The Dirty Dozen: Damsel Edition

by Kay Maree

  “And the new baby?”

  Jonah snorted. “She miscarried. I shouldn’t say thank God about it, but that child didn’t deserve what she was doing to it while she was pregnant.”

  Jeremy rubbed his chin. “What changed so suddenly?”

  Lucy beamed. “He realized that we were part of each other, and he didn’t want to lose me.”

  “She proved that in the only way she could.” Jonah smoothed Lucy’s hair. “She went swimming.”

  About the Author

  Lorah Jaiyn focused on her writing career after a nasty case of empty nest syndrome, followed by the dreaded absent-Gramma disorder due to her son-in-law’s Air Force career. Her projects have ranged from horror to romance, with a little fantasy thrown in for good measure, and she still hasn’t figured out her favorite genre.

  Jaiyn is originally from Western New York but now lives in Central Florida and enjoys exploring the great outdoors and binge watching the Hallmark Channel. She fosters baby squirrels when needed and credits her Jack Russell as both her muse and biggest distraction.

  Author Links

  Facebook:

  https://www.facebook.com/LorahJaiyn

  Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/writerlorahjaiyn/

  Facebook Group:

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/LorahsLoft

  Twitter:

  https://twitter.com/writerlorahj

  Haunting Gina

  THE DIRTY DOZEN – DAMSEL EDITION

  Tressa Rabbit

  HAUNTING GINA

  Copyright © 2019 by Tressa Rabbit

  The right of Tressa Rabbit to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical or mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Gina Collins keyed in her four-digit code on the security pad outside dispatch and waited for the familiar click before rushing inside. “I heard about Chief Anderson’s chest pain call on the scanner. Is he going to be okay?”

  “No news yet,” Kristin responded, snatching up a phone without looking away from her computer screen. “Will you call animal control about the kittens behind Murphy’s gas station? The caller stated that two of them have wandered out near the road and were almost hit by a car. I have to call Okaloosa County for a standby.”

  Gina picked up her headset. “Of course. Why the standby?”

  “Two houses, fully engulfed inside Westwind subdivision,” Lisa Nelson, another coworker, answered for Kris.

  “Damn. We’ll be lucky if the entire subdivision doesn’t burn to the ground.” Donning her headset, Gina called animal control and filled them in on the kitten situation while logging on to the 911 system.

  The emergency line lit up seconds later, and Gina took a deep breath in anticipation of what was to come. “Walton County 911. Do you need police, fire, or ambulance?”

  “Hello?”

  “Yes? What’s your emergency?”

  “You can hear me?” a distant voice asked in obvious surprise.

  “Barely. Can you speak up?”

  There was a long pause. “A small child is trapped in one of the burning houses at Westwind.”

  Gina’s heart squeezed with anxiety. “I’m sorry, sir. I can hardly hear you. Did you say a small child is trapped in one of the houses that is on fire?”

  The masculine voice began to fade, sounding as if he stood a great distance from his phone. “Tell them to hurry.”

  “Can I get your name?” Gina asked as she continued typing instructions for the other dispatchers to pass on to the firefighters on scene. “Hello? Sir?”

  Silence.

  Gina glanced over at Kristin, noticing her face had turned white. Gina watched with bated breath as the other dispatcher conversed with the chief on duty about the possible child in danger.

  “He didn’t say, sir. All we managed to get from the caller was a trapped child in one of the burning houses in the subdivision, and then his phone disconnected. I don’t know, sir. Stand by and I’ll find out.” Kristin looked back at Gina. “Did you try calling him back?”

  Gina was currently doing that very thing. “I’m trying, but there is no log of his call.”

  “There has to be,” Kristin cried. “Check again.”

  “I am checking again, but it’s not there, I tell you. I’ve gone back into the log thirty minutes just in case there was a glitch or something, but it’s not there.”

  Kristin brought the receiver back to her mouth. “I’m sorry, sir. Yes, we’ll keep looking, and I’ll also have Marsha pull the tapes.”

  “I don’t understand how it could have just disappeared like that,” Gina whispered, scrolling through the calls once again. “I just talked to him, Kris.”

  The red emergency light lit up once again, and Gina quickly pressed the call button. “Walton County—”

  “I got her out. She’s lying in the backyard under a copse of trees. Hurry, she’s barely alive.”

  “Can you yell out to one of the firefighters there, sir?” She was met with silence once again.

  Jumping to her feet, Gina recited the caller’s words verbatim, ending with, “He said she’s barely alive.”

  Kristin passed on the information to Chief Colbert before turning back to Gina. “How did he know she was in there? Better yet, how did he get to her without being seen by any of our guys? Why not just tell one of the firefighters which house she was in?”

  “I have no idea.” Gina pinched the bridge of her nose and picked up a landline. “Marsha? Can you come in here, please?”

  “Let me guess,” Kristin added. “His number didn’t show once again?”

