The Departed (16 page)

* * *

DEZ jerked on her wrinkled clothes, the phone wedged against her shoulder. It rang and rang—four rings for Taylor Jones was a hell of a lot of rings. When he finally answered, he sounded a lot more awake than she felt.

“We need to get out to Beau Donnelly’s house. And I’ve no clue where it is. Can you come get me?” she said.

“Yes. Why?”

“Weird phone call. Hell,
everything
about this town is weird. Is there something in the water, or what? I don’t know if it’s anything, but my gut says something’s wrong.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Dez was dressed in another minute and spent the next five minutes curled over a cup of nuked instant coffee, shuddering at the taste of it. Spying the cabinet, she opened it and saw granola bars and cereal. Yeah, Taylor had stocked it with basics. Healthy basics. Typical. But she wasn’t going to be picky. She grabbed a granola bar and tore it open, eating half of it in one huge bite. She shoved another one in her pocket. She couldn’t keep going on steam and nothing else. Well, steam and caffeine.

She saw the flare of headlights and headed toward the front door, coffee in hand. Whatever they had to deal with, she’d need more caffeine to do it. She was outside, shivering in the cold night air, by the time he’d stopped in her driveway. Climbing into Taylor’s car, she shot him a narrow look. “You look ridiculously awake for one in the morning,” she muttered.

“You rely on caffeine too much,” he replied. “What’s with this phone call?”

“I don’t know.” She glanced down at her phone as if it would tell her more than it already had. “We’re going to Asher Road. I did a Google search.”

“I know where it is. Tell me about the call.”

“You know where it is,” she echoed, rubbing her brow. “Of course you know where it is. It was Tristan’s sister. I met her the other day. Talked to her briefly. Gave her my card. I didn’t really expect her to call me and then she does, roughly fifteen minutes ago, and she’s babbling about some shadow she saw and how this boy Beau is in trouble.”

“Did she call the cops?”

“I told her to.” Dez rubbed her temple. “But she hung up on me.”

“Did
you
call them?”

Dez shot him a sour look. “I did better. I called the FBI.”

Taylor sighed and grabbed his phone from the console. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head against the back of the seat and hoped she hadn’t made a mistake in not calling the police right away.

It took only five minutes to get to the house, but those five minutes were an eternity.

THE second Dez promised she was on her way, Tiffany disconnected, ignoring anything else the woman had to say. All she could think about, all she could hear was the rumble of Beau’s Mustang. That gleaming, vintage Mustang. Inside the garage. The closed garage.

A moan lodged in her throat as she peered through the filmy curtain and stared inside. She was pretty sure she could see Beau in there, inside the car. Unmoving.

Tiffany’s dad tinkered with cars. He liked them. A lot. Once upon a time, Tiffany had even worked with him on some of the cars he’d bought to restore and sell. Older cars, they didn’t have that nifty exhaust system that eliminated most of the carbon monoxide. Plus, she knew that even
newer
cars could eventually put off enough of the noxious gas to kill a person—it had happened in California back around Christmastime a year or two earlier.

He was sitting in there, in that silent, deadly poison. Swallowing, she slipped her bag off her shoulder and then checked the ground. There were flowerbeds and she’d have to trample the flowers. But if she could bust through wood at karate class, she could break glass, right?

She did a practice kick first, felt the glass give a little under the heavy, weighted toe of her boot. Damn, she was glad those things went almost all the way to her knees. Then she whispered, “This is something you’d do, Tristan. Asshole or not.” Gritting her teeth, she set her stance and then struck, driving into the window with all the force she had.

Glass shattered.

She used her bag to knock as much of it out of the way as she could before she climbed in. Pulling the neck of her shirt up over her mouth, refusing to breathe, she ran to the door and hit the button to lift the garage door. As it started to lift, she saw the lights pull into the drive.

She wanted to cry in relief. But she could see Beau. And he wasn’t moving.

