Dangerous To Love

by Toni Anderson, Barbara Freethy, Dee Davis, Leslie A. Kelly, Cynthia Eden, J. Kenner, Meli Raine, Gwen Hernandez, Pamela Clare, Rachel Grant

  Not that they were rude, God, no, they’d all been wonderful. More warm and considerate toward her than most people around here were these days—except for Walter and his family. But it was clear they thought he had wasted a year of his life on regret. Julia Harrington, who might talk to ghosts but was also incredibly charming and down-to-earth, seemed especially appreciative that Lexie had drawn Aidan back into the “land of the living” as she called it.

  Huh. Guess she’d know.

  “So have you found out what Chief Dudley Do-Wrong did with the bones?” asked Mick Tanner, the guy who’d had Aidan’s back during the fight in the alley. With his broad grin, twinkling eyes, and flashing dimples, she suspected the sexy guy could be a wicked flirt. But he’d been nothing but cordial and professional with her. Maybe because Aidan had given him a hard, warning look when he’d taken Lexie’s hand in his own gloved one to shake it.

  But she could have imagined that. After all, Aidan had known her less than three days. They weren’t involved, had no claim on each other.

  Except in their dreams.

  “Lexie? The bones?” Mick prompted.

  “Oh, sorry. No, I don’t know what he did with them. That’s something Aidan and I were going to get to work on. I was thinking it would be worth having Walter call the DA’s office, filing a request for information. If Dunston gets some heat from them, he’ll have to come up with some kind of answer.”

  “Sure,” Mick replied, “as in, ‘Bones? What bones?’”

  Lexie shook her head thoughtfully, disagreeing. “Twenty-four hours ago, I might have believed that. But he’s in the hot seat now. The spotlight is shining bright and he’s going to play Mr. Good Cop at least as long as he thinks people in this town give a damn.”

  Olivia, who was as elegantly lovely as her boss, Julia, was flamboyantly sexy, cleared her throat. “Does your friend Walter know the medical examiner well? If he does get the remains, would he be open to allowing them to be . . . examined by anyone else?”

  Lexie didn’t know Olivia’s background, if she was a psychic like Aidan, or saw ghosts like Julia. Come to think of it, she didn’t know what kind of power Mick had, either. But she suspected Olivia was not asking because she had some kind of forensics background. The tension in her tight shoulders and the haunted shadow in her eyes said she didn’t want to examine those remains but that she had to.

  “Actually, yeah, they’re old friends. If he can pry those remains away from Dunston, I imagine he’d be willing to let you examine them, as long as he knows you have the credentials and reason to do so.”

  Olivia nodded once, then looked away, focusing her attention out the window at the passing Georgia countryside. They had left town, heading west on Old Terrytown Road, with marshy flatlands and abandoned rice fields all around them. It wasn’t a particularly pretty drive, nor a popular place to live these days. Which could explain the abandoned houses. Some of them had been empty shells for a year, some for a hundred. Either way, the remaining neighbors were few and far between.

  She couldn’t think of a better area to conduct meetings of a secretive club whose members had a predilection for teenage girls.

  “Here’s the mile marker,” Aidan said, slowing as they drew close to the spot Walter had told her about.

  They neared a mailbox that looked freshly painted and in use. Lexie studied the small name, and said, “Ah. Mr. McCurdy. He and Walter are old poker buddies. I’m sure he’s the anonymous source.”

  “So this is the place,” said Mick. “Why don’t you pull over and let me get out, take a walk around? Obviously not many bones were found, and a single human body has a lot of them. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

  Lucky enough to stumble over human remains on the side of a back country road. The thought was disturbing. But he was also right. “I should go, too. I know the area best.”

  Aidan met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Yes to Mick, no to you. He can tromp around along the side of the road; you and I have a house to look for. We’re going to drive up and back and see if we spot any old gravel roads, driveways, or paths, remember?” He shifted his attention to Julia, who sat beside her in the backseat. “Unless you have any other ideas, Julia?”

