Krewe of Hunters, Volume 2: The Unseen ; The Unholy ; The Unspoken ; The Uninvited

by Heather Graham

  “Wow, that was good,” Kelsey said. “Unless you’ve been stowing silver dollars in your ears, Kat?”

  “No, and you barely touched it,” Kat told Will.

  Will smiled at her. “When we were talking, I made the natural movements I might make during conversation. I had my hand in my pocket, but then I waved it near your ear, so you never saw me with the silver dollar.”

  She took the dollar from him.

  “Hey!”

  “I think it’s mine—it was my ear, right?” she teased.

  “That’s not the same as making it look as if a mummy’s attacking you in the depths,” Jane said, frowning.

  “No, it’s not. You’re talking about a much more complicated illusion, but it could be done,” Will said. “You get the right dive suit. Then you find out what kind of bandaging would work best in the water—appear the most real—and you come down prepared to shed your tank while you perform the illusion. And you’ve got just that. An illusion. But I don’t think Brady Laurie fell for it so easily. That’s why there’s bruising around his mouth. His regulator was torn from him. And someone held him. At least, I believe I’m correct about that. Kat, those bruises looked like ones that would appear postmortem if someone had been held, right?”

  She nodded.

  “So all we need to do is find a mummy dive suit,” Kelsey said, rolling her eyes.

  “Yeah, that would require a hundred search warrants from judges who have to be convinced that a drowning victim was actually murdered and so was an elderly man who had a heart attack. Or maybe we can get Austin Miller to appear before a judge. And if the judge doesn’t have a heart attack, Austin can try to convince him that a mummy did him in.”

  Will’s phone rang, startling him. He excused himself to answer it.

  “Hey, it’s Bernie. I hear Sean is in—the two of you coming over to see what kind of footage we’ve got?”

  “Yes, of course.” Will glanced at his watch. “Bernie,” he said, nodding at Sean Cameron. “He’s expecting Sean and me to see the film they’ve taken thus far,” he told the others.

  Sean rose. “Ready whenever you are.”

  But Will was surprised to realize that he wasn’t ready to go. He had, in a short period of time, become accustomed to working with Kat.

  “Go see what there is to see,” Logan told them. “We’ll be here if you need anything.”

  Jane said to Kat, “Let’s get started on the face in that vision of yours.”

  Kat nodded, but Will was glad to see that she was watching him—watching him as he left. She gave him a smile, and he felt something inside him quiver.

  Tinker Bell? Yeah, was what he’d thought.

  If so, he sure wanted to be Peter Pan.

  That’s so sophomoric! he told himself.

  But when she watched him go and he saw her eyes, he felt rivulets of heat race through his veins.

  And he didn’t bother to tell himself that she was his colleague.

  That just made her more appealing. No, she couldn’t be more appealing.

  She was everything a ghost-seeking illusionist turned law enforcement agent could ever want—beauty, perfection…and understanding.

  And then there were the basic but ravenous feelings he’d begun to experience when he was near her, as primal as the earth and air.

  * * *

  “What do you remember most?” Jane asked Kat.

  “The eyes. They were large and dark. And they seemed to be rimmed with a black liner,” Kat said. “And the face was lean and cleanly cut. Oval-shaped, I think. Classic.”

  “The nose?”

  “Straight. No twists, bulbs, lifts, curves—very straight.”

  Jane sketched out the oval and the eyes and began shading, drawing in the nose. Then she asked about the mouth.

  “Full. Full lower and upper lip,” Kat said.

  “How’s that?” Jane asked, pointing to the sketch.

  “A little thinner in the cheeks.”

  Tyler had come to stand behind them.

  “That’s him. He’s coming along nicely,” Kat said. “Maybe darken the eyes a little.”

  “He looks like someone,” Tyler muttered.

  “Who?” Kelsey stood over them then, Logan close beside her.

  “I can’t put my finger on it,” Tyler said, “but…there’s something familiar.”

