the street. Unit A.” He glanced at Raine, and she didn’t like what she saw in his eyes. “Are you planning a trip, Ms. Montgomery?”
“No, why?”
He gestured for them to follow. When they reached the driver’s side door to her SUV, he indicated an envelope lying on the dashboard. “Looks like an e-ticket. Mind if I take a look?”
Baffled, Raine started to say go ahead, but Max stepped between her and the detective. “Not without a warrant. You want to tell us what this is about?”
The detective’s eyes narrowed. “Who did you say you were again?”
“Maximilian Vasek of Vasek and Caine Investigations.”
The detective shifted his weight so it was equally balanced on the balls of his feet. A fighting stance. “Is there something I should know, Mr. Vasek?”
I’m standing right here, Raine wanted to snap, but she didn’t because this was part of why she’d hired Max. She needed someone who knew how to handle cops and suspicions. She didn’t. Jeff and Tori didn’t.
They’d needed an outsider. They’d needed Max.
Only now that she had him, Raine wasn’t quite sure what to do with him.
“We’re not hiding anything,�
�� Max said. “And we’ll be happy to show you whatever you want as soon as you get back with that warrant. Until then, I’m taking Ms. Montgomery to a hotel while you search the scene for evidence pointing toward the man who tried to kill her.”
After treating Max to another stare, the detective glanced beyond him to Raine. “Don’t leave town.”
“Of course not,” she said between numb lips. “I have a business to run.”
Or more accurately, a business to save before it was irretrievably crippled.
Raine pinched the bridge of her nose. What the hell was going on? Why had someone torched her house? Max’s words echoed in her brain. The man who tried to kill her. Kill her. Kill her…
He touched her arm, nudging her toward the driver’s side of the SUV. “Get in.”
She did as he directed, then scooted over the center console to the passenger’s seat when he climbed in nearly on top of her, crowding her with his big masculine body. “Hey,” she protested, “I can drive. And what about your truck?”
“I’ll get it later.” He held out a hand without looking at her. “Keys?”
She dug the spare set from their hiding place in the passenger foot well and passed them over. Without another word, he started the engine and popped the transmission into Reverse.
Keeping one eye on Detective Marcus, who was making a slow circuit of the front of the smoldering building, Max backed the SUV down the driveway and out, navigating between the fire trucks and splashing through the stream of dirty water that carried pieces of her life like worthless flotsam.
Raine saw a single high-heeled slipper in the mess, one of a pair she’d bought to celebrate Thriller’s acceptance by the FDA. Her eyes filmed with tears.
Rather than have Max see, she turned to stare out the window, at the faces of her neighbors, whose expressions ranged from horrified to fascinated as they watched the firefighters pick through the smoldering wreckage of the house.
Under the Microscope Page 4
