Excerpt © 2006 Elizabeth Sinclair

PROLOGUE

“I’d rather go through root canal without novocaine than go back to Florida,” Rachel Lansing said fiercely into the phone. Knowing why she left Florida in the first place, she was unable to believe that a man who professed to be her friend was asking this of her.

“Rachel,” AJ Branson, the Orange Grove Police Department’s Chief of Detectives sighed. “I know I’m asking a lot–”

“A lot? You have no idea.” She swallowed hard and fought for a long time to push back hellish memories of another place, another time, another life. A life she’d believed perfect until– “AJ, I left Orange Grove to put that part of my life to rest, not to mention save my sanity. I have a new life here in Atlanta. Why would I come back?”

“Because this involves kids,” AJ said simply. “No one I know loves kids more than you do and no one I know can profile an arsonist like you.”

Kids.

Maggie.

Damn him.

Rachel rose from her couch and paced her small Atlanta apartment’s living room.

No! Dammit!

She massaged her forehead in an effort to push back the insistent memories rising from the darkest recesses of her mind. But even as she denied them admittance, images of her tall, handsome husband holding their blonde little girl as she clutched her worn, patchwork teddy bear, seeped into her mind.

Oh, God! Maggie. . . . My sweet baby girl.

Pain sliced through her heart, nearly drawing her double. Her knees dipped, threatening to collapse completely. She gripped the arm of the couch and took a deep breath.

Her white-knuckled fingers pressed the cordless phone tightly to her ear. “Dammit, AJ, that was a low blow.”

“I’m sorry as I can be, Rachel, but in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m desperate, honey.” A pause. “You know I wouldn’t ask you to put yourself through this if I didn’t think it was important.”

Why hadn’t she gone out for dinner instead of coming home? If she had, she would have missed AJ’s call, missed him stirring up–

“There are other people qualified to do this. Why me?” She tried but failed to keep the anguish out of her voice.

Another pause, then he spoke again, his voice quiet, earnest and firm. “This bastard is about as elusive as any arsonist I’ve come up against. We’ve tried for six months to find the answers, but we can’t. I need an arson profiler who knows the ropes. One who can climb inside the torch’s mind. That’s you.”

A long paused followed during which Rachel remembered the exhilaration of the hunt, the adrenalin rush of piecing together illusive clues like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and the satisfaction of finally nailing the arsonist and putting him behind bars. Nothing in her present life could compare to the challenge of profiling, of learning the intricacies of how a criminal mind worked and then out-thinking him.

All this reminiscing magnified just how much she hated her present job as a secretary in a construction company’s office.

However, given the choice, she’d take the boredom of ordering 2 x 4's any day to reliving the agony of waking up in the middle of the night to find her home going up in flames and her baby gone. When compared to the painful reminders of her only child being kidnaped and killed and a husband who no longer loved her, arrogant contractors were infinity easier to cope with.

“I’m sorry, AJ. That part of my life is over. You’ll have to find yourself another profiler.”

“Are you sure?”

A pregnant pause followed his question. Was she sure? Could she turn her back on those kids? Could she step back in time and face everything she’d left behind, step back into a lifestyle filled with memories too brutal to bear? The pain in her heart answered for her.

“Yes. I’m sure,” she said, but even she knew her voice lacked conviction. “Find someone else.”

Another paused stretched Rachel’s nerves to the breaking point. AJ exhaled a long breath, as if he’d made a decision that didn’t set well with him. “I called you because I need someone with an investment in finding this bastard.”

She went stone still. Her fingers tightened on the phone. Sweat broke out on her forehead. “Investment?”

“I didn’t want to tell you this over the phone, but this recent series of arsons has some definite similarities to your apartment fire.”

An icy chill washed over her from head to toe. “My fire?” She wasn’t sure if she’d said it or thought it.

The line remained silent except for her accelerated breathing. Then AJ cleared his throat as if removing a knot of emotion from it. That didn’t surprise her. Maggie’s kidnaping and the collapse of her marriage to Luke had hit AJ hard.

“There are a lot of similarities, Rachel. I think it’s the same arsonist, and I thought you’d want the privilege of helping to collar this son of a bitch.”

Baptism In Fire © 2006 by Elizabeth Sinclair. All rights reserved. Reproduction with the permission of the publisher, Harlequin Books S.A.