****
The men had left only moments after Shaw Bennett had devoured the last bite of his huge burger and wiped the mustard from the corner of his mouth. He’d placed a small caliber handgun on the table between Courtney and Chelsea and told them not to be afraid to use it should anyone come snooping around. No one should be on the property except the four of them.
Somewhere along the way, Chelsea had lost the shotgun.
The place was much quieter with the men gone.
Courtney glanced toward the door. “Shaw said he’d honk three short blasts when they are coming up the drive so we’ll know it’s them.”
She nodded her understanding. That was a good plan. Courtney looked like she’d shoot first and ask questions later.
Chelsea picked up a dirty plate and walked it over to the sink, squirted a wad of soap onto its surface, and turned the hot water tap. Liquid glugged from the faucet for a few moments until a steady stream gushed out. “Wonder how long this place has been abandoned?”
“Shaw said the owner closed it at the end of the summer vacation season last fall.”
Did the woman begin any of her sentences without the words Shaw said?
Chelsea swiped the plate with a sponge and reached for a drinking glass. “Did Shaw say how long they were going to be gone?”
Courtney glanced her way. “No. He wouldn’t even tell me where he was going. He’s always had a lot to do, but it’s been crazier since the governor made him acting sheriff of Hill County.”
Chelsea could picture Sheriff Halsey having a spastic fit in his jail cell. The vision gave her extreme pleasure.
“Shaw told me some of your story.”
She acknowledged the woman’s attempt at starting that conversation with a sharp nod of her head. “Jordan told me some of your story.”
Courtney’s eyebrows lifted. Her expression told Chelsea everything she needed to know. Neither woman trusted the other enough to talk first, and it was going to be a battle of wills to see who broke first. Truthfully, Chelsea didn’t think Courtney needed to know her life story. As far as Chelsea knew, Courtney had been one of them. She wasn’t sure how safe she was with the woman.
As if Courtney could read her mind, she spoke straight to the heart of the tension between them. “I was in the same place you were. Trapped into doing things I didn’t want to do by a man who practically held me prisoner.”
That might be true, but that didn’t automatically make Courtney someone Chelsea could trust.
Courtney broke the stare down first. “My ex, Jared, was a user. Cooley made him deliver product to pay off what he owed, but he kept using and never could pay it all off. The last few months, Cooley made me work in one of his labs because Jared was becoming a liability for him. I worked in the one in the basement of Victoria House. There were three other women… I haven’t seen them since Cooley died.”
So that’s where Zeke took them when he pushed them into the panel van every evening.
“Jordan and my brother rescued them from Jake Richards.”
“Jake?” The curiosity in Courtney’s eyes intensified. “The last time I saw Jake…”
Why hadn’t the woman finished her sentence? They weren’t being totally honest with each other. If Courtney wanted to keep certain things from her, well then that was okay. She wouldn’t tell her everything either.
She offered Courtney one small tidbit of information, just to see if she would open up a bit more. “Jake Richards is in jail now.”
“How do you know?”
“I was there when he was arrested.”
Courtney leaned her elbows on the kitchen table and ran her hands through her long hair. “How come we never saw each other? We worked for the same man, didn’t we?”
“I think Cooley was really good a separating the different parts of his business.”
Courtney nodded. “I think you’re right.” She hesitated. “Actually, that’s not quite right. I think it was old man Haskins that kept the pieces of the business separate.”
So Courtney knew about Haskins.
“Shaw told me about Jordan’s sister Kristie.”
It appeared the woman was ready to move on to another subject. Obviously, talking about Fred Haskins made her nervous. She’d twitched when said his name. On the other hand, every time Courtney mentioned Shaw’s name, a mushy expression transformed her face from haggard to almost beautiful. Transfixed. Like she thought the guy was God’s gift to women. Chelsea didn’t get it.
Chelsea slid into the chair across the table from Courtney. The other woman stared straight out her, and the glow in her eyes made Chelsea uncomfortable.
