Ghost Hunter

by Serena Akeroyd

  She grabs my hand and clings to it. “If you really want to go, then we’ll go.”

  “I only suggested it for you.” I sigh, then admit, “I don’t want you to think I’m a fuddy duddy.”

  “A fuddy what?” She blinks at me, wonderfully confused because she obviously doesn’t think I’m like that at all. “Why would I think that? If anyone’s the fuddy duddy, it’s me. I’m lucky you don’t mind that all I want to do is hang around the penthouse.”

  “You came out today.”

  “Well, going out for food with you is fun.”

  “I know, sweetheart. I’m glad you feel the same.”

  She shrugs, then in an earnest tone, tells me, “You have to be honest with me, Drake. I know I can be a hermit, so if you ever want to go anywhere, you just tell me and we’ll go, okay? If it’s important to you, it’s important to me.”

  “I will.” I kiss her temple again, loving this woman so damn much at that moment it feels like it’s going to make my heart fucking melt.

  I’d noticed that, as the months passed, she’s been going out less. Making fewer suggestions for dates, and the like.

  It’s never bothered me because I’m a homebody too, but I’d figured I was projecting that onto her.

  Jesus, for a shrink who stresses nothing more than the power of communication in a relationship, I really need to heed my own advice.

  “You ready for dinner?”

  She nods. “I’m starving. I’ve only eaten those beignets today.”

  I can’t help but grin. That’s like a day of fasting for Jayce. She must see and understand my amusement, because she pouts.

  I guide her to the breakfast nook and pour her a glass of wine when she sits on the stool. Then, dishing out the pasta and red sauce into large bowls, I put it on the table and let her serve herself. It’s the garlic bread that has her moaning in delight though.

  Eating with Jayce is an experience. I’d never realized how food and sex went hand in hand until her. The noises she makes, holy shit, they have me hiding wood every single time we eat.

  After a low groan as she samples the dish for the first time, she murmurs, “This is gorgeous. Thank you so much for cooking, sweetheart.”

  “You know it’s my pleasure.”

  She sighs, apparently delighted that I mean that, but shortly after, she wrinkles her nose. “I kind of need you to be my conscience today, Drake.”

  “With Francis and Red Bull?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what to do.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Don’t go all shrink on me. Remember, I know all the tricks.”

  It still stuns me that she has a degree in psychology. From an Ivy League college, to boot. She’s far more than she seems, my woman. I love that she has layer upon layers.

  All the more for me to explore, all the more for me to reveal.

  “No, I mean it. The repercussions of you involving yourself with Red Bull are too… vague,” I say, settling on that word with unease. “There’s a threat there. Menace. We don’t know what we’ll be unleashing by pissing him off. I don’t think we can risk that.” When she gnaws on her lip, nodding, I ask, “You said Casper knew Red Bull?”

  “Yeah. Said he’d seen him before.”

  “Have you asked him what’s the best option?”

  Her eyes cut to the left, and the way the muscles flutter, she’s not just looking into space, I can see she’s watching someone. It’s always kind of freaky when that happens.

  It’s bizarre knowing that we’re not alone in here. Though her gift is nothing to be envious of, I almost wish I could see what she did, just so I could know what she was looking at.

  It’s ridiculous, but I always want to look over my shoulder to see who’s there.

  Yeah, it never works.

  “He says to back the hell off and not get involved.”

  “That says it all, Jayce.” I frown at her, placing my fork against the plate to stare at her somber features.

  She sighs. “I just feel so badly. I don’t think Francis killed that woman.”

  “But ghosts can’t cause any harm, can they? It’s not like Red Bull hurt her?” I ask, the thought making sweat bead at my temples. Living with ghosts is crazy enough as it is—ghosts that can affect the ‘real’ world?

  That shit’s just too much to deal with. “No. At least, I don’t think so. He has powers I’ve never heard of before, but I don’t think he could do that. But, maybe.

