Her Last Whisper

by Karen Robards

  Charlie cut a quick glance at Michael, fully expecting a caustic comment. But still he said nothing. From the remote look on his face he was thinking about something else entirely.

  “Yes.” Charlie saw no need to elaborate.

  “You actually saw her? The dead woman?”

  “Yes.”

  Tony’s eyes slid over her face. “And she told you her killer’s name was Joe.” Again, there was no apparent skepticism in his voice. He was merely probing for facts.

  “More or less.”

  “She tell you her name?”

  “She said, ‘No, what are you doing, stop,’ and ‘Joe, why,’ ” Charlie said flatly. “Then she disappeared.”

  Tony knew more about what she saw than did most of the living with whom she came into contact, and if their relationship, professional or otherwise, was to be at all worthwhile it was important that he know the truth. She reflected on that for a second and amended it to some of the truth. Spookville and hunters and sacrificial chicken innards and morgues full of uneasy spirits and inexplicable voices in her head—that might be pushing it. And Michael. Telling him about Michael was definitely out. If ever one of those tell-me-about-your-exes conversations came up between Tony and her, the fact that she was saddled with a studly ghost who was her sometimes lover was definitely something that she was going to fail to mention.

  “Did she tell you anything else?” Tony asked as they reached the Lexus, and Charlie smiled at him. See, that’s why she liked him: since she’d known him, he’d taken everything she’d thrown at him in stride.

  “Nope,” she said, glad to slide inside the car. She was still sick in her stomach, and her head still ached. Plus, she was so tired she was practically wilting. Too tired to worry about a silent ghost who sprawled in the backseat with an abstracted look on his face.

  They were backing out of the parking space when a couple of sharp bangs on the rear driver’s-side window made Charlie start and look around. Buzz’s curly head was framed by the starlit sky. He was frowning, his mouth was tight, and his glasses were crooked. All in all, he was the picture of frustration.

  “Open up,” Buzz mouthed, pointing at the lock.

  Having already hit the brakes, Tony popped the lock and Buzz, still carrying the bagged evidence, got in.

  “She wouldn’t let me in the car,” Buzz said bitterly as he slammed the door. “Told me to either catch you, call a cab, or hitchhike, she didn’t care which.”

  “It’s a form of transference,” Charlie told him in an attempt to provide some comfort. “She’s not really angry at you.”

  Buzz snorted. “Sure seems like it.”

  “After this, remind me to institute a rule about fraternization.” Tony drove out of the parking lot and headed toward the hotel. “You two are a giant pain in the ass.”

  “Sorry, boss.” Buzz sounded so gloomy that Tony semi-relented.

  He said, “It’s my own fault. I should have fired one or the other of you after the last case.”

  That was the end of the conversation until they reached the bright neon glow of the Strip. It was the middle of the night, and the four-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard was packed with cars driving in both directions and pedestrians crowding the sidewalks on either side of the street. Charlie was fascinated by, in turn, an erupting volcano, gondolas in a Venetian lagoon, a Disney-esque castle, and a miniature New York skyline. She was just eyeing the brilliantly lit replica of the Eiffel Tower when Buzz said, “If that woman had Giselle’s bracelet, that means she was picked up by the same perp as Giselle, after Giselle, right? Anybody have any thoughts about why a perp would grab two women so close together?”

  “You’re thinking Giselle might have escaped and he was forced to find a replacement,” Tony answered flatly, responding to the faint note of hope in Buzz’s voice. “It’s possible, but it’s way too soon in the investigation to know.”

  “What do you think?” Buzz directed that to Charlie.

  “I agree with Tony: it’s too early to come to any conclusions,” she replied.

  What she didn’t do was share her own thought: Or maybe it means that Giselle was killed before the perp could act out the fantasy that spurs most serial killers to commit the crimes they do, which was why he needed a replacement.

  That was something she would save for tomorrow, when Buzz, like the rest of them, wasn’t so tired and on edge.

  “You know, it’s always possible that Giselle just dropped that bracelet somewhere and the victim picked it up,” she added.

