Dead People (2 page)

“Aren’t there special cameras—”

She shook her head, the urge to hit him returning. Maybe it was time to leave before she actually did it. She was feeling odd tonight. Unsettled and unsure. Unlike herself.

“How can you film what isn’t there? How can you catch a soul?”

“A soul?” His brows raised and his nostrils flared, as if he smelled something fishy.

“Spirit. Essence. Whatever you want to call it. That isn’t what dies, only bodies die.” She stood, stretching her spine, holding her purse in hands that clenched.

She’d driven in from Ohio after a two-week session at a convent where the nuns had hidden her every time the priest stopped in. She wasn’t going to be anyone’s dirty secret again.

“Any other questions before you go?” Luke rose to his feet.

“I’d like to speak to your daughter.” That hadn’t been part of her plan, but the words flowed out. Maybe to irritate him, though the daughter might be more forthcoming and give Cassie’s unconscious something to mull over until tomorrow.

His expression turned stony, the kind that didn’t chip easily. “You remember our agreement.”

“The confidentiality agreement?” How could she forget that? She’d signed and returned it before she was officially hired. “If your daughter appears uncomfortable, I’ll stop my questions.”

“You can talk to her, but only if I sit in.”

“Fine with me.” Damn, there went her plan to use the torture devices stuffed in her bra.

He strode out the door. She hurried after him. At five foot ten or eleven, he wasn’t overly tall, but she was five foot three and he wasn’t slowing down for her shorter legs.

She made a face at his back as he crossed the hall and opened a thick mahogany door. Light pooled over him, his skin gleaming copper.

“Erin, there’s someone I want you to meet.” No answer came, but he nodded at Cassie to follow him into the room. As if she were a cocker spaniel puppy.

She trotted after him, reminding herself he was paying her a lot of money. People could say what they wanted about her—and that included her stepmother and half-brother—but they couldn’t say she came cheap.

Luke was staring at a corner of the book-lined room. Following his gaze, she saw a blonde waif curled up in a too big chair, her eyes the same bright blue as Luke’s, her long hair limp, an open book on her lap. The look in her eyes was woebegone, sadness radiating from her slight body.

Cassie forced herself to stand still, while every cell in her body screamed at her to scoop the girl up and cradle that blonde head against her breast.

Surprise bloomed inside her. Where did this reaction come from? She’d never thought of herself as a nurturer.

She hesitated a long moment. A strange energy filled the room, from her to Luke to his daughter. Ping-ponging from one to another, as if the world had stopped spinning and they were suspended in a void.

Then Cassie stepped forward, and the void dissipated, the world around them spinning madly.

Chapter Two

Luke followed the curvy ghost whisperer, hearing her sigh. Residues of energy touched his bare arms below his T-shirt sleeves. Cassie brushed her hands over her arms, and he knew she felt it too. The electric company must be sending out stray voltage surges.

Shoving his hands in his pockets, he studied Erin as she stared at Cassie, her expression unreadable. A ten-year-old’s eyes should be the windows to her pre-pubescent soul, but hers were flat, her eyes open but the shutters closed.

“Erin?” he asked.

Her face remained frozen. Something clenched inside his chest. The invisible wall around her was as thick and strong as the day the social worker dropped her off at his Carmel home.

He glanced at Cassie, prepared to hustle her out of the room if she scared his daughter. Although the ghost whisperer looked soft, her sharp gaze could stab holes in steel walls.

Until now. Cassie’s expressive brown eyes warmed, her lips parted. Her posture changed, stiffness seeping from her shoulders.

When she took a step forward, Luke remained in the background. But his legs braced for action. Before he’d let someone hurt Erin again, he’d burn down the damn house.

Cassie’s voice crooned like liquid sugar. “Hi, Erin. I’m Cassie.”

“You’re the lady who talks to ghosts?” Erin sounded more like an adult than a fifth grader.

“Yes. I enjoy it. Most ghosts are nice. Some are even funny.”

“Ours isn’t nice or funny.” Erin glanced around, her expression wary, as if checking to make sure the ghost wasn’t eavesdropping.

“What does she do?”

Erin shrugged. “She makes noises.”

“Does she scare you?”

“She’s not as scary as some movies I’ve seen, just noisier.”

“She probably wants attention. You know how some people are bad to get attention?”
 

Erin nodded, casting her gaze toward the floor. Tension knotted Luke’s shoulders. He knew Erin was thinking of her mother. Vanessa craved attention as much as she craved drugs.

“Well, ghosts were people first,” Cassie said, “so that’s how they act.”

“That’s stupid.”

“People are stupid.”

Luke stepped forward. You didn’t tell children people were stupid. Even if it were true.

Cassie glanced at him, her eyes the same shiny brown as his first guitar, a third-hand Gibson his mother had picked up at a rummage sale. As she continued to hold his gaze, her pupils shrank to bullet points.

He stopped breathing. She seemed to look into his soul and see the howl inside him, waiting to roar out.

She turned back to Erin, the action dismissing him, and he breathed again. “I take that back,” she said. “Not all people are stupid. Just some.”

Luke halted, a step away from Cassie. Close enough to pounce if necessary.

“Are you going to send the ghost away?” Erin asked.

“That’s my plan. I want to help her go to heaven. I want to help all of them go to heaven.”

Erin bit her lower lip, her worried gaze not wavering from Cassie’s face.

“How many times have you seen her?” Cassie asked.

“Seven,” Erin replied promptly. “Her hair’s the color of a pumpkin. And she’s old.”

“Am I old?”

Erin nodded.

“Is your dad old?”

Erin nodded. “But the ghost is older.”

The corners of Cassie’s mouth lifted. “Does she talk to you?”