* * *

“IS he going to make it?” Dez asked quietly, gripping Tiffany’s hand. Her mother sat next to her, her face pale, dazed. But there was a glint of pride in her eyes as she stroked a hand down her daughter’s hair. Pride. Love.

Taylor stood in the door, his face troubled. He glanced backward and then at her. “I don’t know. The carbon monoxide levels must have been pretty high. Any chance he has, it’s because he was rescued when he was.” He looked at Tiffany and gave her a rare smile. “Any chance he has is because of you, Miss Haler.”

Tiffany fidgeted. “I shouldn’t have waited. I knew something was wrong,” she whispered. “But I was scared.”

“You were scared, but you still did something,” Dez said. “That’s more than a lot of people would have done.”

Her mother leaned over and hugged her. “You gave him a chance, at least, sweetheart. I’m so proud of you.” She sighed and added, “Proud enough that I’m not even going to ask you about sneaking out right now.”

“But we’re going to ask,” her father said flatly. “Later.”

The girl shot him a quick glance and then looked down. “Yes, sir.”

“I need to speak with my boss, sweetheart.” Dez squeezed Tiffany’s hand again. “But I’ll come back by, make sure you’re okay. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

Tiffany nodded. “Thank you for coming when I called,” she whispered.

“Thank you for calling me.” Dez gave her a crooked grin and then stood up, her tired, aching body screaming in protest. She rubbed her gritty eyes and headed toward Taylor. She knew him too well not to hear everything he hadn’t said.

“So. Two teenage boys in this hospital. Both of them worked at the hotel where Ivy was found. Coincidence?” She didn’t bother mentioning Tristan just yet. Falling into step next to him, she shoved her hands into her pockets.

“I’m not much for coincidences. You?”

“Nope. What in the hell is going on?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out, I suppose.” He sighed and rubbed his neck. “Whether we’re here officially or not. Have you been to see Mark?”

She shrugged. “I peeked in. The cop on his door is taking the job seriously. His mom said the seizures aren’t easing up.”

“They probably won’t until the withdrawal wears off. Stressing his body too much.”

Dez sighed. “That poor kid.”

Taylor just grunted.

“We going anywhere in particular?” She glanced at him, walking along at his side and wondering why.

“Yeah.” He slid her a narrow look. “To figure out what in the hell is going on, since
you
keep getting dragged into this.”

“Well. You could just leave me to swing. But you insisted I sign that damn contract. So…what’s up?”

“That damn contract is keeping your head in one piece,” he reminded her. “As to what’s up…Hard to say but it looks like somebody else besides Tiffany was out there tonight—last night. Area where somebody might have been watching the house for a few minutes. So far the car is showing a number of fingerprints, but nothing on the bottle but the boy’s, the dad’s, and a partial from a third person—my gut says that’s probably from the store, though. If he had anybody in the car with him, they either didn’t touch the bottle or they gloved up.”

“Smart,” Dez murmured.

“Yes.” Taylor glanced at her. “He has a history of getting in trouble. Drinking. Fighting. This isn’t a surprise to anybody around here. There are some abrasions, swelling on his right hand, looks like he popped somebody tonight.”

“How many buddies did he have in that little group of his?”

“Six, originally. But with Tristan gone, it’s down to five. Now it’s down to three with Mark and Donnelly here. The other two, a Keith Sutter and Lee Grogan, aren’t as intrinsic to the group, from what I’ve heard, but we need to speak with them.”

“We?” she echoed.

He stopped now and turned, facing her.

Sighing, she turned and met his eyes.

“You’re involved in this whether you want to admit it or not. The girl called you. Without the two of you, that boy would be dead. Hell, we’re
still
trying to locate his parents…” His voice trailed off and he shook his head. “They looked closer around the grounds because Tiffany said she saw somebody. That’s why they looked. If they’d just come over to answer a 911 call, they might have taken things as they appeared. A stupid boy doing a stupid thing. Assuming there’s more to this, if any justice is found, it will be because of you—because you established a connection with that girl and gave her somebody she could trust. Like it or not, you’re in this up to your butt, Lincoln.”

