Patrick growled, startling a squirrel peeking over the roofline. The beast saw him and shrieked and tore off. Patrick retreated across the roof, dropped to the ground and snapped his glamour back in place. As he did, he caught a movement to his left and spun fast, peering down the row of headstones.
He had surveyed the scene before climbing down. It'd been clear. But now he was sure he'd spotted a figure amongst the tombstones.
And, yes, that sounded exactly like the sort of thing he'd tried to conjure up for Gabriel. Which suggested his mind was playing a nasty and mocking trick.
Patrick was about to turn away when he caught the flicker again. He turned and...
And there was a woman standing by a grave. The same tomb Gabriel had visited.
Patrick hesitated. He even blinked a few times, as if a ray of sunshine might be manifesting in human shape, because that was a far more believable explanation than this--that there was a woman where there had been no one only moments ago.
Not just a woman, either, but a blonde in a white sundress.
No, he was seeing things. His imagination having fun with him.
The woman bent and touched her fingers to the gravestone. Patrick made his way toward her as silently as he could, loosening his glamour, his natural form better suited for sneaking across a green lawn.
He drew close enough to see the woman clearly. To make out her face. Her form. She was young, with straight blond hair and wore a sundress fifty years out of date. Her feet were bare, and she reminded him of the girls he'd toy with back when her sundress was fashionable--girls who'd found his looks particularly appealing, that whiff of the fae even in his glamour. He'd played that to full effect. The girls themselves had reminded him of some fae, ethereal, flighty and not-quite-there will-o'-the-wisps.
That alone drew him closer, even as he warned himself. When he focused his vision, he caught a telltale shimmer. It seemed not a fae's glow but a smudge to the young woman's edges. A feathering. A blurring.
He took one more step...and a twig cracked under his foot. She spun and stared at him.
Then she disappeared.
TEN
GABRIEL
Gabriel walked into Lambert's office, where the architect was shredding papers, the sound loud enough to cover Gabriel's entry. He slowed and approached offside to see what Lambert was shredding. While people had very good reasons for destroying papers, to a defense lawyer, it was always suspicious. But Lambert wasn't destroying anything. He appeared to be pushing blank pages into the machine, feeding them through one at a time, his gaze fixed out the window.
"I don't believe those require shredding," Gabriel said.
The architect gave a start. He stared, as if trying to place Gabriel, despite the fact he'd been there only hours before. And Gabriel had been told he was rather memorable.
"Those pages," Gabriel said. "Unless they're written in invisible ink, I don't believe they need to be destroyed."
Lambert turned the sheaf of papers over in his hand, giving them that same uncomprehending stare.
"I was...I need to..."
"Get back on track," Gabriel said.
"Yes."
"Because you're lost."
Lambert blinked. "What?"
"Never mind. I need you to do something for me." He took printed pages from his pocket. "I would like you to look at several photographs and tell me if you recognize anyone in connection with your encounter."
"Encounter..."
"With the hitchhiking young woman."
Lambert recoiled as if Gabriel had poked him with a cattle prod.
"I don't know her," Lambert said. "I'd never met her before, and I don't want anything to do with her. It was all a mistake. I love my wife. She's a wonderful--"
"Yes, yes, I'm sure she is. But as I may have said before, I am working to corroborate your story. I want to see justice done."
Meaningless babble, but it was enough--a reassurance that someone was on Lambert's side.
Gabriel unfolded the sheets. At Olivia's suggestion, he'd created a makeshift police lineup. He'd done this sort of thing with witnesses before, using websites where he could submit a scanned photo and search for similar ones. He'd chosen three and done some fiddling with Christina Moore's photograph so it wasn't as obviously out of date. Now he laid the four pictures in front of Lambert.
"Do any of these women look familiar?"
It took two sweeps. The first held that blank-eyed expression, Lambert still unfocused. But then he pulled himself together enough to do a proper scan, and his finger landed on the photograph of Christina Moore.
"That's her. That's the girl I picked up." Lambert flushed. "As a hitchhiker, I mean."
