Serial Read Free

flames spreading across the back of her blouse, reaching for her hair.
    The sight gave him strength he didn’t know he had, and what was left of the window popped from the frame.
    He reached through the window, grabbed the girl’s arm, and dragged her from the vehicle. Pain made him realize he was on fire, too. Both of them were burning.
    That was when Quinn glanced beyond the girl, to the other side of the car. And through his pain and fear he saw a distorted miniature face and waving tiny hands in an infant seat. A screaming child. A baby.
    Aware now of more flames in the street around him, more burning gasoline, he slung the wriggling young girl over his shoulder and ran with her across the street. He gave her to reaching arms. Hands slapped at him, and someone threw a shirt over him to smother the flames.
    He saw the young cop still frozen against the wall. Quinn screamed around the lump in his throat: “There’s a baby in there, other side, rear, in an infant seat!”
    The man didn’t move, only stared straight ahead.
    Quinn shoved people away and ran back toward the burning SUV, ignoring the pleas for him to stay away. He was aware of sirens. Fire trucks down the street, a block away. Too far away. The flames inside the car were spreading. The vehicle was filling with smoke.
    He glanced back and saw the young girl he’d dragged from the wreck huddled on the sidewalk, surrounded by people. A man was bending over her, maybe a doctor.
    Quinn continued running toward the burning SUV.
    The explosion knocked him backward. He remembered being airborne, then the back of his head hitting solid concrete.
    Then nothing was solid and he was falling.
     
    When he regained consciousness the next day in the hospital, he was told the girl he’d pulled from the SUV had second-degree burns on her upper back and arms, but she was alive. The driver of the vehicle, a teenage sister, was dead. So was the infant in the backseat, their little brother, ten months old.
    Quinn had been proclaimed a hero, and the Times ran a photo of him posing with the family of the dead and their one remaining child—Millicent Graff.
    The young officer who’d gone into shock and been unable to help Quinn, and perhaps rescue the infant, was fired from the NYPD for dereliction of duty.
    The NYPD had sort of adopted Millie Graff. Renz had used the charming child as a political prop, but that was okay because it was obvious that he also felt genuine affection for her.
    And now—
    “Quinn.”
    Renz, across the diner booth, was talking to Quinn.
    “Sorry,” Quinn said. “Lost my concentration for a minute.”
    “Where’d you go?” Renz asked, with a sad smile.
    He knew where.
    Quinn felt the beginnings of another kind of flame, deep in his gut, and knew what it meant. In a way, he welcomed it.
    This killer had taken away forever something precious that fifteen years ago Quinn had saved. Now he had to be found. He would be found. Quinn wanted it even more than Renz might imagine.
    This was personal.

4
    Renz tried the coffee again, put the cup back down, and shoved it away. “Camel piss.” He looked hard at Quinn across the diner table. “You and your investigative agency want this one?”
    “Can you convince the higher-ups to turn it over to us?”
    “I am the higher-up,” Renz said. “You might be off the force, along with your retread detectives, but when it comes to serial killers no one can top you. I’ll make it clear to everyone from the mayor on down that nailing this sicko is priority number one and we have to use our best. If we don’t, and there are more murders, there’ll be plenty of blame for all the people who wanted a second-rate investigation. That’s a smelly political albatross to have hanging around your neck in this city.”
    So Renz had his own political motives for wanting this killer brought down fast. Well, that was fine, if it put Quinn on the case. “You sure we got a serial killer?”
    “You know we do, Quinn. We