by AC Arthur
“Our profile puts him at sixty-five, the same age your parents were, and he’s in relatively good shape. He’d have to be to carry the cannister of gasoline and whatever protective gear he’s wearing,” Pierce said.
Roark frowned. “Protective gear?”
“Yeah, because he wants to stay and watch them die,” Cade said. “MPD has issued its official finding of homicide along with the Fire Brigade’s report regarding your mom, Roark. Boot prints were found in the bedroom and the hallways leading down the stairs and out of the house. The prints showed remnants of gasoline and soot, meaning he stood there for a while watching and waiting for her to die. That’s why he paralyzes them first, so they can see it’s him who’s killing them.”
“Oh my—” Tamika slapped her hand over her mouth and turned away from Pierce.
Roark, even though he was feeling a little shaky after Cade’s words himself, went to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, and Roark nodded for Pierce to continue.
“We need to speak to your mother, Tamika. Find out what happened to their group and who could be the one doing this.”
She shook her head but didn’t turn back to face Pierce as he spoke. “You said it was a man, so you can scratch one name off the list from the group.”
“We think it might either be someone who was part of the group or who knew the group while they were in school. But we’re definitely looking at it being someone they all knew very well,” Pierce said.
“Are you sure about this?” Roark asked. “There’s another possibility. Her ex has motive to go after her parents.”
Tamika tensed at his words, but Roark didn’t move his arm from around her shoulders, and so far she hadn’t pushed him away. He’d take that as a good sign.
Pierce didn’t look pleased at this new information. “Is that true?”
She turned around and moved out of Roark’s hold at the same time. “Colin Hopkins. He burned some of my clothes and other stuff in front of my building after I broke up with him.”
“Two weeks before her father was killed,” Roark added. He didn’t know if he wanted it to be Colin so Tamika could get some closure or so Cade would catch him and toss his ass in jail, where he’d be far away from Tamika.
“We did profile this as revenge attacks. The personal connection of the victims led us to that conclusion. It could still work for Colin,” Pierce was saying.
“Except it doesn’t fit for Aunt Max,” Cade said.
Roark had known that was coming. He hadn’t wanted to admit it out loud, but deep down inside, he’d known. “You’re sure these fires are the same?” he asked Cade as if his cousin were standing in that room with them.
“The doctor is doing the tox screen on my mother and Tuppence today. She said she had no need to check for drugs before, because she thought they were both just burn victims, but she’s going to call me with the results.” Tamika didn’t sound hopeful that they weren’t going to come back with the same drug that had been in his mother’s system.
“Ms. Gregory couldn’t have been drugged if she was trying to get your mother out of the house.” Roark tried not to ignore the obvious this time.
“She wasn’t supposed to be there,” Pierce said. “That and the fact that your mother is still alive is probably eating the unsub—that’s what we call the suspect—alive. He’ll be enraged now, and his timeline to kill the others on his revenge list will either move quickly or he’ll circle back to your mother again.”
“I don’t know why this is happening,” Tamika said. “Why kill my father and then come for my mother a year later? Or even come for Roark’s mother a year later? What’s he been doing all this time?”
“We’re tracking the movements of each of the other three names in that group to figure that out,” Cade said. “We just wanted to give you two an update and a warning.”
Roark was already shaking his head. “We’re not the targets. If this is revenge like you said, whatever happened was long before we were born.”
“But you’re here now and because the two of you knew something was off with these fires from the start, you’re in his way,” Pierce said.
“And being in the way of a killer is not a place you want to be, Roark. So I’m gonna tell you now to get some protection around the two of you and be careful.” When Roark began to say something, Cade continued. “Don’t argue with me on this, man. I know what I’m doing here, and I’ve seen these situations take horrible turns. I’m not trying to come back to London to bury you too. Now, either you’re calling Trent to ask him about security, or I’m doing it.”
Roark didn’t like ultimatums and he particularly didn’t like receiving them when he was in a room with people who weren’t his family. His jaw clenched with anger but he waited a beat, measuring his words carefully. “I know how to take care of myself.”
“And I do too,” Tamika chimed in.
Now, Roark felt like an ass because he hadn’t meant his words to reflect that he didn’t give a damn about what happened to her.
Pierce looked as if he were growing impatient with both of them. “We’re still operating outside the lines here, Cade. If we’re going to continue to track this guy and try to stop him, we’re gonna have to pull in local law enforcement.”
“My father was killed in America. Doesn’t that make this guy an international murderer? So that would be over the heads of those two detectives who were here yesterday, correct? Because they were idiots.” Tamika’s voice sounded even steadier now, and if Roark was hearing correctly, it was tinged with a little bit of anger.
“I’ll make some calls and let you know what our next steps are, Pierce,” Cade said. “And you, Roark—”
“I already said I know what to do,” he interrupted. “It’ll be taken care of. Just do your part and find this bastard.”
Seconds later, Cade was off the phone and Pierce was staring pointedly at Roark. “You need somebody here at the house and with you both personally when you go out. It might not be a bad idea to have someone at the hospital too. Pennington and Gibbons are probably already watching you two, but like she said, they’re idiots.”
