Crash and Burn (Wildfire Hearts Book 1)

by Savannah Kade

  Whoever had broken into her house had left no trace of a break in, even though she was certain she’d locked the doors. The police had assumed she was mistaken. Now Maggie was more confident that Aunt Abbie likely hadn’t reclaimed all the keys. It had been stupid of her to move in here without remedying that immediately. Once again she’d been trusting and look what she’d gotten.

  “Sebastian, I need to get the locks changed as soon as possible.”

  The dawning expression in his eyes indicated he’d put together the same problem she had.

  He picked up his phone and was talking to someone in just a few seconds about getting her locks changed out. While he lifted that weight off her shoulders her thoughts tumbled randomly.

  Was Merrit Geller the Blue River Killer? Or was he the La Vista Rapist? Or was he just a random boarder Abbie liked?

  When a knock came at the front door, Maggie turned to look at Sebastian, but he was still on the phone. Craning her neck to see out the front window, she realized whoever was at the door was close enough she couldn't see them.

  But in her driveway sat a police car.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Sebastian trailed Maggie to the front door. He, too, had seen the police car but not the officer.

  It didn't surprise him though that Maggie opened the door and Marina Balero stood there. It did surprise him that she was alone.

  “Officer Balero,” Maggie said, and Sebastian could hear the question in her voice.

  “Marina, please,” she corrected, looking between the two of them, and offering Sebastian a “Hello … This is a bit of a personal visit.”

  Marina looked wary as though the two of them might turn her in for showing up on Maggie's doorstep.

  But Maggie was generous with her wide smile and open gesture. Despite the wild kiss, Maggie didn’t seem to have any issues with the officer being his ex. That shouldn’t make him like Maggie even more than he did, but it did.

  “Come in,” Maggie led them all into the living room.

  The arched passage into the dining room revealed the laptops set up on the table. If Marina had looked in the front window, it would have been obvious what the two of them were doing. Instead, the officer, still in her uniform, sat on the couch. Her hands twisted in front of her.

  Definitely not an official visit, Sebastian thought. “What's going on, Marina?”

  She took a breath and opened her mouth as if to speak. But she looked between the two of them to gauge the situation first. She must have found it acceptable, because she said, “There have been updates and I don't think the Feds or the department has been sharing them with you two …?”

  Sebastian turned to look at Maggie and found her looking back at him, one eyebrow up, confirming Marina’s suspicions. “We haven't gotten anything.”

  “That's what I was afraid of.”

  “What's going on?” Maggie asked.

  “The FBI has been hard at work. So that's really good news,” Marina said it as though she needed to couch what she was going to say next. “They've been going back and re-interviewing victims. Re-examining the crime scenes and cross-checking dates. Everything is getting reopened now that the two cases are intertwined.”

  “What have they decided about that?”

  “Everything and nothing. I wish I had something substantial, but I don’t. The jewelry you gave them seems to say that the two are working together—”

  “So they've confirmed there are two separate perpetrators?” Sebastian interrupted.

  “That's the working theory. But, no, it’s not fully confirmed.” Marina answered.

  It was the same conclusion he and Maggie had come to. So it didn't surprise him, but Maggie had more questions.

  “What about DNA and evidence, wouldn’t that indicate that it was two separate people? I mean, if they found the same evidence at the scene, they would have linked the two before this …”

  “Right, but if the two of them are working together, they may be primary or secondary on certain things. So yes, there are two people involved, but we don’t fully know that the crimes are as separated as we originally thought. In fact, the discovery of the trophy hoard is clearly evidence that it’s not.”

  Though they were both nodding along, Sebastian hated that it meant they still didn’t have enough information.

  Marina kept talking. “And when they look at the patterns and the dates, the overlaps in time now provide new information.”

  Sebastian looked to Maggie again and found her frowning at him, but Marina plowed ahead.

  “The big concern is whether one or the other lived here at the boardinghouse for any extended period of time. The other possibility as that they were both in contact with a third person who was keeping the jewelry for them.”

  Now Marina turned to Maggie, her expression pleading. “I hate to tell you this, but they're going to be investigating your aunt.”

  “I figured as much,” Maggie said. Though her tone was resigned, Sebastian saw that Marina looked relieved. “I mean, these things were found in her home. And she was the one who accepted or rejected the borders. Innocent or not, she was involved.”

  Though Maggie's voice was steady, Sebastian could hear the pain underneath. It was hard to lose your childhood heroes, or even to think that they might have made a mistake. Something told him there was even more at stake for Maggie though …

  “There are also some updates on the silver sedan,” Marina told them. “I don't think anyone gave you those either.”

  “What updates?” Sebastian was curious now, not just confirming Marina’s suspicions. The officers should have been watching the house, much the way he and Maggie were. But he’d been the only one chasing the car that had peeled out. And, if the officers had managed to tail the guy, why did he keep coming back?

  “So the thing about the silver sedan,” Marina told them, “is that we don't know that it's this perpetrator’s car. Even if it is, we don't know if it's the same car they've had for years. However, there was a silver sedan mentioned in recent witness interviews in the case of the La Vista Rapist.”