  Tony and Buzz both said a version of “Nah,” at approximately the same time, effectively eliminating that theory. Well, Charlie hadn’t really believed in it anyway. It was way too big a coincidence. She’d already learned that a mantra of murder investigations was there’s no such thing as coincidence.

  When they reached the enormous, theatrically lit crescent that was the hotel, it was well after one a.m. The fountains still danced, the crowd still watched, and the air of over-the-top luxury still dazzled. As she got out of the car Charlie spared a brief moment of regret for the early hour of her scheduled breakfast with Tam, but then, if she wasn’t meeting Tam she would have been up doing something else by then: the nature of the work the team did meant little time for sleep or anything not related to the case.

  The Conquistador’s lobby was busier than ever, with a great deal of noise and laughter and activity as hordes of people came and went from the casino and the various restaurants and shows and other resort attractions. In addition, the motorized walkways connecting the hotel to other nearby hotels brought in a constant, never-ending stream of new visitors. Buzz went off to take care of shipment of the evidence while Tony (and Michael) waited as Charlie collected her key. It had been arranged for their rooms to be on the sixteenth floor, alongside the one Lena had shared with her sister and was still staying in. The elevator was crowded, and two champagne flute–carrying couples, the guys in tuxes, the women in sparkly cocktail dresses, got off on their floor with them.

  If Charlie hadn’t been so tired, she would have felt like she was seriously slumming it as she and Tony followed them down the dimly lit, plushly carpeted hall.

  When they reached their quartet of rooms, Tony said, “Let me make sure Kaminsky made it back,” and paused to rap on her door, calling to her through it.

  A moment later, Lena yanked the door open. She’d taken off her shoes, which made her look surprisingly small, and her jacket, but had not yet gotten around to removing her shoulder holster. Its black straps and the businesslike weapon it contained formed a stark contrast to her curves. Coupled with her unaccustomed paleness and her red-rimmed eyes, her lack of height would have made her look vulnerable if it hadn’t been for her gun—and the fierceness of her expression.

  “What?” She glowered at them.

  “I wanted to make sure you made it back all right,” Tony said.

  She brushed her hair back from her face and gave him a sharp look. “You don’t have to babysit me, Bartoli. I’m fine.”

  “I know.”

  “If you need anything, or want some company, I’m right next door,” Charlie offered, a glance at the room numbers having confirmed it. Personal relationships did not come easily to her, and she did not consider Lena a friend, exactly. Their association was more prickly and tentative than that. But she knew what the terror of waiting to find out the fate of someone you cared about felt like, and everything about Lena from her appearance to her even more intense than usual reaction to things spoke of a heightened emotional state.

  “And you don’t have to try to play psychiatrist with me.”

  “I wasn’t,” Charlie protested.

  “Yeah.” Lena drew the word out. “Like I said, I’m fine.”

  Tony nodded. “Okay. We’ll see you in the morning, then. Get some sleep.”

  “That’s the plan.” Lena looked from one to the other of them. “Thanks for coming,” she added abruptly, and shut the door.

  “
In your professional opinion, Dr. Stone, should I pull her from the case?” Tony asked with a grimace as he escorted Charlie the few feet to her own door.

  Charlie gave him a wry glance. “Like Buzz said, she wouldn’t go, and you trying to make her would only upset her more. Besides, she’s really good at what she does, and if one thing’s more certain than anything else it’s that she’s going to pull out all the stops on this one. And I think her sister needs her. However this plays out.”

  The sobering thought that Giselle might well be dead hung unspoken in the air between them. The grim truth was that if victims of abductions were not found within forty-eight hours they were usually not found alive. But the forty-eight-hour window was already past, and they still had no real idea of what they were dealing with. It might not be an abduction. It might not even be a crime. At this point, the best thing they could do was assume that Giselle was alive and throw every bit of expertise they could muster into finding her. Hoping for the best, which was that she had left under her own power and simply failed to check in with anyone, while preparing for the worst.