“Got it,” Roark told him with a curt nod.
“I’ll be in touch as soon as we find something else. In the meantime, you should stop poking around the cottage.” Pierce directed those words to Tamika. “We don’t know who this guy is yet, so that means we don’t have eyes on him. But he may very definitely have eyes on you.”
“I’m not going to run and hide from some coward who uses fire to fix whatever petty argument that took place all those years ago,” she snapped.
“You don’t know that it was a petty argument—to him, it obviously means more. So much more he’s ready to kill. You’re an arson investigator, so you know about how deadly fires can be. You should also know how personal they are to the people who set them. How that personal connection can dement their mind until they believe whatever evil they’ve concocted in order to keep setting the fires. I’ll tell you again, stay away from the cottage.” Pierce added a very cold glare to his somber words.
Roark took a step until he was standing close to Tamika again. While he figured there was some truth to Pierce’s words, he didn’t like how harshly they’d been directed to her. “Don’t worry, we’re both going to be careful from this point on.” He didn’t touch her again, but he made sure Pierce got his message by giving the agent a very pointed stare.
Again, Pierce didn’t seem ruffled or intimidated by Roark, but he did give up on dispensing anymore warnings. “I’ll be in touch,” he said before walking out of the room, leaving Roark and Tamika to stand alone in silence for a few minutes more.
“Let’s go for a ride,” Roark suggested after the quiet had grown to an irritating point.
Tamika made a huffing sound. “Didn’t you just tell him we were both going to be careful? You think going out into the big bad world for a ride is smart?”
Roark turned to face her. “I
think I’m a grown man, and I’ll decide when and where I go. Right now, I need some air, and I’m guessing you do too. I’ll get Vaughn to follow us. Is that okay with you?” He’d changed his directive to a question at the last minute and watched as she picked up on that change and offered him a half smile.
“That’s fine with me,” she said.
Chapter 13
“Do you believe what Cade and Pierce said?”
They were in the car, driving on a particularly curvy road that seemed to cut straight through the hills and valleys.
“I don’t want to talk about that right now.” And he didn’t. Roark’s mind was so full of fire and death that he could barely think of anything else.
Of course, it could be said that now wasn’t the time to be thinking about other things, but Roark desperately needed to. The beginning of a headache was pressing against his temples, and his fingers were sore from clenching and unclenching them repeatedly. He tried rolling his neck, but that did nothing to relieve the mounting stress.
“Okay,” she said, exaggerating the word as she looked out the window. “Why’d you come here, Roark? I know you didn’t pack your bags, leave your office and set up house in the country just because I wanted to meet you.”
If she were trying to change the subject, this question wasn’t the way to do it, but Roark took a second before deciding how to answer her. “I came because I missed my mother.” That was the simplistic truth. So why did it sound like it was a cop-out? “Getting the call from the security company that the fire alarm at the house was going off was something I’d never expected, and I was afraid from the moment I hung up the phone until the seconds when the firefighters told me I couldn’t go inside that she wasn’t alive.”
He gripped the steering wheel, and Tamika reached a hand over the console to rest it on his knee. Roark glanced down at that hand for a moment and then returned his gaze to the road.
“Everything after that is such a blur, but it felt like razor-sharp pain at the time. I needed that pain to stop.” Did that make him weak? Did it mean he wasn’t the leader or the man his parents had always expected him to be? Roark had no idea, just as he didn’t know why he was giving Tamika these answers.
“After my father died, all I could focus on was investigating that fire. I ignored my cases at work or I did the bare minimum on them just so it looked like I was at least touching them every day. But I couldn’t think of anything except finding out what happened to him,” she said.
“Different approaches to grieving,” he replied. “That’s what my Aunt Birdie told my sister when Suri asked why Aunt Birdie wasn’t crying at the funeral home.”
“Tuppence mentioned the grief process to me too. The night before the fire, she said I was in denial. But I don’t think that’s true. I can accept that my father is gone. I just can’t accept how or why.”
“Because a killer wanted him dead.” Roark knew his words sounded cold and distant, and to ease them just a bit, he made a left turn, pulled the car off the road and switched off the engine. Behind them, Vaughn did the same.
Roark got out of the car and went around to the passenger side just as she stepped out. When he took her hand, he wondered if she’d pull away from him. Never before had Roark thought about a woman turning away from him the way he did with her. Perhaps that was because he didn’t approach women nearly as much as his brother did, but whenever he had, the attention had been reciprocated. Up to this point, Tamika hadn’t given him any indication that she wasn’t receptive to his attention, yet that hesitation on his part was still there.
“Let’s walk.” He started toward the left, away from the parked cars.
They walked quietly, both of them enjoying the scene of lush green grass and the misty fog that hovered just inches above the ground, giving the area a haunted and intriguing appeal.
“I don’t get this in the city,” he said, breaking the silence. “The noise and business. Parties and endless meetings. That’s my life there.”
“Those are all the things that make you Roark Donovan. Did you know you were in the top three of the Millionaire Man Match?”
He frowned. “What in the world is that?”