“I want to help her.”
Chelsea smirked. “She’s dead. How are you gonna help her?”
“Shaw says I’m good at helping spirits find peace and go to the light.”
She crossed her arms. “Oh, really?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Condescend to me.”
Chelsea thought the woman was too sold on Shaw Bennett’s opinions. “Okay, what makes him think you have this ability?”
“I’ve done it before.”
Her heart thumped harder than it ever had. If Courtney could help Kristie go to her final rest, then maybe she could help the other women that died in the house on Chelsea Lane too. Then maybe Chelsea could get some peace. Maybe then she could close her eyes without hearing their voices accuse her of letting them die.
Chapter Ten
Chelsea had paced all afternoon until her socked feet had practically polished the rough wood floor. Courtney had stared out the window into the forest as if there was something to see besides limbs and leaves. The drizzling rain had done nothing to lighten Chelsea’s mood. She’d spent the time thinking and fighting the awful feeling that something really, really bad was about to happen.
When Shaw and Jordan returned that evening, they brought with them two large pizzas and a bottle of red wine. The food had long been consumed with no one breaking the silence with conversation, meaningful or otherwise. Chelsea was anxious to learn where the men had been and what they had been doing, but she kept her mouth shut, unsure if she should be the one to prompt them to talk. They’d left on cop business, which meant whatever they had been doing was none of her business.
Everyone around the table appeared to be grumpy and weary to the bone. If not for the spastic energy coursing through every nerve of her body, Chelsea would have probably already collapsed into a deep sleep. She anticipated a good night’s rest without the inevitability of spirits awakening her for the sheer pleasure of tormenting her. With Jordan nearby, she hoped she could fall asleep without any trouble.
The wind picked up outside the cabin and whistled under the eaves. A branch beat against the window, startling everyone, seemingly out of his or her separate bubbles.
Shaw glanced toward Courtney and opened the discussion with a heavy sigh. “I suppose you’d like to know what happened out at the Landing today?” He sounded as if he was too tired to think about it, his voice flat and unnatural.
Courtney nodded without looking at him.
“We identified the woman.”
Courtney continued to focus her gaze on anything but Shaw. “She’s not from around here, is she?”
Shaw stared at her as if he couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t look at him. “She’s a missing person from Fayetteville last seen with her boyfriend. They disappeared about the same time. The family thought she’d run away from home. Since she was underage and her boyfriend was over twenty-one, there’s been an amber alert out on her.”
Courtney’s sad expression deepened. “I feel bad for her parents.”
“She must have handled that charm we found in the bathroom because the imprint of it was burned into her hand.”
Courtney shivered. “That’s just creepy. It’s not the same, I know, but don’t you think it’s weird that Jeremy’s necklace and Michael’s necklace would both end
up at Shaw’s Landing.”
Shaw slid his arm around her.
Chelsea was barely keeping up with their dialogue. A lot of things had happened in Hill County while she was James’s prisoner that she had known nothing about. She’d never liked being on the outside of an inside conversation.
Shaw spoke again, never taking his eyes off Courtney. It seemed he worried about her reactions, probably worried about her mental condition as well. “I asked someone back at the office in Little Rock to research the charm. I’m pretty certain both of those charms were manufactured by the same company.”
Jordan interrupted their two-way confab. “Maybe there’s something about the metal that conducts spirit energy.”
Shaw nodded. “That’s possible.”
Jordan continued his speculation. “Maybe Jeremy’s necklace fell off his skeleton onto the dock and Natalie picked it up.”
“Her name was Natalie,” Courtney mumbled. “Poor Natalie.”
“We located Jeremy’s bones.”
The switch in topic was unexpected, as if Shaw had dropped a bomb in the midst of them.
Courtney’s head popped up and her eyes widened. “What happened?”
