by Kris Tualla
“Hollis, turn on your television—channel twelve!” Stevie commanded. “Quick!”
Hollis grabbed the control and switched the old-fashioned unit on, then punched in the channel.
Sveyn sat up beside her. “That’s him!”
Hollis gasped. Fear skittered though her veins at the sight of his familiar and handsome face. Her pulse surged. “Oh my God!”
“…as he tried to board a flight to Mexico City on his way to Buenos Aires. TSA confirms that the stolen icon was in Sage’s luggage.”
“They caught him!” Hollis could practically hear Stevie jumping up and down. “He’s going down. Hard.”
A barrage of unpleasant thoughts flooded Hollis’s mind: would there be a trial? And what about what he did to her? Would she have to testify?
“Do I have to press charges separately?” she blurted.
And if so, will I?
Stevie hesitated. “I don’t know. Do you want me to ask George?”
I know a lawyer in Phoenix.
That realization slowed her heartrate a little. “Yes, please. I’ll want to talk to him, I think.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Thank you, Stevie. I’ll call you when they release me.”
Hollis switched off the television, and curled on her side with her back to the door, facing Sveyn. She pulled the sheets to her chin.
“Tell me I’m safe.”
He looked at her so kindly, she loved him a little more. “I must believe that the jailors know their business, Hollis.”
“It scared me to see his face.” Hollis brushed her hair out of her eyes. “I know that’s silly.”
“Not at all.” Sveyn’s lips twisted. “When I saw him, I wanted to kill him. Slowly.”
“And you probably know how.”
Sveyn laughed. As impossible as it was, he looked better than last night. He looked rested. But wasn’t it impossible for him to be tired?
“What if I have to testify at his trial?” She shuddered. “Maybe he’ll plea bargain and I won’t have to.”
“You are a strong woman, Hollis. You will be able to do what needs to be done.”
Tuesday
October 27
Hollis took Monday off because Miranda forbade her to appear on the museum’s property. So she and Sveyn went out to lunch and a movie at the nearby dine-in theater, then went window shopping at the Biltmore mall. Throughout the day, except during the movie, of course, Hollis used the Bluetooth to disguise the recipient of her conversation.
It turned out to be exactly what she needed.
So when she walked into the front door of the museum today—because her employee key card was retrieved from Everett and kept as evidence—she was much less nervous than she expected. When she opened the door to the administrative offices, Miranda ran out to meet her.
“Good morning, Hollis!” She held out a new key card. “I’m so glad to see you—and I have so much to tell you.”
Hollis tucked the card into her hip pocket. “Thanks, Miranda.”
She gave Hollis an uncertain look. “I threw away the roses.”
Honestly, Hollis had forgotten about them in the wake of what happened since. “Oh, thank you.”
“But I have the vase in my office if you want it,” Miranda continued. “It’s actually cut crystal.”
Hollis shook her head as she walked into her familiar office space. “No, I don’t want it. You can have it.”
Stevie rounded the corner, oversized coffee cup in hand. “Hi, Hollis! How are you feeling?”
“Like I want everything to return to normal.” She faced her two friends. “Any chance of that?”
“Yes, for the most part,” Miranda hedged. “Forensics finished gathering evidence on Sunday, and Tony and Stevie cleaned up after them yesterday.”
Stevie flashed a bright smile. “So we can get back to work on the displays as soon as you’re ready.”
Hollis regarded Miranda warily. “For the most part?”
“Get your coffee and come to my office. I have something to show you.” Miranda gave a suspiciously unconcerned shrug and turned to leave. “No rush.”
Hollis waited until she was gone before she asked Stevie, “Do you know what she’s talking about?”
Stevie looked nervous. “Yes.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll have to see it yourself. I can’t quite describe it…” Stevie walked out before Hollis could ask anything else.
“What do you think it could be?” Sveyn asked, his brow furrowing.
“God only knows,” Hollis grumbled. “But I’m not waiting another moment to find out.”
Hollis walked into Miranda’s office. Not surprisingly, Stevie was already in there.
“Okay. Show me.”
Miranda’s expression was odd. “All right. Sit down.”
Hollis sank into the chair facing her boss’s desk and Stevie stood behind her. Miranda turned her computer monitor so that Hollis could see it.
“This is security footage from Friday night.” She pinned Hollis with a concerned gaze. “Are you sure you’re ready to see this?”
No. “Sure.”
Sveyn knelt beside her. “You do not have to watch this Hollis. Nothing that happened will be changed.”
Hollis looked into the Viking’s eyes. “Waiting only makes this last longer.” She returned her regard to Miranda. “But why do you want me to watch it?”
“You’ll see.” Miranda maximized the icon in the corner of her screen. “This is what the cameras caught at the moment the motion detector was set off.”
Hollis stared herself taped to the girder and sitting on the floor, shrouded in shiny gray tape. A film of sweat formed on her skin. Her pulse surged in her ears.
Miranda looked at her. “Did you see it?”
Hollis grabbed a tissue from Miranda’s desk and wiped her face. “See what?”
“Look here.” Miranda tapped the screen about six inches to the right of Hollis’s image. “I’ll play it again.”
