Her Last Whisper (11 page)

“I’m guessing that the hunter took the spirits that were in these two before he came for me,” Michael said thoughtfully. “That would account for their fainting, and the state they’re in.”

Charlie’s brow crinkled. She couldn’t ask the question that scenario planted in her mind:
So then the hunter went back and killed Spivey? Because something, or someone, did
.

The elevator reached the ground floor.

Following the stretchers, which had priority clearance through the metal detectors and heavy steel doors, it took just a few minutes to get outside. It was a beautiful late September day, and even in the covered loading-dock area where the ambulances waited, the crisp smell of autumn drifted through the heavier scent of exhaust fumes. She still felt like vomiting from her close encounter with Spivey, but she was managing to control the impulse—
practice makes perfect
—and she thought she had it under control. Refusing Tony’s suggestion that she go in the ambulance with the victims to be examined at the hospital herself, casting a wary glance all around as she stepped briskly out from beneath the overhang just in case the cloudless blue sky should harbor a terrible surprise—i.e., the hunter—Charlie headed across the gleaming black asphalt toward her car. Feeling hideously exposed now that they were out in the open air, she hunched her shoulders a little in instinctive self-defense. Then she
tried to convince herself that there was no way a hunter would attack in broad daylight in such a public spot, but almost instantly gave up: the hard truth was, she had no way of knowing the parameters of what a monster from another dimension might do. For Tony’s benefit, she took a few ostentatiously deep breaths to clear out whatever noxious substance she had supposedly been exposed to as she beelined for her car.

Wallens Ridge was a huge complex, a level six maximum security private prison with 700 inmates and about half that number of guards. Eight modern, multi-story buildings that looked almost white in the bright sunshine squatted on the blasted-off top of a mountain, where they were ringed by multiple chain-link fences and rows of shiny silver razor wire. Fortunately, her office was in the same building as the infirmary, so she was able to exit with the stretchers and be close to her car. The west parking lot—that was where she parked—was the overflow lot. Today it was full, and busy. Tuesday was visiting day, visiting hours were just about over, and vehicles of all descriptions were backing out of spaces and chugging toward the exits.

“You feeling better?” Tony asked cautiously after a moment. He was keeping pace beside her, escorting her to her car. She’d been a little short with him after he’d tried to insist that she go in the ambulance to the hospital to get checked out. But she had been so distressed over what had happened to Creason and the others, so unnerved by the continuing threat posed by the hunter, so frightened for Michael, to say nothing of how bad she felt from the physical symptoms associated with Spivey’s appearance and the voices, that patience had momentarily deserted her and she’d ended by snapping out a flat, “I’m not going to the hospital,” thus ending the conversation.

Even now, she couldn’t escape the extra layer of anxiety that Tony’s presence added. The time was at hand: she had to decide whether she was going with him or not, whether she was going to answer Kaminsky’s call for help or not. Just thinking about the pain Kaminsky must be in made Charlie’s heart shiver. If she could help stop a madman and find Kaminsky’s sister then that was what she absolutely needed to do. But the thought of getting too close to another
active serial killer made it suddenly hard to breathe. And she had to factor in Michael’s injuries …

“Yes, thanks. I told you, I just needed some fresh air. If I was exposed to something, it’s out of my system now.” She really liked Tony so much; if only she could get some of the complications in her life straightened out, there was real potential in their relationship. He was exactly the kind of man she had always wanted, the kind of man a woman could build a future with. “I’m sorry if I was cross earlier. It’s been a difficult day.”

“That’s all right.” He grinned unexpectedly. With his lean dark face and twinkling eyes, he looked so handsome that Charlie couldn’t help but return his smile. “You’re cute when you’re cranky.”

“That was just fucking lame,” the number one complication in her life observed with disgust. “He’s trying to get in your pants, and that’s the best line he can come up with?”

