Page 37 of The Burnt (The Declan Hunt Mysteries #3)

Charlie woke up snuggled into Declan. His face was buried in Declan’s hair.

He took a deep breath. You smell like my boyfriend .

He lay there, soaking up the warmth of the man’s body.

At this moment, he had everything he needed…

except for coffee. He carefully got out of bed and made his way down to the office.

The sun hadn’t come up yet. He wondered what time it was, but his eyes were too blurry to read the clock.

He went to the kitchenette, grabbed the espresso machine’s reservoir and took it into the staff washroom to fill it with water.

When he stepped back out, Dave the dead barista was waiting for him near the coffee maker.

Charlie had come to accept that the office was haunted and that Dave wasn’t a threat.

“Cortado, right?” Dave asked.

“You got it,” Charlie replied.

In a minute, Dave presented him with a steaming hot coffee. He smiled as much as his partially burnt face allowed. “Well, I guess my job here is finished.”

Dave started to shimmer, then he began to change. He got smaller and younger until the person facing Charlie looked a lot like the young Milo from the picture Simon Griffin had given him.

“Thank you. Thank you for everything,” the ghost said before fading into nothing.

Charlie drank his coffee, then made his way back up the stairs and crawled into bed with Declan.

It seemed like only a second later that Charlie woke again.

This time everything was clearer. The encounter with Dave had obviously been a dream.

Charlie smiled. It was the gentlest dream he had experienced, and this one had been positive.

Then an eerie whisper drifted through the room.

“ Thank you for everything .” A chill ran down his spine.

As he dove under the sheets, he heard the sound of coffee being poured into a mug.

Dave?

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

Charlie peered out from beneath the covers. Declan walked toward him and handed him a cup of coffee. “What’s wrong? You look spooked?”

“I had a weird dream again last night,” Charlie said. He sat up in the bed. “Have you seen or heard anything odd around here?”

“Odd? Like what?”

Charlie took a sip from his cup. “Ghosts?” he said tentatively.

Declan smiled. “Noooooo,” he answered. “Why?”

“Well… I’ve seen some things that…well, I can’t explain. Or I couldn’t until Gwen told me the history of this place.”

“What history?”

“Didn’t you know? It used to be a funeral home when it was built. God knows how many dead bodies have seen the inside of this building.”

“W-wait a minute. Gwen told you that?”

“Yeah. It’s carved into the stonework right above the doors. ‘Hallowell Brothers, Undertakers’.”

Declan burst out laughing. “Charlie, have you been worrying about this for long?”

“Well, worrying might be a bit dramatic, but, like I said, a lot of weird things have been going on. At first I thought I was just stressed out because of the case.”

“Well, you can relax, Charlie. The case is closed, and there’s never been a funeral home here.”

“But the carving above the door…?” he asked, shaking his head.

Declan got into bed beside him. “Gwen’s sign covers the last part of the carving, right?”

Charlie nodded.

“What it says is ‘Hallowell Brothers, Under writers’ … They were an insurance company.”

“But Gwen said…”

“I’ll have to have a little chat with her when I see her later.”

Charlie frowned. “You mean…Gwen lied to me?”

“I think she was just putting you on.”

“No. She lied. Plain and simple.”

“Simple. Just like the guy who believed—” Declan started.

“If you’re smart, mister, you will not finish that sentence.”

Declan set down his coffee. “Why don’t I help you take your mind off ghosts?” He rolled on top of Charlie and started to nibble on his neck. “I doubt your ghosts can measure up to what I’m about to do to you.”

* * * *

Jasmine Robertson reclined in Simon’s large leather chair in the sun room of The Paddock. She never tired of the view from this vantage point, especially in the morning as the sun rose above Sundance Ridge, which spread out before her beyond the Bow River.

This morning she was at peace. Jasmine had arranged for Declan Hunt Investigations to be well paid for their work because they had helped her more than she’d ever thought possible—so many loose threads taken care of all at once.

Simon was in jail, Tom was dead, Harlen Feist was gone and, at a special meeting held last night, Jasmine had been appointed as the head of Monarch Holdings.

Very few people in the organisation knew about the power she held.

Jasmine was not just ‘the housekeeper’—she was a clever strategist hiding in plain sight.

The police had taken away all of Simon’s ill-gotten gains from the vault.

Jasmine had conveniently opened it during a private moment when the police weren’t in Simon’s office, but they hadn’t done a very thorough search of the rest of the house.

They certainly hadn’t found the smaller vault behind the wall in Jasmine’s clothes closet—a vault that contained money, jewels, weapons and numerous documents that had information on people which would keep them from questioning her position.

While the world might be a machine that often exerted its power on its players, Jasmine had made a choice not to let fate control her.

She was the architect of her own universe.

And now that she had control, she had some ideas about a few things she wanted to take care of in the near future…

things that would involve two men by the names of Declan Hunt and Charlie Watts.