  Tony nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  They reached her door and stopped. A thought had been percolating in Charlie’s mind for a while, and she finally made a decision about it. Looking and/or sounding like a flake was a bad thing for her professionally; but then, she’d already gone so far down that road with Tony that she didn’t have a lot more of her calm, rational scientist façade left to lose.

  “My friend—the one who’s here in the hotel—is a psychic medium,” Charlie told him. “I don’t know if she can help, and I don’t know if she’ll agree to help, but if she will I think it would be a good idea to see if she can pick up anything that might lead us to Giselle.”

  “Your friend’s a psychic medium.” At the expression on Tony’s face, he was having to work to process that. Michael leaned a shoulder against the wall beside her door, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked sardonic. Whatever had been occupying his thoughts earlier, he was clearly paying attention now.

  “Yes,” Charlie answered defiantly. “She’s very gifted. She makes her living at it.”

  “I’ll take any help we can get,” Tony said after only the slightest of hesitations. As a general rule the FBI, she knew, wasn’t a big believer in leads generated by psychics. Tony was going out on a limb here. “And I’m confident Kaminsky will say the same.”

  “I’m meeting Tam for breakfast at eight. I’ll ask her then.” She grimaced. “She doesn’t generally like to get involved in anything involving murder investigations, but I think she’ll do this as a favor to me.”

  “If I never told you what an asset I think you are to the team, let me go on record as saying it now.” Tony was looking at her with a smile in his eyes. His lean, dark face was shadowed by stubble and marked by fresh lines of exhaustion around his eyes. It was obvious that he needed sleep as much as she did.

  Such a good-looking guy, Charlie thought wistfully. Sweet and upstanding and, basically, just what she’d always wanted. How messed up was she that she wasn’t doing her best to snap him up?

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  With Michael standing not two feet away, the last thing Charlie wanted to do was enact a protracted good-night scene with Tony, so she kept her reply short and brisk. Turning, she slid her key card through the lock, and when the door opened she looked back at him to say good night. Before she could, Tony forestalled her by stepping up beside her, sliding a hand along the side of her face, bending his head, and kissing her.

  The kiss was lingering, coaxing. A lot of heat on his part, several degrees less on hers. Horribly, annoyingly conscious of Michael watching even as she closed her eyes and tried to get into it, Charlie was grumpily aware that her response was lacking and was just getting ready to disengage when suddenly Tony’s lips hardened. His arm wrapped around her waist and the hand cradling her face tightened and angled her jaw up so that he could deepen the kiss. He pulled her fully against him, flattening her breasts against the solid wall of his chest.

  The very unexpectedness of it kept her from reacting for those first few surprised seconds. Then his hot, wet invasion of her mouth caught her up in its urgent demand, sending an electric thrill of excitement surging through her. His kiss was suddenly way more practiced, expert, thrilling. His other arm went around her, too, and his hand slid down to cup her bottom, possessively caressing the tender curves, rocking her against him in a way that left her in no doubt about exactly what he had in mind.

  She shivered with pleasure. Her body clenched deep inside in instinctive response. Her breasts swelled against his chest, her hips moved sensuously against his hardness, and suddenly heat poured over her in a wave, extinguishing the instant shock she had experienced at his sudden aggressiveness. Just as quick as that, he had her craving sex like an addict craves meth. She was burning inside, throbbing inside, melting like microwaved plastic.

  Tony. Festooned with surprise, his name was the one coherent thought that managed to surface through the steam that fogged her brain. Along with, Oh my God, who would have thought he could get me so hot so fast?

  Sliding her arms around his neck, Charlie kissed him with the blazing desire that she’d been hoping all along would ignite between them. He kissed her back with such blatant carnality that she was rendered temporarily blind, deaf, and mindless to everything except the way he was making her feel.

  An elevator full of noisy celebrants that disgorged its occupants into the hall interrupted them. Charlie pulled her mouth from his and looked around almost dazedly. Before she had time to focus on the revelers or locate (shudder) Michael or even process so much as a complete thought, both Tony’s arms locked around her waist and he picked her straight up so that her feet no longer touched the floor and shouldered through her unlocked door.

