Gatekeeper (27 page)

He pulled her wrists and ankles together and with a series of quick, jerky motions, he wound the belt of her robe so tightly around her arms and feet she thought the circulation would be cut off. She felt roped and tied like an animal ready for the slaughter.

But none of that mattered.

Scott had the button.

She, Jillian, had failed. Miserably.

She had lost Benton forever. For eternity.

A moan tore from her chest. She struggled against the makeshift bonds but to no avail. Twisting her head, she looked up from the cold, hard floor to where Benton stood.

Love and compassion flooded his gaze. Tears blurred Jillian’s vision.

In the corner of the room, Scott was ripping her phone out of the jack. He dashed the cordless handset to the floor and ground it underneath his heavy army boot.

He wasn’t going to kill her. Somehow, that knowledge did little to comfort her.

Jillian heard the sound of her own voice. “Why are you so bent on revenge?”

“Revenge?” He laughed. It was a sick, angry sound. “This isn’t revenge. It’s
justice
,” Scott sneered as he strode toward the doorway.

Jillian’s gaze slammed into Benton’s. Regret and sorrow tinged his eyes. A sad smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “My love for you is my courage.”

Jillian sobbed helplessly. She somehow twisted onto her side. “Benton, no! Don’t let him do this to you.”

She battled against her bonds. He was fading.
Fading.
Panic gushed through her veins.

“No!” she wailed until she thought her lungs would burst. “No!”

The whole house shook as the front door slammed shut.

Chapter Nineteen

Jillian’s first reaction was to lie there on the hard floor and sob. Benton was gone. Benton was lost to her forever. Scott was going to offer his spirit to the soul collectors. Benton would have the same fate as Lynn, as those revenants she had seen in the cemetery.

But then something sparked inside her.

Some glimmer of hope she couldn’t ignore.

Where had Scott taken the button? Where did he plan to do this evil, awful thing?

She was not helpless. She was not powerless. She was psychic.

And she could use her ability to find him—to stop this.

Ignoring the pain shooting through various parts of her body, she grew still and closed her eyes. She inhaled deeply and tried to draw vibrations of Scott to her.

Nothing surfaced.

“Dammit, Jillian, come on,” she said out loud. “Come on!”

Gritting her teeth, she held her breath and tried again.

Still nothing.

But then, a voice inside her told her to relax, to open. She could do this. She knew she could.

Willing herself to relax, she drew in a deep breath, filling her lungs to capacity. She blew it out slowly. Chills washed over her. She breathed in again and images flooded her. Scott’s truck was racing along the dark Nashville city streets.

And then she knew.

Scott was taking the button to Mt. Olivet cemetery—to Benton’s grave.

Jillian’s eyes flew open. She had to get free of these bonds. She had to call Theo. She had to stop this.

Her gaze darted around the room. If she could get to the scissors or a knife…but they were in the kitchen. It would be too late by the time she scooted that far across the floor.

Her gaze came to a dead stop on the shards of mirror on her bedroom floor where the shot had shattered the glass.

Hope swelled in her chest.

Like a caterpillar, she shifted and inched toward the broken glass. There were pieces big enough. She turned and grappled with her fingers until finally, she managed to get a piece. Her shoulders ached. Her back burned. The only thing keeping her going was the hope of saving Benton. She’d pulled him free of the soul collectors before and she could do it again.

With a grunt, she tried to turn the makeshift knife in her hand but dropped it. The chiming sound it made when it hit the floor was sickening.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Come on, Jillian. You can do this. Try again.” Her fingertips sought the glass once more. And once more, she managed to finagle it into place. The edges were sharp and when she tried to hold it tightly enough to sever the bonds, it sliced into her fingers.

She cried out but forced herself to ignore the searing, stinging pain as she sawed at the terry cloth belt wound around her ankles.

The shard of glass continued to slice into her fingers but Jillian’s focus was solely on Benton. His voice resounded in her head.
Strange how one kind of pain overrides another.

Holding her breath, she sawed and sawed, feeling sticky, wet blood running down her wrists. She had to get free. She had to save Benton. It seemed an eternity before her feet sprang free. She clambered off the floor, kicked free of the sheet and, hands bound, clumsily ran headlong to the kitchen.

Banging her shoulder against the phone, she managed to knock it off the wall. It hit the floor with a hollow-sounding thud. Sinking to the tile floor, she tried to twist around to see the numbers to dial 911. A recorded voice came on the line.

“If you’d like to make a call please hang up and…”

Jillian’s heart sank. Frustration burned in her veins. She hit the reset button and tried again, her fingers leaving bloody prints on the phone. This time, she heard a woman’s voice on the other end. “Nashville, Davidson 9-1-1.”

Relief threatened to overwhelm her and when she tried to speak her voice came out in a choked sob. She cleared her throat and forced her words. “This is Jillian Drew. I need you to get in contact with Captain Theo Carter immediately. I know where Scott Bowers is.”

“Ma’am, are you at—”

Jillian interrupted. She didn’t have time for that. “Call Theo right now and tell him to go to Mt. Olivet Cemetery. It’s a matter of life and death!”

Bracing against her kitchen cabinets, she slid back up. Pain shot through her back and legs. She rushed to the silverware drawer and had to reach in backward, hands tied. She fumbled for a serrated blade. Her fingers finally closed around the hard, wooden handle of a knife. She worked it between the bonds tying her wrist and sawed until her arms burned.

At length, the tough terry cloth yielded and her wrists burst free.

* * * * *

The Jag’s tires squealed as Jillian sped around a curve. She punched the gas pedal and the car growled as the engine kicked into gear.

She had no idea what she would do when she got to Mt. Olivet. She had no weapon. She’d dialed Theo on the cell phone and the call had gone straight to voice mail. Hopefully, that meant he was on the line with Nashville P.D. and hopefully, it meant Theo and the police would get there first.

