Her Last Whisper (7 page)

Oh, God, how would she explain her actions if the hunter attacked again while Tony and the rest of them were in a position to watch? If she threw the horseshoe or launched herself at it as she had before, she would end up in a padded room somewhere.

On the other hand, leaving Michael to battle it alone was not an option.

Please God let the hunter not come back
.

Nervous shivers coursed over her skin from just thinking about it. She was the one who broke eye contact with Tony, ostensibly to look down among the debris on the floor for her phone, but really to keep him from reading anything in her eyes she didn’t want him to know.

“Is everything okay?” Tony asked quietly. Since she was carefully not looking at him, she didn’t see his frown. Instead she heard it in his voice. She
was
behaving oddly, she acknowledged with resignation, and Tony was well enough acquainted with her to pick up on it.

“Yes, of course.” She cast him a fleeting glance just in time to watch his gaze slide down to the floor. His expression turned speculative, and she knew that he was indeed taking in the full glory of the circle of salt.

Feeling more than slightly self-conscious about the line of white crystals that curved just inches in front of her toes, she sought and failed to find a reasonable explanation for it. At the same time, knowing Tony wasn’t looking at her, she gave in to the impulse to cast yet another swift, veiled look around the room: still no sign of anything otherworldly except Michael, thank God. The relief she’d felt upon seeing Tony had disappeared as she realized that in the situation in which she currently found herself there was absolutely nothing he could do to help. He investigated/apprehended/shot bad guys. He had no power over things that went bump in the night. Like hunters. Or spirits, evil or otherwise.

He did know, to some small degree, about her ability to see the dead, which she had used to aid his investigations. He didn’t know anything like the full extent of what she experienced, or (God forbid!) anything about Michael.

Michael definitely knew about him, though. About how much she liked him. About their kisses. About how close she had come to sleeping with him.

Which absolutely would have happened already if it hadn’t been for her own personal thing that went bump in the night.

Tony said, “You seem …” He hesitated, and she suspected that he was searching for a tactful way to put it. “… distracted.”

“You got to give it to Dudley—the dude’s perceptive.” Michael’s sarcasm earned him another narrow-eyed glance. His eyes were open, but his lips were drawn back from his teeth in a way that once again made her think that he was experiencing an attack of severe pain. Her insides curled in sympathy, a reaction that was made worse by the knowledge that there was nothing she could do to help him. Treating injured ghosts was way outside her wheelhouse. Hard on the heels of that thought came another: what would she do if he didn’t recover within a reasonable period of time? What would she do if he didn’t recover at all?

Ghosts couldn’t die—duh!—but she was pretty sure that being sucked into Spookville was only one of many terrible fates that could befall them. Trouble was, never having had a pet ghost before, she wasn’t sure exactly what those fates were. She did know, devoutly, that she didn’t want to find out.

One problem at a time: for however long Michael was stuck in her office, she was stuck there, too. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—leave him, not even briefly, not to go to the infirmary at Pugh’s behest or anywhere (like, say, the ladies’ room) else. She’d been warned that if they were separated by more than about fifty feet, a vortex could open and he could get sucked away just like that, no hunter involvement necessary.

Don’t panic
.

“I’m looking for my phone,” she told Tony. “It was in my purse, but everything scattered when I dropped it.”

At least she was being partially truthful: she
was
scanning the floor for her phone. At the same time, she was also keeping an anxious eye on the space around them, and on Michael. Every instinct she possessed screamed that she needed to get him out of her office
and away from the prison as quickly as possible, but as he still seemed to be almost completely incapacitated there wasn’t much she could do. The last thing she was worried about at the moment was a missed phone call, but checking her phone gave her a ready-made excuse to stay right where she was. Pretty soon either Tony or Pugh was going to want her to accompany them somewhere, and when she wouldn’t they were going to wonder why she was refusing to leave her office. Since her brain was apparently in a fear-induced fog it was good to delay having to come up with a reasonable-sounding excuse for as long as possible, and hunting for her phone/checking her messages provided just such a delay. When she spotted her phone poking out from under her purse she didn’t know whether to feel glad or sorry, but she picked it up, which required a little more time-eating maneuvering—she had to snag her purse first, then dump the items she was carrying into it. Bending to retrieve it gave her a chance to mouth a worried “How are you feeling?” at Michael. He answered with a tight-lipped, “Just peachy keen,” which besides being obviously untrue didn’t provide any helpful information. Her gaze swept him: his eyes were half-closed; the white lines on either side of his mouth came, she thought, from his jaw being clenched so hard. Lying on his back with one knee bent he looked as rigid as if he had been carved from wood.

