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“I’ll see how she wants to handle this.” Kiley broke away from the others and went to meet Presley’s fire investigator, needing a moment to gather her composure.
After that dance at the Christmas party, she had asked her sister what she knew about Collier McClain. Kristin had told her that he had broken his engagement about eighteen months ago and since that time he had dated and dumped half the women on the city’s payroll. Hearing about Collier’s playboy reputation had immediately thrown up the walls Kiley had built while growing up with a man just like that.
She had dated a lot in her thirty-one years, but she’d made it a rule to never date guys like Collier, guys she had come to refer to as “hit-and-runs.” Thanks to her father, Kiley knew to keep a distance from men whose relationships didn’t last as long as it took to spell the word. Whatever reaction she’d had to the rangy firefighter during their dance had been nipped in the bud. She needed to shake it off and get her head in the game.
Kiley had been working with Terra August Spencer since the first firefighter murder in October. Even if it hadn’t been city policy, Kiley needed the expertise of a fire cop. The clue to solving these murders might be something found at a fire scene. So far, all their leads had fizzled out, which frustrated them both.
They had four firefighters who had been murdered—shot. Two of them during calls and two who had been killed while off duty.
The willowy fire investigator moved with the slowness of her advanced pregnancy. Kiley knew from their recent work together that Terra Spencer was due in a month’s time. She gave the other woman a smile of recognition. “How are you feeling?”
Terra grimaced. “Like a blimp. And I’m moving about as fast as a turtle. Sorry y’all have to wait on me.”
“No problem.”
Concern darkened her green eyes. “Who’s down?”
“Dan Lazano.”
“I didn’t know him very well,” Terra murmured. “What can you tell me?”
Just as she started to fill the other woman in on what she knew so far, the investigator’s cell phone rang.
Terra reached into her pocket and flipped open the phone. “Hi, honey.” She looked at Kiley and held up a finger as she stepped a few feet away, reassuring the person on the other end.
Probably her gorgeous husband, Kiley surmised. Terra had married Presley detective, Jack Spencer, a couple of years ago. She’d been glowing ever since. The impending birth of their child made her radiant.
Kiley felt a twinge of envy. She’d kissed plenty of frogs during her thirty-one years on this planet, but never her Mr. Right. She wasn’t sure what she wanted in a man, but she knew what she didn’t want. Her gaze slid grudgingly to Collier McClain. She knew exactly what she didn’t want.
“Sorry about that.” Terra walked back over to her, sliding her cell phone into the pocket of her heavy coat. “The closer the due date gets, the more Jack checks on me. Now, what’s happened?”
Kiley smiled, giving the woman her full attention as she answered.
When she finished, the other woman shook her head, horror streaking across her face. “I guess we haven’t had any luck finding the weapon?”
“I’ve got a couple of uniforms searching the area, but there’s nothing yet.”
Terra gave a start and patted her stomach with an apologetic look. “The baby doesn’t like being dragged out of bed.”
Kiley grinned. “Neither do I.”
“I guess we’d better begin. Maybe we’ll turn up something here.”
“Maybe so.” Kiley shared the fire investigator’s frustration over the cold trail of leads on their other homicides.
As they moved toward the group of waiting firefighters, Terra said, “I’ll go ahead and do the walk-around with the guys then meet you back here. Once we determine the structure is secure, you and I can go inside and begin our investigation there.”
“All right. I’ll start interviewing witnesses.” And she would start with Collier McClain.
Presley had seen a serial arsonist before, but not a serial killer. A little over two years ago, a cameraman for one of the local news channels had started setting fires to get Terra’s attention, then murdered anyone who he perceived as distracting her attention from him.
Kiley had been promoted to detective ten months ago and in October had happened to catch the call involving the firefighter who’d been shot in the back as he ran into a fire at Presley High School’s gym.
