The Cursed

by Heather Graham

  But the Fed didn’t leave, and it finally occurred to Machete that Hannah O’Brien ran a bed-and-breakfast. The Fed wasn’t leaving. He was staying.

  As a guest, of course.

  Then Machete began to wonder.

  Was he just staying as a guest? Or was something else going on?

  The thought made his stomach churn. Buff stud, beautiful woman.

  He told himself that meant nothing. She couldn’t be falling for that agent. She loved music and art and books, and he...

  He probably loved steroids and boxing matches and punching bags.

  They couldn’t possibly be together. In truth, Machete would rather have her dead than with the Fed.

  Than with anyone.

  His phone vibrated, and he quickly answered. It could only be one person, and he braced himself.

  “Do you have it?”

  “Not yet. I told you it wouldn’t be easy.”

  “Are you still in the house?”

  “No. I had to get out. She was on her way back.”

  “Go back in. One good thing—the guests are gone.”

  “No, there’s a new one.”

  Wolf was silent for a long moment. Machete could almost feel the other man’s anger.

  “The Fed?”

  “Yes.”

  Machete was afraid the Wolf was going to tell him to go back inside anyway. He imagined himself waiting until they went to bed, then quietly entering the house, slipping up the stairs and then up to the attic. But it was an old house, and old houses creaked. The Fed would hear him.

  New scenario number one.

  Kill the Fed before he could wake up.

  New scenario number two. Hannah woke up first, went to the attic to investigate the noise, opened her mouth to scream...

  And he had to kill her to silence her. By then the Fed might have heard anyway, and he would follow her up. Machete would have to try to kill the Fed before the Fed could kill him.

  Back to scenario number one. Just kill the Fed first.

  No matter what he did, chances were that he would have to kill someone, and that would blow everything all to hell. Crime scene tape would cover the whole house. They wouldn’t get back in for weeks.

  “Watch them. They’ll have to leave again at some point. The second they’re out of that house, get your ass back in there. Keep searching. If the attic doesn’t pan out, try her room. I want that key—and I want the Santa Elinora treasure. They’re both in that house somewhere—they have to be—and you’re going to find them.”

  Machete let out a sigh he hoped the Wolf didn’t hear.

  Reprieved! Tonight, he wouldn’t have to kill.

  Or be killed.

  7

  Somehow Hannah managed to set the tray on the table without spilling or breaking anything. Somehow she managed to sit before her knees buckled and she fell flat.

  He saw them! Agent Hardass saw ghosts.

  “I’m so sorry,” she managed to murmur after a moment. “I, uh, hadn’t seen you all at the same time yet. There was no way to introduce you.”

  Melody looked at Hannah. “Agent Samson is quite gifted. He spoke to us when we had no idea he could even see us—caught us a bit unaware.”

  “Really?” Hannah said. She stared at Dallas Samson. “I must say, he’s caught me a bit unaware, too.”

  “Hmm, I don’t think I was surprised by any of you,” Dallas said, but there was something warm in his eyes when he looked at her.

  She still felt stunned. Although she wasn’t at all sure why. Her cousin Kelsey was one of the most dedicated law-enforcement officers she’d ever met. Kelsey had the intelligence to be scared at times—but she was steadfast when she was solving a case. And though Hannah hadn’t met Kelsey’s team members yet, she’d talked to her cousin often enough to know they were intelligent, savvy people—who also happened to see ghosts...like Dallas, apparently.

  “What disturbs me,” Hagen said, looking gravely at Dallas and Melody from where he stood by the mantel, “is that Melody and I cannot help you. We were not here when it happened. We did not see anything.”

  “You’re wrong. You can be of tremendous help,” Dallas told them.

  “How?” Melody asked.

  “You can watch over the house,” Dallas said.

  Melody looked at Hagen. “We should have thought of that and returned earlier. I am so sorry. We were just very...upset, you know.”

  “I deserved it,” Hannah admitted. “I know you two, and I should have realized you would never play such a cruel joke.”

  Dallas stared at Hannah incredulously. “Seriously, you accused these two of playing a trick? Still...” He turned to Hagen and Melody. “She was upset and obviously not thinking clearly. So how about you all just forgive each other now, okay?”

  “Absolutely,” Hagen said. “And we will do everything we can to help now.”

  “I am so, so sorry,” Hannah said to the ghostly couple. She felt a soft touch on the back of her hand, as if a breeze were passing over her skin. Melody was trying to pat Hannah’s hand in comfort.

  “We love you, Hannah. You know that,” Melody said.

  “Good, then. We’re all settled,” Dallas said. “I’ll have that cup of tea now.”

  “I so wish I could join you,” Melody said, and she sighed wistfully. “I used to love tea.”

  “And I used to love a good whiskey,” Hagen said with a grin.

  Hannah wasn’t surprised that Dallas took his tea clear. She topped off her own cup with milk and two teaspoons of sugar. As she sipped, Hagen asked Dallas, “What else? There has to be more that we can do. We are always overhearing people, and we have heard vague rumors about this Los Lobos organization you were telling us about, but honestly, we have not seen anything.”

