The Lost: Book Two, The Eddie McCloskey Series (The Unearthed 2) (27 page)

“Now grunt one time so I know you understand.”

“Ugh.”

She couldn’t see his face that well, but she knew he was smiling. He put his knife away and then left, moving quickly through the forest.

She watched his back, afraid to take her eyes off him, afraid he’d change his mind and come back.

But he didn’t. Just before he slipped out of view, he started limping again.

She waited a few minutes till she was sure he was gone, then she started wriggling, trying to get out of her bonds.

She didn’t get anywhere. Mitchell Hollis was an expert with a rope.

With nothing to lose, she screamed for help through the duct tape.  Maybe someone would hear her. With each yell, she got braver and louder. There were a lot of people around. Someone had to hear her.

Then she heard music in the distance. The scratch of an electric guitar and the thunder of a drum set. The thudding of a bass. A rock singer wailing.

There was a band playing at the lake.

Nobody was going to hear her.

Eddi
e
didn’t know where the lake was, but that didn’t matter.

He just had to follow the traffic.

The small country roads couldn’t accommodate the mass of people who’d flocked to town. Eddie followed the slow, steady crawl of traffic to what he hoped was the lake. Eventually, some impatient motorists turned the street into a one-way lane.

Sean had been quiet for a few minutes. Eddie watched the rearview as he slowed down, expecting Sean to use the emergency release to get out of the trunk.

He couldn’t believe how many people there were.

His shoulder throbbed.

“Shut up. Not now,” he said.

His clavicle said,
Fuck you
.

Eventually traffic came to a standstill.

Eddie hit the brakes hard and jumped out of the driver’s seat. Gridlocked drivers watched him curiously.

The trunk stayed closed. Eddie wondered if Sean had passed out, or worse.

Or if this was a trap.

He backed up a few feet and popped the trunk with the key fob. It only opened a few inches. He kicked it open the whole way and scurried back.

Sean’s skin was pale and he was shivering. Either he was a great actor or he was in shock. There was a lot of blood in the trunk.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Some guy with a walrus mustache got out of his car.

“Call nine-one-one,” Eddie said. “I’ve gotta find Lieutenant Whitmore right now.”

There was nothing to do but leave Sean there. Ana was much more important to him. Eddie turned back to Sean.

“Remember this, McKenna. Fucking remember this.”

Mustache was about to challenge Eddie, but the guy’s face brightened when he took Eddie in.

“Are you the guy? That ghost catcher?”

Eddie pushed past him. “Call nine-one-one. This man is hurt and needs medical attention.”

He hated leaving Sean like that. But he’d catch up to him later in the hospital.

Mustache ignored what he was saying and pointed at him. “Hey! It’s the ghost chaser! Look!”

Eddie hurried.

“Is it real? Is it all happening?”

More people were getting out of their cars and waving and pawing at him as Eddie hurried. He felt like a celebrity and he hated it.

He ran past a few news vans and veered off the road toward the woods. He found some kind of path that had been cleared of snow. He followed its bend through the trees and heard the band playing and smelled the pot.

Felt the energy all around him.

Yes, that was what this was all about. This was Kindler’s plan all along.

To get people here, into town, and specifically here. He just had to find Lieutenant Whitmore and rap it down to the cop. There were no hauntings. They’d been fabricated. This was no longer a paranormal investigation. Which meant the police could take over from here.

Eddie slogged through the trampled snow into the woods. He was close now. The music was loud, the crowd thick. Everybody feeling good. Drunk, high, some both. A lot of kids running around too.

His shoulder was a little better as the adrenaline started pumping again.

The lake was just ahead. He’d find Whitmore first then look for Ana. He’d have to break the news to her gently. All this time, she’d been hoping it was Tessa haunting the town. It had been her chance to connect with a sister she’d never really known, a welcome peace to her fractured family.

The thought of seeing the hurt in her eyes made him pissed at Kindler. The pair of them were going to have some words and maybe more, away from the prying eyes of the law.

“Yo, dude!”

Somebody slapped his back. It was too hard for it to be a friendly gesture. It sent a shock wave into his broken clavicle. His nerves fired. The pain made him gasp.

Eddie whirled, balled the fist of his good arm.

