Page 16 of His Fiery Mate

Rick turned her order into the kitchen, gave her a Diet Coke, and then took out other orders as they came up. When hers was ready, he served it to her with a flourish. She took a bite, closed her eyes and moaned.

“Okay, if I end up in Kodiak, I am going to have to limit myself to one meal a day in here. This is delicious.”

“Glad you like it.”

“Speaking of my being here at the diner…”

Rick turned around with a grin that was mischievous and welcoming. “Were we?”

Melisandre shook her head. “You know what’s coming, don’t you?”

“I know what I hope is coming. Joe tells me the money is to be made in short-term rentals, and he could be right. He’s a whiz at financial things. But I’m sort of hoping you and Tanner will want to rent the place upstairs.”

“Could we? I know he’s renting a place from Nicole, and I don’t want to take away that revenue…”

“Don’t you worry about Nicole. She took pity on Tanner when he first showed up, and she’s liked having him there, but my guess is she could find someone else to take his place with no difficulty. So, if you want to lease the upstairs, we can figure out what’s fair.”

“Sounds good to me. Don’t worry about the Tanner thing,” she said leaning forward. “It’s not real.”

“I don’t know that Tanner thinks that, but I’ll leave it for the two of you to figure out.”

“Either way, I’d like to stay. I really like being here, and my lease in Anchorage is up next month, so it’s pretty perfect timing.”

Once she’d eaten, she headed upstairs to her place—she loved thinking of it that way—and settled down to work. Before driving out to the school fire, she’d logged onto the AIU’s mainframe computer, entered a lot of statistics and data she had been compiling and then asked it to find any comparable arsons, any similarities and contrasts between the Kodiak fires, as well as any patterns it could spot. She didn’t really expect the system to find anything so was surprised when it did.

It didn’t seem to match any other arsons, which tended to rule out the possibility of a professional arsonist, but it found a definite pattern among the most recent fires and a link back to some of the fires she had found from two years ago.

Her phone rang and she smiled when she recognized Tanner’s number. “Hey, you. How are you?”

“Me? I’m fine. Why?”

“That fire this morning was pretty gnarly. I know some firefighters get really jazzed up, and some are just wiped.”

“I start at the revved-up point, but once I’ve got my team back at the station and everything squared away, I kind of hit a wall and slide down into a puddle on the floor.”

“Good to know.”

“The chief said your boss asked him about you moving here.”

“Yeah. Don’t feel pressured by that. From the time Rick showed me this place, I started thinking of maybe moving here. It’s a lot cheaper than Anchorage, but I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to trap you.”

“I don’t, but I’m glad you’re staying. You said to call when I was getting ready to wind it up for the day.”

“If you want to wait until tomorrow, we can.”

“Not unless you do.”

“No. I actually got back some interesting findings. I don’t know if you’re going to like them, but the mainframe in Anchorage pretty much confirms all of the recent fires are connected, as are a few going back a couple of years.”

“No chance of a professional?”

“I don’t think so. None of the linked fires match anything other than each other.”

“Okay. You ordered last night, why not let me order tonight?”

“You got it. By the way I had that heart attack-inducing omelet Rick said you liked…”

“And?”

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