“I noticed you didn't take much more than the bare necessities.” He put down her suitcase by the front door. “Now, can I trust you not to jump in the SUV and take off while I run upstairs and pack an overnight case?”

“What would you do if I did?”

“Go after you.”

She shrugged. “Then it would be a waste of time and effort.” She leaned against the door. “I'll wait for you.”

She's left the estate,” Dickens said when Trask answered the phone. “She and Silver took off about three hours ago in the SUV and took Highway 66 and then 81. They just crossed the West Virginia border. I followed them, but I had to be damn careful. The Secret Service was right on their tail.”

“Highway 81,” Trask said thoughtfully. “Now, why would they be going . . .” He started to chuckle. “Of course.”

“You know where she's going?”

“Yes, I know. It's always smart to know your enemy.”

“You want me to stay with her?”

“For the time being.” My God, Marionville. He hadn't been back to that one-horse town since he'd left it to go to Europe on his Fulbright scholarship. He'd thought he'd put those memories far behind him, but they were suddenly bombarding him. All the bitter humiliations and the delicious triumphs . . . “Yes, I want to know where she is every minute.”

“You can't touch her. I told you, she's being followed by—”

“I heard you. I'll get back to you.” He hung up.

Marionville.

He could visualize Kerry Murphy digging, searching, stirring the embers of long ago. The image was curiously alluring. Maybe that was her intention, to draw him into following her.

Marionville . . .

Drop me off at the local library,” Kerry said. If this tiny town had a library, she thought in discouragement. It was hardly a bustling metropolis. The sign they'd passed when they entered Marionville had laid claim to eleven thousand people, but that could have been an old sign. It appeared that half the stores were closed on the main street winding through the center of the town. “I want to go through back newspapers and see if I can find any reference to Trask.”

“How far back are you going?”

“All the way. I'll start the year he was born.”

“I doubt if he was into any shenanigans in the cradle.”

“I don't care. I want to know everything about him.”

Silver nodded. “Well, I noticed an elementary school when we first hit town. Schools and libraries usually go together.” He turned the corner and doubled back. “If we don't see the library, we'll ask at the school.”

“Okay.” She gazed out the window as they passed several small shotgun houses with peeling paint and rickety front porches. “This is depressing. It looks like the town's dying.”

“It probably is. Evidently when the mines closed down so did the town.” He pulled into the school parking lot and got out of the SUV. “I'll be right back.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Ledbruk's surveillance car was within view. “This shouldn't take long.”

She watched him go up the steps toward the front entrance. The elementary school was red brick but still managed to look as old and shoddy as the houses they'd passed. Had the town been this decrepit when Trask was growing up?

Silver came out of the school ten minutes later and walked up to her side of the SUV. “I found out the only local newspaper is the Marionville Gazette. It's been in business for the last seventy years. The library is two blocks from here. You turn left at the corner and it's on your right.”

“You're not coming?”

“I decided to check back records while I was in the office, and Trask went to grade school here. The chances were good since this is such a small burg. I thought I'd get copies of his records and then check out his high school. It's in Cartersville, about five miles from here.”

“They'll give you access to his records?”

“I'll persuade them. I'm a very persuasive guy.” He stepped back. “I'll call you when I'm done and you can pick me up.” He turned and went back into the school.

She scooted over into the driver's seat. That had been a stupid question. Of course Silver would be able to get the information. Persuasive was definitely an understatement.

The computer at the Marionville library was a dinosaur. She did a search on Trask. After the first hour the work went smoother. It was still slow but not excruciating. It took Kerry nearly thirty minutes just to stumble through the first year of Trask's life in the newspaper she'd chosen to access. Not that there was anything there but a birth announcement that Charles and Elizabeth Trask were now the proud parents of a healthy baby boy.

The next mention of Trask was when he won a local spelling bee at age seven. Two years later he came in first at a statewide science fair. There was even a picture of him holding the blue ribbon, with his parents beaming with pride. After that there were numerous mentions, as he took prize after prize that the academic community offered. Until the final awarding of the Fulbright.

She leaned back and rubbed her eyes. A brilliant student, a son to be proud of. No indications of any false steps. But this couldn't be the true picture. Trask couldn't have gone through his entire maturing years as a role model and then turned around and become a monster. The seed had to be there.

The seed.

She sat up straight in her chair.

And in this case the seed was the obsession that dominated Trask's life. Silver had said that it went back only fifteen years, but she had told him that she knew it went back much, much further.

She leaned forward and typed in one word.

Fire.

She didn't pick Silver up when he called her from Cartersville High School. “I've found something—I think. Call Ledbruk to come and get you. Check into a motel and call me and let me know where you are. I'll meet you there as soon as I'm done.”

“I'll get to a motel on my own. I don't want you left alone.” He paused. “I'm glad one of us has gotten lucky. With a few exceptions, all I've learned is that Trask was a golden boy.”

“I want to hear about those exceptions.” She glanced back at the computer screen. “I've got to go. I have two more years to cover and the library closes in an hour.” She hung up and leaned forward, her finger clicking on the mouse as she went through the newspaper page by page. She stiffened as her gaze fell on an article on the back pages of June 3.

There was another one. . . .

She pressed the print button.

So what did you find?” Silver asked when he answered her knock at his motel room. “It took you long enough.”

“I persuaded the librarian to keep the library open an extra hour.” She dropped down on the couch and handed him the papers in her hand. “And I didn't have to use any of your ‘persuasiveness.' All I said was please.”

“Sometimes that works too.” He looked down at the papers she'd handed him. “What's this supposed to be?”

“Articles about fires that occurred in Marionville and surrounding towns during the twenty years Trask lived here. I've marked the ones that interested me.” She rubbed her temple. “No, interested isn't the right word. Horrified is closer.”

“You think that Trask started these fires?”

“I told you that I sensed he'd started to be obsessed a long time before he made Firestorm his career. But I couldn't find anything in his background that indicated he was anything but Mr. Clean.”

Silver nodded. “The golden boy.”

“I still can't find any proof. And I don't even have the info to make a connection.” She grimaced. “So tell me about these exceptions you ran across in his school records.”

“There wasn't much.” He sat down across from her. “You look beat. Want to go out and get something to eat?”

“No, I want to make a connection, dammit. I want to know the bastard.”

He nodded. “You know he was brilliant. He was a fantastic student and made the effort to make himself likable to his teachers. But he wasn't the most popular kid with the other students. This was a tough, gritty mining town, and he was generally thought of as a king-size dork. There were a couple incidents when he went to the principal because kids were bullying him.”