OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2

by Sheedy, EC

  Keeley gasped. How could he know her ragged thoughts?

  “What is not fine by me,” he went on, “is you putting yourself in the sights of Mace’s gun.”

  He finished tying his shoes, stood. Keeley hadn’t yet moved an inch, her mind too busy trying to figure out how her planned one-woman reconnaissance had turned into a team effort. She studied the irritated man in front of her, and her mouth went dry. Love, she thought.

  “Flashlights,” she said. “We’ll need flashlights.”

  “What about shovels?” he asked, his face set with grim purpose.

  Keeley shuddered. “No. No shovels … yet.”

  When Mace’s cell phone rang, its tone was barely audible over the wind and rain. He fumbled in his pocket for it and raised it to his ear.

  “Where are you?”

  Dolan. Mace took a deep breath of cool. “Working the night shift.”

  There was a slight pause. “Tonight’s the night, then?”

  “Uh-huh.” Mace stopped near a copse of trees to get his breath and get out of the weather. He rubbed the dampness off his cheeks. “Almost there. So how’s about you leave me to it. I’ll call you when the job’s done. We can plan a little celebration.” Might as well start making nice-nice to idiot boy, considering payday was at hand.

  “Where exactly is ‘there’?” Dolan asked.

  “Mayday house.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  Mace let out a breath and with it some of his cool. “I’m handling it, Dolan. So why don’t you shut the fuck up and let me do my job?”

  “Seems to me that’s what I’ve been doing and the bitch is still alive. So I repeat, what’s your plan?”

  This time Mace held back on the cursing. Dolan was doing his thing, making like he was the boss. Easy to be tough from the other end of a phone line. He’d humor the jerk, if only to get him off the damn phone. “Going in from the back of the house. That’s where Farrell’s room is. I take her out and I’m gone.”

  “Mace.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do not fuck this up.”

  Mace didn’t answer; he clicked off and spoke into the rain. “Yes, boss-man. Anything you say, boss-man.” Stuffing the phone in his pocket, he headed across the empty windswept field.

  In the kitchen, cast in the dim gray of the kitchen’s nightlight, Gus watched Keeley disappear into the shadow of the mud room. When she came out she was wearing overalls over her jeans, a woolen cap on her head pulled low over her ears, and a hooded rain jacket. She retrieved two flashlights from a shelf in the kitchen and handed one to Gus. “Ready?” she whispered, intent on not waking the second-floor sleepers.

  In the lousy light, Gus eyed her from top to toe; she vaguely reminded him of an Inuit on a seal hunt. “I take it from the gear you’ve put on, Stark isn’t buried in the cellar.”

  “You take it right.”

  “Where, then?”

  She put her fingers to her lips. “Shush.” She closed the Velcro fastener at her neck, her face disappearing behind a hood that encompassed her head and left no peripheral vision. “Let’s go.”

  Gus claimed his still-wet leather jacket from the hook by the door, and they went out the back door where the weather waited to attack them.

  Keeley paused on the top step and grimaced. “I hope this storm will save us from waking Father Barton. That man would hear a pin drop on a cloud.”

  “He’s not there, but his housekeeper is.”

  “Mrs. Rankin.” She nodded and thought a minute. “She shouldn’t be a problem.” She grabbed his hand. “Let’s go.”

  “Whoa.” When she started to step off the porch, he tugged her back. “You’re telling me Stark’s buried in the graveyard?”

  “Yes. That’s where I think he is.”

  “Keeley, there must be three hundred graves over there.” The wind lashed at his hair; the craziness of what they were doing did the same in his head. This was nuts.

  “Three hundred and twenty-two, to be exact. My mother”—she paused a moment and glanced away, then back—“was among the last to be buried there. But we won’t have to check them all.” Her voice came out of the hood. “The older graves are nearest the church, the newer ones fan out from there. I think the one we’re looking for, an eighties grave, will be close to the Mayday House hedge.” She paused. “I know the graveyard layout. I spent a lot of time in there when I was a kid. I used to sit there for hours.” She paused. “Praying for the dead.”

