“More medicine?” He knelt down on the floor next to the couch.
“No.”
His hand slid up my thigh. “A book?”
I shook my head again, afraid my voice would crack. Just one look, just one touch, and he could make me melt.
“Well, what is it you want?”
“You.”
“Well,” he said, carefully setting my crutches aside and pulling me onto the floor with him, “I do think I promised to take good care of you.”
The thick area rug was soft under my back as he tucked me beneath him. “Yes, yes you did.”
His hand skimmed over my hip and dipped under the edge of my tank top. “How’s your foot doing?” he asked.
“What foot?”
His fingers splayed across my ribcage, the tips barely touching the undersides of my breasts. “Let me help you with your shirt.” In a flash, my shirt was off.
“Let me help with yours,” I said, tugging his over his head.
I barely noticed the scar near his collarbone as my hands roamed over his chest.
This was the best distraction ever.
“And your shorts,” he said, carefully sliding them down my legs and maneuvering them over my boot. He took his sweet time in kissing his way back up my legs, my stomach, my breasts. Finally, he reached my face and the desire in his eyes almost did me in.
“You’re the best helper ever,” I said.
He smiled, flashing his dimples. “You haven’t seen anything yet, Ms. Valentine.”
Chapter Seventeen
Enraptured, I watched the hand covered in a blue latex glove twist the cap off a generic water bottle and toss its contents in random arcs over the walls, across the counters, cabinets. He splashed the dining room cushions, the curtains.
Except it wasn’t water. The sharp sting of gasoline filled my nostrils.
My heart thrummed as I watched the scene unfold. The hand set the bottle on the kitchen counter and pulled a wallet to him. He was precise with his movement, going straight for a driver’s license.
With a red Sharpie, he drew concentric circles over a face.
My face.
Adrenaline coursed through my veins as the man turned the license over. On the back of it, he wrote five words.
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
As he slid the license into a crack in the raised panel of a cabinet, I realized I was watching it all through his eyes.
A shudder rippled through me.
After picking up the water bottle, he turned and looked downward, and I started when I spotted the body of a man on the floor. Face down. Unmoving.
The man stepped over him and turned back one more time.
Next thing I knew, he pulled out a matchbox. His hand didn’t shake as he carefully removed a match, turned the box on its side, and placed the red match head against the strike strip.
With a quick swipe, a flame erupted. The man held it in front of his eyes for a moment, then he flicked it into the kitchen.
Flames burst from the floor. Licked across the floorboards and headed straight for the man on the ground.
My eyes flew open, and I bolted upright in bed, gasping for air. I clung to the sheets on the bed, trying to work through what I’d just seen.
It hadn’t felt like a nightmare.
It had felt real. Very real.
Especially since I recognized the kitchen.
Sean sat up and placed his warm hand on my back. “Lucy?”
I tossed off the covers. “We have to go.”
“Where?”
As soon as I put my feet on the floor, I crumpled in pain. I’d forgotten about my foot. Reaching down, I pulled my boot toward me.
The phone started ringing.
Sean rose out of bed, moonlight spilling across his naked body. He took a second to slip on a pair of pajama bottoms and ran for the phone in the kitchen.
I glanced at the clock. Two thirty-three.
My heart raced, and as I finished fussing with the Velcro straps of the boot, I noticed Ebbie watching me carefully. She sat on the bed, next to my pillow.
I squinted in the darkness—there was something on my pillow. Sean’s voice floated in, loud and clear in the silence of the night. “Who’s calling?” he asked. “Hold on.”
Turning on the bedside lamp, I groaned when I saw what Ebbie had done. The remnants of a chewed-up matchstick were spread like shrapnel across my pillowcase. It was the matchstick Sean had brought home.
Looking at Ebbie, I said, “You didn’t.”
She blinked innocently at me.
Suddenly, all I could think about were shards of wood in her digestive tract. I bent over her and opened her mouth. I couldn’t see any sores, but I knew I’d have to have her looked at. The sooner the better. If a splinter pierced her stomach or esophagus or intestines... It would be bad.
But first...the dream.
The nightmare.
“Lucy,” Sean said from the doorway, his hand covering the mouth of the portable phone. “It’s Jeremy Cross.”
I didn’t have time for Jeremy right now. Had he somehow received a psychic message that Ebbie had eaten three-quarters of a matchstick?
I held my hand out for the phone, but kept the mouthpiece covered. To Sean, I said, “Use your cell and call 911, okay? Tell them there’s a fire at Sam’s house. And to hurry.”
Sean blanched. “How do you know?”
Tears filled my eyes. “I don’t know for sure. But I had this dream...and it didn’t feel like a dream.”
“Lucy, I can’t call with a hunch. A false report can get you arrested.”
I stood up. “Call. Do it now. Please. There’s a man in house. I think...he’s dead. Do it. Please. Trust me.”
He gave one quick nod and went to search for his phone. I took a deep breath and took my hand off the receiver. “Jeremy? I don’t have t—”
“Damn it, Lucy Valentine, curse you and the day Orlinda brought me into your life. I should have known better. Now I’m dragged into this mess you’re involved in...”
