by Angie West
Kate nodded. “She’s blonde. Her eyes are brown, though. And she’s taller, and has freckles. They’re lighter now that’s older, but…sorry, I guess that doesn’t matter. My head is so messed up right now.”
“Yeah, I get that, babe.”
“Livi and I don’t look line twins, but a casual onlooker would probably be able to guess that we’re related.”
He nodded, his heart pounding hard now. “Kate, what happened to Mira? Why do you think it was your fault?”
She huffed out a breath and wandered over to the dining room window, putting her back to him. “Because he went after her because of me,” she finally said. “He targeted that woman because of me—because she looked like me. She was seventeen. A senior at Crystal Cove high school when she died. When he killed her. The police and the media, they were never able to prove that he did it. But they would have, I think, given enough time. That’s why he killed himself,” she said. “Because he didn’t want to go to jail. Deep down, he was a coward.”
“What if he didn’t kill her?” Jaxson suggested, wiping a hand across the back of his neck. “What if—”
“What?” Kate glanced at him over her shoulder.
“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”
“He killed her,” she said, shoulders hunching up close to her neck. “I was there. Besides my uncle, I was the last person to see Mira Rathe alive. And as if it wasn’t bad enough that he went after that girl because she was a dead ringer for me, I could have saved her, and I didn’t.”
“Kate…”
“It’s true.” She spun away from the window and took a few hesitant steps toward him. “The last summer I ever spent at my aunt’s house was when I was eight years old. The same year that Mira went missing. My aunt had left to spend a few days with some relative in Tallahassee. I don’t even remember who she went to see, or why, but I remember my uncle graciously offering to watch me.” She snorted. “Early one morning, a day or two after my aunt had left, I heard noises coming from the basement. I heard her—Mira—crying.”
“Hell.”
“I didn’t know she wasn’t alone. It never occurred to me that my uncle…” She shook her head and wrapped her arms around her midsection. “She was tied up, a-and bleeding. I can still see the blood all over what was left of her shirt. And her face, he’d hit her. She was partially submerged in an old tub. I…I’m pretty sure that’s how he killed her, by drowning her in that old tub. He was standing next to her, and his hand was on her shoulder.”
“Did they see you?”
Kate nodded. “He told me to go upstairs. And I did. I went upstairs and hid in my bedroom closet for hours, hugging an absurdly large stuffed dog that my aunt had bought me one year for Valentine’s Day. And I didn’t say a word. Not when he told me, later that night, that bad girls ended up in his special room downstairs. Not when the police started coming around, and not when my uncle did the world a big damn favor and hung himself in the front parlor at the end of the summer. I just…I couldn’t speak. It was like my voice was this well that had dried up, and there was just nothing left for months and months.”
“Shhh,” he soothed, closing the remaining foot or so of distance between them and tucking her close to him. He stroked a hand over her hair and palmed the back of her head, pressing her even closer as he murmured into her hair. “You don’t have to say any more. It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re okay…” Whispering over and over again, leaning down until his lips brushed her ear every time he spoke. He felt the shiver that ran through her body and into his, rocked gently back and forth with her, and, after several long moments, felt some of the tension in her finally begin to ease.
She pulled away far enough to look up into his face, and the sadness in her eyes twisted his gut.
“But it’s not okay, Jaxson. Not really. For years, I’ve dreamed of Mira. I’ve thought of her and dreamed of her, and…and she’s been there, in the back of my mind. But she’s not some buried memory, anymore. She’s real and she’s here—somehow.” Jaxson watched as she cast a nervous glance toward the door. “The broken window… She’s not just a dream, anymore, Jaxson, is she?” Slowly, he shook his head and brushed a wayward lock of hair off her forehead.
“Yeah. I guess I’d already suspected as much.” She sighed. “Ever since I came back to Florida, and moved into that house, I’ve felt like Gollum and I aren’t alone.” She worried her lip again. “She’s not going to stop, is she?”
