Deadly Obsession

A cold-blooded killer with a burning obsession…

Rachel de Luca has a bad feeling about the new woman in Detective Mason Brown’s life, the nurse taking care of him after he’s injured in the line of duty. She’d like to think it’s just jealousy, but intuition tells her it’s something more, maybe something dangerous.

Mason knows Rachel’s wary of commitment, and asking her to stay when he’s in this condition would be the worst thing for their relationship. Then they receive chilling news that drives everything else from their minds.

Mason’s psychotic sister-in-law has escaped from custody, putting her sons—the nephews he’s raising—in the crosshairs. When his house is burned to the ground, he and Rachel are relieved that there are no bodies in the smoldering rubble, but now his nephews are missing and the clock is ticking.

As Mason and Rachel try to find the boys, she senses a new and unexpected danger stalking them. Soon, everyone close to Mason is in deadly peril—Rachel more than anyone….

Praise for the novels of Maggie Shayne

“In this thrilling follow-up to Sleep With the Lights On, Shayne amps up both the creep factor and the suspense…fostering a humming anticipation that builds as the story unfolds.”

—RT Book Reviews on Wake to Darkness

“Readers will love this novel, which twists Shayne’s usual combination of sharp wit and awesome characters with a killer who could have leapt right off of a television screen.”

—RT Book Reviews on Sleep With the Lights On

“A tasty, tension-packed read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water

“Tense…frightening…a page-turner in the best sense.”

—RT Book Reviews on Colder Than Ice

“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven.… A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man

“[A] gripping story of small-town secrets. The suspense will keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.”

—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner on The Gingerbread Man

“[Kiss of the Shadow Man is a] crackerjack novel of romantic suspense.”

—RT Book Reviews

Deadly Obsession

Maggie Shayne

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Eileen Fallon, who has been my agent, my GPS system when I was lost, my wise adviser when I was confused, my steadfast supporter when I most needed one, and most important, my friend, now and always.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Flames were like pets. Hungry, devoted little pets that would do pretty much whatever you wanted them to do, as long as you treated them right. You had to show them, of course. Sort of steer them in the right direction. You had to give them plenty to eat, too. Like a dog that would do a trick in exchange for a tasty treat, tongues of fire would go just where you wanted them to with the help of strategically placed snacks. They were insatiable, the little demons. They would devour everything and everyone in their path, growing bigger and bigger with every morsel, until they became giant ravenous dragons. Until they ate everything available. And then they died, their life over, their purpose served. Their master satisfied.

The master, in this case, had spent two decades learning about the care and feeding of fire. It was easy to give birth to it. So many ways, so many clever, creative, concealed ways to do it. It had become a challenge to invent new methods over the years. Genius wasn’t too big a word to describe her.

This particular baby was about to be born from the basement up. It was a simple method, but a very effective one. A little hacksaw action on the natural gas pipeline, just inside the basement. A tiny transformer box with two bare wires touching, so it would spark as soon as the wireless signal was sent.

The timing, of course, was crucial. Turning that switch too soon, before the gas had time to build to the right concentration, would result in nothing. Or worse, a survivable fire. She couldn’t wait too long, either, or her targets might smell the gas and have the brains to get out of the house without investigating.

Fortunately, timing was something else she had perfected over years of practice. She’d gotten it wrong at her former lover Anthony’s house. She’d thrown the switch too soon. The concentration had been too low. The sparks had amounted to nothing. She’d had to wait until the gas had overcome him and his wife before slipping back inside to retrieve the device. Dangerous, that. But she’d done it, and no one had been the wiser. They’d both died in their beds. A gas leak had been blamed. She hadn’t used a hacksaw on their pipes but had loosened a joint. It had looked accidental. No one knew, and Anthony had paid for choosing his wife over her.

But it hadn’t been anything like a fire. It had been anticlimactic. She’d almost wanted to place an anonymous 911 call and save them, so she could do the job right later on.