  She shook her head slowly, gazing down at her own lap. “I need to get out for a few minutes. Let me go with Mick.” Lifting her head, she said, “I, um, might be able to narrow down the location of this mystery house.”

  Lexie saw the way everyone else in the vehicle nodded, and realized they all thought the woman might be able to get a ghost to tell her where they should search. She still couldn’t wrap her head around it, but she also knew the other woman came across as competent, sharp, and, most important, sane.

  And like Aidan had said, how normal was it to have shared sex dreams? She’d gone so far as to accept Aidan’s psychic abilities as a simple truth; it shouldn’t be that difficult to accept what she was told about Julia.

  Only, of course, it was. Psychic stuff, even dreams, had at least some kind of scientific possibility. She knew much of the brain was a mystery to researchers, so it didn’t shock her to think it might be capable of a lot more than was accepted as fact. Someone who was able to tap into all that unused brainpower might indeed be able to see things others couldn’t or even into other people’s thoughts and dreams.

  But ghosts? That was a whole other story. That was life and death, heaven and hell and earth in the middle stuff. She had her faith, and her beliefs; they didn’t include wispy remnants of the dead hovering around the living.

  Not that she was rude enough to say such a thing to Julia’s face. Because, no matter what she thought, everyone else around her trusted and believed in the woman completely. Either that, or they just liked her enough to humor her.

  Aidan pulled onto the shoulder, waiting while Julia and Mick climbed out. Olivia appeared undecided for a moment, then joined them. “No sense putting it off,” the lovely blonde said with a stiff little smile. “If we find something suspicious, I’m the one who’ll be able to figure out if it’s part of a human body.”

  Okay, so maybe the woman did have a forensics background.

  “Lexie, why don’t you hop up front so you can get a better view?” Julia said as she stood outside the door. “You be the spotter.” She glanced at Aidan. “When I get some information, I’ll call you and try to narrow your search quadrant, okay?”

  “Understood.”

  “It’ll be dark soon,” Julia added.

  Lexie nodded in agreement. “We have no more than an hour of daylight left.”

  “Okay,” Aidan replied, “so let’s make the most of it.”

  Chapter Ten

  Saturday, 6:30 p.m.

  They started to arrive right on time.

  Mayor Lawton came first, then Underwood. More followed.

  Alone or in pairs, never in a group large enough to be noticed on the street, they’d smile at anyone passing by, then carefully make their way into a private side door of a building that was supposed to be closed for the weekend. The building, which provided office suites to a number of attorneys, investment types, and accountants, apparently also offered after-hours meeting space for some of its wealthy tenants.

  Chief Jack Dunston watched them from his window-front table at the restaurant directly across the street. He’d specifically requested the spot, because of this view. Spending a long time looking at the menu and ordering slowly, he’d spread out his meal as long as he could.

  Ignoring everyone else in the crowded place, which was popular with business lunch customers during the week and laughing young adults looking to hook up on Saturday nights, he took out a notepad and pencil and began jotting down names. He knew all of them by sight. Most he’d expected to be there. A few surprised him.

  What he didn’t know was how many more would show up, how they might know each other, and, most important, why they were here. Why did these men gather at this building the second Saturday of every month? Were they the mysteriou
s “club” his own officers sometimes talked about?

  “So, Chief, will that be it for the night? Would you like me to bring you your check?” his waitress asked, startling him into covering up his notes with his arm.

  “Uh, give me a little while, okay?” he said, offering her a big, aww-shucks smile. “I might want some dessert.”

  “You got it,” she said before sauntering away.

  He immediately peered out the window again, seeing two more men go through that door. Young and Wilhelm. He added their names to the list, which had grown to about twelve. Twelve men who he wouldn’t think had much in common, beyond being respected around these parts. What the newspaper owner and the bank manager had in common with teachers and administrators, he had no idea.

