Ghost Hunter

by Paige Tyler

  She opened her word processing program and read over what she’d written. A story about a ghost hunter who falls in love with a ghost only he can see, it had come to her while she’d been in the hospital. Since she’d visualized the characters so easily, she thought writing it would be simple, but halfway through the rough draft she realized she was going to have to do some research if she wanted the story to be believable. She figured she’d surf the web and find a few techie-sounding words and she’d be done. It wasn’t that easy, though. While the internet gave her some good information, it didn’t get into the gritty stuff she was looking for. She wanted her readers to feel as if they were hunting ghosts right alongside the hero, which meant she was going to have to talk to some real-life ghost hunters.

  Unfortunately, finding some who were willing to let her tag along with them proved more difficult than she’d thought. While there were a lot of ghost hunters in the Connecticut-New York metropolitan area, none of them were interested in talking to her. Half of them thought she was making up the whole thing about being a romance writer and was instead some reporter looking to expose them as fakes, while the other half told her their work was too dangerous to involve an “untrained” civilian. Riiiiight.

  Then she’d stumbled over a listing on the net for Paranormal Investigations Unlimited in the little village of Sleepy Hollow, New York. Coming from a place with a name like that, she hadn’t been able to resist giving them a call.

  At first, the man who answered the phone thought she was interested in attending the next lecture they were giving at the local university. He was thrilled when Cassidy told him she was doing research for a book and wanted to do some actual ghost hunting. He was more than willing to let her tag along with them for the weekend, too—for a small fee of seven-hundred-and-fifty dollars. The price was steep, but she was determined to write her book, so she’d agreed.

  Cassidy worked on her novel for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, making small changes here and there, and even writing a little bit of the scene where the hero first sees the ghost he falls in love with. She’d probably have to rewrite it once she got the scoop on how ghosts and ghost hunters worked, but at least she had a basic idea of what she wanted to do. When she finally glanced down at her watch, she was surprised to see it was almost three o’clock. Shutting down her computer, she picked up her purse and headed out to her car. She didn’t want to be late for her first day of ghost hunting.

  Fortunately, Sleepy Hollow was only about thirty minutes from the city of Stamford, so it didn’t take long to get there. When she got to the office of Paranormal Investigations Unlimited, she was disappointed to discover it didn’t look anything at all like she’d pictured. She expected guys who made their living investigating the paranormal to have some kind of creepy, old Victorian mansion with a beat-up hearse outside painted like the one in Ghostbusters, but the brick building was boringly nondescript. With its metal garage door and storefront windows, it blended in with all the other small businesses along the street. At least it would have if it wasn’t for the bright red paint on the front door.

  Grabbing her purse, Cassidy made her way over to the door and went inside. The interior was as unremarkable as the outside and she tried not to let her shoulders slump as she looked around the large room. In addition to a conference table and chairs in the center, there was a topographical map of the northeast section of the United States on one wall and a road map of the same area on the other. Damn, she’d been hoping for an X-Files poster or two, maybe a life-size statue of Beetlejuice in the corner.

  “Can I help you?”

  Cassidy turned to see a man coming out of one of the two offices in the back. About her height, he had unruly blond hair and wore wire-rimmed glasses that he pushed up higher on his nose as he walked toward her. The building might not be what she expected, but he looked exactly as she imagined a ghost hunter would look.

  “I hope so,” she said. “I’m looking for Robert.”

  “I’m Robert. What can I do for…?” His voice trailed off as his eyes went wide. “You must be Cassidy Kincaide, aren’t you? Of course you are. I didn’t expect you until four.”

  She gave him an apologetic look. “I know I’m a little early. Sorry about that.”

  He shook his head. “No, no. That’s fine. I just didn’t expect you to get here yet.” The garage door opened and he darted a quick glance in the direction of the sound, then looked back at her. “Can I get you a drink? We have a break room in the back. I think there might be some soda in the fridge. Or bottled water. Or…or something.”

