Possession

by Linda Mooney

  A thumb rubbed over the nipple, making her jerk in response. Kiel lifted his face from where he had buried it against her neck.

  “Does that hurt?” His voice was hoarse. He had moved his hand away slightly.

  J managed a weak smile. Taking his hand, she deliberately placed it back on her breast, letting him know she didn’t want him to stop whatever delicious torture he had in mind.

  Letting out a deep sigh, Kiel dove back into the sweetness of her skin.

  His thumb continued to play with her nipple until she could feel her womb clench. A surging wetness moistened her innermost core, and she trembled beneath the power of his touch. His hand moved, and he gently pinched the hard nub between thumb and forefinger.

  “Oh, God. Kiel.”

  Before the words were out of her mouth, he was gone. No, not gone, she’d discovered when she opened her eyes. Moved away, back to the other side of the room. She started to ask him what was wrong when the door to her room opened and at least three people entered.

  “Miss Laurent?” It was Dr. Anderson, mispronouncing her name again like most people did.

  J had ceased years ago correcting people, except when she felt it was absolutely necessary.

  “How are you feeling this morning?” he continued, as if he wasn’t aware of the raging forest fire spreading through her at that moment. Or if he could see it on her face and in the way her body was shivering, he chose to ignore it.

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “No dizziness? Do you still have a headache?” A cool hand checked the head wound underneath the bandage. She caught a whiff of sanitizer.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “It looks like you’ve suffered no permanent damage, so we’re letting you go home. But if you have another fainting spell, I’d seriously consider having an MRI done to see if it could be caused by a medical condition.”

  She nodded slightly. “I will, Doctor.”

  The man gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder and left the room without further word. The nurses continued to mess around with the IV drip and whatnot. It was hard to tell, being unfamiliar with the room. Presently a third body came in, this time bearing a tray with her breakfast.

  “The doctor is signing the orders to let you leave. As soon as you’ve finished breakfast, you can go. Is there someone you’d like for us to call to come pick you up?”

  J recognized the nurse from late last night. Ferran? Ferguson? “Thank you, but my ride should be showing up any time now.”

  They puttered around some more. Realizing they weren’t going to be leaving anytime soon, J let her fingers roam over the tray, trying to decipher what was on it. Eggs, scrambled. A sausage link—no, two. Something that felt like hash browns. A container covered with a paper sleeve had oatmeal in it. The cup was coffee. A carton that contained—she sniffed its contents—milk.

  One of the nurses must have seen her exploration and gave a little gasp of surprise.

  “You’re blind?”

  J threw her a partial smile. “Sorry. No one told you?”

  “It’s not noted on your chart. I’ll go fix that right away.”

  “No need to. I’ll be leaving in a while. But I would appreciate it if you’d put my clothes at the foot of the bed so I can find them.”

  “Sure thing, honey. My name’s Amber. Call me if you need anything else.”

  “I will. Thanks, Amber.”

  “Another nurse will be in in a sec to take the IV out.”

  “Okay.”

  J continued to eat as the nurses finished whatever they were doing and finally left.

  The moment the door closed behind them, a soft chuckle came from the far end of the room. “Just when things begin to get interesting between us, we get interrupted.”

  Grinning with the fork pressed against her lower lip, J replied, “Just wait until tonight, buster. Once I lock that front door, ain’t nobody gonna come in and interrupt us.”

  She froze, shocked by the words that had come out of her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say them, at least not out loud. But she knew as well as he did that what had occurred between them a few minutes ago had only been a prelude to something more. Something grander and far-reaching. Just like his touch had led to their first kiss, the kiss to their admission of love. The admission to his first bold, albeit gentle molding of her breast in his hand. Their next step was as certain as day following night.

  Her face felt as hot as if she had sunburned. Lowering her head, J picked at her food and waited for what he would say next. Instead, Kiel walked back over to the side of the bed and lifted her chin. His hand remained cradling her face and cheek as he gave her another long kiss, pausing slightly as he pulled away.

  “Mmm. Now you taste good enough to eat.” A heartbeat echoed between them, then Kiel leaned back. “I’ll go call Sam and see if he’s up yet. We’ll take you home so you can rest.”

  “No. I need to go back to the apartment complex, Kiel. We need to stay on this case.”

  “I need to stay on this case,” he corrected her in a firm voice. “You need to rest.”

  “You need me, Kiel Michael,” she argued. Her tone made it clear she had no intention of resting today, and if she was left behind she would find some way to follow them.

  Kiel crossed his arms across his chest in irritation. “You’re a damn hardheaded woman, you know that?”

  “Yeah, well, get used to it quick because I’ve got stubborn all but tattooed across my butt,” she snapped back, then smiled when Kiel broke up laughing.

  “That’s one area I intend on examining,” he managed to get out.

  The implication bathed her face in another hot flash of embarrassment.

  “Don’t you need to go call Sam while I get dressed?”

  “Why can’t I stay and watch?” he teased.

  Somewhere in his voice she heard the echoes of passion. It was an emotion she wasn’t familiar with, but it made her insides flutter with the thought of what was going to happen between them.

