The Accused and the Damned: Book Three, the Eddie McCloskey Series (The Unearthed 3) (27 page)

“They’re coming in!”

But there was no way to warn the other cops, let alone actually explain what was happening. The best thing he could do was get in that house and put Giles down. No other way to keep everybody safe.

“Garage!” Becky yelled.

A cruiser and an unmarked were parked in front of the bays. They hurried into the garage and found Ross lying face-down in a puddle of his own blood. Dead.

“MY GOD!” Becky shrieked.

He spun her away from the gruesome sight and pointed at the interior door. “No time. We can’t stop!”

She nodded while tears ran down her face. Pulled her piece.

Eddie tried the knob. Unlocked.

He looked at Becky. “Sure you don’t want to give me a gun?”

“Yeah. Because I’m going to shoot this motherfucker.”

A feeling of doom came over Eddie. The last time he’d breached a home and stepped into harm’s way like this, it had been at his brother’s side. And Tim hadn’t come out of that house alive.

“You ready?” she asked.

Deja vu
. Hadn’t Tim asked him the same thing on that terrible day, all those years ago?

This time his answer was different though. “You bet I fucking am.”

Giles knew it wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. He’d killed a cop and there were cops everywhere now. He needed to get out of the house, escape in the woods like his emergency plan called for. It would be difficult.

Good thing, then, that he had all four aces up his sleeve. And some jokers too. He could keep the police at bay.

He hadn’t meant to kill Ross. It had been a reflex action. Someone had shot at him, so without thinking he’d fired back.

And Alice…he hadn’t planned on killing her. That was heat of the moment. She’d figured out what was going on. She would have told everybody. Once it got out that he’d used reverse-possession in a pathetic attempt to resurrect his own doomed business, it would be the final nail in the coffin of his paranormal career. He’d never work in that space again. And he knew no other space. It was kill Alice or find some shit job. Giles had gotten used to living a certain way and the thought of poverty terrified him. He couldn’t stomach the idea of not having money.

And it was all Gracie Barbitok’s fault. If she hadn’t set up that bullshit sting operation…

He hit the hidden button and the panel in the wall slid out of the way, revealing the gun cabinet. He had rifles but he left those. Instead he grabbed the shotgun.

Eddie and Becky Thieler had survived the cemetery. So they were in the house now. He didn’t want to kill Eddie. Or Becky. He didn’t want to kill anybody. But if anybody stood between him and escape…

Giles peered out of the nearest curtain. He saw cruisers entering the cemetery.

He slipped out of the utility room and slid into the tiny panic room under the main staircase. He closed his eyes and reached out, just like he’d done thousands of times now.

* * * *

Chief Towson and Hank Grimm weren’t sitting this one out on the sidelines. They drove separate squad cars out of the perimeter established along the road and hauled ass into the cemetery.

The Chief didn’t know why Eddie McCloskey had ordered everyone to stay back. But more importantly, he didn’t care. His son was inside. And civilian ex-cons didn’t tell him how to operate. Fuck that.

They cut through the graveyard. Grimm tailed the Chief. The word had gotten around that Ross and Billy were inside and nobody had been able to reach either. It wasn’t official yet, but the phrase
Officer down
was on everybody’s minds.

The Chief didn’t have any time to react like Becky and Eddie did. One moment, he was rounding a bend. The next, the steering wheel jerked and he lost control of his vehicle.

Grimm was too close to the Chief to avoid a collision. Towson’s vehicle made an unexpected sharp turn and the momentum sent it into a roll. Grimm slammed the brakes but it was too late.

More cruisers poured into the cemetery. Police eager to help their buddies. But nobody else made it to the house.

* * * *

Eddie and Becky were working their way through the first floor when they heard a horrible crash coming from the cemetery. Giles had caused somebody to have an accident, hopefully they were okay.

They had to find Giles fast. Eddie didn’t want any other cops driving through the cemetery and getting hurt or killed in a collision.

They had been through most of the ground floor and so far Eddie had managed not to get turned around. The upstairs would present a real problem. It was almost as big and Eddie had never been up there. And then there was the basement.

They padded quietly into the foyer and stopped near the staircase when Becky’s walkie blasted to life.

“Stay out of the fucking graveyard! Stay out—” A dropped walkie. Somebody else yelling. Screams in the background.

Becky snapped it off and they both dropped to a crouch.

Becky gave him a look. “We need to hurry.”

“If he’s not on the ground floor, he’s gotta be in the basement.”

“How do you figure?”

“There’s no way to get out safely from the second floor, unless he’s got a ladder.”

“Anything from Magloin?” Becky said.

Eddie hadn’t felt his cell buzz but checked it anyway. “Nada.”

Becky looked over her shoulder. “This house is a maze.”

“We don’t need to figure out where he’s hiding, we just need to think where we’d hide if we wanted to escape.”

“Maybe he’s not trying to get away. Maybe he has other plans now.”

