Spirited 1 (36 page)

Good questions, but I’m not going to find the answers from Nurse Hello Kitty.

Seth had thanked the woman, then headed to a private corner in the waiting room to call his captain at the office. Voice mail. Made sense; if the captain was in the middle of the meeting he’d called, he wouldn’t have answered his phone. But Jones might.

He called Jones; again he was kicked over to voice mail.

Officer Gareth strode through the front doors of the ER. The patrolman glanced around the room, as if searching for someone. The moment his gaze landed on Seth, the officer hurried over.

“Detective, I’ve been searching for you,” Gareth said.

“Officer Gareth, what are you doing here?”

“Detective Jones told me to find you.” Gareth squeezed his eyes closed and rubbed his forehead as if it pained him. “Mason Hart’s gone. I was with him until about twenty minutes ago. I’m not sure what happened. One minute he was in the room and the next he wasn’t.”

“I was told he wasn’t here,” Seth said.

“Who told you that?” Gareth dropped his hand from his face and shook his head. “He was here. I have him.
Had
him.”

Fury snapped through Seth. A week ago, he didn’t know the younger patrolman, and this made the second time in as many days the officer had managed to screw up his case.

“How could you just let Hart go?”

“I didn’t let him go. He was in radiology with a nurse and a tech getting an X-ray. I was told to wait outside the door. When the tech came out, the room was empty. The nurse and Hart were gone. I’ve been searching for Hart ever since. I called Detective Jones ten minutes ago to report Hart’s escape. He said to stop searching for Hart and find you.”

“He told you to
stop
looking for Hart?”

Why would Jones do that?

“I’m sorry, Detective. I had no idea there was a second door out of the room.”

Seth turned and headed for radiology, only to notice an exit door just before it. He raced through it. Gareth ran to keep up with him. There was no reason for Hart to run, unless he was guilty of something.

And had the patrolman done his job, neither of them would need to give chase now.

“Where’s the nurse?” Seth pulled up short and spun on the smaller man. They still had a chance of figuring out where Hart went if they could talk with the nurse.

“Sorry, I don’t know that either.”

Fucking useless.
Seth bit back the words.

The patrolman shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then glanced at the black asphalt.

The sight made Seth’s gut quiver.

The patrolman was hiding something. What, and more important, why?

“What aren’t you telling me?” Seth asked, watching Gareth closely.

“Hart’s father showed up a few minutes before Hart vanished.” The patrolman looked completely frustrated. Digging his fingers through his closely cropped hair, he glowered. “He said there’s no way his son could have been involved in the burglaries or the murder of the Masters girl. And if the police didn’t stop harassing his son, he’d call Mayor Bien and then slap a lawsuit against the department. And you in particular.”

Seth ground his back teeth together. “Then the younger Hart pulled a disappearing act? Where’s the senior Hart?”

“He left when you arrived. I’m surprised you didn’t pass him in the parking lot. It’s not like you could miss his completely inconspicuous powder blue Mercedes.”

“Fine, let’s get back to the station.”

Seth started toward his Honda. After a few steps, he realized the patrolman hadn’t moved. He glanced back to find the younger officer staring up at the hospital. Following the man’s line of vision, he squinted to see better through the last rays of the setting sun.

Seth couldn’t make out much more than a fuzzy shadowed outline. “You coming, Officer?”

The patrolman snapped his gaze away from the building. He closed the distance between them in several short, hurried strides.

“Detective, what if he’s still in the hospital?” The patrolman hiked a thumb over his shoulder toward the building behind him. “I never saw him leave . . . and the ER charge nurse is his cousin.”

“She’s what?”

“His cousin.” Gareth nodded. “What if, Hart, who by all accounts was beaten pretty badly and in need of medical treatment . . . what if he found someone to help him get the medical attention he needed? But not his cousin. She’d be too obvious. But I bet she’d know who would help him.”

“You think he’s still in there?” Seth asked, but was pretty certain he knew the answer already.

“Yeah, and I noticed something else,” Gareth said, pointing to a window on the third floor, nowhere near the ER. “Isn’t that his cousin up there?”

Seth turned in time to see someone in neon pink scrubs drawing curtains closed.

