Sometimes objects appear to move in slow motion in times of stress, of panic. And the sight of the vehicle hurtling toward her made her brain freeze.
The impact of Smith’s shoulder against her side sent her flying across the asphalt, her rear hitting the pavement. With the jolt, her breath burst out with a squeak as the sedan flew past, tires squealing as the driver applied the brakes.
Cilla had a flash of disbelief. Surely, they hadn’t just tried to run them over? Surely that was a lousy movie scene, something that didn’t happen in real life.
“Move!” Smith was scrambling next to her. “They’re coming back.”
Cilla saw the sedan hooking a u turn at the far end of the alley. She stumbled to her feet, realizing they couldn’t outrun the car. In this madness, this incredible ludicrous moment, she was growing coldly logical.
The car accelerated in their direction and Cilla saw the absurdity of their position. They couldn’t make it to the mouth of the alleyway before the car, and if they clung to the sides of the alley, they might get squashed like a bug between the car bumper and the old bricks.
“Run!” She yelled, realizing they hadn’t a choice. There was no way to go but forward. She was a step ahead of Smith when she felt the heat of the car. In a flash in her peripheral vision, she saw a side door to one of the buildings pop open as though an unseen hand had seized the knob and yanked. She dove into the darkened interior a half second before she heard Smith bound in behind her. She lost her balance, going down on the cool tiled floor as the roar of the car rushing past burst into the room with a cloud of exhaust and dust. She felt Smith fall against her with a moan.
“Smith?” She could hear the engine retreating, but she scrambled to her feet and slammed the door to the alley, shutting out most of the light and sound. “We can’t stay here. What if they come back? What if they come after us?” Her heartbeat was pounding so loudly, she feared she wouldn’t hear approaching footfalls outside.
“I know,” Smith said tightly, his voice strained. “Give me a second.”
Cilla turned and stared at him in the dim light. She could only see the outline of his reclining body in the dim interior, and she wasn’t going to try to switch on any lights. They had fallen in an empty office building, the larger room cut up in cubicles, each containing an identical computer, telephone, and keyboard on a built-in desk.
“What’s wrong?” She realized that Smith was moving slowly, a moan escaping deep in his throat.
“Are you hurt?”
“My arm. I think I broke it,” he replied, finally moving into a sitting position.
Cilla bit off an expletive. “I’m sorry, but we’ve got to get out of here.”
“I know,” Smith said between clinched teeth.
Cilla leaned over, carefully taking his good arm, and with some difficulty, managed to help him from the floor.
“This way,” she panted, taking a right down a hallway and toward the front door of the office building. “I don’t want to be in an empty building if they come back. We need witnesses.”
“Should we call the cops?”
“As soon as we get somewhere with people,” Cilla replied. She kept her arm around Smith, avoiding his damaged limb which he cradled with his good arm.
“There,” Cilla said, nodding to the glass door at the front of the shop. A simple bolt lock secured the door to the frame, and Cilla flipped it with her free hand.
They emerged on the sidewalk next to a row of small shops with a variety of goods in the window. Cilla was uncomfortably aware of how close they were to the alley, and how far they were from her car.
“Let’s go in here,” Cilla said after getting a good look at Smith’s face. He was looking grey, the color leached from his face, and she realized he must be in a lot of pain. They edged into a used books and music store, barely noticing the twenty something girl perched on the stool, flicking through images on her cell phone. There were another several patrons flipping through albums or meandering among shelves.
“You sit down,” Cilla told Smith as soon as they found a chair propped up next to one of the reading tables. “I’m calling the police.”
Cilla had remained with Smith for an hour before the pain medication took the edge off and she felt confident enough to leave him alone. He was conscious but comfortable, and the break, while bad, wouldn’t require surgery.
Cilla was pleased at how much Smith had recalled of their attacker. He had recognized the color, make, and model of the car, but neither of them had been able to summon any part of the license plate number. Cilla wondered if it hadn’t been obscured in some way. She couldn’t remember a single digit of the plate.
The police were polite but not at all convinced the car had been targeting them specifically. And when Cilla had told them of the building door left open, she had recognized a glint of skepticism in the older officer’s eye.
This was not the first time she had been met with that expression, and she promptly asked for Officer Talbot. They were told he was not available, but Cilla was determined she would speak to him about this.
Cilla was happy to see her Aunt home when she arrived. She needed the serenity, the peace of some company that grasped her and her gift.
“Sit,” her aunt commanded as soon as she came into the kitchen.
Cilla dropped into the seat, her head in her hands.
“Tea or coffee?”
“Tea please,” Cilla responded on a groan.
“Smith settled in alright? I told you to bring him here.”
“He preferred to be home,” Cilla answered. “And I told him you wanted him to come. He said he would try to be over tomorrow.”
“Are you all right?”
Cilla had given her aunt an abbreviated version of the day’s events over the phone from the hospital as Smith was getting his arm set.
“A few bumps and bruises.”
