A cold-blooded killer with a burning obsession…

Rachel de Luca has a bad feeling about the new woman in Detective Mason Brown’s life, the nurse taking care of him after he’s injured in the line of duty. She’d like to think it’s just jealousy, but intuition tells her it’s something more, maybe something dangerous.

Mason knows Rachel’s wary of commitment, and asking her to stay when he’s in this condition would be the worst thing for their relationship. Then they receive chilling news that drives everything else from their minds.

Mason’s psychotic sister-in-law has escaped from custody, putting her sons—the nephews he’s raising—in the crosshairs. When his house is burned to the ground, he and Rachel are relieved that there are no bodies in the smoldering rubble, but now his nephews are missing and the clock is ticking.

As Mason and Rachel try to find the boys, she senses a new and unexpected danger stalking them. Soon, everyone close to Mason is in deadly peril—Rachel more than anyone….

Praise for the novels of Maggie Shayne

“In this thrilling follow-up to Sleep With the Lights On, Shayne amps up both the creep factor and the suspense…fostering a humming anticipation that builds as the story unfolds.”

—RT Book Reviews on Wake to Darkness

“Readers will love this novel, which twists Shayne’s usual combination of sharp wit and awesome characters with a killer who could have leapt right off of a television screen.”

—RT Book Reviews on Sleep With the Lights On

“A tasty, tension-packed read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water

“Tense…frightening…a page-turner in the best sense.”

—RT Book Reviews on Colder Than Ice

“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven.… A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man

“[A] gripping story of small-town secrets. The suspense will keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.”

—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner on The Gingerbread Man

“[Kiss of the Shadow Man is a] crackerjack novel of romantic suspense.”

—RT Book Reviews

Deadly Obsession

Maggie Shayne

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Eileen Fallon, who has been my agent, my GPS system when I was lost, my wise adviser when I was confused, my steadfast supporter when I most needed one, and most important, my friend, now and always.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Flames were like pets. Hungry, devoted little pets that would do pretty much whatever you wanted them to do, as long as you treated them right. You had to show them, of course. Sort of steer them in the right direction. You had to give them plenty to eat, too. Like a dog that would do a trick in exchange for a tasty treat, tongues of fire would go just where you wanted them to with the help of strategically placed snacks. They were insatiable, the little demons. They would devour everything and everyone in their path, growing bigger and bigger with every morsel, until they became giant ravenous dragons. Until they ate everything available. And then they died, their life over, their purpose served. Their master satisfied.

The master, in this case, had spent two decades learning about the care and feeding of fire. It was easy to give birth to it. So many ways, so many clever, creative, concealed ways to do it. It had become a challenge to invent new methods over the years. Genius wasn’t too big a word to describe her.

This particular baby was about to be born from the basement up. It was a simple method, but a very effective one. A little hacksaw action on the natural gas pipeline, just inside the basement. A tiny transformer box with two bare wires touching, so it would spark as soon as the wireless signal was sent.

The timing, of course, was crucial. Turning that switch too soon, before the gas had time to build to the right concentration, would result in nothing. Or worse, a survivable fire. She couldn’t wait too long, either, or her targets might smell the gas and have the brains to get out of the house without investigating.

Fortunately, timing was something else she had perfected over years of practice. She’d gotten it wrong at her former lover Anthony’s house. She’d thrown the switch too soon. The concentration had been too low. The sparks had amounted to nothing. She’d had to wait until the gas had overcome him and his wife before slipping back inside to retrieve the device. Dangerous, that. But she’d done it, and no one had been the wiser. They’d both died in their beds. A gas leak had been blamed. She hadn’t used a hacksaw on their pipes but had loosened a joint. It had looked accidental. No one knew, and Anthony had paid for choosing his wife over her.

But it hadn’t been anything like a fire. It had been anticlimactic. She’d almost wanted to place an anonymous 911 call and save them, so she could do the job right later on.

But she hadn’t. She knew when to cut her losses and move on.

She had to do it often, with men. Cut her losses and move on. So often that she took precautions now in new relationships. She used a false name and a disposable prepaid phone, and never told the truth about what she did or where she lived.

Someday she would find the man who would recognize her for the prize she was. Someday she would find one worthy of her. A heroic, handsome, selfless man who would fall head over heels in love, and put her ahead of everything and everyone else in his life.

She would find him.

Peter Rouse had not been the one. Like Anthony and so many since—like her own parents, so long ago—Peter had chosen others over her. His wife. And his kids. They’d already left him by then, to move into the two-story house half a block from where she now sat in a borrowed car. But he was determined to get them back.

She got out of the car, walked to the house in the darkness. It was a quiet neighborhood. No one noticed her. She angled into the backyard and moved to the casement window, crouching low.

Through binoculars, she’d watched as Rebecca had tucked her two kids—Jeffrey, who was eight years old and had his father’s eyes, and Rose, who was three—into their beds and walked back downstairs for a little quiet time. The whole neighborhood was in that quiet-before-bed phase of the evening. Watching their TV shows, reading their novels. No one paid attention to her. Not even a dog barked.

She picked up her small digital meter and pulled the dangling sensor out through a tiny hole she’d cut in the windowpane, then quickly smoothed a piece of duct tape over the opening. Then she checked the readout. The gas-to-air ratio in the basement had reached a beautiful 8:1. Oh, this was going to be something.

Dropping the device into a pocket, she walked quickly back to the car. Then she started the engine and put the car into Drive but kept her foot on the brake as she pressed the button on the remote.

There was a delicious moment between cause and effect, a moment lush with anticipation of the delight to come. The release. The birth. The precipice of a full-body orgasm.

And then it came, a newborn spark followed by the instant ignition of all that lovely gas. The baby gobbled it all up and grew so fast it exploded into a fireball. The roar reverberated way down deep in her belly, and the glow of it burned in the night like the flaming sword of an avenging angel.

And that’s what it was, in truth.

Shuddering in gut-deep pleasure, she released the brake and drove away.

1

So if the bullshit I wrote was true, then why the hell didn’t I practice what I made so much money preaching? You know, that whole “live in the moment” and “milk the joy out of every second of your life” bit.

I should. I knew I should. It was just a hell of a lot easier to tell other people what to do than to do it myself. Because, seriously, if I were giving advice to me—and I was, because my inner bitch never shuts the hell up—the conversation would go something like this:

Inner Bitch: “Say it back.”

Me: “I can’t say it back.”

IB: “Why the hell can’t you? He said it. He laid it right out there for you. He said, I love you. And what did you say back to him?”

Me, flooded with shame: “I said, ‘You’re shitting me.’”

IB: “Yeah. Real romantic.”

Me: “I was fucking surprised. Shocked. I wasn’t ready.”

IB: “No one’s ever ready, dumb-ass. You still have to say it back.”

Me: “It’s too late now. I let the moment pass.”

IB: “He’s waiting for you to say it back.”

Me: “Or maybe he’s changed his mind. He hasn’t said it again, after all.”

IB: “Why would he say it again? That would be like sticking his finger into a socket for the second time, hoping for a different result. Say it. Or you’re gonna lose him.”

Me: “I’m not gonna lose him.”

I glanced across the car at my favorite cop and silenced the imaginary conversation in my head. Actually, it wasn’t all that imaginary. My inner bitch and I had been having it over and over again since that night by the campfire a couple of weeks ago when I’d absolutely blown the chance to move this relationship up to the next level.

And I was sure there was no getting that moment back.

I was also sure that things had been a little awkward between Mason and me since then. My fault, I knew. I hadn’t responded the way I wished I had. But dammit, I was scared shitless to think of changing anything about this thing between the two of us. It was good. It was more than good. It was freakin’ amazing. It was bliss. Why fix what isn’t broken? Why move things to another place when the place they’re in is so damned wonderful? Why risk screwing it up? Why?

He looked at me, caught me staring. “What? Have I got fettuccine on my face?”

“No. You have gorgeous on your face. It’s all over you, in fact. Damn irritating.”

He smiled, flashing the dimple of doom. “Thanks.”

“De nada.”

Say it. Tell him. Just tell him. You can’t leave him hanging another minute.

I hated to admit it, but Inner Bitch was kinda right.

“So,” I said, as we rounded a corner, “Mason, um, I’ve been meaning to, uh, you know talk to you about—”

“Holy shit!” He hit the brakes so hard that my seat belt hurt me. Then he jerked the wheel, gunned the car to get us out of the road and hit the brakes again. I saw the flames, then the people standing around outside—one filming everything on his damn smartphone—and then Mason was getting out of the car and shouting at me to call 911 as he ran toward the chaos.

“Mason, wait, where the hell are you—” I jumped out of the car, too, phone to my ear, running after him. “Mason!”

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

“Um, house fire. Big one. Right off State Route 26 near Glenn Aubry.”

“Yes, help is on the way, ma’am.”

I clicked off and shoved the phone into my pocket, running now, despite my killer heels, because Mason hadn’t slowed down. Someone was screaming that there were kids trapped inside, and I wanted to punch them in the face, because there would be no stopping him now. Mason and kids was like me and...bulldogs.

Somehow I caught up to him and grabbed his arm from behind. Smoke stung my eyes and throat, and the heat was like a living thing. There was roaring and smoke, that acrid smell of burning stuff that wasn’t like any other smell. House fires didn’t smell like wood fires or campfires. They smelled like destruction.

He glanced back at me, removed my hand firmly, looked me right in the eyes and said, “I have to.”

“I know you do.” Dammit, dammit, dammit.

And then he was gone again, pulling his shirt up over his face and charging right through the front door, into the jaws of hell.

I swore it got hotter and wondered if that was because he’d just provided additional fuel.

You really should’ve told him.

“I know, Inner Bitch. I know.”

I stood there for what felt like a hundred and ten minutes but in truth was really only two. Fire trucks came screaming up. I ran over to the first one that stopped, jumped up on the running board and yanked the door open, startling the firefighters inside. “Hurry. My detective is in there!”

“Your—”

“Someone said there were kids inside. Detective Mason Brown went charging in to save them. Go get them out. Now.”

“We’ve got a cop inside!” the driver shouted to his fellows as he jumped out. By then more men were jumping out of the other trucks. Hoses had been unrolled and water was cranked on. They all started beating the hell out of the flames with their hoses. A couple of them, wearing so much gear I didn’t know how they could walk upright, ran inside.

I’d never seen anything like this fire. No matter how much water they put onto it, it kept burning, kept coming back to life, like one of those trick birthday candles you can’t blow out. The crowd had backed up into the street now. Neighbors in their bathrobes and slippers, some of them even barefoot, shaking their heads and muttering to each other, and hugging their kids close to them. I glimpsed them in my peripheral vision but couldn’t take my eyes off the front door. Flames were shooting from the roof and licking out from every window. I was way too close. My face felt like it was getting an extreme sunburn. Someone grabbed my arm and said I should move back, but I just jerked away from his touch and stared at that door.

“Universe, if you take him from me, I swear I’ll never write another word. Don’t you dare even think about—”

Then I saw him. Mason came stumbling out the front door with a limp, unmoving child in each arm, their heads bouncing against his shoulders. They were both bundled in blankets. He wasn’t. His whole face was black with soot and he dropped to his knees before he even got clear of the flaming wreck of a house, just at the bottom of the front steps. Firefighters surged around him. The first two took the kids, unmoving in their blankets, and the next two picked Mason up by either arm and carried him across the lawn. Someone shoved a gurney under him, and his bearers dropped him onto it as it trundled toward a waiting ambulance.

