End of the Road (Ghost Stories Trilogy #1) (23 page)

Chapter Fifty-One

ELENA

Two reporters, one I
recognized from the local news and each with a cameraman in tow, approached us.
We tried to make a run for the car, but they stepped in between us.

“I don’t have a comment!”
I blurted out.

“Come on Elena, don’t
even talk to them,” Eric said and grabbed my hand.

“Ms. Hernandez, people
want to hear it from you. What happened?” A microphone was shoved into my face
and I took a step back.

‘Hey, she said no
comment.” Eric moved in front of me and pushed the microphone aside. He still
held my hand and guided us to a waiting SUV with the brown and gold Yavapai
County Sheriff’s logo on its sides while O’Reilly escorted my parents to
another vehicle.

“I can take care of myself,
Eric,” I said when we were secure inside the vehicle. The tinted windows gave
me privacy from the journalists and I let out a slow exhale. Before Eric could
respond, I cut him off. “I appreciate your help though. It’s nice to know you
still have my back.”

“Yeah, well, I was just
following orders.”

The abrasiveness of his tone
caught me off guard and I examined him out of the corner of my eye. He stared
straight ahead past Thompson and out the windshield. He didn’t even glance in
my direction.

“Are you pissed at me or
something?” I asked.

“No, not exactly.” He
finally turned his head and looked at me. “We need to talk later. Not in front
of these guys.” He indicated to our colleagues in the front seats.

“Shit Eric, you and
Hernandez don’t hold back when you argue at the station...or at crime scenes,”
O’Reilly said.

“I don’t want to argue
with her.”

“Oh, I gotcha man,”
Charlie said with a wink.

I kicked the back of his
seat, but succeeded in only hitting the metal mesh barricade that separated the
front seats from the back and he chuckled. “Knock it off O’Reilly. I may have
just gotten out of the hospital, but I can still kick your ass.” This comment
set him off even more.

Truth is Charlie was such
a big guy so his ass was an easy target, but kicking it was another story. I’ve
dropped men who weighed two hundred pounds and O’Reilly made them look tiny. He
was used to our banter so I could talk smack towards him and not suffer any
repercussions. I’ve seen suspects try to resist arrest and wind up on the
opposite end of O’Reilly’s fist. The outcome wasn’t pretty and very unsettling.
He had more than one assault charge against him, but none of them stuck.

O’Reilly calmed down
after a few minutes. I leaned back and closed my eyes. I was asleep before we
were on I-17 and heading north.

The slowing of the car
woke me up and I stretched. “Are we in Prescott?” I asked.

     “No, we’re approaching
where the fire was and traffic is backed up.”

I leaned forward and peered
out the tinted window. Cars were parked along the side of the interstate,
creating a bottleneck. People were milling about like they were in a parking
lot, not on a major highway.

We inched past a news van
and a white shuttle bus with a navy blue and orange logo that read ‘Christian
Church of the Southwest’.

“I saw the news this
morning and everyone who had been called in to help hold people back,” I said
to Eric.

“Yeah, it’s pretty nuts. The
captain called everybody in.” Captain Sanders was Lieutenant Adams’ superior
and head of the entire Law Enforcement Services Division for the Sheriff’s
Office.

“Wow, but not you guys? I
asked.

 “Nope. You’re our
responsibility today.” He turned to look out the tinted window.

 “I had a very
interesting visitor at the hospital last night - someone else who has had an
unusual experience up here.”

“Really?” He turned to
face me. “Who?”

I was getting ready to
tell him when something caught my eye. A gap in the crowd revealed a group
about fifty feet away from the highway, by a burnt skeleton of a tree. I
recognized the news reporter and the man standing near her. It was the guy in
the blue and white bowling shirt. I couldn’t believe my luck.

“Stop the car!” I ordered
and reached for the door handle before Thompson had a chance to step on the
brakes. We were going so slow I didn’t care. The door wouldn’t open. Frustrated
I pulled on the handle and pushed with my shoulder against the window. It still
didn’t budge.

“Elena, you’re in a squad
car, remember?” Eric said.

“Oh, right. Shit,” I
laughed at my stupidity. “O’Reilly can you let me out, please?”

“Nope, we have orders
that we’re not to stop.”

“Please?”

He didn’t say anything
and stared straight ahead out the windshield.

“What if I get Jenn, that
cute dispatcher you like, to go on a date with you?” O’Reilly’s big block head
turned a little bit in my direction and I knew I had his attention. “She owes
me a favor.”

“Done!” O’Reilly was out
of the car, moving faster than seemed possible for his size, and my door
opened.

