A Gift of Ghosts (Tassamara) (14 page)

“Why are you awake?” she muttered, finishing with
a yawn that she buried in her pillow.

“Because it’s morning?” he offered in response,
before tugging lightly on a lock of her dark hair. “Come on, come to North
Carolina with me.”

She rolled over, onto her back, and stretched,
arms above her head, back arching, and then wiggled down in the bed, a little
deeper under the light sheet that covered her. Hmm. Even half-awake, she could
see his reaction to her movement in the way his eyes darkened, the lids half
dropping. “Or you could come back to bed,” she suggested, voice husky with
sleep.

“The body is so, so willing,” he said, sliding
his hand across her stomach and leaning down to kiss her. “But the brain is
stuck with responsibility,” he added as he sat back up, mouth twisting.

“In North Carolina?” Akira asked, reluctantly
sitting up, sheet clutched high.

“Yeah, Lucas . . .” Zane shook his head,
apparently not wanting to get into details, but looking grim. “He took a job
for me.”

“A job?” Akira was surprised. Zane might play a
lot of foosball at work, but she’d gathered that he was the one who coordinated
assignments for the people whose work involved . . . quirks. Didn’t he usually
give Lucas jobs? “Isn’t that backwards?”

Zane sighed. “Yeah, but the only reason Lucas
works for me instead of the other way around is that he doesn’t do so well
staying home. He’s not an office type.”

Akira bit back her smile, but Zane obviously saw
it, because he grinned at her and trailed a finger down her cheek, before
saying, “He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

“I was just thinking that your office isn’t
very—um, formal,” she defended herself. She hadn’t been thinking about what
they’d done in his office, just that Zane didn’t seem to draw the lines between
work and play that most people did.

“Yeah, well, Lucas likes the road. But a lot of
the work we do comes from his connections. Whoever asked him to do this job
probably knew I’d say no. Someone’s calling in a favor.” Zane stood with a
sigh. He was already showered and half-dressed, Akira realized.

That sounded so dubious, she thought. Favors?
Were they the Mafia? “You don’t know who you’re working for?” she asked. She
was feeling an unwieldy mix of doubt and curiosity, a combination of
uncertainty about who Zane was and what he did and a desire to know more.

“That sounds a lot more exciting than it really
is.” Zane was looking around for his t-shirt. “It’ll be someone in the FBI.”

“The FBI?” That was better than the mob, but not
necessarily less exciting.

“Yeah.” Zane pulled on his shirt. “So, you want
to come?”

“Is anyone going to be shooting at you?” Akira
asked, not sure what she’d do if the answer was yes. Briefly, she remembered
what Grace had said the day before about today being a rough day.

“I wish,” Zane answered, almost as if to himself.
“It’d be more fun.”

Her eyebrows arched up. Had Grace been
understating? What was wrong with this job Zane was doing? What exactly was he
going to do? She didn’t say anything but he looked back at her, and must have
seen the questions as he tried to smile. “No, it’s just a straightforward job.
I’m going to fly up there in the company plane, meet Lucas at the airport, hold
someone’s hand for five minutes, tell her I can’t find what she’s looking for,
and then fly home. No big deal, really.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed again. She was
sitting, the sheet tucked around her body, one hand under her chin, and he
brushed her hair back, off her shoulder. “So, no go?”

“Are you kidding?” Akira smiled at him. She didn’t
understand what was going on. She was definitely missing something. But she
wanted to find out what it was, and there was an easy way to do so. “A chance
to spend the day above the clouds in a little tin can that bounces around like
a carnival ride?” She leaned forward and brushed a kiss across his lips. “Do I
have time to shower?”

***

The pilot was a surprise. He was the tow-truck
driver from Akira’s car accident of several weeks earlier.

“You fly planes and drive tow-trucks?” Akira
glanced at Zane uncertainly but he was busy filling out paperwork at the tiny
airport’s front desk.