The crowd closed between us, but I fought my way through it to get to his side, elbowed myself up close, grabbed hold of his hand, and saw that the skin was peeling off it and sticking to mine. I sort of yelped and yanked my hand away, and swore and cried all at once. The EMTs were working quickly, putting an oxygen mask on him and then cutting away his shirt to reveal that his left arm was badly burned, and the flesh underneath was trying to come away with the ravaged fabric.

Oh, God, it looked awful! They draped a clean white cloth over his arm and started soaking it in bottles of sterile water. I’d lost track of the kids. I think they’d been put into the back of another ambulance, and I knew they were as surrounded by EMTs as Mason was. But I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving.

When one of the guys adjusted the oxygen mask, he smeared the black away from Mason’s cheek, and I realized it was soot, not charred skin, and almost sank to the ground in relief.

Someone grabbed me by the shoulders. “Easy, ma’am. Easy. Are you family?”

“Yeah.” I blinked. “No. Is he... God, is he...?”

“He’s alive. His vitals are good. Not great, but good. We’ve gotta get him into a burn unit. We’re gonna airlift him to Saint Joe’s. It’s the closest one. All right?”

“Airlift him?” Oh, God, it was bad. It was bad.

“Can you let his family know?”

Oh, God, the boys! And his mother. I nodded, mutely. “But I have to go with him.”

“You can’t, ma’am. We need room to work on him. If he has family, they’re gonna need your help more than he does. I promise, he’s in good hands.”

Already they were moving the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. I jerked free of the EMT and lunged toward Mason and leaned in close to his face, “I love you, too, Mason. I love you, too.”

But he couldn’t hear me. I’d waited too long. Dammit, I’d waited too long!

Then they peeled me off him and put him into the ambulance. It sped away screaming. I turned in a slow circle, not knowing what the hell to do next. I saw the ambulance with the children inside just as they closed the doors, but I had time enough to see them working on the kids. They must be alive, too, then.

Not so the body on the front lawn. The firemen who’d gone inside must have brought it out after Mason had emerged. It had a blanket over it. Too big to be a child. I hoped.

They were finally making progress beating down the flames. One of the firemen said something about gas, but I didn’t have time to listen. I had to go. I had to get to the boys, Mason’s nephews, who were at my place with Myrtle and my nieces.

Oh, Lord, how was I going to handle this?

I got into Mason’s oversize black Monte Carlo, his pride and joy. I had tears streaming from my eyes. I couldn’t let the kids see me like this. I didn’t know what to do. So I pulled my phone out of my pocket, stared at it for a long moment, and then I did the best thing I could think of.

I called my sister.

* * *

“Snap the fuck out of it!”

I’d been in midrant, complete with hiccuping sobs, when my big sister, who never even said damn, brought my runaway emotions to a sudden halt.

“Do I have your attention?” Sandra asked.

“You do.”

“Okay, first. Set the phone on your lap and put me on speaker so you don’t get killed, okay?”

Apparently she’d discerned from my initial projectile word vomit that I was driving while having a complete breakdown and talking on the phone. I did what she said and paid attention to the road. If I wrecked Mason’s ride he’d never forgive me. If he lived.

God, let him live.

“I’m going to meet you at your place, Rachel. But before you get there, I want you to pull yourself together. Right now.”

“But I don’t know how bad it is. I don’t even know if he’s going to—”

“Yeah, and you know what? Neither do those boys.”

Cold water in the face might have been as effective. But I doubted it.

“They’re kids. Their father is dead, and their mother is in a maximum-security nuthatch. At this moment, you are all they have, Rachel. You need to step up for this. It’s important.”

That brought me to full attention. I sat up straighter, and my tears dried up like they’d never been there. “I don’t know what to do for them, sis.”

“You go in there and you tell them the truth in the most positive manner possible. Live your books for once. Tell them you’ve got no reason to think he won’t be just fine, and make sure you sound confident when you do. If you look scared or uncertain, they’re gonna be terrified. They need a mother figure. So talk to them. Reassure them, and most of all, make sure they know that you’re there for them, no matter what happens to their uncle.”

I blinked hard, because those words hit me deep. I did not want to be a mother figure to those kids. I’d said it over and over.

“You would, wouldn’t you, Rache?”

“What?”

“Be there for the boys if anything happened to Ma—”

“Yeah. I would.” And it was the truth, even if I had only just realized it. I was shocked, to be honest. I’d become way more attached to the dynamic duo than I’d been aware of. Josh was like Myrtle’s freakin’ littermate, and Jeremy was Mason’s mini-me, with a fair amount of teenage angst (most of it hard-earned) thrown in.

“Then you have to let them know that.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be there by the time you arrive.”

“Okay.”

“Now hang up and call his mother.”

“Aw, jeez, Sandra—”

“Tell her not to drive. I’ll send Jim to pick her up and drive her in. Tell her he’ll be there soon. Just as fast as he can.”

“Okay.”

“Hang in there, sis.”

I nodded hard, disconnected, thanked my lucky stars for a big sister who knew how to talk to me and called Mason’s mother. She took it pretty well, I thought, and I did a great job holding it together as I tried to reassure her, and told her my brother-in-law was on his way to pick her up.

And then I was home, rolling slowly through the wrought-iron gates I’d left open and along the driveway up to the my house. My haven. I shut off the engine, got out, then stood there a second looking at my front door like I was looking at my own grave. I did not want to walk in there and blow those kids’ lives to hell and gone. How much more could they take?

Then Sandra’s minivan pulled in behind me. The headlights shut off, and she was out and hugging me hard before I even took another breath.

It made me choke up when she hugged me, so I pushed her away, wiped at my eyes, looked into hers. “How’s my face?”

She took a tissue out of her purse and dabbed some smudged makeup away. “You’re good. You can do this.”

Nodding, I marched up the front steps, opened the door and stepped inside.

Joshua, Jeremy, and Sandra’s daughter Misty were playing video games on the sofa. Jere and Misty sat close enough so their elbows were bumping. Ah, young love. My other niece, Christy, who I think was trying out for the role of the bad twin lately, sat in a chair off to one side, her nose glued to her smartphone.

Myrtle was the only one who noticed we’d come in, and she came barreling across the living room unerringly and bashed me in the shins with her forehead, which was her typical greeting. I yelped, because bulldogs have skulls made of lead, and the kids finally noticed us there, paused their game and turned our way.

Jeremy met my eyes and went a shade paler. “What happened? Where’s Uncle Mason?”

I drew a breath. “Your uncle was hurt a little while ago. He’s going to be okay, though. They’re taking him to the hospital. We’re all going to meet him there, okay?”

Joshua blinked slowly and didn’t say a word. He looked terrified. They both got off the sofa, moving toward us.

Jeremy said, “Hurt how?”

I swallowed my fear and tried to feel confident. “There was a fire.” Be straight with them, said my sister’s voice, echoing in my head. “There were kids inside, and you know your uncle. He ran in to get them out. And he did. But it looked like he got burned a little, and he probably took a few whiffs of smoke in the process.”

Jeremy nodded, joining us near the front door. “Let’s go, then. Josh, c’mon.”

Josh moved slower, like he was sleepwalking. He had this shell-shocked look, and his eyes were wide and unblinking, and kind of vacant.

I crossed to him, put my hands on his shoulders. “Josh, you don’t have to be afraid. He’s gonna be okay.”

His lips trembled. His tears welled. “Wh-what if he’s not?”

“I refuse to even consider that,” I told him. Myrt was at his feet now, affectionately butting his hands where they hung at his sides and getting no response. “I’ll tell you this much, though,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m sticking with you two. The both of you. No matter what.”

Josh wrapped his arms around me. If I got all tight in the throat, it was just because I wasn’t used to such blatant displays of affection from a twelve-year-old kid. But I tightened my arms around him and hugged him to me and stroked his hair and tried to blink back the flood of tears. I loved the kid. I loved Mason, and I loved his boys. What cave had I been living in that I hadn’t realized it sooner?

“Did someone call Gram?” Jeremy asked. He was at the door, itching to go. Misty stood in the background with tears welling, and Christy had stopped texting.

“Jim’s picking her up,” Sandra said. Then, to me, “You okay to drive?”

“I am.”

“All right, the girls and I will take care of things here, then we’ll be along.”

I hugged my sister. I didn’t hug often, but it was called for. “Thanks, Sandra.” When we pulled apart, I saw Misty all wrapped up in Jeremy, whispering that she wouldn’t be far behind him.

Then the three of us headed out, jumping into Mason’s car without even thinking about it, because it was closest. As soon as we got to the end of my almost-private dirt road and took a right to head for the I-81 north ramp, instead of left toward I-81 south, Jeremy said, “Why are we going this way? The hospital’s—”

“They took him to Saint Joseph’s in Syracuse, Jere. It’s apparently the standard place to go for burns.”

He was looking at me like I’d just kicked him in the shins, and he opened his mouth to say something else, then glanced at his kid bro and bit his lip. He was growing up. Graduating high school in a few weeks. He swallowed what I told him and knew what it might mean. I could see that. “Just a precaution, I think. I mean, if you have burns, you want a burn unit, and that’s the closest one.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

But he was scared. Terrified.

And so was I.

* * *

Mason was hurting like hell and resenting the fact that they’d dragged his ass all the way to Syracuse when there were three perfectly great hospitals within a half hour of his home. And while they’d cleaned (excruciating) and dressed the burns on his left arm and shoulder, and doped him up with enough morphine to slow down a rhino, he was still in pain. Not just the arm, either. His chest hurt like hell. Every breath was torture. It felt like he had shredded glass lining his lungs.

And then he saw Rachel, behind Jeremy and Joshua, with an arm around each of them, and the pain took a backseat. She was all smudged with soot but still in that sexy red clingy dress she’d worn for their weekly date night. He’d been admiring it all night long. She was wearing a big phony mask of confidence and ease, but he could see the fear behind her baby-blue eyes.

Damn, he loved her eyes. Even when they’d been blind, they’d been beautiful.

“Uncle Mace!” Joshua broke into a run. Mason managed to lift his left arm out of the way before impact, wincing because it hurt to move the arm at all. He tousled the kids’ hair with his good hand. “I’m fine, Josh. Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

“I was so scared,” Josh said.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You’ve gotta be more careful, Uncle Mace. We need you.”

The kid meant every word. Mason looked over Josh’s head at Jeremy. “C’mere, you.”

Jeremy smiled and went to hug him, as well. “The nurses in the waiting room said you saved those two kids’ lives. Said you were a hero.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said, still standing back, giving them room. “She was all cow-eyed when she said it, too. If she didn’t have your life in her hands, I’d have to kick her ass just to establish my dominance.”

“I can’t help it if I’m irresistible to women,” Mason told her. “It runs in the family. Be forewarned, Jere.”

Jeremy grinned. “Yeah, I’m fighting them off all the time myself.”

“I’ll be sure to let Misty know,” Rachel said.