He shrugged as if they were talking about celebrity gossip or politics. “We bagged and tagged him and sent him to the morgue.” He rubbed his eyes. Prominent dark circles colored the lower lids. “The coroner will have go through the motions of identifying him, but I put him on the right track suggesting he should look at old missing persons cases. It shouldn’t take him long. The whole county remembers when Jeremy Haskins disappeared.”
Courtney shuddered and then spit out her rapid-fire observation. “He seemed to be everywhere. I never realized someone’s spirit could travel like that. I thought surely he would—”
“He would what?” Chelsea could no longer stand their cryptic conversation.
Shaw turned his head her way. “There have been several sightings of Jeremy Haskins’s skeleton on Ashley Ridge and along the creek.”
Courtney laughed and her mirth was full of derision. “That’s putting it rather simplistically, isn’t it, Shaw?”
His lower jaw tightened. “I’m not up to telling the whole story tonight, Courtney, and most of it probably isn’t any of her business.”
“Do you know what they’re talking about?” Chelsea pelted Jordan with her demand for explanations.
He glanced toward Shaw and the other man nodded as if giving his reluctant consent to speak to the subject.
“We were meeting at his place, Shaw’s Landing… Have you heard of it before?”
Chelsea’s impatience grew by leaps and bounds. Was he stalling as well? “Yeah. I’ve heard of it. People used to go there after prom.”
He resumed his narrative with little or no emotion. “There were six others there besides me. Shaw. Grayson. Tori Downing. Josh McCord. Ashley Rivers. And Courtney. Things got tense when Sheriff Halsey showed up pointing a gun at Courtney and accusing her of killing everyone that’s ever been murdered in Hill County.”
Chelsea’s eyes strayed to the other woman.
The lingering traces of fear shadowed Courtney’s eyes. “I’ve never killed anyone. Yeah, I stabbed Jared, but he was hitting me.”
“It’s okay, baby. It was self-defense. We all know that.” Shaw’s soothing tone seemed to be all it took to calm Courtney.
Chelsea wasn’t sure she could say the same. She might not have directly murdered someone in cold blood, but she’d let more than one woman die without trying to prevent it. Wasn’t that the same thing as killing them? Maybe she was never meant to live free. Even if the cops didn’t lock her up, she’d be imprisoned by her guilty conscience. Kristie had been right. The images of the women who had died on Chelsea Lane would haunt her the rest of her life.
She didn’t know what to do with her freedom when it wasn’t really free. Perhaps it would be easier to go back to being someone’s prisoner.
Jordan propped his elbows on the tabletop. “Halsey wasn’t there in an official capacity. If you know what I mean.”
No, she didn’t, but she’d let him go on with his explanation. If she pushed for details, he might stop talking. Jordan looked like he could fall asleep where he sat, and she wasn’t ready for them all to call it a night yet.
Shaw closed his eyes. His words seemed to drift from out of his memories. “He came in the front door and Deputy Jackson came in the back. They had us in between them. For a moment, I thought we were going to have to give him Courtney to keep him from shooting her.”
Courtney sniffed.
Chelsea got it. “Of course, Halsey’s actions weren’t official.”
Jordan pushed his empty plate away from him. “I had gone outside to… Anyway that’s about the time I came back into the room and saw what was happening. I pulled my gun on Jackson. The situation turned into a stand off.”
Shaw picked up the story when Jordan fell silent. “Josh McCord accused Halsey of a lot of things, but mostly taking money from Cooley to tip him off when the Department was about to raid one of his labs. He suggested that Haskins was blackmailing Halsey and that’s why Halsey cooperated with him. Halsey denied it, but Deputy Jackson turned on him. Jackson was on Haskins’s payroll too. That’s when things got kind of crazy.”
He had obviously left most of the details out.
Jordan continued the narrative. The two men seemed to be tag-teaming telling the tale. “It was a cloudless day, but the sky turned dark. Wind and rain pounded on the restaurant. Everything small enough to lift flew around the room. And Jeremy’s skeleton busted through the plate glass.”
