The Last Time I Saw Her (23 page)

When she hung up, Michael looked at her.

“I'm meeting Tony at the prison library at ten,” she told him, and repeated the gist of what Tony had told her.

He didn't say anything.

“What?” she asked defensively.

“You know what,” he said.

She sighed. She did know what, and it wasn't jealousy over Tony. It was the serial killer thing.

“I'm thinking about it,” she said. “But this is important. I can use what I know to help people. I can save lives.”

“You can also get yourself killed.” The look he gave her was stone-cold serious. He straightened away from the refrigerator to grasp her upper arms. “Babe, I know you suffered a childhood trauma. A bad one. But you get over it, you move on. You don't spend your whole life wallowing in it, replaying it, trying to make it right. The hair of the dog that bit you? Forget that. The important thing to remember there is that the dog bit you. Sooner or later it'll do it again.”

“Hear, hear,” Tam said as she entered the kitchen in time to overhear, and gave Michael an approving look. “Really, cherie, much as it hurts me to say it, Ghost Boy's right.”

“You're double-teaming me,” Charlie protested, frowning from one to the other of them. “Not fair!”

“Yeah, we're double-teaming you,” Michael said. “Which should tell you something.”

“It should,” Tam agreed.

Charlie rolled her eyes. “It does, all right? When I get this project wrapped up maybe I'll take all my research and write a book on serial killers or something. That sound safe enough for you?”

“Gets my vote,” Michael said, and Tam said, “Mine, too. Although the frequent-flyer miles involved in me rushing to your rescue are nice.”

Charlie made a face at Tam. “But in the meantime I'm supposed to be at the prison at ten because armed killers with child hostages are out there on the loose somewhere, and I can help find them. I'm going to go upstairs and change clothes now, and then if you'll give us a ride, Tam, we'll take Michael by the inn where his body has a room so he can change so that everybody won't realize he spent last night with me. Then if you would drive us both up to the prison, we can get our cars. Well, I can get mine, and Michael can get the Mustang Shelby GT that Hughes drives.”

“A Shelby?” The look on Michael's face was pure masculine appreciation for a cool car.

“Yes,” Charlie replied, while Tam said, “Fine by me. As long as I can nap after that.”

“Absolutely you can nap,” Charlie told her.

At some point during the conversation her hands had come to rest flat against Michael's chest without her even really being aware of it. Now Charlie closed her fingers around the slightly stiff, slightly crumpled shirt, went up on tiptoe to plant a quick kiss on his hard mouth, then pulled away from him and left the kitchen, calling, “Back in ten,” over her shoulder at them as she went.

Her kiss lingered on his mouth like honey.

Michael watched Charlie head down the hall with an automatic stir of appreciation for the sweet curve of her ass; for her long, slim legs in their jeans; for the slender lines of her back; for the utterly feminine way she moved. The copper highlights in her hair glinted in the first beams of sunlight coming through the windows before she disappeared from his view.

By then his pulse rate had jacked itself up, his gut had tightened, and his heart felt like it was being impaled on a skewer.

He was crazy about the woman, so stupidly smitten that he would have laughed and jeered if he'd watched it happen to somebody else.

Just as he'd always suspected, being “in love” blew.

He didn't want to lose her.

There wasn't any choice.

He was still looking after Charlie and harboring increasingly grim thoughts when he felt the weight of someone's gaze on his face. Turning his head sharply to seek the source, he found the voodoo priestess watching him.

Damn, he'd forgotten she was even there.

“She'll be twenty minutes at least,” he said easily. He'd always been good at keeping his thoughts hidden, and he wasn't about to start being bad at it now.

The voodoo priestess—Tam—nodded. Her eyes were fixed on his face, and they were getting a kind of glazed look in them that he didn't much like.

“I'm going to walk on over to the Pioneer Inn and change while Charlie's changing,” he said, coming around the edge of the counter to head toward the back door. “If you can wait for her, then drive over and pick me up there, that'd be good.”

Tam was perched on the stool at the end of the row, and to get out of the kitchen he had to walk right by her. She never took her eyes off him the whole time, and as he headed past her she reached out and grabbed his arm.

