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came a few seconds later when not one but two unmarked, but very obvious, service cars whizzed by in the opposite direction.
    He hadn’t seen any flames, but there was no doubt they were headed for the apartment complex—correction, crime scene—he’d just fled with the suspect in his passenger seat. He lifted his lead foot. The whole purpose of the stakeout was to trail her, get a feel for her general activities. See if he could catch her in the act.
    Serving as a getaway driver was not in that plan.
    “Fiona—you know I have to stop.” He pulled over to the shoulder in front of a Laundromat that looked like it doubled as a prostitution front.
    “Ian, do you remember that tree stump the other day?”
    Did he remember? It had been the only thing he’d been able to think about for days. Fiona had lit that tree on fire.
    Fiona was the Fireball.
    She looked at him with that mixture of sharp-eyed interest and something he couldn’t recognize on a cognitive level, but felt stirring in his groin just the same.
    Fiona was still the girl he remembered. She was so much more than a random stranger capable of violence, or the unnamed culprit of half a dozen Corrupted crimes. If he was being honest, she was his biggest shame—in more ways than one.
    He would forever regret the day he stood by watching, silent, as a fellow student called her by the awful nickname Neil had spread, using it as a reason to slip a hand under her skirt. He would regret even more that he hadn’t said a word when she let the guy push even further, eyes on Ian the whole time, waiting for him to contradict the slur.
    But he’d done nothing, too weak and too embarrassed to confess his ineptitude, or to punch that sleazebag in the face like he’d deserved.
    Oh, he remembered, all right. He remembered everything .
    “Yeah,” he said vaguely. “I think I might have some recollection.”
    Fiona shifted next to him. “So help me, Ian Jones. If you don’t start driving, I will do the exact same thing to you.”
    He gulped. What had he been thinking, letting this girl get into his car?
    Correction. This woman .
    He glanced sideways at her. With her long, bare legs in cutoffs and a zombie apocalypse tank top spread tight across her chest, it was easy to make the mistake. She didn’t look at all like a responsible adult, someone who paid bills and purchased sensible footwear. She looked…
    …crap. She looked scared.
    Ian took a deep breath, keeping his hands firmly on ten and two. No matter what had happened in the past, he was not falling for this damsel-in-distress routine. He was stronger than that. Smarter.
    “Where, exactly, am I supposed to take you?” he asked, pulling the car back onto the road.
    “I need a place to hide. Somewhere to lay low for a little while. Somewhere he can’t find me.”
    Pain stabbed his gut, feeling an awful lot like fire. “He?”
    “I melted the hell out of his tires, but it won’t take him long to recover.” Fiona gnawed on the end of her thumb. “How far away is your lab?”
    “My lab?” He slammed on the brakes and turned to face her. Caution had always been his modus operandi, the way other men relied on communication skills or six-pack abs. There was no way he was going anywhere near his lab until he was sure what this woman wanted from him—and what she was capable of.
    Forget bodily harm. His lab was the only thing that really mattered.
    But in one fluid movement, Fiona slid so close she might have been in his lap. Ian had enough time to register her soft skin pressed against him before she jammed her foot atop his and hit the gas pedal.
    “I’m not kidding. If you just give me a second to gain my bearings, I can explain everything. What I can do…all those trees in the forest.” She dug her heel into the bridge of his foot. He winced.
    What about the elementary school? What about the bank robbery, the one where a security guard died from third-degree burns and the alarm system melted on