"Fallen Hero"

**This story immediately follows "An Unexpected Ally"**

"The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a

duty of the living to do so for them."

Lois McMaster Bujold

CHAPTER 1

"Houston." Matt was too sleepy to even look at the caller ID on the phone beside the bed. Thanks to having Michael Hoyt's daughter Kathy for a babysitter, he and CJ had been out on a date for the first time in ages and had only gotten in a couple of hours before. It was now 4:03am as he answered the phone.

"Houston, somebody killed Charles!" The voice on the other end of the phone was that of Sheila Wentworth, a nurse who had taken care of Matt on several occasions, including being his private nurse at the ranch after he was injured in a bomb blast. Her husband Charles had just come home from Afghanistan and was just a few weeks shy of being discharged from the Marine Corps. He and Sheila had come over to the house for dinner one night after he got back into town.

"What?!" Matt sat straight up in the bed. "Sheila, where are you?" The phone hadn't woken CJ up, but Matt's yelling did. She was wide awake.

"I'm at our house – or what's left of it. Houston, they almost burnt it to the ground." The normally happy and bubbly nurse burst into tears.

"Hang on darlin', what's the address?" He grabbed a pen and paper next to the bed and wrote it down. "Okay, I'll be right there. You just hang tight, okay?" He hung up the phone and began putting clothes on.

"What in the world happened?" CJ was up putting on clothes as well.

"Sheila's husband is dead. Somebody set their house on fire apparently." He was fastening his jeans and sliding on his boots.

"I'll come with you. Let me go tell Kathy what's going on. They'll be safe here with the alarm on." She ran into the guest room where the girl was spending the night and let her know what was going on, then came back and finished getting dressed as Matt donned a ball cap and pulled his Glock out of the bedside table.

As he walked out into the hall, Kathy was standing in the doorway to the guest room. "You'll be safe here with the alarm set and I'm going to call Bo and Lamar to come up here. They'll stay in the living room so you don't have to worry about anything." He gave the teen a hug and headed on through the den and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket on his way. When the phone at the bunkhouse was answered by a sleepy-sounding Bo, Matt told him what was going on and the ranch hand immediately agreed to stay up at the house until Matt and CJ got back. CJ caught up with him at that point and they headed off to Sheila's house.

As they drove up the narrow street, they could see the lights from fire trucks and police cars, as well as flames leaping into the air from a mile away. Matt pulled his truck over and parked on the side of the road about half a mile from the house – it was as close as he could get. He grabbed his ID from the LAPD and clipped it on the front of his denim shirt as he took CJ by the hand and they walked up to where the crime scene tape was stretched. Sheila spotted the pair just as Matt ducked under the tape and she ran to them, pulling both of them into a desperate hug. "Easy now, hon. Here – sit down here". Matt opened the door on a patrol car and had her sit down in the passenger seat. It was then that he heard a familiar voice behind him.

"I was about to call you when Sheila told me she already had." Matt turned to see a good friend of his, Sgt. Larry Carlisle of the LAPD standing a couple of feet away.

"Is this yours?" Matt motioned to the car and Larry nodded. The private eye turned back and knelt down in front of the distraught nurse who was trying very hard not to lose control. "Okay, now tell me what happened, hon."

After taking a shaky breath, Sheila started in. "We went out to Mario's for dinner tonight and got back home around 9:00. When we got here, there were two guys pounding on the front door. We just moved in here last week, and we had no idea who they were. Charles got out of the car and asked if there was something he could help them with and they told him to get lost. When he let them know that we were living here, they looked at each other and took off. Charles said they probably were looking for someone who used to live here and we didn't think anything else about it. After we went to bed, I heard something and we got up to see what it was. There was the same car sitting out front that those guys were in earlier, so he called the police. By the time Larry got here, they were gone, but we went on and filed a report. So about an hour ago, I heard something again – glass breaking and then there was a loud boom. We ran into the living room and it was on fire. They had thrown a bottle through the front window. Charles grabbed a blanket to try to put the fire out and just as he almost had it out, they threw another one in and it landed at his feet." She lost it at that point. CJ knelt down to comfort her as Larry pulled Matt aside.

"He never stood a chance, Houston. The bottle broke right at his feet and the – whatever they were using – gas, alcohol, whatever – apparently splashed onto his feet and pajama pants." Larry shook his head. "Bless her heart, she managed to pull him out the front door and get the flames out but he was already gone." The long-time cop was near to choking up himself.

"Were they able to get a license number from earlier?" Matt turned to look at CJ who was doing her best to calm down Sheila.

"Nope, they couldn't see it." Larry looked back at the now smoldering house. The firemen had most of the flames out and were sifting through looking for hotspots.

"Have you got any evidence bags?" Matt was watching the firemen.

