Fired Up Read online

“He is. But I want to be sure it’s the real deal. I hate to say it, but when you’re dealing with a legendary artifact you have to consider the possibility that you’ve got a fake.”

  Rose grinned. “You mean there’s actually an outside chance that someone made a copy of some old lamp and sold it to Drake Stone?”

  “Heaven forbid,” Chloe said.

  Rose’s black brows spiked a couple of times. “I seem to recall someone telling me that faithful copies and exact reproductions of works of art or antiquities are not considered fakes or forgeries.”

  “Except when they’re represented and sold as originals,” Chloe concluded drily. “I know. Hard to believe that could happen. I’m going to need an intro to get to Stone. Aunt Phyllis knows everyone in the show-business world, at least the stars in Drake Stone’s age group. I’ll talk to her tomorrow morning and see if she can help me contact him. Then I’ll make a quick trip to Vegas to check out the lamp. If it’s the real thing I’ll call Mr. Winters and tell him to go ahead with the deal.”

  “I love Vegas. Can I go with you?”

  “No, you cannot,” Chloe said firmly. “You’re my administrative assistant, remember? Your job is to look after things here and take care of Hector. You know he can’t be left alone for long.”

  They both looked at Hector. He thumped his tail once or twice and waited to see if he was going to get any more pizza.

  “Bummer,” Rose said. “I really love Vegas.”

  “I seem to recall that you have a psych test coming up this week,” Chloe said before taking the next bite.

  Rose was in her first year at a local community college. Her goal was to become a partner in Harper Investigations. Chloe assumed that her assistant would change her mind a million times before she found the career she really wanted, but Rose was showing no such uncertainty.

  “Promise me you’ll ask Drake Stone for an autographed picture,” Rose said.

  “I’ll do that.”

  Rose frowned. “Just thought of something. What if Stone doesn’t want to sell the lamp?”

  “I’ll worry about that after I’ve verified that it’s the right lamp. One step at a time, as we in the investigation business like to say.”

  “Mostly what you say is that the client is a pain in the ass.”

  “That, too.”

  “Mr. Winters is different, though, isn’t he?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Rose studied her with a thoughtful expression. “You think he’s hot. Weird, but hot.”

  “Jack Winters? Hot?” Chloe sputtered on the pizza. She finally managed to swallow. “He’s a client, Rose.”

  “Doesn’t mean he can’t be hot.” Rose grinned. “I saw your face when he left the office. You’re attracted to him, aren’t you? Admit it.”

  “You know Rule Number One here at Harper Investigations.”

  “Never sleep with a client. Sure. But what about when the case is closed?”

  “Rose—”

  “You never looked at Fletcher Monroe the way you looked at Mr. Winters.”

  Chloe narrowed her eyes in warning. “Speaking of Fletcher Monroe.”

  “Right. This is the night, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Chloe glanced at her watch. “But not until midnight, at the earliest. I’d better make a pot of coffee.”

  “You don’t like coffee. You drink tea.”

  “I’ll need the caffeine to stay awake. Meanwhile I’ve still got time for a little more research on the Burning Lamp. You want to give me a hand?”

  Rose’s eyes glinted with enthusiasm. “Absolutely. I really love these woo-woo cases.”

  Chloe looked at her. “I haven’t told you anything except that I’m looking for an old lamp. What makes you think this is one of the woo-woo cases?”

  Rose reached for the last slice of pizza. “I always know.”

  7

  CHLOE EASED THE CAR TO THE CURB AND TURNED OFF THE engine. She studied the small house through the windshield and felt the hair stir on the nape of her neck.

  The shades and curtains were closed upstairs and down. Only the faint glow of a television screen showed at the edge of the living room window. The rest of the lights were off.

  “That’s not right,” she said to Hector. “All of the lights and the television were supposed to be off by midnight. I swear if Fletcher decided to bring a date back here tonight, I’m off the case. I’m not about to go through all this trouble again.”

  Hector was sitting upright in the passenger seat. He turned his head briefly at the sound of her voice but otherwise showed no great interest in the matter. He was just content to be with her.

  She sat for a while behind the wheel. Most of the other houses on the quiet street in the North Seattle neighborhood were shrouded in darkness, save for the lights above the front doors and the occasional glow from an upstairs window.

  “You see, this is one of the reasons I ended my relationship with Fletcher,” she said to Hector. “He’s unreliable. He can’t help himself. He makes a commitment, and then he can’t follow through on it.”

  Her satchel was on the floor in front of Hector. She fumbled briefly with the straps, reached inside and found her phone. Fletcher was still on her list of contacts under Personal.

  “Should have moved him to Business,” she told Hector.

  She punched in the number. Four rings later she was dumped into voice mail. She did not leave a message.

  “To be fair, I suppose it’s possible that he’s not actually having sex with a new girlfriend,” she said. “Highly unlikely but possible. Maybe he just fell asleep in front of the TV. Guys do that.”