But she hadn’t. She knew when to cut her losses and move on.

She had to do it often, with men. Cut her losses and move on. So often that she took precautions now in new relationships. She used a false name and a disposable prepaid phone, and never told the truth about what she did or where she lived.

Someday she would find the man who would recognize her for the prize she was. Someday she would find one worthy of her. A heroic, handsome, selfless man who would fall head over heels in love, and put her ahead of everything and everyone else in his life.

She would find him.

Peter Rouse had not been the one. Like Anthony and so many since—like her own parents, so long ago—Peter had chosen others over her. His wife. And his kids. They’d already left him by then, to move into the two-story house half a block from where she now sat in a borrowed car. But he was determined to get them back.

She got out of the car, walked to the house in the darkness. It was a quiet neighborhood. No one noticed her. She angled into the backyard and moved to the casement window, crouching low.

Through binoculars, she’d watched as Rebecca had tucked her two kids—Jeffrey, who was eight years old and had his father’s eyes, and Rose, who was three—into their beds and walked back downstairs for a little quiet time. The whole neighborhood was in that quiet-before-bed phase of the evening. Watching their TV shows, reading their novels. No one paid attention to her. Not even a dog barked.

She picked up her small digital meter and pulled the dangling sensor out through a tiny hole she’d cut in the windowpane, then quickly smoothed a piece of duct tape over the opening. Then she checked the readout. The gas-to-air ratio in the basement had reached a beautiful 8:1. Oh, this was going to be something.

Dropping the device into a pocket, she walked quickly back to the car. Then she started the engine and put the car into Drive but kept her foot on the brake as she pressed the button on the remote.

There was a delicious moment between cause and effect, a moment lush with anticipation of the delight to come. The release. The birth. The precipice of a full-body orgasm.

And then it came, a newborn spark followed by the instant ignition of all that lovely gas. The baby gobbled it all up and grew so fast it exploded into a fireball. The roar reverberated way down deep in her belly, and the glow of it burned in the night like the flaming sword of an avenging angel.

And that’s what it was, in truth.

Shuddering in gut-deep pleasure, she released the brake and drove away.

1

So if the bullshit I wrote was true, then why the hell didn’t I practice what I made so much money preaching? You know, that whole “live in the moment” and “milk the joy out of every second of your life” bit.

I should. I knew I should. It was just a hell of a lot easier to tell other people what to do than to do it myself. Because, seriously, if I were giving advice to me—and I was, because my inner bitch never shuts the hell up—the conversation would go something like this:

Inner Bitch: “Say it back.”

Me: “I can’t say it back.”

IB: “Why the hell can’t you? He said it. He laid it right out there for you. He said, I love you. And what did you say back to him?”

Me, flooded with shame: “I said, ‘You’re shitting me.’”

IB: “Yeah. Real romantic.”

Me: “I was fucking surprised. Shocked. I wasn’t ready.”

IB: “No one’s ever ready, dumb-ass. You still have to say it back.”

Me: “It’s too late now. I let the moment pass.”

IB: “He’s waiting for you to say it back.”

Me: “Or maybe he’s changed his mind. He hasn’t said it again, after all.”

IB: “Why would he say it again? That would be like sticking his finger into a socket for the second time, hoping for a different result. Say it. Or you’re gonna lose him.”

Me: “I’m not gonna lose him.”

I glanced across the car at my favorite cop and silenced the imaginary conversation in my head. Actually, it wasn’t all that imaginary. My inner bitch and I had been having it over and over again since that night by the campfire a couple of weeks ago when I’d absolutely blown the chance to move this relationship up to the next level.

And I was sure there was no getting that moment back.

I was also sure that things had been a little awkward between Mason and me since then. My fault, I knew. I hadn’t responded the way I wished I had. But dammit, I was scared shitless to think of changing anything about this thing between the two of us. It was good. It was more than good. It was freakin’ amazing. It was bliss. Why fix what isn’t broken? Why move things to another place when the place they’re in is so damned wonderful? Why risk screwing it up? Why?

