Fire Setters: A Shane Investigations: A gripping crime thriller filled with heart-melting romance and mystery Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Fire Setters: A Shane Investigations Book 1

  Description:

  Also by Debra Erfert

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Other Book by Debra Erfert

  Join Debra’s newsletter

  Fire Setters

  A Shane Investigations

  Book 1

  Debra Erfert

  Fire Setters: A Shane Investigations Book 1

  © 2018 Debra Erfert

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, uploaded, distributed, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, descriptions, entities, and incidents included in this story are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, and entities is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9990460-5-0

  Cover Design by: SelfPubBookCovers.com/ FrinaArt

  Edited by Laura Walker

  Published by: Stone Horse Press, LLC

  Join Debra’s newsletter

  Description:

  From #1 best-selling author Debra Erfert, a gripping mystery full of stunning twists and turns. Discover the author everyone’s talking about.

  THIS IS THE MOST DISTURBING CASE OF CANDICE SHANE’S CAREER.

  Good little boys aren’t supposed to play with fire.

  While on stakeout to catch the cretin who’s stalking a client, Private Investigator Candice Shane finds a house on fire--at midnight. A little girl’s tricycle in the yard prompts her hasty decision to break in, saving a sleeping woman and her three children.

  The husband is out of town. Candice is hired by the grateful woman to clear her husband from police suspicion, and to find out who wants them dead.

  Fingerprints on the circuit breaker box connects the arson to two neighborhood boys, yet the troubled 12-year-old son mumbles the name Zane as he runs out of his smoke-filled bedroom.

  Clearing the husband is easy. Finding Zane, the kid who is seemingly behind the ring of juvenile fire-setters, takes old-fashion, shoe-leather-thinning detective work, and luck.

  Staying alive while doing it takes a lot more. Having her ex-boyfriend who’s a cop helps, but even Alex can’t stop the bullets from coming through Candice’s kitchen window. He can’t stop her apartment from burning. And he can’t stop her heart from falling in love with him all over again.

  Also by Debra Erfert

  A Strange Twist of Fate

  Snowdrift

  Changes of the Heart

  Relative Evil

  Window of Time

  Window of Death

  Window of Darkness

  Window of Time Trilogy boxed set

  Window of Secrets, Mission: Oasis de Huacachina (Novella)

  The Royals of Monterra: It Takes a Sleuth

  Synapses (Novella)

  Chapter 1

  NEVER LET YOUR mouth write a check your butt can’t cash. It didn’t take long before Candice understood what her mentor, private investigator Gil Roscoe, meant when he’d told her that over the year she’d apprenticed with him. Words can hurt. Or more accurately: words can get you hurt. Gil knew what he was talking about. Being a retired City of Phoenix police detective gave him unique insights into the dregs of human nature that Candice only wished she had. He’d been able to talk his way out of most dangerous situations in his twenty-five years of public service using what he called verbal judo.

  The first week Candice rode with Gil, she’d muttered something borderline insensitive to a hotheaded man he was questioning, a probable suspect in a business burglary, and Gil had to take him down to the ground. He’d saved Candice from being punched, but that exchange didn’t dissuade her from speaking up the next chance she had. That said—Gil sent her to Taekwondo self-defense classes twice a week for the next eleven months where she excelled, just like with everything she took on.

  After two years of being on her own with nineteen solved cases to her credit, it was Candice’s turn to apprentice Liz Guerrero, a young woman splitting her time between a full load of university classes while doing mundane duties. Like tonight—staking out a client’s house—for the third night in a row.

  The half-moon overhead made the night dark enough that Candice and Liz weren’t noticeable slumped down in her red ‘67 Volkswagen bug, which was parked next to the curb fifty yards down from the house of Joslyn Smith, Candice’s CPA. Being stalked by an ex-boyfriend should’ve been strictly a police case, but Devin had been careful—he never left evidence traceable back to him. Joslyn knew it was him leaving hand-written death threats under her doormat, as well as disgusting pictures of dead bodies on her Facebook page—neither left any fingerprints, physical or electronic, so the local police couldn’t trace the sender. That was when Joslyn hired Candice.

  Stopping the computer pictures had been easy. Candice had her change her privacy settings and weeded out “friends” she didn’t really know. Now only her true friends had access to her account, but that didn’t stop another hand-written threat from being left under her doormat before Candice was able to have security cameras installed.

  A dark figure darted from the side of Joslyn’s house.

  “Liz—look.” Candice lifted a special camera to her eye, aiming the lens in the night-vision mode in the direction of the front door, and zoomed in closer. “I think Devin has made an appearance.”

  “Aren’t you going to nab him?” Liz asked nasally then sneezed. She snatched two tissues from the box between their seats and blew her nose.

  “Bless you. No, just prove that it’s him stalking her then leave the rest up to the courts.”