Terra lifted the camera around her neck to snap pictures of the building and surrounding area. Two firefighters unloaded portable floodlights from Terra’s SUV and set them up inside the warehouse. The daylight-strength power of the scene lights outside brightened the area.
When the other woman started toward the building, Kiley walked over to the body again. The group of firefighters had scattered. Dan Lazano’s facial features were recognizable. Since he had been wearing all his protective gear, there were no visible burns on what she could see of his body.
Ken Mason, the Oklahoma County coroner, knelt beside the body.
“What do you think, Doc?”
“No soot around or in the nose or mouth, no burns at all. Like Sandusky said, Lazano never made it into the building. The only injury I’ve noted so far is the gunshot wound. It’s a through-and-through.”
In through the back, out through the chest. “Thanks.” She turned, searching for Collier McClain and saw him near the warehouse’s front door talking with Terra.
The man was rangy, strong and built with the lean lines of a baseball pitcher. His hawkish features were sharp in the unstinting white light from the megawatt bulbs illuminating the scene. He wasn’t her type at all, which was exactly why she’d danced with him. And why her over-the-top physical reaction had rocked her. Might as well get this over with.
Taking a deep breath, she started toward him. He left Investigator Spencer to meet her halfway.
“I need to ask you some questions,” she said quietly.
“All right.” He looked tired and dazed.
“Tell me what happened. Or what you remember.”
He dragged a hand down his face, his turnout coat wet, his breath curling in the cold air. “I went for the nozzle.”
“Was that usually your spot?”
“Whoever got there first, but yeah, it was usually me.”
“Go on.”
“I was off the truck and ahead of Lazano when this stupid cat tripped me. By the time I got around the dumb thing, Dan had the nozzle and was on his way into the building.”
“And you were how far behind him?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Four, five steps. He was at the door.”
Collier had long legs; his stride was easily over a yard. “And then what?”
“He started in, then I heard the gunshot.”
“You knew right off what it was?”
“I reacted more from reflex at first. We’ve all been jumpy since Miller’s murder,” he said grimly.
Gary Miller was the first firefighter who’d been killed by the sniper three months ago. “Then you went for Lazano?”
“Yes.” He stared over his shoulder at the warehouse. “The padlock was cut. We didn’t have to use force to open the door.”
She followed his gaze to the door, now open. Terra’s floodlights illuminated the inside of the big concrete cave.
So the sniper had time to aim for the best shot while Lazano took those two heartbeats to open the door. Kiley scribbled the note in her notebook. “How long before you heard the shot?”
“I’d guess maybe two seconds, three. It was quick.”
“Did you work the scene where Miller was killed?”
“No, but I was there.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I heard the call and went by. Turned out they needed another pair of hands so I stayed for a while. Don’t you cops do that?”
Yes, they did. “Do you remember seeing anyone hanging around that night? Anyone you might’ve noticed here, as well?”
“No.” He thought for a moment. “There may have been people walking or driving by tonight, but I didn’t see a thing besides that stupid cat.”
“Okay.” Kiley glanced over at the victim, now being transferred into a body bag. “How long did you know Dan Lazano?”
“Twelve years. We went through firefighter academy together, then he was assigned to Station Two about five years ago.”
A tightness in his voice made Kiley switch her focus to him. “Were you friends?”
In the glaring, smoke-hazed air, she thought she saw his mouth tighten. “Not really.”
Was there resentment under his words? “Enemies?”
“Not exactly. We had a tug-of-war going on over the nozzle.”
“About who would get it first?”
He nodded.
“Know anyone who would want to hurt him?”
Collier’s gaze bored right through her. “No, but you’ll probably hear different.”
“Okay,” she said expectantly. At five-nine, Kiley didn’t have to look up to very many men, but she did with the six-foot-plus firefighter. A tiny sliver of awareness shimmied up her spine. What was it about this man? She dismissed the giddiness he put in her stomach, but allowed herself to search his eyes. She saw a rawness there before he shuttered them against her. What was he not telling her?
