Fighting the Flames (Southern Heat Book 2) Read online

  Great. That was a first for him. Not from encountering a beautiful woman. He just usually felt more sympathy than attraction to a victim of the arson cases he investigated. He frowned, his eyebrows furrowed. Or a suspect. At this point in time, neither had been definitively determined. Nevertheless, the fingers digging into his biceps and her body pressed up against his were distracting. Distracting enough that Liam had to remind himself why he’d come down to the basement. Ignoring his sudden, inexplicable desire, he tried to loosen her grip, tried to put some space between them. She would have none of it. Eyes filled with warm tears, she pressed herself closer.

  Logically, he understood the intense desire for human contact after a tragedy. A body pumped full of adrenaline and fear. Such a state of heightened anxiety made people do the strangest things at the strangest times. He had comforted numerous people affected by fire. He kept a small supply of teddy bears and dolls in his trunk to comfort children. Pulled out sweaters he occasionally purchased at thrift stores for people just like Meg, escaping from their homes in pajamas, sometimes naked.

  Never had he actually had a woman literally throw herself into his arms, seeking—no, demanding—another human’s touch. Too much had happened for Meg to process her fear, to tamp down her angst. Tears streamed down her soot-smudged cheeks as she looked up at him, the mixture of sobs and words jumbling, making it difficult to understand what she tried to tell him.

  “Meg.” With gentle effort, he disengaged her hands from around his torso. She felt good, smelled good, but now was so not the time for a semi. Not only was it highly inappropriate, but he wasn’t about to the tempted by someone who could very well be the target of his forthcoming investigation.

  “I . . . there’s . . .” Her voice shook as she spoke, one hand pressed over her mouth as she bent her head and rested her forehead against his chest.

  She continued to tremble in his arms, her body jerking with renewed fear. Fuck it. One moment wouldn’t hurt anything. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, shifting her head to his chest. She rested there, pressed against him. Could she hear his heart skipping with her touch? He shifted, trying to put a little distance between them before she definitely felt the further hardening of his cock. One hand around her shoulders, the other pressed gently against the back of her head, he patted her shoulder awkwardly.

  “It’s all right, Meg. It’s all right.”

  His calming gesture and low-pitched voice triggered a near instant change in her demeanor. He wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or chagrined when she stiffened in his arms and looked up at him, eyes wide. Was she horrified to realize that she had literally flung herself into his arms? She gestured with a shaking hand toward the closet.

  “Is . . . a body . . . is that a body?”

  Or it could be that.

  He frowned, peered into the jumble of black plastic garbage bags piled inside the closet. At first he couldn’t see what had alarmed her, but then, gently extracting himself from her grasp, he stepped closer, pulling a flashlight from the pocket of his cargo pants. He shined the circle of light into the far corner, narrowing his gaze and recognizing the object that had triggered her intense, visceral reaction.

  “It is.” A man’s leg by the look of it. He didn’t venture any closer but turned toward Meg. “Were these trash bags like this when you came in?” He didn’t even bother asking her, for the moment at least, what she had been thinking to sneak into the basement space in the first place. There was time for that later.

  “Most of it . . .,” she paused and swallowed before continuing in a shaky voice. “Most of it was like that. A couple of bags fell from the closet shelf. I lost my balance and fell onto the bags. Felt something hard underneath—”

  She turned abruptly and doubled, holding her stomach with one hand, clasping her hand over her mouth with the other. She gagged a couple of times but didn’t throw up. A perfectly natural reaction to finding a body. He turned away from the closet and reached for her arm, gently clasping her elbow.

  “Come on, Meg, I need to get you out of here.” To his surprise, she remained riveted to the spot, hesitating. Resisting. Why? “Meg. This is a crime scene. We have to leave.”

  She stood, the pulse in her neck throbbing, her eyes wide as she stared at the partial limb exposed in the closet. “Is it Tim?”

