My family dynamics were complicated to say the least, but Raphael was like a second father to me, and the thought of anything happening to him made my blood run cold.
On the second floor was the Valentine, Inc. office space. I had a sudden image of flames trapping me, Suz, and my father in the building and wished I didn’t have such an overactive imagination. My heart was beating wildly, and that was before I even thought about Sam and Sean on the third floor. Their company, SD Investigations, had rented that space for years.
Nine times nine is eighty-one.
Damn it!
I suddenly felt strong hands settle on my shoulders and looked up to see Sean standing behind me.
“It’s all conjecture at this point,” Sean said calmly, belying the look in his eyes. “The arsonist may have nothing to do with Sam. It could be a coincidence.”
I knew what he was doing—trying to ease my fears. It wasn’t working. This building was old. Centuries old. And though it was up to fire code, I’m not sure it could withstand an arsonist’s attempts to burn it to the ground.
“Too much of a coincidence,” Sam said.
I agreed. Sure, lots of people went to that same high school. But the apartment off-campus? And his starter home? And his grandparents’ shop? Unlikely that someone would pick those spots randomly.
Sean’s hands remained on my shoulders as I said, “I’ll talk to my father about closing up the building for a few days. The air conditioner isn’t working, so it makes sense anyway.” Maggie wasn’t going to like this situation—this was her busiest time of year with all the tourists, but I hoped she’d understand.
Sam nodded and stood. He glanced at his watch and then said, “You might want to start backing up files, too, and moving valuables somewhere safer. I have to go. The detective should be here soon.”
He glanced at the cat, furrowed his brows, and strode out of the room. Sean sat down in Sam’s vacated seat, and pulled my chair over to his. Our knees touched.
“Stop,” he said softly.
“Stop what?” I asked, mentally making a list of things to be moved to storage. My father’s valuable artwork, photos, files, computers...
He slipped his hands under my dress and settled them on my bare thighs.
That certainly got my attention.
He said, “I can practically see your mind going a mile a minute.”
His thumbs made lazy sweeps against my skin. My brain had practically shut down. “Not anymore.”
The corner of his mouth tipped in a knowing smile. “Your skin is hot.”
“And getting hotter.” Thank goodness I was in the direct line of the fan or I might have self-combusted.
“I’m glad I still have the ability to distract you.”
“Was that ever in question?”
We’d been seeing each other for almost eight months now. Exclusively. All-in. He was currently staying in my dad’s Boston waterfront penthouse (since Dad was [amazingly] still living with my mother), and I was happy in my cottage on my grandmother’s property in Cohasset.
The difficult commute between us was getting old, however, and we’d recently resurrected the living-together conversation. It was a big step. Huge. And we didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize the relationship.
He (sadly) removed his hands from my legs and cupped my face. Leaning in, he rested his forehead on mine. “Don’t worry about fires, okay?”
“How can I not?”
He kissed a spot near my ear. “Okay. Don’t worry too much about it.”
“But what about Sam...”
He a kissed a line across my cheek and then lingered directly over my lips. “Sam will be fine.”
Hot. So hot. But I managed to pull away. There was something in his tone that tipped me off to his inner turmoil. I eyed him warily. “You’re not fooling me, Sean Donahue.”
Gone was the desire in his eyes, now replaced with barely concealed fury. He leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know what you mean, Ms. Valentine,” he said lightly. Too lightly.
I was suddenly reminded of Jeremy Cross and his restraint.
Sean, I realized, was acting the same way.
Keeping all his emotions locked inside. It’s the way he’s always been—even with me. There have been only a few times he’s really opened up. He was getting better at sharing, but I was afraid that this threat to Sam was weighing quite heavily on him. Sean Donahue was quite loyal to those he loved. I knew that firsthand.
“You’ve got something planned,” I said. “Tell me.”
Gray eyes flashed dangerously.
The fans whirred. Ebbie’s tail swished. The truck in the alleyway reversed, piercing the air with an annoying beep, beep, beep.
I put my hand on his knee. “Sean?”
His jaw clenched. “This firebug has messed with the wrong family.”
“The police will catch him soon. He’s bound to have left some clues behind.”
“I’m not waiting for the police.”
“No?” I asked, getting a sinking feeling.
Sean held my gaze. “No.”
“What are you planning?”
A vein throbbed in his forehead. “I’m going to catch him, Lucy. But God help him if he hurts someone in my family before I do.”
Chapter Five
On that cheery note, I had to restrain myself from going into full panic mode. To do that, I needed Twinkies, air conditioning, and the ear of a best friend.
I knew what I had to do.
I was on my way out of the office, my tote bag in one hand, Ebbie’s carrier in the other, when I nearly bumped into a man coming up the stairs.
He’d pressed himself against the wall so I could pass when I heard Sean call from the third floor landing. “Lucy, wait!”
The man un-plastered himself and smiled at me. “So, you’re the infamous Lucy Valentine. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
I had never seen the man before in my life. “Really?”
Sean came down the stairs and thrust a hand out to the stranger. “Thanks for coming, Curt.”
Ah. This was Curt Meister. Medium height, thick dark hair, blue eyes. I put him around Sean’s age—thirty, give or take a year or two.
