Foretold (A Ghost Gifts Novel Book 2)

by Laura Spinella

  Motherly instinct moved Aubrey in Agent Hanlin’s direction. He didn’t turn but simply held up an arm, impeding her forward charge. “I’m sure this is beyond difficult, the waiting. But if your son is in there, letting us do our job is in his best interest and yours.” He made unlikely eye contact with Aubrey. “We’re good at our jobs, Miss Ellis. Count on it.”

  And for whatever else Aubrey knew to be true, she understood this about Jack Hanlin, Dan, and Piper. “You are.” She backpedaled to Levi.

  “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Pete’s going to be all right.”

  She nodded, but it was no more than trembling extremities. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so powerless.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She pointed toward the forest of trees and obscured house. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “For an ordinary person, maybe.” Levi put his arm around her, pulling her close. “I’m choosing to see it this way: Piper . . . Dan, they went in there to get our son back. Those are damn good odds all on their own. Imagine, on your behalf, the army of ghosts they took with them. They owe you, Aubrey. All of them. As capable as this team is”—Levi pointed toward the line of defense they could see—“Jude Serino should be more worried about ethereal wrath than the power of law enforcement.”

  Aubrey wanted to believe him. She wanted to think it was more than Levi spinning the best scenario he could envision. She tried to force a smile. It cracked and fell as the sound of gunfire shot through the air.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The glacial wait morphed into a rapid meltdown. Aubrey’s knees gave way as adrenaline spiked. The white of her knuckles showed as she gripped Levi’s jacket, and his face was as pale as her hands. Her mind reeled back to the last time she’d seen Levi’s color so ashen—also the result of gunfire. But Levi did not fall to the ground; blood didn’t slowly saturate his white dress shirt. Instead, he plowed forward, almost dragging Aubrey along as Piper’s voice cut through the tall pines and whipping ocean wind.

  “We’ve got him! We’ve got Pete!”

  Unnerving commotion followed. The whirl of noise was like the hottest of carnival days, clogged with strangers and uneven movement. Aubrey, Levi, and the extended detail surged toward the house. Team members dressed in full body armor, fortified with a variety of weapons, seemed to be everywhere. Other men and women clad in blue jackets and authority raced past, some running in and others running out. Someone shouted about an inbound ambulance, and Levi’s hand gripped tighter to Aubrey’s. Her heart felt like it was beating outside her body, almost trailing behind her and Levi.

  The stretch of land leading to the house was rough, sloppy terrain; decaying leaves permeated the air with the smell of dying things. In her panic, Aubrey mentally grasped for the guide of a specter, opening her mind like a spigot, looking for the rush of her father, Zeke, even Brody. It was pure instinct, and until that moment, something Aubrey would not have viewed as comfort. Near the door, she stopped and assessed. She had to, for her own sake and Pete’s. It wasn’t a ghost but Levi who was right there—bordering on the same panicked breaths, the only person in this world, or the next, who felt the same things.

  “Pete will be all right,” Levi said.

  And for all her gifts, Aubrey could only pray his iron will had the power to haul hope into reality.

  The secluded house was a glass fortress with Levi and Aubrey stumbling up its modern steel steps, the sound of echoing metal clashing with dense forest. Piper met them at the door. “He’s alive.” Aubrey clamped a hand over her mouth; she could hear the breath expel from Levi’s body, his hand so tangled with hers it felt as if he were breathing for both of them.

  “Where is he?” she demanded. “Pete!” Aubrey pushed past Piper, her gaze bouncing from corner to corner in the vast interior. Her line of vision collided with a pool of blood, glistening as it streamed onto the floor. An adult male body lay beside it, agents pulling up close, surrounding him. “Pete! Where are you?”

  There was no reply.

  “Aubrey.” She turned to the grave sound Piper’s voice made. “He’s alive, but he’s not conscious. His pulse is weak but there,” she said hurriedly. “They drugged him. Looks like they were holding him in an interior room with no egress.” She pointed toward the next level, about six steps up. “He’s unresponsive.”

  “Where is he, Piper?” Levi said. “Show me—now.”