He looked at me, caught me staring. “What? Have I got fettuccine on my face?”

“No. You have gorgeous on your face. It’s all over you, in fact. Damn irritating.”

He smiled, flashing the dimple of doom. “Thanks.”

“De nada.”

Say it. Tell him. Just tell him. You can’t leave him hanging another minute.

I hated to admit it, but Inner Bitch was kinda right.

“So,” I said, as we rounded a corner, “Mason, um, I’ve been meaning to, uh, you know talk to you about—”

“Holy shit!” He hit the brakes so hard that my seat belt hurt me. Then he jerked the wheel, gunned the car to get us out of the road and hit the brakes again. I saw the flames, then the people standing around outside—one filming everything on his damn smartphone—and then Mason was getting out of the car and shouting at me to call 911 as he ran toward the chaos.

“Mason, wait, where the hell are you—” I jumped out of the car, too, phone to my ear, running after him. “Mason!”

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

“Um, house fire. Big one. Right off State Route 26 near Glenn Aubry.”

“Yes, help is on the way, ma’am.”

I clicked off and shoved the phone into my pocket, running now, despite my killer heels, because Mason hadn’t slowed down. Someone was screaming that there were kids trapped inside, and I wanted to punch them in the face, because there would be no stopping him now. Mason and kids was like me and...bulldogs.

Somehow I caught up to him and grabbed his arm from behind. Smoke stung my eyes and throat, and the heat was like a living thing. There was roaring and smoke, that acrid smell of burning stuff that wasn’t like any other smell. House fires didn’t smell like wood fires or campfires. They smelled like destruction.

He glanced back at me, removed my hand firmly, looked me right in the eyes and said, “I have to.”

“I know you do.” Dammit, dammit, dammit.

And then he was gone again, pulling his shirt up over his face and charging right through the front door, into the jaws of hell.

I swore it got hotter and wondered if that was because he’d just provided additional fuel.

You really should’ve told him.

“I know, Inner Bitch. I know.”

I stood there for what felt like a hundred and ten minutes but in truth was really only two. Fire trucks came screaming up. I ran over to the first one that stopped, jumped up on the running board and yanked the door open, startling the firefighters inside. “Hurry. My detective is in there!”

“Your—”

“Someone said there were kids inside. Detective Mason Brown went charging in to save them. Go get them out. Now.”

“We’ve got a cop inside!” the driver shouted to his fellows as he jumped out. By then more men were jumping out of the other trucks. Hoses had been unrolled and water was cranked on. They all started beating the hell out of the flames with their hoses. A couple of them, wearing so much gear I didn’t know how they could walk upright, ran inside.

I’d never seen anything like this fire. No matter how much water they put onto it, it kept burning, kept coming back to life, like one of those trick birthday candles you can’t blow out. The crowd had backed up into the street now. Neighbors in their bathrobes and slippers, some of them even barefoot, shaking their heads and muttering to each other, and hugging their kids close to them. I glimpsed them in my peripheral vision but couldn’t take my eyes off the front door. Flames were shooting from the roof and licking out from every window. I was way too close. My face felt like it was getting an extreme sunburn. Someone grabbed my arm and said I should move back, but I just jerked away from his touch and stared at that door.

“Universe, if you take him from me, I swear I’ll never write another word. Don’t you dare even think about—”

Then I saw him. Mason came stumbling out the front door with a limp, unmoving child in each arm, their heads bouncing against his shoulders. They were both bundled in blankets. He wasn’t. His whole face was black with soot and he dropped to his knees before he even got clear of the flaming wreck of a house, just at the bottom of the front steps. Firefighters surged around him. The first two took the kids, unmoving in their blankets, and the next two picked Mason up by either arm and carried him across the lawn. Someone shoved a gurney under him, and his bearers dropped him onto it as it trundled toward a waiting ambulance.

