by Mary Behre
“Whoa!” Seth said as he glanced around the space. He cast her a confused stare, then set her away from him.
Jules sighed and had no choice but to uncoil her legs from his hips. Standing where he’d left her, she watched Seth cross the room.
He stuck his head outside, searching for whoever opened the window. He needn’t have bothered. It’s not like he could have seen the source anyway.
The ghost did it. Jules was certain. And she had a thing or two to say to that interfering little menace when she saw her again.
“I don’t see anyone,” Seth said, searching the kitchen. He closed the window, locked it, then turned to face Jules with his hands on his hips. “Keep your windows locked. There’ve been some break-ins recently.”
“But you left yours open?” Jules countered, trying to lighten the mood.
Seth raised a single brow. “And look how well it turned out for the last person to climb through it.”
“Wonderfully, from my point of view,” Jules couldn’t resist replying.
“True.” Seth chuckled, then frowned again and crossed his arms over his chest. “Still, you’re not me. Keep your windows locked. You’re going to be alone tomorrow, with Ernie and April gone. I don’t want to have to worry about you.”
Then it happened. The ghost materialized. Sort of. She appeared in the windowpane behind Seth, at the same moment the room temperature dropped.
“Brrr . . .” Seth shuddered and glanced around, then took several long strides toward Jules. “There’s a pretty big draft coming from the window. Tomorrow you need to call the super to seal it.”
“Yes, sir!” Jules gave a mock salute.
“Ha, ha.” He rubbed his arms with his hands. “Please, precious, call the super tomorrow.”
“Okay, I’ll call as soon as I return from the airport.”
The ghost’s aura glowed a brighter shade of yellow than Jules had ever seen it. It was as if she was closer to finding peace or crossing over. The girl glanced from Seth to Jules, her lips moving the entire time.
Jules squinted, trying to read the specter’s lips, but she couldn’t make out her words.
I don’t understand. Jules projected her thoughts quickly, then glanced to Seth, who once again seemed occupied with finding the source of the draft.
The ghost’s aura darkened to a murky brownish-yellow and further to dark, thunderous gray. The color change seemed to suck the remaining warmth from the room.
Jules’s skin crawled. Clamping her jaw, she focused all her energy on sending a single thought to the angry spirit.
Please don’t scream at me, I swear I’m trying.
To her surprise, the ghost’s aura lightened again. Not as bright as before, she appeared bathed in a hazy yellowish-brown glow. A tremulous smile quivered at the edges of her lips.
“Well, you have an early morning,” Seth said, suddenly. He turned and crossed the room to where Jules stood by the door. “I had a wonderful time tonight.”
“Me too,” Jules said, unsure what to do or say next.
Seth solved her confusion by leaning down and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “How about dinner tomorrow night?”
Certain the delight showed in her face, Jules nodded. “That would be great.”
Seth smiled wide. “Pick you up at seven.” He gave her one last kiss. Not as sinful as the others, but it left her breathless just the same. “Good night.”
He opened the door and strode through it. She watched until he crossed the hall and went into his apartment before closing her door.
Pressing her back against the wall, she tried to come up with a reason why dating Seth was a bad thing. Okay, so he was a cop. But at that moment, it didn’t seem as terrible to her as it had before. A giddiness bubbled up inside her, then the room went cold again.
Jules glanced over to the window, now covered by the curtains. A faded image of the ghost hovered just inside the room. She mouthed a single word before she faded away.
“Seth.”
CHAPTER 11
SETH HAD BARELY stepped into the station when all hell broke loose. And it came in the form of a middle-aged woman in an expensively tailored red suit. She stood at the front desk, yelling at the young officer on duty.
“Someone had better help me, right now, young man. Or I swear to God, I will see to it that every one of you is fired! Now get your captain on the phone and tell him Iris Masters will speak to him now, or the next call I’ll make is to the mayor!”
