by Jenna Ryan
* * *
Nolan borrowed a truck from a man he knew who repurposed vehicles long since written off by insurance companies. Kate didn’t care if the practice was legal or not. She just wanted to get out of San Francisco before anyone associated with her died.
They drove north, across the foggy Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and beyond. It was still a few minutes shy of midnight when they passed through a cornfield, complete with a Mr. and Mrs. Evil Scarecrow, and on to a broad stretch of Hansel and Gretel woods. Ten minutes later they were bumping down a side road that dead-ended near a weather-beaten church and, what else, a graveyard.
Kate surveyed the scattered headstones. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Nolan, but why is everyone suddenly so obsessed with dead people? Crucible told us Leshad was superstitious. He didn’t say anything about the man doing his dirty work feeling the same.”
“He didn’t say much of anything, kid. The only name Crucible mentioned was Phoebe Lessard’s.” Nolan climbed out. “We need food.”
Kate laughed out a frustrated breath. “I barely spoke to Phoebe Lessard before she vanished. Do you honestly expect me to believe that I’ve been targeted for death because of something a patient in the throes of a post-surgery delusion might have mumbled to me?”
“A good stiff drink wouldn’t hurt either.” Nolan slammed the driver’s side door. “Believe it, Kate. For you to be targeted like this, there has to be a link between you and Phoebe. I talked to Miranda. The first victim in this calling card nightmare was Madeleine Lessard. She’s one of the bayou sisters Crucible talked about in the crypt. Phoebe’s her daughter. The suggestion’s been made that Mama Madeleine, or Mad Mama as she was often called, had some kind of second sight.”
Kate rolled her head. “This night is so not improving. Who told you about Mama Madeleine’s second sight?”
“Killian. Miranda confirmed it.”
“Are we talking psychic ability here or a full-blown voodoo queen?”
“No idea.” He reached into the box of the truck for flashlights. “Fog’s receding. We should get inside.”
Because the ground was fairly level, Kate switched on her light and walked backward to view his expression. “Why are you doing this, Nolan? There was no silhouette calling card in your pocket, only in mine.”
“I’m a doctor. I’m supposed to care about people.” He quirked a sarcastic brow. “Or so I’ve been told.”
She deliberately shone her beam in his face. “A statement to which I believe you replied, ‘Piss off.’”
“Put it down to a generous mood, and get that damn light out of my eyes.”
With a long last look at him, she shifted the beam to a house she hadn’t noticed before behind the church. Like St. Mark’s, it stood on a rise and bore a creepy resemblance to Norman Bates’s mother’s home in Psycho.
“Looks abandoned,” she observed. “The windows are boarded up, the porch is falling down and part of the roof seems to have caved in.”
“The place was condemned two years ago.” She caught the vague amusement in Nolan’s tone. “We’re sleeping in the church.”
“No we’re not.”
“It’s the church or the truck, take your pick.”
“I’ll go with the truck.” Kate dug her heels in. “Seriously, Nolan, churches don’t exist so people can hide out in them. Or, well, maybe they do in emergencies, but this one doesn’t look as though it’s in much better shape than the house.”
“Don’t worry, Chicken Little, it won’t fall on our heads.”
She gnashed her teeth. “I’m not worried, you idiot, I’m terrified. In the past twenty-four plus hours, I’ve seen and heard an old woman who says she’s alive but keeps disappearing into thin air. I’ve also spotted a man with a beard and a limp. I’ve got a death card in my pocket and a jackhammer the size of a tanker truck trying to smash its way out of my skull. All that, and you think I’m worried about whether or not a church might fall down on top of me?”
“Kate—”
“Don’t Kate me, pal. I want my life back. What’s more, when I get it back, I’m quitting trauma surgery and going into forensic pathology.” Leaning toward him she hissed, “Corpses don’t sneak out of hospital rooms and leave their physicians to take the fall.”
He gently pushed her into walking again. “Would this be you having a bona fide panic attack?”
