Fire Burns Hot ((An FBI/ Romance Thriller~ (Book 5))) (76 page)

Tori had been quick to say no, but maybe she did. Letting her mind relive the moments she took it all in and patiently thought about it.

First the door swung open, and she stepped out into the chill. Her body enjoyed the cold clear air. It felt refreshing. Looking around the employee parking there were cars parked there. There was Ethan’s Mustang, Julian’s sedan, the vehicles owned by the doctors and then the stripper’s cars. Then she recognized it.

The black Charger reminded her of a car she’d seen before. Wait, not once but twice before. Once at the strip club and then once at… Patrick Wells
’ house.

“Oh
shit,” she said, staring at her watch. It was just after seven, and surely Elizabeth had to be up.

Picking up her phone she dialed her boss. I
t rang and went to voice mail. Hanging up, Tori sent her a text message telling her what she remembered.

Rushing to her bedroom she started dressing. There still was no reply from Elizabeth. Again she sent another text message, telling her she’d meet them at Patrick Wells
’ house.

Hopefully Elizabeth wasn’t going to kick her ass for going out in the field. Right now she had to get there and keep an eye on the man.

Running to her garage, she backed out her vehicle and tore towards the development. She should probably call Julian next, since Elizabeth wasn’t answering her phone. Reaching in her pocket she couldn’t find her phone.

“Shit, I’m an idiot,” she muttered. Tori left her phone sitting on the counter. “Come on, Elizabeth. Read your damn text messages,” she said to no one in particular. 

It took Tori ten minutes to get to the house. Sitting in her vehicle, she could see the Charger in the driveway. It was the same one that was at the club, she was sure of it. Tori needed to make sure. She remembered seeing pin striping across the hood. If she just snuck over and looked quick, she could be sure.

Pulling her clutch piece, she ran down the street to the driveway. Looking around she waited to be sure Patrick Wells wasn’t anywhere around. When the coast was clear, she approached the vehicle. Stopping in front of the car she saw the striping and knew she was right.

There was a crunch behind her and she spun; only to be struck so hard across the face she saw stars. Falling to the ground, her head struck the concrete. Everything started going gray and closing in on her. The last thing Tori remembered seeing was a man standing over her. Only it wasn’t he man she thought it would be.

This time it was the son.

Elizabeth stood with Callen, Julian and Ethan in the autopsy suite. Chris Leonard was going over the files the ME had written up on Amanda Callister Wells. She was trying to be patient, but it wasn’t really happening.

“Doc, can you maybe just hurry up a little bit,” pleaded Elizabeth. Right now there was a killer running loose, and she’d actually slept the night away. No thanks to the men, who let her.

“Okay, geez Lyzee. Where’s the fire?” he said laughing. When he noticed none of them joined him, he shut up. “Okay, here’
s what the ME recorded,” he said, flipping the page. “Amanda Callister Wells had abrasions and wounds similar with falling down the stairs, or more likely pushed. When you fall you don’t have that velocity of high impact. If it were me looking at her wounds I would have said shoved is your better option. In all my years of experience, rarely do you fall forward down the stairs. You generally tumble and this woman took a header face first.”

“What else?” she asked, getting excited.

“There was smoke in her lungs. The woman wasn’t dead when she hit the bottom. She lived through the fall, but the smoke is what did her in.”

“And?”

“That’s it,” Chris said. “Now you just need to figure out who pushed her.”

Ethan pulled out the other file on the arson. “Patrick Wells was at work that day. He was
on duty at the fire station and was alibied. The men there say he was on cooking duty. When they got the call to the fire, he was in the kitchen making chili. They even produced the meal planner with Patrick and another fireman’s name. Both were side by side cooking up a storm.”

“God damn it
!” exclaimed Elizabeth kicking the morgue table. “What am I missing?”

She started pacing.

“Maybe he wasn’t a bad guy. What if he wasn’t a cheating, abusive bastard who killed his wife?” stated Callen. “Maybe he’s just a happy go lucky guy.”

Elizabeth stopped moving. “What did you say?
Not the last part, the first part.”

He looked around. “Maybe he didn’t hate his wife, abuse her or want to kill her.”

“Ethan, you said that in the profile of the killer that there was an issue with a female authority figure.”

“I did, why?”

Elizabeth could feel the tiny wisps of truth surfacing through the fog. “Can you run any searches and find out of Amanda Callister Wells was arrested, or investigated for anything?”

He sat down at Chris’s computer and logged into their records and began the search.

“Julian, can I have those folders you’re holding?” she asked laying them out on the lab table. She then grabbed seven sheets of paper and wrote victim one through seven on them.

“Lyzee, what are you doing?” asked Callen, worried for her. She looked crazed.

“Let’s lay out these files in the order of what happened, starting with the arsons. There were no people involved. They were all abandoned buildings, right?”

All the men watched her. Ethan continued his search, but saw where she was heading.

Elizabeth laid down files one, two and three. On the front of them she wrote ‘no deaths’. Next she placed files four through six besides them. On the fronts she wrote ‘animals killed’. Then she placed Amanda Callister Wells’ file beside them and wrote ‘mother killed’.

Callen looked at her. “Mother?”

Ethan stood. “You were right, Elizabeth.”

She started smiling, and placed out the victims one through seven besides the files. “The killer started playing with fire, and then something happened in his mind. He began killing animals- cats to be exact. Then he killed his mother.
What if Amanda Callister was the catalyst that set off the killing in him?”

“The son?”

