Her Last Whisper (20 page)

“No, but I’ll feel really bad about dragging you with me.”

“In that case, I bounce back fast.”

Charlie looked at Tam, who was watching them with an expression that was very nearly sour, and said, “I have to go. Are you heading home tomorrow?”

Tam nodded and held Michael’s watch out to her. Charlie took it, glanced at the time—she was shocked to see that only about half an hour had passed since she’d met Tam in the lobby; it had felt like multiple lifetimes—and slid it back into its accustomed place on her arm.

“I told you about the hunter,” Charlie said to Tam, barely repressing a shudder as she remembered. “How much danger are we in from it, do you think?”

“He”
—Tam put an emphasis on the pronoun—“should be in no danger here.
Executeurs
almost never come through to the earth plane. The walls must be especially thin where you were. Concentrations of evil, which I have to imagine your prison contains, do occasionally serve as portals, though. He should probably stay away from them.”

“Good to know,” Michael said, with a significant look at Charlie. She barely repressed a sigh. She was more thankful than she could say to have Michael restored to himself again, but she didn’t look forward to ongoing arguments about continuing her work at the prison.

“Want to do lunch before I head back?” Tam asked.

Charlie thought about how intense the team’s investigations tended to be. They went flat out, with only the bare minimum of time carved out for sleep and food, because lives were inevitably on the line. With Lena’s sister involved, the stakes would be even higher. But she hadn’t seen Tam in forever, and she had no idea how long it would be before she saw her again. And her role in the investigation was less boots on the ground than the others’, especially now that
she’d taken active serial killers in serious aversion and meant to deliberately pull back from the fieldwork as much as she could as a result. Doing her best for Lena and her sister meant using her special ability when it could make a difference, like, possibly, at the morgue tonight, and using every bit of her training and expertise to provide a forensic analysis of the psychological facets of the case.

In other words, she should be able to fit in one nonwork-related meal.

“How does breakfast sound instead? At, say, eight?” Charlie slung her purse over her shoulder. “That’s the only time tomorrow I’m almost sure I can get away.”

Tam made a face at the early-for-her time, then nodded with resignation. “Eight it is.”

“I’ll meet you at the buffet downstairs. And Tam—thanks for coming to our rescue tonight.” Charlie’s last words were heartfelt.

“Yeah, thank you,” Michael echoed as, with a quick smile at her friend, Charlie headed toward the door. “I owe you one.”

Glancing over her shoulder, Charlie saw that Tam was on her feet, no doubt meaning to follow them to the door and lock it behind them. She watched Michael smile at Tam—full-on charm offensive from a guy guaranteed to knock just about any woman’s socks off when he just stood there and breathed—and Tam frown in response.

“You’re welcome.” Tam directed her words to Charlie. Michael got a long cool look in response to that smile. “Although I’m still not sure I did you a favor.”

Once they were in the hall Michael said, “I don’t think the voodoo priestess likes me very much.”

“You’re a ghost.” They reached the elevators and Charlie hit the down button. “Tam thinks they have their place, which isn’t here in the earthly plane following me around.”

The elevator arrived and they got on. Of course, when she could really use some company to keep from having a one-on-one conversation she didn’t feel ready for, there was no one else in the car. Charlie punched L for lobby.

“Lucky for me you don’t agree.” Michael was studying her. Charlie could feel his gaze on her averted face, but she resolutely kept her eyes on the changing numbers over the door. She’d felt too much as she’d fought to save him, and what was worse was she’d let him see it. Now she was pulling back emotionally like a turtle retreating into its shell when danger threatens. It was an instinctive reaction, one no doubt honed by years of psychological issues she wasn’t ready to delve into, and it was also, she recognized even as it was happening, the only sane thing to do.

“What makes you think I don’t agree?” She still wasn’t looking
at him. Her reflection in the brass doors reminded her of what he was, because there was no reflection of him standing beside her. It also showed her that her hair was a mess and her lipstick was gone. Those were the matters she chose to concentrate on. “Just because I didn’t want to see you get turned into a crispy critter and then go poof into oblivion doesn’t mean I like having you here following me around.”

“Let’s see, I think it was you saying something along the lines of
If he dies, it will break my heart
that made me think that. Or maybe it was the way you kissed me.”