He was walking beside her, too. Since they’d exited the elevators he hadn’t said a word: like her, she thought, he’d been busy keeping an eye out for the hunter. She cast him a withering glance, and then her gaze lingered, arrested. It was only now that she got a good look at him in unforgiving daylight that she became aware that he really looked pretty rough. For a man (ghost) with what was ordinarily a healthy tan, the grayish pallor of his face was alarming. So were the new lines around his mouth of what she thought had to be pain, and the deepening shadows beneath his eyes. He looked almost … haggard. The beautiful bone structure of his face was all the more apparent because his skin seemed to be pulled tight over it. His lips were pale. And his eyes were still that disconcerting fathomless black.

A fresh thrill of fear ran down her spine. For the first time it occurred to her that, even if the hunter didn’t return, there was no guarantee that Michael would be all right.

“You keep looking at me all big-eyed and worried like that, and I’m going to start thinking you’re crazy in love with me,” he drawled, then as she stiffened in outrage he nodded at Tony. “There Dudley is, waiting for you to say something. You know, about how cute you look when you’re cranky.”

For so many reasons—
crazy in love with him, my ass!
—that
shifted Charlie’s attention instantly back to Tony. She wouldn’t even give the infuriating creature the satisfaction of glaring at him.

“Thanks—I think,” Charlie said to Tony, perfectly composed. She’d been fishing around in her disorganized mess of a purse for her keys, and found them just as they reached her car. She pulled them out with a triumphant jingle.

“Anyway, when you snapped back at Dudley like that, you weren’t cute,” said Michael. “You were damned hot. That’s what he ought to be telling you.”

Charlie didn’t acknowledge that by so much as a flicker of an eyelash.

What she said as she stopped beside her blue Camry was, “Here’s my car,” and clicked the button on the key ring that unlocked the doors.

“I hate to put pressure on you after what you’ve just been through.” Tony gave her an apologetic look. “But the plane’s scheduled to take off at seven. Crane’s meeting us at the airport. That is, if you’re coming with me.”

“Hell, no, she’s not.” Squaring around to face him, Michael radiated aggression in a way that should have made the other man step back a pace. Except that, of course, Tony couldn’t see him.

“I am coming with you.” Charlie’s lips firmed as Michael’s eyes shot to her face. She’d made her decision in the last couple of seconds, after sifting through the options about a thousand times and finally coming to the conclusion that going with Tony to Kaminsky’s aid was something she had to do. She knew Michael was going to (to put it politely) disagree with her decision, and their upcoming discussion wasn’t going to be pretty, but there wasn’t any other choice she could make. “I just need to stop by my house to pack a bag.”

“What the hell was that?” Michael’s tone was deceptively mild. Charlie only knew how really, truly ticked off he was from the tightness around his mouth and eyes. He hadn’t said a word from the moment she’d told Tony that she was going to Las Vegas with him until now, when she and Michael were driving out of the prison after having been waved through the last checkpoint by a sunglasses-wearing guard with a shotgun riding on his shoulder. She was behind the wheel, seatbelted in, physically feeling a whole lot better since the Tums she’d dug out of her purse as soon as she’d gotten in the car had kicked in. Michael had watched her crunching the (multiple) tablets in broody silence. She’d expected a caustic remark about it, but nothing. Since then, the tension in the air had risen with every swish of the wheels on pavement, until by the time he finally spoke she was so on edge that she was sitting bolt upright in the driver’s seat and scowling at the beat-up red pickup in front of them. Michael slouched in the bucket seat beside her, his tall, broad-shouldered frame looking too big for the compact car. Those black eyes glinted dangerously as they fixed on her: a sideways glance at his face was enough to persuade her that she’d do better to focus her attention on the road if she wanted to keep her own cool. He looked
like a fight waiting to happen, and she wasn’t about to play into that. Couples quarreled, but she and her resident ghost were emphatically
not
a couple. After his
You’re crazy in love with me
crack, she wanted to underline that fact to herself as well as to him. Tony was somewhere behind them, in the car he’d driven to the prison. They’d arranged to meet at her house, and he would drive her from there to Lonesome Pine Airport, where the team’s private plane waited.

“Kaminsky needs me. Her sister’s missing. I can’t leave her in the lurch.” That was the short answer, simple and quick and true. By leaving it at that, Charlie felt that she was taking the high road.

“Oh, yes you can.”

“I’m not going to.”

“I thought we decided that you were gonna tell Dudley no.”