Jaxson hesitated, unsure how to answer her question. He hadn’t spent much time in Florida—thank God—or in the house next door. But so far the impressions he got from the late Mira Rathe, were off-the-charts angry. He didn’t think she was interested in going into the light.
“She’s a pretty angry spirit,” he conceded. “But…I don’t think she’s mad at you.”
Kate shook her head. “Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Why would she be?” he countered.
“I let her die, Jaxson. I had the chance to save her, and I ran away and hid. I knew better. I knew how to dial 911. I don’t know why I didn’t. I screwed up,” she said helplessly. “There’s no other way to put it.”
“You screwed up?” Jaxson demanded incredulously. “What kind of fuck would blame an eight-year-old girl for something like that?”
“Well, apparently Mira.”
Jaxson shook his head. “No, she’s angry, but not at you.”
“How do you—”
He held up a hand. “Don’t ask.”
“Like hell. You can…hear…her?”
He nodded, half expecting to see the apprehension—fear of him—cloud her eyes, for her to call him a freak. Or worse, to keep silent, but pull away, and make up some bullshit excuse because, deep down, she thought he was a freak. But the wary rejection never came. Kate simply continued to stare at him expectantly.
“I can hear her.”
“Are there others? Like her?”
“Like her? Dead?” He frowned. “Or in your house?”
Kate broke away and turned a slow circle, casting a wary glance at the air around them. “Are there a bunch of them, you know, all around us?”
“Ah.” Jaxson smiled and shook his head. “No.”
“Oh, God, is there more than one in my house?”
Again, he hesitated, but decided to tell her the truth. “Yes.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“They aren’t as…vocal, as she is. I haven’t seen them, not like I’ve seen her.”
Kate took a deep breath. “You know what? I’m not even going to ask,” she said. “Okay, so, so…if she’s not out to get me, then why now? Why is she all of a sudden, here?”
“Who says she hasn’t been here all along?”
“I guess. But why is she going all”—Kate waved her arms around—“exorcist, now?”
The sick, niggling feeling was back, and Jaxson cupped a hand around the back of his neck before he straightened and faced Kate’s inquisitive stare. “Well, I think I might have a theory about that…”
Before he could speak, a loud, booming crash sounded from outside, and the screech of shattering glass drifted through the partially open window beside the door.
“What the hell?”
Chapter Eighteen
The Long Goodnight
Their shoulders bumped as they darted toward the dining room window that looked out onto the porch and afforded a clear view of the side of Kate’s house.
“W-what,” Kate stammered, pressing her arm fully against Jaxson’s side, “is she doing?” Even after days and hours and years of dreaming about Mira Rathe, and the brief history they shared, the one and only time their paths had crossed, it felt…wrong, somehow, to be speaking out loud about her. Who was she kidding? It wasn’t only that. It was referring to Mira as if she were a real person that made the hair on the back of Kate’s neck practically stand on end. Mira was dead. Light shone from a downstairs window, then winked off, only to appear in another window. The kitchen, the porch, the second-story room
that was missing a window. Kate shivered. Mira Rathe was dead. Another crash sounded, and the light flashed rapidly now.
But she was far from gone.
“She wants us to come back to the house,” Jaxson answered, glancing sideways at Kate.
“Why?”
He shook his head and returned his attention to the spectacle next door. “I don’t know.”
“Oh…she isn’t…talking?”
“No. Only…”
“Only what?” she prompted when he fell silent. “Jaxson, what is it?”
“Nothing. Come on,” he said, abruptly turning from the window and propelling her deeper into the house. His grip delivered an edge of pain, and Kate wrenched her upper arm free of his grasp, glaring at him when he rounded on her. He’d snatched his cell phone off of one of the lace-doilied end tables in the formal living room.
“Tell me what she said.”
“She said ‘come here,’” he told her after a moment’s hesitation.
She studied his face, the way his fingers curled tightly around the sleek, black cell phone. “You’re lying.”
