The Last Time I Saw Her (22 page)

And she couldn't have it. Couldn't have him. Not for keeps.

Her chest felt like it was being squeezed in a vise.

Reaching him, she put a gentle hand on his back as he pulled the top sheet down. She felt the warm sleekness of his skin, the flexing of the powerful muscles beneath.

“Michael. What happened in Spookville?”

He rounded on her, catching her wrist. His hand was big enough that it could circle her wrist with inches to spare, and strong enough that it felt as immovable as a shackle. A few inches farther up the arm he held, the heavy silver of his watch circling her slender forearm caught the light.

“Holy fucking Christ, you
are
a bulldog. You can't ever let anything go, can you?” His face looked tighter, his features more chiseled now with anger. “I already told you. A couple of times.” Their eyes met, and his face softened fractionally. “All right, yes, unlike one of us who seems to be living in a damned Disney movie, I'm facing the reality that the next time I get sucked up in there I might not be able to get back. If that happens,
when
that happens, I want you to be able to go on with your life. I want you to be happy. I want you to be fucking
safe.
”

Her eyes widened. “You're being
noble.
”

He looked mildly revolted. “I am not being noble.”

“Yes, you are. You're being noble.” She drew in a breath as she zeroed in on an underlying truth that, now that she saw it, made perfect sense. “When I told you I loved you down there in the kitchen, it would have been easy for you to say it back. From your point of view, it would have been the smart, expedient thing to do. It would have made me happy, it would have gotten you laid.” She paused, remembering that he had, in fact, ended up getting laid, before adding, “More quickly, and it wouldn't have cost you a thing. But you didn't say it, and the only reason I can see that you wouldn't have said it back was because you're being noble and you
do.
”

“Would you cut the ‘noble' crap?” His voice was savage. His hand around her wrist had tightened, and his face was hard and dark. “I already told you I love you. What, did you miss that back there in the shower? I might not have twisted it all up in a pretty package with hearts and flowers, but that's because falling in love is such a stupid thing for you and me to do. You want the truth? I love you so fucking much it kills me to know that I can't have you, that I can't give you the life you want, that I can't do anything except make you miserable.”

Her heart was suddenly thumping so hard that it felt like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest. Her mouth went dry. Her eyes were glued to his face. “You don't make me miserable.”

“I will. When I go. And we both know I can't stay.”

She took a breath. “You're here now.”

His eyes were blacker than the blackest midnight as they held hers. Some indescribable emotion flickered across his face and was gone too fast for her to even try to identify it.

“I'm here now,” he agreed.

Pulling her wrist free of his hold, she took the half-step forward needed to close the distance between them, slid her arms around his neck and kissed him, a slow, tender kiss with an eternity's worth of yearning in it. He kissed her back, his lips equally tender and slow—until they weren't. Until he made a harsh sound under his breath and his hold on her tightened, until he was crushing her against him, until his lips hardened, until he was kissing her like it was the most vital thing he'd ever done or ever would do. Then they went up in flames, both of them, and he took her to bed, where he said all the mushy things she was longing to hear and she said equally mushy things back, and he made love to her until at last, somewhere deep in the darkest stretch of the night, she fell into an exhausted sleep in his arms.

When Charlie awoke, she was alone in bed. Coming instantly alert as alarm slammed through her system, she sat straight up, looking around. The clock beside the bed read 5:47 a.m. She was naked and cool air whispered over her body, reminding her of that fact, and also that it was October and she hadn't yet turned on the furnace, which she needed to do. The room was no longer the pitch dark that it had been after he'd turned out the light. Instead, it was a shadowy gray that spoke of daybreak. Gauzy fingers of light probed around the edges of the curtains, crept across the floor. Michael was nowhere in sight. The bathroom was dark and still. She was almost positive that he wasn't in there, either.

“Michael?” No answer.

Where was he? Oh, God, had he been snatched away during the night?

The beginnings of panic started to curl through her system, and Charlie realized that this kind of sudden-onset fear was going to be a staple of her life until, inevitably, one day what she feared most would happen and he would be gone.