She watched Aunt Prissy turn up the fire underneath the old pot and pull out a tin containing her own hand made tea bags. Who knew what concoction might be in the innocent white pouches?
They were silent as the water heated, and when her aunt returned to the table, she had two cups in her hands.
“Tell me,” Aunt Prissy said, her blue eyes intense on Cilla’s face.
“This has gotten out of hand. I swear, if that door hadn’t opened, we would have been struck by the car.” Cilla smoothed her fingers over the warm porcelain. “I think we’re in over our heads with this one.”
“You said you were going to talk to your police officer friend?”
“We will have a meeting tomorrow,” Cilla agreed. “But I don’t know how much help it will be.” She took a sip of the hot brew. “We touched on a nerve, but we’re still no closer to figuring out what happened to Brandon.” She sat the cup down.
“You said the door to the office opened on its own,” her aunt responded, her attention drawn back to the earlier statement.
“Yes. It was closed when we walked into the alley. I would have noticed if it was open. I watched it swing in.”
“And there was no one at the door?”
Cilla blinked. Her aunt seemed to have gotten caught up on a detail, and she couldn’t say why.
“No. There was no one.”
“Who do you think opened the door?”
Cilla felt a breath catch in her chest. This was it. This was the question she had worried about. This was what she was dreading. How to explain that her spiritual connection wasn’t always a haunt looking for a resolution? That sometimes, some shades were there for another reason.
“I don’t know for sure,” Cilla replied quietly.
“Could it be that the man you saw murdered, that perhaps he hasn’t moved on?”
Cilla drew in a breath. This was something she hadn’t considered. She had thought, she had just assumed…
“Brandon?” she asked.
“Perhaps you have been asking the right questions, but to the wrong person,” Aunt Prissy said mild
ly, taking a sip of her tea.
Cilla was uneasy on her walk to the office, but it had nothing to do with the cold. She had Fargo with her, and in any hand to hand combat, he would be an advantage. He was fast, strong, and loyal. No, no one would try to confront her with the dog at her side.
She kept that in her mind as she increased her pace, and by the time she was at her office door, she was jogging. She used her key to get in, and then closed the door and locked it behind her. She didn’t have any appointments, and she had insisted Smith stay home for the day. The pain medication, while lessening the issues with his arm, had made him so dizzy he was having a problem keeping on his feet. She couldn’t have him getting hurt anymore. He agreed to do some work from home, but she honestly felt like she needed to reconsider how they were going about their investigation. They had hit a nerve somewhere along the way, whether it was when they attempted to go to the office and disturb Mr. Moss, which would have been an astonishingly quick backlash from the old man, or prying into the history of the building. She didn’t know what had precipitated the car to come careening out of nowhere on its mission to run them down, but she knew it was something to do with what they had been working on.
And now? The cat was out of the proverbial bag, and she suspected if they gave up on the investigation, they would be left alone. No, they had opened a can of worms, and now they were going to have to deal with it.
She had made it to the head of the stairs when the prickly feeling came over her. Something was wrong. The dog froze in his tracks, his head ducking, ears pricked at attention. Their office door was open.
There was a rattle from within, and Cilla started backing away from the open doorway. She had reached out to grab the rail bolted to the wall when Fargo pulled free and went barreling into the office. He was fast and quiet, and Cilla couldn’t seize the trailing leash.
“Fargo, what are you doing here?”
She recognized the mellow voice and the accent, and her shoulders sagged with relief. Her emotion was short lived because as soon as she walked in the door, the surrounding destruction made her physically ill.
“Oh, my,” her words failed her as Paxton stood from his crouch next to the dog.
“Don’t touch anything,” he commanded. “I’ve called the police. They have a car on the way.”
Cilla looked around her, her mouth in a tight line. The contents of both desks and the filing cabinet appeared to be disgorged onto the surrounding floor. The desktops themselves were completely empty, and Cilla’s frantic gaze couldn’t find the top of the line and therefore very expensive computers she and Smith used for their business.
“Oh, no,” she said faintly, “no, no, no.” Her hands came up to her face, feeling her icy fingers against her cheeks. All their work. All their money. All their research. The office had been the heart of the company, and now it lay in shreds around her feet.
She felt Paxton’s arm around her before she recognized he had moved. He gripped her tightly as though he expected she might collapse, and she had to force herself not to shake off the support. He meant well. It wasn’t his fault she was prickly.
“Come on,” he spoke gently. “Let’s wait downstairs.”
She let him draw her numbly down the stairs, half aware that the dog was proceeding them. They stopped in the tiny anteroom. The office on the first floor had recently been leased to a lawyer, his diploma so new the ink was likely damp. He hadn’t arrived yet for the day, and they sank into the two chairs in the little waiting room outside his office.
“How?” Cilla’s lips felt numb. “How did you get in?”