* * *

I leaned against the doorjamb and forcibly held back tears—relieved ones—while Mason continued to talk and tease and joke. Bit by bit the terror left the boys’ faces. God, he was good at that. How did he get to be such a pro? Was it because he was a cop, or because he was their uncle? I was damned if I knew. I had a ways to go to catch up, though. His mind-easing, reassuring abilities were damn near supernatural. Even with me.

Eventually I could tell the emotions were coming out whether I liked it or not, and I didn’t want to lose it in front of the boys, so I said, “I’m going to get food. We really need some junk food. I’ll be right back.” I started to leave, but when I reached for the door to open it, Mason’s partner, Rosie, was standing on the other side.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, eyeing Mason hard, assuring himself that he was all right. “I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?”

“Apparently not. Boys, I need a minute. Would you go out and see if your grandmother got here yet? She’s probably out in the waiting room giving the staff a hard time.”

“Yeah. But we’re coming right back,” Jeremy said. He took Josh by the arm. “C’mon. We’ll scope out the cafeteria while we’re at it.” He sent Rachel a very grown-up look. “We’ll get the junk food, Rache. You can hang here.”

The boys left. I didn’t. I was eyeing Rosie, then Mason, then Rosie again, and my NFP (for Not Fucking Psychic, because whatever I had, it wasn’t that simple) was heating up to a slow simmer. “What?” I asked. “What’s going on? I can see something is.”

Rosie gave himself a shake. “I’ll never get over that shit. Yes, something’s goin’ on. That fire is goin’ on. You saved the kids, Mason, but their mother didn’t make it. And it was arson.”

* * *

Peter’s wife was dead, according to the TV news. Police were investigating the fire, which had been ruled arson only hours after the flames were doused. Then again, hiding that fact hadn’t been her goal.

The kids had survived, which defeated part of her purpose, but she supposed the lesson had been delivered all the same. Peter would think twice before he treated her like garbage again. Like some disposable toy he could use and then throw away. He would make her his top priority or else. And he had to know that now.

She’d warned him. She’d warned him. But he was just like the rest.

She picked up the remote to turn her little 27-inch flat-screen television off, but then they flashed a picture that brought her to a stop. It was a man, on his knees on the front steps of the burning house, one of her lover’s kids in each arm. His clothes were charred, and so was he. The caption read Hero Cop Saves Children. The reporter was running her mouth. Gretchen Young turned up the volume and sank onto the love seat—her apartment didn’t have room for a full-sized couch.

“This tragic arson, resulting in the death of thirty-six-year-old mother of two Rebecca Rouse could have been an even bigger tragedy had it not been for the actions of off-duty homicide detective Mason Brown. Brown, a decorated member of the Binghamton Police Department, was off duty when he saw the fire and rushed inside to rescue Rouse’s children, ages three and eight. Detective Brown has been in the news before, most notably for solving our city’s first-ever serial killings last year and, more recently, for arresting his own mentally ill sister-in-law for another spate of bizarre murders. The hero cop is listed in satisfactory condition at Saint Joseph’s Hospital. Police aren’t commenting on the arson investigation, though newly minted Police Chief Vanessa Cantone will hold a press conference tomorrow afternoon.”

Gretchen hit the rewind button, then paused the TV on the shot of that hero cop. He was the kind of man she deserved. The kind of man who would know exactly how to love a woman like her. How to make her feel important. Special. Treasured.

Peter Rouse wasn’t worth her time after all, was he?

She looked at her bag of tools on the kitchen counter, where she’d dropped it after coming home from her night’s work. The bag, a little black leather satchel like an old-school doctor might carry, had been her gift to herself way back when she’d graduated and received her pin.

She wouldn’t part with the bag. But she could afford to get rid of a few of the tools it held. Since they knew it was arson, they were going to need an arsonist. Peter Rouse’s punishment wasn’t quite complete. Yet.

2

“Two freaking weeks,” Mason said. It was his routine now. The first thing he said every morning when I walked into his hospital room was an exaggeration of how long he’d been imprisoned there. I showed up at my usual time. Eight o’clock with a Box O’ Joe, a pair of breakfast sandwiches and a couple of doughnuts.

“Ten days,” I corrected. “You’ll survive, I promise.” I pulled the bedside tray around and adjusted the height, cleared it of books, magazines and an empty plastic Jell-O container from the night before, and set the feast for him. I even poured his coffee. I was spoiling the man rotten. And I still hadn’t told him I loved him, because there were bigger things going on. Okay, and because I was a fucking chicken. I’d managed to decide that I’d say it back if he said it to me again. I’d do it immediately. So all he had to do was say it again and make it easy on me.

What if he’d changed his mind?

“Earth to Rachel,” he said,

I blinked out of my own head and said, “I brought you a great big present today.”

“My discharge papers?”

“Better.” I slid my bag off my shoulder, took out my laptop and set it on the nearby easy chair, my new workstation. I worked on my book-in-progress right here in his hospital room, every day until noon. Then I headed home for a few hours of quality time with my dog, and then I came back with the boys in tow as soon as school let out for the day. I didn’t mind it a bit. The four of us usually had dinner together, cafeteria food or takeout, depending on what I had time to grab, and then I took the kids back to my place for the night.

Amy, my personal assistant, was handling everything else. Copy edits, Facebook and Twitter posts, newsletter mailings, and fan letter replies. I needed to come up with a new title for Amy, because personal assistant didn’t begin to cover it. Maybe something like “She Whose Quitting Would Result in My Complete and Utter Annihilation.” Yeah, that would do it. Goth chick had made herself indispensable to me. Probably all part of her evil plan for the ultimate in job security. As long as I stayed flush, she’d stay flush. And I was staying flush.

I pulled a manila envelope out of my bag and slapped it onto the tray in front of “my detective.” I’d been calling him that inside my head ever since the night of the fire, when I’d screamed it at the Binghamton FD.

Mason was in mid-coffee-sip, but he stopped when he looked at the file. “What’s this?”

“The full case file. Everything to do with it, from the arson investigator’s report to Rebecca Rouse’s autopsy report. It also has Rosie’s notes from the interrogation of Peter Rouse, the victim’s estranged husband.” He knew that Rouse was our most likely suspect, being that his wife had taken the kids and moved out only a few weeks prior to the fire.

“Finally!” He set the coffee down and tore open the envelope. “You didn’t even peek?” he asked.

“I did not. I promised Chief Sexy-pants that it would get into your hands unopened, and you can now verify that I lived up to my word.” I moved up beside him so I could read while he did. And I grabbed my doughnut out of the paper bag because, you know, I’d already resisted it all the way here, and I was only human. He was lucky I hadn’t eaten them both and read the file.

He was skimming, though, flipping pages so fast I couldn’t keep up. Police speak required slow, careful reading for me. It was not my native tongue. “Whathitthay?” I asked around my delicious cream-filled, chocolate-frosted bliss.

Mason correctly interpreted my question, which proved he was my perfect mate, and said, “Gas line was tampered with. Marks that appear to have come from a hacksaw were found on the pipe. The killer let the basement fill with gas, then remotely activated a simple detonator to create a spark.”

“A spark?” I asked. “A single spark?”

He nodded. “That’s all it took.” He was still skimming. “They found the detonator in the rubble, but what was left wasn’t much to go on.” He read some more, nodded. “Search warrant was executed on Peter Rouse’s place. They found a hacksaw in the back of his pickup. Forensics matched the shards in its teeth to the gas line that was sawed through. Teeth marks matched, too.”

“Not the brightest murderer on the block, is he? Keeping that stuff in his pickup.” Mason frowned at me. I shrugged. “Not saying I don’t think he’s guilty, just saying he’s also effing stupid.” Then I lifted my brows. “Notice how I abbreviated the cuss word there?”

“I did notice. Nice job. The boys must be having a good influence on you.”

“I’m turning into Carol fucking Brady.” I clapped a hand over my mouth, but he just kept grinning at me. I sighed at my own difficulty with habit breaking and tried to steer us both back on topic. “So the almost-ex is not only guilty but stupid,” I said.

“Not too stupid to figure out how to remotely ignite the fire,” he said softly. “Arson investigator says it’s tricky to know how long to wait to spark one up with a gas leak.”

I shook my head. “Those poor kids down the hall don’t have a mother anymore, and now they’ve got to deal with the fact that their father killed her.”

“They’re not down the hall anymore. They were moved to the pediatric hospital last night,” Mason said.

“That’s good news, isn’t it?” I hoped to God it was.

“Yeah. Not even in ICU. They put them in a regular room, my nurse said. They’re out of danger. Probably going home—or somewhere—in a day or two.”

“Have you seen them yet?”

“No. I haven’t tried.”

“But you saved their lives, Mason.”

He shrugged. “And I’m not going to go present myself to them in hopes of receiving their undying gratitude. They’ve got enough to deal with right now.” He sighed and closed the file. “Speaking of kids, how are the boys?”

“They miss you. I mean, visiting you for a couple of hours every day isn’t the same, you know? They miss their stuff, too, or so they keep saying, though I don’t see how they could. We’ve hauled most of it to my house by now.”

His face turned serious. I hadn’t meant to wipe his smile away. “They’ve taken over your place. I’m sorry, Rache. I know how much you love your home and value your space. Any damage so far?”

“Don’t be a dumb-ass. They keep most of the mess to their assigned bedrooms.” And the kitchen and the living room and the dock out by the lake and the bathrooms. Good God, the bathrooms. Still, it’s odd how much I honestly don’t mind. Really odd. I shook the baffling state of my contentment away, because I wasn’t yet ready to talk about it. “Myrtle is happier than a carnivore at a meat market. She’s already figured out their routine. She waddles right over and plunks her ass in front of the door at a quarter to three every weekday and waits for them to get back from school.”

He smiled at that, because he loved my dog almost as much as I did. “She is one boy-loving bulldog.” Then he opened the file again.

“Rouse said the hacksaw in the back of his pickup wasn’t his.” He flipped a few pages. “No fingerprints on it. Looked like it had been wiped.”

I nodded. “They searched his house, too, though, right?”

“Yeah.”

“They find anything related to the detonator?”

His eyes raced over pages, his lips tightening. “Nope.”

“So all we’ve got is the hacksaw?”

“His fingerprints were found inside the wife’s house,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but his kids lived there. I’m sure he was in and out a lot.”

“There was a silver Chevy Cruze seen parked a couple of blocks away at the time of the fire. The neighbors say it didn’t belong there,” Mason said. “Another neighbor said Rouse’s truck was seen in the area that night.” Then he shrugged. “But Rosie says it was there every weeknight. He drove the kids home from school. And this neighbor’s sighting was several hours before the fire.” He looked at me—waiting, I knew, for my feedback. He counted on me for it. And since I was an official police consultant now, I was happy to give it.

“Sounds like they must’ve been getting along, then. She’d have picked up the kids herself if she thought he was dangerous, right?”

“Women seldom think their spouses are dangerous until it’s too late. But when a woman is murdered, it’s almost always the spouse,” he pointed out.

“Says a lot for the state of marriage, doesn’t it?”

He peered up at me, but when I looked back he turned back to the report and flipped a page. “He admitted during questioning that he didn’t want the divorce. He didn’t want to lose custody of his kids.”

“So why try to burn the place with them inside?”

He met my eyes again, and his were brighter than they’d been since the fire. He loved his work, and this was the first chance he’d had to really sink his teeth into a case since nearly getting his gorgeous ass killed.