But that day was probably not today, not right now. He was almost certainly somewhere on the premises. They still had time.

Please God, let us still have time.

Having just sent that fervent plea skyward, she was swinging her legs over the side of the bed to go in search of him when the unmistakable smell of coffee reached her. Inhaling, she felt an immediate easing of tension: the kitchen. He was in the kitchen. She got out of bed, snagged her blue terry-cloth robe from the hook inside the closet door, pulled it on, and went into the bathroom, where she washed her face and brushed her teeth and hair. Looking at herself in the mirror as she quickly applied a little blush and a slick of lip gloss, she compared her face now with her face last night. Last night she'd looked pale and tense and exhausted. This morning, despite the limited amount of sleep she'd gotten and the lingering images of yesterday's horrors and all she had coming up today, she was bright-eyed and glowing. In fact, she looked like—a woman in love. Which was what she was, completely and irretrievably. A total disaster, and she knew it, and she was so idiotically happy anyway she wanted to kick herself.

Leaving the bathroom, she quickly put on jeans and a loose black pullover to look for Michael.

“Michael?” she called as she went down the stairs. No answer. She frowned.

The rest of the house was as dark and shadowy as the bedroom, but the smell of coffee drew her straight to the kitchen. The shades were open, filling the kitchen with the muted light of a fresh dawn, and there was coffee brewing in the coffeemaker, plus an empty cup and a new PowerBar wrapper on the counter. But no sign of Michael.

The sense of rightness that seeing those simple things gave her was just wrong, she knew. But knowing that he'd made himself breakfast in her kitchen felt right anyway.

She was getting ready to check the other downstairs rooms when she glanced out the window and saw him.

He was standing near her tall sunflowers with his back to her as he looked at the heavily wooded mountainside rising steeply beyond the fence. There was dew on the grass and a little bit of mist rising up from the ground. He was dressed in the same white shirt and gray suit pants as yesterday. They looked rumpled but dry, and she could only imagine he'd thrown them in the dryer after she'd fallen asleep. Something about the way he was standing there, with his hands thrust deep into his pants pockets and a slight slump to his broad shoulders, made her feel anxious all over again. Whatever he was thinking about, it clearly wasn't anything good.

Charlie slid her feet into the garden clogs she kept near the back door and went outside to join him. He didn't hear her, or if he did he didn't turn around. The air was fresh and crisp, bordering on cold, and she shivered a little as she walked across the grass. The yard was still shadowy. Shades of pink and orange were just beginning to streak the sky, which was turning from gray to lavender. From the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Pumpkin, tail swishing, crouched on the Powells' back porch. A rooster crowed on the other side, in Mrs. Norman's yard. The noise was unexpected enough to startle her.

She must have made a sound then, because Michael turned around and spotted her. Unsmiling, with shadows lying all around him and mist rising at his feet, he looked big, powerful, and a little bit dangerous. And so handsome, so just exactly what she had always wanted, that it made her breath hitch.

Then she saw that he had one of her big yellow sunflowers, which he'd obviously just picked, in his hand.

As she reached him he held it out to her. Her heart turned over.

She took it, met his eyes, raised it to her nose, and smiled at him over it.

“You threw your clothes in the dryer?” she asked, and he nodded.

“Shoes are squelching wet, though,” he said.

“Oh?” she asked as he reached for her. She was already lifting her mouth to meet his as he drew her into his arms.

They kissed like they never meant to stop until Charlie sensed that they were not alone, a split second before a female voice gasped, “Charlie?”

Pulling her mouth from Michael's, glancing around in surprise, Charlie discovered Tam staring at her in horror from right inside the backyard gate.

“Tam!” Still wrapped in Michael's arms, Charlie greeted her friend with a combination of surprise and delight, while Michael stiffened and muttered, “Holy hell, the voodoo priestess,” just loudly enough to reach Charlie's ears. Ignoring that, Charlie continued with, “What are you doing here?”

