by H. P. Bayne
“I was a lot younger when we dug this,” he said. His eyes searched Dez’s, eyebrows lifted in a silent request.
“Uh-uh,” Dez said. “You did this, you deal with it.”
Hackman went back to it, shovel shifting the soil bit by bit.
Until, at last, Hackman stilled. Backed away.
The hole had grown too deep for Dez to see anything from his current position, so he moved closer for a look. There, down inside, was a flash of denim.
Cold crept over Dez, as if a blast of winter air had suddenly swept through the clearing. His gaze went to Hackman, whose eyes had grown large in a pale face, a sheen of sweat likely caused by more than exertion.
Hackman hoisted the shovel into a fighting position, his eyes darting around the area. “She’s here. Can you feel that? She’s here.”
“Can you see her?”
Hackman’s eyelids clamped shut. He dry-heaved once, but managed to avoid vomiting before answering Dez’s question. “I don’t want to see…. I don’t want to see.”
“You need to look.”
“I don’t have to. I know. You said you could help me. Did Sullivan tell you how?”
“I said I might be able to if we could give her what she wants. Like I told you, the first thing is to see to it the little guy gets the proper burial he deserves. And it might be she wants to see justice done. Lots of them do, apparently.” There was something else, of course, something he was itching to say out loud: maybe all Nora really wanted was revenge.
“What if what she really wants is me dead?” Hackman asked. “What do I do then?”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you did this.”
Hackman had yet to open his eyes. “We were kids. Dumb kids.”
“Not exactly. You were in your twenties.”
“We didn’t know what we were doing. We were scared. We just wanted to fix our stupid mistake. And we didn’t believe in ghosts. Who the hell thinks this sort of thing’s going to happen to them?”
That, right there, served as proof to Dez Hackman had learned nothing. A woman and her baby were dead, trapped somewhere in an endless limbo, his former best friend had met a lonely and likely terrifying end at the bottom of an old well, and his son was healing from a broken leg sustained after tangling with a ghost. And all Hackman could think about was what was happening to him.
“You believe in ghosts now. And she’s very aware of you too.” He couldn’t resist adding in a dig. “Too bad you put Sully through hell. Chances are he actually could have helped you.”
“Why can’t you help me?”
“Because I can’t see her. I can’t see the things he could. Open your eyes. Maybe you can.”
“No.”
“You’re not a four-year-old kid. Scary things don’t go away just because you don’t look at them. Open your eyes.”
Hackman edged one lid open. Just a crack at first, his pupil scanning the area. Then it stopped. Locked onto something just behind Dez’s left shoulder.
Both eyes flew open, their shape mirrored by that of his mouth, wide in a silent scream. Dez looked, too, but found nothing.
“What?” he demanded.
Hackman didn’t answer. Shovel in hand, he turned. Ran.
Dez tried to ignore the flash of ice cold that blew past him as he took off after the fleeing man. Something else seemed to catch Hackman first, sending him careening into the ground, shovel falling to the side and out of his hands.
Dez leapt, landing on the man’s back before he could regain his feet.
“Get off! Get off! Get off!”
“Calm down, Hackman. We’re going back to the road, and we’re going to the police. You need to put this to rights.”
“She’s here! Don’t you get that! She wants me dead! Let me go!”
Dez was larger, but not by much, and Hackman had the power of terror on his side. Dez had Hackman’s right arm in a twisting grip, but hadn’t counted on the man being either left-handed or ambidextrous. Hackman seized Dez’s leg, achieving a painful pressure-point hold that left Dez vulnerable to a takedown move by the other man. With Dez now flipped, Hackman followed up with a solid punch to his head, then another before Dez could get his hands up to block. Hackman rolled off him, and Dez fought to get his head clear as the other man moved for the shovel.
Dez had gained his hands and knees, was pushing to standing when he felt the pain of the first blow against his back. A second blow, against the back of his skull, dropped him fully back to the ground. Relying on instinct rather than deliberate thought, he rolled over—just in time to avoid another blow. Only it wasn’t a strike by the body of the shovel, but the sharp part of the blade he’d just avoided.
