A Haunting Affair

by Ursula Bauer

  Emma angled the phone to catch more of the conversation. As if he’d read her thoughts, Wesley tilted his head and addressed her.

  “What are you doing hiding behind Sam ? If it weren’t for you, the truth would never have been found. I owe you my gratitude.” He took another step. “Time’s up. Throw the memory card to me, Sam.”

  “You’re only going to kill us anyway, so why don’t you do it and get the thing yourself?”

  Sam’s bravado gave Emma the chance to slip the phone into her trouser pocket.

  “That’s true. I’m a damn good shot. All I need is a little light.”

  RUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUN.

  Jen’s scream erupted in her head like a nuclear bomb. Emma put her hands over her ears reflexively, even though the sound was inside her skull. She stepped out from behind Sam, trying to escape the noise. Then, in the space of a handful of seconds, several things happened at once.

  Wesley reached for the light switch. The temperature of the room dropped ten degrees. The dark coalesced into the solid and visible form of Keith Vaughn. Then the lights erupted, and electricity arced like lightning from the exposed switch panel. The stream of energy connected with Wesley Vaughn’s outstretched hand and pure electrical power surged through his body.

  The murderous brother cried out in agony, convulsed with the force, and reflexively squeezed off several wild shots. Keith reached out a ghostly hand at the gun, sending the shots on skewed angles, blowing out windows all around them.

  Emma screamed and Sam forced her to the ground behind the desk as the glass blew from the hail of bullets. Breath left her lungs in a whoosh as he fell, dead weight, on top of her. Wesley Vaughn continued to scream while the lights shattered and the electricity roared through him, shorting out his heart and eventually killing him. When all fell silent and dark, Sam rolled to the side of her.

  “You okay?” he asked on a ragged breath.

  “Yes.” She sat up with him. She smelled something funny. Coppery. “You’re bleeding.”

  “One of the bullets hit me. Don’t worry, think it was a pass through.” He heaved himself up and looked around. Emma got to her feet and checked him head to toe. A stain spread out just above his heart. Half an inch lower and he’d be dead.

  “You need a doctor,” she said, panic clogging her throat. “Where the hell is the sheriff?” Emma saw Keith looking over the dead form of his brother, but she didn’t care about the already dead. Her focus was on the living. She grabbed the desk phone and dialed 911.

  Keith glided towards them. Emma shielded Sam, not sure what the spirit’s intent was at this point. The apparition held up a hand in peace. His mouth moved, issuing ghostly words that dusted her ears like a trick of the imagination. “Jen was locked in that night she died, stuck in fear. She couldn’t fully manifest. With her killer dead, I can set her free. We can both find peace at last. Thank you.”

  Noisy footsteps sounded out in the hall. “Emma, Sam, you okay?”

  Jake’s voice shook the rafters.

  Keith’s ghost smiled down at them, then vanished as Jake and two more deputies spilled into the room.

  The acting sheriff looked at the dead doctor and bleeding Sam and holstered his gun. “I was in my car when I got the call. Only five minutes away. Quick thinking. Though it seems you didn’t’ need me.”

  “We need an ambulance,” Emma said “Please tell me you called one already?”

  “Standard operations in a hostage situation. Should be here in a minute. Meanwhile I’ll grab the first aid kit.

  “Here’s the evidence.” Sam struggled to lift his right arm. The effort cost him, and he staggered back into the chair.

  “Sit still,” she said, as she held her hand against the wound to stop the blood. It didn’t seem like a gusher, but she didn’t know much about first aid or bullet wounds.

  Sam looked up at her through bleary eyes. “I screwed up back at the police station. Let me make it up to you.”

  The words were a direct hit to her heart. The last thing either of them needed to consider was rose colored futures. He almost died. Could still die. Emma shut down the thoughts, knowing panic would follow if she didn’t. “You’re suffering from blood loss and a bullet wound. This can wait.”

  “Tell me you’ll give me another chance. That you’ll be here when I get back.”