Tamsyn Green was a young, strikingly glamorous thirty-five. One of the few who knew about Charlie's ability to see the newly, violently dead, she not only knew
about
Michael, she actually knew him. Not so long ago, she had brought him back from the brink of being terminated, despite deep misgivings, and had warned that it wouldn't be possible to do again. Her deep red hair hung in long, loose waves just past her shoulders and she had big brown eyes, alabaster skin, and a va-va-voom figure that combined voluptuous breasts with a tiny waist and long, shapely legs. Her slim, attractive face with its high cheekbones, aquiline nose, and full mouth looked as tired as Charlie had ever seen it. In a chic, waist-length wool jacket in a vibrant mustard hue, a clingy orange top, chocolate slacks with high-heeled boots, and a ton of gold jewelry, she looked as vivid as the sun despite the purplish shadows that still hung over the backyard. As Charlie looked at her, she felt a flutter of wild hope. If anybody could help keep Michael out of Spookville, it was Tam. While she wasn't the voodoo priestess Michael called her, she was actually the daughter of an extremely powerful voodoo priestess, whom Charlie had seen work incredible spells.

Ignoring Charlie's question, Tam abandoned a roller suitcase that Charlie had only just noticed and strode toward them, her eyes fixed on Michael.

“Spirit!” Tam's voice was harsh. Her subsequent expression made it clear that any doubts she might have harbored concerning Michael's identity were instantly erased by his answering frown, and her alarmed gaze shifted to Charlie. “Cherie, something is very wrong. This isn't possible. He can't be here.”

As she spoke, she was stretching out a hand to Charlie as if to grab her and pull her away from Michael.

“Hello to you, too,” Michael said, while Charlie disengaged herself from his arms and, careful not to crush the sunflower she still held, gave Tam a hug, only to immediately find herself engulfed in a subtle sandalwood-based perfume.

“I'm so glad you're here,” Charlie told her as Tam returned her hug without ever taking her eyes off Michael's face. “You're the person I most wanted to see.”

“In the After, he was nowhere where I could find him.” Tam was sounding faintly stunned as Charlie let her go, and was looking at Michael as if he was seriously freaking her out. “He was being terminated. He should have been terminated by now. That's the only reason I wouldn't have been able to sense him.”

“So that would make me, what, the ghost of a ghost?” Michael's voice was dry.

Tam was looking at him like he'd grown a second head. “There is no such thing!”

Knowing humor wasn't big on Tam's list of virtues, Charlie rushed to try to explain the situation. “He was able to get away. He has a twin brother—Rick Hughes. Michael borrowed his body to save me from a—bad situation.”

“Another serial killer,” Michael explained.

As Tam frowned—she and Michael were on the same page about Charlie's work with serial killers—Charlie continued as if she hadn't been interrupted. “And now he's afraid that he'll be sucked back into Spookville when he has to exit the body and he won't be able to get out again.” She caught Michael's hand and tugged him forward to stand beside her as she looked at Tam beseechingly. “Can you help us? Keep him here, I mean? I know the body probably has to go, but if we could just find a way to keep him out of Spookville…”

She had said “probably” because it occurred to her that the ideal solution would be for Michael to stay in Hughes's body. What did it say about her moral compass that she was even willing to entertain the possibility? Charlie didn't care to look too deeply. But at that point, the terrible truth was she was so desperate to keep Michael with her that the morality of whatever it might take to get the job done barely entered into it.

Michael said, “Babe, there's nothing she can do.”

Charlie shot him a fierce look. “You don't know that.”

Tam finally tore her eyes from Michael's face to look at Charlie. She shook her head. “Cherie, he may be right. I can possibly keep him from getting borne away into the Dark Place. But now that he's been slated for termination his situation is very different than it was when all we had to do was close the portal. Since he obviously somehow escaped from the
executeurs,
his best hope is that they won't come looking for him. But if they do…”

Her voice trailed off.

