A Gift of Ghosts (Tassamara) (29 page)

Okay, so maybe traveling with your father didn’t sound ambitious.

But as fathers went, Lucas was the mysterious type. Dillon
didn’t really know him. He’d been raised by his grandparents, and for most of
his life Lucas had been a “swoop in for an action-packed weekend before
disappearing again” father.

Not that Dillon was complaining. He hadn’t even seen his mom
since he was a month old. She’d dropped him off at his grandparents so they
could babysit and never came back. Dillon didn’t really blame her for leaving.
She’d been awfully young, his dad even younger. He didn’t like to think about
it, but when Dillon died, he’d already been older than his dad was when Dillon
was born.

A wide-eyed little boy in Mickey Mouse ears was staring at
him. Dillon paused and grinned at the perplexed look on the boy’s face,
wondering if the boy could actually see him. Then he realized that Lucas had
gotten several people away and hurried after him.

It wouldn’t be a big deal if he got stuck at the airport, he
told himself. His home town, Tassamara, was hours away by car, so it’d be a
long walk. But, hey, he had nothing but time. Still, he’d rather not lose his
dad quite so early in their trip.

He wondered if he should send his dad a text to ask where
they were going.

That was the other thing Akira had done for him. She’d
helped him find a way to cope with the worst part of being a ghost: not being
able to communicate with anyone. After much practice and many destroyed
electronic devices—his Aunt Grace bought them in bulk when she learned what he was
trying to do—Dillon had succeeded in manipulating his own ghostly energy to
send text messages.

It wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. Grace found stories of
ghosts who tried to communicate using radio waves. Supposedly someone had even
invented a device that let spirits combine audio clips to send messages,
although it didn’t seem to work very well. Akira had a theory that the digital
signals used by cell phones, computers, and e-readers required less power and
were easier to create than audio transmissions, but Dillon didn’t care how it
worked as long as it did.

Unfortunately, long conversations were out. Dillon could
send a few words, even sentences, but his energy was limited enough that he
hadn’t bothered to ask where they were going that morning. Anywhere would be
more interesting than his car.

Still, he was surprised to wind up in a public airport. His
dad traveled a lot but not usually on commercial flights. The family company,
General Directions, owned several planes: one fancy corporate jet that could
cross oceans and a few smaller private planes for shorter hops. What was wrong
with using one of them?

Lucas swung his bag onto the conveyor belt, and placed the
contents of his pockets into a plastic bin. In the requisite security ritual,
he slipped out of his shoes, and dropped them and the coat he was carrying into
another bin. Pacing forward barefoot, he stepped through the gate of the metal
detector, the bored TSA agent barely registering his presence. But as Dillon
followed him, the detector started beeping wildly.

Oops.

The guard waved Lucas back while Dillon waited on the other
side of the detector. If Akira had been here, she might have explained what
happened scientifically, but it looked like his ghostly electromagnetic field
energy messed with the metal detector. Next time, he’d walk around.

Lucas walked through the detector again, his expression
revealing nothing of his thoughts. Dillon wondered whether his dad realized
what had happened and that Dillon had set off the machine. This time the
detector was silent.

Too silent, Dillon realized, as the guard frowned and
gestured to another uniformed man. While the second security officer ran the
handheld wand over Lucas’s clothes, the first held out a hand for his travel
documents.

Lucas passed them over without comment, then smiled and said
to the guard in front of him, “Busy day today. You guys should get holiday pay.”

“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” said the guard, finishing
with his scan and straightening up.

He stepped back and away, and glanced at the first guard who
shrugged and handed Lucas’s paperwork back with a casual, “Here you go, Mr.
Murray. Have a safe flight.”

Murray?

Lucas’s last name was Latimer, just like Dillon’s.

As they walked away from the security checkpoint and boarded
the monorail that would take them to the gate, Dillon’s mind was racing. Why
was his father traveling under a fake name?

What the hell was going on?

*****

Guarding Rachel Chesney was a pain in the ass.

Sylvie kept her face impassive, her hands tucked behind her
back, while she listened to Rachel’s father rant. To keep her mind occupied,
she considered exit strategies. The room only had one door to an outside
hallway: could she get her charge out of one of the two tall windows if she had
to?

