Up in Flames [The Heroes of Silver Springs 10] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic) (27 page)

She didn’t hesitate. Dignity was way overrated anyway. How could she care about sounding needy when her body couldn’t feel anything else? “Please, Max. Please put your cock in my ass. I need you inside me. Oh, God, I can’t take it.”

“Yes, you can, baby.” He pushed the head of his cock between her spread cheeks, traced the crack of her ass with the tip until it came to rest on her tender opening. “And you will.”

Raking fingers of pleasure, pain, sharp sensations, and fiery explosions of hunger ripped through her body as he worked his cock into her ass. He’d added more lube to the outside of the condom, greasing the passage as he pushed past the tight ring of muscles and inched deeper.

Regina fisted the sheet in her fingers, holding on tight. His cock stretched her ass, invaded it, and sent riots of pained pleasure surging through her system. The nerve-laden tissue of her ass sucked his cock deeper and deeper. It took only a moment for the bliss to overtake the discomfort, and then, oh, yeah, her world became nothing but an erotic, wicked paradise.

He stopped with his cock buried inside her ass to the hilt and folded his body over hers, his lips cruising over the backs of her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“Better than,” she managed on a ragged breath. “Better still if you would move.” Brazenly, she pushed her ass back, drawing his cock even deeper inside her, and the roar of pleasure he made threw her higher. She found herself teetering on the precipice of his creation again, inching closer and closer to the fall as he started to move.

He took it slow at first, easing his cock out of her ass until only the head remained inside her tingling hole, and then gradually pushing his cock inside her again until his pelvis met with the curve of her ass. He held her securely with one hand clamped tightly on her hips and danced the fingers of his other hand around, reached beneath her, and found her pussy.

He palmed her clit, grinding the pad of his hand over her pulsing bud, and her hips jerked on their own accord. His thrusts into her ass picked up pace, and he released his hold on her hip for a nanosecond before his hand returned to her flesh. That nanosecond was apparently all he needed to flip the switch on the bullet inside her pussy.

A rapid vibration ricocheted off the sensitive walls of her channel, colliding with the super-intense flames spreading through her ass, and forming an inferno in her clit. His finger was there to stoke the fire.

“Don’t let me hurt you.” He powered his cock in and out of her ass and rubbed her clit to a frenzy with the pad of his finger.

Hurt her? Hell, no. She’d never felt more alive than she did at this moment. Her body rocked with his thrusts, her breasts raking over the mattress beneath her, the clamps adding another level of stupendous pleasured pain to the mix.

“Max!” She screamed his name as the pressure built to madness. “Oh, God. I can’t stop it. I—” She bit her tongue as he pistoned his cock in her ass, his finger going wild on her clit, and the pleasure tore through her pussy, spilled out of her, and drew an even louder scream from her lips.

Max roared with his own pleasure, and she felt his body jerk inside her as he filled the condom. He collapsed on top of her, his heart beating a rapid staccato against her back, his breaths as ragged as hers.

Seconds stretched to minutes as they lay there before she felt him reach lazily for the remote to the bullet and switch it off. His face turned into her back, his lips planting tender kisses on her sweaty flesh as he eased his cock out of her ass.

The emptiness that swept through her brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them back as she stared at the mattress, knowing soon this emptiness would be sticking around for a long, long time.

Regina replaced her office phone in the cradle and slumped back in her chair. “The SSPD has issued an APB on the Flame Jumper, Joyce Randolph,” she informed her boss, who sat in one of the guest chairs in front of her desk. Gage sat in the other, his posture relaxed and one ankle resting on the opposite knee.

“She won’t be able to go anywhere in this city without someone spottin’ her,” Gage said confidently.

“In theory, at least.” Silver Springs wasn’t a huge city, but Billings across the bridge was one of the top vacation spots in the south. “The SSPD is coordinating man power for us. Patrol cars will be casing the streets outside all the private daycares in town during nonbusiness hours. They’re also contacting the schools in the city to be sure their nightly guards are on high alert.”

Philip Mead nodded once, his aging expression somber. “There’s little more we can do then.”

