Deadly Night (26 page)

“Odd, huh?” Robert said.

“What’s that?”

“Two thighbones—two dead women—and they appear on the same day. Almost as if someone wanted you in on it, huh?”

“Don’t put too much stock in that, since it looks like the bones are gone.”

“That’s odd, too, don’t you think? Who breaks into a morgue?” Robert asked him.

“At least the police are finally paying attention,” Aidan told him. “So, did you get my package? I don’t suppose you have anything for me?”

“I do.”

“You’re kidding. Hell, I thought I’d have to wait.”

“I’m not kidding. You asked, I served. The boss still mourns the fact that you left the Bureau. He told me to give you priority.”

“So what did you get?”

“I wasn’t able to get anything viable from the dress, but I got DNA off the brush, and I was able to do something with your blood.”

“And?”

“Not the same person. In fact, not a person at all.”

“What is it, then?”

“Blood from a rodent. A rat, to be precise.”

A
rat? He had discovered rat blood?

“If you find me anything else, I’ll be happy to get right on it,” Robert offered.

“Thanks.” Aidan couldn’t help being disappointed, though he was glad that he’d held back the brush he had discovered in Jenny Trent’s backpack until he was able to send it up to Quantico. At least it hadn’t been at the morgue, waiting to be stolen.

He heard a car in the driveway—Kendall—and, the phone still held to his ear, walked out to the porch and waved to her. She gestured, and he saw that she had a number of large boxes in the car.

“Robert, thanks, and just so you know, you may be hearing from me, because I’m not turning over anything to the locals anymore.”

“No?”

“Just to be on the safe side,” Aidan said. “Thanks, I’ll talk to you soon.”

He hung up and headed out to the car.

“I packed up some of my favorite pieces,” she said, after giving him a quick hug. “I want them here for the benefit.”

“Great. Can’t wait to see what you’ve brought.”

As he stood there with her, Jimmy came around the side of the house. “Sorry,” he said to Aidan. “You said to listen for cars. I was just doing that.”

“Thanks, Jimmy.”

“Evening, miss,” he said to Kendall. He looked back at Aidan hesitantly. “Want some help with the boxes? I’m stronger than I look.”

“Be my guest,” Kendall said.

“Where do you want them?” Jimmy asked.

“Let’s take them back to the kitchen,” Kendall said, then glanced from Aidan to Jimmy. “We’re going to cook some dinner. Would you like to join us?”

“Oh, I don’t want to intrude, miss.”

“You won’t be intruding. I’m asking you.”

Jimmy looked at Aidan for approval, and smiled broadly when Aidan nodded.

As they started carrying things—including several bags of groceries—into the house, Aidan thought that, even though Kendall was acting as if she were all right, he didn’t think she was. They hadn’t found the body, but she was sure one of her friends had been killed, and that wasn’t the kind of thing you got over in a night.

As Jimmy and Aidan kept bringing in boxes, Kendall started dinner, something she called quickie jambalaya.

At one point Aidan paused by the stove, worried. “You left the shop and went to the grocery store alone? Was that wise?”

She shook her head. “Actually, there’s a grocery store right down the street from the shop, and I didn’t go alone. Mason and Vinnie were with me. I promise you, I’m not taking any chances.”

Once the rest of the groceries were brought in, she started making a salad, and let Jimmy and Aidan open the boxes and check out the decorations.

The skinny ex-con was like a little kid. He pulled out the dancing skeletons, screeching black cats and singing skulls with great delight.

“Very interesting. Maybe we should just keep them up all year,” Aidan said.

When dinner was ready, Kendall served it at the kitchen table. Afterwards, Jimmy insisted on helping her with the dishes, and then, just as firmly, told them that he was going back to his little outbuilding. “I want to get in before the ghosts come out,” he said.

Aidan wondered how Kendall would react to that. She just smiled. “Jimmy, if we’ve got ghosts, they’re good ghosts.”

“If you say so, Miss Montgomery.” He shook his head. “You two stay safe in here, too. Just keep everything closed up and pretend like there’s nothing going on, and you’ll be okay.”

Aidan didn’t argue with Jimmy; in fact, he locked the back door as soon as the other man had gone. When he got back to the kitchen, Kendall was wiping down the counter. He went over and swept her into his arms.

She looked up at him. “It’s really nice, what you’re doing for Jimmy.”