Hackman wasn’t trying to knock him out so he could escape.
He was trying to kill him.
Dez managed a backward shoulder roll, distancing himself from the enraged man and putting himself into a quick position to stand. Now facing Hackman, Dez barked out the question. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I spent thirty years sitting on this secret. It’s not leaving these woods, you hear me? You’re not leaving these woods.”
An inhuman howl bellowed from Hackman as he rushed Dez, shovel drawn back in a prepared strike. Dez braced himself, either for a grab at the wooden handle at the end of the sweep, or for the pain of contact if he failed.
Hackman swung left-handed, and Dez deked left, the shovel glancing off his shoulder. Dez grabbed for the handle, but missed as Hackman pulled it away, readying it for a second swing. Dez moved, inserting a little more distance between them.
Then he saw movement behind Hackman, a blur of blues and reds as someone sprang from the undergrowth and flew at the orderly. Wild, greying red hair gave away the identity of Dez’s backup as Rosie Dalton attached herself to Hackman’s back in a sleeper hold, legs wrapped tightly around his middle. Hackman dropped the shovel, hands clawing at her right arm in a bid to dislodge it from his windpipe. Unsuccessful, he spun, taking the two of them in a circle that might have appeared comical under any other circumstance.
“Calm down,” Rosie hollered. “This is my patented sleeper hold. Ain’t no one ever got out of it.”
Hackman moved backward, slamming Rosie back against a tree. Once. Twice. She gritted her teeth but held on, pinning Dez with a glare as he moved forward to help.
“Stay where you are, junior,” she ground out. “Don’t want you to get hurt.”
The idea of a six-and-a-half-foot tall, muscular man being warned away from a fight by a middle-aged woman might have seemed laughable to most. Dez knew better; he was seeing the evidence. Hackman was fading, eyes drifting shut as the arm-bar robbed him of oxygen. He dropped to his knees but, although she could have touched down with her booted feet, she kept her legs wrapped around him, riding him to the ground as he finally fell.
Seemingly satisfied, Rosie at last released Hackman, removing her belt and using it to bind his hands tightly behind his back.
“You’ll want to get him out of here fast,” she advised. “And not just because I don’t want anyone happening upon me or my place out here. I’ve tied the bastard tight enough he’ll lose use of his hands if he’s not released soon.”
“Thanks, Rosie. You really saved my ass.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Listen, police are going to be coming through here. If you don’t want to be seen, you should make yourself scarce.”
“Thanks for the warning. What’s the guy done? All I heard was him yelling something about guarding a secret and you not leaving these woods.”
“He and his buddy killed a woman and her baby thirty years back. It was an accident in her case, and I suspect criminal negligence with the baby. I managed to persuade him to show me where they buried the little guy.”
“What about the woman?”
“Tossed over a bridge. Given the Kimotan River currents, I doubt we’ll ever find her.”
“Unlikely. Good you found the b
aby at least.” She turned, gave Hackman a solid kick to the thigh. “There. A two-purpose kick. He’ll be limping too bad to pull any more stupid stunts.”
Dez grinned. “What’s the second purpose?”
Rosie smiled back. “Makes me feel better.”
Dez looked to his right at the sound of movement, spotted Sully and Pax crashing through the woods.
“Dez!”
“Relax, bro. Everything’s fine.”
Sully reached them, a little breathless from the run. “I heard yelling. Sounded like a fight.”
“It was. But Rosie’s a lifesaver. Good thing, too, ‘cuz you’re a little slow on the draw.”
“I was hoping you’d wait for us.”
“Speaking of ‘us,’ where’d you lose Lachlan?”
“He’s back there somewhere,” Sully said, head nodding back to the general area behind him. “I’ll go find him.”
Dez smirked. “I don’t know, man. He won’t thank you for ditching him.”