  Sebastian turned to look at Maggie, stunned and furious. Were the officers leaving the La Vista Rapist sitting outside Maggie’s door? He tried to ask a calm reasonable question. “Did they have it narrowed down to make or model or anything else?”

  Marina shook her head. “Just ‘silver sedan,’ and it’s only been associated with recent cases. So we're probably looking for someone who purchased a silver sedan between two and four years ago.”

  Sebastian was trying to figure out how they’d come up with that time.

  It was Maggie who explained. “There was a two-year gap in the cases. They wondered if he'd moved away or quit.” Then she looked back to Marina. “I'm assuming they're looking into reasons why he might not have attacked in the intervening years.”

  “Yes, and also why victims might not have come forward. It's entirely possible he was fully operational and no one reported it.”

  Sebastian nodded, he did understand that one. He was sympathetic to both sides.

  “In the meantime, I thought you should be alerted to what we now know, so that you can stay safe.” Marina pulled out her phone. “They have these suspects.”

  But first, she glared at the two of them, making sure she had their attention. “You can't do anything or hunt anyone down, because they're just suspects right now. The police haven't released this information and they didn’t decide to give it to you. I did. If you do anything, it will blow back on all of us.”

  She glared again, then softened. “But given what you’ve seen and heard, I'm concerned that they might be coming back for their trophies—” the word came out on a choke, “I want you to stay safe.”

  She motioned with the phone, finally holding up the photo on the small screen. “Have you seen this man?”

  Sebastian gave it a thorough look before turning to Maggie. She shook her head first, then Sebastian did, too. That neither of them h
ad seen the suspect was concerning.

  He added, “I can't be sure. I wasn't looking for him, and I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for.”

  Marina nodded and lowered the phone. Sebastian thought she was putting it away, but instead she flipped to a second picture and held the phone up with another face he didn't recognize. Again, he shook his head. Maggie did the same. But the third photo she held up was Merrit Geller.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Maggie laid in bed staring at the ceiling. She was exhausted.

  The information from Marina had been overwhelming.

  It had been shocking to see the face of Merrit Geller on Marina’s phone, but also comforting. They were on the right track.

  When Maggie had excitedly shared what she'd already learned, they'd found out that another of the photos produced a name that had been in Aunt Abbie’s rental records as well.

  As the FBI had taken the records, Marina had not been privy to that information, but the three of them managed to put it together. As excited as they were, Marina was disappointed in the FBI. “They really need to be sharing this with you!”

  Though Maggie and Sebastian had agreed, it didn't change anything.

  Taking a deep breath, Maggie stared at the old plaster of the ceiling. It had been painted in 3D swirls with some odd brush. And she should have been falling asleep, but her brain turned next to Sebastian.

  The locks he’d ordered arrived almost as soon as Marina left. But it had been growing dark. So, while she owned new locks and doorknobs, she figured they wouldn’t get installed until the next day.

  Sebastian, however, insisted that she not go another night with doors that a killer might have a key to.

  Maggie’s brain rolled over. Probably. The killer only probably had the key to her home. But that was too much.

  They had been only partway through the first installation—which, of course, had taken longer than expected—when Kalan called Sebastian. Though the other firefighter had originally been inviting Sebastian out for drinks, the invite was quickly turned the other way and within twenty minutes Kalan and two other A-shift guys were on Maggie’s doorstep and ready to help.

  Kalan had been shocked. “How many doors does this place have?”

  Maggie would have laughed if it hadn't been going dark and she hadn't been learning how to install new locks on the fly. “Four external doors!”

  “Whoa,” Kalan had been shocked. “Obviously front and back …”

  He pointed from where he stood to where Luke Hernandez and Ronan Kelly were installing the one on the back door. The front and back doors were almost perfectly aligned at either end of the hallway running almost through the center of the house.

  “But there's also one from the laundry room,” Maggie told him. It discreetly let people out onto the back porch. “And there's a side door. I think one of the downstairs rooms was intended to be a den or an office and it opens to the side of the porch.”

  The front porch wrapped partly around the side of the house, and the back porch spanned the entire width of the place. Though they didn't meet up in a full circle, she still had a stunning quantity of inside and outside access.

  “What is this part, Kalan?” Ronan called out from the back door.

  “Why are you asking me?” the big man almost hollered it back, but his voice carried easily.

  “Because, we figured you’ve been installing these things since you were three!” Luke almost cackled and they all laughed at a joke Maggie didn’t get.

  Kalan rolled his eyes. “While I have been installing locks since I was seven, it wasn’t full doorknobs like this.”

  Maggie couldn’t help asking. It was too much mystery to leave alone, and she couldn’t stand to be on the outside of a joke. “Why do they think you should do this? And why were you installing locks at age seven?”

  “I had two younger sisters and a single mother in grad school … in Chicago. I got really handy at a really young age.”

