Women are turning up dead, and Lisa O'Malley has a habit of walking into crime scenes, curious. She's a forensic pathologist, and mysteries are her domain. U.S. marshall Quinn Diamond has found loving her is easier than keeping her safe. Lisa's found the killer, and now she's missing too. Introducing the O'Malleys, an inspirational group of seven, all abandoned or orphaned as teens, who have made the choice to become a loyal and committed family. They have chosen their own surname, O'Malley, and have stood by each other through moments of joy and heartache. Their stories are told in CBA best-selling, inspirational romantic suspense novels that rock your heart and restore strength and hope to your spirit. The Truth Seeker By Dee Henderson Multnomah Publishers Copyright ©2005 Dee Henderson All right reserved. ISBN: 9781414310589 Chapter One The fire had been alive; it had left its signature in the coiled,twisted wood, the bent metal, the heavy ash. It was a tamedbeast, but still here, ready to come back to life with a nudge. LisaO'Malley walked with great respect up the stairs following her brotherJack into the heart of the fire damage. The heavy boots he had insistedshe wear were welcome as she realized it was glass crunching beneathher feet. Lightbulbs and picture frames had shattered in the heat. The fire coat was harder to get accustomed to. The Nomex clothwas rough and it felt like thirty pounds on her back as she struggled tokeep her balance. When Jack worked a fire he ran stairs wearing thecoat and an air tank, carrying another forty pounds of gear. She didn'tknow how he did it. The man rarely showed a serious side, but it wasthere when he was doing the job he excelled at. Reaching the upstairs landing, she turned her flashlight to inspectthe hallway ceiling and walls. The superheated gas created by the firehad reached down five feet from the ceiling, burning into the paint andwood, marking a suicide line. Two or three feet down indicated a severefire; five was explosive. The firemen confronting this fire had been takingtheir lives in their hands in facing it head-on. "Watch your step, I don't trust this hallway. Stay close to the northwall." Lisa returned her flashlight to the floor to pick her next steps. Jackhad hesitated before letting her come up. The house was safe for now,but with the weight of walls and joists shifting to beams not designedto handle the weight, every day brought the structure closer to collapse.It had rained yesterday, making the damaged wood swell and furtherstressing the structure. She was careful not to get snagged by a nail or by exposed wiring.The fire crews had pulled down part of the hallway ceiling and tornportions of the walls back to the studs in order to locate dangerouspockets of lingering heat. Six days ago this had been a two-alarm fire.In the smoldering remains, still in his bed, the body of Egan Hamptonhad been recovered. She reached the back bedroom and stopped. "An accident-" She could only shake her head in disbelief. Thefurniture was charred, the mattress burned down to the springs; bookson the shelf were now warped spines enfolding wrinkled pages of ash;the alarm clock was a chunk of deformed plastic adhered to the bedsidetable; the television tube had cracked and buckled in. The only items not burned or blackened in the room were a portionof the bedding that had been protected by Egan's body and a sectionof the floor rug that had been under the bed frame. The bedroomdoor was still on its hinges but it had burned on both sides to a fractionof its normal width. "Like I said, it was a hot fire." She stepped with caution inside the room, instinctively looking upto make sure she wasn't going to get hit with something. The ceilingwas open in sections, revealing part of the attic, and in one place shecould see all the way through to the sky. Through the destroyed window she could see the orchard andnursery, the buildings and commercial greenhouses that comprisedNakomi Nurseries, the business Egan had built up over the years andrecently passed to his nephew Walter to manage. Jack dealt with fire every day; he knew how it moved and breathedand burned. She'd learned enough from him to understand the patterns.This looked like a flashover-everything in the room heating up, reachingburn point, and suddenly bursting into flames en masse . "Did the roomsmolder and smoke before flashover or was it a steady fire? In the policereport Walter said he saw the smoke and then a flash and called 911." "It began as a smoldering fire." Jack knelt and picked up largeshards of glass from the shattered window. "Look at the smoke stainthat burned into the pane of window glass." He used the crowbar to pull off the bottom piece of the windowframe casing and turned it over to show her the details. "You can tell itstarted as a floor fire burning upward because the fire swept across thiswood and out the window. Had it initially been flames at the ceiling