Raintree: Inferno (Raintree 1)

The accident scene was beginning to clear up; witnesses had given their statements, and more and more people were managing to maneuver their vehicles around the demolished Jag, the remains of the fender bender and all the rescue vehicles. Two wreckers had arrived, one to tow Dante’s Jaguar, the other to get the center car in the fender bender, because it had a ruptured radiator. Before his poor car was taken away, Dante was getting his registration and insurance card from the glove compartment, as well as the garage door opener. Given how mangled the car was, finding anything and getting to it was a major undertaking.

From what Lorna could tell, he wasn’t upset at all about the Jaguar. He didn’t like the inconvenience, but the car itself didn’t mean anything to him. He had already made arrangements for a rental car to be waiting for him at the hotel, and one of his many employees was on the way to the accident site to pick them up. As she had always suspected, money smoothed out many of life’s bumps.

Thinking of money prompted her to casually brush her hand against her left front pocket. Her money was still there, and her driver’s license and the tiny pair of scissors were in her right pocket. She had no idea what good those scissors would do in any truly dangerous situation, but she had them anyway.

She noticed she was feeling much better, that the ugly, cold sensation had gone away. She turned and looked over to where the watcher had been parked. He wasn’t there any longer, and neither was his car. Coincidence, she wondered, or cause and effect?

And wasn’t it odd that she’d had that sickening cold feeling both right before the casino fire, and right before she almost got mowed down in the crossfire of a gang shooting? Maybe she wasn’t reacting to a person at all but to something that was about to happen. Maybe that coldness was a warning. Of course, she’d also gotten the feeling right before Dante fed her a McMuffin for breakfast, but the principle could still be holding true: Warning! McMuffin ahead!

She had almost come to terms with the claircognizance thing, because even though she’d spent a lifetime insisting she was simply good with numbers, she had always known it was more than that. She didn’t want to discover yet another talent, particularly one that seemed to be useless. A warning was all well and good if you knew what you were being warned about. Otherwise, why bother?

“Our ride’s here,” Dante said, coming up behind her and resting his hand on the curve of her waist. “Do you want to go to the hotel with me, or go back home?”

Home? He was referring to his house as her home? She looked up, ready to nail him on his mistake, and the words died on her lips. He was watching her with a steady, burning intent; that hadn’t been a slip of the tongue but a warning of a different kind.

“We both know where we’re going with this,” he said. “I have a suite at the hotel, and the electricians got the power back on yesterday, so it’s functional. You can come with me to the hotel or go home, but either way, you’re going to be under me. The only difference is that going home will give you a little more time, if you need it.”

She needed more than time, but standing on the side of the interstate wasn’t the place to have the showdown she knew was coming.

“I haven’t decided yet whether or not to sleep with you, and I’ll make the decision on my timetable, not yours,” she said. “I’ll come to the hotel with you because I don’t want to spend another day cooped up in that house, so don’t get too cocky, Raintree.”

The expression of intense focus faded, to be replaced by wryness. Looking down at himself, he said, “Too late.”

TWENTY

Lorna was too restless to just sit in Dante’s suite while he was literally all over the hotel, directing the cleaning and repairs, touring with insurance adjusters, meeting with contractors. She dogged his steps, listening but not joining in. The behind-the-scenes details of a luxury hotel were fascinating. The place was hopping, too. Rather than wait until the insurance companies ponied up, he’d brought the adjusters in to take pictures; then he got on with the repairs using his own money.

That he was able to do so told her that he was seriously wealthy, which made his lifestyle even more of a statement about him. He didn’t have an army of servants waiting on him. He lived in a big, gorgeous home, but it wasn’t a mansion. He drove expensive cars, but he drove himself. He made his own breakfast, loaded his own dishwasher. He liked luxury but was comfortable with far less.

When it came to the hotel, though, he was unbending. Everything had to be top notch, from the toilet paper in the bathrooms to the sheets on the beds. A room that was smoke-damaged couldn’t be cleaned and described as “good enough.” It had to be perfect. It had to be better than it had been before the fire. If the smell of smoke wouldn’t come out of the curtains, the curtains were discarded; likewise the miles of carpet.

Lorna found out that the day before had been a madhouse, with guests being allowed to go to their rooms and retrieve their belongings. Because the destroyed casino was attached to the hotel, for liability purposes guests had to be escorted to make certain their curiosity didn’t lead them where they shouldn’t go.

A casino existed for one reason only, and that reason was money. In a rare moment when he had time to talk, he told Lorna that over six million dollars a day had to go through the casino just for him to break even, and since the whole point of a casino was its generous profit margin, the amount of cash he actually dealt with on a daily basis was mind-boggling.

The acre of melted and charred slot machines held thousands upon thousands of dollars, so the ruins had to have around-the-clock security until the machines could be transported and as much as possible of their contents was salvaged. About half the machines had spewed printed tickets instead of belching out quarters, which saved both time and money. The coin vaults and the master vault were fireproof, thus saving that huge amount of cash, and his cashiers in the cages had refused to evacuate until they secured the money, which had been very loyal of them but not smart: the two fatalities had been from their ranks.

The fire marshal was wrapping up his investigation, so Dante cornered him. “Was it arson?” he demanded bluntly.

“All indications are that it was electrical in nature, Mr. Raintree. I haven’t found any trace of accelerants at the source of the fire. The flames reached unusually high temperatures, so I was suspicious, I admit.”

“So was I—when detectives were here questioning me immediately after the fire on Sunday night, when you hadn’t even begun your investigation. This wasn’t a crime scene.”

The fire marshal rubbed his nose. “They didn’t tell you? A call came in about the time the fire started. Some nutcase claimed he was burning down the casino. When they tracked him down, turns out he’d been eating in one of the restaurants, and when the fire alarm went off, he pulled out his trusty cell phone and made a grab for glory. He’d had one too many adult beverages.” He shook his head. “Some people are nuts.”

Dante met Lorna’s gaze; both were rueful. “We’d wondered what was going on. I was beginning to feel like a conspiracy theorist,” he said.

“Weird things happen in fires. One of them is how you two are alive. You had no protection at all, but the heat and smoke didn’t get to you. Amazing.”

“I felt as if the smoke got to us,” Dante said in a dry tone. “I thought I was coughing up my lungs.”

“But your airways had no significant damage. I’ve seen people die who faced less smoke than you two dealt with.”

Lorna wondered what he would think if he could see what was left of Dante’s Jaguar, since the two of them were walking around without even a bruise.

No, that wasn’t right. Frowning, she looked at Dante, really looked. He’d had a cut on his face whe

re the impact of the air bag had literally split open the skin over his cheekbone. His cheekbone had been bruised and was swelling, and his left arm had been bruised.