Regina closed her eyes briefly and sighed. “If there is, I can’t think of it right now. Joyce Randolph has only hit businesses during the hours they’ve been closed. It was her MO four years ago in Kingsford, and she’s stuck with it so far here. She’s striking in the wee hours of the morning or on weekends.”

“There’s no reason to believe she’ll change that pattern now,” Gage commented.

“Except for the time frame,” Regina pointed out. She straightened and gazed down at the reports on her desk. “She hit yesterday. That was less than a week after the fire at Mr. G’s. All her previous fires occurred at least a week or more apart.”

“It could mean she’s escalating,” Mead said. “Or, it could simply be that she saw the opportunity to hit the physical therapist office and took it.”

“I’m leaning more toward escalation.” Regina turned the top paper of the opened file around on her desk. “This is what I’m looking at.” She’d gotten to her office shortly before seven that morning, and it was nearing nine p.m. now. After fourteen hours, she’d managed to piece together what she believed to be a damn good opinion as to what had led Joyce Randolph to become the Flame Jumper and why she continued to create the chain of events they were dealing with.

She pointed to the top of the timeline she’d created and started working her way down. “In 1985 the single-family home located at 1243 Walnut Street caught fire. Widowed mother Beatrice Randolph lived in that home with her only daughter, Joyce. It’s still unclear if the fire was indeed an accident or if Joyce Randolph was to blame. Ethan Zimmer, my father and the fire investigator to handle the scene, found no evidence to substantiate anything other than an accident. What
is
clear is that the seven-year-old girl watched her mother burn to death before being rescued by the responding firefighters.”

“What happened to the little girl, Joyce Randolph, after her mother’s death?” Mead asked.

“She went to live with her mother’s sister, Ramona, in a small town in Wisconsin. I spoke with Ramona this morning. She swears she never had a bit of trouble out of Joyce, though Joyce was traumatized by her mother’s death. She suffered from frequent nightmares. She didn’t act out at school, but she never had any close friends, either. She was basically a loner. She kept to herself, studied, and cut town as soon as she graduated.”

Gage put his foot on the floor and leaned forward in his seat, resting his forearms on his lower thighs. “Back to Kingsford?”

Regina shook her head. “She bounced around for years, living here and there, keeping odd jobs that never really amounted to anything. She has too many former employers to speak with all of them in a day, but the ones I was able to reach this morning who remembered her said pretty much the same as her aunt. Joyce did her job, didn’t cause any trouble, but always kept to herself.”

“You said odd jobs,” Mead said, lacing his fingers together over his gut. “As in…”

“That’s the interesting part. The jobs she had weren’t ones you’d expect from a woman, but they are ones that tie her to being the Flame Jumper. She kept to small towns, independently owned businesses that are more open to helping a person learn on the job rather than requiring a degree in the particular field. She spent two months working for an automotive shop, another month as a secretary for a physical therapist office, and a few weeks at a private daycare.”

“Christ.” Gage straightened and raked a hand down his face. “She was casin’ the joints, learnin’ how they operated, and gettin’ ready to put her plan into action.”

Regina nodded. “She also worked at a factory that produces, among other products, citronella gel. She was only a janitor there. Anything else would’ve required more experience and knowledge.”

“But even a janitor can get a good look at the machinery, the products, and even secretly gain access to that product if they’re sneaky enough,” Mead pointed out. “It’s all coming together.”

“Her aunt is what made it all come together for me.” Regina leaned back in her chair as she looked at Mead and Gage in turn. “In 1984, a full year before the fire that killed Randolph’s mother, Joyce and Beatrice were involved in a car accident. I bet you can’t guess what kind of car Beatrice owned.”

“A Buick Regal,” Mead answered, his eyes widening slightly.

Regina clucked her tongue. “Got it in one, boss. According the aunt, Beatrice took the car in for service at an automotive shop the day before the accident. She couldn’t tell me why Beatrice had taken the car in, only that Beatrice told her the car was having some sort of engine trouble. The official report on the accident cited the driver of the other car at fault. A male, in his early twenties, drunk behind the wheel. He swerved into oncoming traffic and hit Beatrice’s car head-on. A fire erupted under the hood of the Buick, which was later determined to be caused by an improperly connected fuel line going to the engine.”

