Nightwalker (19 page)

Sandra leaned forward again, her expression intense. “You’re too trusting. What if it wasn’t an accident? What if someone was trying to kill you?”

“If someone really was trying to kill me, I doubt his weapon of choice would be a big canvas sail.”

“It didn’t hit you?”

“No, I heard it falling.”

“It could have beaned you.”

“Seriously, Sandra. It was an accident, not a murder attempt. I mean, I might have been hurt if I’d been a bit slower, but I wouldn’t have been killed.”

“It could have been a warning, then,” Sandra said sagely. “Someone wanting you to back off from…something.

“Sandra, any member of the cast could have been out there,” she said.

“But it wasn’t
any
member of the cast, it was
you
.” She shook her head. “This is scary, very scary.” She stood suddenly, looking past Jessy, smiled and said, “Hi, I’m Sandra Nelson. And you must be Dillon Wolf.”

Jessy turned and smiled at Dillon as Sandra continued to talk.

“Maybe you can talk some sense into her, since she thinks I’ve gone off the deep end just because no matter what she says about it being an accident, I think someone tried to kill her this afternoon.”

T
he lights were neon and garish, the streets wild and busy, and the bar was doing a bang-up business in cocktails, while the sober, semisober and downright drunk laughed and talked around them.

Taking a seat at the table, Dillon frowned at Jessy. She should have been safe at work, surrounded by other people.

If Rudy Yorba hadn’t died in what had clearly been meant to be mistaken for an accident, he might not be so concerned. But Rudy Yorba was dead, smashed almost beyond recognition.

Other people had seen the security tapes of the night Tanner Green had been murdered. Cops, casino personnel. What if someone—someone complicit in the murder—had noticed that Green had opened his mouth, had said something to Jessy before dying.

Indigo.

Would that mean something to the killer? Because it sure as hell didn’t mean anything to
him
. The place was a ghost town, nothing but a ghost town.

“Tell me what happened—
exactly
what happened,” Dillon said to Jessy.

“It was nothing. You’ve seen the show. When we attack Port Royal, the guns of the port fire back and we lose a sail. The sail fell again after the show was over and I happened to be walking by, that’s all.” In an effort to change the subject she looked more closely at Dillon and asked, “What have you been up to? You’re all dusty.”

“I took a drive out to the desert today,” he told her. “I guess I could use a shower and some clean clothes.”

“Want a margarita?” Sandra suggested.

He shook his head, smiling. “No, I’d rather have that shower, I think.”

As they walked Sandra out to her car, she plied Dillon with questions about his job with Harrison Investigations, which he answered politely. There were so many things, he said, that no one could be sure of, but he
could
assure her that he’d never personally seen any evidence that a ghost had harmed anyone who was innocent of wrongdoing.

“Does that mean a ghost
will
harm a bad guy?” Sandra asked him eagerly.

He laughed. “It means exactly what I said. We’re called in when inexplicable things are happening, but there’s usually an explanation that’s completely real-world. I suppose that if a ghost could manage to move
objects, it could also manage to hurt someone with them. But we usually find a real perp behind whatever’s going on.”

They’d reached Sandra’s car, which she’d left in a casino garage. Dillon opened the driver’s side door for her and checked out the interior as she settled herself behind the wheel. “Drive safely,” he told her.

“Will do,” Sandra said. “And
you
—watch out for Jessy. Please.”

“I intend to,” Dillon assured her.

They watched her drive away, and he was silent as he slipped an arm around Jessy, leading her back toward the elevator. Finally he said, “I think maybe Sandra’s right to be worried about what happened to you today.”

“Dillon, Sandra is a good friend, and I love her for worrying about me, but nothing that happened this afternoon was anything other than an accident.”

He frowned and let that go unchallenged, asking, “What’s your work schedule, anyway?”

“I usually have Mondays and Tuesdays off.”

“So you work tomorrow, then you’re off for two days,” he said thoughtfully, feeling an unwelcome sense of urgency. Maybe it was paranoia. Maybe he shouldn’t be so afraid for her. But he was. He had barely spoken to Rudy Yorba, and Rudy had died. He and Jessy…

“Let’s go to your place,” he said.

They walked to his car, which he’d parked in a public lot by one of the huge shopping plazas. They were halfway back to her place when she turned to him excitedly. “I forgot to tell you! Tanner Green was back.”

“Right,” he murmured.