  Liz dug out the binoculars from Candice’s bag in the backseat. “You’d prove it was Devin if you grabbed him by his collar and said gotcha! And then citizen’s arrest him.”

  “What have I been teaching you?” Candice said softly, not really asking the question of her intern, but more to herself. She snapped a couple of pictures of where she thought she saw movement. “Unless you’re willing to get into a physical confrontation with a suspect, then it’s better to leave it to the police to apprehend him. That’s not necessarily our job.”

  “I’ll be your backup,” Liz told her, sniffing. “Together we can handle him without getting hurt. It’ll give me good experience.”

  Candice continued to look though the viewfinder. “You’re in no condition to handle anybody.” The optics gathered the low natural light and multiplied it many times over. What was visible to the naked eye as varying shades of blacks and grays was lit up in a weird light green glow bright enough to see the figure move closer to Joslyn’s front door. “I wish he’d lift his head so I can get a clear sho
t of his face. Look up, you idiot.” She blew out a short breath of frustration. “If I can’t, then I’m not going to let him get away. I may have to—Ow!”

  A brilliant beam of light filled the camera lens, spiking intense pain in her brain like lightning flashing too close, blinding Candice. She dropped the camera away, closing her eyes against the light that still shone through the rearview mirror.

  “Candice, a police car pulled up behind us,” Liz said before she sneezed again. Blue and red lights flashed on when the cop whooped his siren, letting them know he was there. “Now he can arrest him and I can go home to bed.”

  “Devin’s going to bolt. We’re going to lose him!” Candice dropped the camera in Liz’s lap as she reached for the door. “Stay here—”

  “Where’re you going?”

  Candice didn’t bother answering before dashing out of the car. Joslyn’s stalker was too close to lose just because of bad timing. Thoughts of him being dangerous—of him carrying out his threats and killing her friend—made Candice take the chance to go after him. She ran across the street. With her right eye temporarily blinded, the loss of depth perception made the trek dangerous, and she stubbed her toe on the concrete curb, nearly tripping. The pounding footsteps behind her grew closer much too quickly.

  Candice ran faster, shouting, “Devin Metz, stop, you toad! Stop!” Not really believing he’d actually listen to her, she wasn’t surprised when the dark figure disappeared behind the house and she was tackled down to the wet lawn. At least the cop didn’t use his Taser.

  Without giving any resistance, she let the officer slip the handcuffs on her wrists. The coldness of the steel seeped against her skin through the thin material of her long sleeves. The damp grass soaked through her T-shirt.

  A moment later the officer said, “Sam Seven, I have one in custody.”

  “Ten-four, Sam Seven. You have one in custody. Do you still want backup?” a woman’s voice asked through a radio.

  “No, but send me a female officer.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Candice moaned, “Oh, no.” She recognized the officer’s voice. It brought back tender feelings of intimate lunches and dinners from her last year at the University of Arizona five years ago. Alexander Delany, a tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed man with dimples deep enough to hold water—a man who could’ve made her happy if he hadn’t planned on becoming a cop—had her pinned to the soggy ground.

  A few moments before, anger at losing her friend’s stalker had churned like a firestorm inside her chest, but the heat she felt after hearing Alex’s voice had nothing to do with Devin Metz.

  “Why did you run?” he asked, turning Candice over and gently sitting her up. Even after chasing her, he still treated her with kindness. If he felt anything like she had when she went after Devin, his heart was racing from excitement that might’ve bordered on anger at having his simple stop turn into an unexpected foot pursuit.

  Candice’s hair had fallen over her face. She’d dyed it an auburn red for the last case she’d worked and hadn’t bothered to change it back to her usual light brown natural color. He evidently hadn’t recognized her voice when she’d childishly called Devin a name as he ran away.

  “I was chasing my client’s stalker, a man you scared off when you beamed me with your spotlight and squelched your siren.”

  Alex pushed aside her hair, clearing most of it from off her face. He then turned on a small flashlight. She could only imagine his surprised expression even as he blinded her again.

  “Candice?”

  She heard the same unsure, nearly pleading tone in his voice as she did the last time he’d spoken her name. It’d tugged at her heart then, and it had almost made her change her mind about breaking off their friendship. Who was she kidding? It was more than a friendship. They’d been an item obvious enough that no other guys had asked her out that last semester they were together. Now, here she was face-to-face with a man she’d hoped she’d never have to deal with again.

  “Hello, Alex,” Candice said, tamping down the unwanted feelings she’d buried for years. But her traitorous heart started beating again with forgotten desire the moment she heard his deep voice. “Could you lower your flashlight? I’d like to regain my sight.”

  He moved it down, out of her eyes, and after she blinked a few times, he came into focus. His dark hair was shorter. His face didn’t have the scattering of beard he’d normally showed up to class wearing—like his razor didn’t have a close enough setting. She glanced at the police uniform. She may not like to admit it, but he looked terribly handsome in it.

