Wild Heat (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #1)(57)
Author: Bella Andre

Logan sprinted downhill. All he’d been doing for the past two days was running up and down this goddamned mountain. First to save Connor. Then Joseph. And now Maya.

His house was gone. Joseph’s cabin would be nothing but ashes very soon. But Robbie was dead. Dead.

Someone had killed him. And if it turned out to be Jenny, Logan hoped she’d burn in hell for what she’d done.

He was long past the point of pain as he sprinted onto Joseph’s property. Flames leapt ten feet in the air and the stench of gasoline filled his lungs.

“Maya,” he roared into the smoke-filled sky, yelling her name over and over, praying she’d answer.

A quick check of the property’s perimeter confirmed what he’d already guessed: Maya was gone. She’d promised to be here waiting for him, but she hadn’t bet on Jenny. Neither of them had.

Logan had never been this scared and knew it would be nearly impossible to treat this situation like any one of the hundreds of emergencies he’d worked. But he wouldn’t be worth shit if he didn’t calm down. He unclenched his fists and forcibly slowed his heart rate.

Maya was one of the smartest women he knew. She wasn’t going to let someone haul her off without leaving a clue as to her whereabouts. And Jenny’s truck was parked between two pine trees. Which meant they couldn’t have gone far.

He quickly ruled out the driveway. If they’d been headed to the road, Jenny would have taken her truck. Which meant they had to be back up in the mountains, on a different fork of the trail than he and Joseph had taken.

He looked down and saw a match on the ground, and then another, heading toward the trailhead. Logan sprinted back toward the mountain, passing Joseph, who was on his way down.

“You didn’t find her?”

“No. But I will. She left me a trail of matches.”

“Smart girl.” Joseph stripped off his fire-resistant jacket. “Put this on. It’ll buy you some time if you need it. I’ll run out to the freeway and get some help.”

Joseph didn’t tell him to be careful. Not when he already seemed to know that Logan would do whatever it took—and risk everything—to ensure Maya’s safety.

Logan put the jacket on as he ran uphill, not giving the burning cabin another glance. It was just another building, wood and nails, not flesh and blood.

Maya was all that mattered now.

“Did I know him?” Intense, unending rage raced through Maya, from head to toe and back again as she launched herself at Jenny, swinging her bound arms around in an arc, knocking the woman into the mountain, screaming “You f**king bitch, he was my brother!”

She spun around, wanting to hit Jenny harder, faster this time. But before she could make contact, a sharp blade whacked against her skull and knocked her back into a tree trunk. She felt something warm and wet trickle through her hair.

Jenny threw the bloodstained chainsaw down into the dirt. Taking advantage of Maya’s momentary shock, she quickly rolled duct tape around her body. Maya kicked and yelled, but without the use of her hands, she was soon imprisoned against the tree.

“I was planning on killing you,” Jenny said viciously, “but now I’m thinking I should just leave you here to burn. It’ll hurt so much more that way, take so much longer for you to die.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Maya registered Jenny’s crazy threats. But she needed to know for certain what happened to her brother.

“Did you light that apartment on fire?”

Jenny put the roll of duct tape next to the chainsaw and her gun. “Oh, you mean the fire that killed Tony?” She almost looked bored, as if one rookie firefighter mattered so little. She fluffed her sweat-dampened hair. “Um, yeah. But he’d really pissed me off.”

“How?” The word left Maya’s lips like a bullet. Like the one she wanted to put between Jenny’s eyebrows.

“Do you really want to know?” Jenny rolled her eyes. “I mean, he’s been dead for months. Don’t you think you should get over it already?”

Maya tried to wrench herself away from the tree, but the duct tape around her chest and legs held her firmly in place.

“Tell me why.”

Jenny continued taping her up as she said, “We went out a couple of times. And then he told me I was acting all weird and he thought we should cool it. Piece of shit rookie was lucky to score me in the first place. He hadn’t seen weird yet. The things I could have made him do.” Her eyes went slightly unfocused. Glazed. “I knew his shifts. Thought it would be fun to see how he did in a big fire. It was just pure luck that he died. Served the bastard right.”

“Bitch!”

Maya’s scream reverberated through her entire body and still it wasn’t enough. She wanted to rip Jenny limb from limb for taking her brother away without even the slightest bit of remorse.

Jenny’s face contorted in anger and she grabbed the chainsaw from the dirt and forced the blade up under Maya’s chin.

“No, you’re the bitch. The shady bitch who stole my man.”

Maya’s eyes teared from the saw’s jagged teeth and chain digging into her neck and jaw, but she refused to show any fear. There was no point in playing nice anymore, no reason to keep her mouth shut.

“You’re disgusting. No wonder Logan wouldn’t go near you.”

Jenny jammed the chainsaw harder into Maya’s neck. “You’re wrong. He would have fallen in love with me, and I’d be carrying his baby instead of Dennis’s, if it weren’t for you.”

Maya was amazed she could register one more shock at this point. “You’re pregnant?”

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me? Because I’m going to tell everyone Logan’s the father.”

Jenny’s sick words lanced Maya’s heart like knives. Oh God, even after they were all dead, it wouldn’t end. A child would have to live with this insanity every single day.

“No one will believe you,” she choked out from beneath the pressure of the chainsaw. “They’ll all know what filth you are. They’ll all know you’re lying.”

Jenny snarled and pulled the chainsaw away from her neck, looking for the start cord, then pulling it hard. Maya gasped in a breath, one that looked like it was going to be her last.

Her nemesis lifted the grinding chainsaw, aiming right for Maya’s heart. “I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll kill you instead of letting you burn. And I know exactly what I’m going to cut off first. Your precious tits. Logan would be so sad if he knew what I was about to do to your boobies. Tell me, how did it feel when Logan sucked them? When he squeezed them?”

Maya shot a quick barb at her killer: “Amazing.”

Jenny’s cheeks went red, as if Maya had slapped them. “I wish he could find you like this, see your charred tits on the ground. But if he’s not already dead, I’m going to have to take care of him too. I hope you f**ked him good and hard this morning, because it was good-bye.”