by H. P. Bayne
“Hey, Forbes,” Sully said. “She’s here.”
Forbes turned slowly, as if uncertain whether he wanted to see. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing there for him to see. “Where?” he asked.
Sully allowed Forbes to follow his gaze. “Doorway.” Then he turned his attention to her. “Eloise? This is Forbes Raynor. I know it’s been a lot of years but—” He broke off the introduction as she shot forward, stilling only once she stood directly in front of Forbes. She studied him, as if both recognizing something within the man and looking for something familiar. When a smile broke upon her face, Sully knew she’d found it.
“You don’t need me to tell you,” Sully said to her.
But it was as if he’d ceased to exist. Everything in this moment came down to just two people: Eloise and David. He was all she saw as she brought up a hand to brush at a stray strand of Forbes’s ordinarily neat hair.
“Sullivan? What’s going on?”
“She knows you,” Sully said, voice coming through a smile. “Who you are, I mean.”
“Is she okay?”
Sully nodded. “Yeah. She’s okay. More okay than I’ve ever seen her.”
It was true. Even as they stood here, the injuries on her were beginning to fade, the stains and rips on her clothing disappearing.
“Can I talk to her?” Forbes asked. “I mean, she’ll hear me?”
“Yeah. I think she’d like that.”
Forbes glanced at Sully, flinching slightly as he eyed him. “It feels weird, doing this while you’re here.”
“I can leave.”
“Then I won’t know what she’s saying back.”
“I think it’s kind of obvious what she’s saying back, don’t you?” Sully smiled, then left Forbes to it, heading back down the stairs and to Dez.
Dez was staring out the living room window, eyes hard as he watched for potential threats. “How’s it going?”
“He’s talking to her now, I think.”
“And she’s okay?”
“I think she’s almost ready to go, so yeah.”
Dez nodded, then took a break from his surveillance duty to grace Sully with a smile. “What you do, it’s pretty cool, you know.”
Sully returned the grin. “It has its moments.” He turned his gaze to the world outside the broken window just as Dez did. “Anything going on out there?”
“Just Terrence lurking from what I can tell.”
“Terrence is out there?”
Dez nodded with his chin. “By those shrubs across the road. I was contemplating inviting him in. Guess I owe him for clueing me in that you were in trouble back at Lockwood. You good with me getting him?”
“I’m not really thrilled at the idea of seeing Snowy again, but it would be good to talk to Terrence.”
“I don’t see her, just him.”
Sully nodded his agreement, and Dez waved a hand out the window. A moment later, a bald head popped up from the bushes.
Terrence jogged across the road, gun in hand, and entered the house. “How the hell’d you make me out there?” he asked Dez.
“Sorry.”
“Guess I’m getting rusty.” He turned to Sully, and his face cracked into a wide grin as he knocked knuckles with the younger man. “How ya doin’, kid?”
“Good, thanks. You?”
“Decent. Heard you and the old lady took care of Gerhardt.”
Sully raised his eyebrows. “How’d you know that?”
“Hey, my mom?” Terrence said by way of explanation.
It was all Sully required. “Right. Of course.”
The mention of Snowy caused Terrence’s face to fall. “Listen, man, I want to apologize to you for what she did. I didn’t know until it was too late. You need to believe me. She got it in her head she wanted to face her past, and I figured I could get us in there and out without being seen. She’s had a lot of nightmares and flashbacks, and I know firsthand how running from your past doesn’t help you heal. You saw me through my own demons by helping me face them, and I figured I could do the same for her. Worse came to worse, I knew I could bust my way out of there easily enough. But it turned out she wanted to go for another reason altogether.”
Sully nodded. “Me.”
Terrence’s smile carried shame. “I just thought she was going to use the bathroom. Next thing I know, she’s gone. When she came back, she looked like hell, and she admitted to me she’d sold you out to Gerhardt. I was gonna go in there to get you myself when I saw Dez and your ma. Figured you’d have things cased between you, so I bailed and got Mom out of there.
