Page 26 of Hot For You

He tilted his head as he studied Janice where she lay slumped on the concrete floor against the metal support. She looked a lot like the charred blonde Barbie he’d just set fire to in front of Janice while she’d still been alive. He’d tied a gag around the doll, and bound her wrists together and her ankles too, using a chain necklace…just like Janice had been bound with heavy chain.

He hadn’t expected Janice’s clothes to catch fire.

Or had he known perfectly well what would happen when he tossed the burning doll at Janice’s feet?

Her clothes had caught fire so quickly he’d known there was nothing he could do to save her. He’d thrown the blanket he’d covered her with in the car into the fire. The burning blanket had finished the job.

He’d watched her burn. The fire had been amazing, had filled him with an excitement he’d never experienced before.

The gag had muffled her screams and the metal support she was chained to had kept her from moving. The concrete floor in the empty part of the vast warehouse hadn’t allowed the fire to spread and it had burned itself out.

The sickly smell and the smoke had him coughing and his eyes stung. Still, he stared at her body, fascinated.

He’d never taken a life before. Instead of sickening him, a sense of power flooded his veins. It was as if her lifeforce had flowed into him and strengthened his own.

Taking her to the warehouse after keeping her in his apartment for a week had been a spur of the moment thing. He’d gotten tired of her constant moaning and hadn’t been sure what to do with her once he’d had her.

Rape was distasteful, but even without that he’d felt confident and powerful having her in his possession. He’d been in control of everything she did, day after day.

And now the final testament to his power… Her life had been in his hands… And he’d snuffed it out.

He frowned. What should he do with her body? He looked around the warehouse with all its junk, old and rusted tools, broken down machinery, and refuse. His gaze landed on a group of rusted red and green fifty-gallon drums. One of those would do.

The body was burned beyond recognition, including what had been lovely blonde hair. He didn’t want to touch her so he went to his car that was parked nearby in the warehouse, and pulled a tarp out of the trunk.

Once he was back, he crossed the chalk line he’d drawn and poured gasoline on. Carefully, avoiding contact with Janice’s charred skin, he unlocked the chains that bound her to the steel support and also removed the chains from around her ankles.

Somehow he managed to roll her body onto the tarp without touching it, and he wrapped her in it. He tied cord around the corpse to keep the tarp from coming off and dragged the body to one of the drums and let the body drop to the floor. It took the crowbar that he took from the back of the car to get the lid off the empty drum.

Nathan wasn’t a big man and her dead weight was a challenge to get into the drum. Her tarp-covered body finally slid off his shoulder and fell into the drum with a hard thump. He tossed the remnants of the burned Barbie inside with the body.

With relief, he put the lid back on the drum and used the crow bar to bang the lid down tight. The sound of metal hitting metal echoed in the warehouse.

When he was finished, he tossed the crowbar and the chains into the back of the car. As he made sure he didn’t leave anything behind, he worked the scene over and over in his mind.

He thought about how she’d burned…the terror in her eyes…the screams behind her gag…

Unexpectedly, his dinner churned in his belly and started to come up. The next thing he knew, he was puking all over the concrete floor.

Finally, he finished and wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve as he blinked his watery eyes, and tried to spit the acidic taste out of his mouth. He stared at the mess he’d made then slipped outside into the darkness, scooped up dirt with an old tin can he’d found in the warehouse, and returned to pour the dirt over the vomit. For good measure he found some old crude oil and poured it over the dirt. Puke no doubt would have his DNA, and he didn’t want to take any chances.

When he’d finished gathering his supplies, he rolled up the warehouse door and drove his car out. He got out to roll the door back down again and then headed home.

As he drove, the urge to burn again was strong. He should wait. It had just been days ago that he’d torched the redhead’s car. And he’d just played with fire once again, for the first time killing his victim.

First things first. He needed to research everything his target did and photograph her.

While he drove from the outskirts of town, his thoughts drifted to the redhead. She had been a spur of the moment decision. He’d needed a redhead and there she was. It had been the perfect opportunity.

Where was she now?

Wherever she was, he would find her.

Chapter 10

Every couple of hours, Cody had woken Carilyn to check on her after insisting she lay on his bed, and he’d slept in the guestroom. She’d been so out of it that every time he woke her it had seemed unreal, like a dream.

Now, as she blinked her eyes open, she squinted against the early morning sun coming in through his bedroom window. The clean sheets he’d put on his bed felt wonderful and the T-shirt he had loaned her felt soft against her skin. His scent surrounded her. She liked the way he smelled, a heady masculine scent.

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