Page 51 of Her Beast

Malcolm wanted to cut Sheehan’s throat. Or set him on fire.

Or maybe both.

Instead, he punched him in the face hard enough to knock the chair onto its side. If there hadn’t been a rug on the floor Sheehan’s skull would have split open. As it was, he groaned, proving he was still among the living.

Sheehan blinked his eyes and licked the split in his lip as Malcolm loomed over him.

The Irishman stared for a long moment and then gave a huff of laughter. “Bloody hell!You?” He shook his head in genuine amazement. “Fucking impossible! After all these years. Who would have guessed?”

Malcolm bent over, grabbed Sheehan’s chair, and set it on its feet. “It took you seeing me again to figure it out, did it? A lot of people want to abduct, beat, and kill you?” he asked, massaging his aching knuckles with his damaged left hand.

“Aye, more than a few,” Sheehan conceded, his insouciance forced. “You saw me when I came into your store, didn’t you?” He made a noise of disgust. “This is all that little bitch’s fault! If she’d not gone in there—"

Malcolm hit him again. “Watch your mouth.”

Sheehan blinked, shook away the pain, and then smirked up at him. “You’ve fallen under her spell, haven’t you?” He gave a filthy laugh at whatever he saw on Malcolm’s face. “She’s like her ma, that one—a regular little bitch in he—”

This time Malcolm kicked Sheehan in the chest hard enough to knock the chair over.

It took a basin of water to wake the bastard up again.

“I knew I’d seen you before,” Malcolm said, before he could open his mouth. “But it took me a while to place your face. You came to my shipyard the day before the fire—you were there to repair the big furnace.”

Sheehan laughed, but his eyes were afraid. “Took you long enough to remember me, eh? Fifteen years!”

Malcolm ignored him. “It must have been easy for you to rig up a fire with all those solvents and pitch and other flammables.”

Sheehan had no smart answer for that.

“The insurance finding was negligence on our part,” Malcolm said, although he suspected the other man already knew that. “Their investigator said we should have faced criminal charges for storing such items so close to a raging fire. He said we were fortunate the entire waterfront didn’t burn to the ground. I wasn’t there during the inquest to hear all that, of course. I had to read about it months later, when I finally left my hospital bed.”

Sheehan swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing wildly.

Malcolm clucked his tongue at the other man. “All of this would have stayed buried if you’d remained in America.”

Sheehan forced a grin, sweat rolling down his forehead even though the room was cold enough that Malcolm could see his own breath. “I was homesick.”

“Whydidyou leave New York, Carl?”

Sheehan’s green gaze flickered nervously over Malcolm’s mask. “I guess you could say things got toohotfor me there.”

This time, Malcolm hit him in the stomach, which was a lot easier on his hand.

While Sheehan was gasping for breath, Malcolm closed his hands around his throat. “You think burning alive is amusing?” he asked, squeezing the man’s throat too hard for him to answer. “That’s seven people, by my count, that you’ve murdered with fire.”

Malcolm watched as confusion bloomed in the other man’s terrified gaze.

“Yes,seven—twopeople died in that warehouse.” He pressed both thumbs against Sheehan’s larynx. “Do you have any idea how much pain you’ve caused?”

Malcolm squeezed until Sheehan’s eyes bulged.

As he stared into the other man’s hateful green gaze, he saw the truth: Sheehan was hoping to goad him into killing him quickly and Malcolm, stupidly, had almost given the other man what he wanted.

He yanked back his hands back as if Sheehan had suddenly burst into flame. “No. You won’t get off so easily.”

As the other man coughed and gasped for breath Malcolm reached behind his head and pulled the leather cords before removing his mask and tossing it onto a nearby table.

“Now, tell me who came up with the idea to set the fire, who knew about it, and who helped?”

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