“Lots of men would rather see the kids dead than lose custody.”

“I refuse to believe it’s ‘lots of men.’ Granted, we see it in the news, but it has to be rare or it wouldn’t be news.”

“That sounded dangerously positive, Rache.”

“I know, right? Having the boys around, I just can’t imagine how a parent could hurt their own kid.” I heaved a sigh. “I suppose it’s possible he did it. But still, all we really have is the hacksaw.” I finished my doughnut, sipped my coffee, leaned back in my chair.

“You have an idea, don’t you?” he asked.

“How can you tell?”

“If I look deep into your eyes I can see a bunch of gears turning in your brain.”

I nodded. “Get me in to see him. I mean, he’s still in custody, isn’t he?”

“No. He made bail. Probably because our evidence is so freaking weak.”

I shrugged. “Even better. I can talk to him more easily that way.”

“Uh-uh. No way. That’s a very bad idea.”

“Oh, come on, Mason.” He hadn’t touched his breakfast sandwich, so I picked it up and took a bite, then put it back. After some yummy caffeine, I went on. “You know I can tell if he’s the guy with a single conversation.”

“He could be dangerous.”

“So am I.”

“This guy probably killed his own wife, almost killed his two kids and damn near took me out with them. I don’t want you anywhere near him.”

“You’re worried he’ll turn his focus to me?”

“That too. Mainly I was thinking about your temper.”

I smiled sweetly and batted my eyes. “What temper?” But he was right. If this man was guilty, he had almost killed my detective. It might not be safe for me to be in the same room with him surrounded by armed guards, much less all alone.

Mason sent me a look that spoke louder than words, but it changed to one of worry when he returned to the file. “We need more or this guy’s gonna walk. A decent defense attorney could find a dozen experts who’d testify that pipe shavings aren’t unique. It’s not like DNA. And his pickup was parked outside in the open. Anyone could’ve thrown the saw into it.”

“That would be a hell of a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”

“Not if they knew who he was. Besides, it only takes reasonable doubt to get him off.”

I shrugged. “All the more reason I should talk to him.”

Mason said, “Your ESP isn’t admissible in court, Rache.”

“NFP. And it should be.”

“Whether it should be is irrelevant.”

“But if I talk to him, maybe I can get more. A clue that will lead us to better evidence or—”

“Rachel, stay away from this guy.”

He pointed at me with a forefinger, something I didn’t remember him ever doing before. Like he was telling Josh to eat his vegetables. I did not like it. I sent him a look, my eyebrows arching, my gaze on that finger, and he lowered it and shook his head.

“He’s dangerous, Rache.”

The door opened, and Dr. Earl came in. I thought his photo was probably next to the word stately in the dictionary. Tall, lean, silver-white hair so neat it looked plastic, and the face of an aging GQ model. He looked up from the chart in his hands and flashed us a cheerful white smile. “Good morning, you two. You beat me here again, Rachel. I must be slowing down in my old age.”

“Well, you know, I couldn’t have a doughnut until I got here, so I was highly motivated.”

He laughed softly, turned his attention to Mason. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I don’t need to be here. Like I need to be home and back on the job, building a case against the guy who put me here.”

“Well, we just might be able to make that happen today. The home part, not the back on the job part.”

“Today?” Mason’s brows rose, and he looked at me, then back at the doctor. “Where the hell are my clothes?”

“Ah, not so fast now,” said the AARP poster boy. “There are going to be some conditions.”

“Anything, Doc. Anything you say, I promise. Tell me, and I’ll do it. To the letter.”

“You are such a liar,” I muttered, but under my breath, so Dr. Earl could pretend not to hear.

He winked at me, though, so I knew he’d heard just fine. Then he started ticking off conditions on his immaculately manicured fingers. “You need to hire a nurse to come in and change your dressing twice a day to prevent infection. You need to come back if there’s any sign of any problem whatsoever. Any trouble breathing, or if that cough comes back. And you need to take another week at home before returning to work. And then only after I’ve examined and cleared you.”

“Yes. Yes, I agree to all of it. Anything just to get out of here. Rache, my clothes?”

Dr. Earl shook his head. “You know better, Detective. Let’s proceed with your morning exam, and then I’ll get started on the paperwork as soon as I finish my rounds. You should be out of here by—” he looked at the clock “—midday, if all goes well.”

Mason shot me a bug-eyed “my head’s gonna explode” expression, and I had to clap a hand over my mouth to keep the laugh from busting out. I refilled my coffee cup from the box. “I’ll get out of here to give you some privacy, then. Help yourself to coffee, Dr. Earl.”

Then I left the room, shaking my head. Thank God he was okay and heading home today. Thank God. I think it was the first time I really allowed the full brunt of the danger to hit me, and it made my knees a little weak. It was a constant battle to keep my mind from going to what could’ve happened.

And, oh man, was I ever going to have a talk with probable arsonist Mr. Rouse the Louse, whether my detective liked it or not. I just wouldn’t tell him. Not until after the fact, anyway.

For now, though, my main challenge was how I was going to convince him to come home to my house instead of to his own. I paced the hallway, tried to stay out of the way of the rush-hour nurse traffic and wished I knew how Mason was going to react to my suggestion.

* * *

Marie Rivette Brown’s life wasn’t pleasant. The doctors at Riverside Maximum Security Psychiatric Hospital kept her medicated. Heavily medicated. She didn’t hear her husband’s voice anymore. Once in a while he came through, but it was rare and usually only if she was stressed out about something else.

They even let her use the community room. They hadn’t for the first few months, but now they did. It was a big room, with small round tables and plenty of chairs, lots of games like checkers and Trouble, and several decks of cards. A TV set was always playing some happy family movie with no violence or death or ghosts or voices. Nothing that might upset the inmates.

She knew what she’d done. She’d tried to retrieve her dead husband’s donated organs. Eric had been a serial killer. Finding that out had been like a mortar round hitting her world. No one else knew. No one ever would. But she knew. She’d known for more than a year and had done nothing about it, unable to destroy her sons by letting it come out. Then, after his suicide, she’d lost the little baby girl she’d been carrying, and that seemed to make the walls of her sanity come crumbling down completely.

She didn’t feel remorse. She figured the drugs kept her from feeling much of anything, so she couldn’t feel sorry for what she’d done, the lives she’d taken. Without the drugs, though, she knew she wouldn’t feel it, either. Without the drugs, she was convinced that what she had done was completely rational.

She missed her boys, though. That was the one thing she seemed capable of feeling, on her meds or off, completely insane or doped into a state of zombie-like calm. She missed her sons. Jeremy would be graduating from high school soon. A couple of weeks, if that. She so wished she could be there for him.

“Hi, sweetie. How are you doing today?”

Blinking out of her thoughts, Marie looked up from the table where she sat alone, an untouched meal in front of her, at the nurse. She’d seen her around before, a stunningly beautiful blue-eyed blonde with a figure her tight-fitting white dress did nothing to hide. But she wasn’t anyone Marie interacted with very often.

“Fine.” That was always her answer.

“You should let me take you outside. It’s such a beautiful day. Lots of people are out enjoying the yard today.”

Marie shrugged. “Okay.”

The nurse smiled and took her arm, helped her up and held on to her gently as they walked together toward the doors, then she used her keycard to unlock them. Marie didn’t think it made any sense keeping them locked, because they only led out to a fenced-in lawn, with several patches of flowers and quite a few big shade trees. Marie scuffed across the soft grass in her foam slippers toward a pair of lawn chairs underneath a pretty red maple. The nurse was right. The fresh air was nice. It smelled like summer and sunshine, and reminded Marie of picnics at the lake house up north and the kids playing on the tire swing and jumping into the water. Skinny and shirtless in baggy shorts she used to say would fall right off in the lake one of these days.

She sank into a chair, closing her eyes and breathing the air, and trying to grab hold of the joy of the memory. But there wasn’t any. It was just a picture. It elicited no emotion.

Marie wasn’t aware that the nurse had sat down in the other chair until she spoke, breaking into the memory and bringing her back to the miserable present.

“I wanted to show you something. I’m not really allowed, but sometimes I think the rules here are over the top.”

Marie frowned as the nurse pulled a folded newspaper clipping out of her pocket, opened it and held it by two corners as the breeze made it ripple. It was a photo of a man carrying two blankets out of a fire. She looked closer, frowning. “That’s Mason.”

“Your brother-in-law, right?”

Marie nodded, her eyes eagerly skimming the words under the photo. Those weren’t blankets, they were children. Mason had saved them from a terrible fire that had killed their mother. Nodding slowly, she understood. “He’s a good man. He’s always been.”

“I can see that. I was so surprised when I saw this on the news and realized he was part of your family. You must be so proud of him.”

Marie wasn’t proud of him. Not really. After all, she’d had no hand in making him the great person he was. “His mother probably is.”

“Oh? His mother’s still living?”

Marie nodded.

“Close to him, I hope? He lives in...Binghamton, right?”

“Castle Creek,” Marie said, remembering the farmhouse and wondering if her boys were happy there. Probably. They loved their uncle so much. Maybe more than they loved her. Especially after what she’d done. “His mother’s in Whitney Point. Near Rachel.”

“Rachel? Who’s she?”

“His girlfriend, I guess. She’s a writer.” Something buzzed deep in Marie’s mind, a little trill of awareness that told her it was odd for a nurse to be asking about her family. “Why do you want to know?”

The nurse smiled, shrugged, lowered her head, blushed a little. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just impressed with him. To think we have a hero like that around. They don’t make men like that anymore, you know?”

“Oh.”

“What’s he like?”

She’s up to something. Look at her eyes.

Marie blinked. It had been so long since she’d heard her dead husband’s voice in her head. Oh, she knew the doctors kept telling her it wasn’t really his voice. It was her own subconscious, speaking to her in his voice in order to get her attention. And because she had a mental illness, she must not trust the things her subconscious said to her in the voice of her dead husband.

But she furrowed her brows and stared deep into the nurse’s eyes anyway. There was a fire in there. It was deep, but it was there, swirling and sparking, but hidden very well behind a facade that was blank. False. Empty. She’d seen that look before. She’d seen it in Eric’s eyes. It was the plastic mask of a killer.

“He’s nice,” she said softly, cautiously.

“He has your kids, doesn’t he?”

“How do you know that?” Marie asked.

Dangerous. She’s dangerous.

“I looked at your file.”

Marie’s eyes widened. “You stay away from him. You stay away from him and my boys.”

“Me?” The nurse got up from her chair, one hand fluttering to her chest, her eyes pretending to be offended and surprised. But she didn’t feel those things. Marie could tell. She was mimicking real emotions, the way Marie herself tried to do during every session with her shrink, in hopes of someday convincing him that she was well and could go home.

“My goodness, Marie, what are you talking about?”

“Stay away from them,” Marie said again.

The nurse smiled. And for just a moment she let the mask slip. There was evil in that smile. Evil. She was a demon, and the fire in her eyes was a window directly into hell.

Marie reached out and snatched the name tag from the nurse’s chest, tearing her dress in the process. She stared at the name, saying it aloud, over and over and over as the nurse jumped back with a squeak of alarm and then pressed a button in her pocket.

Orderlies came running out the door, crossing the yard toward them.

Marie was up on her feet. “You’re evil. What do you want with my family? You stay away from them. You stay away!”