She slapped something down on the desk, but Seth couldn’t see it from his position. The young officer gaped at the woman, then over her shoulder at Seth.
As the highest-ranking officer in the building at the unearthly hour of six thirty in the morning, Seth intervened. “Excuse me, may I help you?”
The woman spun on him. Her short silver hair framed a pretty face. Her light gray eyes narrowed on him. “Are you the captain?”
“No, ma’am. My name is Detective English.” He extended his hand in greeting. “The captain isn’t in yet. Perhaps I might assist you.”
The woman’s features crumpled and her eyes turned glassy as she fought her tears. “My daughter, Aimee-Lynn, is missing and I’m tired of being told to wait to report it.”
She held up a picture of a beautiful young woman who bore a resemblance to the victim found in the Dumpster on Saturday. Seth took the photo from Iris Masters. He gestured down the hallway to the interrogation room. “Come with me.”
• • •
BANG, BANG, BANG!
Jules bolted upright in her bed. Someone was pounding on her front door. Thank God, she’d already driven Big Jim and April to the airport. The racket would have woken them up.
Bang, bang, bang!
She glanced at the clock; it was half past eight. Grumbling, she yanked on a pair of sleep pants and straightened her tank top as she half walked, half hopped down the hall, tugging on her slippers.
When the banging started a third time, she yelled, “Coming! Keep your knickers on!”
Still overtired, she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, not paying attention to the boxes littering the apartment until she stubbed her toe. With a yelp of pain, she kept moving forward but glanced backward in time to slam her knee into the corner of the coffee table.
“Owww! Shoot!” she hissed under her breath.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
“Jeez, what’s the emergency?” she snapped.
The front door flew open under its own steam but there was no one on the other side. Jules took an automatic step back. Somehow the corridor beyond the door seemed to move closer to her.
Empty and eerily silent, late morning light filtered into the hallway like a spotlight from the large round window overlooking the top of the stairs. Dust motes floated in the rays of sunshine and the world seemed totally at peace.
Seconds later, an icy chill rolled down her back. She glanced around, but time seemed to have stopped. The dust motes hung in the air as if suspended on strings. The morning light changed from vibrant streams to dull shafts of stale sunshine and they appeared to arrow through the icy cold like golden knives pointing to the floor at her feet.
Jules glanced down to her blue-painted toenails. On the floor, in the middle of the light, a series of brilliant, glittery red rocks spelled out the letter P. The rocks, maybe rubies, seemed to sparkle from all different directions, until the light they cast grew blinding and painful.
Covering her aching eyes with her right hand, Jules took two steps forward and slammed the door closed, locking it with shaking fingers.
“Give it to him!” The words slashed through her mind. Could mental thoughts alone lacerate her brain? “Do it now before someone else dies!”
Clutching one hand to her head, which was now throbbing in agony, Jules dropped to the floor and curled into a ball. Where the hallway had been filled with oppressive light, the living room went unearthly dark. Sound and light were sucked into a vacuum and she was left with the
paralyzing reality that the ghost wasn’t finished yet.
Then she heard it.
The cry of a baby. Weak, sad. The sound cut through her like a knife.
Swinging her head from left to right, she peered into the blackening room for the infant.
No baby. Only the ghost hovered nearby. Her muddy red aura pulsed around her. Crystalline tears tracked down her cheeks. “You must do it, today.”
The sound of thousands of nails shrieking down chalkboards echoed in her ears again, sending a rush of tears pricking her eyes. She clapped her hands to her ears and sent a mental plea to the angry spirit. “Please. I’ll do what you want. Tell me what you want me to give and who I should give it to—”
The ghost screamed. Jules lifted her head in time to see the room erupt into flowing crimson. Red saturated the room like someone had splashed buckets of blood on everything.
The room began to spin. Then the vision started again. The Buick, the desperate search for a way out of the trunk, the smell of blood in the confined space . . . and Jules was there. Reliving the ghost’s murder.