"Understood. Thank you for your time."
Gabriel turned to go. He made it three steps. Then he caught sight of a clock on the wall.
Forty-eight hours.
He thought of Tanya Gross, the first gravestone he'd visited.
He heard Lambert again, frantically trying to book that vacation, the deadline looming.
Gabriel turned back to the architect, who was poised behind his desk, as if they were still mid-conversation.
"Mr. Lambert," he said.
"Yes?"
"In the course of my investigation, I've had contact with your wife. I say this in complete confidence, because I doubt she would want me sharing it, but I believe it's important for you to know."
"Yes?"
"She forgives you. She will not say that immediately, perhaps not for a while, and you must continue to work at repairing the damage, but your eagerness to repair it has been recognized."
Lambert stood there, as if waiting for something Gabriel's words did not quite provide. Which was rather annoying. It seemed clear enough, and to say more made him feel like he was auditioning for a post as Rose's assistant.
Gabriel steeled himself. "You've found the right path. You're back on it." A moment's pause, and then he added, "Stay on it," before leaving.
So they appeared to have a ghost. Which did not bother Gabriel nearly as much as an illogical construct within the expected narrative. Christina Moore died on a lonely stretch of road, hit by a careless driver on a rainy summer night. For fifty years since that night, witnesses had reported picking up a hitchhiking ghost matching Christina's description, all within that general region, all on rainy nights.
To this point, the narrative made logical sense. If ghosts existed, might they not be souls trapped on earth, trying to complete one final task? Endlessly and fruitlessly trying, in Christina's case.
Here was where the logic broke down. For the first forty-odd years, when someone stopped to pick up her ghost, she could not tell them where she wished to go. She would break down in tears...and then disappear.
Then, in the last two years, the narrative had changed, as if Christina suddenly remembered where she needed to be. But then she started giving false directions designed to lead drivers off the road. To get them lost. Whereupon she'd impart a final message before vanishing. And forty-eight hours later, at least two who had picked her up killed themselves.
So what had changed?
Gabriel pondered this question as he sat across from a client in the Cook County Jail. Ostensibly, he was listening to Mr. Pryce, but that required only the occasional nod or murmur. Had Pryce been talking about his own case, he would deserve all Gabriel's focus, but he was simply bemoaning the fact he might spend the next ten years in jail.
Gabriel could point out that he had every hope of getting the sentence down to three years, possibly four, but he had learned that it was not the length of time that clients found daunting. It was the "in jail" part. And while Gabriel knew enough to listen and nod and make those noises that could be interpreted as sympathy, it was all he could do not to give an exasperated, "What did you expect?"
It was truly astounding how the human mind worked. People committed crimes--in this case, hiring a hitman to kill a business partner--and then whined about the punishmen
t once they were caught. Even as a child, Gabriel had known the potential consequences of his youthful criminality. It had begun right with Seanna when she'd made a game of teaching him to pickpocket money from her men. If he won, he shared in the profits, via a candy bar or a trip to the used bookstore. If he was caught, though? That was on him, and Gabriel better not even try implicating Seanna.
When he was eight, his mother sent him on his first break-and-enter. He was to sneak into the home of one of her lovers and fetch back the money the man had allegedly stolen from her--which Gabriel presumed was money she'd paid him for drugs. While he was inside, he was free to take anything else he found, and they'd split the profits, fifty-fifty, in cash. That led to his first mistake--and his first lesson in the perils of greed. He'd been so fixated on the monetary reward that he'd stayed too long, and the man's wife had returned, glimpsing him as he dove out the window.
Seanna said if the police came, she'd turn him over, and he'd be in prison until his twentieth birthday. Even as a child, this struck Gabriel as rather extreme, and so he'd done what he always did when Seanna told him something he suspected was untrue: he looked it up. And there he got his first taste of the law, like the Theban labyrinth with the Minotaur at the center, surrounded by endless traps and hidden escape routes.