Dave grinned at her. “Drive one buggy, you can
drive ‘em all,” he assured her.

That was why he’d seemed familiar before, she
realized: he was the pilot who had flown her to Tassamara on her very first
visit. He’d been wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, and she’d been so
nervous at first that she hadn’t remembered his face.

“Dave used to fly the space shuttle,” Zane
drawled from behind her. “A little plane like this is nothing to him.”

Was Zane teasing? Akira looked at Dave and he
shrugged. “Not a lot of jobs with NASA anymore.”

Akira wasn’t sure whether it was reassuring or
not to know that the pilot had flown in space, but she didn’t say a word when
he handed control over to Zane and let him bring them most of the way to North
Carolina. She could see Zane’s hands on the controls from her forward-facing
seat behind the pilot, and between the soothing sound of the engines, the lack
of sleep, and the smooth flight in clear blue skies, she spent most of the trip
in a pleasant half-daydream, half-doze, thinking about the way those hands had
touched her, and how they felt on her skin.

At the airport, however, there was no Lucas, just
a car with a driver.

“Oh, hell,” muttered Zane. “I’m going to kill
Lucas.” He strode across the tarmac toward the car as Akira and Dave followed
him out of the plane.

“So,” Dave said to Akira, voice casual, as they
watched Zane’s back receding. “Ghosts, huh?”

Akira glanced at him and frowned. It had been
weeks since their first encounter: why were ghosts still on his mind?

“You should go with him.” Dave wasn’t looking at
her and his tone was unrevealing.

“Why’s that?” Akira asked warily.

“I need to stay with the plane, and he could use
the company.”

Akira’s frown deepened. Did that have something to
do with ghosts?

The pilot looked at her and smiled, a twist of
his lips that didn’t reach his eyes. “You might be able to help him.”

“How so?” Akira asked.

“Grace let me know when she called to schedule
the flight that it was a lost kid case. If the kid was alive, Zane would know
where he is already.”

Oh, hell. Had Zane brought her here thinking she’d
talk to a ghost for him? The stab of pain was almost physical; the betrayal a
bitter taste in her mouth. And then she looked at Zane, leaning down and
talking to the driver of the car, and bit her lip.

She’d go with him. She’d see what this was. And
if he had been manipulating her—well, she’d deal with that when she was sure it
was true.

***

The drive was quiet.

Akira was silent, gazing out the window without
noticing the scenery, trying to remember every shade, every nuance, of the
conversations that had brought her here. Zane hadn’t mentioned ghosts. Or lost
children, for that matter. But he hadn’t tried to persuade her to come, either.
No promises of fun and excitement, no words that turned on the charm.

But had he lied to her? Had he known that Lucas
wouldn’t meet them? She didn’t think so, but she wasn’t sure.

She sighed.

Zane was texting, but he put his hand over hers,
where it lay in her lap, for a quick squeeze, before bringing it back to his
smart phone. “I’m sorry about this,” he said, not really turning his attention
to her. “Lucas is saying that circumstances have changed, but he’s not giving
me a lot of information. I’m still not sure what’s happened.”

Akira glanced at his phone. Surely it would be
faster for him to just call and talk to Lucas? Was he texting so that she
wouldn’t overhear what he said? She glanced at his face, his profile turned to
her, trying to reconcile her paranoid thoughts with the man she thought she’d
come to know.

She couldn’t.

She liked him, she really did, and seeing him as
a liar and a manipulator just didn’t fit. Dillon’s warnings about his uncle had
been about girlfriends, casual relationships, a lack of commitment coupled with
a playful attitude toward life, not lies. She was ready to be stood up when a
baseball game called, not to be deceived about ulterior motives. Zane just didn’t
seem like an ulterior motive kind of guy.

His phone buzzed. “Oh, hell,” he muttered as he
read his message. He glanced at her quickly, almost as if to check whether she
was reading over his shoulder, and then grimaced when he saw that she was
watching him. “You’re not going to like this.”

