Fighting the Flames (Southern Heat Book 2) Read online

  Meg sighed and gathered her courage. No, not really courage, because it wasn’t like she was afraid. Not exactly. Hesitant. Dreading even the sound of his voice. The memories of her failures. Just the idea of an unpleasant conversation, or argument rather, left her feeling a bit shaky. She was already dealing with so much. An argument with Ray was the last thing she needed right now, but she had to get this issue regarding the life insurance policy clarified. If he had an insurance policy in her name, she wanted to know how he’d managed it, and make sure the asshole canceled it immediately.

  Her eyes watering from the acrid smell of burned wood, she returned to her room. The broken window let in fresh air. Thank goodness for small favors. She sat on the edge of the bed and glanced at the bedside table to see what time it was, but then remembered that the alarm clock wasn’t there. She’d pulled it from the wall only hours ago. It seemed like forever. The face display of her smart phone told her it was just about two o’clock. That would make it, what, around noon in California? She had no idea what he was doing, where he worked, but she dialed the number, took another deep breath, and then pressed the send button.

  The call went through and a phone on the other end began to ring. One, two, three . . . she wasn’t sure whether she felt more relieved than annoyed. Maybe he wasn’t home. Maybe the number belonged to someone else by now. After two more rings she dropped the phone from her ear, ready to disconnect. Then she heard a click. Lifted the phone back to her ear.

  “’lo,” a male voice responded, impatient.

  Her heart skipped a beat when she recognized Ray’s voice. It unnerved her a little that she could identify his voice by that one muttered syllable, the way he always answered the phone.

  “Ray?” She wasn’t sure why she hesitated or why she even said his name as a question. It was him.

  “That’s me, who’s this?”

  She heard a noise behind him. A whooshing sound. Driving? With the window down?

  “Ray, it’s Meg.”

  For a second he didn’t say anything. “What do you want, Meg?”

  “I’m doing fine, thank you,” she replied, piqued that even after a couple of years he couldn’t even manage a polite greeting. He had never forgiven her for filing for divorce. So what else was new? “I have to talk to you about something. It’s important.” The whooshing sound stopped. Had he rolled up his window or pulled off to the side of the road? She doubted it. Ray and safe driving practices didn’t always necessarily go together.

  “I’ve got about five minutes,” he said. “Got an appointment.”

  Curiosity made her want to ask him questions. Why did he need an appointment? Medical or business? Where was he? What had he been doing the past couple of years? Small talk, the kind that friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time would ask of one another. She heard the sound of another voice, female, close.

  “Who’s that?” She couldn’t help it.

  “None of your business, Meg.”

  She heard the sound of muffled voices. He had covered the mouthpiece to talk to someone. Silence on the other end.

  “Meg, what do you want?”

  Okay, straight to the point. “Are there any active life insurance policies on me?” she blurted. Obviously not a question he expected her to ask. Again, silence.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just answer the question, Ray. I know that we each used to have small life insurance policies on each other but—”

  “When we got divorced we canceled them, remember? From State Farm or Farmers or something.”

  “Yes, I thought so, too. But I’ve recently discovered that you took out another policy on me. And this one’s a whopper. Do you mind explaining that?”

  Again silence. Finally a response. “What the hell are you talking about? What insurance policy?”

  Now she was getting angry. Did he think she was still as naïve as she had been when they were married? That she would believe everything he had to say without question? “A whole life insurance policy, Ray. With double indemnity. For three hundred thousand?”

  He snorted a laugh. “You’re fuckin’ crazy.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, Meg, I don’t have time for this. I don’t know where you came up with such a cockamamie idea, but you’ve fuckin’ gone off your rocker.”

  She knew it had been awhile and there was little love lost between them. But for him to talk to her like that? She wanted to throw it right back at him, something she had never done while they were married. “No, Ray, I haven’t gone off my fuckin’ rocker. I have proof. A life insurance policy on me, from New York Life Insurance Company for three hundred grand, double indemnity.” Her temper rose with each passing second, compounded by the strain of the events of the morning. “And I’ve got your signature on the policy. I’m telling you right now that if this policy isn’t canceled within twenty-four hours, I’m going to report you for insurance fraud. You got that, Ray?”

  By the time she finished speaking she was practically shouting. How dare he! Again, silence. She thought he had hung up before she heard him blustering right back at her.

  “Now you listen to me, Meg. I’m telling you that I didn’t take out any life insurance policy on you after we got divorced—”

  “And what about before? Did you sneak that one in there before we signed the papers?”

  “No!”

  Again she heard the sound of a female voice. His new girlfriend? A new wife? She told herself she didn’t care. She could have him.

  “I don’t know what this is all about, Meg, but I’m telling you that I didn’t take out any life insurance policies on you, not from New York Life, not for three hundred grand, not for shit. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m telling you—”

  “I saw a copy of the policy, Ray.” Hodges hadn’t exactly shown the policy to her but Ray didn’t know that. “It’s got your signature on it.”

  “It can’t, because I didn’t take one out. You think I’m stupid enough to risk insurance fraud?”