  “Because I’d prefer you were out of the room for now.”

  There was a few seconds of silence, then he casually remarked, “You have a beautiful body, J. Why do you hide it underneath those ugly dresses? They look like houserobes on you.”

  A nervous giggle escaped her. “How would you know what my body looks like?” She started to say more, to suggest he might have some special ability as a spirit to look though her clothes like an x-ray machine, when it hit her. Yesterday when the nurse had undressed her and had helped her put on the hospital gown.

  Her hands flew to her face, only to have his gently pry them away. “J, listen to me.” He sat on the edge of the bed and took her face in his palms. “We’re about to do something that has never happened before. Or at least we’re going to try. I’ll go ahead and go out to the nurses’ station to call Sam. I promise not to reenter the room until you’re ready. But promise me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Promise me that tonight you’ll wear something beautiful. I don’t care if it’s that sexy little t-shirt and shorts you had on Monday night. Just as long as you don’t look like someone’s aging grandmother.”

  That last bit evoked another giggle. Lifting her lips for a quick kiss, she promised and watched him leave the room. The door had yet to snicker shut when she quickly fumbled for her things.

  She had never felt so alive and full of energy. The day was heady with excitement and possible danger, but more than that it promised something she couldn’t identify because this had never happened to her before. Was she allowed to be this impatient? Was it all right to think of such things when the man she was toying fantasies about sat a couple of feet away?

  J rubbed a hand over her cheek. She hadn’t lost the blush. Images kept coming back to her, keeping her off-balance. No, not quite images, but thoughts. Hopes. Wishes. They could touch, so they could make love. What would it be like, having a ghost for a lover? Do ghosts have the same kinds of desires? Do they have…
erections?

  Restlessly tapping her feet on the floorboard of the car, J silently listened to the police scanner as Sam and Kiel drove her home to take a quick shower.

  When Sam had arrived earlier to pick them up, her demands had met his brick wall. He had been as equally insistent as his brother, but his objections would prove just as useless. It wasn’t long before both brothers shrugged their shoulders and surrendered. If they left her behind, they knew she would find a way to reach the apartment building on her own. And if the captain found out about it, they could be in worse trouble than they already were.

  “Make yourselves at home,” she called down to them as she hurried up the stairs. “There’s bottled water in the fridge, Sam.” Once she reached the landing, she paused to add, “Oh, whatever you do, guys, don’t move anything.” They promised to leave everything as it was, and she flashed them a smile as she disappeared upstairs.

  The contents of the house had been kept as immaculate as the exterior, they found. As they walked from one room to the other, it was obvious great care had been taken to preserve as much of the older artifacts as possible. Sam picked up a needlepoint pillow and showed it to Kiel. They may not be experts in antiquities, but they could tell some of the furniture could be traced as far back as a hundred years or more.

  “I feel like I’m living in the nineteenth century,” Kiel commented. His voice rang eerily from the high ceilings.

  “Yeah. All we need is to hear horse-drawn wagons going by outside instead of cars.”

  A distant dinging caught their attention. “Grandfather clock in the entry,” Kiel identified it.

  “Then what’s that other sound?” Sam froze to listen. “Sounds like the TV.”

  “I thought she said she doesn’t own a TV.”

  They followed the noise, looping in a circle through the house until they reached the kitchen. Here was where nineteenth met the twenty-first century. The stove, fridge, and dishwasher were modern, as was the radio under the counter, their source of noise they had been following. “Gee, I wonder where the old wood burning stove went,” Sam quipped as a joke.

  “In the backyard where the original kitchen still stands,” a voice behind them answered.

  Both men turned around to see J looking like she had just stepped out of time. Instead of one of her shapeless shifts, she had opted to wear a long-sleeved dress in a pale ice blue, with lace at the throat and cuffs. It hugged her breasts and waist, then flared at the hips all the way down to her ankles. She had pulled her wet hair back from her face and clipped it at the crown. Standing there, she looked young and fresh, and very beautiful. On anyone else the dress would have been a costume. J wore it as though she had been born in that century. They gawked as she walked into the kitchen.

  “Back when this house was built, kitchens weren’t part of the main building. They got much too hot, especially in the summer months. And they were also too much of a fire hazard. Servants would do the cooking in a smaller building behind the house, then bring the food on trays into the house to be served.” She gave them a bright smile. “This room was originally the dining room that used to run the entire length of the back of the house. Grandmama had that wall put in, and this kitchen installed when she married Grandfather. Well, I’m ready when you are.” Holding her arms out for inspection, she added, “No more dowdy dresses, Detective Stark. Does this one pass inspection?”

  “You look like you just stepped out of the 1800s.”

  “That better be a compliment,” she half-teased.

  “Don’t you have any jeans?” Sam asked. He had to agree, the woman looked devastating. And vulnerable. But where they were heading a dress like this would be impractical.

  “Actually, no, I don’t. Miss Carrie’s tried to get me to buy a pair once, but I felt too closed in when I tried them on. No, I prefer dresses. Call me strange, but I like the freedom.” She paused, tilting her head to listen to the faint sound of the clock in the entry. “It’s almost ten. We need to be going.”

