Harlequin E Shivers Box Set Volume 3: Valley of NightmaresHis to PossessThe Girl in BlueThe Ghosts of Cragera Bay

by Jane Godman

  Lucian shoved her behind him, and Olivia fell onto the concrete sidewalk. In the same motion, Lucian pulled his gun.

  He took aim.

  Fired.

  The shot blasted through the air.

  Everything seemed to freeze. Her breath. Her heart. Her. All but Lucian. He moved, readying himself to fire again.

  But he didn’t get the chance.

  The driver hit the accelerator, the tires kicking up the stench and smoke of burning rubber as it sped away.

  However, even over those sounds and the warning throb of her own heartbeat, Olivia heard something else.

  Someone’s voice.

  A voice straining to be heard from beneath the decay. Barely audible—a warning, murmured and soft—but just as bone-chilling as the scream that bubbled up in her own throat.

  Help us. Or die.

  Chapter Four

  “I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Olivia said, not for the first time.

  Lucian couldn’t argue with her about that. It probably did feel like a bad idea to her. Especially with the memories from the attack still so fresh. But he wasn’t giving Olivia any options about this. She was going home with him so he could protect her.

  At least now she knew for certain that she needed protection.

  Though nearly being killed had been a bad way to have it confirmed.

  “The cops might find the car and the driver,” he reminded her. “They might be able to see something on the security footage so they can make an arrest.”

  And it could happen. However, judging from the hmmp sound she made, Olivia didn’t believe it for a second.

  Lucian didn’t, either.

  He was betting that if it was Estelle or Harvey behind that wheel, then they’d orchestrated alibis and a fake license plate to cover their asses. Or they could have just hired someone to kill Olivia and him.

  But why?

  Did the killer think Olivia and he were that close to learning the identity of who’d murdered Marissa and Damien? Because they weren’t close at all. Worse, they couldn’t even go to the cops with this.

  Not with the spiritual possession part, anyway.

  That would get them a quick trip to the psychiatric hospital for evaluation, and that’s why Lucian had been very careful what they’d told the police while giving their statements. Lucian had said he was looking into the murders after he’d bought the building and had become interested in them.

  No lie there.

  He’d even spelled out that the killer might be nervous about that and had given them Estelle and Harvey’s names as possible persons of interest. It was a risk. Riling either one of their suspects might be like tossing gasoline on an already hot flame, but at this point the fire was already blazing.

  In more ways than one.

  Lucian pulled into his garage but waited until the door was fully closed before he got Olivia out of his car and into the side entrance of his house. During the entire fifteen-minute drive from the police station to his neighborhood, she had kept a white-knuckle grip on the armrest, and her gaze had darted around as if she expected another car to come at them. Olivia didn’t relax much, either, when she stepped inside, and her gaze continued to dart around.

  He was well aware that it was too much of a place for one person. Sixteen rooms. Lucian had toned down the previous owner’s stiff décor so that it was more homey—hard to do though with cathedral ceilings, gleaming marble floors and a sprawling staircase.

  And the scent, of course.

  Nothing homey about that scent. It coiled through the place like a whisper of high-priced perfume. Definitely not a scent that came from a bottle.

  Not even from this time and place.

  Judging from the way Olivia took it all in, the house only unnerved her even more. Of course, she might feel the same way about any place right now.

  “Please tell me Damien didn’t own this house, too,” she said.

  “No.” That was the good news. Now, for the part she wouldn’t like. “But Marissa did. Damien owned the one across the street. I didn’t know that until the dreams started and I did some more research.”

  She pulled in a long, weary breath. “You were drawn here, too, like you were to Damien’s converted office building.”

  “I guess.” He cursed, scrubbed his hand over his face. “I don’t have all the answers. Hell, I’m not even sure I know all the questions.”

  That brought her gaze to his, and even though she didn’t voice it, he knew what she was thinking. They had answers about the heat between them. It was there, and it didn’t appear to be going away.