  Hector looked at her, patient as always. She did not do a lot of stakeout work. With the advent of the Internet it had become increasingly unnecessary. If you wanted to verify that a person who was filing a medical disability claim with his insurance company didn’t really have to wear a neck brace all you had to do was check out his home page at one of the social networking sites or find his blog. Invariably the claimant had posted numerous photos of his recent skiing vacation or hiking trip together with a chatty little comment about how much fun he’d had and how he planned to spend the money he would get when the insurance company settled his claim. And she never did divorce work, period. It was one of her rules.

  She almost never took cases like the one she was on tonight, either. They were always messy. But she’d made the fatal mistake of letting herself feel sorry for Fletcher.

  “I admit I have a soft spot for him,” she said to Hector. “That’s because for a few brief, shining moments I was convinced that he was Mr. Perfect. I was actually thinking of giving up celibacy for him. It’s not his fault it turned out that I was wrong.”

  She sat quietly for a few more minutes, contemplating the almost-dark house. Invisible energy feathered her senses.

  “There’s something screwy with this picture, Hector.”

  Hector yawned.

  She tried Fletcher’s number again. Still no answer. She closed the phone.

  “Okay, that’s it, we’re going to wake him up,” she announced. “I don’t care if he is having great sex. It will serve him right if we interrupt his postcoital glow.”

  She plucked the leash from the dashboard and attached it to Hector’s collar. They got out of the car. She took a minute to transfer the tiny camera and her phone to the pocket of her trench coat.

  She stashed the satchel in the trunk and picked up the end of Hector’s leash. Together they crossed the street in the middle of the block and went up the front walk to the door of Fletcher’s house.

  The flickering glow of the television set showed at the cracks in the curtains. The bluish light appeared eerie for some inexplicable reason. Once again, she felt the hair stir on the nape of her neck. Instinctively she ramped up her senses a little and looked around. There were several layers of psi prints on the steps and the doorknob but none of the dreamlight looked fresh or dangerous. Most of the residue had be
en left by Fletcher.

  “Nerves,” she said to Hector. “Probably shouldn’t have had that second cup of coffee.”

  She leaned on the bell for a while and listened to the muffled sound of the chimes inside. There was no response. Her skin prickled. She looked down at Hector. He appeared monumentally unconcerned.

  “Well, you never did like Fletcher,” she said. “If he actually was in trouble in there you’d probably just lift a leg and pee on him.”

  She tried the door, expecting to find it locked. It was. Fletcher had become very security conscious recently.

  She glanced back down at Hector. He was idly sniffing the ceramic planter on the front step. As she watched, he marked the territory, but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Nothing about Fletcher interested Hector.

  “But he’s a client now,” she explained. “We can’t just ignore this.”

  Hector looked bored.

  She dug into another pocket of her trench coat and found the high-tech tool that her cousin Abe had given her as a birthday gift. “Any respectable PI should be able to pick a lock,” he’d explained. “This little gadget will open just about any standard- issue door lock. Think of me whenever you use it.”

  She thought about Abe now. He had a talent for locks and related technology. But, then, his branch of the family tree boasted a number of what Arcane liked to call crypto-talents. In previous eras they had been known by less politically correct labels: cat burglars and safe-crackers. Cryptos came in many iterations and permutations, but they all had one thing in common: they had a preternatural ability to get through locked doors, including the cyberspace variety. Like her, Abe made his living in a fairly respectable fashion: he designed computer security systems.

  She pushed the door open, cranked her senses a little higher, and looked into the darkened foyer. She could hear the television clearly now. The fast, sparkling dialogue of a vintage film blared. Fletcher was not a fan of old movies. That meant he probably was asleep on the sofa.

  “Fletcher?”

  There was no response.

  Another wave of jitters swept through her, but she could see no reason for it. Not only was Hector quiet, but her other vision revealed nothing alarming. There were no dangerously hot footsteps on the foyer tiles.

  Hector gazed intently into the small, shadowed entry. He was showing some interest now, but no more than he would have upon entering any new environment, she decided. Of course, given his profound disdain for Fletcher, it would not bother him at all if Fletcher was lying dead or ill on the floor of the living room.

  Dead or ill. Her stomach knotted with acute anxiety.

  Fletcher was in his early thirties. He worked out three times a week, and he watched his diet. But it was not unheard of for an otherwise healthy man to collapse from an undiagnosed heart condition or an aneurism.

  Another wave of unease swept over her. She moved into the foyer and groped for the wall switch. The dim light from the sconce illuminated the entry and a small portion of the living room. She could make out a man’s legs on the floor. The rest of the figure was concealed by the sofa.

  “Oh, my God, Fletcher.”

  She dropped the leash and rushed forward, simultaneously plunging her hand into her pocket for her cell phone.

  She fell to her knees beside Fletcher’s too-still form and fumbled for a pulse. Relief surged through her when she found the slow but steady beat at his throat. The hall light and the glow of the television revealed no signs of blood. She wondered if he’d had a seizure of some kind. She punched in the emergency number on her phone.

  Hector whined. She glanced up and saw that he was standing at the foot of the stairs, gazing intently up into the darkness of the second floor.

  For the first time she got a look at the steps and the banister. She froze at the sight of the violent, black and purple dreamprints glowing ominously in the shadows.

  Hector growled. He did not take his attention off the top of the stairs.