  Funny, as she was being accused of doing just that. “Then how would you explain the policy? It has your information on it. Mine. Birth dates, address—”

  “I don’t know how—wait a minute.” He paused again, taking a deep breath before he spoke again. “A while back, maybe a year ago or so, my wallet got stolen. Out of my truck. I canceled everything, got a new driver’s license, but maybe that’s what happened. Identity theft or something.”

  It sounded lame. It was lame. “Why would an identity thief take out an insurance policy on me using your identity?”

  “How the hell should I know? I’m hanging up now, Meg. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me again.”

  The call disconnected. She fumed in frustration for several moments, pacing back and forth on the floor, resisting the urge to throw her phone at the nearest wall. Damn him! She trembled wildly, so infuriated by not only his attitude, but his . . . she wasn’t even sure what it was. All she knew was that he had made her life miserable. Then, to thank her for all the sacrifices she had made for him, he’d had an affair. Probably more than one. All those late nights. She’d been so stupid, so gullible. Coming home smelling of perfume. His excuse? A waitress had leaned over him. Yeah, right.

  One night, after a drinking binge, he’d actually had the audacity to ask her to come pick him up in front of a strip club. A strip club! His excuse that time? One of his friends dragged him there and then left with some bimbo, leaving him stranded without a ride.

  She took a deep breath. Talking to Ray had been nothing more than a mistake. She would have to call the life insurance company. See if she could find out more information. Maybe the detectives—no, she wouldn’t ask Hodges or Petit for any help sorting through this mess. Let them figure out who had deposited fifty grand into her account. It certainly wasn’t her. Evidence would prove that, wouldn’t it?

  Wouldn’t it?

  12

  Liam
/>   Liam quietly entered Promise House, focused on wrapping up the last details of his investigation. He felt bad about what happened to Meg Devers. No, this was more than that. Of course he was sympathetic to those who had lost their homes or their businesses, but never before had he experienced the emotion on more than a superficial level. In this job, you had to keep emotions under control, locked down. He couldn’t allow the emotions of the victims to sway his opinion or his judgment when it came to determining the cause of a fire.

  And yet with Meg, he’d believed her innocence from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. Now he was dead sure. While his logic argued that she was just as likely to be guilty as anyone else, his dick was telling him otherwise. Why? And that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? Might as well admit it to himself. It was more than her sexual allure. He didn’t believe in a bunch of spiritual connections or the law of attraction or anything like that. In fact, he didn’t believe in much of anything, especially after his last breakup. But he did believe in sexual chemistry, and he and Meg seemed to have that in spades.

  He softly closed the door behind him, thinking to just go through the house one more time, double-checking his paperwork, making sure he hadn’t missed anything. The house was quiet, as if holding its breath. Recovering from the damage, like a living, breathing thing. He shook his head, making a noise of disgust in his throat. What the hell had gotten into him?

  He ventured through the downstairs, his shoes making no sound on the area rug in the living area, nor the sitting room. He double-checked windowsills, along the baseboards, electrical outlets, watching for any wires or wiring he might’ve missed from his first pass through the house. He finished in the front two rooms and glanced down the hall toward the kitchen and the dining room, thinking he would save them for last. So far, the kitchen and the attic displayed the worst damage. He headed up the stairs, stepping slowly as he hovered closer to the wall than to the banister, eyeing every step, riser, and banister railing. Whoever had dumped the gasoline had been haphazard at best. Had the arsonist carried a five-gallon jug of gasoline? Underestimated its weight and the difficulty of trying to tip a steady stream of gasoline from point A to point B?

  As he walked slowly upward he imagined the arsonist in his head. Pausing here. Splash. Turning toward the wall, jerking the can upward, another splash of liquid soaking into the paint and plaster beneath, its trickles running down toward the stairway connection joints. Moving steadily upward but realizing how cumbersome a heavy gas can could be. Deciding to wait until he reached the landing to splash more.

  He slowly made his way through the second floor, once again checking every bedroom, but he didn’t find anything he’d missed on his earlier rounds of the house. At the far end of the second floor, he heard a noise. A creaking of floorboards above him. He paused, waited, but everything was silent. The house must just be settling. It was an old house, after all. But then he heard another sound, a shuffling noise from upstairs. And then he heard something else, a noise he couldn’t immediately identify.

  Someone was in the house. Perhaps to finish the job he or she had failed to do the first time. He didn’t smell any fresh accelerant and he had seen no signs of another more recent attempt to burn the house down, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t be up there in the attic, drenching the floorboards with gasoline. It wouldn’t take much for a fire to eat through those hundred-year-old plus floorboards and weaken the structure, causing it to burn and fall inward.

  He paused at the door that stood in front of a narrow stairway leading up to the attic. There were no sounds of heavy footsteps, or liquid splashing. He carefully entered the narrow, angled, fully enclosed stairway, again staying close to the walls to avoid creaking steps as he made his way upward. As he topped the stairs, he slowed down. There was no one up there, not even any shadows. Now he recognized the sound he couldn’t identify earlier. Someone was crying. Shit. It had to be Meg, sitting in her room. He hesitated, torn between going to her and quickly heading back downstairs. He didn’t want a repeat of what happened earlier. She didn’t need that after the night and morning she’d had.