I reeled with the acid in his voice. “What mess?”
“The fires. The murder. Take your damn pick. I’ve called the fire department already with the address. I don’t know whose house it is, but I know you’re involved. I saw your driver’s license.”
I sat back down on the bed. Ebbie nudged my elbow with her nose. “You saw? The water bottle? The drapes? My wallet? The man on the floor? I was hoping it was a dream.”
There was silence on the line for a moment. “It wasn’t.”
And he hung up on me.
Sean came back into the room, his face pale. With a cracking voice, he said, “The fire’s already been reported. Trucks are at the scene.”
I grabbed my crutches and a sweatshirt. “Let’s go.”
Sean reached for my arm and stopped me. “Who was the man, Lucy? The dead man?”
His pulse throbbed in his neck.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Quietly, as if he’d used every last bit of strength in his body, he whispered, “Sam?”
I closed my eyes, and concentrated on the vision. I forced myself to recall the image of the man on the floor. I cupped Sean’s jaw. “No, not Sam,” I whispered.
The man I’d seen had been too short, his hair too dark and too long to have been Sam.
Lowering his head, Sean let out a breath. He released my arm and finally looked up. “Let me grab a shirt and we’ll go. We can stop by Raphael’s on the way.”
“Grab Ebbie, too. I’ll have Marisol meet us at Sam’s.”
“Ebbie? Why?”
“She ate your evidence.”
***
“At least you provided eye candy,” Marisol Valerius said, fanning her face.
Marisol and I sat on a curb across the street from Sam’s house. Firefighters crisscrossed in front of us as they went back and forth from their trucks to the scene.
She checked out every male firefighter that passed by. “It almost makes
it worth being called out of bed in the middle of the night.”
“Thanks for coming over,” I said, watching as crews continued to spray the house. Sean and Sam were together somewhere, talking to the police.
There was quite a bit of damage to the house, but it could have been worse. So much worse. Jeremy’s call might have saved a man’s life. The man I’d seen on the floor. He was severely burned, but he was alive. Barely, though. The EMTs didn’t think he’d make it through the morning.
No one knew who he was, but the EMTs said the hospital might be able to get some fingerprints.
Might. The burns had been so bad...
“Of course,” she said, peering into Ebbie’s carrier. “She’s a sweet girl, aren’t you?”
Ebbie blinked.
Marisol stood and smoothed her hand down her shorts, brushing off pebbles and grass. “I should go. I’ll take her to the clinic and run some tests. Wood doesn’t show up on x-rays, though, so we might have to keep her for observation for a little bit. Most likely, she’ll be fine.”
“I know she’s in good hands with you.”
“You’ll call her owner?” Marisol asked. Her shoulder-length black hair was pulled back in a tiny ponytail, and even though I’d dragged her out of bed at three in the morning, she still looked stunning.
I’d given her the Cliffs Notes version of how I’d come to care for Ebbie. “I’ll try, but he’s kind of off the grid, and kind of a jackass who doesn’t deserve her.”
But...he had saved a man’s life. He didn’t have to get involved when he had that vision. Yet he did...
“I hear a story there.”
“A long one.”
“Dinner this week?” she asked. “Maybe a girl’s night in?”
“Sounds good.” With the way my week was going, I’d need a night of pure silliness.
“I’ll call you with what I find out about this little one.”
“Thank you.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek. “And I’ll take care of all her bills.”
Marisol smiled. “I have your credit card on file.”
“Not that it’s going to do you any good. I had to cancel it today after my wallet was stolen.”
An ache in my stomach worsened. How had my wallet ended up here? What did the purse-snatcher have to do with the arsonist?
What did I have to do with the arsonist?
Why had he drawn a bullseye on my face?
Concern filled her dark eyes. “As much as I love a firefighter—and I do, almost as much as Matt Damon, and you know that’s saying something—what’s going on here, Lucy?”
I balanced on my crutches.
“I don’t know, Marisol. That’s the terrifying part.”
She glanced at the house, then back at me, a million questions in her eyes. But she only said, “Call me if you need me. And please be careful.”
“I will,” I said.
A moment later, she and Ebbie were gone, threading through the crowd of onlookers.
I sat back down on the curb and watched as small groups of firefighters went in and out of the house. Even though it was still hot and humid, I felt a chill. I zipped my sweatshirt up to my neck and wished I had put on a pair of yoga pants before I left the house.
Over the next hour, the crowd dispersed and Sean finally came back to me. Reeking of acrid smoke, he sat down next to me. “Is Ebbie going to be okay?”
“Marisol thinks so.”
“Good,” he said, distracted.
His gaze followed the movement of the firefighters, and I knew he missed being one of them.
“How’s Sam?” I asked.
“About as good as can be expected.”
I imagined his family inside the house when the arsonist broke in, and it made me shiver. Thank God they hadn’t been home.
“Where is he?” I looked around but didn’t see him.
“Cutting through the neighbor’s yards. Raphael’s picking him up two blocks down.”