  “Marissa…or someone spoke to me right after that car tried to run us down.” Olivia looked at him. “Did you hear it?”

  Lucian settled for a nod. “I don’t think she was threatening us. I think it was more of a warning.”

  Help us. Or die.

  “A warning,” she repeated. A burst of air left her mouth. Not a laugh of humor. Pure frustration, followed by a groan. “Everything about this is a warning. And if I stay here, we’ll end up in bed together.”

  Another nod. “It’ll happen even if you don’t stay here.”

  She might have tried to disagree, but her phone buzzed. A reminder that she had another life, one not connected to this heat and the danger. A life that didn’t include another man.

  Lucian had made sure of that.

  Olivia had essentially cut herself off from men, and her life, after the attack. Still, she did take research jobs to support herself, and Lucian had used that research to draw her out. That could turn out to be a fatal mistake, but he hadn’t felt that he had much of a choice about doing that. One way or another, Damien would have made sure she came to him.

  At least this way, they had a day to figure out who wanted them dead.

  And to resolve this dangerous attraction between them.

  Lucian had hoped to have it resolved sooner. That’s why he’d delayed meeting Olivia face-to-face. However, he was no closer to answers now than when he’d started this search.

  Olivia fished the phone from her purse, and he saw the text on the screen. A text that snagged her complete attention. It got Lucian’s, too, especially when Olivia mumbled “Oh, God.”

  He took the phone from her and saw “Unknown Sender” on the screen. And then he saw the message. Or rather the threat.

  Digging up bones will get you killed—again.

  The breath swooshed out of her, and Lucian slipped his arm around her. Judging from the additional flash of concern in Olivia’s eyes, she didn’t want him this close, but she didn’t move away, either. Maybe because she was shaking all over again and wasn’t too steady on her feet.

  “This isn’t stopping,” she mumbled.

  “But it can.” At best, that was hopeful. At worst, an outright lie.

  It took her a few moments to get control of her breathing. “And how will my being here help stop it?”

  Sadly, it might not. But now that he’d actually seen Olivia, and kissed her, Lucian knew he had to do whatever it took to stop the killer from coming after her again. He couldn’t do that if they weren’t together, and that’s why he had no intentions of letting her out of his sight.

  “We need to figure out who killed Marissa and Damien,” he reminded her.

  There it was again. That flash of concern and fear in her eyes. “How? The cops haven’t managed to do that in three decades. What makes you think we’ll have any better luck at it than they’ve had?”

  Lucian led her through the foyer and toward his office. “Remember, I have something the cops don’t have. Marissa’s journal. I wanted to study it before I gave it to them.”

  Of course, he’d been studying it for days now and wasn’t any closer to figuring out the killer’s identity.

  In fact, in some ways the journal only complicated things.

  Still, the answers might be there in those words that Marissa wrote so long ago. That was possibly wishful thinking on his
part, but Lucian refused to believe there wasn’t something he could do to stop a bloodbath destiny that fate seemed to have in store for Olivia and him.

  The moment they stepped inside his office, Olivia gasped. Probably because she hadn’t expected to see the room turned into what looked like a crime scene board. Lucian had copied the pages from the journal, enlarged them and had taped the pages to walls and bookcases.

  “Like I said, I wanted to study it,” he reminded her.

  Though there was a fine line between study and obsession, and Lucian was sure he’d crossed it. A line that was already blurred since Marissa had perhaps written the journal in this very room.

  As if confirming that, one of the tree branches outside scraped over the window. Barely a touch. Marissa’s fingers were playing with the glass.

  And with his soul.

  Olivia shivered, glancing at the window. Maybe feeling the slight chill that slid into the room, too. The chill went just as quickly as it’d come. But it would be back.

  It always came back.

  She moved away from him, her gaze skirting over the journal pages. Since Lucian had already read every word, he watched her response instead. She stopped in front of the very one that made this so much more complicated.

