The Last Victim

by Karen Robards

  Turning off the lamp, she settled down onto the pillows she had been infuriatingly forced to retrieve and closed her eyes. Her emotions were in so much turmoil that she was afraid she would lie awake for hours. It didn’t help that she could hear the TV, which since she now associated the sound with Garland meant it was impossible to banish him from the forefront of her mind.

  If last night wasn’t a dream, what was it?

  She decided she didn’t want to know. In fact, she was too tired to think about it. Just like she was too tired to think about Tony, or Bayley Evans, or ways to find the monster who had murdered those three girls. She was too tired to think, period.

  She had barely closed her eyes when she fell fathoms deep asleep.

  Her dreams were a jumble of terrifying images. Charlie found herself looking down at Bayley Evans’ body on the gurney again, in all its horrific detail. Only, in her dream, the girl’s eyes suddenly popped open and she started to scream, soundlessly because her vocal cords had been cut along with her throat.

  No …

  Charlie’s own eyes popped open, to nothing but a whole lot of dark. She was, she discovered, as she lay there trying to make sense of where she was, gasping for breath and making soft whimpering sounds. Thrashing around in her bed in the FBI’s rented beach house, mourning a dead girl. A dead girl she hadn’t been able to save.

  Dear God, I can’t do this.

  “You’re safe, Doc. I’m right here.” That voice, coming to her out of the dark, instantly shut her up. It froze her in place, widened her eyes, and then practically gave her whiplash as she snapped a look in the direction from which it had come.

  Garland crouched by the side of the bed. She couldn’t really see much more than his outline and the gleam of his eyes: it was too dark. But she knew without a doubt that it was him.

  Her heart, which the dream had set pounding, slowed. Her too-fast breathing steadied. The tension in her muscles eased.

  The ridiculous, horrible, impossible-to-process thing about it was, having him there actually made her feel safe.

  His hand rested on the bed near her shoulder. She could see the dark shape of it against the white sheet. Just to make sure, just to test whether this was a dream or real or, third alternative, whatever the previous night had been, she put her hand on his.

  It sank right through to the sheet, leaving her to experience no more of him than an electric tingle. No warm flesh or solid muscle and bone. Nothing substantial at all.

  Her ghost remained a ghost.

  He yanked his hand away.

  “What was that?” He sounded wary.

  “I’m awake, and this is real,” Charlie said, although not with complete conviction.

  “Yes to both.”

  Charlie rallied enough to frown at him. “So what are you doing in my bedroom? What part of off-limits didn’t you get?”

  “The noise you were making was interfering with my enjoyment of Sports Center. I came in to shut you up.”

  She was immediately self-conscious. “I was having a nightmare.”

  “I know. Just like you did last night. I came in to shut you up then, too.”

  Charlie sighed and bit. It was bugging her to death, and she had to know. What was more, he knew it. If this was reality and in this reality he was nothing more than magnetic energy to the touch, and if her dreams, where she could have imagined he was a living man, were hers alone, which meant that he shouldn’t have had the first clue what went on in them, then what, exactly, had last night been? Embarrassing and infuriating and unsettling as having this conversation was sure to be, she needed to have it for her own peace of mind.

  “So you want to explain last night to me?” If her question was slightly gruff, it was because she still really didn’t want to go where this conversation would lead.

  She could just barely see his slow, curling smile. “Short answer is, looks like I’m your dream man, Doc.”

  If hitting him with her pillow could do any good, she would have done it. As it was, she went with what was practically her only option: ignoring it. “I’m serious. What happened last night?”

  His smile widened into a wicked grin. “Well, let’s see: we danced, and we made out, and we got each other hot, and then you—”

  “You know what I mean,” she snapped, before he could get to the part where she had started stripping.

  He said nothing for a moment, and she wasn’t sure he was going to answer. Hitching herself up on the pillows, she folded her arms over her chest and glared at him.

  “Garland. Stop being a jackass, and tell me how you ended up in my dream.”

  “Try calling me Michael,” he suggested. “And I wouldn’t say no to a please.”

  Remembering the circumstances under which she had called him by his first name made her heart beat faster. It was all she could do to keep her breathing from quickening.

  She could feel him waiting.

  “Michael.” She said it reluctantly, and thought she saw a flicker of something in his eyes. Despite her best efforts, she felt her blood begin to heat. The next word was several degrees less difficult: “Please.”