The stairwell felt a little bit like an oven, so Sean made the introductions quickly.
I said, “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“Same here.” He clapped Sean on his back and added, “You’ve snagged yourself a great guy.”
“You don’t need to tell me that.”
The pensive look was still in Sean’s eyes, but I could see how at ease Curt made him feel. “You two are making me blush.”
“Just blame this heat,” I said.
“Seriously,” Curt piped in. “We miss Sean at the firehouse every day, though I’m kind of glad he’s not around. I’m coming up for lieutenant and don’t need the competition. Did you know Sean beat me out of every promotion that came along?”
I thought I picked up on a thread of animosity in the undercurrent of his words, but maybe I’d been imagining it. “He was good at his job,” I said.
“The best,” Curt said with a smile.
“Enough about me,” Sean protested.
“I’ve got to run.” To Sean, I said, “You’ll call when you’re done?”
He nodded.
As I rushed down the steps, I heard Curt say, “Great gal you’ve got there.”
Why I felt it wasn’t a sincere compliment I didn’t know.
***
Fifteen minutes later, I sat next to Emerson Baumbach, who stared at me in horror as I nibbled my way around the oblong golden goodness of a Twinkie—my third in a row.
“Do you know what’s in those things?” Em asked.
“Yummy goodness?”
“You’re a sick woman.”
I eyed the bran muffin she was eating. “I’d like to discuss your definition of ‘sick.’”
We were in one of the many buildings on the Boston College campu
s. Em was in-between classes. Last fall she left her job as a pediatric intern to go back to school to become a teacher. Summer school was part of that grand plan.
She tossed a crumb at me. “I don’t even want to imagine what your colon looks like.”
That made two of us. “You can take the girl out of the lab coat, but not the doctor out of the girl.”
She threw another crumb at me, and I smiled when I saw the sun glint off her modest diamond engagement ring.
Detective Lieutenant Aiden Holliday had proposed to her a few months ago while on vacation in Hawaii. Even though she had been fresh off an engagement-from-hell, and Aiden could be considered a rebound relationship, I wasn’t surprised she said yes.
She and Aiden had matching auras. My father declared them soul mates, and well, that was about as big a stamp of approval as a couple was likely to get.
I’d met Aiden in the fall, during a search for a missing little boy. After that case closed he approached me to work with him as a psychic consultant for the state police.
I eventually agreed, and since then, together we have solved dozens of cases.
Aiden was now one of my favorite people, and I was beyond happy that he was going to marry my best friend.
Em’s flaming red hair had been pulled back into a loose braid, and her fair skin glowed. She wore hardly any makeup—just a swipe or two of mascara and some lip gloss—but she didn’t need much anyway.
“Have you picked a date for the wedding?” I asked. She and Aiden had been going back and forth about the wedding for a good month now, including whether they should have a big affair or small, local or a destination wedding.
My thoughts of a destination wedding reminded me of a vision I’d had back in the wintertime of me and Sean. In the vision, I’d been wearing a fancy long white sheath, and he’d been in a dark suit. We’d been somewhere tropical, and love had definitely been in the air. I thought for sure the vision meant we would elope while on the impromptu trip we made to join Em and Aiden in Hawaii for a quickie vacation, but I should have known better. Sometimes my visions were misleading. As they had been in this case.
Love had been in the air—but the fancy clothes were to celebrate Em and Aiden’s engagement, not any kind of elopement. Since I hadn’t packed anything remotely formal, I’d gone shopping. The white sheath dress had been hanging in the window of a little boutique in the hotel lobby. I’d fallen in love with it at first sight.
Just like I had with Sean.
And just like that, the Twinkies felt like lead in my stomach, and I was back to worrying about him and his state of mind.
“Not yet,” Em said. “We just want to let things be for now. See where this crazy thing called love takes us.” She glanced at her phone and frowned at the blank screen. “Actually, he’s been really quiet these past few days. Not returning my texts or calls for hours. It’s not like him.”
“Big case?”
“Not that I know of.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m probably just reading too much into it.”
“He could be working on something undercover, that he can’t tell you about.”
“Maybe.” She set what was left of her muffin on the beat-up coffee table and peered into the mesh side panel of the animal carrier. “She’s a cute little thing.”
Ebbie was indeed cute. I still couldn’t believe that Jeremy had left her with me and disappeared.
“What are you going to do with her? Give her to Marisol?”
Marisol Valerius, Em, and I had been best friends since we were five years old. We’d actually met when we were three, but couldn’t stand each other until a braid-cutting incident in kindergarten cemented our friendship.
Giving Ebbie to Marisol would be fitting since Marisol had a habit of giving me pets-usually an “unadoptable” from one of the veterinary clinics where she worked. She was why I had my three-legged cat, Grendel, and my one-eyed hamster, Odysseus. “I don’t think I should. After all, Ebbie told Jeremy she wanted to stay with me. I can only assume there’s a reason why.”
Em kicked off her sandals, tucked her legs underneath her, and then leveled an inquisitive gaze on me. “Do you ever find any of this strange?”
“Any of what?”
