Free Fire Raiser by Melanie Rawn Page B

‘pussy-whipped,’ anyway?”
    “Whatever gave you the impression that I was a nice girl?”
    “Just what I wanted to hear,” he announced, and slid his fingers up her thigh.
    Holly laughed, then slowed the car and pulled over to the side of the road—but not for purposes of fooling around. Just as the fire truck roared past, Evan’s cell phone played the opening guitar riff of “Life in the Fast Lane.” He snagged the phone out of his jacket pocket with his right hand while his left delved beneath the seat for the flasher he insisted she keep in the car.
    “Don’t you scratch up my dashboard with that thing,” she warned. “Or scrape the paint off the roof with it, either.”
    “You want I should roll down the window and hold it outside while you’re doin’ eighty miles an hour?” He flipped the switch and wedged the flasher against the windshield while hitting the button on his phone. “Yeah, I know there’s a fire—the truck just went past. Where at?”
    Fifteen minutes later, Evan was surveying the last smoke rising from the Pocahontas County Lutheran Church. Holly stood nearby, sneezing quietly into her coat sleeve. Jamey Stirling had been there to meet them, having been in his courthouse office when the fire department got the call and sent the engine. “Shit,” was all he’d said.
    This fire totally screwed any tentative theories about the targets being only Baptist churches. The only upside was that this one had been spotted early, and the damage was confined to a closet where the vestments were kept. When the fire chief gave them the okay, they poked around a bit by flashlight, then decided to tape it all off and wait for morning. Evan sternly forbade himself to think about the klieg lights and crime scene unit and dozen officers looking for witnesses that he would have had at his disposal in New York.
    “Nothing?” Holly asked when the two men trudged back to the Beemer.
    “Nothing,” Jamey confirmed. “Less than nothing. If there’s a quantifiable amount that’s less than less than nothing, this is it.”
    “I’m really starting to get pissed off,” Evan remarked. “Getting pissed off is bad for my blood pressure.”
    “Come home with us, Jamey, have a Scotch, and we’ll talk about it,” Holly said. “Did you get dinner? I can make you a sandwich—”
    “Make your own sandwich,” Evan advised the young man. “Trust me on this one, Jamey.”
    A little while later—Evan having firmly replaced the flasher beneath the seat, telling Holly that she’d had her fun for the night driving really, really fast—he canted a curious glance at her. “Come home with us? Make him a sandwich? Is it middle age, motherhood, or frustration about not having a book to write that’s making you so domestic these days?”
    “Maybe I just like checking out Jamey’s ass.”
    “Oh. Okay.” He settled back in the seat, waiting. Sure enough, not two miles had gone by before she squirmed and glanced over at him. “What?” he asked innocently.
    “Are you trying to prove how unjealous you can be?”
    “Were you trying to provoke me into being jealous?”
    All at once she laughed and leaned over to rumple his hair. “Point taken, lover man.”

Five

    LACHLAN ESCORTED LOUVENA COX into the ballroom, beckoned to the nearest waiter bearing champagne, and left her happily in possession of a bottle of Korbel while he sought out his host. He’d met Bernhardt Weiss four times, and liked him about as much as he liked Westmoreland.
    The first time had been right after the purchase of the property, and Weiss, with a thoughtful regard for decorum, had stopped by on his round of county officials to introduce himself. Jesse McNichol had still been sheriff back then, so Lachlan just sat back and watched, drinking coffee and nodding every so often, as Cousin Jesse made nice. A few words had been said about New York, and a few more words about Evan’s lovely and talented wife, and then the man departed.
    The