“It’s this matchmaking list composed of millionaires. I found it online when I researched you. There was this great picture of you in a black suit, white shirt and black tie, but your tie was loose, so it gave you a little bit of a bad-boy mogul look. I’ll admit, when I first saw it, I imagined you with that shirt unbuttoned and showing your bare chest.”
She made a growling sound when she finished, and Roark couldn’t help but laugh.
“You should do that more often.”
“What? Be entertained by a woman I just met?”
With her free hand, she pushed her hair back behind her ear. “No. Laugh. I mean, I guess I’m glad I’m entertaining you. Your laugh is so honest but it always seems like you’re as shocked by it as whoever is around you. That tells me you don’t laugh enough. Why is that?”
She was way too intuitive where he was concerned, but he didn’t mind as much as he probably he should have. “I thought I laughed enough.” Laughing actually hadn’t crossed his mind at all. “I guess I’m mostly relaxed enough to laugh when I’m around my family. And I tend to be in the office more than at home with them, so that probably says a lot.”
They were walking at an easy pace; the air was warm, but not humid. What Roark noticed most about where they were was the quiet. It was so peaceful here, and that was exactly what he’d been searching for.
“You have a huge family.” She sounded almost amazed. “I saw so many names online and the businesses they’re connected to. The Donovans don’t half-ass in any industry, do they?”
“There are a lot of Donovans around the world, but not as many here in the UK. My mother hated that we weren’t brought up in close proximity with the rest of our cousins.”
“But you’re still close to them, right? I mean, you and Cade sounded close on the phone earlier.”
“I’m closer to Cade than the others from the US because Cade’s been to the UK more. He comes when he’s on special international cases. Like Pierce does, I guess. I’ve seen him more as an adult. My cousin Linc just moved here two years ago, so I’ve gotten closer to him and his family. He has two beautiful twin girls, and his wife Jade is pregnant again.”
“Do you want children?”
Roark stopped walking. “Why would you ask me that? Do you want children?”
Her eyes widened and he presumed she was as shocked as he’d been by her question. She pulled her hand from his. This time she put both hands on her hips, an action that spread her jacket open wider and drew his attention to how tight the white material of her shirt was stretched over her breasts. “Relax, I’m not about to tell you I’m pregnant.” There was a hint of laughter to her voice, but the look of irritation was clear on her face. “You’re so uptight about everything. We used a condom last night, remember? I just noticed the way your voice became lighter when you mentioned Linc’s kids. It sounded like someday you might want kids of your own. That’s the only reason I asked.”
He huffed and shook his head. “See, this is why I needed to come to the country. I can’t even answer simple questions.”
“You could if you weren’t so worried about giving the wrong answer.”
“I never give the wrong answer,” he immediately replied.
“Then you’re afraid of what the right answer is.”
“I—” He was about to deny her comment but decided against it. Instead he started to walk again. “My mother wanted grandchildren. Katrina and I didn’t stay together long enough to give her any.”
She fell into step beside him. “My mom wants a house full of grandchildren. At least she did before my dad died. Every year for my birthday since I was twenty-five she gives me a pregnancy test as a way of nudging me toward that goal.”
Roark chuckled. “Not too subtle, huh.”
“Not at all. And if an
ybody ever buys my storage unit, they’ll be in possession of a box full of pregnancy tests.”
They both laughed.
“I’d like to have children one day.” The admission had Roark breathing a little easier, and he wondered why he just hadn’t given that response before.
“Me too.” Her reply came quickly, like there wasn’t really anything for her to contemplate.
He stopped again, this time taking both her hands and holding them in his. “I like you, Tamika.” Since he was being honest, he figured he should get that out of the way.
She looked up at him, giving the wide grin he was becoming accustomed to. “I like you, Roark.” She shrugged and eased a hand away from his to brush hair out of her face when a cool breeze blew. “I think we showed how much we like each other last night.”
And here it was, that awkwardness that came with the “morning after” that he always tried to avoid. Sure, it was nearing two in the afternoon, but this was actually the first chance they’d had alone. “I thought last night was really good.” So good, he’d considered a repeat performance most of the morning.
She took a step closer to him, using her free hand to cup his cheek. “It was. But you know it was only sex. ‘Relationships that start under intense circumstances, they never last’.” When he only stared at her, she laughed. “That’s what Sandra Bullock said to Keanu Reeves in Speed. You did watch Speed, didn’t you, Roark?”
He shook his head but still managed to grin. “I don’t have a lot of time to watch movies. But you’re right, neither of us are in a position to start anything serious. You’ll be returning to the States when this is all over, and I have my work in London.”
“Right, that’s what I said.” She held tight to his hand and they started walking back toward the car. “We can get Dorianne to cook us something spectacular for dinner, and then we’ll watch some movies. You came here to relax, and even though there’s a psychopath arsonist on the loose, we’re gonna take tonight to do just that.”
Roark enjoyed the sound of optimism in her voice and the spark of energy in every step she took. He found himself chuckling again. “I take it you plan to pick the movies we’re going to watch.” It was more of a statement than a question, because Tamika definitely had a take-charge attitude.