  “Right here.” Dan appeared in the upper-level hall. Lying limp in his arms was Pete. “His pulse slowed even more. Fuck waiting on the ambulance. Let’s move.”

  Fortunately, sirens sounded as the medical cavalry met them outside the front doors. While Aubrey could get a glimpse, she could not get ahold of her son, cranking angst up another notch. A gurney sank a smidge as Dan laid Pete’s supine body on it. Levi held fast to Aubrey’s shoulders, keeping them both stationary as paramedics crowded around. Hovering over Pete, medical personnel forced open one eye, then the other. “Pupils are sluggish—constricted.”

  “BP eighty over fifty . . .” The second paramedic stared at an unconscious Pete. “Counting thirty-second periods of apnea.” He turned Pete’s arm, revealing multiple needle sticks.

  “Any idea what they pumped in him?” Piper said.

  “Opioid, anesthetic of some sort. But that’s no more than a baseline guess.”

  “For sure, a whole lot of this.” Jack Hanlin’s voice came from behind them. In his gloved hand was a vial and syringe in a plastic bag. “Agent Donavan just handed it to me. It was in the room with the boy.”

  “That’ll help—a lot.” The paramedic took the evidence. He looked at Piper. “We’ll know more when we get him to the hospital. How old is he? Do we have some parents en route or on the scene?” For the first time, the paramedic’s attention deviated from Pete to the surrounding commotion.

  Levi stepped forward. “We’re his parents. He’s twelve—Pete, his name is Peter St John.”

  “Let’s move.” The first paramedic secured some straps. “One of you can ride in the ambulance.”

  “Go ahead.” Levi nudged Aubrey.

  She was frozen—fear, responsibility, dread. A tremor that Aubrey thought might be permanent ripped through her, her head moving back and forth. “You go with him,” Piper said to Levi. “I’ll bring Aubrey in the car, right behind you.” The gurney started bumping across the wooded yard. The abrupt departure was so sudden, Levi couldn’t do anything but let go of Aubrey and grip his son’s lifeless hand.

  Levi and Pete vanished into the shroud of trees. Aubrey panicked; his breathing wasn’t there to steady hers, and she started gasping for air.

  “Aubrey, stop!” Piper grabbed both her hands, forcing her attention away from what were now exiting sirens. “He’s alive. He’s going to stay alive. But you’ve got to keep it together—for yourself, for Pete . . . for your family.”

  Aubrey understood terror; the deep bite marks in her forearm were visible as Piper held tight to her hands. More specifically, Aubrey thought she had a handle on the fear born out of the unknown. She moved toward the SUV, not sure how one foot was getting in front of the other and understanding that she’d never known a fear like this.

  Pete was already in a treatment room when Aubrey arrived. She found Levi pinned to a narrow slip of glass that was part of the door. “They asked me to wait outside. It’s not a big space,” he reported. “He was okay on the way here. Out cold, but breathing.” He sidestepped a nurse as she went inside the room with an IV bag of something.

  There was nothing to do but wait. Aubrey stood against a wall; Levi looked caged. If room allowed, he would be pacing, no doubt adding to his tight mental list of logical ways to navigate tragedy. After Brody, even after so many years, Aubrey didn’t know how much space was left on the list. Piper and Dan took several calls, gathering facts as they unfolded. Jack Hanlin said he was going to question the man shot at the Serino residence and walked toward the other side of the ER. Having been on the receiving
end of a Hanlin interrogation, Aubrey guessed he’d return with answers.

  Still, in the moment, Aubrey was amazed how much she did not care. Levi appeared more engaged, and she thought this was a good thing. It would give him something to do besides wait and pace. When she got around to feeling anger, perhaps revenge, she might know where to find Jude Serino. Ten minutes hadn’t passed when Jack Hanlin returned with a notepad of information. She didn’t want to, not really, but Aubrey was compelled to listen, awed as Zeke’s implications turned into facts. The man shot at the scene readily admitted to being employed by Jude. He was one of several men charged with kidnapping and holding Pete captive.

