A Gift of Grace

by Sarah Wynde

  “Is that you saying that or is it Sylvie?” she asked.

  Lucas chuckled. “Sylvie pointed it out to me. I think she might be a little scared of you.”

  Grace snorted. Her brother’s girlfriend was a former Marine, a private security consultant, and not scared of anything or anyone.

  “Ow,” Lucas said, but with a laugh. “I’m told the proper word is awe.”

  “Tell Sylvie the feeling’s mutual.” Grace swiveled back to her desk. “Still, I might have been able to do something.”

  “Like what?”

  “He was in the courthouse that day for a reason.”

  “Along with several hundred other people.”

  “We could have gotten an investigator working on it. Put Sylvie with a sketch artist. Run the image through some facial recognition software.” Grace thought back to her interaction with Noah. “He’s ex-military. We would have gotten a hit on one of the DoD databases, I bet.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Ex-military and in the courthouse for the AlecCorp hearings,” Grace mused, ignoring her brother’s question. “I bet he worked with them.” She turned to her computer.

  “How do you know he’s ex-military?” Lucas asked.

  “He told me so.” Grace’s fingers flew over her keyboard, composing a quick note to one of the investigators she used for routine background checks.

  “He told you? You talked to him?”

  “Not about ghosts. But yeah, I told him to order the special. We chatted.”

  “I don’t want you talking to him again, Grace. You need to leave this to me.” Grace didn’t hear Sylvie say anything, but she must have, because Lucas corrected himself quickly. “Me and Sylvie. Leave this to us.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Grace replied. She paused in her typing. How deep did she want the investigator to go? A basic background check would be quick, even with just a name and a probable past employer, but a high-level security clearance would net her a lot more information. How much did she need to know about Noah Blake’s history?

  “It’s not ridiculous. Bad enough that Dillon is with him. If he worked for AlecCorp, he’s dangerous. I don’t want you anywhere near him.” Lucas’s voice held a crisp, decisive, older brother tone that Grace hated.

  “That’s not your call.”

  There was need and there was want, Grace decided. She didn’t know what she might need to know, but she wanted to know everything. She added another line to her email.

  “AlecCorp was into some scary shit. We have no idea who this guy is. Whatever’s going on with him, he’s not in a good place.”

  “Probably not.” Grace hit Send on her email. “But I care about Dillon, too, you know.”

  She couldn’t say this to her brother — would never say it to him — but she and Dillon had actually been much closer than Lucas and Dillon. Dillon loved his father, of course, but for much of Dillon’s life, Lucas had been away, either at college or working, while their parents raised Dillon.

  For her, though, Dillon had been more like a beloved baby brother than a nephew. She’d toted the toddler Dillon around with her like a doll. They’d been together every day. At least until the last few years of his life, when she’d been away at school, too. She felt a twinge of a familiar pain and stuffed it away.

  “I know you do,” Lucas said. “That’s not the point. This guy could be dangerous.”

  “He’s not,” Grace replied. “Certainly not to me.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Grace had no idea what Lucas was imagining. Did he think Noah would kidnap her? Hold her for ransom? Tie her up and… hmm, that might not be so bad, actually. If he liked whipped cream more than whips, anyway.

  She suppressed a laugh. It was a good thing her brother couldn’t read her mind over the phone. She didn’t think their imaginations were running along the same lines.

  “I’ll be fine, Lucas.”

  “I’m serious, Grace.”

  “As am I.”

  “He’s haunted for a reason.”

  “Is he?”

  “He must be.”

  “So why were we?”

  Lucas didn’t answer.

  Grace turned back to her window, but this time she barely noticed the beauty of the trees, her gaze far away. All those hours, all that research, all those pages of reading, and the fundamental questions had never been answered. Why was Dillon a ghost? And how could they help him?

  Grace’s calendar chimed an alert. She had a meeting in five minutes. Reluctantly she turned away from the window. She didn’t have time to dwell on the mysteries of the universe: she had a company to run.

  But first things first.

  “I gave him a map to GD and told him to come by after he finished his breakfast,” she told her brother. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  7

  Noah

  Noah woke up slowly, groggy from sleeping in the daytime. Late afternoon sunlight rimmed the drawn curtains, leaving a line of light on the wooden floor.

  The room was silent.

  He sat up. He didn’t feel rested but he wasn’t bleary-eyed tired anymore either.

  The room was just as it had been when he’d crashed onto the bed — spartan but spotless, with cream-colored walls and Shaker-style furniture. His duffel bag sat on a luggage rack at the end of the double bed, with the simple coverlet kicked down, almost covering it. A fan spun lazily overhead, creating shadows on the ceiling, a cool breeze, and a faint hum.

  The hum was the only sound he could hear.

  He lay back against the pillow.

  He didn’t want to think about what had happened outside the restaurant. Those memories were old, dead, gone. It was the past and it should stay there.

  But how had that stranger known him? And what did he know? He’d mentioned ghosts and that was ridiculous. Noah knew what came after death — nothing.

  Human beings were collections of cells powered by a beating heart and electrical impulses jolting around the brain and nervous system. Shut that down and the only thing left was rotting meat, bones, and teeth. And hair. He’d heard that hair supposedly still grew after death, but even that sounded unlikely to him.

