Ghost Seer (27 page)

“We can give her a finder’s fee, standard rate,” Rickman said, moving to the door to open it.”

“I don’t think she’ll want that,” Zach said. “She doesn’t need the money.”

“A laborer is worthy of her hire,” Mrs. Flinton said. Zach thought that was from the Bible. “You can tell her that. She’s a sensible girl.”

Yeah, she was, even with her new “gift.”

 • • • 

The drive home seemed endless, traffic heavier and slower, the light brighter even against her sunglasses, Enzo either chirpily offering comments, noting ghosts in buildings as she drove through towns, or a little too quiet.

By the time she pulled into her driveway, a headache raged between her temples and she yearned for the cool dimness of the house and a tepid bath with fragrant herbs and soothing music. She fumbled for the garage door opener, but it didn’t seem to work.

Crap! So hot and weary and not nearly as pleased at a task well done as she would have been after a good audit. This ghost bit was tiring and strained her mind and imagination . . . not to mention her sore body, especially her hands. Working with figures was so much more personally rewarding.

She turned off the ignition and sat a moment. She’d only have a couple of minutes before the heat in the car became insufferable. No, she wouldn’t deal with the darn bottle and its contents right now—whatever shape the thing might be in. She’d leave bottle and all tucked under her seat. It was safe enough under her seat since she had problems moving the darn thing back and forth.

Getting out of the car and walking to the narrow side house door nearly hidden by ivy, she was barely able to think, her neck was so tight and her head ached so much.

Clare, watch—

Something hit her head and pain exploded, taking her into hot darkness with it.

B
Y LATE IN
the afternoon, Zach had made some decisions on a personal front. He’d leased a truck and ordered a hooked cane recommended by the bartitsu guy. He’d signed up for some private lessons in the mixed martial art.

He missed Clare. He’d liked knowing she’d be there for him with sweet serenity when he’d finished his day. And though he hadn’t liked her words, he’d liked her fire, the passion he knew she locked down. Liked that he could bring that out in her, that she felt passionately about him.

And he had to acknowledge the bottom line. The bottom line was that he had made a mistake and paid a tough price for it and his life had damn well changed.

Clare’s life had changed because she’d been born into the wrong family. Nothing she could have done about that . . . except, from what he’d overheard in conversations between her and Enzo and seen in her notes, read in the journals of Sandra Cermak he’d peeked into . . . Clare had a choice of dying or accepting her gift, going mad or accepting her gift.

Not a choice he’d have to make.

 • • • 

Hearing a noise, which turned out to be her own whimpering groan, roused Clare. Her whole body felt stiff and she thought she lay on a cot.

What was going on?

She’d heard Enzo yell mentally, and then her head had gone from miserable ache to magnificent piercing pain. She touched it: a huge bump and—yikes!—tender.

She sat up groggily, hot and sweaty, her mind muddled. Her stomach roiled, but she squeezed her eyes shut and forced it to calm by sheer will. More sweat leaked from her pores at the effort, and the drying of it cooled her slightly but felt like it left a film over her skin.

Where was Enzo? He could keep her cool.

Or the apparition of Jack Slade.

They weren’t here right now; she’d sense them even with her lashes shut.

Rubbing crust from her eyes, then just plain rubbing her eyes, she opened them to see the small back bedroom in her old house that she’d used as an office. Enough time had passed that twilight shrouded the room. Again her stomach tightened and did the roll thing and she had to concentrate on not vomiting.

Increment by increment, she set her feet under her and rose and wobbled the few paces to the door and tried the knob. It was locked. She swung around too fast and had to lean a shoulder against the wall. Then she stumbled to check the two vertical windows and blinked. The rectangles of light showed bright in the darkening room and she could see that the cranks to open the windows had been removed.

Crap! She’d been kidnapped and was locked in a room of an empty house.

A house everyone knew she wouldn’t visit.

She breathed slowly through her nose, examined the room. She’d done a quick surface cleaning but the service she’d hired for the deep cleaning wouldn’t be coming for days; they’d been backed up. Arlene, the agent who’d be handling the sale, wouldn’t be checking on it for a week or so, and wouldn’t be checking on Clare for a couple of days. Arlene had dropped by to see how the move was going and left five gorgeous bouquets for individual rooms along with effusive thanks.