“She tells me to go away or something bad will happen.”

Cassie’s smile wiped off, her mouth forming a straight line. “Does she say what this something bad will be?”

Erin shook her head. “I told her bad things already happened to me.”

Cassie knelt, her face level with Erin’s, her mouth parting, showing Erin her vulnerability. A curious mix of softness and hardness.

“I promise to get the ghost out of this house as soon as I can.”

For the first time, Luke saw Erin flash a smile. Like the sun coming out from behind a storm cloud.
 

For an instant he couldn’t breathe, his throat blocked by an eight-ball sized obstruction.

“I’ll start tomorrow.” Cassie’s honeyed voice flowed over him. “Is that okay with you?”

Erin nodded. “Yes.”

Cassie straightened, smiled at Erin, then brushed her gaze over him like he was dog shit. With a curt nod at him, she marched out of the room.

“I’m glad she came,” Erin said.

The obstruction in Luke’s throat cleared, and he breathed deeply. If Erin liked her, he wouldn’t kick her out on her nicely rounded ass. But he’d keep an eye on her. Two eyes.

He’d learned the hard way that it was smart to be wary. To look for the knife aiming for his back.

Betrayal was an everyday part of the life he’d chosen. When you swam with sharks, you watched out for their teeth.

But if anyone tried to attack Erin, they’d have to swim through him first.

Chapter Three

“Turn down this job,” Joe said. “I’m getting a bad feeling.”

“Since when did you admit to getting feelings?” Rain drummed against the roof of the car and Cassie set the front defogger on high. Cool air rushed up at her face as she navigated the snaking driveway. A crack of thunder made her jerk, and a flash of lightning lit up the driveway in time for her to avoid a pothole.

“Since seeing the way Luke Rivers looked at you.”

“He didn’t like me, he made that clear.” Cassie reached the end of the driveway and she felt a sense of lightness at leaving the old house, as if she’d been holding her breath and finally sucked in pure oxygen.

“Maybe he didn’t like you, but he
looked
at you.”

And I looked back, Cassie thought, steering the car onto the highway. One of the perks of being alive. Checking out good looking men and eating chocolate.
 

“So? A rat can look at a queen.”

“You’re smiling. You liked it.”

“Don’t interrogate me.” Cassie glanced at her sulking passenger.

“I’m not only a cop, I’m a man too.”

You
were
a man, she thought, facing the road again, because she didn’t want her obituary to read “Killed while driving stupidly in the rain.” Nor did she want Joe to read her expression. A bullet to his heart had stolen his life, not his ego.

Headlights sped toward them on the other side of the highway. Their car was catching up to a semi, the red rear lights flickering through the barrage of rain, the upper reflectors barely visible.

“Forget Luke Rivers,” she said. “He’s not important.”

“It’s you that’s important,” Joe said.

A glow kindled in Cassie’s chest. “In this case, it’s the dead person that’s important.”

“I wonder what Rivers will say when you tell him the reason she’s sticking around on earth.”

“He won’t believe me. He doesn’t believe I talk to dead people. I could see it in his face.”

“He doesn’t want to believe. There’s a difference.”

“He’s ready to pay on the off chance that he’s wrong. As long as his check cashes, that’s okay with me.” But despite her words, the glow inside her flickered out, leaving a hollow coldness.

The truck slowed and she eased her foot from the gas pedal to avoid a backsplash of filthy water. The car’s headlights caught a sign on the side of the road, “Welcome to Bliss.” She made a face. More like “Welcome to Misery.”

“Thata girl,” Joe said. “You’ve got pluck.”

She passed a McDonald’s and pulled into the Home Away From Home motel. Chickens had pluck, she thought. And look how they ended up.

Chicken McNuggets.

“I’ll tell him tomorrow.” Then she’d sit back and watch the feathers fly.

***

Tall bookshelves lined the walls of the library, but Luke focused his attention on the lost looking girl curled in a brown leather reading chair, pretending he was invisible. He pulled a matching chair closer to Erin. She hunched her shoulders, not peering up from her book.

Luke put his hands on his knees, leaning forward, searching his mind for something to say to her. He wondered when he’d feel comfortable with her, or she with him. She was tall for her age—she got that from her mother. But she had his blue eyes instead of Vanessa’s brown eyes. And Erin’s long, slim fingers were his too.

“I can teach you how to play guitar.”

“I want to sing like my mom,” she said, still looking down.

“Your mother has a voice like velvet.”

Erin lifted her sapphire gaze, her brows slashing down over them. “Mom used to sing with me sometimes.”

“I’ll get you singing lessons.”

“Put me back with my mom, and she’ll teach me.”

Luke’s fingers tightened on his knees. He wanted to sock someone, but had no place to go with the raw emotion burning in his gut.

“I can’t do that. The judge gave me custody because your mother wasn’t taking care of you.”

“She was too!” Erin glared at him. “Don’t talk bad about my mother.”

Luke sucked in a breath that filled his lungs. The therapist had been dead on about Erin still seeing Vanessa as her primary caregiver, even after finding Vanessa nude and comatose on the kitchen floor ten weeks ago, inches from death.

Just another sunny Southern California morning.

“How was school today?” he asked, his voice stiff. The most boring question in the world. He, who’d been the cool guy as long as he could remember, was officially a parent.

She gazed down at the book again, curling her feet under her, her posture closing him out. “Okay.”

He looked at her while the clock on the library desk ticked away a moment of his life. The ticking turned into a snatch of song.
“The happiest moments of my life were when you said you wouldn’t be my wife.”

His fingertips itched for his guitar strings, the music calling to him. He stood. It wasn’t as if Erin wanted to talk to him. She’d be happy when he left.