Charlie felt her lungs constrict. She worked hard to keep breathing. Until that moment, she hadn't realized how much she'd counted on Tam being able to help. But the realization that Spookville might not be the worst of Michael's problems made her blood run cold. Something of what she was feeling must have shown in her face, because Michael's hand tightened on hers. He stood close enough to her that their bodies brushed, and the electric tingle that his touch always engendered in her arced from his body to hers. It was suddenly bittersweet.

“It's okay,” he told her, and as she glanced up at him in instant rebuttal—
it is not okay
—he carried her hand that was entwined with his to his mouth and kissed the back of it. Charlie felt the warm brush of his lips on her skin all the way down to her toes. It was such a romantic gesture, and at such odds with his tough-guy persona, and done in front of Tam, too, that Charlie was knocked a little sideways. She looked at his handsome head bent over her hand, and her heart skipped a beat. No, a whole series of beats.
Oh, my God, I am so in love with him.
Panic threatened to consume her at the thought, and she had to work to beat it back. He said, “Don't worry about it. We're fine for now.”

For now.

The words were both comforting and terrifying. Charlie took comfort in reminding herself,
We still have time.
And refused to allow herself to even dwell on the question of how much.

Tam was watching the pair of them with a troubled expression. “I'll look into this and see what I can do,” she said, catching Charlie's eyes. By “look into it,” Charlie knew Tam probably meant that she would talk to her mother. “You know that I think your feelings for him are insane. He's one thing, you're another. The dead and the living don't mix. And now he shouldn't even exist. But you're my dear friend, and you”—she speared Michael with a glance—“saved my life. I don't forget that, believe me. If there's anything I can do to help you, I will.”

“I'd be grateful,” Michael said, and he and Tam exchanged measuring looks while Charlie said, “Thanks, Tam,” with a renewed spurt of hope.

“Don't thank me yet.” Tam was still looking at Michael.

“Come on in.” Recalled to a sense of where they were by another exuberant cock-a-doodle-doo from Mrs. Norman's yard, Charlie dropped Michael's hand to usher Tam toward the house. “Not that I'm not glad to see you—actually, I am, I'm thrilled—but, once again, what are you doing here?”

“What do you think I'm doing here? I'm here because of you, of course.” Tam's tone was acerbic. “I've never seen anybody get herself in so much trouble, by the way. It's ridiculous. And terrifying. One thing after another, all the time.”

“Yep,” Michael chimed in, on his way to picking up Tam's suitcase. Charlie sent an evil glance his way.

As they entered the house Tam continued, “I've been having a bad feeling about you for the last few days. Yesterday it got much worse. I saw a black cloud around you, and I felt you were in terrible danger. I tried to call, but your phone kept going to voice mail. The bad feeling kept getting worse and worse, and then I turned on the TV only to learn that you'd been taken hostage in a prison escape.”

“Oh, no.” Charlie winced at the thought, had another one—
I have to call my mother and let her know I'm all right
—and then concentrated on listening to Tam, who kept talking as Charlie headed into the kitchen.

“So I hopped a red-eye flight that landed about an hour ago, rented a car, and here I am.” Tam finished by fixing Charlie with a frowning look.

“You must be exhausted,” Charlie sympathized. “Did you get any sleep at all?”

“No. And I'm still having that feeling about you, by the way. That black-cloud feeling. You seem perfectly safe, and yet it hasn't gone away.”

Giving it a discreet sniff—sunflowers really have no smell, but it was big and beautiful and Michael had given it to her, which was the part that gave her butterflies in her stomach—Charlie put the sunflower in a glass of water and snagged a couple of cups from the cabinet as she listened.

“Maybe it's a residual feeling,” she suggested, pouring coffee in both cups. “Left over from me being held hostage yesterday.”

“Or maybe it's because of Gorgeous Ghost Guy.” Tam's tone was sour as she hitched herself onto a stool at the counter and curled her fingers around the cup of coffee Charlie handed her. “FYI, that sappy smile that's been on your face ever since you smelled that flower makes me want to hurl.”

Checking herself, Charlie discovered that she was indeed smiling. Probably sappily. Over the flower. Okay, now she'd stopped. “I'm not in danger from Michael.”