  Gina only shook her head. She’d checked the second the call came in. “Not even an unknown caller showed up on the log. It was just blank, as if it never happened.”

  Marsha barreled through her office door and into dispatch. “What’s going on?”

  “I received two separate calls from the same man about a small child in a structure fire in Freeport,” Gina rushed out. “I’ve gone back and looked several times, and there is no number associated with that call.”

  “Not even an unknown number notification shows up on the caller ID,” Kristin finished for her.

  “So you didn’t get a name?” Marsha glanced at all the faces in the room before stopping her gaze on Gina.

  “He didn’t give a name. He said—”

  “Medic Five to Walton Control,” the radio interrupted.

  Gina leaned forward and pressed the green key. “Go ahead, Medic Five.”

  “Launch Careflight. I repeat, launch Careflight. The landing zone will be set up in the parking lot of the elementary school.” He rattled off the coordinates. “We have a six-year-old female suffering from smoke inhalation and third degree burns on both legs. Copy?”

  “Control copies.” Gina repeated back the landing zone coordinates as well as the patient information.

  Kristin moved to the console reserved for the air ambulance and sent out the tones for the flight crew. After logging their takeoff time, she remained in her seat to follow the flight coordinates until they could arrive safely on the ground. “How did your caller get inside that house and rescue the child without being noticed? Better yet, why would he rush in there with all the firefighters on scene?”

  Gina turned toward Kris, understanding completely where her coworker’s thoughts were. “I wish I knew. The same thing happened with the Shueller fire a few months back. You hea
rd the call come in, right?”

  Kris just stared at her before dropping her gaze and turning back to her console to answer the radio traffic.

  Marsha spun toward her office. “Give me half an hour, and I’ll have the tapes pulled. I’m sure S.O. will be requesting them shortly anyhow.”

  “What makes you think the sheriff’s office would want a copy of the call?” Gina called out to Marsha’s retreating back.

  The supervisor stopped inside her door and glanced back over her shoulder. “Like the rest of us, they will want to know why the caller would disappear after moving the child to safety and why his call didn’t show up in our CAD either time.”

  Gina could understand why the sheriff’s office would want a copy of the call. A computer-aided dispatch, or CAD for short, recorded every incoming and outgoing call on their server. Yet it had failed not once but twice now.

  “Do you think he may have been the one who called in the Shueller fire a few months ago as well?” Gina couldn’t wrap her mind around something so heinous.

  “Who knows?” Marsha responded. “Anything is possible. All I can tell you is that I think it’s awfully suspicious that he knew she was in there but didn’t approach any of the crew on scene. Instead he calls 911 and runs inside the house himself, then saves the little girl before dumping her body in the backyard and not in an ambulance. Sure sounds strange to me.” She softly closed the door behind her.

  As much as Gina hated to admit it, she knew Marsha spoke the truth. Everything the man had done thus far had been weird. And the fact that his number had mysteriously vanished exactly like the man who’d called in the Shueller fire was even more perplexing.

  * * * *

  Colton Baines gritted his teeth as the world around him spun out of control. He braced himself against the side of a building, waiting for the agony to recede and the screams to stop.

  He had been experiencing the unnatural wailing almost daily for the past three years. Saving a life seemed to be his one reprieve from the nightmare… The only time the cries stopped haunting him.

  The pain gradually faded along with the screams, allowing him to breathe again. His legs buckled beneath him, and he slid to the ground in relief.

  She could hear him. The woman who’d answered his 911 call had heard his voice. But how was that possible? He’d been dead for three years now, and other than the strange connection when he’d reached out about a house fire a few months ago, no one had ever responded to him. Until her…

  He honestly hadn’t thought it would be possible to connect with a person’s mind from such a distance, especially since rescuing the victims always drained him of precious energy. But he’d connected with her.

  The last time he’d attempted to reach out to 911, he’d burned all his energy racing into a house fire in DeFuniak Springs. Yet, when he’d attempted to connect with someone who could help, he couldn’t remember anything past the sound of an angel’s voice. Her voice.

  Colton had always been taught that upon dying, a soul left the body to travel to its forever home. So why hadn’t his? He seemed to be trapped inside his skin, wearing the same clothes and reeking of the same smoke he’d inhaled on the day he’d died.

  And why couldn’t he see other dead people? Was he destined to remain in his current form, lost and alone for eternity?

  A vision of his younger sister suddenly took shape behind his eyes. She’d been gone for eight years, and the pain of her disappearance haunted him still.

  Leanne Baines had been listed as a runaway for months before FBI agent Nolan Delaney discovered evidence that tied Leanne’s case to several other missing girls in the area.

  After years of investigating the disappearances of more than twenty-three women, the FBI had found only one body. Until an unidentified female washed ashore on the Choctawhatchee Bay only weeks before the fire that had claimed Colton’s life.

  Extensive DNA testing had identified Jane Doe as Cara Perez, Leanne’s best friend and the girl she happened to be with the day she’d vanished all those years ago.

