Deadly Heat (Deadly #2)(17)

“The SSD. I heard about y’all but…” Seth’s jaw clenched.

But you didn’t call us in. You had a serial hunting and you thought you could handle him on your own? Kenton stared at the guy. Just stared.

Seth swiped his hand over his face. “What are you hoping to find here?”

Kenton didn’t answer as he headed inside. Lora followed close behind him, then she swept past them all, going to study the partially intact wall in the back.

Seth took a deep breath. He’d come in behind them. “There’s no signature, okay? With the arsonists, there’s always a tag. They like to start ’em the same way. Same place. Origin’s usually fixed.”

Not with this guy.

The arson investigator shook his head. “I know these guys. They have a pet accelerant. One they always use to get the burn just right—”

“I told you, Seth. This jerk likes to change his fires.” Lora tossed this back without looking over her shoulder.

Seth’s shoulders sagged a bit. His face didn’t look quite so tense and angry then. Fear flickered in his eyes. “Another call came in?” A little bit of fear there, probably because the guy knew.

“Yeah,” Kenton told him. “It did.”

A rough sigh slipped past Seth’s lips. “I didn’t—I wasn’t told—”

“Your fires might be different, son, but the victims are all trapped and the killer—he wants to make sure we know he’s the one behind the flames.” Hyde stalked around the interior, being careful not to touch any of the evidence. Like the chunk of radiator that still had a handcuff closed around one blackened pipe.

Poor bastard.

“He’s a serial,” Hyde said. “And he’s ours.” Pissing match over. They’d take these cases, and Seth could work with them, or not at all.

Seth’s fingers clenched. “The first two—they were so different. A woman in her apartment. A guy in his garage. Not tied. Not bound. Not…” His gaze darted to Hyde and the radiator. “Cuffed.”

“And then the third kill came.” Kenton watched him, curious about the investigator’s reaction.

“His own body trapped him.” A hard swallow. “If the bastard hadn’t called us in on Hatchen…”

“He wanted us to know.” Lora turned around and put her hands on her hips. “The guy gets off on the fires, but he wants attention, too. He didn’t claim the first kill, but he’s claiming them now. Every one.”

“He wants the world to see how good he is.” Hyde’s eyes were on Lora. Studying her, weighing her.

“He wants the world to see that he’s f*cking better than we are.” She shook her head. “Maybe Jennifer Langley was some kind of test, to see if he could do it. And when he torched her…”

He saw he could get away with murder.

Lora exhaled. “He sets it up as a race, the fire versus the firefighters, and every time, we lose.”

And sometimes, they died.

“That’s sick, Lora.” The arson investigator’s lips twisted.

“That’s what we’re dealing with here, Seth. I told you after the second kill—before Carter went into that fire—he’s setting us up. Getting us all to play his way.”

He frowned. “I checked. Those two—Langley and Hatchen—didn’t seem linked.”

The guy’s voice was gruff, and his shoulders couldn’t drop much more. The attitude was gone now, finally, so maybe they could get someplace. It sure looked like the arson investigator knew he was in over his head now. “But after Creed died, you knew what was happening, didn’t you?” Kenton asked.

“We all knew about that call.” Seth’s chin came up. “But there weren’t any more fires, everything seemed to stop after that, and I thought—”

“There have been two fires within the last few days.” Kenton stared him down. “Both claimed by the arsonist. I think it’s safe to say our boy is back in business.”

Seth exhaled. “Yeah, yeah… aw, Christ. I thought it was over!”

Kenton figured that it was just getting started. Two fires, so fast…

“What do you have on the vic?” Hyde demanded. “Cuffed to the radiator? That’s one hell of a way to go.”

He would have seen the flames coming at him. Probably nearly ripped his own wrist off trying to get free.

“D-dental records. The cops will have to ID him with dental records.”

No big surprise.

How is he picking the victims? The question was driving Kenton crazy. If he was going to link all the crimes, the victims would be the key. He needed Monica down there, yesterday.

Lora went back to pacing the perimeter. Part of the roof had fallen, a large chunk of wood and shingles. She bent down, inching along the remains of the tiled floor. “Ghost marks,” she whispered.

Kenton frowned. Ghost marks?

Lora glanced back up. “You can tell a liquid accelerant was used here because the gasoline bled under the tile.” She pointed to the stained outlines. “Like a ghost leaving a trail behind.”

“We already took samples, Lora,” Seth rushed to say.

“Glad to hear it,” she muttered and turned to head deeper into the hull of the house.