Her Last Whisper (6 page)

Ignoring that, she cast another panicky glance toward the door. “Where is it?”

“Fuck if I know,” he gritted. “I said, get behind the damned desk!”

“Not happening.” Just looking at him scared the daylights out of her, but there was no time to spare. She still could see no trace of the heat shimmer—the
hunter
—but what if it had just gone invisible, at least to her eyes? What if it was even now coming for Michael again?

She’d thrown her weapon away.

“Stay still!” she hissed at him, bolting for the horseshoe. As she ran right through where the hunter had been, her heart practically pounded its way out of her chest.

“Charlie—”
Clearly Michael couldn’t get up, because he sure was trying. His eyes were fastened on her.

“Don’t move!” Snatching up the horseshoe, she darted back. Flight was clearly out: Michael didn’t look like he was going anywhere any time soon. Fight didn’t seem all that promising, either, so she was going with Plan C: barricade them in. Having located her canister of salt, she dove for it. Seconds later, ignoring Michael’s curses and orders to get away from him, one end of the horseshoe tucked into her waistband so that it would be easy to grab, she was on her hands and knees frantically laying down a line of salt in a circle around them that, hopefully, the hunter couldn’t cross.

“You think
salt’s
going to keep that thing away?” Michael turned onto his back with a groan. “Jesus H. Christ, when I tell you to go, go! Are you
trying
to get yourself killed?”

“I don’t think it can kill me,” Charlie said cautiously, throwing another dread-filled look around. “And salt acts as a barrier for all kinds of supernatural beings. Anyway, do you have a better idea?”

No answer. She took that as a resounding
no
. He was gritting his teeth, clenching his fists—and looking around. After a moment in which he seemed to be warily examining every inch of space in the room, he said, “I’m thinking maybe it’s gone. If we’re lucky.”

His voice was hoarse and gravelly again and his lids were once more at half-mast, but at least he was there and making sense. Sending a quick message of thanks winging skyward that it was so, her movements a little awkward because of her bandaged hand, she continued pouring salt for all she was worth.

“Dr. Stone?” At the unexpected sound of Warden Pugh’s voice, Charlie nearly jumped out of her skin. Her head came up with a snap. Her eyes went wide as they sought and found him.

“Well, lookee who’s here.” Michael’s gaze found Pugh. “If it ain’t The Skunk.”

The Skunk—because, oh, ha ha, his name was Pugh—was what Michael called the warden.

Charlie didn’t respond to that with so much as a reproving look. Her eyes stayed fixed on Pugh. In his mid-fifties, average height, paunchy and balding, dressed in a rumpled suit with his tie askew, he had stopped short in what seemed to have been a headlong rush to her office. The beads of sweat on his forehead, the puce color of his face, even his still-swinging coattails, all screamed that he’d been moving fast seconds earlier.

Now, standing in the doorway where the hunter had so recently loomed, he peered over the tops of his rimless spectacles at her. Surprise—okay, maybe astonishment was a better word—was apparent in every line of his face.

Still on her knees, frozen in the act of shaking salt out onto the floor, Charlie returned the favor by gaping up at him.

“What are you doing?” Plainly taken aback, Pugh looked from her to the semi-circle of sparkling crystals that extended from a few inches in front of her knees around what was actually sprawled-out Michael but must appear to Pugh like an expanse of bare floor littered with the scattered contents of her purse. Fortunately she had only a little more than a yard to go before the barrier was complete. Even as she registered her audience, registered how inexplicable
what she was doing must appear, she went back to doing it, because she dared not stop: the hard truth was, they had no idea of where the hunter was, or if it would come back.

“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 near 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.”

“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.