Lunar Heat: 1 (The Heat Series)

by Susan Kearney

  Thick smoke made her eyes tear. Shara grabbed a stray shirt and placed it over her nose and mouth, trying to filter the air. Beside her Jules did the same, but coughed anyway.

  Together, they stumbled toward the center of the house. Smoke curled around them and made breathing painful.

  Cade snagged Shara’s wrist, and she held on to Jules, forming a human chain. Together they hurried down the hallway. Cade slowed as they reached each room, checking to see if they could escape through a window.

  “The fire seems worst around the perimeter,” Shara whispered, her voice hoarse. Fear, thick and heavy, wrapped around her gut.

  “It’s a trap.” Cade squeezed her hand.

  Oh, God. Someone wanted them to burn to death. And the idea that the smoke would take them out before the flames burned her to ashes was not the least bit comforting.

  “Damn it.” Shara clung tight to Jules and Cade. “Now what?”

  “We’re getting out of here.” Cade voice stayed steady and positive, but Shara’s heart was hammering, her lungs straining.

  Eyes tearing, Shara stumbled into Cade’s back. He’d stopped, but with the smoke as thick as pea soup, she could barely see him or Jules.

  Jules coughed. “The smoke’s worse here.”

  “Go right,” Shara ordered, hoping the spare bedroom where she’d stayed so often and the big bay window might offer an escape route.

  Cade placed his palm on the closed door to check for heat, cautiously cracked it, and stepped through the doorway. “Come on.”

  He pulled Shara inside. She in turn dragged in Jules and the cat. Jules slammed the door behind them.

  The air in the bedroom was almost breathable. Between wracking coughs, Shara gulped huge breaths of air. Beside her Jules was hacking too. Oddly, Cade seemed impervious.

  The interior walls had yet to catch fire.

  Cade didn’t waste a moment. Picking up a chair, he flung it through the picture window. Shara grabbed an umbrella from a stand and knocked back the biggest glass pieces still stuck in the edges of the frame.

  Her hopes soared. They were going to make it.

  But even as they worked in frantic haste, the outside wall burst into flames, blocking the window opening in a sheet of fire.

  Terror burned down Shara’s spine. Heat licked at them. Sparks landed on Jules’s back. Shara beat them out with the shirt.

  “We can’t go through that. We’ll burn alive,” Jules shouted.

  Fire blazed across the ceiling and, lit them up like center stage. Smoke curled under their feet as the old wood burst into rivers of fire. Burning ceiling tiles rained down.

  Sparks swirled around them.

  Cade grabbed Shara’s hand again. “We can’t stay here, either.”

  Even as she reached for Jules and Cade, Shara knew there was no way to pass through that wall of fire and live.

  Staying here they would burn. Fleeing they would burn.

  Shara tasted the bitterness of fuel with each hot breath of air. Someone had set the fire, poured it around the perimeter.

  There was no way out.

  17

  Reporter’s instincts on full alert, Trevor watched the fire trucks douse the flames at the psychic’s home. Were there bodies inside? Or had Jules Makana set the fire to cover her trail and those of Shara Weston and her mystery friend?

  If those rubies had been stolen, perhaps all three people needed to disappear before the police were onto them.

  Except Shara Weston was fabulously wealthy. Could someone be taking advantage of her? Had she been abducted?

  Trevor had no idea what had happened, but he had to consider all possibilities.

  The chief of police’s second-in-command, Dan Brandon, recognized Trevor from other fires he’d covered and wandered over. Ex-military, Dan had settled in New L.A. after serving his second tour of duty during the Martian War. Face smudged with smoke, his experienced eyes remaining on the crew hosing down the last sparks, he clapped Trevor on the back. “Didn’t expect to see you this far out of the city.”

  “It’s a slow week. How’s the family?”

  “Good, thanks.”

  Black smoke rose in thick plumes into the night sky. The firemen hosed the dense foliage around the home to control the flames. Trevor spoke in a casual tone, coming at the topic he wanted to discuss in a roundabout technique that made his interviews less formal and more like speaking with a friend. “That home was over a hundred years old. Those old wooden beams must have gone up like straw.”

