LITMIR.BIZ

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back a sob, Rachel pressed the mute button on the remote. She threw it on the coffee table and headed into the bedroom, leaving the voiceless, female anchor on the TV screen resembling a bad mime.

      It had taken Rachel a long time to concede to the belief that her beautiful little girl would never come home again, never laugh at her daddy’s silly jokes, never draw those unrecognizable pictures of houses and cows, never drift off to sleep while Rachel sang her favorite lullaby—

      Unbidden, the words of the lullaby played through her head. Hush, little Maggie, don’t say a word—

      Grabbing the edge of the dresser, Rachel bent double, clutching her heart. Would the pain never go away? The emptiness never leave her arms or her heart? How does a mother forget a part of her?

      Maggie’s birth had been the most momentous thing that had ever happened to Rachel. When the nurse laid that tiny being in her arms, their daughter had completed the circle of love she and Luke had found. Rachel had marveled that the fiery passion she and Luke shared could have produced something so small, so perfect, so delicate. Luke adored their baby with the same intensity he applied to his work. Together, the three of them had become a family, sharing their love.

      After Maggie’s birth, the love Luke and Rachel had for each other had grown by leaps and bounds until she was sure their lives could only get better. But she’d been very wrong. Ironically, all it took to shatter their happiness was a macabre twist of fate and one match.

      Exhaustion pressing down on her, Rachel shook loose of the memories and began undressing for a shower. In the mirror above the dresser, she noted that the necklace she wore constantly had snagged in a strand of her chestnut hair. She disentangled the hair and allowed the chain to drop back against her skin. Staring in the mirror, Rachel picked up the medallion hanging from the chain. The artificial light from the bedside lamp caught in the grooves of the Oriental engraving on the gold disk. While in Japan to escort a prisoner back to the States, Luke had bought it for her. He’d told her it was the Chinese symbol for protection and, when she needed him, she had only to rub it and say his name. The whole idea had been foolish fun, but she had never taken the necklace off, not even after the divorce. During the worst times, after she’d ceased opposition to the certainty of Maggie’s death, just fingering it had provided her with a small sense of comfort, but no matter how often she had said his name, Luke had never come.

      With the pad of her thumb, she stroked the familiar squiggle, noting that the edges of the design had become smooth and rounded, unlike the sharp carving it had been when she first got it. She thought of Luke, his infectious laughter, his charm, his magnetism, and wondered if this little hunk of gold had the power to protect her from him as well.

      Showered, shampooed and feeling much better about the job she’d agreed to do, Rachel slipped into jeans and a pale green T-shirt emblazoned with Puppy Love Is Forever, flopped onto the sofa and opened the folder. Turning the victims’ photos facedown and moving them to the side, she began to go over the detectives’ narrative reports. Using a yellow legal pad she’d pulled from her briefcase, she divided the top sheet into two columns and headed them Similarities and Differences.

      Rachel had just gotten started filling in the columns when her cell phone rang. She stiffened, then remembered she hadn’t given Luke her number. Digging through the congestion of gas and credit-card receipts, loose change and gum wrappers she’d stuffed into her briefcase during the drive south, she found the cell phone and flipped it open.

      “Hello.”

      “Rachel?” Luke’s voice sent a warm ripple through her.

      “How did you get my number?” But he didn’t need to answer. She knew. A.J. When she and Luke divorced, it had been as hard on A.J. as it had them. She was sure this was his subtle attempt at mending the relationship.

      “I’m sworn to secrecy,” he said, a hint of amusement in his tone.

      “Well, you can tell A.J. that I’m glad it wasn’t my virginity I trusted him to guard.”

      Once the words were out, Rachel was shocked at how easily she had slipped back into the habit of exchanging quips with Luke.

      Would it be just as easy to slip into other things with him? Keeping an emotional distance between herself and the man she’d once loved beyond logic was imperative. She sat straighter.

      He laughed. “Yeah. Where we’re concerned, he never got high marks for keeping a secret.”

      An instant replay of the evening A.J. let it slip that Luke had an engagement ring for her crossed her mind. A.J. had waged quite a battle with himself, trying to make up his mind if he should stay and be a part of the big moment or if he should leave them to their privacy. Privacy had finally won out, but not before A.J. had inadvertently blurted out that he couldn’t be happier that his two favorite people had decided to tie the knot. She smiled.

      A long silence hung on the phone. Why had Luke called? Just to show her he had the number?

      “I’m going over the notes A.J. gave me. Was there something you wanted?”

      “I just wanted to give you my cell-phone number.” He recited the number, and she wrote it across the tope of the legal pad.

      “Anything else?” she asked, eager to get him off the phone before she obeyed her urge to see him, to talk to him about this big step she’d taken and ask him to please not fight her on it. Silence. She doodled absently while waiting for him to say something.

      Then, “Did you eat dinner yet?”

      “No,” she blurted a little too sharply, trying to kill the urge to say she’d love to have dinner with him.

      He chuckled, deep and sexy. “Even grouches have to eat,” he said, reminding her of the first thing he’d ever said to her. She’d gone with him to dinner that night and every night after that. Their entire courtship had been like that, fast, furious and filled with passion and laughter. Then—

      No, dammit, she refused to mourn their marriage. She had enough to mourn without adding that. She stiffened her spine.

      “I’m not hungry. I’ll fix something later.” She rarely hungered for anything these days, except what she couldn’t have. Like her daughter in her arms.

      And Luke? a little voice prompted.

      Before he could say anything more, she heard the unmistakable interruption that signaled an incoming call. “I have to take this, Rachel. I’ll talk to you later. Don’t forget to eat,” he admonished, then hung up.

      Rachel stared at the dead phone. An acute loneliness washed over her. She folded the phone and laid it on the coffee table. Not until she felt the cold metal on her fingertips did she realize she’d begun stroking the Oriental pendant. When she looked down at the legal pad where she’d written his number, she saw that she had doodled hearts all around it.

      Hours passed, and she’d made good progress on assigning the similarities and differences she’d found in the notes. Under the column headed Differences, she’d listed: marital status, hair color and restraints. Under Similarities, she’d written: chloroform, charcoal lighter, victims alone at the time of the fire, all died from smoke inhalation, no signs of sexual assault, one child, each had a Bible placed under her.

      Since starting, she’d added a third column to the paper, headed up with one word—Mine. All the similarities she’d listed also appeared under her column. The only differences were that she’d been married and the others had either been separated or divorced at the time of the fires, and she had not been alone.

      The common thread that captured her attention was the Bible. Every serial arsonist had a signature. It could be anything from the brand and kind of accelerant they used to the type of incendiary device and where it was planted. This one evidently had religion and, since religious motives were a twisted version of the arsonist’s beliefs, it could make him one of the hardest to catch.

      She was studying the columns, thinking about the profile of the arsonist, when the cell phone rang again. Rachel

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