“Listen, I know this won’t mean much after everything, but she really does feel like shit about what she did.”
Dez faced Terrence, a sour expression marring his features. “No offence to you, Terrence, but good.”
Terrence faced Dez. “I don’t blame you for being pissed. If it was my brother, I’d be out for blood. All I’m trying to tell you is I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“We know that,” Sully said.
Dez shrugged. “Doesn’t erase what she did though.”
“I get it. But you need to understand, we’ve been living a half-life out here. She keeps talking like her life is over anyway, but she wants something more for me. We’re stuck in hiding because of two men: Gerhardt and Lowell Braddock. She figured she could take care of Gerhardt by making a deal with him, trading info for her freedom. That would leave just the one obstacle.”
“We share that obstacle,” Dez said. “Now we’ve got Gerhardt dealt with, we’re hoping Lowell will be falling alongside him very soon. We haven’t figured out exactly how we’re going to get there yet, but it’s coming.”
“I don’t know what I can do to help,” Terrence said. “But if you need me, I’m here. Honestly, I’d love to be there when the son of a bitch goes down.”
A creak on the stairs had them turning to see Forbes making his way down. His eyes were a little red, but he otherwise appeared okay.
He was most of the way down when he spotted Terrence, and the sight of the stranger pulled him up short.
“It’s all right,” Sully said. “Forbes, this is Terrence. Terrence, Forbes.”
The two men exchanged a nod of greeting before Forbes turned to Sully. “Does he—”
“Know about me? Yeah. Both that I’m alive and can see ghosts.”
Forbes nodded and took a breath. “I know I told you I wanted some privacy, but the conversation seems kind of one-sided to me, so….”
Terrence chuckled. “Yeah, I know how that goes. Tell ya what, I’ll leave you to it. I’ll keep an eye on the place from the road, fire off a shot if I see anything I don’t like.”
Dez clapped Terrence on the shoulder. “Thanks. I appreciate it. And thanks again for coming to me about Sully the other day.”
“Anytime. And, hey, I owe him.” He turned and pulled Sully into a bro hug, thumping him a couple of times on the back before releasing him. “You take care of yourself, kid. Call me if you need me. I mean it.”
Terrence having taken his leave, Sully returned attention to Forbes. Eloise, now fully healed, appeared beside him, one hand hovering near one of his.
“I told her all about how good my life was after she gave me up, how close I am to my dad—the dad who raised me, I mean. And I told her none of it was her fault, that she’s shown how good a mother she was by making that kind of sacrifice. I guess I need to know what she wants to say.”
“She’s been saying it all along,” Sully said. “She loves you, that’s obvious. And she’s happy now. I think she got trapped here after she died, so she had no way of knowing what happened to you.” Sully stopped there. The reality was, Eloise had to have been petrified by the possibility of Val Raynor turning on her adopted child; if she’d snapped once, she could do it again. What Eloise couldn’t have known was that Charles Raynor wasn’t about to let anything happen to the boy. He’d made sure of it, in a way that ultimately proved tragic.
Sully
thought it might be best for Forbes to never know the full truth.
“I want to find her, give her a proper burial,” Forbes said. “And I want to find evidence of what happened. If Gerhardt did this, I want the world to know. And if it was someone else, they need to face justice for it.”
Sully turned to Eloise. “What about you? Is that what you want?”
She shook her head, the movement quick and decisive. No, she definitely did not want that. Sully didn’t have to ask to know her thoughts had travelled the same paths and had drawn the same conclusions.
“She doesn’t need anyone to find her body,” Sully said. “And she doesn’t need any more justice. Gerhardt’s paid for his crimes, and she’s just found the only thing she ever really needed. You’re the reason she was stuck here, Forbes, and you’re the reason she can leave.”
“Leave?” Forbes turned to the space Sully had been watching, his eyes fixing on the spot where Eloise stood. “I only just found her again.”
