Laurel Heights (Haunted Hearts Series Book 1)

by Denise Moncrief

  “Surely not.” Her whispered words fluttered around them.

  “I had been in prison about a month when he contacted me and offered me his lawyer. Before that, I hadn’t talked to him in over a year, maybe two. The timing seems a little strange, don’t you think?”

  He reached across the table again and grasped her hand. His grip tightened until it hurt.

  She pulled back. “Chase, you’re hurting my hand.”

  Did he somehow blame her for Rand’s actions? No, that was ridiculous.

  He glanced at their clasped hands. “Oh, I’m sorry.” He loosened his grip a bit, but didn’t let go. “He’s a dangerous man, Laurel. The things I’ve learned about him... I asked a guy I used to work with...a guy who will still speak to me...to contact someone in law enforcement in California. It’s bad, Laurel. Really bad. Rand was into some awful stuff. I’m glad you got away from him, but I’m afraid he isn’t the kind to let go easily. When he assumed we were together, he told me I was a dead man. I worry about myself, Laurel, but I worry more about you.” His pause was significant. “How much do you know? And what do you know that would make him want you dead?”

  She shivered and glanced around the truck stop. Was anyone staring at her? Was someone watching them? Had they been followed from Laurel Heights? Maybe not. A long stretch of empty highway would have been the perfect spot to create an accident. Yet they were still alive.

  “I wish I owned a gun.”

  Chase released her hand and chuckled. “I don’t think either of us could pass the background check to get a carry permit.”

  Her heart settled into her chest cavity like a stone cold rock. “Surely, we could get one under the radar.”

  “That’s dangerous and probably stupid.”

  She stared straight at him. She’d never been more serious in her life. “Whoever shows up at my place won’t play by the rules, won’t care about what’s legal and what isn’t. We need to protect ourselves with more than a baseball bat.”

  He seemed to consider the idea for a long, long time. Seconds stretched into minutes.

  “Do you even know how to fire a weapon?”

  “Of course, I do. I wouldn’t suggest it otherwise.”

  “Then... Okay, sure.” He had finally agreed, but he didn’t act as if he liked the idea. “I met a guy in Fairview. I think he’ll help me out with that.”

  “Then, we need to go back home. I want to get this over with.”

  “We just got here.” Was there a bit of a whine in his voice?

  “I know, but I can’t relax. I’m not going to be a fun date.”

  “Okay, if you want to go home, we’ll go home. But just for the record...I still want to go on a date with you. A real date.”

  “When did you start thinking of Laurel Heights as home?”

  Her question seemed to startle him. The seconds ticked by while she waited for his response.

  “It’s not the house. I could take or leave the house. Honest answer?”

  She nodded with a huge lump in her throat.

  “Being with you feels like being home.”

  “But what about Angie?”

  She regretted the words as soon as they fell from her lips. Why, oh why, did she remind him of his loss at that moment?

  Pain flickered across his face, just for a split second. “She’s gone, Laurel. It’s time for me to let her go.”

  “Are you ever going to be able to do that if you never know for sure why she was murdered?”

  “I can’t stay stuck in this living hell forever.” The warmth in his expression seemed so odd after the statement he’d just made. “I need to move on, and I think I can do that with you. I know we’ve only just met, but... I just think I can. I can’t explain it.”

  “Don’t try. Let’s just take it one moment at a time. Okay?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He checked the time on his phone. “If we leave now, we could get back home before midnight.”

  She smiled. “Sure. Let’s go home.”

  ****

  Gray had parked his car two or three miles down the road at the small lot that serviced the ridge trailhead. He checked his watch. About ten minutes before midnight. Would the intruder in Laurel’s house still be there? Probably not. Especially if he’d heard Gray banging on the front door. Probably waited until he left before exiting the scene. No matter. Laurel had granted him permission to investigate, and that’s what he’d do. When would he get another chance?

