Her Last Whisper Read online

  “Dr. Stone?” Pugh persevered.

  “I, uh, dropped my purse.” She started gathering up the closest of her scattered belongings—a lipstick, a pen, her incense—with her free hand even as she continued to pour out a thick line of shimmery salt with the other.

  “I … see.” Pugh’s tone made it clear that he didn’t. At all.

  “At a guess, I’d say he’s thinking you’re a few French fries short of a Happy Meal,” Michael said. The continued raspiness of his voice worried her. His face was tight. One leg moved restlessly until it was bent at the knee and then stretched out again.

  “Are you feeling … quite well, Dr. Stone?” Pugh asked. “Dr. Creason has apparently fainted in the infirmary, as did a trustee. We’re investigating the possibility of some kind of gas leak, or perhaps an accidental exposure to a medication.” He was blinking more frequently than was normal as he watched her, which she knew from her training indicated increased anxiety. And no wonder: Charlie felt an almost hysterical urge to laugh as she realized how bizarre her actions must appear. Now would definitely be the time to stop with the salt, she thought, only she couldn’t. “You were just with him. Is it possible that you were exposed as well?”

  Charlie replied to the part that had given her a fresh thrill of alarm: “Dr. Creason fainted? How—is he?”

  Possessed? Unpossessed? Evil? Not? was what she wanted to know, but she could ask none of that. Just considering the possibilities made her mouth go dry.

  “He’s being evaluated right now.” Pugh’s expression was troubled as he watched her. It was impossible, she was discovering, to shake salt out onto a floor discreetly. “What I’d like to do is escort you back to the infirmary so that you can be evaluated, too.”

  The sudden soothing quality in his voice told her that he had, indeed, decided that her Happy Meal was lacking. In the meantime, fear that the hunter might return before the salt was in place had her pulse pounding in her ears and her stomach twisting into a pretzel.

  “You can go ahead and admit anytime that you were wrong about coming back to work so soon.” The grating undertone to Michael’s satiric drawl caused her to shoot him the quickest, most furtive of worried looks. “I won’t say I told you so, I promise.”

  “I’m fine,” Charlie told Pugh firmly, while still (discreetly) shaking out salt. She finished closing the salt circle, and said a silent Thank you, God as she sank back on her heels and put the lid back on the canister.

  “That’ll convince him,” Michael said. “Just so you’re aware, to most people, pouring salt on the floor probably doesn’t equal fine.”

  “Dr. Stone.” Pugh sounded unhappy. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist. I—”

  “Charlie?”

  The interruption was welcome. The voice was even more so. Head whipping around so fast that she nearly gave herself whiplash, she beheld Tony Bartoli looming in the doorway behind the warden. Johnson and the Hazmat team were visible behind them—drawn, she guessed, by the commotion, which she could only hope they would assume had resulted from her dropped purse—and even as she glanced in their direction more guards came running up

  “Warden!” one of them cried, drawing Pugh’s attention. Pugh turned away to speak to the guards, although he remained in full view, framed by the doorway.

  “Tony!” Her surprised greeting blended genuine enthusiasm with relief. Here was an ally just when she needed one most.

  He stepped past the warden, stopping just inside her office, which placed him only a few feet away.

  “Are you kidding me?” Michael groaned, closing his eyes after taking one look at the newcomer. “Him again? This day just keeps getting better and better.”

  Special Agent Tony Bartoli was six-one, lean, tanned, not quite as gorgeous as Michael (honestly, who was?) but handsome enough to make most any woman sit up and take notice. Thirty-five years old, with short, well-groomed black hair and coffee brown eyes, he was as impeccably dressed as usual, in a charcoal suit, white shirt, and red power tie. Quite apart from being the guy with whom she had been kinda/sorta trying to form a real, lasting human (as opposed to an impossible, insane, ghostly) relationship, she liked him. A lot. More to the point, he was from the Special Circumstances Division out of Quantico. The division that investigated serial killers. In other words, he was a highly competent, armed federal agent, just the kind of man she wanted in her corner when things started going south (like now). Having him here made her feel instantly safer. She’d assisted him and his team with their last two investigations and, in fact, had turned down repeated offers of a permanent job with them to return to her research project here at Wallens Ridge. She’d told Tony no largely, she saw now, because all she had wanted after dealing with the horrors of an active serial killer investigation was to go crawling back into the shelter of her safe research cocoon.