He shrugged. “It’s a big place, and he’s not doing anyone any harm.”

“Well, I still think it’s really nice. Ready to head upstairs?”

He had thought that she was still fragile and was prepared to treat her that way. When they got into bed, she turned to him. He thought she wanted to be held, but she wanted more. She was aggressive; she was passionate. He matched her urgency with his own, and wondered if they weren’t both as fevered as they were because the act of intimacy between a man and a woman was such a strong assertion of life. They clung to each other, drowsed, made love again.

And slept at last.

Kendall was dreaming, and once again she knew it.

But this time she entered into the dream with determination. She intended to see this through.

At first all she saw was the mist. Then she heard shouting, and as the mist began to dissipate, she saw fields that were torn and trampled, and soldiers everywhere. Horses screamed as they died in the pursuit of war, just like their masters. One man kept reappearing, a rider who looked so much like Aidan and yet was clearly someone else, someone she had never met.

She saw the house.

Saw the woman.

And she saw the man who did not deserve to wear the uniform of any army. The man who used his uniform as a free pass to play out his fantasies of sickness and cruelty.

“If you touch me, they’ll all know,” the woman warned him. “Your friend…will see, and he’ll tell.”

The man laughed. “When I attack you, my friend will join in,” he promised. His eyes narrowed. “When I kill you,” he said softly, “he’ll just walk away.”

In her dream, Kendall felt Fiona’s terrible fear for the baby, the son who was her life.

And then she ran, knowing he would follow.

The dream shifted, as if it were a movie, and Kendall saw Sloan Flynn.

She saw him riding toward the house, then walking through the mist to the front steps, where he stood, smiling, his arms open in welcome.

Then the woman was there, in a gorgeous white gown with tiny roses on it. She ran to him and was enveloped in his arms. A second man appeared, his uniform the deep blue of the Union army. Brendan Flynn. He walked over to the couple and was welcomed into the circle of their embrace.

She heard a baby crying, and the mist darkened and swirled, then lightened as the scene changed again to reveal Henry, holding the baby. He was looking at Kendall as if he knew that she could see him.

She called out softly to him,
Help me.

Strangely, she could have sworn that she heard Amelia answer.
They’re trying to, dear. Listen. You must listen.

Then the fog darkened again, and this time she was running through it, no longer only Kendall but also Sheila, and she realized the ghosts were trying to show her what had happened to Sheila.

There were graves all around her. She tried to wend her way between them, one step ahead of the evil darkness coming up behind her. And then she left the graves behind and reached the water, but it was clogged with bones and limbs and skulls staring at her from their sightless, empty eye pits, and somehow she knew that one of them was the woman she had met in her shop. Jenny Trent.

Too much. It was too much.

Henry was ahead of her, telling her to keep running. He was reaching out for her. She touched his fingers…

And woke with a start.

Aidan was at her side, holding her hand.

“Another nightmare?” he asked, frowning. “I can’t keep bringing you out here. It’s making everything worse for you.”

She stared back at him and shook her head, realizing suddenly that she was drenched with sweat. “I’m not leaving.”

“I can throw you out, you know.”

“But you won’t. Because I’ll just come back.”

He pulled her close to him and kissed the top of her head. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

“Aidan,” she said, “there’s something in the cemetery. I…know it. The…the ghosts are telling me so.”

She was certain he was going to mock her, but he didn’t. Instead, he pulled her to him and said, “We’ll figure it out, and we’ll make it stop. I promise.”

They fell asleep in each other’s arms, and this time it was Aidan’s turn to dream, but his was oddly comforting.

He’d seen the woman in the white gown again. It was as if he’d simply opened his eyes to find her there. She’d touched his cheek, and though she was beautiful and young, there had been nothing sexual in her touch, only tenderness. And then she’d whispered,
You have to help. It’s happening again. He’s like the one who came before.

Who is he?

A killer. A man of pure evil. You have to stop him.

I’m trying. But how? And what does he have to do with the plantation?

History repeats itself. Amelia saw the lights.

Then he had roused, the dream still clear in his mind. It was just his subconscious trying to help him sort out what was bothering him, he told himself.

Amelia saw the lights.

Was his subconscious trying to tell him that Amelia’s lights had been more than just Jimmy’s flashlight?

He followed her into town. He even parked and walked her into the shop, then stayed to have coffee with Mason and Vinnie, who had opened for her.

