Crawl
Date: 2019-04-18 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Paranormal; Mystery
Description: Four years ago, seventeen-year-old spelunker Carter was killed in a cave collapse. The coroner deemed it an accident. Sullivan Gray knows better. A camping weekend with his brother Dez takes an unsettling turn when Sully sees Carter’s shattered spirit, a sighting that reveals the teen’s death was, in fact, murder. The brothers launch an investigation—a job complicated by a marital infidelity case Dez has been handed and the fact Sully remains little more than a ghost himself. Having once escaped his own death inside a collapsed cavern, Sully knows the dangers lying beneath the earth’s surface.
Publisher: Bayne Independent Publishing
Rights: Copyright 2020 H.P. Bayne. All rights reserved.

The Sullivan Gray Series

Books 5 - 7

H.P. Bayne

Copyright © 2020 by H.P. Bayne

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Hollow Road

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Second Son

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Spirit Caller

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Hollow Road

1

Clouds obscured the moon in the October sky, casting Sullivan Gray deeper in shadow.

His childhood home stood before him, several of its windows lit like welcoming beacons in the dark.

But his homecoming would have to wait. Lowell Braddock was inside. Because of his uncle, Sully had been living like a dead man for two years He hadn’t intended to return until he’d taken Lowell out of the picture. Instead, ghosts had gotten in the way, and over the past month and a half, he’d found shelter with another current occupant of the house. His brother Dez Braddock, who had given him his life back.

As a means to repay him, Sully had agreed to talk to their mom.

Now here he was, crouched in the dark with his dog Pax. The spirits of his foster father and brother hovered nearby as he waited for the man who’d killed them—who’d tried to kill Sully—to leave the house.

He didn't check the time, but it seemed like forever before the sound of an engine reached his ears. Moments later, the glow of headlights illuminated the night as a car drove away from the house, toward the grid.

It had to be Lowell but Sully waited anyway. Fear had made him a wait-and-see guy, had turned him into somebody who watched and listened for signs, dangers and opportunities.

Dez knew it, and he sent the sign Sully was waiting for. The text message came through with a ping: He’s gone. Give me a minute to tell Mom about you. I’ll let you know when you can come in.

He rubbed his neck. One more person learning his secret. He’d delayed reunion with the woman who’d raised him by convincing himself he’d wanted to minimize the number of people who knew of his existence. To keep them—and himself—safe. But really, it was about trust and anger. Mara Braddock had been one of two people—the other being Lowell—who had signed the paper committing Sully to Lockwood Psychiatric Institution.

While Sully had forgiven his mother, he wasn't sure he could ever forget.

He expected a long wait. What he got was about two minutes.

His phone dinged again. She wants to see you. Now.

Sully heaved a breath. He hadn't thought through what to say. He figured much of what was about to be said would come from her. He'd never been much of a conversation-starter, and she knew it.

As he drew nearer, a figure moved in front of the kitchen window overlooking the backyard. Dez and Mara were in there, and Mara’s eyes were fixed on the world outside. From within the lit room, she'd never be able to see into the darkness, but she was trying anyway. The expression on her face—wide eyes, lips pressed tightly together, lines showing between her brows—was read best as torturous anticipation with a side of shock.

Sully knew he wouldn't be going anywhere else tonight. No way she’d let either of them out of her sight until she was convinced what she was about to see was true.

Sully took one last glance behind him, hoping for an encouraging nod from his dad. But he, along with Aiden, were gone.

The back door was unlocked, and Sully passed through into the mudroom and, from there, into the kitchen. Her eyes fixed upon him, but she didn't move or speak for an uncomfortably long time.

“Take your hood off, bro,” Dez said, voice near a whisper, as if afraid he’d shatter the woman standing between the brothers if he spoke any louder.

Sully had forgotten about the hood. It had become such a standard piece of his wardrobe, he felt naked and exposed without it.

He obeyed his brother, pulling the hood down and tucking strands of long hair behind his ears.

Only then did he get the reaction he’d expected: a gasp. Then the tears started, huge racking sobs that had Sully crossing the room and pulling his adopted mom into an embrace.

He ducked his head so it rested against hers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She tried to speak, but her words couldn’t be distinguished within the choke of emotion. What she couldn't say aloud, her body said for her. Her arms were like a vice around Sully’s middle, hands drawing him in hard enough to leave bruises.

Any anger Sully had felt coming in here evaporated like water in a desert.

It came as no great surprise, upon looking up, to find Dez crying too. The guy was a water faucet, turning on and off at a moment’s notice. Sully offered him a smile, one he found returned. This was okay. It really was.

Better than okay. It felt right.

At last, Mara pulled away, far enough to meet Sully’s eyes and study his face and body. Her mouth opened, but her lower lip quivered, and she held up a finger, before moving off to grab the tissue box atop the fridge. Two solid nose-blows later, she managed her first coherent word.

“Why?”

A one-word question with a long, complicated answer Sully was unable to provide in full. As with Dez, generalities would have to be enough.

“I was scared. After Lockwood, I needed to get away. And I had to make sure no one could ever make me go back there or hurt the people I love to get to me. The only real escape was making the world believe I was dead.”

She opened her mouth as if to answer, but closed it almost immediately. Sully watched the thoughts play out across her face, thought he could sense the moment she came up with the answer on her own.

“I guess I can understand why you didn't trust me. I can't blame you. If I were in your shoes, I’d feel exactly the same. You need to understand, leaving you there almost killed me. Visiting you, seeing what was happening to you, it shattered my soul. I've never gotten over it, Sully. And I’ve never tried to. As far as I'm concerned, I deserve that for what I helped put you through. So it makes total sense for you to feel you had to hide from me. The people you were supposed to be able to trust the most betrayed you in the worst way.”

“You didn’t know. You were trying to help me. I understand.”

“But we didn’t. We allowed you to be in a place where you were hurt, where you were traumatized. I know what those men did to you. Dez told me after you… left us. I’ve never said this, but I seriously questioned whether I could live, knowing what I’d done. For a time back then, the only thing keeping me from following through was knowing what I would be putting my other son through. Dez has seen far too much loss in his life. I couldn’t be one more loss for him. I couldn’t turn him into the last living member of the family he grew up with. Anyway, I considered it penance, having to live with this on my conscience.”

“I forgave you,” Sully said. “You, Dez, Eva, Ara, you guys were the only reason I stayed sane. You kept me alive in there. You need to know that.”

Mara tossed out the tissue she’d been clutching, then returned to Sully and drew him back into her arms. “You’ve always been far too forgiving, kid.”

He hugged her back. “Not about everything.”

* * *

The three of them stayed up talking long into the night, until Dez nodded off on the sofa.

As expected, Mara insisted they stay over—a request Sully was happy to oblige. He slept in his old bedroom, Pax snoring softly next to him on the floor.

Morning came quickly, light streaming through his window, revealing a room Mara hadn’t touched since Sully had last left it. It also revealed Dez, sitting on the end of the bed, tapping away at a game on his phone.

“How long you been sitting there?” Sully asked.

Dez looked up and grinned. “Either my ninja skills are improving, or you were really tired. I don’t usually manage to sneak up on you.”

Sully smiled back. “I was really tired. Sorry. A guy your size is never going to be ninja material.”

Dez returned his gaze to his phone, suggesting whatever conversation was coming was going to be about something other than the weather.

“Thank you,” he said. “For doing this, I mean. It means a lot to Mom. And to me. I know it wasn’t easy for you.”

“I needed it too.” Sully scanned the bedspread as he formed thought into words. “I thought I was angry at her. But seeing her, seeing what she’d gone through because of all this, it wiped all of that out.”

Sully looked up to find Dez’s eyes on him and a question on his lips. “What about Lowell?”

Sully dragged himself to sitting, propping his back against the headboard, maintaining focus on his brother’s face. “What about him?”

“Think you might be able to forgive him eventually?”

“That’s different.”

“Why? I mean, he’s not immediate family or anything, but he was a big part of us growing up. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never stopped being pissed at him over the whole Lockwood thing. But I’m tired of being angry, Sull. Aren’t you?”

“It’s not just anger.”

“Fear? He’s not going to send you back. I won’t let him. Hell, you won’t let him.”

“Newsflash: You didn’t let him the last time. He still did it. Like I told Mom last night, no one—not even anyone else in our family—can know I’m still alive. No one. You can’t tell him, Dez.”

“I know. I wasn’t going to. If anyone’s going to tell him, it will be you, okay? But, Jesus, man, you’re going to have to deal with this eventually. You know you can’t live like this forever.”

That was a fact. But what he didn’t know—couldn’t know—was Sully had every intention of ensuring this didn’t continue forever.

Lowell would face justice for his crimes. He would to find a way to make it happen.

2

“Have I got a job for you.” Lachlan Fields’s voice filling the earpiece made for an internal groan for Dez.

Seven words. Seven too many for Dez when it came to listening to his boss. The man sounded cheerful; as the characteristic wasn’t often found on Lachlan’s emotional spectrum, he would likely follow the words with a heavy dose of sarcasm or really bad news.

Dez held the phone in his hand, but didn’t say anything. He’d wait this out. Anything else was unlikely to end well.

“Braddock?”

“I’m here. What?”

“Mite testy, are we?”

Dez drew in a long breath and released it slowly. It wouldn’t do to blow at Lachlan. First off, the man signed his pay checks and had given him his first job after well over a year of unemployment. Second, it wasn’t a fight Dez was likely to win; nobody who battled wits with Lachlan came out whole again. “I’m fine. What’s going on?”

“You don’t mind ghosts, right?”

Dez hated ghosts. He hated the fact they existed. He hated the fact he couldn’t see them, and he’d hate it if he could see them. He hated that Sully had to see them. Most of all, he hated knowing another world overlapped his own, one which he had no control over.

Yes, Dez minded ghosts very much. And Lachlan knew it.

“You’re not about to send me on some case with a ghost, are you?”

“Not specifically, no.”

Dez bit back the response he really wanted to give. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know Hollow Road?”

“You mean the haunted one north of the city that used to go to Loons Hollow?”

“Still does. There’s just not much left of Loons Hollow to get to.”

“I know that. What are you getting at?”

“Nothing. Christ, Braddock. Kind of bitchy today, huh?”

“Why are you in such a good mood?”

“I went to see my doctor, and he said my concussion’s healed enough that I can return to some light work. That means you, your brother and I get to work a job together.”

The words “get to” made it sound like an opportunity rather than an impending nightmare. No doubt Lachlan was screwing with him.

Even so, Dez had plenty to be grateful for where his boss was concerned. But for Lachlan’s information pointing him in the right direction, Dez might never have saved Sully from the Dules.

“Glad to hear you’re on the mend,” Dez said.

“No, you’re not.”

“Just tell me about the job.”

Lachlan’s laugh contained its usual sarcastic glee. “Missing persons file. Bank employee disappeared almost thirty years ago. A massive search was done, but only his car was ever found—parked on the road leading to Loons Hollow. You’re too young to remember, but the case made the news for a good long while. Lonnie Debenham was his name. He left his wife and kids at home one day, got in his car and drove right off the radar. Never found him. Plenty of chatter about the case came from both in and out of the Kimotan Rapids Police Department back then. Some people thought he might have been kidnapped as a means to get his rich father to pay a hefty ransom. Some believed he ran off with another woman. Some suggested he killed himself. And some said—you’re gonna love this part—he became one of Florence’s victims.”

“Florence? You mean Faceless Flo?”

“The very same.”

Dez snorted, his best attempt at pretending Lachlan hadn’t just succeeded in creeping him out. “Come on. That legend is just a bunch of crap.”

“Hey, you’re the one with a brother who sees the dead. I think we should take him out there, see if he can find Lonnie. If we can’t, maybe we find her instead.”

“Look, before you go too far down the path of trying to scare the bejeezus out of me, could we talk about the actual missing person case? You mentioned some other possibilities there.”

“I did,” Lachlan said. “But no one ever came forward demanding ransom.”

“Maybe they ended up killing him before they could make the demand.”

“In my experience, kidnappers don’t concern themselves with the state of their victim when they’re making ransom demands. I’ve heard of cases where families have paid up and only later discovered their loved one had been killed pretty much right off the hop. Kidnapping is not honest men’s work, and it’s dangerous work besides.”

“Okay, fine. So if police ruled that out, I’m thinking the ‘other woman’ theory might be the way to go.”

“It might be. That’s still up in the air. Family swears up and down it’s not a possibility though. They say he was devoted to his wife and kids.”

“So is the family suggesting he was done in by a ghost?”

“No, they don’t believe all that either,” Lachlan said. “All they really know for sure is Lonnie didn’t come home, and they want to know why. I was called by his wife Carlene. She wants to meet with me, and as I’m not supposed to drive yet….”

“Right. That’s why you’re calling me. I’m your wheels.”

“You’re my associate. Come and pick me up, and we’ll go meet with her. Hey, worst thing that happens is you learn a thing or two from a pro.”

Actually, the worst thing that could happen was Lachlan humiliating him in front of their new client, and then sending him off on a ghost hunt. But Dez knew some things were best kept to himself.

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

* * *

Carlene Debenham lived in a large house in the North Bank district, close enough to Lachlan’s that a cab ride would've been relatively cheap.

There was more to Lachlan’s bid to have Dez on board than a free ride in a not-so-fancy car. Dez suspected it was his brother.

“You didn’t bring the psychic,” Lachlan observed upon climbing into the passenger seat of Dez’s SUV.

“I left him at Mom’s. I didn’t think he should be out meeting the general public. You know, since he’s supposed to be dead and all.”

Lachlan tapped the side of his head, a motion that was supposed to show he was in the know. The movement and its accompanying expression contained a measure of humour. Dez didn’t think it suited Lachlan any more than the grin that wafted across his face as they approached their new client’s address.

“I’ll do the talking,” Lachlan said as Dez pulled up to a three-storey Victorian mansion in one of the city’s oldest and most sought-after neighbourhoods.

“You always do,” Dez muttered as his boss climbed out of the car.

If Lachlan heard, he gave no indication. Dez followed the older man to the home’s front porch.

Carlene had clearly been waiting, the door opening almost immediately upon Lachlan’s knock.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” she said. “Come in.”

She was likely close to fifty-five or sixty, but her features, combined with impeccable makeup, made her look nearer to her mid-forties. Her hair was pale enough that the greys showing through could have been taken for highlights, and she'd retained the kind of figure that many twenty-year-old girls strived for.

The house, too, was immaculate, decorated in a style that accentuated its history and architecture. This was a woman who took pride in appearance. Dez could only imagine how she would've been impacted by the perception her husband had left her.

She led them into a sunroom overlooking the back garden, and Dez gingerly lowered himself into one of the wicker chairs. Thankfully, it held, and he allowed himself to settle back against it despite some dangerous creaking.

Carlene had already laid out a teapot and several cups. Dez wasn't much of a tea drinker, but he knew Lachlan was as soon as his boss commented on the scent emanating from the pot.

“Rooibos,” he said. “Among my favourites.”

Lachlan hadn't bothered with an introduction, so Dez extended a hand as the woman’s eyes drifted over to him.

“Dez Braddock,” he said. “I work with Lachlan.”

“It's a pleasure,” Carlene said. Her lips turned up at one corner, and one eyebrow lifted slightly. A pleasure indeed.

Dez shifted in his chair, regretting it immediately as it protested beneath him.

Blessedly, Lachlan had more on his mind than humiliating his new employee. “You told me you wanted us to look into your husband's disappearance?”

Carlene’s attention returned to Lachlan. “Are you familiar with the details at all?”

“Sure am,” he said. “I had a small hand in it back then. Would've played a bigger role, but it was bundled off to Major Crimes pretty quick. Didn't stop me from doing a little digging on my own, but nothing ever came of it. One thing is for sure: the police ruled out kidnapping as a likely cause. What do you think happened to him?”

“If I knew, I wouldn't have called you.”

“But you must have some suspicions. All these years, you must've thought about it an awful lot.”

“I try not to. But you're right. Something like that, you don't just stop thinking about. It never got me anywhere but anxious.”

“Some people said he took off to be with another woman. Did you think that?”

“I don't see how. It may sound trite, but we really were happy. He loved me, he loved the kids, we had a great relationship with his family. He even liked his job.”

“How was your sex life?”

Dez’s head snapped to the side so fast, his neck cracked. “Jesus, Lachlan.”

“It’s a valid question. A lot of men start looking for something on the side if they feel they're lacking it at home.”

“Yeah, but you don’t just—”

“It’s all right,” Carlene said. “I don't mind the question. Our love life was very healthy. He certainly had no complaints in that department.”

Once again, her gaze fell on Dez. He fought the urge to squirm.

“And you?” Lachlan asked her. “You never went looking for something else at any point?”

“I’m a one-man kind of girl. When I married him, it was forever. I never cheated, and I’m certain he didn’t either.”

“What do you think happened then?”

“I have one theory, but it’s nothing more than that—and it’s not one I’ve ever voiced to anyone outside the family. You're the one I’m hoping will find the real answers.”

“Humour me. What’s your theory?”

“I'm concerned he went off somewhere to kill himself. I told you he was happy in his life, and he was—at least until the end. Before Lonnie disappeared, he changed. It started after he came home one night, absolutely despondent. He went straight into the bathroom and vomited, and then stayed in the shower for more than an hour. I'm sure I could hear him crying, but by the time he came out, he was his usual self, like nothing had ever happened. I asked him about it anyway, and he said it was nothing I had to worry about, that he’d had a bad day at work. He said it was all better now that he was home.

“Only it wasn’t. He changed after that, became quieter, more withdrawn. We used to laugh together about the stupidest things. A week went by before I realized I hadn't heard him laugh once. Things improved a little after that, but not by much. He disappeared not long after. They found his car on that road in the middle of nowhere. I’m worried it might be he bought a gun somewhere and went out into the woods where no one would find him.”

“How much time passed between that first night and his disappearance?” Lachlan asked.

“I couldn’t tell you exactly, but I think it was probably about two months. He was doing better by then at putting on a good front for the kids, but I could see through him. It worried me. The police at the time suggested suicide as a possibility, but I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn't think of him doing that to the kids or to me. But then the police started talking about the possibility he was having an affair, and that seemed so wrong. I guess I don't know what to think. Hopefully you can find out the truth.”

“Thirty years is a long time. It gets pretty hard to find clues when that much time has passed. If no one found a body or any other evidence back then, it’s going to be an uphill battle now.”

“I asked around and was told you're the best. I thought if anybody could find out, it would be you.”

Lachlan’s chair complained as he sat up straighter and puffed out his chest a little. Dez resisted an eye roll.

“I’ll do what I can,” Lachlan said. “But one question first. Why now? Why after thirty years did you decide you needed these answers?”

“It’s never sat right with me, not knowing,” she said. “But it’s not just for me. It's Lonnie’s dad. He’s dying. He was diagnosed with cancer last month, and he's got, at best, two more months. He wants to know, but he didn't like the idea of going to a private investigator. He said it's a pride thing, but I think it's also the money. He and his wife had a beautiful property in The Forks. They sunk a lot of money into it. After the flood four years ago, they discovered their insurance policy didn't cover natural disasters. They lost a lot and have been getting by on his retirement pension and a few other investments. Thomas and Rose live a comfortable enough life, but that's only because they're careful. I don't think they have the money for a private investigator.”

“You do, though. Did you ever get any insurance from Lonnie’s policy?”

“The house was bought and paid for by his parents as a wedding gift for us, and everything else I pay for through my own job at the bank. I’m a financial advisor. As for Lonnie’s policy, because he was never found, we've never had confirmation of death. I talked to his parents once about putting in some paperwork to have him officially declared dead. That way we could get the insurance, and that would've helped them out some. They weren't beneficiaries, but I would've given them some money. Only they didn't want to. I accepted long ago that Lonnie was gone. His parents never could. They always hoped he'd walk through the door one day.”

“If they’re in that kind of denial, why would they want to know now?”

“Because Thomas is scared to die. He's always been scared of dying. I think the possibility of Lonnie being there to greet him might make things a little easier for him. That's what I hope anyway. As for Rose, if we can prove Lonnie is dead, the insurance money would help her live more comfortably after her husband's gone. He was the president and CEO of the bank where Lonnie worked, but his benefits run out upon his death. The cancer treatments aren’t helping, either. Rose was a housewife. All she'll be left with is what's in the bank account, and I'm not sure it's all that much anymore.”

“Of course, you stand to benefit too. Quite a bit, I should think.”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“I’m going to have to ask questions, and some of them are going to be pretty uncomfortable. Are you prepared for that?”

“If it means finally being able to lay my husband to rest, then yes, I am.”

“And if we find him alive?”

“I can’t imagine you will, but I want the truth. Whatever it is.”

“And you’re aware of my rates?”

“I am, and I’m prepared to pay them.”

“All right.” Lachlan extended a hand. “Then we have a deal.”

Carlene reached out, wrapping Lachlan’s fingers in a grip that made his eyebrows raise.

“We have a deal.”

* * *

Back in the SUV, Dez prepared for ribbing over Carlene’s flirtations, but Lachlan was all-business.

“I’m going to talk to an old friend over at the KRPD, see if I can get my hands on the Debenham file. I made my own version of it back in the day, but it’s not official and doesn’t contain everything. Mine is in my storage container, and I’d like to head over there, have a look at it.”

“So I’m playing chauffeur duty again, is what you’re telling me?”

Once he’d finished buckling up, Dez found himself faced with Lachlan’s powerful glare.

“Holy hell, kid, I don’t pay you to drive a car around all day, do I? Drop me off at home and go get your brother. I want the two of you to head out to Loons Hollow.”

“What are we supposed to be searching for out there, exactly?”

“I think suicide is a distinct possibility, but so is the affair. I know what the wife said, but no woman ever wants to believe her spouse was getting his rocks off with another woman. A couple things about Loons Hollow: No one much goes up there anymore. It’s too far removed from the city for the majority of our criminal types to set up shop. Mostly two kinds of people use it—ghost hunters and people wanting somewhere interesting to hook up.”

“Someone with Lonnie’s money would have been more likely to use a hotel, no?” He glanced into the rearview mirror at the receding house.

“Sure, but don’t forget, he was in his early twenties when he went missing. Could be he was interested in something a little more adventurous than the Hyatt.” Lachlan silenced the sudden beeping of the notification system by finally putting on his seatbelt. “And there’s another thing. One of the tips that came in suggested Lonnie had been seen up that way. It was the kind of tip police didn’t typically look into back then. Probably still don’t.”

“What kind of tip is that?”

“It was from someone claiming to be psychic,” Lachlan said. “Someone who thought they’d seen Lonnie’s ghost near Loons Hollow. Whole thing seemed so ludicrous, no one really bothered to do much checking, but I followed up in my own time.”

“And?”

“Didn’t find anything.”

“But now you think we will?”

“I think if there’s something to it, maybe your brother will have a good chance at spotting it. Like I said, I’ll check my file and see if there’s anything more on the official police file, once I get my hands on it.” He stared out his window. “Maybe there are some better leads to follow than this whole ghost-in-the-woods thing. But, at the moment, one lead’s as good as another. Just wanting to cover our bases.”

At a light, Dez studied Lachlan a long moment, so long his boss turned to him with raised eyebrows. “Something on your mind, junior?”

“Sorry. I was thinking. Those ghosts Sully saw attached to you when he first met you—the guy in the suit and the woman with the baby—I thought you’d be gung-ho to go solve those since you’re back on the job.”

“Oh, that’s next on my list,” Lachlan said. “But this is a paying job, and those come first. Anyway, this one’s always stuck in my craw too. If I can get to the bottom of it, I’ll be pretty damn pleased. Finding Lonnie Debenham would be the Kimotan Rapids version of solving the Amelia Earhart mystery. And I’m all set for takeoff on that.”

Lachlan paused, and it took a few seconds for Dez to clue into his boss’s pun.

“That’s… kind of a shitty joke,” Dez said.

Lachlan chuckled as if Dez had been the one trying to be witty. “You’re a real stick in the mud, you know that? Now, listen, if your brother sees Lonnie out there, you call me right away, you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Good. Oh, and Braddock. If you happen to see Faceless Flo out there, don’t let your brother stick around to talk, huh? They say anyone who comes face to face with her—so to speak—disappears forever.”

Dez shuddered, his mouth inadvertently forming a grimace. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

3

It was surreal being back here.

So much about the house had remained the same. The furniture and decor were exactly as Sully remembered. No rooms had been repurposed. Flynn Braddock’s office was just as he’d left it on the day he died.

It was as if no time had passed, as if nothing had changed.

But everything had. Everything that mattered.

This family—the one that had taken Sully in when he was a frightened and isolated seven-year-old foster kid—had been ripped apart by tragedy. Half of the original family unit—the one that existed before Sully—was dead, the victims of murder. The others were left to pick up the pieces.

There was pain in this house, but there was also happiness. Sully had had his first taste of it here, his first glimpse of safety, of understanding and acceptance. Everywhere he looked, a memory waited, each one containing a sense of love and peace he was convinced he would never have found but for his having lived here. Sully loved this house, and he loved even more the people who’d made it a home.

As he walked through each of the rooms, the resulting memories were tinged with sadness and anger. The murders of his father and Aiden were senseless.

Sully slammed his palm against the doorframe of his father’s office as he left it, grateful his mother Mara wasn’t home to see it. There were explanations he couldn’t give. Not yet anyway.

More than two years had passed since Lowell killed his brother Flynn and had almost killed Sully. During that time, he had likely grown comfortable. A detail Sully could use to his benefit. He’d spent too long in hiding. He was tired of it. Why should he have to remain invisible while Lowell walked around as if he’d done nothing wrong?

Lowell was a rich man, and his wealth had afforded him some measure of protection. Sully had always felt helpless in the face of it, imprisoned by the knowledge no one would believe an unemployed ex-bartender over the respected head of one of the country’s leading pharmaceutical companies.

But life had thrown him a bone last month. Justice Prescott Montague had tried to worm his way out of criminal charges by offering police a chance at bringing down a circle of powerful men who were apparently involved in something less than respectable. One of those men, he’d told police, was Lowell Braddock.

With Montague in custody, Sully could do little. No way could he just walk into the remand centre and demand an interview with the man.

But maybe there was another option.

Sully retrieved his phone from the kitchen, where he’d plugged it in next to the stove. He selected Sergeant Forbes Raynor’s cellphone number. The man let it ring four times before answering, presumably moving to a “safe” location. Sully gritted his teeth. The Major Crime detective really got under his skin, but he had benefits.

“Why are you calling me?”

“Hello to you too,” Sully said. “I wanted to ask you about what the judge said. He mentioned something about Lowell. I need to talk to him.”

“There are two very good reasons why you can’t talk to him. One, he’s the suspect in a murder investigation, and he’s also on the hook for trying to kill your brother. And two, as I remember it, you’re supposed to be dead. The dead don’t talk to other people. Well, except you, apparently.”

“You had no problem with me confronting Montague at his place last month.”

“I didn’t tell you to confront him,” Forbes corrected. “I asked you to keep an eye on him. You took it and ran with it—and you almost landed in your grave because of it. Now you want to have a conversation with the man?”

“He has something on Lowell, and I need to know what it is. You need to find out, too, don’t you? Or have you asked around?”

“Sure, I’ve asked around. By all accounts, Lowell Braddock is the epitome of style and class, and he’s generous with his chequebook. You don’t make a lot of enemies when you’re willing to scribble out a cheque at a moment’s notice. Anyway, for all I know, that talk of Montague’s was just a way to try to get himself off the hook.”

“It’s more than that, and you know it. Look, I’m not going to get myself killed, all right? I just want to talk to him, see if I can get anything out of him.”

Forbes blew out a heavy breath. “I guess there isn’t any way I can stop you. You already know where he lives.”

“He’s not in custody?”

“He was released pretty quick afterward. Don’t you watch the news? It was all over it for a solid week. The media crams into the courtroom like sardines every time his case comes up. You’ll be lucky if there aren’t three news vans parked outside his house right now.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Sully said. “Is his phone number the same?”

“Nope, he changed it way back. Someone got hold of his old number and shared it with a couple of reporters. Took him about three minutes to get himself a new one and, no, I’m not giving it to you. His lawyer has already been asking questions, wondering if one of us gave it up. You’re on your own. Now, I’m busy, so if there’s nothing else…?”

He wasn’t really asking for permission to hang up; his tone suggested it took a great deal of self-control not to tell Sully to get stuffed.

Forbes disconnected the call, leaving Sully to puzzle out a next move. If he was going to approach the judge, it would have to be under the cover of darkness, so as not to be seen by either Montague or any witnesses. How he was going to get into the house was only the first problem; many more mounted behind it.

He was distracted by his phone ringing in his hand. The tone was the one he’d set for Dez.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Sull. I need your help with something. I’m on my way to get you.”

“I take it Lachlan’s case comes with a ghost problem?”

“No idea. But if you see our missing guy, that will answer one of our questions. We’ll know Lonnie Debenham didn’t kill himself.”

* * *

It took all of three seconds upon sliding into Dez’s passenger seat for Sully to gauge his brother’s mood. He was a bundle of nerves, and the explanation he provided answered Sully’s unasked question.

“Lachlan said there’s a decent possibility Debenham died around Loons Hollow.”

Sully felt his eyebrows crawling up his forehead. “Loons Hollow? It’s like life keeps throwing you into these cases.”

Dez reached back to scratch Pax’s ears. “Ones with ghosts attached, you mean? Correction, dear brother. Ninety per cent of the time, it’s you who keeps throwing me into these cases. This time, I can blame Lachlan instead.”

“Hollow Road has that story connected with it.”

“Faceless Flo?” Dez said as he turned his SUV around in the yard and started back down the road. “You don’t have to remind me. I went out there once, in high school with some friends. I told you about it, I think.”

“I remember. You didn’t want to look like a wuss.”

“Big mistake. I damn near crapped my pants. Those losers knew I was terrified of ghosts, so Kurt Iggleston waited out there, dressed up in a white dress and a wig, and jumped out at me.”

“You punched him in the face, didn’t you?”

Dez grimaced. “Busted his nose. Didn’t mean to. But the jerk kinda had it coming. You ever go out there?”

“Never. I had enough ghosts to deal with. And given this one has a reputation for making bad things happen to guys, I figured it was best to avoid it. Anyway, I had enough scary stuff to deal with. I wasn’t about to go looking for more.”

“Fair point. Why are we going out there again?”

“I don’t know. You haven’t really told me.”

Sully listened as Dez filled him in on what Lonnie Debenham’s wife had said and what Lachlan told him about the investigation at the time.

“And there’s something else,” Dez said. “Some so-called psychic came forward back then, saying they’d seen Lonnie’s ghost around Loons Hollow. Police thought the whole thing was crackers, so they didn’t bother to check into it. But Lachlan did. He didn’t come up with anything. Of course, he doesn’t have your particular skill set.”

“So that’s why I’m coming along—as your token psychic,” Sully quipped.

“Sure, that. And the fact I could use some backup if Faceless Flo comes at me.”

Dez had spoken through a smirk, but Sully could see the uncertainty in the expression, the anxiety it attempted to conceal.

They fell quiet, and Sully put it down to Dez’s fear of ghosts that he hadn’t yet asked whether Sully had found Aiden last night. Part of the reason for returning to the acreage, after all, had been to seek answers from the ghost of Dez’s little brother, drowned at age five in the river that ran behind the property.

Sully had found Aiden. He’d also found Flynn. But he hadn’t received any answers from them. He didn’t need to. Sully already knew exactly what had happened to them.

The problem wasn’t one of finding more information to provide Dez; it was how best to keep that information from him. Sully didn’t think his mercurial brother was equipped to handle some truths. He would never be able to live with it if Dez confronted Lowell and met the same end as his father.

One strange benefit to Dez’s being forced to go off in search of a ghost was his resulting anxiety. Dez would have a hard time seeing through that long enough to go back to thoughts of Aiden.

By the time they reached the turnoff to Hollow Road, Sully knew the topic of Aiden had been officially placed on Dez’s back burner.

“It doesn’t look like much yet, does it?” Dez said.

True enough, the road was nothing more than a gravel path, not even a sign to mark it. Northwest of the city, it started off bordered by fields, the expanse of farmland revealing nothing about this road’s dark reputation.

But, in the distance, a long wall of trees awaited them. Five minutes would take them from sunlight into shadow.

Dez slipped back into silence, and Sully could almost hear his mental gears turning.

“It could be Flo is nothing more than a stupid ghost story,” Sully said. “I mean, has anyone reliable actually seen her?”

“There were those disappearances, though.”

“It’s the middle of the woods, Dez. People get lost in the woods all the time, especially around here. There are no marked paths like at Winteredge. It would be pretty easy for someone to wander off and never come out again. Could be an animal got them, or they died of exposure to the cold. For a lot of people, it’s more fun to blame a ghost.”

“Not for me,” Dez said.

There was no denying that truth.

And there was no denying the one that revealed itself to Sully less than two minutes after they passed the tree line.

A flash of white caught his eye first, snapped his gaze to the right, out his window. For a second he saw it—the figure of a woman standing within the shadow of a tree, a long, pale dress flowing around her.

A heartbeat. Not long enough to make out any detail. The one thing he thought he could swear to was that she didn’t have a face.

Sully swivelled in his seat as Dez sped past, going too fast for a gravel road. Sully uttered a curse word, drawing Dez’s attention to him.

“Jesus Christ, what?” Dez yelped, voice significantly higher than was natural for him.

“I think I just saw….”

“No. Don’t you say it.”

“Sorry, but I did. There was a woman standing under a tree. She was wearing a long, white dress. I didn’t see a face.”

“You didn’t see one, or she didn’t have one?”

Sully turned to Dez, trying for a comforting smile and failing miserably. “Uh, the last one. Sorry.”

“Sully, you’d damn well better not be trying to scare me, or I will pull you out of this vehicle and beat your ass.”

“I wouldn’t joke about that, Dez. You know that. Maybe we should go back.”

“No. No, we are not going back. We are here looking for a missing man, not some creepy ass, murderous ghost with no face. You hear me? Jesus Christ, I can’t believe it’s real.”

“You already seemed to think it was real.”

“No, I was afraid it was real. Now I know for sure, and let me tell you, that does not sit well with me. We are not going back. You are not going back. You got that?”

“Hey, Dez? You want to slow down a bit?”

“I am trying to get us as far away as fast as humanly possible from that woman.”

“Sure, but if you roll your SUV, you realize we’re going to be like sitting ducks for her, right?”

The engine’s rev died back a bit as Dez’s foot eased off the gas. “This sucks, man. I’m going to kill Lachlan. How can you sit there all calm after seeing something like that?”

“I guess I’ve gotten used to it.”

“The no face thing, though? Or did you mean she was so badly injured that her face was gone?”

“No, I meant she had no face. There was nothing there. It was like this big black shadow under her hair, like—”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry I asked. Stop talking about it, all right? Let’s just get to Loons Hollow. And I swear, man, if you or Pax take off on me, I’m going to leave your asses there and go home by myself.”

Sully managed a laugh he hoped would help to calm Dez. “I won’t take off on you. Promise.”

* * *

Going by the memory of his mother’s stories, Sully recalled the town of Loons Hollow had been established around the same time as Kimotan Rapids. Back in the late eighteen hundreds, it was a booming community, full of businesses, families and enough shared wealth to make it a comfortable place to live and work.

The coming of the railway had brought great change; unfortunately for Loons Hollow, the change was not a welcome one.

Given Loons Hollow and Kimotan Rapids were so close together, railroad officials were left to choose between them when it came time to establishing a new station. KR, larger by a hair and boasting a new hotel and the first moving picture theatre in the area, won the bid.

Over the course of several decades, Loons Hollow died a slow and painful death as its residents sought their fortunes elsewhere. The World Wars further decimated what remained of its population.

Some residents stayed as late as the nineteen fifties, the stubborn ones whose memories stretched back to a more prosperous time, when the town was the place families moved to rather than away from.

Eventually, the final resident died, and the community became a ghost town.

As the forest opened to reveal the townsite, Sully could see for himself what was left of the once-vibrant community. Trees and “No Trespassing” signs had sprouted within the ruins, giving the place the feel of a zombie film. The remaining buildings stood sad, empty and broken, paint long since peeled away, windows shattered, many walls either collapsing or spray painted.

The town once held as many as five thousand residents. Given what little remained, Sully assumed the forest had swallowed many of the buildings and other structures, leaving just this central piece at the end of Hollow Road.

“Bloody creepy,” Dez said. “See anyone yet?”

“Nothing yet,” Sully said. “We’ll probably have to get out and look around. You up for a walk?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Sully led the way, leaving the vehicle first and opening the door so Pax could join him. Dez gained his side a moment later, snagging Sully’s arm as he started toward the first of the buildings on the main thoroughfare.

“There’s no chance she followed us here, is there?”

Knowing exactly who Dez meant, Sully scanned the area as best he could, given the number of trees. “I don’t see her.”

“But that doesn’t mean she’s not out there somewhere, does it?”

Sully shrugged, an honest response he knew would do nothing to soothe Dez’s anxiety.

The two of them, with Pax trotting along at Sully’s side, set off to explore the town.

4

Dez’s eyes dropped to the floor at the sound of a creak from beneath him.

They’d stepped into the front room of what might have been a main street store. Dez wasn’t sure what worried him more: the chance of finding a ghost or the possibility of falling through the rickety wooden floor. Given his size—six-foot-six and a frame stacked with muscle—if one of them was going down, it was bound to be him.

“I don’t know about this,” he said.

Sully’s gaze shifted from Dez to the floor. “Yeah, maybe you should stay by the door.”

“You’re not leaving me here by myself.”

Sully laughed. “Nothing’s going to get you, all right? I’ll be able to sense if something’s around.”

“You sure? What if she moves fast?”

“Dez.”

“All right, just make it quick. And watch your step. It wasn’t so long ago we got trapped in a cave. I might actually prefer that to being stuck in a ghost town, especially one by a haunted road.”

He backed up a couple steps, keeping his back to the doorframe while Sully crept forward with Pax to explore the building. From here, Dez had a good view of the street from the open door and through the large multi-pane window, most of the glass long-since smashed out. A large tree had sprouted in the middle of the street, and smaller ones were well on their way. Grass and weeds had overtaken the pavement outside, so that the street was more green than grey. What remained of the surrounding buildings made it hard to imagine what they must have looked like in their prime.

He knew this must have once been a bustling street, but for the life of him, he couldn’t picture it.

Any attempt to try to catch a glimpse into the past was interrupted by evidence of the present.

More specifically, the sight of a woman emerging from a building down the street on the opposite side.

“Hey, Sull?” When there was no answer, Dez tried again, louder this time. “Sully?”

His brother’s head poked past a doorway toward the end of the long shop. “What?”

“There’s a woman down the street.”

Sully and Pax approached him. “The woman from earlier?”

“No, this one’s dressed pretty modern. You see her?”

Sully peered out the door next to Dez, then immediately put his hood up, concealing his face. “Yeah, I see her…. Hey, Dez, that kind of looks like….”

The tone in Sully’s voice had Dez ducking to try to get see his brother’s eyes. “What’s wrong? If I was talking to anyone other than you, I’d say you looked like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

He’d been trying for a joke. Sully wasn’t laughing.

“Okay,” Dez said. “Who is it? Is it something I should be worried about?”

“I think it’s Ara.”

Dez turned toward the woman, catching the back of her as she disappeared inside another building. “Ara? You mean Takara Watanabe?”

The hood nodded, but no verbal response followed.

“I take it you’re not planning on talking to her?” Dez asked.

“I can’t. She never knew about me to start with—about what I can do, I mean. How am I supposed to explain everything else?”

“Maybe you should have trusted her in the first place.”

“It wasn’t that,” Sully said. “I did trust her. I just wanted one normal, good thing in my life, someone who didn’t know how weird I am.”

Dez smacked Sully on the back of the head. “First off, you’re not weird. Second, you do realize she’s a practicing Wiccan, right? Or at least she was back then. It’s not like she’s Miss Apple Pie or anything.”

For some reason, that’s what drew the laugh from Sully. “Miss Apple Pie?”

“Hey, I’m hungry. Listen, I’ll go talk to her. Maybe it’s not even her.”

“It’s her. I’m sure of it.”

“Okay, okay. Stay put and keep out of sight. I’ll see what she’s doing here. And don’t move, I mean it. If I can’t find you when I’m done talking to her, I’m going to kick your scrawny ass.”

“I’ll wait until you get back, okay? Chill out.”

Dez nudged Sully aside—a little harder than was necessary—then made his way across the road to where the woman had disappeared into what looked like a former bank. The inside, once Dez stepped beyond the threshold, revealed itself to be in surprisingly good shape. The brick walls had provided a barrier to the elements, keeping rain and snow from rotting the floors. The wood creaked beneath him as he took a few steps inside, but he wasn’t as worried he’d fall through.

He could see no sign of the woman, and he wondered whether she’d stepped outside through a back door.

He took a chance at calling out. “Is anyone here?”

When he received no response, he tried again. “I saw you come in here. I just want to talk to you.”

He jumped at movement from his left, and he turned to see a door swinging open. A young woman emerged from behind it.

Chalk one up for Sully. There was no doubt this was Takara Watanabe.

Japanese on her father’s side, Ara was as exotically stunning now as she had been when Dez had last seen her two years ago. Her long, dark hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun, a few strands hanging loosely around her petite, pretty features. She might have been wearing a little mascara and some colour on her lips, but Dez would have banked on it she had otherwise kept her face clean of makeup.

Ara’s expression—wide dark eyes and slightly parted lips—mirrored what Sully’s must have been just a few moments ago.

“Dez?” she said.

“Hey, Ara. How are you?”

Skipping a verbal answer, she closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his middle. “It’s so good to see you. I’ve always wondered how you were doing, but I didn’t know if I should call after….”

The way she trailed off was rich with meaning, and Dez read the sorrow in the way her eyes left his to fall to her boots.

“Yeah,” Dez said. He didn’t know what else to say.

She returned her gaze to his face and managed what looked like a feigned smile. “So how are you doing?”

“It’s been a rough couple of years,” Dez said. It was an honest answer and, he realized regretfully, possibly the only honest answer he’d be able to give. “How about you?”

“Same. Sully… he’s a hard guy to get over.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he is.” It seemed like a good time to get off that topic and onto something safer. “So what are you doing here? You couldn’t have missed all those no trespassing signs out there.”

“You’re here too.”

Dez flashed a few teeth. “Good point. But I’m a private investigator now, and I’m looking into a missing person case. What’s your excuse?”

“Actually, as it happens, I’m looking for a missing person too.”

It wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. “What missing person?”

“Emory Davis. He’s my….” She paused mid-thought again, and Dez felt compelled to finish the sentence for her.

“Your boyfriend? It’s okay, you know. You’re permitted to have a life.” Whether Sully would be as accepting remained to be seen.

“Yeah. We’ve been seeing each other since shortly after… you know. Anyway, he and I were here overnight, and he left for what I thought was a few minutes. Now I can’t find him.”

“I didn’t see any cars outside.”

“We drove it in behind some bushes. We always park there. We know we’re not supposed to be here, but it’s what we do.”

“What do you mean, it’s what you do?”

Ara leaned in behind the door and retrieved a backpack. Unzipping it, she reached inside and pulled out a small videocamera. “We have a YouTube channel and a blog. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit this to some people, but we’re paranormal investigators. We actually have a really good following. The two of us and a couple of other people started the Kimotan Rapids Paranormal Society back in university. Since we’re out of school and working, we weren’t sure we’d have the time, but we have so many followers, it makes us want to keep going with it. We post a new video every week. We’ve been to Loons Hollow a bunch of times, but we still get a lot of views whenever we come. There are actually a lot of buildings left, so we can explore different places in each video.”

“So what happened to this Emory guy? When did he go missing?”

“We were camping out in the old bar, and he went outside to pee. It was about five thirty in the morning; I’d checked the clock on my phone. I waited for what felt like a long time, but he didn’t come back. At first, I thought maybe he found something interesting, but he usually texts me to let me know. I didn’t hear anything from him so I tried texting him. He didn’t respond, and he didn’t answer his phone when I tried calling him a bunch of times. It keeps giving me that message he’s unavailable or out of the service area. I’ve been looking for him for the past few hours, but I can’t find him anywhere.”

Without warning, Ara’s face crumpled, and she brought a hand to cover her eyes as the tears started.

“Whoa, hey,” Dez said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure everything’s fine. It might be he just stepped in something somewhere. He could have broken his phone, or he might be somewhere he has no reception. Believe me, I’ve been there. Listen, if you want, I can give you a hand looking for him.”

“Thank you,” Ara said through a smile more genuine than the last.

With Dez having signed on for an impromptu ground search for his brother’s ex’s new squeeze, that left the problem of what to do about Sully.

“Hey, Ara. Give me a minute, all right? I actually came here with a buddy of mine, and I want to give him a call, clue him in. Maybe he can keep an eye out for Emory too.”

Dez removed himself to the front step of the bank and pressed the call button next to Sully’s contact info.

“Is it her?” Sully asked by way of greeting.

“Yep. Sorry.”

“How is she?”

Dez decided Sully needed a clue as to why they couldn’t have this conversation right now, and used his fake name as a hint. “We can talk about that later, Oliver.”

“Oh,” Sully said. “I gotcha. So what’s up?”

“Girl here says her—” He quickly thought through how best to phrase it. “—friend went missing after he went out for a leak around five thirty this morning. They’re paranormal investigators and were filming something for their YouTube channel overnight.”

“He? A guy friend?”

“Um, yeah. His name’s Emory Davis. Can you and your dog go have a look around, see what you can see? Only stay close, huh? You know, just in case.”

“Is this a boy friend or a boyfriend?”

“Can I refuse to answer?”

Silence on the other end suggested Sully was either deep in thought or too perturbed to answer. Given the situation, Dez was banking on the latter.

“Oliver?”

“I’m on it.”

Sully hung up without further reply, and Dez returned to Ara.

“He’ll give us a hand,” he said. “So this Emory guy. You’re sure he’s not playing some sort of joke on you?”

“He wouldn’t do that. He knows I wouldn’t find it funny.”

An unwelcome thought occurred to Dez: another young man missing in the same area haunted by Faceless Flo. This had to be more than a coincidence.

“Should we split up?” Ara asked.

“I think we should stick together,” Dez said. If that ghost was around here somewhere, Dez didn’t want Ara on her own. Then again, given the ghost’s reputed track record, it was more likely he’d be the one at risk.

Together, they scoured the main street, picking through the buildings before trudging through the tall grass and shrubs to get to the next road.

“Any idea how many buildings are actually left in this town?” Dez asked.

“We documented a few less than eighty. Not all of them are standing, but a lot of them are, at least well enough for us to go inside a little way. That’s why it’s taken me all this time to try to search for him. I have a lot of ground to cover.”

“Any spots you know of he might’ve fallen into? Maybe a well or an old storm cellar?”

“That’s kind of the problem. The grass is really tall, and there’s a lot of stuff you can’t see until you’re right on top of it. He might have fallen somewhere, and I wouldn’t be able to see him.”

Dez checked his watch. “It’s coming close to noon. In all this time, you didn’t think it might be a good idea to call the police?”

“Like you said, there are all those no trespassing signs. We knew we’d be in trouble. We don’t show our faces on the channel, so no one knows it’s us. If the police found out we’ve been coming here, we’d get shut down and probably lose our day jobs too.”

“I hate to tell you, but the police have ways of figuring those things out, faces or not. I’m thinking if we don’t turn anything up within the next hour, we’d better call 911, have them start a ground search.”

“I know. I was coming around to that. I don’t think we’re going to find him, are we?”

“If he thought he saw something, how likely would he be to go off on his own?”

“Highly likely. He takes chances sometimes, stupid ones.”

“Even taking into account the stories about the nearby ghost?”

“You mean Faceless Flo? Especially her. He would have been beside himself with excitement if he managed to see her.”

Dez decided this was a good time to get a few answers about Flo, being with an actual ghost hunter. Dez had heard a story or two, but since they’d come more than a decade ago from a bunch of jerks he’d gone to high school with, he wasn’t convinced he had the true story.

“What do you know about her?” he asked.

“She’s supposed to haunt the road on the way in. Haven’t you heard the story? I thought everybody had.”

“I’ve heard something. But I’m not sure how much stock to place in it based on my source. Seems to me you’d have a more accurate version.”

Ara smiled, and Dez knew he’d said the magic words. “The story goes that Flo was a resident of Loons Hollow back in the nineteen twenties. She was the daughter of an ultra-religious family, and she was expected to follow the doctrine of that religion without question. The problem was she’d fallen in love with a boy who lived on a nearby farm. She was only seventeen at the time, and her family forbade her to see him. But it wasn’t just about the religion. Her family actually wanted her to marry someone else, a farmer who’d inherited a bunch of land from his wealthy father. The boy she loved had little money, and even less prospect of more. She didn’t care. All she wanted was to be with him.

“They used to meet out in the woods near Loons Hollow. Or they’d go for rides together. She’d tell her family she was going for a walk down the road, and her boyfriend would come out in his father’s old cart and pick her up. Eventually they’d pull over and head into the woods to spend time together.

“One night when they were supposed to meet, the man her family wanted her to marry showed up at her house, wanting to see her. Her family told him she’d gone for a walk. But they also told him they were concerned she was seeing the other boy, so the man set off to find them.

“He spotted the cart from the roadway, and walked into the woods to look for them. He found them eventually, walking back toward the road. The man confronted them, and he and the boy fought. It’s said he brought a knife with him and stabbed the boy, killing him. Flo, distraught and terrified, took off toward the road, intending to run back home.

“Afraid she was going to tell everyone what he’d done, the man rushed back to his truck and sped after her. According to the legend, he hit her with the truck, leaving her badly injured. She wasn’t dead, so he took a shovel from the box of his truck, and hit her in the face repeatedly until she died. Then he dragged her off into the bush and buried her before returning to the boy’s body and doing the same. No one ever found either of them. Some people thought the two of them must have run off together to elope, knowing her family would never bless their marriage. But then the haunting started. People saw her on the road, but when they tried to talk to her, she’d disappear. Others would get close enough to see her properly, and they came back to town with the terrifying story she had no face. The man who people say killed her supposedly left town shortly after, terrified she’d come back for him. That’s how the legend was born.

“Once in a while, a young man would go missing, and it always got blamed on her. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. But the questions are still there, and men still go missing from that road.”

As Ara had talked, her anxiety had appeared to fall away until she sounded like she was telling a ghost story around a campfire. It seemed to Dez she’d momentarily forgotten about Emory, at least until she got to the last line. At that point, she took a shaky breath.

“You okay?” Dez asked.

“I was just thinking,” she said. “All the time I’ve been doing this, I think part of me thought it was fun, that it wasn’t real. I always said I believed in ghosts, but I don’t know that I really did. But what if that’s what happened? What if Emory isn’t just hurt or trapped somewhere? What if she’s real, and she got him? What am I supposed to do then? They say they don’t find any of them. What if he’s gone, and it’s my fault?”

“Why would it be your fault?”

“I’m the one who got him into ghost hunting. He only started because I talked him into it. I think he thought it would impress me. What if this is my fault?”

“No offence to him, but if he took off without telling you, that kind of makes it his fault, not yours. Maybe coming here and tempting fate all this time wasn’t a great move, but you weren’t doing anything loads of other people don’t already do. Most people come and go from here without any problem. You wouldn’t have had reason to expect any different.”

“Even so. I can’t help feeling like he’s my responsibility.”

Dez smiled, but didn’t bother trying to inject any humour into it. The topic he was about to launch into was far from funny. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with Sully, would it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I suffered a hell of a lot of guilt after what happened to him, thinking up all the ways I could have maybe made things better for him. You spent a lot of time visiting him at Lockwood. I just thought maybe you felt the same, like maybe you’re wondering if you could have done more. Now that you’ve got Emory, you’re doing everything you can to take care of him in all the ways you tell yourself you failed Sully.”

Ara’s mouth popped open, and the colour drained from her face. Dez had hit the nail on the head.

“I’ve got news for you,” he said. “First off, you aren’t responsible for Sully, for anything that happened to him. If anything, you’re one of the only reasons he was able to keep going in there. You were there for him, Ara, right beside Mom, Eva and me. And second, you aren’t responsible for Emory. People make their own choices, and sometimes nothing you do will ever make a dent. One way or another, we’ll find Emory. After that, you can kick his ass.”

He was relieved by the hoot of laughter that erupted from her. She was on the small side, but she packed a powerful laugh when she was surprised by something funny. Dez couldn’t return Sully to her, but if he could give her this much, he’d be happy.

“You know what?” she said. “I feel like you’ve taken a weight off my shoulders. I never thought about it the way you explained it. I think you’re right. I’m transferring, aren’t I?”

Dez shrugged. He was no psychologist, but he’d heard his mother use that word. Dez had grown up doing it himself, using Sully to fill the void left by Aiden.

“I really appreciate you and your friend helping me look for Emory,” Ara said. “But I’m thinking I should probably accept defeat and call 911. We’re covering a lot of the same ground I already did. He probably went off into the woods somewhere.”

Dez thought through how that would play out. “I’m wondering, do you think you’d be all right here on your own until the authorities come? I’d imagine they’ll send in some conservation officers as well as the police. COs would have better knowledge of the area. Anyway, I’d rather be gone when they get here.”

“Why?”

Dez thought fast, the truth about Sully not one he could share. He fell back on something he hoped was a believable alternative. “First off, I’m in the middle of my own investigation, and I’ve got to follow some other leads now that I’ve had a look around here and found no sign of my target. The other thing is, like I was saying, the place is supposed to be off limits. If anyone finds out I was digging around here, I’ll have some questions to answer I’d rather not have to.”

Ara nodded. “I understand. I’ll be totally fine by myself. It’s not so scary here in daylight. And I won’t say anything about you being here. Thanks for helping me look.”

Dez passed her one of the cards Lachlan had given him. Naturally, it bore Lachlan’s name, not his own. “That’s my boss, but it’s my number written on the bottom. Give me a call and let me know how you make out. You sure you’ll be okay by yourself until the police come?”

“Flo never goes after women. Just men. I’ll be fine.”

* * *

Sully stood inside the semi-collapsed structure of what was once a hardware store, watching the conversation between his brother and his former girlfriend.

Although he’d thought about her, she hadn’t been at the forefront of his thoughts as often as she probably should have been; the various personal crises he’d had on his plate the past couple of years had done plenty to get in the way of happier thoughts. But with her in his sight, the tug of attraction hit him all over again.

She’d been one of the few truly good things life had handed him, bringing with her the chance for him to find companionship, acceptance and the sort of affection—love even, if he dared to use the word—that required no explanations. She’d taken him as he was. Sure, she’d asked questions, and she’d known there were things he refused to share with her. But although he knew it hurt her that he didn’t tell her everything, she’d never given up on him.

Only she had.

She’d moved on with her life, had accepted the one thing about Sully he realized he didn’t want her to. She’d accepted his death. And she’d accepted she would have to carve out a new life without him in it.

Part of him wanted to hate her new boyfriend out of principle. Part of him, to be honest, did hate him, whoever and wherever he was. But hate didn’t come naturally to Sully, and he decided to help find the man, if for no other reason than erasing the worry from Ara’s face. She’d tried so hard to ease Sully’s when he was a prisoner in Lockwood Psychiatric Hospital; he owed her the same now. He owed her so much more than that.

The fact was she wasn’t betraying Sully by moving on with her life. Betraying a dead man was impossible, after all.

Dez stepped away from Ara and pulled out his phone to dial. A moment later, Sully’s cellphone rang in his pocket.

“Hey, where are you at?” Dez asked once Sully answered.

“Close by. I can see you.”

“Didn’t find anything?”

“No. Sorry.”

Dez’s voice was just above a whisper when it next came. “Were you really looking?”

“Of course I was looking. I’m not an asshole, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Listen, Ara’s going to call 911, get someone out here to start a proper search. You and I need to bail before anyone shows up.”

“We’re okay leaving her by herself?”

“You tell me.”

Sully thought about it. He could feel a lot of spirits here but, so far, they’d only been the kind he couldn’t see. He could sense those who didn’t die by someone else’s hand, but his abilities didn’t stretch to seeing them. They were here, and they were watching; that much he knew. And while they presented to him as nothing more than invisible walls of energy, he could tell they were no threat to the living. Homicide victims—the ones who chose to or were forced to stick around—they often held onto the emotions evoked during their violent deaths. They didn’t just feel rage, agony or terror; they were rage, agony or terror. Those emotions, beyond most others, could cause manifestations which could sometimes put living, breathing humans at risk.

Faceless Flo could be that kind of spirit. But while Sully had seen her in the woods, he had no sense of her in Loons Hollow.

Anyway, the stories suggested she targeted men, not women. If those tales held true, Ara would be safe. He hated taking chances with an “if,” but given his circumstances, he didn’t have much choice.

“I don’t get the feeling there are any real threats around,” he told Dez. “Not yet, anyway.”

The thought occurred to him, not for the first time, circumstances had made him utterly useless in a wide variety of instances. Where he used to be able to readily speak to people about their ghost problems, or even save them if need be, he was now required to head for the hills the moment anyone other than his immediate circle was present.

Dez had apparently heard the frustrated sigh.

“What is it?”

“We shouldn’t be bailing like this. We haven’t even found what we came for.”

“No one can see you. That’s just the way it is.”

“I’m getting sick of the way it is.”

“We’ll get it sorted out, okay? One thing at a time.”

The problem was there always seemed to be one more thing, one more barricade placed between Sully and a return to his former version of normal.

Days like today, those barricades felt like castle walls, and he didn’t have a ladder high enough to scale them.

5

Dez kept a vigilant watch on the road as he, Sully and Pax drove back toward Kimotan Rapids.

He could count on one hand—one finger, actually—the number of ghosts he’d actually seen in the course of his life, and he continued to struggle with a fear he’d add to his tally.

When they came to the end of Hollow Road with no indication from Sully he’d seen Flo again, Dez allowed himself to relax.

But into the quiet another thought pressed, no less upsetting than the one he’d just abandoned.

“Hey, Sull, I never asked you. Last night, while we were at the acreage, did you see Aiden?”

Sully had yet to pull down his hood. The question had the hood moving toward him slightly, before the head beneath turned back toward the windshield. “Yeah. I did.”

“And? Did he tell you anything?”

A slow head shake, side to side. “He didn’t stick around long. Sorry, Dez. I’ll keep trying. I promise.”

“Why does he keep disappearing like that? Why wouldn’t he want help? I mean, he came to you when I was stuck in that grave, right? He knows he can go to you.”

A shrug. “I don’t know. Unless they decide to share stuff with me, all I can do is guess.”

“Guessing isn’t going to get us anywhere. I can’t stand leaving him out there. It isn’t right that he’s spent seventeen years by that damn river.”

“He’s not trapped there. We’ve both seen him in other places.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I know. Believe me, I’m trying. I’ll figure it out.”

“How? If he won’t communicate with you, how are you going to figure it out exactly?”

It was impossible to be satisfied with another shrug, but it was all Dez got before his phone rang through the vehicle’s hands-free Bluetooth setup. The number showing on the dashboard screen belonged to Lachlan.

Hitting the talk button, Dez greeted his boss.

“Where are you?” Lachlan asked.

“Just left Loons Hollow.”

“Mr. Chadwell with you?”

Sully, Dez had recently learned, had been using the name Oliver Chadwell when in public, leaving Dez to suspect Lachlan wasn’t somewhere private at the moment. Either that, or he was practicing a more subtle form of sarcasm.

“Yeah, he’s here. He didn’t see any signs of Lonnie. He saw someone else though.”

“Don’t tell me she’s real?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Anyway, we didn’t get to look around as much as we wanted. Sully’s ex-girlfriend was there.”

“Did she see him?”

“No, but there are a lot more people who are likely to turn up there soon. Ara’s new….” Dez paused and cast Sully a look, uncertain about saying the word out loud.

His brother finished where he’d left off. “Her new boyfriend is missing. We looked around for him, but there’s no sign of him. Ara was going to call 911. We didn’t think it would be a good idea to be there when search teams show up.”

“Good plan. What happened to him?”

“If we knew that, there wouldn’t be much need to have search teams brought in now, would there?” Dez said.

“Smart ass,” Lachlan said. “I meant, what was he doing when he disappeared?”

Dez provided his boss with the rundown Ara had given him about their ghost hunting channel and Emory’s inexplicable disappearance after he’d gone outside.

“No signs of wildlife?” Lachlan asked.

“I don’t think a grown man got dragged off by coyotes,” Dez said.

“You’re on a roll today, Braddock. What’s got your panties in a twist?”

“You know damn well I hate ghosts, and you sent me out here anyway.”

“Hey, not my fault your family adopted a psychic. If we can’t use his talents, what good is he?”

Sully snorted, a sign he, at least, found Lachlan amusing.

“You’d better not be anywhere out in public right now,” Dez warned.

“Don’t worry, Mother Hen. I’m at my storage locker, going through my files and the one I snagged from the KRPD. Rather than eating up my minutes, why don’t the two of you head over here? We should touch base, figure out a next move.”

“It’s past lunch. I’m starving.”

“So pick up a burger on the way over. In fact, bring me one too. Get me a side salad instead of fries, though. And no pop. I’d like a tea instead. Oh, and skip the cheese and ketchup on the burger, and tell them to go heavy on the onions.”

“Seriously?”

“Hey, onions are healthy.”

“I mean, do I look like a waiter at Chez Louis’s? Who the hell orders fast food like that?”

“Just do it and get your asses over here.”

Dez disconnected the call, letting out his frustration in a low growl.

Sully chuckled. “He’s a little on the high maintenance side, but I kind of get a kick out of him.”

“Funny you should mention the word ‘kick,’ ” Dez said. “That’s exactly the one I was going to use.”

* * *

A piece of onion poked out the side of Lachlan’s mouth as he chewed on his burger. The thing to do would be to look away but, like viewing a car crash, Dez couldn’t avoid staring.

One benefit to feeding Lachlan: he refused to talk with his mouth full. A lover of art, history and classical music, Lachlan prided himself on good breeding. He could be plenty uncouth when he wanted to be—and, as far as Dez was concerned, the opportunity arose far too often—but he was also capable of impeccable manners in the right company.

Dez had quickly discovered he was not that kind of company.

A small blessing came when Lachlan discovered the escaping onion. He sucked it back, chewed and swallowed before addressing the visitors to his strangely well-furnished storage locker.

“It’s been a while, and I moved to other investigations, but I did play a small role in the Lonnie Debenham case,” he said from a padded leather chair. “I was a staff sergeant at the time, working watch command. I was stuck in the office, but I was in charge of the initial search, tasking my officers with making inquiries and the like. I was all right to handle it when it sounded like a simple case of a guy who decided to ditch the family in favour of quality time with either a mistress or Captain Morgan.

“But when he didn’t turn up after a couple of days, and our searches came up empty, I brought Major Crimes up to speed. They didn’t take over the case right away, so I had a couple of days to make inquiries—enough time for me to start thinking there might be more to this than a depressed businessman on a bender. At that point, I talked to Major Crimes again, and they took on the file. If there was anything suspicious to it, they had more experienced interviewers who might be able to drag something out of someone, plus they had better contacts on the street than my comparatively junior officers. I did my best to keep tabs on what Major Crimes was up to, largely because I was interested. But it was a busy department, even back then, and it soon fell off my radar.”

“But you kept a file,” Dez observed. “It must have been somewhere on your radar.”

“I kept files on a lot of cases. You’ve been through my filing cabinets. You know I take a broad interest in local crime.”

“You didn’t know it was a crime, though, did you?” Sully asked.

“When someone goes missing without a trace, you don’t leave a lot of stones unturned. At least, I didn’t. There was that one stone other investigators back then didn’t want to touch, though.”

“The psychic thing,” Dez said.

“Yeah, the psychic thing. Here’s the part you’re going to find interesting. I couldn’t remember the guy’s name, and it didn’t make it into the actual police file. It’s in mine, though. Psychic’s name was Harry Schuster.”

Dez’s jaw dropped, and he quickly shut it, hoping Lachlan hadn’t noticed. The man played up drama just to elicit a response, and damned if Dez was going to supply it willingly. Even so….

“Harry Schuster, as in ‘Harbinger Harry’?”

“That’s the one. I had a chat with the guy after, when no other cop seemed interested in following up. Guy was short a few bricks, for sure, but he had some details which hadn’t been released publicly yet. The investigative team had some holdback info at the time, because they were operating under the possibility of a kidnapping. We’d put a photo of Lonnie out to the public, but not a clothing description. Harry told me exactly what the guy was wearing when he was last seen. And he said he was covered in dirt and a few leaves, and that he had a significant leg injury. Oh, and he said he believed his body was underground somewhere.”

“And Harry’s vision was of Lonnie near Loons Hollow.”

“Bingo. By rights, I should have taken him in for questioning as a potential suspect. Conventional wisdom tells you someone doesn’t come by that sort of info unless they have direct knowledge, either as a witness or a suspect. But I didn’t get that vibe from the guy. I’ve always run on a solid combination of knowledge and instinct, and everything pointed away from that guy being in on something like that. He was more or less begging me to find Lonnie. Said the visions would keep coming otherwise.”

“I guess the info we had about Harry two years ago was on the money,” Dez said. “He had a reputation even back then for seeing stuff like that.” He turned to Sully. “You know, I never asked. Did you ever see Harry again—in spirit form, I mean?”

“He never reappeared to me after I ended up in Lockwood, but then I was so heavily medicated, I wasn’t seeing anything unless they wanted me to. Maybe he and Betty are watching over their son, or they’re all together now. You never heard what happened to Thackeray, did you?”

“No. It’s like he walked right off the earth. I figure he either committed suicide, like I was thinking, or he took a page out of your book and decided to make himself disappear. He didn’t exactly have much going for him here. Whatever happened to the Schusters, it looks like Harry’s crept back into our lives, if in name only. You okay with that?”

“In the end, he wasn’t all that bad,” Sully said. “He was only trying to protect his family. I can understand that.”

“He tried to kill you, too, Sull. Let’s not forget that.”

Lachlan had been uncharacteristically quiet, and he now broke into the conversation.

“You two done with the trip down memory lane?… Thanks. Anyway, back in my policing days, we looked at every possibility on the Debenham case, including that he might have been kidnapped. His father, you understand, is one of the wealthiest men in the city. Thomas Debenham built his business from the ground up, and he earned every penny he made—plenty of it on the backs of others. Certainly, the family didn’t want to buy our theory about the affair, the possibility Lonnie was on a drinking or drug binge, or had gone off to kill himself. They probably felt it was more respectable for Lonnie to have been kidnapped.”

“I don’t know, man,” Dez said. “Seems pretty far-fetched they’d rather he was at someone else’s mercy than out there somewhere, maybe alive.”

“You don’t know the Debenhams,” Lachlan said. “If you did, you’d be whistling a different tune.”

“They that bad? I mean, Lonnie’s wife seemed okay from what I could tell. What you’re suggesting makes them sound pretty rotten.”

“Carlene was a lovely woman, if not a little Orange County housewife-y back then. And Rose was a nice enough woman, as I recall. I got the impression she married Thomas well before money came into the picture. Money changes people, Braddock; it twists them. Like an addiction. When you start making it, you’ll do anything to keep it. Thomas was like that, the kind of guy who would have sold his mother into slavery if it meant saving a nickel.

“Fortunately, it never came to that. The good thing about banks like the one he owns is they’re never broke. It afforded him a lot of luxuries, got him invites to the swankiest social events, put him at the front of the line at every trendy restaurant. He had the best of everything, and that included his family—at least from the outside looking in. It wouldn’t do for him to have a son who wasn’t fitting into his image of the perfect life.”

“How far do you think he would have gone to maintain that image?” Sully asked.

Dez peered at his brother. “You aren’t suggesting Thomas would have bumped off his own son?”

“Stranger things.”

“That’s pretty strange, and it’s plenty dark. Even if Thomas Debenham is as rotten as Lachlan thinks, I can’t imagine he’d go that far.”

“Don’t discount it,” Lachlan said. “During my years with Major Crimes, I attended more than my share of fatal family disputes. I’m sure you did too during your years on patrol. Most of the ones I dealt with came about during a night of heavy drinking or drugging. But some of them were pretty damn cold-blooded. One thing we need to keep in mind: When people disappear, when they die, the people close to them tend to forget about the bad things. You don’t often hear people openly disrespecting deceased friends and relatives, do you? It could be Lonnie Debenham had some skeletons in his closet we never uncovered.”

“If that’s true, we’re going to need to watch our backs,” Sully said. “If someone who loved Lonnie is responsible for his disappearance, they won’t think twice about making us disappear too.”

6

Pax’s head hung out the window as Sully crossed the bridge from the North Bank into the Riverview area where Dez had his apartment.

Sully had left Dez with Lachlan, the pair planning on going to talk to Thomas and Rose Debenham about their son. Obviously, Sully couldn’t be there. Nor could he be anywhere near Loons Hollow now, not with police and his ex-girlfriend there.

Left with time on his own, Sully mentally kicked himself for how close he’d come at the storage container to revealing his biggest secret—Lowell Braddock’s biggest secret. He knew firsthand how prepared some people were to hurt those they said they loved. Lowell had, after all, murdered his own brother and five-year-old nephew, and had attempted to kill Sully. The why was what bothered him. Flynn and Sully had both figured things out, so their deaths would shelter his secret. But why Aiden? What danger could a five-year-old boy have posed?

Sully had plenty of questions, but Lachlan’s storage container was not the place to ask them, not when it meant putting problematic thoughts into Dez’s head. Sully planned to take Lowell down, but he intended to keep his brother well out of the line of fire. That wouldn’t be possible if Dez began to suspect.

With time on his hands and Dez nowhere nearby to rein him in, the obvious thing would have been to pay a visit to the judge. But it was far too early, and daylight wouldn’t conceal him as he would need it to.

His mind turned to the ghost on the road. Flo was a local legend, but apparently not a fictional one. Legends could be born of truth; he knew that. But he also knew they could be twisted with time, their truths lost to the passage of years until something new and wholly inaccurate stood in their place.

If the legend was true, there had to be a record somewhere. Murders and missing people didn’t often go unreported, even back then. It would be a hard slog, but there would probably be something buried within newspaper archives from the time.

That would mean a trip to the library, a place Pax was unlikely to be welcome.

Dez’s neighbour Emily Crichton had proved a godsend, she and Pax having taken to each other from the start. She’d become both dog sitter and counsellor for Sully, more than eighty years of patience, wisdom and pluck wrapped up into one small, unassuming form.

She beamed, as she always did, when Sully appeared at her door. He hadn’t planned on going inside, but he ended up there anyway, sitting at the table while she brewed him a cup of tea.

“You seem out of sorts,” she said, once the tea was poured and she’d joined him at the table.

“I’m okay. Just thinking.”

“If there’s anything you want to talk about, you know you can trust me.”

His eyes snapped to her face, and he realized he’d given a lot away in one inadvertent move.

“There’s something you’ve been hiding, something you’ve been keeping to yourself,” she said. “It’s eating you up inside, isn’t it? I’ve lived a lot of years, Sullivan, and I’ve known a lot of people with secrets. I recognize it in you as I recognized it in them. You don’t have to tell me, of course. Just know you can trust me to hold onto anything you want to say.”

“Even if it concerns Dez? I can’t ask you to keep something from him. I know you care about him too.”

“I most certainly do. Tell me this for starters. Has he done something wrong, something that could get him in trouble?”

“No, nothing like that. He hasn’t done anything wrong. And I want to keep it that way.”

“You’re worried if you tell him, he will do something bad?”

“Yeah, that’s what I think.”

“Perhaps you aren’t giving him enough credit. He can be a little intense, but he is a very good man. And he has you, after all, to guide him when he goes a little off course.”

“I don’t know if I’d be enough. Not for this.”

Emily leaned forward and smiled, bringing her fingers to rest atop Sully’s. “You know, if you don’t give me some idea what you mean, I can’t really give you any advice. I would like to help if I can. You don’t have your birth mother, after all, someone you might have gone to for advice were she still alive. If I’d been able to protect her at the end, the way I should have….”

Sully turned his hand so he could take Emily’s fingers in his. “It wasn’t your fault, what happened to her. Lucky made her own choice, and I’m probably alive because of it—and because of you. You gave her the power and the ability to make that choice. That’s what was important right then. Anyway, she didn’t die at Lockwood. She got out because you and Ben helped her. In the end, she was betrayed by her own family. What happened to her is their fault, not yours. The people who were supposed to love and protect her ended up murdering her. You couldn’t have known that, and you couldn’t have done anything to prevent it. Don’t put that on yourself. You don’t deserve it.”

Emily’s fingers grasped his. “Your mother would be so proud of the man you grew up to be. You’re a compassionate and wise soul, Sullivan. Not many with your life experience could say the same. That you haven’t given in to anger and bitterness says so much about you.”

“It says more about my family. I am who I am because of them, because of the Braddocks. That’s why I have to protect them.”

“From someone else? Or from themselves?”

Sully looked away. The reply was there on the tip of his tongue, waiting to be spoken aloud—if only he could trust enough to do it. This was the woman who had broken into her own workplace under the cover of darkness to rescue the teenager and her newborn. If he couldn’t trust her after all of that, who could he trust?

The words were out of his mouth before he completely finished thinking them through.

“From each other.”

Emily said nothing, a silence settling over the table as those words hung there between them. And yet there was no shock in the silence, merely the sense she was patiently waiting for him to come to her with the explanation. He could back out now. It would be easy to invent an excuse; he had somewhere he needed to go, after all, a job he needed to do to help Lachlan and Dez with their investigation.

But the idea of sharing this painful secret, of ridding himself of part of its burden, kept him rooted to the chair.

Like a dam bursting, the three words he’d already spoken led to more.

“One of the Braddocks is responsible for the deaths of two of his relatives: our dad and Dez’s little brother, Aiden. He drowned Aiden when he was five, and he killed our dad when he found out about it. Then he tried to kill me, and when he failed, he had me committed to Lockwood.”

“Who is this man?”

Sully met Emily’s eyes at the question. Again, he saw no surprise there, only sorrow.

“I’m scared if I tell you, it could put you in danger.”

“Only if I act on it. At my age, that’s hardly likely.”

Sully smiled, but thinking through his answer wiped away all amusement. “My uncle. Lowell Braddock.”

The words left his mouth, and a weight left his shoulders. Until he’d said it out loud, he hadn’t fully recognized how heavy a load he’d been carrying.

“I’ve never met him,” Emily said. “But Dez has talked about him.” An apologetic smile crossed her face. “He cares a great deal for him, I think. But there’s anger there too.”

“I think he’s holding a bit of a grudge over what Lowell did to me, committing me to Lockwood, I mean. Dez doesn’t know anything else. I’m scared if he did, he would act on it. Aiden’s death has plagued him his whole life, and he was nearly destroyed when Dad died. If he knew Lowell was the one behind it, he’d insist on confronting him, and I don’t think I’d be enough to stop him. And I’m terrified a confrontation would end with one of them dead. Lowell already killed Dad; he wouldn’t think twice about doing the same to Dez. But if Dez got the upper hand, he’d probably end up going to prison, maybe for the rest of his life. I know he’s got a right to know what happened to his family, to our family, but I can’t see a way to tell him and keep him safe at the same time.”

“I think I understand what you mean,” Emily said. “He is, most certainly, extremely protective of the people he cares about. But perhaps you aren’t giving yourself enough credit. It might be you could stop him, should he try to do something regrettable.”

“That’s the problem,” Sully said. “I can’t make a decision like that—I can’t risk my brother’s life—over a ‘might.’ ”

* * *

They talked further, close to half an hour. But while Sully left feeling lighter, he still had no idea what to do.

He would have to wait for an opportunity, a sign even, pointing him toward the answer. If it never came, if he dealt with Lowell before sharing the truth with his brother, he knew Dez might never forgive him. But of all the three outcomes, this one at least ended with Dez alive and safe. Even if Dez severed all ties between them, at least Sully would know his brother was in a position and a state of mind to make that choice. In the end, that might be all Sully could ask for.

Grateful for a task to occupy his thoughts, Sully left Pax with Emily and made his way toward the Riverview library.

Located in a grand stone building, the library had stood at this spot since soon after the city was established in the late eighteen hundreds. It had kept itself going with a combination of city funds and creative programming, as well as a film theatre built into the basement in the nineteen sixties.

It was frequently a hub of activity in the poorer Riverview neighbourhood, the only place many of the area’s less fortunate could access the Internet. It was rare to be able to find an unused computer, and today was no exception.

If there was one benefit to living in an area as run down as Riverview had become, it was that Sully didn’t stick out suspiciously as he made his way to the library with his hood up, long hair and beard marking him as something other than a college student here to work on a term paper. He had no choice but to try to conceal his face; he was well aware security cameras had been installed at various locations throughout the building.

Uncertain what he was looking for, Sully approached one of the librarians working behind the main desk. She appeared to be in her thirties, and he was relieved to find no evidence of anxiety on her part as he stepped up to her.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m hoping to research an event I believe happened back in the nineteen twenties. I don’t know when exactly, but I’m thinking it was probably in the paper at some point.”

“You want the history room,” she said. “I’ll take you down there and show you how to use the microfilm system.”

She emerged from behind the desk, and led Sully out of the main room and down a hall. A reading room was to the right, and a door marked History Room stood closed and locked to the left. The librarian turned a key in the lock, flicking a light switch once inside.

The room was lined with shelves containing various local books, the kind containing family histories and reminiscences about communities’ past businesses and events. Another shelf marked “newspaper archives” contained a large number of boxes Sully guessed contained the microfilm mentioned by the librarian.

“We’ve been working to get all of our newspaper archives scanned and entered onto the computer system, but it’s a hard slog. For many years, we had two daily newspapers in Kimotan Rapids, as well as a weekly Trader. We also stock copies of past papers for nearby communities. You mentioned the nineteen twenties?”

“I’m not completely sure. It’s just a guess. Doesn’t help much, I imagine.”

The librarian smiled. “Not much, unfortunately. Maybe we could narrow it down. If you tell me exactly what you’re looking for, I might be able to help.”

“It’s going to sound weird.”

“Trust me, I’ve probably heard it all.”

“I’m trying to track down any stories that might provide some background to the whole Faceless Flo story.”

The woman chuckled. “If I had a nickel for every time I heard that. It’s a common request. Plenty of people are interested in local ghost stories. I can tell you we haven’t been successful yet in locating anything in our records about a Flo or a Florence who was murdered or went missing in the twenties. I’ve helped students, skeptics and ghost hunters alike search through papers for both Kimotan Rapids and Loons Hollow.”

“Loons Hollow had its own paper?”

“For a while. It didn’t last long. With the town dying, it didn’t have the subscribers or the advertisers to sustain itself.”

“Mind if I have a look anyway?”

“Suit yourself. Give me a minute to turn the machine on, and I’ll help get you started.”

Sully had used a microfilm machine once in high school for a history project, so the current lesson acted as a simple refresher. The librarian took her leave, giving Sully some space to himself.

Finding no sign of a camera in here, Sully lowered his hood and pulled his hair up into a knot, keeping it out of his eyes as he worked. The librarian had pointed out the shelves containing the papers from the decade in question, and Sully headed first for the Loons Hollow editions.

With no real idea where to start, he selected a roll at random and fed it into the machine.

Within less than an hour, a headache had started, his brain dizzy from the super-fast scrolling on the screen.

So far, the librarian was right. Sully had been hoping maybe the others who’d come here looking for evidence of Flo had simply given up, faced with the magnitude of the search. A decade’s worth of daily newspapers for two communities amounted to a mammoth task, after all.

But while Sully credited himself with more tenacity than many people possessed, even he wasn’t sure he was up to this. He’d only made it up to March of 1921, and he was already itching to get out of there. How he was going to make it through nearly nine more years was beyond him—especially since success was reliant on the legend being correct that someone named Flo or Florence had been killed during that decade. What if she died the decade prior, or later? Short of getting himself a full-time job at the library, there was no way he’d have the time or ability to go through each and every one of the microfilms.

He replaced the roll anyway, pulling down the next one on the shelf. One more roll, one more failure. Nowhere did he see any mention of a young woman who had gone missing or been killed.

Pulling the roll from the machine, Sully groaned. More rolls awaited him in the box, and in many others.

Interlocking his fingers over the crown of his head, he stared at the collection of boxes. Somewhere inside one of them, the answer might be waiting for discovery, a Holy Grail for ghost hunters. And here he was, one of the only people who might be able to do something to help Flo or the men she supposedly targeted, and there was little he could do.

Desperation had him speaking to an empty room. “I could use the help here, if anyone’s listening.”

It seemed no one was. If he’d been hoping for divine intervention, he was left sorely disappointed. Letting his breath out in a heavy sigh, Sully decided to sort through at least one more year’s worth of microfilm before calling it a day.

He chose the next roll and moved back to the machine.

About to sit, a crash snapped his attention back to the shelves.

He spun in time to see the contents of a fallen box spill out across the floor, one roll of microfilm coming to rest against his toe.

“The hell?” he muttered. It was possible he’d dislodged the box while he was exchanging the rolls from the one below it. But maybe it was something else.

He had the sense of a presence, of someone in front of him, near the shelves, but he could not see the ghosts. Moments like this underlined the limitations of his ability. Because only homicide victims were visible to him, an entire world of spirits was unknown to him.

Back in high school, Dez had refused to come to this library because of chatter about the Phantom Librarian—reportedly Prue Longquill, a beloved employee who spent more than two decades working here until she passed away from cancer in the nineteen eighties. Since then, rumours swirled of a presence that helped people find their books by knocking them off shelves or making them appear on nearby surfaces.

Most people laughed at the stories. Sully was pretty sure he’d just met her.

“Thanks, Ms. Longquill,” he said, peering into the apparently empty space before him.

Hoping he was right in his assessment, Sully returned the roll he was holding, and placed the spilled microfilms back into their box, sorting them by date—all but the one that had fallen next to his foot. That one he fed into the machine.

It was indeed the Loons Hollow Sentinel he was looking at, editions from the late part of 1927. He scrolled more slowly this time, eyes scanning each page in search of the clue Prue Longquill might have been trying to impart.

He found it in an October edition, a story bearing the headline “Search on for local woman.” There wasn’t much to the story, just a couple of paragraphs. But it was enough to get him thinking.

A search began on Sunday morning for Sarah Marquill, daughter of Joseph and Catherine Marquill of Loons Hollow. Sarah, known to family and friends as Sadie, is said to have left home for a walk on Saturday evening, but didn’t return. An overnight search by family failed to turn up any clues as to her whereabouts. By Sunday morning, the search grew to involve numerous members of the community and encompassed both the road leading to town and the woods surrounding it.

Police have been notified as has the local forestry service.

Sully’s heart thudded, a familiar excitement at the discovery of a likely answer. It was no wonder no one had ever uncovered the true story behind Faceless Flo. They’d been looking in the wrong place. One of the facts lost to time was the woman’s actual identity.

The name of the woman on the road wasn’t Flo. It was Sadie.

7

Thomas and Rose Debenham owned a home on the twenty-second floor of one of the ritziest condo towers in Kimotan Rapids’ downtown core.

The suites were large, only four per floor, making each a corner unit. From the outside, it looked as though each property boasted floor-to-ceiling windows, and that was the first thing Dez noticed upon being granted admittance by a housekeeper to the Debenham suite.

It was bright—too bright, come to that. Custom blinds had been fitted to the windows in the large living room, but the shades were up, allowing in much of the midday light.

“I’ll get Rose for you,” the housekeeper said. Her accent identified her as having come from a Spanish-speaking country, and Dez was left to hope the woman was being properly paid.

The housekeeper didn’t return; the door through which she’d disappeared opened instead to reveal a woman who looked to be in her late sixties or early seventies. Her hair was well-done, immaculate even, not a curl out of place. She’d put makeup on, but the pull of exhaustion weighed down her features nonetheless.

Although it was clear she was tired, there was nothing weak in her handshake. Firm fingers gripped Dez’s, giving his forearm one solid shake before releasing him.

“I’m Rose Debenham,” she said, her voice as strong as her grasp. “You’ll have to forgive my husband. He isn’t up to receiving anyone today. I believe Carlene told you about his health situation. He has bad days and good days. Today isn’t so good.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,” Lachlan said as Rose indicated for them to sit, taking a plush chair for herself. “As your daughter-in-law no doubt made you aware, my name is Lachlan Fields, and this is my associate Desmond Braddock. We’re private investigators, and we’ve been asked to look into your son’s disappearance. I know this isn’t an easy time for you, nor is it an easy topic of conversation. But, if we can, we hope we might be able to shed some light on this. Maybe we could even find him, if things go our way.”

“I understand why Carlene is doing this,” Rose said. “But I made my peace with Lonnie’s disappearance some time ago. I don’t think Carlene ever did. She had to raise their children without their father, and it’s a hard thing to have to explain to little ones. Some people need closure to get on with life. I suppose I’m more worried about what closure will mean. As it stands, I can imagine the utter worst, or I can try to picture the best possible outcome for Lonnie. There have been days I’ve tried to think of him being holed up on a desert island somewhere, content and stress-free. It may be unrealistic, but I’m sure it’s a lot better than reality. I understand most parents need closure. I’m just not sure I’m one of them.”

“Am I to understand then that you don’t want us to investigate?”

“What I want is irrelevant. Carlene clearly wants this and, if I’m any judge of the man I married, Thomas wants it too. The closer Thomas gets to the end, the more I think he wants to know someone will be there waiting for him. As much as I wish I could tell you to leave, it’s what Thomas wants that’s important now. He needs this, and it would be wrong of me to deny him. So though it pains me to say it, I will give you whatever help you need.”

“I appreciate that, ma’am,” Lachlan said. “And I can assure you, we will handle this with all the sensitivity we possibly can. At some point, I would like very much to be able to speak with your husband. If you could endeavour to let me know when he is up to talking, I would be grateful to you.”

Dez resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow. Rarely had he seen Lachlan so tactful, and sensitivity all too often seemed a feature he sorely lacked. Dez imagined money had something to do with it. If Lachlan could impress the Debenhams—a couple who lay at the heart of KR’s elite—he might be able to find a way to even more lucrative cases down the road.

Given his own financial security rested on Lachlan’s, Dez couldn’t begrudge him that.

“Perhaps we could begin with your taking me through what happened back then,” Lachlan said.

“Carlene is the best one to ask. Lonnie was living there at the time.”

Dez decided he should enter the conversation at some point, even if he was risking breaking Lachlan’s interrogative flow. “We’ve spoken with her already. She gave us her version of events. We’d like to hear yours.”

“All right. But you understand I wasn’t there at the time, when Lonnie left, I mean. Thomas and I only found out about it later, when Carlene called us to say he hadn’t come home.”

“Actually, I think what we’re more interested in is what might have happened to lead to his disappearance,” Lachlan said. “We understand he wasn’t himself for a while beforehand. Can you shed any light on his emotional state?”

Rose gave a slight shrug alongside a smile that bordered on apologetic. “Honestly—and I’m ashamed to admit this—Thomas and I didn’t see Lonnie and Carlene all that much during that period. They were very busy with their family. Young kids do that, take a lot of energy and care. And they insisted on doing it alone. We offered to pay for a nanny, or at the very least a housekeeper, but they turned us down. They were always very independently minded.”

“So you don’t know what was bothering him?” Dez asked. “Carlene said he seemed depressed for two months before he went missing, and she said it seemed to start one day after he got home from work. Was there something going on at the bank that might have caused it?”

“It’s possible, I suppose. Now I don’t know much about the day-to-day workings there, but Thomas would tell me sometimes how he thought other employees were jealous of Lonnie. He was quite young, and he was advancing quickly with his career. You have to understand: Lonnie was a very bright young man. Thomas built his business from the ground up, relying on nothing but ambition, intelligence and good salesmanship. Lonnie was his father’s son; he possessed the same characteristics. He was excellent at his job, and any promotions he received, he earned himself. Thomas was concerned others might have believed Lonnie received the promotions simply because of who his father was.”

Lachlan scratched at his temple. “Did anyone act on their jealousy?”

“Not that I know of. If such a person valued his or her job, they would have done well to leave Lonnie alone. His father didn’t coddle him at work, but at the end of the day, Lonnie was Thomas’s son, and he would have protected him if he felt there was a true threat.”

“That’s no doubt true,” Lachlan said. “But could it be someone bore a grudge—one significant enough to cause them to act?”

“The police looked into that, back when they considered it could have been a kidnapping scheme. As far as I know, they didn’t come up with anything that panned out.”

“Well, I’m looking into it now,” Lachlan said. “I’d like to explore some of the same territory, eliminate certain theories for myself.”

“What makes you think you’re going to achieve anything different this time around?”

“Because,” Lachlan said with a broadening grin, “it’s me.”

* * *

“I can’t believe she bought that ‘it’s me’ crap,” Dez said as the two returned to the SUV a little more than an hour later.

“Hey, I can’t help being this brilliant.”

“Or this cocky.”

“Watch it, Braddock. Don’t forget who signs your paycheques.” The comment had come through a smug smile, and it was clear the man hadn’t taken offence. With someone else, all this ribbing might have ended badly; Lachlan thought too much of himself to be put out by someone’s half-hearted attempts to deflate his ego.

One thing about Lachlan: he dished it out an awful lot, but he was a big enough man to take it in return. Dez had to admit, it was something he liked about his boss.

Not that he’d ever say it out loud, of course.

Just before they reached the SUV, Dez’s phone rang. The “S” on the screen indicated it was Sully.

“What’s up?”

“How was your meeting?” Sully asked.

“Long. For someone who didn’t want to see us, Rose had an awful lot to say. Her husband wasn’t well enough to talk to us, but she spoke to him on our behalf for a while. They put together a list for us, containing the names of several people who Thomas thought might have had a grudge against Lonnie or himself. It’s pretty much the same list the police had thirty years ago, but they gave us one additional name. Some woman named Eleanor Kilpatrick had been up for the same promotion as Lonnie, but it went to him. I guess she wasn’t on police radar at the time because she didn’t make much of a stink about the situation back then—not publicly, anyway. It wasn’t until a few months after Lonnie went missing that Thomas started to hear stories that Eleanor was talking trash about Lonnie. Thomas confronted her, and inevitably fired her.”

“For talking about his son?”

“Unprofessionalism, apparently. The bank had a code of conduct, and she was found to have breached it.”

“But she was fired after Lonnie disappeared. She had a motive, but not until after Lonnie went missing, right?”

“That’s the question,” Dez said. “Maybe the fact she didn’t get the promotion was motive enough.”

“Seems like a stretch,” Sully said.

“I know, and that’s why the Debenhams never bothered to tell investigators about her. No one really figured she’d have it in her to hurt Lonnie.”

“But you do?”

“Lachlan wants to look into it. Makes some sense, I guess. We’ve got the file from the investigation. It seemed pretty thorough. Background checks, surveillance, phone records—the Major Crimes unit did a lot of digging back then into anyone who might have been a potential suspect. I don’t think there were many stones left unturned. Maybe Eleanor is the stone we’re looking for. How about you? What were you up to?”

“I went to the library, and I hit a bit of a jackpot. I think I know who Faceless Flo really is.” He grinned as Dez’s eyebrows lifted.

“Who?” Dez asked.

“Her actual name is Sarah, or Sadie Marquill. She disappeared in 1927, and I can’t find any record that she was ever found. Her disappearance was mentioned in the Loons Hollow newspaper at the time, but there was no major follow-up. I’m not sure why. I mean, there was one story that ran about a week after the initial search, but it only said she hadn’t been found, and that the search had been abandoned. I searched historical obituaries, but I couldn’t find one for her.”

“You realize this is a pretty big deal, right? People have been looking for proof of Faceless Flo for as long as I can remember. You might just have cracked it.”

“No one really knew what they were looking for. Everyone was operating under the assumption her real name was Flo.”

“So how’d you manage it, then?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Oh no. Don’t tell me you met the Phantom Librarian.”

“ ‘Met’ is a strong word, given I couldn’t see her. But, yeah, Prue Longquill was a huge help.”

“I can’t take you anywhere.”

Dez paused the conversation to pass along Sully’s information to Lachlan.

“Put him on speaker,” Lachlan said at the end of the summary. That done, Lachlan leaned toward the phone to speak. “I might be completely out to lunch on this, but I wouldn’t mind learning more about this Sadie Marquill and her disappearance. I mean, no way the two disappearances are directly connected given the amount of time between them. But if she’s in some way responsible for something happening to Lonnie, I think we have to know what we’re dealing with. Are you still at the library?”

“Yeah, just about to leave.”

“See if you can find some information about her family. Maybe there are some descendants we can talk to.”

“Already on it. The library has a bunch of books with local histories. I found a couple for Loons Hollow, and the Marquill family has a write-up in each. One was from before Sadie went missing, and the other was written about a decade after. The later one doesn’t say much about her. They mention she was one of the kids, but there’s nothing about her disappearance. I’m not sure why.”

“Not something a family wants to write about, I guess,” Dez said. “One thing, though. According to legend, she went to meet her boyfriend in the woods. That sort of thing would’ve been frowned upon back then. Could be people thought that’s what happened, and she was effectively disowned.”

“Even if she was dead?”

“It was a different time,” Lachlan said. “People didn’t think progressively back then. If she brought shame on her family, they would feel justified in writing her out of their history. The fact she was mentioned at all in the later write-up might be the unusual part. Here’s what I want you to do. Get onto the internet and start plugging in the names of any siblings or cousins; see if you can find any obituaries. Those will have a pretty decent list of relatives and descendants, and it will hopefully give us some names of people we can talk to.”

“Actually, I’ve already done that. I found an obituary for Sadie’s younger sister. She had five kids. I’m going to start checking for addresses and phone numbers, see if any of them live in the area.”

Dez met Lachlan’s eye, watched as his boss’s eyebrow lifted. “I’m impressed. You’ve got a decent head for investigation under all that hair.”

“I was raised by a police officer,” Sully said. “It comes with the territory.”

“Okay, start running those names. I’ll send your brother over to you. Once you’ve got somewhere to start, Desmond can look after the phone calls and door-knocking. I want you nearby, in case our ghostly dame makes an appearance. I’ll hire a driver for today, in case I have luck tracking down Eleanor or any of our other possible suspects. Keep in touch.”

“Hire a driver?” Dez asked once they’d disconnected with Sully. “Who’s going to pay for that?”

“I’m taking it out of your wages. You know, since you’re abandoning me and all.”

“What?”

Lachlan laughed, the sound erasing some of Dez’s indignation. “Relax, Braddock. I was kidding. Jesus, you need to learn how to take a joke. Look, every private investigator can claim costs. The Debenhams have hired one with a concussion. It follows I’m going to need a driver from time to time. And, hell, if someone in that family can’t afford it, I’d be hard-pressed to find one who can.”

* * *

When Dez pulled up to the library, Sully was waiting on a park bench, hood pulled up to conceal his features. The phone in his hand made him look less conspicuous, more like a sulky college student than a creepy guy plotting something unpleasant.

Dez didn’t have long to wait before Sully spotted him, tucking away his phone and approaching the SUV.

“You didn’t bring anyone with you, did you?” Dez asked as Sully dropped into the passenger seat.

“I left Pax with Emily.”

“I meant someone less substantial.”

Sully chuckled. “Prue Longquill? Don’t worry, she’s attached to the library. I don’t think she gets out much.”

That would have to be good enough for Dez. “Did you find some names and addresses for us?”

“A couple. Lots of people aren’t listed in the 411 anymore, what with cellphones and all. And there really aren’t very many Marquill descendants left around here, but I did find one. Or two, actually. Sadie’s father was quite a bit older than his wife. Apparently, he’d been married before, and he had a son from that relationship. The son was already married and had a young daughter when Sadie went missing. The daughter is alive, but she’s almost a hundred years old. Near as I can tell, she lives with her daughter in Kimotan Rapids.”

“You have an address?”

Sully pulled out his phone. “I’ve already plugged it into the map app. It’s in the Springvale neighbourhood, so not that far from Riverview.”

“Maybe we should phone first. I’m not sure two old ladies are going to be all that thrilled to see me turn up on their doorstep, asking questions about their missing relative.”

“Already done. They’re expecting us.”

“What do you mean ‘us’?”

“You and Oliver Chadwell.”

“Sully….”

“What? I thought the whole point was for me to be close by in case Sadie’s around somewhere. She seems to be attached to Hollow Road, but lots of ghosts can move between places. If she feels any connection to her family, she might be there.”

“And you think a pair of grannies won’t mind some scruffy guy in a hood sitting in their living room, drinking their tea?”

“First off, I trimmed my beard this morning, and if I pull my hair back, I’m not that scruffy. And second, I think I’m okay going in without a hood. I don’t know either of them from a hole in the ground.”

“Maybe you’re forgetting you made the news when that cave supposedly collapsed on you.”

“Two years ago. Look, I don’t consider this taking chances. No one’s going to remember my face from some bit on the news and, even if they do, I look different now. I’ll be fine. I think they’ll be more likely to talk to a face than a hood, don’t you?”

The logic was sound, no point in arguing—in all honesty, he didn’t think two retired ladies posed much of a threat—so Dez focused on setting a course for the Springvale neighbourhood.

The house belonging to Stella Pinter was a two-storey on a street lined with trees almost as old as the neighbourhood itself. Stella had opted for shrubs instead of a fence, and they’d been left to grow wild, obscuring much of the lower floor from the sidewalk. The house itself was in need of a paint, and judging by the peeling back of a handful of shingles, it could probably do with some roof repairs as well.

Dez didn’t imagine home maintenance was a simple matter for a pair of senior ladies. He hoped they had a family who could help them out.

“Place could do with some work,” he said.

“You offering?”

“I’m not exactly qualified to replace a roof.” Dez gave the house another once-over, then returned his attention to Sully, deciding to make a final attempt. “Listen, when Lachlan suggested you tag along, I’m not sure he meant for you to come inside.”

“I don’t really care what he meant. He’s got his job to do, and I’ve got mine. If Sadie’s around, and if she’s behind these guys going missing, I need to figure it out. At some point, that’s going to mean talking to her.”

“Bloody hell,” Dez said. “Talking to Faceless Flo? I can’t say that sounds like one of your better ideas, Sull.”

“Maybe not. But the fact remains if she has something to do with these men disappearing, she might be the only one who can lead us to them.”

“Or maybe she does more than lead us to them,” Dez said. “Maybe she’ll want us to join them.”

8

If the front yard of Stella Pinter’s residence was in need of a cleanup, the home’s interior looked like the before image on one of those renovation shows.

The furniture clearly hadn’t been replaced since the nineteen eighties, and nothing had been dusted in a good long while. The living room curtains, almost completely drawn, cast the room in shadow but for a streak of light forcing its way through. Dust and cat hair drifted through the lone sunbeam, the daylight barely revealing an elderly woman sitting in an easy chair. Two cats cuddled on her lap, their purrs audible even from across the room as she stroked knobby fingers through their fur.

The woman who’d shown them into this room—a younger version of the woman in the chair—ushered Sully and Dez toward the sofa before claiming a second recliner for herself.

“You’re sure you won’t have tea?” Stella asked. “It would just take me a few minutes.”

Sully carefully lifted a cat from the seat of the couch, then shifted a second to allow a space for Dez to sit.

“No, thank you, ma’am,” Dez said. “We’re fine.”

A healthy amount of cat hair coated the cushions, but it seemed impolite to try to sweep it aside. Resigned to being covered in dander, Sully sat, once again removing a particularly persistent feline from the spot next to him, allowing Dez to join him.

If the situation bothered Dez, he didn’t show it. Sully guessed he’d seen much worse during his years with the Kimotan Rapids Police Department.

Dez hadn’t said anything about the lack of light, and Sully guessed his brother took it as a blessing in disguise. It was bright enough they could see each other within the sitting room, but not quite enough to make out the precise details of each other’s features. Given his concern Sully might be identified, it was unlikely Dez would complain.

“I know it’s dark in here,” Stella said, as if reading the turn of Sully’s thoughts. “My mother suffers from migraines, and she has one today.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dez said. “We could talk in another room, if that would be easier. I don’t want to disturb her.”

“Oh, no,” Stella said. “No, she specifically asked to join us. When I told her you were coming and what you wished to ask about, she said she wanted to be present.”

“Can she hear all right?” Dez asked. “I mean, should I speak louder so she can hear what—”

“I can hear just fine, young man,” said the older woman, her voice stronger than Sully would have expected from someone her age. “I have a lot of trouble with my body these days, and my vision is going, but my mind and my hearing are as sharp as ever.” She leaned forward, unsettling one of the cats so she could extend a hand toward the couch. “Gillian Mondale.”

Sully waited until Dez had met her handshake before reaching over to provide his own. “Dez Braddock and Oliver Chadwell,” Dez said. “Nice to meet you. And I’m grateful you’ve agreed to speak with us, especially since you’re not feeling well today.”

“My pleasure,” she said. “We don’t get a lot of visitors here anymore.”

“Your daughter told you what we’re here to ask about?” Dez leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

“My Aunt Sadie,” the older woman said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken about her.”

“I think you did the write-up for the Loons Hollow history book,” Sully said. “The part about your family, I mean.”

Gillian’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. “I did. The later one, anyway. My mother did the first.”

“I noticed something,” Sully said. “Sadie’s barely mentioned in the second write-up. Nothing was said about what happened to her.”

“Well, no one actually knew what happened to her. There wasn’t much to say.”

“Her disappearance made the news back then. No one ever found her?”

“No. Her parents went to their graves not knowing. I’ve always wondered myself.”

“Do you remember her?”

“I was quite young when she disappeared, just seven years old. But that’s old enough to have gained some fond memories. I remember her being a lot of fun. She laughed a lot. She had a very boisterous laugh, one people joked you could hear all over town. I admired her, and she put up with me tagging along behind her like a puppy. We lived a few doors away, and I spent as much time as I could with her. She was a beautiful, stylish young woman, and I wanted very much to grow up to look like her. The way she styled her hair, it took my breath away. She wanted to be a hairstylist. She never got the chance.”

“If you were close to her, why didn’t you say more about her in the write-up?” Sully asked.

“Well, for one thing, her parents were still alive. After Sadie disappeared, we stopped talking about her. It was too hard for them. I think it was easier for them to pretend she didn’t exist. The alternative was far too hard. But I don’t think they ever stopped looking. A parent doesn’t, do they?”

“How about you?” Dez asked. “Did you ever try to find her?”

“We all did, I suppose. I was too young at the time to take part in the search in any real way, but I watched for her too. Some people said she’d run off with a boy, and part of me wanted to believe that was true. So, yes, I suppose I always did look for her. You do that when you lose someone suddenly.”

“Yeah,” Dez said. “I know.”

“Oliver didn’t say exactly why the two of you want to know about Sadie,” Stella said. “Is this for a history project, or is it something else?”

“It’s a bit hard to explain,” Sully said. “I’m afraid you’re going to think I’m being disrespectful, although I’m really not.”

“I’ve lived a good life, but it hasn’t always been an easy one,” Gillian said. “In almost a hundred years, there’s precious little I haven’t heard. You aren’t likely to offend me easily.”

Sully nodded, then drew in a breath as he searched for the right words. But if right words existed, he couldn’t find them, so he opted to just dive right in.

“Have the two of you heard the legend of Faceless Flo?”

“I certainly have,” Stella said. “It was a story even when my kids were in school. I never placed much stock in these things, but it was certainly intriguing.”

“Did you ever hear anything about where the story started?”

“I can’t say I have. I never even knew of anyone named Flo or Florence from Loons Hollow, certainly nobody who was murdered in the woods. My mother’s aunt was the only person I know who ever disappeared there.”

“That’s kind of why we’re here, I guess,” Sully said. “I don’t mean any offence, so I hope you don’t take it that way, but Flo exists. I’ve seen her. And I think she’s been misidentified. I think she’s actually Sadie.”

A smile plucked at the corners of Stella’s mouth, one he read as patient yet condescending. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. Perhaps you saw someone in the woods and mistook her for something else.”

He offered a smile of his own. “I know how it sounds. But I’ve been seeing these things my whole life, and I’ve met a lot of people who don’t believe me. It doesn’t make these things less real. I have seen her, and I’m hoping I can help her. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping she’d be here, or to at least learn more about her.”

“Why would she be here?” Gillian asked.

Sully returned his attention to the older woman. No sign of incredulity or offence showed in her expression or tone, only curiosity.

“Sometimes, even though a spirit’s strongest connection might be to a place or an object, they are also attracted to certain people. Sometimes that person is me because of the things I can see. Sometimes they want to be around family. I wanted to see if that was the case with her.”

“And is it?”

“I don’t see her, and I don’t feel her.”

“Does that mean she doesn’t feel a connection to me?”

An edge of hurt laced Gillian’s voice, and Sully sought to erase it. “Not necessarily. I think sometimes they just get trapped, and they can’t see anything beyond themselves and their situation. If she is stuck on that road, or in those woods, that might explain why she’s angry.”

“Angry? How do you mean?”

“Mother,” Stella said. “I don’t think this is a good idea.” She turned back to Sully. “You seem like a nice young man, so I’m going to ask you politely to please leave. You’re going to upset her if you carry on like this. I won’t have you leaving here and spreading rumours about Sadie being this ghost you’re talking about. She deserves more respect than that.”

“I have no intention of spreading rumours,” Sully said. “And I’m because I do respect her. I’ve helped a lot of lost spirits find peace, and I want to give that to her. Most of the time, helping them helps their families too.”

“I don’t believe in this sort of thing,” Stella said.

Gillian leaned forward, tapping Stella gently on the wrist. “But I do. I would like to hear him out.”

“Mother, I don’t think you should involve yourself in a conversation that will leave you upset.”

“I’ll make my own decisions, thank you.” Gillian’s gaze returned to Sully. “What were you going to say about her being angry?”

Sully risked a glance at Stella. Finding no support there, he focused on Gillian. “The thing is, I can see ghosts, but only ones who have died by homicide. The woman I saw on the road didn’t die by accident. Someone hurt her, and I think she’s trapped by whatever happened to her.”

“Could it be we need to find her body so she can cross over?”

“Maybe. But I’m worried it’s more than that. The stories about that road involve men who’ve disappeared. It’s thought the ghost had something to do with it, that she lured them, maybe even killed them or led them to their deaths.”

“Then it can’t be Sadie,” Gillian said. “I knew my aunt, and she was nothing like that.”

“Not in life. But sometimes what happens to a person when they die, after they die, changes them. I don’t know everything. I probably don’t know much at all, come right down to it. But I have some theories, and one thing I’ve come to believe about some ghosts is that the emotions they experienced when they were killed were so intense, they’ve never been able to move past them. I think sometimes they get stuck in that mindset, in those emotions, almost like they’re constantly reliving the death experience. Some of them have shown me what it’s like, how it felt for them to die. I can understand how for some of them, moving on seems impossible. And I can understand how an experience like that must twist them. Some are just afraid all the time. Others are angry and want revenge. The problem is, peace doesn’t come through revenge. And if that’s what she’s doing, she’ll never find it. Whoever killed her is probably already dead. It would be really unfair if that person managed to cross over while she’s stuck here, constantly reliving what happened to her and trying to find a way to escape.”

Gillian was quiet a long while, fingers running through her cat’s fur as she studied Sully. Unspoken thoughts played out across her face, and Sully could do nothing but wait to see whether she would share them.

Finally, she broke her silence. “Come closer to me, young man. It’s dark, and my sight isn’t what it used to be. I’d like to see your eyes.”

Sully resisted the urge to exchange a look with Dez, instead obeying the woman and approaching her. Reaching her chair, he knelt before her. Blue eyes, a hint of lingering youth belied by the folds of sagging skin surrounding them, peered into his face. He watched as snow-white brows lifted, revealing more of the sparkling irises.

“Your eyes are the same,” she said.

“The same as what?”

The woman lifted a hand, resting her fingertips against Sully’s cheek. He wasn’t sure whether it was the touch or the words that immediately followed that sent a jolt through him.

“The first Oliver Chadwell.”

9

Sully’s breath caught in his throat.

“What do you mean? Who—”

“I was a young girl when he came to Loons Hollow,” Gillian said. “Lovely Scottish accent, and grey eyes the same shape and colour as yours. He was an older man, likely in his seventies. Said he’d heard about my family’s troubles and wanted to help us find Sadie. Close to a decade had passed since she’d disappeared, and her parents had already moved on—quite literally. They’d left town by then, so there was less concern this Oliver Chadwell would be offending anybody by having a look around.

“My parents, in fact, took him in for the week he stayed. Even then, I was fascinated by ghost stories, and Mr. Chadwell had plenty to keep me entertained. He was a lovely man, very kind eyes. But there was something about him, something I couldn’t put my finger on at the time. I realize now he was guarding something. A secret perhaps. I’ve wondered about him ever since, especially given what happened after.”

Sully leaned closer. “What happened?”

“He disappeared. Just left one day on one of his walks and never came back. He always took his things with him—all of it fit into one bag, so it wasn’t much trouble. But he talked about looking forward to supper that night, so we’d expected him back. When he didn’t return, we didn’t know what to think. Looking back on it, I guess you might say he was the first.”

“The first what?”

“The first man whose disappearance was attributed to the ghost.”

“The ghost?” Sully said. “Is that what people thought at the time?”

“No, at least not that I ever heard. There was talk of a ghost, but nothing to suggest she was a true danger to others. And as for Mr. Chadwell’s disappearance, no one really bothered themselves much about his comings and goings to begin with. As far as most of the community was concerned, he was just a down-on-his-luck traveller searching for work. It was the nineteen thirties, and many people had fallen on hard times. No one batted an eye at a stranger passing through town, hoping for shelter, food and a job. And no one thought anything of it when people like that wandered off again. I suppose that’s what many people think happened to Mr. Chadwell. But I wasn’t so sure. Now you’ve got me wondering if it had something to do with Sadie, after all.”

“Did he say why he came in the first place? I mean, did he have some sort of skill that made him think he could find Sadie?”

“The same skill you seem to have. He said he could see the dead.”

Dez cursed softly behind him. “Jesus Christ.”

“He was very upfront with us, refreshingly so. He said he believed Sadie was dead and that she’d become trapped on this side. He said he could help her cross over to what he called Summerland. As I understand it, that was a Victorian term for the other side. He said he’d been doing it for a while. My mother was also a firm believer in these things, and although my father was a skeptic, he put up with Mr. Chadwell for my mother’s sake. Anyway, if it could solve the mystery of his sister’s disappearance, who was he to say no? So Mr. Chadwell stayed for a few days. When he failed to return, we looked for him. But it was just like my aunt. No sign of him anywhere, no evidence he’d come to harm, no clues to be found. He just vanished.”

“Did anyone besides you think the whole situation was weird?” Dez asked. “I mean, this guy turning up on a ghost hunt and then disappearing?”

“His purpose for being there wasn’t broadly known. I’d very much doubt anyone outside of my family knew the truth about his reasons for coming. My father ordered us never to speak of it, said it was family business. The community would have assumed my father had simply given Mr. Chadwell some work for a few days.”

Sully’s mind turned back to Gillian’s earlier comment about the ghost. “You said there was some talk about a ghost, but no one really considered her dangerous. What did people say about it back then?”

“First of all, keep in mind I’ve never seen her myself. But some people would come into town speaking of a young woman on the road. It’s one of the reasons my parents left. Each time someone reported a sighting, they’d rush out and search. Of course, they could never find anything. It only happened a handful of times but, as you can imagine, even once was too much. There was no mention of her doing any harm, though. Not like you’re telling me now, about these missing men. She’d simply be seen, nothing more. At least until Mr. Chadwell.”

“Hang on,” Dez said. “If people attributed the sightings to Sadie back then, how’d she end up being called Flo?”

“After Mr. Chadwell left that last day, no one ever reported another sighting,” Gillian said. “At least, not until my grandkids were in school. By then, I’m thinking no one could remember the real story, so they came up with their own.”

“And I didn’t bother to correct them,” Stella said. “As I said, my great aunt deserves more respect than that. The last thing I want is a bunch of kids and ghost hunters crawling around out there, yelling her name and poking fun at what happened to her. People forget, these supposed ghosts they’re searching for were real people who met with real tragedy. And they have families who remember. I won’t have that happen to Sadie, and I certainly won’t have it happen to my mom.”

“I understand,” Sully said. “And I promise you, I have no plans to pass along anything we talked about here. Dez and I have helped spirits before, and we always do it respectfully. We have no intention of doing any different this time.”

“How do you propose to help?” Stella asked. “It seems a rather impossible thing.”

“Not as impossible as you’d think. At least, not always. Ghosts are just people who get stuck here for some reason. If I can figure out what that reason is, and help solve whatever problem they’re facing, I can usually get them to cross over. In my case, given I only see those who died by homicide, it usually means finding justice for them.”

“But surely whoever killed my aunt is long dead by now,” Gillian said. “How will you help her if there’s no one out there to be brought to justice? I mean, have you ever had to help a spirit who’s existed as long as she has?”

“No,” Sully said. “But it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. I’m not sure yet how I’m going to go about it, but I’ll figure it out.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? If Sadie is as angry as you say, and as big a threat as people suggest, how do you know she won’t try to do the same thing to you as she’s supposedly done to other men?”

The answer was obvious, and it was one Dez wouldn’t like. It needed to be said nonetheless.

“Honestly?” Sully said. “I don’t know she won’t. What I do know is I see the things I do for a reason. Once they notice me, once they know I can help them, they usually find me. If I can help her, if I can get her to leave before she goes after anyone else, then I don’t only protect others, I might be protecting myself.”

Gillian reached forward and caught Sully’s fingers in her own. “I don’t know exactly what to make of what you’ve told me, but I appreciate your wanting to help my aunt. If you can, I would be grateful to you. But please don’t put yourself at risk. If something happened to Mr. Chadwell because he set out to help Sadie, I would feel terrible. The last thing I want is to see it happen again. After all, she had a life to live, but it’s over now. Yours isn’t, and you have a right to live it.”

“I guess that’s the problem,” Sully said. “This is the only life I’ve ever known.”

* * *

Without question, the conversation had unsettled Dez. The most surprising thing was that he didn’t launch immediately into a critique of Sully’s intentions the moment the two of them got back into the SUV.

Sully waited, sensing the churning of his brother’s thoughts as Dez white-knuckled the steering wheel, fingers clenched tightly enough to put the steering column’s strength to the test.

Dez’s voice, when it came, was the tight growl Sully had anticipated.

“I don’t like this. We went there looking for answers, but all I’ve got are more questions. It’s bad enough this ghost might be responsible for the disappearances of several men; now we find out one of them was a psychic like you, someone who went there trying to help her. If it could happen to him, it can happen to you.”

“We don’t really know what happened to him. All we know is he didn’t go back to Gillian’s family’s house. Maybe he just realized he couldn’t finish what he started, and he couldn’t face them again.”

“Well, we know one thing for sure. He went there to try to get her to cross over, and he failed. And we know no one saw him alive again.”

“No one in Loons Hollow anyway. Like I said, we don’t know what happened to him.”

“No, we don’t. And I’m not sure we want to find out. Face it, man. We already share a key trait with the people who might have fallen victim to Faceless Flo. We’re men. Add that to the fact we’re purposely going off in search of her, and we’re looking for trouble we might not be able to handle.”

“We don’t really have a choice, though, do we? We’ve been asked to look into this. We’re being paid to do it.”

“I’m willing to turn down the job if you are.”

“You’d turn it down? Just let this continue? What if we can do something to stop her, to keep others from falling victim to whatever’s going on out there?”

Dez didn’t answer immediately, holding onto whatever it was he wanted to say until he pulled the vehicle toward the curb and pushed the stick into park. Sully expected a lecture. It turned out Dez had something else on his mind.

“You started calling yourself Oliver Chadwell. Why?”

“Like I told you before, the name just came to me, not long after I faked my own death. I’d been in a position where I needed to come up with a false name, and it popped into my head. I didn’t realize it was a real person.”

“Not just a real person. A real person who had the same eyes as you. That’s what Gillian said, that his eyes were the same shape and colour as yours. What if that means something? You don’t know much about your birth family, Sully. Maybe you’re a descendent of this guy.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“And maybe part of the reason you want to go through with this job is to learn more about Oliver Chadwell.”

“I’d do it regardless.”

“But…?”

Dez wanted an admission. Sully couldn’t refuse.

“Okay, yeah. If I can find out more about him, that would be a pretty cool bonus. I don’t really know where I came from, what it all means. All I know is what Lorinda and Rhona Dule told me about this supposed Dule curse, and I can’t exactly place a lot of stock in anything they told me. One thing’s for sure though. They told me Dule men all fall victim to evil, to being possessed by it. Oliver Chadwell was in his seventies when he came to Loons Hollow, and Gillian had nothing bad to say about him. He sure didn’t sound like someone possessed, and he definitely didn’t sound evil. If I am related to him, then that proves this supposed Dule curse is bullshit. The Dules would have no reason to come after me if I can show them they’re wrong, that not everyone goes bad.”

The words brought his brain snapping back to a dream he had recently, one that had awoken him in a cold sweat, the feel of a rough noose around his neck and a hateful rage boiling inside him. Sully had talked to his professor friend Marc Echoles about it, but had never shared it with Dez. He’d told himself he didn’t want to worry his brother. But somewhere deep down, he’d been aware of another reason: He carried his own worry. Perhaps the Dules were telling the truth. Dez believed the best of Sully, always had. The idea of him, even for a second, thinking the worst was unbearable.

That said, there was a time for truth, regardless of consequences.

“You remember that morning I woke up and I couldn’t breathe?”

“Yeah. You were having a nightmare, you said.”

“Only it wasn’t really a nightmare. It was a memory. Not my own, though—not exactly, anyway. I heard somewhere once that souls can have memories. There are people who say that’s why we experience things like déjà vu, or why we sometimes feel like we already know someone when we first meet them. Some people travel someplace new and have the feeling they’ve been there before. The dream I had was beyond all of that. I was this man in a past life. He was being hanged. I don’t know what he did to end up with a noose around his neck, but I do know there was nothing good in him. All I could feel was hate and darkness and a desire to kill everyone within reach. I asked Marc about it, and he says it sounds like it happened sometime in the sixteen hundreds. I’ve thought about it since, and I keep coming back to the possibility it has something to do with the curse I was told about.”

“Even if the curse is real, you’re not that guy, Sully. There’s nothing evil about you.”

“But maybe there’s something in me that’s susceptible to it. I’ve been possessed before, and I tried to kill someone.”

“Still wasn’t you. I was there when you went after Lowell in his office that day. It was Harry Schuster, not you. You’re not capable of that sort of thing, not without some major ghostly intervention.”

“Sitting here right now, I know you’re right. I know who I am and who I’m not. Problem is, I don’t know where I’ve come from, or who I might turn into. And I don’t know who I would have become if it hadn’t been for you. You, Mom and Dad might be the only reason I haven’t gone dark.”

“Maybe that’s good enough. Why question it?”

“Because I can’t risk not questioning it. If there is something inside me that isn’t good, I need to know so I can stop it if it starts to come out. I know I’m a good person, but even good people are capable of bad things. I love that you have faith in me, but what if, at the end of the day, that’s not enough?”

“I can tell you this, Sully: It isn’t enough. It won’t do you any good if I’m the only one of the two of us who believes in you. If you don’t believe in yourself, you’re sunk before you’ve even started. You’re better than this, and you need to accept that. Don’t let the Dules convince you of anything else. If you let them do that, they win.”

“I’m not saying I believe them. I’m just saying it would make me feel better if I could find someone who defied the curse.”

“If the curse even exists.”

“Fair enough. But I need to know. There’s strength in knowledge.”

As usual, Dez had an answer, and not the one Sully was looking for.

“Sometimes all that comes from knowledge are more problems,” he said. One corner of his mouth turned up in dry smile, the kind that carried something far deeper than amusement. “Curiosity killed the cat, remember?”

10

Dez’s stomach had been growling loudly enough to classify as its own species when he convinced Sully they should go get something to eat.

Dining out with Sully wasn’t an option anymore, so they settled on take-out, tucking into Chinese food inside Dez’s apartment while Pax ogled the contents of the containers from his spot on the floor.

Dez tossed the dog a piece of beef, watched as it disappeared down his throat almost as soon as it hit his tongue. Ordinarily, Dez found Pax’s eating habits amusing. But his mind had gone elsewhere, travelling paths too dark for humour to follow.

“What’s wrong?”

Sully’s quiet question wasn’t entirely unexpected; the younger man’s keen observational skills were at their finest when it came to Dez.

“Just thinking.” The truth was his thoughts had turned again to Aiden. They were heading in that direction more and more often lately, and he knew he’d sound like a broken record—a frustratingly broken record. Sully was doing the best he could; Dez knew that. He didn’t need the added pressure, the constant reminder of how badly Dez was plagued by thoughts of his lost brother.

Little got past Sully. “About Aiden.”

Dez answered with a nod.

“I’m sorry. When we’re done with this, I’ll get back to it. I promise.”

“That’s the problem. Something always comes up. There’s always something more important.”

“Not to me. I haven’t forgotten. I never will, okay?”

“Yeah.” Dez paused, took a breath, let it out in a sigh. “I know. I know you won’t. I just…. It’s frustrating. Now that I know something bad happened to him—something worse than what I thought—I just want to help him. And I want to find out who did it, and why. Someone killed him, and they need to pay for it. I hate that someone’s gone seventeen years without paying. Who kills a kid anyway? He was five years old.” He felt the blood drain from his face as he stared at Sully. He didn’t know why, but the stomach-churning thought hadn’t occurred to him before. “Hey, Sull, you’ve seen him, right? Was he—I mean, was there any sign he might’ve been…. Was he…?”

The words were there, sitting at the front of his brain in big, black letters. Yet he couldn’t say it, didn’t want to hear it out loud like that, to face what it would mean if the answer was one more thing he couldn’t bear.

Sully picked up on that too. “He wasn’t sexually assaulted. There was nothing like that.”

That was something, at least, enough to merit another long exhale as Dez released the tension. “Okay. Good. But that still doesn’t tell us why.”

Sully shook his head. “No. It doesn’t.”

Dez checked his watch. Early evening, less chance Lachlan would send him out somewhere. “We have some time. Maybe we could swing by the acreage, see if we can find him. I’m thinking maybe if he sees you enough, he’ll realize he can trust you with whatever it is he’s guarding. Or maybe I can come talk to him, persuade him to communicate with you. He might listen to me, right?”

“Dez—”

Whatever Sully was about to say was interrupted by Dez’s phone. He expected Lachlan, was pleasantly surprised to hear Eva’s ring tone, and to see her beautiful face pop up on the screen.

“Hey, Evie.”

“What are you up to?”

“Just hanging out with Sully. You?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to come over for supper. Kayleigh would love to see you. It’s been a few days.”

“I just ate, but I’d love to come for a visit anyway.”

“That would be great. Kayleigh’s not the only one who wants to see you, you know. You can spend the night if you want, save yourself the drive later.”

He recognized the tone in her voice, one that sent a rush of warmth through him until it settled in a place that didn’t get much use these days.

“That would be awesome. Let me check on a couple of things, and I’ll come right over.”

Sully had a response ready when Dez got off the phone. “I don’t know what you want to check on, but I can’t think of much that’s more important. Go. I’ll hold down the fort.”

“You know, now that mom knows, it wouldn’t be so bad for Kayleigh to know you’re alive. Mom was the reason we decided not to tell her. We didn’t want her to feel like she was lying to her grandma.”

Dez grinned at the changing expression on his brother’s face, a hopeful smile plucking at his lips before fading away into worry. “You think it would be all right? I mean, you don’t think she’d be mad?”

“Oh, she’ll be mad. She might not even talk to you for the first while. But she’ll get over it. She’s not one for a grudge.” He paused, thinking it through further. “Just the same, though, maybe you’d better let us talk to her first. It’s going to be a shock, and I want to ease her into it as much as we can. Give us tonight, and we’ll work out a time for you to come visit.”

Sully agreed, and Dez prepared to leave.

Another interruption, another phone call. This time, though, it was Lachlan’s ring tone.

“Oh no,” Dez said. “Bloody hell, not tonight.”

“Maybe he just wants to tell you something.”

“Yeah, right,” Dez said to Sully. Then, into his mouthpiece, “What’s up? It’s late.”

“It’s not even seven o’clock. Were you planning on getting in some early beauty sleep, or is there a sitcom you were desperate to watch?”

“I’ve got plans tonight.”

“Cancel them. I need you to go talk to someone. I found Eleanor Kilpatrick.”

“The other bank employee? Why aren’t you talking to her? I thought that’s what you were planning to do.”

“I was, but my stupid brain had other ideas. I’ve been going hard all day, which I knew was against my doctor’s orders. I’m paying the price with a massive headache and dizzy spells. And I’m starting to have trouble stringing two coherent thoughts together. I have no choice. I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

“Are you at home?”

“Yeah, tucked up in bed like a geriatric patient.”

Dez resisted the dig. Lachlan was clearly not in a good place, and Dez didn’t want to deal with the fallout if the man took his ribbing the wrong way. “Sorry to hear that. Should you be in hospital maybe?”

“No, I shouldn’t. Trust me, Braddock, I’ve been through this plenty since I got clobbered on the noggin. I know what I need and, unfortunately, it’s rest. That means you’re going to have to pick up more slack than I was hoping. Eleanor lives in Tinford. I’ll text you the address.”

“Tinford? That’s an hour out.”

“Yep, and an hour back too. What’s your point?”

“I don’t have one, I guess.”

Lachlan had fallen blissfully silent, and Dez saw why as an address popped up on his screen. “You get it?” Lachlan asked a moment later.

“Yeah, I got it. Is she even home?”

“Yes, and she’s expecting you. She agreed to talk to us about Lonnie Debenham. You’d better get going. She won’t appreciate it if you keep her up past her bedtime.”

Dez didn’t bother suggesting the possibility of a phone interview. Everyone trained in police interview techniques knew body language and expression could reveal truths the subject sought to keep hidden.

He hung up with a sigh. “Damn it.”

“Why don’t you let me go talk to her?” Sully said.

“Maybe you’re forgetting, you don’t exist. Dead people don’t conduct interviews, Sully.”

“I don’t know Eleanor Kilpatrick from a hole in the ground, and I can pretty much guarantee she doesn’t know me either. Go see Eva and Kayleigh. I’ll borrow Emily’s car and head out there.”

“After I ruined her old one, I don’t think she’s going to be eager to lend a vehicle out again.”

Half of Sully’s mouth quirked up in a smirk. “Hey, it was wrecked on your watch, not mine. Just because she won’t let you anywhere near her car again doesn’t mean she won’t let me.”

Dez elbowed Sully in the ribs, taking satisfaction in the round of hacking it caused. Sully’s offer was tempting. Too many days went by without Dez getting the chance to see his wife and daughter. The chance to move home was there, Eva having extended it some time ago. But the situation with Sully precluded anything else, no way either of them could risk the welfare of the people they loved. Until Dez knew Sully and the whole situation was safe, there would be no going home—not for longer than a day or two at a time, anyway.

But the thought of spending a normal night with his little family was hard to put out of his mind. Were he to do as Lachlan requested, he’d have trouble focusing on the interview, anyway, with his mind elsewhere and his mood too dark to allow light conversation. Sully was good with people, and his unusual gift meant he was experienced in talking to strangers about uncomfortable topics, like homicide. And Tinford was a fair distance from Kimotan Rapids. The chances of Sully running into someone he knew there—let alone an enemy—were pretty remote.

“You really don’t mind?” Dez asked.

“No, I don’t. Get going.”

Dez ruffled his brother’s hair. “Thanks, buddy. I’ll make it up to you.”

“You can do that by telling Kayleigh about me. I’m dying to see her.”

Dez couldn’t resist the dig. “You ‘dying’ was what complicated matters in the first place. I’ll call you in a bit. Oh, and don’t tell Lachlan I let you do this. He’ll kick my ass.”

“I doubt he could reach.”

Dez grinned. “Good point.”

* * *

The porch light was on when Dez pulled up, one he’d installed himself shortly after they’d first moved in.

He and Eva had put a lot of work into this house, had made it their own. They’d built a life inside these walls, had raised Kayleigh here from infancy to her now seven years.

They’d been happy here. Until life got in the way.

But with his world getting closer to righting itself, Dez saw hope again. For the first time in well over a year, he could picture himself walking through that door not as a visitor, but as a resident—as a husband and a father.

Eva was waiting as he reached the front steps, the door opening before he had a chance to knock. He opened his mouth to offer a greeting, was surprised by her grip on the front of his shirt yanking him inside. The door slammed shut behind him, and then he was being pulled down until his lips met hers.

There was nothing gentle in the kiss, an urgency that would have required a fast trip upstairs in their pre-Kayleigh days.

Speaking of Kayleigh….

Dez pulled back enough to ask. “Where’s our girl?”

“Upstairs finishing her shower. She had football tonight and she was worried she stank.”

Dez chuckled and took advantage of the momentary privacy to pull Eva into the living room, taking the two of them behind the wall separating the room from the stairs. There, he continued what Eva had started, deepening the kiss until he’d completely lost himself within it.

“Does this mean you’re staying the night?” Eva asked.

Dez grinned. “Damn straight, babe.”

“Don’t call me babe, Snowman.”

Her nickname for him drew a playful growl from his throat, had him burying his face in the crook of her neck while she laughed.

“Ew, gross,” came a voice from a few feet away.

Dez pulled back, and looked down into the judgmental face of their little girl. Kayleigh stood at the entrance to the room, arms folded across her chest as she regarded her parents with an amused smirk. She was every bit her mother’s daughter, beautiful and strong, ever-ready to playfully take Dez down a peg or two. She possessed Eva’s Indigenous colouring but had inherited Dez’s green eyes, giving her an exotic look he was convinced would require his attention in a few years, once boys started to notice her. For now, though, she was still his little girl, and she happily hugged him back as he swept her up into his arms.

“Gross?” he said. “What’s gross?” He started blowing raspberries against the side of her face while she squirmed and giggled. “Is this gross?”

“Stop it, Dad!” she squealed. “I just had a shower!”

A few minutes later had them downstairs in the family room, sitting in front of the large-screen TV.

“You said you’d already eaten, so we had something quick on the way home from practice,” Eva said. “We thought we could watch a movie together.”

“Princess Bride,” Kayleigh said.

Dez resisted the groan. At least four years had passed since Kayleigh first fell in love with that movie, and Dez was losing hope she’d ever fall out of love with it. He’d watched it so many times he could quote it word for word.

Even so, the fact he was sitting here with his two girls meant he would’ve happily watched a three-hour video of paint drying. It wasn’t what they were watching; it was who he was watching with.

He waited until Kayleigh had loaded up the movie before deciding this might be the ideal time to break it to her about Sully. He’d have to talk to Eva first.

“You know what we’re missing?” he said to Kayleigh. “Popcorn. Have we got any?”

Kayleigh rolled her eyes. “You could have said that when we were upstairs.”

Eva seemed to sense Dez’s intent. “You know where we keep it, K. Why don’t you go and pop a couple of bags for us?”

“O-kay,” Kayleigh huffed as she headed for the stairs. “Just don’t make out while I’m gone.”

Once Kayleigh had disappeared up the stairs, Eva turned back to Dez. “Are we going to make out while she’s gone?”

He chuckled. “I wish. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about. Sully and I went to the acreage to see mom last night.”

“Oh, wow. How’d that go?”

“Really well, actually. She was almost on the floor, seeing him, but it was awesome.”

“And he did okay? He wasn’t angry with her or anything?”

“It’s Sully. He doesn’t stay mad at anyone. Not for long, anyway. Well, except for Lowell, but I can’t blame him for that. I’m pissed at him too.”

“Count me in on that. You’re wondering if this is the time to tell Kayleigh?”

“Sully really wants to see her, and I would love for her to know.”

“She’s not going to be happy we kept this from her.”

“I know. But we were going to have to say it sometime. Now that she won’t have to keep it from her grandma, it would be easier. I mean, we can trust her not to say anything to anyone else, as long as she knows Sully would be in danger. Even if she’s pissed at him, she loves him too much to risk something like that.”

“She talks about him a lot,” Eva said. “I don’t think it would take her long to get over being angry.”

“So we’re going to do this?” Dez asked.

“Yeah, I’d really like to. I’ve hated not telling her.”

“And we’re absolutely certain she can keep it to herself? She wouldn’t be able to tell anyone. Not her friends, not her other relatives. No one. Do you think she could do that?”

“Yep, I do. She’s got your fiery temperament, but she’s got my smarts. If it’s explained to her what’s at stake, she’ll guard the secret with her life.”

Dez blew out of breath between pursed lips. “I don’t want her to be mad.”

“This is her favourite movie. By the time it’s over, she’ll be ready to forgive us.”

“Okay,” Dez said. His daughter’s footsteps thumped down the carpeted stairs, slower than usual as she no doubt carried two bowls of popcorn.

Truth time.

“Hey, Kay-bee,” he said as she settled back into her place between the two of them. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

Having handed the bowls of popcorn to her parents, Kayleigh peered up into Dez’s face, eyes wide in her little face. “Something bad?”

His heart almost broke. The kid had suffered through a lot of bad for someone her age, and it showed in her expression, a look of dread that didn’t belong on the face of a seven-year-old.

Dez sought to erase it immediately.

“No, kiddo. Something good. Something really good.”

He paused to offer her a smile, was relieved to see her mirroring him.

“Are we getting a dog?” she asked.

He laughed. “In a way, we kind of are,” he said. “Pax is part of the package deal.”

“Pax? You mean the big, black dog you brought here that one time? I loved him.”

“I know you did. And I’ll be able to bring him around a lot more in the future.”

“His owner wouldn’t mind?”

“Not a bit. Thing is, his owner would like to come over too.”

“That’s okay.”

Dez had looked forward to this ever since Sully had returned. But now he couldn’t figure out the right words. How did you spring it on a kid that their supposedly dead uncle—their beloved uncle—had faked his own death and allowed his family to believe him gone?

Eva laid a hand on his shoulder and took up the task of explaining.

“Honey, do you remember what happened to your Uncle Sully?”

“He died.”

“But we never found him.”

Kayleigh shook her head.

“We all thought he was gone, that he died. But we found something out recently. He didn’t die, sweetie. Uncle Sully is alive.”

Kayleigh took a little breath. Then, “How do you know?”

“He came back,” Eva said. “Your dad was in trouble, and Uncle Sully came back to help him. Your dad’s okay now because of your uncle.”

“Where is he? I want to see him.”

“He’d love that,” Dez said. “He’s busy working tonight, but I’ll bring him over soon, okay? I promise.”

An excited glow coloured Kayleigh’s features, the look of Christmas morning. It faded as the thoughts played out across her face.

“What are you thinking, kiddo?” he asked.

“He lied to us. He let us think something bad happened to him, and it didn’t.”

“That’s the thing right there, Kay-bee. Something bad did happen to him. That’s why he left and didn’t tell anyone.”

“Not even us? I thought families were supposed to tell each other everything.”

Eva took over. “That’s true. But sometimes when bad things happen, it gets complicated. Do you remember when you were having all those nightmares after Grandpa Flynn and Uncle Sully were gone? You remember how scared you felt? That’s how Uncle Sully felt. But it wasn’t just at night. It was all the time. Every day and every night.”

“But you helped me when I was scared. We could have helped him.”

“This is hard to explain, but he felt like we would be better off if he wasn’t around us,” Dez said. “He thought he’d be protecting us.”

“From what?”

“From what he was afraid of.”

“What was he afraid of?”

That was a good question, and it left the problem of how much to tell Kayleigh. These were adult problems, and Kayleigh had been exposed to too many adult problems already.

Eva wasn’t as concerned. “You know how I told you I arrest messed-up and bad people at my job as a police officer? Uncle Sully was afraid of some very bad people.”

“You could have put them in jail.”

“It’s not always as easy as that. There are laws, and we can’t arrest people unless we’re really sure they’ve broken a law. Sometimes it’s hard to prove a law has been broken, so there isn’t much we can do. Not right away, anyway. Uncle Sully did what he did to get away from those bad people because he didn’t think anyone could help him, and he didn’t want to put anyone he loved at risk.”

“But he’s back now?”

“Sort of, but not really,” Dez said. “Only a few people know he’s alive, Kayleigh. And it has to stay that way. You can’t tell anyone, not even your friends or anyone else in the family. Your mom and I know, and your Grandma Mara. Oh, and your Uncle Bulldog. But no one else. Uncle Sully could be in really big danger if anyone else finds out.”

“What kind of danger?”

Dez exchanged a glance with Eva, who provided what she could of an answer. “The bad people I told you about. They’d try to find him if they knew about him being alive.”

“I won’t tell anyone. I promise. But I really want to see him.”

“Soon, okay? Promise. He’s excited to see you too. He really, really missed you.”

“I missed him too. Can we watch the movie now?”

And just like that, the conversation was over, Sully’s secret revealed to one more person.

As the movie started, Dez met Eva’s eye over the top of Kayleigh’s head. She smiled. He smiled back.

He had never once not been grateful for his family, but there were moments like this that reminded him exactly how lucky he was.

11

Sully got a text from Dez before he reached Tinford, added instructions on how to find Eleanor’s house as provided by Lachlan.

Just as well, too, because from what Sully could tell, very few of the houses were properly marked in this small town. During his years in foster care before the Braddocks had taken him in, Sully had lived in a couple of small towns, enough to know directions were more about landmarks than numbers. Dez’s text—Turn left at the bank and right at the road repairs, then look for a blue house with white trim and an arbor in front—actually made the task easier than if he’d been given nothing but a number.

Located midway down the block, the house had no number, and neither did the neighbours. The sun had set, and Eleanor had left an outside light on next to a side door. More lights were on inside the house, giving it a welcoming look.

Sully reached into the back seat to scratch Pax’s ears. “Got to leave you here, buddy. Sorry.”

Pax whined a little, but otherwise didn’t protest as Sully extricated himself from Emily’s borrowed car. The dog was getting used to it, being left behind while Sully talked to people. Not everyone reacted well to the presence of a huge, black dog, particularly one prone to growl at strangers.

His decision proved a wise one. Not only did the woman who answered the door not look like a dog person, she had a cat besides. Pax didn’t hate cats exactly, but he wasn’t a big fan either. Sully and Pax had first met each other in the abandoned Forks shortly after Sully had faked his own death. The place was crawling with feral cats, and Pax had a few reddened stripes across his nose that showed they’d likely been competing for the same food. It wasn’t a memory the dog was likely to soon forget.

Eleanor’s face registered surprise as she took in her visitor. “I was told to expect a tall, red-haired man.”

“That’s my friend, Dez,” Sully said. “He had something else to attend to tonight so he sent me. Is that all right?”

“Do you have a photo of the two of you together? Lachlan sent me one of the man who was supposed to come.”

That was a good question. Sully and Dez weren’t exactly the selfie types, and he couldn’t think of anything on his phone that would fit the bill. It occurred to him he had an old family photo tucked into his wallet, one taken when he and Dez were teenagers. Hoping it would do the trick, he fished it out, unfolded it and handed it over to her.

“Sorry,” Sully said. “It’s a little worse for wear. I’ve been carrying that with me for a few years and I took it out a lot. And it’s had some water damage besides.”

Eleanor squinted at the picture beneath the light from the front porch, then compared it to a photo from her phone. Narrowing her eyes again, she at last handed the photo back while offering a tight smile.

“It looks like the same person, all right,” she said. She studied Sully a moment longer before seeming to decide he was safe. For his part, he was grateful he’d trimmed his beard recently, and had thought to pull his hair back into a knot. He didn’t think there was anything much about him that came across as intimidating even when he tried. When he went for this look, he appeared more college student than homeless scruff.

Having been invited into her home, Sully took the chair she motioned to at the kitchen table. She didn’t offer coffee or tea, and that didn’t bother him in the slightest. With Dez away for the night, Sully had plans of his own, ones that had formed while he was driving out here. No way Dez would want to spend the night on a haunted road; no way would he give his blessing for Sully to do it on his own either. Sully knew this might be his one chance at searching for Sadie without Dez’s worries getting in the way.

For now, though, there was Eleanor.

Nothing about her screamed “murderer” to Sully; nothing suggested she might have orchestrated the disappearance of her former coworker. He had no problem guessing why everyone had overlooked this tiny, mousy creature as a possible suspect in Lonnie’s disappearance. She looked to be the kind of person who would need help emptying a mouse trap; the idea she might have the appetite for murder seemed inconceivable.

“Were you told why we wanted to talk to you?” he asked.

“Mr. Fields said it had to do with Lonnie Debenham. I’m not sure what you want from me. I spoke to police at the time—all of his coworkers did—and I don’t know any more than I did then.”

Dez had filled him in on the conversation he and Lachlan had with the Debenhams, particularly the parts concerning Eleanor.

“His dad isn’t well, and his parents want closure, if they can get it,” Sully said. “They’ve asked us to make sure all of the T’s were crossed during the investigation, and to check into anything that might have been overlooked. I know you talked to police back then but, as I understand it, information came to light afterward that you were saying things against Lonnie. You lost your job because of it, we were told.”

“I did, and that was my own fault. I was bitter I was turned down for the promotion. I can’t deny it, as much as I would like to. I’m ashamed now of how I acted. I was much younger then, and I hadn’t been out in the workforce long enough to understand how things worked. There was no question Lonnie was going to advance in his father’s company. That I expected anything different was simply a sign of my naïveté. But even if the decision was the wrong one—and I’m not saying it was, mind you—it was childish of me to speak out against him. Particularly after what had happened.”

“Do you think the fact he was chosen for promotion over you was just because of who his dad was?”

“In part, I’m sure. Part of it might have been that I was a woman, and a young one at that.”

“But you think you deserved the promotion?”

“I was working very hard, putting in long hours. It wasn’t unusual that I would be the last one out of the office every night. And I’d taken three training courses just within the six months leading to that promotion. I lost a boyfriend over that job. I missed family birthdays, and I even worked through Thanksgiving to sort out a client’s file. Lonnie was very smart, don’t get me wrong. And he was good at his job. But it wasn’t his life. When the bank closed each day, he was out the door just as soon as he could get his jacket on. I know he had a young family, but he liked to party too. You probably heard all the great things about Lonnie, but I’d imagine no one told you he liked to tie one on with the boys after work.”

“How do you know that?”

“One of them invited me along one night. By the time I met them at the bar, Lonnie was very drunk. They all were. I didn’t stay long, as I didn’t enjoy their company with them in that state. But Lonnie left before I did, him and this creepy buddy of his. Neither of them was in any state to be behind the wheel, but Lonnie drove anyway. Probably figured his dad’s money or influence would get him out of an impaired driving charge.”

“This creepy buddy. Did he work at the bank?”

“No, I think they went to high school together, maybe university. I don’t know which. I just know the guy rubbed me the wrong way, drooling down my neck and getting a little too handsy.”

“How long was this before Lonnie went missing?”

“Oh, I can’t remember exactly. Maybe two or three months?”

“From what we were told, Lonnie was a family man who kind of went off the rails a couple of months before he disappeared. Did you notice anything like that?”

“He seemed quieter at work, I think. But he’d gotten the promotion he’d wanted, so I assumed he was either trying harder or his father had told him to grow up. I noticed he wasn’t out the door as fast anymore, and he didn’t go out with his friends as much—not the ones from work anyway. I’d see them ask him to join them for an after-work drink, and he’d usually say no. I just thought his father or his wife must have tuned him in.”

“If you had to guess, what would you say happened to Lonnie?”

“I wouldn’t know, would I?”

“I’m just asking for your best guess.”

“Looking back on it, it’s possible he killed himself. As I mentioned, he seemed quieter at work, not happy. At the time, it didn’t bother me enough to put any real thought into why. I didn’t care if it was because he hated his job or because he was having trouble at home. Lonnie and I had nothing to do with each other.”

“Would he have had reason to kill himself?”

“I’m not the right person to ask. Like I said, we weren’t exactly friends.”

“Would it surprise you if you were to find out he was actually murdered?”

“I can’t imagine why anyone would have wanted to kill him. He was well-liked, popular even. Even his dad was very well-regarded. Both of them involved themselves in charity, helping special causes and people in need. They had their faults, of course, but as far as I know, those faults weren’t known to the world at large.”

“But they were known to you.”

“I’ve watched enough television to know what you’re about to say. And, no, I certainly didn’t kill Lonnie. I’m not capable of such a thing. I was angry at the time, bitter even. But I’m the sort of person who stews in my own negative emotions. I don’t act on them.”

“But you kind of did, didn’t you? You were fired for saying things against him.”

“For saying things, yes. As I said, I was childish back then, and I dealt with my hurt in a childish way. I would do things differently now. Lonnie and I were never friends, but if something truly bad happened to him, I can honestly say he didn’t deserve it.”

* * *

Eleanor wasn’t much more help when it came to naming possible suspects.

She admitted she’d been the only one at the bank with any real dislike for Lonnie, making her the only logical suspect in the mix.

But the conversation had given Sully something else to think about. Lonnie hadn’t apparently been the wholesome family man his loved ones had suggested.

“Not really a surprise, though, is it?” Dez said when Sully called with his report. “No one ever thinks the worst about a loved one after they die. People always remember the good things, and conveniently forget the bad. I’ve lost track of how many murdered gangster thugs and convicted killers were described as good, respectful kids by their mothers.”

Sully agreed with a dry chuckle.

“What kind of feeling did you get from Eleanor?” Dez asked. “Do you think she’s capable of having done something to Lonnie?”

“Honestly, no. I mean, it could be she’s just really smart and knows how to run a good coverup. But she seemed on the level to me. She wasn’t talking Lonnie up or down. She was just being frank about what he was like, and she admitted she wasn’t exactly Mother Teresa either.”

“Huh. So back to square one then.”

“I guess so. But then, I haven’t really moved past square one to start with.”

“You think the ghost might have made Lonnie disappear.”

“I think it’s a possibility we need to explore, particularly since there’s now another missing man.” He realized Dez would soon start asking about his night’s plans, and he sought to derail that by changing the subject. “How’s your visit with the girls?”

“Awesome. It’s been a really great night. And it’s going to get even better soon, if you know what I mean.”

“Almost Kayleigh’s bedtime, I take it?”

“Another hour yet. I’m going to read to her, though. She likes when I do the voices.”

Sully smirked. “So do I. You never read to me anymore.”

“Piss off. Listen, Eva and I talked to Kayleigh about you. She’s really excited to see you.”

This time, Sully found himself thrilled by the subject change. “Really? She’s not mad?”

“We explained things to her as well as we could. She seems to get it. Obviously, we couldn’t tell her everything. But she gets why you left the way you did, without telling us. Honestly, she handled it a lot better than I did.”

“So she’s not going to punch me in the face?” Sully said through a smile.

“Not likely. But I wouldn’t try pulling any more stupid moves with her. She’s a tough kid, and she packs a mean punch.”

Sully laughed. “Kind of more like her mom then. You’re a soft touch.”

“Only with you. And you’re damn lucky about that too. Are you heading home?”

Uh-oh. “In a bit. I want to stay out for a while yet. It’s a nice night, and I miss being able to just go for a drive.”

“Where are you driving?” The suspicion was there, an edge to Dez’s voice suggesting he wasn’t about to buy what Sully hoped to sell.

No point in lying. “I want to swing by the road, see if I can find her.”

“Sully, no. Not by yourself.”

“I’m not by myself. I’ve got Pax with me.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of human help. Human help—i.e. me—by daylight.”

“Daylight’s not really an option right now. With that Emory guy missing, the police are going to be crawling all over the place during the day.”

“I hate to break it to you, but they can run searches by night. If they’re worried enough, they could get a chopper or a plane in the air to look for heat signatures on the ground. If they do that, they’ll have ground units in place to move in if they spot anything from the air. And you, my idiot brother, will make for one big, juicy heat signature. You’re talking a surefire way to get yourself caught—and that’s if Faceless Flo doesn’t get to you first.”

It was sound logic, no denying that. But Sully had logic of his own.

“One way or another, we’re going to have to deal with her. It’s better me than someone else. At least I can see her coming.”

“And do what? Get the hell out of the way?”

“Sure. Why not? Look, most ghosts are not really all that powerful. They’re just leftover energy from what was once a living person. If the person wasn’t overly powerful in life, they won’t be after death.”

“What about poltergeists?”

“She isn’t a poltergeist.”

“How do you know?”

“There’s never been any talk about that.”

“Well, there’s never been any talk about her name being Sadie, either. Talk was always about a Flo, and we proved that one wrong, didn’t we?” Dez sighed. “Damn it, Sull, can’t you just give me one nice night without throwing a monkey wrench in there somewhere? I was enjoying myself until you called.”

“I’m sorry, D. But there really isn’t any way around this. I can’t go look for her by daylight now, and if she’s done something to Emory, I need to try to find him before it’s too late. I can see things the police and search parties can’t. It might be she’ll lead me right to him.”

“Yeah,” Dez said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

* * *

Sully knew Dez wasn’t happy about it, but by the time they got off the phone, he’d more or less convinced his older brother of the necessity of his plan.

Dez had offered to meet him, but Sully put a stopper in that one. Sully didn’t often remind him, but Dez’s fear of ghosts could prove a source of energy for spirits, giving them something to feed on. Strong human emotion could act like a battery. Sully was battery enough. For a ghost like Sadie, the two of them together might just supercharge her. And if she was really as bad as people said, feeding her energy was the last thing they wanted.

Detecting no sign of police presence at the start of Hollow Road, Sully made the turn and started down the roadway. He drove slowly, eyes and senses alert to the possible presence of a ghost in the woods which lined the road either side.

He stopped the car long enough to get out and listen, straining to pick up on the sound of an airplane or a helicopter, something that might suggest the area was being monitored. He heard nothing but the wind blowing gently through the trees, rattling branches left mostly bare by the changing fall weather. Old poplars creaked nearby. Somewhere, an owl hooted.

Dez would be crapping himself right about now.

Sully took a long look around, scanning the dark woods for a sign of a dim glow. Ghosts usually appeared that way to him, a dull light in the dark, a beacon to him just as Marc had once said Sully was a beacon to them. His own light, he’d been told, was intense. If Sadie was around, she would see him.

He got back in the car, took a moment to steel his own nerves as he reached back to scratch Pax’s chin.

“Tell me if you see anything, okay?” Sully said.

Pax’s mouth dropped open, his panting resembling laughter. Sully wished he could share in the joke. He’d chosen to come, but it wasn’t without reservation. He knew as well as Dez men had disappeared here—one of them someone he suspected was his own ancestor, a man who apparently possessed the same ability he had. If the real Oliver Chadwell could vanish at the behest of a spirit, so could Sully.

But then, no ghost of Sully’s acquaintance had the power to send a person to another dimension. All they could do was lead a person into danger.

Sully would just have to remain aware of his surroundings, that was all.

In the dark, that was quite possibly too much to expect.

He drove on, tires crunching against gravel as he crawled down the road. He drove until he glimpsed the opening ahead marking the start of the old town of Loons Hollow. He saw no evidence of any police vehicles, which was a good thing for someone hoping to remain undetected. It might have been a really good thing if it also meant they’d accomplished their task and located Emory. It occurred to Sully they hadn’t thought to text Ara and ask.

Whatever the case, Sully suspected he was alone out here.

Very alone.

Just him and his dog in a deep, dark wood haunted by the potentially homicidal spirit of a murdered woman.

All in a night’s work.

With no sign of Sadie, Sully decided the best move might be to pull over and wait. He steered to the side of the road and shut off the engine, not bothering to put the window down to listen. He couldn’t hear the ghosts anyway, and the last thing he wanted was to set off his nerves by forcing himself to listen to eerie nighttime noises in the woods. He’d do far better if he stayed calm, and that would be pretty damn hard if he gave in to imagination.

He had one other trick for staying calm, and he knew he could find it at the end of the phone line. Keeping his eyes on his surroundings, he pulled out his cellphone and dialled Dez’s number.

Three rings and Dez answered, sounding out of breath. “What?”

Sully grimaced. He’d forgotten to check the time. He now noticed it was well over an hour since his last call to Dez—past Kayleigh’s bedtime. It didn’t take a genius to realize what Dez had been in the middle of just now.

“Oh, crap, sorry.”

“This damn well better be important.”

“Um… kind of?”

“Spit it out.”

“I was wondering if you could text Ara, see if they happened to find Emory today. I don’t see any sign of police vehicles, and it occurred to me we hadn’t checked.”

“Can I do that in a few minutes, do you think?” The sarcasm was heavy. Sully didn’t blame him.

“Uh, yeah. Sure. Sorry. Hi to Eva.”

Dez hung up without another word. Sully mouthed the word “Oops” as he returned his phone to the pocket of his hoodie.

Pax’s sudden barking had Sully’s head snapping up, his neck cracking as it whipped around to check his surroundings.

Nothing.

He looked at Pax, still barking, in the back seat. “You’re killing my ears, buddy. What’s up?”

Pax was focused on something to the side of the car, something in the woods. Following the gaze, Sully sat forward a bit to better see through the window.

And jumped.

She was there.

A pale, lightly glowing figure standing in the woods, head low, hair hanging across her face.

A feeling of dread crawled over him, sent prickles down his neck. Part of him wanted to start the car and get out of here.

But this was why he’d come. This woman, this ghost, might hold answers he needed. If he ran, he might never find them.

Taking a long, deep breath, he pocketed the car keys, then gripped the handle of the door and pushed it open. Stepping onto the gravel outside, he took in his surroundings before he closed his own door and moved to open Pax’s. The dog, hair standing on end, joined him on the road and stayed at his side as Sully circled the car and started into the woods.

She was there, unmoving, unaffected by the breeze that played with a few wayward strands of Sully’s hair.

“My name’s Sullivan Gray,” he said. “I want to help you.”

Sully’s phone pinged its notification of a text from Dez. Without taking his eyes from the ghost, he drew his phone out, then looked down only long enough to check the short message displayed on his screen. Emory still missing. Searchers back first thing.

So much for the hope that much had been put to rights.

He returned his full attention to the ghost. “A man went missing early this morning. Do you know anything about it?”

He hadn’t really expected a response, so he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t receive one. He dared to take another few steps toward her, allowing him a better view. Her dress was white but stained in places by mud and dirt, and her feet were bare. There was no immediate sign of blood or injury, which was unusual in his experience; most homicide victims showed him their fatal wounds. Whether the face was shadowed by the hair and the night or whether it wasn’t there at all, he couldn’t say for sure. He wasn’t keen on getting close enough to find out.

Usually, he got a feeling from the spirits he saw, a sense of their emotions. Often it was terror, rage or pain. This one, if she felt anything, guarded her feelings, held them in a place he couldn’t reach. She was closed to him.

It made for a bad start.

He tried anyway. “People say you don’t like men. If a man hurt you, I can’t blame you for that. But I’m not that man. Emory Davis, the guy who disappeared this morning, he’s not that man.”

He stopped, took a breath, thought through what he was about to ask. It seemed like a bad idea. He went ahead anyway.

“I need you to help me find him.”

It might have been his imagination—the risk of it working overtime out here was great—but he thought he saw her head twitch.

They stood a moment, facing each other, a fraught silence stretching between them. He waited, knowing she would do one of three things. She might disappear altogether. She might turn and lead him into the woods. Or, worst case, she might come at him.

When she suddenly vanished, Sully wasn’t sure whether he should be grieved or grateful. Until, a moment later, she reappeared deeper in the woods, her form standing next to one of the many bare trees.

And now he had his own choice to make: return to the car and leave, or follow.

In the end, it didn’t make for much of a choice. He’d come here for a reason, and that reason still existed. Emory was missing, and Ara cared about him. As much as part of Sully would be thrilled to see the back of the man, he knew he couldn’t begrudge Ara her happiness. Sully had brought her nothing but pain in the end, and she deserved better. What was more, she was a good person, and she wasn’t likely to choose someone who was anything but good himself. If she cared about Emory Davis, he didn’t deserve to be out here, the victim of a vengeful spirit.

Even if it was the last thing he did, if he could find Emory, that would be something at least to help fulfill his debt to her.

His course decided, he started toward the ghost.

12

In Sully’s experience, ghosts didn’t always move the way living people did.

Some moved as they always did, nursing injuries they’d felt in life. But others, no longer hindered by the bulk of flesh, muscle and bone, figured out their new place in the world of physics. These spirits—the ones like Sadie—simply vanished only to reappear at another location. They were the ones desperate to tell him something, and they didn’t waste time or energy on travel.

Yet there was nothing about Sadie suggesting urgency, no sense of fear, anger or pain acting as obvious motivator. Many spirits were no more than a non-physical representation of the living being they’d once been; they retained their personalities, emotions, thoughts and appearances.

In Sadie’s case, it was like following a corpse.

Sully tried, failed to restrain the shiver that ran down his spine.

Pax, at his side, growled low in his throat whenever the two of them paused. The dog wasn’t fond of this arrangement, that much was clear. It was possible, between the two of them, Pax was the wiser one right now.

Sully continued on anyway.

He lost track of how long they’d been out here, what could’ve been ten minutes taking on the feel of an hour. His cellphone would tell him the time, but he didn’t want to risk looking away for even a moment. Too much could happen in a moment. Too much had already happened.

He’d grown so used to Pax’s growling it was as if a bomb went off when the barking started. Sully’s eyes snapped down to the dog’s head, finding Pax’s own sightline trained not on the ghost, but on something to the south, something not yet visible to Sully’s human sight.

He’d been walking without the use of his flashlight app, relying on the abnormally bright moon to light the way. He preferred to save the battery, just in case. Anyway, too much light focused in one spot would blind him to the rest of his surroundings, and he hadn’t wanted to chance it.

Now he could hear movement, the crunch of leaves underfoot, the crackle of branches as they were pushed aside. It was too loud for a small animal, and Sully’s first thought was of a bear or a wolf. There weren’t a large number of either animal in these woods, but there had been a few sightings over the years—enough he knew it was a possibility he was about to have a confrontation he might not survive.

He’d forgotten Rule One of outdoor survival: Always carry a canister of bear spray. Without the appropriate weapon on hand, Sully cast his gaze around for anything else that might work. A fallen tree lay nearby, and he ran over to it. Stepping down hard on one of the larger branches and wrenching it upward, he managed to sever it from the trunk. Holding it in front of him like a baseball bat and angling off for the delivery of a blow, Sully watched and waited.

“Put that down before you hurt yourself, kid,” came a female voice from the direction of the supposed wild animal.

Sully released the breath he’d been holding, then laid a hand on top of Pax’s head to calm him. “Pax, stop. It’s okay.” Once the barking stopped, Sully squinted back into the darkness. “Who’s there?”

A woman came into view, stepping out fully from behind a large tree. She was large, tall and broad, almost an older female version of Dez. Something was familiar about the voice, one Sully thought he’d last heard several years ago.

She was closer now, close enough he could make out a few of her facial features. “Give me your name first,” she said, tone demanding rather than requesting.

He no longer needed her answer. He lowered the large branch as memory clicked into place. “Rosie?”

She pulled up short in her advance toward him. “Who are you? I know your voice.”

It was no use hiding the truth. It might take her a moment, but she’d figure it out pretty quick. Pulling his hood down, he smiled at her. “I used to work at the Black Fox.”

It took her a few seconds, but she ended by grinning her recognition. “Sullivan Gray. My God. I haven’t seen you in something like five years. How you doin’?”

“I’m okay.” He remembered Sadie and turned his head to the left. She was still there, standing nearby.

Waiting.

Hopefully, she’d wait a little longer. You didn’t easily abandon a conversation with Rasslin’ Rosie Dalton.