  She could feel her eyebrows climbing. That was not the answer she’d expected. She’d just assumed he was from around here. So she asked what she hoped was a good question. “What was she in grad school for?”

  “Her MBA.” The pride in his voice said everything and Maggie smiled back at him.

  As they wrapped up the installations on the first two doors, Maggie put her hand to her head and swore. “I have five external doors. I forgot about the upstairs balcony door!”

  Her aunt’s office had a balcony that opened over the porch in the back. She didn’t use it much … or ever. So she’d forgotten. But it did provide access into the house and it was keyed to the old locks.

  The five of them began talking over each other, trying to decide what to do. Sebastian hadn’t even bought a new lock for that door, because she’d forgotten it. She was apologizing and the men were debating.

  “No one should be able to get up there, right?” Ronan asked her.

  “They’d have to climb the posts to do it, yes. But if anyone did, the lock would be easily opened with the old key,” she told him.

  “If your prowler used to live here, he might know about the door and even an easy way up to it,” Luke pointed out.

  Even now, lying in bed with five new locks, it scared her to think that someone else knew other ways into her home …

  They didn’t want to leave it. So Ronan had run to the store to get another kit and it made another hour of work. So she’d bought everyone pizza.

  Sebastian had asked for a substitute for his shift the next day. Maggie had told him not to—she had new locks after all—but she’d still been grateful when he refused.

  He was here. Across the hall.

  Was he finally someone she could count on?

  Rex hadn’t betrayed her like Ryan and Celeste had. He hadn’t ruined her memories like her father insisting that a little betrayal didn’t really hurt a marriage. Aunt Abbie had remained a shining beacon in Maggie’s memory when everything else had fallen apart. Maybe that was why moving to Redemption and moving into Abbie’s home had seemed so appealing at the time. But even here, Rex had used her. She didn’t have real friends, not yet. But would she ever fit in?

  Aside from the man across the hallway, she was alone, and it was a stunningly sobering thought.

  Though she pushed that awful thought away, her mind turned to the chaste kiss goodnight in the hall. She’d been shy again, not knowing what he expected or what might make their budding relationship blow up in her face.

  Though the touch of his mouth to hers had rocked her world again, they'd gone through separate doors. At the time, Maggie had stupidly believed she would fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  Now, she'd been staring at the ceiling and the temptation to cross the hallway and see if Sebastian was awake was getting stronger. But there was no way to sneak through this house, so she stayed put. Besides, Sebastian had been tired, she didn’t want to wake him.

  Would she be going to him because she wanted him? Or would it just be so she wasn’t so alone?

  Maggie wanted to believe she was better than that, but her whole world had blown apart by her own inability to see others for who they really were. And now she was here, and it had been several months and nothing was really fixed.

  She didn't know how much longer she lay there, wide awake and trying to ignore the sad and awful thoughts in her brain before she heard the door open across the hallway.

  It was clearly Sebastian. She listened intently as his footsteps wandered down the front steps. And after that she lost track of where he went. Possibly the kitchen, maybe getting a glass of milk or something.

  She waited for him to come back and it didn’t take long before she heard him padding softly through the living room.

  It wasn’t a conscious decision, but when he hit the bottom of the stairs, she was waiting at the top.

  Chapter Forty

  She watched as Sebastian paused at the bottom of the steps. His gaze slowly
lifted and even in the dim light she could see the heat there.

  Then again, she was wearing yet another stupid nightshirt—this one had Bugs Bunny on it—and maybe he could see up it from where he stood. She’d worn it specifically to keep herself from crossing the hallway and seducing him. Surely, she couldn’t tempt a man in a Loony Toons nightshirt? But the look in his eyes said she could.

  Slowly, he began climbing the stairs. He was wearing only plaid pajama pants and everything she’d wanted to see and touch before was on display. Well, not everything. The steps squeaked, protesting as he put weight on them, and the sound itself was suddenly sexy.

  When he finally stood one step below her, and almost on eye level, she swallowed. Was she really going to do this?

  Yes. She was.

  Sebastian was the man she’d wanted for some time. He was flesh and blood standing in front of her, wanting her. The blaze in his eyes left no doubt of that.

  She might be wrong, and they might fizzle and burn out, or he might rip her heart out of her ribcage, but it had been so long since she’d found a man who got better the more she got to know him. So long since someone could set her on fire just by looking at her. And she’d never felt this bone deep connection—this rightness—with anyone.

  Sebastian didn’t move. It took a moment to realize that he wasn’t going to. No matter what he wanted, he wasn’t going to push her, and damn if that didn’t make her heat up even more.

  Leaning forward, she kissed him. Softly at first, she nibbled at the edges of his mouth. Slowly placed her hands onto his warm biceps and held him there. She traced his jaw with little flicks of her tongue and felt his shoulders move as he groaned softly.

  “You’re killing me, Maggie.”

  “Why?” She whispered the word against his lips, then followed one carved cheekbone to his temple

  “Because I want you … so much. But—” He sighed again as she reached his ear and gently closed her teeth over the lobe.