“Digital,” he confirmed through chews of salad.
“Did our perspective client give you this or did you find it on your own?”
“After the first call I got from Harper, I started to look into the island myself and found the image on some kid’s ‘my space’ page. I printed out the picture as well as talked to the kid who took it. He said he’d send me a disc with the image on it, but that was two weeks ago and I have yet to get it.”
Jorden understood and gave the photo another glance. “Is this the only evidence you have to try to convince the others that this is the right location for us?”
“That and volumes of personal experiences from everyone from thrill-seeking college kids like the one who took the picture to archaeologists working on various parts of the island,” he said as the waitress put their entrees down in front of them and took their salad plates before Jorden was even half finished; which irritated the hell out of her. “I know that it isn’t much to go on, but the people who own the island came to us because of our honesty and I think that our reputation is something we should build on and take advantage of when we can.”
Jorden looked up into his dark eyes. “I agree, and I have to admit that this place was on my short list of locations.”
“So why do I sense a ‘but’ coming on.”
Jorden did want to investigate the island but now she felt more trepidation than excitement. “But I’m not sure that we should do it if we’re being asked by a private group of investors looking for a clean bill of health. That might do more to harm than good to our reputation.”
“Not if we stick to our own rules,” Matt said firmly. “If we find something…great, if not…then so be it.”
In all honesty, Jorden didn’t need to be convinced, after all it was exactly what she wanted, but she did need to know that Matt wanted this investigation. By all that she’d heard over dinner, he did.
“All right,” she said finally. “When are you going to talk to the others?”
“We are going to talk to them tomorrow,” he corrected. “I’ve already put in the calls. We’ll be meeting at the office at eight.”
She couldn’t stop the spontaneous spurt of laughter that escaped her lips.
“What?” he questioned with eyes that were dark with worry, which added to her amusement.
“My first day of vacation and I’m still going to have to get up before six in the morning.”
“You only live ten minutes from the office, and that’s when you’re walking. Why so early?” he questioned.
Her morning run was the main reason; she’d have a hard time getting started with her day otherwise. “It’s not important,” she said then started to eat her dinner, which by now was getting cold. It wasn’t until their desert came that their conversation continued. “So if the others agree to this hunt, how long are we planning on being there?”
“There’s an old caretaker’s cottage that has running water and working electricity that should accommodate us fine.”
She didn’t like that he didn’t answer her question and the only time he ever avoided her inquiries was when he didn’t want to answer them. “I didn’t ask where we would be staying, I asked how long.”
Matt took a bite of apple pie and swallowed before he looked up into her eyes. “Two weeks.”
Jorden didn’t even try to hide her shock. “Excuse me?”
Matt finished off his desert before speaking again. “It’s the only way to do a thorough investigation,” he explained. “The layout of the buildings takes up a lot of real estate, and you know as well as I do that ghosts, if they are there, don’t come out on cue or because we ask them to. The people who bought the island want a definite answer and a one or two night investigation won’t cut it.”
“You don’t have to convince me, I actually agree,” she said to his obvious surprise. “It’s the others you’re going to have to convince. They’re the ones who actually have jobs they need to go to over the summer.”
Matt walked Jorden to her door, though she was reluctant to even allow him to drive her. He insisted that she save her money on a cab and let him drive. He didn’t know why she was so adamant about him not taking her home, though when he walked her up to the front door of her small two bedroom house he started to feel uneasy himself. It was a strange sensation, and one that he’d battled for years. They were as close to best friends as any two people could be, so why they were having such a difficult time now was hard to explain.
“So I guess I’ll see you at eight,” she said while attempting rather unsuccessfully to hide the displeasure in her voice.
“I can call the others and try to move the meeting to ten, but-”
She held a steady, lightly tanned hand up and halted his words. “Eight will be fine,” she affirmed, this time with more conviction in her tone.
Silence fell over them and for a moment all he could do was stare into her deep, green eyes. Her long, dark hair was braided back and the silky, brown dress she wore clung to her body in the soft breeze that blew in from the southwest. A slight smile pressed her lips upwards just a bit and the full moon above gave her skin the appearance of silk. It was at that moment, in all the years they’d worked together and did what most friends did like going to lunch, catching a baseball or hockey game, or just heading out for a movie or dinner that he saw her in a sensual light and it scared the hell out of him.
A sudden gust of wind blew up against them and pushed him into her and he quickly stepped back as if he was stepping away from a live wire.
“Damned Santa Ana’s,” Matt cursed.
“High winds are in the forecast for the next three days,” Jorden said as though she hadn’t even felt him run into her.
There was an awkward moment between them. “I should be headed home,” Matt finally said, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
She nodded.
Matt stood and watched her without taking a step.
“What?” she asked.
He rolled his eyes. “As a gentleman, I can’t just walk off without seeing that you get inside your house safely,” he said in a stern tone, though that was far from what was truly going through his mind.
