Table of Contents
Synopsis
By the Author
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Epilogue
About the Author
Books Available from Bold Strokes Books
Synopsis
A missing sister. A friend in need. A twisted web of dark secrets.
Thea Lynch’s twin sister is missing, abducted from her vehicle as she worked at a remote transfer station outside Spokane, Washington. Help arrives in the form tall, dark, and beautiful Detective Katie Carlisle who races against the clock knowing that with each passing hour the chance of finding Thea’s sister alive diminishes. With no leads, no progress, and hope waning, Thea does the only thing she can think of: she calls her friend for help. Can reluctant psychic Lorna Dutton pull away the veil and reveal the truth? Or will the secrets destroy them all?
Twisted Whispers
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Twisted Whispers
© 2015 By Sheri Lewis Wohl. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-459-9
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: October 2015
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Shelley Thrasher
Production Design: Susan Ramundo
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
By the Author
Crimson Vengeance
Burgundy Betrayal
Scarlet Revenge
Vermilion Justice
Twisted Echoes
Twisted Whispers
Dedication
The Lady in White
I never knew who you were
I never knew why you came
But Thank You
You made me see
You made me think
And best of all…
You gave wings to my imagination
I find hope
In the darkest of days,
And focus in the brightest.
I do not judge the universe.
—Dalai Lama
Prologue
This wasn’t murder. No sirree, Bob. Murder was something criminals did, and that’s the last thing he was. This might be a complication that required cleanup, but that’s about it. Definitely not something that might fall into the scofflaw category. He had morals as well as a distinct belief in right and wrong. Criminals didn’t, and that’s what set him far apart from the felons.
Blood dripped from his hands as he plowed the shovel into the dirt again and again. Sweat trickled down his back and dampened the hair at the nape of his neck. The evening was deep and dark, and he didn’t dare use a light. The chance of anyone coming by this time of night was slim. Still, it didn’t hurt to take precautions. Besides, he didn’t really need any kind of light to do his work. He was as comfortable here as if he and the darkness shared a soul. Nighttime was his favorite, which—given his mission—was good. A pansy afraid of the dark would fail miserably in his line of work.
The hole grew deeper with each shovelful of dirt he tossed out onto the blue tarp spread wide on the grass. What he was trying to accomplish needed to be right. Or more precisely, perfect. And it was. He stopped shoveling and crawled out of the hole.
The second blue tarp, this one tied with an extensive length of paracord, rolled easily into the hole. For a long moment, he stood at the edge of his carefully crafted crevasse and stared. Then he picked up the shovel and began to fill it once again with rich earth. When the dirt reached the top, was packed level, and the turf back in place, it was as if nothing had disturbed the ground. The beauty of it made him smile. His father always said, “A job worth doing is worth doing right.” Well, Daddy, I did this job right.
Slowly he folded the tarp, taking care to ensure any loose dirt stayed within the folds. He tossed the shovel into the bed of his pickup and tucked the tarp into the diamond-plate toolbox mounted behind the cab. Keys in hand, he pulled open the driver’s door and then paused. A wise man would leave now, and he considered himself a very wise man. As he debated, he tightened his grip on the door handle. Get in. Go, before someone drives by and sees you.
Sighing, he stepped away from the truck door, closed it, and returned to the spot where a moment before he’d worked up a sweat. Staring down at the grass he’d carefully replaced so no one would notice any kind of disturbance, he felt his heart start to beat like a freight train and his breath begin to hitch. A light rain fell from the sky, yet he still didn’t return to his truck. He’d done this enough times already to know his work was good and, more importantly, his own private secret—forever.
Walking away this time was impossible, and he understood why. Understanding didn’t change how he felt. This one was different from the rest. Much more personal and far more important. His head bowed and his hands in his pockets, he stood still as death. The rain picked up in intensity until it dripped down his hair and onto his face, where it mixed with his tears.
Chapter One
“Son of a bitch.” Lorna Dutton spit her mouthful of coffee all over the morning newspaper. With the back of her hand she wiped her mouth and then slapped the soggy paper down on the kitchen table. “When is this shit going to stop?”
Honestly, enough already. She’d moved out here on the Washington Coast to get away from people, not to end up in The Seattle Times, yet there she was in all her smiling—or was that grimacing—glory. Her face was front and center on page one of a newspaper with a circulation in the hundreds of thousands. Page fucking one!