  According to Jack, the man confirmed that for years Jude had parlayed eerie prognostications into his own personal and widespread gaming operation. Unfortunately, his clientele was the type who celebrated wins and came looking for you if they lost. When Zeke provided him with a string of losing bets, Jude ended up with a lengthy list of angry gamblers—people who lost huge amounts of money, others who felt Jude was holding out on them, perhaps looking to up his share of the take.

  Dan Watney picked up the story from there. Since arriving at the hospital, his team had reported in with additional initial findings. “In the house, they discovered a detailed plot plan—apparently, Serino didn’t want anybody missing a step. He should have taken a few cues from his sister-in-law; the plan wasn’t terribly clever, just a basic ransom-for-payment operation.”

  “Except for the part where they shot my kid up with God knows what to keep him quiet,” Levi said.

  A chagrined look hung from Dan’s face. “Right. Sorry. Of course there’s that.”

  Jack interjected with more facts from his ER interrogation. “After I informed Jude’s lackey of the penalty for kidnapping, he got real motivated, all before going into surgery.” He nodded, his lips pursed. “Interesting what the threat of thirty years in prison and the desire for anesthesia will produce. Apparently, gunshots can be quite painful.”

  “Tell me about it,” Levi said.

  “Part one of the plan was to take Peter St John, a mission easily accomplished by abducting him from the back of the defunct rubber plant in Surrey. From there, they were told to wait several days.”

  “Enough time to instill the fear of God or the wrath of Jude Serino in us,” Levi said.

  “Correct. Duress and turning you into desperate parents seems to have been the immediate goal. That brings us to about now.” He pointed his notebook at Aubrey. “That’s where Serino’s flunky got a little fuzzy. I don’t think he had clear knowledge of the entire strategy. He said Jude Serino had instructed him to take the boy, then keep him sequestered.”

  “But why drug him?” Aubrey said. “Locking him in an interior room wasn’t enough?”

  “Apparently not. As it was, according to our squealer, your son was savvy enough to get ahold of a cell phone at one point. That’s when they . . .”

  “When they what?” Levi demanded.

  “Upped the dosage on what they were pumping into him. The creep on his way into surgery, he tried to score military comradery points with me.” Jack’s shirtsleeves were rolled up, the Navy SEAL emblem obvious. “Said he was an army paramedic—four Middle East tours. From the track marks on him, I’d guess it was a drug-induced dishonorable discharge. Guy knows his medicine cabinet backwards and forwards. He copped to what he gave your kid, but the docs here won’t take his word for it. Anyway, administering drugs is this guy’s wheelhouse. Unfortunately, ex-junkies find it difficult to employ such a skill set. Made him a prime pick for Serino’s op.”

  Levi drew the rest of the conclusion. “So the idea was to terrorize us, then use Pete as leverage, exchange him . . . or dangle him, betting on Aubrey’s ability to provide him with future prognostications.”

  “And how would he even know to do that?” Piper asked.

  “That, Piper,” Levi said, “is the mother of all ghost stories.”

  Aubrey added more reverently, “A story that cost a grifter his soul.”

  Before Aubrey could go into specific details, the ER doctor came out of the treatment room. Aubrey and Levi whipped around to face her. “How is he? How’s Pete?”

  “His pulse is still thready. I don’t have definitive answers yet.”

  Aubrey’s heart thudded to a near standstill. Her response wasn’t what she had anticipated. This was supposed to have a happy ending. The doctor was supposed to come out of the treatment room declaring that after some rest and time, Pete would be fine. “What is it you don’t know? Is he awake . . . can we see him?”

  “He’s very groggy. The first labs show propofol in his system. It’s an anesthetic. Whoever administered it knew what they were doing—the exact amounts to keep him under and alive. A person can wake up agitated, saying incoherent things. As far as that goes, it seems to be the case for Pete.”

  Aubrey and Levi exchanged a glance. “What, um . . . what sort of things is he saying?”

  The doctor offered a befuddled look. “Ramblings, really . . . I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying close attention to what your son was saying. I’m more interested in what’s going on with Pete physically. He’s also running a high fever.”

  “Because of the drugs?”

  “Not likely,” she said. “But we don’t have concrete answers just yet, Mrs. St John.”