  “I don’t know and we can’t touch anything, at least more than it’s already been touched. Come with me.” She still refused to move, cemented to the spot. Frustrated, he tugged lightly on her elbow. She resisted for another second or two and then acquiesced. He moved her back toward the stairs. Why had she come down here, entered a still-smoldering structure? While this section of the basement didn’t show any fire damage, you never knew what was behind the walls. Charred studs, toxic chemicals in the air from insulation, carpet padding, and plastic. Electrical sparks, hot spots . . . the dangers were numerous.

  “You shouldn’t have gone into the house,” he grumbled as he guided her beside him through the doorway, down the short hallway and up the stairs outside. “You know better.”

  She jerked her arm angrily from his grasp but continued to follow him toward the curb. “No one was answering my questions about him,” she snapped. “I had to see if he was down there!”

  He glanced at her now-angry features, not surprised that her emotions varied from despondent to infuriated in an instant. He focused on her anger, and the fear still simmering beneath it. It was enough to tamp down his desire and get himself back under control. “You’re going to go to the hospital. Get your arm taken care of. You will not enter that house again until I’ve completed my investigation. Understood?”

  She turned on him, confusion joining the anger. “That’s my home! My shelter! I have to—”

  “Liam!”

  They both turned to find a man and a woman in street clothes approaching. The man wore an ill-fitted, cheap suit. Marty Hodges. The woman wore a pair of khaki slacks, pumps, and a neatly pressed linen blouse. Rebecca Petit. The pair worked for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, often called in on suspected arson cases. Marty always wore a cheap suit; the cheaper the better. Liam had asked him about it once, half joking because otherwise the guy was pretty put together. Always shaved, ever-present buzz cut, clothes always clean—most of the time. Marty had told him he opted for cheap suits because he was always getting blood or something else on them. Liam knew what he was talking about. He often went home smelling of kerosene, gasoline, or other accelerants. Drugs were the worst. He’d been on investigations to more than one meth lab and they stunk worse than anything—other than a burned body, of course.

  “Hey,” he nodded.

  The detectives looked at Meg before turning to him. He knew what they wanted to ask but they would wait. “Detectives Marty Hodges and Rebecca Petit, with the Georgia Bureau of Investigations,” he said, glancing down at Meg. He turned to the detectives. “This is Meg Devers. She owns the place.”

  “Did we see you coming from the basement?”

  Liam nodded stiffly. “You did.”

  “I had to go in and see if Tim was down there,” Meg interrupted, speaking to the detectives, giving her the once over as she stood in front of them in her pajama bottoms and T-shirt, holding her injured arm close to her body, the other cradling it.

  Detective Hodges lifted an eyebrow and glanced at Liam. “Tim?”

  “One of her tenants or boarders or whatever you call them,” he explained. “She runs a shelter. Most of the current residents are over there on the other side of the driveway. She was looking for an older gentleman named Tim Jefferson.” He paused. “There’s a body in the closet in the bedroom down in the basement.”

  The detectives took the news in stride, nodded, and then brushed past both of them.

  “Wait!” Meg called after them. “Can you tell me—”

  “Looks like you better get yourself to the hospital,” Detective Petit interrupted. “We’ll come and get your statement once we’re done here.”


  Meg frowned at the investigators as they approached the fire captain, then gestured toward the basement. She looked exhausted, the adrenaline leaving her body. The skin of her bare arms was mottled with goose bumps. Blood had seeped through the temporary bandage on her arm. Her shoulder-length brown hair was disheveled, her face incredibly pale, lips trembling. Pity for her took precedence over his irritation at her careless and potentially crime-scene-damaging behavior.

  “Come on, Meg,” he said softly. “Let them do their jobs. Let me do my job. Your job now is to go to the hospital, get yourself cared for.”

  The fight suddenly gone, she nodded. Before he could get her to the back of the ambulance, she was suddenly surrounded by a cluster of individuals in various states of dress. One brunette woman, mid twenties, in an oversized T-shirt, a blanket held loosely over her shoulders. Another one in a silky maroon nightgown that revealed every aspect of her curvaceous figure. A thin housecoat hung loosely from her shoulders. Two other young women, both wearing flannel lounge pants—one checkered, the other patterned with pink and white cat figures emblazoned up and down the legs. Both wore T-shirts as well. Every one of them in varying states of shock. One of the young women cried as she reached for Meg.