“Yeah, well, you were my priority.” Sully extended a hand to Rosie. “Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.”
“Anytime, kid. Lachlan? You don’t mean Lachlan Fields, by chance, do you?”
Dez exchanged a glance with his brother. “Uh, yeah. I know the two of you had a run-in a number of years back. Maybe you want to bail before he gets here.”
“Nah. I owe him an apology. Was never an opportunity before.”
Through the trees, the sound of grumbling and cursing came to Dez’s ears.
“Over here, Lachlan!” he called out.
“Where the hell’s ‘here’?”
“Keep moving forward. I can see you. Yeah, bit more to your right. See me waving?”
“I’m going to make it so you can’t ever wave again when I get over there.”
“Might be I could use your sleeper hold a second time,” Dez told Rosie.
Hackman was starting to stir when Lachlan closed the rest of the distance, so Sully made himself scarce, telling the others he and Pax would be back at the road.
Lachlan had Rosie fixed in a stare, narrowed eyes suggesting he wasn’t pleased to see her.
“You. I remember you.”
“I remember you too—although I don’t remember a whole lot else about that night, to be honest. Listen, I heard you were coming over here, so I just wanted to offer you an apology. I was in a bad place back then. I’m not a whole lot better off now, but I’m not looking to die anymore either. I figured if I went off on a cop, I’d end up with a bullet or two in me. The state I was in, that seemed ideal at the time. If I died, pain over. If I lived, at least I’d feel like I did some real penance over what happened in the ring. Problem was, you didn’t draw. Why not?”
Lachlan shrugged. “Never liked the idea of having to shoot a woman, I guess.”
“So you’d rather I strangled you to death?”
“Maybe I wasn’t in a good place either.”
Rosie extended a hand. To Dez’s surprise, Lachlan took it.
“It wasn’t personal,” she said. “And I am sorry.”
“Forget it. I have.”
Dez suspected Lachlan hadn’t, and would never, forget. But he wasn’t about to poke at his boss if he was in a generous mood. Those didn’t come around often.
Dez waited until Rosie left, then hauled the now-conscious Hackman to his feet.
“Untie me,” he demanded. “I can hardly feel my hands.”
“In good time,” Lachlan said. “Show me the grave first. Then I’ll call it in and you get the yahoo back to the road to wait for the police.”
“What about you?” Dez asked. “It might not be safe, you staying here alone with that ghost out there.”
“Thanks for your concern, Braddock, but I think she knows now who her real enemy is. I’ll be a lot safer than you’ll be, dragging that fool back to the road. Good work, by the way.”
Dez allowed himself a smile.
25
Sully stared at the front of the house, living room window alight as it overlooked the street. Dez and Eva’s home had an open floor plan, so he could see through into the kitchen where Eva, Kayleigh and Mara were cooking something together.
He heaved a sigh.
“You okay?”
He’d become lost in a memory, had momentarily forgotten where he was and that Dez was beside him.
“Fine,” Sully said.
“What’s going on? I thought you’d be chomping at the bit to get in there. I definitely am. They’re making meatloaf. You remember Eva’s meatloaf? It’s the best in the world.”
“I remember.”
“So why are we sitting here?”
Sully shrugged, led the way out of the car, careful to pull his hood up before he let Pax out of the backseat. But once standing next to the SUV, his mind flashed back to that moment, the last time he’d come here. It had been among the lowest moments of his life, and yet the best he’d had during those lonely two years.
“Sully?”
“I came here once at Christmas.”
“You came here a few times at Christmas.”
“I meant, that first year. When I was gone.”
Dez closed the distance between them. “You came here? When we thought you were dead?”
He nodded. “I needed to—I don’t know—be around you guys. But when I got here, and I saw all of you through the window, it wasn’t what I’d imagined. I thought it would be nice, comforting or something.”
“But it wasn’t.”
Sully shook his head. He didn’t explain further, couldn’t manage it around the lump in his throat.