Then the strong young men in white took her arms, and another nurse, a regular, jabbed her in the ass with a needle. Marie went out with the demon nurse’s name on her lips.

Gretchen Young.

3

“So when are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

Mason sat in the passenger side of Rachel’s hot little yellow T-Bird while she drove him home from his endless stay in the hospital. The top was down, and her hair was whipping like a flag in a hurricane. She drove way above the speed limit, despite the fact that her passenger was a cop. Driving usually had her smiling from ear to ear. Not so today. Today she was all nervous and jerky.

She glanced sideways at him. “You’re almost as good at it as I am, you know.”

“What? Reading people?” He shook his head. “Only criminals and you, babe.”

She crooked one brow at him but kept her focus on the road as she zigged into the fast lane to pass a jacked-out Mustang, then zagged back in front of it again. She didn’t even taunt the driver with a wink or flip him off or give him a cutesy little wave. Something was definitely wrong with her, he thought.

“So what is it?”

“Nothing. I just... Okay, there’s something.” She drew a deep breath, and her shoulders rose with it. He knew that look. She was preparing to blurt it out, whatever it was. He braced himself.

“Why don’t you stay at my place for a while?”

And there it was. He watched her face closely. She didn’t have the same opportunity to watch his, but he didn’t figure she needed to. The stuff she “got” didn’t come from anything she could see with her eyes. In fact, most of the time when she was trying to read people she had to close those gorgeous baby blues.

“You want me to stay with you,” he repeated without inflection.

“Yeah. I mean, why not? The boys are already there, and it really hasn’t been as bad as I expected it to be.” She bit her lip on one side, glanced sideways at him. “I mean, it’s been great.”

“You mean not as bad as you expected.”

“Which is great.”

“I think you need to look up the word great in the dictionary. Aren’t you supposed to be a writer or something?”

She shrugged. “Look, you need to take it easy, and you can’t run a houseful of boys and take it easy at the same time. Come to my place. Just for a couple of weeks, until you get your strength back.”

He tried to weigh his words before speaking them. He did not want to screw things up with her, but her invitation was weak. Or maybe he was just still stinging from that unrequited “I love you” he’d dropped on her a few weeks ago. She hadn’t said it back. And he hadn’t said it again. If she wasn’t ready for serious feelings, she sure as hell wasn’t ready for cohabitation.

“Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”

“I think,” he said, slowly and carefully, “that if we ever decide to...live together, I’d just as soon it not be because I’m too weak to be on my own.”

She looked disappointed. “Oh.”

“Jeremy and Josh will be a ton of help. My mother will probably want to move in. And there will be a home care nurse.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Sure, okay.”

“And you. You’ll be in and out all the time, too.”

“Sure,” she said again.

He was quiet for a long moment. She was upset. Dammit, she’d asked him in a way that was a lot like a person pulling off a Band-Aid. Grit your teeth, close your eyes and get it over with. He didn’t think she’d really been hoping he would say yes.

“I just don’t want to risk messing up—”

“It’s fine, okay? It’s fine.”

It wasn’t though. Crap.

“You hungry?” she asked at length. “We didn’t have lunch before we left, and there’s a Nice N Easy off the next exit. They make the best wraps.”

“There’s a Mickey D’s, too,” he said, having seen the same road sign that she had.

“Yeah, but you need to heal. Junk food isn’t gonna cut it right now. And I’m sure your mother and the nurse would agree with me.”

He nodded. “Okay. Wraps sound good. And a Coke.”

“Or water.”

“Or Coke.”

She heaved a sigh, but nodded as she exited the highway and pulled in at the gas station slash convenience store.

* * *

So he didn’t want to stay with me. Fine, he could fucking stay by himself and take twice as long to heal if that was what he wanted.

I was sitting on my living room floor, working on my second vodka and Diet Coke, my poor blind bulldog lying with her head on my lap. “It’s actually kinda nice to have the house to ourselves again, isn’t it, Myrt?”

Myrt’s reply was a great big sigh. She’d been heaving them every few minutes, in between pacing the house looking for Joshua. Her buddy. She couldn’t stand that he wasn’t here. It was mean, that’s what it was. Mason shouldn’t be mean to a poor defenseless bulldog. Myrtle had gotten used to having the kids around. Every afternoon we’d make cookies or brownies or something, so when they got off the bus and came in the door they’d have a snack. I mean, I remember always being hungry after school when I was a kid, so why would they be any different, right?

Myrt would hear that school bus coming a mile away and jump to the door and stand there wiggling from her nose to her stump of a tail, waiting for the boys to come through.

It was heartbreaking to see her so dejected.

Poor dog.

I hadn’t packed up the boys’ stuff yet. I figured I’d tell them they had to do it themselves. That way they’d have to come back and spend some time, and Myrtle could get her groove back. I’d phoned the school from my car to let them know the boys would be taking the bus back to their old place from now on, and to drop them off there starting today.

When I drove Mason home I’d gone in for a few minutes to make sure he had everything he needed. He asked me to stay for dinner, but I said no, that he’d want to get acclimated and stuff. His mother had already filled his freezer with meals. I’d seen her several times while the boys had been my roomies, because of course she had to come by a couple of nights a week to try to talk them into staying with her instead.

Poor Angela. She was kind of stiff as grandmothers went, kind of cold, but she loved the kids in her way. I hope I’d managed to convince her that they liked my place better simply because of the lake out front, the dog they adored and the super short ride to school. They could’ve taken their bikes, if they’d wanted to. (They hadn’t.)

Anyway, I knew Angela had stocked Mason’s freezer with casseroles, lasagnas, meatballs, mac and cheese, and God only knew what else. So I got him home and kissed him goodbye, then made my excuses and headed home.

I’d pretty much been moping ever since. He’d really hurt my feelings by not wanting to stay with me, and I was really good and pissed at myself for being such a fucking whiny ass.

Sighing, I got up and poured myself another drink. Myrtle followed me, then left my side to wander from one room to the next again. She paused at the stairs, sniffing, but didn’t go up. Not only was it not in her nature to exert herself unnecessarily, but she probably knew the boys weren’t up there without climbing the stairs to find out. Her other senses were as sharp as mine. She sighed again, plodded back to our spot, and together we sat down. I grabbed the remote, flipped on the TV.

A news crew was ambushing some guy who was trying to get out of his pickup and into his front door, and the female reporter and her camera guy were apparently doing their best to keep him from getting there.

“If you didn’t set that fire, then who did?” said the reporter, who then thrust her microphone into his face and I was pretty sure bonked him on the nose with it.

Wait a minute. Fire?

“No comment.” He pushed the mike away with one hand and sidestepped the camera. He was an average-looking guy, beer belly that overhung his belt, typical blue work pants, plaid shirt tucked in nice and neat. He had a ruddy complexion, like he was outside a lot in rough weather, and a thick shock of black hair that looked as if he was wearing an animal pelt on his head.

“That guy? That is the guy who damn near killed my detective?” I turned up the volume.

“What evidence do the police have against you, Mr. Rouse?”

Yep, that was him all right. Rouse the Louse.

The man lowered his head, shook it slowly. I narrowed my eyes on him, but I couldn’t feel him. I wasn’t close enough. “No comment.”

“Mr. Rouse, again, if you didn’t set the fire that killed your wife, do you have any idea who did?”

His head came up fast and he opened his mouth, clearly about to blurt something. But then he clamped it closed again, and I could see he really regretted his almost-slip. “My lawyer says I can’t talk to you. I’m sorry. You’ll just have to wait for the trial.”

“But you want to tell your side of the story, don’t you, Mr. Rouse? I can see you do.”

He stopped walking, and I thought he was going to do it. Spill his guts. She was good, this reporter. What the hell was her name? I knew it. I’d seen her on the local news often enough. Trisha Knight. That was it.

She was holding her breath, and so was I. And then he pressed his lips tight, shook his head. “No comment. Now please let me go into my house.”

He pushed past her, not giving her much choice about “letting” him.

I located the remote, hit the back button and watched the entire story again, pausing it every few seconds to try to read the man visually. But visuals were not my strong point. I had to be near someone. I had to feel them.

Or, you know, dream about them. At least, it had happened that way a few times. I always tended to think that gift of dreaming about things was just going to vanish and never come back, but it hadn’t, not really. It had morphed instead, turning into some kind of a sixth sense that I didn’t like admitting I had.

Still, I had a feeling about that guy. I backed up the action and watched again, paying attention to the surroundings this time around. I noticed the house number: 117. Now if I could just get a glimpse of a street sign...

I probably watched that clip until my eyes bled, until Inner Bitch cuffed me upside the head (you know, figuratively) and said, You about ready to look the guy up online yet or what?

I rolled my eyes. It was another classic “duh, Rachel” moment. But at least no one was there to witness it.

Why the hell did I catch myself wishing that someone was? Three someones, to be exact.

* * *

I searched Peter Rouse, found his address, jotted it down, took my bulldog upstairs and went to bed. It was way too late at night to be paying impromptu visits to murder suspects. Besides, I had to figure out how to approach him. He was being hounded by reporters. He wasn’t going to just open the door and let me in. And also, I had to figure out how to keep myself from kneeing him in the balls the second I got within reach. There are pills to make you happy when you’re sad, pills to make you chill when you’re stressed. Why the hell hadn’t anyone invented a pill to make you less likely to assault a person who sorely deserved it?

Myrt followed me upstairs, but not into my bedroom. She went to Josh’s room instead. Sighing, I followed her, stood in the doorway and watched her sniff around the entire perimeter. The bed was still unmade. His pajamas and a used T-shirt lay on the floor, even though I’d bought each kid a big plastic hamper to put their laundry in. Myrtle found that pile of clothes, smelled them, pawed them into a perfect little bulldog nest, and then, sighing, collapsed on top of it. As always, she was snoring before she even hit the floor.

Broke my damn heart.

I tugged the blanket and pillow off Josh’s bed, tossed them down beside Myrt and curled up next to her. She snuggled a little closer. And that was where the two of us spent the night. She was missing her guy as much as I was missing mine.

You’re fucking doomed, you know that, right?

Yes, Inner Bitch. I know it. I hadn’t intended for it to happen. I’d tried real hard to keep this—God, I hated the word—relationship in perspective. Don’t get too close. Don’t use the L word. Don’t need him, because if you do, then when you don’t have him anymore, it’ll hurt.

Too late. Too late for all of the above. Except for the use of the L word, of course, but that was on my to-do list. I just needed the right moment. And it probably ought to be one when I wasn’t as pissed off at him as I was right now. Damn him for not being here with me.

Damn him for taking the boys back.

Wow. If you’d told me a year ago that those words would whisper through this brain, I’d have called you a dirty liar.

* * *

Saturday morning dawned bright and beautiful, and Mason was up, showered, dressed and halfway down the stairs before he smelled the coffee. His heart took a little leap in his chest. Was Rachel here? Had she come over bright and early to make them breakfast and assure herself that he wasn’t overdoing it?

By the time he entered the kitchen, his grin was a mile wide. But Rachel wasn’t there. Just the boys. Joshua was setting the table, and Jeremy was making French toast and a lot of smoke. The coffeepot was full and calling to him, though, so he grabbed a cup off the table.

“Morning, boys.”

They were so focused on their work they hadn’t seen him. “Morning, Uncle Mace! We’re making breakfast,” Joshua said.

