The Ex Who Glowed in the Dark (Charley's Ghost)

by Berneathy, Sally

  No. Dawson was all right. He had to be. She couldn’t panic, couldn’t think about any other possibility. She had to remain calm if she was going to get the three of them out of there alive.

  “I told you we should have eliminated those two redheads on the motorcycles,” the bald guy said. “Where’s your friend, that other woman?”

  Amanda glared at the creepy guy. “That woman is my mother, and she’s looking for me. She and my two friends on the police force will be here any minute. They’re tracking the GPS device in my cell phone.” Amanda was fairly certain the GPS device wouldn’t work when she had no service, but it was worth a shot to try the bluff. Poker 101. Another skill her dad had taught her while her mother was away at social functions.

  Brendan shoved her forward. “You get over there and sit down, too.”

  Amanda stumbled, regained her balance and turned to face the villains. “I’ll be happy to sit if you’ll fetch me another chair.”

  Grant rose. “You can sit here.”

  The woman stepped down between the two men and waved the gun again. “She can sit on the floor!”

  The packed dirt floor was covered in leaves, dead bugs, mouse droppings and no telling what else. “Have you got a broom or a rug?”

  The woman fired a shot just over her head. Again the sound exploded and magnified in the small space, bouncing around the room and setting Amanda’s ear drums to ringing. A lot different than shooting at the range while wearing ear protection.

  “Since you put it that way—” She sank to the floor, cringing as she felt a crunch. A twig or a dead roach skeleton, and that was probably a best case scenario. She smiled reassuringly at Grant. “I sit on the floor at home all the time.” Of course, her floors at home didn’t crunch when she sat. Or if they did, it was only from a misplaced tortilla chip.

  Brendan shook his head. “What a mess.”

  Amanda was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about the floor.

  The bald man stepped closer and extended a hand toward her. “Give me your cell phone.”

  Amanda considered refusing but the sight of the woman waving the gun around made her decision. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled it out. As soon as they saw it had no service, they’d know she’d been bluffing about the people tracking her.

  She drew back her arm and threw the phone as hard as she could against the rock wall of the cellar, flinching at the shattering sound her poor phone made. Everyone including her stared at the ruins. She’d only had that phone a week, just time enough to get her contacts updated and her favorite songs downloaded, plus it was the only place she’d stored Jake’s cell number.

  Her hatred of those people surged to even greater heights. The loss of her phone was one more thing to add to her list of wrongs she was going to get revenge for.

  She lifted her chin and stared directly into baldy’s eyes. “You do not get to read my private texts or see my sexting messages to my boyfriend.”

  “What?” Charley shouted. “Boyfriend? Sexting? I knew you had something going with that Jake!” He paused and looked confused. “But when did you do it? I never saw any sexting messages.”

  That meant Charley had been snooping on her phone! She made a note to get back to that conversation later when her life wasn’t in danger.

  The bald man lunged toward her. “Roger!” Brendan shouted. “Forget about the phone. It’s not important.”

  “Scott’s right,” the woman said. “Get out of the way and let me shoot her.”

  Scott. That was the name Grant had mentioned. Brendan was Scott? She’d think about that later too. At the moment it took second place to the woman’s desire to shoot her.

  “Killing me would not be a good idea.” She licked her lips and tried to come up with some reason why it wouldn’t be a good idea other than the fact that she still had motorcycles to ride and Cokes to drink. “That boyfriend I sent those sexting messages to, he’s one of the cops I mentioned.”

  Brendan/Scott frowned. “Neither one of those police officers acted like your boyfriend.”

  “You knew they were cops?”

  “Of course I knew. We’ve had Dawson bugged for the last three days. What did you think I was doing with all that electronic equipment in Brendan’s apartment? Searching the skies for aliens?”

  Brendan’s apartment, not my apartment. That didn’t sound good.

  “Well, Jake and I didn’t make a public announcement, but he’s my boyfriend all right. He spent last night at my place.”

