Page 4 of Catching Fire

He easily saw over her head because she was quite petite, and he wasn't. Behind her, the others raised eyebrows, silently asking what his relationship with the hot blonde was. But there was nothing between them, though he might wish otherwise. If he was smart, he would change that tomorrow. Today, there was too much work to do and she was late for her meeting.

“I'm glad you're okay,” she was repeating it as she ignored a series of dings and bells from her phone.

He looked down at her, still wrapped around him.

Shyly, she seemed to realize where she was, and only pulled out her phone to say, “My messages are blowing up since I got out into the hallway.”

As she turned away from him, he realized she seemed so petite because she was barefoot and her shoes were still in the elevator.Dammit, he thought, he should have brought them out with him.

“I'll see about getting your shoes.” He said it but she was frowning at her phone, paying no attention to him at all.

“Maggie?” she asked, putting the phone to her ear. “What's so important? I was stuck in an elevator with one of your firefighter friends.”

Oh, shit. This was Maggie's friend, the chemist she talked about! He hadn’t expected to run into her here in Lincoln, and he grinned at how lucky he was that the woman who’d just thrown her arms around him lived in his small hometown.

But as he watched, Seline’s face went white.

“He what? … Do you think I'm in trouble? … No, no. I’m safe. I'm here with the firefighters right now. I’m putting you on speaker.” Seline looked up at Kalan and the others still standing behind him.

“Hey Maggie,” Kalan offered, his concern growing with the fear on Seline’s face.

Maggie's voice was nearly frantic. “The FBI just called me and I'm not supposed to tell anyone. But I have to tell Seline, and I guess now I’m telling you. It's been five months that William Treat Sanders has been in the wind. The agents are confident that he's the Blue River killer and theywereconfident he was gone.” The words tumbled over each other, coming out too quickly, but all the firefighters knew Maggie. She was their volunteer once a week. So no one interrupted her.

“They just confirmed it to me. The new victim they found this morning, matches his profile. The body is probably three or four days old.”

Seline was the one who asked out loud what Kalan was wondering. “Are they sure?”

Kalan wondered if Seline knew just how much she looked like the BRK’s victims, but he didn’t get a chance to ask. Maggie confirmed his worst fear. “They are certain. The Blue River Killer is back and no one knows where he is.”

Chapter Three

Seline stood in her lab at the university. She’d come in today to put in an appearance and let her department chair see that she was here and working. Because she was here, she was running the experiment that might just blow up.

Her home lab couldn’t handle it if this one went wrong. Besides, it was the first home she’d ever bought, she loved the view, and the gingerbread trim, and she was determined not to blow it up. But for now, she was in the uni lab, staring at the columns in her lab notebook and tapping her pencil.

She was also trying to decide exactly how worried she should be about the Blue River Killer.

Maggie was concerned and felt bad, which made sense. Maggie had brought Seline up to date on the La Vista Rapist and Blue River Killer information. Some of it Maggie said hadn’t been released to the public, but she’d felt the need to tell Seline.

But she’d locked her doors, and she wasn’t going to parties or bars … and she had to get this formula configured. She was close.

Seline quadruple checked. If this blew up, it would not reflect well on her petition for tenure. But maybe she could spin it … or maybe just not blow it up.

Firing up her Bunsen burner, she snapped on a pair of gloves and began to line up her chemicals. They were organized alphabetically in a variety of containers depending on whether they reacted to air or absorbed water or such. She pulled a pale-yellow powder from the shelf and her brain veered again.

Maggie told her that the latest victim had been found the night before, about seven miles up the Big Blue River from where it passed by Redemption. The body was partially submerged at the water's edge, just like the others. Whatever the other identifying information was, Maggie hadn’t known, but she did say the FBI had confirmed that it was the work of the BRK. This victim had been female, but they'd all been blond haired and most of them blue eyed.Just like her.

But—like the other victims—this one had disappeared when she'd been out partying. The last place she'd been seen had been a bar, which she'd left after eleven on Thursday night, Maggie said.

Though Seline understood Maggie’s worry that she matched the typecasting perfectly—maybe aside from being French and a little bit older than his usual victims—she certainly didn't exhibit any of the dangerous behaviors the man targeted.

The problem was that he was already stealing her time … even if he hadn’t targeted her at all.

But he wouldn’t take her from here. And she had work to do!Dieu, she had extra work because she could not afford to miss a deadline now that she’d missed the meeting.

Forcing her attention back to the task at hand, she picked up a beaker and checked it for cleanliness. Though she cleaned them all herself, no one was infallible, and a good chemist always checked when they were done, and before they started.

She measured and diluted her acid and double checked it with litmus paper. She noted the shade of pink and was pretty much able to read it by sight, but still she held it up against the reference strip just to be sure. Moving down on the counter, she turned around and pulled another flask and once again inspected it before setting it and another down on the counter.

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