Hollis fixed her eyes on the point where Miranda indicated.
“Ready?
“Yes,” she answered. Sveyn leaned closer as well.
Oh my GOD!
Hollis looked at Miranda, stunned. “What is that?”
“I was hoping you knew.”
Hollis felt faint. “Can you slow it down?”
“Yes.” Miranda played the three-second clip again.
Right at the spot which she indicated a figure appeared. Or, more accurately, the smudge of a figure appeared. Tall, lean, and blurred by motion.
It was there, and then it was gone. In the literal blink of an eye.
“Is that me?” Sveyn sat back on his haunches. “Is that me?”
“I don’t know!”
Steve stepped up beside her. “What don’t you know, Hollis?”
“Who—what that is.” She was having trouble breathing.
“Were you alone, Hollis?” Miranda asked.
“Everett was gone. The room was pitch black. I couldn’t see anything.” She leaned over and put her head between her knees. “Do you have any water?”
Miranda and Stevie grabbed her arms and led her to the sofa.
“Lay back. Gather yourself,” Miranda instructed. “I was worried this was too soon.”
Stevie pressed a bottle of cold water into her hand. Hollis opened it and gulped enough that it gave her brain freeze. She rubbed her head while she assembled her thoughts because the truth was never going to fly.
She squinted up at Miranda. “How do you know that’s not just some digital glitch?”
“Because.” The curator shot Stevie a significant look. “There is something else.”
“Something else?” Stevie squeaked. “What?”
“Mr. Benton was worried about Kensington’s hoard introducing mice into the storeroom.”
Hollis found the suggestion deeply offensive. “We would never bring anything in that we hadn’t unwrapped and e
xamined!”
“I know that. And I told him he was spending money unnecessarily.” Miranda shrugged her helplessness. “But he did it anyway.”
Hollis stared at her. “Did what?”
“Had thermal imaging cameras installed.”
Hollis sat up straight. “To measure body heat? Of mice?”
“Is that even possible?” Stevie demanded.
Miranda put up her hands in surrender. “It’s a very sophisticated and expensive system which detects minute temperature variations and records in a fifteen minute loop. It automatically saves time-stamped video portions which show a reading.”
Hollis looked at Stevie, dumbfounded.
“Benton sent it to me this morning.” Miranda crossed back to her desk, sat in the swivel chair, and pulled up another file. “Do you want to see?”
Hollis pushed herself to her feet and reclaimed the chair in front of Miranda’s desk. This day was getting weirder by the minute.
On this video, Hollis’s body glowed in a pale rainbow of swirling colors.
“Watch the same area.” Miranda hit play.
A faint glow started to move around Hollis, intensifying in color until the motion detectors switched on the blinding light. This glow showed a vertical figure floating above the floor, with smudges that looked like shimmering wings.
“I was waving my arms,” Sveyn said.
“They look like wings,” Hollis answered.
“Yes, they do.” Miranda stared at her. “I think you have a guardian angel, Hollis.”
Stevie’s coffee cup hit Miranda’s desktop. “And he was in the storeroom with you.”
Hollis turned away from the women and faced Sveyn. The Viking apparition was obviously as stunned as she was. He stood right in front of her, looking down at her with intense blue eyes.
“I do,” she whispered. “And he was.”
An excerpt from:
A Restored
Viking
Sveyn & Hollis: Book Two
A Paranormal
Romantic Suspense Trilogy
in The Hansen Series
Chapter One
Monday
November 9
Even though Hollis McKenna’s abduction only lasted three hours, and took place more than a week ago, she was still having nightmares.
“Give yourself a break, Hollis,” Stevie chided. “That was a truly terrifying experience.”
The petite museum Registrar who worked side-by-side with Hollis cataloging the huge Kensington bequest sipped coffee from an over-sized mug, her concerned gaze pinning Hollis’s.
“I just wish I knew what was happening with Everett.” Hollis felt a too-familiar shiver of fear skate up her spine. “I won’t feel safe until he’s locked up.”
“George is on it. He’ll let us know as soon as the judge makes a decision on the plea agreement.”
Stevie’s suitor George was a God-send. Hollis met him first through an online dating site, but when no chemistry sparked between them she gave Stevie permission to pursue the mild-mannered attorney. Now the two were inseparable.
Hollis turned her back on her friend, both to pour coffee and look at Sveyn Hansen. The Viking ghost gave her a tender smile.
No, not a ghost. An apparition. The man was caught between life and death. Ghosts were dead people and Sveyn hadn’t died.
His obviously un-solid presence was the only thing keeping her sane at this time.
Yes, it was an oxymoron.
Deal with it.
Her drug-facilitated abduction would have ended much more critically if Sveyn hadn’t reacted as violently as he did to her predicament.
Because he didn’t have a physical body, he couldn’t stop Everett Sage from duct-taping her within an inch of her life and locking her in the museum’s huge collections storeroom. The rage and frustration he expressed, however, proved forceful enough to cross into the three-dimensional world and set off the motion detectors.
He saved her before she was permanently injured.