  “No, he didn’t!” Charley protested, then suddenly smiled. “Oh, I see. You’re bluffing again. Good job, Amanda! You’re getting to be a top notch con artist.”

  Amanda just hoped she was going to make it out of there as a live con artist.

  “We need to shoot all three of them and get out of here,” the woman said. “There’s no reason to keep them alive now.”

  Amanda ducked as the woman carelessly waved the gun in her general direction.

  “Alice is right,” the bald man—Roger—said. “We can’t stay here. The police could be on their way already if Red’s telling the truth. Scott, you established that neither one of those boys knows where that program is, so they’re worthless to us. We have the computers and we need to get rid of these loose ends.”

  Brendan was definitely Scott. But Brendan was a real person who’d lived in Dawson’s building for nine years, long before Dawson’s parents were killed. Jake had verified all that, and Scott had referred to the place he’d been staying as Brendan’s apartment.

  A horrible possibility reared its ugly head.

  “Scott.” She said the name aloud, and the man she knew as Brendan looked at her. “Where’s the real Brendan?”

  Scott snorted. “The real Brendan? Are you referring to that wimp who tried to contact aliens and allowed his phobias to trap him in that awful apartment? The only thing he was good for was helping us find these two and lending us his computer equipment.”

  “He helped you find them?” Jake had mentioned Brendan’s Internet posts about Dawson being an alien.

  “These boys aren’t smart enough to hide. Dawson acted so suspicious, Brendan got paranoid and tried to track down his neighbors. When he figured out their identities were false, he decided they were aliens and posted it all over the Internet. If he hadn’t done that, we might never have found them.” He shrugged. “I needed to use his place to keep an eye on things and his Internet connection to send the messages. He didn’t like that idea, so he’s in a plastic bag in the back of our van.”

  Grant gasped but said nothing.

  In a plastic bag in the back of their van? Amanda had never met the real Brendan, but that image clenched her gut and added to her anger. She leaned forward. “You killed a human being and stuffed him in a trash bag? You kidnapped a kid? And all for some stupid computer program? You’re monsters!”

  “Shut up!” Roger stepped forward and slapped Amanda so hard lights flashed before her eyes.

  “Are you okay, Amanda?” Charley and Grant both asked at the same time. Charley hovered close, passing through Roger and causing the man to shiver then step back.

  Amanda drew a hand over the side of her face. She didn’t feel any blood but she wouldn’t be surprised to end up with a bruise, maybe even her first black eye. However, she wasn’t about to admit it hurt. “I’m fine. He hits like a girl.”

  Roger grabbed her arm and yanked her up to face him.

  “Back off, Roger,” Scott said quietly. “Amanda, it’s not a good idea to insult somebody who has the power to hurt you.”

  He and Charley were on the same page with that one.

  Roger released her and she fell back to the floor with another crunch. The first thing she was going to do when she got out of there was take a shower. She’d probably have to throw away the jeans.

  “What about the real Nick Farner and the real Hannah Wilder? Are they in the back of your van too?”

  Scott laughed, the sound closer to a
snarl than honest laughter. “They’re fine. No humans were harmed in the making of those smokescreens. Those two were just diversions to allow us to get away before anybody figured it out.”

  Suddenly all the things that hadn’t made sense clicked into place. “Hannah’s license plate, Nick’s job at the health club, all that was your convoluted effort to mislead us, turn our attention to them so we’d ignore you. What about Mrs. Lowell? Is she on a cruise or in a trash bag in your van?”

  “She’s on a cruise to Alaska, a cruise we paid for.”

  “She’s not on the passenger lists.”

  Scott smirked. “We write computer software. We’re the best at what we do. Getting her name off the passenger lists was easy. Getting Nick Farner out of prison and Steven Lowell transferred to a better facility so we could set up that part of the diversion and have them go along with our little joke was more complicated, but still no problem for us. We’re good.”

  Charley appeared next to Scott. “Play to his ego, Amanda. Encourage him to talk about what brilliant computer guys they are. Suck up to him.”