Probably not while Rachel was puking, she admitted to
herself. Not without a climbing harness and much more time than they’d have if
armed intruders were banging on the door.

So in the absence of a quick escape, how would she defend
the space? The suite had an entry foyer, small, but if she lifted the sofa onto
one end, she could shove it against the door. It was a sleeper sofa, so it’d be
heavy, but it looked doable, and it would definitely slow down incoming
assailants.

With Rachel already in the bathroom, huddled against the
toilet, Sylvie would have to put her back to the bathroom door and take out the
enemy head-on. Probably better to drag Rachel into the living space and move
her behind the bed, Sylvie decided. No one would get upset about a little vomit
on the floor if they were under attack.

Not the way her father was already upset about her very
public puke in the hotel ballroom, anyway.

“What do you have to say for yourself, Ms. Blair?” Raymond
Chesney finally snapped. His usually pale, benevolent face was flushed with
fury, and the brown eyes behind his round glasses were blinking rapidly.

Oh, goodie, he’s going to let me speak, Sylvie thought,
before saying, expressionless, “As I told you when you hired me, sir, I’m a bodyguard,
not a babysitter.”

“You’re supposed to take care of her!”

“Close protection on a teenage client requires the
establishment of a trusting relationship.” Sylvie didn’t let her eyes drop from
their focus on the glint of Chesney’s glasses. It was a trick she’d learned
that let her look as if she was maintaining eye contact. Raymond Chesney was a
wealthy man and a force to be reckoned with in Washington. She
shouldn’t—wouldn’t—let him bully her. “I can’t do my job if I’m viewed as an
adversarial authority figure.”

“Stopping a fourteen-year-old from doing vodka shots is
hardly adversarial!”

“I protect my charges from outside threats, sir, not from
themselves.” Sylvie kept her voice neutral, although inwardly she was scoffing.

Right. Now he objected. She hadn’t seen him complaining when
he sent his daughter off to ‘hang out’ with the nineteen-year-old son of one of
his pet politicians. What did he think a nineteen-year-old would be doing at a
party like the one going on downstairs? He was lucky it hadn’t been anything
worse.

Of course, she would have intervened if Rachel had been in
danger. And she had, in fact, stopped Rachel from having a fourth drink. She
just hadn’t realized that three drinks would be enough to put the girl under
the table. But there was no reason Chesney needed to know any of that.

“Ha,” Chesney snorted. He turned to Ty Barton, the leader of
the security team, and said, “From now on, Lydia’s on party duty. Get Rachel
home. We’ll discuss this again later.” He took a quick glance in the mirror,
smoothed his hand over his balding head, and tweaked his black bow tie before
turning and stalking out of the room.

“Sylvie,” Ty started.

“Total lightweight,” she interrupted him. “Three drinks, I
swear. And the guys were drinking from the same bottle, so it wasn’t spiked.”

Ty sighed. In his mid-forties, he was tall, blond, and
handsome, in impeccable physical condition, and the perfect image of a
professional security expert. But he was also damn good at his job and an old
friend. “He’s going to want me to fire you, you know.”

Sylvie shrugged. “You can if you have to.”

She wasn’t worried about losing her job. Working for Chesney
was lucrative, but she could always find more work. Plus, Ty wouldn’t want to
let her go: not only because of their shared history, but because he was one of
the few people in the world who knew how uniquely qualified she was to be a
bodyguard. Close protection security consultant, she corrected herself wryly.
Ty really preferred it when she used the fancy name.

Besides, Rachel Chesney was a spoiled brat. If Sylvie never
had to listen to her whine again, she wouldn’t exactly be sad.

“You didn’t do this on purpose, did you? To get out of going
to parties for the next month?”

“Absolutely not,” Sylvie protested. And then the corner of
her mouth tilted up, as she added, “Not that I mind.”

She hated working parties. The advance detail work could be
interesting. She liked conducting threat assessments. But crowds gave her
headaches and the biggest risk at the actual event—at least here in DC—was that
she’d die of boredom while wearing high heels. And if she was going to die of
boredom, she really wanted it to be in comfortable shoes.