“I went to see Smith this morning. He wanted me to get his computer, so he could do some work from home. He gave me the key.” He held up the keyring, the iconic symbol of the band ‘Kiss’ dangling from his fingers. “The place was locked up. But I obviously wasn’t the first person to get into there.”
Cilla let her chin drop to her chest, taking slow and easy breaths.
“They took everything, didn’t they?”
“All the electronics,” Paxton agreed, “but that’s why you have insurance.”
“Insurance,” Cilla said dully. “It will cover the computer, but what about all the work?” She felt helpless tears crowd her eyes and blinked furiously. She wasn’t going to cry. Not now, and not in front of this man.
“Smith said before he had all his work stored in a cloud server. I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t have done the same for your computer. It probably automatically saves periodically.”
Cilla looked blindly at the floor. That was true. She sometimes forgot about how sophisticated their business had become. It was all digital now, and the files were likely to be floating around in the ether, just waiting to be pulled back down.
“But why?” she said softy.
“Smith told me about yesterday,” Paxton replied, his voice low, a subdued song.
“Banner day,” she retorted grimly. “We’ve sure managed to stir something up.”
“Then you believe this all has to do with Brandon’s death?”
“Of course,” Cilla hesitated a beat, her hands fisting in her lap. “It all started when we agreed to take the job. We were there in the office when he died. I felt him when he died,” her voice had become tight and she had to swallow the emotion.
“You felt his spirit?”
She hazarded a glance up at him and nodded mutely.
“We as much as witnessed his death,” Cilla admitted after a moment. “If we had been a few minutes earlier, we would have seen his killer.”
“And likely been another notch in the body count,” Paxton replied grimly.
The quick knock on the front door had Cilla jumping, and she frowned and sent Paxton a look.
“No hocus pocus, no spirits, we talk about the facts,” she warned him as she stood to let in the police.
Chapter Fifteen
Third time was not a charm. At least not when talking to the police. It didn’t make them view Cilla as a reasonable witness. If anything, she worried they might be looking at her with more suspicion.
When she and Paxton had given their statements, she realized her morning was gone, as was most of the afternoon. Now she stood on the sidewalk outside the building with Fargo at her side, frozen with indecision. The office would be cleared by the police the following day, and she supposed she should be prepared for several hours of hard work to put the place back in order. And she would need Smith to help replace the equipment. She was just glad that some of his pricer ghost hunting gear was still locked in the car.
“I,” she looked at Paxton, his deep blue eyes shadowed by the brim of his hat. “I guess I’m going to go home. I need to think about all of this. Decide what I want to do next.” She had lost some of her bravado, some of her confidence. Her office wasn’t her safe place anymore, and she was running out of time.
“May I accompany you?”
She slanted a look at him. He confused her. He was irritating and charming, overbearing and just a little dangerous, she thought. But she needed help, and with Smith out of the picture for at least the day, she needed someone she could talk to.
“Sure,” she said, but her voice held a note of reluctance. “I imagine my aunt and uncle will be home. I need to tell them about the office.” She pictured her aunt’s reaction when she told her about the break in. They were already getting worried about her. This wasn’t going to help.
She had walked about a half block with him at her side when he finally spoke up.
“You walked to work?”
She realized the cause of his confusion and smiled almost unwillingly. “I live close,” she explained. “That was one reason we took this place. We knew the neighborhood, and we got a cut on the rent. The man that owns the building has worked with my uncle for years.”
“Then you live with your uncle?”
She nodded, almost to herself. “My parents moved to Florida awhile back. I moved in with my aunt and uncle when I was finis
hing school, and I just haven’t moved away. I help around the house, and I pitch in for bills.” If he thought there was anything strange about her living with family at her age, he wasn’t going to comment. She was glad about that. With her strange mood, she was likely to get fired up pretty easily, and she didn’t want to lose her temper.
“Sounds like you have a good situation.”
Cilla nodded. It was good. Her aunt and uncle let her have a lot of freedom, but they were there for her if she needed them. And her parents were a phone call away.
“I almost forgot,” he said, changing the subject. “I did find an interesting connection to the business you mentioned.”
“Moss?”
“Yes. There was a rumor that before Brandon bought the property, there was an offer on it. It wasn’t substantial, but the bank had to consider it. I couldn’t find any documentation to back it up, but the man I spoke to at the realty agency said it was a representative of Bicor. Bicor is a subsidiary of Moss Industries.”
Cilla felt a prickle of alarm slid up her arms. There was a connection.
“There is no way that Mr. Moskov is going to talk to us,” Cilla replied thoughtfully. “And considering someone just tried to run us down and broke into our office, we have kicked up something that someone wants to cover up.”
“Then you believe you were attacked to try to drive you away from Moss?”
“The car was deliberately trying to scare us. Whether or not they would have run us down, I can’t say. But they wanted us out of the way, and the only reason I could come up with was related to Moss.”
They walked on in silence, the breeze blowing, chilling the air. Cilla glanced at the dog next to her and saw he was looking alert but happy, no doubt catching the scent of squirrels in the air.
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