“I see that.” He moseyed to the coffeepot and gave the burner a sneaky downward turn underneath Jeremy’s pan before filling his mug. “Mmm. Looks great.”

Jere shrugged. “You’re supposed to take it easy. We figured we’d help out.” He turned the burner back up, but not as high as it had been.

Josh ran behind his uncle to pull out a chair, and Mason sat down. “Don’t feel like you have to do this every morning, guys. I’m fine. I really am.”

He wasn’t. His lungs still felt as if they’d been scrubbed on the inside with steel wool. And his arm still hurt like hell. It was healing, but he was pretty sure there were going to be lasting scars.

Jeremy brought a plateful of charred bread to the table. Mason helped himself to a couple of slices, and applied liberal amounts of syrup to help it go down. “Nice job, Jere. Thank you.”

Jere shrugged. “It was no big deal.” He stabbed a slice for himself.

Josh looked at the stack. “Is it s’posed to be so black?”

“It’s fine, Josh. Try it—you’ll see,” Mason told him.

“Ooookay.” Josh speared a slice with his fork, looked at it doubtfully, then dropped it on his plate. Before he did anything else, he broke off a corner of the crust with his fingers, and looked down at the floor. And then he sighed. “I forgot. Myrt’s not here.”

“You miss her already, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Mason nodded slowly. “Well, maybe it’s about time we talk about getting you a dog of your own, Josh. We have the room here, and you’re old enough to handle the responsibility now.”

Josh nodded slowly. “I guess. It won’t be the same, though. I want Myrtle.” He looked up. “You think Rachel will bring her over today?”

“I’ll call her and ask.”

Josh’s answering smile was as bright as the June sunshine.

June. Gosh, it was June, Mason realized. “Jeremy, about your graduation...”

“Don’t worry about it. Misty and I have it all planned.”

“You mean Rachel and Misty’s mom, don’t you?” Joshua asked him.

Jere made a face. “All of us. It’s gonna be at Rachel’s. We’re renting a party barge, and a big tent for shade.”

“Or in case it rains,” Josh said.

“Rachel ordered a cake, and Misty’s mom is taking care of decorations. And I’m making a playlist for the DJ.”

“There’s going to be a DJ?”

“Rache asked if I wanted a DJ or a band. I said DJ.” He wiggled his eyebrows and grinned. “Saves more money for the present.”

Oh, God, Mason thought. He needed to do something about a present. “What about the rest of the food?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Rache said something about catering. I don’t know.” Then his smile faded. “Don’t be mad at her, Uncle Mace. You were in the hospital, and graduation is only a week away.”

“Mad at her? I think I’ll buy her a present.” A week. Hell.

There was a knock at the door, and Mason started to get up, but Jeremy sent him a “don’t you dare” look that reminded him of himself, so he sat back down and let his all-grown-up nephew open the door.

“Hello. I’m looking for Detective Mason Brown.”

It was a woman’s voice, and not one he knew.

“He’s here. Come on in.”

Mason did get up then, as Jeremy opened the door wider to admit a blonde who was within a year, one way or the other, of thirty. She had rivers of hair, all wavy, flowing halfway down her back, pretty blue eyes and an infectious smile.

“I’m Mason Brown,” he said, offering a hand. “You are...?”

“Your new nurse, I hope,” she replied, taking his hand. She clasped it firmly, still smiling, smoothing her white and sunshine-yellow floral-print sundress with her other hand.

“I...” He drew out the syllable. “I haven’t even posted the ad yet. How did you know?”

“I have friends who work at Saint Joe’s,” she said. “I just left my job to move into a home care position in Binghamton. But it’s going to be a few weeks before I start.” She lowered her head, shook it slowly. “I misunderstood, thought I would be starting immediately. My own fault, but the gap leaves me in a little bit of a lurch. I have rent and a car payment and...well...” Her head came up again, and she replaced her bright smile. She was like little Mary Sunshine, he thought. “You don’t need to hear my woes. The thing is, when my friend told me about the hero cop who was being discharged and would be needing home care, I figured I could be the first one to apply for the job.”

“I was going to go through an agency.”

“This is my résumé, work history, et cetera,” she said, thrusting a folder at him “I’m really good at what I do, if that’s not too immodest a thing to say.” Then she blinked. “Maybe it was. It was, wasn’t it?”

“Not at all,” Mason said. He was getting a kick out of her, revising his estimate of her age back three or four years. She had a very young, bubbly personality. Twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven. “I just wasn’t expecting...” He shook himself, looked back at the boys, shrugged. “Why don’t you come in and have a seat? I’ll pour you some coffee and—”

“Oh, no!” She pressed a hand to her chest. “No, I can’t possibly stay. If I don’t find something soon, I’m doomed. Besides, I’m clearly interrupting your breakfast.” She waved at the boys and shrugged her shoulders. “Sorry, guys.”

“That’s okay,” Jeremy said, beaming.

She looked at Mason again. “Just take a look through my credentials and give me a call if you like what you see,” she said brightly.

“All right, I’ll do that. I just want to be clear with you, though, that I’m not going to need a lot.”

“Oh, I’ve worked with burn victims plenty of times. You need a daily dressing change. Twice daily, maybe. And a thorough listen to those lungs of yours. It’s as much the heat as the smoke that affects them, you know.”

“That’s what the doctor said.” He was impressed. “Okay, I’ll give your paperwork a look and let you know what I decide.”

“Thank you, Detective Brown.”

“You’re welcome, Miss...” He looked at her business card.

“Gretchen,” she said. “Gretchen Young.”

* * *

“Myrtle!” I said, using my “this is exciting, so listen up” tone of voice. She jumped up from her circular Memory Foam doggy bed, where she’d collapsed right after our morning walk, and cocked her head to one side, ears perked. “Wanna go for a ride? In the car?”

She said “snarf!” but I knew what she meant was, “Do you really need to ask? Do you not yet know that rides in the car are my freaking raison d’être?”

What? She’s a smart bulldog.

I grabbed her leopard-print goggles and matching silk scarf from the peg on the wall, along with my keys, and we went out the front door. We could’ve gone straight from the kitchen into the attached garage, but the steps were a bit steep for her. This was easier. I pointed at the garage and clicked one of the buttons on the key fob. The door rose slowly, and Myrt, recognizing the sound, danced around my feet, snuffing and snarfing. “Come on, then.” We walked together into the garage. She went directly to the passenger-side door and then stood as straight as a pointer, smiling a mile wide. Yes, dogs smile. Don’t question it. It’s fact.

I opened her door, and she did what she always does. Put one forepaw on the floor, just inside the door, to accurately gauge her position relative to the car. Then she placed it on the seat instead, put the other paw beside it and waited.

I, her devoted servant, scooped her backside up for her and helped her get situated. I put her special harness on her while she panted for joy. Then I closed her door and went around to get behind the wheel. It was a gorgeous morning. Not quite warm enough yet to put the top down—I was leaving early and hoping to beat the press to my destination—so I lowered her window. She loved the wind in her face. Sitting on her ass, like a little person, leaning back slightly against the seat, she didn’t need to put any weight on her front paws. They were up. Think kangaroo pose. And her round, pink Buddha belly was fully exposed for all to see. She had no shame.

We drove to the end of our narrow dirt road, which was edged by the giant lake-like Whitney Point Reservoir. Myrt couldn’t see the way the sunlight was dancing on the water’s surface like liquid gold, but I knew she could smell the water. She loved the water. Mainly because, now that it was summer, she’d discovered that froggies lived there, and she loved few things more than trying to catch froggies. Even hearing the word froggy sent her into paroxysms of pleasure.

At the end of the road we took a left, putting us onto Whitney Point’s main drag. We did not pull in at the McDonald’s, because Myrtle needed to watch her waistline, and we’d already had a healthy breakfast. (Chicken breast for her, oatmeal for me.) Instead, we kept going all the way to the other end of the village, hung a right, followed by a left onto the on-ramp, and sailed onto I-81 south with the wind blowing in my hair and flapping Myrtle’s jowls. We got looks, waves, smiles and a few beeps from at least half the cars we passed. A bulldog wearing leopard-print goggles and a scarf, sitting up in the seat of a classic Inspiration Yellow T-Bird, was an attention grabber.

My pleasure faded just a little when we passed the Castle Creek exit, just a few miles down. I couldn’t see Mason’s little farmhouse from the highway, but I knew it was there, almost within shouting distance, and my heart clenched a little. I missed him. And I missed his rug rats, too.

But he was not my morning’s mission. Peter Rouse, the man who’d damn near killed him, was. And he was down in Endwell, not far from where Amy lived.

Amy. I hadn’t told her I was going to be out when she arrived at the house for work this morning. Not that it mattered. She knew her job. She’d busy herself answering fan mail, updating my fan page and reading over the latest set of galley proofs until I returned.

How would I ever get by without her?

I wouldn’t, that was how. I’d curl up and die.

Before long we were pulling into Rouse the Louse’s driveway. It was still only 8:00 a.m. No reporters were camped out. Yet.

I put up the windows, left the AC on and took the extra key with me so I could lock the running car with Myrt inside, leaving her safe, secure, and nice and cool. Then I went up to the house. It was a cream-colored ranch, with a matching one-car garage beside it. The driveway was paved, like most of the houses nearby. He had brown shutters, a white front door and a two-step concrete stoop with a tiny roof over it, supported by black iron filigree posts. There was an attached mailbox with the digits 117 on it in fake gold. And a doorbell right next to that.

My finger moved toward the doorbell, then stopped there as another car pulled into the little driveway behind mine. A loud (in a good way, the owner had repeatedly assured me) boat-sized, black ’72 Monte Carlo that Mason called classic and I called old.

Folding my arms over my chest, I leaned against one of the filigree pillars and watched Mason defy his doctor’s orders on his first full day out of the hospital. He got out of the Beast, closed the door and looked at me like I was the one doing something wrong.

“Don’t give me that look, Detective. You’re the one who’s not allowed to work yet.”

“I’m not working,” he said, palms up as he walked toward me.

“No? What do you call it, then?”

“Visiting?”

“Right.”

“And you?” he asked. “What are you doing here, Rache? I thought I told you to stay away from this guy.”

“Maybe you should have asked me instead.” Not that it would have made a difference. “Besides, I’m an official police consultant.” I know it was lame. It was the best I could come up with on short notice.

“And they’ve hired you to work on the arson case?”

I lowered my eyes. “Not exactly.”

“Then what—exactly?”

He was right in front of me now, though, so when I lifted my head, there he was. Close enough to kiss. I was sorely tempted, too, but the door suddenly opened behind me, and I spun around like a guilty teenager at Make-Out Point, caught in a flashlight’s beam.

Peter Rouse stood there, pajama bottoms, white T-shirt, coffee mug in one hand, hair looking as though he’d combed it with an egg beater, bleary eyes. “No press. Come on, my kids are sleeping.”

Liar. Or so my NFP told me.

“We’re not press,” Mason said, flipping his badge at the guy.

Yeah, sure he wasn’t working. I’m pretty sure flashing your badge at a suspect is the definition of working. You know, for a cop.

Rouse the Louse met Mason’s eyes, and then recognition hit. He gaped a little, then said, “Shit. Yeah, I guess you would want to talk to me.” Then he looked up. “That’s it, right? Just talk. ’Cause like I said, my kids are in bed. So if you want anything else...”