“What are you doing out here this late?” she asked. She peered at him through narrowed eyes. “You’re not one of those nut bar ghost hunters been trespassing at Loons Hollow, are you?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “I guess you could say I’m a ghost hunter, but I’m not doing it for the entertainment value. A guy went missing out here by the name of Emory Davis. Have you heard about it?”

“I saw a search party going through earlier today. It was all I could do to avoid them.”

“Do you live out here or something?”

“Yep,” she said. “Over five years now. I had enough of the city. People there were going bad, like rotting apples. Riverview wasn’t what it once was. Used to be you could walk around the place and find a friend. Lately, all you’re doing is dodging enemies. You and your brother were tight with Bulldog Bird. He’s a good guy. You ever see him?”

“Quite a bit, actually,” Sully said. “Although I haven’t seen too many people in the past couple of years.” Secrets were safe with Rosie, never more so than now that she was well into a self-imposed exile here in the woods. He spent a few minutes updating her about having faked his own death to escape the horrors of Lockwood, and the necessity to return in part.

“What the hell were you doing at Lockwood?” she asked when he’d finished. “You’re about as crazy as I am.”

In certain circles, that might not be seen as a compliment. Sully, though, had quickly come to see Rosie differently than some. She had always been one of Kimotan Rapids’s quirky characters, someone who breathed life into an otherwise dull place. Many, he knew, didn’t appreciate quirky, and those people had a much more negative view of the woman.

She had been a jail guard for many years, until an on-the-job incident left her on long-term disability. After recovering, she landed a new job, teaching wrestling at a local club. On weekends, she took part in the city’s answer to the World Wrestling Federation, earning herself some small-scale fame as Rasslin’ Rosie.

He didn’t know much about it, but he’d heard Rosie fell out of favour when one of her competitors was badly injured during an in-ring accident. Shortly after, she quit her job at the wrestling club and people stopped seeing her at her old hangouts in the Riverview neighbourhood—or anywhere else, for that matter. Some people guessed she’d committed suicide. Others suspected guilt had driven her to drugs or drink, and that she’d OD’d in a crack house somewhere. Still others theorized her fallen competitor’s family, friends or fans had done something to make her disappear.

Sully hadn’t bothered much with the latter theory. He hadn’t seen her ghost, so he was pretty sure homicide hadn’t played a hand in her disappearance. He had wondered about the real reason along with everyone else, though, and he couldn’t not ask her now—ghost or no ghost waiting nearby.

“What happened to you? You just vanished. Everyone wondered.”

“Like I said, the city wasn’t what it used to be for me. And you no doubt heard what happened during that match. Some weird people love wrestling in KR, and they made life miserable for me afterward. I was getting threats; people left nasty letters in my mailbox. I even got spit on in public a couple of times. That sort of thing gets old fast.

“I used to come up here as a kid with my grandpa. He grew up here, near Loons Hollow, and he turned his childhood home into a hunting cabin. I would come up with him quite a bit. Truth be told, he was more tracker than hunter; he enjoyed watching the animals too much. I guess I inherited that from him, and when things got bad in KR, I decided I might be better off spending my time with animals than people. I haven’t looked back. It’s not easy, and winters can be pretty damn hard, but I wouldn’t give this up for the world.”

“I’ve lived off the grid for two years now,” Sully said. “I’d give it up in a heartbeat.”

“Then I hope you get there. It’s a good life if you don’t mind the isolation. For my part, I enjoy it.”

Sully glanced again to the side. Sadie hadn’t moved. “You’re not exactly isolated,” he told Rosie. “Do you ever see anything out here? Anything you can’t explain?”

Rosie stared at him, a few seconds passing before she responded. “You mean, anything spooky? I don’t go in for that sort of thing. People do a lot of talking about some sort of ghost in these woods, but I have yet to see something.”

“She’s probably not at all that interested in you. It’s men she seems to have the problem with.”

“Like I said, not my cup of tea, kid. You can believe what you want. Far as I’m concerned, we live this life and then we die. End of story. Game over. All this nonsense about life after death, that’s just people’s way of trying to make themselves feel better.”

“What if I told you that wasn’t true?”

“You can tell me anything you like. I’m always happy to listen. Doesn’t mean I’m going to buy what you’re selling.”

Sully wasn’t about to get into a debate. There wasn’t time, and he’d given up years ago on the idea he could change minds and philosophies. His experiences, real as they were, were still just his. Others had as much of a right to their own beliefs, to experience the world as it unfolded before them.

Anyway, Rosie clearly had no information on Sadie, so the conversation—nice at it had been to catch up—wasn’t much help to him.

“I wouldn’t try to sell you on anything,” he said. “Not my style. Listen, if you should happen to see Emory, or find any signs of him, could you let me know?”

“I don’t have a phone, Gray, and I don’t exactly have the ability or inclination to get myself an Internet connection either. Not sure how I’d let you know.”

“I can come back, check in with you.”

“Look, if I find him, and he’s wandering around lost out here, I’ll get him to the road and send him on his way to get help. Just don’t you go getting lost. I understand why you’re out here, wandering around in the dark, what with your needing to avoid the authorities and all. But it’s not safe. There’s stuff you could step in. If you break a leg, you’ll be a sitting duck for the coyotes. They’re almost as big as wolves out here.”

“I’ve got Pax,” he said.

Rosie eyed the large dog. “Good point. Well, take care of yourself. You get lost tonight, find yourself a high point and look for the plume of smoke. I keep a fire at my cabin at night. You’re welcome to come there.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

Having exchanged a handshake, the two parted ways, leaving Sully to return his attention to the ghost.

As if realizing he was following once again, the ghost resumed their game, disappearing and reappearing as she took him and Pax deeper into the woods. Sully had made a note of the moon’s position when he left the car, and he was monitoring it now, using its location and path through the sky to gauge his direction. He was walking east; he knew that much. If he turned around and went west, he would hit the road eventually. Even if he didn’t come out right near the car, he would be able to find it.

If she didn’t do something to prevent his return.

The game was changing. The spaces between the vanishings and reappearances were growing, the distances greater and the amount of time she spent in one spot lessening. Until now, Sully had been able to walk slowly enough to monitor his surroundings for objects in his path or wild animals. As he followed, he was forced first into a jog, then a run and, finally, something just short of a full-on sprint.

A few minutes of this had him wiping at sweat on his forehead and struggling to catch his breath. He tripped on something, coming down hard on his hands and knees. A rock or a crack in the earth, he had no idea which. He didn’t stick around long enough to find out. She was moving, putting far too much distance between them for him to comfortably keep up.

He tried to call out, to beg her to slow down, but he could barely get out the single word: “Wait!”

If she heard, she didn’t acknowledge it, and he struggled on behind her as she continued forward.

The terrain was different now, no longer poplar, shrubs and undergrowth, but rock and evergreen. Here, it more closely resembled Winteredge National Park, and Sully wondered briefly if they’d crossed over into that territory.

Not that it mattered. The important thing at this point was keeping her in his sights. He was now certain she was leading him into danger. As surely as he was looking at her, every fibre of his being, every instinct he possessed screamed at him to turn back.

And yet he was propelled forward, almost against his own will. The only thing he knew, besides the fact he was in trouble was that he couldn’t lose sight of her. His desire to help had turned to need, and need to obsession, within the space of minutes.

It occurred to him these were not his own emotions or thoughts. He often picked up on the feelings and thoughts of ghosts. This grasping need was not his own, but hers.

Or maybe it was something else. Someone else. Someone he had once been. Oliver Chadwell had, after all, returned to these woods time and again, eager to help Sadie in much the same way.

For now, the reason for Sully’s desperation didn’t matter either. His mind and his will were no longer wholly his own to control. Stopping was not an option. She could run him to death, and he could do nothing to stop it.

Pax was at his side, holding up far better under the strain, not even panting as he focused on their target ahead. Yet Sully suspected Pax’s true priority was not the woman, but his human.

It was more reassuring than Sully could put into words.

Out of breath, lungs burning, heart pounding, legs aching, one ankle and both knees sore from the earlier fall, he fought to keep up. He was getting lightheaded from lack of oxygen. Had this been any other situation, he would’ve stopped long ago.

His vision faded, growing darker around the edges, and he worried he was about to drop.

Then he did.

Having leapt a fallen tree, he felt no purchase as the earth opened beneath him. He fell forward, arms reaching for anything he could grab. His chest collided hard with the far edge of the fissure, and he scrabbled against the ground as his lower body dangled within a hole of unknown depth.

The forest floor was damp, muddy, nothing to provide him purchase. There were no tree roots, no heavy rocks.

A large black shadow temporarily blocked his sight as Pax jumped the space, then turned to face him as if meaning to haul him from danger.

But, sliding, Sully was beyond help.

He lost his ineffectual grip on the soft ground.

And fell.

13

Panic rose in his throat, a gasp choking back what would have otherwise been a startled cry.

He allowed terror no more than a fraction of a second of control. Fear wouldn’t save him, after all.

Or maybe it would.

In the uncontrolled flailing of reaching arms, the backs of the fingers on his left hand struck something hard behind him. The hole or crevice he’d fallen into wasn’t overly wide, and he had six feet worth of height in his favour.

Less than two seconds into the fall, he twisted, gritting his teeth in a grimace as his upper spine and the back of his head collided with rock. Stars flashed behind his shuttered eyelids but he held onto consciousness.

Bringing one leg up, he kicked against the opposite wall, seeking some sort of grip between army boot and rock. His foot skidded against the slick surface, but he’d brought his other foot up by then, seeking to plant it alongside the first. All the while, he pressed back hard against the wall behind him, aiming to wedge himself there.

Against all hope, he succeeded, his fall broken as one heel butted up against the lower lip of a small crack. Meanwhile, his upper back stopped its downward scrape against stone.

He hung there, suspended by the strength of his own body and the grace of the rock walls. He forced in one breath, as deeply as he could given his position, then a second. His eyes had shut of their own accord during the fall, and he opened them now, hoping to see something of his surroundings.

Everything was black, nothing to see but a trail of night sky visible along the surface of the crevice above him. Pax was barking like crazy, his tone sharp and insistent.

It was hard to tell exactly how far down he’d fallen, whether stable ground was reachable from his current position. He fumbled for his cellphone, finding it in its usual spot in the pocket of his hoodie. Focusing on steadying his grip so as to avoid dropping it, he pulled it free while pushing his shoulders hard back against the wall.

Despite his best efforts, his fingers trembled with tension, and it took a few tries for him to locate and activate the flashlight function. His surroundings lit up, revealing the rocky wall facing him.

Pax was barking down the hole now, the noise deafening as it bounced between the walls.

“It’s okay, Pax,” Sully called up, hoping to calm the dog enough to save his own hearing. “I’m okay.”

His voice seemed to help, Pax’s barks dwindling to softer growls and woofs. If Sully could have the same steadying effect on himself, he’d be able to ascertain the extent of the danger he was in and hopefully do something to abate it. Taking a breath, he built up the courage to aim the beam downward, following with his eyes.

The first thing he saw was a face.

His breath caught hard in his throat, every major muscle in his body jumping.

One second’s worth of shock proved his undoing.

His boot slipped in its precarious niche and set the rest of him off balance. He fought to regain the purchase he’d lost, but the slick rock refused to grant it. He slid.

Deeper into the blackness of the pit. Nearer the body he’d seen in the light from his cellphone.

Pain seized him as he hit bottom.

Then the world faded.

* * *

By the time his head cleared, his pain had dwindled to a manageable level of discomfort.

He didn’t have the impression of receding unconsciousness, guessing rather that he’d laid there stunned for a minute or so.

His back burned, his hoodie and his shirt having ridden up near his shoulders during the dragging plummet. He imagined his flesh was scraped raw in places, and more than one stone might have to be removed with tweezers. He was lying on his left side, and the shoulder beneath him ached—not the fiery pain of a break or dislocation, but a likely sign of strain or small muscular tear.

He eased himself to sitting, mentally scanning himself for further injury. He was relieved to find nothing more, his body suffering the sort of soreness that would soon dissipate.

His bigger problem was what to do now that he was down here. Pax was still making noises topside, but the sound was distant. Around Sully, all was pitch black save the pathway of sky above him, far narrower than a couple of minutes ago. The distance between him and the opening had grown to uncomfortable proportions.

Thinking about a light, he was relieved to find he’d retained the hold on his phone, tense, scraped fingers having clenched around it as he slipped down the wall.

The fall hadn’t broken the phone, and the screen lit up as he hit the home button. Not so heartening was the “no service” message showing across the top on the screen in bold, white letters.

That would be his next moment’s problem. Right now, he was more interested in figuring out whose face he’d seen and whether the person belonging to it was alive.

The flashlight function worked as it should, lighting up the area well enough for Sully to find the body he’d seen. He’d come to rest just feet from what proved to be another young man. The other person was lying on his back, one leg twisted beneath him in a way that revealed a break or dislocation, the kind Sully had been lucky enough to avoid himself. The man’s arms were hugged around his chest, a position that suggested he’d lived at least long enough to feel the cold, if he wasn’t still alive.

Sully dragged himself the few feet, closing the distance between the two of them. Careful to avoid the leg, he reached to feel for a pulse at the man’s throat. At this angle, he was afforded a better view of his face.

It had him sucking in a gasping breath. He’d seen it before, or at least something like it.

He had known one very similar at Lockwood.

Larson Hackman was the head orderly at the institution, a man feared by many of the patients. Sully had more reason to fear him than most; it was only with Hackman’s help that Dr. Roman Gerhardt had been able to conduct his torturous experiments in the Blue Room. Hackman’s sneering face had looked down at Sully during each session as he’d restrained the unwilling subject for the psychiatrist’s “treatments.”

Sully sat back without checking for a pulse, closing his eyes and centring himself. This wasn’t Larson Hackman; he was at least twenty years too young and a great deal smaller. This man had done nothing to merit Sully’s loathing. He needed help, and only Sully was in a position to give it.

Mind made up, he reopened his eyes and returned to his task, reaching out and fumbling with his fingertips along the man’s throat, searching for a gentle throb where jawbone met neck.

It was there, pulse beating with unexpected strength against Sully’s fingers.

His touch alerted the previously unconscious man to Sully’s presence.

The man drew in a heaving, shuddering breath as his eyes popped open to wildly scan his immediate surroundings.

Sully turned away long enough to struggle with his hoodie, tugging it into place and pulling the hood over his head. Only then did he allow the light from his phone to reveal his shadowed visage.

“Who are you?”

“Oliver Chadwell. Who are you?”

“Emory. Emory Davis.”

It figured. Of all the people Ara had to pick to go out with, it was someone who closely resembled one of Sully’s biggest enemies. He had questions about the man’s resemblance to Hackman, but they’d have to wait. Other things took priority.

“People are searching for you,” Sully said.

“I thought they must be by now. I haven’t heard anybody from down here, though.”

“Have you been down here the whole time?”

“A whole day for sure. It was early morning and pretty dark when I fell in. I’ve been down here long enough for it to get dark again. You said ‘people are searching.’ Don’t you count as ‘people’? I mean, you’re here to rescue me, right?”

“In a manner of speaking. But it seems like we’re going to have to wait for additional help.”

“You don’t have people up there who are going to pull us out? Someone must’ve lowered you down here.”

“I’m not Search and Rescue,” Sully said. “I’m a different kind of help.”

Emory shifted, groaned. “Ah, Jesus. My leg.”

“I know. It looks broken. Try not to move around too much.”

“I’m trying, believe me. If you weren’t lowered down here, does that mean you fell too?”

“Yeah, probably the same way you did.”

Emory lifted his head at the neck, eyes growing rounder as he sought out his companion’s. Sully hoped the hood was doing its job, concealing his eyes in shadow. “Did you see her?”

“By ‘her,’ I’m guessing you mean Faceless Flo?”

Emory managed a tight nod before lowering his head back to the ground. “I saw something while I was in Loons Hollow. I couldn’t tell for sure—it was kind of out of the corner of my eye—but it looked like a woman in a white dress. My girlfriend and I have been going out there for quite a while, hunting for Flo. I thought about calling Takara—that’s my girlfriend—to come with me, but I didn’t. I don’t know why. I felt like I needed to follow, and fast. I ran all the way out of the old town and into the woods, chasing after this person or ghost or whatever. I never did see her full-on; just a flash here and there. It was weird. I kept feeling I should turn back, but it was like I couldn’t.”

“I know what you mean.”

“So you did see her?” Emory’s eyebrows lifted.

“Yeah. I did. I guess I ended up down here the same way you did.”

“Only you don’t look hurt too bad.”

“I managed to slow my descent a bit,” Sully said. “Are you hurt anywhere besides your leg?”

“Everything’s sore, but my leg’s the worst. And I’m really cold.”

The statement formed a reminder, and Sully’s gaze returned to the arms Emory had wrapped tight around himself. Sully shrugged out of his outer jacket, draping it over the injured man’s upper body.

“Thanks,” Emory said.

“Not sure how much good it will do.”

“Still appreciate it.”

“You said you saw her,” Sully said. “Have you seen ghosts before?”

“Once, when I was a little kid. I saw my grandmother in my room late at night. I found out later she’d died a couple hours before that.”

Sully was thinking through how far down that road to go, when Emory re-asked a question of his own.

“You didn’t really answer me before. Is someone else around who can help us?”

Sully thought he had answered the question, but supposed there was plenty of reason why Emory’s head might not be fully in the game at the moment. “The only other living being up there is my dog.”

Emory swore under his breath, prompting Sully to tack on a more hopeful statement.

“A friend of mine will find us, though. He knows I came out here looking for you and the ghost. If I don’t show up, he’ll come searching for me.”

“Yeah, but you said there are already people trying to find me. Takara would have called for help pretty early, so that means whoever came spent the whole day looking and didn’t find me. What makes you think your friend is going to have better luck?”

“Search parties only go on for so long. My buddy won’t give up until he finds us.”

“Must be a good friend.”

“The best. He’s… like a brother to me.” It seemed a good transition, an opportunity for Sully to launch into that other topic he’d considered upon his first solid view of Emory’s features. “What about you? You have family?”

“No siblings. It was always just me and my mom growing up.”

“Your dad’s not in the picture?”

“Why are you asking?” Suspicion coloured Emory’s tone, and Sully thought fast. It was true this wasn’t the sort of chat you had with a stranger.

“Just making conversation. We’re in a bad spot, and talking about family makes me feel better. I thought it might make you feel better too.”

“Well, it doesn’t. Not about my father, anyway.” A pause followed, but one pregnant with unspoken thought. Sully let it play through, avoiding filling it with further questions. He knew he’d done the right thing when Emory again spoke. “The answer is no. My father’s not in the picture, and I’m happy to keep it that way. He bailed when I was a kid, left my mom and me alone. The guy’s a prick of the highest order. I barely ever see him, and I’m not exactly eager to change that. Last time was a couple of years ago, and the only reason I went to see him was because he manages to get this medication my mom’s sister needs for her mental health problem.”

Sully risked taking the conversation one step further. “You look like someone I’ve seen before. I used to know someone who was a patient at Lockwood Psychiatric Hospital.”

“My father’s head orderly there. That’s how he was always able to get the meds my aunt needed. I don’t really know anything else about him, and I don’t care.”

But Sully cared. Emory’s reply had given him the answer he needed. Larson Hackman was Emory Davis’s father.

Unfortunately, it had opened up a new can of worms. Sully’s time as a patient at Lockwood had been spent under the influence of heavy medication. He had very little visual memory of the place, save within those moments he was restrained within the Blue Room. If Emory had seen him during a reluctant visit to his father, there was a chance he might recognize him now—beard, long hair and cover of darkness notwithstanding.

“Did it ever bother you, seeing the patients there?” Sully asked. “Some of them were pretty messed up, as I recall.”

“I never really saw them. I waited in the reception area, and Larson came to meet me there with the meds. All I wanted was to get in and get out. The only good thing I got out of those visits, besides the meds, was meeting my girlfriend.”

Sully treaded carefully, “Ara, you said her name was?”

“Takara,” Emory corrected, leaving Sully to puzzle through that one. Ara had always insisted on being called by the shorter term, having told Sully she didn’t much like her full given name.

“So she was a visitor, too, I’m assuming?”

“Yeah. Her boyfriend was a patient there, some guy who’d apparently tried to kill himself a couple of times. She refused to date me at first because of him. We were just friends until he got killed in some freak accident a short time later. When he was in there, though, he was basically a vegetable, she said. She didn’t think he even knew she was there.”

He knew, Sully thought to himself. He knew, and he’d been grateful for her visits. If only he’d had the chance to tell her.

He found he couldn’t fault her for moving on, even if it was with the son of one of his worst enemies, and even if she’d met Emory while Sully was technically alive and present in the next room. Sully knew how badly Dez, Eva and his mom had been impacted by those visits. He knew Marc hadn’t even had the strength to face going. Ara couldn’t have had it any easier, devoting time, energy and emotion to a seemingly hopeless and heartbreaking task. She’d recognized a chance at happiness and she’d taken it. She deserved it.

“You sound like you care about her,” Sully said. He was prying; he knew that. But it was a necessary prying. No way he’d simply sit back and watch Ara get hurt if it turned out Emory was nothing more than Hackman Junior.

“Yeah, I care,” Emory said. “I love her. Honestly, I can see us getting married one day… if I can ever get out of this damn pit.”

A small part of Sully wasn’t so sure he wanted to see Emory pulled free, not if it meant losing Ara forever. Sully, too, had entertained ideas about her, about what life might be like once he could finally come out of hiding. He’d never been sure about marriage, uncertain whether his life’s path lent itself to something so normal or permanent. But he had pictured Ara at his side nonetheless.

Suddenly the picture had changed, and he didn’t like the look of it.

It seemed a good time to get off the subject.

“I’m thinking it’s a solid twenty feet to the top,” Sully said. “I’m wondering if there’s a way I can scale it. If I can get out of here, I can get us help.”

Emory wasn’t about to argue, so Sully dug through the pockets of the jacket he planned to leave draped over the injured man, retrieving his wallet and the keys to Emily’s car and Dez’s apartment. The wallet wasn’t much good for anything. He didn’t have a driver’s licence anymore, and he’d removed all of his identification just in case. But he hadn’t been able to part with the couple of family photos he kept tucked away in there, and the thought of a stranger finding them—let alone one who was related to Hackman—unsettled him. Placing the items into the pockets of his hoodie and jeans, he readied himself for the upcoming task.

He had the height to pull off the move, so long as he was able to keep his upper back and his feet pressed to the walls. It would involve shuffling up, one painstaking step at a time, and a level of patience he wasn’t sure he possessed. But with no immediate hope of rescue, this seemed the only option.

Looking up once more at the gap in the earth above his head, Sully leaned back against one wall and placed his feet against the opposite side. The rock felt slick beneath his boots, a constant threat of slipping. And already he could feel a dampness seeping through his jacket. But his position held, and he took some comfort in that. If he could maintain that until he reached the top, he could get help to Emory.

If Sadie would allow it.

“You sure you’re okay for a bit?” he asked the injured man.

“I’ll have to be.”

“If this works, I’ll be back soon with help.”

“Then good luck.”

By the time he got partway up the crevice, Sully realized he would need more than luck.

This might work if the walls were even, and if they were bone dry. Twice now, he’d almost completely lost his footing. And twice he’d had to shuffle sideways to get around an outcropping of rock that impeded further progress.

His current angle prevented him from looking up, making it impossible to tell precisely how close to the top he’d come when the inevitable happened. In this spot—likely the place he’d slipped from when he ended up next to Emory in the first place—there was nowhere to grip, the stone smooth and wet. Holding onto what he still had of a grip against a rougher area beneath, Sully cast the light from his cellphone around him, wanting a spot that might prove easier. What he saw was purely unhelpful, evidence of the crevice widening out far enough he wouldn’t be able to pull off his current move with any success.

He could try to push forward, move up farther. But a glance down changed his mind. He was higher than expected, Emory a distant face blinking in the light from the cellphone. He estimated this was indeed where he’d lost his grip the last time, and it was only a matter of luck he’d escaped without serious injury. The last thing either of them, or any future rescuers, needed was having to cope with two seriously hurt men.

The best bet seemed to be giving the search party or Dez—or even Rosie Dalton, with any luck—a chance to find them. If too much time passed with no rescue, and no immediate hope of it, Sully would try again.

Emory appeared dismayed when Sully returned to him a few long minutes later. “What happened?”

“The rock’s really slick, and it’s too flat in one spot up there to get a good grip on it. I was lucky the last time not to break anything. I might not be so lucky a second time.”

“So we’re stuck down here? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“For now,” Sully said. “I can try later, if no one comes around to help us. Maybe everything will be less damp during the day. It feels kind of humid right now. If that bit of rock was dry at least, I could probably make it up okay.”

Sully gave Emory what he intended to be a reassuring smile, speaking through it so Emory could hear his attempt at confidence. “Don’t worry. My buddy will come for me. He’ll find us.”

“One thing you should probably consider,” Emory said. “What happens if the ghost finds him first?”

14

Early morning sunlight bathed the master bedroom in gleaming warmth.

Dez felt a warm glow of his own as his mind returned to last night. Eva lay next to him, eyes closed in gentle slumber. He rolled onto his side to study her, eyes tracing her delicate features, her narrow yet strong shoulders, the swell of her breasts beneath the bedding. He tried and failed to resist the urge to close the slight distance between them, draping an arm across her form as he inhaled the scent of her hair. In the heady enthusiasm of last night, he hadn’t had the time or the inclination for this level of study. Now a smile formed on his lips as recognition took hold. He knew this smell: tones of vanilla and some sort of flower he couldn’t identify, the scent of her favourite leave-in conditioner.

It was the smell of home.

A humming noise formed on his lips as he nuzzled deeper into her hair, eyes closed to allow him to more fully bask in the scent.

“What are you doing?” Her voice held a combination of sleepiness and amusement.

“Memorizing,” he said. “I miss the smell of you.”

She chuckled. “Clearly, you’ve forgotten post-workout me.”

“I miss that too.”

“You’re weird.” She turned her head to kiss him anyway. “Morning, Snowman.”

He smiled into her lips. “Morning, babe.”

No risk now of waking her, he tightened his hold, drawing her more fully to him.

“I don’t want to go back to Riverview,” he said.

“So don’t.”

“But Sully—”

“We’ve got room here, you know. Now that Kayleigh knows about him, he could stay here with us.”

“I appreciate that. I really do. But the problem was always bigger than Kayleigh knowing. There are too many people who want him. The risks are too huge. I’d never forgive myself if somebody found him here, and if something happened to you or Kayleigh because of it. And I know Sully feels the same.”

“What risks, exactly?”

“We’ve talked about this.”

“Remind me. Right now, all I know is I want you home. I need you to convince me otherwise.”

Dez allowed himself a moment to bask in that statement. It didn’t last long. It couldn’t. Not until they got all of this resolved.

“First of all, there’s his birth family.”

“Who believes he’s dead.”

“For now. Let’s face it. Greta Raynor’s not exactly what I’d call trustworthy. If she chooses to go back to them—and she might if she falls back into addiction—there will be nothing to stop her from telling them.”

“Except the possibility of a murder conviction. Her silence is about more than her getting clean or being with Forbes instead of her batty mother and grandmother. If she isn’t careful, she’s looking at a life sentence for killing Brennan Wakeman.”

“Even so, you know addicts aren’t exactly reliable. In the middle of an alcohol or drug high, people will say and do all sorts of things they might not otherwise. If she ends up back with her family, and something slips out, that would be it. Next thing you know, that pair of loons would be rolling back into town planning to set fire to whatever building Sully happens to be in at the time. Then there’s the whole Lockwood thing. Gerhardt will want him back in there the second he finds out he’s alive, and there’s a lot more to that than we ever realized.”

“What do you mean?”

Dez had been sitting on this secret ever since Emily told him the truth about what Gerhardt had done to Lucky Dule, Sully’s birth mother. There was no question Sully would want to know; he had a right to know. But he had enough on his plate, and the last thing Dez wanted was to give his brother one more thing he would struggle to digest.

“I haven’t told anyone about this, but I know I can trust you not to say anything. I don’t know what to do, and I could use someone to talk to.”

His tone had changed; he could hear it in his own voice. Eva responded by turning fully onto her side and propping her head up in one hand as she studied him from beneath lowered brows. She didn’t say anything, just waited him out. He loved that about her, her disinclination to fill every gap with unneeded questions, her way of letting him get things out at his own pace.

By the time she finally interrupted with a question, it was one for which he was grateful, keeping him from having to say the words out loud himself.

“You’re trying to tell me Gerhardt is Sully’s biological father, aren’t you?”

Dez nodded his confirmation.

“And you haven’t told Sully?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?”

“He’s got enough to worry about, don’t you think?”

“Dez, you can’t keep treating Sully like a kid. He’s a grown man and he’s a mature one at that. Far too mature for his age, actually. A whole lot of twenty-four-year-old guys are busy chasing skirts and having drinking competitions with their buddies. Sully’s helping homicide victims get justice. He’s never been a kid, not really. You need to give him more credit.”

“I know what you’re saying makes sense. But how exactly am I supposed to tell him he’s the product of a rape? And let’s not forget, Gerhardt confined and tortured him. Sully’s got plenty of issues with the man already. How’s he going to react when I tell him the guy who gave him PTSD is his biological father?”

“You know how he’ll react. He’ll be upset. He’ll be angry. He might even hate himself for a while. But he’ll come back. He always comes back.”

“The last time, he only came back because I was in trouble. He was gone two years, and he would’ve stayed gone if Aiden hadn’t found him for me. What if this drives him away again? Or worse, what if he decides to confront Gerhardt? The second he reveals himself, he not only risks returning to Lockwood as a patient, his life will be in jeopardy because of the Dules, and Raynor will be clear to pursue murder charges against him over Betty Schuster’s death.”

“You don’t think Forbes is still after him on that, do you? It seems pretty obvious Sully didn’t kill Betty.”

“Obvious to you and me and anyone with half a mind. In my experience, the obvious is lost on Raynor.”

“Okay, but all of these horrible things you’re worried about, those are all dependent on Sully jumping off the deep end when you tell him. You’re not giving him enough credit. He’s been through a lot in his life, and your family gave him the skills and the support to deal with it. If he’s found a place to put everything else, why not this? It seems to me all he might need in the long run are people around him who care, people who will support him through whatever he’s facing. I know you’ll be that for him. I sure will be. So will your mom. He’s got people who love him, Dez. None of us will let him down.”

Dez smiled, drawing Eva to him in an embrace. “I love you, you know that?”

“I know,” she said, face muffled against Dez’s shoulder, breath tickling his chest. “So you’re going to tell him?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell him. When the time is right.”

“When’s that going to be?”

“No idea,” Dez said. “But I’m hoping I’ll know it when I see it.”

Eva broke the embrace first. “I need to get Kayleigh up for school and get breakfast ready.”

“Just go look after breakfast. I’ll get Kayleigh ready.”

“She can get herself ready. She’s just not the best at getting up on time. Kind of like someone else I know.”

The meaning was clear and Dez smirked at the jibe. “All right. Point taken. Just get going before I find a reason for us to stay in bed too.”

Eva took the hint and left the bed, sliding into the silk robe she kept hanging on the back of the bedroom door. Dez watched her go before turning attention to his own task. Midway through getting dressed, he checked his phone, deciding it wasn’t too early to call Sully.

The problem was there wasn’t any Sully there to pick up. The phone rang through to a message stating the number he was trying to reach was unavailable or out of the service area. Dez slipped the phone into his jeans pocket and finished getting dressed. He felt the familiar bubble of anxiety in his gut, but he pushed it down, focusing instead on his daughter in her room just down the hall.

“Kayleigh,” he said. Then louder, “Kayleigh.”

“No,” she groaned. “Too early.”

Dez smiled. If he had a nickel for every time he’d said those exact words to his own parents. “I know it’s early, but it’s time to get up and get ready for school.”

“Don’t wanna go.”

“I get it, kiddo. Believe me. But no choice. Now, come on. Up and at ‘em.”

The seven-year-old heaved one massive groan and forced herself to sitting. “Okay, okay. I’m up.”

He straightened and grinned down at her. “That’s my girl.”

He expected her to get out of bed, but received only a rather indignant glare instead. “Uh, Dad? A little privacy?”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

He hightailed it back to the hall, closing the door behind himself. He found Eva in the kitchen. “Privacy? Since when is that a thing?”

Eva chuckled. “She gave you that line, too, huh? Yeah, she likes her space in the morning these days. Basically, I wake her up and leave. We usually just do cereal and toast with peanut butter around here for breakfast, but I’m going to do some eggs up. I know our usual fare won’t hold you for long.”

“You got that right. But let me do it. You go get yourself ready.”

“I’m on a swing shift today. I don’t start until two. I’m in no rush. Anyway, you never fry the eggs long enough.”

“I like my eggs runny.”

“It’s like courting salmonella. I’ve got this. But if you want to do the toast, have at it.”

Dez went about the assigned task, popping a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster and pushing the lever down. Eva had put coffee on, and he laid out a couple of mugs and the flavoured creamers from the fridge while it perked. That done, he pulled out his phone, redialling Sully.

Another ring, another message: “The number you are trying to reach is unavailable or out of the service area.”

His anxiety intensified.

“What’s wrong?” Eva asked.

“I can’t reach Sully. I’ve been trying but it doesn’t even give me his voicemail. I keep getting that ‘out of the service area’ message.”

“When did you last talk to him?”

“Last night. When you and I were in bed together. He was on Hollow Road, searching for Flo.”

“Faceless Flo? God, what are the two of you involved in now?”

“Don’t ask. Listen, I might have to skip breakfast. I think something’s wrong. I need to go find him.”

“Let me get Kayleigh off to school, and I’ll go with you. Two sets of eyes are better than one, right?”

The idea of having Eva with him was a comforting one. Not only did he welcome having someone with him on a haunted road, he liked the thought of her being there for him if he found something not good. With Sully, anything was a possibility.

In the meantime, the minutes dragged by, and Dez had to mentally coach himself into maintaining his patience as Kayleigh dawdled. Finally, the three of them fed and watered and Kayleigh ready for school, they left in Dez’s SUV. Having dropped their daughter off at school, Dez turned around, setting a course east through the city, making for one of the bridges that would take them to the north side of the Kimotan River.

It didn’t take any real work for Eva to read his mind. “I’m sure he’s all right, Dez.”

“Experience with Sully has taught me to never get too comfortable. There have been too many instances of him not being all right.”

He knew he’d made his point when Eva fell silent. He wished she’d say something to take his mind off of this latest problem.

Of course, there wasn’t really anything she could say. Dez worried about people. She knew that as well as he did. And with Sully, he’d had plenty of cause to worry over the years. This growing sense of dread wouldn’t quit gnawing at him just because Eva filled the silence.

Only one thing would make it quit, and that was finding Sully in one piece. The problem was, there was no certainty that’s what Dez was about to find.

The drive out to Hollow Road took a little over an hour, enough time for Dez to get himself worked up. Eva had done her best, trying to talk about other things to distract him. But, with five more attempted calls to Sully resulting in the same message, there was nothing Eva could do to calm him down.

Dread turned to full-on fear when he spotted Emily’s car on the road, its windows covered in morning frost. It was clear the car had been here all night.

It was equally obvious, having gotten out to scrape a window on the car, there was no Sully.

Dez called his brother’s name, listening for a response that didn’t come. A second attempt fared no better. He was about to try again when Eva nudged him. He turned to see a number of vehicles driving toward them from the direction of the highway.

“Search party for Emory,” Dez said. “Bloody hell.”

“Might not be a bad thing. Those are a lot of additional eyes.”

“Just what Sully doesn’t need.”

“Priorities,” Eva said. “I think our focus right now needs to be on finding him. Seems kind of pointless to be worried about hiding him from the authorities if we can’t even find him ourselves, doesn’t it?”

It was a fair point. Even so…. “He’s been using the name Oliver Chadwell publicly. Let’s use that to call. I’d rather people don’t hear me yelling the name of my supposedly dead brother.”

“Message received,” Eva said as the first of five vehicles pulled up next to them.

Dez recognized the face of a police officer he’d once worked with, and did his best to hide his anxiety. “Hey, Clark. I heard you guys are searching for that missing guy.”

“Yeah. I’m leading the search party.”

“Any luck?”

“Nothing. But we’ve got a couple of conservation officers and a tracker coming in a few hours, so I’m hopeful. What brings you and Eva out here?’

Dez quickly thought through how honest to be. This wasn’t an area normal people came for a hike, and there was the frosted-over car to explain. It seemed the only option was to provide a version of the truth.

“I’ve been trying to reach a friend of mine, and I wasn’t having any luck. Eva and I just got here and found the car he’d borrowed. It belongs to my neighbour.”

“God, don’t tell me,” Clark groaned. “He’s another ghost hunter, isn’t he?”

“Uh, yeah, something like that.”

“I wish there was a way we could just block this road off. There’s nothing down here for anyone, not anymore.”

“The no-trespassing signs are up,” Eva said. “People know walking around the area is at their own risk.”

“Fair enough, but we’ve still got to come out when people do something stupid and get themselves lost,” Clark said. “Listen, if you’re planning on hiking into the woods in search of your buddy, do us all a favour and set yourselves some coordinates. Do you know how to read coordinates and use them to navigate?”

“Yeah,” Dez said. “My dad taught me about that years ago. I’ve got my phone. I was planning on using it to help us get around. You haven’t run into any dead zones out here, have you?”

“Not so far.”

“So no explanation for why my buddy’s phone just rings through to an ‘out of the service area’ message?”

“Emory Davis’s is doing the same thing. Could be the phones are dead, I suppose. Weird thing was his girlfriend started trying to call him not too long after he walked off, and she was already getting that message. Not sure why. One thought was he was somewhere there was a lot of interference, but that doesn’t make any sense. There’s not even any phone or power lines up around here, and that wouldn’t impact a phone’s ability to receive calls anyway. It would take some pretty strong interference to impact it.”

“Where’s the nearest cellphone tower?” Eva asked.

“Nothing right nearby, but we’re all getting at least two bars on our phones anyway,” Clark said. “And Emory’s apparently using the same service provider as I am. That shouldn’t be an issue, unless he fell into a hole somewhere—which is what I’m starting to think happened. That’s where the conservation officers and the tracker will hopefully come in handy today. They know the area better or, in the case of the tracker, can read it better. Hopefully, we’ll get some results quick. His girlfriend and his family are pretty worried. I can’t say I blame them. Much longer and I’ll be concerned about exposure issues. It’s getting pretty cold at night.”

That was all Dez needed. One more thing to worry about.

“Are you starting your search from the townsite again?” he asked.

Clark nodded. “We want to give the town another thorough look. If he fell into an old well or a cellar or something, it would explain a lot. Most homes had roots cellars or storm cellars at the time, and I feel like we haven’t uncovered a whole lot of them. The two of you are checking out the woods here?”

“Yeah,” Dez said. “Seems the best thing, since the car’s here.”

“What’s your friend’s name and description? We can keep an eye out, give you a call if we find something.”

“Oliver Chadwell. He’s six feet tall, thin build, with long brown hair and a beard. He’s probably wearing a hoodie and this green overcoat he got from Army surplus.”

“Got it,” Clark said, handing over a business card in exchange for one of Dez’s. “Good luck. Give me a call if you find anything.”

Clark drove off, leading the other vehicles in the direction of the old townsite.

“At least they’ll be busy in Loons Hollow for a while,” Eva said. “That’ll keep them out of our way.”

“For a bit,” Dez said. “But it doesn’t give us much time.”

“Well, then,” Eva said, “we’d better get started.”

15

An hour passed. Dez’s throat had grown hoarse from calling out his brother’s fake name.

It reoccurred to him midway through the morning another Oliver Chadwell had gone missing in these woods many years ago. If life had taught Dez anything, it was that ghosts were everywhere. He couldn’t see them, but he had gained unwanted awareness through Sully. If Oliver Chadwell had stayed around here after his death, there was a good chance Dez could be summoning him by repeatedly calling his name—kind of like that Bloody Mary game schoolkids played in their bathrooms.

He shuddered, but fought to suppress any additional thoughts of ghosts. He already had Faceless Flo to contend with, and that was a big enough deal—especially if she was the one responsible for Sully’s disappearance.

“How are you holding up?” Eva asked. Her own voice sounded a bit croaky; she’d been doing plenty of calling out too.

“About ready to run mad,” Dez said. “How are you?”

Eva’s fingers slipped through his. Dez felt a little warmth seep back into him, a little of the fear slide away. “We’ll find him, Snowman. We won’t go back until we do, okay? Worse comes to worse, I can call in sick and we can ask your mom to pick Kayleigh up from school.”

“God, we’d better not be out here that long.”

Dez started to take another step forward, about to call out to Sully again when Eva yanked back on his hand.

“What?” he asked, every bit of anxiety he possessed standing to attention as he thought about faceless ghosts and mysteriously missing men.

“Did you hear that? It sounded like movement.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Nearby. Shh.”

Dez listened. It took a few seconds, but he could indeed hear the sound of movement not far away.

“Could be an animal,” Dez said, hoping saying it out loud would make him feel better. He decided he’d rather face a bear than a spectral woman with no face and homicidal tendencies.

Eva took a chance at calling out. “Oliver?”

It wasn’t Sully who came in to view, emerging from between the trees and shrubs ahead. For a moment, Dez thought he was seeing another ghost.

“Rosie?” he asked. “That you?”

Her face broke into a grin as she clamped eyes on him. “Holy hell. Big Red. It’s been years. How the hell are ya?” She closed the distance between them, grasping his hand in a solid handshake and pumping his arm to near-dislocation.

“I’m okay, more or less,” he said. “How about you? I thought… uh….”

“That I was dead. I know. Your brother said the same thing.”

Dez felt a pounding in his chest. “Sully? You’ve seen him?”

“Yup. Last night. Wandering around in here with a big dog. Nice dog. Been thinking I’d like one myself.”

Dez’s heart sank. “So you haven’t seen him since?”

“No. Why, he didn’t come home?”

“No, and I can’t get ahold of him. His phone’s telling me his number’s out of the service area. That’s usually a sign it’s broken or somewhere it can’t receive a signal.”

“Damn. Tell you what, ‘cuz it’s you two, I’ll give you a hand. I always liked that kid, and you’re okay too—for a cop.”

“I was a cop,” Dez said. “I got canned.”

“Jesus. For what?”

“Long story, but basically I drank myself out of the job. On the up and up now, though.”

“Good to hear. Too much booze will kill you. I’ve seen it happen to too many good people.” Rosie turned to Eva. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“We did once or twice. I’m Eva Braddock, Dez’s wife.”

“Cop?”

“Yeah. We met in police college. How’d you know?”

“Most cops carry themselves the same way. You get to recognizing it after a while. Don’t worry, I’ve got no problem with police. Don’t be fooled by the talk. I was pretty drunk myself when that whole mess happened, and I regretted it after.”

The story came back to Dez. “Lachlan Fields. He’s a private investigator now. I’m actually working with him.”

“Guy’s an asshole,” Rosie said. “But he didn’t deserve the lickin’ I hung on him. Pass along my apologies, will ya?”

Rosie led the way through the woods, leaving Dez and Eva to follow behind. “I didn’t hear you calling your brother’s name. Sounded like you were saying something else.”

Dez explained Sully’s use of the false name and the reason for it. No point keeping anything from Rosie, not now that she had seen Sully.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d keep all of this to yourself,” Dez said. “No one can know.”

“Hey,” Rosie said, turning to face him with a smirk as she spread out her arms to indicate the woods around them. “Who am I going to tell?” She turned back around, continuing the search. “Hey, listen, I know all about needing to get out of Dodge and start over. His secret’s safe with me. Don’t worry.”

“Thanks.”

The conversation ended there while each focused on calling out. Another half hour went by with no success.

“Sully said he was out here looking for that missing kid,” Rosie said. “Any word on him yet?”

“He’s still missing,” Eva said. “Search party is combing through the townsite this morning, and they’ll likely be searching the woods later, if they don’t find anything in town.”

“Great,” Rosie said. “Another day of hide and seek for me, then.”

She pulled up short, causing Dez and Eva to do the same. Any questions Dez had were prevented by the hand Rosie raised as a command for silence.

Dez listened. He could hear it, too, now, the sound of movement ahead. He risked calling out once more. “Oliver?”

The sounds intensified, whatever it was no longer walking, but running toward them.

“Shit,” Rosie said. “Sounds like an animal. And it’s big.” She drew a bowie knife from the waistband of her pants and held it before her, knife-fighting style, as she placed herself in front of Dez and Eva. “Get ready.”

Dez was looking around for anything he could use as a weapon when the animal burst through the brush ahead.

“Pax!” Dez pushed past Rosie, meeting the dog’s enthusiastic greeting. Only Dez’s size saved him from being knocked to the ground as Pax leapt on him, paws against his chest as he tried and failed to reach Dez’s chin with his tongue.

The reunion brought with it a rush of relief, and Dez allowed himself a laugh as he roughhoused with Pax. But the joy didn’t last long. He expected to see Sully following just a few steps behind his dog. When that didn’t happen, Dez’s anxiety returned full-force.

“Sully?” he called out. Then louder, “Sully?”

“Ssh,” Eva said. “Don’t forget, we’re using the name Oliver. We don’t know who else is out here.”

“Right,” Dez said. “I forgot. Damn it. He wouldn’t have left Pax out here by himself—and Pax wouldn’t have left him. Where is he?”

“We’ll find him, all right?”

Rosie stepped forward to examine Pax, and it said something for her character that the dog let her. One thing about Pax: He had his people-reading skills down. Anyone he deemed even remotely untrustworthy was met with a growl or full-on barking.

Rosie stood from her quick study. “No blood on him that I can see—his own or anyone else’s.”

That was something, at least. Of course, it didn’t mean Sully wasn’t hurt or worse. Not all serious injuries resulted in external bleeding. It didn’t pay to get too comfortable, not until they had ample reason.

Dez’s memory flashed back to Sully’s recent kidnapping. Pax had found his way back to Dez’s that day, and he’d later led Dez to the spot where Sully had been taken. Pax was more than a loyal companion—he was also as smart as a whip. If Dez could get Pax to repeat what he’d done that day, it was possible he’d lead them right to Sully.

“Pax, where’s Sully?” he asked, keeping his voice upbeat, trying to treat this as a game for the dog. “Where’s Sully, Pax? Huh? Find Sully. Find Sully, Pax.”

Pax’s front feet left the ground as he gave a little jump. Then he was off, and it was all Dez could do to keep up. Eva and Rosie thundered along behind him as he raced after the dog, shouting warnings to the women along the way about logs or rocks in the path. Twice he had to call Pax back when the dog got too far ahead, but both times Pax returned to his course once his companions had caught up.

Less than five minutes passed, by Dez’s estimation, before they came to a large fallen tree in their path. Pax was large enough to leap it, yet he circled it instead, causing Dez to do the same. Only then did he see what Pax had obviously known to be there: a gaping crevice in the earth.

“Is someone there?” came a familiar voice from its depths.

Relief flooded Dez as he recognized his brother’s voice. He reached down to ruffle Pax’s ears. “Atta boy, Paxie.” Then he knelt along the edge of the crevice, peering down into the darkness as he was joined by Eva and Rosie.

Dez fished out his cellphone, fumbling for his flashlight app. He reminded himself to use his brother’s fake name, just in case. “Olly? You okay?”

“Dez? Thank God. I’m fine. I’m with Emory. His leg’s badly broken, but he’s alive.”

Dez found the app and shone it downward, locating his brother in the gloom. Sully’s dimly lit face squinted up at him, dirty and grinning and very much okay. Dez felt his anxiety leave him, and he sealed it with a wild laugh. “You look like hell.”

“Been a long night. Who’s with you?”

“Eva and Rosie.”

“Hi, guys.”

“Hi, Oliver,” Eva said. “You’re in some trouble when we get you out of there. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, you can yell at me all you want later.”

“My cabin’s probably about a twenty-minute hike from here,” Rosie said. “I’ve got some rope we can use to pull our boy out, but I’d rather not be moving the other kid with an injury like that.”

“Me neither,” Eva said. “Listen, if you can get the rope, we’ll get Oliver out, and you can lower me down there. Dez can go get the search party. They’ll have access to rescue equipment to stabilize the leg and get Emory out safely. That will help Emory and keep anyone from seeing either you or Oliver.”

“Works for me,” Rosie said, before taking off at a jog through the woods, calling over her shoulder, “Wait here.”

“What else are we going to do?” Dez asked her departing figure. He returned his attention to the two men in the hole, asking the question to which he wasn’t sure he wanted an answer. “How’d the two of you end up down there?”

“Same way,” Sully said. “It was Flo. We both saw her, and we both followed her. She led us here—on purpose, I guess.”

His brother had used the name Flo rather than Sadie. Sully must be keeping the Sadie info from Emory. It made sense. Her still-living family members didn’t want her name maligned, after all. The fewer people who made the connection, the better.

“You mean she trapped you down there deliberately?” he asked.

“That’s the only thing that makes sense,” Sully said. “Both of us jumped a tree up there and found nothing but an empty space on the other side.”

“How’d you not get hurt?” Eva asked. “It’s a long way down.”

“I’m getting to be a pro at avoiding serious injury,” Sully said. “I caught myself and managed to minimize the extent of the fall. I’m a little scraped up, but nothing bad.”

“I’d say you were lucky, but past experience would make a mockery of me,” Dez said. “How you doing, Emory?”

“Hurts,” came a plaintive voice from below.

“It’s been a rough night,” Sully said.

True to her word, Rosie returned in just a little more than half an hour. She’d brought a length of rope, a bottle of water, and what looked to be a couple of pieces of jerky.

“It’s deer meat,” she explained, tossing a bag down with the food and drink. “It’s not much, but it’ll put something in your bellies.”

“Thanks,” came Sully’s voice from the hole as Rosie went about fashioning a stirrup on one end of the rope.

Dez turned to Eva. “You sure you’re okay with us leaving you down there with him for a bit? Rosie and Olly are going to have to leave. They can’t be here when I get back with help.”

Eva gave him a smile best described as patient. “I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine, thanks. Just don’t you go chasing strange women in the woods.”

“Believe me, if I see anything even remotely resembling a lone female, I’m running the other way.”

“Ready?” Rosie asked.

Dez scanned the loop the woman had tied in the rope. It seemed solid, but he had two close family members to worry about. “You sure that’ll hold?”

“Shut it, Red. Of course it’ll hold. I know what I’m doing. Now, let’s get cracking, shall we?”

Eva chuckled and Dez scowled as he took up a grip on the rope next to Rosie.

In less than five minutes, Eva and Sully had exchanged places, allowing her to use the first aid she’d learned on the job to look after Emory while Dez saw to Sully. His back and hands were indeed scraped up, and he was complaining of a sore shoulder, but he had no obvious injuries requiring immediate medical attention.

Sully tugged his hoodie back into place and slipped into the overcoat he’d retrieved from Emory. “We can walk to the road together,” he told Dez. “I’ll take Emily’s car and bail before anyone notices me. Does that work?”

“Sounds good to me.” Dez took a quick moment first, shining his cellphone light down the hole one final time. “You okay, babe?”

Eva blinked up at him. “I’ll be better once you get that light out of my face.”

“Sorry.”

“Just get help back here ASAP. Emory needs to get out of here soon.”

“I won’t dawdle, believe me.”

He turned to where Rosie had been standing, but she had already walked off, rope in hand. Dez spotted her disappearing into the trees to the south. “Thanks for your help!” he called.

She raised a hand in a backward wave and was gone.

Dez turned back to Sully. “You okay to run, or do you need to take it slow?”

“I don’t know if I can manage a run, but we can try a jog.”

Dez set a medium pace, leading the two of them back in the direction of the road. They’d been going for about five minutes when Sully called for a break.

“Your shoulder?” Dez asked.

“Feels like needles poking through it every time I put a foot down. We can keep walking, though.”

Dez kept moving forward, slower now. “I checked it. No sign of a break or dislocation, but I suppose it could be a hairline fracture. I’m guessing it’s more likely a sprain. It’s a bit swollen, but not too bad. We need to seriously think about finding someone who could do up some fake ID for you. I dread the day you end up with an injury I can’t fix by myself.” He thought about Lowell’s wife Kendra. She was a forensic pathologist, but that still made her a trained doctor. She could help with things like X-rays and other medical tests, and knew her way around a needle and thread. “You know, Aunt Kendra—”

“No.”

“Sully, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if—”

“No one else can know, Dez. No one.”

“I wasn’t going to tell anyone. That’s your call. It’s always been your call.”

“If she knows, then Lowell will know. And he can’t.”

“I get it, okay?” Dez said. “I won’t tell her. We’ll figure something else out.”

Sully changed the subject. “When you shined the light down there, did you see Emory’s face?”

“Not in any great detail. Why? He disfigure himself in the fall or something?”

“No. He’s the spitting image of his father.”

Dez peered over at Sully. “Who’s his father?”

“Larson Hackman.”

“Bloody hell. Are you serious? Emory didn’t ever see you at Lockwood, did he?”

Sully shook his head. “No. He doesn’t like his father, so he wasn’t around there often. Makes me feel a little better about Emory, actually. When he did go to Lockwood, he didn’t go past the reception area. Unfortunately, the last time he saw Hackman actually ended in his meeting Ara.”

“They met while she was visiting you?”

“Yeah. But there was nothing in it, he said. They talked, got to be friends. He said she wouldn’t involve herself with anyone else until after I’d supposedly gotten killed.”

“She’s not the disloyal type,” Dez agreed. “That had to be weird for you, though, huh? Being down there with that guy all night and not punching him in the face—especially once you found out who his father is.”

“It didn’t take long to figure out he’s nothing like his dad. Emory’s actually a good guy. It would be easier if I could hate him.”

“You’re not exactly big on hate, Sull.”

“It doesn’t happen often, but I do hate a few people.”

“With good cause. If it makes you feel any better, I hate them too.”

Sully smiled. “I think I’m good to try another jog.”

They found the road and the vehicles, encountering no other problems along the way—something of a miracle as far as Dez was concerned.

“Head home and switch up heat and ice on that shoulder,” Dez said. “There’s a hot/cold pack in the cupboard above the fridge. Then get some rest. I’ll get this Emory rescue done and come check in on you.”

Sully let Pax into the backseat of Emily’s now-fully-defrosted car and was about to get in himself when Dez caught his good arm. “Hey, you made sure to tell Emory to forget you were there, right?”

“Yeah, and he said he wouldn’t tell anyone about me. But I gave him the fake name anyway, just in case. The last thing I want is him blurting out to his father that Sullivan Gray looked after him. Probably not the best thing for Ara to find out about that either.”

“Had you been thinking about telling her?”

“Maybe,” Sully said. “One day, once the danger had passed. Now, things are different. She’s moved on. I guess I’m going to have to too.”

“Maybe it won’t last between them.”

“I don’t know. He’s talking pretty seriously about her. Marriage and everything. I don’t want to see that happen—I really don’t want it. But what the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t give her a life, Dez. I can’t even make one for myself.”

“You’ll get there, Sull. I promise you, we’ll sort this out. We’ll nail Gerhardt and Hackman to the wall, and we’ll figure out who really killed Betty. And we’ll find a way to deal with the Dules while we’re at it. I’ve got your back on this. You’re not in it alone.”

“I know,” Sully said. “And you have no idea how much that means to me. If it wasn’t for you, I’d have lost it by now.”

Dez ruffled Sully’s hair. It was already a mess, hanging free of any bun or ponytail, likely in an attempt to hide his full features from Emory. Sully didn’t bother pushing Dez’s hand away.

“I’ll see you soon,” Dez said.

Sully nodded and got into the car, but Dez held him up once more.

“By the way, Sull? I owe you an ass-kicking for chasing a ghostly killing machine into the woods on your own.”

Sully smiled. “I wouldn’t expect anything less of you.”

Then he closed the door, started the car and used the shallow ditch and the road to turn around.

Dez watched the car disappear behind a cloud of dust before getting into his own SUV and driving off toward Loons Hollow and the search team.

16

The search was going full bore when Dez drove into the old townsite. Locating Clark wasn’t going to be easy, not with even more carloads of searchers having shown up.

It seemed the search was to focus for now on the town itself. Exiting his SUV, Dez could see people beating the long grass, entering and exiting crumbling buildings and emerging from between trees.

He’d tried phoning Clark several times, but the calls had failed to connect. It was possible Clark was simply busy coordinating the search, but it was just as likely it had to do with the spotty phone reception around here. Both Emory and Sully had talked about issues with their phone connections; Dez’s own was fluctuating between one and two bars. It could be the problems were ghost-created rather than technology-based, but Dez didn’t want to focus for too long on that sort of explanation.

When another attempted call to Clark went unanswered, Dez settled for scanning the area once again, this time looking for someone who might be able to point him toward the officer in charge.

Unfortunately, what Dez got was Larson Hackman.

The two of them spotted each other as Hackman emerged from the old hardware store, his weary eyes bearing the bloodshot appearance of a man who’d spent more time crying than sleeping.

Anyone who didn’t know Hackman would sympathize with the worried father. Dez wasn’t one of those people.

When his attempts to un-ball his fists failed, he shoved his hands deep into his jeans pockets where they could do no damage. It would be far too tempting to close the thirty feet of distance separating them and bury his knuckles in the flesh and bone of whatever part of Hackman’s face was most accessible.

But no one else here would know the true story, the reason for Dez’s fury. All they would see was a large, raging man beating the crap out of the anxious father of a missing person. Dez might feel good for a moment, but any joy in triumph would end, leaving him with little more than a sore hand, an assault charge and a ghost town full of people hating him.

Hackman walked over.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to help,” Dez said, grinding out his reply from between gritted teeth. “What’s more, I can help. I found Emory. He’s injured, but he’s alive.”

The anger and distrust in Hackman’s eyes faded, replaced by a widening of eyes and a sharp exhale of the deepest relief. “Jesus Christ. Jesus…. Where? Where is he?”

“My wife’s with him now. We’re going to need some help getting him out. His leg is broken, and he’s down a pretty deep hole. Where’s Clark?”

“Clark who?”

“Clark Davies, the cop in charge of the search. I’m going to need him to get some bodies and equipment together for a rescue.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, he’s around here somewhere. Can’t you call him? I want you to take me to my son.”

“I’m not going through this process twice. You can come along once I get the right people to join us. You want to get there sooner, help me find Clark.”

Hackman probably wasn’t pleased by the curtness of Dez’s reply, but that was fine. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Dez, the fact he was helping to rescue the loved one of a man who had played a crucial role in taking one of Dez’s from him. Hackman had been front and centre in what had happened to Sully at Lockwood. The so-called psych hospital had changed Sully. In many ways, he was the same person he’d always been: kind, introverted, strong and determined. But there was a wariness now, a fear that occasionally reared its head and left Dez looking for a way to calm a person who, during those moments, reminded him of a wounded animal.

Because of Hackman’s role in the creation of this new version of Sully, Dez would never forgive him.

Evidently, the situation wasn’t lost on Hackman either. “I’m surprised you’re helping me. You always seemed to hate my guts.”

“I do hate your guts,” Dez said. “I’m not doing this to help you. I’m doing it for Emory. He seems like a good guy. And I’m not the sort of person who allows someone to suffer needlessly.”

The dig was there, and Hackman was perceptive enough to pick up on it. “I know you blame me for what happened to Sullivan. But you need to understand, Dr. Gerhardt was trying to help him.”

“Don’t bullshit me. I know what he was trying to do, and it wasn’t to help Sully. He was helping himself. The two of you put my brother through hell.”

“Whatever he told you, Mr. Braddock, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. He was unwell, even delusional at times. There were psychotic episodes which could only be controlled through strong medication. You know what I’m talking about because you’re the one who found him—twice—after he’d tried to kill himself. I didn’t do that to him. His mental illness was at fault, and Dr. Gerhardt was doing everything he could to get to the root of it.”

They were passing the old bank. From here, it looked empty, and Dez forced a smile onto his face as he headed for the doorway. “Come ‘ere.”

Hackman had never been a very bright man. He followed.

Dez waited until the older man had stepped through the door behind him, until they were both concealed within the shadowed interior. Then he allowed his hands free of their pockets, grabbing handfuls of Hackman’s shirtfront. Before the older man knew what was happening, Dez shoved him back hard into the wall, sending a cascade of dust from the crumbling ceiling over their heads. Whether from the dust or the impact to his lungs, Hackman gasped, then coughed.

Dez pressed forward, closing the distance between their faces, near enough he could see the worry in Hackman’s eyes. Near enough Hackman could see the full extent of the rage in Dez’s.

“Don’t you fucking feed me that crap,” Dez said. “I know what happened. I know what you did. And I know what happened because of it. As far as I’m concerned, you killed my brother. He died because of you, because of what you and Gerhardt did to him. It’s taking every ounce of my self-control not to put you through this wall. Give me one excuse, Hackman. Just one. Tell me again how what you did to Sully was supposed to help him.”

Dez waited. Hackman was a large man, almost as big as Dez himself. It likely said something about the nature of Dez’s anger that the other man hadn’t tried to get away, that he held back now on his excuses. There was nothing he could say Dez would buy, and Hackman had finally seemed to figure that out.

“I’m sorry about what happened to your brother,” he said at last.

It was weak, and he didn’t mean the words. But they didn’t give Dez the excuse he’d been looking for to finish what he’d started. His hands tightened into the material of Hackman’s shirt, hard enough he heard the popping of seams along one shoulder. It would be easy, too easy, to remove one hand, to drive his fist into Hackman’s cheek. Dez could picture the assault in his head, could almost feel the release of rage through the punches, kicks and stomps he was mentally delivering.

But it ended there. He wasn’t that guy, the one he could see in his mind. He could be, given the right circumstances. But this wasn’t it. Had he walked into one of those sessions at Lockwood, he would have had his excuse, and it was quite possible he would have killed those men at that point. But that was in the past. At present, what Dez had was a man nearly twice his age who’d opted not to fight back, a man with larger concerns on his mind than a potential assault by the irate, grieving brother of a former patient.

Dez let him go.

He left the bank first, listened as Hackman followed a few moments later. The older man kept his distance, keeping at least a few paces between them as Dez continued the search for Clark.

He found him with a group of searchers, beating a path through the overgrown grass and shrubs along the northern edge of the townsite. Clark greeted him with his usual smile, one that grew by a mile upon hearing Dez had located both his “friend” and Emory alive.

“My buddy got a bit lost, but I sent him on his way,” Dez said. “We’re going to need some help with Emory though.”

Clark took a few moments, passing along instructions to another police officer on scene to locate all the searchers and send them home. Then Clark gathered a few other officers and made calls to EMS and Search and Rescue.

“The rescue team’s only a few minutes out,” Clark said. “They’ll meet us on the road. You sure you can find the spot again?”

“I set coordinates where Emory is, as well as on the road where I’d been parked. We’re all set.”

Clark reached out, pumped Dez’s hand enthusiastically. “You’re the man, Dez. You’re the man. What say we go out and get this done? With any luck, we can all be home in time for lunch.”

* * *

Having followed Dez’s instructions about the shoulder, Sully settled onto the pullout couch for a nap. By the time he awoke, his brother was back, puttering quietly around the kitchen as he made something to eat.

“I thought you’d sleep longer,” Dez said.

Sully peered over the top of the couch. “How’d you know I was awake?”

“You don’t move around much when you’re asleep. How’s the shoulder?”

“Sore, but the hot and cold packs helped. Did you get Emory out?”

“Yep. He was headed to hospital when we left. It’s a nasty-looking injury, and I’m guessing he’ll need surgery. But he’ll live, and that’s the main thing. I’m making lunch. Why don’t you get a couple more hours? I’ll save you a grilled cheese. Promise.”

Sully grinned. Grilled cheese. Dez’s specialty. It didn’t seem like much to get up for, but the grumbling within Sully’s stomach suggested otherwise. He hadn’t eaten since sometime yesterday—he couldn’t even remember when—and it felt like ages ago.

Anyway, something else was on his mind, and he needed some advice.

Sully joined his brother at the table, taking one of the small squares of sandwich as Dez tossed a chunk of his own to Pax sitting next to him.

“I wanted to ask you about something,” Sully said. “When you were a police officer, did you ever hear of investigators using a hypnotist?”

“What, like those guys at the exhibition every summer?”

“Not the entertainment ones. I mean real ones, the kind who do hypnotherapy.”

“Why are you wondering about hypnotherapy?”

“When I was chasing Sadie, it felt like it wasn’t really me. It’s hard to explain, but it was like it was someone else’s thoughts leading me.”

“Ghosts do that to you, don’t they? They kind of feed you their thoughts or feelings, you said.”

“Yeah, but the stuff I found out about recently, about Oliver Chadwell, it made me wonder if it was him I was feeling.”

“You think he’s a ghost out there too?”

“I didn’t see him. Maybe I wouldn’t anyway, if it turned out he dropped dead of heart failure or something. But I had a feeling it was something more, like maybe it wasn’t just me feeling what he was feeling. I thought maybe I am him. Maybe that’s why the name came to me the way it did. Maybe I used that name in another lifetime.”

Dez visibly shuddered. “A past life, you mean. You think that actually happens?”

“Yeah, I think it does. I talked to Marc about it a bit, actually.”

“And you want to try to tap into this past life? You sure that’s a good idea? It sounds kind of creepy to me.”

“Everything sounds kind of creepy to you.”

Dez smirked. “Ha ha.” The feigned levity faded as he sorted his thoughts aloud. “I think the police department does sometimes use hypnotists. Probably only when they get to the point of desperation, when a key witness saw something but is having trouble remembering. Hypnosis doesn’t serve a lot of purpose, really. No evidence obtained during the process would be admissible in court. It would be strictly for investigative reasons. And anyway, I don’t think that’s the kind of hypnotist you’d be looking for. Most of them probably aren’t going to go in for this whole past life thing. Maybe Marc knows someone you could talk to. But check them out first, huh? If you’re going to let someone mess around in your brain, better make sure you can trust them.”

“I know. I hear you on that.”

“So why all the interest in this past life stuff? You have enough to deal with in the here and now, don’t you?”

Sully considered keeping it to himself; Dez seemed anxious enough about this conversation without tossing in Sully’s concerns about his soul being tainted by a homicidal madman from the sixteen hundreds. But he’d reached the point where he’d have to lie to avoid talking about it, and there was already far too much Sully was keeping from his brother.

As expected, Dez shifted in his chair as Sully finished the story about the dream he’d had.

“You really think you were that guy?”

“Yeah, and I don’t know what to make of it. Marc says souls evolve, and that’s probably true. But it would make me feel better if I had some sort of proof of that. If I could see Oliver myself, if I could see he was a good man and that he and I do share the same soul, it would help me, I think.”

“It might help more than that,” Dez said. “If he’s really your ancestor, and he was the good guy Gillian Mondale said he was, that proves you don’t have to turn into this murderous nutcase the Dules seem to think you will. That stupid Dule curse of theirs would be proven a sham, and they’d lose their excuse to go around killing male relatives.”

“But his last name was Chadwell, not Dule. Maybe he’s not related to me on the Dule side, but my biological father’s. I have no way of knowing, not without figuring out who my birth father was.”

Dez appeared deep in thought, and the journey looked to be an unsettling one if the pinched expression on his face was any indication.

“You all right?” Sully asked.

Dez’s eyes snapped back onto Sully’s, as if he’d been suddenly reminded of his presence. “Yeah. Sorry. Just thinking…. Maybe Oliver Chadwell wasn’t the guy’s real name. Did you ever think it might be he was using a fake name the same way you are?”

“Why would he need to?”

“People get weirded out enough by this ghost stuff nowadays, and everyone’s more open to things like that now, aren’t they? But back then? Seems to me people would have been anxious enough in a small town about a stranger hanging around. If it turned out that stranger claimed to see the dead, that would lead to all sorts of talk, maybe worse.”

“During the Victorian era, most people were actually really fascinated with ghosts and mediums and stuff like that. They were way more open to this sort of thing than they are now. But I take your point. It wasn’t the Victorian era by the time he got to Loons Hollow, and beliefs might have changed. And, yeah, it was a small town. He would have stuck out around there to begin with, even without the psychic thing. And Gillian mentioned he had a Scottish accent. That makes me wonder whether he might have used a false name, not because he was trying to protect himself, but because he was trying to leave his past behind. What if that was because he’d done something bad?”

“Or maybe, if we’re going with this past life theory, he was in the same boat as you. Maybe he was running from someone.”

“Only one way to find out. I think I will talk to Marc, see if he can suggest someone.”

“Make sure it’s someone you can trust to not reveal the fact you still exist. No point using a fake name with a hypnotherapist. They could probably pull the truth out of you without you even knowing.”

It was a good point, and it bore some thought. But it seemed now wasn’t the time to do it.

Dez’s phone buzzed, rattling against the nearby counter as it rang on vibrate. Dez snagged it with a long arm and checked the call display. “Lachlan,” he said before hitting the talk button. Then into the phone, “Sorry I haven’t checked in yet. Family emergency. Good news is we found Emory. Emergency crews pulled him out of a big crack in the ground. He’s got a badly busted leg but, that aside, he’s going to be okay.”

Dez offered a quick explanation of what—or, more specifically, who—had befallen both Emory and Sully. Sully couldn’t make out what Lachlan said in response, but it ended in Dez hanging up a moment later.

“Lachlan’s headed over in a cab,” Dez said. “He sounds excited about something. That can’t be good.”

Sure enough, the man turned up about ten minutes later, his arrival heralded by a buzzing from the callbox. Within a minute, a frazzled-looking Lachlan burst into the apartment, jacket askew, hair uncombed, wide eyes dancing as they located Sully at the table.

“Good, you’re here,” Lachlan said by way of greeting. “Sullivan, I need you to describe the ghost you saw in the woods.”

“I actually have a better description for you now. I spent a little more time with her last night, as it happens.”

“Did you see her face?”

“No. Whatever there might be of it stayed hidden behind all that hair.”

“Blonde, you said?”

“Yeah, but it’s pretty dirty. So is her dress. And she’s barefoot.”

“The dress. Would you say it resembles something a woman would have worn in the nineteen twenties?”

“I don’t know much about twenties fashion, but I can tell you it’s ankle length and white. Why?”

Lachlan bustled over, dropping into the chair Dez had vacated. His hand dipped into his jacket pocket and fished around. “I’ve been doing some digging, and I had a thought. I’d forgotten about this particular detail until now, but I went to my locker this morning to do some reading, and I found it. Remember how you saw the ghost of a woman and a baby when you first met me? Have you seen her around me since?”

“No, actually. I don’t know why. I’ve seen the man once in a while, kind of from a distance, but he hasn’t really tried to communicate yet.”

“Let’s not worry about him yet. One problem at a time. The woman, though. Did she look anything like the ghost you saw on Hollow Road?”

Sully had only seen the ghost near Lachlan once. Although she hadn’t been holding a baby, Sully had guessed the two spirits belonged together nonetheless. He’d been so centred on the Faceless Flo legend, on working the Sadie Marquill angle, he hadn’t considered the Hollow Road ghost might be someone else entirely. Now the possibility hit him hard, and he found himself racking his brain trying to recall.

“I remember her back was to me in the room, but she was wearing a long, white dress. I think it was like the one on the ghost on the road.”

“Or maybe—” Lachlan said, pulling a photograph from his pocket, “—it’s the very same dress.”

He slid a photo across the table to Sully. It showed a young woman in what was obviously a Halloween costume, judging by the ghoulish makeup she’d applied. It wasn’t just a white dress she was wearing—it was the same one Sully had seen last night.

The same dress on the same woman.

The ghost is the woods wasn’t Sadie Marquill after all.

Dez edged in, standing at Sully’s shoulder as he studied the picture. “That photo looks old.”

“It is,” Lachlan said. “Thirty years old, in fact. That year, this young woman—Nora Silversmith—went to a Halloween party dressed as Faceless Flo. She was never seen again.”

17

“I was a patrol member at the time,” Lachlan said. “There wasn’t a whole lot I could do. The case went to Missing Persons, and they were looking after it. But I couldn’t let it lie. Some cases haunt you.”

Sully smiled. “I think I can understand that.”

Lachlan returned the smile with a sheepish one. “Of course you do. This one made the news for a while, mainly because she had her baby with her. It wasn’t so much for her people were interested. It was the baby, Ben. Everyone was worried about the little guy, which makes sense, obviously. People weren’t so sure what to think about Nora.”

Dez moved to lean against the counter. “What happened?”

“She and her boyfriend, Nathaniel Porter, went to a Halloween party that night and took the kid along. It was a family deal, not some drunken affair, so it wasn’t an issue having kids there. Party was at Porter’s family’s, I understand, kind of a meet-the-new-baby kind of thing. Ben was about a month old at that point. Anyway, something happened between Porter and Nora that evening, and they argued. No one at the party knew what about, just said they weren’t speaking by the time they left. Porter initially denied they’d fought, but later told police they had a disagreement over when to leave. He said Nora wanted to go home to put Ben to bed, and he wanted to stay and hang out with his family a bit longer. It struck me as bullshit at the time, but he never moved off that version of events.

“Anyway, the whole story falls to him after that. No other witnesses were ever found. Porter said the two of them kept arguing on the ride home, so he pulled over to talk it out. Yell it out is probably more accurate. He told police she’d been holding the baby in her lap, and she got out of the car with Ben and walked off. He said he followed her and they kept arguing. It got heated, he said, and he got to the point where he worried he was going to do something regrettable, so he got back in the car and drove off. He said he drove around the area for a few minutes, intending to go back and pick them up when he’d cooled down. But when he got back, they were gone. He told investigators he drove around the area for an hour but couldn’t find them. He assumed Nora must have caught a lift with someone passing by, and he thought he might find her at home—this was before the days of cellphones, obviously. But when he got back, there was no sign of her.”

“Some suspicion must have fallen on him in all this,” Dez said. “Was he looked at for potential foul play?”

“Naturally. But no evidence linking him to a crime was ever found. There was nothing to suggest she’d met with foul play in the first place. Some people figured she took her baby and walked away from everything.”

“But not you,” Sully guessed.

Lachlan gave his head a slow shake. “Nope. My instincts told me the young lady and her baby were dead, and someone played a role in making them that way. My own suspicions led me back to Porter every time. It made the most sense from a logical perspective. He didn’t report them missing until two days later, so plenty of time to conceal evidence. No one else had motive or means, at least not that investigators could ever find. The two of them were arguing, and he acknowledged it got heated. He also had a youth record, including a few common assaults. One of them involved a former girlfriend. And he admitted during an interview he wasn’t sure Ben was even his, so that gave him motive, not just against Nora, but possibly Ben as well. It struck me as highly possible, even likely, he’d lost his temper that night and exploded, that he acted on those suspicions. Maybe that’s even what the fight was about in the first place.”

“Any idea where he is now?” Dez asked. “I’m thinking we’re going to need to talk to him.”

“Already on it. I’ve got a buddy looking up his vehicle registration as we speak. Hoping to have something within the hour.”

“One of these days you’re going to get this buddy into a heap of trouble, doing this sort of digging for you,” Dez said.

“Hey,” Lachlan replied. “I’m not stupid. I never put all my eggs in one basket. You keep using the same sources, people eventually get wise. I like to spread out the work, and I’ve got a lot of people to spread it out to. Don’t worry, kid. I’ve got things cased.”

Dez rolled his eyes.

“So what do you want me to do?” Sully asked. “I don’t think I can come with you to talk to him.”

“No way,” Lachlan said. “Sit tight. You’ve done plenty already.”

“I’d like to help.”

“Well, there’s Nora, of course. Maybe she’d tell you something.”

Unsurprisingly, Dez cut in before Sully had the chance to answer. “No. No way. Sully was stuck down a hole in the woods overnight because of her. It was only because of Pax I was able to find him at all. Forget it. No doubt we need to get some justice for her but, as far as I’m concerned, she’s proven to be nothing but a homicidal maniac. You know what pisses me off in all this? Her boyfriend kills her, and she spends the next thirty years targeting other guys who just happen to be walking through there. That’s wrong. I mean, Lonnie Debenham might have been a victim. Now Emory and Sully. Who knows if there have been others?”

“None that I could find,” Lachlan said. “I asked. A handful of others got lost in the woods around there, but they came out again. And they had no ghost stories to share. Two of them admitted to going off in search of the ghost, but said they didn’t find anything. Most made like they were on a nature hike—which was bullshit. Quite frankly, with all of these wannabe ghost hunters crawling around Loons Hollow and Hollow Road, I’m surprised more people haven’t gone permanently missing due to no more than their own stupidity.”

Dez turned to Sully. “So if there are only certain people who become victims, why them? Why not others?”

“It takes energy for ghosts to manifest in a way that makes them visible to others,” Sully said. “Not in my case so much, because I can see them naturally. But it must take more when it comes to people who don’t normally see ghosts. Maybe there are times she just didn’t have the energy. Or it could be the ones who’ve seen her are more sensitive to spirits than they realized. Or maybe it’s something else.”

“Such as?”

“Maybe the people she targeted weren’t random at all.”

“You’re thinking she deliberately went after the three of you?” Lachlan said. “Why?”

“No idea about Emory, but she might have targeted me because I was determined to find him and she didn’t want that.”

“It could be she was leading you to him to help him.”

“That wasn’t the impression I got,” Sully said. “I’m not basing that on anything more than a feeling but, in my experience, my senses are pretty on about these things. What about Lonnie, though? He disappeared close to the same time she did, right?”

“He went missing a couple months after her, so no immediate connection there.”

“Could they have known each other?”

“Let me put it this way,” Lachlan said. “Lonnie Debenham was a spoiled rich kid who hung around other spoiled rich kids for the most part. Nora Silversmith was what elite snobs in this community would have referred to as ‘trailer trash.’ She and her boyfriend lived in a dinky rental house on the wrong side of the tracks, and the newborn baby meant they weren’t going to have the money to save up for anything better. There was no way she might have inadvertently run into Lonnie Debenham at the Blue Swan Social Club or something. They would have been in completely different circles, no way their paths would have crossed socially.”

“What did she do for a living?” Dez asked.

“At the time, she was a stay-at-home mom. Before the baby was born, she was a supermarket cashier. And before you ask, no, it was nowhere near where Lonnie lived. Anyway, the Debenhams are the sort of people who get their groceries delivered. Can you see Thomas wandering through the frozen food aisle while his wife checks the salads-in-a-bag for soggy lettuce?”

Dez shrugged. “Just a thought.”

“Well, like I said before, when Lonnie disappeared, there weren’t many stones left unturned. Investigators talked to every family member, friend, enemy and colleague they could find. All it got them were more dead ends. That said, those investigators weren’t me.”

“And you think you can do better,” Dez summed up.

“I’m going to have to try. The Debenhams want answers, and I’m determined to be the one to get them. Let’s not forget, even if every single stone was unturned, something beneath might have been missed if it was the wrong set of eyes doing the looking.”

Lachlan’s phone dinged, and he checked the screen. A satisfied smile drifted over his face. “First things first: you and I are going to go have a chat with Nathaniel Porter, Braddock.”

“Your contact came through, I take it.”

“Yep. And the good news is he hasn’t left Kimotan Rapids.”

Sully was about to ask what he should do when Sergeant Forbes Raynor solved the problem for him, his number showing up on the call display as the handset’s ringer went off.

“Hello?”

“Gray. We need to have a chat. You at your brother’s?”

“Yep. Why?”

Dez crossed the couple of feet from the counter to the table, looming over Sully as the minimal conversation continued. “What’s he want?”

“Is that Braddock?”

“Yes, but he’s heading out right away. Was there something you needed to see him about too?”

“Nope. You’ll do for now. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be over soon.”

“What do you need to talk to me about?”

“Your uncle,” was all he said before severing the connection.

“What does he want?” Dez asked again as Sully returned his phone to the table.

The truth would have Dez looking for an excuse to stay, and Sully needing to come up with a good story, fast. A white lie seemed simpler. “I don’t know exactly. I’ll find out soon, I guess.”

Dez turned to Lachlan. “Maybe I should stick around. Raynor was still trying to peg Sully for Betty Schuster’s death. What if that’s on his mind again?”

“You sitting around here playing nursemaid isn’t going to help anyone,” Lachlan said. “I need you to drive me to find Porter. Your brother’s a big boy, and he’s got a good head on his shoulders. He can take care of himself. Now, come on. Time’s a-wasting.”

“I’m fine, Dez,” Sully said, providing what extra incentive he could to get Dez out the door. “He isn’t going to arrest me as long as he wants to keep his wife out of major legal trouble. I can handle him.”

Dez’s furrowed brow and tight lips suggested he wasn’t so sure, but he left with Lachlan anyway. Sully went to the window and watched as Dez’s SUV emerged from the direction of the back of the building, turned onto Twenty-Fifth and drove away.

* * *

Sully played with Pax for a few minutes to keep himself from watching the windows or pacing. He’d known, after the recent phone conversation with Forbes, Justice Prescott Montague had hinted at some wrongdoing by a circle of wealthy and powerful men, including Lowell Braddock. It struck at the heart of Sully’s deepest desire: to find something he could use to bring Lowell down, to have him arrested and held in custody. Only if Lowell was somewhere unreachable would there be safety in telling Dez the truth about what the man had done to Flynn, Aiden and Sully.

Less than fifteen minutes had passed when the buzzer sounded. Having checked to ensure it was indeed Forbes, Sully pressed the button to allow him upstairs.

It said something that Pax didn’t growl or bark when Forbes came in, although he didn’t beat out a happy greeting with his tail either. The dog was complacent which, given this was Forbes, was likely the best the situation was going to get.

Sully allowed the Major Crimes investigator into the small apartment. He hadn’t made up the couch, so he led the way to the kitchen table instead. The police detective took the chair Lachlan had recently vacated.

Never one to beat around the bush, Forbes launched right into it. “I haven’t had the opportunity to touch base with you about what Montague hinted at. I wasn’t sure whether I should start asking questions with your brother around.”

“Don’t. Dez doesn’t know. He’s not really close to Lowell anymore, but he was while growing up. There are things he doesn’t know, that I don’t know how to say.”

Forbes leaned forward. “Such as?”

That was the question. There were plenty of things to say. The question was how many of those things could safely be said to Forbes.

“Why are you so interested?” he asked instead. “You don’t even know if Montague was on the level. It could have been nothing more than him trying to deal his way out of a murder charge. How do you know he actually knows anything of value?”

“I don’t, which is why I’m here. If there’s really something seedy in Lowell Braddock’s past, something involving a gang of rich men, I’d like to know about it.”

A possibility flashed into Sully’s brain, one he hadn’t considered. “Your father’s the mayor. Are you concerned he’s wrapped up in something you didn’t know about? I mean, if there’s some weird circle of powerful people involved in something not so good, it stands to reason your father might know about it. It’s his job to know the major players in this city, after all. He’d socialize with them, wouldn’t he?”

Forbes’s narrowed eyes suggested he was of a mind to argue. “My father’s not that kind of man. He may be the mayor, but he’s not particularly wealthy, and he’s not what I’d call ‘in with the in crowd.’ ”

“No, but maybe he wants to be. People will do all sorts of things to move up in the world. We’re almost due for another municipal election, aren’t we? If he’s voted out, what’s he left with?”

“He’s not going to be voted out.”

“You sure about that? There are a lot of pissed off people, given the current economy. Plenty of rich people lost money in the flood, and they’re paying some really high taxes these days. They’re pretty annoyed lately, at least according to the papers. Property taxes are crazy high on downtown condos and businesses.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of reading.”

“Nothing much else to do when you’re supposed to be dead. Our neighbour across the hall gives me her papers when she’s done with them. I like knowing what’s going on in the world.”

“Look, you can believe this or not, but my father has nothing to do with my interest in this info Montague hinted at. If there’s something going on, something that involves rich, powerful people like Lowell Braddock, I’d like to find out about it.”

That was, of course, quite possibly true. Forbes was the kind of man who was eager for career advancement, but didn’t necessarily have the skill or likability to pull it off without a little help. He was in his forties, working his way closer to the natural end of his policing career. Sully knew he coveted a place in administration, more than likely the chief’s role. No way he was getting there without a good nudge. A solid gold case, one that would make the news—possibly even nationally, if he could help it—would be a pretty decent step in the right direction. Forbes’s father was mayor, and therefore head of the police commission, but conflict would preclude him from selecting his son for the top police job. Forbes would need to earn the undying respect of others on the future hiring committee and in the public realm to earn himself a promotion of that nature.

His reasons for being here might be less than pure, but he was still here. And he had the drive to solve this problem and more power than Sully did to get there.

On the other hand, it would mean one more person knew before Dez did—and in this case, it was a person they didn’t particularly like or trust. Dez would see it as a slap in the face. Where it would leave the brothers’ relationship was anyone’s guess. But at least if they were both alive and on this side of the prison walls, Sully stood a chance at fixing anything he’d inadvertently broken.

“What would you like to know?” Sully asked.

A flash of a triumphant smile on Forbes’s lips was quickly pushed back. “Let’s start easy. What kind of relationship do you have with your uncle?”

“A nonexistent one. He thinks I’m dead, and I need to keep it that way.”

“He was central in your committal to Lockwood, I understand.”

Sully nodded. He took a breath. This was it, his opportunity, if he was willing to make the leap.

He knew what he had to do. To say nothing would mean nothing happening. Lowell would continue to walk free while Sully was forced to hide in the shadows, living a half-life as a dead man.

“He was central in a lot more than that.”

Forbes inched forward on his chair. Any farther and he would be on the floor. He didn’t say any more, didn’t ask the questions Sully could see burning on his face, in the pinch of his lips, in the shine of his eyes. It was the expression of a starving man eyeing up a steak on the grill.

Sully didn’t like the idea he was the steak. Forbes wouldn’t have his best interests at heart. He knew that. But he also knew if he played his cards right, Forbes could prove to be his ally, whether he cared to be or not.

Mind made up, Sully told Forbes the truth. All of it. By the time he finished, Forbes’s jaw had gone slack.

A silence fell into which neither of them stepped. Sully waited, knowing Forbes would eventually have to speak to the claims Sully had laid out.

“Those are extremely serious allegations,” Forbes said at last. “Do you have any proof?”

“I might have had. Betty had a thumb drive containing a recorded conversation with Lowell, supposedly containing evidence about his murder of Aiden. I had it in my possession briefly, but didn’t have the chance to listen to it. My dad found it, and died confronting Lowell over it.”

“It makes no sense. From what you say, everything starts with the boy. Why kill his five-year-old nephew in the first place? I mean, did he abuse the kid or something? Was he worried Aiden would say something?”

“I didn’t get that impression. Aiden wasn’t afraid of Lowell.”

“And you know that in your creepy way.”

“If that’s what you want to call it, sure. Aiden showed me his death. That’s how I know beyond a doubt Lowell drowned him.”

“Still doesn’t answer why. These ghosts of yours, they can’t tell you?”

“They can only tell me what they know. If they don’t know why they died, there’s nothing more they can say.”

“Couldn’t they find out, though?” Forbes asked. “I mean, they could follow their killers around or something, couldn’t they?”

“Sure, and they do sometimes,” Sully said. “But it’s not that simple. Most people who have gotten away with murder aren’t going to run around talking about it. They guard their secrets. Ghosts can’t see inside a person’s brain, not unless they were a mind reader in life.”

“So all you need is to find a mind-reading ghost. Sounds simple enough.”

Sully sensed sarcasm and allowed himself a slight smile. “Right. I’ll get on that. In the meantime, maybe you can start doing some quiet digging. One thing you might want to do is see if you can figure out where Thackeray Schuster ended up. It could be he’s in hiding. I know he was more afraid than I am. But I think there’s a good possibility he’s dead, possibly murdered.”

“You’d see him then, wouldn’t you?”

“Not everyone who’s murdered sticks around. I haven’t seen Betty or Harry around either. Might turn out the three of them found each other and crossed over. You’ll also want to check into Harry’s death, for that matter. I’m willing to bet Dr. Gerhardt was more involved in it than he’s admitting.”

“Alleging the doctor killed a patient is a huge deal. I can’t just walk in there and do that.”

“I’m hoping you aren’t planning on walking in anywhere and throwing any of this around. The reason I haven’t made more progress isn’t just because I’m not in a position to do much with it. It’s also because I realize how out there it all sounds. I know it’s going to be hard to prove—maybe even impossible—but something needs to happen. These people can’t be allowed to get away with this just because they’re rich and powerful.”

“I don’t care about rich and powerful,” Forbes said. “And for the record, no, I’m not planning on throwing this stuff around. I know how to play my cards close. But a few things are going to have to be done, among them autopsies on the bodies.”

Autopsies. The word called something else to mind. “Lowell’s wife Kindra is the chief forensic pathologist. I’ve always liked her, but now I don’t know. What if she covered something up for him?”

“That’s a possibility. But maybe there weren’t autopsies in the first place. If the coroner didn’t have any real questions as to cause and manner of death, there wouldn’t necessarily be a need for a post-mortem. I’d expect there was in the kid’s death, but it might not have showed anything suspicious. The way you described it, he was held under and his body was later found downstream somewhere. It wouldn’t be unusual for there to be bruising on him from anything he bumped up against—if he was alive at that point. And being small, it wouldn’t have taken much pressure for Lowell to hold him down. With an adult, I’d expect far more signs of a struggle than you’d get with a small child.”

“So she could have missed it, is what you’re saying.”

“Sure. Or she covered up for her husband. No way of knowing until I can dig further into this. Leave it with me. I’ll pull some files, start trying to wrap my head around it. I’ll contact you with any further questions.”

Sully stood with Forbes, following him to the apartment door.

“This goes without saying, but watch yourself,” Sully said. “Pretty much anyone who’s gotten close on this thing is dead or missing. Don’t think you’re safe just because you’re a police officer. He won’t care. He’s gotten away with numerous murders already, and he won’t think anything of one more—especially since you’re someone he doesn’t have any feelings about. Lowell’s confident, and that makes him dangerous.”

“One thing about confidence, Gray,” Forbes said. “It makes people sloppy. When they start thinking they’re untouchable, that’s when they start to screw up. The trick is to be there when that happens.”

“No,” Sully said. “The trick is to be there and be able to walk out afterward.”

18

Nathaniel Porter hadn’t gone far in life.

He no longer lived in the tiny house he’d once shared with Nora and Ben, but that didn’t count for much when his new residence was less than three blocks away.

The King’s Mill area hadn’t changed much in thirty years, still a working-class neighbourhood where people held down two or three jobs to make ends meet while many of the kids pulled off their own double shifts, splitting time between school and graffiti work. Garages and fences were littered with the stuff, which had thankfully been applied to houses only when they were clearly abandoned.

Plenty of neighbourhoods within KR had suffered after the flood, but none so badly as ones like this. Money trickled downhill, and by the time the wealthier areas had taken what they considered their share, there wasn’t much left over.

“Strange he didn’t move farther away,” Lachlan said.

“Not if he didn’t have the money, it isn’t,” Dez said.

Dez put the car into park and shut off the engine, then followed Lachlan to the home’s front door.

Dez wasn’t certain whether Nathaniel would be home, given the time of day. But when he answered the door, it appeared pretty obvious the man hadn’t worked a mainstream job in a while.

The details on Nathaniel’s driver’s registration put his age at forty-nine, but he appeared closer to sixty. He was saddled with a significant stoop, relying on a cane to keep him upright as he stood at the door.

“What do you want?” A significant odour of alcohol emanated from the man’s breath as he addressed his visitors.

“Are you Nathaniel Porter?” Lachlan asked.

“What’s it to you?”

“Just answer the question.” Lachlan could be intimidating when he went for no-nonsense, and Dez knew he served his boss well just standing at his shoulder.

Nathaniel’s eyes darted from Lachlan to Dez back to Lachlan. “Yeah, that’s me. Why?” Before Lachlan could answer, Nathaniel jumped in with further comment. “If you’re with a collection agency, I’ve got the money together to make a payment on the truck, all right? I was going to go into the bank later this afternoon.”

“You smell like a brewery,” Lachlan said. “If you think you’re driving anywhere in this state, you’re looking for a bigger problem. Anyway, we’re not with collections. We’re here about something else. It will be easier for all of us to speak inside.”

Nathaniel narrowed his eyes, but he stepped to the side anyway, allowing the two men in.

People joked about how they came to resemble their dogs; in Nathaniel’s case, he matched his house. The place was rundown and sad, littered with items that belonged in the garbage or recycling bin. It contained just enough to suggest care had been taken in its building: rounded archways marking the passage between rooms, a window seat in the living room, kitchen cabinets—easily visible from the living room—appearing solid and, for their day, tasteful. But the place, like the neighbourhood and the home’s current tenant, had fallen on hard times. It was in desperate need of an overhaul—one it wasn’t likely to see.

With a grunt, Nathaniel fell into a ratty recliner. A can of beer was beside him and the TV was on. A home improvement program, of all things.

Dez scanned the room. A sofa sat under the window, littered by flyers and crumpled beer cans. Apparently, Nathaniel was in the habit of tossing his empties there once he’d finished.

Dez decided to stand.

Lachlan wasn’t as squeamish. He crossed in front of Nathaniel, swept a pile of refuse onto the floor and sat, focusing on the other man.

“I don’t know if you remember me,” he began.

Nathaniel didn’t seem to be of the mind to play this guessing game. His eyes remained fixed on the screen as he took another long swig from his can.

Lachlan met Dez’s eye and waved a hand in the direction of the TV. “Let’s have that off, shall we?”

Dez took his cue, crossing to the box—a miraculously operable tube variety rather than a flat-screen—and depressing the power button.

“Hey, I was watching that.”

“Planning a major home reno, are you?” Lachlan asked.

“Maybe I am.” Sarcasm dripped from Nathaniel’s tone as he turned a cocky glare on Lachlan.

“You can start tomorrow. Today, I need your help answering some questions. My name’s Lachlan Fields. I’m a private investigator, but I used to be a cop.”

“Great. Best of both worlds.”

“Yep. As I was saying before, it might be you’ll remember me. I spoke to you thirty years ago.”

Nathaniel smirked. “Right. And I’m sure you remember everyone you talked to thirty years ago.”

“You might remember this. I was one of the officers tasked with looking into Nora and Ben’s disappearance.”

That quieted Nathaniel. The smirk fell away through the slackening of his jaw. Dez thought he caught a glimpse of recognition in the lifting of the man’s brows before he quickly turned his head away. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Lachlan said. “Here’s the thing. We’ve been looking into another missing person case from back then, and it made me think about this one. No one ever found your girlfriend or son.”

“Could be they didn’t want to be found.”

“Sure, that’s what some people said. I think even you said it back then. But she didn’t have a lot of money, did she? It takes cash to disappear properly, especially with a baby. She’d need a load of food, diapers, clothes. She’d need a place to stay. Hell, if she managed to stay gone this long without anyone finding her, she would have needed fake ID for both of them. That sort of thing costs a fortune. So unless she had a relative who would have done that sort of work for her for free, I’d say it’s highly unlikely she just walked away. Anyway, from what I recall, she didn’t take much with her that night. Just stuff she needed for the evening. All of her things, the baby’s things, that all stayed behind at the house, didn’t it?”

“Look, it never made any sense to me neither. I searched for her, all right? I looked and looked. I drove for hours that night.”

“One hour.”

“So what? It felt like a long time. Anyway, I needed to go home in case they were there.”

“Did you hit her that night?”

“What? No.”

“Don’t get indignant,” Lachlan said. “We both know you’ve got a record for hitting women.”

“I was a little asshole back then. Yeah, I did some things I regret. But you can check my record. I ain’t had no assaults since I was a kid. I’ve got some DUIs now, a few thefts and possessions of stolen property and the like, but nothing violent. I learned my lesson about hitting women.”

“Have you been with a lot of women since Nora?” Dez asked.

“A few, here and there. What’s it to you?”

“Part of the questioning,” Lachlan said. “I’m curious. You moved since then, but only about three blocks. Why?”

“You kidding me? Where the hell’s a guy gonna go on pogey? Anyway, I got friends around here. And I always thought maybe….”

The way Nathaniel trailed off had Dez filling in the blanks. “You thought maybe Nora would come back some day.”

Nathaniel nodded. “Or Ben maybe. I know a long time’s gone past, but I always figured I’d recognize him. He didn’t look much like me, but people used to say he had my nose.”

“You weren’t so sure back then he was even your son,” Lachlan said. “You think otherwise now?”

“Listen, I was pissed off at Nora then. I was worried about her, sure, but I figured she left me. I talked myself into believing maybe she’d cheated on me, that she’d gone to live with this other guy. Hell, that might be exactly what happened. Could be the guy had some money to put together those fake IDs you’re talking about.”

A guy with money. “Did you ever know anyone by the name Lonnie Debenham?” Dez asked.

“No. Should I?”

“Didn’t read the news much, did you? It was all over it at the time.”

“He that other missing person you’re investigating?” Nathaniel asked. Receiving a nod from Lachlan, he continued. “Listen, I didn’t watch the news in those days. I didn’t like hearing all that bad shit every night, and anyway, I was worried what I might hear about Nora. The way the cops treated me, I didn’t put it past them to tell reporters any news before they told me. Besides, I had enough on my mind to worry about without filling it with even more garbage.”

Lachlan fished around the inside pocket of his jacket, producing a photograph. Dez wasn’t surprised his boss had secured an old photo of Lonnie. He likely had one attached to his permanent file inside the storage container.

“That the guy?” Nathaniel asked, taking the picture from Lachlan.

“Yeah. Ever see him before?”

Nathaniel peered at it for a few seconds before shaking his head and handing it back. “Nope. Never saw him. Clean-cut guy like that would stick out like a sore thumb around here. Bet he drove some fancy wheels besides.”

“He had a red 1987 BMW M6. You ever see something like that around?”

“No, and that I definitely woulda noticed. Look out the window. Nothing to see around here but Fords and GMs—and mostly just the ones rolled out more than ten years back.” Nathaniel sat forward as much as his back would allow. “Listen, man. Nora was a pretty girl, no question. But for all intents and purposes, she was like me. She never woulda fit in with a guy like that. And before you ask, no, she wasn’t into whoring herself for money, so he wouldn’t’a met her that way either. She wasn’t like that. She and me, if we’d been born with a little more money or opportunity, we could’ve been something. We had our problems, but we worked hard for our money, and we earned it the decent way.”

“So what happened?” Lachlan asked. “How’d you go from classic working stiff to a guy earning money from pogey and theft?”

There were times Dez wished Lachlan would let him ask the questions. He stepped in as Nathaniel’s face clouded over with anger. “You’ve got an injury there. Is that why you’re on social assistance?”

Nathaniel turned from Lachlan, focusing on Dez. He must have found something less repulsive there, because he answered the question without any snark. “I got jumped a couple years after Nora left, couple of guys yelling at me that I killed my girl and my son. Assholes roughed me up bad, almost killed me. Broke my back in two places. I was in hospital almost two months, and I needed a few surgeries. At first, they weren’t sure I’d even walk again, but it turned out the damage wasn’t as permanent as they thought. Not in that way, anyway. I managed all right for a few years, but I started developing arthritis some time ago. Doctor figures it’s related to the attack. It’s never going to get better, so I sit here, watch TV and drink my beer. Once in a while, when I’ve got some money together, I buy myself some weed. I can’t afford anything better for pain management. Sometimes, I think about ending it all, but so far, I ain’t had the guts.” He returned his attention to Lachlan. “So that’s it in a nutshell. How a guy goes from working stiff to getting cash from pogey and theft. Quite frankly, you should be impressed I haven’t gotten into drug dealing or robbery. The thought’s crossed my mind more than once, believe me.”

“You’re not quick enough to pull off a robbery,” Lachlan said. “And you’d be a walking target as a dealer, just the kind of guy losers would rob for drugs.”

“Yeah, I’d figured on that, thanks,” Nathaniel said with no small amount of snark. “I think I’d know a little something about that, living around here, don’t you think?”

“Fair enough,” Lachlan said. “Getting back to Nora—”

“Oh, lord.”

Lachlan continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Take me through that night.”

“I’m thinking you already know about it, if you were involved in the investigation.”

“I know what you said then. I’d like to hear it again. A lot of time’s passed. It could be you remember something now you forgot about.”

Dez knew where Lachlan was headed. People didn’t easily recall their original lies later on—at least not accurately. Repeating the exact details of a made-up story was a significant challenge a year later, let alone thirty years on. If Nathaniel was indeed responsible for the deaths of his girlfriend and son, this could be the way to catch him.

“Look, like I said at the time, she and I were at a party with the baby. We got in a bit of a spat over the fact she wanted to leave, but—”

“You initially said there was no spat. It wasn’t until you were confronted with what other witnesses had said that you changed your tune.”

“Yeah, I wonder why. You cops were acting like I must’ve done something to her. I was a dumb kid; I told a dumb lie about everything being all peachy-keen. So, yeah, we were at each other a bit that night. We argued sometimes. We had a newborn baby, and he cried a lot, kept us up at night. Find me a married couple who doesn’t fight when neither of them’s getting much sleep.”

Dez could see truth in that statement, but he wasn’t about to risk stepping on Lachlan’s interrogation by agreeing with his key suspect.

“So what happened then?”

“We stayed a while more, but not long. Ben was getting more and more crabby, and so was Nora. I can’t even tell you exactly what we argued about on the way home. No doubt something to do with staying late at my family’s, but when we started up, we usually found something else to add to the list. We were still a ways from home when she insisted on getting out of the car and taking Ben. I went after her, tried to talk her into getting back in. But I was at the end of my rope by then, so I took off. Figured I’d drive around the area a bit and come back to get ‘em. Only when I came back, they were gone. No sign of ‘em. I drove around for an hour or thereabouts, but I never did find them, so I gave up and went home. I was hoping she’d caught a lift from a passerby, and I was all set to ream her out for accepting a ride from a stranger. Only they weren’t there. Didn’t show up all night.”

“You didn’t report her missing for two days.”

“I figured she probably went to a friend’s. We both needed time to cool off. I thought she’d come home once she did. When she didn’t turn up, I started calling around. I found out no one had seen her or heard from her at all since before the party. That’s when I called the cops.”

“You must appreciate how all of this sounds,” Lachlan said.

“Damn straight I do. So did other people. Lots of sideways looks over the last thirty years, never mind that attack on me—all thanks to that car you guys had sent round to pick me up. I woulda come in on my own, you know. No need to make the neighbourhood think I’d done something shitty.”

“Tell me something,” Lachlan said. “The baby. You eventually fessed up to investigators you weren’t sure Ben was yours. You still feel that way?”

“Listen, I thought a lot of dumb shit back then. Cops were talking like Nora and Ben were dead, and I wanted it to be anything else. And, no, not just to avoid the murder charge you guys wanted to lay on me. I wanted them to be alive for me too. You can believe this or not. I don’t care. But I loved them. They were my family.”

“But why say what you did about Ben?”

“Easier to think that way, I guess. If he was some other guy’s, maybe it woulda hurt less to lose them. Only I just couldn’t convince myself. He did have my nose, people said. Hard to deny genetics, right?”

Lachlan sat forward. “Mr. Porter, did you lay hands on Nora or Ben that night, or at any time afterward?”

Nathaniel held Lachlan’s eye, the steady glare containing a fire on the verge of igniting. “No, sir. I did not.”

“Did you kill them?”

“No, sir, I sure as hell did not.”

“Did you do something to make them disappear?”

“Other than being an asshole, no, I did not. I wish I could take back lots of things I said and did that night. But, other than that, my conscience is clear.”

* * *

Lachlan called it shortly after, leading the way from the house and back to Dez’s SUV.

Not until they were back inside, Dez driving from Nathaniel’s house, did Lachlan speak.

“Shit.”

“What?”

“I thought it was him. I really thought it was him.”

“You sure it’s not?”

“You were a cop a while, Braddock. What’re your instincts telling you?”

Dez nodded. “That he didn’t do it.”

“Me too.”

“So why were you so sure going in?”

“I wasn’t in a position back then to do much with the case. It had to be passed off to a detective unit. I poured over the interview recordings, but you know how interviews can go. You get a cop in there who knows how to break a suspect down, and you start to believe him. Hell, you get one good enough, even a wrongly accused suspect starts to believe him. As I got older and better at my job, I honed my bullshit detector and learned how to be that sort of interviewer myself. But I wasn’t that cop back when Nora disappeared. I was good, but not that good. I had a lot to learn. Once in a while, something like this happens to remind me of just how much I didn’t know.”

“I’m not so sure we should just give up on the Porter angle yet,” Dez said. “The same way years made you a better investigator, it could have made Porter a better liar. Don’t forget his record. People with a run of property offences generally aren’t known for their honesty.”

“Fair enough, but it’s a far cry from property crime to violence. Sure, he’s been picked up on some assaults, but they’re old.”

“So is Nora and Ben’s disappearance. Could be he did something and regretted it. Lots of killers do, especially when you’re talking domestics. If so, it’s less likely he’d have put himself in a position like that again. He is single, after all. No way a woman’s set foot in that house anytime within the past decade, by the looks of it.”

Dez cast Lachlan a side-eye, spotted the man bobbing his head in thought. “Fair point, Braddock. Fair point. I’m not sold on Porter being our man, but it’s probably a little soon to toss him out of the running completely.”

Dez was watching the road but could hear the smile in Lachlan’s voice when he next spoke. “It might be the concussion talking, but you’ve got a decent head on your shoulders.”

“I’m my father’s son.”

“Not quite yet, you’re not,” Lachlan said. “But keep plugging away, and you’ll get there.”

19

Lachlan insisted on heading to his storage container, not a quick trip from the King’s Mill neighbourhood.

Dez’s apartment was on the way, and they made a stop to pick up Sully. Dez had been to the storage container more than once. If Lachlan wanted to dig through files for additional information about either the Nora Silversmith file or the one involving Lonnie Debenham, three sets of eyes were better than two.

Sully was quiet, which was nothing new for him. But there was something in the quality of his silence that made Dez question it.

Now wasn’t the time, though. Lachlan had his bloodhound hat on, and he’d be impossible to deal with until he’d sorted through these mysteries.

The private investigator had his own way of organizing, and it had never made any sense to Dez. He and Sully, on their own, would have spent an hour or more hunting for the right files. Lachlan had them inside of two minutes.

“I’ll never understand how you sort this stuff,” Dez said.

“And you never will. I purposefully keep it ambiguous. Anyone breaks in here wanting for something, they’ll need more time than they’ve got just to try to find it. It makes sense to me. That’s what counts.”

“You know I’m working with you now, right? You could let me in on some stuff.”

“One day, Braddock. One day.”

Lachlan plopped into the armchair he’d hauled in here, leaving Dez and Sully settling for a spot on the area rug. Even in a storage container, Lachlan insisted on a measure of elegance.

He’d located both missing person files—the one involving Nora and Ben and the other on Lonnie Debenham. Taking the first for himself, he handed off the Debenham file to the brothers.

“Do the police know you took copies of all this stuff?” Dez asked.

“Some of it, I’d imagine. As for the other—as you put it—‘stuff,’ what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

Dez shrugged.

Sully was already pouring over a stack of written statements, and Dez happily settled on a smaller and less mind-melting pile of photographs. They were in a manila envelope, and Dez dumped them out over the rug, ignoring the sigh from Lachlan he inadvertently provoked.

He fingered through them, photos of Lonnie with various people in his life. There were several formal family photos as well as more candid pictures of him with his parents or his wife and kids. A wedding photo revealed Carlene to be a knockout. She was still attractive, but back then, she’d been movie-star gorgeous with a body most men would kill to get with. At first blush, the idea of Lonnie cheating on someone like her was laughable, though it was possible her personality left something to be desired. She was certainly flirtatious; Dez had had proof of that. But he hadn’t been left with the impression she was particularly difficult or stuck-up.

Then again, she’d wanted something from them, and might have been on her best behaviour. It was possible the Carlene Lonnie knew was another person altogether.

It was also possible Lonnie was the world’s biggest chump if he had, in fact, cheated on her.

Dez looked at a few more pictures of the Debenhams before moving on to a variety showing Lonnie with his work colleagues and friends.

“These weren’t all with the police file, were they?” Dez asked. “They only ever ask for one or maybe a few decent pictures for missing persons files.”

“Like I said, I did some digging back then, in my spare time. Asked for a range of photos, mainly to be able to visually identify the people in Lonnie’s life. His wife and parents made the reprints for me.”

Dez nodded and went back to his task. He picked out Eleanor Kirkpatrick from a staff picture, clearly taken during a Christmas party or some other sort of formal occasion. Lonnie appeared every bit the upscale businessman in a sharply cut suit, while Eleanor managed to appear frumpy—even by nineteen eighties standards. In the middle stood a couple who Dez figured had to be Thomas and Rose Debenham, the king and queen surrounded by their court.

Next were a range of photographs of Lonnie with his friends—attractive society girls, playboy-type guys and one or two less-favoured types who were probably just happy to be included. Lonnie was frequently at the centre, buddies’ arms dangling over his shoulders, women hanging on his arms. He was a man of privilege and popularity, a man with a lot to lose. And, judging by the beaming grin he wore, a set of perfect, white teeth on display, he was a happy man too.

Then again, Dez had been to more than one suicide call in his policing career. At times, it didn’t come as a tremendous surprise to those who knew the person. But often, he’d been faced with shocked relatives who described a person they’d known to be bubbly, outgoing and happy. Smiles and laughter could hide a great many things, and a deep darkness could dwell just below a sunshine-lit surface.

Dez was flipping through the photos when he got a shock of his own.

The picture seemed a little older than the others, judging by the shaggier hair and more casual dress Lonnie wore. Dez recognized one of the buildings from the university’s Bowl, acting as backdrop to a photo of a group of buddies lounging on the lawn.

A large man stood at Lonnie’s right shoulder, at least a full head taller, his arm pulling a laughing Lonnie into a playful headlock.

Dez would know that face anywhere. He’d wanted to bury a fist in it countless times over the past two years.

“Hey, Sull.”

“Hmm?”

Dez didn’t say it out loud, just passed the photo to his brother. Watched as Sully lost a shade of colour.

“How the hell…. I didn’t even know Hackman went to university.”

“Me neither. Seems more like a big, dumb oaf to me.”

“He’s an oaf, but he’s not that dumb,” Sully said.

Lachlan’s voice drifted over from the chair. “Larson Hackman? The orderly from Lockwood?”

“Yeah,” Dez said. “He’s in this photo with Lonnie. Looks like they were buddies, at least back in university.”

“Hmm,” Lachlan said, sounding more noncommittal than interested. “Are there other photos of the two of them together?”

“I’m not through all of them, but I haven’t seen any so far. Nothing post-uni, anyway.”

Sully had reached over, was now rifling through the photos on the carpet. His fingers plucked one out a moment later, holding it up for Dez’s inspection. This one wasn’t of a group. It showed just two people, Lonnie and Hackman, cans of beer in hand and drunken grins on reddened faces. They appeared to be at a festival, likely the multi-band rock show that came to town each summer, judging by the crowd. Again, they were standing, arms hanging around each other—a couple of good buddies out for a good time. A third photo, located by Sully while Dez was taking in the previous one, was of Lonnie and Hackman, this time with a couple of other friends. More beer, this time while sitting around a poker table. The four young men were hamming it up for the camera, Lonnie and Hackman leaning toward each other to adopt the now-familiar arms-around-each-other pose.

“They seem like they must have been good friends,” Sully said. “You’re sure you didn’t see Hackman in the later ones?”

“If he’d been there, believe me, I would have noticed. I spent a couple of years meditating on his face and all the ways I could rearrange it.”

Sully chuckled. “I’ll take that as a real no. So why wouldn’t he be there? It looks like they used to hang out back then, so why stop?”

“I’m thinking it’s possible they just went in two different directions after university. Happens all the time, doesn’t it? Lonnie’s path took him into the business world, and Hackman’s landed him at Lockwood.”

“Okay, but I don’t think Hackman came from wealthy stock,” Sully said. “At least he didn’t give off that air. He seemed more like, as you put it, an oaf. So the two of them were already from different places, even in university. They aren’t the sort of people you’d expect to see hanging out. Lonnie was fraternity material. Hackman couldn’t have successfully rushed a fraternity if his life depended on it.”

Again, Lachlan’s voice cut into their conversation. “You two are missing one real possibility. Maybe Lonnie and Hackman never did stop spending time together.”

“Hackman isn’t in any other photos.”

“Those are only the ones I was given. There are others in existence. Could be Hackman’s in some of those. Or it might be he’s in none of them. Doesn’t make any real difference. Just because photos weren’t taken doesn’t mean something didn’t happen, does it? Bear in mind your point about two separate lives. As the son of a rich and well-respected businessman, Lonnie was a member of society’s elite; Hackman, if you’re correct in your read, is and was not. Even if the two of them were the best of friends, it isn’t likely Lonnie would have brought Hackman into his world. An ‘oaf’ would stick out like a sore thumb around people of the Debenhams’ ilk. Lonnie was a star on the rise, and Hackman would have pulled him down.”

“So it’s possible they were hanging around each other, just not in public view,” Dez said.

“Or at least, not the public Lonnie really cared about impressing. Regardless, don’t get too hung up on Hackman. Just because he was a sod to your brother doesn’t make him guilty of anything nefarious concerning his friend.”

“I hadn’t been thinking that, but now that you suggest it—”

“Braddock. I mean it. The worst mistake you can make as an investigator is to start injecting your personal baggage into a case. If you can’t handle it, you need to take a step back.”

A fuming response was at the tip of Dez’s tongue when Sully cut in with a far more tactful observation.

“It doesn’t have to mean Hackman was responsible for Lonnie’s disappearance. But I think it might mean something. Hackman’s son was led to that crevice, and the ghost we now know is Nora led me there when I went into the woods trying to help him. If Lonnie was the victim of the same ghost, there’s a connection we need to check into.”

“You might be reaching a little, but fair enough.” Lachlan turned to Dez. “What’s the best route to talking to Hackman? We obviously can’t have Sullivan anywhere near him.”

The answer was obvious to Dez, but it wasn’t one he was happy to provide. “He thinks I saved his son’s life. I have a feeling he’ll talk to me.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Sully asked. “You won’t go off on him, I mean?”

“Hey,” Dez said. “In what world is going off on an asshole like Hackman not a good idea?”

* * *

Hackman proved an easy find, his address and phone number popping up in a 411 web search. It was now past five, the time most people would be heading home for the day.

Hackman was another story. Dez had spent plenty of time at Lockwood, enough to know the orderly worked a lot of late afternoon and evening shifts—all the better to help with Dr. Roman Gerhardt’s sick experiments on psychic patients.

A call to Hackman’s home number led to the expected ring-through and a terse recording asking callers to leave a message. Dez hung up without doing so.

“I think that means he’s at Lockwood.”

“So go see him there,” Lachlan said.

“I’m not supposed to be on the grounds.”

“Is the psycho doctor around the place much after hours?”

“Not unless he’s got one of his off-the-clock psychic ‘treatments’ lined up,” Dez said. “I saw him leave most days after five, once visiting hours were done for the day and they booted everyone out. No doubt he came back later.”

“I’m assuming these ‘treatments’ would have been done late at night,” Lachlan said. “If he was up to anything creepy, no chance he’d do it while potential witnesses—staff or patients—are hanging around. That should give you a few hours to get over to Lockwood, talk to Hackman, and get out again without Gerhardt seeing.”

“The doors will be locked. Can’t I wait and go talk to him at his place in the morning?”

“You’re just delaying the inevitable. What, are you afraid of him or something?”

“More afraid of what I might do to him. I’d rather walk out of a meeting with him the way I walked in, and not in a set of handcuffs.”

“I’ll second that,” Sully said. “But do you really think you’ll be in a better state to deal with him tomorrow? I hate to say it, but Lockwood might be a better place to talk to him. It’s public at least. Meeting him at his home, with no one else around, could end with things being said. You know how easily a verbal confrontation can turn physical.”

Dez sighed. “I don’t want to do this.”

“I could go,” Lachlan said. “But as you noted, he credits you with saving his son. He’ll be more likely to talk to you than to me. As you describe the situation, he’s got secrets to hide. The last thing he’ll want is some private investigator snooping around. His guard will go up, and it’ll be pulling teeth to get him to tell me what he had for breakfast. I could get the answers from him, but it would take time and maneuvering. You could do it much more quickly and efficiently. I’m all about quick and efficient whenever possible.”

Dez nodded, eyes drifting to the floor. A hand landed on his shoulder, giving it a gentle pat, and he turned to meet his brother’s eye.

“You’ll be fine,” Sully said. “You’re stronger than you think.”

Dez met Sully’s smile with a weaker version. “I hope you’re right. But in case you’re not, you’d better call Eva to be ready with some bail money.”

20

The doors were indeed locked. But it was less than an hour past close, and there were always a few stragglers who left work a little late.

Like police officers, orderlies were required to fill out incident reports, and rarely was there time in a shift to complete the paperwork. That meant overtime, and Dez caught one of those staffers as he left.

The young man—likely a new hire as Dez didn’t recognize him—tried to push past him on the steps. “Visiting hours are over.”

“I know, but I’m not here for a patient. I need to see Larson Hackman. Is he here?”

“Who are you?”

“Can you tell him Dez Braddock needs to talk to him. He knows me.”

That was a fact. Hackman knew him too well. Sure, Dez had helped locate Emory, but he wasn’t convinced one good deed would overshadow a past full of secrets and pain. Dez knew things about Hackman. Horrible things. Not just about Sully, but about Sully’s mother.

If Sully ever found out the full truth, he’d be the one over here looking to rearrange Hackman’s face.

The young employee studied him, and Dez plastered on a grin. Just some dude here to chat with his buddy. No big deal.

He knew he’d passed the smell test when he got a muttered “Wait here,” before the young man key-carded his way back inside.

Not two minutes passed before the staffer returned. He was far more relaxed, actually offering Dez a small smile as he passed. “He’s on his way. Will just be a few minutes while he finishes helping with pre-dinner meds.”

Dez nodded and watched the young man as he headed for the parking lot and an old beater of a car parked there. Dez wondered how much other staff members knew or at least suspected about what went on here in the dead of night. Lockwood had a decent reputation as an institution, had become the kind of place people paid to come to for a mental health break or for help with aging parents with dementia or Alzheimer’s. In Dez’s experience, many of the staff members seemed like decent people who cared for their patients or, at the very least, their jobs. They treated patients and visitors well.

People like Gerhardt and Hackman were another sort altogether. They put on a face for the world to conceal an evil inside. Gerhardt was the perfect doctor to most patients, caring and helpful. But to others—to those with gifts like Sully’s—he was the devil incarnate. And Hackman was the demon sitting on his left shoulder.

There couldn’t have been a worse time for Hackman to emerge.

Dez battled back hate as he stared at the man, trying to force from his mind thoughts of his little brother strapped, screaming, helpless and alone, to a treatment bed while Hackman watched with a grin. He could see the head orderly’s mouth moving, could hear words being spoken, but he wasn’t listening, focused as he was on keeping his balled-up hands stuffed deep in his pockets, and retraining his thoughts on his real purpose for this visit.

Lonnie Debenham. Think Lonnie Debenham. Kimotan Rapids University. Nora Silversmith. Emory Davis.

At last, Hackman’s question, being asked a second time, filtered through the rage. “What can I do for you?”

Dez could think of a few things, none of them consisting of a good end for Hackman. He settled on an answer Lachlan would approve of. “Your name came up in an old missing person’s file, and I wanted to ask you some questions about it. Lonnie Debenham.”

Dez forced himself to study Hackman for a response, taking his temper down another few notches as he fell into investigator mode. All-business. That was the way to handle this.

At least, that’s what he would tell himself.

Hackman’s brow furrowed. Just for a fraction of a second. “Sure, I remember Lonnie. We were buddies.” His voice sounded a little too relaxed, particularly for a man talking about a long-missing friend.

Or maybe that was just Dez putting his own mental spin on this. He’d have to play this carefully, do his best to take Lachlan’s advice on the taking-a-step-back thing.

He tried another tactic, one designed more to further settle himself than to placate Hackman. “I didn’t ask, and I should have. How’s Emory doing? Any updates?”

“He’s doing good. I wouldn’t have come back to work otherwise. They’re keeping him in hospital another day or two just to ensure everything’s healing up okay from the surgery. After that, he’ll head home with his girl.”

“Takara.”

“Yeah. Just met her. Seems nice. A little weird, but nice. I think she used to date your brother. I’m told Emory met her at Lockwood back then.”

“Yeah, that’s what she told me. I ran into her at Loons Hollow. I’m glad she’s moving on. Emory seems like a decent kind of guy.” Dez left the thought unspoken: sometimes apples fell far from trees. In this case, a tornado had swept through the orchard and scattered the apples into the next field. “Anyway, the reason I came: I’m working on a case involving Lonnie’s disappearance, and I was digging through some old photos. You’re in some from his university days, and it looks to me like the two of you were pretty tight.”

Hackman leaned back on the iron railing. “We were. We hung out a lot. Went to high school together, and we were both on the football team. We were pretty much inseparable.”

“Lonnie went to public school? I had him pegged as a private school type.”

“Nah, not his parents. His dad was rich, but he lived in the real world. He wanted his kids to grow up that way, not like spoiled, rich brats.”

“So what happened?” Dez asked. “Did the two of you stay friends?”

“More or less, yeah. I mean, a few things happened that led us in different directions, but we still hung out and everything.”

“What happened, exactly?”

“Lonnie was smart. He got into university all on his own. I got a ride on a football scholarship. They wanted me on the university team, and I was more than happy to take them up on it. I didn’t have any real interest in school, but I was hoping some big-league agent might happen by and notice me. What happened instead is I blew my knee during a bad tackle. Boom.” He made a motion with his hand to resemble an explosion. “Dreams over. Just like that. My grades were tanking, and even with tutoring, I was barely staying afloat. Once I realized I wasn’t going to get what I wanted out of the university deal, I dropped out. Lockwood was hiring, and I took a job here as an orderly. Figured it would be temporary, just till I could find something better, but I found out I liked it here and stayed.”

Dez hadn’t really been asking for Hackman’s life story, but it didn’t come as a great surprise the man was happy to talk about himself. “So Lonnie?”

“Right. Well, he stayed in university, obviously. Then he got himself hired at his dad’s bank and was working his way up there. He started hanging around more with his rich friends—ones he met through all these social events his parents would go to. His dad wanted him to start making a few connections so he was better set up for promotions down the road. It helps to know people in the business community, and a lot of his friends back then were like him—kids riding their parents’ coattails to high-paying, management-type gigs.”

“Did that piss you off, what Lonnie was becoming?”

Hackman stared at Dez a moment before breaking out in a sneer. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re about to suggest.”

“I wasn’t suggesting anything. Just asking. The two of you were close, and he was going somewhere you couldn’t follow.”

“I didn’t want to follow him,” Hackman said. “I hate those people. They really think they’re something, all of them. Look down their nose at anyone not on their economic level. I’ve got better things to do. Anyway, Lonnie and I still hung around together. We just did it most of the time without his other friends around.”

“What would you do?”

“You know, usual guy stuff. Go to the bar mostly, check out women. My bars, mind you. Not the kind he went to, the ones with multicoloured drinks that cost a day’s wages.”

“He was married by then, wasn’t he?”

“No, but he met Carlene one of the nights we were out. We actually almost duked it out over who was going to ask her out. In the end, we tossed for it. He won. He always won.”

Dez wondered if Carlene knew her marriage started out as a coin toss.

“I didn’t see as much of him after that,” Hackman continued. “He fell hard for her, kind of disappeared from the world for a while. But once they got married and had their kids, he decided he wanted to have an outside life again. He called me up and we were hanging out a bit again. I’m sure Carlene would tell you all about it.”

Hackman’s tone had changed, no longer one of fact-sharing and reminiscing, but of bitterness.

“You don’t like her,” Dez said.

“She doesn’t like me,” Hackman said. “Never did. Stuck up bitch, quite frankly. Good in bed, apparently, but that’s about it. And I guess she was good with the kids. But other than that, I never had any idea why Lonnie stayed.”

“Sounds like some sour grapes. You sure you’re not just pissed off she didn’t pick you over him?”

Hackman’s brows lowered. “No, that’s not it. Maybe I was a little jealous at the start, but that ended pretty quick when I discovered what she was like. She wasn’t born rich or anything—her family was a bunch of working slobs just like mine. But she acted like she had money. I think her radar honed in on Lonnie within all of ten seconds that night. Once she found out who he was—or who his dad was—he couldn’t have got her hooks out of him if he tried.”

“Carlene didn’t mention you when we were talking to her about Lonnie.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“She did mention, though, he was really off for about two months before he disappeared. Distant and depressed. Did you notice anything unusual about him?”

“I didn’t notice anything about him, period. Not then. I didn’t see him those last couple of months before he went missing. He just went right off the radar.”

“You didn’t try to find out why?”

Hackman was quiet, watching Dez. Studying him. Dez could see the gears turning, and waited to see what would come out the other side.

“I didn’t have to ask,” Hackman said at last. “I knew why. We had a fight. I said something like what I just told you about Carlene, which was true but stupid of me to say to him. Of course he defended her and said some shitty things about me. Neither of us wanted to see the other after that.”

“Took you a few seconds there to decide to tell me.”

“You came over here looking to make me on a murder. Why would I jump at the chance to tell you Lonnie and I were on the outs when he went missing.”

“You’ve said a couple of times now you’re worried I’m trying to pin something on you. You know, I never used the word ‘murder.’ For all I know, Lonnie went into the woods around Loons Hollow and fell in a hole like Emory, or went out there to kill himself. You’re the one who keeps suggesting something different. Why is that?”

“Because I know you, Braddock. I know you blame me for what happened to Sullivan, and I know you’d like nothing more than to see me behind bars. And if you can’t get me for whatever I supposedly did to your brother, you’ll bury me on something else. Newsflash: I loved Lonnie. We went back years, and when we fought, we made up eventually. That’s how we were. Sure, we had it out before he disappeared, and I’ll always regret that. But we would have been buddies again at some point. That’s how we were.”

Hackman dropped his head and shook it before once again meeting Dez’s eye. “I know this won’t mean much to you, but I’m sorry about what happened to your brother. I don’t know how many times you want me to say it, but there it is again.”

“That’s the problem, I guess,” Dez said. “It isn’t the sort of thing ‘I’m sorry’ is going to fix.”

* * *

Dez decided to contact Carlene before calling it a night, see what she had to say about Hackman.

She didn’t want to talk on the phone, insisting he come over to see her in person.

Dez’s anxiety, not so good at the best of times these days, skyrocketed. He was no expert in women, by any means, but he was sure he’d read her tone correctly.

It meant trouble.

He couldn’t take Sully with him, and Lachlan would be of no help, needing to go to bed early to nurse a headache.

Dez thought about Eva, and put in a call to her cellphone.

“You busy?” he asked.

“I’m on shift tonight. Why?”

Damn. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“No. Why? What’s wrong?” There was no arguing that tone, no way he could avoid answering now.

“I’ve got a client interview, and I’d rather not go alone.”

“Why? You expecting trouble?”

“Not of the duck-for-cover variety,” Dez said. “It’s a woman. And she’s… well, a little, um….”

“She wants to jump you. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

Dez rubbed a hand down his face. “Uh, yeah. Kind of. I guess.”

“Right. Are you attracted to her?”

“Nope. I’m a one-woman guy. You know that. But I’m worried she’ll try something, and it’ll put me in an awkward spot.”

“And Sully obviously can’t go.”

“Nope. And Lachlan’s having a rough night.”

“So take Bulldog.”

“Bulldog? Evie, this woman’s got some money. She’s society. Bulldog’s… not.”

“He’s still backup. I mean it. Take him along.”

It seemed a bad idea. But a worse idea was going alone to Carlene’s, so Dez tracked his buddy down at the house he was currently sharing with a friend.

Bulldog’s face broke into its usual grin upon seeing Dez.

He reached out and pumped Dez’s hand enthusiastically. “Copper! How the hell are ya?”

“Fine, Bulldog. Up for a drive?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Had plans tonight. Was going to check out that new French restaurant downtown. Took me three months to get in.”

Bulldog’s humour was deadpan, but the subject matter made it clear he was joking. Dez would have been surprised to hear Bulldog had ever set foot inside a proper sit-down restaurant in his life. It just wasn’t his scene.

“Good one, man,” Dez said. “So how about it?”

“I’ve never said no to a drive.”

With Bulldog in the passenger seat, Dez steered them toward Carlene Debenham’s. It was a good half-hour from the run-down Riverview area to the neighbourhood Carlene called home—plenty of time to catch up.

“You know, I’m making some money again,” Dez said. “I could—”

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard what I’m going to say.”

“I heard it. I heard it before you said it. You’ve said the same thing over and over in the past. And my answer’s the same. I don’t need charity. I’m happy with my life.”

“You’re happy couch-surfing? Going from one friend’s to the next with all your possessions?”

“First of all, possessions tie people down. I live free, no crap to worry about getting lost in a flood or fire. Second, I like crashing with friends. I don’t gotta pay rent, and I’m fine as long as I pay for whatever booze and smokes they want.”

“Some of your friends are losers,” Dez said.

“By most people’s standards, all my friends are losers. Of course, those standards also make me a loser.”

“You’re not. Anyway, that’s not how I meant it. I meant you and I are both doing well staying on the wagon. The people you hang out with, they might make it tempting for you to jump back into that old life.”

“You and me, we were never alcoholics. We had a drinking problem because we chose to drink too much. Neither of us did it full-time or long-term. I don’t have a problem staying sober. Do you?”

“No, but then, I’m not hanging around with your buddies anymore.”

Bulldog smirked. “Hey, if they peer pressured you, I’m sorry.”

Dez backhanded Bulldog in the gut, drawing from him a coughing fit punctuated with laughter.

“Forget I brought it up,” Dez said.

“So where are we going exactly?”

“A client’s house.”

“So why am I coming? You need a street translator?”

“I need backup in case she gets handsy.”

“Got a thing for big, strapping redheaded men, does she?”

“No idea. But she seems to have a thing for me. Eva’s working tonight, or she probably would have come with me herself.”

“I guess she wants me along, too, then.”

“Yeah, she suggested it, actually.”

“Okay, fine,” Bulldog said. “I’m happy enough to act as your bodyguard, though the idea of it seems kinda silly. I mean, next to me, you look like Mount Etna.”

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” Dez said. “Just someone else there so she doesn’t feel inclined to act on anything she might be thinking. It would be awkward, having to refuse a client, especially a wealthy one like her.”

“Is she pretty? If she’s wanting some company, and doesn’t mind dialling it down from you to me, I’d have no problem helping her out.”

“Shut up.”

Bulldog chuckled.

They made it to Carlene’s in less time than Dez had hoped, the traffic having cooperated exactly when it was most inconvenient.

Carlene was waiting at the door in a long, blue silk robe, and Dez didn’t like to think what, if anything, she had on underneath. She pulled the tie a little tighter as she saw Dez had brought company.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“Billy Bird,” he said, shooting out a hand to shake. “But most people just call me Bulldog.”

Carlene took the hand as if she’d been asked to hold a dead carp. Bulldog was sober, but Dez realized belatedly he likely hadn’t washed this particular outfit in a couple of weeks.

“Bulldog,” she repeated. It was unlikely, based on the tone, she intended to ever say the name out loud again. “Nice to meet you.”

“And you, ma’am.”

“Bulldog helps me out sometimes on jobs,” Dez explained. “He’s got an ear on a part of the world I can’t always navigate on my own.”

She didn’t comment, instead standing aside to let them pass—after they’d removed their boots. Dez expected they’d talk in the living room again, but she instead showed them toward the kitchen at the back of the house. The reason was clear. Bulldog’s jeans were less likely to leave stains on a wooden chair than a plush white one.

“Nice digs,” Bulldog said as they passed the large sitting room Dez and Lachlan had been ushered into last time.

“Thanks,” came the muttered response as she finished leading them into the kitchen.

Dez knew his read on Carlene had been spot-on—as had Eva’s suggestion to bring Bulldog as backup—when the woman tugged again on the tie around her waist and announced she was going to go put on something more appropriate for receiving guests.

“You weren’t kidding about her,” Bulldog said. “She expected she was going to get her some Copper lovin’ tonight.”

“Shut up,” Dez repeated as Bulldog laughed.

Carlene returned a couple of minutes later, more appropriately clad in jeans and a button-down shirt. “So what was it you wanted to speak with me about?”

Dez had brought Lonnie’s university photos along, and he pulled them from his pocket now, pushing one across the table to Carlene. “Do you know this man with Lonnie?”

“I do,” she said. “I wish I didn’t. Larson Hackman. He was Lonnie’s closest friend.”

“Why didn’t you like him?”

“He was a jerk. Drank too much, partied too much, didn’t respect women. He was your typical ‘bro.’ Lonnie adored him, and I always worried about the influence Larson would have on him.”

“I hate guys like that,” Bulldog agreed.

Carlene offered only a tight, humourless smile in response, so Dez followed up with another question.

“Did he have any influence on Lonnie, do you think?”

“No, not really. I mean, Lonnie would come back from nights out with Larson a little too intoxicated for my liking, but there was never any real harm done. What worried me was all the other stuff. Larson liked the ladies. His marriage split up over an infidelity, and I was scared he might set Lonnie down a similar path. Maybe he did, if it turns out those rumours are true, that Lonnie left us to go be with another woman.”

“He’d have to be a nut job if he did that,” Bulldog said.

Dez drove an elbow not so subtly into his friend’s side.

“What?” Bulldog complained. “It was a compliment.”

Dez took a chance at bringing up today’s meeting. “I talked to Larson earlier this evening. He seems to think you married Lonnie for his money.”

Carlene’s chin dipped, brow sinking low over heated eyes. “He would say that, wouldn’t he?”

“It’s not true?”

“Of course, it’s not. I loved Lonnie. Always did.” She sat back in her chair, folding her arms lightly across her chest. “I won’t deny I was pleased to learn Lonnie was wealthy, and I won’t say I didn’t want to lose the security money provides. I had our children to think of, Mr. Braddock. I grew up poor, the daughter of a single mother who had to work three jobs just to support us after my father left us. The thought of going back to living like that scared me to death. But Lonnie was far more to me than a meal ticket, like Larson seems to think. He was my husband, my lover, my best friend. We supported each other through some very difficult times. Larson wasn’t there for all of that. Lonnie more or less dropped him after we got together, and Larson couldn’t handle it, that his friend had grown up when he hadn’t. He still can’t handle it, apparently. Can’t say it surprises me. Larson Hackman is the kind of man who won’t ever grasp he left his twenties behind long ago.”

“He doesn’t strike me as the partying sort,” Dez said.

“I’m sure he isn’t anymore. Probably any drinking he does now, he does alone—mostly because few people other than Lonnie were able to tolerate him in large doses.”

“Did Lonnie stop spending time with him because he knew you didn’t like him?”

“Perhaps in part,” Carlene said. “But it was more than that, I think. As I said, Lonnie grew up. He had a wife, a home, responsibilities. The kids were both under three at the time and a real handful. Larson didn’t have those things at that point. He met his ex-wife somewhere in there, but it didn’t last long. They had their son and he couldn’t handle the strain of being tied down, so he left them. That’s the sort of person he is, and Lonnie understood that.”

“But Lonnie started spending time with him again.”

Carlene blanched. “When?”

“Uh-oh,” Bulldog muttered.

“Sometime after the kids were born,” Dez said.

“Who told you that? Was it Larson?”

“I take it you didn’t know.”

“No. I didn’t.” She pursed her lips, and Dez didn’t step into the silence. Thankfully, Bulldog kept his mouth shut, too, allowing her a moment to process as she turned her glare on a row of beautifully done custom cabinets. At last, she returned her attention to Dez. “It probably shouldn’t surprise me Larson managed to worm his way back into Lonnie’s life, and that my husband didn’t tell me. That would have ended in an argument, and he tried to avoid those where possible.” She sat forward, eyes widening as she regarded Dez. “You didn’t come here to ask about Larson because you think he had something to do with Lonnie’s disappearance, do you?”

“I didn’t say that,” Dez said. “But what do you think? Would Larson have reason?”

“No, he wouldn’t, but he might think he had. Put it this way. If the two of them had gone back to drinking the way they used to, and they started arguing about me, anything could have happened. Larson’s a big man. He might have hurt Lonnie. It’s just possible. Lonnie was in a bad place before he went missing. He was more argumentative with me and the kids. He might have been with his friends too.”

“Was there anything else between them? Any bad blood?”

“I don’t know. Jealousy maybe. Lonnie told me Larson had wanted me too. Maybe that was the reason.”

“Don’t get too hung up on homicide as an answer to all of this,” Dez said. “I’m looking at all the angles here. I have no evidence at this point your husband was the victim of foul play.”

He went through the photos in his hand, picking out one of Nora.

“How about this one?” he asked, sliding it across to Carlene. “Do you recognize this woman?”

Carlene peered at it. “No, I don’t. Should I?”

“Just poking around for any possible connections. There might not be any. She’s a missing person, too, disappeared shortly before Lonnie did.”

“You don’t think…. I mean, you aren’t suggesting Lonnie might have run off with this girl, are you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you’re thinking it.”

“They weren’t exactly in the same league,” Dez said. “We have no evidence the two of them even knew each other.”

“So why ask me about her then?”

The real answer wasn’t one he could provide. How did you tell someone the reason you were looking into a possible connection was because a ghost had exposed one?

“Like I said, the two of them disappeared close to the same time, and we’re checking into her case too. It was a long shot, but I wanted to check it out anyway.”

Carlene didn’t appear completely placated, but her easing posture told him she’d let it go all the same.

Dez tucked the photos back into his pocket and stood. “I think that’s all for now, Mrs. Debenham. Thanks for answering my questions. We’ll show ourselves out.”

Dez headed for the front door, Bulldog behind him when he was interrupted by Carlene. “Mr. Braddock?”

He knelt to put his boots back on, but faced her to allow for conversation. “Yeah?”

She knelt in front of him so they were nearer to face-to-face. “Um…. Listen, there might be one or two things I…. I might have some things I’m more comfortable sharing with just you. Just you. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Oh, he knew, all right. He knew he was grateful Bulldog was standing next to him, a modern-day chaperone. “Thanks, Carlene. But I’m a happily married man, like your husband was. It wouldn’t be right for me to come back here alone.”

She nodded, smiled. “I understand. Pity, though.”

She stood as he did, staying at the door as they left so she could close it behind him.

“Quite the lady,” Bulldog said as they walked toward the SUV. “I can see why you were worried. But honestly, though, who would cheat on her?”

“She wasn’t exactly nice to you.”

“She didn’t toss me out on my ass either. Given the right circumstances, I’ll bet she’d warm up to me.”

Dez smirked as he unlocked the vehicle, saving his reply for when the two of them were sitting inside.

“Sure, she would. If you were on fire.”

21

Sully had already seen this episode of House Hunting 101, one where an obnoxious executive-type and his wife—a woman who dressed like she wanted desperately to fit in among the Beverly Hills set—picked apart every house they entered.

He could only imagine their horror if they were shown Dez’s apartment as a prospective home: “Nice closet. Where’s the rest of it?”

Sully was relieved when Dez returned.

He clicked off the TV as his brother plopped down next to him on the pullout and gave Pax’s head a rub.

“How was your talk with Hackman? You’ve been gone a long time. You didn’t kill him and bury him in the woods, did you?”

“Thought about it. But no. He’s still in one piece. You should be proud of me.”

“What did he say?”

Dez filled Sully in on his meeting, adding in details about his subsequent visit to Carlene.

“So what do you think?” Sully asked. “Did Lonnie have anything to do with Nora’s murder?”

“No idea. It seems like a bit of a stretch. I mean, yeah, both of them went missing in the same area and close to the same time. But that’s not necessarily unusual in and of itself. On any given day in KR, the police department receives at least a couple of calls about missing people.”

“Sure, but most are found pretty quickly, right?”

“Yeah. Most don’t turn into full-blown, long-term files. Look, I’m not about to toss out the possibility the two cases are connected. I just don’t want to get hung up on that yet, and neither should you. The Faceless Flo legend runs that she goes after any guy out there who’s alone. That can explain Lonnie and Emory. It can even explain this possible ancestor of yours.”

“Only we know now our current ‘Faceless Flo’ is actually Nora.”

“So what happened to that Oliver guy? Nora wasn’t even close to being born yet when he disappeared.”

“Maybe he just fell somewhere or had a heart attack, and no one ever found him. There’s no reason to think he fell victim to a spirit. People like to blame things on ghosts. It’s easier than accepting there’s not always an explanation for bad things happening, or that they screwed something up themselves.”

“Fair enough. But let’s not jump too quickly into the Lonnie-Nora connection yet, huh? Keep an open mind. That’s what Dad always said.”

“I remember. You’re right.” With plenty of time on his hands tonight, Sully had been thinking, and he kept coming back to the same place—one Dez wouldn’t be happy to explore. “Hey, D? I’m wondering if maybe we shouldn’t go back to Hollow Road, see if—”

“Why do you keep doing this to me?”

“We should have another look around, see if we can find something other people have missed. I mean, Nora led me to Emory when I asked her. I just thought maybe, if she did have something to do with it, she might lead me to Lonnie too.”

“Can I remind you of something? She led you to Emory so she could get you in there with him. She wasn’t trying to be helpful.”

“I know that. But I’ve got my eyes open now. And I’ll have you with me. If she starts to affect me like she did the last time, I’m hoping you can hold me back.”

“I’d like to skip the in-between steps and just hold you back right now. You’re crazy, you know that? Most people avoid things that almost killed them. You run right back toward them.”

“It’s been thirty years, and no one’s found Lonnie or Nora, despite massive searches. Maybe the reason is they couldn’t see the one thing that would have given them their answer.”

“Nice,” Dez said. “Nice, man. Can’t you try to see, I don’t know, gentle grannies? Why do you always have to see ghosts who want to lead us into something that damn near kills us?”

“I don’t get a choice in who I see. They show themselves to me, and I have to do the rest.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. But do we have to go tonight?”

“No. Tomorrow’s fine. Time of day’s never mattered in terms of when I see them. Anyway, I’m not stupid. I don’t want to risk us falling into another gaping hole in the ground.”

Dez’s shoulders visibly relaxed as he heaved a breath. “In terms of ghost chasing, that, Sully, is probably the first intelligent thing you’ve ever said.”

* * *

Sully was up first, and while he wanted to get started as soon as his brother emerged from his spot on the pullout, Dez wouldn’t be going anywhere until he’d been fed.

Sully wasn’t much of a cook, but he managed some scrambled eggs, toast and bacon while Dez went through the initial phases of getting up.

“Smells good,” came a muttered compliment from the direction of the couch.

“Rise and shine and you can have some.”

One more groan and Dez rolled himself out of bed, then padded wordlessly to the bathroom. Sully buttered the toast while Dez took a quick shower.

Five minutes later, the two of them were at the table, Pax drooling next to Dez as he eyed the plates.

Dez unsuccessfully directed Pax to shake a paw, but tossed the dog a piece of bacon anyway.

“You’ve never bothered to teach him any tricks,” Dez said.

“What’s the point? He listens to me when it counts. He knows when to come, when to stay and when to attack. The rest is unnecessary.”

“Sure, but it’s fun.” Dez didn’t pursue the matter, switching topics to the issue Sully expected was actually on his mind. “You haven’t, by chance, rethought going back out to Hollow Road, have you?”

“No choice, man. You can come or not.”

“Like I’d let you go back out there by yourself again. I’m coming. I just wish you’d reconsider, that’s all.”

Reconsidering wasn’t an option. A few minutes later, breakfast dishes done—Dez’s insistence—the two of them, along with Pax, headed out in the SUV.

Sully half-expected to hear Dez’s phone go off with the day’s instructions from Lachlan but, so far, his boss was leaving them in peace. They made it to Hollow Road without a call or text, nothing to distract them from the mission Sully had laid out for them.

If Dez was disappointed, he kept it to himself, remaining a silent figure at Sully’s side as they drove along the road, Sully’s eyes glued to the woods for any sign of the ghost.

He could see the break in the trees ahead, indicating they were near the old town, when another scan returned the sight he was seeking.

“Stop,” he said. “I see her.”

Dez said nothing, simply braked and pushed the stick into park. Sully turned, just long enough to inspect his brother before returning his eyes to Nora.

“You okay?” he asked Dez.

“Ask me later.”

Sully stepped out of the vehicle and opened the rear door for Pax while Dez shut off, exited and locked the SUV. Sully waited until Dez was at his side before starting to make his way toward the spirit. So far, she hadn’t moved. Facing them, her features were obscured, as usual, behind a layer of clumped and dirty hair.

“I know who you are,” Sully called out as they closed the distance. “Who you really are. Nora Silversmith, right?”

Her head twitched, her yet-invisible face lifting so he could make out the tip of a nose poking from between strands of hair. The revelation she did indeed have a face beneath the hair and shadow gave him some extra courage to continue questioning her.

“I know someone killed you. My brother and I are trying to find out who did this to you so we can bring them to justice. It’s been thirty years, but that’s not too long for someone to face a charge. But I know you weren’t alone. You had a baby.”

Sully blinked. Opened his eyes to find Nora directly in front of him, shadowed face not two feet from his.

He took an involuntary step back, a strangled exclamation on his lips as he collided with Dez.

“Jesus, what?” Dez demanded.

Sully took a breath, then another, convincing himself he was okay. “Nothing. It’s all right. They just move fast sometimes, that’s all.”

“Where is she now?”

“Right in front of me.”

“Shit.”

Sully put Dez’s anxiety out of his mind, honing in on Nora instead. He had her attention, all of it, and he needed to make the most of it.

“Your baby’s name was Ben. He was a month old when you were killed, but he’s not with you. I’m guessing you’ve been looking for him. Do you know for sure he’s dead too?”

Sully knew the answer, of course. He’d seen the baby’s tiny spirit near Nora’s that day he’d revealed his ability to Lachlan. But what he knew didn’t matter. It was what she knew, or at least suspected, that counted. It could form the basis for her motivation to remain here, trapped in this world, threatening the men who came here.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t revealing her secrets. Not yet, anyway. He hadn’t lost her; she was very much focused on him. But he suspected this was more a case of her sizing him up, as if gauging the strength of an enemy.

He tried again. “I can help you. It’s what I do. People who have been murdered come to me to find justice and peace, and I can do that for you too. But I need you to help me. Do you know where to find your body?”

No response.

“How about Lonnie Debenham? He was a young guy who came out here thirty years ago too. His car was found on this road, but no one was ever able to find him. Do you know anything about that?”

Nothing. Her hair shifted slightly, as if caught in a gentle wind that existed only within her own reality. On Sully’s side, everything was still, not even a light breeze from the overcast sky.

Dez had apparently reached the end of his limited patience. “What’s going on?”

“I’m trying to get her to communicate.”

“She won’t? Why not?”

“I can’t exactly answer that now, can I?” Sully said through a smile, one he forced for Dez’s benefit.

“I remember you saying something once about how some ghosts aren’t aware of anything outside their own world or dimension or whatever. Maybe that’s what the problem is.”

“No, she’s aware of me. She’s focused on me. But I’m not getting anywhere.”

“It’s been thirty years. If she’s spent all that time with one goal in mind, it might be kind of jarring, having you turn up, asking her to change course.”

Sully’s eyebrows lifted. Sometimes, despite Dez’s dislike of ghosts, he came up with a nugget that revealed he understood them better than he realized. It was a great point. If Nora had spent three decades with her sole aim to take revenge upon any vulnerable male she happened upon, it was a lot to ask her to alter her thinking now.

They could get partway to an answer, though—and could make tremendous strides toward concluding Dez and Lachlan’s current paid job—if they could find the body of the missing banker.

“Do you have a photo of Lonnie?” Sully asked.

He listened as Dez rifled through his clothing and accepted the photo his brother pressed into his hand. Sully lifted it, holding it where he hoped Nora could see through the hair.

“This man. His name’s Lonnie Debenham. I think you might have seen him a couple of months after you were killed. You led me to Emory a couple of nights ago. Maybe you can take us to Lonnie now. Can you do that? It’s important we find him, not just for him or his family, but for you too. I think it might help us to help you.”

It was crap. He knew it. He couldn’t think of a single way their locating the banker’s remains would help Nora find peace, but he’d use any ploy he could at this point.

For some reason, this one seemed to be working.

As unexpectedly as she’d appeared in front of him, Nora vanished from his space. Sully visually searched the area, finally spotting her a short distance to the northeast.

“I think she’s going to show me,” Sully said for Dez’s benefit. “Don’t lose me, all right?”

“You’re moving pretty stiffly this morning. Keeping up to you shouldn’t be a problem.”

“If she draws me in the same way she did that night, I won’t even remember my shoulder.”

“I won’t lose you. Let’s get this over with.”

As the last time, Sully started off with a light walk, but found he had to increase his pace to a jog as she began to move more quickly through the woods. Finally, a couple of minutes into this, she led him into a run.

He’d only managed a few paces at that speed before a hand seizing his good arm pulled him up short.

“Sully, stop.”

“I need to keep up to her.”

“You need to focus. Not on her, but on yourself. I think she’s doing to you what she did last time—you know, when she almost killed you. This is why I’m here, to hold you back when you need it. And you need it, man. Chill out. If she really wants to lead us somewhere, she’ll come back and make sure we’re following. Don’t let her set the pace here. You’re giving her too much control.”

“I can’t help it.”

“No, but I can. Follow her, but if you start moving too fast, I’m reeling you back in.”

Sully nodded, pouring his gratitude into the smile he offered Dez. Then he returned his attention to Nora.

As Dez had suggested, she hadn’t gone far, paused next to a tree ahead. Dez was right; she wasn’t going to allow him to lose sight of her. He felt it, a desperate pull deep inside him urging him to sprint blindly wherever she intended to lead. But there was comfort to be found in the presence at his side, Dez prepared to override the psychic with the physical.

Sully walked toward Nora, Dez’s heavy footfalls sounding immediately behind him. Nora allowed the lighter pace for a minute or two but, as expected, soon darted ahead. Sully’s attempt to run after her ended with his arm once again caught in Dez’s grip.

“Sully.”

“I know, I know. I can’t help it. She’s—” He broke off as she once again appeared before him, face pressed so close to his he would have felt her breath on him, had she been able to breathe.

He didn’t feel desperation or the determination to follow anymore. Now all he felt was anger and frustration. He tried to remind himself these emotions weren’t his own, but her strength, built over decades, pushed them forward. Her energy blending with his, he began to fade beneath her until he could no longer see himself for her. He closed his eyes, hoping by first visually blocking her, he could see his way to doing the same with her spirit. But his own calm, steady energy fled in the face of her enraged torment, until he all but disappeared completely.

“Sully, breathe.” The voice came as if from the top of a well, the same way it had sounded when he was a prisoner at Lockwood. “Come on, man. You’re freaking me out here.”

He opened his eyes. She was no longer in front of him. The reason, he realized with some interest—with excitement that wasn’t his own—was that she was now inside him.

“Sully—”

She spun, took in the image of Dez’s tall figure. In that moment, he was nothing more than a stranger in her way, a man preventing her from moving forward.

The words left her like a punch. “Get the hell away from me!”

Dez’s eyes were saucers, mouth popping open as his jaw visibly dropped. Now was the time, if one was to be found. She turned, ran. Sprinted through the woods, trees flashing past as the dog—Pax, that was his name, right?—ran beside her. It was up ahead, her goal. So close. Just a few more feet.

An impact from behind drove her forward and down, put her on the cold, hard ground beneath a weight she couldn’t budge. She tried to squirm free but the man holding her wasn’t letting go. Her mind flashed to a pocketknife, one she sensed Sully kept in his jacket pocket. If she could pull it out, drive it into her attacker, she could escape.

This wouldn’t happen again. She wouldn’t allow it.

If she lost, they would kill her son next.

A blow to the head, then another, clouded her thoughts, her resolve. A blinding pain seized her shoulder as her arms were wrenched back behind her, easing only a little when a cry was wrenched from her throat.

Someone was talking, but the words didn’t fully register. She tried again to break free, but she might as well have been trapped in a vice.

Fear, rage, desperation—they burned like a fire.

Then they were gone. Leaving Sully lying there, face down on the forest floor with Dez sitting on him, pinning his arms.

“Sully, come back. Please. Sully—”

“I’m okay. Can you let me go? My shoulder.”

“Uh-uh. Say something ‘you’ first.”

“Let me go or I’ll tell Mom on you.”

Dez paused, stilled. Then he barked out a surprised-sounding laugh. “I wasn’t thinking about going back that far, but okay. You sure you’re you again?”

“Yeah. I’m sure. She’s gone. You scared her off.”

“I scared her?”

“You might be the only guy in thirty years to scare Faceless Flo, Dez. Can you get off me now, please?”

Dez released him, then helped him to his feet. Sully rubbed his pained shoulder as he scanned the woods for any sign of the ghost.

Nothing.

“Is she gone?” Dez asked.

“For now. If materializing takes energy, possession soaks all of it up.”

“It was like what happened with Harry. It was like I wasn’t even looking at you. It was your face, your body. But it was her too.”

“That pretty much sums up how it feels too,” Sully said.

“I didn’t screw your shoulder up too bad, did I?”

“It’s fine. I’m glad you did it. Thanks.” Sully took another glance around. “It was like she was taking me to something. It’s not far from here, whatever it is.”

“You sure it’s safe?”

“No, but at least we can go slow now without her getting in the way.” Sully led them farther through the woods, searching the ground for whatever it was she’d been pulling him to. He saw it before he happened upon it, which was more than likely what would have happened had she been in control of him.

“That’s it,” he said aloud for Dez’s benefit. “Watch your step. The hole doesn’t seem that big from here, but the ground might be unstable around it.”

But the ground held as he neared, getting close enough he could kneel and peer down inside. It was deep and black, only the first few feet visible in the daylight. Dez, kneeling at his side, pulled out his cellphone and shone the flashlight beam down into the hole.

“Looks like an old well,” he said. “See anything?”

“Just a lot of leaves and crap that’s fallen in there,” Sully said. “Can you lower me down?”

“It’s too deep. We’re going to need a rope.”

Sully scanned the forest, eyes settling on a fallen poplar nearby. “I don’t want to waste time going back to the vehicle. Can we break the branches off that tree? It’s thin enough to lower most of the way down, I think. Maybe we can use it to shift some of the debris down there.”

Seemingly happy with that plan, Dez joined Sully in snapping off branches. The trunk that remained wasn’t the sturdiest-looking thing, but it would likely be both long enough to reach bottom and firm enough to move leaves and other matter aside to see if anything was beneath.

Careful not to brush the edges of the well, the two of them lowered the trunk inside until, at last, it reached what felt like bottom. Dez held the tree while Sully took his phone to illuminate the inside of the hole.

“It’s hard to see anything around the trunk,” Sully said. “Let’s try to move it around a bit and get some of that stuff out of the way.”

It was awkward, and they didn’t get a whole lot of movement out of the tree, the old well not nearly wide enough to allow it. But they gave it a few minutes anyway, shifting the debris at the bottom as much as they could before finally withdrawing it and laying it along the ground next to the hole.

Then the two of them knelt back down while Sully again cast the light inside.

A set of empty eye sockets inside a dirt-encased skull stared up at him.

Next to it, seated on the shifted soil, knees hugged to his chest as he rocked back and forth, was the ghost of Lonnie Debenham.

22

Sully tried to talk to him, but if he heard, he didn’t acknowledge it.

He was terrified, that much was obvious. It was hard to get through to living people, let alone the dead, when they were trapped in that frame of mind. If Lonnie’s fear was Nora, he had a lot to be worried about.

Sully tried again anyway, calling down to him until, at last, he faded away.

“It’s definitely Lonnie?” Dez asked.

“Without question.”

“Okay. But I can pretty much guarantee Lachlan will want more to take to the police than a ghost sighting and a skull if he’s going to persuade anyone this could be Lonnie.”

Searching for additional confirmation, they put the tree back down the hole, scraping aside more leaves, dirt, twigs and small rocks until they caught a glimpse of material.

Dez put in a call to Lachlan, asking him to check what Lonnie Debenham was said to have been wearing when he disappeared. He clicked the phone onto speaker in time for Sully to hear Lachlan answer the question.

“Jeans and a light blue button-down. Why?”

Sully took one more look to satisfy himself, then answered the question. “Because we just found a skull at the bottom of an old well near Hollow Road. And we uncovered what looks like some sort of blue material.”

“Jesus Christ, are you serious? How?”

“Long story,” Sully said.

“And not a good one,” Dez added.

“Hang tight there and don’t do any more digging,” Lachlan said. “I’m on my way. Meantime, you’d better call Raynor. The clown will salivate over this, and Major Crimes is going to become involved now that there’s a body. I want to be there when they get there.”

“And I can’t be here,” Sully said.

“I can follow coordinates just fine,” Lachlan said.

“Don’t come into the woods on your own. She’s still around, and she’ll be extra pissed when she’s got a little of her energy back.”

“Back from where?”

“I’ll tell you later. Just promise me you won’t come in on your own.”

“I’ll wait for the cops. Anyway, unlikely Raynor’s smart enough to know how to deal with coordinates. If I don’t wait and walk in with him, they’ll never find the spot.” He paused. “Good work, you two. Once I get confirmation, I’ll advise the family.”

“Think we’re safe to leave?” Dez asked once Sully disconnected with Lachlan and handed the phone back.

“She isn’t likely to reappear yet.”

“That’s good, too, obviously, but I was referring to the skeleton down the well. You don’t think she’ll up and move it, do you? Lachlan will have my ass if he gets here with the police to find there’s nothing down there after all.”

“There’s no way to say for sure,” Sully said. “But it’s pretty rare for ghosts to be able to physically move objects. It happens; we’ve seen it happen. But it isn’t common. Anyway, I don’t have a choice. I can’t stand guard here and wait.”

“I know. Probably best you don’t stay anyway. They seem to feed off you. If she didn’t have the power to start with, she might end up with some if you’re nearby—especially if she pulls more of that Exorcist-type crap.”

Dez visibly shuddered, and Sully didn’t have the heart to rib him about his fear. In all honesty, what had just happened with Nora had freaked him out too. He’d only been possessed one other time, with Harry Schuster, and it had almost killed him—and, at one point, Dez. Nora had contemplated using Sully’s knife, and it was only because Dez had overpowered him that he came away injury-free.

The fact this had now happened to him twice after a lifetime of believing it couldn’t terrified Sully. It could happen again, and there was no way to know what motivation a ghost might hold or how far they’d be willing to go to meet their ends. If someone Sully loved got in the way….

He closed the thought down before he strayed too far down that path. It wouldn’t get him anywhere but more stressed, and that would mean a bad starting point should Nora suddenly reappear.

They reached the SUV without further incident, and Dez wasted no time in starting the engine and getting them out of there, dust kicking up on the road behind them as they, mile by mile, left the woods in the rearview mirror.

* * *

They’d been back at the apartment less than an hour when Dez’s phone rang.

Sully, holding a heating pad against his shoulder, listened while Dez put the call onto speaker.

“Hey, Lachlan. Anything?”

Lachlan spoke through hushed tones, and Sully could hear what sounded like movement and chatter deep in the background. “You boys cracked it. They sent an Ident member down the well, and he did a little more digging, just until they could get to a pocket on a pair of blue jeans the skeleton is wearing. Had a wallet on him with a driver’s licence inside—Lonnie Debenham’s driver’s licence. There’s nothing much left of the body, but the teeth are in decent enough shape for the most part. I put in a call to Carlene to tell her about the find and asked her for the name of Lonnie’s dentist.”

