Spirited 1 (40 page)

J
ULES HADN’T EVEN
flipped on the light in her apartment when a sweaty hand clamped over her mouth from behind her.

“Shh . . .” The fetid stench of stale scotch blew across her face.

She had no intention of remaining quiet. Twisting her head and body from side to side, she fought for freedom. She clawed at a leather-jacketed arm but only succeeded in being lifted off the ground by her captor. She kicked backward, aiming for a knee or a leg, but Mr. Scotch Breath just dodged her attempts. Remembering the stacks of boxes in the room, she kicked forward, hoping to knock some over. Instead, her foot connected with a muscular thigh.

A terrifying moment later, the owner of the leg, a second man in the room, produced a fist. It flew toward her face even as her first captor called out, “No!”

Her world tunneled into darkness.

 • • • 

S
ETH HOLSTERED HIS
gun, then rubbed the back of his neck. Tension made his spine ache, and he shifted his position on the couch. Man, he needed a little time to wrap his mind around the possibility that Jules possessed some sort of genetically inherited ESP. “So you’re telling me you’ve actually seen both Shelley and Jules do . . . whatever it is they do? Seen it with your own eyes?”

“Crazy as it sounds, yeah.” Jones nodded. “Sitting right here tonight, I watched her talk with Aimee-Lynn’s ghost.”

“Could
you
see the ghost?” Maybe Jones was crazy too?

“No. But it was weird. I could swear that the air got colder when she arrived. And I had this, um, feeling that we weren’t alone anymore.”

Seth had that feeling the night he’d kissed Jules in her apartment. But he’d dismissed it as a drafty window because no one
was
there.

“Look, I’m not describing it well. You have to see it for yourself.”

“I tried that. I told her to ask Aimee-Lynn a question for me.” He sighed. “She told me she couldn’t—”

“Because Aimee-Lynn had crossed over before you returned,” Jones interrupted.

“Yeah, that’s what she said.” Seth shook his head. “As she left she told me to beware the night.”

It clicked then. Not beware the night. Beware the
knight
.

“Crap, she did tell me something. Either
I’m
going crazy or Jules told me the name of one of the characters in Masters’s diary. The Knight. Unless you mentioned it to her.”

“Not me. I didn’t tell her anything about the case.” A spark of recognition lit Jones’s eyes. “Wait, she told me Aimee-Lynn had given her strict instructions to give the diamonds only to you or me.”

Cottoning onto that train of thought, Seth said, “Crap. I’d been thinking on the way over here that the Knight’s a cop. I’d started to suspect someone on the force. For a while I thought it was you. No offense.”

“Right.” Jones snorted. “Still think it’s me?”

“No.” A jolt of fear ripped down Seth’s spine. He jumped to his feet, running for the door.

“Where are you going?” Jones said.

“If the Knight is someone on the force, Jules could still be in danger. Especially if the Knight doesn’t know we have the diamonds.”

Seth wrenched open his front door and hurried into the hallway. The familiar musty scent of the old building assailed his nostrils. The hallway lay peaceful and silent. Nothing seemed odd or out of place, except Jules’s door.

It stood ajar.

Drawing his gun, he caught Jones doing the same. Quickly and silently, they approached the apartment. Light from the hallway poured through the opening, illuminating the devastation within.

In a single unified move, they swung open the door and aimed their guns into the empty apartment. Stepping lightly over the mess, they checked out the rooms.

“Clear,” Jones reported, coming from April and Ernie’s bedroom.

“Clear,” Seth echoed, exiting Jules’s room. Meeting Jones back in the living room, they surveyed the damage.

“Someone was searching for something,” Jones said, squatting down near the front door.

He ran two fingers through a spot on the floor the size of a half-dollar, then held them in the air. They were stained crimson.

“Did you check out her apartment before you stormed into mine?” Seth knew he had no right to be angry with Jones, but fear and common sense didn’t always go hand in hand. And right now, he was more afraid than he’d ever been in his life.

Jones cursed under his breath. “No.”

Surprisingly, Jones didn’t hurl an accusation back at Seth, so he did it himself. “It’s my fault. I
knew
she was in danger. I shouldn’t have left her alone. Whoever has her couldn’t have taken her more than ten minutes ago.”