My lie detector was blinking like a beacon.

“Like what?” Mason asked.

“He thinks you’re here to kick his ass. Or worse,” I clarified. “He’s not like that, Rouse.” I don’t know why I called him by his last name, but it’s just what came out. Frankly, I’m glad I didn’t slip and call him Louse. “I’m like that, but since he’s here to stay my angry hand, chances are you’re pretty safe.”

Rouse thinned his lips, nodded heavily, opened the door farther and stood aside. “Come on in. Just keep it down. The kids—”

“Are still in the hospital,” Mason said.

So that was what he’d been lying about. The kids weren’t even home. The Louse looked alarmed, but Mason just went on.

“They moved them over to Golisano yesterday before I was discharged. I checked on their condition just this morning. I’m glad to hear they’re doing better, by the way.”

Guiltily, the vermin sighed and lowered his head. “Thanks to you,” he said.

He moved aside to let us walk in, then pushed the door closed and didn’t say a word as we followed him through the living room with its beige carpet, tan sofa, and matching love seat and chair. Cheap coffee table that probably came from Walmart, and a modest 32-inch TV mounted to the wall. The dining room was stark. Dinette, chairs, a few photos of the kids on the walls. His wife must have stripped the place down when she left him. Didn’t seem like the act of a woman who thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell she was ever coming back.

He led the way into the kitchen, a cluttered little room that looked as if it got a lot of use.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“Sure.” That was Mason. I didn’t want to socialize; I wanted to kick the guy in the balls. But not until I was positive he was the one who’d set the fire that had hurt Mason. I had that much of a hold on my temper, and to tell you the truth, I was fucking impressed with myself. I sat down in a kitchen chair. The table was metal with red Formica. The chairs were the same metal, with red vinyl cushions and backs. Very retro. I liked it.

Mason stayed standing, but Rouse the Louse filled two more cups and sat at the table. “I wanted to come to visit you, Detective Brown, in the hospital, but between my lawyer and your colleagues...” He lowered his head, letting the gesture finish the sentence for him.

“What did you want to do that for?” Mason asked.

Rouse lifted his head slowly, met Mason’s eyes. I closed mine and tried to open my brain. To feel him. He said, “To thank you. You saved my kids’ lives. Damn near got yourself killed doing it, the way they’re telling it.” His gaze drifted to Mason’s arm as he said it. Some of the bandages showed from under his shirt sleeve.

Mason turned away. He wasn’t good at accepting praise. “I just wish I could’ve gotten your wife out, too.”

“So do I.” Rouse’s voice thickened on those words, and I shivered a little. I picked up heartbreak. Grief. Anger. Regret. Huge regret. Waves of it that made it hard for him to breathe. “I didn’t set that fire, Detective.”

Mason shot me a look. I felt it, but I couldn’t let myself be distracted just then. I sipped my coffee. Let them think what they would about my closed eyes. Did I fucking care what an asshole who’d probably killed his wife and tried to kill his own kids thought about me? What do you think?

“I read your statement.” Mason was scary when he was in cop mode. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he knew everything and could prove it already.

“I didn’t tell them everything in that statement,” Rouse said. “I didn’t want to make myself look more guilty. But then they found that hacksaw in my truck and arrested me. My lawyer’s telling me to keep quiet, but I can’t. I just can’t anymore. She’ll kill me, too, before she’s done. And the kids. God, the kids...”

“Who are you talking about?” My eyes popped open as I asked the question. His tone, his fear, completely pulled me out of my focus. But not before I got that his fear was genuine. That didn’t mean it was based on anything real. But it did mean that he believed what he was saying.

“I had an affair. That’s why Becky took the kids and moved into that freaking dump.”

I shot Mason a wide-eyed look. This was the first I was hearing about an affair, and from the look on his face, it was news to him, too.

Mason nodded, taking a notepad from a pocket. “So you had an affair. What does that have to do with the fire?”

“It was her—don’t you get it? I told her it was over, that I wanted my family back. The fire was her revenge.”

I felt my spinal fluid turning to ice.

“This woman have a name?” Mason asked.

“The one she gave me was Noelle Baker.”

“What do you mean, the one she gave you?”

“I don’t think it was real.”

“Why not, Peter?” Mason was so good at this, I thought. Using his first name. Being his pal.

“I’ve been trying to contact her ever since that night.” He shook his head. “Everything she told me was a lie. She said she had an apartment in Johnson City, on Bleeker. But I’ve been to every building on the street, and no one’s ever heard of her. She said she worked at Zales, you know the jewelry store at the mall?”

“Oakdale Mall?” Mason asked.

“Yeah. I called them, too. But no one there ever heard the name, either. And her cell’s no longer in service.”

My head was spinning as I tried to sort out what he was saying from the emotions he was emitting. It wasn’t easy. It was better when I could keep quiet, close my eyes and just feel, but I’d let myself get sucked into his story.

“Okay, so you had an affair with this woman. Noelle Baker. Your wife found out and—”

“She didn’t just find out, Noelle fucking told her. Called her at home and ruined my life with a single sentence.” He shook his head, his mouth pulling into a tight grimace, tears welling up and spilling over. “I’d tried to end it with her. I knew it was a mistake. I loved my wife. Noelle was furious. She said she’d make me pay. And that night she called Becky and told her about us.”

I wanted to say it wasn’t the other woman who’d destroyed his marriage but his own idiotic inability to keep his junk in his pants. But I didn’t because I could feel his suffering, and it was already plenty. I couldn’t make the guy feel worse than he already did, and I found I didn’t particularly want to.

Maybe I was going soft.

“She thought I’d come back to her once Becky left me,” he went on. “She came over here, pawing all over me. I told her there was no way in hell.” He closed his eyes. The lashes were wet. “She was like a crazy person. Screaming at me, tearing up the house.”

“So you think she started the fire out of vengeance?” I asked before Mason could get a word in.

“I don’t think it. I know it. No one else had any reason.” He looked from me to Mason and back again. “And then she put that hacksaw into my truck. It’s not mine. I never saw it before.”

“Do you have a hacksaw?” Mason asked.

“Yeah. It’s out in the garage. You want to see it?”

Mason nodded, and we headed out together.

4

“Did you notice what I noticed out in the garage?” Mason asked an hour later.

We were sitting at our favorite spot in the park, eating takeout we’d grabbed from the Spiedie and Rib Pit on Front Street and watching the Susquehanna River roll by. It was hot already, pushing up toward ninety, and I was glad I’d dressed in layers earlier because that meant I could remove them as needed. I was down to my tank top and sitting on the shady side of the picnic table because I hadn’t brought any sunblock.

Mason sat in the shade, too, but he kept his sunglasses on. He looked hot in those solid black shades.

“What did you notice?” I asked, once I reminded myself of the question.

“His tools. All the same brand. Snap-on. Expensive.”

I didn’t know Snap-on tools from strap-on tools, which is why I was just a classic-car buff and not a true motorhead. “So?”

“So guys are the same way with tools that they are with cars. They have their brands. That’s what they buy. You’ll never catch a Chevy guy driving a Ford.”

“You’re a Chevy guy. But you’ve driven my Ford.”

“Owning. I should’ve said owning, not driving.”

“So your point is?”

“The hacksaw we found in the back of Rouse’s truck was made by Craftsman.”

I blinked at him. “Do you know that you’re a fucking genius?”

He smiled. “Yes, I was aware of it, but thanks for recognizing it, too.”

I rolled my eyes at him and handed another bite of my lunch down to Myrtle, who was lying on the cool grass, in full shade, and panting anyway.

“What did you sense from Peter Rouse?” Mason asked.

I nodded slowly as I chewed, took a swig of Diet Coke to wash it down. “He’s a bundle of emotions, all of them intense, but I didn’t get the liar alarm going off, other than when he kept insisting the kids were there so you’d be less inclined to kick his ass.”

He nodded. “So you think he was telling the truth? About this...Noelle Baker?”

I reviewed my mental data. Inconclusive. “Maybe. But there was so much guilt coming out of him I can’t be sure. Seems like a stretch that his mistress would kill his wife just to have him all to herself, doesn’t it? I mean, he’s not the kind of guy who seems likely to inspire that kind of devotion.”

“Obsession. Not devotion. Very different things.”

“If you say so.”

“So we’re looking for a Caucasian female of about five foot two with curly brown hair and blue eyes.”

“Or a bottle of hair dye and a pair of tinted contacts,” I said. “We women...we’re like chameleons.” I sucked on my Diet Coke, even though it was all gone and I was just draining the ice cubes of their life’s blood.

“Is that so? Then how is it you never change?”

My brows arched up like hissing cats. I leaned back and set my empty cup down, eyeing him. “Is that a complaint?”

“No,” he denied too emphatically.

My jaw dropped. “It was. It was a complaint. You’re getting bored with me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Rachel. I am not getting bored with you.”

“I’ve only had my eyesight back for less than a year, you know. Jesus, I’ve only recently mastered the art of hair and makeup at all. If I go switching it up, I’m gonna have to start all over again.”

“Rachel, I’m not complaining.”

“Fuck you, Mason. Why don’t you go do something wildly different with your appearance, huh? You don’t hear me bitching that you never change it up.”

“Rache...”

“Don’t give me that warning tone you use on the boys, either.” I got up. “Come on, Myrtle. We’re going home.”

I was overreacting. I knew that while I was doing it, and I knew why, too. He’d told me about the new nurse who’d shown up at his door that morning, and that he’d gone ahead and hired her already without even asking what I thought. He’d called her on the way here, he said. Liked her initiative, he said. She was cheerful and sunny, and the boys thought she was great, too, he said.

It was my goddamn place to take care of him while he healed, and I was still stinging from him not wanting to move into my place to let me do that. I was starting to feel like this thing between us was getting a little shaky, and I knew it might be my own fault for not saying the L word back to him when he’d said it to me. And that pissed me off even more.

Of course, I wasn’t going to admit any of that to him. I tossed my soda cup into a nearby trash can, took my dog by her ludicrous leash (she didn’t need it, but it was the law) and stomped down the sidewalk toward my car.

Worst of all...he didn’t even try to stop me.

Well, shit.

He wanted a change, then I’d give him a change. I took Myrtle with me and headed out of town, going south, not north toward home, to the high-end salon where my sister liked to take me for mani-pedis.

They knew me there, though I didn’t frequent the place very often. I mean, you know, my hair is long and, aside from the odd trim, it doesn’t need much fussing. Still, they knew me, and I’d brought Myrtle along before. Never a problem.

So we sailed in through the front door, and everyone stopped what they were doing and looked our way. I swept the room, but wasn’t really looking at anyone. Instead I was using my inner radar to give each individual a brief read before I settled on the cute male stylist with the gel-stiff Mohawk and the to-die-for eyelashes, and said, “I need a change.”

“Oh, baby, you’ve come to the right place,” he said, and he patted his chair.

* * *

Mason didn’t know what to make of Rachel stomping off, so he let her go. Then he put in a call to Rosie, left a message on his voice mail and headed back to the house, along with a big container of spiedie chicken (aka chicken breast in bite-size pieces, marinated in Binghamton’s famous spiedie sauce) for the boys for lunch. He was a little bit pissed at Rachel. He’d wanted to talk to her about the boys and Josh missing Myrtle so much, and the puppy idea, and Jeremy’s impending graduation and...well, he’d just wanted to talk to her.