  “‘I’ve had plenty of wrong men, but I didn’t find the perfect wrong man until Damien.’”

  “Wrong men,” she repeated. “And any one of those wrong men could have killed her.”

  That was the same conclusion he’d reached. It was easy to zoom in on Damien’s wife and Marissa’s latest ex, but the killer might be someone not even on their radar.

  Or it could be a different kind of killer.

  “‘Must find a way to get Damien’s bitch wife out of the picture,’” Olivia continued to read. “‘Estelle said I must have a death wish to play around with her man, and I guess I do when it comes to Damien. I’d rather us dead than her have him.’”

  Olivia snapped toward him. “You said it wasn’t suicide.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  Or maybe that was wishful thinking, too. Yes, it would have been possible for Marissa and Damien to have gotten into a stabbing altercation before shooting themselves, but he didn’t want to believe it was possible.

  Especially since they’d had sex right before the violence.

  And suicide didn’t explain why someone had tried to kill Olivia and him earlier. Or why there’d been no weapons found at the scene of the crime. He doubted spirits would bother to come all the way back from the dead just to hide a gun and a knife, then wait around thirty years to possess someone.

  But perhaps he couldn’t apply sound reasoning to any of this. After all, there was a sex-crazed married man taking over his body and a dead woman’s scent coiling around him.

  No sound reasoning in that.

  Olivia continued reading the journal entries and then shook her head. “I keep going back to being possessed. I didn’t start dreaming about Marissa and Damien until about a week ago when I started this research project that you hired me to do.”

  “You’re sure? I didn’t think I had, either, but after I gave it some thought, there were always dreams and flashes of images. Scents. I thought they were regular things that go on in a person’s head. But now I believe they were their memories.”

  Memories of great sex.

  He wasn’t sure it was a blessing or a curse that he hadn’t relived the exact images of the violence.

  “Yes,” Olivia said, her voice soft. “There were some dreams. I thought they were just that—dreams.”

  No. If Lucian’s theory was right, they were bits and pieces of memories that’d pretty much stayed bits and pieces until now. Until the approaching anniversary of the murders.

  The tree branch skittered across the window again, snagging Olivia’s attention. She jerked in her breath, closed her eyes a moment. Shook her head.

  “How can you stay here, in her house?” she asked, her voice strangled.

  “How could I leave?” he countered, tipping his head to the pages that he’d copied. “She wants me to find whatever it is she’s trying to show me.”

  Her gaze drifted to the glass again. “Does she ever come inside?”

  All the time.

  Marissa’s whispers, touches and scents.

  But Lucian kept that to himself.

  Olivia waved him off, obviously not wanting an answer to her question after all, and moved on to the next entry of Marissa’s journal. Lucian had read it so many times now that he knew it by heart, but every time he saw it, it ate away at his gut. Because it could be this entry, this raw emotion that had started everything.

  “‘Last night I dreamed again. The nightmare of Damien and me dying. Before our lives slipped away, I offered to make a pact with the devil himself and hoped like hell he didn’t laugh in my face. He didn’t. That’s when I knew I’d survive whatever happens, and if the worst does happen, I’ll avenge our deaths. No mercy, no resting in peace. Damien and I will be together forever.’”

  Olivia didn’t move. She stood there for what seemed an eternity, her gaze fixed on the words that had seemingly sealed their fate.

  “A pact with the devil,” she finally repeated. Her gaze came to his, and Lucian could practically hear the voodoo whispers that had haunted him. They were a lot harder to take coming from Olivia than the rest of the world.

  “No, I don’t have any personal connections with Satan,” he assured her. “But I’m not sure the devil played a part in this. Marissa and Damien were no saints, and they were just as likely to have attracted a demon as a guardian angel, but I figure spiritual possession doesn’t require demonic help.”

  He hoped.

  There weren’t exactly rule books about this sort of thing. And he had indeed been born in a graveyard.

  Was that the reason Damien had picked him?

  Because of this murky cloud hanging over him?