  Cassidy frowned. This guy hunted ghosts for a living? He looked as if he was about ready to jump out of his skin at the sound of a garage door opening. “Thanks, but I’m fine.”

  Robert nodded and pushed his glasses up on his nose again. “Here, why don’t you have a seat and…”

  He stopped as a door opened behind him.

  “Oh man,” he muttered. “Um…I’ll be right back.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, but turned and practically ran over to the door as two men and a woman walked in.

  Robert came to a halt before the trio and shoved his glasses up even higher. “You’re back. That was fast.”

  “We only went up to Tarrytown to get some batteries,” one of the men said. He glanced at Cassidy, his golden brown eyes sizing her up. “Who’s our guest? A new client?”

  Client. Cassidy blinked in surprise as the word registered. This gorgeous guy was a ghost hunter? She took in his chiseled jaw with its hint of stubble and wide, sensuous mouth before letting her gaze move lower to admire the broad shoulders and long legs that completed the package. No way was he a ghost hunter, not with those looks and that body. More like Sleepy Hollow’s resident model.

  Robert did that nervous thing with the glasses again. “Not exactly.”

  The man folded his arms across his chest, the movement making his well-muscled biceps ripple and flex. “What do you mean, not exactly?”

  “Um…” Robert glanced at Cassidy, then turned back to the other man. “Maybe we should talk in your office.”

  Gold eyes narrowed, then went from Robert to Cassidy before going back to Robert again. “This better be good.”

  Cassidy stared after the two ghost hunters in bewilderment as they disappeared into an office on the far side of the room. The way Robert almost had to run to keep up with the other man’s long strides would have been comical if the situation wasn’t so awkward. She got the feeling Robert hadn’t told his partner about her tagging along with them. While she could still see them through the glass wall, she couldn’t hear what they were saying since they’d closed the door. She glanced at the man and woman standing beside her, hoping they would shed some light on things, but they looked as curious about what was going on as she was.

  “You did what?” the hunk demanded, his deep voice so loud that it made the glass vibrate.

  Okay, so maybe she’d be able to listen in on their conversation after all.

  Robert pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Just calm down and hear me out on this. I overheard you talking to Wes about bringing in some more money and…”

  “And?” the other man prompted when Robert hesitated.

  “And I found a way to do that. Cassidy Kincaide is an author. She’s writing a book about ghosts and needed to do some research, so I invited her to come with us this weekend.”

  The hunk looked at Robert as if he’d told him Cassidy was an alien from another planet there to turn them all into mindless slaves. “You invited her to come along? Are you out of your damn mind? What we do isn’t a spectator sport. You should know that better than anyone.”

  “I know,” Robert said. “But we could use the money and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to bring her on some of the simple home inspections, maybe a low-level smudging. Nothing dangerous. We can control the risk of exposure—”

  “Control it, huh ? How the hell are you going to do that? You suddenly turn
into a psychic or something?”

  “No, but—”

  “But nothing,” the hunk growled. “You never know when it’s all going to go to shit, so you don’t involve civilians. Ever. That’s the number one rule of this job. Which means she isn’t coming with us tonight or any other night. Give her money back, say it was all a big misunderstanding and send her on her way.”

  Through the windows that separated the office from the main room, Cassidy saw the dark-haired hunk pick up the stack of mail on his desk and flip through it. Clearly that was his way of putting an end to the conversation. He sounded no different than those other ghost hunters she’d talked to, the ones who hadn’t wanted to involve her in their dangerous work. What a bunch of crap.

  Robert was silent for so long Cassidy thought he was going to follow the other man’s orders without so much as a peep, but then he shook his head. “I can’t give her money back because we already spent it.”

  His partner looked up from the mail with a frown. “Spent it on what?”

  Robert sighed. “The repairs on the Hummer. What else?”