Clare’s mouth dried, and she tasted bile and swallowed the burn back down. Her breathing turned fast and ragged. Weakening knees had her staggering back to the cot, sitting again and rubbing her head—her temples, touching the bump, owie!—and pushing her fingers through her hair. She tugged, trying to clear more fogginess from her mind.

Think!

Panting, she worked through who would miss her and how soon. Zach. No, they’d broken up. Wait, wait. She’d told him that she’d finish the ledgers and messenger them to Rickman.

Her mouth turned down. She hadn’t told Zach how close to done she had been with the records; he might expect them in two to three days.

She sucked in a shaky breath. Time to effing figure out what was going on. Again she swallowed hard, wished for some water to rinse out her mouth, and stood.

The door opened.

She rushed forward, met outstretched arms that shoved her to the floor, and her mind began to whirl again. Oww! A couple of seconds passed before she croaked, “Who . . . who?”

A snort, and simply the sound of it clued her in.

“Ted Mather!”

“That’s right.” He stood at the threshold of her room with shadows clinging to him, but unlike the ghosts she’d been communicating with lately, Ted was all too dreadfully solid. “Get back on the cot.”

“But . . . but
why
?”

A sound of disbelief. “You
are
slow, aren’t you.” His head tilted. “Though I s’pose the hit on your head didn’t help. Sorry about that,” he said cheerfully.

Clare rose painfully and sat on the cot. She eased her fingers through her hair, ran into some clumped blood near her wound. Ick.

“Why?” she repeated.

“Because you can talk to ghosts, probably can talk to the ghost of Jack Slade, and he knows where the gold is from the robbery he masterminded,” Ted said, as if
that
were reasonable.

She stared at him,
feeling
her pupils dilate even more than needed in the twilight. How could the research assistant have possibly guessed? Did he have some sort of psychic gift, too?

Clare grasped for rational thought. “That’s an interesting theory,” she said. “But Jack Slade died in Virginia City, Montana. He didn’t even spend much time in Denver.”

Ted shrugged and didn’t come any closer. “You began acting odd at the library. I followed you once to an upscale shrink’s office, heard something about ‘ghosts,’ and then you added books on being psychic and mediumistic to your reading pile.”

She glared at him, outraged. “You followed me!”

He nodded, then waved a casual hand. “Then there was that whole business outside the library during lunch. You were obviously interacting with someone or some
thing
.”

Suppressing a wince, Clare stared at him. “It was you,” she accused. “You spread the word that I was a medium.”

“Just wanted to see what would happen. It was interesting, especially when you got rid of that Native American ghost. I was watching then, too. So I knew you were the real deal.”

“Believing in ghosts is crazy.”

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” Ted quoted. “I guess you proved that to me.” He rubbed his hands and smiled, and Clare knew the man wasn’t quite sane. “Now, let’s get down to business. You tell me where the missing gold shipment is.”

“There is no missing gold shipment.”

Ted tsked. “Now that is wrong. The robbery occurred, that’s a fact.”

“When?”

“Eighteen hundred and sixty-three.”

Clare gritted her teeth. “When?”

“Dunno. I found an entry in the library for gold receipts, but by that time I knew you were my best and fastest lead.”

“Jack Slade did not mastermind the robbery.”

Ted pursed his lips. “Everything online says he did.”

“Don’t you know that you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet? What of your own studies?”

He jerked a shrug. Even in the gloom, she could see his lip curl. “It was taking too long. Summer doesn’t last forever, you know, especially at higher elevations when you want to dig something up. You know about digging up treasure, don’t you, Clare?”

This time her stomach seemed to swoop inside her. She blocked the image of an “almost whole” ear. “I didn’t dig up a chest.”

“No, it didn’t look like that,” Ted agreed.

He’d been there, watching! And she hadn’t even sensed him. Hadn’t seen a car. Neither of the ghosts had informed her of that. Geez, she’d been so clueless. And worried about the wrong people observing her.

His smile widened, showing the edges of his teeth now. “I’d prefer you to talk to your friendly ghost sooner rather than later so we can get on with this.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” She moved her tongue across her teeth to get a little moisture going in her mouth. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Oh, I’ll let you go when you tell me what I want to know. I don’t think you’ll be able to hold out very long. This house is hot and I’m not going to let you have any food, and not much water. You’re not a woman accustomed to that, are you?”

