Jaxson's Song (18 page)

“
Hey,” he repeated softly, stroking one thumb across her
bottom lip, battling back the sudden urge to lean forward and touch
his mouth to her slightly parted lips. Her breath stuttered over
his calloused thumb, and the hand that he’d raised to smooth her
hair halted abruptly. Reluctantly, he backed off, forcing his hands
to the countertop beside them and willing his self-control to hold
firm. Touching her was a bad idea…for now. They had a world of shit
to deal with, and it wouldn’t wait. His mind was suddenly filled to
capacity with Klein, and sting operations, and pissed off dead
girls. He looked up, meeting Kate’s gaze. Her violet-eyed stare
reflected the grimness of their present situation.

“
Are you with me?” He watched her throat work as she
swallowed, nodded once.

“
I think so,” she said, scraping her stool back across the
floor, away from him. She stood and paced the floor in front of him
for about thirty seconds before she finally stopped and regarded
him steadily. “You’re telling me that my house is haunted. That a
ghost just did…that, to the window.”

He nodded without taking
his gaze off of her. “Yes.”

“
You can see her?”

Again, he nodded. “Can
you?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.

“
Y-yes. But…you can really,” she pressed one hand to her
midsection, “see her? For real?”

Her voice hitched up a
little at the end, sounding more like a plea—one Jaxson instantly
recognized. “You’re not crazy.”

Kate squeezed her eyes
shut. “What does she look like?” she demanded.

“
Blonde hair, a little longer than yours, and without the
darker streaks. White dress.” He shrugged. “She looks
like—”

“
Me,” Kate finished. Her eyes snapped open, and her gaze flew
to his. Grim acceptance laced her tone. “She looks like
me.”

Chapter
Seventeen

Too Far

“
S
he
does,
doesn’t she?” Kate voiced what she could plainly see in Jaxson’s
expression. His face was a mask of surprise, and pity. A dash of
apprehension tightened his features. Kate shivered in the
air-conditioned house, for the first time noticing that both she
and Jaxson wore wet clothing. Well, hers was damp, really, not wet,
not like—
fuck
. She balled her hands into fists, squeezing until her
fingernails bit into her palms. Jaxson was at her side in an
instant.

Her gaze flew to his, and
she swayed a little as slowly, carefully, he unclenched her
fingers. She thought he’d step away from her then, but he didn’t.
Instead he surprised her by slipping his palm against her own,
until their fingers were locked tightly together.

A million questions lurked
in the shadowy corners of her mind. Right now, only one mattered.
“How?” she demanded. “How can you see her?”

“
How can she be seen, you mean?”

Kate gulped. “Yes. She’s…I
thought she was,” she broke off as a wave of dizziness slammed into
her.

“
Whoa,” Jaxson murmured, catching her bare upper arm in a firm
grip and easing her back onto a stool. “Are you good?” he asked,
taking a few steps away from her, toward the fridge, but cautiously
keeping one arm extended in her direction. As if he would catch her
if she suddenly fell off the stool. As if he expected her to swoon
and take a header into the kitchen floor any second now. Did she
look that bad? A glance in the frosted glass, mirrored snowflake
picture that hung on the wall straight ahead, opposite the dining
room table, showed a pale-faced woman with wild hair and huge eyes.
She looked like a woman on the edge. Worse, she felt like
one.
Bullshit
, her inner voice gritted, cutting through the hazy layers of
shock and fear and uncertainty that threatened to rip her
apart.

“
I’m fine,” she insisted, cradling her head in her hands and
struggling to find a focal point in the middle of the
crazy-storm.

A few seconds later,
Jaxson pried one of her hands away from her head, pressed an
ice-cold can of cola at her, and instructed her to
drink.

A bath, she thought
numbly, popping the tab on the soda and raising the can to her
lips. When this was all over, she was going to take a bath. With
bubbles. And maybe a nice glass of wine—no, not wine—but definitely
a candle or two, and Chinese takeout. Her stomach rumbled, and she
was reminded that the only things she’d consumed in recent memory
were cheap wine and black coffee. Oh yeah, by the time this day was
over, she was definitely going to be sitting in a bathtub,
balancing a carton of sweet and sour chicken and a white plastic
fork. Tonight, she’d look back on this day and laugh…maybe. Kate
choked back a sob, and Jaxson shoved the can of soda at her again.
Obediently, she tipped the can to her lips and drank.

“
Drink. You’re in shock.”

“
Well, wouldn’t you be?” she shot back, then hung her head.
Snapping at Jaxson wasn’t fair, and she knew it. She caught her lip
between her teeth, then abruptly released it. She set can down on
the counter with a tinny thump, and twisted to face Jaxson. “Were
you?” she wanted to know. “The first you, you know,
saw…one?”
I can say it. It’s just a
word
. “A ghost,” she
finished.

“
Who is she, Kate?” he asked instead.

* * *

She was off the stool like
a shot, and the next thing he knew, she was pacing the width of the
dining room, back and forth. But at least she was up and moving
now. Her color was returning, too, since he’d practically forced
half a can of Coke down her throat.

Jaxson caught the faint
hint of peach as she passed within inches of him on her fifth pass
across the room. He’d pretty much already figured the dead girl had
been a relative of Kate’s, and clearly she had her own reasons for
not wanting to talk about it. Well, tough. They had bigger problems
at the moment. A glance into the kitchen behind him, at the numbers
that flashed green on the digital clock above the stove, told him
the day was moving on without them. Ten o’clock.

“
Katie, honey…”

Abruptly she halted,
mid-pace, and her startled gaze flashed to his before she blinked
and shook her head. Jaxson wasn’t prepared for what she said
next.