Oh, yeah, she was really getting somewhere with this guy. “McClain—”
“Lazano and I were friends once.” He glanced away, clearly reluctant to talk.
“It’s better if I hear it from you.”
He stepped closer, the odor of smoke swirling around her. “He and my fiancée were—” He broke off and dragged a hand down his smoke-buffed face. “I found them together.”
She drew in a sharp breath. That was brutal. Now she understood the emotion that had flashed through his eyes, and her chest tightened. She really didn’t want to continue this line of questioning, but she had to do her job. “So you had a reason to hate him.”
“But not kill him.”
“Your fiancée cheated on you with one of your friends.” Kiley could only imagine the pain. “If my ex took up with one of my friends, I couldn’t find it that easy to forgive.”
“Not forgiving is a long way from murder, Detective.”
“Not to some people.” Just because Collier had broken his engagement didn’t mean he wasn’t still in love with his ex. And maybe angry and hurt enough to kill the man who’d betrayed their friendship.
Anything was possible and he could’ve hired a sniper and been here to fight the fire, but Kiley had a good sense of people. Collier McClain didn’t seem to be the kind of man who would hire someone else to take care of his problems. He would do it himself, face-to-face. The fact that he could’ve easily been the one killed tonight also helped in settling her questions about his involvement. Once she checked his alibis for the nights of the other murders, she could probably mark him off her suspect list officially.
A glance over her shoulder showed Terra stepping inside the warehouse, but Kiley had more questions. She looked back at her witness. “I may need to talk to you again later.”
“I’ll be around.” He tucked his helmet under his arm and tunneled a hand through his short, wet hair.
Annoyed at the way his cool voice knotted her nerves, she moved over to Pitts and Foster, the safety crew who had been sent by Captain Sandusky to talk to her.
She needed to put aside her personal feelings. The memory of that dance, the feel of Collier’s large hand curled warmly on her hip, the hard length of his body against hers. She had a job to do and she would focus on that. Looking for commonalities between the victims had Kiley asking the same questions she had asked at the other three murder scenes.
Did tonight’s victim socialize off duty with any of the others? Did he go to the same doctor or church with the other victims? High school or college? Had he been involved in a side business with any of the victims? Again all answers were no.
About thirty minutes later, she joined Terra outside the front door of the warehouse where the fire investigator again stood talking to Collier McClain. Three firefighters had backed up his story about the cat as well as vouching for him on the other nights in question.
And the firefighters she’d interviewed had confirmed that he and Lazano did have an ongoing rivalry regarding who would get the nozzle first.
“The structure is secure enough for us to go inside,” Terra said when Kiley reached her. “It’s lucky the next warehouse is at least three hundred feet away or this whole side of the street might’ve gone up.”
It appeared this fire, like the others, had been set to lure the firefighters here and kill one of them, but they needed proof. “Did you see anything that hinted at arson?”
“Not yet. The window was blown out from the inside, probably from heat, but that doesn’t mean we’re looking at arson.” She glanced at Kiley’s feet. “Good, you have on some of our boots. You need a helmet, too.”
“Is there falling debris?”
“We want to be prepared.”
Kiley took a helmet from the firefighter who held one out at Terra’s request and slid it onto her head.
Collier McClain stood silently to the side. He had cleaned the ash from his face, but there was strain around his gray-green eyes and the same guardedness she hoped he saw in her eyes. She shut off further thoughts of him and followed Terra inside the cavernous concrete and metal building. It smelled of burned coffee, wet ash and the searing odor of charred insulation and chemicals. Light glanced off white burlap bags of coffee stacked on row after row of wooden pallets.
Strong light streamed from the portable floodlamps, and Kiley stopped, taking a quick look around the soaked floor, wet wooden pallets stacked with now-sopping white bags of coffee.
“I bagged the padlock so we can check it for prints.”
Startled to hear McClain’s voice, Kiley spun. “What are you doing?”
He frowned. “Going through the building.”
“Why?”
