LITMIR.BIZ

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was having trouble thinking straight. As she performed the routine tasks behind the bar under Doug’s supervision, her stomach was churning and her hands were clammy.

      Hollie had never worked undercover, and once McLain had decided to place Torque under surveillance, things had moved fast. Checking out the area around his home, local agents had come back with information that the owner of Torque’s favorite bar was a former cop. If they could get someone in there, right up close to their target, just for a few days... Someone who could observe a celebrity rock star without arousing his suspicion...

      “Have you ever worked in a bar?” McLain’s sharp eyes had narrowed as she studied Hollie’s face.

      “I had a summer job when I was studying...” She had caught the trend of her chief’s thoughts and trailed off. “No way.” Blatant insubordination was not her style, but this was out-and-out crazy. “You need an experienced undercover agent.”

      “I need someone who knows the Incinerator. You’ve worked this case from the start, Hollie.” Things were serious when McLain used her first name. “You understand everything about our fire starter.” McLain had flipped over a sheet of paper. “This John ‘Torque’ Jones. You also know about him. This is highly sensitive. If we screw this up, the press will be screaming harassment of a superstar and the Incinerator case will become public property. No one else can replicate your intuition about this. I want you to get up close to Torque and find out if there’s a chance he’s our guy.”

      Get up close to Torque? Hollie was twenty-eight years old, but that instruction still made her heart rate soar as if she were nineteen and attending her first Beast concert. She told herself those words had nothing to do with why she was here. She was a professional. Catching the deadly arsonist whose trail of destruction had led to billions of dollars’ worth of damage and more than twenty deaths was all that mattered. That was why she had agreed to McLain’s request. For the next few weeks, she wasn’t Agent Hollie Brennan, Chief Fire Investigator. Instead, she was Hollie Brown, bartender.

      As she felt Torque’s eyes following her, she thought back to her eighteen-year-old self. How often had she gazed at the image on the cover of Fire and Fury, Beast’s most successful album? It depicted the band in evening dress, all of them looking glamorous as hell and slightly debauched, as though the shot had been taken the morning after a heavy night. While the others were pictured leaning against a whitewashed wall, bow ties hanging loose and hands thrust into dinner jacket pockets, it was always Torque who drew her gaze.

      In the picture, he was apart from his bandmates, half sitting, half lying on a set of stone steps. With his flame-red hair tossed over one shoulder, bronzed skin tones and long legs encased in daringly tight black pants, he could have been a fashion model. The black top hat he wore was tilted low, its shadow concealing the upper part of his face, but his beautiful mouth and chiseled jaw were visible. His hands were raised as though his long fingers were strumming an invisible guitar. It was a stunning, iconic image.

      The man who tilted his empty glass toward her now with a raised brow wore torn, faded jeans and work boots. His black T-shirt clung lovingly to his biceps and emphasized his dramatic coloring. Even in everyday clothing, Torque was breathtaking. Even with his features that looked like they had been lovingly carved by the hand of a master sculptor, it was still his eyes that drew her attention. Just when they appeared a nondescript gray, the light caught the multicolored moonstone flecks in their depths, making them shimmer like opals in sunlight.

      Those eyes watched her again from beneath heavy lids as she refilled his glass. “What brings you to Addison?”

      Keep it simple. That was what the veteran undercover agent who had given her an intense induction course had told her. Vince King had coached her in every aspect of the role, going over and over what she needed to know until she was word perfect. Stick to a short, basic story and don’t elaborate.

      “I like Maine. I thought it would be a nice place to spend the summer.” She smiled. “Don’t worry. Although I’m a fan, I’m not a stalker.”

      She’d seen his smile on her TV and laptop, on the pages of magazines, on the huge LED screens at the back of the stage at concerts. Now she was experiencing its full force across a distance of a few feet. As her knees turned to Jell-O, she gripped the edge of the bar to keep herself upright.

      “Good. I don’t want any more of those.”

      So Torque had a stalker. His words implied there was more than one. Could the Incinerator be an obsessive fan? Torque was well-known for his fiery onstage antics. Were the arson attacks a sick tribute?

      Or was Hollie, already a Torque fan herself, now feeling the hit of his attractiveness close up, reluctant to accept that he could be the man they were looking for? Whatever the truth turned out to be, she needed to take care. She had come here to unmask a fire-wielding killer. After only minutes in Torque’s company, she was already in danger of getting burned.

       Chapter 2

      Days of yore. Torque liked that phrase. It was all-encompassing, conjuring up images of chivalrous knights in armor on white chargers, maidens in distress and, of course, the obligatory dragon who terrorized the neighborhood by demanding a regular blood or virgin sacrifice.

      Except legend didn’t always get its facts straight. Sometimes the maidens did the rescuing, the knights were the ones who terrorized and the dragons were in charge of chivalry. To Torque, yore was more than just a nostalgic word for describing a bygone era. It summed up a time when the veil between worlds had been thinner. When the line between magic and mundane was blurred. When mortals had accepted the evidence of their hearts and their souls. Science had brought humankind a long way. Its benefits were far-reaching, but it had closed down many of those instincts. People looked with suspicion upon the very things that had once sustained them. Witches were cast out, charms and spells were frowned upon, alchemy faded into insignificance.

      And dragons? What of those unique creatures who, most people would say, had only ever existed in legend? Even the believers, the humans who truly wanted dragons to have been real, would shake their heads sadly and mourn their loss, holding on to them through their games, paintings and stories.

      It was better this way, of course. The last of the true dragons had died out five hundred years ago, spending his last days on a remote island in the South China Sea. Now only the dragon-shifters—a unique breed of half human, half dragon beings—remained. If the world ever discovered their existence? Torque clenched his jaw hard. Not on my watch. He had no desire to end his days in a cage, poked and prodded in the name of research. Even worse would be to become an exhibit in the name of entertainment, paraded and ogled like an elephant in a circus.

      Torque was a dragon-shifter, but he no longer bore any responsibility to the others of his kind. His leadership had been brought to an abrupt end and the world had moved on from the days of dragon clans and oaths of fealty. He was the last of his kin. The mighty Cumhachdach had been wiped out by powerful magic, his own life saved only because the sorceress who killed his clan had chosen to torture him by keeping him alive. There had been a time, once... He shook his head, clearing it of any lingering thoughts as he unfurled his huge wings and took to the skies. Once might as well be never. These days, his only loyalty was to himself.

      He swooped over his private island, blending easily with the night sky. As he flew lower over the dense forest, his scales changed color to match the tones of the trees. Camouflage was the dragon version of invisibility. Had he ventured into a city skyline, he would have become concrete gray. When he passed over an ocean in daylight, he was the exact blue of the waves below him and the sky above.

      Torque’s eyes scanned the landscape, homing in on a tiny creature moving in grass and the tilt of a bird’s wing many miles away. His ears isolated individual sounds, locating rustling leaves and human voices along the coast. Dragon senses were the keenest of all, but on this night he was distracted by his human emotions. Feelings he barely understood were pulling at the edges of his consciousness, forcing his attention away from the

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