  Dead was dead.

  Oh, maybe if there was such a thing, Joe could be a ghost. Noah could understand why Joe might haunt him. Maybe even the Iraqi woman and the kid. But wouldn’t they be ghostly? Moaning and wailing and clanking chains or something? Or demanding that he fulfill their unfinished business, whatever it might be?

  Or wanting their revenge?

  But Noah pushed that thought away. What about the others?

  The singing lady was sort of ghostly. She sang her lullaby over and over again, the tune desperately sad. But why the hell would she be haunting him? The cleaning lady, the fake Chinese guy, all the random phrases and mysterious murmurings… could they really be ghosts?

  Noah cleared his throat. Softly, tentatively, a question in the word, he spoke. “Hello?”

  He felt like an idiot.

  Silence answered him.

  Of course it did.

  His hallucinations were misfiring synapses in his brain or an excess of dopamine or damage from the hit he’d taken in Iraq, nothing else. And his paranoid ideas about General Directions were fantasies at best. At worst, delusions demonstrating his deepening insanity.

  Noah rolled out of bed and headed toward the room’s attached bathroom, shaking his head. He should have known better. But as he showered, his thoughts kept straying back to his encounters of the morning. Why did the man at the door seem to recognize him? The woman, his daughter, who had she thought he was? And why had Grace Latimer lied to him?

  His brain was running in circles, one absurd idea after the next, as he pulled on his clothes. As far as he could see, he had two choices: leave and forget this whole weird day had ever happened or stay here and try to investigate. The first would be the sensible thing to do. But he couldn’t walk away, not yet.


  He went down the stairs and paused in the foyer. A hallway led toward the back of the house and he could hear voices coming from that direction.

  Familiar voices.

  Noah headed toward the sounds. The clean freak was fussing about dust, the way she did, and the crying girl actually sounded cheerful as she said, “I remember that. Can we watch?”

  The Rose voice said, “Maybe later. Let’s let Misam practice.”

  Noah paused in the doorway of a large open room. The walls were lined with shelves overflowing with books and knickknacks — crystal balls, carved wooden boxes, candles in ornate holders, mysterious jars and bottles. It could have been an alchemist’s lab in a video game, except for the small kitchen, separated from the rest of the room by a breakfast bar with stools, and the enormous flat-screen television in the middle of the far wall.

  The innkeeper was sitting on one of the stools, a bowl in one hand, a spoon in the other, eyes intent on the screen. A sitcom was playing, one Noah vaguely remembered.

  “Good show?” Noah ventured when Avery took no notice of him.

  “Ah, hello.” Avery started, standing and turning to place the bowl and spoon on the counter. “How are you doing? Did you rest well?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  The innkeeper had changed his clothes. Or was it her clothes? Noah wasn’t sure. He’d thought at first that Avery was male, then, after he spotted the eyeliner, surely female, but even the red jacket and tight black pants the innkeeper now wore were ambiguous. His hallucinations had claimed that the innkeeper was neither, which seemed like a weird way for his subconscious to try to process uncertainty. Still, given that the ambiguity had to be intentional, maybe his subconscious was onto something.

  “It’s almost time for our cocktail hour,” Avery continued. He or she — they — gave Noah a friendly grin. “Well, I call it that, but it’s really just wine and cheese. Can I offer you some?”

  “You have to concentrate,” the Rose voice said.

  Good idea, Noah thought. Maybe the innkeeper wouldn’t know anything about top-secret experiments, but it was a small town. They must know something about the company and the people involved with it. Some careful questioning could net Noah some useful gossip. Would visiting military types stay at a bed-and-breakfast?

  “Touch the button, then imagine putting all your weight on it.”

  What button? Noah wondered.

  “Like you’re doing a handstand on your finger,” the voice continued.

  Noah kept his expression even, but he wanted to roll his eyes. More nonsense, of course. He should have realized.

  The innkeeper was looking at him expectantly, so he crossed to the bar. “Uh, a glass of wine would be great, sure.”

  “It works better if you try to flow through it,” the teenage boy’s voice said. “Like when you go through a wall and you get that shivery feeling.”

  Resolutely, Noah forced his attention away from his hallucinations.

  “I’ve got a Chardonnay chilling or a very pleasant Pinot Noir. If you prefer something richer, I could open a Cab.”

  Noah rubbed the back of his neck. A lot of guys came home and hit the bottle hard, but Noah’s fleeting experiences with the same had only made his problems worse. And wine… well, he knew white, he knew red. “Whatever you’ve got open is fine.”

  “Pinot Noir it is, then.” The innkeeper bustled around the small kitchen.

  Noah slid onto a stool seat, wondering where to start, considering and rejecting one opening line after another.

  “Nice place you’ve got here,” he finally said as Avery set a glass of red wine on the counter.

  “Thank you.” Avery glanced around the room with proprietary satisfaction. “I enjoy it.”

  “Town seems kinda small for the tourist trade.” Noah kept his voice casual. “You stay busy?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Noah waited, hoping for more, but the innkeeper was digging in the fridge, head obscured.