With Dez, he didn’t have to. A large hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed. “Well, you don’t have to stand outside anymore.” Dez’s hand moved to his arm and tugged. “Come on. Kayleigh’s really excited to see you. And Pax, of course.”
Sully took one more deep breath and followed Dez to the door, then into the house.
A pounding of feet instantly greeted them as the seven-year-old rushed toward the door. Pax met her in the living room, insisting on being greeted first, and she obliged, wrapping her arms around his neck and scratching his ears.
Even as she was hugging the dog, her eyes drifted to the entryway, to the two men standing there. She gave her dad a big, toothy smile, but it faded as her gaze settled on Sully.
“Hood,” Dez reminded him.
Sully pulled it down. He’d bought some new jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt for tonight, had brushed out his hair and tucked it back into a low knot, and he’d trimmed his beard. He knew he looked different from the last time Kayleigh had seen him, and he wondered for a moment whether he was too different. She’d been just five when he’d last seen her. Two years was a lifetime to a kid. Did she even remember him as anything more than a face in photographs and a depressing topic of conversation?
Emotion snagged in his throat as her face broke into the biggest grin he’d ever seen on her face, tears forming in her eyes as she looked up into his. Then she was on the move, rushing him, not stopping until his waist was caught up in her vicelike hug.
Sully hugged her back as he released the breath he’d been holding, the sound of it one of emotion and relief. Dez patted him on the back and moved toward the kitchen. Pax had already headed that way, his keen nose picking up on the smell of food preparation, leaving Sully and Kayleigh alone.
Once she’d eased up enough he could pull away, he knelt in front of her. The last time he’d done that, they’d been more or less face to face. Now, he found he was looking up at her a little.
“You got so big,” he said.
“I’m probably going to end up as tall as Dad,” she said, rolling her eyes.
He laughed. “I doubt it. No one’s as tall as your dad.”
“You’re staying for supper, right?”
“Yeah. I’m staying for supper.”
“And after that? Are you staying?”
“Overnight? Yeah, that’s the plan.”
&n
bsp; “And you won’t leave?”
He shook his head, solemnly. He saw where this was going. He’d been a kid once, frightened of abandonment once he’d finally met the Braddocks—the family he’d always dreamed of. The one he’d been terrified of losing.
“I won’t leave,” he said.
“You left before.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t think I had a choice. I know I hurt you, and I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. Mom and Dad explained. I wish you hadn’t gone, but I’m happy you’re back now. Do you like meatloaf?”
“Your mom’s? Yeah, it’s the best.”
“I help her, you know.”
He laughed and stood up, the inside of his chest warming as she took his hand in hers. “Then you’re a really good cook.”
She looked up at him, big green eyes and an impish smile.
“Not really,” she said. “Grandma wishes I was, but I’m better at sports.”
She released his hand in the kitchen, running to her dad so he could scoop her up in his arms. Soon enough, she would consider Dez’s big hugs the stuff of little girls, and would rail against them. But, for now, this was the way things were supposed to be, and Sully was glad to see she was fine with it.
Sully stood a moment, taking the few seconds to watch his family before Eva or his mom noticed him. He watched the scene playing out, the one he’d dreamed, not so long ago, of being a part of. He’d stood outside the house that Christmas, watching the people he loved getting on with life without him. It had been comforting, knowing they were okay—at least in that moment—but it had hurt too. He hadn’t come back since, not until Aiden had led him to Dez in the cemetery.
Being here now, it was almost as if nothing had changed. And that was a far bigger comfort than anything he’d witnessed that lonely Christmas.
He took a quick drive that night, after Kayleigh had been tucked into bed.
Lachlan had provided the address, and Sully told himself he was going over only to check, to make sure Nora wasn’t still out there, looking to get back at the people who’d hurt her and her son.
Emory Davis had played no role in the offence, other than being born to one of the two men responsible. But Nora hadn’t seen it that way. She’d targeted him, whether because of his resemblance to his father, or out of a twisted desire to take a child from Hackman as he had taken hers.