It was Tony. Two guys Eddie didn’t know stood behind him, while Jimbo and Liam fanned out and flanked Eddie. For once, with everybody else plastered or ripped, Liam seemed relatively sober.

Jimbo clamped a hand on Eddie’s bad shoulder. The pain buckled his knees, and Jimbo and Tony, surprised by the discovery of this useful injury, both laughed while the other three closed around him.

“Got a little boo-boo there, you old fuck?” Tony said.

Eddie shrugged out of Jim’s grip. “Where’s Ana?”

“Bitch is around somewhere.”

“She might be in danger.”

“What do you care? You wanna hook up with my girl behind my back again?” Jim said.

Uh-oh
. “Jim, I need to see Whitmore right now. This is bigger than what we’ve got going on between us.”

Tony stepped up. “Awww, big man himself has gotta run to the po-po.”

Tony shoved Eddie. The jarring motion sent an ice pick of pain through his shoulder.

Eddie stayed on his feet, but it was all he could do. “Listen you dumb fucks, you keep this up and you’ll be charged with obstruction of justice. I’ve got information—”

Tony shoved Eddie hard into Jimbo, who pushed him back into Liam. Eddie felt like a pinball. Liam grabbed Eddie’s bad shoulder, and this time Eddie howled in agony.

He looked around for help. A couple of teens had stopped to watch what was going on, but Tony scared them away.

Liam shoved Eddie from behind. A tree root tripped him. He splayed in the snow, then a knee dug into his back. It was hard to breathe. His shoulder was on fire.

Tony’s liquored-up breath blowing in his face. “The fuck do you think you are, asshole? Coming here, moving on my boy’s girl, acting like you’re God’s gift.”

Eddie took as deep a breath as he could. “Fuck you.”

Tony increased the pressure of his knee on Eddie’s back, while the other goons laughed. He was going to black out. Too hard to breathe. Too much pain. Nobody coming to help.

Tony said, “Didn’t Ana warn you about me?”

Eddie wanted to spit something back at the punk, but he needed all his air.

“Probably told you I was violent. Well I am. Been in a lot of fights. Won most of them, too. But you know, fighting other guys from town, you can only go so far. There’s a line.”

Eddie squirmed while the other guys laughed. At least his right arm was free.

“Somebody from around here, I can beat his ass, and it’s alright. Just a little spat among neighbors. No big.”

The black curtains were closing. He couldn’t pass out again. These guys would have free rein with him. They could throw him in the trunk of their car, strip him, leave him somewhere to freeze.

Tony said, “But with you, some fucking drifter that nobody’s going to miss, I could do a lot more.”

Tony was just a little too far away, and Eddie was at an awkward angle to do anything. He needed the guy closer.

“We should take you out in the woods, string you up and beat your ass. We’d get away with it.”

String him up? The phrase triggered an image of Colin being tied up. Not in a sexual way, but as if he’d tripped some man-made trap and had been hauled off the ground, a rope tied around one ankle.

Tie me up. Moira had said that in his dream. He’d taken her offer as a sexual advance, but nothing about her in the dream had been sexual. His subconscious had been trying to tell him something, through the woman he’d loved.

Rope
.

He’d seen how adept Hollis was with rope, that deer hanging in the tree.

Yes. His rational brain was catching up to his intuition now.

Shame it was too late.

Tony and his friends were in stitches now. Tony’s knee dug a little deeper. Eddie’s back gave more than he thought it capable. He couldn’t breathe.

Hollis was a hunter. He knew how to lay traps. He’d lived in the woods all his life, probably.

He knew how to use a rope. How to string somebody up.

He was the only one with a motive to kill Colin, Bernard, and Kindler. Bernard wasn’t dead, and Eddie didn’t know how Hollis had coaxed the guy out of the house, but he could figure that out later.

Better yet, Whitmore could figure that out later.

And he could also figure out how Hollis, who could barely walk without a limp, was capable of killing men. For now, Eddie was more worried about the guys who were going to beat the shit out of him, or worse.

Tony leaned his elbow against the back of Eddie’s neck, forced his head into the ground and his face deeper into the icy sting of the snow.

“I’m gonna take care of you, asshole,” Tony said.

He was closer, but still just a little too far away. Eddie pretended like he couldn’t hear, mouthed the word,
What
?