She raised her eyebrows in the question, but didn’t
say anything. She could feel her shoulders tensing. Was he going to ask her
about ghosts?

He looked worried, eyes tightening. “This was a
custody case: the dad took his kid and disappeared. Happens all the time, and
mostly the kids wind up home within a few days. But this dad is gone, gone. No
one’s seen him, his car, anything. He hasn’t used any of his credit cards or
taken money out of any banks. Best-case scenario would be that he spent a long
time planning this.”

“And worst-case?” Akira asked the question even
though she already knew the answer.

“That’s what the feds think it is, now.” Zane
sighed.

“You brought me to the scene of a murder-suicide?”
Akira couldn’t keep the accusation—and maybe the hurt—out of her voice. He had
to know what that meant. They hadn’t talked much about the ghosts. Oh, sure, he’d
asked her a few questions over the past several weeks, but mostly about Dillon.
He seemed to respect her wish to not talk about what she could see. But even
though Akira knew that a lot of the common stories about ghosts were wrong, Zane
had to suspect that a murder-suicide was likely to leave ghost energy behind.

Zane’s eyes widened. “No,” he protested. “Definitely
not! We’re going to the mom’s house, and there’s no way anyone died there.”

Damn. Maybe they should have had a few more
conversations about ghosts. Ghosts weren’t always tied to the place they died.
Some were, but not all of them.

“No,” Zane continued. “The problem is—the thing
is—see, what’s happened is—”

The car had slowed dramatically and Akira,
looking over Zane’s shoulder, could see the reason why. “The media found out?”
she offered Zane. “And let me guess—the kid is cute?”

Following her glance, he saw what she was looking
at. Cars. Lots of cars. And vans. The ones with satellite dishes on their
roofs. Flashing lights from police cars, people milling around, reporters
directing cameras, a crowd of neighbors, and behind it all, a driveway leading
up to a posh, Palladian suburban house with a lopsided “For Sale” sign planted
in the lush grass of the front yard.

“I’m so sorry,” Zane apologized. “If Lucas had
told me, I wouldn’t have asked you to come.”

“I’ll wait in the car,” Akira said, looking past
the crowd to the house. It was definitely haunted. She could see the shimmers
of energy, almost like a color change in the air near the door of the house. It
wasn’t just a ghost, it was a fresh ghost with a lot of power. Maybe a desperate
ghost. That made it dangerous for her.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” The driver, in the front
seat, had been listening to the conversation. “I’m only supposed to drop you
off. The other Mr. Latimer will be driving you back to the airport. I’ve got to
get back to work.”

“Can you take her back to the airport first?” Zane
interjected.

“No can-do, sorry.” The driver’s words were firm.

Zane looked at Akira. “Do you want to wait
outside? I can find Lucas, and make him arrange for another car.”

Akira looked at the crowds of newspeople, already
eagerly motioning toward their car. “Oh, that’s just a thrilling idea,” she
said bitterly.

“I’m sorry,” Zane repeated, but a little less
apologetically than he had the first time. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have
brought you. But I didn’t. This should only take a few minutes.”

A few minutes. Depending on how perceptive the
ghost was, that could be bad. But Akira looked at Zane’s face, his expression
anxious but firm, and knew that he hadn’t lied to her. He didn’t understand the
risks, but he hadn’t lied.

“I’ll come inside,” she said. They’d have a long
talk after this. She’d tell him some of what she knew about ghosts. After that,
if past experience held true, she probably wouldn’t be sleeping with him again.

Damn.

Today was turning into a day when she should have
stayed in bed.

Lucas was an older, tougher, more heavily
muscled, more serious version of Zane. They were clearly brothers, but on
Lucas, the charm held an edge of danger.

Akira managed not to glare at him, simply smiling
tightly as they were introduced. Inwardly, though, she was thinking,
Asshole
.
Damn him for putting her in this situation.