  One of them glanced around, his gaze falling on the front of this very place. Though he almost certainly couldn’t be seen through the window, Jack pulled back instinctively, not wanting them to know he was spying on them.

  Though he’d known about these meetings, he’d never given them a second thought. Jack had noticed the once-a-month pattern—no matter what anybody might think about him as a chief, he did pay attention. He’d seen some of the successful men of this town coming together at this place, on certain nights of the month, and then leaving together in a big rented van. He’d never questioned it, never asked them why. He’d certainly never spied on them before.

  But he had noticed.

  Just like he’d noticed how nervous and jittery they sometimes got, especially back when those articles had been published in the paper.

  Did he think some of the most respected men of Granville had anything to do with the disappearance of a bunch of Boro girls? Hell no. Not a chance. But he didn’t doubt they were up to something. He had the feeling they feared too much attention about those missing girls could cast a glimmer of light on whatever they were trying to hide in the shadows.

  Until now, he hadn’t really cared about being left out of the loop. Lately, though, it had started to bug him. Maybe because he’d been embarrassed, caught with his pants down in the paper and again at the game last night. Maybe because of the bruises on that reporter’s throat—the woman might be a pain in the ass, but she was only doing her job. And he sure didn’t want to think people were really getting attacked on the streets of Granville in broad daylight, no matter what neighborhood they were in.

  He was losing control of this town. And that he didn’t like most of all.

  No matter what anyone thought, and no matter how much he liked getting that wad of cash in his porch fridge, Jack Dunston would never ignore actual murder.

  That might not be related to this.

  But he suspected it was. Something was going on with those secretive men across the street. Something dark and ugly going on here in Granville. The small bag of bones locked inside his desk at the station told him that much. He’d let himself believe they didn’t—couldn’t possibly—belong to a human being. But he’d since begun to wonder.

  “So have you decided on dessert, Chief? The carrot cake is awful good!”

  Jack didn’t respond at first, merely watching as the big passenger van pulled into the parking lot across the street, just like always. He couldn’t see who was driving, but was able to make out a couple of shapes in the passenger seats, even before anyone from the building got in.

  He wondered who those shapes belonged to.

  The men began to emerge from the building, heading for the van. They were on the move, on schedule to leave right around seven p.m. Going to do whatever it was they did one Saturday a month.

  He could stay here and eat a piece of cake. Maybe feel the mayor out tomorrow, hint that he’d seen activity in the building and wonder aloud what was going on. Or he could be a cop and follow them.

  He thought of the cake. He thought of the cash.

  He thought of the bruises. He thought of the bones.

  Finally he said, “Tell you what, why don’t you wrap up a piece for me to take along. I just remembered, I have somewhere to be.”

  And, he thought, someone to be.

  Granville’s chief of police.

  Saturday, 7:15 p.m.

  It was full dark by the time they found the house.

  Aidan had driven Lexie up and down the Old Terrytown Road, pulling into a few overgrown, nearly forgotten driveways, checking out ruins that appeared to have been untouched by human hands for decades. There had been no recent tire tracks, no footprints, no signs of life. When they’d shone flashlights through the hanging doors or broken window frames, they’d seen rotting wood, half-fallen walls, nests left by wintering animals long since gone. The insides of the structures appeared far too flimsy and decayed to house any secret meetings.

  They had been about to give up, ready to go back and pick up the others, who were still searching for human remains in the reeds and woods, when his phone had signaled he had a text message. It had been Julia, with some advice from Morgan: Head back this way, go another quarter-mile from where you are now. The driveway is intentionally concealed by a downed tree.

  And they’d found it. Right where Julia’s ghostly friend had said they would.

  “I would never have even realized this place was back here,” Lexie whispered, visibly shaken.