  Amanda looked from smug Charley to smug Scott. She didn’t want to suck up to Scott. She wanted to lash out, attack him with her words since that was the only weapon she had available at the moment. Instead she gritted her teeth and forced herself to smile. “Computer software. I see. You know all about writing code and that kind of genius stuff. So why do you need that program from Dawson? Why don’t you just write your own program if you’re so smart?”

  Scott’s expression told her she hadn’t succeeded in sucking up. His brows lowered and his eyes narrowed. “If Dawson wasn’t so simple minded, he could find that code.”

  “My brother’s brilliant!” Grant shouted. He wasn’t any better at sucking up than she was.

  Scott snorted. “I thought maybe your brother was stalling, pretending he didn’t know anything about the program your father wrote. That’s why I came over to check it out for myself, but he’s really so dumb he couldn’t find it.”

  Grant shot out of his chair and lunged for Scott.

  Damn! Not again. Amanda leapt up and grabbed him just as he grabbed Scott. “Bad idea,” she whispered in his ear. He struggled for a moment then gave up with a noise that sounded suspiciously but only briefly like a sob. She wrapped an arm around him and led him back to his chair.

  Dawson still hadn’t moved. Amanda glanced at Grant to see if he’d noticed. His worried gaze met hers. He’d noticed. “It’ll be all right.” She whispered the words again, but she wasn’t sure she believed them.

  “If we’re finished with all the chit chat, I vote we kill them now,” Alice said. “There’s no reason not to. We can find the program. We don’t need them.” She lifted her arm, aiming the Glock in Amanda’s general direction.

  Amanda’s stomach clenched into a hard, painful knot.

  “Dawson knows where the program is!” she shouted, trying to be heard over the thundering of her own heart.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Scott moved closer to her, pushing Alice’s gun-wielding arm toward the floor. “No, he doesn’t. I was there, remember? He had me helping to look for it. He has no idea.”

  Amanda twisted her lips into a sneer and forced herself to speak around the huge lump in her throat. “You really think Dawson trusted you? You really think he didn’t see through your silly masquerade?”

  Scott grinned. “Yes, I really think he trusted me. Dawson was ready to trust anybody he thought might help him. I became his new best friend.”

  Amanda snorted…derisively, she hoped. “You may be a hotshot computer nerd, but you don’t know squat about people. Dawson knew where the program was the whole time. He copied it to a flash drive and gave it to Jake to take to the drop site. Jake and Ross were going to follow you when you came to pick it up. Dawson was just pretending all the time, delaying until they could get everything set up.”

  “That’s a pretty good spur of the moment story,” Charley said. “I’m impressed.”

  Amanda was too. Apparently terror sparked her imagination and ability to lie.

  Scott folded his arms and looked down at her. “I don’t believe you.”

  Amanda folded her arms, the action serving two purposes, to mimic and mock him and to hide her shaking. Her mouth was dry as the dirt on the road outside. She swallowed and forced the words up her arid throat, making every effort to keep her voice from wavering. “Fine. Don’t believe me. That’s your choice. You’re going to kill us anyway. The only question is when. You can kill us now and hope you’ll be able to find that program you’re so hot for, or you can wait until Dawson wakes up and get the information from him before you kill us. Up to you.”

  “She’s just trying to stay alive until her boyfriend gets here.” Alice waved the gun again.

  “We’ve got the computers,” Roger said. “Shoot them and let’s get out of here.”

  “These three will be easier to take with us if they’re bodies in bags instead of jumping around and talking.” Alice pointed the bobbing gun in Amanda’s general direction.

  “All that’s true,” Scott said. “But our efforts will have been for nothing if we don’t find that damned program. We’ll be back to square one, and that’s nowhere.” He looked at Dawson. “I gave him a rather large dose of zolpidem in his Red Bull and I think he drank most of it. It’s got a short half-life, but he should be out at least another couple of hours. We don’t dare wait that long since she says her boyfriend’s on the way. We could take Dawson with us and kill the others.” He arched an eyebrow in Alice’s direction. “Please refrain from using your new toy on him until we’re sure we don’t need him.”