Gage pushed to his feet and rounded the chair he’d been sitting in. “The MVA in Kingsford and the two that happened here, you’re sayin’ she tampered with the fuel lines of those cars to recreate the accidents.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. She tampered with the steering cables, too. She couldn’t very well force someone to drink, get behind the wheel of a car, and crash head-on into the Buicks, so she had to have a way to make the Buicks wreck on their own. A little tweak of her own, but effective, nevertheless.”

“Why recreate the accident, even to that extent?” Mead wanted to know.

“It was the start of the chain that led to her mother’s death. Joyce escaped the accident unharmed. Her mother didn’t. Beatrice was injured in the crash. Her left arm was broken severely enough that it required her to go through a series of visits to a physical therapist for rehab.”

Gage had started pacing the floor of her office behind the guest chairs, but he stopped at that. “Son of a bitch.”

“There’s more,” Regina told him. “The rehab didn’t help. Beatrice couldn’t regain full control of her left arm. Due to the nature of her job, her employer had to let her go. The loss of her job sent her tumbling into debt. According to her sister, Beatrice was depressed all the time and short-tempered with Joyce.”

Mead’s eyes turned to narrow slits in his face. “What sort of job?”

“A private daycare in which most of the children were ages six weeks to seven years old. With only one good arm, Beatrice had trouble caring for the babies. The daycare didn’t fire her, but they put her on leave until she could get through therapy.” Regina sighed and pushed her fingers through her hair. “In short, gentlemen, the entire chain of events in Joyce Randolph’s young life created the Flame Jumper.” She ticked the points off on her fingers. “The careless mechanic at the automotive shop led to the accident that disabled Beatrice Randolph. Beatrice then began a series of visits to a physical therapist office which were unsuccessful, therefore leading to the loss of her job. Depression and short temper set in. Then, one day, I believe she found Joyce playing with a lit citronella lamp in the kitchen. The fuse on her already short temper sparked. She got angry with Joyce, maybe attempted to snatch the lamp from the child, the gel splashed onto her, and the flame followed the path.”

“Joyce got her first real glimpse at a fire during the accident.” Gage had started pacing again and seemed to be talking to himself more than Regina or Mead, but neither of them interrupted as he put it all together. “It sparked something in her, a hunger for more. She didn’t plan on killin’ her mother that day in the kitchen, but when the gel ignited, she was mesmerized. She didn’t do anything to help her mother, not that a seven-year-old child could’ve done much more than call for help. Her mother, frantic over bein’ on fire, made matters worse by panickin’. She likely splattered the gel over the surface of the kitchen in her attempts to escape it. The fire grew, and so did Joyce’s hunger.”

“She grew up with that image of her mother burning, with that hunger for more growing, and the hatred that her life had changed so drastically in such a short time,” Regina continued when Gage stopped. “I’m sure, if we continued to dig into the towns she lived in, we’ll find the fires we know about aren’t the only ones she’s started. She honed her craft somewhere, somehow, and simply never got caught.”

“She wants to get caught this time,” Mead speculated. “And she wants you to be the one to do it.”

Regina nodded and told them the rest. “Beatrice Randolph was thirty-five years old when she died. The anniversary of her death is in three days. That’s why Joyce Randolph has gotten away from her usual timetable. I think she’s planning her grand finale to blaze on the same day her mother died.”

She couldn’t be certain of that, which was why she’d been working with the SSPD all day in an effort to not only catch Joyce Randolph, but to provide as much safety as possible for the daycares in the area. She believed the Flame Jumper would strike again in three days, torching a daycare and, once again, ending the chain.

Except, the daycare fire hadn’t been the end. The death of Beatrice Randolph had. The more Regina thought about that, the more an icy chill froze in her veins. Would Joyce see the daycare fire as the end of her work or did she have a different grand finale in mind?

* * * *

Terri startled when the latest issue of
Firehouse
magazine she’d been holding suddenly left her fingers as Thaddeus Carter plopped down next to her on the sofa in the TV room of the station.