All right, it just might be a pretty good story. After all, solving the mystery of a Makah woman missing for over a hundred years made for a great human-interest article. Or newscast. Or Internet video clip. That John McCafferty, the original owner of the house she now lived in, had murdered Catherine Swan, the Makah woman, then buried her in the yard, wasn’t an original story, but how she’d uncovered the truth was. Good old-fashioned psychic ability, and pretty much the last thing she wanted to be known for made for a story sure to capture the reading public’s attention. It didn’t seem to interest anyone that she’d written training manuals for not one but three Fortune 500 companies. Now that was something she wouldn’t mind seeing
on the front page of the newspaper.
Didn’t seem to matter what she wanted. The minute she moved into the house she inherited from her great-aunt, her latent psychic abilities began to get stronger and stronger until she solved the century-old mystery. Even as isolated as they were out here, the story still managed to work its way through just about every news outlet in the state. Instead of isolation and a chance to rest and renew, she’d morphed into a strange sort of celebrity. Not the kind that brought her technical-writing jobs either. That would be a helpful sort of celebrity status.
But no, it couldn’t be that easy. Rather than connecting her name with real jobs writing books, manuals, and trade materials, all people knew about her was that she could see ghosts.
Sucked to be her.
The story did, however, have two upsides. First, she wasn’t in the psychic realm all by herself. When her brother Jeremy had showed up, the old paranormal bug had managed to hit him square on too. Actually Jeremy didn’t have much latent psychic ability, but he was an open type of person, which made him easy pickings for a hostile spirit. Now that they’d banished the spirit of the asshole who built the house and murdered his daughter’s lover, nothing preternatural seemed to be bothering Jeremy any longer. Still, it was nice to have someone around who could relate. Most people couldn’t even if they wanted to, and those that said they could were by and large the crazy ones.
The second perk, and in her opinion the best, was Renee. Lorna’s heart took a big leap every time she thought about her. When Lorna inherited the house, she also inherited, so to speak, the housekeeper, Jolene Austin. Jolene’s daughter Renee was a lovely woman with long dark hair and gorgeous eyes. By herself, Renee was fantastic, interesting, and beautiful. It also didn’t hurt that she’d brought Clancy along with her. Probably less than a minute after he put his big head in her lap and turned his expressive eyes on her, she was a goner. Lorna loved the big German shepherd as if he’d been part of her life for years.
The whole reason Renee came to the house was tragic. A fire in the building she owned in downtown Seattle had gutted her business on the main floor and so smoke-damaged her living quarters on the second floor she couldn’t live there until extensive repairs were completed. More than happy to invite her to stay at the house on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, Lorna extended a heartfelt invitation. The house was huge, with plenty of room for what turned out to be a makeshift kind of family consisting of Lorna, Jeremy, his pregnant girlfriend Merry, Jolene, and Renee. Oh, and Clancy, of course.
The truth of why she relocated so far from her childhood home was a tired old story. She came here to disappear after her long-time girlfriend, Anna, decided for both of them the relationship was over. Might have been nice if they’d talked it through first, but that’s not the way it played out. Anna moved on before Lorna even knew it was over. After the relationship implosion she just wanted to hide out here all alone and train for her first Ironman triathlon. Well, train and feel sorry for herself in a way that was pretty embarrassing when she looked back on it. Somebody should have given her a big old bitch-slap alongside the head instead of allowing her to mope, whine, and cry. Luckily her self-imposed isolation was brief and she’d never been happier. Best intentions and all that.
Notwithstanding her current good feelings, right now she was sick and tired of the publicity her discovery of the body of Catherine Swan generated. She resented it, actually, for a multitude of reasons. Solitude wasn’t an objective these days like it was when she first moved here, and that was okay. Privacy was a different matter. If she had her way, the whole psychic thing could disappear as quickly as it appeared. That wasn’t going to happen, judging by the rabid attention her unusual talent seemed to garner.
Her reluctance to embrace her psychic ability aside, Catherine’s remains were returned to her family and the Makah Tribe. A wrong perpetuated against a lovely young woman so long ago was put right. What only the inhabitants of the house knew, though, was discovering Catherine’s remains also connected her spirit with the love of her life, Tiana McCafferty, the only daughter of John McCafferty. Took Lorna awhile to figure it out, but she finally realized Tiana was earthbound as she waited for someone to reunite her with Catherine. Once it happened, the spirits of both Catherine and Tiana were free at last.