  She wanted to scream. She wanted to run. She wanted to be anywhere but here, holding her hand over his bleeding wound, while her own heart broke.

  “Thank you for protecting me,” she said softly. “I owe you my life. When the bullets started flying, you took me down and kept me safe. I’ll never forget that.”

  “Don’t forget me,” he muttered, his velvet voice dreamy and soft. “Promise.”

  Never in a million years would she forget him or the fire they shared. She hated him for how he’d made her feel. And she hated herself for thinking they had a chance. “Promise.”

  Jake returned with the first aid kit. “Ambulance is three minutes out. He’ll be fine. It will hurt like hell, take some rehab, but it’s a clean wound with a pass through.”

  “You sound like you’ve experienced this first hand.”

  “Not my first time to this dance either.”

  Sam relaxed under Jake’s care, and Emma stayed close. She held his hand while Jake, and then the EMTs, treated him. She stayed in the operating room waiting area and talked with the surgeon who told her that despite the trauma, he was in safe waters and would make an excellent recovery. She even watched him for a while when he returned to the recovery area, until Jake showed up with coffee to relieve her shift.

  “Long drive back to the city this time of night,” he said, handing her the giant cup of acid scented cafeteria sludge.“Figured you could use this.”

  She felt uncomfortable, guilty even, but if she stayed to see him wake, it would only be worse. The coffee tasted as bad as it smelled, but it sent the needed pick up to the right spots. “How’d you know I was leaving tonight?”

  “Woman gets a certain look in her eyes, means she’s feeling a lot of strong things. Sometimes it takes distance to sort it all out. A smart man learns to be step back when he sees it. You have that look right now. Like you can’t decide if you want to cheer to heaven Sam’s okay, or if you want to kill him yourself.”

  There was no denying that truth. Jake Meyer was way too canny, bordering on spooky. Emma was starting to understand why most of Meyerville feared and respected him. “Thanks for the coffee. You’ll keep an eye on him? Make sure he heals up?”

  Jake nodded. “Any messages you want me to pass along?”

  Words swirled like a storm in her head and her heart. She shouldn’t say anything, just cut and run. But something made it out of the maelstrom and to the surface. “Tell him I’m sorry. What’s broke between us can’t be fixed by words.”

  He sipped the coffee and slanted a curious gaze down at her. “Will do. Thanks for all the help. Mind if I keep your number on file?”

  “Would saying no stop you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Take care, Sherriff.”

  “That’s acting sheriff.”

  He’d be permanent, whether he knew it or not. Didn’t matter how hard he’d fight it, either. That much she was sure of, the intuitive vibe coming through strong and clear. “We’ll see.”

  Emma took one last look at Sam and left, hurrying to her car before she softened up any further and talked herself into staying one more day. She had to remind herself why she was leaving, coach herself that they had no future. They were too different and she didn’t think she could get over what she felt was his betrayal. Maybe it was petty. Maybe even a little childish, but he failed an important test for her, a test of trust. It was that chip on her shoulder again, but that chip was part of her. She needed his trust, or what actions she thought passed for trust, and Emma didn’t think she could put that need aside.

  On the drive home it occurred to her a few times what she might be missing b
y giving up a chance to start over with Sam. But she squashed that ruthlessly by the time she’d reached Manhattan. What he wanted in a woman, she wouldn’t provide, because what she thought she needed in a man wasn’t in him. Or maybe in anyone. Happy for-ever-after with prince charming was a load of crap. There was only happy for now, in the moment, and then there were memories. That had always worked for her, and it would work now. The roller coaster ride of emotions she’d had with Sam was enough to last ten lifetimes, and while she’d miss the highs, the lows were too hard to handle and the pay off wasn’t worth the risk of playing the game any longer.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Five days later—New York City

  Winter came early that year to New York. Snow fell in a soundless cloud from the sky, blanketing the city that never slept. It muted the noise and forced the pace to slow by a few steps. Emma abandoned her desk to stare out the window of the loft that housed Eric’s offices. The once familiar gray and white landscape was now curiously alien to her.