Not good signs
.

She certainly couldn’t carry him; she couldn’t even touch him. Once again she reminded herself,
There is nothing you can do
. That hard truth set her nerves to jumping all over again. Taking a deep, hopefully calming (hah!) breath, she looked down at her phone and saw that there were two missed calls. One from Tony, and a slightly earlier one from Special Agent Lena Kaminsky, a member of Tony’s three-person team. Like Tony, Kaminsky had left a message.

Attention caught by that, she frowned at Tony. “Kaminsky called me.”

“Sugar Buns?” Michael’s eyes flickered with interest. He was, she was glad to see, beginning to experimentally flex his broad shoulders; both legs were now bent at the knee. Progress? She hoped. Sugar Buns was his nickname for Kaminsky. It never failed to irritate Charlie, which, she knew, was at least one reason he continued
to use it. “Since when is she a member of the Charlie Stone fan club?”

Michael might be irritating, but he had a point. A call to her cell from prickly Kaminsky, whom she definitely wasn’t on just-phoned-for-a-chat terms, was nothing if not unexpected.

“She told me she called you,” Tony said. “Here’s the thing: her sister’s disappeared. Kaminsky thinks she might have run afoul of a serial killer.”

“What?” She looked at Tony with shock. Lena Kaminsky was not a friend, exactly. As Michael had pointed out, Kaminsky wasn’t even a fan of the expertise that Dr. Charlotte Stone, renowned serial killer expert, brought to the investigative table. Raised a Scientologist, Kaminsky didn’t believe in psychiatry, for starters. From the beginning she’d made it clear that she was deeply skeptical of every insight Charlie provided the team. Add to that her suspicion of Charlie’s occasionally unaccountable behavior (for which Michael and the whole spectrum of the spirit world could largely be thanked) and her disapproval of Charlie’s budding friendship (?) with Tony, and their relationship, as the saying went, was complicated. Still, they’d nearly been killed together during their last serial killer hunt, which had had the upside of forging some pretty strong bonds between them. In any case, Charlie could definitely sympathize with Kaminsky over this. She felt cold all over.

“So the first thing Dudley thinks to do is come running straight for you,” Michael said with disgust. Charlie tried not to watch too obviously as, grimacing, he managed to sit up. It cost him a lot of effort, she could tell. She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as he succeeded, then felt a renewal of worry as he sat there on the floor with his arms resting on his bent knees and his head hanging, as if that small action had sapped every bit of his strength. She’d never known Michael to be anything but whipcord tough, so to see him like that was disconcerting. But still, the fact that he could sit up was a good thing. It was
definitely
progress. She felt a spurt of hope.

Maybe they would make it out of there before the hunter came back, after all.

She asked Tony, “Are you saying her sister’s been
murdered
?”

“She’s disappeared,” Tony repeated, clarifying, “No body’s been found. That’s one reason Kaminsky’s so frantic: she’s hoping her sister’s still alive and we can locate her in time to save her life.”

“Oh, God.” What Charlie’s every instinct urged her to do was clap her hands over her ears and not listen to another word. The last thing she wanted, the last thing she needed, was to be drawn into another life or death search for a serial killer.

“Not your problem,” Michael intoned without lifting his head.

He’s right
, she told herself. But her fingers tightened around her phone.

Tony continued, “Apparently the two of them were together in Vegas on vacation.”