  He and Josh hiked back to Laurel Heights and approached the property from the rear. By the time they came within sight of the house, Josh was sweating and thoroughly winded. Gray had refused to slow his pace, hoping maybe the accelerated metabolism would sweat some of the toxins out of Josh’s system. Despite his bedraggled appearance, Josh’s countenance appeared better than it had that morning.

  “Are you trying to kill me?” Josh whispered-shouted across the ten feet that separated them.

  Kill Josh? No. Maim him? Perhaps.

  “Maybe I am.”

  The man never shut up. He had talked all the way along the ridge trail. He needed to be quiet. If someone was still inside the house, Gray didn’t want to alert the intruder. Didn’t Josh get that was why he’d parked down the road? Hiking was not Gray’s idea of fun.

  As they came alongside the garage, the entire property appeared to be shrouded in a heavy fog. It wasn’t a particularly cloudy night. Neither was it chilly. The earth on their part of the world had warmed a bit with the approach of May.

  Gray stopped and studied the darkened house and then the derelict garage. “Where should we start?”

  “I know you’re dying to get inside the house and snoop around, but we both know the garage is where the action’s at.”

  Gray nodded. When Josh was right, he was right.

  To his surprise, Laurel had not bought a new lock. The garage door hung open on its hinges. A few inches were enough to peek inside. He punched the power on his flashlight and sprayed a beam through the crack. Nothing moved. He placed his free hand on his service weapon and nudged the garage door open with his shoulder. Josh followed so closely he could smell him. The man needed a shower.

  He circled right, staring into the pitch black to the left. Rustling along the back wall startled him, but he was certain tiny rodent feet caused the noise. He sucked in a breath anyway and waited a few moments for his nerves to settle. Gray didn’t believe he was afraid of much, but this situation reeked of danger. A heavy cloud of unease settled over him.

  Josh whispered in his ear. “I’m nauseous.”

  “It’s from your hangover,” Gray whispered back.

  Josh jabbed him in the back. “You know what I mean. It’s the feel. Don’t you feel it?”

  He did. The atmosphere in the garage was so thick it was making him light headed. They had always operated under the theory that an entity sucked the energy from any source it met. Without a doubt, each of them—Gray, Josh, and Ashley—had at one time or another faked the feeling. This sensation was real. Gray had never experienced anything like it. When he had told Josh the house had the feel, he hadn’t known what he was talking about.

  “Something is here, Gray. I can feel it.” Josh’s voice sounded remote and a bit eerie.

  Gray tried to shake the fuzz out of his head. “You want to do an EVP? Maybe try to provoke?”

  “I feel as if we’ve provoked something just being here.”

  A chill snaked down Gray’s backbone. He glanced at Josh in time to see him jerk.

  “The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees since we came in the door.”

  Josh’s teeth chattered to punctuate his assessment.

  Gray pulled the recorder out of his jacket pocket. It hadn’t seen much use since they investigated the old Donovan place in Springfield a few years ago.

  “Mitchell Grayson and Joshua McCord in the garage at Laurel Heights. Saturday, April 26, 2014 at...” He flicked the light across the face of his watch. “Five m
inutes until midnight.” He shifted on his feet before he doused the light and settled into the typical one-sided conversation. “Is there anyone here?” He waited for an answer. “What’s your name?” The stop and go nature of the recording continued through a series of standard questions. Nothing seemed to elicit a reaction until he asked the dark room about Laurel. “Are you angry that Laurel Standridge has moved into the house?”

  Electrical fingers seemed to tap up and down his arms. He gulped down a wad of anxiety. Should he mention the weird sensation to Josh? Would speaking of it end the experience? He had a strong desire to make it stop.

  Suddenly, the loose contents of the garage rose from every surface and swirled around them, banging and clanging against the walls and the center support posts, knocking against the ceiling. He ducked and put his arms over his head to protect himself from flying debris.

  “Gray?” Josh called as if from a far off place.

