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think …” Only sheer pride prevented her stepping back. Or forward. “I don’t think this is appropriate.”
    “If we ever get to know each other better, you’ll find out that propriety isn’t at the top of my list. Tell me, do you and Hawthorne have a personal thing going?”
    His eyes, dark, intense, close, dazzled her for a moment. “Donald? Of course not.” Appalled, she caught herself. “That’s none of your business.”
    Her answer pleased him, on professional and personal levels. “Everything about you is my business.”
    She tossed up her chin, eyes smoldering. “So, this pitiful excuse for a flirtation is just a way to get me to incriminate myself?”
    “I didn’t think it was that pitiful. Obvious,” he admitted, “but not pitiful. On a professional level, it worked.”
    “I could have lied.”
    “You have to think before you lie. And you weren’t thinking.” He liked the idea of being able to frazzle her, and pushed a little further. “It so happens that, on a strictly personal level, I like the way you look. But don’t worry, it won’t get in the way of the job.”
    “I don’t like you, Inspector Piasecki.”
    “You said that already.” For his own pleasure, he reached out, tugged her coat closed. “Button up. It’s cold out there. My office,” he added as he turned for the door. “Tomorrow, two o’clock.”
    He strolled out, thinking of her.
    Natalie Fletcher, he mused, punching the elevator button for the lobby. High-class brains in a first-class package. Maybe she’d torched her own building for a quick profit. She wouldn’t be the first or the last.
    But his instincts told him no.
    She didn’t strike him as a woman who looked for shortcuts.
    He stepped into the elevator car, which tossed his own image back to him in smoked glass.
    Everything about her was top-of-the-line. And her background just didn’t equal fraud. Fletcher Industries generated enough profit annually to buy a couple of small Third World countries. This new arm of it was Natalie’s baby, and even if it folded in the first year, it wouldn’t shake the corporate foundations.
    Of course, there was emotional attachment to be considered. Those same instincts told him she had a great deal of emotional attachment to this new endeavor. That was enough for some to try to eke out a quick profit to save a shaky investment.
    But it didn’t jibe. Not with her.
    Someone else in the company, maybe. A competitor, hoping to sabotage her business before it got off the ground. Or a classic pyro, looking for a thrill.
    Whatever it was, he’d find it.
    And, he thought, he was going to enjoy rattling Natalie Fletcher’s cage while he was going about it.
    One classy lady, he mused. He imagined she’d look good—damn good—modeling her own merchandise.
    The beeper hooked to his belt sounded as he stepped from the elevator. Another fire, he thought, and moved quickly to the nearest phone.
    There was always another fire.

Chapter 3
    Ry kept her cooling her heels for fifteen minutes. It was a standard ploy, one she’d often used herself to psych out an opponent. She was determined not to fall for it.
    There wasn’t even enough room in the damn closet he called an office to pace.
    He worked in one of the oldest fire stations in the city, two floors above the engines and trucks, in a small glassed-in box that offered an uninspiring view of a cracked parking lot and sagging tenements.
    In the adjoining room, Natalie could see a woman pecking listlessly at a computer keyboard that sat on a desk overflowing with files and forms. The walls throughout were a dingy yellow that might, decades ago, have been white. They were checkerboarded with photos of fire scenes—some of which were grim enough to have had her turning away—bulletins, flyers, and a number of Polish jokes in dubious taste.
    Obviously Ry had no problem shrugging off the clichéd humor about his heritage.
    Metal shelves were piled with books, binders, pamphlets,