“See there, Sugar Buns took a vacation, and she wasn’t the one who flat-lined.” Michael lifted his head at last. His eyes were still eerily black, but the lines around his mouth had relaxed a little and his jaw was not so tight. Except for the ashen cast to his skin, and those disconcerting obsidian eyes, he looked almost back to normal. “Good to know
somebody’s
got her priorities in order.”

Charlie kept (most of) her attention focused on Tony. “So what makes Kaminsky think her sister is the victim of a serial killer?”

“Listen to her message,” Tony recommended.

There was no longer any way to try to avoid the true purpose behind his visit. Throat tightening, Charlie said, “You—
she
—wants me to help find this guy, right?”

“Let’s see, didn’t you almost die the last time you got mixed up with Dudley and the gang?” Michael’s voice had acquired a real edge. “So I’d say your answer needs to be ‘a big thanks for thinking of me, but stupid really isn’t my middle name.’ ”

“I came to see if I could take you to Vegas with me,” Tony admitted. “Tonight. The plane’s waiting at Lonesome Pine Airport right now.” Something in her face must have told him that she wasn’t exactly jumping for joy at the prospect, because he added, “I know it’s a lot to ask.”

“Ya think?” Michael demanded savagely, those black eyes glittering as they fixed on Tony. “After you nearly got her killed the last time, jerkoff?” He shot a glance at Charlie. “Your answer’s
no
.”

Charlie ignored Michael, and pressed the button that allowed her to listen to the first of her cell phone messages.

“Goddamn it.” Michael’s attention had shifted to Charlie. “They were finding serial killers for a long time before they started dragging you into it.”

The phone beeped, and the message started to play.

“I need your help,” Kaminsky said without preamble. Her usually brisk voice was low and strained. “My sister’s missing. We’re in Las Vegas, at the Conquistador, and she didn’t come back to our room Saturday night. I thought maybe she met somebody, so I didn’t start getting really worried until Sunday night, when I called the police and got the local office involved. By Monday I was running the details of her disappearance through the FBI computer system. I got a match with three other women who vanished in Las Vegas over the past year. I did some more checking and there are actually seventeen over two years.
Seventeen
. Attractive young women who went out on the town and never came back. Some of them are officially listed as missing persons and some of them are in the police records as deadbeats who skipped out on their hotel bills and some of them popped up in the computer because they had round-trip tickets to Vegas and apparently never used the return part. There are so many similarities in the cases that I think we’re dealing with an active serial killer at work. I called Bartoli. He and Crane are coming.” Kaminsky’s voice wobbled. “Please come. I know I haven’t always been—” Her voice broke off. When it resumed it was fierce: “It doesn’t matter. I have to do everything I can to find her. She’s my
sister
.”

As Kaminsky clicked off, Charlie could feel the other woman’s anguish so strongly that it seemed to be seeping through her pores into her bloodstream. A large part of her
wanted
to rush to Kaminsky’s side just as fast as she could. But—

Charlie realized that the message had been loud enough to be overheard only when Michael growled, “I’d be crying my eyes out here, except she’s got the whole damned FBI to help her find her sister. She doesn’t need
you
.”

Having turned away from the guards, Pugh moved to stand beside
Tony. “Dr. Stone, I was told that you were the one who ordered the infirmary shut down.” He frowned at Charlie. “Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Charlie replied, trying to keep her attention focused on Pugh rather than letting it be diverted by Michael, who was planting his booted feet and bracing his hands on his blue-jeaned knees and giving every indication that he was preparing to try to stand. She was sure that, as the hunter’s prey, he was as conscious of their continued vulnerability as she was. Even if the salt worked, they couldn’t stay where they were forever. He knew they needed to leave her office, and the prison, as soon as possible. Best case scenario, before the damned thing came back.

But there was Michael. And the whole I-hear-disembodied-voices thing she had going on. And then there was her growing aversion to the idea of ever putting herself anywhere near an active serial killer again. Because, Charlie had discovered, she really, truly didn’t want to die. Once was enough: even though she didn’t remember much about it, what she had taken away from her recent near-death experience was the unshakable conviction that she never wanted it to happen again. Eternity was something she just wasn’t ready for.