She waved toward the cat. “ESP, mediums...talking cats.”
I smiled. For most of my life, I’d kept my abilities secret from my friends. It was the Valentine way. For centuries, we guarded our gift from unbelievers by maintaining silence on the matter. Only a few trusted souls knew the truth of what we could do. Even now, very few outsiders knew about the auras; however, the whole world knew (thanks to Preston) that I could find lost objects.
My friends had been more supportive than I could ever ask, but I could see skepticism in Em’s eyes as she stared at the cat carrier.
“She can’t really talk,” I said lightly.
Em whacked my arm playfully. “You know what I mean.”
I did. And truth be told, it was strange.
“Can you hear her?” Em asked, placing a finger on the mesh.
Ebbie stared at it as if wondering how she was supposed to react. She settled for turning her head disdainfully.
Em knew I’d been taking psychic lessons, so her question wasn’t out of the ordinary—except maybe to someone eavesdropping. I glanced around. Remarkably, we were alone.
“No.” Not yet at least, but I kept that part to myself.
“Do you really think this guy Jeremy can communicate with animals?”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “Part of being in my line of work is to trust that people are who they say they are.”
“Isn’t that a little dangerous, too, though?” she asked. “How do you know if someone is really psychic—or if they’re full of baloney?”
“Baloney?” I smiled.
“I’m hungry.” She scrunched her nose. “That bran muffin...blah.”
I offered her one of my Twinkies. I’d bought a whole carton on the way over. She eyed it with contempt. “Not on your life.”
Waving the box under her nose, I said, “You sure?”
“I’d rather eat another bran muffin.”
Laughing, I set the Twinkies on the table. “Suit yourself.”
“So, really, how do you know if someone is psychic?” she asked.
Inwardly, I sighed. I’d hoped she wouldn’t pick up the conversation. I wasn’t comfortable talking about things I couldn’t explain—but could only feel. “There is no definite way. Jeremy has Orlinda’s stamp of approval, though, and that’s good enough for me.”
Her reddish eyebrows rose. “Well, then, that makes it all right.”
Em didn’t care for Orlinda. I figured the dislike stemmed more from not being able to figure out the woman than anything. Em’s scientific mind wanted tangible answers as to how Orlinda knew the things she knew; how she could do the things she did. There were no answers—and that frustrated Em beyond belief.
Before she could dig deeper, I blurted out, “So, Sean’s brother Sam thinks the Beantown Burner is after him.”
She blinked pretty blue eyes, opened her mouth, and then closed it again. I could practically hear her brain spinning as she calmly evaluated and processed what I’d just said. “Is there any merit to his thinking such a thing?”
Em was exactly who I needed right now. She provided a cool, calm, collected viewpoint. I explained about the location of the fires.
Tapping her chin, she stared at me, blinked again, and said, “Well, shit.”
Groaning, I flopped against the back of the couch. What happened to cool and calm?
“Does he have any idea who it might be?” she asked.
“Not yet. When I left, he was meeting with a detective on the case. And Sean was getting together with a former fire colleague to get any information that may have been withheld from the public.”
Her brows dipped. “Let me put on my psychologist’s hat for a moment.”
The fact that she wasn’t a psychologist needn’t be point
ed out. She had, however, taken a few psych classes, and that was also good enough for me. “Go on.”
“The fact that the arsonist targeted locations from Sam’s childhood, i.e. his grandparents’ store and his high school, reveals a deep-seated hatred that dates back decades.”
I narrowed my eyes on her. “Did you just make that up?”
She twisted the cap off a stainless steel water bottle and gave me a little grin. “A little, but you get the gist.”
I did, and it made sense. Why target places from Sam’s childhood if the arsonist hadn’t known Sam back then? There was a familiarity to these fires. Burning down his grandparents’ former shop was intensely personal.
She took a sip of water and then said, “I’m sure the detective in charge of the case as well, as the arson investigators, are already thinking along the same lines. It will be a tough investigation, especially if Sam doesn’t keep in close contact with people from back then.”
“I don’t know if he does or doesn’t. Having been a foster kid might make it a bit difficult.” I gestured to her water bottle. “Can I have some of that?”
She passed it over. “I’d forgotten he and Sean were in the system. That adds a new spin on things.”
“How so?” I removed the cap, set it on the table, then poured water to its rim.
“Have there been any fires related to places Sam lived before the Donahues adopted him?” She eyed me as I set the cap inside the cat carrier. “What are you doing?”
“Ebbie might be thirsty.” I smiled innocently at her. “You wouldn’t want her getting dehydrated, would you?”
She sighed. “My God, it’s a good thing I love you.”
“I know,” I said as Ebbie sniffed the cap. “As for Sam, I’m not sure. I don’t really know enough of his history. Are you thinking it could be someone from the time he was on the streets?”
“Could be,” Em said, peeking in at Ebbie, who was delicately lapping the water. “It makes sense. If one of those kids didn’t get adopted like Sam, didn’t do something with his or her life... That could certainly breed hatred, especially if the arsonist has been watching Sam all these years. Beautiful family, successful business. It may have come to a breaking point. The arsonist might want to take all that away, starting with places from Sam’s childhood.”