  He smiled at her, slow and almost sweet. “Now, how hard was that?” He then eased into a sitting position on the floor beside the bed, with his back against the wall and an arm on his bent knee. Her eyes had adjusted enough to the gloom so that she could actually see him a little now. They were at right angles to each other, close enough that she caught what looked like a quick, wry smile. “Since in my present state climbing into bed with you and making us both feel real good isn’t looking like it’s an option, I guess talking’s all there is to do.” Charlie was just drawing a breath at the image this planted in her brain when he added, “Like I said, you had a nightmare last night. I got through your salt barrier—went right out through the ceiling—and came in to see what was up. There was this girl in your room. Dead girl—see, I recognize the type right off now.” Humor just touched his voice. “You were asleep, but you seemed real agitated, tossing and turning and moaning. I was just coming around the corner of the bed, trying to get between you and the girl in case she had bad intentions or something, when she saw me and started to turn away. Then—here’s the good part, Doc—you rose right up and tried to go after her. Not your body—it stayed where it was, in this bed. But you. Your spirit, I guess, if that’s what you want to call it. You went flying after that girl, who vanished right out through the wall. And if I hadn’t caught you around the waist and hung on, you would have gone after her. But I did catch you, and it was the damnedest thing. We were both the same, both as solid and alive as you are now and I used to be. I could hold you, Doc, and feel you. It surprised the hell out of me, let me tell you. So I grabbed on tight, and then we got whisked back to that dance where we were earlier, and I figured that must be where you were in your dream. Only me grabbing on to you took me with you.” His brow furrowed. “You got any explanation for any of that?”

  Charlie’s eyes had widened as she listened. Everything he had said was a revelation, and while her mind pondered the ramifications she answered his question almost absently. “It had to be a form of astral projection. I don’t think I’ve ever done it before. In fact, I didn’t know I could do it.”

  “You lost me, Doc.”

  “Many people believe the soul can leave the body for brief periods while the body is still alive, especially while sleeping or under conditions of extreme emotion or duress. There’s actually a lot of literature backing it up.”

  “Ye-ah.” Obviously dubious, he drew the word out. “So your soul and my soul met in the sky.”

  His tone earned him a sharp look. “I don’t know why you sound so skeptical. You’re the one who’s dead and still walking and talking and causing problems.”

  His grimace conceded the point. “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ huh?”

  She blinked at him, genuinely surprised. “That’s Shakespear
e.”

  “Believe it or not, I know that. I can read, Doc. Like I said, there wasn’t a whole lot to do in prison.”

  At another time she might have marveled a little more, but just then her thoughts were finally coalescing to pinpoint the most important part of what he’d told her.

  “The girl—the one you said you saw—what did she look like?”

  “Blond. Pretty. A kid—maybe seventeen, eighteen. In a puffy pink dress.”

  Holly.

  There was no one else it could have been.

  Charlie’s heart started to pound.

  “You actually saw her?”

  “Clear as I’m seeing you now. She was coming toward you, saying something, but when she saw me she vamoosed.”

  Charlie sucked in air. “What did she say?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t quite catch it all. Something about a bag. ‘It’s in the bag,’ maybe, or ‘where’s my bag,’ or something like that. Like I said, when she saw me she shut up and got out of here.”

  Charlie was desperately turning the words over in her mind. Although she had dreamed of Holly a few times, she had not actually had a visitation from her since right around the time of her death. Which made sense, because she only saw the recently violently departed. Had Holly been trying to get in touch with her all this time, to tell her something? Or had this new string of deaths somehow brought Holly to her again? The only explanation Charlie could come up with for either was that Holly must have a message for her.

  But what?

  “Are you sure that’s all she said?” Charlie asked anxiously.

  “That’s all I heard. The only part I got real clearly was bag. The rest could have gone a lot of ways.”

  “Oh, my God, you can see her.” As that part finally sank in, Charlie regarded him with sudden excitement. “If she comes again, you can talk to her. Ask her what she wants.”

  “You know, I’ve got just about zero hankering to play telephone with stray spooks.”

  “But you can talk to her. I can’t.” Frantic to get him to do what she wanted, she tried to think of a way to persuade him; finally, she hit on a possiblity and took a deep breath. “There’s one more thing I can try to keep you here. I’ll do it, if you’ll help me.”

  He looked at her without speaking for a moment. Then he nodded, a barely perceptible inclination of his head. “Now you’re talking my lingo.”

  “If she comes back—her name is Holly—if she comes back, ask her what she wants. Tell her you’ll take a message to me. Tell her—”

  “Whoa. Slow down. Suppose you tell me who she is first.”

  Charlie looked at him, hesitating. She never willingly talked about that night to anyone—even unwillingly, she hadn’t so much as mentioned it for years. Forgetting it had been one of the goals of her life. But if Garland was to understand how important his questioning Holly was, then he needed to know who she was, and what had happened to her.

  So she told him. And found, when she had finished, that she was glad he knew. It was almost as if a weight she had not realized she was carrying around with her had eased. As if in the telling she had shifted some of the burden of it onto his broad shoulders.

  For a moment he just sat there looking at her. Finally he spoke.

  “You’re something, Doc, you know that? That’s the kind of experience that would turn most people into basket cases, but you—look at you. Dr. Charlotte Stone. Right after they first took me in to see you, and I discovered to my amazement that you were hot, I looked up all your degrees and credentials just to make sure I was getting quality service. I got to tell you, they impressed the hell out of me. Now they impress me even more. You took what happened and used it to make something of yourself. You should be proud,” he said, sounding uncharacteristically serious.