Helpless to do more than ride the vision, Jules lay still. Beneath her body, the trunk’s carpeting scratched against her skin.
“I’m not in the trunk,” she whispered to herself in a desperate attempt to hang on to her sanity. “I’m home.”
But as the vision continued, she disconnected from herself and became the victim.
My name is Aimee-Lynn.
The awareness of being someone other than Juliana Scott was enough to pause the vision, like a DVD. Had the ghost spoken or just remembered suddenly? Either way, Jules heard her.
“Do you remember your killer?” Jules winged the question mentally.
Aimee-Lynn didn’t answer. Instead, the nightmare started playing again, louder and in a high-def that techno geeks would have killed to produce.
Cold, leather-encased hands squeezed her naked throat. She gasped and wheezed, fighting for breath. As the life slipped from her body, the vision faded. Once again, Jules was in her apartment, alone. Blackness descended, and just before she succumbed to the peace, Aimee-Lynn’s voice floated gently through her mind.
“Give it to him and finish what I started.”
• • •
THE MORNING HAD been a royal pain in the ass. Mondays always sucked at the station. Today transcended from merely sucking into shitsville.
“Christ!” Seth glared at the glossy 8x10 photo, then shoved it into the McGivern’s file and dropped it onto his desk. He pulled out his chair and sank into it.
He’d suspected the Dumpster victim had been his tipster, Aimee-Lynn. He’d been right. Worse, he hadn’t spent twenty minutes with Iris Masters before he learned it had been her red diamond ring stolen from the Holcomb robbery. Why the hell would Aimee-Lynn steal her mother’s diamond only to contact him with information about it? It didn’t make sense.
The moment she’d identified Aimee-Lynn’s body, her tough-as-nails façade shattered. Captain Peterson had arrived and personally driven the woman home. A sure sign that Iris’s threat to call the mayor hadn’t been a hollow one.
Now, Seth was back to no suspects and a dead tipster.
Damn it! He was running in circles. Scrubbing a weary hand down his face, Seth yawned. He needed a break in the case that actually might help him. He needed sleep. He needed . . . Jules.
Where had that thought come from?
Probably from his lack of sleep and the fact that he could still taste her on his lips. Whenever he’d closed his eyes last night, he’d pictured her naked beneath him. Several times between midnight and six this morning, he’d debated going back to her apartment and finishing what they’d started.
He couldn’t explain why they’d stopped. Well, yes, he could. The window. He was almost certain it had been closed when he arrived. Almost, but not entirely. After all, he couldn’t exactly see the window past the boxes in the living room. At least, not until the curtain started to blow in the wind.
Tonight, before they went to dinner, Seth would make sure all of the windows in Jules’s apartment were closed and locked. For safety’s sake, he’d draw all the curtains too. Any thief glancing in her living room window might see the boxes as a chance for a smash and grab.
And if Jules didn’t like it, he might just have to convince her to sleep at his place.
The thought of Jules in his bed brought a smile to his lips.
“Morning,” Jones said, dropping his jacket on the back of his chair and sitting down. The man appeared well rested, leaning back casually in his chair. “Anything new on the case?”
Seth grimaced. “Unfortunately. But it requires coffee before I start talking about it.”
“None left.” Jones shook his head and hiked a thumb over his shoulder toward Reynolds and O’Dell. “They finished off the last of the pot just before I got to it. I’ve started brewing another.”
Seth glared at his two ex-partners who appeared engrossed in an oh-so-mature game of punch tag. “Damn, I could really use a caffeine IV.” Since none was available, he focused on their case. Handing the file to Jones, he described his morning. “So we’re back to square one.”
“Holy shit!” Jones lifted the photo from the file, then dropped it again. He spun to his computer and started typing. A minute later, he sat back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his face. “Want some good news?”
Without waiting for a reply, Jones rotated his monitor on its base so Seth could see it. The heading on the website read “Recently Engaged.” The center of the screen displayed a man and a woman, smiling and wrapped in each other’s arms. It was Aimee-Lynn and . . .
