But the worst hadn’t even begun.
Leaning against the strong, living man behind him, Derek felt able to continue looking.
“Dad?” he whispered, staring toward his father, who was a few feet inside the room, to the left of the door. His hands were behind his back, his arms twisted in a weird way, and his shoulder bones bulged. His mouth was open in a scream, but there was no sound. His body straining, he struggled against something invisible that held him in place. But still he tried, leaning toward the middle of the room. Toward the couch…where his mother was lying.
He couldn’t see anyone else, but he saw her. She was pressed into the sofa, lying on her back, gasping soundlessly, like a heavy weight was on top of her chest. Her expression was so scared, and her mouth was open in a scream like Dad’s as she looked up at something that wasn’t there. At least not to Derek’s eyes.
She wriggled and finally got a hand free. It lashed up, her fingers curled, her long nails extended like claws. They thrust into nothing he could see and jerked down, and then her hand was yanked away, her arm twisted painfully and shoved over her head. Even from here, he saw her nails were suddenly wet with a dark fluid.
A second later, a bunch of that same dark liquid came from her throat.
Derek put a fist against his lips to stop a scream, and to stop the puke churning up from his stomach. “Mommy,” he whispered, feeling tears flood his face.
He saw the shadow of a long knife, an eerie gleam on the blade. Nobody was holding it. He hadn’t even seen it until it had made its first deadly cut, appearing out of thin air.
Dad went crazy, jerking, jumping, and twisting. Finally, he managed to pull away from whatever had been holding him back. He raced over to the couch, hitting something, punching at nothing, and then dropped to his knees and put his hand over Mom’s wound. Black blood surged through his fingers, slower now. His body shook and he threw his head back, his mouth open in a silent scream that Derek couldn’t hear but felt all the way down to his bones.
It wasn’t over.
His father flew backward, as if he’d been yanked by strong hands. His feet skidded as he was dragged across the room, one of his shoes coming off at the base of the couch. He was fighting, not giving up. Struggling like a man possessed.
It didn’t work. His arms were clenched at his sides. Dad could only twist, trying to see his wife, who was so still, blood no longer surging, just dripping down to pool on the cushion beneath her. Where it touched the cushion, the blood was red. It also looked dry, like a stain sitting there for hours. Where it dripped from her ghostly body, it was black.
A rope appeared from midair, falling onto Dad’s head as if it had been hidden behind someone’s back. Although his father still tried to fight, he was held in a powerful grip.
The rope—pale grey—was wrapped around his father’s neck, growing tighter as the noose closed in a hard circle below his chin. But through the fuzzy grey ghost rope, Derek could still see the real one hanging from the iron light fixture in the middle of the room. It was blue.
A chair slid from behind the desk, moved by invisible hands, and someone stepped on it; he could see the real footprints left by bloody shoes. Then Dad was hoisted up, his fingers grasping at the rope, his body jerking. He couldn’t break free.
The chair was kicked away, landing on its back, the misty image melting into the real brown one, still in position, marked as evidence. Dad’s toes left the floor, going up inch by inch, until he dangled a foot above the carpet.
His eyes bulged. His neck strained. He shuddered and twisted. He was still trying to turn to look at Mom, lying dead on the couch, but kept facing the doorway where Derek stood. His father’s milky, almost transparent eyes looked right at Derek, or so it seemed.
Elsie. Derek!
Derek didn’t hear a voice, didn’t experience the words in his brain. He could just see Dad’s lips forming them, trying to scream them through his airless mouth. He also saw the pain—physical and emotional—followed by acceptance that washed over his father’s face as he realized he, like Mom, was going to die.
And then Dave Monahan was jerked down, yanked from below. His head bent at a funny angle as his neck snapped. His mouth stopped moving.
A twitch. A thrust. Within seconds, he hung motionless. Every part of him that had loved to eat pretzels and watch the Diamondbacks games on TV, the soft voice that was so effective in court because he was so likable, the crooked smile, the hint of gray in his hair…they were all gone.