"Yeah." Larry went to the trunk of the car and pulled some out as Matt put on a pair of black gloves and headed down toward the house, stopping to talk to the fire captain, who looked at his ID then made a phone call, and after a minute nodded at Matt who headed up into what was left of the house. The cop watched as Matt began talking to the firemen who directed him to the area where the Molotov cocktails had shattered. He pulled out his phone and began taking photos of the shattered glass and of the accelerant marks on the floor. Next he took pictures of the remains of the front window where the bottles had come through, then carefully collected the glass and placed it in the evidence bags.

Larry had walked back over to the patrol car where Sheila and CJ were both watching him. "CJ, I don't want to sound like a jerk, but he really shouldn't be doing that. It could compromise the investigation."

CJ gave him a grim smile and shook her head no. "He's been taking Fire Investigation classes and has been hired on as a consultant to the Fire Marshal's office."

The veteran cop's head snapped toward CJ. "Seriously? Wow, I had no idea."

Sheila looked at CJ. "When did he do all that?"

"He started back in the fall. Aced his first exam the day before Hoyt got shot." Matt's friend Lt. Michael Hoyt had been shot a couple of weeks earlier and was now recuperating.

A few minutes later the man responsible for Matt's decision to learn fire investigation pulled up. Capt. Rich Holt, the newest Fire Marshal, got out of his car and headed on down to where Matt was shining a flashlight and looking around in the area that used to be Sheila's living room. Holt shook hands with Matt and looked at the pictures that the private eye had taken along with the evidence collected. They then squatted down and began talking about the burn patterns on the floor. The captain of the unit that had responded to the fire walked up to join them and the three continued to talk about what had happened. Matt turned the evidence he had collected over to Holt and the two went to the Fire Marshal's car to download the pictures from Matt's phone onto a computer. A few minutes later, Matt and Holt shook hands again and Matt returned to the patrol car, followed a moment later by Holt.

"Sheila, what did these guys look like?" Matt had pulled out his notebook and was leaning on the hood of Larry's car.

"Well, they were white, probably about 25 or so, one had real short hair like a crew cut, the other had hair about the length of yours. Both were wearing blue jeans. The guy with the short hair was kind of blonde, and the other guy had black hair. The crew cut guy was probably about six feet tall and the other one about four inches shorter. The shorter guy was wearing a black leather jacket over a white t-shirt and the other one was wearing a navy blue thermal-type top." She was shaking as if cold, and Matt pulled off his denim shirt, removing the ID from the front and put it around her and gave her a hug.

"You know, you're about the best witness I think I've ever talked to, Sheila." He gave her a smile and then turned to Larry. "Is there a detective on the way out here?"

"Supposed to be, but you would think he would be here by now. Let me see who they've assigned to it." He tilted his head and began talking into the microphone on his shoulder. "Jenkins got caught up behind a wreck."

Matt nodded and looked around, then pulled out his phone and called the detective. "Hey Lee, it's Houston. Look I'm out here at the fire scene. Would it be okay with you if I took Sheila to the ranch and you came up there to interview her? Yeah, it's about wrapped up here. Uh huh. Alright then, I'll put a pot of coffee on and we'll see you. 'Bye." He turned back to Larry. "He'll be meeting us at the ranch." Turning to look at what was left of the house, Matt spied something and took off running back down that way.

"Oh my God, it's Chantilly!" Sheila stood up and took off following Matt, who was headed back up the hill carrying a puppy.

"Does this belong to you?" He held out the dog to the nurse, who burst into a fresh round of tears.

"Oh, I thought she was dead! Ohhhh!" She hugged the little dog to her.

"Let's take her up here and get a good look at her, okay?" Matt led her up to Larry's car where they shone a flashlight on the pup trying to see if she was hurt. "I'm not seeing anything. She seems to be fine." The dog was licking Sheila's face and then turned to Matt. "Easy there baby girl. Calm down." He patted the dog. "I don't think we're going to be able to get anything out of there, at least not now. We'll come back and take a look after the sun is up and things have a chance to cool down a little bit." He looked over at Capt. Holt. "Is that okay with you?"

"Yeah, I'll probably be here anyway. I'll see you then." He turned to Sheila. "Mrs. Wentworth, I'm very sorry about your husband. Houston here was telling me about you two. I want you to know we'll do everything we can to find these jerks." He shook her hand.

"Thank you, Captain." She was still sobbing and shaking.

"Alright, let's get you to the ranch and get started on this." Houston put an arm around Sheila and took CJ by the hand and headed down toward his truck.

"You know, he is one amazing guy." Larry watched as Matt walked away.

"Yep, I'm finding that out. I was quizzing him about the scene up there and he didn't miss a thing. Pretty impressive." Holt watched the three as they got into Matt's truck.

"CJ said he aced his exam."

"Yep, his instructor called me. You know he was the only one in there who did – and the rest of the students are all fire fighters." He shook his head and walked back down to talk to the fire captain, leaving Larry to think about what he had said.