  Meg wrapped her arm around the young woman’s shoulder, soothing, telling her that everything would be all right. That they were safe and would be taken care of. The others hovered nearby. He watched as she transformed in an instant from victim to caretaker. One of the women looked over at him, a question on her face. It was obvious. They all wanted to seek comfort from the woman who offered them shelter, food, and a roof over their head, but they also noticed him hovering beside her. He blanked his face, trying to appear the least threatening he could. Still, the gold badge on his jacket’s breast pocket probably didn’t help.

  “You have to excuse us,” he said, after Meg had been passed around, each woman embracing her. “She needs to go to the hospital.” He wasn’t going to let her put off being checked out any longer. Already he got the feeling that Meg would put herself last in almost every scenario. Besides, he needed to get inside, begin his investigation. Not only did he have Meg delaying that inspection, but possibly the crime scene in the basement. He tugged her elbow gently again, moving her away from her friends . . . tenants or whatever they were called.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said, speaking over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’ll be taken care of!”

  Liam said nothing more as he handed Meg off to the EMTs. This time she didn’t argue or put up any struggles as they helped her into the back of the ambulance. The last glimpse he had was the EMT helping her lie down on the gurney. The doors slammed shut, the EMTs climbed into the cab, and the ambulance pulled away.

  Now he could get down to business.

  Before entering the house proper, Liam ventured back around the side where Meg had darted only minutes before. Belatedly pulling on a pair of rubber gloves that he pulled from his jacket pocket, he reentered the basement, making his way toward the doorway to the room with the corpse. Whoever lived there was a hoarder, or at the very least an avid collector. He had probably picked up potentially sellable items and junk to sell to supplement some kind of an income. He stopped at the open doorway.

  “Detectives, Liam Cohen. Can I enter?”

  “Come on in and join the party,” Hodges’ gravelly voice responded.

  Liam stepped into the room, this time noticing the empty liquor bottles on the dresser and the unmade twin-sized bed in one corner of the room. The sheets and blankets looked clean. The rest of the place was a disaster. He turned around to look into the closet. Hodges and Rebecca had pulled a number of plastic bags away from what was indeed a stiff corpse. He’d seen plenty of bodies before, but this one was a bit jarring.

  “Time of death?” He asked, grimacing as he noted the man’s bulging eyes and bluish-purple tongue. Protruding lips. A belt was still wrapped around his neck. Blood had trickled from the corner of the guy’s mouth and dried in a jagged streak down his jaw and around his neck. Had he bit his tongue or had his lungs hemorrhaged in their desperate quest for oxygen? One hand was wrapped around the guy’s penis.

  “Are you kidding me? Autoerotic asphyxiation?” he asked in disbelief.

  “At first glance, it appears so,” Rebecca nodded. “But look at his other hand. His fingers are broken. He couldn’t choke himself and jerk off at the same time. No, this was staged.”

  Who would be sick enough to do that? And to what purpose? “Is it Tim Jefferson?”

  “No idea,” Hodges grumbled. He shook his head as he stood to cast a glare around the room. “Bunch of bums. Dregs of society. Taking handouts and not even trying to get a job.”

  “Hodges, we don’t know—”

  “Looking for free handouts, food, shelter, and look at this place. It’s a pigsty!”

  Liam didn’t bother to argue with Hodges. He knew from past history that once the man was on a roll, nothing could stop him. He’d worked with Hodges on multiple cases, as well as Rebecca Petit. The GBI often responded to fires at business locations, and many of them ultimately turned out to be arson-related for insurance purposes. Based on what he had been told before rolling out, this old Victorian was a shelter for homeless people, battered women, or the temporarily down and out. While he didn’t agree with Hodges, who seemed to lump most homeless people as worthless, he did know that there were many who took advantage of people like Meg Devers.

  “And these liberal, bleeding hearts like the lady who owns this place. They’re not helping, they’re just making things worse!”

