by Sarah Wynde
Then she waited.
Before too much more time had passed, the sheriff entered the room. He dropped a manila folder on the table and took a seat across from her. She met his gaze evenly, assessing him. He was young, probably in his mid-thirties, with sandy brown hair and blue eyes. He looked vaguely familiar. She wondered if he was related to the old sheriff. Tassamara seemed like a place where law enforcement jobs would be handed down, generation to generation, and she’d really hated the old sheriff.
“Every year, second Saturday in December, my gramma has a tree-trimming party,” he told her. “Tinsel, eggnog, gingerbread cookies. Little kids running around all over the place, screaming and yelling. Big kids sulking ‘cause they’re not off with their friends. Grown-ups getting into stupid arguments about football and politics.”
Sylvie held back her smile. He made it sound unpleasant, but she could tell that he didn’t feel that way.
“I’d really like to get there before it ends. Not so much because I mind missing it, but if I’m a no-show, I’ll hear about it for the next five years.”
“Is my lawyer here?”
“Got a great lawyer waiting in the outside office for ya’. He’s been here since before we got here.”
Sylvie crossed her arms, urge to smile gone. They’d had this conversation before. “I’ll wait for my lawyer,” she told him.
He scratched his head. “He won’t be licensed in Florida, you know. He’s going to need local help.”
“I’ll let him tell me that.”
“All right. Well, maybe you’ll change your mind about that when I tell you what I’ve got.”
Sylvie stayed silent.
He opened the folder. “Let’s see. Two dead bodies, but you know that. Shell casings at the scene. I’m guessing that our ballistics guys are going to match them and the bullets inside our two dead vics to that pretty little Glock you had on you.”
With an effort, Sylvie refrained from tapping her foot. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know there was plenty of evidence. What was he trying to achieve?
“Fingerprints came back a match, so I know you were at the house. Of course, I knew that already because I’ve got eyewitnesses who put you at the scene.”
Sylvie didn’t say anything. The eyewitnesses might have been a surprise if Lucas hadn’t already told her that the house had been under surveillance.
“We’ve got the blood on your dress. We’re sending that off to the lab but since you’re not injured, we can say now that the blood’s not yours. It’ll be a match to one or both victims. And then there’s the gunshot residue on your hands.”
He leaned back in his chair, his face somber. “I’d say we’ve got an open-and-shut double homicide here. You sure you don’t want to tell me your side of the story? Once I send this off to the DA, there won’t be much I can do for you.”
He waited.
Sylvie tried not to glare, but she knew her disgust showed. Did he think she was an idiot? “I’ll wait for my lawyer, thanks.”
He grinned at her. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
The unexpected question startled her. She looked at him closely, puzzled, and then shook her head. Should she remember him?
“Eh.” He waved his hand, dismissing her forgetfulness. “You never saw anyone except Lucas, anyway.”
She frowned, but he continued without waiting for her recognition.
“Ready for what else I’ve got?” he asked her.
She didn’t answer, but her eyes narrowed.
“Eyewitnesses: one who was surveilling the house, but two who were in it. One of those is willing to testify that you were a dead woman walking. The other’s keeping quiet but he’s got an ugly record.”
They must have picked up Ari and Rafe. Sylvie didn’t comment.
“That’s not all, though. The DEA was happy about getting into that house, happier when they found the drugs and guns, and really, really happy when they found files. Lots of files. Computers, too.”
Sylvie shifted in her seat. Where was he going with this?
The sheriff continued cheerfully. “I hear, though, that the folks in Washington are even happier. They executed a search warrant on Chesney’s house and office about twenty minutes after they got the news, and are busy cleaning out AlecCorp as we speak.”
He glanced at his watch.
“Is that it?” Sylvie asked. She felt confused. She didn’t understand. Okay, so Chesney was a criminal. But that didn’t change anything. She could call Mateo’s death self-defense. He’d pulled a gun and he’d intended to kill her. But Chesney had been unarmed. She could have—should have—called the police. Instead, she’d shot him.
“Oh, not entirely.” His grin was lop-sided, and she could feel a faint hum of annoyance coming from him. “Five messages—already—from the Commonwealth Attorney’s office back in Virginia. Apparently someone warned them that they might lose a key witness in a serial killer case?”
It was a question, but Sylvie shrugged in response. She hadn’t even called her mom, much less the Virginia police.
“Then there’s the lawyer sitting in my office.” Colin drew a deep breath, his annoyance level jumping. “You’ve passed on him but your lawyer won’t be so stupid.”
Sylvie scowled. She didn’t like being called stupid. “How so?” she asked, her voice dangerous.
“William Piero. Criminal defense attorney and an expert in Florida’s self-defense laws. Your lawyer will probably recognize the name. It makes prosecutors wince. Anyway, he takes a lot of pro bono cases. It turns out he’s been on retainer for Max Latimer for over a decade.”
Sylvie blinked. A decade?
“Do you know much about Florida law?”
Sylvie shrugged one shoulder, feeling vaguely resentful and unsettled. This conversation wasn’t going the way it was supposed to. But of course she didn’t know anything about Florida law. She wasn’t a lawyer and she hadn’t lived here for twenty years.