“Mason Hart!” Seth bounced his gaze from the screen to Jones and back again. “Sonofabitch! Her mother didn’t mention him.”
“Probably because they broke up two days after the Holcomb robbery.” Jones scrolled the screen down to an addendum announcing the wedding had been canceled.
“Aimee-Lynn’s mother said she’d been withdrawn for the last seven weeks, but that last week it had all changed. What happened?”
Jones shrugged. “Good question. But I’ve got a better one. Why would someone knowingly keep her mother’s stolen diamond ring, only to call the police with a tip about it?”
“And where is it now?” Seth asked with a frown.
Jones scrolled the screen back down until the smiling couple was centered on it. “Where do we go from here?”
“To interview Hart. Let’s see if he can shed some light on what happened to his relationship with his fiancée.” Seth frowned and gestured to the monitor. “How’d you find this?”
“She was in the society section of the paper two months ago,” Jones returned the monitor to its normal position. “I remembered seeing it.”
“You read the society column, do you?” O’Dell interrupted.
Reynolds cackled like a hyena. Seth glared at both intruders as they perched their annoying asses on the corners of Seth and Jones’s desks. O’Dell fingered the McGivern file while Reynolds picked up the photo.
“Laugh it up, boys, but less than three hours ago, this girl’s mother filed a missing persons report.” Seth leaned across his desk and plucked the picture out of Reynolds’s hands. “We now have the name of our murder victim from the Dumpster.”
“You sure?” O’Dell frowned as he looked at the photo. “She seems too pretty to have had a tramp stamp. I thought the vic had one of those.”
“I’m positive.” Seth frowned at the conversation’s odd segue.
“Pretty doesn’t make you smart,” Reynolds retorted. “I mean, come on, you’d have to be a complete jackass to intentionally mutilate your body to begin with.”
“Or young and stupid,” O’Dell agreed, then cut his gaze to Jones.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jones asked, his normally even tone sharp with indignation.
“Back off, assholes.” Seth glared at his former partners.
O’Dell and Reynolds shared a s
urprised glance, then laughed.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist, girls,” O’Dell said, pushing off the desk. He nodded to his partner and Reynolds stood up too. “So aside from learning your victim’s name, how is your case coming?”
“Fine.” Seth ground his teeth. He knew where this was going. The clock was ticking, and with each passing day his former partners acted more like rabid animals who smelled fresh meat. They wanted his case. Well, he’d be damned before he let them have it. “But we need to get back to work.”
“You do that.” O’Dell shrugged and started toward the kitchen with Reynolds beside him.
“Assholes,” Jones muttered under his breath.
Surprised by his partner’s uncharacteristic remark, Seth glanced at Jones. “Ignore them.”
Jones’s cheeks were mottled red and he rubbed at his left biceps. “That’s such crap. I know PhD’s with tattoos. Just because you have one doesn’t make you stupid.”
The kid seemed to take Reynolds and O’Dell’s comments personally. Again, out of character for the young detective. “Kid, let it go. They’re dicks.”
Jones glared at him.
“Detective Jones.” Seth waited until his partner stopped glaring. “You’re right. I happen to know a bright, beautiful woman with a tattoo of three intricately designed roses. She didn’t do it out of stupidity or youthful foolishness. She did it to honor her sisters. She even had their names put in each one.” Seth stretched his arms wide, cracking his back. “Don’t let the idiot twins rile you.”
An inscrutable expression crossed Jones’s face.
“You all right, kid?”
“Y-yeah.” Jones blinked twice. “Thanks.”
O’Dell and Reynolds strode out of the kitchen and past Seth’s desk at that moment, heading toward the captain’s office.
Seth pushed to his feet. “Time to report in.”
“Don’t you think we should interview Hart as soon as possible?” Jones asked, rising to his feet.
“Yes, but right now, we don’t even know where to find him.” Seth tugged on his jacket.