  His words made what almost felt like a lump rise up in her throat. Charlie realized that this was the first time anyone had ever recognized and acknowledged what she had done, and for some idiotic, ridiculous reason it touched her to the core. Worn out and depleted from reliving those long-ago events and emotions, not wanting to speak until she was sure her voice wouldn’t sound croaky, she lay back limply against the pillows without replying, her eyes on him. Her breathing was slightly uneven, but she believed it was the only outward sign of distress she showed. However, he—she realized that although he had stayed perfectly still throughout her pitiful little recital, his face had gone tight and his shoulders were tense and his hands had clenched into fists by the time she had finished. The anger and pain and protectiveness he felt on her behalf were there in his expression, in his body language. She could read it plainly. It comforted her to a surprising degree—more than anything had comforted her in a long time.

  “You’re not sitting over there crying on me, are you, Doc?” He peered at her, frowning.

  That banished the maudlins in a hurry.

  “No, I certainly am not.” She summoned the strength to refute it strongly. One thing she prided herself on was, she never cried. Not once since those terrible days fifteen years ago. And she had absolutely no intention of starting now, with him.

  “Good, because if you are, with me like this there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it.”

  “Of course I’m not crying. I never cry. And if I were, and you were alive, just what do you think you could do about it anyway?” She adopted a slightly astringent tone, because allowing herself to be moved by him was a dangerous mistake, as she absolutely knew, and the last thing she wanted was for him to realize how he had affected her. “Pat me on the back a couple of times and say, There, there, don’t cry?”

  “I’d make you feel better.”

  “Oh? How?”

  “If I were myself again, I’d crawl up there in bed with you and fuck all the bad memories right out of your head. Then I’d fuck you to sleep. I’d fuck you when you woke up in the morning, too.”

  At that, Charlie’s breathing suspended. Her heart drummed. Her senses caught fire. Her whole body responded with a fierceness that caught her by surprise. Their eyes connected through the darkness, and there was no mistaking the heat in his.

  This is bad. She wanted him to do what he had described so intensely that she was shaky with it. The sad truth was, the only thing stopping her from going into his arms and doing anything he asked was that sex with him simply wasn’t possible.

  But just the thought of it made her dizzy and hot and so aroused she burned for him. Which was stupid. And self-destructive. And stupid all over again. Because not only was sex with Garland something she was never going to have, it was something she never should have. Never should want.

  Her chin went up. “What makes you think I’d let you?”

  A smile just touched his mouth. “Oh, you’d let me, Doc. We both know that.”

  Charlie could feel her bones melting. For a moment she was mute, so turned on and rattled because of it, she could think of nothing to say. Because the truth was—and he knew it, too—he was right.

  Some long-buried instinct for self-preservation kept her from admitting it.

  “I guess we’ll never know, will we?” She strove to inject some crispness into her tone—and even from her own perspective, failed miserably.

  “I guess we won’t, at least not unless you want to try the astral thing again.”

  She shook her head. The regret and sense of loss she felt at acknowledging that a brief, hot affair with her impossible ghost was something that was just not going to happen was way more intense than it should have been, she realized. “It’s not something I can do intentionally. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “Yeah.” He got to his feet, and for the briefest of moments stood looking down at her. Whatever he was thinking, his face was shrouded enough in shadow that she couldn’t tell. But his mouth thinned out and his jaw hardened, and when he spoke again it was in a totally different tone. “What about that ju-ju, Doc?”

  That sounded more like him.

  “Meet me
in the kitchen,” she told him. She really didn’t want to get out of bed and have him ogling her in her nightgown, which was just as feminine and skimpy as the one she’d taken off for him the previous night, because those were pretty much the only kind of nightgowns she owned.

  If he somehow managed to stick around for more than the next few days, she was investing in heavy flannel.

  He nodded, and headed for the door.

  Charlie rose, snatched up her robe, put it on, and belted it tightly, then followed him.

  The ingredients she found in the cabinets; the delivery system, under the sink.

  The mixture of honey and oil she sprayed him with to ground him to the earth was an old Middle Eastern trick she had read about but never before had occasion to use. When he saw her pouring it into a plant mister and found out what she meant to do, his skepticism abounded—but as she pointed out, beggars couldn’t be choosers. She made him stand fully clothed in the shower for it, not wanting to get the gooey mixture on anything in the apartment. Since he wasn’t actually solid no matter how solid he looked, the spray passed right through him, coating the shower walls and floor but leaving him untouched. When it was done, she ordered him out and turned on the shower to clean up the mess. Then she went to bed.

  He went with her.

  This time, instead of sitting on the floor, he took the other side of the bed. As she burrowed under the covers, ostentatiously turning her back to him, she did her level best not to think about his big body stretched out beside her, except on top of the bedspread. His purpose, of course, was to keep a watch out for Holly.

  Hers was to sleep. Not that she expected to, with him taking up way more than his fair share of the bed.

  But by then it was close to four a.m.—and despite everything, she was so exhausted that sleep she did, almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  If she had any dreams, she didn’t remember them. According to Garland, she didn’t do anything more exciting than switch positions once or twice. And Holly didn’t show.