  “You don’t know how important it is for you to keep an eye on this house,” Dallas said. “And on Hannah,” he added quietly.

  Hannah wanted to protest. She had a hard time believing she was really in danger. But he was giving Melody and Hagen a chance to feel needed, so she kept quiet.

  “Of course we will keep an eye on the house,” Hagen said. “We would never have left you if we had thought you were in danger.”

  “I know, and I appreciate that,” Hannah said. She was suddenly exhausted. She’d been up since the wee hours, and it had been a day of extremes. It had begun with screaming and chaos, and segued into the pain of finding the dead man, followed by the shock of meeting his ghost, and now she had a Federal agent staying in her house.

  And at that moment, she realized, she was glad he was there.

  She stood up abruptly. “Thank you all, but I’m about to keel over, so I’m going to bed.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Dallas said. “I’ll be up a bit later, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Make yourself at home,” she told him. As she walked toward the stairs, she realized with renewed astonishment that he was going to spend more time talking with Melody and Hagen.

  She wanted to turn around and demand to know how the hell he was able to see and speak with the dead so easily. She knew other people—especially in her small, tight circle of friends—who could do it. But to most of the world it would seem bizarre.

  So where and how the hell and why had he come to be one of the few people in the world who had the strange ability?

  She could still hear the low drone of voices downstairs when she reached her door. She wanted to know what they were saying.

  But she was falling asleep standing up. She headed into her bedroom, washed her face and brushed her teeth, then donned a large nightshirt, fell into bed and, before she knew it, was asleep.

  * * *

  “So you believe this killer thinks Hannah knows something?”
Hagen asked. “If that is true, I understand why you are worried. From the little I have heard about Los Lobos, crossing them can be dangerous.”

  “I don’t know exactly why I’m worried, I just am. There are too many little things that the killer could put together and come up with the wrong answer. A couple who were staying here saw Jose Rodriguez just before he died,” Dallas told him. “Hannah herself found the body. And there’s no alarm system here, so it would be easy for anyone to get in and hurt her. One bright spot is that she has family coming tomorrow. A cousin, I think.”

  “I hope it is Kelsey,” Melody said, pleased.

  “We know her. She sees us, too,” Hagen told him.

  “That’s excellent,” Dallas said, then hesitated. He wondered how many other people in Hannah’s circle could communicate with ghosts and whether they’d been born with the ability. He hadn’t learned to see the dead until he’d been older and no longer living in Key West. “Forgive me for asking, but, I’d like to hear it in your own words. Melody, how did...?”

  “How did I die?” she asked, then glanced at Hagen with pain in her eyes. Even so many years later, the memory clearly still hurt.

  “I kept going down to the sea,” she said. “Just as the legends say. One day I walked out into the water, because I could have sworn I saw a boat.”

  “And if you had seen a boat and I had been on it...well, there would have been real irony. You would have been dead before I ever could have reached the shore,” Hagen said roughly.

  She nodded. “But,” she reminded him, “you cannot imagine how I felt. Losing my father and you in one night...life was unbearable.”

  “We think that might be why we are still here,” Hagen said.

  “You think God sees what Melody did as suicide?” Dallas asked.

  Hagen shrugged.

  Dallas leaned forward. “I don’t believe that for a minute,” he said. “God, however one defines him, isn’t cruel. Life is what can be cruel. What we do to one another can be cruel. Perhaps you’re here to have a chance to be together now as you couldn’t be in life. Or to help right a wrong or save a life when the time comes.”

  Melody rose and sat by him. He didn’t feel cold, as he would have expected. Instead, he felt a surprising warmth. She touched his knee, and he felt it like a shift in the air.

  “Thank you,” she said, then looked over at Hagen. “I was foolish, heartbroken, inconsolable and foolish. My poor Hagen. He might have saved my father and himself—if not for Valmont LaBruge.”

  “So that part of the story is true,” Dallas said.

  “People do not have all the details right, but yes,” Hagen said, and there was bitterness in his voice. “I had Ian—I had him! We had just reached the lifeboat my men were in and were climbing aboard when LaBruge actually rammed it and plunged into the water himself. I do not suppose the dead like me should be spiteful, but I was glad I got to see him go down. I think he wanted Ian dead so he could have both Melody and Ian’s fortune, but...I think he wanted something more that night, too. Maybe the treasure that was rumored to be on board the Wind and the Sea. I did not know then, and I still do not.”

  “You know, you may be right,” Melody said. “My father was not happy that I was in love with Hagen, but I was his only child and he doted on me after my mother’s death—afraid he’d lose me, too, I imagine. I do not think he would have liked to see me fall in love with anyone. LaBruge had spoken to my father about a match, but my father had never agreed to it.”

  “And you’ve never seen his spirit?” Dallas asked.

  “No, and I do not expect to,” Hagen said. “I saw him when he went down. I grant you, the storm was still raging. But the water turned black and created a whirlpool beneath him, and the wind howled. It was as if...” He paused and shrugged, as if feeling a little silly. Like a living person explaining a ghostly interaction. “It was as if hell-hounds were baying. I was dying myself, of course. But still, something of that stays with me. I do not expect to see him ever again.”