“Not even close.” She pointed at the misty graveyard. “You chose a church for sanctuary because of Leshad’s scared-of-the occult tick, didn’t you? To which I say again, the person doing his bidding is unlikely to possess a similar fear.”
“We don’t know what anyone involved in whatever the hell’s going on might or might not fear.” Wrapping his fingers around the back of her neck, Nolan forced her to look at him. “Kate, the church is here, we’re here, and I need someplace quiet to think.”
“About Crucible?”
“Partly.”
Nolan was lucky, she reflected and fought the temptation to squirm. Because while all he required was thinking space, she wanted distance. From him. A little air wouldn’t hurt either. Composing herself, she met his gaze. “Do you trust Crucible?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do, but I also recognize that he did in fact throw us on a landmine. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather steer clear of him until we have a better idea of what’s really going on. City’s close if we need it. I like to think we won’t, but we probably will.”
“What does that mean?” She hated to ask.
“It means—” he tightened his grip on her neck “—we’re going to find out as much as we can as fast as we can about your missing patient, Phoebe Lessard.”
* * *
Crucible’s furious eyes impaled Killian and Miranda via their iPads. “Explain what you mean by you ‘lost them.’”
“It was chaos, sir.” Killian showed him the singed ends of his ponytail. “We were almost torched ourselves.”
“Perp knows his stuff,” Miranda put in. “There’s no trace of apartment 203 left.”
Crucible drummed his fingers. “No trace of Kate or Nolan either, it appears. Were they snatched?”
“Unlikely.” He saw Killian glance at Miranda. “We think Nolan talked her into ditching us. The idea of a lockdown on Alcatraz Island didn’t appeal to him.”
Miranda took over. “May thought she saw them leave the alley, but she was lying in a bed of trash at the time. We have people out searching, Crucible. All their usual and unusual haunts. Sir, the perp obliterated an entire building. The death toll could have been twenty-seven souls. Either Leshad doesn’t care about numbers, or he’s desperate.”
“Possibly desperate,” Crucible agreed. “Possibly something else.”
Killian glanced at Miranda again. “Do you have a theory?”
“A burgeoning one.” Crucible glared at them through the screen. “Find Kate and Nolan before whatever or whoever whisked Phoebe Lessard away swallows the only decent lead we’ve got.”
Although he disliked having his authority challenged, Crucible gave Miranda marks for holding his gaze and replying coolly, “Our only decent lead, sir, or our only juicy piece of bait?”
* * *
Kate slept on a lumpy cot in the old rectory. The church and attached living quarters came with limited electrical power, two space heaters, a four-burner hotplate and food for a week neatly packed in three wooden crates.
The next morning, she worked a brush through her damp hair as she circled the main room. “I missed something on the drive up, didn’t I? Although to be fair, the water pressure in the shower here is much better than it was in our old apartment.”
“You mean our old apartment that’s currently spread all over the Mission District?” Nolan held his iPhone higher, searching, Kate imagined, for a signal.
She gestured with her brush. “I saw arrow slits of light in the house on the hill last night. Does the fact that we were obviously expected mean the resident ghost is a friend of y
ours?”
“The ghost’s a horror. The guy who owns a big chunk of the land in this area isn’t. His name’s McDuff. He’s eighty-six, or so he claims. Others insist he’s half a decade older than that. Most of what he currently possesses he won in a high-stakes poker game five years ago.”
“Let me guess. McDuff is going to let us hide out in an old church on his property because you performed the surgery that saved his life after the resident ghost attacked him with a knife in the shower.”
“Nothing quite so dramatic. He got drunk a year ago and shot himself in the foot. I removed the bullet and stitched him up.”
“Really?” She frowned. “I never heard about that.”
“Why would you? It happened in a local bar. I was seeing double that night, so in a way you could say Duffy got a twofer.”
Kate refused to find that funny. “You operated on someone when you were drunk?”
“Wasted. I was approximately two-thirds aware of what I was doing. Duffy and I agreed that was good enough.” He pocketed his phone. “I can’t get a signal. We’ll have to risk his place.”