“Come on. Let’s—”

Becky’s eyes went wide as if she’s seen Giles. Eddie looked around but didn’t see anybody.

She stood and whirled, gun out. “There’s something here. My skin’s crawling.”

“I don’t fe—”

Before he got the words out, the tingly sensation on his skin started. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

Eddie put it together. The cops were staying out of the cemetery, probably setting up a perimeter till they figured out what to do. That meant Giles was free to focus on them again.

“We’ve gotta move,” Eddie said.

He grabbed her arm to lead her down the hallway they hadn’t explored yet, but she didn’t budge.

“Eddie!”

He turned and saw her. Becky was leaned back, like something was holding her from behind. She flailed one of her arms and her body strained against the invisible force.

Eddie used both hands. She came free, stumbled a few feet, then came to another stop. Eddie pulled harder, but this time the spirit held fast and wrenched her away.

“My head!” she screamed.

It was cocked to the side. She put her hands on her ears to keep it steady.

Eddie grasped her head too. He felt that invisible force working against him, the whole time fearing the worst. Together they fought and kept her head still, but they couldn’t stay like that forever. Eddie had to assume worst-case scenario: that Giles could move freely through the house while he controlled this ghost. The guy could hold them in place like this while he snuck away…or while he snuck up on them.

“Eddie.”

Becky gasped and put her hands up to her neck. Now it was trying to choke her.

“Don’t struggle,” he said. “This will work.”

Eddie closed his eyes and began the channeling process, knowing if it didn’t work that Becky would be dead in minutes.

CIARA

Becky’s body felt like one big tensed muscle against his.

In his mind, Eddie reached out. Imagined he was sensing the ghost in the room and then inviting the spirit into his psyche. He’d never been much a believer in that crap but now it was all they had.

Becky kept choking, her eyes bulging. She made a sickening gagging sound, like someone had stuffed a dry rag down her throat. Eddie focused all his consciousness on one tiny point in his mind and reached out. He didn’t know exactly what he was doing, he was just following the Madam’s vague instructions about channeling.

The veins in Becky’s forehead pushed against the skin. She couldn’t get any air. She was going to die.

Then Eddie felt it.

A fluid motion. Like a smooth ripple across a puddle. Then it grew into a rushing sensation, like rapids over a rocky bed. Then water going over a fall.

An excruciating, sharp pain blinded him. One moment he saw the dark foyer, the next an all-encompassing white light. And a coldness that seemed to fill him. Like he’d plunged into icy water.

It was working. He was right. In trying to channel the spirit, Alice had unwittingly severed the connection between Giles and Mrs. Oliver.

His vision came back to him, but that only made matters worse. He went dizzy. His legs turned to rubber. A strange energy both flooded him and sapped him of strength. Like too much electricity was traveling through a weak circuit.

Something fell.

He realized it was him.

“Eddie!”

His eyes fluttered open and he saw Becky’s face hovering above him.

“What?”

“Get up.”

He realized she was trying to help him to his feet.

“It worked?”

“Yeah. It’s—”

Then a gunshot boomed through the foyer.

And another gunshot.

Becky fell on top of him. He couldn’t tell if she’d been hit. Without his strength, she felt like a thousand pounds. He realized he’d heard shots from two different weapons. Stuck his head up and found Billy Towson limping badly through the foyer, blood smeared on his uniform. Billy had his gun up and shouted something.

But it was drowned out by the next blast.

Billy was flung backward, like he’d been hit by a train. His gun fell out of his hand.

Now Becky was screaming.

She rolled off him and brought her gun to bear in the opposite direction. Eddie felt his senses coming back to him and realized now that Giles was shooting at them from one of the two hallways leading out of the foyer. Eddie rolled away from Becky, wanting to give Giles two spaced targets to worry about. He took cover behind an end table.

Becky fired from a doorway on the other side of the foyer. Eddie dared to peek over the end table. Giles was coming toward them, shotgun extended. At this range and with that weapon, Giles didn’t need to be a good shot. If they caught any of the blast, they’d be dead instantly.

Giles fired at the doorway. The blast chewed up the wood around the door and Becky was knocked back into the room. Then she started screaming.

She’d been hit.

Eddie didn’t have time to think but he knew in that instant he’d be dead if he didn’t act. Giles was armed. He wasn’t. Giles had killed Ross and just put down two cops. Who knew how many more in the cemetery. Even if they couldn’t pin the Alice Ketcher murder on him, now the law had him dead to rights.

Which meant Giles had nothing to lose.

Eddie had everything to lose. And nothing to gain by hiding or pleading for mercy.

As Giles crunched another shell into place, Eddie took the opening and tackled him. They got tangled up but Giles stubbornly clung to the shotgun as they went down. Eddie knew Giles would regroup quickly so he flurried before the guy had a chance. He elbowed and kneed and twisted.

Rule number one when tangling with an armed man: disarm him.