“Put it this way.” The sheriff closed the folder, picked it up and tapped it against the table. She could feel that he was looking for the right words. “We’re a little more liberal than most states.”
“Liberal?” Sylvie protested, cocking her head to one side and letting her disbelief show. “Florida?”
“Well, only when it comes to murder.” The sheriff’s smile showed a flash of white, even teeth. “If you’d confessed, I might have something to hold you on.” He sounded regretful, but Sylvie could tell that he didn’t really feel sorry.
She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“Florida state law: a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.” The sheriff rattled off the law at top-speed.
Sylvie swallowed. She should point out that Chesney hadn’t been armed. But Jeremy’s voice echoed in her head: ‘Never, never, never tell the police anything without a lawyer present.’ She kept her mouth closed.
“Nice thing is—well, for you, anyway—Stand Your Ground isn’t a defense.”
Sylvie didn’t say anything but the sheriff grinned at her. “You’re not going to ask, are you? Lucas told me you wouldn’t say anything.” He stood, pushing the chair back.
“We do have to get your statement, so if you won’t talk without your lawyer, you’re going to have to wait for him to get here. But the Stand Your Ground laws provide immunity from prosecution. If this is what it looks like, and what your lawyers will undoubtedly argue it is, the DA can’t prosecute you.”
Sylvie didn’t let her mouth drop open, but she knew her eyes widened. She almost wanted to protest. Sure, she’d hoped a jury would be on her side, but she’d killed an unarmed man! Were they just going to let her go?
“Ready to talk?” he asked, sounding hopeful as he glanced at his watch again.
Wary and mistrustful, but with a spark of hope.
Maybe her worst fears wouldn’t come true.
Chapter Sixteen
His worst fear had come true.
This was hell, Dillon thought. It was the only thing that made sense.
He felt unmoored, cut loose from the ties of gravity and lost in a darkness punctuated by clouds of color and swirling light.
Had Rose heard him? Had she had enough time to get away? Akira had told him that turning into a vortex pulled other ghosts into the energy. They never came back. She thought they were destroyed. Had he destroyed Rose? The grief and fear grew until it was lightning running against his skin, fire surging around him.
He tried desperately to make sense of what he saw, to still the shifting whirls and streams, to find solid ground, but it was impossible. The energy tossed him about like ocean waves lifting driftwood.
A mottled gray cloud streaked with muddy red and sickly green flew toward him. Was this the vortex? Was he drawing it in somehow? Pulling it toward him? Frantic, Dillon tried desperately to scramble away from the diffuse shape but it drew closer and closer until it was oozing up, over, and around him, a slimy miasma.
What could it be? It was disgusting, slick yet grimy against him. And then he realized.
Chesney.
The cloud was Chesney. His spirit sizzled against Dillon, searing like a chemical, like the touch of ammonia. As the cloud reached his face, Dillon panicked. As a ghost, he hadn’t needed to breathe in a long time, but it felt as if the cloud was trying to suffocate him.
He tried to push it off, scraping at it with his hands. But it wasn’t solid. It flowed between his fingers and back toward him, clinging where it touched. It was trying to swallow him, he thought. To cover him up and drown him in its gray poison.
Revolted, Dillon lashed out at it. His energy crackled around him, red and flashing in the darkness. It bit into the cloud, sparks flaring where they touched, then disappearing as the ooze surrounded them. Was it absorbing his energy? Eating it?
Desperately, he fought harder, smashing against the cloud with all the power he could muster, forcing his energy higher and higher until it was lightning, smashing the air around him, filling the void with the rumbles of thunder.
He hated Chesney. Hated him, hated him, hated him.
For an endless, timeless space, his hatred of Chesney was all-consuming, the essence of his existence, the pure drive that kept him burning.
And then the cloud was breaking up, the ooze splitting into chunks and wisps of gray and green that drifted away on the energy sea. As the pieces became smaller they dazzled with light like sparklers on a summer evening and then fizzled out and were gone.
It had been over five years since Dillon had taken a shower, but he desperately wanted one now.
He was pretty sure that he’d just broken Chesney’s ghost into a million pieces. He thought he ought to feel guilty, but he didn’t have room for it: he was too consumed with hate and rage.
He stayed angry, floating in nothingness, oblivious to his surroundings, until a little whisper of thought broke into his fury.
It wasn’t Chesney’s fault.
He shoved the thought away, but it crept relentlessly back.
Chesney hadn’t been a nice person. But what had he done really? Ignored his daughter? Wanted revenge on his killer? Was that such evil?
Chesney hadn’t convinced Rachel to run away, putting her in danger from any creepy stranger who might accost her.
And he hadn’t shot himself. Dillon didn’t know why Sylvie killed Raymond Chesney, but it wasn’t the other way around: Chesney hadn’t murdered his mom.
Chesney hadn’t even plunged them into this void world. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have been deliberate. He couldn’t have known the risks of overloading on energy. But Dillon had known. Had known and had let it happen anyway. If Rose was gone, it wasn’t Chesney who had destroyed her.
As his anger started to fade, Dillon’s guilt and grief grew. What had he done? He’d screwed up. Again.