“What I said was,
gets destroyed
, not dies,” Charlie pointed out with far more composure than she was feeling as she pulled her brush from her purse and ran it through her hair. The advantage of having lived with the man (ghost) for six weeks or so now was that she’d gotten used to him watching her groom, so having his eyes on her as she made repairs to her appearance no longer bothered her. “For the record, I said that because I was trying to persuade Tam to save you.”

Having finished with her hair, she took advantage of the shiny brass to reapply her lipstick.

“And you kissed me like I was holding water and you were dying of thirst because …?”

“You’re a hot guy.” As she finished up with the lipstick and restored it to her purse, she deliberately kept her voice light. “I didn’t say I wasn’t attracted to you.”

“Are you really going to do this?” Michael said after a moment in which his eyes never left her. She, on the other hand, was religiously watching the descending floor numbers. Thank goodness they were on number three, with only two to go!

“Do what?” Her tone was short. She really, really did not want to have this conversation. Not until she’d had time to get her thoughts together and regroup. Not until she felt less vulnerable.

“Give me the cold shoulder because you’re scared to admit you’re crazy in love with me. After all we’ve been through?”

That snapped her head around. She glared at him. He smiled beguilingly at her.

“I am not giving you the cold shoulder,” she clarified, refusing
to be beguiled. “I’m just getting on with the next item on today’s extremely full to-do list.”

“Does that mean you’re not denying that you’re scared to admit you’re crazy in love with me?”

“That means I’m not in love with you.” She cut right to the chase. Now that he wasn’t in imminent danger of disappearing forever and she wasn’t going nuts over the possibility, her mind rejected the idea as if it were a snake trying to slither through her front door. Her heart, on the other hand, gave an odd little throb, which she absolutely refused to so much as acknowledge.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Charlie didn’t think she’d ever been so glad to walk out into a crowded, noisy hotel lobby in her life.

“You can keep fighting it all you want.” His voice in her ear was maddening. “Thanks to you, I’ll still be here when you get tired of denying it.”

Charlie’s lips compressed. Her spine straightened. Resolutely ignoring he-who-was-once-again-the-bane-of-her-existence, she strode across the lobby in search of Tony.

He was waiting with Buzz, right where he said he’d be. Reliable: she liked that in a man. Almost as much as she liked
alive
.

“Ready?” His eyes assessed her as she joined them. He was looking tired, as she had no doubt she was herself. But on Tony tired looked good. The faint lines around his mouth and eyes gave him a certain gravitas. “Get all caught up with your friend?”

She nodded. “She’s staying here. When I left her, she was heading for bed.”

“She?” he asked with a lift of his brows, as Buzz greeted her with an abstracted wave. Buzz’s curly hair bore evidence of his having run his hands through it multiple times: it looked like he was wearing a frizzy brown dandelion on his head. Instead of tired, he looked wired. He was all but bouncing from foot to foot.

Charlie nodded again, as Tony’s tone reminded her of how complicated her life was becoming. Good guy FBI agent versus bad boy ghost shouldn’t even have been a contest. The unfortunate thing about it was, at the moment it really wasn’t.

Michael gave Tony a narrow-eyed look, but didn’t say anything.

Nobody said much as they headed for the front entrance, where the valet had the car waiting. The Conquistador’s spectacular fountains were shooting toward the night sky, forming a colorful wall of water that pulsated in time to Celene Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” That the tune held a certain irony under the circumstances didn’t escape Charlie, but she refused to dwell on it. Given that it was September, which wasn’t a big tourist month, she was surprised at the size of the crowd watching the water show. The area in front of the hotel was packed with people of all sizes, shapes, and descriptions.

“She told
you
she’s found something. Hasn’t said word one to me.” Buzz was obviously continuing a conversation he and Tony had been having as they piled into the white Lexus that had been provided for them at the airport, courtesy of the local field office. Tony drove, Charlie was in the front passenger seat, and Buzz sat in the back behind Tony. Michael was behind Charlie. He was being so silent that she would have pulled down her visor and flipped open the makeup mirror to check on him, except—oh, wait—that was pointless because she wouldn’t be able to see his reflection in the mirror.