But Jaxson was already talking into the phone. “Jake,” he said, turning away from Kate and lowering his voice a few octaves until she could only make out every other word or so.
She took a step forward, but Jaxson retreated a few more paces, closer to the staircase, and finally she gave up, crossing her arms over her chest in irritation but otherwise keeping silent. There would be time enough to corner Jaxson as soon as he was off the phone. A moment later, she dropped her arms to her sides and stared, open-mouthed, at Jaxson as he slapped his hand against the eggshell-white wall of the living room.
“God damn it, Jake! He saw her with me. Don’t you get it? He didn’t stop the car until he saw her over here, with me. He’s going to come after her. What do you—Jake, you don’t,” Jaxson exhaled and curled his hand into a fist as Kate watched, her stomach tightening. “Because I know. He wants her. I don’t know. Because she’s blonde, because she with me, who the fuck knows, but he’ll try and take her. She’s next. I need to get her out of her,” he snapped. “No, that’s not enough. Fuck!” he growled, abruptly hanging up and sending his phone sailing across the living room.
Kate’s gaze followed the track of the throw, watching with vague interest as the cell phone slid across an end table. She blinked when it was stopped by the wall, then she rounded on Jaxson. “Do I even want to know?” she asked, tapping one foot against the plush carpet beneath her toes.
One corner of his mouth quirked up without humor. “Probably not. Come on, we’re getting out of here,” he said, crossing the room and looping one hand around her wrist in a firm grip. But Kate dug her heels in and held firm.
“No,” she protested. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”
“I will,” he promised, staring down at her with a pained expression on his face. “But later. Tonight. When we’re far away from this godforsaken hell hole,” he muttered, turning toward the door again and propelling her along behind him. Again, she stopped him in his tracks.
“Damn it, Jaxson. Stop,” she demanded, ignoring the glare he leveled on her as he swung around impatiently. “What. Is. Going. On. You’re telling me now, right here, or else I walk out the door. Explain.”
“It’s not good.”
“Yeah, I gathered that,” she said wryly.
“It’s really bad, Kate,” he warned.
“Worse than my house being haunted by a ghost who probably wants to kill me?” she asked dubiously, her blood chilling in her veins as she briefly wondered if Mira Rathe could actually kill her. Considering what she’d done to the window earlier, Kate figured that was a line of thought she didn’t want to examine further.
Grimly, he nodded. “Yeah, it’s worse than that.” He cast a glance behind them, at the door, before Kate tugged on his arm, and his gaze swung back around to her.
“Jaxson.”
“I screwed up,” he said hoarsely.
“You screwed up,” she repeated slowly, searching his face. “Okay.”
“Not just now, although I’ve managed to fuck this up too,” he said, ramming his fingers through his hair and cursing when he knocked his wig askew. “I’m not an exotic dancer at a club—well, I am, right now, but I’m undercover.”
“You’re a cop?” Her eyes widened.
Jaxson snorted. “No, sweetheart. I’m not a cop. I’m an ex-con. Before I came to Florida, I was an accountant. I did some business with the wrong people, and I got arrested—”
“Arrested? What sort of business?” Kate interrupted, taking a small step closer, curious
“Financial business,” he said, and she got the sense he was being deliberately vague. “Racketeering. Gambling,” he finally explained, hanging his head and exhaling slowly.
“Oh.” She nodded, hoping her expression was neutral.
Jaxson’s head came up, and his gaze was questioning, before it became shuttered again. “One of the people I handled some financial…business…for, was a man named Roger Klein—the man you saw outside earlier. The blue car,” he added when Kate remained silent.
She took a deep breath. “What does that have to do with me?” she asked, though she could more or less connect the dots. The picture that was beginning to take shape wasn’t pretty.
“After my arrest, the FBI came to question me. Roger Klein is more than just some shifty club owner. He’s also the sole suspect in the murders of at least three women. All young—all blonde.”