“Her staying here, it isn’t right,” Sully said. “And I don’t think people we love ever really leave us. They just go somewhere we can’t see.”
“Even you?”
“Even me.”
“So how do you know?”
Sully shrugged. “I don’t. I guess sometimes, you just have to have faith.”
Forbes smirked. “I never used to know what that meant. I’ve had to develop it in spades since I got to know you, Gray.”
Sully smiled at Forbes before turning it on Eloise. She drifted up to him, settling a hand alongside his face. It was a thank you, no need for words he couldn’t hear.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
She deepened the touch, sending a thought into his brain. This time, unlike the others, the thought was calm, and it held there: a set of wind chimes, jangling gently in a breeze.
“What is it?” Dez asked once Eloise had broken the connection.
“I think she’s telling me she’ll let Forbes know she’s around by playing with wind chimes.” Having received a confirmatory nod from Eloise, Sully turned to Forbes. “You have some?”
“No,” Forbes said. “But damn sure I’m gonna go out and buy some now.”
Sully watched as Eloise approached Forbes. She rested a hand over his heart, and a peace stole over her face as if she’d felt the thrum of his life beneath shirt, flesh and bone.
Then, with one more gaze up into the face of her son, she was gone.
29
Sully peered through the mesh eye holes of his rubber mask, a poor approximation of a ghost if ever he’d seen one.
Dez had bought the stupid costume for him, cackling maniacally as he’d stuck the mask over his little brother’s head. Dez had seen something hilarious in the idea of a trick-or-treating Sully dressed as a ghost.
All Sully saw was his first chance at an evening where he was something other than the ghost he’d been forced to become.
Kayleigh tugged on his hand, jack-o-lantern shaped candy bucket already half full as it bounced along next to her, threatening to spill its contents onto the sidewalk.
“Come on!” she said. “You’re going to love this next house. They always decorate it really awesome. One year, they even did a haunted house in the garage!”
This year, it turned out, they’d done one, too, and Sully held onto Kayleigh and pretended to be scared as she squealed at the animatronic creatures, ghosts and ghouls the family had set up. It took a lot more than that to spook him. A hell of a lot more.
As it stood, this was the best night he’d had in years.
Given the current state of his life, he knew it couldn’t last.
Forbes was waiting for him at Dez and Eva’s when Sully returned with Kayleigh an hour later.
The police detective, seated in one of the living room chairs, wasn’t bothering to hide a smirk as he regarded Dez’s scarecrow costume. If Dez was staying home with Eva to hand out candy instead of coming trick-or-treating, he had to dress up; Kayleigh had insisted, and Sully had done absolutely nothing to back his brother’s arguments.
“What’s he supposed to be?” Kayleigh asked as she regarded Forbes.
“We’re trying to figure that out,” Dez grumbled.
Kayleigh’s face lit up at the perceived game. “Door-to-door salesman?”
Forbes pulled out his ID wallet and flipped it open to reveal his badge. Kayleigh glanced at it before peering up at her father. “He doesn’t look like a policeman.”
Dez chuckled as Forbes scowled. “Hey, she said it.”
Forbes eyed Dez and Sully. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
Dez knelt in front of Kayleigh. “Honey, why don’t you go put on a movie downstairs? We need to talk to this guy about boring stuff for a bit. We’ll come down and join you, after. Don’t eat any of your candy until Mom or I check it, okay?”
“How long will you be?”
“Not long. Go pick something out and start watching.”
Kayleigh rolled her eyes and headed for the basement stairs. Eva, Mara and Emily—newly released from hospital and a guest in the Braddock house—joined the men in the upstairs sitting room, Mara casting Forbes a dark look as she sat. Sully could guess where her mind had travelled; while he’d forgiven Forbes for his actions two years ago, mothers were not so quick to forget.
“Sergeant,” she said.
“Ma’am.” Forbes peered up at Dez. “Does everyone—”
“They all know what’s going on, yeah. What’s up?”