It was her turn to roll her eyes, but instead of staring like a moron the way he had, she shook her head and turned to enter her house. Before entering, however, she gave him a final glance over her shoulder and a smile. Again Matt’s heart jumped and he couldn’t weigh the amount of relief he felt when she closed the door and locked it behind her.
Another gust of wind slammed into Matt and hit him like a slap in the face, pulling him from his adolescent trance, and like an adolescent, he shoved his hands in his pockets and sulked back to his car. He wasn’t sure why he had a feeling of frustration, but it sat with him all the way back to his small, one bedroom duplex and stayed with him as he settled in for the night.
Running the track at the high school always made Jorden feel at home, then of course, she’d been running all her life and this wasn’t any different.
“Pump your arms Eric,” she said to the sixteen year old boy running next to her.
Eric did as she instructed on this, and every other morning. He was a fast runner who should have tried out for track, but couldn’t because of restrictions put on him by his parents. He had to be home after school to watch his younger brother and sister, though she had the feeling that there was more to it than that, and she’d said so to the principal as well as several anonymous calls to social services, and all that had come from her warnings was an investigation into herself.
“I wish that I could do this every morning,” Eric said as he pushed ahead slightly.
Being the competitive person she was, she wasn’t about to let him get too far ahead, especially since their last lap was always a sprint to the finish.
“We already do this every morning,” Jorden said, keeping her words to a minimum.
Eric stopped and she turned to look at him. Horror struck her when she saw his face
covered in blood and his eyes hollowed out. In a whispered, raspy voice he screamed at her, “Don’t goooo-”
Jorden sat bolt upright in her bed while beads of sweat lightly streamed down beneath her silk camisole to the waistband of her low cut briefs. She panted and reached for the alarm clock that was screaming at her and slapped the snooze button.
For a moment all Jorden could do was sit and gasp for any breath she could take in and hope that she would eventually relax. When she finally found a steady breathing rhythm, all she could do was cry.
It wasn’t unusual, or even the first time, that she’d had that particular nightmare, but this was the first time she’d seen the boy dead. Injured and asking for help that she couldn’t give was the norm, but he was never dead. Not even when he appeared to her to say goodbye.
After another minute of wiping away tears and calming herself down, she finally got out of bed and reached for her water bottle. Several drinks later, she was ready to get the day started, yet she still couldn’t get Eric’s dead face out of her head.
Suddenly, the alarm went off again, forcing her to jump about a foot in the air. She wanted nothing more than to rip the blasted machinery from the wall and toss it through the window, but a cooler head prevailed and she simply turned it off.
After taking her morning run, which took her three miles round trip, she showered and grabbed a cab to Matt’s office. By the time she got there, everyone else had arrived, including a well-dressed, thirty-something man with a head of thick, dark hair and eyes as deep and blue as the ocean. A finely tailored silk suit just shy of charcoal gray dressed him from shoulders to toes and he wore a deep blue shirt that was the same shade as his eyes. Beneath the suit he was strong and stood tall, just as tall as Matt but with a confidence that came from a lifetime of getting what he wanted. She stared at him for a moment before Matt stepped in between them.
“Now that we’re all here we can get this meeting started.”
Instinctively, after hearing the irritation in Matt’s voice, she looked down at her watch, thinking that she was late, yet it was five minutes to eight. When she took a seat in front of Isis’s desk, she looked up at Matt, who clearly avoided eye contact with her. The action had her scratching her head and coupled with the thoughts of her nightmare, she barely heard Matt tell the others what he’d told her the night before.
“This is Jonas Harper,” Matt introduced with authority, making certain that he had everyone’s attention, namely hers. “And he’s here to answer any questions you might have.”
“Are you certain that we have to investigate for a full two weeks?” Nigel asked. Along with Jorden, they took on most of the research for their hunts. As a journalist, though only for a small, local paper, he was rather adept at research and rare were the times when he and Jorden missed even the smallest detail. He was from Birmingham, England, was tall, thin and gangly with brilliant, blue eyes. “Some of us have day jobs that require our presence.”
“I’m afraid only a thorough investigation will do, and my understanding is that one or two nights won’t be enough,” Jonas said and glanced in Matt’s direction. “My partners and I are willing to compensate for any-”
“That won’t be necessary,” Matt immediately interrupted. “In order for us to give the appearance of propriety and offer an unbiased report, we can’t take any compensation from you or your partners. In cases such as yours it is vital.”
Jonas nodded. “I understand, and I will abide by whatever stipulations you put forth because your team is the one I want on this.”
“And why’s that?” Jorden questioned.
The man looked at her, his eyes full of fire and a wide smile stretched over his face. Jorden didn’t like his forced expression of cordiality or the way he looked at her, but she held her ground. “I’ve been doing research on various ghost hunting agencies and several actually came up. I chose yours because of your reputation for conservativeness and discretion. You’re also not out to make a name for yourselves as near as I can tell and I don’t want anyone going over to the island who isn’t there to get the truth and only the truth.”
“And if we find something that you don’t want found?” Syd questioned, just the slightest hint of a French accent pinching his words.