  He had the feeling she hadn’t quite accepted Morgan’s existence. Now she was beginning to understand. The dead guy wasn’t always reliable, sometimes disappearing when Julia seemed to need him most. But whenever he came back, he always had excellent information. He was already two-for-two today.

  “The way that driveway is hidden, we never would have found it,” she added.

  “Which is exactly what they intended when they put that huge tree down.”

  It had been hollow. And easily moved, once he’d known to look for it.

  There were no “Private Property” or “No Trespassing” signs. Nor did any kind of fence or chain try to keep people out. The men who used this place didn’t want anyone thinking there was any property worth trespassing on deep in these woods, so they’d simply made all evidence of its existence disappear.

  “Who would ever have imagined this was back here?”

  This was an elegant old plantation house. The exterior almost fully intact, it stood about three hundred feet off the main road, behind a thick stand of thorny, dense trees, all decorated with tangles of Spanish moss as twisted and gray as an old terrorist’s beard.

  The two-storied structure, graced with columns and also with wide verandahs on both the bottom and top floors, had once been white. And it had once been beautiful.

  Time and neglect had dulled the house to a mottled gray—the color most resembling a corpse’s skin on this moonlit night. Moss and vines had encircled it in a thick, woodsy embrace. Runners clambered in all directions, climbing toward the sky, looking like veins pulsing with green blood.

  Though no longer conventionally beautiful, the place remained darkly stunning. Mesmerizing, in fact. Unnatural and mysterious, the old plantation had seemed to become one with the woods at some point over the past century, as if the Georgia earth had reclaimed the land on which it stood, and the old house along with it.

  Lexie said something else, but Aidan didn’t answer; he couldn’t. Because he had a hard time hearing her. His mind had opened up as soon as they’d rounded a curve and spied the house. The tension had grown exponentially when they’d driven past several small, decrepit buildings that he suspected had once served as slave quarters.

  Something in him had known, intuitively, that they’d found what they’d been seeking. The pounding in his head and the pressure in his chest couldn’t be denied. He wasn’t sure why yet, but already he felt this haunting place was tainted, so ripe with evil and ugliness, it might as well have come equipped with a poison sign.

  Poisoned earth.

  Knowing there was much to discover, he’d let the connection happen, anxious to learn any secrets hidden in this strange, desolate hideaway. Now, parked right outside the
front door, he heard a cacophony of whispers that lingered here, hanging in the air like the remnants of a woman’s perfume after she had passed through a room.

  There were so many voices. Dozens. Hundreds. Each sharing thoughts, moments, memories, emotions.

  None sounded like they were from today and he would bet anything not a single soul was currently inside that house. These thoughts and memories didn’t feel immediate; they were weeks, months, years, and centuries old.

  But they were still vivid. They hit him hard. Jerking back in the seat, he didn’t fight it. He kept his body relaxed and flowed with the sensations, knowing they weren’t his, weren’t personal, and couldn’t harm him physically. This wasn’t his version of reality; it belonged to countless other people who’d come to this place before him.

  His eyes dropping closed, his breathing became shallow and open-mouthed. He pushed back against the pressure, finally breaking free of it. Getting that flying sensation as his consciousness spewed up and over the entire area like a geyser, he began to search, seeking answers, or at least entrances into the past.

  Beside him, Lexie’s worry grew to something almost tangible, and he knew she was watching, fearful, wondering if she should do something. But he couldn’t tell her he was all right, couldn’t let her know this was his version of normal. He just had to ride it out.

  Feeling like he was being pummeled by tiny pebbles, he tried to evade the impressions that wouldn’t help him. He began to pick and choose the remnants, discarding the wispy, self-indulgent thoughts of Southern belles in their ball gowns, and the heartbreaking ones of the slaves who’d once worked the place. He ignored the smells of the fields and unwashed bodies, evaded the painful lash of the whip. Aidan didn’t let himself think about it or acknowledge just how doomed to darkness and suffering this genteel, lovely estate had been from the moment it had been conceived.