  “He had on a hat. Not a turban, but it had width and substance and made him taller. Let’s see…his chest was bare. And he wore a heavy necklace,” Kat recalled.

  Jane sketched the headdress and Kat instructed her to broaden it.

  “That looks like an Egyptian ceremonial headdress,” Kelsey said. “I saw a few that were very similar on the pictures and statues we’ve been studying.”

  “Egyptian, and how strange in many ways. The ancient culture lasted almost thirty centuries, and yet, so much remained the same throughout the dynasties,” Kat said. “I was in the Sand Diggers’ house, I was in Austin Miller’s house and—” She broke off and looked up at Kelsey. “You’re right. There are all kinds of similar faces….”

  Tyler, who now sat across from her, took her hands and squeezed them. “Hey, Kat. You seem worried. An ancient Egyptian did not come walking across the water to sink the Jerry McGuen.”

  She smiled. Tyler was the team muscle—but he was also incredibly intelligent and surprisingly sensitive for the tough cowboy he often seemed to be. They’d connected like brother and sister from the first time they’d met, a number of years ago. “I know that, Tyler. And don’t worry. I definitely don’t believe that an Egyptian priest could create a giant image of himself to sink a ship. But I do think there was more than weather out there.”

  He nodded. “Okay. All we have to do, then, is figure out what happened that night.”

  Logan sat at the head of the table, frowning as he looked at Kat. “Interesting. The ship went down over a hundred years ago, and while you were able to get a little more information from Miller this evening, he couldn’t give you a name—he gave you a mummy. But what you see when you dream and when you’re below goes back to the sinking of the ship. I wonder if that has any bearing on what’s happening now.”

  “Especially,” Jane added, “if Amanda is searching for something specific.”

  “Well, finding something specific in a ship that’s lain on the bottom of Lake Michigan for more than a century is…worse than looking for a needle in a haystack!” Kat said.

  “What about Amanda?” Tyler asked. “Any ideas on how we find out whether she was involved?”

  “I’d like Will or Sean to get their hands on her computer,” Logan said.

  Tyler grinned. “There is that pesky little thing called illegal search and seizure.”

  “Tomorrow, Tyler and Sean should dive with the film crew. Alan King told me that Amanda and Jon were bringing out their larger ship. It has a small crane and they plan to start pulling up a few of the boxes.” Logan drummed his fingers on his desk. “Maybe now we’ll find out what Amanda is up to.”

  * * *

  “That woman is one skinny little witch!” Earl Candy said.

  He was showing the film he’d taken the first day, which included Amanda having a fit on the deck of the film crew’s boat. Will watched her, even though he’d been there.

  He’d seen the other footage, and he knew she hadn’t been down at the Jerry McGuen to kill Brady Laurie; there just hadn’t been time. But maybe there was something hidden beneath the surface that was of more value than they’d imagined.

  “How could there be anything more valuable than what they’ve discovered so far?” he mused aloud.

  “The treasure does, in essence, belong to the state,” Alan King said. He shook his head. “That’s what I don’t understand. I don’t know much about the black market, but if there were a major piece—wouldn’t everyone know once it went on the market?”

  “The black market exists all over the world and most collectors will talk about it if, say, a Rembrandt
or Matisse appears on the market somewhere. But finding out who actually has it or where it may be or how money changed hands is a nightmare. Once something disappears into the hands of a private collector, it disappears—sometimes for centuries,” Will said. He spoke without looking at Alan. Like Sean, he kept his eyes glued to the film. “Then, suddenly, you’ll hear about an auction—perhaps an estate auction—and there it’ll be.”

  “And the family supposedly knew nothing about it,” Sean said. “What if—”

  Will interrupted him. “Hold on. That’s the second dive on the second day, right?” He hadn’t been the first to get to the Jerry McGuen’s hold. He’d been with Kat, hovering near her in case she stopped breathing as she stared at the salon.

  “Yeah, second dive, second day,” Earl Candy said.

  “What did you see?” Bernie asked Will.

  Will nodded at Earl. “Go back to the end of the first dive, please.”