  “This fire burned hot and fast.”

  “Arson?” Trevor didn’t ask about bodies. Any fool could see it was too soon to search through the smoldering embers.

  “Someone poured a ring of accelerant around the perimeter.”

  Interesting. The fire had been set. Whether it had been insurance fraud, murder, or to cover up another crime had yet to be determined.

  Dan glanced at him and kept his tone low. “Of course that’s not official until our investigator—”

  “Understood.” Trevor surveyed the crowd that congregated beyond the fire trucks. Most looked on with sadness, as if realizing the old home’s historic value could never be replaced. But was one of those faces of sorrow a mask that hid an arsonist or a murderer? Had the person responsible for the blaze returned to the scene to see if his fire had trapped Jules Makana, Shara Weston, and Cade Archer inside?

  Trevor suspected the arsonist had been after the holovid actress and her male friend. It seemed too much of a coincidence that an enemy of Jules’s could have burned down the home on the very same night her famous guest and the mystery man who’d sold the rubies had arrived.

  At the sounds of shouting, Trevor’s gaze again turned to the crowd. A man of Hawaiian descent wearing a torn shirt shoved past a throng of bystanders, ripping past the arms of an older female who tried to hold him back. She might as well have been trying to stop a whale. The guy was big, solid muscle. Yet it wasn’t his size, but his red eyes and the tears pouring down his face that held Trevor’s attention.

  Dan moved to intercept the man before he could near the smoking blaze. “Sir, can I help you?”

  “Jules.” The man’s voice broke in anguish. “Is she . . . was she . . . in there?”

  “We don’t know. You part of the family or a friend of hers?” Dan asked.

  Trevor remained silent, observing. The man’s distress was clear, but Trevor saw fear in his eyes and perhaps guilt, too. His shirt had two torn buttons and grass stains smeared across his chest and belly, as if he’d rolled in the dirt. A long, ugly, and recent scratch still oozed along his forearm. Perhaps most significantly, his breath reeked of stale beer.

  “Jules and I . . . uh . . . I was just here. We fought. I left and when I came back . . .” He gestured to the fire. “I found . . .”

  “Sir. What’s your name?”

  “Lou. Lou Smith.”

  “So Lou, what did you and Jules fight about?” Dan asked.

  “I wanted to get back together. I would have convinced her, too.” His face hardened, his meaty fingers closed into tight fists, and his voice deepened in frustration. “Except her friends were protecting her. In front of them, she couldn’t forgive me.”

  “Why did she need to forgive you?” Dan pressed.

  Lou rubbed his teary eyes on his torn shirtsleeve. “Doesn’t matter. But she would have loved me again—if only they hadn’t been around.”

  “Is that Jules’s hovercar?” Dan pointed to a charred pink model.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did Shara Weston and Cade Archer come in another vehicle?” Trevor asked.

  Dan raised his eyebrows at Trevor’s mention of Shara Weston. Apparently the cop hadn’t known about Jules’s famous house guest or the male friend.

  Lou shrugged, his tone belligerent. “I don’t remember how many hovercars were around. I’d had a few beers, and I was focused on Jules.”

  “So you were angry with her?” Dan pressed.

  �
��More like she was angry with me.”

  “How’d you get that cut on your arm?”

  “In a fight.”

  Lou spoke freely, as if he had nothing to hide or lacked the intelligence to understand that he might be implicating himself in a crime.

  “Who did you fight with? Jules?” Dan asked.

  “No. Shara’s friend. At first, I thought the guy was seeing Jules, and I was jealous. I came back to apologize for being an ass. And I found . . .”

  “Is that your vehicle?”

  Lou’s swollen eyes rounded on Dan and, for the first time, revealed suspicion. “Yeah, I drive a fuel truck. Mostly I supply diesel to big machines, but I also carry a gasoline tank in the bed for our generators.” His eyes narrowed as if he realized he was a suspect. “But hey, I couldn’t have done it, the tank’s full.”

  “Then you wouldn’t mind coming down to the station with me to get to the bottom of this?” Dan asked.