  The hunk let out an expletive loud enough to make Cassidy jump. He looked so angry she half expected him to put his fist though the wall. Or punch Robert in the nose. Instead, he threw the stack of envelopes down on the desk and turned to stare out the window, his back rigid.

  Cassidy was wondering if maybe she should come back some other time when the woman beside her spoke.

  “You’re an author, huh? Written anything I might have read?”

  Cassidy tore her gaze away from the two men to look at the other woman. Cassidy wondered if she was asking because she wanted to make an uncomfortable situation a little less uncomfortable or whether she was genuinely interested.

  “I don’t have anything published yet,” Cassidy explained. “This is my first book.”

  The woman’s dark eyes lit up. “Oh. Cool. What’s it about?”

  Cassidy opened her mouth to reply when the office door suddenly swung open and banged against the wall. The hunk stormed past them without so much as a glance in their direction and disappeared through the same door he and the others had entered earlier.

  Robert followed at a much slower pace. He gave Cassidy a small smile. “Okay, we’re all set.”

  Cassidy lifted a brow. “Are you sure? He seemed pretty pissed.”

  It was the dark-haired woman who answered. “That’s just Trace being his charming self. He’s always a little intense.”

  “Hurry the hell up!” came a shout from the other room. “We don’t have all fucking night.”

  “He’s a little socially maladjusted, too,” the woman added. “Come on, we’d better get going before he really blows a gasket.”

  Cassidy opened her mouth to make some smart-alecky comment, but closed it again when the man and woman started toward the door Trace and Robert had gone through.

  “You’re ghost hunters, too?” she asked as she fell into step beside them.

  “He is,” the woman said, gesturing to the good-looking man ahead of them. “I just help out sometimes. My name is Bella, by the way, and that’s Wes.”

  Wes gave her a nod over his shoulder as he walked through the door. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too. I’m Cassidy.”

  Bella laughed. “Yeah, we heard.”

  Besides the big, black Hummer dominating the garage, there was a long worktable against one wall as well as several storage lockers and shelves filled with lots of different gadgets and tools, none of which she recognized.

  Trace, the socially maladjusted hunk, was already in the front passenger seat of the Hummer. Robert was getting in the back. Cassidy climbed in the backseat along with Bella while Wes slipped behind the wheel.

  “Where are we heading?” Wes asked as he turned on the engine.

  “Seventy-Five Sunset Drive, Moores Mill,” Robert said.

  Wes punched the address into the GPS on the dash, then pulled out of the garage and turned right. As they drove down the street, Cassidy waited for him to ask what kind of job they were going on, but he didn’t. In fact, no one said anything. She wondered if they were always so quiet or whether they didn’t want to talk because she was there.

  “Are we going to a haunted house?” she asked.

  To her surprise, it was Trace who answered. “It’s a house, but it probably isn’t haunted.”

  She frowned. “We’re going to a house that isn’t haunted?”

  “I said we’re going to a house that probably isn’t haunted.”

  Her frown deepened. That didn’t make sense. “Let me get this straight. I’m crammed into an SUV with a team of ghost hunters so we can drive for an hour to check out a house that probably isn’t even haunted? What’s the point of that?”

  Trace shrugged. “Well, we could have gone to the nearest unhaunted house down the street, but I want you to feel as if you’re getting your money’s worth so an hour-long drive seems about right. I’m throwing in the crowded SUV for free.”

  Cassidy stared at the back of his head, speechless. Eyes narrowing, she leaned forward. “Wait a minute. If you think I paid seven-hundred-and-fifty dollars to have you drive me around for the weekend and show me an old unhaunted house or two, then I want my money back right now.”

  “He’s kidding, Cassidy.”

  “And if you don’t give me a refund, then I’ll…” she trailed off as Bella’s words registered. She looked over her shoulder at the woman. “What?”

  Bella smiled. “He’s kidding.”

  Cassidy jerked her head around to look at Trace. She thought she saw his mouth quirk, but it disappeared too quickly for her to be sure.

  Beside her, Bella leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “Remember what I said about him being socially maladjusted?”

