Page 20 of Catching Fire

“Contacts.”

“They look real.” Kalan was in her face, though Marina was handling getting inspected pretty well.

“They have to.” She looked at the four of them, the conversation turning away from her and Sebastian’s past, from hair dye and colored contact lenses. “I’m the bait. If he figures out it’s contact lenses, I don’t know what he’ll do.”

Seline’s heart pounded in her chest. “That can’t be safe! We’ve all seen what he’s done.”

There was nothing okay about this.

Marina offered a soothing hand, as though just touching her arm could calm her down. Oddly enough, it did. “I can’t tell you everything, but it’s a joint venture with the FBI. I’m being tracked, so you don’t have to worry about me.”

But Seline did. It was bad enough that he was killing random people in association with what he was doing to her. If he hurt someone she knew, that would be too much.

“I’m Wendy Buck. I’m your new best friend.” She looked to Maggie. “Yours, too. We are going to do a handful of things together over the next few days, and then become good friends.”

It felt odd to have her friendships dictated, but nothing about this was normal.

Marina continued. “You’re dating Kalan.”

It was just a pronouncement, and that was it, the Redemption PD and the FBI had decided her love life. Before she could protest, Marina added more.

“It doesn’t matter if you really date or not, but we are going out on a triple date this weekend. My boyfriend will be another cop. We’re all friends.”

They were all nodding along. Something about having a plan felt better. Seline was a chemist, not a criminal investigator. Give her a formula and she could balance it. Give her a classroom and she’d make them love the periodic table. But pitting her against a serial killer was out of hermillieu.

“I’m moving in across the street. The Gutierrez family—” She pointed toward the window as though Seline would know them. “—is out of town for at least the next six weeks.”

Dieu! Six weeks?

But she could handle it. She wasn’t even playing the role of “bait.” So she nodded and tried to listen.

“They've agreed to let me sublet their home.”

Now Marina walked up to Seline directly and looked her in the eye. “I'm not just your new best friend. I'm part of your protection detail. And I'm your decoy.”

Seline looked the woman up and down. She’d made quite the transformation and she was putting herself at risk. All to catch a killer thatneededto be caught.

She couldn’t say no.

But she looked back and forth between her friends. They caught each other's eyes for a moment as everyone scrambled to keep up and make the right decision.

So Seline turned back to the officer who was offering to take the biggest risk. She asked, “Do you think it will work?”

Chapter Thirteen

“Ithink I'm going to have a heart attack,” the woman announced as Kalan and Luke arrived at her front porch.

She was small, white-haired, frail, and ornery. She was smoking a cigarette while a nasal canula snaked it's clear plastic tubing to nose prongs. She was sitting on the step, next to an oxygen tank on its own little dolly. Kalan went on high alert as he and Luke stopped dead halfway up the sidewalk.

Putting his hand up to motion ‘stop’, Kalan said, “Ma'am, I'm sorry. We're gonna need you to put out that cigarette.” He said it as calmly as he could, thinking that a heart attack would be the least of her problems if she blew herself up first. The tank said “no open flame” on the huge warning sticker he could see from where he stood.

This was supposed to be a medical call, not fire.

She took two more drags on the cigarette as she looked between the two men. Then finally said, “Fine!” and stubbed the thing out on the step beside her. “Better now?”

Though she asked it to be sarcastic, Luke answered honestly. “Yes, it is.”

Kalan felt his too-rapid heartbeat begin to slow. Hell, she could have blown them all up and, chances were, she did this every day in her own living room. As Luke approached her, Kalan stepped to the side and hit his comm to tell the chief what he’d seen. They could note that this address had O2 tanks for future safety reference.

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