 • • • 

W
HO SEWS DIAMONDS
into a purse? Apparently one loony ghost who’s convinced a knight of the realm killed her.

This couldn’t be happening.

Think, Jules, think . . . What am I going to do?

“I thought you were going to turn them in to Seth and tell him about the Knight?”
Aimee-Lynn, who’d clearly been eavesdropping, cried out.

“I need time to think,” Jules said. Her mind raced with fear. These diamonds were related to the case Seth had been working on. The one he needed to solve in order to get the promotion he so desperately wanted. And she’d had them for days.

“I don’t see what the problem is. Call him and tell him to come here. Just hurry up and give them to him.”

Aimee-Lynn stood up and crossed her arms over her chest, her medieval garb evaporating into the pink polo and khaki shorts she’d been wearing earlier.

“How am I going to explain this?” Jules gestured to the diamonds. “I swore to him I’d told him everything I knew about his case. He’s going to think I was lying.”

Aimee-Lynn floated six inches above the floor and glided through the middle of the bed toward her.
“If you don’t hurry, someone else is going to die!”

Too much! It was too much.

“Can you see the future, Aimee-Lynn?” Jules jumped, scattering diamonds across the floor. She hurriedly picked them up, and swept them back into her purse.

Not her purse.
Aimee-Lynn’s
purse.

Her stomach cramped and the baklava she’d eaten earlier threatened to make a reappearance.

“Calm down!”
Aimee-Lynn said, gliding so close, Jules could feel the other woman’s aura.
“It’ll be okay.”

“So you can see the future?” Jules asked hopefully.

Aimee-Lynn shook her head. Her hair swung lazily, like hair floating under water.
“Not really. But when I’m not here, I go to this room where one wall is like a giant high-definition television of the world. I see the Knight for what he is, a liar, a thief, and a murderer.

“You know, he told me we were testing security systems, and I actually believed him? Said he needed my help because of my background in gemology. I believed him until I saw my mother’s ring in the jewelry store. She’d told me before she loaned the red diamond that the jeweler had already run an extensive test of their security. Then when I learned the ring had disappeared after the robbery, I went looking for the jewels.

“I waited until he was at work, and went through his place. My mother’s ring was there. When I told my Prince, he floundered. Said he owed the Knight. That there must have been a mistake. But I took all the jewels and hid them in my purse. I carried them with me every day for weeks, trying to figure out what to do next. I couldn’t tell my mother, not without implicating my love.”

“So you and Mason weren’t part of the Diamond Gang?” Jules shook her head in confusion. “Or were you?”

“I was but didn’t know it. I’m not sure my Prince really understood what was happening until it was too late. We thought we were part of a team hired to test private security systems.”
A red aura pulsed around Aimee-Lynn, it glowed bright and sharp.
“I’d finally convinced him that whatever debt he thought he owed to that blackguard wasn’t worth life in prison. My Prince at last agreed to go with me to turn in the diamonds the night I ran into you. We were supposed to be a family. I wasn’t supposed to . . .”
Her words trailed off and silver tears glittered on her lashes.

“It was an accident that I gave them to you. Our purses looked so much alike, I didn’t know it until the Knight ripped the purse apart.”
She paused, then warned,
“He’s coming for the diamonds. And he’ll kill anyone who gets in his way. I’m proof.”

“Seth?” Jules prayed he was safe. When Aimee-Lynn didn’t do more than stare at her, a fierce need to protect him at all costs surged through her.

She may have only known him a few days and she may not have told him she could see ghosts, but she knew one thing. She loved him. And no one was going to hurt him.

No one.

Grabbing Seth’s phone from the nightstand, she froze.

“What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know Seth’s cell phone number,” she admitted, a bit embarrassed she’d just spent the majority of the past twenty-four hours with a man whose phone number she didn’t know.

“So call the station.”

“Good idea.” That number she had. Jones had left her his card at the flower shop. She’d thrown it in her change purse and forgotten about it. She dug it out and punched in the digits.

“Detective Jones, Burglary Division. May I help you?”

“Hi, Detective Jones. This is Juliana Scott. Is Seth, um . . . I mean, is Detective English available?”

“Hi, Jules. You’re supposed to call me Dev, remember?” His deep baritone voice rumbled with laughter. “No, the detective isn’t here.”