The crowd closed between us, but I fought my way through it to get to his side, elbowed myself up close, grabbed hold of his hand, and saw that the skin was peeling off it and sticking to mine. I sort of yelped and yanked my hand away, and swore and cried all at once. The EMTs were working quickly, putting an oxygen mask on him and then cutting away his shirt to reveal that his left arm was badly burned, and the flesh underneath was trying to come away with the ravaged fabric.

Oh, God, it looked awful! They draped a clean white cloth over his arm and started soaking it in bottles of sterile water. I’d lost track of the kids. I think they’d been put into the back of another ambulance, and I knew they were as surrounded by EMTs as Mason was. But I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving.

When one of the guys adjusted the oxygen mask, he smeared the black away from Mason’s cheek, and I realized it was soot, not charred skin, and almost sank to the ground in relief.

Someone grabbed me by the shoulders. “Easy, ma’am. Easy. Are you family?”

“Yeah.” I blinked. “No. Is he... God, is he...?”

“He’s alive. His vitals are good. Not great, but good. We’ve gotta get him into a burn unit. We’re gonna airlift him to Saint Joe’s. It’s the closest one. All right?”

“Airlift him?” Oh, God, it was bad. It was bad.

“Can you let his family know?”

Oh, God, the boys! And his mother. I nodded, mutely. “But I have to go with him.”

“You can’t, ma’am. We need room to work on him. If he has family, they’re gonna need your help more than he does. I promise, he’s in good hands.”

Already they were moving the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. I jerked free of the EMT and lunged toward Mason and leaned in close to his face, “I love you, too, Mason. I love you, too.”

But he couldn’t hear me. I’d waited too long. Dammit, I’d waited too long!

Then they peeled me off him and put him into the ambulance. It sped away screaming. I turned in a slow circle, not knowing what the hell to do next. I saw the ambulance with the children inside just as they closed the doors, but I had time enough to see them working on the kids. They must be alive, too, then.

Not so the body on the front lawn. The firemen who’d gone inside must have brought it out after Mason had emerged. It had a blanket over it. Too big to be a child. I hoped.

They were finally making progress beating down the flames. One of the firemen said something about gas, but I didn’t have time to listen. I had to go. I had to get to the boys, Mason’s nephews, who were at my place with Myrtle and my nieces.

Oh, Lord, how was I going to handle this?

I got into Mason’s oversize black Monte Carlo, his pride and joy. I had tears streaming from my eyes. I couldn’t let the kids see me like this. I didn’t know what to do. So I pulled my phone out of my pocket, stared at it for a long moment, and then I did the best thing I could think of.

I called my sister.

* * *

“Snap the fuck out of it!”

I’d been in midrant, complete with hiccuping sobs, when my big sister, who never even said damn, brought my runaway emotions to a sudden halt.

“Do I have your attention?” Sandra asked.

“You do.”

“Okay, first. Set the phone on your lap and put me on speaker so you don’t get killed, okay?”

Apparently she’d discerned from my initial projectile word vomit that I was driving while having a complete breakdown and talking on the phone. I did what she said and paid attention to the road. If I wrecked Mason’s ride he’d never forgive me. If he lived.

God, let him live.

“I’m going to meet you at your place, Rachel. But before you get there, I want you to pull yourself together. Right now.”

“But I don’t know how bad it is. I don’t even know if he’s going to—”

“Yeah, and you know what? Neither do those boys.”

Cold water in the face might have been as effective. But I doubted it.

“They’re kids. Their father is dead, and their mother is in a maximum-security nuthatch. At this moment, you are all they have, Rachel. You need to step up for this. It’s important.”

That brought me to full attention. I sat up straighter, and my tears dried up like they’d never been there. “I don’t know what to do for them, sis.”