  “There is another piece to the story,” Melody said. “Before the ship set sail, a soldier was killed, one of the men guarding the room at the fort where they kept important papers and other things. Some people suspected Valmont LaBruge. But he was a rich man—a very rich man. And he had a lot of power in the town back then. But he died that night and, I firmly believe, went straight to hell, and the truth died with him.”

  Dallas frowned. “I guess LaBruge really was after that treasure chest. When he didn’t find it in the fort, he must have assumed it was on the ship.”

  “I will never understand how any thing could have been worth the lives of others,” Hagen said.

  “Sadly, history has shown that many men value things above human life,” Dallas told him. Then he rose and said, “It’s been a true pleasure to meet you. And you have my most sincere thanks for all the help I know you’ll give.”

  “We would do anything for Hannah,” Hagen said passionately. “We would die for her.”

  “Except that we are already dead,” Melody reminded him.

  “There is that,” Hagen admitted.

  “I understand the sentiment,” Dallas said. “Thank you.”

  He bade them good-night and headed up the stairs. As he entered Ian Chandler’s room, he wondered why the old merchant had never made an appearance. Then again, his body had been found, and he’d been given a Christian burial. Maybe that had made the difference.

  There was certainly no sense of the man or any other presence in the room. Dallas stripped down to his briefs and found that the bathroom was nicely supplied with travel-sized toiletries. His own place—a rental for now—wasn’t far away, just over in the Truman Annex, but he hadn’t wanted to leave Hannah. There was something about her and this house, though he couldn’t lay his finger on it. He was going to have to leave her at some point, of course, but he could ask Liam to keep an eye on her. And her cousin was coming, of course, though what good another young woman was going to do, he wasn’t sure.

  Safety in numbers, maybe?

  And yet, Jose Rodriguez had been with other people just before he was assaulted.

  Maybe the sketches made from Katie O’Hara’s descriptions would help them find the men who’d been with Jose the night of his murder.

  Dallas stared into the night. “I won’t let this go, buddy,” he said quietly. “I won’t drop it until I find the man who took your life.”

  He lay staring at the ceiling for a while. The drapes were closed, but light from the street still filtered in. He could even hear—faintly—the revelry going on down on Duval Street.

  There was something appealing about the room. The heavy furniture had sat in the house for years and years. It befit a wealthy merchant with a fleet of ships at his command.

  He began to drift off to sleep. As he did, he thought about the last time he’d lost a colleague in the field.

  Adrian Hall had been a good agent. Smart and talented, the best in her class at Quantico. Eventually they wound up being best friends with benefits, filling holes in each other’s lives without making difficult emotional demands. The relationship worked because they were both convinced they weren’t cut out for a long-term relationship, and they shared a desire to, silly as it sounded, save the world, or at least as many innocents as they could.

  They’d been trying to capture a serial rapist/murderer in Alabama. Adrian had gone undercover as a prostitute who was so desperate for money that she was willing to solicit tricks despite the fear pervading the streets. They’d been prepared. He’d been key man on the team, she’d been wearing a wire and carrying a tiny handgun in her garter belt, and they’d done everything right.

  And yet, in the blink of an eye, the killer had taken her. She’d never even had a chance to use the gun.

  Dallas had been barely a block away, hiding wit
h backup in the bushes. He’d gone running the second he heard the killer curse at finding the wire and call her a bitch cop. And he had found her, dead as Jose Rodriguez had been dead. She had bled out, her throat slit so savagely that she’d nearly been decapitated.

  He’d held her—held her dead body. There had been no goodbyes.

  But in the end he’d caught the bastard.

  Because she’d managed to leave a clue in her own blood, just as Jose had done.

  She had written three letters, too. W-I-L.

  There had been a William on their suspect list. Dallas had caught him two nights later, about to slit the throat of another woman.

  There was no trial. Dallas followed the rule book to the letter. He gave the guy a warning. But when the bastard started moving his knife, Dallas fired. The intended victim had nearly died; she would have the scar for life to prove it. And William Warwich had died, just as he deserved to.

  Everyone said that Adrian would have been glad that they’d brought down the bastard who’d killed twelve women, that they had saved the next one—because of her.

  He didn’t care. She shouldn’t have died. She should have lived.

  But she had died. And she hadn’t come back.

  He lay in the darkness thinking about those who had been lost. He knew that loss came with the territory, but it was still hard to take. He knew he had signed on that line, as well, that he was willing to risk his own life. Somehow, that seemed different.

  He heard it the second his doorknob turned. He hadn’t bothered to lock it, since there were only the two of them in the house, and he’d gone over every possible point of entry with a fine-tooth comb to make sure it was as secure as possible. Still, he reached over to the night table for the regulation Glock he carried. He kept his Smith & Wesson—his backup weapon of choice—tucked in his briefcase at night.

  The door opened, and for a moment he saw Hannah O’Brien only as a dark silhouette created by the night lights in the hallway. Even in shadow, her hair seemed to shimmer. As his eyes adjusted and she came into focus, he found her somehow both appealing and vulnerable in bare feet and a long cotton T-shirt.