Joker in the Pack (Romantic Suspense, Completed, Watty Winner)

Chapter 35

The sirens drew closer, and before long, firemen were running everywhere. Hoses criss-crossed the ground like sleeping snakes, all over the garden, to the hydrant on the road, and even into the swimming pool next-door-but-one. And I was right—Lilac Cottage couldn't be saved.

"This is going to be damage control, I'm afraid," one of the firemen told Nye. "At least you got out safely."

"That's all that matters."

Easy for him to say. He hadn't been left homeless.

The police arrived soon after, followed by a couple of ambulances, and Nye insisted I get checked out even though he refused to be poked and prodded himself.

"I'm fine, Liv. I only dropped one floor out of a building. It happens."

How he could be so blasé about it? Me, I couldn't stop trembling.

While I sat in the back of the ambulance, Nye headed to the side of the garden where his group of black-clad ninjas had congregated. Every couple of minutes, another shadow appeared and joined them. As soon as the paramedics let me go, I hurried towards them, their silhouettes lit up by the dying flames.

"Looks like things have escalated," Max said in the understatement of the decade.

"He might not have been trying to kill Olivia before, but he definitely is now," said another.

"The fucker won't get away with it." Nye's voice came out of the darkness, and I stumbled towards it on shaky legs.

"The problem is that whatever he wanted to keep hidden's gone up in flames," Max said.

I made it to Nye and gripped his hand before collapsing onto the remains of Aunt Ellie's old sofa next to him, bodily fluids be damned. Trivialities didn't matter so much anymore, not when my home had just become its own funeral pyre.

Nye bent to give me a soft kiss and tuck a jacket around my shoulders. "You're okay. That's all that matters."

"We could have died."

"But we didn't." He straightened again. "How the hell did anybody get close enough to do this?"

A man from the outside security detail shifted from foot to foot. "We saw movement at the end of the drive, and he must have snuck behind us when we went to investigate."

Nye muttered a string of curses. "Where are Hazell and Hannigan?"

"Hannigan's in town, waiting at the taxi rank. Still checking on Hazell."

So, it wasn't Warren. That cheered me up a little bit.

Nye, not so much. "If this was Larry, the next time he gets close to a fire, he'll be warming himself in front of Satan."

"The surveillance team followed him back to the shelter and parked up outside. He didn't come out the front, but he's not in his bed either."

Nye gave the corner of the sofa a vicious kick with one of his steel-toed boots, and the judder ran through me.

"Find the bastard. I don't care how many men it takes. If the guys upstairs have a problem with it, tell them to call me."

Nye's stress transferred to me, and I began chewing a nail. Dammit—I'd been so good about that for the last few weeks. I forced myself to grip the edge of the cushion instead, but my fingers couldn't keep still, and before I knew it, I'd pulled out a pile of stuffing. It floated around my feet in the breeze like a pile of fluffy snow. I should have stopped, but the motion was soothing, like popping bubble wrap or the rocking of a patient with no hope of escape from the asylum.