“It’s been a while. His dentist is still around?”

“He’s about a hundred and ten years old, but he’s still practicing. Anyway, all we need is for his office to provide the X-rays. Coroner has a go-to guy for dental comparisons, so that’s who will be handling that part of it.”

“How excited was Raynor?” Dez asked.

“Hopping around like a kid on Christmas morning. I think he figures this will be the case that will make him a shoo-in for a spot in administration, maybe even eventually that coveted chief’s job. Listen, the Debenhams are wanting answers fast. Thomas is going downhill at a pretty bad rate, and they want to give him the answers he needs first. The coroner’s got the expert lined up for later this aft, so everyone’s hoping for a positive ID sooner rather than later. I’ll keep you in the loop. I’m going to be busy with the family for a bit once we get the confirmation, so I’m hoping you’ll start talking to Eleanor Kirkpatrick and Larson Hackman.”

“Won’t that be a problem if police are investigating?”

“There’s nothing at this point to indicate foul play, but even if there were, those two were never considered suspects. Far as I’m concerned, we’d be doing the police a favour by figuring out if they need to look at either of them for possible involvement.”

Sully would be thrilled if it turned out Hackman was involved, and if they could uncover evidence pinning him with a murder charge. But he suspected the truth was something else. Lonnie was basically murdered, but not by anyone living. The person responsible wasn’t in any state to be arrested, and worse, she was likely to strike again if Sully couldn’t do something to stop her.

“Do you really think Eleanor has something to do with this?” Sully asked once Dez disconnected the call.

“No. I hate to say it, but Hackman probably didn’t either. It’s probably all on your ghost.”

“I think so too.”

“No matter, I guess. I’m thinking they’ll go through their usual procedures, get the confirmation on the identity and do what they can with an autopsy. If they don’t find blood or other evidence on the clothes, and no obvious signs of assault-related injuries on the remains, it will likely be ruled either undetermined or an accident. I mean, they’ll re-interview everyone they can, but it won’t lead to anything new. Not if he died the way we think.”

“Yeah, we’ve gotten to know her MO pretty well,” Sully said. “Are you going to go talk to Eleanor and Hackman anyway?”

“Don’t seem to have a choice. What about you? Hanging out here?”

“I think I need to give Marc a call.”

“The possession thing, huh? Think he’ll be able to help?”

“He set me up seeing that Raiya Everton lady a couple of years ago. She seemed to know a few things about it. I don’t have her number anymore.”

“Okay, but if you’re heading over there, don’t take Pax. As I recall, her place was crawling with cats. I doubt she’ll be too willing to help you out if your dog eats her pets.”

* * *

Raiya hadn’t moved, lived in the same house north of the river. A couple of her cats were looking older, but they were all there too.

Sully was uncertain about the wisdom of this visit; he would, after all, have to allow one more person into the secret of his being alive.

She solved the problem for him.

Marc told him he had called her, about to ask Sully’s questions, when she’d said, “No need to tiptoe around it, Marc. I know the boy’s alive.”

Now there was only to ask how—a question Dez had as well.

“It creeps me out she knew without anyone having to tell her,” he said as he dropped Sully off at the house. “You sure this is safe?”

“She’s safe,” Sully said. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I know.”

“Could it be you’re comfortable with her because she’s psychic too? Maybe you want her to be something she’s not.”

“That’s not it. I actually know, the way I know you’re a good person. Sometimes you get feelings about people.”

“You know I’m a good person because you grew up with me.”

“Dez, you reek of good. She does too. Relax. Go talk to Eleanor. And call me when you get back to town.”

“You’ve got money for the cab ride home?”

Sully checked. He did.

He slid out of the SUV, but realized Dez wasn’t going anywhere until he’d caught his own glimpse of Raiya—in case he saw something Sully didn’t, no doubt.

Raiya went one better.

The door opened, and she stepped from the house, encasing Sully in a quick hug before approaching Dez’s window.

“You have nothing to worry about, Desmond. Your brother is quite safe with me. You have important work to do. Best get to it. We’ll get this sorted out, Sully and I.”

Dez looked like he’d been struck, but he drove off all the same.

“He’s sure spooked about all this psychic stuff, that brother of yours,” Raiya said as she led Sully into the house.

“Always has been. In his defence, his first taste of it was when he was a kid, and he experienced it all through me. I was terrified of it myself back then. I didn’t make a very comforting guide.”

“I can understand.” Raiya led Sully into her sunroom, the one overlooking the lush back garden. Indicating one of the wicker chairs, she took another for herself. “I understand you have some questions about possession.”

“That and something else. What do you know about past lives?”

“I believe in them, if that’s what you mean. You’ve been experiencing one through your dreams, Marc told me. Not a very nice one, at that.”

“That’s one thing, yeah. Before we get into all that, can I ask you something first?”

“You want to know how I knew you were still alive.”

Sully nodded, so Raiya supplied an answer. “People like us, we see into a part of the world others can’t reach. I have several gifts. One of them is a strong ability to sense that world. You have a powerful gift, far more than you realize. When I met you, I tuned into that part of you in some depth. In a way I can’t explain in words, we connected. Your energy is unique to you, and I believe if it was snuffed out, I would know it. I felt it waver for a while, not long after we met, but it never disappeared.”

Lockwood, Sully thought. Satisfied with the answer—one that made far more sense to him than it ever would to Dez—he moved on to the reason for his coming here.

“Did Marc tell you about my dream?”

“The hanging? Yes. He said you felt the man was evil, and you’re worried that same evil runs inside you. He also told me he talked to you about soul evolution and growth.”

“Is that true?”

“Of course it is. Souls learn lessons and change the same way a repentant criminal might change his ways after going through certain programming or life experiences.”

“I think I have another ancestor named Oliver. He would have been born sometime in the mid-eighteen hundreds. He was already pretty old by the nineteen thirties. I talked to someone who knew him a little, and she had only good things to say about him.”

“Further proof of soul evolution.”

“Only if I am him. I mean, when I first went off the grid two years ago, I needed a new name and his came to me. I’m hoping that means something.”

“I can find out.”

“How?”

“I know a thing or two about hypnosis. I can take you deeper inside your consciousness, see if we can’t pull out an old memory or two. Are you comfortable with that?”

“I’m going to have to be.”

* * *

He could hear Raiya’s soft, soothing voice in the background, as if through water. But he was somewhere else, drifting back through time, past images of himself as a teenager, as a child.

He got caught up on a memory of Flynn Braddock, the way one might get snagged on a fallen tree while drifting gently down a stream.

“Keep going, Sully,” came the gentle command.

The traumas of his early childhood passed him by only through sheer force of will, and then he was in a place of shadow, a place where he had no human form.

“It’s dark,” he said.

“It’s a place of transitioning lives. Some people catch a glimpse of their time in what religious folks call Heaven. It’s rare, though. Heaven guards its secrets carefully. Tell me when you next see an image.”

Time meant nothing where he was, so there was no way to know whether seconds or minutes passed before he paused on a memory—one that didn’t belong to his current life as Sullivan Gray.

This one, he knew, was Oliver’s.

“I’m there,” he said.

“What do you see?”

“Woods. It’s dark. I’m holding a lantern. Everything hurts.”

“Are you injured?”

He focused. No, not injured. “I think it’s arthritis. I’m old.”

“How old?”

He lifted his hands. The skin was saggy, wrinkled. “At least in my seventies, I think.”

“What’s happening?”

“I’m just walking.”

“You stopped here for a reason. Tell me when something else comes to you, but no need to force it. Let it come at its own pace.”

He continued through the woods, eyes scanning the shadows until he at last saw a flicker of light a short distance ahead and to the left.

“Sadie,” he heard himself call out in a voice not his own. “Sadie, I want to help you.”

The light, which had been drifting through the trees, stopped.

“Sully?” came a voice from topside.

“I’m trying to talk to a ghost, I think.”

“All right. Let it play through. I won’t interrupt. I’ll only bring you out if you need it.”

He sank back into the vision, watched through Oliver’s eyes as he approached the light ahead. The Sully part of him found even that much fascinating, the way Sadie appeared. Sully usually saw them from the start as full-bodied apparitions. For Oliver, it was merely a light he could see, a dim blueish glow, like one of those orbs people sometimes caught while taking photos. But as he neared, the orb grew, extended, lengthened until it reached the ground. Gradually, limbs formed, then a head and, finally, features.

She looked somewhat like Nora Silversmith, a dirty, ankle-length dress covering her body while long, blonde hair partially concealed a bloody, broken face. But unlike Nora, there was nothing angry or resentful about this ghost. Only sadness.

“Your family is worried for you,” Oliver said. “I’ve been searching for you in the hopes you would let me help you find peace.”

She spoke, but it was impossible to read the lips, moving too fast to make out.

“I can’t hear you,” Oliver said. “If there’s something you need me or your family to know, you’ll have to show me. Sometimes spirits can touch my hand and pass along a thought that way.”

She surged forward, excitement clear. The image before him changed. Still dark woods at night, but this time he saw them through her eyes. She was with a man, someone she loved. Not the man she was intended to marry.

They embraced, kissed. She wanted it to go on like this forever, but she needed to do right by her family. She’d come here for a reason and this, as much as she loved it—loved him—wasn’t that reason.

She watched as the smile faded from his face, as the light left his eyes beneath the weight of her words. They wouldn’t be able to see each other again; she was intended to someone else, and the wedding was to be next month. She needed time to get over this love, to try as hard as she could to allow it to bloom for her to-be husband.

Ned—his name was Ned—begged her to come away with him, tugging on her hand as if to draw her away. She snatched her hand back, tears coursing down her face. This wasn’t an option. Her decision had already been made for her. She couldn’t disappoint her family. This marriage would be an immense help to her father, would ensure he and the rest of her family could live a comfortable life.

Ned’s face changed again as she spoke. The eyes were no longer dead, no longer imploring. They were furious.

The vision was silent, but the meaning of the words Ned spoke washed over Sadie, making themselves very clear. In his eyes, she’d betrayed him, had made him feel for her what he’d never felt for another woman. He loved her, adored her. His world revolved around her. Without her, he’d be nothing, and she’d be nothing without him.

Her apologies fell without impact, his rage only building as he paced, speaking of the nights she would spend in another man’s arms. They hadn’t even been together, she and Ned. He hadn’t known that pleasure. It was wrong another man would know her in that way before he had.

She saw his intention too late. She turned, tried to run. But he caught her, taking her to the cold forest floor. Turned her so she was facing him as he straddled her hips.

He reached back to tug up her skirt, and she let loose, one slap mottling his cheek in the bright moonlight, then a second. He gave up on the skirt, returned his attention to her face. Slapped her back, snapping her head to the side.

Again, he returned to her skirt. This time, she scratched him, leaving gouges in his neck that wouldn’t be easily hidden, not the way he ordinarily went around with his top buttons undone. Blood formed in the wounds, and while the sound of it was hidden to Oliver—and to Sully—his resulting howl made her blood run cold.

Too late she noticed the rock resting nearby. But he saw it, seized it.

The first blow hurt, drew a cry from her. The second left her seeing stars. After that, the impacts came furiously, too many to count, the rock colliding with her skull until, at last, darkness claimed her.

Her next image was of standing next to her own body, watching the man she loved opening her skull with that rock until, at last, he stopped. She watched as he dropped the blood-soaked rock, as he stumbled back from her, bloody hand going to his mouth as if it had only now dawned on him what he’d done.

He turned, vomited. Then he fled.

She stayed with her body for a time, long enough to see him return with breaking daylight.

He’d brought a shovel.

The vision cleared, leaving Oliver alone with the ghost in the nighttime forest.

“Do you need me to find your body?” he asked. “You can show me.”

She shook her head.

“Do you want me to see to it he faces justice for what he did to you?”

Again, a head shake.

“You didn’t deserve this, what he did to you. You were forced to choose between your family’s wishes and your own. You apparently chose well, because any man who would do such a thing was not deserving of you in the first place. Do you not see that, Sadie?”

This time no head shake, no nod. She was thinking. He’d found the answer to her lingering here.

“You are only staying, then, because of him, because you are unable to come to terms with what he did. He doesn’t deserve you, and you don’t deserve this half-life. You can find peace and comfort on the other side. I was drawn here, to you, because I can help guide you there. Let me help you, Sadie. I can offer you a doorway, but only you can open it and step through. Will you try? Not for me or for yourself, but for your family. Each time someone sees you, their hearts break all over again. From the other side, you can learn to bring them comfort, not pain.”

She turned to her right, then back to him. He couldn’t see it, the door to Summerland, but he knew it was there. A light fell across her face, casting it in a glow that returned to her the beauty she’d lost in the brutal beating.

“You will be whole again there, Sadie. No pain, no fear, no sadness. Only peace. If you look, you will probably see someone you once knew, waiting to lead you through.”

She looked, and he watched as her eyes lit with joyous recognition.

Who it was she saw, he didn’t learn. She returned her eyes to his only long enough to offer him a slow nod and a smile. Thank you.

Then she was gone.

The image disappeared, darkness replacing it until a new picture flashed into his mind.

He was back at the Triple Tree, three men awaiting their fates, nooses around their necks he’d placed there.

They were bad men, murderous highwaymen, known to leave none alive as they snared and robbed their prey. The public hanging had drawn a crowd larger than he’d seen in quite some time.

So he’d arranged for a show. It wouldn’t be the usual drop today. He’d cut the ropes extra-long, had brought in milking stools to replace the carts. When the time came, he’d kick the stools from beneath them, await the crowd’s response as the murderers danced, toes scraping dirt but unable to fully touch. Salvation less than one cruel inch away.

And when they stilled, their souls would be his. He would draw them into himself, would feel their life force flow through his veins.

His power was growing. He could feel it. Today… today would be extraordinary.

“Sully…. Come back, Sully. Listen to me. Come back.”

Sully’s eyes snapped open, revealing not a jeering crowd and three convicted killers before him but Raiya’s worried face.

“You were going someplace dark,” she said.

“Did I say something?”

“You didn’t have to. I could see it in you. You were changing. Your face, your expression, it wasn’t right. Was it Oliver?”

“I got sucked back to the time before. The hangman.” He described the vision to her.

“There had to be at least a few lives in between,” she said. “How did you end up all the way back there?”

“He’s strong. I can feel it. He’s really strong.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” she said. “Not entirely, anyway. Don’t forget, this is a past life. He is you. If he’s strong, so are you. I think it’s something else. Power like the one you possess, it’s a push-pull, a yin-yang. There is both darkness and light in everyone, and power is the same. You are inherently good, but as with everyone, there is some darkness there. Because your light is greater than most, it stands to reason your darkness will be too. This could be nothing more than a reminder you possess both.”

“So what am I supposed to do with that?”

“It might be, as your power grows, you will be called upon to choose. This is a warning, a sign of what you could become if you choose the wrong path.”

“I don’t want my power to grow. It’s bad enough already. And what if, when the time comes, I choose wrong? Or what if I’m not given a choice? Sometimes they take me over, make me do things.”

“You can learn to control it. If there’s one lesson to be learned from the hangman, it’s that it’s possible to control your power. Bear in mind, the path of darkness is always easier. Choosing the good path doesn’t always come with instant gratification. The blessings are different, and we can’t always see them as easily. That’s why it’s much easier to take the low road. You know different. You’ve lived in a way that allows you to see what happens when a person chooses that path and stays on it. You’ve lived, Sully, and you’ve learned. Consider this hangman as another lesson, one you’ve already learned and can draw on when you need to choose.”

“That’s kind of the same thing Marc said.”

“He knows what he’s talking about.”

“So it’s true then. These people—Oliver and this hangman—they’re me, but in a different life?”

“You share the same soul,” she said. “But you’re very much your own person. Remember that.”

“He helped Sadie cross. But people talked about the legend for years after.”

“Sadie?”

“The Faceless Flo legend, the one from Hollow Road.”

“Oh, that one. I thought her name was supposed to be Florence.”

Sully told Raiya the story, how he’d discovered what he had, what Sadie’s descendants had told him, and what he’d been shown in the vision a moment ago. “If she’s been on the other side since way back then, why would people have said they’ve seen her since? I mean, the past thirty years, the ghost was someone else, but the legend was around before Nora was killed. Nora was even dressed up as Faceless Flo for Halloween.”

“You know stories,” Raiya said. “They have a way of getting blown out of proportion over time. Ghost stories are the worst that way. As you said, people were seeing Sadie’s ghost back then. That’s why Oliver ended up there, looking to help. By the time she finally left, it was too late. The myth had been born. If Oliver disappeared afterward without providing any answers, no one would have known she was at peace. People are bad for finding ways to make stories true. Movement from the corner of the eye, unexplained noises, outright lies—all of these things can keep ghost stories alive, even when there’s no truth to them. Throw in a few lost men in the woods, and you’ve got the makings of a real legend. I suspect that’s what happened here. Then when your new ghost came along, she breathed life back into it.”

“People apparently thought Oliver was the first victim. But he wasn’t. I don’t think he would have left without talking to the family first; I know I’d do that to help them. I think he must have died somewhere in the woods, and no one ever found him.”

“It’s too bad. The sort of thing he did for others, he deserved a proper funeral.”

“I don’t know,” Sully said. “What we do, you, me and Oliver, it’s lonely. There aren’t a lot of people who understand, or try to. Maybe dying alone was the best thing for him.”

“You’ve seen more than most, Sully,” Raiya said. “No one ever really dies alone.” She paused, as if thinking through whether to say something or not, before continuing. “I’m not sure you want the answers yet, but if the time comes when you want to learn more about this hangman, come and find me.”

“I won’t ever want to learn more about him,” Sully said. “But there might come a time when I’m going to need to.”

23

Eleanor Kilpatrick simply shrugged when Dez told her they’d found the remains of who they suspected to be Lonnie Debenham.

“Surprised it took thirty years, but all right,” she said. “How’d he die?”

“No idea. They have to get him into an autopsy suite and see what they can piece together. It’s been a lot of years. Some evidence will be impossible to find now. But there might be other stuff: bullets, blood on the clothing, tool marks in bone, that sort of thing—if there was foul play. It very well might turn out to be something else.”

Dez knew better, of course. Sully had seen Lonnie, after all. But it wasn’t the sort of murder that would necessarily leave clues—not when your killer was a ghost.

One thing was certain: Eleanor would have had no call to be out with Lonnie that deep in the woods, and it was highly unlikely the petite, mousy woman would have the strength needed to overpower and murder a young man who apparently looked after himself. Even if he’d gone downhill those last couple of months, it wouldn’t have been so significant as to render him defenceless against the likes of Eleanor.

Dez had something else on his mind. Sully had told him Eleanor mentioned a friend of Lonnie’s, a creepy guy who rubbed her the wrong way. He’d come equipped with one of the photos from Lachlan’s file, and he slid it across the kitchen table now.

“You told Oliver about a friend of Lonnie’s, someone you didn’t have a good feeling about.”

“Yes, and that’s him right there,” she said. “Tall fellow and muscular. That’s him, all right.”

“It’s been thirty years. You’re sure?”

“I’ll admit, I’m not great with remembering faces, but his… his I wouldn’t forget. I’ve rarely wanted to punch someone so badly as that night at the bar. Now I’ll admit, I wasn’t much to look at even back then, but he didn’t seem to care. He was all over me, and hands-on too. And Lonnie did nothing to help. I would have left, but it was dark and my car was parked a couple of blocks away. I didn’t want to risk walking out of there if there was a chance he’d follow me.”

“You think he would have done something?”

“He was a creep, and he had no concept of a woman’s personal space. At the time, I thought maybe he was picking on me because he knew Lonnie didn’t like me, but I think now it was more about my personality and build. I made for an easy target back then.”

“Did you know anything else about this man?”

“No, and I’ve never cared to either. All I know is he drove a big tank of a car, a four-door with a huge hood and a trunk.”

“Why does that stick out in your mind?”

“I saw the two of them drive off in it,” she said. “Him and Lonnie. They were both slobberingly drunk, but Lonnie was a little less so than his friend, so he drove. I debated calling the police, and I intended to, actually, to report them for impaired driving. But his father was there, and he said if I called the police, he would fire me. That night, and everything about it, is engraved on my brain. Lonnie changed after that night. I suspect his father tuned him in afterward. Took him down a peg or two.”

“It struck me from talking to his family he was deeply depressed,” Dez said.

“He got by okay at work. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t exactly spend much time around him, particularly at that point. He’d been promoted by then, and his office was on the top floor, near his father’s. Some days, I wouldn’t see him at all.”

Dez nodded. “Okay. Thanks for talking with me. I’ll get out of your hair.”

Eleanor stood and saw Dez to the door. “If there’s anything else you need, let me know. I didn’t particularly like Lonnie, but no one deserves to die alone in the woods like that, and he certainly didn’t deserve it if it turns out it was murder. Now, his friend on the other hand….”

She left the rest of her statement unsaid, but Dez provided the ending in his own head. Larson Hackman was one of the only people on the planet Dez would have been quite happy to see disappear permanently.

Instead, he was on his way to see him.

* * *

A quick phone call revealed Hackman was at home, his night shift not due to start for a few more hours.

Hackman’s apartment was in one of the older buildings downtown, proof being a psycho psychiatrist’s primary henchman wasn’t a job that paid well.

The unit wasn’t tiny, but the entry hall was small enough it couldn’t easily accommodate two large men. Hackman left Dez to close the door while he led the way into the living room.

It was a mess, flyers and beer cans littering the furniture and floor, an empty pizza box lying open next to the beat-up sofa, and at least a week’s worth of food and beverage stains on the coffee table. Hackman took a leather recliner that was clearly his usual captain’s chair, leaving the couch for Dez.

“Nice place,” Dez said, the dig clear.

Hackman sneered. “Thanks. What do you want?”

The baser part of Dez wanted to just come out with it, hammer Hackman with today’s find. Lachlan had called during Dez’s drive back into the city from Eleanor’s. They’d managed to have their expert do the dental check, and the body was indeed that of Lonnie Debenham. The news, if Hackman was as good a friend as he’d made out, would be shocking, even if part of him had to know the truth.

Slamming home news like this and gloating over someone else’s shock and grief, that wasn’t Dez—no matter who the other person was.

“I was back in the woods today, and I stumbled upon a body. It had clearly been there a long time, and there wasn’t much left of him, but they’ve had an expert do a dental comparison. It’s him.”

Hackman paled. “Lonnie? You found Lonnie?”

“Yeah. In the woods. The same area we found Emory.”

“By Hollow Road?”

Hackman knew the answer, obviously, so Dez said nothing. He was watching for further signs, something to tell him Hackman knew more about Lonnie’s death than he planned on letting on.

So far, all Dez saw was shock.

Hackman broke a few moments of stunned silence with a question. “How did he die?”

“No word on that yet. An autopsy’s being done. I didn’t get a really good look at the body, so I don’t know exactly what’s left of him, but I’d imagine if there’s any tissue left to sample, they’ll send that off for analysis. It could be weeks or even months before we know a cause of death—if we ever do.”

Dez didn’t mention the well in which they’d found the remains. If Hackman had anything to do with it, the less Dez provided, the better. It would make anything he blurted out in an interview room all the more valuable.

Not that Hackman seemed the blurting-out type. He was quiet. Really quiet, actually. So quiet, it prompted Dez to check.

“Everything okay?”

Hackman’s eyes, previously focused on his tightly interwoven fingers, snapped back to Dez’s face. “Huh? Oh, uh, yeah. Yeah, fine. Just a shock, is all. I’d kind of stopped thinking about it.”

“He was your best friend. I didn’t think it would be possible to stop thinking about it, the fact he disappeared without a trace and all that.”

Hackman’s eyes narrowed into a glare. “That’s not what I meant. I got on with my life. I had to put it out of my head. You go crazy otherwise, wondering.”

Dez wanted to respond with something cutting, but was reminded of his own truth. Sully had disappeared, was presumed dead. For a while, Dez had obsessed over finding him. But after a while, he’d simply allowed himself to fade, to give in to the grief of loss over his dad and his brother. He’d gotten on with life too. Not productively, and not in any healthy way. Come right down to it, he’d come as close as he could to screwing up every good thing left to him. He’d focused on drinking away the memories, the grief and the unanswered questions. It had taken time, and a lot of booze, but there were days he managed to forget.

Sort of.

If Hackman was to be judged, Dez wasn’t the one to do it.

There was something else he wanted to discuss, a topic he was more uncertain of. Ghosts weren’t the sort of thing a person normally talked about with someone they barely knew, let alone someone they hated. He reminded himself Hackman was one of the few people out there who knew the truth about that other world. His help with Gerhardt’s experiments suggested he had to know.

Even so….

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Dez asked.

“What kind of question is that?”

“Come on, Hackman, you and I both know what you and that nutcase doctor are up to at that hospital.”

“Look, I know you’re inclined to believe whatever Sullivan told you, but he was disturbed. He—”

“He had ligature marks on his wrists and ankles,” Dez said. “He’d been restrained. More than once. And he fought. It backs up what he told me, so do you want to try that again? Just answer the question. You and I both know Gerhardt has a hard-on for psychics, that he experiments on them. So that suggests the idea of ghosts being real isn’t so off-the-wall. Anyway, Gerhardt told me that himself before Sully went in there.”

“That he believes in ghosts?”

“That he doesn’t rule out the possibility they exist.”

“I didn’t say I don’t think they might exist. I’m just questioning your views on what we’re supposed to have done to Sullivan and these other supposed psychics you’re talking about.”

“All right, fine. We won’t talk experiments or psychics. Let’s narrow the scope to ghosts. You believe in them?”

“I’m like Dr. Gerhardt, I guess. I can’t rule them out.”

“So you’re likely aware of a ghost people have talked about around Loons Hollow.”

“Faceless Flo? Of course. Everyone knows about her.”

“Lachlan and I have been looking into another missing persons case that started around the same time as Lonnie’s. Nora and Ben Silversmith, a mother and her infant son. She was last seen wearing a Faceless Flo costume. She’d just been to a Halloween party.”

Hackman lost a little colour, shifted in his chair.

“Something wrong?” Dez asked.

“No. Why bring that up? I thought we were talking about Lonnie.”

“We were. But we think there might be a connection there. Did you talk to Emory about why he went missing?”

“He hasn’t been in the talking mood.”

“Not with you, anyway,” Dez said. It was catty, but he couldn’t help it. He continued before Hackman could get a retort in. “He told us he followed Faceless Flo into the woods. Thing is, we’ve since come to believe there is no Faceless Flo. It’s Nora people have been seeing. Or her ghost, anyway.”

Hackman shifted again.

“A friend of mine also went missing briefly. He also said he followed Faceless Flo into the woods. All three of them—my friend, Emory, Lonnie—they all ended up trapped, injured or dead because of her. She’s seeking revenge for something, and I’m beginning to wonder if there might be a connection here somewhere.”

A creak of leather suggested Hackman was starting to squirm again, but he caught himself at the last second. He opted instead to crook an elbow so he could rest his chin on his hand in what appeared to be a bid at nonchalance. The new position looked awkward and uncomfortable. “What kind of connection?”

Dez had been a cop only a few years, but he’d dealt with a fair number of suspects in that time. He’d been lied to—a lot—and he’d learned how to read the tells like researchers read books. Hackman hadn’t yet told an outright lie, but he wasn’t providing the truth either.

The truth had already been revealed by his body posture and tone. Larson Hackman knew more than he was saying. Far more, if Dez was any judge.

“You know something about that connection, don’t you?” he asked. “There’s a reason she’s going after people like Lonnie and Emory. It seems to me you’re one highly possible connection. You knew both of the missing guys, after all.”

“What about your friend? Do I know him?”

Dez’s turn to lie. “No, but he was there trying to find your son. We think she led him into a dangerous situation to keep him from rescuing Emory. My question’s the same. Do you know something about Nora Silversmith’s disappearance?”

The answer came far too quickly. “No, I don’t.”

“Do you even remember the case? It didn’t exactly get quite the same news coverage at the time as Lonnie’s.”

“I remember it.”

“Why?”

“I just do, okay?”

“Is it because you had something to do with it?”

Hackman dropped the hand, started to shift again. Anxiety morphed into anger, brows lowering over his eyes as he sat forward, pinning Dez in a glare. “What are you suggesting, exactly? That I killed some woman and her kid?”

“Actually, I was wondering if Lonnie killed them.” It was true. The connections had started to form as they sat here, talking. Lonnie had fallen into an inexplicable deep depression approximately two months before he disappeared—approximately the same time Nora and Ben went missing. And Sully believed Nora was responsible for Lonnie’s death. But there was another side to this, one that seemed to involve Hackman. Dez hadn’t accused him of killing anyone, yet the man had leapt to that conclusion. Hackman’s son—who happened to closely resemble his father—had recently fallen victim to Nora’s ghost, and had barely survived the ordeal. Now Hackman was sitting here, squirming every time Nora was mentioned.

“Lonnie didn’t kill anyone,” Hackman said.

“But you did, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“You know something about this, Hackman, far more than you’re letting on.”

“You’re crazy, Braddock. They should reserve a room for you at Lockwood. You’d fit right in.”

“You can believe I’m crazy if you want, but the situation remains the same. Nora Silversmith is haunting those woods, and she seems to be targeting people connected to you. Emory and his girlfriend are ghost hunters, and their video blog gets the most hits when they cover Loons Hollow. You think they’re going to give that up? If anything, what happened to him will only serve to whet his appetite. No one will ever be able to stop them going up there, and Nora will go looking for him again. I’m no expert on ghosts, but I’ve heard they stick around to deal with unfinished business. Could be you’re that unfinished business, Hackman. Maybe she’s coming for you next. And if she can’t get to you, she’ll find Emory.”

Dez had said more than he’d planned, but the longer he’d continued, the greater the effect on Hackman. He’d grown pale, so pale Dez worried he might collapse. A sheen had broken out on his face, and Dez could count two beads of sweat already trickling from his hairline. And the anger had faded. In its place were eyes widened and mouth popped open in terror.

Hackman tried to speak, but the words got caught halfway. “Y… you… you d… don’t….”

Dez sat forward. “I can help you, but you need to tell me the truth. Help us help Nora and maybe she’ll leave you and Emory alone.” He sealed it with an additional thought, one he knew would drive additional fear into Hackman’s heart. Anyone else, Dez wouldn’t have dared. But this was the man who had helped torture Sully, who had ensured terror was driven into him repeatedly during his time at Lockwood. Dez’s sympathy didn’t extend to this man, a person so awful even his own son didn’t want anything to do with him. “Ghosts can get around. Could be she’s following Emory now, waiting for the right moment. Or maybe she followed you. You were out there the day we found Emory. She probably saw you. How do you know she’s not standing in the corner right now”—Dez wagged his chin toward a section of the room behind Hackman, pleased when the man turned to look—“waiting to get you the moment I leave?”

“Stop it!” Hackman shouted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Then why are you so nervous?”

“It was an accident, all right? Just an accident! We didn’t mean for it to happen. We were drunk.”

Dez jumped in before Hackman could rethink the would-be confession. “What happened?”

“You can stop her? You can protect me?”

“We can try to give her what she wants. Part of it is probably the fact she doesn’t know where her son is. But you know, don’t you?”

Hackman’s colour changed again, his skin taking on a greenish cast. Dez hated watching people vomit, and he prepared himself for the possibility, just in case.

“It’s been a long time,” Hackman said quietly.

Were he still a cop, Dez would have moved long past the point of putting the man under arrest and reading him his rights to remain silent and seek legal counsel. As it stood, he was no longer a police officer. He could take this further now, and he did.

“What happened?”

“Lonnie and I were out with a few people from his work one night. We shouldn’t have been driving, but we were. Lonnie didn’t want to take his car—he had this nice little sports car—so we took mine. He wasn’t as sloshed as I was, so he drove. I figured we’d go back to his place so he could get dropped off, and I’d go home after, but he said his wife would be pissed off if he came in like that. So we kept going. We decided to go look for a woman or two.”

“Prostitutes?”

“Yeah.”

“Your idea or his?”

“Both of ours. But mainly mine, I guess. I’d already met some of the girls in the usual areas. I’d heard about another location somewhere a little farther out from the core, but we got ourselves a little lost, being drunk and all that. We were driving around when this woman…. She came out of nowhere. Just appeared in front of the car. At least, that’s what Lonnie said. I didn’t see her at all. I just felt the thump.”

Dez’s stomach turned. “Did he kill her?”

Hackman didn’t provide a direct answer right away, locked into his narrative. “We talked for a minute about bailing. There was no one around, not even any houses right there. And most businesses didn’t have decent video surveillance back then; I figured we could get away with it. But Lonnie just sat there, mumbled something about needing to make sure. He got out—I didn’t want to—and came back all frantic saying she looked dead, but there was a baby too. It had got thrown out of her arms, I guess, and landed in the grass off the road. Lonnie was freaking out, completely useless, so I took over. I sat him down in the passenger seat, and I loaded the woman’s body into my trunk. Then I found the baby. It was crying a little, so I handed it to Lonnie. I knew we were going to have to find somewhere to get rid of the body, but I was figuring on dropping the kid at a hospital, somewhere near an ER without getting so close I’d end up seen by anyone. Figured someone would hear the baby crying and check. We decided we’d wait to take the kid until after we got rid of her though. If someone saw us, we knew the cops would be called. If they found her in the trunk, we’d be screwed.

“We talked about tossing the body over one of the bridges, thinking it would look like a suicide if anyone found her. But even though it was late, there was still too much traffic. So we kept driving, ended up out of town to the east. There’s another bridge out that way, and there was no traffic, plus it was downstream, so no way she’d wash up somewhere in town. So we dumped her and started back to Kimotan Rapids, figuring we’d stop off at a hospital next.

“Somewhere on the way, the baby stopped crying. I thought maybe it just fell asleep, but Lonnie freaked out, said it had stopped breathing. I stopped and we checked. There was nothing. No heartbeat, no breath. Nothing.

“At that point, we knew there was no point going to a hospital. We were going to go back to where we dumped the woman, but neither of us felt right throwing a baby over a bridge like that. We thought it deserved some sort of proper burial.”

Dez cut in. “You keep calling the baby ‘it.’ His name was Ben.”

“Yeah, well, we didn’t know that at the time, all right? And we couldn’t tell what gender he was. We weren’t about to start checking, were we?”

“You took him out to Hollow Road, didn’t you?”

“We were trying to think of someplace we could go no one would think of. The woods are pretty deep around there, so we figured we could find a quiet spot somewhere out of sight from the road. We walked in and dug a little grave for him and put him in. Then we buried him, said some prayers and left. We swore to each other we’d never talk about it. Neither of us ever did. Until now.”

“You told me you and Lonnie fell out because you had a fight over his wife. That wasn’t true, was it?”

Hackman shook his head. “We couldn’t face each other again, not after that night. I think we both figured seeing each other would bring it all back. I just wanted to forget, get on with things. No doubt he did too. It got worse when they started showing the clips on the news. I saw Lonnie once after, and I remember how awful he looked, like he was the one hit by a car.”

“Didn’t that worry you, that he might crack and say something?”

“I know what you’re going to say. But, no, I didn’t kill him. Seeing him that day, I figured he was going to do it himself soon enough.”

“That didn’t bother you? He was your best friend.”

“I was stuck in my own issues; I wasn’t in a state to worry about his too. When he went missing, I just thought he’d finally done it, went off and capped himself. When they found his car on Hollow Road, I figured I’d been right. He’d gone back out to the place we left the baby and he’d done it there. At least, I thought so. It never occurred to me it would be some ghost that done him in.”

“You’re sure now that’s what happened? You don’t think I should be in Lockwood for saying that?”

“Last night, I took a shower. The mirrors were all fogged when I got out, so I wiped some off to shave. She was there. Right behind me in the reflection. I spun around but there wasn’t anything there, and she was gone when I turned back to the mirror. Later, when I went to bed, I rolled over to turn off my lamp and she was standing next to the bed. I blinked and she was gone when my eyes opened again. I’ve been trying to tell myself it’s my eyes playing tricks, but it’s not, is it? I really saw her. She came for Lonnie, and she almost took my son. He looks a lot like I did back then. She might have thought…. You need to help me, Braddock. Your brother, he tell you how to get rid of these things?”

“So you know Sully wasn’t crazy then, too, huh?”

“I believe in ghosts, all right? Things I saw and heard in Lockwood, I know they’re real. Tell me you can help me.”

“I can try,” Dez said. “First thing you need to do is show me where to find the baby.”

24

It occurred to Dez as he walked down to his SUV with Hackman that it wasn’t such a good idea to go alone.

Sure, they could find the baby’s body, but they were going with a shovel he’d borrowed from the building manager. The shovel looked heavy enough to make a formidable weapon should Hackman choose to use it as such, and the man was large and strong enough to give Dez a solid fight if it came to one.

With Hackman leading the way down the stairs, Dez fired off a quick text to Sully. Get Lachlan and come to H. Road. Hackman showing me where baby buried.

No more than ten seconds passed before his phone dinged. Wait until I’m there. I mean it.

Dez replied. Will try to delay.

Sully: On my way. Be careful.

Dez dropped the phone back into his pocket, and found Hackman watching him suspiciously from a turning in the stairwell.

“Who was that?”

A lie was necessary for more reasons than one. “Lachlan. I needed to check in. Don’t worry. I haven’t told him anything.”

“You think I’m going to trust you on that?”

Dez shrugged. “Don’t really care if you do. Way I see it, you don’t have much of a choice in this. It’s me or her. I’m thinking you’re safer dealing with me.”

Hackman didn’t argue the point, simply turning and continuing down the steps, shovel in hand.

They made it to the vehicle without any shovel attacks directed Dez’s way, and he set a course toward the bridge that would take them north through the city and, from there, toward Hollow Road.

They drove in silence, even the radio off. Dez ordinarily liked having music on, but it didn’t seem right. Not today. Not when their destination was a dead baby buried in the woods.

As they drew nearer to the road, another question occurred to Dez, one that had him breaking his silence. “Your car, the one you were in when you hit Nora and Ben, what happened to it?”

“We got rid of it. I had a buddy with a backhoe, and we buried it out on some property Lonnie’s family owned out of town.”

“You couldn’t have claimed insurance for it.”

“Plus I had to keep paying. I couldn’t very well go to the insurance company and say what really happened, could I? Lonnie covered me on that, bought me a new vehicle and gave me enough to cover a few years of insurance payments.”

“We might need the car, too, you know.”

“One thing at a time,” Hackman said. “Hopefully, finding the baby will get rid of her.”

* * *

Finding Ben wasn’t going to be easy.

“You don’t remember anything about the location?” Dez asked as they crawled down Hollow Road, tires crunching gravel as Hackman scanned the woods out the passenger-side window.

“It was late, and we were in a rush. Plus, we were both freaked out, and it’s been thirty years. I don’t remember exactly.”

“Try to remember something. A large rock, an unusually big tree, a clearing. Something.”

Hackman was silent a moment, but finally came up with an answer they could use. “A shack. There was some sort of a hunting shack. We got scared because we sort of stumbled across it and thought someone might be there and see us, but we realized it wasn’t in use. I remember it now. I couldn’t think where we got the shovel we used to bury the baby, but it was from that shack.”

The only shack Dez knew of in the area was the one where Rosie was now living. He remembered her saying she lived a twenty-minute walk or so from the spot where Sully and Emory had been trapped. It took him a few seconds to locate the GPS coordinates he’d saved for the location, and he set a course for that area now, forcing himself to go slow. There was no sign of a vehicle in his rearview mirror, and he’d feel better if he knew he had some backup on the way. Not that he wanted Sully involved; the last thing he wanted was for Hackman to see his brother. But if the alternative was death at the end of a shovel, they could deal with the ramifications of Sully’s involvement later. Chances were Hackman could be coaxed into silence the same way Forbes had been. Hackman’s secrets were far worse than Sully’s, and Dez would be happy to guard them if it kept his brother’s existence quiet.

His mind turned to something else. If a hunting cabin was nearby, there must be a way to access it from the road. Maybe he didn’t need to pick his way through the woods to look for it, not if he could find a road leading there.

Another glance at his phone screen showed they would soon reach the spot where he’d stopped when they’d come searching for Sully. He knew any access to the cabin, if one existed, would have to be on this side somewhere, but he wasn’t seeing anything. Not at first, anyway.

Then he spotted something he hadn’t before. At this slow speed, he was able to pick out a rise in the ditch, one he now suspected had once been an approach or an off-road. Pausing beside it, he scanned the area in the woods behind it.

If a road once lay here, it was long gone, overtaken by woods and undergrowth. But the trees, heavier in some places, were sparser and younger here. It was possible.

“Did you happen to notice a road at all when the two of you came here back then?” Dez asked.

“We thought we found an old road, but it was blocked by fallen trees. Might be this spot, actually. Could have been a road at one time.”

It was as good a place as any. He stopped, pushed the stick into park and glanced in the rearview mirror. He’d been hoping to spot distant headlights, a sign Sully was closing in.

Nothing.

He took a moment, making a play of toying with the GPS app. He copied his current coordinates into his notes function, then took a final peek.

“Looking for something?” Hackman asked.

Dez thought up a quick and believable lie. “Hoping no one decides to come ghost hunting right now. I don’t think you’ll want anyone to see you here, and I’d rather they don’t see me with you.”

The fact Hackman said nothing suggested he’d bought the lie.

There was no sign of Sully, but waiting here wasn’t an option. Dez stepped first from the SUV, grabbing the shovel from the backseat before Hackman could get to it. Dez would make Hackman do the digging, but he’d hold onto the potential weapon as they made their way into the woods.

It occurred to him Rosie wouldn’t be pleased to see him turning up with a stranger in tow; her privacy out here had already been breached far too often. But her cabin would have to be the starting point for their search.

If they could find it. The farther they moved into the woods, the more the trees closed in, obscuring all signs of their rutted path.

Hackman’s furrowed brow did nothing to instill confidence. “I take it none of this is familiar,” Dez said.

“One tree looks just like any other to me.”

Enough said.

One other problem about this scenario: Nora was out here somewhere. Sure, Hackman looked different than he did back then, and Nora seemed to have targeted his son because of the obvious resemblance, but Dez was pretty sure the ghost would figure it out. He didn’t want to be anywhere around if that happened.

Then again, it was possible Nora had already found them, was following right now, close enough to touch, waiting for the opportunity to take her revenge.

Dez shuddered and set a brisker pace.

Luckily, he spotted the cabin before anything befell either of them. There was no sign of Rosie, but the fact smoke was rising from the chimney suggested she was nearby.

“Is that the place?”

“No idea. We were here in the dark. Jesus, someone lives there?”

“Now, yeah,” Dez said.

“They can’t see me out here.”

Dez stopped, faced Hackman. This seemed like the time for this discussion, with Rosie somewhere in the vicinity. She might be a little out of practice, but she’d been a solid fighter in her day, capable of delivering a licking to the strongest opponents. He was pretty sure she’d give both him and Hackman a run for their money.

“Does it matter who sees you? What do you think is going to come from this?”

“We find the body and make sure she finds him. Isn’t that the plan?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of finding the body, making sure she finds him, and then ensuring he has a proper burial. Then I was thinking you’d turn yourself in and explain all this to the police.”

“I’m not going to the police. I didn’t do anything wrong. It was Lonnie who was driving.”

“First of all, I’ve only got your word for that. Second, it’s possible the baby would have lived if you’d taken him to the hospital before dumping his mother’s body. Even if you weren’t directly responsible for the injuries, your decision to put Ben’s well-being after your desire for secrecy, that might be what killed him in the end.”

Hackman glowered, took a step forward, into Dez’s personal space. “So what exactly is the point of me being here if I get burned?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious, don’t you? One option has you maybe doing a few years behind bars. The other has you sitting around, watching the shadows, wondering when she’s going to step out of one and come for you. She not only wants revenge, she’s proven she’s more than capable of getting it. Given the choice between facing justice or her, I’m thinking you’re safer with the first.”

Hackman’s glare didn’t fade, but his mouth moved as if he was gnawing at the inside of his lower lip. He was thinking, and Dez let him do it.

“Let’s just find the spot,” Hackman said. “We’ll figure out the rest after.”

His resolve to do the right thing was fading. Dez could see it. The closer Hackman got to the body, the more his mind was turning to what would happen next. He had to know Dez would be in no rush to protect his secret; if anything, Dez was the person with the greatest reason to go to the police with his newfound knowledge. More and more, he realized he was looking at a fight once they’d uncovered the body. What Hackman thought he’d do if the disinterment didn’t satisfy Nora, Dez didn’t know. But he expected Hackman would take his chances. An arrest, criminal charges, a potentially lengthy sentence, public loathing—these were all utter certainties if he chose the justice route Dez was touting. The other side held continual stalking by an enraged dead woman and possible death, but Hackman might decide to take that risk. The victims had, so far, been killed or injured in the woods near Hollow Road. Hackman might decide he’d be safe as long as he stayed far away from here.

And he might be right. Sully said ghosts were often strongest in the places that meant the most to them in life or where they’d died. For Nora, that place seemed to be the area where her son was buried. Dez could imagine her ghost had followed Lonnie and Hackman that night, possibly sitting right next to them in the car while Lonnie cradled her son’s body. Or she might have been drawn here afterward, through a sort of mother-baby bond. Whatever it was, she was here, and she didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Only she had. Hackman had seen her in his own apartment. She’d followed him. She could keep following him.

Dez would have to fall back on that argument if it came to one later. For now, they continued through the woods, Hackman leading the way. The blind leading the blind. It was possible Hackman would catch sight of Nora, but it was just as likely neither of them would know if she was nearby, and Dez suspected neither of them had a clue how to find the gravesite.

Even so, Hackman continued on for half-an-hour, walking, stopping, scanning and closing his eyes in thought.

“I remember a slope of some sort,” he said as they came to one, a small hill dipping downward into a valley covered in poplar. “Maybe we’re getting close.”

Dez guessed there were a lot of hills in these woods, but he kept the thought to himself. No sense arguing the small stuff when a bigger altercation lay on the horizon.

Anyway, Hackman was on his game after all. Having arrived at the bottom of the slope, they passed a few more trees before he drew them to a halt in a small clearing. A chill seeped through Dez’s skin.

It was completely bare. Not just empty of trees or undergrowth. Bare of anything. No grass or weeds grew here, as if the ground itself was poison. The blighted area was too large for an infant’s grave, but the fallen poplar leaves provided another clue. They lay scattered on the ground, but one spot remained untouched—a spot the approximate size of a one-month-old baby.

“I think this must be it,” Hackman said. His voice was low, a slight tremble affecting the words. He led the way to the suspected grave, but made no move beyond that. “I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t… I don’t want to see it again.”

“You’ll be seeing a lot more than this if you don’t go through with it.” Dez’s initial thought had been to wait until Hackman showed him the grave, then overpower the man and march him back to the road while calling the police. But with Hackman so clearly uncertain about Ben’s location, they needed more. They needed to be sure this was, in fact, the spot. The only way to do that would be to unearth the body. “Did you bury him in something?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you wrap him in something, or just dump him in?”

“We used the mother’s jacket. We took it off her before we dumped her, to keep him warm.”

“So just dig down far enough until we see if there’s a jacket there or not. After that, we’ll leave, and I’ll text some coordinates to a contact of mine with the police. They can do the rest.”

“I thought we had to finish unburying him so she could see him.”

“I don’t think her seeing her son in this state is going to help your cause. I just wanted to find him. After that, someone can come and get him, and he can eventually have a proper burial. He’s got a dad who will want to be able to do that for him.”

Hackman took a breath, let it out in a whoosh. The idea seemed to suit him, and he finally reached for the shovel. Dez gave it to him, standing well out of the way as Hackman dug.

It didn’t take long once past the hard, crusty surface, no tree roots having intruded to toughen the dig. The soil seemed looser, moister down below, kept fed by a yearly compost of dead leaves.

Hackman kept digging. Dez kept his eyes on the shovel and the area it was gradually exposing.

“How deep did you bury him?” he asked.

Hackman took a quick break to answer, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Seemed deeper than it probably was. We just wanted the hell out of here. Maybe two to three feet.”

“Ease up a bit then. You don’t want to damage the body.”

Hackman nodded, face solemn, before returning to his task. It seemed like the digging went on a long time, and the man had to take a couple of breaks to massage his lower back.

“I was a lot younger when we dug this,” he said. His eyes searched Dez’s, eyebrows lifted in a silent request.

“Uh-uh,” Dez said. “You did this, you deal with it.”

Hackman went back to it, shovel shifting the soil bit by bit.

Until, at last, Hackman stilled. Backed away.

The hole had grown too deep for Dez to see anything from his current position, so he moved closer for a look. There, down inside, was a flash of denim.

Cold crept over Dez, as if a blast of winter air had suddenly swept through the clearing. His gaze went to Hackman, whose eyes had grown large in a pale face, a sheen of sweat likely caused by more than exertion.

Hackman hoisted the shovel into a fighting position, his eyes darting around the area. “She’s here. Can you feel that? She’s here.”

“Can you see her?”

Hackman’s eyelids clamped shut. He dry-heaved once, but managed to avoid vomiting before answering Dez’s question. “I don’t want to see…. I don’t want to see.”

“You need to look.”

“I don’t have to. I know. You said you could help me. Did Sullivan tell you how?”

“I said I might be able to if we could give her what she wants. Like I told you, the first thing is to see to it the little guy gets the proper burial he deserves. And it might be she wants to see justice done. Lots of them do, apparently.” There was something else, of course, something he was itching to say out loud: maybe all Nora really wanted was revenge.

“What if what she really wants is me dead?” Hackman asked. “What do I do then?”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you did this.”

Hackman had yet to open his eyes. “We were kids. Dumb kids.”

“Not exactly. You were in your twenties.”

“We didn’t know what we were doing. We were scared. We just wanted to fix our stupid mistake. And we didn’t believe in ghosts. Who the hell thinks this sort of thing’s going to happen to them?”

That, right there, served as proof to Dez Hackman had learned nothing. A woman and her baby were dead, trapped somewhere in an endless limbo, his former best friend had met a lonely and likely terrifying end at the bottom of an old well, and his son was healing from a broken leg sustained after tangling with a ghost. And all Hackman could think about was what was happening to him.

“You believe in ghosts now. And she’s very aware of you too.” He couldn’t resist adding in a dig. “Too bad you put Sully through hell. Chances are he actually could have helped you.”

“Why can’t you help me?”

“Because I can’t see her. I can’t see the things he could. Open your eyes. Maybe you can.”

“No.”

“You’re not a four-year-old kid. Scary things don’t go away just because you don’t look at them. Open your eyes.”

Hackman edged one lid open. Just a crack at first, his pupil scanning the area. Then it stopped. Locked onto something just behind Dez’s left shoulder.

Both eyes flew open, their shape mirrored by that of his mouth, wide in a silent scream. Dez looked, too, but found nothing.

“What?” he demanded.

Hackman didn’t answer. Shovel in hand, he turned. Ran.

Dez tried to ignore the flash of ice cold that blew past him as he took off after the fleeing man. Something else seemed to catch Hackman first, sending him careening into the ground, shovel falling to the side and out of his hands.

Dez leapt, landing on the man’s back before he could regain his feet.

“Get off! Get off! Get off!”

“Calm down, Hackman. We’re going back to the road, and we’re going to the police. You need to put this to rights.”

“She’s here! Don’t you get that! She wants me dead! Let me go!”

Dez was larger, but not by much, and Hackman had the power of terror on his side. Dez had Hackman’s right arm in a twisting grip, but hadn’t counted on the man being either left-handed or ambidextrous. Hackman seized Dez’s leg, achieving a painful pressure-point hold that left Dez vulnerable to a takedown move by the other man. With Dez now flipped, Hackman followed up with a solid punch to his head, then another before Dez could get his hands up to block. Hackman rolled off him, and Dez fought to get his head clear as the other man moved for the shovel.

Dez had gained his hands and knees, was pushing to standing when he felt the pain of the first blow against his back. A second blow, against the back of his skull, dropped him fully back to the ground. Relying on instinct rather than deliberate thought, he rolled over—just in time to avoid another blow. Only it wasn’t a strike by the body of the shovel, but the sharp part of the blade he’d just avoided.

Hackman wasn’t trying to knock him out so he could escape.

He was trying to kill him.

Dez managed a backward shoulder roll, distancing himself from the enraged man and putting himself into a quick position to stand. Now facing Hackman, Dez barked out the question. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I spent thirty years sitting on this secret. It’s not leaving these woods, you hear me? You’re not leaving these woods.”

An inhuman howl bellowed from Hackman as he rushed Dez, shovel drawn back in a prepared strike. Dez braced himself, either for a grab at the wooden handle at the end of the sweep, or for the pain of contact if he failed.

Hackman swung left-handed, and Dez deked left, the shovel glancing off his shoulder. Dez grabbed for the handle, but missed as Hackman pulled it away, readying it for a second swing. Dez moved, inserting a little more distance between them.

Then he saw movement behind Hackman, a blur of blues and reds as someone sprang from the undergrowth and flew at the orderly. Wild, greying red hair gave away the identity of Dez’s backup as Rosie Dalton attached herself to Hackman’s back in a sleeper hold, legs wrapped tightly around his middle. Hackman dropped the shovel, hands clawing at her right arm in a bid to dislodge it from his windpipe. Unsuccessful, he spun, taking the two of them in a circle that might have appeared comical under any other circumstance.

“Calm down,” Rosie hollered. “This is my patented sleeper hold. Ain’t no one ever got out of it.”

Hackman moved backward, slamming Rosie back against a tree. Once. Twice. She gritted her teeth but held on, pinning Dez with a glare as he moved forward to help.

“Stay where you are, junior,” she ground out. “Don’t want you to get hurt.”

The idea of a six-and-a-half-foot tall, muscular man being warned away from a fight by a middle-aged woman might have seemed laughable to most. Dez knew better; he was seeing the evidence. Hackman was fading, eyes drifting shut as the arm-bar robbed him of oxygen. He dropped to his knees but, although she could have touched down with her booted feet, she kept her legs wrapped around him, riding him to the ground as he finally fell.

Seemingly satisfied, Rosie at last released Hackman, removing her belt and using it to bind his hands tightly behind his back.

“You’ll want to get him out of here fast,” she advised. “And not just because I don’t want anyone happening upon me or my place out here. I’ve tied the bastard tight enough he’ll lose use of his hands if he’s not released soon.”

“Thanks, Rosie. You really saved my ass.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“Listen, police are going to be coming through here. If you don’t want to be seen, you should make yourself scarce.”

“Thanks for the warning. What’s the guy done? All I heard was him yelling something about guarding a secret and you not leaving these woods.”

“He and his buddy killed a woman and her baby thirty years back. It was an accident in her case, and I suspect criminal negligence with the baby. I managed to persuade him to show me where they buried the little guy.”

“What about the woman?”

“Tossed over a bridge. Given the Kimotan River currents, I doubt we’ll ever find her.”

“Unlikely. Good you found the baby at least.” She turned, gave Hackman a solid kick to the thigh. “There. A two-purpose kick. He’ll be limping too bad to pull any more stupid stunts.”

Dez grinned. “What’s the second purpose?”

Rosie smiled back. “Makes me feel better.”

Dez looked to his right at the sound of movement, spotted Sully and Pax crashing through the woods.

“Dez!”

“Relax, bro. Everything’s fine.”

Sully reached them, a little breathless from the run. “I heard yelling. Sounded like a fight.”

“It was. But Rosie’s a lifesaver. Good thing, too, ‘cuz you’re a little slow on the draw.”

“I was hoping you’d wait for us.”

“Speaking of ‘us,’ where’d you lose Lachlan?”

“He’s back there somewhere,” Sully said, head nodding back to the general area behind him. “I’ll go find him.”

Dez smirked. “I don’t know, man. He won’t thank you for ditching him.”

“Yeah, well, you were my priority.” Sully extended a hand to Rosie. “Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.”

“Anytime, kid. Lachlan? You don’t mean Lachlan Fields, by chance, do you?”

Dez exchanged a glance with his brother. “Uh, yeah. I know the two of you had a run-in a number of years back. Maybe you want to bail before he gets here.”

“Nah. I owe him an apology. Was never an opportunity before.”

Through the trees, the sound of grumbling and cursing came to Dez’s ears.

“Over here, Lachlan!” he called out.

“Where the hell’s ‘here’?”

“Keep moving forward. I can see you. Yeah, bit more to your right. See me waving?”

“I’m going to make it so you can’t ever wave again when I get over there.”

“Might be I could use your sleeper hold a second time,” Dez told Rosie.

Hackman was starting to stir when Lachlan closed the rest of the distance, so Sully made himself scarce, telling the others he and Pax would be back at the road.

Lachlan had Rosie fixed in a stare, narrowed eyes suggesting he wasn’t pleased to see her.

“You. I remember you.”

“I remember you too—although I don’t remember a whole lot else about that night, to be honest. Listen, I heard you were coming over here, so I just wanted to offer you an apology. I was in a bad place back then. I’m not a whole lot better off now, but I’m not looking to die anymore either. I figured if I went off on a cop, I’d end up with a bullet or two in me. The state I was in, that seemed ideal at the time. If I died, pain over. If I lived, at least I’d feel like I did some real penance over what happened in the ring. Problem was, you didn’t draw. Why not?”

Lachlan shrugged. “Never liked the idea of having to shoot a woman, I guess.”

“So you’d rather I strangled you to death?”

“Maybe I wasn’t in a good place either.”

Rosie extended a hand. To Dez’s surprise, Lachlan took it.

“It wasn’t personal,” she said. “And I am sorry.”

“Forget it. I have.”

Dez suspected Lachlan hadn’t, and would never, forget. But he wasn’t about to poke at his boss if he was in a generous mood. Those didn’t come around often.

Dez waited until Rosie left, then hauled the now-conscious Hackman to his feet.

“Untie me,” he demanded. “I can hardly feel my hands.”

“In good time,” Lachlan said. “Show me the grave first. Then I’ll call it in and you get the yahoo back to the road to wait for the police.”

“What about you?” Dez asked. “It might not be safe, you staying here alone with that ghost out there.”

“Thanks for your concern, Braddock, but I think she knows now who her real enemy is. I’ll be a lot safer than you’ll be, dragging that fool back to the road. Good work, by the way.”

Dez allowed himself a smile.

25

Sully stared at the front of the house, living room window alight as it overlooked the street. Dez and Eva’s home had an open floor plan, so he could see through into the kitchen where Eva, Kayleigh and Mara were cooking something together.

He heaved a sigh.

“You okay?”

He’d become lost in a memory, had momentarily forgotten where he was and that Dez was beside him.

“Fine,” Sully said.

“What’s going on? I thought you’d be chomping at the bit to get in there. I definitely am. They’re making meatloaf. You remember Eva’s meatloaf? It’s the best in the world.”

“I remember.”

“So why are we sitting here?”

Sully shrugged, led the way out of the car, careful to pull his hood up before he let Pax out of the backseat. But once standing next to the SUV, his mind flashed back to that moment, the last time he’d come here. It had been among the lowest moments of his life, and yet the best he’d had during those lonely two years.

“Sully?”

“I came here once at Christmas.”

“You came here a few times at Christmas.”

“I meant, that first year. When I was gone.”

Dez closed the distance between them. “You came here? When we thought you were dead?”

He nodded. “I needed to—I don’t know—be around you guys. But when I got here, and I saw all of you through the window, it wasn’t what I’d imagined. I thought it would be nice, comforting or something.”

“But it wasn’t.”

Sully shook his head. He didn’t explain further, couldn’t manage it around the lump in his throat.

With Dez, he didn’t have to. A large hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed. “Well, you don’t have to stand outside anymore.” Dez’s hand moved to his arm and tugged. “Come on. Kayleigh’s really excited to see you. And Pax, of course.”

Sully took one more deep breath and followed Dez to the door, then into the house.

A pounding of feet instantly greeted them as the seven-year-old rushed toward the door. Pax met her in the living room, insisting on being greeted first, and she obliged, wrapping her arms around his neck and scratching his ears.

Even as she was hugging the dog, her eyes drifted to the entryway, to the two men standing there. She gave her dad a big, toothy smile, but it faded as her gaze settled on Sully.

“Hood,” Dez reminded him.

Sully pulled it down. He’d bought some new jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt for tonight, had brushed out his hair and tucked it back into a low knot, and he’d trimmed his beard. He knew he looked different from the last time Kayleigh had seen him, and he wondered for a moment whether he was too different. She’d been just five when he’d last seen her. Two years was a lifetime to a kid. Did she even remember him as anything more than a face in photographs and a depressing topic of conversation?

Emotion snagged in his throat as her face broke into the biggest grin he’d ever seen on her face, tears forming in her eyes as she looked up into his. Then she was on the move, rushing him, not stopping until his waist was caught up in her vicelike hug.

Sully hugged her back as he released the breath he’d been holding, the sound of it one of emotion and relief. Dez patted him on the back and moved toward the kitchen. Pax had already headed that way, his keen nose picking up on the smell of food preparation, leaving Sully and Kayleigh alone.

Once she’d eased up enough he could pull away, he knelt in front of her. The last time he’d done that, they’d been more or less face to face. Now, he found he was looking up at her a little.

“You got so big,” he said.

“I’m probably going to end up as tall as Dad,” she said, rolling her eyes.

He laughed. “I doubt it. No one’s as tall as your dad.”

“You’re staying for supper, right?”

“Yeah. I’m staying for supper.”

“And after that? Are you staying?”

“Overnight? Yeah, that’s the plan.”

“And you won’t leave?”

He shook his head, solemnly. He saw where this was going. He’d been a kid once, frightened of abandonment once he’d finally met the Braddocks—the family he’d always dreamed of. The one he’d been terrified of losing.

“I won’t leave,” he said.

“You left before.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t think I had a choice. I know I hurt you, and I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. Mom and Dad explained. I wish you hadn’t gone, but I’m happy you’re back now. Do you like meatloaf?”

“Your mom’s? Yeah, it’s the best.”

“I help her, you know.”

He laughed and stood up, the inside of his chest warming as she took his hand in hers. “Then you’re a really good cook.”

She looked up at him, big green eyes and an impish smile.

“Not really,” she said. “Grandma wishes I was, but I’m better at sports.”

She released his hand in the kitchen, running to her dad so he could scoop her up in his arms. Soon enough, she would consider Dez’s big hugs the stuff of little girls, and would rail against them. But, for now, this was the way things were supposed to be, and Sully was glad to see she was fine with it.

Sully stood a moment, taking the few seconds to watch his family before Eva or his mom noticed him. He watched the scene playing out, the one he’d dreamed, not so long ago, of being a part of. He’d stood outside the house that Christmas, watching the people he loved getting on with life without him. It had been comforting, knowing they were okay—at least in that moment—but it had hurt too. He hadn’t come back since, not until Aiden had led him to Dez in the cemetery.

Being here now, it was almost as if nothing had changed. And that was a far bigger comfort than anything he’d witnessed that lonely Christmas.

* * *

He took a quick drive that night, after Kayleigh had been tucked into bed.

Lachlan had provided the address, and Sully told himself he was going over only to check, to make sure Nora wasn’t still out there, looking to get back at the people who’d hurt her and her son.

Emory Davis had played no role in the offence, other than being born to one of the two men responsible. But Nora hadn’t seen it that way. She’d targeted him, whether because of his resemblance to his father, or out of a twisted desire to take a child from Hackman as he had taken hers.

But really, the reason Sully was now standing outside the tiny rented house was altogether different. It wasn’t about Emory at all.

It was about her.

The living room curtains were open, allowing Sully to see Ara sitting next to Emory on the sofa. She was tucked up next to him, head on his shoulder, long, black hair spilling over his chest. She looked beautiful.

She looked… happy.

He tried to think back, through their time together as an on-again, off-again couple. He tried to remember a time when she looked as happy with him.

He couldn’t.

She’d loved him. He knew that. But she’d cared for him in a way a person cares for an abused animal. She’d tolerated his standoffishness, his frequent need to withdraw, his moodiness. She’d loved him in spite of it. And he’d come to realize too late he loved her for that.

But she’d never worn that expression on her face, that look of utter peace and contentment, like her world was in order, and she was the one in control of it.

Emory had helped her find that. As much as Sully wanted to hate him, he couldn’t. If Sully truly cared for Ara, he couldn’t begrudge her this happiness.

What he could do was what he chose to do.

He walked away.

* * *

St. Matthew’s Cemetery was one of the oldest in town.

Surrounded by a lush border of pine and spruce, planted long ago by the church’s earlier parishioners, it provided everything Sully looked for these days when out in public: privacy and shadow. With his hood pulled over his head, he was able to watch the burial service for little Ben Silversmith in safety.

Only one person knew he was here. Dez stood at his shoulder, arms crossed over his barrel of a chest as he watched the scene. Five days had passed since the discovery, four days since Hackman had broken down and confessed to what he’d done. He’d insisted, Lachlan had informed them, on Lonnie’s having been the one driving that night, when they’d struck and killed the young mother. Whether Forbes had bought the story, or just wanted the case wrapped up was anyone’s guess. It didn’t really matter. Hackman had been charged with criminal negligence causing Ben’s death and causing an indignity to a dead body in the cases of both mother and son. He’d fast become one of the most despised men in the city, the newly solved cold case—the discovery of both Ben and Lonnie Debenham in the midst of the haunted woods—the talk of the town, and the headline on every paper, TV newscast and radio broadcast.

Already, Lachlan had learned Hackman lost his job at Lockwood. He’d been invaluable all these years to Dr. Roman Gerhardt, but even he, it seemed, had his limits. He had a reputation to maintain, after all—even if just the one he presented to the outside world.

“Do you think this is going to help?” Dez asked. “Burying Ben, I mean.”

“If you’re asking whether I think it will give Nora the peace she needs to move forward, I don’t know. Hopefully. When I went out there yesterday to help Lonnie cross over, I didn’t see her anywhere.”

“I don’t get it. If she knew where her son was buried, why not just lead you there? If that’s what she wanted, it would have been easy to get it. Unless, of course, she didn’t know where they’d put Ben.”

“She knew,” Sully said. “You told me the area around the grave was completely dead. Spirits as angry and dark as she is, they’re like poison. They stay in the same area long enough, you’ll see signs of it. I think she was rooted there. She probably drew strength from that place, from the feelings it brought out in her. She watched those men bury her son, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop them. Not then, anyway. She found a way to get back at them later, though.”

“Or Lonnie, at least.”

“And Hackman, through his son. He’s a crap father, but I do believe he loves Emory, even if it isn’t a healthy father-son relationship. Then again, it’s possible Nora targeted Emory only because she mistook him for his father. Time’s probably a weird thing on the other side. It might be they don’t even realize how many years have passed.”

“You described seeing the baby once, the first time you met Lachlan. You didn’t mention his ghost again, though. Do you think he’s out there somewhere?”

“I don’t think so. I think I was being shown an image of him. Everything she does is about him. My guess is someone came and got him, took him over soon after he died. I’m hoping whoever it was came and got her too.”

“Hackman probably wants a little more than ‘you hope’ right now.”

“Hackman can go to hell. I don’t care what he wants.”

“Yeah,” Dez said. “Me neither.”

Sully went back to focusing on the service. Nathaniel Porter stood graveside, his family around him as they at last lowered the tiny casket into the earth. There was a nip to the air today, a sign of winter on the horizon, but no one gathered at the grave seemed to notice. Burying a baby felt unnatural and wrong. Thirty years had passed, but no amount of time was long enough, not for a parent forced to say goodbye.

“How’s Nathaniel handling it?” Sully asked. “Did you check in with him after you told him about finding his son?”

“I called him yesterday. I don’t think Hackman needs to fear for his life anymore. Nathaniel’s more sad now than angry. But grief’s a hard thing. It changes from day to day. There will be days he’ll want nothing more than to see Hackman’s face at the end of a gun barrel.”

“I can understand that. I still can’t believe they released him from custody.”

“He has no criminal record, and he’s not considered a flight risk. Plus, the case is thirty years old and, as far as the world’s concerned, he’s been a model citizen. You and I know better, but not many people know the things we do.”

Sully shrugged. Fair point, but it felt better, thinking of Hackman behind bars where he belonged.

“At least he lost his job,” Dez continued. “That’s something, right? He won’t be in a position to hurt anyone else in Lockwood. Without him, Gerhardt’s got to get another orderly onside.”

“He will,” Sully said. “He’ll convince them it’s for the patients’ own good, or he’ll make it worth their while financially. I don’t put a whole lot past people. Not anymore.”

“Not everyone’s bad, Sull.”

“I know that. But there are plenty of people prepared to look the other way instead of doing something to help.”

Dez’s elbow dug into Sully’s arm. “Good thing the world’s got you and me then, huh?”

Sully looked away from the gravesite, met Dez’s eye with a smile. “Yeah. Good thing.”

He lingered there a moment, drawing some peace from his brother before returning his gaze to the cemetery through the trees.

What he saw turned his blood cold.

“Damn it.”

“What?” Dez asked.

She stood removed from the crowd, but near enough to observe what was happening. Hair limp and straggly over her face, long dress covered in dirt and stains.

But it was her hands that drew Sully’s attention. They were clenched into fists.

“Sully, what?”

“She’s still here,” he said. “And she’s pissed.”

“Shit. Now what?”

“It’s not over for her, Dez. I think there’s only one thing left for her. And if we don’t stop her, she’s going to finish it.”

26

Sully would have rather been anywhere else as he and Dez pulled into a spot on the street in front of Hackman’s apartment building.

Dez was already on the move, sliding out of the driver’s seat. “Wait here. I’ll make sure he’s okay.”

But Sully wasn’t about to sit out here, doing nothing. Ghosts, those were his patch. Dez couldn’t do anything to help, not this time. Sully was out the passenger-side door and headed for the building’s entrance and its callbox when a hand around his bicep stopped him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dez demanded. “You can’t let him see you.”

Sully looked up, scanned the windows. The feeling he’d had, the one that had drawn him here, was proven correct as he spotted Nora peering down at him through her curtain of hair from the window of a fifth-floor apartment.

“She’s going to kill him, Dez.”

“I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, but so what? After everything he did, everything he put you through—”

“I’m not like him. I can’t be like him. Don’t you get it? If I turn into the kind of person who’s okay with other people suffering and dying, I’m on a slippery slope to becoming something I don’t want to be. I have to do this. I have to stop her.”

Whether it was the desperation in his voice or whatever was visible in his eyes, Dez bought it. He led the way to the callbox, pressing the button for Hackman’s suite. The sound of static suggested the man had pressed the button, but his voice sounded fuzzy when it came.

Fuzzy and panicked.

“Who is this?”

“Dez Braddock. I—” Dez hadn’t had the chance to finish when a loud buzz from the front door indicated they’d been granted entry.

“That can’t be good,” Sully said, following Dez through the entrance and to a stairway on the left side of the lobby.

They took the stairs two at a time, both puffing for air by the time they reached the fifth floor. Sully sprinted after Dez to an apartment midway down the hall.

“Your hood,” Dez warned, just before he pounded on the door.

There didn’t seem much point. Sully had spent enough time with Hackman to allow the former orderly to identify him by voice alone, but Sully obliged anyway, getting the hood up just as Hackman yanked the door open.

He looked wild, eyes wide and covered over by a sheen of tears.

“She’s here!” he exclaimed. “Jesus Christ, she’s here!”

“Where?” Dez asked.

Sully didn’t need the help. He could see her, standing at the end of the short entrance hall.

He pushed past Dez and Hackman, approaching the spirit.

“You need to let this go,” he said. “You need to stop. This isn’t going to fix things.”

Behind him, he could hear Hackman questioning Dez, a whole new level of shock in his voice. “Is that Sullivan Gray? It sounds like—It can’t be.”

Dez said nothing, and Sully knew he wouldn’t. It was Sully’s secret to reveal, after all, one he’d have no choice now but to share. He’d revealed himself, hood or no hood.

It couldn’t be avoided. Not if he wanted to keep from ending up like the hangman.

His focus shifted fully back to Nora. She’d command all of it, no way he could afford to spare any on anything else. She was furious. He could feel it. Furious and intent on seeking this last revenge on the man who’d helped to end her son’s life.

“Nora, this has to end. You’re not going to get what you want this way. Your son’s gone into the light. You need to go to him. You can find peace there. But the more you give into anger and hate, the more you trap yourself here. Don’t do this. Please, don’t do this.”

Her focus had shifted, face turned from Hackman to Sully. She was listening, and that was a start.

“You weren’t always like this,” he said. “And you deserve better than being stuck here, trapped by all this rage. Your son is waiting for you. Leave this alone and go find him. Hackman will be punished for what he did. He’ll face justice. You don’t have to do this. Please.”

The fury had abated, and he had the sense of curiosity having taken its place. He suspected she’d never been faced by someone like him before, someone who could see her, who didn’t fear her.

She watched him from behind the hair for a long moment, as if thinking, considering what he’d said, questioning whether his request was worth granting. She was quiet for so long, he found himself beginning to hope maybe he’d gotten through.

He should have known nothing was that easy. Not with someone like her.

He felt it as she tried to meld her emotion with his, felt the rage beginning to root itself within him. But he was prepared this time. She’d done this in the woods. Once he’d nearly run himself to his own death; the second time, he tried to attack his own brother. Not again.

He took a breath, falling back on Raiya’s old lessons, seeking strength from the protective wooden cross gifted to him by Marc. He drew his thought inward, identifying the anger and separating it from his own feelings. It wasn’t him. She wasn’t him.

Another breath and he was free of her.

“I won’t let you overpower me, Nora. Not again. Now, please, listen to me.”

But she wasn’t falling to his power either. Her mouth, just visible to him behind the veil of hair, opened wide as if to scream. Fiery orange light poured from the opening, the colour of her rage.

She rushed through Sully, delivering a psychic body blow that put him on his knees. He turned his head at the sound of Hackman’s strangled cry, watched as she leapt onto him, her hand disappearing inside his chest where his heart must be.

Sully drew himself to his feet, watched as Hackman fell to the ground, clutching at his chest. Dez, in the hallway on Hackman’s other side, met Sully’s eye, the dread clear on his face.

“Sully?”

Sully’s eyes shot back to Nora. “No.”

He closed his eyes, drawing his energy together, focusing all of it on her. He wouldn’t allow her to kill anyone else. He couldn’t. Not while he stood here and did nothing.

He’d been possessed by Harry Schuster in the past, and he remembered the feeling of temporarily occupying his own body with the spirit. He’d been able to hold onto himself that last time, the time Hackman had joined Lowell in that near-fatal attack. He knew, rather than hoped, he could do it again.

He focused on the feeling of her, the essence of her spirit. Her rage made it easy to find her, even through closed eyes.

He envisioned pulling her energy into himself, drawing it back, off of Hackman, toward him at the opposite end of the hall. He knew he was getting somewhere when he heard a pained sigh come from Hackman, followed by a series of gasping breaths.

It was all Sully and Nora now. He refused to release her, drawing her spirit back, back, closer to him. He could feel her panic now, her fear at being controlled. He felt it, then let it slip away. Her emotion couldn’t touch him now.

A cold chill bit into him as her energy met his, then joined it fully. The ghost was no longer in front of him, but inside him, much as Harry had once been. But this wasn’t an invasion, or an attack. This was all him. He was in control. She was in his control.

He could hold her. If he wanted to, he could hold her here forever.

Grant himself the power to do anything. Already, he could feel it, the doubling of his energy much as he’d felt that day with Harry. He had the strength of two now.

If he could corral more, his power would be infinite.

A voice came to his ears, Hackman’s strained voice. “What the hell? He’s glowing. How the hell is he glowing?”

Sully’s eyes shot open. Fear, now his own, enabled her escape. She fled from him, rushing back down the hall, toward the still-fallen Hackman. She paused over him, reaching down one last time into his chest as if to defy Sully. Hackman cried out, clutched his chest, then was still.

Nora cast one look back at Sully, then disappeared from sight.

Dez knelt at Hackman’s side, fingers moving to a pulse point in his neck. “He’s alive. Help me get him to his couch.”

Sully took one arm, Dez the other, the two of them wrestling the large man to the living room sofa while Dez called 911 en route.

“I’m a former police officer,” he advised the operator after he provided the address and a quick rundown of the situation. “I know my First Aid and CPR. Just get some help here. I’m going to hang up so I can look after him.”

Dez disconnected as they eased Hackman onto the couch.

“As soon as we hear the siren, get out of here,” Dez told Sully. “I don’t know what we’re going to do, though. He saw you, Sull. He knows you’re alive.”

“Nothing I could do different. She didn’t give me any options.”

As if on cue, Hackman’s eyes shot open, whipping around the room as he tried to sit up.

Dez pushed him back to laying. “Take it easy.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s gone,” Sully said. “For now, anyway.”

Hackman eased himself back down under Dez’s hand, eyes closing again. The rush of adrenaline faded, and Sully found he saw not an enemy, but a middle-aged man, pale and weak.

Dying.

Hackman was dying.

His breath was shallow, the gaps between them too long. Even so, he managed to open his eyes, to draw them to Sully’s face, partially concealed beneath the hood.

“I want to see your face,” he said.

Sully obliged, drawing the hood around his shoulders and tucking loose hair behind his ears.

“It’s you. But I thought—”

“You were wrong.”

“You tried to save me,” Hackman said. “After everything. Why?”

The answer was simple. “I’m not you.”

Hackman closed his eyes and took a breath, a long, gasping one. It released quickly, so fast Sully initially thought it was his last. But Hackman opened his eyes, looked back up at Sully.

“I feel so weak.”

“An ambulance is coming.”

“I don’t think I’m going to be around when it gets here. Don’t want to be. Tell them I don’t want to be saved. Will you do that?”

“I doubt they’ll take our word for it,” Dez said.

Hackman ignored him, keeping his eyes on Sully’s face. “Did a lot of things I’m not proud of. But it wasn’t all my fault. Dr. Gerhardt, your uncle, they’re hard men to argue with. Dr. Gerhardt insisted on those experiments, him and Braddock and the other guy, the one who always came in the mask.”

“Lowell?” Dez said. “What the hell are you—?”

But Sully’s thoughts were stuck on the other part of Hackman’s statement. “The guy in the mask. Who is he?”

“Don’t know. Never saw him. All I know is he’s helping to fund the experiment.”

Sully’s heart pounded with the arrival of answers. “Gerhardt’s work with psychic patients?”

“Lowell’s drug tests. He developed something that’s supposed to open the mind, allow people to see things they ordinarily don’t. Some sort of—” He broke off, took a raspy breath, as if the act of speaking was taking a round out of what was left of him. “Psychoactive drug.”

“Why us?” Sully asked. “Why psychics?”

“Your minds are more open. They figured the risk would be decreased. It might be too much for a normal person, but with people like you, they could do things, experiment with dosages without worrying they’d break your mind.”

“They were breaking my mind,” Sully said. “Or didn’t you notice?”

“I noticed. But I didn’t care. Not then.”

“You do now?”

“I don’t want to die with this on my conscience.”

“That last day, before I went into Lockwood. You and Lowell—”

“He wanted you dead. He blackmailed me into helping him. He’s terrified of you.”

“Jesus, what—” Dez started. But Sully, acutely aware of the limited time, cut in.

“He’s terrified of me?”

“Some sort of prophesy. He pretends he doesn’t believe, but he does. He’s the most superstitious man I’ve ever met. When you didn’t die that day, we knew we’d have to make sure you never had the chance to tell anyone. He insisted on higher doses, thinking it would eventually be too much for you, that it would destroy your brain. But it didn’t.”

“I need someone to tell me—” Dez said, but Sully shushed him as Hackman continued.

“Anyone else, it would have killed. Not you. I don’t know how, but you kept coming. You weren’t supposed to leave that place alive. I was relieved when I heard you’d been killed.”

The sound of a siren had been drawing closer as Hackman spoke. It was now likely just down the block, closing in. Sully would have to leave quickly if he didn’t want to be found here.

Hackman drew in a ragged breath, then flailed around with a hand until it caught Sully’s. He grasped it, squeezing Sully’s fingers as if a lifeline. “Is there a Hell? Am I going there?”

“I don’t know what comes after this,” Sully said. “I don’t have the answers.”

“I’m sorry. For my part in what happened to you. I was wrong. I should have done something. And I’m sorry for what I did to the woman and her baby. I didn’t mean for anyone to die that night. You need to believe me.”

What Sully believed was he was looking down at a man about to die who was seeking absolution. Sully had taken the place of a minister, offering Hackman his own version of last rites, helping him make his peace with a life of sin.

He had every right to refuse Hackman his forgiveness. But he didn’t have the heart. He’d once feared this man, had dreaded seeing him come into his room at Lockwood, had looked up into his sneering face as he’d restrained him for the shot of what he now knew was Lowell’s drug.

This was no longer that man.

“I believe you,” Sully said. “And, for what it’s worth, I forgive you.”

Hackman managed a weak smile and a slight nod. He took another raspy breath and refocused his gaze upward. The light of recognition settled in his face. “I see my mother.”

Once more, his chest rose with breath. Then it released, rattling from his throat.

No more breaths followed.

27

Sully waited in the park down the street, hood pulled up and head bent down as he sat, hunched, on a bench.

A cold wind blew, shaking the remaining leaves from trees and causing him to zip his hoodie up to the throat and draw his outer jacket more tightly around himself.

But it wasn’t completely the wind at fault for the chill that ran through him. He’d just done something he’d never known possible: he’d effectively possessed a ghost. He’d overpowered her, pulled her into himself.

He’d started to become the hangman.

But he had other problems, at least one of which was driving down the block toward him now. Hackman had revealed his secrets, had provided a deathbed confession. But he’d also confessed Lowell’s secrets and Sully’s. Dez, now pulling to a stop across from the park, would demand an explanation.

Sully could no longer avoid giving him one.

He stood and made his way to the SUV.

“Not here,” Dez said as soon as Sully was inside. “Don’t talk to me yet.”

He was upset. That much was clear. Exactly how upset remained to be seen.

Sully didn’t have long to wait. The drive back to their apartment was less than fifteen minutes. Dez bypassed Emily’s, foregoing a reunion with Pax in favour of towing Sully inside their suite.

Pax would have to wait. Dez, it seemed, wasn’t about to put this off for another second.

The door barely had a chance to slam shut behind Dez when he launched into an interrogation. “What the hell was he talking about?”

“Which part?”

“You know damn well which part. The part about Lowell.”

Sully took a breath, then moved to sit at the kitchen table, using the few seconds to think through how best to start. But there wasn’t a best way, so he simply launched into it. He told Dez everything: how Lowell had drugged him before his admission to Lockwood, leaving him more vulnerable to the possessions by Harry Schuster; how Lowell and Hackman had tried to kill him; how Lowell had been there and watched as Sully was tortured inside the Blue Room. He left out the other parts—for now. Dez would sense something missing. Sully knew that as well as he knew his brother.

He also knew the look on his face now. He’d gone red, a kettle about to boil. Dez could yell, and Sully had been at the receiving end more than once.

Only what he got was worse. The more dangerous, deceptively calm growl. “Why the hell didn’t you bother to tell me about this before?”

“I told you I was trying to protect you.”

“From Lowell? I don’t get this, Sully. I really don’t get this. Why would he do this? I know him. He’s no killer.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I believe you. But I don’t understand. Why? Why would he do it? Someone like him, he wouldn’t take a step like that without some sort of warped reason.”

There it was. A call to provide the rest of the story. Sully briefly considered lying, but thought better of it. He’d already held back far too much, had kept things from Dez he had every right to know.

So he told him the rest. About how Lowell was responsible for the deaths of Harry and Betty Schuster—and quite possibly their son. How he’d killed Aiden. How he’d killed their father.

As Sully spoke, the red left Dez’s face, leaving it so white Sully had to pause midway to allow Dez to sit heavily in a chair next to him.

Now finished, Sully waited, watching his brother’s face as he struggled to process. It was all there in his expression—the confusion, the anger, the grief. Most of all, the disbelief.

“I don’t…. No. He wouldn’t….” Another few seconds passed before Dez’s eyes drifted up to meet Sully’s. “He wouldn’t.”

Sully gave him the only answer he could. “He did.”

Another long pause. More processing. Then, “Why?”

“I don’t know, Dez. I know why he killed Dad, and I know why he killed Harry and Betty, and possibly Thackeray. And I know why he tried to kill me. It was all about Aiden, about us figuring out what he did. But that’s the part I don’t understand, that I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of. Aiden was just a little kid.”

“And you’re sure? You’re absolutely sure?”

“Dad didn’t die of a simple heart attack. I’ve seen him. Lowell didn’t shoot Dad full of epinephrine to try to save him. He did it to cause his heart to fail. And Aiden, he showed me what happened to him. He showed me Lowell holding him under the water at the creek behind the house.”

“And you didn’t think I had the right to know this?”

“That’s not why I didn’t tell you.”

Dez’s moods had always been interchangeable, rising and falling like waves. Within his last question, he’d left stunned behind, had moved back into anger.

He stood, shoving the chair back so that it rocked a little on its back legs. It managed to stay standing, which was more than Sully thought he was capable of at the moment. The admission had left him drained, and he knew he was going to face more grief before this was over.

Dez paced several times, a feat made difficult by the combination of long legs and small space. He was burning off energy, trying to hold his anger in check, to avoid saying or doing something he’d regret.

Then he started to go for the door.

Sully leapt up, grabbed his arm just as he reached for the handle. “Where are you going?”

“To see Lowell.”

“No.”

“Get off me.”

“No. Not now. Not while you’re like this. You’ll do something you’ll regret.”

“What, you think me beating Lowell to death with my bare hands is something I’d regret? Fuck off. Let go of me. Now!”

Sully had a choice to make. He could let Dez go, could let him find Lowell while taking with him every bit of rage he was now experiencing. Or he could try to draw some of that rage back on himself. It wouldn’t solve everything, but it might take enough wind from Dez’s sails to lessen the risk.

“Dez,” Sully said. “Your problem right now is with me. Just let me have it.”

He’d said the not-so-magic words. Dez spun on him, towering over him as he barked out his fury. “I had a right to know about this! And I didn’t need your fucking protection! I needed the truth, and you kept it from me. They were my family! All this time, I’ve been seeing Lowell’s face, trying to be polite, when I should have been smashing it in.”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

“Shut up! Shut up, Sullivan. I’m not done.”

The use of his full first name had Sully looking up, eyes snapping onto Dez’s. He didn’t use that name, not unless things were really bad between them.

“You lied to me. You lied to me. Not about some stupid thing you did that you knew I wouldn’t like. You lied to me about our family. Our family. That’s sacred. You don’t lie about that ever. I had a right to know about Dad and Aiden. You knew how desperate I was to know what happened to my brother, how and why you were seeing him. Now I find out you had the answer all this time, and didn’t tell me. What the hell am I supposed to do with that, huh?”

“I found out just before Lockwood. I couldn’t tell you then.”

“No, you chose to fake your own death and put me through an even greater hell. And you’ve been back a while now. Not once, not once in all that time did you bother saying something about this.”

“I wasn’t sure you could handle knowing the truth.”

The words, for some reason, proved a tipping point. Dez came at him, seizing handfuls of his jacket and slamming him back into the wall. The impact rattled his lungs, Dez’s fists pressed hard enough into his chest to leave bruises.

“I couldn’t handle knowing? Newsflash, you moron. I couldn’t handle what you put me through. All these years, I trusted you, I relied on the fact you’d never lie to me.”

“I didn’t lie, Dez. I just didn’t tell you everything.”

“Which is the same thing. Every day, every goddamn day, I think about them.” Tears formed in Dez’s eyes, and he let them fall, making no effort to release Sully to wipe them away. Sully felt his own emotion rise to meet Dez’s, answering tears gathering along his lower lashes as he held Dez’s watery glare. “I miss them. I miss them so damn much. And I missed you. Or I missed the person I thought you were. But you…. I don’t know you. I don’t know who the hell you are.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Sully Gray I knew would never have held back something like that. He wouldn’t have lied to me.”

He released Sully, so abruptly he nearly lost his balance. “I’m done with this. All of this. I miss Eva and Kayleigh. I’m going home. You can do what you want.”

“Don’t go like this, okay? Can’t we talk about it?”

“I’m done talking. And I’m done with you. Leave me the hell alone.”

Dez moved back toward the door. Sully rushed after him, grabbing for his arm again. They needed to discuss this, to fix what Sully had inadvertently broken.

He didn’t see the fist coming, felt it before he knew what was happening. The impact sent him across the room, his body landing hard against the coffee table. The rickety legs gave way beneath his weight, and he laid there a moment, mentally scanning himself for significant injury. Dez had punched him before, but never this hard. He’d always pulled his punches for Sully.

Not this time.

Then came a second blow, verbal this time.

“Roman Gerhardt is your father. Ask Emily.”

Then Dez was gone.

* * *

“What was all th—oh, dear.”

Emily’s question stopped midway, and Sully knew his appearance was likely the cause. His jaw hurt, was probably already starting to bruise and swell. And he’d given up trying to control the tears.

She pulled him into a warm hug right there, in the doorway to her little apartment, while Pax nudged and then pressed against his leg. She held him until he’d regained a little control, until the shaking stopped. Then she led him inside.

Settling into a spot at her kitchen table, he waited while she poured the requisite tea. She didn’t fill the space, letting him filter through his thoughts. He had a lot of them. None of them good.

She held her silence until she was sitting across from him. Then she placed a hand over his. “You and your brother had a fight.”

He nodded, taking a moment to stroke Pax’s head. The dog had yet to leave his side, rooted there like the big, furry guardian he was. “A bad one.”

“You told him, didn’t you?”

“About Lowell? Yeah.”

“And he didn’t take it well.”

“He hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you. He’s angry. That’s understandable. But he’ll get past it. You’re family, after all.”

“I don’t think that’s enough this time. He thinks I betrayed him. And he’s right. He had a right to know, and I didn’t tell him.”

Emily patted his hand. “I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but it will pass. He’ll come back to you. You’ll see.”

“I don’t think so. Not this time. He said he’s done with me. And he punched me. Hard. He’s never hit me like that before. That means something.”

The statement seemed to form a reminder for Emily, and she levered herself up from the table to shuffle over to her freezer. “It means he’s angry. He needs to stew a little, that’s all.”

Sully watched as Emily pulled out a bag of frozen vegetables and wrapped them in a tea towel. “He wasn’t stewing. He was boiling.”

Emily returned to the table, pressing the makeshift cold pack against Sully’s jaw. “So he’s boiling. Eventually, water boils dry. He’ll run out of anger soon enough, and he’ll be back.”

Sully shook his head. “I don’t think so. It was different this time.”

“It feels that way because you’re directly involved, and you’re hurting. But you did the right thing, Sullivan, and you’ll see that soon enough. I’m sure of it.”

Sully heaved a sigh, and moved on. There was something else on his mind. “Dez said something right before he left. He told me Roman Gerhardt is my father, and that I should ask you. What was he talking about?”

“Oh dear.”

“What? It’s not true, is it?”

Her hand reached out to him, and he had to switch the hand he was using to hold the peas on his face so he could meet her request. Her fingers wrapped around his, their warmth slowly dissipating the chill within his.

“I told you how you were born inside Lockwood, how your mother was a patient there. But I didn’t tell you how you were conceived. Your mother was abused by Dr. Gerhardt. He sexually assaulted her.”

“No.”

“It happened a number of times. From what I could tell, he targeted her.”

“You mean, I’m only here because my mother was raped? And he’s…. No. Oh, God, no. He can’t be. He can’t be my father.”

“He’s not a father, not in any way. He’s a monster. You might be biologically tied to him, but it’s nothing more than that. Your father is Flynn Braddock. Always remember that.”

“I know, but…. God, what does that make me?”

“It makes you the same person you have always been. You are Lucky’s son. She loved you, Sullivan. Not in spite of how you came to be, but because of who you were to her. She loved you fiercely, and she was prepared to die to protect you. That’s who you are. You are her child. Hers.”

“I guess I can’t blame anyone for not telling me, huh?”

“Desmond wanted to protect you, the same way you tried to protect him from the pain of the truth. And I had to honour his wishes. But I nonetheless share the blame in keeping this from you, so I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about. I understand. I can even understand why Dez didn’t tell me. I can’t blame him for keeping secrets when I kept my own from him, can I?”

She smiled, shook her head. He smiled back.

“What are you planning to do now?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I need to think. A lot’s come to light today, and I don’t know what to do with it.”

“I meant about your brother.”

Sully nodded. Of course she’d meant that. “I need to give him some space. I’m hoping it won’t be long, but it might be. In the meantime, I’m going to have to accept being on my own again.”

“You’re never on your own,” Emily said. Her fingers squeezed his gently as she gave him a warm smile. “You’ve got me.”

28

Clouds covered the moon, casting the night in darkness as Sully skirted the manmade pond.

A handful of large properties overlooked the body of water, but he knew he could pass unseen.

He’d done it before, after all.

Staying low, he padded across the grass until he spotted the target house, then sheltered on the far side of its small boathouse.

He recalled former judge Prescott Montague had once kept his handgun inside. The weapon had since been seized by police, involved as it was in a homicide. Currently free on bail conditions while he awaited trial, Montague had been prohibited from possessing weapons.

Sully wasn’t so naïve as to rely on Montague obeying that condition.

The boathouse was locked, and Sully next moved toward the house, keeping for the moment to the bushes framing the large yard. This would be the tricky part, getting inside. In Sully’s experience, good criminals were often keenly aware of their own surroundings and safety, largely because they’d been able to breach someone else’s. It was unlikely any windows or doors would be left open or unlocked on the ground floor.

Sully had just spotted what he thought was a climbable portion of the house, thanks to a sturdy-looking bench and a balcony just above it, when Montague simplified matters.

He emerged from the back door, scanning the darkened yard as he took several steps onto the lawn. His head turned in Sully’s direction, but his sight would never uncover the intruder, crouched as Sully was in the shadows of the shrubs.

Sully waited until the man’s head had turned, then made his move.

He knew how to move silently, and he made it easily to the side of the house. This would be the tricky part, would require more stealth than he was sure he possessed.

With luck, Montague wasn’t running security cameras that would reveal him later.

Pulling the hood as far over his head as he could without obscuring his own sight, Sully edged up to the corner and peered around. Montague was there, hands cupped to his mouth as he lit a cigarette.

Now it was just a matter of waiting for the opportune moment.

Montague gave it to him.

A bench overlooking the lake had been placed midway down the gently sloping lawn, and the former judge made his way there, pulling his coat closed with one hand as he walked.

Sully drew in a nerve-steeling breath, then left his place of concealment, keeping his eyes on the back of Montague’s head as he made his way toward the open back door.

If Montague looked back to question his own lackadaisical security, it was too late.

Sully, crouched low in the darkened kitchen, was already inside.

* * *

He delayed an hour, telling himself he was using the time to wait for his moment.

As he stood inside the second-floor spare room closet, his rolling gut suggested a different story.

The longer he stayed, the more anxious he became. The moment, if he was going to take it, was now. Montague was in the shower inside the master suite’s bathroom. Sully had done a quick reconnaissance of the second floor while Montague was outside, discovering both his current hiding spot and the place where he could confront the older man.

He’d have to do it now, set himself up to come up behind Montague when he emerged from the bathroom.

He could bail, make his way downstairs and out of the house. Go back the way he came and try to forget he’d ever attempted something this insane.

But backing out wouldn’t get him the answers he needed.

One more breath and he was on the move. The hallway to the left would take him to the stairs and the way out; the right would take him to the master bedroom.

Sully went right.

The master bedroom was bathed in light, curtains open. By day, the gold-coloured drapes would frame a view of the backyard and the shared pond. By night, all Sully could see was black.

He reached through the doorway, fumbling along the wall with a gloved hand until he found the light switch. Concealing the room in darkness, and satisfying himself he wouldn’t be seen by anyone outside, Sully fully entered the room and waited the few seconds until his eyes adjusted.

An antique wardrobe stood just the other side of the closed bathroom door, and Sully moved toward it, concealing himself on its far side.

Another waiting game began as he listened to the sounds of the shower, of Montague shaving, of him brushing his teeth and using the bathroom one more time before bed.

Then the door opened.

Now or never.

Montague stalled on the threshold between bathroom and bedroom, as if questioning how the room had gone dark. There were no bedroom light switches outside the bathroom door, and he headed for the door to the hall and the switch he’d find there.

Sully beat him to it.

He’d cut up Dez’s plastic broom handle before he’d left this evening, and he poked the end of it into Montague’s back, hoping the man would mistake it for the business end of a gun.

“Don’t move.”

Montague froze, started to turn.

“I said, don’t move!”

The former judge stopped, hands lifting to show they were empty.

“Face the wall and stay there.” Sully worked to keep his voice abnormally hard. He’d practiced the tone before leaving Dez’s apartment, just to ensure he was capable of it. He was pleased to see the desired effect, the obvious fear in Montague’s movements.

“I’m unarmed,” the man said. “My wallet’s on the bureau. If you’ll let me get it—”

“I don’t want your money. I want information.” His cellphone was in his pocket, an app running on audio record. He used his free hand to pull the device a little farther out, then shifted a leg to hold it there, ensuring it was in a position to capture anything said.

“Information about what?”

“You told the police you had information on Lowell Braddock. I want to know what you were going to tell them.”

“Who are you? Some competitor of his?”

“Who I am doesn’t matter. Answer the question.”

“Why should I? What’s in it for me?”

“You stay alive.”

“You’ll kill me if I don’t tell you? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Sully stayed silent. He’d already essentially uttered a threat. No need to dig himself in deeper. As it was, he’d committed several criminal offences tonight. Anyway, he wasn’t sure he could convincingly answer Montague in the affirmative, making the stretching silence a far more effective response.

Montague finally filled the gap, proving he’d need a little more convincing. “I offered the police information on Lowell if they saw to it the prosecutors cut me a deal. I haven’t been offered anything of the sort. I won’t say anything now.”

“I think it’s pretty clear I’m not with the police or the prosecutors’ office. I don’t care about any deal. I’ve got my own reasons for being here. Tell me about Lowell.”

Another pause, as if Montague was thinking it through. There was truth in what Sully had said, no way someone from the police or prosecutors’ office would turn up or send someone to menace an accused offender in his own home.

This time, the pause ended the way Sully had hoped, with answers.

“I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, but I can tell you Lowell Braddock is not the man people think he is. He does all the good things, donating to charity and schmoozing the right people. But it’s a cover. He’s evil to the core.”

“How evil?”

“I believe he’s killed people, and more than once. And others have helped him cover it up.”

“What others?”

“You asked about Lowell, not anyone else.”

“You brought it up. What others?”

Another pause.

“They call themselves the Circle. It started off as an alternative to the Freemasons, an organization for those refused entry. It began in the seventies and has been around since. Lowell joined a number of years ago.”

“And you’re saying this Circle helped him cover up these murders?”

“Not all of them. Some of them.”

“How do you know this?”

“I’m a member, joined shortly after it first formed. I’m now on the Grand Council, and I help decide who comes in. I know each of the current members, and I know who’s connected to whom.”

“Who’s Lowell connected to?”

“His most significant connection is the head psychiatrist over at Lockwood Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Roman Gerhardt—also a member. They’ve been working together, I understand, on a drug trial that could have some serious money attached.”

“Did they tell you about this drug trial?”

“Not in any great detail. Roman told me if they’re successful, he will see to it the entire Circle benefits from the wealth and prestige. He saw it as a way we could legitimize the Circle, to bring us out of the shadows and show ourselves to be an organization of successful, intelligent men and women.”

“You said Lowell killed people. If the Circle helped him cover it up, did it have something to do with this drug trial?”

“I don’t know. I suspect it reaches back further than that. No one’s ever said this out loud, but I suspect he’s responsible for the death of a child. His own nephew, I believe.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Another member of our organization, a man known for his psychic ability, foresaw something years ago. It happened as Lowell was attempting to join the Circle. Harry was a teacher with an unusual talent for seeing things others couldn’t, and we used his gift back then to help us decide on our new members. It didn’t last long. Harry was already going mad. But he did predict something when he met Lowell, something about a ‘second son being our end.’ Harry described, to a tee, Lowell’s brother, described his having two sons, and that the youngest would cause the downfall of the Circle and everyone within it.”

“And people took that seriously?”

“You have to understand, Harry was gifted. Exceptionally so. We didn’t take him seriously when he first tried to join, and it proved to be to our detriment. He told us our then-president would be killed in a vehicle crash and that he would take others with him. He described the vehicles involved, the occupants of both cars and the nature of the fatal injuries each would sustain. Less than two weeks later, it happened. Clinton was drinking and driving, and he crashed his car into a van carrying a young family that matched, to a tee, the people Harry had described. We never doubted him again. His prediction about this second son was enough to make us all very, very nervous. He’d not only predicted Lowell’s downfall, but all of ours. He saw us behind bars or dead, each of us, including me.

“I didn’t make the decision about the child. I wasn’t yet part of the Grand Council. But my understanding is they ordered Lowell to kill the boy.”

“He killed his own nephew just to get into this stupid organization?”

“Of course not. It’s not just about an organization. It’s about partnerships. He was struggling at the time to set up his own pharmaceutical company. He had some grand ideas, and he had the drive and smarts, but no capital. The Circle consists of many wealthy individuals. If he did as asked, he was guaranteed enough money to start up his own company, and to ensure he had majority interest in it. In return, he was told to eliminate the threat. He didn’t believe in psychics or prophecies, but he knew the Grand Council did, and that was tangible enough for him. And nothing’s more tangible to people like him than money and power.”

“People like him, or people like you?”

“I’ve always had money, and money brings power. What I didn’t have was the job I really wanted. Members within the Circle knew people, and they helped me secure a position as judge. I’ve never wanted, nor asked, for anything else from them, and they’ve never asked more of me than I was willing to give. At the end of the day, Lowell acted on his own. He didn’t have to do as asked. He could have just walked away.”

“If the Circle was so concerned about Lowell and the people in his life, why let him in?”

“As I said, I wasn’t in charge of the decision-making back then. But Harry saw wealth, and a lot of it, in Lowell’s future, and that was of great interest to the Grand Council. We’ve become quite a wealthy order since then, in no small part because of Lowell’s contribution.”

“But you’re willing to sell him out.”

“I’ve lost my job, but the law still means something to me. Lowell Braddock is the worst kind of man, the kind who will not only sacrifice those he loves for wealth and power, but the kind who thinks nothing of killing children.”

“You’re about to stand trial for murdering a teenager.”

“Who was sleeping with my wife.”

“And who was a threat to your goals of becoming a Supreme Court judge. That’s a national position. Some local order consisting of rich people wasn’t going to help you get there.”

Montague’s head started to turn. “Who are you?”

“Face the wall.”

But Montague’s curiosity seemed to have come to outweigh his fear. He turned, not to the wall, but to his assailant. Sully took a step back as Montague’s eyes darted to the supposed gun. The room was dark, but not quite dark enough.

“That’s not even a gun. Who are you?”

The time for talk had passed. The door was directly behind Montague. Sully made a run for it, pushing the former judge aside in the process.

But Montague wasn’t going down that easily. Sully had only just made it past Montague when he was grabbed from behind. Montague yanked him back, using what felt like a leg to further trip Sully up so he ended up on the floor.

In this position, the hood was useless, having slipped from his face. His concealment was secondary, escape his priority. He started to get up, but Montague leapt onto him, delivering two sharp, forceful punches to his head. Sully’s head reeled under the impact, so he was only just aware of the feel of Montague reaching for something and the subsequent beep of a cellphone key being dialled.

The sound of a loud crack stopped everything.

The side of Montague’s head exploded, blood and other matter splattering onto the side of the nearby duvet.

Onto Sully.

For a moment, Montague remained where he was, eyes wide but unfocused.

Then he slumped to the side.

Sully lay there, frozen as he stared at Montague. Dead. Shot.

Shot. Someone had a gun and had just committed murder. Sully was a witness. He could be next.

The thought drove him, had him shoving Montague off so he could get out from under the body.

Sully’s phone had fallen from his pocket after Montague had thrown him to the ground, and he scrabbled around for it on the floor until his shaking hand settled over it. Ensuring it was indeed his phone and not Montague’s—he couldn’t afford to lose the information it contained—Sully stood and ran.

Another shot rang out.

It was clear who the target was this time.

He made it to the door, into the hall. No idea where the shooter was, no idea if he was about to run headlong into him. He was pretty sure the gunman was outside the house; there had been no one else in the room, and the sound he’d heard was definitely that of a high-powered rifle.

He forced himself to stop, sheltering in the enclosed hall a moment. The exit wound had been on the right side of Montague’s head. That meant the shot had been taken from the left.

From the back of the house.

The way Sully had come.

Knowing now he’d have to scale the fence along the front of the house, Sully found the stairs as he shoved his phone safely into the depths of his jeans pocket.

The front door was directly across from him once he reached the base of the stairs. He ensured his hood concealed his face as he approached it, keenly aware of the possibility of security cameras guarding the entrance. A quick glance through the window to the side of the door revealed nothing but a wide expanse of lawn and driveway. Plenty of room to be an easily visible target.

In the house, though, he was a sitting duck.

With no option, he unlocked and opened the door. Then he was out, racing across the lawn, running in a zigzag pattern to try to lessen the chances of being hit by a bullet.

Another crack sounded, this one louder than the first two, no walls or windows to buffer the noise. He poured on some extra speed, the fence now within reach. It was high, but he had his own height and adrenaline in his favour as he sprang at it, catching the top in one leap. A boot against the wall helped propel him up and over, and then he was free of the yard.

Sirens sounded in the distance, growing closer as he ran. There was a park nearby, one he’d not so long ago taken shelter within as he’d waited for Forbes to come and get him. That time, Sully had fled Montague’s under a similar hail of gunfire.

But this time, he couldn’t call Forbes, no way the Major Crimes investigator would be able to keep Sully’s presence to himself. The last time, Sully had been there with Forbes’s knowledge, and he’d been the sole victim. This time, he was fleeing the scene of a murder. He knew how investigations worked. Until they had a chance to check him out and clear him of wrongdoing, he’d be a suspect too.

He couldn’t afford to be either a witness or a suspect. Not now. Not when the stakes had grown so high.

Police would scour the neighbourhood, would be on the lookout for a gunman. So Sully did the only thing he could.

He ran.

29

Making it back to Emily’s car wasn’t easy.

The area was crawling with cops by the time he reached the vehicle, and he was now grateful to a neighbourhood that had made parking closer an impossibility.

His hood would now be a hindrance rather than a blessing, making him a figure of suspicion to investigators on the lookout for a murderer. He’d already taken his gore-spattered outer coat off and turned it inside out, and tucked his gloves inside its pockets. He wouldn’t discard it here. He knew where he had to go, and no one would come looking for evidence there.

His hoodie still appeared clean, so that stayed on. He pulled the hood out of the way and tied his hair back as neatly as possible. Emily’s car was another story. There was nothing he could do to help it fit in all that well in this neighbourhood, so all he could do was hope for the best.

He made it back without incident to the Riverview area, making one last stop at the apartment building. He’d have to drop off Emily’s keys and get Pax, but he needed to do something else first.

Dez had left his laptop behind, and Sully logged into it to upload his audio file. He reviewed it quickly within the corresponding laptop app, allowing himself a relieved sigh as he discovered the audio was not only there, it was of good quality. He made a quick edit, removing the initial portion in which he’d threatened the disgraced judge. No need to compound his existing problems. Then he downloaded the edited version onto his phone and logged out of Dez’s computer.

He’d start a fake email account, send Forbes the file that way. Sure, there was probably a way to trace it, but it would slow the police down long enough for him to get out of Dodge. Where he was going, no one would follow.

Leaving his phone to charge, he grabbed a quick shower, ridding himself of Montague’s gore. His outer jacket, he’d discovered upon removing it, was similarly splattered, and he thanked himself for having picked up a new coat at the goodwill store a couple of weeks ago. Freshly showered, he placed his bloody clothes into a plastic bag and stuffed those, the few clothes he owned and what was left of Pax’s dog food into his duffel bag.

He took another minute to pick up the pieces of the broken coffee table, leaning the splintered surface and two snapped-off legs against the wall. He wanted to leave a note for Dez but, hand poised over a notepad on the kitchen counter, he couldn’t think of anything better to write than, “I’m sorry.”

He took one last look at the small apartment, then shut off the lights and left, closing and locking the door behind him. He paused a moment, looking down at the keys in his hand before crouching and sliding them under the door.

Then he went to get Pax, hoping Emily hadn’t yet gone to bed. If she had, he’d have to wake her up. He couldn’t wait for morning.

Relief flooded him when Emily answered the door almost immediately, the sound of the TV in the background.

Her eyes grew large behind her glasses as she looked Sully up and down. “You aren’t leaving?”

“I have to. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I need to find somewhere to lie low for a while.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t done anything wrong, but I’m in the middle of something big. I don’t want anyone caught in the crosshairs, and I can’t afford for anyone to find me until I figure out how to handle things.”

“Why don’t you talk to me? Maybe I can help.”

“You’ve already helped more than you know. Right now, I need to handle things alone.”

“Maybe you don’t. That’s what friends and family are for.”

“Friends and family have already been killed because of this. I won’t risk anyone else. I need to handle this myself, Emily.”

“Where are you going?”

“I can’t say. The fewer people who know, the better. It will be safer for everyone that way.”

“You know you can trust me, don’t you?”

“I know. It’s not about trust. It’s about me not being able to live with myself if anyone else gets hurt.” He paused, worked a smile onto his face, instilled in it as much warmth as he could muster. “I want to thank you for everything you—”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you say goodbye to me, Sullivan. You’ll be back. You can tell me then.”

She closed the distance to him, drawing him into a hug. He embraced her, making an effort to commit the moment to memory. Where he was going, this might well be the last kind human contact he’d have for a while.

“Take care of yourself,” Emily said. “Remember there are people here who care about you. We’re here to help you whenever you need it.”

“I know,” he said. “That means everything to me.”

He released her, looking down into her eyes, this tiny, warm, brave woman who’d saved him as a baby and had protected him ever since—even without his knowing it.

Now it was his turn to protect her. Her and everyone else he loved.

Pax waited patiently behind Emily, brown eyes solemn as if he sensed the gravity of his human’s mission. Sully patted his leg and Pax came toward him, pausing at the threshold to allow himself a final head rub from Emily.

Then he followed Sully into the hall.

Down the stairs.

Out the door.

Into the night.

THE STORY CONTINUES IN SECOND SON. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE OR READ FOR FREE IN KINDLE UNLIMITED.

Second Son

1

Sully hadn’t counted on being back here.

The manor stood before him, expansive, bleak and foreboding. The windows were like the eyes of a spider, many and watching. Behind them, he could sense the building’s inhabitants, former occupants who’d decided to stay after death and other spirits who had gravitated here. They were, almost to a one, bad-tempered and malicious, driving from these walls anyone whom they disliked. That meant most people.

Sullivan “Sully” Gray wasn’t most people.

For some reason, they put up with him. Perhaps because of Pax. Sully wasn’t sure, but he believed the dog had belonged to the last owner, an old man who had been crotchety enough to fit in with his home’s miserable otherworldly inhabitants. He’d once heard Linton Blackmoor was the only buyer to live more than a year in the place. He’d lasted more than twenty.

Then came the flood.

Blackmoor refused to leave the house that had meant everything to him. Like most others who’d stayed behind, the decision became his last.

Sully had never seen him; his ability to see ghosts was limited to those who had died by someone else’s hand. Blackmoor, like the rest of the ghosts of Ravenwood Hall, remained invisible to him.

Of course, unseen didn’t mean unnoticeable. Ravenwood had its own poltergeist, a ghost Sully had nicknamed Noisy Ned. Naming the entity had seemed like a way to inject some humour, or at least some humanity, into a terrifying situation.

It hadn’t worked.

Ned still threw things at odd hours of the night, startling Sully awake and putting him on high alert for intruders. Here in The Forks these days, intruders carried far more danger than violent ghosts.

Thankfully, the house’s reputation preceded it. Few dared to visit. Those who did regretted it quickly.

It made Ravenwood Hall the safest place for Sully to be.

Given the situation in which he’d landed, The Forks was the safest place for him in all of Kimotan Rapids.

And the loneliest.

But, right now, his being alone was the safest thing for everyone else.

In a weird way, it might also be a relief. The house came with its own ghosts, and it didn’t like outside spirits any more than living intruders. Sully had first noticed Prescott Montague’s ghost shortly after leaving Emily’s apartment, and the spirit had trailed him here, a constant angry presence at his shoulder. The possibility of being somewhere he couldn’t easily follow was a welcome one.

As Sully approached the manor’s threshold, he avoided seeking out the image of Montague. Instead, his gaze drifted to the happy sight of the dog next to him.

“You and me, Pax.” He stretched out a hand and rubbed his dog’s head. Pax turned brown eyes up to meet Sully, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth as he regarded his human. Whether the dog made the expression on purpose or not didn’t matter. Sully laughed anyway.

He needed it. He hadn’t found much to laugh at in the past couple of days.

Giving Pax one more pat, he returned his attention to the house.

Then he led the way inside.

2

Dez hadn’t counted on being back here.

Not permanently, anyway.

It felt like forever since Eva had kicked him out, told him his drinking and foul moods were hurting their daughter. He’d gone, not entirely willingly, but with the acceptance that what Eva had said was true. He’d been a screwup, caught in a depression he couldn’t pull himself out of. But even then, the last thing he wanted was to drag anyone down with him.

Especially his little girl.

He’d left, found himself a dumpy apartment in the Riverview area. He’d stayed there until a couple of days ago, when his brother had revealed to him the details of a secret so dark, it risked throwing Dez right back into the pit he’d clawed his way out of.

He’d hoped being back here, back at his own home with Eva and their little girl Kayleigh, would be enough.

It wasn’t.

“Dez, you need to deal with this.”

He looked up at Eva from the downstairs sofa, redirecting his gaze from the TV show he hadn’t really been watching. He hadn’t even heard her approach.

“I’m trying.”

“No. You’re not. You’re doing what you did before, what you always do when things are bad, and you feel like everything’s out of your control. You’re brooding. And you won’t talk to me about it.”

“I don’t need to drag anyone else down.”

Eva closed the remaining distance between them and settled onto the couch next to him. “Newsflash, Snowman. I’m already down there with you. So talk to me.”

“I told you everything.”

“About Lowell and about the fight you had with Sully. What you haven’t told me is what’s going on in your head because of it. That’s a lot for anyone to deal with, and you aren’t dealing. So talk.”

Dez sighed, met her eye. “What do you want me to say? That I’ve never wanted to kill anyone so bad in all my life as my own uncle? That my regret alternates between punching Sully and not punching him again? I’m pissed off, Eva. Like, beyond pissed. It’s taking everything I have not to get up and leave and find Lowell, to beat a damn confession out of him. Hell, even coming here instead of going to look for him took every bit of self-control I had.”

“I know. And I’m sorry this is happening. But we need to get this sorted out, you and me, before it destroys you. I don’t want to see you go down the same road you did after you lost your dad and Sully. Especially now, when we’re just getting us back.”

“I don’t want to see that either.”

“So let’s talk about what we can do.”

Dez raised his hands, palms up, a demonstration of helplessness. “Do? There’s nothing I can do. The only person alive with any information isn’t supposed to be alive. I can’t just drag my brother into a police station and get him to sit down with an investigator, can I?”

“Not unless he’s willing.”

“He won’t be. He’s got too much to lose, and he’s already been through the wringer because of this. Anyway, who’d believe him over Lowell?”

“You never know. If he’s being honest, investigators will figure that out, especially once they start digging.”

“Eva, my uncle is one of the richest men in town, maybe the richest. He’s charming, well-respected and popular. Sully is a scruffy, shy homeless guy who was once the suspect in a murder investigation, spent a couple of months as a patient at a mental hospital, and faked his own death. There won’t be any digging. No one will take him seriously enough to even go to the trouble of a sit-down interview. And I think that was Lowell’s plan all along. If killing him didn’t work, discrediting him was a solid second option.”

“What about Forbes? He might listen.”

Dez lowered his head into a hand and massaged his temples. “He’s not exactly the most competent detective on the force. And I’m not sure I’d trust him with this.”

“So how about Lachlan? He loves a challenge. And he’s got some well-placed contacts.”

“Lachlan would salivate over this.”

“So tell him. See what he comes up with.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good. In the meantime, you need to go talk to your brother. You can’t leave things like this.”

“Like what? I’ve got every right to be mad at him.”

“I know. But you also need to remember where he’s coming from. Given what he went through, I can understand why he wouldn’t want to talk about it.”

“But this is my family, Eva. He knew how badly I needed to know about Aiden, and he knew I’d want to know about Dad. Hell, about him too. And he shut me out. He lied to me.”

“He thought it was for your own good. He wasn’t sure you could handle the truth.”

“Please, don’t quote A Few Good Men.”

Eva smiled. “Dez. I’m being serious here. The effect it’s having on you, the depression you’re slipping back into, the way you’re battling yourself not to confront Lowell, those are things he would have expected. He wouldn’t have wanted that for you.”

“So, what? His plan was for us to go to our graves with me not knowing?”

“I don’t know what his plan was. You should ask him. Talk to him, Dez. Half the reason you’re sitting here in the dark, stewing, is because of the fight you two had.”

“I’m not in the dark.”

Eva looked around the room as if to make a liar out of him. Sure, he’d only turned on the pop lights above the couch, but still….

“Honey, it’s dark,” Eva concluded. “And you’re in a bad place. Finding a way to deal with Lowell is a big challenge. I get it. But this thing with Sully—that, you can fix.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Why not?”

He hadn’t told Eva this part, too ashamed of himself to say it out loud. Now, he had no option. “I said some things to him too…. One thing, really.”

“What?”

Dez took a breath, held it, let it go before answering. “I told him about Gerhardt being his father.”

“Oh, Jesus, Dez, you didn’t. Not like that.”

“I was angry. It just came out as I was leaving. It was that or beat the crap out of him, so I chose the non-violent method.”

“I can’t believe you.”

Dez’s temper rose at the criticism, but almost as quickly, he tamped it back down. She was right. Hell, at least part of his current anger was directed at himself for having thrown the comment out there, like it meant nothing. He couldn’t believe himself.

“I know I was an ass. And I regret it, but it’s done.”

“You need to make this right.”

“I need to make this right? Look, I know blurting it out was low, but he held out on me too.”

Eva’s glare suggested she wasn’t sold. “Look. You can sit here, arguing with me about who’s right, or you can make things right. Which one of you was more wrong doesn’t matter in the end. What matters is the two of you love each other, and if you don’t fix this, you might lose him. You can be angry, Dez. You have every right to be. But don’t let this cost you more than you can afford to pay. It’s not worth your relationship with your brother.”

He knew she was right. There was no question, the stupidity of costing himself a still-living family member over two who were already gone.

“I’ll go look for him.”

“Good. Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, you work today.”

“Not until two.”

“This might take longer than that. Anyway, it’s something I need to deal with myself.”

He looked down as Eva’s hand slid over his, and he turned his own hand to weave his fingers through hers.

“I know it’s hard,” she said. “And I know you’re angry. But you’ll get through this, Dez. You’ve got me and Kayleigh and your mom, and you’ve got Sully. No matter what happened back at your apartment, he’ll be there for you.”

* * *

“He’s not here.”

Emily peered up at him as she uttered the words, her head tilted back, far beyond comfort level so she could look Dez in the eye.

He’d arrived back at his apartment to find his spare set of keys on the floor, just the other side of the door, and all of Sully’s things gone. On the counter lay a two-word note in his brother’s handwriting saying only, “I’m sorry.” Worst of all, though, there was no Sully.

“Where is he?” he asked now. “Did he say anything?”

She shook her head. “He said he had to go. And he said he couldn’t tell me where. ‘The fewer people who know, the better.’ That’s what he said. He told me he couldn’t risk anyone else he cared about; he needed to handle things alone.”

“Damn it.”

“Why don’t you come in for a minute? We can talk.”

“I don’t have time. The jerk always does this when the chips are down. He goes off on his own to deal with things, and he gets himself into serious trouble.”

“I didn’t get the impression he was about to take immediate action. I think he was going somewhere to lie low a while. That was the feeling I got, anyway. He wasn’t angry, really. Just sad. Really, really sad.”

This wasn’t helping. “Thanks, Emily. I’m going to call a couple of people and see if they’ve heard from him. In the meantime, please call me if he contacts you, okay?”

“I will.”

Dez nodded and offered a forced smile before leaving the building and returning to his vehicle. He didn’t want to be inside the apartment right now.

He’d tried calling Sully before driving over here, but got nothing other than a single ring and voicemail. Another attempt now got him no further.

He tried their mom next.

“What happened?” she said as soon as he asked if Sully was there.

“Why do you think something happened?”

“I hear it in your voice. What’s wrong?”

“I’ll explain later.”

“Is one of you in trouble again?”

“No, nothing like that. We had a fight and I’m trying to reach him, is all.”

“What about?”

Crap. Amidst his own anger and depression, he’d forgotten one other person was likely to be even more shattered by this news. Mara Braddock didn’t even know Aiden’s death had been anything other than a tragic accidental drowning. She’d have to be told about him. And about Flynn.

But that was a conversation for another time, preferably when both her sons could be there with her. For now, he had some ducking to do.

“I’ll tell you later. Right now, I need to focus on finding Sully.”

“I haven’t heard from him. I’m sorry. He’s not in any danger, is he?”

Dez sought to erase his mother’s worry with words he didn’t fully believe himself. “There are risks, but he knows how to avoid them.”

“Are you sure?”

Nope. “Yeah, I’m sure. Call me if you hear from him, okay?”

“I will.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“You look after yourself, all right? You know how you get.”

Dez rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, okay.”

He hung up, then tried Marc Echoles, but got a similar response. At his urging, he next tried Raiya Everton. Again, nothing.

Dez was about to try Bulldog when his phone rang. He’d hoped to see his brother’s fake name, Oliver, show up on his call display.

What he got was Lachlan.

Dez pulled into traffic, hoping for at least a few minutes of scanning the streets for a scruffy guy with a large, black dog.

“This isn’t a good time,” Dez said by way of greeting.

“In my experience, good times are rare. Listen, I want to talk to you and your brother about my other ghost. Now that we’ve figured out what happened to Nora Silversmith and her son—”

“That’s going to be a problem. You need Sully for that, and I can’t find him. You haven’t heard from him by chance, have you?”

“No, I haven’t. What happened?”

“We had a fight.”

“Big deal. Brothers fight all the time. Hell, I haven’t talked to mine in twenty-two years.”

“Sully and I aren’t like that. We’re tight, always have been. This was bad. Really bad.”

“Come pick me up and you can fill me in.”

“You really care?”

“No. But I do care about finding your brother. He’s the only way I’m going to bring an end to this other case that’s been nagging me. I’ll expect you within the half-hour.”

Lachlan hung up, preventing further argument.

Just as well, since a call to Bulldog left Dez with no additional answers as to Sully’s whereabouts.

He’d driven less than five minutes when his phone rang. His hopes were dashed when he saw the number on his call display.

Then again, a member of the Major Crimes Unit might have information after all. Information Dez wouldn’t want to hear.

He pressed the Bluetooth button, allowing the call to come through his vehicle’s speaker system.

“Raynor?”

Sergeant Forbes Raynor didn’t often bother with small talk. “Where’s your brother?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Don’t bullshit me, Braddock. Where is he?”

“I’m not lying to you. I really don’t know.”

“You don’t know, as in he’s gone out and didn’t tell you where he was going? Or he’s gone?”

“The latter. I’m trying to find him. Still leads me back to my question though. Why are you looking for him?”

“It’s not something I’m at liberty to discuss.”

“Then I won’t be at liberty to share his whereabouts when I find him.”

“You’re a real stubborn asshole, you know that?”

“Takes one to know one.”

“All right,” Forbes said after a pause. “Here’s the thing. You heard on the news about a shooting the night before last?”

“There’s a shooting every couple of days. What’s special about this one?”

“We haven’t released the victim’s name publicly yet. Trying to keep things under our hats as long as we can, particularly given the shit storm that’s going to blow in the moment it goes public. The dead guy is Prescott Montague.”

The information had Dez pulling to the side of the road. “What happened?”

“We seized surveillance video from his house. He had a camera mounted over the front door and at the front gate. The front door camera recorded a man in a hoodie running out at the approximate time one of the neighbours reported hearing a gunshot. I’ve analyzed and reanalyzed the footage, and I keep drawing the same conclusion. I think the guy in the video is Sullivan.”

“Bloody hell. You can’t seriously think he’d be responsible for a shooting. He’s no killer.”

“Well, the fact is, he isn’t the one who pulled the trigger. The shot was from a high-powered sniper rifle, and it came from outside the house. As near as we can tell, the shooter must have been set up on top of Montague’s boathouse out back.”

“So there you are. Even if it was Sully inside the house, he didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It doesn’t let him off the hook, especially now he’s done a runner. Until we’re able to eliminate him, we’re treating him as a potential suspect. It could be he and the shooter were working together.”

“Hang on,” Dez said. “You didn’t expose Sully to any of the other cops, did you?”

“No, but I can’t keep it quiet forever. Your brother is either a suspect or a key witness. I need to talk to him so I can decide how I’m going to handle everything.”

“This is all supposing he actually is the guy in the video. You said he’s wearing a hood. I know Sully does that, but so do lots of other people.”

“His size, build, his movements, it all points to Sullivan. You’re welcome watch the footage, if that will convince you.”

“I can’t just—”

“I’ll make a copy and meet you somewhere out of the way. I think you’ll want to see this.”

* * *

Dez found Forbes where he said he’d be, sitting on a bench on the edge of a small park five minutes’ walk from the police station.

The cop had been bold enough to bring a laptop with him, taking a chance no one would mug him for his electronics. Dez grudgingly sat next to him, and Forbes unfolded the laptop without bothering with a greeting.

A couple of clicks later, Dez was looking at a video from the inside of Montague’s house. The image was dark, but the camera switched to night vision after nightfall, enabling him to see a slim male figure rushing toward the front door and turning the lock with gloved hands before dashing outside.

Little about the video could tell anyone who the man was. He never turned toward the camera, and he wasn’t wearing anything particularly distinguishing. But Dez—who’d known Sully most of his life—saw what Forbes had.

The man in the video was almost definitely his brother.

“Enough to convince you?” Forbes asked.

Dez realized his mouth was open, and he shut it before thinking through his answer. “It could be anyone in that video.”

“But it isn’t, is it? I don’t know Sullivan as well as you do, obviously, but I’ve gotten to know him well enough. That’s him. I’m sure of it.”

“Look, if it is him, he wasn’t there to do anything bad.”

“You sure about that? Montague had, after all, nearly killed him. Plus he’s implicated in the attempt on your life at the caves. And Sullivan told me about wanting to go back to try to talk to him about….” Forbes trailed off, as if he’d remembered something.

Dez knew what it was. “About Lowell. I know. Sully filled me in. I know he told you about his suspicions. And I know the judge threw Lowell’s name out there when he was arrested, hoping his info might buy him a deal.”

“Right. So there’s another reason he might have gone down there with bad intentions. He knew Montague was mixed up in something seedy with Lowell, and he knew the judge said he had information that could take Lowell down. I think Sullivan went down there to confront him, to try to get some answers. Maybe he went with some backup, someone who would take the shot if things went sideways or if Montague refused to talk.”

“That’s weak,” Dez said. “First off, what good would killing him do? Sully wanted to know what info he had. If he’s dead, he can’t share it, and nothing can be proved. Second, Sully doesn’t know anyone who’d be capable and willing to pull off a hit like that. It’s not even close to being his style. Sully’s no killer. You know it as well as I do. If he did go down there to talk to Montague, it was on his own. This assassin or whatever, he had to have been working independently, or for someone else. If that is Sully on the video, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not like he hasn’t been in that situation before.”

“All right. Let’s say I believe you. That still puts him front and centre in this thing as a crucial witness. We’re going to have to talk to him, and I need you to make that happen.”

“You know I can’t do that. Not now. The risks to him are too great.”

Forbes shut the laptop and focused fully on Dez. “There’s something I hadn’t planned on telling you, but I don’t think I can avoid it. There was more than one shot. From what we’ve been able to piece together, Montague was taken down by one of the first bullets. The others, we believe, were directed at the person in the video. What we don’t know is whether the shooter was trying to take out a witness, or whether he was looking to tie up a loose end by eliminating his accomplice. Either way, the guy on the video was a target as well. These risks you’re talking about—they exist, whether or not he’s in hiding. It might be he’s safer coming forward and allowing us to get him some proper protection until we can get the shooter safely behind bars.”

“Hold on a sec. You’re telling me you think this assassin was firing at Sully? You didn’t find any evidence he was hit, did you?”

“We didn’t find any other blood in the house or on the grounds, other than a couple of transfer stains we believe will come back as Montague’s DNA. So, no, there’s no obvious evidence of him being hit.”

“Thank God.”

“Look, I showed you this because I thought you’d need some convincing. I guess I’ve got no choice but to leave it up to you to decide how to handle it. But Braddock? You need to handle it. I can’t sit on this forever. You need to get him to come forward. He’s not on the hook for the Betty Schuster shooting, if that helps convince you any.”

It didn’t. The facts remained the same. If Sully was outed, particularly in the midst of a case bound to draw national media attention, he’d not only be a walking target for this shooter, whoever he or she was. Lowell would be next in line with the Dules not far behind. Add Gerhardt to the mix, looking for a way to get Sully recommitted, and you had a whole lot of bad with no real end in sight—at least, no end that wouldn’t leave Sully destroyed.

No way in hell Dez was playing a role in that.

Forbes wasn’t likely to take that as an answer. Not for long anyway. So Dez gave him what little he could.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t think too long.” Forbes stood from the bench, casting one more meaningful look at Dez before walking off in the direction of the police station.

3

When Dez pulled up to Lachlan’s home in the North Bank area, he was waiting on the front stoop. Dez unlocked the door and, staying true to form, by skipping the greetings, Lachlan dropped into the passenger seat and got right down to business.

“Did you already contact everyone he might have had reason to speak with?”

“Yeah,” Dez said. “Given the whole pretending-to-be-dead thing, it’s a pretty short list.”

“And nothing from any of them?”

“Nope. Nothing. Doesn’t surprise me, I guess. If he’s gone to ground, he’ll make sure he’s doing it alone. Last person who saw him was Emily, my neighbour across the hall. She confirmed it, said he was basically taking himself off the radar for awhile.”

Lachlan snorted, his expression mirroring the incredulity in the noise. “And this is just because the two of you had a fight?”

“Of course not. It’s a lot more than that. More than I even realized.”

“You going to fill me in, or are you hoping to turn this into a fun new guessing game?”

Dez broke it down for Lachlan, filling him in on what Sully had told him two days ago, leaving nothing out. He then added what he’d just learned from Forbes. By the time he’d finished, Lachlan’s eyes were huge.

“Christ, Braddock, this is big.”

“Yeah, I’d kind of realized that, thanks.”

“No, I mean big. Like really big.”

Dez allowed his annoyance to show in his expression and tone. “Yeah, I know, okay? So what do I do about it?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’ll give it some thought, that’s for sure. Wow. Okay, well, since you’ve tried everyone else to no avail, I’ve got to ask: any chance your brother’s gone to confront Lowell?”

It was a possibility Dez hadn’t considered. His blood pressure spiked as he considered it was exactly what Sully had done when Lowell and Hackman had nearly killed him two years ago.

“Jesus. I hope not.”

“I’m thinking taking you to pay your uncle a visit isn’t a good idea, given your propensity to fly off the handle.”

“I don’t fly off the handle.”

“Uh, yeah, you do.”

“And could you not refer to him as my uncle? Far as I’m concerned, he’s nothing to me now, so just call him by his name, all right?”

Lachlan looked like he was about to retort, but clamped his lips together instead. He gave it a moment, then replied. “Right. I get it. Lowell. Sorry, Braddock. I forget sometimes, when I get my teeth into the bit, these are real people and not just a great case. We’re talking about your family here, so I’m sorry. Your dad was a great man, and I know you didn’t exactly invite me to this party willingly, but I would be honoured if I could play a role in bringing his killer to justice. All right?”

It was the nicest thing Lachlan had ever said to him. It made Dez feel uncomfortable as hell, and he pulled back onto the road before answering. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. So back to the uncle from hell. Is it worth a check to see if Sullivan went there?”

“I don’t know. I can’t think why he’d confront him now. The last time we were anywhere near Lowell, Sully bailed out of the car and hid until Lowell left. He’s done everything he can to avoid him.”

“Everyone has a breaking point. But let’s leave that possibility alone for a moment. You said you think Raynor’s right, that Sullivan went to talk to Montague the night of the murder. I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but is there a chance he was hit? Any idea how carefully the area was checked afterward? If he took a bullet, he could be lying under the bushes in someone’s yard.”

“Jesus Christ, Lachlan.”

“Well? The question needs asked.”

“Not to me. I can’t think that way.”

Lachlan pulled out his phone and started scrolling through something on his screen.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling the Humane Society,” Lachlan said. “Checking to see if anyone reported a big, black dog on the loose.”

With this new possibility to dread—not every bullet wound bled badly enough to leave a clear trail, especially if the victim was wearing several layers of clothes—Dez white-knuckled the steering wheel as Lachlan made the call. He received an answer in the negative.

“Doesn’t necessarily eliminate the possibility, but it’s probably good news,” Lachlan said. “When did your neighbour see him? Before or after the shooting?”

“I don’t know.”

Lachlan made a rotating gesture with his hand. “Well, can we find out? It might help us figure out whether he had a hitman on his tail when he left Montague’s.”

Dez got on the phone in a hurry, hoping both Emily and Forbes could provide answers to soothe his new fear.

“Shooting happened around ten,” Dez said. “Emily saw him between midnight and one in the morning.”

“That’s a good sign,” Lachlan said to Dez’s great relief. “If he made it there without being taken out, he probably slipped any tail he might have had. Of course, it also leaves us back at square one. Any idea where to start looking? You know him best. Where would he go?”

“If he’s worried about putting people at risk, he’s proven he can drop right off the radar. If he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.”

“That’s a cop-out. Everyone can be found if you’ve got the right people looking. If you and I aren’t the right people, they don’t exist. Let’s break it down. He doesn’t have a lot of options. I’ve been paying him under the table for his work, but it won’t be enough for a long-term hotel or major transportation. Did he ever get set up with fake ID?”

“No, we never approached anyone about that sort of thing.”

“So that limits where he can go and how far. We’re sure he’s got his dog with him?”

“He wouldn’t go anywhere without Pax.”

“So more limits. Plus, he’ll be eager to keep his mug from being seen in public too much. How did he avoid it the two years he was away? Where did he go? What did he do?”

The answer hit Dez like a brick. He could have kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner.

“The Forks,” he said. “He told me he stayed there during those couple of years.”

“Did he say where, specifically?”

Dez’s stomach rolled as he said the words out loud. “Ravenwood Hall.”

“The mansion on the east side of the island? The one everyone talks about being haunted?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Well, if there’s one place to find a guy who sees ghosts, why not try the most haunted place in town?”

Dez scrubbed a hand down his face. “Crap. Guess I’m going to have to go there.”

“That gives us another problem. Driving through The Forks is not what I’d call an option. We’d only be setting ourselves up for carjacking and murder.”

“You’ve got a better idea?”

Lachlan grinned. “Damn straight I do.”

4

There was a chill in the air when Sully poked his head out from under three layers of blankets.

Winter was coming, and while the snow had yet to fall, the cold suggested it wasn’t far off.

Sully had spent two miserable winters here, nearly dying during one particularly bad cold snap.

A champ at fires, he’d found a parlour toward the back of the house small enough to heat easily. Now, once again, he made the room his home. After lighting the fire last night, he’d curled up on the fainting couch, Pax curled on the floor next to him.

Previously, his routine had been to awaken every hour or two to stoke the fire. But he’d gotten comfortable during his return to his old life. His body clock had forgotten its preset survival alarms, and when he awoke inside the parlour, the fire was completely out.

He stayed where he was a moment, shivering beneath the blankets as he mentally prepared for the extra dose of cold he’d feel once he fully emerged from his cocoon.

Pax next to him exhaled noisily in his slumber. The cold rarely bothered him, thick coat of black fur protecting him from the worst of the elements. But every animal had its limits, and Sully felt guilty for the dog’s sake at having neglected his duties with the fireplace.

He was still thinking about getting up when the distant creak of footsteps somewhere on the other side of the closed door made the decision for him.

Of course, the sound might not be human-caused. He’d heard footsteps before, usually overhead and often in the dead of night. But in a house like this, with its history and inhabitants, you learned quickly to tell the difference between physical and ghostly.

The footsteps he heard now were not made by invisible feet.

Someone was here.

Someone living.

Visitors to an abandoned building in The Forks took on a far different meaning from those anywhere else. Here, the person was likely to be an escaped convict or a messed-up meth user rather than a college kid with a video camera.

Sully jumped up, leaving the blankets where they fell as he lunged for the fireplace poker next to the fainting couch. Pax rose and stood to attention next to him, ears perked and a low growl sounding in his throat. Sully angled his body as he faced the door, heavy, wrought-iron poker drawn back in a batter’s stance.

A crash sounded within the house, then a series of increasingly loud bangs. Noisy Ned had taken longer than usual to realize a newcomer was within his territory and to begin showing his displeasure. The poltergeist tolerated Sully, but he was as good as an alarm system for anyone else.

Noisy Ned was losing his touch, but he’d still prove a helpful ally.

Sully. Pax. Ned. If this intruder was up to no good, they were in for an unpleasant surprise.

A second crash sounded, vibrated the walls as Ned closed in.

This one was followed by a human exclamation. “Bloody hell! Sully! Sully!”

The wrought iron poker dropped to the ground with a dull clatter the same moment as Pax’s growls gave way to a gentle woof.

“Dez?” Sully said, voice not loud enough to carry beyond the room.

He left the parlour, Pax on his heels. A short hall led past a kitchen on one side and a large dining room on the other. From there, it emptied into what would have been a grand entry hall in the house’s pre-flood days. Dez had backed himself up against one of the wood-panelled walls, palms flat against it as his head swivelled to allow saucer-like eyes to scan for hidden dangers in every shadowed corner.

A solid object cutting through the air whistled past Sully as Ned threw his latest improvised missile. Dez ducked just as a rusted brass serving tray clanged against the panel where his head had just been.

“Sully!”

Sully closed the distance to his brother. “I’m here.” Then louder, for the poltergeist’s benefit: “Cut it out! He’s not a threat!” Waiting a moment, he listened for further movement from Ned, but all had fallen silent. The ghost had either decided to grant Sully the benefit of the doubt, or he’d exhausted himself with that last throw. It didn’t really matter which, as long as Dez was able to go home with no cuts, bruises or broken bones.

Dez had gone from ducking heavy objects to wrestling with Pax’s enthusiastic welcome. “What the hell was that, Sully?”

“I call him Noisy Ned for lack of an actual name. No idea who he really is, but he comes in pretty handy when someone shows up unexpectedly.”

“Is there somewhere we can talk where Ned isn’t?”

“I generally have no idea where he is, but we can try.”

Dez fell into step beside Sully as he led them back down the hall and into the parlour he’d just left.

“So it’s true,” Dez said. “This place being haunted, I mean. It wasn’t just some stupid story kids told each other in school.”

“Nope, it’s all true. Near as I can tell, there are at least six separate entities here, and most of them are in a bad mood daily. They all tolerate me, probably because they like Pax and they know I’m looking after him. I think he was Linton Blackmoor’s dog.”

“The most recent owner? The guy who died here in the flood?”

“Yeah. He’s still here, too, I think. I don’t know how to help him or anyone else since I can’t see them or communicate with them, so we just put up with each other. Kind of like a really bad roommate situation.”

Dez looked around the room, eyes settling on the rumpled pile of blankets on the fainting couch and what was left of last night’s now-extinguished fire. “And you’ve been living here? I mean, you spent two years in this place by yourself?”

“I had Pax.”

“I know. I just meant…. Bloody hell, Sully.”

“It’s not so bad. I’ve got a roof over my head, a way to more or less keep warm, and a stockroom with canned stuff and seeds for the garden out back. And I’ve got Pax and the best security setup a guy could ask for with Noisy Ned.”

“Yeah, but…. Bloody hell.”

It seemed like the right time to try again to fix things. “Dez, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I know, okay? I get it.”

“I didn’t keep it from you because I—”

“I heard you the first time. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You haven’t… done anything about it, have you?”

“Killed Lowell, you mean? I thought about it. Hell, I think about it at least once every five minutes. But I haven’t confronted him. Eva’s been keeping an eye on me, making sure I’m not about to fly off in a murderous rage. Listen, I don’t want to stay long, and I can’t. Lachlan’s waiting on the riverbank, guarding a boat we borrowed from some ex-cop buddy of his. Raynor called me, looking for you. He said Montague was shot to death, apparently by a sniper. And he thinks you were involved. Surveillance video shows a guy running out of the house. Someone who looks a lot like you. And… you don’t look surprised by any of this.”

Sully shrugged. “There’s nothing to be surprised about. It was me. I was there.”

Dez’s mouth drew together in a tight line, the calm before the storm. Sully waited, watching as the blood filled the vessels in his brother’s face, then decided he’d better step in to head off the worst of the explosion.

“He said he had answers, and I needed to get him to talk. If there’s a way to take Lowell down for what he did to our family, I had to try.”

“So you broke into his house and confronted him?” Dez was angry, no question, but Sully counted himself a win that the question was growled rather than shouted.

“Sort of. I snuck in while he wasn’t looking and I talked to his back, pretending I was armed.”

Sully filled Dez in on the conversation with Montague that had followed, right up to the point where the bullets started flying. When he’d finished, Dez’s fury had reduced to a more comfortable level of angry.

“You’re an idiot, you know that? Damn it, Sully. You could have been killed. Do you get that?”

“I know. I didn’t count on a sniper in the backyard.”

“The police aren’t sure if you were in on it or if you’re just a witness they need to talk to. Either way, they want you in there for a statement.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I know. And Raynor knows, I think. But he’s talking about outing you if you don’t come forward soon on your own.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“No clue. Maybe if you considered the consequences before going off and doing stupid crap, you wouldn’t end up in these situations.”

“I couldn’t have predicted an assassination.”

“But you had to have known the chances of things going bad were pretty damn good. You went anyway.”

“If he could help us take down Lowell, I wasn’t about to leave that stone unturned. I’d have thought you’d be onside with that.”

“I would have been onside with a sit-down conversation that didn’t involve a break and enter and threats.”

“He wasn’t going to say anything without serious incentive,” Sully said. “You have to see that.”

Dez’s sigh and subsequent subject change suggested he did see that. “Still leaves us with what we’re going to do about you.”

“I’m already doing the only thing I can think of. I’ve removed myself from the situation, and I’m somewhere no one will look.”

“I know this doesn’t solve the Raynor problem, but no one ever looked for you at my apartment, did they? You could stay there.”

“Dez—”

“Listen, Sully, I drove into The Forks just one time, when Raynor and I came to look for you at the Dules’ old house. We almost didn’t get out alive.”

“I lived here for two years on my own. I’m not saying it was without problems, but I managed it. I can do it again.”

There’d been a time, not so long ago, when this conversation might have gone very differently. Dez would have laid down an argument as to why Sully needed to be somewhere safe and, failing that, would have resorted to force to get his younger brother to such a place.

Things had changed. Sully could see it in the conflicting emotions passing across his brother’s face. Sully had spent much of his life struggling to exert his independence with Dez, his ability to make his own decisions and mistakes. Now that he was here, it wasn’t without some regret.

“I think you’re making another stupid mistake, but I’m done arguing,” Dez said. “You’ll do what you want. You always do. But I came here for something else. I’m pissed at you with good reason, but I had no call to say what I did to you. I’m sorry I just blurted it out like that. The Gerhardt thing, I mean.”

Sully dropped his head at the reminder, scanning the tops of his and Dez’s boots. The name reopened the door, one Sully had spent the last two days trying to hold shut.

“Sully?”

“It’s okay, Dez. After everything I told you—everything I hadn’t told you—I get it.”

“It didn’t give me the right to nail you with that. Not the way I did. It was wrong. I was wrong. It was a dick thing to do, and I’m sorry.”

Sully forced his head up, his gaze making it as far as Dez’s chin. He couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “It’s okay. Like I said, I understand.”

Dez nodded, muscles in his face relaxing a little. But not entirely. They’d each made their apologies, but words hadn’t fixed what their secrets had broken. Sully wasn’t angry at Dez for what he’d said—what he hadn’t said until two days ago. He was too busy being angry with himself. He’d held out on Dez, had kept from him a truth he had every right to know. Intentions didn’t matter, not to Dez. He was an action guy, and it was actions that counted. Sully’s had been dishonest, and with someone who deserved nothing less than complete honesty.

And there was the other thing, the reality he’d been trying hard to avoid. But it was there, not just around him but inside him. He was Gerhardt’s son. The son of a rapist, a sociopath who took advantage of patients he believed could benefit him. That man was half of Sully’s genetic makeup. His skin, blood, bones, hair, all of it was at least partly made up of Gerhardt’s genes. Emily might have been right: Inside, he was his mother’s son. But the physical parts of him, those were at least partially Gerhardt.

He didn’t want to be inside his body anymore, and it terrified him.

“You okay?”

Sully’s gaze had drifted back down, and he lifted his head to look back up at Dez. This time, he only made it as far as the logo on Dez’s T-shirt.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

He wasn’t. His brother would see that as surely as he was standing here.

Dez didn’t pursue it.

“Listen, there’s another reason we came,” he said instead. “Lachlan wants your help with his other ghost.”

“Right. I’ll do what I can. I’ll come down and talk to him.”

“We were thinking more along the lines of you coming with.”

“Okay. But after that, I’ll have to come back here.”

For the first time in his life, he hoped for an argument from Dez. He realized as he stood here, drowning in self-loathing, he needed some sort of validation that he was more than a liar, more than a rapist’s son, more than a man with the soul of a killer. Dez had always seen the best in Sully, and had been quick to remind him when he needed it. Dez had never let him down.

Until, with one word, he did.

“Fine.”

5

Conversation with Lachlan was put on hold until they reached the mainland, boat nosed into a quiet spot on the shores of Riverview Park. Sully didn’t breathe any easier when they hit land.

“I need to get the boat back to my friend,” he said. “Find somewhere to hang out where no one will notice you, then send me the location. Not your apartment, Braddock. It’s the first place Raynor will look. Now, give me a push back out.”

Lachlan didn’t wait for agreement, simply waited like a ship’s captain for his impromptu crew to shove the boat from the shore back onto the water.

Sully watched him go before turning to scan the park. A few people were around, enough to convince him to draw his hood over his head. Dez followed Sully and Pax a few steps before spinning back to the river.

“What?” Sully asked.

“My SUV. The jerk’s planning on driving my SUV.”

“So?”

“So he’s got a concussion. He’s not cleared to drive yet.”

“Well, you’ve got the keys, right?”

“Nope. I left all my valuables at his buddy’s place. My keys, my wallet, even my wedding ring. Lachlan convinced me if we were going into The Forks, we should be going empty-handed, just in case someone tried to rob us.”

Sully grinned. “I think you’ve been taken.”

“Damn it.”

“He’ll be fine. How far is it to this buddy’s place?”

“He’s out of town. I’m thinking it’ll be close to an hour before Lachlan gets back here.”

“There are too many people around,” Sully said. “And I guess we can’t go back to the apartment. Any other ideas about where to hole up?”

Dez quieted in thought. When his expression registered he’d arrived at a possible solution, it also contained an element of reluctance. “Do you still remember the back door key-code at the Black Fox?”

“I don’t want to go back there.”

“Neither do I. But it’s empty. We won’t have to worry about anyone seeing you or looking for you there.”

It was a good point, good enough to draw a defeated sigh from Sully. His years working there had largely been happy ones, the work honest and his boss Betty having become a friend. Then Betty was shot to death in the bar and Sully was nearly murdered himself. He hadn’t been back since that last bloody confrontation with Lowell, and he wasn’t eager to return now.

Dez couldn’t be much happier. After all, he’d been the one to find Sully, unconscious in a tub filled with water and blood. But he was right. They needed somewhere quiet, somewhere out of the way. A shuttered bar was as quiet and out of the way as you could get in Kimotan Rapids.

Sully led the way, Dez falling into step beside him as Pax trotted along behind, occasionally distracted by the various scents along their path.

They walked in silence the few blocks to the back alley behind the bar. The rear door came into view, its image hitting Sully with a heavy and unpleasant dose of déjà vu.

He stalled, drawing to an abrupt halt in the rear parking area.

Dez had continued a couple of steps, but returned once he noticed he was proceeding alone. “Sully?”

“I told myself I’d never come back here.”

“Me too.” Dez shrugged. “But it’s still our best option. Listen, we’ll stay out of the bar area and we won’t go upstairs.” He nudged Sully with a solidly muscled arm. “Come on. We’ll be okay.”

* * *

The door to the bar area was thankfully closed, preventing Sully from catching a glimpse of the spot where Betty had died.

But here, just feet from where he sat at the base of the stairs, he’d unsuccessfully fought the gunman. The gunman he now knew was his own foster uncle.

Dez sat in a chair Betty always kept in the back area for propping open the door, Pax reclined and snoring lightly at his feet. The sound of traffic floated past outside, but here inside, they remained locked within their own world.

Sully lifted his eyes, gaze fixing on the top of Dez’s head. He was slumped over in the chair, elbows on knees, hands cupped together in front of him. A man deep in thought.

Or trying hard to ignore the only other person in the room.

Sully wanted to say so many things, variations of apologies multiplying like rabbits inside his brain. But he knew Dez, knew he hated “sorry” on repeat. With no better way to repair their relationship, Sully looked for something else they could talk about.

He found it where he least expected it.

Until now, he’d done everything he could to avoid Gerhardt. Suddenly, an idea formed, one that might allow them to play one enemy against the other.

“Dez?”

Dez didn’t look up. “Hmm?”

“This Lowell-Gerhardt thing. I’ve been thinking. Hackman told us the two of them were in this together, at least insofar as the stuff at Lockwood with the drug. And they’re both in that Circle. We know that now too.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m wondering if the way to get Lowell might be to go through Gerhardt. He’s in there like a dirty shirt. He has to be. And he’s got to know who the guy in the mask is. Maybe he’s another in.”

That got Dez lifting his head, his eyes locking onto Sully’s. “What are you getting at with this whole ‘go through Gerhardt’ thing? You’re not thinking we’re going to find something to pin on him to get him to talk, are you? I mean, I know what he’s doing is really, really bad and even illegal, but sorry, man. Who’s going to believe a bunch of diagnosed mentally ill people over him?”

“No one. That’s not what I’m getting at. I meant we use him another way.”

“Which is?”

“His son. I don’t mean me. I mean his other son. The one who disappeared.”

“The one who he believes was kidnapped from his backyard. He was trying to get your biological mom to find him before….”

“Before she died. I know. And he asked me about him a lot too. When I was in the Blue Room, he asked me every single time, at the start and at the end.”

“But you never saw him?”

Sully shook his head. “Never. Maybe he wasn’t taken and killed. Maybe he’s still out there somewhere.”

“Or maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Could be you didn’t see him because it was the wrong place, wrong time—you being in that room in those conditions.”

“That didn’t stop me from seeing all those other ghosts they wanted me to. Some people take other people’s kids and raise them as their own, right?”

“Rarely. In my experience, most people who take kids are in it for something far, far worse.”

“But not all.”

“I guess not. It’s a thought. Anyway, what are you suggesting exactly? How are you going to get Gerhardt on board without revealing yourself to him?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet.”

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, but Dez broke the silence with a tentative question.

“You doing okay?”

“With what?”

“The Gerhardt thing. What I told you about him being… you know.”

“I’m not mad at you, Dez. I already said.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant, how are you doing with knowing, with what it means?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Sully said. “I hate him. I hate him so much it scares me. And I don’t know what it makes me, to be born from that. From him.”

“You’re the same person you were before you knew. He’s a sperm donor, Sully. Nothing more. You’ve got three true parents, and every one of them would have given everything to keep you safe and happy. Lucky risked her life to protect you, just like you’re always risking yours to help others. You’re your mother’s son, man. Don’t you ever forget.”

Sully smiled, gratitude warming his insides. “That’s a really nice thing to say, given how pissed you are at me.”

“Hey, I can be pissed at you as much as I want. Doesn’t make me care about you any less. And it doesn’t change who you are, okay? None of this changes who you are.”

“Maybe I can use it to get to Gerhardt.”

Fire flashed in Dez’s eyes. “No. No, Sully. He can’t ever know about you.”

“If he knows, maybe he’ll talk to me. Maybe I can reduce the threat with him.”

Dez stood, his size adding power to his argument. “Or maybe you increase it. You’re not just his biological son, all right? You’re evidence—not just of his warped experiments, but of the fact he raped a teenage patient. You can’t reveal any of this to him, Sully. And you sure as hell can’t reveal yourself. Don’t you even think it.”

Dez, an exceedingly large man at the best of times, looked like a grizzly bear when he got like this. Arguing with a grizzly never paid off.

Anyway, he’d made a solid point.

“Okay,” Sully said. “I hear you. And you’re right. It was a dumb idea.”

“So you won’t?”

“I won’t. I’ll figure something else out.”

“We’ll figure something else out,” Dez corrected, before returning to his chair.

Sully studied Dez a moment. “Thanks, D.”

“For what?”

“For having my back even when you’d rather pound it.”

“We’re brothers,” Dez replied. “That means I can have your back and pound it at the same time.”

Dez finished with a smile, one Sully gratefully mirrored.

The ease didn’t last long. The sound of a vehicle driving through the back alley and stopping, the engine cutting, had them exchanging a look.

“It’s too early for Lachlan,” Dez said. He got up to crack the door open, bringing Pax to standing in the process.

He closed it almost immediately, face registering something between shock and rage.

“Who is it?” Sully asked.

The answer came out a growl. “Lowell.”

Sully’s stomach dropped out as he leapt to his feet. “What?”

“Get upstairs. Find somewhere to stay hidden.”

“Come with me.”

“No.”

“Dez.”

“I need to face him.”

“If you’re planning on confronting him, I’m not going anywhere. I won’t let you do anything you’re going to regret.”

“My only regret is spending all those years looking up to the man who destroyed my family. Get upstairs.”

“Not without you. If you’re staying, so am I.”

Dez growled, the sound as dangerous as it was frustrated. Sully braced himself for the unwanted reunion, for coming face to face with Lowell after two years in hiding.

As footsteps sounded in the parking lot’s gravel, Dez at last relented. Giving Sully a shove to get him moving, Dez, with Pax immediately on his heels, jogged after his brother up the stairs.

The door to Sully’s old apartment was partially ajar, the wood splintered along the lock where Dez had no doubt kicked it in the day he’d found Sully in the tub. Sully led the way inside, moving quietly as Lowell made entry downstairs. Bypassing the bathroom, Sully led them into the living room and signalled for Pax to sit.

Besides the heavy layer of dust, the room was more or less as Sully had left it—not helpful as he’d left following a fight to near-death with Lowell and Hackman. Yet there was no sign of a struggle save a hole in the drywall. No doubt Lowell and Hackman had righted the place before leaving, eliminating any potential notions of foul play. Sully remembered that day well. Not for the first time, he wished the blow to his head at the end of the attack had robbed him of a little short-term memory.

He left his own thoughts in the past as he focused on Dez. His brother was vibrating, tension wracking his body as they stood side by side, listening to Lowell making his way through the bar downstairs. Sully slipped his phone from his pocket, ensuring it was on silent, before nudging Dez to do the same.

Dez’s hands shook as he flipped the ringer to silent and dropped the phone back into his pocket. “What’s he even doing here?” Dez hissed.

Sully shrugged, stepped closer to Dez to answer. “He owns the place. Probably needs to check it every so often for insurance purposes.”

They stood in silence a minute, maybe two, listening as Lowell’s footsteps sounded below, a creak on the old wood floors. Water pipes kicking in told Sully he was right about Lowell’s presence here. There was nothing to do but wait.

Waiting wasn’t a skill Dez had ever fully mastered.

“I can’t do this.” Dez’s voice was a low growl, teeth clenched around the words.

“You’re doing good,” Sully said, voice low.

“I’m not. I want to face him. I need to face him.” Even through the whisper, Sully could hear the emotion.

“Not now. You’ll get your chance, D, but wait until we have the upper hand.”

“We have it now. There are two of us and one of him.”

“You know where that leads. I don’t want to go to prison. Lockwood was pretty damn close to one, and I can’t live like that again. And I won’t let you put yourself there either. Anyway, I confronted him once, and it almost killed me.”

“Another reason we should deal with him now.”

“It all leads to the same place. You know it as well as I do. If you act on what you’re feeling now, it won’t come out anywhere good.” When the effect of that argument proved negligible, Sully tried a different tactic—one he knew his brother couldn’t ignore. “Kayleigh deserves a father in her life, Dez. Don’t let Lowell take that too. Your daughter’s more important than revenge.”

“Don’t you fucking do that, Sully.”

“You know I’m right.”

Dez took a deep breath, but the low growl that followed suggested calm hadn’t resulted. His hands balled into fists, and his eyes fixed on the wall in front of him as if wanting to punch through it.

The couch was within easy reach, and Sully pointed Dez toward it. Dez sat, hands white-knuckling his knees as they continued to listen to the sounds downstairs. It occurred to Sully Lowell might opt to run the taps in all the upstairs apartments as well. If so, they’d be screwed.

If Dez didn’t calm down, Lowell would be screwed.

Sully sat next to his brother, daring to lay a palm on his shoulder.

Dez shook him off. “Don’t.”

Sully didn’t try to repeat the move, nor did he say anything. Moments like this, words were neither necessary nor wanted.

Pax padded over, dropping his large head onto Dez’s knee. It was the sort of comfort Dez wasn’t as quick to push away, and he stroked the dog’s fur while his breathing gradually returned to normal.

They sat together, the three of them, until the sound of the back door closing suggested Lowell had gone. Sully released tension through a breath, relieved Lowell seemed to have foregone the full check.

Sully’s apartment didn’t overlook the back alley, so he tiptoed into the hall, keeping close to the wall as he edged up to a window on the landing that would provide a view of the rear parking area. He got there in time to see a car drive off, Lowell behind the wheel.

Dez and Pax were standing at the doorway to the apartment when Sully turned.

“He’s gone,” he said, to which Dez gave a tight nod.

Dez took two steps into the hall, turned, drew back a fist and drove a punch through the drywall.

6

Dez answered the rear door when Lachlan showed up twenty minutes later, signalling his arrival with a shave-and-a-haircut knock.

Dez was surprisingly pleased about the presence of an outsider. Sully had been hovering since taking care of his two split knuckles, watching him as if afraid he’d run out on a murderous rampage.

Sully’s worry hadn’t been entirely misplaced. Dez had never wanted to kill anyone, not really, despite having used the words in exaggeration. But never had he experienced a rage like this, one that curled around his insides like a parasite, sucking every good feeling from him and leaving only anger. Knowing he’d been just a few steps from the man who’d drowned his five-year-old brother, who’d murdered his father and all but destroyed Sully, it set off inside him a burning desire to act on his fury. He’d been able to picture it in his mind, beating Lowell to death with his bare hands. He was ashamed to think he’d enjoyed the mental image.

“Why the long face?” Lachlan asked through a smirk.

Sully appeared at Dez’s left shoulder, fielding the question for his brother. “Lowell was here.”