But she was in a snit, and he figured he’d done something, though he wasn’t sure what. He hoped to hell this wasn’t the beginning of the end. Hell, he’d better fix this. He didn’t want to lose her. But he was damned if he knew what to do because he wasn’t sure where he’d gone wrong.

Rosie called him back before he made it home. “Hey, partner. How’s the rest and relaxation goin’?”

Mason said, “Right. Listen, I talked to Peter Rouse this morning, and—”

“You did what?”

“You heard me, Rosie. Now listen, he says he was sleeping with a woman who went all Fatal Attraction on him when he tried to dump her. He says he thinks she’s the one who set the fire, then planted the hacksaw in his truck to frame him.”

“Mason, you’re supposed to be staying away from this case.”

“Will you quit changing the subject? The forensics report on the hacksaw said ‘incomplete’ when I read it before. Have they found anything else since?”

Rosie sighed. “I’m gonna call Rachel on your white ass.”

“Rachel’s pissed at my white ass right now, so it wouldn’t help. Now, will you tell me what Forensics says about the hacksaw?”

“Cantone will have my ass if—”

“Rosie, how long have we been partners?”

Silence stretched out, and then Rosie finally sighed into the phone. “A few metal fibers not inconsistent with the pipe that was cut at the crime scene, but you already knew that. There was also a human hair on the handle. No DNA. It broke off too far from the root, but it was long, curly and brunette. Rebecca Rouse was a redhead.”

“That fits. Rouse said the other woman was a brunette,” Mason said.

“That story sounds like something a guy caught red-handed would make up to cover his ass, Mace.”

“I know. I know it does. But listen, all the guy’s other tools are Snap-on, Rosie. The hacksaw was a Craftsman.”

“That’s not exactly proof of innocence, but...you’re sayin’ you believe him?”

Mason sighed. Rosie didn’t even change his own oil. He wouldn’t get it any more than Rachel had at first. But he had something his partner would understand. “Rachel thinks he was telling the truth.”

“She was with you, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“But she’s not there now?”

“Nope.”

“So what did you do to piss her off?”

“Damned if I know, bro.”

“You thank her?”

“For...?”

“Shit, Mason, you really have to ask? She came to that hospital every day. Brought her work with her. Took in your boys. You telling me you haven’t thanked her?”

“Well, of course I thanked her.”

“You buy her a present? Flowers? Anything?”

“Jeez, Rosie, I’ve only been home a day.”

“Gwen says you oughtta pin a medal on her. But flowers would be just as good. Or somethin’ sweet. Maybe take her out. She’s been workin’ hard for you and those boys, partner.”

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll try that.”

“Not today, though. Your first day home, you better damn well be getting some rest so you can get back to work. Just let her know it’s coming. You read me?”

“Loud and clear, partner. Loud and clear.”

* * *

I stared in the mirror at my brand-new bangs for a solid half hour. Myrtle kept bumping me in the calves with her head. She wanted her dinner. She wanted a walk. She wanted my attention. But instead of attending to her needs as I normally would, many and endless though they were, I was standing still, and she probably couldn’t fathom why.

She bumped me again, harder.

“All right, all right. Let me just—” I tweaked the bangs with my fingers, trying to decide if I loved them or hated them, and still couldn’t make up my mind. They changed my entire face, that was for sure.

Bump!

“Okay, Myrt.” I turned away from my apparently hypnotic reflection, bent low and rubbed her face with both hands. “I’m sorry I was ignoring you. You only just lost your best friend, and I should be showering you with affection, not primping in the mirror. If I were you, I’d bite me.”

But she was too busy closing her eyes tight and letting me rub her wrinkly face.

“Come on, dinnertime.”

She raced down the stairs at the word dinner, stopping at the bottom to turn and bark up at me in a high-pitched yip that was more suited to a toy poodle than an overweight bulldog.

I hurried to catch up and get her meal in front of her. Then I stood staring into the fridge the same way I’d been staring into the mirror. Myrt was wolfing her meal. But nothing looked good to me.

The phone rang. Sighing, I closed the fridge and picked up the call. “Yeah?”

“Well, that sounds morose,” Mason said. “Somebody kick your dog?”

“Had a fight with my guy,” I said. “It was mostly my fault.”

“Mostly?”

“Watch yourself, Detective.”

I felt his smile right through the phone lines. “Come over tonight. I have a surprise for the boys, and I want you and Myrt to be here when I spring it.”

I looked down at Myrt. She’d inhaled her food in about 2.3 seconds and was looking up at me as if asking “where’s the rest?”

“Okay,” I said. “Myrt’s missing the hell outta Josh.”

“He’s missing her right back. But I have a solution. See you in a little while, okay?”

He sounded excited. “Okay,” I said, and he hung up before I could ask any questions.

So what was I supposed to think? What solution had he come up with for the problem of Joshua and Myrtle missing each other? Had he decided to stay at my place after all? I decided it was fine with me either way. I was done being hurt by his saying no. And I was done being mad at him, too. He hadn’t meant to hurt me. When had the guy ever deliberately done something like that? Never. It wasn’t in him, and I knew it.

He was just male and, therefore, needed extra patience and understanding. Along with very clear instructions.

Shrugging, I said, “Myrt, you want to go see Josh?”

She spun around in a circle, then jumped at me, her front feet landing about knee high on my legs, claws digging right in.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” I grabbed my bag, my keys and Myrt’s goggles on the way to the door, while she danced, barking, beside me. I put her in her seat and buckled her harness, then got into my own, glanced up at the mirror and startled myself.

Oh, shit. I had bangs now. What was Mason going to make of that?

Wow, Rache. You’ve fallen a long way, girl. A long way.

I know, Inner Bitch. But it’s been a helluva ride.

* * *

“You’re here!”

I wasn’t ready for Mason to fling the door open and greet me as if he hadn’t seen me in a month. I was distracted by my dog, who was acting oddly. Sniffing the air and then growling a little.

He hugged me hard, and I hugged him back, and then he let me go and I said, “Something’s wrong with Myrt.”

And he said, “Wow!”

I realized he was staring at my new bangs. I automatically ruffled them with my fingers. “I decided I needed a change. I’m still not sure if I like it.”

“I like it,” he said. “I like it a lot.”

I punched him in the shoulder. “Kiss up, much?”

“I was not kissing up.” He stepped aside, and I walked in, Myrt beside me, sniffing all the way. The hair along her backbone was all bristly.

“Has someone new been here?” I asked. “She’s really tensing up.”

“She’ll be okay as soon as she sees Josh,” Mason said.

“Well, where the hell is the little runt? She’s been waiting for like ever.”

“I sent him out with Jere to pick up our pizza.”

I wondered if we ate way too much pizza, then decided that was ridiculous, because there was no such thing as too much pizza.

“They’ll be back any minute. Come on, I’ve got to show you first.” He headed into the living room, and I was on his heels. Myrt followed along, but slowly, cautiously, like she was expecting something to jump out of the shadows and attack her at any second. I couldn’t make heads or tails of her tonight.

Mason walked around behind the sofa, crouched down out of sight and then bounced upright again with the culprit in his hands. It was a tiny, wrinkly faced, pink-snouted, fat little puppy. A brown-and-white bulldog puppy, to be specific, and probably the cutest living creature I had ever set eyes on in my entire life.

Myrtle growled deep in her throat.

I hunkered down and hugged her. “It’s okay, Myrt. It’s a...it’s a puppy. It is a puppy, right? Not a piglet?”

“Of course it’s a puppy. I figured it was high time Josh had a dog of his own.”

Ouch. That really hurt.

“And he’s been missing Myrt so much, I thought a puppy would help him get over it.” He carried the little creature around the sofa, then knelt down and set it on the floor in front of Myrtle.

Myrt puffed out her great big bulldog chest and growled. She was shaking. I grabbed her around the neck and held her back. “Jeez, are you nuts? She’s gonna eat it!”

“She’s not gonna eat it. Go on, let her check him out.”

“Him?”

“The breeder said Myrtle would be more receptive to a male pup than a female.”

Made perfect sense to me, and I felt a little bit soothed that he’d at least considered Myrtle in this decision. “She’s going to kill him,” I said, but I let her go.

Myrtle leaned forward and put her nose directly on the little guy, sniffing him all over. The pup whined like he was being whipped. “Yeah, I’d be scared, too. Shit, Mason, what were you thinking?”

The pup started to back away. Myrtle plopped a paw on top of him, flattening him to the floor so she could continue her inspection. I quickly lifted said paw and checked to be sure the pup hadn’t popped open. He hadn’t. Myrtle growled at him, and I think she was saying, “You don’t fucking move until I tell you to fucking move. Runt.”

“I think it’ll make Josh happy to have a dog.”

“He already has a dog,” I said. “Jeez, where have you been, Mason? Myrtle has been more his dog than mine since she set eyes on the kid.”

“Well, yeah, but you know, I mean here. Where we live.”

Yeah. And just like the boys, Mason didn’t live with me. Nor, apparently, did he want to. He didn’t have to beat me over the head with it. I got it already. I sighed heavily but didn’t take my eyes off the dogs. Myrt finished her inspection of the pup, heaved a huge sigh and walked away, crossing the room to plop down on a blanket one of the boys had left on the floor.

The pup stood where he was, staring at her and shaking. Then we heard Mason’s winter rat, a Jeep, pull into the driveway out front. The boys were home. Mason scooped the puppy up again. “You really don’t like him?” he asked.

“Of course I like him. Fucking Attila the Hun would like him.”

“But—”

“No buts.” There were a lot of buts, in fact. I could have listed them. But I thought we’d move in together eventually. But I thought Myrtle would be our dog when we did. But doesn’t having one dog for each household sort of mean there have to continue to be two households? But this isn’t the solution I was expecting you to come up with.

I grabbed hold of myself and gave myself a shake. You know, inwardly. What the hell was wrong with me?

And then it dawned, slow and dramatic. The problem, I realized, was that I had, at some point during his recovery, become ready for more of a commitment in this relationship. Or maybe not during his recovery. Maybe it had been during those moments when he’d been inside that burning house and I’d been sure I would never see him alive again. I got it. I got why he’d finally blurted that he loved me after seeing me nearly get shot, thinking I had been shot for a horrifying moment. He’d been feeling then the way I was feeling now. And he’d told me so, said he loved me. But I hadn’t reciprocated. And now that I was ready to, he might have already moved on.

I mean, he’d bought his own damn dog. Wasn’t that a pretty big message?

The front door opened, and the boys surged inside carrying pizza boxes and containers of hot wings and bottles of soda in bags.

Josh dropped his burdens on the table, smiling ear to ear. “Hey, Rache! Did you bring Myrtle?”

Before I could answer, Myrt came trotting into the kitchen, right to her favorite human. Josh dropped onto all fours, and the two of them rolled around on the floor together.

Jeremy, watching them, smiled. “Hey, Rache,” he said. Then he blinked. “Wow, you look so much younger.”

I lifted my brows, though my bangs probably hid it. “You bucking for a really huge graduation present or what?”

He grinned. “Yes, but it’s still true.” Then he frowned. “What the heck...?”

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