“Wait,” she ordered in a throbbing voice. He was so surprised that he stopped to look down at her. Her grip tightened until her nails dug into his skin. Her eyes blazed at him. “
Mon dieu,
Spirit, what have you done?”

Michael jerked his arm free of her hold. The look he gave her was both alarmed and borderline hostile.

“You were in the
lieu de la mort,
” Tam said. Her eyes were as shiny as glass as they met his. “You were in terrible pain, excruciating pain, being tortured endlessly. It felt like your flesh was being flayed from your bones. Like you were being burned alive. They were to terminate you, but they had to wait. Oh, you suffered!
I love you.
A whisper—the whisper is a shield.
Charlie. Don't hurt Charlie. I'll do anything. Please.
You're begging.” Her words had become disjointed. She was speaking quickly, breathlessly, and he got the impression that she was seeing, not him, not Charlie's kitchen, but the icy horror of the place where he'd been imprisoned. “You made a bargain. You got to come back here, to her. For a little bit of time. To save her. In return, you gave up the shield. You have no defense against them now. They will come, and when they do you will be taken back to the
lieu de la mort
and instantly terminated. They have put on you
un mouchard
—a tracker. You have been injected with an
incendiaire
that will self-combust at the appointed time. It will destroy you. There is no possibility of escape.”

She blinked, and the focus returned to her eyes. She was still looking at him wide-eyed, but the glassy blankness was gone.

The accuracy of what she'd said stunned him. Then he remembered what she was.

Damned psychics.

“There's nothing I can do,” Tam said. It was her normal voice, maybe slightly breathless. She was fully focused on him now, and aware. Her eyes were dark with horror. “There's nothing anyone can do for you. You're done.”

Well, he'd known it. He believed in miracles about as much as he believed in the Tooth Fairy.

“Stay the fuck out of my head,” he told her, almost politely.

The snort she gave wasn't polite at all.

“I thought you couldn't read dead people,” he said.

“You're in a body now. That gives me access. I still can't read everything, but an experience that strong, that powerful, that recent—I saw that.”

“So you saw it. Keep it to yourself.” His voice was gritty with warning.

“You must tell Charlie.”

His Achilles' heel. He didn't want Charlie to know. He folded his arms over his chest, took a step back. “What makes you think I haven't?”

The look she gave him was scornful. She tapped her temple with a forefinger. “Hello, psychic here? Besides, she's too happy. Too hopeful. If she knew—”

The shudder with which she finished that sentence echoed his thoughts on the subject. If Charlie knew, she would be frantic. Pulling out all the stops to try to save him, which couldn't be done. And once he was taken, once he was terminated, she would be wild with grief. Beside herself. Inconsolable.

The thought of how she would grieve for him was worse than any torture. He'd felt her pain before. There wasn't much he wouldn't have done to spare her from it then, and there wasn't much he wouldn't do to protect her from it now. He might not be able to change what was going to happen to him, but he could keep her from ever finding out the full extent of it.

He said, “I don't want her to know.”

She frowned. “I think she's going to notice when you aren't here anymore.” The tinge of sarcasm in her voice faded as she looked at him. “She was—upset—the last time you disappeared. She had me searching all over the Beyond for you. This is going to hit her, oh, very hard.”

“I know.” He wasn't big on asking for favors. In fact, he never did it. But this was for Charlie. “I want her to think I just got sucked into Spookville again and can't get back. She'll miss me, but she'll get over it, and it won't be as hard on her as knowing I've been snuffed out of existence. If you wouldn't tell her any different, I'd appreciate it.”

She was watching him closely. “You would spare her pain.”

“Yes.”

“You love her.”

He didn't answer that. What he did or didn't feel for Charlie was between him and Charlie. Period.

Tam didn't push it. Instead she said, “You're not just going to vanish on her, are you? You do plan on telling her good-bye?”

He nodded. “When the time comes, I'm going to tell her I can feel that I'm getting ready to go, and I don't think I'll be coming back.”