  Sean glanced over at him, repeating Bernie’s question. “What did you see?”

  “Maybe nothing. It just seemed that something changed. I wish I had a photographic memory, but I don’t. Can you tell whether anything’s off?”

  Earl Candy set his digital video back to the end of the first dive.

  He had an angle of the divers starting to go up and, as he followed, he had a shot of the hold as he went up himself. The blue-green darkness of the water seemed to swallow it up and even the bulk of the Jerry McGuen slowly faded away.

  He fast-forwarded through the footage he’d taken on deck. Then the divers entered the water again and he followed Amanda and Jon down to the hold of the ship a second time.

  “Hold it, Earl,” Will said, leaning forward to point at the computer screen. “There—that door. That bulkhead door. It was ajar every time we went down. Now it looks as if it’s closed tight.”

  Earl ran the two different views of the hold again.

  “Could be motion in the lake,” Sean commented doubtfully. “In the water, the motion one of us makes can become amplified, sending currents that displace it elsewhere.”

  Will looked at Sean, who was looking back at him.

  “Could be,” Will said.

  “But we both think someone else was down there, don’t we?” Sean asked him.

  “How? How are they doing it?” Alan was distraught. “We keep a boat there as security. We watch for anyone remotely near us on the lake.”

  Will sat back, folding his arms over his chest and smiling. “I think I might know,” he said. He glanced around. “The answer should have smacked us in the face from the beginning.”

  * * *

  The drawing was completed and attached to the board. Logan doled out the various journals Kat had taken from Austin Miller’s house so that his writing could be read more thoroughly. Will and Sean were still out, but they all said good-night; morning would come soon.

  Kat went to her room but walked through to Will’s. She cleaned Bastet’s litter box and gave her more food and water, telling her as she did that a cat as regal as an Egyptian Mau should have toilet trained herself. Bastet looked at her balefully, as if to say she disdained such activities.

  Kat hovered there, wishing that Will had come back. She really wasn’t a coward, and she wasn’t afraid of being alone, but she couldn’t help feeling some dread about the things she saw in her dreams. She realized she needed to see them, but that didn’t make it any easier.

  She remembered the way Austin Miller had appeared to her that evening, and how convinced he was that he’d been killed by a mummy. She’d tried to tell him the mummy had been a man and hoped he’d believed her in the end. “The curse was written on the tomb wall,” Miller had said.

  “What respectable Egyptian with power and money would die without a curse on the wall? It was to stop tomb-raiders,” Kat had told him.

  “But we’re tomb-raiders, aren’t we? We deserve to be stopped,” he’d said, just before fading away. He was such a new ghost; he might find tomorrow or in the days to come that he could maintain his soul’s image for those who could see. He was a charming man, and she hoped she’d get to speak with him again.

  She wondered if they were tomb-raiders. But she knew, perhaps more than most, that the saying You can’t take it with you was entirely true. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes and all that was organic in life would eventually disappear. The soul was the essence of a person, and no amount of finery could change that.

  She realized she wasn’t frightened on the physical plane. She was a good shot, and she’d learned how to deal with criminals and psychotics in instances when she wasn’t armed and someone had to be “talked down.”

  Kat didn’t like being alone now because she was accustomed to Will’s presence. She sat in his hotel room with the cat; it wasn’t really his place, and yet it reminded her of him. His aftershave was very subtle and pleasant and somehow spoke of breezy tropic nights and the sea. His shirts were neatly hung in the closet, his diving gear ready by the door. Always rinsed and always checked. He wasn’t obsessive, she’d learned. He was far more casual than she was, unless it had to do with survival—such as diving equipment—or something that wasn’t right, like McFarland’s desire to shelve Brady Laurie’s death as an accident.

  She needed to sleep. She stroked Bastet but left her curled up on Will’s bed. It was as if the cat missed him, too.

  She walked through to her own room, slowly got ready for bed and finally turned off all but the night-light streaming from the bathroom and lay down to sleep.