“I’ll call this in,” Jones offered.

“I wouldn’t do that,” said a gravelly voice from the hallway. Seth turned to find Sam there, a determined look in his eyes. “He’ll kill her before you can find them.”

 • • • 

S
OMETHING WET AND
sticky oozed down her neck. Jules opened her eyes and tried to move, but she was in an oddly familiar confined space. Two strips of red light glowed dimly, one at her head and one near her knees. The scent of rubber filled her nostrils. A steady hum of tires on pavement rocked beneath her.

The rocking ended on a jolt and a squeal of tires. She slid sideways and her face slapped against the wall of the trunk. Something heavy and long hit her in the back, making her tight quarters even tighter.

The memory of Aimee-Lynn’s murder slammed into her. She was in the same car.

Panic formed a golf ball in her throat. For a moment she lay frozen, too terrified to even try to lift her unbound hands. She didn’t want to die like Aimee-Lynn, but the memory replayed itself in her mind.

“Stop it, Jules. Just stop it!” she whispered to herself. “Get a grip and get the heck out of here.”

She shifted her weight and brought her right hand to her face, swiping at the blood. Her left arm burned as if she’d torn out her stitches. And unless she was mistaken, her sleeve was sticky. Her right eye throbbed from where she’d been punched. Her legs and arms ached from being crammed into the trunk of a car.

The thing at her back groaned. A tremor ran through her at the deep-throated sound. Pressing her hands against the cold steel of the car, she pushed herself onto her back. Her stitches pulled and threatened to pop, making her cry out in pain. Finally, she lay on her back and stared at the ceiling a scant six inches from her face. Panting with exertion and fear, sweat trickled down her temples.

Terrified to look but more frightened by her own imagination, she swiveled her head and glanced to her right.

It took a moment to recognize the body on its side as Officer Zig Harmon, one of the two patrolmen assigned to watch her at the shop yesterday.

Even in the shadows, his normally youthful face appeared sunken around the eyes. His left shoulder seemed to point both up and backward at once, as if he’d dislocated it. But the blood seeping from it seemed to hint at something else entirely.

“Zig?” Jules whispered and gently touched his face. “Zig, can you hear me?”

He didn’t answer. Without putting weight on her injured arm again, she couldn’t get close enough to hear if he was still breathing.

Cradling her injured arm to her body, she stretched out two shaky fingers and aimed for the pulse in his neck. A lifetime started and ended before she finally found the weak but steady
thump, thump
.

“Zig!” she whispered urgently into his ear. “Wake up!”

He moaned but didn’t rouse. She needed to do something. She’d already seen how one version of this story played out. And she didn’t want to star in the sequel.

From Aimee-Lynn’s vision, Jules knew there was no release latch, so she turned her attention to the officer, hoping he might have a radio or a gun or at least a pocketknife on his tool belt. Gingerly, she ran her fingers down his shoulder to his belt. The weapons police officers normally carried had been stripped away. No gun, no Taser, even the cord to his radio dangled headless.

“Check his pockets,”
Moira said. Her face alone peered into the closed trunk. The silver white aura surrounding her illuminated the cramped space.

“Good idea.” Jules set to work patting his pockets. She found a cell phone on the third try. Unfortunately, it was wedged between his thigh and the trunk floor. As gently as she could, she pushed Zig onto his back and yanked out the phone.

She pushed the send button and prayed.

 • • • 

T
HE NIGHT WAS
growing stranger by the second. First, Seth was sent on a wild-goose chase. Then Jules told him a ghost showed her where to find a bag of stolen diamonds. Now he and Jones were racing down Atlantic Avenue in Jones’s Lexus with a homeless man in the back seat.

“I’ve got a BOLO on the Buick,” Jones said, ending his call and tossing his cell on the dashboard. The BOLO or Be On the Look Out wouldn’t do them much good if a cop had taken Jules. But they might get lucky. “Last report of a vehicle matching that description passed here five minutes ago.”

“Tell us exactly what you saw,” Seth said, splitting his attention between Jones doing a damn good Mario Andretti impersonation shuttling between cars and Sam in the back seat.