  “Strange kid.” He tried to visualize his energetic redhead slowing down enough to kneel in an old graveyard.

  “Maybe, but you know what they say, the dead don’t bother you; it’s the living you have to watch out for.” Gus couldn’t argue with that. “And you think Mary and your mother buried Stark in a church graveyard.”

  “Yes, I do. I know it sounds crazy, but I can see them doing it … for a lot of reasons.”

  “You think it might have been their way of making things right,” he said. “Burying Stark in the churchyard.”

  Her shrug was uncertain. “It’s possible.”

  He thought about it. Possible. Yes, and aside from the hallowed ground, religious aspect of things, damn smart. Especially if there happened to be a grave already dug and waiting for its occupant. Dig a little deeper, put the body in, cover it with dirt. Yeah. It’d work, although he kept his more pragmatic view to himself. “Even if they did, how will you find it? All the graves look pretty much the same.”

  “They’re not.” She pulled his hand. “Can we go? It’ll lighten up soon, and I’d rather do what I have to do while everyone’s still asleep.”

  They walked across Mayday’s huge backyard and pushed through the dripping hedge. The night lamp attached under the peak of St. Ivan’s steep roof cast a foggy wash of gray light on the graves nearest the church, and bleak shadows over those beyond it. Gus turned on his flashlight.

  Once on the other side, Keeley waved her light along the hedge and the graves closest to it, walked about thirty feet, and dropped to her knees. She set her flashlight beside her to illuminate a grave and ran her hands slowly over its surface.

  Gus, standing over her, said, “If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can help.” He pulled his wet collar up against the rain-laden wind.

  Still on her knees, she moved to the next grave. “Stones. I’m looking for a series of stones embedded on the surface of the grave.” She looked down the uneven row of tilted headstones and mossy plaques bearing the names of the dead and records of their time on earth. All of them black with rain, the plots themselves were buried inches deep in leaves driven to earth by the harsh weather.

  Gus didn’t bother asking why he was looking for stones. He followed her lead, sank to his knees, and started probing the surface of the nearest grave.

  The heavy rain soaked the rest of the way through his jacket; then, with the suddenness common to a Pacific Northwest storm, it stopped. Gus knew the reprieve was temporary.

  Keeley shoved the hood from her head, mumbling, “Thank God.” But she carried on with her grim task.

  He felt a hard lump under his palm, shifted his hand back, and pressed harder. A stone, then another. “There’s something here.”

  Keeley crawled to his side. “Where?”

  He took her hand and pressed it against the stones. She moved her own hands in a circle, her face tight with purpose; then she shook her head. “No. That’s not it. There should be a pattern.” She went back to the grave she’d abandoned, but after running her hands over it, she rested on her heels. When her flashlight dimmed, she picked it up, and pointed it down the row of graves. “Maybe you should start there,” she said, circling her light on a headstone about fifty feet away. “I’ll go there.” She swung it in the opposite direction. “We’ll work toward each other instead of away.” She paused. “The pattern might be hard to find. It’s been a lot of years.”

  “We’ll take it slow.” He gave her his much brighter flashlight and took
hers.

  She took his hand, squeezed it, and let it go. “Thanks, Gus,” she said, her tone low. “For coming with me. I know you think this is crazy.”

  He crouched down and stroked her face. Wet from tears or wet from the rain, he couldn’t tell. “Not so crazy, and from now on—just to be sure we understand each other—where you go, I go. No thanks are necessary.”

  She nodded but said nothing, then got up and walked along the path between the graves where she dropped to her knees, morphing into a gray ghost, a kneeling shadow in his peripheral vision.

  As they worked, the beam of her flashlight splayed across the ground, the grass and leaves, blanketing the long-departed souls of St. Ivan’s. The wind, gusting lighter now, flicked at the trees overhead and swirled along the hedge behind them, the only break in the deadness of the silence.

