The Ghost Had an Early Check-Out

by The Ghost Had an Early Check-Out (retail) (epub)

Perry felt for his inhaler, clicked, sucked.

  Calm down. He can’t hurt you. Just breathe.

  A floorboard creaked. He looked toward the doorway, and his heart nearly stopped.

  A black, burly shadow stood in the archway.

  He must have made some sound of alarm because the figure shifted, then seemed to settle into place. Decision made.

  A flashlight beam hit him squarely in the eyes.

  “Who…is…it?” Perry asked. He thought he knew. He clicked his inhaler again.

  “Why did you have to come here?” Enzo asked. “Why did you have to make yourself a part of it?”

  “Why…did you…have to…kill him?” Perry got out.

  “Because he wouldn’t stop! Because he was making Horace crazy. They made each other crazy. I told him not to come back. He wouldn’t listen. I told him.”

  “Horace…wanted him…back.”

  “Yes! He did. Because he’s nuts. I had to protect him from himself. He’d have been right back in the loony bin if I’d let that go ahead.”

  Does he have a gun?

  Keep him talking.

  The crazy thing was Perry couldn’t think of anything to ask. Terror seemed to have sped up his mental processes. He already knew why Enzo had been so terrified of the police hunting around the hotel. He knew why he had been upset that Horace had hired a private investigator. He even knew that when he took too long finding the projector, Horace had gone ahead and woken up Enzo—and when Enzo heard where Perry was going, he had raced to try and head him off. He knew that Enzo was going to try to kill him as soon as he ran out of questions.

  “Why…didn’t you…feed him…to alligator?” The inhaler was helping. It was a little easier to get his breath now. Or maybe that was the fight-or-flight response kicking in, because if he was going to survive, he would have to do one or both.

  “I thought of it. Maybe I should have. I didn’t want to have a man-eater on my hands, for Chrissake.”

  “Horace is going to…remember… he sent you after me,” Perry said.

  “I don’t think so. And so what if he does? I didn’t find you. Horace is used to people letting him down.” Enzo shrugged. “You won’t be the first who checked out early from this hotel.”

  All the while they were talking, the ravens continued to fly in and out, agitatedly circling the tower room in an attempt to protect their nests. Now one of them flew toward Enzo as he stood blocking the doorway.

  Enzo gasped and swung at the bird with his flashlight. Something heavy hit the floor.

  A gun? A knife?

  Perry scrambled for the door. The only way out was through Enzo, but Enzo instinctively dived for his weapon, leaving just enough space for Perry to slip through. Perry jumped the stairs and darted through the door into the hall. His legs felt like straw, and his lungs were laboring to get enough oxygen to fuel this mad dash to escape.

  He pounded down the hallway, thinking every moment now he would be shot. Instead, he heard Enzo thudding after him, and he knew Enzo either didn’t have a gun or was afraid to risk the sound of firing.

  He made it to the head of the stairs and half ran, half fell down the first flight. He was dizzy with the need for oxygen—he’d lost both his phone and inhaler when he’d leaped for the door—and dropped to his knees on the landing.

  Someone was coming up the stairs. A black shape loomed out of the gloom, towering over him. A hand like a boulder landed on his head, pushing him down, and Nick yelled, “Move a fucking muscle and I’ll kill you.”

  “It’s me,” Enzo cried. “Don’t shoot.”

  Perry wheezed, “It’s…him…”

  “I know it’s you,” Nick said, cold and steady. “One more step and you’re dead.”

  Enzo stopped. Something metal clanged on the step. He began to cry.

  * * * * *

  “How did you know?” Perry asked.

  It was seven o’clock on Monday morning, and they were sitting in the middle of workday traffic as they made their way home from Angel’s Rest. Stop-and-going past pumpkins smashed on the roadside and bedraggled black and orange streamers. Halloween was over. Back to real life, and thank God for that.

  Perry was still wrapped in Nick’s jacket. He was sipping Starbucks hot chocolate and holding his inhaler, but he was fine. A little pale, a little shadowy-eyed, a little disreputable-looking under the blond stubble, but fine. Alive and well. Older and wiser.

  Every time Nick thought of him making that trip through the deserted east wing and up to the tower, he felt like someone punched him in the heart. That had been too fucking close. But at the same time, he was awed by Perry’s sheer guts. And not for the first time. He had to have been scared out of his wits, but somehow he’d kept it together.

  “Process of elimination,” Nick said. “Horace clearly believed Troy was haunting him. The Nevins weren’t killers, or Horace would have been dead long ago. Duke and the girl were too young to be involved. Wynne only moved back West ten years ago. And Gilda the Great had no motive that I could see. That left Enzo.”

  Perry swallowed. “Thank you for coming for me.” He sounded uncharacteristically subdued. As much as Nick wanted him to be more cautious in the future, he didn’t like that squashed note in Perry’s voice.

  “I’ll always come for you,” he said.

  Perry blushed and then offered that half-shy smile. “I’ll always come for you too,” he said mischievously, and it took Nick an astonished second to get the joke.

  “What do you think will happen to them?” Perry asked after another mile or two of poking along past disheveled witches and windblown ghosts posted in front yards.

  “I think Enzo will go to jail for whatever’s left of his life. I think Sissy and Jonah will also go to jail.”

  “That was clever how Sissy hid her typewriter in that refurbished sewing table.”

  “What was really clever was Marin finding it. I think Duke will probably get off with probation. And I think Horace will relent and let him and the Savitri girl continue to live there.”

  “Really?” Perry asked in surprise.

  Nick shrugged. “I have no idea.” He threw Perry a sideways look. “What did Horace whisper to you before we left?”

  Perry bit his lip.

  “What?” Nick pressed.

  “He said, ‘One day, not too far in the future, my boy, this will all be yours.’”

  “What?”

  At Nick’s look of horror, Perry began to laugh.

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  Josh Lanyon is the author of over sixty titles of classic Male/Male fiction featuring twisty mystery, kickass adventure and unapologetic man-on-man romance.

  Her work has been translated into eleven languages. The FBI thriller Fair Game was the first male/male title to be published by Harlequin Mondadori, the largest romance publisher in Italy. Stranger on the Shore (Harper Collins Italia) was the first M/M title to be published in print. In 2016 Fatal Shadows placed #5 in Japan’s annual Boy Love novel list (the first and only title by a foreign author to place). The Adrien English Series was awarded All Time Favorite Male Male Couple in the 2nd Annual contest held by the 20,000+ Goodreads M/M Group. Josh is an Eppie Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist (twice for Gay Mystery), an Edgar nominee and the first ever recipient of the Goodreads Favorite M/M Author Lifetime Achievement award.

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