  “If he didn’t kill her though, and Francis didn’t either, then that means a killer’s roaming the streets.”

  That has me grimacing. “I hate to say it, Jayce, but that’s pretty par for the course. Look at Nate Cambright—” The bastard who had doped my nephew’s drink and caused him to overdose. “He’s still free.”

  “That makes me feel worse, not better,” she argues and then, taking a bite of her pasta, sighs, “It’s not like I can help anyway. I have no evidence, nothing that can stand up in court. The police rarely believe me, so when there’s nothing to back up my story…”

  “Would you feel better if you saw the crime scene? Or maybe, if you spoke to Francis again?”

  For a second, her pensive state concerns me. As she contemplates my questions, she takes another bite of her dinner.

  “Seeing Francis won’t help, but maybe if I saw the crime scene?” She ponders her own words a second and says, “Arroyo will probably spend the rest of the night checking up on what I had to say. When she realizes I didn’t spout bullshit at her, I think she’ll help me out.”

  “Do you think seeing the crime scene will piss off this Red Bull guy?”

  “I don’t see why. I’m just looking, right? I won’t say anything to Arroyo.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  She blinks. “Would you?”

  “Sure. I’ll cancel tomorrow’s appointments.”

  My words have her holding her hand over the table, silently reaching for mine. When our fingers clasp, she lets out a sigh. “I’d really appreciate that.”

  “I know. I’ll leave a message with Mrs. Wallovitch tomorrow, and after dinner, you can call Arroyo. Is that enough time for her to have fact checked what you told her about her grandmother?”

  Jayce wrinkles her nose. “She has more to fact check than just that.”

  I cock a brow. “Oh.”

  “Yup,” she admits. “Granny doesn’t like her boyfriend.”

  My eyes widen. “Jesus. It’s a bitch when you have to make sure that both the living and dead relatives like you.”

  When she grins, I wink at her, and watching her tuck into her dinner once more, I feel a little more at ease because I’ve helped her.

  I’ve shared the burden, and for someone like Jayce who’s never been able to do that before, I know how important that is.

  Drake

  The loft apartment wasn’t something I expected. Not from a woman who was apparently having an affair with a man who looked like he’d fit in the deep south.

  It’s a modern, minimalistic penthouse in Tribeca. And the photos dotted around in sleek frames show a woman, who definitely looks far younger than her sixty-year-old husband.

  Apparently, Mrs. Dietrick had a thing for older guys.

  Jayce’s hand clings to mine as she peers around the living room, waiting for Arroyo to return from a phone call she had to take moments after arriving.

  She’s buzzing though, this woman of mine. Agitation flowing through her in a way I rarely see.

  Just when I can sense her reach her limit, she tugs my hand. “Come on. Nothing happened here.”

  I eye the pool of blood on the floor. The stain, still totally visible, has me peering with surprise at Jayce, but she’s intent on heading down a corridor and taking the door at the end of the hall.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer. She’s too busy talking to Kenna, if her silence is anything to go by.

  Kenna can read her mind. She’s the onl
y ghost who can do that. I have no idea why, neither does Jayce.

  The rest of the time she has to verbally speak to them. The fact she isn’t now lets me know who she’s having a conversation with.

  I’ve had to pick up on these tidbits out of self-preservation.

  Jayce has to be the only woman in the world who, when she falls silent, is actually conversing with someone else. Not because she’s sulking. That would be too simple!

  Shaking my head at the thought, I watch as she leads us through the doorway into a bedroom.

  Grimacing because this room is obviously currently in use—at some point, a still damp towel has been dropped on the floor by the door leading to the connecting bath—I tug her to a halt.

  “Jayce, this is someone’s bedroom. Probably Mr. Dietrick’s.”

  “Don’t you think it’s creepy he’s staying here? Not at a hotel?”

  “I guess. But people deal with things differently.”

  She snorts. “Yeah. Weirdos do.”

  “The police won’t have let him access the house while the crime scene was under investigation.”