Physically, at least.
Hollis lifted her steaming cup and turned around to face Stevie again. “Let me know as soon as you hear something.”
“I will.” Stevie followed her from the employee break room. “Do you need help with the descriptions?”
“No, I’m almost finished. “ Hollis dragged one hand through her unruly curls. “We can start ordering the plaques by the end of the day.”
“That’s good. The opening of the Kensington wing is only three weeks away.”
“Don’t remind me.” Please. Hollis ducked into her office.
When long-time Tempe resident Ezra Kensington the Fifth died unmarried and with no progeny at the age of one-hundred-and-five, he willed a house packed with his life’s acquisitions to the museum.
Though the obsessive-compulsive hoarder’s collection was atypical of the disorder and actually contained numerous museum-worthy artifacts, they were European and American in origin. The Arizona History and Cultural Center’s mission statement limited its displayed artifacts to historical items from the territory.
However, the mission statement was adapted to state including significant international contributions from long-time Arizona residents’ private collections—because Ezra also willed over twelve million dollars to the museum in order to build a wing for his treasures.
Hollis was hired eight months ago as a temporary Collections Manager to dig through the hoard and categorize what she found.
Her office phone’s speaker beeped. “Hollis, are you there?”
“Yep.”
“Come see me when you have a minute.”
“I can come now.”
Hollis left her office and walked down the hallway of the museum’s administrative area to Miranda’s office. The curator—and her boss—was the opposite of petite blonde Stevie. The attractive brunette was at least five-foot-eleven.
“I just got a call from Mr. Benton.” Miranda waved at the chair in front of her. “Have a seat.”
As much as she respected the museum’s director, Hollis learned quickly that Benton was a media whore.
“What now?” she asked, lowering herself into the chair and steeling herself for the newest onslaught.
“First of all,” Miranda grinned. “He called to tell me that, as part of the plea agreement with Dr. Sage, the museum will demand his half of the Blessing of the Gods, so that it can be displayed along with Ezra Kensington’s half.”
“NO!” The word burst from Sveyn as powerfully as if her constant apparition had breath. He moved into her line of sight. “Hollis, tell her no!”
Miranda’s brow twitched. “What’s the Norse name for it?”
“Velsignelse av Gudene.”
Hollis only knew how to pronounce the name because Sveyn told her. She shot him a warning glance. “I think that’s awesome. And terrifying.”
“Terrifying?” Miranda chuckled. “Don’t tell me you believe that the reunited halves of the icon really can make the owner immortal.”
“No, I don’t.” Hollis sighed and wagged her head. “But look at Sage; the crazies in this world do. Or they will, once they hear about it.”
“Hollis, I beg you. Do not agree to this…” Sveyn growled.
Miranda leaned back in her office chair. “What do you suggest?”
Hollis had actually thought about this scenario. Once the other half of Ezra’s icon was found, she knew Mr. Benton wouldn’t rest until he acquired it.
“I think we put them in the same bullet-proof display case, side-by-side in the direction they are intended to fit together, but not locked in place.”
Sveyn glared at her. “You are playing with fire.”
Hollis ignored him. “And I’m serious about the bullet-proof part,” she continued. “Otherwise we are just asking for trouble to walk in over and over again and try to take it.”
Miranda made a conciliatory gesture. “I agree. And I’ll tell Mr. Benton the same thing. After what happened to y
ou, I think he’ll go along with that plan.”
“Good. Thank you.” Hollis laced her fingers together. “And what’s the second thing?”
Miranda’s expression morphed into an odd combination of delight and apology. “The YouTube video has over eight million views.”
“Ugh!” Hollis clapped her hands over her face. “Well that’s just crap-tastic.”
“You have to admit that the images of whatever was locked in the room with you are intriguing.”
“And you have to admit that Benton is a media whore.”
The museum’s director had ordered their tech guys to splice together the thermal imaging video before the pitch black storeroom’s alarm went off with the security camera tape when the lights came on. Sveyn somehow appeared on both, first as a green shimmer, and then as a brief murky smudge.
Hollis uncovered her face and groaned. “He must be absolutely thrilled.”
“He is.”
Hollis gave her boss a wary look. “And how does this affect me?”
“We are fielding dozens of calls a day from mediums, ghost busters, and priests who want to exorcise the collections storage area. All of them are asking for access.” Miranda paused.
Hollis tensed.
Her boss continued tentatively, “Access to the storage area… and to you.”
“No way!” Hollis blurted. “If we’re expected to have the Kensington display ready for the wing’s opening on December first, I can’t waste my time talking to whack jobs.”
“Mr. Benton doesn’t consider the guys from Ghost Myths, Inc. to be whack jobs.”
“The cable show?” This was getting worse—and fast. “What do they want? Please don’t say…”
Miranda eyebrows disappeared in her bangs, and her mouth got very tiny.
Hollis scowled at Sveyn. “Why me?”
“Because you have a guardian angel. You admitted it. In front of witnesses.” Miranda looked to her right, following the direction of Hollis’s gaze. “Are you looking at him now?”
Hollis jerked her regard back to her boss. “What?”
