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  FIRE

  WALK

  Book 12 of the Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Series

  Melissa Bowersock

  Copyright © 2018 by Melissa Bowersock

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in an online review or one printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  First Printing

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover image by coversbydesign.net.

  Books by Melissa Bowersock

  The Appaloosa Connection

  The Blue Crystal

  Burning Through

  Finding Travis

  (No Time for Travis Series Book 1)

  Being Travis

  (No Time for Travis Series Book 2)

  Fleischerhaus

  Ghost Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 1)

  Skin Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 2)

  Star Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 3)

  Dream Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 4)

  Dragon Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 5)

  Demon Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 6)

  Soul Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 7)

  Death Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 8)

  Castle Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 9)

  Murder Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 10)

  Spirit Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 11)

  Fire Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 12)

  Goddess Rising

  Lightning Strikes

  Love’s Savage Armpit by Amber Flame

  (Originally published as

  The Pits of Passion)

  The Man in the Black Hat

  Marcia Gates: Angel of Bataan

  Queen’s Gold

  The Rare Breed

  Remember Me

  Sonnets for Heidi

  Stone’s Ghost

  Superstition Gold

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve thanked my beta readers before, but I really do need to call out four people who have been supremely helpful to me, not only for finding the nitpicky typos that drive me crazy, but also for their thoughtful feedback in terms on setting, story, conflict, and character development. These are all people I rely on a great deal, and I value their input. In no particular order, fellow writers Lynne Cantwell and Gordon Long, and readers Zane Dick and Lorraine Kraft. You folks keep me honest, and help me hone Sam and Lacey’s adventures to their sharpest form. I’m grateful for the support and the friendship.

  FIRE

  WALK

  Melissa Bowersock

  About the Author

  Books by Melissa Bowersock

  ONE

  Lacey stood in the kitchen and glared at the various machines that called her. The washing machine in the laundry closet, the vacuum cleaner next to it, and her laptop on the kitchen table. All three made valid points; all three “should” be a top priority, but she was still having trouble fully immersing herself into re-entry.

  Okay, she told herself, let’s do this logically. She could start one load of laundry, then vacuum while that was going, put a second load in and attack her laptop.

  Good plan.

  She headed for the hall closet where the dirty clothes hampers lived.

  It was always tough to let go of time spent on the Navajo reservation. She loved it out there, even as hot as it was in midsummer. She and Sam had spent the better part of a week there, working a case, then had his kids for the weekend, then… back to reality.

  Sam’s transition back to the “real world” wasn’t as jarring as hers was. He, after all, had taken his buckets of fresh-dug clay and sand to his ceramics studio where he would mix up a batch of clay to his own specifications. Then he was free to start creating.

  She got vacuuming and laundry.

  Oh, joy.

  Well, it wouldn’t take her long to get the household stuff done, then she could get back to her normal PI work. “Normal,” ha. Background checks. Serving subpoenas. Chasing down ghosts. It occurred to her that if she ever had to write a resume, she’d have no idea what to put.

  Experienced in videoing ghostly encounters.

  Researcher extraordinaire.

  Proficient in releasing tortured souls.

  When she’d met Sam two years ago, she’d had no idea what they would do, or how they would make a profession out of revealing and releasing ghosts.

  And now she was doing laundry. Well, she supposed they couldn’t go ghost-hunting all the time. At least not until they were rich enough to hire a fulltime housekeeper.

  She dumped the dirty whites into the washing machine and turned it on. Then she dragged the vacuum to the living room and plugged it in.

  Her phone rang.

  Saved by the bell.

  “Hello?”

  “Lacey Fitzpatrick?” a male voice asked.

  “Yes, this is she.”

  “My name is Beau Hewitt. I wonder if I could talk to you for a few minutes about what you and your partner do. Is this a good time?”

  “Uh, sure.” She walked to the couch and sank down on it. “Are you from the media?”

  Beau chuckled. “No, no, afraid not. But I have read about you and Mr. Firecloud. I have a situation that I think might benefit from your experience.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, understanding. “What situation is that?”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m in Meade Falls, Massachusetts. It’s a tiny town; I’m sure you never heard of it. I’m building a convenience store in the next town over, a place called Meadeview. I bought the property a few years ago; got it for a song, actually. It’s a perfect location, a corner of the main drag and by main drag, I mean the only road through town. Anyway, I started to build there last year. Got some of the walls framed but before I could get it closed in, it burnt to the ground.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Lacey said.

  “Yeah, me, too. After all the police investigation and the insurance company’s whatever-they-do, it was ruled accidental and I was cleared to start building again. So I did. Got all the walls up and framed, just started to close ‘em in… and it burned down again.”