Forbes leaned forward. “We had the Lockwood drug tested, and we ran it against the one we seized a couple of years ago from Sullivan’s apartment. The two match up, same substance. Only difference is the one Sullivan had back then was in pill form, and it was less concentrated. The Lockwood stuff is administered intravenously and is significantly more potent. Two years later, the chemists at the lab we use are still stumped. All they can tell us is that the drug is a psychotropic of some type. I’m not heading up the investigation anymore, for obvious reasons, so I had no say in it when the new lead took the drug to LOBRA for additional testing. I understand he spoke to Lowell directly. Lowell’s denied any knowledge of the drug, other than to promise to check it out for us.”
“If he knows the drug’s in the hands of police, he’ll tear down any evidence he has of its production,” Mara said.
“If I were to guess, I’d say he probably started the process as soon as Gerhardt was located in the old wing.”
“Any change with Gerhardt?” Eva asked.
“Still in the same state. He’s not really in a coma, but he’s not able to respond to much outside stimulus either. They’ve run a couple more MRIs, and still the same thing: plenty of activity in the brain and corresponding spikes in his heart rate and blood pressure. But whatever’s going on in his head is staying there.” Forbes’s lips formed a tight line. “Wish I was a big enough man to say I feel sorry for him.”
Mara glanced around the room at each of its occupants before returning her attention to Forbes. “Lowell will conceal all evidence of his involvement in the Lockwood experiments; we know that. But I think we can safely assume this will nonetheless put him on edge. He’ll know he’s being watched. Our biggest problem isn’t just finding something to pin on him; it’s keeping ourselves and each other safe while doing it.”
“From my end, I’ll do what I can to protect you.” Forbes ended the statement with a smile. “I know we got off on the wrong foot, ma’am, but I’ve come to a few conclusions since then. In short, I believe Sullivan, and I’ll do my best to get you some justice for Deputy Chief Braddock and Aiden.”
Surprise gave way to a softening of Mara’s features, the corners of her mouth turning up as she regarded the detective. “Thank you, Sergeant. That means a lot to me. To all of us.”
Forbes nodded and stood. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Please keep me posted on anything you hear or see, anything you think might aid me in the investigation.”
Mara stood,
too, then crossed the room and shook Forbes’s hand. “You be careful. Your investigation isn’t official. Until you have something substantial enough to take to your commanding officer, you’re more or less on your own. That puts you at great risk if Lowell learns about your activities. If you need help with anything in the meantime, call us.”
“I will, ma’am, thank you.”
Sully and Dez showed Forbes out while Mara, Eva and Emily went to join Kayleigh. Forbes had his hand on the door handle when he turned back toward the brothers.
“There’s something else,” he said. “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of everyone.”
Sully expected something about Forbes’s feelings about his birth family. What he got was much more unsettling.
“Greta left the treatment centre,” Forbes said. “Didn’t even bother to check herself out, just went out the window last night. I’ve been looking, but I can’t find her. No one knows what happened. She seemed to be on the straight and narrow, and was kicking the drugs. Last time I saw her, she told me the cravings had dropped right off. She was so much different from the woman you knew. She was like the woman I married.” Forbes took a deep breath and let it out in a huff. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Maybe Lachlan can help find her,” Dez said. “He’s good at that.”
Forbes’s gaze had settled on the wall, but now it snapped to Dez’s face. “That’s not why I told you. I don’t want a search for her to become a big thing. She has too many secrets—bad secrets—and investigations always entail overturning a person’s life. If she’s found out, I’ll lose her forever. I’m telling you because she’s targeted Sullivan in the past, and there’s every chance she might try again.”
“But she did it because of the influence of her family,” Sully said. “They’re not in the picture anymore, so what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know,” Forbes said. “And that’s the problem. I have no idea why she took off, so I can’t say what her plans are. One thing’s for sure: If she’s unstable enough to walk away from treatment like this, anything’s possible. Just watch your back, okay? Just until I can find her.”