  “You know that’s not true, Marty,” Rebecca sighed, still crouched down near the body. She turned, her cell phone in her hand. “I just called the ME. He should be here in the next twenty minutes or so.” She stood, casting her emotionless gaze around the room. “Not sure if what happened here has any connection to the fire, but you can go about your business, Liam, as long as you don’t disturb anything down in the basement, at least until we clear this scene.”

  “Got it,” Liam said. He turned to Hodges. “I haven’t determined this an arson. Why are you guys responding instead of the local PD?”

  “We got a tip.”

  “That it was arson?” Liam asked.

  Hodges shook his head. “That the place was being used for illegal activities. We were on our way to interview the owner.”

  Liam frowned. “What kind of illegal activities?”

  Hodges shrugged. “I have no idea. No signs of drugs in here, but look at this fuckin’ place. It’s gonna take us hours to go through this crap.” He offered a put-upon sigh. “We’ll get the CSI techs down here to start looking.” He turned to his partner. “As soon as the ME gets here, we’ll head on over to the hospital, talk to this Meg Devers. Maybe we can find out what the hell is going on here.”

  He felt a wave of pity for Meg Devers. He had seen Hodges in action on more than one occasion. Liam didn’t particularly care for his brusque approach to investigations, but at least Rebecca Petit was sometimes able to soften Hodges’ sharp edges and aggressive investigative style. As he turned to leave the room and head outside, he recalled the memory of Meg frightened and trembling, her body against his. That moment of vulnerability stayed with him, triggered a renewed arousal as he remembered her soft skin pressed against him. Liam tamped the feelings down. No way was he going to be attracted to or in any way personally involved with a potential witness in one of his investigations. Or a suspect. It’d never happened before and he damned well wasn’t about to let it happen now. No matter what his dick had to say about it.

  5

  Meg

  Meg sat, undeniably nervous, in an interview room at the offices of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation about halfway between Monroe and Macklin. It would’ve been much more convenient for her to go to the Monroe Police Department, only a few blocks away from the small regional hospital, but no, the detectives had shown up at the ER as the last strip
of bandage had been wrapped around the gauze padding her stitched-up arm. The guy had asked the doctor whether she was ready to be released, and following his nod, gestured toward the waiting room.

  “We’ll be out there waiting,” Detective Hodges said abruptly. “As soon as you get your discharge papers, we’ll head on down for your statement, all right?” He didn’t wait for a response.

  They’d been in such a hurry to get her down here, but she’d been kept waiting in this room for at least a half an hour, maybe longer. It seemed like forever. She wanted to get back to her house, assess the damage. The image of the hairy leg in the closet down in the basement returned, front and center in her thoughts, giving rise to nausea. While she figured that it was likely the leg belonged to Tim, there was always a chance it didn’t. But if it didn’t belong to Tim, then who? If the body wasn’t his, where the hell was he and why was someone down in the basement that didn’t belong there?

  For the millionth time, she glanced around the stark room. Bare cinderblock walls painted a dusky buttermilk color. A kitchen-sized table was bolted to the floor in the middle of the room, a metal ring bolted down to the center of the table. That must be for people in handcuffs. She wasn’t wearing handcuffs, but she still wasn’t free to leave. Well, maybe she could. What would happen if she just got up and walked out the door? Probably nothing. She knew enough about due legal process to know that if she was a suspect she would have been read her rights. That hadn’t happened. They wanted to get her statement about the fire. They probably knew more than she did at this point.

  She sighed, leaned back in the uncomfortable chair, its padding long since worn away by the asses of dozens of “interviewees” before her. Hands folded in her lap, one foot jiggled with impatience. Where the hell were they? She glanced at the mirror on the wall to her right. Were they standing behind that mirror? Watching her? She stopped jiggling her foot and continued to stare at the mirror. She could only see half of her face and head from where she sat. She reached up and tried to finger-comb her hair into some semblance of order. Her eyes were red and puffy, more from the smoke than from her emotional state. Dark smudges were painted under her eyes. Pale features, her plucked eyebrows pulled down into a frown as she eyed her reflection and beyond to whomever was behind there watching her.