Kate poked through one of the food boxes. “When you say ‘risk,’ are you referring to us, and more specifically to me, not being shot en route, or is there something about the land between here and your friend’s freaky hilltop house that I should know?”
He speared her with those incredible eyes and, damn him, started to advance. “This is a haunted spot, Kate. Has been since 1884 when the landowner murdered his wife and the local preacher for having an affair. He hung their bodies on stakes in the cornfield, exactly where you saw those two scarecrows last night. Then he went up to the cupola in the house on the hill and took a header off the roof.”
Rather than wait for him to reach her, she manned up and strolled across the floor. “Your life’s just chock-full of fascinating tidbits isn’t it, Nolan?”
“Some good, more not.”
“Suggests to me that you’re hitting the highlights rather than the low points in an effort to lighten the mood. Why?”
“I’m not a fan of panic attacks.”
“Ah, well, in that case, you really want to avoid the night janitor at St. Mark’s. Guy’s a cat on amphetamines.”
A gust of wind blowing through the rafters of the old rectory distracted her. Beyond the window, gunmetal gray clouds deepened to black over the woods. And here she stood with Nolan in a dimly lit room on a creaky wood floor, surrounded by sheet-draped furniture. Her grandfather would see ghosts. Unfortunately, all Kate saw was a man who both intrigued and unnerved her. A man with a dangerous number of layers. And, damn it, she wanted to rip away every last one of them, along with his clothing.
“Why the uncertain expression, Kate?” The corners of Nolan’s mouth twitched. “Are you thinking I’m going to seduce you? Because I promise you, I’m not.”
“Yeah, I got that last night.” Stopping in front of him, she threw caution aside and stroked a finger from his cheek to his jaw. “Sex and seduction don’t mix.”
He stared down at her. “You play games with me, lady, you’ll lose. I’ve been there and done that a whole lot more than you have or ever will.”
“So lust is good and sex is better, just not with me.” The idea would have stung her pride if the glimmer in his eyes hadn’t made the lightning fast leap from cautious gleam to hungry glint.
“I’ll give you grief, Kate, and then I’ll walk. It’s what I do. Army’s the longest stint I’ve pulled, and that was four years of pure hell.”
“I don’t know about the hell part, but you’ve been at St. Mark’s for three and a half years.”
“Six months longer than you.”
“This isn’t about me, Nolan.”
He tipped her chin up with his thumb. “Yeah, it is. And if I tell you why, there’s a good chance it’ll be about sex, too.” He lowered his head until his mouth almost but didn’t quite touch hers. “Did you hear a click?”
“Yes.” Kate didn’t move. “I think it came from the church.” Which was better than the graveyard, she conceded, but not by much. “Why is the sun never out when you hear spooky sounds?”
Nolan set his sights on the partly open rectory door. “A rifle can kill you just as easily on a sunny day as a cloudy one. The lightbulbs in the corridor are either burned out or missing. Stay behind me and don’t make any noise.”
Make no noise in a building with nineteenth-century plank floors that sagged in the middle and would probably shriek like the undead if a mouse tiptoed across them? Highly unlikely. But she breathed once, in and out, and nodded. “After you.”
Kate’s mind sped through the possibilities. It had to be Nolan’s friend Duffy didn’t it? Or someone who worked for him. There was no reason for her heart to be pounding or for her feet to feel lead-weighted. This wasn’t a nightmare, ghosts didn’t need doors to move about and the Grim Reaper wasn’t on Leshad’s payroll.
The floor protested loudly as they made their way across it, but then whoever was out there had to already know they were in here, so terror factor aside, Kate figured they were even.
Nolan pressed a hand to her stomach. “Back against the wall. Whoever it is, he’s in the corridor.”
But only for a moment.
The door crashed open before Kate could flatten her spine to the plaster. In the gloom, the shadow of a man appeared.
A man with a .30-30 rifle aimed it right at them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nolan felt her move. Reaching back, he warned, “Not yet, kid. This isn’t Duffy.”
“Because that would be way too simple.” Kate sighed.
The shadow resolved itself into a fifty-something male with greasy black hair and an oversized Adam’s apple. His finger on the trigger looked itchy.