  She started to think about the major players, at least the ones they knew. The film crew, who’d called them in. But she didn’t believe any member of that group could be involved. There were the two men from the Egyptian Sand Diggers, but Dirk Manning was nearing eighty and Austin Miller was dead. At the Preservation Center, Amanda—highly suspicious, but constantly with them or on video or witnessed by others. And there was Jon Hunt, a far more amenable scholar with whom to work. Then there were Landry Salvage and Simonton’s Sea Search. Landry was rich and definitely aware of what was going on. She didn’t want Andy Simonton to be involved; he had seemed too nice and down-to-earth.

  That didn’t make him innocent, she reminded herself. Many a serial killer had turned out to be the boy-next-door type.

  At last, physical exhaustion seemed to settle her mind, and she drifted into sleep. Even as she did, she tried to fight the fact that she was slipping into another plane where she saw things.

  She couldn’t really see things, of course. There was no magic that let her see the past as it had been. People experienced haunting in two different ways. Residual haunting, in which events and the emotions they generated seemed to remain through the violence or energy of what had happened. It was why people saw Civil War soldiers in the misty fields of Gettysburg, or why some houses were haunted by murder victims.

  Then there were “intelligent” or “active” hauntings, such as Austin Miller returning to the place he loved, the place he’d lived all his life. Returning to tell her that justice needed to be done, his killer needed to pay—and his killer had been a mummy.

  What filled her dreams? Residual haunting or active ones?

  They seemed so very real.

  She could feel the night and, at first, everything that touched her senses was lovely. How could the moon ride the sky so beautifully before being obliterated by darkness? The breeze seemed soft, but she knew it would grow to be a bitter and icy cold. She could hear the music, the rustle of silk gowns. The sounds of laughter and pleasant conversation were all around her. But as she stood on the deck, she knew what was coming. The couple brushed by her, the woman fearful, the man quick to reassure her.

  It all happened as before. The moon was consumed by darkness in the sky; the breeze turned quickly and viciously into a cold wind. The brutal kiss of ice seemed to touch her skin. She heard laughter change to screams.

  And from the darkness, she could see it coming. Massive and dark—part of the darkness tha
t covered the moon? There were cries all around her.

  “Cursed!” someone screamed.

  And there it was….

  She saw the figure—the giant figure of the ancient Egyptian. It seemed to be fifty-feet high. It was coming closer and closer and seemed about to devour them all….

  She couldn’t breathe.

  The water was all around her. She was so cold she couldn’t feel her body anymore, but her lungs were burning.

  “Kat!”

  Distantly, she heard her name being called.

  “Kat, breathe, breathe!”

  She woke. There was something pressing down on her, something pressing air into her lungs. There was pressure on her mouth, but it was a good pressure, and she was no longer cold. She was warmed by the body heat of the man on top of her.

  She inhaled deeply, coughed, inhaled again.

  She looked into Will’s eyes. He was seated beside her by then, watching her breathe, dark eyes filled with concern and relief in one. She edged herself into a sitting position, still staring at him, afraid of what had happened, yet secure because he was with her again.

  “In and out, breathe slowly…. I’ll get you some water,” he said.

  He stood and hurried to the bathroom, returning with a glass of water. “Don’t talk. Just breathe and sip.”

  She nodded and leaned against the headboard. She sipped the water until she felt that her lungs were whole again, that oxygen was filling her system. She wasn’t dizzy and she wasn’t confused.

  “I—I guess I drown in the dream,” she said.

  He nodded. “I don’t think you should keep going down to that ship,” he said worriedly.

  She set the glass on her side table. “I’m not down at the ship, Will. I’m safe in bed with a bunch of other agents near me—and you with me,” she added at the end. “I have to keep going to the ship. My subconscious or someone from that ship keeps trying to tell me something, and I have to figure out what it is.”

  “Not if it’s ‘Hey, you’re drowning!’”

  She smiled. His muscles were still taut with tension, and his striking face was almost haggard.

  “I’m afraid to leave you at all,” he told her.