  “I heard that,” Trace said.

  “Good. That way I won’t have to repeat it.” Bella flopped back in the seat. “You can be a real jerk sometimes, you know that, Trace?”

  He shrugged. “I was telling her the truth when I said the house we’re going to probably isn’t haunted.”

  “Give it a rest, Trace,” Wes said. “You’re only going to get her spun up again.” He glanced at Cassidy in the rearview mirror. “What Trace meant to say in his socially maladjusted way is that we’re being paid to see if the house is haunted or not. Given the odds involved in these types of situations, it probably isn’t.”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?” Trace asked. “With a hell of a lot less words, I might add.”

  Cassidy ignored Trace and sat back in the seat, her brow furrowing. “Why would people pay you to tell them their house isn’t haunted? Wouldn’t they already know if it is or isn’t?”

  “Actually, the house was for sale, so there isn’t anyone living there at the moment,” Robert said. “But someone just purchased it and we’ve been hired by the real estate agency to make sure the place is ghost-free prior to the new owners moving in.”

  “Real estate agencies pay for that?”

  “Sometimes. Actually, they pay for it a lot more than you think, especially here in the Northeast where there are so many old houses. With the home market being as slow as it is around here right now, the real estate agency doesn’t want to lose a prospective buyer because there’s a spook hanging around that likes to clank about the kitchen in the middle of the night. Once a home gets a reputation for being haunted, it’s never going to sell.”

  Cassidy tried to wrap her mind around that, but it wasn’t working. “So what, you walk around the house, check under the bed for Casper, then collect your money when he doesn’t jump out and say boo?”

  Trace’s mouth quirked. “It’s a little more technical than that, but you’ve got the basic idea.”

  Cassidy wondered if he was teasing her again. “That seems like a sort of shady way to make a living, don’t you think? Taking money to tell someone their house isn’t haunted.”

  Trace shrugged. “I don’t disagree with you there.
”

  She wanted to ask why they did it then, but Robert spoke before she could get the words out.

  “It’s not as shady as it sounds, Cassidy.” He squirmed in the seat and pushed his glasses up. “I mean, it’s no different than a home inspector checking a house for leaky pipes or bad wiring, and not finding any. They use their particular skills, we use ours. Besides, we wouldn’t be getting paid for our services if there wasn’t a demand for them.”

  “If it sounds as if Robert is defensive, it’s because he’s the one who talked Trace and me into doing these demonic home-inspections,” Wes said.

  “In his defense, business has been better than we thought it would be,” Bella pointed out. “There actually is a need for it.”

  “Just because there’s a need, that doesn’t mean we have to charge people for it,” Trace grumbled.

  Cassidy blinked in surprise. She’d thought a socially maladjusted guy like him would appreciate ripping off honest people.

  “That’s the same kind of thinking that put your little save-the-world endeavor so deep in debt,” Robert said. “I’m just trying to show you that you can help people and still make a little money on the side. Letting people owe you favors now and then is fine, but it doesn’t put gas in the Hummer. There’s nothing wrong with making a little profit from helping people. Especially if the only reason you charge money anyway is so you can help more people. Right, Cassidy?”

  “Um…” Cassidy hesitated. She hated it when people put her on the spot. “Well, when you put it that way, I suppose not.”

  Trace snorted.

  Cassidy stifled a groan. Well, that comment certainly wasn’t going to win her any brownie points from him. Not that she wanted to win any, of course. She didn’t care what he thought of her. It was just that she was already a source of contention between him and Robert. She didn’t like the idea of adding to it, especially since she wanted to learn as much as she could from them in the three days she going to be with them.

  She let out a sigh as an uncomfortable silence descended on the SUV again. While she knew asking about ghost hunting was probably going to be a bad way to start up another conversation, particularly with Trace, she couldn’t think of anything else to talk about. Besides, she was there to do research for her book and that meant finding out what made the average ghost hunter tick.