Keeper of the Peace (Graveyard Guardians #2) (6 page)

“What?” She stammered, “wh … why?”

He turned his head and gazed back out over
the water. “I got accepted into the Police Academy for the
LAPD.”

She let go of his hand and held back the
tears, unwilling to let them loose before she fully understood.
“You’re going to leave, just like that?”

He raked his fingers through his sandy blond
hair. “You could come with me. We will go to L.A. together. It will
be an adventure, the start of our new life.”

Yeah, those damn tears weren’t going to stay
put. They spilled over from the corners of her eyes and trailed
down her cheeks. “I … I can’t leave. I have school coming up.”

She told him it was school and that was an
honest reason, but she also couldn’t leave her family. Her dad
needed help taking care of the kids and the graveyard. If she left,
that put more patrols on her dad, Greg and Dan. She needed to be
there.

“Hannah, there are schools in there, bigger
and better schools too. You’re so smart, you would get into one of
them no problem.”

She tried to ignore the excitement in his
voice and brushed away some of the wetness on her cheek. “It
doesn’t work like that, David.”

For a moment there was silence and his
excitement seemed to dissipate as he realized that Hannah truly
wouldn’t leave Summer Hollow. “You really don’t want to come with
me?” he asked her softly.

She choked back the lump in her throat and
spoke slowly, afraid that she may end up sobbing uncontrollably if
she wasn’t careful. “It isn’t that I don’t want to David, I just
can’t.”

He nodded. “I guess I understand that. I
shouldn’t expect you to just up and leave your life for me.”

“Well, I can’t expect you to stay here and
not go after what you want because of me. I don’t want to be what
holds you back in life.” Her voice had grown thick with
sarcasm.

“You are what I want in life, Hannah. But, I
want more than SHPD.”

“We had plans. How can you just leave?” She
scooted back and stood up. “There isn’t anything wrong with being a
small-town cop, look what Sheriff Davis did for you! You can help
people right here.”

He also stood, catching her hand as she
tried to turn away from him. “Hannah …”

She let loose a sob and then sniffed back
some of the tears. “Don’t!”

“I have to live my life and make something
of myself.”

She shook her head, trying to wake up from
this nightmare. “So, Summer Hollow, me, everything here, isn’t
enough for you?”

He didn’t say anything and when her brown
eyes met his blue ones, her lips formed a thin line and she pulled
her hands from his. “Seriously?”

“I love you, Hannah.”

“If you loved me you wouldn’t leave.”

He wandered over to the edge of the bridge
and stood with his toes over the edge. “I have to go. I want you to
understand.”

“Oh, I understand.” Leaving her shoes, she
marched over the wooden planks of the bridge, intending to get to
her car and get out of there as fast as possible. But, David was
right behind her, he grabbed her arm, trying to spin her around so
he could talk to her.

Without really knowing what came over her,
she turned and slapped him. “Don’t touch me!” Her breathing was
labored and the lump in her throat was so big that she felt like
someone had shoved a hose down there.

He stepped back and touched his cheek where
she had hit him. “Hannah, please …”

She faced him one final time. “Look, I get
why you want to leave. Don’t for one moment think that I don’t
understand that. But, don’t think that I can just up and leave my
life either. I love you, dammit! I fucking love you and you can
have a life here in Summer Hollow … with me.”

“Han—“

“No! You just don’t want to try!” With those
last words she spun around and bolted for her car, leaving David to
walk back to his house in the dark.

Coming back to the present, she shook off
the memories and realized that she had finished her work on the
body while lost in thought about that last night with David. They
were just kids really and she had been in love. Now that she was an
adult with real life under her belt, she realized that David had to
live for himself, no one else, and that included her.

She understood this wasn’t some romance
novel where one of them sacrifices everything for the other. It was
real life and David had a shitty childhood. She really was the only
thing that had been keeping him in Summer Hollow. Well, probably
the sheriff and his wife too, they were the only real parental
figures he had.

None of this took away the pain though. It
was one thing to forgive someone when they aren’t around, but
coming face to face with them again after so long brought back all
the memories as if they were happening all over again.

Getting her head back in the game, she
checked over the file one more time to make sure that she had
filled everything out the way it was supposed to be. God, she could
be fired for lying about everything on that report, but if she told
the truth they would find her and take her to jail.

She was probably going to end up in jail
anyway. There was no way they wouldn’t be able to find out it was
her, not in this day and age. The real kicker was that David was
the detective on the case. This had to be the worst day of her
entire life.

Hannah closed her eyes as she thought about
this last bit. It was one reason why it probably would have never
worked between them anyway. Keepers usually only married other
Keepers because their lifestyle was a secret, it was a commitment
and it wasn’t something you could just ignore.

If she and David had stayed together, she
would have eventually had to tell him about the Keepers and the
Reapers, and then he most likely would have had her put into an
institution. She would have never been able to prove it to him
either. How did you tell your one true love that you were a Keeper
of souls, that you guarded those souls from the Reapers until they
crossed over to wherever they go afterward.

Yeah, basically, you were telling him that
you saw ghosts and you felt the need to protect them from monsters.
There was absolutely no way that was going to go over well.

These were exactly the reasons she had told
herself long ago that it was probably for the best that they
separated. Yet, once again, that didn’t take away the heartache and
pain from the loss.

One of the souls approached her, shimmering
underneath the fluorescent lights. The misty blue shimmers swirled
around her arm, winding upward until the mist lightly caressed her
cheek.

She felt her lips turn up into a wistful
smile and another tear escaped from the corner of her eye. “I’m all
right … thank you,” she whispered to the soul.