Tam paused in the act of chugging coffee to make a skeptical sound. “Maybe not physically. Cherie—”

She broke off as Michael stepped through the back door with her bag. The silence, coupled with Charlie's or Tam's or both of their expressions, must have been telltale, because Michael looked from one to the other of them, raised his eyebrows at Charlie, and said, “You talking about me?”

“Maybe,” she said, and smiled at him.

“Oh, my God, I
am
going to puke,” Tam muttered, and Charlie shot her a look. Then Charlie said to Michael, “Would you take that up to the guest bedroom, please?” before confirming with Tam by asking, “You're staying here, right?”

Grimacing at her where Michael couldn't see, Tam nodded. Then, as Michael headed down the hall with her suitcase, Tam added under her breath, “Unless I'm interrupting the honeymoon.”

Charlie made a face at her.

After she'd filled Tam in on everything that had happened with help from the occasional, usually annoying-to-Charlie interjection from Michael and he'd told Tam about the NARSAD and Tam had exclaimed over it and they'd all eaten scrambled eggs—“No bread?” Tam had protested—and PowerBars and coffee, and Charlie had left her mother a voice-mail message and they'd moved to the living room and turned on CNN to discover that the prison escape was, indeed, headline news and what was described as the “exhaustive search” of the mountain was still ongoing, Charlie called Tony. It wasn't quite eight a.m. She was afraid that if he'd been up most of the night in conjunction with the search she would wake him, which was why she hadn't called earlier. But he sounded completely alert, and Charlie learned that he, Lena, and Buzz were in fact in a car on their way back to Big Stone Gap.

“On TV it says the search is ongoing,” Charlie said. “Have they found anybody?”

“Creech and Ruben have been recaptured, and two of the teens rescued,” Tony replied. “They both credit you with telling them to climb out a window and run when they got the chance, by the way.”

It wasn't much of a counterbalance to the knowledge that the same advice had gotten Ben Snider killed, but it was something.

“What two teens?” Charlie asked. She could feel tension rising inside her.

Tony named two of the boys. “We're still hunting for Bree Hoyt, Trevor Frost, and Blake Armour. And Doyle, Torres, Ware, and Abell.”

Trevor Frost was the small, scared-looking boy, Charlie remembered. Blake Armour was the kid who'd told Paris she was too fat to make it out a window.

“Do you think they're all still on the mountain?” Charlie felt sick at the idea that those kids were somewhere at the mercy of the animals she knew the three missing serial killers to be. Or worse, they were dead.

“It's possible,” Tony replied. “The locals tell me that there are lots of caves, lots of nooks and crannies where their thermal imaging equipment and the rest of that high-tech stuff might not be effective, so they're searching on foot, too, which is what's taking so long. And if anybody's dead, thermal imaging would be ineffective. But it's equally possible that at least one or two of those guys managed to escape the net.”

“What about the pickup truck? Has anybody found the pickup truck?” she asked.

“No sign of it. Which is another reason why I think they might have made it past the roadblocks. The search is being expanded, and I'd have a BOLO out on the pickup except we have no idea what it looks like. Think you have anything in those files of yours that could help us pinpoint where the serial killers in the group are likely to head?”

“Yes,” Charlie said, trying to recall as much of the three men's files as she could. Doyle she knew nothing about.

“Thought so.” Tony was smiling, she could tell. “We're meeting Warden Pugh and a team of investigators in the prison library at ten. You could meet us there, give us your insights.”

“I'll be there,” Charlie said. “Did you get any sleep at all?”

“They set up some cots. Crane, Kaminsky, and I took turns sacking out. What about you? No trouble with Hughes?”

“No, no trouble,” Charlie answered. In fact, she was looking right at “Hughes.” She was in the kitchen, talking on the landline because her cell phone was sleeping with the fishes, and he'd just walked in from the living room, where he'd been watching more of the escape coverage on TV. Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned a broad shoulder against the refrigerator and frowned as he listened to her. “I'll see you at ten. Bye.”