  Colton abruptly stood. He couldn’t allow his mind to linger on his sister, not in his weakened state.

  He slowly pushed off from the wall and staggered toward the one place he could find solitude—the shipyard. Something about the water felt serene and harmonic. Perhaps the murky shoreline would be the only place he would ever find peace in his nightmare of an afterlife.

  He threw his head back and cried, “Why have you forsaken me?” The silence that followed was deafening. As with all the times before, he wasn’t really expecting an answer.

  Colton had been taught from an early age that when a person died, their soul either went to heaven or hell. Not someplace in between where you wandered the earth aimlessly, cold and alone.

  His body shivered in response to his thoughts. No matter how many fires he continued to run into or how many bodies he saved, he could never seem to feel warm.

  It stopped the screams though, he numbly admitted to himself. He’d take the cold any day over the endless screams, the soul-wrenching cries for help.

  Chapter Two

  Gina stood and meandered over to the far wall to clock out for the night. She loved evening shift. It gave her the freedom to sleep in, clean her house, and run errands before heading into work for the day.

  Kristin got to her feet also. “A few of us are going to Scruples tomorrow for lunch. Care to join us?”

  “Thanks, Kris. I may just do that. It really depends on how late I sleep.” Gina sent her friend and coworker a wink before opening the door to step out into the well-lit parking lot.

  Kristin followed close behind. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Gina unlocked her car door and slid behind the wheel. “I know what I heard, Kris. How else would I have known where to look for the little girl?”

  “I have no idea, but you have to admit it’s a bit spooky. Especially after the strange call you took about the Shueller fire a few months ago.”

  “It’s a lot spooky. And I’d rather forget it ever happened, if you don’t mind.” Gina pulled the door shut, cranked the car, and rolled the window down. “I’ll try to make lunch tomorrow. Thanks again for the invite.”

  “No problem. See you then.” With a quick smile, Kristin ambled over to her four-wheel drive and climbed inside.

  The drive home passed without mishap for Gina. She managed to catch every green light on the brief trip, and traffic was nearly nonexistent.

  She pulled into the familiar driveway of home and stared at the yellow glow of her porch light before grabbing her purse and going inside.

  Gina couldn’t get the mysterious caller out of her head. Even with the static and poor reception of his phone, his deep voice had bled through her headset to penetrate her brain.

  Maybe she was going crazy and had imagined the call, but she didn’t think so. The six-year-old girl found in the copse of trees was evidence enough that the call had been real. As was the Shueller fire a few months back. The call hadn’t shown up in the CAD at that time either.

  Gina had no doubt the fire marshal would launch an official investigation. Someone would want answers as to how a local dispatcher knew of the child’s sudden rescue, along with the disappearance of the mysterious recording that tipped her off to the little girl’s whereabouts.

  None of it made any sense, she thought while pouring a glass of wine.

  The trill of a phone startled her, bringing her out of her musing. She fished her cell out of the bottom of her purse. “Hello?”

  “Hi, honey. I heard about what happened. Are you all right?”

  The sound of her stepfather’s voice soothed her somehow. “Hi, Dad. Yes, I’m fine. It was just all so weird. What are you doing up this late?”

  “I was trying to get caught up on some paperwork. Listen, your mother and I are worried about you. How about coming by the house for lunch tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know.
Kristin invited me to Scruples to eat with her and some of the ladies I work with.”

  There was a long pause. “If that’s what you want to do, but it would sure mean a lot to your mother if you were to show up at the house.”

  Guilt was instant. Jack Collins, an attorney turned judge, was capable of using words like a boxer used his fists. And he wasn’t above hitting below the belt. “Okay then. Tell Mom that I’ll be there.”

  “I will. Have a good night, buttercup.”

  “You too, Dad.” Gina ended the call, drained her glass of wine, and poured another. She noticed her hand shook as she gripped the crystal stem. What the hell is wrong with me?

  Plucking up the bottle of Chianti, she left the snifter on the counter and trailed over to the couch to check her email.

  It was going to be a long night, she surmised, opening her laptop and signing onto the internet. A long night indeed.

  She turned up the bottle of wine…

  * * * *

  Colton rolled to his back, blinking into the bright rays of the morning sun. The shipyard was bustling with people going about their daily routines. Some were sitting beneath shade trees eating breakfast from fast food bags, while others warmed up machinery and barked orders to the late arrivers.

  A vision of the little girl from the fire interrupted his introspection. He wondered if she’d survived, and if so, how much damage had been done to her.

  He slowly sat up and got to his feet, testing his strength. It took hours of sleep to replenish himself after gathering the energy to pull someone from the jaws of death.

  Colton closed his eyes and willed himself to the closest hospital from the fire site.

  Dizziness assaulted him upon arrival. He kept his eyes shut until the nauseating feeling passed. Apparently he hadn’t slept as well as he thought he had.