“You called him to come to a meeting,” she said.

“He didn’t come.” Dev paused and asked, “He isn’t with you?”

“No, after he spoke to you, he told me to wait here and then left.”

“Jules, are you home
alone
?”

“Yes, but what—” Jules stopped herself from saying anything more. Seth had told her not to let anyone in. Did that mean she shouldn’t be talking to Dev either? And Aimee-Lynn had warned her she couldn’t trust just anyone at the police station. Her stomach knotted tighter but she tried to keep her tone light, “Oh well. Never mind, Dev. I’ve got to go.”

“Jules, wait. I need to talk to you—”

She clicked off in the middle of his sentence.

Now what? Too jittery to sit with a purse full of stolen diamonds in the room with her, Jules paced the floor.

“What happened?”
Aimee-Lynn asked.

“He wasn’t there, I need to wait.” Jules struggled to keep calm but she broke in a fine sheen of nervous sweat. “I need a shower.”

She did some of her best thinking under the spray. Maybe she could figure out a smart game plan. She shuffled toward the bathroom.

“
You’re going to take a shower?”
Aimee-Lynn snorted indignantly
. “That can’t wait?”

“No, actually, it can’t.” Jules tugged at the collar of her shirt and sniffed. It didn’t smell too bad. Short of stealing one of Seth’s shirts, she had no choice but to put on the same clothes after she cleaned up. “Look, I promise I’ll be fast. But I can’t just sit here. I’ll go nuts.”

Shutting the door in the ghost’s face was more for cathartic purposes than useful ones. Had she wanted to, Aimee-Lynn could have floated right through the white wood.

Stripping quickly, she adjusted the water temperature, then stepped beneath the spray. Once she was fully doused, she grabbed the bottle of shampoo and lathered it into her hair and let her thought processes flow freely.

She could wait here for Seth to return. He knew she discovered the body, and he’d believe she didn’t know about the diamonds. It was perfectly plausible that she’d only just discovered the rip in the purse. All she had to do was show him. She didn’t even need to mention anything about Aimee-Lynn.

The idea of still hiding her secret pinched. Four days with him and she was already tired of hiding who she was. What she was. Like it or not, she was a psychic.

Question was, would Seth like it? Would he even believe it?

Her stomach plummeted at the thought of seeing Seth look at her with loathing and fear in his eyes.

Focus. Don’t lose sight of what’s important.
Get rid of the diamonds before some idiot decided to arrest her for stealing them. And do it in such a way so that she didn’t completely ruin Seth’s chances of promotion. From what he’d said, he needed the credit for the case.

Quickly rinsing her body and her hair, she shut off the water. She’d barely pulled back the curtain when a towel floated in midair toward her.

Aimee-Lynn’s image appeared in the bathroom mirror.

“A little privacy, please!” Jules snapped, cinching the towel around her wet body.

“Something’s wrong.”
Aimee-Lynn moved her lips but no sound came out. Her image was more translucent than before and she wore the hooker getup she hated so much.

“Are you okay, Aimee-Lynn?” Concern had Jules moving closer, only to bump into the Corian sink with her belly. Jules stretched out a hand toward the ghostly face in the mirror, then dropped it. She couldn’t have touched Aimee-Lynn even if she hadn’t looked like a bad hologram from an old sci-fi flick.

“I’m so very tired. I need to go . . . to the other place. I need rest.”
Aimee-Lynn’s mouth moved and the words whispered almost inaudibly through Jules’s mind. The spirit’s image faded out and came back into being.
“Moving things is easy . . . but I’m . . . sleepy.”

Aimee-Lynn faded out of the mirror again. Jules waited, holding her breath, hoping Aimee-Lynn would come back. When she did, she was a whisper of an image, just a pale gray aura pulsing around the silhouette of a woman.

“Are you in pain?”

The image disappeared altogether, but Aimee-Lynn’s word’s floated through Jules’s mind, high and tinny, like something from an old radio.
“Not pain, per se, more like it feels as if my soul is being sucked out of consciousness. It doesn’t hurt but it doesn’t feel good either. I’m afraid if I don’t find a way to finish this soon, I may lose who I am. I’ve seen a few people in the other place. Soulless beings with no will or mind of their own.”