  “Sure. I want to know who would hurt Jules.”

  Love caused men to do strange things. Maybe, the big guy had snapped.

  But if he hadn’t set the fire, who had?

  “Sir.” One of the firemen strode over to Dan. “There doesn’t appear to be any evidence of bodies.”

  “Thank the Lord.” Lou sagged to the ground, dropped his head into his hands, and cried tears of relief.

  Unless he was the best actor in the world, Trevor now believed he was innocent. But one thing was for certain: with an accelerant around the perimeter, this fire was no accident.

  To find answers, he needed to talk to Jules, Shara, and Cade, and he had no idea where they’d gone. A resourceful reporter, Trevor had his work cut out for him, but if he was lucky, someone would recognize Shara Weston, and the gossip would eventually reach him. Meanwhile, Trevor would put out feelers across the city, tapping into his established network of sources.

  They’d turn up. Sensing a big story, he would follow.

  18

  A few hours ago Shara had thought her life was over. The walls had caught fire and the blaze ripped across the plaster with astonishing speed. Above their heads, the ceiling had sizzled and popped. Sheets of flame had blocked the only escape out the broken window. Smoke, black as hell, had pummeled her lungs.

  Jules had cried out, “We’re going to burn.”

  Then the inexplicable occurred.

  Cade yanked Shara and Jules close. Voice full of gravel and smoky low, he muttered in a language she couldn’t understand, then switched to English. “Stay close. We can survive.”

  Yeah, right.

  “Walk with me to the window,” he instructed.

  “So we can die quicker?” Jules muttered.

  As if a wind current had blown in to clear out the flames, a clear air pocket suddenly formed around them. Above, the roar of flames and burning wood signaled the roof was caving.

  Shara ducked her head; however, nothing fell on Cade, her, Jules, or Kapuna, who Jules had protected by wrapping him in a towel.

  “Keep going,” Cade said, urging them forward.

  As they advanced right up to and then through the solid wall of flames, the burning wood on the floor in front of them hissed . . . and oddly subsided.

  Had Shara already died and gone to hell? Nothing made sense. The clear pocket of air. The burning ceiling falling . . . Missing them.

  Even the material under their feet had ceased to burn or even to feel warm.

  Together, they moved forward in the odd bubble toward the hellish flames.

  But there was no heat.

  No stray sparks.

  No smoke.

  Side-by-side, they climbed through the window, walked right through the fire, their skin unblistered as they passed by the reeking stench of burning fuel. As if they were ghosts, not one spark caught on their clothes, and the fire didn’t touch them.

  Mystified, elated, Shara glanced at Cade for answers, but his gorgeous bronze skin had turned gray. His entire body shook, and his chest heaved with effort as sweat poured off him.

  “What did you . . . How did you save us?”

  “Quait.” His reply was brisk, his focus on the next steps.

  They staggered from the fire toward her leased hovercar. They may have escaped the flames, but someone had set that fire. And she’d be damned if she was going to stick around long enough to give the arsonist another shot at them.

  Jules halted on the front lawn, uncovered Kapuna, who seemed no worse for his escape from death. She petted the cat and looked back at her burning house, tears making rivulets on her soot-smudged face.

  At the loss of her precious home, Jules’s sorrow was so potent Shara could feel it filling up the air around them, and she had to force back her own tears.

  “Don’t stop,” Shara ordered Jules, devastated by Jules’s grief, but aware they had to get out of here before anything else bad happened. “First we have to be safe.”

  Jules sniffled and wiped away her tears. “When will that be?”

  “Not until we’ve disappeared.”

  They’d almost reached the rental vehicle when Cade crumpled to the grass. Kapuna leapt from Jules’s arms. Jules didn’t seem to notice. In shock, she’d again turned to watch her house burn.

  “Jules.” Shara grabbed her shoulder and turned her from the ugly sight. “Help me drag Cade to the car.”

  Jules ignored Shara’s request. She spoke as if talking was painful, her voice hoarse. “How did we walk through fire?”

  “Something called Quait, he said. I have no idea what it was or is.”