“Why don’t you kiss my butt?” she muttered, turning on her heel and storming down the hall.

Yeah, she was involved. But she damn well didn’t
like
it.

Taylor caught up with her at the coffee machine. As she plugged quarters in, he said, “That stuff is going to eat away at your stomach lining and you know it.”

“You say the sweetest things, Jones.” She sighed and rested a hand over her heart. “Is it any wonder I went to my back for you the minute I had you alone in my house?”

Hearing an odd, strangled sound from him, she shot him a look from the corner of her eye. His tanned cheekbones had harsh red flags of color to them—but he wasn’t blushing. No, it was more than that. He looked…ravenous. Yeah. That was it. The steely blue of his eyes had a hard, hungry glint to it. It was enough to make her heart race, but she’d be damned if she showed it. Still, it made her feel a little better. He wasn’t immune to her, even now. No more than she was immune to him.

Good
.

“What’s the matter, Jones?” she asked, forgetting about the coffee and taking a step closer to him. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Damn it, Dez,” he growled.

Blinking at him, she whispered, “Is that all you got, Jones?”

“Why are you doing this?” He tore his eyes away from her, staring past her shoulder as though the secrets of the universe and the mess they had on their hands were written on the wall in disappearing ink and he had only moments to memorize it all. “Don’t we have enough to deal with without this crap?”

“This…crap?” she mocked. “Is this crap?”

Sidling closer, she breathed in his scent, wished she could just lean in against him and let him take away every problem in the world. Wished he would
want
to.

“This crap,” she repeated. “You want me. You care for me. I want you. I care for you. And once this job is done, we don’t work together anymore. So why is it crap? Why is this such a problem for you?”

Tilting her head back, she stared at him, into those steely blue eyes that held so many secrets.

But he had no answer for her. Sighing, she turned away, staring at the coffee machine again. But she didn’t need the caffeine now. She was wide awake. Wide awake and miserable.

He had a point, she supposed. They had enough on their hands and she didn’t need to be stirring up her old heartbreaks on top of it. She just couldn’t help herself. Not where he was concerned.

Tired of it, tired of the pain that came along with him, she walked away from the coffee machine. She needed to be away from him for a while. From all of this.

When this is over, I want to go to Tahiti. For a month.
Someplace warm and sunny. And if she was lucky, she could find a deserted strip of beach where no ghosts would linger, where she could be alone inside her head.

Not that she would.

She’d find another lost soul, another one of the departed, another ghost. Somebody who’d pull her into a mess and have her give everything she had. And then another and another.

Until eventually, there was nothing left of her to give. Until she wasn’t much more than a shell…just like them. She might still be alive, but she was turning into a ghost herself, she suspected.

* * *

WATCHING her walk down the hall, her head down, shoulders slumped, Taylor stared at her. She looked so tired. He reached into his pocket, touched the necklace as he stared at her retreating back. Then he groaned and looked back at the machine and considered the poison it spitted out as a poor excuse for coffee.

She never used to drink that much coffee. She’d lost weight, too.

Just leave her alone,
he told himself.

But he didn’t. He got the coffee, but laced it liberally with cream and sugar, hoping maybe they would provide a buffer to keep the coffee from eating at her stomach lining. Then he fed a couple of dollars into the various vending machines. He knew Dez. She liked her sweets. She could get a Hershey bar. If she ate a damn apple first.

She needed several hours horizontal, not that he expected she’d take them here. Probably better off if she didn’t. But she could damn well get some food in her belly and she could sit down, stop pacing, and try to relax. He’d see to it. Assuming he could find wherever she’d disappeared to.

It wasn’t that hard to find her, in the end. It seemed he could always find her. She was tucked away inside the small chapel, her knees drawn to her chest, her eyes locked on the cross hanging above the dais. “Leave me alone, Jones,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Then don’t talk.” He held out the candy bar.

