Page 120 of Burning For You

And that was his fear right now.

She was taunting the fucker and you don’t screw with that shit.

“Maybe he’ll mess up now,” she said. “I’m sick of this. I’m sick of being his pawn, whoever he is. Sick of sitting and waiting for him to decide. No. No more.”

“It’s not for you to decide that,” Holden said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“See, even Holden is losing his shit,” Ash said. “You need to see reason.”

She crossed her arms. They were all sitting in the family room, all eyes on Skye.

“If you’re going to gang up on me, then I might as well tell you what I’ve got in mind.”

Corbin groaned right next to him. “What do you mean, ‘what you have in mind’?”

“I got thinking. If I were writing a book about this, what would I do?”

“No, no, no,” Jim said. “You are not going down that path.”

“I’m just thinking. Hear me out. He likes to copy people, right, Ash?”

He sighed. “It seems that is what he’s doing.”

“So, what if the fire department started a controlled fire somewhere. You know, used a different form for starting it. We give it a big article, write it up as there is someone else out there starting fires⁠—”

“Absolutely not,” Carrie said firmly and stood up, then marched toward her daughter. “Don’t even think of that.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” she argued. “If he copies it, then we know for sure he’s doing it. And maybe we can kind of lay a trap for him. I mean, I wouldn’t know how to do that, but maybe Tate and Keegan can?”

Ash watched all the astonished looks cross her family’s faces.

Ash was right there with them. “Stop right there. You can’t. What you just said can’t even leave this house.”

“Why?” she asked.

He hadn’t wanted to say this, but had no choice.

“Because Alan threw suspicion on you. And if you come up with this idea, it’s going to make them look closer. Is that what you want?”

“Whoa,” Tate said. “What the hell are you talking about? No one said anything to me. Or are they keeping me out of it?”

“I haven’t heard a word either,” Keegan said, his face stone cold, reminding him of Clay. “So start explaining, Ash.”

“It’s not going anywhere. Alan got in my face a few days ago when I was working. He got called in and questioned. Christian brought it up that he’d been to a lot of fires, but Alan thought it was me.”

“And Alan got in your face about it?” Corbin asked.

Ash snorted. “He did. He said a few things that pissed me off and I slammed him into the wall.”

Skye’s eyes all but bugged out of her face. “You attacked him? For me?”

“He was running his mouth. He was blaming me. Christian broke it up and told Alan he was the one who brought it up to the chief. I thought it might have been Tate or Keegan, but I wouldn’t have said that.”

“So they just let Alan go?” she asked.

He didn’t know what he could say, but he trusted everyone in this room. “He got defensive and said the reasons he was being questioned could apply to Skye.” He turned to her. “He knew your family history. He said a few things I’d rather not repeat.”

“Like what?” Tate asked.