“
Her name was Mira Rathe. And I’m pretty sure my uncle killed
her, before he hung himself.“

“
Your uncle?” he said, picking up on one of the more subtle
details of her speech. “She wasn’t related to you,
then?”

“
No.” Kate sighed. “But it’s my fault she’s dead.” She hung
her head for a moment before raising her gaze back to his, as if
she was waiting for his reaction—or his judgment. He schooled his
face into an impassive mask, careful to give her
neither.

“
What happened?”

“
My uncle was…he was…sick. He was,” she paused, pressing her
fingers to her eyelids and taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’ve
only ever talked about this to my cousin Olivia and my best friend
Lindsey, and the times we’ve talked about it was…” She shook her
head. “It’s been years.”

Something shifted inside,
something…almost warm, at the thought of her trusting him enough to
share a piece of herself. He was a little shocked at just how badly
he wanted it, wanted her to look at him like she had a moment ago,
like she had a secret to tell, like she was scared, like he was
some sort of haven from the worst kind of storm. Fuck, he
wanted
to be. He
wanted to—

“
My uncle was obsessed with me,” she blurted. “I don’t know
when it started. I mean, I wasn’t even aware of it at the time. But
my sister and I would visit, and,” Her speech was halting. “he
always wanted to spend
quality
time
with me. I was older—the oldest—I
was his princess,” she said sarcastically.

Jaxson ground his teeth
together, but his voice was steady when he asked, “Did he touch
you?”

“
No. Not the way you mean, anyway. But I think he would have,
given enough time. He used to ask me to sit on his lap all the
time, and he would play with my hair, and the way he would look at
me…” she trailed off, visibly shuddering. “God, he creeped me the
hell out. I was eight years old, for God’s sake—”

“
Son of a bitch,” Jaxson swore.

“
He touched Olivia,” she blurted. “Before he started paying
attention to me, he hurt my cousin Olivia. I guess she refused to
come back to Florida after that, but it was years until she told
me, or anyone, what he’d done to her, before we talked about, well,
everything.”

“
Does she look like you?” Jaxson asked, feeling a sick
numbness in the pit of his stomach as he waited for her
answer.

Kate nodded. “She’s
blonde. Her eyes are brown, though. And she’s taller, and has
freckles. They’re lighter now that’s older, but…sorry, I guess that
doesn’t matter. My head is so messed up right now.”

“
Yeah, I get that, babe.”

“
Livi and I don’t look line twins, but a casual onlooker would
probably be able to guess that we’re related.”

He nodded, his heart
pounding hard now. “Kate, what happened to Mira? Why do you think
it was your fault?”

She huffed out a breath
and wandered over to the dining room window, putting her back to
him. “Because he went after her because of me,” she finally said.
“He targeted that woman because of me—because she looked like me.
She was seventeen. A senior at Crystal Cove high school when she
died. When he killed her. The police and the media, they were never
able to prove that he did it. But they would have, I think, given
enough time. That’s why he killed himself,” she said. “Because he
didn’t want to go to jail. Deep down, he was a coward.”

“
What if he didn’t kill her?” Jaxson suggested, wiping a hand
across the back of his neck. “What if—”

“
What?” Kate glanced at him over her shoulder.

“
Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”

“
He killed her,” she said, shoulders hunching up close to her
neck. “I was there. Besides my uncle, I was the last person to see
Mira Rathe alive. And as if it wasn’t bad enough that he went after
that girl because she was a dead ringer for me, I could have saved
her, and I didn’t.”

“
Kate…”

“
It’s true.” She spun away from the window and took a few
hesitant steps toward him. “The last summer I ever spent at my
aunt’s house was when I was eight years old. The same year that
Mira went missing. My aunt had left to spend a few days with some
relative in Tallahassee. I don’t even remember who she went to see,
or why, but I remember my uncle graciously offering to watch me.”
She snorted. “Early one morning, a day or two after my aunt had
left, I heard noises coming from the basement. I heard
her—Mira—crying.”

“
Hell.”

“
I didn’t know she wasn’t alone. It never occurred to me that
my uncle…” She shook her head and wrapped her arms around her
midsection. “She was tied up, a-and bleeding. I can still see the
blood all over what was left of her shirt. And her face, he’d hit
her. She was partially submerged in an old tub. I…I’m pretty sure
that’s how he killed her, by drowning her in that old tub. He was
standing next to her, and his hand was on her shoulder.”

“
Did they see you?”

Kate nodded. “He told me
to go upstairs. And I did. I went upstairs and hid in my bedroom
closet for hours, hugging an absurdly large stuffed dog that my
aunt had bought me one year for Valentine’s Day. And I didn’t say a
word. Not when he told me, later that night, that bad girls ended
up in his special room downstairs. Not when the police started
coming around, and not when my uncle did the world a big damn favor
and hung himself in the front parlor at the end of the summer. I
just…I couldn’t speak. It was like my voice was this well that had
dried up, and there was just nothing left for months and
months.”

“
Shhh,” he soothed, closing the remaining foot or so of
distance between them and tucking her close to him. He stroked a
hand over her hair and palmed the back of her head, pressing her
even closer as he murmured into her hair. “You don’t have to say
any more. It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re okay…” Whispering over and
over again, leaning down until his lips brushed her ear every time
he spoke. He felt the shiver that ran through her body and into
his, rocked gently back and forth with her, and, after several long
moments, felt some of the tension in her finally begin to
ease.

She pulled away far enough
to look up into his face, and the sadness in her eyes twisted his
gut.