“Jesus. You two didn’t kill him, did you?”

“No,” Dez said, slipping his wedding band back on and pocketing the keys and wallet Lachlan handed him. “Thought about it. Thought about it hard. But no.”

“So what happened to your hand?”

“Wall,” Dez said. He stepped aside to allow Lachlan to enter.

“We didn’t confront him,” Sully explained. “We kept out of sight. He didn’t even know we were here. Dez told me you wanted some help with your second ghost.”

“Sure, but never mind that now. You’ve got me sold on your Lowell problem. I want to help bring the bastard down. Now, I know it’s not going to be easy, but nothing’s impossible. Sullivan, take me through everything you know.”

Sully cast Dez an anxious glance before launching into it. Dez returned to the chair, hunched over to conceal most of his face as Sully took Lachlan through it, answering questions and providing detail, some of which Dez hadn’t heard in full. When he finished, Dez’s teeth were gritted and Lachlan was silent.

“Heavy stuff,” he said at last. “The usual solution would be you going to the police and providing a statement to that effect. Of course, I recognize that isn’t currently possible, and I can understand why—particularly now that you’re wanted on the Montague homicide.”

Dez raised his head at a growl from Pax and a sudden, sharp intake of breath from Sully, who glanced to his side and then quickly away.

“What?” Dez asked.

“Nothing.”

“No. What?”

Sully sighed. “It’s Montague. He’s been on me since after the shooting. He blames me for what happened to him.”

Dez repressed the shiver as his eyes went to the spot at Sully’s side, empty to all save his brother. “He’s here? Now?”

Pax was still growling, and Sully shushed him before answering Dez. “He didn’t follow me inside Ravenwood. The place doesn’t deal well with outsiders. But I saw him there the whole time, outside, waiting. I didn’t notice him after we left, and I’d hoped maybe he didn’t know and stayed behind. I guess he found me.”

“Crap,” Dez said. “You didn’t kill him though. You had nothing to do with his death.”

“He doesn’t believe that. All he knows is I was an intruder in his home when the shot was fired. He thinks I’m involved.”

“Why not go after the real killer?”

“He didn’t see him. People don’t become all-knowing just because they’re dead. He’s still limited to what he was aware of in life. I didn’t see the gunman and neither did he. So he blames me.”

“And he’s stalking you in the meantime,” Dez said. “That sucks.” He spoke to the air next to Sully, too pissed off at life to care about his fears. “Hey, Montague, after everything you did, maybe you should consider you had it coming.”

Two sharp barks from Pax coincided with a flinch from Sully, one that resembled a man about to get punched. “Dez, don’t. You’re just making him mad. It won’t help. It really won’t help.”

It helped Dez, but given he usually couldn’t see or experience the things Sully did, he sometimes forgot how severely they could impact his brother. No sense getting Montague riled up if it meant Sully paying the price.

“Okay, sorry,” he said to the empty space. “You didn’t deserve to be murdered. Justice is one thing but murder’s another. But Sully didn’t do it. He had nothing to do with it. You’re targeting the wrong person. You want someone to haunt, go find Lowell Braddock. He deserves all the torment you can provide.”

He waited a moment, watching Sully’s face for a change.

“Anything?” he asked when Sully didn’t comment.

“He’s less pissed. But he’s still here. Thanks for trying, Dez.”

Great. It wasn’t bad enough he was sitting here stewing over his uncle. They were now going to have to deal with the stalker ghost of a murderer to boot.

Lachlan had been unusually quiet during the exchange, and he chose that moment to speak up. “There’s no way for Montague to find out more about the shooter for us, is there? I mean, he’s uniquely positioned to be able to go places and do things none of us can.”

“He wouldn’t know where to start, and I don’t know where to point him,” Sully said. “Anyway, like I said, he blames me. In my experience, ghosts who’ve been murdered tend to be fairly one-track in their thoughts. The only way I’m going to get rid of him is to find the person who actually killed him and make sure they face justice. If he can see the person and hear them say they acted alone, that will probably be enough.”

“Right,” Lachlan said. “So all you need is for the assassin to come forward and provide a statement acknowledging everything he did and promising to plead guilty in court.”

Dez snorted. “You really see that happening?”

“Nope. I’d say it’s pretty obvious this was a professional hit. Someone paid a pro to take the judge down. And I don’t think I’m reaching by saying it has something to do with this Circle.”

“Maybe it was Lowell,” Sully said. “He knows his way around guns. And it was his name Montague brought up to police. If word got back to him somehow, he might have decided he’d have to shut the judge up.”

“You’re suggesting a leak inside the department,” Dez said.

“Not necessarily. Maybe someone went over to question Lowell about it, hoping he’d say something.”

“Maybe,” Dez said. “But it would have been a dumb thing to do, if that’s what happened.”

“Not every cop is as good as Dad was.”

“Fair point. In that case, might be worth asking Raynor if he decided to jump the gun on that one.”

“I can’t see it,” Lachlan said. “Every cop worth his salt, and even most of the dumb ones, know better than to confront a suspect without some evidence to back your play. Fallout could be a complaint against you to the department or sending your suspect underground. Either way, any chance at catching a smart criminal at something illegal could easily be diminished or eliminated altogether. And something tells me Lowell Braddock will make for one smart criminal.

“One thing’s for sure. Much as I’d love to get my teeth into this whole who-shot-the-disgraced-judge thing, the police won’t let us anywhere near that one. It’s an open investigation, and one they’re going to be loath to share info on. Plus, we’d be letting ourselves in for obstruction charges for trying to stick our noses in. We’re better off focusing our efforts on the Lowell problem. If we can take him down, maybe we’ll be lucky and solve Montague’s murder at the same time—if you’re right and Lowell was the one behind the gun. Does he have any ability to act as a sniper?”

“Like Sully said, he knows his way around guns,” Dez said. “He used to take part in competitions here and there when he was younger. It might be he still heads out to the range to practice. Fast cars and extreme sports, that’s Lowell.”

“Smart,” Lachlan said. “Really smart. He’s behind several murders and attempted murders that we know of, and only one—Betty Schuster—involved a gun. He drowned his nephew, injected his brother with epinephrine and cut Sullivan’s wrists. Avoiding a specific MO makes it harder to connect the homicides, or the person responsible—if the deaths were ever discovered to be homicides in the first place.”

“I was thinking,” Sully said. “If we want a way in with Lowell, the Circle might be the way to get there.”

“If you’re thinking undercover work, something tells me they’re not going to be keen to let any of us in. It’s a society for wealthy or soon-to-be wealthy men and women. Anyway, the last thing they’ll want is a private investigator in their ranks, and you’re supposed to be dead, so….”

“Not what I was getting at. I was thinking more along the lines of using someone already within their ranks.”

“Such as?”

“Roman Gerhardt.”

Dez sensed where his brother was going. “Sully, no. We talked about this.”

Sully met his eye and shrugged. “Just wanted to put it out there for Lachlan, see what he thinks.”

Lachlan’s gaze flitted from Sully to Dez and back again, lifted eyebrows suggesting interest. “What?”

No getting around it, Dez explained his brother’s earlier thought. “Sully reminded me Gerhardt has been intent on finding his kid, a six-year-old boy who went missing from his backyard. Gerhardt has been questioning psychic patients about it, but he’s never gotten to the bottom of it. He mentioned to me a couple of years ago that a patient told him his son was with him or something. We now know that patient was Sully’s birth mother.”

“How long after the disappearance did Lucienne Dule come into his care?”

“Fifteen years, he said.”

“Sullivan’s twenty-four now, so add that to fifteen—you get something around forty years since the disappearance. I’ll do some digging, see what I can find. It was before my time on the force, but I should be able to pull some strings and get us a look at the file.”

“What’s the point?” Dez asked. “Where are we supposed to go with this exactly?”

“I told you,” Sully said. “We might be able to use this to our benefit. Gerhardt knows what Lowell is, and he’s in a position to go to the police and have them believe him. It sounds bad saying it like this, but we can dangle his son’s case like a huge carrot to get him to help us bring Lowell down. Trade info on the son for info on Lowell.”

Lachlan pointed an index finger toward Sully and grinned. “Bingo.”

Dez crossed his arms. “And as I already told you, I don’t like it.” He turned to Lachlan. “We can’t do anything that risks exposing Sully.”

“Who said anything about exposing him?” Lachlan asked. “Near as I can see, we’re just two private investigators offering to solve the case for him. It’s perfectly true I worked for a woman purporting to be Lucienne Dule, and I can tell him she mentioned having seen his son’s ghost.”

“Except it wasn’t Lucienne. It was her crackpot sister you were dealing with. And since their mother was a patient of Gerhardt’s, he’s bound to know that.”

Lachlan rolled his eyes. “I realize that, thank you. Moving on. I mentioned a couple of minutes ago how tipping off a suspect can make them go to ground. It can have another effect though. Sometimes it can trip a suspect up, get them making mistakes and taking chances out of panic. In Gerhardt’s case, he’s obsessed—understandably—with finding his son and laying him to rest. That makes him both highly driven and emotional, which is a good recipe for screwups. It also makes him more easily manipulated by anyone with information he’ll see as helpful. If I had a nickel for every time a poor, grieving mother paid some fake psychic for supposed information on her missing child, I’d be a wealthy man. Parents will leave no stone unturned, and I normally wouldn’t play on that sort of grief. But this is Roman Gerhardt, a man we know isn’t above torturing defenceless patients to achieve his ends. My sympathy level is lessened significantly. If we can use this to our advantage, why wouldn’t we try?”

“He won’t talk to me,” Dez said. “He hates me, and he knows how much I hate him.”

“He’ll talk to you if you have information he wants. I can’t hide the fact you’re working for me, Braddock. There will be times I’ll need you to check into certain things on your own, and it’ll raise his suspicions unnecessarily if he hasn’t been made aware of you ahead of time. We’ll just have to nip your joint dislike in the bud.”

“So that’s it?” Dez asked. “We’re doing this? I don’t get a say in the fact we’re about to open one massive can of worms?”

“Every investigation is a can of worms, Braddock. You know that.”

Dez rubbed at the back of his neck. Going after Lowell was one thing, and it was something he was increasingly eager to do. But poking at Gerhardt to do it felt like a line they were safer not crossing. Sully would have to be involved in this investigation. How long would it take before Gerhardt, naturally eager for involvement in the case, saw him? The loss of his first son was tragic, but discovering Sully of all people was also his son would no doubt result in a catastrophe.

And Sully’s involvement in this was risky on a whole other level. If he got into this and found out he couldn’t handle it, where did that leave them? Sully wasn’t violent, far from it. But this was the man who had raped his mother and who had confined and tortured him. He’d confronted Lowell over Flynn and had nearly died doing it. If Sully fell into the chasm that ongoing proximity to Gerhardt would no doubt open, Dez wasn’t sure he’d be able to pull him free. Not before his brother’s life was forever shattered.

“If we’re doing this,” he said, “I’m keeping close to Sully. I’m not gonna risk this going sideways and something happening we can’t reverse. He’s already been traumatized because of Lockwood. Last thing I want is him falling under the weight of a severe PTSD flashback or something else when I’m not around to hold him up.”

“I’ll be okay, Dez,” Sully said. “I’m better prepared this time. Anyway, I need to face this. And at some point, I’ll need to face him. It’s the only way I’ll find any peace. If we can get him to turn on Lowell, to provide info to the police, I won’t need to be in hiding anymore. Best case scenario, he’d back my story and make it so I can provide a statement of my own, one the police might actually believe. If I had a way to come forward so people would believe me, we’d have him, just like that. After everything that happened to Dad and Aiden, you want that, too, don’t you?”

“Of course I want that. But not at your expense. We find a way to take him down that doesn’t destroy you in the process, I’m all-in. But Sully, this thing starts taking you down too dark a path, I’m calling it, you hear me?”

Sully smiled and Dez took some comfort in that, as well as in his following response. “I hear you.”

7

Through heavy sighs from Lachlan, Dez ran a careful visual scan of his SUV, relieved to find no dings or scratches to suggest his concussed boss had lost track of the road.

“Happy now?” Lachlan grumbled.

“I’d be happier if you hadn’t driven in the first place.”

“I miss driving. As much fun as it is to be your backseat driver, I like not needing to rely on you for everything.”

“Talk to your doctor. Get him to clear you. Please.”

Lachlan seemed to find that funny, judging from the closed-mouthed chuckle that rumbled from his chest.

Dez wasn’t keen to share in the joke. He had something on his mind, something he didn’t think he could put off for much longer.

“Are you planning to talk to someone at the police department about getting you a look at Gerhardt’s son’s file?” Dez asked.

“Yep. I’ll put in the call right away. Usually doesn’t take my buddies long to dig things up for me.”

“Good. Then I’m going to drop you off at home in the meantime. There’s something Sully and I need to do.”

“What do we need to do?” Sully asked as he let Pax into the backseat.

“We’re about to start digging into some stuff we hope will lead us to taking down Lowell,” Dez said. “We need to talk to Mom. She doesn’t know any of this, and we need to fill her in before the pieces start to move.”

Sully’s shoulders slumped. “I hadn’t even thought.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means.”

Dez hadn’t meant to start up another argument, but there it was. His emotions were all over the place these days, and the anger bubbling inside him was constantly threatening to boil over. Sully, close in both proximity and to being the source of the problem, would end up bearing the brunt of it unless Dez could get a handle on things.

That wasn’t going to happen today.

“Boys, boys, play nice,” Lachlan said. “Eyes on the prize. Whatever’s going on between the two of you needs to be dealt with or put on hold. We all need to work together if we’re going to get this thing sorted.”

Lachlan had a good point, enough to get Dez to leave the argument alone and drop into the driver’s seat. He held his tongue during the drive up to Lachlan’s, Sully doing the same from the backseat. Anything else was an impossibility anyway, Lachlan having located a classical music station he decided he wanted to listen to on high volume.

By the time they reached Lachlan’s house, he, at least, was in a good mood. “I’ll give you a call once I get the file,” he told Dez. “Keep your phone turned on.”

“I always keep my phone on. Might be on silent from time to time, but I check it.”

Lachlan looked like he had a retort burning a hole in his tongue but, thankfully, he held onto it. He settled for an inoffensive “See you later” before getting out of the vehicle and heading for the house.

Dez waited until Lachlan had let himself inside, in part because he expected Sully to get into the front passenger seat.

He didn’t.

“You’re not moving up?” Dez asked without turning.

“I’m fine back here.”

Dez wondered how true that was, given Pax took up a large part of the seat and was rarely a still passenger, but he left it alone.

Dez sent a quick text to his mom, ensuring she was home before hitting the road. She used to have an office in the city where she’d counselled families in trouble, but she’d gone on stress leave after her own family situation took such a tragic turn. She was home most of the time now, a fact that was subject to change once she learned Aiden hadn’t accidentally drowned in the creek out back. Whether she’d be able to stay at the acreage once she knew the truth remained to be seen.

It was nearly three quarters of an hour from here to the acreage, and Dez was content to make the drive in silence.

Sully, it turned out, wasn’t.

“I know you’re pissed at me, and I get it.”

“You’ve got every right to be pissed at me too.”

“Maybe, but I’m not. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We need to put all of this on hold, okay? Mom’s going to need our support, and we can’t give that to her if we’re at each other’s throats.”

“We aren’t at each other’s throats. I’m mad, not homicidal—at least as far as the situation with you. Don’t worry. Once we get there, I’m there all the way.”

Sully remained quiet a few minutes but broke it with a further statement. “I didn’t mean it the way it came out. About Mom, I mean. Of course I thought about it. I just didn’t—”

“I know, okay? Honestly, it was the same with me. I got caught up in what I was going through, and I forgot she didn’t know yet. I lost track of stuff outside myself. I’m sure it was the same with you. I shouldn’t have said what I did to you.”

“It’s okay,” Sully said. “I understand.”

This time, the silence that followed was a little more comfortable.

* * *

The SUV’s tires crunched gravel as Dez crawled up the drive toward the house.

He’d tried to think through how best to tell their mom the truth but had yet to come up with the right words inside his own brain. Of all the people in the world he wanted to avoid hurting, she was up there near the very top of the list; what he was about to say would leave her shattered.

“Dez?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll tell her, okay? I’m the one who held all this back. I should be the one to say it.”

A wave of relief washed over Dez. Sully was no conversationalist, but he was better at calm and empathetic. “Thanks, man. I can’t think of the words.”

“Neither can I.”

“You said them to me.”

“And look how that turned out.”

There was an argument to be made about the fact it wasn’t the way Sully had said it so much as the fact he’d gone so long without saying it, but he left it alone. The last thing they needed right now was another argument. Breaking the news to their mom would be challenge enough.

She didn’t make it any easier by answering the door with the beaming grin that formed the moment she saw them.

“I’ll never get tired of this,” she said as she let them in. “Seeing the two of you together again.”

The reason was obvious as she enveloped Sully in a tight hug. Until only recently, she’d believed him dead. Dez’s heart sank as he looked into his mother’s face, the picture of contentment, like her world had been righted. He and Sully were about to shake it off its axis all over again.

She turned to Dez next, wrapping her arms around his middle, her head barely making it to his chest. He tried to meet Sully’s eye but his brother was staring at the wall, the tight expression on his face suggesting he was deep in unpleasant thought. He could have been deciding on the right words or picturing their result. Either way, today’s outcome wouldn’t be good.

Dez suddenly regretted not waiting until Eva could be here with them. She was always better at this sort of thing.

Mara pulled away, at last giving Pax the playful head scratch he’d been waiting on. “You too, Pax. It’s lovely to see you again, sweetie.” She headed for the kitchen, Pax trotting along at her heels. “Come on. I’ll put on some coffee.”

Sully at last met Dez’s eye, raised eyebrows and a grimace providing the answer Dez had looked for earlier. No, he wasn’t looking forward to this any more than Dez was.

Mara busied herself with the coffeemaker while Dez slid onto one of the stools at the island, Pax settling himself into a puddle of fur next to him.

“So what brings the two of you by today?” she asked. “Or did you just want a visit with your mom?” She beamed up at Sully who’d circled the island to stand next to her.

“There’s actually something we need to talk to you about.”

She looked up at him, studied his face for a few seconds. “It’s something I’m not going to want to hear.”

He shook his head. “But it’s something you need to hear.”

Dez glanced behind him. The kitchen table was littered with its usual array of newspapers, flyers and magazines but was otherwise clear, the logical place to have this conversation.

“Maybe we should sit down,” he suggested, receiving a nod from Sully in response.

“Good idea.”

Mara glanced back at the coffeemaker. “Are you sure you don’t want coffee first?”

“I’d rather just get this out,” Sully said. “Is that okay?”

“It depends. You’re not leaving again, are you?”

“No, nothing like that. And nobody’s sick or dying. It’s about something that already happened. About Dad and Aiden.”

Sully’s words proved sufficient to get her circling the island for the table where Dez pulled out her usual chair. The brothers gravitated to their old spots, leaving just one chair—their dad’s—empty.

Or not so empty. Sully’s eyes flitted to it, held there a long moment, long enough for a sheen of tears to form.

“He’s here?” Dez asked, his voice breaking unexpectedly over the last word. His own eyes went to their dad’s chair at the nod from Sully. It looked no less empty.

Never in his life had Dez wanted to see one of Sully’s ghosts. Not until today.

“You see him?” Mara asked. For a moment, she smiled. Only for a moment.

Then she remembered.

“But Sully, you only see them if….”

She didn’t finish. Sully met her eye and nodded.

“No.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“No. It’s not…. It can’t be. He—It was a heart attack. He just had a heart attack. Like his father.”

“You remember how Lowell said he injected Dad with epinephrine to try to save him?” Sully said. “The thing is, that’s not really how it happened. Lowell did inject him, but Dad wasn’t in any medical distress at the time. Lowell… he killed Dad, Mom. He did it on purpose. That’s why I can see him.”

“No, there has to be some sort of mistake, some misunderstanding. Lowell wouldn’t do that. Not to his own brother.”

Dez’s gaze returned to the empty chair, willing himself to see. Hearing it out loud like this again, seeing the impact on their mom, he needed some comfort. They all did. Just to know, to be able to see his dad, even for a moment, it would be enough. Enough to be able to meet his eye one more time, to be greeted by his warm smile, maybe hear a word of encouragement if he was really lucky. That was all he needed. Just one second.

It didn’t come.

Sully could see though. Given the way ghosts often appeared to him—looking very much dead rather than like the living person they’d been—maybe that was worse.

Sully was staring at the chair now. “You’ve never shown me how it happened. Show me now, so I can explain better.” He reached out a hand. Often, if ghosts touched him they could more easily pass along their thoughts. “Dad?”

“What’s going on?” Dez asked.

“He won’t show me,” Sully said. “I think he’s trying to protect me.”

“Sully, no,” Mara said. “I don’t want you to see that either. Stop. It’s okay.”

“But I need you to believe me.”

“I do believe you. I have always believed you. You can see him, and he’s obviously made you aware of why. That’s enough for me. But I don’t…. Why? His own brother? How could he do that? Why would he do that?”

Sully took a breath. Dez knew this was going to be the hardest part, and he thanked God Sully was here to do this. No way would Dez ever get the words out. He wasn’t even sure he could get through hearing them out loud again.

“Mom, Dad isn’t alone,” Sully said. “Aiden’s with him.”

He paused, giving the words a moment to sink in.

They did, partway at least. “You see Aiden too?”

Sully held her eye, nodded slowly.

The remaining colour left her face, but she managed one more word, a question. “Lowell?”

Sully nodded again.

Mara’s eyes filled with tears. Shaking hands came up to cover the bottom half of her face as a sob erupted. Dez slid out of his chair, knelt next to his mom and bundled her into an embrace, holding her there while she cried.

Sully, slumped in his seat with eyes downcast, held onto the rest of the explanation as Dez uttered useless words of comfort into his mom’s hair. No way anything either of them said now was going to help the situation. Certainly, nothing Sully had yet to say was going to do anything but make this worse.

Dez stayed where he was until Mara regained control. She tried to stand, presumably to go for the tissue box, but Dez gently pushed her back down and retrieved it for her. She took one and blew her nose, and ended up needing a second.

“I’m sorry,” came a quietly spoken apology from Sully. “I wish I didn’t have to—”

“Don’t,” she snapped, the one word loud and crisp enough to draw the immediate attention of both her sons. “Don’t you dare apologize to me. There’s only one person who should be sorry, and it isn’t you. The fact the two of you are having to put yourselves through this to tell me only makes me hate him even more.” Her eyes went to Dez as he returned to his chair. The pain was still there in her expression, but a flash of heated anger had superseded it. “Have you confronted him?”

“No. I wanted to—still do—but no. Sully and Eva have been holding me back.”

She nodded, eyes next going to Sully. “And you?”

“Um… I don’t—I mean….”

Sully had evidently reached the part he was going to struggle with, so Dez took up the slack. “Yeah, he did. Two years ago. It’s the reason he faked his own death and why he’s still in hiding. That supposed suicide attempt, when I found him in his tub with his wrists slashed? That was Lowell too. Him and one of the orderlies from Lockwood. And when I managed to save Sully, Lowell had him committed instead, probably made sure they kept him drugged up in there so he couldn’t say anything.”

“Oh, Sully, no.”

“It’s okay. I’m okay now.”

“Why would you have done that? Why would you have gone to confront Lowell by yourself?”

“I was angry. I wasn’t thinking straight. Dad tried to stop me, but I was beyond listening. The only thing I could think about was beating a confession out of Lowell. I almost had him too. But then Hackman turned up.”

“Why wouldn’t you have taken Dez with you?”

“I didn’t know,” Dez said. “He didn’t bother to fill me in until a couple of days ago.”

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Sully said. “And I didn’t know what you would do. If I was angry enough to go after him, I knew you would be. Dad died confronting Lowell, and I almost did too. I couldn’t let that happen to you. Either of you.”

“It wouldn’t have happened,” Dez said. “I would have killed him first.”

“Right. And you spending life in prison for killing that bastard was such a great alternative.”

Mara laid a hand over one of Dez’s to cut off his impending argument. “We know now. That’s what’s important.” She turned back to Sully. “How long have you known?”

“About Dad? Since it happened. I saw him in the car with us on the way to the hospital. I didn’t know the details at that point, but I figured it out pretty quickly.”

“And Aiden?”

Sully’s eyes flitted from Mara to Dez back to Mara, and then down to his lap. Dez’s insides tensed. Another confession was coming.

“Almost as long as I’ve been here.”

The reply had been mumbled, but Dez heard it nonetheless. “You mean since you were seven?”

Sully nodded, didn’t look up.

Dez pushed away from the table and stood, anger heating up inside him all over again. “Christ.”

A fresh sheen of tears formed in Mara’s eyes. “How is he? How does he seem to you?”

“Do you really want me to talk about this?”

“Please, Sully. I need to know.”

“He doesn’t look physically hurt or anything. He’s just dripping wet. What you need to know about him is he’s stronger than you’d expect. He’s come around a couple of times when it meant saving Dez. He looks out for him, and he does a great job of it.”

Mara nodded, allowing a couple of tears to course unchecked down her cheeks. “My boy. My baby boy.” She averted her eyes downward as a small sob erupted, but she held onto anything else, sniffling back emotion until she could meet Sully’s eye once again. “Is he here too? With your dad?”

“They’re together. They’re almost always together now.”

She managed a smile, her eyes drifting to the empty chair, searching it out. She held her gaze first at a spot that would have been Aiden’s approximate height at his death, then moved it up to what would have been the level of Flynn’s eyes had he been physically there to meet it.

“I love you both so, so much,” she said. “I’ve never, not for one day stopped thinking about you.” She glanced back quickly to Sully before returning her visual attention to her husband’s chair. “They can hear me, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. They’re smiling.”

“Both of them?”

“Both of them.”

Mara took another long moment to study the space, as if hoping she’d see something herself. At last, she returned her eyes to Sully. “Why didn’t you ever say anything during all those years? About Aiden, I mean.”

“I always knew how broken all of you were about him. At first, I didn’t know I only saw homicide victims, so I didn’t realize what happened to him was anything but an accident. And at first, I was uncomfortable talking about the things I saw.”

Dez tried to get a handle on his annoyance before responding. He knew he’d failed when his words came out sounding more accusatory than questioning. “You knew we weren’t like your other foster families. You knew we wouldn’t be assholes about it. You didn’t think we’d want to know?”

“I tried, okay? At first, I didn’t know how to talk about it. The idea of bringing it up to any of you made me really anxious. By the time I’d been here a year or so, I decided I’d try to tell you. But I didn’t know how to say it without hurting you worse, so I talked to Lowell one day when he was over keeping an eye on me. I told him what I’d been seeing. I wanted to ask him to help me talk to you guys, but he kind of went crazy.”

“What do you mean, ‘went crazy?’ ” Mara asked.

“He accused me of lying, of seeking attention. He went off on me. Said I was making up this ghost based on information I’d learned from you. Said I’d only make things worse for you if I told you. I insisted, that I was really seeing Aiden. I described what he looked like when I saw him. Then Lowell hit me.”

“Hit you how?” Dez asked.

“Punched me. In the head.”

The anger already building inside Dez’s insides bubbled. “Hard?”

Sully nodded. “Sent me across the living room. There was a bump after, but under the hair where it didn’t show.”

“Where was I when this happened?”

“You weren’t there. I think you had a football tournament or something. Mom and Dad went to watch you, but I had a stomach bug, so you guys couldn’t take me along. They called Lowell to come stay with me while you were out. After that weekend, he and I went out of our way to avoid each other.”

Everything clicked in, Sully’s lifelong distrust of Lowell. “So that’s where it started. Why the hell didn’t you tell us?”

“He told me if I said anything, either about Aiden or what he’d just done, he’d say I was lying. He told me I’d get sent back into foster care because no one would ever believe me over him. It never occurred to me he’d killed Aiden. For years, I just thought it was his warped way of trying to protect you guys from more pain. In a way, I could understand that, and it helped remind me to keep it to myself. This family is the best thing that ever happened to me. It was the first really good thing I’d ever known. I would have done anything not to lose it, even if it meant keeping secrets from you or dealing with Lowell. I knew how close all of you were to him. He was blood. I wasn’t. I believed him. I didn’t want to hurt you or to get sent back to foster care, so I did what he told me.”

Any anger at Sully Dez had left dissipated. He returned to the table, laying a hand on his brother’s head and giving it a gentle shake before sitting back down. “We would have believed you, Sull. I sure would have.”

Mara extended a hand along the table, palm up. Sully met the invitation, placing his hand in hers. “We all would have believed you, kiddo,” she said. “I’m so sorry you didn’t know that.”

Sully heaved a sigh, the sound of tension releasing. “I’ve held onto this for so long. I never thought I’d be able to say it out loud. I never knew how you’d take it.”

“After all these years, how could you not have known?” Mara said. “Sweetie, you’re my son. Not my foster son or my adopted son. My son. I love you with all my heart. Your dad and your brother always felt the same. If we had been asked to choose between you and Lowell, it would have been you. It would always have been you. You hear me?”

A tear wove its way down Sully’s cheek, wiped away with the back of his hand. He nodded.

“Yeah, goes for me too, jerk-face,” Dez said.

The childhood slight got the result he’d been after, drawing a burst of laughter from Sully.

Mara gave his hand one last squeeze, then stood and headed for the counter. “I think we need that coffee now. Then we need to figure out what we’re going to do about this.”

Dez got up to help his mom.“We’re already working on it. Lachlan’s in on it, and he’s giving us a hand. We’ve got an idea, but I have to admit, I’m not a huge fan.”

“What’s the plan?”

“It involves Gerhardt.”

Mara finished removing the lid from the coffee canister and dropped it a little heavily on the counter. “The maniac from Lockwood who tortured your brother? That Gerhardt?”

Dez offered her a tight smile. “Yeah. That one.” He explained what they’d learned about the Circle and Gerhardt’s apparent involvement with Lowell in the use of the experimental drug. “He knows Lowell’s secrets because he was a member of this demented little club when Lowell was directed to kill Aiden. We’ve got a solid in with Gerhardt, one we can play on to hopefully get him to turn over info we can use to bury Lowell. His six-year-old son disappeared forty years ago, and he’s never stopped trying to find out what happened to him. If we can find the boy, or if Sully can see him and get some answers, we can use that to get us what we need. Sully can’t go to the police with what he knows, but Gerhardt can. What’s more, they’ll believe him, no question.”

“He’s got some pretty horrible secrets of his own to hide,” Mara said. “I’m not so sure he’ll be willing to go anywhere near the police.”

“We’re counting on it his son means more to him than the possibility of being found out,” Dez said. “If he’s obsessed enough to put his patients’ well-being on the line to try to find the kid, I’m hoping he’ll do whatever it takes if we can give him a way to get what he’s been after.”

Mara nodded, her expression suggesting she agreed with the argument. Dez sure did. If, God forbid, it was Kayleigh, he’d move heaven and earth to find her. The possibility of jail or job loss would be meaningless next to a chance at uncovering the answers that would bring her back to him. Mara, as a mother herself—and one who had lost a child to tragic circumstances—would understand.

Mara crossed her arms as she regarded Dez. “You mentioned you’ve got some reservations,” she said. “What are they?”

This would involve another reveal, one which wasn’t really Dez’s to tell. He glanced over at Sully, waited until he met his eye and nodded his consent before turning back to Mara.

“We found out recently Gerhardt is Sully’s biological father.”

“What? How?”

“My neighbour, Emily,” Dez said, explaining what she’d told him about Lucky Dule’s tragic stay at Lockwood and the manner of Sully’s birth inside the institution.

Once he’d finished, Mara remained still and silent for a few seconds, processing, thinking. Then she returned to Sully at the table. He’d let his hair fall across his face in a way that told Dez he’d withdrawn somewhere inside himself, the way he often did during the discussion of painful subjects. Mara didn’t say anything, just wrapped her arms around him. Sully remained frozen for a moment but then returned the embrace. A quiet sob sounded in his throat as Mara, still standing, folded herself protectively over him.

Another wave of guilt hit Dez as he recalled the abrupt, careless manner in which he’d thrown the truth at his brother. Sully hadn’t spoken about the impact on him, other than the sadly expected questioning of his own character and soul given the nature of his genetic makeup. Now Dez could see just how much the truth had shattered Sully—a truth Dez had tossed out in anger as if it meant nothing.

Dez studied the tiles that made up the kitchen floor, one he’d helped his dad install a decade ago. It hadn’t changed much in all that time, the soft pattern and colour barely faded by the sunlight that frequently bathed the kitchen. But so much else had changed.

Those had been easier days. He’d been in his final year of high school, looking forward to the possibility of following in his father’s footsteps on the force. Sully had been fourteen, a kid whose dark past had been blessedly saturated by light, thanks to his place in a stable, loving family. Mara and Flynn had never truly gotten over Aiden’s loss—an impossibility—but they’d found a place to put it, enabling them to move on with their lives. Most importantly, Flynn had been alive.

Yeah, a lot had changed. And there was no going back.

Even as badly as Dez wished he could.

Mara whispered to Sully, words Dez couldn’t make out from his current position. He didn’t need to hear to understand the gist of it, Sully nodding before finally releasing Mara and excusing himself to go to the bathroom. He kept his tear-streaked, emotion-fraught face down as he went, avoiding meeting his brother’s eye—a move Dez took more as embarrassment over loss of emotional control than anger toward Dez.

Dez was angry enough at himself for both of them.

“He okay?” he asked his mom.

She returned to the coffee maker, spooning out some coffee into the filter Dez had placed inside the tank.

“He will be,” she said. “He just needs to find somewhere inside himself to put this. But he’ll come through. He’s far stronger than he ever gives himself credit for.”

Dez nodded, then decided his own confession was in order. “I was angry at him for holding back on the Dad and Aiden stuff. But I’m no better. I knew about Gerhardt for a while, and I didn’t say anything to him. I wanted to protect him.”

“I guess you can understand then why he didn’t say anything to you,” Mara said. “It says something about the two of you, that you’d want to keep each other safe from the pain of these things.”

Dez dove forward before his mom got too heavy-handed with the compliments. “After he told me about Dad and Aiden and Lowell, I tossed it out at him, about Gerhardt. I feel like an absolute piece of shit over the whole thing. I let my anger control me. I did exactly what he was worried I’d do, only I took it out on him, not Lowell. It wasn’t fair, and I feel like garbage for doing that to him.”

Mara hit the coffeemaker’s on switch, then took Dez’s hands in hers. “If there’s one thing I know about Sully, it’s that he’s very forgiving, particularly with the people he loves.”

“That’s not the point. I know he forgives me. He wasn’t pissed with me to begin with. That’s the problem. It would be easier if he hated me for it. That way I’m not the only one who’s mad at me.”

For a moment, Mara didn’t say anything as she studied Dez’s face. Then her frown turned to a smile. “You are every inch your father’s son, you know that?”

“I wish. Dad was way more patient and calm than I am.”

“Not by nature,” she said. “He worked hard at it, to be that way. He had an explosive temper he had to try hard to control sometimes. In the end, giving into it is why he left us. Had he taken what he learned to his police colleagues rather than charging off to confront Lowell, he’d probably still be here. At the same time, I can’t blame him for it. Had I known all of this back then, I would likely have gone with him—and not to hold him back either. You’d be visiting both your parents in prison right now.”

“And now?” Dez asked. “How are you handling it?”

“Honestly? I haven’t figured it out yet. Part of me wants to do exactly what your dad did and confront the bastard. The other part, the rational part, knows I can’t because my family needs me. But most of me is just sad. We were happy once, weren’t we?”

Dez nodded. “Yeah. We were.”

“I have to hold onto the hope we can be again.” She squeezed Dez’s hands, watching his eyes as hers narrowed slightly with the promise of a command. “Don’t be angry at your brother for holding out on you. And don’t be angry with yourself either. We’ve made mistakes, all of us. As good people, we feel each and every one. Anger is natural, and you need to allow yourself to feel it. But direct it where it should go. Direct it at Lowell.”

Dez forced one side of his mouth up into a half-smile. “Believe me, I intend to.”

8

It took remarkably little persuasion to get Mara to pack up a few things and come with them to Dez and Eva’s. When they started to close in on Lowell, odds were he’d lash out like a trapped animal. A certain wisdom was found in the adage about safety in numbers, and Sully liked the idea of Mara, Eva, Kayleigh and Dez being in a position to have each other’s backs.

Ordinarily, he would have stayed with them. But the situation was far from ordinary, and he was more likely than the others to be targeted once everything hit the fan. He hadn’t said anything, but the moment the situation turned ugly, he planned to reveal himself to Lowell. If he could keep the killer’s attention fixed on him, it wouldn’t be honed in on anyone else.

They arrived at the house just as Kayleigh got home from school, and Sully, who had just set down Mara’s suitcase in the living room, welcomed it as she flung herself into his arms.

“You’re back!” she cried, squeezing his neck hard enough to restrict breathing as he knelt in front of her.

“Just for a bit,” Sully said. “Your dad and I need to go do some stuff. He’ll be back later though.”

“What about you?”

“Not tonight, but I’ll see you again soon, all right?”

“Promise?”

He pulled away far enough to look into her face. Her expression held an earnestness and more than a little worry. His heart sank with the knowledge he’d put it there.

He forced a smile. “Promise.”

She gave him one last big hug before turning her attention to her father, hands on hips. “Aren’t you eating before you leave? You have to eat.”

Dez raised his eyebrows, then burst out laughing. “You sound more like your mom every day, you know that, kiddo? Don’t worry. I’ll make sure to eat.”

Sully turned to Mara while Dez and Kayleigh chatted. “You going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. It’s you two I’m worried about. Don’t let Dez do anything stupid.”

“I won’t.” Sully debated whether to say what was on his mind. He didn’t want to worry anyone, but decided they had plenty of reason to worry and to be prepared. “You know once we start closing in on this, Lowell’s likely to lash out. We need to be ready—all of us.”

“I’m more than aware. If he comes near anyone else in my family, I’ll kill him.” She stepped closer to him, as if realizing Kayleigh might be near enough to hear. “I need to help. I can’t sit idly by while my boys are out there, endangering themselves. I need you to keep me in the loop.”

“I’ll do my best. But when things start rolling, they tend to move fast.”

“Then take me with you.”

“Mom….”

“Aiden was my son. Flynn was my husband. I have every bit as much right to be involved in this.”

“I know you do. Come right down to it, you have more right than I do. But we also need to have someone here, keeping an eye on Kayleigh while Eva’s away. If Lowell figures out what Dez and I are up to, he’ll know Kayleigh’s a weak spot. Given what he’s done in the past, I wouldn’t put it past him to think up a way to use her against us.”

It might be a stretch, but then again with someone like Lowell, who knew? Really, all Sully wanted was to keep their mom out of harm’s way. It was bad enough Dez was going into the trenches with him. He’d be damned if he was going to willingly put anyone else he cared about at risk.

Without knowing it, Kayleigh timed out her approach perfectly, tugging on Mara’s shirt. “Grandma? Can you make your stew and dumplings?”

“It’s a bit late to get started on that, sweetie.”

“It’s okay. Mom won’t be back for supper, and I don’t mind eating late.” She put on her most winning smile. “I’ll help you.”

No way Mara could refuse that offer. “Okay. But I’m not sure your mom and dad have all the ingredients.”

“Let’s look.”

With Kayleigh tugging at her hand, Mara allowed herself to be led to the kitchen.

Dez had gone off somewhere, and Sully spotted him a minute or so later, coming down the stairs with something in his hand.

“It’s a portable charger,” Dez said, placing it in Sully’s hand. “I’ve got a second one I’m charging up now, but this one’s good to go. It should be set for something like ten charges.”

“For what?”

“Your phone, dummy. If you’re insisting on staying at Ravenwood, you’ll need a way to keep your phone charged. I don’t like the idea of you being all the way over there with no way for us to reach each other. I’m thinking if you use this one until it starts running dry, then we can switch them out. I’ll give you the other one while I recharge this one.”

Sully pocketed the device. “Okay, thanks.”

“Sure you won’t consider staying here?”

“I’m sure. It’s safer if I’m not around.”

“Safer for who? Not you, obviously.”

It seemed like a good time for a subject change. “Just so you know, Mom wants in on this.”

“No fucking way.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.”

“If Lowell was willing to kill his own brother, he’d think nothing of going after her too. I don’t want her in his crosshairs. Not for anything.”

“I get it, but she’s got a point too. Aiden was her son, and Dad was her husband. Would you be content to sit it out if it was Eva and Kayleigh?”

Dez blew out a tension-filled breath. “Maybe we shouldn’t have told her yet.”

“She had a right to know, Dez, same as you.”

“When has that mattered to you before?” Dez asked. But this time, he combined it with a smile that told Sully he wasn’t the same level of angry. He glanced back to the kitchen where Mara and Kayleigh were rifling through the fridge, looking for the items necessary for Mara’s stew. “She is going to stay put, though, right?”

“For now, anyway,” Sully said. “I think I managed to convince her to stay here for Kayleigh’s safety.”

Dez lost a shade of colour, and Sully realized his error. “Kayleigh? God, you don’t think he’d—” It took Dez all of five seconds to think through his own answer, and for the blood to return full-force to his head with the resulting anger. “If that bastard comes anywhere near my family—”

“He won’t,” Sully said. “We won’t let him.”

“Damn right, we won’t.”

Time to divert Dez to a different track. “Have you heard from Lachlan since we dropped him off? He was trying to get that file.”

Dez shook his head and pulled his phone from his pocket. After dialling, he waited only a moment before speaking. “Hey, did you…? I thought you were going to call once you…. Okay, fine. We’re on our way.” He disconnected and turned to Sully. “Lachlan got the file and he’s digging through it now.”

“He was supposed to call once he got it.”

“You know Lachlan,” Dez said, leading the way to the door. “He forgets stuff like including people when he gets his nose down on a trail. Let’s go. Oh, and I’m thinking we should leave Pax here. The storage container’s one thing, but I doubt Lachlan would be pleased to have a dog running around that art gallery he calls a home.” Over his shoulder, he called, “See you two later. Look after Pax for a bit, okay?”

“Dez!” Mara hurried out to them. “What are you two doing?”

“Nothing much,” Sully said. “We’re going to look at a file Lachlan got his hands on. It’s to do with Gerhardt’s missing son.”

Mara’s eyes pierced Sully’s, as if searching for something. “Are you sure you should be doing that?”

“If it will find us a way to get to Gerhardt or Lowell, then, yeah, we should.”

“You know what I mean.”

Sully smiled. “I’ll be okay.”

Mara appeared skeptical, proved it by training her focus on Dez. “You look after him, you hear me? Make sure he’s okay.”

Sully sighed. “Mom, I’m—”

“I’ll watch,” Dez cut in. “Don’t worry.”

“You two look after yourselves,” Mara said as her sons beat a hasty retreat through the door. “I mean it.”

* * *

Sully, hood up, rang the bell at Lachlan’s North Bank neighbourhood house.

The door opened to a mile-wide grin.

“This is shaping up to be one hell of an interesting case, boys.”

He stood aside to let them in, then led the way into his art- and book-filled living room. The contents of a file were spread out over the coffee table next to a well-used notepad and half a mug of tea. Lachlan had pulled one end of the table up to the leather recliner he returned to now, enabling him to study the file in comfort. One side of the sofa remained within easy reach of the table’s other end, and Dez sat there, leaving Sully to take a spot on the couch next to his brother.

They weren’t alone. Justice Montague, blessedly absent after they’d left the Black Fox, had opted to make a reappearance now, hovering at Sully’s other side.

Sully decided to ignore him. Nothing he could think to do would satisfy the man anyway.

“What have we got?” Dez asked.

“It’s all in the file, but I’ll give you the quick version,” Lachlan said. “As you told me, David Gerhardt was six when he went missing from the backyard of his parents’ old house—which, for our purposes, is rather inconveniently situated in The Forks. His parents told police he had a habit of wandering off, that he was an inquisitive kid who tended to forget the rules when something caught his attention. He was supposed to stay in the yard unless he was with an adult, but sometimes he didn’t listen.

“The day he went missing—July 25, 1980—Dr. Gerhardt was at work, and his wife Eloise was at home with the kid. David was playing in the yard. Eloise had been out there, too, puttering around in the garden. Judging by the photos, they had a pretty nice little yard: a few trees, lots of shrubs and flowers, many of them big enough for a kid to hide behind. When David disappeared, Eloise checked behind all the bushes and flowers first, thinking maybe he was hiding, but nothing. Then she found the gate unlatched.”

“Had she left David alone for a while or something?” Dez asked.

“The phone was ringing, and she went to answer it, she said. According to her, just a few minutes passed. When she came back out, the kid was gone.”

Dez scratched at the stubble along his jawline. “Who was on the line? If this was an abduction, the phone call might have been a distraction to get the kid alone.”

“I thought of that. So did the investigators at the time. Call was from her sister, though. Nothing suspicious there. A thorough area search was done in the hours following, and neighbours’ yards were checked too. Nothing was found, nor did anyone see any suspicious people or vehicles nearby. Granted, it was a weekday and most of the neighbours were at work. Not many people were around to witness anything.”

“Eloise didn’t have an outside job?” Sully asked.

Lachlan shook his head. “Stay-at-home mom. Apparently, the not-so-good doctor thought it was the man’s job to bring home the bacon. He liked the idea of having a woman at home to do his cooking and cleaning, bring him his slippers and pipe or whatever it is women were supposed to do in ancient times. Sounds like a real winner, this guy. You can only imagine the fallout after David went missing. No doubt Gerhardt blamed the wife.”

“No doubt,” Dez said. “Where’d she end up?”

“No one knows.”

“Gerhardt said something about her having died.”

“Maybe she did. Seems she was the subject of a short police investigation, too, a couple of months after David’s disappearance. Gerhardt called in, saying his wife had taken some things and left a Dear John letter while he was at work. It said she was leaving him, but he suspected she actually planned to go off and kill herself. He told police she hadn’t been right after David’s disappearance, which is understandable. Police conducted a search, but there was no sign of her, nor was there any indication of foul play on Gerhardt’s part.”

“They checked?” Sully asked.

“I wouldn’t say they pulled out all the stops, exactly—and there were fewer stops, given it was 1980 with no DNA capability—but they did look into the possibility, just in case. In the end, investigators simply chalked it up to a woman who couldn’t handle life in that house anymore. Given she’d taken some clothes and toiletries, it was believed she’d run off on Gerhardt. And since no sign of her popped up on the grid afterward, investigators thought it likely she’d found herself a new life or a new man and started over, likely with a new name to boot.” Lachlan plucked a photo from the scattering on the table and handed it to the brothers. “She was an attractive woman.”

Sully scanned the picture, a family photo of the Gerhardts in happier days. His eyes went immediately to Gerhardt himself. He’d never seen a photo of him in his younger years, and Sully estimated his age in this picture to be near the age Sully was now. He searched the face and the form of the man, looking for similarities to himself, all the while hoping he’d find none. The fewer characteristics he shared with Gerhardt, the better.

“Sull? You with me?”

Sully snapped his gaze from the photo to Dez’s face. “What?”

“I asked you a question.”

“Sorry, I missed it.”

Dez studied his face, and Sully did his best to appear impassive. When Dez raised an eyebrow, Sully knew he’d failed. Surprisingly, he let it drop. For now, anyway.

“I asked if you’d ever seen this kid or the wife anywhere before.”

Sully returned to the photo, this time focusing on the other two people in it. Eloise Gerhardt was, as Lachlan had said, an attractive woman: honey blonde hair, perfect smile, pretty, petite figure. A little too much makeup, but given the photo had been taken in the late 1970s, that was probably to be expected. David sat on her lap, then a boy of about four years. He held a toy train in his hands and wore a beaming smile despite the fact his blond hair had been cut into one of those terrible chunky styles that were all the rage at the time.

Oddly, despite the fact Sully had never seen the boy during those sessions at Lockwood, there was something familiar in the face.

“I’ve never seen her,” he said. “But I feel like I’ve seen the boy somewhere before.”

“In Lockwood?” Lachlan asked.

Sully shook his head. “Not there. He never appeared to me in any of those visions they forced on me. It was somewhere else. I can’t place it.”

Dez spoke quietly. “It’s not because he’s… you know.”

“My half-brother?” Sully finished for Dez, who shrugged and smiled apologetically. “No, I don’t think that’s it.”

“You spent two solid years in The Forks,” Lachlan said. “It’s possible you passed by their old house. Maybe you saw his ghost there.”

“Maybe.” But Sully wasn’t sure. He had a sense of the answer being something else, something he couldn’t put a finger on. “Are you able to make a copy of this photo? I wouldn’t mind having it with me. I want to give it some thought.”

“I don’t see why not,” Lachlan said. “Just don’t tell anyone. I’m not supposed to have the file, let alone be making copies of it.”

“Hey,” Sully said with a grin. “Who would I tell? Almost everyone I know is in this room.”

“Good point,” Lachlan said. “I’ll make you that copy, and I’ll give you the address to the old house. Maybe you could swing by there when you go back to The Forks, see if you notice anyone or anything around the place.”

“No,” Dez said. “It’s bad enough he’s at Ravenwood, but at least not a lot of people go there. If he starts wandering around The Forks, he’s a walking target.”

“I hate to tell you this, Dez, but I’ve walked around there before,” Sully said. “I’m still alive. Anyway, I’ve always had Pax with me. He’s a pretty powerful disincentive for anyone thinking I’d make a good victim.”

“I still don’t like it,” Dez said. “If you check out this house, I’m going with you.”

“I need you to come with me to talk to Gerhardt,” Lachlan said.

“Why?” Dez asked. “I won’t be much help. The guy hates me.”

“While I’m sure he’s eager for answers, I can’t imagine he’ll be in a hurry to trust a pair of P.I.s nosing around. He won’t want us anywhere near his dirty little secrets, and he’ll wonder whether we have ulterior motives. You’ll be a good in.”

“Right. Because me turning up on his doorstep is going to get us past his defences. He knows I hate him over what went down with Sully.”

“He also likely knows by now you were with his buddy Hackman when he expired. Honestly, I’m starting to think our best tactic might be you going on your own to see him, get a look inside his house, see what you see.”

“If Sully can get us some answers at the old house, it will give us an even better in,” Dez said. “And if he’s going, so am I.”

Sully jumped in before his brother got too ahead of himself. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Dez. I can get around The Forks okay on my own because I know how to look like I belong around there. You—”

“Hey, I can scruff myself up just like you can.”

“You don’t even own the right clothes.”

“We can stop by one of the secondhand shops in Riverview. They’ve got a lot of nasty-looking junk no one will ever buy. You can give me a makeover.”

“I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I don’t care what you think,” Dez said. “You’re not going alone. And before you bring up Pax, I was going to say I kind of like the idea of him acting as guard dog for Mom and Kayleigh while we’re not there. That dog barely trusts anyone, and I like that. He’ll eat Lowell for breakfast before he’ll let him hurt anyone in that house.”

Sully had planned to go back and get Pax before heading back to The Forks. The dog wasn’t just protection, he was a companion, a good friend to help him stay calm and settled in a place where calm was hard to come by. But he also saw Dez’s point. Sully would never find peace again if anything happened to anyone else he loved, especially if he hadn’t done everything in his power to protect them. If loaning them Pax would help keep them safe—and he knew it would—he was willing to make the temporary sacrifice.

“Are you planning to go to there now?” Lachlan asked.

“I’m not planning to be there once the sun sets,” Dez said. “That’s for sure.”

Lachlan appeared to be thinking, and judging by the tight expression on his face, his thoughts weren’t taking him anywhere good. “I hate to say it, but I’m not sure I’m up to the trip. Taking a boat out and sitting on the shore is one thing, but venturing in there is another. I’m not in the best shape of my life at the moment. If we were to run into trouble, I’m not sure I’d—”

“It’s okay, man,” Dez said. “We’ve got it cased. What are you going to do?”

“Keep digging through this file for a start. And I’m going to get us Gerhardt’s current home address as well. If I get it soon enough, I’ll take a spin past, see what I can see. You can get a good feel for a man by checking out his home.” He leaned forward in his chair, fixing first Sully and then Dez in a pointed look. “I know I’m not your father, and I’m not trying to be. But I’m going to insist you take every precaution while you’re in The Forks. Don’t take any chances. If you feel like things are going south, get out fast. It might prove useful to check out the old house, but it isn’t worth your lives. You understand me?”

In Sully’s peripheral vision, Dez smiled. Sully felt his own lips turning up in response to the unusual display of concern from Dez’s boss.

“Thanks, Lachlan,” Dez said. “We’ll be careful. Don’t worry.”

“Hey,” Lachlan said. “I’m a man with a concussion and a doctor with a stick up his ass. It feels like all I’m cleared to do is worry.”

9

By the time they made it back to the island upon which The Forks had been built, evening was on the verge of closing in. Sully sensed the worry wafting from Dez.

They’d stopped at a few secondhand shops first, not all of them carrying clothes large enough to fit Dez’s larger-than-normal form. As it stood, there hadn’t been much to pick from.

Sully fought the grin as he checked out his brother for the hundredth time. Dez was kitted out in a worn pair of camouflage pants, a T-shirt with a goofy logo he had promptly concealed beneath the zip of a slightly-too-small hoodie and a trench coat that somehow managed to be a little too big on him. He’d found himself a cap too, one he’d tugged further over his features each time he passed someone remotely respectable on the Riverview-neighbourhood streets.

“I look like a cartoon,” Dez complained as he finished pulling their rented rowboat onto the shore. He straightened up and lifted the bottom seam of his outer jacket. “Does this look like blood to you?”

Sully peered at the suspicious brown-red stain and shrugged. “Maybe. If it is, it’s old.”

Beneath the brim of his cap, Dez’s eyes widened perceptibly. “What if someone died in this coat?”

Sully laughed.

“It’s not funny,” Dez complained.

Sully patted his brother on the chest, then went to haul the boat farther up the shore to where he could conceal it in the trees. Dez gave him a hand. The other boat—the one Sully usually used—was still there, hidden in the greenery. They’d rented the current one at the Kimotan Rapids Rowing Club from a guy who seemed suspicious of them, and there would be hell to pay if they didn’t get it back to him by the end of the evening.

“We’ve got three hours before the club closes,” Sully said.

Dez wiped his hands on his pant legs. “You really need to reconsider this whole not-coming-back-with-me thing later. That guy already looked like he wanted to report us to the police just because of the way we looked. If I turn up without you, he’s going to think I killed you and buried your body somewhere.”

Sully chuckled. “That blood stain won’t help.”

“Shut up.”

It was quicker cutting through the mansion rather than going all the way around, so Sully went for the back door. Dez grabbed his arm.

“Can’t we go around? I don’t want to go back in there.”

“It’s quicker,” Sully said. He leaned closer, whispering the next part in Dez’s ear. “Plus I’m hoping to shake the judge.”

Dez turned wide eyes on Sully. “He’s here?”

Sully didn’t look back, but he could sense Montague behind them, a short distance back. No way he wasn’t there, having ridden over in the rowboat with them. “He’s barely left my side since he was killed.”

“We need to find a way to get rid of him.”

“One problem at a time. He won’t come in the house. I’ve figured out that much.”

Dez didn’t look sold, but the options for a guy who hated ghosts weren’t great: haunted house or stalking spirit. In the end, Dez chose the house, leading the way to the back door.

“I hate this,” he said as he went.

Sully did his best at a reassuring smile before nudging past Dez to open the door.

They’d taken just two steps inside—the door closed behind them and Montague left, scowling, in the back garden—when the whistle of something cutting through the air had Sully ducking. Noisy Ned, unfortunately, had grown wise to their tricks and had aimed lower this time. Sully grunted in pain as something caught him hard in the left hip. He looked down to see a small but solid paperweight hit the floor and roll.

“Damn it!” he shouted. “It’s me!”

He and Dez stalled in the rear entryway, waiting. When nothing else sailed through the air at them, Sully decided he’d gotten his point across.

“You okay?” Dez asked. “That thing hit you pretty hard.”

Sully rubbed at his hip. “Yeah. At least I know Ned’s on the ball.”

“How about you-know-who? Did we lose him?”

Sully took a quick glance, spotted the furious ex-judge glaring at the house from the backyard. “He’s still outside. I won’t know if we’ve lost him until we’re out the front.”

Sully led the way through the house, Dez a hovering presence at his right shoulder. Thankfully, they reached the front entrance without further problems.

With no immediate sign of Montague, the brothers walked through the large, overgrown front yard and down the long drive leading to the main road. Sully had ventured this way a few times, but could count the trips on one hand. Several times in the winter when the river had not been quite frozen enough to safely cross, he’d been forced to resort to taking stuff still left at the nearby shuttered shops. He’d been fortunate Ravenwood sat on the end of the island, farthest from the majority of the homes and businesses. Few people ventured out this way, and those who did found little to hold them here. A handful of smaller stores were in this area—those that hadn’t been utterly destroyed by the violence of the flood—and while they’d been burgled like everything else, there was still a decent supply of goods.

He hoped, with temperatures dropping, people would be less likely to venture out of doors as the evening closed in, enabling him and Dez to make their way unbothered to the Gerhardts’ old property.

Dez checked his cellphone screen. “It’s probably about a half-hour walk from here. We’ll have to make it a quick search if I’m going to get the boat back before close.”

“In The Forks, you need to do everything quick,” Sully said. “By the way, commit the map to memory. You don’t want to be flashing electronics around here.”

Dez nodded, gave his screen one last long look before handing it to Sully to do the same. Map committed to memory, Dez returned the phone to one of his many pockets and joined Sully as they passed through the large gate separating Ravenwood from the main road.

The roadway had once been well-maintained, paved and manicured for the benefit of the ultra-rich who lived on this side of the island. The flood and the subsequent years of abandonment had left the pavement cracked and outright broken, creating places for grass, weeds and even small trees to sprout. The ditch made for an easier walk, and Sully kept them there, the treed sides providing a good place to duck into should the need for quick concealment arise. Sully hadn’t told Dez, but a notorious local street gang had turned one of the nearby mansions into its stronghold, meaning it wasn’t uncommon for several members at a time to drive along here, between their house and the busier sections of The Forks. The gang had checked out Ravenwood initially, before being chased out by Ned.

Usually, if gang members were on the road, Sully had some forewarning in the sound of an approaching engine. If he heard anything like that, he’d tug Dez into the bushes and deal later with the fallout from the required explanation. If Dez found out Sully’s nearest neighbours were the inner circle of the Red Jacks, he’d use any means necessary to get Sully back to the mainland with him at evening’s end—force included.

“I didn’t really like The Forks when it was the way it used to be,” Dez said. “But this is actually kinda sad.”

“Kind of ironic too,” Sully said. “The rich chased the poor out of here constantly, and now the poor own it.”

“What’s left of it, anyway.”

They fell silent as they maintained a brisk pace west, past the island’s largest properties.

Dez commented as they moved past one spot, the property all but obscured by the trees that had grown in. “That’s where Paul Dunsmore lived, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. There’s nothing left now, though. The house was completely washed away.”

“Jesus,” Dez muttered.

Sully knew where his brother’s thoughts had gone. Four years ago, Sully had been trapped in the house with Paul, Bulldog and Bulldog’s niece. Only because of Dez and Eva’s timely arrival and some ghostly assistance were they all able to make it out alive. The fact the entire house had been taken by the flood sealed just how close they’d come.

They left it at that, and Sully kept his focus centred on the houses coming into view ahead where they lined the road. There wasn’t much left of these places, most too badly damaged by the flood waters to provide adequate shelter. They’d have more to worry about once they turned north and headed deeper into The Forks where the former businesses and numerous other homes stood. The damage had been lessened to those on higher ground when compared to buildings near the river’s edge—making them more attractive to those in need. Sully opted to steer them away from the main roads upon which most businesses were situated, taking them through residential areas instead. There, they cut through overgrown yards, avoiding the more open streets wherever possible.

They passed a few people, those who, like Sully, had sought a place farther from the crime and drug scene plaguing the west side of the island. The people here were either in a similar predicament to Sully’s—forced to avoid the outside world—or they were addicts who needed to be close enough to their dealers but wanted to avoid the unpredictability and frequent violence within the drug scene itself. Like their surroundings, these people were a wreck, an abandoned part of this city left to fend for themselves.

Dez was right. It was sad.

Dez remained a rigid bundle of tension at Sully’s side until, at last, they reached the Gerhardts’ house.

“That’s it, right?” Dez asked as the two of them stared at the large two-storey Victorian. “I can’t make out the numbers on most of these places.”

“Looks like the one we saw in the pictures back at Lachlan’s, but everything looks a lot different after the flood.” Sully peered closer. Lots of buildings in The Forks had been tagged with graffiti, but the stuff marking this building was different. These weren’t gang tags; they were personal. Deranged Doctor. Psycho Shrink. A variety of curse words. These were the markings of people who’d been to, and escaped, Lockwood.

“Check out the tags,” Sully said. “We’ve definitely got the right house.”

Dez squinted as he read. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Listen, we’ll have to watch our step going in, and not just because of the possibility of squatters. Most places on the island are badly water damaged, with rotted-out floors and everything. Stay close to the walls, or better yet, wait outside while I look around in the house.”

“No way,” Dez said. “We’re not separating. Where you go, I go. Like you said, we can stick close to the walls, just in case.” He returned his gaze to the house, and Sully smiled as he spotted the predictable shudder. “God, it looks like the setting for a horror movie.”

“It’s just a house. It’ll be fine.”

With Dez following, Sully stepped up to the gate, left askew and prevented from closing by a young tree that had sprouted. Sully squeezed past and waited for Dez to do the same before approaching the wraparound veranda.

“Would have been a nice place in its day,” Sully said.

“Yeah, sure,” Dez said. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

Maintaining the lead, Sully stepped cautiously onto the planked veranda. Several boards had snapped farther down where vandals had likely tried to stand to spraypaint the exterior, and he moved even more lightly as he crossed to the partially open front door.

With Dez at his heels, Sully pushed the door all the way open, allowing light to enter the dim interior.

The inside of the house was dark enough to suggest curtains had been drawn. Whether by the last owner before they left it the night of the flood or by squatters, they had no way of knowing.

The house stank of mildew, mould and urine, the latter suggesting the vandalism wasn’t limited to paint. The overwhelming odour provided another very good reason to make this search a quick one.

Sully hugged the short wall separating the entryway from the living area. Across from him stood a staircase, one that looked to be in one piece. With any luck, the structural damage was kept to a minimum, at least compared to other places in The Forks. Taking a few steps into the room, Sully observed a creak to the floor, but not the spongy feeling suggesting rot had taken hold.

“I think it’s safe right here, but watch your step,” he said.

“I’m planning on it.”

Sully entered first what looked to be a sitting room to the left before moving to an open kitchen behind that. From here, through a gap in the curtains, showing a dust- and grime-covered piece of window, Sully could just make out the backyard.

Dez moved to Sully’s right side. “That’s where they think he was taken from. Do you see anything?”

Sully crossed to the pane, tugged back the fragile material and scanned the area. It was heavily overgrown, and one of the large elm trees had toppled, covering much of the ground beneath. If there had been places to hide back then, there were even more now. From where he stood, there was no sign of a small child’s ghost.

“I don’t see anything from here,” Sully said. “We can go out there, though. Could be I just can’t see him yet.”

“Let’s cover the house first. I’d rather get that part over with.”

Sully patted Dez’s abs and moved around him, rifling a few drawers and coming up with nothing but rusted cutlery, pots, pans and small appliances. What paper they found had been waterlogged to the point of illegibility.

From there, they walked past a pantry and the door to the basement—“We’re not going down there. Forget it,” came Dez’s pronouncement—before ending up in a dining room. Passing through, they pushed a sliding door into a formal lounge and, from there, back to the entry hall.

Photos once lining the walls had been knocked off and now cluttered the floor with countless other pieces of rotted and vandalized debris. Nothing to see here. They’d have to go upstairs.

Sully scanned the ceiling, taking note of sagging plaster and more than a few protruding boards. The main floor seemed sound enough, but rainwater might have seeped through the compromised roof throughout the past few years, compounding the water damage on the upper floor.

“I think you’d better stay down here,” Sully told his brother. “You outweigh me by close to eighty pounds. My weight will be enough up there.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go either.”

“We came here hoping to find some answers. It’s possible David’s still around here somewhere. Sometimes kids go back to their old rooms, or it might be I’ll see him in the backyard from a higher viewpoint. Just let me….”

He trailed off as his eyes drifted to the stairs. A small blonde woman stood there, a series of ghastly stab wounds to her chest, neck and face, marking her as dead. Her eyes met Sully’s and held, widening as she recognized him as someone who could see her.

She shot forward, reaching him in a fraction of a second. He flinched, took an involuntary step back. Sometimes, in their excitement, spirits forgot the rule of personal space, and he gave himself a more comfortable distance from which to communicate.

Before he could open his mouth, she had, her fast-moving lips forming silent, unreadable words.

“Hold on,” he interrupted. “I can’t hear anything you’re trying to tell me.”

“Oh, God,” Dez said. “You found a ghost.”

Sully glanced over at his brother, who was peering at the space where Sully had just been looking. “It’s too tall for a kid, though, judging by where you were looking.”

“It’s not a kid. It’s a woman. She’s been stabbed repeatedly.”

“Any idea who?”

“I’ve got every idea,” Sully said. Her face was a little messed up but he’d recognized her once she’d gotten close enough. “Eloise Gerhardt.”

10

Sully rubbed his face, let his heart settle.

“Not the ghost we were expecting,” Dez said. “I remember Gerhardt saying something about his wife having died, but…. Jesus, Sully, what if he murdered her?” His question, one that would inspire horror in most people, had instilled in him a small, hopeful smile.

Sully raised his eyebrows. “You want to tell me why you think that’s a good thing?”

“Hey, if he killed his wife, that’s not only a way to bust that asshole for something serious, it might also give us a way to really crack open this whole thing with Lowell. If Gerhardt’s going down for something as serious as murder, he’ll have no reason to guard anyone else’s secrets—especially if he offers up info the same way Montague said he would.”

Sully hadn’t thought to cut in before Dez finished the statement. Now it was too late. Montague, summoned by his own name, reappeared as his usual intimidating presence at Sully’s shoulder.

“Damn,” Sully muttered.

“What?”

“Montague. He just found me again.”

“Aw, shit. Sorry, Sull. You think he heard me?”

“I guess he did.”

“How? We’re a decent hike away from where we left him.”

“Yeah, but I think saying his name triggers it somehow.”

Dez’s brow rumpled in thought. “How does that work?”

“No idea. I don’t understand the whole ghost travel thing. I just have to work around it.” Sully did his best to ignore Montague, returning his attention to an increasingly desperate-looking Eloise. “Like I was telling you, I can’t hear you, but I can usually see things if you’ll show me. Touch my hand and try to think of what you want me to see.”

He held up his fingers. Immediately, her hand met his, ice biting into flesh. He grunted as pain—her pain—seized his chest, neck and face. But it was more than that. The intensity of heartbreak, loss and desperation hammered into him hard enough to steal his breath. He gasped, struggling to breathe beneath the weight of her emotions. Images formed, zipping past him in a way that reminded him of those books he and Dez used to like as kids, where you flipped through really fast to make it look like the cartoons inside were moving. Nothing held inside his brain, pictures flashing bright and indecipherable as they spun past. Fire ignited inside his skull, the pain now his own.

“Sully, stop! Stop!” Hands were on him, pulling his hand back by the wrist and pinning it to his side. Instantly, the pain stopped, and Sully discovered he’d somehow ended up on his knees on the floor, a worried-looking Dez next to him. “What happened?”

“She’s intense,” he said. “Like, really intense. She’s frantic to have me help her, but it means she’s just firing stuff at me at a pace I can’t process. My brain felt like it was melting.”

“Well, don’t do that again.” Dez gave Sully a moment to collect himself before continuing. “She lost a child, Sull. I can’t begin to imagine the way that affects a parent. Loss to death is one thing, and it’s nightmare enough. But to not know…. God, I don’t even want to think what that would be like.”

Sully nodded. He didn’t have kids of his own, but he had Kayleigh. It wasn’t impossible to picture the horror of the kind of loss Eloise had suffered, and the excitement of finally finding someone she believed could help.

He lifted his head but found her gone from her place before him. Scanning the room, he spotted her back on the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “It was too much to process. Maybe if you try to focus on just one image?”

But she seemed to have a different idea. She lifted a hand, moving it in an indication for him to join her.

“She wants me to follow,” Sully said for Dez’s benefit.

Dez helped Sully to his feet. “Let’s go.”

They’d taken just a few steps up, Sully in front, when Dez’s foot broke through a stair. As he fell forward, he managed to catch himself, preventing a face plant.

“You all right?” Sully asked as Dez pried his foot out.

Back on solid footing, Dez checked his ankle. Sully noted a couple of scrapes, but nothing serious. “Fine,” Dez said.

“You’d better wait down here. I’ll try not to be long.”

Dez sighed. “That’s probably a good idea, unless you want to be dragging my carcass back to Ravenwood.” He caught Sully’s wrist as he made to follow Eloise. “Don’t let her touch you again, all right? If she wants to point you toward something, fine, but keep it there.”

“No problem,” Sully said.

While Dez returned to the main floor, Sully climbed the stairs.

The upstairs hallway sagged in places, the ceiling broken above. Nearer the end of the hall, pieces of board, brick and whatever had been in the attic had settled into a large pile on the floor. Thankfully, Eloise didn’t take him that far, leading him instead into a room off to the right.

It was a little boy’s room, its train and airplane wallpaper peeling and faded by weather and light but still visible. A shelf above the bed held a toy train, the kind a small child would play with. A bookshelf across the room contained numerous books, all of them for children.

Sully knelt to scan the titles. Eva had been big on reading to Kayleigh as a young child, and Sully had been handed the duties several times. More than a little familiar with kids’ books as a result, he still didn’t recognize any of these. He pulled a few out and cracked them open to check the years. All, he noticed, dated from the nineteen seventies or earlier.

Sully turned at an icy touch to his shoulder, one that was withdrawn almost as soon as he felt it. Eloise stood near the door, pointing to something on the yet-hidden back side of it. Sully straightened and joined her, pushing the door shut far enough to see behind it.

A child’s door-mounted hat and clothing rack hung there, a sweater and a baseball cap on its pegs. Each peg was placed beneath the car of a train, with each of those cars emblazoned with a letter that, together, spelled out a name.

DAVID.

Sully met Eloise’s eye. “He still lived here. Your husband, I mean. He lived here until the flood.”

Her expression, wistful as she gazed at the name on the rack, tightened into one Sully could only describe as disgust. It seemed Eloise shared his dislike of the psychiatrist.

Sully had questions, but Eloise left the room before he could ask them. He followed her to a room directly across the hall, one that had clearly been the master suite. Eloise gave no indication of interest in any particular spot, rather eyeing the space as if in wistful remembrance. Sully kept an eye on her as he explored the room, peering at a pair of family photos, searching the bedside drawers and scoping out the walk-in closet. Signs of Eloise were still very much present here, her image showing in the photos and her clothing still taking up a corner of the closet. The room’s decor, too—very much nineteen-seventies style—suggested Gerhardt had touched little since his wife had disappeared. They might have been estranged, and he might well have bullied her out the door, but there was no indication he’d killed her.

Then again, Sully had seen regret in killers more than once. It might be Gerhardt lived with such a regret, that his memories of Eloise remained fond, despite whatever had passed.

Sully faced the spirit, seeking out her eyes. “Did he do this to you? Did your husband kill you?”

He wanted a yes, wanted it so badly. Even if it turned out he could pin nothing else on Gerhardt, he’d be satisfied if he could nail him on even this one crime.

But Eloise shook her head. No, her husband hadn’t killed her.

“If he did something to you, you don’t owe him anything. You can tell me the truth. Did he do this?”

Another head shake.

“Who, then?”

She opened her mouth as if to speak, but closed it almost immediately, as if recalling he wouldn’t be able to hear.

Bracing himself, Sully once again held out a hand. “Show me.”

Eloise took a step forward, slowly raised her fingers to meet his. A light touch this time, fingertips to fingertips.

It didn’t matter. Images fired into Sully’s brain, rapid-fire memories rendered nonsensical to anyone but those who were there. David laughing. A backward glimpse of the house. A flash of trees. A vehicle interior. An unfamiliar room. The back of a woman’s head.

Sully pulled away when the fire relit inside his brain. As his senses returned, he discovered he was back on his knees on the abandoned home’s dusty floor, Eloise in front of him with regret written on her face. He didn’t need to hear the words to know what she wanted to say.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m fine. We’ll find another way, okay? I’ll find a way to help you.”

The dresser stood next to him, and he reached up to its surface, using it to draw himself to his feet. A little unsteady, he leaned against the dresser and spotted something inside a decorative bowl: a set of keys.

A large set of keys.

They might fit the house, but there were far too many for just that. Most notably, several of the keys were the old skeleton types, the kind you’d only ever fit to locks from the turn of the century or before.

A word formed in Sully’s brain, spelling itself out in black letters: Lockwood. The night of the flood had been terrifying, the evacuation hectic. With the island’s destruction imminent, homeowners had grabbed their most important items and fled, each desperate to be as close to the front of the line as possible. What Gerhardt had considered his most treasured possessions was anyone’s guess, but clearly his work keys were not among them.

They might not have served a purpose to the psychiatrist on that awful night, but they might prove plenty useful to Sully. He dropped the keyring into the inside pocket of his outer jacket, then returned his attention to Eloise.

“I’m sure you’ve tried to find your son since you’ve been in spirit form. Have you found out anything? I know we’re having trouble communicating, but maybe you could just nod or shake your head for me if I ask questions. Could we try that?”

She nodded, and Sully readied himself to start the questioning.

A series of loud noises and shouting downstairs—shouts that weren’t Dez’s—snapped Sully’s attention away from Eloise. More than one voice was audible. Far more than one, shouting something that sounded very much like a gang name.

“Shit,” Sully said, dashing from the room and to the stairs. Dez’s voice came now, limited to grunts and yells as he took on a fight. Sully flew down the stairs, turned the corner into the sitting room to his right.

He counted five.

All of them with metal bars or knives.

Dez was good in a fight, but not against this many. He was already stumbling, blood on his head suggesting he’d taken a hard blow.

“Hey!” Sully shouted.

The distraction gave Dez the chance to rally, to land a solid, knock-down punch to one man’s face, then start battling a second.

It also brought two of the gangsters rushing at Sully. He deked left as one sliced at him with a knife, managing to avoid the blade while placing himself in a position to punch the second man in the face. A second knife swipe, this one aimed at Sully’s gut, barely missed its target. He managed to pull his abs back just in time, limiting the severity of the resulting injury. The knifeman was already delivering another strike, and Sully ducked away from that one too.

This time, though, he collided with one of the other men. Sully found himself effectively pinned as the man caught him in a bear hug from behind. Judging by the feel of him and the strength in his sizeable arms, he approached Dez-proportions.

Already, the knifeman was moving back in. Sully got his legs up in a double kick, taking a cut to the calf but managing to catch the assailant on the chin. The knifeman fell back, blade skirting away and sliding beneath the sofa.

A glance to his side had Sully’s heart thudding even harder. Dez was being piled on by the remaining three guys, the one he’d hit earlier now back in the fray. Two were beating on him with pipes.

As Dez finally dropped beneath the weight of the attack, a third man retrieved his knife from the floor.

Panic seized Sully.

He was about to watch his brother die.

A flash of movement—the arrival of several new presences—drew Sully’s attention for a second. Flynn and Aiden, hand in hand, had appeared out of nowhere, joining the ever-present Montague in the sitting room. Eloise was nowhere to be seen, and Sully didn’t care right now where she’d ended up. His eyes had gone back to the horrifying scene, his brain churning through every worst-case scenario as he screamed at the men to stop.

Desperate to help Dez, he pulled hard against the man holding him. He managed nothing more than a slight shifting and subsequent tightening of the restraining arms.

Flynn moved closer, stretching out fingers to touch Sully’s face.

The memory blasted into his mind, the battle between himself, Lowell and Hackman in his apartment above the Black Fox. His partial possession by Harry Schuster. The extra power he’d drawn from the ghost’s energy inside him.

Flynn pulled back, returning Sully to the here and now. His father’s eyes shifted meaningfully to Montague.

The rage inside the judge. Added to Sully’s own, it might be enough.

As he had at Hackman’s apartment, the day he’d pulled the spirit of Nora Silversmith into himself, Sully focused in on Montague.

Instantly, the judge’s glower changed, narrowed eyes widening as he was towed forward.

Sully could feel him fighting it. But need and desperation drove Sully, made him stronger than any spirit. With Dez’s pained grunts spurring him on, he completed the process in seconds, absorbing Montague’s spirit and energy.

He felt it inside him now, the intensity of Montague’s fury. The man’s thoughts formed inside Sully’s brain, but he swept them aside, focus entirely on Dez.

The gangster with the knife pushed aside one of his crowbar-wielding buddies, preparing to deliver his own blow to Dez.

He was laughing. Like killing an innocent man was nothing more than a cheap form of entertainment.

Rage built, Montague’s own turning Sully’s into a lit stick of TNT. He vibrated with it, unreleased tension and fury.

And power.

Power he’d never felt.

He exploded.

The arms around him released like those of a child as he pulled free of the hold. He flew at the knifeman, tackling him hard to the floor before he could deliver a blow to Dez. The big guy was already moving back in, but Sully regained his feet in time to grab and throw him into a chair that toppled beneath his weight.

Sully’s eyes went to Dez’s, found him staring up at him wide-eyed. But it wasn’t the worry Sully saw. It was the blood.

His brother’s blood.

It was gasoline on a fire.

It overwhelmed him, the intensity of a hate so deep he knew it couldn’t be fully his own. He drew on it, let it take over. There was power in it, and he gave into it gladly.

Five men came at him now. All of them. Wielding knives and metal bars.

None of it mattered. They didn’t matter. They were nothing.

He was everything.

The world around him went red, his senses limited to the feel of his fists delivering blow after blow; of flesh shifting and bone breaking beneath him; to the cries of pain from the men. He revelled in those, drank in the smell of their blood as they one by one fell before him.

Through the crimson mist, he watched one flee, then a second. Two were on the floor, unmoving. The last of them was in his grasp, neck constricted beneath Sully’s tightening fingers. He could envision it now, the man’s head popping off like a puss-filled cyst, squeezing until it separated completely from his body.

“Sully, stop! Sully!”

He knew Dez’s voice. Knew and didn’t care.

All he cared about was the man kneeling before him, bulging eyes staring with sheer terror into his.

It had been years. Lifetimes since he’d held the fate of another man in his own, since he’d watched death close in at his bidding.

He would enjoy this. Every blessed second.

“Sully! No!”

He felt it the moment they entered, the red-haired man and his son, sharing space inside this body. They were light to his dark, light that gradually filled every space, every nook and cranny.

A memory flashed, a smoke-scented child seated in a police interview room while the red-haired man knelt before him.

Offering to give him a home.

His first real home.

“Sully, please!”

Dez. That first day at school. Taking on an entire cafeteria and Sully’s bullies, warning anyone to mess with his new brother was to mess with him too.

“Sully!”

Light filled him, drowning out the hate, the rage.

His fingers released, the man previously encased within his grasp falling, gagging, to the floor next to his two moaning friends.

Sully next released Montague, who instantly fled. He watched him go and allowed himself a moment of amazement at finally being rid of his stalker.

“Sully?”

He turned, found Dez standing next to him. Sully tried for a smile, but it was lost to blackness as consciousness faded.

11

Dez wiped another trail of blood from his forehead before it could drip into his right eye.

He needed his vision, every iota of his senses he could muster as he ran. It was bad enough he couldn’t hear much above the pounding of the pulse in his ears, anxiety and physical exertion intensifying the flow of blood. His heart thudded out a manic rhythm, one borne less of the run and more of what he’d just experienced.

Sully, draped over his shoulder, stirred with returning consciousness, but Dez ran on. He didn’t see anyone around, and he doubted anyone would be crazy enough to follow after what had just happened, but he wasn’t about to bank on it. The men who attacked them hadn’t, thank God, had guns. But who was to say they didn’t have friends nearby who did?

“Dez,” came a movement-rattled voice from the other side of his shoulder. Dez ignored Sully for now, making for a thick grove of trees next to a badly damaged house. Branches whipped at his face as Dez dove into the bushes, taking the two of them to what he hoped would be temporary shelter. When a quick scan revealed no sign of any pursuers, Dez set Sully on his feet.

Sully’s hands bunched up the front of Dez’s jacket. “Are you okay?”

“I will be. Bunch of meth heads. Goddammit.”

“Are you sure? You’re bleeding.”

Dez swiped at his head again. The back of his hand was already sticky, coated with his own blood. He’d been momentarily stunned after taking the blow, but he hadn’t lost consciousness. He wasn’t dizzy, wasn’t faint, and he wasn’t tired or confused. No sign of a serious head injury. The rest of him hurt, and he knew bruises—some of them deep and ugly—had to be forming, but nothing felt fractured. Small blessings.

“I’m fine. How about you?”

Sully gave up an obvious visual inspection of Dez to lift his own shirt. A bloody furrow had been left across his abdomen, and the lower left leg of his jeans was stained red.

Dez checked the abdominal wound before kneeling to look at the calf. “You could use a few stitches.”

“Won’t be happening,” Sully said. “I’ve got butterfly bandages back at Ravenwood. They’ve come in handy in the past.”

Dez dropped Sully’s pant leg and stood with some difficulty. On the way up, he noticed his brother’s torn and scraped knuckles, and his thoughts returned to what he’d just seen.

His quiet, mild-mannered brother, completely out of control and in possession of a strength Dez would have struggled to equal on his best days.

“Sully? What happened back there?”

“Not here,” Sully said. “Let’s get back to Ravenwood.”

They kept conversation to a minimum, Dez keeping his focus entirely on their surroundings and on any potential signs they were being followed. They reached the gates of Ravenwood without any further issues, and Dez breathed a sigh of relief as they passed through onto the property.

He was aware of the oddity of the situation, the fact he was grateful to be returning to a haunted house. Everything was relative, and he’d take Noisy Ned over a group of murderous, meth-binging gangsters any day.

Even so, Dez stuck to Sully as he went to get his bag from the hidden passage in the basement. Ned hadn’t come at them upon their return, but Dez wasn’t satisfied he, without his brother, wouldn’t make for a good target.

Bag retrieved, the two of them headed for the lounge at the back of the house.

Sully dug through the bag until he produced a bottle of disinfectant and bandages.

“The pharmacies were probably among the first places to get raided,” Sully said, wincing as he dabbed at his injuries with alcohol wipes. “The good thing is people were mostly just after the drugs. The place on this side of the island still had a few first aid supplies left. Not much, but enough to hold me.”

Dez applied the bandages while Sully pinched the skin of his abdomen, then his calf together. They then did the same with a couple of bleeding injuries Dez had sustained. “We should be doing this back at my house. This place isn’t exactly sanitary.”

“Dez.”

There was meaning in the tone, and Dez looked up to meet Sully’s eye. “Come on. You’re not seriously planning on staying here? Not after all that.”

“I have to—even more so now than before.”

“What does that mean? Look, if Raynor comes looking for you at my place, he’ll need a warrant to enter. Good luck applying to a judge for an arrest warrant on a dead guy. Anyway, he hasn’t made a move yet, so why would he now?”

“That’s not the only problem. You saw what I did back there. I’m not….” Sully trailed off, looking up and away. A sheen of tears formed, just visible in the waning light from the dusty window.

Dez stood. “You’re not what?”

“I’m not safe to be around. I’m not good.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Honestly, man, all the years we’ve known each other, and the few fights we’ve been back to back in, I can’t say I’ve ever felt safer around you than I did half an hour ago. I mean, hell, man. You saved my life.”

“You don’t get it.”

Dez crossed his arms. “So explain it to me.”

Sully finally met his eye, a challenge in the way they narrowed. “You going to tell me what just happened didn’t freak you out?”

Truthfully, yeah, it had. It had scared the hell out of him. “No. It didn’t.”

“Bullshit.” Sully dropped onto the fainting couch, lowering his head into his hands and running fingers through his hair. He’d lost the tie sometime during the fight and his hair hung loose now, dropping into its familiar curtain around his face as soon as he released it.

Dez sat gingerly next to him, wary of the capacity of the water-damaged couch to hold both of them. It held, and Dez sat forward, too, elbows on knees as he tried to see around the hair.

“What’s bullshit, exactly? You think because you went a little nuts on those guys, you’re a bad person?”

“It wasn’t all me. It was Montague. I used him.”

It took Dez a moment to puzzle through that one. “Like drawing on his energy, or do you mean like a possession?”

“The latter. Only he didn’t possess me, Dez. I possessed him.”

This time, Dez really did require an explanation. “What?”

“You remember Nora Silversmith? I pulled her off Hackman the day she killed him, but it was more than that. I pulled her into myself. And I did the same thing with Montague. I could hear their thoughts, feel their emotions—because I sucked in their energy. I didn’t use it that day with Nora, but I did this time. And I used it once before, with Harry, the day Lowell and Hackman tried to kill me. Back then, I didn’t know how to hold onto it, how to work with it.”

“And you do now?”

“I don’t know how I know. I just do. Like an instinct.”

“Okay. Wow.” Dez considered what he’d just been told as he searched for the right words. It didn’t take him long to realize there were no right words, not for this. Nothing he could come up with, anyway. “Well, it can’t be that bad, right? I mean, you used it to protect me, and yourself.”

“That’s the way it started. But it’s not how it ended. He’s there, Dez, inside me, and he’s strong.”

“Who? Montague?”

Sully shook his head. “No, I released him. He took off. I doubt he’ll be back.”

“So who do you mean?”

“The hangman.”

“He’s a past life, Marc and Raiya figured. Souls evolve, remember? They grow.”

“But maybe they don’t really change,” Sully said. “I’m not like him, not the way I am now. But when I drew those two spirits into myself, I lost who I am. I became him. But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe I became me.”

“Come on, Sully.”

“I’m the son of a rapist. I’m half-bad, even in this life. Why wouldn’t I be the kind of person who does the things I did to those gang members?”

Frustration turned to anger, had Dez grasping fists full of his brother’s jacket and turning him to face him. “Because that’s not who you are! I know you. I’ve known you most of your life. You aren’t Gerhardt, and you aren’t this hangman. You’re you. You’re who you choose to be. That’s all. And don’t forget, you stopped it. You didn’t kill anyone today. The hangman would have.”

“Yeah, you’re right, he would have!” Sully shouted back. “And I would have. I wanted to. I wanted to so bad, I could smell the blood. I could picture it in my head, what it would look like, what it would feel like to do it. I didn’t stop myself, Dez. It wasn’t me. I would have kept going.”

“So why’d you stop?”

“Dad and Aiden.” The answer, quietly spoken, had Dez releasing Sully, allowing him to turn back into the shelter of his hair. “It was Dad and Aiden.”

“How?”

“They possessed me, too, I guess. I could feel them, all their light. They were stronger than the hangman, stronger than me. That’s why I stopped.”

Emotion hit, bringing a lump to Dez’s throat that had him gasping out a breath. “Are they here? Now?”

Sully looked up, then lowered his head before answering with a nod.

Dez smiled, eyes going to the spot Sully had been looking at. “Thanks, guys.” Then he turned back to Sully, draping an arm over his shoulders. “Hey, here’s the thing. I don’t know who you would have been if you hadn’t ended up coming into our lives. But what I do know is that it doesn’t matter. You’ve got the life you’ve got, and I’m pretty sure that’s enough. I’ve met a lot of screwed-up people who have done bad things. Most of them aren’t bad. They’re just messed up, and they don’t have stable people to help them get past their problems. Most of what they do is because they use booze and drugs to medicate the pain. The monsters they become when they’re drunk or high, that’s not really who they are. I think, in a way, it’s the same with you.”

“Except it is who they are,” Sully said. “Booze and drugs, they just remove walls. Those people you’re talking about, the people who get violent, it’s because the chemicals tap into something that’s already there. They’re angry to start with. The alcohol, the drugs, they just free it or intensify it. It’s probably the same for the assholes who attacked us at the house. If they weren’t on whatever they were on, they probably wouldn’t have done what they did. But it doesn’t erase the anger they’re probably carrying around. That’s what I’m worried about, that I’m carrying something around inside me that’s like a time bomb. The Dules said their men fall to evil. I almost did.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Not because of a choice I made. It was only because someone stopped me. It’s getting stronger, Dez. I can feel it. Raiya told me my abilities would grow. What if next time, Dad and Aiden aren’t enough?”

“If you don’t use this whole spirit possession thing, it won’t be a problem, right? That much you can decide for yourself.”

“I didn’t use it either time because I wanted to. I used it to try to save people. And if, in the future, I have to choose between losing myself to evil and saving someone I love, I’ll pick the latter every time.”

Dez blew out a breath, then moved his hand to ruffle Sully’s hair before dropping it.

“I don’t understand anything about what you can do,” he said. “But I understand this much: You’re not partly bad because of who supplied the sperm to create you. You’re all good because of the people who care about you. And you’re good because of who you are at your core. Everyone’s got some bad in them, Sull. I’ve been fighting myself to keep from finding Lowell and beating him to death. It doesn’t make me a bad person. It makes me human. For once in your life, you need to stop being so hard on yourself. You’re in a bad place right now, and you’re going through a lot. Maybe it makes you more susceptible to that part of yourself. That’s normal.”

Sully didn’t say anything right away, which relieved Dez. He’d expected further argument. He waited, listening to the sound of the evening breeze outside, until Sully spoke again.

“I wasn’t sure you’d forgive me after what I kept from you. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t in my life.”

Dez patted Sully’s back. “And you won’t ever have to find out.”

He’d left his wedding band and keys behind some books on one of the shelves, and he stood to retrieve them. He checked the time on his phone, discovering it was a little past seven thirty.

“It’s getting dark out,” Sully said. “You should get going. You need to get the boat back to the club.”

“I don’t want to leave you here.”

“You have to.”

Sully stood, leading the way through the house and to the cellar stairs.

“Why this way?” Dez asked.

“Once the sun goes down, it’s safer than going outside. Too hard to see anyone who might be hiding out there. This gets us right up to the river without being seen.”

Dez followed Sully into the cellar, over to the sliding shelf and through the tunnel until they reached the hidden grate. Back outside, the spot in sight where they’d hidden the boat, Dez turned back to Sully.

“Please, come back with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Damn it, Sully.” Dez paused, then drew his brother into a hug. “You be safe, you got that?”

“I will.”

Dez released Sully, but his eyes remained fixed on the darkness behind his brother. The house was back there somewhere, concealed in shadow and overgrown vegetation. It was impossible to say what else—or, more specifically, who—might be hiding in the dark. They’d barely survived a brutal attack by a bunch of tweaking gangsters. The reality was The Forks was crawling with people like that.

The other reality was that Sully was completely alone now, not even Pax here to watch over him. Sure, Noisy Ned had proven himself a decent alarm system, and Sully could definitely protect himself if he had to—as long as he saw the danger coming. Dez wasn’t sure how much faith to put in a poltergeist when it came to ensuring Sully was looked after.

Dez had just two real fears in life: ghosts and being helpless to protect the people he loved from harm. He had zero control over the first, but he could do something about the second. And the latter fear outweighed the former by a ton.

“You know, I could make you come back with me,” he said.

“You could,” Sully agreed. “But you won’t.”

“No, I won’t. So I guess that means I’m staying too.”

“Dez, come on.”

“Honestly, I’d rather Kayleigh not see me when I’m all banged up like this. And it’s a long way back from here to my place. And—”

“And you’re reaching.” Sully’s features were barely visible now, just the dimmest outline in the dark. Even so, Dez could make out the smile.

He added one more valid argument. “Look at it this way. If I go home, I’m just going to be lying awake all night, worrying about your ass.”

“Here, you’ll just be up all night, worrying about all the noises.”

“Better that than the alternative.” He turned Sully toward the hidden boats. “Come on. Let’s get the boat returned and then come back and get a fire going. We’re going to freeze our nuts off, standing around out here.”

“You’re not going to take no for an answer on this, are you?”

“Nope. You’re stuck with me. Let’s go.”

12

Dez poked the fire, flipping over a log to expose the flame beneath to the air.

He searched for calm in the crackling of the blaze. As long as he kept it roaring, it helped to drown out some of the other noises in the house.

He’d woken Sully twice already, believing he’d heard the sound of intruders. Sully had assured him they weren’t the sort of intruders who could hurt them and went promptly back to sleep.

It hadn’t made Dez feel any better. The difference between human bad guys and ghosts was minimal when it came to his nerves.

He’d given up on trying to sleep, relegating himself to fire duty and overall watchdog as the night ticked slowly past. His body ached from the beating he’d taken, a large, painful lump having formed on his head where he’d been clobbered by the pipe.

He’d gotten up an hour ago, keeping a musty quilt pulled up over his head like a cloak as he watched the fire.

He checked his watch. Almost twenty minutes after three. Being October, several hours remained before daybreak.

Crap.

Dez jumped at the sound of a scratch from the other side of the wall. At least, he hoped it was the other side. Nothing was on this side.

Nothing visible, anyway.

He’d heard the same sound earlier, and had awoken Sully to ask about it. The answer hadn’t been encouraging. Just a ghost, he’d said. One of the women. No, Sully had never seen her, but he had a sense of her. Yes, she was annoyed they were here, but she’d tolerate them. Go to sleep, Dez.

Well, sleep wasn’t happening, Sully.

Dez stared at the wall another few seconds as the scratching moved in the direction of the door. From his spot on the floor, Dez turned, facing that side of the room. His eyes darted along the wall, movement everywhere as the flames cast their dancing light upon it. He slid closer to Sully, hand hovering in preparation to wake him should the need arise. Dez’s eyes, wide and unblinking, focused on the door, awaiting the moment it flung itself open. The scratches were still moving that way, edging ever closer.

Now they moved to the door itself.

His eyes shifted to the knob. It was unlikely he’d see it turning from here, given it was round, but he was pretty sure it was rusty enough to make a noise should she try to open it.

Please, don’t let me hear that sound, he thought.

His hand lowered onto Sully’s arm, preparing to shake him awake.

Then the moaning started. Dez had heard a similar sound before, when he’d been with an accident victim as they died. Death moan.

Crap.

Dez shook Sully’s arm.

“What?” he grumbled.

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“The moaning. It’s right outside the door.”

Sully lifted his head from the nest of his pillow and bundled covers. He was silent a moment, listening. Then he dropped his head back down and shut his eyes. “I don’t hear anything.”

Dez sighed. “Of course you don’t. You can’t hear ghosts, can you? But apparently, I can. And it’s right outside.”

“I can hear the scratching, if that helps convince you you’re not crazy.”

“I wasn’t worried about being crazy. I know what I’m hearing is real. How is it you can hear the scratching but not the moaning, anyway?”

Sully shifted the covers, burying most of his head beneath them, just his face exposed to allow his groggy answer. “I don’t know. Probably the usual problem with me not being able to hear them speaking. It’s different when they interact with the environment. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. Can you try and get some sleep?”

“With the Woman in Black standing outside the door waiting to kill us? I don’t think so.”

“She’s not going to kill us. The only one with the ability to cause us any harm is Ned, and he’s not going to.”

“But she doesn’t want us here, right?”

Sully opened his eyes to meet Dez’s gaze. “No, she doesn’t. But she’s not the boss of us, okay? They need to accept if they’re going to stay on earth that they need to share their space with the living. I’m not letting her or any of the others tell me what I can and can’t do in my own world. Neither should you.”

Dez’s eyes darted to the door, then back to Sully. “If you’re suggesting I should tell off a ghost, you’re crazy.”

“I’m not suggesting anything, except that you should try to get some sleep. If there’s any real danger, Ned will let us know in no uncertain terms.”

Dez glanced back at the fainting couch. It was on the other side of the large fireplace, too far to reach without moving from his current spot on the floor. He stood and approached it, then tugged it to the other side of the fireplace, right next to a set of chairs Sully was using as a bed.

Once Dez had lain down and tucked himself back in, he found Sully smirking at him.

“What are you doing?” Sully asked through a smile.

“Shut up.”

Sully chuckled but didn’t say anything more. The scratching didn’t stop.

Metal creaked—the sound of the doorknob.

“Sully?”

“Don’t worry, it’s one of her usual tricks. She’s never actually opened the door.”

“What if she does tonight?”

Sully didn’t answer right away. When he did, it wasn’t any kind of reply Dez had been expecting.

“Remember when Mom and Dad took us on that road trip west? We went through the mountains and stopped at that place made entirely out of pop bottles?”

“What the hell does this have to do with ghosts?”

“Nothing. That’s the point. You used to prattle my ear off when we were kids until I went to sleep. I’m returning the favour.”

“You really think it’s going to help?”

“It helped me.”

“You were seven.”

“Still helped. Now shut up and let me talk.”

Dez smiled. “Thanks, man.”

He lay there, eyes closed, forcing his brain beyond the night noises and into the past. Eventually, caught between memories and exhaustion, Sully’s voice and sleep drowned out the spirit at the door.

* * *

Dez awoke to a loud ring.

He patted the air, searching for his bedside table where he kept his phone charging. The search came up empty, and he opened his eyes to find out why. Morning disorientation fogged his brain, and it took a moment for him to piece it back together.

Ravenwood. The most haunted house in the city.

He’d survived the night.

The scratching from last night was gone; daylight streaming into the room had washed away the nighttime terrors.

Sully was gone, too, but the fire was still crackling lightly, suggesting he’d rekindled it recently.

A chill hung in the air, one that made the idea of getting up even more unpleasant. His phone had stopped ringing, and he had yet to remember where he’d put it. He’d called Eva and Mara last night, letting them know he’d be spending the night with Sully. It could be one of them was checking in, and they’d be worried if he didn’t respond quickly.

His visual sweep of the room ended as the door opened to reveal Sully, plate in hand.

“Was that your phone?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Dez said. “Can’t remember where I put it.”

Sully scanned the room until his eyes settled on a spot above the fireplace. Dez followed his brother’s gaze to the mantle and watched as Sully plucked it from its spot there. Dez accepted the phone as Sully returned to his length of chairs, sitting on one and swinging his legs up onto the others.

“Who was it?” he asked.

Dez checked his missed calls. “Eva. Probably wanted to make sure we’re still alive. What you got there?”

“Breakfast,” Sully said, placing the plate next to Dez where he could see and reach it.

Dez wrinkled his nose. The contents of a can of salmon, a few pickles and a small pile of mushy strawberries from a tin. “Dude, that’s gross.”

“Hey, it’s survival. How do you think I’ve kept myself so svelte the past couple of years?”

“I’m getting the picture. Please tell me that stuff didn’t come with the house.”

“It didn’t. I picked up a few things at a late-night convenience store before coming back here a few nights ago. Figured I’d need some supplies.”

Dez hated canned fish, but he accepted one of the pickles before calling Eva back.

“How’s everything going?” she asked as soon as she answered.

“We survived the night,” Dez said around his crunching. “How’s everything there?”

“Fine. Pax is pretty mopey, though. I think he misses Sully.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll bring him by soon. They can reunite. Sully’s mooning over Pax too.”

Sully gently slapped the uninjured side of Dez’s head.

“I’m not sure it’s such a great idea for Sully to come by here,” Eva said. “Raynor was by at the crack of dawn. Probably thought he’d catch us by surprise. He’s looking for Sully. Said he really needs to talk to him.”

“Talk to him how?” Dez asked. “Like an informal chat, or a formal police station interview room kind of talk?”

“He didn’t say anything about an interview, but he definitely wants to speak with him about the Montague homicide. Investigators are getting desperate to piece it together. They’ve made no arrests and they’ve got no suspects—and you can bet your ass the press is all over it. There was a story on the news last night about the fact the case is still unsolved, and it’s been front-page news since it happened.”

“Damn. Did Raynor mention the words ‘obstructing justice’ at all? ’Cuz I guess that’s kind of what we’re doing.”

“Yeah, well, so is he, and he knows it. That’s why he’s getting desperate. He can’t expose Sully without outing his wife at the same time. I bet he’s hoping Sully will come forward willingly and fix everything.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not happening,” Dez said. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Dez?” Sully said.

Dez hadn’t put his phone on speaker, and he put his hand against the mouthpiece to allow him to speak to his brother. “What?”

“I’ll meet with Forbes, okay? If it will help convince him I’m not responsible for the murder, it might help them solve this thing sooner.”

“He’s well aware you’re not responsible,” Dez said. “But you’re still a key witness. You’re the only other person who was there when it happened. Raynor’s not the only one who will be interested in what you have to say. If you meet with him, I’m afraid he might haul you in. There’s enough to arrest you on suspicion, at least until they clear some stuff up.”

“So I’ll phone him,” Sully said. “That’s safe, right?”

Dez shrugged, then returned to the conversation with Eva. “Sully says he’ll phone him.”

“I doubt that will satisfy Forbes, but it’s better than nothing,” Eva said. “Make sure Sully’s prepared for questioning first, though.”

“I think he’s already prepared,” Dez said. “But I’ll walk him through whatever I suspect Raynor’s going to ask.”

“Everything okay with the two of you?” Eva asked. “We haven’t really talked about it.”

“Yeah, everything’s fine. We sorted it out.”

“Good. I’m proud of you. And about everything else, with Lowell, I mean. Let me know how I can help. And your mom too. Don’t leave us in the dark on this.”

“I won’t. Thanks, babe.”

“Later, Snowman. Love you.”

“Love you too. Hey, uh, just so you know, I kind of got beat up yesterday.”

“Beat up how?” Eva’s voice was tight, as Dez had expected. He’d debated not telling her, but he’d be seeing her later today, and he didn’t want his injuries to come as a shock.

“Nothing broken, but I’m pretty banged up. Sully and I got into a scrape with some gangsters at a house in The Forks.”

“The Forks?”

Dez grimaced. He thought he’d told her. “I mentioned we were staying there, didn’t I?”

“You told me you were staying the night with Sully. I assumed you meant at your apartment. Damn it, Dez. The Forks?”

Dez spoke fast. “The house is actually fairly safe. It comes with its own poltergeist guard. It’s the rest of the island that isn’t so good.”

“Damn it, Dez.”

“I’m sorry. I thought I said.”

“You didn’t. You think if you had, I would have been so quick to let it slide?”

“Okay, point taken. We’ll come back over today, all right? Could you forewarn Mom and Kayleigh for me, that I’ve got some bumps and bruises? I don’t want anyone freaking out over it.”

“I’ll mention it. Anyway, I’m likely to add a few when I see you. Be careful—or more careful than you have been.”

“I will. Sorry, babe.”

“We’ll discuss it later.”

She hung up without another word, and Dez exhaled through pursed lips as he tucked his phone into his pocket.

“She’s pissed, huh?” Sully asked.

“Uh, yeah, you could say that. Guess we’d better track Lachlan down next.”

“Yeah, but maybe we could do that from the boat. In my experience, it’s best leaving in the early morning or late at night. Less chance of someone being able to see. If anyone catches wind I’ve got a boat hidden away here, it’ll be gone before I know it.”

“Ned won’t watch it for you?”

“Ned stays in the house, at least as far as I’m aware. This place is all he cares about.”

“Okay, well, if you’re thinking we should bail now, I’m all for it. The sooner we get out of this place, the happier I’ll be.”

* * *

While Dez rowed, Sully called Lachlan but, at Dez’s insistence, waited on the call to Forbes. Dez wanted to ensure his attention was undivided when his brother made the call, enabling him to shut things down quickly if Forbes tried any tricks.

Sully put Lachlan onto speaker, allowing Dez to hear the conversation from both ends.

“Find anything useful at the house?” Lachlan asked.

“Death,” Dez said. “We almost found death.”

Sully provided a better explanation. “We were jumped by some gang members tweaking on something. We got a little banged up, but we’ll live.”

“Speaking of which, I haven’t checked your cuts today,” Dez said. “Remind me to take a look when we get to shore. If they get infected, we’ll have some serious decisions to make.”

“I’m sure there’s a story there, but I’d rather hear if you found anything of use to our investigation,” Lachlan said.

Dez snorted. “Thanks for your concern.”

“Hey, you’re well enough to gripe at me, so you’re clearly all right. Now talk.”

“I saw Eloise,” Sully said. “She’s appearing to me as quite young, and she’s got some pretty bad injuries. She showed me their son’s room—and it was very much still their son’s room. Gerhardt had to have been living there at the time of the flood. He never left, not until he had no choice.”

“Could be he was attached to memories in the place, or hoped his kid might find his way back there,” Lachlan said. “Or it could be he was sitting on top of evidence he didn’t want to leave for someone else to uncover. I’ve seen it before. Had a case once where a guy killed his wife and buried her in the basement. Lived there for thirty-odd years—right on top of her—to make sure no one found out.”

“We didn’t have time to give the place a real thorough search,” Dez said. “And I doubt we’ll be able to. I’m not sure how those guys saw us go in there, but they swooped in on us pretty quick. It could be they’re set up in a place nearby. Until we know for sure, we can’t risk going back, not without a full-scale tactical team at our backs.”

“I did get one other thing out of it,” Sully said. “I grabbed a set of keys from the master bedroom. I can’t say for sure without checking, but they look to me like they might be for Lockwood.”

Dez raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I forgot. Things went sideways fast after I found them, and we’ve both had plenty of other stuff on our minds since.”

Lachlan offered a, “Hmm,” but didn’t add to it immediately. Dez was too focused on his increasingly sore body to bother trying to figure out what Lachlan was thinking. His injuries roared at him as he continued to row, and the shore, though only another couple of minutes away, felt miles off.

“I’m wondering,” Lachlan said at last. “Might there be value in our sneaking into Lockwood? The place is a fortress. If I had something to hide, better to keep it there than at home. He runs the place, after all, and he’s well-respected by most around there. Others fear him. I can’t imagine many would cross him by digging through his personal property.”

“Given he left his keys behind at the house, some locks were probably changed,” Dez said.

“To his office and personal filing cabinets, certainly,” Lachlan said. “But not the ones for the main building. They would’ve just given him copies of those.”

“Yeah, I realize that. What I was getting at was that anything useful to us would likely be kept in his office. Only he and maybe the cleaning staff would have keys, and I’d actually be shocked if he allowed the cleaners a way in. Guy like him, he’d probably do his own dusting before allowing anyone a chance at catching wind of one of his dirty little secrets.”

“There’s a good chance that’s not where he keeps his dirty little secrets,” Sully said. “The Blue Room is in the old, unused part of the institution. Hardly anyone has keys to that wing, and no one’s allowed in. Seems to me that might be the logical place to keep anything he doesn’t want found.”

“You have the keys to get in there?” Lachlan asked.

Sully pulled a large keyring from his pocket. Even from here, Dez could see what appeared to be a series of older keys dangling from the ring. “I might, yeah.”

Lachlan went quiet again, and Dez waited for the inevitable: the request he didn’t feel either he or Sully could meet.

“I’m thinking we might need to take advantage of this find, boys,” Lachlan said a moment later.

“As in sneak into Lockwood and search the place?” Dez asked. “No way.”

“Only the abandoned wing,” Lachlan said. “Not the rest.”

“Same thing, and answer’s the same. No way. I’m not allowed near the place, and it’s got all kinds of cameras up. And Sully—well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“I’m not saying the plan is perfect,” Lachlan said. “Hell, I don’t even have a plan yet. I’m just saying we should keep it in mind as a possibility. It might be there are answers we won’t find anywhere else.”

“My worry is we’ll find a lot more there than answers,” Dez said. “And it could be the answers we get aren’t ones we’ll want.”

13

Sully helped Dez tug the rowboat to shore and conceal it within the bushes.

The first time he’d done that, he’d fully expected to return and find it gone, but so far, no one had happened onto it.

This stretch of riverbank was relatively free of pedestrian traffic, close to nothing but the main road above and the old warehouse district behind that. The part of the warehouse area closer to Kimotan Rapids’ core had been converted into bars, night clubs, condos and trendy businesses, but this side didn’t possess the same sort of ambience. Some of the buildings were still in use, but many had been abandoned.

Regardless, it was a fairly quiet area, perfect for stashing rowboats you’d need later.

Also perfect for phone calls to suspicious police detectives.

Dez, though, seemed to have other ideas. He’d left his SUV parked behind one of the abandoned businesses, and Sully imagined he was anxious to ensure it was both still there and in one piece. Sully trailed Dez to the vehicle and watched as he gave it a visual once-over.

“Everything where it should be?” Sully asked as he and Dez dropped into the front bucket seats.

“Seems to be. Kinda thought I’d get back to find it gone. I need to invest in a steering wheel lock”

“It would have come in handier as a weapon at the Gerhardt house than in the vehicle.”

Dez nodded and slipped the keys into the ignition.

“Dez? I should call Forbes.”

Dez sighed. “Right.” He dug out his phone and laid it on the dashboard between them. “Listen, I’m going to make it clear I’m here with you. That way I can—”

“No,” Sully said. “If he starts thinking like I’m obstructing justice, and you’re a part of it, he could get your private investigator’s licence revoked.”

“Uh, newsflash. I don’t have a licence. Not yet. I’m just helping Lachlan, technically.”

“Okay, so it could keep you from getting one down the road then. Same thing. I don’t want him knowing you’re here.”

“All right, but I’m staying while you talk to him anyway,” Dez said. “If things head somewhere I don’t like, I’ll make a cutting motion and you end the call.”

“Right, but I should use my own phone then, not yours.”

Dez didn’t respond other than to re-pocket his phone.

Sully removed his own. “Any other advice?”

“He might try to trip you up by asking you the same questions in different ways. People who are lying sometimes have a hard time repeating their stories without flubbing something up.”

“That’s great because I won’t be lying. Forbes knows why I went there, and I had nothing to do with Montague getting killed, so I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Except you broke into the house of a murder victim, pretended to have a gun and threatened the guy into talking.”

“I made an edit of the audio using your laptop, and I took out the threat part. I was going to start a fake email account and send it anonymously to Forbes, but I guess there’s no point now. He knows it was me anyway.”

“Suspects it was you,” Dez said. “I didn’t confirm anything.”

“Come on, Dez. Forbes is a lot of things, but he’s not as stupid as Lachlan likes to say. He knows me well enough to recognize me on a surveillance video. I’m not starting this off by lying to him about that.”

“If he knows for sure it was you in there, he can’t sit on that information,” Dez said. “He’ll be obstructing the investigation if he doesn’t reveal what he knows.”

It was a good point, one Sully hadn’t given enough consideration to. With Forbes, ensuring his wife’s secrets remained untold would only go so far. He was a husband, but he was also a police officer with serious ambitions to reach the top of the ladder someday. Forbes was caught between a rock and a hard place, and Sully wasn’t certain he wanted to take a chance at finding out which side the cop was willing to break apart first.

“I know what to do,” he said.

“What’s that?”

Sully dialled without answering his brother’s question. He just wanted this over with before his anxiety got the better of him.

Forbes answered his cellphone almost immediately. “Raynor, Major Crimes.”

Sully put the call onto speaker for Dez. “It’s Sully.”

“Give me a minute.”

Sully waited, listening to the sounds of movement in the background. Half a minute passed before Forbes spoke again. “Wanted to get somewhere quiet. Where are you? I need to speak with you.”

Dez waved a hand around in a wild gesture of “no”; Sully didn’t need the advice. “I can’t. You know that.”

“I can’t keep pretending I don’t know anything about the tape. I know it was you in Montague’s house that night.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Gray. I’m not an idiot.”

“I’m not trying to bullshit you. I’m just calling to tell you I’d be happy to help with your investigation, but not until I can come out of the reeds. I can’t risk my life, and I can’t risk my family’s. You can’t ask me to do that.”

“A man is dead.”

“Several people are dead, including my dad. I think this all comes down to the same thing. Montague knew something about Lowell and the Circle, and he tried to use it to buy himself a deal. If word got back to Lowell, there’s no doubt in my mind he either took that shot himself or paid someone to do it.”

“Is he capable of pulling off a hit like that himself?”

“He’s trained in firearms. I didn’t have him pegged as a sniper, but I haven’t exactly spent much time around him. If I were you, I’d start checking it out. Find out which shooting clubs he uses, and if he’s certified in sharpshooting. After that, start checking into any former Armed Forces members or police officers with sniper backgrounds. Could be one of them’s running an underground murder-for-hire gig.”

“We’re already checking into that angle, given what we’re looking at here—the Army/SWAT thing, not the Lowell Braddock thing. No one’s really treating Montague’s supposed info on Braddock seriously, at least insofar as his murder goes.”

“Why not?”

“Come on. The head of a major pharmaceutical company turned assassin? Does that sound plausible to you?”

“It does, and you know it.”

Forbes sighed heavily. “All right. I know what you told me, and I believe you. But if I bring that forward without something to back it, I’d be laughed out of the room.”

Sully met Dez’s eye. Dez shrugged, then nodded agreement at Forbes’s suggestion.

“What if I told you I can get you the info you need to get people to take you seriously?” Sully asked.

“What sort of info?”

“I can’t tell you yet, but I can get something to you. I just need to know you’ll cover for me. If you drag me in there, you’ll not only put lives in jeopardy, you’ll prevent my being able to help put all of this to bed. And you do need me, Forbes. There are elements at play here no one but me can get at—namely witnesses no one else can interview.”

“Because they’re dead.” Forbes had always been good at stating the obvious. “Damn it. Okay. Okay, I’ll buy you a little more time. But you’d better be close to something.”

“We’re closing in on Gerhardt. My hope is if we can promise him the thing he wants the most, he’ll give us Lowell on a platter. If he does, I’ll send him your way.”

“You really think he’ll talk? Hell, if you could get Lockwood’s chief psychiatrist to talk, people would have to take it seriously.”

“I’m hopeful,” Sully said. “Just give me some time.”

“I need something soon,” Forbes said. He paused, and Sully sensed he was about to switch tracks. “Did you have anything to do with Montague’s death?”

“I didn’t kill him, and I wasn’t connected to anyone responsible for the shooting. I promise you that.”

“Okay. I guess that’ll have to be good enough for now. Do what you’ve got to do, but keep me looped in, you hear me? I can’t wait around forever.”

“I’m not asking you to. Our time is limited on this too. If we can’t get Lowell soon, I’m afraid more people will get hurt. Work things from your end, and tell me what you find. But play it cool, okay? If Lowell thinks police are closing in on him, he’ll lash out. It’s what he does. Don’t get caught in his crosshairs.”

“I can handle him.”

“My dad was one of the strongest people I’ve ever known. He thought he could handle Lowell, too, and he’s dead. Don’t underestimate him. We need you on our side here, and I’d rather be able to communicate with you alive than dead.”

“All right, all right. Call me with updates. If I find anything I think you can help with, I’ll call you. I can reach you at this number?”

“For now. If I need to switch out phones, I’ll get you my new number.”

Sully disconnected without a goodbye. He replaced the phone in his pocket, then met Dez’s eye and grinned. “How’d I do?”

Dez raised his eyebrows. “Good, actually.”

“I’m like a really cool confidential informant now, aren’t I?”

Dez smirked. “The only time you’re cool is when you’re standing outside in winter, but as far as the confidential informant angle, you’re doing all right. Now let’s get back to my house for a shower and change, and so I can check your injuries and get some ice on mine. After that, we’ll figure out where to go next.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Sully said. “There’s one person who knows Lockwood almost as well as Gerhardt. Emily might be able to help—and if it involves taking down Gerhardt, she’ll definitely want to. One suggestion, though? Maybe we should skip your house and go to your apartment instead.”

“I want to go home, Sull.”

“Mom’s there. The second she sees us looking like this—”

“Crap. You’re right. My apartment it is.”

* * *

Sully had changed his clothes back at Ravenwood, but he gratefully stood under the spray of Dez’s shower while Dez made himself a proper breakfast from whatever was left in the fridge and cupboards.

They traded places, Dez first ensuring Sully’s injuries weren’t turning colours they shouldn’t be. Seemingly satisfied on that count, he closed himself in the small bathroom while Sully ate the eggs, bacon and toast Dez had left for him on the counter.

While chewing, Sully’s eyes drifted to the remains of the coffee table propped up against the wall, then the short note he’d written Dez before leaving, still on the counter where he’d left it. That had been only a few days ago; Sully had anticipated it would be months or even years before they reached the point they’d come to now. He’d underestimated his brother more than once. Not only had Dez not gone after Lowell, he’d found a way to forgive Sully far sooner than expected. The past few years, Sully had complained Dez didn’t give him enough credit for being able to take care of himself; only now did Sully realize he hadn’t given his brother the credit he deserved either.

Dez stayed in the shower long enough to soak up the rest of the hot water. By the time he returned to the kitchen, Sully had finished eating and was washing the dishes in lukewarm suds.

Sully looked back at Dez, relieved to find him less pale than when they’d arrived. “How you feeling?”

Dez grabbed a towel and started drying. “I took a couple painkillers and had a good hot soak, so I’m feeling like a human being again. You?”

“Sore but okay.”

“Let me know if things get worse. God knows where that knife had been before it ended up in you. There’s all sorts of bad stuff you could wind up with.”

“Thanks, Doctor Doom, but I’ll be fine.” He handed Dez a plate.

Dez dried it and placed it back in the cupboard. “Listen, I’ve been thinking. Given Raynor’s not likely to come at you now, you should stay here. It doesn’t make sense, you going back to The Forks. This is closer, it’s safer and it’s more practical. Plus, you’ve got running water and electricity. And the best part is, you’re neighbours with Emily, not Ned or that other ghost whose main skill is finding ways to keep people from sleeping.”

“Dez, you’re back home with Eva and Kayleigh now. There’s no point holding onto this place, is there?”

“Until things are sorted out, there’s plenty of point. Like I said, I’d love it if you’d stay here. Anyway, if Eva gets sick of me again and gives me the boot, it’s good to know I’ve got a place to crash.” Dez grinned, and Sully responded with a smile of his own.

“Thanks,” Sully said. “I’ll think about it.”

“What’s to think about?”

“I just need to make sure the risks don’t outweigh the benefits.”

“I’m looking forward to the day when the riskiest thing we need to worry about is whether to eat the chicken that’s been sitting in the fridge for a week and a half.”

Once the dishes were done, they headed across the hall.

Emily answered the door, glasses-magnified eyes wide as she peered up at them. “I thought I heard someone go into your apartment, but I couldn’t get up fast enough to see anything but your back, Desmond. Both of you? Does this mean everything’s all right between the two of you again?”

Sully all but buckled under the weight of Dez’s hand as it settled firmly on his shoulder and gave it a shake.

“Yeah,” Dez said. “We’re good.”

Emily gave a little sigh as she beamed. “Thank goodness. Come in. That calls for tea and coffee cake.”

Sully grinned. Emily’s coffee cake was another great reason to move back into Dez’s apartment.

Five minutes later, the three of them were gathered around her table, Dez devouring his second piece of cake while Sully picked more politely at his.

“I was certain things would work themselves out with the two of you,” she said. “I haven’t met many siblings closer than you are.”

“Yeah,” Sully said. “We’re lucky.” He glanced at his brother in time to see the rest of the cake disappear into his mouth.

“Another piece, dear?” she asked.

“Uh… I really shouldn’t,” Dez said. The smile that formed a moment later said otherwise.

With Dez tucking into his third piece, Sully launched into the reason they’d come. “We wanted to talk to you about something you might not like discussing much. Dr. Gerhardt.”

He watched her for signs of discomfort, but didn’t see anything obvious. Nothing to indicate this topic of conversation would cause her any great distress. “Yes?”

“We’re looking into what happened to his son.”

“David.”

“Right. Were you working at Lockwood when he disappeared?”

“I was. It was a terrible time.”

“I know you described what a horrible person Gerhardt was later on,” Sully said. “Was it because of what happened to David?”

“He was a horrible person even before that. Don’t get me wrong. He was a fine doctor, and he was always very good with most of the patients and their families. But he could be a tyrant as a boss, and he treated many staff members like his servants. He utterly debased us over minor mistakes. Major ones—well, you can imagine. A young nurse once put the wrong medication into the cups. She caught it in time, thankfully, but one of the other staff members told him about it. He pulled the nurse aside and tore a strip off her, screamed at her that she was completely incompetent and a failure, and that there was no room for people like her in his workplace. She ran off in tears. I never learned what became of her after, poor dear.”

“And his family? Do you have any idea whether they might have been treated like that too?”

Emily offered a dry smile. “One thing I’ve learned about people like him. They’re very good at putting on a good front where they believe it counts. He’s always been able to charm the right people, and he’s also been an excellent advocate for the staff in terms of helping to ensure competitive pay and excellent benefits. Some staff there, the ones who never had a run-in with him, they’d defend him with their dying breath. If you asked them, they’d tell you any staff member who’s complained was simply sucking sour grapes. To answer your question, he always showed his true colours when he believed he could get away with it. I suspect his family might have suffered the same sort of wrath he otherwise reserved for weaker staff.”

“Did you ever hear any talk about what happened to David or Eloise?” Dez asked.

“Nothing about David. No one so much as breathed his name afterward for fear of upsetting the doctor. Everyone simply saw it as a terrible tragedy, and I know sympathy for Dr. Gerhardt increased significantly for a time. When Eloise left him, and no one heard from her again, some people did talk. Some said she ran off after he’d beaten her. Some said she committed suicide because he blamed her for their son’s disappearance. Others said he killed her.”

“Did you know her?” Sully asked.

“A little. I’d see her at functions now and again, and I spoke to her when I had the chance. She was a lovely woman, doted on their little boy. David was so happy around her. Two peas in a pod. She put on a pleasant face around her husband, too, but I don’t know. I always suspected something was off.” She tipped her head to the side. “Hard to say now, of course, whether I’m recalling what I truly thought then or simply imposing what I know now. He tried to have me killed, after all, once I attempted to confront him over your mother. I have hated precious few people in life, but I do hate him.”

“We’re trying to figure out a way to solve what happened to David and Eloise,” Sully said. “The thing is, I’ve seen her.”

“Alive?”

“Dead. Definitely dead.”

“And the fact you can see her means she was murdered, doesn’t it?” Emily asked.

Sully nodded. “I saw her in their old house, in The Forks. She was—”

“Not a good idea to go to The Forks, dear. Not anymore.”

Dez snorted and shook his head. “I keep telling him.”

Sully nudged his brother and continued with what he’d been trying to say. “She was beaten and stabbed. While I was at the house, I also found some keys. I think they’re to Lockwood. He must have left them there when he evacuated before the flood. We’re wondering now if there’s some way we’d be able to get in to use them. The problem is, I obviously can’t be seen there, and Dez isn’t supposed to be around there either.”

Emily’s face scrunched up a little as if in thought. A moment later, widening eyes and an open-mouthed grin told Sully a lightbulb had gone off. “As it happens, I might have a solution.” She stood, using the table edge as support, and shuffled to the side of the fridge. Pulling something from beneath a magnet, she returned with the card to the table and laid it in front of Sully. “Lockwood homecoming. One hundred and fifty years since they opened the institution. Every living person who’s ever worked there has been invited, and it will be open to families of patients too. I went to the one hundred and twenty-fifth, and I remember they had the gates open to visitors. Patients considered dangerous or a flight risk were kept inside locked areas of the institution, so access to the grounds wasn’t considered a problem. A lot of people showed up, and I’d expect the same for this reunion. Parts of the institution will be open for tours—Dr. Gerhardt’s way, no doubt, of showing what a great job he’s doing. I’d expect you’d be able to blend easily enough into the crowd.”

Sully peered doubtfully at his mountainous brother. Emily conceded the point.

“Or you could, anyway,” she told Sully.

Sully expected Dez would have something to say about that, and he wasn’t disappointed. “I don’t want you going in there without backup.”

“I’d go with him,” Emily said. “Don’t worry.”

“No offence, Emily, but I was thinking more of someone who could fight off any orderlies who might identify Sully.”

“Oh, I won’t be going without a little backup myself,” she said, tapping the side of her nose.

“What backup?”

“Messers Smith & Wesson.”

Dez had just taken a mouthful of tea, and Sully smirked as he watched his brother struggle to swallow. Once he had, he stared at Emily with wide eyes. “Your handgun? You’re going to go armed to your reunion?”

“The chief psychiatrist had me hit by a car, and when he failed to kill me, threatened me into a life of silence. Damn right, I’m going armed.”

Dez shrugged. “Guessing they won’t be running anyone through metal detectors.”

“Like I said, the security risks will be kept inside. Staff won’t be anticipating any major problems with the guests, and I won’t give them any unless they’re keen to start something first.”

Dez grinned. “I wish you were my grandma.”

Sully scanned the invitation for the date. “This is tomorrow.”

“It is. Will you be ready?”

Sully delayed his response, waiting for his heart to stop thudding like a marching band bass drum. After everything he’d gone through, he’d vowed never to go anywhere near the place again. He was fast coming to the realization he would have to break that promise to himself.

“I’ll have to be,” he said.

14

Dez knew Lachlan wasn’t going to stay quiet for long. The expected call came while he was still at Emily’s, stewing about his brother’s planned return to Lockwood.

“What’s up, Lachlan?” he asked upon answering his vibrating phone.

“We need to interview the psychiatrist. And I’d like to get on it now.”

“We’ve got a lead,” Dez said. “My neighbour has a way in to Lockwood tomorrow. It’s open for a reunion thing. She and Sully are going.”

“Maybe that’s our way in, too, then,” Lachlan said. “We could go there to speak with the doctor about the case.”

Dez liked the idea of being nearby should Sully need him, but recent memory dampened his enthusiasm for the plan. “Gerhardt told me I’m not allowed back there.”

“What’s the worst that can happen? He boots you out again? Big deal. Anyway, I’ll tell him you’re my associate, and I need your help on the investigation. If he’s truly interested in finding his son, he’ll accept whatever help comes his way. That should include you.”

“He doesn’t trust me.”

“He’s a father searching for his missing child. Trust doesn’t factor into it. Desperate parents will go to any lengths to find answers, and often that includes trusting in every two-bit shyster who comes forward. By comparison, you’re pretty damn reliable.”

Dez was happy to concede the point. He checked the card Emily had laid on the table. “Reunion starts at two tomorrow. Casual dress. I’ll pick you up at one-thirty.” His gaze moved between Emily and Sully. “You two will go at the same time?”

“I think we’re all better waiting an hour or so,” Emily suggested. “Place will be busier by three or four.”

Dez nodded. “Emily says—”

“I heard her, junior. Good idea. Pick me up at two-thirty then. In the meantime, I’d like you to swing by my office. I’ve got someone else we should speak with. Fill you in when you get here.”

Dez agreed and disconnected the call. “I guess we’ve got a plan,” he said to Sully and Emily. “I need to head over to Lachlan’s office. He’s wants to talk to someone.”

“Who?” Sully asked.

“He said he’d fill me in.”

“Does he need me?”

“He didn’t say.”

“All right,” Sully said. “I’ll head out to The Forks and grab my stuff. If I’m going to be staying at the apartment here, I’ll need it.”

Dez frowned. “Wait a bit, and I’ll go with you.”

Sully met Dez’s worry with a soothing smile. “I’m just heading to Ravenwood, that’s all. I don’t even have to go in, really. My stuff’s all down in the tunnel. I can be in and out in ten minutes.”

“Okay,” Dez said. “But do us both a favour and pick up Pax first, huh? I’d feel better knowing he’s there with all his teeth. Oh, and don’t mention to Mom about your injuries.”

Sully rolled his eyes. “Like I was going to say anything.” He turned his attention to Emily. “Sorry to ask, but would I be able to borrow your car? I’m not driving it into The Forks or anything, just to where I stashed the boat. I’d call a cab to take me, but they probably wouldn’t want Pax in there.”

“Of course you may, dear,” she said. She stood and retrieved her keys from a basket on the counter nearest the door. “Just don’t get pulled over. You don’t have a licence.”

Sully accepted the keys. “I may not have a licence at the moment, but I’m still a way better driver than Dez.”

Dez smacked him.

* * *

Lachlan was his usual picture of impatience when Dez arrived.

“What took you so long?”

“Traffic was nuts. It’s right before the weekend. Lots of people have EDOs today.”

“Whatever.”

“So where are we going?”

“Nowhere,” Lachlan said. “He’s coming to us.”

“He, who?”

“Paul Dunsmore. I think you know him.”

Paul. Son of Reynold Dunsmore, president and CEO of Dunsmore Developments. Dez and Sully had dealings with Paul four years ago while searching for Bulldog’s missing niece. Nice enough guy, had even come to Sully’s funeral. Plus, he was rich—a point that would run in his favour with Lachlan, ever on the lookout for lucrative cases.

“I know him a little,” Dez said. “What’s he want?”

“Nothing. I asked him to come.”

“Why?”

Lachlan’s face cracked into one of his all-knowing smiles. “I’ve been doing a little asking around about this Circle you boys told me about. I’ve known Paul a while, and figured his family was just the sort who’d be welcomed into a fold like that. When I contacted him, he said he knows about it and would be happy to share.”

Dez’s heart thudded. “He’s a member?”

“Has been for a while, I understand. And he didn’t sound too enthusiastic about it.”

Lachlan stopped talking as the sound of footsteps on the floorboards outside the door reached them. A moment later, a knock sounded.

Dez answered to find Paul there, watched as the man’s gaze travelled upward until his eyes met Dez’s. Paul grinned and reached out a hand to shake.

“Desmond Braddock. I haven’t seen you since—” He stopped abruptly. Dez read it in his expression, the realization he’d just stepped into an awkward topic. The last time they’d seen each other, of course, had been at Sully’s gravesite.

Dez pumped Paul’s hand warmly, seeking to ease away the man’s discomfort. “Good to see you, man. Come in. Have a seat.”

“What are you doing here?” Paul asked. “Not that it’s not great to see you.”

“Desmond works with me,” Lachlan said. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Of course not,” Paul said. He crossed the room, settling into one of Lachlan’s armchairs. He waited until Dez took the one next to him before asking, “How are you doing?”

“Okay, thanks,” Dez said. “You?”

“Fine, but I meant…. You know what I meant.”

Paul, like most of the rest of the world, had no idea about Sully’s being alive. As much as Dez liked Paul, it was a truth he wasn’t prepared to share.

Then again, Dez didn’t want to start the conversation with a lie, either.

“Oh,” he said, with a shrug. “You know.”

“Yeah,” Paul said, finishing with a pat to Dez’s shoulder.

Lachlan cleared his throat, drawing their attention to him. “You’re probably wondering why I wanted to know about the Circle, Paul.”

“Actually, what I’ve always wondered was why no one wants to know more about it. Most people have never heard of it, but those who have never seem to question it.”

“Bunch of wealthy men and women,” Lachlan said. “They’re rarely what you’d call ‘the usual suspects,’ are they?”

“Fair enough,” Paul said. “I guess the question should be why people aren’t more suspicious when rich, powerful people get together to pool their resources. I’d definitely question what’s going on. I have, actually.”

“But you’re a member, aren’t you?” Dez asked.

“My parents are founding members and they brought my brother and me in. We really had little choice in the matter, given we’re all co-owners of Dunsmore Developments.” He shrugged. “I try to have as little to do with the Circle as possible. I attend meetings as required, but I stay out of decision-making. My parents are majority shareholders in our company, anyway. They make all the big decisions for us—which includes anything to do with the Circle. Personally, I wish it didn’t exist, but that’s just me.”

“We know a little about the Circle,” Lachlan said. “But we’d love to know more. What can you tell us?”

“It’s been around quite a few years. Decades, actually. It started off pretty small, just a few pissed-off, rich, white men who couldn’t get into the Masons or something like that. Since then, it’s grown to more ridiculous proportions.

“In essence, it’s become a mini-bank. Members invest when they find someone they believe will go places. It’s an incestuous little group, everyone sitting on everyone’s boards or acting as investors in each other’s companies. My father, in particular, has dropped money into countless ventures.” He met Dez’s eye. “That includes your uncle. My father had a fair hand in LOBRA’s establishment, and he put up a significant amount of capital to help Lowell set it up back in the day—construction, hiring, research, everything. It was costly, you can imagine, but my father saw something in him.”

Paul returned his gaze to Lachlan. “Usually the way these things work, deals are made based on risk and promise. If you’ve ever watched Dragon’s Den, you’ll get the idea. Prospects petition existing members, offering a portion of their company or profits in exchange for start-up funds or something else they need to get their business off the ground or booming. Depending on the risk involved, members might seek a greater return. There are opportunities down the road for owners of successful ventures to buy out investors, should they want a greater share of control in their own companies.”

“What if they aren’t successful?” Dez asked.

“Some people are simply turned away at the start. But for those whose ventures fail after significant investment… well, nothing comes for free, does it? Those members are usually kicked out, and they’re left on the hook for whatever they owe. I’ve seen people literally destroyed, forced to declare bankruptcy or revert to fraud to repay what they owe. You remember that Kay O’Hanlon affair a few years back?”

“Multi-million-dollar fraud,” Lachlan said. “She was a member?”

“Failed member. The fraud was intended as a way to repay the Circle.”

“I didn’t hear mention of the Circle during that investigation. She did say she owed investors, but that was it.”

“It doesn’t pay to mention the Circle by name. They guard their secrets well. As it stood, she owed them money. If she’d brought them into it by name, she would have owed them her life.”

“Hang on,” Dez said. “The Circle would have had her killed?”

“I’m not suggesting they’re all a bunch of killers. Most wouldn’t have the stomach for it. But some people, as you’re well aware, are prepared to do anything to hold onto what they have. If the Circle breaks, they all fall. What makes them strongest also makes them weakest. Because they are all in each other’s back pockets, if one of them goes down, the chances of him or her taking others down are high. And if they go, more follow. It’s like a house of cards.”

“Harry Schuster,” Dez said.

Paul’s head snapped toward Dez, his eyebrows lifted. “What?”

“Sorry,” Dez said. “Harry Schuster. He was a member of the Circle who was committed to—”

“I know who he was. I didn’t know his involvement in the Circle was well-known.”

“It isn’t,” Dez said. “I found out about it by chance during an investigation a while back. There’s some suspicion his health problems and subsequent death in Lockwood weren’t altogether natural.”

Paul nodded. “He knew things. A lot of things. Enough to worry most members. He was valuable to them, but they feared him too. Because of the way his brain worked, the whole psychic thing or whatever you want to call it, he could foresee where the biggest successes would come. But he also knew where the bodies were buried. It was only a matter of time before something happened to him.”

Dez leaned toward Paul. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“Only that he suffered a fatal stroke while in Lockwood. I’ve always suspected there’s more to it, but I have no proof. And good luck to anyone else looking to prove it.”

Lachlan sat forward behind his desk, lifting steepled fingers to his chin. “What are your thoughts on Lowell Braddock?”

Paul glanced from Lachlan to Dez and back again. “Are you really asking me that? Now?”

“I am.”

Paul’s eyes darted back to Dez.

“It’s okay if you’ve got issues with him,” Dez said. “I’ve found out some stuff about him. Made me realize he’s not who I thought he was.”

“This is strictly between us, I presume,” Paul said. He inclined his head toward Dez. “I’m trusting you with what I say here. If any of this gets back—”

“It won’t,” Dez said. “I’ve got no loyalty to him anymore.” He considered it briefly, decided on some quid pro quo to invite honesty from Paul—but nowhere near full quid pro quo. Dez still had people to worry about, and if it turned out Paul reported back to Lowell, he didn’t want to think about the ramifications. “Sully told me Lowell and the head orderly from Lockwood tried to kill him. When they failed, they got him committed. Lowell was present for experiments they conducted, experiments using LOBRA drugs.”

“Christ,” Paul said. “But you don’t have proof?”

“No, and I don’t know we’ll find any. Nothing people will believe anyway.”

“And you’d like my help to find some.”

Dez’s thoughts hadn’t travelled there yet, simply wondering what Paul already had for information. This new possibility was a hopeful one.

“Would you be willing to?”

“I can try,” Paul said. He turned another few inches in his chair so he faced Dez more fully. “Here’s the thing. I liked your brother. Sure, he pegged me for a killer once, but he also saved my life with all that ghost stuff he could do. He was a good man. Harry, troubled as he was, was a good man too. I’d hate to think how many more good people have been bowled under by the rich and the powerful in this city. You know I’ve always done what I could to help fix the parts of this community my family and others like them have broken. I will do what I can now.”

He returned to his previous position and rubbed the palms of his hands over his legs as if to rid them of sweat. “It won’t be easy, but I’ll try.”

“No one wants you to put yourself at risk here,” Dez said. “That’s definitely not what I’m asking.”

“Risks are inevitable.” Paul said. “Given your family history, you know that better than most.” He paused, but his mouth remained slightly open as if he was merely searching for the right words. Dez waited him out.

“You asked about Lowell,” Paul said. “And you told me what he did to Sullivan. I said most members of the Circle don’t have the stomach for murder. Lowell isn’t one of them. I have no proof—and I have no doubt you’d have to search long and hard to find any—but I believe Lowell is behind what happened to Harry. Lowell and Roman Gerhardt. I know that must sound outlandish—”

“It doesn’t,” Lachlan cut in. “We’re aware of what they did to Sullivan in Lockwood— him and other patients who shared similar gifts. Our understanding is the drug developed at LOBRA was being tested on patients with psychic abilities. We have also learned the experiments weren’t exactly a heavily guarded secret within the Circle. At least one other member—Prescott Montague—knew about it, and he’s since been permanently silenced. We also know there was a man present at the experiments, someone Sullivan described as wearing a mask.”

Paul nodded. “What you’re saying sounds like something a fellow wearing a tinfoil hat might come up with. But all of it makes perfect sense. I can’t say I was in on any of this regarding the experiments, but I very much believe what Sullivan reported was true. More than that, I believe I know the identity of the man in the mask.”

Dez unconsciously straightened in his chair. “Who?”

Paul offered a sad smile. “My father. It makes sense. He’s a heavy investor and a significant shareholder in LOBRA. I’d have to double-check the numbers, but I believe he holds a forty-one percent share in the company, with Lowell maintaining fifty-one percent and other Circle members the remainder. My father is effectively Lowell’s partner. Nothing would happen without his say-so, and I also know he’s a very hands-on kind of businessman. He’s not content with reports. He needs to see for himself. If LOBRA is testing a drug, and they’re using Lockwood patients to do it, my father would be involved. No question.”

“Why the mask?” Dez asked.

“Well, it’s not exactly legal what they’re doing, is it? If they were found out, it would ruin him—all of them.” A corner of Paul’s mouth quirked up, surprising Dez. “I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud, but I’d actually love to see that happen.”

Paul looked from Lachlan to Dez and back again. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll keep my ear to the ground and pass along any information I get. But you need to give me a little time. I’m going to start liquidating some assets and getting as much as I can out of the company. If I’m going to be in part responsible for taking down Dunsmore Developments, I’d like to ensure I’ve got something to live on when the dust clears.”

He stood. “I need to get back, but I’ll keep you both informed.”

Dez and Lachlan stood too. Across the desk, Lachlan extended a hand, which Paul shook. “Thank you for agreeing to help us, but as Desmond said, don’t put your life at risk over this. The last thing either of us wants is you ending up where others have.”

“That’s where we differ,” Paul said. “The last thing I want is to stand idly by, allowing others to end up that way. If there’s anything I can do to make things right, I intend to.”

He tipped an imaginary hat and bowed his head toward Dez and Lachlan. “Gentlemen. Good day. I’ll be in touch.”

He left the office, closing the door behind himself. Dez listened to Paul’s footsteps fading away on the stairs before turning to Lachlan. “What do you think?”

Lachlan’s face broke into a Cheshire cat grin. “I think we’re well on the way to cracking the case of the century.”

15

Sully had only intended to go as far as the basement side of the tunnel where he’d stashed his duffel bag and Pax’s extra food.

Then he remembered he’d left Dez’s portable cellphone charger upstairs, in the back parlour. Hoisting his duffel bag up and over one shoulder and tucking the bag of dog food into the crook of the opposite elbow, Sully left the passageway and headed for the basement stairs.

He hadn’t stopped to get Pax as Dez had suggested, wanting to avoid their mom until he’d returned from The Forks. She’d have questions, and he’d feel better tackling them if Dez was with him. But he found himself wishing he had the dog at his side as he gained the main floor to find the house eerily quiet.

There were two kinds of quiet in Ravenwood: the natural kind you’d find in any empty house, and the gathering storm kind of quiet. This was the latter, a silence so deep you could have heard a pin drop. No creaking floors, no scratching, not even the sound of wind pressing against the remaining windows.

It got like this just before Ned unleashed his fury on an unsuspecting intruder.

Sully decided he’d make this quick.

He headed for the parlour and searched the bookshelves and the mantle for the device before recalling he’d used it to charge his phone next to his makeshift bed last night. It was still there, on the floor next to the chairs, and he picked it up and pocketed it before turning for the door.

A clamour from the front hall drew him up short, the clang of something heavy and metallic, the sound of glass breaking, something heavy impacting on a wall or table.

Hurricane Ned had begun.

This time, the intruder wasn’t Dez.

Sully scanned the room until his eyes settled on the wrought-iron poker laid across the brick base of the fireplace. Having placed his bag and the dog food quietly on the floor, he grabbed the poker in a two-handed grip and stood to one side of the doorway. The door was open, and he didn’t try to close it, the creak likely to give him away. Standing motionless, he held his breath and tried to slow his rapid pulse to allow him to better hear an approaching enemy.

Another clatter from the hall, another heavy object thrown, wood on wood this time.

It was followed by a high-pitched squeak. Female not male. No second voice, nothing to indicate more than one human presence.

Curiosity got the better of him. He peered around the edge of the doorframe but saw nothing in the short hall. He’d have to make his way toward the entrance hall to see anything.

Keeping the poker hefted baseball-bat style, Sully left the room, putting his back to the wall and edging alongside it, foot over foot as he inched forward.

Another solid throw by Ned resulted in a louder shriek this time. It was close, close enough he thought he’d probably be able to see the woman if he peered around the corner.

Keeping his weapon at the ready, Sully peeked into the entry hall.

What he saw had him lowering the poker and leaving his place of concealment.

“Quit it!” he called out to Ned. “She’s not a threat!”

He’d first met Phoebe Waters two years ago in Lockwood, back when he was just a visitor looking for answers regarding Harry Schuster. Like Emily Crichton, Phoebe was tiny and had large glasses that magnified her eyes, contributing to her nickname, Snowy the Owl. But Sully had learned there was more to Snowy’s moniker than mere appearance. She had a certain wisdom to her, an all-seeing aspect that made her different from many other patients inside the institution. She’d been a friend of Harry’s, not just because her ingrained empathy drew her to the desperate man, but because she was like him. Snowy had a gift, the kind of gift that had made her a target to men like Gerhardt and Lowell.

The time Sully had spent as a patient there was mainly lost to the haze of drugs, but he remembered Snowy talking to him in those in-between moments when his family or Ara weren’t there. He couldn’t always respond, but her presence had been a comfort—a far more substantial comfort than what she was clearly experiencing now.

Snowy was, he believed, somewhere in her late sixties, although it was possible her time at Lockwood had aged her prematurely. Regardless, she had achieved a yoga-like posture on the floor, curled up on herself like a turtle as she anticipated further ghostly attacks.

“Sully?” she asked, voice quaking from within the helmet her arms had created around her head.

“It’s okay, Snowy. He usually listens to me.”

“Usually?”

Sully chuckled, hoping the sound would ease her anxiety, before approaching her and offering a hand. She peered up at him, one large eye visible through a space at her elbow’s crook, then slowly extended the arm to take his hand.

Having helped her to her feet, Sully guided her through the house to his room. He waited until they were inside to encase her in a gentle hug.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” he said. “I thought you must be dead.”

“And I assumed you were,” she said. “It wasn’t until recently I learned otherwise. I heard you, when you went to Dr. Gerhardt’s old house. Terrence and I, we’ve been staying in a house near that one, and I knew you were there.”

The word “heard” for Snowy meant something different. She had the ability to read thoughts. It wasn’t perfect, she’d once told him, but it worked very well with other psychics, those whose minds were already more open. It was how she’d been able to communicate with Harry and to complete the rudimentary drawings giving voice to his visions when he no longer could on his own.

“I’m sorry we didn’t come to your assistance,” she went on. “We saw those men enter, and Terrence went to help, but he came back a minute later and said you had it well in hand. He was impressed, and he doesn’t impress easily.”

“Terrence?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, you didn’t know, did you? Terrence Waters. You met him, I understand, around the same time you met me. He was medically discharged from the Armed Forces, and he managed the army surplus store. He told me you helped him with his friend, the one who was killed in the explosion. Terrence is my son.”

“What? Seriously?” Sully considered the information. “I always figured something must have happened to you in Lockwood, but it was Terrence, wasn’t it? He helped you escape.”

“He has skills that come in very handy. I’m sorry we weren’t able to help you too. It needed to be a ‘quick extraction.’ His words. There just wasn’t time.”

“You don’t need to explain. I understand. Where is he now?”

“Outside, keeping watch near the front gate.”

“It would be great to see him.”

“He won’t come in here. Ghosts spook him too much. I don’t share that fear—except for the one I’ve just met.”

“He has that effect on people. How’d you know I was here?”

“After you and your brother left the Gerhardt place, Terrence and I tailed you back here. I’d hoped to speak with you, but Terrence talked me out of it. Your brother is nephew to Lowell Braddock, the man who forced my son into hiding. It was what brought him to break me out of Lockwood when he did. He’s convinced Lowell tried to kill him, and he said he was a walking target. He decided starting over somewhere else would be necessary, but he didn’t want to leave me behind.”

“He’s a good son.”

“He is. Anyway, I’ve been working on him since last night and finally convinced him to let me come back to talk to you.”

“Good timing,” Sully said. “I’d actually just been packing up to leave. I’m going to stay at Dez’s place in Riverview.”

“You’re certain that’s safe?”

“I can’t say this is safe either. The threat of break-ins and attacks like the one last night are always there.”

“But on the outside, there’s Lowell,” Snowy said. “You know what he is. I’m sensing that from you.”

“I do know what he is,” Sully said. “But he thinks I’m dead, and I doubt he even knows where Dez’s apartment is. I’ll be fine there. Anyway, if I stay at Ravenwood much longer, Dez will be the bigger threat. He’ll kick my ass.”

“I wasn’t thinking of you staying here alone. I meant for you to come back with Terrence and me. You could stay with us. It would certainly give Terrence a break if he didn’t feel he has to keep a constant watch.”

“I’d be happy to help, but with what I’m working on now, there’s a good chance the end result will mean all of us can leave The Forks forever and go back to our real lives.”

Snowy fell silent, and Sully sensed her mind working away. It was a little creepy, her picking away at his private thoughts, but he reminded himself he had nothing to conceal anymore.

“There’s a reunion tomorrow at Lockwood,” she said. “You’re planning to attend.”

“I’m trying to—”

“I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s admirable. But it might also be stupid. Why would you go back there?”

“The answers I need might be there. Anyway, I have to deal with what happened at Lockwood. The sooner I do that, the stronger I’ll be to handle Lowell when that fight comes.”

“What if it goes the other way? What if you can’t handle the memories of the torture you endured?”

Sully shrugged. “Maybe it won’t go so well. But my brother will be nearby and so will a couple of friends. I won’t be alone.”

“One thing about trauma, Sullivan. When we’re trying to find our way through it, we are always alone. Do you really think it will be worth the risk? Are you so certain Dr. Gerhardt will buckle to your demands if you solve what happened to his son?”

“I’m hoping so. What about you? You’ve had the opportunity to look inside his mind, haven’t you?”

“I tried once or twice,” she said. “But he’s a closed book to me. He’s built walls a mile thick, and short of drugging him, I can think of no way to penetrate his mind. Nor would I want to. There’s a real darkness inside him, and I’ve been trying my hardest to stay away from the dark. We both know where his thoughts run, Sullivan. No need for a mind reader there.”

“I guess I was really wondering whether he killed his wife. Did you know her? Eloise, I mean?”

Snowy shook her head. “She was before my time at Lockwood. I was there perhaps a decade, long after everything happened with his family.”

“A decade?” Sully asked. “I didn’t know it was that long. How did you deal with it, with the Blue Room?”

“I wasn’t taken there that often, actually,” she said. “A gift like mine wasn’t going to prove useful to the doctor and, quite frankly, I made him anxious. He didn’t need a person who read minds. I would be of little use to him unless he could place me next to someone he believed held some answers. With what you can do, you’re far more valuable. You’d be able to see his son in the afterlife.”

“All these years, all of his torturing psychics to find answers, and he’s never gotten them. Why?”

Snowy’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know. It might be, though, there are some answers we’re never meant to receive. What about you? I can tell there are answers you’re still seeking. You’re wondering about Harry, about the vision he had that led to the little Braddock boy’s drowning.”

“I was told Harry foresaw Aiden bringing down this group called the Circle. Do you know anything about that?”

“Harry thought about it frequently. He never got over it, that his prophesy was used to justify the murder of a young child.”

“Why did he say it then? Why not keep it to himself?”

Snowy’s responding smile was a sad one. “He didn’t often have a choice in what he said. His prophesies would come while he was in a trance-like state. When he was still at home with his wife, he was known for wandering around the neighbourhood, muttering things. Some people believed he was sleepwalking because he was so unresponsive. Betty used to visit Lockwood, and we’d talk. She told me she’d finally had to lock the bedroom door at night and nail the windows shut to keep him from getting out. It got especially bad after his first stroke. She also used to hear him talk about the vision he called ‘River Boy.’ Whenever he thought too hard about it, he’d end up depressed for days. Betty didn’t know the whole story, and Harry, in one of his lucid moments, begged me never to tell her. He didn’t want her to know he had a hand in such a cold-blooded crime.”

“Betty and their son assumed Harry’s vision was him looking back into the past, but it wasn’t,” Sully said. “He predicted something far earlier, something big enough to lead to the murder of a five-year-old kid.”

“He foresaw the downfall of the Circle. It was another recurring vision of his. Whenever it would enter his mind, he’d mutter the words, ‘second son,’ over and over.”

“And you saw the vision?”

Snowy nodded. “I saw what he saw: a man, his face in shadow, standing over members of the Circle. A few of them were dead, some injured, others were pleading for their lives. It ended with the survivors in prison cells. You can imagine why an image like that would cause panic.”

“What does it have to do with this second son thing?”

“The prophesy was that the downfall would be brought about by the second son of a member of the circle. You can imagine the pandemonium that must have created. How many members back then would have had more than one son? How many must have looked at their children and wondered?”

“But Aiden wasn’t the son of a member,” Sully said. “He was Lowell’s nephew.”

“Did Lowell ever have children of his own?”

Sully shook his head. “No.”

“So maybe he viewed Desmond and Aiden as his own children. I don’t know. Whatever it was, Aiden was considered a threat, and a big enough one that the council ordered his death.”

“So Harry must have zeroed in on Aiden then,” Sully said. “I can’t imagine the council ordering everyone to kill their kids. That would have been insane, and it would have attracted a hell of a lot of police attention, even if the deaths had been made to look like accidents.”

“I know Harry did foresee something more specific as to the identity of the second son. But I don’t have all the answers. You’d need Harry for that, and he’s gone.”

“Maybe I can find him.”

“Maybe. But I doubt you’ll get him to talk about it. Like I said, he carried a great deal of shame over it. It was only because of the strength of my gift that I was able to see inside his mind, even without his willing it.”

“I’ll do my best,” Sully said. “My abilities seem to be getting stronger too.”

“I can’t go with you to Lockwood,” Snowy said. “But Terrence and I will be here if you need help down the road. Please let us know.”

“I will. Thanks.” Sully checked the time on his cellphone screen. He’d decided not to risk driving Emily’s car. One taillight was burned out, and getting pulled over was not an option. Dez might be done by now with whatever he was doing with Lachlan and could pick him up.

“You need to go,” Snowy observed. “I should go too—if you wouldn’t mind seeing me to the door. I’d rather not be alone here after all that activity a few minutes ago.”

Sully led her back toward the front door and returned her subsequent embrace.

“It was good to see you,” she said. “You take care of yourself, and make sure to call on us if you need help.”

“I will,” he said. “Thank you.”

She released him, but continued to hold him in a narrow-eyed gaze.

“I understand your need to find answers and a way out of this half-life you’re living,” she said. “But be certain the truths you are after are ones you can handle.”

She left without awaiting a response.

16

Dez waited in the rear parking lot of a defunct business in the warehouse area, keeping to his spot behind the wheel as he waited for Sully.

A few minutes passed, and Dez was considering calling his brother again when he finally saw him jogging over from the direction of the riverbank—without his dog.

“Where’s Pax?” Dez asked as soon as Sully had put his belongings in the back and dropped into the passenger seat.

“I couldn’t take Emily’s car because of the taillight,” Sully said. “And I decided I didn’t want to be anywhere near Mom and her questions until you were there to help me field them.”

“You realize the questions are only going to be worse once she sees me, right?”

Sully’s discerning gaze covered Dez’s face before drifting to the rest of him. “You don’t look as bad as you did last night. The swelling’s gone down on your head, and your eye’s not as black as we thought it might get.”

Dez checked out the eye in the rearview mirror. “It’s still black underneath,” he said. “Mom’s going to ask.”

Sully smirked. “I could go in first, sneak out some of Eva’s makeup for you. Bit of foundation, maybe some lipstick and mascara, you’d be a whole new you.”

Dez was about to backhand Sully in the gut when he remembered the injury. He settled for a light smack to the back of his brother’s head.

“If you’re finished being a dipshit, I’ll fill you in on the meeting Lachlan and I just had,” Dez said.

“Who was it?”

“Paul Dunsmore. You remember Paul. You almost drowned in his basement.”

Sully rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I remember. How is he? What did he tell you?”

“He’s good, and he had a few interesting things to say.” Dez filled Sully in on the meeting, detailing Paul’s involvement in the Circle and the man’s thoughts on Lowell. “He’s willing to give us a hand, be our eyes and ears inside the Circle.”

“Is that safe?”

“Probably not, but nothing feels safe to me anymore. One thing in his favour, anyway: His father is among the founding members, and being one of the richest men in town, he holds some clout around there. Any murderous Circle member would think twice about going after Paul if it means upsetting his father.”

“Okay, so—”

Dez cut in. “Hang on. One more thing you should know. The masked man in the Blue Room you talked about? Paul thinks it was his father.”

Sully’s head snapped fully toward Dez. “What?”

Dez nodded. “Paul says his father is basically Lowell’s partner, and that he’s been investing heavily in LOBRA from the start. He said Ray Dunsmore is a hands-on kind of guy. He would have wanted to be there to see the experiments in action.”

“Hackman told us all he knew about the guy in the mask was that he was an investor,” Sully said. “What Paul told you makes sense. And if it was Ray Dunsmore, I get the mask thing. What they were doing was wrong on multiple levels. If anyone found out what he was involved in, he’d be finished.”

“I know. It does make sense—as much as anything makes sense to me anymore. How about you? You get everything out of Ravenwood?”

“Yeah, and I got more than I bargained for. I ran into Snowy.”

“Snowy? You mean the Lockwood patient who looks like an owl? The one you thought died there?”

“Yeah. It turns out her son helped her escape. Terrence Waters, the guy who—”

“I remember him,” Dez said. After the playground fight with the war vet, Dez would have a hard time forgetting. “He’s her son? Did you see him too?”

“No, he was apparently keeping watch outside. Anyway, he had to go into hiding because of Lowell.”

“Because of the break-in at the Black Fox?” Dez asked. “He thinks Lowell wants to kill him over that?”

“Probably more that Terrence can point police toward Lowell in Betty’s murder,” Sully said. “And Snowy told me Lowell already tried to kill him.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get to talk to him. He wasn’t all that eager to have Snowy speak with me in the first place, given our family connection to Lowell. I think I managed to convince her there’s no love lost there.”

An idea occurred to Dez, one he wasn’t sure he wanted to put out there. He did anyway. “I was thinking, you know how police are looking into the possibility of the judge killer being ex-military?”

“It’s not Terrence,” Sully said. “He told me once he doesn’t have it in him to kill anymore, and I believe him.”

“He’s also a man who was under significant threat from a member of the Circle.”

“Yeah, but a different member,” Sully said. “It was Lowell he was worried about, not the judge.”

“I know. I’m just saying it’s something we should keep in mind.”

“Okay, I hear you.” Sully paused, and Dez could sense something within the silence—something Sully wasn’t sure how to say. “There’s something else Snowy told me, about the prophesy Harry had that led to what happened to Aiden. I think we need to talk to Mom about it. Do we have time to go over there now? She’s still at your place, right?”

“Should be, yeah. What about this prophesy? What did she tell you?”

No way Dez was waiting until he was all the way home before hearing the details. Not when it came to this.

Sully didn’t argue the matter. “Harry called it ‘second son.’ The prophesy involved the second-born son of a member who takes down the Circle. Harry saw the man standing over Circle members, some dead, others injured. The survivors ended up in prison.”

“And this man, that was Aiden?”

“Possibly. The man’s face was in shadow. Harry couldn’t identify him.”

“Hold on. So Harry didn’t know who the guy was, but Lowell killed Aiden anyway? What, just in case?” The thought of it, of Lowell holding his little brother under the waters of the Kettle Arm, all because of some goddamn prophesy—let alone one without any real detail—got his stomach knotting and blood boiling.

“Snowy said Harry zeroed in on Aiden later on, but she didn’t have any more detail than that.”

“It’s a good thing Harry’s already dead,” Dez growled. “If he wasn’t, I’d fucking kill him.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Sully said. “Anyway, it wasn’t really his fault. He couldn’t control the things he saw or the way he voiced them. He was basically in a trance when they came. Snowy said he felt really guilty the rest of his life because of Aiden.”

“Good.”

“Dez.”

“Okay, okay. But he’s still the starting pistol in this whole thing. If it wasn’t for him getting this thing going, Aiden would still be alive.”

“Harry might have seen what he did, but it was Lowell who chose to act on it. Orders or not, he made the choice.”

“I know that, Sully, all right?” Dez had snapped the words, and he ended by taking a deep breath, searching for calm in a world that had stolen it from him. “Sorry. It’s not you I’m angry with.”

“I know. I get it.”

Dez blew out one more breath, but the tension abated only a little, his fingers still tight enough around the steering wheel to make his knuckles sore. “Guess we’d better get going.”

“I was thinking,” Sully said. “Harry could still be around somewhere. If I can find him, I’m hoping I can get more detail on those visions. Maybe he could even show them to me.”

“But you haven’t seen him for a couple of years, right? You thought maybe he and Betty crossed over or whatever.”

“Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. I won’t know until I look.”

“One thing at a time,” Dez said. “Let’s deal with the Gerhardt mess first. If we’re going into Lockwood tomorrow, I don’t want our attention divided.”

Sully nodded. “I hear you. Okay, we’ll deal with the whole prophesy thing later. Maybe we should hold off then on talking to Mom about it.”

“Probably a good idea. But we can’t really hold off much longer on going back there.” He unfolded the driver’s side visor, scanning his reflection in its mirror, as if he might look different in this one than the rearview. He didn’t. “Damn.”

Dez met Sully’s eye. “What you said about Eva’s makeup? Maybe I really would look good in foundation.”

* * *

“Ow.”

“Stop being such a baby.”

Dez did his best to sit still in the SUV’s driver’s seat as Eva applied what she’d called concealer to his under-eye area. Sully had gone inside Dez and Eva’s to keep their mom occupied, and Eva was thankfully on a day off. She was also much cooler about Dez and his injuries than his mom was likely to be.

At last, Eva sat back to check out her work.