  The city was her place, a home she’d made, but it felt different on her return. Or maybe she was different. It seemed a lifetime ago when she was surrounded by towering pines and leafless trees rooted in dark mountains and reaching into cold, clean air. She sat along the wide ledge and traced spirals in the window condensation. Part of her heart stayed in those forbidding mountains, and here, without that part of her, she wasn’t connected. She floated without anchor, wondering when the drift would stop and where she’d land.

  Her main phone line buzzed. Emma ignored it, letting it roll to voice mail. It was hard to plug back into the old routine. Her anonymity was blown when the national papers spread news of the happenings in sleepy Meyerville. It wasn’t Jen’s solved murder that made fantastic headlines, but the fact that the cold case abduction and murder of the missing Taggert Pharmaceuticals heir had finally been resolved—and not by normal, earthly means.

  The media hounded her daily, trying to discover if she had more cold cases lined up, and two of the big six New York publishing houses had sent emissaries offering her book deals. When she didn’t grant interviews, tabloids and bloggers invented their own content. Everyone was eager to get a piece of the action now. A piece of her. She’d earned the respect she’d craved, and with it, a reputation that followed her everywhere.

  Emma’s book, her initial reason for taking the case and once her sole ambition, couldn’t seem to hold her attention. Her position with Eric had been compromised by her notoriety. He’d made no move to push her out, but she no longer worked at ferreting out the deceitful amongst his potential clients. Right now she was playing catch up with his backlog of appearance requests and assigning private meetings to other psychics on staff who’d now do what was once her main job.

  She couldn’t see a future in this role, but wasn’t sure what future she could see. Or wanted to see. Her life had changed forever. She had fame, fortune to come, and had found a quick ticket to into the limelight. For any other person this would be the start of a wild ride on a fast moving gravy train.

  For her, it was all wrong. Emma hadn’t realized how much she valued her privacy. Working under the radar had numerous advantages she hadn’t appreciated until they were gone. On the flip side, she hadn’t realized the relative insignificance of her shady past as far as the general public was concerned. Her entire upbringing was reduced to no more than a biographical quip about a childhood spent with an infamous con man currently living in exile in a country not too keen on extradition. The scandal of the missing heiress cold case far outshone Emma's sordid history.

  The phone buzzed again and she let this call go untouched as well, opting instead to take a morning break. She was restless. Unsettled. Her job and her life and her skin no longer fit the woman who came down from those cold mountains five days ago. And part of that was Sam Tyler’s fault.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t forget him, couldn’t get over him and move on the way she thought. In fact, she was beginning to wonder what it would take to move on. Even in the whirlwind of change, her affection and raw desire for him, day in and day, out was a nagging and unwelcome constant. Their brief affair haunted her in a way that left her no escape and no peace.

  Despite her years of hard living on the grift, despite all the lessons learned, her little girl self had bought into the fantasy of Sam and her big girl self had bought into the reality of him, and that seemed to be all that mattered. She knew she couldn’t go on wishing he was a different man. If he was, she might not feel this way about him. But since he wasn’t a different man, she couldn’t trust him. Still she'd wondered, more than once in the dark and lonely hours of the long nights, if maybe she didn’t need to trust him all that much.

  The office door opened, and Emma sighed. There was no escaping work or life today. She realized she’s gone from drawing spirals to hearts. She wiped away the evidence with an angry swipe of her hand before her visitor could see.

  Eric lounged against the door frame. “Hate to bother you, Emma. Someone’s here to see you.”

  “I don’t have any appointments booked today,” she said.

  Eric had a good poker face, and was as much performer as he was psychic, but there was something about him, something in the air, that made her suspicious. “Who is it?”

  “If I tell you, odds are good, you won’t agree to the meeting.”

  Sam.

  The restlessness in her vanished, replaced by a giddy excitement and hard case of the nerves. Both of which she found annoying. Yet keeping a smile from forming wasn’t easy work. “Why wouldn’t I agree to see him? He probably has the final contract conveying sole rights for the story to me. That’s my ticket to the big time.”