The soul seemed to shimmer a bit brighter
and its molecules broke away from each other in a spray of
beautiful, blue mist, floating away from Hannah and regrouping over
by the vaults.

“Thank you,” she whispered again.

Closing the folder, she took a deep breath
and exhaled slowly, mentally preparing to go out into the hallway
and deliver it to David.

CHAPTER

6

DAVID

An hour later, David slowed for the reduced
speed limit sign and entered the city limits of Summer Hollow. He
passed the deli and the shitty motel, and the old firehouse that
was now a tire shop. The liquor store caught his eye and he
realized he wanted to drink … he wanted to drink a lot.

But, he had shit to do before he could do
that. A lot of good he would be getting sloshed while he was
investigating a murder case. So, instead of stopping and picking up
a bottle of Patron, he turned left and took the back streets to the
rodeo grounds.

He parked in the same place he had parked
earlier in the day and opened the folder for the report. Any other
day he would have opened that folder the second he got his hands on
it. The longer they waited, the farther away the killer could get.
But, now he had other things on his mind. Hannah was probably the
only thing that could have made his mind stray from the job.

His eyes scanned the file for the
information he was looking for.

There was nothing.

Not one fucking thing to go on. No skin
under the nails, no hair, no residue … fucking nothing. This never
happened, there was always some kind of evidence left on the body
when someone was murdered, but this guy had zero.

He shut the folder and stared at the wooden
corrals in the distance. It was possible that the killer knew what
he, or she, was doing and managed to clean the guy up before they
ran off, but that would rule out his theory of self-defense.

“Son of a bitch,” he mumbled, tossing the
folder into passenger seat and shoving the driver door open. He
took his time wandering over to the crime scene. All being in this
place did was remind him of the last Summer Hollow rodeo that he
had been at.

Rodeo time was always one of the best days
of the summer. Nothing was better than eating BBQ while watching
the barrel racing and the bronc riders. One of his personal
favorites was the little kids’ sheep roping, since he had been a
participant in that when he was in elementary school.

Hannah had been with him that last rodeo.
They had walked the grounds together and stayed there all day,
checking out the vendor booths, eating and laughing with their
friends.

The dance started in the evening and ended
around midnight. People drank keg beer and two-stepped all night
long to the local bands while their children ran wild in the
surrounding woods. He and Hannah were only twenty at the time, but
they were no exception to the drinking and dancing.

Before he drove her home that night, they
went to their spot at The Springs and that was when he told her he
was leaving Summer Hollow.

Perfect. Fucking. Timing.

Obviously Hannah hadn’t taken it very well.
He hadn’t been dumb enough to think that she was going to be
totally on board so when that Estmond anger flashed, he took it
full force. As if that weren’t enough, he let her brother Dan kick
his ass the next day. The rumors were true, when you messed with
one of the Estmond kids, you messed with all of them.

That was the second to last time he had
spoken to her before his return to town.

He reached the yellow police tape and
circled the area where the body had been found. The man had a fake
ID and his prints didn’t match anything in the system, which meant
he couldn’t question any friends or family. Without any evidence
from the body, the best he could do at the moment was check around
town and see if the victim had mentioned anything to anyone.

The mud had dried considerably since he had
been there earlier, so he walked around, looking for anything else
that might give him an idea about who either of them were. They did
have the tread prints from the killer’s shoes, which was something.
He had just hoped for something more. What he really wanted was for
this to be an open and shut case so that he could get the hell out
of Summer Hollow.

He pulled his cell out and checked the time.
It was almost five, he could probably hit up a few of the
businesses in town before heading back home for the night.

With a blown up version of the victim’s
photo from his fake ID in hand, he strolled into the small grocery
store. Flashbacks of the past swarmed over him immediately. It may
have just been a little market to everyone else, but for him, it
was the place that changed his life.

He had been thirteen years old when the SPD
picked him up for shoplifting. After making a big show of putting
him into the cruiser, the officer dumped him off at the station
with Sheriff Davis.

“Son,” Sheriff Davis sat across the desk
with a folder sitting in front of him. “Did you honestly think you
weren’t going to get caught in there?”

David had glared back at him with the best
defiant expression he could muster. “Doesn’t matter. I had to
try.”

The sheriff leaned back in his chair, giving
David the once over. “Says here you were trying to take a pound of
hamburger, a bag of rice and a Snickers bar.” He glanced up from
the papers on his desk to see if that got any reaction from
David.

“Yeah, so?”

“So, you weren’t stealing simply to steal.
Those are the things people take when they are hungry.”

David finally turned his head away and
mumbled. “So am I arrested? Can I go now?”

“No, you can’t go. David, you committed a
crime and there are prices to pay when you do that.”

“So send me to juvie, I don’t care.”

The sheriff nodded his head in
understanding. “So was that your plan, to get caught? At least they
eat three meals a day in juvie, huh?”

David hadn’t been able to say anything,
because that was pretty much exactly what he had figured. If he had
gotten away with it, he would have a food for the next couple of
days and if he didn’t then he would go to juvenile hall.

“Look, Son, I’m not going to arrest you, but
I’m going to make another deal with you if you are interested.”

“What kind of deal?”

“I need some work done around here and out
at my house. I got a shit ton of yard work that the missus and I
don’t have time to do. I will pay you a decent wage, if you’re not
opposed to working.”

That statement was so far from what David
had expected that he had only sat there with his mouth hanging
open. The sheriff continued, “It’s summer and you have lots of free
time. If it works out, then you can work after school when the
school year comes round.”

David still could not use his words.

“Well?” The sheriff spread his hands wide,
waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know if my parents will let me.
They don’t like cops.”