  For a few minutes, they searched quietly, Gus’s flashlight growing dimmer by the second, finally going out completely. He shook it a couple of times, but other than one quick flash, nothing. He looked up at the sky, lighter now that some of the rain clouds had scudded off, took another reading on Keeley’s location, and went back to working toward her, pressing his hands, deeply and palm flat, into the wet earth over the graves leading to Keeley’s light.

  They were maybe forty feet apart when he heard Keeley shout, “I’ve found it. Dear God, Gus, I think I found it.”

  She waved the brilliant beam of the flashlight in his direction, temporarily blinding him.

  He started to get up. The action abruptly aborted when something as hard and solid as a St. Ivan’s gravestone connected with his head.

  Gus’s jolted senses registered two things: the dense odor of sodden leaves shooting up his nose and the chill of dead earth against his cheek.

  His brain, amidst an array of wildly shooting colors, registered rage—and one name.

  Keeley.

  CHAPTER 22

  Keeley sat back on her knees, lifted her hand from the grave, and wiped it slowly on her jean-covered thigh. Her mind was a jumble, her heart incoherent with emotion.

  Everything Dinah and Mary had said was true. She’d found the grave. The grave she’d prayed wouldn’t be there.

  Until a stone daisy said otherwise.

  Mary Weaver had killed Jimmy Stark and her mother had helped her bury him.

  Keeley tried to imagine carrying the weight of Mary and her mother’s guilt, to understand the reasons for their years of secrecy, their terrible silence.

  How had they lived with the sin of it?

  So many questions … The biggest one of all being what should she do now? Expose Mary and her mother or take on their mantle of secrecy and silence?

  She knew she wouldn’t decide here, with her knees, cold and wet, bent over forgotten bones, an unknown soul. No, she’d go back to Mayday, talk to Gus—then talk to God.

  On one knee now, she called out again, “Gus, did you hear me? I’ve found him.”

  A hand came from behind, grabbed her hair, and yanked her the rest of the way to her feet.

  “No, he doesn’t hear you,” a low harsh voice said in her ear. “And he won’t. Ever again.”

  Keeley, pulled hard against the body behind hers, couldn’t get a breath, and her heart pumped so hard, she couldn’t think. Dear God. Gus, oh Gus! No. He wasn’t dead. Impossible. The arm around her middle formed a vise tight enough to crack her ribs—push air out of her lungs.

  The flashlight fell from her hand, spilling light on the daisy-marked grave before rolling across the path and into the base of the hedge.

  He dragged her backward, roughly. “Who are you?” She choked out the words at the second he grabbed her shoulder and spun her to face him. “What have you done—” Gus, she needed to know about Gus.

  “Shut the fuck up.” He used the palm of his hand against her chin to shove her backward into the dense hedge. With his other hand, he jammed a gun into her stomach.

  Shock blurred her brain.

  A wave of nausea threatened to take her to her knees.

  He stepped back, and the pressure of the gun left her stomach, but he stayed close enough she could see his night-dark face.

  A stranger.

  “So you’re Farrell.” He sounded pleased by that.

  When she didn’t say anything—still too paralyzed by shock to access her brain—he reached over and touched her hair, pulled some strands, rolled them between his fingers, the gesture eerily gentle. He let her hair go, then ran his hand down her throat and across her breast. “Even in this shit weather I can make out that red hair.”

  Keeley, shuddering under his touch, couldn’t make sense of any of it. She needed time. “And if I’m not?”

  He casually lifted the gun in the direction of Mayday House.”Then I’ll just head on over there and start shootin’ until I find her.” His tone chilled. “Your call, sister.”

  “I’m Farrell.” She forced her shoulders to straighten, her mind to stifle her panic. “And I’d like to know why my name has you pointing a gun at me. I don’t even know you.” She tried to stare him down, keep her eyes off the gun, turn her fear about Gus into something more useful than the shakes and a dry mouth.

  “Well, now let’s us straighten things out for you. The name’s Mace, and I’m pointing a gun at you because I aim to send you to your Maker.”

  “My Maker,” she echoed stupidly. Afraid her knees would give way, she put her hands behind her, buried them in the thorny brush of the hedge, and held tight.

  Think, Keeley, think!