It was awful. Worse than anything he’d ever seen or even imagined. But Derek didn’t scream. Didn’t sob. Silent tears continued to run from his eyes, and he remained close to Uncle Abe, glad the man was there to support him as he stared at the strange figures of his dead parents.
He didn’t believe in spirits, and these didn’t seem like actual ghosts. If any real remnants of his parents were here, in this room, they sure wouldn’t be acting out the final, awful minutes of their lives, especially not in front of him. They would be trying to comfort him, to say goodbye. So no. These weren’t their ghosts. They were something else.
Suddenly, they flashed out of sight, disappearing in a blink. He stiffened, half-glad the horrible vision was gone, but not ready to let them go completely. “Dad! Mom!”
Abe tried to turn him around. “Come on, son, you’ve seen enough.”
Before he could pull Derek away, the figures reappeared. They were right where they’d been when he first arrived at the room. Mom on the couch fighting and scratching, pushing up against someone who was determined to keep her down. Dad a few feet away, struggling while he was held back. It was starting all over again. Like a movie repeating.
What is happening to me?
“That’s enough. Let’s go.”
“Wait. Just wait,” he whispered.
“Derek…”
“No, Uncle Abe.” He looked up at the man. “Trust me. It’s starting again. I have to watch.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t explain. But please, just a couple more minutes.”
His dad’s old friend stared intently into his face, not looking skeptical or bossy the way grown-ups usually did. “Derek, are you…seeing something?”
It was as if he knew, as if this wasn’t totally unexpected. When he nodded, and heard the other man’s resigned sigh, he knew it hadn’t been. Uncle Abe had some idea of what was going on. He wanted to know why. But not right now.
“Go ahead,” the man murmured. “I’m right here for you, kid.”
Derek turned back toward the ugly tableau. It was horrible, painful to watch again, every second of it exactly like before. Even knowing how it would end, he still silently cheered for his dad as he struggled, and for his mom when she reached up to scratch an invisible face. He winced when the knife touched her throat and gasped as the blood gushed.
He was calm. Tearful, but not sobbing. Grieving, but no longer utterly terrified.
And then it was done.
He blinked. Waited. They disappeared. One shaky breath later, everything started again.
He sighed, at last understanding. He knew why he had to watch this awful thing over and over. Derek was the only witness to their murder. Their twelve-year-old son would be the one to make sure the world knew Dave Monahan had not killed his wife, and then himself. They had died fighting, loving each other. That much he knew. That much he could hold onto.
“They were murdered,” he said, the words coming out of a clenched jaw as he tried to remain calm. He had to make sure Uncle Abe believed him. “There were at least two other people here. Actually, probably three. I think it would have taken two of them to hold Dad back and make him watch while they killed Mom first, with a knife.”
There was the briefest pause, and then he heard a whisper.
“Eternal rest grant unto them, oh Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon them.”
Derek had done a couple of years in Catholic school. He mentally finished the prayer w
ith his father’s best friend.
God, he hoped all that religious stuff was true. How he hoped his mom and dad really were at peace and he’d see them again someday. The real them, not these awful imprints their deaths had left in their family home.
Abe released his shoulders and turned him around to face him. Derek looked up at the man’s sad expression. It wasn’t suspicious or doubting. He believed. “Tell me.”
Derek pointed to his side, at the rope. “Dad was hung up right there. Mom was on her back, on the couch.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Abe mumbled.
“He tried to save her.” He sniffed. “Put his hand over the cut in her throat; then they dragged him away. His shoe came off.” He recited what had happened not because he wanted to relive it, but to make sure Abe believed him. He’d need his dad’s best friend—also a prosecutor—to help convince the cops. “They think it was my dad because of that note on the computer screen, right?”
“And because there were no signs of forced entry, and nothing was taken.”