“You may have decided that. I didn’t.” In the interests of not escalating the “discussion,” instead of focusing the glare she felt coming on on its rightful target, she frowned out the window at the gang of orange-jumpsuit-wearing inmates mowing the grass around the outside of the prison under the supervision of a quartet of armed guards. The single road that curled down the mountain had quite a bit of traffic on it at the moment as the prison disgorged its visitors and the guards changed shifts: the Ridge’s version of rush hour. She was still behind the red pickup, and would be until they reached town. The thought that the hunter might be circling in the sky overhead like an invisible version of the Wicked Witch in
The Wizard of Oz
sent a prickle of unease over her skin. The need to get as far away from the prison as fast as possible had her nerves jumping. Speeding away from the epicenter of danger wasn’t going to happen, however. She was stuck going thirty-five miles an hour, and unless a whole line of traffic got blasted out of her way, nothing was going to change. Her hands tightened on the wheel. She did not curse, not even under her breath.

“That’s a load of crap.” Michael’s fingers tightened around the edge of the console between the seats. Slanting sunlight bathed his powerful forearm in golden light: the muscles of his upper arm looked hard and sleek below the sleeve of his T-shirt. His arm, she
was glad to see, had none of the grayish tinge that she found so worrying when she looked at his face. Not that she was going to let him see her worrying about him again anytime soon. “This Vegas trip is a cluster-fuck waiting to happen, and you know it as well as I do. When we get home, you need to tell Dudley that you changed your mind and can’t go.”

“No,” Charlie said, flicking Michael a cool but by no means nasty sideways look. Come to think of it, she liked that word
no
a whole lot. It was short and sweet, and got the job done.

His lips compressed. “You were hearing those creepy voices of yours back there, weren’t you? In the hall right before that psycho freak charged you?”

It was clear from his expression that he already knew the answer.

“So what if I was?” she countered.

“In sports, injured players lay out until they’re healed. Consider yourself an injured player, and sit this one out.”

“This isn’t sports, and I’m not injured. And Kaminsky needs me.”

“You’re hearing fucking voices in your head, and they’re causing you to spaz out. If that isn’t injured, I don’t know what is. To say nothing of the fact that a damned murderous lunatic bit you today, and you’re chowing down on Tums by the handful because being attacked by his ghost made you want to puke.”

He knew way too much about her. “So what am I supposed to do, lock myself in my house until I’m all better?”

“Yes.” His answer was uncompromising.

“No.” So was hers.

“Damn it, we’re not going to Vegas.”

“I’m surprised you’re not chomping at the bit to go to Las Vegas. They have casinos there, remember? Bright lights, big city! Lots of things to do. Aren’t you the one who likes going to bars, hanging out with strippers and hookers, and all that?”

“Being dead kind of takes the fun out of that stuff. Particularly the hookers.”

“Oh, ha, ha.”

“Look, babe: do us both a favor and forget Vegas.”

“You know what? You’re a big boy. You can stay home if you want.”

“Funny. Especially when we both know you won’t leave me.”

“Watch me.”

“You trying to convince yourself or me?”

“I don’t have to convince you. All I have to do is get on that plane.”

“What happens next time you hear the voices and spaz out around somebody who wants to hurt you—like, say, I don’t know, a serial killer?”

“I’ll deal with it,” she snapped. “Anyway, the voices are bound to go away at some point.”

“Let’s just hope it’s not after you’re dead.”

“Hey, Casper, anybody ever tell you that you have a tendency to be controlling?” Charlie gave up entirely on the failing attempt at keeping her cool and glared at him. “It’s a little alarming—or at least it would be if I felt I had to listen to you. Luckily, I don’t. I do what I want.”

“So I’m controlling, huh? You going all shrinky on me now, Doc?”

“I’m pretty sure
shrinky
’s not a word.”

“You should know. You’re the one with all them fancy degrees.” The smile he gave her was tigerish. “Shame they don’t come with common sense.”

“Are you really going to talk to
me
about common sense?” She let loose a derisive laugh. “If you’d had the
common sense
to keep your pants zipped once in a while, you probably wouldn’t have been arrested for being a serial killer, and you wouldn’t have ended up on death row.”