She just stared, could feel her throat dry as he spoke.

“So why don’t you tell me about the gold?” he persisted.

“I don’t know anything about that gold.”

He tilted his head in the opposite direction. “You know, I believe you. After all, with your new inheritance you don’t need money, do you? You inherited upward of twenty million, didn’t you?”

He’d been researching
her
! Fury helped drive the fear away.

Ted jutted his chin. “Just talk to Slade for me, why don’t you?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Clare said.

“Oh, I believe you can ‘call’ him or ‘summon’ him or whatever”—another casual gesture—“whenever you want. After all, your great-aunt Sandra Cermak boasted that in an interview or two I’ve read.”

Geez.

She blinked rapidly, sorting through arguments. “I’ll be missed.”

A ripe chuckle. “I don’t think so. I saw that touching farewell to your ex-lover; that was a break for me. Your new house’s security hasn’t been breached, though I did disable the garage door. All will look fine, there. And I drove you here in your own car.”

“My neighbors here will—”

“Accept that you came back for some reason . . . and if we can’t reach an agreement in a couple of hours, I’ll move it, leave you alone here in the dark.”

That really didn’t matter to her much, but she managed a flinch as if it would.

“I’ll let you stew all night.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’m sure the room won’t be very pleasant when I come back in the morning, and it will be harder to sell a house when someone’s urinated and defecated in a room, won’t it? All lose-lose options for you, Clare.”

She might vomit first.

“Perhaps I should offer some incentive.”

He stepped back and locked the door, but returned in under a minute.

Under his arm appeared to be a plastic bottle of water; his right hand leveled a gun at her.

Sweat popped from her and she bit her lower lip to focus on that instead of her churning belly.

ENZO
, she shrieked in her mind. The phantom dog did not answer.
Great.
He’d been pretty nearly inseparable from her and now he wasn’t here. Where the heck was he?

She stared at Ted, tasting bile again, acid searing her throat. He didn’t look scary, really. Unless you looked at his eyes . . . or his smile . . . or the gun he was holding. Her throbbing head indicated he would use violence to get what he wanted.

“So, what do you think? Ready to talk?” He offered the water.

She
yearned
for it. But, blinking, she saw that the cap had been broken and the bottle opened. No telling what filthy drug he might have put in there. Or could it be a fake-out and he expected her to notice that it had been opened and have qualms.

She realized she didn’t know enough about the jerk.

She could hold out for a little bit, until her aches subsided, her head felt less muzzy.

“I think I’ll refuse your so-generous offer.”

Color flushed his face reddish. The heat couldn’t be good for him. As for her, she knew she had a sweat stain along the spine of her shirt. “Fine!” He kicked the door shut hard. The tongue of the lock didn’t catch, and it bounced. Clare could have told him it would.

Scowling, he shut the door and locked it. This time she heard additional sounds, as if he’d added another lock on the outside of the door!

This was her house, had been
her
home, and she knew all its quirks. She went to the high window that didn’t close all the way, leaving a tiny gap she had to block during the winter.

Ted had managed to shut it, but she’d bet anything that even without the crank handle, she could open it. She set her hands against the window and tried to slide it open. It budged a tiny bit. She hissed a frustrated sigh. Maybe in several hours she could get the thing open. She didn’t think she had that amount of time, despite what Ted said. He was an impatient man, wanting, like so many people did, instant gratification . . . like quick access to mythical 1863 gold.

Now that Ted had mentioned it, she needed water. It had been a “trip day,” so she hadn’t drunk a lot. It had also been hot and she’d done minor physical labor. She was probably dehydrated.

She hadn’t eaten much either, and the way acid pitched in her stomach, she was glad of that. Soon, though, her bladder would be bothering her. She’d stopped once on the way back at a gas station to refuel the car to full and to pee, but that had been hours ago.

Enzo!
she called again, and waited futilely for an answer.

She was right; Ted returned only a few minutes later with only the gun.

“A gunshot will be noticed in this neighborhood.” The area was solidly middle class.

His pursing lips made his mouth tiny. She’d never noticed his mouth was smaller than average, though when his grin showed his teeth all the way to his incisors, his mouth looked huge.