“Anything on Sheila?” Mason asked him anxiously.

Aidan hesitated before answering. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

When Aidan left, he gave Kendall a kiss on the cheek and assured her that he would see her later. As he walked to his car, he was surprised to hear someone call his name.

It was Rebecca. She was wearing a scarf over her head, a trench coat and sunglasses, and she was carrying a large shopping bag.

“Rebecca, hello,” he said, arching a brow. “Are you incognito?”

“I don’t want anyone to see me giving you these. Just take the bag,” she told him.

“What?”

“Take the bag.”

“What is it?”

“Your bones,” she told him.

Kendall skipped lunch and ran down to the florist’s shop. She selected a number of arrangements and had the delivery boy take them to her car. On the street, she paused, feeling the air, looking around.

She didn’t feel
it
. The sensation of being watched. Was she safe by day? she wondered.

She decided not to do any readings that afternoon. When she got back to the shop, she put her tarot deck in a desk drawer and closed it firmly.

Mason seemed to do too much thinking when he wasn’t busy, so she did her best to keep him occupied. At one point, she asked him to go to her apartment and retrieve Jezebel, who was going to come and live in the shop for a while, because Kendall had decided that she wasn’t leaving the Flynn plantation for home again until she had figured out what was going on. Despite her earlier good intentions, she was afraid to let the dream go any further, so maybe she had to start exploring while she was awake.

Later in the afternoon, when the store was quiet, she turned to Mason. “Can you watch the place alone for a while?”

“Alone? What am I?” Vinnie asked. “Chopped liver?”

“Actually, you’re coming with me,” she told him.

“Oh?”

“You’re going to help me bring flowers out to the graveyard.”

As they walked out to her car, she looked up at the sky, wondering what was going on with the weather. It was October, but the sky looked like winter. There were dark clouds forming overhead, and it seemed much too chilly for autumn in New Orleans. Something hinted at a thick gray fog, and dampness hung ripe and heavy in the air.

As they drove, Vinnie said, “I don’t believe it. We’ve got a ground fog rising.”

He was right, she realized. Mist hung low to the ground, swirling ominously.

A mist very like what she kept seeing in her dreams.

Aidan couldn’t quite figure out how it had happened, but somehow Rebecca ended up in his car after she’d delivered the bones, so he took her with him to the FBI to send them off to Robert Birch, and then on to the historical society.

Sheila’s boss was a decent guy. He told Aidan that the police had been in to look through Sheila’s desk, and had taken her calendar and most of her files, but he was welcome to search for himself, in case he could come up with anything.

It was Rebecca who noticed the Post-it stuck in the closure of a drawer.

“‘Before plane, meet Papa,’” Aidan read. “Papa. Her father?”

Rebecca shook her head. “Her mama and daddy were never married. I don’t think she ever knew her father.”

“Papa. Someone older, maybe?” Aidan mused. He rose swiftly. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Where are we going now?”

“Police station.”

“Honey, you’re on your own,” Rebecca said, looking at her watch. “I got to pick my mama up from the doctor’s now.”

“I’ll drop you at your car.”

She studied him just before she got out of his car to get into hers. “You really do care for our girl, don’t you? Mama approves of you, you know.”

“I’m glad. Thank you, Rebecca.”

Aidan headed to the police station. Hal was in his office, a stack of papers in front of him.

“Sit down, join me. I’m going through Sheila’s files.”

There was a box of disposable gloves on Hal’s desk, the kind cops had to wear when handling evidence, but they made Aidan remember that whoever had bought the voodoo dolls had been wearing black latex gloves.

He drew up a chair next to Hal’s, they both put on gloves, and together they started going through Sheila’s files in search of something—anything—that might give them a clue as to who had killed her. After a while, Hal excused himself to go get coffee.

He’d been gone a few minutes when Aidan got the creeping feeling at the back of his neck that he was being watched.

He looked up to see…

The woman in white.

Her face was tense with anxiety, and she was beckoning to him.

He stood up, not daring to blink, and started toward the door—and she faded into nothing just as Hal walked back into the office.

“What’s the matter with you, Flynn? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I have to go,” Aidan said.

“What?”

“I’ve got to get out to the house.”

Without another word, he hurried out to his car.

When Kendall and Vinnie arrived at the house, she thought it had never looked more beautiful than it did now, rising mysteriously from the mist. The last coat of paint was complete, and the columns were strong and white and tall.