  Gray couldn’t see him through the flying dust and dirt that had lifted from the garage floor.

  “You want to get out of here?”

  “Do you?” Gray bit his lower lip to keep from screaming.

  “Keep asking questions.”

  Was Josh crazy? Well, the answer to that was obvious. Yes, he was.

  Gray managed to stand erect again and braced himself against the force that was buffeting him.

  “Do you want Laurel Standridge to leave Laurel Heights?”

  The activity in the garage intensified. The dark became darker. An oppressive heaviness weighed on his chest until he couldn’t breathe easily. It seemed as if a strong hand pushed him toward the garage door. Josh was already halfway out. As soon as Josh cleared the entrance, the door slammed shut before Gray could exit. His flashlight went out. He dropped the light and groped for the door handle.

  His heart pounded hard and fast in his chest. Fear, real fear, penetrated every fiber of his being. “Josh? The door won’t budge.”

  He tugged and strained, but without success. Black appeared on the edges of his vision and began narrowing his eyesight. If he didn’t get out of the garage, he would soon pass out. A sharp stabbing pain erupted in his head, and his knees nearly buckled.

  The sound of banging penetrated the roar in his ears. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the wood wall of the garage splinter and break. A hand shot through the new opening, reaching for him and dragging him toward fresh air. The interior of the garage seemed to suck him backward like a huge vacuum cleaner. For a long moment, he was stuck as if in between two worlds. Weightless and powerless. Suspended in the air.

  When he finally broke free from the force that held him and stumbled into the open outside the garage, he fell into Josh, who braced him to keep him from hitting the ground.

  When Gray regained his balance, he turned to look over his shoulder and stared at the garage, watching in fascination as the surreal nature of the scene enveloped every one of his senses. His skin burned as if he’d just gotten the worst sunburn of his life. The stench of burnt wood hit him in the nose. His eyes watered. The eerie quiet pressed on him until he wanted to scream just to break the heaviness of the night. He thought his eardrums might burst from the sound of silence. He licked his lips, trying to remove an unfamiliar foul taste from his mouth.

  The garage appeared to be sucking in the fog that had previously enshrouded the property. Gray would not have believed it if he hadn’t witnessed it. Within a few seconds, the sky above them had cleared. A host of sparkling stars blinked overhead. No evidence of the fog or the paranormal activity in the garage remained. The night was unnaturally quiet.

  Josh gasped. “What was that?”

  Everything they had done in their quest to document paranormal activity paled in comparison to what had just happened.

  It was a long walk back to the car. Gray wasn’t up for the hike. Not yet.

  “Maybe we should check out the house. Laurel gave me permission to go inside. I think we should take advantage of that.” Gray started toward the house.

  Josh didn’t follow. He called to Gray from where he stood by the gaping hole in the garage wall. “Are we going to do an investigation?”

  Gray’s shoulders tensed. He stopped and turned. “No. I think we should just look for evidence of an intruder. That’s what we should have done first. Whoever was moving around in her house has probably left by now. We’ve made too much noise.”

  He hadn’t followed proper procedure, and now he may have missed his opportunity to unravel part of the mystery surrounding Laurel Heights. Might have lost his thin lead in breaking the Standridge murder case. He’d let his old ghost hunting habit interfere with his job.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chase’s truck glided into its usual spot beneath the sycamore tree. Across the short distance between the tree and the garage, the red-haired man named McCord reached through a new hole in the side of the building. What was the fool doing? Why had the man created another repair job for him?

  His irritation almost overwhelmed him. When his anger flared, he had a hard time controlling it. Well, at least, he used to. Chase tightened his hands around the steering wheel, drew in a deep breath, and counted to ten.

  His temper had been what had gotten him into trouble in Alabama. He would have never been suspected of murdering Angie if he hadn’t raged around the house throwing things the night before she died. He had always hated domestic disturbance calls when he was a patrol officer. He hated them even more when the call came from his neighbors, when one of his fellow officers knocked on his door. His accusers hadn’t understood that he wasn’t angry with Angie. Or maybe they hadn’t wanted to understand. He used to say raging was the way he vented his aggravation at the job, the system, injustice, at life.