“This is my land, my property.” He jabbed the air between them with his rifle. “No trespassers allowed.”
Arness T. Clemens. Nolan had met him twice, and neither encounter had been pleasant. “Think back, Nesty,” he said. “Bank foreclosed on your land seven years ago. A dentist from L.A. bought it then lost it to Duffy in a game of five-card stud. Duffy lets you live in the house on the hill.” When the man continued to glower, Nolan summoned a serene smile. “You’re off your medication again, aren’t you?”
Nesty bared crooked teeth. “Don’t need a mess of pills to know what’s what. There’s five generations of Clemenses buried in that graveyard.” He brought the rifle around. “Who’s she?”
Kate stepped into view. “My name’s Kate Marshall, Mr. Clemens. I’m a – “
“Fuckin’ she-devil.” He spit again and shoved the rusty rifle barrel into Nolan’s chest. “That old spook’s trying to run me off my land, isn’t he?” The rifle snapped up, almost clipping Nolan’s chin. “He brought her here to witch me. Well, it won’t work.”
“Nesty—” Nolan said.
“Shut up.” The man, a beanpole in filthy clothes, screwed up his face as he mashed a palm over his left ear. However, when Nolan stepped toward him, he snatched it away and scuttled backward. “You set that gun of yours on the floor, Doc. You do it, or I’ll send the she-devil straight to hell.”
Nodding, Nolan complied. The guy was a keg of paranoid dynamite. Teeth bared, chest heaving, Nesty forced them to walk along the corridor to the church.
Kate bumped Nolan’s shoulder. “Is this the horror of a ghost you told me about?”
“His mother’s the ghost.”
“So his name’s really Norman Clemens.”
“He has a mental illness, Kate.”
“And a really big rifle,” she retorted. “Is he going to shoot us or let Mother do the honors?”
“He’s not that mentally ill. Mommy’s dead and buried and he’s not normally this bad. Nesty knows where she is—or he would if he hadn’t ditched his meds. Just keep walking. I’ll think of something.”
“If you don’t, and we die, I’ll come back and haunt him. Crucible, too. I’m angry enough right now to freak the
hell out of both of them.”
“You’re not helping, Kate.”
“Yes I am. I’m using temper to combat the fact that I want to do something seriously stupid.”
“Like what? Turn and attack?”
“Or fake a fainting spell.”
“He’d shoot you, then me.”
“You could try reasoning with him again.”
“He’d shoot me, then you.”
“Fine. Say something nice about his mother.”
“He hated his mother.”
“About his father then.”
“His father killed his mother and almost killed him.”
“What’re you two jawing about?” Nesty demanded. “Ain’t no chance of you getting this rifle out of my hands, if you’re making plans.”
“No plans, Nesty,” Nolan called back. “Kate was just wondering if you might be on the payroll of a killer named Leshad. I told her you wouldn’t work for a slimeball like that. You’re not the kind of man who’d turn people in for bounty money.”
“Bounty money?”
At his almost comically eager response, Nolan glanced over his shoulder. “Twenty thousand,” he confirmed. “Maybe more. Amount paid depends on the condition of the bounty. Alive and kicking could net you as much as twenty-five.”
Nesty licked his lips. “What about stone-cold dead?”
“Not a sou, I’m afraid.”
“Shit.”
“Choice is yours, friend.”
Nesty’s thin mouth worked for several long seconds. Nolan wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad sign when his olive pit eyes brightened. “I’ll hold you in the bat cave!” he exclaimed.
“What? No!” A horrified Kate whirled to object. But her hands went up at Nesty’s snarl. “Sorry. Knee-jerk reaction. Bats are—which way to the cave?”
Still calculating, Nesty gestured to his left.
They stepped through the rear door of the church and straight into the haunted woods of every child’s deepest, darkest nightmare. Skeletal trees, their last leaves clinging like leeches, swayed overhead. But it was the evergreens that really dominated this forest. Pine, spruce and cedar, most of them ancient, all of them gnarled and every one of them resembling some kind of tortured creature.