  Jules glanced at Cade. “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know that, either.” Frustrated by the inexplicable, worried by his collapse, Shara knelt beside Cade. “Maybe he inhaled too much smoke.” Leaning forward, she placed her cheek near his lips and felt him exhale a breath.

  Jules frowned. “Is he going to die?”

  Terrible fear hammered Shara, and extra adrenaline kicked in. “He’s still breathing, and he’s got a pulse. Help me get him to the car.”

  Jules shook her head. “Maybe we should leave him.”

  “Didn’t you smell the gasoline? Someone set your house on fire, and they likely knew we were inside. They wanted us to die in that inferno, and they may come back to make sure they succeeded. If they find us . . . they’ll know they failed. Maybe they’ll try again.”

  “What about stopping him from completing his mission?” Jules’s words might have sounded cruel, but it cost her to say them. She shook, couldn’t meet Shara’s eyes.

  Startled to the very depth of her being by Jules’s suggestion, Shara’s bones froze to ice. She knew the burden of taking a life. Knew how an accident weighed on her soul. To deliberately cause a death . . . was so wrong, so evil, that she couldn’t think it. Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t live with herself if she did.

  She wouldn’t allow Jules’s vision to get in the way of her compassion. “Cade just saved our lives. I’m not leaving him to die. And neither are you.” She glared at Jules.

  Jules looked away from her, but not before she saw the shame and grief in her eyes. “Okay. Okay.” Jules moved to Cade’s other side, giving in so quickly that Shara knew her friend couldn’t have walked away, either.

  Each of them took an arm, and they dragged him across the grass. Kapuna trailed after their feet, rubbing their ankles.

  Cade regained consciousness just in time to help them remove the pack from his back and slide him into the hovercar’s rear seat. But he kept mumbling in his native language. His head rolled to the side.

  “You drive,” Shara instructed.

  “Thumbprint?” Jules picked up Kapuna and placed him in the passenger seat.

  Shara climbed into the backseat, leaned over and gave her thumbprint, then eased Cade’s head in her lap. With his big body scrunched up, Cade couldn’t be comfortable, but Shara didn’t want to wait for a sky ambulance. “How long will it take to fly to the hospital?”

  “Thirty minutes to
an hour depending on traffic. I can’t recall how many cruise ships are in town today.” Jules backed out, hit the hover button, shifted into gear, and banked around a corner.

  “No hospital,” Cade groaned and opened his eyes.

  Shara smoothed his soot-streaked hair from his forehead. “You need medical attention.”

  “Need salt,” he whispered, his voice choked with pain.

  “What?” Shara bent over to hear him muttering.

  “Salt.”

  She straightened and spoke to Jules. “He says he needs salt.”

  “He’s half out of his mind.” Jules sped down the hover lane, throwing back clouds of dust behind them.

  “Maybe not.” Shara recalled his strange reaction to alcohol and how he’d ingested large quantities of salt with every meal. Obviously his body chemistry was different from theirs. “Since he’s been here, he’s eaten an extraordinary amount of salt. Maybe his efforts to save us from the fire depleted his store of energy.”

  “Fine. We’ll stop at my mom’s to drop off Kapuna pick up some salt. But if salt doesn’t work—”

  “We go straight to the hospital,” Shara agreed.

  Cade had closed his eyes again. His breathing seemed as erratic as his pulse that throbbed in his neck. “Hang on, Cade. We’re almost there.”

  Jules pushed the hover’s limits and arrived at her mother’s home in record time. She grabbed Kapuna and rushed toward the house.

  Shara waited and ran her fingers through Cade’s hair. Despite the smoke, it was silky soft. With his face smudged with smoke, his sharp cheekbones and square jaw reminded her how gorgeous he was. Really, Shara had worked in a world of handsome men, but he had to be the most handsome man she’d ever seen.

  Jules returned a few minutes later with a grocery sack. “Mom doesn’t use much salt, but she had potato chips and—”

  “No chips. Salt.” Cade spoke without opening his eyes. At least he remained conscious, but Shara could tell talking taxed his strength.

  Shara opened a bag and held a chip to Cade’s lips. “Trust me. You’ll love potato chips.”