They both had their hands on the weapon, the barrel pointed toward the ceiling. Eddie realized he wasn’t going to wrest the shotgun from Giles so he did the next best thing.

He pulled the trigger.

The bang was deafeningly loud. A small bomb went off in his ear. The point-blank sound rang his bell. The world went half-silent. The blast was enough to surprise Giles. Eddie twisted and drove an elbow into Giles’s shoulder.

The shotgun was loose.

Now Eddie just had to—

Before he did anything, Giles landed a barrage of hands, elbows, and knees in Eddie’s torso. He was dazed, unsure where Giles was even though the guy was right next to him. He swung wildly, missed worse.

Giles grabbed his arm, flipped around, pinned Eddie to the ground with his legs. And pulled.

Eddie came to his senses when he realized he was trapped in an armbar. His elbow extended, then hyperextended. Sharp pain up his arm. Tendons and connective tissue in his joints being stretched beyond limit.

He’d been trapped in a few armbars in class before. He grabbed his held wrist and pulled it toward him to ease the tension at the elbow. But he couldn’t get much leverage against Giles. And now the pain was excruciating.

His eyes were lined up with the doorway in which Becky had disappeared. He didn’t know if she was alive. And if she was, how long she had. He needed to act fast. Every second he wasted fighting was one less second Becky might have to live.

“Edward, I don’t want to kill you,” Giles said very calmly, as if he was hardly breaking a sweat.

“Then don’t.”

He pulled his arm toward him as hard as he could but Giles was a skilled fighter, had the leverage, and held fast. Eddie’s arm was locked and it was about to snap in two at the elbow and the shoulder wasn’t feeling much better.

“Edward. You have no chance against me.”

Eddie knew all about having no chance. He’d played the long odds most his life and there’d been plenty of bumps in the road but he’d come out the other side. Maybe wounded, maybe scarred, but always alive. And always smarter.

This wasn’t how his life was going to end. Not in Giles Tyson’s fucking foyer. He knew it. He just had to let the answer come to him.

Giles pulled more and the arm was a million screaming nerves. The whole thing felt like it had been held over flames.

Think, goddamnit.

“Just let me run,” Giles said. “No shame on you. You’re outmatched, Edward. You did your best.”

Outmatched
.

The word made Eddie recall one of his instructor’s recurring quips. Sometimes, it’s harder to fight Joe Amateur. The reason being, with a trained fighter you can expect them to fight certain ways. With an amateur, you have no idea because they’ll try any batshit-insane move.

So Eddie decided to fight like some guy off the street.

“Giles, you’ve always been a pompous fuck.”

Eddie gritted his teeth against the blinding pain. With his free hand, he dug in under Giles’s knee and twisted. There was no chance of the move working in itself, but Giles was distracted by the strangeness of it. Eddie pushed off the floor with his foot, feeling his elbow give a little more than it should have, and he jerked his hip violently and rolled toward Giles.

Giles lost his hold.

Eddie kept rolling. Giles brought his feet up in the blink of an eye and kicked Eddie backward. Eddie crashed into the banister of the stairway and landed on something long, hard, and metallic.

He reached under him and felt the barrel of Giles’s shotgun.

Giles scrambled to his feet.

“Interesting move, Edward. But I’m afraid luck only gets you so far in this life.”

“Good thing a gun gets you farther.”

Giles’s eyes went wide as Eddie, still on the floor, brought the shotgun to bear and pumped it. The weapon’s weight surprised him. It was awkward and solid and just holding it he felt the awful force it could unleash. All deadly potential energy.

“Edward…” Giles held his hands up but took a step forward. “...I didn’t plan on killing Alice, I swear. It was heat of the moment.”

“Doesn’t make a difference to me, Giles.”

Eddie didn’t know shotguns. He had no idea how many shells they could hold. But if there was no ammo, then Giles would have already rushed him. So maybe, just maybe, he had one shot.

Giles said, “Edward…Eddie, if you shoot me with that, this close, you’ll kill me.”

Giles was right. On the other hand, if he didn’t shoot Giles would get away. Eddie had gotten lucky with the armbar but he couldn’t take Giles in a fistfight. The police outside weren’t going to help. He couldn’t call them in without risking another scuffle with Giles. It was on him. Knowing Giles, he had an exit strategy already planned. He’d had all this time to think about it, ever since he’d killed Alice.

Giles took another step forward. “Eddie. I’ll disappear. I’ll never do this again.”

“Oh, you promise?”

“Eddie, please.”

“Don’t fucking move, Giles.”

Giles was only five feet away. Inside the danger zone. “Please, Eddie.”

“You killed Alice. You fucking killed her to protect your career. You fucking broke that poor battered woman’s neck to maintain your lifestyle.”

“Eddie, there’s nothing else I’m good at, nothing else I can do…please.” He was crying.

“You chose your career over a human being.”

“It was wrong, I know…but Eddie…you’re my friend.”

“I know. That’s what makes shooting you so hard.”

Giles lunged.

Eddie pulled the trigger.