  “You’ve ignored his calls all week.” Eric arched a dark brow. Dressed all in chic New York black, with his gypsy good looks, he was the devil incarnate, bringing her dangerous temptation and reading all her hidden desire. It sucked to have a master psychic as a boss some days. “Last night at dinner you refused to talk about what happened between you and all but cursed his name. I’m going out on the ledge and saying that isn’t a good sign.”

  “I’m a professional.”

  “He’s pretty banged up. Don’t hurt him anymore.”

  “I wasn’t the one who shot him.” I wasn’t the one he trusted, either, she thought. Then again, she didn’t stick around to sort things out. She’d packed up and skipped town rather than risk any further emotional entanglements. Except those entanglements followed her south to New York City and had plagued her ever since. Maybe meeting in person would cut those ties, or give her the tools she needed to do the job down the road. Maybe she wanted to see him one last time. “Where’d you put him?”

  “Across the hall in the gold conference room.”

  Emma found Sam staring out the window at the unrelenting gray Manhattan landscape, as she’d done. He turned as she entered and the familiar tension sprang up between them. The longing, the draw, still there, fresh and potent. Playing hell with her resolve, and giving her something new to chew on: guilt. She shouldn’t have run out on him. She should have stayed until he woke. Said good-by. Instead, she’d indulged her bruised feelings and had a tantrum, acting like a spoiled kid who didn’t get a favorite toy.

  Sam spoke first. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”

  His arm was in a sling, and he looked horrible. Shadows lined his eyes. His cheeks hollowed into deep crags and his body was rigid with pain and anxiety.

  “You look like hell. Why are you here Sam?” You should be home. Resting. Safe. Healing. All the things she wanted to say she kept to herself.

  “I screwed up. The one time I needed to trust you, I trusted what I thought was evidence. I should have been more balanced, given it time, rather than jumping to the conclusions you knew I’d jump to. You were right to leave me the way you did.”

  Hearing the words she wanted to hear didn’t have the effect she’d anticipated. Instead of feeling vindicated, she felt small a
nd mean. If she’d stayed at the station instead of running back to the lodge, Sam wouldn’t have been shot. The stupid hang up she’d carried around had nearly cost him his life. Seeing him now, it all became clear. A part of her softened.

  “You’ve built two careers in your lifetime on hard data. It’s part of who you are. Besides, hard evidence is what you need to convict a killer. I should have waited for you at the police station. If I had, we’d have come to a compromise that worked, and you probably wouldn’t be wearing the sling right now.”

  Her words surprised him into an awkward silence. Instead of speaking, he moved closer, closing the gap between them. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. Uncertain. A little vulnerable. “Maybe we both made some mistakes.”

  “Things were...” she searched for the right word.

  “Intense?” Sam smiled wryly. “Crazy? Hot?”

  Tension lightened between them and Emma finally drew a breath. “All that. And more. I don’t know what you make of you Sam.”

  “Feeling’s mutual.”

  “Are you—okay? Should you even be here? You were shot. I’m no doctor, but that can’t be an easy recovery.”

  “I’ll heal. You weren’t taking my calls. I had to do something. I couldn’t let you go.” He touched her now. Laid his hand on her arm. A feathering of his palm, a caress even, and yet everything neither would say was held in that single action. Like rain, the walls between them came down. “I couldn’t let us go.”

  “Is there an 'us'?”

  “I want to find out. I’m in, but I think still need to sell you on the idea. It’s only fair to warn you, I’m playing for keeps.”

  Was it that easy? Forgive, forget, give a second chance, take a shot at happy ever after? She’d have to break free from go of a lifetime of teaching, training, learning to guard and watch and protect, if she accepted his offer. If she did there’d be no turning back, and no escaping a broken heart if she played the game and ended up rolling craps. She and Sam felt right, felt like a winner. Was she seeing what she wanted to see, or were they the real deal? The only way to find out was to join him. To believe they had a chance meant setting aside the differences, and that was no small task. “You’re taking a big risk on me. We come from two different worlds.”