Derek nodded. “Maybe not. But there were other people here.”
“Did you see them?” Abe asked. “Can you tell us who did this?”
“No. Not them. Just my parents.”
“Jesus…you saw…everything?” Abe asked, staring down at him with something like wonder, something like pity.
Derek hoped the man wasn’t afraid of him, or didn’t think he was some kind of freak. Right now, it didn’t really matter, though.
“My mom scratched one guy in the face. They need to look under her fingernails.” He turned again, staring at the chair, lying angled so he could see the seat. He focused on that, not on his dad being dragged toward the inevitable meeting with the rope. There was that smeary footprint on the pale cushion. “The footprints on the chair aren’t from my Dad’s shoes. They can check—one of the bad guys stood there to pull him up.”
Abe squatted down, staring at him. “Are you sure about this”
He nodded. “I’m positive, Uncle Abe.” Swallowing—gulping as sobs threatened to suffocate him—he turned his back to the study, knowing he’d seen enough and never wanted to see that awful scene again. “My Dad’s not a killer. I need you to help me prove it.”
CHAPTER 2
Present Day
Darkness. Mist. Both cold and hot. Strange lights, and no sounds except the faintest hoo-hoo of a train whistle.
He was floating. He was motionless. He swam. He sank. He begged. He was mute.
He was nowhere. And everywhere. Alone. And in a sea of people, all with open mouths jabbering in silence.
Time had no meaning; it was a concept he could barely grasp. When up was down, and down was up, days switched with decades and years with minutes. He had been here forever…or wasn’t here at all.
Where here was, he did not know.
How he would get out—or if it was even possible—he did not know either.
He knew only one thing: He couldn’t stop screaming.
“Forget it, Julia. I’m not doing it.”
Julia Harrington, the owner of Extrasensory Agents, didn’t seem fazed by Derek’s refusal. Sitting at the head of the conference table, around which sat the four other agents who worked for her—including him—she merely sat back in her chair, crossed her arms in front of her, half-smiled, and raised one eyebrow.
Derek knew that intransigent look and posture. What Julia couldn’t get with a smile and a wisecrack, she would try to with sheer guts and determination. Well, she wasn’t going to get her way this time. No way was he taking the assignment she wanted to give him. “I mean it.”
“You have to.”
“No, I don’t,” he snapped. “I’ve never said no to a job before, but I am saying no to this.”
Julia’s smile tightened. Her jaw, always a little stubborn, jutted. “Do you want to tell that poor woman we’re not going to help her find out what really happened to her brother?”
He blew out a hard breath between his teeth, muttering, “Send somebody else.”
“No-one else can help in this case.”
He glanced across the table at Olivia, a pretty blonde. She offered him a commiserating look. “You know I would. I’d love to be able to go undercover and work one last big, scary case before I go on maternity leave this summer. But I wouldn’t be much use in this one.”
True. Aside from the fact that none of them wanted fragile Olivia working in the field, where she might be in danger during the seventh month of her pregnancy, there was nothing she could do anyway. According to what Julia had told them about this case, there was no body. Olivia’s strange ability only worked if there were remains for her to touch, in which case she could share the last few minutes of that person’s life.
Of course, she wasn’t using that ability anymore, anyway, not since her new husband had urged her to quit. Every time she had done it, seeing and hearing what the deceased had, she’d also felt each agonizing second of it, a piece of her soul being bitten away each time. If he’d been Gabe Cooper, he’d have demanded she stop. Now that she was pregnant—a development that had surprised them all, including, it seemed, Olivia—it was even more impossible for her to use her dark gift. For all she knew, the baby could be hurt as well.
But Olivia’s weird ability wasn’t her only skill. She had another ace up her sleeve. She, like Julia, had a connection to someone in the afterlife. The ghost of a former local detective, Cooper’s own late partner, was a big help on some cases.
She read his mind. “There’s not much Ty and I could do without having some idea what happened to the boy.” She glanced at Julia. “If there were, Morgan could probably….”