  As the laughing crowd passed by, he closed the door on them with his foot, put her down in the dark little hallway just inside the door, and started kissing her again.

  Still so blown away by this unexpected explosion of passion between them that she couldn’t do anything except respond, Charlie wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him like she was dying to get naked with him, like she was ready to push him down on the king-sized bed with which the room was furnished and have her wicked way with him. Like she was on fire for him, which she was.

  He had her pressed up against the wall and his mouth was crawling down the side of her neck and his hand was caressing her breast through the thin layers of her blouse and bra when a measure of sanity returned to her.

  Michael. Ridiculous to feel like she was cheating on a dead man, but …

  “Tony, stop.” Her voice was low and breathless.

  “You don’t want me to.” He cupped her breast and bent his head to nibble at the aroused peak. Fire shot clear down to her toes.

  Oh, my.

  His hand slid up under her shirt—

  This wasn’t the time. It wasn’t the place. She needed to think. Dear God, somewhere nearby Michael had to be going nuts. Charlie pushed against Tony’s shoulders. “I said, stop.”

  —and found her breast. Her slinky little bra was all that lay between them as he caressed her, squeezed. His mouth was hot against the sensitive spot right below her ear. He ran his thumb back and forth over her eager nipple.

  Her bones liquefied. She wanted him so much that she was dizzy with it.

  From somewhere she mustered the strength. “Stop.”

  He didn’t. Instead he kissed her ear, drew the lobe into his mouth. “It’s all right, babe. It’s me.”

  Her eyes blinked open, angled sideways, and she got as good a look at him as she could. Well-developed shoulders in a suit coat. Crisp black hair. Leanly muscled build. She frowned, not entirely sure she’d understood.

  “What?”

  “You really think Dudley could get you this hot?” His lips slid across her cheek toward her mouth.

  She froze. “Michael?”r />
  Delving inside her bra, he fondled her breast.

  “I love how warm and soft your tits feel.”

  The blatant masculinity of his hand caressing her bare breast was mind-blowing—or at least it would have been if her mind hadn’t already been blown by the realization that had just clobbered her over the head like a baseball bat.

  “What the hell are you doing?” It was a yelp, and the shove to his shoulders that accompanied it sent him staggering backward. He tripped over something—her small suitcase, she saw as she squinted at it through the darkness, which the bellboy must have dropped off—and, swearing, went down heavily.

  His head struck the wooden framing around the closet with a thud.

  Charlie was so flabbergasted that all she could do was stare down at the dark shape of Tony’s body lying unmoving against the pale carpet. He was on his back, stretched out at an angle that practically filled the narrow space between the bathroom and closet. The curtains were open, so with the streaming starlight beaming in through the large window as illumination she had no trouble whatsoever seeing what happened next.

  A tall, strongly built, tawny-haired shadow rose like pale mist out of the figure on the floor, hovered for a second, then surged upward to solidify beside the fallen man with a muttered, “Fuck.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “What did you do?” Aghast, Charlie glared at Michael even as she dropped to her knees beside Tony. Towering over them both, Michael looked perfectly fine; Tony, on the other hand, was now as pale as any self-respecting ghost ought to be. His eyes were closed. She touched him to discover that his skin was warm, and he was still breathing, which relieved her mind of its first, most terrible fear, which was that Michael, in possessing him, had killed him. Tony was not dead. He was, however, definitely unconscious.

  Michael frowned down at the two of them as she checked Tony’s pulse, which was a little elevated.

  “I borrowed his body.”

  “You can’t just borrow a body! Especially not Tony’s body!” Charlie practically screeched it at him. Having checked Tony’s pulse, she let his arm go: it was totally limp, totally flaccid as it dropped to the carpet. She had to fight against complete panic: who knew what spirit possession did to someone? And how the hell was she supposed to treat it? She shot a furious look at Michael. “How could you do such a thing?”