I had thought we would bring him home, but realized how foolish that might be. Whoever lit this fire might have done so to flush Sam out of hiding. And even if we’d been careful driving him home, it was a chance we shouldn’t take. As it was, Sean and Sam were using disposable phones to call each other.
Paranoia was now the name of our game.
“Was there an unlit matchstick found?” I asked.
He nodded. “Inside the mailbox.”
I plucked a blade of grass from beside me. “And my license?”
“Right where you said it would be,” he answered with an edge to his voice.
His jaw was working overtime, but I didn’t reach out to try and calm him.
We were beyond that point now.
Softly, I said, “I don’t know what I have to do with this.”
Sean put his arm around me. “Probably nothing. Whoever this is wants Sam to see that he knows all aspects of Sam’s life. The guy is a stalker.”
Probably.
I wanted desperately to believe him.
But I didn’t.
Chapter Eighteen
By ten that morning, Sean and I were in his car, driving the streets of a quiet Boston neighborhood. He pulled up in front of a small two story house. A big oak tree shaded the front door, and the vinyl siding looked in need of a good power-washing.
“This is where the Donahues lived.”
“Where you lived, you mean?”
He gave me a gentle nudge at the correction. “Yes, where I lived. From age fourteen until I graduated from college.”
“Which room was yours?”
“Top left.”
I studied the window, imagining Sean’s face behind the glass. The branches of the oak brushed against the siding. “Did you ever use the tree to sneak out?”
“Not once.”
I glanced at him.
Softly, he said, “I’d spent years wanting a room of my own with a family who loved me. I wasn’t about to sneak away from that. It was bad enough going to school every day, but I couldn’t talk my mom into homeschooling.”
His mom.
My heart swelled with love for the Donahues, and I wished I knew them.
“She didn’t want you two under foot all day?” I asked.
He smiled. “She didn’t want to admit she couldn’t understand a bit of geometry.”
Laughing, I said, “We have a lot in common.”
There was a reason the math problems I did in my head were so simple. It was all I could manage without giving myself a migraine.
I adjusted the air conditioning vent so it wasn’t blowing directly into my face, and said, “What did Sam say about his biological family?”
He put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. “He was so young when he was removed from his home that he can’t remember whether he had siblings.”
“And were his records in that big DCF fire, too?”
Sean nodded. “I had to break that news to him this morning. He hadn’t known about that fire.”
“Did you call and ask Curt if a matchstick was found at that scene, too?”
“He says he’ll look into it.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel. “Sam doesn’t even know his real name. At least I was old enough to remember mine.”
I swallowed hard. There had to be a way to find out. This case was so frustrating.
Chasing ghosts.
Slowing, Sean turned right at the next corner and executed a series of turns that made me feel like I was lost in a maze.
We pulled up in front of a duplex in a working class neighborhood I didn’t recognize. I had no idea where I was, other than the street name. Maple Drive.
With weathered gray shingles and old single-paned windows, the house looked like it could use some TLC.
“What’s here?” I asked.
“That was one of the houses where I was placed after my mom died.”
I tried to imagine a young Sean going in and out of the duplex, and the thought of it alone broke my heart.
“It’s also the first house I ever broke into.”
“What?”
“This was the foster family who threw away my things.”
Realization hit me. “You broke in to see if they’d kept any of it.”
He nodded. “Then I took things of theirs to show them how it felt.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did,” he said somberly. Then he smiled. “They moved not long after. Out of state.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You’ve got quite the colorful background. Were you ever arrested?”
“A few times. Nothing stuck. I was lucky, because I was able to have my record expunged. A lot of other kids in my situation weren’t so fortunate.”
I wondered what would have happened to him if Daniel Donahue hadn’t taken him in and decided I probably didn’t want to know. Fate had stepped in, and for that I was grateful.
Sean drove another few blocks and parked in the driveway of a fast food restaurant. He pointed across the street, to the site of a strip mall. “That’s where the vacant building was that Sam and I accidentally burned down.”
The scent of French fries wafted into the car, making me hungry. “Where did you meet Sam?” I asked.
“On these streets.” He motioned all around us. “He took me under his wing, protected me from the bigger, badder kids.”
“Like Johnny Largo?”
He nodded. “I’ve been thinking about him, and there’s one person who might know what happened to him. If she’s still alive.”
***
Sean drove around the corner to a library that sat catty-corner on a tree-filled lot. It was picture perfect, even in this rough and tumble neighborhood.
“Mrs. Atterly never minded when I spent hours in here, reading everything I could get my hands on.” He helped me out of the car and handed me my crutches. “She always encouraged me, brought me snacks, and slipped me money from time to time. I don’t know how much she’d figured out about my life, but she had a giving nature and was a benefactor for a lot of the street kids. Giving what she could.”
Street kids.
Sometimes my mind just couldn’t wrap itself around what Sean must have gone through as a kid. A little boy. When I was taking piano lessons and going to the movies with Em and Marisol, Sean was foraging through Dumpsters for food and lighting fires in vacant buildings to keep warm.