Shaw finished up with an observation. “If we can give old man Haskins his son’s bones so he can give Jeremy a burial better than he deserves, then maybe the county can get some rest.”
Courtney erupted with a sharp question. “You really think that’s all it will take to keep Jeremy from terrorizing people? Especially people he hates?”
Chelsea finally had something to add. “What do you mean ‘people he hates’? He hated everybody.”
“Well, that’s true. Maybe he should be incinerated so he can get used to knowing what hell feels like.” Courtney drew closer to Shaw, settling her gaze on Chelsea. “You were kind of young when he went missing, weren’t you?”
“I wasn’t so young that I couldn’t hear my Grandpa and Brett talking about it when they didn’t think I was listening.”
Thoughts of Brett flashed through her mind. Guilt hit her. While she’d been at the cabin, she’d all but forgotten that Brett was out in the world somewhere, possibly unprotected by anything but his own ability to defend himself. “Where is Brett?”
Shaw checked his watch. “He should have been here by now.”
An unsettled feeling sucked the air clean out of her lungs. “Jordan, you don’t think he went looking for Haskins, do you?”
Before he could answer, a knock rattled the front door. Both men drew their sidearm. Shaw motioned for Chelsea and Courtney to take shelter in the bedroom behind them. With Jordan on one side of the door and Shaw on the other, Shaw called out. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Brett. Open the door, Bennett.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, Chelsea jettisoned herself at Brett, wrapping her arms around him. “Where have you been?”
He shook raindrops off and almost dropped the bags he was carrying. “I went to the store to get you some stuff. You know, girl things.”
Brett pushed her back and offered her the bags. She peeked inside and then rummaged through them like a kid on Christmas morning. All sorts of things. Like a toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, and sanitary napkins. Bras and panties. Socks and a couple of t-shirts.
He pointed at the clothes. “I guessed at the sizes. The clerk at the store helped me with that.” He glanced around the room. “I didn’t mean to worry anyone.”
Shaw holstered his weapon and motioned Brett toward the door and the drive down to the highway. “You made sure no o
ne followed you?”
“I doubled back if I thought I might have a tail. By the time I got here, there was no one on the road anywhere around me.” He pulled out a chair at the table. “This place is pretty remote.”
Jordan’s expression turned grim. “We should have heard you come up the road.”
Shaw shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“The wind’s blowing pretty hard out there tonight. And you guys look whupped.” Brett’s assessment bit with a sharp edge. His tone hinted that excuse was no excuse at all.
“We should have been more alert.” Shaw’s agreement vibrated with aggravation.
Jordan sheathed his gun and then pushed the curtain aside to stare out the front window. “What are we gonna do? I counted on being able to hear someone come up the drive. We can’t stay up all night. We need rest if we’re going to finish what we started.”
“I’ll stay with my sister and make sure she’s safe.” Brett nailed Jordan with a hard stare as if he thought Jordan was the source of any threats against Chelsea.
Jordan started to respond but then bit out his answer. “Yeah, you should do that.”
Chelsea glanced at Jordan, and the flash of disappointment he allowed her to see in the depths of his eyes surprised her, but maybe it shouldn’t have. He had wanted to stay with her. She allowed her disappointment to show as well, for just a split second, just long enough he should have seen it. Then she cut it off like a faucet. Neither of them could argue with Brett. After all, Brett was her kin, and he had a brotherly right to try to protect her, even if that meant he thought he was protecting her from Jordan.
****
The rain had finally ceased. Jordan peered into the night, his vision focused on the drive that led down to the highway. Someone cleared a throat behind him, and he swiveled just as Shaw came alongside him. Both men stood in the shadows on the wood deck between the cabins with their arms crossed, legs slightly apart in the standard cop pose. Jordan almost laughed at the thought of what they must look like standing there in the dark like two sentinels guarding the people inside the cabin.
“So what did she tell you about Haskins?”
Chelsea Lane (Haunted Hearts Series Book 5) Page 12