“I was sleeping at my Dumpster when a cop and a blond man came around the corner arguing. The blond man carried Jules in his arms. He kept telling the cop, ‘I won’t do it.’ I wasn’t sure what
it
was until the cop strode over to a beat-up blue Buick and popped the trunk.” Sam clutched the back seat until his knuckles turned white. “The cop pointed his gun at the blond man’s head and ordered him to put her in. He put her in the trunk gentle-like, but before he straightened, the cop cuffed him across the back of the skull.

“I thought maybe the blond man had died the way he crumpled to the ground, but no. The cop leaned over, pressed the barrel of his piece against the other man’s temple, and whispered something into his ear. I couldn’t hear what was said, but whatever it was convinced the blond man to get into the car without another word.”

Seth’s stomach shrank. Jules was in the trunk of some bastard’s car. He could guess who, or at least he thought he knew whose it was, until Sam added, “Then this young officer who barely looked old enough to drive walked up. I don’t think he’d seen what I had because he chatted with the cop and glanced inside the car. When he saw the blond man, the first cop said, ‘Let it go, Harmon.’ But Harmon seemed intent on talking to the blond man. He leaned in the open window and never saw it coming. Bastard shanked him.” Blue fire snapped in Sam’s eyes. His fingernails dug divots into the expensive leather seat.

“I didn’t see anyone when we came down,” Jones said.

“ ’Cause the bastard cop dumped the guy’s body in the trunk with Jules saying he’d make them both disappear and no one but the fishes would know where they were.” A look of desolation Seth could identify with crossed Sam’s face. “It all happened so quick, I barely got a look at the license plate. I should’ve moved up the alley faster, but my knees haven’t recovered from chasing that asshole mugger yesterday.”

“You did the right thing,” Seth said.

He had his own guilt to contend with, but now was not the time to deal with Sam’s or his.

He had a kidnapper to catch and not a prayer of doing it without divine intervention.

 • • • 

T
HE SCREEN LIT
up.

Four bars.

She dialed 9-1-1.

“Nine-one-one, please hold.”

“No, wait!” Jules called into the receiver. She glanced up to where Moira had been moments before and said, “I don’t believe this. I’ve been kidnapped and nine-one-one puts me on hold.”

Moira didn’t answer. She appeared to have left.

And a Muzak version of “Kids Wanna Rock” played through the receiver.

She couldn’t keep waiting. Zig needed help now. Well, she did too, but she wasn’t bleeding.

Clicking end, Jules scrolled through Zig’s recent calls, hoping they’d be labeled by name and not just a number. There at the top was Seth. Relief rushed through her, but then she worried that he might hang up on her when he realized who was calling. Or worse, he wouldn’t believe her.

Best not to chance it.

The next number on the list was labeled Devon Jones. She selected it and hit send.

He answered on the second ring, asking without preamble, “Harmon, is Jules with you?”

“Dev, it’s Jules,” she said, relieved to know her disappearance had already been noted. “Zig is next to me but unconscious. I know this is gonna sound crazy but we’ve been kidnapped and stuffed in a trunk.”

“How are you calling me from a trunk?”

“That’s what you ask me?” Jules replied, disbelievingly.

The sound of her irritated voice through Dev’s cell, now on speaker, was a balm to Seth’s frayed nerves. If she was ticked, she wasn’t mortally injured . . . he hoped.

“Juliana, I need you to tell me in as few words as possible what happened and where you are,” Seth said.

And, smart woman that she was, she didn’t ask any questions but told them succinctly about being assaulted, kidnapped, and waking up with an unconscious Harmon in the trunk.

“Oh!” she cried out.

“What?” he, Jones, and Sam all yelled at once.

“Um . . . well,” she paused again then said, “Moira says we’re headed to the old pier near the Tidewater Seafood Packing Company.”

A place where no one but the fishes would know where to find them.

“
Moira
says?” Seth echoed at the same time Sam emitted a cry like a wounded animal and slumped in the back seat.

Jules didn’t reply to him; instead, she said, “Did you hear me, Dev? The old pier. She’s gotta be right, the stench of dead fish is gagworthy.”

“Heard you, Jules. Hang on, we’ll be there in two minutes,” Jones answered, casting Seth a disparaging look.

From the back seat, Sam sniffed then leaned forward. “My Moira?”

CHAPTER 21