“How’s it look?” Dez asked, not sure he wanted to see.

“Much better.” Eva smiled coyly at him. “You look really pretty, actually. Wanna get in the backseat?”

Dez quirked up the side of his mouth and moved in for a kiss. He succeeded in a light lip-lock, but found himself shoved back when he tried to deepen it.

“Don’t,” Eva said with a smirk. “You’ll smear your makeup.”

Dez growled and turned to check out his reflection. It didn’t look as awful as he thought it would. Honestly, he could barely tell he was wearing makeup. The best part was the black eye was barely noticeable now. Eva had also touched up the lump on the side of his head, a bruise on his jawline and a few scrapes on his knuckles. It wasn’t perfect, but he was nowhere near as startling.

“Thanks, babe. That looks pretty good, actually.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m the best.”

Eva slid out of the SUV and Dez joined her, taking her hand as they crossed the driveway toward the front door. “I’m bringing Sully upstairs to check him out next,” Eva said. “Keep your mom busy.”

“I already checked him. I would’ve taken him to the hospital, but that’s not possible. Besides, it all looks good for what happened to him.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t trust your judgment. With guys, as long as things aren’t oozing green puss or spurting blood across the room, you figure everything’s okay.”

Dez shrugged. He figured he’d been careful enough, but no sense arguing with Eva. He’d only end up paying for it later.

They found Sully and Mara in the kitchen, Pax sitting flush against Sully’s thigh as if to show he wouldn’t allow any further separation.

Eva plucked at Sully’s sleeve as an indication to follow. “Come here. Something I need to talk to you about.”

Sully turned slightly panicked eyes on Dez as he stood from the table. It was clear he thought he was in trouble. Dez smirked, not about to tell him any different.

With Sully and Eva gone, Pax at their heels, Dez joined his mom at the table.

“What happened to your eye?” she asked.

Dez huffed out a breath. “It’s fine.”

Mara reached out for his face, and Dez sat back to avoid a touch that would smear anything. “It’s fine, Mom.”

“Okay, but I’d still like to know what happened.”

“Got in a bit of a scuffle. No big deal.”

Mara sat up a little straighter. “With Lowell?”

“No, we haven’t gone anywhere near him. Don’t worry.”

“Sully told me you two are planning on going to Lockwood tomorrow.”

Dez’s stomach dropped. “He told you that, huh?”

“I didn’t give him much choice. Something was clearly on his mind, and he’s never been very good at lying to me. I pulled it out of him.”

“Yeah, we’re planning to go. It’s a good in for us. Sully was going to go anyway. The way we’ve arranged it, I’ll be there too.”

“If they’ll let you in.”

“The front gates are open during the day, and they’ll definitely be open tomorrow. And my understanding is they’re having most of the events on the grounds, not inside. It’s supposed to be fairly warm tomorrow, so it should work out.”

Mara sat forward. “I meant the doctor isn’t likely to allow you to stick around once he sees you. And he will see you. You’re hard to miss, even in a crowd.”

“I’m going with Lachlan. Once Gerhardt realizes why we’re there, he should prove more cooperative.”

“I think you’re missing a very good opportunity,” Mara said.

“Which is?”

“Me. No offence to you, kiddo, but I think it’s far more likely Gerhardt will talk to me than to you and Lachlan, don’t you think? I’m a mother who’s buried two sons. I understand better than anyone what he’s been through. It could be what you really need here are kid gloves. And you, Dez, don’t own any.”

“I don’t like the idea of you going in there.”

“Tough. I don’t like the idea of the two of you going in there, but you are anyway. Face it, I might well be the best chance you have for getting answers out of that man.”

“You sure you can, you know…?”

“Hold it together around him?” Mara smiled. “Dez, if you can manage to keep your cool, I certainly can—even as much as I would like to throat-punch that asshole.”

Dez let loose a laugh. “That, I would pay to see.” His amusement fell away abruptly. “Are you sure about this?”

Mara folded her arms. “I’m sure my boys are going into a dangerous situation as a means to catch the man who killed my other son. That’s all I need.”

Dez studied his mother a long moment, then nodded. She’d never been weak, but he’d also never seen this level of determination in her either. This was a new Mara, one who wasn’t about to back down to a potential threat. What was more, she had a right to be there, too, front and centre when Lowell finally went down for what he’d done to Aiden.

“Okay,” he said. “But you stay close to me.”

“You, Sully, Eva and Kayleigh—you’re the most important people to me in the world,” she said. “If there’s a threat to any of you, close to you is exactly where I intend to be.”

17

Dez barely had time to find himself a comfortable spot on the sofa when his phone rang. Discomfort only grew as he saw Lachlan’s name on the call display.

“I swear, he knows the second I sit down,” Dez told Eva, next to him on the couch. He punched the talk button a little harder than necessary. “Yeah?”

“Crusty?”

Dez checked to make sure his mom and Kayleigh weren’t in earshot before voicing his thoughts. “I feel like I’ve been beaten by a bunch of nut jobs with heavy, blunt objects. Oh, wait, I was.”

“Done with the sarcasm?”

Dez sighed. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Then if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d like it if you’d drag your delicate carcass over to my place. I’ve got some info you’re going to want to hear.”

“Can’t you tell me over the phone?”

“No point, because I’m going to need you to drive me somewhere. And bring the psychic.”

Lachlan hung up without allowing a response, and Dez simply tucked the phone back into his pocket before gently rubbing at his eyes.

Eva slapped at his hand. “Stop touching your eye. You’re going to irritate it.”

“The rest of me’s irritated. Why should my eye get left behind?”

* * *

He found Lachlan on his sofa, the contents of a file in front of him on the coffee table.

“Christ, Braddock, you look like hell,” he said by way of greeting once Dez had let themselves in.

Dez ignored the comment. “Maybe you should start locking your door. You know, considering the reason for your concussion and all?”

“I always keep it locked,” he said. “But I knew you were coming and when, so I opened it for you. No sense me standing by the door like some loyal golden retriever until you got here.”

No doubt Lachlan’s logic made sense to him, and as far as Dez’s boss went, nothing else mattered.

“What did you want to see us about?” Dez asked.

“Speaking of ‘us,’ where’s—”

“Here,” Sully said, emerging from the entryway. “I just had to take off my boots. They were kind of dirty, and I didn’t think you’d want bits of riverbank on your rugs.”

“Good call. Sit down.”

Lachlan waited until the brothers had taken up spots on either side of him before launching into his find. “I know we basically agreed with the original investigation that the phone call to Eloise didn’t mean anything, but I thought I’d take a closer look anyway. You might recall it was her sister who phoned her, taking her out of the yard and enabling David’s disappearance. The sister’s name was Mariel Kisbey—Kisbey being her maiden name. She was quite young at the time, just nineteen.”

“Okay?” Dez said. There was a point here somewhere; Lachlan just wasn’t always great at getting to it quickly.

“I did some internet digging, and I found her obituary. By the time she died, you’ll be interested to know, she’d gotten married. Married name was Mariel Echoles.”

Sully beat Dez to it, his raised eyebrows showing all the surprise Dez felt. “Marc’s wife.”

Lachlan grinned. “Bingo.”

Dez shrugged, then winced as the movement pulled at a sore spot. “Weird connections aside, what’s that got to do with anything?”

“Maybe nothing,” Lachlan said. “Maybe everything. I don’t know. All I do know is we haven’t found our answers yet, and any good investigation leaves no stone unturned. Investigators at the time looked at the possibility of family involvement, but they ruled it out very quickly—maybe too quickly. I think we should visit your friend Marc, see if he knows anything.”

Dez found himself pinned in an imploring gaze from Sully, who then addressed Lachlan directly. “Um, maybe it would be better if Dez and I went to talk to him ourselves first. He really loves Mariel, and he’s bound to be protective. If he gets the impression you’re accusing her of anything—particularly something this serious—he’ll probably shut down on you.”

Lachlan pressed his lips together. He wasn’t fond of the suggestion, that much was clear. But he was thinking about it, which said something about Sully’s power of persuasion. Not easily would Lachlan agree to sit out a witness interview he’d personally deemed necessary.

Maybe it also said something for his faith in Dez and Sully to do the job that his lips turned up into a slight smile. “Okay. You have a point. But don’t beat around the bush on this. I know he’s your friend, but he might have answers we need. You have to get him to share what he knows—even if it means getting a little forceful.”

Lachlan handed over a copy of Mariel’s police statement and the subsequent report before letting the brothers go on their way.

“I’d imagine that’s why you didn’t want Lachlan coming along,” Dez said once the brothers were back in the SUV and on their way to the university. “I don’t get the impression ‘getting a little forceful’ with Marc is the way you want to play this. Good call, by the way.”

“That was part of the reason, but not the only one,” Sully said. “Lachlan doesn’t know about Marc’s empath abilities, and I’m not sure Marc would want to share. Plus, let’s face it, Lachlan’s personality being what it is, his aura has to be all sorts of colours that would put Marc off from the start.”

It was a good point. Marc’s ability to read auras allowed him to see right into a person’s soul at first glance. Lachlan was a good person, but he could also be a complete dick and a huge bully when he chose to be—which some days was quite often. Marc wasn’t likely to spill any secrets to a man like that, much less about a deceased loved one.

Marc wasn’t in his office when Dez and Sully arrived on the floor housing the Sociology department, allowing them a little more time to go through the documents Marc had provided. Sully had read them aloud on the way over, but Dez had never been the best at processing information that way. Seated in a pair of chairs outside Marc’s closed door, Dez took the statement and the report from Sully and read them over himself.

“They’re short,” Dez said. “But it looks like investigators ticked the right boxes back then. They even noted she appeared distraught—about what you’d expect from a young woman whose nephew’s gone missing.”

“I didn’t see anything to suggest she knew something.” Sully paused, fingering the wooden cross hanging around his neck. It had been a gift from Marc, one not lightly given since it had belonged to Mariel. Sully had his hood up, but Dez could see enough of his face to recognize tension along the jawline. That and the way he was toying with the cross suggested he didn’t want to say what he was thinking. He did anyway. “But I’m not sure there’s anything here to prove she didn’t know anything either. I mean, people with a guilty conscience could be distraught, too, right?”

“Do you really think Marc would have married a woman who had a hand in hurting her own nephew?”

“No, I don’t. But maybe the answer’s something else.”

“Or maybe the answer’s what the police thought at the time,” Dez said. “That she had no knowledge of the disappearance.”

Sully nodded, the hood moving with the motion. “You’re right. That makes the most sense. Don’t tell Marc I said anything.”

“If I were you, I’d take a breath and try to put it out of your head,” Dez said. “The second he sees you, he’ll know something’s up, whether or not you say anything.”

Another nod, then the two fell into silence as Dez folded and tucked the documents into his jacket pocket.

Another fifteen minutes passed before the elevator doors opened down the hall to reveal Marc approaching with leather briefcase in one hand, coffee mug in the other and a stack of books and papers balanced precariously along his forearms. He looked stressed, but his eyes lit up the moment he saw Dez and Sully waiting for him.

“Boys, good to see you.” Marc reached them, jingling a set of keys on one finger while meeting Dez’s eye. “Help me out and get the door for me, will you? I didn’t think ahead when I left my office. Essay turn-in day. You can guess how I’ll be spending my weekend.”

Dez carefully extracted the keys from Marc’s overtasked hand and unlocked the office door. Inside, Dez and Sully helped the professor unload his burden onto his cluttered desktop.

Dez scanned the top of one of the papers. “Witchcraft, huh?”

“More specifically, the persecution of women and societal outsiders condoned during the witch trials. Interesting topic. I’m just not sure I’m in the mood to read over this class’s offerings. Not the brightest bulbs, if you catch my drift.”

“Love to help, but witches aren’t really my thing,” Dez said. He recognized his foot-in-mouth comment as soon as it had escaped, Marc being a practicing Wiccan. “Present company excluded, of course.”

Marc chuckled, then slid into his chair. “Naturally. What can I help you two with? I can see something’s on your minds.”

Sully shut the office door, then took one of two other chairs. That left Dez the other, which first required relocating a few books from the seat to the desk.

“We’re looking into something as part of an investigation,” Sully said. “It’s about a missing kid.”

“Oh no,” Marc said. “I didn’t hear about a missing child. What happened?”

“It’s not a new case,” Dez said. “This one dates back forty years. Actually, it’s Roman Gerhardt’s son we’re trying to find answers about. We’ve just learned Gerhardt’s wife was Mariel’s sister.”

Marc had been leaning forward, his expression one of interest. Now he sat back in his chair, the springs squeaking beneath him. An expression crossed his features for a fleeting moment—worry or fear, Dez believed—but it was gone quickly, replaced by what would be best described as an inscrutable poker face.

Apparently, Sully had caught it too. “Marc?”

Marc’s eyes snapped onto Sully’s. “Why are you doing this? After everything you went through at that man’s hands, you’re putting yourself back into the fray? Why? What do you think you’re going to get out of this?”

“Answers, if we’re lucky,” Sully said. “We’re getting really close to being able to move on some major players and expose their dirty secrets. Gerhardt might be the key, if we can give him what he wants.”

“His missing son,” Marc summed up. “You want to expose another human being to a monster like that? What for?”

“We don’t even know David’s still alive,” Dez said. “Let’s be honest, most people who take children aren’t planning Disney trips. It could be all we find is a body he can bury, but at least it would give him some sort of closure.”

“He doesn’t deserve closure. We all know what kind of man he is, what he does to innocent, helpless people. Monsters like him are exactly why it’s so crucial to teach the subject I do. People like that made the witch trials possible, and if you think it couldn’t happen again, you’d be very wrong. What he’s been doing in Lockwood, that’s a form of torture.”

“If it turns out David is alive, we wouldn’t hand Gerhardt a bunch of info on him just like that,” Sully said. “We know better. But here’s the thing: We’re trying to take down something far bigger than Gerhardt or David or either of us. Gerhardt could be the key, and we’re going to have to weigh everything we do against the big picture.”

“What are you trying to do, exactly?”

Marc was doing exactly what Sully had expressed a fear about. He was shutting down, closing in on himself. Yet he was their friend, and he was no doubt asking questions because of that existing relationship. If they could give him satisfactory answers, maybe they could elicit a few from him as well. Because one thing was very clear: Marc did indeed know something. And he wasn’t keen on sharing.

Dez and Sully gave Marc a full rundown on what they were working on, providing details of the Circle, of Lowell’s crimes, of Sully’s blood ties to Gerhardt and of their forming plan to deal with all of it. When they’d finished, Marc’s poker face had crumbled. Still, he remained silent.

They gave him a minute or two, and Dez watched as thoughts played out in the narrowing of eyes and the deepening of forehead lines.

“You truly believe you can shut down Lockwood?” he asked at last.

“Our goal isn’t to shut it down,” Sully said. “It does good work for a lot of the patients, ones who aren’t psychic anyway. It’s just Gerhardt who needs to go.”

“To hell, preferably,” Dez added.

“And you think Mariel knew something,” Marc said.

“We don’t think anything,” Sully said. “We’re just asking the question. She called Eloise at the exact moment David was taken. It’s possible a kidnapper was waiting behind the fence for an opportunity, and one simply presented itself when Eloise went to answer the phone. But we need to check into every possibility, including that Mariel was providing an opportunity on purpose.”

Marc released a long sigh, one suggesting a difficult truth was about to be revealed.

“What I’m about to tell you is something I swore never to reveal,” he said. “I promised Mariel as she lay dying. I’m only saying this so you can make an informed decision as to how best to proceed, given all that’s involved.” He leaned forward, into arms folded atop his desk. His face lowered, concealing much of his expression. Maintaining the position, he took a long, deep breath and let it out in a shaky exhale. His eyes remained fixed on his cupped hands as he spoke. “When I first met Mariel, I was certain she was the most beautiful human being I’d ever set eyes on. Her aura was incredible, an array of bright colours that told me she was as lovely inside as out. But there was something else there too: a muddy spot that told me she was carrying something unpleasant, something that came from deep guilt or regret or pain. I asked her about it a few times over the course of our marriage as it never disappeared, but she wouldn’t speak of it. She kept saying she’d tell me one day, when she was ready. That day came as she was lying on her deathbed.”

He stopped, lifting a hand to press at the corners of his eyes where tears had begun to form.

Sully’s voice pressed into the silence. “I’m sorry, Marc.”

Marc glanced up, catching Sully’s eye. “I know. It’s all right.” He took another deep breath and continued, this time maintaining his gaze on his visitors. “Mariel aided in the kidnapping of her nephew. But it isn’t what you might think. There was no malice in it, only love. She adored that little boy with all her heart. All of the family did. Everyone but his father, that is. I can’t imagine Roman Gerhardt having it in him to care about anyone. Even this obsession with finding the child, it’s not about love. It’s about control. As far as he’s concerned, that child was his, his property, his possession, and someone took that from him—and in doing so, prevented his plans for the boy. Don’t ever mistake his feelings for anything honourable.”

“Was he abusive?” Dez asked. “Was that why Mariel wanted to get David away from the situation?”

“He was a jerk, all right, and he was verbally and emotionally abusive to both Eloise and David. As far as Mariel knew, he never raised a hand to them, but abuse of any kind is abuse. It’s something far bigger, something that wouldn’t make sense to many people.”

“It has to do with the Circle, doesn’t it?” Sully asked.

Marc nodded. “Mariel was in university at the time, and she befriended a young man named Harry Schuster.”

“Hang on,” Sully said. “Harbinger Harry? You didn’t tell me that when I came to you with the possession stuff two years ago.”

“I didn’t think it pertained, and I’ve explained to you why I’ve kept this secret. Anyway, Mariel told me she was out for a walk one night and encountered Harry on the street. He appeared to be in a trance. The friend she was with thought he must be sleepwalking, but Mariel suspected differently. Her friendship with Harry had come to include a shared interest in Wicca. Perhaps sensing she was someone who would understand, he told her about his gift of prophesy and how the visions came to him. When she saw him on the street that night, she recognized he was in the midst of that type of trance. Her friend was spooked about the whole thing and left, but Mariel stayed and guided Harry home. He talked the whole way, muttering out a prophesy about a second son. He mentioned the name Gerhardt, and said Gerhardt’s second son would have to die to protect the Circle.”

“And she bought it, just like that?” Dez asked. “She helped to arrange a boy’s kidnapping from his parents over something a guy muttered on the street?”

“I know how it sounds, but there’s more to it. When Harry and Mariel first met, he appeared stunned. He apologized and told her to ensure her mother didn’t drive on the night of October thirteenth. Mariel didn’t heed the warning, thinking it sounded crackpot. The night of October thirteenth, her mother was going to visit her parents out of town. A drunk driver crossed into her lane and hit her, head on. She was killed instantly. Mariel didn’t doubt him again.”

“Okay, but we’ve looked at the file, and we didn’t see anything about David having any siblings,” Dez said.

“Actually, there was another boy. Gerhardt and Eloise’s first son was named Leo. She was almost full term when she suffered a miscarriage during a fall. Some have said that’s when Gerhardt started to go wrong in the head, but Mariel told me otherwise. He’s always been wrong. We’re all aware of the existence of sociopaths, and most people argue it’s a mental disorder, at least as far as the ones born that way. But I’ve always wondered whether it’s something else. Most people are born with a soul; I suspect sociopaths are not. I met Gerhardt once. The aura around him, the only way to describe it is like staring into a black hole. There’s nothing there. No colours, not even the muddy ones you’ll often see in people who have done bad things. There’s only one explanation I could come up with.”

“Maybe that’s why Snowy couldn’t read him,” Sully said. “There’s nothing there. If her connection to people is through the soul rather than the mind, that makes sense.”

“For most people, there is a connection between mind and spirit. Not for people like him.” Marc’s eyes bored first into Sully’s, then Dez’s. “Now, perhaps, you can understand why Mariel felt it necessary to do what she did. The second son prophesy put at risk the futures of some very ambitious men, Gerhardt included. Someone like him, there’s no doubt in my mind he would have found a way to protect himself, even at the expense of those closest to him. The thought of killing one’s child makes no sense, not to people like you and me. But to people like him, people who place nothing above the importance and preservation of oneself, everyone else is expendable. If what Harry said was taken seriously—and I have reason to believe it was—David was in very grave danger.”

“You said Mariel helped,” Dez said. “Who actually took David? Was Eloise in on it?”

“She didn’t say. She told me she wanted to share her truth with me, but didn’t want to tell the secrets of others. As far as Eloise, I guess it’s possible she was involved, though I understand she gave every impression of a panicked mother in the time prior to her own disappearance. I suspect it was the girls’ father who actually took the boy. Elliott Kisbey was a very good man, very loving and protective of his family. What’s more, he believed strongly in the world beyond our five senses. He would have believed Mariel’s story about Harry, about what he’d said.”

Marc leaned forward, putting his papers at risk of toppling under the weight of a shoulder. His eyes carried the intensity of a statement yet to be spoken, one he needed to be heard.

“There’s no doubt in my mind,” he said. “Had Mariel and Elliott not taken David from that home, his father would have killed him.”

18

Sully dropped into the SUV’s passenger seat, removing his hood once it was clear no one was around to see him. He waited until Dez was settled in behind the wheel before broaching the topic they’d just discussed with Marc.

“As much as I hate Gerhardt, I’ve never considered the possibility he might have considered killing his own son.”

“All this time, we’ve been operating under the assumption he wanted answers about David because he’s a worried parent of a missing kid,” Dez said. “Now I’m thinking he only wants confirmation he’s dead so he knows his little Circle is safe.”

“And if David isn’t dead, he wants the opportunity to correct that,” Sully said. He met Dez’s eye, looking for answers there. “How do we deal with this?”

“Same way we were going to deal with it in the first place. We offer Gerhardt the chance to find the answers he’s after.”

“But we can’t hand David to him if he’s still out there somewhere.”

“No, we can’t. And we won’t. All we need to do is gather enough info to do what you talked about doing in the first place: enough to use as a carrot to dangle. If we can convince him we’ve got his answers, I’m hoping we can get him to give us Lowell. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the rest of the Circle. It’s just the one member I want.”

“But you told me what Paul said. They’re all in each other’s back pockets. If one goes down, especially one as important as Lowell, the rest go with him. You really think Gerhardt’s going to bite on that, especially since he and Lowell are so closely connected in this whole drug experiment?”

Dez’s lips flattened into a hard line. “When you put it like that…. Hell, I don’t know, Sully. All we can do is try, okay? Just take this one step at a time and see where it gets us.”

“Okay, but we’ve got one massive step to take tomorrow, and that’s the reunion. We haven’t got room to blow it.” He’d been thinking something since they’d left Marc’s office, something he knew Dez wouldn’t want to hear. “Dez, I think I need to find Eloise again.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s possible, given what Marc said, she was involved in her own son’s disappearance. I mean, if it were my son and someone told me something like that, I’d do anything possible to protect him.”

“Yeah, but that’s if she believed in prophesies and psychics. Lots of people would have laughed Harry out of the room.”

“That’s another reason I need to find her again,” Sully said. “I want to know for sure, and I want to know before we go to Lockwood tomorrow. The more answers we have going in, the stronger we’ll be.”

“That’s if we get there,” Dez said. “Face it, man, we almost didn’t walk out of there the last time. Hell, I carried you out the last time.”

“So we’ll be better prepared this time. Terrence is nearby. He’d be great backup. And maybe we can go armed this time. We can ask about borrowing Emily’s gun.”

“You’re really serious about this.” Dez turned from Sully, staring out the windshield at the university parking lot. “I don’t like it.”

Sully knew Dez wasn’t talking about his surroundings.

“Neither do I,” Sully said. “But it doesn’t make it any less necessary.”

* * *

Dez put his foot down about visiting The Forks that night, insisting they go in the morning. He put his other foot down against Sully’s suggestion he stay at the apartment that night.

“You’re staying where I can see you,” Dez said. “No way I’m leaving the door open for you to make some middle-of-the-night visit to The Forks without me.”

With that, Dez drove the two of them back to his house.

After the obligatory call to fill Lachlan in, Sully spent the night on the downstairs couch. He woke in the morning to find Kayleigh next to him on the floor, stuffing balled-up newspaper into a tied-off jeans leg. Judging by the sheer size of the leg, it had come out of Dez’s closet.

“Hey, Kay-bee,” he said.

She turned to meet his eye and beamed. “You’re awake! Good. You can help me. I’m making a scarecrow for the front step. It’s almost Halloween, and Mom said I could make some decorations.” She looked back at the jeans. “Dad’s pants are too big. I’m running out of newspaper.”

Sully laughed, then gave Kayleigh a hand until Dez emerged and told them breakfast was ready.

“Can we make some more decorations today?” Kayleigh asked while Sully cleared the table afterward.

“Uh, Uncle Sully and I have somewhere we need to go this morning,” Dez said. “We’ll try to be back by lunch. Maybe we could make something before we head out again this afternoon.”

“You’re leaving again?” Kayleigh’s lips formed a pout. “You’re always leaving.”

Dez turned his frown into a smile, grabbing Kayleigh and tickling her until she broke down in laughter. “But then we’re always coming back.”

Dez waited until he and Sully were in the SUV before commenting further.

“We damn well better be coming back,” he grumbled.

* * *

Sully reminded Dez they needed to change. First they made a quick stop at Emily’s, who took one look at Dez’s bruised face and happily handed over her revolver and a supply of extra bullets. After promising to be careful, they then changed into their grungier clothes at Dez’s apartment and set out for the warehouse area where Sully had left the boat from Ravenwood.

The mansion was silent as they emerged from the tunnel and made their way through the house. Ned, it seemed, had grown used to Dez, which came as a relief.

Sully was about to lead the way outside when he was halted by a hand on his arm. He waited while Dez loaded the revolver and relocated it from his back waistband to the front pocket of his jacket. The extra rounds he placed immediately next to the gun, ensuring they were within easy reach.

Dez kept his hand inside the pocket after, and Sully could imagine his brother’s fingers wrapped around the gun, prepared to draw and fire or even shoot through his clothing should the need arise. He wasn’t about to be bested in a fight a second time—a fact that suited Sully just fine.

They set the same course for the Gerhardt house, concealing themselves in as many bushes and overgrown backyards as they were able until, at last, they reached the right block. Once there, they ducked into the same thick grove of trees they’d regrouped in immediately after their previous disastrous visit to the Gerhardt home.

Dez’s eyes were on the street, gaze sweeping each of the houses in turn. “Any idea which house Terrence and Snowy are using?”

Sully was also scanning the area, looking for an answer to that question. The block largely consisted of larger Victorians, but a couple of smaller, more nondescript houses nestled between the larger properties. “It’ll be one of the smaller ones,” he said. “The bigger houses would attract the looters and the gangsters first, plus there’s more opportunity for an enemy to sneak in and take the occupants by surprise. Terrence will probably be somewhere he feels like he’ll attract the least attention and where he has the most control.”

“Ordinarily, the bigger places would give him and Snowy more places to hide.”

“You’ve seen the state of the houses here,” Sully said. “Ravenwood’s mostly stone and brick, so it held up pretty well under the weight of the flood. But most homes in The Forks are wood. A lot of them are rotted out, and upper floors are mainly unusable or unstable. Terrence would know that. Multi-storey places aren’t much use around here.”

Dez didn’t debate the point any further. “So which one?”

Sully nodded with his chin. “I’d say the one with the rifle aimed out the window.”

“Jesus, what?”

Sully waited the couple of seconds until Dez had seen what he had: the barrel of a long gun, barely visible where it protruded from the corner of a largely boarded-up window. An overgrown caragana bush covered part of the window, making the gun even harder to see, were you not looking for it.

“If that’s a sniper rifle, I’m going to have a few questions for him regarding the death of a certain judge,” Dez said. “Speaking of, am I safe bringing him up? Do you think he’ll come at you again if I open up that can of worms?”

“I don’t know,” Sully said. “It’s possible. But, honestly, I don’t see a way to avoid it. You’re right. We need to ask, even if I seriously doubt it was Terrence behind it. He wouldn’t have shot at me too.”

“Your face was concealed,” Dez said. “He wouldn’t have known it was you, right?”

Good point. And Dez had another one. “The gun’s aimed in our direction. How much you want to bet he saw us moving around in here, and he’s got a scope on that thing?”

“Only one way to find out.” Without giving Dez a chance to stop him, Sully pushed through the bush, exposing his form to the gun wielder.

“Damn it, Sully!” came Dez’s protest from the bushes just before he, too, burst through and took up a spot next to his brother.

Sully waited. The gun, for a moment, remained where it was, so long he began to wonder whether it was simply propped there as a warning to passersby. But then, as he stared, it slowly withdrew. A moment later, the front door cracked open. Terrence’s face, and then a beckoning hand, appeared.

Sully and Dez ran over, their pace in keeping with the frantic waving of the man’s hand. Once they’d been granted admittance to the house, Terrence tore into them.

“What the hell’s the matter with the two of you? Last time wasn’t enough? Don’t you know the kind of assholes hang out around here?”

Sully didn’t have a chance to answer or to offer a friendly greeting before Dez jumped in with his own question. “That looked like a sniper rifle you had levelled at us. Was it?”

“Damn straight. I’ve got myself a small arsenal here. It’s called survival in The Forks. Anyway, I didn’t know it was you until Sullivan showed himself. All I saw was movement in the trees. Damn lucky I didn’t just cap you. Round here, you shoot first, ask questions later.” Terrence turned next to Sully. “The other day, the way you tore into those assholes. How’d you do that?”

“Long story,” Sully said. “I’d rather hear yours. Your mom told us Lowell tried to kill you. What happened?”

“I got no proof it was him.”

“But you suspect.”

Terrence looked from Sully to Dez and back again. He said nothing, and Sully didn’t need Snowy’s mind-reading skill to know where Terrence’s thoughts had gone.

Neither, apparently, did Dez. “We’ve got no loyalty to Lowell,” he said. “We want to take that bastard down more than you do.”

Terrence held Dez’s eye for a long moment. He didn’t share his mother’s psychic ability—at least not as far as Sully had ever been made aware—but he was ex-army, a man who’d been forced to live hard, to see the kind of things no human being should ever have to see. He’d learned how to read people as a matter of survival, and he was putting that skill to the test now. For Dez’s part, he didn’t flinch, and Sully watched as the muscles in Terrence’s face gradually relaxed, forming a visible dropping of his guard.

“Mom told me what Lowell did to your kid brother,” he told Dez. “The little guy, I mean. I just wanted to be sure you were for real, that it was true and you weren’t trying to expose me to your uncle.”

“The only thing I’m interested in doing for Lowell is fitting him with a nice, cozy prison cell,” Dez said. “Or a casket. I’m fine either way.”

Terrence’s lips parted in a dangerous smile. “Then you and I have something in common, brother.”

Dez crossed his arms. “Before we go any further down that road, there’s something I need to ask you.”

Snowy’s voice sounded as she emerged from the hallway. “Terrence didn’t kill the judge. He wasn’t even on the mainland when it happened.”

Terrence met Sully’s eye. “Who the hell you talking about?”

Sully took a chance at speaking the name. “Former Justice Prescott Montague. He lost his job after he was implicated in the death of a teenage boy.”

Dez finished the explanation. “Then he lost his life after he threatened to blab something about Lowell and the Circle.”

Sully scanned the room. No judge. This was a first, one he believed he could safely put down to the reverse possession. Sully had never considered himself an intimidating person, but he’d begun to realize there were parts of himself that were truly terrifying. Apparently, Montague had grasped that too.

Sully hadn’t received an answer to his previous question, so asked it again. “What did Lowell do to make you run?”

“Like I said, I’ve got nothing to say for sure it was him. All I know is I was leaving the store one night, locking up in the back alley, and someone took a shot at me. Then a second. I ducked for cover behind my truck and called it in, but police found no sign of anyone by the time they got there.”

“What makes you think it was him?”

“No one else I know has cause to go after me. Lowell paid me to break into the Black Fox the night before Betty Schuster was killed and then her house afterward. I figured later it was a way to try to set me up for a fall if someone started to put two and two together. But I guess that wasn’t enough. I might decide to rat him out, after all. I was a loose end he couldn’t afford to have hanging around.”

Sully’s heart sank. “So you didn’t actually see him take those shots. You don’t have any actual evidence against him?”

“Only what my gut’s telling me. That’s enough for me.”

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be nearly enough for an investigating officer, nor for a court of law. And the additional reality wasn’t lost on Sully either, that Terrence’s word wouldn’t stand on its own against Lowell. Terrence was a medically discharged soldier with a significant psychological chip on his shoulder, and a man who’d agreed to commit break-ins in exchange for a payout. He wasn’t what a court would readily deem a reliable witness. It might be his word would be helpful down the road, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough on its own.

It was looking more and more like they’d need Gerhardt.

Sully’s gaze shifted to the window overlooking the street. The sniper rifle rested there, its business end propped up against the windowsill. “Any chance you can use that to cover us, Terrence?”

“For what?”

“Dez and I need to go back into the old Gerhardt place. His wife’s ghost is there and I need to ask her about something. I’d rather we not get taken by surprise.”

Terrence shook his head. “I can’t leave my mother here for that long, unguarded. There are too many bad people around here.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of you covering us from here, maybe firing a warning shot if you see anyone approaching.”

Terrence nodded slowly. “I can do that. Least I can do for you after everything you helped me with back then.”

Dez harrumphed, and Sully could read the turn of his mind. It really was the least Terrence could do. Sully ignored him. Snowy scowled.

Regardless, Terrence did as asked, exiting the house with them and taking up a spot in the caragana bush beneath the living room window.

“Think we can trust him?” Dez asked as he and Sully made their way a few houses down the street to where the Gerhardt house waited.

“Even if he won’t go all-in for us, I think we can count on him for at least this much,” Sully said.

“He’d risk exposing himself and his mother, and the fact they’ve got guns there? I don’t know, man. He’s got a lot to lose. I wouldn’t count on him doing what he promised he’d do.”

“So I guess we just need to be more careful this time,” Sully said. “Keep your gun ready, just in case.”

They reached the house without a problem, and Sully, with Dez at his immediate side, searched the main floor for Eloise. She didn’t appear, and Sully led his brother quickly through the living room—the site of the recent attack—and into the kitchen overlooking the backyard. The door was off its hinges, its former frame bent with the heaving foundation, and Sully stepped carefully onto the rear veranda lest it not support his weight. He managed it safely, but Dez had to leap off as the boards cracked beneath him.

Photographs in the police file had shown the backyard to be the sort of place found in a house-and-garden magazine, the pristine wild of an English country garden. It had been all tall flowers, sheltering trees, benches and bird baths. A retreat to get lost in.

Getting lost would be a lot easier now. The couple of large elm trees had died, drowned in the flood, but new ones had sprung up in their shadows. Rose bushes—all thorns and no flowers now that summer was long gone—had overtaken large sections of the yard while caragana had sprouted and spread in places once occupied by flower beds.

If David’s spirit was back here, he’d be damn near impossible to find.

But Eloise wasn’t.

Sully sensed her before he saw anything, his skin prickling and hair standing to attention on the back of his neck as the feeling of her anxiety reached him. Standing at the base of the veranda steps, Sully turned his head to look back at the house.

She stood framed in the doorway, a spectre of blood and dread as her eyes fixed on the garden where, years earlier, her panic had been born.

“We talked to Marc Echoles,” Sully said. “He said Mariel told him what she’d been a part of. Did you know?”

Eloise didn’t meet his eye, still fixated on the jungle of her yard. Yet Sully sensed her attention was on him, on his words to her.

Sully pressed on. “Did you find out Mariel helped someone take David that day? Eloise?”

Nothing.

“Someone else was involved. Was it your father?”

She didn’t move, didn’t adjust her gaze.

“Eloise. I know this is hard, but I need some answers if we’re going to move forward. Did you know about the second son prophesy, that your son was in danger?” A logical next question came to him—one that suddenly made all the sense in the world given the intensity of feeling Eloise still carried for David.

“Eloise,” he said. “Were you involved? Did you turn your back on purpose that day?”

Her eyes snapped to his, wide and full of pain—and maybe, somewhere in their depths, regret.

“That’s it, isn’t it? Why you’ve stayed. You knew your son was in danger and that your husband wouldn’t protect him, so you had to do it. You helped make David disappear, and you’ve regretted it since.”

He took a step forward, one foot on a rickety step. It creaked beneath him but held.

“Please,” he said. “I want to help, but I need you to communicate with me. Do you know where he ended up? Do you know what happened to him? How did you die? Eloise?”

She stared, saucer-shaped eyes boring into his for a long, tense moment. Answers were in her expression, signs of a knowledge she carried but had chosen to keep secret.

Then, just as suddenly as she’d appeared, she vanished.

“Eloise!” he called out, but she didn’t reappear.

“What’s going on?” Dez asked, voice near a whisper as if reluctant for her to overhear him.

“I know she heard me but she’s shutting me out. She just disappeared on me.”

“Why? She seemed pretty eager to talk the last time.”

“I think it’s because I suggested she was involved. That’s got to be it, Dez. She’s ashamed. She did it out of love, the same way my birth mother was prepared to give me up to protect me. But I think she doesn’t know what happened to him after, and she’s scared. What if we find out something bad happened to him after? She’d blame herself.”

Dez scanned the backyard with eyes that wouldn’t see anything beyond trees, bushes and ruin. “So you don’t see him anywhere back here, then?”

Sully shook his head. “No. Could mean his ghost is somewhere else, maybe wherever he died. But it might be something else too.”

He met Dez’s eye before providing his other theory, one that might, if true, be enough to help Eloise find the peace she so desperately needed.

“I think it means David is still alive.”

19

No warning shots sounded, which suited Dez fine.

He'd kept his fingers wrapped around the butt of the gun the entire time they’d been in the house, mind repeatedly drifting back to the incident the day before. The sight of those men entering the living room, shouting the gang name as they swung their weapons, was unlikely to leave his memory anytime soon.

He and Sully made their way back to Ravenwood, waving at the occupied shrub outside the Waterses’ squat on the way. Dez didn't see Terrence wave back, but he did notice the barrel of a gun withdraw from between the branches.

Dez didn't allow himself to relax until he and Sully reached the safety of the opposite shore. It was typical, the gun in his pocket the equivalent of an umbrella; as long as you were prepared enough to have it with you, you never seemed to have to use it.

Sully was quiet, which was nothing unusual for him. Even so, Dez had questions coming out of the visit to the Gerhardt house, ones he didn't think Sully had received answers to either.

“We’re not much further ahead, are we?” Dez asked as he helped Sully tug the rowboat into the bushes.

“Not really. I'd hoped Eloise would give us the answers we needed. Now I don't know what to do.”

“Maybe this isn't the way to get Gerhardt onside. I mean, if David’s still alive, we couldn't tell Gerhardt anyway. It wouldn't be right.”

“No, but I think Eloise has a right to know what happened to her son, especially if she was involved as a way to protect him.”

Dez thought about Sully’s own birth mother who, at just sixteen, had risked everything, including her own life, to keep her newborn son safe. She'd handed him to Emily, allowing the Lockwood nurse to escape with the baby while she'd stayed behind to fight Gerhardt. The psychiatrist still carried a noticeable limp, a lifelong injury he'd sustained thanks to a solid kick by Lucienne “Lucky” Dule. She had found Sully soon after her death at the hands of her own family, and she’d remained a nearby presence in his life ever since. But the same could not, it seemed, be said about Eloise.

Dez agreed with his brother; Eloise deserved to know.

But it would have to take a back seat for now. With the Lockwood reunion beginning in just a couple of hours, they’d have their hands full enough.

“We’ll figure out the David thing,” Dez told Sully. “For now, we have to get our heads in the game.”

Sully’s ringing phone set them off course once again.

“It’s Forbes,” Sully said after a glance at his screen.

“Shit,” Dez said. “Now?”

Sully answered, he and Dez staying close to the bushes to ensure privacy—not that there were many people around to overhear anyway. “Forbes?”

“Where are you? I stopped by the apartment but no one was around. Your neighbour across the hall said you were out.”

“I didn’t think I needed to check in with you.”

“Whether or not your name is on record, you’re part of an active investigation,” Forbes said. “I need to know where you’re at if I’ve got questions.”

“So you have questions?”

“I want to know where you’re at on your side of things. Have you figured anything out?”

“No. Only that it’s looking more and more like David wasn’t taken by a stranger. We think it was someone who knew him and was trying to protect him from Gerhardt.”

“Who?”

Dez met Sully’s eye. It was clear Sully didn’t know what to say—not wanting to betray Marc’s trust—so Dez took over. He was plenty okay with lying to Forbes. “We’re working on that part.”

“You realize how big a deal this is, don’t you? Solving a forty-year-old missing persons case like that, it would be huge.”

Now Sully’s expression was something next door to panic.

Dez chose his words as carefully as he could. “I hear you. But it would probably be a good idea for you to sit on this one for now. Don't tell anyone else what we’re working on. If it starts getting out, we’re going to lose our sources, and that gets us nowhere.” No point telling him one of their sources was a dead woman.

“You’ll keep me in the loop?”

“We know it’s technically still an open police investigation,” Dez said. “So, yeah, if we get to the bottom of it, we’ll let you know. Then you can do what you figure you need to do.”

“You said you think it was an attempt to protect the kid from his father,” Forbes said. “Why? Is there info the guy was abusive?”

“Not that exactly,” Sully said. “There’s this prophesy, one we think might link into Aiden’s murder as well.”

Sully provided a brief explanation, and Dez wasn’t surprised when Forbes snorted at the end of it.

“That’s crazy.”

“Maybe so,” Sully said. “But whether it was true or not doesn't really matter. All that matters is people believed it—enough to cause them to justify the murder of children.”

“Children? Plural?”

“We’re thinking that’s why David was taken from his father, to keep him safe from anything Gerhardt or others in the Circle might try to do.”

“Do we have a list of people who were members of this Circle at the time of the kid’s disappearance?” Forbes asked. “Maybe you’ve got it backward. Maybe Gerhardt refused to follow orders so someone within the Circle took his kid.”

“I don’t think that’s it, but we’ll keep an open mind,” Sully said.

“Where are you going with that next?”

“Nowhere exactly,” Dez replied. “But Mom and I are going to ask some questions today if we can get close to Gerhardt at the Lockwood reunion today.”

“You’re going? You’re not supposed to be there.”

“Hey, the gates will be open and it’s expected to be busy. I can’t imagine they’d grill everyone who’s coming and going. In a sense, it’ll be kind of an open house.”

“I don’t think that’s exactly it,” Forbes said. “They sent out invitations.”

“How do you know?”

“We got one. Well, Greta did. She used to volunteer there.”

Dez had forgotten. Greta had been volunteering with senior residents—her birth grandmother, Lorinda, among them—when everything happened with Sully at Lockwood.

“Is she planning on going?” Sully asked.

“She’s still doing an inpatient rehab program,” Forbes said. “She’s not going anywhere for a while yet. But since we’ve got the invitation and all, I thought I might take advantage.”

Dez turned wide eyes on his brother even as he responded to Forbes. “You’re going?”

“Why not? If you’re going, even more reason for me to be there.”

“If there was any sort of plan by Gerhardt to kill his son, he definitely won’t say anything if there’s a cop around.”

“That’s the only reason you’re going?” Forbes asked. “Seems pretty weak. I mean, why go all the way out there if all you end up getting out of it is a pissed-off psychiatrist who kicks you off the property?”

Dez hadn’t been planning on sharing the other reason for the visit, but it seemed Sully didn’t have similar reservations.

“That’s not the only reason,” Sully said. “It’s also a way to get me in.”

“You? For what?”

“We were thinking, Gerhardt’s got some secrets he’s had to bury, and what better place to keep them than inside Lockwood?”

“You can’t be planning on breaking into his office,” Forbes said, voice low in warning.

“Not his office,” Sully said. “There’s an old wing they shut down years back, one he was using to conduct the drug experiments. If there’s anything in Lockwood we can use against Gerhardt, any evidence of wrongdoing, it’ll probably be there. I found a set of keys at his old house in The Forks. I think they belong to Lockwood. While Dez and Mom are talking to him, I’m planning on finding a way into the old wing.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?”

“None of our other ideas have gotten us remotely close to nailing Lowell. I’m willing to try anything.”

Forbes was silent a few moments, and Dez and Sully waited him out. It was possible, of course, he’d tell them to stay the hell out of it, that he wouldn’t allow them to commit what was essentially an offence and risk contaminating any evidence they found they might be able to use against either Gerhardt or Lowell.

So Dez was surprised by Forbes’s eventual response.

“If you’re planning on going in there, there’s not much I can do to dissuade you,” he said. “But I’ll tell you this much. If you’re going in there, so am I.”

* * *

A part of Dez—a part buried so deep he could deny its very existence—was relieved by the idea of Forbes going in there with Sully. Forbes was a lot of things, few of which Dez had much use for. But he was also a cop, one with definite career aspirations. Dez didn’t trust Forbes with much, but he knew the man wouldn’t let anything truly bad happen to Sully—if not out of some moral code shared by every decent human being, then because he could kiss his career goals goodbye if he gave in to fear or spite and turned his back on a civilian in need.

As it turned out, there was one more reason to rest assured Forbes would toe the line: Lachlan would be there to make sure of it.

Dez called him shortly after returning to his and Eva’s Gladstone-area home, intending to make sure Lachlan was still up for going to Lockwood. No sense driving out of their way to pick him up if he wasn’t.

“Of course I’m going,” he said. “Even got us a minivan.”

“A minivan?” Dez said. “What for?”

“How are we going to get your brother in there, otherwise? Smuggle him in a trunk?”

Actually, that was exactly what Dez had been thinking, but he left the thought unspoken, given the derision with which Lachlan had said it.

“We can cover him up on the floor,” Lachlan said. “They shouldn't be searching vehicles either way, but it will look pretty damn awkward, us opening someone’s trunk or hatch and letting some guy out. With a minivan, all he’s got to do is sit up and get out with the rest of us.”

Lachlan’s suggestion put Dez’s barely considered plan to shame. Dez, though, had an idea of his own. “I’m thinking we should head over in two vehicles. Mom’s coming along now, too, and if I get the boot, I’ll need a way to get Mom and me home.” He gave it a little more thought. “Do you think you’re okay to drive?”

“Hell, yeah,” Lachlan said. “But why is your mother going?”

“She was thinking she could talk to Gerhardt parent-to-parent, maybe get him to say something useful to her.”

Lachlan chuckled. “I like your mom. Good idea. Here’s another one: If you and Mara are planning on tackling that, you can surreptitiously record it for me. That will free me up to go with your brother into the old wing. Not that I don’t trust his judgment, but I’d love a look around there myself. There are things only a seasoned investigator will recognize as evidence, and there might be some stuff I’ll have to keep him from putting his mitts all over. I’d like to have a look without letting the whole world know I was there.”

“As it happens, he’ll already have a cop in there with him.”

“Who?”

“Forbes Raynor.”

Lachlan’s response was as expected. “Bloody hell. Who invited that schmuck?”

“No choice. He called asking for an update. We couldn’t put him off. Anyway, he got his own invite. His wife volunteered at Lockwood for a while.”

“Great,” Lachlan grumbled, but he left it at that.

Dez found his mom getting ready in the upstairs bathroom, putting on her makeup while Kayleigh watched, riveted, from atop the closed toilet. The little girl turned her gaze on her father.

“When can I wear makeup?” she asked.

“When you’re older,” he said. “Like twenty-five.”

Kayleigh sighed impatiently. “You’re so not funny.”

Dez and Mara shared a laugh before Dez invented a reason to speak to his mother alone. “Kay-bee, could you go set the table for lunch, please?”

Kayleigh took one more long look at her grandma before returning her attention to Dez. She rolled her eyes, uttering her response through a heavy sigh “O-kay.”

Dez waited until his daughter's footsteps faded away on the stairs before addressing his mom. “Are you sure about this?”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“I’m not even sure I want to go through with it. Too much can go wrong. If we don't play our cards exactly right, it'll raise his suspicions. Hell, he'll be suspicious enough to begin with. The first place he'll go is where he keeps his secrets buried. And if we’re correct about that being the old wing, he could run into Sully.”

“So we'll play our cards right and make sure that doesn't happen.”

“It’s not just Sully I'm worried about. It’s you too. As of now, you're not on anyone’s radar. You're no threat to Gerhardt or to Lowell. You going in there asking questions could change everything. Not only will Gerhardt know you’ve been asking about his past, you can bank on it he'll tell Lowell. The more I think about this, the less I want you involved.”

“And like I’ve told you, I am involved. Lowell and Gerhardt, they’ve hurt my family in unimaginable ways. I won't let that go, and you can't make me sit it out. We’re doing this together, Dez, all of us, and that's all there is to it.”

The statement wasn't completely true, as Eva reminded Dez before he, Sully and Mara left to pick up Emily and Lachlan. Sully and Mara had already headed out to Mara’s car, giving Dez a moment to say goodbye to his wife.

“I wish I were going with you,” she said. “I hate not knowing what's happening.”

Dez scanned the living room. Kayleigh was busy with Pax, giggling uproariously as the dog reacted with predictable confusion to her pretending to throw a ball for him. Dez folded Eva into his embrace, pulling from it every last ounce of warmth he could.

“We need to keep Kayleigh in our sights until this is over,” he said.

“I know. That’s why I’m not leaving her next door and coming with you. But it doesn’t make me less worried about you. Be careful, all right? Keep your cool. And if you need to get out without Sully, you do it. He’s got Lachlan and Forbes at his back. You need to trust they won’t let anything happen to him.”

As much as Dez’s instincts ran to protecting his little brother, his wife and daughter came first. If Gerhardt reacted with suspicion—or worse—to questioning about David, Dez knew his place was at Eva and Kayleigh’s side. The moment the Circle was alerted to the danger of exposure, there was every chance they would lash out. They’d done it before; Dez knew they’d do it again.

“If this goes sideways, you can count on me being here,” he said.

Giving her one last squeeze, Dez left Eva, Kayleigh and Pax and joined Sully and Mara.

20

They timed their arrival at Lockwood so Dez, Mara and Emily arrived first in Mara’s car. If someone was checking vehicles at the front gate, Dez reasoned he could call back to Lachlan and tell them not to come.

They passed through easily enough, no one on site so much as positioned to check invitations. There was a camera there, of course, which was no doubt transmitting video to a security office, but Sully, concealed as he was beneath a pile of clothes and bedding, would be fine if he stayed down.

Dez turned to Emily in the back seat. “You were right. They’re pretty lax about this whole thing.”

“They’ll have security watching the crowds, but as I recall from the last reunion, they didn't have much to do,” she said.

Mara was behind the wheel, allowing Dez—crammed into the front passenger seat of the mid-size sedan—to send a quick text to Sully: No security at front gate. Just camera.

Sully responded within seconds with a thumbs-up.

Lockwood was reachable only after driving up a long, treed lane, which then opened to reveal a parking area and a wide expanse of lawn and gardens. The fact vehicles were parked on the edges of the lane told Dez the place was already packed with visitors—a good sign for a group of people aiming to blend into a crowd.

“Maybe we can drop Emily off up on the grounds and come back here to park,” Dez suggested.

Emily leaned forward, ensuring her response was clearly heard. “Don’t be silly. I’m perfectly capable of walking. Anyway, I think Sullivan, your boss and I will be best served going through the woods at the edge of the grounds rather than cutting across the gardens.”

Dez glanced back at Emily. She looked tinier than usual, swimming as she was inside a too-large jacket. “You’re sure about going with the others into the old wing?”

“Of course. Out of all of us, Sullivan and I are the only ones who have ever been inside that part of the institution, and he was drugged at the time. They’ll need me as a guide. Anyway” —she tapped her purse—“I’ve got a surefire way to get us out of there if need be.”

Mara peered into the rearview mirror at the older lady. “What way is that?”

Uh-oh, Dez thought. One thing about his mom: She wasn’t a fan of guns. He was struggling to come up with a satisfactory answer when Emily provided an honest one.

“My revolver.”

Mara’s eyebrows lifted. “A gun?”

“.357 Magnum,” Emily said. “And I’m not particularly fond of guns either, my dear. But when you’re a smaller woman, and you’ve been the subject of an attempted murder, you rethink things in a hurry.”

Dez watched his mother, saw her eyes narrow slightly at Emily. “It’s loaded, I hope,” Mara said. Dez’s jaw dropped even before Emily had provided the answer.

“Fully loaded with .38 Special. And I’ve got a box of extra rounds in my purse.”

“And you’re prepared to use it?”

“If it comes to protecting Sullivan or anyone else, I certainly am.”

Mara nodded, a grim smile painting her expression. “Atta girl.”

Dez coughed. “Mom?”

Mara pulled into a spot behind a half-ton truck and parked before turning to Dez. “I’m not ordinarily a fan of guns or violence, but I’ll happily condone either if it keeps my family safe.”

They climbed out of the car, waiting the few minutes until Lachlan pulled up behind them in his borrowed minivan. Dez approached the open driver’s window and stuck his head into Lachlan’s space, catching a glimpse of Sully poking his head up from the floor area in front of the rear-most seats.

“Anyone know about cameras around here?” Dez asked.

He expected an answer from Sully, so was surprised when Lachlan replied instead. “Besides the front gate, there are a couple on the grounds. More are over each of the main doors and there are multiple inside the main institution. Nothing inside the old wing, though. Would defeat the purpose, no doubt, if the demented doctor and his cronies were caught on candid camera.”

“How do you know all that?”

“Hey, I checked,” Lachlan said. “If I’m going to be sneaking around the place with a guy who’s supposed to be dead, I’m going to cover my bases first. A coroner’s investigation happened here a few years back after a patient suicide. Lockwood had to provide a list of its cameras and their locations to the coroner’s office.”

Dez didn’t bother asking how Lachlan had gotten his hands on the coroner’s file. It was enough that he had it, and this was one gift horse Dez was happy not to look in the mouth.

Lachlan checked the sideview mirror, eyes studying the proximity to the front gate some distance behind them. “Camera was pointed down as we drove in, and it doesn’t seem to have moved. And we’re far enough it won’t be able to make out any distinguishing features even if it does spot us. I’m thinking Sullivan and I will make our way toward the building through the woods. Won’t be any cameras that way.”

“Emily said the same thing,” Dez said. “She’s going with you. She’ll be able to show you the best way in.”

“Good,” Lachlan said. Then, angling his head toward the back of the van, “Ready, kid?”

Dez circled the van and opened the side door.

“As I’ll ever be,” Sully said as he un-burrowed himself stepped into the small ditch next to the lane.

Dez searched for some last-minute advice as Mara pulled Sully into a hug. “Be careful,” she said. “Don’t force yourself into situations if you aren’t certain you can handle it. And call or text Dez or me if you need us.”

Dez smirked as he ruffled Sully’s hair. “Yeah. What she said.”

Sully smiled, but the expression didn’t come close to approaching his eyes. “I will. Thanks.”

“You okay?” Dez asked.

Sully nodded before taking a deep breath and exhaling in a heavy whoosh. “Let’s just do this, okay? The sooner we get in, the sooner we can leave. Text me if you can’t find Gerhardt or if it looks like he might be headed in our direction.”

Dez agreed, then reluctantly allowed Sully to head off without him, Lachlan and Emily taking up Dez’s usual spot at his brother’s side. Sully pulled the hood of his coat over his head, and Dez knew it would stay there, his brother’s defence mechanism in this place.

Dez stepped up to Mara, crossing his arms as he continued to watch Sully’s back. “I don’t like this.”

Mara settled a calming hand on his arm. “Me neither. But here we are.” She paused, long enough Dez redirected his gaze to meet her eye. She smiled grimly. “What say we get this over with, hmm?”

Dez forced himself to keep his eyes from drifting to the woods to the west, not wanting to give anything away as he and Mara walked up the lane toward the psychiatric hospital’s grounds. As it happened, he and his mom had plenty to hold their attention, the front gardens swarming with games, tables, food vendors and more people than he’d expected, even based on the number of cars parked on the lane.

“Keep your eyes peeled for Gerhardt,” Dez said.

Mara chuckled. “Honey, you’re six-and-a-half feet tall. If one of us is going to spot someone in this crowd, it’s you.”

Dez was still looking for the chief psychiatrist when he turned at the feel of a tap on his back and found Forbes.

“Where are the others?” he asked.

“Walk back to the lane and head into the woods to the west. Text Sull and let him know you’re coming. They’ll wait for you. And for God’s sake, don’t let anyone see you going in there.”

Forbes narrowed his eyes. “I think I can avoid being followed, thanks.” He met Mara’s eye and extended a hand. “Ma’am.”

Mara met the handshake, but her expression remained cold. “Sergeant.”

Dez waited until Forbes had scuttled off before asking the question. “Not that I fault you for it, but what’s your issue with Raynor?”

“He was a real jerk to Sully after your dad died. It was all I could do not to pop him in the mouth.”

Dez couldn’t resist a laugh. His amusement died an abrupt death as his gaze returned to the crowd and settled on a figure bobbing slowly through on the side closest to the imposing Victorian structure making up the main institution. Dr. Roman Gerhardt walked with a cane due to his old injury.

Dez had never before been grateful for another person’s permanent injury.

Gerhardt had turned on the charm, smile settling on visitor after visitor, going so far as to embrace an elderly woman who approached him.

“I see him,” Dez said for his mother’s benefit. “He’s busy glad-handling.”

“Perfect. He’ll have a harder time telling us to go to hell if he’s trying to charm reunion attendees.”

Dez took a breath and released it through pursed lips. “Okay, let’s do this. Stay close. I might need you to yell at me if I try to clobber him.”

Dez wove a path through the crowd, glancing back every few seconds to ensure his mom was still with him. After the tenth check, Dez returned his view to the front in time to catch Gerhardt’s eyes settling, saucer-like, on his.

For a moment, it seemed to Dez that Gerhardt didn't know where to look, or whether he should stay where he stood. The psychiatrist's eyes darted first to one side, then the other before finally settling on the massive building behind him. Dez pressed forward, eyes locked on his target, noticing the moment Gerhardt recognized fleeing was futile.

Gerhardt extricated himself from an impending conversation with another visitor, resignation on his face as Dez closed the remaining distance.

Crossing his wiry arms over his chest, Gerhardt levelled a glare at Dez. “What are you doing here? I ordered you off this property, and I intended the order to be a permanent one.”

“You’ll want to hear us out,” Dez said.

Only then did Gerhardt have the opportunity to see Dez’s companion, Mara appearing from behind her son’s significant form.

Something between surprise and confusion formed on the psychiatrist’s face. A smile plucked at the corners of his mouth, the sort of grin that didn't know what it wanted to be when it grew up. “Mrs. Braddock. This is a pleasant surprise. What can I do for you?”

Mara Braddock had years of experience behind her as a family counsellor. She knew her way around conflict: how to avoid it, how to extricate oneself from it, how to use it to solve problems. The tension in her jaw and forehead and the way her lips mashed together told Dez she was struggling to remember everything she’d spent a lifetime teaching.

“Dr. Gerhardt,” she said at last. “How are you?”

Dez could hear the anger in her voice, the clipped way she’d addressed the man. But Gerhardt didn’t know her well at all. From the way Gerhardt’s smile broadened just a little, it was clear he’d mistaken Mara’s phoney niceties for ignorance. Gerhardt would know Dez had been told of Sully’s allegations, but the fact they were here two years later—the doctor still very much employed and the recipient of unearned respect—would suggest to Gerhardt that Sully’s claims had gone nowhere and never would.

Dez couldn’t wait to show the man exactly how wrong he was.

Gerhardt’s hand lifted a couple of inches and hovered there a moment before dropping, a handshake he appeared to have thought better of. “I’m well. And you?”

“Well, I’m sure as a mental health professional, you can imagine,” Mara said.

Dez held his smile in check over his mother’s burn.

Gerhardt offered an apologetic nod to match the sudden, slight flush of his cheeks. “Of course. Forgive me.”

Mara returned a tight smile, polite rather than conciliatory. Truly forgiving Gerhardt was not something she, any more than Dez, was prepared to do. “We heard about the reunion today, so we took advantage of the opportunity to come out,” she said. “It’s been over two years, and I thought it was important to take another step toward healing. This was the place I’d hoped Sully would find his own healing. It didn’t turn out that way, so now I’m here to try to find a way to put the past behind me.”

Gerhardt took a step forward, all kind eyes and warm smile. Fake though they were, they presented enough of a sense of reality as to fool the unwary. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. I wish things could have turned out differently. I will never stop regretting it, that the situation didn’t turn out better. I know you likely won’t believe this, but I did my very best to do right by Sullivan.”

“You’re right,” Dez said. “We don’t believe it.”

“Dez,” Mara’s voice cut in, characteristically gentle, yet with the edge Dez recognized as her “watch it” tone.

He bit back further response, opting to allow his mother to play this through.

She returned her attention to the doctor. “Dez has never stopped being angry about what happened to Sully. I can't blame him, but at some point, I would like him to let go of the anger. I have my own to deal with. That’s why I’ve come. I thought if I could find a way to forgive you, I might be able to find some sort of peace within myself again. Does that make sense?”

“It makes plenty of sense, and I want to thank you for that.” He looked back at the institution. “Shall we go inside to talk more privately?”

Mara nodded slowly. “I think that would be a good idea.”

With Gerhardt leading the way, Dez walked at his mother’s side up the steps and through Lockwood’s main entrance. He’d come through these doors so many times in the past to visit Sully, had left feeling hopeless and helpless. This time, he reminded himself, Sully was okay and was very much in control of his own fate. With any luck, he was on the verge of finding the evidence to seal Gerhardt’s and Lowell’s.

Gerhardt guided Dez and Mara through the building until he reached the keycard-coded door leading to the main offices. Dez had been through here once, and the only thing that appeared any different to him was the fact the secretary wasn’t on duty—no big surprise given this was a Saturday.

Gerhardt’s office was right near the secretary’s, a large, wood-panelled room, likely unaltered much since the place was built in the eighteen hundreds. He used a key to enter the room and flicked a switch to turn on the wall lamps. While Mara followed, Dez hung back a few seconds, just long enough to turn on the record function on his phone’s notes app. Only once it was recording did he follow the others.

The wall lamps, Dez noticed, didn’t do much to brighten the room, a reality that accorded with his last memory of the place. Gerhardt pulled a cord on a large desk lamp, the light cutting into a little more of the darkness in the process. Plenty more shadows remained in the room’s corners, and Dez repressed a shudder as he contemplated the ghosts who might be lurking there even now, revenge on their minds as they regarded the doctor who was far more unhinged than virtually anyone who’d ever lived or died in this place.

Gerhardt slid in behind his desk, waving grandly at a pair of leather chairs reserved for guests. Dez lowered himself into one while Mara took the other, leather creaking as they sat.

“I have to admit,” Gerhardt began, “I’m surprised to see you here. After everything that happened, I had reason to believe you might never find it within you to forgive me for being unable to help Sullivan.”

“I wasn’t sure I’d be able to,” Mara said. “But then I learned something about you, something Dez said you told him a couple of years ago. You said you’d lost a son yourself. I know the pain of that sort of loss. Twice-over, I’ve known that pain. I realize nothing I do or say can cause you any greater harm than what you already suffer every day.”

“Well, yes, that’s—”

But Mara wasn’t done. Nowhere near, as it turned out. “Sully told Dez you took him to a place he called the Blue Room, that you drugged him and forced him into communicating with murdered spirits.”

Gerhardt blanched. “Now, I wouldn’t say—”

“Let me finish. I understand your purpose in doing so was to try to discover something about what happened to your own son. Please don’t deny it, Doctor. Sully was my son, and I never saw him as terrified as he was during the short time I spent with him between his release from Lockwood and his death in that cave. What’s more, I saw the restraint marks and bruises.”

“You don’t understand,” Gerhardt cut in quickly. “Your son was very unwell. He was suicidal when he came to us. He was—”

“Possessed by someone. My son wasn’t suicidal, Doctor. He had come under the control of a spirit. And I think you believed that every bit as strongly as I did. You thought maybe, with his gifts, he could help you find your missing son, and you were prepared to do whatever you had to do to tap into that.”

“Ma’am—”

“Here’s the thing, Doctor. I hate you for what you did to my son. I can’t think of many people I’ve hated more. But I’m torn, because a part of me—a part I wish I didn’t have to admit exists—can’t blame you for it. I’d like to be able to say differently, but if I had been in your shoes, I might have done the same thing. I don’t know what kind of person that makes me, but I do know being a parent comes first. It comes above every other thing. I would do anything, say anything and become anything if it meant protecting my children. I have to believe you are the same.”

Gerhardt cleared his throat. Shifted a little in his chair. Cleared his throat again. Finally, he spoke. “What do you want me to say?”

“You could begin with the truth.”

“You want me to tell you what Sullivan said was what actually happened. But he was a very disturbed young man, suffering from repeated episodes of psychosis in the time immediately prior to his death. What you’re saying, it’s—”

“Don’t insult our intelligence,” Dez said. “We know what happened, and we know why. We didn’t come here looking for you to deny or confirm anything. We came for another reason entirely.”

Gerhardt’s jaw tightened, teeth working invisibly within his mouth until he finally answered. “Which is?”

“I’m involved in an investigation into the disappearance of your son,” Dez said. “I wanted to ask you a few questions.”

Gerhardt narrowed his eyes at Dez. “Why would you do that?”

“Why wouldn’t I? We’re talking about a young child.”

“A young child who was my son. You hate me. Why would you help me?”

“It’s not about helping you,” Dez said. “It’s bigger than that. A lot bigger. My boss, Lachlan Fields, and I received information from a psychic, someone who said they saw Eloise inside your old house in The Forks.”

Gerhardt shot forward in his chair. “Eloise? When?”

“Recently.”

“But she… I was certain, after all this time, she had to be dead.” The dim lighting did not hide the pallor of his face.

“She is dead,” Dez said. “It was her spirit the psychic saw. He said she appeared to have been the victim of a homicide.” Dez described the injuries Sully had detailed, signs of both a beating and a stabbing. “The psychic said she wasn’t much older than she would have been at the time of David’s disappearance. That suggested to him she’d died shortly after. Which tells me this whole thing is larger than just your son. Whatever happened to him, it could very easily be connected to the murder of your wife. That leaves me with some questions, such as what role you might have had to play in all of it.”

With the pronouncement of the accusation, the psychiatrist reddened.

“How dare you?” he demanded. “How dare you sit there and suggest I had anything to do with what happened to my family? You might not believe this, Mr. Braddock, but I loved them. Whatever befell them, and whatever you might think of me, I would never have caused them harm.”

“I’m a former cop, Doctor,” Dez said. “Every investigation begins with those closest to the victim. You and I have a pretty shitty history, but I assure you, there is nothing personal behind my questions.”

“No?”

“No. So I’m going to ask you right out, and I expect an honest answer. Did you have any reason to make either your son or your wife disappear?”

Gerhardt levelled a glare at Dez, his lips forming a tight line that broke only when he opened his mouth to answer. “No. I did not.”

Gerhardt had held Dez’s gaze. He hadn’t wavered in his reply and he hadn’t said more than was absolutely necessary. None of the usual lying tells were present. And yet, Dez couldn’t shake the feeling Gerhardt knew far more than he was letting on.

There was, of course, every chance Dez’s suspicion was based on nothing more than his hatred of the psychiatrist. But it might also be his read was accurate, and that his biggest mistake would be to ignore his instincts.

His instincts told him Gerhardt was in this up to his eyeballs.

“Why don’t you tell us your version of what happened?” Dez said.

“My version? You mean the truth? I was at work and my wife stayed home with David. I received a frantic call from her that afternoon, telling me the police were there and that someone had taken David. The police investigated the matter thoroughly as far as Eloise and I went. We were questioned as suspects and nothing came of it, for one simple reason: We had nothing to do with it. Some lunatic sat there, outside our yard, and waited for the opportune moment. When Eloise went to answer the phone, the man took my son.”

That story matched what Gerhardt had told the police at the time, and the one that had become the version of events that had gone out to the media. That told Dez the police, at least, had believed it.

“What happened between you and Eloise afterward?” Mara asked.

“What happens to many couples who lose a child. We fell apart. We blamed each other, we blamed ourselves. We grew distant and barely spoke. She didn’t tell me of her plans to leave, simply left a note stating she couldn’t bear to live in that house anymore, couldn’t bear life without David in it. I found the note when I arrived back from work one day, and I called the police. I thought perhaps she’d gone off to kill herself. When she didn’t return, I became convinced of it. It never occurred to me she’d been murdered. This psychic of yours, how reliable is he?”

“Reliable,” Dez said.

“Who is he?”

“I’m not at liberty to share that info. What I can tell you is that I’m willing to help you find the answers you’ve been looking for.”

Gerhardt sat back and crossed his arms. “And what makes you think I want your help? You’ve questioned me, my methods, my very character. I’ve ordered you to stay away from Lockwood, and yet here you are. You’ve made it very clear you blame me for Sullivan. Why should I trust you with this investigation?”

“Because you have no choice,” Dez said. “You’ve spent years torturing psychics for answers you couldn’t find any other way. We’re giving you an opportunity here, a chance to finally lay this to rest.”

“And you’ll do this for me out of the goodness of your heart, will you?”

Dez was about to reply, but Mara beat him to it. “Not after what you put Sully through. We have a favour to call in, and we’ll expect some quid pro quo before we turn over any significant information.”

Gerhardt’s smile reminded Dez of a snake. “Ah, so now we come to the crux of the matter. What is it you’re looking for, precisely?”

This was the part Dez hadn’t been sure about. How much could they comfortably share with Gerhardt before they put themselves and their loved ones into a lethal spot?

Mara provided another answer, one that made Dez even more grateful for her presence here.

“You carry a lot of secrets, Doctor, many your job requires you to keep. We’d never dream of asking you to breach the confidence of other families. What we want—what we will demand—are the secrets you carry about our family. We’ll help you solve your family’s mysteries if you help us solve ours.”

Mara stood, ending the conversation without awaiting an answer, forcing Dez to do the same.

“We’ll be in touch,” she said, offering Gerhardt a cool smile.

Then she left the office, leaving Dez to trail behind her. He glanced back as he passed into the hall, too curious about Gerhardt’s response to play this as cool as Mara had. Gerhardt wasn’t looking at him, eyes fixed upon the surface of his desk. Whether the man suspected what Mara had been hinting at was unknown, but it was clear he was deep in thought about something.

Gerhardt looked up just before Dez could turn to follow Mara.

“Be careful, Mr. Braddock,” he said. “You have no idea how far I’m willing to go to find the answers I need.”

Dez’s lips formed a humourless grin. “Finally, something you and I have in common.”

21

Caraganas had grown over portions of this part of Lockwood, obscuring windows and concealing sections of wall that had been allowed to crack with time and weathering.

At Lockwood’s inception, this stone construct was the entirety of the institution, with the main building erected nearer the turn of the century. Lockwood had taken advantage of its new space, launching itself into a new era of mental health treatment. It became not so much an asylum as a place of treatment, and it quickly filled its rooms. The old institution, the home of so much trauma—the site of everything from electroshock to lobotomies—was eventually closed down. Sully had heard blame placed on the presence of asbestos in its walls and ceilings, but he suspected the full answer went beyond the structural. This building held secrets, dark ones the modern-day board members would as soon be kept buried deep within the past.

Talk of demolition had begun, but it had yet to happen. Sully suspected Gerhardt, and possibly even Lowell, had something to do with it. Destruction of the old wing would mean the loss of their experimental space. Connected as it was to a collection of human lab rats—the kind who would talk without being believed—there could be no better location in all of Kimotan Rapids.

Sully followed closely behind Emily as she emerged from the shadow of the woods encircling the hospital grounds. Lachlan remained a fixture at the woman’s side while Forbes, who’d caught up partway through their trek, kept as far from the private investigator as he could. An obvious friction existed between the two men, Lachlan possessing the kind of investigative brilliance and acquired respect every working cop aspired to. Forbes’s own gifts as a cop ran more to dogged determination, the kind of persistence needed to see plodding investigations through to an end. While equally necessary, stubbornness just didn’t come with the same star quality as Lachlan’s brand of near-psychic skill in gauging the truth behind a case.

The two men seemed to have agreed to put their mutual dislike aside, though, cooperation and silence required as the unlikely group made its way toward the old wing.

Emily led them to the farthest end of the building. From here, Sully could just make out a portion of the grounds toward the front of the main institution, and several groups of people were visible as they talked. The tinkle of laughter was a distant sound, far enough Sully knew he and his companions could speak without fear of being overheard. Still they kept any thoughts they carried to themselves, following wordlessly as Emily led them from the shelter of the woods and into the few yards of open space separating trees from the building’s edge.

In her gloved hands, Emily held the set of keys Sully had pilfered from the Gerhardt house as she pressed between a pair of caragana bushes. It sounded like she said something to Lachlan, and he responded by pushing away some branches, enough to allow Emily to move forward more easily.

It was also enough to reveal a doorway lying at the base of a short set of steps, one the bushes rendered invisible to all but the most knowing eyes.

Sully, with Forbes at his left flank, pushed forward, branches poking at his clothes as he listened to Emily’s progress. The jangle of keys suggested she was looking for the right one, and it took a full minute before another sound reached his ears: that of a rusty lock being turned.

The door was unlocked, but entry, it turned out, wouldn’t be quite so easy. Lachlan slipped on a set of gloves and took Emily’s place, and thudding sounds reached Sully’s ears even as Emily stepped up to him.

“Something’s holding the door shut,” she told Sully. “If my guess is correct, I’d say Dr. Gerhardt had the entrances sealed off from the inside after Nate and I helped you and your mother escape back then.”

“Probably boarded up,” Forbes said. “It’ll need a more forceful touch than Lachlan will manage.”

Sully wasn’t convinced. Lachlan had reached retirement age, but he was far from weak. Even so, Sully joined Forbes in ducking past the caraganas to reach the door. Lachlan was putting his shoulder unsuccessfully to it, and he turned narrowed eyes on Forbes as the younger man tapped him on the upper back.

“What?”

“Let me have a go at it,” Forbes said. “Some things need a younger man’s touch.”

Lachlan’s face cracked into a derisive smirk. “Then you should step aside and let Sullivan at it.”

Forbes’s snort was more that of an angry bull than an amused recipient of a joke. Luckily, he possessed other bovine qualities that might come in handy: Forbes wasn’t tall, but he was solidly built, a short wall of bulky muscle.

Lachlan returned to the other side of the caraganas, and Sully stepped back as much as he could to allow Forbes the room to move. The cop gave the door two precursory shoulders that did little before deciding a kick might be the better option. Forbes jammed his hands into a pair of leather gloves, then gripped the doorframe and lifted a foot. One kick—a solid one by any measure—resulted in nothing but a pained grunt. A second one, though it came with a slight sound of splintering, ended in a loudly muttered curse.

“Maybe we can go through a window,” Lachlan suggested to Emily from the other side of the bush.

“It won’t work,” she replied. “The windows are barred.”

Forbes glanced back at Sully, his expression a combination of annoyance and his usual brand of stubborn determination. “This bitch isn’t budging. How about I shoulder while you kick? Aim for the spot just above the knob. That seems to be where the block is most solid.”

Sully took up Forbes’s position, slipping into his own set of gloves as the cop contorted his body to deliver a shoulder blow while avoiding any impact from Sully’s boot. Then the two of them went at the door together.

Whatever barricade had been constructed on the door’s inner side was a solid one, enough to rattle Sully’s teeth as his first kick connected. Yet he felt a little give, enough that Forbes turned hopeful eyes on him.

“One more,” the cop said. “Count of three.” Forbes counted down without an acknowledging reply, and Sully gave another hard boot to the door as Forbes finished the count.

A loud splintering noise sounded, and it took a final good kick from Sully to send the door crashing inward, a large piece of two-by-four clattering to the floor.

“Quiet,” Lachlan scolded as he brushed between Sully and Forbes, flashlight in hand and clicked on.

“There wasn’t exactly a quiet option,” Sully said.

Forbes settled on a more direct response before following Lachlan. “Asshole.”

Sully held the bush back to allow Emily to pass more easily beneath its branches. Her fingers found Sully’s forearm and squeezed gently.

“Are you ready for this?” she asked.

He nodded, the expression an unspoken lie. He wanted to be anywhere else right now. Until this moment, he’d had little recollection of how he’d been brought down to the Blue Room, but Lachlan’s flashlight bobbing against dusty tiled walls had jarred something loose inside his brain. He saw the tile in his mind, softly illuminated within dim lighting as he bumped along a cracked floor in a wheelchair, brain barely aware, body unresponsive beneath the weight of drugs.

Another gentle squeeze at his arm drew him out of the hazy past, and he looked down to find Emily’s bespectacled eyes gazing up at him. “Sullivan?”

“I’m okay,” he said. “Just remembering something.”

“Try not to,” she said, then took his hand as she led him gently into the basement hall.

Sully paused to close the door, sealing them in darkness. He located the flashlight feature on his phone, his flash cutting only a little into the press of shadows as he guided Emily inside. A short distance ahead, Lachlan’s flashlight had stopped, its beam fixed on the ground at Sully and Emily’s feet as he waited for them.

“Where to?” Lachlan’s voice was a muted echo on tile, one Emily responded to by moving quickly into the beam, drawing Sully along behind her. She took the light from Lachlan in her free hand, casting it down the hall and on various doors.

“The old treatment room is this way,” she said.

The old treatment room. Sully didn’t need to ask to know it was the place Harry had called the Blue Room, its sky-blue walls a deceptively soothing colour likely intended to calm unwilling patients for old-school, torturous procedures.

During his own experience at Lockwood, Sully had been heavily drugged, enough that he’d seen or felt none of the ghosts he might have expected to otherwise see in a place so full of trauma. He was no longer similarly limited.

Dimly lit forms emerged from the shadows around him. A woman, bald and drooling, in a wheelchair. A man, body rocking as he sat curled on the floor, pulling hard at shaggy hair. Most unnervingly, a wild-eyed woman, face partially concealed beneath a tangle of matted hair, moving along at his left shoulder, so close he would have, in life, felt her breath on his neck.

He did his best to ignore the ghosts, but the challenge wouldn’t be an easy one, even with his hood acting as partial barrier. These were, after all, only the ones he could see, each apparently the victim of an unlawful death. But there were others, many others, ones who had died whether by illness or their own hand. He couldn’t see them, but there was no ignoring the weight of them in this place, the creeping sensation of dread and desperation they emitted as he moved around them and through them.

Emily had yet to release his hand, and he tried to derive what comfort he could from the touch as he forced himself onward.

Emily paused briefly partway down the hall. Her lips parted in the castoff glow of the flashlight, a signifier of yet-unspoken words. He waited, wondering what she was deciding to say.

Finally, she made up her mind, shining her light on a partially opened door. “That’s the room where you were born,” she said.

Shadow lay beyond the door, the promise of further darkness beyond.

“You were born here?” Forbes asked. “Jesus.”

“Do you want to go in?” she asked.

Sully shook his head before she’d even finished the question. No, he didn’t want to go in. He wanted to get the hell away from this room as fast as was humanly possible.

Emily must have read the need in his eyes because she immediately turned and kept going, distancing them from the room and the terrible secrets it held. Lucky Dule had been kept against her will there, had been subjected to God knows what while carrying the unborn baby of the man who’d put her there. This place, all of it, was the stuff of nightmares, and Sully wanted nothing more than to burn all of it to the ground.

He hadn’t said it out loud, but with Emily, he didn’t need to.

“We’ll find justice for her, Sullivan,” she said. “I won’t rest until we do.”

“Thank you,” was all he could think of to say. The expression of his gratitude was nowhere near enough, not for this little eighty-something-year-old lady who had nearly sacrificed her own life to ensure Sully had a chance at one.

They continued on, putting a few more doors between themselves and the room. Here, they were closer to the old elevator and the stairs that would lead them to the current institution. Somewhere near here, he knew—somewhere near enough to set his skin crawling—was the Blue Room.

Lachlan found it first. Light burst from the room as a switch inside was flicked, revealing electricity had not been cut off to the old wing despite its supposed disuse.

“I’ve got a treatment room here,” he said, head popping out from the doorway to announce the find. Forbes, too, disappeared inside, leaving just Sully and Emily in the hallway.

“You don’t have to go in,” she said. “We can wait right here.”

It was a good thought. As much as Sully hated the darkened hallway and its ghosts, he liked far less the idea of entering that space ahead, the light bright enough inside to reveal in detail the room that held so much trauma for him.

Yet, deep inside himself, he knew he had to face this. It would be easier with Dez, their mom or Eva at his side, but Emily was fine replacement, one he knew he could trust to watch out for him.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I need to do this.”

She gave his hand a squeeze but didn’t make a move toward the room, letting him take it at his own pace. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a pace in existence that would make this any easier.

Sully stepped forward, closing the distance, keeping his eyes on the dusty floor as he moved. In the light, he could see the trail there, a worn path through the dust made by feet and wheels coming and going from the old elevator. He waited until the moment he’d crossed fully into the Blue Room, when the darker tile of the hallway turned to dusty, clinical white. Only then did he look up.

His eyes bypassed Lachlan and Forbes, went immediately to the bed. He knew he was still standing here, at the entrance to the room, but his mind took him elsewhere. He was no longer on his feet, but restrained on the gurney, Gerhardt coming at him with a syringe while Hackman stood over him with a smirk. He was feeling the prick of the needle in his arm, the sensation of the chemical as it flowed into his vein. He was sinking, further and further, fog separating him from the here and now as the drug took him under. Then, with the press of an object into his hand, a memory not his own exploded in his consciousness until, inevitably, he experienced a ghost’s horrific, terrifying death.

Panic seized him, robbing him of breath. He heard a voice, then two, tugging on his consciousness, the way he would hear Dez or their mom or Eva or Ara as they sat with him in Lockwood’s visiting area.

A woman’s voice—Emily’s—reached him first, but it was a deeper, firmer one that broke fully through the haze.

“Sullivan, breathe. Come on. You’re okay. Look at me. Hey! Look at me!”

He felt a firm grip on his chin and his head being tweaked to the side. A series of none-too-gentle slaps to his cheek. Then, at least, the fog parted, revealing not Emily or Lachlan in front of him, but Forbes.

Sully blinked once, twice, forcing the remains of the flashback from his brain. Somehow, he’d ended up on the floor, seated and curled against the wall. Forbes was kneeling in front of him, Emily standing just to the side. Lachlan stood back near the bed, but headed for the door and left the room the moment it was clear Sully was okay. He had a set of keys in his hand—Gerhardt’s keys—and Sully guessed Dez’s boss must have grabbed them while Sully was trapped in the flashback.

Forbes, for now, stayed where he was. “You good?”

Sully nodded, not yet trusting his voice. There was something in Forbes’s expression, not an unasked question so much as something needing said. As far as Sully could think, there wasn’t much he needed to say. He’d already told Forbes about the Blue Room, about what had happened to him in this place.

A few moments passed before Forbes spoke. “My mother. She was a patient here. I’ve always wondered….”

The admission, trailing off to silence, jarred Sully, shoved his own trauma temporarily into the background. “What?”

Forbes stood, eyes casting over the room. “Do you think she would have been brought in here?”

Sully pressed back against the wall, using it as support as he drew himself to standing. His legs felt a little unsteady beneath him, but they held. “As far as I’m aware, Gerhardt only used this room to experiment on patients with some sort of psychic ability. Did your mother have anything like that?”

Forbes shook his head slowly, but continued to sweep his gaze over the room. “Not that I was ever aware. I was under the understanding she was treated all right here, but being here, knowing what happened to you, it makes me wonder.” He met Sully’s eye briefly, before his eyes darted away. This time, his gaze didn’t appear to focus. “She suffered a severe breakdown when I was a kid. Dad didn’t have any choice but to commit her. She had days where things seemed all right, where I’d visit and she’d seem just like she always had been. But I found out later those days were few and far between. She tried to run more than once, but never made it far before they caught her again. Eventually, she found a way to escape so they’d never be able to bring her back in.”

Sully didn’t ask. What Forbes meant was clear.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Forbes didn’t respond directly. His eyes snapped back onto Sully’s. “Can you see her?”

Sully shook his head. He couldn’t see her, which probably boded well for both Forbes and his mom. But, as he focused, he believed he could sense her, a protective, loving energy near the police detective. “I can only see the ones who were murdered. But I think she’s here, with you. I don’t feel like she’s upset or anything. She’s protecting you. Maybe she always does.”

A sheen formed over Forbes’s eyes, and he turned away to hide his emotion. “Sometimes I think I feel her around me. I always figured I was just being stupid.”

“There’s nothing stupid about that.”

Forbes nodded. “Maybe it’s why I married Greta. I knew she had problems, that she struggled with drugs and her mental health. I couldn’t fix my mom, so maybe I set out to fix Greta.” He chuckled bitterly. “Didn’t work out so good, did it?”

“You did your best.”

“My best wasn’t good enough.”

It was the most real conversation Sully had ever had with the man. It ended almost as soon as it began when Lachlan’s head popped back into the room. He met Sully’s eye before drifting past Emily to settle on Forbes.

“There’s something you need to see. Come on.”

Sully was happy enough to leave the Blue Room behind, shutting off the light as he tailed the others to a room across the hall and a couple of doors down.

“Don’t turn on the lights,” Lachlan advised. “There’s a window in here.”

The windows were dusty, but enough daylight filtered through that they didn’t need additional light to see by. Filing cabinets lined one wall and Lachlan drew their attention there. “There are loads of historic patient files in here, most from before the new institution was built. But I found others, those of patients like Sullivan who were taken to the Blue Room. Gerhardt kept notes—enough to get the authorities asking some big questions.”

Sully stepped forward. “Is my file in there?”

Forbes caught his arm. “Don’t. Don’t touch anything, either of you. This is evidence. If we start tampering with it, any search warrant I manage to obtain will be pointless if this ever ends up in court.”

“You’re already in here when you shouldn’t be,” Sully said. “That’s enough to screw up your case.”

“Worse comes to worse, I can say I came in here because I saw evidence you people had broken in. But I need a search warrant for anything not in plain sight.”

Lachlan crossed the room, walking past a desk until he reached a large, windowed medicine cabinet. “Is this plain sight enough for you?”

Forbes, Sully and Emily joined Lachlan, each peering through the cabinet panes at the drugs on the other side. Many appeared old, like they’d been there forever. But a handful, vials containing a liquid injectable, were clearly new. What was more, they were familiar.

“That’s the drug,” Sully said. “The one they gave me in the Blue Room.”

“You’re sure?” Lachlan asked. “You wouldn’t have been in a position to see the markings on the labels, would you?”

That was true. “Well, they look identical, anyway.”

“Easy enough to figure it out, I guess,” Forbes said. “We can get this stuff tested as a non-LOBRA lab, see if it would cause the sort of experience you described. Leave it alone. I’ll ensure the warrant covers this.”

Lachlan rolled his eyes and returned to the filing cabinets. He pulled out a drawer, removed and opened a file and started snapping photos with his phone’s camera.

“Hey,” Forbes snapped, rushing over to Lachlan. “Cut it out!”

There was no lock on the medicine cabinet door. Sully cracked open one of the doors and snatched a vial from inside, dropping it into a jacket pocket before Forbes would notice. He met Emily’s eye and the two shared a small, conspiratorial smile as Sully resealed the cabinet.

Forbes was still arguing quietly with Lachlan as Sully’s phone pinged an incoming message from within his pocket. He pulled it out and read the text from Dez: Mom and I finished talking to G. Fill you in when I see you. Cut it short and get out. Will wait.

Sully sent a quick text back—K—before looking up to address the others.

“Hey, guys, Dez just—”

He halted abruptly as a sound reached his ears, something mechanical from just down the hallway.

“Lachlan, goddammit, stop—”

Sully shushed Forbes, drawing everyone into silence until they, too, had a chance to listen.

Lachlan identified the noise first.

“Bloody hell,” he said. “That’s the elevator.” His eyes snapped from the office door to Sully.

“Someone’s coming.”

22

Lachlan slid the drawer to the filing cabinet shut while Sully ran to the office door. The elevator gears stopped grinding as the car paused a floor above.

Forbes appeared, anxiety rolling off him, at Sully’s left shoulder. “We need to get the hell out of here. Now.”

There was no arguing the point, but exiting the way they’d come was an impossibility. That became obvious the moment they were back in the hall.

“We can’t go back the way we came,” Lachlan said, pulling shut and locking the office door. “Whoever that is, they’ll see us, or at least hear us before we can get back to the exit. In any case, as soon as we crack that door open, the hallway will be flooded with light.”

“The stairs,” Emily said. “The ones past the elevator. It’s the only way.”

Forbes gripped Sully’s arm and tugged at him to get him moving. “Let’s go.”

“Sullivan can’t go that way,” Lachlan said. “It leads to a hall connecting to the main institution. Security cameras are all over the place. If he’s seen—”

“Go,” Sully said. “I’ll find somewhere to hide. As soon as Gerhardt, or whoever that is, goes into the office or the Blue Room, I’ll head for the outside door.”

Forbes didn’t need to be told twice. The elevator had started up again, grinding slowly toward the basement floor.

Lachlan paused briefly at Sully’s side. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.” Sully remembered the vial, and pulled it from his pocket, thrusting it into Lachlan’s hand. “Take this and have it tested.”

Lachlan appeared uncertain but nodded anyway. Then he jogged after Forbes. Emily, though, wasn’t moving.

“Emily—” Sully began, but she cut him off before he could protest further.

“I’m not leaving you here alone.” She grabbed his hand and pulled at it. “Follow me. Quickly.”

The elevator dinged as it reached the floor and prepared to open. The sound was nearly enough to launch another panic attack, but Sully managed to keep his focus and follow Emily as she moved down the hallway in the direction of the outside door. There was nowhere near time enough to reach the exit, and Sully gave it no thought as Emily led him inside one of the darkened rooms along the hallway. It wasn’t until they were inside, concealed in shadow with the door slightly ajar that Sully realized where they were: the room where, twenty-four-and-a-half years ago, he was born.

There was no time to protest Emily’s choice of hiding place. The elevator had opened and the sound of movement—a shuffling gait interspersed by the sound of a cane against the floor—reached his ears.

Sully’s heart pounded in his chest, breath catching in his throat as he recognized Gerhardt’s footsteps.

Sully had lost the most intrusive of the ghosts when he’d entered the Blue Room, but she’d found him again, standing immediately next to him as he sought to control his fear. He thought about Dez, wishing he could call him; since childhood, the sound of his brother’s voice was often enough to settle his nerves. That wasn’t a possibility, but the thought of Dez brought something else to mind. If Dez saw Forbes and Lachlan emerge from the building without Sully and Emily, he’d flip out.

Sully pulled out his phone, retreating to the nearest corner of the room and facing into it, ensuring the light from his screen wouldn’t be visible from the hall. It was, however, enough to further light the ghastly face of the patient who insisted on pressing well into his personal space.

Sully turned his face farther into the shelter of his hood and did his best to ignore the woman while firing off a text to Dez: Emily and I still inside. We’re fine. Take Mom home. Will c u ltr.

He wasn’t surprised by the text that followed seconds later: Like hell

Sully sent a reply. Emily has her piece. Will be fine. Make sure Eva and K ok

The reply didn’t come immediately, suggesting Dez was either distracted or thinking. Sully would have put money on the latter. When at last he responded—K. Keep me posted—Sully realized he’d won the brief debate. Problem was, he wasn’t sure whether he should feel relieved or despondent.

He sought comfort in Emily, double-checking his phone was on silent and tucked away before rejoining her just behind the door. As if sensing his anxiety, she reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. It seemed fitting, that the woman who’d taken care of him all those years back was here, doing the same thing all over again.

Another sound reached his ears: footsteps, quieter than the first set. They came from the end of the hall nearest the stairs leading to the adjoining hallway, and for a moment, Sully wondered whether Lachlan had decided to return to question the doctor.

What he heard instead almost put him on his ass on the cold, dusty floor.

“Doctor?”

He knew the voice, had exchanged conversation with its owner only recently.

Snowy.

“My God,” Gerhardt said. “You have some nerve showing up here after that escape. One of my orderlies is still off with a concussion thanks to your son.”

There was a brief pause, followed by Snowy saying, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I have information I think you’ll want. All you have to do is turn the other way as it relates to my son and me. I want us to be able to come out of hiding, and you’re a part of that. If you would just agree to—”

“I’m not making any bargains with you, Phoebe.”

“Even after everything I did for you? I gave you all of those psychics. I told you who might be able to help you.”

“You didn’t do that for me. You did it for you. You wanted out of the treatments.”

“All I’m asking is for you to agree to turn the other way should you see Terrence or me in future. All we want is a chance at a life, a real life. Now I don’t have much time. He doesn’t know I’m here speaking with you. He wouldn’t approve of what I’m doing.”

“Which is?”

“Betraying a man he and I both respect.”

Sully’s heart pounded against his ribs as Gerhardt paused in apparent thought. Sully knew without possessing Snowy’s gift of clairvoyance she was about to sell him out to Gerhardt.

Escape was now more necessary than ever, but it sounded like Gerhardt and Snowy were speaking not inside an office or other room, but in the hall, just a few doors down. Sully could run, and no one immediately present in the basement could catch him. But Emily might not be as fast, and he wouldn’t abandon her here. Anyway, there was the problem of all the staff on the premises. Even if Sully and Emily escaped the building, a simple phone call from Gerhardt would have the gates shut and staff on alert before full escape could be made.

They had no option but to stay put and keep silent.

“All right,” Gerhardt said at last. “I’ll bite. Who do you mean?”

“I need your assurance.”

“As I understand it, your son’s problems are rather deeper than just his doings at Lockwood during your escape.”

“One problem at a time,” Snowy said.

“Fine,” Gerhardt said. “I won’t make efforts to find either of you in future.”

Sully wouldn’t have put much faith in anything Gerhardt promised, but Snowy forged on anyway. Whether that was suggestive of her claim she couldn’t read Gerhardt like she did others, or whether it was simply a sign of desperate times calling for desperate measures, he didn’t know. All he knew was what she said next.

“Sullivan Gray. He’s alive.”

Another pause, one into which Emily interjected with a squeeze hard enough to crush Sully’s fingers.

“He died in a cave collapse shortly after his own escape,” Gerhardt said. But the tone was slow and thoughtful rather than immediately dismissive.

“I can assure you, Doctor, he is very much alive. I’ve seen him. I’ve spoken to him.”

She paused, and Sully was left to wish he shared her ability to read minds.

“Phoebe?” Gerhardt prodded.

“He’s here,” she said.

“Here, as in Kimotan Rapids?” he asked.

“Here, as in right down the hall.”

23

Sully’s stomach dropped.

Just a few words, and Snowy had as good as destroyed him.

In the dim light from the hall, he could make out Emily’s head as she turned toward him. She’d never be able to see him in the dark, but she didn’t have to. She’d know the expression he was wearing without having to look him in the eye.

Sully was sunk. But Emily didn’t have to go down with him. That was more than he’d allow.

“Stay here,” he whispered.

“No.”

“Emily, you have to. I need to face Gerhardt. I don’t have a choice. Please, just stay here. Keep your gun at the ready, just in case, okay?”

“I’ll call your brother.” The tone was hopeful, not threatening. But whichever way Sully looked at it, having Dez here was not an option. He had far too much to lose, and Sully had cost his brother too much already.

“No,” he said. “This is about me and Gerhardt. Please, don’t involve Dez any more than he already is. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

Emily sucked in a breath but said nothing more, and Sully slipped past her before she could think up another argument. Nothing she said could change his mind.

He could hear Gerhardt questioning Snowy further, disbelieving. Sully would have to make this quick, confront Gerhardt before he had time to call in backup. If a search became necessary, Emily would be discovered too. Emily whom Gerhardt had already tried to kill once.

Never again.

Two doors separated Sully from the office he’d just left a few minutes ago. Judging by the light coming from the room, Gerhardt had taken the conversation with Snowy there, no doubt to allow him to use the phone.

He could hear Snowy’s voice. “I’m telling you the truth.”

“I’m sure you believe that,” Gerhardt said. “Don’t worry. I’ll call in some help to ensure a thorough search of the place.”

Sully checked his phone, relieved it still had charge. He opened the recorder app and hit the red button to get it running.

Then he stepped through the door.

“You know, you could just search the floor yourself. Or are you afraid of what would happen if it was just you and me, Doc?”

Sully had kept his hood up until now. Now it no longer mattered. He reached up, drawing it down around his shoulders, revealing his face.

Gerhardt’s hand had been on a phone sitting atop the desk; he dropped it like a hot potato when he made eye contact.

“My God… My God.”

“Not quite,” Sully said. He risked turning his glare to Snowy, who stood this side of the psychiatrist’s desk, hands over her mouth as if startled by the sight of the fellow psychic. Sure, she’d known he was there, but seeing him face to face, that was a whole other matter.

“I trusted you,” he said.

Her eyes filled with tears, and a sob erupted from her throat. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just wanted it to end. Terrence, he doesn’t deserve this.”

“Terrence’s biggest problem isn’t Gerhardt. That’s your problem. Terrence’s concern is Lowell Braddock. Don’t try to tell me you coming here like this was all about you being a concerned mother. You were looking out for you.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand?”

“You were here less than three months. I spent years in this place. I couldn’t bear it another day. I would have done anything to be free of it, but even when I was out, it was still there, inside me. It hangs over me everywhere I go, the idea I might one day walk into someone I knew from Lockwood, that they might drag me back. I thought if I gave them what they wanted—”

“And now? You’re fine living with yourself? What about Terrence? What would he think?”

“He won’t know.” She took a breath, let it out before shaking her head slowly. “I told you to stay away from this place, didn’t I? I warned you. You didn’t listen.”

Sully understood she was trying to lessen the blame, to alleviate her guilt. Sure, she’d said that. But all it would have meant, had he obeyed, was that Sully would have been fighting even harder to conceal himself. It would have meant Dez, Mara and Eva being questioned and threatened in an attempt to pull from them the truth. The fact Sully was here, that he could face this without dragging his loved ones into it, was actually preferable to the reality Snowy would otherwise have left him with.

He had a second thought, about Terrence. If Snowy had come here in an attempt to settle accounts with Gerhardt so she could come out of hiding, what might it mean about Terrence and his problem with Lowell? Terrence and Snowy needed to stay concealed until Lowell was out of the picture. Maybe Terrence was working on a plan even now to deal with his biggest problem.

Now, though, wasn’t the time to ask. He’d probably already revealed too much to Gerhardt about the Lowell situation. The psychiatrist no doubt had some knowledge about his business partner’s dirty deeds—he obviously was front and centre regarding what was being done at Lockwood with LOBRA drugs—but Sully wanted to hold onto as much as he could for now.

He shook his head. His thoughts were likely as loud to Snowy as if he’d spoken them, and he sought to pull back, to draw the blinds between his conscious mind and the outside world.

“I know it doesn’t mean much to you, and I do understand why you must hate me,” she said. “But I truly am very, very sorry.”

She turned to Gerhardt. “May I leave?”

His answer was a slow nod, and Snowy beetled from the room as if expecting the psychiatrist might yet withdraw his consent and have her dragged back.

Sully fixed his eyes on Gerhardt as the sound of Snowy’s footsteps on the stairs drifted away.

Then he and Gerhardt were alone.

“I thought you were dead,” the psychiatrist said. “Where have you been all this time?”

“I didn’t come here to answer questions. I’m here to ask them. Are you still experimenting on patients?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t,” Sully said. “I’m not stupid, and I was never insane. I have an ability you and Lowell exploited for your own ends. The experiments you’ve been conducting on psychic patients, are you still doing them?”

Gerhardt sat forward at the desk, fixing Sully with a paternal smile so patronizing it was all Sully could do to resist smacking it off. “Sullivan, I know your time here was difficult. But the drugs you were on were very heavy. They had to be. It’s likely they made you believe things that—”

“Stop,” Sully growled. “You waited until the drugs had worn off before you injected me with the stuff from LOBRA. I was aware. Fully aware. I know what happened. I only want to know why. Was it all for Lowell, to help him, or was it for yourself?”

“Now Sullivan—”

“You always wanted to find your son. You never did. The experiments won’t end until you do, will they?”

“I don’t know what you—”

Sully took a step forward, cutting off yet another denial through movement alone. By now, he knew he’d been naive to hope he might draw a confession from Gerhardt this easily. The man had spent years concealing all manner of sins. No doubt he’d planned, again and again, what he’d do if confronted. There were ways to break him, just like he’d broken Sully two years ago. Talking wasn’t it.

Sully felt a tug inside him, a nudge from a part of him. A dark part. If he could feed the hangman by drawing in the disturbed spirits haunting the corridor outside, he could harness the kind of power needed to force Gerhardt’s confession. His gaze flicked to the doorway. She was there, the ghost who’d all but stuck to him since he’d come in here. It would be so easy….

Sully shook the thought away. The last time he’d done it, he’d lost himself. He’d nearly killed a man. While he could live with beating Gerhardt senseless, he didn’t want a death on his hands. And there was the chance he wouldn’t stop there. Emily was just down the hall. If he turned on her, he’d never be able to forgive himself.

Instead, he turned to something else he imagined might significantly weaken the psychiatrist. “Do you still want to find your son?”

“As I understand it, your brother is already working on it. Does he know about you?”

Sully opted not to answer. “I can help you find him.”

The smile was back. Sully balled his fists at his sides and held them there. “Why would you help me, after everything you believe I’ve done?”

“Because there’s something you can do for me in return. I can give you your son if you give me Lowell.”

“Your uncle? Why?”

“Don’t bullshit me. You know exactly why.”

“I don’t know what you expect me to do. Of course I want to find my son. But how on earth do you think I can help you settle your problems with your uncle?”

“You can provide me with information that will take him down. If the authorities and the public are made aware of the drug experiments, of the fact patients are being used as guinea pigs, he’d be finished.”

“If all of that truly happened, I’d be finished too,” Gerhardt said. “And it didn’t happen, Sullivan, whatever you think you remember.”

“It happened. I know it happened. You have files in here to prove it. I’ve seen them.”

Shock flitted across Gerhardt’s face, but he quickly hid it behind narrowed eyes and tight lips. “You had no right to go through private patient files.”

“But I had a right to look at mine. You documented the patients you experimented on. Why leave a paper trail?”

“Any procedure we do here is documented.” Gerhardt paused, took a breath he ejected in a sigh before turning tired eyes on Sully. “Look, I know what you think, but anything I’ve done has been in the best interests of my patients. LOBRA developed a drug that was believed to open up parts of the brain that ordinarily can’t easily be accessed. I’m no chemist, so I can’t explain how it works, but my hope was that it would allow patients with so-called psychic abilities to not only access their gifts at will, but to control them. I used to believe those with such abilities wanted only to be rid of them; I’ve since realized differently, that some only want a way to better control the things they can see and do. You’re one of them. You don’t enjoy seeing spirits, but you embrace it as a part of who you are. Ridding you of the ability, or suppressing it, took from you the essence of your being. Don’t you want a way to control it?”

“I have a way to control it,” Sully said. “My abilities aren’t my problem and neither are the ghosts. It’s people like you and Lowell who are the problem.” He took another step, leaning on the desktop to put his face closer to Gerhardt’s. He was pleased to see the older man flinch. “You haven’t done a single thing in the name of helping patients. You’ve taken advantage of them. You’ve used them. It ends now, Gerhardt. I’m ending it. You can mitigate the damage to yourself by giving me Lowell. In return, I’ll give you the one thing that’s more important to you than this job or your own life. If you want to find your son, you’ll do what I tell you.”

Gerhardt’s right hand came up from beneath the desk, more quickly than Sully would have thought possible for the man. In it was a handgun.

“Or maybe,” Gerhardt said. “You’ll do what I tell you.”

Sully stared at the gun, a revolver similar to the one Emily owned. He was no expert on guns, but he knew it would be fully loaded. What was more, Gerhart would be prepared to use it.

Sully debated making a comment to alert Emily to the presence of the weapon. It might bring her here, which Sully didn’t want, but it would also serve as a needed warning to her. It didn’t take him long to decide it was better she knew, for her own safety.

“You going to shoot me?” he asked.

“I don’t want to,” Gerhardt said. “But you seem to be leaning toward giving me little choice. And consider: The world already believes you’re dead. No one knows you’re down here. The place is very well soundproofed. And you’re an escaped patient who’s just broken in and confronted me. It might be I can conceal the whole thing easily enough, but if I’m found out, I have a fairly solid defence.”

A sound in the hall drew Gerhardt’s attention, and he shifted his aim. Sully wheeled to see Emily standing there, gun in hand and fire in her glare like an elderly, female Dirty Harry.

She opened her mouth, as if to issue an order to Gerhardt, but she didn’t get the chance. A shot sounded, a deafening pop that muffled all subsequent sound.

Emily’s little body flew back under an impact to her midsection. Sully could do nothing but watch, horrified, as she struck the opposite wall in the hall. There, she slid down until she lay, slumped, on the floor.

Shock gave way to panic.

“No!” Sully cried as he rushed for the hall.

She wasn’t moving, yet he didn’t see her ghost. With Betty Schuster, he’d noticed her moments after. The fact he couldn’t see Emily gave him hope. And yet….

For a moment, Emily was all he knew. He knelt at her side, intending to check on her, but spun at the sound of movement behind him. Gerhardt stood at the door to the office, gun still in hand.

Sully spotted Emily’s gun within easy reach. He’d only managed to stretch out a hand for it when another shot sounded. Pain streaked across Sully’s middle, the force of the blast flipping him onto his back on the floor next to the fallen Emily.

Gerhardt stood over him as he trained Sully in his sights.

Sully poured every ounce of hate he had for this man into his words. “You son of a bitch. You killed her.”

“That’s right,” Gerhardt said. “And I’m going to kill you too.”

24

The wound in his side was like a fire burning, and it would have been enough to buckle him were he anywhere else, in any other situation.

But here and now, his survival depended on seeing past the pain. Seeing past it and ensuring he didn’t suffer any further.

The ghosts were here, all three of them, gathered around as observers at a sideshow.

Emily was dead. She had to be. No way she’d taken that slug in the chest and survived.

He’d reached the point of grasping reality, that he might have to kill Gerhardt if he was to get out of here alive and take Emily with him. No way he was leaving her here, in a place and situation that would see her painted as anything less than honourable.

His heart broke for her, and he knew he’d feel even worse later. She’d come here, after all, for him. Gerhardt had pulled the trigger, but her death was on Sully’s hands nonetheless.

But the guilt and grief would have to come later. Right now, there was only him, Gerhardt and a gun.

And only one way he could think of to win this battle.

He focused on the ghosts, beginning the process of drawing them in. Unfortunately the pain and the distraction left him unprepared for the unexpected.

Gerhardt jabbed a syringe into his leg.

Sully gave up on the ghosts, his attention snapping to the sensation of a liquid drug flowing into his vein. He kicked Gerhardt away before he could administer the full dose, then yanked the needle from his leg, tossing the half-full syringe away. He didn’t see where it clattered off to, but it was enough that he’d put himself between Gerhardt and the remaining drug.

The doctor backed away a couple of steps, gun still out and fixed on Sully. Sully did his best to keep the weapon in his sights as he struggled to sitting, gritting his teeth as his side pulled painfully.

“Stay down,” Gerhardt ordered. “Don’t move.”

The tone contained no trace of panic; rather, it was that of a man in complete control. Sully tried to refocus on the ghosts, but found he couldn’t get there. Dread had set in, the feel of the LOBRA drug winding its way up into his brain, poking into his consciousness, taking him over.

He’d learned over time how to separate spirit emotions from his own, and so more or less block them. But the drug changed that, lowered those defences. As if it were his own, he felt their fear now, these three trapped Lockwood spirits. They circled him, watching pitilessly as he fell before the power of Lowell’s drug and their torment. Like many who’d endured the sort of trauma they had, it had become impossible for them to see beyond their own suffering, to sympathize with that of another.

He was on his own.

Sully backed away from Gerhardt, pulling himself along on his backside while scanning the ground for Emily’s gun. He couldn’t control the spirits in his current condition, but surely he could still fire a gun.

As if sensing the turn of his thoughts, Gerhardt stepped forward, kicking at something on the ground. Emily’s revolver slid away, disappearing into the shadows of the hall.

Sully turned back to his enemy. Gerhardt was watching him thoughtfully.

“Mara and Desmond were here at Lockwood just a short time ago,” Gerhardt said. “Desmond told me something, that a psychic had seen Eloise’s spirit at our old home. I don’t think I’d be far off the mark to assume you are that psychic. What did you see? What did she tell you?”

“She didn’t tell me anything. Even if she did, I wouldn’t share it with you.”

“Wouldn’t you? You know, it’s just occurred to me I’ve been going about this all wrong. All these years, I’ve been trying to communicate with my son. Maybe what I’ve needed all along is to communicate with my wife.”

Sully’s vision swam, but he was certain he saw Gerhardt tuck his gun under one arm to allow him to remove his wedding band. “Eloise picked this out for our wedding. She was always much better at those sorts of things than I was. It’s mine, but in a way, it’s really hers.”

Perception had changed with the drug. The hallway spun, lights dancing around Sully as his world shifted. Smells were sharper, dust, decay and Gerhardt’s aftershave combining pungently enough to make him want to vomit. Sounds were louder; each statement from Gerhardt seemed shouted. The image of the psychiatrist grew larger, and Sully didn’t know whether it was real or simply a trick of his eyes until he felt an object—the ring, no doubt—being pressed into his hand.

He’d intended to throw it, as far as he was able. The drug didn’t give him the chance.

The vision came instantly. He was back inside the house in The Forks, only it looked different. And he felt different, not like himself. He’d connected to Eloise’s ghost, had entered her consciousness, her memory. He was Eloise, and now there was nothing to do but be dragged along for the ride.

She was in the sunlit kitchen, bagging up a sandwich and placing it, along with a yogurt cup, carrot sticks and an apple juice, inside a Charlie Brown lunch kit.

As usual, Sully’s limitation meant the vision was restricted to sights, smell and touch. She was calling out to David; he could sense it based on the turn of her thoughts. And he was aware as she was of David’s too-rapid approach from the stairs.

She scolded over her shoulder as she sealed the lunch box. David continued to run anyway, didn’t stop until he’d encased his mother’s waist in a tight hug.

Bright blue eyes peered up into hers as she turned into his embrace. He was thanking her once again for the train she’d bought him, one she’d seen in a shop window. She’d intended it for his birthday, but Roman had been so harsh with the little boy yesterday evening she’d decided to give David the gift early.

She hugged him back, then laughed inside—only inside—as he begged her to be allowed to stay home from school to play with his new toy.

Her firm “no” led to a pout, but one that turned quickly to a smile. He was a good-natured kid that way, thankfully far more like his mother than his father in personality. And her love for him was boundless.

The memory changed. This time, David was nowhere to be seen, just Eloise and a young woman Sully recognized from photos as Marc’s wife, Mariel. She was still very young, likely only eighteen or nineteen. Her face was plaintive and desperate as she revealed a secret to her older sister. Sully couldn’t hear the words, but he felt the creeping dread moving through Eloise as she listened. He didn’t need to hear to know Mariel was telling her sister of the second son prophesy, the one she’d heard from her friend, Harry.

The two women argued, Eloise locked in disbelief. Roman had proven himself a hard man, but he’d never harm their son. Mariel’s friend was obviously out of his mind.

Another memory. David hadn’t spoken to Eloise all that weekend morning, had withdrawn to his room with his trains and books and politely refused to come out. When he turned down lunch, Eloise knew something was very wrong.

She sat down on the bedroom floor with him, drew from him at long last an admission. The words went unheard by Sully, but he could see the thoughts as they formed in Eloise’s mind, as she pictured what the child described. His father had come into his room last night, saying he wanted to play a game. They took turns holding their breath behind the boy’s pillow.

Then the game changed. They’d hold the pillow over each other’s faces.

David went first, giggling as he pressed the pillow down. He didn’t know why his father looked so serious as he took the pillow for his turn. His dad had told him to lie down. Then he’d held the pillow over David’s face, pressing down hard. It hurt. The little boy couldn’t breathe at all, even though he tried, and he couldn’t tell his father to stop. And he hadn’t stopped. Not until they heard Eloise calling.

Eloise wasn’t supposed to be back that early, but her art class was cancelled when the teacher called in sick.

She’d arrived home, she realized, in time to prevent her little boy’s murder.

Her first thought was to confront Roman, even to kill him. But Roman hit her sometimes, and she knew she’d never win a fight against the man. If she was injured so badly she was rendered helpless, she’d be no use in protecting her son.

She next thought of escape, of taking David with her and running. Running so far Roman would never find them. But there were faults in that plan too. Roman knew people. Wealthy, powerful people. He belonged to a group he called the Circle, and she knew they had eyes everywhere. The kind of resources and skills they possessed collectively, she’d never run far enough fast enough.

She tried anyway. She packed their bags, just one each for her and David. She took the boy’s favourite train, of course, and his copy of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! If she could turn this into a fun outing for them, he would ask fewer questions she didn’t know how to answer. She packed several changes of clothes and enough cash to see them through a week or two without having to revert to credit cards. She’d envisioned herself getting a job in a small town somewhere, preferably in a place where she was near enough to see the school. That way, she could watch all the time, make sure Roman didn’t return.

She didn’t make it. She’d booked them into a motel in a nearby small town and they’d been there less than a day when Roman turned up, furious, at the door. How he’d discovered their location, she didn’t know, but she was aware of at least one policeman in the Circle’s ranks.

She managed to convince Roman they’d simply gone on a little holiday, arguing honestly that they never went anywhere as a family, and she’d tired of asking him.

He let it go. She didn’t.

She knew then there was no other way. If she wanted David alive, she’d need to give him up.

She nearly didn’t survive the conversation with Mariel and their father, a kind man who would have done anything for his family. And he did do anything. He helped his girls plot a kidnapping.

He knew a couple, he said, who were unable to have a child of their own. They were desperate, but the adoption process was slow and they’d so far been unsuccessful in speeding it up. Eloise insisted on meeting them, but the best she could manage, given Roman was checking her car’s mileage now, was to speak by phone. They were lovely, said all the things she’d told herself she needed to hear to go through with this. They’d let her visit, certainly. They’d find ways to keep her updated on David. She would be a part of his life.

She agreed. They would arrange it well, all of them. Eloise would be “distracted” by a call from Mariel, and their dad would take David from the backyard. He’d drive the little boy to the couple’s acreage out of town, and he’d stay there. Eloise would find a way to get there, to explain to him what was happening. She’d take him his favourite things, his trains, his books, the shirts he liked the best. She’d tell him his father was going through a bad time and it was best, for now, that David not be around there. That much, at least, was true.

She stuck to the plan, and when the police came to speak with her, her grief had been genuine. Walking away from David in the backyard had almost killed her, knowing her little boy would never again call this house his home. That he was about to meet someone else he would begin to call “Mommy.” She reminded herself again and again as she went to answer the ringing phone that this was for the best, that David’s life depended on this. But it didn’t hurt less. The police didn’t doubt her.

Roman had been furious. He’d started to beat her that night, accusing her of losing their son, but she’d stopped him with a threat, that the police would be back with further questions and she wouldn’t lie to them about the origin of the bruises. The police were around a lot with questions. They worked hard to find her son so that she never felt comfortable sorting out a way to visit him. What if they followed her? David’s adoptive parents would be arrested. They all would be. All but Roman, who had played no part in this. David would be placed back with him, alone. All alone with the man who had tried to kill him.

So she kept her distance. She didn’t try to quell her pain; it continued to serve her well with the police. Some days she went into David’s room and never left it. Others, she shut it up and avoided the upper floor at all costs. The house became a prison, just her and the man she’d come to hate with every fibre of her being. She’d stopped him killing her boy, but he’d taken him from her all the same. Sometimes she thought about nothing but how she might kill him and get away with it.

She bided her time, waited until the police investigation and media coverage dwindled, once there weren’t eyes on her every move. A little over a year had gone by at that point, a long, painful year. She’d waited until the police and media had reignited interest in the disappearance at its one-year mark. Only then, once the stories were read and additional tips came to nothing, did she act.

She once again packed up her bag, but this time, she took more with her. She’d leave a lot behind but she didn’t care. She needed enough to get by, but not so much as to slow her down. And she left a note: “Goodbye, Roman. I can’t bear to live anymore in a place where my boy isn’t. Please, don’t try to find me. It’s better this way for both of us. -Eloise.” He could take it as a Dear John letter or a suicide note. She didn’t care either way.

She called a cab this time, ensuring no one could trace her through her car. The cab took her out of the neighbourhood, and she found a friendly woman at a coffee shop willing to give her a lift. She’d considered calling her family, but she didn’t want them involved. They’d already taken on far too much. If Eloise was going to take her son back, she needed to keep them out of it.

The lady took Eloise to a car rental place, and she picked out the cheapest model she could find. Then she drove out to the acreage, using the land location she’d been provided, back when she still expected to go out and visit.

The couple had intended to homeschool their adopted son; they’d really have no choice. Word was they had talked about obtaining some forged documents for him under a new name—their name—but Eloise didn’t know if they’d gotten to it yet. Whatever the case, it wasn’t likely David left the acreage much, and she expected he’d be there when she arrived.

Only he wasn’t. A woman answered the door, a lady with pretty features and the sort of build people described as “sturdy.” It took a moment, but the woman clued in upon greeting the stranger standing on her doorstep.

David wasn’t there. He’d gone fishing for a few days with his father. His father. The strangeness of it struck Eloise, the idea of calling anyone other than Roman David’s father. It was odd, but not disagreeable. Roman had never been much of a father to him anyway.

What wasn’t so welcome was the realization that if this new man was David’s father, the woman Eloise was speaking with was, by extension, his mother. Eloise knew it, of course, had helped to plan for it. It didn’t make it any easier, this idea of having been replaced.

The woman—her name was Val, she reminded Eloise—invited her in. She showed Eloise David’s room. He’d been playing with his favourite train, the gift from Eloise, on the day he’d been taken from the backyard, and it sat on a shelf in a place of pride, easy access for him to reach it whenever he wanted. It was a comfortable room, warm, cozy and tidy. Plenty of toys, lots of clothes in the closet, books sitting in a shelf just like in his old room in The Forks. It was the photos atop the bookshelf that gave Eloise another moment of pause. There were, of course, none of her. Only these two new parents.

She didn’t look more closely at the photos, only a quick glance. It was enough. David wore the largest grin in one of them, the sort of grin Eloise had struggled to pull from him in those later days when Roman had become increasingly dark and unpredictable.

That David was grinning like that for someone other than her was unbearable.

He was happy. Happy, even without her in his life.

It was enough to break her, to steel the resolve to do what she’d come here for.

Standing in the kitchen, she told Val she wanted her son back, that she’d left Roman and intended to start a new life somewhere with David. Val paled. Eloise read the other woman’s silence as room to continue her argument.

Something changed. Val’s face, moments ago placid and pretty, twisted in anger. No, Eloise was not taking David. The arrangement had been made, and so it would stay. David would not live like that, on the run, for the rest of his childhood and youth.

But Eloise was not backing down. He was her son, not Val’s. Arrangements could be altered, broken.

The argument continued, became more heated. Val paced, waved her arms wildly, raged at Eloise. And her voice changed, became deeper, raspy, as if Eloise was dealing with a different person entirely. It occurred to her Val might have multiple personalities, and it became just another reason for Eloise to fight for her child.

And a fight was exactly what it became. The first blow from Val was unexpected, a punch to the face as quick and as sharp as a rattlesnake strike. Eloise buckled under the force of it and fell to the floor. She’d never fought back against Roman; it had always served her better, she believed, to simply take it, as it would end more quickly and with less violence. She didn’t know how to fight back, and she didn’t now, merely curling into herself as Val continued to deliver kicks and blows to every part of Eloise’s body she could reach.

Finally, it ended, just as assaults by Roman ended. Val stalked away, leaving Eloise gasping and sobbing on the floor.

Only it wasn’t over. Not this time.

Eloise looked up to the approach of footsteps, saw Val reappear over her.

This time, she held a butcher knife.

Eloise screamed as the knife streaked toward her. They felt like sharp punches at first, the knife blows that struck her chest. She gasped beneath the weight of them, the screams caught in her throat.

Then the blade, coming down again and again at breathtaking speed, arced toward her throat. Eloise tried to move away, to put a hand up to block, but Val wouldn’t be stopped. Eloise watched her own blood as it left her body until, at last, darkness stole over her.

25

The image changed, darkness giving way to bright light, Eloise slipping away so that Sully reemerged.

It wasn’t the light of heaven he was seeing, despite having just experienced the horror of having been murdered. It was a light hanging over his body.

A fiery pain from his middle seized him, reminding him of the bullet wound there. But he forced himself past it, the continued danger he was in leaving him no room for anything else.

He cast his gaze around, noted the familiar sky-blue, windowless walls, the grimy white tile.

The Blue Room.

Sully knew from experience what he’d discover upon trying to move his arms and legs, but he attempted it anyway. He was indeed strapped down, ankles and wrists secured in padded restraint cuffs locking him to the treatment bed. Somehow, Gerhardt has managed to drag him in here, despite any restrictions his disability and age might create. Needs must and all that.

Gerhardt stood nearby, regarding Sully thoughtfully. “You’re back.”

He was, and he knew what came next. Gerhardt would question him, quite likely with brutal force, even torture. The only escape Sully could imagine came with the three ghosts nearby. He could sense them rather than see them.

It was enough.

He closed his eyes, shutting out Gerhardt’s additional questions and demands for answers. Sully locked onto the entities, all three at once. He’d never managed more than one at a time, but then, he’d never tried. He’d do it now. He needed to.

It was palpable the moment he drew their flailing energy into himself, allowed the hangman to consume it. The most startling thing was a gradual lessening of his pain, the burning in his abdomen fading to a dull throb. He felt the hangman’s answering laugh, felt it bubble up within his own throat until Sully gave it physical voice.

“What are you laughing about?” Gerhardt’s tone was still its usual brand of bitter, but a tremor sounded within the words. Sully didn’t blame him. The sound of that laugh had shaken him too.

The hangman pressed forward, urging Sully to allow him to control this moment. Past events dictated the executioner was stronger, more capable of doing what had to be done. Yet, for some reason, this time the hangman hadn’t been able to simply take over.

Gerhardt stepped forward. “Answer my questions! What did she tell you? Where’s my son?”

Sully snapped his head toward Gerhardt, took pleasure in the way the sudden movement caused the older man to flinch. Sully allowed a sneer to form, the sort of dangerous smile he didn’t know he could truly pull off.

“I’m not telling you a damn thing, you son of a bitch. Go to hell.”

The psychiatrist took one more step. “You’re in no position to refuse me. Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You don’t want to know what ‘the hard way’ entails. Now I want to find my son. I need to find my son.”

A voice, spoken in a solid Cockney accent, sounded in Sully’s brain, coming from somewhere deep within. Now’s the time. Let me at him, boy.

Sully ignored it. For now.

He fixed his eyes on Gerhardt’s. “All this time, I thought you were looking for him because you loved him. Because you wanted to give him a proper burial or find some peace for yourself. But all you really want is to kill him.”

“What?”

“The second son prophesy. I know about it. I also know you tried to kill David shortly before he disappeared.”

Gerhardt opened his mouth to deny it, but closed it again. When he reopened it, a dark smile formed. “I supposed there’s no sense denying anything more to you. You’re not leaving here alive anyway.”

Now, boy!

“Harry Schuster—you remember Harry—he came to our Circle when he was still quite young,” Gerhardt said. “Well, we were all young then, I suppose. He convinced us of his abilities, in part because of a tragic car crash he’d predicted that came to pass. He went into these trance-like states and said things. None of us understood it, including him, and it eventually drove him mad. But as strange as these visions were, they always came true. When he came to us with the second son prediction, we were understandably concerned. We’d begun to really get somewhere as a group. We were achieving the things we’d come together to achieve. I, for instance, was able to finish paying off large debts from school and secure myself a job as Lockwood’s chief psychiatrist thanks to my contacts in the Circle. I owed them everything.”

“So you agreed to kill your own son?”

“It wasn’t an easy decision to make. But, by then, Harry was starting to zero in on some people. He told me I was the father of the second son. We decided, as a group, that I had a chance to stop things before the Circle was destroyed. ‘When the second son rises, the Circle will fall.’ That’s what the prophesy says. We were what we were because of each other. The Circle was greater as a whole than any of its individual parts. I owed everything I’d achieved to it. I couldn’t allow it to crumble, so I did what I had to do.”

Sully thought back to the little boy in the vision, pale-haired, bright-eyed and innocent. Not so different from another child who’d fallen victim two decades later to the same prophesy. Aiden and David. They’d been killed for nothing better than greed and a desperation for power.

Sully’s hands balled into fists as he snarled his response at Gerhardt. “He was just six years old.”

“Exactly. He wasn’t yet a threat. I couldn’t wait until he was older, when he’d be able to defend himself. If I waited until I saw the evidence myself, he’d have been too strong for me to fight. If I waited even another year or two, he’d be strong enough to put up a struggle. Struggles leave bruises, marks. If I simply owned up to my responsibility when he was still very young, there would be little to no evidence of wrongdoing. Police would likely ask questions, but there would be no way to prove a murder.”

Heat bubbled inside Sully. The hangman was begging to be let loose. Not yet. Sully pinned Gerhardt in a glare. “You fucking bastard.”

“I know what you must think of me, but I truly had no choice. The child had to die. Problem was, he disappeared before I could finish it. After the failed attempt I’d made, I had to bide my time, wait until he stopped being so suspicious of me. In the meantime, I became more and more convinced David had gone against my orders and told his mother. When he disappeared, I thought it very possible Eloise had something to do with it. I wasn’t certain, given her grief was certainly very real, but it sat there in my brain, wouldn’t let go. Finally, she disappeared, taking all possible answers with her.”

“Dez told me about a young woman who said she saw David, that he was with you.”

“Fifteen years or so after the disappearance, yes. She said she saw him, and I believed what she meant was that he was dead. I thought if I could find the body and prove it was my son, I’d have something to take to the Circle to settle them. Harry, you see, had never stopped going on about the second son prophesy and everyone was anxious. Some of them looked at me like I’d failed them and, you have to understand, failing the Circle is not an option. I would have done anything to find David, to prove to them he was no longer a threat.”

Sully thought of Lucky, his teenage birth mother who’d lied to her own family about his existence to protect him. If she’d known about or sensed Gerhardt’s true intentions with David, the last thing she would have done was hand him over. And there was the other possibility, that she’d been trying to find a way out of Lockwood. If she could convince the psychiatrist to let her leave, to search for David or his final resting place, she could find a way to escape.

It broke Sully’s heart.

You going to cry, boy? Let me out, and I’ll make him cry.

Sully shook the hangman off. No, he was not going to cry. He was too pissed for that. “I know what you did to her, to Lucky. I know you tortured her. I know you raped her.”

That got the response Sully had been after. Gerhardt blanched, his mouth popping open. He snapped it shut before speaking. “How do you know that name?”

Sully had shied away from revealing this last truth, but the reasons not to had dwindled to zero. He found now he wanted this man to know who he was, to reveal himself to him completely, to see what response it would elicit. One of the two of them wasn’t leaving here. The truth, if need be, would stay buried within this room.

Sully spoke in a growl. “You got her pregnant, Gerhardt. You got a child pregnant. She gave birth to a son. I’m that son.”

Gerhardt gripped the railing of the treatment bed. For a moment, it looked as if it might not be enough to keep him on his feet. Disbelief clung to his features, so Sully kept on, pummelling him with truth.

“She was a good mother, in the short time she was allowed to be. She protected me by slowing you down long enough someone could get me away from here, and she didn’t tell her crazy family about me. She gave up everything, including me, to protect me. I was left on a doorstep, and after a few shitty years in the system, I ended up with the Braddocks. It was because of her wanting to give me the best chance possible that I found the family I was meant to be with. But I shouldn’t exist. I never should have been born, because what you did never should have happened. You’re an evil piece of shit, Gerhardt, and so help me, when I get out of these restraints, you’re going to wish I was never born.”

Gerhardt had regained some colour, some composure, enough that he was able to speak. “Well then, it’s all right, because you’re never getting out of those restraints. And you’re never leaving this place.”

Gerhardt moved across the room to a counter upon which sat a few vials. Into one, he inserted a syringe. “You know what I’ve just realized, Sullivan? I was wrong about David. I’m glad I didn’t succeed in killing him. Because he’s not my second son. You are. My first boy never truly saw life. He died during a miscarriage. And Lowell. When Harry went to him and told him he believed his brother would harbour the second son, we all believed he meant Aiden Braddock. But it wasn’t him. It’s you. It’s been you all along. You’re the one, Sullivan. You’re the one I need to destroy.”

NOW!

Sully at last relented, giving in to the hangman’s demands. He closed his eyes, allowing himself to slide.

The hangman leapt. He snatched onto the spirits locked inside Sully and drew out their energy.

Sully opened his eyes.

Gerhardt stepped back so suddenly onto his bad leg, he fell.

As with Harry’s spirit during the battle with Lowell and Hackman, Sully discovered he was still very much present as the hangman came forward. Although he wasn’t truly in control of his own body, he felt it nonetheless. Strangely, he found he didn’t mind the experience. This wasn’t another being inside him, controlling him. This was a part of him. A dark, twisted part, but a part nonetheless.

He feared the hangman: his power, his darkness, what he could turn Sully into. But he couldn’t deny that, right now, the nameless executioner was saving his life.

The hangman tested the bonds a moment before pulling at them, using the strength of several energies against the restraints.

Gerhardt had managed to stand, was back at the counter, filling the syringe with shaking hands.

The hangman pulled harder. At last, a crack and a ping sounded as a metal ring shattered and shot off across the room.

One hand free.

One was enough.

Gerhardt didn’t look back, focused on his desperate task, as the hangman moved to free Sully’s other hand.

Gerhardt turned, rushed to the bed before the hangman had opened the restraint fully. He stabbed the syringe into Sully’s yet-trapped forearm but, before he could inject the liquid into his captive, the hangman grabbed the psychiatrist’s hand.

A crack sounded within Gerhardt’s encased fingers, and he howled. He released the syringe and dropped to his knees, but the hangman held on, two more cracks sounding before he finally let go.

While Gerhardt moaned and writhed on the floor, hugging his broken fingers to his chest, the hangman succeeded in freeing Sully’s other hand, then his feet. He yanked out the needle and placed it next to him on the bed. It would come in handy, this substance. It appeared to be the same one Gerhardt had repeatedly administered to Sully, and no doubt to all the other psychic patients brought down here by force. Only it was at least double the usual dose.

Enough to kill a person.

The hangman stood, testing out Sully’s limbs as if revelling in the sensation of being in charge of a body for the first time in ages. In a way, Sully imagined it was true. He circled the bed until he reached Gerhardt’s side.

“My, my, how the tables have turned.” The voice emerging from Sully’s throat was his, and yet not, the deep Cockney accent belonging to another person, another time.

He reached down and, amid the psychiatrist’s startled protests, lifted and threw the older man onto the treatment bed. Gerhardt could do nothing as the hangman secured the restraint cuffs, his attempts to defend himself ineffectual against the strength of four separate entities currently taking up residence inside Sully’s body. Gerhardt was weak, helpless.

As weak and helpless as a six-year-old boy.

The hangman picked up the syringe. “This liquid. Meant to kill, ain’t it?” He met Gerhardt’s eyes, saucer-wide in terror. “Works like a charm on people with a third eye. What’s it do to people like you? What do you say, doctor? Should we find out?”

“No! Don’t you dare. Release me immediately, or you’ll regret it!”

The hangman made a tsking sound. “Now, now. Not such a wise move, trying to intimidate the man who holds your life in his hands.” He grasped the broken hand and twisted, drawing a wild yell from Gerhardt. “Try again.”

“Please! Please, don’t do this! Stop!”

The hangman released the hand and stared into the doctor’s face, tilting his head as if it would give him a new perspective on the man lying there. “Not so nice being on the receiving end, is it? Go on, beg me. Maybe I’ll relent.”

“Please. Please! I promise I won’t reveal you were here. I won’t tell anyone.”

“No, you’re right there, doctor.” The hangman leaned in, locking eyes with the psychiatrist. “You won’t.”

He jabbed the needle into Gerhardt’s arm.

“Stop!” came a voice from the door.

The hangman turned to find Emily standing there, hunched over and in obvious pain. Sully wanted to go to her, to see if she was all right, to figure out how it was she was still alive—hell, to make sure she was actually alive—but the executioner was committed to his task. Sully felt a rush of relief as her eyes met his, eyes containing their usual strength despite the discomfort she was clearly in.

The hangman had other ideas about her place here. “You the one to stop me?”

Emily’s lips curled into a smile that shocked both Sully and the hangman. “Stop you? I want to help.”

Sully was no less stunned, this time by Emily’s stated intentions, but the hangman felt only amusement.

“You’re my kind of lady,” he said.

Gerhardt’s eyes narrowed as he took in the newcomer, making her way to the side of the bed. “Emily Crichton. I should have finished you when I had the chance.”

Emily smiled. “Today or twenty-five years ago, dear?”

The hangman laughed. Gerhardt didn’t.

“How are you alive?” the psychiatrist asked. “I shot you in the chest.”

Emily tugged her blouse open, revealing a layer of black beneath. “Kevlar,” she said. “I’m afraid one or two ribs are cracked but, thanks to the hit and run you once plotted against me, I know how to handle pain.”

Emily turned to the hangman, flinching slightly as she peered up fully into his eyes but holding the gaze nonetheless. “I know you want to kill him, and I don’t blame you. I feel very much the same. But you need to consider something. If he dies by your hand—by anyone’s—he’ll never leave you. There’s a very good chance he’ll haunt you until the end of your days. You don’t want that, surely.”

This gave Sully pause. Unfortunately, the hangman wasn’t as convinced. “It matters not to me, pet. I’ll consume him like every other evil man I’ve killed.”

“Death is too easy for a man like him.”

“So what do you suggest? He needs to know justice.”

“I can think of a far better justice for him than death, can’t you?” Emily returned her gaze to Gerhardt. “You’ve spent your career torturing and traumatizing patients who weren’t like others, those you felt could be of benefit to you. Perhaps the most fitting punishment would be for you to become one of them. How would you like that, Doctor? To be locked away inside your own damaged mind, a patient within your own facility?” She took the syringe from the hangman’s willing hand. “I think if we’re careful with the dosage, we can ensure just such an outcome, don’t you?”

Gerhardt’s face froze.

The hangman laughed, wild and deep, as he held the psychiatrist’s arm against the bed, squeezing to make a vein pop. Emily waited a few seconds, until a thick bluish line showed through the flesh of Gerhardt’s arm. Then she inserted the needle.

“No!” Gerhardt screamed. “Stop! You can’t do this to me! It will kill me!”

“Like you’ve killed,” the hangman said. “Seems fitting.” He turned back to Emily. “What do you say, milady? Shall we?”

Emily ignored the hangman, focusing entirely on Gerhardt. “I don’t get any pleasure from this, and I assure you I have no intention of killing you. But I do need to stop you. I’ve lived with the guilt of turning a blind eye to your evil, of what that meant for Lucky Dule. I won’t let you hurt anyone else.”

She injected the drug into Gerhardt’s arm.

A furious yell broke off midway as shock overtook his features. Sully had no way of seeing inside the man’s head, but he knew what he was feeling. Sully had been here too many times before. He could see it in Gerhardt’s face as the drug he’d injected into numerous patients seeped into his own vein, set its course through blood, its final destination his brain.

Fear played out across Gerhardt’s face. Part of Sully felt guilty, but only a small part. The psychiatrist had shown no mercy to the patients he’d forced into his current position. He hadn’t batted an eye at the pleas, the tears or the screams. He’d destroyed lives, and likely taken a few.

Emily had given him only a partial dose of what Gerhardt had intended for Sully.

It was more than enough.

Psychics had been guinea pigs for Lowell because their brains, he’d reasoned, were more open. Gerhardt had happily allowed it to meet his own ends.

The problem for Gerhardt was he was no psychic.

Sully didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but he’d been mentally preparing himself to view a seizure or even death.

Instead, after a few moments of useless struggling, everything went quiet.

Gerhardt was alive. He was breathing and his pulse, when the hangman lifted a hand to check, was a solid, healthy—if not a little too rapid—thrum against fingertips. Gerhardt blinked once, twice. But the eyes didn’t focus, fixed on a spot in the water-stained ceiling.

What caught Sully was the way the eyes looked. Wide open between blinks, they held an expression of the deepest terror. What he saw was anyone’s guess. All Sully knew for sure was the man had come to resemble the haunted and tortured spectre of Harry Schuster.

Sully could think of nothing more fitting.

Pounding footfalls sounded in the hall, had the hangman spinning in place, prepared to do battle with whatever new threat this might be. Instead, a few seconds later, the image of Dez came into view, sliding to a screeching halt in the doorway and breathing hard.

“Sully? Mom and I ran into Terrence just as we got to the car. He told us his mother sold you out. We ran all the way back and had to figure out how to get in. Mom’s standing watch outside. Are you—What’s wrong with you?”

At first, Sully thought Dez must be referring to the blood on his clothes from the gunshot wound. Then he noticed Dez was focused entirely on his eyes.

“It isn’t him right now, Desmond,” Emily said. “It’s a man speaking in an English accent.”

Sully felt the hangman’s anxiety as he regarded Dez. Why, he didn’t know.

Dez at last looked away from Sully’s face, gaze settling where it ordinarily would have to start with. “God, is all of that blood yours? Sully—”

“We need to get out of here,” Emily said. “But we can’t leave Gerhardt like this. Help me get him out of this room.”

The hangman didn’t need additional help, easily lifting and carrying the psychiatrist into his office and settling him in his chair. Emily, meanwhile, busied herself gathering up the used syringes, both of which she wiped clean of any prints before wrapping Gerhardt’s limp fingers around them. One—the remainder of the dose he’d been injected with—she placed at his side, next to his good hand.

“Don’t he look all nice and cozy?” the executioner said.

Dez appeared at his side. “Stop talking like that.”

“Like what, Red? This is how I talk.”

Dez’s eyes widened, his expression an approximation of Gerhardt’s. “Christ, Sully, what happened to you?”

Emily moved forward and took Sully’s still-gloved hand. “You can let go now, Sullivan. We’re safe now. You can come back.”

Sully knew it. But this wasn’t like a separate personality. It was him, or a part of his soul anyway. The longer the hangman stayed up front, the stronger he felt, as if he was continually devouring more of the spirits he’d taken in.

As if he was trying to find a way to stay in control.

Sully wasn’t about to let him. He couldn’t. Anyway, it wasn’t fair to the patients whose spirits he’d sucked in. They deserved peace, not the eternal torment of possession.

The hangman’s protest was audible, a snarled, “No!” But Emily was right. This part of his life, the Lockwood part, it was over. He didn’t need the hangman’s strength here anymore.

He pulled the darkness back, stepped back fully into himself.

The pain hit him the second he released the three souls, but it was not what it was, and nowhere near what it should have been.

He’d been shot. He knew he had. He had plenty of blood on the front of his shirt to prove it.

He lifted his T-shirt, exposing a belly covered in blood—enough to draw an anxious Dez even closer.

One of Dez’s hands joined Sully’s in a search for the wound. “What happened?”

Emily had temporarily disappeared into the hall, and she returned in time to answer the question. “Gerhardt shot him.”

Dez’s head snapped toward her. “Jesus Christ, what? Sull—”

“I’m okay,” Sully said, just as his fingers finally settled over a small pucker in his skin, to the right of his belly button and a couple of inches down.

Dez knelt for a closer look. “This is it?” He examined it a moment before turning startled eyes up to his brother’s face. “Sully, this wound looks like it’s a month old. It’s mostly healed.”

Sully shook his head. No, he didn’t have an explanation.

While the brothers had been distracted by the injury, Emily had been bustling around the room as quickly as her own injuries would allow. Now, she appeared at their side, Gerhardt’s lab coat over one arm and an urgent tone in her demand. “We need to leave here. Now!”

“Are you okay to walk?” Dez asked her as they followed her from the room and back down the hall. “I can carry you.”

She managed a light chuckle. “As much as I’d enjoy being carried by a handsome young man, I’ll be fine. But I do think I’ll need a hospital. Sullivan should get looked at too.”

Sully shook his head. “I can’t, Em. But it’s okay. I can’t explain it, but it doesn’t feel that bad.”

Dez wasn’t sold. “Sully, I don’t think we have a choice. You’ve been shot, dude.”

“If it’s not bad enough I’m not supposed to exist, how the hell am I going to explain a rapidly healing bullet wound?”

Dez shrugged before stopping suddenly in the dark of the hall. “Damn. Blood. Sully’s DNA’s in the databank. If someone finds it here—”

“There’s no blood that I saw,” Emily said. “The bullet must still be inside Sullivan, so there’s no exit wound. That would have lessened the external bleeding, and I’m thinking his front must not have come into contact with much. The only blood I could see was on Gerhardt’s lab coat, and I’ve taken that with me. Sullivan was wearing his gloves most of the time he was in here, as was I, so no fingerprints. I did wipe down the syringes, just in case, and I placed them next to him so someone might think he injected himself. And I picked up my gun and replaced his in the drawer and picked up the spent casings. No doubt he’ll have gunfire residue on him. I wiped some from his face, but there’s not much I can do about the rest of it. I couldn’t think of anything else to clean up offhand.”

Dez raised his eyebrows. “Damn. You’re good.”

Sully grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “She is.”

26

They spent two days lying low, waiting to hear about Gerhardt.

Dez had filled Lachlan in on what happened as soon as he dropped Emily off at the hospital. The private investigator had hightailed it back to Lockwood so he could be on hand once the search for the missing psychiatrist began, as it inevitably would. Just as well, too, because very few staff members, it seemed, had knowledge of the continued use of the old wing or Gerhardt’s illicit use of it.

They’d found him, Lachlan later told Dez, where he’d been left, a partially loaded syringe next to the fingers of one hand. The other hand had been inexplicably broken in several places. Some were surmising he’d fallen on it. Given his longtime leg injury, falls for him weren’t unheard of.

Dez had managed to convince Sully to stay at his house, and he’d make Emily come, too, once she was discharged. They didn’t exactly have the space, but it felt better to Dez to have everyone under one roof where he could keep an eye out.

On the second day, Dez received a call from Lachlan, telling him Forbes wanted them to go over to discuss what had happened. Not the police station—Forbes had insisted on that—but at his house.

Dez and Sully left in the SUV to pick up Lachlan. It would take them out of their way, picking up his boss before going to Forbes’s, but it was just as well. Dez wanted to talk to Sully first. With everyone around, he hadn’t had much opportunity. They’d managed to hide Sully’s bullet wound from Mara, concealing the worst of the blood on his shirt and hoodie by doing up his overcoat. Her discovering Sully had been shot—and that her boys had effectively lied to her about it—was unlikely to go down well.

“How are you feeling?” Dez asked a few minutes into the drive.

“The bullet wound? It’s fine. Like, weirdly fine.”

“It doesn’t make sense, man.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about it, and the only thing I can come up with is that having all that extra energy inside me helped my body to heal more quickly. I mean, I’ve always healed fairly quickly, but not like this. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”

Dez shrugged. The idea of it, of his brother being able to consume and use spirits to heal himself was so out there, it made his head spin. Yet he wasn’t about to complain about something that had, quite likely, kept Sully alive.

“I guess that makes as much sense as anything,” he said. “What about the rest of it? Going back there and everything? You okay with that?”

He gazed over at Sully and was met by a smile. “Yeah, D, I am. I never thought I’d say it, but I really am. Facing it—facing him—it was like an exorcism or something. Just as well, because I need to go back there to try to get those ghosts to cross over. They shouldn’t have to be stuck in a place like that.”

“After, you know… what happened, do you think they’ll appear to you again?”

“I don’t know, but I have to try. Especially given the way I had to use them.”

That touched on the other topic, the one Dez hated having to bring up. Really hated having to bring up.

“Hey, Sull. About that. What was that?”

“You’re not talking about the reverse possession.”

Dez kept his eyes on the road as he shook his head.

“It was the hangman,” Sully said.

“I figured that much out. And I’ve seen what happens when he ends up in control. I mean, it was obviously him at the Gerhardt house that day. But he was, like, fully present this time, having conversations and everything. Even your eyes changed, went all pale—like on someone who’s been dead a while, only shinier. Is that, I don’t know, normal?”

“Not exactly,” Sully said. “I felt like I had to let him take control so I could stay alive in there, so I could escape. Gerhardt had me strapped down to the bed, and he was going to inject me with enough of the drug to kill me. I mean, he actually said he was going to do it. I’ve got the whole thing recorded.”

This was new. “You recorded it?”

“I thought I could get a confession from him. And I did. He admitted he tried to kill his son, and he admitted he was going to kill me.”

“What about Lowell? He say something about him?”

“Yeah. He mentioned him. I’d asked him about the second son prophesy, and he talked about Aiden’s death, and how Lowell had done it.”

Dez’s heart gave a solid thud. “Jesus, Sull! That means we’ve got him!”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m kind of thinking Gerhardt just comes off sounding like a lunatic. It’s enough to raise questions, definitely, but Gerhardt’s not in any condition anymore to provide a statement or testify at trial.”

“I’ve seen cases where recorded statements have been played for juries where the person who initially said it was dead or otherwise incapable of testifying. It happens.”

“Statements given to police, maybe. This, I don’t know….”

Dez didn’t bother arguing the point. Come right down to it, he didn’t know whether it would be usable in court against Lowell. Forbes was the Major Crimes investigator. He’d be able to provide some advice on the matter.

They arrived at his house forty minutes later, and Forbes waved them in.

“I called in sick,” he said. “I figured we needed to discuss this privately.”

The police sergeant waited until they were all seated around his living room before launching into it. “Thanks to Lachlan, they found Gerhardt in his office in the old wing. We’ve been questioning staff left, right and centre, and barely anyone claims to have been aware the old wing was still in use. They’d been told it was unsafe due to asbestos, so were ordered to stay out of there. For my part, I believe them.”

“Gerhardt only had a handful of people present during the experiments,” Sully said. “Hackman’s dead. Lowell was there a few times. And the other one we now believe to be Reynold Dunsmore. I don’t doubt some of the other orderlies were in on something and maybe a nurse or two; it’s pretty hard to cart patients around in the dead of night without at least a couple of night staff noticing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if most people around there had no clue.”

“All of that’s definitely being checked into,” Forbes said.

“How is Gerhardt?” Lachlan asked. “Any updates?”

“He’s still in hospital,” Forbes said. “Medical staff is trying to figure out what to do, but given the experimental nature of the drug, they’re at a loss. Unsurprisingly, they’ve brought LOBRA in to offer advice. Lowell is distancing himself from it, of course, saying he doesn’t know anything about this drug. While the vials are labelled with some identifying information—enough for Gerhardt to know what he was using—it doesn’t have the necessary identifiers as to where the drug came from. You can bet your ass Lowell’s working as we speak to obliterate any evidence of the stuff in his labs. Not much we can do about that, I’m afraid. We don’t have nearly enough for a search warrant. Good news, I guess, is this should mean the drug experiments are over.

“As for Gerhardt, he appears to be in a semi-vegetative state, but his brain is showing unusual signs of activity. Neurologists aren’t sure what to do with him, other than send him back to Lockwood. I mean, he sits up fine, he can be spoon-fed and everything, but he can’t communicate. It’s like he’s stuck inside his head. The worst part is the expression on his face. Twenty-four-seven, he looks like he’s seeing his own death coming for him.”

For anyone else, it seemed a cruel outcome. For Gerhardt, Dez decided, it was justice.

“What about Lockwood?” Sully asked. “What’s going to happen to it?”

“They’ve got someone filling in as psychiatrist over there, a young woman who’d apparently tried for a spot there in the past. The board loved her but Gerhardt put his foot down against her. With the only opposition gone, I’m thinking she’s a shoo-in for the chief job now. By all accounts, she’s got a great reputation. Won a humanitarian award for the work she did in some Third World countries and all that.”

“Cass Jacobson,” Lachlan supplied. “I heard about her.” He met Sully’s eye. “She’s good. Really good. She’ll do a fine job around there, and she’s a sweetheart to boot. Gerhardt’s polar opposite. I understand she’s in the process of re-evaluating every patient there to ensure she agrees with the diagnoses.”

Sully smiled, and Dez mirrored the expression. In many cases, Lockwood served a purpose, and a useful one. It was helpful and even necessary to many of its patients. But to others, those like Sully, it had been a living nightmare. It sounded like that was about to end.

“What about the files?” Lachlan asked. “They still there?”

“Yep, all accounted for,” Forbes said. “We seized them all as evidence, and we’re trying to make sense of them now. Most of them don’t identify the patients other than by numbers, and they’re only a record of the secret treatments, not the legitimate patient records. The proper records are upstairs, in the main office. Based on what we know about Sullivan’s experience, I think I’ve managed to pick out his file. But there are others—a lot of others—we haven’t been able to put a name to.

“I’ll tell you this, the info contained in those files is pretty damning. It confirms what you’ve told us. Gerhardt made notes of what patients reported having seen, he noted the quantity of the drug used in each case and whether sedative was required to calm the patients afterward. But we found something else, something even better. He video-recorded some of the sessions. It’s pretty damn obvious how terrified the patients were, how unwilling to undergo these supposed treatments. It makes him look a damn sight more unstable than his patients.”

“Anyone else there?” Sully asked.

“You’re wondering about Lowell,” Forbes said. “Sorry, no. There was a video of you, but Lowell wasn’t in it.”

“He wasn’t there every time,” Sully said. His tone sounded the way Dez felt. After everything they’d been through to get to this point, it would have been too easy, finding Lowell in one of those torture videos.

“Is there anything connecting Lowell to this stuff?” Dez asked.

“Not by name. Gerhardt covered up others’ involvement, I suspect. But given the nature of the drug involved, I can’t imagine any lab besides LOBRA being able to come up with it. Our own lab has been looking at it, and they’ve never seen anything like it.”

Dez thought of something. “Sully, the drug Lowell was giving you a couple of years ago, the one you were taking around the time you started seeing Harry. Maybe it’s similar.”

Forbes raised an eyebrow. “You have any left?”

“Not personally,” Sully said. “But you guys seized some back then, remember? I think your lab tested it. I think Lowell told you it must have been some kind of street drug.”

“Shit, I forgot about that,” Forbes said. “I’ll check with the lab, see if we have the samples on hand. If we can compare the two, it could be we’ll be closer to pinning something on Lowell.”

Dez met Sully’s eye. There was one other thing, although he wasn’t sure Sully was prepared to hand it over.

Ultimately, Sully pulled his cellphone from his pocket. “There is one thing, Forbes. I recorded part of my conversation with Gerhardt.”

“What? Why the hell didn’t you say that earlier?”

“Sorry. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. It’s got my voice on it, and I’m not supposed to exist, remember?”

“Let me hear it.”

Dez hadn’t heard it yet either, and his blood ran cold as the recording played through. He listened as Gerhardt admitted to what he’d tried to do to his own son in the name of this stupid prophesy, what he planned on doing to Sully. But the turning point came as the psychiatrist dug further into Harry’s vision, and what it had ultimately meant for Aiden Braddock. Dez fumed as he listened to the cold, clinical way the doctor spoke of the two small boys, both targeted by an organization fuelled by greed, power and wealth.

The recording ended abruptly after that. Dez was livid, damn near shaking with it, but he calmed slightly as his brother’s hand settled on his shoulder and squeezed. Dez exchanged a quick look with Sully. He knew there had to have been more to that recording; it cut out just after Gerhardt announced his intention to kill Sully. Dez suspected his brother had done some editing, had gotten rid of the parts that might incriminate him or Emily or would raise questions given the later appearance of the Cockney-accented hangman.

“What happened after that?” Forbes asked.

“I guess my phone died, but Emily suddenly appeared. She had her gun and she threatened Gerhardt into letting me go. There was a struggle. I grabbed his hand at one point and he fell. I think he broke it, but I couldn’t tell if that happened when I grabbed him or when he hit the floor. Anyway, we knew he had a gun—he’d already shot Emily—so we got out of there.”

It was the story they’d rehearsed, a way to explain away evidence that might be uncovered. No one had known whether it would be enough to convince investigators—Lachlan’s tight-lipped expression suggested he, at least, smelled a lie—but if Forbes thought the same, he wasn’t making a point of it.

“I’m going to need your phone,” he said.

“For what?”

“I need to take it to our tech guys so they can extract the audio clip you’ve just played.”

Dez was about to protest—the tech guys would be able to remove far more than that if they wanted to—but Sully beat him to it. “Sorry, man. I’m not turning it in. Like I said, I’m not supposed to exist. There’s stuff on here that could burn me. I’ll email you a copy of the recording.”

“Copies aren’t good enough. Not for evidence. There’s no way to ensure tampering didn’t occur.”

Sully took another long look at his phone. “Can you guarantee me this is enough to nail Lowell?”

Forbes waited until Sully looked back up at him. “Nope. But it’s enough to start asking some questions.”

Sully held onto the phone for another moment, then dropped it back into his pocket. “I’m sorry. That’s not good enough. Once Lowell clues in I’m alive—and he will once this recording starts getting out there—none of us are safe. I could deal with it if it was just me, but it’s not. It’s my family too. I need to find more, something we can concretely pin on him. Something that will take him out of play for good.”

Forbes leaned forward. “Are you sure that exists?”

Sully seemed to be doing his best to form a smile. “It has to. I don’t want to think about the alternative.”

* * *

Forbes’s phone ringing a few minutes later signalled a pause in the conversation. He took the call out of the room and Lachlan excused himself to use the bathroom, leaving Dez and Sully alone in the living room.

Dez studied a row of family photos on the upper shelf of a bookcase while Sully knelt beside him to scan the titles. Charles Raynor’s face grinned from one of the photos, his arm draped around his son’s shoulders.

“Bad Luck Chuck in happier days,” Dez grumbled, his tone reflecting his disdain for the man.

While Charles was well-enough liked by the community, he’d run up against his share of problems as Kimotan Rapids’ longtime mayor—leading to the nickname coined by one of the unsuccessful mayoral candidates in the last civic election. The massive flood four years ago was a veritable disaster for obvious reasons. Another was a corruption scandal that had nearly unseated him. Flynn Braddock had been given the unhappy task of liaising with the feds on the corruption allegations, an extra-uncomfortable task since the mayor doubled as head of the police commission. Nothing had come of it except Flynn’s belief Charles harboured hopes of seeing him out of a job one day.

It turned out Lowell solved the problem for Chuck.

Sully hadn’t acknowledged the comment and, when Dez looked down on the top of his brother’s head to see why, he noticed Sully’s gaze fixed upon something in the bookshelf.

“What is it?” Dez asked.

Sully’s hand shook slightly as he drew a book from the shelf, a battered copy of Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go!. He stood, taking the book with him as he flipped the cover open.

An intake of breath caught in Sully’s throat, and he exhaled a half-whispered, “Oh, my God.”

Startled by his brother’s inexplicable reaction to a children’s book, Dez peered over his shoulder. Inside the front cover was inscribed, “To my boy. Wherever you go, carry me with you. Love forever and ever, your mom.”

“Sully, what?”

“This book. She showed me this book.”

“Who?”

“Eloise.”

Sully next scanned the photos on the shelf. His face paled as he settled on one, taken when Forbes was just a little boy, both his parents next to him.

“Oh, God. Dez….”

“What? You’re freaking me out, man.”

Sully replaced the book on the shelf and caught Dez’s sleeve, tugging him out of the living room, through the kitchen and into the backyard. Only then did Sully reveal what disturbed him, his tone hushed to keep the conversation private.

“You remember what I told you when we were at Lachlan’s, and he had the photo of Eloise and David? I recognized something about David. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it. And then, when Gerhardt gave me his wedding band? Dez, the book, the photo. Forbes is David.”

Dez stared at Sully, trying to comprehend what he’d just said. “But Sully, that…. How is—”

Sully cut into Dez’s failing attempt at speech. “It all makes sense. When the four of us went into Lockwood the other day, I had a panic attack and Forbes talked me through it. He said something to me about his mother having been a patient there before her suicide. He wasn’t talking about his birth mother. He was talking about his adoptive one—the one I saw flipping out and killing Eloise.”

“Hang on. I thought Chuck and his wife, whatever her name was, were his birth parents.”

“Her name was Val,” Sully said. “And, no, they weren’t. A couple of years ago, when Forbes was questioning me about Betty’s murder, he asked me something about whether I’d ever wanted to find my birth parents. I told him I figured he was asking because he was adopted himself. He didn’t deny it, just shut the conversation down. Now I get it.”

Dez whistled low before speaking. “Jesus. How much do you think he remembers?”

“He hasn’t said anything about Gerhardt, about having any recollection of him as his father.”

“You think he would have just forgotten him like that?”

“What I do know is that he didn’t have much of a relationship with him. Most of David’s time was spent with his mother. I got the distinct impression Gerhardt’s always been a workaholic, and when he was around, he was the kind of father a kid would rather forget.”

“The whole suffocation thing. I wonder if he remembers that?”

“It could be he blocked the memory. It happens sometimes with trauma.”

“Maybe,” Dez said. “We need to talk to him about it.”

Sully caught Dez’s arm before he could return to the house. “Wait, Dez.”

Dez turned, met his brother’s eye. Sully’s expression—furrowed brow and slightly parted lips—suggested some sort of internal conflict was raging. He gave Sully a moment to get his thoughts together before voicing his question. “What?”

“I don’t know, I just…. Are you sure we should tell him?”

“He has a right to know. Hell, maybe he already does.”

“I don’t think he does. I think he might have some vague memory, but I think he’s found a way to put a lot of it behind him. He made a new life with the Raynors, and I know he’s really close to his dad. I get that. I found you guys, and you weren’t just my adoptive family. You were my family, and you were all I needed. I don’t know, sometimes maybe it’s better not to know the truth.”

Dez scanned his boot tops, hearing more in Sully’s statement than he’d perhaps intended. “You wish I hadn’t told you about Gerhardt, don’t you? I’m sorry. I really wish I hadn’t said anything.”

“No, I’m glad you told me the truth, Dez. It gave me the chance to confront him with it. But Forbes won’t have that same chance now.”

Dez met Sully’s eye. “Except he’s involved with the investigation. If it comes out he is who you’re saying he is, he’d be in a major conflict situation.”

This time, it was Sully gazing down at his boots. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Listen,” Dez said. “Why don’t Lachlan and I go talk to Chuck, see what he has to say? I mean, we do need to sort out what happened to Eloise, don’t we? You’ll need to help her move on.”

“Yeah, you’re right. She needs answers too.”

Dez settled a hand on Sully’s shoulder, then moved closer and draped his arm fully around his brother, pulling him into a half-hug as they turned back toward the house. “Come on. One problem at a time, all right? We’ll get this sorted out.”

“Thanks, D.”

Only then did Dez shake his head at the absurdity of the situation.

“You know what’s weird?” he said, his hand on the door handle. “Never in my wildest dreams would I ever have pictured myself giving a damn about Forbes’s feelings.”

27

Charles Raynor was a busy man, so busy it seemed at first he would have no time to talk to Dez and Lachlan.

“He’s swamped today,” the receptionist in the mayor’s office said. “He’s preparing for a meeting with the city planner this afternoon. If you’d like to leave me your names, I can—”

Lachlan, though, had an ace up his sleeve. “Eloise Gerhardt. If you could just pass along the name to him, I’m sure he’ll see us.”

The receptionist’s face was the picture of confusion, but she followed through, picking up her phone and dialling. “I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Fields has asked me to provide you with a name. Eloise Gerhardt.”