  “Candice, what are you doing here dressed like a burglar?” Alex asked, moving his flashlight along her body.

  True, she wore clothes similar to Devin. Black long-sleeved turtlenecks and dark blue jeans were her standard winter surveillance favorites. “Asked and answered.” Candice wriggled, adjusting her arms so the handcuffs didn’t bite into her hands.

  He frowned at her flippant response. “No, I asked why you ran. There’s a difference.”

  “No, it is the same question. I was chasing my accountant’s sadistic ex-boyfriend—”

  “Why would you do that?” Alex asked, his voice intensifying in volume.

  “Because she’s the world’s best private investigator,” a woman said from behind Alex. He looked over his shoulder as a uniformed female officer walked up to them. “I take it Metz got away?” she asked Candice.

  Candice nodded at her former client as she squatted next to them. Julianna Eddington was engaged to the detective who originally worked with Joslyn and technically still had the case open, so her knowledge of all the details wasn’t surprising. “If he didn’t, Anna, then he’s watching us from the shadows.”

  “Is he dangerous?” Alex asked, standing up, reaching for his gun.

  Candice jiggled her hands in a subtle attempt to remind him that she was still in handcuffs. “Three months ago, twenty-five-year-old Devin Metz thought he’d imitate a movie character and tried to tie my client up to seduce her. When she told him no and pushed away from him, he got angry and he hit her. She immediately broke off their relationship. The next week her first written death threat was left sticking out from under her doorstep’s welcome mat and nasty pictures of dead women were posted on her Facebook page—would you please un-cuff me or at least do a sweep of the area for a man wearing dark clothing and a black knit beanie?”

  Alex nodded down to Candice. “Officer Eddington, take care of her. I’ll call for backup and start the search.”

  “Do you know what Metz looks like?” Anna asked, as she stood up.

  “Just the clothing description,” Alex said, reaching for his mic clipped to his shirt.

  “I’ve seen his picture. I’ll help you.”

  “Candice, you sit still and stay out of our way.” Alex headed off toward the front of Joslyn’s house with Anna two feet behind him.

  “Stay out of your way?” She was positive she’d said it loud enough for him to hear. She nearly shouted it. “You were the one in my way!” Candice dropped onto her back, rolled her shoulders forward, sliding her shackled hands past her bottom. It took only another moment before she walked her feet over her handcuffs. Being flexible had its advantages. There wasn’t any way she planned on laying on the grass waiting for her old boyfriend to do her job, and she didn’t need him to insult her, either. Candice was in his way? That was a laugh.

  Although, with the way her clothing matched Devin’s, it probably wasn’t the brightest idea for her to search for him when there were two armed officers doing the same thing who might mistake her for him.

  “Candice!” Liz called from near the chromed front bumper of the V-dub. “Are you okay?”

  Candice got up and walked back over to her car, seriously thinking about picking the handcuff locks. They’d clicked tighter and her fingers were tingling from lack of circulation. Now if only she could get her heart to go as numb.

  “I’m okay.” Candice leaned against th
e driver’s door. Seeing Alex again shouldn’t have surprised her. It was inevitable, considering they were both criminal justice majors. His goal was to become a police officer, but Candice never wanted to wear a cop’s uniform. Right from the beginning she’d planned on being a private investigator. Well, for a while she thought about being a firefighter. She earned a degree in fire science right out of high school, but it was near the end of her difficult fire academy when she knew that career wasn’t for her. It hadn’t been the strenuous physical demands that had her rethinking her future. Candice had a thing about seeing blood—a negative thing. Candice didn’t like to quit. She’d hung on until the end before making her fateful decision.

  “Are you under arrest?” Liz asked, staring down at Candice’s wrists.

  Candice lifted her hands. The shiny metal glinted off a distant streetlight. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then why the cuffs?”

  “Okay, I might be, technically.” Anna’s patrol car was parked behind Alex’s bigger SUV unit. Besides the few cars parked in the driveways that had been there before they began the surveillance, the street was quiet. “Did you notice Devin’s car drive by?”

  Liz shook her head, her long brown hair falling over her shoulders. “I didn’t notice. I was busy watching that tall cop chasing you.” She laughed. “He ran fast. If he’s single, I call dibs.”

  “If he’s single?” Candice hadn’t thought about whether or not Alex had moved on with his life—until then. She certainly hadn’t given him any reason to wait for her, so why not find another girlfriend? Why not get married? As Candice imagined him holding his first child, her heart hurt again, nearly as bad as when she left him that day five years ago.

  Candice stretched her shoulders back. She would feel the tackle in the morning. “Devin must’ve parked in the alley, or maybe he walked over. He doesn’t live all that far away.”