What if Scott had already given Benton up to the soul collectors? How would she ever know? Scott had the button. Would Benton’s soul be lost, forever trapped somewhere between heaven and earth? Her heart tightened until it felt like a stone in her chest. A lump rose in her throat. Tears stung her eyes but she refused to give in to the tears.

Gripping the steering wheel, she weaved around a street sweeper and then sailed through a red light.

The Mt. Olivet entrance was just down the street, just past the Catholic cemetery.

Jillian hardly braked as she flew into the entrance. As she neared the top of the hill, there was no sign of flashing blue lights—or anyone, for that matter.

Could she have been wrong? Why, now that she’d finally come to some sort of acceptance of her psychic ability, had it failed her?

A wave of terror surged inside her followed by a sickening sense of utter hopelessness. “No,” she said aloud. “No.” She swallowed it down. This was not the time to give up.

Switching off the car’s lights, she barely gassed the Jag down the narrow pathways through the massive cemetery, the car’s high-performance engine purring near-silently. Her gaze scanned the darkened graveyard. The tombstones shone an eerie shade of blue in the moonlight. The limbs of ancient oaks loomed blacker than the black sky.

Jillian’s heart fluttered rapidly in her chest. Her grip tightened on the steering wheel. Where was Theo? Where were the police?
Where is Scott?

The car crept quietly past a mausoleum and a human silhouette came into view.

Jillian froze, stopping the car. In the murky darkness, she could make out the figure of Scott Bowers in the distance—standing at the head of Benton’s grave.

Jillian squinted. What was he holding up? The button?

A little thrill of hope swept through her. Maybe she’d gotten here in time. Maybe Benton was safe. But then Jillian’s stomach did a somersault. The revenant ghosts were creeping out from behind gravestones, all lumbering like ghastly sleepwalkers toward Scott.

One slid past the driver’s side window. Jillian gasped. A shudder crawled up her spine as she recalled their reaching, grasping hands, their hollow, dead faces.

Benton…

Would he be like them when the soul collectors were done with him? An image of his beautiful, smiling face morphing into one of those belonging to the vacant, gray ghosts rose like bile in Jillian’s thoughts.

She couldn’t let that happen. She would
not
.

Resolve flooded her being. But how was she ever going to overpower Scott? If only she had a weapon. A gun. A knife. Something—

Jillian’s lips parted. She
did
have a weapon. The Jaguar. But she knew she only had one shot at stopping him. Just one.

But could she kill a man? She bit her bottom lip. Killing Lynn had been an accident. Could she deliberately take a life? Terror and doubt surged and everything inside her screamed at her to wait for the police.

But then a strange, silver, glittering light appeared just beyond Scott. Mesmerized, Jillian stared as the particles seemed to fuse together and form into Benton, his light softly luminous against the backdrop of gravestones and night sky.

Shoulders slumped, his head hung and he looked weak, tired. But he wasn’t gone. The soul collectors hadn’t come for him yet. Her heart soared.

Dammit, where’s Theo?

Jillian sat stock-still in the car. What should she do? Wait? Confront Scott?

She reminded herself that he had a gun. He would kill her. She didn’t doubt that.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she warred with her choices. An unearthly shriek rent the air. Jillian’s eyes snapped open and her heart turned to ice.

Soul collectors swarmed toward Benton, swooping, diving to pick at him like vultures.

“No!” Jillian screamed and, gripping the leather-encased steering wheel with all her might, she jammed the gas pedal to the floorboard. The Jag’s powerful V6 engine kicked into gear and the car shot forward, careening over curbs and low-lying gravestones.

As the car careened toward him, Scott turned. Bracing herself, Jillian saw Scott’s eyes go impossibly wide before closing her own and turning her head. She heard and felt the sickening, bone-crushing force of a body coming across the hood, slamming into the windshield. Jillian screamed. The air bag exploded in her face as the Jag bounced to a rough abrupt stop, the two front tires lodging in the edge of Benton’s grave.

Stunned, Jillian coughed. Her mouth tasted plastic and powdery. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs out of her brain. Trembling, she scrambled out of the car and fell on her hands and knees to the ground.

Scott lay bloody and unmoving several feet away but a groan emanated from deep in his chest. He sputtered and coughed. Jillian stared. Something ethereal rose from his body. As it hovered toward her, it formed into a woman—the most beautiful woman Jillian had ever seen—Harriet Cooke.

Pale but fully solid, Hattie’s hard gaze never left Jillian’s. Dark eyebrows arched like delicate wings above her icy brown eyes. Her voluminous pale skirts audibly swept the ground as she approached.

Jillian shot a quick glance at Benton as she scrambled to her feet. He was pallid, transparent—but the soul collectors had backed off and were merely hovering, watching.

Hattie was coming closer. Jillian’s heart thundered. She struggled to remain calm, to think. She could fight Scott. He’d been a flesh-and-blood man. But how could she fight a ghost?

Jillian took a step backward as Hattie’s hooped skirt brushed the toe of her shoe. A chill pervaded Jillian’s bones. She shuddered at the utter coldness Hattie projected.

Hattie fingers unfurled, revealing the button. A mirthless smile claimed her lips. “I will take him to hell with me!”

The soul collectors dipped closer.

“Hattie, don’t do this! Benton loved you.” The tears were falling now, coursing unchecked down Jillian’s cheeks. If only she’d waited for Theo. Now there was nothing she could do but watch the soul collectors take Benton. Why had she been so impetuous? So stupid?

Hattie merely laughed, whirled and crossed the muddy ground. Her ghost passed through the car and floated over the open grave to where Benton had slumped to his knees.