  Prison had a unique way of teaching a man anger management.

  Chase needed to get out of the truck. Its thin metal walls couldn’t contain his aggravation. He yanked on the handle, but Laurel’s fingers wrapped around his upper arm before he could push the door open.

  She breathed heavily, in and out. “Wait.”

  Did she know how close he was to exploding? He recalled the fear that flared in her eyes when he’d pounded his fist on the wall near her head. She hadn’t flinched or backed down, but she had been wary of him for a while after that.

  He had to control his temper, so he drew in a deep, replenishing breath. Kept his voice steady. “What is it?”

  “Do you see it?” she whispered.

  “See what?”

  “The fog. It’s a weird color, and it’s kind of hovering around the garage. Like smoke, but not smoke. Like a...vapor. It doesn’t look normal.”

  The mist was thin and glowed greenish-gray in the pale moonlight. So focused was he on McCord that he’d missed it.

  “That is...odd.”

  His attention diverted once again to McCord. His skin prickled with electricity as he watched the man try to pull Grayson out of the garage. Grayson seemed to be half in and half out, and he wasn’t budging either way. His face was turning several shades of pinkish red, almost like the man was developing severe sunburn.

  “They need help.”

  Laurel’s words circled them, but neither of them moved as if they were entranced by what happened across the yard. Glued to their seats. Frozen.

  Every molecule of oxygen Chase inhaled seemed weighted with moisture.

  McCord tugged on Grayson’s arm one more time, and he seemed to fly through the hole in the garage wall, stumbling and nearly knocking McCord onto the ground with him. The two men righted themselves and turned in unison to stare at the garage.

  Laurel’s fingers tightened around Chase’s arm. The fog that seemed to hover around and above them coalesced and rushed into the garage as if a giant suction had pulled it into the interior.

  “Did you see that?”

  Chase’s heart pounded. He’d never seen anything like it. Never. Suddenly his limbs cooperated, no longer paralyzed. He pushed the door open and jumped from
the cab of the vehicle.

  “Stay in the truck.”

  The slam of Laurel’s passenger door rang through the heavy night air behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to glare at her for ignoring his advice. Actually, it had been more like a command. He hadn’t meant it to sound that way, but his years as a police officer had kicked in. She returned his glare. A defiant stance.

  She stopped and placed her hands on her hips. He sighed. It would do no good to push Laurel back to the pickup. She was strong willed when she wanted to be. He turned his attention back toward the men across the yard.

  McCord and Grayson hadn’t spotted them yet. How could they not hear the clunk of truck doors slamming? Both men appeared pale as a...ghost.

  Something tremendous had happened. Chase sensed it. Could feel it like the approach of an incoming thunderstorm or that sick feeling he sometimes got in the pit of the stomach when he knew something bad was about to happen. The sensation was shocking. Electrical and intense.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked as he stood right behind McCord.

  Grayson jerked as if Chase had fired a shot right beside his ear. Both men twisted and spun on their heels to face Chase.

  “What the—” The man was trembling. “Oh, it’s you.” Grayson sucked in a quick breath and appeared to pull himself together.

  When Chase glanced at McCord, he knew what fear looked like. McCord stomped his feet as if he was cold, but the night was balmy if anything. The man’s lips appeared just a bit blue, and he shuddered once, a violent jolting of his entire body. Every part of the man seemed to jerk.

  “Something is really wrong with that garage.” McCord’s words tripped and stumbled out of his mouth.

  “What happened?” Laurel’s voice vibrated loudly in Chase’s ear.

  Grayson stepped between Chase and McCord, pushing Chase back a step or two.

  “Look... Josh and I... We’ve been doing this a long, long time. Most of the time, we’ve faked it or imagined it—”