Lucky Stars (69 page)

“Oh my God,” Lorna breathed as it hit her.

“There were two of them. Caldwell had a partner. He killed Brenna while someone was inside smothering the children.”

“Fucking hell,” Lorna whispered.

“If Myrtle came into the room, she could have seen the assailant. And definitely she would have seen him if he dragged her there prior to killing her. And,
Lor
, we didn’t question Myrtle.”

“We need to get to The Point,” Lorna decided.

“Yeah, we bloody do. Where are you?”

“Plymouth.”

“I’m in Exeter. Get in your car. I’ll meet you at The Point. You call Cassandra.”

“
You calling
Uncle Angus?”

“He’s already there. The party is tonight. I’ll call him and get him to talk to Belle. Lewis is protective of his sister and Belle’s protective of both of them. Uncle Angus is going to have to talk her into letting us talk to Myrtle.”

“Is Cassandra there?” Lorna asked.

“I don’t know. She was invited but she had a job and I don’t know if it’s done. Find out,” he ordered. “Get her ass there. We have to talk to Myrtle then we have to figure out what’s next.”

“Right.
On it and outta here.
See you at The Point.”

Lach
touched his screen then he got up and swiftly moved, carrying his jeans across the room to the bathroom in order to deal with the condom.

When he came out, he had his jeans on and he moved directly to his jumper on the floor.

Emma was in bed, the covers tucked tight around her naked body. She was sitting on her ass, her legs curled into her chest, her arms wrapped around her calves, her eyes on him.

“What do you do for a living?” she asked quietly as he tagged his jumper from the floor, straightened and prepared to pull it on.

“You don’t wanna know,” he muttered and yanked it over his head.

“I’m thinking you’re right,” she whispered as he pulled the jumper down to his waist. “But you seem worried and, uh, we just had sex and it looks like you’re leaving.”

At her words, he focused on her.

She had great hair, dark, glossy and a lot of it.

And she had a fantastic ass.

He moved to the bed, put a fist into it, leaned toward her and touched his mouth to hers.

Then he moved back and caught her brown eyes.

Damn, but she also had great eyes.

“My job is strange and there’s some danger,” he told her, his burr soft and gentle, his mind processing the fact that her eyes getting wide was all kinds of cute. “To me but also to the people I do it for. A month ago, I left a job because there was nothing more I could do. No information to get, the trail was cold, the story dead and nothing was happening. It had been weeks and nothing. There were other jobs to do and we had to do them. So we made certain the protection was strong and we left. But I just figured out we missed something.”

Her brows went up. “And you remembered that while you were inside me?”

He grinned and whispered, “Sorry, love. My job is intense and when I say that I mean sometimes lives are at stake.”

She held his eyes a moment before she muttered, “At least whatever it is has to do with kids being murdered and lives being at stake. I suppose that’s more important than um…” she threw out a hand to indicate her bed and finished, “whatever.”

He liked that she understood, not many women would and he knew this because the few he’d tried to explain it to
didn’t
so he no longer bothered.

He liked it enough that his grin turned into a smile and he leaned in again, catching her at the back of her neck. He pulled her to him and kissed her, this time longer, deeper and wet.

She tasted great too and that night he discovered it wasn’t just her mouth that tasted good.

She was blinking at him and looking dazed when he let her go.

It was a good look but, also unfortunately, at that moment it wasn’t a look he could get lost in.

So
Lach
moved away, grabbed his socks and boots, sat on the bed and pulled them on.

He was swinging his leather jacket on and walking to the door when she called out, “Lachlan?”

He turned and looked at her.

“Aye?”

“Be careful,” she whispered.

He didn’t have time but the look on her face, the memory of her heart-shaped ass in his hands and tipped up for him to take, all that hair, her warm brown eyes soft on him and the sweet way she said that, he went back to the bed and kissed her again.

In the hall of her house, heading to her door, hearing the rain pouring down outside, he pulled out his phone to call Uncle Angus.

* * * * *

The Other

She stood beside the prone body of Angus McPherson on the floor in the corner of the room in the
servants
quarters where she’d lured him.

The blood dribbled from his forehead into his eye and off his red nose.

His phone rang.

She reached down, pulled it out of his limp hand and looked at the display.

Then she put it to the floor, lifted her foot and smashed it with her heel.

The other ones, she hadn’t smashed. In her time skulking about the house, she’d just collected them, turned them off and hidden them.

She didn’t know why she smashed that one.

But it felt good.

She turned the lights out when she left and was certain to lock the door.

* * * * *

Mickey

Mickey was grinning at the female bartender and lifting his new pint of lager to his lips when his phone rang.

He pulled it out of his back pocket and looked at the display.

He felt his brows draw together, his eyes went back to the bartender and he muttered, “A minute.”

She jerked up her chin and wandered down the bar.

Mickey took the call and put his phone to his ear.

“Dempsey,” he answered.

“Mr. Dempsey?” a woman asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. This is strange…” she trailed off.

When she didn’t speak for some time but didn’t disconnect, Mickey said into the phone, “Can I help you with something?”

“I, well, you’re going to think I’m all kinds of barmy but, well, I’ve spoken with Dr. Holmes and he gave me your number to call you.”