  Wow,” Lacey said. “That’s pretty weird.”

  “No kidding,” he said. “The insurance company has another name for it. But now, after all this, now people in Meadeview are telling me it’s no surprise. They say the property is haunted and that anything built there burns down.”

  Lacey blinked at her phone. “That a ghost burns it down?”

  “That’s what they say. So now I am either out a wicked chunk of change and proud owner of a worthless piece of property, or I need to get rid of this pyromaniac ghost.” He paused. “Think you two could do that?”

  “Well,” Lacey said, “I don’t see why not. Sam and I will have to talk it over, of course, but…”

  “Oh, sure, sure,” Beau said. “What information do you
need? I don’t mind telling you I’m at the end of my rope here, and my insurance company is about ready to cut me loose. I gotta do something, even if it’s something, well, weird.”

  Lacey grabbed her notebook and a pen and settled in a chair at the dining room table. Weird, indeed. “First off, what’s the address?”

  Forty minutes later, she had all the particulars. She promised she and Sam would discuss it and get back to him tomorrow.

  “Great, great,” he said with a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Ms. Fitzpatrick. I hope you can help.”

  “It’s Lacey,” she said. “And I hope we can, too.”

  She keyed off the call and grabbed her laptop. She did a search on Google Earth for the property and waited impatiently as the program zeroed in from space on the tiny town in western Massachusetts. He wasn’t kidding, she realized. One main drag, about three or four blocks of a business center, and otherwise small, square houses on small, square lots. All around the town was thick forest, the canopy hiding a small stream that ran behind the town and downstream to the next town, Meade Falls.

  She even zoomed in on the property itself. A good-sized lot, maybe an acre, but the entire front half looked like it had been ravaged by a forest fire. She had no way to know if this image was after the current fire or the last one, but she had a feeling either way it would look pretty similar.

  She zoomed out slightly. Luckily, the property was on a corner and there was only a vacant lot next door. Nothing close to get caught up in any fires. Beyond the back property line was forest, but it didn’t look like that had been threatened at all.

  She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, staring out the front window. Weird, she thought. She reflected back over their past cases, trying to think of instances where ghosts had actually caused damage. When they’d been working that old Hollywood mansion, one of the ghosts liked to pull religious art off the wall and lay it on the floor, but he never damaged anything. The demon ghost they’d battled at San Juan Capistrano had actually attacked people but didn’t do physical damage to any structures. Small miracles. No, they hadn’t run into anything like this.

  Until now.

  The washing machine beeped the end of its cycle. She looked around and saw the vacuum glaring at her.

  Okay, okay, she grumbled to herself. She couldn’t do any more until Sam got home anyway.

  She shoved her laptop aside and went to take care of her housewifely duties.

  ~~~

  “A ghost setting fires?” Sam asked when she told him about the phone call.

  “Apparently. At least that’s what some people think. Have you ever encountered anything like that?”

  He gazed upward, obviously accessing his memories, going back through his experiences. She was used to his very deliberate considerations, and waited patiently.

  “No,” he said finally. He leveled his dark eyes at her and shrugged.

  “I’m not super crazy about dashing off across the country right away when we just got home from the reservation, but…”

  “Me, neither. We just got back to normal.” He glanced down at his hands where he still had a little clay under his fingernails. “What about next week?” he asked. “Give us a week here to catch up, rest up. Then go back to Massachusetts next Monday.”

  “That sounds okay,” she said. “I doubt if a week will make much difference. The police and insurance company are still doing their investigations anyway, so he can’t do much one way or another. I’ll call him and see if that works.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “Massachusetts, here we come.”

  ~~~

  TWO

  The flight out of LA was midmorning, getting to Hartford, Connecticut in early evening. By the time they got their luggage and their rental car, the sun was going down. They navigated the two-lane highway to Meadeview, enjoying the leisurely pace of the small towns and rural areas they drove through.

  “Lots of trees,” Lacey noted. “I’ll bet this is gorgeous in the fall.”

  “Maybe we should have waited ‘til then,” Sam said.

  “I’m not sure a two-month delay would have gone over,” she said. “This is fine. We’re coming up on Meade Falls; Meadeview is the next town over.”

  Beau had given them information about lodging, and they found the one and only hotel without trouble. The Meadeview Inn was a rectangular brick building next to a small family diner. It looked sturdy and cared for although not big on frills. They parked and went inside.

  “You have reservations for Fitzpatrick,” Lacey said to the woman behind the counter. The lady was older—perhaps sixty—with white hair styled in short curls close to her head, and she wore glasses secured with a decorative chain around her neck. Her name tag read Dorothy M.