“You go in there and you tell them the truth in the most positive manner possible. Live your books for once. Tell them you’ve got no reason to think he won’t be just fine, and make sure you sound confident when you do. If you look scared or uncertain, they’re gonna be terrified. They need a mother figure. So talk to them. Reassure them, and most of all, make sure they know that you’re there for them, no matter what happens to their uncle.”

I blinked hard, because those words hit me deep. I did not want to be a mother figure to those kids. I’d said it over and over.

“You would, wouldn’t you, Rache?”

“What?”

“Be there for the boys if anything happened to Ma—”

“Yeah. I would.” And it was the truth, even if I had only just realized it. I was shocked, to be honest. I’d become way more attached to the dynamic duo than I’d been aware of. Josh was like Myrtle’s freakin’ littermate, and Jeremy was Mason’s mini-me, with a fair amount of teenage angst (most of it hard-earned) thrown in.

“Then you have to let them know that.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be there by the time you arrive.”

“Okay.”

“Now hang up and call his mother.”

“Aw, jeez, Sandra—”

“Tell her not to drive. I’ll send Jim to pick her up and drive her in. Tell her he’ll be there soon. Just as fast as he can.”

“Okay.”

“Hang in there, sis.”

I nodded hard, disconnected, thanked my lucky stars for a big sister who knew how to talk to me and called Mason’s mother. She took it pretty well, I thought, and I did a great job holding it together as I tried to reassure her, and told her my brother-in-law was on his way to pick her up.

And then I was home, rolling slowly through the wrought-iron gates I’d left open and along the driveway up to the my house. My haven. I shut off the engine, got out, then stood there a second looking at my front door like I was looking at my own grave. I did not want to walk in there and blow those kids’ lives to hell and gone. How much more could they take?

Then Sandra’s minivan pulled in behind me. The headlights shut off, and she was out and hugging me hard before I even took another breath.

It made me choke up when she hugged me, so I pushed her away, wiped at my eyes, looked into hers. “How’s my face?”

She took a tissue out of her purse and dabbed some smudged makeup away. “You’re good. You can do this.”

Nodding, I marched up the front steps, opened the door and stepped inside.

Joshua, Jeremy, and Sandra’s daughter Misty were playing video games on the sofa. Jere and Misty sat close enough so their elbows were bumping. Ah, young love. My other niece, Christy, who I think was trying out for the role of the bad twin lately, sat in a chair off to one side, her nose glued to her smartphone.

Myrtle was the only one who noticed we’d come in, and she came barreling across the living room unerringly and bashed me in the shins with her forehead, which was her typical greeting. I yelped, because bulldogs have skulls made of lead, and the kids finally noticed us there, paused their game and turned our way.

Jeremy met my eyes and went a shade paler. “What happened? Where’s Uncle Mason?”

I drew a breath. “Your uncle was hurt a little while ago. He’s going to be okay, though. They’re taking him to the hospital. We’re all going to meet him there, okay?”

Joshua blinked slowly and didn’t say a word. He looked terrified. They both got off the sofa, moving toward us.

Jeremy said, “Hurt how?”

I swallowed my fear and tried to feel confident. “There was a fire.” Be straight with them, said my sister’s voice, echoing in my head. “There were kids inside, and you know your uncle. He ran in to get them out. And he did. But it looked like he got burned a little, and he probably took a few whiffs of smoke in the process.”

Jeremy nodded, joining us near the front door. “Let’s go, then. Josh, c’mon.”

Josh moved slower, like he was sleepwalking. He had this shell-shocked look, and his eyes were wide and unblinking, and kind of vacant.

I crossed to him, put my hands on his shoulders. “Josh, you don’t have to be afraid. He’s gonna be okay.”

His lips trembled. His tears welled. “Wh-what if he’s not?”

“I refuse to even consider that,” I told him. Myrt was at his feet now, affectionately butting his hands where they hung at his sides and getting no response. “I’ll tell you this much, though,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m sticking with you two. The both of you. No matter what.”