  Alice shrugged. “Okay, I’ll just shoot the other two.” She swung the gun around and it went off, exploding through one of the rock walls off to the side, scattering shards of stone and dust over all of them and setting Amanda’s ears to ringing again. She’d probably have permanent hearing loss after this. The smell of gunpowder almost overpowered the musty scent of the cellar and the smell of rotten something that came from the broken jar. It was something of an improvement.

  “I didn’t mean to do that.” Alice smiled. “But I think I’m getting good with this thing. When this is over and we start getting our money again, I’m going to have lots of guns.”

  Things weren’t going very well. “Dawson will never tell you where the code is if you kill his brother,” she threatened.

  “Or his best friend,” Grant added.

  Scott shrugged. “We’ll have to take that chance. We’ve got to get away from here before your cop boyfriend gets here.”

  Damn. Just as she’d told Charley many times, lies always come back to haunt you.

  She drew in a deep breath and prepared to say the only thing she could think of to save them, however briefly. “Jake’s not coming. I lost cell phone service several miles back.” Her confession meant she’d destroyed her new phone for no reason.

  A smug grin spread over Scott’s face. “I wondered about that. We’re pretty far off the grid to get cell phone reception. We lost our service back by the highway.”

  “That means you have time to wait for Dawson to wake up and give you the code.”

  “Unless you were lying about that too.”

  “She told the truth.” Grant’s voice was small but strong. “My brother knows about the program. Dad left a note telling him everything.”

  “Now the boy’s lying,” Roger said.

  Scott peered at Grant as if trying to read his mind. Grant returned his gaze, never wavering. “If he’s always known about the program, why was he so upset when we took you? Why didn’t he just give it to us?”

  “He wasn’t upset. He was pretending. He knew you’d kill me just the way you killed our parents no matter if he gave you the program or not. He’s been buying time to give the cops a chance to find you.”

  “The kid’s good,” Charley said. “I almost believe him myself.”

  Scott turned away from
them, toward the door. “Roger, drive down the road and see if anybody’s coming. Alice, give me the gun and let’s go inside to get things ready to leave.”

  Alice scowled but slapped the Glock into Scott’s hand. The three of them exited the cellar, letting the door close with a thud.

  Total darkness filled the room, pressing against Amanda as if it were a tangible force, invading her senses with the musty scent of the underground as well as the lingering smells of gunpowder and rot or maybe it was just the lingering odor of the three beasts who’d been there.

  Faint streaks of luminosity coming through small cracks in the ancient wood revealed the location of the door but didn’t let in enough light to allow them to see their surroundings or even outlines of each other.

  “Put something on that door so they can’t get away,” Scott ordered from outside.

  Sounds of metal creaking and rattling were followed by heavy thuds.

  As soon as the sounds stopped, Charley came through that door, frowning, completely visible, glowing faintly in the darkness. Amanda groaned. She couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face but she could see him. That was just wrong.

  “They laid some heavy stuff on it,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to lift it.”

  “We?” Amanda snapped. “I don’t know about you, but Grant and I can lift that door.”

  “Get this rope off my hands and I’ll help.”

  Grant gasped. “Dawson!”

  “Dawson? You’re awake? You’re alive!” The last word came out of Amanda’s mouth as a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

  “Are you okay?” Grant asked, his voice trembling. “I was afraid—”

  “I’m fine except my hands and arms are getting numb. I’ve been awake for several minutes. I let them think I was still unconscious until I could get my hands free, figure out what was going on and attack them before they realized I was awake. But that didn’t work out so well.”

  Amanda felt suddenly giddy. Dawson was alive and ready to help them get out of this mess. She was so happy, she wasn’t even mad at Charley for being visible. Suddenly anything seemed possible. It didn’t matter that Jake wouldn’t be able to save her. They’d save themselves. “So you heard everything,” she said. “They don’t expect you to wake up for another couple of hours.”