  “Yes, here we are,” she said cheerfully. “One king, no smoking. If you would fill out this information card…”

  She slid the card and a pen across the counter to Lacey with a smile. Then just noticing Sam’s copper-colored skin and long black hair pulled back in a ponytail, her smile sagged a bit. Lacey noted that with a frown. Not too many Native Americans around, apparently.

  Lacey returned the card, filled in, and passed over her credit card. The woman gave them their two key cards plus the WIFI password. “Room two-fifteen,” she said. “Up this stairwell and three doors down on your left.”

  “Thank you,” Lacey said.

  They climbed the stairs and counted down to their room. The burgundy hall carpet looked a bit worn, but the walls were a soft rose color, and clean. Lacey keyed open the door and pushed into their room. Long and narrow, it had the bathroom right off the door, then the king bed and the sitting area beyond.

  “Not bad,” she said. The dresser across from the bed held the flat-screen TV. A small fridge crouched between the dresser and the two-seater couch.

  “It’ll do,” Sam agreed. “Let’s get our luggage and then check out the diner. I’m starved.”

  The diner seemed to specialize in family comfort food: biscuits and gravy, chicken-fried steak, lots of meat and carbs. The waitress definitely looked like she enjoyed the food. She was a perky butterball of a woman with a name tag that read Abby.

  “What can I get for you folks?” she asked in a friendly voice.

  “I’ll have the chicken strips,” Lacey said, “and a side salad.”

  “Caesar chicken salad for me,” Sam said.

  “All righty. Any fries or onion rings for either of you?”

  Lacey was tempted, but followed Sam’s lead and shook her head. It was too easy to overeat when they dined out for days at a time.

  “I’ll have that right out for you.”

  Lacey stared out the window into the darkness. “This three-hour time difference is tough,” she said. “I hope we can get good sleep and get up in time tomorrow.”

  “What time are we meeting Beau?”

  “Nine. At the site. It shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  Now that they were here, Lacey was itching to see the site and start gathering information. The only thing that stopped her from asking the waitress about it was the fact that Sam liked to walk a scene with little or no prior knowledge, just to make sure that the impressions he got were from the ghosts and not his own expectations.

  “Here we are,” Abby said when she laid full plates in front of them. “Now, how about ketchup, Tabasco or anything else?”

  “No, this looks fine,” Lacey said. “I think we’re good.”

  “All righty. You folks here for a few days, or just passing through?” Abby set her hands on her ample hips and beamed at them. Lacey realized there were very few other customers, so apparently the woman had time to chitchat.

  “We’ll be here a few days,” Lacey said. “Seems like a nice town.”

  “Oh, it is,” Abby agreed. “Not much going on compared to some, but it’s beautiful country. You folks hikers?”

  “Uh, hikers? No, not really,” Lacey said. “Are the
re a lot of trails around here?”

  “Oh, yeah. We’ve got lots of state forests all around, lots of lakes, and a nice wildlife preserve. October Mountain State Forest is a real popular area just south of here. Quite a few pretty waterfalls.”

  “Is there a waterfall in Meade Falls?”

  Abby laughed. “One. Meade Creek drops about eight feet. It’s pretty, but not exactly exciting.”

  “I see. Well, we’ll have a look around tomorrow. Thank you.”

  “Sure thing. I’ll check back with you in a bit. Enjoy.”

  Lacey chuckled as she picked up a chicken strip and dipped it into Ranch dressing. “Looks like we’ve got our own private tour guide if we want it.”

  “Looks like,” Sam agreed. “Maybe we’ll have to check out some of the trails when we’re done here.”

  But work first, Lacey thought. She couldn’t help but wonder what this case would be, or where it would take them.

  Only time would tell.

  ~~~

  THREE

  Her fears about the time difference confounding their sleep habits were, unfortunately, not unfounded. She slept only fitfully and every time she woke up and glanced at the clock radio, she figured what the time translated to in the Pacific Time Zone. Getting up at seven a.m. meant four a.m. in LA. And felt like it.

  They sampled the free breakfast in the hotel lobby, an unimaginative offering of fresh fruit, English muffins or cold cereal. Lacey guessed the simple choices here would help to offset the heavier items available at the diner, which was probably a good thing.

  “So where’s the site?” Sam asked as he buttered his English muffin. The dining area was only a corner of the lobby, just four small tables, so it was a good thing there were few customers. One man cruised through, grabbing a banana, but no other guests appeared.

  “We actually passed it last night,” Lacey said, bringing up an image on her phone. “But in the dark, it would be hard to see.” She passed her phone to Sam.