“You having trouble hearing me?” Tony smirked and leaned in closer. Within range now. “I was saying—”

Eddie thumbed him in the eyeball.

Eddi
e
felt Tony’s eye give like a bubble about to pop. Tony shrieked and snapped his head back.

Without aiming, Eddie kicked and swung his leg around till his heel connected with something that felt like a shin.

Meanwhile, Tony flopped to the ground, and Eddie rolled toward Liam, figuring the stoner would be the least dangerous. He wrapped Liam’s knees in a hug and twisted till the short man went down.

Eddie just needed to get to his feet. On the ground, he was in trouble.

Somebody pummeled his back. He log-rolled, hoping his body would trip someone.

It worked.

Another body landed in a heap next to him. Eddie put one foot on the ground and was about to get up, but Jim slammed into him and he went down.

Jim was on top of him and swung wildly. Eddie covered up and twisted his hips to throw Jim, but Jim stayed on top of him and kept hammering him.

Eddie felt a foot in his ribs. He was done.  These guys would take him out of the game and the murderer would get a chance to kill the last man at the lake that day, Marty Kindler.

“Fucking kill you!” Jim screamed as he rained blows down on Eddie.

Something swooshed through the air and cracked against the side of Jim’s head. Eddie felt a shower of wood splinters as Jim slumped off him and landed unconscious next to him.

“Back off!”

Eddie’s vision came into focus and he saw a man standing between him and Tony’s crew. The man’s back was to him but he held out a long branch of wood that looked like a shillelagh.

“Get up, Eddie,” the man said.

Eddie did and moved back. The man kept his stick out and backed away from the group.

Lenny the Drunk said, “Any of you bastards want to try anything, you’ll have to go through me.”

Tony’s crew went to work on Jim, trying to get him to wake up. Eddie and Lenny put some distance between them and the group.

Lenny smiled at him. “I told you I’d pay you back.”

“Lenny, I could kiss you right now.”

Lenny winked at him. “Listen old man, I like you a good deal but not that way.”

Eddie slapped the guy’s shoulder. “I’ve gotta find Whitmore, pal. If you see him, tell him Eddie said it’s all bullshit and there’s a real killer out here. He’ll know what I mean. And I’m buying you a drink tomorrow.”

“I appreciate that, but tomorrow I’m giving up the sauce.”

Eddie thanked Lenny the Drunk one more time and hustled away. Finding Whitmore out here would be difficult, as there were probably a thousand people around the lake.

His entire body hurt, his clavicle the worst. Each heartbeat sent a fresh shiver of pain through his body.

A rock band blasted music. The snow underfoot had been churned by all the traffic, and he pushed his way through the drunken crowds till the trees thinned and he was standing on the lake shore.

Some kids had decided to be stupid and were running across the ice of the very same lake in which Tessa had drowned. Another group of teens squared off in a tug-of-war spanning the lake, one team trying to pull the other onto the ice.

Eddie searched the madding crowd for Whitmore or his cops. He spotted a patrolman on the other side of the lake, trying to get some women to put their shirts and jackets back on, like that was the most important thing right now with everybody acting up near the ice, drunk, high, or both, and while dumb-ass townie thugs tried to kick the shit out of drifters.

The band was on the south end of the lake on a hastily erected stage crowded by their fuzz boxes. Eddie’s eyes circled the lake like radar. He did a three-sixty, trying to spot someone of authority.

And when he stopped turning, he came face-to-face with Mitchell Hollis.

The two men stared at each other for a moment. Eddie weighed his options. He could play dumb and hope to find Ana and Kindler in time, or he could challenge Hollis and see what happened.

“Murderer,” Eddie said.

He wasn’t sure but he watched Hollis’s reaction.

Surprise flashed in Hollis’s eyes. Eddie was right. He balled his one good fist to throw a punch, but Hollis moved fast and without a limp. The old man closed the distance between them and pressed something sharp against Eddie’s stomach.

Eddie looked down and saw the glint of a knife. He hated knives. His brother had died by a blade and he almost had too. He got weak at the knees thinking about the knife pointed at his stomach. The old scar, from where he’d been stabbed, was suddenly itchy.

The old man smiled wickedly. “How’d you know, Mister Eddie?”

“I didn’t. You just told me.”