“Elena, where are you
going?” Eric called after me as I disappeared into the crowd. It didn’t take
long for him to catch up and I was winded from my brief sprint.

“The guy who rescued me
is here. I saw him,” I explained as we walked.

“Where, who?”

I pointed at the group by
the tree. “The camera guy?” Eric asked.

“No, that guy wearing the
bowling shirt. He’s standing behind the reporter…Heather whatever her name is.”

Eric slowed to stop and
grabbed onto my arm. “Elena, there isn’t anyone there who matches that
description.”

“You might not be able to
see him, but I can. He’s a ghost.”

Poor Eric’s face went
slack and his grip loosened on my arm, so I started walking again. Mariella
gave me the insight and explanation I needed. Eric was going to need some more
convincing.

“I know it sounds
ridiculous, but you yourself said that what you witnessed yesterday couldn’t be
explained. Ghosts, Eric, are the only logical answer.”

“Ghosts and logic don’t
belong in the same sentence,” he said, catching up to me again.

“Trust me on this, okay?”

He didn’t say anything,
which was his standard non-committal response. I was surprised he didn’t try
harder to keep me from talking to the ghosts, especially with the media right
there. Maybe he was genuinely curious. I know I sure as hell was.

Chapter Fifty-Two

FRANK

I couldn’t believe it.
The woman I had found unconscious on the ground, flames licking at the bottoms
of her boots, was walking towards us and staring at me. Not through me, but at
me. When I scooped her off the ground yesterday, she briefly regained
consciousness and her dark eyes fixed on mine just as they were now.

She broke contact and focused
on our group circling the reporter. The supposed psychic woman was unable to
see us, but this female police officer certainly could.

“Peggy, do you remember
her?”

“Of course, Frank. It
happened only yesterday.”

Peggy had used the last
of her energy to lift the police woman’s shoulder off the ground, enabling me
to position my arms underneath her. When I was alive, any strenuous physical
effort like that would have resulted in a back injury. Fortunately, I was able
to get the woman out of the fire’s way before my energy fizzled out.

When I rejoined Peggy,
there wasn’t anyone else to rescue, so we met up with the others at the
clearing. They were all faded, the outline of their forms barely detectable in
the daylight.

In total, we rescued
seven people who had succumbed to smoke or flames. We jumped in out of instinct
carried over from when we were alive and we didn’t think about the attention
our actions could bring.

***

ELENA

“Excuse me, but who are
you?” Heather, the reporter asked me.

“I’m not here to talk to
you,” I answered, unable to take my eyes off of the man who rescued me. He
couldn’t stop staring at me either.

Heather looked at her
cameraman and then the woman standing next to her. “We’re the only one’s here.”

“No you’re not.”

“She must be talking
about Juanita,” the other woman interjected. Hearing this name caused me to
break eye contact.

“What do you know about Juanita?”
I asked, turning to face her.

“I know she rescued you.”

The laugh was out before
I could stop it, but then I realized this woman knew who I was.

“And who are you?”

“Lucinda Moonstone. I’m a
psychic and you’re the police officer from the news video. I never forget a
face,” she said smugly. She held her hand out to me and I shook the clammy,
limp offering once before letting go.

“Lucinda, I saw who saved
me and it wasn’t Juanita. In fact, a man saved me.”

She seemed surprised and
then embarrassed, her ruddy cheeks flushing a deeper red. “He’s standing right
there.” I pointed. Lucinda spun around to her right.

“Where?” she asked and
looked back at me, her round face twisted up in confusion.

Heather shoved her
microphone in between us and the cameraman closed in. The scrutiny of the
camera lens, a giant unblinking eye, zeroed in on me and I began to regret my
impulsiveness.

At that moment Eric interfered.
He must have seen my deer in the headlights expression and I certainly wasn’t
able to form a coherent answer with the camera inches from my face.

“Please excuse her, she
was just released from the hospital and still isn’t one hundred percent.” Eric
grabbed my hand and started to extricate me from the situation.

“Wait, I haven’t thanked
him yet,” I whispered forcefully to Eric and tried to pull away.

“You can thank him later,
come on,” Eric wouldn’t release me and I couldn’t break free. The cameraman
moved around us, capturing our tug of war on tape.

I sought the man out and
he was still watching me. “What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Frank. Frank Murphy,” he
said, and he grew more visible. I blinked with surprise at the change. He had
short, dark brown hair, which was combed back. A bulge from a pack of
cigarettes filled out the pocket on his shirt.

“Thanks for saving me
Frank, I’ll be back.”

