While the Fire Rages Read Free

seltzer water, then, sipping at the liquid appreciatively, he glanced around the comfortable room.
    The earth-tone colors, the functional yet luxurious furnishings, the oversized desk, stamped the room as Wolf’s domain. However, there were small signs indicating the domain had been invaded.
    A smile softened Brett’s finely molded lips as his eyes paused on a large, brazenly red fire engine parked neatly in one corner. He had witnessed his nephew tearing through the house on the riding toy with the same panache Wolf displayed behind the wheel of his equally brazen red Ferrari.
    His thought banished the soft smile. The Ferrari was gone, totally demolished in the accident. It was several seconds before a twinge of pain in his jaw brought Brett out of his reverie to the realization of his tightly clenched teeth.
    Damn, it was only a car! A car can be replaced. He would gladly write out his own personal check for a half dozen Ferraris if only Wolf...
    Literally shaking himself out of his introspection, Brett moved purposefully to the desk. It had grown completely dark beyond the window behind him before he pushed the padded leather covered chair back and stood up.
    The plot sickens.
    Raking long, bony fingers through thick strands of slightly wavy hair, he grimaced sourly at the innocent-looking envelope on the desktop. The tightness in his stomach bore out his appraisal of the play unfolding in his mind.
    Raising eyes gone steely gray with anger, Brett ran his gaze slowly around the room, seeing everything, seeing nothing, the document neatly folded inside the long, buff-colored envelope imprinted on his inner vision.
    Does she love him?
    Damn it! Whether or not Jo Lawrence was in love with Wolf should not be his uppermost consideration! Micki was the one who would suffer from this. If she found out.
    Lids narrowing over eyes now icy with calculation, he sliced his gaze back to the desk. He had discovered the damned thing inside the locked top drawer of the desk, which, as he was in possession of Wolf’s keyring, he’d opened without the slightest compunction.
    As expected, he’d found everything pertaining to the company in perfect order. It was that one long envelope that had shaken him.
    It was his job to make sure Micki did not find out.
    “Damn!”
    His very long, deceptively lean looking frame taut with frustration and anger, Brett snatched the empty whisky glass and walked out of the room with his habitual long stride.
    He rinsed the glass under steaming hot water and placed it in the draining rack beside the sink, his mind examining the ways in which to handle this new, unsavory development.
    He strode back into his brother’s study, his eyes, cold as the North Atlantic, fastening on the cause of his anger.
    Crossing to the desk, he extended a hand to pluck the envelope up, then, turning abruptly, he walked out of the room. After activating the computerized alarm system to secure the house for the night, he left the house and loped to the low sports car shimmering like liquid silver in the moonlight.
    The weightless document lay heavy in Brett’s breast pocket as he backed the vehicle out of the driveway. Instead of making the turn that would take him back to the center of town, he spun the leather-covered wheel and headed toward the bay.
    Now, in early evening, the streets were even more deserted than they’d been when he left the motel. The uncanny sensation of being the only living being in a dark, abandoned ghost town was even more pronounced.
    Parking at the base of a street that dead-ended at the bay, Brett uncoiled his considerable length from behind the wheel and strolled to stand on the wide, oily-looking wood pilings.
    The moonlight struck a glittering path across the ever-shifting water, dancing in time to the muted swish as wavelets wound themselves around the spindly legs supporting long, narrow docking piers. Empty now, the berthing slips had a forsaken look that would vanish with the return of