  “Which means he spent the night here last night before letting a cleaning crew come in and mop up the blood stains.” She shudders. “That’s creepy.”

  I grimace.

  Can’t argue with that.

  “I mean,” she starts to reason, “it could just be that he’s extraordinarily cheap. Those cleaning firms charge more for urgent jobs.”

  “The guy’s filthy rich, Jayce. Look at where we’re standing: in the center of the most fashionable neighborhood this side of the city,” I point out, then, I shake my head. “No, you’re right. It’s just weird.”

  She grins. “Didn’t take much to convince you.”

  “Nope. When you speak the truth, you speak it well. A guy that rich could live in a hotel for months at a time and not feel the pinch. Why come back when the place is still showing signs his wife was murdered here, for God’s sake?”

  She nods in agreement, then starts to look around the bedroom.

  “Are there any ghosts in here?” I ask her softly, not wanting to disturb her method but, at the same time, equally curious as to why the hell she dragged us in here when the police obviously believe Paula Dietrick was murdered in the living room.

  “You remember I told you before how each room has a stain in it?”

  “Sure. The worse the crime, the deeper and darker it is.”

  “The one in the living room was sort of muddled. Not a regular stain. Like something happened there, but it wasn’t the main event.”

  “Okay. But what made you think there was one here?”

  “Because in the hallway, there was a trail. Stains dotted down the length of it.”

  “Like a fucked up Hansel and Gretel trail of breadcrumbs?”

  She wrinkles her nose. “Hansel and Gretel’s all kinds of fucked up anyway. That witch wanted to eat them!”

  “You don’t like it only because you’d have been fooled by the trap, too.”

  “Hell, yeah. A house made of candy? That’s my bag.”

  I snort, because it’s the honest-to-God truth. We usually sleep together, but after these nightmares, I’ve found her slumped on the couch, the TV murmuring quietly in the background. She’s been asleep, has even been talking in her sleep, dammit, all while eating candy.

  I watched her once, wondering if my eyes deceived me. But nope. Jayce is a sleep-eater.

  Not the weirdest of sleep related activities I’ve come across, but it figures that even in slumber, Jayce thinks about food.

  “What do you think happened in here?” I ask, watching as she glances around the place.

  I’m not the kind of guy to fancifully find this place creepy just because someone died here. In my profession, I’ve learned that sometimes, in death, there is peace. It’s a morbid mentality, and I’m not suicidal, but it’s the people who live, who strive, who fight on a daily basis to make it through who are the warriors.

  “I think she was killed here.”

  “Surely the police would have cordoned off the space? I mean, the pool of blood still has those yellow crime scene markers around it.”

  She nods. “I know. Do I say anything?”

  “Say anything about what?”

  Arroyo’s voice penetrates our conversation with the precision of a lobotomy completed with an ice pick.

  “I’m not sure if you’d believe me if I told you,” Jayce admits, though I can tell, she didn’t want to say even that.

  “After last night, I’m all ears.”

  Jayce’s brows rise. “Yeah? You never said what you’d found, just that you’d let me look at the crime scene.”

  Arroyo’s nearly thirty, kind of cute, in a harried-professional way. Her black hair gleams with vitality, and her almond eyes give her an exotic look. That said, those almond eyes are bruised with fatigue, her expression world-weary and a little depressed, while her shoulders are hunched like she’s caving in on herself in self-protection.

  All of which begins to makes sense when she admits, “Let’s just say I’m no longer in a relationship, and my almost fiancé is being watched by the department.”

  Jayce’s eyes widen. “What the hell was he looking at?”

  “Snuff.”

  Crap. Is that brave or arrogant of the man to date a cop, and then watch porn that involves either rape or violent death as the happy ending?

  “Wow,” Jayce mumbles, as stunned as I by such gall. “I’m sorry about that, Arroyo.”

  “No, you saved me from the bastard. So, I’m grateful. I’m also all ears.”