  He hadn’t expected her to be done at the GBI so quickly. Did that mean the polygraph test had gone well or badly? He sighed. Her crying gave him a good indication. Liam topped the landing and stepped across the short space before being confronted with the wall that separated the attic space. He knocked on the half open door, eliciting a startled yelp from the other side. “Meg, it’s me, Liam.”

  The crying stopped, followed by a short sniffle. He gently pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped into the room. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, each fist tightly grasping the mattress beneath her, fingertips digging into the now dingy, soot- smudged sheet beneath her. Her head was down, her knees pressed together, shoulders hunched, a classic self-protection position. She didn’t look up at him. He quickly glanced through the room. Of course he’d seen it earlier, but this time he looked at it through her eyes. She’d made quite a cozy space for herself, small but serviceable. A carpet remnant covered most of the floor in the room. A twin bed was shoved into one corner, a small bedside table and lamp beside it. On the wall closest to him sat a three-drawer dresser topped with a couple of nice picture frames; one holding a photograph of an older couple. Her parents, maybe. Another of Meg laughing, a golden Labrador retriever on a leash beside her.

  Broken glass littered the floor, a white sheet crumpled in a heap on the floor below the broken window, tangled with the remnants of the window sash. Everything was as it had been earlier this morning when he had come for the first time to assess the damage. It smelled heavily of gasoline, smoke, and soot up here.

  “You okay?” He asked the words softly, hesitantly. He shouldn’t care. Really, he shouldn’t. But he did. She said nothing but the sniffling had stopped. “I didn’t know you were home,” he continued. “I just came to give the place one last look through, make sure I didn’t miss anything for my final report.”

  She still didn’t look up at him, but she shifted her position slightly, her hands in her lap now, the finger of one hand idly scratching at the fabric of her jeans.

  “How’d it go at the GBI?” She finally looked up. Liam held back a wince when he saw her tear-stained cheeks, her reddened eyes, her nose also red from crying. She unconsciously lifted her arm and swiped at her face with the sleeve of her flannel shirt.

  “Not good, at least according to Detective Hodges,” she mumbled.

  He took a chance and stepped toward the bed and then sat down next to her. “What did he say?”

  She looked down, her eyes sweeping over the broken glass lying at her feet. “He said I barely passed.”

  Now that was unexpected. Liam wasn’t naïve, not by any vivid stretch of the imagination, but he wasn’t wrong here. He knew it, and he trusted his gut. He’d seen her reactions following the fire. She cared deeply for this place. Financial strain could make people do crazy things, but you couldn’t fake the deep grief he’d felt from Meg. She’d been distraught.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He meant it. He was sorry she’d had to go through any of the last day at all. “Those polygraphs . . . sometimes they prove inconclusive.” He was probably doing an incredibly shit job at making her feel better. He knew Hodges. Once he set his mind on something, he was like a dog with a bone, growling and snapping at anyone who tried to take it away. “Meg, let them complete their investigation.” His next words surprised even himself. He’d never let himself get personally involved in a case before. “I know you didn’t set fire to this place. I know you didn’t kill that guy down in the basement.”

  She glanced at him with a laugh. “You don’t even know me, Liam. Besides, what makes you so sure I didn’t? The detectives seem to think I’m guilty, why don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure,” he replied honestly, then grinned. “Maybe it’s your girl-next-door looks. Maybe it’s the fact that you’re up here crying.” His expression sobered. “Ma
ybe it’s the fear and panic I saw in your eyes this morning when I first saw you.”

  Her face crumpled. He told himself not to do it, but he did anyway. Reached for her, he wrapped her in his embrace. That was all it took. Within seconds, she was crying again, her tears seeping underneath the fabric of his shirt, the fingers of one hand clutching at his other shoulder. Her breasts pressed close against him again. Just the memory of what they’d done in the kitchen a few hours earlier sent a surge of desire through him. He tamped it down. No repeat performance. Absolutely not. He sat quietly, allowing her to cry herself out. Eventually she calmed down and gently pushed herself away from him, a half smile on her face.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to—”

  “It’s all right,” he said, smiling at her. “It’s been a long time since a beautiful woman cried her heart out on my shoulder.”

  She half laughed, again swiping at her cheeks and her nose with the sleeve of her flannel shirt. The gesture was charming, and insanely hot at the same time.

  “I shouldn’t be up here in my room, crying like this. What I should be doing is getting downstairs and cleaning up the kitchen, assessing the damage.” She looked up at him. “Will they work? The appliances? Is my electricity still on? I haven’t even checked.”

  He shrugged. “The oven and stove don’t work. Damaged beyond repair, I’m afraid. But the refrigerator does. The outlets near the floor in the corner of the kitchen still work. A few of the outlets up here need to be replaced, but the wiring in most of the house is still okay.”