“Right?” she said, surprised. “I thought you’d be happy. Weren’t you hoping he’d come back?”

Dillon gave himself a mental head-slap as he realized that she didn’t know that Ringo had been watching Tanner Green watch. He really did need to tell her about Ringo.

“Sorry. I was sure he would come back. He’s trying to reach you.”

“Well, he was at the show. And then, when Sandra and I were at the bar, I saw him again, and Rudy Yorba was behind him, acting like maybe he didn’t want to be seen. I tried to talk to Tanner, and I’m pretty sure he heard me, but then we were interrupted.”

“Oh?” Dillon asked, his attention sharpening. This was news—very interesting news. “Who interrupted you?”

“It was just Darrell Frye. He’s a pit boss at the Sun. You’ve seen him. He was there the night I won all that money. He wants to get a job in entertainment management, so he talked to me a few weeks ago about going to work over there. Do you know him?”

He nodded. “He went off shift right before Green died. I’ve been wanting to speak with him, see if he remembered anything, saw anything. They told me he was on vacation, and I haven’t had a chance to track him down yet.”

“Well, when he came up and started talking to me, Tanner Green and Rudy Yorba both disappeared,” she told him.

Did that mean anything? Dillon wondered. He didn’t know, but now he wanted to talk to the man more than ever.

Right now, though…

“I’m not sure what any of this means,” Dillon told her, looking at her thoughtfully. He was glad she was no longer frightened about seeing the ghosts, had even sounded excited about it. But he was worried that even at work she might have been in danger. The puzzle pieces were starting to connect, but the final picture was still a mystery.

They reached her house, where he went through every room before heading into the shower.

He’d barely been there for ten seconds when she joined him.

Her presence was a piece of earthly magic that seemed to drive away all thoughts of puzzles and fears, and even the world around him.

He didn’t know if it was the fact that she had entranced him at first sight, or if it had to do with the sleek, lean, beautifully muscled elegance of her body, the blue of her eyes, the tone of her voice, or even the essence of her soul, but she aroused him in a way that went beyond the sexual, beyond the instinctive rise of his libido in an animalistic reaction older than time. He wouldn’t say that he loved her; love took time. But he knew that he was falling in love with her, and that she touched the core of him in a way no other woman ever had.

The look of mischief in her eyes was his undoing, followed by the sight of the steamy, hot water sluicing over the ivory perfection of her skin, shoulders and breasts, back and buttocks. It was the erotic feel of flesh against flesh as she pressed against him. It was finding her lips beneath the spray and exploring the recesses of her mouth, hotter than the water falling over them.

It was touching her. His hands sliding down her naked flesh, cupping her breasts, slipping between her thighs into intimacy.

She moved against him, the friction of her body irresistibly erotic. All so seductive, driving him to an agony of excitement and arousal. Her hands were on him then, kneading his muscles, her nails scraping teasingly over his skin. His lips broke away from hers, and he forced her back against the tiles, his mouth moving frenziedly against her flesh.

They made love in the heated steam, with him lifting her as she wrapped her limbs around him in wicked splendor. The roar of the water pounded in his heart and lungs like a tempest, and after they climaxed, he fumbled for the taps, then stumbled out of the shower, still holding her against him as if he wanted to keep her there forever.

He carried her to her bed, where they fell together onto the mattress and began anew, devouring one another with hands and lips and tongues, taking time, savoring each other’s wet, clean and hot flesh, touching and tasting again and again, and reveling in the complete intimacy they had found with one another. She knew how to move, how to seduce, but it was never calculated, never planned, just an instinctive part of her beauty and being. Even when she wasn’t beneath him or atop him, she was somehow rubbing against him, sliding along him with supple movements that aroused him all over again. She met his mouth with her own at just the right moment, showered his body with kisses, took his sex in her mouth and teased him until he was ready to explode. When he
couldn’t take any more, he rolled her beneath him, desire raging inside him again as she responded to his touch, as he caressed her breasts, her belly, her thighs, then moved between them, first with his hands, then with his mouth, until he possessed her, body and soul.

Sometime in the night, exhausted and spent, they slept at last.

He woke early. She was still asleep, and like any new lover, he spared a few minutes to watch her. He found himself entranced anew by the fiery cascade of her hair over the pillows, the fine structure of her face, the way her lips were slightly parted as she breathed. He tucked the covers carefully around her and rose, then dressed quickly before heading into the kitchen and started making coffee. He didn’t do anything about food, since he had a feeling she would want to join her grandfather again at the home and eat something there.