“Then you find something,” Jonas said flatly. “As I said, the truth is what we want, not a cover story.”
Jorden heard the words and even heard the sincerity in them, but his eyes told her otherwise and she couldn’t shake her misgivings.
“Are there any other questions?” Jonas asked.
“When does this investigation have to be done?” Sapphire Li asked. Saph was one of two college students in the group and with the summer break, she and Ana would both be allowed to go on the trip if they chose to do so.
“Well obviously the sooner the better, though I understand that not all of you may have passports and you need to make arrangements with your places of employment. The only time frame that I’m going to put on you is that it be completed by the end of the summer. If that isn’t possible I will have to go with one of the other agencies.”
Jonas’s words remained cordial throughout just as his eyes remained cold and deceptive, and Jorden had to wonder if she was the only one who didn’t trust him.
When no one else raised a hand or spoke a word, Jonas rose from the corner of Matt’s desk. “Then I will leave this matter in your hands,” he said then headed for the door. “I’ll need to know what you decide by the end of the day.”
“Why so soon?” Tony Thomason asked in a deep, booming voice. Aside from being one of Jorden’s colleagues at the school, Tony was also the technical specialist for the team and while his booming voice and massive frame was intimidating he was a gentle giant at heart.
“Because I understand the preparation that is involved with a matter such as this and I would like to give whichever agency is involved time to do it properly,” he said candidly. “Anything else?”
There were no further questions and Matt stood. “I think that we have all the information we need to make our decision. I’ll be in contact with you by tomorrow morning.”
Jonas took one last look around, his eyes settling on Jorden for a brief moment before he made his exit.
Once the door closed, and Jonas’s footfalls disappeared down the corridor, Matt spoke up. “So…what do all of you think?”
“I think that it’s an opportunity that we shouldn’t pass up,” Ana, the other college student said, though it wasn’t a complete surprise that she was the first to speak up. “It’s something that all of us have suggested or talked about at one time or another. And the perfect opportunity just fell into our laps.”
“And we all know that nothing holds spiritual energy like incredibly old locations steeped in history,” Nigel added. “I read an article on Lorenzo once and if its past is any indication of what might be there now, then I think that we finally have the opportunity to get hard evidence of a true ghost.”
Matt looked around, still avoiding eye contact with Jorden, and settling his gaze, instead, on Jesse Kim, another investigator and “tech guy”, as Saph called him. “You’ve been awfully quiet this morning, and you’re probably the one who’ll have the most difficulties in arranging for two or so weeks off for this investigation,” Matt pointed out. “What do you think?”
Jesse’s head was slightly hung, hiding his almond shaped, dark eyes. When he finally looked up, he was quiet and looked at the others before he finally shrugged. “I want to do an overseas investigation as much as all of you. If all of you can work out a way to go, I’ll make sure that I make the time as well,” he said then smiled. “Because there’s no way in hell that I’m going to miss this!”
Everyone in the office smiled, though Jorden knew that she didn’t. She didn’t know if it was the uneasy feeling that Jonas gave her or the events that shook her from her bed earlier that morning, though it was likely a combination of the two. Whatever the reason, she didn’t speak up w
hen the others agreed to go and she didn’t change her vote after telling Matt the night before that she was all for it.
It seemed that she would finally get her wish of investigating an allegedly haunted location overseas, and she should be excited about it. In fact, just a week ago she would have been and nothing had changed since then. What bothered her now was why she was dreading the trip and was on the verge of telling Matt that they were wrong and should stay exactly where they were.
CHAPTER THREE
One month later…
Isis looked out the window and watched as a massive 777 rolled up to the terminal, and her heart raced with anticipation. Of course she was well traveled over both North and South America, but that was all by car or bus and none of it ever required her to get aboard a massive jet and fly over the ocean. And she was damned nervous. It wasn’t that she felt anything in her bones that damned them to an ugly fate of crashing into the ocean or blowing up between here and Italy, but she’d watched far too many television shows that documented doomed aircraft to be comfortable. The fact that she couldn’t feel anything didn’t help. It also didn’t help that they were already more than an hour delayed and pulled off the first plane that was supposed to take them on their way when something was found to be amiss with the electrical system. In the shows she’d watched there was always some kind of ironical twist…
…The plane the passengers were taken from turned out to be fine. The alarm was set off when a bird shit on the wing and doomed the five hundred passengers to a different plane and to a fiery death…
…or something like that happened. When she looked out at their new plane, she couldn’t muster any confidence that their trip would be a safe one.
To combat her nerves Isis turned away from the plane, and her thoughts, and instead turned her attentions to the terminal. The rest of the SCP team was sitting together for the most part – both Ana and Saph sat next to Isis’s usual partner in crime, Nigel, and the three of them were in the chairs nearest the Jetway, which started to stretch out towards the massive plane. Across from them were Tony, Jesse and Syd, who were all talking about Italy and discussing where they would place cameras and what areas they felt needed to be closely scrutinized.
The Haunting of Isola Forte di Lorenzo Page 3