“I
am
her boss.” Tony’s voice was dry. “She was returning my call.”

“Yeah.” Buzz’s tone clearly said that he knew that wasn’t the reason. “I must have called her a dozen times since we got here. She hasn’t returned any of them.”

“She’s probably trying to distance herself a little bit from you right now.” Charlie turned sideways in her seat to look at Buzz. She could also—funny how that worked out—see Michael. He was looking out the window at the bright blaze of light that was Las Vegas. Broodingly. She frowned. “If I were you, I would concentrate on being her helpful colleague rather than her boyfriend for a bit.”

“How about we just concentrate on finding her sister?” Tony suggested pointedly.

“Did Lena say anything specifically about the lead she found?” Charlie asked.

“No.” Tony shook his head. “Only that it was the first solid thing she’s turned up.”

“I keep hoping this is all a mistake.” Buzz’s voice sounded hollow. He was cracking his knuckles and jiggling one leg as he spoke. “But it’s not, is it?”

“It’s not looking that way,” Tony said.

They rehashed what they knew about certain aspects of the case—the time Giselle was last seen (exiting the Conquistador around midnight Saturday), the characteristics she shared with the other possible victims (attractive, busty brunette under thirty-five), other scenarios for her disappearance that did not involve a serial killer (leaving voluntarily; accident; abduction by someone who was not a serial killer)—until they arrived at the Clark County Coroner’s Office, better known as the Las Vegas morgue. Charlie was surprised to see that the building looked like a church, complete with a stained-glass window set into a wall.

“It’s a church?” Buzz asked, clearly as surprised as Charlie.

“It
was
a church. It’s been remodeled.” It was obvious that Tony had been there before. A few minutes later they were inside being greeted by Coroner Investigator Kevin Jones. He looked to be around thirty-five, average looks, height and weight, with dark brown hair worn in a military-style cut, mild blue eyes, and a pasty complexion. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt with multiple pens and a small flashlight in his chest pocket, and black pants with his badge on his belt.

“Your agent is downstairs,” Jones told them after Tony made the introductions. The smell of death was strong even in these well-kept outer offices. Charlie got busy trying to convince herself the sickish-sweet scent wasn’t already making her stomach start to act up as, at Jones’s gesture, they followed him past the glass-walled work cubicles, which were largely empty at that hour, and into an elevator. “I was the one who gave her a call when I started cataloging the victim’s personal possessions. She’d stopped by yesterday, left a photo of the woman you’re looking for and a list of what she was wearing, and this fit the bill.”

“Giselle Kaminsky—is that the name of the victim?” Buzz’s voice went high and reedy. His face turned absolutely white.

“Haven’t ID’d her yet,” Jones said cheerfully as the elevator stopped and the doors opened. A rush of cold air immediately enveloped
them. Charlie shivered inwardly as they walked out into a small corridor. She was starting to hear a humming sound in her ears, and she could feel the cold and smell the stench of death on what was almost an organic level. The grayish-white light cast by the fluorescent fixtures overhead suddenly grew way too bright. Even as she squinted in reaction, she realized that her senses were heightening.

Which meant, of course, that the dead were near. This was how they always affected her.

If they were in the morgue, they would be the newly, violently dead. She would be able to see them.

She could hear the thumping of her own heart, feel the warm rush of blood through her veins. The familiar miasma with its sense of being part of two worlds enveloped her. Reality took on a whole new dimension.

I hate this. Oh, God, why did you visit this ability on
me?

“You’re turning kind of green around the gills,” Michael said grimly.

“Kaminsky wouldn’t have said she had a lead if she’d found her sister’s body.” Tony gripped Buzz’s arm in a way that was clearly meant to be steadying.

“Oh. Right.” Buzz still looked pale. Then Jones pushed one of two brushed-steel double doors at the end of the corridor open and stood back with a gesture inviting them to precede him. They walked into a large, low-ceilinged, white-walled room with multiple ventilation fans rattling away in boxlike aluminum housing. The temperature would have done a refrigerator proud, and the reason for that was immediately apparent: six bodies in blue plastic body bags were lined up on gurneys against the far wall. At least three of them had already been autopsied. Charlie could tell because of the clear plastic bags containing their organs that were stored neatly in open bins attached to the gurneys.