  Again they waited for J to lock the front door with the oversized iron key, which she dropped in her skirt pocket, then helped her into the car. Kiel sat in front, knowing she was watching him closely in that way she had.

  “Explain something to me?” she commented as they neared the interstate that looped through the city. “When did this killer strike the first time?”

  Sam answered her. “A little more than a month ago. We thought it was some sort of gangland killing until the next three showed up. Coroner says it had to be the same killer. All five bodies were identical in the way they had been killed then dismembered.”

  “Same M.O. And then that guy yesterday.”

  “Yep.” Kiel turned slightly to glance back at her. “What’s going around in that head of yours, J?”

  “I’m wondering why the killer waited so long after his first victims, then didn’t hardly wait at all to strike the third time.”

  Sam nodded. “We’ve been debating that same problem. There’s too many pieces of this puzzle missing still for us to make any sort of sense out of it.”

  They rode a bit further. Their ID came over the radio. Kiel answered to let them know they were on their way over to the apartment complex. Once he signed off, J spoke up again. “If the first two victims were killed a month ago, how come their bodies are still at the morgue?”

  “They’re not. We had them moved to the morgue so you could view them,” Sam replied, pulling to a stop at a red light.

  Kiel took over. “They’re still part of an investigation, so they’re kept in the freezer downtown.”

  “Wouldn’t matter anyway,” Sam said. “No one’s come to claim them.”

  “Freezer?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Kiel told her in a softer voice.

  Sitting quietly in the back, J let the sounds from outside filter through to her, allowing the familiar noises to wash over her like a calming background. She could think better when there was some chatter going on. Dead silence was too eerie, too unnerving to try and concentrate. J had learned long ago that her powers worked at their peak when she had some kind of background sound to help keep her focused.

  All too soon Sam pulled up to the apartment building, a swear word on his lips. “What?” J asked, curious.

  “Road construction,” Kiel told her. “They’ve blocked off the street running in front of the building. We’re going to have to go in the back way.”

  Getting out on her own, J waited for Kiel to take her arm to guide her. “Watch your footing,” he warned her. “There’s all kinds of shit piled up back here.”

  At one time the apartment had been surrounded by a privacy fence, with a gate at both the front and back entrances. The little post where residents would swipe their keycards was gone now. The tall wrought-iron gates sagged on their hinges. Kiel pushed the right side open as he guided J. Sam followed directly behind.

  Crime scene tape also covered the back entrance into the building proper. Tearing it off, Kiel jiggled the handle to find it locked. “You’d think they would have given us a key to get in,” he grumbled.

  “Why don’t you just pop in on the other side and open it like you did last time?”

  He glanced at her in surprise. A tiny smile was curling up the corners of her mouth. Shaking his head in amusement, Kiel said, “This’ll just take a sec,” and disappeared. A moment later, the door rattled then opened. Sam took her elbow and led her inside.

  The oppressive atmosphere of the place had not dissipated since their last visit. Standing in the lobby near the elevators, J slowly turned around, cocking her head slightly to listen. The two men watched her, waiting, not interrupting.

  “Let’s go back up to the third floor.”

  “You sure?” Kiel whispered. There was something about this place that made them all want to whisper, even though they were the only people in the building. At J’s nod, he instructed his brother, “Can you take her? I want to go up there first to have a look around. Make s
ure it’s safe.”

  “Yeah. Go ahead.” Taking J’s arm, Sam headed for the stairwell next to the elevators. Once they had begun up the three flights, Kiel disembodied himself and materialized in the hallway in front of 316. Squaring his shoulders, he drifted through the door.

  Morning sunlight beamed through the windows and balcony doors, but the brightness failed to dispel the gray-black fog of death in the place. He went from room to room, noticing a spot of blood here, a telltale stain there—errant bits and pieces that the cleanup crew had missed. But it didn’t matter. Their job had been to get rid of as much of the evidence as possible so that gorehounds wouldn’t be able to break inside and cart off any grisly mementoes to keep as souvenirs or sell on eBay. Anyway, in another couple of months it wouldn’t matter. The building was going to be razed and a new condominium built over the site. If he and Sam couldn’t find the answers by then, they would be SOL.

  He heard Sam call out his name. He went to meet them in the hallway.

  “Anything?” Sam asked.

  “Nothing, but it still feels stuffy in there.” Kiel looked at J, who was wearing a frown on her lovely face. “What is it, J?”

  “I keep getting shadows.”

  “What do you mean, shadows?”

  She shook her head slowly, then walked past him into the apartment. “Did you find out who owned this place?”

  “Yeah.” Sam pulled out a little spiral notebook from his inner jacket pocket. Flipping the pages until he found the right one, he said, “Three-sixteen was leased to a Mr. and Mrs. Randall Pommerantz. They moved out after the company bought the property four months ago so they could rebuild.”

  “What company?”

  “Six Star. It’s listed as a limited partnership. I looked into it. They own at least two dozen condos along the Eastern and Western Seaboards. They’ve just invested in two others, plus this one, along the gulf. The spokeswoman I talked to on the phone said they were wanting to expand their holdings all the way down into Mexico.”