That Minotaur? Jail time. It could be avoided, yet once you stepped into the maze--once you committed a crime--you accepted the possibility that prison might be your fate. Or, in the words of the cliche, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
Gabriel had always kept that in mind, always known that if he did something and was caught, he'd pay the price. After turning eighteen, he had--largely--given up pickpocketing and burglary and other acts likely to end in a prison cell. But if he did commit them, and he was caught, while he'd try his best to avoid the Minotaur, he would never whine and moan like his clients. Seanna had taught him correctly in that: take responsibility for your actions.
She'd also inadvertently taught him to commit his own crimes and not pay others to do them for you. Which made this client's wailing all the more annoying. Gabriel had to stop accepting clients who hired hitmen. He simply could not work up the proper degree of patience with them.
"You know what's really not fair?" Pryce said.
Life, Gabriel was tempted to answer, which, while true, no one ever wanted to hear. So he made his noise, one that could be mistaken for a "Hmm?" of actual interest.
"I didn't kill anyone. No one's claiming I did. But I'm still going to prison. How exactly can Lou's death be my fault?"
Possibly because you paid the person who did pull the trigger? Paid him to pull it?
"It's not my fault," Pryce said. "Not at all."
And with those words, Gabriel finally saw the problem. Not with Pryce, who had too many problems to note, but with the ghost of Christina Moore.
"Culpability," he murmured.
The client's face screwed up. "What?"
"You feel you were not responsible," Gabriel said, as if by rote. That's what they wanted to hear. Well, no. They wanted to hear "You are not responsible," but even Gabriel had limits to what he could say with a straight face.
"Damn right I'm not responsible. I don't understand how I'm even being charged with this. Like I said, I didn't actually want this guy to kill Lou. It was... What do you call it? Entrapment. I thought he was kidding. And if he says otherwise, well, he's a killer. He lies. Look at me. I'm an educated, successful businessman. A pillar of my community. You're going to tell the jury that, right? Pillar of my community?"
Gabriel made another noncommittal noise. Those were four words he would never utter in front of a judge. It might as well be shorthand for "My client sponsored a little league baseball team to hide the fact he's a murdering scumbag."
As his client continued, Gabriel mentally reversed to the concept of culpability. That was what bothered him about the ghost case. What did her victims do to deserve an apparent death curse? A man who considered cheating on his wife was in need of either a wakeup call or a divorce lawyer. But death? That was like punishing a first-time pickpocket with double amputation.
Moreover, Lambert's case did smack of entrapment--offering an enticing possibility and seeing if Lambert would take the bait. And it had absolutely nothing to do with Christina Moore's fate. Yes, a ghost's revenge could be unconnected to her death, but why change her modus operandi from panicked tears to cold-blooded murder? Was there an inciting event? Or some missed connection between her death and her curses?
His client was still expostulating on the terrible unfairness of his situation. Gabriel was still pretending to listen. When he caught a break in the rant, he murmured, "Yes," accompanied by a solemn nod, and received a grunt of satisfaction in reply.
Your outrage has been noted. In billable hours.
"You are going to get me out of here, right?"
Eventually.
"As I've said, Mr. Pryce, the charges against you, while"--fair--"reprehensible, are grave, and since, under psychological duress, you made the"--idiotic--"understandable mistake of confessing to hiring"--some lowlife thug who kills for beer money--"a professional assassin, the task of setting you free is contingent upon"--divine intervention--"an exceedingly favorable jury, which we are unlikely to get in light of that confession. Our hope is that the jury will"--be equally idiotic and possibly sociopathic--"see the unfairness of your situation and reduce your sentence accordingly."
Count on four years. Possibly three, if I decide you're worth the extra effort.
Pryce stared at Gabriel, running on a thirty-second delay as he struggled to process all that. After a few moments, he nodded and said, "I get it. Sure. Thanks."
"Be assured, I'm doing my best." Or a reasonable facsimile of it.
Gabriel strode to his car and took his phone from the locked glove compartment. Earlier he'd e-mailed Olivia the results of Lambert's photo lineup, and now she'd just gotten back to him with: Okay, so we have a ghost. If I say that's cool, you won't roll your eyes at me, right?