  Despite her ability to see the newly, violently created among them, ghosts had been absent from her life for more than a year before she had encountered Michael, and that was because she had deliberately arranged things that way. She still had been using her expertise on serial killers for the greater good, but the serial killers she had dealt with on a regular basis were caged, chained, and closely guarded prisoners.

  After years of screwing it up, she’d finally gotten her life just the way she wanted it: under control.

  She had her home in Big Stone Gap; she had her job at Wallens Ridge. In the carefully constructed environment she had created for herself, she’d felt secure.

  Then Michael had died despite her attempt to save him, and Tony had showed up asking for her help in catching the Boardwalk Killer, and between the two of them all her painstaking efforts to build a peaceful life for herself had gone straight to hell.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, and ignored Michael’s muttered, “I’ll give you three guesses.”

  “Would you believe I just happened to be in the neighborhood?” Tony replied with a glimmer of humor.

  “No,” she answered, giving Tony a level look as she got to her feet. Her chest was tight with anxiety and her heart still beat uncomfortably fast, but with the salt down and the horseshoe tucked into her waistband she had done everything she could.

  So breathe.

  At her less-than-encouraging response, Tony gave her a rueful smile. He had such a nice smile, she reflected. Sweet and charming and masculine, all at the same time. The kind of smile that should make her go all soft and warm inside. Charlie wanted to think that the reason it didn’t was because she was shaking in her sensible shoes at the possibility that an invisible, murderous monster could launch a second attack at any moment, but she knew perfectly well that wasn’t it.

  You have issues, girlfriend, she told herself severely.

  “I am glad to see you.” Tony lowered his voice. “Way more glad than I should be, probably. I missed you.”

  “Uh-huh. Go on,” she replied with the air of one waiting for the other shoe to drop, while Michael gritted out through teeth that appeared to be clenched with a fresh spasm of pain, “It’s been all of two fucking weeks. Guy needs a life.”

  Reflecting how unfair it was that Tony thought they were having a private conversation—Pugh still being occupied in talking to the guards—while she was acutely conscious of Michael looking sardonic, on his back practically beneath her feet, she resolutely kept her attention on Tony. His eyes slid over her, warm with appreciation. They had the almost certainly unintended consequence of making her acutely aware that her hands were full of her canister of salt and the items she had picked up, which in turn reminded her of how much danger she and Michael were facing and how little Tony knew about what really went on in her life. Which was part of the reason why her and Tony’s relationship wasn’t evolving quite as well as she had hoped. The other part of the reason was six-foot-three and dead, but she wasn’t going there.

  Anyway, the last time she’d seen Tony she’d been a day away from being released from the hospital after her nea
r drowning, and he’d stopped by her room to tell her he was leaving because he’d been summoned to appear in court in New York to testify in a case and had to go. He’d kissed her good-bye, a surprisingly thorough kiss that had brought Michael, who’d been sprawled out in the chair beside her bed, to his feet with a growl. Since then, she’d talked to Tony twice on the phone, and he’d sent the roses. As far as she’d known, he was still in New York, and she hadn’t expected to see him again for quite a while.

  “You’re right, I’m here on business,” Tony admitted, and Charlie nodded even as her heart sank. She didn’t say anything else because she really didn’t want to know. Business for them could only mean one thing: a serial killer.

  Truth was, she’d had her fill of serial killers.

  “I know you haven’t had much time to recover,” Tony said, “but I need your help. That’s why I’m here.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I see.” Charlie’s voice was flat. She was already formulating a regretful-sounding way of saying no.

  “Bullshit.” Michael gave a derisive snort. “Like you’re the only serial killer expert in the damned country? Dudley”—as in Dudley Do-Right, which was what Michael had taken to mockingly calling Tony after the valiant (and inept) Canadian Mountie—“has got a major case of the hots for you, buttercup. That’s why he’s here.”

  For a nanosecond her eyes slid in Michael’s direction. Other than narrowing them threateningly at him, she ignored his contribution to the conversation as Tony continued with a touch of apology: “I called to tell you I was on my way, but it went straight to voice mail.”

  “I haven’t had my phone with me all afternoon.” She’d left it in her desk while she’d conducted the interview with Spivey.

  “I guessed that.” Tony’s eyes seemed to probe hers. Keeping her agitation hidden from Tony, who knew her in a way Pugh and the guards did not, was difficult, and she wasn’t sure how well she was succeeding. Catching herself biting her lower lip, she immediately stopped. Her compulsive glances around the room, though, were something she just couldn’t help.

  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.