  “Like pushing,” the little boy’s voice said. “But with all of me.”

  “Yes, just like that,” the Rose voice said.

  “How so?” Noah prompted Avery.

  Avery emerged, hands full. They closed the fridge door with a hip. “Well, Florida,” they said vaguely. “Lots of visitors. We get our share.”

  Noah held back his sigh. Interrogation had never been his forte. At least this one was in English. “Glad you had space available for me, then.”

  “You had good timing. I was fully booked over the weekend. The last of those guests just left this morning, but I’ve got a nice young couple staying in the front room and a hiker upstairs taking advantage of the midweek discount.” Avery set the cheese on a plate as they spoke, then added some crackers. “And have you decided how long you’ll be staying?”

  “Not yet.” Noah picked up his wine and took a sip, refraining from a grimace with difficulty. Why did people drink grape juice gone bad?

  “No rush. But we do have a weekly rate, if you’re interested.” Avery put the plate on a tray that already held several glasses.

  Noah nodded an acknowledgement, but when the voices behind him broke out into cheers and applause, he forced his gaze to drop to the countertop, fighting the temptation to look over his shoulder.

  There was nothing behind him. He knew that. How many times had he looked toward a voice only to see nothing? But when he’d controlled his automatic reaction, he looked up to see that Avery was staring past him into the lounge, dark eyes sharp and narrowed.

  “Good job, Misam!” Joe said.

  “You got it!” The Rose voice sounded delighted.

  “I did it, I did it. Did you see, Mama? I did it!”

  Noah risked a quick glance. Nothing. “Something to see?” he asked.

  “Something’s wrong with the television.” Avery gave a quick head shake before turning to the refrigerator. “Let’s take the wine out to the patio. It’s going to be a lovely evening.”

  Noah leaned back against the counter. The television looked fine to him. The sitcom had ended and some talk show that he didn’t recognize was on, but the picture was clear and steady. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s playing itself.” Avery had a bottle of white wine in one hand, sparkling water in the other. They gestured toward the television with the wine. “The channel just changed on its own. It’s been doing that all afternoon.”

  “Probably some dust in your remote,” Noah offered. He let his gaze skim the room’s surfaces, searching for the telltale device. “A short of some kind.”

  “Oh, yeah, could be.” Avery added the bottles to the tray. They lifted it, balancing the weight easily, and started toward a door set in the back wall.

  Noah pushed away from the counter and followed. The remote was sitting on an end table next to the couch. He scooped it up. “I’ll take a look.”

  “No, don’t do that,” the Rose voice said. It was followed by a chorus of other complaints.

  Noah paused. Ghosts. That’s what the stranger had said, that he was hearing ghosts. But what a bizarre idea. Ghosts were fantasies made up by camp counselors to scare school kids or the wishful thinking of the recently bereaved. They weren’t real.

  And if they were, what would they want with a television remote?

  Noah popped the back of the remote off, shaking out the batteries, searching for signs of dust or damage. The infrared sensor looked clear. He blew a quick short breath into the case, hoping for a hair or bit of fuzz to float away.

  “Put it back, please.” The Rose voice was right next to his ear, so close that it sounded as if she was peering over his shoulder into the remote, too.

  “He cannot hear you,” the Arabic woman’s voice said, sounding exasperated. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  Noah stared down at the open remote in his hands.

  His hallucinations were his own traumas resonating in his mind in ways he didn’t understand, he reminded him
self. His broken brain picked up on incidents in his life and wove stories around them. That was all that was happening.

  But his fingers felt stiff as he put the remote back together, sliding the batteries in, tilting it up to check that the light indicator showed that it had power, pressing the back panel into place, then setting it down on the side table.

  “Thank you.” The Rose voice sounded triumphant. The television promptly changed channels, once, twice, a third time, a fourth, flickering through stations with scant pauses on each.

  Noah pressed his lips together. Then, carefully, he turned the remote so that the infrared sensor was pointing away from the television and toward the kitchen.

  It wouldn’t prove anything. Some newer television remotes used wireless frequencies to solve line-of-sight problems. But neither the television nor the remote looked like the latest and greatest model.

  The channels stopped changing.

  “Oh, that is just mean,” the Rose voice complained.

  Avery paused on their return from outside. “Interesting.”

  “It’s definitely a problem with your remote,” Noah said.

  With the remote… or with something else?

  If he had a chip in his head…

  If General Directions had done something to him…

  If, if, if.

  “It’s not a problem,” the Rose voice said, sounding indignant. “We were having fun. Misam wants to learn to change the channels and Sophia wants to watch the Disney channel. Put it back the way it was.”

  Noah shivered with a sudden chill. He tucked his arms against his chest and glanced up, looking for the air-conditioning vent that must be near him.

  “I’ll take care of it later,” Avery said. “Why don’t you just turn it off for now?”

  As Avery headed toward the kitchen, Noah picked up the remote and pressed the power button, turning the television off. But he paused before setting the remote down again.

  “Come on,” the Rose voice said, pleadingly. “Be nice, please. We’re not hurting anything. I can turn the volume down if it’s too loud.”