A pause followed, and a lengthy one in Dez’s approximation. He cast Lachlan a quick side-eye, checking for a reaction. Lachlan’s face held a smile, the sort of cat-got-the-canary grin he’d likely worn into his share of suspect interviews during his storied policing days. Dez would have hated to be on the receiving end of one of those smirks had he ever landed on the wrong side of an interview room.

At last, the receptionist provided the answer Lachlan, at least, seemed to be anticipating. “End of the hall, corner office on the left.”

Charles occupied a massive space, floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, making the office appear even larger. Given the mayor’s office was on the twenty-second floor of City Hall, it boasted some of the best views in the city, looking out over the urban sprawl of Kimotan Rapids, the river close enough to watch the boaters in the warmer months.

Charles stood at one of the windows, casting his gaze somewhere beyond this office, possibly even beyond the city.

“What can I help you with?” he asked. No polite greeting he was so known for. He simply sounded exhausted.

“Mr. Mayor, I’m Lachlan Fields and this is—”

“I know who you are.” Charles at last turned to face them. Dez wasn’t surprised the politician’s characteristic grin was down for the count. “I don’t have much time to talk. Please, make this quick.”

Lachlan took a seat in one of a set of plush chairs this side of the mayor’s massive desk. Dez remained standing.

Lachlan had just taken a breath to speak when he was interrupted by Charles, his eyes having settled on Dez’s large form. “You’re Deputy Chief Braddock’s son. I hadn’t clued in right away for some reason.”

“I am, sir.”

The mayor took a few steps and, to Dez’s surprise, extended a hand to him. “I know it’s two years too late, but allow me to extend my condolences. I know Flynn and I didn’t always see eye to eye, but I’ve come to respect the job he had to do. It can’t have been easy.”

“It wasn’t,” Dez said. He still wasn’t sold on the guy, but decided to be big about it. He thought his dad would want that. “Thank you,” he said before breaking the handshake.

Charles motioned to the other guest chair. “Please, have a seat.”

Lachlan waited until Dez and Charles had sat—the latter not on his own chair as Dez had expected, but on the edge of his desk, facing his two visitors. It could be it was an attempt at appearing open—more open than he intended to be. Or it could be the way he normally was. It was anybody’s guess until the questioning started.

“Let me begin by saying we’ve managed to piece a few things together,” Lachlan said. “We’ve been working on solving the disappearance of David Gerhardt, and the trail’s led us to your doorstep.”

Charles paled. Dez guessed the mayor now regretted his choice of seat.

“Are you all right, sir?” Dez asked.

It took a few seconds to get an answer, but Charles at last replied, “Fine.” The hushed sound of the word made him sound anything but.

Dez opted to take over. The situation required tact Lachlan didn’t often use. “We’ve learned a fair bit about the kind of life David lived in the Gerhardt home. He was close to his mother, and she was good to him, but his father was a sociopath who we believe tried to kill him. As a result, Eloise set out to find a way to protect her child. When she found out she couldn’t do it alone, she was forced to look for another solution. We have information that you and your wife were that solution.”

Charles stood shakily, keeping one hand on the desktop to balance him as he circled it. Once in front of his chair, he collapsed into it. His eyes, usually full of smiles whenever a TV crew was nearby, appeared nearly dead by comparison. “Where did you come by this information?”

“We have a source,” Dez said. “Someone who made some connections and brought them to us.”

Charles sat forward, imploring eyes settling on Dez and Lachlan in turn. “How much do you want? I have no doubt you’re being paid by someone for your services. I’ll pay more. Just please, whatever you think you’ve learned, I need you to keep it to yourselves.” His eyes widened. “God, Forbes doesn’t know, does he?”

“He doesn’t remember?”

“He remembers his birth mother, but he doesn’t remember much about her besides her first name. He’s blocked a lot out, I think. Val and I took him to a child psychologist after he came into our lives, given we were informed about the attempt on his life. The psychologist said Forbes remembered something about not being able to breathe, but little else. He didn’t seem to remember why, and said nothing about an incident with a pillow. That never changed throughout his youth, nor did he ever mention anything about Roman Gerhardt.

“He asked me once, when he was a teenager, who his birth parents were. He’d never discussed it before that, although he’d sometimes talk about his memories of Eloise. I talked to him about her, the good person she was, how she’d allowed us to raise him because she was unable to do it herself. He said he had no memory of his father. I told him a partial truth, that he wasn’t a good man. Forbes didn’t question me further. I think part of him wanted to know more; that’s natural. But I think he was afraid too—afraid of what he might find if he went looking. As far as I know, his search for answers began and ended that day.”

“How did the boy end up in your care?” Lachlan asked.

“I knew Eloise’s father. He was a good man, a kind man who loved his family dearly. His wife died young and he brought the girls up himself. There was nothing he wouldn’t have done for them and for his grandson. When Eloise and Mariel went to him with what Gerhardt had done, and how Eloise’s attempt at escape with the child had failed, he helped them arrange a new family for Forbes. Eloise knew Gerhardt might let her go if she was alone, but he’d never let her take the child. She needed a permanent solution, so they faked his kidnapping. Her father brought Forbes to Val and me, and we raised him as our own.”

“How did you avoid being found out?” Dez asked. “I mean, it was all over the news.”

“We kept his presence a secret for a long time. We homeschooled him, and we didn’t take him out anywhere for a while. But we quickly realized it was no life for a child, so we moved. We left the province entirely, settled down on an acreage. We continued to homeschool him, though. Too many eyes in the public school system. If I have one regret, it’s that we didn’t do more to ensure he had some friends growing up. He didn’t. We couldn’t afford a situation where someone recognized him. It got easier when he got older. He looked different: His hair darkened, he grew taller and broader, his facial features matured. I had been working for a small-town police service, but I really wanted badly to work in Kimotan Rapids. Anyway, Val’s health had deteriorated by then, and she was back in KR. It was a long way to go to visit, but there wasn’t any help for her where we were living.”

“Help?” Dez asked. “You mean Lockwood?”

Charles’s gaze snapped down to his lap. “I know what you must think of me, putting her into that place with that monster.” He returned his eyes to Dez’s. “But you need to understand, Lockwood was all there was. It still is the only dedicated mental health facility within a three-province radius. I’d tried taking her to a regular hospital, one with a psychiatric unit. They looked after her there for a time. But it soon became apparent her breakdown was not to be of short duration. The episodes were coming more and more frequently, and she was rarely herself. Sometimes, the people she became scared me. I worried about leaving Forbes alone with her when she was like that. At any rate, it quickly became clear Lockwood was the only option.

“I met with Gerhardt first. I wanted to see whether he showed any indication of suspicion of me or my wife, something to show he knew about us. But he didn’t. He actually seemed kind in his dealings with Val. I’ve heard that about him, that he could be remarkably good with his patients, despite the way he treated others. I felt I had no choice. God help me, I had her committed. Then one day, I got a call from Gerhardt saying she’d managed to take her own life.”

Lachlan edged forward slightly in his chair. “Did you suspect that, perhaps, he’d had a hand?”

“I did, naturally, question it. I insisted on an autopsy, and I asked the pathologist to check for any signs of foul play. Given I was working with the KRPD by then, I had an existing relationship with the pathologist, and I’m certain he told me the truth. He assured me there were no signs of anything untoward. She’d hanged herself, no signs of a struggle, nothing in the toxicology to suggest she’d been drugged. I think she knew she was ill and wouldn’t get better. She just couldn’t deal with it anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” Dez said.

Charles offered a small smile and nodded his thanks.

“Can I ask you something else?” Dez asked. “Are you familiar with a group called the Circle?”

“I’m aware of them, yes.”

“Are you a member?”

“No. I was approached around the time I started working in civic politics, but I turned them down. I knew enough about the Circle to know I didn’t trust their tactics. And I knew Gerhardt was a member. I would never join anything that would put me in proximity with that man.” He met Dez’s eye. “To be honest, I’ve always wondered whether that was where the corruption claims originated. I made some enemies in the Circle’s ranks when I refused to join, and I think the false claims might have been a way for them to get back at me. And I also wonder whether they weren’t eager to have one of their own members in the mayor’s office.” He sat forward, his gaze intensifying as he regarded Dez. “I’m afraid I was very embittered by the whole thing at the time, and I took it out on your father. I know he was only doing his job; I’d been a police officer myself, of course, and I knew how it worked. I sure wish I could take back some of the things I said to him.”

“It’s okay,” Dez said. “I’m sure he knows, wherever he is.” That could have been right here, for all Dez knew. Only Sully would know for sure.

Something else needed to be discussed, the most difficult topic. Charles seemed like a good guy, and Dez wasn’t thrilled about having to broach the topic of Eloise’s murder, but there was no way around it. She’d never been found, and she deserved to be.

Thankfully, Lachlan fielded that one. “Did you ever find out what happened to Eloise?”

“No,” Charles said. Dez saw no tells he was readying for a lie. “Val and I suggested she could come around for occasional visitations with Forbes, but she never came to see him. I think at first, it was hard for her to get away, what with Gerhardt being how he was and all of the police and media attention on the case. Val and I, too, felt very hemmed in at that point, like we couldn’t move a finger for fear of someone seeing and reading into it.” He paused, thinking. “You know, come to think of it, Val did tell me once that Eloise came to see Forbes. He and I had gone for a fishing break that time, I think. I remember asking because Forbes found a bag stashed by the stairs containing a few of his things from his old life: books and toys and things like that. Val said Eloise had dropped the things off and left.”

“And you’re sure that’s what happened?”

“Of course.” Charles sank slightly in his chair. “Why? Are you suggesting something more?”

“I’m afraid so, sir,” Lachlan said. “We have reason to believe Eloise was murdered by your wife.”

“That’s absurd!”

“Is it? You know how deep emotional strain can sometimes trigger people with dissociative personality disorder. Our information is that Eloise went there that day to take her son back. Understandably, Val was badly shaken and upset by this, and we believe she lashed out violently. I don’t think she fully knew what she was doing, if that helps. It’s quite possible she would have been found not criminally responsible for the offence. But I think if you were to search the property, you might find that Eloise is still there somewhere.”

Charles stared at Lachlan a long moment. Then he crumpled. His face dropped into the shelter of his hands, and he sobbed, shoulders quaking with the rush of emotion.

Dez pitied the man.

Close to a minute passed before Charles uttered anything more. What he said came out as a muffled moan behind his hands. “Oh, Val. Val, what did you do?”

Another half-minute ticked by before Charles withdrew his hands. His face was a mess, eyes red and tear-filled, skin mottled, nose running. He grabbed a tissue from a drawer and blew his nose, then needed a second.

“Are you all right, sir?” Dez asked.

Charles nodded, but the movement didn’t match what Dez was seeing. “I’m sorry. God, I—” He wiped tears from his cheeks before returning his gaze to Dez. “I didn’t know. You have to believe me. I didn’t. But, heaven help me, I suspected something might have happened. That bag didn’t just contain toys and books. There were clothes and a few toiletries. I understood why she’d want him to have some of his favourite things, but the rest didn’t make sense. Not unless the explanation was what you’ve just suggested. I wondered. I did. But I didn’t ask. Val gave me her explanation, and I didn’t question it, because the alternative was unthinkable. I was a police officer, and I knew something was off. I did search for evidence to show something had transpired, but I never found anything—no blood, no hair, nothing broken, no notable injuries on Val. I did notice our butcher knife was gone, but she said she’d broken the blade so had thrown it out. Oh, God, you don’t think—”

“We think so, yes,” Lachlan said. “I know it isn’t easy to hear. You knew Val best. Do you have any idea what she might have done with the body?”

Charles shook his head. “I never even accepted she’d done anything wrong. I didn’t ever get as far as trying to think where a body might have been concealed. One thing, though, she wouldn’t have kept Eloise at the acreage. She wouldn’t have risked either myself or Forbes finding her. This happened before we moved away, and we lived very near the Black Woods. It’s quite likely, I suppose, she might have taken the body there. Oh, God. I know what you need to do, and I understand it, but this will ruin Forbes and me.”

“You had nothing to do with it,” Lachlan said. “I believe you on that. I’ll go to bat for you publicly. It could be with the right public relations, the impact on your career can be minimized.”

“I appreciate that, but it isn’t my career I’m talking about. It’s my relationship with my son. He was close to Eloise. He talked about her all the time as a child, and he always asked why she didn’t come to see him. I’m worried he’ll think I had something to do with either the death or with covering it up, or that he’ll blame me for not doing enough to prevent it. Regardless, this will bring the truth out, and that will break us. He’ll never see me again.”

“I think you’re overthinking things,” Dez said. “If he’s as close to you as I think he is, he won’t give up on you just like that. He’ll be upset, no question, but you didn’t do anything wrong. Hell, you didn’t even lie to him. You didn’t know either.”

“But I suspected, and did nothing. That’s bad enough.” Charles sighed. “My God. What am I going to do?”

Dez exchanged a look with Lachlan. He knew how miserable he must look when Lachlan took up the baton once again. “Leave it with us for now, all right? It might be there’s a way to do this so no one ever needs to know. I mean, there’s little use now, is there? Val’s gone, and Gerhardt is as good as. The people left behind don’t deserve to be burned over this.”

Charles met his eye, gently raised brows and a slight lift at the corners of his mouth suggesting hope had dawned at Lachlan’s words. “Thank you. Thank you both. I’ll do what I can to help.”

Dez and Lachlan took their leave, standing and heading for the exit. Lachlan turned back before opening the office door.

“Forbes is investigating the Lockwood case. We might have to tell him something so as to avoid a conflict. Should it come out about his relationship to Gerhardt, it could affect the admissibility of any evidence he’s gathering.”

Charles nodded tightly. “I understand. I’ll try to figure out how to break it to him.”

Dez smiled. “One thing I’ve learned about Forbes. He’s a tough bastard, and he stands by his family even when things aren’t so good. Maybe you’re not giving him enough credit.”

Charles returned the smile. “Maybe you’re right. Thank you, both of you.”

Lachlan gave the mayor a lazy parting salute and led the way from the room.

28

The sound of a car pulling up outside had Sully peering out the window of Dez’s Riverview-area apartment.

He’d called Forbes and asked to meet with him. He hadn’t said about what. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could say over the phone.

Having buzzed the man in, Sully took the few moments he had to steel his nerves for the upcoming conversation. He’d been in this same room when he’d learned Gerhardt was his father. It was about to play host to a repeat.

Sully had insisted on coming alone. Although Dez and Forbes didn’t hate each other as much as they once had, the old tensions hadn’t completely eased. The last thing Sully wanted was Forbes on edge before he’d even broken the news.

A knock on the door signalled it was time to get this rolling. Sully answered, and the Major Crimes detective swept into the room.

“I haven’t got a lot of time. We’ve got a lot on the go with the Lockwood investigation. As you can imagine, we’ve got piles of people to talk to, so—”

“I won’t take up much of your time, but I’m thinking you might have to shelve your role in the investigation once I’m done.”

“Why would I do that? It’s the case of a lifetime.”

“I thought Lowell Braddock was the case of a lifetime.”

“This could lead us to him. That’s what I’m hoping anyway.”

No sense delaying the inevitable. “Sit down, okay?”

Now Forbes appeared suspicious, head angled away, narrowed eyes fixed on Sully. “Why?”

“Humour me.”

Forbes sat on the pullout. Sully had made it back up into a couch for the meeting, and he lowered himself into a spot on the other end, giving himself one last moment for thought.

“You asked me once if I ever wondered about my birth family, remember?”

Forbes pondered the question, as if trying to recollect when he’d asked the question. “I think so. Why?”

“I said I thought you were curious because you were adopted yourself.”

“What’s your point?”

“You are, aren’t you?”

“Adopted? Yeah. So? My dad is my dad.”

“I know. I get that. The Braddocks are my family. I never questioned that. Thing is, when I found out about my birth family, it made me wish even more the Braddocks were my blood.”

Forbes gave a slight shrug. “Blood doesn’t always matter. Not about the important things.”

“I know. I guess what I’m trying to ask is whether you’re interested in knowing more about your birth family. I mean, do you remember them?”

Forbes shifted in his seat. “Why are you asking me this? It’s none of your business.”

“You’re going to have to trust me when I tell you it kind of is. Please. I promise I have a point.”

Forbes heaved a suffering sigh. “I remember my birth mother a little. I don’t think I could even describe her in any great detail anymore, though. It’s been a lot of years and I don’t even have a photo of her.”

“Do you know her name?”

“I remember people calling her Ella. I don’t know more than that. My parents never gave me a last name, and I never asked for one. I was happy where I was. I didn’t need more.”

“But you still wondered. You wondered enough to ask me about my experience.”

“Of course I wondered. Who wouldn’t? Doesn’t mean finding out is a good idea. I mean, if you had the chance, wouldn’t you want to unlearn the shit you know now about your own birth family?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. Sometimes knowing is hard, but it gives you the chance to make choices you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Knowing about them, it’s helped me know myself better—not the good side, but the other part. I think we have to understand the darker parts of ourselves too. Meeting the Dules let me do that. I could see where that part of me came from, so maybe I can figure out how to control it.”

Forbes crossed his arms. “You’re working around to telling me you know who my birth parents are, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am, yeah. But I won’t say anything more about it if you really don’t want to know.”

Forbes uncrossed his arms, started to cross them again, then used them to lean forward, into his lap. He remained silent a while. A long while.

Sully waited.

At last Forbes spoke. “I have good memories of Ella, nothing but good. But there’s this other thing. It’s always felt like a dream kind of, a nightmare, this feeling of suffocating, of knowing I’m about to die. Her voice, it saved me. I kind of remember her voice, I guess. That’s all I’ve got. Blonde hair and a voice.” He sat up, meeting Sully’s eye. “I have no memory of my father. I know I had one, but I have the impression he wasn’t around much. She was a good person, though, right?”

“Yeah,” Sully said. “She was.”

“Do you know why?”

“Why what?”

“Why she gave me up. My parents always told me she wasn’t in a good place in her life, that she was in a situation that made raising a child impossible. They never said what that meant, and I never asked. I always assumed she was a drug addict or something.”

“She wasn’t,” Sully said. “She was with a horrible man who made life impossible. She tried to escape the situation with you, but he found the two of you and made you go back. Then something happened that made her realize she couldn’t protect you anymore. The only thing she could do was find someone else to raise you, someone who could give you a better life, a safe and happy life.”

Forbes hadn’t moved, body still angled forward, toward Sully. He’d lost some colour, and Sully questioned whether Forbes could handle what he was no doubt about to ask. “This something that happened. What was it?”

Sully took a breath, let it out slowly before answering, holding Forbes’s eye as he did so. “Your birth father, he tried to suffocate you with a pillow. Ella returned home unexpectedly and interrupted without knowing it. She only found out about it later because you told her.”

Forbes blanched, gaze redirecting to the wall. “It wasn’t a nightmare.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I thought maybe I’d almost drowned or something, but it was—Jesus Christ.” Forbes returned his eyes to Sully’s. “How do you know all this?”

“She showed me.”

“Ella.”

Sully nodded.

“That means she was murdered.”

Sully nodded again.

“How? Was it my biological father?”

Sully had considered this moment, this question. The truth, he knew, would shatter Forbes, might destroy every positive feeling he still carried for Val Raynor. She was a killer, yes. But she’d also been a severely mentally ill woman who’d snapped only because she believed the child she’d come to love as her own was about to be taken from her forever. It was unlikely Mara or Flynn would have reacted violently to Sully’s birth family showing up and trying to take him, but maybe they would have. Either way, they wouldn’t have let him go peacefully.

Val’s reaction had been her brain’s way of dealing with it. Horrible and as wrong as you could go wrong, yes, but the result of mental illness, a part of herself she couldn’t control. Sully didn’t have DID, but he knew what it was to lose control to a dark part of himself, to nearly kill while in that state. How could he blame Val when he wasn’t so different?

Had it not been for Gerhardt, Eloise wouldn’t have been in the position to have to give up her child in the first place. And Val wouldn’t have been placed in the position of needing to defend the chance at motherhood that had been so unexpectedly granted to her.

Maybe it was Sully’s loathing for the man doing his thinking for him, but right now, he had no problem making Gerhardt out as the architect of Eloise’s brutal fate.

“I’m not really sure,” Sully said in answer to Forbes’s question. “I think it was.”

Forbes’s head lowered, brows settling over his eyes. “Who is he? I want to see to it he’s dealt with.”

“He has been dealt with,” Sully said. “There’s no easy way to say this. Forbes, you mother’s full name was Eloise. You were born David Gerhardt, and you’ve been the subject of a missing person file since you were six years old. Your father is—”

Forbes fired off the couch, backed away a couple of steps. “No.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s true. The book you have in your shelf, the Dr. Seuss one from your birth mother. She showed me that. And she showed me her memories of you as a child. It all came together at your house, when I saw the book and the photo of you as a kid.”

Forbes shook his head. “I’m not that man’s kid. I can’t be. Not him.”

“I’ve been saying the same thing since I found out about my own past. I debated telling you because I know what it makes me feel about myself, coming from someone like that. But I also know you’re in a conflict situation with this case, and you have the right to know, to make some choices about what you do going forward.”

Sully stood, facing Forbes fully. “I know it probably doesn’t help much, especially coming from me, but I really do know what you’re going through. And I know you’re not big on talking, but if you ever want to, you can talk to me.” He smirked. “I’m dead anyway, right? I’m as silent as the grave.”

The heat and the panic hadn’t left Forbes’s expression, and Sully had to struggle to hold his ground as Forbes took a quick step forward, closing the distance between them. Forbes stared into Sully’s face as if looking for something there.

“You’re telling me…. You’re telling me we’re brothers?”

It was Sully’s turn to pale. It felt stupid now, but in all this time, he hadn’t even considered this other very real truth. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess we are.” His lips quirked.

Forbes reached out slowly, fingers touching and then bunching up the front of Sully’s hoodie. Sully waited, uncertain whether he was about to get shoved to the ground or hit.

Instead, Forbes only shook him gently, letting his breath out in a little “huh” sound. His lips turned up at the corners.

“I don’t fucking believe it. I’ve got a brother.”

* * *

The Forks was quiet, a chill in the air promising winter on the horizon. Sully pulled his jacket tighter around him.

A cold breeze had proven enough to keep most people off the streets today, allowing Dez and Sully to move unhindered as they made the trek between Ravenwood and the Gerhardts’ old house.

Just as well, because they had some anxious company this time: Forbes Raynor.

They paused in the bushes outside a house within view of the Gerhardt place. Sully had led them in a different direction this time, ensuring they wouldn’t easily be within sight of the house where Snowy and Terrence were staying. Not that it would do much good. Snowy would know he was here, regardless.

He paused to rub at his middle. A dull ache had formed with the exertion of the hike. It was annoying, but he didn’t dwell. He knew it could have been—should have been—far worse.

Dez hadn’t missed the movement. “You okay?”

“Yeah. All good.”

Dez wasn’t likely sold, but he dropped it anyway. “Any chance of us avoiding Snowy? I’d rather not see that little traitor again if I can help it.”

“If she’s around here, she’ll know where I am. I don’t know if her gift has any sort of radius or whatever, but we’ll be too close no matter which way we go.”

“So we’d better make this quick.”

“Gerhardt’s basically gone, Dez. Whatever risk she posed is gone too.” Sully scanned the street one last time, relieved to find it still quiet. “Ready?”

“Yeah, let’s get this done.”

Sully started to push through the trees but was drawn up short by the realization Forbes had yet to say a word. He’d been quiet on the boat ride over, and he’d muttered a few curse words as he was briefly assailed by Noisy Ned inside Ravenwood. But he’d kept to himself after that.

It hadn’t initially struck Sully as unusual; Forbes wasn’t much for conversation at the best of times. But this silence possessed a different quality, one built more of tension than introversion.

Sully halted Dez with a hand on his arm before returning his attention to Forbes. “You okay, man?”

“I never believed in ghosts,” he said. “I think even after everything I saw you do, I never really bought into it somehow. But, God, man, you’re telling me she’s really still there? In that house?”

Sully nodded. “Yeah. And I think seeing you will help her.”

“I know that’s what you told me, and that’s why I came. But holy hell.”

Sully gave Forbes a minute, watching as the thoughts played out across the man’s face. Dez’s tree trunk arms folded over his chest, the picture of impatience. Sully didn’t blame him, the realization things could go way wrong in The Forks all too obvious after their past visits. But Forbes was who this was about today. Forbes and Eloise. They’d do this on their terms or not at all.

But when Forbes showed no immediate sign of emerging from his thoughts, Sully decided some gentle pressure was in order. “I know this isn’t easy, but staying in one place for too long around here isn’t a good idea. The sooner we can get in and out, the better.”

Forbes acknowledged Sully with a stiff nod. “Right. Right, let’s do this, then.”

This time, Dez led the way, pushing through the trees before Forbes could again delay things. Sully followed, keeping Forbes next to him as they approached the street. Sully tugged Forbes into a jog as they crossed the road.

They stepped onto the Gerhardt property, keeping quiet, waiting on conversation until they were inside. Sully led them into the sitting room where he’d first set eyes on Eloise, wondering if she’d sense her son’s return. When he didn’t see her within the first minute or so, he tried calling out.

“Eloise? Are you here?”

He was met by silence.

“Nothing?” Dez asked.

Sully shook his head, then turned to see Forbes heading for the staircase leading to the upper floor. “Hey, Forbes, watch it. The stairs aren’t in great shape, and neither is the upper floor.”

Forbes didn’t answer but stalled at the base of the stairway. Sully joined him, peering into the older man’s face to try to get a read of what was playing out within his mind. He’d gone pale, eyes wide as he stared into the shadows above.

“You okay?”

“I used to dream about this house. As I got older, I thought I must have made it up.”

“You remember it?”

“Kind of. Not really. I don’t know.” He looked away from the stairs, focusing on Sully. “I think my bedroom was up there.”

Sully gazed from Forbes to the stairs and back again. “You want to go have a look?”

“I don’t know.” Forbes paused another long moment, then, without further conversation, started gingerly up the steps.

Sully glanced back at Dez. “You’re okay staying here?”

Dez patted his coat pocket. “I’ve got Emily’s gun this time. I’m plenty okay. I’ll keep an eye out and call if something comes up.”

Sully nodded and followed Forbes.

Having reached the second floor, Sully had intended to tell Forbes where the room was. He discovered there was no need; Forbes drifted straight there as if in a daze, no instructions necessary.

By the time Sully reached David’s bedroom, Forbes was in the midst of it, arms hugged across his chest, back to Sully.

“Forbes?”

A sound somewhere between a gasp and a sob came from the older man, and Sully took a couple of steps forward, gaining Forbes’s side while hoping the floor would accommodate them both. It creaked, but held. Just as well, because the broken-down state of the building was the least of Sully’s concerns at the moment.

Forbes’s eyes had covered over in a sheen of unshed tears. He brushed at them and trained his gaze from the bookshelf to the opened closet to the toys on the shelf.

“Forbes?”

“I remember this,” he said. Then his eyes settled on the bed, and awe changed to dread. “I remember all of it.”

Sully sensed her before he saw her, a presence at the doorway leading to the hall. He turned to find her there, wide eyes fixated on the greying blond hair of the newcomer.

“Hey, Forbes,” Sully said. “She’s here.”

Forbes turned slowly, as if uncertain whether he wanted to see. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing there for him to see. “Where?” he asked.

Sully allowed Forbes to follow his gaze. “Doorway.” Then he turned his attention to her. “Eloise? This is Forbes Raynor. I know it’s been a lot of years but—” He broke off the introduction as she shot forward, stilling only once she stood directly in front of Forbes. She studied him, as if both recognizing something within the man and looking for something familiar. When a smile broke upon her face, Sully knew she’d found it.

“You don’t need me to tell you,” Sully said to her.

But it was as if he’d ceased to exist. Everything in this moment came down to just two people: Eloise and David. He was all she saw as she brought up a hand to brush at a stray strand of Forbes’s ordinarily neat hair.

“Sullivan? What’s going on?”

“She knows you,” Sully said, voice coming through a smile. “Who you are, I mean.”

“Is she okay?”

Sully nodded. “Yeah. She’s okay. More okay than I’ve ever seen her.”

It was true. Even as they stood here, the injuries on her were beginning to fade, the stains and rips on her clothing disappearing.

“Can I talk to her?” Forbes asked. “I mean, she’ll hear me?”

“Yeah. I think she’d like that.”

Forbes glanced at Sully, flinching slightly as he eyed him. “It feels weird, doing this while you’re here.”

“I can leave.”

“Then I won’t know what she’s saying back.”

“I think it’s kind of obvious what she’s saying back, don’t you?” Sully smiled, then left Forbes to it, heading back down the stairs and to Dez.

Dez was staring out the living room window, eyes hard as he watched for potential threats. “How’s it going?”

“He’s talking to her now, I think.”

“And she’s okay?”

“I think she’s almost ready to go, so yeah.”

Dez nodded, then took a break from his surveillance duty to grace Sully with a smile. “What you do, it’s pretty cool, you know.”

Sully returned the grin. “It has its moments.” He turned his gaze to the world outside the broken window just as Dez did. “Anything going on out there?”

“Just Terrence lurking from what I can tell.”

“Terrence is out there?”

Dez nodded with his chin. “By those shrubs across the road. I was contemplating inviting him in. Guess I owe him for clueing me in that you were in trouble back at Lockwood. You good with me getting him?”

“I’m not really thrilled at the idea of seeing Snowy again, but it would be good to talk to Terrence.”

“I don’t see her, just him.”

Sully nodded his agreement, and Dez waved a hand out the window. A moment later, a bald head popped up from the bushes.

Terrence jogged across the road, gun in hand, and entered the house. “How the hell’d you make me out there?” he asked Dez.

“Sorry.”

“Guess I’m getting rusty.” He turned to Sully, and his face cracked into a wide grin as he knocked knuckles with the younger man. “How ya doin’, kid?”

“Good, thanks. You?”

“Decent. Heard you and the old lady took care of Gerhardt.”

Sully raised his eyebrows. “How’d you know that?”

“Hey, my mom?” Terrence said by way of explanation.

It was all Sully required. “Right. Of course.”

The mention of Snowy caused Terrence’s face to fall. “Listen, man, I want to apologize to you for what she did. I didn’t know until it was too late. You need to believe me. She got it in her head she wanted to face her past, and I figured I could get us in there and out without being seen. She’s had a lot of nightmares and flashbacks, and I know firsthand how running from your past doesn’t help you heal. You saw me through my own demons by helping me face them, and I figured I could do the same for her. Worse came to worse, I knew I could bust my way out of there easily enough. But it turned out she wanted to go for another reason altogether.”

Sully nodded. “Me.”

Terrence’s smile carried shame. “I just thought she was going to use the bathroom. Next thing I know, she’s gone. When she came back, she looked like hell, and she admitted to me she’d sold you out to Gerhardt. I was gonna go in there to get you myself when I saw Dez and your ma. Figured you’d have things cased between you, so I bailed and got Mom out of there.

“Listen, I know this won’t mean much after everything, but she really does feel like shit about what she did.”

Dez faced Terrence, a sour expression marring his features. “No offence to you, Terrence, but good.”

Terrence faced Dez. “I don’t blame you for being pissed. If it was my brother, I’d be out for blood. All I’m trying to tell you is I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“We know that,” Sully said.

Dez shrugged. “Doesn’t erase what she did though.”

“I get it. But you need to understand, we’ve been living a half-life out here. She keeps talking like her life is over anyway, but she wants something more for me. We’re stuck in hiding because of two men: Gerhardt and Lowell Braddock. She figured she could take care of Gerhardt by making a deal with him, trading info for her freedom. That would leave just the one obstacle.”

“We share that obstacle,” Dez said. “Now we’ve got Gerhardt dealt with, we’re hoping Lowell will be falling alongside him very soon. We haven’t figured out exactly how we’re going to get there yet, but it’s coming.”

“I don’t know what I can do to help,” Terrence said. “But if you need me, I’m here. Honestly, I’d love to be there when the son of a bitch goes down.”

A creak on the stairs had them turning to see Forbes making his way down. His eyes were a little red, but he otherwise appeared okay.

He was most of the way down when he spotted Terrence, and the sight of the stranger pulled him up short.

“It’s all right,” Sully said. “Forbes, this is Terrence. Terrence, Forbes.”

The two men exchanged a nod of greeting before Forbes turned to Sully. “Does he—”

“Know about me? Yeah. Both that I’m alive and can see ghosts.”

Forbes nodded and took a breath. “I know I told you I wanted some privacy, but the conversation seems kind of one-sided to me, so….”

Terrence chuckled. “Yeah, I know how that goes. Tell ya what, I’ll leave you to it. I’ll keep an eye on the place from the road, fire off a shot if I see anything I don’t like.”

Dez clapped Terrence on the shoulder. “Thanks. I appreciate it. And thanks again for coming to me about Sully the other day.”

“Anytime. And, hey, I owe him.” He turned and pulled Sully into a bro hug, thumping him a couple of times on the back before releasing him. “You take care of yourself, kid. Call me if you need me. I mean it.”

Terrence having taken his leave, Sully returned attention to Forbes. Eloise, now fully healed, appeared beside him, one hand hovering near one of his.

“I told her all about how good my life was after she gave me up, how close I am to my dad—the dad who raised me, I mean. And I told her none of it was her fault, that she’s shown how good a mother she was by making that kind of sacrifice. I guess I need to know what she wants to say.”

“She’s been saying it all along,” Sully said. “She loves you, that’s obvious. And she’s happy now. I think she got trapped here after she died, so she had no way of knowing what happened to you.” Sully stopped there. The reality was, Eloise had to have been petrified by the possibility of Val Raynor turning on her adopted child; if she’d snapped once, she could do it again. What Eloise couldn’t have known was that Charles Raynor wasn’t about to let anything happen to the boy. He’d made sure of it, in a way that ultimately proved tragic.

Sully thought it might be best for Forbes to never know the full truth.

“I want to find her, give her a proper burial,” Forbes said. “And I want to find evidence of what happened. If Gerhardt did this, I want the world to know. And if it was someone else, they need to face justice for it.”

Sully turned to Eloise. “What about you? Is that what you want?”

She shook her head, the movement quick and decisive. No, she definitely did not want that. Sully didn’t have to ask to know her thoughts had travelled the same paths and had drawn the same conclusions.

“She doesn’t need anyone to find her body,” Sully said. “And she doesn’t need any more justice. Gerhardt’s paid for his crimes, and she’s just found the only thing she ever really needed. You’re the reason she was stuck here, Forbes, and you’re the reason she can leave.”

“Leave?” Forbes turned to the space Sully had been watching, his eyes fixing on the spot where Eloise stood. “I only just found her again.”

“Her staying here, it isn’t right,” Sully said. “And I don’t think people we love ever really leave us. They just go somewhere we can’t see.”

“Even you?”

“Even me.”

“So how do you know?”

Sully shrugged. “I don’t. I guess sometimes, you just have to have faith.”

Forbes smirked. “I never used to know what that meant. I’ve had to develop it in spades since I got to know you, Gray.”

Sully smiled at Forbes before turning it on Eloise. She drifted up to him, settling a hand alongside his face. It was a thank you, no need for words he couldn’t hear.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

She deepened the touch, sending a thought into his brain. This time, unlike the others, the thought was calm, and it held there: a set of wind chimes, jangling gently in a breeze.

“What is it?” Dez asked once Eloise had broken the connection.

“I think she’s telling me she’ll let Forbes know she’s around by playing with wind chimes.” Having received a confirmatory nod from Eloise, Sully turned to Forbes. “You have some?”

“No,” Forbes said. “But damn sure I’m gonna go out and buy some now.”

Sully watched as Eloise approached Forbes. She rested a hand over his heart, and a peace stole over her face as if she’d felt the thrum of his life beneath shirt, flesh and bone.

Then, with one more gaze up into the face of her son, she was gone.

29

Sully peered through the mesh eye holes of his rubber mask, a poor approximation of a ghost if ever he’d seen one.

Dez had bought the stupid costume for him, cackling maniacally as he’d stuck the mask over his little brother’s head. Dez had seen something hilarious in the idea of a trick-or-treating Sully dressed as a ghost.

All Sully saw was his first chance at an evening where he was something other than the ghost he’d been forced to become.

Kayleigh tugged on his hand, jack-o-lantern shaped candy bucket already half full as it bounced along next to her, threatening to spill its contents onto the sidewalk.

“Come on!” she said. “You’re going to love this next house. They always decorate it really awesome. One year, they even did a haunted house in the garage!”

This year, it turned out, they’d done one, too, and Sully held onto Kayleigh and pretended to be scared as she squealed at the animatronic creatures, ghosts and ghouls the family had set up. It took a lot more than that to spook him. A hell of a lot more.

As it stood, this was the best night he’d had in years.

Given the current state of his life, he knew it couldn’t last.

* * *

Forbes was waiting for him at Dez and Eva’s when Sully returned with Kayleigh an hour later.

The police detective, seated in one of the living room chairs, wasn’t bothering to hide a smirk as he regarded Dez’s scarecrow costume. If Dez was staying home with Eva to hand out candy instead of coming trick-or-treating, he had to dress up; Kayleigh had insisted, and Sully had done absolutely nothing to back his brother’s arguments.

“What’s he supposed to be?” Kayleigh asked as she regarded Forbes.

“We’re trying to figure that out,” Dez grumbled.

Kayleigh’s face lit up at the perceived game. “Door-to-door salesman?”

Forbes pulled out his ID wallet and flipped it open to reveal his badge. Kayleigh glanced at it before peering up at her father. “He doesn’t look like a policeman.”

Dez chuckled as Forbes scowled. “Hey, she said it.”

Forbes eyed Dez and Sully. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

Dez knelt in front of Kayleigh. “Honey, why don’t you go put on a movie downstairs? We need to talk to this guy about boring stuff for a bit. We’ll come down and join you, after. Don’t eat any of your candy until Mom or I check it, okay?”

“How long will you be?”

“Not long. Go pick something out and start watching.”

Kayleigh rolled her eyes and headed for the basement stairs. Eva, Mara and Emily—newly released from hospital and a guest in the Braddock house—joined the men in the upstairs sitting room, Mara casting Forbes a dark look as she sat. Sully could guess where her mind had travelled; while he’d forgiven Forbes for his actions two years ago, mothers were not so quick to forget.

“Sergeant,” she said.

“Ma’am.” Forbes peered up at Dez. “Does everyone—”

“They all know what’s going on, yeah. What’s up?”

Forbes leaned forward. “We had the Lockwood drug tested, and we ran it against the one we seized a couple of years ago from Sullivan’s apartment. The two match up, same substance. Only difference is the one Sullivan had back then was in pill form, and it was less concentrated. The Lockwood stuff is administered intravenously and is significantly more potent. Two years later, the chemists at the lab we use are still stumped. All they can tell us is that the drug is a psychotropic of some type. I’m not heading up the investigation anymore, for obvious reasons, so I had no say in it when the new lead took the drug to LOBRA for additional testing. I understand he spoke to Lowell directly. Lowell’s denied any knowledge of the drug, other than to promise to check it out for us.”

“If he knows the drug’s in the hands of police, he’ll tear down any evidence he has of its production,” Mara said.

“If I were to guess, I’d say he probably started the process as soon as Gerhardt was located in the old wing.”

“Any change with Gerhardt?” Eva asked.

“Still in the same state. He’s not really in a coma, but he’s not able to respond to much outside stimulus either. They’ve run a couple more MRIs, and still the same thing: plenty of activity in the brain and corresponding spikes in his heart rate and blood pressure. But whatever’s going on in his head is staying there.” Forbes’s lips formed a tight line. “Wish I was a big enough man to say I feel sorry for him.”

Mara glanced around the room at each of its occupants before returning her attention to Forbes. “Lowell will conceal all evidence of his involvement in the Lockwood experiments; we know that. But I think we can safely assume this will nonetheless put him on edge. He’ll know he’s being watched. Our biggest problem isn’t just finding something to pin on him; it’s keeping ourselves and each other safe while doing it.”

“From my end, I’ll do what I can to protect you.” Forbes ended the statement with a smile. “I know we got off on the wrong foot, ma’am, but I’ve come to a few conclusions since then. In short, I believe Sullivan, and I’ll do my best to get you some justice for Deputy Chief Braddock and Aiden.”

Surprise gave way to a softening of Mara’s features, the corners of her mouth turning up as she regarded the detective. “Thank you, Sergeant. That means a lot to me. To all of us.”

Forbes nodded and stood. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Please keep me posted on anything you hear or see, anything you think might aid me in the investigation.”

Mara stood, too, then crossed the room and shook Forbes’s hand. “You be careful. Your investigation isn’t official. Until you have something substantial enough to take to your commanding officer, you’re more or less on your own. That puts you at great risk if Lowell learns about your activities. If you need help with anything in the meantime, call us.”

“I will, ma’am, thank you.”

Sully and Dez showed Forbes out while Mara, Eva and Emily went to join Kayleigh. Forbes had his hand on the door handle when he turned back toward the brothers.

“There’s something else,” he said. “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of everyone.”

Sully expected something about Forbes’s feelings about his birth family. What he got was much more unsettling.

“Greta left the treatment centre,” Forbes said. “Didn’t even bother to check herself out, just went out the window last night. I’ve been looking, but I can’t find her. No one knows what happened. She seemed to be on the straight and narrow, and was kicking the drugs. Last time I saw her, she told me the cravings had dropped right off. She was so much different from the woman you knew. She was like the woman I married.” Forbes took a deep breath and let it out in a huff. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Maybe Lachlan can help find her,” Dez said. “He’s good at that.”

Forbes’s gaze had settled on the wall, but now it snapped to Dez’s face. “That’s not why I told you. I don’t want a search for her to become a big thing. She has too many secrets—bad secrets—and investigations always entail overturning a person’s life. If she’s found out, I’ll lose her forever. I’m telling you because she’s targeted Sullivan in the past, and there’s every chance she might try again.”

“But she did it because of the influence of her family,” Sully said. “They’re not in the picture anymore, so what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know,” Forbes said. “And that’s the problem. I have no idea why she took off, so I can’t say what her plans are. One thing’s for sure: If she’s unstable enough to walk away from treatment like this, anything’s possible. Just watch your back, okay? Just until I can find her.”

“You know, it’s more likely something in treatment triggered her, and she went off somewhere to get a fix,” Dez said. “She’ll turn up.”

“Probably,” Forbes said. “But I can’t take a chance of it being something else.” One side of his mouth quirked up. “I may be new to this whole big brother thing, but I’m pretty sure looking out for him is one of my jobs now.”

Thankfully, Dez waited until Forbes was out of earshot, back in his car and driving down the block, before responding. “Big brother. The guy doesn’t know the first thing about it.”

“He’s trying, Dez. That’s something, right?”

Dez shrugged. “Guess it beats him looking for ways to arrest you. Let’s just keep in mind, where big brothers go, you’ve already got the best.”

Sully met Dez’s goofy grin with one of his own. “Yeah, no arguing that.”

Dez patted Sully on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go see what Kayleigh’s picked out. If I have to suffer through Princess Bride again, so do you.”

“I’ll be right there. Just need the bathroom first.”

He didn’t really have to go, but he needed a moment to himself. He’d spent the past few days in this house—save a quick surreptitious trip to Lockwood with Dez to rescue the trio of trapped ghosts—and time to himself was hard to come by.

And he needed it. With everything that had been going on—the David investigation, facing his past at Lockwood, dealing with the fact he had a new blood relation—Sully had put the manner of his own creation onto the back burner. None of it, none of the good things he’d done or the people he’d helped, erased how he came into being. He could change people’s lives for the better, but he would be forever helpless to change the one thing he so desperately wished he could.

So here he was, staring at the bathroom sink faucet as he tried to get up the nerve to look in the mirror.

He hadn’t studied his own reflection since discovering the truth about his background, and he wasn’t keen to now. But he’d have to face it sometime, would have to accept this part of himself if he was going to find a way to exist within his own skin.

He hadn’t seen his birth mother’s ghost since back at the Dules’ old house in The Forks, and he hadn’t expected to either. She’d told him she would stay close to her mother and sister and would return to him if they were closing in again. Her image was in his mind as he forced his head up, hoping to find parts of her in his reflection. The more he resembled Lucky, the fewer traces of Roman Gerhardt he’d find.

The initial glimpse of his own face had him averting his eyes. He returned to studying the sink, his hands clenched around the sides of the bowl.

A small, white hand reaching for his made him jump and turn.

She was there. Lucky. The petite, pale, blood-covered teenage girl who’d given him life and then saved it more than once. Large, kohl-rimmed blue-gray eyes stared up into his before going to the mirror. He followed her gaze, saw the two of them side by side in the mirror, mother and son, him eight years older in physical age and six or seven inches taller. She moved a little closer, sealing the remaining distance between them, her energy joining his at the edges. The bite of cold against his left arm and hip was uncomfortable, but he didn’t move away. The rest of him, the parts inside himself that really mattered, were enveloped in enough warmth to render the chill meaningless.

He found it there, just as he needed to. His height and body structure, there was no getting away from the fact those were Gerhardt. But from Lucky had come his eye colour and shape, the fine bone structure in his face, even the soft half-smile she was giving him now. Her hair was dyed purple, but he knew from photos in Lachlan’s possession that it was naturally a shade very similar to his own. As his gaze moved from his own face to hers and back again, a small shred of hope took root inside him.

“I’m not like him, am I?” he asked.

She shook her head.

He sought out and held her eyes in the mirror. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. There are no words for how wrong it was, how wrong I am for existing the way I do. I’m only here because something awful happened to you, and that’s not right.”

He watched the mirror as she turned to face him. It was obvious she was demanding he meet her, so he turned to gaze directly down into her eyes. A chill against his hand told him she’d touched him, and then he was flooded with a memory.

Hers, not his. The image of a crying, blood-covered newborn baby held tight in her arms. Her first image of him. And it wasn’t revulsion she’d felt, nor horror or pain. It was the most intense joy, her vision clouding through tears so she’d had to blink them away. And love. The kind of love Sully had not yet had the pleasure to feel for another human being. He loved his family, and he loved them intensely. But this, this bond between a young parent and her child, was beyond anything Sully could describe.

She didn’t hate him or regret the fact he’d come into existence.

He completed her. He gave her meaning. And he was the first real joy or love she’d ever known.

Her hand came up to touch at his face.

And then the smile slipped from hers.

Another image, this one not of her or of him, but of Greta. She was peering from a window, a street below shadowed by the night. From one of the shadows emerged a blonde woman pushing a wheelchair. In the chair sat a thin woman with a pointed face, which lifted until a set of cold eyes met with Greta’s. A smile, as icy as the rest of her expression, formed, and she lifted an arm, index finger extending and retracting in a “come here” gesture.

For a long moment, Greta didn’t move. She stood frozen to the spot as she regarded the two women. While the younger one appeared slightly anxious, the woman in the wheelchair showed every sign of confidence, as if nothing stood between her and the power she still held over the young woman inside the treatment centre.

The vision ended, leaving Sully chilled and disquieted.

Because there was no doubt in his mind what Lucky was trying to tell him.

“The Dules,” he said. “They’re back.”

THE STORY ENDS IN SPIRIT CALLER. CLICK HERE TO CHECK IT OUT.

Spirit Caller

1

Sullivan Gray curled inside his sleeping bag, eyes fixed on the dwindling flames as he listened to the early morning scratching and banging within Ravenwood’s walls.

He knew he’d have to get up to prod the fire back to life, but the thought of crawling out of his still-warm nest into the biting cold was unpleasant.

He’d woken a couple of times in the night to rekindle the blaze in the small lounge’s fireplace. Each time, he’d had the sensation of being watched. It wasn’t unusual, not in a house sheltering at minimum six ghosts. But with no way of telling whether or not the watchful eyes belonged to a living—and potentially dangerous—intruder, Sully was edgy.

His skin crawled as he pushed himself off the fainting couch he used as a bed. Whatever or whoever was watching him was still there, and a shiver beyond the cold coursed through him. Long ago, Sully had learned how to cope with seeing ghosts, but he’d also discovered he only saw ones who had been the victim of homicide. That left a whole dimension of spirits he couldn’t see or interact with. Most of the time, there was something comforting in being able to see who lingered in the shadows, staring.

But not always.

As Sully poked at the fire, sleeping bag clutched around himself to seal in the remaining warmth, he chanced to look up at the window.

A man stared back at him.

The one glance glance revealed a sneer beneath a heavy beard. But the eyes were more disturbing. Sully had seen many people on drugs, and this man’s eyes possessed the wild look of someone in the throes of a serious binge. Sully had seen this particular expression before—on the faces of the men who’d attacked him and his brother Dez a couple of months ago in Dr. Roman Gerhardt’s former house.

They’d barely escaped with their lives.

Sully leapt up, his sleeping bag slumping to the floor around him. He stepped free of it as the man dashed from the window.

Sully grabbed his phone and dropped both it and its portable charger into his coat pocket. As he ran from the room, a wrought iron fireplace poker in hand, Noisy Ned—the abandoned mansion’s resident poltergeist—went into hurricane mode.

Usually Ned made quick work of convincing people this wasn’t a house they wanted to spend more than a few seconds in.

Not today. Coming from inside, a man’s wild, high-pitched cackling suggested someone was enjoying playing dodge ball with Ned’s collection of heavy household goods. More sounds, more voices followed.

The man wasn’t alone.

Sully was decent in a fight, but people on certain types of drugs didn’t always experience pain the same way. He could deliver multiple blows with fists or a heavy object before his opponent decided it hurt. The easiest solution lay in the basement, which held a secret passage he’d discovered shortly after first coming here.

He made it to the basement door, relying on moonlight and memory to show him the way. After slipping through and closing the door behind himself, he withdrew his cellphone and enabled the flashlight function.

He took the stairs more slowly than he would have liked, keeping the sound of his boots on the stone steps to a minimum. Not that it would have mattered much, the way this latest group of intruders was rampaging through the main floor.

Once downstairs, he picked up the pace, jogging through the various rooms and hallways until he reached the shelving unit forming the hidden entrance to the passage. It scraped across the floor as he pulled it open, but the house was sturdy, making it unlikely anyone had heard from an upper floor. After stepping to the other side, Sully dragged the shelving unit back into place.

Closed at the back, the unit acted as a solid door, allowing Sully to leave the flashlight on without fear of being seen. He used it now, enabling him to find his duffel bag in the dark. He’d taken to keeping his belongings down here; during the past couple of weeks, he’d seen more and more people this side of The Forks, and he expected they were on the lookout for different places to shelter or loot with the onset of another freezing winter. With Ned’s recent level of increased activity, he figured people had been coming closer, glancing through windows, working up the nerve to enter. This morning proved it.

His phone vibrated in his hand, and Dez’s name popped up on the display.

Dez wouldn’t deal well with this.

Sully answered, keeping his voice low. “Hey.”

“Hey, how’s it going? Didn’t wake you up, did I?”

“No. I was awake.”

“Why are you talking like that?”

“Like what?”

A pause. One unlikely to end well.

“Someone’s in the house,” Dez said. A conclusion rather than a guess.

Sully considered lying but couldn’t think up another plausible excuse for needing to speak in a near-whisper. “Yeah, a few people. Don’t worry. I’m in the tunnel.”

“Sully—”

“I’m fine. What’s up?”

Dez uttered a humourless chuckle. “You just finished telling me you’re hiding from intruders, and you’re asking what’s up with me? Seriously?”

“Listen, I’ve been in this situation before. I know how to handle it. No one’s ever found the tunnel, okay? I’ll wait it out here until they go. Ned will convince them to leave eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“I spent two days in here once. I can do it again if I have to.”

“One problem, man. It’s the middle of winter, and it’s freezing out. You’ve got no way to keep yourself warm in there, do you?”

Dez had a point. “I’ll be fine. Seriously, D, can we talk about whatever it was you were calling about? I could use the distraction.”

“I want you back on mainland, Sull. I’ve been telling you that for close to two months. It’s almost Christmas, and we all want you here. I get you left to keep us out of harm’s way, but I still say we’re safer as a unit than separated. Lowell hasn’t made a move since everything blew up at Lockwood. I don’t see the situation changing now.”

“I didn’t leave because of him.”

“Okay, so the Dules then. Same difference. We can handle your crazy grandmother and aunt.”

“Lorinda and Rhona aren’t the type to go toe-to-toe in a fight. I’m more worried about the possibility they’ll figure it out if I’m with you guys and burn your house down with all of us inside. And I can’t go back to the apartment because that’s where they tracked me from last time.”

“But Greta and Brennan saw you in The Forks last time, right? Isn’t that how they started tracking you in the first place? Damn it, Sull. I wish you’d taken Pax with you. He and Kayleigh are damn near attached at the hip, but I’d rather you had a solid set of canine teeth on your side right now.”

A clattering from the other side of the shelving unit had Sully pausing in the conversation. He picked up his bag and moved farther into the tunnel, using the dim light from his phone screen to guide him through the pitch black.

A voice sounded from the device. “Sully? What’s going on?”

He stopped, lifting the phone back to his ear. “Just moving a little farther out,” he said.

“Why?”

“They’re in the basement.”

“That’s it,” Dez said. “I’m on my way.”

“No, you’re not. Stay where you are. There’s nothing to worry about. So why were you calling?”

“Damn it, Sully. Not now. Stay on the line with me until they’re gone. How’s your battery?”

“Fine. I charged it all night.”

“And your portable chargers are okay? I haven’t seen you in nearly a month.”

True. The river had been freezing up, staying in that in-between state for a while: ice too thick to get a boat through and too thin to safely cross on foot. Sully had checked again yesterday and was relieved to see the recent cold snap had rendered it safe enough to cross.

Loud thudding near the shelf had him taking a few more steps into the tunnel. “One charger still has some juice left. Good idea keeping a few on hand. The river ice hasn’t been thick enough to get across.”

“It should be okay now. It’s been cold. Like brutal cold. Bloody hell, are we seriously having a conversation about the weather? What’s happening there?”

More thudding. Really close this time. Almost as if someone were banging right against the shelf. “I should probably hang up for a minute.”

“Why?”

“They’re close. I’ll call back.”

“No. You stay on the line. I mean it. Just don’t talk.”

Sully heard the sound of a car door from his handset, then a vehicle starting. “I told you not to come,” he whispered.

“Too fucking bad.”

“Dez—”

“Shut it, Sull.”

So much for waiting this out in the tunnel. If Dez turned up, the last place Sully wanted to be was hunkering underground while his brother battled alone with a bunch of tweaking and potentially violent drug addicts. He’d have to make for the exit and hope he could get across the river unnoticed.

The sound of the shelving unit grating against the floor upped the ante significantly.

“Shit,” Sully hissed.

“What?”

“They found the tunnel.”

“Jesus, get out of there!”

Sully didn’t need to be told twice. He didn’t bother being quiet as he took off down the passage, no point as he needed to leave the flashlight on to keep upright on the uneven floor; even if they couldn’t hear him, they’d see him. His only chance at escape was to reach the exit near the river and hope to hell he was right about the solid state of the ice—and that he could outrun the intruders once he got there.

The echo of rapid footfalls behind him told him he’d become a target, if he hadn’t been already.

Dez’s voice came from the handset, the repeated call of his name a demand for answers Sully didn’t have time to provide. The exit was ahead, and Sully poured on the speed, making it to the door and turning a shoulder to hammer his way through.

As he burst into the cold outside air, something hard slammed against his head and threw him off his feet. He collided with the ground, protected from the worst of the fall by snow, thick grass and shrubs.

Pain seared across the back of his skull as his head gradually cleared of shock. He got his hands beneath him and prepared to push himself into a sprint when a second blow landed.

Everything went black.

2

His head throbbed with the return of consciousness.

Sully cracked open one eye, enough to reveal his surroundings. He recognized one of the main-floor sitting rooms at Ravenwood—water-damaged, wood-panelled walls encasing what had once been a comfortable, grand space for entertaining.

Nothing was comfortable about Sully’s current situation, nor anything entertaining about the mansion’s current guests.

Four men: three solidly built, the fourth a wiry sort of lean. One—the guy Sully had seen at the window—had the look of a resident of The Forks, a ratty wool hat stuffed over a shock of wild, dark hair and a coat he’d likely taken off a dead body, judging by the tears and long-dried blood stains on the material. The others appeared clean enough to suggest they’d arrived on the island as recently as last night or this morning, faces either clean-shaven or neatly trimmed, hair still maintaining some semblance of a style, clothing free of stains and smell.

All of that, Sully had gauged from his place on the floor, his slight attempt at movement revealing he was bound hand and foot, wrists secured behind his back.

“He’s awake,” one of the large men said. “Should we knock him out again?”

“What for?” said another. “He’s not going anywhere.”

“She said he’s dangerous.”

The smaller man snorted. “Does he look dangerous to you? Anyway, they said they want him alive. If he’s got a concussion, another blow to the head could be problematic.”

The guy from the window jumped a couple of feet to the side as a serving tray flew through the air and caught him in the shoulder. His head swivelled, wide eyes searching pointlessly for the source of the hurled object.

“Don’t bother,” Sully said. “You won’t find him.”

Wild eyes fixed on Sully’s, a nervous laugh fading before he asked the question. “Who?”

“I don’t know his name. He’s a ghost.”

A manic laugh, the one Sully had heard earlier, burst from the man’s throat. It disappeared just as quickly as it had erupted, out-of-place humour supplanted by a look of paranoia that strongly indicated the man was on meth or something similar. His head turned side to side as he paced the room, a caged animal in an experimental lab.

“Fuck this. Fuck this.”

One of the others grabbed at his arm but he shook him off. “Calm down.”

“Fuck you!”

The last pronouncement shouted, the man turned and fled the room. The sound of the front door opening suggested the man had escaped to the relative safety of the front garden.

“Fucking asshole,” one of the remaining large men said. “Told him to come straight.”

“What the hell is this?” Sully asked.

The smaller man met his eye a moment before pulling out a cellphone. “Shut up.”

“Who are you?”

“I said, shut up!” The man scrolled through something on his screen, presumably his phone’s contacts given he ended by tapping on something and lifting the phone to his ear. Sully decided against trespassing into the resulting silence, needing to know who it was the man was trying to reach.

A few seconds passed and the man had started to pull the phone away from his ear with a disgusted grimace when a sound from the handset had him lifting it back up.

“Where the hell have you been?” the man snapped into the handset. “I’ve been trying to reach you. We’ve got him. What are we supposed to do with him?” He paused, listening. “Yeah, okay.”

The man pulled the phone away as he approached, then aimed it toward Sully’s face. Realizing the man intended to take a photo, Sully turned his face away, using his long hair as a shield. One of the large men knelt beside him, grabbed his head and twisted painfully, forcing his face up. A click from the camera sounded, and the smaller man stood and tapped a few times on the screen before returning the device to his ear.

“Just sent it…. So what do you…? Yeah, he’s tied up. Not going anywhere…. Okay, but it’s a big place. It won’t burn easy.”

A vase narrowly missed the man’s head. “Son of a bitch,” he complained, before returning to his conversation. “Yeah, we’ve got it. I’ll call when it’s done.”

He disconnected and met the eyes of his two remaining companions. “We’re supposed to burn the place down with him inside. They want proof after, though, so we have to stick around.” He ducked as another object—it moved too fast for Sully to make out what it was—flew at his head. “Fucking ghosts.”

“I don’t know, man,” one of the other two said. “It won’t be easy. The place is made of stone. Gonna to be a bitch, if it’ll burn at all.”

“There’s enough wood and other material in here to catch. Let’s just get started, see what happens.”

Sully had been anxious before. Now he had reason to panic. He no longer needed an answer to what the men wanted. They’d been sent here by Lorinda and Rhona Dule to kill him; the fact their orders were to burn him alive was evidence enough.

Sully pulled hard at the ties, but the effort was futile. And the smaller man was right. Even if the stone was fire-retardant, plenty enough wood was inside the mansion to reduce it to a burned-out shell once a fire caught. The other problem was finding a way out. Once they set the blaze, they’d head outside, leaving Sully alone in here. He could probably find something to use to cut himself free, but it might take a while—quite possibly longer than he had time for. And he had little doubt the men would position themselves on various sides of the building to ensure he couldn’t escape. Even with Dez coming at full speed, he wouldn’t arrive in time.

Sully needed to act. Now.

He’d last felt the draw of the darkest part of his soul back in October, when he’d faced down Dr. Roman Gerhardt at Lockwood Psychiatric Hospital. With no other name for the past life—one that remained, for some reason, conscious and aware inside him—Sully simply dubbed it the hangman; he was dark, spiteful and vengeful—and very, very strong.

Strong enough to take these guys down quickly if Sully could free himself. Given the use of zip ties and how tight they were, that could be a problem.

Sully felt the hangman fighting forward as the men busied themselves around the room. One was working at setting a curtain alight, but so far couldn’t persuade his lighter to cooperate.

In the past, Sully had drawn in the spirits he’d seen around him, using their energy to multiply his own. While the house contained several ghosts, none were homicide victims, meaning he could see none of them.

But maybe he didn’t have to see them. He closed his eyes, reaching out, struggling to see past his panic and grasp the energies around him. Only one seemed immediately obvious, and Sully suspected it would provide all the strength he needed if he could harness it: Noisy Ned, after all, contained the energy of a dozen ghosts combined.

Poltergeists weren’t like regular spirits, but they were energy all the same. Sully felt the kinetic, destructive force as he dragged it in. The energy tore through him, bouncing around as if seeking escape. He almost couldn’t corral it.

But the hangman could.

Sully surrendered, giving the executioner the control he needed.

A growl from deep inside sounded from his throat as the hangman wrestled Ned into submission, sucked in the poltergeist’s power and energy. No longer fighting for escape, it thrummed through Sully with the force of a hurricane about to reach land.

He opened his eyes. One of the curtains had caught fire. The men were working on two more.

Sully’s lips, in the control of the executioner, formed into a smug sneer.

“You should have listened to the old crone,” he said, voice emerging in a strong Cockney accent as two of the men turned to face him. “I am dangerous.”

The power and fury of the poltergeist burst from Sully, propelling his body backward a foot or two over the floor with the momentum. Combined as it was with the energy of his own ancient and dark soul, Ned’s power seemed to double as it hammered into the first of the men. The man’s body flew across the room, limbs flailing until he struck the wall with a sickening thud. As he slumped, unmoving, to the floor, Sully turned his attention to his next assailant. The first curtain was completely aflame, and the second large man’s body became a helpful tool as Ned’s energy lifted and tossed him against the window. He crashed through the remaining panes of glass, his body tearing the fiery curtain from its rod and taking it with him outside the mansion’s walls.

Just the smallest man remained, the one who had acted as leader. Regarding him, Sully’s lips curled.

“Still want to dance?” the hangman asked through the grin.

“What the hell are you?”

The hangman’s grin widened. “I’m your biggest mistake.”

The man hadn’t come empty-handed, evidenced by the handgun he whipped from his back waistband. He didn’t get the chance to take aim.

Ned’s energy slammed into him, shoved him hard against the wall and pinned him there. The man grunted, struggling uselessly in a way Ned no longer was. The ghost was now a willing passenger, an accomplice, settled in as if he’d found himself a new home. He’d go anywhere Sully—or, more accurately, the hangman—chose to lead.

At the moment, the hangman was leading Ned toward murder.

Sully watched as the smaller man’s badly shaking gun hand lifted, taking the weapon higher and higher, inch by trembling inch, until its barrel dug into the soft nook between chin and throat.

“Stop!” the man yelled. “Don’t! Please!”

“You should have left well enough alone,” the hangman said.

The room’s only other occupant, the large man slumped against the wall, finally stirred, hand coming up to rub at his head. His eyes opened and fixed, staring, at his accomplice pinned to the wall.

“Help me!” the smaller man yelled. “Stop him!”

The large man’s gaze flitted to Sully, fixed onto his eyes just long enough. Whatever he saw there had him up and out, diving through the smashed window to join the others already outside.

“Get back here!” the smaller man screamed. “Carey! Carey, you bastard! Help!”

But Carey wasn’t coming back. Nor, Sully expected, were the other two.

The man’s trembling finger began to squeeze against the trigger. He let out a wail.

Desperation of his own filled Sully. Whatever else he was, whatever twisted, dark thing, he was no murderer.

He felt the hangman’s fury as he was pulled back, Sully overtaking him and regaining control. He towed Ned back, too, drawing in his energy and forcing it still. The power was almost too much, leaving Sully’s body shaking as he fought to contain it.

“Get out of here!” he yelled at the man, in his own voice rather than the hangman’s. “Get out! Now!”

Released from the wall, the man’s gun hand rose. One growl from Sully changed his intentions. Firearm still in hand, he turned and fled, footsteps pounding against the floor until he disappeared out the front door. Voices raised in panic sounded from outside, drifting into the distance as their makers fled the grounds.

Struggling to control his racing heart, Sully released Ned. The loss of the spirit’s intense energy left him slumped and exhausted on the floor, with the feeling of having just fought twelve rounds. Unlike other spirits Sully had used like this, Ned didn’t flee. He had a sense of the ghost hovering above him, as if wanting back in.

It was tempting. Too tempting, given how drained he felt. But the poltergeist wasn’t just fuel for Sully; it fuelled the hangman too. It was the last thing Sully wanted with Dez on the way. He’d managed to pull it back a few moments ago; exhausted as he felt, what if he couldn’t do it again?

He lay there, minutes ticking past. The house was silent, as if his actions had sent every other entity scurrying for shelter. But Ned remained ever-present, even when the sound of movement, of a person attempting to move stealthily through the house, cut through the stillness.

Sully managed one word. “Dez?”

“Sully?”

Sully didn’t call out again, simply waited until Dez found him.

Moments later, rapidly approaching footsteps sounded behind him. “Shit, Sully, are you okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

He turned his head to see Dez kneeling at his back. “Your head’s bleeding.”

“I’m okay.”

“They’re gone?”

“Yeah. They ran off.”

“I’m sure there’s a story there somewhere.” Dez patted Sully down until he found his pocketknife in one of his coat pockets. His fingers grasped Sully’s uppermost arm, still locked behind his back. “Hold still.”

Sully felt his wrists, then his ankles cut loose of the ties. He allowed Dez to help him to sitting, but he stayed where he was for the moment, rubbing the sensation back into his partially numb extremities.

Dez left his side to move around the room. “Bloody hell, it looks like a hurricane went through here.”

“It kind of did.”

Dez approached one of the windows, the one Ned had propelled a man through. There, he glanced out and stilled.

The way he stopped cold, his posture rigid with one hand grasping the window’s edge, had Sully struggling to his feet. He’d almost gained Dez’s side when his brother spun on him. His hands gripped his shoulders, holding him back.

“No, Sull. Stay back.”

“Why? What is it?”

“Trust me. What happened here, exactly?”

Sully provided a quick explanation, one that resulted in the anticipated widening of Dez’s eyes.

“So these guys,” Dez said. “It wasn’t exactly you throwing them around, then.”

“Not exactly. But I wasn’t stopping it either. Not until the end, anyway. I didn’t want to play a role in killing someone.”

Dez lost a shade of colour. “Okay. Come on. Let’s go. The ice on the river is solid. I found your bag and your phone by the riverbank. We can go pick them up and—”

Sully cut in, dread seizing him as he recognized Dez’s attempt at distraction. “What is it?”

“What’s what? Come on.”

Dez took his arm and started to tug him farther into the house, but Sully pulled away. Before Dez had a chance to stop him, he took two quick steps toward the window.

What he saw turned his blood cold.

In the snow and frozen weeds lay the man he’d allowed to be thrown through the window—bits of glass and wood scattered around him. In his neck, buried deep and surrounded by more blood than Sully had ever seen at one time, was a large shard of glass.

The man’s eyes stared, fixed and lifeless, at the skies above.

Sully’s head spun, blood rushing for his toes. “Oh, God.”

He felt Dez’s hands on him again, turning and tugging him away from the gory sight, propelling him forward through the house. “Come on.”

“Dez—”

“You didn’t do this, okay? Let’s go.”

“But I—”

“No, Sull! You didn’t do it!” Dez shouted, as if increased volume provided a better chance at persuasion.

“I didn’t stop it either.”

Dez paused just beyond the threshold of the next room, taking advantage of the nearest wall by slamming Sully into it and holding him there by the front of his coat.

“You listen to me, goddammit! You didn’t do anything wrong. Those bastards were going to kill you! If you played any sort of a role in what happened to that guy, it’s only because you were defending yourself, you hear me?”

Sully heard him. With Dez yelling like that, he couldn’t help but hear him.

But Sully heard something else, too, something left unspoken between the pronouncements of absolution.

Dez wasn’t just trying to convince Sully.

He was trying to convince himself.

3

Dez tossed the last of Sully’s belongings into the hatch of his SUV and slammed it shut.

They’d cleared Ravenwood of his things—no way could Sully go back there now. The Dules, it seemed, knew where he was, and once they learned what had just happened, they’d be even more determined to end him.

Ravenwood wasn’t safe for him anymore, nor could Dez put his brother back in the apartment.

Sully would argue, but as far as Dez was concerned, his family—his entire family—was staying together until they could sort this out once and for all.

Sully, hunched in the passenger seat, was a silent presence behind his hood and hair as Dez got in and started the vehicle. Before putting it into drive, Dez paused long enough to tug Sully’s hood down and yank his face toward him. Sully’s eyes carried the sheen of unshed tears.

“Don’t,” Dez said. “Just don’t. You did the only thing you could.”

“I killed someone.”

“It wasn’t you.”

“Stop saying that! It was me! I wasn’t controlling it, exactly, but I could have. I could have taken over.”

“But you didn’t, because what the hangman and Ned were doing was saving your life. I’ll tell you one thing, little brother: If I’d gotten there earlier, it would have been me putting that asshole through the window. You did nothing wrong, even if you did play any sort of a role in what happened. Killing in self-defence is justifiable by law and by moral code. You or them, man. That’s what it came down to. Anyway, killing him wasn’t intentional. It was a freak accident.”

“He went through glass. Chances of something like that happening were pretty good.”

“A lot of the window panes were broken out to start with. Him hitting glass at all, and in a way to end his life, was an act of God as far as I’m concerned.” Dez eyed Sully, searching for signs he’d made a dent. He couldn’t tell, but he was relieved to see no more indication of tears. “You’re a good person, Sull. And you can bet your ass those bastards weren’t going to lose any sleep over killing you. They don’t deserve your regret. You did what you had to do because they agreed to take on a hit job for the Dules. Those men started this, and they left you no choice but to defend yourself. What happened after was all on them.”

Sully heaved a heavy sigh full of exhaustion and grief. “I hear what you’re saying, okay? And I appreciate it, but I still feel like shit.”

“You feel like shit because you’re exactly the opposite of what the Dules are trying to make you out to be.”

Sully shook his head. “They’re making me out to be exactly what I am: a man who carries something dark and murderous inside. What happened today only proves their beliefs about me, about this Dule curse. It gives them even more reason to want me dead.”

Dez put the SUV into drive and turned around, headed toward the freeway that would take them east, toward his home in the Gladstone neighbourhood. “All the more reason for us to stick together from here on out.”

“No.”

“Not up for debate, Sull. Not after today.”

“Exactly. It isn’t up for debate. I said no. I’m not putting anyone else at risk. They know I’m still alive, Dez, and they won’t stop until I’m dead. I can’t take a chance someone I love will end up caught in the crossfire.”

“Tough,” Dez snapped. “That’s what family’s about, man. I’m done arguing with you, and I’m done ducking enemies. We’re going somewhere safe—all of us—and we’re going to figure out a way to deal with the Dules and with Lowell for good. And we’re going to do it in time for us to have a nice family Christmas.”

The statement drew a laugh from Sully.

“Seriously, D? You think there’s any chance of us getting this sorted by Christmas?”

“We’re going to give it a solid try. Right now, we’re going to pick up the girls and Pax and head out to the acreage. Once we get there, we’ll put together a plan.”

“Not the acreage,” Sully said. “It’s too remote. If you and I go somewhere, and if Eva’s at work, that leaves Mom and Kayleigh alone. Even with Pax there, they wouldn’t be safe. The guys who came at me today, at least one of them had a gun. If someone shot Pax, Mom and Kayleigh would be—”

Dez cut in, not needing or wanting Sully to finish the thought. “Okay, I get it. No acreage. But we need somewhere to go, somewhere safe while we start digging into this. We’re going to piss off some powerful people once we really start going after Lowell.”

“What about Paul?”

Dez glanced at Sully. “Paul Dunsmore?”

“You told me he’s going to help by feeding us info on the Circle. Maybe he could find us somewhere to stay. He’s in the Circle. He knows who’s in it, so he’d know where in the city we could go to avoid being seen by any of them.”

Dez nodded. “Okay, I like it. Let’s get back to my place and we can start making calls. We’ll need Lachlan’s help too. Probably even Raynor’s once we start closing in on Lowell. I’d like to get them on board ASAP.”

When a reply didn’t come as quickly as he’d expected, Dez peered back at Sully. “You with me?”

Sully’s weighty breath belied the short nod he gave. “I don’t know, man. The second we start getting close, Lowell will lash out. He always does. People are dead because of it.” He met Dez’s eye. “I couldn’t deal with it if he did something to any of you.”

Dez offered what he could of a confident smile. “So all we need to do is deal with him before he gets the chance.”

* * *

Easier said than done, Dez realized. Even so, they at least had a way to start.

Kayleigh was at school, with just a few days to go before the Christmas break, and Eva’s shift was on days off—the perfect situation to enable the family, plus their handful of visitors, to start formulating a plan of action.

Dez’s boss, Lachlan Fields, and Raynor, each chomping at the bit for what would be a massive feather in their respective caps, quickly agreed to come over, Forbes even consenting to pick up Lachlan on the way. Dez could only imagine the amount of grumbling and infighting the drive would entail, given the mutual dislike between the pair.

Dez had made one more call, asking Paul Dunsmore if he had some time to meet up. He, too, was on his way, and he’d hopefully bring good news about temporary accommodation for the Braddocks and Sully as well.

Given the extra distance Forbes had to travel to pick up Lachlan, Paul ended up arriving first. The Dunsmores were filthy rich, but Paul didn’t go in for showy, opting to donate much of his earnings to various community endeavours. His car reflected this trait; while it was a BMW, it was at least a decade old—not the sort of thing you’d expect a highly paid architect and the son of a city development magnate to tool around town in.

“Give me a minute with him,” Dez suggested to Sully. “He still thinks you got killed in that cave collapse two years ago.”

While Sully made for the kitchen, Dez answered the front door.

Paul was all smiles. “Desmond. Good to see you. I must say, your tone on our call intrigued me.”

“Come in, Paul. My wife and mom are here, too, and Lachlan and Forbes Raynor with the KRPD’s Major Crimes unit are coming to join us as well, if that’s all right.”

Paul stepped into the entryway and removed his boots as Dez closed the door behind him, sealing the cold outdoors. Dez waited until the man had finished with his boots before launching into the necessary reveal.

“There’s someone else here, too, actually. We were going to let you know eventually, and it seems this is the time. Sully’s alive.”

Paul’s eyes widened, his face freezing in place. “Sully? You mean Sullivan Gray? Your brother, Sullivan?”

“Yeah. It all plays into what we’re trying to sort out here, what we asked you to listen for within the Circle. Sully had to fake his own death to escape… well, it’s a long story, but he’s been in hiding since. I didn’t find out about him myself until a few months ago.”

Seemingly over his shock, Paul beamed. “My God! Where is he?”

Dez met the grin with his own and led Paul through the house, toward where he’d seen Sully heading. They found him in the kitchen, sitting at the table with their mom and Eva, Pax lying on the floor at his feet. Pax’s head shot up, and he studied the newcomer; the fact no growl or bark resulted struck Dez as further proof Paul was one of the good ones.

“My God,” Paul repeated, eyeing Sully. “Look at you. Long hair suits you. Even the beard, which surprises me.”

Sully stood and met Paul’s embrace. “Good to see you, man. Sorry I had to go cloak and dagger. Not much option.” He pulled back to smile at Paul. “Thanks for coming to my funeral, by the way.”

“You were there?”

“Yeah, he was,” Dez said. “Hiding in the bushes, watching, like a jerk.” He gave Sully a light shove, a far cry from the punch he’d delivered upon having learned that particular piece of information a few months back.

Luckily for Sully, Paul wasn’t a violent man, nor one with the same cause for it. Instead, he met the explanation by grasping Sully’s arm and giving it a gentle squeeze. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”

Dez had put the extra leaf into the kitchen table in anticipation of this meeting, and now ushered Paul into one of the remaining spots while taking a chair next to Eva. They offered Paul a brief history lesson, filling him in on what they’d learned about Lowell and Gerhardt.

“Listen, Paul, we’re really closing in on some stuff here, and it’s likely to turn us all into targets,” Dez said. “We’ll discuss it more once Lachlan and Forbes show up, but there’s something we want to talk to you about first.”

“We don’t think we’re safe at any of our homes anymore,” Mara said. “Sully has people after him who won’t worry about collateral damage. And the moment we start going after Lowell, there will be some real fallout.”

“You’re hoping I can put you up somewhere,” Paul said.

“Since you know everyone in the Circle, we thought you might be able to help,” Eva said. “You’ll know where we could stay to avoid anyone finding out.”

“I know just the place,” Paul said. “But be warned: it isn’t exactly glamourous.”

Sully smirked. “That lets Dez out.”

Paul joined in the welcome laugh before supplying the answer. “I have a cabin in the Black Woods, the other side of Winteredge. I had it built after the flood destroyed my old place. It’s very secluded and a bit of a challenge to get to—which is exactly why I love it. Sometimes I just need to get away from everything and everyone.”

Dez grimaced. “Uh, thanks, Paul, but is there something a little closer?”

“If you’re in the city, you could run into anyone. If you truly want to avoid certain people, this is the best solution. I can take you up there, show you the place. Then you can decide if it’s what you need.”

They had just time enough to arrange to meet up there later today and take a look before Lachlan and Forbes showed up.

Dez dragged over one of the kitchen island stools, allowing them all to sit at the table. Already tall, and now seated on the highest chair among them, Dez slouched forward to make himself less imposing. Without chatter, he launched into the issue of Sully’s birth family returning and sending a group of hit men after him.

He left out the part about the death of one of them, as well as the hangman’s involvement in saving Sully.

Dez ended by turning to Forbes. “Have you heard from Greta since she left the treatment centre?”

Forbes’s face fell, and he shook his head. “No. Nothing. I’m still looking, but if it’s like the last time, I don’t know how much luck I’ll have. The only reason I found her then was because she was in the middle of trying to kill Sullivan.”

“What should we do about the Dules?” Mara asked Forbes and Lachlan. “They won’t stop until Sully’s dead. Obviously, we need to stop them first.”

“If I can find them, I can arrest them—all three of them—and hope like hell Greta will turn on her mother and grandmother in exchange for some lighter treatment in court. Obviously, I’m not at liberty to make a deal like that, but the Crown just might. Of course, that’s dependent on Sullivan agreeing to come forward too. I can’t arrest anyone on kidnapping, attempted murder or arson charges if I don’t have an existing victim.”

“We know,” Dez said. “That’s why we need to take down Lowell at the same time. The second Sully reveals he’s still alive, he’ll be leaving himself open to Lowell coming at him again. Since his pet psychiatrist is out of commission, Lowell won’t find it as easy to discredit Sully or put him in a state where he can’t talk to anyone. That means the only way he’ll be able to shut him up is permanently.”

“Does Lowell know about the Dules?”

“No,” Sully said. “At least, he shouldn’t.”

“Unless they went to him,” Eva said. “We don’t know for sure they haven’t.”

Sully met Paul’s eye. “You said you thought your father was the man in the mask in the Blue Room at Lockwood. Do you think there’s a chance he could be persuaded to come forward and report what he saw? He can put Lowell in the room. Even if no one believes me, they’ll have to believe your father.”

Paul remained silent a moment. “If Ray Dunsmore senses his house of cards is about to fall, he’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect it. If that means sinking Lowell Braddock, he’ll do it—as long as he’s got some assurances he won’t go down with him.”

“I can’t make that kind of assurance,” Forbes said. “But if he can come up with a plausible explanation for being there, that might help.”

Paul’s eyebrows sunk low over his eyes. Then they lifted, along with the corners of his mouth. “You know, I think I can see my way to a scenario where my father comes forward, saying he suspected wrongdoing so went in to see for himself. He could say he didn’t come forward sooner since Sullivan died, thereby eliminating the issue—or so he thought.”

“I shouldn’t be hearing this,” Forbes said.

“But would it work?” Paul asked. “If I take it to him that police are looking at Lowell, and reports exist of a man in a mask believed to be him, maybe I could persuade him to come forward—if he believes he can avoid prosecution and come out smelling like roses.”

Forbes considered it. “For obvious reasons, I can’t head up this investigation. But I can tell you if someone of his ilk came forward with something like what you’re saying, someone would definitely sit down with him and treat his statement seriously. I’m not saying he wouldn’t be looked at for possible involvement, but if he’s a good enough storyteller and he’s eliminated any potential ties between himself and the experiments, it would help.”

“Honestly, I don’t care if he ends up arrested and charged right alongside Lowell,” Paul said. “All I want is to figure out a way to get him in there and telling the truth.”

“It might nail Lowell on his involvement in the drug experiments,” Lachlan said. “But it won’t get him on the biggest stuff. We want him on a series of murders and attempted murders, after all.” He peered over at Mara. “I hate to ask, but your husband and Aiden—were they buried intact or cremated?”

Mara’s lips formed a tight line. “I know what you’re wondering about, but no. A second post-mortem isn’t a possibility in either case. They were both cremated. Anyway, Lowell had an explanation for how the epinephrine ended up in Flynn’s system. We wouldn’t have learned anything new there.”

Lachlan rubbed his jaw. “And the boy? Might there be something new to discover there?”

“Aiden showed me his death,” Sully said. He glanced apologetically from Mara to Dez before returning his eyes to Lachlan. “Lowell held him under. Maybe some bruises were left by Lowell’s palms or fingers.”

“He had bruises,” Mara said. “I remember. Flynn and I sat with him before the cremation. But nothing much was made of them. He had a number of injuries from banging against debris in the river and others from simply being a six-year-old boy.”

“I’d still like a closer look,” Lachlan said. “I can speak with the coroner, see if I can get a look at Aiden’s file. In the meantime, I think there’s another avenue we haven’t explored as fully as we might. The Schusters. We suspect Lowell was the one who shot and killed Betty, correct?”

“There won’t be any physical evidence tying him to it,” Dez said. “Not anymore.”

Lachlan fired him a quick glare. “I realize that, Junior. I’m just making sure I’ve got a handle on his suspected involvement. So we think he killed Betty and played a role in Harry’s death—likely by supplying whatever drug was used to do him in. What about their kid? Thackeray, was it?”

“Yeah,” Dez said. “All I know is he disappeared. Lowell told me he just up and left, walked away from everything. Lowell said Thackeray didn’t give notice to vacate or anything, and that he didn’t hear from him again.”

“Do we suspect Thackeray might not have walked away willingly?”

“Yep,” Dez said. “I think you could say that.”

“So maybe that’s our way in,” Lachlan said. “Since I’ll be asking to look at the Aiden file, I’ll take advantage and ask about Harry too. If he died in Lockwood, there should have been some involvement by the coroner. In the meantime, maybe you boys want to start asking around about Thackeray. Could be we find him, we find some answers.”

Lachlan turned to Forbes. “How about the judge’s murder? You getting anywhere with that?”

“I’ve been asking around about Lowell at some local ranges. He uses the Kimotan Rapids Shooting Club, and I’m told he’s been practicing out there routinely for years. He’s not certified as such, but he’s known for being an excellent sharpshooter. I didn’t get specific about why I was asking, but it sounded to me like he definitely has the skills to pull off a hit like the one against Prescott Montague.”

“You never found the gun used, did you?” Dez asked.

“No, but if Lowell’s as smart as we all know he is, he won’t have it in his possession.” Forbes shrugged. “He’ll have dumped it or even melted it down somewhere. We won’t connect him through physical evidence—not to Montague and not to anyone else. We’ll need something else—best case scenario, a confession.” Forbes turned to Sully. “And when you’re ready to come forward and provide a sworn statement, you let me know.”

Sully offered him a smile—which was about all he’d be at liberty to provide for the time being. “As soon as I’m in a position to make Lowell face reality, you’ll be the first to know.”

4

It wasn’t much of a plan, but Sully had to acknowledge it was more than they’d gone in with.

The meeting over, the group split up; Forbes headed back to work, Lachlan to the coroner’s office, and Paul, Mara and Eva to check out the cabin.

That left Dez and Sully in town, ensuring someone was nearby for Kayleigh’s sake and enabling them to enact their own portion of the plan.

Sully hadn’t been back to the Schusters’ old house for more than two years, and he hadn’t seen any of their ghosts in almost as long. The house seemed the logical place to start searching, and Dez drove the two of them over as soon as everyone else left.

Dez’s voice cut into his thoughts as they neared the Schusters’ block. “It’s been a while. You think the ghosts will still be there?”

“No idea. Only one way to find out.”

Unfortunately, finding out wasn’t going to be an easy matter. Sully remembered Betty’s house awash in flowers and shrubs—a small but vibrant oasis in the midst of the rundown Riverview neighbourhood.

Someone, it seemed, had moved in since—someone with no use for an oasis.

The flowers in the front yard were gone, replaced by xeriscaping and a recently paved walk. The house itself had been redone, which wasn’t a bad thing given the state of the place back then. But nothing was left here to remind Sully of the woman he’d come to call a friend.

Nothing but the woman herself.

She stood in an upper-floor window, her face a pale, blood-speckled image through the glass. With a round of barking ,Pax signalled he’d caught the same sight from the backseat.

“She’s here,” Sully said for Dez’s benefit.

“Where?”

“In the house. Upper floor window.”

Dez ducked his head and leaned across Sully as if he could see what he’d indicated. Unsurprisingly, Dez returned to his previous position none the wiser.

“Okay, but someone else obviously lives here,” Dez said. “Can you get her to come down to talk to you?”

Sully fixed him with a smirk. “You want me to have a conversation with a ghost on the street?”

“Okay, good point. There’s a car in the drive. Hopefully that means someone’s around.”

“And hopefully that someone won’t mind a couple of strangers in their home,” Sully added. He started to get out of the SUV, but found his arm caught in Dez’s grasp.

“Hang on,” Dez said. “Lowell might still own the place. If the people who live here are just renting it, they’ll know him. What happens if they go to him with the fact a couple of guys closely resembling his nephews turned up asking questions? Let’s face it; there aren’t exactly a whole lot of six-and-a-half-foot tall gingers in KR. And if they describe you, and he puts two and two together….” Dez left the rest of the statement unspoken.

Sully knew where it ended anyway. “I hear you, but I think the time’s rapidly approaching where I’ll have to face him. I can’t stay in the dark much longer, Dez, and you going in by yourself won’t get us anywhere. I’m the only one who can see her.”

Dez exhaled through pursed lips. “All right. Fine. I don’t like it, but I see your point. I guess we’ll be getting everyone out of town soon anyway, right?”

Sully didn’t answer, just finished the process of exiting the vehicle. He waited until Dez gained his side, leaving Pax to play his usual guard duty with the vehicle. Then they headed toward the front veranda.

Neither of them had so much as the opportunity to knock before the door was yanked open, revealing a panicked-looking young woman. Her hair appeared to be in need of a wash and her eyes were ringed by dark circles.

“Are you the ghost hunters?” she asked.

Sully peered up at Dez in time to see his usual smile of greeting fade, quickly replaced by wide eyes and a dropped jaw. “Pardon?”

“I called, asking for someone to look at my house,” she said. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting them for another hour, but I still thought it was you.”

Sully jumped in, given Dez wasn’t likely to. “If you need help with ghosts, you’ve got the right people. Can we come in?”

The woman didn’t reply, merely yanking the door open wide with a grateful smile. Once they were inside, she stuck out a hand. “Andie Lewchuk. Nice to meet you.”

Sully shook. “Oliver Chadwell.”

Dez, Sully noticed, didn’t introduce himself—no doubt a wise move given the way the last name was likely to tip the woman off. Unfortunately, it seemed she wanted full introductions as she turned expectant eyes way up on Dez’s face.

Dez began to fumble the play. “Oh, uh….”

“My colleague, Lachlan Fields,” Sully said.

Dez’s widening grin suggested he was rapidly settling into the ruse. “I’m actually a private investigator. My buddy here’s the one with the experience with ghosts. I help out with other questions of a more practical nature that might arise.”

Andie’s still-hopeful expression suggested she wasn’t in need of further convincing. Sully could imagine where she was coming from. Having tangled with Harry Schuster in the past, he knew how terrifying the man could be. If this woman had seen him—or the others for that matter—she had plenty of cause to be in the market for someone who could give her back some peace.

“Why exactly were you wanting ghost hunters?” Dez asked.

The woman showed the two of them into the living room and indicated for them to sit on the couch. Sully noted much of the furniture was Betty’s, suggesting Lowell still owned the place and was renting it out as furnished. But little else looked the same in here. Sully remembered it as dark, dusty and depressing. While there was a solid weight to the atmosphere—the definite feel of more than one spirit—it was otherwise like night and day. The new renter clearly made the effort to keep a tidy place, a fact easily revealed given the way the rooms were now flooded with light. All of the curtains were pulled back, showing off crisp white walls, refinished hardwood floors and well-tended furniture. What was more, not a speck of dust was visible on the small table next to Sully’s spot on the couch.

The house, it seemed, wasn’t repaying Andie for her trouble.

“I moved in here a few months ago,” she said. “At first, it was awesome. The rent was fair and the owner seemed like a good guy.”

“Who’s the owner?” Dez asked.

“Lowell Braddock.” She narrowed her eyes as if sizing Dez up. “Looks a lot like you, actually. Weird.”

“Yeah,” Dez said. “Weird.”

Sully pulled the conversation back on track before Andie went too far down the Lowell path. “You were telling us about the ghosts?”

“Ghosts?” The word she repeated back at Sully ended in a squeak. “You mean there’s more than one?”

He grimaced. “Sorry. I think so, yeah. I’ll know more once I have a look around. For now, I’d like to hear what you’ve experienced.”

A clatter sounded from the kitchen. Andie’s head wheeled toward the noise, eyes huge. “What was that?”

“Do you live here alone?” Dez asked.

She nodded tightly.

Dez cleared his throat loudly. “Uh…. Listen, I’ll stay here and keep talking to you while my colleague goes to check it out, all right?” He finished by meeting Sully’s eyes, brows lifted in question and more than a little anxiety.

Sully resisted the smirk at his brother’s predictable show of fear. “Yeah, okay. On it.”

More banging sounded as Sully approached, drawing a startled yelp from Andie. “That’s never happened before!”

“It’s all right,” Sully said. “He’s noisy but he’s not a threat.”

He’d had a sense of Noisy Ned since leaving Ravenwood, as if the poltergeist had been tagging along. There was no getting away from it. Having found himself back in a house populated by several spirits, Ned was making himself right at home.

Sully entered the kitchen to discover the source of the problem: cupboard doors, first one, then more, opened and shut, opened and shut, the violence of the movement rattling the dishes inside.

“Stop it,” Sully ordered. “You’re scaring her. Nothing here is a threat.” Finding no sign of anyone else in the kitchen, Sully started to back away. He thought better of it, giving one last command. “And you’re not staying here either.”

The banging stopped, and Sully returned to find Dez an equal shade of white to their unexpected client.

“Ned?” Dez asked.

Andie’s head flipped between them. “Who’s Ned?”

“Don’t worry. He’s not yours. He’s with me.”

“He followed you?” It was Dez’s turn to end a question in a squeak.

Sully grinned, as much to show a lack of concern as a sense of amusement at Dez. “Yeah. But he’s fine. No big deal.”

Dez looked like he had plenty of arguments on why it certainly was a big deal, but given Andie’s obvious anxiety, he wisely kept them to himself.

“What is it you’ve been experiencing exactly?” Sully asked.

“I hear voices a lot, mostly a male muttering things. I can never make out what he says. I thought I heard a woman once, but I told myself I misheard. One ghost was enough, I thought.”

“Did you ever see anyone?” Dez asked.

“Once. A man. He looked old to me and thin, with a yellow shirt. His chin was all stubbly and his eyes….” She trailed off, and Sully waited her out, expecting her to say how they possessed the wild appearance of a man locked in terror. That was how he knew Harry, after all. “They were just fixed on the basement door, staring.”

Dez exchanged a look with Sully before returning his gaze to Andie. “The basement?”

She nodded.

“I’ll check it out,” Sully said. “But is it all right if I look around the upstairs first?”

“Sure,” Andie said. “Go wherever you need to. Just make him leave, all right? Make them all leave, if there’s more than one. Please.”

“I’ll do my best,” Sully promised.

“Need me to come?” Dez asked.

“Nah, it’s all right. I’ve got it cased. Stay and chat.”

Dez didn’t need to be told twice, smiling and nodding before settling back onto the sofa.

It lasted only a few seconds. Sully was a few stairs up when Dez rushed over and caught his wrist. “Shit,” Dez said. “I forgot. Harry.”

Sully spoke in hushed tones to avoid Andie overhearing. “That was two years ago. I’m stronger now. A lot stronger. Harry can’t possess me. Not anymore.”

“I don’t know, man….”

“Look, if I get the sense I’m getting in over my head, I’ll call, okay?”

Dez didn’t appear sold—who could blame him, given Sully had twice tried to kill himself under Harry’s influence?—but he backed away, anyway. To Sully, the move revealed exactly how much had changed between them, or at least how much Dez had changed. Just a couple of years ago, Dez had been a hovering, overprotective presence at Sully’s side; the fact he wasn’t hovering showed he’d learned to trust Sully’s judgement, experience and abilities. As welcome as it was, it was a little sad, too, the fact a once-central part of their relationship was now relegated to memory.

But it was also a boost to Sully’s self-confidence; if Dez believed in him, he could rest assured his confidence in himself wasn’t ill-placed. Sully gave Dez one more smile, then climbed the rest of the way up the stairs.

By the time he got to the top, Betty was there, waiting for him.

She smiled a greeting despite her still-bloody and shot-up state.

He did his best to return her smile. “Hi, Betty. I’ll admit, I’d hoped you’d moved on already. Is Harry here too?”

Harry answered the question for himself, appearing in the doorway to their old bedroom and drifting over to stand next to his wife.

Harry had changed. The expression of horror once seemingly locked onto his face was gone, replaced by a sunken and exhausted look. A man beaten.

The reason, Sully suspected, was to do with the third ghost. The short time he’d spent in this house in the past hadn’t allowed him to identify which of the rooms belonged to the couple’s adult son, Thackeray. Then a recent parolee, having been set up by Lowell for a repugnant crime he hadn’t truly committed, Thackeray had been forced to hide out in the house to avoid local vigilantes.

It seemed someone had found a way to keep him here for good.

Thackeray sat on the end of the bed in what was likely a spare room, slumped over with head in hands. As Sully watched him, Betty moved toward the bedroom door. She paused there, eyes first fixed on Sully, then Thackeray and then back again.

Her message was clear: Please, help him.

“You and Harry, you’re just here because of him, aren’t you?” Sully asked. “He’s having trouble crossing over.”

Betty nodded, but Harry wasn’t offering the same acknowledgment. Sully focused on Harry next. “You’ve been looking for someone to help your family, but the new tenant here isn’t responding well to you. And you’re not just looking for a way to help your son. You want Lowell dealt with too, right?”

That earned Sully a nod.

Sully provided what answer he could. “I’m working on it.” Then he slipped past Betty, into her son’s old room.

Thackeray had yet to move, to acknowledge the visitor, and Sully found his confidence slipping as he regarded the man. He hadn’t known him well, had really only had a couple of conversations with him—not nearly enough to form any sort of bond. Whether anything he had to say would be enough to persuade Thackeray to go was anyone’s guess.

All he knew was he had to try. For Andie, but most of all for the Schusters.

A chair stood in the corner of the room, and Sully picked it up, placing it in front of but slightly to the side of Thackeray, putting him in a spot where he could meet the ghost’s eye, should he look up, without being right in his face.

“Thackeray? I don’t know if you remember me. We met a couple of years ago. My name’s Sullivan Gray and I used to work with your mom at the Black Fox. I want to help you—all of you—but I’m going to need you to look at me, all right?”

Thackeray didn’t move, but Sully felt a tinge of pain in his face that gradually grew—an indication Thackeray was beginning to let him in. The pain wasn’t Sully’s but Thackeray’s; he’d learned over time to differentiate physical pain from ghostly. It was evidence of a bridge forming between the two, so Sully did nothing yet to raise his own walls, accepting the continued discomfort at least until he’d convinced the ghost to meet his eye.

“Thackeray? I’m sorry this happened to you. You didn’t deserve any of this. I really do want to help. I think I know who did this to you. If I’m right, he tried to kill me too. I’ve been in hiding for two years because of Lowell Braddock. I’m done hiding.” He looked over his shoulder, found Harry standing there, watching. “I’ve dealt with Roman Gerhardt,” Sully told Harry. “I’m going to take care of Lowell too.”

When he returned his gaze to Thackeray, the youngest Schuster had lifted his head from his hands.

Sully had seen a lot in his life, his gift having forced him to witness all manner of gruesome injuries. Thackeray’s weren’t enough to faze Sully, but they would have been plenty to horrify most anyone else.

He’d been viciously beaten, one eye completely sealed shut, the other pulverized into non-existence. His nose was so badly broken it had shifted over significantly and his lips had torn, likely due to being bashed repeatedly against his teeth. Sully couldn’t see anything but blood in and around Thackeray’s mouth, but he suspected it contained a number of broken or lost teeth.

Despite the fact Thackeray had been covering his face, his hands were blood-free, suggesting he hadn’t been conscious for most of this beating.

Then Sully looked closer. The hands weren’t entirely free of blood after all. He could see some red in the area of Thackeray’s fingernails.

Was it possible he’d managed to scratch Lowell hard enough to come away with bits of his skin and blood? If so, Thackeray’s body might hold Lowell’s DNA—enough to merit an arrest and quite possibly a charge.

That was, of course, assuming Lowell was the one who did this. Sully had yet to receive a definitive reply.

He sought it now. “Thackeray? It was Lowell, right? He’s the one who did this to you.”

A nod.

“Son of a bitch,” Sully muttered. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

He believed he had the answer to his next question as well. Andie had seen Harry staring at the basement door, and Sully thought he knew why. He met Harry’s eye once again. “Thackeray’s body. It’s in the basement, isn’t it?”

This time, Harry nodded. Something in his face changed, drooping eyes widening, corners of his lips turning up just a little.

Hope.

Sully had a hope of his own: that Thackeray’s body, once uncovered, would give them definitive proof to use against Lowell. Even if he never faced justice for anyone else, if he went down for this, at least, Sully would be satisfied.

He stood, returning the chair to the corner before heading back down the stairs. He sensed without needing to look that Harry and Betty were on his tail. Thackeray, though, remained where he was. Sully didn’t expect anything else of him. Some ghosts wanted to stay as far away from their bodies as possible. Given the family seemed to have become trapped in this house, the upper floor might be as far away as Thackeray could manage.

Dez’s eyes fixed on Sully as he re-entered the living room, and Sully waved for him to follow. With Dez now, too, at his back, Sully walked through the kitchen to where he thought he remembered seeing the entrance to the basement.

“Oh no,” Dez moaned. “Another basement? We don’t do well with basements.”

“Sorry.”

“Shit.”

Harry remained at his side as Sully pulled open the door and flicked on the light. Instantly, he was struck by an odour, one of intense decay. He peered at Dez, but saw nothing to indicate he’d smelled the same.

He checked anyway. “You don’t smell that?”

“Smell what?” Dez’s eyebrows shot up a second later, suggesting he’d grasped the meaning of Sully’s question. “Oh, my God. You aren’t saying—”

“That Thackeray’s down there? Yeah. I am.”

“Ah, shit.”

Sully led the way down the stairs, Dez all but pressed up against his back. He had to feel the chill, given Harry and Betty were very nearly in the same position.

“Hey, Sull? That cold…?”

“Yeah. Harry and Betty. You might want to step back a bit. You’re kind of right in the middle of them.”

Dez’s shudder came out an audible noise in his throat, and he paused on the stairs a few seconds, allowing Sully to reach the bottom with his ghostly followers.

Sully turned to look up at him. “You’re fine now, man.”

Dez took a tentative step down, then another. “Speak for yourself.”

Sully flashed a smile before giving the basement a quick once-over. He’d expected a dark, dingy space, a cement or dirt floor and ceilings left open to reveal duct work. What he actually saw was a fully finished basement with laminate flooring and carpet with painted drywall covering the remaining surfaces. The main room in which they stood had been repurposed as an entertainment and exercise space, a television along one wall and a sizeable sofa within easy viewing distance. An exercise machine and a large box containing weights and bands stood nearby. Black and white pictures of European cities graced the walls and a sizeable area rug lent added a touch of colour.

It was comfortable and homey. The most unlikely setting to hide a body.

“I can’t imagine it looked like this when Betty lived here,” Dez said. “The Schusters didn’t do much with the upstairs. No way they bothered with the basement.”

“You’re right,” Sully said. “I think Lowell did all of this to conceal any evidence of what he did to Thackeray. If I was to guess, I’d say he killed him down here too. All the evidence will be under the floor or behind the drywall.” He looked from Dez to Harry and Betty. “Am I right?”

Two nods confirmed his suspicions.

“Did they say yes?” Dez asked. Having received a nod from Sully, Dez continued with another question. “Why bury him in the house, though? Why not take him somewhere no one’s going to find him? The Black Woods, for instance. No one would ever find a body in there if it were deep enough in.”

“Neighbours,” Sully said. “Lowell likes his flashy cars and expensive clothes. Him pulling up in a neighbourhood like this is bound to draw attention. No doubt people noticed when he showed up to collect rent or check the property. If he’d left here lugging anything the size of a human body, someone would have noticed and questioned it. Probably easier to leave Thackeray here and plaster over everything to conceal evidence. I’m thinking the body’s not just underneath the floor. He’s probably buried too. Otherwise, it’s likely someone would have noticed the smell at some point.”

“Where is he exactly?”

For that, Sully looked to Harry. The ghost led the way, taking a few steps into the space and stopping at a spot between the sofa and the coffee table. Once there, he extended a finger, pointing down.

Sully joined Harry, extending his index finger to mark the spot for Dez.

“So what now?” Dez asked. “We can’t just start pulling up the floor.”

“Why not?”

“Well, first off, someone lives here.” Dez grimaced. “Crap.”

“What?” Sully asked.

Dez closed the distance to him, allowing for a hushed response.

“How are we supposed to break it to Andie she’s been working out over the body of a murder victim?”

5

The answer, Dez decided, was to get Andie out of here for the time being.

Not only, he reasoned to Sully, would it enable them to work without upsetting her, but it would keep her out of harm’s way. Once Lowell found out Thackeray’s body had been unearthed, Andie, as the home’s lone tenant, could become a target.

“We need to convince her to stay with someone for a couple of weeks,” Dez said. “Preferably somewhere Lowell won’t be able to find her.”

“You heard what Paul said,” Sully said. “Given their money and influence, the Circle more or less runs the city. There aren’t a lot of places a person can hide. That’s why Terrence Waters and I both holed up in The Forks. I think the only way she’ll really be safe is if this goes public. Once it’s out there the body of the former renter was found in the basement, that should give her some measure of protection.

“It might not come back at Lowell right away—I mean, Thackeray was pretty universally despised, given the conviction—but it will put eyes on him as the owner. And if we can convince her to give a few interviews, it will put Andie in the public eye too. That should be plenty to keep Lowell from moving on anything where she’s concerned.”

“I like it,” Dez said. “What I don’t like is trying to figure out a way to convince her to leave.”

“Maybe we just keep it simple,” Sully said. “We tell her the truth.”

Dez’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Like, how much of it?”

“Not all, obviously. Just enough. Honestly, I don’t think it will take much. She’s already pretty freaked out.”

It made sense to Dez, put like that, so he followed Sully up the stairs and back into the living room. Andie was sitting on the edge of her chair, hands clamped between her knees and lips pressed together as she fixed them with wide eyes.

“Anything?” she asked.

Dez took the spot on the couch farthest from Andie, leaving the closer side for Sully. Sully leaned forward and spoke softly. When he did that, Dez would have believed just about anything coming out of his mouth.

“Andie,” Sully began. “I’ve had a look around. There are three spirits here. Be—”

Andie cut in, voice a squeak. “Three? There are three of them?”

Sully nodded, then continued with what Dez assumed he’d started to say. “Believe me when I tell you they don’t mean you any harm. They’re good people, all of them. But they’re trapped here.”

A sheen building in Andie’s eyes suggested she was on the verge of tears. Dez guessed it was more out of terror than sympathy. “Can you get them to leave?”

“I can,” Sully said. “But there’s something I need to do for them first. I don’t think you’re going to like it, but it’s necessary. And I’m only telling you this because it’s going to come out, probably in a big way. I want you to be prepared.”

“For what?”

“One of them—the man you described seeing—showed me a spot in the basement. I believe the body of one of the ghosts is buried in that spot.”

Andie blanched. Her breaths came too fast, not deep enough to fully reach her lungs. A moment later, her upper body teetered.

Dez leapt from his spot and gained her side, easing her head down between her knees. “Breathe, ma’am,” he said. “As deep as you can. It’s okay.”

He held her there gently for a minute or two, only letting her sit back up once her breathing had returned to normal. This time, when he met her eyes, her tears had spilled over, several drops trailing down her cheeks.

“Where?” she asked, the question coming out choked.

“Where, what?” Dez asked.

“The body? Where is it?”

“Kind of between the couch and the coffee table,” Sully said. “Under the area rug. At least, that’s what the ghost showed me.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “I’ve been working out there. I do cardio kickboxing. I’ve been jumping all over a dead body.”

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think he cares all that much,” Sully said. “From what I can tell, he stays mainly in the spare room.”

“Really? Wow, that explains it. It’s always so cold in there, and no one who stays in that room ever has a good sleep.” Her shoulders hunched a little closer to her ears, and she sat forward a little, nearer to Sully. “None of them are mad at me, are they?”

Sully looked up, in the direction of the staircase, before returning his gaze to Andie. “No one’s mad at you. If anything, they’re grateful to you for letting us in here to help.”

“That’s good to hear,” she said. “But I don’t think I can stay here while there’s a dead body downstairs.”

Dez resisted the grin. Problem solved.

“We get it,” he said. “Listen, my friend and I are going to have to tear some stuff up down there, see if we can find the body. Once we’re sure something’s actually there, we’ll have to get the police in here to take over. It might be a while your place is off-limits.”

“Honestly, I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t even know if I can live here anymore.”

“Do us one favour,” Dez said. “If you do start looking for somewhere else to live, please don’t say anything to your landlord just yet. And don’t tell anyone about what we told you. If you want to say some ghost hunters are poking around the place, fine, but don’t say anything about the body. Not until you hear from us again. I don’t think it will be long. Probably later today or tomorrow.”

Andie nodded. “Okay. Deal.” Her eyes dropped to her lap for a few seconds, and when she looked back up, her expression was sad. “I know I called you here because I was scared, but I actually do want you to help them. The ghosts, I mean. I wouldn’t want anyone I cared about trapped here like that. It isn’t fair, especially if someone murdered one of them and buried them here. If my calling you means you can help them find peace, then something good will come out of this—even if I have to find someplace new to live.”

* * *

Andie took all of ten minutes to pack a bag—insisting they remain immediately on hand in the upstairs hall while she did so. The ghosts weren’t a threat to her, but they were no less terrifying.

If anyone could understand that, it was Dez. All these years and he’d never completely adjusted to the idea of sharing his space with spirits.

They trailed Andie to the door, where she handed Sully her phone number and placed a set of keys in Dez’s hand.

“My spare set,” she said. “So you can come and go as needed. I’d rather not have to drive over to let you in and lock up again every time.” She eyed Sully. “My number for if you need to get ahold of me about anything to do with the ghosts.”

Dez jingled the keys. “We’ll hold onto them for now, but we’ll probably have to hand them over to the police soon. You can get them back at the station later.”

“Mr. Braddock can do that,” Andie said. “I think I’m done with all of this.”

She started for the car but turned back to face Dez and Sully. “Oh no! My damage deposit. Once Mr. Braddock sees the basement all torn up—”

Sully cut in with an answer. “Any decent landlord will overlook it, considering you’d be helping to solve a crime.”

That seemed to satisfy Andie. Dez stood in the doorway, watching as she got into her car and drove off. When Dez turned back into the house, Sully was no longer behind him.

The sound of the backdoor opening had Dez jogging through the house to find Sully. He spotted him walking, hood up to conceal his face, through the backyard toward a shed.

Dez quickened his pace to regain Sully’s side. “What are you doing?”

“Garden shed,” Sully said. “I thought maybe we could find something to use in the basement.”

“We’re doing that now, huh?” Dez asked. He struggled to ignore the roiling in his gut at the thought of unearthing a corpse.

“If we’re going to get this sorted out before Christmas, like you said, better do it sooner than later, right?”

Dez grumbled something so incomprehensible even he couldn’t understand it.

The shed was locked, but Dez located a small key on the ring that fit. Inside, they located a pile of gardening tools, and they pulled out a shovel, a spade and an axe.

“Hopefully none of the neighbours are watching,” Dez said. “We probably look like we’re the ones angling to bury a body.”

Sully didn’t respond but for a low chuckle that emerged from beneath the hood. Then he led the way back into the house, spade in one hand, axe in the other.

Dez relocked the shed and trotted to catch up to Sully.

“By the way,” Dez said. “What you said about ‘any decent landlord’ and all that? You weren’t describing Lowell.”

Sully held the back door open for Dez. “Nope. Hate to say it, but Andie’s not getting her damage deposit back.”

* * *

They pushed the TV out of the way and pulled the carpet aside to see what they were dealing with. Dez had been hoping they wouldn’t have to chop through the laminate, and he decided, based on what he saw, they could pull it up easily enough.

Starting at the wall, Dez levered the baseboard away to reveal the edges of the flooring. He then wedged the blade of the axe into the groove and pulled, prying the wide boards up one by one.

He’d just started to expose a layer of underlay when a further problem revealed itself: a ringing doorbell.

Dez’s head shot up, and he clamped eyes on Sully. “Who the hell’s that?”

Sully didn’t reply, instead dropping his spade and leading the way to the stairs. He’d gone as far as the living room window, Dez immediately behind him, when he drew back sharply.

“Damn it,” Sully muttered.

Dez stepped forward to try to see what it was Sully had spotted but was stopped by a hand on his chest.

“The ghost hunters Andie said she called,” Sully said. “I think they’re here.”

“Crap,” Dez said. “Can we just ignore them?”

“At least one of them isn’t the sort of person to just give up.”

Dez succeeded in moving past Sully just far enough to get a look outside. A young woman stood on the walkway, peering up at the house. Long, glossy black hair. Dark, almond-shaped eyes. Beautiful features. No mistaking it.

“Ara,” Dez said. “Damn. I hadn’t even considered that possibility.”

“Neither had I.” Sully glanced from the window up to Dez’s face as the bell rang again. “How much you want to bet the person ringing the doorbell is Emory Davis?”

“Damn,” Dez said again. “What should we do?”

“Give me a second to get to the basement,” Sully said. “Then answer the door. Tell them Andie had to step out for a bit and to come back another day or something like that. I don’t want Ara and Emory sneaking around the place. If someone gets suspicious and calls the police before we find anything in the basement, we’re sunk.”

“This will be the second time Ara’s found me in a haunted location,” Dez said. “She’s going to start thinking I’m nuts or something.”

“She’s a practicing Wiccan who has her own ghost-hunting YouTube channel,” Sully said. “I’m pretty sure she’ll be willing to overlook it.”

Sully hightailed it to the basement, leaving Dez to follow through with door-answering duties.

He approached the door, pausing just this side of the entryway. The front door contained a large glass pane with a few clear patches through which residents and visitors could see each other, and he wanted to take a second to get his head screwed on straight. If he was unable to convince Ara to leave, the situation would get tricky fast.

He took a breath and released it, then turned into the entryway and pulled open the door. He recognized Emory, standing with the assistance of a cane on the front stoop. But it was to Ara his eyes went. She’d been on the walkway, phone in hand as if to dial Andie. With the appearance of Dez at the door, her eyes had snapped onto his and the phone stilled in her hand, fingers held frozen over the screen.

“Dez?” she said, lips turning up in a stunned smile. “What are you doing here?”

Dez joined the couple outside, seeking to keep them out of the house at all costs. “Bit hard to explain.” He looked for an out by revisiting her own question on her. “What about you? What brings you here?”

“The lady who lives here called us to investigate her place. She described a haunting and said she’d seen a full-bodied apparition. We wanted to try to document it for our channel.”

Dez bit back the comments forming in his brain. He was pretty sure Andie had been looking for help in getting the ghosts to cross over, not simply for added proof of their existence. While Ara and Emory’s brand of aid might help convince Andie she wasn’t crazy, they wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about ending the haunting. If anything, they’d make it worse by meddling in something they didn’t understand. Dez thought about Betty, Thackeray and Harry trapped in the house, each the victim of a homicide. They didn’t need people wandering around in here asking for signs of their existence—at least, not people who wouldn’t be able to help them at the end of the day. That’s what he and Sully were here for.

Not that he could share that with these two.

Maybe Ara recognized Dez’s skepticism because she changed the subject momentarily. “You remember Emory, right? I know you helped find him. You and your friends. I didn’t get the chance to thank you. I wanted to, but it felt weird somehow, reaching out to you after.”

“You didn’t need to feel weird,” Dez said. “And it’s cool. I was happy to be able to help.”

Emory bestowed his own grateful smile on Dez. “What she said. I owe you and your friends my life. Oliver, especially. Can you pass that along to him, or better yet, arrange a meeting? I’d love to be able to thank him in person. I wasn’t exactly at my best at the time, obviously.”

“I’ll let him know,” Dez said. He didn’t say anything about the proposed meeting, hoping Emory would eventually forget about the idea. “How’s the leg?”

“Getting better. They had to put a rod and a bunch of pins through it, and I’m going to need physio for a while yet. But they finally cleared me from having to use a walker, and I can manage stairs again without feeling like I’ve run a marathon. It’ll get better, they tell me. Seems like a long time coming.”

“Glad to hear you’re making progress. It’s good to see you up and about.”

“So what are you doing here?” Emory asked. “Do you know Andie?”

“Not really,” Dez said. He considered it briefly, and decided partial honesty was the best policy. “I knew the people who used to live here. I mentioned it to Andie, and the ghost she described sounded like one of the family members.”

“Who used to live here?” Ara asked.

There was no sense making anything up. Any ghost hunter worth his or her salt would investigate a house’s past. She’d figure it out soon enough, with or without his help.

“The Schusters,” he said. “Betty, her husband Harry and their son, Thackeray. I think you probably met Betty. She was—”

“Sully’s boss,” Ara supplied. “I remember. “I… I didn’t know this was their place.”

Emory glanced between Dez and Ara. “You mean Sully Gray? Your last boyfriend?”

Ara nodded. Dez watched to see what Emory’s response would be, wondering whether he would react jealously or sympathetically. Emory passed Dez’s unspoken test by limping down the steps and drawing Ara into a gentle half-hug.

“We don’t have to take this job,” he said.

Ara met his eye. “No, I want to.”

Dez decided he’d better cut in fast. “Um, I know you guys had an appointment here, but I’m actually in the middle of something here.”

That had their attention. “What, exactly?” Emory asked.

“I can’t say much about it yet,” Dez said. “But it’s to do with the Schusters.”

“They never did arrest anyone for what happened to Betty, did they?” Ara asked.

Emory was out of the loop again. “What happened?”

“She was murdered,” Ara said. “Shot to death at the bar she managed, where Sully worked.” She looked back at Dez. “Is that what you’re investigating?”

“Partly,” he said.

“What’s the other part?” Emory asked.

“Like I said, I can’t really discuss the case just yet.”

“And we can’t come in to do some filming?”

“Not a good idea,” Dez said. “Andie’s left us with the house so she’s not here anyway. I’ve got a friend who’s a psychic, and he’s looking around the place now.”

“But that would be perfect!” Ara said. “We could totally do something with that, following a psychic around the house and all that.”

“He doesn’t like people knowing what he does,” Dez said. Or who he is, for that matter. “Believe me, he wouldn’t be up for being filmed. Besides, if this goes the way I think it will go, it will turn into an active police investigation. You guys being in the middle of this isn’t a good idea.”

Ara appeared crestfallen, but Emory nodded as Dez finished speaking. “I get it,” he said. “We already got in trouble over everything that happened with our trespassing at Loons Hollow. If we piss off the cops again, we could end up with our channel being shut down. I’d still love to hear how you make out with all this, though. Any way you can keep us in the loop?”

“If it goes the way I think it will go, you’ll hear all about it on the news,” Dez said.

Ara offered him a small smile. “Okay. I guess we’d better go then. It was nice seeing you again, Dez.”

“You too.” Dez turned to Emory. “Hope you’re back up to par very soon. Oh, and I’m sorry about what happened to your dad.”

“Don’t be,” Emory said. “I found out more about him recently. Someone I know at Lockwood told me they found out Larson was helping that nut-job psychiatrist with some sort of experiment on patients. Turns out my father was a worse human being then I even thought.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation,” Dez said, “you are very much not your father’s son.”

One side of Emory’s mouth turned up. “Thanks, man. That means a lot, especially since I think your brother was one of the patients. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what happened to him and for whatever role Larson played in it.”

“I appreciate that.”

Dez exchanged a parting hug with Ara and a handshake with Emory before seeing the two off. He waited, offering a wave as they drove off down the block.

Then he returned to Sully.

By the time he got back into the basement, Sully had managed to pry up the rest of the floorboards around the spot in question and tear up the underlay. Unfortunately, he’d run up against another problem: cement.

“We’re kind of screwed,” Sully said as he studied the floor. Then he met Dez’s eye. “They leave?”

“Yeah. But there’s no guarantee they’ll stay gone. They’re curious. Really curious.” Dez shared what he’d told Ara and Emory, ending in a further warning. “When we leave, you’d better keep your hood up and head down. And walk different or something. Last thing we want is Ara making you if she’s hiding in the bushes.”

“I’ll do that,” Sully said. “In the meantime, how are we going to blast our way through this? Shovels and spade won’t do it.” He eyed Dez. “Don’t you have a sledgehammer? I doubt Andie keeps a jackhammer around the place.”

“Yeah, in my garage,” Dez said. “But that might cause a further problem. If we start hammering away at the floor, we could end up damaging the body. The good thing is if Thackeray’s been encased in cement all this time, it probably prevented quite a bit of decomposition. Any evidence on him should be more or less intact. Last thing we want to do is destroy it.”

Sully pulled out his phone and spent a couple of minutes tapping and swiping the screen. “It says some types of acids will dissolve concrete. Any way we can get our hands on phosphoric acid and trisodium phosphate?”

“That’s no good either,” Dez said. “That stuff will cause its own kind of damage to the body. I hate to say it, but we’re probably going to have to bust up more of the basement than we’d planned to. I can go grab the sledge and we can work on another section of the floor. That way, we can get a sense of how thick the pour is.”

“Either that, or we can call in Forbes and ask him to get forensic investigators in here to do it right.”

“I would love that, believe me. But they’re not going to come in here without good cause. And a panicky woman reporting ghosts in her house doesn’t count.”

Sully had placed the tools they’d borrowed against the wall, and Dez picked up the shovel. It appeared solid and sturdy, its weight heavy enough in his hands.

“How sure are you about the exact location of the body?” he asked.

Sully’s response was delayed while his gaze travelled to a spot next to him at approximately eye level. “Harry?”

Sully’s eyes tracked downward, back to the spot on the floor they’d already uncovered.

“He’s sure,” Sully told Dez. “This is it.”

“And which way is he laying?”

Another pause. Dez waited, watching Sully for some indication as to answer. He’d hoped one of the ghosts would simply point. Instead, it seemed someone was intent on showing Sully firsthand.

Dez dropped the shovel and caught Sully before he collapsed to his knees under the weight of whatever he was being shown. As the only sounds coming from him at this point were of pain, there was no way to know whose thoughts were being impressed on him. He could be watching Thackeray’s death through his own eyes or those of one of his parents.

As a parent himself, Dez didn’t know which would be worse.

Dez hated Sully’s visions, hated thinking about what he was going through when he had one. He knew value came from them, given how often they’d helped solve the mysteries behind people’s violent deaths. But they also meant Sully constantly experienced death in new and horrific ways—usually firsthand from the perspective of the victim, agony and terror included.

So when this vision didn’t stop after a solid minute, Dez decided he needed to end it.

Supporting Sully with one arm, Dez waved the other through the air around him. He felt the unmistakable cold spot just behind and to his left, and Dez focused his anger there.

“That’s enough!” he shouted. “Stop it!”

A second later, Sully’s rigid posture relaxed, allowing Dez to settle him on the floor in a seated position.

“What the hell was that?” Dez asked.

“Harry.”

Dez scoffed. It figured. Harry had never shown much concern for Sully’s well-being. “Naturally. What did he show you?”

Sully shifted so he was sitting fully on his butt, knees up and elbows against them to allow him to prop up his head in his hands. “His son’s death.”

“Yeah, I figured that much. What, exactly?”

“It was like we figured. Lowell did it. Only it wasn’t quick. He basically tortured him first. He wanted information—everything Thackeray had told me, what he’d told his mother or anyone else about Harry’s visions. But I don’t think what Lowell did was just about getting info. The bastard enjoyed it. He beat Thackeray for no reason besides the fact he wanted to hurt him. Harry and Betty saw all of it. And they couldn’t do anything about it.

“Lowell used a hammer for most of it, and at the end, he beat Thackeray to death with it.” Sully pointed down at the spot they’d been working on. “Right here. This is where he died. When they check the body, they’ll find broken kneecaps, several broken fingers and toes, probably some ribs. But in the end, his head and face got it the worst.”

“Jesus, Sull.”

“One other thing. The blood under his nails, it is Lowell’s. The assault started in the kitchen. Lowell thought he’d knocked Thackeray out and was dragging him down the stairs to interrogate him. Thackeray came around halfway down and fought. He managed to gouge Lowell’s arm pretty good—maybe good enough to leave scars. They’ll find Lowell’s DNA under Thackeray’s nails, maybe even on other parts of his body or clothes. The scratches were deep enough to cause bleeding.”

Sully took a deep breath, then pressed on. “Anyway, his head is closest to the wall and his feet are near where the couch was. How he’s buried, I mean.”

Dez dropped a hand onto Sully’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze, allowing him an extra few moments to come back around. “Okay, so if I move a few feet to the left, we should be in the clear,” Dez said.

Another breath and Sully raised his head. He met Dez’s eye and nodded. “Yeah.”

Dez watched him another long moment. There was something else, something on the tip of Sully’s tongue.

“What?” Dez asked.

Sully opened his mouth as if to speak, but shut it again. “Nothing. Let’s just do this.”

Dez stood and gave Sully a hand getting to his feet. Then the two of them pried up a few more floorboards and the underlay beneath to expose the concrete.

With nothing else easily moveable in the way, Dez gritted his teeth for impact and brought the blade of the shovel down hard. His teeth rattled in his mouth, but he tried again a couple more times, and the concrete gradually broke up beneath the weight of the shovel. A number of additional hard strikes—he didn’t bother counting how many—and the cement crumbled. Dez dropped the shovel and shook out his arms while Sully knelt to sweep the debris from the spot.

“It’s not that thick,” Sully said. “Just an inch or two. I think Lowell must have buried Thackeray in the dirt and then cemented over him.”

Dez braced himself for an impact of a different kind. “So he might not be as intact as we were thinking. Bugs and all that.”

Sully’s face took on an apologetic appearance as he peered up at Dez. “Sorry, man. No choice.”

“I know.” He returned to the spot Sully had indicated. “I’m going to break into this stuff. I’ll avoid where you think the head is and hope to hell I can miss the hands too. All we need is a glimpse of a body, just enough to take to Forbes. Sound good?”

“I wouldn’t use the word, ‘good,’ ” Sully said. “But, yeah.”

Dez raised the shovel. “Sorry, Thackeray,” he said before bringing the blade back down.

He hit the spot at least a couple dozen times, and the concrete gave way bit by bit beneath the blows. At last, Dez stopped and allowed Sully to scoop out the debris. As predicted, dried earth showed beneath the crumbs of cement. The newly created hole was only a few inches in diameter, but hopefully it would be enough.

Sully provided further relief by telling Dez he’d take over from here. Dez sat on the couch, getting his wind back as he watched Sully use the blade of the axe to scrape away at the dirt. After a few minutes of work, Sully sat back on his haunches.

“What?” Dez asked.

“I’ve got some clothing here,” came the response. Sully’s voice was quiet, sad. “It looks like it might be the same shirt he was wearing the last time I saw him.”

Dez stood and knelt next to Sully, taking a look for himself. Covered by a dusting of dirt, the material he saw was a pale denim colour, a small white button marking it most definitely as a shirt. Dez grimaced, preparing himself mentally for the next part. He hated handling dead bodies despite several years of experience doing it as a police officer, but there was no way to avoid it. A shirt was one thing; it was what lay beneath it that counted.

Dez reached into the shallow hole and unfastened the button, then pulled at the material to create a gap.

Flesh. Rotted, but definitely flesh.

Dez released the material and fell back on his butt, wiping his fingers against his jeans. “Goddammit.”

The two of them sat there, side by side.

“Do you think Harry foresaw this?” Dez asked. “Maybe this is why he was so intent on using you to kill Lowell.”

“Maybe,” Sully said. “Probably. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know anything, like I’m always one move behind Lowell. He keeps doing this, hurting people, killing them. And I never see it until it’s too late to stop him.” He paused, heaving a heavy sigh. “Maybe we shouldn’t get so hung up on busting him. Maybe I should just turn the hangman loose on him, let him take him down for good. Can we ever really be safe if he’s out there? Even if he gets sent to prison, he’ll get out eventually. Then what?”

Dez looked over at Sully, waited until he’d met his eye before speaking. “Then we’ll deal with it when we get there. I’d love to see Lowell dead. Hell, part of me would love to take him there myself. But you’re not a killer, Sull. I won’t let you turn into one.”

“I might not have a choice. If it’s the only way to stop him—”

“It isn’t. There’s always another way.” Dez smiled, waited until he received an answering one from Sully. “We’ll get there, okay? One step at a time.”

Dez patted Sully on the shoulder, then pulled out his cellphone. He didn’t know what their future moves would entail, but the next one was obvious.

Get the police over here now. After that, with any luck, it was only a matter of time before they buried Lowell right alongside the people he’d killed.

Figuratively, of course.

6

Dez sent Sully off into the park across the road before calling Forbes. Sully was still shaken, but he had Pax with him. The dog’s playful company would soon set Sully right, Dez told himself.

Dez was looking for a little of the same just as soon as he could get out of here.

For now, though, he was waiting on the first police vehicle to show up so he could reveal the find and turn over the scene.

To his surprise, it wasn’t a marked patrol unit arriving first, but Forbes.

“Let me guess,” Dez said. “You don’t believe me.”

“I wanted to see for myself before calling in the cavalry,” Forbes said.

Dez crossed his arms. “Just to make sure.”

Forbes shrugged. “Okay, yeah. Just to make sure. Didn’t want to waste anyone else’s time if you’re out to lunch.”

Dez shook his head and led the way into the house. “Asshole.”

Forbes trailed behind Dez as he led the way to the basement. “Hey, I may be an asshole, but I’m a cautious asshole. If I’m bringing a bunch of units in here, including our rather-busy Ident section, I want to make sure about what you’re telling me. Where’s Sullivan?”

“I sent him across the road, into the park.”

They’d reached the basement, allowing Forbes his first glimpse at the grave he and Sully had unearthed.

Forbes knelt over the hole while Dez remained back by the stairs. Forbes reached in with a latex-gloved hand, presumably to check and prod beneath the exposed shirt as Dez had done. A few seconds of that, and he was back on his feet, peeling off the glove inside out and discarding the crumpled item on the floor as he returned to Dez.

“Tell me something,” he said. “What exactly am I supposed to say to my colleagues about how you stumbled across this body? I mean, I need to say something about how you knew it was down here in the first place and knew precisely where in the basement to find it.”

Dez jumped at a voice coming from behind him, on the stairs.

“I’ll explain it to them.”

Dez turned, narrowing his eyes at Sully as he came down the stairs with Pax. “How are you going to manage that, being as you’re supposed to be dead and all?”

“What’s the point of staying hidden any longer?” Sully asked. “Gerhardt’s not a danger to me anymore. The Dules apparently know I’m still alive. The only one who still matters is Lowell, and he’ll find out soon enough, anyway. Forbes is right. It’s going to be damn hard for you to explain how you found the body.”

“No offence,” Forbes said. “But your explanation’s not going to be a whole lot better. You’re seriously going to say a ghost led you here?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Because it’s unbelievable,” Forbes said. “Listen, Sullivan, I’m well aware you aren’t the one who killed Betty Schuster, but your name is still listed on the file as a suspect—the main suspect at that. You haven’t officially been cleared, and you won’t be until we’ve got evidence of someone else’s involvement. If you come forward now, talking about how you just happened to locate the body of Betty’s son two years later, you’ll be locked up as a suspect in a second homicide as well. I believe you on all the ghost stuff. I’ve seen too much to not believe you. But others will take a lot more convincing.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to agree with Forbes on something, but he’s right,” Dez said. “The time will come for you to show yourself, but it isn’t now.”

“There’s DNA evidence under Thackeray’s fingernails,” Sully said. “It’ll point to Lowell.”

“DNA results take time,” Forbes said. “Are you prepared to stew away in jail in the meantime?”

Sully’s gaze returned to Dez. “So what are you going to tell them then?”

“He’s not going to say anything,” Forbes said. “I want you both out of here. I’ll say I got a source tip. What names did you give the renter?”

“Sully gave her his usual fake name,” Dez said. “And he told her I was Lachlan. If I had ID’d myself as a Braddock, she might have said something to Lowell.”

“Good plan. Okay, get ahold of Lachlan and apprise him of the situation. My staff sergeant will probably insist on a statement from my source, and if you can get Lachlan to take credit for the find, he’ll be able to hold his own in an interview room situation without revealing anything he shouldn’t.”

Dez fired a glare at Forbes. “You saying I couldn’t?”

Forbes snorted. “Please. You’re a lousy liar, Braddock, and you wear your heart on your sleeve. It’s not about trying to locate the place to pick at with you, it’s deciding which spot to pick at first.”

Dez felt a hand settle on his arm, looked to see Sully staring at him imploringly. “He’s right, Dez. Let’s go.”

Dez glared between the pair as a final protest. He couldn’t deny the truths they were touting, but he didn’t have to like it.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “But you might run into some problems once Andie gives a statement. She saw us, not Lachlan.”

“I’ll handle her interview,” Forbes said. “She’ll answer what I ask. She’ll give me Lachlan’s name. I don’t need to ask for physical descriptions.”

That helped, but Dez wasn’t quite finished. “One more word of warning, Forbes. Make sure the nail clippings don’t go to LOBRA for testing. In fact, keep this as quiet as you can. As soon as Lowell finds out about this, he’ll go into attack mode.”

“I didn’t become a police officer yesterday, Braddock. I know, all right? Now get out of here. Both of you.”

* * *

They’d barely driven two blocks when Sully asked Dez to pull over.

Dez found a spot next to a defunct corner store and turned to face him. “What’s up?”

Sully’s eyes locked onto Dez, his expression—upturned brows and dropped jaw—suggesting inner torment. “You didn’t tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“That I tried to kill you.”

Dez snorted. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Two years ago. In your bathroom when I slashed up. You smashed in there to stop me, and I tried to stab you in the neck with a piece of glass. He showed me, Dez. Harry showed me.”

Dez felt the blood drain from his face. “I… I didn’t—”

“You didn’t what? Want me to know?”

Dez couldn’t find the words, so he simply nodded.

“I had a right to know, man. It was something I did. To you. You should have told me.”

“You didn’t do anything to me, Sully. It wasn’t you, all right? It was Harry. You weren’t yourself.”

“You still should have told me.” Sully turned to face the windshield. “Jesus, Dez. I’m sorry.”

Dez grabbed Sully around the back of the neck and squeezed hard enough to make his upcoming point clearly heard. “Don’t you apologize for something you didn’t do. You weren’t the one in control, and I knew that, didn’t tell you because of that. You were already going through hell, and I didn’t want to make it worse. You couldn’t have done anything. I couldn’t protect you from much back then, but I could at least protect you from that.”

“I’d like to say it wouldn’t happen again, that I’d be strong enough to control it, but I don’t know. I really don’t.” Sully looked back at Dez. “If I need to go there again, to allow someone else to take over, I want you and everyone else I love far away from me. You hear me? I don’t want to take the chance I’ll hurt any of you. I’m stronger than I was, but I don’t know if I’m strong enough. Some of them, they’re more than I can handle. If they take over, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“You’re not giving yourself enough credit.”

“It’s not about giving myself credit. It’s giving them credit. They’re stronger than people realize, and some of them, when they want something bad enough, they’ll stop at nothing to get it. And they’ll cut through anyone they don’t care about to get there.” Sully stared down as his lap. “Harry showed me what happened in the bathroom that day. I had the feeling it was important to him for me to know he wasn’t trying to kill me, or you exactly.

“When he stepped into me that first time, it wasn’t just me who got lost. He did too. When he looked in the mirror, he didn’t see me but himself. Given the hell he was enduring at Lockwood, the only person he sometimes wanted to kill more than Lowell was himself. I think he thought if he was fully free of his body, he could go where he wanted anytime he wanted. And when he saw you, he thought for a moment you were Lowell. All he saw was a big guy with red hair and similar features. I didn’t know any of that before. I didn’t see any of it. I know you won’t accept my apology, but you can accept his. He’s sorry, too, to both of us.”

Dez sighed. “Guess I can’t exactly blame him, can I? Given what I saw you going through in Lockwood, I can’t fault him for wanting a way out. And he was there a hell of a lot longer than you were.”

Sully nodded. “I know. I feel the same way.”

Dez patted him on the shoulder. “But you can’t blame me for not telling you, Sull. Neither of us understood what was happening to you back then, or what it meant. You knowing, it wouldn’t have helped you, and it sure as hell wouldn’t have helped me. I was worried enough about you without adding another element to it. I wasn’t going to stick you with guilt on top of guilt—especially when none of it was your fault to begin with.”

Dez gave Sully one more solid thump, then pulled out his phone. “If we’re all done with the mushy stuff, I need to give Lachlan a call. Forbes would have called this in by now, and his C/O will be wanting Lachlan interviewed pretty damn quick. He won’t thank me for forcing him to think on his feet, no matter how good he is at it.”

Dez dialled and Lachlan picked up on the first ring.

“Braddock, good timing. Get your asses to my place. First off, I’ve been told there’s no coroner’s file on Harry Schuster. Whatever happened to him, it wasn’t deemed necessary at the time to open any sort of an inquiry. But I’ve got the file on Aiden. There’s some stuff we need to discuss.”

* * *

The drive felt too slow to Dez, every red light and slow driver conspiring against him.

Ever since Sully’s return had brought with it the revelation Aiden had been the victim of a homicide rather than an accidental drowning—and that he was not yet at peace, even after close to twenty years—Dez had been desperate to find a way to help. He liked the fact his baby brother’s ghost had protected him from time to time, but he knew enough about the world Sully saw to realize it wasn’t what he wanted for Aiden.

Or for their dad, for that matter. Dez suspected while Flynn, too, wanted justice for himself and his young son, the real reason he stayed was to take care of Aiden. As much as Dez missed his dad, and always would, it gave him some comfort to know Aiden no longer had reason to feel alone. If they were together and at peace, that would be even better.

“Dez, relax,” Sully said after Dez had sworn at his fifth slow-moving driver. “We’ll get there, all right? And we’ll get this dealt with. For both of them.”

Dez limited his reply to a tight nod and a conscious attempt to loosen his grip on the steering wheel.

As Sully promised, they did reach Lachlan’s. And as Dez could have expected, Lachlan was no more pleased with the time they had taken to get there than Dez was.

“What—did you take the scenic route?” Lachlan griped as they walked into the living room, Pax at Sully’s side. “Did you decide to come by way of McCoy Falls? And what’s that dog doing here?”

“He had to stay in the car while we were at the Schusters,” Sully said, peeling off his gloves and shoving them in the pockets of his coat before slipping out of it. “He’s really good, I promise. He doesn’t chew stuff or pee where he shouldn’t.”

“He’ll shed.”

“I’ll vacuum.”

Lachlan narrowed his eyes but didn’t say anything further about it. Dez bit back his surprise. He’d warned Sully when they got out of the SUV Lachlan would send Pax straight back to the vehicle as soon as he saw him. It seemed Lachlan was learning to relax.

Either that, or his concussion from a few months ago had scrambled his brain worse than Dez had feared.

“By the way, I managed to fend Raynor off for a bit,” Lachlan said. “He’s busying himself with the tenant for now, so that gives us time for this.” He pointed to a closed file on his coffee table, the wear on the folder suggesting its age. Dez’s eyes held there, mind drifting to what it must contain.

He was vaguely aware of Sully and Lachlan speaking to each other, but he didn’t truly hear the words. The world around him had become muffled and clouded, everything else fading as that file and its contents leapt into the foreground.

He’d been just eight when Aiden drowned. His parents, he knew, had seen his body after, but they hadn’t allowed Dez the same opportunity. Just as well, because he hadn’t wanted it. Dez’s fear of death, and of the dead, had likely been born right there, the unwanted phoenix risen from the ashes of Aiden’s loss. His parents, he supposed, had wanted to protect him from having to see his brother like that. It was summer, and Aiden had been in the water a little while. Dez knew, given his policing experience, what that could to a body. He’d thought about it, about Aiden, every time he had to attend a river drowning, as police officers grumbled about the smell and the bloating.

Part of him had always seen Aiden in those fatalities, and his brain betrayed him by transposing on the corpses the image of a tiny, five-year-old body lying in the grass and mud.

That file wouldn’t just hold reports and conclusions. It would also hold photos. Pictures Lachlan would want to show them to demonstrate where Lowell might have pressed to hold Aiden under.

His view of the closed file was interrupted by a face appearing directly in front of his. Sully’s hands fisted up in Dez’s shirt and shook him gently, forcing him even further into the here and now.

“Hey,” Sully said. “Look at me. Look at me, Dez.”

Dez refocused, vision leaving behind the past to fully meet Sully’s eyes. He wanted to say something about being okay, but found he couldn’t get the words to form. Maybe the reason was because it would have been a lie.

“You don’t have to do this,” Sully said. “I can go through it with Lachlan by myself. Take Pax into the backyard or for a walk or something. I’ll call when we’re done.”

Those words, at last, elicited a response. Dez shook his head. “No. I need to do this.”

“No, you don’t.”

Dez brought his hands up, grasping Sully’s wrists where his hands continued to hold onto his shirt front. “Yeah, I do. I’ve been afraid of this my whole life, of seeing him like this. That file contains answers, and I need them. I trust you to get them for me, okay? But it’s not the same as getting through it myself. I need to do this. I need to do this.”

Lachlan’s voice sounded from behind Sully, its tone unusually soft. “I’ve already turned over the pictures we don’t need to see. Full body and head and all that. It’s really just the chest I wanted the two of you to have a look at.”

Sully’s hands finally released. Dez gave him a smile, then looked down to see Pax had all but sealed himself to his leg. He gave the dog’s head a grateful pet, then led the way to the couch, lowering himself next to Lachlan and letting his breath out in a whoosh.

“What’ve we got?” he asked.

Sully moved toward them, indicating through hand movement for Lachlan to scoot over. Then he sandwiched himself into the space between Dez and Lachlan.

He answered Dez’s querying expression with his characteristic half-smile. “Hey, you’ve spent most of your life protecting me. Once in a while, you need to let me return the favour. At least let me vet this stuff for you first, okay?”

Dez managed a smile. “Deal.”

Lachlan glanced between the two of them, eyebrows raised in question. “We good?”

Dez nodded. “We good. What did you find?”

Lachlan first slid from the file what Dez recognized as an autopsy report. “First thing you’re going to want to look at is the name of the pathologist.”

He handed it over, allowing Dez and Sully to check it out for themselves. What it said made Dez’s stomach drop.

Kindra Abraham.

Lowell’s wife.

7

Dez stared down at the name, willing it to make sense.

Kindra. Auntie K.

“I’m pretty sure I’m not out to lunch on this,” Lachlan said. “But just so I’m clear, Kindra Abraham is Lowell Braddock’s wife, is she not?”

Dez nodded, head moving as slowly as it was taking this latest news to sink in. “Yeah.”

“When did they get married?”

“Uh….” Dez puzzled over the question. He was bad with dates. He had a hard enough time remembering his own anniversary, let along other people’s. “I don’t remember, but I know they were already together when Aiden died. I remember because Kindra was around a lot back then, trying to help.”

Lachlan raised an eyebrow. “Or making it look like she was trying to help.”

“What are you saying?”

“She provided her report to the coroner complete with conclusions. Her opinion was that Aiden died as the result of misadventure. An accident. Most of his injuries suffered at or around the time of death. Granted, it’s never been easy to slap a time on a bruise, given variations in people’s healing times. But since the coroner asked for and received a photo taken of Aiden shortly before this happened—no shirt and without any obvious injuries—it stands to reason many of the contusions and abrasions he suffered were the result of his death.”

“Do you have the photo?” Dez asked.

Lachlan opened the folder—cover held so Dez couldn’t easily see the contents—then removed a five-by-eight photograph. He handed it to Sully but Dez took it before he had a chance to study it. He needed to see it himself.

He didn’t remember the picture, but he recalled the circumstances. The last picture of him and Aiden together.

Mara had taken it the morning of the day Aiden had disappeared. Dez sat sulking on the end of his bed, controller for his video game console clutched in his hands and narrowed eyes fixed to the screen. Next to him, his mom had posed Aiden, impish grin wide, blondish-red hair in dire need of a comb. He’d dared to loop a freckled arm around his older brother, and Dez had a recollection of pushing Aiden away the moment after their mom had snapped the picture.

He stared into the face of this younger Dez, studying the frown, the glare, the way his body was angled away from Aiden’s. It was the look of a boy who wanted to be left alone, who wanted his little brother out of his hair. A boy who’d wanted more than anything to have a dog and felt put upon his allergic kid brother had ruined it for him. A boy who didn’t know how good he had it.

Who didn’t know how horrifically everything was about to fall apart.

Dez wanted more than anything to reach into that photo and smack his younger self upside the head. To hug the kid sitting next to him and keep him at his side every minute until their parents got home.

Sully’s voice cut into his dark thoughts. “You okay?”

“I was an idiot back then. This was taken a few hours before he went missing. Mom and Dad were going out, and I hadn’t been speaking to Aiden. Lowell was coming over to watch us, and Mom didn’t want me being a jerk when he got there. She took the photo thinking it would get a laugh out of me. If she and Aiden could get me to laugh, everything would be okay.” He took a breath, let it out in a sigh shaky with emotion. “I didn’t laugh. I pushed him away and told him to leave me alone.”

“Dez, he knows you don’t hate him. He knows how much he means to you. He really does. Brothers fight. I mean, we fight, right?”

“Never the way I fought with him. I used to go into one of my sulks with him, and I wouldn’t talk to him for days except to say shitty things to him. I never let things go that long with you, not even recently when things were really bad between us. It was because of him, you know. Because of how I left things. I was a jerk to him that day, and that’s the last memory I have of the two of us together: him wanting to play hide and seek and me letting him go off without any intention of looking. I’ve never left things like that again with someone I love.”

“Still doesn’t change the one thing that matters. He knows, Dez. He’s always known.”

“I wish I could see him.”

“I can see him, and I know how much he thinks of you. I’m pretty sure you do too. He’s proven it. He watches over you, D. He always has. There’s no way anyone who’s spent close to twenty years doing that wouldn’t know how much he means to you.”

“Is he here? Now?”

Sully nodded. “With Dad.”

Dez sighed. “I guess that’ll have to be good enough for me.”

He patted Sully’s knee, then snapped his attention to the man on his brother’s other side at the sound of a throat clearing. Locked in his own emotional torment, Dez had almost forgotten Lachlan was there.

Dez cleared his own throat in response. “Sorry, Lachlan.”

“Are we done with the mushy bromantic moment?” Lachlan’s question, the words reminiscent of his usual snark, was belied by the gentler tone in his voice and an accompanying smile—kind rather than mocking. Dez considered pulling himself further from his funk by chiding Lachlan on his soft side, but decided such a move would be risky to life and limb.

“Yeah,” Dez said. “Sorry.”

Sully stepped in with a question before Lachlan could continue. “If Kindra was with Lowell already, how was she able to do the autopsy? Isn’t that a conflict?”

“No one considered the death suspicious at the time, and the police didn’t notice anything on the body to indicate otherwise,” Lachlan said. “It’s there, when you look for it, but it isn’t the most noticeable of marks. The other issue was that, as I recall from my policing days, they were short on forensic pathologists for a couple of years back then. Kindra might have taken it as a matter of necessity. And it might also be worth asking how deep into their relationship she and Lowell really were. Do you have any recollection of Kindra in your lives prior to Aiden’s death?”

Dez considered it but wasn’t completely clear. “A lot from my life at that point is kind of fuzzy. Everything blurred out a bit around Aiden, I guess. I remember Kindra being there pretty much right after, but I’m not so sure I can say she was there before.”

“Can you find out?”

“I’ll ask Mom. She’ll remember.”

“Wait on that a minute,” Lachlan said. “Let me show you the reason for my concerns.” He paused, meeting Sully’s eye first, as if passing him a silent message. Only then did he look back at Dez. “I need to show you a photo of Aiden’s upper body. It’s just neck down.”

Dez stalled a moment, then nodded. This time, he allowed Sully to play the role of vetter, keeping his own eyes averted as he listened to the sound of a photo being slipped from the file.

“Dez?” Sully said a second later. “I think it’s okay.”

Dez rubbed at his face, then turned to look.

An image of a child’s chest rested on Sully’s knees. The deathly pallor and the bruises might have grabbed most people’s attention but, for Dez, it was the freckles. Aiden’s freckles. The ones Dez had so often bugged him about.

His eyes burned as tears built. Sully started to turn the photo over but Dez brought a hand down on his forearm, stopping him. “No. It’s okay.” He peered over at Lachlan. “What did you want to show us?”

“You sure, Braddock?”

“Yeah. Let’s just get this over with.”

Lachlan looked to Sully and continued after receiving a tight nod. “According to the report, lividity was toward the back of the body, which made sense as he was found lying on his back. That meant the skin on his front was less mottled, so we can read the bruising more easily. Now, Dr. Abraham said the bruising she found was almost entirely indicative of blunt-force trauma, such as from coming into contact with debris. She and the coroner used that, combined with knowledge of the river’s rather strong current, to determine the injuries Aiden suffered were the result of his impacting against rocks or fallen trees. What went ignored—possibly deliberately—were these.”

Lachlan extended his index finger, pointing to several small bruises scattered along Aiden’s upper chest and collarbone. Then he went one better, reaching over to Sully’s lap and bringing his hands down, fingers extended, until the tips roughly lined up with the bruises.

“Seven marks,” Lachlan said. “Near as I can figure it, we’re missing one pinky and both thumbs. Given the positioning and the difference in sizes between Aiden and Lowell, I’d say the thumbs were probably in the area of the boy’s belly. As you know, Braddock, it’s much harder to leave bruises along the softer flesh of the abdomen.”

Dez did know that. He’d also known something far bigger, that Lowell had killed Aiden. But seeing it in this way, evidence of the injuries a large man had left on a tiny, defenceless body—Aiden’s body—drew an unexpected explosion of rage from Dez.

He fired from the couch, nearly tripping over Pax who had been curled on the floor at his feet. He stalked to the middle of the room before considering he had nowhere to go, nothing he could break to relieve the fury tearing him up from the inside.

“Son of bitch! That goddamned fucking son of a bitch!”

He spun, finding Sully directly behind him. “Dez—”

“Don’t! Don’t, Sully! Leave me the fuck alone!”

Dez’s breath heaved as he glared at Sully through tears borne more of anger than grief. Sully watched him for a moment. Only a moment. Then he moved in, pulling him into a hug.

Dez’s first thought was to shove him away, but he stalled as his fingers dug into the sides of Sully’s ribs. The photograph flashed back into his mind. He’d pushed Aiden away, and he’d lost him forever.

He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Dez grabbed Sully back, an embrace hard enough to hurt. Sully didn’t say anything, just stood there with him, an anchor around which Dez’s grief and rage and torment could safely churn. As tightly as he wished he could have held onto Aiden, he now held onto Sully. Held onto him as if life itself depended on it.

Because it did. Dez’s life, his reason for living, came down to four living people. If he could, he’d gather them all up—Kayleigh, Eva, Mara and Sully—and never let go.

He had no idea how long they stood there, Dez’s arms python-tight around Sully’s midsection. By the time Dez pulled away, he was a mess of tears and snot, Sully was sucking in deep and likely much-needed breaths, Pax was back at their side as if feeling left out, and Lachlan was nowhere to be seen.

Dez took a minute to head to the main floor half-bath where he splashed water on his face and blew his nose a couple of times. He stared into the mirror, studying his blotchy, emotion-reddened face. He was still angry—hell, furious—at Lowell, but it felt as if a weight had come off. He’d made himself a caretaker as a way to make up for the care he hadn’t taken of Aiden. Rarely did he allow anyone else to do the same for him. Definitely not Sully. Sully was his responsibility, not the other way around.

As embarrassing as it was to lose control again, the fact was Sully had seen him through it. And Dez had let him. He was surprised to realize he was okay with that.

Of course, the embarrassment of Lachlan observing the whole breakdown wasn’t going away as easily.

Dez reemerged from the bathroom to find Sully and Pax waiting for him in the living room. Pax wiggled up to him, tail wagging and wet nose prodding at his hand for a pet. Dez happily obliged, kneeling to wrestle the playful dog to the ground.

“You okay?” Sully asked.

Dez looked up briefly to turn his Pax-created grin on his brother. “Yeah. I’m okay. Sorry I fell apart on you.”

“Don’t be.”

Their attention turned as Lachlan stalked back into the room.

“Sorry, boss,” Dez said, standing. “I had a moment.”

Lachlan smirked as he faced Dez. “Forget it. I’m thinking you probably have a lot of those.”

“Not that bad. Thanks for clearing out for a minute.”

“Yeah, well … I had to make a phone call.”

“To who?”

Lachlan glared a Dez a few seconds. “My brother, you giant, nosy bastard. I haven’t talked to the asshole in years and figured that was time enough. Now shut up and call your mom so we can sort out this mess about Kindra, all right?”

* * *

Dez reached his mom while she and Eva were with Paul up at the cabin.

“It’s a little rustic for my taste, but it’s a lot better than I’d anticipated,” Mara said. “Given he told us it’s off the grid, I expected dinner by candlelight and needing to heat water over an open fire—not to mention having to pee in a bucket. But Paul had it fitted with solar panels and, for when that’s not enough, a generator. He’s offered to bring us Christmas decorations and everything. I think it might actually be nice for us to use as a family. It’s so peaceful here.”

Dez hated to rain on his mom’s parade—she actually sounded surprisingly relaxed given the circumstances—but needs must.

“That sounds great, Mom, but we’ve got something we need to ask you here. Mind if I put you on speaker? I’m with Sully and Lachlan.”

Having received the go-ahead, Dez tapped the speaker button and told her about the file, and the fact Kindra had done the autopsy.

“I didn’t know that,” Mara said. The lightness had left her voice, and Dez instantly regretted having been the cause. “I don’t understand. How was she able to do it?”

“Lachlan said they were short forensic pathologists at the time, so it might have been as simple a matter as that,” Dez said. “What we were wondering, though, was about the state of her and Lowell’s relationship at the time. Were they already married?”

“No, but they’d been seeing each other. It hadn’t been long, but to my understanding, they were becoming quite serious. Lowell had brought Kindra around to meet us. I remember being so grateful for her after Aiden, because she was there, with us, all the time.”

“I remember.”

“You know, looking back on it, Lowell wasn’t around as much. In fact, other than the funeral, I didn’t see him at all that first month. Funny, the things that make sense when you look back on them with new eyes.” She paused, and Dez didn’t fill the space, suspecting Mara was in thought rather than awaiting a response from him. “You’re telling me Kindra was in on all of this? Kindra?”

Dez looked to Lachlan for an answer, but received nothing but a shrug.

“We aren’t exactly sure yet, Mom. Lachlan and I will probably have to go and talk to her to find out for sure. She likely won’t tell us the truth if she was, but Lachlan has some mad skills in the bullshit-detection department.”

Lachlan, though, seemed to have jumped on board another train of thought. He cut into the conversation before Mara could reply. “Pardon me, ma’am. Lachlan here. I’m wondering if you’re anywhere near Paul right now.”

“He’s right here.”

“Excellent. Could you put him on?”

Movement in the background suggested the phone had changed hands. A moment later, Paul’s voice came on the line.

“Paul here.”

“Hello, Paul. Lachlan. Listen, question for you. Kindra Abraham. Do you know her?”

“Of course. I’ve known her for years.”

“Would she, by chance, be a member of the Circle?”

“She is,” Paul said. “Didn’t you know that?”

Dez exchanged questioning glances with Sully and Lachlan, receiving head shakes all around.

“No, none of us knew that,” Lachlan said. “How long?”

“Years. She was already a member when I was brought in.”

“Did Lowell help to bring her on board?”

“My understanding was she was a member before Lowell was. I’m sorry. I thought you all knew given your knowledge of Lowell’s involvement. He and Kindra met through the Circle.”

8

After hanging up with Mara and Paul, Dez had to pace off the effects of receiving a blast from yet another massive bombshell. Lachlan, not one for pacing, sat back in his easy chair, eyes half closed.

“This whole thing was a massive coverup from the start,” Dez said.

Lachlan released the lower lip he’d been squeezing. “Sure starting to look that way, isn’t it?”

Dez’s eyes snapped onto Lachlan. “What about the chief coroner? He in on it too?”

“The current chief coroner, no. He’s only been in his post twelve years. The previous one, quite possibly. Then again, it’s rarely been a medical professional in that job. The reason for having a forensic pathologist is to advise the coroner on the medical aspects of death investigations. The coroner who handled Aiden’s file would have taken his cues from Dr. Abraham.”

“So now that we know this, what do we do with it?” Sully asked.

“We don’t know one important thing,” Lachlan said. “We don’t have proof she deliberately covered anything up. We only have our suspicions.”

Dez jabbed his finger in the direction of the now-closed file. “Those finger marks—”

“Only clearly appear like finger marks when you’re looking for them. And don’t forget: Love is blind. If Kindra knew Lowell was the one watching you and Aiden when it happened, she might have consciously or unconsciously overlooked certain details that might have led to questions against him. If she did make a deliberate decision to ignore certain possibilities, it might have had to do with nothing more than her feelings for him. And remember too, no one in your family, with the possible exception of Sullivan, would have believed Lowell capable of such a horrible crime. As the person closest to him, why would Kindra have thought any different?”

“What about the fact she was in the Circle?” Sully asked. “If she was aware of Harry’s vision about the second son thing, she would have heard about Aiden being named as a threat. And she might also have been aware Lowell had been directed to kill him. That would make her a party to murder.”

“It’s also highly possible few people were brought into the loop on the actions deemed necessary to protect the Circle from the prophesy,” Lachlan said. “Think about it. As ambitious and ruthless as many people can be, most would stop well before killing a person, particularly a child. No doubt the executive council, or whatever they’re called, considered that. I’d think the killing of a young boy—two if you consider Forbes was also targeted some years before that—would be kept on a need-to-know basis. They could have left Kindra out of the equation, given her growing relationship to your family at the time. If she didn’t know, that could explain how she so easily showed her face at your house as often as she did afterward while Lowell avoided you like the plague. Or….”

When Lachlan didn’t immediately answer, Dez sent out a prodding, “Or what?”

“Or maybe she’s not the sort of person you thought she was. Maybe her staying close to all of you was a deliberate attempt to keep you off Lowell’s trail and to report back to him if anyone became suspicious or started asking questions. If she knew Lowell couldn’t face you, she might have gone over there, offering her apologies for how busy he was and filling your brain with all the non-criminal reasons he might feel too guilty to come on his own. It wouldn’t be inconceivable, of course. His brother’s young son died on his watch. If Kindra was over there as often as she was, she’d have all the time and opportunity in the world to drill that idea deep into your brains.”

“I remember that coming up a few times,” Dez said. “It actually got so we felt sorry for him. All these years, I’ve blamed myself for not being there, but I don’t remember ever blaming him. It’s weird, looking back on it. Maybe it was all Kindra. She’s always bridged the gap whenever there’s been one between us and Lowell. She tried to do it with me when I went to her for help with Pax when….” Dez trailed off, a thought forming.

This time, it was Sully stepping in to dig for an explanation. “What?”

“After you’d been grabbed by the Dules and Pax was tranqued, I took him to Kindra to look at. He growled at her, like pretty nastily. I remember telling her it was just because he was drugged or not feeling well or whatever, but now I’m not so sure anymore. Pax has something like a sixth sense for bad people. You told me once he wasn’t really a people dog, but he actually is. You and Pax just weren’t around a lot of good people when you were living in The Forks. He’s mostly easygoing now, but he still reacts when he encounters someone he doesn’t like or trust. What if he picked up on something from Kindra?”

Lachlan’s face curved into a slow, Grinch-like grin. “You up for an experiment, Braddock?”

“When you look at me like that, I’ve got to ask first. What kind of experiment?”

Lachlan ignored the question for the moment, eyes going to Sully. “Would it be all right if we were to borrow your dog for an hour or two?”

“You want to take him to see Kindra, don’t you?” Sully asked.

“If the dog got snippy with her just because he was under the influence of something, that’s one thing,” Lachlan said. “If he does it again now, maybe that gives us an answer or two.”

“I’m a little surprised at you, man,” Dez said. “You don’t even like dogs.”

“Hey, I may not like having a dog around the place, but they come in pretty damn handy sometimes,” Lachlan said. “When it comes to sniffing out an asshole, give me a dog any day.”

Dez smirked. “If it comes to sniffing assholes, I’d rather have a dog to do the dirty work too.”

* * *

Dez sent a text rather than opting to phone Kindra, uncertain whether he could keep the suspicion from showing in his voice.

She responded within two minutes, answering his question about whether she had time to talk.

For you, always.

The reply was indicative of the aunt he’d quickly come to love once she entered their lives, so much so he felt sick to his stomach over the upcoming questioning. Having left Sully behind at Lachlan’s, Dez had assured him he’d be fine with a visit to Kindra’s office.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

“She there?” Lachlan asked.

Dez handed off his phone over, allowing him to focus on driving—and sweating. He was doing a lot of the latter, despite the cold temperatures outside.

“You sure you’re up for this?” Lachlan asked. “I can talk to her myself, you know.”

“She’ll be more likely to talk to me, don’t you think?”

“Sure, I think. But if you’re going to keep perspiring like that—or worse, try to put her through a wall—I’d rather you stayed in the car.”

“No one’s going through any walls,” Dez said. He thought better of the promise, and added a caveat. “Yet. I’m reserving that part for her husband.”

