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Once more, she pressed her lips together. Not a denial. Or those lips would be on him.
The limo came to a full stop. Would Royal have the sense to give them more time? Probably not. But Beau needed more. “You talk to killers because you are trying to understand your own dark urges.”
“I don’t have dark urges.”
His hand rose. His index finger tapped against his lips. Come on, sweetheart. You know what I get.
Her chin lifted and she…darted forward to press a very chaste kiss to his lips. Liar, liar.
But it was a start. “You want vengeance, sweetheart,” he rumbled. “Nothing wrong with that. Some prick burns my home down around me, and you can absolutely bet I’d want to incinerate his world.”
No kisses. No lies.
He heard the faint click of her swallow. “No one could ever find the arsonist in New Orleans. The cops looked. I looked. And the arsons stopped. When the fires stopped, the investigations stopped.”
No fires equaled a cold case. Luckily, he knew some people who freaking lived for cold cases. And he would get to those people, soon enough. “You and I both know the pyro could have—probably had—just moved on from the city. Maybe he got spooked when you escaped the fire. Maybe he needed you to burn and you didn’t.” Now his hands were the ones to clench. “So he fled. But guys like him don’t stop. I bet you learned that in all your chats with killers.”
“They have to be made to stop.” Her gaze darted to the side of the limo. To the window. “Compulsions usually drive them, and you can’t ignore a compulsion. Not when it is too strong.”
The limo had parked right in front of the hotel’s gleaming, double doors. Royal stood just beyond the window. Waiting, not interrupting. For the moment. He was also keeping the eager doormen back.
“I tried to find crimes that I could connect to him in other places,” Avalon revealed. “But most arsons—it’s hard to prove arson in the first case! Lots of arsons go undetected. And the US is huge. There are so many fires each year.”
“Over a million.”
A flash of surprise came and went on her face. What? Did she truly think he hadn’t investigated, too?
“One of the things I learned early on in my career is that serial killers have signatures. This guy? He killed three people in New Orleans. It was never just about the fire. It was about death, too. He moved that bookcase in front of my door. He trapped me in my room.”
Beau remembered shoving the bookcase. That heavy, freaking bookcase.
“I didn’t realize the window had been nailed shut. Not until you told me recently. I thought it was just stuck. It was an old house, after all. Historic. Things in old houses get stuck and warped all the time.”
“I felt the nails.”
Her lashes fluttered. “In order for the nails to be there, he had to be in my house before that night. It…it was the sound of the bookcase grinding over the floor that woke me, you see. I heard it. The sound scared me, and I woke up. No way in the world I would have missed him being in my room and nailing my window shut.”
Beau had realized the same thing long ago. “It was a premeditated attack.”
“It was personal. My bedroom. Me. He wanted me to die. Someone hated me so much that they trapped me in my room and wanted me to burn alive.”
Some sadistic bastard will pay.
“I’ve been hunting him.” Avalon’s quiet confession. “But I can’t find him.”
“You won’t stop until you do.” Something he’d suspected about her for a long time.
“I won’t stop.”
Neither would he.
The limo door opened. “We’re here,” Royal announced. “Been here a while. But I was trying to give you time to, uh, finish up. If you needed to do that.”
“Shut the door, Royal,” he ordered. “We aren’t finished.”
“Good for you. Glad to see dreams are coming true. I’ll just tell these assholes honking behind my ride to calm the hell down.” Royal shut the door.
“Does he…” Avalon’s voice lowered. “Does he think we’re having sex?”