Kate recoiled, even though she’d seen that coming. “So they had you dress as a blonde woman to try and, what, trap him in some sort of cop show sting operation?”
Jaxson nodded, looking almost relieved for some reason. “The other man you saw here, the one that drives the Buick, is a cop, back in New York. He’s my uncle Jake. At first, I was a suspect in the murders. Once they determined that I wasn’t Roger Klein’s accomplice in anything besides money laundering, they started to pump me for information about him, about his club.”
“And the other dancers in the club…do they dress like you?” she asked, not even sure why she was curious about such a thing at a time like this. Maybe she was going into shock again, she mused, still focusing on Jaxson’s tense face.
He nodded. “Transvestites? Yes. And no, this isn’t my normal style of dress.”
“I didn’t think it was,” she murmured, promptly closing her mouth. “So, your uncle?”
“Right. He came up with the idea of the sting operation, starring yours truly. The next thing I knew, I was being offered a plea bargain. My full and total cooperation in exchange for a suspended sentence on the racketeering charges. I took it. And now here we are.”
“Roger Klein has been baited to come after you,” she said, breathless and slightly nauseous again. The idea of Jaxson being dangled in front of a serial killer was enough to make her see red. She didn’t stop to question when her feelings for her quirky, screwed-up neighbor had developed into something deeper, something she was hesitant to name. Then again, the tipping point didn’t really matter, did it? Her entire acquaintance with Jaxson Green had been bizarre—and kind of wonderful.
“Yeah, he’s supposed to come after me. And I think it would have worked. Until he saw you.” Jaxson shook his head and leaned in close, pressing his forehead to hers and closing his eyes. “I should have followed my own advice and stayed away from you after that first night. Fuck, I practically led him right to you.”
She raised one hand to touch the side of his face; beneath her fingertips, his skin was hot, bordering on feverish. “You don’t know that he’s after me. He could have stopped the car earlier to stare at you,” she pointed out, stroking her fingers down to the tense line of his jaw. “And, anyway, we live next door.” She sighed. “Assuming he saw me and I…fit his type, or whatever, you wouldn’t have had anything to do with that. I could have walked out of my house to go to the grocery store, or to go to work, and he could have driven b
y and seen me then, all the same.”
He brought his hands up to frame her face. “Sweetheart, you don’t understand. He doesn’t just want you because you’re young, and blonde. He thinks you’re mine. It’s a competition for him. It’s about the chase. He wants to take you away from me. The thought excites him.”
“You can’t know that,” she gasped, allowing him to pull her from the room. They both paused at the front door, staring silently at her house. The crashing sounds had stopped, for the moment, anyway, but the lights still flickered crazily from one room to the next.
“It’s true, Kate. He’s going to come after you next.”
“But how—” Abruptly, she stopped, her gaze shifting from her house to Jaxson’s grim expression. “She told you all that, didn’t she? Or you heard it in her thoughts.”
He nodded. “I’m—”
She held up one hand. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry again,” she said absently. “I already told you it’s not your fault. Damn,” she swore. “Are you sure about all of this?”
“I’m sure. Now come on, I’ve got to get you out of here,” he told her, shoving the screen door open and propelling them both across the porch and down the steps to the damp lawn below.
Kate shielded her eyes with one arm, only vaguely aware of leaving her sunglasses on Jaxson’s dining room counter. “Hold on. Where are we going?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. Right now, we focus on getting as far away from Florida as possible. We’ll figure it out on the way, and worry about the rest later.”
“But if we run, what then? You’ll go to jail, won’t you? And when does it end? When is this Roger Klein person going to give up?”
“When he’s fucking caught,” Jaxson scowled.
“And then you’ll go to prison,” she repeated, glaring back. “You will, won’t you?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“So, no.”
“Kate, you don’t understand. The police aren’t going to help us. My uncle can’t get you out of here. You can’t rely on the cops to get you to someplace safe. This is the only way.”