  Aubrey didn’t bother to correct her. Levi interjected, “Did they do anything else to my son? I want to know.”

  “Not from what we’ve assessed so far. Nothing that will allow these good folks,” she said, pointing to Piper and company, “to press additional charges. But there are significant bruises, scratches. They could have been a result of the initial abduction, Pete fighting them off, but . . .”

  “But what?” Aubrey said.

  “He’s been gone three days, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s puzzling. The wounds I’m seeing are fresh. With the amount of propofol still in his system, I doubt your son’s been conscious enough to put up a fight in recent days. He’s dehydrated, which is also hard to explain. According to the paramedics at the scene and the initial findings, they had him hooked up to IV fluids. So while I’d like to blame the dehydration on Pete’s fever . . . his treatment . . . it’s not adding up from a medical perspective. As for his surface injuries, we can ask when he’s fully conscious. There must be a logical explanation.”

  Aubrey traded a glance with Levi. “Can we go in, see him?”

  The doctor’s gaze moved around the tight waiting area, which was dotted in federal agents. It seemed to remind her that this wasn’t an ordinary admission. “Yes. Of course you can go in. Just be mindful of the drugs in his system. If you’re upset by his demeanor, it will likely only agitate him further. I’m sure none of us wants that.” Aubrey nodded as she and Levi turned for the door. “I’ll be back, hopefully with some more lab results.”

  Aubrey’s attention was hyper-tuned to her son, not so different from the last time they were in a hospital together—the day Pete was born. She made brief eye contact with a nurse, who adjusted an IV. “Can, um . . . can we have a few minutes alone with him?”

  The nurse looked tentatively between beeping monitors and her patient. “Dr. Eason didn’t request a one-to-one. I guess it’ll be okay. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Aubrey didn’t say another word, watching from the corner of her eye until the nurse exited the room. She took a motherly inventory: one piece—her son was in one piece. This was despite scratches on his arms and face, bruises that did look fresh. Her chest moved with his—life-assuring breaths.

  “Pete . . .” Levi stood closer than a shadow against Aubrey’s frame. He repeated his son’s name. The boy’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Mom?”

  She smiled and gathered his hand in hers; it was mad hot. “I . . . we’re right here, Pete. Both Pa and I. You’re going to be fine. I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

  It appeared to
be a fight for Pete to open his eyes. Long dark lashes that were Levi’s fluttered as Pete’s eyes rolled up into his head again and again. “Esme . . .”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to leave her . . . but I don’t want to hurt her again. Esme.”

  Aubrey shook her head. “Pete, who’s Esme? You’re here . . . with us, at a hospital.”

  Levi moved to the opposite side of the bed, gripping the hand attached to an IV. “Pete . . . you’re going to be okay. It’s over. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Pete’s head began to thrash from side to side, legs moving as if he were trying to gain traction, enough to raise himself out of the bed. “No! I don’t want to be here. I have to go back! I have to fix it!” Using his parents’ grasp as leverage, Pete managed to hoist himself upward. Levi let go of Pete’s hand and held his son’s shoulders, urging him flat onto the mattress. “Get your hands off me! I won’t leave her, not like that!”

  Aubrey and Levi looked at one another. It wasn’t the out-of-sync words or the out-of-character actions, it was his voice. Pete’s voice was deep, as if he’d passed through puberty in the three days he’d been gone. “Pete, stop,” Aubrey said. “You won’t leave who? Where are you, exactly?” She asked this, recognizing that her son wasn’t in the same room or realm. Aubrey began to tally the clues—Pete’s visions, his talk of war, the notes she’d taken, and his possible reality.

  His head slammed back onto the pillow, and a violent cough overtook him. But he continued to fight, his bruised body reeling upward; Levi did everything he could to hold his son in place. This wasn’t the fight of a twelve-year-old boy; this was the strength of a grown man. Monitors responded, chirping and beeping to mirror Pete’s frenzied behavior. Then the tremendous force Pete thrust upon them began to wane. The coughing dominated, his chest heaving as his breathing labored into a desperate wheeze.

  “Levi?” Aubrey said.

  “Maybe it’s the drugs . . . like the doctor said.”