“Yes. Something had to trigger it. Ethan told us when he did the profile that something happens to cause the killer to escalate. Maybe it’s abuse, or the loss of the parent.” She looked over at Ethan. “What happened?”

“Amanda Callister Wells was investigate
d for child abuse. The case was dismissed because Trent Wells recanted his statement that she had been abusing him for a few years. The Callister family buried it.”

“Physical abuse?” asked Callen, feeling sick to his stomach. He’d been abused as a
child; he knew how hard it was to get over it.

“Emotional abuse at first and then it went to physical.”

“He’d been burning things down out of anger, and then when the abuse began happening he started killing animals.” Elizabeth stated. “Once he’d perfected that, he moved onto the woman that hurt him.”

“It was probably accidental,” added Blackhawk, “and when he got away with it…” He let it go from there.

Elizabeth continued. “Trent Wells shoved her down the stairs and lit the house on fire. She was his first.” She started pacing. “Where was he that day?”

Ethan
opened the file and searched. “The file shows he was at school that day. Gym class.”

“Then isn’t that his alibi?” asked Julian.

Elizabeth could feel the hopes sinking.

Blackhawk continued.
“They were doing a cross country run that day. Their old house is three blocks from the school. In fact, the file says he was running and smelled the smoke and saw it in the sky and ran home.”

“Bullshit,” grinned Elizabeth. “He lit the fire and made sure his mother didn’t get out of the building.
”

Elizabeth started for the door. “We need to get over to that house,” she said, grinning in the elevator.
“Let’s go get suited up and over there as fast as we can. I want to stick this asshole behind bars and then spend New Year’s cuddled up with some Indians.”

“Yay!” said Julian, and then he started laughing when both men stared at him.

“Let me rephrase,” Elizabeth said snickering. “I want to spend New Year’s with all the Indians in the room that have knocked me up.”

“Damn it,” grinned Julian
, trying to be jovial. “Hey, I had to try.”

Elizabeth clipped on her gun and badge and watched as the men brought out her Kevlar. “Oh, come on already. He’s a firebug. I think I can stay out of his way
if he starts threatening me with a Bic lighter,” she muttered, as Callen dropped the body armor over her shoulders.

“Not happening. You’re suiting up.”

Elizabeth noticed her phone was blinking. Picking it up she read the messages. “Oh bloody hell! I’m going to fire her ass,” she blurted, running for the door.

“Wait! What’s wrong?” yelled Blackhawk.

“Tori remembered something from last night,” she said, racing for the elevator with three men chasing.

“That’s good, right?” asked Callen.

“She’s on her way over there, or was twenty minutes ago.”

Julian was now officially sick to his stomach and close to being out of his mind. “You won’t have to fire or kill her. I’m going to do it for you!”

                                *    *     *

Tori kept her eyes closed and tested the bindings holding her arms behind her back, and to the wood of the chair. Trent Wells had tied her up really well.

This was a really bad thing.

Peeking at the clock on the wall, she noticed she’d been out for less than ten minutes. When she heard his footsteps coming, she forced her body to go slack and
closed her eyes once again.

“I know you’re awake by now. You only hit your head. I’m actually very bright
. I take after my mother, not him,” Trent said, slapping her hard across the face, splitting open her lip again.

Tori sucked in a sharp breath
, as the tears filled her eyes from the sting. “Why are you doing this Trent?”

He started laughing. “I like hurting women.”

Well at least he didn’t sugar coat it.

“Can you at least humor me and tell me why before you kill me?” she inquired.

Trent sat across from her on another chair. “Where to begin? Well I guess you can say my whore of a mother started me down this path. She was this rich bitch, but the irony was she slept with just about every man she met. I caught her in the act, and she abused me as a way to keep me from spilling the truth.”

Tori didn’t say a word.

“My dad was a naïve fool. He believed in love and all that shit that people fall for, but it’s all just that. Shit.”

Tori kept working at the bindings.

“So you’re killing women because your mom slept around? That seems a bit extreme, doesn’t it?”

He started laughing. “You’re funny and very sexy. Before I kill you I plan on fucking your brains out. But I promise you’ll enjoy it. Well, I will anyway.”

There was no way in hell; she’d fight him to the death. In order to rape her, he’d have to untie her. That’s when she’d attack. The man was about her size, and she could take him if her hands were free. “So you killed your mom, huh?” she stated out of the blue, catching him off guard.

“Yeah I did. I’m surprised someone figured that out. I’ve been living with that for the last five years.” Trent grinned.

“What’s your dad going to think when he finds out that his son is a killer and also murdered his wife?”

Now Trent was laughing like a maniac. “Oh, he knows sexy
FBI lady. I confessed to my father.”

She lifted a brow.

“Oh, no he wasn’t happy. That’s why he’s dead. Right now he’s in the basement. I smashed his skull in with a baseball bat. He told me he was going to the police, and I really couldn’t have that, so he’s gone from this world. I had hoped to frame him for all this, but I guess I need a new plan.”

“You think?” muttered Tori.

“I hear Mexico is a nice place to live. Do they extradite?” he asked, and waited for her to answer.

“Yeah, they do.” Tori was close to getting one knot out of the ones behind her.

“Oh well, then Nicaragua then.”

“
You should try Switzerland, they love criminals,” she stated sarcastically, praying to buy as much time as possible. Today was a bad day to not be wearing the protection medallion Julian gave her.

A really bad
freaking day.

“I transferred money from my trust fund while you were out cold. I have enough cash to get me to
a safe haven and then to another safe place. There I’ll get me a place and find me more women to ‘enjoy’.”

Tori wanted to vomit for so many reasons.