The psychic and reporter
huddled together, whispering, occasionally glancing in my direction while the
cameraman struggled with replacing the battery pack on his camera, muttering
curses under his breath.

“Let’s go Elena,” Eric
said through clenched teeth and tugged on my hand again. This time I let him
lead me. I had confirmed Frank existed and the news captured the whole crazy
scene. It was time to leave before the reporter started asking any more questions.
I had already, unintentionally, given her enough footage to feed off of for a
while.

We started to walk away
and Heather ran after us, as quickly as her high heels in the sand allowed. Her
voice bounced with her movement when she called out for us to stop. Eric
pressed on, but I did glance over my shoulder. Heather was a few steps behind
and her cameraman followed, keeping the camera focused on our retreat.

“Let us through,” Eric
ordered the deputy who was guarding the barricade. The deputy quickly grabbed
and lifted the end of the orange and white construction barricade. The moment a
gap was wide enough for us to pass through, Eric led us to the other side.

“Wait!” Heather yelled
again. The crowd began to close in around us, incited by the reporter’s presence.
I squeezed Eric’s hand in a Kung-Fu death grip for the closeness of the crowd
made it hard to breathe, triggering memories of yesterday’s smoke and flames. He
bulldozed his way through the throngs of people and I kept my head down
allowing him to lead. Finally the crowd thinned out and I let go of Eric’s hand
and walked beside him. O’Reilly was leaning against the SUV, his bulging arms
crossed over his broad chest when we approached.

“What the fuck was that
all about?” he asked and opened the door for me.

“Oh, just me stirring up shit
again,” I winked at him as I slid into the back seat.

“Shit is right. That’s
exactly what Adams is going to do when he sees the news later,” Eric said when
he got in the car on the other side. He slammed his door for emphasis. “Elena,
do you have any idea how crazy you looked?”

“What? There are ghosts
out there. Ghosts. One of them saved me and I’m not going to ignore the fact. I
know it’s hard to comprehend, but is it really? I mean, people claim to see
spirits. It’s not like I’m the first.”

“Wait, what?” O’Reilly
turned around in his seat to face us. Thompson shook his head and made a
clucking noise with his tongue before turning the key in the ignition.
“Hernandez, were you talking to ghosts?” O’Reilly asked.

“Yes I was. I thanked the
man who rescued me.”

“Oh man, you’re right Wilcox,
Adams is going to shit.”

Thompson started to pull
out onto the highway when I glanced out the window and jumped. Frank was
standing right on the other side. He was transparent and the movement of the
crowd behind him created a weird flickering effect.

“Stop!” I ordered and for
the second time that day, Thompson slammed on the brakes.

“What the fuck is it
now?” he snapped.

I tried to roll my window
down, but, like the door earlier, it didn’t open. “Thompson, can you please
roll my window down?”

Once he did, I leaned out,
but hissed and pulled my arm back in after it came in contact with the metal window
frame, which had been soaking up the scorching sun. Frank moved closer and bent
over so he was eye level with me.

“Hello Frank,” I said.

“Hello Officer. I didn’t
catch your name?”

“Elena Hernandez.”

“That other woman, the psychic,
she can’t see us, but you can.”

“I know. There are a lot
of frauds out there. You know you’re ghosts, right?”

Frank nodded. “Can you
help us?”

“Help you, how?”

“Who is she talking to?”
I heard O’Reilly ask Eric.

“Thompson, step on it!” was
his answer. The car jerked forward as tires skidded on sand before finding
traction on the asphalt. Hot dust blew in through the open window, obscuring my
view of Frank. I coughed and waved the cloud away, but we were already close to
a half mile up the highway and Frank was nowhere to be seen.

“What is your problem?” I
glared at Eric. “Frank helped me and he was asking me to help him. It’s the
right thing to do.”

“Who’s Frank?”

“The ghost who rescued
me.”

“You do realize you were
talking to nothing and looked absolutely crazy.”

“None of you could see
Frank? He was right outside the car.”

“Nope, nada, nothing,”
O’Reilly said. “Are you sure you should have been discharged from the
hospital?” I smacked the mesh behind his head rest.

The rest of the drive was
silent. Eric had a bad habit of calling me, or my actions, crazy. He was all
adoring and concerned in the hospital. How quick he was to revert back to his
usual self. I gazed out the window at the passing landscape of scorched earth
and charred plant life, which faded into a patchwork of dust brown and green
cow pastures the closer we got to Prescott. Maybe my decision to march in front
of a news camera wasn’t the best move, but as a police officer, my instinct to
solve the unknown was strong and I had been close to getting some answers.