Her gaze locked on it the way a shark might stare at a seal, he supposed. With hungry, intent focus. But when she reached for it, he pulled it back. “Eat this first,” he said shortly, pushing the apple at her.

She glared at him. “I don’t want a damn apple.”

“You’re swearing in church,” he said mildly.

“And you’re teasing a woman over chocolate. Both are probably akin to tempting fate.” Then she made a face and glanced toward the front of the church. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

He smiled as he realized she was blushing. “Eat the apple, Dez. Then you can have the chocolate.”

She groaned and then reached out, snatching the apple from him. She crunched down. After she’d swallowed the first bite, she said, “You know, we’re not supposed to eat in here.”

“What are they going to do, arrest us? And somehow, I don’t think Jesus cares if you eat in here. Isn’t there a passage in the Bible that says ‘Feed my sheep’?”

“I’m not a sheep.” Sighing, she just took another bite. “Besides, I don’t see why you care if I eat or not. Haven’t we already established we’re not…whatever?”

“Do we need to be…whatever for me to care whether or not you’re eating? Whether you’re sleeping?” He curled a hand over the back of her neck, stroking his thumb over the sensitive skin under her ear. “You don’t sleep much, or you haven’t lately, at least. I can tell. And you’re losing weight. When’s the last time you took a break, Desiree?”

With a brittle smile, she said, “Three weeks ago. Before I took a case in Arkansas. I was going to take one after that case but this one came too hard.” She took another bite and then, in a singsong voice, added, “Too bad, so sad.”

“And how long was that break?” Three weeks wouldn’t have her looking this drawn. While he didn’t do it if he could avoid it, he’d had her work cases close together before. They’d never worn on her this hard.

She swallowed and lowered the apple. Her head dipped and she sighed. “Just a weekend.” Abruptly, she slammed the apple into his lap and stood up. “If you want me to eat, you’d be better off saving the interrogation until I’m done, you know.”

“Okay. A weekend. And before that?”

She paced in front of him, her hands tucked in the back pockets of her jeans. But she didn’t answer him. Putting the half-eaten apple aside, he stood up and went to her, catching her arm. “How
long
, Dez?” he demanded.

She glared at him. “Four months. The last few cases ran together on me and it took four months to get everything wrapped up and done. Okay? It’s been almost five months since I’ve gone more than a couple of days without having ghosts whisper to me. I had a week. Before that? The jobs would last a few weeks, maybe a month. I’d have three or four days of peace before they started again. But it’s nonstop. Ever since I walked. I get no peace; I get no rest. It’s worse than it was before I came to you. Are you happy?”

Fury punched through him but he shoved it down, lashed it under control. Fury wouldn’t help her—it would just feed the wild desperation he could see in her eyes.

Staring into her tormented, tired gaze, he reached up and cupped her cheek. “Happy?” He stroked his thumb over her lip.

“Yeah.” She jerked back from him and stalked away, like she couldn’t bear to have him touching her. “Are you happy? I couldn’t take going those three months of leave without helping—I
know
I couldn’t. It would have driven me crazy.”

She glared at him, rage all but vibrating off of her. “
You
know it, too, and don’t deny it.”

“Okay.” He closed his hands into fists, resisted the urge to reach for her. It was something he’d forced himself to admit over the past year. Too long—it had been too long, and he never should have touched her and forced himself into that position.

She sneered at him. “Okay?
Okay?
You stand there and say
okay
? You push me out and now you say
okay
?”

“I didn’t
push
you out,” he snapped. “You
walked
.” And he’d wanted to come after her, every damn day. If he’d known she was suffering like that, he would have, too. But he’d thought she’d be better off…happier.

“I walked because you didn’t give me a
choice
.” She glared at him. “And now you get to stand there and smile in that lofty, superior way of yours, because—guess what? I might not have gone crazy this way, but I sure as hell am working myself into an early grave.”

She pressed a hand to her belly and smiled at him, a brittle, empty smile. “So either way, I was screwed. I was destined either to lose my mind or to work myself into the ground. You’re right—I’m no better off leaving than I was staying. Either I’m sick in the head or sick physically. Neither one is much fun.”