She saw them together, a love so strong it defied death, and her heart ached for the travesty visited upon the two women. Until she met Renee that kind of love was an elusive dream far out of her reach. Every day she spent with Renee she understood a little more about the bond between Catherine and Tiana that kept them bound to the earth decade after decade.
Reuniting the two lovers allowed them to leave this place and go into the light, or wherever peaceful spirits go. She felt good about that, except it left the house feeling a little empty. Tiana’s essence filled the place with an energy she couldn’t touch but could sure as hell feel. She missed the spirit of the beautiful young woman whose only crime was to love another so deeply it enraged her father enough to propel him to commit murder.
It was time to put it all to rest, especially the part that shone the spotlight squarely on her. Lately, people were actually driving by as if trying to glimpse the psychic. Circus performer wasn’t on her bucket list.
If she didn’t have the picture staring up at her she could pretend nobody was paying any attention to her. She wadded up the newspaper and tossed it toward the trashcan just as Renee came into the kitchen.
A single eyebrow went up as she cut her gaze first to Lorna and then at the damp newspaper that missed the trash can by a pretty wide margin. “Practicing your three-point shot?” She poured herself a cup of coffee and looked at Lorna over the rim of the mug.
“Never had one,” she admitted with honesty and a smile. Her heart was lighter at the sight of Renee dressed in pink-flowered flannel pants and a bright-yellow T-shirt. Unlike Lorna, who preferred primary colors, Renee embraced bright and cheerful. Her choice worked for her in a way it never would for Lorna, and it always made her smile. She pushed away from the table and got up to retrieve the wadded paper from where it landed on the floor.
“What made you want to crush the paper before anyone else could read it?”
She cocked her head and studied the missed shot. There was a reason she never made the varsity basketball team. “As my grandmother used to say, I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.” She picked up the newspaper and stuffed it into the trash before sitting back down in her chair at the table her long legs crossed.
Renee laughed, her eyes sparkling. “Gosh, that narrows it right down. I’d have to say that something in there was about one beautiful and talented psychic. Did my first guess get close?”
“Ding, ding, ding…you’re a winner.” She held up her coffee mug in a mock toast.
“Sweetheart.” Renee walked over and ran a hand across Lorna’s hair before planting a kiss on the top of her head. “You gotta stop letting these things get to you. The truth is, whether you like it or not, God gave you a gift, and you’ve already used it for the greater good.”
Lorna rolled her eyes as she leaned into Renee’s hand where it still rested against her head. “Okay, Gandhi.”
Renee’s laugh was like a ray of sunshine. “I prefer Mother Theresa. But seriously, Lorna, you’re unique and what you did was incredibly special. Yeah, it’s kind of exploitive of journalists to keep using it to sell papers, but it doesn’t diminish what you are, honey. Just roll with it for now, and as my grandmother used to say…this too shall pass.”
“I sure as hell hope your granny was right ’cause this shit needs to pass.”
“She never let me down. It will pass, I promise.” She kissed the top of Lorna’s head again.
*
Thea Lynch paced the length of her office, the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach refusing to lessen. Three days, three incredibly long days, and still nothing. Not a single call, not a clue, nothing. Her sister was missing and nobody
knew a goddamn thing. Worse, nobody seemed to care except her.
She glanced at the silent phone and cursed it under her breath. From the moment Grant called her, she’d been a wreck. Actually that wasn’t right either; she was rattled long before that. She’d sensed before his call that something was wrong with Alida. It’d always been that way with them. Everything people said about twins was true in their case. Their connection was more than physical; it was spiritual.
Now that her worst fears appeared to be true, she didn’t know what to do or where to turn for help. The company truck Alida was driving three days ago was found at a sub-station with the doors open, her backpack on the seat, and the keys in the ignition. Everything was there except her sister. How could that be? There was nothing around the sub-station, nowhere for her to go. People—her sister—didn’t simply disappear.
The police checked over the truck, and searchers went out for hours to try to find her, or at least a trace of her. Nothing came of it. Alida vanished as if she were part of a magician’s disappearing act.
Thea had come into work today hoping for a little distraction, but that turned out to be fruitless because so far she wasn’t getting a damn thing done. How could she? Alida was in trouble, and she didn’t have the first idea of how to help.
After a couple of hours she gave up and, leaving everything in the hands of her very capable staff, returned home. At least she could be here in case Alida called or, better yet, showed up. Nothing would be better than to open her front door and see her standing on the front steps. Pressing her fingers to her closed eyes she took long, deep breaths. Please, God, bring her home.
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