The minute she mentioned Holmes’s name, Holmes being a historian with a doctorate, a speciality in Cornwall and a sub-speciality in famous local crimes including the Bennett murders, Mickey’s back went straight and she had his complete attention.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Mercy.
Mercy Richardson.”

“Ms. Richardson, why did Dr. Holmes tell you to speak with me?”

“He says the dreams I’m having are, well, he says you’d be interested in them.”

Dreams.

Bloody hell.

“And what dreams are you having, Ms. Richardson?” Mickey enquired.

“They’re very,
erm
,
strange
,” she whispered then said no more.

“Please tell me about them,” Mickey coaxed, not feeling good about this mostly because Bennett made it clear
he
didn’t feel good about the fact that nothing came of all the work and research Mickey and Bennett’s crew of whoever they were had done a month ago.

Mickey was convinced the spirit of Caleb Caldwell had been fucking with Bennett’s head. One last shot before, if all this lunacy was true, Caldwell was sent straight to hell.

Bennett was not convinced of the same.

With absolutely nothing left to find and nothing left to do, Bennett’s team had disbursed.

That didn’t mean Bennett had to like it. He didn’t and he made this clear.

He also had no choice and he made it even clearer he liked that even less.

“All right,” she said in his ear, taking him from his thoughts, “well, first, I’ve been having them for months. I tried to remember when they started, Dr. Holmes said that might be important, but I don’t know exact. But I do remember they started a few weeks before all that news hit with James Bennett, The Tiny Dynamo and James’s brother, Miles. I remember that.”

Blood
hell.

“Right, so you started having the dreams, then…” Mickey prompted.

“I know you probably think it’s weird that I told you that about, well, Belle Abbot and James Bennett but, I don’t know. I think it’s important. Because, at the time, I thought I was dreaming about
them.
It felt weird because, you know, they were from another time and everything. Like, they didn’t look like them, really, but still… they
were.
Then,
bang!
They’re in the paper and they’re together. It really freaked me out.”

“As I suspect it would,” Mickey muttered, seeking patience. “What else? Most important, what did you dream?”

“Okay, now, I know this all sounds bizarre –”

“How about this,” he cut her off. “Just assume I won’t think it’s bizarre.
All right?
You don’t know me but rest assured, I’ve seen and heard a lot, Ms. Richardson, so just tell me your story and don’t worry what I think about it. Yes?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Then, well, okay, so you won’t think it’s bizarre when I say it isn’t like these dreams are
dreams
. It’s like they’re, well…
memories.
”

Bloody fucking
hell.

“Go on,” he urged.

“The thing is
,
there’s another man.”

Good Christ.

“And…” Mickey prompted.

“And he’s with a woman. And I see them. They don’t see me. I think, well, it’s crazy but I think I’m like a servant or something. And they don’t see me or they don’t care that I’m around. I exist but I’m not important. But, and Mr. Dempsey, this is disturbing as well as weird and it’s the reason I went to Dr. Holmes. I asked around, who to talk to because I’m scared to go to sleep, it’s
that
disturbing. And this is because, first, okay, I know you said don’t say anything is crazy but this is. See, she’s
a witch.
An
… actual…
hocus
pocus
witch.
And worse,” she cried, warming to her theme, “they’re plotting a murder.
The murder of two children and a woman.
And the woman’s name is Brenna.”

By the time she was finished, Mickey had thrown money on the bar and was on his way to the door.

“Ms. Richardson,” he said into his phone as he made his way across the pub toward the door that would lead him to the driving rain outside, “start at the beginning, don’t leave anything out, don’t hesitate and tell me
everything.
”

Twenty minutes later, Mercy Richardson had told Mickey Dempsey everything.

Five minutes after that, when Dempsey was unable to get Jack Bennett on the phone, he called a mate of his who was a pilot and he pulled in a favour.

Five minutes after that, he was headed to the airstrip.

* * * * *

Jack

“Poppet, have you seen my phone?” Jack called as he entered his and Belle’s room at The Point.

“No,” she called back through the closed door to the bathroom.

Jack stopped in the room and looked around.

Something was wrong and it was more than the something he’d felt was wrong the entirety of the six weeks since they dispelled Caldwell’s spirit from Miles and even more than the something that had been nagging his gut all day.

As he took in their room, it hit him.

The dogs were not there.

This wasn’t unusual but it was rare. If they weren’t with him then they were with Belle. Or, oftentimes, Baron was with him and
Gretl
was with Belle.

But usually one or the other of them
were
close.

“If you need a phone, honey, mine’s in my bag on the bed,” Belle continued to talk through the door.

Jack moved to her bag on the bed, seeing some of the contents scattered over the duvet as he called out to Belle, “Do you know where the dogs are?”

“They’re not with you?”

That nag in his gut clawed deeper as Jack sorted through her stuff on the bed and in her bag but found no phone.

“Fucking hell,” he muttered, rounding the bed and pulling the house phone from its charger as he called back, “No, they’re not with me.”

He wasn’t surprised when he hit the on button on the phone, put it to his ear and found it dead. He wasn’t surprised because five minutes before when he’d been unable to locate his mobile, he’d tried this in his study.

His eyes moved to the windows to see the rain driving against the panes.

And he wasn’t surprised the house phone was dead because it happened often during storms.