She shoved past him, leaving him alone in the small, quiet chapel.

He lingered, waiting. Watching. Wanting so desperately to go after her. And once more, he found himself pulling that necklace out of his pocket. Closing his eyes, he thought back, remembering all those months ago when he’d wanted to go after her.

He hadn’t. And she’d suffered. All this time, she’d suffered and it was his fault.

He’d thought he was doing the right thing—for both of them. Even if it wasn’t what he
wanted
, it seemed like the right thing. Letting her go, when all he’d wanted was for her to stay.

Closing his eyes, he whispered, “Damn it, I don’t know what to do…”

Then he opened his eyes and found his gaze locked on the warm, gentle glow of the cross on the wall. He knew what he
wanted
to do—it was what he’d wanted then. But it wasn’t that simple. It was never that simple…

Why not?

It sounded like something Dez would say. Why wasn’t it that simple? She didn’t work for him now. That issue was solved. Sucking in a deep, desperate breath, he lifted his hands to his face, wondered what he should do.

For once, damn it, for once, I want to do what I want—what I need…

He looked down at the necklace he held. Then, before he could talk himself out of it, he turned and took off after her.

Hell, could he possibly make things any worse than they already were? For either of them?

THE parking lot was empty. But it didn’t take long to spot her. She was storming down the sidewalk leading away from the hospital. It was roughly five miles to the house and it looked like she was going to walk it.

In the dead of night.

Shit.

Say something
, he thought.
Stop her, damn it.
His mind was a raw, ragged wound and today, of all days—shit, today, yesterday, it was the worst possible time for him to be trying to think of something
coherent
to say to anybody. Especially the person who mattered to him the most. Dez.

But he had to say something. He just didn’t know what. Didn’t know what to think. His mind went blank. Words, the easy glib lines he could always hand out whenever he needed to do whatever he needed to do—they failed him. He needed to talk, needed to say
something
, but he couldn’t.

He had to do something, though, and he had to do it fast, because if he let her leave this time, he wasn’t going to have a chance in hell of getting her. Keeping her. And he was finally starting to realize that was exactly what he needed to do—what he wanted, what he absolutely must have.

Otherwise, he was going to turn into one of those shadows that haunted her. Maybe a living, breathing one, but everything that made him live would be gone.
Dez
made him live, damn it. He’d been dead the past year.

Fuck.

Jogging to catch up with her, he caught her arm. “Dez…”

He swallowed as she stopped in her tracks. “Get away from me,” she whispered, her voice low and raw.

“You can’t leave,” he said. He jerked his hand back and shoved it in his pocket.

“Why the hell not?”

Without anything else to say, he latched onto the one constant he’d always had in his life. “We have to go back out to the kid’s house. You’re the only one who has any possible chance of maybe connecting to the one who did this, and if we wait much longer, even that chance is gone.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She turned around and stared at him, her eyes wide with disbelief. “You want
me
to play bloodhound? Hello, have you forgotten? I’m the one who talks to ghosts, remember? I’m not the bloodhound. I talk to dead people.”

“You’re still psychic. You pick up on lingering emotions and in case you haven’t noticed, you’re picking up a hell of a lot since you’ve been here. If you expect me to think that somebody can try to kill and not leave a trace for you to pick up on, then you must think I’m past stupid,” he said. He didn’t entirely believe that line, but he didn’t disbelieve it, either. Dez underestimated her abilities. She always had. And whether anything came of it or not, he’d have another hour or two to figure out what to say to her, how to fix the damage he’d done to them.

All before he’d even realized he wanted to take a chance at
being
a “them.”

Fuck. Maybe he
was
past stupid.

Dez continued to stare at him, her eyes suspicious. He held her gaze, refusing to look away. She finally swore and broke the stare. He held out a hand and said, “Truce?”

She shot him a dirty look.

“Like hell. Let’s get this over with so I can get the hell away from you.”