  Jayce shakes her head. “This is so far beyond my comfort zone, Arroyo, that someone like you could never understand.”

  She narrows her eyes at me. “I guess that’s partway true, but if it pertains to the case…”

  Jayce grimaces. “I want to help. I do. But I learned something recently, and it’s scared the living shit out of me.”

  Arroyo tilts her head to the side. “Why do I feel like it’s hard to scare you?”

  “Probably because it is.”

  “Can I take it as read that I actually don’t want to know what did it?”

  “I want to help,” Jayce admits. “I’m just not sure if I dare.”

  “Let me guess that it’s not somebody scaring you, but something.”

  Jayce lets out a shaky breath. “There are spirits like your grandmother, then there are… others.”

  “Like bad ghosts?” She cuts me a glance to see if I’m buying this. What else can I do but nod at her in encouragement. “And there’s a bad ghost involved in this case?”

  “Yeah. I just don’t know how.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing in my bedroom? Detective, I thought you said the crime scene was closed.”

  A man I recognize from the photos in the frames dotted around the living room appears in the doorway.

  Jayce lets out a gasp at the sight of him. Why? I’m not sure, but whatever the reason, she’s scared. The hand she holds out to me is trembling, and as I clasp it in mine, trying to imbue her with support, I can see it’s not working.

  “Mr. Dietrick, I apologize for the inconvenience. I’ve brought a consultant in on your wife’s case.”

  “Why? I thought that bastard was caught?”

  “Something cropped up in our line of questioning,” Arroyo murmurs, the lie slipping from her lips as easily as an eel through water. “I wanted to make sure I had all the facts.”

  Dietrick narrows his eyes. “Does that include invading my personal space when I’ve moved back in here?”

  Arroyo jerks a shoulder. “What can I say? Our consultant is thorough.”

  Before Dietrick can focus overlong on Jayce—although she’s sticking out like a sore thumb because she’s trembling—I hold out my hand to the man. “Drake Edwins. Psychologist. This is my assistant, Ms. Ventura.”

  Dietrick frowns at me. “A psychologist? Are you doing a profile
on O’Hara?” Suddenly, his eyes flare wide. “Is Paula not his first victim?”

  “Like I said, Mr. Dietrick, we’re just dotting all the I’s here.”

  The man, in his fancy suit and four-hundred-dollar haircut, looks down at his twenty-thousand-dollar watch and huffs out a sigh. “I have an appointment.”

  “Don’t let us keep you, sir,” Arroyo tells him politely.

  “I’d prefer you to leave with me, Detective,” comes the gruff and agitated reply.

  “I’m afraid we’re still investigating, sir. I know where your housekeeper is. She can see us out.”

  His lips pinch, but he nods. “I just need to get something from my closet.”

  Arroyo sweeps out an inviting hand. “Please, don’t let us disturb you.”

  His huff lets us know that it’s too late for that, but he moves into his bedroom, quickly locates something in his walk-in closet, then retreats, shooting an irritated look our way.

  Arroyo eyes Jayce. “You okay? You look sick.”

  “Red Bull was with him, Drake,” Jayce whispers.

  And even though I know I fell down the rabbit hole the first day I met Jayce, somehow, I know that was a walk in the park in comparison to what’s about to go down now.

  Chapter Eight

  Jayce

  “What did he say?”

  Drake’s concern washes over me, comforting me like a heating pad on a cold winter’s night.

  There’s something about him that both eases my fears and that can excite me within a heartbeat.

  I never thought the two could go together.

  Passion and desire never seemed all that comfortable to me, and I was right. They aren’t. But maybe it’s a sign that Drake is special. Unique.

  With one look, he can stir me in ways no other man ever has. Then, with a gentle touch, he can calm and ease me, take my fears away.

  A problem shared is a problem halved, don’t they say?

  Well, I feel like that’s the case with Drake.

  “He told me to stay out of it.”

  Arroyo’s nose wrinkles. “Red Bull? The ghost you mentioned before?”