Dez recognized Kindra’s car in the parking lot of the city morgue when they pulled in, and he took a few moments to steady his nerves as well as he could.

“Braddock?”

“Got it cased, man. Let’s go.”

“Hang on,” Lachlan said. “I think you need to be aware of the strategy I intend to employ here. We need to do more than spook her. We need to talk her into going to the police with what she knows.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“By convincing her of how much we know. If we present it to her as a way out for her, a way to save herself from prosecution as an aider or abettor, it might be she’ll decide playing ball for our team is in her best interests.”

“So we’re going all in, is what you’re telling me.”

Lachlan smiled, but the expression was tight, no trace of amusement or enjoyment. “Yep. That’s my plan.”

“What if it backfires?” Dez asked. “What if she chooses to go to Lowell rather than the police?”

“I don’t think she will. I think most of the people in this Circle seem to be fairly self-serving. When she sees the writing on the wall, she’ll seek to distance herself from it.”

“Not everyone’s the same. Paul’s not like the others.”

“He’s an exception. Listen, Braddock, I know this is a huge step we’re about to take, and it’s not without its risks. But near as I can figure, we’ve got everything we can get, short of someone reliable to sit down and make a statement against Lowell. Sullivan’s got us what amount to recorded confessions from Gerhardt and Montague, but both require him to come forward. Once he’s in the open, all bets are off. We’ve got this one chance to hammer down a solid witness, one who can very likely point a finger at Lowell in Aiden’s death, possibly even your father’s. We can’t beat around the bush on this anymore. We need her, or we need Sullivan.”

“What about the DNA results from Thackeray? Sully says that will come back to Lowell.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. Besides the hospitals, there’s only one morgue in the city. As of now, we’ve got nothing tying Lowell to Thackeray’s death, which means we’ve got nothing to keep Kindra from making herself the forensic pathologist in charge of the autopsy. There’s too much opportunity for evidence to go missing or be destroyed or switched. Sure, she’s not supposed to unseal or handle anything outside of the presence of police, but really, who’s to stop her? I want Raynor in the room when the autopsy’s completed and evidence collected, and I want her removed from her post—prior to the body arriving at the morgue, if possible. That means either outing her as corrupt or incompetent or having her remove herself willingly. I think the second option is in everyone’s best interests.”

Dez struggled to quell the nausea building inside his gut. He knew this sort of confrontation was a possibility, of course, but sitting here now, getting ready to stare it in the face, was proving harder than anticipated.

“I don’t think I can say it,” he said.

“Hey,” Lachlan said. “With me, you don’t have to.”

Dez took one last nerve-steeling breath and led the way out of the vehicle. He opened the back door for Pax, scratching at the dog’s ears, an action that was more for himself than Pax.

Pax at his heels, Dez led the way inside and nodded a greeting to the commissionaire on staff.

“Brought the dog again, I see,” Larry observed, leaning a little farther over the desk to study Pax.

Pax didn’t growl or bark, merely regarded the man with the same sort of scrutiny he was receiving.

“Yep,” Dez said. “Dog-sitting again.”

Larry turned his attention to Lachlan. “I’ve seen you around here before, haven’t I?”

“It’s been years, but yeah. Lachlan Fields. Used to be—”

“KRPD, yeah. I remember you.” The fading smile on Larry’s face suggested the memory wasn’t a fond one.

Dez wasn’t surprised.

“Is Dr. Abraham expecting you?” Larry asked.

“I am,” came a voice from the doorway leading to the main building. Her eyes, too, drifted to Lachlan. “Or one of you, anyway.”

She let Lachlan’s presence go for the moment, closing the short distance to Dez and folding him into an embrace he forced himself to return. “How are you, Desmond?”

Kindra was, Dez thought, the only close family member he had who almost always used his full first name. Kindra had always been like that, warm and yet formal, the sort of woman who made a perfect wife for a glad-hander like Lowell.

“I’m okay,” he said. “This is my boss, Lachlan Fields.”

Kindra extended a hand, smile shrinking a little, though still there. Polite rather than welcoming. “We’ve met. It’s been a few years, but we’ve chatted over our share of post-mortems.”

Dez decided it was time to put a piece of the plan into action. He stepped aside just a little, giving Kindra and Pax a view of each other. “And I think you remember—”

Pax cut in, low growl emanating from his throat as he regarded the doctor.

“Oh, my,” she chuckled. “I certainly do. Still not the friendliest guy, though, is he?”

Dez resisted exchanging a look with Lachlan, instead forcing a smile. “Must remember you having to jab him last time. Probably thinks you’re a V-E-T.”

“Maybe you should leave him in the SUV,” Lachlan suggested.

Dez agreed, albeit reluctantly; Pax hadn’t done anything wrong to be once again relegated to the confines of the vehicle. But he took him out anyway, giving himself one last soothing moment with the dog before returning to Lachlan and Kindra.

Kindra led them down the hall, past the morgue rooms and autopsy suites and into one of the offices on this floor. She had a more formal and comfortable office upstairs, but Dez knew she spent most of her time in this one, writing up her reports for the coroner and the police.

Having closed the door behind them, Kindra circled her desk, leaving a pair of chairs on the other side for her guests. She waited until they were all seated before speaking. “So I’m guessing this isn’t entirely a social call.”

Dez found he wasn’t sure what to say, which wasn’t a bad problem to have as long as Lachlan was around. Rarely was Dez’s boss lost for words.

“As you may be aware, your nephew here has been doing some work for me.”

Kindra smiled. “I’d heard.” By way of explanation to Dez, she added, “Your mom. I hadn’t seen you in a few months, and she and I talked on the phone a few weeks ago. She told me you’d found a job with a retired police officer working as a private investigator.”

Dez nodded but was prevented from replying by Lachlan. “That’s correct.”

“So I’m guessing you’re here because you have some questions for me pertaining to an investigation you’re working on.”

“Indeed,” Lachlan said. “It’s a rather delicate subject, I’m afraid. Some information’s come to light recently regarding Aiden Braddock. I was able to have a look at the coroner’s report, and I noticed you were the pathologist.”

The smile faded completely from Kindra’s face. Dez had never seen his aunt like this, face resembling a stone mask. She was always laughing or smiling or wearing a sympathetic expression. This Kindra was someone he didn’t know.

Given what they’d recently learned, he supposed he might not truly know Kindra at all.

“I was,” she said. She peered at Dez. “We were very short-staffed in those days. The only other pathologist employed with our office at the time was on his summer holidays, and it quickly turned into a very busy week. I remember speaking with the coroner after Aiden’s body was brought in. We discussed what I was to do, given the obvious conflict. I’d been dating your uncle by then, and while we hadn’t been together long, Lowell and I both recognized the likelihood of it turning into something more serious. The coroner and I talked about waiting until the following week, when my colleague was to return, but your family obviously wanted to have Aiden’s body back as soon as possible, to get on with final arrangements. In the end, I told the coroner I’d perform the post-mortem to prevent unnecessary delay for his family.”

Dez bit back a retort. Kindra painting herself as the family woman who’d sacrificed her own psychological well-being to aid those she cared about, it was too much given what Dez expected were her true motives.

“You ruled his death one of misadventure,” Lachlan said.

“Basically, an accidental drowning, yes.” Once again, her eyes drifted to Dez. “Are you sure you want to talk about this, Desmond? I know you’ve struggled with it.”

“Actually,” Dez said, “that’s exactly why I want to discuss it.”

He’d been unable to keep the heat out of his tone, unintentionally signalling to Lachlan a turn in the questioning.

Lachlan went with it. “I won’t beat around the bush. I’ve looked at the autopsy photos. I noted what appear to be a series of finger marks in the area of the boy’s chest and collarbone. They look like the sort of injuries you’d see in the intentional drowning of a child.”

A tiny breath escaped Kindra’s mouth, but it was the only sign of tension she revealed. “Mr. Fields, I’m sure you noticed Aiden was covered in contusions, abrasions and even a couple of lacerations, all from some form of blunt-force trauma. How you’d expect to find so-called finger marks in the midst of all that—”

“But I did. Thing is, Dr. Abraham, I was a cop a long time, long enough to have seen two prior cases of intentional drownings involving young children. I saw the marks because I knew what I was looking for.”

“I didn’t see those marks. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My recollection from your report is you supplied an approximate bruise count as part of your findings. That suggests to me you looked at the boy in some detail—as one might expect of a pathologist examining a body for the purposes of a coroner’s investigation. I’m not asking how you missed the injuries. I’m asking why you chose not to include them in your report. I mean, to be fair, you did break down many of the other injuries, providing possible causes. Why not those? They certainly appeared deep enough to me to count. Certainly deep enough to merit asking a question or two.”

Kindra’s lips formed a tight line. “You’re suggesting Aiden was the victim of foul play, and I missed it.”

Lachlan’s answering smile was cold. “I’m suggesting Aiden was the victim of foul play, and you ignored it.”

This time, Kindra’s exhale sounded like she’d been punched in the gut. Lachlan continued before the woman had a chance to recover.

“Desmond tells me your husband was watching his nephews that day. Seems to me if homicide was indeed the cause of the child’s death, Lowell Braddock would have been first on the list of suspects. You had reason to want to protect him from such an inquiry.”

“Lowell didn’t hurt that boy.”

“If not him, who?”

“As I said, it was an accident. A terrible accident. That’s all.”

“I’m afraid I’ve moved well past believing that, ma’am.”

Kindra’s eyes narrowed, and she fixed Lachlan in a glare fiery enough to barbecue a brisket. “There are three people sitting in this room, and only one of them is a medical professional. That person isn’t you, Mr. Fields. You can see what you like in those pictures. My opinion remains the same.”

“You’re sure about that? You’re willing to stand by Lowell Braddock even if it will mean your own downfall?”

“What?”

Lachlan leaned forward, one side of his lips quirking up in his characteristic sneer. “Thing is, ma’am, we’ve got more on him than just this. Aiden’s simply a piece of a larger puzzle. Perhaps you’re aware, for instance, of the scandal that broke out not long ago, relating to Lockwood’s former chief psychiatrist? Files were located, as well as drugs. Drugs we believe will trace back to LOBRA. Your husband’s company is teetering on the edge of a knife. Once the investigation fully reveals the hand he played in the torture of helpless patients—including your own adopted nephew, Sullivan—Lowell and the company he started will be ruined.

“You have a chance to rewrite your own story. You’ve obviously worked very hard to get to where you are. You’re a highly intelligent, skilled and competent doctor. I would hate to see you lose everything you’ve earned. I would especially hate to see you go down for your role in covering up for you husband’s crimes.”

“You don’t know—”

Lachlan talked over her. “You have a decision to make, Doctor. You can go to the police with what you know and help them stop a very dangerous man, or you can go down with him.”

Kindra fired up from her chair, hands slapping hard against the surface of her desk. “How dare you? How dare you come into my office and accuse me and my husband of these things? You have no right. And you.” Her eyes fixed on Dez. “How can you allow this? How could you believe those things about me? I have always, always been there to support you and your family. So has Lowell.”

“Don’t,” Dez said, the word coming out a growl. “Just don’t.”

“Get out,” she said. “Both of you.”

Dez stood, but Lachlan remained sitting, still smiling coolly up at the woman. “One thing first, Doctor. Thackeray Schuster. His body was found this morning, buried in the basement of his former house, blood and skin cells under his fingernails. Whose blood do you suppose we’re going to find?”

Kindra paled so suddenly, Dez half-expected her to pass out. He waited, watching as she used shaking hands on the chair’s armrests to help lower her back to sitting.

Lachlan created a seesaw of the moment, standing as she sat so that she had to look up at him. “If I were you, ma’am, I’d reconsider your loyalties. You’ve covered for Lowell a long time. We know he killed Aiden. We also know he killed Betty Schuster and her son, Thackeray. We suspect he played a role in Harry Schuster’s death. We know he tried to kill Sullivan. We know he intentionally injected his brother with epinephrine. And we suspect he shot and killed Justice Prescott Montague. What’s more, I’m certain you know all of those things too.

“As I said, you have a decision to make. You can protect Lowell or you can protect yourself. You might lose a few things, including your medical licence, but if you play your cards right, you just might avoid prison. Your call. The investigator you’ll want to talk to is Sergeant Forbes Raynor, Major Crimes. Oh, and just in case anyone entertains any ideas about knocking off myself, Desmond, Raynor or anyone else connected to the investigation, you should know more people than ourselves are aware of the things we’ve just discussed.”

Lachlan finished with another smile. “Give it some thought.”

Then he led the way from the office.

9

Left alone with Aiden’s file, Sully looked through the contents Lachlan had tried to protect them from.

Nothing Sully saw would be pertinent to their investigation—at least nothing Lachlan hadn’t already told them about. All he came away with were more images burned into his brain.

The Aiden he’d grown up seeing wasn’t this Aiden, the one lying on an autopsy table, his skin an ugly colour and his body bloated from heat and water. Throughout his time with the Braddocks, Sully had seen Aiden how he must have been in the moments after his death. He realized how lucky he’d been, to have been spared this other image.

His parents, he knew, hadn’t been so lucky.

“I’m sorry you had to see your son like this,” Sully said. He didn’t have to look up to know his dad was nearby, watching over him. He closed the file and looked up anyway, needing to see Flynn. Needing to see Aiden.

They were both there, as he knew they would be, hand in hand, watching him with eyes filled with sorrow.

“We’re close,” Sully said. “Really close. Just a little while more and you guys can go.”

He hadn’t expected it, the rush of emotion choking the final word. He’d felt nothing but good all the times he’d successfully helped a spirit to cross. For some reason, it had never occurred to him this might prove the exception.

He was lucky, after all. Among those in his family, he was the only one who had irrefutable proof of life after death. He was the only one lucky enough to be able to still see Flynn and Aiden. As much as his gift had tortured him at times, there were moments it gave back.

He knew its limitations, but more than not being able to see the non-homicides was the devastating knowledge he couldn’t see the ones who had crossed into the light. When Flynn and Aiden were finally able to go, he wouldn’t see them again. Not until, one day, he joined them.

He wanted the best for them, and the best now meant peace. But the cost to him would be significant.

They were close to nailing Lowell, and that meant he was close to losing this connection to his dad.

A flash of purple in his peripheral vision told him something else—or rather, someone else—was close.

Lucky appeared, her usual dread-filled self, in the border between living room and entryway. Her large eyes shot from Sully to front door.

Just as the doorbell rang.

Sully jumped, instinct turning him toward the window. Lachlan had closed the drapes, allowing just a sliver of light to enter the dim room. Sully leaned toward that crack and peeked through.

A car was parked on the street, one containing several people. The faces of two were hidden from him due to their positioning on the passenger side, farthest from him. But the driver… he recognized him.

One of the men who’d attacked him this morning.

The doorbell rang again.

Sully dug out his phone to call Forbes, eyes roaming the rest of the street as he did so. He saw something else now, another car.

Ara’s car.

The back door of the men’s car opened and one of the larger men emerged, gun in hand, his eyes—and his aim—fixed on someone standing at Lachlan’s door.

“Shit,” Sully said. The man wouldn’t be taking aim at one of his own accomplices. “Shit.”

Sully dashed to the door and pulled it open, reaching out blindly and grabbing the closest part of Ara he could find.

He towed her in by her arm, then took a second to lock up before abandoning her in the front hall to check the rest of the floor. Convinced everything was secure, he returned.

Her face, wide-eyed and pale, contained a hundred questions. Sully didn’t have time for any of them.

He completed what he’d started, dialling Forbes’s number, waiting the second it took for him to pick up.

“The men who attacked me this morning,” Sully said. “They’re at Lachlan’s, outside on the street in a dark blue sedan. Ara’s here too. They either tailed her here or they’ve got a bead on her now that she’s turned up at your place. I’ve got her inside the house with me now, but I’ve got to get her out of here.”

“On my way,” Forbes said. “Stay on the line with me.”

“I can’t. I have to warn Dez and Lachlan. They’ll be coming back here any minute. I don’t want them walking into this unprepared. These guys have at least one gun between them, and they’re the type to use them.”

“Okay. Call and warn them, then call me back. Or better yet, get us all on a conference call. Can you do that?”

“Haven’t got a clue how,” Sully confessed. He disconnected without waiting and dialled Dez.

Ara got in a question between calls. “Sully? How—What…. What is this?” Her voice shook, shock covering her features. Sully took a quick second to gently touch the side of her face.

His attention returned to his phone as Dez picked up.

“We just finished up,” Dez said. “Shit, man, you won’t believe—”

“Dez, listen to me. The men from Ravenwood are here, at Lachlan’s.”

“What?” Dez’s one-word question ended on a squeak. “Sull—”

“There’s more. Ara’s here. I think if they can’t get me, they might try to take her to use as bait for me.” He’d been moving toward the window as he spoke, and now he peered out, hoping to see what the men were up to. They were still there, still sitting in the car. Waiting. “They’re still there. Outside.”

“We’re on our way.” Shock had left Dez’s voice, only to be replaced by resolute anger. “They’d better hope to hell they’re gone by the time I get there.”

“I’m going to need to deal with them, Dez. I can’t let someone else get caught in the crossfire.”

“No, you’re fucking not. Wait for us to get there.”

“You’re a threat to them, Dez, and they’ve shown us what they do with threats. I didn’t call you to try to get you here faster. I’m calling to ask you to stay away. Just until they’re gone.”

“Yeah? And that’s a hard no. We’re coming. Hold on.”

“I can’t. I told Forbes I’d call him back.”

“He’s on his way too?”

“Yeah.”

“If he was at the office, he’s farther away than we are. Hang tight. We’ll be there in less than five.”

Sully disconnected. The stakes had changed. The car was still sitting there, one of the men waiting on the sidewalk, ready for action. His gun was out of view, likely to prevent a concerned neighbour calling police, but Sully knew it was there nonetheless, within easy reach.

Sully knew he was right, that Dez was a threat the men wouldn’t want to contend with. How could he not be, protective powerhouse that he was? And if the men had been told about Sully, no doubt they’d been warned about his brother. Dez had saved him the last time, and he’d do it again and again; they had to know that. Rhona Dule had gotten close to Dez the last time for that exact reason. These men would open fire the moment they saw Dez.

Sully could think of just one way to deal with them, and it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Sully?”

Crap. That left the problem of what to do with Ara.

He turned to her, finding her directly behind him. He grasped her shoulders, forced a hint of a smile onto his face. “I know this doesn’t make sense to you, and you deserve an explanation. I just can’t give it to you yet. I need to deal with those people outside. You have to stay in here while I do that, okay? Find somewhere to hide and stay there until Dez or Lachlan or I come to get you. All right?”

“What is this? I thought you—”

“Now, Ara! Please!”

He’d unintentionally shouted it, desperation ruling his words. He forced calm, then tried again. “Please. I need you to hide. I can’t deal with them until I know you’re safe.”

She stared into his eyes for a moment, one that seemed to drag on far too long. At last, she backed away, eyes scanning the room.

“There’s a pantry off the kitchen,” Sully said. “It’s close to the back door if you need to get out of here. Go.”

She started to go, but he thought better of it. This might be his last chance, his last opportunity to grant her a chance at the life she deserved.

“I’m happy for you, you know,” he said. “You and Emory. He’s a good man, and I’m grateful to him for being what I can never be for you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. You never needed my permission to go on with your life, Ara. You deserve to be happy, and I’m glad you are. Now go. Please.”

Tears filled her eyes at his words, and she gave him one last long look and a sad smile before backing away toward the kitchen, holding him in her sights as if seeking to form a lasting memory. Then she was gone.

Now it was just Sully, his collection of ghosts and his would-be killers.

And Ned.

The poltergeist was still hovering around him, the unlikeliest of loyal companions, ever ready for action. Sully hoped he wouldn’t have use of Ned—the last time he had, someone had died—but the spirit might prove lifesaving under the right circumstances.

As long as he could keep the hangman tamped down. No question what he’d want to do with these men.

Sully gave it only another second’s thought before drawing Ned’s energy into himself. His insides churning with the force of the contained energy, he moved toward the door.

Lucky and Flynn each appeared in front of him, attempting to bar his way.

He faced Lucky first. “It’s okay. I know what I’m doing. You need to trust me.” He then turned to Flynn. “If I don’t deal with them now, they’ll hurt the people I love in order to get to me. They’ll hurt Dez. I can’t allow that. Anyway, they won’t kill me. Not yet. The Dules said it has to be in a fire.”

He wasn’t successful in easing their concern, as he knew he wouldn’t be. But they weren’t holding him back anymore, either. They stepped aside, just enough to create a path for him between them.

He walked out onto the veranda, hood up and hair down to conceal his features. There was no sense hiding from the men; they knew it was him without needing a closer look. But no sense the entire neighbourhood being able to identify him if these people just shot him and took off.

He was pretty sure, with Ned’s energy thrumming through him, a bullet wound wouldn’t stop him. He half-hoped they would—just put a bullet in him and take off. If they believed they’d killed him, it would get the Dules out of his hair awhile, at least long enough to deal with Lowell without his birth family causing a major complication.

Of course, nothing was ever that easy.

The smaller of the men, the one who came across as leader, stepped from the car’s front passenger seat as Sully neared. Sully spoke first.

“It’s me you’re after, not anyone else. This is between me and the Dules.”

“I agree,” he said. “They want to see you. Get in.”

He could fight them, could unleash Ned, the hangman, too, if he wanted. A quick scan of the area negated that idea. Two people were shovelling their walks, at least one of whom was watching. If Sully went full poltergeist in front of those people, he’d never be able to come back here, and Lachlan would have a hell of a lot of questions to answer.

He did the only other thing he could. He got in the back seat.

Two guns. That was the first thing he noticed. One held by the smaller man up front, a second by the larger man next to him in the backseat.

“Those won’t help you,” Sully said. “Not against me.” The words came out sounding more confident than he felt. He’d managed a weird, rapid-fire healing from a gunshot wound at Lockwood a couple of months ago, but that had been just one injury. If he ended up with a series of slugs inside him, he didn’t have quite so much faith in his ability to recover—additional spiritual energy or not.

They didn’t have to know that. As it stood, memories of what he’d done to them at Ravenwood were coursing through them; he could tell by the tight expressions, the rigidity in their postures, the way the two gunmen clutched their weapons in white-knuckled grips. Past experience had given Sully an unusual upper hand, an element of fear that could turn the situation in his favour—if he used it right.

Currently, he had no desire to use it. These men wouldn’t kill him here and now, after all. The Dules had given their orders and no doubt paid well to ensure they were obeyed. Whether by the Dules’ hands or these men’s, Sully was to die by fire. He’d force himself to stay solid during the drive; the real fight would come once the car stopped moving.

With the car accelerating down the block, Sully allowed his eyes to leave the guns long enough to check out the driver. Like the man sitting next to him, he was a larger man, but not the other one he’d encountered at Ravenwood, the one who’d clearly been high on something when he ran off in a panic.

“New guy,” Sully observed. “Your last one didn’t want to face me again.”

“He wasn’t in a state to get the job done,” the smaller man said. “He’s got some problems. I’m sure you noticed. Bernie”—he nodded at the driver using his chin—“doesn’t have similar issues. Don’t worry.” The man managed a smirk. “We’re all in very good hands.”

“Where are we going?”

“For a drive.”

“I gathered that much,” Sully said. “In town or out?”

“Out,” the man said. “Can’t risk anyone finding you before it’s done. Speaking of….” He turned to the man in the backseat. “Tie him up.”

The guy next to Sully set his gun down and pulled out a pair of long zip ties from his pocket. Time to nip this one in the bud.

“Nope,” Sully said. “Not going to happen.”

The de facto leader tried for cocky. “You think you’ve got a choice?”

Sully turned a heated glare on him, was pleased to see a nerve jump along the side of his forehead. “Damn straight I do. I’m coming along quietly at this point. You want to change that, go ahead. But your buddy back here will be out that door before he knows what’s happening, and you’ll be using your gun in ways you’d rather not consider.”

The backseat thug was convinced, zip ties dropping forgotten to the floor while he retrieved his gun. Sully noticed the smaller man up front wasn’t arguing the point either.

The driver had yet to say or do anything but steer. He chose this moment to break his silence. “What the hell is this? You’re not actually letting this asshole give you orders.”

“This asshole isn’t our problem,” the smaller man said. “We’re being paid to deliver him, that’s it. Anything else ain’t worth my time.”

“But—”

“And you’re being paid to drive, Bernie. Shut up and do it.”

Sully sat back, did his best to relax. They were heading north out of the city; that much became obvious as Bernie steered them onto the freeway and avoided the exits that would have led them toward the northeast or northwest parts of Kimotan Rapids. What awaited them at the end of the drive was unclear, the games the Dules were willing to play myriad and dangerous.

Sully had told his dad and Lucky he knew what he was doing. Truth was, he was making it up as he went. And until he knew exactly what he was facing, the outcome—for his enemies as well as himself—was far from certain.

10

The house stood at the end of an unplowed lane. The snow had drifted so heavily in spots, they would have to walk in rather than drive. A second vehicle sat this end of the lane, abandoned with a few sets of prints leading from it toward the two-storey farmhouse.

Among the prints was a set that came not from feet but wheels. Lorinda. How Rhona and Greta—no doubt responsible for the two sets of boot prints Sully observed in the snow—had wrestled both Lorinda and her wheelchair in here, Sully had no idea.

But one thing about the Dules: They were determined. The fact he was here, in the company of a group of paid hitmen, was evidence enough of that.

Sully took some satisfaction from the markings left behind in the snowdrifts, evidence the women had struggled coming through here. If Sully was reading it correctly, Lorinda had been made to walk in places while the chair was dragged. Someone had sunk deep into the drift, leaving a trail of pits that spoke to a struggle in extrication. A similar set of marks met Sully and the other men as they reached a second, then a third snowdrift.

The women—Lorinda at least—would have been exhausted and grouchy by the time they got to the house. If they were anyone else, he might have felt bad for them.

Having passed the final snow-created hurdle, Sully turned his attention to the farm. That it was no longer inhabited was obvious—and not just because of the fact the road hadn’t been plowed in some time. The house wasn’t in horrible shape, suggesting it had been lived in within the past decade, but the paint and the shingles were peeling, and one of the lower storey windows this side was smashed.

A variety of other buildings stood, all in need of fixes were this ever to be used again as a farm. A large barn was in far worse shape than the house, sagging precariously against its lean; a row of old wooden bins was missing doors and boards; another small building—its purpose lost to time—had fallen in completely. Sully’s eyes went next to the only other item of note in the yard: a pair of tanks toward the back of the property, marked “fuel” and “diesel” in large, faded lettering. If the Dules had managed to tap into the one tank—and if it still contained sufficient gasoline—they’d have all the accelerant they needed for a decent blaze.

Ned rattled around inside him, eager for release, and the hangman was crouched and ready to spring at a moment’s notice. A time not so long ago, Sully would have given in to both, would have let them take control in order to protect himself both physically and psychologically. But he’d seen the destruction the pair could wreak. With little to no moral compass between them, the one Sully possessed was all that stood in the way of an unnecessary murderous rampage. If death became necessary, he’d let the hangman at it. Sully was no killer—not where it counted, anyway. If it came down to having to do it again, he knew well enough to leave the job to the professional concealed within his soul.

A flash of purple came into view from behind a caragana bush. Lucky’s eyes were wide, fear rippling off her as she moved to stand in front of the door. He knew what she was trying to do, and there was wisdom in her attempt to keep her son from entering that house. But Sully had moved past wisdom, had firmly entered a mindset of determined recklessness. He didn’t know what awaited him on the other side of that door. All he knew was these people were keeping him from dealing with the situation with Lowell—a situation that was threatening his family’s safety and any chance they had at peace. The Dules needed to be dealt with, one way or another. He was done running, done hiding.

They’d been expecting Bad Sully ever since they’d learned of his existence.

They were about to meet him.

The men who’d brought him here flanked him, standing close by as if expecting him to do a runner. No doubt they’d been told by the Dules he wouldn’t come quietly. He banked on surprising everyone by heading for the front steps willingly, leading the way to the building’s front door.

Lucky didn’t move, standing still and resolute in his way.

“I have to do this, Mom,” he said. “You have to let me.”

She shook her head.

“Who are you talking to?” asked one of the two larger men at his back. He didn’t look to see which, didn’t care.

“Shut up, you idiot,” the smaller man said.

Sully’s attention returned in full to the teenager on the top step. “Please,” he whispered. “This needs to end. One way or another, I need to deal with it.”

She stared at him, large, blue eyes no less terrified by the determination he knew had to be showing in his own gaze. But, as she had at Lachlan’s, she slowly stepped aside.

Sully moved past her and, conscious about the idea of leaving prints should this go badly, used his coat sleeve to turn the knob. It opened easily in his grip, door either left unlocked or incapable of being locked.

The house was surprisingly warm, suggesting someone had started a fire already.

“In here, Sullivan,” a voice called from somewhere on the main floor. He was in a kitchen; he guessed Lorinda—the voice he’d just heard—was up ahead, probably in a living room or parlour.

Sully glanced behind himself. The men hadn’t followed him inside, opting to remain out in the snow. Sully had no idea why, and it seemed there had to be a reason for it.

While he looked small compared to Dez, Sully was solidly built by normal standards. At six feet, he’d managed to regain some weight and muscle he’d lost during his self-imposed years in hiding, and he knew how to hold up his end of a fight, even without supernatural intervention. Add all that to the fact these women had to know how much he loathed them, and he couldn’t help wondering why they weren’t more intimidated by the idea of facing him without some backup present.

It was probably a call for caution on his part. But caution required time. Time he no longer had.

He pressed ahead, passing Lucky as she stood at the juncture between kitchen and what proved to be a sitting room. In the room, gathered near a lit fireplace, were the Dules.

Rhona had dragged over a once-plush chair and had plunked herself into it, water damage and potential mouse infestation be damned. Greta stood nearby, arms crossed while leaning back against the wall as if trying for an appearance of cool despite the panicked, drugged-out look in her eyes. And between them, posed collectedly in her wheelchair, sat the matriarch of this nasty little clan. Lorinda leaned forward slightly as Sully entered the room, her bright eyes looking him up and down appraisingly.

“You’ve gained a little weight since we last saw you,” she said. “You look much healthier.”

He didn’t respond. They’d moved far past the point of engaging in small talk. “What do you want?”

He felt no surprise despite a quick movement from Greta, one that ended in her aiming a gun directly at him.

“They were supposed to tie you up,” she said. Then to her mother, as if the statement had gone unheard, “They were supposed to tie him up.”

“Wasn’t going to happen,” Sully said. “Anyway, I came quietly. They didn’t have to restrain me. Neither do you. Put the gun away, Greta, before you get hurt.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked. “I’m the one with the gun. It’s you who should be worried about getting hurt.”

He’d forgotten about Lorinda’s liking for tranquilizer darts and her ability to move quickly when she chose. He felt it before he had time to register movement from the chair, the bite of a dart into his midsection. He yanked it out, threw it discarded onto the time- and weather-battered rug, and waited for the inevitable sensation of sinking.

It didn’t come.

He puzzled over it a moment, just as the women clearly were. He didn’t need as long as they did, though, to land on the answer. He was carrying Ned’s massive energy inside him; as long as Ned was there, Sully was more or less immune to the effects of whatever drug they’d just given him.

“Shoot him again,” Rhona said.

Lorinda raised the gun. Sully focused on it, let Ned do his thing. The weapon flew across the room and clattered against the wall before slipping into the crack between wall and sofa.

Lorinda turned narrowed eyes on Sully. “How did you do that?”

“It doesn’t matter. You wanted me here. You’ve got me. What do you want?”

“You know what we want.” Her eyes were slits as she glared at him. “We know what you did back at Ravenwood Hall. We know you killed a man. You’ve gone bad, just like we said you would.”

“He tried to kill me. I didn’t mean for him to die, but it happened.”

“Because you’re evil. You can’t control yourself or the power within you. And now someone is dead. We can’t allow you the chance to kill anyone else.”

“He’s dead because you sent him and the others after me. You wouldn’t leave well enough alone. All I want—all I’ve ever wanted—was a chance at a good life. You’ve been doing everything in your power to prevent it, all based on some stupid thing from the past.”

“But you’ve been learning how to do things, haven’t you?” Lorinda asked. “You just threw that gun across the room like it was nothing. You can move things, control things with nothing more than a thought. But it’s not all you, is it? You’ve taken in another soul. You’re evil, Sullivan.”

“Because I can control possessions?”

“Because you do more than take them in. Whenever you do, whenever you carry the soul of another being inside you, you take in a piece of that spirit. You start to become them. You think you control them, but it’s an illusion. Over time, they will poison you, corrupt you, turn you into them. Do you know about the Spirit Caller?”

Sully knew who they meant, but he hoped to draw more information from them. “Who?”

Rhona took up the explanation. “I’ve been researching our family history, trying to learn how far back this evil goes. I believe I’ve traced its origins to a man who lived and died in the sixteen hundreds. His name was Thadeus Dule. He called himself the Spirit Caller.”

“By all accounts, he was what people might call a warlock or a necromancer,” Lorinda said. “He could control the dead, could draw in their ghosts to strengthen himself, to give himself unnatural power. Back then, being an executioner was a role few wanted. Not Thadeus. He revelled in it. He worked as a hangman. It’s where we came by the name Dule, you know. Dule trees were hanging trees, and Thadeus became so well known for his job that it became his surname.

“Everywhere he went, people knew and feared him. Because people knew another truth about him: Whenever he took a man’s life, he also took his soul. And these were evil men he was executing; each time he pulled in another of their souls, his own darkened with it. After a time, it wasn’t enough to wait for executions to feed the darkness inside him. He needed more. He started to kill others, people he believed possessed souls which could make his stronger. It became his undoing. Eventually, he was captured and put to death at the end of a rope, just as he’d done to so many others.”

It was the part of the story Sully had never fully understood. “If he was so powerful, why did he let them kill him? Why not fight them?”

“Because he knew something about death most don’t,” Lorinda said. “He didn’t fear it. He welcomed it. He knew as powerful as he was in life, he could find more in death. He could find immortality. He was getting older by then, and one account Rhona found suggested he was dying of some sort of illness. No doubt his intention was to find and possess another, healthier body, use it to exact the revenge he swore at the time of his execution. He found it first, we believe, in his biological grandson. The boy grew up and slaughtered an entire family. Years later, that man’s son went on to beat his wife to death. And so it goes. Nearly each generation contained a story about a Dule male who went bad, who turned to murder, often blaming it on sleepwalking, drunkenness or outright possession. All said they weren’t in control of themselves when they killed. And I believe it’s very likely true they weren’t in control. Thadeus was. He’s moved on down through the line, and he’s wormed his way into a male descendent at virtually every generation. We see the results: the deaths, the tragedy, the pain he’s wreaked. He won’t stop, and he won’t be stopped. Not unless we do it.”

“We thought the men we hired could do the job, but you proved too strong for them,” Rhona said. “When we learned you were still alive, we knew we had to act. They told us what you did, how you killed that man, how you threw them around the room like rag dolls. We knew then that you’d discovered Thadeus’s power inside you, that you had travelled far down the road toward becoming fully evil.”

“You went bad, just like we said you would,” Lorinda said.

“No, I’ve learned how to look after myself.”

Lorinda leaned forward. “And the man you killed? The one you put through the window? What does that tell you?”

“He died because you put him up to something he couldn’t handle. I feel shitty about what happened to him, but it was as much, if not more, your fault. I’m going to say this once. Leave me and the people I care about alone. I’m not a bad person. I never was. But keep pushing, lady, and I will show you exactly how bad I can get.”

“That seals it.” Lorinda peered up at Rhona. “Just as I told you, there are some things we need to do ourselves.”

The words proved a signal for Rhona, who stepped toward the back of her mother’s wheelchair and removed a container strung with thin, coloured wires from a bag slung over the handles. Sully had never seen a bomb in real life, hadn’t even known anyone who knew how to make one. If this wasn’t a bomb, it sure as hell looked like one.

“What the hell?” he asked.

“We knew we might need to make sacrifices,” Lorinda said. “We’re all prepared to die to protect the world from your evil. The Dule line dies with everyone in this room. There’s no one else left. The evil soul of Thadeus Dule may never die, but with no one left to inhabit, he’ll drift for a time. Eventually, though, the devil will find him and take him down to hell where he belongs.”

Lorinda peered over at the box in Rhona’s hand, and she touched it with near-reverence. “Fire purifies the soul. In the end, we all need it. We, too, have been forced to kill.” She smiled at Sully. “Blood belongs with blood, Sullivan. In life and in death. Now we’ll be together forever.”

Sully hadn’t seen it, the button on one side of the box. Didn’t see it until Rhona pressed it.

The hangman—Thadeus—sprang. Sully let him, the time for talk over. There was nothing left to do but die.

Or, if he could manage it, escape.

Thadeus pulled Ned’s attention to the nearest window, pushed outward with every iota of energy the entity possessed. Unfortunately for Greta, she stood in the way, and her body took a huge wallop as Ned’s energy forged an explosive path through both window and wall. Greta was blown from the house moments before Ned propelled Sully’s body through the same opening.

A deafening boom and a wall of heat shook Thadeus as he flew forward, impacting against a cushion of snow. His ears rang, and he once again revelled in the fact that here, taking up residence within this body, he was no longer restricted by the deafness that had plagued him in his former life. With the audible blow from the explosion, it seemed as if he was hearing the world through cotton, but he was hearing it nonetheless, and that was still remarkable to him.

He turned, looking back at the house. Flame tore through it, the hottest flames bursting from the spot he’d just flown from, the device in the women’s hands having eradicated much of the structure.

It had eradicated them too. He couldn’t see them, but could sense them, spirits freed from their bodies. He could only imagine their chagrin at discovering him still standing, still very much alive, despite their best attempts. From his pocket, he grabbed Sullivan’s gloves and slipped them over his cold hands.

He didn’t have long to rejoice in their failure. Though muted, he heard male voices coming from behind him. He spun. The trio of hitmen were running his way, guns drawn and aimed at him.

It ended now.

Thadeus picked up one of the two larger men and flung him inside the house, basking in the agonized screams that resulted. Already one of the others was preparing to fire his gun, and Thadeus turned next to him, spinning him so his aim shifted just as the bullet discharged—shifted to his larger accomplice. The bullet meant for Sullivan hammered into the forehead of the larger hitman, opening up his skull at the back and painting the stark white snow with a spattering of blood, brains and bone fragments.

One man remained—the leader—and he looked very much like he wished he was anywhere else as Thadeus closed the remaining distance to him.

The smaller man tried, brought the gun up, more terror in his eyes than murder. Thadeus used the poltergeist to shove the man’s gun arm back, watched as the gun was propelled out of his hand, lost to the snow somewhere behind him.

The man turned to watch it go, but only for a second. It was all he had before Thadeus grasped the man by the throat. The strength of a small army running through him, Thadeus lifted his enemy, watching the eyes as they bulged down at him.

“Couldn’t leave well enough alone,” he said. He’d eventually stopped being able to hear himself speak in his old life, and he found he was fascinated by the sound of his own voice emerging from this descendent of his. His own Cockney accent, his own words, but from the voice of another.

The hitman’s mouth moved as if to speak, but with no ability to utter a word, he came off more closely resembling a suffocating fish, floundering on land.

Thadeus tilted his head to peer at him. “How many more like you? How many more want to send me to hell?”

No response resulted, which wasn’t a surprise given the circumstances.

“Question is, what should I do with you? I’d be well within my rights to kill you, but I’d do nothing but prove those witches right.” Mind made up, he flung the man down, watched as he scrambled away a few feet before collapsing in the snow and gasping for air.

“I’m not what they think,” Thadeus said. “I didn’t start off this way. I was given a job to do, and I did it. Hanging turned out to be the only thing I was good at. And I didn’t steal a soul that didn’t deserve it. Was it really so bad, what I did? In the end, I took only the lives of evil men, and I took only souls otherwise destined for hell. I killed killers and I stole from the devil himself. In the end, they killed me for it. Did I deserve it? Did I deserve to die for performing a service no one else had the strength to?”

He took a few steps forward, until he stood over the hitman. As if sensing the presence, the man turned from his stomach before dragging himself backward. Thadeus followed. One foot sank through the snow, to his knee. He thought up a new use for Ned, commanding the ghost to lift him, to hold him so he floated an inch above the snow. He saw the terror in the hitman’s eyes as he drifted toward him, booted toes scraping the snow. The hitman scrambled in reverse, but the snow finally betrayed him, sending him down within it close to a foot, far enough to make extrication a challenge.

“Leave me alone!” the man wailed. “Please! Just leave me alone!”

“And you’ll leave me alone, will you?”

“Yes! I won’t come near you! Never again! Please!”

Thadeus cocked his head as he regarded the man. “I don’t know.”

“Please! God, please!”

Thadeus laughed, the sound of it enough to chill even him. He expected his words to the man would rid him of some of the horror in his expression. “Hard to resist a beggar.” He considered how best to get out of this place, realized the vehicles were the only option. “Give me the keys.”

“I don’t have them.” The hitman pointed with a trembling hand to the bloody body in the snow, the one he’d been made to shoot. “He was driving.”

Thadeus peered over his shoulder to locate the spot, then returned his attention briefly to the still-living hitman. “It’s your lucky day. I’d suggest you celebrate by finding yourself a new occupation.”

He turned, using Ned to take him safely back across the deep snow, back toward the body. There, he leaned over the man, rifling his pockets until he felt what seemed to be the keys in question. He was straightening up, keyring in hand, when a gunshot sounded. The force from a bullet passed within a foot of his face.

He wheeled, turning eyes and full attention on the hitman. The man had crawled a few feet, had located the gun somewhere in the snow. He’d taken aim, had fixed Thadeus in his sights.

Thadeus sent Ned at him. The man’s gun hand shook badly, his eyes growing large in his head as he realized too late his error. Ned forced the man’s hand back. Back until the gun, clutched in fingers locked in place, aimed itself steadily at his own head.

“Guess it’s not your lucky day, after all,” Thadeus said.

“No!” the man yelled.

It proved to be his last word. His finger, under Ned’s influence, squeezed the trigger. His head exploded out the side, and Ned allowed him to crumple to the snow. A moment later, the man’s ghost stood next to his body, wide-eyed stare shifting from his own corpse to Thadeus.

“See?” Thadeus said. “Death’s not so bad.” He scanned the farmyard. The spirits of the two other hitmen were visible to him now, too, standing nearby, also dead by Thadeus’s will.

He considered what was best to do. In the old days, he would have drawn them in, devoured their souls and stolen their energy. But each soul came with its own memories, its own character, pieces of the person it had once belonged to. It could be a struggle, quieting them, finding himself amid the spiritual turmoil.

He had all the power he needed in Ned. And it just felt better. One spirit, one massive but single energy and consciousness. Ned’s past, if he had one, was lost to time. He’d stopped being a human spirit some time ago, was nothing now but a drifting and aimless force looking for purpose. Sullivan—Thadeus—had given him that purpose. Ned was like an attack dog, loyal to no one but his master. He’d follow where Thadeus led, and he’d do his bidding.

As far as Thadeus was concerned, Ned had a date with Lowell Braddock.

11

Dez had stopped counting, but he had to have tried Sully’s phone at least two dozen times.

It was either dead or someone had turned it off or broken it. Whatever the reason, his calls weren’t going through.

He paced Lachlan’s living room, watched by Ara and Pax from the couch, the dog sitting next to Sully’s ex-girlfriend. Dez hadn’t bothered kicking Pax off of Lachlan’s sofa. He had bigger worries at this point than a shedding canine.

Ara had passed along the news once Dez and Lachlan had returned from the visit to Kindra: Sully had gone, at gunpoint, with the men who had attempted to kill him at Ravenwood.

No question what that meant. Hired hitmen didn’t take a target shopping or for tea. Even if they hadn’t dragged him off to put a bullet in his brain, the only plausible alternative was that they’d taken him to the Dules. Either way, the end game was Sully’s death. It had to be. The Dules wouldn’t allow any other outcome.

“I’m sorry,” Ara said. “I wish I could have done something.”

“Not your fault,” Dez said. He didn’t blame her, but he knew he hadn’t put a convincing amount of feeling into the statement. He just didn’t have the energy to devote to making her feel better, not when he needed someone to make him feel better.

“I don’t understand.”

Dez turned at the words from Ara. “What?”

“About Sully. I thought he was dead. He didn’t explain.”

Dez wasn’t in the mood to offer a full explanation, but Ara deserved—and needed—something, especially if he was going to ensure she kept it to herself. He provided what he could of a quick rundown, watched as her eyes widened at the added revelations.

“He could have trusted me,” she said when he’d finished. “Why didn’t he trust me?”

“It was never about trust,” Dez said. “It was his way of protecting us. All of us.”

“Who was there to protect him?”

Lachlan had gone off to another room to make some calls, and he returned now, face bearing no trace of hope. Dez’s heart sank another foot.

“Nothing?”

Lachlan shook his head. “Last place Sullivan’s cellphone pinged was off a tower in the city, and that was well over an hour ago. Nothing since. Looks like it’s gone dead or has been turned off.”

Dez took that in, gave it a second to settle. Then he clutched at his hair and swore loudly enough to be heard next door.

He glanced back up to see Lachlan closing the distance to him. “Listen, I think we need to keep in mind Sullivan isn’t helpless. Far from it. There are things he can do none of us can fully explain. If anyone can handle this situation, I’m convinced it’s him.”

Dez knew Lachlan had a point. Sully had, after all, managed to heal from Gerhardt’s bullet by somehow corralling the energies he’d pulled in. That was using just a few spirits from Lockwood. Sully said he had Ned hovering around him now. Given what Dez knew about the poltergeist’s power, Ned might make Sully just this side of invincible.

That was, of course, dependent on where Sully took a bullet. Dez suspected a head shot would render any help Ned might otherwise provide meaningless. If these hitmen were worth their salt, they wouldn’t be satisfied with anything other than a head shot.

Dez resumed pacing but was interrupted in his useless course by Lachlan’s voice.

“It’s getting close to three,” he said. “You need to pick up your daughter from school, don’t you?”

Dez stilled. “Damn it. Lost track of time.”

He started for the door where he’d left his coat and boots but was halted by Lachlan’s voice once again. “Hang tight there, Braddock. I’ll come with you.”

Ara joined them at the door. “Is there something I can do? I want to help.”

Dez shook his head. “At this point, I’m not even sure what we can do. We’re playing this by ear, Ara, all of it. Any plans we’ve made have fallen apart. Anyway, you have a life—a good one. You need to go live it.”

“Just because I’m happy and with Emory, doesn’t mean I ever stopped caring about Sully. If he’s in trouble—”

Dez cut her off. “He cares about you too, and he won’t thank us for involving you. If there’s something I think you can help with, I’ll call. But at this point, we’ve got nothing resembling a plan. I won’t drag you into this. Go home. I’ll let you know once we have some news. Okay?”

Ara wasn’t satisfied, that much was clear by the furrowed brow. But Dez didn’t want anyone else involved—particularly someone with no defence training. Too much was already at play, and Dez wanted to get Kayleigh to safety as soon as possible. She’d be fine at school, but he wanted to make sure he was there once the bell rang, ready to pick her up. She was his highest priority; everything else, Sully included, needed to take a back seat until he was convinced his little girl was safe.

Maybe Ara sensed that. Graceful as always, she didn’t argue the point, merely enveloping Dez in an embrace. “I hope he’s okay. I really hope he’s okay.”

Dez hugged her back. “Thanks, Ara. Me too.”

* * *

Dez waited outside Kayleigh’s school, Lachlan next to him and Pax taking up a sizeable portion of the back seat.

School would be letting out in a couple of minutes. Dez had called Eva on the way here. She’d left Mara at the cabin and was at home now, picking up Mara’s suitcase and packing bags for herself, Dez and Kayleigh. Sully’s belongings were still in the hatch, next to Lachlan’s. Dez and Lachlan had come up with as much of a plan as they could manage. They would pick up Kayleigh and take her to Eva, who would return with her to the cabin. Dez and Lachlan would then turn their attention to finding Sully.

Dez had initially intended to just go in and get Kayleigh, but decided he could use a couple more minutes alone with Lachlan first. There were things they wouldn’t be able to discuss in front of her—namely the fact her uncle was in major trouble.

“I’m not sure where to start looking,” Dez told Lachlan. “The Dules could be anywhere.”

“Maybe we don’t start with them. There aren’t a lot of people in KR on the call list as hitmen, even fewer who work in teams. I don’t have a lot of inroads into that arena anymore, but given Sullivan’s description of these men, they sound to be over thirty, maybe even forty. That suggests to me they’ve been at this a while. I put a file together at one point, trying to keep tabs on people who took on hit jobs. Might be one of them jumps out at us as a possibility.”

“Chances are they didn’t stick around at the same address for long.”

“Give me some credit, Braddock,” Lachlan grumbled. “I do know how to find people, you know. That’s why I get paid the big bucks.”

Nagging dread swelled inside him, the kind that told him that even if they found the men, it would likely be too late to change anything. Hired killers didn’t doddle on paid jobs. This wasn’t a kidnapping with a ransom demand at the other end. Sully was supposed to die, end of story. Dez swore, raking his hand through his hair.

With less than a minute to go before the bell rang, Dez’s dark thoughts were interrupted by his cellphone ringing. Forbes.

Just as well. Dez had a bone to pick with him. He hadn’t shown up at Lachlan’s, and he hadn’t bothered to pick up when Dez had tried him.

“About bloody time,” Dez said. “Where the hell were you?”

“Braddock, listen.”

Dez’s shoulders tightened, as did his grip on the phone. This wasn’t Forbes’s usual brusque tone.

This was pain.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been shot.”

Dez put Forbes onto speaker for Lachlan’s benefit, turning wide eyes on him. “He said he’s been shot.”

Despite the fact the phone was on speaker, Lachlan snatched it from Dez’s hand. “Where are you? Is help coming?”

“I called 9-1-1. Hung up to call Sullivan but couldn’t reach him. Haven’t got much time. Another cop did this. Amber Lisoway. Talked her way onto the Thackeray Schuster murder.”

Dez cut in. “Maybe you should save your strength. You sound like hell.”

Forbes wasn’t having it. “I’m supposed to be dead. Might end up there anyway. Turn on a recorder. Need to provide a statement.”

Lachlan handed back Dez’s phone, then pulled out his own. He located his notes app, opened it and hit record. “Got it. Go ahead.”

“Amber Lisoway was my partner on the Montague investigation. Had been on past cases too. Trusted her. Told her I was looking into Lowell Braddock, and about his possible connection to the Montague homicide. I put Oliver’s statement about Montague onto a thumb drive, said it was the original. Wanted to play it for her, but didn’t want anyone to know about the copy on my phone. She wanted to listen to it, and we were supposed to go to her place. She drove me to the old warehouse area instead. Made me get out of the car at gunpoint and walk into one of the buildings. She didn’t say anything other than demanding the thumb drive. I handed it over. She shot me twice and ran out. She didn’t use her service weapon; she had a secondary one. You need to protect yourselves. Turn off your recording.”

Lachlan clicked the button on his phone. “It’s off.”

Forbes’s voice, when it came again, sounded mumbled and groggy. “Didn’t give her Sullivan’s name, but once she plays it for Lowell, he’ll recognize it. She’s trying to eliminate all connections between the murders and Lowell. I’m sure of it. Where’s Sullivan?”

Dez ignored the question for now. “Why do you think this is about Lowell?”

“She’s involved with the Circle. Mentioned it to her and she reacted.”

The school bell rang, drawing Dez’s eyes there. As he watched for Kayleigh, he heard distant sirens coming through his handset. “How bad you hurt, Forbes?”

“Don’t know. One in the chest, one to the head. Hurts like a bitch but could be worse. Think I’m in shock.”

“The head?” Dez asked.

“Just sliced through my scalp and kept going. Bleeding bad. Hit my head on the way down, knocked myself out. Probably thought I was dead.”

The sirens sounded closer. “Listen, Forbes,” Dez said. “We’re going to try to find out which police officers are Circle members. It will help us figure out who to avoid. Once I track Sully down, I’ll check in on you.”

Forbes didn’t answer.

“Forbes? Forbes, come on. Answer me, man. Forbes!”

Nothing.

“Shit,” Dez said. He could hear movement now, someone approaching Forbes. Meanwhile, in front of him, the school was emptying of kids.

“Watch for Kayleigh,” Dez told Lachlan. “You remember what she looks like, right?”

Lachlan shot him a withering glance, but didn’t otherwise respond.

Someone picked up the phone and Dez held his breath, hoping.

“Who is this?” came a voice on the line.

Dez breathed a sigh of relief, recognizing the voice of his former colleague, Clark Davies. Clark was a good, solid cop, as incorruptible as they came. What was more, he had earned his stripes the good, old-fashioned way—with solid police work.

“Clark, thank God. It’s Dez Braddock. Listen, Forbes just filled Lachlan Fields and me in on what happened. Amber Lisoway shot him. You need to make sure Forbes is under twenty-four-hour guard, you hear me? I’m going to get a list of names and forward them to you. Those names will be police officers you can’t trust. And I’ll have Lachlan forward you a verbal statement Forbes just provided to us, detailing what happened to him.”

It seemed to take Clark a moment to compute. “Jesus, Dez. You’re not fucking serious.”

“Wish I wasn’t.” Dez watched the front doors of the school as Lachlan tapped the share function on the recording.

Still no Kayleigh.

“Need your number, Davies,” Lachlan said. “I’m going to send one to the chief’s office as well, hit up as many of the brass as possible.”

Clark provided his own number and Lachlan sent off a copy of the recording.

“Sure sending it to the brass is a good idea?” Dez asked. “Odds are at least one of them is a Circle member.”

“One thing I know about the power-hungry,” Lachlan said. “They don’t suffer fools. They’ll push their own mothers off a sinking life raft if it means keeping themselves afloat longer. Might be we win this by separating them from each other. But you raise a good point. I’ll call our source first about those names.”

Dez took his own phone off speaker while Lachlan made his call to Paul.

“Listen, Clark, stay alert, all right?” Dez said. “Until we get you that list, you can’t trust anyone.”

“You’re freaking me out, man.”

“Welcome to my world.” Dez disconnected and redialled Sully’s number. As before, the call ended in a message the person he was trying to reach was away from the phone.

Dez clicked off just as Lachlan finished with his conversation with Paul.

“Still nothing from Sullivan?” Lachlan asked.

Dez shook his head, fighting back another bout of cold dread.

Lachlan dropped a hand onto his shoulder. “Listen—he’s smart, capable and tougher than he looks. He won’t go down easy on this, all right?”

Dez nodded, but left it at that.

So did Lachlan. “Paul’s going to send me a list, not just of the police members, but everyone he can think of in the Circle. I don’t know why I didn’t think of asking him sooner. I’m an idiot.”

“With a concussion,” Dez reminded him. “Anyway, I didn’t think of it either.”

“Yeah, well, I’m usually smarter than you,” Lachlan quipped.

“I won’t disagree.” Dez’s eyes remained locked on the school doors, and his heart gave a thud as a final group of stragglers left the schoolyard. Kayleigh hadn’t been among them. “You’re sure you didn’t see my daughter?” Dez glanced at Lachlan, found his eyes fixed on him.

“I’m sure.” His voice was tight. “I think you’d better go and ask.”

Dez didn’t need to be told twice. He was out of the car and inside the school in less than ten seconds, taking it at a sprint. The office was right there, on the left, and Dez went up to the window, shouting to get the attention of the school secretary.

He knew how he must look by the alarm that passed across the woman’s face as she headed over.

“My daughter, Kayleigh,” he said. “She didn’t come out of school. Do you know if she’s still here somewhere?”

The woman paled. “You don’t know?”

It was Dez’s turn to pale. “Know what?”

“She was taken out of school about an hour ago. They’re family. I recognized them both and Kayleigh seemed happy to go along with them. I thought you must have known.”

Dez didn’t have to ask. He did anyway.

“Who picked her up?”

Though he knew what she would say, the woman’s answer nonetheless made his stomach drop.

“Lowell and Kindra Braddock.”

12

Dez raced back to the SUV, where he’d left his cellphone.

His brain, as much as it was capable of forming a coherent thought, flipped between calling 9-1-1 or Eva first.

Lachlan, standing outside the vehicle, Dez’s phone in hand, provided an answer—though not one of the options Dez had considered.

Lachlan’s hand covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “It’s Lowell. I’ve put him on speaker so I can—”

Dez didn’t have the luxury of time to think, nor was he capable of it at the moment. He snatched the phone from Lachlan’s waiting hand.

“Where is she?” he snapped, his tone the embodiment of all the terror and rage coursing through him.

“Relax, Dez. She’s fine.”

“Where. Is. She?” Each word a clipped sentence of its own, spoken through gritted teeth.

“As I said, she’s safe. We need to talk.”

“Where and when?”

“Right now, right where you are is just fine. I understand you tried to convince Kindra to go to the police with the collection of lies you levelled at her. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, boy, but it ends now, do you hear me? Whatever you think you’ve got on me, it’s wrong. It’s all wrong. I didn’t hurt Aiden, and I didn’t hurt your dad. And I didn’t do anything to the Schusters or Sullivan or anyone else. Now, you’ve been through a lot the past couple of years and—”

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up! I’m not discussing this with you. Tell me where my daughter is, right now!”

“She’s with us, and she’s safe. A lot safer than I am, apparently. How can you accuse me of these things, Dez? You’ve known me your whole life. Whoever’s been telling you these things, they’re obviously out to get me. You have to see that.”

“What I see is that you took my little girl and won’t tell me where she is.”

“You make it sound like a kidnapping.”

“What the fuck would you call it?”

“She’s my great-niece. I used to see her all the time. That all changed a couple of years ago when you started to slide. Kindra and I just wanted to spend some time with her again. There was a time you wouldn’t have minded if we took her with us for a visit.”

“Those days are long gone. Stop trying to sell your bullshit and tell me where you’ve got her.”

“She’s with us, and she’ll be just fine. I need you to call off this ridiculous witch hunt you’ve got going for me. I know you blame me for the deaths of your father and your brothers, but it’s crazy. Your dad had a heart attack. He and I had a big blowup, and his heart couldn’t take it. Aiden’s death was nothing but a terrible accident. And Sullivan died as a result of a misadventure because he chose to run from the psychiatric help he so desperately needed. Don’t you see how bizarre it sounds for you to try to pin all of that on me? And the Schusters yet? Come on, kid. You make me sound like a bloody sociopath.”

Dez glared down at his handset as if it was the embodiment of Lowell himself. “If the diagnosis fits.”

“Hear me on this, Dez. You and Lachlan, the two of you are off your rockers. Lachlan Fields was always just this side of crazy, always one to fall for whatever conspiracy theory he thought would make a great case. But you—Dez, you’re better than that. Or you used to be. Whatever Lachlan’s been feeding you, it’s a lie. You’re imagining wrongs where none have been committed. Not by me, anyway. I knew you’d gone badly downhill given all the tragedy you’ve had to cope with recently, but I was truly convinced you’d gotten your life back together. At the very least, I thought your wife and your mom would have been able to get through to you. But they’re not, are they? Because you’ve managed to convince them too. All of you, you’re out of your collective mind. Kayleigh isn’t safe with you anymore, not with any of you. You’re unstable, kid, and Eva and Mara, they’re unstable because of you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I love Kayleigh very much, and I only want the best for her. I can’t allow her to remain in an unsafe environment.”

Dez’s words came through grinding teeth. “You goddamn son of a bitch.”

“I need you to prove to me you’re still capable of stability and responsibility. Once you do, I’ll know Kayleigh is safe with you. Now, I don’t know who you’ve shared your lies with, but I want you to go to each and every one of them and tell them you made it up. And, for God’s sake, don’t even think about going to the police and adding to your insane story by accusing me of abduction. It won’t work. I know people there, Dez. They’ll tell me if you decide to press ahead with these disgusting allegations. I’ll know then that you’ve put your ill-based vendetta against me before your own daughter. If, after a few weeks, I’m certain you and Lachlan haven’t pressed forward with this investigation against me, I’ll know you’re fit to go back to raising your daughter.”

As Lowell’s words began to fully settle in, desperation—of a dizzying level Dez had never before truly known—hammered him in the ribs. It stole his breath, drove his heart to a pounding drumbeat against his chest and drew tears to his eyes. The strength from his voice was sucked away, leaving a tone fraught with gut-wrenching emotion.

“You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch.”

“I’ll call you with updates,” Lowell said. “I promise you, Kayleigh’s perfectly safe, and she’s happy. Kindra is wonderful with children. You know that. We’ll make sure she has a happy Christmas. And we’ll let you talk to her on the phone so you can hear for yourself she’s all right.”

“I need to talk to her now.”

“Now’s not a good time,” Lowell said. “You’re upset, Dez. She’ll hear it in your voice. Get ahold of yourself, and I’ll make sure you can all connect.”

“I swear to God, Lowell, you hurt one hair on my girl’s head, and I will fucking kill you. You hear me?”

“You aren’t helping your position any by saying things like that. I’ll be in touch. Oh, and Dez? Don’t try to call me on this line. I’ve decided I’ll have to ditch my current phone for the time being. I’m well aware Lachlan might have ways of tracing me by using cellphone signals. I’ve got a series of burners I’ll be using for the next few weeks to contact you and Eva. And we’ll be on the move, so no point trying to hone in on us.” Lowell sighed, the sound burdened with fake torment. “I hate that I have to do this. I really do. I know how badly this is going to hurt all of you, especially at Christmas. But it’s necessary. You’ve made it necessary. You need to come back down to earth, kid, and I guess I need to provide you with a little incentive to get there. Just do what I say, and all of this ends well, all right? One day, you might even thank me.”

Dez had a response on the tip of his tongue, one heavily laden with swear words and threats. He didn’t get the chance to voice it before Lowell hung up.

Fingers shaking so badly he could barely control them, Dez punched his recent calls list and dialled Lowell’s number. It rang just once before he received a message the person he was trying to reach was unavailable. Lowell had already turned off his phone. He wouldn’t turn it on again until it suited him.

Dez released agony and terror through a wail, one loud enough and filled with sufficient rage to get the whole block racing for their windows to see who was getting murdered. Just as well for Lowell he wasn’t standing here; he’d make for a very welcome murder victim.

His phone—the one through which Lowell’s voice had sounded moments ago—was still in Dez’s hand, and he drew back an arm, prepared to fling it as far as he could away from him. Lachlan stopped him, daring to step into Dez’s personal space and place a hand on his chest.

“Don’t. I know you’re going through hell, and all you want to do right now is smash everything in sight, but that phone is Lowell’s means of reaching you.”

Dez, breath heaving, glared down into Lachlan’s face a long few seconds. He knew how he looked when in a rage, knew he made for one hell of an intimidating presence. But Lachlan didn’t flinch, didn’t back down.

“Come on, son. I need you to take a deep breath for me.”

“Don’t you fucking try to manage me. Not now.”

“I’m not trying to manage you. I’m trying to help. That’s all. Please, Braddock. Take a deep breath, and give me the phone until you’re calmer. All right?”

“I’m not going to be calmer. Not until Kayleigh—” The sound of her name on his own lips broke Dez open. Fury fled, replaced by grief so desperate and profound it dropped him on his ass on the verge next to the schoolyard fence. He lowered his face into his free hand, a sob erupting from him as his body shook.

He felt Lachlan’s fingers against his, his phone being withdrawn from his hand. Dez allowed it. He was right. The phone was a lifeline to Kayleigh.

Lachlan’s voice sounded, and Dez had to work to focus on the words.

“Any chance anyone at the school called the police?”

“Don’t know.”

“We need to check to make sure they didn’t,” Lachlan said. “Until we can get the upper hand, we need to play this safe. For now, that means no police.”

Dez nodded and heard Lachlan’s footsteps as they moved off toward the school. A couple of minutes passed, minutes Dez filled with thoughts of Kayleigh. Was she okay? Was she scared? She was a smart kid; had she clued in that something was wrong? Would she try to escape? If she did, and was caught, what would that mean for her?

His brain busy plumbing the depths of his own personal hell, he didn’t hear Lachlan return. The first indication was a groan and a grunt from the man, then a pressure on Dez’s left arm. He looked up long enough to see Lachlan had settled next to him beside the fence.

“Secretary didn’t call police. She figured you would if there was a problem. She was planning on staying at the school, though, just in case police needed to talk to her. I told her everything’s fine, just some miscommunication in the family. She seemed relieved.”

Dez didn’t answer. He was pissed at the school, too, and didn’t give a damn about the secretary’s relief. Rational thought dictated office staff and teachers hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. They had no way of knowing what a terrible person Lowell was. No one had told them. All they knew was that Lowell and Kindra were family and that Kayleigh had happily greeted them as such. It didn’t make the current situation any better, but it might help Dez avoid an angry confrontation with Kayleigh’s homeroom teacher at their next parent-teacher meeting. And there would be a next meeting. There would have to be. Anything else was not an option.

His thoughts were again interrupted by the man sitting next to him. Lachlan blew out a long breath, the kind that revealed sadness and tension rather than dispelled it.

“I never had kids,” he said. “So I don’t know what you’re going through. But I do know it’s got to be sheer hell, the kind even the worst human being should never have to endure.” Lachlan’s hand settled on his shoulder. “I need you to know something. I’ve never been good with kids, but I value them. And I will do anything and give anything, including my own life if need be, to get your daughter home safe to you. I promise you, Braddock, I won’t rest until we find that bastard and get Kayleigh back. And I will see to it he pays for what’s he done—for all of it.”

Any other day, his words would have touched Dez deeply. Today, there was no room for positive emotion, grateful as he was for Lachlan’s support.

Dez’s mind grasped onto and held Lachlan’s final statement.

“Thanks, Lachlan. But you won’t see to it that asshole pays.” He met Lachlan’s eye to make his final point.

“That’s my job.”

13

Muscle memory was a blessed thing.

Thadeus knew what cars were, thanks to his existence within a modern world, but he’d never been in full control of one before.

The first kilometre or so had been nothing short of terrifying, the steering wheel not cooperating and the snow threatening to pull him into the ditch each time he wandered even slightly off the pre-made tire tracks.

He survived by reverting to what he knew Sullivan had done when he needed strength for deeds he couldn’t accomplish on his own: He reached deep within, searching for that other side of himself. Thadeus didn’t know how to drive, but Sullivan did. Muscle memory kicked in, making the journey far more bearable.

Which was fortunate, because by the time he got to the highway, he could hear sirens in the distance. Two fire engines—older ones, obviously belonging to a nearby town’s volunteer fire department—blazed past, sirens blaring, faces of the men inside a blur, just as Thadeus hoped his was to them. He truly hoped he’d gone unnoticed when he passed two police cars speeding in his direction. They couldn’t have seen him turn off the road, so they would have no immediate way of connecting him to the explosion, but it paid to be cautious. It was possible, of course, someone had seen him either on the farm or leaving it.

In his rearview mirror, he tracked the red and blue lights as they swirled into the distance. He watched to see if they turned around, questioned what he’d do if they did. Outrunning the police would be manageable in other circumstances, but he didn’t like his chances in a car. Even Sullivan, experienced as he was with driving, wasn’t sufficiently skilled behind the wheel to shake off pursuing cops.

It wouldn’t come to that today. Not now, at any rate. The lights continued on, dwindling into the distance until they disappeared entirely.

Now it was just Thadeus.

Thadeus, the road and the target at the end of it.

* * *

It had taken more than an hour to get from the city to the farmhouse. Thadeus’s inexperience and anxiety in this unfamiliar situation meant it would take even longer to get back.

He estimated he was about halfway there when he came up with an entirely new reason for worry: He had no idea whether this car was owned by one of the men he’d killed. If someone discovered the existence of the vehicle, he didn’t want to be driving it when it was spotted.

A small town lay ahead, and he took advantage, turning left and steering along the main street to get to the opposite side. Christmas was just around the corner—Yule as he’d always called it—and the lights were on display, bright shapes of candles, sleighs and presents shining through the gathering dusk from the streetlight poles. Something was going on at the community hall, a gathering of some kind judging by the number of vehicles present. He’d contemplated abandoning the car out of town on a quiet road, then walking back in and begging for a ride back into the city, but this presented a second option.

Someone was backing out ahead, and he waited until they drove away before pulling into the empty spot. People were far more likely to notice an abandoned car on a country road than to pay attention to one of many vehicles parked at a busy location. Anyway, he now had numerous people in one place from whom he could beg a lift. Surely, someone would be kind enough to oblige him.

He left the keys in the ignition, using still-gloved hands to turn them to the off position and open the door. Before climbing out, he took one last, long look inside the car. He’d been careful, had kept his hood up and gloves on, making sure he left nothing behind that could trace to him. Back in his day, none of that mattered, but police had science at their disposal these days, and they had new and incredible methods of identifying criminals.

Not that Thadeus had done anything wrong, exactly, and it certainly wouldn’t look any different based on evidence police would find at the crime scene. All they’d discover were several corpses incinerated at the house and two shot men, one killed by the other and the final one dead by his own hand. Police had come a long way in terms of science, but they were still dunces when it came to the world in which Thadeus existed. They’d never grasp certain truths, wouldn’t believe them even if they could. At this moment, Thadeus found safety in disbelief.

The cold winter air bit into the bare flesh of his face as he stepped from the car and closed the car door behind him. A cold night lay ahead. Perfect for the deeds needing done.

The door to the hall was before him, and Thadeus made his way toward it, eyes drifting to a noticeboard just outside. A large poster in the centre announced a community Christmas supper this evening: “Community Hall, 5 to 7 p.m. Perogies, cabbage rolls, turkey, sausage and salads. And a visit from Santa Claus. $12 a plate, $6 for kids.” Thadeus smiled. Santa might visit later; the devil had arrived first.

He stepped up to the door and pushed inside. The smell of hot food hit him, and his stomach growled in response. It had been a long time since the last meal, and this seemed like a good opportunity. He located Sullivan’s wallet in his jacket and pulled it out to check its contents. Two twenty-dollar bills. Good enough.

“Would you like a ticket?” an older woman manning a table at the front asked.

“Thank you, ma’am, I would,” he said, handing over one of the bills and removing his hood.

Her eyes lit up. “You’re from London! I recognize the accent. My father was born and raised there, and his accent was just the same as yours.”

“Good Cockney man,” Thadeus said.

The woman continued to smile. It felt strange. No one had ever smiled at him during his own lifetime. Not in this way. He supposed he had Sullivan to thank for that. He had a face people—women in particular—liked to look at, and he didn’t wear his darkness on his sleeve like Thadeus had in life.

“He was a good man,” she said. “Are you visiting someone in the area?”

“Just passing through. My car’s been causing me problems and I came here in hopes of begging a ride into the city. I don’t think I’m going to make it back in that piece of junk, and I’d rather not end up stranded on the road in this weather.”

“I’m sure we can find someone to help you out,” the woman said.

“I’ll take care of him,” came a voice from behind.

Thadeus spun. He knew the voice, enough to distrust it. He recognized her immediately. The witch, Raiya Everton, was clad in a long, loose-fitting purple dress that floated over her full figure, a large, slouchy bag over her shoulder. But it was the expression she wore that held Thadeus’s attention: suspicion.

As if that wasn’t enough, someone else was walking over. Marc Echoles, the professor with the aura-reading ability. If Raiya appeared suspicious, Marc was outright terrified.

“Perhaps we could take a look at your car,” Raiya said. “Marc and I haven’t gotten our plates yet, so you can sit down and eat with us afterward.”

The ruse was obvious. She wanted to get him outside, get him alone.

It seemed a good idea to him. If it came down to a fight, far easier to get rid of two people than an entire hall full of them.

He felt Sullivan squirming, sensed his dread. He could stay where he was, far as Thadeus was concerned. The kid didn’t have what it took to take care of himself, not really. Thadeus had had to step in more than once, and he was tired of doing it. Better he take control permanently, save them both the hassle. Anyway, he thought as he followed Raiya and Marc from the hall, he liked this, being in charge of a body again. Liked it enough to defend against any attempts to change it.

No doubt that was exactly what he’d have to do now.

“Where’s your car parked?” Raiya asked.

“Does it matter?” Thadeus asked. “This isn’t about my car, is it, Raiya?”

She continued walking, proving him right. They turned at the corner of the building, continuing on until they’d reached the back lane. Only there, protected by the shadow and quiet, did Raiya draw them to a halt.

Only, she didn’t simply stop. She whirled. Thadeus saw an object in her hand as her large bag hit the ground. He didn’t have time to react before the object struck him in the head.

Then they were on him, both of them, pinning him against the back wall of the hall. The object that had hit him, whatever it was, was being held to the side of his head now, holding him so his opposite cheek was pressed against the cold siding.

It was silly, all of this. He had no particular desire to harm these people; they’d been useful to Sullivan and therefore to him. But they were also a threat, never more so than now. They knew about him, about his existence within Sullivan, and they were aware of the dangers Thadeus presented—now and always. They’d do everything they could to send him back into the darkness.

If they insisted, he’d put them there first.

“What is it you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“Getting our friend back,” Marc said.

Thadeus laughed. His amusement died quickly as Raiya started chanting in a language he didn’t understand. Marc fumbled with something near Sullivan’s upper chest, tucked the object inside the shirt Sullivan was wearing. Thadeus yelped as it touched his skin.

Mariel’s crucifix.

It burned.

“Let me go,” he growled. “Let me go, or I’ll send the both of you to meet the one who made you.”

“You let go first,” Marc said.

Raiya continued to chant. The object in her hand was growing hot now, blazing through him. What started off as the sensation of a fever escalated, until he felt as if the blood running through Sullivan’s body was heating up, reaching boiling point.

It was now or never.

Ned was still inside him, waiting for a command. Thadeus set him loose, heard Marc cry out as he was thrown backward.

Thadeus easily recognized the outside threat. He hadn’t counted on one from within. Sullivan was done being controlled. Thadeus felt him now, grasping onto Raiya’s chant and the feel of the wooden crucifix as if to a rope lowered into a well. He was climbing, hand over hand, toward the surface.

Thadeus struggled, honed in on Raiya. If he could push her away, he could finish this and get out of here before anyone noticed anything. Maybe he could do it without killing them. Maybe not. He didn’t care.

He didn’t get the chance.

More unrecognizable words from Raiya and Sullivan was no longer climbing. He was leaping.

Thadeus howled as his insides burned.

The world around him, already darkened by the coming of a winter evening, faded out completely.

* * *

Sully awoke to two faces hovering above his, peering down at him worriedly.

Raiya’s voice came through a parting fog. “It’s all right. He’s back.”

“I know,” Marc replied. “I could see it the moment the other presence faded. It looked to me like someone flicked on a light inside him.”

She passed a hand over Sully’s face. “It’s okay, Sully. You’re safe now.”

He tried to sit up but was gently pressed back down.

“Don’t try to move just yet,” she said. “You’ve been through the wringer. Sorry I had to hit you, by the way. I had to take the other one by surprise if we were going to get past him.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad you did.” Sully’s gaze went to Marc, but his friend’s focus had shifted to the street. A passing car had slowed, the window down to allow a woman inside to shout out a question.

“Everything okay?”

“Fine,” Marc said, his tone coming off calmer than Sully suspected he felt. “Our friend is diabetic. He collapsed. We’ll get him something to eat inside right away. That’ll fix him up.”

The woman looked to Sully as if for confirmation, and he followed Marc’s lead by offering a smile and a nod. “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks. I’ll be fine.”

The woman smiled, put her window back up and drove off.

As Marc turned back to him, Sully asked the question he’d intended to a moment ago. “Are you okay?”

“Nothing these old bones can’t take.”

“I’m serious, Marc. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Wasn’t you.”

“It kind of was. I wasn’t really in control, but it was a part of me. God….” He trailed off, mind returning to the farm, to the lives he ended there. The memory was strange—horrifically strange. He’d been present, had observed Thadeus kill as if watching a movie through a virtual reality headset. Yet he’d felt all of it, including the satisfaction Thadeus had taken in his total power.

It scared the hell out of Sully.

Or it should have done. Truth was, hell apparently dwelled within him.

“Sullivan?”

The one-word question had Sully snapping his gaze back to Marc.

“I think it might be there are some things you need help with,” Marc said. “It’s why we’re here. Let’s get you inside, get something to eat, and then you can tell us what’s been happening with you.”

“What do you mean, it’s why you’re here? You didn’t just come out here for supper?”

Raiya stood and extended a hand to Sully while Marc did the same on the other side.

“Marc’s right,” she said. “Let’s get you inside and warm. After that, we can talk.”

* * *

They found a spot at a far table, away from the majority of other community members. Raiya insisted they eat before they get into any sort of serious conversation, and Sully was happy to oblige. He had yet to figure out how he was going to tell them about the things he’d done tonight, when the dark side of his soul had taken the wheel.

“I grew up here,” Raiya said, around a mostly swallowed bite of cabbage roll. “Nice place. Nice people. But not exactly sold on the whole Wicca thing. Very Catholic town, St. Stephens.”

“That’s where we are?” Sully asked. “I didn’t even notice.”

He hadn’t noticed much of anything, come to that. All his brain had room for was the memory of the terror in the eyes of the men he’d killed, the screams of the one he’d tossed inside the exploded house, the pleas on the lips of the last remaining hitman. Right before he forced him to pull the trigger on himself.

“I take it you haven’t checked in with your family?” Marc said. “Maybe you should. It might be they’re worried.”

God, Dez. Sully hadn’t even thought about him, lost as he was in guilt. Marc was right. Dez would be in panic mode by now.

Sully pulled out his phone and hit the button that should have lit up the screen to check for calls. It didn’t work.

“Phone’s dead,” he said. He wasn’t surprised. Between Ned’s frenetic and powerful force and Thadeus, every bit of surrounding energy had likely been sapped up. It was a wonder, frankly, the car battery had held up.

Marc handed over his own phone. “Use mine.”

But Sully had other ideas. He’d call Dez, but he needed to talk first, to get some things off his chest, to try to get his head around what he’d seen and done today. He’d say it—all of it—now and watch for reaction. He trusted both Marc and Raiya, considered them good friends. If they absolved him, he’d tell Dez. If they turned away from him as a result, he’d know to take the events of today to his grave.

“Thanks, Marc,” he said. “But can we talk for a few minutes first? There are things….” Things he didn’t know how to say out loud. He jumped at the sound of a prolonged shriek, watched as a giddy toddler ran past, pursued by a gaggle of equally enthused young children. He watched them go, waited until they were out of earshot.

He considered how best to start before deciding a question was as good a place as any. “You said you came here to help me. How did you know I’d be here?”

“We didn’t,” Marc said. “Not exactly anyway.”

Raiya pushed her now-empty plate aside to allow her to lay her arms upon the table’s surface. “As I was meditating earlier, I sensed a change, something dark. I told you once I have a sense of you in the world, that our energies connect. I sensed a change in you, Sully. A dark change. You’ve allowed the dark part of your soul to take control before, I know, but never so fully. It felt as if the light within you was fading. I called Marc and asked him to come with me. I thought, given the power you carry, it might take both of us to stop you—recognizing even we might not be enough. I considered calling your brother, but I remembered how nervous he is around this other world. I didn’t want any dark power to be able to feed off his fear, plus I didn’t think you’d want him to see you like that.”

“Thanks,” Sully said. “You’re right. I mean, I’ve turned like that in front of him before, but I stopped before I—” He’d come to it now. The worst of his truths.

Marc’s hand settled over his arm, warmth and the support of friendship in the grasp. “Sullivan? Talk to us.”

Sully turned back to him. “What do you see when you look at me? My aura, I mean. What does it tell you right now?”

“You’re who you’re supposed to be,” Marc said. “Your light is back, and it’s strong. But when we first saw you inside the hall, it was like you were standing inside a black hole. You’re carrying something, a terrible weight, one that pains you.”

“But you don’t see it anymore? The black hole?”

“No,” Marc said. “It’s gone. I know it’s there, somewhere inside you, but it isn’t a part of your consciousness at the moment. Nonetheless, your aura tells me you’ve been through something terrible, something you’re carrying with you. Tell us what happened. Maybe talking about it will lighten your burden.”

“I doubt it,” Sully said. “Not this time.”

“Sullivan—”

The words escaped Sully’s lips before he could give them further thought. “I killed people.”

He waited, watched for reaction. Raiya didn’t move, didn’t blink, as if she’d already known. Marc flinched slightly, but didn’t look away, nor did his sympathetic expression change.

They hadn’t abandoned him yet.

“I mean, it wasn’t me, exactly. It was this other part of me, this old part.”

“The hangman,” Marc said.

Sully nodded. He sat forward, despite the fact no one was near enough to hear. “I let Thadeus take control, knowing full well he’d kill. I let him take over because I knew killing would be necessary, and I didn’t want to do it myself. I grew up around police. I know the law: Aiding and abetting a killer makes me guilty as a killer too.”

“These people,” Raiya said. “Tell us about them. What happened?”

Sully explained, taking the pair through the past couple of hours—including the brutal and horrific manner of his escape. When he’d finished, he was both surprised and relieved to find both Marc and Raiya still sitting there, their faces unhardened toward him.

“You said Thadeus took control after Lorinda pressed the button on the device,” Raiya said. “He did it to get you out of there, to save you—or himself, anyway, but it was self-preservation nonetheless. Without some otherworldly intervention, you would have been killed. And the threat remained even after you escaped the house. The men Thadeus killed weren’t good people. They were paid assassins. They were called in by the Dules to kill you, and when they failed, they threatened the life of someone you care for to compel you to go with them. After that, after the Dules were gone, they tried to kill you again. Thadeus might not be a good man either, but he still employed his own version of self-defence.”

“Those men wouldn’t have stopped hunting you, Sullivan,” Marc added. “Now, granted I’m far from an expert here, but I should think assassination contracts would typically involve some upfront payment with the rest payable upon completion. With the Dules dead, they knew they wouldn’t be receiving final payment, but attempted to finish the job anyway. That tells me they might well have continued trying to kill you had you escaped without Thadeus killing them. Men like that, they would think little of collateral damage.

“What if, down the road, Desmond had gotten in the way of a bullet, or Eva or your mom or me, even some random stranger? What would you think then? You’d feel guilt of a different kind, one I’d imagine would be even more unbearable to you than the one you face now. Death contracts can never have a good outcome. In this case, people who set out to kill ended up being killed themselves. While I don’t believe in capital punishment, there are many who’d call what happened today a form of justice.”

“I appreciate what the two of you are doing,” Sully said. “I really do. I was scared you’d think I was a monster for letting this happen. But it doesn’t let me off the hook. Maybe you’re right. Maybe their deaths were necessary to protect myself or others, but I still carry all of this inside me, the memory of what Thadeus did. To be fair, he tried to let the last one off. He gave him a chance. The guy didn’t take it.”

“Interesting,” Marc said. “The way you’ve described this Thadeus, and the way I saw his aura, there’s next to nothing redeemable about him. Yet he was willing to give that man a chance. All this time, you’ve been concerned about the impact this dark side of your soul has on the good part. What if the good is rubbing off on the bad? Maybe it works both ways.”

Sully hadn’t even considered it, this possibility he stood as much of a chance at altering this dark part of himself as he did of being corrupted by the bad. “You think that’s possible?”

“If you stay in control,” Raiya said. “The problem, I think, is that the longer Thadeus remains behind the wheel, so to speak, the stronger he gets. I don’t think he would have relinquished control had we not found you. And he is strong, no question. I could feel him, could sense the static from him increasingly as we got nearer to you. I knew then it would take a lot to overcome him, and I wasn’t even sure the palo santo would be enough.”

“Palo santo?” Sully fingered the cross Marc had given him. “That’s what Mariel’s cross is made out of, right?”

“The object I hit you with was a large piece of wood from a palo santo tree. Mariel gifted it to me after I blessed her cross many years ago. I’ve made a few items from it myself over the years, but still have a large part. Mariel said her cross came from that piece of wood. I blessed it before we left my home. I hoped by connecting the mother wood with the cross we could create a sort of energy flow, one strong enough to drive the hangman back.”

“It worked,” Sully said. “It felt like it was killing him. It was enough that I could finish beating him back from the inside.”

“My intention was never to kill him,” Raiya said. “Killing him would kill you. He isn’t a separate entity. He’s a part of you. I’ve never encountered a past life with a consciousness like his, but he is still a past life, and so a part of your soul.”

She leaned toward Sully again, reaching across the table to clasp his forearm. “You had a very difficult life as a young child, Sully. You were virtually powerless against the terrible people who took you in before the Braddocks entered your life. There must have been moments you wished for the sort of strength you find in this darker part of yourself. It might be that’s a large part of why you are so willing to let the hangman take charge when you’re most at risk. You need to understand something: He is you. You have the strength within yourself to fight the battles that need fought. You can stay in control and still do those things.”

“But today, that meant killing people,” he said. “I don’t want to do that. Thadeus—”

“Kills because he enjoys it,” Raiya said. “That isn’t right, and there’s a huge risk that it could go very, very wrong. The way he looked and Marc and me, I could see he was considering killing us. There’s no doubt in my mind he would have, had we continued to fight him. Sully, you’re a good person, one who has yet to fully grasp how much power can come from good. Dark power might be more immediate and more destructive, but it carries with it great danger. Know that the more and the longer you allow it to control you, the greater the chance you will lose yourself to it. I very much doubt Thadeus Dule began life as a dark entity. I think it’s far more likely that in taking in the souls of bad people, he gradually became them.”

Raiya squeezed his arm, as if to draw his attention to a final, important point. “Take in only good, Sully. Have faith in yourself, in your own power, and good will result. But go the other way, allow the darkness inside you too much control, and I’m afraid the light Marc sees in you will fade forever.”

* * *

The snow fell in heavy, wet flakes when Sully stepped outside with Marc’s phone to call Dez.

Dez answered on the first ring. “Marc?”

Just one word was enough. Pain filled Dez’s voice, a level of torment that sent a shudder through Sully.

“It’s me, Dez.”

A loud intake of breath, one that spoke to deep relief. Then, “Sully? Where are you? Are you okay? I thought you must be—”

“I’m fine. I’m with Marc and Raiya. Some stuff happened, and I need to—”

“Sully….” For some reasons, Dez’s interruption went nowhere further than that. Sully waited on something more, but nothing came.

“What’s going on, Dez?”

Another sound, one that froze Sully in place. A sob. “It’s Kayleigh. Oh, God. It’s Kayleigh.”

The worst flashed into Sully’s mind. His legs gave out, dropping him to his knees on the snowy ground. “No. God, she’s not—”

“She’s alive,” Dez said. “Lowell. He took her. He and Kindra. We’ve checked his place in the city and the estate out west. And we called over to the LOBRA offices, and nothing. We don’t know where else to look. God, Sull. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”

Sully gave it a moment to process. Only a moment. He didn’t need longer. Fury swept in, filling up the space that had been taken by fear.

“First, you’re going to tell me where to meet you,” Sully said. “Then we’re going to go get her back.”

14

The sun had long set as headlights from a car came into view along the highway just north of the city.

The snowfall was lightening up, but it had already done its damage, leaving some roads impassable and most others treacherous. Marc, behind the wheel of his car, had maneuvered carefully into the spot he now occupied, on a quiet gravel road just a few metres from the highway intersection.

Several vehicles had passed already, the more foolhardy or desperate daring to leave the city despite the travel warnings.

Sully suspected such warnings wouldn’t apply to him or his family either. They’d fall into the desperate category in a way few others would.

The approaching vehicle slowed as it reached the gravel road. It made the left turn, then stopped on the opposite side, just out of the path of any oncoming highway traffic. Close enough Sully recognized Dez and Eva’s SUV.

Sully climbed out of the backseat just as the SUV’s rear passenger-side door opened. He was surprised to see Dez unfolding himself from the backseat, a space typically too small for his large frame.

After everything he’d been through, everything Dez was going through now, the broken image of his brother had Sully rapidly closing the distance to wrap Dez in a hug.

Sully didn’t say anything. Neither did Dez, his ability to talk seemingly restricted by sniffles and choked-back emotion. Finally, Dez pulled away, just enough to cast his eye over Sully’s body. “You hurt?”

Sully shook his head. “I’m fine.” Physically, anyway. He wasn’t about to get into the rest of it. That would wait until they had Kayleigh back safe.

Eva appeared next to Dez, and Sully turned to her, pulling her into an embrace that allowed him to feel her shaking even through heavy winter layers.

“We’re going to get her back, Evie. I swear to you, we’ll get her back.”

As Dez had, she squeezed him back hard enough to hurt. And as with Dez, it sounded like her intended words had become lodged in her throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She pushed away and glared at him. “For what?”

“This. All of this. If I’d just confronted him earlier, dealt with him instead of running, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Dealt with him how?” she asked. “Short of killing him, we had no way of doing that.”

Sully didn’t pursue it, but the thought was there. Between Thadeus and Ned, killing Lowell would have been as easy as getting through his front door.

“It’s my fault,” Dez said. “Lachlan and I pushed too far too fast when we confronted Kindra. We just thought—”

“We had no choice,” Lachlan said. Sully turned to see the man standing next to the SUV’s driver’s side door. “There was never going to be a good time or a good way to do this. There were always going to be risks.”

Dez turned on Lachlan. “We should have waited until my family was safe.”

Lachlan nodded, eyes turning from Dez to the highway behind them. “I know. That’s my fault, and I’m sorry.”

Eva turned to glare at each of them in turn. “No one here is to blame. The fault lies with Lowell and Kindra, no one else. Lachlan’s right. We knew what we were calling down. And I’m sorry, Dez, I know we all trust Paul, but there were never any guarantees we would be safe up at that cabin anyway. You can’t tell me Lowell doesn’t have ways of figuring out where we are, whether by getting it from someone in the Circle or using one of Gerhardt’s psychics for info. The only way we’ll be safe is to get him out of the way.”

Dez nodded, returned his attention to Lachlan. “Sorry I snapped at you. Eva’s right. I know it. I’m just—I’m fucked, man. I’m totally fucked.”

Lachlan smiled. “I hear you. Listen, we need to start asking around. I’ll start checking—”

“There’s no ‘I’ in any of this from now on,” Dez said. “We stick together. All of us. The risks are too high. After what happened to Forbes—”

Sully’s head spun toward Dez. “What happened?”

“Shit, sorry, man, didn’t think. He was shot by a fellow cop. We contacted Paul with the name Forbes provided to us, and he confirmed she’s a Circle member.”

“How bad is he hurt?”

“It’s not great, but Clark Davies called us from the hospital a while ago to tell us he came through surgery okay. The chest wound was a little touch and go, but he’s expected to live. Clark’s staying with him, and he’ll make sure anyone who comes to relieve him is well-apprised of the situation.”

“How’s he going to know who to trust? We don’t even know.”

Dez removed his phone and tapped it for Sully’s benefit. “Paul got back to us with a list of Circle members. It reads like a who’s who of the city’s elite and a cast of wannabes. Good news is while there are a couple of doctors on the list, they aren’t working in a capacity where they’d be dealing directly with Forbes. We’ve passed the list on to Clark and Chief Leuvan. Clark will watch for any of them coming or going around the hospital, and so will any relief he’s got coming. As for the chief, Lachlan and I talked to him on the way out here.”

Lachlan leaned against the vehicle hood as he provided Sully with a rundown. “Ed wasn’t entirely blown away by what we told him. He’d heard of the Circle and had apparently been approached in the past about joining. He refused, said it wasn’t his thing. He didn’t have concrete evidence of it being anything more than a bunch of rich people hobnobbing, but he told us he’s had suspicions about darker goings-on. Nothing he could put a finger on, but he thought it was along the lines of financial corruption of some type. He didn’t realize it went as far as murder. We haven’t told him about you being alive—yet. But I think we should. He wants to speak with us immediately about the Circle. And I think he should speak with you.”

Sully met Dez’s eye.

“It’s okay,” Dez said. “He’s in the clear on this. Anyway, we’ll be there. Like I said, no one’s going anywhere or doing anything alone. Not anymore.”

“What about Mom?” Sully asked.

Dez and Eva exchanged a look.

“We haven’t told her yet,” Eva said. “We decided to wait a bit, hopefully until we have some better news. She’ll insist on helping us look, and we don’t want her involved.”

“But she’s alone, and you said Lowell might have ways of finding the cabin.”

“She’s not alone,” Dez said. “Paul’s with her. We didn’t tell him about Kayleigh either. Not yet. But we talked about everything else, and we decided it was best he stick around there too. With everything coming out, Circle members are going to clue in pretty quick they’ve got a traitor on board. It won’t take a genius to recognize it’s Paul.”

“He thought maybe his dad would break,” Sully said. “Is there still a chance of that happening?”

“Maybe,” Lachlan said. “If we can provide a strong enough incentive. The chief of police sniffing around might give us that incentive. We need to call Ed back to arrange a meeting, if we’re going to have one. I need to know first: What happened with you? The fact you’re here and relatively uninjured suggests someone else isn’t.”

Sully scanned his boots. He hadn’t wanted to go there, had hoped to avoid it. But Lachlan was right. If they were hoping to sit Sully down with the chief of police, better his secrets were shared first with the people he trusted.

“The men who tried to kill me at Ravenwood took me to an abandoned farm about an hour from the city. The Dules—Lorinda, Rhona and Greta—were waiting, and they had a bomb.”

“Jesus,” Dez hissed.

“The hangman—his name’s Thadeus, apparently—jumped in and took over, but I was present and aware. He used Ned to get out of the house before it blew. The Dules were killed in their own explosion. Then Thadeus killed the men.”

“How?” Eva asked. “Anything that will trace to you?”

Sully shook his head. “I don’t think so. He used Ned to toss one into the fire. Then he forced one to shoot another and then shoot himself.” He had yet to look up from the ground, and he felt hands—definitely Dez’s—settle on his shoulders.

“I don’t care what happened or how,” he said. “It’s not your fault. The hangman and Ned kept you alive, and that’s all that matters. What I want to know is how comfortable you are turning the hangman against Lowell.”

“Not a good idea,” came Raiya’s voice from behind them. Sully turned his head to see she and Marc had stepped from their vehicle.

“Why not?” Dez asked. “He’s got my daughter, and he’s already killed my father and brother. I don’t give a damn if he gets hurt or killed.”

“That’s not the point,” she said. “The more often Thadeus is given free rein—and the longer he’s allowed to stay there when he’s in control—the stronger he gets. He completely took over this time. It was all Marc and I could do to press him back to allow Sully back.”

“I don’t care,” Sully said. “If it means saving Kayleigh, I’ll let Thadeus take the reins forever.”

“That could be a problem,” Marc said. “From what you’ve said, he isn’t capable of caring about anyone. You and I have been friends for a few years, and he thought nothing of trying to hurt me. Like Raiya said, he had murder in his eyes before you came forward. He doesn’t share your concerns, Sullivan. He cares about nothing but self-preservation. You need to stay in control if you want your family kept safe.”

“I can’t do the things he can. He’s stronger.”

Marc stepped forward, laid a hand on Sully’s arm. “As I told you, he’s a part of you, not something separate. If he’s strong, so are you. You don’t see yourself as I do. Your aura is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed. You’re a very powerful being, Sullivan, and you’re selling yourself short. The only difference between you and Thadeus should be where you draw your power. He takes his from darkness. Find yours in good.”

Sully didn’t respond beyond a smile. He wasn’t convinced, not by any stretch. He’d spent much of his childhood helpless and afraid, and he’d found himself back there during his time at Lockwood and while trapped by the Dules at their old house in The Forks. If he had any sort of power beyond what Thadeus was capable of, he had yet to find it. It was through Thadeus, after all, he’d learned how to harness and use the energy of the ghosts around him.

Instead of heading farther down that path, he settled on an earlier point of discussion.

“What should we do about meeting the chief?” Sully asked.

“We haven’t arranged anything,” Lachlan said. “But I’ve made it clear we won’t be comfortable coming to headquarters. Not right now. Paul gave us the names of six police officers who are members of the Circle. One of them’s an inspector. Too many things can go wrong if we’re inside those walls. Anyway, it’s safest for Ed, too, to keep any meetings between us quiet for now.”

“What about Kayleigh?” Sully asked. “Do we tell him about her?”

Dez jumped in quickly. “No. Lowell said no police. I’m not taking a chance.” He turned to Lachlan. “I know you want to get Leuvan on board to start circling the wagons around Lowell, but I want to wait until we’ve got Kayleigh back. Any sooner and we risk something worse happening to her. Right now, she’s his ace in the hole with us, a way to keep us in line. The second he sees we’ve fallen out of line, he’ll have no reason to keep her alive.”

“We’ve been over this,” Lachlan said. “Leuvan wants a meet. If we don’t figure out a way to turn him the way we want him to walk, he’ll run completely the wrong direction. They’ve got an officer down because of another cop, one involved with a creepy underground organization. We’ve had to give them names to protect Forbes. If we don’t get on this and strategize with them immediately, they might just take a scattergun approach and start hauling in the first Circle members they can lay hands on. Word will get out fast we’re onto them, and it’s only a matter of time before Lowell hears about it. We need to do some damage control before we can move forward.”

“Maybe we can split this up,” Sully said. “You guys talk to Leuvan, get him moving on this in a way we can all live with. I’ll start working on finding Kayleigh.”

“Dez and I aren’t sitting out a search for our own daughter,” Eva said.

Sully gave her a humourless smile. “The kind of search I’m thinking about doing, I can do right from the same house. I won’t go anywhere without you.”

“Is there anything Raiya and I can do?” Marc asked. “I’d like to help, if I can.”

“Come back with us for now,” Sully said. “I’m going to have to draw on all this psychic stuff, and it might be I could use a little guidance. The way I’m feeling, the wall between Thadeus’s hate and my own is pretty damn thin. One wrong step and he’s looking at a wide-open door, and there might not be any pulling him back again once he’s out.”

15

With Marc and Raiya set to follow, Dez settled into the slightly more spacious front passenger seat. Sully took Dez’s previous spot in the backseat, prodding Pax—giddy from the reunion with his human—back into the hatch to make room for both himself and Eva. Dez wished he’d insisted on driving as Lachlan pulled out his cellphone.

“We should get going,” he said to Lachlan. “The snow’s really coming down, and I want to get back to looking—”

Lachlan shushed him as he dialled. Dez watched the man’s fingers fumbling over the keypad. Why he hadn’t programmed any of the numbers into his phone’s address book was beyond Dez, but as soon as everyone he loved was safe and Lowell either dead or behind bars, Dez planned on swiping Lachlan’s phone to deal with this annoying problem.

Dez figured out pretty quickly who Lachlan was calling.

“Ed? It’s Lachlan. Listen, we’d like to meet with you, but it’s got to be somewhere safe. Come to my place. You remember where it is?… Yeah, that’s the one. We’re a short distance out of town and the roads are crap. Give us forty-five minutes and meet us there, all right?… Okay, sure. But no one else. Given recent events, I don’t think I can over-accentuate the need to play this carefully.”

Lachlan hung up a moment later and returned the phone to his pocket. “He’s bringing the head of Major Crimes.”

“He’s not on Paul’s list, right?” Sully asked.

“Nope, he’s in the clear as far as all that goes,” Lachlan said. “Staff Sergeant Duncan McPhee. Bit of a dick but a decent guy, honest as the day is long. Night, too, for that matter. Now does anyone know the best spot to turn the car around so I don’t get us stuck in the snow?”

“Let me drive, and I’ll solve the problem for you,” Dez said.

Lachlan fired him a hot look. “Not on your life. I may still have a concussion, but I’ve been cleared to drive. And you, my young associate, are a damn mess. I’d rather get there late than not at all. So shut up and buckle your seatbelt.”

* * *

The drive back into town was treacherous, snow having packed to form a slick surface on the streets and an icy sheet at intersections.

Dez gritted his teeth and kept his right foot pressed to an invisible brake pedal whenever Lachlan sped up. He flipped down the visor and caught Eva’s eye in the mirror. She had her head against Sully’s shoulder, and he second-guessed not staying back there with her. She was toughing this out miraculously well, but strong as she was, she had her limits. Both of them had hit those limits the moment they’d learned their daughter had been taken. If they didn’t sort this out within the next few hours, Dez was pretty certain he’d run mad.

What was more, he still wasn’t thrilled with the plan to meet with police. He’d heard and understood Lachlan’s point, but Dez had a few points of his own. He wanted nothing more than to dive fully into the search for Kayleigh; anything else felt like a delay they couldn’t afford.

Yet, he understood how getting the police involved in the Circle investigation might help their cause. While not all Circle members were bad people—Paul was a solid example of that—plenty within its ranks were the type who’d achieved success by turning their fellow humans into rungs on a ladder, happily stepping on as many as possible to get to the top. Faced with the likelihood of a downward plummet, they’d do what they had to do to stay where they were, including using one of their own for leverage. Destabilizing the Circle meant pulling Lowell’s supports away one by one. If he was alone, it would make a final battle, if it came to one, a whole lot easier.

Then there was the other benefit: They would get a little breathing room if they could give police enough to keep them busy. Sully could focus one hundred percent on using his gifts to find Kayleigh, Lowell and Kindra. Dez hadn’t yet asked him whether he’d seen their dad or Aiden recently; part of Dez hoped Sully hadn’t, that the two ghosts were with Kayleigh, watching over her. Protecting her. God knew, with Lowell there, she could use every bit of help she could get.

Dez realized his error in thinking, struggled to force the pain back before it ended in another round of tears. He was tired of crying, sick of the feeling of being on the edge of panic. He wanted nothing more than to be Liam Neeson in Taken, kicking ass until he found his little girl; he felt more like the Cowardly Lion flailing his arms through a band of flying monkeys.

A hand settled on his shoulder, and he turned just enough to meet Sully’s eye.

“How you doing?” came the inevitable question.

Dez offered a tight nod, the best he could manage under the circumstances. Sully’s lips turned up a little at the corners, his attempt at an encouraging smile. It didn’t pass the test. Sully was scared too; Dez could see it as well as he recognized it in himself.

They arrived at Lachlan’s within the hour, giving the private detective just enough time to put together a quick meal for himself, Dez and Eva. Sully had already eaten with Marc and Raiya, he said. Dez and Eva did little but pick at their sandwiches, appetites lost and unlikely to be easily found.

As the time for the police visit approached, Lachlan launched into business mode.

“Are you sure you’re up to speaking with them?” he asked Dez. “If you’re not bringing up what happened to Kayleigh, you need to try to keep your emotions steady. Can you do that?”

“I’m going to have to.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Dez sighed. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“I can’t,” Eva said. “I’ll have to go upstairs with the others. I’m sorry, Snowman.”

Dez tugged her into an embrace. “Don’t be.”

Eva, Sully—with Pax on his heels—Marc and Raiya took their leave, heading upstairs, Sully offering a solid pat to Dez’s back as he passed. Just in time, too, as less than a minute later, a set of headlights pulled to a stop on the street outside Lachlan’s, suggesting their company had arrived.

Dez dragged in one last calming breath, one that missed its purpose. He wasn’t calm. Nowhere near it.

He’d have to do his best impression.

Lachlan led the two men into the sitting room where Dez was waiting.

“Have a seat,” Lachlan said, careful to make a beeline for his usual chair before anyone else gravitated that way.

The chief stopped in front of Dez, peering up at him, sympathy in his gaze. Dez struggled to pin it together, lost as he was in thoughts of Kayleigh. Ed couldn’t know about her. No way he could know.

“How are you holding up, son?”

Dez forgot to breathe, caught himself and worked around the question. “About what?”

“Everything,” Ed said. “You’ve had a rough couple of years. I take it since you’re working with Lachlan, you’ve sorted through some things?”

Dez heaved an internal sigh of relief. His mind flashed back to the last time he had seen Chief Leuvan, seated behind his desk with a sorrowful expression causing his face to droop. It was the moment Dez knew he was about to be canned. Having already been through the losses of his dad and Sully, the sting of job loss had piled on extra hurt.

“Yeah, I’m doing better,” Dez said. “Thanks.”

“I don’t remember a whole lot about our conversation that last day,” Ed said. “I want to make sure you know how sorry I am about everything you’ve been through.”

Dez nodded in response, mostly because any attempt at a verbal one would prove futile around the lump in his throat. He’d known Ed pretty well, used to see him most times he visited his father in admin offices. Ed and Flynn Braddock had worked well together, had been friends even. Dez couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for Ed to have to sack his dead friend’s son.

Lachlan, in true Lachlan style, drew the conversation forward with a one-word question. “Gentlemen?”

Ed patted Dez on the arm before turning and making his way to the couch. Dez suddenly recalled the file containing Aiden’s autopsy results and snapped his gaze to the coffee table. It was gone. No doubt Lachlan had moved it somewhere it wouldn’t be seen. Its discovery here and now would raise questions they couldn’t answer. Not yet.

Lachlan waited until Ed and Staff Sergeant Duncan McPhee—the latter a rotund man with a face that was the counterbalance to Ed’s typically open and affable expression—took up spots on the sofa before asking a question.

“Lisoway. What happened with her? You pick her up yet?”

Duncan looked to Ed, as if for confirmation this was a detail he could share. Ed nodded, allowing Duncan to provide the answer.

“Based on the strength of Sergeant Raynor’s statement, we’ve arrested Sergeant Lisoway and charged her with attempted murder. She’s denying everything, but she’s having a hard time accounting for her movements—particularly since she was driving one of our unmarked units at the time.”

“We’ve had the marked units outfitted with GPS tracking for some time, but only recently did the same with our unmarked vehicles,” Ed explained. “It’s been only a few days and we hadn’t yet put out a memo to members to notify them. She didn’t know we had ways of tracking the vehicle.”

“Have you asked her about the Circle?” Lachlan asked.

“The investigator I tasked with handling the interview asked about it,” Duncan said. “She initially denied knowing anything about it but, once confronted with a handful of names from the list, said nothing was wrong in the way the Circle conducts itself. She compared it to the Freemasons.”

“Freemasons aren’t involved in criminal enterprise, at least not on the organizational level,” Lachlan said.

Ed sat forward, raised eyebrows suggesting his upcoming question was to be asked more from curiosity than doubt. “What makes you so sure the Circle is?”

Lachlan stewed over that one a minute before providing a vague response. “I have my suspicions.”

“We didn’t come here to talk suspicions,” Duncan said. “We want facts. I know damn well you pride yourself on those, Fields. Let’s start easy: How’d the two of you know where to find Thackeray Schuster’s body?”

“You mean Desmond and I?”

“The young woman renting the place gave us two names: Lachlan Fields and Oliver Chadwell. Funny thing, though. She didn’t describe either as an older guy, but she had Dez here described to a tee. You don’t find too many six-and-a-half-foot tall gingers running around Kimotan Rapids. I’m curious: Who’s the other guy? The one with the long hair and beard the renter described as—I’m quoting here—‘super cute’?”

Dez didn’t respond. He’d thought Forbes was to take that interview, and so avoid requesting physical descriptions. It seemed there had been a change of plans.

“He’s our source on this,” Lachlan said. “I can’t reveal more than that. Not yet, anyway.”

“I need him to come forward. I saw the basement.” Duncan turned his stare on Dez. “You didn’t dig anyplace else. Just that one spot. You knew exactly where the body would be. Now, that makes me wonder whether your source was involved in either killing or burying Thackeray Schuster. I need him to come in so we can question him.”

“That could be a problem,” Lachlan said. “He’s not easy to find. He’s homeless, and the phone we got him doesn’t always work. I’ll try to track him down for you, though, okay?”

“Give me his number and I’ll track him down myself.”

Lachlan’s grin was a cool one. “Not gonna happen, Dunc.”

“Don’t call me Dunc.”

Ed held up a hand. “Boys, that’s enough.”

Despite the situation, Dez had to restrain a grin. Ed was, if anything, the same age or younger than Lachlan. Dez couldn’t imagine a time in Lachlan’s life when he would have answered to “boy.”

Thankfully, Ed picked up the conversation before Lachlan could come back with something about the use of the word. “We actually had something else we wanted to ask about, something we haven’t been able to make hide nor hair out of yet. We can’t talk to Forbes yet as he’s pretty doped up—”

“You’ve got him under protection, right?” Dez asked.

“Yeah, of course,” Ed said. “Until I’ve gotten to the bottom of all of this, I can’t risk taking the chance. Thing is, given he cut off our 9-1-1 comms operator to call you, it seems obvious there’s a connection. How well do you know Forbes’s wife, Greta?”

A larger can of worms Ed couldn’t have found. “Not well,” Dez said. The statement wasn’t altogether untrue. “I mean, I’ve met her and everything. Why?”

“No sense sitting on it. The supper-hour news was carrying it. Duncan sent a couple of his investigators to the scene of a house explosion earlier today. Scene was too hot to get inside, but it looks like a couple of bodies in there. Two more DBs found outside, both dead of GSW. We’ve run their prints, and they’ve both got serious records in other provinces. A call to one police service revealed at least one of them is a suspected hitman, the sort who will take money for kill jobs. Matter’s still under investigation, and will be for some time, no doubt, but so far signs point to a murder-suicide involving that guy and his partner.”

Dez kept up the play-dumb approach. “What’s it got to do with Greta?”

“A vehicle found at the scene was registered to a Rhona Dule, and we found a bag containing Greta’s identification inside,” Duncan said. “Forbes told me in early November his wife ran from her drug rehab centre and disappeared. Rhona Dule was her birth mother. We suspect a couple of bodies we can see inside the house belong to them. Any idea what Greta and her mother would be doing hanging around with suspected hitmen? We’re working with a theory they were taken there by force, but we can’t rule out the possibility they were working some sort of deal with these guys.”

“You’re aware of Greta’s past, right?” Dez asked.

“About the whole arson thing when she was a kid? Yeah, we know. She’s no stranger to homicide. But Forbes has always sworn she turned herself around.”

“You’re not convinced,” Lachlan said.

Duncan shook his head. “Guess I’ve been in this job too long. I haven’t met a lot of people who’ve truly changed. Easier said than done.”

Dez couldn’t disagree. Sure, Forbes believed in Greta, but love was blind. Dez knew better. Greta had put Sully through hell, had tried to kill him more than once. No matter what Forbes thought, nothing could erase that truth.

Not that he could share it with these guys.

“It’s possible she was involved in something dark,” Dez said. “Maybe it involved her birth family. Nothing I can tell you about that. Sorry.”

He’d worded his answer carefully, avoiding a lie. Unfortunately, it seemed he was about as good at half-truths as full-on fibs.

Ed, fixing Dez in his sights, leaned forward, his posture registering interest. “There’s something you’re not telling us,” he said. “Something important.”

Dez resisted looking to Lachlan for guidance, not wanting to come over as nervous as he felt. Thankfully, Lachlan took up the call anyway.

“Listen, fellows,” Lachlan said. “You’re right. There’s some stuff we haven’t filled you in on—yet. We will. I promise. But there are some pretty big gears grinding in the background, and if we aren’t careful in how we handle things, innocent lives could be taken. You want my advice—”

“I don’t,” Duncan said.

Ed patted his colleague on the shoulder to quiet him. “What were you going to say, Lachlan?”

Lachlan trained a patient smile first on Duncan, then on Ed. “If you want my advice, you’ll start by taking a DNA sample from whatever’s underneath Thackeray Schuster’s fingernails.”

“We’ve taken those samples,” Duncan said. “DNA request is in.”

“Nowhere LOBRA can touch it?”

“That was Forbes’s request,” Duncan said. “He didn’t really explain why.”

“We believe someone connected with LOBRA is involved in the murders of several people, Thackeray among them. If anyone from that company is allowed access to your exhibits, tampering or destruction is a very real possibility.”

“Forbes said the same thing. Don’t worry. No one’s getting at the items. We’re sending everything to the national lab. We’ve used LOBRA for a few pressing matters in the past in terms of toxicology and the like, but never for DNA. Won’t be starting now.”

That came as a relief. With the nail clippings in the national police lab, no way Lowell could get at them. It was only a matter of time before the results came back, pointing the finger of blame squarely at Lowell.

Time, unfortunately, was not something they had.

Lachlan continued where he’d left off, focusing his comments on Ed.

“I’d also advise you to start questioning people from the list we gave you of various Circle members. Ask them what they know about Lisoway’s activities, and start asking about Gerhardt and the Lockwood experiments.”

“You think the Lockwood scandal is connected?”

“Without knowing Lisoway’s motives, I have no definitive proof,” Lachlan said. “But there’s a solid chance everything involving the Circle is connected in some way. Make your inquiry big. Involve as many members as possible. If you don’t, if you limit it to just one or two, members of the Circle might think they can target your investigators to keep them from digging further. That’s what happened to Raynor. In the meantime, we’ll keep working this from our end. Once we’ve got more to share, we will.”

“This is a criminal investigation now,” Duncan said. “You can’t be involved.”

“Problem is, if you want this sorted out, you need us involved,” Lachlan said. “Think of us as confidential informants for the time being, even independent contractors. Really, we’re working for you, trying to get you what you need to solve the investigation of the century. Believe me when I tell you, you can’t do it alone. Give us the space we need, and we’ll have a lot more for you in very short order. But get in our way, and it’s highly likely more innocent people will suffer for it.”

Duncan looked to his boss. “We can’t condone this. It’s our investigation. I’ve got one member in hospital in serious condition and another in custody on allegations she tried to kill him. My unit’s already involved in a major way. Whatever Fields has, I need.”

“One night,” Lachlan said. “That’s all I’m asking. Just give me one night. First thing in the morning, I’ll give you a call. Whether or not we’ve got what we need, I’ll fill you in on the rest.”

Ed met Duncan’s eye. “Seems like a fair deal to me.”

“Chief—”

Ed cut in, tone the sharpest Dez had ever heard it. “Lachlan’s a solid investigator, best I’ve ever worked with. What’s more, I trust him. So should you. Let’s do what he says. Cue up your team for an all-nighter and see about getting some of the folks from the Organized Crime Task Force involved as well. Start interviewing our members with alleged involvement in the Circle and move out from there.”

“Hit up the bit players first,” Lachlan suggested. “The older, more established members won’t fall as easily, not until they sense the ground shifting. It might be I can get you a major player before the night is out. And for God’s sake, don’t underestimate this group. Believe me when I say they’ve been involved in more than one murder—if not by ordering them, by covering them up. They’ve got a lot to hide, and there aren’t many lengths they won’t go to in order to keep their secrets. Like I said, make sure your members make it clear from the start this is a major investigation involving numerous detectives. Strength and safety in numbers.”

Duncan’s eyes shifted from Lachlan to Dez. “You know what’s interesting? One of the names on the list you provided is Lowell Braddock. If we start moving on this, who’s to say we don’t find out he’s in it deep? Some pretty serious drugs were found inside Lockwood—one in particular linked to after-dark experiments on patients we haven’t been able to identify. We suspect the only lab in the area with the ability to produce something of that nature is LOBRA. Braddock has sworn up and down he knows nothing about it, but this list makes me wonder. Might be he should be first on our list of people to talk to.”

The single word snapped from Dez’s mouth before he could stop himself. “Don’t.”

Duncan’s stare was like a boulder, pinning Dez in place. “Why not? Because he’s your uncle?”

Dez couldn’t help it. His gaze shifted to Lachlan, looking for help there.

Lachlan gave him a tight smile, then turned the same expression on the two men on the sofa. “I’d advise you to quit poking. I’ve asked you for the night and you’ve agreed to give it to me.”

“Why?” Duncan asked. “So you can come up with a way to shield Lowell Braddock? I know how close he and Deputy Chief Braddock were. I’d expect nephew and uncle are pretty tight too.”

“We used to be,” Dez said. “Not anymore.” If there had been any doubt as to his loyalties to Lowell, he expected the growl in which he spoke would remove any false notions. “I don’t want to shield him. I want to burn him.”

“So there’s a personal vendetta in this for you,” Duncan concluded. He turned back to Ed. “We can’t allow this, Chief. We can’t. If he messes up this investigation—”

“He won’t,” Lachlan said. “I’m with him, and I know very well how far I can let him run with it. Believe me, if things start going someplace I don’t think he can handle, I’ll rein him in.”

“Seems to me he needs it now.”

A smile slid over Lachlan’s face, the kind that suggested a snide comment wasn’t far behind. “And it seems to me you’re scared to colour a little outside the lines, just like always.”

Duncan’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’ve played things by the book your whole career, McPhee. And that’s great. Really. But sometimes, good police work needs you to read a different book. Hell, every big undercover assignment is based on that. I’m not talking about going cowboy here. I’m talking about using our strengths to get to the bottom of this. Now Braddock and I have been working on this Circle thing for some time, and we’re making solid progress. We’ve got info and contacts you don’t, and we’ve got ways of doing things you can’t, by law, do.

“Desmond works for me, and I can tell you he’s got a good head on his shoulders for investigation and action. He can handle this. What’s more, you need him to handle it. You can get the bit players easily enough, especially the ones within your own department. But Lowell Braddock’s going to take something more. He’s in this deep. Before the night is done, we’ll be able to tell you exactly how deep. With luck, we’ll even be able to hand him over to you with all the evidence you need to lay charges—with or without a confession from him.”

Duncan looked to be of a mind to argue, but Ed wasn’t having it. “Duncan, let’s go. We’ve got a long night ahead of us, and I’d like to start getting our people cued up. And it doesn’t happen often, but I’m planning on pulling the all-nighter at your side. I want to ensure I’m aware of exactly what’s going on at all times.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ed stood and started for the door, Duncan dragging himself behind.

Lachlan took advantage of the few remaining seconds to further drive his point home. “I’ll be in touch. Make sure no one goes near Lowell or LOBRA, and wait on the big players until morning. There are some balls in the air here, and if they fall wrong, it could mean more people’s lives.”

“You know a lot more about this that we do,” Ed said. “I’m not happy about it, but we’ll take our cues from you until morning. Eight in the morning, Lachlan. After that, if I haven’t heard from you, we’re moving forward full steam.”

“I hear you,” Lachlan said. “Eight o’clock. I’ll contact you by then. If you haven’t heard from Desmond or me, it means something went seriously sideways, and we’re not in a position to call. Oh, and one other thing: I told you to involve a lot of people, but I’d appreciate you keeping it as quiet as possible tonight. Bring your members in and question them, but try to hold them on something if possible. And ask anyone involved in the questioning to keep it to themselves. I want to keep word from getting to the Circle as long as possible.”

Ed nodded and extended his hand to Lachlan to shake. That was Ed’s style, Dez thought, the old-school brand of honour so sorely missing these days, the kind that based even the largest of agreements on the strength of a handshake.

Dez waited until the men had gone, then turned back to Lachlan. “Thanks, man. I didn’t know what to do anymore.”

“No problem. McPhee’s a stubborn dick, but one thing I can say about him: He’s a damn good cop. We can count on him to see this through to convictions once we hand it fully over to him. Sure, I ride him for being overcautious, but his weakness is also his strength. It means less chance of cases falling apart in the courtroom. You’ll thank him for that when it comes time to see Lowell in the prisoner’s box.”

Dez nodded before turning his mind to the other nagging detail. “Ed’s giving us until eight. Is that enough time for us to get to the bottom of this thing?”

Lachlan grinned, and for one of the first times since Dez had started working with the man, he found he was grateful for the cockiness in the expression. For Lachlan, cocky meant confident, the kind of confident he knew he could back with action. Dez needed that now, and badly.

“I don’t know about you, Braddock,” Lachlan said. “But I’m not planning on starting a new day in a world where Lowell is still in charge. One night. One night and I swear to all things holy we’ll have your kid back to you safe and sound.”

16

Eva paced the bedroom, a caged animal in a tiny zoo pen.

Sully had pleaded with her several times to sit down, but he was well aware sitting must feel too much like doing nothing. And nothing, he reminded himself for the hundredth time, was exactly what they were doing.

He’d tried. Repeatedly. He’d sent his thoughts out to his dad, hoping he’d hear, hoping he’d come. With ever-increasing certainty, Sully knew Flynn—and therefore Aiden too—was with Kayleigh. Sully had hoped to connect with his father, have him show him exactly where Lowell and Kindra had holed up with the little girl.

But Flynn and Aiden hadn’t come. He couldn’t even get a sense of them. Nor could he draw Lucky to him.

It wasn’t doing anything for Sully’s emotional state. And it definitely wasn’t helping Eva’s.

“We need to find her,” she said as she completed another frantic circle around the room. “We need to find her now.”

“Eva—”

“I can’t do this anymore. I need to get out of here. We need to—”

Sully snagged her hand as she passed by, drawing her to a halt. “Eva, stop. Please.”

She could have pulled away easily enough; she looked like she wanted to. The light from the bedside lamp reflected within her eyes, revealing the sheen of tears covering them. But she didn’t pull away. Instead, she settled next to him, allowing him to bundle her into a hug.

Marc and Raiya, who had been sitting quietly in a pair of chairs next to a table by the window, chose that moment to exit the room, leaving Sully and Eva alone.

Once Marc closed the door, Sully settled fully into Eva’s pain. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Evie.”

Any words she might have said got caught up in a sob. He held her, his own eyes strangely dry as he rubbed her quaking back and shoulders, listening to the choked and muffled sounds she made into the safe haven between his shoulder and neck.

He didn’t talk, didn’t offer any sort of consolation, no sentiments of, “It’ll be okay” or “She’s fine.” Eva deserved better than false platitudes, and he wasn’t capable of them. Not tonight.

Long minutes ticked past. Sully imagined Dez and Lachlan were still talking to the two cops, who hopefully would agree to leave without anyone in tow. If everything went as it should, Sully could tap into a greater consciousness that could go places and see things they, as mortal human beings, could not. Despite everything that had—or rather hadn’t—happened so far, Sully held out hope their father or Aiden could yet lead them to Kayleigh. But Sully suspected it would take all of them to save her when the time came. If the police insisted on immediate in-depth statements from Lachlan and Dez, they’d be screwed. Sully needed them—Dez particularly—if for no other reason than to keep his increasingly messed-up head screwed on straight.

He returned his attention fully to Eva as she pulled partially out of his embrace. She didn’t go far, though—not yet—leaning her forehead into his chest and balling up his long-sleeve T-shirt within clenched fingers.

“I don’t know how I’m going to survive if anything happens—”

Sully cut into the thought before Eva could finish. “Nothing’s going to happen. We’ll find her.”

“You can’t get through to anyone who can help.” She pulled back, far enough to meet his eye. “Why won’t they help?”

“It could be they’re rooted to her side and don’t want their attention divided,” Sully said. “I don’t know. I really thought I’d be able to reach them.”

“I keep thinking about Aiden,” she said. “He was younger than Kayleigh, and Lowell thought nothing of killing him. She’s just a little girl. If he—”

“He won’t. He doesn’t get anything out of it if he hurts her. Aiden’s death was meant to protect Lowell and the rest of the Circle. Taking Kayleigh is all about Lowell protecting himself. If he does anything to her, all bets are off. Dez said Lowell told him he’d call at some point and let you talk to her, right? He’ll know you’ll insist on it. He needs to be able to put her on the phone, and he needs her to be in a state where she won’t be scared or upset. He’ll know anything else will be like poking two bears with sticks. Three, counting me.”

Eva released a long, shaky sigh before letting go of Sully’s shirt. She stood and made her way to the tissue box on the opposite bedside table and gave her nose a couple of blows. That done, she took another deep breath and straightened to her full height. Sully watched in awe as emotion left her face, replaced by the determination and stoicism he so admired about her.

“Enough,” she said. “We need to start planning what we’re going to do.”

Sully remained where he was as Eva crossed the room and tossed her used tissue into a small wastebasket. “Once the chief and Duncan leave, we can sit down with Dez and Lachlan and start figuring out our next move. In the meantime, maybe you can try again to reach your dad.”

It seemed as good an idea as any. Sully closed his eyes and pictured his father in his mind. He allowed the image to become just this side of solid, so detailed he could make out the odour of Flynn’s usual brand of aftershave. He recreated the scattering of freckles across his nose, the bulge of muscle beneath his shirt sleeves, the flecks of gold within the olive green of his eyes. He sent out the call, begging his father to come.

Nothing.

It was like dialling a number and getting a busy signal.

Sully opened his eyes and shook his head. He was approaching the point of frustration where he’d risk struggling for control. All his life, he’d never been able to keep the ghosts away; the moment he needed one to come to him, he couldn’t get there.

As if that weren’t enough, Eva presented another conundrum.

“I was thinking about something,” she said. “Your ghosts don’t always work in a linear way. You remember Bulldog’s sister four years ago? She wanted you to find Sparrow but had no way of leading you directly to her. Not until you got close, anyway. You told us ghosts can kind of astral travel from one location to the next—or one person to the next—without knowing how they got there. If that’s the case, your dad and Aiden might not know how to lead us to where we need to go.”

“But this is Dad,” Sully said. “He policed this city for years. He knows it well. He could send me images of landmarks or street signs or something—anything to get us to the right area. After that, once we got close enough, he could lead us to the right spot. I’m sure of it.”

Eva crossed back toward Sully and sat next to him. “I police this city, too, and so did Dez. Lowell and Kindra know that. It makes me think they might have taken Kayleigh somewhere else, somewhere they feel they have the upper hand.”

“Lowell’s lived in Kimotan Rapids his whole life. Where else would they go? I mean, he isn’t going to take her to either of his homes, and he won’t go to either of the LOBRA properties. I don’t think so, anyway.”

“No, you’re probably right,” Eva said. “Maybe he’ll use the home of another member of the Circle, someone who lives out of the city. We know several of them were in on what Lowell did to Aiden. He’s got some longtime support around there. I think we need to call Paul and see if he has any ideas.”

“If we call Paul, we’ll have to explain about Kayleigh,” Sully said. “That means we’ll have to tell Mom too. We can’t expect Paul to keep it to himself. And once Mom knows, it’ll take an act of God to keep her at the cabin.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Let’s wait for Dez and Lachlan,” Sully said. “If, as a group, we can’t come up with anything right away, we’ll call Paul and figure out how to break it to Mom.”

The muffled sound of conversation on the move downstairs told Sully that Ed and Duncan were leaving. He moved to the side of the bedroom window, peering around the edge of the drape until he saw the two men climb into an SUV.

“They’re leaving,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He hadn’t yet reached the door when it opened, Dez emerging from the other side.

“Everything go okay?” Sully asked.

Dez crossed toward Eva, meeting her embrace. Only once she was held tight in his arms did he answer. “Yeah, everything went all right.”

Lachlan crossed the room and lowered himself onto one of the chairs. “We gave them a few details. They’re giving us until morning—eight o’clock—to provide the rest. We didn’t tell them about Kayleigh, and they knew we were leaving out something big. Leuvan and McPhee didn’t get promoted to their current posts by being dummies.”

“Morning?” Eva said. “What if that’s not enough time? We can’t put the police on to Lowell, not until Kayleigh’s safe.”

“That gives us a solid twelve hours, maybe a bit more,” Lachlan said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m planning on getting your kid back safe and sound long before that.” He met Sully’s eye just as Marc and Raiya returned to the room. “You get anywhere?”

Sully shook his head. “I can’t get through. It’s like someone put up a wall between me and Dad. I can’t connect, no matter how hard I try. I know he has to be with Kayleigh, but what good is that if I can’t get him to show me?”

“Maybe it’s not that he isn’t trying,” Raiya said. “Maybe it’s you who’s blocked.”

“Why would I be? The drugs I was given at Lockwood to suppress it, all that’s long worn off. I’ve never normally had problems connecting with that world.”

“This Thadeus guy, he wants to be in control,” Marc said. “Could be he’s still got a bit of a hold on you, that he’s trying to distance you from your supports.”

Sully thought back to a moment not so long ago. He and Dez in Gerhardt’s old house in The Forks. A group of men intent on killing the two of them. Sully had turned the hangman loose to save himself and Dez, and he’d almost lost himself to Thadeus.

He hadn’t because of Flynn and Aiden. They’d pushed through, made Sully remember himself, and in so doing, had given him the strength to push Thadeus away.

“That makes sense,” Sully said. “But what do I do about it? I need to reach Dad.”

Lachlan stood from his chair so fast, it made Sully jump—Dez, too, by the startled expression on his face.

“I have an idea,” Lachlan said. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

17

Lachlan was right.

Sully didn’t like his plan. Not at all.

Lachlan hadn’t provided details of it before leaving the room, holding off until his return a few minutes later. When he walked back in, he was carrying a syringe and a small bottle.

Sully recognized the bottle right away.

“That’s the drug you took from Lockwood a couple of months ago,” he said. “The stuff they were giving me during the experiments.”

“Hell, no,” Dez said. “That’s your idea, Lachlan?”

Lachlan didn’t reply directly, but what he said was answer enough. “Do either of you have something that belonged to your dad?”

Sully met Dez’s eye. “You have his watch, right?”

“Sull—”

“We need to find Kayleigh, and Dad isn’t coming to me for some reason. If this will get us what we need, I’m game to try.”

Ordinarily, such a suggestion would be met by the sharpest opposition from Dez. But this was his little girl, and Sully knew as protective as Dez was of him, his daughter trumped everything.

Not that Dez was completely sold. “How is it you just happened to have a syringe lying around? And how do you know how much to give him?”

“I bought a few syringes when I was looking to have the stuff analyzed,” Lachlan said. “I didn’t want to send in the full bottle, so I needed something to withdraw some samples. And I took photos of Sully’s Lockwood file, remember? Gerhardt kept records of the amounts he used.”

Marc stepped close to Sully. “This doesn’t seem like a very safe approach.”

“It probably isn’t,” Sully said. “But it’s Kayleigh. I’m more than willing to risk it.”

“Something goes wrong, you could end up like Gerhardt,” Dez said. “You know that, right?”

Sully nodded. He didn’t respond further. He was anxious enough, the idea of going under just as he’d done during his time in the Blue Room. Only his biggest worry now wasn’t the other people in the room with him; it was what he might see while he was under.

All the other spirits with whom he’d connected had showed him one thing, and one thing only: their deaths. If he had to live through Flynn’s, he wasn’t sure he’d come out of this experience the same.

He towed Dez to the side, looking up to meet his eye. “I don’t think you should be here for this.”

“She’s my daughter, Sully. Damn straight I’m going to be here.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking about. All the other times I was on that drug, the only thing I was shown was the deaths of the ghosts they connected me to. The drug in combination with a trigger object made me experience their deaths. That might be all I get out of this. I don’t want you to see it if that’s what happens now.”

Dez paled, his sprinkling of freckles standing out all the more as a result. “You mean you might experience Dad’s death?”

Sully nodded.

“Jesus,” Dez said. “I hadn’t thought about that. Sull, I don’t know, man. Maybe there’s another way.”

“Maybe,” Sully said. “I could drive around aimlessly, hoping to pick something up. But that might not happen fast, if at all. And the road conditions aren’t good out there. If we’re heading out to get Kayleigh back, it would help to have just one destination in mind. The other thing I’m worried about is that Thadeus will use the fact I’m not in control to try to put himself there. I don’t know who I’ll be when I come back around.”

Dez’s face hardened. “All the more reason for me to stay, then. If someone needs to hold you back—”

“You won’t be enough. Not against him. None of you will be enough. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Well, I can say the same about you. And that’s not even getting into the psychological side of this, if it turns out you do have to experience what happened to Dad. If you’re going through with this, Sull, I’m sticking around.”

Sully sighed. There was no point arguing—and not enough time, even if he was of a mind to try.

He turned back to Lachlan. “Let’s do it. But I need everyone to be prepared. There’s a chance this won’t end well. If I don’t come out like I’m supposed to, it’s no one’s fault. I’m doing this willingly. And if Thadeus uses this as an opportunity for a return appearance, I need you guys to be ready for it.” He turned to Raiya. “Have the palo santo ready, but if it’s not enough, if you can’t stop me, just let me leave. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“We won’t let you,” Raiya said. “And what’s more, I don’t think you’d let yourself.”

Sully wished he could believe it. It would make what he was about to do so much easier.

He headed over to the bed, tugging up the sleeve of his T-shirt on the way to expose the veins of his inner arm. While Lachlan measured out a quantity of the drug, Sully laid down, making himself as comfortable as possible.

Dez and Eva took up spots on the bed next to him, Eva laying a hand on his chest as she settled in.

“We’re here,” she said. “This isn’t like Lockwood, all right? Not at all. Try to remember that.”

He gave her what smile he could manage. What she said was true. Being surrounded by Dez, Eva, Marc, Raiya and Lachlan was a damn sight better than looking into the faces of Gerhardt, Hackman, Lowell and the guy in the fright mask. But no matter the change of location, circumstance or companions, the drug and his brain remained very much the same—and he worried the effects he was about to experience would be the same too.

He turned away as Lachlan approached his arm with the loaded syringe. “You’re sure about this?” Lachlan asked.

Sully nodded. He watched as Dez removed his watch, the one that used to belong to their dad.

“Sullivan.” The soft quality of Lachlan’s voice, a tone unusual for the man, had Sully turning back toward him. “If this doesn’t go well…. I mean, I’ve checked and triple-checked the dose, and I know it’s the lesser of the amounts you were given in the Blue Room. I just hate doing this, you know, just in case.”

Sully laid a hand on Lachlan’s arm. “It’s okay, Lachlan. I’m doing this willingly. Whatever happens, it’s not your fault.”

“But it’s my idea.”

“Still not your fault. Anyway, I may not be crazy about it, but it is a good idea.”

Lachlan didn’t appear convinced, but he moved in anyway. Sully turned back to Dez and Eva, focusing on them as the needle pricked his arm. He wasn’t back there. He knew that. He wasn’t strapped down and he wasn’t being looked at the way scientists might eye a lab rat.

But the feeling of the drug itself—the sensation of the cold chemical entering his vein, worming its way through his system—slammed him heavily back into the past nonetheless.

He reached out with his free hand, expecting Dez to drop the watch into it. Instead, he felt fingers—Eva’s—intertwine with his while Dez’s warm hand settled over his wrist.

“Not until you’re ready,” Dez said.

Sully wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready. All he knew was he had to try. For his family, he’d try anything.

He closed his eyes, sealing out the image of Dez and Eva, of the comfortable room in which he lay, settling into the feel of the drug as it invaded his brain. He felt it now, the crawling sensation within his skull as if parts of his mind, ordinarily closed off, ground open. Open doors, open windows, waiting to receive.

He nodded. At least he thought he nodded.

Eva’s fingers released, Dez’s hand lifted away.

Something hard, metallic, was placed gently into the palm of his outstretched hand.

Then he was gone, no longer himself.

He was Flynn.

18

The gate protecting Lowell’s country estate stood before Flynn, an effective barrier between him and his brother.

Pressing on the brakes, he lowered his window, pausing to reign in his anger before pressing the button. He felt like he’d failed when the best he could do was to announce his presence with a muffled growl.

It was enough, and the gate opened.

Now the only thing standing in Flynn’s way was the long driveway leading to the main house.

He stepped on the accelerator, eating up the remaining distance in less time than he ever had before. Ordinarily, he liked this drive and took his time. Lowell’s estate was built into a heavily wooded valley west of the city, and the winding drive this side of the entrance passed beneath an honour guard of elm trees, their limbs threading together above passing vehicles.

Just ahead, if he looked to his left at just the right moment, a pond would be visible. Lowell had begun stocking it with trout a few years back and they had enjoyed many a lazy day throwing in their lines and chatting.

Those days were over.

In discovering a thumb drive on Sully, Flynn had taken it to his computer downstairs, had pressed it in to check out the contents. Only one item was saved on the drive. One item had proved more than enough.

He hadn’t immediately recognized Thackeray Schuster’s voice, but it was obvious who was talking between references to his parents and the fact Sully had been hunting for a missing thumb drive since Betty was killed. The voice he had recognized immediately belonged to Lowell.

Flynn didn’t know what he’d expected to come of Sully’s search for the drive. Part of him wondered whether it would simply contain precisely what Betty had claimed: a collection of items detailing her family history. Whatever else the drive might have held, Flynn would never in a million years have expected this.

He’d been a cop a long time. He’d sat in numerous interview rooms with suspects, had learned all the visual and verbal tells of lying.

Lowell had stuttered. Lowell, who never stuttered.

And it had come at a crucial moment, immediately after Thackeray accused Lowell of killing Aiden.

Flynn’s head had spun. It was still spinning, his pounding heartbeat doing nothing to ease the sensation. Part of him didn’t believe Thackeray’s accusations, couldn’t believe it. But the other part of him, the part that was both a police officer and a father, had driven him here. Because on some level, it rang true.

After Aiden died, Lowell hadn’t come around for a long time. Flynn had convinced himself his brother felt guilty he hadn’t been watching Aiden closely enough. Flynn had allowed Lowell to wallow in guilt for a while; frankly, Flynn had blamed him too.

But with time, anger had passed, leaving only the heaviest grief behind. Flynn had decided he needed his family around him—all of his family. But still Lowell hadn’t come. In fact, close to two years passed before Lowell again set foot at Flynn and Mara’s acreage.

Then there was Sully. Flynn had suspected something had to be up, the way he avoided Lowell, the way he looked at him when he thought no one noticed. Sully distrusted Lowell; that much was plain to see. Flynn had asked him about it once, but the little boy guarded his secrets well. Or perhaps Flynn just hadn’t been willing enough to dig further. It had been only a couple of years since he’d lost Aiden. Flynn hadn’t wanted to deal with any more personal pain, not then.

God forgive him, he’d ignored the signs.

There was no ignoring what he’d heard on Thackeray’s recording.

He slammed on the brakes in front of the house and pulled the keys before leaving the car and slamming the door behind himself.

The house’s front door opened for him, Lowell’s grin fading as Flynn stormed toward him.

Lowell’s expression told Flynn he knew something was wrong. But he’d have no idea what it was about. The only question left to Flynn was whether to explain verbally or to beat it into him.

The latter seemed far more likely.

* * *

The vision fell away, disappearing into darkness around Flynn, leaving him standing there amidst a pool of black silence.

No, he thought. I won’t let him see this.

Inexplicably, in a way Sully had never experienced during his time at Lockwood under this drug’s influence, he felt his own presence there, inside the vision. He was no longer Flynn; he was a spirit within him.

No, Flynn thought again. Sully, no.

Uncertain whether Flynn would hear, Sully sent his own thought out in reply. I need you to show me. We need to find Kayleigh, Dad. Please, I know you’re with her. Please, show me where you are.

No further words came from Flynn, nothing to suggest he’d heard, and for a moment everything stayed as it was, just Flynn lost in this black, empty void.

Then light filtered through. Just a little at first, then more, until it became clear they were standing inside a room.

It was warmly lit, flames dancing within a stonework fireplace. Wood panelling completed the wall, and Sully followed it to one corner of the sitting room where a group of people stood around a tall Scotch pine.

Lowell, Kindra and Kayleigh.

The adults fought with a long rope of Christmas lights while Kayleigh knelt to try to unwind an entanglement of garland from inside a box on the floor.

Kindra turned, saying something to Kayleigh. The two shared a smile. It wasn’t much, but at least Kayleigh wasn’t afraid or upset. Small blessings. He didn’t want his niece having to deal with post-traumatic stress as a result of all of this.

She was okay, for the time being anyway. What he couldn’t yet tell was where they were. He sent the question to his dad, hoping he’d be able to better show him.

Flynn pulled back, until he was looking at the scene not from within the room but from outside. Snow blew past him, partially obscuring the scene behind the window, and for the first time, Sully noticed Aiden. The little boy was not inside the cabin, but out, standing atop the snow, his eyes fixed on the back of the man who’d killed him. Flynn caught his hand, and Sully heard the thought father passed to son.

It’s okay, Aidy. He can’t hurt you anymore.

Tiny fingers squeezed Flynn’s hand, sending a rush of warmth through Flynn. Sully had always wondered what it was like for them, his dad and Aiden, caught here together for the past two years. They weren’t happy, that was clear. But they weren’t miserable either. Together, they’d found a small kind of peace. It wasn’t enough, not by a long shot, but it would sustain them until Sully could get them what they needed to cross over.

The two spirits moved back farther, taking Sully with them and showing him the exterior of a small stone house set into a wooded area. Still, Sully was at a loss, nothing here descriptive enough to allow him to identify a location.

Then Flynn turned. Aiden’s hand still in his, he shot forward, moving past trees at inhumanly fast speeds until, seconds later, he emerged on the other side.

A large, three-storey mansion stood before them, rising like a great, black shadow from within the swirling snow.

And Sully knew it. Knew it without having to look closer.

He’d been here before, many times over the years. He and Dez had run around on the expansive lawns, had played hide and seek in the corridors and numerous rooms, had even once tried swimming in the pond—to disastrous, leech-related consequences.

There was a time they’d had fun here, Dez because he adored everything about the property and the people who lived there, Sully because the place was big enough he could easily avoid the owners, save at mealtime.

Put into perspective, he even recognized the small house in the woods.

Consciousness plucked at Sully. He didn’t have the sensation of having been under long—not nearly as long as he had at Lockwood—and he suspected Lachlan had administered a dose even smaller than the smallest Sully had ever been given.

Just as well. Sully had the answer he needed.

He took a moment to send out one last thought. Thanks, Dad. Don’t worry. We’re coming to get her.

He heard a thought returned to him. Be careful, son. Please. Be careful.

* * *

Sully opened his eyes, finding a group of faces hovering around him, peering down. Next to him, Pax had settled in and was lying with his back nuzzled up against his side. The dog sat up as Sully did.

Raiya held her hunk of palo santo at the ready, gaze fixed on him only until his eyes must have revealed he wasn’t a threat. She lowered the block of wood as a smile formed.

Marc had reached the same conclusion. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s him.”

Dez pressed forward. “Sully? Did you see Dad? Did he tell you anything?”

Sully reached out, grasped a handful of Dez’s shirt as he nodded his response.

“I know where Kayleigh is.”

19

Dez was halfway down the stairs, moving too fast for safety, when his phone rang.

His first thought was of Kayleigh and the possibility Lowell was calling to let him speak to her.

Instead, he spotted his mom’s number.

He barked out a curse. “It’s Mom,” he told Eva by way of explanation. “We don’t have time for this.”

“You haven’t checked in with her in a while,” Eva said. “She’ll want to know you’re safe.”

“What am I supposed to tell her? I can’t tell her the truth. She’ll freak out.”

Eva held out her hand. “Let me talk to her. Go wait in Lachlan’s office while I’m on the phone. I’d rather she doesn’t hear you flipping out in the background.”

Dez handed Eva his handset, a wave of gratitude forming a smile on his face. Eva met it and walked off into the sitting room. “Hi, Mom.”

Dez didn’t stay to listen, instead tugging Sully and Lachlan into the office while Marc, Raiya and Pax trailed behind.

“I don’t get it,” Dez said. “I mean, we drove out to Lowell’s estate. He wasn’t there.”

“You’re sure?” Sully asked. “I’m thinking he wouldn’t have buzzed you through under the circumstances.”

“No, we were buzzed through. His housekeeper was still there. She let us in, even let us look around the house.”

“Only he wasn’t at the house,” Sully said. “They were at the groundskeeper’s cottage.”

When they’d been kids, Dez and Sully had avoided the cottage. At the time, an actual groundskeeper had lived there, and the man hated children with a passion. It wasn’t unusual for him to chase them off with a stick. Dez hadn’t been any more sold on the place once Sully told him a woman was haunting the place. Looking back, Dez wouldn’t have been surprised to learn the groundskeeper had killed his wife and buried her in the woods.

“I didn’t even think to check there,” Dez said. “And when this is over, I want the housekeeper charged as an accessory.”

“It might be she doesn’t know what’s going on,” Lachlan said. “In fact, if I were Lowell, I’d make damn sure she didn’t. The fewer people who know what he’s doing, the better.”

“Lachlan’s right,” Sully said. “It would have been pretty easy for Lowell to park somewhere off the road and walk to the cottage. Before the snow really started coming down, he could have driven partway in there if he was in his SUV. His housekeeper wouldn’t have even had to know he was on the property.”

“She’ll have gone back to her own home by now,” Dez said. “No one will be there to buzz us through, and the fence isn’t scalable. We’ll have to take some stuff with us to let us through.”

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Sully said. “I seem to have ways now of getting us into locked places.”

“Ned’s still hanging around you, I take it?”

Sully nodded. “And I don’t get the impression he’s going anywhere.”

Dez managed a smile. “I’ve never been grateful for the presence of a violent ghost before. When this is over, I’d like to throw Ned a party.”

Sully grinned. “I get the sense you’d come to regret that decision.”

Dez hadn’t asked the question on the top of his mind, had counted on the likelihood he already knew the answer based on Sully’s emotional state and behaviour since he’d reemerged from the drug-induced vision. Sully adored Kayleigh; if she was frightened or hurt, Sully would be a basket case.

Even so….

Dez tugged Sully off into a corner of the room. “Kayleigh’s okay, right? I mean, all things considered, is she—”

Sully cut in, landing hands on Dez’s arms to stop both his statement and his dark thoughts. “She’s fine, D. They were decorating a tree. It’s obvious we’re the target here, not her. She’s a pawn, that’s it. They know her value rests with her being okay. Obviously, the longer this continues, the more suspicious she’s going to get, and that will eventually get her pretty upset. But she won’t be there with them that long. We’re going to get her out, tonight.”

“Damn straight,” Dez said.

Eva entered the room, phone held out toward Dez and Sully, hand over the mouthpiece. “I’ve just lied to your mom, and I feel like a piece of scum.”

Dez eyed the phone like it was about to rear up and bite him. “Is that still her?”

Eva glanced down at the phone, then back up at Dez. “She said Paul wants to speak with us.”

Dez took the phone and waved Lachlan over just as a muffled voice sounded from the earpiece. Dez put the device onto speaker mode, allowing them all to hear what Paul had to say.

“We’re all here now, Paul,” Eva said. “How’s it going there?”

Paul didn’t beat around the bush. “Something’s up, isn’t it?”

Dez focused on keeping his voice level. “Why do you think something’s up?”

“It’s getting late, and you’re not here yet. You were supposed to pick up Kayleigh and come out here.”

Dez exchanged a look with Eva, then Lachlan. “Uhh….”

Lachlan seized the phone and the conversational reins. “Is Mara with you?”

“She’s gone to have a warm soak in the tub at Eva’s insistence. I’m on the opposite side of the cabin. What’s going on?”

Lachlan held Dez’s eye as he answered Paul’s question. “The pieces are moving on this, Paul, and they’re moving fast. We won’t be there for a while. We’ve got too much to deal with here.”

“I’m going to ask again: What’s going on?”

“You mentioned you thought you could get your father to turn evidence against the Circle if he thought it would save himself. How likely is that to happen on a fairly quick basis?”

“That depends,” Paul said. “How close is he to needing to save himself?”

Lachlan headed to a nearby chair and sat, requiring Dez, Eva and Sully to move and hover around him to stay part of the conversation. “I’d say pretty damn close. After everything with Forbes—”

“How’s he doing? Any word?”

“He came through surgery, and the list you provided means we can ensure the right people are guarding him.”

“But something else happened, didn’t it?”

“The chief and the head of Major Crimes were here a little while ago. We had to give them something to keep busy with, given Forbes’s shooting. If things go the way I’m expecting they should, they’re going to be hauling in and interviewing the cops on your list. They’ve got five interview rooms, plus a soft room set up for videotaped questioning, so it’s possible for them to do six at once. Worst case scenario, if all the cops are brought in at the same time, and if all exercise their right to remain silent, Major Crimes will be looking for somewhere else to turn their attention to get answers.”

“You really think they won’t talk?” Sully asked. “If their futures are on the line, why wouldn’t they? I mean, how strong is this code in the Circle?”

“Pretty strong,” Paul said. “But I’d say people’s personal codes might well be stronger. What I said about my father holds true for anyone. If people sense the world is burning around them, they’ll look for an escape route. A police officer’s been shot. I can’t imagine any of Forbes’s colleagues—Circle members or not—will want to risk being implicated in it. My guess is at least one of them will start singing in order to distance him or herself from the chance of being blamed for something.”

“Given that, might your father be inclined to come forward?” Lachlan asked.

“I’d have to talk to him.”

Dez leaned in a bit, ensuring his voice would be heard. “Not in person, though, right? It’s not safe, especially now. I don’t want you risking it.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Paul said. “But as awful a person as my father is on multiple levels, he wouldn’t actually hurt me.”

“I used to say the same about Lowell,” Dez said. “Life has taught me otherwise.”

“Maybe wait on talking to him for now,” Lachlan said. “Let’s let the police investigation play out a bit while we go our own way. I’ve got an eight a.m. deadline, and I’m planning on using all of it if necessary. Anyway, I’m counting on the man in charge of Major Crimes getting on the horn to us sooner if they start drawing blanks.”

“So what’s the plan in the meantime? Why don’t you all come here? Mara’s on pins and needles. She wants her family here, and I’m running out of things to say to calm her down.”

“We can’t,” Dez said. “Not yet.”

“Why not? What aren’t you telling me?”

Dez exchanged a look with Eva, waited until he got the quick nod. “Lowell has Kayleigh. He and Kindra picked her up from school.”

“Oh, dear God. I’m so sorry, Desmond.”

Dez ignored the fact Paul’s tone was the sort you’d hear from someone who’d just been informed of a death. “We think we know where he’s keeping her. We’re getting our shit together here and then we’re heading out. I’m not sure how things are going to play out yet, but we’ve got some pretty serious strength on our side, so I’m hopeful. Just take care of Mom in the meantime, okay?”

“What am I supposed to tell her?”

Eva fielded that one. “The same thing I did. That we got held up by the weather and will head out your way tomorrow.” She shrugged as she met Dez’s eye, the expression on her face suggesting she was looking for some absolution. “It’s not completely untrue.”

Dez shook his head and smiled.

“Listen,” Paul said. “I know I don’t have to tell you this, but be careful. From what we’ve learned of Lowell, he’ll do whatever he thinks he has to do to stay in control, to stay safe. He’ll go after anyone he feels is standing between him and salvation.”

“You’re right,” Dez said. “You don’t have to tell us.”

* * *

Dez joined Sully, Eva and Lachlan in the home’s entrance hall as Marc and Raiya prepared to take their leave.

“I don’t like this,” Marc said. “I’d still like to help.”

Sully stepped forward, wrapping first Marc, then Raiya in a hug. “You have helped,” he said. “More than you know.”

“We’ve already involved too many people,” Dez said. “Lachlan, Eva and I are police-trained, and Sully’s—well, he’s Sully.”

“I can’t see the future,” Raiya said. “But common sense dictates the night could get really tense really fast.” She placed hands on Sully’s face, holding his eye. “Bear something in mind, Sully, and hold onto it. You are strong because of you, not because of who you used to be. You don’t need a past life to pull you through. You are more than capable of handling the world around you. You’re not the child you once were. You have control now, over your own situation and over the world around you if need be. You are very powerful, and you can choose to use that power for good. But you need to stay in control to do that. Stay you, Sully, and everything will turn out the way it’s supposed to.”

Sully, head still within Raiya’s gentle grasp, nodded but he didn’t say anything. Based on the rigid pose to Sully’s shoulders, Dez guessed he was battling emotion. He landed a hand on Sully’s back, and his suspicions were confirmed by the feel of a slight quake to the muscles there.

Raiya gave Sully one last hug, then turned to Dez, holding out a chunk of wood.

“What’s this?” Dez asked as he accepted the item.

“Palo santo, the same piece Mariel’s cross came from,” Raiya said. “If you feel like Sully is losing himself, touch him with this. The cross is powerful, but not as powerful as Sully himself—not ordinarily, anyway. The cross’s power grows when it’s near the tree—or in this case, the wood—from which it came.”

“It doesn’t matter I’m not a witch?” Dez asked. “I don’t have any sort of power.”

“You have the strongest power of all.”

“Don’t say it,” Lachlan cut in. “Please, don’t say it.”

“Don’t say what?”

Lachlan rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. “She’s going to say you love your brother, and that’s more powerful than anything else. And now that I’ve said it out loud, I need to go and puke.”

Raiya chuckled. “Not quite the way I planned on saying it, but accurate.” She drew Dez, then Eva into her embrace. “Take care of yourselves. You and your daughter are in my thoughts. I will hold you there until I know everything is okay.”

“Thanks, Raiya,” Dez said, then accepted the hug from Marc that followed.

“That goes for me too,” Marc said. “Please, call me when you have news. I doubt very much I’ll get any sleep tonight anyway.”

“We’ll let you know,” Sully said. “Thanks so much for everything. Both of you.”

Sully held the door open, and they waited until Marc and Raiya had driven off before sealing themselves back inside the house.

‘We still don’t have a plan,” Lachlan said. “We need to formulate something.”

“Fine,” Dez said. “But let’s do it in the SUV. I want my little girl back, and I’m not wasting another second.”

20

As the city fell away around them, Dez came to the realization a plan might not be entirely viable.

It was hard to plan when he didn’t have a solid grasp on the abilities of one of the key members of the group.

Sully sat in the backseat, gazing out the window, alternating between scratching Pax—pacing the hatch as before—and fingering the wooden cross around his neck. Dez could tell a war was raging inside Sully’s brain, one Dez wasn’t and couldn’t be a part of—especially now. Dez had his own battle to fight. When this was over, when they had Kayleigh back safe with them and Lowell and Kindra behind bars where they belonged, he could sit Sully down and figure out where his head was at, then pound reality into it if need be. But not now.

Now there was just this snow-covered road and a little girl at the other end of it who needed her dad. Needed them all.

Dez would die before he’d let her down.

Once again, he’d grudgingly allowed Lachlan to drive, his claims of having previously instructed the driving class at the police academy slightly outweighing the fact he still had a concussion. But Dez had to admit Lachlan had kept them on the road so far. They’d already passed three vehicles stuck in the ditch and long-since abandoned, and they were barely out of the city.

The drive started as a silent one, but conversation grew as they got closer to Lowell and Kindra’s estate.

“We should probably talk about what we’re going to do once we get there,” Lachlan said. “I’ve never been to Lowell’s. I have no idea as to a best way to approach the cottage. And we have to assume he’ll be armed as he’s already shot and killed two people.”

“Follow my lead,” Dez said. “Sully and I know how to get to the cottage.” He didn’t address Lachlan’s comment about Lowell being armed. He blamed his overwhelmed brain for not thinking of it himself. Had he been thinking clearly, he would have stopped at Emily’s and asked to borrow her revolver.

Lachlan solved that problem for him, tapping the large pocket of his puffy parka. “And so you know, I came packing tonight. That’s why I’d like to know what we’re doing before we get there in case I need to use this thing.”

Dez cast Lachlan a side-eye. “You sure you’re okay to use a gun? I mean, Kayleigh’s in there, and—”

“Christ almighty, give me some credit, Braddock. I’m not taking a shot if your daughter’s anywhere in range, all right? And I’ve taken my gun to the range a few times over the past month. I’m cleared to drive, and I’ve cleared myself to shoot. I’m solid, steady as a rock, same as always.”

Dez had to admit, Lachlan had achieved a reputation as an all-around solid cop. His ability to manage a near-perfect target, even under stress, was well-known. Dez wasn’t completely sure if Lachlan had indeed taught driving at the academy, but he had trained recruits in shooting.

Five more minutes and the approach to Lowell and Kindra’s estate came into view—though barely, amid the falling snow. Dez instructed Lachlan to pull in and park. He knew Lowell had a camera mounted above the gate, meaning he might see them arrive, but it couldn’t be helped. The entire property was surrounded by a tall fence, one rendered unscalable through a combination of height and the presence of long, iron spikes atop it. Dez also wondered whether the fence was electrified. It would be the sort of thing Lowell would think of.

“I don’t know, Braddock,” Lachlan said. “Something tells me no one’s about to buzz us in, and this gate looks too solid to ram through. Got a plan? Like maybe a keycard stashed away you didn’t tell me about?”

“Leave it to me,” came Sully’s voice from the backseat.

Dez turned. “What are you going to do?”

But Sully was already out, closing the door behind himself and stepping just in front of the vehicle so his back was illuminated by the headlights. He stilled, holding his position as if staring at the gate. A few seconds passed.

Dez jumped as the gate flew open with a loud metallic bang. Snow previously settled around its base swirled into the air, partially obscuring the gate as it shoved a path through until, at last, it came to a halt. Not quite far enough for a vehicle to pass through, but it didn’t matter. The way the road was filling in with snow, Dez wasn’t certain he wanted to chance taking the SUV in there. If they were going to get away from here after rescuing Kayleigh, they’d need to make sure they weren’t in a position to get stuck.

Lachlan shut off the SUV, then got out and pocketed the keys as he joined Dez and Sully at the hood.

Dez nudged his shoulder against Sully’s. “Glad you’re on my side, bro.”

“Me too,” Lachlan muttered. “Don’t know how the hell you did that, but I’ll take it.”

Eva joined them a moment later, Pax at her side. “Let’s go get our girl back.”

Dez met her eye, hoping his smile appeared more confident than he felt. “Ten-four.”

* * *

They stayed to the road a few minutes, Dez expecting the snow in the wooded areas on either side might be deep in places. While he didn’t think anyone minded ending up knee-deep in snow under the circumstances, it would make for an exhausting walk. And if they wanted to be ready for a fight at the other end, exhaustion was the wrong way to go.

Then again, with Sully managing tricks like he’d just done with the gate, maybe it didn’t matter what state the rest of them were in. Their roles in this might prove minimal.

Sully had taken the lead and Dez gained his side. “I know I wasn’t overly fond of Noisy Ned when I first met him, but he’s quickly becoming one of my best friends,” Dez said.

Sully’s smile was barely visible in the castoff glow from Dez’s flashlight. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.” The hint of humour faded as he veered back onto the topic of their mission. “We should probably get off the road soon. There’s a chance Lowell’s moved to the house, and I’d rather no one sees our lights coming in.”

Dez nodded and took over the lead, guiding the others from the road. Immediately, he sunk to mid-calf in snow—depth enough to come to the knees on Lachlan and Eva. He expected a grumble from Lachlan, was surprised when none came.

Turning, Dez saw him struggling to step in the pits his larger feet had created. “You okay?” Dez asked him.

“Getting myself focused,” Lachlan replied. “Shut up.”

Dez was happy enough to obey the command. He wasn’t much in the mood to talk, his thoughts running to dark places the closer they got to the cottage. He still didn’t know what they’d do when they got there, although his ex-cop brain was running through various scenarios as he moved forward.

Virtually all of them ended with him beating Lowell to a bloody pulp. If Lowell was lucky, Sully might use Ned to throw Dez off. Then again, Sully might start turning Lowell into sausage before Dez could even get a blow in. Anything could happen.

That was the problem.

He felt for the piece of wood Raiya had given him, its form a large bulge in the pocket of his coat. He hoped Raiya was right. It seemed a lot to ask, to put so much faith in a chunk of dead tree. But if Sully went dark again, Dez knew he’d have little to guide him but faith.

For now, he put that threat on the back burner. He needed to focus. The cottage, if memory served, was just a couple more minutes ahead.

He stopped, drawing a grumble from Lachlan as he ran into Dez’s back.

“What the hell, Braddock?”

Dez clicked off his flashlight. “Sull, the cottage. It shouldn’t be far from here, should it?”

Sully’s voice sounded from behind him. “I think so.”

“I figured on seeing some sort of lights on. Or were they sitting in the dark when you saw them?”

“They had a fire going,” Sully said. “And lights were on. You’re right. We should be seeing something by now.”

“I think we’d better leave our flashlights off,” Eva said. “If he sees us coming, this’ll be over before it begins.”

“Newsflash,” Lachlan said. “If he’s behind the judge’s shooting, he had a sniper rifle. He’ll have a scope and very possibly some sort of night vision or infrared device. We’ll be sitting ducks either way.”