Never.
And if you do, I'm not there to see it, so I can pretend it never happened :) Give me a shout if you get a minute. We'll be back on the road soon. Almost home!
He checked the time stamp against the clock. She'd sent it ten minutes ago. He called her. It rang three times. Then a male voice answered with, "Hey, Gabriel."
"Ricky..."
"Yeah, Liv ran to the restroom. I was going to ignore the call. Then I saw it was you. So, ghost, huh? That's cool."
There was no sarcasm in his voice. Gabriel wished there were--that little twist that said Ricky couldn't believe Liv found this interesting. Perhaps the eye-roll she'd expected from Gabriel. But Gabriel didn't need to see Ricky's face to know the sentiment was genuine. As was the rest--answering the phone to be sure Liv got his message, never thinking to click the Ignore button, perhaps finding a way to hide any trace of the call. In other words, never considering everything Gabriel would if the situation were reversed.
Because Ricky was "a nice guy." A decent guy. A good person. Pick your platitude. All those hackneyed phrases that should make Gabriel curl his lip and dismiss Ricky with contempt and disgust. Nice. Good. Decent. Synonyms for weak, foolish and ineffectual. Unless you were Ricky.
Ricky Gallagher was a biker. And an MBA student. At least one of those things should make him an asshole. The combination should make him an insufferable lout.
But Ricky Gallagher was not an ass. Or insufferable. Or weak, foolish or ineffectual. He rose above all that, naturally, to be tough and smart as well as likable and charming.
Worse, Gabriel could not even muster a good dose of jealous hatred. Which had not stopped him from watching Ricky dangle, injured, from a bell tower and thinking how easy it would be to let him fall. It had, however, stopped Gabriel from doing so. And left him reflecting on that dark impulse with the most uncomfortable of emotions: shame.
"Gabriel?"
"Yes. We have a case. I was ph
oning with an update, but it isn't urgent. Olivia can call me in the morning."
"Whoa, no. If I let you go, I'll catch proper shit. You've got her hooked with the mystery. I'm keeping you on the line, like it or not."
A chuckle, a little bit forced, a reminder that Olivia wasn't the only one Gabriel had hurt. Not the only one he'd betrayed. And Ricky didn't even know about his hesitation in the bell tower.
Fresh shame licked through Gabriel.
Ricky continued, "And because I know you despise small talk, my dad wants me to run a few things past you when I get back. Normal business." Which meant the Gallaghers' legitimate business interests, rather than their criminal ones. "He wants me to handle it, but if you'd rather--"
"No, that's fine. We'll talk."
"Great. And here comes Liv." Ricky's voice faded, as if pulling the phone away. "It's Gabriel. I told him you're not interested in the case, and you don't want to hear anything about it."
Whatever Olivia did, it made Ricky laugh. Then he said into the receiver. "Here she is. I'll call Lydia tomorrow and set up a meeting."
Olivia came on the line with a breezy, "Hey, there." Gabriel eased back in the driver's seat and told her what was bothering him about Christina Moore.
"Exactly what I was thinking," Olivia said. "It's a one-eighty in haunting style. Weepy ghost to vengeful spirit with no apparent transition period. I say 'apparent' meaning I have to dig deeper to confirm that. To that end, I've tracked down the woman who claims to have encountered weepy Chrissy right before Tanya Gross--the first to fall to the vengeful version."
"Excellent. We can speak to her tomorrow."
"Actually, I thought Ricky and I would pop by there tonight."
A chill settled between Gabriel's shoulder blades. A dangerous chill. The one that slid into his gut and made his voice ice over as he said, "I see."
Olivia did not fail to catch that chill. She hurried on, saying, "She lives outside the city. Right on our way to Cainsville. It makes sense for us to stop by."
"Of course."
He heard his chill deepen, and he tried to put on the brakes, change direction, avoid this destination. She was right. It was efficient. No insult to him. No rejection. So why did he feel that same impulse rising? To reject. To shun. To freeze her out. Just as he had when she'd told him about Gwynn.
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