“All right.” Ty rubbed his face. “We’re short-staffed
tonight.”

Sylvie nodded. One of the three drivers on the team had quit
a few weeks ago and his position was still open. Normally that wouldn’t matter,
but two other members of the team were out with the flu.

“If I send James with you—no, that won’t work.” Ty was
thinking out loud.

“I can drive,” Sylvie suggested. “I’ve done the training.”

Ty considered the idea. It was irregular, but moving a
charge on the spur of the moment was less risky than a regular outing. He’d
never agree to let her drive Rachel to school, Sylvie knew, but there was
minimal risk of ambush on an unscheduled trip.

Ty nodded. “If she hurls in the car, you get to clean it up,”
he added, with a spark of humor.

Just then the sound of renewed vomiting came from the
bathroom. Sylvie glanced toward the sound and said with a grimace, “I’ll give
it a little longer before we head out.”

*****

The girl ate like a bird, Sylvie thought, baffled. Well, not
like a bird—didn’t they supposedly eat their body weight in food every day?
Rachel ate like whatever it was that ate almost nothing, which meant that
logically there couldn’t be anything left in her system.

But she looked like shit, her lipstick smeared, her black
eyeliner running down her face, and her skin tone vaguely off-color. Girls her
age shouldn’t be wearing eye make-up anyway, Sylvie thought. It was no wonder
those boys didn’t realize she was out of her league.

“Roll the window down if you think you need to throw up
again.”

They were on the GW Parkway, on their way to the house in
McLean. Sylvie had waited an hour, and then gotten a helpful bellhop to
half-drag, half-carry Rachel to the black Mercedes via the parking garage.

“Not allowed,” Rachel mumbled, head against the headrest,
eyes closed.

“Just this once,” Sylvie said with a pang of sympathy. Poor
kid. Still following the rules, even when plastered. “Just if you feel sick.”

Rachel didn’t answer, and Sylvie stepped on the gas a little
harder. She was breaking the ten-miles-over-the-speed-limit rule by a good
fifteen miles, but she wanted to get Rachel home. Would she get pulled over?
Automatically, she started planning her approach to the cops if she did: hands
on the wheel, friendly, but not too friendly. Should she admit to the various
weapons in the car? Mention her employer?

Her strategizing kept her busy until they were almost home.
The gates swung open as the car neared them, and as Sylvie pulled into the long
driveway, she couldn’t help a sigh of relief and another glance at Rachel.
Sylvie really wanted to get her inside, and not only because she didn’t want to
clean the car. All the alcohol ought to be out of Rachel’s system, but the girl
didn’t look good. She’d feel better after a shower and something to eat.

But as she reached the house, instead of pulling around to
the garage, Sylvie hit the brakes, a trickle of adrenaline quickening her
pulse. Someone was in the house—she could feel it.

She looked up at the imposing brick façade with its Italian
limestone trim. The floodlights had gone on automatically, spreading their warm
and welcoming light over the double staircase that led to the front terrace,
and the windows were dark, as they should be. It didn’t matter. Sylvie knew
someone was there.

She closed her eyes, the better to let her sixth sense work.
This was the reason Ty would never let her go. Sight, sound, touch, feel,
taste, and for Sylvie, something else: something that let her detect the
presence of people and understand what they were feeling.

For a bodyguard, it was a valuable gift.

For a Marine, it had been priceless.

Sylvie froze, hands tightening on the steering wheel. Damn
it. She recognized that feel-flavor-sound. What the hell was he doing here?

She licked her lips and glanced at Rachel, who was leaning
against the car door, her head propped against the window, her eyes closed. She
could back out, turn the car around, and run. But that would get complicated.
What would she do with Rachel? And it was probably too late. If Lucas had found
her here, he wouldn’t walk away.

Reluctantly, her foot light on the gas pedal, Sylvie pulled
the car around to the garage. He was in the second floor study, the one right
next to the master bedroom suite. She’d get Rachel tucked away in her own
bedroom and then go see what he wanted.