Dez took the warning, crouching low, judging from the sounds behind him the others were doing the same. “Listen, we need to surround the place. I’ll take front. Lachlan, you’ve got the gun. There’s a back door. Circle the house and position yourself there. Sully, you go with him. Once I go in front, you can use Ned to blow the door open.”

“What about me?” Eva asked.

“Bedroom window,” Dez said. “If he sees us coming, he might try to stash Kayleigh in there.”

“If the lights are out, he’s probably already seen us coming,” Lachlan said. “It’s a bit early for bed, isn’t it?”

“Not for Kayleigh,” Dez said. “Could be she’s tucked in and Lowell and Kindra have shut off everything else and are just sitting in front of the fire. If that’s the case, it makes sense we wouldn’t see anything yet. Let’s just stay low and keep moving.”

Dez fought instinct, his desire to get to Kayleigh outweighing everything else, including the need for caution. It took everything he had to press forward, one slow, stealthy step at a time rather than at a full-on gallop. Because the closer they got, the more he felt brutal realization slipping in.

Something was very wrong.

A quick break in the clouds brought both a temporary end to the snow and a glimmer of moonlight, enough to allow his eyes—now accustomed to the dark—to see a shadow rising before him straight ahead.

No question. It was the cottage.

The very dark cottage.

“Shit,” Dez said. Lachlan was right. It was too early for bed—for Lowell and Kindra, anyway. They should still be up, or at the very least, asleep with a fire going.

But there was no sign of a fire here. No smoke rose from the chimney. No subtle glow emerged from the windows.

Sully appeared at his side, pressing past Dez and sprinting toward the cottage before Dez could stop him.

“Sully, wait!” Dez called after him. The need for caution had passed. Sully was making enough noise to wake anyone inside who might be asleep.

Dez chased after Sully, reached him just as he kicked the door in. Dez tried to hold him back, intending to go in first, but Sully wasn’t cooperating. Empowered by Ned, he easily threw Dez off before entering the building and flicking on a light.

The bulk of the cottage boasted an open floor plan, living room melding into kitchen and dining areas.

It was empty, although clues suggested it hadn’t been for long. While Sully and Lachlan barrelled toward the sole bedroom, Dez peered down at the hide-a-bed, made down for the night and kitted up with fresh linens. Eva crouched next to the fireplace.

“It’s still warm,” she said. “They were here, Dez. They were here.”

Sully and Lachlan returned from the bedroom and Lachlan gave the bathroom a cursory glance.

Dez didn’t need them to say it. Lachlan did anyway. “They’ve flown the coop.”

Dez’s gaze settled on the nearest inanimate object, and he grabbed and hurled the lamp across the room with a roared curse. The lamp shattered against the wall, glass shards settling over the wood floor and area rug.

Eva stilled Dez before he could throw something else, grabbing him in a desperate hug he didn’t dare to break.

Looking over the top of Eva’s head, he met Sully’s eye. “You said they were here.”

“They were,” Sully said. “They must have left just a little while ago.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, figure it out, damn it!”

Sully flinched as if he’d been struck, and Dez struggled to reel himself back in. “I’m sorry,” Dez said. “I’m just….”

“I know,” Sully said. “It’s okay.”

Dez sought out Lachlan and spotted him in at the dining table, leaning over a piece of paper. He stilled as he read it, then held it up in one hand, lips forming a tight line as he approached Dez.

“Well, this confirms they were indeed the ones here,” Lachlan said. “In case anyone doubted it was them.”

He handed Dez the paper, and Eva pulled away long enough to read it with Dez.

It didn’t take long, made up of just two words.

Nice try.

21

Just as well Dez had already broken the lamp. It saved Sully having to do it himself.

Sully’s own rage wasn’t far below Dez’s, bubbling like a cauldron inside his belly. He seethed with it, with the desire to find Lowell. To kill him. To tear him apart, one limb at a time. Watch as what was left of him writhed in pain.

Sully took a breath. Those weren’t his thoughts, not really. His anger was an unlocked door for the hangman, one Sully needed to do a better job of guarding. As much as he’d be okay with turning Thadeus loose on Lowell, he wouldn’t subject Kayleigh to having to witness something like that. Nor could he be certain Thadeus would have the little girl’s best interests at heart. More than likely, he wouldn’t. Whether or not he’d been born this way, Thadeus was little more than a sociopath, no one more important to him than himself.

It was the kind of selfishness Sully couldn’t afford, not with his family in the middle of this war and increasingly at risk of getting caught in the crossfire.

Dez’s gaze, barely controlled panic caught in his wide-eyed stare, shifted from one person to the next in a desperate search for someone with a solution. “What do we do now? Oh, Christ, what do we do now?”

“We could look for footprints, vehicle tracks,” Lachlan suggested.

“And where does that get us? They’d be insane to go back to the main house, and the vehicle tracks would only get us as far as the highway before we lost them.”

Sully, seeing no sign of Flynn or Aiden, turned to Lachlan. “Did you happen to bring any more of the drug with you?”

“No, and I wouldn’t give you any more even if I had,” Lachlan said. “I’m not dosing you twice on the same night. It could fry your brain.”

“It won’t. When I was at Lockwood, they dosed me more than once during the same session sometimes.”

“Well, this isn’t Lockwood,” Lachlan said. “Anyway, you were essentially a basket case there. I’m not doing it.”

Sully looked to Dez, but found no help there, his face suggesting he was too deeply trapped within his own nightmare to grasp anything else.

Eva wasn’t getting onside either. “Lachlan’s right,” she said. “We can’t risk it. Besides, we’ll need you when it comes time to deal with Lowell.”

“How the hell did they know we were coming?” Dez asked.

“They might not have,” Lachlan said. “He told you they were going to be on the move. Could be that’s exactly what they’re doing.”

“But the note.”

“He might plan on leaving them everywhere they go, just to taunt you if we happen upon one of their nests. It would be the kind of cocky, asshole move I’d expect of him.”

Eva’s eyes drifted to the tree in the corner of the room, adorned in garlands and brightly coloured decorations. “They decorated the tree. Maybe it means they’re planning on coming back.”

“Not necessarily,” Lachlan said. “What if they did it just to keep Kayleigh busy? If her mind is otherwise occupied, if they make the situation as fun for her as possible, it’ll keep her from worrying too much. Last thing they want to deal with is a panicking kid looking for an escape route at every turn.”

“Goddammit,” Eva muttered. “I’m going to kill them.”

“Get in line,” Dez said. He returned his attention to Sully. “You don’t see them? Dad or Aiden?”

Sully shook his head. “They’re not here. No doubt they’re with Kayleigh.”

“Why won’t they come and show you where they are?”

Sully had given it some thought. “Could be they’re too attached to her right now. They might not be able to leave her. Or maybe they don’t know where they are yet. We might have to wait until they reach their next destination.”

“By which time it might be too late for us to reach them before they’re on the move again,” Dez said. His teeth ground together as his eyes scoped the room as if searching for something else to break. “It’s like he knows we’re right behind him so he’s managing to stay at least one step ahead.”

Lachlan lowered himself onto the edge of the hide-a-bed. “Okay, so let’s break this down. You folks know him better than most. Where might he go?”

“We know where he won’t go,” Dez said. “His place in the city or anywhere attached to LOBRA.”

“You’re sure about that? You didn’t think he’d come back here either, yet this is exactly where he ended up. Could be he’ll exhaust the places he feels comfortable and safe before he tries anything else. Anyway, he’ll know we’ve already checked those. He might think we won’t double back on places we’ve looked.”

“Driving around the city, searching random places, gets us nowhere,” Sully said.

“Do you have a better suggestion?” Lachlan asked. “I’m fresh out.”

“I kind of do,” Sully said. “But it’s going to involve us separating for a while.”

* * *

Sully expected the plan wasn’t going to go down well with Dez, and he was right. But the situation had changed, and the stakes with it. Under normal circumstances, Dez would have stuffed Sully in a trunk before allowing him to venture alone into The Forks.

But, for all of them, Kayleigh came first.

“You really sure this is a good idea?” Dez was not convinced.

“Snowy has abilities I don’t,” Sully said. “If I can persuade her to come with me, I’m hoping she’ll be able to sense Lowell’s thoughts once we get within range. It would help pinpoint him without us having to breach every building he might be inside. And we might be able to use Terrence’s army skills somewhere along the way.”

“I’m not sold on our part of the plan either,” Dez said. “You really think Ray Dunsmore’s going to help us?”

“By now, McPhee will have hauled in the police officers connected with the Circle. Chances are at least one of them’s been able to get word out to someone else in the group—likely a lawyer, given that’s a call they’ll have the right to make.”

“Shit,” Dez said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Me neither,” Lachlan said. “My God, age and concussion have made an idiot of me.” He turned to Dez. “Sullivan’s right. We need to contact Paul and have him arrange a meeting with his father. If we’re going to stay on top of this thing, we need a Circle bigwig onside.”

“Once he knows, everyone else will find out,” Eva said. “And if word gets back to Lowell—”

“He’s committed several very serious offences,” Lachlan said. “I’m increasingly certain the rest of them will seek to distance themselves from him. Besides, we’ve got the second son prophesy on our side. If the possibility of criminal charges isn’t enough to convince them to do the right thing, I’m sure the likelihood of complete annihilation will do it. Anyway, I think we’re at the point where all bets are off. We’ve only got a few hours before we need to turn this over to the police, and we all know it’s going to be a lot harder to keep Lowell in the dark once that happens.”

Eva nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

It was getting late when Dez pulled over at Sully’s regular crossing, a wide, black expanse of ice standing between them and the dim glow from the distant island, alit here and there with small, life-preserving fires, and likely a number of larger, life-threatening ones that had gotten out of control.

Dez approached the hatch and allowed Pax out, then joined the dog at Sully’s side. “Take Pax with you. I know you can handle yourself. I just like the idea of you having a little extra backup. And here….” Dez dug inside his pocket, pulling Raiya’s wood block from inside. “Take this too. Just in case.”

Sully was happy to have Pax along, but added palo santo wasn’t a good idea. “If things go sideways, I might need to fall back on Thadeus. I’m worried I’ll hesitate if I have to make certain decisions. He won’t.”

Dez didn’t need further convincing, re-pocketing the palo santo almost as quickly as he’d removed it. Dez might not like the fact of Thadeus’s existence any more than Sully did, but they both knew the hangman had kept Sully alive more than once—a detail Dez wouldn’t underrate given the current situation.

Dez pulled Sully into a hug. “Keep your phone on, even if it’s on silent. And send me a text every so often, all right?”

Sully nodded against Dez’s chest, then pulled away. “Be careful.” He turned to Eva and Lachlan. “All of you.”

Having received a hug from Eva, Sully turned on his flashlight app and started across the frozen river.

* * *

Dez watched Sully go as Lachlan pulled out his phone to make the requisite phone call.

“Paul? Sorry to wake you. It’s Lachlan. Listen, we need your help with something. Hang on, I’m going to put you on speaker.”

Doing so, Lachlan waited until Dez and Eva crowded around him before continuing. “We thought we had Lowell pinned down to a cottage on his estate, but he managed to give us the slip. We’ve got just a few hours left, and we need to move if we’re going to stay on top of this thing. Sullivan suggested something we hadn’t thought about before: that one of the cops getting pulled in for questioning might call a lawyer who’s also a Circle member. I recognized at least two names on the list who are well-known lawyers in town. If they tell others in the Circle, it’s only a matter of time before it gets back to Lowell. We need to get to the Circle’s brass before someone does something we can’t fix later.”

“I hear you,” Paul said. “There are members who are lawyers. Four off the top of my head, probably others I don’t know as well. But don’t forget, these people aren’t stupid. They’ll probably call members of Circle council to report what’s going on, but they’ll go into damage-control mode, not go on the offensive. Any lawyer worth their salt will advise everyone to stay out of contact with Lowell and the police officer who shot Forbes. They’ll want to ensure a measure of distance, enough to keep police from pinning them with an accessory charge.”

“Even if they’re already accessories?” Lachlan asked. “Face it, some of them are already parties or accessories to murder.”

“Then it’s likely time to come forward that Lowell has kidnapped a child,” Paul said. “If you want to try to persuade my father to go to the police, news like that will help cement your case. He was there at the time of Aiden’s death. He knows what Lowell is capable of and might well see this as a chance to save himself, by helping to save a child—as long as you can ensure police are aware of the help he provided you.”

Deal with the devil, Dez found himself thinking. Ray Dunsmore had donned a fright mask and stood dispassionately by as Gerhardt had tortured Sully. He didn’t deserve credit. He deserved a prison term almost as long as the one Lowell had earned.

But if it meant saving Kayleigh, Dez—and no doubt Sully as well—could turn a blind eye to Ray Dunsmore’s wrongdoing.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Dez said. “Not anymore. Could you give us his address, Paul?”

“I will, under the condition you wait until I get there.”

Dez exchanged a look with Lachlan, then Eva. “You’re coming?”

“He’s a stubborn man, and he might need a little persuasion. Anyway, as a member of the Circle and a Dunsmore, I’m at risk too. Once our company falls—and it just might once certain members of the Circle are taken down—our family will become one of the most hated in the city. I don’t want to be seen as a part of that. I want to go to the police with what I know, and I want to take my father with me—kicking and screaming, if need be. Everything I have to say about certain things would be nothing but hearsay. They’ll need my father if they’re going to build a case against Lowell. Which means you need me to meet you. One problem: I can’t leave Mara here alone. I feel safe here, but I can’t absolutely guarantee someone in the Circle doesn’t have ways of learning about its location. I’d never be able to live with myself if something happened to her because I left her here.”

Crap, Dez thought. Once his mom learned about Kayleigh, she’d never agree to sit this out. The last thing he wanted was another loved one at risk. Then again, he reminded himself, Mara had a far cooler head than he did, and she’d always been good at calming him down when his anxiety spiked. So was Eva, but given her worries were just as severe as Dez’s, soothing his nerves wasn’t an added task she should be called upon to undertake.

“Okay,” Dez said. “I guess that’s just one more thing we don’t have a choice about anymore.”

22

Snow fell in light flakes, turning Sully’s shoulders white as he hunched within what warmth remained in his coat.

The jog across the river had taken close to twenty minutes, time not helped by the fact he’d tripped twice over ice heaves.

He’d entered Ravenwood with some dread. Ned had become a useful ally to him, one he couldn’t afford to lose now. He worried once the poltergeist returned to his longtime home, he’d decide he wanted to stay.

But as Sully emerged on the other side, passing through the gates separating the mansion’s property with the rest of the island, he realized his worry had been for nothing. Ned was still there, hovering somewhere around him, waiting as patiently as any violent poltergeist was able. Ravenwood was no longer Ned’s home; Sully was. And what might have once troubled Sully now spawned a level of comfort that seemed, at least on some level, wrong.

He’d learned early on ghosts weren’t supposed to exist on this side of the veil. Those who did were unsettled, not at peace, and the longer they remained, the more disturbed they became. Sully still didn’t know who Ned was, if he was even a “who.” If Ned was nothing more than a bundle of powerful energy looking for an outlet, Sully would have no qualms about his remaining here; if he was human, or had been once, he should have the same chance at moving on.

Just not tonight.

Too dark to walk without the aid of a flashlight, Sully relied on Pax to let him know if anyone was approaching. They made a good team this way, always had. Rarely had he been more grateful to have the dog at his side than tonight, when his whole world was shattering.

He forced thoughts of Kayleigh from his mind as they left this section of the island behind, nearing an area more densely filled by houses. The dim glow of fire they’d seen from across the river was brighter here, telling him exactly which buildings were occupied, and therefore which ones to avoid.

He shut off his flashlight app, relying on Pax and the scattered light to guide him. Somewhere ahead, within that cluster of homes, sat the one occupied by Terrence and Snowy. While Sully had no particular desire to see Snowy again, the night’s events had robbed choice from his family on many levels. With no other way to find his niece, Sully was willing to try anything.

Dodging lit homes like a pixelated character in an arcade game, he wound his way through the ruined neighbourhood until he reached the right street. He recognized the small house nestled between two larger ones. From here, no light was visible from within, but Sully knew Terrence had boarded the place up—in part to keep in warmth, but also to keep signs of life from being readily apparent to potential enemies in the outside world. There was no hiding the plume of smoke that rose from the chimney, though, and it provided all the evidence Sully needed that someone was there.

He didn’t bother trying to silence his footfalls as he approached, next to impossible in the crunch of snow beneath his boots. Terrence would hear him no matter what he did, and even if he didn’t, Snowy would sense him.

He was proved correct when, just within the boundaries of the yard, the door opened a crack. The outline of Terrence’s body appeared, subtly backlit by a fire from within the house.

“Sully?” The head seemed to shift as if Terrence was looking for something. “You alone?”

The latter question carried an element of disbelief. Sully didn’t blame him. No one, save the utterly stupid, roamed the streets in The Forks in the middle of the night.

“I’m not exactly alone,” Sully said, nodding toward Pax.

“I was just thinking you had your brother with you the last couple of times. Everything okay?”

Sully delayed the answer to that one. “Can I come in?”

Terrence held the door open wider, allowing Sully and Pax to enter. Terrence led them into the living room, where a fire crackled. Sully at last pulled his hands from his pockets and then out of his gloves to warm them near the fireplace.

He hadn’t seen Snowy since she’d sold him out to Gerhardt at Lockwood. Terrence had done his best to explain why she’d done it, but it didn’t help a whole lot. Sully knew fear better than most; never had he used it as an excuse to betray someone he’d considered a friend.

He was surprised she wasn’t sleeping here, near the fire. It was late, and it was unlikely, given the cold, any other room besides this one would be habitable. During those two years at Ravenwood, Sully had spent most of the winter months confined to one room for the sake of the heat.

“Where is she?” he asked.

Terrence stepped to Sully’s side to speak quietly—as if that would matter when they were talking about a mind reader. “She was sitting up, keeping a lookout. She woke me to tell me you were coming. She scuttled off to another room. She doesn’t know how to face you.”

Sully didn’t blame her. He understood her reasons, but he was a long way from being able to forgive. If she wanted to wait him out in a chilly back bedroom, that was fine with him.

He left the topic there, switching to the reason he’d come. “You asked if everything’s okay. It’s not. Things have come to a head with Lowell. He took my niece.”

“She’s just little yet, isn’t she?”

“Seven.”

Terrence turned eyes narrowed in pity from Sully’s face to the fire. “Damn. I’m sorry.” As with Paul, Terrence’s tone was the sort of thing you’d hear when sharing news of a family death.

“She’s not dead, Terrence.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

Sully knew what he was thinking, though, knew it because his own thoughts had run that way more times than he wanted to admit. They both knew Lowell’s history. Kayleigh wasn’t dead, but Lowell would have no significant qualms about changing that.

“You came here looking for help?”

“I need to talk to your mother.”

“What do you need from her?”

“It’s all right, Terrence,” came a voice from behind them. “I know what he wants.”

Sully turned. Snowy looked smaller than ever, shoulders hunched and head bowed forward as she approached. She stopped several feet away, like a dog facing its master after ripping apart a sofa cushion.

“Hi, Snowy.”

She raised her eyes to his face, but they stayed there only a second before dropping back to the floor. “I know Terrence already spoke to you on my behalf, but I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I thought it would help me, but it didn’t. He granted me my freedom but I only ended up caught up in something else. Being trapped with guilt is almost as bad as living in fear.”

She was looking for absolution Sully wasn’t yet ready to grant. It was something she’d have to earn. “You weren’t the only one who was afraid of Gerhardt or being forced to return to Lockwood.”

“I know.”

Sully left it at that. There wasn’t time and he wasn’t in the mood. “I came here because I need your help. If you want to make it up to me, there’s a way you can do that. It won’t even involve you having to face anyone or show yourself. I can get you a vehicle. If you could drive around to some locations I give you, see if you sense Lowell—”

“I can’t.”

“Snowy—”

Her head snapped up, wide eyes locking onto his. “I can’t! Don’t you understand? He tried to kill my son. I won’t expose him to that.”

“You’re not exposing me to anything, Mom,” Terrence said. “She’s just seven years old. I’m an adult and ex-military. I can look after myself. Anyway, he’s only a risk if he knows we’re there, and he doesn’t have to.”

“No. No!”

Terrence sighed and turned back to Sully. “She’s been like this since we came back from Lockwood the last time. It was a mistake, taking her there. It just made everything resurface. It might seem strange, but The Forks is the only place she feels comfortable anymore.” He leaned closer. “Are you telling me you’re getting ready to take Lowell down?”

“One way or another. Like I said, he’s got my niece. We have to get her back, and we need to make sure he’s no longer a threat in the future. At this point, I don’t know if that means making sure police have enough to pin on him or taking him out of the picture permanently.”

“You’re not a killer,” Terrence said.

If only he knew. “Not under normal circumstances,” Sully said.

He returned his attention to Snowy. “I know you’re scared, but this is a way to end that. Once my niece is safe, we can corner Lowell and make sure he’s not in a position to threaten anyone ever again. Terrence wouldn’t have to live with a target on his back anymore. You could both return to the mainland and live there.”

“Not sure what I’d do,” Terrence said. “I doubt I’d be able to get my old job back, but I don’t think I can survive another year in this dump.” He approached his mother and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Mom, I know it’s hard, but Sully needs our help. We owe it to him, and we owe it to ourselves, besides. This is our chance to end this.”

The reply left her lips before he’d even finished his last sentence. “No!” It wasn’t simply a refusal; it was a word edged in panic, a sign of a woman close to breaking.

Terrence placed his arm around her and squeezed before turning back to Sully, his expression filled with all the torment Sully himself was feeling. “I’m sorry. I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t put her through more than she can handle. You understand, she comes first with me. I can’t—”

“It’s okay,” Sully said. “I get it.” He took a last moment to warm his hands, wiggling his fingers to get a little more blood flowing within them. “I need to go. Please, think about it in the meantime. We only have until eight in the morning. After that, the police are taking over, and that could screw everything up for us.”

“What are you going to do now?” Terrence asked.

That was a good question. “I don’t know,” Sully said.

He slipped his gloves back on and gave Terrence one last tight smile before starting for the door.

“Harry,” Snowy said.

Sully stopped, spinning back toward her. “What?”

Eyes magnified behind her large lenses focused in on him. “Harry. He can see things others can’t.”

“Harry Schuster?” Terrence asked. “He’s dead, Mom.”

“I know that,” she said. “But he’s not gone. He’s still here. Waiting.”

Sully was pretty sure he knew what she was getting at, but Terrence wasn’t clueing in so quickly. “Okay, but he’s still dead, so what good is it if—Oh. Oh yeah. Sully can do that thing.” His eyes lost their focus, and Sully was pretty sure he was remembering his army buddy.

“Just because Harry’s not in his body anymore doesn’t mean he hasn’t retained the ability to see things beyond the ordinary world,” Snowy said. “Surely, if Sully speaks with him, Harry can show him what he needs to see.”

Sully had come here looking for one thing. Now he had something altogether different—and quite possibly better. He wanted to kick himself for not having thought of it before.

“Thanks, Snowy,” he said, and turned to the door.

“I really am sorry, you know,” Snowy called to his back. “About everything.”

He didn’t turn. “I know.”

23

Dez wasn’t surprised to learn Reynold Dunsmore maintained two residences: one in the ritziest condo tower in the city and the other in an area just outside town co-opted by the rich for sprawling estates.

Whatever money Ray had lost in the flood four years ago—his main residence at the time had been in The Forks—seemed to have magically reappeared. Or not so magically. The city had needed rebuilding, and the Dunsmores had been perfectly placed to put themselves front and centre when it came time to snap up contracts. While some wealthy families had been devastated by uninsurable losses, the Dunsmores had found a way to create gains.

Paul had notified Dez, Eva and Lachlan he’d called his father at the downtown high-rise. Dez had driven his small group over, and they were sitting in the running SUV, awaiting Paul who was on his way into town with Mara to join them. While part of Dez wanted nothing more than to walk into the Dunsmore condo right now and started making demands, the yet-sane part of him accepted it was far smarter to wait on Paul. It was very early in the morning—or very late at night—and a man who had reached retirement age a few years back wasn’t going to be pleased to entertain visitors at a time most people were long asleep.

They were still waiting for Paul when Dez’s phone rang to Sully’s ringtone.

“Everything okay?” Dez asked by way of greeting.

“Sort of,” Sully said. “Snowy won’t help us, though.”

Dez glared out the windshield, though the object of his annoyance was far beyond reach. “Even after she set you up and all? Did you tell her she owes you massively?”

“She knows. That’s not the problem. She’s terrified. Like shell-shocked terrified.”

“So when you said ‘sort of’ about everything being okay, you really meant ‘not at all.’ ”

“No, I meant what I said. She won’t help directly, but she gave me an idea, an even better one. Problem’s going to be getting in.”

Lachlan leaned forward from the backseat. “Put the damn phone on speaker, Braddock.”

Dez resisted grumbling at him and did as asked before returning attention to Sully. “Getting in where, Sull?”

“The Schusters’. I’d imagine the police are still holding the scene, right?”

“We didn’t ask earlier,” Lachlan said. “But it seems a bit early for them to have released it, given the nature of your find and the likely connection to the investigation into Betty’s murder. Why do you need to get in?”

The answer came to Dez without Sully needing to respond. “Harry,” Dez said.

“Snowy reminded me of something. Remember how Harry was trying to possess me, and we figured it might have been about trying to prevent bad stuff happening to his family? Thing is, that means even as a ghost, he has the ability to see things others can’t. If I can’t find Dad or Aiden to show me where Kayleigh is, I’ll bet Harry could see something. Problem’s going to be getting in there to ask him.”

Dez looked to Lachlan. “How likely is it the chief can get Sully inside the house?”

“It’s an active crime scene,” Lachlan said. “Not likely.”

“Even under the circumstances, if he’s treated as a consultant or something?”

“It depends on the forensic work being done, I’d imagine. If it’s not completed, there’s a risk of contaminating the scene. They wouldn’t allow that.”

Dez wasn’t giving up that easily. “We can get Sully geared up in the stuff Ident wears. And I doubt he’d even have to go far inside. Even just stepping through the door might be enough. I mean, hell, if Sully tells the Schusters we’re working on closing in on Lowell, damn straight they’d want to help—especially if it means enabling Thackeray to leave the house. It didn’t sound to me like they were enjoying being stuck there.”

“Tell you what,” Lachlan said. “I’ll call Leuvan, see what he can do for us. Where are you now?”

“Almost at Ravenwood. I would have called sooner, but I didn’t want to risk someone hearing me talking. Working cellphones are a hot commodity in The Forks.”

Lachlan leaned forward a bit more. “Think you can get a cab to Betty’s?”

“I’ve got Pax with me. It won’t be easy finding someone who’ll transport a dog.”

Lachlan looked from Dez to Eva and back again. “Anyone else he can call for a ride? How about that Emily lady? I’d rather not ditch this chat with Dunsmore.”

“It won’t be long before Paul gets here,” Eva said. “Maybe I can borrow his vehicle to get Sully and take him to the Schusters’.”

Dez shook his head. “If Harry’s got answers about Kayleigh’s whereabouts, I want to be there.”

Lachlan gave a head shake of his own. “Uh-uh. I need you here. If we’re going to persuade Dunsmore to help us, we need to prove to him exactly how much we know. It’ll be far more convincing if Lowell Braddock’s nephew is one of the ones doing the convincing.”

“Lachlan’s right,” Eva said. “Don’t worry. We won’t move on anything without you. Believe me, if this goes the way I think it’s going to go, we’ll need all hands on deck.”

“Okay,” Dez said. “But one condition. Take Mom with you, all right? I don’t want you on your own.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“I know. But take her along anyway. I’ll feel better if I know the two of you are together.”

Lachlan heaved a sigh and snatched Dez’s cellphone away. “Hang tight, Sullivan. I’m going to call the chief, see what he can do for us.”

“Hold up,” Sully said. “If you need to explain to him exactly who it is wanting in there, go ahead. The way tonight’s going, it’s only a matter of time before I need to come forward. Might as well be now.”

Lachlan ended the call with Sully, then handed Dez his phone back before retrieving his own from his pocket.

Dez fixed Lachlan in a pointed stare. “Why’d you cut Sully off if you’re using your own phone?”

“I can’t focus on two conversations at once, Braddock.” Lachlan focused on his phone while Dez turned to Eva.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

She shook her head, but didn’t otherwise answer. Dez laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get there,” he said. “I promise, we will.”

He could see it on the tip of her tongue, the “what if.” He had an answer ready, one he wasn’t entirely sure he could believe himself, but her question didn’t come. She wasn’t prepared to voice her doubt, which was just as well, because he didn’t think he was prepared to hear it. If Eva fell apart, Dez wouldn’t be far behind.

A tinny voice sounded from behind them, coming from Lachlan’s phone.

“Hang on, Ed,” Lachlan said. “Need to put you on speaker.”

A second later, Lachlan was leaning back toward the centre console, phone in hand. “I’m here with Desmond and Eva,” Lachlan said into the phone. “We’re outside Ray Dunsmore’s waiting for Paul. Once he gets here, we’re going to have a word with him, see if we can persuade him to come to you with a full statement about the Circle’s illegal activities—specifically serious crimes committed by Lowell Braddock.”

“You need to give me an idea here,” Ed said. “What kind of serious are we talking here? Fraud? Drug offences?”

“Murder,” Lachlan said. “More than one.”

“Jee-zus,” Ed said, dragging out the word. “How many?”

“Four for sure, likely five, plus one attempt. And he was front and centre in the Lockwood drug experiments.”

A chuckle erupted from the phone. “You’re joking.”

“I don’t have a sense of humour, Ed. You know that. I’m serious. When I told you he was in deep, I meant it. It occurred to me you’re going to need a DNA sample to match to what you find under Thackeray Schuster’s fingernails. Right now, I’m willing to bet you don’t have anything in the system to match. We can get that for you once Ray Dunsmore comes forward.”

“Who else’s murders are you talking about here?” Ed asked. “I mean, Major Crimes is looking at a possible connection between Thackeray and Betty’s deaths, but who besides them?”

Lachlan sought out Dez’s eye, then Eva’s, looking for the go-ahead. Dez looked for and received Eva’s nod before passing the same on to Lachlan. The night was wearing on and they were no closer to finding Lowell. There was no point sitting on this anymore. They were too far into this now.

“Flynn and Aiden Braddock,” Lachlan said. “And also—”

“Hang on,” Ed cut in. “His own brother and nephew? Why?”

“All in good time. We have reason to believe he was also responsible for the shooting death of Prescott Montague. Forbes Raynor was looking into it on the down-low when he was hit.”

Ed sighed. “We knew he was investigating something he wasn’t sharing. Duncan told me Forbes had a habit of taking calls or meets outside of the unit, ones where he’d just disappear and be gone a while, then come back and refuse to talk about it. Duncan thought it had to do with Greta, but what you tell me makes as much sense. Damn it. I need info on this, now.”

“We’ll try to get it to you.”

“I mean from you. I need you in here, Lachlan. I need to know what you know.”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

“Then Dez or Eva. Someone. We can’t sit on this. Not for another second.”

“We don’t have a choice, Ed.” Lachlan paused, looking again to Dez and Eva. It was obvious what he was asking. It was equally obvious they no longer had a choice.

Dez took Lachlan’s phone with a shaking hand. “Chief? It’s Dez. The reason we needed the time is because Lowell took our daughter. He’s got Kayleigh, and given his history, we’re well aware she’s….” He trailed off, long enough to blow tension out through a prolonged breath. “She’s not safe with him.”

“Why would he have taken her?”

Dez launched into an explanation, providing the chief with as much of a rundown of Lowell’s murderous history as time allowed, as well as the perceived reasons for it. When he’d finished, Ed had fallen silent.

“You there, Ed?” Lachlan asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m—wow. Okay. God, where the hell do we start with all this?”

“We’ve already started,” Lachlan said. “We’ll share everything with you as soon as we can. But we need you to let us run with what we’ve got for a little while longer. The more Circle members who are pulled in, the better the chances word will reach Lowell. We don’t want him in a position where he’ll panic. That’s one major reason we’re wanting to talk to Dunsmore now. If he can get the word out to a couple of key Circle members not to offer assistance to Lowell, it should keep him in the dark a little while longer—hopefully long enough we can find him before everything blows up.”

“Lachlan, if a little girl has been the victim of a kidnapping, we need to be involved in the investigation.”

“I’m a former cop, Ed. So is Desmond, and Eva still is. We know the law; we know the rules of evidence. We won’t bungle anything so you can’t make a case. But you need to give us the space. Anything else, and that girl’s life is at risk. Anyway, we’ve got an ace in the hole, one Lowell won’t see coming. But we’re going to need your help to use him.”

“This just keeps getting worse,” Ed groaned. “Who are you talking about now?”

“Sullivan Gray.”

“Flynn’s foster son? He was killed two years ago.”

“Another long story, Ed, and we don’t have time. But here’s the quick version: He’s not dead. He faked his own death to get away from Gerhardt and the drug experiments, but mainly to escape Lowell. Lowell tried to kill him when Sullivan learned of his illegal activities, and he’s been gathering evidence against him ever since. He’s got stuff you can use against Lowell, including recorded statements from Gerhardt and Montague.”

“What? Where is he?”

“He’s working on helping us find Kayleigh, but we need your help getting him inside the Schuster house.”

“That’s still a held scene. I can’t.”

“He doesn’t need in far. Just inside a doorway is good enough. You can have a member keep an eye, just to make sure he doesn’t go anywhere or touch anything. Put him in one of Ident’s suits so nothing gets contaminated. But we need him in there, Ed.”

“Why? What’s he going to get out of standing in the doorway?”

“I can’t get into that now. Just trust me. We think he can get us what we need. And once this is over, he’ll willingly come in and talk to your investigators about what he knows. But not before. Kayleigh comes first. Can you get him in there or not?”

“I still don’t understand what he’s expecting to accomplish. I can’t just interfere in an active investigation or crime scene. I need—”

Lachlan had been allowing Dez to hold the phone. Now he snatched it away with a growl. “He communicates with the dead, all right?”

Ed’s response sounded as incredulous as Dez would have expected. “What?”

Dez took over. “Lachlan’s not crackers, Chief. Sully sees ghosts. Always has. You and Duncan wondered how it was our source was able to find Thackeray’s body as easily as he did. That was Sully. The Schusters pointed out the spot to him and Sully and I ripped the spot up until we found enough to call in police. I told you how Harry’s visions were behind Aiden’s murder and everything that followed. You can believe in it or not, but the Circle believed firmly. I think Dunsmore will confirm that for you. But we know it’s true, what Harry can do, and we’re banking on it he can help us find Kayleigh. You need to let Sully in there, just for a few minutes. Please, sir. It might be the only way to save her.”

“Christ almighty,” Ed grumbled. Another few moments of silence fell before an answer came. “All right. Just give me a few minutes to talk to Duncan.”

He hung up without waiting on a reply. Dez looked to Lachlan.

“We’re screwed,” Dez said.

* * *

They’d been off the phone only a couple of minutes when Paul pulled up behind them.

Dez, Eva and Lachlan climbed out to greet the newcomers, and Dez marvelled at the fact Paul appeared just as put-together as ever, a thick, gray wool coat over crisp jeans, his hair coiffed perfectly despite the cold breeze and the snow falling atop it.

Mara, on the other hand, wasn’t looking so good. She broke into tears the moment she saw Dez, rushing headlong into his arms and clutching at him while she wept. It proved enough to get Dez going again, and they stood there, the two of them, holding each other and crying while, presumably, Lachlan filled Paul in on what they’d discussed with Chief Leuvan. By the time Dez and Mara released each other, Dez had a mess of frozen tears on his face and Eva was waiting right next to him for her own hug from Mara.

Paul approached and extended a hand to Dez. “I’m sorry all of this is happening to your family. It’s not right. We’re going to put an end to it. I’ll make sure my father does the right thing.”

Lachlan’s phone rang. “It’s Ed,” he said, before answering and putting it back on speaker. “Lachlan here. Paul just arrived. We’re going to go have a word with his father right away. You talk to McPhee?”

“Yeah, and he’s not happy about the idea of Sullivan going in there.”

“Ed—”

“But he’ll do it. Under one condition. Both he and I want to be there.”

Naturally, Dez thought.

Ed continued. “Where and when can he pick Sullivan up?”

Eva stepped farther forward to get closer to the phone. “Eva Braddock here, Chief. I’m going to pick him up and take him to the house. Have Staff Sergeant McPhee meet us there in, say, about half an hour. I’m hoping we can get there in that time, but we might be a little late, depending on the roads.”

“Okay,” Ed said. “Half an hour. And Constable? I’m sorry about your daughter.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Ed broke the connection, leaving the group to finish sorting out tasks.

“Mom, can you go with Eva to get Sully?” Dez asked. “She’ll explain what’s happening on the way. I need to go with Lachlan and Paul to talk to Ray Dunsmore. We’ll meet up again later tonight, all right?” He turned to Eva. “Take the SUV. Oh, and this.” He fished out the palo santo and placed it in Eva’s hands. “Just in case.”

Another exchange of hugs and Dez was watching Eva and his mom drive away.

“Well, gentlemen?” Lachlan said. “What say we get this show on the road?”

24

Ray Dunsmore was not pleased to see them.

He met them at the door of his expansive penthouse condo with a frown and narrowed, bloodshot eyes before leading them into an office—one Dez noticed had just one chair, situated behind an oak desk.

Dez was happy enough to stand, and he used his height and muscle to its best advantage by taking up a position very near the desk, dwarfing Dunsmore’s seated self.

The man’s discomfort was clear as he shifted in his chair. Dez crossed his arms, a position that made the muscles of his biceps bulge, even beneath his winter coat. If Dez could deliver even a portion of the anxiety Dunsmore had doled out to Sully, he’d consider it job done.

No great surprise then when the man stood abruptly and circled the desk on the opposite side from Dez. “Second thought,” he said. “We’d be more comfortable in the living room.”

Lachlan turned a smirk and a raised eyebrow on Dez—as approving a look as he’d ever bestowed on him. Dez smiled back. If his being a jerk impressed Lachlan, Dez would be well on his way to a hefty raise by the time this night was over.

The living room was massive, oversized furniture barely making a dent in the open floor plan. Floor-to-ceiling windows provided a breathtaking view of Kimotan Rapids, one Dez would, under any other circumstance, be loath to miss checking out. Tonight was not the night.

Dunsmore gravitated toward one of two high-backed leather chairs and Lachlan immediately beelined for the other. Paul and Dez settled on one of two sofas.

“Where’s Mom?” Paul asked.

Dunsmore’s glare fell on his son. “The estate. Do you want to tell me what this is all about? You know I have a busy day tomorrow. Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Pretty sure I do, yeah,” Paul said. “As it happens, I’ve been running around, trying to clean up our little club’s mess. I think it’s time you take on your share of the work.”

Dunsmore’s glare faltered, disallowed by the slight widening of his eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses. “Pardon me?”

Paul sat forward, nearer his father. “Lowell Braddock’s gone off the deep end. Unbeknownst to me, he’s been going that way a long time. You knew all about it, and you let it go until now. It’s over, Dad. He needs to be dealt with. The police are closing in, and if you don’t do something about it, he’ll take all of us down with him.”

Dez noted the use of the word “us.” Whether simply a tactic on Paul’s part to elicit a confidence from his father or because Paul actually believed he’d be included in the fallout, Dez wasn’t sure. Truth was, Dez would fight hard to keep Paul from going down with the others, but he doubted it would get to that point.

Dunsmore’s head swivelled, gaze fixing first on Lachlan, then on Dez, before returning to his son. “Have you told these two men about—”

“I haven’t told them anything. They came to me with what they knew. Just as well for you they didn’t go directly to the police. They know everything, Dad. They know about the second son prophesy and all the horrible things done to prevent it. They know about your role in the Lockwood experiments. And they know what an evil son of a bitch Lowell Braddock is. What’s more, they know you’ve been covering for him, probably even using him to your benefit all these years. You’ve got a chance to make it right for yourself, but you need to act fast. Tonight. Now, in fact.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Amber Lisoway tried to kill Forbes Raynor.”

Dez watched the construction magnate’s face, studied it for a sign he knew, maybe was even involved in ordering the hit. What he saw was a brief flicker of shock followed by barely controlled rage. “The stupid girl. Why the hell would she do that?”

“If I was to guess, I’d say she was either directed by someone or she took it upon herself to try to elevate herself in the Circle,” Paul said. “The plan seemed to be to kill Forbes to prevent his further involvement in the investigation into Lowell’s wrongdoings. Forbes had been asking around about him recently. It’s likely Lowell got word. Everyone knows Lisoway works on the same unit as Forbes. Wouldn’t be a far stretch for Lowell or someone else to figure out how best to use her to stop him.”

“If you’re suggesting I had anything to do with ordering a hit on a policeman—”

“Did you?” Paul asked.

Dunsmore sat forward rapidly, a snake making a threatening jerk toward a perceived enemy. “No! I didn’t. How can you even suggest such a thing?”

“You’ve been involved in worse. You were on the council when Aiden Braddock’s death was ordered.”

Dunsmore exploded off the chair. “How dare you?”

Dez stood, too, facing the smaller man head on. “Sit down, Mr. Dunsmore.”

“Don’t you dare presume to order me about. Do you know who I am?”

Dez took a step closer, looming over Dunsmore. “Do you know who I am? Aiden was my brother. I know Lowell murdered him. We have proof, and he’ll go down for it. But I swear to God, Dunsmore, I will hunt down every other man or woman who allowed it or had a hand in it. What’s more, Lowell kidnapped my daughter a few hours ago.

“I’m giving you this one chance to fix things. You help me get her back and put Lowell in a prison cell, I might just give you a pass. But if anything happens to her, and you could have helped us and didn’t, you’d better hope to hell you never see my face again.”

Dunsmore’s attempt at a continued glare failed. He placed a hand on the back of the chair he’d just risen from, gripping it as if it was the only thing keeping him rooted to life and sanity.

His voice, when it came a moment later, was quiet, weak. “I didn’t have anything to do with Lowell’s activities.”

“You turned a blind eye, if nothing else,” Lachlan said. “That’s very much a criminal offence, and a serious one given the activities in question are a string of murders dating back almost twenty years. I’d say you should start talking. It will be good practice for what you’re going to tell police.”

Dunsmore’s eyes snapped onto Lachlan. “What makes you think I have any intention of speaking with police?”

“Oh, you will,” Lachlan said. “Because of Lisoway’s actions, the police have hauled in every police officer with ties to the Circle. They’re all being questioned. Your group’s secrets are about to be revealed, and the police have been informed you’re very highly placed within the organization. You’ve got a chance to do some damage control if you come forward of your own volition. Lowell is on their radar and will be solidly in their crosshairs before the end of the night. I have no doubt the two of you came up with some very clever means of hiding your financial support of each other over the years, but there’s always a paper trail.

“Only a matter of time before they find the proof needed to drag you down too. Your business will be gone, your money in the hands of lawyers and people filing lawsuits, and you’ll end up dying alone in a prison cell. It’s over, Ray. You made a deal with the devil and you both lost. Give us and the police the info we need to take Lowell down and help us find that little girl. It’s the only thing that will save you.”

Dunsmore stood still, stare trained solidly on Lachlan as if trying to work out what he’d said. His grip on the chair finally shifted, moving clumsily to the arm rest, which he used to help guide him into the seat. He collapsed rather than lowered himself down, hand now shaking.

It seemed a good time to start recording, and Dez dug the phone out of his pocket and hit the record button on his notes app.

“Just in case you try to avoid talking to the police,” Dez said when Dunsmore gave him a questioning look.

“Before I say anything, I want to know precisely what it is you think you have,” Dunsmore said.

Lachlan took up the call, happily going through all of the evidence they’d accrued against Lowell: evidence from Aiden’s autopsy photos, the discovery of Thackeray’s body with DNA results pending, recorded statements from Gerhardt and Montague, Lowell’s skill with a gun. Lachlan stretched the truth a little on the identity of the masked man in Lockwood, claiming Gerhardt had revealed the man to be Dunsmore. It was a bluff but it proved a good one when an admission from Dunsmore resulted.

“Lowell and Roman Gerhardt were involved in testing a drug that was supposed to benefit Roman’s patients with abilities like Harry Schuster. I invested money in it, thinking it would be of some benefit to people like Harry, and I went along several times to observe.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it,” Dez said. “My brother was one of the test subjects. It wasn’t intended to help anyone. They were using patients, mind-raping them to learn things. They forced Sully to experience people’s murders, firsthand. He went through everything the victims did, as if it were happening to him. It almost destroyed him. And you knew that because you were there. He told me about you. You watched him suffering, and you did nothing! So why don’t you try again? Tell us what those experiments were really about.”

Dunsmore didn’t answer immediately. Dez had yet to sit down, and the older man had to crank his neck back in order to fix Dez in the heated stare he was mustering now. Dez guessed that look from this powerful and wealthy man had won many an argument over the years.

Not this time. Dez remained where he was, years of pain and loss keeping him rooted solidly in place, staring down on Dunsmore like he was a cockroach he was contemplating crushing beneath a boot. No doubt the president and CEO of Dunsmore Developments had never before backed down.

Today was to be a first.

He signalled the loss by breaking the stare-down first, dropping his gaze to the hands he’d clenched together in his lap. “Several members of the Circle had invested. Lowell came to us a number of years ago, looking for venture capital in the research and development of a drug he believed could, in time, greatly add to our wealth. He kept it to a small number of investors, wanting to keep it from becoming general knowledge. I became the chief investor, and Lowell kept me apprised of development. It was a powerful drug, one that couldn’t be used on regular people—nor was it intended as such. He had something else in mind.”

Dunsmore finally raised his head, meeting Dez’s eye. “Harry had been struggling, going downhill after Aiden’s death. He blamed himself for it, and I believe it drove him mad. He soon became a threat to the group, particularly to those who played a role in discussing how best to deal with the prophesy. Understand one thing: I played no role in ordering the boy’s death. My suggestion had been to keep an eye on him, to wait and see where it led. Others—Roman and Lowell in particular—wanted to move on it before the boy became a danger. As you mentioned a few minutes ago, Roman had attempted to kill his own son when he was a young child, believing he could more easily make it look like a natural death. He helped Lowell devise a plan for killing Aiden, one involving the river running behind your family’s house. Lowell was clearly pained by it, but when we learned of the drowning, we knew he’d followed through.

Dunsmore redirected his gaze to Lachlan. “Harry knew about it as only Harry could. He was haunted by it, began speaking of it when in one of his fits. Lowell took it upon himself to silence him, but in a way that ensured he’d remain alive and useful to the Circle. With Roman in charge at Lockwood, they could ensure Harry never again had the chance to speak out of turn or reveal anyone’s secrets, plus they had their first drug trial subject.”

Lachlan sat forward, leather chair protesting beneath him. “What was the purpose of the drug tests if not to help psychic patients?”

“In a word, blackmail. Psychics like Harry, they have ways of learning secrets, and there’s money in secrets. A lot of money, once you learn how to uncover hidden truths. Roman began trying to ferret out which of his patients were simply suffering from a classic mental illness and which were, in fact, in possession of a rare gift. He learned some could read minds, others could see the dead, some could foresee the future. The trick was to be able to point them toward particular targets and then learn what they’d seen while in the drugged state. It wasn’t a simple process, as you can imagine. Often, they’d be locked within their minds while on the drug. We’d have to wait until they returned before learning what they’d seen. And many times, they’d been so shell shocked afterward, trying to get a straight answer from them was like pulling teeth. But Roman was determined. He was still working on perfecting it while Lowell worked with dosages and formulas. Then Roman ended up injected with the stuff. I know it’s been said it was self-administered, but I’m not convinced. I think it was payback, likely someone who went through the experiments, maybe even a staff member he’d angered. Roman had plenty of enemies.”

Dez took a step forward, watched as Dunsmore sat up straight in his chair. “Why didn’t you put a stop to it when you saw what it was doing to people?”

“My intention was to draw out information on those who’d done evil things. Your brother, he was able to connect with people who’d been murdered. All we needed was for him to see the faces of the killers and to be able to identify those people for us. To pick them out of a lineup, so to speak. But he was rarely in a state afterward to be able to pass along useful information. Lowell said he was working on altering the formula in the hopes it would effectively allow people like Sullivan to see things but not feel them quite so heavily—rather like having a nightmare where you see something bad happen to someone else rather than to yourself. I don’t pretend to know what was involved in the research or development. I’m not scientifically minded. But Lowell was certain he could get there. Once he did, he said we could better target those people, the ones who’d harmed others, and draw out their secrets in a way we could use.”

“But not for justice,” Lachlan said. “You didn’t intend to turn them in. You wanted to extort money from them.”

“Money or a service, yes. I’ll admit it. But I’m not ashamed. What’s the difference if someone pays for their crime in a prison cell or by spending life under someone’s thumb? They’d suffer one way or another. The only thing that gives me pause is knowing the people Roman and Lowell used to achieve those ends weren’t willing participants. But they, too, in their own way were providing a service. Had we been able to glean more information from them, we could have solved murders and found missing people in cases that had long gone cold. Would that not have been a form of justice too? Would those psychics we used not have been helping their fellow man by using their gifts?”

“Sully always used his gift to do things like that—willingly,” Dez said. “You forced it on him. You made him go through things no human being should ever have to endure. Don’t make this out like you’re some fucking saint, like these psychics were sacrificing for the greater good. You weren’t doing this for justice. You were trying to line your own pockets.”

“Desmond,” Lachlan said, tone a quiet warning. Dez forced back everything else he wanted to say. Lachlan was right. They needed Dunsmore to go to the police. Convincing him of the severity of his crime wasn’t going to compel a confession from him when it came time to face the music in an interview room.

Dez took the hint and returned to his spot on the couch, closer to Dunsmore’s current position while maintaining a level where he could fire off heated looks like bullets.

Dunsmore met his eye. “I can appreciate why you’d be angry.”

“Good. So what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t see I have much choice.” He turned next to Paul. “If I’m going to speak with police, you’re coming too.”

“Of course, I’m going,” Paul said. “That was my plan all along. I’m not doing this to corner you, Dad. I’m giving you a chance to do the right thing, to maybe come out of this with something left to your name. You might even get some public points out of this for coming forward and turning over evidence on people who would be otherwise untouchable.”

Dunsmore nodded, then returned his gaze to Dez. “I would help you find your daughter if I could, but I don’t know where he would have gone, if not to his estate.”

“He was there,” Dez said. “By the time we got there, he’d taken off.”

“Then, I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

“Is there another Circle member whose home they might have access to? Maybe somewhere out of town?”

“If he would have come to anyone within the Circle, it likely would have been me.”

“Maybe he still will,” Lachlan said. “If I can arrange it, will you agree to keep your phone with you and answer any calls that might come from Lowell? You didn’t do much to protect Aiden, but you can help Kayleigh.”

Dunsmore’s face took on a hard cast. “You can believe this or not, but what happened to Aiden Braddock never sat well with me. If there’s something I can do to prevent a similar tragedy, I will. Call your police contacts. I’ll speak with them.”

Dez pulled into the loading zone outside the front doors of police headquarters and pushed the stick into park.

“You’re not coming in?” Paul asked Dez from his spot in the backseat next to his father.

Dez ducked his head, leaning into Lachlan’s space to peer up at the building. Staff Sergeant Duncan McPhee was visible, waiting to greet Ray Dunsmore the moment he walked through the front door. Duncan had been planning on going to meet Sully at the Schusters, but the moment Lachlan had called with news of Dunsmore’s impending statement, Duncan had reassigned himself. This would be one of those rare occasions when the head of Major Crimes would take an interview himself.

Dez liked the idea. Duncan could be a stick in the mud, but he was as solid an investigator as they came. The only better interviewer Dez could imagine was sitting next to him right now.

“I need to go inside with them,” Lachlan told Dez. “I’ll have to get them filled in with full detail on what we’ve pulled together so far. That should buy at least a couple more hours for you to find Kayleigh. In the meantime, I’ll ensure someone notifies you if Lowell tries to get ahold of Ray for assistance.”

“Thanks, Lachlan.”

The Dunsmores climbed out, but Lachlan didn’t immediately move. He studied Dez, opened his mouth and took a breath as if to speak, then closed it again.

Dez read the man’s intended comment. “Don’t worry, boss. I’ll be careful.”

Lachlan offered him a smile, as real a one as he’d quite possibly ever worn. “I get why you’re not coming in with us, but don’t take any risks, you hear me? Drive around and look, but if you see anything, wait until you can get someone there as backup—your brother at the very least.”

Dez smiled back but didn’t comment further as Lachlan climbed out. He didn’t want to answer directly, couldn’t bring himself to lie to a man he’d come to respect so highly.

Because Dez knew if he found Lowell, nothing in the world could compel him to wait. Not if wasting even one moment meant he lost the chance to save his little girl.

25

Sully sipped at the hot coffee Eva had bought him from a drive-thru.

He shivered, taking what warmth he could from the steaming liquid as Eva drove them along snow-covered streets toward the Schusters’ house.

The drive was silent, moods tanked and thoughts too dark to share. The night was wearing on, and so far, Kayleigh still seemed to be miles too far to locate.

Sully did his best to focus, to see past the dread that threatened whatever stability he had left inside him. He felt like he was on a tightrope, balancing precariously while, beneath him, Thadeus waited like a great, open-mouthed crocodile, eager to devour him. Sully had a plan, or as much of one as anyone had at the moment. If only he could communicate with Harry, they stood a chance at finding Kayleigh. Lowell had so far managed to stay a step ahead, but if Harry’s precognition allowed him to see twelve steps ahead, Sully could reach Lowell’s next destination before the man had even contemplated it.

Or so he hoped. Hope was just about all he had left.

The house was ahead now, coming into view through the blowing snow, which fell in large flakes—the kind that graced the covers of Christmas cards and climactic scenes in romance movies. Any other day, in any other situation, it would have been pretty.

He waited until Eva pulled over, stopping behind a police cruiser guarding the front of the house. Then he put his half-empty coffee cup into the holder at the back of the centre console. “Wait here, all right?”

“I don’t think they’re going to want us in there, anyway,” Eva said. “I’m surprised enough they’re going to allow you in there.”

“Is Ed here already?” Mara asked.

As if in answer, a man stepped from the passenger side of the police cruiser. Sully had met the man several times in the past, during occasional visits to the administration offices to visit his dad. Mara climbed out of the car before Sully had finished opening his door. By the time he reached the chief, Mara had already wrapped the man in a warm hug.

“It’s been a long time, Ed,” she said.

He squeezed her back. “Too long. How are you holding up?”

Mara shook her head against his shoulder before pulling away. Answer enough. “Thank you for letting Sully in to have a look. We’re hoping it will help.”

Ed peered over her shoulder, eyes widening as he studied Sully for the first time. “My God. You really are alive. They told me you can….” He trailed off, a sheepish grimace on his face prompting Sully to complete the thought for him.

“Communicate with the dead? Yeah. I can.”

“I’m sorry. I know Lachlan and Dez place a lot of stock in this, but I feel I should tell you, I don’t believe in such things.”

Sully smiled. “You don’t have to believe in them for them to be real.”

Ed stepped a little closer. “I’ve been asked to allow you into an active crime scene. I said I would, but I’d like some reassurance I’m doing the right thing. If you could—”

Sully cut in. “There’s a woman with you. Dressed in clothing and wearing makeup and a hairstyle that suggests she died in the late nineteen-sixties or early seventies. She’s dressed like a hippie: bell bottoms, fringed vest, lacy, white shirt. There are beads around her neck, but they’re dangling there, broken. Her feet are bare and they’re covered in dirt and are scraped up. I think she must have been running before she died. She suffered multiple stab wounds, but there are marks around her throat suggesting she was strangled.” Sully turned his gaze from the woman to Ed, finding the man staring at him slack-jawed. “How old were you when your mother was killed?”

Even through the snow and the semi-darkness, it was clear Ed had gone pale. “What makes you think she’s my mother?”

“The way she’s looking at you. She’s proud of you, you know, of the man you became. You joined the police because of her, didn’t you? You must have been just a kid when she died.”

“I was twelve. We never found out who did it or why. I used to devote hours of off-duty time to the case in my earlier years, trying to figure it out. I never got there.”

“Maybe I can help one day,” Sully said. “But tonight, I need to find my niece. Can you get me in there to find Harry?”

Ed nodded dumbly, then leaned into the car, emerging with a sign-in sheet. Ed scribbled his own name down before passing it over to Sully. “I appreciate you might have some reservations about using your real name, but it’s standard procedure.”

Sully took the clipboard and pen from Ed and signed. “It’s okay. After tonight, it looks like Sullivan Gray’s coming back from the dead.”

Another vehicle pulled up just as Sully finished signing. He wheeled in place, struggling to pick out the features of the woman getting out from behind the wheel.

“Who’s that?” Mara demanded.

“It’s okay,” Ed said. “I called the Ident officer overseeing the crime scene. I want to ensure we don’t inadvertently step where we shouldn’t.”

Ed introduced the officer as Corporal Paula Lamburton, a woman somewhere in her thirties with an affable expression that belied her piercing and studious stare. Sully recognized yet another doubter, and like many police officers he’d met, she had a ghost attached to her. But he wasn’t going to waste time convincing someone else. He needed to get moving.

“I know this is a highly unusual request,” Ed said. “But I’ve been assured Sullivan doesn’t need to go far inside. I’d hoped you could direct us. Is there anywhere on the main floor that’s all right for us to enter?”

“We found traces of apparent blood in places in the kitchen, up high and only visible under blue light. There’s evidence someone cleaned up, so it’s likely unusable save for providing some clue as to where the crime might have played out. There really isn’t much left on the main or upper floors of much use to us. All the same, I’d say front door is best.”

While Mara returned to the car, Sully and Ed allowed Paula to lead the way to the front veranda, ducking beneath the crime scene tape as they went. Paula sliced through the tape sealing the door, then unlocked it with a key in her possession.

“Give us a minute?” Ed asked. “I’ll leave the door open so you can see us.”

“If you put on the light and close the door, I’ll see you just fine through the glass,” she said. Then she grinned. “Anyway, if I can’t trust you, sir, who can I trust?”

Ed returned the smile, then stepped through the door, allowing Sully into the entryway next to him before flicking the light switch next to the door. The front hall lit up, revealing the staircase leading upstairs, the sitting room to the left and, just beyond that, the kitchen where the fatal attack on Thackeray Schuster had begun.

“How does this work, exactly?” Ed asked.

“I’ll let you know,” Sully said.

Then he focused in on the house. He felt them there still, the Schusters. They were aware, could feel him as surely as he felt them. “Harry?” he called out. “Harry, I need to talk to you. I need your help.”

Sully’s head snapped up as he became aware of movement at the top of the stairs. Harry and Betty appeared there, side by side. Thackeray wasn’t with them, and Sully imagined he had remained, as ever, in his old room.

Sully’s peripheral vision revealed the bemused expression on Ed’s face, and Sully did his best to ignore the man, focusing instead on the two spirits before him. “It’s Lowell. We’re close to nailing him, and he knows it. It’s pushed him over the edge. He took my niece, Dez and Eva’s daughter. She’s just seven years old. Harry, I know if you focus on him, you can find him. Please, I need you to tell me where he’s going to be. I need to find him. I need to find Kayleigh. Will you help me?”

One moment Harry was standing at the top of the stairs. The next moment, just one short blink dividing the time, and he stood directly in front of Sully. Sully jumped but stood his ground.

Ed noticed. “What happened?”

But Sully wasn’t in a position to answer. Not now.

Harry was reaching toward him, eyes wide with the promise of an impending vision, one he intended to share.

As the cold, ethereal hand grazed Sully’s cheek, he did his best to prepare himself for whatever he was about to see.

All the preparation in the world wouldn’t have been enough.

One image and one image only flashed into Sully’s mind. It put him on his knees, rent a howl of torment from his throat.

It wasn’t Kayleigh he saw, but Dez.

In the morgue.

Lying lifeless on a cold, metal slab.

It was all it took, his tenuous balance on that tightrope disappearing beneath him. He fell into darkness, into the waiting jaws of the beast.

* * *

Mara and Eva had emerged from the car. They stood, watching, wide-eyed as he flew from the house, the confused police chief on his tail.

“Sully?” Eva asked, face the picture of torment. “God, what did you see?”

No time to answer the question. No point. He had a date with destiny to get to, and he neither needed nor wanted chaperones.

The dog was still in the backseat, and he let out a growl as soon as his master wrenched open the driver’s door.

“What’s wrong?” Mara asked. “Sully?”

The dog jumped the seat and spilled out onto the snow-covered pavement, teeth snapping as he faced his master.

It didn’t matter. Job done. The dog was out. He was in.

He leapt behind the wheel. The keys were still there, still in the ignition. He slammed the door, hit the button working the locks, sealing everyone outside. Just him now. Just him and the path this life had laid out for him.

He turned the keys, and the engine sprang to life. Then he pushed the stick into drive and sped off, snow billowing behind the rear tires as he went.

Lowell Braddock was about to meet his end. Thadeus would see to it.

26

Dez had already checked the locations Lowell was most likely to go. He was trying to decide which of those places to check again when it occurred to him he hadn’t considered Kindra.

All this time, Dez’s focus had been locked on Lowell, so much so he’d lost sight of the fact the man had an accomplice. Lowell and Kindra shared residences, but not workplaces.

The morgue.

It seemed an unlikely place to take a child in the middle of the night, or at all, but Dez had reached the point of no-stone-unturned. Having checked the obvious places, he was content to try the not-so-obvious, if for no other reason than to give his brain something to do besides panic.

The city morgue wasn’t far, only about a ten-minute drive from where he was now.

Dez made it in seven.

He circled the building, its lower floor still lit as it always was. They always had a commissionaire on duty here, someone who could let in police after hours, allowing for late-night drop-offs of those who needing an autopsy or for whom there was no room at the hospital morgues.

The parking lot out back was its usual brand of late-night quiet, just the commissionaire’s run-down half-ton parked next to the loading zone.

Then Dez looked again.

A light had burned out to the right of the door, casting a portion of that side of the parking lot in darkness. A vehicle was parked there, barely noticeable in the shadow.

He turned into the lot, casting his beams across the back of the vehicle.

It was an SUV.

One identical to the one Lowell drove.

“Son of a bitch,” Dez exclaimed, revving across the lot until he’d reached the SUV. He stopped behind it, creating a T along the vehicle’s back end to effectively block it in. If he was right, if this was Lowell, Dez wasn’t about to allow him an easy getaway.

Keying off the ignition, Dez forced his mind into police mode, playing through various scenarios and outcomes. With most perps, it was simple. A guy with a record for carrying and using knives was more likely to stab someone than shoot them. A gunman wasn’t likely to revert to strangulation.

Lowell, though, wasn’t your typical criminal. He didn’t have any specific MO, comfortable with anything so long as it kept him in control. Lowell had shot people, stabbed and beat them, drowned someone, even forced a massive heart failure. He wasn’t stupid. Far from it. He’d set himself up as the perfect killer, one whose murders had nothing in common but the killer himself.

All the scenario training in the world wouldn’t prepare Dez for what he was about to face. All he could say for certain was that he’d fight to the death to protect Kayleigh.

He pocketed his keys and slid from the vehicle, then thought better of the situation and pulled out his cellphone. Lowell had said no police, but he hadn’t said anything about Sully or Lachlan. Dez tried Sully first, but the call rang through to voicemail. When a second attempt fared no better, Dez tried Lachlan.

He answered on the second ring.

“Don’t tell the police yet, but I’m at the city morgue,” Dez said. “Lowell’s vehicle is here.”

“Hang tight. I’ll get someone over to you.”

“No. Don’t. I’m only telling you in case something happens and they manage to get away. It’ll give you somewhere new to start.”

“If they manage to get away, it’ll be over your dead body,” Lachlan said. “Which is kind of the problem. I need to get someone over there, Braddock. McPhee got Dunsmore right into an interview room, and he’s singing like a canary. McPhee’s going to want Lowell, bad. Listen to me. Don’t do anything. I mean it.”

Dez saved his response until he’d ended the call and turned his phone onto silent. “Sorry, Lachlan. I’m not waiting. I can’t.”

Then he dropped his phone into his pocket and started toward the back entrance.

Dez recognized the commissionaire on duty, a weasel-faced guy in his forties named Greg who seemed the sort to enjoy graveyard shifts as a way to avoid dealing with people.

Greg was never happy to see Dez—near as Dez could tell, Greg was never happy to see anyone—but he allowed the former police officer in all the same.

“Didn’t know the whole Braddock clan was showing up tonight,” Greg grumbled.

That sealed it. Dez’s heart thumped hard against his ribs. “Where are they?”

“Don’t know. Somewhere. Maybe the offices. They had a kid with them, so I can’t imagine they went to the morgue rooms.”

No sense asking Greg to check surveillance cameras. The morgue only had three: two above the front and back man doors and one above the drive-in delivery access. No one had bothered installing anything extra inside the building; there didn’t seem to be a point, given the place was crawling by day with police officers, coroners and pathologists. And the bodies weren’t going anywhere.

Dez pulled out a business card onto which he’d scrawled his cellphone number. “If you see them, give me a call, okay?”

“I’m not a messenger service.”

Dez stood over the man and pinned him in his most solid glare—one it didn’t take much work to muster under the circumstances. “Do it anyway.”

Greg gave a tight nod, and Dez turned and jogged down the nearest corridor, the one leading to the pathologists’ main floor offices, the refrigeration rooms and the autopsy suites. He’d try there first, then check Kindra’s upstairs office. For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what had brought them here, but he didn’t much care. All he cared about was ensuring they didn’t leave—not with Kayleigh, anyway.

He’d planned on bypassing the refrigeration rooms, thinking Lowell would have no business in there. Dez’s plans changed as a glimpse into a side passage—one that contained a pair of doors to the two long rooms used for body storage—revealed movement.

The door on the right had just closed.

He rushed toward the door, unthinking, blinded by worry for Kayleigh. If those bastards had taken his daughter in there, into a room populated by dead people in refrigerated compartments, there would be even more hell to pay.

He found the door unlocked and pushed through, passing into the long, clinical-white chamber. On the left, a row of steel doors stacked three high concealed whatever bodies were awaiting autopsy or release to funeral homes. But it was the centre of the room that quickly drew his attention—or more specifically, who it was standing there.

Lowell faced him, alone, gun in hand, expression carrying a hint of panic as he faced his nephew. Dez didn’t have long to enjoy his uncle’s discomfort, as Lowell quickly replaced it with the confident smile more natural to him.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Lowell said. “How’d you find us?”

A time for explanation would come—preferably when Lowell was safely stowed in the back seat of a police car. Right now, Dez had just one thing on his mind. “Where’s Kayleigh?”

His question, a dangerous growl, turned down the corners of Lowell’s lips.

“Dez—”

“Where is she?” A shout this time, thunder in an echo chamber. It rattled off the walls, off the steel doors to the left. Rattled Lowell’s nerve, if the further slip of his expression had anything to say about it.

Lowell brought the handgun up a few inches, taking steady aim at Dez’s chest. “Don’t make me use this.”

“You’re going to fire that thing in here? Greg will have the police here in less than two minutes.”

“He won’t,” Lowell said. “He knows better.”

“Why? Because you’re the rich and powerful Lowell Braddock?”

“Because he knows no one would believe him.”

“Give me a break. You know damn well police would have to come clear the call. What are you really planning?”

“Nothing. All we intend to do is leave.”

Dez’s focus, fixed entirely on Lowell, couldn’t shift quickly enough as someone rushed through the open door behind him. He barely had time to turn when he felt the jab of a syringe in his neck and the cool flow of liquid crawling beneath his flesh. He finished his turn, eyes locking onto Kindra’s. She, at least, had the decency to appear apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Desmond,” she said. “This isn’t what I wanted. None of this was what I wanted.”

Dez took a step toward her, intending to push past, to search for Kayleigh. If Lowell and Kindra were here, Kayleigh couldn’t be far. Kindra backed away as Dez took one step, then two. It was all he managed before something heavy collided with his head from behind. He dropped to his knees, but what should have been a painful collision between his body and the tile floor was dulled by whatever chemical had been injected into him.

“What’d you give me?” he asked, the words slurring around each other.

He ended up fully on the floor, uncertain how he’d gotten there. On his side, he turned his head enough to catch sight of Lowell leaning over him.

“Just a sedative,” he said. “Same thing I gave Sullivan in my office two years ago. Remember? He was fine afterward. I wish I could say the same for you. I mean that, Dez. I don’t get any pleasure from what I have to do.”

Dez didn’t intend to ask what Lowell meant; he didn’t want to know, nor did he have the luxury of time to consider it. Kayleigh. Kayleigh was all that mattered.

He pushed off the floor, managed to lever his upper body to partial sitting. Lowell reached for him, but Dez shoved him back, his remaining strength still plenty to put the older man onto his ass. He continued to push up, getting one leg under him with one arm positioned to lift him toward standing. But the leg didn’t cooperate. It gave out, the room spinning around him like the world surrounding an amusement park ride.

He slumped back down, brain screaming at him to move. Kayleigh. He had to find Kayleigh. He was so close. So close.

“Are you sure you gave him enough?” came Lowell’s voice through the fog. “He should be out by now.”

“It was meant for Kayleigh, just in case,” Kindra replied. “Look at him. He’s three times her size. It’s something it’s doing as much as it is.”

“Let’s get him onto one of the slabs and lock him inside one of the long-term freezer units. No one will hear him until it’s too late.”

“The negative temperature lockers? We can’t do that, Lowell. Not to him. He’ll freeze to death.”

“That’s the point. Hon, there’s no choice. He hasn’t left us with one.”

“How are we supposed to explain it once they find him? Greg knows we were here, and we’ll be on surveillance coming in.”

“We’ll take the tapes and deal with Greg. Don’t worry. I have a plan for handling this.”

“What if Desmond told someone we were here?”

“Enough.” Lowell’s tone suggested he was rapidly reaching the end of his rope. “If I tell you I have a plan, I have one. All we need is to buy enough time to get out of the country. That’s it. After that, we’ll find somewhere to start over, just you and me.”

“Lowell—”

“Stop, all right? Just stop. Help me get him loaded into the fridge.”

Dez sensed movement, did his best to fight as he was manhandled onto something solid and cool. But his best was no longer good enough, and he could do nothing as the fuzzy bright white swimming in his vision gave way to dark, accompanied by a sound he’d heard several times in his policing days: a morgue tray being wheeled into one of the refrigerated compartments.

Most lockers were between two and four degrees, just cold enough to slow decomposition. This was something altogether different. Even through the haze of the drug, he knew he wasn’t in one of those lockers, but the other kind, one where they kept bodies they’d need, for investigative reasons, to hold long-term.

He might have air enough to breathe, but hypothermia would take him down fast.

He shifted slightly on the cold slab, but while his mind played through an image of pulling himself out of the drawer and propelling himself off the tray in one quick move, his body didn’t cooperate. All he managed was to lift one arm half a foot before it dropped solidly back against the metal slab on which he lay.

A voice sounded around the crown of his head.

“I’m so sorry, Desmond,” Kindra said. “I don’t want to do this. I really don’t.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Lowell said. “He’s sealed his own fate, Kindra. Let’s go.”

Now or never.

Dez gave it one last push, slamming a hand down against the tray to push himself to his side. He managed the move, but a second hard blow to his head sent him teetering on the brink, unconsciousness right below.

He slipped, plummeting downward into the blackness.

The door slamming shut was the last thing he heard.

27

Thadeus stopped the vehicle before he reached the morgue, considering how best to proceed now that he was here.

It was quiet, no signs of activity through the lit main floor windows facing the street on which he was parked. Yet he knew something was going on within the building. Harry’s vision, shared with him less than ten minutes ago, was proof enough of that.

Headlights in his rearview mirror had him pulling his attention from the building to the road behind, just in time to watch a vehicle slowing to a halt behind his. Thadeus narrowed his eyes as he peered into the mirror. Thoughts of flight faded as he recognized the person emerging from the vehicle.

Lachlan Fields, the private investigator. If he was here, no doubt something was going on. Perhaps Sullivan’s brother had summoned him here. If so, Lachlan might have some news to share.

Thadeus stepped from his own vehicle, rising to meet Lachlan.

“What are you doing here?” Thadeus asked.

Lachlan pulled up short, whether because of the Cockney accent or whatever it was that changed in Sullivan’s eyes when Thadeus took over.

“Not again,” Lachlan said. “You need to get a grip on yourself, Sullivan.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Thadeus said. “I’m the grip.” He motioned to the building, now partially behind him. “I’ll ask again. What are you doing here?”

“I’m sure you’re already aware since you’re here as well, but Lowell’s inside. It’s only a matter of time before the police show up. Ray Dunsmore gave Lowell up. He’s providing a full statement detailing the bastard’s involvement in more than one homicide and other illegal dealings. A warrant’s being drawn up as we speak for Lowell’s arrest. I managed to talk my own way out of an interview for the time being, given Desmond is in there and probably in some trouble.” Lachlan scanned the scene. “I didn’t tell McPhee where I was going, only that I needed to meet my associate. We’ve got the place to ourselves for now, but don’t count on it staying that way for long. If we’re going to do something, we’d better make it quick.”

“We?”

Lachlan snapped his attention back to Thadeus. “Yeah, we. Look, I don’t know who the hell you are, but I’m not sitting on my ass out here. I was a damn good cop, and I’m still good. Anyway, Desmond’s my responsibility just as much as yours.” Lachlan took another look at the building. “I don’t see Desmond. I highly doubt that hothead would have listened to me and sat it out until I got here. Even so, I’m going to take a quick drive around the place, see what I can see. Wait here.”

Thadeus waited, but only until Lachlan returned to his vehicle and drove toward the building. Then he moved, sprinting across the road and slipping into the shadow of a set of shrubs that served as a fence. The branches scratched at him as he pushed between them but he barely felt it. He was close. So close to taking care of Lowell Braddock forever.

Thadeus had waited a long time to be reborn into a life he could settle into, a body that possessed the sort of power he could make use of. Sullivan Gray was stronger than any of Thadeus’s other descendants. He could harness the power of the Spirit Caller, could consume enough energy to make him all-but invincible. What was more, Sullivan had endured a difficult, painful childhood, one he’d been helpless to change on his own. To this day, it was his greatest weakness—which made it Thadeus’s greatest strength. Sullivan was all-too-willing to hand over the reins when he didn’t know if he could handle a situation, and Thadeus was always there to pick up the slack. And every time he did, he grew stronger. The time would come when Sullivan could no longer regain control of the body he’d surrendered to this past life, and that would give Thadeus the power he’d spent generations coveting.

But first, he’d need to take care of the uncle. Until Lowell was out of the way like the Dules, Sullivan would never be truly free—and nor, then, would Thadeus be.

A window was within reach, but each of those on the main floor was barred. Not so for the upper floors, but as far as Thadeus was aware, his abilities had never extended to flight.

Then again, what were bars against the might of the Ravenwood poltergeist? He could feel the spirit churning inside him, desperately seeking an outlet. Thadeus would give him one.

He reached out mentally with the poltergeist’s power, focusing on the ground floor window nearest him. The glass broke first, shattering inward, into an office. The bars would pose a greater problem, but Thadeus sensed the poltergeist enjoyed a challenge. It pushed out of him like an explosion, the spirit’s energy pummelling not the bars, but the brick holding them in place. The bottom edge went first, mortar crumbling as bricks separated, taking bolts with them. Settled into the knowledge this was not outside his capabilities, the other sides of the barricade shattered more easily.

Thadeus caught the bars before they fell to the floor, preventing at least that much noise. If he’d managed to avoid detection so far, he’d be a very lucky man.

The window now clear to enter, he crawled carefully over what was left of the sill until he stood in the middle of the office, doing his best to avoid the glass on the floor.

Now all he had to do was find Lowell Braddock. Where he was now was anyone’s guess, but Thadeus knew of at least one place Lowell had already been or was likely to end up. Desmond Braddock had ended up in one of the morgue lockers, and chances were he hadn’t sealed himself in there willingly.

Thadeus eased the office door open and peered out, finding himself facing an empty, white hallway. He listened a moment and, hearing nothing, slid from the room and closed the door quietly behind himself. No doubt the other doors were locked, but that meant nothing to him. If the poltergeist had managed to blast through brick, he could certainly manage a locked door if the situation required him to quickly conceal himself.

He found what he was after along a short corridor branching off the main hall. Two doors stood either side, leading, according to a sign overhead, to the morgue’s cooler rooms. He turned the corner and chose the one on the left.

Thadeus had expected a room with rows of steel cabinets along the side. Not in this room. Here, bodies were laid out on trays in the open, wrapped in plastic with just tagged toes emerging. The entire room was chilled, like stepping inside a refrigerator.

He’d always been fascinated by death, by the means and mechanics of it. Perhaps that was why, in taking a moment to focus on this room’s contents, Thadeus missed what had slipped up behind him.

He spun at the sound of a gun being cocked. He expected to find Lowell. What he got instead was Greta Raynor.

She looked like hell, the side of her face bruised and scraped, blood caked in her hair. She still looked a damn sight better than Thadeus would have predicted.

“I thought you were dead,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not for lack of trying on your part.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you, pet. You were trying to kill me, remember?”

“You’re dangerous. We were trying to stop you before you became a greater threat. You’re evil.”

“That’s what you tell yourself, anyway.” Thadeus took a step toward her.

She held the gun more solidly, no sign of drug-induced shakes in her grip. “Don’t come any closer!”

He stopped, to placate her more than anything. If he wished to, he could use the poltergeist against her. For now, it was unnecessary. She was here because she felt some sort of duty to the crones who had been leading her like a blind puppy. She wasn’t a foe; she was a pathetic creature, lost to brainwashing and her own vices.

“How much do you really know about me?”

“Enough. I know you killed people.”

“As have you. We’re each of us fighting a war. Sometimes sacrifices must be made.”

“You killed my mother and grandmother! They were all I had!”

“They killed themselves. And aren’t you married? Granted, the copper’s not all that much, but he seems to love you all the same.”

“Forbes? He’s a loser and a bully. Anyway, this isn’t about him. It’s about you. Stop trying to analyze me.”

“Fine. Let’s analyze me. You think you have me pegged. Have at it, then.”

“You’re the Spirit Caller. You’re a murderer who devours the souls of your victims. You take in evil and you’ve become evil as a result. And the more you do, the more you suck in, the stronger you become. You’re like a black hole.”

“And it isn’t perhaps just the slightest bit jealousy on your part, the reason you so desperately want me dead?”

Greta scoffed. “Jealousy? Over what?”

“You grew up the same as I did, the same as Sullivan. Unwanted. Unloved. Abandoned. Helpless to change your path in life. Defenceless against the cold world and the brutal people in it. When you killed, did you not feel for even a moment the rush of power in the act, that ultimate control over another’s fate? For once in your life, you weren’t the victim; you were the aggressor. You could do as you wished. You had the power to allow life to continue or to snuff it out like a candle. And when you stood there, watching as their lives ended, did you not feel as if no one could ever again hold sway over you?”

Where it hadn’t before, her gun hand now shook. Her eyes narrowed, squeezing from one a single tear she made no effort to wipe away. “Fuck you.”

“Your problem, my dear, is that for some of us, death is like a drug. You kill one, you break a seal inside yourself, one you can’t mend. You first killed as a young girl, didn’t you? Part of you hated doing it, but the larger part of you hated just how much you loved it. You spent years trying to be something you weren’t, convincing the world and yourself you were something other than a killer. But deep down, you’re no different from those witches who made you. You’re a Dule, and Dules kill. It’s what we do. You’re here not to stop me, but to feed your craving, nothing more. You’d better get to doing it, pet, because only one of us is walking out of here.”

She took him up on it as he knew she would. Her face hardened, her eyes narrowing as she raised and stared down the sights of the handgun. Thadeus, in those couple of seconds in which time seemed to slow to a crawl, smirked as he prepared for the counterattack she’d never see coming.

But the night’s surprises, it seemed, were far from over. Before he could react, a gunshot sounded—not from her weapon but another. The side of Greta’s head opened up, blood and gore spattering over the wall and doorframe. She fell hard, landing on the tiled floor, a red pool growing where gravity drew from the open wound.

Thadeus snapped his head up at movement from the door. This time, he’d expected Lachlan. Again, he was mistaken.

“Terrence Waters,” he said. “I suppose I owe you my life.”

“Where’s Lowell Braddock?”

Thadeus turned up a corner of his mouth. “No idea, but you can count on it the gunfire won’t induce him to stick around. How did you end up here?”

“You asked for our help. I managed to convince Mom, so here I am. I had to borrow a friend’s car, so it took us a while to get going, but once we were on the road, Mom brought us straight here. She said she had a real strong sense of you, but like you were messed up bad. She’s still in the car, but I don’t need her for me to see she was right. Something’s not right with you, man.”

“Nothing’s ever been right with me, mate. Do me a favour. Worry about me later. For now, focus on Lowell. It’s a big building. Take the upper two floors and listen at all the doors. He’s here somewhere. I can feel it.”

“We’ve got other problems. The commissionaire’s dead. Someone shot him. And a couple cars were pulling up as I ran in. Not cops, either. I think they’re part of this Circle you talked about. Lowell’s called in backup. We need to get out of here.”

Thadeus stepped forward. “You get out of here. You’ve done me a service, now let me do one for you. I intend to deal with these bastards once and for all. I took out the window on the far side, the furthest office down the hall. Use it to get yourself out and take your mother from here.”

Terrence shook his head. “Uh-uh. I’m done running, and you’re not armed. You need me.”

“I have no need of guns, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Thadeus reached out with the poltergeist’s energy, located two nearby corpses. It was a new use, far more focused than what the destructive spirit was used to, but if Thadeus could pull this off, it would be useful in more ways than one. If there was anything better than a living army, it was a dead one.

Terrence lost a shade of colour. “Jesus Christ!” He had yet to come fully in the door, which was just as well because he’d have a hard time skirting past the newly reanimated Greta, now in the process of sitting up. Behind Thadeus, a large man, chest riddled with bullet holes, was doing the same on the tray that had held him.

“I’ll tell you again,” Thadeus said. “Take your mother and leave. You don’t want to be here. Trust me.”

Terrence’s eyes, impossibly wide, appeared to struggle to pull away from the body on the slab to lock back onto Thadeus. “I don’t know what this is, but for God’s sake, man, don’t go somewhere so dark you can’t find your way back, okay?”

Thadeus offered him a final smile. “Far too late for that, mate. Go.”

Terrence finally fled, his boots pounding on the floor as he ran for the escape route Thadeus had provided.

Then Thadeus returned his attention to the bodies in his power. If he could control these, he could do the same with others. An army of the dead.

It was time to go to war.

28

Darkness turned to light, a kind of light that didn’t seem wholly natural.

Two forms pressed into Dez’s field of vision, human figures fogged as if behind frosted glass. His first thought was of Lowell and Kindra, but one was too small—too small even for Kayleigh. She was taller than this figure; although just seven years old, she was already showing signs she’d soaked in some of Dez’s genes.

No, this was someone else.

He squinted, as if that would make a difference. It didn’t help, but the figures shifted forward, pressing closer, forms gradually coming a little further into focus.

Dez saw a hint of colour crowning the head of one. Red. As the person stepped closer, he caught sight of features. While still fuzzy, they were also just this side of recognizable. He knew the characteristics typical of Braddock males: the strong jaw and green eyes shared by himself, his dad and Lowell.

Lowell. It had to be Lowell.

Yet Dez was no longer in the freezer. He was free. What was more, he was warm. Lowell wouldn’t have let him out, would he?

Only then did Dez look down to better study the other form. What he saw nearly stopped his heart. Not the glossy, near-black of Kayleigh’s hair, but a paler version of red, a shade his mother called strawberry blond.

“Oh, my God,” Dez breathed. He knew these two, knew them well.

He held his breath, waited, praying silently what he was seeing was real and not some cruel hallucination sparked by the cold and a head injury. Another moment, perhaps a second or two, and the pair approaching him passed through the gauzy veil separating them.

And he had his confirmation.

His dad and Aiden. Deathly pale, faces dragged down by exhaustion, Aiden dripping wet and covered here and there in mud and vegetation. But clearly them, hand in hand, each eying Dez with an intense combination of worry and love.

“Son.” Flynn’s voice. Definitely his voice.

A sob came unexpectedly, a rush of emotion Dez couldn’t have stopped if he wanted to. He closed the distance, expecting rather than hoping now he’d find this real. His dad was a solid form in his embrace, and Dez clung to him with one arm, reaching out with the other to draw in his little brother. Aiden’s hand was solid and cool against his jean-covered leg, tiny fingers pressing in as Flynn’s larger, stronger ones squeezed at Dez’s back.

“Son,” Flynn’s voice came again.

Dez pulled away, not because he wanted to leave the warmth of this surprisingly physical connection, but because he wanted more than anything to see his two loved ones, to study their forms and features, to commit them to memory in case this was his one chance to see them again.

“Are you real?” he asked.

Flynn’s hand rose to his shoulder and kneaded while Aiden’s fingers wrapped around a couple of Dez’s much larger ones. “We feel real enough, don’t we?” Flynn asked.

The question had to be asked. Dez had suddenly settled into the realization he wasn’t truly here, not in body anyway. His body was stuck in a morgue freezer.

“How?” he asked. Then, before his father or brother could answer, “Am I dead?”

“No, son,” Flynn said. “But you will be soon if you don’t fight through. You’re giving up. You can’t.”

“But if I go back, I’ll have to leave you here.”

Aiden’s fingers squeezed, drawing Dez’s attention down to his small, earnest face. “But we won’t leave you.”

Flynn cupped Dez’s chin, tugging his face gently upward to meet his eyes. “Dez, this isn’t your time. Kayleigh needs you, son. Sully needs you. Eva and your mom. You can’t leave them. Not yet. You need to go back.”

Kayleigh. All of this was about her. Everything Dez was, everything he stood for, everything he still wanted to achieve. All of it was for her, about her. If he left now, if he chose to abandon his life, he’d be abandoning her. He’d force her to grow up as he did, with the constant weight of loss pressing down on her, a never-ending reminder the people she loved the most weren’t permanent, that they could be lost to her at any time. In his own life, it had been a blessing of sorts, preventing him from taking the people closest to him for granted. But it had come at a heavy price, a loss of childhood innocence and security.

He couldn’t do that to Kayleigh.

“Is she safe?” Dez asked. “Is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” Flynn said. “We’ve been with her the whole time. But she won’t be if you don’t stop this. And, Dez, Sully’s fading. He’s lost between darkness and light, and we can’t reach him. If you can get him to hear you, we can help him use his gifts to save himself. You need him to stop Lowell—Sully, not this other person inside him. He doesn’t need to rely on that other part of himself. You need to help him see that.”

“I think I’m stuck in a freezer,” Dez said.

“You are, but you can get out.”

“You’re strong, Dez,” Aiden said. “Really strong. Just kick at it until it opens. We’ll help.”

Dez didn’t bother to ask how. The sense of urgency was growing, this feeling of needing to act now or be prevented forever.

“Will I see you again?” he asked.

“One day,” Flynn said. “But not for a while. Once you and Sully stop Lowell and Kindra, we’ll be able to cross over knowing you’re safe. But Aidy’s right. We won’t be far. We’ll always watch over you, wherever we are.”

Dez forced back tears as he moved in, sinking into one final hug with the two of them. “I love you. Both of you. More than I can say.” He knelt, facing Aiden, pulling him into an embrace all his own. “I’m so sorry I failed you. I didn’t protect you, and I should have.”

“You didn’t fail me, Dez,” Aiden said. “You were just a kid too. Lowell was the adult. He’s the one who made the choice. All you can do—all you could ever do—was try to deal with the consequences. It hurt me every day watching how badly you felt about me. I was glad when you found Sully.”

Dez pulled away and stared fully into Aiden’s eyes. “You don’t talk like a little kid, you know that?”

“I look the same to you because this is the way you knew me, but I’ve grown up inside. When I cross over, I think I might even be as tall as you are.”

The thought made Dez laugh, the joy of thinking of his little brother—growth tragically halted forever at just five—having a chance to grow up. He’d never thought much about it, about how Aiden might look as an adult. Dez realized it wasn’t so much that Aiden’s growth had been stunted by his murder; rather, it was Dez’s own thoughts and feelings that had prevented his being able to see the possibilities. Sully had shown it to him, this other world, but Dez had been too afraid to really look.

Now, standing here, faced by it, it was as if the poisons of fear and pain had been drawn from open wounds. He was being stitched together, made whole again. He’d have to say goodbye to his father and Aiden, but only temporarily. They were right. They’d always be with him. Maybe not in a way he could see, but seeing wasn’t really believing. The things he believed in the most, those had nothing to do with sight. Love for family, it wasn’t a tangible thing, not something you could look at or touch, but it was the most real thing Dez had ever known. Real enough to make him who he was, to colour every choice he’d ever made.

It was enough to make him fight for life now.

“I love you,” he said. “Always.” He stood, forced himself to take a step back from them. He drank in the sight of them, imprinted this image on his memory in a way he could carry with him forever. “Stay with me?”

Flynn smiled. “Forever and ever, kiddo. Watch for the signs. You’ll always find us there.”

* * *

The light disappeared in a blink, dropping him back into cold black. Back into this deep freeze nightmare into which Lowell and Kindra had thrown him.

The sluggish feel of sedation was gone, whether because of the impact of the temperature or some otherworldly help. Now he had only to contend with cold and cramping limbs as he lifted his arms to shove at the door.

He banged at it a few times before realizing it wasn’t going to budge that way. Aiden had said to kick at it, which seemed more likely to work. He squirmed around on the tray—his tall form making it a challenge in the cramped space—until he’d finally repositioned himself with feet toward the door. Then he started to kick at it with everything he had.

Still, after a dozen or more impacts, it didn’t shift. A cramp in one leg stalled him, forced him to take a breather. He lay there, struggling to refocus, to keep his brain from taking him back to that experience in the grave a few months back when Sully returned. This wasn’t the same thing, he told himself. Sure, he was locked in a morgue drawer where countless corpses had rested over the years, but no one was in here with him now.

Were they?

As he caught his breath, he was certain he felt a presence, the feel of eyes on him, the way you somehow knew, without seeing, when someone was staring at you from across the room. Panic seized him as he strained to stretch out the muscle cramp, The tray’s last occupant might still be here. But as he forced himself to breathe, to relax, he realized the truth was something else. He felt them now. Dad and Aiden, beside him and surrounding him, the same way he’d felt their presence moments ago while in that dream.

A rattling against the door made him jump. It was the sound, he was certain, of the handle being manipulated from the outside.

A voice sounded in his ear, one he immediately recognized as his dad’s. “Now, son.”

Dez drew his legs back, cramp be damned, and let loose, kicking the door as hard as he could. Once didn’t do it, nor did the second impact. The third, though, sent the door flying open.

Light flooded the space, enough to bring Dez an initial dose of relief. Moments later, after some squirming, he was out, standing on the tiled floor while heaving breaths, hands on knees.

“Thanks, guys,” he whispered. He didn’t hear a response, but he knew now—knew in a way he never had before—they could hear him. And even though they weren’t here in physical presence, he felt stronger for the realization they were here nonetheless.

They’d see him through this. He knew it as well as he knew himself.

He straightened, then started for the door leading to the hall.

He didn’t get there.

It flew open before he could reach it, revealing not just Sully but two people next to him—both very clearly dead and yet on their feet. One of them was Greta. And Sully… wasn’t Sully.

Cold dread seized Dez the way the cramp had grabbed at his leg in the drawer. “Sully?”

“Sully’s not here,” came the expected Cockney accent. “Where’s Lowell?”

Dez reached into his pocket for Raiya’s chunk of wood, only to recall he’d given it to Eva.

Damn.

“Sully, listen to me—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish, shoved up against the wall of lockers before he knew what was happening. Sully hadn’t moved, and Dez sensed this was Ned’s energy, repurposed by the hangman. The hangman who clearly had no use for a meddlesome older brother who desperately wanted Sully back at the helm.

“Sully, this isn’t you. Come on, man.”

Sully entered the room, the two bodies tagging along as if rooted to him. Given they were likely only held up by Ned’s energy, Dez imagined that was exactly the reason they were kept so close.

The hangman’s focus for now seemed to be on Dez, not on the corpses he was towing along. “Sullivan has fallen back on you for protection and for strength his whole life, and I’ve been happy for it. He was too weak on his own, too scared. He’s neither anymore—but only because of me.”

“Sully’s never been weak,” Dez said. “You hear me, Sull? You’re not weak, man. You don’t need this guy. Please!”

Sully—Sully’s body, anyway—took another step toward Dez. His eyes, those strange, milky-blue irises unique to the hangman’s presence, studied Dez, dissected him. “You think he can hear you? He’s gone. The man you knew is gone forever. I’m what’s left. I’m in control, and I’m not letting go. I’ve waited centuries for this, for a descendent strong enough to hold me. I’m having far too much fun to quit now, Red, and there’s nothing standing in my way. Nothing but Lowell.” He tilted his head, peering deep into Dez’s eyes. “And you.”

“Sully, no.”

But Sully, wherever he was, didn’t seem to be in a place to hear him. The hangman glanced over his shoulder at the naked, bullet-riddled male corpse, then back at Dez. “Sic ’im.”

If there was one benefit to the hangman’s need to focus Ned’s energy on controlling the two corpses, it was the fact he subsequently had to release Dez to do so. Dez felt the energy pinning him to the wall pull back, like a suction cup being tugged free. As the large, dead man reached for him, he ducked and backed off a few steps—far enough to take in the horror scene before him: two dead bodies staggering in his direction, Sully’s face sneering sadistically as he watched. The jury was out on whether the corpses would have strength enough to rend Dez limb from limb as the hangman no doubt intended, but he wasn’t keen to find out. He could fight the bodies, but all he’d do was exhaust himself before the main battle—the one he’d have to wage against Sully himself.

“Sully, please. It’s me. Don’t do this!”

If Sully was in there, Dez had yet to see evidence of it. The bodies were still coming, nearly on him now. Dez steeled himself, bracing back against the far wall. He’d need to execute the perfect tackle, and he had to have a good running start to make it happen. Taking two deep breaths through gritted teeth and flared nostrils, he pushed off the wall, shouldered Greta out of the way and skirted past the male body as he rushed Sully.

Without warning, a force—one he couldn’t see, yet as solid as cement—nailed him. He flew back, his body entirely off the ground a moment before he hit the floor with brutal force, his head striking tile hard enough to send him back to the brink of unconsciousness. He fought to remain alert, to force his brain to settle, but the few seconds it took were seconds too long. He saw them before he could react, the two bodies closing in, falling rather than kneeling next to him. Dead hands made firm and unyielding with supernatural force seized and held his arms, pinning him to the floor, while Sully—or the hangman—stood over him.

“You were useful to me a long time,” the executioner said. “Those days are over. Know that I derive no pleasure from what I’m about to do.”

A force pressed down on Dez’s throat, squeezing so hard he couldn’t have pleaded for Sully to stop if he tried. No words, no breath. He was trapped here, left to flail helplessly as the force compressed his throat.

And he knew. Knew without a doubt. He was going to die in the worst way imaginable. Like his father, he would die at his brother’s hands.

And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it.

* * *

Riding along with Thadeus in the driver’s seat reminded Sully of late-night childhood drives with his parents. Tucking himself into the corner between backseat and door, Sully would rest his head on the window while, around him, sounds of chatter and the radio faded into the background. Not fully asleep but not awake either.

He usually had some awareness while Thadeus used his body to move around and take what action he deemed necessary, but it was a semi-conscious awareness.

Not now. Not anymore. What it was that had fully roused him he didn’t know. All he was truly aware of now was the image of his brother lying on the tiled floor, his throat squeezed by a force coming from him.

Thadeus—using the power of Sully and Ned—was killing Dez.

It hit him like a punch, drove the remaining lethargy from him, as his horror bubbled into his throat and formed one audible, whispered word. “No.”

He felt it, Thadeus’s surprise, and Sully used it, picturing himself pushing past his ancestor, reaching for the controls to his own body.

He sensed Ned release Dez, heard the evidence of it in the painful wheezing of his lungs.

But Thadeus wasn’t one to give up so easily.

The hangman’s words formed in Sully’s mind: He’s a threat to us, boy. He’s in our way. You’ll come to see it in time.

Sully had an argument at the ready, but Thadeus wasn’t prepared to hear it. He pounced, shoved past Sully, sprang back into the driver’s seat. Thadeus pushed Ned back out, against Dez, forcing him back against the floor. All sounds from Dez stopped as the pressure on his throat returned, harder—far harder—than before. Sully felt it as solidly as if he had his hands around his brother’s neck, could see the way Dez’s throat bowed inward against the compression, the way the blood pooling in his head rapidly reddened his face.

Dez flailed beneath him, boots scraping the floor as he suffocated. And Thadeus—Sully could feel it, the sadistic fascination at watching this horrific scene, at being the cause of it. That, as much as Dez’s desperation and pain, sent Sully over the edge. He dove back into this bizarre internal battle, driving Thadeus down far enough he could regain control.

The effect was immediate. Ned pulled back, allowing Dez to attempt a series of shallow gasps that thankfully ended in a full-on round of deep, racking coughs. It sounded awful, but it meant his throat was open and allowing in air.

But Thadeus wasn’t done—not by a long shot. His energy, seemingly ever-present now, shot forward, pinned Sully down as he once again took the reins.

One word came from Sully’s throat, the Cockney accent clear. “Enough.”

The hangman’s intentions were equally and frighteningly clear.

The dead bodies flew back, freeing Dez. But any relief he might have felt was short-lived. Thadeus wasn’t prepared to fight Sully all night. He wanted this over and over quickly. That meant directing Ned’s energy fully and completely at Dez.

Sully watched, horrified, as Thadeus used Ned to pick Dez up off the floor and toss him across the room, as if he was nothing more substantial than a rag doll. Dez hit the farthest wall hard enough to shatter drywall and tile, and he fell to the floor with a groan. Before he so much as had a chance to draw in a breath, he was up again, flying hard into another wall.

Again he was picked up and tossed, into the steel locker doors this time. Up again, another wall. More tile cracked behind him before he landed, gasping, on the floor.

A sound came from Sully, a gut-wrenching wail he’d never before heard come out of himself. Yet this was him, not Thadeus. He closed his eyes, shutting out the image of Dez writhing on the floor, focusing completely inward. Focusing on Thadeus.

I’m done letting you control me. I won’t let you hurt my brother anymore.

No? Watch me.

But this time, there was nothing to watch. Sully held firm, pictured himself grabbing hold of Thadeus and wrenching him backward, further from the control he so desperately coveted.

The executioner raged at him with a fury built high through several lifetimes. I won’t let you take this from me! I’ve waited too long! You’re weak! You’ve always been weak!

Dez’s voice, though quiet and strained, filtered through the madness. “Sully? Please, hear me. You don’t need him. You’re strong without him. You’ve always been stronger than you realize.”

You’re only strong because they stood behind you. Now you’re only strong because of me.

“Sully, you need to believe me. You could have gone sideways after everything you’ve been through in life. You could have gone off the rails and given in to anger and pain, but you didn’t. You had us, but that wouldn’t have been enough if it wasn’t for you too. You let us in and you let us help you. And you helped yourself too. You faced down your demons and, God knows how, but you learned how to face the things you have to see, all the things people have done to you. A lesser man would have fallen under the weight of it. You’re not a lesser man, Sull. You’re tougher than you’ve ever given yourself credit for. Please, hear me. You’re enough, okay? Who you already are is more than enough.”

The words wrapped around Sully, held him steady as he ignored the insults Thadeus continued to sling. Sully raised a hand, lifted it to his throat and tugged Mariel’s cross into his fingers. It felt warm against his skin, comforting yet powerful—like something else he could now feel pressing into his space. He opened his eyes to find his dad and Aiden beside him and, just behind them, his birth mom, Lucky. They moved closer, close enough he knew what they intended. He allowed it, took them in, felt their warm, loving energy winding through him, quieting Thadeus’s raging spirit. He recognized their strength, and what was more, he recognized his own.

He felt it as if it was a physical presence, the door that slammed shut inside him, sealing and locking Thadeus away. Whatever fears Sully had left melted away, faded into the dark. Only light remained. Light and the people he loved, both physically present and in spirit.

He felt Flynn, Aiden and Lucky leave his body just before his eyes fixed on Dez. He was still on the floor, eyeing him warily while dragging in heaving breaths, limbs poised as if readying himself for a further assault. A desperate combination of guilt, relief and love crashed over Sully, had him rushing to his side.

Dez flinched and tried to scuttle back, to distance himself as much as possible from Sully’s rapidly approaching form. But there was nowhere to go, nothing but another solid wall behind him. Dez ended up in a corner as Sully dropped to his knees next to him and grabbed him in a hug so tight it was probably painful.

“I’m sorry. God, Dez, I’m so sorry.”

Dez released a quaking breath heavy with emotion, then grabbed Sully back, hanging onto him hard.

“I’m so sorry, Dez.”

“It’s okay. You’re back. That’s what matters.”

Sully pulled back, far enough to look Dez in the eye. “He’s gone, okay? I promise he’s gone, and he’s not coming back. I heard you, D, what you said. All my life, I’ve felt like I was dodging bullets, and I was constantly living in fear of getting shot. The only time I wasn’t afraid was when I was with you guys. The way you see me, I guess I’ve never seen myself that way.”

Dez’s fingers squeezed Sully’s biceps. “I meant what I said, bro. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.”

“Strong enough to bounce you off every wall in the room, apparently. Are you okay?”

Dez managed a smile as he nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be hurting in a few hours, but right now I’m good. All I want is to get Kayleigh and get the hell out of here. You up for it?”

Sully grinned. “Damn straight.”

29

Sully questioned why Greg hadn’t responded to the apocalypse-level noise down the hall. The answer became apparent as they peered around the corner toward the rear door.

Sully saw two Gregs—the one slumped over his desk and the other standing next to his dead body with a stunned expression.

“Terrence said he was dead,” Sully said. “Looks like he was right.”

“Terrence was here?”

“He killed Greta to save me. Not that Thadeus couldn’t have handled it, but it’s just as well. I would have hated going to Forbes and having to explain I was the one who killed his wife, even if it wasn’t really me.”

Dez shifted past Sully a bit farther, eyes narrowed as he peered outside. “Where’d those other cars come from? They weren’t here when I arrived.”

“Terrence thought there were Circle members pulling up. I’m thinking he was right.”

“Why would they still be here?” Dez asked. “They couldn’t have missed all the noise, could they?”

Sully considered it. Between the gunfire and Thadeus’s antics in the morgue room, they hadn’t been quiet, that was a fact. But if the cars were still here, the Circle members—and likely Lowell, Kindra and Kayleigh—had to be too.

“They can’t be on the main floor,” Sully said. “They building’s pretty solid but not that solid. You’re right; they should have heard something—if they were on this floor at least.”

“So an upper floor maybe?”

“Maybe. Do you have your phone? You should text Lachlan. I don’t know why he hasn’t found us yet.”

“Lachlan’s here?”

Sully nodded. “I ran into him outside. Last time I saw him, he was going to take a drive around the place. Chances are he came inside.”

Dez pulled out his phone. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I’d put it on silent. I’ve got a bunch of missed calls and texts from Eva, Mom and Lachlan.”

Sully offered a sheepish smile. “I think Eva and Mom were probably calling mainly to tell you I took off on them.”

Dez scrolled through his texts. “Yep, you got that right. But Lachlan, he just called twice. What about you? Anyone try to reach you?”

Sully had been in the process of pulling out his phone as Dez was talking. He wasn’t surprised to find the battery completely drained. All the paranormal juice flowing through him tonight had wreaked havoc on the device.

“It’s dead,” he said. He had one of his portable chargers in his pocket, and he plugged the phone into it before dropping it back into his pocket.

“Mine’s not far behind,” Dez said. “Being stuck in a morgue deepfreeze couldn’t have helped. I think I’ve got just enough juice to manage a quick call. I’ll check in with Lachlan. I don’t want Eva and Mom over here, not until this is resolved—especially if we’re about to go toe-to-toe with the Circle as well.”

Sully wasn’t about to argue. He waited, keeping one eye on the door as Dez made the call. A hand gripping Sully’s shoulder had him turning back. Dez’s eyes were wide as he lifted a shaking finger to tap the speaker function.

“Dez? Are you there? Dez?” Sully knew immediately what had startled him so badly. It was Lachlan’s number, Lachlan’s name showing on the call display. But it wasn’t Lachlan’s voice.

It was Lowell’s.

“Listen, Dez, I don’t know how you managed to get out of the locker, but know this. It’s over, you hear me? I’ve got your boss here, and he’s about to start singing for us. Want to hear?”

A shriek of pain—definitely Lachlan’s—came from the phone. Dez’s fingers dug into Sully’s shoulder, hard enough to bruise. Sully clamped a hand over Dez’s mouth before he could respond, shaking his head at him. No. Far as Lowell needed to know, Dez was still locked away, freezing to death inside a morgue cooler. Sully had been waiting for this moment, waiting to face Lowell, to reveal himself to the man who, above all others, he’d been hiding from.

He was done hiding.

Sully took the phone from Dez, holding it right next to his mouth to ensure Lowell didn’t have the opportunity to mishear.

“Guess again.”

Silence. Dead silence. Then, “Wh-who is this?” The stutter on the first word told a tale of its own. Lowell knew the voice. He just hadn’t grasped it yet.

“Think back two years,” Sully said. “I’m sure it’ll come to you.”

Another silence from Lowell, but this time, Sully could hear muffled chatter in the background. It seemed Lowell, too, had put his phone on speaker. Sully grinned. Even better.

“Tell your friends the second son has come for them.”

With that, Sully disconnected.

“What the hell, Sully?”

Sully grasped handfuls of Dez’s coat and towed him back toward the morgue room where the two bodies lay sprawled out on the floor. He looked to the side, saw Aiden there. Flynn, he knew, would be back with Kayleigh.

“Aiden, which floor is Lowell on? Second?” A head shake, no. “Basement?” That earned him a nod. “And Kayleigh? Is she down there too?” Another head shake. “Kindra’s upstairs office?” A nod. “Is Kindra there too?” Another nod. “Does she have a weapon?” One more nod.

Sully turned back to Dez, thrusting his phone at him. “I think there’s enough juice left in your phone to call 9-1-1. Get them here, now. With luck, they’ll catch the rats jumping ship. Then go upstairs and keep watch. Don’t confront Kindra. Wait for me.”

“What are you going to do?”

Sully grinned. “I’m going to show those bastards exactly why Harry warned them about me.”

* * *

He waited until Dez turned the corner into the stairs heading up. They exchanged one last look, a quick nod and a smile.

It would have to be enough to sustain Sully. Dez had spent his life protecting him; he no longer needed that protection.

With Dez out of the way, Sully cast Ned out, listened as lightbulb after lightbulb exploded until the hallway was cast in darkness. He wasn’t sure where to find the stairs leading to the basement. He knew they weren’t connected to the main staircase, the one leading to the upper floors; he recalled that from periodic visits over the years to Kindra’s office.

He decided he didn’t need to find the stairs down. He’d let the Circle show him.

He waited, listening, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark. Within moments, he heard it, the sound of quiet footfalls and nervous mutterings from somewhere nearby. Probably the closed door facing the short hall leading to the morgue cooler rooms.

Just as well. Once they emerged, they’d be in for a surprise.

Sully turned Ned loose again, focusing this time on the two corpses. It seemed a horrible thing to do, but the stakes were high enough to render it necessary. Thadeus had proven helpful in this much, at least. Without him, Sully would never have considered using Ned to reanimate a pair of dead bodies.

Under Ned’s influence, the two rose shakily to their feet and stumbled, the man before Greta, out into the short hallway and to the door Sully believed led to the stairs. He peered around the corner, far enough to spot Aiden standing there, eyes fixed on his.

“Is it the right door?” Sully whispered.

Aiden nodded.

In the distance, sirens sounded, growing gradually closer. The mutterings behind the door intensified. It started to ease open.

Sully reached out further with Ned, seized the door and flung it wide, sending it crashing into the wall with a bang. Someone in the staircase yelped. Startled, not terrified. Not yet.

Their terror was about to begin.

Using Ned, Sully pushed the two corpses forward, putting them directly in the path of the would-be escapees. This time, a chorus of screams, one seeking to outdo the next in volume. Footsteps thundered on the stairs, rushing back down, several people—four, perhaps five—wailing and cursing as they went.

From farther down the hall came another set of rushed footfalls, ones Sully recognized immediately as Dez’s. He peered around the corner, saw the bobbing of Dez’s cellphone flashlight. Sully dashed out of hiding long enough to put himself in Dez’s path. A rush of relief nearly put him on the floor as he spotted Kayleigh held tight in Dez’s arms.

“Uncle Sully!” Kayleigh exclaimed. “Dad punched Auntie Kindra in the face. Mom’s going to be mad.” Her eyes turned to the two shadowy figures standing at the top of the basement steps. “Ew, why is that guy naked?” she whispered.

Sully gave the girl a quick hug, then focused on Dez. “I thought I told you to wait for me.”

Dez shrugged his free shoulder. “Opportunity presented itself. I took it.”

“Get Kayleigh out of here, now. I’ll get Lachlan.”

“I can’t just leave you here.”

Sully clasped him on the shoulder. “Dez, you’ve always looked out for me, and that means more than I can tell you. But you need to trust I can handle this. If I know you and Kayleigh are safe, that’s all the protection I need, all right? Go. Now.”

Dez was torn, that much was obvious. But in the end, he was a father first, and Kayleigh’s safety was most important.

Dez ran off toward the entrance and Sully stepped close enough to see his SUV speeding out of the lot.

Now it was just Sully, alone and about to face off against some of the most dangerous and powerful people in Kimotan Rapids.

He could deal with that.

Then again, he wasn’t actually alone. With Kayleigh safe, Flynn had returned to Sully’s side. He stood there, flanked by Aiden and Lucky. Close behind, Sully recognized Justice Prescott Montague. And materializing just down the hall stood the Schusters—Thackeray included.

If Sully had needed the nudge, this would be it. The presence of the ghosts Lowell had created signalled beyond all else it was time to deal with this, once and for all.

“Is there another way out of the basement?” Sully asked, happy enough to take a response from anyone who had one.

Montague provided the answer, shaking his head in the negative.

Good. Nowhere for anyone to go.

The sirens were louder, right outside the building. Time to move.

Sully sent the corpses down first. Maneuvering two dead bodies, even with the power provided by Ned, was far from easy, and Sully grimaced as the man plunged down the stairs, landing at the bottom in a heap. No sounds emerged from the Circle members below, no screams, suggesting they’d removed themselves to a quiet corner somewhere, as if hoping they wouldn’t be discovered.

Sully followed the corpses into the basement, righting the man and sending him off, in front of him. The bodies wouldn’t necessarily be enough to stop a bullet, but they’d help. What was more, they might just draw enough surprise that Lachlan, wherever he was, might be able to get the jump on Lowell.

Sully’s phone buzzed in his pocket, startling him. Dez’s name showed on his call display, and Sully kept his tone hushed as he answered. “Hey.”

“Sull, Eva and Mom are on their way over. Police are here.”

“I know. I heard.”

“They’re setting up a perimeter. Get out of there.”

Sully shook his head, though Dez wasn’t there to see. “Not until I’ve got Lachlan.”

“Listen to me. I took a gun from Kindra, and I’ve turned it over to one of the patrol officers here, but I’ve told them Lowell, and possibly others, are armed. I’ve also told them a couple of people, including the commissionaire, have been killed already. SWAT’s being deployed, so you need to get out.”

“How long before they get here?”

A pause. “Could be up to an hour.”

“That’s too long,” Sully said, tone hushed but urgent. “These aren’t your usual criminals. They’re smart and they’re used to getting their own way. I can’t leave Lachlan with them for a whole hour, not if they’re torturing him. I’ll figure out a way to get him out, and I’ll try to disarm Lowell. Then I’ll get Lachlan and me out the side window. Thadeus blew it out to get himself in here. It’s kind of behind some bushes, so the police might not see it to know to watch it. I’ve been told there’s no other way out of the basement. Once I get Lachlan out, I’ll set up my mini-army to try to keep the bastards down here.”

“Mini-army?”

“The bodies.”

“Jesus Christ, Sull. That’s creepy as hell, you know that?” He sighed, a sound of resignation. “Be careful, buddy, okay? Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Pretty much everything I’ve done tonight so far counts as stupid,” Sully said. “I’ll see you soon.”

“You’d better.”

Sully disconnected, placing the phone back into his pocket before looking around him. The lights in the windowless basement were on, though dim, and Sully thought about blowing them out like he’d done upstairs. But that would defeat the purpose. He wanted them to see him coming. They’d feared him enough to condone the murder of children. He wanted to show them their fears were justified.

The spirits had once again gathered around him, as if he’d become the general they were counting on for a next move.

“I need you to show me the way,” he whispered.

Flynn met his eye, the meaning clear enough even without the benefit of audible words. Are you sure?

Sully nodded, offering a confident smile to further convince his father. Flynn nodded back. Then, with Aiden’s hand clutched in his, he drifted across the room to a door on the other side.

Sully followed, moving slowly to allow for the staggering gait of the two bodies in front of him. He pressed between them long enough to test the door, which he discovered locked. No matter. It would take more than that to stop him.

The door flew open under Ned’s force, thudding hard against the wall. He heard the sounds of people down the hall, a man’s startled cry followed by a hissed, “Shut up.”

The hall was long, extending the length of the block-long building, and it was difficult to tell, given the concrete-caused echo, which direction the voices had come from. But he didn’t need to rely on his own senses to find them. Not when he had a troop of ghosts at his side.

Flynn took them to the right, and Sully sent the corpses that way first, keeping his own footsteps quiet so the bastards down the hall could better recognize the shuffling gait of the approaching bodies. He heard hushed sounds of urgent conversation, people on the verge of panic.

Good.

Flynn stopped at a door second from the end of the hall, on the left. It, too, was closed, but that would be no more a problem for Ned than the others had been. Sully placed the bodies in front of it, then took one final, nerve-steeling breath. He turned Ned loose, sending the door crashing inward. This time, he was met by a barrage of screams, then the eardrum-rattling pops from a handgun’s repeated discharge. Four shots fired. The larger of the two corpses staggered backward under the impact, hitting the wall behind him.

“Ted!” a female voice shrieked. “Ted! Someone help him!”

Already the male corpse was back in service, returning to the open door and lurching inside. More screams, wails of the most ungodly terror Sully had ever heard. Someone ahead was trying to press their way out, into the hall, but Greta—or what was left of her—shoved him back.

“Lowell!” cried one man. “Shoot him again!”

Two more rounds fired. More screams. From this vantage point, Sully had no way of knowing what the bodies were doing, where they were positioned or who they were approaching. He’d need to move in if he wanted to keep the tension high.

Anyway, it was far past time he revealed himself.

He put his hood up and stepped forward, using Ned to propel Greta into the room in front of him. Entering the dimly lit room, he got his first glimpse at its occupants: four men and two women, plus a bound, gagged and bleeding Lachlan lying on the floor. All but one of the strangers were older, and Sully didn’t think he’d be out to lunch thinking these weren’t just members of the Circle, but its remaining council. One of the men was on the floor, clutching at his chest while, beside him, a woman knelt, hand on his shoulder but wide-eyed attention very much fixed on Sully.

Sully’s own focus, though, drifted elsewhere, to the man standing in the middle of the group, gun drawn.

Lowell Braddock.

Sully didn’t wait for Lowell to drag his eyes to him from the male corpse; he simply strode forward, pressing past Greta as he closed the distance to the man he’d once called his uncle. Lowell’s eyes snapped onto him, to the spot beneath the hood where Sully knew his eyes were in shadow.

“Stop this!” Lowell snapped. “Stop it, right now!”

Sully focused in on the gun, had Ned send it flying into a darkened corner of the large room. “You’re done giving orders, Lowell.” He peered around at the others. “All of you are done.”

One of the men stepped forward, hands held together as if in prayer. “Please. We came here to try to convince Lowell to end this. Reynold called us and warned us he’d be talking to the police. We thought perhaps we could convince Lowell to do the same.”

“You really expect me to believe that?” Sully said. “You knew. All of you knew. All this time, and you did nothing. Over and over, you turned a blind eye to murder, including that of a child. Nothing’s going to save you from that. Nothing.”

“Ted needs help,” the kneeling woman said. “I think he’s having a heart attack.”

The police were, by now, set up outside. No one would leave this building without running into an armed officer. Their arrests were imminent. One of the men Sully recognized as a provincial politician, a second as a local lawyer who frequently made the news. Both were about to have their careers ruined, their lives publicly shattered, might well face prison time. That would have to be good enough.

“Go,” Sully said. “All of you can go. But cut Lachlan loose first.” He returned his glare to Lowell. “But he stays.”

The woman on the floor released a sob and helped a shaky Ted to stand. One of the men knelt to free Lachlan. Then the whole lot of them—Lowell and Lachlan excluded—began the exodus, squeezing or rushing past Sully and the corpses as they fled the room. Sully waited, listening as their footsteps and panicked voices died away in the corridor and thundered up the stairs.

Lachlan rubbed at his wrists as he regarded Sully. “Help me up. Then bring Lowell and come with me.”

Sully stepped forward, keeping his eyes fixed to Lowell as he pulled Lachlan to his feet. Lachlan stood next to him a moment, as if ensuring he could keep his feet. Sully gave him a moment, until he felt him release his arm.

“Go, Lachlan.”

“Not without you.”

“You have to. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. I’m not leaving before it’s done.”

“Please. Don’t kill him. For the love of God, Sullivan, don’t. You’re not a killer. Don’t become one. He isn’t worth it. Let him face justice.”

More footsteps sounded in the hall, these sprinting toward rather than away from the room. Sully held back a groan, envisioning the police arriving before he had his chance to have this out with Lowell, to find some sort of peace for himself, for the others who’d paid the ultimate price for Lowell’s evil.

Sully didn’t turn, keeping Lowell in his sites. Lachlan provided the answer Sully needed.

“Desmond. Mara.”

Then Dez’s voice. “You okay, boss?”

“I’m fine. But you need to get your brother out of here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sully said.

“He’s right,” Mara said. “He isn’t. And neither are Dez and I. Go, Lachlan. Make sure none of those people who just ran out of here has a chance to weasel out of anything. We’ll see you soon.”

“Okay,” Lachlan said. “But please, don’t do anything to put yourselves behind bars with them, all right? Don’t kill this bastard.”

“I won’t kill him,” Sully said. “But I’m sure as hell going to consider making him beg me to.”

30

With Lachlan gone and the threat narrowed down now to just Lowell, Sully let the bodies drop. He didn’t need Ned now. This was between the four living people remaining in this room.

“I would strongly urge you to back away,” Lowell said. “One call from me, and Kayleigh’s dead. Kindra’s—”

“Out of commission,” Dez said. “And Kayleigh’s safe, with Eva and the police. They’re providing statements as we speak.”

“What do you mean, out of commission?”

“Don’t worry, she’s fine,” Dez said. “I just knocked her out. All I had to do was convince her to open the door to her office. Took her by surprise. She’ll have a goose-egg, maybe a concussion. Considering how badly I wanted to kill her, I’d say she got off light. Mind you, that’s nothing compared to what I want to do to you.” Dez ended the statement in a growl, one that had Lowell’s feigned confidence disappearing from his face.

“You won’t,” Lowell said. “You can’t. The police are right outside.”

Mara stepped forward, closing the distance to Lowell so Sully and Dez had to press closer, too, to stay at her back. “All these years, I’ve trusted you. I’ve loved you like you were my own sibling. You and Kindra. How could you?” She raised a hand, slapping him across the face, hard enough to snap his head to the side. “How could you, you bastard?”

Lowell rubbed at his cheek as he turned back to face her. “Mara, listen, I don’t know what these two have been telling you but—”

“It’s too late for that, Lowell,” Sully said. “Even now, Ray Dunsmore is selling you out. DNA’s being run on the blood found beneath Thackeray Schuster’s fingernails. You know damn well how that’s going to turn out.”

Thackeray stepped forward, pressing his badly beaten face close to Lowell’s. “You gave him one hell of a beating, Lowell, but he dished out a little, too, didn’t he? Probably took a while for the scratches to heal. Not quite the same thing as shooting people or drowning a small child, is it? Irony of the whole thing is that you screwed it up. All of you were wrong. The second son you’ve all been so terrified of, it wasn’t David Gerhardt or Aiden. It was me. It was me all along. And that prophesy is being fulfilled as we speak. The Circle’s done, Lowell. You’re done.”

Lowell shook his head. Denial showed in the movement, in the expression accompanying it. But there was also a mounting horror. “This isn’t happening.”

“Oh, it’s happening. You made it happen. For what? Money? Power? Prestige? To get ahead in the world and to keep yourself there, you sacrificed your own family in the worst way imaginable. You targeted them, you targeted others who got in your way, who threatened to expose you for what you are. All of it, all of your homicidal bullshit, it was for nothing. Because you’re exposed. And by the time the sun comes up, the entire world is going to know what a lying, scheming, murderous, evil bastard you really are.”

“Leave him alone!”

The cry from the door had Dez and Mara spinning in place. Not Sully, though. He saw it, the moment Lowell pulled a revolver—Lachlan’s revolver—from the small of his back and brought it around, levelling it at Dez’s belly.

Sully shouted Dez’s name, but knew it wouldn’t be enough. He was moving before the single word had finished leaving his lips, slamming into Dez, shoving him hard out of the way just as a deafening crack sounded.

Fire exploded in Sully’s middle as he ended up in Dez’s arms, held there, partially upright, as agony seared through him. Dez stared down into his eyes, and the mounting terror in his gaze was enough to convince Sully what had just happened wasn’t good.

From somewhere behind him, Mara screamed.

It was the last thing Sully heard before darkness stole over him.

* * *

He was still in the room, but he wasn’t in his body. He floated next to it, watching as Dez pumped at his chest, as Mara clutched his hand, shaking badly as she watched the hopeless CPR.

Because it was hopeless. Sully knew it.

So this was what death felt like.

Sully stared at Lowell, watched as he raised the gun and took aim at Dez’s head. Sully didn’t think, just pushed out. Ned reacted just as he would have were Sully still in his own body, knocking the revolver away, slamming Lowell back into the wall. Sully heard the man’s head thud hard against concrete, and he slumped, unconscious, to the floor.

Kindra ran toward him, moved to reach for one of the guns herself. Sully gave her similar treatment, rendering her senseless as well.

Keeping the pair of them in his sights—sights that had expanded beyond what his eyes could see—he returned his attention to Dez and his mom.

Mara had reached out a hand, and it rested, trembling, on Dez’s shoulder. “Dez—”

“No.”

“Dez, stop. He’s gone. Sweetie, he’s gone.”

Dez paused, long enough to look up at Mara through wild eyes. “No! He can’t be!” He turned his manic gaze on the air around him. “You hear me, Sully? You’re not dead! Get your ass back in your body and help me!”

He went back to pumping at Sully’s chest, gave it another half-minute before falling back, collapsing against the wall with a sob. Mara stepped over Sully’s body and gathered Dez into her arms. “Dez, sweetie.”

Dez clung to her. “He took my bullet, Mom. It was mine. He saved my life. I’m the big brother. I’m supposed to protect him.”

“It was never a one-way street,” Mara said. “You’ve always been there for each other. I know that. It’s okay. He’s with your dad and Aidy. He’ll be okay. He’ll be okay.”

If Sully hadn’t left his heart behind in that blood-soaked body, it would be breaking. “It can’t end like this,” he said.

His father stepped forward and, for the first time since Flynn’s death, his words were audible.

“No. It can’t. You can’t come with us, Sully. Not yet.”

“But I’m dead. I can feel it. It’s like I’m not even connected to my body.”

Lucky appeared next to him, her fingers intertwining with his. “With anyone else, that would be true. But this is you. Your heart’s stopped beating, but your brain is still functioning. You can still get back in.”

“The bullet wound. It looks bad.”

Flynn raised a brow. “Oh, it’s bad, all right. But you’ve healed from one before. You can do it again. We can help. So can that thing you call Ned. You’ve got all kinds of extra energy here, son. Use us. Use us and get your mom and your brother out of here safely. And see to it Lowell and Kindra face justice. They both deserve to rot in prison, to stay alive long enough to see everything they worked for pulled out from under them. Be the reason for that, the way Harry foresaw.”

Harry stepped into view, inclining his head toward Sully. “It’s the prophesy. You’re the second son. It doesn’t end this way.”

“How does it end?”

Harry smiled. “Any way you want it to.”

Sully turned back to Flynn. He wanted to say so much, but now wasn’t the time. Lowell and Kindra were unconscious, but they wouldn’t stay that way. And Mara and Dez weren’t currently in a state to leave or, for that matter, to notice should Lowell awaken and reach for a gun. Sully used Ned to slide the weapons across the floor, closer to Dez and Mara. Dez looked over, but made no move just yet to reach for them, merely moaning something that sounded like Sully’s name.

Sully gazed back at his body. If he didn’t move now, his brain would soon die as well. Once that happened, there would be nothing left to climb back into, nothing left for the spirits to help heal.

“This isn’t going to be pleasant, is it?”

“Nope,” Harry said. “But it’s necessary if you’re going to end this.”

Sully didn’t respond, not in words. Instead, he turned, facing the group of spirits, this collection of loved ones and Lowell’s victims. The unasked question, the request for consent, had each of them stepping forward, stepping into him. This was different, so much different, from Thadeus. This was power of a different sort, one of love and light, pain and lost hopes. A spiritual yin-yang that felt as natural to him as life itself and yet held a power he’d never before felt. He peered up and, for the first time, saw Ned. It wasn’t human, possibly never had been. Rather it resembled a churning storm cloud—not black or white, but grey. It possessed a consciousness, but not an allegiance to light or dark. It knew only loyalty to power; Sully could use it for good or for evil.

He’d chosen good, would continue to choose good.

He drew Ned in, felt his energy—already bursting with the presence of several spirits—multiply tenfold.

It was time.

He turned, stared back down at his body a moment, long enough to silence the remaining doubt. Then he jumped back in.

* * *

Pain. A pain so intense he’d never be able to describe it with any accuracy. Blinding white light. The most searing heat and intense cold wrapped into one.

As a teenager, Sully had once fallen through the ice on a lake where he had been fishing with his dad and Dez. By the time they’d managed to pull him out, his flesh had gone numb. Gradually, as they’d driven him back into the city, heater blasting on full, feeling had returned. It had been like hundreds of tiny knives jabbing at him, as if his nerve endings were getting their revenge on him for his stupidity.

This felt like that, only a thousand times worse. Had he not been so determined to keep his surviving family safe and to ensure justice for those Lowell had already killed, Sully would have happily left well enough alone and accepted death.

The bullet had passed through part of his heart. He knew that because he felt it with keen agony as the frayed edges inside the organ pulled back together. The renewed pounding inside his chest was like a jackhammer, the flow of blood like lava. He wondered whether he would lose this new blood through one of the wounds in his flesh, but those had apparently already been healed. Blood moved through him now, setting its usual course through veins and arteries, supercharging his suffocating brain with the oxygen now filtering into his lungs. His breaths, he knew, were shallow and slow, but it was adequate, all he needed for now.

The pain began to fade as the most intense part of the healing completed. Awareness returned, the sort that reminded him of those brief moments between dream-state and waking in the morning.

He opened his eyes.

The spirits, all of them, were still inside him and he held them there for now as he took in the current situation outside himself.

A lot seemed to have happened between death and resurrection. Dez stood, squared off against Lowell, each holding a gun on the other.

“I’m going to fucking kill you!” Dez raged.

“Drop it, son.”

“I’m not your fucking son!”

Mara was at Dez’s side, although he seemed to be trying his best to keep her behind him. “Lowell, it’s over,” she said. “Put the gun down and give yourself up. The police are right outside. You’re not getting out of here.”

“Oh, I’m getting out of here,” he said. “With you as a hostage, they’ll let me pass. Former deputy chief’s wife? They won’t take a chance with you. They’ll let me go. I’ve got a plane waiting. All I need is to get to it. After that, I’m out of here. I’m starting over somewhere. New identity, new life, money waiting for me in an offshore account.”

“You’ve got it all sorted,” Dez growled. “One problem. I’m not letting you walk out of here with her.”

Lowell tilted his head. “Oh, I know that. That’s why you’re about to join your brother.”

Sully moved, but not in a way he ever had before. Limbs still stiff, he used Ned to propel him upward, straight off the floor to standing. Upright, he hovered more than stood, feet not fully against the floor as Ned took the bulk of his weight.

The movement drew four sets of startled eyes and Sully took advantage of Lowell’s horrified distraction, hammering at his arms so the gun flew free, clattering away, as before, into the shadows. Lowell responded quick, as did Kindra, the pair of them diving to the floor and scrambling for the weapon.

Using more of Ned’s seemingly boundless power, Sully seized both of them. He flung them back against a wall and held them there, a pair of squirming rag dolls in his psychic grasp.

“Sully?” Dez’s hushed voice, full of hope, sounded as Sully drifted past to position himself protectively in front of his living family members.

“Yeah, D,” he replied. He didn’t say anything else, didn’t need to. It was enough to draw a relieved burst of laughter from Dez and an emotion-filled sigh from Mara.

Sully moved to within two feet of Lowell and Kindra, close enough to smell the combination of sweat and Kindra’s usual perfume. “You’re leaving this room one of two ways: in our custody or dead. You choose.”

Lowell shook his head as much as his position would allow, wide eyes fixed on Sully’s. “You—you’re dead. I killed you. I know I killed you.”

“There’s no such thing as death, Lowell. There’s only this life and the one that comes after. People like me, we exist in both worlds. You can only kill me if I allow it, and I won’t. We’re going upstairs, and you’re turning yourself over to police.”

The head shake was back. “No. I can’t go to prison. I won’t. Kill me. Do it. Kill me.”

Kindra gasped. “Lowell!”

“Do it,” Lowell said. “Kill me. I mean it. I can’t live like this. I’ve worked too hard for everything I have. I’ve sacrificed too much. You’ll have to kill me.”

“I could,” Sully said. “Easily. Thackeray wants me to. So does Prescott Montague. They’re here, you know. They’re all here. Everyone you murdered. But they deserve justice. If you die, chances are the truth dies with you, and the public needs to know exactly what you are.”

“No,” Lowell moaned. “No.”

“You should thank me,” Sully said. “You won’t face anything better on the other side. You won’t find peace there, Lowell, not even for a moment. You’re better off sucking every moment you can out of what’s left of your life on earth. What comes after for you… well, let’s just say you’re better off not knowing.”

The terror in the depths of Lowell’s eyes brought a thrill of excitement to at least a few of the spirits Sully carried inside him. Harry certainly was enjoying this, perhaps a little too much. Sully was happy to help.

“Your choice,” Sully said to Lowell.

“Okay,” he breathed. “Okay.”

* * *

The feeling was nearly back in Sully’s limbs by the time they reached the top of the stairs with their prisoners in tow, Lowell’s wrists lashed behind his back with his own belt. Kindra wasn’t going anywhere, a concussion keeping her senses too dulled for her to accomplish anything of real use to her or her husband.

Dez opted to steer them toward the front entrance rather than the back, most likely wanting to avoid tracking through any evidence present around Greg’s body. Dez drew them to a halt in the hallway, and Sully felt his brother’s eyes on him.

“Hey, Sully? You’ll probably want to do up your coat. All that blood—police are going to ask.”

Sully moved to do up his zipper, but Mara was already there, grinning up at him as she took care of the task. He met her smile with his own, one he shared with the still very-present Flynn and Aiden.

“And Sull?” Dez said. “Um, I don’t know how to say this exactly, but you’re, uh, kind of glowing.”

“I’m carrying a bunch of ghosts inside me,” Sully said. “Kind of hard to avoid.”

“Are they keeping you alive?” Dez asked. “They’re not, are they? Oh, shit, man, tell me they’re not.”

Sully shook his head. “They already saved me.” He thought, anyway. He released them, one by one. Montague first, of course. Then the Schusters. Then, more reluctantly, Flynn, Aiden and Lucky.

He held onto Ned for now. He felt nearly empty without the others, deflated and weakened, as if he had just come through a serious illness.

Or had just returned from death.

“Better?” he asked.

“Jesus, Sull. You okay?”

Dez’s response was adequate to convince Sully he’d pass for a guy without a freakish paranormal ability. “I’ll make it.” And that was enough.

Dez made the quick, obligatory call to Lachlan, asking him to advise police they were coming out the front. They gave it a minute, then emerged into a blinding wall of takedown lights melded with flashes of blues and reds. One voice, coming through a loudhailer, had them all face down on the ground, limbs splayed until officers could surround them.

Sully could quite happily have stayed there, the snow blessedly cool against the building headache.

Police replaced Lowell’s belt with a pair of handcuffs. The ghosts of Lowell’s victims formed an honour guard of sorts as he was led to the back of a police cruiser, an officer reading rights and warnings from a card he’d pulled from his pocket. Kindra received similar treatment as she was escorted to a second police car.

Unbeknownst to anyone but Sully, Montague had climbed in next to Lowell, was now fixing him with a stare as cold as death. He turned back to Sully only long enough to offer a quick, approving nod.

Job done.

The others remained behind for the moment. The Schusters came together, and Sully watched as their wounds fell away and light filled the space around them and inside them. He exchanged smiles with the family, nodding as Betty mouthed the words, “Thanks, kid.”

Then they were gone.

Flynn, Aiden and Lucky stayed, and Sully expected they’d stick around a little while yet. His job with at least two of them wasn’t quite finished.

Dez stood with the permission of officers, then helped Sully to his feet. The snow beneath Sully was stained red with his blood, prompting an immediate and urgent assessment by a pair of officers. But there were no injuries to find, nothing but a pair of freshly healed scabs surrounded by an ungodly amount of dried blood.

“Whose is this?” one officer asked.

No point in lying. The answer would become clear should they choose to test for DNA. “Mine,” Sully said. He offered what he could of a smile. “I’m a fast healer.”

* * *

Police headquarters was a beehive despite the early morning hour, detectives from Major Crimes and other units joining uniformed officers in what had become overnight a massive investigation into corruption, fraud and murder.

Sully spent two hours in an interview room with Staff Sergeant Duncan McPhee, clothed in plastic police-issued coveralls while detailing his comings and goings of the past two years. His phone, complete with his edited recordings of Montague and Gerhardt, were in the hands of police technicians, and what evidence they didn’t provide, he did. He left out the parts McPhee couldn’t handle; few people, in Sully’s experience, were equipped to deal with the invisible truths surrounding them. Maybe he’d share the full story once the camera was turned off, if he ever found himself sitting across a kitchen table from McPhee. But, for now, there would just have to be a few unanswered questions.

As it stood, the answers he did provide were plenty.

“Lowell’s been officially charged with the kidnapping of your niece and first-degree murder in the deaths of commissionaire Greg Kipling, Aiden Braddock and Thackeray Schuster,” McPhee said. “We’re awaiting DNA for added confirmation on Thackeray, but we talked to a neighbour who recalls hearing some banging and shouting over there on what we believe was the night of the man’s death. She said she saw Lowell Braddock leave about an hour later, then return with the makings for cement. She didn’t call it in at the time because she thought maybe he was doing home renos and had gotten into an argument with his contractor.”

Sully nodded. “And Greg?”

“Ballistics on the bullet used to kill him come back to one of the weapons Lowell had in his possession. Plus, he had gunshot residue on his face, hands and clothing. We’ve got some gaps to fill, but his wife’s doing a good job of that. Seems she’s trying to talk her way out of an accessory charge. She’ll cooperate. We’ve also had a fair bit of luck with the Circle members we’ve corralled, our own members among them. The one who shot Forbes pinned the blame on Lowell too. Said he put her up to it by telling her Forbes was snooping around, asking questions about him at the gun range. We haven’t figured out yet whether Lowell actually gave the order to kill Forbes, but we’re working on it. And we’ll keep working on the others too. Kindra gave Lowell up on Aiden’s death. We think she’ll rat him out on the others as well. She’s going to be in questioning a few more hours, at least.”

Kindra. Reynold Dunsmore. Sully. Dez. Lachlan. Mara. The witnesses against Lowell were stacking up. If Lowell didn’t give in and plead guilty, the city was in for a long and sordid trial.

“I’ve still got some questions, more than I’ve got time for now,” McPhee said. “A few things are really bugging me, though. We don’t have a shooter in relation to the Greta Raynor death. None of the guns we’ve found match to the bullet used to kill her. Then there are the Circle members we picked up at the morgue. They all said the two bodies we found down there—Greta and this shooting victim we found on the street a couple of nights ago—were being used by you as zombies, that they were walking and everything. And Kindra swears up and down Lowell killed you, that the bullet wounds we saw on you should be fresh. What do you make of all of that?”

“I don’t know who killed Greta,” Sully said. “I didn’t see. As for the rest of it—” He paused, quirking up his lips in a smile. “It sounds to me like those people should spend a little time in Lockwood.”

* * *

By the time Sully emerged from police headquarters, the sun had risen.

The snowfall that blanketed the city overnight had lessened and was now floating lightly, as if the clouds overhead had already shaken off the worst of their burden.

Sully, too, felt as if he’d shed a massive weight. Lowell had been charged; once the news broke today, his life would be in tatters.

It was the most just punishment Sully could imagine.

As he walked down the front steps in a fresh set of clothes one of his family members had dropped off for him, he spotted his mom’s car parked curbside. Dez pried himself from the driver’s seat and met Sully halfway, pulling him into an emotional hug.

“I thought I lost you,” Dez choked out.

“I thought I lost me too,” Sully said. “More than once, and in more ways than one.”

“How?” Dez asked. Sully knew what he was really wanting to know.

Sully pulled back enough to meet Dez’s eye. He provided what he could of an explanation, of how the ghosts had loaned their energy to help him heal.

“But this wasn’t the same as you getting shot at Lockwood,” Dez said. “You were dead, Sull. I know you were.”

“Lucky said something about my brain still functioning. I think as long as it’s still firing, I can get back in.”

“No one questioned all the blood on you?”

Sully fell into step with Dez as they returned to the car. “Oh, there were questions. Just nothing I had a good answer for. I think McPhee finally agreed to let a few things slide. He’s got enough on his plate to deal with without having to worry about the paranormal.”

“What are you going to tell him when he decides he needs the answers?”

Sully shrugged. “I guess I’ll tell him the truth.” He quirked up a corner of his mouth. “He’s got about half a dozen ghosts attached to him, so I don’t think it’ll be hard to convince him.”

“Gotta say, I don’t mind the idea of you being able to use this gift of yours to heal yourself.”

Sully had given it some thought. A lot of thought, actually. Enough to come to a conclusion. “Don’t get too comfortable with it. I’m done. The risks are too high.”

“What risks?” Dez asked. “You’re only alive because of it.”

“And you almost died. I’m pretty sure I can control it, but pretty sure doesn’t cut it. Every time I use that ability, I risk unlocking the door for Thadeus. I can’t take the chance. I’ll communicate with the ghosts, but that’s it. I’m done with the rest of it. Shouldn’t be such a big deal now that everyone who wanted me dead is out of the way.”

The two of them got into the car, which Sully found blessedly warm. He felt cold, weak and stiff, as if his body hadn’t yet fully recovered from extreme blood loss or death. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Home,” Dez said. “And I mean our home. Eva and Mom wanted to get Kayleigh into bed as soon as police got a quick statement from her. Poor kid was beat.”

“She’s okay, though?”

“Yeah. Near as we can tell, Lowell and Kindra didn’t expose her to anything awful, so there’s that much at least. Kayleigh was confused as to why we didn’t tell her she was going to be spending time with them, but that’s about it.”

“Are you going to tell her the truth?”

“Eventually. But not now.” Dez started the car as the windows began to fog from their breath. “I want her to have a chance to be a kid.”

He pulled away, steering them from police headquarters, setting a course for home. “You looking at any charges over any of this?”

“Not yet. Guess it’s possible. I mean, they haven’t connected me to the incident with the Dules and the assassins, and I didn’t provide information otherwise. I suppose they might find Greta’s blood on my clothes if they run DNA, but they tested me for gunshot residue and I was clean, so I can’t see them charging me with her death. I told them I didn’t see what happened. Terrence shot her to save me. I don’t want him dragged into this. He’s got a chance at starting over. I want to make sure he gets to take advantage.”

Dez stopped at a red light, and Sully, sensing his stare, turned his direction.

“What about you?” Dez gave a half smile. “You’ve got the same chance now. What are you going to do with it?”

Sully shrugged. “I don’t know. Funny, I guess. I’ve been so stuck on the idea of nailing Lowell that I never stopped to think what comes after.” He grinned. “Maybe someone needs a bartender.”

Dez provided an answering smile. “I think I’ve got a better idea for you—and I’m pretty sure Lachlan will agree.”

Sully lifted a brow. “The three of us, working together full-time, solving unsolvable homicide cases?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

Sully nodded and turned back to face the windshield just as the light turned green.

“Sure,” he said. “I think I could live with that.”

31

Christmas Eve found Sully crammed between his brother and mom on Dez’s downstairs sofa. Eva lay stretched out on the rug in front of Dez’s feet next to a napping Kayleigh, while Pax drooled in his sleep next to them.

Mara had insisted on their yearly tradition, the 1951 version of Scrooge—a movie that used to bore the hell out of the men in her life. She was in her element while Dez sat with head propped in his hand.

Sully remembered a time he’d rolled his eyes at the notion of this particular Christmas routine. He’d long since moved past that.

Last Christmas had found him staring at Dez’s house from the outside, watching his family enjoying the holiday without him. He could think of nothing better than this, than his being here now.

That the show featured lessons imparted by ghosts wasn’t lost on him. Nor was the fact it was being watched by ghosts. Flynn, Lucky and Aiden were here, too, though their eyes were fixed more often on their family than on the black and white film.

To Sully, it suggested something he wasn’t ready for.

They were preparing to leave.

Mara always timed the movie to end at midnight, once the clock ticked over to Christmas morning. As the tradition came to its close, the family exchanged goodnight hugs and wishes for a merry Christmas, and Dez carried Kayleigh off to bed.

Sully waited until the others had gone upstairs, leaving him with Pax and his ghostly family members.

He rose to his feet to speak with them. “You’re ready, aren’t you? You’re ready to cross over.”

Flynn met Aiden’s eye, then focused back on Sully. While Flynn’s face showed peace, his gaze wasn’t without sadness as he answered the question with a slow nod.

Sully nodded back, offering what he could of a smile, before turning next to Lucky. From her came a headshake.

“Why?” he asked her. “The Dules are gone. You don’t need to protect me from them anymore.”

She stepped forward, placed a hand on his chest, over his heart. He expected an image to flash into his brain. What he got instead was a feeling of the most intense love, and a thought passed onto him through the sensation. She didn’t need to protect him from the Dules anymore, nor was it likely she needed to guard him against himself. But she would protect him all the same.

Flynn approached him next, settling a hand on his shoulder. He needed to get Aiden into the light, but they, too, would look in on their family often.

“I won’t see you,” Sully said. “I can’t see ghosts once they’ve crossed.”

Flynn nodded. I know. I’m sorry. But it’s the way it has to be. Flynn smiled down on Lucky. But you’ll have this girl. She’s a tough little nut.

Sully smiled, but a tear dripping down his cheek belied his attempt. “I don’t want to say goodbye to you.”

Then don’t, came the thought from Flynn. You don’t need to. Goodbye is just an illusion.

* * *

Sully barely slept, dreading what the day would bring. They hadn’t said as much, but he knew. Flynn and Aiden would stay for Christmas with their family before taking their brief journey into the light.

Kayleigh, bounding down the stairs shortly after six in the morning, was the medicine he needed.

“Uncle Sully! You’re awake! Good, you can help me wake up Mom and Dad. They’re hopeless.”

Sully laughed, folding the girl into a hug. “I think everyone was pretty tired last night, kiddo.” He watched as Pax awoke with a massive yawn and climbed to his feet, welcoming Kayleigh with a round of licks to her face. “Why don’t you play with Pax for a bit? I feel like I’ve been neglecting him lately. Anyway,” he added, “I think he likes you better.”

“Of course he does,” she said, taking Sully up on his offer by wrapping her arms around the dog’s neck. “Dogs like kids better.” She peered up, meeting Sully’s eye with an impish grin. “But I like you better than almost anyone.”

Sully grinned back. “Same with you, kid. I love you, you know that?”

“I know,” she said. “Love you back. Now let’s go wake up Mom and Dad, okay?”

* * *

Christmas dinner was a potluck. It had to be, given the number of people coming.

Besides the immediate family, they were to be joined by Lachlan, Emily Crichton, Bulldog Bird, Paul Dunsmore, Marc, Raiya and Mara’s sister, Lindsay.

Sully lent what help he could in the kitchen, but he soon found himself with another task that was more important.

He’d been checking in with the hospital daily, and was repeatedly informed Forbes was doing much better physically and was to be released on Christmas day. Not so heartening was the fact he had been refusing all visitors.

Today, Sully intended to remove that option.

Still midway through the process of trying to convince the government he did, in fact, still exist, it seemed a driver’s licence was some distance away. Dez happily took a break from kitchen duties to drive Sully to the hospital.

“You going to tell him what happened to Greta?” Dez asked en route. “The truth, I mean?”

“Maybe,” Sully said. “Eventually. Not today, though. Today, I want him to think of her as the person he wanted her to be.”

Dez waited in the running car while Sully went in, in search of Forbes. He found him in his room, seated in a wheelchair, his clothes rumpled and twisted in a way that suggested he’d dressed himself without waiting on staff to help.

He turned a glower up on Sully as he entered the room. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to pick you up. Dez is downstairs.”

“I was going to ask them to call me a cab as soon as I finish signing the papers.”

“Not going to happen. We’re your ride.”

“I don’t need one.”

Forbes, it seemed, in fact needed far more than that. Sully ignored the warning glare as he walked fully into the room and sat in the lone visitor’s chair. “I tried to come see you, you know. They told me you didn’t want visitors.”

“I didn’t. Still don’t.”

“I know you’re going through hell right now, man, but—”

Forbes held up a hand. “Don’t. I’m not in the mood.”

“Tough. ’Cuz here’s the thing, man. You and me, we’re family. And that means something to me. It means I’m going to sit here until they sign you out, and then I’m going to wheel your stubborn ass down to the car. It means I’m going to stay on your ass until you agree to talk to me. It means while you’re sitting in the dark, I’ll be sitting there with you.”

Forbes had turned from him midway through, his face a mask of stone. Now a tear slipped through. Just one. But it was enough.

Forbes lowered his face into a hand as the tears started in full. “I thought I could help her. I thought I could save her.”

Sully dropped a hand onto Forbes’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. He didn’t say anything. Nothing he could say would help. Not yet.

But one day, yes. As long as Forbes gave him the chance.

“I’m pretty sure they don’t want you alone for a while with your injuries,” Sully said. “You’re welcome to come to our place, but I’ll bet your dad would love to see you.”

“I told him I wasn’t up to Christmas this year. He gave up trying.”

“I doubt he gave up. Probably he’s just waiting for you to come back around. Anyway, Christmas doesn’t need to be about celebrating anything. It’s just being with people you care about. I know it’s hard. Believe me, I know. But don’t shut out the people you still have because of the ones you don’t, okay?”

Forbes met his eye at last. “Do you see her? Greta?”

Sully shook his head. No, he didn’t see her. He hadn’t seen any of the Dules. And he thanked God for that.

“I want to find out who shot her,” Forbes said. “Will you help?”

“One day,” Sully said. “When we’re both ready. But for now, we’re just going to take things one day at a time. Your dad’s probably really worried about you. So how about it, us taking you over there?”

Sully was relieved to see the nod.

“Okay,” Forbes said. “Okay.”

* * *

The food was secondary at the Braddocks’ Christmas dinner, Sully far more invested in watching the faces around him and listening to their happy chatter back and forth.

It wasn’t just Sully who’d had a weight lifted from him. It was like a whole new group of people sitting here, telling jokes, making fun of each other, sharing goofy stories. And despite the fact they’d all lost someone close to them, they took joyful solace in each other.

After the guests departed, loaded down with leftovers, Sully helped Dez with dishes while Mara, Eva and Kayleigh watched a movie downstairs. Once Kayleigh went to bed, reality dawned fully on Sully.

Flynn and Aiden were close by, hovering, demanding he act as their intermediary in this parting.

In a way he never had before, Sully hated his role.

He took the stairs into the basement slowly, interrupting a lighthearted conversation between Dez, Eva and Mara.

“Hey, guys?”

Three sets of eyes turned to him, questioning. He waited, trying to get his thoughts in order, his emotions under control as he searched for the right words.

Mara found them for him. “They’re going, aren’t they?”

Sully nodded. He didn’t speak. Now that he’d come this far, the lump in his throat precluded anything further.

Mara approached him, drawing him into an embrace. He sank into it, hugging her back, letting his walls crumble as he released the tears that had been threatening all day.

“Sweetie, it’s okay,” she said. “It’s time. They’ve stayed this long only to ensure we were safe and to see justice done. Everything is fixed now, as much as it possibly can be. It’s time we let them go.”

Sully nodded against her shoulder. He sucked in a shaky breath, released it in a slow whoosh. He looked up long enough to meet Dez’s eye. Dez was weepy, but not broken, his eyes holding only sympathy as he regarded Sully.

The confusion hit as Sully pulled away from Mara. He’d expected far worse. Perhaps his thoughts were clear on his face, because Mara answered his unspoken question.

“Sweetie, we said goodbye to them already,” she said. “We don’t have the same ability you do, to see them. For us, their being able to go and find peace, that’s a wonderful thing. But for you, I know it’s something else. You didn’t have to say goodbye, not really, because they were still so very palpable to you. Now they won’t be. But I am absolutely convinced they will be just as present in our lives going forward as they ever were. Seeing and believing, those are two very different things. You’ve taught us that.”

Sully nodded again, then sucked in a threatening fresh round of tears as he turned to Flynn and Aiden. “I love you both. So, so much. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. You’ve saved me—you’ve saved all of us—over and over. But we’re going to be okay, because we’ve got each other. And I know we’ll still have you too.”

Dez approached, draping an arm across Sully’s shoulders while Mara’s wound around his waist. Eva, joining them, held one of his hands. There, nestled within the support of three of the people who meant the most to him in the world, Sully watched as light surrounded Flynn and Aiden.

It shone from Flynn’s face while, beside him, Aiden’s shape changed. He grew tall and broad, transforming before Sully’s eyes from a small, sopping-wet child to a healthy, beaming twenty-four-year-old man.

“Wow,” Sully breathed.

“What?” Dez asked.

“Aiden. He’s grown up. He looks a lot like you.” Sully couldn’t resist. “Only better looking.”

Aiden chortled silently as Dez landed a playful punch to Sully’s gut.

The two Braddock men scanned their family once more, then locked eyes and hands before fading into the light surrounding them.

* * *

Sully stood on the front stoop, scanning the nighttime street, aglow with Christmas lights.

The corner lot just down the road had gone full bore, half a dozen blow-up characters littering the lawn and what looked like a manmade sleigh mounted on the roof. A house kitty-corner to Dez and Eva’s was a hive of activity, Christmas music playing a little too loudly as people inside laughed and chatted, drinks in hand. Up and down the street, as far as the eye could see, there wasn’t a single spot left to park.

Families, friends, people who cared about each other. Few, if any, could have come unscathed through life, and most likely had lost someone along the way. What many probably didn’t know was that their loved ones had never truly gone.

The door opened behind Sully and he turned only long enough to see Dez moving to stand next to him.

“It’s late,” Dez said. “We’re going to bed right away. You coming in?”

“In a minute.”

Dez shivered, pulling his unzipped coat a little tighter around himself. “Colder than a witch’s teat out here.”

Sully smirked. “Don’t draw that comparison in front of Raiya.”

“Ah, hell,” Dez said. “She’d laugh harder than anyone.” He paused, and Sully sensed the impending question before it had even been asked aloud. “You okay?”

Sully nodded. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Out of all these people, how many do you think know there’s another world outside the one they know?”

Dez shrugged. “Probably not many. If it wasn’t for you, I probably wouldn’t know either.”

Sully nodded again, then dropped his head, scanning his boots. They were easy to see, the stoop lit by a string of bright, white lights. “It’s easy to lose faith, to forget. When you can’t see it, I mean.”

A few seconds passed. Then he felt a hand land on his shoulder. “They’re still here, with us. I can feel them.”

“I can’t. I don’t know why.”

“It’s hard to feel things when you’re grieving,” Dez said. “Give yourself a few days. I’ll bet you’ll start sensing them too.”

Sully smiled up at Dez. “Have we switched roles here somewhere?”

Dez smiled back, then dropped his hand and leaned against the railing. “You’re not the only one who’s seen them.”

This was new. “What do you mean?”

Dez didn’t look at him, his eyes instead fixed on the party across the street. “I didn’t tell you this before. Don’t know why, except maybe I wanted to keep it to myself a while. But when I was in that morgue cooler, I almost died. Came really close to it, I think. Anyway, I saw Dad and Aiden. I went into some sort of place where everything was this really bright white. They were there.”

Sully stared at Dez, trying to get past how close his brother must have been to death. “What did they say?”

“Aiden told me it wasn’t my fault, what happened to him.”

“I’ve told you that a million times.”

“I know. But coming from him, that was different. I’ve lived with the guilt for so long, I almost don’t know what to do now that it’s gone.”

“So you know now? That it didn’t happen because of you?”

Dez nodded. “Yeah. I get it. I get what it was you were trying to hammer into my head all these years. But I guess I needed it to come from him.”

“I get that.”

“He also said he was happy I ended up with another brother. Didn’t disagree with him on that either.”

Sully smiled. Dez patted him on the back, then continued.

“But it was what Dad said that maybe you need to hear. I know you can’t hear them, that you can just see them. But what Mom told you, that was true. Dad told me the same thing. He said he and Aiden would always be around to watch over us, that he’d stay with us. ‘Forever and ever, kiddo.’ That’s what he said.” Dez’s voice cracked and he needed a pause before he could continue. “And he said to watch for the signs.”

“What signs?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say. The way Dad was always trying to keep us out of trouble, he probably meant ‘Stop’ and ‘Yield.’ ”

Sully laughed, a real laugh, the unexpected kind that possessed an explosive quality. He was rewarded by the rumble of laughter that bubbled from Dez’s broad chest.

They stood there another minute or two, Sully ignoring the fact he was now genuinely cold. He didn’t want to move. Not yet.

A light snow was falling. The revellers across the street were now performing an actual conga line. And he was standing next to one of his favourite people in the world, the brother who had saved him over and over.

Who was saving him again now without fully realizing it.

A loud flapping nearby made Sully jump, and he took a step back as first one raven, then a second, descended onto the porch railing. The birds faced them, blinking and tilting their heads as they locked eyes with the two humans.

“Bloody hell,” Dez muttered. “Dad used to have full-on conversations with the ravens on our acreage. Remember?”

Sully did remember. It had been one of Flynn’s most endearing quirks. He’d seen videos of ravens that had learned to imitate the human voice and to pronounce a few words. Flynn had made it a weird goal to get one of the birds to answer him back.

He’d never succeeded, and these two birds weren’t talking, either. Then again, they didn’t have to. They were saying plenty just by being here.

Because Sully felt them now, his dad and Aiden, standing nearby, guiding the birds here—Flynn likely leaning toward one of them and hopelessly repeating the words “pretty bird” over and over.

“Thanks, guys,” Sully said.

Dez’s phone ringing in his pocket ended the moment, the birds flapping off into the night.

“Goddammit,” Dez muttered. “Lachlan.”

Sully looked up to find his brother’s eyes shiny with tears, but he sucked them back as he punched the talk button. “It’s Christmas night, Lachlan…. Yeah, he’s here.”

Dez put the phone onto speaker and held it so they both could hear.

“Sullivan, now that you’re officially alive and all, you’re going to need a job,” Lachlan said. “Given you’ve already been doing a fair bit of work for me, how’d you like to make it official?”

Sully and Dez exchanged a look. “Are you offering me a job?” Sully asked.

“Yep, but what I’d really like is for the two of you to go get yourselves licensed. If you’re going to be officially in my employ, I’d like the Ts crossed and all that.”

Sully grinned up at Dez as he answered Lachlan. “I could get on board with that. One problem, though. I’ll have to wait until the government decides I’m really alive.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lachlan said. “Technicalities. That’s fine. In the meantime, I’ve got a case for us to tackle.”

“I’ll say it again,” Dez said. “It’s Christmas night.”

“Not tonight, you gargantuan buffoon. In a couple of days, once the turkey’s digested. You promised me we’d sort out what happened to that other ghost of mine.”

Sully chuckled. “Right. Right, okay. We’ll get on it soon.”

They disconnected a moment later, Dez heaving a giant sigh as he dropped the phone back into his pocket. Then he peered at Sully. “You going to be able to stand working with that guy full-time?”

“I like him,” Sully said. “It’s working with you I’m not so sure about.”

Dez grabbed Sully in a headlock, rubbing a fist hard through his mop of long hair as he dragged him back inside the house.

WANT MORE SULLY AND DEZ? JOIN MY MAILING LIST AND GRAB YOUR FREE COPY OF HAUNTED: THE GHOSTS OF SULLIVAN GRAY HERE.

Afterword

Thanks so much for reading! While these three books bring The Sullivan Gray Series to an end, I am working on a series of standalone Sully and Dez books to be entitled The Braddock & Gray Case Files. If you would like to be kept updated on future projects and release dates, just sign up for my mailing list. As an adding bonus, a growing anthology of short stories, entitled Haunted: The Ghosts of Sullivan Gray, is available as a gift to subscribers. Visit my website at hpbayne.com to sign up or simply click here to join up and pick up the current version of Haunted.

The books in The Sullivan Gray Series can be read as standalones to some extent, each with a plot that wraps itself up by book’s end. But there is a deeper plot that threads throughout the series so, for that reason, I always suggest the books are best read in the following order (click the titles to check them out individually on Amazon):

Black Candle

Harbinger

The Dule Tree

Crawl

Hollow Road

Second Son

Spirit Caller

And one more big, big ask: if you could please take a moment to leave me a review on Amazon, I would be eternally grateful. Reviews mean more than many people realize, as they are often the difference between a would-be reader simply browsing or deciding to take a chance on making a purchase.

Thank you so much for reading. Having readers like you pick up my books is truly a dream come true for me. I hope you’ll come back to visit Kimotan Rapids again soon!

All the best!

-H

Acknowledgments

My heartfelt thanks as always to my family, friends and readers. You are my constant inspiration and my reason to keep writing.

To my brilliant editor Hannah Sullivan and my amazing cover designer Fiona Jayde, you have helped me turn this series into actual proper books, and for that I am eternally grateful. I am so blessed to have had the opportunity to work with both of you!

And to my advance reader team, your enthusiasm and your collective eagle eye ensures I can continue to launch my books with confidence. And perhaps more importantly, you make writing even more fun for me.

Thank you to all of you!

About the Author

Fascinated by ghost stories and crime fiction, H.P. has been writing both for well over two decades, drawing on close to two decades as a crime reporter. Raised on a farm on the Canadian Prairies, H.P. enjoys reading, portrait drawing, travel and spending time with family and friends.

For more information, visit H.P.’s website at hpbayne.com.

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