Julia frowned, her lips pursing.
“Something wrong with Mr. Perfect?” Derek asked, his annoyance fading. Once, when he’d been sleeping with her, it had infuriated him that Julia had shut herself off from all other men in the world because she was still in love with a dead guy—Morgan Raines. Now that they’d agreed they could only ever be friends, he simply pitied her. “Did he bail on you to climb that stairway to heaven?” Or ride the highway to hell, which was where Derek thought he deserved to go for stringing-along a beautiful, vibrant, living woman for all these years.
“Don’t change the subject,” Julia said. “You have to do this. Doctor Lincoln is right—something funky is going on at that school.” She pulled out a case file, thin, clean and unmarked, ready to be filled with notes and clues. “I’ve printed out info on other missing boys.”
“How many?” asked Aidan McConnell, who had solved their last missing teens’ case. He had a soft spot for kids, though he and his girlfriend Lexie had none of their own.
“Too many,” Julia replied, her voice falling. “Derek, you’re the only one who can go undercover at the Fenton Academy to try to get to the bottom of this.”
“Aidan’s perfect for it,” Derek snapped. “He looks like a professor.”
“My undercover days are over. With the recent Remington trial, and the release of my book on the Granville case, the media has been glued to me. I don’t think a rigid academy for wealthy, troubled youth is going to hire somebody in the spotlight for being a psychic.”
Shit. That was true.
Not giving up, Derek looked over at Mick, the last member of the team. The guy grinned, his good humor really annoying this morning. “Sorry, dude. Ten-day cruise starts Sunday.”
“You can reschedule it.”
“We’ve rescheduled twice already. If I try it again, Gypsy told me she’d yank off my gloves and shove a hundred pieces of chewed gum onto my hands.”
Julia butted in, “Besides, the designer leather gloves he always wears wouldn’t be easy to explain to a bunch of curious teens.”
“Hey, if you had to wear them all the time, you’d get the best gloves, too,” Tanner said.
Derek frowned, not liking to think about having the ability Mick did. Touching any random object and knowing the thoughts of all the people who’d touc
hed it before? It would be awful, especially given where this assignment would take them. He inwardly cringed for Tanner at the thought; he’d be in hell if those gloves ever came off at that school.
Needing to continue the constant shit he threw at the unflappable guy, however, he merely said, “Well have fun on your cruise.” He added a smirk. “Can’t imagine a lot of people have been on a ship before.”
Impossible to rile, Mick’s smile remained in place. “It’s the maiden voyage.”
“Didja buy the cruiseline?”
“No, but if I do, I’ll be sure to give you a discount.”
Julia interrupted their snark. “Enough. Derek, you understand now, it has to be you.”
“Jesus Christ,” he snapped, leaning back in his chair. “I didn’t even graduate from high school.” Gram and Aunt Beth should have sent him off to a military school, but they’d been way too kind to do it. “Why would I want to go stay at a boarding school for juvenile delinquents?”
“Well, you were a bit of a delinquent yourself, right?”
He remained silent.
“How about because you’re the only one who can.” She put her hands on the folder and pushed it across the table toward him.
“As what? I can’t pose as a teacher. I don’t know geometry from geography, who crusaded where, or what Ernest Hemingway wrote. Nor do I care.”
“You are so full of shit,” Julia replied with a challenging stare.
She didn’t add, I’ve been in your place, I’ve seen your overloaded bookshelves.
Yeah, okay. He had a thing for reading, especially the classics. Call it the GED kid’s guide to going to college. But she wasn’t going to say anything else about it. Nobody else on staff knew about their fling a few years back; neither of them would want to explain how she knew what books were on the shelf in his place. So he merely growled under his breath.
Julia glanced at the wall clock. It was shaped like a werewolf, kitschy and weird, like a lot of things at the Extrasensory Agents office. Including the agents.
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