  Time, she needed time.

  “Why? I’ve never seen you before in my life.” She glanced at the light near her feet. The flashlight.

  “The why don’t matter, sweetheart. Dead’s dead. And that’s the way your brother wants you.”

  “You’ve made a mistake. I don’t have a brother.”

  He laughed. “Not one you’re gonna meet, anyway. Now about the dead part …” He lifted the gun. “We’ll get to that as soon as I’m done with you.”

  For a second, her mind stuck on the brother word, the fact she was going to die because of a mistake. A stupid, stupid mistake. Then her mind landed on his last words, and it wasn’t fear firing along her veins, it was a sudden white-hot anger. She let go of the hedge growth. “By ‘done with me’ I take it you plan to rape me,” she said, the words as crisp and cool as those of a fourth-grade teacher. She inched away, her hands at her sides, her back brushing the hedge behind her, her focus on the flashlight maybe a foot or two from her feet.

  “Don’t see why we shouldn’t have ourselves a little fun.” He touched her hair again. “Your dead boyfriend sure as hell isn’t going to be giving you any.”

  At the reference to Gus, Keeley went sleet cold. Gus wasn’t dead. She might not know why, but she was absolutely certain of it. Equally as certain she needed to get to him—quickly.

  “The priest who lives in that house might,” she said, jerking her head in the direction of the rectory. When Mace glanced up, she gained another few inches. “And if I scream loud enough, they’ll hear me all the way to Mayday House.”

  “Well, then you’ll just have to be quiet, won’t you?” He looked at her, as if sizing her up, ran his tongue over his lower lip. “And know what, red? I don’t think I’ll be needing this.” He shoved the gun in his belt and lunged.

  Keeley dropped to her knees, closed her fingers around the flashlight. She raised it, brought it down hard, but managed only a grazing blow to his shoulder. Enough to anger him.

  “Bitch!” He grabbed her hair, and she hit him again, this time ramming the flashlight into his stomach. A slight whoosh of his breath crossed her cheek and he cursed again, yanking her hair until her face was inches from his. She saw mean, ugly eyes, a cold sneer. “I didn’t expect this much fun, you being a nun and all.”

  When she rammed him again, he hit her, his first blow glancing off her ear, his second connecting with her jaw. Her head ringing, she stumbled and fell to the ground. When he ca
me toward her, she beamed the flashlight into his eyes and scuttled backward along the path.

  She didn’t get far.

  He fell on her, broad and heavy, like a giant tree sawn at the base. The gun he’d stuffed in his belt bore hard into her hipbone. She pounded his back with the light, kicked, clawed, and screamed as long and loud as she could, but he was too big, too heavy. Nothing moved him.

  Nothing moved.

  “You dumb son of a bitch!”

  The body on top of her rolled away in a slow sliding motion, leaving her chest clear, but their legs entangled, and her hand, with its death grip on the flashlight, mashed under the weight of his torso.

  To work herself free of the body, Keeley let go of the light. Breathing heavy and unable to comprehend what had just happened, she looked up.

  Another man, smaller than the first, stared down at her, a gun held loosely in the hand at his side. While he stared at her, she glanced at the inert body beside her—the man called Mace—and saw the dark wash of blood staining his neck.

  He was dead.

  She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find power enough to get to her feet. Panic closed her throat and she scampered backward and looked up.

  The man staring down at her seemed to be chewing on something, because his mouth kept moving, even as his eyes never left her face.

  The gun still dangled from his hand. “You’re her, aren’t you?” he finally said, his tone ripe with disgust “Aileen Farrell’s daughter? That stupid piece of shit got that right, didn’t he?”

  What was he saying …

  Keeley stared dumbly, eyes wide, mouth dry. It was as if a tidal wave had crested in her brain, then receded, leaving a dulling amorphous calm, an inability to think, to fear.

  I should get up. Face him. Whoever he is…

  Instead she closed her eyes, forced herself to calm, to think. When she opened her eyes, she asked, “Who are you?” Her voice was weak, but okay. She swallowed. “And how do you know my mother?”