Firefly Mountain by Christine DePetrillo Read Free Book Online Page B

said. “I’ve been fighting fires for a long time, and there is no way you could have started it like that. Stop blaming yourself.”
    She hadn’t mentioned what Cameron was trying to do at the time. Hadn’t mentioned how deeply he’d hurt her with his words and his actions. If she didn’t talk about it, perhaps she could pretend it didn’t happen.
    Her daddy’s not believing her had stung. Her own flesh and blood telling her she was talking nonsense. Before she could stop herself, she’d stirred up some fresh anger. The mailbox at the end of their driveway had gone up like a firecracker as she and her father sat on the front steps of their house.
    Her daddy believed her then and had been helping her keep this ability—this curse—under control. Her family had managed it rather well. She’d filled her days with happy thoughts and felt normal most of the time.
    Until Patrick Barre.

Chapter Six
    Patrick and Midas sat on the bench outside Mason’s office. He was early, but that was the way he’d planned it. He hoped to get the formalities over with so he could put in most of the day at the fire station. Though his paperwork was always in order, every detail checked and rechecked, Patrick didn’t have an affinity for forms. He’d rather be at the station or building something.
    He’d spent most of last night examining the photos Mason had emailed him. Though he had some mixed thoughts about Gini, he couldn’t deny she had a gift when it came to photography. Patrick had been studying incident photographs for years. Most of them merely showed the facts. Gini’s were pieces of art. As if she’d thought about angles and lighting, foreground and background, while she snapped her camera. The photos captured things he hadn’t noticed when going through the actual house, and he liked to think he was an observant guy.
    Cookie crumbs on a patch of unmelted linoleum. Burn rings rainbowing across plywood. Blackened fringe on a Navajo-print blanket scrap. Shards of mirror, like glass snow sparkling on tile.
    And the blue candle, its waxy, lopsided edges hiding beneath sagging white wicker.
    “Morning.” Mason strode over with a coffee in his hands. “Sorry if I kept you waiting, but I’m no good without one of these.” He raised the cup and pointed to it with his other hand. “Want some?”
    “No, thanks.” Patrick never touched the stuff. Never understood the fuss over coffee. He liked his water pure and unspoiled.
    “Come on in.” Mason opened the door to his office and let Patrick enter first. Patrick would have liked to call the room messy, but that wasn’t the right word. Not at all. Words like “hurricane,” “devastation,” and “catastrophe” came to mind instead. He felt as if he needed a hard hat to sit safely in the crowded disaster that was Mason’s office.
    “Dump those files off that chair there.” Mason stepped over three boxes of files on the floor next to his desk to get to his own seat. “I know what you’re thinking.”
    “That your office needs caution tape?” Patrick gathered up the files and held them as he decided where to place them. Even Midas, who wasn’t particularly choosy about his hunkering down spots, didn’t know where to go.
    “Funny. No, you’re thinking that there’s no way I can possibly solve any cases in this mess.”
    “Yeah, okay. That was my second thought.” Patrick settled for resting the files on the top of a low bookcase under the only window in the office.
    “Don’t worry. This all makes sense to me and I’m the one who has to work here.” Mason sat and placed his coffee atop his littered desk.
    “As long as it works for you.” Patrick shrugged and gripped the file folder he’d brought as if he were protecting it. He didn’t want his papers to catch whatever had infected this office. He finally sat, and Midas nosed a box aside until a clear spot of floor appeared.
    “So did talking with the neighbors turn up anything?” Mason