As the coffee brewed, he took out his cell phone and started making calls. This was no longer a one-man job.

Dillon could tell that Jessy was both surprised and pleased that he and Timothy got on as if they had known each other forever. When she took advantage of that fact and went to speak with her grandfather’s doctor, he got a chance to talk to Timothy by himself, without having to worry about upsetting her.

“So, Timothy,” he began casually, “you can see the ghost dancers, huh?” he asked.

For a moment the old man just looked out the
window, as if he hadn’t heard. Then he turned to stare challengingly at Dillon. “I know why you’ve come back. You’re here because the desire for riches never ends. Men are greedy. They don’t care what they do to other people if it makes them richer.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “Man has always been greedy, quick to slay his fellow man if it will bring him material gain.”

“Once,” Dillon said carefully, “many of our people called themselves simply the Human Beings. We wanted to be good, as the Great Spirit asked. To care for the children, the injured, the needy. Yes, greed has existed for as long as man has been here. But we strive for more.”

Timothy nodded.

“Timothy, you spoke of Billie Tiger. Is he…your guide? Does he help you understand the messages from the ghost dancers?” Dillon asked.

Timothy nodded, and when he spoke, his words seemed to be coming from far away. “Billie Tiger can see what was, and he knows that the world spins, time moves on, and what happened once will come to pass again, unless it is stopped. And now something terrible threatens to return, so it can be relived. It must be stopped.”

“‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,’” Dillon quoted. “George Santayana,” he added. “Timothy, does the name Indigo mean anything to you?” Dillon asked.

Timothy nodded. “It’s a town. An evil town.”

“I don’t think the town was evil, but I do I think evil men lived there,” Dillon said.

Timothy nodded. “Greedy men.”

“Yes, they were. The other day you told me ‘they are assembling.’ Timothy, are people from the past assembling somehow?”

“Evil keeps going unless it is stopped,” Timothy said. He turned and stared out the window again, then looked back at Dillon and smiled. His voice changed and his features relaxed. “Did you mention Indigo, young man? I know Indigo. Sandy old place out in the desert. Some movie company rented it maybe five or six years ago. They filmed a few scenes and then they left. They didn’t like the place. Said things moved around at night, and they went off to film somewhere else.”

“Really?” Dillon said, intrigued. “I didn’t know that.”

“Some people said some of our people were sabotaging the shoot because they didn’t think the movie company had paid enough to rent the town. Other people claimed it was because of the old burial ground out there, but nobody really knows. I’ll tell you one thing, though. There’s something wrong with Indigo, always has been. There was an awful shoot-out there. An Indian named Wolf was involved. Kin to you?”

“A great-great-great-something,” Dillon told him.

“Jessy and me, we go back to Indigo, too,” he said.

“Oh?”

“My grandmother was related to a mixed-blood who played piano in a saloon there,” Timothy told him. He stared at Dillon, his gaze clear and focused. “The world can be strange. Life and death are not always what we
think. The souls of the ancients slip into the living. Some are good, and some are evil. As to why they come, sometimes it’s because the descendants of those who fought, the winners and the losers, are assembling. Do you understand?”

Dillon wasn’t sure that he did. Not entirely, anyway, though certain connections were starting to become clear. An ancestor of Jessy’s had lived in Indigo. His own ancestor had died there. And Ringo was still hanging around to this day.

But what did all that
mean?
What the hell did it have to do with the murders of Tanner Green and Rudy Yorba—or the casinos business and Emil Landon, who had been the starting point for everything?

“Timothy, the ghost dancers—how long have they been talking to you?” Dillon asked.

“I don’t really remember when they came. A while ago now. But when I saw the blood,” Timothy said sadly, “that’s when I knew they were here to warn me. The cycle needs to be stopped.”

“Timothy, where did you see blood,” Dillon said, then asked, “Where?”

“On Jessy,” the elderly man said, his eyes bleak. “I saw blood on my granddaughter. But I knew they didn’t want to kill her, they wanted to save her. They told me that you would come. They said she would open the door, but you would come and guide her through it.” Then he winked conspiratorially and inclined his head.

Dillon turned.

Jessy was on her way over, and she smiled when she caught his eye, then sat down next to him.

She looked across the table at Timothy and smiled. “I hear you’ve been playing a lot of Scrabble.”

“It’s good for the mind. Sally and I play almost every night.”