  “So, maybe no devil,” Olivia mumbled. “Maybe,” she added, her gaze connecting with his.

  Lucian braced himself for her to fall apart again. She certainly had a good reason for it with everything that’d happened and with everything she’d just learned. And she still might do that, but for now, her attention went to his computer.

  “How many photos of them do you have?” she asked.

  “Plenty. Both before and after.” He went to his desk and clicked the button to start the bizarre slideshow.

  This particular segment started with a couple of pictures of Damien and Marissa taken at the lavish party they’d attended the night before their murder. One of the newspapers had covered it for their society column, and the late photographer’s son had sold them to Lucian. Not only the photos, but the negatives as well. The cops had supposedly looked at the film thirty years ago, but had dismissed it as not being important to their investigation.

  The jury was still out on that for Lucian.

  In the shots, Damien and Marissa were dressed to the nines. Him, in a tux. Her, in a red dress that shimmered like bloody champagne under the chandelier light. Ditto for the bulky ruby necklace and earrings. It was an outfit made to draw attention from every angle, and it helped that her breasts looked ready to spill right out of the dress.

  “They’re not even trying to hide their attraction,” Olivia mumbled.

  No. They were clearly continuing the affair they’d started three months earlier. They were dancing together, and that cat-lapping-cream smile on Marissa’s face said it all. She was planning on having Damien as an after-party favor.

  Unlike Estelle’s expression.

  Damien’s wife was in several shots that Lucian had put into a collage of sorts. He froze those images on the screen. In three of the four photos, Estelle was enjoying herself. Or rather pretending to. But the fourth, well, it said it all.

  If Estelle hadn’t had an alibi for the murders, then that look alone would have made her a suspect. The cops, however, had said the photo of that look wasn’t relevant since Estelle di
d, indeed, have an alibi. Lucian suspected her daddy’s money might have had something to do with the cops’ fast dismissal.

  Olivia used her finger to trace a line between Estelle’s gaze and the dancing couple. Marissa seemed oblivious to the fury that Estelle was hurdling at her. But Damien had noticed, and he appeared to be trying to move Marissa out of Estelle’s line of sight.

  “Estelle’s a wallflower compared to Marissa,” Olivia observed. “No sparkle for her. She’s dressed to show her classiness rather than her libido. That green dress looks like expensive silk. Her jewelry, like stuff I’ve seen in high-end estate sales.”

  It did, and there wasn’t even enough sparkle in the earrings and necklace for the items to catch the light the way Marissa’s did.

  “It makes me wonder what Damien ever saw in her,” Olivia commented but then shrugged. “During the research, I ran across some newspaper articles that hinted theirs was a marriage of business mergers.”

  Lucian nodded. “Damien wanted a company that Estelle’s father owned, and talk was the only way he could get it was to marry the ice princess.”

  He pressed the key to get the photos scrolling again, and the next one that popped up was of Harvey Jenkins, Marissa’s recently discarded lover.

  “Harvey’s not wearing a tux like everyone else,” Olivia immediately said.

  No. Harvey was young and cocky. An upcoming musician with enough old money to get into parties like this. But he was going for that whole bad-boy look with a black leather jacket.

  “Harvey no doubt came to the party to see if he could be with Marissa,” Lucian remarked when the next photo scrolled by. One with Marissa’s mouth right against Lucian’s ear. “But I’m figuring that didn’t happen.”

  “No,” Olivia agreed. And she repeated it.

  There was one final party picture. Damien and Marissa, on the far side of the room by a buffet table. They were standing next to an ice sculpture of what appeared to be a phoenix. The ice was melting, a gray mist stirring around it, and the mist from the bird’s wings looked like eerie tentacles.

  Reaching out for them.

  Damien and Marissa didn’t seem to notice. They were whispering to each other. Even though they weren’t exactly touching, Damien might as well have hiked up that dress and screwed her right there. Because everything in their body language said that’s exactly what was going on in their heads.