Reluctantly, he thought back to his last big screw-up. Not the time he asked Akira to visit his gran and got her killed: although that one was big, he didn’t really blame himself for it.
No, the time before that.
He’d been angry then, too. All his friends were headed to the midnight movies—for the third time that summer—and as always, he wasn’t allowed to go. His curfew was ten o’clock. Fifteen years old, on summer vacation, and his gran insisted he be home by ten. It just wasn’t fair, he thought, but the words were rote, the resentment long since gone.
He’d stolen the pills, snuck off to the car so no one would hear him if he got sick, and died. No psychic gift. No shortcut to adulthood. Just day after day of monotony as the world went on without him.
The choice he’d made meant living—well, existing—with the consequences ever since, both for him and for the people who loved him. He could never go back and change what he’d done.
But that’s what he’d been trying to do, wasn’t it? He’d wanted to erase time, to make his parents be who they’d been before him and before he died.
To make his father be who he was before Dillon died.
He thought back to that day by the car, when Andy got the police to pull Sylvie over. His dad had smiled at her. Really smiled, the way he used to smile. That was what Dillon had wanted: for that smile to come back and erase the grim look that Lucas usually wore.
Sylvie—she was cool. He liked her, and he wished he could have gotten to know her. But making his parents come to Tassamara hadn’t only been about her, and maybe it wasn’t even mostly about her. He’d wanted his dad to be happy; happy the way he had never been since Dillon’s death. He’d wanted his dad to laugh again and he’d thought Sylvie could make him do it.
In the darkness, he closed his eyes as the sadness overwhelmed him.
And then that little voice was back, pushing up from his subconscious.
Maybe his mom would go to jail for killing Chesney and maybe she wouldn’t. He’d bet she had a good reason for doing it. But whether she went to jail or not, if his dad lost Dillon again, this time to a vortex of ghostly energies, he was definitely not going to be happy.
Dillon couldn’t change the fact that he’d killed himself. That was over and done and nothing could make that better. And he couldn’t change what he’d done to Chesney’s spirit. But his gran had escaped from the void. Maybe he could, too.
If he’d destroyed Rose, though, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Did he really want to keep on existing if his actions had ripped her spirit apart? But he hadn’t felt her, not like he’d felt Chesney. Maybe she’d had time to run away.
A whisper of thought told him to stop worrying about Rose and concentrate.
He frowned. His subconscious seemed a little unreasonable: Rose was his best friend, he could worry about her if he wanted to.
This time the whisper was more of a growl. Concentrate, the voice ordered him. It was time to think of a way out of this mess.
Slowly he turned, trying to make sense of everything he saw. With his fear suppressed, the tossing felt more like floating and the chaos of swirling lights in the darkness separated into distinct glows. His gran had recognized the lights as people. Could he do the same?
Closest to him was a pillar of white. Seeing it made him feel better, safer, as if he wasn’t alone in the darkness. He drifted a little closer to it and basked in its warmth. He had no idea who it might be, but he liked it.
Other lights were sprinkled around him; yellows, greens, a pale blue, a deep royal blue. And in the distance, far off, a sparkling blue iridescence. It called to him like sunlight on a stormy day, like firelight on a dark night. Without thinking, he started pushing himself against the waves, trying to reach it. And then he froze, stopping himself and hurriedly retreating back to the white lig
ht.
That blue had to be Akira. He understood why his gran had wanted to grab her aura and hang on to it. It had a kind of solidity about it, as if it might be a life raft instead of a star. But tugging at Akira’s aura had killed her. He wasn’t going to do that again. No, he’d think of something else.
But what?
*****
Ty and Jeremy had brought Joshua. Sylvie felt tears spring to her eyes at the sight of the toddler leaning against Ty’s leg in the waiting room, babbling happily as his father tried to read him a book. She blinked them back furiously.
With Jeremy on one side and the lawyer sent by Max Latimer on the other, her interrogation—if it could even be called that—had been swift and painless. Rachel’s disappearance, the circumstances of how she’d been at a suspected drug trafficker’s house, her lack of knowledge of Chesney’s business—the only moments they’d glossed over were the actual shootings.
Had Chesney threatened her? Yes, she’d answered truthfully, he’d said that they needed to make her death look like an accident and that he would destroy her. Had she believed her life to be in danger? Yes. She didn’t clarify the timeline or the source and the police didn’t ask. And her lawyers refused to let her respond to some questions, so she told no lies. Her reasons for shooting Chesney and whether she’d considered alternatives stayed off the record.
The sheriff politely requested that she stay in Florida while the investigation continued, but with that he’d let them go.
Behind her, Jeremy and William chatted.
“How do you like diminished capacity from lack of sleep?”
“Not as good as post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“We’d need a documented history for that.”
“No, she was attacked by a serial killer last week. She’s definitely still in the window of trauma response.”
“Nice.”
Sylvie glanced over her shoulder at them. “You’re planning a defense. Am I going to need one?”
Jeremy shrugged, but William shook his head and said, sounding almost regretful, “Not a chance. You might get charged, but we’d assert immunity pre-trial based on Stand Your Grand, and we’ll get it.”