  The 911 operator came on the line. “What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “Intruder in the house,” Chloe whispered.

  “Does he have a gun?”

  “I don’t know. He’s upstairs.”

  “Get out of the house immediately, ma’am.”

  “Someone has been hurt. He’s unconscious.”

  “Get out of the house. Now.”

  8

  HE WAS ON THE COMPUTER, TRYING NOT TO THINK ABOUT THE night of doped-up sleep and bad dreams that awaited him when the jolt of awareness struck. It hit like a body blow. He was out of the chair and on his feet, searching for nameless enemies in the shadows of his office before he realized what had happened.

  Take it easy. Just another hallucination. They rarely lasted more than a few minutes at most. But invariably he knew that what he was seeing was not real. It was as if his para-senses short-circuited for a brief period and his brain tried to make sense of the resulting confusion.

  But what was happening to him now was different. It wasn’t a disorienting moment of visual disturbance when the real world blurred and took on the surreal quality of a dreamscape. It wasn’t an auditory hallucination, either. His first thought was that it was yet another aspect of his new talent. But for some reason the deep, intense awareness and alarm he was experiencing seemed focused on Chloe Harper.

  His unease was not irrational, he thought. After all, he had a hell of a lot riding on Chloe. If she could not locate the lamp he was going to find himself right up against a very hard wall. He’d been thinking about her constantly since he had left her office, the strat side of his nature trying to plot ways to stay in control of what was fast becoming an out-of-control situation.

  But logic went only so far. He could not escape the feeling that something really bad was going down and that Chloe was in the middle of it.

  He took out his phone and punched in the number of Harper Investigations. Goth Girl answered on the third or fourth ring. He heard the sound of music playing in the background. Opera, of all things.

  “Is your boss there?” he asked.

  “She’s out on a case,” Rose said.

  “It’s after midnight.”

  “Stakeout. Her sort-of ex thinks one of his students is stalking him.”

  “Where is she?”

  “That kind of information is supposed to be confidential at a detective agency,” Rose said.

  “She’s in trouble—I can feel it.” He did not bother to put the energy of his new talent into words. He wanted to scare her a little, but the laws of para-physics being what they were, psi waves did not travel through cell phones, cyberspace or any other kind of high- tech device. But he was still a strat. He had picked up on the close bond between Rose and Chloe that afternoon. You didn’t have to have a lot of talent to know how to work an angle like that.

  “You really think so?” Rose asked, dubious, but concerned.

  “Look, you know your boss is psychic, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, sure.”

  It was a relief to be dealing with someone who actually believed in the paranormal.

  “So am I,” he said. “Trust me on this. Chloe is in danger.”

  “Okay, this is really weird. I’ve been getting a little nervous, myself, for the past few minutes. Chloe says I’ve got good intuition. Hang on, I’ll give her a call.”

  He left his office and went out into the living room. The sight of his newly decorated condo with its cold, polished concrete floor and sleek steel-and-glass design did nothing to ease his prowling tension. He went to the wall of windows and looked out at the view of the black expanse of Elliott Bay and the lights of West Seattle while he waited. Another storm was coming in. He could feel it.

  Rose came back a moment later. She sounded seriously worried now.

  “She’s not answering her phone,” Rose said. “You’re right, something’s wrong. I knew that weasel was using the Mad Cheerleader to manipulate her.”

  He headed for the
door, fishing his keys out of his pocket. “Give me an address.”

  “What are you going to do?” Rose asked.

  “Find her.”

  “Pick me up first. I’m coming with you.”

  “Waste of time.”

  “Please. I don’t have a car of my own. I need to get to her.”

  The rising anxiety in Rose’s voice cut deep. She was starting to panic.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “I have an apartment across the hall from Chloe’s. Right above the office. I’ll meet you downstairs on the sidewalk.”

  9

  THE SMELL OF KEROSENE WAFTED DOWN THE STAIRCASE. HECTOR growled again. There was a sudden, terrifying whoosh. The top of the stairs was abruptly illuminated with a hellish glow.

  “Oh, shit,” Chloe whispered.

  “Ma’am? Are you out of the house?” the 911 operator demanded.

  The smoke detectors kicked in. The screech drowned out Hector, who was now barking furiously. Upstairs the fire roared like a freight train as it gathered energy.

  “Trust me, I’m getting out of here as fast as I can,” Chloe said.

  She closed the phone, dropped it into her pocket and jumped to her feet. Hooking her hands under Fletcher’s shoulders she heaved with all of her strength. His head lolled. His body moved only a couple of inches on the carpet. He weighed a ton.

  So much for the famous adrenaline rush that was supposed to give a woman abnormal strength in an emergency, she thought. It dawned on her that she had to get Fletcher off the carpet and onto the hardwood floor where there would be less friction. She dropped his shoulders, knelt beside him and started to roll him toward the entrance.

  To her amazement, the technique worked. Fletcher’s head flopped on the rug a few times in the process. He would probably have some bruises in the morning, she thought, but at least he would be alive. Maybe. Always assuming she could haul him out the door before the house burned down around them.

  Hector was in a frenzy now. He trotted back and forth between the open door and the foot of the staircase, howling.