The thought of how she was going to react to that made his gut clench. But he couldn't just disappear without a word, and it was better than the truth. Even he, as inured to the idea of his own destruction as he had become, was having a hard time with the truth.

He wanted to stay.

Tam sucked in a breath. “How much time?”

He understood that to mean
How much time do you have left?
“They ain't real up on the fine points of time in the Dungeon of Doom, but I think about two more days.”

“So soon.” Her face clouded.

He knew just how she felt. “Will you keep my secret?”

She looked at him thoughtfully. She didn't like him, didn't trust him, didn't approve of him, but they'd had a meeting of the minds over Charlie: they both cared about her.

“Yes,” she said. “I agree that it would be easier for her to believe that you're trapped in the Dark Place than to know that you no longer exist. But it's still going to be very difficult for her.” She frowned at him. “You should not have made her care about you.”

Like he'd seen it coming. Like he'd meant to. Like he'd intentionally waited until after he'd died to fall in love. Whoever it was who'd said life's a bitch didn't know the half of it. Death was the bitch's bigger, badder sister.

“I'm heading over to the Pioneer Inn now,” he said.

The voodoo priestess didn't say anything else, but he could feel her eyes on his back as he walked out the door.

Tam was in the downstairs bathroom when Charlie reached the bottom of the stairs. Dressed in her workwear staple of black pants and a black blazer with a color-of-the-day blouse—today's was sapphire—and tiny silver hoops in her ears that were her only jewelry besides Michael's watch, she was a little stiff as she waited for the Advil to kick in; a lot saddened by the loss of so many lives yesterday; terrified for the still missing teens; resolved to do everything she could to help locate Abell, Torres, and Ware; worried about Michael—and still so fricking happy it was embarrassing.

Because she was in love with a dead man, and he loved her back.

Professional diagnosis:
They make padded rooms for people like you.

Tam must have heard her in the hall, because she called through the bathroom door, “Triple G decided to walk to the inn to change. We're supposed to pick him up there. He just left, so we've got a few.”

“Triple G?” Charlie asked before she got it.

“Gorgeous Ghost Guy,” Tam replied, confirming.

“Okay,” Charlie called back, and went on into the kitchen, debating the wisdom of consuming one more cup of coffee. Once again she'd gotten very little sleep, but this kind of lack of sleep she could live with. Definitely. Long-term. Like, say, forever. She was smiling—probably sappily—at the sunflower bobbing in its glass when her attention was caught by the ongoing drama in her backyard.

Mrs. Norman's prized white hens were scratching for food under her sunflowers again, and Pumpkin was crouched maybe six feet away, watching them.

Charlie hurried outside to prevent catastrophe while she could. Scooping up Pumpkin before he could succumb to what she could only feel were his regrettably violent tendencies, Charlie was just saying, “What, did they lock you out for the day?” to him in a commiserating tone when a hand clamped down over her mouth and she was jerked back hard against a hulking male body.

Terror and shocked recognition stabbed through her even before Pumpkin tumbled from her arms, even before a horribly familiar voice said with false affability, “Morning, Dr. Stone.”

Abell! She was instantly icy with dread. Her stomach dropped like an elevator in free-fall. Her heart seized up.

A gun poked into her rib cage.

Her pulse leaped to instant warp speed as he shoved her ahead of him toward the gate.

“We're going next door,” he said. “Walk, or I'll shoot you right here.”

Charlie knew Abell, knew what he was capable of. She had no doubt whatsoever that he meant it. The “next door” he was pushing her toward was the Powells'. She walked through her gate and another one, into the Powells' backyard and up their steps, while her heart pounded and her insides jellied and her mind raced. A thousand thoughts and images fought for supremacy—Pumpkin out on the Powells' back porch so early that morning:
Should have realized there was something odd about that;
Glory Powell with her new braces:
Don't let him have hurt her;
Abell shooting the guards on the bus through the head;
Michael, Michael, Michael
—but she thrust them aside as she frantically searched for something, some tidbit of information or ace-in-the-hole survivor maneuver that she could use to save herself.

Her heart palpitated as she realized she was coming up with zilch.

