She frowned. “If you tell me that you’re married—”
He laughed. “Are you kidding? My mother would have skinned me alive if I had a wife and brought a date to her house.”
“Okay, well, tell me this evening. After work,” she said, a slight frown shadowing her beautiful face.
“Can’t. I have to work tonight, too,” he said.
“Then come by when you get done, even if it’s the middle of the night,” she said. “Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than my curse, right?”
Her attempt at a smile faded when he didn’t return it. She squared her shoulders. “Okay,” she repeated. “We’ll figure this out.”
They finished cleaning up in silence, and then they both headed for the door and their respective days. He’d just stepped out onto the porch when she stopped.
“I forgot my keys,” she said. “You go ahead, and I’ll see you later.”
Sean hesitated, but he did want to check up on his mom before he went to work. He pulled Brynn close and kissed her again, taking his time about it, right there on her porch.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he promised. “Good luck with the oil emergency.”
She smiled. “Thanks. All in a day’s work at Scruffy’s.”
Sean sauntered down the steps and headed for his car. It wasn’t until he’d traveled halfway to his mother’s house that he realized he was whistling. They’d figure it out. She’d be okay with his secret.
He refused to let things turn out any other way.
TWELVE
Brynn rushed to her bedroom to get her keys, but before she could make it back to the front door, it started to swing open, and sheer, effervescent joy bubbled inside her. He hadn’t been able to leave without another kiss, maybe.
“Back so soon,” she teased, but the large man who entered her house wasn’t Sean.
She stumbled back a step, but she wasn’t really worried, not yet, even though he was entering her house uninvited, because he looked familiar to her for some reason.
“Can I help you?”
The man raised a closed fist to just in front of his mouth, opened his hand, and blew. A shower of fine gray dust shot forward into Brynn’s face before she could duck or dodge away.
“What—” she managed, but the rest of the sentence died away as the poison entered her system. The room spun, and her vision funneled down to black, except for sparks of light from the matches her attacker was lighting.
Matches? But why—?
Her last thought before unconsciousness claimed her: Sean.
THIRTEEN
Sean heard the alarm when he was still halfway down the block from the station, and he started sprinting. The arsonist had taken a few days off, but even though Sean and the rest of his crew hoped the scumbag had fallen off a cliff or, more fitting, set himself on fire and was now out of commission, nobody was relaxing. This could be him again, and—worse—he could be escalating. People could die.
Please let it be a normal, boring backyard grill out of control.
“House fire,” Sue told him, when he started gearing up. “We don’t know if it’s him or not.”
“Where is it?”
She rattled off the address and Sean dropped his helmet, whirled around, and grabbed her. “What did you say?”
She blinked and glanced quite deliberately at his hands on her shoulders. He immediately released her.
“I’m sorry, Sue, but I need to hear that address again right now,” he demanded. Terror sliced into him with a scalpel’s edge, and rage wasn’t far behind.