Tam would miss her almost right away. Tam might even have seen—no, if Tam had seen her being grabbed and taken away, Tam would have come bursting out the door yelling at the top of her lungs and would probably have gotten herself, and Charlie, too, killed on the spot. But Tam was psychic.

Help.
Concentrating as hard as she could, Charlie tried beaming a message to Tam.

“Keep walking,” Abell growled as he forced Charlie through the Powells' back door into their warm, bright, surprisingly noisy kitchen. A single half-eaten bowl of cereal sat on the table, a small TV on the counter was turned to CNN, and the kitchen curtains were open. Charlie saw at a glance that whoever had been eating the cereal at the table would have had a view of her backyard that was obstructed only by the fence between the properties. It wasn't much of a stretch to assume that the person eating at the table had been Abell, and that he had seen her come outside after Pumpkin. A knot formed in her chest as she realized that there was no sign of the Powells. Any of them.

“Please don't kill me, please don't kill me, please don't kill me.”
The shriek came from behind Charlie, and as it tore through the TV's noise she jumped reactively in Abell's hold. His gun jabbed harder into her rib cage in retaliation for her sudden movement, but she scarcely noticed it.

The spirit of the chaperone from the school bus—Tabitha Grunwald—appeared out of nowhere, dropping to her knees in the middle of the kitchen floor, clasping her hands in front of her as she begged for her life. Her crisp gray curls and attractive, middle-aged face, pale and drawn now with fear, her flowered dress, the paper bag still clutched in her hand, were as vividly real as they had been in life. She was crying, her face tilted up in supplication—and Charlie could only watch in horror as her face disintegrated into a red, pulpy mass that was the stuff of nightmares between one second and the next. Then she disappeared.

By the time she did, Charlie felt as if her nerves were trying to jump through her skin.

Tabitha Grunwald had clearly attached herself to her killer in the moment of her death.

“I said
walk.
” Voice harsh with impatience, Abell, who of course had seen nothing spectral, shoved Charlie toward a closed door at the far end of the kitchen. Oh, God, Tabitha Grunwald's appearance had distracted her, robbed her of vital seconds when she should have been trying something, anything, to attract attention or get away. Like, say, snatch up the cereal bowl and hurl it through the window? Who'd notice? Punch Abell in the nose and try to bolt? He was holding her too tightly for her to even attempt it, and if she did attempt it he would blow a hole through her before her fist could begin to connect. A set of knives in a wooden block on the counter near the door caught her eye. But they were too far away now. Why hadn't she noticed them when he'd first pushed her inside? Why—?

Tam. Help.

They were at the door. Abell said, “Open it.”

Hands shaking, Charlie did as he said.

The door led to the basement. The Powells' house was newer than hers, a 1950s-era bungalow, but the basement had that damp, musty smell of old basements everywhere, and that was what hit her first. Second, it was dark, not pitch black but gloomy, especially in contrast to the sunny kitchen. Abell's hand dropped away from her mouth to fist in the back of her jacket as he pushed her into the stairwell. Trying to break away and run for it wasn't an option. He blocked the doorway behind her, and he was the approximate size of King Kong. Her heart hammered like it was trying to knock its way out of her chest. She could hear her pulse thundering in her ears.

The only semicoherent thought that flashed through her head was:
Basement bad.

“Move,” he said, and shoved the gun into her spine.

With her mouth sour with fear, she went down the stairs.

They were gray-painted planks, no risers between them. The floor she was approaching was poured concrete. The walls were raw concrete block. It was, she saw as she reached the lower steps, one room about half the size of the footprint of the house, with a furnace and a washer and dryer and boxes and—Melissa and Glory Powell, each tied to one of the separate metal poles that supported the unfinished ceiling. Their mouths were sealed with duct tape, and they were sitting on the floor with their hands zip-tied behind the pole against which they leaned. Melissa was wearing a blue nightgown, Glory pink pajamas. Melissa's short hair was standing on end. Glory's hair was in twin braids, one of which had unraveled. Their faces were utterly white and exhausted-looking. There was no sign of Brett Powell. Charlie prayed that wasn't a bad thing.